The sun and rain are given to the just and unjust. His goodness and mercy fills the earth. The Gospel goes and touches hearts and God is made known in His redemption. (Matthew 5:44-45; Acts 14:15-17)

Speaker(s): Thomas Schaller
Sermon 12198
11:00 AM on 11/14/2021

P. Schaller –

Okay. Good evening – morning! Happy Easter! Praise the Lord! Merry Christmas! Praise the Lord! Wow!
There are new folks here in the church, like you’re kind of new here in the last year or so. Just
raise your hand. I just want to recognize. Let’s see. Caleb and Faith, great. Yes. Good. God
bless you. So good to have you. Keep coming. Keep coming. We had a new brother here first
time at 9:00 and he had a great story. He’s been away from God and this past week he just had
some nightmares seeing his life destroyed and our message was about God’s goodness and
God’s grace and common grace. We’ll teach it today. And how good God is to all of us, the
wicked, the unbeliever, the evil man and the good man and then salvation and what it means. It
was awesome.

I talked to that brother with P. Gary Groeneweld after the service. We had a talk. He grew up in
a Christian home. I said you must have a praying mother or praying grandmother cause what
happened. He just came here. He’s needy. He’s just turning to God, you know, with all his heart.
It’s beautiful to see God’s work of grace. God will do it again. Will he do it again? He will do it
again. He will make a way when there is no way. There’s no way. There’s no way out. God will
make a way, won’t he? Remember, Noah. God shut the door but there was always a window
open up above with Noah’s ark. There was always a window open up above. There’s always
God to hear you and to answer you.

Caleb came from Tennessee and his grandfather – right? – his grandfather was a preacher and
Caleb is with us in Bible school and his wife, Faith. They’re precious. I’m thinking about a young
man like Caleb who has a grandfather in his background. My grandfather and the influence he
has in my life. It’s a good thing but it’s not enough. I need God. Amen. God is an ever present
help in time of need. My church will help me, but I need God. My grandfather can help me, but I
need God. My friend can help me, but I need God himself to deliver me, to encourage me, to fill
me and lead me. God can do it again like we sang in that song.

Now I’m going to introduce one of my best friends that I got in all the world, P. Eugene Davis.
Give him a hand! (announcements). Okay. I want to be tried by fire (from the song). Remember
that verse, – is it in Numbers where Amy Carmichael got a rhema from God. Do you know what
a rhema is? Rhema? It’s a Greek word. I’ll write it here. It’s a Greek word for “word.” But the
word “logos” is also Greek for word. This word is a word or a phrase that is living, from a living
voice. Jesus said, “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word – in the Greek it’s
“rhema” – that comes from the mouth of God.”

So when you read the Bible as you can sit down and read a chapter and then the Holy Spirit will
bring out something in that chapter that’s living. And live reading the Bible believing that some of
it will come off the page to your spirit. “My words they are spirit and life.” This is what you are
listening to today as you listen to me, but I’m only a voice. John the Baptist said I am the voice,
but he that comes after me was before me.

Christ was before John the Baptist but he comes after. I’m only a voice but what comes after me
is the Word, the living Word that will change your life. It’s a great way to live, so you are here to
hear the Word of God, the Bible speaks to your heart. When that starts to happen in your life
and you get words of life, then it’s a new life. It’s a new way of living. You are hungry for the
Word. This is what we call in our ministry “Word of God revival.” It’s when the congregation gets
excited about the Bible that is speaking to me personally. It’s a Word of God revival. How long
does it last? It goes on and on. It doesn’t end. To those that hear, more is given in Mark 4:22-24.
Be careful how you hear (Luke 8). Be careful what you hear (Mark 4). Because your life is now
based on your ears.

Many people’s lives are based on their eyes. Your life is now based on your ears. To him that
hears, more is given, right? When your life is based on your eyes, you’re in danger of making mistakes. When your life is based on God who we cannot see but you can hear, then he leads
you and guides you by his Word. Isn’t that beautiful?

You learn to love your wife because of the Word. Love your children because of the Word.
Learn to praise God because of the Word. So that will be a good lesson for us today. Would you
stand with me and just kind of say in your own heart I believe that the Lord loves me and that
the Lord brought me here. I’m standing next to the person who is next to me and I’m going to
turn to them and bless them and say nice to see you. God bless you. Bless you. You can be
seated.

Turn with me to Matthew 5. Do you believe that the earth is full of God’s goodness? Is it everywhere?
Psalm 33:5. The earth is filled with his goodness. He opens his hand and satisfies every living
thing in Psalm 145. The earth is filled with God’s goodness. Is his goodness towards evil
people? Yes, it is. We’ll see that in a minute.

Matthew 5:44. Why should we do that? Because God does that to evil people every day. He loves
them. He gives them food. He protects them. He cares for people. Who? Good people. How
about saved people? Absolutely. Saved people and we’ll talk about that today but unsaved
people. Unsaved people are blessed by God. Every day they live there’s blessings from God
towards unsaved people. It’s the nature of the world we live in. Unsaved people also interpret
that goodness as something maybe they deserve, but actually none of us deserve it. If we
received what we deserved, we wouldn’t be here. Yeah. “Lord, do not judge me according to my
sin. There is forgiveness with you that you may be trusted” (Psalm 130:3-4).

Actually, the grace of God every day is to draw people to God. His goodness is what draws us
to himself. Many of us have believed in God and have been drawn to God because he is just
simply good that the sun comes up every day. That we eat food. That we get to swim and take a
shower and go fishing and go for a walk and the stars are shining and the palm trees are
blowing in the sea breeze and the sandwiches are so tasty and the children are happy and
running around. Mom and dad are happy and contented and satisfied. And there are so many,
many good things about life everywhere.

Look at Matthew 5:45. Have you ever heard of an evil man living to be 100 years old with hundreds of
children and grandchildren and cousins and a huge family and a big banquet hall and the man is
old, lived a long time and had been blessed with many blessings and business and his ability,
his personality, his success. All that happened to that evil man. Because the sun shines on him,
his farm and then the rain comes on his farm. Do you know what it means?

There is such a thing called common grace or logistical grace, and I like to think of time. This is
a graph of time and in this world, it’s filled with common grace. What does grace mean? It’s a
gift. Turn to Ecclesiastes 8 with me please. vs. 11. See that? Sentence against a murder, a murder, is not
executed speedily. Like Cain murdered his brother, and then God did not kill Cain. God
protected Cain. God spoke to Cain. God was giving him grace. How long did Cain live? It looks
like he got away with murder. Like in Baltimore city. How many people get away with murder?
There’s no execution of justice immediately and they get away with murder and they live their
lives. Isn’t that amazing? Is it just? No. Is it right?

Well, with God he’s saying I’m giving grace. That man, I’m giving him time. I’m giving him time which is like we could all ask the question, why? And God could answer my ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts.
There is a day coming. It’s called the last day, the day of the Lord. There’s a day of judgment for
the unbeliever at the White Throne judgment in Revelation 20. But until then, the man may get away with murder and live his happy life and live his way and so on. That’s called common grace, not to be confused with salvation. It’s not salvation. We have met people when we evangelize who have said oh, yes. I believe in God. He saved my life. How
did he save your life? I was sick, and he saved my life. He answered my prayer and I’m alive.

Is the person who is saying that are they regenerated? Are they saved? Are they born again? In
many cases, they are not. They just say I believe in God. God has been good to me. But has he
given you salvation? Has he saved you? Have you been forgiven of your sin? The man might
not know anything about it and may not believe God that way but he’s a believer in God. Jesus
said, “you believe in God; believe also in me.” Do not fear. Believe also in me. That’s called
saving grace.

But in the beginning of our message I want to talk about common grace, how grace is given to
everybody in this world to live and move. I have a paragraph here. “There’s large amounts of common grace. It does not imply that these people are saved but they may be very skilled people, very intelligent, very wealthy, very
powerful and they need the Gospel of Jesus Christ otherwise they are lost for eternity. But even
the most moral and kind of our neighbors still need the Gospel of Jesus Christ or they will be
condemned for eternity. They may appear outwardly to have no needs, but Scripture says the
unbelievers are enemies of God. They live as enemies of the cross, but God is giving them
grace all the time.”

Look at the verse Ecclesiastes 8:11-12. I hope I can explain this to you in the right way. A person is born
and let’s say they are a child and they see the grace of God in life. A child has a birthday party.
Mom and dad. They eat. They play. They have a swing set. The sun is shining and they say life
is good. Maybe that happened to you in your childhood. We are surrounded by grace every day.
The unbeliever has the grace of God every day. They eat every day by grace. That means it’s a
gift in time where God is good to the evil people. Wow! Yes, he is.

He’s a lot better to them than you are and me. We may be very judgmental of evil people and
have no patience for them and judge them. But Romans 2:1 says wherein you judge, you yourself
are judged. For you do the same thing as them. What a revealing verse that is. No, I don’t
commit adultery. Yes, you do. In your heart, yes you do. You have done that in your heart. I
don’t hate people. I’m not an enemy of God. Yes, you are. You have been an enemy of God. Of
course you have been.

There are only two men in the world: the first Adam and the last Adam. The first Adam is an
enemy of God and the last Adam is a friend of God. The first Adam is no different from any
other Adam. The first Adam is Adam. He is a sinner. What does God do with him? In his varying
degrees of evil, God is giving him grace so he can live 70 years or 10 or 30. Whatever God
wants to give to an evil man, he gives him grace. He loves people.

God loved Cain. Did you ever realize that? After Cain killed his brother, if I was God, I would
have killed Cain. You reap what you sow. You killed your brother. I will kill you. But God didn’t
do that. He spoke to Cain. Why are you angry he said? He counseled Cain. He tried to reach
Cain. He tried to draw Cain to himself, but Cain would not come? Cain died and went to hell
undoubtedly in the book of Jude, verse 11. Lost without salvation. But during Cain’s life, we
could say he was an NFL fan. He had his kids in the best school. Let’s say he was in the local
non-profit society. He was educated. Maybe he lived a great life all by grace.

Do you get it? All by grace. Do you see why we are kind to the ungodly? Why are we kind to the
ungodly? Because God is. God is kind to the ungodly. God gives them life. God does not
execute speedily. He gives them time to repent. Romans 2 the goodness of God leads a man to repentance. So we have a child who becomes a teenager and his life – this is called – let’s say this is happiness scale. This is happiness. And the teenager sins and he starts to feel the negative effect of sin in his soul. He feels the guilt. He
feels the broken heart. He feels the loneliness. He senses that perhaps he feels it.

He’s condemned. Perhaps there is God but I’m not sure anymore. His heart gets cold like a stone. He
develops bad habits of his sinful life as a sinner and time goes on and he has a broken heart.
He’s saddened by his lifestyle and he may find himself in some kind of bereavement, loss. He feels life isn’t as beautiful as when I was a child. When I was a child and the swing set and mom
made me peanut butter sandwich and cold milk and life was great and I had a dog. I don’t feel
that anymore. What is he feeling? He’s feeling sin and the effect of sin in his heart. He is feeling the alienation
from God who gives grace, loves me. The sun comes up every day and goes down. The
showers of blessing and encouragement. My education is a gift of grace. My ability to talk and
think is a gift of grace.

The community I am in. The United States of America and the government and our Constitution is a gift to me as a person that I can be free. I can have a business or a family or own a house or have a bank account. That’s all the grace of God. Many times we meet unbelievers that are filled with thanksgiving for the things that we have in
this world and you hear it. They say I’m so thankful for my family. God has protected us and
blessed us. Many times you hear people say I am so thankful. People say I’m thankful for the
United States of America. They say I’m thankful for the lunch. I’m thankful I have gasoline in my
car. I had covid. I’m thankful that I didn’t die.

The hospital helped me and I recovered. Thank you for the hospital, God, and the medical people and the medications and the services. Thank you for all of the blessings of grace that I have every day to live this life. That’s amazing. It is. It’s incredible.

Don’t become a judgmental Christian that walks around judging unbelievers and saying they are
unworthy. They are unworthy. They shouldn’t have anything. They are wicked, evil people. They
are unbelievers. They are swearing and cursing God that made them. Yes, they are. They are
swearing and cursing and many of them are unhappy and broken, but do you know they wake
up in a world where God is speaking to them and saying I have given you the sunshine. I have
given you gasoline in your car. I have given you a mind. I have given you an opportunity. I have
given you time. You have lived this long and I’m speaking to you. Isn’t that true?

Now, in the second part of the message is very important, and it is we have common grace
every day with the unbeliever and the believer. We had a brother sit down here. He was here for
some years. He’s not here anymore. He told me – he was like a middle aged man and he said
he had a bullet in his spine. It just touched his spine. He got shot in the neck as a 16-year old in
Washington, D.C. and he just lived with a bullet in his body. He said God saved my life. I said,
yes. Then I said, did he save your soul? He said that’s the best part of it. He saved my soul. I’m
born again. Christ saved me. I got saved.

What kind of grace is that? That’s saving grace. That’s the forgiveness of our sins. Because on
our graph, you can live with common grace every day and thank God. But have you been
convicted of your sin? Have you been forgiven by Jesus Christ and his blood. Are you born of
God? That’s the key.

So, this is how it works. I think all of you know about Frederick Douglass. He was a slave on the
Eastern Shore. Remember the story? His father was a slave owner. His mother was a slave. He
was born on a plantation over there on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. And he as a little boy – I
think he was 8 years old when he was taken from his mother and put on another plantation.
One touching story was that his mother was missing him so much, but she couldn’t leave the
plantation. She snuck away at night and walked 18 miles at night to see her son, spend some
time with him early in the morning and then walk back. That was the last time he saw his
mother. He was beaten by his slave master at times. He also was a very strong willed guy and
he became one of our heroes in the Abolitionist Movement. But he was very bitter and angry
and had hatred in his heart because of slavery and being beaten within an inch of his life. He
hated the slave master. He wanted to kill him. He hated slavery of course, and he hated what
was happening.

His story is amazing, because Christ saved him. You have common grace and then you have
that sin that is working in you that makes you bitter and hateful. And you know, it’s not fair and all of this that can happen in anybody’s life, some more than others. But in this story, he says – I’ll read it to you. “Frederick Douglass included this story retelling his conversion. He said I loved all mankind after he got saved. Slave holder not accepted.” Meaning
even the slave holders. I loved everybody. God took the bitterness away. God changed my
heart. Then he said, “I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light. I
scattered pages of the Bible from the filthy street gutters and washed them, the pages, and tried
them that in moments of leisure I might get a word or two of wisdom from them.”

I was so hungry for the Bible but I couldn’t afford the Bible. But I could find torn pages in a street
gutter and wash them off and dry them and use them looking for a word. I was so hungry for the
Word of God. This is the grace of God. You see, many people have the common grace and they live all their lives and thank God he saved me from the car accident or saved me from a broken marriage or my children never went
to jail. That’s an amazing gift of grace. My kids turned out okay. Many of them did or whatever it
might be.

You know, in our church we have families that have lost children on the streets of Baltimore by
murder. How horrible that would be. Yet we have mothers here who live with that pain in their
heart. I lost my son or I lost two sons. Wow. How do I live? I need God to heal my heart. Maybe
the grace that you have in your life, this common grace that is for us for a time for us to live.
We all have different stories, but it’s also a message for God to speak to my heart and say I am
God. Come to me. Trust me. I will fill your heart with my grace. I will take your stoney heart
away and give your heart of flesh. Trust me. I will heal your broken heart. I will save your soul.
That’s important.

Save my body? Yes, he has done that many times. I think we could all, many of us crazy people
amazingly survived.

By the way, I want to give a shout out to Jack Hadley, state trooper Jack Hadley, tells a story up
in Kingsville I think it was. A speeding car goes down Belair Road and they’re eating a sandwich
or coffee, he and another trooper. And the car goes 100 miles an hour passed and then bam!
They hear an explosion. There is smoke. They get in the car, drive down and pull a man out of a
burning car and saved the man’s life through the back seat while the car is on fire. So, give a
hand to state trooper Jack Hadley.

Okay. You know what? That’s the grace of God that that guy, that kid in the car his life was saved. Grace of God that trooper Hadley was on the scene. Grace of God that trooper Hadley had the strength and the courage to do it. Grace of God – do you see what I’m saying? Is there salvation yet in the story? No. Didn’t say a word about salvation. I don’t know anything about that in this case, but I’m saying Jesus is saying unless you are born again, unless you are
coming to me, unless you are putting your trust in me you will not enter the kingdom of heaven
in John. 3:5. You must be born again. All of this goodness is a message to the sinner, to the
unbeliever. It’s also a message to the believer. The Gospel message must be preached. People
must be born of God. They must be saved.

And you might say well their life is saved. Yeah, but take another look at where they are at in
their miserable life. They’re eating lunch every day, but it tastes like cardboard. They have
children in their house, but they don’t like them. They have a marriage, but they are thinking of
how to get out of it. They have a party but they are depressed.
What is happening inside? They are dying. They are dying on the inside out. They are dead
while they live. They need Christ and salvation. They need the removal of their sin and the guilt.
They need to be born of the Spirit and find God as their heavenly Father.

You and I are in this world to be kind to them. We are to love them. We are to pray for them. We
are to care about their future and say to them I’m very glad you got over covid. God saved your
life physically. But did he save your life spiritually? Eternally? When you do die, will you go to
God or will you not? That’s a good question. Let me give you more good news. Jesus Christ
paid the price for your sin to take it away. Believe in him and you are born of God and have
eternal life. He’ll take and give you a new life.

So watch. You know what happens? I got a new heart of flesh and you know what happens? My
life goes this way but now it’s kinda like the grass is greener. The sky is bluer. The sandwich is
better than ever. The dog is happier. The kids are happy. My wife has a new husband. The
woman, my husband has a new wife. The teenagers seem to be shining. I mean there’s
obedience in the house of God. There’s a reality that came from God into the heart of people.
People are on fire in a spiritual meaning with quietness and peace in their hearts because Jesus
Christ is not only the Creator and the giver of common grace, but he is the Savior. The giver of
salvation grace, redemptive grace to give us a new life in Jesus Christ and eternal life. The
great gift of eternal life given to whosoever believes.

Amen.

Please enjoy these sermon notes from the messages preached at Greater Grace Church in Baltimore. These notes are provided to aid in your study and understanding of the Word. Note that these notes do not represent complete, word-for-word transcriptions. Also, they may contain omissions as well as some errors in spelling and structure, etc., as we attempt to provide them as soon as possible. Our hope is that these notes serve as a way to help you search and connect with messages on related subjects and passages. Thank you for your interest in the ministry of Greater Grace.