And greetings to you everyone I see that you're all here in class it's good to
see you I welcome you you can see my face I only wish I can see yours but I
can see your face in my imagination and I see you smiling because you are
enjoying these lessons and you are beginning to see that this is going to
grow you and build your confidence that you can shake successfully share the
gospel with other people I went home after we completed lesson five and I
really was excited about the possibility of your going out and using those five
questions to interview a person and then reading in the five scriptures and then
asking him five more questions I remembered that in the video yesterday
when I made lesson five I used my larger study Bible actually
when I'm out sharing the gospel with people I find it easier to use a small
New Testament like this size and I can make the marks the highlights in this
smaller version and they can read them to me I was also thinking in some of
your cultures you don't like to write in bibles like we do here
and in that case you could simply prepare those five verses on a blank
sheet of paper and hand them to the person and say these are the five some
reverses would you read them to me and that would work you know every lesson
we're teaching you you're going to have to adapt it to your culture in terms of
the strategy and methodology the principles of truth are the same
everywhere all the time and one of the great principles of truth
is grace it is so important that everyone's sharing the gospel have a
clear understanding of what grace is that we're going to spend this entire
lesson talking about what is so amazing about grace some of our lessons our
strategy and some of them are a little bit more theology this is going to be a
little bit more theology I'm teaching for you to understand and then be able
to explain to other people really what grace is now here is an interesting
picture of a photograph of a helicopter a rescue helicopter have you ever seen a
photograph like this or a maybe a video of a rescue helicopter retrieving a per
from the ocean nothing is more impressive are more heartwarming than
seeing a person maybe two people people made in the image of God who are
floating out in the ocean there miles and miles from the shore there's no
possible way that they can make it all the way to shore some of them might be
strong swimmers and they could swim many kilometres others might not be able to
swim at all but it doesn't matter none of them can swim all the way to the
shore from the ocean but out flies a helicopter and a person goes from total
hopelessness to total hope when they see the helicopter and after pulled up out
of the water they now go to overwhelming gratitude they have no illusion at all
and how they were saved they know they were not saved by their own power they
were saved by the power of a aerial vehicle we call a helicopter a rotary
wing aircraft and a very skilled crew I like to think that the man who has
lifted up out of the water on this cable will be in church the next Sunday
morning I'd like to thank he would be on the front row of church filled with
heart gratitude to God and to the helicopter crew do you see what an
illustration this is all of us are drowning in an ocean of sin in God's
helicopter that comes down from heaven and pulls us up out of the sin is the
man Jesus Christ our lord our savior our coming king the one we follow our
teacher our rabbi we owe him everything because of the grace that he showed us
he is called our savior in english that means a person who saves you he also is
called our deliverer which means a person who rescues you he is called our
healer he heals us from the wounds of the sin and the fall and he's called the
coming king those are great titles for Jesus so the most important single
concept for evangelists in my opinion of all the theological Jews out there all
the Bible facts all of the history all the stories all the parables there's no
concept that comes close to having the power in the life of the person you're
trying to reach as the power to commune kait them - what grace really is when I
meet people and turn the discussion into spiritual themes sometimes a person will
say to me oh they're a Christian but I'm looking at them my spirit is not sensing
that perhaps it's their lifestyle their attitude toward matters of faith they
really don't have a deep understanding of this vital concept of grace and so
sometimes I'll ask them even tell me what is grace and it bugs me it annoys
me sometimes that they're unable to give me a definition of grace I have asked
this question of people and they will say to me grace grace well that's the
prayer we say before we have a meal together know that terminology we say
grace before we have a meal christians do that almost around the world yes
sometimes we do say a prayer before the meal but that's not really what grace is
all about it is much much more than simply saying a prayer before the meal
so we're going to go back one more time to my favorite verse on grace it is this
verse in ephesians that says by grace you have been saved it's already
happened it's through faith that's how you access grace it's not of yourselves
it's a gift of God it's the helicopter hanging over you there in the ocean
drowning of sin and grace makes us the new creation we become his workmanship
he created us as new believers we're created we're in Christ and why for good
works what good works the ones that God's
already prepared for us so that we can walk on these works this is a wonderful
concept for us to understand so looking at moving on here and going ahead I want
to explain these this thing to you in detail by grace we are talking about
unmerited favor undeserved gift of God something we did not earn we're not
worthy of it it's just given to us it makes us extremely
grateful we have been saved that's past tense it's already happened through
faith that's our part and it's not of ourselves boy when you have these simple
concepts nailed down many more truths now open up to you grace is the
foundational truth for many other truths that a Christian will learn along the
way let's just I want to take as half of a
second and let this just soak in to you
let's refresh another way of looking at this when you understand deeply all the
eight points of these verses you really do have something to present to people
this is the breakthrough concept where people suddenly grasp the difference
between New Testament Christianity and all the other religions by grace we are
not a people trying to work to please God to earn our own salvation whether
God has given it to us as a gift from his works this is a very simple concept
I can say it in one sentence but very difficult for many people who have been
conditioned that they must pay for their own sin somehow that they must spend the
rest of their life trying to earn their their love from God somehow that Karma
will demand its revenge or that God is angry and wrathful and capricious of all
the teachings you can give to people this by far is the most powerful and
beneficial let me give you another illustration of this in my culture we
often love to go out to have dinner at some restaurant we most of us do not
have the money to afford to hire cook we cook our own meals but on a special day
at the end of the week perhaps or on someone's birthday a family will go to a
cafe maybe a simple hamburger fast or something more elaborate but we'll
have a meal for which we have to pay every time and it's not a small amount
of money to pay we could not do this every single day it's a special thing to
go out and eat at a meal but when we do sometimes it's because someone has given
us a little gift card it looks like a little credit card or a debit card but
it can only be used at that restaurant it can only be used to pay for a meal it
has a dollar amount I love these cars when I was a pastor sometimes I would
perform a funeral or wedding or something for a family and rather than
pay me and my they would send a thank-you card and give me a little
restaurant gift card I would take the wife may be friends or kids we would go
out and have this cafe and eat the meal and when the waiter brings the bill the
cheque to pay I would simply give him the little card and walk out of the
restaurant and they did not call the police or anything now can you tell me
how that works I love to ask people that question I tell them that story and say
can you explain to me did the cafe lose money on that meal was it a free meal
and people always go oh no no no the cafe didn't lose any money it was free
to you Jim because someone else paid it in advance okay do you see it
heaven is a free gift according to the Bible it's free to us but only because
someone else paid it in advance on the cross of Jesus I have used this
illustration many times in speaking to my church to explain it you probably can
think of one in your culture that works the same way something that looks like
it's free but it's really not because someone else paid for it in advance I
suppose every Christmas gift is a picture of grace every birthday present
is a gift of grace the presents that are given at cultural festivals like the
quinceañeras in Latin America they're all pictures of grace something that's
free to you because someone else paid for it now a lot of people want to say
to me well we know Jesus died on the cross but is that really enough did he
really pay enough that it covers all of our sin I
want to remind you on the cross Jesus last words were it is finished in that
Greek language it's one word to tell us die and it means paid in full
it doesn't mean paid in part it means completely paid there's nothing you can
add to this listen to me if Jesus Christ the son of God went to the cross to die
for your sins what could you possibly add to that yeah I'm getting wound up on
this topic but the truth is I want you to grasp that your bill your debt to God
is paid in full and completely so now how do we see grace how do we spell the
word grace g ra c e spells God's riches at Christ's expense wow
God's riches made available to you at Christ's expenses that's what we're
talking about when we present the gospel to someone and we must be firm in our
conviction that we believe that the death of Jesus on the cross covers this
person's sin all of them and if I am confident in it and I have faith in the
grace of God then it will apply to that person and here is the promise that I
will tell them hey when you have this grace when you have salvation from Jesus
three things are going to be yours your entire past is forgiven all of your sins
are forgiven in fact even the sins you haven't gotten around to all the sins of
your life are forgiven your present life has meaning and purpose and your future
is secure when you leave this earth you now know where you're going
sometimes I'd say to people Jesus Christ offers you all this if you'll give him
the control of the direction and the rest of your life you become a follower
of Jesus you receive all of these gifts your past is forgiven your present life
has meaning and purpose your future is secure and I tell them you cannot find
that deal anywhere else no one else offers you
anything like what Jesus offers to you so to fully understand how vital grace
is let's take some time let's look at the context of diverse as we've studied
you need to know that every verse in the Bible is set within some other verses we
call it a context the text around the text and the best way to any understand
any verse in the Bible is to look at the immediate context the verses before and
after then consider the whole chapter and then ask some questions of yourself
yeah this is really off of the topic of Evangelistic Strategies but just to
understand the Bible because when I share the truth people I want them to
understand how to study the Bible how to read the Bible for themselves and there
are some easy techniques like this who is talking to whom here well in the case
of ephesians chapter 2 Paul is talking to Christian people what would this have
meant to the original hearers well the original hearers were not living in
Israel they probably knew the old Testament they knew about if they
attended synagogue and they were followers of judaism they knew some
foundations but this was new to them to hear this about grace is there a
timeless principle of truth in this passage of ephesians 2 and then how do
we apply that truth today I think that you want to take time every time you
read the Bible read a Psalm or read a passage in proverbs or read a parable or
some of the prophets to stop and ask those questions who was talking to him
what did it mean to them is their big timeless principle and then how do we
apply that principle so with those thought in mind we're
going to look at several texts here from the second chapter of ephesians I want
to bring you back into context of what that chapter actually says that leads us
up to the grace chapter 2 of the book of ephesians starts out by saying you were
dead you were spiritually dead doomed you were walking around an earth but you
were spiritually dead in your trespasses and sin you formerly
walked now he's talking to christians about their past you formerly walked to
the course of this world now as believers we no longer walk to the
course or guidance of this world in those days it was according to the
prince of the power of the air that is an ominous terrible phrase that refers
to the devil to Satan he is called the prince of the power of the air you were
walking in your old days of the spirit that is now working in disobedience so
this verse says you were dead you were in the course of the world you
were following the teachings of the devil and you were disobeying God that's
pretty rough stuff ok just to get the chapter started the very next verse says
among these things we too even Paul the apostle says we all formerly lived in
the lusts of the flesh a fifth problem in the dull geing two desires of the
flesh and of the mind and we're by nature children of wrath angry people if
we think about all the deadly sins in the world so many of the sins in the
world are based on the what the world is telling us it's not truth of God what
our own flesh is telling us that is this nature and then the devil himself comes
and tries to influence us the wrong way so we fight the world our own flesh and
the devil this is ephesians chapter 2 a pretty
strong picture here isn't it of how we cannot save ourselves from these things
there's uselessness to try to save ourselves there's only one way to be
saved and that is by grace Tim Keller pastor in America likes to say this no
one is so good that they don't need the grace of God and no one is so bad that
they cannot be saved by the grace of God let me say that again
no one is so good that they don't need grace no one is so bad that they cannot
be saved by the grace of God when we contrast grace and law they're both
teachers to us and they both teach us certain things
the law over here on this one side with the picture with the the gavel of
justice here the law is saying to us that we're all sinners we all fall short
God's demand is perfection it's a picture of righteousness none of us can
obtain that picture it the law basically says you need a savior and grace says
the savior is here for you and grace is so strong it can overcome any sin you
have no matter how bad your sin is there are people out there who will think that
their sin is so bad that it cannot be forgiven by the grace of God
in fact in future lessons we're going to talk some about people who doubt who
have prayed the prayer and they still doubt and some emotional and
psychological reasons why they do that let me just give you one example of it
is if a person has grown up in a household where it is impossible to
please their father that he is demanding to the point of never being satisfied if
the student comes home from school student comes home from school very high
grade on a test let's say they made a ninety five percent ninety five out of a
possible 100 points that would always be better than what I made as a student but
some fathers would say 95 why isn't it a 97 why is it a 99 and so then that the
father is never pleased now when you preach these ways a couple of people
people will question you for a couple of things one of them is they will say I
think that you're making it sound too easy you're making it sound too cheap
Charles swindall wonderful pastor in America gave me great comfort in this
one time when he said if you are preaching and people accuse you of
preaching cheap grace it's okay he said you're always going to be
accused of cheap preaching cheap grace because when you preach grace it is so
easy and so simple but if you're never questioned about
if no one ever challenges you and accuses you of preaching cheap grace
then you probably are not preaching grace strong enough so we've discussed
the meaning of grace how does God's free gift undeserved favor God's riches at
Christ's expense it is the most amazing gift of all from us let's talk briefly
one more time through the passage that we mentioned of ephesians 2:8 and 9 that
by grace you're saved through faith how do you get at the grace you get at faith
at grace through faith and what does faith really mean my favorite definition
of faith is to spell it this way forsaking all I trust him I don't have
that spelled out but you can write it down forsaking which means to abandon
and release all all other things that I have trusted I trust him Jesus it is the
transfer of trust it's my favorite phrase I transfer my trust I'm no longer
trusting my works I'm not trusting my religious membership my family heritage
the prayers of my ancestors the prayers of any other priest or any other gifts
other people have made I'm transferring all of my trust this is in my will my
mind my will and my emotions I'm transferring my trust to Jesus that is
the act of faith that ephesians is 2:8 and 9 is talking about there's another
kind of faith that we walk by faith in fact in one place in colossians the
Bible says walk by faith just as you were Trey as you were saved by faith
let's talk about that you're no longer what it means you're no longer working
to be saved okay you're not saying I must work in order to be saved I already
am saved I like to do good works but it's not because I want to be saved it's
because I already am saved already is a big concept right here it is so
different my children try to love me and they try to do good to me not because I
they're not trying to become my children they're already my children
the second point here no then once a person has transferred their trust
they'll no longer believe that everybody is safe because it's obvious to us that
not everyone has saved and not everyone has transferred their trust they no
longer trust anything but Jesus it's all about Jesus if you ask a person like me
well when you get to heaven and God says why should I let you into heaven what
will you say I'm going to say because the lord Jesus Christ died on a cross
for me and if you say to me well what if that's not enough what else do you have
to offer I have nothing else to offer I have nothing else to offer God except
the blood of Jesus if that's not enough to have me saved I won't be saved and
then when this is done you have totally transferred once trust to Jesus yes
now the key action and transferring this trust this might be expressed through a
prayer that you say but there's no magic prayer to say some people don't actually
pray in some cultural settings people walk down to the front of a church
service a big evangelistic meeting or just a Sunday morning meeting in in
western culture and even for about a hundred and fifty years now people have
stood and sing a song at the end of a church service and during this song
people are invited to come down to the front we invite you to come and meet
with the counselor and and pray to receive Christ you know 150 years ago
they invited them to go outside the building to another place and do the
same thing and sometimes people in those days had a certain room in a church they
used go to that room for prayer in fact that's come back around in American
churches now many of our churches the church I pastored we would say if we can
pray for you go to the prayer room and there's a team of people after the
service waiting to hear from you to listen to you to pray with you to bless
you to minister to you because one preacher can't do all that stuff okay
those are good things to do have a prayer meet with the counselor but I'm
telling you a lot of people me included the moment that I transferred my trust
to Jesus I was entirely alone it was more than a middle
standing it was a volitional chart it was a volitional choice of the will I
simply said here here it is so let's leave behind ephesians for a
moment I want to show you something from the Old Testament you may not know this
but in the Old Testament in the book of psalms especially you can look around
and you can find the word trust in all kinds of places and whenever you find
the word trust you will find the word salvation let me give you an example of
this in a slide some 113 and verse 5 and I'm telling you there are dozens and
dozens of these I have trusted in your loving-kindness that is the old
Testament word for grace if you want to know what the word is it is has said h e
sed but it loving-kindness is all over the Bible you'll find trust I trust in
your loving kindness your grace and look what's in the next line I rejoice and
your salvation I will sing to the lord because he has dealt bountifully with me
he's already dealt bountifully meaning graciously and giving to me now speaking
of psalms and Old Testament if you were ever asked this question is there grace
in the Old Testament oh yes the old Testament is mostly about law but Moses
found grace in the eyes of lord Noah found grace in the eyes of the lord in
fact Genesis 6 8 flatout says Noah found grace in the eyes of the lord and was
spared from the flood Moses was spared many times David found grace and
forgiveness in Psalm 32 you can read the confession of David's sin how miserable
he was his body his mind his heart he was miserable he confessed his sin he
admitted his iniquity he told God that he was wrong and God was right about his
own transgressions and wonderful things came to past for David Psalm 32 is a
great sum for reading the power of confession in the administration of
grace in the Old Testament when I explained this to people I love to
have a simple way of explaining it where people can understand it in a single
sentence and I put it this way in the Old Testament they trusted God to send
to savior they look forward in time and said God is going to send a savior you
can find that all over the Old Testament in the New Testament we trust the savior
that God sent we look back in time to that cross when I talked to a person
about the gospel often in the conversation I will ask them if they
believe that they have what is called saving faith you know sometimes I ask
them - can any to find grace sometimes said well tell me do you have saving
faith do you know what saving faith is can they explain it to me a great way to
find out what a person knows is simply to ask them to explain to you what they
believe and sometimes they're gone oh I said well do you believe Jesus was a
real person do you believe Jesus was a real person if they say yes I say that's
very good that's history are you aware of this that a number of
secular historians by secular I mean not religious people wrote about the person
of Jesus from galilee he was a real person then I asked him did Jesus died
on the cross yes they'll say yes I believe he died on the cross well that's
a belief in the word of God in the Bible that's how we know why we believe that
Jesus died upon the cross it is written in here so now you have history now you
have theology my third question is did he die for you did he die for you and
sometimes I got what I don't want to go that far I go you have to go that far
that's salvation you can ask him do you believe that Jesus was a real person
that's history did he die for the sins of the world that's theology did he die
for you if they can say yes I can say that his salvation now this gospel of
Jesus is actually found all over the old Testament he's found in every book in
the Old Testament the gospel was there it's in types it's in shadows it's in
symbols it's in stories almost as if it were written in code think about Abraham
and taking his son up to the top of mount Moriah to offer his son as
a sacrifice and then yet God stops him it's a picture of Jesus Moses is kind of
a type of Jesus he leads people out Egypt represents the world of sin the
life of sin and the plagues came on them as the punishment for sin and then God
had them put the blood of a lamb over the top of their door so that they would
come through the door under the blood of the lamb what an easy picture that is to
see we get to heaven Jesus would later say I am the door I am the door by which
the sheep that's us come in and out and then Moses leads the children of Egypt
out of the land of Egypt the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt when
during the event we call the exodus and and they're saved by the blood of the
lamb and immediately after they're saved they go out and they cross the red sea
which to me is a picture of baptism isn't it I'm a pastor who always sees
baptism in thanks they go through the water when they come out the other side
of the water they get the ten commandments they get the word then all
kinds of things happen on their journey if I you can see the whole Christian
life the whole life to the victorious Christian life in the book of exodus
well one more point of discussion while we're wrapping up this lesson on grace
often I am asked this question how does the lordship of Jesus fit into the idea
of salvation by grace if you receive Jesus as savior must you
also accept him as lord at the same time this is a good question and not all
believers agree on this I'm gonna the question again if a person wants to
accept Jesus as savior don't they have to also accept him as lord at the same
time my answer is actually no I believe they come it's a two-step step 1 step 2
they come first step accepting Jesus as savior then the spirit enlightens their
mind they begin to learn about the call the claim that Jesus has on our life
they begin to learn what is required of a Christian they begin to learn how to
live as a Christian they learn about a word we call
discipleship and for almost all people this second step comes quickly once they
really have been saved by grace for some people who came to faith as a child a
very young it comes later so the question remains can a person accept
Jesus as savior and not accept him as lord my answer to that phrasing the
question is this you cannot accept Jesus as savior and later reject him lord you
can accept Jesus as savior first okay you can receive Jesus as savior first
without understanding him as lord but you cannot receive him as savior first
and then secondly reject him as lord to me this solves the whole problem when I
think about grace and in english language we often call it amazing grace
I do believe if a person is really understanding of grace and what grace
means they could walk around all day long with their jaw hanging down amazed
at the love of God in the willingness of God to go to great expense to redeem me
and bring me to himself it should be something that amazes us every day and
there's even a song called amazing grace it is I believe I'm confident it is the
most popular Christian song ever written and I want to tell you the story about
the author of that song his name is John Newton his he was in england back in the
1700s his father was a sea captain and plied the seven seas John Newton as a
boy grew up around the sea would serve on the ships with his father he himself
became a ship captain and I'm sorry to report that he actually engaged in that
horrible endeavor called human slavery and so John Newton became as a sea
captain who recruited crews that that took and transported people from Africa
to the west indies and up into the north American continent he was an awful man
his own crew did not even like him he had close calls with death where storms
almost sank his ship and he railed against God with anger on the occasion
he actually fell off his own ship into the water and the laws of all the seamen
in the world if a person falls off the ship whether you like them or not you
have to throw them a rope and try to rescue them and seamen would never not
do that but in the case of John Newton when he fell in the water his crew threw
him a rope yes they did but it had a harpoon on it a big spear that you would
use to spear a large fish and they threw the harpoon at him trying to kill him
but they missed and he grabbed the rope and got back up on board eventually this
man John Newton had a close call with death during a storm and after the storm
passed and his ship did not sink he finally came to grips with himself as a
hopeless sinner and he turned to Christ by faith he received the grace of God he
began to study the Bible it took him a couple of years to completely forsake
his work not only of working as a slave trader but working as a sea captain he
got away from the whole thing because of the evils of slavery and he studied to
become a pastor in a hymn writer this is the man who wrote the song called
amazing grace let me explain a little bit about the song I think it may have
to be changed in your language it may have to be changed in your culture but
it is simply a song and the words sing out this sermon of how lost a person was
and then how saved they can be so the very first verses amazing grace how
sweet the sound that saved a wretch a terrible person like me I once was lost
with no hope and now I'm found I was blind now I see it was grace that taught
my heart to fear caught my to fear God and it was grace that my
fears relieved you know when a person is afraid of everything and they come to
Christ through faith they'll suddenly develop a fear of God and if you really
have a fear of God you don't have to fear very much else no one can hurt me
without the express permission of God no one can kill me unless God permits it so
his fears are all relieved how precious did that grace appear Newton wrote the
hour that I first believed notice he says my only action was I believed all
right the middle of the song the third verse through many dangers toils and
snares I have already come and it was God's grace that brought me safe thus
far and grace will lead me home he's echoing my theme of past sins
forgiven present life having meaning in purpose future being secured fourth
verse the lord has promised good to me his word my hope secures he will be my
shield and portion as long as life endures God is the defence of my life
he's saying from Psalm 27 verse 5 yes when this flesh and heart shall fail and
mortal life shall cease when I die a physical death I shall then possess
within the veil in heaven a life of joy and peace the earth will soon dissolve
like snow the sun forbear to shine but God who called me here below will be
forever mine and the last verse speaking of heaven when we've been there ten
thousand years bright shining as the sun we've no less days to sing God's praise
than when we've first begun there's no time in eternity we'll be
able to really enjoy and reflect upon the grace of God so there it is the key
theology that we need to learn we'll leave that theology and we'll move on to
strategy and our next lesson number seven we'll talk specifically about
praying for the people to whom you wish to share the gospel before we
go and talk to people we will pray for the people and we'll talk about how to
do that specifically so that your prayers will have effect for these
people God bless you as you have continued through less than six of the
class Evangelistic Strategies I hope to see you soon
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