Faith and Hope What about grace part 2

Welcome to episode 111, 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 Ryan Ryan.

Episode 111, we're going to get back into talking about grace. Remember, we've painted the picture of it being a treasure, and it's just a bunch of different treasures that God has put in this heavenly places, in the spirit realm, for us to reach over and grab and appropriate to our lives. And we appropriate the grace of God by faith. And we're going to go to get a kind of an idea how all of this. I want, I want us to— again, I want it— we're talking about grace right now, but we've got to— because grace and faith work together. If you just live your life by the grace of God and don't exercise any faith, I mean, you're going to end up in a ditch. But if you're just living by faith without appropriating any of the grace of God, you're going to end up in a ditch on the other side of the road. So we've got to kind of keep it down the middle, all right, keep it in our lane. For a better way to analogy is that we've got to keep this thing, we got to keep this car that we're driving on the road, and we've got to use grace and faith together. And we're going to go to Ephesians. We've already read these scriptures, but I want to read them again. Ephesians 2:4: But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ By grace you have been saved and raised up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourself; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And I'm gonna stop there. Again, it's not gonna hurt us to hear the Bible. It may hurt you to listen to me read the Bible, but you just can't have to get over that. I'm trying to do better with my reading, but you know, you only got so much to work with here. I want us to continue our discussion with that picture in mind, with the word of God that we just read, that it's grace through faith. The grace of God— again, we're still talking about the grace of God, and that is the gift of God, and it happened when Jesus died on the cross He went and paid the price for all of that and opened up— that's where the New Testament comes in. It's a new covenant. And I don't know that you're aware of that, but the Old Testament is the old covenant and the New Testament is the new covenant, which is a totally different contract. But somebody has to die for that to go into effect. In fact, we're going to talk about this later, but both parties have to die for for this to happen. We are gonna talk in the near future episodes about dying daily and about the second death. We're gonna, there's a lot of, there's a lot of dying gonna have to go on. You and I to know for certain that we are saved, we have to die in order to live. I didn't write the book, remember? And I make a horrible Holy Spirit. So you've got to go to God to figure all this out and his word to get clarification. But I wanna continue to talk about grace This is something that Jesus already did when he died. And when we become— salvation, I want to talk about a couple of the Greek words. And I know I'm getting above my pay grade when I start talking Greek terminology and I start using Greek words that I can't pronounce, but I think it's important that we get an understanding of what salvation or saved means in the original language that was written. And I want to go to it, The first one is saved, and I'm gonna read in Luke 7:50. Then he said to the woman, your faith has saved you, go in peace. Now I know I'm probably gonna butcher this Greek word, but it's sozo, S-O-Z-O, sozo. And this means to save, heal, cure, preserve, keep safe and sound, rescue from danger or destruction, deliver. Sozo saves from physical death by healing and from spiritual death by forgiving sin and its effects. In primitive cultures, it's translated simply to give new life and to cause to have a new heart. So when someone says that they are saved, I want you to think about that sozo and then just kind of do some cert research on your own. But that's one, and then I'm gonna place, and then I wanna go to Luke 19:9. Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor. And if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold. And Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. And the Greek word for salvation is soteria. Soteria. Again, I know I'm butchering it. Deal, deal with it. I'm going somewhere with this. And then Acts 28:28, therefore let it be known to you that salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles and they will hear it. And then the word for salvation there was soterion. So you got soteria and soterion, which is— I mean, we're just splitting hairs now, but I just want to read what the soterion— it's rescue, deliverance, safety, liberation, release, perseverance, and the general word for Christian salvation. Soterion only occurs 5 times. Soteria, the generic word, occurs 45 times. It is an all-inclusive word signifying forgiveness, healing, prosperity, deliverance, safety, rescue, liberation, and restoration. Christ's salvation is total in scope for the total man—spirit, soul, and body. And so I think it's important that we know when we're talking about salvation that we're talking about all of those. Now I know reading definitions don't sound good on a podcast, but I wanted to put all those words out there, and I haven't memorized it, so I just can't just talk to you. You got to read it. And with my superior reading skills, I know it's probably teeth grinding to hear, but I want all of those things— when you hear saved or when you hear salvation, I want you to kind of couple that with the grace of God. And I want you to go back and I want you to listen to all of the things that salvation has: forgiveness, healing, prosperity, deliverance, safety, rescue, liberation, and restoration. Those are huge words, and each one of those— if, if it was just one of those things, it would be worth dying to self and accepting Christ. And we're not even talking about heaven and eternity with God himself. That's why it's called the good news, is because you get all of these things with one act, with one humbling yourself. And I don't know why anybody wouldn't do it. Other than the price that has to be paid. You have to die to self. You have to humble yourself. If you're walking around thinking you're all of that and that it's a good thing God has you in his kingdom— now, I can't tell you— it says to work out your own salvation. But if you think God got a gift when he got you, you may want to reconsider whether you're truly saved. Now, I can feel myself starting to go down another rabbit hole, and I've got a— I've got a story that I want to tell you in the next episode that kind of brings together the picture of grace and how all that kind of ties in. And then we'll, we're probably going to just leave grace for a minute and then go to faith. But I want to, I want to just anchor that, the, the gray, the picture of grace with the treasure chest, and that it's, it's there sitting there for you or I. It is all of those things that I mentioned and so much more, but you have to believe that it's there. And I've been in services, Christian services, where I've heard the preacher or someone say, we need to get God to move, we need— we're going to move God. And here I need to tell you that God's not stuck. God is waiting for you or I to move. We got to take the first step. And when we take a step towards him, he takes a step. He says, oh, he's coming towards me. So then he comes. He's never— he's right there by us. Remember, he has never left us nor forsaken us. And all of this stuff that's sitting there that God has already done, Jesus paid the price, everything is there in the spirit realm. Grace of God is waiting on us to use our faith to appropriate it to us. And we're going to get into that when we start talking about grace and how grace and faith work together. But let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. God, I thank you for your grace. I pray in Jesus' name that you would help the person listening to this understand just how wonderful and how marvelous your grace is, and that you have already paid everything and you've already done everything that you're gonna do. God, you're not stuck. God, you're not mad. And we thank you for the leading, that you're leading us into all truth, and that as we stay in your word, Lord, you will open up your word to us. And as we hear with the ears of our heart and with the eyes of our heart, Lord, our understanding and our wisdom will be open to us. God, 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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