Now this afternoon we continue in our study
of the attributes of God, and we come,
first of all, to the grace of God.
The grace of God.
And I would like to expand the definition
that is up there behind me this afternoon.
It says, I would like to expand it
like this.
God grants favor and acceptance to those who
don't deserve it, who deserve the very opposite,
but who trust the sinner's savior.
Three parts to it.
God grants favor and acceptance to those who
don't deserve it, who deserve the very opposite,
but who trust the sinner's savior.
There's a difference between God's grace and his
mercy.
We'll be looking at his mercy next.
God's grace is only for believers.
His mercy is for all mankind.
Now let's think of some verses of scripture.
I'm sure if I asked you for verses
of scripture dealing with the grace of God
that many would come to your mind.
Let's just take a few.
John chapter 1 verse 16.
The law was given by Moses, but grace
and truth came by Jesus Christ.
Romans chapter 3 verse 4 says, being justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus.
Second Corinthians 8 9.
Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that though he was rich, yet for
your sakes he became poor, that ye through
his poverty might be rich.
Of course, good old favorite Ephesians 2 8.
For by grace are you saved through faith,
and that not of yourselves it is the
gift of God.
And then I love that expression in 1
Peter 5 10.
It says, God of all grace, isn't that
nice?
And that isn't all.
But the God of all grace who has
called you to his eternal glory.
That's enough to make angels gasp.
The God of all grace who has called
you to his eternal glory.
Think of it this way.
We were speaking the other day of the
tremendous universe in which we live, right?
Nobody knows the dimensions of it.
As far as we know, it's, there are
no bounds.
I called the Adler Planetarium in Chicago one
day and said, and the man seemed, he
didn't seem at all abashed or surprised by
my, he said, I said, how far can
you look out into space?
And he said, 10 billion light years.
And light years, the distance that light travels
in a year, and they can look out
10 billion light years with telescopic vision.
The world on which we are this earth,
this planet on which we are is a
speck of cosmic dust in the universe.
Really, it's not that it's not even that
big, a speck of cosmic dust in the
universe.
If the earth on which we are sitting
this afternoon is a speck of cosmic dust,
how infinitesimal you and I are.
Mark, God looked down and saw us lost
in sin and degradation.
And he sent the son of his love
down through all the planets to this earth
to be born in Bethlehem and to go
to the cross and suffer as you and
I will never know for you and for
me.
It was marvelous grace.
And he wasn't satisfied to save us from
hell.
He lifted us up.
He indwelt us by his Holy spirit.
He could have done less.
He gave us the seal of the spirit.
He gave us the earnest of the spirit.
He redeemed us.
He reconciled us.
He sanctified us.
He justified us.
He received us as children in his family.
We were adopted as mature adult sons.
We received the anointing.
As a matter of fact, the moment we
trusted Christ, 35 different things happened, matchless tokens
of the grace of God.
And is he through?
No.
His love and his grace will never be
satisfied until we're with him in celestial glory.
The God of all grace who has destined
us to eternal glory.
No wonder Darby broke out in those matchless
strains.
And is it so?
I shall be like thy son.
Is this the grace that he from me
has won?
Father of glory, thought beyond all thought, in
glory to his own blessed likeness brought.
Imagine worms associated with Jesus Christ in eternal
glory.
Amazing grace.
How sweet the sound that saved a wretch
like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found.
Was blind, but now I see.
The hymn writer thought that the grace of
God was the greatest of all his attributes.
Each of us this afternoon is allowed to
make our choice.
But he said, great God of wonders, all
thy ways display thine attributes divine.
But the bright mysteries of thy grace above
thine other glory shine.
Who is a pardoning God like thee?
Or who has grace so rich and free?
We sang appropriately this morning, wonderful grace of
Jesus greater than all my sin.
And I'll tell you one of the grandest
themes certainly that can occupy the human mind
is the matchless grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Now we've mentioned right along that the contemplation
of the attributes of God should have a
practical effect in our lives.
As I think of the grace of God,
what effect does it have on me?
I think like few other attributes of God,
it makes me a worshiper.
Just before the meeting, I turned once again
to Ephesians chapter one, Ephesians chapter one, and
I read those words, verse four, according as
he has chosen us in him, that is
in Christ, before the foundation of the world.
Just think of that for a moment.
According as he, God, has chosen us in
him, Christ, before the foundation of the world.
What does that mean?
Well, I'm a very simple believer, and I
just take the Bible to mean what it
says.
And I believe implicitly as I stand here
this morning, that this afternoon, that before the
foundation of the world, God chose me to
belong to Christ.
And I'll never know why.
Because there are people in Minnesota today with
better characters than mine.
People in Minnesota with better dispositions and temperaments
than mine.
And I'm on my way to heaven, and
many of them, sad to say, are on
their way to hell.
And what can I do but adore the
grace of God that would have ever stooped
down to choose such a worthless person as
I?
Really, it just passes telling.
And not only does the contemplation of the
grace of God make me a worshiper, but
it makes me desire to know more of
this in my own life.
Grace.
God wants his people to be gracious, not
harsh.
There's enough harshness in the world already.
The world is looking for this kind of
grace that goes out to the unworthy and
to the unlovely.
And that type of behavior is worth more
than a thousand arguments.
There's a camp in upstate New York.
It's called the Word of Life Camp.
It's run by Jack Wurtzen, Word of Life,
our screw link.
One summer at a conference just like this
one, there was a Christian brother came.
And this brother had a very severe facial
deformity, and it affected him so that when
food went into his mouth, it didn't all
stay.
Some of it came back out.
It's not an uncommon thing, actually.
And so, meal after meal, this brother would
sit at a table, and of course, he
had newspapers down in front of him because
he only was able to eat a fraction
of the meal that went into his mouth.
And it oftentimes happened that he sat alone.
More often than not, he sat alone.
Jack Wurtzen himself was often late coming to
the meal.
And when Jack would come in the door
of the dining room, people from all over
would wave to him and beckon him to
come to their table.
Jack never did.
He always went and sat with a brother
that couldn't hold the food in his mouth.
That was a reflection of the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ, wasn't it?
A reflection of that matchless grace told out
in his life.
You've heard of George Washington Carver, the black
man who really made history in this country.
When he was a young man, he was
refused admission to a college because of his
color.
And later in life, the conversation came up
one day, and somebody said to him, Mr.
Carver, what was the name of that college?
And he answered, it doesn't matter.
That's great.
That's really great.
When Lincoln was president of the United States,
he had a man who was his sworn
enemy.
His name was Stanton.
Stanton said some very bitter and harsh things
against Lincoln.
He said there was no use going to
Africa to look for a gorilla when the
original gorilla was in Springfield, Illinois.
Later on in the war, Lincoln needed a
minister of war, and he appointed Stanton because
he said he was the man most fitted
for the job.
Stanton came by the night that Lincoln was
shot, and he stood in the house where
they had brought Lincoln's body, and he looked
down, and he said, the greatest leader of
men.
Grace had conquered.
And God wants that grace to be shed
abroad in our lives.
Two women were talking, and one said to
the other, don't you remember that mean thing
she said about you?
She said, not only don't I remember, I
distinctly remember forgetting.
Scripture says, let your speech be always with
grace, seasoned with salt.
They marveled at the gracious words that proceeded
out of the lips of the Lord Jesus.
Well, I tell you, as we contemplate the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we're changed
into the same image, aren't we?
Changed into the same image.
We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in
a glass the glory of the Lord, are
changed, the same image from glory to glory,
even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
And so that brings us to the next
attribute of God, which is spoken of as
his mercy.
And by the mercy of God, we mean
that he has pity, loving kindness, and compassion
on those who are in misery and distress.
Those who are guilty, and in misery, and
in distress.
The mercy of God.
Now, oftentimes we use this word interchangeably with
grace, but it really is different.
Here are some verses having to do with
the mercies, the mercy of God.
Psalm 136.1. Notice how oftentimes we go
to the Psalms for the attributes of God.
Psalm 136.1 says, his mercy endureth forever.
It's a refrain.
His mercy endureth forever.
In 2 Corinthians 1.3, God is called
the Father of mercies.
That's a lovely expression, the Father of mercies.
And Ephesians 2.4-5, but God who
is rich in mercy, for his great love,
for which he loved us.
Wonderful.
God is rich in many things.
Isn't it wonderful to think of him being
rich in mercy?
And then James 5.11 says, the Lord
is very pitiful and of tender mercy.
What effect does the contemplation of the mercy
of God have on my life?
Once again, it leads out my heart in
praise to him.
I come to that in Ephesians 2.4,
but God who is rich in mercy.
And I realized I have found God's roadblock
on man's way to hell.
That's what it is.
God's roadblock.
God looked down and saw me and I
richly deserved to go to hell.
And God had mercy and loving kindness and
pity and compassion on me.
And he devised a way where I could
be righteously saved and delivered from going down
there.
And then once again, God wants us to
be conformed to his image, not only worship,
but conformity.
Matthew 5.7, blessed are the merciful for
they shall obtain mercy.
Luke 6.36, be therefore merciful, even as
your father also is merciful.
And then Romans 12.8, show mercy with
cheerfulness.
I was thinking this afternoon about this marvelous
quality of mercy, and my mind went to
a dear brother, a young brother on the
West Coast.
Some of you may know him.
His name is Paul Sandberg.
Again, he's one of the assemblies in the
LA area and he's the, or has been
at least, the first tenor on the Haven
of Rest program.
Paul Sandberg has some lovely albums.
I just forget the names of them right
now.
One day Paul went into a little coffee
shop and sat on the stool to have
something to eat.
And he began speaking to the man next
to him.
Man's name was Freddy.
He began speaking to me, found a soul
in need.
And Paul dealt with him and made arrangements
to meet him.
And finally, Freddy trusted the Lord Jesus as
his Savior.
He was gloriously saved.
And then Paul began to disciple him on
a one-to-one basis.
And this dear man really began to grow
in grace and in the knowledge of the
Lord Jesus.
And then he was struck with the news
that he had cancer and it was terminal.
And he didn't have any place to go,
and that is, any home where he could
be cared for.
So he went to, I suppose you'd call
it a convalescent hospital.
And it was really substandard, this particular hospital.
And Paul used to go and visit him.
And Paul used to bathe Freddy.
And he would change the sheets on the
bed and do anything that the staff really
should have been doing.
This is Paul Sandberg, first tenor in the
Haven of Rest Quartet.
The night Fred died, Paul was holding him
in his arms, whispering verses of Scripture into
his ear.
Dear friends, that's mercy.
That's really mercy.
What a wonderful thing to see that God
-like quality in a human life.
One night, I'll never forget one night in
London years ago, I was speaking in Romans
chapter 12 to a group of, I think
it was a nurse's fellowship or something like
that.
And I came to that verse, show mercy
with cheerfulness.
And I was really well, I confessed to
the people that I just wondered what that
verse meant, show mercy with cheerfulness.
I came to that verse, show mercy with
cheerfulness.
And I was really well, I confessed to
the people that I just wondered what that
verse meant, show mercy with cheerfulness.
And a sister came up to me after
and she said, I think I can tell
you what that verse means.
And I said, what does that mean?
And she said, well, she said, I have
an aged mother.
And she said she was living alone, but
she said the time came when she couldn't
live alone any longer.
And so she said, I talked to my
husband and she said, we decided to bring
her into our house.
She said, deep within my heart, I was
kind of resentful because it really disturbed the
routine of our house.
She said, I cared for her.
I cooked her meals.
I did her washing.
I did everything for her.
But, but inside she said, I was showing
mercy.
She said, my mother used to say to
me, why don't you smile anymore?
You don't seem to be happy anymore.
My sister said to me, I was showing
mercy, but I wasn't doing it with cheerfulness.
You know, the demands of the Christian life
are not difficult.
They're impossible.
It really takes supernatural power to live the
Christian life, doesn't it?
All the fruits of the spirit are supernatural.
They cannot, an unbeliever couldn't do it at
all, period.
A believer can't do it in his own
strength.
Only as empowered by the Holy Spirit of
God.
But the Lord wants this characteristic in our
lives as well.
The mercy that he has shown to us.
The next attribute of God we want to
think about is the patience of God.
I think a good word to use here
is long suffering.
Long suffering or patience.
This refers to his restraint and self-control
in dealing with sin and rebellion.
The long suffering of God, his patience, his
restraint and self-control in dealing with sin
and rebellion.
Let me just give you a few verses
about mercy.
Exodus chapter 34 and verse 6.
Exodus 34, 6.
The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious.
Nahum chapter 1 verse 3.
The Lord is slow to anger and great
in power.
Romans 9.22. What if God endured with
much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted
to destruction?
And then Romans chapter, that was Romans 9
.22. Romans chapter 15 verse 5.
It speaks of the God of patience.
The God of patience.
His restraint and self-control in dealing with
sin and rebellion.
Now this really means for us the ability
to bear up patiently and triumphantly under the
aggravations of life.
You think of the long-suffering of God.
You think of what's going on in the
world today.
You think of the gross sin that's all
about us.
God places man down here and man makes
a tremendous colossal mess of the whole thing.
Turns his back on God and just flails
his fist in the face of God.
And every basic foundational principle that God has
set up man is defying it today.
Did God give headship to the man?
Human race is against it today.
Did God ordain capital punishment?
Human race is against it today.
Did God establish morality in giving the law?
Anything goes today.
Premarital sex, legalized prostitution, homosexuality, and all the
rest.
And then the crowning sin, the rejection of
God's beloved son.
If you and I were God, what do
you think we'd do?
Well, I think we'd just take our hand
and just wipe the human race off the
face of the earth.
And God could have done it.
God could have done it.
But he's not willing that any should perish.
God is long-suffering.
He's delaying the day of judgment so that
men and women might come to the pierced
feet of the Lord Jesus.
Wonderful, wonderful Lord.
And he wants his long-suffering to be
reproduced in us.
He doesn't want us to be quick-tempered.
He doesn't want us to fly off the
handle.
He doesn't want us to try to get
even.
He wants us to display a kind of
conquering patience.
And every one of us should ask the
Lord to reproduce this patience within us, that
we might be patient with one another.
I was interested in reading a Kari Ten
Boom's book, you know, she and Betsy, her
sister, were there in a concentration camp, and
they were really suffering indescribable pain and indignity.
And Betsy used to say to Kari, Kari,
when we get out of here, we've got
to do something for these people.
She didn't say, we've got to do something
to these people.
She said, we've got to do something for
these people.
And Kari kept thinking that Betsy was referring
to their fellow prisoners there.
She wasn't referring to them at all.
She was referring to those who were persecuting
them.
And Kari, when she describes this, she writes
this, she says, and I wondered, not for
the first time, what sort of a person
she was, this sister of mine.
What kind of road she followed, which I
trudged beside her on the all-too-solid
earth.
Meaning that she was walking with a sister
who was treading a heavenly pathway, while Kari
was walking down on the earth, not rising
above flesh and blood.
But the road Betsy followed was the road
of long suffering, and Kari walked it too,
in spite of her humble statement.
Long suffering, God wants to see us long
suffering.
You know, I really think that a subject
that we've neglected in the church today is
the story of the Christian martyrs.
The Christian martyrs give us lessons on how
to bear up under the aggravations of life,
and especially from when we speak of long
suffering, it's not so much with the circumstances
of life as the aggravations that other people
bring upon us.
I was brought up in a Scottish home,
and my mother used to feed us on
the stories of the martyrs.
I remember a calendar in our kitchen, and
the calendar was from the story of John
Brown.
John Brown was a faithful, devoted Christian who
was suffering for his loyalty to Christ, at
a time the Christians were being persecuted, and
he had to leave home, he had to
leave his wife and children, and he was
hiding out in the moors, in the dens,
in the caves, in the woods, and he
scarcely dared come home for fear Claverhouse and
his men would swoop in and capture him.
One time he had to come home, he
had to come home to get clothes and
to get provisions, and while he was there
in his house, Claverhouse did arrive with his
men, and this picture in our kitchen had
Claverhouse and his men there, and John Brown
and his wife and the children clinging to
her apron.
Claverhouse ordered one of his men to kill
John Brown, and a man looked at him
and thought he saw the face of an
angel and he couldn't kill him.
So then Claverhouse took the sword himself and
did away with John Brown, and then he
said to Mrs. Brown, what do you think
of your husband now?
And she said in the broad scotch, she
said, I always thought a great deal of
him, but I never thought more of him
than I do now.
Long-suffering, eh?
I love the story of that old bishop
in England who was put under pressure, he
was threatened if he did not recant his
faithfulness and loyalty to Christ that he'd be
burned at the stake, and at first he
was able to hold out, but then as
time went on he finally took the pen
in his right hand and he signed the
recantation, and he had no sooner signed it
than he realized he had done wrong.
And he called the men and he said,
my hand signed it, but my heart was
not in it.
They said, if you don't stick to it,
they said, we'll burn you at the stake,
and he said, go ahead with the burning.
And so the thing was prepared, the stake
was prepared, and the fire was started.
And they asked him before, they put him
in the fire, if he had any last
request, and he said, yes, all I ask
is that you untie my hand.
And they untied his hands, and he walked
over and held his right hand in the
flame and said, perish this unworthy hand.
He wanted it to be the first part
of him to burn, because he had signed
the recantation denying his Lord.
We don't know much about long-suffering doing
in this country.
You might like to get sometime Fox's Book
of the Martyrs, read some of these stories
and read the price that men and women
down through the years have paid for their
faith.
One other that comes to my mind that
I've always appreciated, a young girl there in
Scotland, and she was put under enormous pressure
to denounce the Lord, and she wouldn't do
it.
And so they told her that they put
her to death, and they had rather a
novel way of putting to death.
When the tide went out, they drove a
stake in the sand, and they would tie
her to the stake so that when the
tide came in, she would be drowned, but
very gradually.
And just to put, her parents came out
on unbended knee, they begged her to do
as the men asked her to do.
She wouldn't flinch.
So just to add to her pressure, they
took another stake further out in the tide,
and they tied an old Christian woman to
it.
And they said when Margaret sees her die,
she'll change her mind.
And so the two women were tied to
the stake, so the tide began to come
in.
Margaret said, God can give an old woman
grace to die for Christ.
He can give grace to me to die
for Christ.
And as the tide came in and covered
her mouth, she was quoting the last part
of Romans chapter 8.
Long suffering.
Patience.
In God's case, his restraint and self-control
in dealing with sin and rebellion.
In our case, triumphant bearing up under the
aggravations of life.
Perhaps we'll just look at the next one
here, and that is the goodness of God.
One of the attributes of God is his
goodness.
And here we say he is benevolent and
kind and never originates evil.
This morning, Brother Jay read over the PA
system as we got up.
The Lord is good.
His mercy is everlasting, and his truth endures
to all generations.
That I was sharing with him today.
You know, that's beautiful.
The Lord is good.
All monosyllables.
A lot of our young men and older
men too, they're afraid to get up in
the worship meeting because they're afraid they can't
say something flowery enough.
Well, that's not too flowery, is it?
It's part of the sacred scriptures.
The Lord is good.
When you've said it, you've said a lot.
Let me share some verses with you on
the goodness of God.
Psalm 31, 19.
You'll like this.
Oh, how great is thy goodness, which thou
hast laid up for them that fear thee,
which thou hast wrought for them that trust
in thee, before the sons of men.
Psalm 52, 1.
The goodness of God endureth continually.
Psalm 119, 68.
Thou art good and doest good.
I like Nahum 1, 7.
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the
day of trouble, and he knoweth them that
trust in him.
And don't think when you see other Christians
prospering, you're tempted to say, you say, oh,
the Lord is good to you, meaning he's
not good to me.
Psalm 145, verse 9 says, the Lord is
good to all, and his tender mercies are
over all his works.
You know, the goodness of God is manifested
in nature, isn't it?
I hope I never become too spiritual to
see the goodness of God in nature, because
it's all around us.
The goodness of God is seen in the
seasons of the year, which we take so
much for granted, don't we?
You know, ho-hum, what else is new?
But it's the goodness of God seen in
the seasons.
The goodness of God is seen in his
his treatment of the wicked and the way
he allows them to prosper.
This was a riddle to the psalmist one
time.
But God sends the rain on the farms
of the unsaved, just as well as on
the farms of the saved, doesn't he?
The goodness of God seen in allowing the
wicked to prosper, and he's kind to them,
of course, in order to lead them to
repentance.
What should the contemplation of the goodness of
God do in my life?
Oh, that men would praise the Lord for
his goodness and for his wonderful works to
the children of men.
You know, I sometimes wish this were a
discussion period, and some of you who are
experts in certain fields could really discuss the
goodness of God.
He could have made all our food like
sawdust, couldn't he?
Could have just as nutritional, you know, but
not very enjoyable.
But he didn't do that.
Remember that when you eat your supper tonight,
the goodness of God in the variety.
And not only that, but the color of
the food.
You know, sometimes you sit down and there's
the carrots with their lovely color, and the
green beans, and really it's beautiful.
Starts the saliva flowing before you ever start
eating, really.
The goodness of God is seen in all
of those things.
Oh, that men would praise the Lord for
his goodness and for his wonderful works to
the children of men.
And then finally, we should be good too,
also to others.
We should be friendly, kind, benevolent, tender-hearted,
forgiving, considerate, gentle, and hospitable.
Godly means God-like, doesn't it?
And I suppose that our English word God
comes from the word good, don't you think?
God is good.
He wants us to demonstrate goodness in our
lives as well.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we've told it out now, we would
pray it in.
Father, we feel so convicted to even stand
here and talk about these things and realize
how we fail in our lives day by
day.
Oh, Father, when we think of the wonderful
grace that you've shown to us, we pray
that in some small measure it might be
reproduced in our lives.
Help us too to show mercy with cheerfulness.
Lord, teach us lessons in long suffering, not
living somehow, but triumphantly.
And then teach us goodness in our practical
everyday life.
We ask it in the Savior's worthy name
and for his sake.
Amen.