Morning Moments

GRACE

Many far more brilliant and spiritual than I, no doubt, have taken it upon themselves to divide the Bible into many divisions by dispensation, covenants, etc, but for the sake of our study I prefer to keep it much simpler in order to get the Big Picture before plunging into the divisional depths.

Grace has always been the means of God’s dealings with His creation.  It is “By grace, through faith” from cover to cover that we are reconciled to God, regardless of Testament, Times, or  Trials.

God owes us nothing but offers us everything - THAT is GRACE, which can only be personally accepted, appreciated, and appropriated through faith.  Hence, Noah (through faith) found grace in the eyes of the LORD. 

When God offered the clothing to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, it was an expression of His Grace.

When God offered Cain the opportunity to make the proper faith sacrifice when he had made a flesh sacrifice, it was grace.  Cain refused and in so doing spurned, rejected, and refused the grace of God and suffered the consequences, which is always the case.  God offers grace, but man can receive or reject the grace God offers.  The consequence never changes.

The rejection of grace is the rejection of God who is the “God of all grace”.  No one ever deserves it and few ever desire it, but it is nevertheless available to all.

In conclusion of this brief consideration, consider:

1. God created man and extended grace to live an ideal life forever by the tree of life.
2. Man refused the grace of God and chose the knowledge of good and evil.  He sinned and died spiritually.
3. Once again God extended His grace and provided covering for sinful man through sacrifice.
4. Man accepted the grace gifts from God.
5. Man and woman had children who followed the same course - two sons, offered grace, one accepts, the other rejects, the one who refuses grace kills the one who received grace.
6. And so the story goes from generation to generation, family to family, person to person down through the corridors of time - through the flood, Babel, to the calling out of a man through whom God would establish a nation - ABRAM, who would become ABRAHAM, the father of many nations, to the coming of Messiah, the establishment of the CHURCH, which is the Body of Christ, through the Seventieth Week of Daniel's prophecy, into the Millennium.  It is the GRACE of GOD extended - RECEIVED OR REJECTED!

No one can deny the grace of God extended to all humanity from the very beginning.  Hence, for me, to suggest that the age in which we live is the Age of Grace is somewhat misleading.  God’s very desire to reconcile man unto Himself is the ultimate expression of GRACE.

BLESSINGS!