Grace vs. Mercy: What's the Real Difference? (Bible Explained)

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, let's get right back to where we were in 1 Corinthians 15. And for those of you joining us on television, we'd just like to let you know that all the past programs are available in videos, in the print, and now on audio. So if you're interested in any of those, why, you just write to us or call us. And again, I'd like to emphasize how much we enjoy your letters. And every once in a while, someone will write and apologize that they do not have the funds to give. And I always write right back, don't apologize, because that's not what we're sitting here waiting for. We just love to have people write, and we love to hear people say that for the first time in their life, they're enjoying the Bible, they're understanding it, and we trust that in that light, the Lord is using us. Okay, now let's just buy up the time and get right back into 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I just barely got the last word out in that last program, and I don't know what I'd have done if I hadn't. But anyway, here it is now then in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 10, the word B -U-T. And we were in Ephesians 2 of course, where He listed all the things that were part of the past of every one of us. But God, that's the flip side. We're no longer what we were. We are what we are, not because we have done so much, but God has done it all. Now same way here, the Apostle Paul does not claim that he received his apostleship because he was so educated, which of course he had been. He doesn't claim to have been the apostle of the Gentiles, because of some merit on his part, but by the grace of God, I am what I am. You know every once in a while things come up in our class and we have discussion, and that's of course where the television viewers miss it. Our local classes we just have so much more fun discussing things. So a long time ago the subject came up, and it was, What's the difference between grace and mercy? Well Merlin got a computer program with all the Greek and all the ramifications of the Hebrew. So one time I told him, and I said, Merlin for a little homework, look up the difference between grace and mercy. Well the other night he told it, and you know I haven't gotten it out of my craw ever since. I shared it with the class last night, and here it comes again. Grace, grace is that attribute of God, that unmerited favor, which makes the pouring out of His mercy possible. You got that? If it wasn't for the grace of God, He could have never poured out mercy on mankind, because we don't deserve it. But since grace is that unmerited favor, God was able to pour out mercy. Now don't you love that? Boy I do. I'm going to be teaching in every tense I get, that it's the grace of God that makes it possible for Him to show mercy rather than wrath and judgment. Verse 10, hear this persecutor, this raging religious zealot, and I say it without apology, he hated the name of Jesus of Nazareth with a passion, and now by the grace of God, instead of zapping the man, instead of sending him off the scene to his eternal doom, what did the grace of God do? It permitted God to save him and pour out mercy. Remember, oh I think it was several programs ago, I guess back when we were in Romans 12, when I was showing how that Israel had the branches broken off, and the Gentiles are now placed on the root and the fatness of Abraham. You remember that series? And then I made the analogy that how many times up through human history, if God would have reacted without grace and mercy, if He would have reacted according to what was fair, what would He have done time and time again? Wiped the human race out, wiped Israel out, and then you remember I gave the illustration in particular, I remember that when Israel demanded that Aaron make them a golden calf while Moses was up in the mountain, and when Moses came down they were dancing in all their lewdness, and practicing all their immorality. What could and should God have done with them? One thought and they would have been gone. But he told Moses later in Deuteronomy 33, I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. Why? He is sovereign. He can do whatever He wants to do. And so when Israel or mankind reaches the point where He should have just zapped them and had them off the scene, He retreated is the word I used. He retreated into His sovereignty, and by grace He poured out mercy. All right, He did the same thing with this man. My, He could have zapped him on that road to Damascus and been done with him. But instead, He retreats into sovereignty, and He says, I'll have compassion on that man because I am God. I don't have to ask anybody. And so He spared that man, and as He says here, saved him by His grace, see? Verse 10, in 1 Corinthians 15 again, it's by the grace of God that I am what I am, and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain. In other words, Saul of Tarsus succumbed immediately to the grace of God, and what was his response? Who art thou Lord? A humble seeking sinner saved by grace. And now he's ready to do whatever God wants him to do. And in the meantime, what had God told Ananias uptown Damascus? Hey, this fellow's coming into town. And Ananias said, yeah, but I've heard how he persecutes the Jewish believers. And God said, don't worry about him. I'm going to send this man far hence to the Gentiles. He's going to suffer for my name's sake. And you know how he did. If you don't think that Saul or Paul later suffered, you read 2 Corinthians, I think it's chapter 11 or 12, oh, how that man suffered. But he never slowed down in his fervor for getting the Gospel out to pagan Gentiles. Verse 10, reading on. So he says, I labored more abundantly than they all, that is, than all the other apostles before him. Yet not I, Paul says, it wasn't in my flesh that I did all this, but the grace of God which was with me, therefore, verse 11, whether it were I or they, so we preach. And so he says, you what? You believed. And that brought them out of their paganism. And again, I have to just constantly bring people back to the fact that you don't become a Christian by going through a certain set ritual or rules and regulations or a set procedure is the word I'm looking for. How many denominations, my own included, expect people to go through a set of procedures, and then all of a sudden the church declares them, Oh yeah, you're a Christian, you've got nothing to worry about, you're on your way to glory. No, that's not the case. We have to believe the Gospel, and then these other things have their rightful place. Absolutely I'm in favor of the local church, I'm in favor of the Sunday school and all these things. But you do not use those as a substitute for salvation. It has to be by personal faith in this death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. All right, now verse 12. Here we get into the whole theme of the chapter, resurrection, life after death. Now if Christ be preached, or proclaimed, that he rose from the dead, then how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? Now in that question I have to think that Paul must have run up some Sadducees in Corinth, because you remember in Christ's earthly ministry the Pharisees, you all know what they were, they were religious fanatics, and I mean they thought they were the only ones with their self-righteous robes around them that were ever going to merit any God. But you also had the Sadducees. Now the Sadducees never did believe in resurrection from the dead. They rejected that as so much foolishness. And so in this question here I have to think there must have been some Sadducees in Corinth, because Paul says some of you are saying there is no resurrection from the dead. All right, verse 13, if that be true, if there is no such thing as resurrection from the dead, and I'm of course probably talking to a lot of people in my audience this morning who are of that same mindset, that this is all there is. When you die, you're like a dog and you're done. But Paul says, if there's no resurrection from the dead, if there is no life after death, then Christ is not risen. All right, verse 14, and if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. In other words, everyone who ascribes to some form of Christianity, and if they're faithful in their churchgoing, and they're faithful in their Christian activity, if there is no resurrection from the dead, they of all people are the most foolish. My, they're wasting their time. Why in the world sit in the pew and sing the hymns of the faith and all these things if there's no resurrection from the dead? It's foolishness. And so this is what Paul is using as an argument. There is resurrection from the dead, because Christ arose from the dead. Who is it? Josh McDowell? Isn't he the one who wrote that great book on resurrection? One of the best little paperback books I've ever read on the proof of the resurrection of Christ. I hope I got his name right. And he had started out as a complete infidel on a college campus. And after he graduated from college, he had been having so much fun destroying the faith of college students, even as a student himself, that he decided that to take it one step further, he'd go to Israel, and he would dig up all the proof that the resurrection was just a fallacy. But the more he dug, the more he proved himself wrong, and he came away from it a born-again believer. And then of course the direction of his life, I guess, completely changed, if I remember the biography correctly, and he literally spent years now going from college campus to college campus, proving to college kids that Christ literally, physically arose from the grave. Well this is what Paul is doing here to the Corinthians. He is proving to them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Christ died, but He arose from the dead. And that's the very hope of every believer. If He didn't, we might as well pack up, throw our Bible away, and go home and forget it. But don't you do it, because He did. He arose from the grave. I think I shared with some of our classes, that was before last taping, or since the last taping, we got a letter from a lady in one of our television areas, and one that we had met while we were traveling, and I read her letter, and the tears just came down my cheeks. I couldn't help it. And she said, Now I'm sure she had been a good church member for years and years. I think the gal was probably in her thirties, she was a young mother, had little kids, but whatever. This is where so many people are. They talk about the resurrection, they sing about it, and they have a mental ascent to it, but they have never really experienced resurrection power in their own life. And this is what Paul is trying to teach here, that at the heart of our Gospel is not just that Christ died some martyr's death, He wasn't just put to death by some angry mob, but in the annals of all of eternity, God had already set it in motion that He would die, and He would shed His blood. He would pay the sin debt for the whole human race, not just for the believer. I don't believe in limited atonement. I believe He paid the sin debt for every human being that has ever lived, but it goes for nothing until the person believes it personally, and then they cash in, of course. Reading on, verse 15, "...yea, we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God, that He raised up Christ, whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not." But you can't separate them. You cannot separate the resurrection of Christ with the resurrection of the believer. They're tied together. And of course the reason, and now let's turn back a minute to 2 Timothy, and on the way stop at Ephesians. First I thought I wouldn't take time, but I think I will. Stop at Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 1, let's start at verse 10. Now here's one of the little letters that we alluded to several weeks ago, that Paul wrote from prison in Rome, and he takes us into the higher atmosphere of Christian doctrine, or into the deeper waters, however you want to place it. But here we come now, in this letter of Ephesians, where there is no more reference to the Old Testament, no more reference to the Jew, but it is higher ground. It is the Body of Christ territory. And look what he says, beginning in Ephesians 1, verse 10, "...that in the dispensation of the administration of the fullness of time, that he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, everything will be consummated even in him, in whom also we, as Gentile believers especially, we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him, who worketh all things after the consul of his own will." Now another verse comes up. I didn't want to do this. Honey, let's come back to Acts chapter 2. Got to tie all this together. It just has to be. Acts chapter 2, now remember what I just read, that all these things are going to come together in Christ to fulfill the purpose of Him who worketh everything, or consummates everything, after the consul, c-o-u-n-s -e-l, not c-o-n-c-i -l, but s-e-l. In other words, that's an agreement of ideas. All right, you got Acts chapter 2, starting at verse 22. "...Ye men of Israel," Peter screams at that huge crowd at Pentecost, "...ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also know, him being delivered up to the crucifixion, him being delivered by the determinate consul, and for knowledge of God." When did that take place? Way back in eternity past. We don't know how far back. It may be billions of years ago that this consul of the Godhead determined that one day earth would be created to be inhabited, He would put man on it, and man would be given that free will choice to respond to His love, or reject it, and in order to bring it to a consummation, He went to that. Oh, it was all in the fulfillment of that predetermined consul of the Godhead. All right, now then, let's go on to 2 Timothy. I hope you can still hold all these together. Now to 2 Timothy chapter 1, 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 9, 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 9. Who, speaking of God in verse 8, who has saved us, called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace. See how that word keeps coming in? It wasn't according to our works, but according to His own purpose, which was what we read about in Acts chapter 2 and in Ephesians 1, which was given us in Christ Jesus when? Before the ages began. That's mind-boggling, isn't it? That this is the eternal purpose of the Creator God, that He created everything for His own purpose. And what was His own purpose? That everything would redound to His glory. And yet we work into that purpose by being recipients of His grace and mercy, and we're made partakers of it all by simple faith in the gospel. Oh, listen, it is past finding out. It is past human understanding. But the Bible teaches it, and we better believe it. All right, come back to 1 Corinthians 15. Now verse 17. And again, now there's a lot of repetition in this chapter. And you remember, repetition is always for the purpose of driving home something that God wants us to know. And so all through this chapter, we're going to see repeated and repeated and repeated this whole concept of the resurrection from the dead. All right, verse 17 now. If Christ be not raised, if He stayed in the tomb, then your faith is vain. It's all for nothing. You are yet in your sin. You're doomed. All right, next verse. Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ, in other words, believers who had embraced Christianity, had embraced Paul's gospel, if Paul wasn't raised from the dead, they too are just as doomed as anybody else, because without resurrection power, there is no eternal life. Cannot be. And so it has to all come back to that threefold aspect of the gospel, that yes, the eternal Creator God Himself took on human flesh and died, shed His blood, was buried three days and three nights in the grave as proof positive that He was really dead. See there's a lot of liberals and modernistic type preachers that say, well if He did raise from the dead, then He wasn't really dead. He was just unconscious and He was brought back to life. Yeah, there are those that teach that. But no, He was literally, physically dead, and then God raised Him from the dead the third day according to the Scriptures. Now then verse 19, If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. Now you know what He's saying? The same thing the world throws at us today. Why do you give up the good time? Why get out of the fast lane just for the sake of being a Christian? Why don't you live it up? Why don't you enjoy the flesh? Because after all, when you're dead, it's all over. And Paul says if that's true, there's probably merit in what they're saying. Go ahead. Enjoy the lusts of the flesh, because tomorrow you're dead, it doesn't make any difference. But that's not the way it is. We of all people are not miserable. We have that hope. Got a few minutes left. Turn back with me to Titus, chapter 2. Oh, I'll never forget. Years and years ago a fellow came out to our little country church up in Iowa, and for a whole week during which the temperature never got above 30, below zero, even in the daytime, that poor fellow was faithful, and he taught us every night from Titus, chapter 2, verses 11 through 15. Found out just a while back that he's now gone to be with the Lord. The old fellow's name was Dr. Nordland. I'll never forget him, and he didn't speak fast. He spoke ever so slowly, but every word was just like a truckload coming out. And the whole week on these few verses, and much of what I teach, I guess, is what I've remembered from what he shared with us that cold, cold winter week. Verse 11, for the grace of God. Here it is again. See, you can't run away from it. Everywhere you go in Paul's epistles, there comes the grace of God, and it bring us salvation, and it has appeared to all men. Now that means what it says. Now a lot of people wonder, well without benefit of radio, and television, and the printed page, how did the Gospel cover the whole then known world, which of course was primarily the Roman Empire, in Paul's lifetime? Now you know and remember he was only able to be out there about 35 years, if I reckon time right. No, not even that long. He was converted in about 37, and he was put to death in 67. Thirty years. Thirty years of ministry. And yet he was able to write by inspiration that the whole then known world, now remember it's the then known world, had heard the plan of salvation. How in the world could that have happened? Well you know you always got to take everything in the big picture. Remember when he was in house arrest in Rome, and he had Roman soldiers guarding him 24 hours a day? Well the Roman army would rotate their soldiers in places of duty. So in those two or three years that Paul was under house arrest in Rome, who knows how many Roman soldiers had duty guarding him. We don't know how many. Two, three, four at a time. But as I would be rotated out from Paul's house, they would go to the far reaches of the empire. In one place he said they even got into Caesar's palace. Well I know one thing, anybody that spent any time in Paul's house left a believer. I'm almost confident of that. And so as a result of Paul's ministering to his guards, who in turn went into areas of service throughout the empire, the whole world, yeah I believe this, the whole then known world had heard the plan of salvation. Alright, I want to come on quickly. So this grace of God teaches us the denying ungodliness and worldly desires. Of course we do. We do not believe in just satisfying the flesh, live because tomorrow you die. But we deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and we do live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. Verse 13 is the best part of all. We're constantly looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Isn't that something? That's our blessed hope. I once asked somebody, what's the blessed hope? Oh he said that when I die I will go to heaven. Oh no, that's not the blessed hope, that's a glorious hope, yeah. But the blessed hope is the soon appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Why? Because He arose from the dead. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.