Our Father

0:00Our Father: come boldly to the throne of grace

Well, this morning we’re starting a new series that’s part of a larger series. Last week we started the Lord’s Prayer, which I just realized I do not have on the screen for us. So we’re going to have to do it from memory. I messed up. I missed a media cue, and I’m just owning it in front of the internet right here, that I’ve missed a media cue. But hey, you know what? Life goes on. We’re building. We aren’t built. You can’t move in until there’s been a final inspection. I’m waiting on a final inspection in Jesus’ mighty name.

What I want to do is, because we’re in this series on the Lord’s Prayer, I’m trying to fill you up with content that you can pray using the template of the Lord’s Prayer. And so what I want to do is I want us to say the Lord’s Prayer together, and hopefully I’ll remember the whole thing while I’m standing up here in front of you all. This is the time preachers forget things. We’re fine. We’re very spiritual till we get in the pulpit, in front of everyone. All right, well, shake your neighbor and tell them to laugh or something this morning.

Okay, here we go. So let’s do the Lord’s Prayer together.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

All right, give the Lord a good praise right there. And I had you clap. Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil. We haven’t done the series on that yet. We’ll just edit the whole thing out. We’re having fun in church today. Which is really going to make an announcement I’m about to give y’all real scary, okay?

So I’m excited about this. I think this was the enemy’s way to try to get me out of it. But lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

The reason we’re in this series on the Lord’s Prayer is because the Bible says in Hebrews 4:16 to come boldly before the throne of grace. It is hard to come boldly before the throne of grace in prayer if you don’t feel like you are able to pray. If you don’t feel like you’re able to be before the throne of grace, you can’t come boldly before the throne of grace.

And so what we’re going to do today is we’re starting the beginning part of our series on Our Father. We’re going to spend the next four weeks talking about the Our Father of the Lord’s Prayer. We’re going to be talking about grace upon grace. John 1 says, “But you have received grace upon grace.”

Now, this is the disclaimer that I want to give you. I’m preaching the whole message with no notes today. I have no notes. I don’t know the Lord’s Prayer, but I might know this sermon.

Y’all got to remember the denomination I was raised in. Do y’all know what denomination I was raised? Pentecostal? No. I was raised Alcoholics Anonymous. So I can do the Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I know that one. All right, so just remember how I was raised.

But I’m going to preach this entire message without notes. I have for years wanted to just be note-free when I preach. So we either are about to have a great time together, or we’re going to be singing How Great Thou Art in about 20 minutes. Either way, this thing’s ending well.

3:59The revelation of grace

All right, so we’re starting a series called Our Father. I want to share with you something before we get going. Probably at this point, probably 16, 17 years ago, I had a moment where I stepped into what I can only describe as a life-changing revelation. I had a life-changing revelation come on me.

I talk about it in the book, but I don’t really talk about what it is. I have a book called Here to Hear that I’ve written that we give to all of our guests. And if you don’t have a copy of it, we’ll give you a copy too. We’ve got to order some more. But in the book, I talk about this season in my life where I have just a massive life-changing revelation come on me.

In fact, it is so life-changing that at one point I’m pretty sure Ashleigh thought I was losing my mind. She was actually frightened because it was shifting everything, and I think she thought I had gone off the deep end, and I was trying to come to terms with what was fundamentally, theologically, philosophically, pragmatically life changing. It just changed everything.

It happened after I had read the Bible a couple of times. A lot of what I teach people on Bible reading is based on how this revelation came into my life. So when I tell people read the Bible three times, this is why. It’s because I read the Bible once, and I got through it. And that’s about all you can expect the first time you read the Bible, folks. You’ll find them stories you’ve already heard, and you’ll go, oh, there’s Noah. That’s kind of the experience the first time you read the Bible.

The second time I started reading I was like, this is crazy. There’s stuff in here that I’ve never seen before. And the third time I read the Bible it was like the Holy Ghost took a blacklight and waved it over the page, and I went, where has this been? I haven’t heard anybody preaching on it. I’ve never seen it in here. Where is this coming from? It was like major revelation.

And what it was is, for the first time, I had already been in ministry for a handful of years. I had been saved for 10, 12 years, something like that. And for the first time ever, I actually understood, I actually saw the gospel of Jesus Christ. What I call the gospel of grace. It’s a new covenant way of viewing God.

And so when I came into this revelation, it shifted everything. And if I had to give you a physical example, the only thing I can think of is, how many of y’all have seen these pictures on the internet that you can’t tell what it is, and you look at it and it makes no sense, but then when you see what the image is, you can’t go back? You can’t unsee it. There’s one that goes around with these purple things, these purple columns, and then once you finally see it, you realize it’s not purple columns. It’s an upside-down fork prong over something. And when you see it you go, oh. But you can’t unsee the fork once you see it. The fork is there forever. Well, maybe prophetically we’ve come to a fork in the road in our church.

So once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. It changed everything.

A few years later, I am sitting at my kitchen counter in our house in Adrian, Michigan. I am eating Honey Nut Cheerios with my coffee in a Winnie-the-Pooh mug. In fact, if y’all ever wonder why I use Yetis all the time, it’s because I’ve given testimonies where I was using the Winnie-the-Pooh mug. I’m just trying to be a little more, I’m future-proofing these testimonies.

And so I’m sitting there with my Bible open and I’m in the chapter of the Bible that we’re going to look at today, which is Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5, you can turn there. I’m looking at Romans 5, and the Lord speaks to me in my kitchen that morning and tells me, help my people experience grace for life through Jesus Christ. Help my people experience grace for life through Jesus Christ.

And so that’s really what I’m about to do. We’re about to see a shift in some of the preaching here with this. I have a plan for the rest of the Lord’s Prayer, to be honest with you. Once we do this, I could be here forever. This is where I want to live my life, is in what I’m going to start teaching you today.

I do want to prepare you, though, before we jump into Romans 5, that when it comes to the topic of grace, the hardest part is to figure out where to start. I can walk you through the systematic theology of it. I can walk you through the new covenant timelines. I can walk you through some of that stuff, but there’s such a transformative power when it comes to the gospel of grace. So powerful, in fact, that Paul called it my own gospel. The Apostle Paul claimed it as his own. He called it my own gospel, because the gospel of grace is so transformative that it’s hard to know where to get in, where to start.

So what we’re going to do is we’re kind of just going to parachute into the Bible, and I’m going to let the Scripture do the work. So you probably won’t leave here today going, I fully understand that, because I’m going to leave here preaching it today not going, I fully understand that. I’m doing what I think it was Peter said, I’m growing in grace constantly. Peter encouraged, and I think it’s in his first letter, he says, grow in grace in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Grow in grace. I’m still growing in grace. I’m still learning. I’m not becoming more gracious. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m learning about the grace that God has towards me.

And so we’re going to start looking at that today, and we’re going to spend the next four weeks, because this is going to absolutely transform your ability to pray. Because I told you last week there’s really three obstacles to prayer. One of them is discomfort. If you don’t feel comfortable, you won’t pray. One of them is content. If you don’t have content, you won’t pray. I can help get you through a little bit of the discomfort. I can give you the content. That’s what I’m doing now.

But the third obstacle to prayer, which is really the enemy of prayer, is condemnation. If you feel condemnation, if you do not feel worthy to go boldly before the throne of grace, you will never do it. When condemnation gets a stronghold on you, you will not activate the things of God that actually set you free. So you have to be free from condemnation. That’s what this series is hopefully going to help you with. That’s what hopefully this church is going to help this region with, in Jesus’ mighty name.

All right. If you’re ready, say, I’m ready. Romans chapter 5. We’re also going to display stuff a little bit different this morning. We’re going to have scripture kind of hanging out on the screen for the most part.

So here we go. I’ve got 30 minutes. I’m going to try to stick to the clock. Let’s see what happens.

11:25Romans 5:1-5: standing in grace

Romans chapter 5, starting in verse one. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Now, where we start in Romans chapter 5, we start here finding out where we’re kind of picking up. We’re picking up because Romans 1 through 4 have been getting us here. We’re starting with, we are saved because we have faith in Jesus Christ. If you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, you are a born again believer.

If you want to know if you are saved: do you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord? Do you believe that He died for your sins? Do you believe that He rose from the dead, and He’s the soon coming King? Good news, you are saved. If you don’t believe that stuff, hopefully you’ll believe it by the end of the day.

Look at your neighbor. I’m serious, y’all. I’m nervous. I’m doing something I’ve never done. You do something you’ve never done. You say amen a couple of times in this sermon. Just write five on an offering envelope and start ticking them off, you know what I mean? Just some check boxes or something.

But if you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are saved. It starts here by saying, therefore, since we’ve been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Then it says this: through him we’ve also obtained access into this grace in which we stand.

If you are saved, the grace of God has been extended to you, here’s what I want you to hear, in its full measure. You don’t have a little bit of grace. You don’t have a tiny bit of grace. You don’t have enough grace for you. You have the full measure of God’s grace that has reached into your life. All the grace that God has, it’s been extended to you.

We have access to the grace in which we stand. We aren’t laid over, we aren’t hurting, we aren’t defeated in it. We stand in this grace. We have a proper posture. We have a proper position. We stand in the grace of God. Somebody say, I’ve got the grace.

All right. Now, right here it says that we’ve obtained access. The NASB translates this a little bit differently. Both renderings are good. I like the NASB a little bit more. It says, we have obtained our introduction into the grace in which we stand. We’ve obtained our introduction into this grace in which we stand.

Both renderings are fine. What I like about that introduction is that this is going to identify one of the major problems that we’re going to run into with grace. Because I am a results-oriented person, if you haven’t figured it out. I like to get results.

What have I told you folks about Pentecost? I don’t want Pentecost that’s just fun church services and flipping out and having a good time. I want Pentecost that works. I’m anti Pentecost that falls off in the parking lot. I want Pentecost that works.

Turns out, you know how you get Pentecost to work? Grace. It’s through the finished work of Jesus Christ, knowing what Jesus has done for you. That’s how you get grace to work, or that’s how you get Pentecost to work. You’re going to find out throughout this series that the power of God and the grace of God are directly connected. They’re directly connected to one another. They impact each other.

Now, the reason I like that introduction is because for most people, we have an introductory knowledge of the grace of God. We’ve been introduced to it, and then we move past it very quickly. We move past this idea that we’ve received the grace of God.

Most people in the church today, and probably the church for the last 2,000 years barring maybe the first 30, have struggled to keep grace in front of them. This is what is at the core of the Protestant Reformation. When Martin Luther’s sitting in a room and he goes, wait, we’re saved by grace? Through faith? What? That revolution, that is the power. If you want to know the power of the gospel of grace, the Protestant Reformation would be a great place to look. Talking about splitting church history wide open. That’s the power of grace.

But most of us operate in a very basic knowledge of grace. So we need to not only be introduced to grace, we need to grow in grace, as Peter said.

So it says, we’ve obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings.

Now, I want to say this real quick. The word rejoice there, if you’re reading from the ESV like I am, there’s a footnote that says that you could also translate that word boast. Other translations translate it as exult. Not exalt, but exult with a U. That’s a seminary term, by the way. It’s a Bible-y word.

Exult is a word that sounds like exalt, and a lot of times we think of it as exalt, but exult actually means that you rejoice, you celebrate from a point of having victory. So you exult because you’ve already won, you’ve already overcome, and you celebrate from that place. You celebrate from a place of victory.

That being said, it shifts gears here, and until you sit with this scripture for a while, it doesn’t make sense why we’re about to talk about all this grace, and he’s talking about suffering here.

But it says here, we’ve obtained our introduction into the grace of God. And then it has two things happening. The first one is that we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Then it says, not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings.

18:20Two manifestations of grace

So the first one, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, that tells you that there is a spiritual dynamic to grace. There is a spiritual manifestation of grace. When by faith, or through faith, you are saved by grace, borrowing language from Ephesians 2. When you are saved, when you are born again, the moment you give your life to Jesus Christ, you place your faith in Him, the moment that happens, there is a spiritual reality that takes place immediately.

Immediately, your name is written in what is called the Lamb’s Book of Life. You are saved, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Your name is written down. You are the righteousness of God in Christ. You are on your way to heaven. That’s a spiritual reality. It is in the annals of heaven that you are a born-again, blood-bought believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But here’s the tension. A lot of times we think that all things spiritual remain spiritual. But what it tells us here is there is a spiritual manifestation of the grace of God. We hope in the glory of God. There’s a spiritual manifestation.

But then it says, not only that. Everybody say, not only that. That’s not all. There is a spiritual manifestation of grace, praise God, because I’d hate to have it working on Earth and then go to hell. If I’ve got to have it one way, I want to have it not working for me here, and then have it working for me there. The good news is, though, you don’t have to choose. You can have both. Because, not only that.

So then it goes on and it says, we rejoice in our sufferings. Watch the rundown here. We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.

Want to hang on a second. It said a moment ago that we hope in the glory of God. But also, we get hope produced from our sufferings, to endurance, to character. That’s producing hope. And then it says, hope does not put us to shame.

When you’ve got hope, you’ve got breakthrough. When you’ve got hope, you’ve got a promise. When you’ve got hope, you can overcome. When you’ve got hope, that thing can happen. That’s what hope does. Hope brings you to that place.

What does the Bible say about faith? The Bible says in Hebrews 11 that faith is the substance of things hoped for. I’m telling you, this is where faith and grace and hope and manifestation of these promises all start to work together.

If we get done with this, I will be real shocked today. But y’all will never know, because I don’t have notes. There ain’t no points today either, folks. We’re just letting the Apostle Paul, I stole this sermon from the Apostle Paul.

Hope doesn’t put us to shame. So that means that there’s a physical manifestation of grace. So that means that in the things that you go through, when you’re dealing with things, that’s not to say that everything is roses. If you’re not dealing with stuff, you’re dead.

I believe God wants you to prosper, but there’s some prosperity stuff that comes off the TV that I go, man, that just ain’t realistic. You know? I mean, I get it. You can have a jet and three mansions, but at some point you got to have a cross word with your CPA. It’s just, something’s going to happen. There’s always something going on. You get what I’m saying?

And so when you have those things happen, you know that you can access, by the grace of God in which you stand, some type of hope that comes down into the earth that resolves situations, that brings about breakthrough, that produces healing, that gives power, all through the grace of God.

And then it tells us how this happens. It tells us how you get a spiritual manifestation in heaven to become a physical manifestation on earth. It says, because. This is why. So the hope that we have, here’s the because. We have this hope because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.

God’s love and God’s grace are like this. You’re not going to separate these. Oftentimes what Paul calls grace, the Apostle John calls love. They’re very synonymous. He’s saying that you can have this hope. You do have this hope. You do stand in this grace because God’s love has been poured into your hearts.

Now, here is a very key line that you need to hear, you need to understand this. This is the whole frame of my understanding of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ working in your life. I’m talking about the physical manifestation. You don’t have to make it past the salvation prayer. You put your faith in Jesus Christ, the spiritual manifestation works.

But I’m telling you, I don’t want to pastor a church full of people who know how to get saved and live in defeat. I don’t want to pastor a church full of people who know how to get saved and then stay broke, busted, and disgusted, sick, feeling ill, being hurt, being under when they could be over. I want to pastor a church full of people that through the grace of God have learned how to access breakthrough in every area of their life.

Is it always kicking on all cylinders? Maybe not. But I’m talking about a group of people who know how to touch something out of this book that brings about breakthrough.

This tells you how it works. This tells you how it happens right here. The love of God’s been poured into your hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Now, what I need you to understand is that the physical manifestation of the grace of God, to see spiritual breakthrough in your life. While I am in a series where I’m trying to teach you about prayer, while I’m in a series where I’m trying to teach you about making your requests known to the Lord, asking God to do things in your life, prayer is actually less about getting results than it is about God getting glory.

God is weird about this, but He likes credit for the stuff He does. And so when we pray, what we do is we put on the table where we want breakthrough, and that is the God part of it. God is making sure we’re jotting down, we’re keeping a record of what He’s going to do in your life. However, receiving it is actually not as much about prayer as it is about this. It’s about your revelation of grace.

The physical manifestation of grace in your life, the power of God working in your life, getting a physical manifestation of grace, is directly tied to your understanding and your insight into the grace of God.

So I do need to tell you, if you do not receive the Word, you’re going to be limited. I’m not talking about this message and I’m not talking about my preaching. But if you do not receive the Word, if you do not get under good preaching that points towards the finished work of Jesus Christ, that points towards the price that was paid at Calvary that gives you full access to God’s blessing, if you don’t receive that Word, you’re always going to live in struggle. And you’re going to get from struggle to struggle on the struggle bus. That’s what life is going to be like.

That’s why I’m teaching this. This is why I’m going here. And frankly, it’s why I’m just using the Bible today. These aren’t clever thoughts that I have. Now, let me be clear. I preach the Bible all the time. But I’m just going to use the Word. We’re just going to walk down today.

And when you have an understanding of the grace of God, when you have the insight of what has been accomplished for you, you can begin to step into breakthrough.

One of the reasons that we don’t see a lot of Christians step into breakthrough is because in many churches there is a lack of revelation concerning this topic. Some pastors have it, but they’re afraid to preach it because they’re afraid if they preach grace, their people will run wild. Which how you run really ain’t any of my business anyway. And let’s be honest, I tell y’all not to do stuff y’all do anyway. So it ain’t like it’s going to do a whole lot of good.

And so they won’t preach it because they think their people are going to run wild if they get a hold of this message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the finished work, the grace of God, the love of God, that they’ll run crazy.

And the other reason is that what I have found is that pastors tend to be so busy going from content to content to content, it’s very hard for them to receive revelation. Something that I am more compassionate towards today than I would’ve been five years ago, because I didn’t have that pace. I got to sit there and write books and just hear from the Lord.

But just recently I heard a pastor in our city get up and say, and I’m going to preach on this next week, but I heard a pastor in our city get up and say, you think the law was bad? Grace is harder than the law. Grace raises the standard.

That is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard preached from the pulpit. It is an affront to the cross. The pastor ought to be ashamed and he ought to take six months and get straight on that. I’m serious. I was so irritated, and the fact that I’m not calling him by name is the grace of God. It’s a physical manifestation of grace. Ticked me off.

Because breakthrough is going to be directly connected to your understanding, your insight of the grace of God. If you’re with me, say yes.

29:39Romans 5:6-11: what the love of God is

Okay, move on to verse six. Not chapter six. You’ll get too far ahead. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Now, we’re not going to flip back on the screen, but listen. Verse five told us how we get a physical manifestation of grace. We get it because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Ghost, through revelation, through understanding. And then right here, verses six, seven, and eight that we just read tell us what the love of God is.

The love of God is that God gave you something you did not deserve, you could not get yourself. So even if you did deserve it, you didn’t have access to it. Even if you were strong enough, you weren’t this strong, honey. You can’t get it. No matter how good, no matter how right you’ve lived, no matter what family you were born into, you couldn’t do it.

This is where the idea of unmerited favor comes from. Grace is, and you can write this down if you’re taking notes, grace is, in its simplest definition, unmerited favor, undeserved favor, unearned favor. You can’t earn it, you can’t buy it. This is unmerited favor. It is not unique favor. It is not favor for some and not for others. It is favor for anyone who puts their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you, by faith, have trusted in the Lord, then you now have access and introduction into a grace in which you stand that is giving you victory, solid in the spiritual, directly correlated with your insight into the grace in the physical realm. And how did it get to you? Through the love of God.

By the way, this is very similar to how I study the Bible, folks. You just read it. If anybody has argued with my encouragement that the best way to study the Bible is just to read it, this is just reading the Bible. We’re just reading the Bible right now. That’s all we’re doing. As Paul said, you can see into my insight.

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would die.” Paul is saying right there that we are unrighteous. He’s making sure that we know that we are unrighteous. “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Verse nine. “Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

I want you to just notice right here, there’s twice that he says much more, and then the last line he says more than that. There is more, more, more.

The great thing about the new covenant, the great thing about the finished work of Jesus Christ, is that you’ve got a guarantee that’s got a guarantee that’s got a guarantee. This is why it’s important that you understand that, yes, He died for your sins, and that has done something for you that was completely outside of your ability to do for yourself. Yes, Jesus Christ died for you and has now brought about peace between you and God the Father. You are good. You are saved. You are born again.

But not only that, we have more assurance because He was raised from the dead. I’m telling you, if you think Jesus was just a good teacher, first of all, I don’t know if you’re going to go to heaven. Because that’s not enough to save you. He’s not a good teacher. He’s not just a rabbi. He ain’t Pastor Jesus. He is God in the flesh. He is the Lord of all.

So He’s resurrected from the dead. He sits at the right hand of God. He’s coming again. All of these things give you more and more guarantee. They’re the much more, the much more, the much more of the grace of God.

Because Jesus didn’t only pay the price, He will argue with customer service on your behalf. When the devil comes against you and begins to accuse you and try to bring condemnation into your life, John calls him the accuser of the brethren. When he comes in and he starts trying to bring accusation into your life, Jesus goes, hang on just a second. I don’t really care what he did.

It’s kind of like talking about your kids. How many of you know that when your kid’s bad but the teacher’s got the wrong tone of voice? Let me tell you something right now, Ms. Johnson. I really don’t care what he did. You’re not going to talk about my boy like that. I bet you have 455 conversations like that every day.

And so I’m telling you that He’ll bow up on the devil and go, don’t you come in here and talk about that. I don’t want to hear about it. Doesn’t matter. The price has been paid. There’s a receipt of the victory that Jesus Christ has in your life. It’s called the cross at Calvary.

My God, I’ve preached my way through this whole time. Let’s just keep going. We’ll go fast.

35:40Romans 5:12-16: Adam and Jesus

Verse 12. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man.” Okay, now we are making a major transition here. Sin came into the world through one man. What we’re now talking about is Adam.

And I just want to keep us up to speed, because Romans 5 deals more with what Jesus did in terms of your sin. Your sin does not come just from what you do, though that’s there partially. We are all sinners because Adam sinned. Sin is in our DNA. Sin is in our nature. You’ll hear preachers say that you have a sin nature. It’s because of what Adam did.

So now we’re introducing Adam. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,” Adam, “and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”

You’re going to notice right here that there’s that little, I learned from ChatGPT, it’s called an em dash. Because y’all know ChatGPT be putting that in everything. That’s how you know if it’s ChatGPT. But this wasn’t ChatGPT. This is the Bible.

But that little em dash right there is an indicator that Paul is dropping off of the conversation. He’s about to hit a hard stop and go to something else. There’s a reason. He’s going to address a Jewish understanding of the law, sin, and death. He’s about to address this.

But what he says here is he says that sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, which we’re going to further understand, that is the sin that none of us can commit. It’s not what you’ve done, it’s what you’ve inherited. It’s the sin nature.

A lot of times what people try to do is do a one-to-one comparison of Adam and Jesus and make it like, well, I didn’t accept Adam, why do I have to accept Jesus? Or, if I didn’t accept Adam, why am I in sin? Okay, that’s not, well, I got other things I’ll say about that. Ashleigh said I got to stop calling people dumb, but some of this stuff is dumb that people say. Can’t help it.

What he’s saying here is, yes, sin came through one man, but it spread, and every single person is responsible for it because all sinned. So yes, sin came into the world through Adam, but you have reinforced your responsibility for sin in that you have participated in sin.

Look at the person next to you and say, I knew. I knew you were a sinner. I could tell. I’ve seen you in the parking lot.

You have participated in the sinful process. If you say, I’ve never sinned, well, John calls you a liar. John says that if any man says that he has not sinned, that man is a liar and the truth is not in him. Everybody has sinned, so we participated in the process. That is why we were responsible because of what Adam did. We have reinforced our responsibility by our participation.

Then he goes into this in verse 13, and he says, “For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.”

Now, it’s a little easy to go, well, sin doesn’t matter when the law is removed. Like everybody got a free pass until the law. That is not entirely true. I don’t want to dismiss that thought completely. However, what he’s saying here, that word counted is a Greek word. It’s only used twice in the Bible. It’s used here, and it’s used in Philemon. It’s a word that’s in an accounting sense, and it basically means a record of individual sins that you’ve done. In the accounting, it would be the record of individual debts that you owe.

So he’s trying to say there’s no ledger where there is no law. You’re still responsible for your sin. Sin was in the world, and death spread through sin, but it wasn’t counted in that way.

“Where there is no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” We’re going to come back to that in a moment.

This is the correction he’s kind of trying to give towards the Jews. The Jews had a belief around the law, sin, and death that where there was no law, there was no sin, and if there is no sin, there is no death. And what Paul is trying to illustrate to the Jewish readers is the obvious: that from Adam until Moses, Moses being the one who received and transmitted the law to the people, the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai and et cetera from there, but initiating with the Ten Commandments, the Law of Moses, death was still around between Adam and Moses.

So he’s reiterating to the Jewish people the obvious flaw in their theology, that there can be no death if there is no sin, and no sin if there is no law, in that, hey, people were dying the whole time. They were dying from Adam till Moses. So it’s a correction. So I just want to make sure you know that. Sometimes there’s a line in there and you go, I don’t understand what that means. That’s what it means.

This line right here, though, I want you to hang on to this, that says, “Even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.” I want you to put that in the back of your mind. We’re going to come back to it shortly.

“Who was a type of him who is to come,” meaning that Adam is, in his essence, a typology of Jesus Christ. We see Jesus Christ in a similar light that we see Adam. It’s about to explain to us that Adam did something that spread to all people, and Jesus did something that also can spread to all people.

Verse 15, here we go. “For the free gift is not like the trespass.” Jesus brought a free gift. Adam brought the trespass. Adam trespassed, everyone became a sinner. Jesus brings a free gift that is going to resolve that.

What I want you to catch, it just said that Adam is a type of the one who was to come. So there’s a typology, but then he says this. He says, it is not like the trespass. The free gift is not like the trespass. In other words, Adam and Jesus are similar, but they are not the same.

Every deep Bible teacher you listen to, you need to get this into your brain, that sometimes they get up and they run down this most illogical conclusion that would’ve been solved if you just go, maybe those are similar but they’re not the same. Right here he says he’s a type of the one who is to come. In other places in the New Testament, Paul uses the language types and shadows. Kind of looks like it. They’re kind of the same height, kind of the same build, kind of the same thing, but it’s not the same thing. [worship], even though they might look a little alike.

“But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through the one man’s trespass, much more,” everybody say much more, “much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.”

So Adam did one thing, and after one thing condemnation comes in. Adam gets it wrong one time, condemnation comes in. Spreads to all humanity.

But then it says, “the free gift following many trespasses.” Many trespasses. Jesus has covered many trespasses. The world has committed many trespasses. You have committed many trespasses. You aren’t as good as you think you are. You have messed up, and you’ve done it fantastically. You are fully committed to messing up.

But after many trespasses, Jesus has covered that. Jesus has covered every trespass that has been committed. Adam got it messed up from the easiest place he could have ever been. Jesus took on every sin ever committed, past, present, and future, and saved people. That’s powerful. That’s how powerful He is.

“But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.”

45:14Romans 5:17: reign in life

If you ever want to know, this is my favorite verse in the whole Bible. Verse 17. “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

First of all, I want you to hear this. We’re talking about how you get the physical manifestation of the power, the breakthrough of God. Remember, there’s a spiritual manifestation of grace. There’s a physical manifestation of grace that is directly correlated to your insight, understanding, revelation of the finished work of Jesus Christ. Are you with me on that?

Romans 5:17 tells you what you need to do to maximize your return on the grace of God. It says you need an abundance of grace. You need lots of grace. You need to fill your life with grace. You need to look towards grace. You need to talk about grace. You need to receive grace. You need to listen to preaching about grace. You need an abundance of grace.

Some of y’all have wondered, I got up here and made some pretty straight comments about the end times, because I’m about frustrated with every end time teacher in the world. You want to know why? Because you need an abundance of grace. We don’t need to figure out stuff we can’t figure out. My God, we spend all this time talking about stuff that doesn’t matter.

And here’s the thing, we can get up in the pulpit and talk about gender ideology all you want to. Do any of y’all need me to clear it up for you what a boy and a girl is? I don’t think this is the room that needs that lecture. So I can get up here and I can gripe about it all day long, and I can make issues about it all day long, or I can give you what you need, which is an abundance of grace.

An abundance of grace. You need grace, grace, grace, grace, grace. John chapter 1 calls it grace upon grace. You need an abundance of it. Because the more insight and revelation you have for the grace of God, the more physical manifestation you have of breakthrough, supernatural breakthrough in your life. Come on, somebody give the Lord a praise right there.

He also says this in there. He says, just as death reigned through the one. I want you to understand that under Adam, a theological way to think through this is everybody’s going to be in one of two people. They’re either going to be in Adam or they’re going to be in Christ.

When you’re in Adam, death reigns over you. Death is in control of your life. You are not in control. Death reigns. This is actually the curse of sin. God cast Adam and Eve out of the garden and told Adam, you’re going to work the ground and it’s not going to cooperate with you. Everything you do is not going to cooperate with you. It’s a curse. Everything’s going to work against you. You’re going to try to get fruit out of the ground, the ground’s going to resist. You’re going to try to work your herd, the herd’s going to resist. Everything you do, it’s going to resist. That is the curse of sin. Well, that’s death reigning over you.

And then it goes on and it says, those who receive the free gift of righteousness, the abundance of grace, will reign in life. It actually changes, and this is really interesting just linguistically, it changes the object. See, in Adam, death reigns. In Jesus, life doesn’t reign. You reign.

When you’re in Christ, you reign. Did you know that God placed Adam and Eve in the garden to have dominion? Dominion, to have control. I’m telling you, life isn’t just going to manifest in you because you’ve got grace. You are going to reign. Everything that happens in your life now, you have a supernatural dominating control of it.

Well, why am I not seeing that, Pastor? Well, probably because you don’t have insight and revelation of the grace of God yet. But if we can get you insight and revelation of the finished work of Jesus Christ, you can start to reign over things in your life. You can take control of them. I just feel bold in my spirit. I’m going to walk in my house and start telling stuff how it’s going to act today. I’m serious. You have some dominating power through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

You know, 1 John chapter 4, I don’t have any of these other messages prepared yet, so I can’t give too much stuff because I might hurt myself in my preaching content. But 1 John chapter 4 says that as He is, talking about Jesus, as He is right now. Does Jesus sit on the throne? Yes. Has Jesus overcome sin? Yes. Is Jesus healed? Yes. Is Jesus prospering? Yes. The answer’s yes to all of them. You can be more charismatic than this. Is Jesus reigning over life? Yes. Does everything do what Jesus tells it to do? Yes. If Jesus says go, will it go? Yes. If Jesus says stop, will it stop? Yes. If Jesus says yes, is it yes? Yes. If Jesus says no, is it no? Yes.

Well, 1 John chapter 4 says that as He is, so are we in this world. Somebody give Him praise.

51:09Romans 5:18-21: one man's obedience

Verse 18. “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

I want to stop right there. Verse 19. This is such an interesting concept, and the parallels, you almost have to draw it out. We talked about it Wednesday night. I actually preached it a year ago. It was funny, I preached this not long after I got here, and the Wednesday nights are going back through those messages. On Wednesday night, I preached on this chapter of the Bible, and so some of this stuff overlaps. Really been an interesting week. I think the Lord wanted y’all to hear from Romans chapter 5 this week.

But right here it says, and I said this on Wednesday night, that sin enters through the one man. Righteousness enters through the one man. There’s a juxtaposition here between the two of them. And this is what’s interesting.

We won’t put it on the screen, but when we go back up to verse 14, it says, “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses,” listen to this line, I told you to remember it earlier, “even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.”

This is what’s so interesting about the sin of Adam. You are a sinner because Adam sinned. I’m a sinner because Adam sinned. We’re all sinners because Adam sinned, even though we can’t sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam.

This is crazy, y’all. Because it’s actually impossible to sin like Adam sinned. If you wanted to go home today and commit the sin of Adam, you can’t do it. You don’t have the access. Because Adam ate from a tree in the garden that God told him not to eat from. He said, don’t eat from this tree, and he ate from the tree. It’s the only instruction that he was given in the garden. It was the only prohibition in the garden. Don’t do this. And he goes and he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and when he does it, his eyes are opened. Him and Eve both realize they’re naked. They go cover themselves. And then when God finds them in the garden, has a discourse with them, and then casts them out of the garden.

He casts them out of the garden, where the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is. And at the entrance of the garden, He puts an angel with a fiery sword. So if you could happen to find the garden where the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is, you’re going to have to take your best shot with an angel with a fiery sword.

There is no way to commit the sin that Adam sinned, and yet the full brunt of his sin has been imputed to us. We are fully sinners because Adam fully sinned in a way that we cannot at all mimic. We cannot do it. It is impossible.

Verse 19, going back to it, it says, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.” Now, we understand what Adam’s disobedience was, correct? We’ve got it. Something you can’t do. “So by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

Here’s what’s crazy. So Jesus Christ, first of all, He’s God. Let’s start there with the list of things you’re probably not going to get done. He’s God, who submits Himself in human form to be born of a virgin. Anyone in the room in that club? Or do we need to have a conversation about your mother you’ve never had?

So, born of a virgin, lives a sinless life, goes to the cross at Calvary, obeys the Lord unto death, is risen from the dead, ascends into heaven. He’s the soon coming king.

Let’s just stop at sinless. Let’s just take it there. He’s never done anything wrong. Can you do that? No. Have you done it? Certainly not.

Here’s what’s interesting. We can’t sin like Adam sinned. Guess what? We can’t obey like Jesus obeyed. We can’t be righteous like Jesus is righteous. There is no way to mimic this. There is no way for you to get a one-to-one representation of what Jesus did. And yet, completely aside from that behavior, Jesus’ righteousness, if you have faith in Him, is fully imputed to you.

Not on the basis of what you’ve done. Not on the basis of how well you behave. Not on the basis of how well you keep the Bible, read the Bible. This is why I don’t like the phrase, I’m a good Christian. No, you’re not, because you think that you can be one. The only thing you can do is serve a good Jesus who’s a good savior, who goodly imputes His righteousness to us. My God.

That’s why this is so important. Keep going here. Verse 20. Now the law, this is what we’re going to talk about next week. Next week I’m going to talk about the law. Today we’re talking about sin and grace. Really we’re talking about how you need to have an understanding, insight, revelation of the grace of God to get the manifestation that it promises.

But it says here, “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” That should’ve been the whole message right there. Grace abounded all the more.

Listen, let me encourage you. This is not something I was planning on saying. We’re going to talk about the law next week, but I need you to understand, some preaching is law, law, law, law, law, do, do, do, don’t, don’t, don’t, detail, detail, detail that doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s not even do, do, do, don’t, don’t, don’t. It’s just frivolous, frivolous, frivolous. Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Could not matter less.

My God, I don’t know why anybody would want to get up here for 30 minutes and talk to y’all and it not matter. That seems like such a waste of life. I mean, let’s just get into the goodness of God.

And so you get all of this teaching. You need to make sure you’re not getting that. You don’t need that. You need grace, grace, grace, grace, grace. You need to make sure that grace is abounding all the more. You need an abundance of grace so grace can abound all the more.

So verse 21, “so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

We’re going to talk about the law next week. I want you to be here, because there really is a question, especially in the Pentecostal church, how sure am I that I am saved? How sure am I that I am blessed? How sure am I that God is pleased with me? And we do live a little bit in the he loves me, he loves me not zone, and I’m going to help you with that next week if you’ll be here.

We’re going to talk about the law of Moses. We’re going to talk about the Ten Commandments, the commandments of God, obeying God, righteous living, all of that stuff. We’re going to talk about it next week. You want to make sure that you’re here.

But in the meantime, I want to encourage you with this. Go down to chapter 6, and we’re going to do all of 6 and 7, and then we’re going to leave. I’m just kidding you. Some of y’all went, don’t worry, your roast is fine.

59:26Romans 6:1-2: the all clear to preach grace

Chapter six. Jeremy, can you come? It says here, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Verse two, I don’t have this up there, but I want to say it. “By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?”

Verse one: what are we to say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

I want to just encourage you with something. We’re about to go somewhere, and everything in me tells me that the devil does not want me to preach this stuff. In fact, I just want you to know that for the first time since I came into the revelation, I have the all clear to preach the uncompromising, dangerous, church-splitting gospel of grace. And I’ll go down for it.

I’m telling you, I’m going to preach this gospel. Romans 1, Paul said, I’m not ashamed of the gospel, for it’s the power of God unto salvation. I’m going to tell you right now, I’m not afraid, I’m not ashamed. I’m going to preach grace.

And if I get driven out of Saraland, which by the way, I don’t foresee happening, because y’all have gotten really on board with what the Lord’s doing around here and I’m super excited. Sometimes y’all shock me with how easy y’all are to lead. But I’m going to tell you right now, if they run me out of Saraland, run me out, I’ll write a book about it. I don’t care. I’m going to preach grace. I’m going to preach this message. This gospel shall be preached to the ends of the earth. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to preach this message.

But for the first time since I got the revelation, I’ve got the all clear to go all in. My ministry has always been in some way subordinate to other people. Even when I was teaching online, I was mindful that I’m getting booked, I got to go to churches. And a lot of pastors are afraid of this message.

In fact, it came into the earth real strong about 20 years ago. Like everything in the kingdom, it goes through a cycle, and it came into the earth real strong and they started calling us hyper-grace preachers. I just want you to know, I’m a hyper-grace preacher. That’s what people started calling it.

What happens is this message comes under attack very quickly, because I’m telling you, all the fruit, all the power, all the freedom is in this gospel. All of it is here. This is what’ll set you free.

I had a friend who said it this way. He stole it from Dallas Willard, and I gave him credit for it for 20 years, and then I found out who really said it. Shame on him. It was his birthday yesterday so I’m not going to say nothing. But what I found, and what everybody who’s gotten into this has found, is that when you receive an understanding, an insight, a revelation of the grace of God, you will live better for God on accident than you previously did on purpose.

It unlocks something in your life that I can’t explain other than it’s the love of God poured out into our heart.

And so I’ve got the all clear, and we’re going to preach, preach, preach this stuff, because I’m pretty well aware of the attack of the enemy on this message. I just want to warn you. There is a yeah, but that somebody has given to everything that I am going to say over the next several weeks, and hopefully over the next several years, because I’m hoping to kind of live here. We’re going to get through the Lord’s Prayer, and then I want to be living here.

And so there’s a yeah, but. Hey, you need an abundance of grace. Yeah, but brother, you need to live right.

Well, hang on a minute. In Galatians chapter 2, Paul says this. He’s actually coming off of a tangent about behavior, people who are misbehaving under the guise of the grace of God, and they’re misbehaving, they’re in sin, they’re doing X, Y, and Z. And he goes, I will not nullify the grace of God. I will not.

And I just want to prepare you, there’s a thousand things that you can come up with and go, okay, grace, yeah, but. You can go look it up online. There will be a lot of yeah, buts online. If you get into the scripture without knowing how to rightly divide the Word of God, there’s a lot of yeah, buts in the Bible.

In fact, next week we’re going to talk about the biggest yeah, but to grace. We’re going to talk about Moses. Moses is the biggest yeah, but to grace.

But this is what I want to encourage you with. Romans chapter 6, immediately following this, Paul says something that makes you go, well, wait now, maybe I don’t need to pay attention to what I just read in Romans chapter 5.

But I want to encourage you with something. Paul was a brilliant scholar. You know, Jesus called these blue-collar fishermen to Him, and everybody talks about that, how He drew these just roughneck guys out of nowhere and made them His disciples, and they turned the world upside down. But when He realized He might need to get some stuff written down, He went out of His way to knock a guy off his horse on the way to Damascus and said, hey, I’m going to need you to maybe write some of this stuff. And He got Him a scholar.

Paul’s a brilliant man. He wouldn’t have just spent five chapters building up an argument then go, but don’t pay attention to it. That is not the purpose of that.

Over the next few weeks, the devil is going to constantly find reasons for you to go, I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that. I’m not sure about that. I don’t think that’s...

I wasn’t going to tell this, but I’m going to tell the story. Ashleigh will be mad at me later, but I’ll pay that price for y’all. She knows what I’m about to tell.

When I came into the grace of God, when I came into the revelation, I told y’all, she thought I was going out of my mind, like I was crazy. Because I came in, I’m like, man, this is done. Once I realized it was finished, I was like, it’s finished. And it changed me, man. Y’all, I’m a totally different person than I was before this, in a lot of different ways.

And I’ll never forget, I’m standing in the kitchen and the dining room where they meet, and I’m leaned against the wall, and Ashleigh’s sitting over here on the couch, and I’m talking to Ashleigh. I’m just basically preaching the gospel at her, because it’s all exciting to me and I’ve just heard it, you know, and she’s sitting there, and I mean, she’s enduring it. As you can tell, I can express some opinions.

And she’s sitting here, and finally she kind of just out of nowhere bows up. And she hollers at me. If y’all want to know what kind of home I live in. I’m just kidding, we get along. But she hollers at me. Jocelyn was real little. I don’t know if Ali was even born yet. I don’t think she was. And she hollers at me and she goes, it can’t be that good!

Because she had grown up hearing our Pentecostal distorted version of grace that depended on how well you behaved. God will bless you when you get it right. God will bless you when you act right. When you stop sinning, God will show up.

But the Bible says that while you were yet a sinner, the NASB says, while you were helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

Everything in you will fight against this message. If you’ll hang on with me, we might see a full out, we might see a breakthrough on something here. This message, it is the power of God.

I want you to hang with me the next few weeks, and every time you start going, I don’t know about that, give me a week. I only get however much time I get with you. Give me some time. You’re going to see it over and over and over and over. It is page upon page upon page of the New Testament. It is unreal. And we’re just going to kind of walk through some chapters of the Bible.

Has this been all right for y’all today? Just walking through it. Everybody goes, I just want to go to a church where they preach the Bible. Well, really? You sure? There ain’t no cute points and poems. There ain’t no alliteration to this.

The Bible is a glorious, messy, confronting work of the Holy Ghost. The author of Hebrews says it’s sharper than any two-edged sword. It’ll get down into the bone and the marrow, and I’m going to tell you something, it’s going to get down into the bone and the marrow of your life. It’s going to change you. In Jesus’ name, hallelujah.