Grace Life Part 1 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Grace Life Part 1 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

The Grace Life Part 1 with Pastors Lawson and Aaron Perdue. In this episode of Grace For Today, you’ll understand from scripture how to approach truth so that you can walk in life.

Grace Life Part 1 – Transcript

Friends, I’m so glad to have you with us today. We’re sharing on “The Grace Life”, and grace has changed my life. In fact, did you know the way that you approach truth depends whether truth will produce life or death in your life. I’m gonna show you that today from the scripture. So open your heart and receive the good Word of God today. Blessings.

Friends, I’m so glad that you’re here today. Aaron and I are here, we’re teaching a brand new series on “The Grace Life”, and grace has really changed my life. In fact, I pastored a church for six years, Barbara and I, before I got a revelation of grace. And when I got a revelation of grace, it changed how I pastored. It changed how I related to my wife, Barbara, how I related to my sons. Aaron was only seven years old when I got a revelation of grace, but Barbara doesn’t think our kids would’ve grown up serving Jesus like they are today if I hadn’t got the revelation of grace that I did. So thank God we’re gonna be sharing about “The Grace Life. We’re gonna begin today in John 1:14-18, where it’s talking about Jesus who really is the embodiment of grace. So go ahead, Aaron, read John 1:14-18.

It says: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. John bore witness of him and cried out saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'” And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

So when we look at this, it shows us that Jesus is the Word made flesh and then it says: When we beheld Him, His glory, as of the only begotten of the Father, He was full of grace and truth. He goes on and says; Of his fullness, we have all received grace for grace, for the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus. I’d like to talk about this, when we look at this scripture where it says the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus. You know, truth minus grace equals law and that produces death. But truth plus grace equals Jesus which produces life. So the way that you approach grace depends whether, or truth depends whether it produces life or death. If you approach truth through the law, it will produce death. But if you approach truth through grace, it will produce life.

Amen. I love that gospel equation you gave that Jesus plus nothing equals everything and Jesus is everything. If you try to add anything to Him, you dilute what He’s already given to us. You dilute the power, the value of the gift He’s given us.

If you have to add anything to Jesus, it’s like saying “Jesus isn’t enough”. And that’s really, Paul addresses that and we’ll teach it in these lessons as we go through. We’ll go through the Book of Galatians eventually. But when we look at Jesus, Jesus embodies grace and truth. Jesus shows us the fullness of God. It says “of His fullness, we’ve received grace upon grace”. So when we begin to think about Jesus being the embodiment of truth and grace, when you look at His life, there’s numbers of examples of Jesus revealing grace. In fact, the legalistic people, right, the very law-focused people were sometimes challenged with Jesus. However, sinners loved Jesus because He gave them grace. A good example is the woman at the well. And Jesus, she tells Him, “Give me this water that I thirst no more,” in John 4. And Jesus said, “Well, go and get your husband.” And she said, “Well, I don’t have a husband,” in verse 17 and 18, and she says, “I don’t have a husband.” Jesus said, “Well, that’s right. “You’ve had five before now, “and the one you’re living with is not your husband,” but Jesus ministers the grace of God to her. And she goes and gets not only her husband, but she evangelized the whole city. She brings the whole city to Jesus. Praise God, just because the grace of God changed her. Another example is in John 8, the woman who’s caught in adultery. They brought this woman to Jesus and said, “Lord, this woman was caught in adultery “in the very act, and Moses, in law, said, ‘Stone her,’ “and but what do you say?” And Jesus says, “Well, who of you haven’t sinned, you cast the first stone.” Now Aaron, you’ve got some revelation about that so talk a little bit about John 8 here.

Yeah, whenever I’ve read this story before, I kind of wonder, did Jesus break the law? They said, “We caught her in the act of adultery, and the law says that we had to stone her. What do you say, Jesus? And the law does say, in the law, that if someone is guilty of certain sins, and adultery is one of ’em, that they’re guilty and to be put to death. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death and you see that throughout the law. But Jesus didn’t destroy the law. He said, “I didn’t come to destroy the law, “but I came to fulfill the law.” And you know, he’s full of grace and truth. Like I love… John was one of those disciples that saw Him when He was transfigured on the mount, when He was shining in all of His glory and all of His truth and all of His grace, and that Elijah and Moses were there. And Moses was the one who wrote the law down, who penned it down as God gave it to him, But Moses actually looked forward to Jesus and that fulfillment of the law. Right in the middle of the law, God helped me see this, but in the middle of the law, you look at the law in Deuteronomy… Deuteronomy is…

34 chapters.

34 chapters, and the middle chapter is chapter 17, and you can check me out if you’d like to, but chapter 17 is the middle chapter and the middle verse of this chapter actually kind of gives the answer to this question. I believe it’s a prophecy in the law of what happens in John 8. So in the middle verse, it’s 20 verses and the middle verse is verse 10, but if you start a few verses before-

Start in verse 8.

Yeah, Deuteronomy 17:8, it kind of foretells of this instance that happened in Jesus’ life in John 8. So it says: “If a matter arises, which is too hard for you to judge between degrees of guilt for bloodshed between one judgment or another, or between one punishment or another, matters of controversy within your gates, then you shall arise and go up to the place which the Lord your God chooses, and you shall come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge there in those days, and inquire of them; they shall pronounce upon you the sentence of judgment.” So I believe when they brought this woman to Jesus it’s said, initially, He stooped down and started writing in the dirt like he didn’t hear them. I believe he started writing down the law. Because they said the law says this, so I think, the same finger that wrote the law on the tablets given to Moses is the same finger that’s writing in the dirt here. In John 8, the finger of Jesus is the finger of God, so he’s writing the law. I think he’s writing the law in the dirt. And so this is what was happening. They weren’t sure what to do with this woman. They brought him to Jesus. They brought her to Jesus. They made Jesus the priest, they made Jesus the judge. And he stood up and he gave his pronouncement, which was “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” And then I believe that, after he pronounced that, it said that he stooped down and kept writing again. So I believe he wrote here that, that that very center verse of the center chapter of the entire law, Deuteronomy 17:10, says, “You shall do according to the sentence which they pronounce upon you in that place which the Lord chooses.” So he gave that pronouncement and that pronouncement didn’t break the law. It actually fulfills the law. And I believe he kept writing; it said, “You shall be careful to do according to all that they order you, according to the sentence of the law in which they instruct you, according to the judgment which they tell you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left from the sentence which they pronounce upon you. Now, the man who acts presumptuously and will not heed the priest who stands to minister there before the Lord, your God or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall put away the evil from Israel.”

And so here, Jesus, you brought this out before, but in John 8, he’s standing in the temple and he is the priest and he’s making a judgment. They brought this woman to him to make a judgment, and Jesus makes a judgment. And Jesus makes the judgment, “Whoever of you have not sinned, you cast the first stone,” and then he writes in the dirt and they all leave, from the oldest to the youngest, because they’re all convicted by their own conscious. And also, you know, they studied the law, they knew the law. And Romans 3:20 says, “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” But not only is Jesus basically forgiving this woman, giving her grace, giving her life, but Jesus then becomes the one who dies, for our sin, who offers up himself as that ultimate sacrifice. And so he’s basically saying, “You’re gonna go with my judgment or you’re gonna die.’

Yeah, if they were, if they would, if they’d cast that first stone, they’d be claiming that they were blameless, that they were perfect.

We know that no one’s blameless. And so when they all leave, then Jesus sees it’s just Him and this woman standing there in John 8:10, and He says, “Woman, where are your accusers? Has no man condemned you?” And she says, “No man, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.” So Jesus frees her from condemnation, frees her from guilt, and then he says, “You can go and you can live free.” And he goes on in the next verse and said, “I’m the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” So when you receive Jesus, who’s the light of the world, light is stronger than darkness, you know? And His grace is greater than our sin. But Jesus ministers grace to this woman caught in adultery, Jesus ministers grace to the woman at the well, and we see this throughout the life of Jesus, that He is constantly ministering grace to sinners, who understand that they need grace. The people, however, who are legalistic and who are standing in their own self-righteous way, Jesus is not so gracious with them because they’re standing in self-righteousness and there’s a lot of difference between His righteousness and self-righteousness.

One thing that, as you’ve taught through this at church, on The Grace Life, one thing that God showed me about grace, too, there’s three aspects of grace. Grace frees you, grace transforms you, and grace empowers you.

[Pastor Lawson] Amen.

The law doesn’t do any of those things. Being legalistic and religious doesn’t do any of those things. It doesn’t, the law can’t bring freedom. You know, legalism can’t transform, certainly can’t transform people, and it definitely can’t empower people.

So the law showed people their sin. “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” I think that’s Romans 3:20. 1 Timothy 1 says: “The law is good if you use it lawfully.” So what is the lawful use of the law? And it goes on, “If you’re murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, men’s stealers, if you’re caught up in sin, the law will show you that you’re in sin, but that was the whole purpose of the law. Like you say, it can’t free you, it can’t transform you, it can’t empower you.

Well, like speed limits aren’t meant for people who drive slow. They’re meant for people who speed and who need to get a ticket.

Yeah, and so if you have a guilty conscience, it’ll condemn you. But anyway, the law would condemn people. Now, Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth. We began with this truth minus grace equals law that produces death. Truth plus grace equals Jesus, which produces life. So the way that you approach truth, whether you approach it with or without grace, depends what the truth will produce in your life. And if you approach the truth with grace, and Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth, then it will produce life in your life. We’re gonna take a short break and we’re gonna be back, and we’re gonna continue to talk about “The Grace Life” in the life of Jesus. Friends, I’m gonna be talking about, in this series, about how grace has revolutionized my life. And you want to get this because I’m telling you, it changed my home, changed my marriage, changed my children, changed my church, changed my business. Grace has changed about everything about me, and not in a negative way, in a super-positive way. My wife Barbara says, “I’m not even living with the same person and not negatively, positively.” She said, “I don’t know how it would’ve went on if you would’ve continued on the way that you were going,” but thank God, grace changed me. And do you know what? God is not a respecter of persons. He’s a respecter of faith. But I believe that the grace that’s changed me will change you as you believe the gospel. And I’ve got two things that we’re making available as a package during these teachings. One is my series. It’s a 10 part series on “The Grace Life.” It’s the most in depth teaching I’ve done. The other one is “The Revelation of Grace” with Andrew Wommack. Blessings. Friends, it’s so good to have you, I’m glad you stayed with us. We’re gonna continue to talk about how The Grace Life begins and ends in Jesus. And here in John 1:18, John went on to say “He was before me.” In other words, he says, “No man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed Him.” Jesus revealed the Father. Jesus revealed the grace of God. And when we look at Jesus, we see the Father’s heart. And I love looking in the scripture and really, the Bible is a book about the Father and His family. And when you approach it that way, I believe you receive a lot more. In fact, the disciples came to Jesus when they saw him pray. Jesus prayed differently than the legalistic people they’d seen praying. And in Luke 11, when they saw Jesus praying, they said, “Lord, teach us to pray,” as John taught his disciples. And Jesus said, “You pray this way. ‘Our Father, which is in Heaven.'” And so we pray to God, who is our Father, so on and so forth. And then he went on to say, “for which of you has a sign? If he asked bread, are you gonna give him a serpent? Are you gonna give him a stone? Or are you gonna give him life? You’re not gonna give him death, you’re gonna give him life. And he says, “If we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more shall our Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those of us who ask him? But again, it’s this mentality of a father and his family. I love how Paul prays, and really, if you wanna pray in a New Testament sense, and I think there are too many New Testament saints still praying Old Testament prayers, They’re still begging God. And you know, Galatians, when we studied Chapter 4, it says, “We’re no more servants but sons.” And the way a son asks of a father is different than the way a slave comes to his master. And so we need to come to God as our Father. And I know you boys know how much I love you. And a lot of times you come to our house, you don’t even really ask, you just go take, because you know what? It’s yours, praise God. You’re in the family and it belongs to you and we want you to do that, praise God. Now, there’s certain things we want you to ask about, but-

I love that you’re just, it’s just boiling down to truth and grace. It’s the story of a father and his family, our Father God and his family. Jesus really revealed God as father when he-

Amen.

When his disciples asked, “How do we pray?”, they wanted to know how to pray, he said, “Our Father, you pray to our Father.

Amen! And a lot of, you know, there’s legalism in all sorts of areas of the world today. There’s certainly legalism within the church, but people can get very legalistic about politics. They can get very legalistic-

Sure can!

About woke things. They can get very legalistic about LGBTQ things. That is a religion today. People can get, you know, I went to a store here in Carter Springs recently, an athletic clothing store, Lululemon in the shops at Briargate, and they sell very nice athletic clothing, shorts, and sweatpants, and these kinds of things. But in the corner of their store, this is just right around the corner from Focus on the Family where James Dobson was fired for being too conservative…

Terrible.

On homosexual, but right around the corner, I’m at this shop, they had a little table set up in the window for children to go to. It was under a rainbow flag and they had little books on homosexuality for children, like geared towards four year olds, five year olds.

[Pastor Lawson] It’s terrible.

So, it’s like it was like a little shrine to this religion of gender identity.

And they have states where they’re trying to make it so a child can go get a sex change without their parents’ consent. That’s the most ridiculous thing that I’ve ever heard. You’ve studied some of this, most of these people, right, that get sex changed, they’re still miserable after they do it because it wasn’t a sexual problem, it was an identity problem and they had problems in other areas.

But people can get legalistic about all sorts of things. You saw that during the COVID pandemic, how legalistic people could be with mask-wearing and things, and how ridiculous some of the things are.

Christians can get legalistic about grace.

That’s true, yeah.

I’ve seen this happen, and I’m a grace person.

I had a professor who was very legalistic about being green, recycling, and these torts. So, this professor I worked for, she wanted me to organize her office. And she had hundreds and hundreds of photocopies of music from like the last 20 years. And the easiest thing would’ve been to just throw it away or recycle the paper, like, put it in recycling and they could turn it into cardboard or something. But she wanted me to spend hours upon hours just sifting through just this stack of photocopies, organizing it alphabetically. And just ’cause that was her religion, was to not throw anything away.

Well, I don’t like to waste, but sometimes it’s kind of crazy.

Yeah, it can be a religion.

Let’s go on and talk about God as our father and we’re in his family, and Jesus is the embodiment of this and he really shows us the Father. And he prays, the disciples see him praying and say, “Teach us to pray.” He says, “You pray, ‘Our Father, which is in Heaven'”, and then he compares prayer, right? To, if you are a father and you know how to give good things to your children, how much more will God as our Heavenly Father give good things to us? And so we’re no longer beggars, but we’re sons, we’re children of the Almighty God, and Paul prays this in Ephesians 3:14-15, he says, “For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in Heaven and Earth is named.” And when you begin to get that revelation that God is my father and I’m in His family, it changes how you pray. In fact, I think the prayers of Paul are the ideal model prayers for believers in this time that we live in. And you can find them in Ephesians 1, Ephesians 3, Philippians 1, in Colossians 1, and basically, he says, “God is our Father, we’re in his family.” And here he begins to talk about praying out of this understanding of the love of God. And when you get a revelation of the love of God, that God’s your father and that he loves you, he goes on to say, “He’s able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that’s working in us.” And you can look at that in a number of different ways. We have the power of the Word. We have the power of the spirit of God. We have the power of the Holy Spirit. But I like to look at it like this because in the context that this is written in, it’s talking really about the power of the love of God. And Romans 5:5 says, “The love of God is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost that’s given to us.” So when you get this understanding that God is your father and you’re in his family and that then you begin to really get a grasp, an understanding of His great love for you, it causes you to begin to pray in a bold new way and to begin to pray with faith. And he says, “He’s able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we can ask or think, through the power of His great love that’s working in us.” And so when we look at Jesus, Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth. The Grace Life begins and ends in Jesus. And as you begin to move into it, you find out there is more grace. In fact, it says here in John 1:16, “Of his fullness, we’ve all received grace for grace.” And so there’s different aspects of grace, right? There’s grace for salvation, there’s grace for eternity, there’s grace for growth, there’s grace for ministry, there’s grace for redemption, there’s grace for all these different things as we study this out in the scripture. And so thank God, that there’s more grace! And sometimes, if you’re in a legalistic church, you know, they kind of bring this attitude about, “Well, if you’ve done one sin, you’re gonna go to hell.” Well, you’ve probably committed sins. If you look at the, you know… Sin is the transgression of the law as it says in 1 John 3 or so, that, if you really take that, there’s a lot of things that people are doing that they probably don’t even realize that are sin, where they’re missing the mark. And the main thing, I don’t want live, I don’t wanna live in rebellion. I don’t wanna live against the known will of God for my life. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna do anything that violates my relationship with God, my love relationship with God. And I believe that, really, the goal of our Christian life is to know God. And when you get to know him, he says, “Listen,” in Hebrews 8:11, he says this, “You won’t have to have any man teach you, don’t do this and do this, but you’ll know me from a heart level.” And Paul says this in Philippians 3:10, “That we may know him in the power of his resurrection being made conformable to his death.” So when we really identify with Jesus, we get to know God and we live from a heart relationship with God. And so, number one, I don’t wanna violate my relationship with God, but then I don’t want to violate my relationship with people. I don’t wanna violate my relationship with your mother, with you boys as my three sons. I don’t want to violate my relationship with my church. I don’t wanna violate my relationship with my mentors. I don’t want to do anything that brings disgrace on my mentors in the gospel. Andrew Wommack’s one of them, you know, different people. I don’t wanna do anything that violates my relationship with young ministers that I’m investing my life into. I don’t wanna do anything that violates my relationship with the world. I want to continue to be a good witness for Christ. I recently did a funeral in Kit Carson and I hadn’t been down there for a number of years, but we pastored there for 13 years and it’s a town of 300 people in a county that’s got like just over 2000 people, that covers 2,400 square miles. So there’s less than one person per square mile. And you know what? Those people know that we live the gospel. I see a lot of stuff go down in the city. People think that nobody holds them accountable, but you know what, God sees and knows. We wanna live out of the grace of God. And I believe when we understand grace, it’s empowering and it helps us live in the victory Jesus won. There’s a lot more we have to say, but Aaron, you can go ahead and close out and we’ll be back tomorrow.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us today. We love you guys. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for “The Grace Life”. We’ll be back again soon. God bless you.

[Aaron] Jesus is the embodiment of grace and truth, and he wants to reign in your life. Grace is what frees from sin and allows us to accomplish God’s will. Get the “Grace Life” package, which includes “The Grace Life” and “Revelation of Grace”, all for $39. Choose between CD, USB, or digital download when you call 719-418-4000 or visit CharisChristianCenter.com.

Friends, I certainly hope that you’ve enjoyed the program today and it’s ministering to you to move into that which God has for you. And I want to say a great big thank you to all of our partners for helping us share this gospel across the United States and across the world. It’s because of our partners that we can take this message of grace and faith around the world. If you would like to join our partners and receive that blessing, give us a call today. Blessings.

[Aaron] Thanks for watching “Grace for Today”. This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer, or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000 or to partner online, go to CharisChristianCenter.com/Give. You can write us at P.O. Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today”.