Hope Comes By Grace | Dr. Jerry Mason

And the church said, Amen, stand with me tonight.

If you're not standing, let's read the word of the Lord

together, the book of First Corinthians 15 and 10.

While you are preparing that tonight, give honor to our

pastor and our Bishop, youth pastor, Next Gen. directors

courage hasn't officially clicked over that date yet, but

we went ahead and celebrated it because the season gets so busy.

December's a bit of a tough month, but it's coming soon.

I will celebrate again on December 4th.

Make no make no mention about it.

It will happen, but so very happy and and honored to have

her as my life's partner tonight. 1st Corinthians 15 and

10. My isn't the presence of the

Lord in this house tonight and we are so, so, so grateful for

that. The the Bible says, 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

a few moments tonight. I probably won't hold you long,

but I'll hold you hopefully just right.

I want to minister on this thought tonight with God's help.

Hope comes by grace. Hope comes by grace.

Could you lift your hands one more time?

We're we're a praising God group of people.

Let's lift our hands and ask him to help us tonight.

Mighty God, we're we're so grateful for your presence.

We're grateful for who you are in our lives.

And we ask you to touch and anoint tonight this word of God

as we speak it by faith in the name of Jesus, help me to

minister with wisdom and clarity tonight, and we'll give you the

praise and glory and honor for it in the name of the Lord

Jesus. And the church said, Amen.

You may be seated. May God bless you.

That is a courtesy, not a command.

Hope comes by grace. I believe it's important this

evening to start by defining what the word grace means,

because it's a word that can be overused in some context, and as

a result we can forget just exactly how powerful and real it

really is. Webster's defines grace as

unconstrained and undeserved. Divine favor or goodwill?

God's loving mercy displayed to a man for the salvation of his

soul. I've often heard the word grace

defined as not getting what you deserve because there's a

penalty that I deserve. I could echo the words of the

Apostle Paul this evening and say, O wretched man, that I am

nothing good in me. Some people wanted to say Amen

really loud to that, and you restrained yourself.

I appreciate that. Nothing good in me.

Nothing good in in the physical nature of of me, my, my

thoughts, my actions, my attitude.

Nothing really good naturally about it.

So there's a penalty that I deserve for the things that I

have done, the things that I have thought, the things that I

wish I had done. There's a penalty for that.

Grace is what has positioned me in this life to not have to

suffer that penalty. I deserve something, but grace

says not happening. Love that reaches up is

adoration. Love that reaches the cross is

affection, but love that reaches down is grace.

Grace will get in the dirt and see divine purification take

place just like Jesus did with the woman at the well.

Many Christians are shocked by sin.

We should all be staggered by the power of God's grace and the

the the reality that he he gives us.

He's not giving us a free pass, but He's giving us a repentant

pass that when we obey his word that He will not hold us

accountable for those things that we have done.

To more fully understand the grace of God, we must also

attempt to understand His compassions because they are

extended to us as well. And we we read in the book of

Lamentations chapter 3 and verse 22 that it is of the Lord's

Lamentations 3 · chapter mention

mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail

not. They are new every every every

morning. When I wake up at 5:00 tomorrow,

Brother Malone, after I've hit the snooze a couple of times at

5:00 tomorrow morning and I my feet hit the floor, I can thank

God because the 24 hour cycle renewal of His compassions has

just kicked in every morning they are new.

The Bible says great is thy faithfulness in the writing of

lamentations. Jeremiah said the Lords

compassions fell not he says that the Lords compassions are

new every morning. Jeremiah qualified, was

qualified to speak these words. If we look at the list of

Jeremiah's calamities in the book of Lamentations, and I'll

take you through a list of them as efficiently as I can.

But in verse 1, he felt the rod of wrath.

In verse two, he was led Into Darkness.

Verse three, he felt that the Lord's hand was turned.

He said he had been committed. Verse 7, he'd been hedged about.

Verse eight, that his prayers had been shut out.

In verse nine that his paths had been made crooked.

In verse 10 that a lion and a bear was after him.

Verse 11, that he had been desolate.

Verse 12, that he had been made the mark for the archer's arrow.

Verse 13, that he had arrows enter his reigns.

Verse 14 that he was ridiculed and became a mock of the people.

Verse 15 that he had been filled with bitterness.

Verse 16 that his teeth had been busted out with stones.

Verse 17, that he had forgot about prosperity.

Verse 18 that his strength and his hope were both gone.

Yet he continues to take the pen to paper and write and leads us

to Lamentations 3 and 21 and says this I recall to my mind,

therefore I have hope. What did he recall?

He recalled the calamities of verses one through 20.

The list, the exhaustive list of terrible things that he had

encountered and endured in his life.

That's what he was recalling. And it was the memory of those

things that was causing him to recollect the very fact that

because of those things, he still had hope.

How could he do this? It sounds quite strange because

in our modern day list of trials and tribulations that we often

go through, it is not the first thing that we think of whenever

we have problems. It's not the first thing that we

think of whenever we have situations that are remotely

similar to what Jeremiah went through.

Now, I will tell you that I've not had my teeth busted out with

stones. I've not been publicly mocked

and ridiculed. Maybe behind my back, I don't

know. But to my face, I've not been

publicly ridiculed. I've not been made a mockery of

people. I've not had my bones broken.

I've not been LED into the wilderness.

I've not felt the rod of His wrath.

I've not felt. I have felt occasionally like my

prayers were not getting anywhere, but I don't think I've

officially ever had my prayers shut out.

I've never had a lion and a bear.

If they did, but it hasn't happened.

I've not been in a situation that I can fully say with

honesty that I am desolate. I have went through things in

this life that I thought were pretty bad.

I have went through things in this life that I, I thought

actually were pretty horrible. They were pretty painful.

They were bothersome. They were troublesome.

And I will tell you tonight it with with honesty and clarity

that the first thought of my mind each morning when I would

wake up going through that season in that trial was not

that. Those things gave me hope,

right? Come on, that wasn't what I was

thinking, but Jeremiah was thinking that because of what we

find in the following verses of Scripture tonight in

Lamentations 3 and 22, he says it is of the Lord's mercies that

we are not consumed. All of these horrible things,

all of these, these, these, these, these horrific things

that are happening in my life now serve as a reminder because

it's all about perspective today that I'm still here.

I'm not consumed in spite of these problems because God's

compassions, the Lords compassions, fail not the

apostle Paul said, if only I had hope in this life, I would be of

all men, most miserable. We have more than hope today.

Our hope is not just in this life.

The reason why we are living this life, the reason why I have

this lifestyle that I live, living for God, is so that I

don't have just hope in this life, so that my hope doesn't

expire at the grave. I have hope today that goes

beyond tomorrow. You have hope in this house

today that goes beyond tomorrow. His mercy, His compassion, His

grace are a demonstration of the love and the power of Almighty

God. Somebody shout a man, the very

same God tonight that was before the foundation of the world.

The very same God who was the Word made flesh.

The very same God who walked among men who was 100% God and

100% man. But that was the Ancient of

days. The very same God in flesh who

said before Abraham was. I am the very same God tonight

who was and is and is to come. The Almighty sees us in full

transparency. He knows every failure.

He knows every thought. He knows every time you trip and

fall. He has a clear understanding of

how wretched we can be, yet He longs to be in relationship with

us. The Apostle Paul wrote to the

Church of Ephesus in Ephesians 2 and 8 for bike race.

Are you saved through faith? Bike race that not of

yourselves? That's a clear indicator tonight

in the language that there's not a single thing that I can do to

earn it. I can't come before God in some

formula and say if I do this and if I do that, and if I give to

the poor and if I'm nice and if I pay my offerings and if I pay

my tithe, all good things, all biblical things, but those are

not, not earnings that we earn some type of goodness with God

because wretchedness of sin is so bad.

There isn't a single thing that we can do to earn God's grace.

So God had, if he was going because of his love and if he

was going to have people that was going to be saved, He had to

give compassion to us through grace so strongly that it would

overcome the fact that there's nothing we can do to make it

better. And I don't know why tonight.

I don't have a clue why. I really don't.

I don't understand why He loves us the way that he does.

I really don't. But I'm so thankful, I'm so

thankful today that He loves us because it is true.

In Ephesians 2 and 8, that verse closes with it is the gift of

God. I was a dead man walking

destined for failure, destined for eternal, eternal punishment.

But God's grace because of his mercy, I experience his

compassions. It is not because of my

perfection. Let me let me tell you something

tonight as as this service has been great and, and, and God's

presence has been here and I, I believe my observation tonight.

You have felt that and you have witnessed to that, but that

alone is not going to stop you from making a mistake tomorrow.

It's not going to stop you from making a mistake six months from

now. And after you've served God for

45 years, it's possible. I meant from now.

You're still going to be making mistakes.

And I'm, I'm not writing you a blank check to send, I'm just

telling you in your humanity, you are not going to get so

close to God that you don't make mistakes.

You are going to mature where you're not making the same

mistakes over and over and over and over and over again.

That does happen. And you may not think it can

happen, but it you, you just hold on and have faith it does

happen because I don't struggle with the same things I used to

struggle with. To me is you've made a mistake.

You tripped over yourself, you didn't get it right.

Just stop now. It sounds so simple and it

honestly sounds so stupid that in 2024 that that's still his

trick, but it must still be effective because he still uses

it. Now I've come to declare tonight

that it is his grace. I didn't earn it and I, I

admittedly do not deserve it, but His grace is so, so powerful

because of that. Not just one time, not just a

single event, but every single day.

And this opens the door for grace to operate in my life, in

your life. We need the grace of God to

bring hope into our lives. We need it in our relationships,

our individual lives, in our homes.

We need it in our marriages. We need it with our children.

We need it in our with our parents and in our schools and

on our jobs and our companies. We need it in our church.

You know, we will often extend grace to people we don't know

faster than people that we do know.

That wasn't in my notes, so I won't charge you for that one.

We we need to be a compassionate people.

We don't need to be like the the man in the Bible that was

forgiven his debts and turned around and charged those that

were indebted to him without mercy.

Because the apostle Paul said it right when he gave a whole list

of things that people did and sins that he had experienced in

his past. And he said, such were some of

you. Hope is delivered by grace

because we first received grace and then hope comes in after

hope comes by grace there. There is a lot of hopelessness

in this world today. And I believe that the

foundation of that hopelessness is founded in a lack of grace

and a lack of compassion. Hope is delivered by grace.

There are people that have lost their hope.

There are people who believe they've done too much and

they've gone too far from God for him to love them.

And if they'll, if they'll finally accept the fact that

he'll love them, then the next trick of the enemy is to tell

them, well, God might love you, but he's done using you because

you did too much. They don't see a hope of

effectiveness in their life. I've come to tell somebody

tonight, that's wrong. That's a lie of the enemy.

God's grace covers all sin, not just one sin.

God's grace covers one day of my past, but it also covers one

year, one decade, one lifetime of wrong.

God is able to cover that with His blood.

God is able to say, I don't even remember the mistake you made.

You might think it's bad, but I don't remember it.

So why don't you just come on and sit at the table for a while

and allow me to use you? Because if the Apostle Paul,

come on, think about it, I know we some of some of maybe not

everybody, because he was blunt and kind of in your face and up

in your grill. You're going to heaven, you're

going to hell. He, he, he told it in a way that

is not 2024, correct. But that's ministry Apostle.

Let's not forget who he was. He was the man that was so

wrapped up in, I'll call it ferrisology.

But this Pharisee spirit of how things are supposed to be and

these Jesus people don't don't adhere to that.

Just go ahead and kill him. Let's not forget that and I'm

not I'm not saying this in a way that I want you to not take his

teachings. I'm trying to prove a point

tonight that who he was and what we read in the word of God and

who he was before was two different people, not just the

name change. That was the reason he changed

his name is because the church wouldn't accept it.

Now this is Mason One O 1. But I I think it's a tragedy

that Saul had to change his name to Paul to be accepted by the

church. It's a tragedy because such were

some of you. Well, I never killed anybody.

You dogged the reputation real good.

You can kill them without sticking them with a knife.

He changed his name because the church wouldn't accept him

because he had done so much. But the the the last laugh was

Paul's. Because when he committed to

Christ, when he accepted that his hope came by grace, when he

realized there was, there was no, no law, there was no, there

was no statute, there was no conformity that he could

exercise that would make him good enough.

And he realized that he needed the love of Jesus in his life.

Grace was the change maker and I believe tonight and I believe

that this, the foundation of my statement that I'm about to make

is in the word of God. I believe that when Paul started

ministering on behalf of God and the church, I believe God had

been true to his voice, true to his word, and he didn't remember

who Saul was because we're told, we're told that in forgiveness

he buries our sins in the sea of forgetfulness.

God, it's not that God has a memory lapse.

It's not that God's getting old and he's having a hard time

remembering like some of us might be getting.

It's, it's not that God's having difficulties and he's losing his

authenticity or his power. God's making a conscious choice

to say what you did yesterday in your yester life no longer

matters. I'm not worried about it

anymore. I have.

I have covered you by my grave. Therefore I have hope.

Oh, could you lift your hands and magnify Jesus together?

I have hope tonight, he says. This, I recall to my mind,

therefore, because of all of these problems in all of this

history, I have hope how that applies to you tonight.

This is whatever your past is. This is whatever your

circumstances. Yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but

you, you, you, you don't, you don't.

You don't know what I where I was, and you don't know where

I've been and you don't know what I've done.

And, and I'm not trying to be disrespectful tonight.

I don't need to because His word is just as good without me

knowing the details as it is with me knowing the details.

And that is just a simple fact tonight that once you are blood

bought, once you are blood covered, once you have have the

blood applied to your life and over the past sins that you had

and you commit to a a life in Him, there is nothing, nothing,

nothing that can separate you from the love of God.

We haunt our self over our past. God's not the author of that.

Therefore I have hope because of this.

We don't have to surrender to hopelessness because of this.

Somebody shout it with me tonight.

I have hope. I have hope.

Come on, say it like you mean it.

I have hope because people are hopeless.

They have a fear of the future. Matthew 634 says take therefore

no thought for the Morrow, for the Morrow shall take thought

for the things of itself. People who don't have hope are

haunted by regrets. First, John 1 and 9 says if we

confess our sins, this is the formula back to hope.

He is watch this now faithful and just to forgive us our sins

and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

People who don't have hope feel shame from their past, but

second Corinthians 517 says therefore, if any man be in

Christ, he is a new creature. Come on, you know it, Apostolic,

All things are passed away and behold, all things are become

new yesterday doesn't matter. The things you did doesn't

matter as long as you've put them under the blood, as long as

you've confessed them to God. He is faithful, He is just.

He will forgive and He will make you a new creature in Him.

I've come to give somebody hope tonight.

I've come to preach hope tonight because we need hope in a Dark

World. We need hope and the darker the

world gets, the light or the bright of Christ and the church

needs to shine. We need to be the hope of life

for this community and for this world.

Hope because grace. Grace is not the agent that

saves you. Grace doesn't save his blood's.

What saves grace doesn't save. Grace is the passageway by which

the blood flows. When the when the blood covering

is applied to my life, grace is the conduit that allows that

blood to flow and cover over my life.

Because the Bible says for by grace are you saved?

Oh Hallelujah, hope, hope comes by grace.

We are often, we are often our own limitations.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. We are often our biggest

limitation. You want to teach Sunday school

class? I don't think I could do that.

You want to sing in the praise team?

I don't think I could do that. Play musical?

No, I don't think I could do that.

You want to be an usher? I'm not sure I could do that.

We are often our biggest. Those are just examples, but we

are often often our biggest limitation.

It's not God that's telling us we can't do certain things

because he sees you as he saw the apostle Paul, not as he saw

Saul. That's right.

Amen. Amen.

Fleas. I don't want to make anybody

itch here. Stay with fleas Have one of the

highest vertical leaps of any living insect based on their

size. A flea has a vertical jump that

is 60 times it's height, 60. I know a couple football teams

that could use that. Right now, if you capture a

flea, put it in a jar, and put a lid on the jar, that flea still

has the ability to jump 60 times it's height, but it has a

limitation. So it'll start jumping inside

the jar and it jumps in the jar because it's jump is 60 times

its height and the size of the common jar would be smaller than

that with the lid on. The flea is hitting the lid.

It's jumping. I don't know that that's the

sound it makes, but that's my effects.

And it will hit its head or its body, whatever, over and over

and over and over again so much that it will finally get tired

of hitting itself on the lid. And it will start making

adjustments to its jump to jump to the height of its limitation.

So then the flea reduces his jump just high enough that he

almost touches the lid, but he doesn't hit it all in an effort

to not get knocked back down again.

Some people have been knocked down so many times they've

stopped trying to reach up. Some of us have adjusted our

reach in life to a safety zone that is limited, and it's based

on a limitation, a limitation that we are putting on

ourselves. It's not about what we can do,

it's about us forgetting what God can do.

Because God never put a lid on you.

God's not the one capping your limitation.

We do that ourselves. Watch this now, because here's

Here's the danger of hopelessness.

Hopelessness. Hopeless people duplicate

hopelessness If those fleas in the jar have baby fleas while

they're in the jar. The baby fleas are born with the

same vertical ability to jump 60 times their height.

But because they're in an environment where they only see

other fleas jumping to the limitation of the lid, they

duplicate the behavior they see, and they never fulfill their

fullest physical potential to jump beyond the lid.

We have hope, We have hope. You have hope, but the hope can

be rendered useless if we don't effectively trust God and accept

the hope that He has given us by His grace.

Grace that is given to us and our musicians can come tonight.

Grace that is given to us. It's not simply is worth it

today in tonight, but by grace. Are you saved?

I've come to challenge somebody tonight to take the lid off of

your limitations. I've come to challenge someone

tonight in the Lord to stop telling God what you can't do

whenever God's trying to tell you what you can do.

And if you're under the guidance of your pastor, and if you're

under the approval of your pastor, take the lid off.

Well, it's scary. Of course it is.

I'll tell you what I tell people that work for me whenever it

comes to public speaking. We work in a big company, and

for some of us, it requires getting up and talking in front

of a very large group of people. You never get comfortable doing

something that you don't do. It's normal to be nervous.

I've got a group of students that I'm teaching on Monday

nights and tomorrow night they have to give a presentation.

It's the last night of the class and they have to give a

presentation. They only have to give a

presentation. Minimum requirement is 6

minutes. Minimum requirement maximum is

8. I've learned the hard way to set

a maximum. Some people like their

opportunity. Minimum requirement is 6

minutes. Last week class I opened the

class stated in front of them. I said anybody have any

questions with next week is presentation week?

Anybody have any questions? And everybody's hand went up.

Oh boy, all of them but one. He's the one.

I'm glad that I've set a limit on all of them.

We're saying the same thing. I don't know if I can last 6

minutes. I don't have that much to say.

I'm too nervous. So I started coaching them

through some things that aren't really related to what we're

talking about tonight, but trying to help them ease their

nerves and and figure out how to do what they needed to do for

just 6 minutes. But I told them I realized this

may be out of your comfort zone and it may be something that

your current job doesn't require you to do on a daily basis.

I respect that, I really do. But it's OK to be nervous

because you never get good at anything that you don't ever do.

Every master was once an amateur, and that's OK.

But you never master something. You never get better at

something until you take the step to actually do it.

I had no preconceived intentions tonight of turning this into a

recruitment message, but I'm very sincere whenever I tell you

tonight I'm challenging you to take the lid off of your life.

There are some God callings in this house tonight that I

believe are remaining unfulfilled.

I felt that for years. I'm not telling you what they

are because I don't know the specifics, but I'm just telling

you what I feel prompted to tell you.

I believe there are some God callings in this house that have

gone for years and days and months unfulfilled because of

self-imposed limitation lids. I can't do this because I can't

do that because I can't do that. Because the Apostle Paul would

have never wrote 2/3 of the New Testament that we have and

appreciate and love today if he had never accepted the fact that

the church might not love me. People may not love me, but God

has called me. Hope comes by grace.

Grace, the gift of God. This altar is open tonight.

Would you just lift your hands? If you want to come, come.

If you want to kneel at your seat, please pray.

But let's take this opportunity right now to consecrate some

things to him. Let's seal this word in our

heart tonight because we live in a world of hopelessness and we

need to be the hope and the light of God for somebody.

And that may not happen if we've got a lid on our life.

We need to take the lid off tonight in Jesus name and allow

God to minister to us.