It is this thing called grace that sets Christianity apart from every religion and philosophy ever in all of time.

Grace is our secret weapon. Every born again believer needs to understand what the Bible teaches on this all-important subject.

Grace is more than a word. It's more than just a way of saying that God is nice or kind. It's more than another way of speaking of God's love. Grace is more than a good feeling.

Grace is more complicated than a football playbook, yet simple enough a child can understand. It's like peeking under the hood of a smoothly running Lamborghini. Once you see it, you're blown away. Once you see it, you want to know more.

Grace is the opposite of human performance. It is the opposite of you doing good works or of you being a good person so you can earn God's love in your life.

Which makes it even more tragic to know that over half of self-identified Christians today believe that being a "good person" or doing enough good deeds is what gets us into heaven.

Even among churchgoers, many assume God's approval must be earned—like a spiritual report card. But here's the problem: Scripture tells us something radically different.

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).

That is crystal clear that salvation by works and salvation by grace are opposites.

So to me it's tragic that surveys show:
52% of Christians think eternal life is earned through works.
60% of Christians believe other religions can lead to heaven, even without Jesus.

If that's correct, then why bother? Why share the gospel? Why go to the ends of the earth? Why suffer for Jesus? Why pray for lost people?

To me this says that the Christian church has a huge problem in clarifying the basic truths that Jesus taught, the apostles taught, and the church taught throughout the centuries, and that the Bible has taught all along.

It's a teaching issue, yes, but it's more than that.

This isn't just a theological debate—it's a heart issue. Deep down, many of us still wrestle with performance-based faith. We slip into thinking, "If I pray more, serve harder, or sin less, God will love me more. God will bless me more."

But grace flips that script. Grace says, "You're loved before you achieve. You're forgiven before you ask. Salvation isn't for winners—it's a gift for anybody."

God loves you equally on your bad days as on your good days because it's not your days that determine his love; it's his heart plus Christ's cross.

Let that truth sink in:
God's grace is not a reward for the worthy; it's a gift for the willing.

Not payment for your work, but a gift without work. Not the outcome of performance, but the outcome of faith. Not human effort in life, but the Savior's sacrifice in death.

To get grace wrong slams the door shut on salvation.

But it does something else too. To get grace wrong pulls the plug on any lasting sense of peace and rest in the human heart.

It could be that some — I'm not saying all, but some — of the stress, the anger, the hostility, the anxiety, the frustration, the fatigue, the depression, the obsession you feel is because your heart is on an unrelenting quest to rest itself in the love of God by means of the grace of God.

"Our hearts are restless until the find their rest in thee." St. Augustine (A.D. 354-430)

Our theme for the year is Resting in the Love of God.

Our case study is a love story in the Bible called the Book of Ruth.

My talk today is called: Why Rest Is Impossible

With that, I invite you to open your Bible to the Book of Ruth

This little book is a textbook on Grace.

When we're through, I guarantee that you are going to see the machinery of grace in ways you have never seen before.

Here's the opening paragraph:

Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died; so the woman survived her two sons and her husband" (Ruth 1:1-5).

Stand back and ask what this paragraph is about.

It is about the story of a woman named Naomi. Yes. But more than that, it is about tragedy.

A string of heartbreaks and tragedies assault Naomi. Just list the trials she faced:

Famine. Emigration to Moab. The death of her husband. Single motherhood with teenage boys (in a culture where that was extremely hard). Life as an alien in a foreign land. The death of her first son, who is newly married (and childless). The death of her second son, who is newly married (and childless).

In five short verses you have to ask, how much heartbreak can one person handle?

And notice, that as the writer has it so far, nobody is to blame.

So far the author hasn't given even the tiniest hint why Naomi suffered. If he wanted to blame Elimelek, or Naomi, or even God, he could have.

I disagree with the many reference books that blame them for going to Moab, ancient enemies of the Jews. The Bible is full of this kind of travel in time of famine. God is not punishing Naomi here. There is something deeper behind her sufferings.

The first readers of Ruth understood this deeper truth.

It's something that every child of God must come to grips with. It's the major premise of the Book.

So death happens, heartbreak happens, tragedy happens, sin happens... and as the author has it so far, God may NOT be the direct causative factor. Let's just leave it where the author leaves it: we live in a fallen world and are members of a fallen race.

I want to go to another Scripture so we can see the same thing. Because I want you to see how the Bible is written. How the Bible works.

This isn't just a pretty story. This is a literary masterpiece written by a master author, and designed to convey deep truth in story-form.

Here's the same truth, this time not in story form... but in teaching form.

 

Warning... we're about to go deep.