Shownotes
Pastor Wayne opens up Galatians 5 and names the quiet fear that many carry: what if I fall short, or fall away from grace altogether?
Then he flips the script, showing that grace isn’t just a ticket to heaven or a pat on the head when we mess up. It’s divine favor and an empowering presence that's meant to fuel your daily life, help you face real frustration. And even spill over to bless those around you.
Through practical definitions and down-to-earth stories, we’re shown three faces of grace: saving, appropriated by request, and given as God sees fit. True grace invites you to admit both your need and your raw, honest frustration, and then receive more than just forgiveness: the power to actually live differently.
This journey ends not in self-effort, but in belonging—a messy, honest, Spirit-powered community. You’ll walk away with courage to ask for what you need, extend grace with open hands, and take real steps toward loving those right beside you.
Bible References
John 8:1–11; Romans 5:15-17; Galatians 5:1–6; Ephesians 2:8–9; Hebrews 4:16
Key Insights
- You can't give away saving grace, but you can act as a carrier and conduit of grace for others.
- Extending grace changes environments and relationships, even without words.
- Trying to walk out faith in your own strength or by just following rules leads to emptiness and division.
https://springhousemidweek.captivate.fm/episode/foundations-galatians-5
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Gathering Times
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- Wednesdays, 6:00 PM
Contact Info
Springhouse Church
14119 Old Nashville Highway
Smyrna TN 37167
CCLI License 2070006
Transcripts
Esther, Jonathan, he titled this series— help me if
Speaker:I'm wrong— he titled this series Foundations, plural, I
Speaker:think, Foundations, Foundation, Foundations. We're in
Speaker:Galatians 5. I've
Speaker:noticed over the last 3 or 4 weeks. More people are taking
Speaker:notes and bringing Bibles, and that's
Speaker:terrific. It's really great to be back in this room this
Speaker:way, having a
Speaker:choir in this space. Some of us go
Speaker:way back in this room, and it just sounds fabulous. But I have
Speaker:noticed being in here that people are actually being more attentive, at
Speaker:least they appear to be. They could be writing notes to themselves. It could be
Speaker:a— It could be a grocery list. Right, I don't know,
Speaker:I'm assuming from a pastoral standpoint that you're taking major
Speaker:notes on the text or what the speakers have been saying prior to
Speaker:me. Yeah. The reason I'm
Speaker:commenting on foundations, he and I had a
Speaker:side conversation in the last month, 6 weeks, and
Speaker:my words, not his, he was concerned about takeaways.
Speaker:And he may have been saying that for my benefit. One of the things that
Speaker:I've been doing really in the last 2 or
Speaker:3 years with more diligence on my side
Speaker:is trying to, if I'm teaching or sharing, trying
Speaker:to impart something that you can take with you. And
Speaker:since this series has been titled Foundations,
Speaker:we're really not doing a book study, although we are in Galatians,
Speaker:we're clearly moving through the chapters. And the teachers, the
Speaker:4 teachers that have preceded me, have all taken a chapter. a
Speaker:time. And fundamentally, what we've been looking
Speaker:at up to tonight is,
Speaker:in essence, is a study between
Speaker:law and grace, or law and in the Spirit. I mean, it's been
Speaker:worked over several different ways over the last— I'm
Speaker:ringing a little bit, I think— over the last 4
Speaker:weeks. And in the process of doing that,
Speaker:What I had sensed was that the Lord wanted me to
Speaker:pull from this text tonight some takeaways.
Speaker:And I got stuck right at the top of what we're doing. And so that's
Speaker:where we're gonna be for a while. I'm prepared to go through
Speaker:the chapter, but we may not make it.
Speaker:Because the imperative that I've been trying to work through
Speaker:is at the top of the text.
Speaker:So I'm not giving you a context. You've been— many of you have been here
Speaker:since we started, so we're 4 chapters in before tonight. So I'm
Speaker:pulling this out, and you can look at the first 3 verses if you
Speaker:need to. But this first verse, or verse 4, says, you were
Speaker:severed from Christ, you who would be justified by
Speaker:the law, you have fallen away from grace. Amen.
Speaker:And what I've not been able to get off of in preparing for this is
Speaker:that phrase, fallen away from grace.
Speaker:So let me say a couple of things and then we'll kind of unpack this
Speaker:together. First
Speaker:off, the
Speaker:phrase fallen away from grace would be pointless
Speaker:if you couldn't fall away from grace. There would be
Speaker:no point in saying it. So there is a
Speaker:downside. There is a way to be removed from grace.
Speaker:And here's the disclaimer that's really important. What I'm saying and what
Speaker:Paul is saying here isn't about salvation.
Speaker:So any inkling that you have that somehow I should
Speaker:start— personally, that you should start feeling
Speaker:paranoid about, oh my goodness, I'm gonna hear a
Speaker:sermon, a message about a text. About not staying in
Speaker:the faith. That's not what he's saying, and that's
Speaker:not what I'm gonna be saying. What he's saying is
Speaker:there's a way to function so that the grace that can
Speaker:cover you— and we're gonna unpack grace, I have a
Speaker:reason for doing that— but the grace that can cover
Speaker:you can be removed from you, but that doesn't affect
Speaker:your salvation. It just means, if I could say it this
Speaker:way, it just means that you could be in a position of
Speaker:being graceless or less than 100% grace, if I could
Speaker:say it that way. And so I just, I kept tripping over
Speaker:falling away from grace, and that pulled me into
Speaker:where we're gonna go for a while tonight. And is that
Speaker:there? Yeah, can you? Okay. The definition that I'm
Speaker:using is what I call, and this is not original to me, I
Speaker:call it a working definition.
Speaker:And by working definition, what that fundamentally means is,
Speaker:this is the definition that I use when I speak about grace.
Speaker:So it becomes my working definition. It's not original to me,
Speaker:but when I latched onto it years ago, I went,
Speaker:this works in my life. So what
Speaker:I need you to do for the time we have together is just
Speaker:while we're in here in session, You can discard it if you choose.
Speaker:Make this your working definition as well. So that's what we're
Speaker:working from. Grace is the divine favor.
Speaker:I need to do it this way. Grace is the divine favor of God's empowering
Speaker:presence, enabling me to be who he created me to be
Speaker:so I can do what he called me to do. Now,
Speaker:if I said to you, and I'm not, but if I said to you, could
Speaker:someone raise your hand and give me a definition of grace? What would probably come
Speaker:out From my
Speaker:life experiences, what would come out would be unmerited favor.
Speaker:Now, that's not a wrong definition. It's a functional definition, and
Speaker:it will certainly work.
Speaker:However, it tells you what grace is, sort
Speaker:of. It tells you that it's favor
Speaker:that's unmerited. So if I said,
Speaker:when we finish tonight, if everybody will go to the Sonic
Speaker:down by wherever the Sonic is, the closest one's here
Speaker:somewhere, closest one down here. If everybody will meet me down there,
Speaker:I will— this is pretend.
Speaker:I will buy everybody 1 or 2 scoops of ice cream.
Speaker:Now, you haven't done anything for me to
Speaker:offer that. So my gift of
Speaker:ice cream to you would be unmerited favor.
Speaker:Capisce? Okay. So if
Speaker:grace is unmerited favor, and I
Speaker:said, if you'll meet me down there, I will buy you ice cream, I would
Speaker:be gracing you all. Because
Speaker:I'm— you haven't done anything to earn my
Speaker:unmerited favor. So if I extend favor to you
Speaker:in that way, I'm in fact extending grace to you. So
Speaker:all of a sudden now we're faced with a quandary. Is
Speaker:getting ice cream from somebody grace?
Speaker:Well, it is according to the definition of unmerited favor,
Speaker:because that's what we're saying to one another. So there must be more
Speaker:to grace than that. So we're gonna look
Speaker:at 3 little, not little, we're gonna look at 3 categories of
Speaker:grace. They are not the only categories of grace. There's a bunch.
Speaker:But for the purpose of this teaching, I'm gonna look at 3.
Speaker:If you could go to the next slide.
Speaker:Okay, number 1.
Speaker:Salvific is a word, it's an adjective. It
Speaker:has to do with salvation. So
Speaker:salvific grace is saving grace.
Speaker:It's the grace that we are saved by. The
Speaker:Ephesians passage, most of you probably know it. By grace are
Speaker:you saved through— by grace we are saved
Speaker:through faith, not by— it's a gift from God,
Speaker:not by works, lest any man should boast. Amen. So
Speaker:clearly, grace that imparts
Speaker:salvation is a gift from
Speaker:God to the recipient of salvation.
Speaker:Now this is— this is where we're starting from,
Speaker:and this is really important in terms of looking at the expanse of
Speaker:grace.
Speaker:Once you're gifted with salvific grace,
Speaker:it has been given to you by God
Speaker:without any strings attached. That grace has
Speaker:saved you. Everybody in this room that is in
Speaker:Christ Jesus is here because of salvific grace.
Speaker:That's how we got here. That's our commonality. That we have a lot of other
Speaker:things in common, but the commonality referencing grace
Speaker:is We didn't do anything to get it, but He gave it to us.
Speaker:Now that's important because of this. When
Speaker:He gave us or gives us
Speaker:grace, grace unto salvation,
Speaker:it's not ours to give to other people because He
Speaker:gave it to us. He gave it to you and to you and to me
Speaker:and you all at that table. Amen. So when you got it,
Speaker:when you got saved, you were saved by grace.
Speaker:And when you were saved by grace, it was a gift. When you were
Speaker:given the gift, I suppose— what's it called when you take a—
Speaker:Regift? That won't work. Thanks, Ronnie. You can't
Speaker:regift it. And here's the reason you can't regift it. You can't
Speaker:regift it because you're not capable of taking the grace
Speaker:that saved you and saving somebody else with it.
Speaker:It's not possible because it's, it's custom-made
Speaker:grace for you and me, us, to have
Speaker:gotten saved. So when we get that gift,
Speaker:that gift can't go anywhere else. That's how we got here.
Speaker:I don't mean here on the earth. I mean, that's
Speaker:how we got grafted into Christ. So it's
Speaker:imperative that we understand that As
Speaker:correct as unmerited favor is to define
Speaker:grace, it's way too simplistic because it
Speaker:doesn't tell us anything. That's why I can't
Speaker:get off of this tonight. It doesn't tell us—
Speaker:it doesn't look at the full orb of grace in
Speaker:terms of how it outworks. So consequently,
Speaker:when Paul said in verse 4, when he said, If
Speaker:you're in a place where you're falling back
Speaker:into law and you're moving out of the Spirit,
Speaker:then effectively what you're doing is
Speaker:you're falling away from grace. I'm
Speaker:reiterating, he's not saying you're
Speaker:falling away from your salvation. Go back to
Speaker:the ice cream metaphor. If you all head
Speaker:down that way and I've said I'm gonna grace you with ice
Speaker:cream, and 3 or 4 of you decide, oh, it'll melt before we get
Speaker:there, and you turn around and leave, then you're not
Speaker:getting grace with the ice cream I was going to give you. The
Speaker:option of getting it another time from me or somebody else
Speaker:or buying it yourself might be there. I'm messing with my
Speaker:metaphors, but I'm trying to make my point here with this
Speaker:first point. Salvific grace is singular when you get it at
Speaker:redemption. And when it becomes yours, it's yours to keep
Speaker:End of conversation. Now that's critical because just
Speaker:that point makes unmerited favor make more sense. Had I not
Speaker:said any of this and I'd said, somebody tell me what grace
Speaker:means, somebody, one more, many of you would have gone,
Speaker:it's unmerited favor. And I could have gone on from there
Speaker:and we could just see wherever this teaching is going to go.
Speaker:But I can't go there. I can't go there because if Paul
Speaker:is starting out this chapter by saying, You're in
Speaker:danger when you move over under law. When you get— when you
Speaker:start moving out of— into the flesh and out of the Spirit, which
Speaker:is the rest of this chapter that we might get to. When you start
Speaker:moving over to that place, you are in danger,
Speaker:not of losing your salvation, but of losing the ability to
Speaker:move in the gift of grace that saved you. Now
Speaker:that's— he wouldn't say that if it wasn't possible.
Speaker:That's the point I'm trying to make. So don't kid yourself
Speaker:because the larger issue he's dealing with is
Speaker:when you move over into dealing with flesh, you are
Speaker:still a believer, but you may have a serious
Speaker:problem ahead of yourself. And the problem may be you're starting to
Speaker:walk out your faith in a way that doesn't have any
Speaker:grace connected to it. That's huge.
Speaker:That's huge, because grace is so much
Speaker:bigger than unmerited favor. So point 2,
Speaker:is it on the slide? Yes. No, no, no, that's 3. There you go,
Speaker:we're good, okay. First
Speaker:gift is a gift of grace.
Speaker:It's to us free, and it was given to us by the Father.
Speaker:The second category, or the second aspect that I'm wanting to deal with, is
Speaker:appropriated grace, and this is gonna take a little outworking.
Speaker:It comes from Hebrews. Some of you have been down
Speaker:this road with me more times than you can
Speaker:count. In fact, a couple of weeks ago on
Speaker:Sunday, in Sunday school. But it just— it's
Speaker:come up again in the text. Appropriated grace
Speaker:is different from the gift of grace because
Speaker:the gift of grace is redemption. And since you
Speaker:can't— we can't redeem anybody with the
Speaker:redemptive grace that we have, There is
Speaker:access to other kinds of grace. I'm opening
Speaker:the curtain a bit here, okay? One of the ways we
Speaker:appropriate grace is this passage in Hebrews
Speaker:that says, therefore, let us come boldly to
Speaker:the throne of grace that we might receive
Speaker:mercy and find grace in the time of need. Now,
Speaker:however you work that language, however it
Speaker:reads off the page, wherever you're reading
Speaker:it from, it's fine with me if you read it
Speaker:another way and come out with a different
Speaker:result. I don't have a problem with that.
Speaker:But as I read the text, it becomes clear to me
Speaker:based on just reading the language that it is
Speaker:requested grace.
Speaker:It's not like,
Speaker:this is the throne of grace. You didn't know?
Speaker:What precious seats you both have.
Speaker:Here I am. Well, no, no, no, let's do it this way. I'm
Speaker:coming boldly.
Speaker:Say something.
Speaker:The text says
Speaker:to appropriate the grace. It doesn't just say show up.
Speaker:By request, something comes out your mouth.
Speaker:I'm not saying silent prayers don't work. I'm not getting legalistic here, so
Speaker:don't— please don't shout me down, at least not yet.
Speaker:What takes place is we are called, based on this
Speaker:passage, the we— I did
Speaker:this I think Sunday. When Scripture is
Speaker:talking about you, or primarily about you,
Speaker:you come boldly to the throne of grace, put it back in our
Speaker:roots in the South. Y'all come. What it's
Speaker:functionally saying is we need to go
Speaker:together, but not necessarily all at the same time. We're
Speaker:not all showing up at the throne of grace. What we're doing is
Speaker:we're coming to the throne of grace, however our prayer life
Speaker:works, However we understand working our faith out based on
Speaker:Scripture, what we're doing is we're coming to
Speaker:request grace other than
Speaker:salvific grace. Because you don't come to the throne of grace and
Speaker:go, could I get some more grace to save me again?
Speaker:It's another kind of grace. It's another commodity of
Speaker:grace. And the request is— What is the request? To
Speaker:find that grace, to receive mercy, receive mercy. So in
Speaker:other words, showing up gets you mercy. Hallelujah.
Speaker:Hallelujah. Showing up at the throne
Speaker:of grace, mercy is already there. And then it says,
Speaker:receive mercy and find grace.
Speaker:Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened,
Speaker:et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. When you're there, There's a
Speaker:dynamic of request to acquire what you came to
Speaker:get. And then it pushes the whole issue again.
Speaker:And the reason you're— we're called to do it is to
Speaker:receive, find that kind of
Speaker:grace, appropriated grace, requested
Speaker:grace to meet our
Speaker:need. Now,
Speaker:It doesn't say to stop there.
Speaker:What it says is we can appropriate
Speaker:a type of grace that will
Speaker:help us work through or work out or get
Speaker:past a need or needs, plural,
Speaker:in our life. So the writer of Hebrews
Speaker:is saying to us, By proxy. By proxy. He's
Speaker:saying to the saints, he's saying, this is a
Speaker:way to acquire grace
Speaker:that functionally you can only get to because you got
Speaker:salvific grace at some point in your life. Because you're not— you can't come
Speaker:to the throne of grace if you can't get entrance there. And you can't get
Speaker:entrance to the throne of grace unless you're already in the kingdom.
Speaker:It doesn't happen. You wouldn't know to go there. How would you— I mean,
Speaker:what would you know? How would you have acquired something in your faith
Speaker:walk that got you to the place to go, where— what is this? In the
Speaker:spirit realm, in otherness. How would you get there? So
Speaker:this passage, the writer of Hebrews is saying, this is what you do. You come
Speaker:boldly to the throne of grace, you receive mercy, and you
Speaker:ask, or— and you find grace in
Speaker:your time of need, and your time of need, and your time of need. That's
Speaker:right. That's what it says. But it doesn't say
Speaker:that's the end of it. It's not like, thank you very much,
Speaker:my needs are covered by grace, I'll go on with my day. Because it
Speaker:does not stop by
Speaker:saying— it's nowhere in the text. It doesn't say, once you've
Speaker:done that, that's all the grace that needs to happen today,
Speaker:or tonight, or next week. It doesn't say that. It's nowhere in
Speaker:Hebrews 4. So I propose this
Speaker:to you, and we're gonna have a testimony about it in a moment.
Speaker:Why don't you ease up this way? I need you up here because
Speaker:they're audioing it and you can share my mic.
Speaker:When you go— look, watch this. When you go,
Speaker:please watch this, to the throne of grace to
Speaker:appropriate grace for When I
Speaker:do this for my time, my need, my needs,
Speaker:plural, I need some type of
Speaker:grace, some manifestation of grace into my
Speaker:life that can somehow get me through the day or the week
Speaker:or the year or the monumental task I have ahead of myself.
Speaker:Now, that's fine. And that's appropriate. And that's what
:16 is saying. But it doesn't
:preclude this. Since I'm here,
:could I get some more grace
:for some other people I know that have needs? In
:fact, if I might be so bold,
:could I request grace for
:people I might run into today?
:That I might not even talk to. I might not have a verbal witness
:into their lives.
:I need grace to help me in my time of need, but
:could I be a carrier of grace?
:Would that be possible? Well, I'm glad you
:asked. Where did you go? I know you're here somewhere.
:Now, she's heard this all before,
:but a couple of weeks ago, I think it was 2 weeks ago, 2 Sundays
:ago, she was in class and she heard this.
:Would you tell them what happened? Sure. So,
:as Pastor Wayne said, and it clicked that day, you know, sometimes
:it doesn't, but it clicked.
:Come here, I need your mic. Bring
:the mic back. He knows I love him. He knows I love him. Anyway, the
:next day I was in Staples. I had to do an Amazon return.
:And you know, there was one kid working the return and the cash register. I
:say kid, he was literally a teenage kid. And so I get up and
:it's my turn and I have my one Amazon package and he went,
:hold on. And he went over to the cash register and then I looked and
:there's a lady Who's emptied out the clearance bins.
:Her cart is full. Oh, okay. Well,
:she would have him ring up something, and he'd tell her the
:price, and she'd look, and she'd dig, and she— he would ring
:up, and she'd put back, put something else and ring. And this
:went on, and the line was coming in behind me. And you know,
:that frustration starts building up, and I just stopped,
:and I went, Lord, can you just give her some of the grace that
:you've given me? And I just felt just peace, just that peace.
:And, you know, she walked out and left the cart sitting there
:and took one of the little bags that she had. And it was— that
:was it. It was over. But I shared with Pastor Wayne that
:that's practical application of what he was teaching.
:That's it. Okay. Okay. Now, what she left out— Oh, I'm feeling
:foolish. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. What she left out, my words, not
:yours. Okay. I think.
:When she told me that, you know, she felt different or it
:centered her different, she also said, at least this is what I
:heard, that the atmosphere changed. Yeah.
:Something to that effect. Yeah. Right. So she was
:saying to us, she was saying,
:when I released grace into the— did you speak to her?
:No, I just put my hand out. Right. It was all internal.
:Yeah, when she did that thing,
:it changed her. But her awareness
:changed to go— she didn't go, well, all these people in the
:back behind you, did y'all all get that? Wasn't
:that great? Could we get some applause here? She didn't— thank you. She
:didn't do that. Okay.
:But what she did is what that passage says in Hebrews.
:Said another way, what it doesn't say in
:Hebrews is to do that.
:But you can, because there's nothing in Hebrews 4
:that prohibits doing what she just said.
:This is important. The reason she shared the
:testimony with me is because she became a
:test case for what I'm sharing with you. Amen.
:She did what I was teaching, and the
:result was it changed her and it changed the atmosphere. Whether
:it changed the other people in line remains to be seen,
:okay? Now, this is my point in saying
:that before we move on.
:If the Body of Christ applied this to our lives,
:it would change the planet. Yes. Not this
:church, Not Davidson, not Middle Tennessee,
:the planet. Because the
:level of need, or needs, plural,
:in humanity is absolutely beyond
:comprehension. It's actually, actually the
:needs in this room are beyond comprehension.
:In this room tonight. If we put a prayer line
:together and said, forget about the clock, we'll order in food if we need it
:later. Let's just start, somebody— Come on. So those of you that feel
:led to intercede and lay hands on people, let's just line up and
:just come up and give me like 3 needs you have, and let's pray for
:that, and then step out of line. We'd be here for days.
:Days. Now, my
:point here, or one of my many points, is
:all she did was internal.
:There was no witness. There was no testimony. She wasn't evangelizing. Yes, I'm being a
:little facetious.
:I'm not diminishing any of that. That's all important.
:But the larger issue is right here. It's
:right here. Do we care enough?
:Don't get ahead of me. Do we care enough to go to the throne of
:grace and receive and find
:mercy and grace in my time of need for my
:need? Amen. requests for needs to get met.
:And before I back out, could you just give me
:another dose? I've got a couple of empty pockets,
:metaphorically speaking. Could I carry this with
:me? Now, what she did is she carried it out of Sunday
:school and she went to Staples. She went to Staples
:and she had more than she knew what to do with.
:Because, if I might presume, since you're
:explaining how this lady was handling one thing at
:a time and the lines up behind you, I would imagine
:that there was at least a brief moment where the
:battle between flesh and Spirit was happening in
:your life. Yeah.
:And everybody's laughing because we all been there, done that. Okay, now watch.
:When that happens in our lives, when that happens,
:what if the switch flipped and we went,
:I'm not trying to not be angry. I'm not trying to not be
:frustrated. I mean, I am angry and I am frustrated. I wish she'd get out
:of the way, but she's got some serious needs because she's
:really battling with all this and it's making everybody in the room kind of crazy.
:So could you just grace her, Lord? And when you do that,
:The moment you do that, you have released the Holy
:Ghost to do what the Holy Ghost wants to do and
:doesn't have to tell you what or how or when.
:Because the grace giver is the Spirit of grace. Come on.
:And the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of grace. So what you've basically
:done is go, you know, standing in line, you
:know, she needs grace 'cause she's got a bag
:full of needs and those needs are bleeding over all of us. So Holy Ghost,
:You remember when I was praying this morning in front of the throne of
:grace and I asked you, could you double up on grace?
:Could we tap into some of that now? Thank you very much.
:That would change the planet
:because we would be asking, we would be requesting
:the Holy Ghost to do what only the Holy Ghost
:can do. For the sake of Christ Jesus and the
:advancement of the kingdom. And all— the only thing we would have
:done is be empty vessels that were full of grace.
:So, practice that. It worked for her. It's
:worked for me. Try it. Try it, you might like it.
:Point 3, there it is,
:so-called common grace. Common grace from a
:scholar— from a theological standpoint, common grace is what that
:definition says. Given by God to
:anyone, anywhere, at any time as he chooses to impart it.
:It's up to God.
:It's precluding what we just went through in point 2 about the Hebrews
:passage. And it's certainly precluding salvific
:grace. We— I hope we're on the same page. We've moved
:past redemption. We've gone through the situation where we can
:actually appropriate grace for others in their times
:of needs, plural. But there's
:another category that's much broader, and it's
:singular because it's up to God. He can do whatever
:he wants. See, what this sort of does, if I could say it this way,
:what this sort of does is it enables me to go
:through these first 2 points with you guys and go, if you disagree,
:Or you think I've lost my mind, or you don't have— I'm not giving you
:a chapter and verse to work from, then let's just put it all in category
:3. So I have nothing to do with it. And neither do you.
:To anybody, anywhere, anytime, as he chooses.
:Okay? So, you know the story about the
:woman caught in prostitution? Oh
:Jesus, help me. I'm gonna paraphrase
:it. And you can, if you don't know where
:it is right now, I don't either, so you
:can find it on your own. Ronnie, where is
:it? Where? John 8. John 8, thank you. I knew he knows all
:that. This is free.
:When Paul references stuff in the New Testament,
:often— Somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Paul isn't
:concerned about chapter and verse.
:We've done this a million times. So he'll reference
:something from the Old Testament. And in Wayne speak, this is what
:he'll do. He'll be saying it and he'll make a point, and then he'll go,
:in case you're wondering, it's in there somewhere, find it on your own.
:No, it's all over Paul's writings. But the joke between
:us is Pastor Ronnie's
:retention about where stuff is in Scripture is just— it ain't
:mine. That's right. Because what I adopted
:It's Paul's way of functioning. It's like, it's in there. I know it's in
:there. That's all I'm telling you. So you can dig it out for yourself. But
:it's in John 8, and you can take his word for it.
:Okay, so— and don't correct— don't shout me down
:if I'm wrong. I'm in Wayne speak mode. So
:the religious leaders of the day have set
:up a scenario, one of millions, many, to
:catch Jesus. To find out, to trap him, to
:find out what he'll do. That's, that's what they're doing.
:Now, Scripture doesn't tell us if it's a— we
:know that they're setting Jesus up, but we don't know if
:the scenario is a setup.
:Right, right. We don't know. We don't know how she
:was found out. We don't even know if she's done
:anything. We don't even know if they paid her under the
:table and went, just just walk out this scenario. The
:whole thing may be jive to catch Jesus. We don't know.
:It's not in Scripture, so anything we do would be
:presumptive if we add to Scripture. So they set up the
:scenario. Jesus shows up.
:They tell him what's happened. Jesus looks
:around. Think law. Think law.
:The penalty of law is death.
:Amen. The penalty, if I could say it that way, the
:penalty of grace is life. Law will
:kill you. This is in the first 4 chapters. We went through that to get
:to here. If you're dealing with law, the
:outcome with law, worst-case scenario, is death. There is nothing left to
:do. The upside of grace is you're still
:alive. We're still alive. There's hope
:because there's grace. Grace. The
:divine favor of God enabling me to be who he
:created me to be so I can do what he called me to
:do. Grace, working definition. So Jesus
:assesses the situation out. Taking a little
:bit of liberty here, 'cause we all know enough
:about Jesus to know that Jesus also had a way of
:putting people in a situation that they didn't
:know they had walked into. On more than one
:occasion. So they're all waiting to see what
:Jesus will do next. And they're all
:functioning by the law. So if Jesus had gone,
:help me, hand me that rock.
:No, a bigger one. Give me a bigger one. Okay.
:If he had done that, Everybody
:watching is going, wow, what's going to go on now?
:And he lines up.
:Pause.
:Had he thrown it,
:they would have all thrown theirs. And the
:outcome of the story would be she's laying there dead. Because
:the penalty for breaking— for what she has done,
:adultery, not prostitution. I said adultery, you know what
:I'm— the penalty is stoning.
:So if Jesus had thrown the first stone, they
:wouldn't have gone, great! They— because they're just
:waiting to bring the law down on her. So
:if he'd tossed in, they'd have tossed in. She's down,
:she's either dying or dead, and everybody goes,
:let's go have pizza. And it's over.
:But that's not how the story works. You know how the story
:works. Some of us think we know more about the story than we actually know,
:because some of us grew up hearing something about when he gets and
:writes that— gets down and writes in the dirt, about what that's supposed to mean.
:It's not in the Scripture. No. We don't have a
:clue what he did. You can
:be suspect about it. You can imagine something. You can sort of
:read something into the text, as long as you understand that it's
:silly. 'Cause if the Holy
:Ghost wanted us to know more, he would have given us more. So
:Jesus does something. He writes something some way or other
:here. And he gets up
:and he looks up and they've all tossed the stones down and
:left. Now we know that part of the story. And then what happens
:next? He looks up, maybe stays down, maybe she—
:I don't know whether she's, you know, I don't know if she's crying and, you
:know, afraid she's gonna die or whether he stands— whether they
:do like a face-to-face, eye-to-eye thing. He says, where are
:your accusers? And she says, they're all gone.
:And he says, I don't accuse you either.
:Go and sin no more.
:Grace walks on 2 legs.
:The favor to forgive.
:Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.
:If that wasn't grace, she
:wouldn't be alive. Because if
:she had been stoned according to the law, she would
:be dead. So the
:favor to forgive, neither do I condemn
:you. Go and sin no more. Go, neither do I condemn you, is— Grace.
:Grace. Grace. It cannot be anything
:that has anything to do with the law.
:Then he says, neither do I condemn you.
:Go and sin no more. The challenge to
:change.
:Favor to forgive, challenge to
:change. Favor to forgive.
:Challenge to change. It came out of our Savior's
:mouth. And
:she walks away not scot-free.
:She walks away graced.
:He extended favor to forgive
:what she has allegedly done because we don't know the
:backstory. So he's
:taking it at face value and going, I will
:not condemn you for that. But
:don't do it again. Amen. We've lost that.
:The body of Christ has lost that. In the world we live in now,
:everybody— not everybody, sorry. Many, many
:followers of Christ have lost their
:ability to stand on the truth of Scripture.
:Lots of reasons. They're afraid, they're paranoid, they think they'll lose their job, they think
:somebody will push back on them. They think they'll get— there'll
:be, you know, days and days and days of back and forth on Facebook. You
:know, all of that stuff will happen, but that's irrelevant.
:As my pastor would say, that's not the point. The point is
:not what kind of pushback you'll get. The point is what you're standing for.
:And if what you're standing for is, I forgive you—
:Wait, wait, what? This leg is—
:The challenge to change.
:It's in our Bibles. Now, here's what happens when you don't do
:that. I knew we wouldn't get through
:this. Think,
:think. Don't think me, feeble me. I have 2 legs. They both work,
:more or less, okay? If one of the
:legs, either leg, either leg, If either leg
:is hobbled, this is what happens.
:Don't move, I'm coming to you. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Give me a
:hand, give me a hand, give me a hand.
:I could do the same thing, but I'm not. It tired me out. If I
:reverse the leg— when you hobble
:grace to make it all about
:forgiveness, Are all about
:challenge to change, you have
:hobbled grace that can do both. I
:forgive you, but stop doing this, or
:stop doing this, or please stop. I'm—
:don't— you know, I get intense. I'm
:that kind of guy. How you give the
:challenge to change It's between you
:and the Holy Spirit. Don't do that
:again. That sounds a little bit like
:me, but it sounds a lot like Paul. It
:sounds more like me than it does him.
:I'm just being transparent. His— Sounds
:like John. Right, no, we've had this conversation, right? He
:sounds— exactly, read your Bible. Yeah.
:The dynamic, if I could say it this way, the
:personality, the vehicle has a
:personality. The vehicle has
:accumulated over a lifetime, at whatever age you are,
:a way that you manifest.
:Okay? My temperament
:is more like Paul than his is. His temperament is more
:like John than mine is. But
:over 47— what?
:Stop, stop, stop. Over 47
:years, we have had conflicts that y'all know nothing about.
:But we really love each other, and we put up with each other enough
:to get to where we are now. That's a joke. Well, it's
:not really a joke. But my point is this. We're
:different in how we need out what we carry, but
:we're carrying the same thing. That's one of the
:reasons we got 47 years of history with each
:other. It may be the sole reason, S-O-U-L,
:S-O-L-E, no. So I said all that to say this. The
:rest of the chapter, you've got a Bible. The rest
:of the chapter you can work through predicated on
:what I'm sharing from the opening volley, which
:is you can fall away from God.
:'Cause what Paul was saying is, it's
:problematic if you walk around fleshed out all the time.
:And I'll jump down just a minute 'cause I got 4 minutes left.
:He actually says to believers about
:one another. You with me? Yeah.
:He says to us about us. You'll find it if you read the
:chapter. He says, If you're going to
:operate in love with one another, then you have
:to stop biting and devouring and fighting with one another.
:Oh, no, you're not listening. He tells the
:church, he tells the saints, he tells the
:followers of Christ, the way you're acting is
:just flesh. There's no grace in what you're doing.
:2 legs. There's no temperance in
:what you're doing. There's no compassion in what you're doing.
:He's not talking about how we treat the lost
:or the disenfranchised or the pagan or the agnostic. He's
:not— he's not talking to them. He's talking to
:us. And he says,
:if you keep acting like this, it's gonna be
:problematic for you. And the rest of the
:people in your community. Not community earth.
:Not peace, love, you know, let's save the planet. Whoopie
:whoopie. Yeah. You
:understand? Hey, he's not dismissing global
:warming. He's not dismissing all of that. He's
:going, look, the community's in-house, in
:the house. This is where you are. You need to get—
:the word I'm not using, you know. You need to get your stuff
:together and treat each other
:in a way that makes compatibility
:functional because of who you belong to.
:So our work is cut out for us. And we can thank Paul for that
:because he's the one that wrote it. Or I suppose we
:could thank the Holy Ghost and kick it back up to
:God. Sure. So everything I didn't cover in the
:chapter is between you and the Holy Ghost, or what
:does Justin call it? What's the after-hours
:thing? After Dark. Wait, wait, too many
:people. It's what? After Dark. And I'm
:assuming, 'cause I don't know this for a fact, is that like a real thing?
:Hold on, hold on, hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait. But if it were a
:real thing, if it were a real thing, how would it work?
:What is it that—
:Oh, okay. Well, that sounds like Justin.
:Okay, and so you would basically sign in or sign on or
:leave money under a door or however that works, right? Right.
:Well, see Justin. How's that?
:Father, we thank you for your Holy Spirit. My goodness. We
:thank you for Jesus and his ongoing intercession on our
:behalf. We thank you that you've placed
:an unction in our lives to pursue your kingdom. Just help us to
:stay on task. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank y'all
:for your attention. Thank you. You're welcome.
