12/04/05 - “When Grace Becomes Disgrace– Part 5” 36L
Victory Ministries International presents:
Awesome Truths and Amazing Facts  
Treasures of awesome truths from God’s Word 
and facts that affect you!

Hello!  This is Richard Vaughn

Today’s subject – “When Grace Becomes Disgrace– Part 5”

Before we begin today’s program, shall we reverently seek God’s presence. Heavenly Father we ask for divine guidance as we open the word and continue to study this subject of Your grace and how modern Christians unaware, have turned it into disgrace. In Jesus name Amen.
I continue to keep my pledge to lift up my voice like a trumpet and to show God’s people where they are going against God’s Will.
Over the last four weeks we have been discussing how the Christian world has turned God’s grace into disgrace, simply by becoming careless regarding God’s moral law the Ten Commandments. 
Let us consider God’s grace by the following example of a man on death row who killed another person. The evidence was overwhelming and he was found guilty and sentenced to die. On the date of his execution, his lawyers presented new evidence to the governor, who is the only person that can intervene in the case. Reviewing it, the governor makes the decision to pardon the man and he is set free. 
A governor can simply pardon a sinner who’s condemned to die when it comes to human courts of law, but God can’t do that.  God’s law is much more binding than man’s law.  God’s law is so binding that the penalty could not be done away simply by a pardon.  The penalty still had to be paid!  Someone had to die!!  Jesus came down from heaven and took our death sentence upon him-self. The death of Christ proves God’s moral law to be immutable.  If you’ve never thought about that before in that light, it’s time to really think about it now.  And the fact that the infinite sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary as an atonement for the penalty for sin, (which is the breaking of God’s law), demonstrates to the entire universe, that justice and mercy are the foundation of the law and government of God. 
Just imagine that if our human laws on earth were so binding that the only way a governor could pardon any convict who was sentenced to die, was for the governor to die in the place of the convict.  How many pardons do you suppose we’d be seeing?   Probably none.  But now suppose this— 
Suppose a really kind hearted governor loved the convict so much, and thought he needed a little longer to live and get right with the Lord, that he goes and dies for that convict. He actually sentenced himself to die for that guilty murderer. The convict goes out free and says, “I’m glad that governor died for my sin of killing another person, now I’m under grace and can go and kill all the people I want to.” That’s not very appreciative is it? And quite frankly, it’s not very sensible at all.  
Why is it so easy for people to understand this when it comes to human courts of law, and so hard for some folks to understand when it comes to  God’s Divine courts of law. 
Now what do you think our heavenly Father feels like, when He sent down His only Son to die for our sins, and Christian people, who should know better, turn around and say “Well Lord, now that You’ve died for my sins I have grace, and therefore the liberty to go break Your law and sin all I want to!!” 
For that person, that’s when grace becomes a disgrace. 
Brothers and sisters in Jesus, praise God that we’re under His marvelous grace and not under the penalty of the law. But because that grace saves us from the condemnation of the law, doesn’t mean the jurisdiction of the law has passed away. 
Do you see? We are really double duty bound to keep God’s law?
When Christians begin to think that grace purchases for them a license to go on sinning, then what they think is grace, becomes an absolute disgrace in God’s sight.
IF YOU FORGET EVERYTHING ELSE YOU HAVE HEARD ME SAY, REMEMBER THIS:
The only way a person can please God and keep His law is by believing in the gospel, knowing that Christ died for us and by loving God.  And when your heart is filled with love for God, then you want to obey Him, keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.
Romans  6:1,2.   Paul guarded against this very argument by stating “What shall we say then?  Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” 
In other words, now that we’ve all been saved by grace through faith in Jesus, shall we go on sinning and breaking God’s law? The next verse he says, “God forbid.    (Certainly not, Paul says!)  How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” 
	No friends, Grace never leads to disobedience. Then in Romans 3:31 Paul states, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” 
Isn’t the Bible clear?  Four Times Paul exclaims God Forbid regarding the law of God, it’s validity and purpose.  Is there any room for guesswork?
Psalm 119:97 says,  “O how I love thy law! it is my meditation all the day.”
Now let’s look briefly at some other arguments.
Some insist on saying that Jesus fulfilled the moral law, therefore it is no longer binding today. And they get that from Matthew 5:17,18, which is so astounding because if they would just carefully read that passage they’d see Jesus was saying just the opposite.
When it comes to a moral code of conduct, fulfilling it has nothing to do with doing away with it. If I fulfill a speed limit law, the speed limit is not done away with.  
Mr. Brown gave his wife total fulfillment, so did that do away with his wife because she was a fulfilled person?
In Matthew 3:15, it tells us Jesus fulfilled all righteousness. Is all righteousness done away with?
In Philippians 2:2, Paul said he wanted his readers to fulfill his joy.  Was this so his joy could be done away with?  Absolutely not!
In Colossians 1:25, Paul tells us he was made a minister that he may fulfill the word of God!  Is the Word of God done away with?  Absurd!
Isaiah 42:21  “He will magnify the law and make it honorable.”
He was not going to do away with the law, he was to enlarge our understanding of the law’s requirements. Where did anyone ever get the idea that Jesus fulfilling the moral law of Ten Commandments destroys the law?   Right from the old Devil himself—the original law-breaker!
Jesus fulfilled the law so that we can receive power to fulfill the law!  That’s what the Bible says! 
Romans 8:3,4  “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, 
and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:  That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in (who?) US, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” 
Converted people keep the law of God.
Not only did Jesus come down to fulfill the law but He wants us to fulfill the law.  Some say, “But it’s impossible to keep God’s law.” But would God ask of His children an impossibility?  Would you ask impossible things of your children?   Would God say, “Be ye a doer of the law” if it was an impossible thing to be a doer of the law?Would Jesus say, “Keep my commandments” if it was impossible to keep His commandments? Of course not and we have access to the same power He did.
Another argument: 
Some people will try to tell you, “We’re in a new grace dispensation.” They’ll tell you that the people who lived before the cross were saved through the keeping of the law but those after the cross by grace. 
How were people in OT times saved?  The whole truth is that everyone that has ever been saved and ever will be saved will have been saved by grace. 
Heb. 4:2 “For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. Who are the them?  Heb. 3:16 “For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.”
Listen carefully, those who lived in ancient times before the days of Christ, those who we would refer to as ancient Israel, had the gospel preached to them.  But the Bible tells us that for the vast majority of them, the gospel did them no good, because it wasn’t mixed with faith.
There is only one method of salvation from cover to cover in this Bible, and that’s by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Read Romans 4:3  “Abraham believed God…”
In the OT the faithful looked forward to the cross by faith through their sacrifices.   In the New Testament the people looked back to the cross by faith.
We are saved in a Christ who has already come.  The people long ago were saved in a Christ who was still to come.  They had the service of the sanctuary in which to learn through those sacrifices, the great story of how a Messiah, a Redeemer, would come from heaven and shed His own blood and die for the human race.
In the Old Testament, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.  
Some today say “Oh, but we’re under the New Covenant!” What is the New Covenant? God says, He wants us to become part of a new covenant. We all should take a look at  this. Hebrews 10:16  “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord,  I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;”
This is what the new covenant is all about with Christ!  This is the kind of relationship that God wants!  An essential change under the New Covenant is a change, not in the commandments, but rather their location!!  The Holy Spirit in the New Covenant takes God’s law, and writes it into our very hearts and minds. The weakness was not in God’s holy law, but in us who are too weak of ourselves to give obedience.  
Romans 8:7  “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”
When our minds are changed by the power of the gospel from carnal to spiritual, then the law can be written in our minds so that it simply becomes the natural outworking of our lives to do the will of God.  Do you now see how simple that is to understand?
That’s what we need in Christianity today!  What have we as Christians got to offer people if not a victorious life?  
The power of a Christian for witnessing is
“I was dead and now I’m alive. I was sick and now I’m well. I was lost and now I’m found.” 
What have we got to share if not victory in Christ!! If the so-called saved don’t lead any kind of victorious life, what are we saved from? What kind of a witness is that? Listen, as Christians, we are saved not only from the penalty of sin, but also from the power of sin!
It astounds me when so many people today who want to call themselves Christians, pride themselves on being against God’s law when Paul calls such people in Romans 8 God’s enemies!!  That’s a very serious statement.
That’s why we need to be born again.  So we can learn to love God and be obedient to Him.  (Phil.4:13)
We read in Matthew 7 where Jesus declared of the lost when He comes the 2nd time, “And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you:  depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”  The word “iniquity” in the original Greek can be literally translated “lawlessness”, or “you who break the law”.
Dear friends, let’s use common sense.  If we were going to do away with any part of the Scriptures, let’s not do away with the only part that was written with the finger of Almighty God.  
As I close this message tonight, I point you to the two sides that are forming like never before in Earth’s history.   We see one side and that is the Beast, along with popular Christianity saying “It’s all done away with, you don’t need to be obedient”   The root problem is they don’t really love Jesus. 
And on the other side we see God’s people in Revelation.  It says they’re just a remnant, and they keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus.  
Do you know why?  Because they have chosen to truly love Jesus.  Do you really love Him with all your heart? 
That’s the ultimate test in the book of Revelation:  Who do we really, really love?  Will we be among the majority following the beast or among the few keeping the commandments of God and following the faith of Jesus. 
Do you want to say to Jesus, “Jesus, I love you, I love you enough to keep your commandments”? 
Time is up for this week, so be tuned in next week as we present another important truth from God’s word.

Until next week, Jesus said in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”. Even so, Come Lord Jesus.