Faith and Hope A parable to help you understand grace

Welcome to episode 112, In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 112. If you are here for the first time, welcome aboard. We have covered a lot of ground on the faith and hope. I think I started back in '94, episode 94, so we've had a few episodes talking about faith and hope. We've added grace and love. And if you're here as a frequent flyer, welcome back, you fanatic. I appreciate you being out there, and I thank you for being a part of this. Well, let's dig back in. I want to start with Mark. The scripture that I want to talk about is— we're going to talk about a parable. I've got a story that I want to tell you about, kind of to illustrate grace. And it was a story that I thought was really appropriate when I heard it, and I want to share it with you. And maybe you'll think the same thing because it's going to be a story and it's not going to be based on scripture. Now, it's based on grace, but I want to give you a scripture because this is a Bible study, and I've got air quotes, but it's using the scripture. We're going to look at Mark 4:10-11. But when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parable. And he said to them, to you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, all things come in parables. And so Jesus spoke in parables, and I'm told that a parable, it means to roll alongside. It's, it's something that the story is based on the truth, based on the word of God, but it gives you a picture, a natural picture about something going on in the natural world to run alongside a spiritual truth. And so that's what I'm not claiming to be God or anything like that, but I want to give you an example of grace that I thought that just worked for me. And, and it starts with, with an older couple that had been happily married for a long time, and they had always talked about and dreamed about going on a cruise ship. They had just dreamed about it and were saving money. Well, one day the wife passed away and it was sudden. The husband was not ready for that. And the wife passed away and at her funeral he was with regret and they never got to go on the cruise. And so he made up his mind that he was, he was going to go in her honor and he was going to just go and he was going to enjoy the cruise. Because if you think about the cruise, the one thing that cruise ship has is is you're going to probably an exotic destination where you're gonna get a picture of something that looks like paradise or a, a place where you would wanna go. So this man bought this cruise ticket for himself. He took a picture of his wife with him. When he went, he chose where he was gonna go based on the picture in a brochure. So that's how he made his decision about where he was gonna go on this cruise. And so he went and bought this ticket. He gets on this cruise ship. In his luggage, he had packed some peanut butter crackers and some bread and some peanut butter and jelly. And so he went into this room and he just walked around this cruise ship. They took off, you know, they were celebrating. He was walking around this cruise ship during the day, and he would get off and go to all these places where they— the ports where they would walk and see all these sights. And then he would, when he got hungry, he would go back to his room and he would eat his crackers and he would eat his peanut butter sandwich. And so he would go out all day every day. Well, he had had just enough money he had saved up, and he had just enough money to go— he wanted to, he wanted to go to the dining room and he wanted to eat there on the last night of the cruise. And so he walked to the dining room, told the, the person there at the, at the desk who he was, and they kind of looked kind of funny. They looked down at the piece of paper and they looked kind of funny at him. And they led him to this table, and there was his name on a little placard right there on a plate. It was an empty plate sitting right there. The waiter said, "Well, Mr. Smith, welcome to the dining room. We've missed you this whole trip." I knew I'd saved up enough money, but I just didn't have enough to pay for fine dining. I was just real cautious about the money, you know. I didn't have a lot when I came on here, and I was real cautious. And the waiter looked at him and said, Well, Mr. Smith, all of the food and all of the dining experience and everything that is on the boat was paid for when you purchased your ticket to get on the boat. His countenance just sunk, and he realized he could have had it all at the beginning of the trip and for the whole trip. And I also want you to realize that I used the man as the one that survived because you and I both know that if the woman would have bought this ticket. She'd have read the brochure. She'd have known everything about the trip before she got on the boat, and she'd have known everything that went with it. But men were a little bit too simple sometimes. The Apostle Peter in me, the ready, fire, aim, he just made up his mind and he was getting on this boat. He had already had the money for the ticket, and so he was going in her honor. Mr. Smith learned a valuable lesson that day when he bought the ticket. Everything was included with the purchase. And I want to turn this to Jesus. I don't think you and I understand the price that's been paid for our salvation. I don't think we have any idea. Now, maybe some of us in the far reaches, far corners of our mind can maybe see— if you watch that Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ, you might can see the beating that he took. And Mel Gibson actually said that he did not portray it as it actually happened. He made it a lot less graphic because he said that if he did it the way that the Romans did it, it would probably have to be a rated X or double X or whatever. He said people wouldn't have gone to see that. Jesus was marred beyond recognition. He was put everything, every disease, every punishment, every beating, every whipping was put on Jesus Christ, and he took that for us. So I don't think we can picture the price that was paid, and I don't think we get an idea because we walking around in this body, and at least I am, I'm walking around this body and I'm trying my best to do good. God did good every step of every day that he walked. He had no reason. He didn't owe the price because he never sinned. He had no sin in him, and yet he chose to go to the cross because that's why he came. He came to die. But when we accept what Jesus did for us on the cross, when we die to self, when we humble ourselves and we tell God, I, I can't do this— and we've talked about the law in the previous episodes— but when, when the law shows us how unworthy we are to enter heaven. That is where the law does its job. That is where we humble ourselves and say, God, there's no way I can live this law. And that's the, that's the position God wants us in. He wants us to see that we cannot do it on our own, that we have to have a savior. And so he sent his son. His son lived the perfect life. He died the death that we should have died, and he gave his life for you and I. And with that, and I talked about on the previous episode about sozo and soteria or soterian, and again, those are Greek words for saved and salvation. And I know I butcher that, but I don't know Greek and I don't pretend to know Greek, but I do research things and I know the words represent. And I want to remind you just some of these words: forgiveness, healing, Prosperity, deliverance, safety, rescue, liberation, and restoration. When Jesus— with salvation, all of those things come to you. Now, whether or not you're going to sit in your room in your little corner— and that's where I wanted to, to bring this story full circle— is that this poor man had no idea. He didn't dig into the brochure. On the cruise. He just assumed that because this thing was so, so pricey that he was going to get on this ship and that the prices were going to be similar when he went to eat or he went to drink something or anything. So he was drinking water and he was eating crackers when he could have had a gourmet meal every day, and he could have had all he wanted to eat and all he wanted to drink. And he chose to stay in his cabin until someone told him the price he paid for the ticket included everything on the ship. And in this analogy, if you think about it, faith came by hearing and hearing by the way of the waiter. In the Bible analogy, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And I just believe that there's so many of us in the body of Christ, because we have an enemy and he is a punk, and he comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And he's very good at deception. And if he's got you deceived to thinking that you don't deserve— I can promise you, you and I do not deserve salvation. I can promise you, the life that we lived— I, I know for the first 29 to 30 years I was not living for God. And I accepted what Jesus did on the cross back in '93, January 10th, 1993. And I became a new creature. And when I did that, everything opened up to me. Now, did I know it? No, I didn't have any idea. I knew something had changed, and I knew something was different, but it was up to me to dig into the Word of God. And here comes the soapbox moment: get into the Word of God and find out about this thing we call grace. Find out, is it, is it really unmerited favor? Is it really too good to be true? Is it really God's gift to us? And it's all done. Jesus Christ paid the price and he gave everything. God gave everything to Jesus and Jesus has given all of it to us that accept him. I cannot get over the the fact that the grace of God is so overwhelming. He is so good. It is— there is no reason other than just the, the pure love that God has for his kids. There's no reason for God to have given us grace because we deserve death. We deserved hell. I did, and I deserve to spend eternity in hell paying for the mess up that my first 29 to 30 years had brought. And I continue to take missteps. Again, perfection is not the goal here. We, we are not going to be perfect, and we can't sit in our room and all cuddled up in fear in a ball worried about messing up. And God doesn't want us to. Again, we talked about practicing lawlessness. Those people that practice lawlessness, those are the people that are gonna be in trouble on Judgment Day. Not the people who sin and get caught and get persuaded by Satan to do this, or tempted, I guess is a better churchy word. You're tempted to open that door, let this sin into your life, and the only way to get it out is by repenting, by slamming the door shut, having, asking God, "God, shut that door." When you repent, you are turning 180 degrees. You're like, "I am just so sorry." and you tell God, hey, I am so sorry, I screwed up, I was deceived, I messed up, the door is shut, and you start all over and you ask God to forgive you, and he's going to say, for what? Because he's thrown it in the sea of forgetfulness. And God is so wonderful, but the grace of God— just because you're not partaking in all of the things salvation has does not mean it's not there. And I just want to encourage you, when you think about grace, when you think about that treasure chest of all of the things God has done— and he's done them back 2,000-plus years ago with one act when he died on the cross and was resurrected— grace now abounds on this earth, and sin has been paid for. And the grace of God is there, and it is there for us to get, and it's there for us to use, and it's there for us to help other people. It's there for us when we mess up, and it's there for us when we don't mess up. And I'm telling you, the grace of God is, is so hard for me to kind of picture or for me to tell you, but it is incredible when you really truly see how good God is. I kind of want to stop right here. I want you to just think about how good God is and how wonderful the price that he paid and how you've been given it all. You've been given it all. Now whether we take it, that's our— that's on us. And I don't want to get to heaven and have God say, Greg, you were this close. You were this close to, to walking in this part of the grace, or you were this close. And I know I've missed on multiple things But I just want what God has for me, and he's given me this grace to live the life that he's chose for me. And he made me for a specific purpose, and he made you for a specific purpose. And I'm going to pray right now. God, I thank you so much for allowing your Son to die on the cross for me and for the person listening to this episode. God, I pray that you would just help through your Holy Spirit, help us to understand how wonderful that gift was, that the grace of God is a gift that we have to take, we have to open every day. Lord, every day is new, and every day you give us something even better. And God, I thank you for your love. I thank you, Holy Spirit, for leading us into all truth. And I pray in Jesus' name that you would allow us to understand the best way we can the grace of God and how we can apply it to our life. Lord, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

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