Grace Through Jesus Christ

Okay, my name is Seth and I'm going to preach on grace through Jesus Christ.

! Pray exactly how you say it in your word with the same power and weight and authority that it has.

Help us not to try to make your word fit something that is more tangible, that fits with our experience, if that's not what you mean.

If you mean something different, we just pray for grace to receive it like that. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, grace through Jesus Christ.

One of my texts, I consider this kind of the guiding text for my topic, is John chapter 1, verse 16 through 17.

John chapter 1, verse 16 through 17. This is speaking of Christ. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.

For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Okay, so this is not going to be a law sermon.

This is not going to be a sermon where I'm talking about a lot of particular sins or challenging people on sin. I mean, there's some, there's a little bit of that. But this is a gift sermon.

Grace is a gift. Jesus comes bearing gifts. Jesus comes bearing gifts. The law demands, says you ought to. Grace gives. It says here, there's a free gift.

The law came through Moses. Grace and truth uniquely came through Jesus Christ. He comes bearing gifts.

Jesus is the gift giver. And the gift he most prominently gives is grace. Okay. I want to read in Galatians 2, Galatians chapter 2, starting in verse 16.

I will ask you to turn to this one. I'm going to read a bunch of different verses. I probably won't ask you to turn to most of them, but I do think it's helpful to turn to this because this is kind of, it might be a little bit of a confusing passage, but I think if we slow down a little bit, I think we'll be able to relate to this experience.

Galatians chapter 2, starting in verse 16. We know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by observing the law. Because by observing the law, no one will be justified.

I'm going to pause there. I hope we all believe that. We are justified, not by works of the law. We are justified by faith in Jesus and what he did for us on the cross.

It's a free gift. There are zero things that we could do to work off the debt of sin that we owe God. We couldn't do it.

God had to come as a man and pay our debt on the cross. And we receive that by faith, not by works. And that is how we are justified before God.

Just as if we had never sinned. God looks at Jesus, or he looks at us and he sees Jesus. He takes our sin, put it onto Christ on the cross, and he took his righteousness.

And when we trust Jesus, he puts it onto us. That's amazing. Justification. So we believe that, right? You're justified by faith in Jesus.

So Paul continues. Verse 17. However, if, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin?

Okay. So I am justified by faith in Jesus. This is amazing. My whole debt that I owed God is taken away. But I still sin.

Like, whoa. I wasn't expecting that. He's narrating the experience of a Christian after they get born again, come to faith in Jesus. It's like, I still have sin.

Does that mean that Jesus is now promoting sin? Is that what God's saying? Is that, no, no, don't worry about it. I took care of it on the cross. And you can just live however you want. No. Absolutely not, he says.

But if I rebuild what I destroy, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. What do you mean rebuild what he destroyed? What does that mean?

He continues and explains it. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

And the life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God.

For if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. What he's saying here is, my first instinct, his first instinct, is, well, maybe I'm not justified by works.

Okay, I believe that. Jesus had to die for my sins. Okay, I'm not justified by my works. Justified by faith. But maybe I'm sanctified by my works.

Maybe the law is what I need to overcome the present power of sin in my life that the Lord has been showing me. Maybe that's what it is.

And he says, no, it's not. If I rebuild that way of relating with God and sin, I make myself a transgressor.

Some translations say, I prove myself to be a transgressor. I'm operating under that covenant of wrath that God says no one can possibly be made righteous under this covenant.

Okay? So Paul says, I don't set aside the grace of God for this new problem that I've discovered in my life that God has shown me, which is the presence of indwelling sin.

Sin that I know is there, sin that the Spirit has convicted me about, sin that I'm ashamed of and I don't want to be there in my life anymore, but I don't know what to do with it.

Paul says, well, first thing is, I do not set aside the grace of God and I don't go back to that old way of trying to deal with it. Okay?

So, what is the solution he offers here? Well, it's nested in here. He says, I don't set aside the grace of God and I no longer live. I was crucified with Christ.

I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I live in the body, I live by faith in a person, Jesus, who is my access to the grace of God.

He's saying, the same way I started my Christian life, by simply looking to Jesus and what he did for me on the cross, is the same way I live my Christian life in the flesh.

The implication being, there's sin in me still, and I still live a life trusting Jesus to do what I can't do for myself. This is essentially, this is the point of this whole topic here is, the grace of God is through Jesus Christ, for the Christian in an ongoing way.

And this is the only way God has made for us to be delivered from the present power of sin in our life and to be sanctified. Okay? Well, anyway, just want to set that up.

I think that passage does a really good job of stating the problem and then giving us the solution ahead of time. So, that's the whole point here is, the solution is, the grace of God is through Jesus Christ, and that's how we are made conformed into the image of Jesus.

That's how we overcome sin in our life, is through trust in Jesus. God. Okay. My daughter, Sophia, she's repeatedly asked me to preach in a way that's simple enough for her to understand.

Oh, man. So, I'm going to try to do it today. She and the kids are... Okay. She'll listen to it.

Okay. I'll listen to it. Whatever. I'll say it anyway, because I think this topic is so simple. It's so simple, but we're so complicated. We do need God's grace. It's by revelation.

The simplest truths in the Bible, they're there. A child can understand it. The problem is the darkening of our mind, the blindness of our heart.

We need God to open our eyes to help us understand it. So, that's my prayer today is that we can do that. Okay, real quick, I just want to talk about what grace is. And just to be clear, I mean, grace is a huge topic.

There's a lot more to grace than what I'm going to talk about today. I'm speaking of grace in the sense as how it applies to getting free from ongoing sin. Sanctification.

Grace as pertains to sanctification. That's really what I'm speaking of when I'm talking about grace through Jesus, but there's a lot more to grace than that. So, just, if I say something that sounds overly simplistic, it's because I'm talking about that kind of grace.

So, what is that kind of grace? First of all, grace of God, the grace of God is doing the grace, okay. Grace is God doing something for us that we cannot do for ourselves.

Okay? Grace is God doing something for us that we can't do for ourselves. 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9, Paul says of something Jesus told him.

He says, This is descriptive.

This is a description of an experience of what grace is like. I can't do anything about this problem. I can't. I prayed that it would go away. That was context.

He's praying that God would take away this thorn in his flesh, this messenger of Satan. And God says, Jesus says, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.

It's good that you can't do anything about it, because you couldn't in the first place. You just maybe thought you could. But you can't. Okay? God doing something for us that we can't do for ourselves.

So, I thought of this analogy. Can anyone lift up a mountain? Maybe Brady can. Brady, can you lift up a mountain?

He can deadlift a lot, by the way. Can anybody lift a mountain, though? Like, the strongest person in the room, can anyone actually physically take a mountain and lift it up? No.

No. Can anyone lift 200 pounds? Maybe there's some people in this room who can lift 200 pounds. Anybody lift 50 pounds?

Okay. All right. So, what if your sin's 50 pounds? Essentially, you don't like that. Your slave to sin means the weight's on the floor, and then you're victorious over sin when you can lift it up.

If your sin's 50 pounds, maybe we'll try to do it ourselves. Your sin's 200 pounds. Maybe some of us will be like, I don't know. That seems really hard.

But you wouldn't say it's impossible. You'd say it's hard. But what if your sin is a mountain? And the law says, if you don't lift that up, you're going to hell.

And it's your responsibility to do it. You put the mountain there. You take care. Well, I think we would all despair.

Well, that's what it is. Okay? The weight, the debt I owed God, the sins I've committed in my past, that was a mountain I couldn't remove it. It took Jesus coming and dying on the cross for my sins to remove that mountain.

The presence of sin in my life today, whether I acknowledge it or I've come to terms with it or not, is a mountain.

And I can do this much to take it out. Paul came to a revelation of this. I think Romans 7 is one of those passages that I think have been, it's confused a lot of people. There's a lot to be said about that, that whole passage.

But Paul says something in that passage that's very profound. He says, I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing.

For I know what I ought to do, but I have no power to do it. None. I have no power. As a Christian, he said this.

What Paul had was a revelation of the total depravity of his flesh, the indwelling sin, the power of indwelling sin as a born-again believer.

And he came to terms with it, and he looked at it and said, wow, I have no power to remove this from my life. And that's after knowing what God says about it and knowing what I ought to do and actually being excited about what I ought to do.

He says, I rejoice in the law of God in the afternoon most people. I have no power to do it, though. No power. But grace does. Grace is the game changer.

I'm jumping ahead a little bit here. But I think that is a good segue into my next point, is when we think about what is grace, grace is miraculous. Grace is not self-help.

It's not incremental improvements. It's not a slow evolution of, you know, understanding the root cause of your sin and fixing your mom and your parents. You know, your, I don't know, your issues with your dad.

You know, my dad's here. I mean, if we had to do all that, we'd never get free of sin. If all of my present bondage to sin is just because, you know, I had daddy issues, then, I mean, like, that sounds really, like, tantalizing.

You know, yeah, if I figure out all my issues with my dad and all the things, you know, that he didn't do right and stuff, then maybe I'll figure out, you know, why I'm motivated the way I'm motivated. And I'll finally discover why it is I keep doing bad things.

Because way down deep, I really think it's somebody else's fault. That's all you're saying is I think that's someone else's fault. I don't really think this is my fault. I'm not that bad of a person. Someone had to do something messed up to me for me to be behaving as evil as I am right now.

Because I think I'm basically kind of a good person. What that indicates is we don't really believe that we're as bad as the Bible says it would. And therefore, the solutions we jump to are not grace.

I'm not looking for a miracle. Grace is a miracle. So Ephesians 2, verse 4 through 5 says, This applies to full salvation.

Past, present, future. Okay. So it applies to this. If you're in sin, ongoing, habitual, unrepentant sin, you know, the kind of stuff you're embarrassed to talk about.

Okay. That kind of stuff. You're dead in your trespasses. You're ensnared. But what did God do? Made you alive. That's a miracle.

Taking a dead person and turning them into a live person. Only God can do that. Like no amount of counseling is going to get you, get a dead person to become a live person.

Okay. What happened? Is counseling good? Yes, of course it's good. But it has its limits. You can't counsel a dead person into a place of salvific victory.

You can't do it. It's miraculous. And this is the narrative. Like think about Jesus and his ministry. Like what's the most prominent thing you think about when you think of Jesus on earth as a man?

Miracles. That's the most prominent thing I think about. He went around doing miracles all over the place. People bring in an impossible problem. What's he do? Boom.

Miracle. Blind people. I can't see. All right. You can see now. A woman who's been bleeding her whole life or whatever.

Spending her whole life savings on doctors. None of them can do anything. Touches Jesus' cloak. Healed. Jesus was in the business of doing miracles. Well, there's a spiritual principle being communicated here.

Jesus has authority to change reality. To change what you've experienced till now into something different. It's grace.

That's grace. Grace is God doing something for me that I can't do myself. And he said, be it unto you according to your faith.

Over and over again. He says this. Okay. Your faith has healed you. What do you mean your faith healed me? Jesus, you healed me. Well, they had to believe, though.

That he would. That he wanted to. And then he wouldn't. Some people doubted. They wouldn't believe. And they would go on their way. They wouldn't experience that. This is what Paul's talking about earlier in Galatians here.

He's talking about the life I live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God. He trusts Jesus to do something for him that he can't do himself. So when the Spirit convicts him of sin, when he discovers, after seeking to be justified by faith, that he's still a sinner.

You know what he does? I need you, Jesus. I have no hope. There's no other doctor in this world who can deal with a problem. It's a mountain. Your law says move the mountain.

But I know I can't do it. I need you to do a miracle. That's grace. Grace is miraculous. Third point on grace. Grace comes through Jesus Christ.

I read this verse. I'm going to read it again. John 1, verse 16 through 17. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the means of receiving God's grace. You know, we talk about the means of grace. You know, studying your Bible, praying, going to church, and all these things. Okay.

There's a way of thinking, I'm going to get grace if I just do enough of those things. Well, like those are secondary to this one preeminent means, which is through Jesus Christ.

If I'm not coming to Jesus Christ as the means of grace, God's capital M means of grace, all that other stuff, it's wood, hay, and straw.

It's not going to matter. Okay. I have to come through Jesus. Romans 5, verse 1 through 2. Josh shared this verse last time when he was teaching on the gospel.

Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

So, we were justified by faith. And then there's something else. Also. We've also, through him, obtained access by faith into grace.

Grace. How do we stand? Grace. How do these mountains get pulled out of our life? Miraculous grace. How do I get this grace? Through a person.

One man. Jesus Christ. The same way I'm justified, through Jesus Christ, is also how I'm sanctified. Through Jesus Christ.

So, grace comes through Jesus Christ. Alright, so what's grace do? Grace sets us free from the power of sin. Get this from a lot of verses. You can think of grace being God's unmerited favor.

But it's also God's help. It's God's power to overcome sin. Romans 6.14 says, For sin will not have dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace.

Notice that's not a commandment. That's a statement. That's just a promise. Sin won't be your master. For you are not under the law, but under grace.

Titus 2, verses 11-12 says, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live sensibly, righteously, ungodly, in the present age.

Another version says self-controlled. Okay? So what's grace do? It teaches us to say no to sin. It teaches us to deny ungodliness. Grace. And it's grace that's doing it.

Grace gives us power where we had none before. Grace is enlivening. It gives life to our mortal bodies so that we can say, man, that mountain that ruled me my whole life.

Through God's grace, I have a miraculous change. There's something that happened that I'm now able to say no to something that I was never able to say no to before.

And I don't need an accountability partner to do it. It's something different. It's a miracle. It's a miracle. Who did this? Jesus.

Jesus. And this is what Jesus came to do. Okay? Matthew 121 says, this is about Mary.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. This is in his name.

This is why he came. He, personally, will save his people from their sins. Jesus will do it. Grace through faith.

But it's Jesus. Okay? He's the man for the job. Okay? We are not the man for the job. Jesus is the man for the job. The question is, do you believe it?

And will you come to him? Okay. John 8, 34 through 36. Jesus answered the Jews. And by the way, it says these are Jews who believed in him. Okay? So I think we can all relate with that in this room.

We all profess faith in Jesus Christ. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. Is that true in your life? Okay?

Okay. Do you practice sin? Well, then you just need to admit the truth. You're a slave. And the slave does not remain in the house forever. But the son remains forever.

So, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. See? That's the only escape for a slave. Is if someone who will never, ever, ever leave the house because he's a son, has mercy on you and sets you free.

Then you'll be free. He says, whom the son sets free will be free indeed. It's not a fake kind of free. It's the kind of free that is transformative. It's like, wow, what happened to that guy? He was always like that.

He's constantly looking at porn. You know, everyone talked to him. You know? Counseling. Church discipline. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And he just changed. The other woman, she's just wrapped with anxiety.

Her whole life is just one constant goo of therapy and just emotional spiraling. Everybody talked to her and she'd get encouraged for a little bit and then it just goes down the tubes again.

But she changed. God's grace. Whom the son sets free will be free indeed. Be free indeed. So, grace is a miracle. Grace sets us free from sin.

And it's what Jesus, and Jesus is the means of grace. It's what he came to do. He says he came to set his people free from sin. To save them from sin, and whom the son sets free is free indeed. Do we believe it?

Do we believe that the sin in our life, first of all, you can't do anything about it. But there's a man who is. Who's the man for the job. And that just like when he was on earth, and people would bring him impossible problems, and he never, ever, ever didn't have a solution.

He's the same today. The Bible says Jesus Christ is the same. Yesterday and today and forever. He hasn't changed. He can do anything. Jesus says all things are possible for those who believe.

So, do you have the same Jesus that is Jesus? Okay. Is your Jesus the Jesus of the Bible? Or is it some distant therapist in the sky who put his, you know, sin resolution mystery code in the Bible?

And if you have the smarts to figure it out, maybe you'll figure out how to get free. No. No. No. Just, are you coming to Jesus? Okay. So, what are obstacles to an experience of this grace?

Number one is human effort and self-righteousness. This is the number one obstacle. Galatians 5, verse 4 says, you are severed from Christ. You who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace.

That's very sobering. Okay. This is a very sobering warning. Jesus didn't come for people who aren't sinners. There's only one category of people that Jesus came for, sinners.

Are you one? Or are you okay? Okay. If you're okay, none of this that I'm talking about applies to you. You know what applies to you?

The full weight of the wrath of God. That's what applies to you. You're under the law. You're not under grace. There's no mercy under that system.

And if you don't feel that you are needy, you're in need of someone to save you from the power of sin, then you're relying on your own effort, your own self-righteousness.

And even after coming to a head knowledge of these truths, like I acknowledge that I'm a sinner. And I see sin in my life. There's a way of aborting the grace of God by just being active in ministry.

Reading your Bible, going to church, sharing the gospel, giving, counseling, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When back here, in the back of your mind, in the secret places of your life, the Holy Spirit's knocking on the door and saying, something ain't right.

Something ain't right. Knocking on the door. Are you going to let me in? You're a hypocrite. You're running away from the Holy Spirit. And you're protecting yourself, self-righteousness.

When you feel bad about your sin, you know what you do? You don't come to Jesus and say, Lord, I need salvation from this. You say, well, you know, I'm doing all this stuff.

And you feel good. And then moment passes and you move on. It's an obstacle. You don't make, you haven't put it maybe in these theological terms, but that is the experience of being justified by the law.

Okay. And it says, there's no grace for that. Number two, obstacle to grace, pride. James 4, verses 6 through 7 says, but he gives more grace.

Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Again, this message, this is for humble people.

If you're proud, this is not for you. God's opposing you, and there's no grace for you. The law is for the proud. Grace is for the humble. Our pride puts us in a situation where God is actively opposing us.

Have mercy on me, God. Bless me. No. I'm not going to bless you. I'm not going to bless you. You're proud. I'm going to oppose you.

I'm going to let your life get worse. Because you haven't humbled yourself under the mighty hand of God. Okay? All of these promises, all of these gifts, they're for humble people.

They're for people who are broken. For people who aren't worried about everyone else's sin, but they're like, I, I have a problem. And I need Jesus. I need someone to do a miracle in my life. And I don't care about anybody else.

I have a problem. And I need Jesus. And if he doesn't save me, I don't know what I'm going to do. That's a humble person. A proud person is, yeah, of course I have a problem. I mean, objectively, the Bible says they're sinners.

But I'm pretty good. You know? I'm doing okay. You know, my quiet time, I got regular quiet time to confess my sins. Yeah, I confess it all. I'm good. You know? Yeah, I'm working on it. But that person, oh my goodness.

You know? You're proud. You're a proud person. You are this kind of person. This is what's happening to you. You might not know it, but this is your, this is what your actual position is with God right now.

He's opposing you. Because you're not agreeing with what God's perspective of you is. Anyway, number three.

Obstacles to grace is trust in human wisdom, philosophy, and self-help. Colossians 2, verses 8 through 23. I'm just going to catch a few of the high points in this passage.

It's kind of a longer passage. I won't read the whole thing. But he says, 10-step self-improvement plans.

I was in a Christian version of Alcoholics Anonymous. My dad made me go to it in order to live in his house. He's very good. But it's like this. Basically like this.

12 basic principles for how to overcome the power of addiction. But you know what it says at the end of those two 12-step programs?

This is who you are. This is your identity. This addiction is your identity. And you're never going to change. Ever. The only thing you can do is avoid the temptation.

And build up good virtuous habits. And have good accountability. So you don't fall back into it. But it's your identity. That is not the way the Bible speaks about sin. If any man is in Christ.

He's a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold all things have become new. Well there's hundreds of different systems like this. Offering counterfeit solutions.

To overcoming the power of sin in our life. And there are all some versions of. Well it's not quite a mountain. It's you know. It's a heavy weight. You're going to have to work really hard. You're going to have to get a lot of therapy.

You're going to have to follow these steps. And blah blah blah blah blah blah. But it's all based on one basic presupposition. Which is you can lift the weight. You can't.

That's a lie. If it were by works. Grace would no longer be grace. It has to be a gift. Okay. But. These things are deceptive.

Because there's something in us. That wants to avoid. Coming to terms of the truth. That I'm real bad. And this sin. Is proof. And I need a miracle.

There's something in the pride and hardness of our heart. That wants to avoid all that. So we want to call it different things. We want to. You know. Just have whole categories. For different problems in our life. That aren't sin.

When really. If we just read the Bible. It's just sin. And there's a really simple solution. Repentance and faith in Jesus. You receive the grace of God. And it's miraculous. But our pride doesn't like that.

Our human reasoning thinks that's a little too simple. It's a little too simplistic. Don't you know how long I've struggled with this thing? Don't you know about all my like. You know. My daddy issues. And blah blah blah. That let into this.

I keep bringing up daddy issues. It's just because I've heard it so much. And I've actually. You know. I've been tempted to blame my dad. For how I act. It's not true.

It's not true. It's because I love sinning. You know what I'm going to boil down. Why do you sin? Because you love it. Because God said not to do it. You probably wouldn't even want to do it.

God said not to do it. Didn't say not to do it. But you like it. First of all. Because you love wicked things. And second of all. Because God said not to do it. Which makes you want to do it even more.

That's what the Bible says. Is your basic motivation. We need. We need something more. We need grace. We need grace. Number four.

Number four. Obstacle to grace. You just don't believe Jesus can do it. Okay. You don't really believe he can do it.

Mark 9.23. There's a story of a dad who brought his demon possessed son to Jesus. And he basically says. If you can help.

You know. Will you help? And Jesus says. If you can. All things are possible. For one who believes. Remember the father's response.

Lord I believe. Please help my unbelief. And he delivered that boy. I would never rebuke a guy coming up to me. With a demon possessed child. In the throes of the turmoil that's going on in a father's heart.

Who says. If you can help. Will you do something. I would never rebuke him. Jesus. Harshly rebukes him. If you can. You know why? He had to believe Jesus.

According to you. Be it unto you. According to your faith. So. This miracle grace. Is for people who believe. That Jesus can do it. And he wants to do it. Okay.

That's who it's for. And for those. All of the people who came to Jesus. And believed. What happened. He did it for them.

It's just amazing. He did it for them. Crazy problems. Problems that there is not a human solution for. That's why all the miracles are so crazy.

There's no human solution for it. Even like this thing. Almost like. Seems like meaningless ones. Like Peter walking on the water. You know. Like you can't make that happen.

There's no amount of therapy time. That's going to get you to a point. Where you can. Not sink. It takes. It's miraculous. There's a meaning in these.

These miracles. It's. It's a type. It's pointing to. What's our act. Like. Is our basic problem. That we're all sick. No. No.

It is a problem. It's a problem for our bodies. But there's a spiritual version of that. We're sin sick. Okay. We're sin sick. That's our major problem.

Same thing applies. Same miraculous grace. When you come to Jesus. Jesus is the game changer. But if we don't believe in him.

We won't experience that grace. And frankly. To start looking for other solutions. Okay. Number five. Obstacles to grace. You love your sin. And you don't want to be free.

Okay. You love your sin. And you don't want to be free. There's a funny story. John five. Start in verse three. An area.

Where. It says. It lay. There lay a multitude of invalids. Blind. Lame. And paralyzed. One man was there. Who had been an invalid. For 38 years. 30. Invalid means.

Someone who is crippled. They can't move around. Okay. Maybe paralyzed. Or something. But he'd been laying there. For 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there. And knew he had already been there.

A long time. He said to him. Do you want to be healed? I think. I've always thought. That's such a crazy thing to ask. Duh.

38 years. Of being paralyzed. Surely. He'd want to be healed. Maybe. That's all he'd ever known. Alright. Got pretty used to other people doing stuff for him.

You continue on. You can see a little bit of this. In what his response is. He says. The sick man answered. Sir. I had no one to put me into the pool. When the water stirred up. And while I'm going. Another steps down before me. I.

I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. you've ever known, maybe you don't. He lived on handouts his whole life. How does he make money?

If I get healed, maybe I won't be able to make money. So there's a benefit to being an invalid. Now we would look at that and be like, well, that's crazy, man. You can move around and get a job and make way more money, and then you don't have to be laying there. But that's what sin does to us. We've depended on the fleeting pleasure of sin for so long that you don't want to be healed.

Thankfully, this guy did, though. Jesus said to him, get up, take up your bed, and walk. And once the man was healed, he took up his bed and he walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. Just awesome.

But he did ask the question, do you want it? Well, Jesus asked that question to us, too. Do you really want it? Do you want to be healed? Or do you just want to fix your circumstances? You just want to stop being tempted? Do you want people to stop provoking you? If they just stopped provoking me, then I wouldn't lose it. If a woman wore more clothes, I'd be able to walk in purity.

If my work wasn't so stressful, I wouldn't be drunk. You know, whatever. On and on and on. Am I asking God for a change in my circumstances? Or do I really want to be free?

Jesus says nothing from the outside defiles a man, but that which comes out of the heart, that defiles a man. It's an inside-out problem. And sometimes we just don't want to actually change.

We don't want to be free. And you always know this because someone justifies themselves. They'll confess their sin, but they immediately got all the reasons why. You don't want to be free.

And you should just be honest about that. Tell God, Lord, actually, I've been praying about this for years. I've been confessing and telling people maybe, I actually don't really want to be free. I'm going to confess that sin to you. I'm just going to be honest. I don't want to change.

And that actually kind of terrifies me. Will you please have mercy on me? Forgive me for that. Help me want to be free. Okay? Last one.

This is the biggest obstacle to grace is just not coming to Jesus. Okay? Jesus said in John chapter 5, later on in that same chapter, he healed this guy. He's speaking to the Pharisees. These are people who are the conservative Christians of the day.

Okay? They're holding up the truth. He says, You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And as they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you might have life.

You can live your whole life searching the scriptures thinking that in them you don't find life. And miss, miss the forest for the trees. You miss who the Bible's talking about, who's pointing you to.

And you're refusing to come to Jesus that you might have life. You know? It's crazy, but like you can just live your Christian life like that. You can be in ministry like that. You can be someone who people think, man, they are actually killing it on ministry.

Their counsel is so good. They're so on it with sharing the gospel. Their sermons are great. Their Bible studies are awesome. But they refuse to come to Jesus that they might have life.

You know what? It'll come out. It always does. It comes out. For the Pharisees, Jesus says they're like whitewashed tombs. They're full of dead men's bones. It comes out.

But if we come to Jesus, if we let the Bible do what it's intended to do, points us to Jesus, we come to him. He came to set the captives free.

Nothing's too difficult for him. You don't have to be smart. You don't have to know any, really, theology. My dad, I'm going to just give you a test. My dad's here, so I'm going to give you a little testimony here. My dad came from a totally godless home.

I was actually, I forgot to tell you this. I was thinking about this driving over to the other day. What a miracle it is that God took my dad out of that home and saved him. He's got 10 kids.

Totally changed the course of thousands of people's lives, depending on how many generations go on. And he didn't know anything. And, you know, for those of you growing up in a Christian home, you don't really realize the amount of blessing you have, the amount of sin that you're protected from.

But if you've grown up in a home that's not, you may have an experience like this. And he was exposed to pornography and a lot of very vile stuff at a very end of age, very formative age.

The age where it gets baked into the hard code. Okay. And he didn't really know anything about. These truths. That much.

But after he got saved, God convicted him about sexual immorality. And he didn't know any different. But he had, he was gifted the fear of God by the Holy Spirit.

And he repented and he cried out to God and God saved him like that. And later on, when he got more plugged into churches and started having more of a healthy church life and stuff, he ran into all these guys who were professing believers and are still defeated by it.

And it's like all these therapy programs and stuff. It's just like, oh, this takes a long, this takes a lot of work to get free from. And I remember him telling me, he's like, I'm so glad I didn't know anything because all I knew is what the Bible said.

And I came to Jesus and his grace just set me free. He's got piles of other problems, you know, like those work out in life and we all do. But this is, God gives us grace according to our need.

And he doesn't throw the whole book at us all at once. You know what he does? He comes in and says, this is my son. This is my daughter. It's the only thing that I care about right now.

And that's the one thing you're not willing to know with your son God. And if we did, we came to Jesus, you know what we experienced? Miraculous grace. And it seems like kind of a cop-out, you know, like you can just come to God.

He can just set you free from bondage to pornography. Yeah, he can. Any other sin? Put it in there. Homosexuality.

Reviling. Gossiping. I mean, is he God? Who spoke the universe into being with a word?

Who is that word? Christ. All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me, Jesus said. That's who we're coming to when we bring him our sin.

And we should have expectations accordingly for deliverance. And it's not sinless perfection, you know. Remember, he deals with it one at a time. Bring that sin.

Experience grace. You know what? He'll bring up some other stuff, too. And he'll keep bringing stuff up until the day we die. Because it's his glory to conform us to the image of his son, Jesus.

But he gets no glory when we have all the reasons why. Other than Christ had mercy on me. Okay. He did a miracle. He did a bunch of them, actually.

And he keeps doing them. And anyway, that's my prayer. Is that we would come to Jesus today, okay? I do trust. I haven't spoken a lot about specific sins and stuff.

But if the Lord's at work in your heart, I trust that he's highlighting that stuff right now. And I just want to encourage you, put yourself in the shoes of people back when Jesus was walking on earth that had a problem that no one else could help them with.

And when they came to Jesus, he'd do his thing. So I want to encourage you to do the same thing with that sin this morning. Take that thing that's been eating your lunch your whole life.

And come to Jesus. Believe what the Bible says about this stuff. From the Son is set free, he will be free indeed. And you'll experience it. Okay?

So, I'm going to pray.