Morning church. It is very good to see all of you here today. My name is Michael. I'm the lead pastor here and greetings to everyone downstairs in the great room.

Thank you for serving us by worshiping downstairs to make room up here. If you haven't heard. It's official. On Friday, we closed on our new church building. Yes. Praise the Lord. We can let it. I can breathe and celebrate and let it out now. So thankful. It's been a, just a very long journey to get to this point.

And now that we're at this Now we can start working and actually there's lots of stuff to do as we prepare to move, but I just very thankful to, to the Lord and for all the folks that have been involved and for all of you who have made this possible. So, thank you. Big time answer to prayer.

Lord willing, the first service in the new building will be February the 9th. I know I'd previously said February 2nd. We pushed it back to February 9th. We want to make sure we have plenty of time. So that gives us about a month left in this home before we'll be over in the other home. That'll give a little bit more time for them to fix that bridge the Big Mac bridge added over there.

In the meantime, please just be in prayer for all the things that we need to do to be prepared for the new move and for the Lord's favor in the new neighborhood and community that we're going to be moving to. For those of you who don't know the new church is across the river with, when the bridge is working, it's about, 10 minutes or so from here, so it's very close.

And if you're, if you live in Ohio up 71, it's about the same distance as it is to get here. This is very close to here. So, anybody who's here today should have no trouble getting to the next to our next location. But pray for God to give us favor in the new community. There's going to be many opportunities to share the gospel.

I'm already seeing just indicators that there will be just ample opportunities to share the gospel with people, to minister to people. And so, I'm very excited about that. We have workdays coming up. I know many of you are You'd have a servant's heart. I had a couple of days I was prepared to tell you today and we might need to change those.

Which I'll just say we got workdays that we will communicate to you. And just over the next month or five, let's say just please be prepared to be flexible as we're always encountering things that we don't know and things that need to change. So, over the next few months be just extra flexibility and graces plans that we might set in motion might.

Need to be changed last minute. Will definitely have at least one family meeting. I'd like to have multiple, maybe two, but we'll have at least one family meeting between now and the date in February where we'll meet there. So be on the lookout for announcements and details to be sent out through the text messaging service and through the public, if you're not, if you don't get the public weekly emails, you can go to our website.

And under the menu where this is the public, there's a place to sign up there. As we prepare to move into this new church home, we are reviewing a handful of topics that I'm just calling them church essentials. Just a handful of things that are foundational for life in the church. And every topic in this series is important for our culture as a church.

And as we've gone through this series last few weeks, that's emerged in my own thinking is something I'm particularly eager to guard is that to guard a culture in our church. Cause I think we have a. A, a sweet fellowship, a sweet culture that, that I don't want to lose that as a lot of new people, Lord willing, join us.

We want to make sure that we retain our culture. And so that's why we're going through this series over the next few weeks. Today we're talking about a church culture of grace and truth. So, we're going to look at. One primary text today, one verse, and as I mentioned last week I'd like us to try a habit of standing for the reading of God's word.

So, if you would you please stand, and we'll read this one verse today. We're in John chapter 1, and I'm going to read verse 14.

God's word says this, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory, as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. There you go. You remember from last week. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

Let's pick this verse apart. The first phrase here is the word became flesh. The word became flesh. So, in the context, John chapter one, the word is not a book. It is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the word of God. He is God's self-disclosure. So, the word became flesh that is about Jesus Christ because he is the word of God and God became man in the incarnation.

And he did this because God, our God, is a speaking God. He wants to be known, and he has revealed himself in various ways, but he is chiefly revealed in his son, Jesus Christ. So, Jesus Christ, he is the perfect representation of the Father. And in fact, John chapter 14, verse 9, Jesus says, has seen the father.

So, Jesus is the perfect representation of the Father. This next phrase, he dwelt among us. That literally means he pitched his tent because the word dwelt is the same word for pitching a tent. And that has a reference from the Old Testament. So, if you know from the Old Testament, God. would pitch a tent with the Israelites.

So, in the book of Exodus, God gave very detailed instructions for building what was called the tabernacle, and the tabernacle was basically a mobile tent. It was a temple that could be picked up and moved around. So that was the tabernacle. And so, in the Old Testament, God's presence would move with his people as he would set them out and tell them to move from one place to another.

They would. Pick up that tent and they would move it. And whenever they stopped to camp, they would pitch the tent once again. And so that's what God did. And it was called the tent of meeting or a tabernacle. Now, in the New Testament, God, as we've said, became man. God became a human man. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This verse here, dwelt among us. So, the word dwelt there literally means pitched his tent. Just as God did in the Old Testament times with Moses and his people, Jesus is God who came near and who dwells among his people. That language is deliberate because Jesus Christ is the true dwelling place of God.

He is the true tabernacle of God. And then the tabernacle, when it was made permanent under King Solomon, it was called the temple. The same idea throughout. The tabernacle became the temple, but Jesus is the true temple. He is the true dwelling place of God. The next part, we have seen his glory.

We have seen his glory. Exodus chapter 33 verse 20, God tells Moses, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me. Did you know that? If you were to just see God in His undiluted glory, it would, you would die. Apart from the mediating work of Christ in forgiveness, but if you were just any, anybody would just encounter God as a sinful person encountering a holy God, it's deadly.

Because God's holiness is so radiant, His power, His transcendence is so beyond us that to approach Him unworthily is a death sentence. And yet, John says here, we've seen his glory. We have seen it. Now what they, what he means is we have seen the glory of Jesus Christ, who is the embodiment, the human embodiment of God.

And so, he is the glory of God then is the manifestation of his essence. And all of his perfections are present in Jesus Christ. And so, whenever Moses encountered God on the mountain in the book of Exodus, God only would allow him to see his backside, not even his face. And he would just see the afterglow of the glory of God.

And even that was so radiant and so powerful that his face would light up. And so, he had to put a veil over his face because it was blinding whatever he would do. from the mountain. It was still this and the afterglow of being in God's presence. So, whenever God appeared to men in Old Testament times, he appeared to them temporarily in the form of a man because the human flesh was a sort of a shielding, a protection from the glory of God.

It was a way for God to draw near to people in a way that would not kill them. And that's what God did in the Old Testament. He did it for their protection because God is holy, and man is sinful and to approach God unbidden and unworthily is deadly. However, in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God came near.

And in Colossians chapter one, verse 15, it describes Jesus saying, he is the Image is something right? He is the image of the invisible God. Meaning, God who is spirit, God who is invisible, has now become visible in the person of Jesus Christ. We can see God. So, Jesus is the true image of God, and to see Christ, is to see God, because Christ humbled himself, Christ lowered himself in the incarnation.

And so, Jesus is the visible and physical manifestation of the invisible God. We do not go up to God, God comes down to us. He condescends to dwell with us. So, they've seen his glory as of the only Son from the father. Jesus did this not as some angel, not as some created being, not as some reflection.

He did this as God himself. He is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And so, the word Son does not mean he is a created being. He is not like the offspring of God. Rather, the Son is a position within the Trinity, the Godhead. He is the Son, co-equal with the Father. And then finally, full of grace and truth. So, all of this is building up to this crescendo, this last idea.

All of this about Jesus himself, who is God. He's full of something. And what he is full of is actually two things. Two attributes that pull in different directions. He is full of grace and he's full of truth. He's full of both of them. So, since Jesus is the true image of God, since Jesus perfectly represents the father, just as Jesus is full of grace and truth, so also the father is full of grace and truth.

So, whenever God shows up, there are two things that you can expect to see present. You can see the fullness of God present in Jesus Christ. And when God shows up, He is full of grace, and whenever God shows up, he is full of truth. And further, this pairing of grace and truth is necessary. Having one without the other is a distortion.

So, the application of this is quite simple. Since Jesus, the Son of God, he is, since Jesus is full of grace and truth, we should be too. Very simple. Since Jesus is full of grace and truth, we should be also. And since these two attributes are paired together, as Christians, we can't have one without the other.

We need both. We need them to go together. So, think of it this way. Think of it like a kite. A kite that flies. A kite will fly in the air when there are two forces present. There's the wind which will lift the kite. It will pull the kite off the ground, but there's also a string that holds the tight that holds the kite.

And by having the string, what it does, the tightness of the string, that tension enables the kite to fly. And as you release the string, you maintain a little bit of tension, which enables the kite to fly higher and higher. So, you need the wind to lift it, and you also need a string to steady it and to anchor it.

So, in Christ, our sins are forgiven. In Christ, we're set free. We're set free by His grace. And that is like the wind giving flight to our souls. However, a kite needs to be steadied and anchored. And that is the string that keeps it from flying away off into la land. So, it can only fly properly when both forces are present.

The wind to lift it, and the string to hold it steady. And it's the same with grace and truth. In a healthy Christian life, or in a healthy church culture, both forces will be present. So, in individuals, there's going to be a little bit more variety. In individuals, you have some people that are more grace kind of people, and then you have other people that are more truth kind of people.

And that's fine, because they are, these are gifts. These are manifestation, manifestations of emphasis, or things that are more, more present in us, and it's a way that we have something to contribute. We have something unique to offer. And so there are grace people, there's truth people. Truth people, you might see them stronger in things like teaching or exhortation because they're dialed in on what is real, what is right, what is wrong, ethics, morality, doctrine.

Those are what truth people care about. But you also have grace people and grace people are stronger in gifts like mercy and help. And of course it's not. These are not, airtight compartments. There's a lot of overlap. Everybody has a mixture of both, but people that are really strong in mercy, they'll be or strong in grace.

They'll have gifts like mercy and help. And they're dialed in to human frailty and weakness. They're dialed into the fact that we are fallen and that we have weakness and we're not able to just flip a switch and be perfectly sanctified. We need time. We need patients. We need instruction. We need a gentle hand to help us grow.

These are good things. God made us this way. You want grace people, and you want truth people in the same church with different gifts and different strengths. And it's good as long as one does not neglect the other. So, in churches, then a balance between the two is more important than in individuals because the balance between the two is, is determinative of the culture of a church.

So, let's say you have a church that is all truth and no grace. That church is going to be rigid and cold, right? And further, you're going to have dark sins that will remain hidden and unaddressed. because there's no grace. Grace is what is needed to draw the sins out to give us confidence to be able to confess them.

But if it's all truth and no grace, then everybody, there's, it's going to create a stifling climate of rigidity and coldness because all of us are sinful, and the hope of grace is necessary. We need that to be able to be, to repent of our sin knowing that bringing it into the light does not mean we're crushed underneath the blinding weight and the light of God's holiness.

Yes. But rather, we know God is a God of grace. That we can bring our sin into the light. We can bring our weaknesses, our frailties, our problems. We can bring these things into the light. And say, God, shine the light of your truth on it, because you're a God of grace. But let's say you have the opposite.

Let's say you have a church that's all grace and no truth. Then these kinds of churches will flatter people to hell. They will never talk about real things because the way that they avoid dealing with sin is by never talking about it at all. They never define it. They don't identify it. They leave it alone.

And so, in that environment, sin can grow in the first environment. That's all truth and no grace. Sin doesn't come out into the open. It stays in the darkness and hides in the church. It's all a grace and no truth. Sin can be flaunted openly and there's nobody there to confront it. Because you don't value truth.

Truth is like any appeal to truth or pre appeal to accountability is going to be squashed. We said, no, we don't want to do that because we want to be about grace, right? So, you need to have both present. You don't want to twist grace into a license to sin. And human nature tells us that we would rather not hear ugly and painful truths about sin.

We'd rather avoid it. And so, we need both grace and truth. Truth to know what sin is and grace to be able to deal with it. So, we need this piercing light of truth, God's truth, to show us the holiness of God, and to show us the sinfulness of man, and to show us the utter depravity and ugliness of sin. And then we also need the amazing grace of God that gives us hope that those sins, once exposed, can be fully and completely forgiven.

And they can be washed clean, and that we can be counted righteous in Christ. And that's the power of the gospel message. The power of the gospel message is not merely that God's a senile old grandpa that likes you and overlooks your flaws. No, that's not the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel is that you are a reprehensible, great sinner.

However, Jesus Christ is an even greater Savior. His grace and power and mercy and grace is greater than any sin that we commit. And that no matter what we've done, we can bring it to the light. We can let it, subject it to the scrutiny of God's truth that is revealed in his word, and then we can be healed and forgiven.

That is the message of the gospel, and that is the power of the gospel. It's electric, whenever both are there powerfully. That's the power of God unto salvation and the power to live lives that are pleasing to God. Always growing in grace of God. So, a church that has a culture that is high grace and high truth, that powerfully testifies to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's what we're after. It’s not let's lean really hard into one or let's lean really hard into the other. No, that's not what we're about. We want a high grace culture and a high truth culture because who is Jesus? Jesus is full of grace and truth. And Jesus is the perfect representation of the Father, right?

So, let's break this down a little bit further. What will we do to cultivate a high truth and a high grace culture? How do, how might we pursue this? Let's start with a high truth first. High truth culture. And this is unwelcome in our postmodern society. Because postmodernism is really the death of truth.

It is a, it is the attempt to live in some alternate reality where the real reality is not acknowledged or proclaimed. It is, we brush that aside and we create this fantasy type of reality, and we try to live in that fantasy, and we try to get everybody else to live in the same fantasy. And it is a denial of the truth.

That's what postmodernism does. So, in a postmodern society, the virtues of truth and honesty, it gives way and yields to emotionalism. And so that's the way it is in our society. Now we're conditioned to avoid saying anything that might hurt somebody else's feelings because somebody else's emotions and their subjective experience is more important than what is the objective truth.

And so, in churches that have given into this, preaching God's word has been replaced with therapeutic, feel good, self-esteem messages. I had a friend tell me once that he had come from a church where it had been years since ringing out from his pulpit, he had heard words like hell, judgment, wrath, or sin.

He had not heard those words in years from the pulpit of the church that he had come from. Why? Because those words offend people. Because those are unpleasant truths that we would rather avoid. We don't like them. We don't want to deal with unpleasant truths. We would rather be pleasant. We would rather come to church and have a pick me up, come to church and have something that feels good.

That gives us this nice little boost to carry us on into our week where we'd leave feeling on this sort of spiritual high, but we don't actually deal with the real problems that are weighing us down in our life. We want to avoid those things. We want to avoid any idea that God's wrath burns hot against sin, and it is right.

God is good and right, and it is a manifestation of his perfection and his holiness and his justice for his wrath to burn hot against sin. It's important then that we have this commitment to always speaking and living what is true. Let me read to you from 1st, or excuse me, 2nd Timothy chapter 4, where Paul is giving his final marching orders to his protege Timothy.

He says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge, here's the word judgment, judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word. Amen. Amen. Be ready in season and out of season. Sometimes it's out of season to preach the word.

Sometimes it's not very popular. Sometimes it's this is a, this is an uncomfortable truth to deal with right now. We'd rather not deal with it right now. So that truth is out of season. Preach the word in season and out of season. Don't let any particular factors allow you to deviate from proclaiming the truth.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching. Why?

For the time is coming. When people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. Just tell them what they want to hear. I think that time has come, don't you? And the result is they will turn away from listening to the truth.

So, Timothy, if you don't preach the word, then what's going to be the result? What's going to happen? What do people do when left to themselves? They turn away from the truth. They reject it. They resist it. They sideline it. So, they don't listen to the truth, and they find teachers who will tell them what they want to hear.

Who will tell them you're okay, I'm okay, we're all okay. God doesn't care. He's going to take us all to home to heaven and be a big Scott Santa Claus God for the rest of eternity. Amen. That's what we want to hear, but that's a silly myth. That isn't what's true. And so, we'll turn away from the truth of having to deal with our sin, and we'll turn off, turn away into these myths that aren't true.

They're fictions. They're fantasies.

So how do we do this? We want to be willing, need to be willing to speak the truth to each other. It starts interpersonally. I don't know if it starts there, but certainly it includes interpersonal speaking the truth to one another, to live not by lies. And so, Ephesians chapter four, verse 25 says this.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you, so it's an individual personal responsibility, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. We talked about this a few weeks ago in the sermon about being one body. So, it's if one part of the body is lying to another part of the body, let's say my arm is set on fire and my eyes, my ears, my brain saying it's not on fire.

No, it's fine. It's fine. Don't worry about that. Obviously, I'm hurting myself because it's my own body. And so, I'm a fool if I lie to myself. So, I need the truth to be able to live a whole life, whole in the W H O L E sense, to be a whole life, a whole person, I need to live what is true. And to be able to recognize the truth, we need one another to help us to see it, to proclaim it, to speak it from God's word.

So, the truth then that Paul is talking about is the truth in the areas where we're tempted to lie. We don't need to be reminded to tell the truth in areas where we already want to be honest. But it's in the areas that we're tempted to lie to ourselves or to somebody else. So, you would say at least in three areas, the truth about God's word, the truth about sin, the truth of the gospel, the remedy for our sin.

We have to tell the truth in those areas, and we do that interpersonally. Very practically, what that would mean simply is that we have to be willing to have hard conversations to help each other grow. I've had them, you've had them. If you haven't had them, then you're being deprived of a great grace, a great gift, because those hard conversations is where often somebody may pull you aside and say, brother, I want you to see something, sister.

I want you to see something. Let me point out something that, that I see. Let me show you what I see in God's word and how that lines up with what I see in your life. And let me tell you about the grace of God that frees you from the sin and then now you can grow in repentance. That is a wonderful gift.

That is a treasure in any body of any church body that is willing to do those things. But it's uncomfortable. We don't like doing that, do we? So, it can mean simply calling out sin in one another, holding each other accountable, challenging one another's doctrines as needed. I'm not talking about nitpicky stuff, just egg headed, I'm talking about substantive theology where we really need to have, we really need to sharpen and challenge one another.

That's important. Now, a lot of you that are here, you're truth people. Christ the King has got a lot of truth people here, and it's probably why you're here, is that you know that we're a church that will speak the truth, so you know we don't shy away from hard truths. And because we're the kind of church that will speak the truth about a variety of different issues, sooner or later something's going to happen.

Do you know what that is? There will be an unpleasant or uncomfortable truth that will land in your lap. And you'll hear something from this pulpit or from somebody in this church body that is true, but you don't like it. And then you'll be tempted to bolt or to get angry or whatever. And that's going to be the challenge.

And so, this is something that, whatever, first shining the light of God's truth on whatever, then sometimes eventually it might shine in an area you don't want it to shine. And that's when you really need the faith to believe that this is good.

In the last few years, you may have noticed that there's conservative Christianity. I'm speaking of the broad evangelical world. For those of you that pay attention to such things, conservative Christianity is splintered into different factions and groups. And out of that, it's not conservative Christianity.

It's no longer a; it's no longer a singular thing. There are multiple conservatisms. And I'm speaking of conservative in the way that we apply scripture to life and culture and that sort of thing. So, to give you some examples, there's, you have COVID conservatives and COVID conservatives, they want the church to fight for religious freedom and oppose government overreach.

Yes, and amen. I'm over that. Then you have activist conservatives. I'm making all these names up so these are not official lists. Activist conservatives, they want the church to leverage its influence to advance policy goals and government. I'm okay with that too. You have anti woke conservatives. I like this list so far.

I'm an anti-woke conservative and those are the people who want the church to speak out on things like diversity, equity, and inclusion, madness, and reverse racism, and things of that sort. Then you have neo patriarch conservatives. Again, guilty. We want a, they want a church who opposes feminism and wants the men, urges the men to step up and take the lead in the church and to be responsible.

Now that's just a sample and I'm on board with all of those things. But what I've noticed is that you have people that might have, I want this kind of conservatism and they're like, oh, Christ the King is that kind of church. Christ can go talk about that. But there's this other kind of conservatism that you're not on board with.

And so, if we touch on one area, you're like, yes, I love that kind of conservative. But if you talk about some other issue that's more hey, that, that kind of gets up in my business and I don't like that, then it's upsetting for you. And that the thing is these aren't cultural things. These are things that the Bible gives clear guidance on because the Bible is what we preach.

All of these issues by God's grace, and we will always strive to follow what the scripture says on whatever the issue is. And there are new ones I'm sure that will emerge in the years to come. And we'll speak the truth on it because the Bible is our highest authority. This is what matters, not what happens to be conservative right now in some group.

But we will always do what the Bible says. And there are things that in a quote unquote conservative group will say, this is what we should do that doesn't exactly line up with scripture. We have to go with scripture always because it's not a, an ideology. It is something that we're required to do.

So, our highest authority of scripture and the truth of scripture is the thing that we're conservative about. So let me give you a talk about this just a bit further. The Christian faith is conservative. In the purest sense of the word. Now, when you hear the conservative, don't think Republicans and Democrats just think like what the word conservative means.

There is a political expression of it, but I think both of the political parties are pretty corrupt. One's better than the other, but this is not a political statement. I'm saying conservative in a pure sense of the word. Let me show you an example. This is Jude chapter three or Jude verse three. Jude says, beloved, although I was very eager to you to write about our common salvation.

So, there's a core, there's a thing that we hold in common. I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. What's he talking about there? The word contend means to struggle for, strive for, fight for, to preserve, to protect something.

So, to struggle for it means that we want to keep it pure. We want to keep it undiluted, and we want to apply it accurately. The conservatism that you will encounter at Christ the King Church is not an ideology that we impose on the Bible. It's not something that we get from a chat group or from a political party or somewhere else.

And then we say, okay, the Bible therefore must fit this thing that we've labeled conservative. No, the Bible tells us what we must be conservative about. And what we must be conservative about is the common salvation that we have. And the thing that was once for all delivered to the saints, it's a historical thing.

It's an event that really actually happened and we have to contend for that and not let it get perverted or polluted by whatever anybody else may happen to be doing. And so being a high truth church means that we are not going to be innovative in these areas. We don't modify Christianity, we conserve it.

We want to conserve what is a true, historic Christianity. So, we believe that God created this world for His glory, that man rebelled against Him in his sin, and invited God's wrath and judgment. But God, being gracious and compassionate because of His love, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save sinners.

And then to establish his supreme rule forever over the whole cosmos with his redeemed bride, the church. We want to conserve that, and we want to conserve the truth of that, which is contained in his word. His word, the word the scripture is the testimony of what God has done. And we can serve that.

This is the core of the Christian faith. We don't update it. We don't modify it or adjust it because it is eternally true, and it is the power of God into salvation. Therefore, what we do with it is we proclaim it, we contend for it, we conserve it. Both from this pulpit and individually, house to house, one another.

So being a high truth church, as we've already said, being high truth without being high grace can lead to rigidity, coldness, dead orthodoxy. Not to mention how we want to hide sin whenever we don't think that there's grace. So, there's a, there is a flavor of some conservative groups or churches That they're very conservatism and their very truthiness what was it?

Who's the, that word just popped into my head. I think it was a Stephen Colbert that said it once, Steve, the truthiness, the very truthiness of conservatism can create an environment where there it it's suffocates grace because people do not apply the truth of grace than want truth to be this thing that can be that can just be a hammer to, to beat people with.

So as our church grows in the coming years, we want to be high truth. And we also want to be high grace, which is where that truth is applied to people. So, let's talk about that. How do we promote a high grace culture?

To be a high grace church simply means we're all sinful. We all need God's grace every day, and we all need to apply God's grace every day and to our lives as we're all growing, on our way to sanctification. Scriptures. Romans 3, verses 9 and 10. So picking up in the middle of an argument here, but you'll get the gist of what I'm saying.

Paul says, What then? Are we Jews any better off than the Gentiles? No, not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written, none is righteous, no, not one. So, everybody is sinful. Everybody has fallen short of the glory of God. And if you've been coming around for a while, you'll notice that every week we have a time where we confess our sins corporately.

We'll read a scripture that will highlight some sin or issue that we want to acknowledge and bring before the Lord, and we'll confess it. Lord, we have not always acted in the way that your scripture tells us that we should act. And then we have an assurance of pardon that follows because we don't want to leave anybody in sin without an assurance of God's grace that is available through faith in Christ.

And we also do this individually. So, after the sermon is over, we'll Wade will come up here and lead us into communion, and in the time of communion, there's a moment where we can just reflect on our own need for grace, and we can use that time to confess sin. Why do we do these things? I don't want to; it's not an empty ritual.

We do this because we don't want anybody to come to church and leave puffed up with pride and filled with self-righteousness, feeling as though being in a truthy kind of church makes them righteous. Or being in an environment of people that strive for holiness or godliness makes them by proxy holy and godly and that they are being a part of a certain kind of group of people is, it makes you righteous.

No, none of us are righteous. We're all sinful. We've all got all kinds of things that we need God's grace for every day. No one is righteous. No one is good but God alone, Jesus said. So, we come to Him not full of things to offer, but empty, needing things from Him, needing to be filled with what He has to offer.

We come to Him empty, weak, poor, and pathetic. We don't come to Him on the basis of our righteousness. We come to Him with nothing. We have nothing to offer. We come to him as sinners. We come on the basis of his grace, meaning unmerited favor. God looks kindly upon us, and he shows us favor merely because he is a good and gracious God who wants to glorify his name in the saving of sinners.

So, we come on the basis of his grace, not on the basis of anything good that we have to offer. John, 1st John chapter 1 verses 8 and 9. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, bringing it into the light. That's when we know He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Ephesians For by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. You didn't manufacture this. You didn't do anything to make God smile upon you and to make God decide to save you because you are better than somebody else. No, it is purely on the basis of his own grace, his unmerited favor.

That's why any of us are saved. We did nothing at all to contribute to this. So, it is a gift of God, not a result of works. You did nothing. There's no result of works. Nobody should boast. One more Roman four verse four. Now to the one who works, His wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. So, if you put in 40 hours at work this week, you don't collect your paycheck and tell the boss, thank you for this gift, because it's not a gift.

You earned it, you work for it, you deserve it. And if a boss doesn't want to give it to you, tough luck, it's yours. You've earned it. He should give it to you. You don't owe him. Thanks. You can say it if you want to be courteous, but you don't owe him thanks because you are given what is due. But if somebody applies that same thinking to our spirituality and thinks when I go to heaven, when I die, I'm going to go to heaven.

How do you know? I'm a good person. I don't hurt anybody, try to be nice to people here and there. And you'll be amazed at how vile people are that still think that way about themselves. I think, God will take me to heaven when I'm dying because I'm a good person. I'm a good guy; I'm a good guy. We try to do right by people, try not to hurt anybody, generally get along with folks. Therefore, when I die, God will take me to heaven, which is a way of saying, God owes it to me because I'm not a serial killer, I'm not on death row, I'm not some horrible human being, and we always judge ourselves compared to some people that are worse, obviously.

And so, we think God owes it to me to take me to heaven when I die. That's boasting. That is saying, God, you owe it to me. It's my due. And what Paul says here in Romans 4 is that if you think that God owes it to you to take you to heaven for being a good person, that's not grace. You've nullified grace.

You're now saying, this is my wage. I've earned it. God, I demand it. I expect it because I'm good enough. And that is an insult to God because that is a denial of the truth that God is holy, and you are sinful. It insults the God who created you. So, we have nothing to boast in. We have no, no means or no, no leverage to try to extract anything from God.

Now you might say, man, that's harsh. Why are you being so harsh, Michael? Talking about judgment and hell and sin and wrath. See my previous point about truth. We have to speak truth because only when we know the truth, will the grace and the solution be seen for as beautiful and glorious as it truly is.

Only when the cold hard truths about our sin and wretchedness and rebellion, when those things are seen and proclaimed, that's when the beauty of God's grace will come into sharp relief. And we will see, oh hallelujah, thank Jesus because I've got nothing to offer. I know that I'm a wretched sinner and I thank Jesus Christ that He paid the price for me.

He went to the cross for me so that I might not die and be separated from Him for eternity, but that I might be saved and forgiven and adopted into His family and forever reconciled. So that I can spend eternity with him. That is the beauty of the gospel. And that is why we need truth to see the beauty of the gospel for what it is.

So, verse five, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

None of you here are righteous. Not me. And there's some pretty darn good people here. There's some amazing people here that your faith and your love and your commitment to Christ, your devotion is so mind boggling and humbling, but you're not righteous. No one is righteous. Not one of you is righteous.

The best of us is wretched, weak, pitiable, poor, sinner, and is only, He only has any standing before God based on his sheer grace that he offers freely because that's the kind of God that he is. That's it.

No one could claim heaven by their own works. To think they could, to think anybody, that really is quite an insult. To think, I'm a good person, therefore I'll go to heaven when I die, that's an insult to God. That's another sin that you need to be forgiven for. God is glorified in his compassion and mercy for the ungodly, and that's us.

Certainly myself. I am an ungodly man apart from the grace of God, and so are you. But whenever we say God, I've got nothing. I need your grace. Lord, forgive me. I have I'm, I have nothing I can say. I have no excuse. I just need your grace. Forgive me. That is faith. Humble faith. And that faith is counted.

It's reckoned as righteousness. We call this imputed righteousness. So, the moment that a sinful man or woman humbles himself or herself before God, it says, Lord, I need you, I've got nothing to offer. That is faith. And at that moment the righteousness of Christ is imputed to that person. It doesn't, it's different from infused.

Infused would mean that you actually become a more righteous person. That's not what it says here. Your faith is counted. If it were an accounting ledger, it's like your debts are wiped away and now there's treasure in your account. It's counted to you. So now God sees you. Wretched, sinful, pitiable as you are, God sees you not as you actually are in our sin, but he sees you as though you possess already the full righteousness of Christ.

He sees you as righteous, just as his son Jesus Christ is righteous. That's the grace of God. And you don't hear about or know about or glorify God in that grace without the truth to proclaim it to you. Otherwise, God is just a friendly fella. Otherwise, God is just a divine Santa Claus that gives you goodies when you die.

That's an insult to God. That's an insult to our maker. Did you listen to a Joe Rogan podcast this week? Wesley Huff, he cussed like a sailor, not recommending it big time. But Wesley Huff is a Christian man who just in strange providence of God, he ended up on the largest podcast in the world, the Joe Rogan podcast.

And this dude's like a 34-year-old Bible scholar from Canada. Nicest fellow you ever met. And he's jacked, too. The dude's been working out. So, this guy, he's on the Joe Rogan podcast, and then about, the last hour or so I can't remember if it was Rogan or Huff that made some comments. So, it's so what do you think about Jesus?

I think it might have been Wesley Huff that asked, so what do you think about Jesus? Who do you think Jesus is? And before that, they were talking about documents and papyri and, this different kind of textual things. But then it gets to what any good Christian apologist and evangelist would do.

He said, what do you think about Jesus? And there were videos around that people had posted of all the different times in that three-hour conversation where Rogan is wow, whoa, like this Joe Rogan, his mind is being blown in real time by the gospel. Now, earlier I talked about being high truth people.

Oh, if you happen to listen to that f bomb warning, there's plenty of them. 'Cause Rogan is not a believer. He because like a sailor. But if you listen to that, you'll notice that Wesley Huff is not a jerk. He's a very kind man, and he speaks very respectfully and humbly. But he is speaking truth, hard truth, and he's destroying arguments and he's upholding the truth of the gospel.

Praise the Lord for that. I think that I listened to that this week, and I was preparing this sermon, and I was thinking like, that's a good, there's a good blend in this man and his presentation of the gospel on the largest platform. Some people are speculating this is like the single largest presentation of the gospel to a mass audience in history.

We're talking about, I don't know, how many million people, 15 million people or something, whenever I looked into it a few days ago, millions and millions of people, but he did it not in this way that is mean or heartless or cold or rigid, you could sense he wasn't scandalized by all the F bombs that Rogan was dropping.

If you listen to Joe Rogan, it's like he'll smoke pot, and get high while he's interviewing people. Rogan's a pagan dude. But Rogan has gone from being an atheist to being a respecter. Certainly, he's interested in ways that he wasn't interested before. And I think there's an opportunity now because I think there is a hunger for truth because we've seen the truth lessness of our society being played out.

And it's gone so far to where even the most hardened pagans are like, Man, I think we've gone too far with this stuff. And guess who has the truth? Guess whose whole worldview is predicated upon we have the truth. Not we possess the truth, but our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.

Everything that we need is summed up in one man, and that is who we worship. That is our God. What an incredible opportunity that we have in our culture, but also, I want to say this as an apologetic for the way we do ministry. Some of you know that a couple of years ago we had had some drama in our church and really the crux of the issue is there were certain truths that must not be said.

And that caused a lot of drama in the church, and a lot of people left the church. And since then, it's been vindication after vindication. Because truth is powerful, not mean. Nobody's ever advocated for mean truth, harsh truth, mean spirited truth. No, it's honest truth, because the truth of the gospel is what is necessary to highlight the grace of God that is what we're also proclaiming.

And some people might be like, I don't know about this. Man, they talk about this, they talk about that, they seem awfully conservative. And Mike, listen. Watch. Watch what God is doing, and it's not just limited to this little congregation. Watch what God is doing on the Joe Rogan podcast, and that's one example.

Russell Brand, Tucker Carlson, lots of people. There's a lot of conservative type people, right wing type people that are not Christians. But they're expressing interest in Christianity. Elon Musk is talking about it. I'm saying that there's an opportunity for people who speak the truth to also be able to declare and proclaim the excellencies of Christ and all of his grace.

To glorify him. That's what we're after. And that's what I believe is going to happen as we move into our new space. So, we've got a lot of opportunities coming up. This is the culture that I'm describing here. All throughout the series, I'm not correcting problems. I'm reinforcing strengths. And this is, I think, a strength of our church.

I've made comments like this before, but if somebody came in here and they were truly humble and contrite and they said, let me tell you what I did, let me tell you this horrible sin I committed. I don't think there's a person in this room that would be scandalized by just about any sin, but they would tell you, okay, that's a sin.

I don't want to minimize that. Let me tell you about the grace of God that is available to you and that doesn't eliminate consequences of sin. but it is available for your soul to be forgiven so you can have peace of mind of a purified conscience through faith in Christ. I'm sure just about anybody in this church would do that because we do have a church of grace and truth.

And that's, that is what I want to maintain. So, we have people that may join our church that are, ooey gooey grace people. And I'm like, okay, we're church that's going to tell you the truth. And so, if you're scandalized by it, you might want to keep looking. But you might have these kind of rigid, cold, hard truth people.

That are heartless, and I'm like, no brother, no sister. It's this is about people, and we're applying God's truth to human beings who need it. So, this is not a theology classroom where we're trying to get our doctrine precisely right. We're talking about truth as it is applied to people's lives, and so there needs to be patience.

We have to be gracious with people. People need time to warm up to ideas that they're uncomfortable with. Nobody just hears a truth that they did not believe before and, on a dime, believe it immediately and apply it to their life perfectly in an instant. People need time to warm up to things. That's high grace.

That's high truth. Now, as when it gets into the nitty gritty of issue an issue B, as we go through the years to come, we will try to navigate it. In the strength of God by the wisdom of the spirit and his leading. But we're trying, we'll try to apply it as best we can in the years to come and hopefully, we'll be able to be faithful in all things.

But we want a culture that upholds both. One example of this coming up is next Sunday. We're gonna, we'll do something unusual we'll have, this will be an opportunity for us to apply something. We're gonna have a guest preacher here next Sunday, and it's going to be related to Sanctity of Life Sunday.

So that's not really a thing that we've, made a big deal about in years past, but this year we're going to have a sermon about the value of human life, right? Particularly unborn life. I want to hear a sermon that addresses the sin of abortion. Abortion is a great evil. That's a hard truth, right?

So, we're not going to shy away from that. Now Darren Stitt, can you just wave your hand? That's Darren. This dude with the big red beard looks like a Viking. That's Darren Stitt. So, Darren works with a ministry that has been involved in this sort of thing. So, he's going to bring the word next Sunday and he's got a lot of experience in this.

And as we've talked about it, he said Michael, in a church this size. You may have people in this church that would either have had an abortion themselves or would have supported or paid for and encouraged an abortion. So that's just the reality of the day we live in. And so, we, I, we've talked about this, quite a bit and the heart of the message is grace and truth, right?

So, he's going to, he's going to minister the grace of God. And so, I wanted to be able to just say this as a way of preface to, so that way nobody's surprised. It's Oh man, this whole sermon from this guy that we either don't know or barely know. And I'm like, no, this is the kind of thing that we're talking about.

Like high grace, high truth, talking about it and to be able to find grace in Christ. And I know the first point right out of the gate, Darren is going to talk about how no matter what our sin is, that we can find forgiveness and hope and healing in Christ. Truth is the prerequisite for grace, because truth tells you where grace needs to be applied.

I'll finish up here with a story. You've probably heard of John Newton, if not the name, you certainly know a song he wrote. But John Newton he was an English Anglican clergyman, who was also a former slave trader turned abolitionist. And before coming to Christ, he led a reckless life, rebellious, working on slave ships.

He was a man who participated in enslaving, kidnapping, and selling people into slavery. But he had a near death experience that changed him. There was a storm, and it terrified him so much that in asking God to spare his life, he committed his life to Christ. But in so doing, he squarely faced the depth of his sin, and he turned to Christ in forgiveness.

He received grace. He was saved. He became a Christian. And so, after that, then he repented, he renounced the slave trade, and then he became a prominent, pretty well-known pastor, writer of hymns, and an abolitionist, which you probably know him for the hymn, Amazing Grace. I wish I would have thought of this sooner.

I would have asked Wade to sing that today, but unless y'all just want to do it impromptu, you can just have it humming on the way out today. But he wrote the song, 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. We know the song and the power of the lyrics, but that's a, that song is a reflection of his own redemption, but the, I'll tell you this to read just the short little quote and I'll conclude with this.

He said this, I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be in another world, but still I am not what I once used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you that you sent The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, full of grace, full of truth, as our Savior and Redeemer to reveal who you are in the fullness of your glory and holiness and in the depths of our sin and in Christ and by his outstretched arms and bloody cross, the bridge, the chasm that enables men and women to cross over into the presence of God.

Thank you for inviting us. Thank you for making the way for us to experience your grace. And Lord Jesus, I pray that you will help us by your power in the days and weeks, months, years ahead to be the kind of church that is full of grace and full of truth. May we apply these things. May we in our personal lives not neglect one or the other, but in the culture of our church, may we Lord be the kind of people that are full of grace and full of truth.

And may that be the sort of electric, powerful testimony to the gospel that will be transformative for many lives for many years to come. Thank you, Jesus. We give you all praise and all worship. We ask all of these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.