The grace of God is the central theme, understood as God's character of goodness, mercy, and truth, revealed most fully in Jesus Christ. The sermon explores this concept by examining Moses' bold request to see God's glory in Exodus 33-34, where God reveals himself as merciful and gracious, abundant in goodness and truth. This Old Testament revelation is then connected to the New Testament, particularly John 1:14, where Jesus is described as being full of grace and truth, embodying God's character. The message concludes by emphasizing that this abundant grace, exemplified in Paul's conversion, is available to all who turn to Christ, offering salvation and transforming lives.
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In the summer of nineteen forty-four I was a very young man and with some of my brothers we made our way from the city of Vancouver over to Vancouver Island where my grandparents Robertson lived in a small town called Shamanus. We arrived there with great joy, we loved our grandparents and they said to us on our arrival, well there's going to be a Sunday school picnic this weekend. We're joining together with the other congregation in a neighboring town called Ladysmith, and we're all going over to Shell Beach for a day in the sunshine and a Sunday school picnic, so we were very happy.
We made our way across the bay and little boats and arrived at the beach, and there was lots of food and fun, and there was a beautiful young lady there that day, and that afternoon she was baptized in the sea. by one of the elders of the Church, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I didn't even know her name. I found out afterwards that her name was Grace MacLeod. Some years before, around nineteen thirty-seven, Mr. and Mrs. MacLeod took their daughter Grace and Sister Mary over to Scotland.
They traveled across Canada on the train. They made the trip across the Atlantic on the Duchess of Bedford. And on the wharf, when they arrived in Greenock, was Mr. Bain, the grandfather of Grace and Mary. He'd never seen his granddaughters. It had been some years since he'd seen his daughter, Mary MacLeod. And when they made their way onto the wharf, the first question that Mr. Bain asked of his daughter, Mary was, Where did Grace come from? It was no welcome. He wasn't talking anything about biology. He knew all about children and births, but he couldn't understand where the name Grace came from.
In all Scottish families in those years, you named your children after people in the family. Grace was the last of seven children. And in her family, there was a Margaret and a James and a John and a William. and a Mary and a George. You could find all of those names in the family tree, but there was no grace. And so Mr. Bain asked his daughter, Where did grace come from? And she answered her father, We just liked the name. And I've often wondered what she meant by that. Was it the sound of the word, the beautiful name, grace? Or was she thinking about its meaning?
And that's why she named her last child Grace. It is a beautiful sounding name. I took this young lady years ago to my home church for the first time in the city of Vancouver. You walked up some stairs onto a landing, opened the doors, and you found yourself on another landing. You walked up more stairs to the main auditorium. And when they opened the door, the congregation was heartily singing, Grace does a charming sound, harmonious through the ear. Well, it is a beautiful term. I'm not going to talk to you this week during the morning sessions about my wife Grace, but I do want to talk to you about the subject of grace, the meaning of the term and also its function when it comes to our Christian lives.
And I'd like you to take your Bibles and we'll turn to Titus chapter two. And we'll read just a few verses this morning from this chapter. Not that we're going to comment today very much on the portion, but beginning tomorrow and on till Friday each morning, I would like to go into the meaning of the subject of grace in this beautiful portion of Titus. Titus chapter two and verse eleven. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us.
that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. So Paul writes to his junior associate and he shares some very beautiful thoughts about the grace of God. The term grace in the New Testament is linked to a term in the Hebrew language, and in both Testaments, these terms take you right into the heart of God.
In the Old Testament, the word is translated in different ways, sometimes love, sometimes mercy, sometimes goodness. In the New Testament, grace and sometimes love. But both terms, however they are translated, again I emphasize they take you right into the character of God. I'd like to take you this morning back to the book of Exodus to find one of the very special places where this term is used. I never read about Moses. I never talk about Moses without having a sense of wonder, even of awe.
of this man and his boldness in the presence of God. In Exodus chapter thirty-two, you have the very sad story of the golden calf. This is outside of our theme this morning, but I would like to remind you that in that awful tragedy, Israel did not reject Jehovah. What they did was look for a different meeting place with Jehovah. Moses had always been the meeting place. God spoke to Moses. Moses spoke to the people. The people talked to Moses and Moses talked to God.
And one day Moses went up into Mount Sinai and he stayed a long time. And the people down in the valley began to wonder and then they worried and then they panicked. And they went to Aaron and they said, You'll have to make us a new meeting place. We don't know where this man is. Perhaps he's died up in the mountain. Perhaps he got lost and went down the wrong side and is in some wilderness far from us. We don't know where this man is who brought us up out of Egypt. So you must make us a substitute. And the substitute was a golden calf.
That is, They followed the pattern of the neighboring nations. And the idols were always the meeting place between the invisible deity and the people. The people came to the idol. They worshipped the idol and through the idol the deity and the deity through the idol made himself known to the people. It was the meeting place. And so Aaron gathered up pieces of gold from the people. He made a golden calf. And then he said to them, Now tomorrow we will meet and we will have a festival to Jehovah. They never left Jehovah. They were looking for another meeting place in which they could worship their God.
The truth of the story is that in doing that they brought God down and placed him on the level of all the other national gods in the towns and the villages and nations round about them. That was their sin against God. They failed to recognize that God is not one among many, but He is the only true living and transcendent God. They brought Him down, and they treated Him as those round about them treated their gods. And so God comes and he speaks to Moses and there's going to be a day of reckoning.
There's going to be great sorrow in the camp. And the result was in verse thirty-five of chapter thirty-two, the Lord plagued the people because they made the calf which Aaron made. It's very beautiful that in that setting you see something of the stature of this man, Moses. Most of you are very familiar with the story. And you read farther up in the chapter that Moses says to God, Now, if you will forgive their sin, that's what he wanted. And if not blot me, I pray you out of your book, which you have written. Here's a man who realizes if the people are going to disappear, the people that God has chosen, then there's no place for me.
and he puts himself forward, just take me right out of your plans, right out of your book. Of course, God would not do that, but he did tell Moses, those who have sinned, they will be judged, and God plagued the people. That's the background. Here is the people chosen by God, destined for a new country filled with prosperity and joy and new life and abundance. Something has gone wrong tragically. Moses is the leader. He's not really sure that he can go on with this task. Farther down, you'll find in chapter thirty-four, he refers to the people as a stiff-necked people.
And he knows alone, I cannot do this job. I cannot take them to the promised land. And so you begin to have a dialogue between Moses and God. Here's the boldness of this man. He's not meek. He doesn't stand away in the background. He comes boldly into the presence of God, and he pours out his heart in demands. He requests. He beseeches. He asks God for great things. And I think As you go down through chapter thirty-three, you reach one of the mountain peaks of the Old Testament.
Let's begin with verse twelve. And Moses said in chapter thirty-three in verse twelve, And Moses said unto the Lord, See, you say unto me, Bring up this people, and you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, I know you by name. and you have also found grace in my sight. Now, I must pause there. Here's a man, and he's basically saying there's a disadvantage here. You know me. You know me by my name. Name always bears the sense of character.
You know all about me. But I don't know you. I don't understand what you are like. I don't really know your character. And so in the following verse, you read these words, Now therefore I pray you, if I have found grace in your sight, show me now your way that I may know you. The beautiful font of a man who is aware that God fully understands him. And now he turns that right back to God. Now he says, I want to know you. I want you to teach me your ways so that I will know what you are like, what your character is, what your thoughts are.
And God answers Moses, perhaps with one of your favorite verses in the Bible, for you read in verse fourteen, and God said, My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest. How many times You've taken that verse, we've taken that verse, we've rested there, and we've been comforted by the fact that the presence of God is with us. Moses is not satisfying. He listens to the words of God, and then he answers in a form which is rather lacking, perhaps even in reverence, because he says, Well, if your presence doesn't go with us, don't take us one step from where we are.
Just leave us where we are. He can't imagine making one move forward without the presence of God. But it's not the presence of God that he is primarily interested in. The presence of God only takes on meaning when you know what God is like. when you know something of his character. Moses doesn't want magic. He doesn't want something to happen that he doesn't understand. This presence of God, he wants to move beyond that. He wants to understand and penetrate the heart of God. This is a bold man.
And as he speaks to God that way in verse fifteen, God answers, pardon me, down in verse And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also. You have spoken, for you have found grace in my sight, and I know you by name. It almost compounds the problem in the heart of Moses. For here a second time, God says, I know you. I know all about you. I know your character. And that's when this man takes us, I think, to one of the great peaks of the Old Testament. And in our King James language, it reads as follows, verse eighteen.
And Moses said, I beseech you, show me your glory. Now that is more than presence. That old word glory in the Hebrew comes from the thought of weight. And behind weight is character. And what this man is asking of God is not some great flash of light, not some brilliance that will appear, but he wants to understand the weight of God, the character of God. And he begs God, show me what you are like, what your character is like.
And God answers him graciously, and brings us to this beautiful revelation. You read in verse nineteen and God said, I will make all my goodness pass before you. I don't know how you understand the word goodness, but it must be understood in the sense of character. That's what this man asked for, insight into the character of God. Now God says, I'm going to let all my goodness, what I am, what I do, What I think, it's all going to pass before you. And then he adds as a confirmation, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you.
Name again is character. And God says, I'm going to proclaim, I'm going to reveal, I'm going to show you what my name is, what my character is. I would like to have been in the shoes of Moses. This is what he wanted. But then something is said. And it must have come as a shock, I would think, to Moses down in verse twenty. And God said, You cannot see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. There was no way that Moses could receive the full brilliance of the character of God. But I want to go back to that previous verse.
I will let all my goodness pass before you. This is not a contradiction. What you have here is that he is going to be given an authentic revelation of the character of God as he can bear it as a man in our world. He could not possibly, as a human being, in his present situation, receive the full brilliance of that character. But what he receives is not partial. It is an authentic display of God's character. But he cannot see his face. Again, you might wonder why face is mentioned.
God never, pardon me, Moses never asked to see the face of God. He did not say, I beseech you, show me your face. He has to see His glory, but it refers to character and face. It's often used as the place where character is revealed and reflected. God says, you cannot see my face. No one could see that full brilliance of God's character and survive in this world right now. But God says a very beautiful thing to him in the following verse, verse twenty-two, and it shall come to pass while my glory passes by that I will put you in a cleft of the rock and will cover you with my hand while I pass by and I will take away my hand and you shall see my back parts but my face shall not be seen this is very symbolic language I don't know in the following chapter that we're going to look at briefly There is no detailed description of that promise.
You don't find Moses going somewhere and putting himself in the cleft of a rock and God putting his hand over him. But this is the promise. And the promise seems to be the full brilliance you cannot see, but you will receive an authentic look into the heart of God. And it comes in verse six of chapter thirty-four. We should read verse five. And the Lord descended in a cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. I have often thought of that. Notice, apart from the cloud, there is no other visible manifestation.
There is no smoking mountain, no lightning, no thunder, no earthquake. God comes surrounded by glory, the cloud, and He stands beside Moses. and he talks to him and with words he opens up his heart and he lets Moses look right in and listen as God speaks to Moses verse six and the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed the Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth."
And it goes on into verse seven, but the essence of the message is this, abundant in goodness and truth. God appeared in different ways to different men in the Old Testament, but this is the only revelation of God given to a man which is picked up and repeated again in the historical books, in the Psalms, and even in the prophets. This is one of the high marks of the Old Testament when God's heart is open. And I say, in essence, the message is given. I am abundant.
I am filled with goodness and truth. Now, that's the word goodness. That special Hebrew word, Shafed. There's no word in English, there's no word in Spanish that can pick up all the meaning of that wonderful word. It means love, mercy, tenderness, care. It springs from God's word, his commitment, his pledge. That is, it's not just a vain thing, but the Word of God stands behind this Word. And then because of that, The term is filled with thoughts of loyalty, constancy, devotion, fidelity.
All of those thoughts are in this word. This is the heart of God. This is the expression of what God is. He is good. He is filled with love and mercy. And tied to that, abundant in goodness and truth, is the second word. which I would suggest to you should not be taken in the sense of faithfulness, not here, but in the sense of reality. This is true love. This is real love. This is the character of God, and God is abundant in that authentic, true, real love, mercy, And then when you come to the New Testament, you'll find in John's Gospel that the phrase is picked up again, now referring to the Lord Jesus.
It is a beautiful portion. Some of you may remember in your readings in the past that William Kelly said of the prologue to John's Gospel, John is the master in taking the great mysteries that are before us and setting them out in words that children can read. and in a basic sense even understand in the beginning, was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. Apart from beginning, they're all very short, easily pronounced and understood words. And yet in those simple words is the great mystery of how God came down into our world.
For in verse fourteen of John one, John writes, And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. Remember glory again, character. And then it's defined at the very end of the verse, full of grace and truth. Now that's the phrase from Exodus chapter thirty-four. Now it is linked to Jesus Christ. Verse seventeen, Paul is speaking about our Savior. He calls him the Word who is God. And that Word became flesh.
He dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the Father. That character that belongs to God, it comes and it shines through Jesus Christ. And John says, full. Exodus, abundant. Here, full of grace. That's the counterpart to goodness. love and mercy in the Old Testament and truth. And in the Lord Jesus, that character has been displayed. In verse sixteen of John one, you read, and of his fullness. Now that goes back to verse fourteen. That's the character of God.
That's the grace, the love, the mercy of God. And of his fullness we have all received in grace for grace. That is, it is because of who God is, He can come to you and He meets your need today, and you are overcome by His grace, His love and His kindness. But then next week there is a larger problem, and God comes back and He meets you again in grace and love and mercy, grace by grace, grace after grace, in the sense Each grace is greater than the previous grace.
This is the character of God that flows out towards those that He loves. And it's so different from the Old Testament. That's the message that you find in verse seventeen, for the law was given by Moses. Now, there's a film today being shown in your area called Shadowland. Those of you who have read many of C.S. Lewis's books, have probably seen the film. It deals with that time in his life when this man met a woman and fell in love and lived with her for a number of years and then she died of cancer. And the film is called Shadowland.
You sometimes think that in a sense is the good name for the Old Testament. For the Old Testament is the book of shadows and of types and of illustrations. It's all summarized by the word law. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth. Here we're back in Exodus thirty-four and verse fourteen of John one. Grace and truth. It comes in Jesus Christ, for he comes into the world and he is the expression of God. We went to Ireland, the Republic of Ireland two years ago.
and Grace and I had a delightful two weeks there before beginning meetings in England and Scotland. And on that tour that we made of the Republic of Ireland, we met the widow of Mr. Isaac Bashevna's singer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in nineteen seventy-nine. If you've never read any of his books, you might enjoy some of them for an insight into the Jewish communities between the two world wars in Europe. He only wrote in Yiddish. All the works we have by that man today in English have been translated. His father was a poor rabbi, and he has one book called In My Father's Court.
This poor rabbi received every day people coming into his home with problems, and the little boy listened and learned a great deal. He shares it in his books. This is the man he had died just the year before we made the tour of Ireland, and his widow, now eighty-five, was one of our companions, a delightful lady. And one day she stood right in front of me and looked me in the eye, and she said, Mr. Cochrane, do you believe in God? Not many people asked me a question quite as directly as that. And I looked at Mrs. Singer, and I said, Yes, Mrs. Singer, I believe in God. Well, she said, my husband believed in God, but I find it very difficult.
I knew why she found it difficult because she's a survivor of the Holocaust and lost all of her family. When I read his books, I found a man who could not leave this belief in God. Sometimes he wants to run away from the thought, but he cannot leave God. He knows there is a God, but He sometimes rages against God because He does not understand Him. He's a man like so many others who are still in shadowland. You can only really know God today when you come face to face with Jesus Christ, and there you see the one who is full of grace and truth.
That is grace which is real and authentic, that insight into the character of God. That's what Paul is going to talk about in Titus chapter two, the grace of God. What God is, what he thinks, what he does, the grace of God which brings salvation has appeared. And Paul says to all men, We'll talk about that tomorrow, but as we close our service this morning, let me give you Paul's personal testimony. And as we read it in First Timothy chapter one, perhaps it will bring to mind in your life the moment when the grace of God first touched you.
Have you lost the wonder of that moment? Here is Paul writing from jail to his son in the faith, Timothy. And he says in verse fourteen of chapter one of Timothy, first Timothy, and the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. I would suggest to you there's something missing in that translation because there's no object to the exceeding abundant grace of our Lord. But the object must be understood.
You'll find it in the previous verses. Paul's talking about himself. So what that verse really means, he's writing and saying, And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant towards me. That's why in other translations you have words like this, The grace of our Lord was lavished upon me. or the grace of our Lord was poured out on me in abundance. Paul is thinking of the character of God that reached out and touched him in the person of the Lord Jesus. And in the previous verse, he talks about what he was like.
Verse twelve, and I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who hath enabled me For that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious. But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. He abused the Lord. He persecuted the Lord. He was outraged against Jesus. Here is enemy number one in the Jewish community of two thousand years ago.
But he says, The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant toward me. It was lavished on me. It was poured out on me abundantly. This is the grace of God that has reached out and touched Paul, and it has touched all of us. and we should never lose the wonder of that grace. Just to go back as we close now our service, remember what you were like before conversion, before you knew the Lord Jesus, and then that moment when God, because of His character, what He is like, love, mercy, grace, tenderness, backed up by his commitment, his pledge, his word, which means he will be loyal, devoted, faithful to the end.
He reached out in grace, and the grace of our Lord touched you, and it touched me in exceeding abundance. It was lavished on us. This is the warmth and the tenderness of the heart of God. So we're going to move. tomorrow and on through to Friday in the morning sessions into that grace of God, its meaning and its function in our lives. Let's close our session now by singing a hymn, hymn number five hundred and fourteen. It's one of the old hymns, and I'm not sure how often we sing it, Jesus, Lover of My Soul.
Let me to thy bosom fly while the near waters roll, while the tempest still is high. We're going to sing the last two verses as we remain seated. And verse three reads, Thou, O Christ, art all I want, more than all in thee I find, raised the fallen