(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Look back at verse 25 if you would, it says, But there was none like unto Ahab which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the LORD, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up, and he did very abominably in following idols, according to all things as did the Amorites, whom the LORD cast out before the children of Israel. And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and laid sackcloth, and went softly. And the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, Seest thou how Ahab humbled himself before me? Because he humbled himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but in his son's days will I bring the evil upon his house. I think this chapter, it's great that we read the whole chapter, because as you're reading this chapter it's a very negative story, there's a lot of bad things happening, we learn about Naboth and the evil that partook him from his wife Jezebel, but at the very end there's this just interesting, you know, add-on, how Ahab, after doing all these wicked things, the Bible even kind of sums it up, just saying, look at verse 25, it says, but there was none like unto Ahab which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the LORD. He's saying this guy's not just bad, he's like at the top of bad, I mean he's just super wicked, he did a lot of evil, a lot of horrible things in his life, but at the very end of this passage we see he actually ends up humbling himself, and we see God even, you know, gives some mercy, gives some grace unto Ahab, and the title of my sermon tonight is a recipe for grace, a recipe for grace. Now when we think about Ahab, you know, he's in the Bible quite a bit, he's in through the Kings and the Chronicles, and the Bible says that he did all kinds of wicked things. He took a wife of the Zidonians, Jezebel, he rose up altars for Baal, he was consenting unto the death of Naboth. I mean even if he didn't actually physically partake in the death, he was very, he was consenting unto the death through the wife, through his wife's hands, through the hands of those sons of Belial, through the hands of the people, we see that he even takes the vineyard. You know, he didn't have to take Naboth's vineyard, even though, you know, he killed him through other people's means, he didn't have to take the vineyard. He's even hunting Elijah in this chapter. He comes to Elijah and he calls him his enemy, and isn't it interesting that God points out to Elijah, he said, hey look at this guy, he humbled himself, and I'm gonna spare him in his life. I'm not going to bring all the evil in his days, but in his son's days, and even in 1 Kings 16, you don't have to turn here, but I'm gonna read for you one place, it says that Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. Saying look, they keep getting worse and worse, the kings of Israel, Ahab's at the pinnacle of his time. He's just, he's one of the worst kings of Israel as far as just performing all kinds of sin and transgressing God's commandments and not following any of, you know, the things that he had been instructed to do. But I want to give you a definition of the word grace. In the dictionary it says, the first definition says elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action. The second definition says favor or good will. The third is mercy, clemency, or pardon. Now of course when we talk about grace, I mean it's just the pinnacle of salvation. The fact that for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is the gift of God that any man should boast. We know that we're saved through grace, that God gives us grace, that's how we can even be saved. Without grace we couldn't be saved. It's impossible. It's only by his grace that we're saved. But the point of the sermon tonight is not to focus on the grace of salvation, but the reality that grace does not just extend to salvation, but extends through the entire Christian life. It extends through all of your life that God wants to continually give you grace. He wants to give you grace in all areas of life, not just in salvation. We see the word mercy also in the Bible kind of goes interchangeably with the word grace. It can mean the same thing. It even, when you read the definition of mercy, I'll read that for you, it says the first definition is compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, anemone or another person in one's power, compassion, pity. It says the second definition is the disposition to be compassionate or forbearing. It says the third definition is the discretionary power of a judge to pardon someone or to mitigate punishment, especially to send someone to prison rather than invoke the death penalty. So again, both definitions, they use the word pardon, they can be used interchangeably in a lot of ways. Grace is just unmerited favor a lot of times in the Bible we see. And sometimes the Bible does use the word grace to just mean something that's beautiful or elegant, the gracious words of the king or something that's just, you know, very pleasant. But the definition that I'm really wanting to focus on tonight is that of unmerited favor or mercy. How do you get unmerited favor or mercy from God even after salvation? Now when I think about this sermon, it may not be applicable to you today, maybe in a day it's not the most applicable time to think about I need God's grace or I need his mercy, but it's one of those sermons that I want you to just get deep in your heart, a truth that's from God's word that we can know in our mind so that when something befalls us, when we fall into sin, when we have something come upon us where we really need his grace, that we can think back to all the promises he has in the Bible, to the recipe for grace so that we can get back into his good graces. Maybe that's a term or a phrase you've heard people say, in someone's good graces. We want to be in God's good graces. We want him to be pleased with us. We want to fulfill his purposes in our life and you say, well, yeah, maybe Ahab needed some grace. I mean, God, this guy was killing, you know, all kinds, he was worshipping all kinds of false gods. He was killing people. He was doing all this wicked stuff. I mean, I know I'm a sinner, but I'm not Ahab, but we see in the Bible that even some of the most righteous people that we look up to, they needed grace. I'll give you, you don't have to turn there, turn to Psalms 84, Psalms 84. I'll give you some verses. The Bible says in Genesis 6, 8, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. A man that we look up to, a man of great faith to build the ark, to save the world. He found grace in the eyes of the Lord. In Genesis 19, we see Lot, Lot had grace. It says in verse 19, behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast showed unto me in saving my life, and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me and I die. We see Lot was bestowed grace upon him, that he wasn't killed in Sodom and Gomorrah. God took him out of that wicked city. It wasn't because he deserved it, it wasn't because he earned it, it wasn't because he was doing anything right, but he needed God's grace in that moment and God spared him out of the city. We see Moses in Exodus 32, I'm sorry, in Exodus 33, it says, Moses said unto the Lord, see thou sayest unto me, bring up this people, and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt sin with me, yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. When God was speaking to Noah, he said, you found grace in my sight. Moses needed grace. Bible says in Judges 6, when it talks about Gideon, it says, and he said unto him, if now I found grace in my sight, then show me a sign that thou talkest with me. Gideon was like, I need your grace, Lord, if I found grace in your sight, show me a sign. We see these great men of God throughout the Bible, excluding Lot, he's not a great example, but we see Christians, they need grace from the Lord. It's not just the unsaved that need grace just for salvation, it's us that are saved too that need his grace. Look at Psalms 84 verse 11, where I return, the Bible says, for the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. Wow. He's talking about the saved there, he's talking about the righteous, but he's saying they need grace too, and God will give grace to the upright, those that are upright. Go to, uh, go to Proverbs 24, if you would, Proverbs 24, I'll read for you a couple other places. In 1st Corinthians 15, Paul needed grace. He said, for I am the least of the apostles, and I'm not mean to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace, which was bestowed upon me, was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me. He said, look, I got grace to get saved, there's grace that I'm here, but even as I do the works, there's grace with me, and that's how I'm able to fulfill all these great, wonderful works that I'm doing for the Lord, going out preaching the gospel, enduring afflictions, enduring all kinds of persecutions. We see that Paul needed God's grace, and grace was with him. One of the greatest Christians to ever live needed God's grace. In Lamentations 3, the Bible says in verse 22, it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassion is still not. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. You know who's faithful? God. We can't always be trusted to be faithful, or always be the steadfast, or always be the person that's going to be relied on, but God can, and we always need to seek his grace. He has new graces every morning. God is so much more gracious than man could ever be. We need to understand how gracious our Lord is, how long suffering he is, how patient he is with us, how much he just wants us to be doing the right thing, to be on the right path. Even when we stumble, even when we fall, even when we don't do the right thing, God's still there. He's wanting to show grace upon those that are walking upright, those that have a right heart, those that are trying to seek him. Says in 2 Timothy 1, says to Timothy, my dearly beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, and Christ Jesus our Lord. If you go through Paul's epistles, I mean they all start off, he's talking about grace from the Father, grace from our Lord Jesus Christ, grace, grace, he's constantly telling grace to who? The saved! To those in the church, he's wanting them to have more grace from the Lord Jesus Christ. He also said in 2 Timothy 2, thou therefore my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. We're not supposed to be weak in grace, we're supposed to be strong. Meaning what? Knowing that when we come up short, it's by God's grace that we can continue on. Even when we stumble, even when we fall, even when we're not perfect, we can be strong in God's grace knowing, hey I'm just going to keep running the race, I'm just going to keep striving forward, I'm just going to keep living my life and doing the right thing. What of kids when they were growing up? They just gave up as soon as they messed up one time. I mean they would never be a great person, I mean the kids screw up all the time, kids are constantly getting in trouble, constantly getting spanked, constantly getting reproved, constantly, I mean they should be, I mean, boost is bound to the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from it. But we see, life is not just, oh I made it, oh I've arrived, I've gotten here, I'm already perfect, I've already got it all figured out. No it's constantly trying to get better, it's constantly trying to learn more, it's constantly trying to seek the Lord. We need to realize that we need God's grace as we go through that journey, as we go through the journey of a Christian life. Nobody's made it, nobody's there, nobody's gotten there, be like Paul, he doesn't realize that he didn't think that he had attained, he hadn't gotten to a perfection level. We should always be striving, we should always be trying to continue in God's work and grace in our lives. Look at Proverbs 24 verse 16, it says, for a just man falleth seven times and riseth up again, but the wicked shall fall into mischief. I think the best thing to take away from this verse to me is the fact that hey, just people fall, but guess what, what separates the just from the wicked? He gets back up. The guy that doesn't quit, he doesn't quit on God when he stumbles, when he falls, when he struggles, when he goes through affliction and persecution, he gets back up and he gets back on the horse. How? By God's grace, by God's mercy, by his love for us, not by his own will, not by his own strength, not by his own might. I can't do it. If it was by my will, I would never get there. I would never have, I would never earn or deserve anything good. It's only by God's grace that I can even stand up here, that I can continue to do God's work. It's by his mercy, his grace that I don't deserve. Go to John chapter 21, go to John chapter 21 if you will. So we see that there's all kinds of people that needs God's grace. Obviously for salvation, we have the city of Nineveh who repents in sackcloth and ashes and God spares the city. We see with King Hezekiah, King Hezekiah was going to die. He's praying unto the Lord and the Lord extends his life by 15 years. He gives him more grace. We see even with Ahab, the story that we've read, probably the one of the most wicked kings of all Israel, when he humbled himself, God gave him grace. Why? Because God's more gracious than we can even imagine. I mean for God to love the world that he gave his only begotten son. The Bible says he's not the propitiation of our sins, but the sins of the whole world. That's a lot of love. That's a lot of grace he's bestowing unto us, saying, look, I've already done it all. I've already paid it all. All you have to do is just enter into my rest. All you have to do is walk through the door. All you have to do is take a drink of water. You know, it's really the same even in the Christian life of getting God's grace. It's usually simple, but it's always pride that stops people from doing anything. It's always pride that stops you from entering into God's rest and his grace. Why do people not want to get saved? Because of pride. Why do people not want to get right with God, enter back into his grace? Because of pride. Look at John 21 verse three says, Simon Peter saith unto them, I go fishing. They say unto him, we also go with thee. They went forth and entered into a ship immediately and that night they caught nothing. Now Peter is an example of someone who fell and he fell real hard. He denied the Lord Jesus Christ three times. God told him he was going to deny him after he had vowed that he would, he would die for him. He would. He said, I'm going to die for you. You don't even, you know, confess me before a mate or a little girl. You want to confess me? You're telling me you're going to die for me. We see that he fell hard. What is his first reaction? Is his first reaction to go back to God, to go back to the things that God knows? Just go fishing. And you see that he caught nothing. If you get out of the will of God, if you stumble, if you fall, the most important thing is to try and go straight back to the bother. Go straight back to the Lord Jesus Christ. Go back to church. Get back to your Bible reading. Get back to your prayer. Humble yourself and seek the Lord. We shouldn't just wallow in our sin, decide that it's over, I'm just going to go fishing. I guess I'm just going to go back to my old ways. I guess I'm just going to go be a loser. I guess I'm just going to go and catch nothing. That's what he's going to do. He was going to waste the rest of his life. He needed God's grace. It says in John 5, 30, it says, I can of my own self do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which has sent me. We're never going to accomplish anything in our life by accomplishing our own will. We have to seek His will. So when we stumble, when we backside, when we sin, when we commit a fault, we need to go back and say, I'm going to do Father's will. It's not by my own strength, it's not by my own power. Peter couldn't do anything by his own will. He could do nothing. It says in John 15, 5, I am the vine, you're the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. Jesus is saying, look, without me you're not going to accomplish anything. It's all going to be in vain, it's all vanity. You need to get back into the vine. And how do we get back into the vine? Through grace. You know, there's a lot of sins in the Bible that will cast you out of the church, like being a fornicator, being a junker, being extortioner, being a railer. There's sins in 1 Corinthians 5, there's other things in the Bible that you can do to get kicked out of. Believing heresy, teaching heresy. You can get kicked out of church, it's a very serious thing. But guess what, when you're out of the vine, when you're not seeking the Lord, you can do nothing. You're just going to waste your life. We need to seek God's grace in our life. We need to say, hey, you know what, I need to get back to the Lord Jesus Christ, I need to get back to the Bible, I need to get back to God's people, I need to seek the grace in my life that I need and His mercy. I'm not going to go back to church because I deserve it or because by my own will or by my own strength, no, by His grace. And we see that God's so gracious, He's always wanting to receive His children back into His house. You know, didn't He never get right? Lot. Lot never got right. I mean, he had grace, he was grace given unto him, he was spared, he went out of the city. I mean, what does he do? He goes and runs and hides in a cave. The first cave dweller in the Bible is Lot, and he just dies in the cave. I mean, we don't hear anything about him. He has an incestual relationship with his children and then dies in a cave like Osama Bin Laden. What a great way to go. Why? Because he didn't want to seek, you know, the Lord again. He didn't want to take that grace and say, hey, you know what, I need to seek back to the Lord. I need to humble myself. I need to seek more of His mercies. John chapter 3, go to Psalms 103, if you would, Psalms 103. In John 3, the Bible says, for everyone that doeth evil hated the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deed should be reproved. A lot of times when someone stumbles or struggles or sins, because of the shame of their sin, because of the fact that they don't want it to be exposed, what they did maybe, or the fact that they did something wrong, they're too afraid, so they just never get right. They never get back to church. They never read their Bible again. They never do anything for God. They never follow, you know, God's commandments anymore. They're just like, well, I've already sinned once, might as well just break them all. But we need to realize that God doesn't want that for our lives. He has so much grace. He has so much mercy. He wants you to just come back in the fold. He wants to seek that one sheep that's lost and find him and bring him back home. You know, when we, when we commit a sin, that first sin, I think sometimes it can change our heart a little bit. It starts to harden the heart a little bit. It makes it a little bit more difficult to want to go to church, to read your Bible. When you're right with God, I mean, it's just, it's a lot easier to get on your knees and pray and be excited for the things of God and sing praises, but maybe if you backslide a little bit or maybe if you commit a sin or you're struggling or you're doing something wrong, it's a little bit harder. And I think that's just something we should realize our hearts may be getting a little harder. It's just the beginning stages. It's not necessarily like you're a wicked person or something, but I'm just saying just there's something changing place in your heart is starting to draw you away from the Lord a little bit. And we need to realize that symptom and say, I don't want to get to the place where my heart is so hardened that I would never come to church again. I would never want to pray. I would never want to read the Bible. But we see great men, men that even love the Lord after a while, they get to a point where their heart is so hardened, they won't seek God anymore. They won't do his commandments. They won't follow him anymore. It's so important as soon as you commit the one sin to go back to his grace, go back to his mercy, open your Bible, get underneath and pray, seek the Lord while he may be found. It's so important because you never know when your heart could get hardened to a point where you just don't even desire anymore. You don't even desire to want to serve God. We need to seek his grace and his mercy when we fall, when we struggle, when there's anything wrong. And again, maybe this doesn't apply to you today, but it will in the future. The Bible says that we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. The Bible says that we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God wants to cleanse us. He wants to purify us. He wants us to be in his good graces. Look at Psalms 103 verse 1. I'm going to read a lot here because I think this Psalm is really, really good at this point. It says, Bless the Lord on my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord on my soul and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfied thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord executed righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. He made known his ways into Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever. He has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far have you removed our transgressions from us. Like as the father pitied his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. Man, this psalm, I had to include all those verses because it's constantly talking about how merciful God is, how slow to anger, how God is gracious, how we should seek his mercy and his grace. The Bible says in verse 10, he hath not dealt with us after our sins. What a great verse. Saying, look, you didn't get what you deserved. You got mercy and grace, but you know what, that's a realization we should have towards God and just love him even more. Just saying, hey, I'm just getting so much grace and mercy from God, he's not dealing me after my sins. That's why I should go back to seek him. But you know what, those that don't fear him, meaning what, they think it's okay to just get out of church and just harden their hearts and not pray and not humble themselves, he's going to deal with them with their sins. I don't want that. I don't want that for anybody. I want us to realize, hey, God is merciful and gracious. We need to go back to the fold. We need to go back to him. We need to get our knees and humble ourselves. I have a lot more, but I'm going to get to my main point. Let's go to, go to Isaiah 55, if you would, I'm sorry, go to second chronicle seven. I'll just read for you. Isaiah 55, the Bible says, seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he abundantly pardoned. Now the Bible makes it clear that God, he's so gracious and merciful that he even bestows grace and mercy on the unsaved. Sometimes I'm out soul winning and I'm talking to a person and they're like, man, I just know that God just spared me and gave me grace. I was about to die and it's like I was saved and it's like an act of God and all these things. And I used to be like, at least people were like, you know, caught up in charismatic false doctrine and all this weird stuff, but I think sometimes it may be true because I'll read for you. It says in Matthew five verse 45 that you may be the children of your father, which is in heaven for he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. The Bible's saying God's merciful to everybody in some ways, in some ways we're all merciful. We have his mercy and grace and the fact that we're not just consumed as soon as we committed wicked sin. I mean, like in the old Testament, those that committed fornication were just killed. How many people would be alive in America today if fornication was just the death penalty? I mean, there's a lot of grace and mercy that God gives to all, all people, whether they're saved or unsaved, but we see that there's, you know, the recipe for grace. If you really want God's grace, the Bible makes it clear that we should be seeking him. We should be returning unto him and he will abundantly pardon. So in Second Chronicles chapter seven, look at verse 14. I think this is the recipe for grace. It says, if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. A very, very famous verse, but I want to extract from this thing three points that I think are the points of the recipe for grace. The first point is that we should humble ourselves and pray. The first step to getting right with God, the first step after stumbling or transgressing or committing sin is to just humble yourself and pray in the Lord. That's the first step. That's the step we need. Go to Second Chronicles six, Second Chronicles six. This is really important. I'm going to kind of drive in these three points for a minute. I'm not going to necessarily preach these three points, but I'm just going to drill the fact that these three points are emphasized in the Bible over and over and over and over and over. You're in Second Chronicles chapter six. I want you to read verse twenty-six. I'm not going to read there. I'm going to read from somewhere else. I just want you to follow along. I'm going to read from First Kings eight thirty-five. Y'all are in verse twenty-six. When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against, if they pray toward this place and confess thy name and turn from their sin when thou afflictest them, then hear thou in heaven and forgive the sin of thy servants and of thy people Israel that thou teach them the good way wherein they should walk and give rain upon thy land, which thou has given to thy people for an inheritance. Now I did not read Second Chronicles six twenty-six there. I was reading First Kings eight thirty-five, but it says almost exactly the same thing. There's like a few words difference. Why? Because this is such an important point that God's driving in in so many parts of the Bible that we need to what? We need to humble ourselves. We need to pray. We need to seek him. It says in verse twenty-six if they pray towards this place, if they confess thy name, if they turn from their sin, then look at verse twenty-seven, then they'll hear from heaven and forgive the sin of thy servants. We see the recipe for God's grace. We see the recipe for his mercy is to to humble ourselves and praise the first step, but then also to seek it and to turn from our ways, right? Now obviously when it comes to grace and mercy, it is unmerited. It is undeserving. It's not something that you're earning or getting. But just like a parent with a child, when a child disobeys their parents and they do something wrong and you say, well, I'm going to, you know, spank you or I'm going to take away your car or I'm going to ground you or do whatever and they do that wrong thing. But then they come to the parent like, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have done it. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry. Now at that point, that kid has earned the punishment. They are deserving of the punishment and the parent decides, well, you know, they kind of inflicted themselves. They are very sorry. I think they're penitent. I'm just going to spare them in that punishment. That would be grace and mercy. The same thing of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we sin against God, we are worthy of the punishment. We are worthy of his righteous judgment upon our lives and our souls. We're worthy of death in some cases, if you committed a sin, worthy of death. But sometimes God bestows mercy and grace and says, well, this guy humbled himself. He's seeking me. He's turning from his wicked way. I'm going to spare him of that punishment. I'm going to spare him of that wrath. Go to Daniel chapter six, if you will, Daniel chapter six. I'm going to read for you from second Chronicles six. The Bible says in verse 36, if they say against thee for there is no man which sinneth not and thou be angry with them and deliver them over before their enemies and they carry them away captives in a land far off or near, yet if they could think themselves in the land where they are carried captive and turn and pray in thee in the land of their captivity saying, we have sinned, we have done amiss and have dealt wickedly, if they return to thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, whether they have carried them captives and pray toward their land which thou gave us unto their fathers and toward the city which thou has chosen and toward the house which I have built for thy name, then hear thou from the heavens, even from thy dwelling place, their prayer and their supplications and maintain their cause and forgive thy people which have sinned against thee. I mean I could read scores and scores of places where it says the same thing, that we should confess, we should humble ourselves, we should seek the Lord and turn from our wicked ways and that's just the recipe for God's forgiveness. That's the recipe for his grace. That's the recipe. I mean, it's just so clear, look at Daniel chapter 6 verse 3, and I set my face on the Lord God to seek my prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes and I prayed unto the Lord my God and made my confession and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him and to them that keep his commandments. Skip down to verse 17, now therefore our God, hear the prayer of thy servant and his supplications and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate for the Lord's sake. O my God, incline thine ear and hear, open thine eyes and behold our desolations and the city which is called by thy name. For we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousness, but for thy great mercies. He's saying, look, don't forgive us because we're righteous. Don't forgive us because we've done right. Don't forgive us because we turn from our ways. Forgive us because you're merciful. Forgive us for your name's sake. Don't forgive us because of your greatness, your graciousness, your mercies. He said, we shouldn't take this to an unhealthy extreme and say, well, we deserve it because we really turn from our ways because we really were righteous because we really did get it right. No, it's because of his grace. It's always because of his grace. We're always deserving that which we've earned through sin. Go to James chapter four, James chapter four. So we'll get to our first point. What does it mean to humble and pray? The Bible talks about this a lot of different times in the Bible. I quoted for you in First John where it said, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That can be applied to just getting saved. Just the fact that you're saying, hey, I'm a sinner. I deserve, you know, to go to hell. Will you please save me? Also, I think more appropriately extends to the Christian life. First John's written to the brethren. It's written to those that are saved and saying, look, when we sin, we need to confess our sins still. Obviously, we're not going to go and sacrifice a cow, we're not going to go sacrifice the lamb, we're not going to make the sin offering. So what does God want us to do? He wants us to confess our sins to him. He wants us to get on our knees and say, God, I'm sorry, God, I don't want to do it. Please don't harden my heart. Please let me seek you with all my heart. I want to follow your commandments. I want to do right. We see Paul struggle in the epistle saying, look, I want to do right, but sometimes I do that which I hate. Sometimes I do the wrong thing. Sometimes I struggle. There's a struggle when we have the flesh. There's a struggle with this world. With the sin out there. There's so much, it's overbearing. We don't see this church filled with thousands of people. Most people out there wanting to sin as much as they can. They're constantly wanting to sin. They hate God. They're blaspheming him. They're lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. From such withdraw thyself, the Bible says. But look, you know, sometimes it rubs off and causes us to stumble or struggle or have wicked thoughts. We ought not let our hearts get hardened through sin. We need to always come back and see God. We always need to humble ourselves and pray. Look at James chapter four verse four. He adulterous and adulteresses. Know ye not that friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever there for will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Therefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands ye sinners, and purify your hearts ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep. Let your laugh to be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. He's saying, look, sin is serious, sin is a big deal. You ought to get on the ground, you ought to mourn, and you ought to weep, and you ought to afflict yourself, and say, God I'm sorry, please give grace and mercy unto me, by your grace and mercy, not by my righteousness. We ought to afflict ourselves, and look what he said in verse six, but he giveth more grace. You don't just give grace one time and you're saved, no he wants to continue to give you more grace, more grace as you seek the Lord, as you get more sin in your life, as you're doing more things for God, as you're getting, you know, transforming your mind, renewing your mind with the things of God. He's constantly wanting to give you more grace and mercy so you can go out and do more works for him. We see that the Christian life is a constant battle, it's a constant fight. The Bible says, be perfect as your Father in heaven which is perfect. The Bible says that we should strive for perfection, we should strive to do that which is right, but inevitably we're human. We're going to fail, we're going to struggle, we're going to fall. And what we need to do is we need to humble ourselves and pray when that happens. Ask God not to harden our hearts, ask God not to, you know, cause us to not want to come to church. When we sin, when we stumble, when we struggle, when we don't do things that are right, it's like, oh, I just don't want to go to church. I just don't feel like sitting there and listening to the preacher, you know, scream and yell. I don't feel like reading my Bible, I don't feel like praying, I don't feel like singing praises. I mean, I think just prayer and singing praises are probably the first things to go. I mean, it's really hard to get up and just sing about how much you love God when you just committed some kind of trespass, you just did something wicked. But you know what, I think it's, it's like the most crucial time to do it, it's the most crucial time. As soon as you rip, hey, I need to get on my knees and pray, hey, I need to get right with God, hey, I need to start singing songs, I need to, you know, afflict myself, I need to mourn, it needs to be real too. I mean, James is not saying this isn't some fake, this isn't some show, obviously this isn't the prayer closet, this isn't some outward show, oh, I just feel so bad because I sinned. It's not for other people, it's a real emotion between you and God. Go to Matthew 6, if you will. The Bible says in 2 Peter 1, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ our Lord. The Bible says in 2 Peter 3, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to Him be glory both now and forever, amen. Every time God's merciful, it's just more glory and honor to Him. It's more just, look how gracious and loving our God is. So the second point we have, and I think this is the, this is the one truth that I just want us to take away, is when it talked about Ahab and it talked about how he was given mercy and grace from the Lord, it said, because he humbled himself before me. That's the first step, that's the most important step, it's just the most important thing that we just humble ourselves before God. Realize that we're not perfect, we're not special, there's not, oh, I'm just really got a strong will, I'm just really going to follow His commandments because I'm really great. No, you need God's grace, we all need God's grace, Moses needs God's grace, Paul needs God's grace. I think sometimes there's a temptation in a church that's striving for perfection for people to think, well, I got to just pretend like I'm perfect. I got to just think that I'm perfect and I could never, you know, admit to myself or to God that I need His grace. I could never admit that I really need to be humble, that I'm still, you know, just a sinner, that I still just need His love and His mercy and His compassion, just like every Christian did through the whole Bible. We need His grace just as much as the next guy, even great men of God needed God's grace and we ought to never get lifted up in ourselves and think, oh, I don't really need, you know, God's grace. I'm pretty righteous. I pretty much got it together, but we should always be seeking His grace. Matthew 6 verse 33 says, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be had done to you. Look, He's the righteous one. We go to Him to get righteousness, we go to Him to get grace, we go to Him to get mercy. Matthew 7 verse 7 says, ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, naught and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth and he that seeketh findeth and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Go to Psalms 119. So the question is though, when you do sin, when you do fall away from God, or maybe, you know, you're not just committing some wicked sin or something, but you're just not real zealous. Maybe you're just doing nothing. You know, the Bible says faith without works is dead. I mean, that's a true statement. If you're not going soul winning, if you're not reading your Bible, if you're not, you know, actually going on fulfilling the great commission, guess what? You're not right with God. You need God's grace to get back in His graces and start fulfilling His word. And if you're not seeking Him, you're not going to get His grace. You're not going to get His mercy. Are you seeking to please God? What is it that you're seeking for in this life? Are you seeking the pleasures of this world? Are you seeking to just have great relationships? Are you just seeking just the carnal relationship between husband and wife or brother and sister or mother or father or mother and child or father and child? Is that your driving force in this world? Is your driving force to get great riches? Is your driving force to be some great person? Is your driving force for your whole family to look at you and just to praise you? Is your driving force to just be somebody, to have a name? Or are you seeking to please God? If you're seeking to please God, I don't think you're going to struggle in this point. If you're always seeking, I just want to do whatever God wants me to do, you're going to realize I always fall short. So I always need to seek His grace. I always need to seek His mercy. I always need to seek His forgiveness. Why? Because I'm trying to please Him. I'm trying to follow His commandments. I'm trying to do that which is right. You know, there's a lot of people that are seeking God, but they're seeking Him in the wrong way. They think they're seeking God. They're trying to seek God. They want to seek God in their mind, but they're deceived. The Bible says in John 7 verse 34, ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And where I am, thither ye cannot come. So we see the Pharisees, they were seeking Him apparently. I mean, he says, hey, you're trying to find me, but you're not going to find me. Why? Because they weren't really trying to please God. The Bible says that the Israelites, they had a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. We need to seek God to get knowledge. We need to seek, how do you get the knowledge? It's from reading your Bible. It's from following His commandments. You say, well, how am I going to get His grace and His mercy? Is it just I have a great desire in my heart to serve Him? That's important. That's a really big thing. But guess what? It's got to be according to knowledge. Not everyone that's trying to seek the Lord is going to find His mercy and grace. It's those that are doing it with knowledge, those that are doing with understanding, those that are doing it according to the Bible, those that are following His commandments. It's not, I just really love the Lord and I'm just going to sing His praise every day. And I'm just so excited. That's not how you get His grace and mercy. It's not just being so excited and the care of Max, I'm going to get His grace and mercy. I love the Lord. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. You've been around. I've been around with you my whole life. It's just so annoying. I'm like these hyper spiritual people that are just, everything's hallelujah and amen and praise the Lord. That's just fake. It's just phony. Obviously they might be seeking the Lord, but not according to the knowledge. They're not doing it. They're not trying to follow the commandments. They're not actually reading their Bible and going to church and doing soul winning and preaching the gospel. They're just making a show of just, you know, but obviously I'm not downplaying us seeking the Lord or zeal or excitement. I think we should be excited. I'm excited to go out and preach the gospel. I'm excited to preach a sermon. I'm excited to be around Lord's people, even if it's just a few people or if it's hundreds of people. I don't, I just want to seek the Lord and I just want to please Him according to His commandments, to His word. Look at Psalms 119, look at verse 64, it says, the earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy. Teach me thy statutes. Thou has dealt well with thy servant, O Lord, according unto thy word. Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I have believed thy commandments. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I have kept thy word. Thou art good and doest good. Teach me thy statutes. So the first step in getting God's grace, getting His mercy, is humbling yourselves and praying. The second point, though, is you got to seek Him, but it's not just having a desire and having the excitement, having the appeal. You got to seek Him with knowledge. You got to seek Him according to His word. You got to seek Him to His commandments, to His statutes. The Bible says, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I have kept thy word. It's applying the word. That's how you seek the Lord. That's how you seek God. But, you know, you talk to some of these people and you start showing them what the Bible says. You start exposing them. Hey, I just love the Lord. I just want to follow His commandments. And it says, yeah, well, you're not supposed to commit a fornication. Well, you know, I'm not, I would still do that. But I still love the Lord. I still love Jesus. No, they don't. They're not. It's following His word. That's seeking the Lord. It's humbling yourself and saying, hey, it's not what I think that's right, it's what God thinks that's right. And I'm going to follow Him according to His knowledge, not my own knowledge, not what I think is right, but what He thinks is right. Go to, go to Hebrews 10, if you would, I'm going to read for you a couple other places. It says, for the Lord giveth wisdom out of His mouth, cometh knowledge and understanding. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 3, and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. The Bible says that all of His word is important. That we can be perfect, that we can be thoroughly furnished to do what? Good works. The point of following His commandments is that we can do good works, but when you're not seeking His grace and His mercy, you're never going to do the works. You're never going to do it without His grace, without His mercy, without seeking Him with knowledge. And those that are going to stumble and struggle and fall and decide, well, I can't, I'm not going to get back, I'm not going back to church, I'm not going to keep reading my Bible, I'm not going to keep praying, I'm not going to do these things, you're not going to do the works. If you want to do the works, we've got to be quick to humble, quick to be humble, quick to pray, quick to seek the Lord, quick to get back on the horse, quick to rise up and seek the Lord again and not get discouraged, not get destroyed because of our imperfections, but just realize, hey, there's more grace that God wants to give me. There's more mercy. God gets more of the glory. Why? Because I'm imperfect, because I'm weak, but through His grace, I can do it. Through Christ, I can do all things with strength with me. Christ is the one that strengthens us, through His grace and His mercy, not through my righteousness, not through my willpower, but just through His word, through me just deciding, I'm just going to get on His program, no matter what happens, I'm just going to get on the roller coaster and buckle up and just, let's go. Says in Psalms 22, it says, I will acquire thy name out of my brethren, and the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. We've got to be in church if we want to seek God. The Bible says in Matthew 16, I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Acts 20 and 28, it says, take heed therefore in yourselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. People today say they want to seek God, but they don't want to go to church. They want to attack church. They wanted to say, well, you don't have to go to church to serve God. No, I don't believe in church anymore. No, I don't think we should go to some institution and pay some guy some money and sit in some chairs. No, we're just going to have church in our house, and we're just going to read our Bible on our own. Jesus Christ paid for the church with his own blood, and you're going to tell me that we're not supposed to go to church? How ridiculous. Jesus Christ died on the cross, his blood was spilled for the church. He wants us to be in church. He wants us to go to church. If you want to say, hey, I'm seeking God, you better be in church. You better go to church where God's people are. Even when you sin, even when you transgress, even when you need more mercy and grace, get in church. Go to church. Always say, hey, I'm going to always be in church. Why? So your heart beat not hard. Because when you get under God's preaching, when you get around God's people, it just a lot of times it will help you. Hey, I need the help of myself. I need God's grace. I need God's mercy. But a church is an optional thing. It's like, well, maybe, I'm not sure, I don't know if I'm going to go. It's a dangerous road. Hebrews 10, verse 24, the Bible says, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking and assembling ourselves together as the man or some is, but exhorting one another. And so much the more as we see the day approaching, for if we willfully sin, after that we receive the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice or sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. What an interesting parallel verses there. He's saying, look, we should go to church and guess what? We shouldn't just willfully sin because there's going to be a strict punishment to those that willfully sin. Why? We need to be in church. Why? It'll help us not sin. It'll help us seek God's mercy. It'll help us seek God's grace. You need to go to church. That's how you seek the Lord, according to God's commandments, according to his knowledge. It's not getting out of church that's going to help you. Go to my last point, go to Luke 15. So we see we need to humble ourselves. Most important point, Ahab received mercy because he humbled himself. We need to humble ourselves, but then we also need to seek him. We need to not just realize that we've messed up and pray, but we need to then actively seek him. How? Go to church, read the Bible, pray, seek his word, let his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances and the preaching of God from God's men help guide you on the right path. It says in Jonah 3, he says, and God saw their works that they turn from their evil way and God repented of the evil that he said that he would do unto them and he did it not. So not only do you humble yourself and pray, not only do you go back to the word of God and seek what it says and say, hey, I want to follow his commandments. You got to turn from your sin to, you got to stop whatever it was that you're doing. You got to decide, hey, I don't want to do that anymore, so I'm going to actively try to turn from it. I'm going to get out of fornication, I'm going to stop railing, I'm going to stop being covetous, I'm going to stop being a drunkard, I'm going to stop committing all these sins, I'm going to stop doing all this wicked stuff so that God can give you the mercy and grace. He's not foolish, he's not, you know, a parent has the wisdom to realize when their kid isn't really turning from their wicked way, he's going to still punish them. He's going to say, no, you're still not cleaning your room, no, you're still not eating your dinner, no, you're still back talking, no, you're still just doing all these things against what I said. I'm going to give you the punishment. I'm going to keep giving you the punishment. But guess what? When you get it right, sometimes you get the mercy. That's the recipe. The recipe for grace and mercy is actually turning from your sins, actually deciding, I don't want to live like that anymore, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to turn from it. Look at Luke 15 verse 20, look at verse 11. And he said, a certain man had two sons and the young of them said to his father, father, give me the portion of goods that follow to me and divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with riotous living. Now a very famous story in the Bible, the parable of the two sons. The one son says, give me all my inheritance now and then he goes out and just wastes it. He goes and commits all kinds of lewdness and lasciviousness, just lives with the world. And he makes his living. That doesn't sound like a pleasant thing. Skip down to verse 18, it says, this is when he came to himself. He finally lost it all and that's what sin will do, it'll cause you to lose it all. It says in verse 18, I will rise and go to my father and will say unto him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. So what do we see? He's humbling himself and praying. Look at verse 19, and I'm no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. Look he's seeking to go back to his father. He's actually making a decision to go. He's not just getting humble. He's not just praying, he's seeking. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. It was me, and then we skip down to verse 32, it was me that we should make merry and be glad for this thy brother was dead and is alive again and was lost and is found. We can apply it from the text, not only did he do those things, but he also turned from his righteous living. He didn't want to do that anymore. He wanted to serve with his father. He wanted to be back in his father's house, and we see a bunch of grace and mercy bestowed onto the son. That is how God views his children. Even as much love and compassion and mercy as this father had, our father in heaven is even more mercy and grace. And we should look at these kind of stories. We should look through the whole Bible. We should realize God is a loving and merciful God. Sometimes in today's epidemic of false prophets, of false teachers, just constantly just God loves you, God is not mad at you, you know, you could never do anything wrong. Some people have the tendency to go to the other extreme and only preach on God's judgment and anger and fury. We need to realize that there is a lot of grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's long suffering. He's merciful. He wants us to go and seek him, but it's not this unconditional grace. It's not like the Calvinists, the unconditional election or something. It's not this tractor beam of grace. No, there's a recipe for grace. What is it? Humble yourself. Pray. Seek the Lord and turn from your evil ways. Now I'm not going to say that this is just a recipe of it'll always happen, but you'll always get it. We see David, he prayed and he sought the Lord for his son, for his boy that he had of Bathsheba. And he said, who can tell if God will turn to repent or who can tell if God will be merciful? And we see that he did lose the child. So obviously God is just and giving us our punishment and what we deserve and what we earned. But we see way more examples in the Bible when people did decide to humble themselves and pray and seek the Lord and turn from the wicked ways where he was merciful, where he was gracious, where he was not giving them the full punishment that they deserve. So we should never have this attitude of, well, I deserve it now or no, I've earned it. Only by his grace and mercy that we receive any forgiveness of any kind of sin. But if you want that forgiveness, if you want that grace, we need to follow those steps. And why did they have, you know, why did he get that grace? Because he humbled himself before the Lord. Let's close in prayer. Thank you Father so much for giving us your word and your statutes so that we could by knowledge seek you and serve you. I pray that everyone in this room, that as we continue to fight for the faith, as we continue to go on our journey in the Christian life, that as we may struggle or fall, that we realize that we should just try to get back up and just understand your grace and mercy is extended toward those that want to humble themselves, that want to seek you and that want to pray and that want to turn from their wicked way. And I pray that we would not let our hearts get hardened, but that we would just be quick to respond to your grace and mercy. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.