Embracing Grace: The Hope Beyond Our Sinfulness

is it not profoundly hope filled and satisfying to have someone who knows you to the absolute core of your life who knows the worst things about you that nobody else knows knows you to the bottom of all your deceit and all your evil and all your duplicity and all your bad attitudes and all your half-heartedness and tells you he knows that and then follows it with I love you and I can make this right [00:00:06]

we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are under sin under sin and what he means by Jews and Greeks is everybody I know Jews and Greeks doesn't sound like everybody but Jews is a unique category and then when you look outside to non-jews the term Greeks really was used I think because this is the best representative you can get it was thought outside Israel and so if they don't come out from under sin nobody comes out from under sin and so Jews and Greeks meaning everybody is under sin [00:03:36]

it's one of those great truths that the Church of Jesus Christ is supposed to hold up like a pillar because it says in 1 Timothy 3:15 that the Church of Jesus Christ the Church of the Living God is the pillar and bull workk or foundation of the truth so picture a pillar like the one that Samson perhaps pushed over so that the building fell picture a pillar holding up a building and the building is truth and one of the truths that the church as the pillar in the modern day 20th century America Uganda wherever is to hold up is the truth that everybody is under sin [00:04:31]

we don't just do sins we are under sin it is like a slave master it's like a power on US in US holding us down corrupting us from the inside out I am aware and you are aware that it is great and glorious truth that we also hold up that everybody in this room is created in the image of God and that's what makes sin such a tragedy and a travesty of humanity that it corrupts us to the core and it holds up us down and it ruins everything and we must hold up this truth before the world [00:05:28]

this message you are all under sin you are all corrupt by nature is vastly more hopeful than that message from the doctor because you don't know whether that message can be fixed maybe a surgery and some chemo will do it and maybe not but this message this diagnosis you are all I am under sin we have a remedy for this there is a remedy for this and it is without fail for any who will have it so my message my diagnoses while in one sense being vastly worse is vastly more hopeful [00:07:42]

is it not profoundly hope filled and satisfying to have someone who knows you to the absolute core of your life who knows the worst things about about you that nobody else knows knows you to the bottom of all your deceit and all your evil and all your duplicity and all your bad attitudes and all your half-heartedness and tells you he knows that and then follows it with I love you and I can make this right with God and with everybody else [00:09:17]

Paul knows good and well about the righteous in the Old Testament in fact well I don't know how many verses would it be just a few verses later in chapter 4:3 he's going to say quoting Genesis 15:6 Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for what Abraham before David ever wrote those psalms followed by a whole history of saints believed God and they were reckoned righteous and thus were in that sense righteous so Paul knows even as he quotes Psalm 14 to the effect there's none righteous know not one he knows there's a qualifier on that namely that if you reckon somebody righteous from God if God reckons somebody righteous by faith they're not any longer in that category [00:16:43]

David has said in Psalm 51 I was born in iniquity in sin did my mother conceive me Psalm 51:5 he knows he is by nature corrupt but now he says by Mercy by free Sovereign Grace ious transforming Mercy I have been plucked out of that mass of corruption and I have been led to the house of God and I know that it's only Mercy not nature that got me there [00:22:01]

we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are under sin under sin and what he means by Jews and Greeks is everybody I know Jews and Greeks doesn't sound like everybody but Jews is a unique category and then when you look outside to non-jews the term Greeks really was used I think because this is the best representative you can get it was thought outside Israel and so if they don't come out from under sin nobody comes out from under sin and so Jews and Greeks meaning everybody is under sin [00:03:36]

we don't just do sins we are under sin it is like a slave master it's like a power on US in US holding us down corrupting us from the inside out I am aware and you are aware that it is great and glorious truth that we also hold up that everybody in this room is created in the image of God and that's what makes sin such a tragedy and a travesty of humanity that it corrupts us to the core and it holds up us down and it ruins everything and we must hold up this truth before the world [00:05:28]

this message you are all under sin you are all corrupt by nature is vastly more hopeful than that message from the doctor because you don't know whether that message can be fixed maybe a surgery and some chemo will do it and maybe not but this message this diagnosis you are all I am under sin we have a remedy for this there is a remedy for this and it is without fail for any who will have it so my message my diagnoses while in one sense being vastly worse is vastly more hopeful [00:07:42]

Paul knows good and well about the righteous in the Old Testament in fact well I don't know how many verses would it be just a few verses later in chapter 4:3 he's going to say quoting Genesis 15:6 Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for what Abraham before David ever wrote those psalms followed by a whole history of saints believed God and they were reckoned righteous and thus were in that sense righteous so Paul knows even as he quotes Psalm 14 to the effect there's none righteous know not one he knows there's a qualifier on that namely that if you reckon somebody righteous from God if God reckons somebody righteous by faith they're not any longer in that category [00:16:43]