Creflo Dollar - Grace and Truth - Part 2
Look at John 14:6. Look at all of these keys, look at all these about the deity of Christ. Look at what he was saying. We're never gonna understand this grace and truth until we understand the preeminence over Moses, over the law. The nerve of us to try to even bring the law into competition with this grace and truth. Look at what he said, "Jesus saith unto him, 'I am the way, I am the truth.'" I don't know what people are talking about. He says, "I'm full of grace and truth. I'm grace," grace is a person. "I'm truth," you can't separate Jesus, grace and truth.
"I'm the way, I'm the truth", and watch what he says, "I'm the life: no man Cometh unto the Father, but by me". I think I got a better understanding. I was thinking, well, here go Jesus and I gotta go through Jesus to get to the Father. Now when I get to Jesus, I'm at the father. Y'all know what I'm saying? I ain't gotta go find the Father, but when I found out I'm at the Father. So anybody, if you dismiss Jesus, you done dismissed the Father and you get all deep and about, "Well I don't believe in Jesus". Well, you and the Father got a problem because you have just dismissed him. You're trying to play this little carnal human separation game. We don't understand what real true oneness is all about.
Oh, alright, look at John 20:31. I thought about trying to teach this, like, verse to verse, chapter to chapter. It ain't nothing really like that, you know, it's just, we're gonna just go and we gonna do this thing. And John's purpose in writing, he had a purpose. Why did John write this book? Why was he inspired to write it? He said, "But these are written," these signs and miracles and healings are written, "that they might believe that Jesus is the Christ". So he says, I'm writing this so you can believe because in believing, you have life. In believing, you have life and that life is eternal, so that he's talking about you have life and you have eternal life in believing.
And this is John, this is not Paul, this is John, okay? I saw something the other day, they say "Everybody hate Paul," you know, and theologians, they have a problem with the Pauline writings. But then you see John the Revelator given a revelation of what Paul wrote, my God, "But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ," believe he's the Christ. Now Christ isn't Jesus's last name, Christ is, "believe he's the Anointed One. Believe he's the Son of God; and that believing ye might have a life and you're gonna have it through his name and through", the name, if you would study the word name, it's authority. You're gonna have a life through his authority to give it. You believe and you'll have life.
We have life because we believe. Human beings don't think that's enough, because you're governing things as a person with an earth suit on while you ignore who you really are, another speaking spirit. Now, such a one God chose as the messenger to bring grace and truth, he was chosen to bring grace and truth to a rebellious and lost human race. He was chosen to bring grace and truth, a gift to bring grace and truth to a loss and rebellious human race. No less a person could have adequately revealed the wonders of grace, for grace is the infinite love and kindness of God towards man. Grace is favor, but it is the honored, restricted, infinite love. Who gonna deliver that? Nothing that's created can hold a capacity of that infinite love and kindness. He's the only one. He's the only one that can deliver that. So now Jesus is really being made big in his teaching and it's gonna enhance your life of grace.
Now, I need to take a little side road because we need to deal with something, the ministry of death, the ministry or the ministration of death versus the ministration of grace. So again, John is gonna be constantly weighing out, or setting forth the preeminence of grace and Jesus above the law and Moses, you'll see that throughout these writings. So because life is inherent, is something that is in you, something that's inherent means it exists in you as a permanent essential characteristic or attribute, something that's been vested in, it's been vested in you. And so life is vested, it exists in Jesus. So it's possible, it is possible for grace to reign onto eternal life because it exists in Jesus.
Now, that's not so with the law, listen carefully. Moses was mortal, he could not be the bearer of that which gave life. Wow, there is no life giving power related to the law. The life that was in the Word was the light of men, but when the law, which the Bible calls, we'll look at it in a moment, but the Bible calls it the ministration of death. When it was given up at Mount Sinai, did you notice what was happening when it was given? Thunderings and blackness and darkness, look at Exodus real quick when the law was given, I don't think people recognize, Exodus 20:18 and I'll look at it in the new covenant as well. The ministration of death, that'll freak your grandma and them out. If you go tell your grandmama and it's right there in Hebrews, the administration of death and I'll show you the whole thing in a minute.
But look at what happened when it was given on Mount Sinai, "And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off". There was nothing that made somebody wanted to go and check it out. They were like, "Shoot, what in the world"? And then look at Hebrews chapter 12, and verse 18, Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 18, I told you this was gonna be a series where I was gonna take my time and we're gonna cover every corner, every jot and tittle, every cross the T. He says, "For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto the blackness, and the darkness, and the tempest," he said, that's not what you've come to. You didn't come in grace hearing, "You touch that mountain, you're gonna fall dead".
You didn't come to that, you came to a liberty that came out of life. And so he who brought grace and truth, which is Jesus, is infinite in his being, in his person, in his works. Because of this, there can be no failure, no failure in the administration of grace, no failure in the administration is grace. A bunch of failure in the administration of law, none in the administration of grace. Now, that's all I want you to hold on to right now. So now let's look at a living revelation of God versus a letter that's written on stone, a living revelation, I'm living, versus a written laws on stone.
So look look at verse 14, again in John chapter 1, verse 14, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us, (and we beheld," now this is the part people skip over, "we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth". So grace and truth came by the Word made flesh, dwelling among men. It was a living revelation of God, it was a living revealing of God. Jesus was a live, you can see revelation of God. When you saw Jesus, you saw the glory, my God I need to bring it down to your intelligence. The glory is manifested Word, but I thought the glory was any word that was manifested, not saying that's completely wrong.
I said, well, when you pray to God an answer, that's the glory of God. No, no, no, this is talking about Jesus, the manifested glory of God. You get to see glory that Moses... who was that, that they couldn't see? It was Moses, wasn't it? That he bypassed him in and he couldn't look at the glory and live. Oh my God, you couldn't look at the glory and live. And then when Jesus came, you could look at him right in his face and behold the glory that men could not look at when he passed by. And what God said is, "You can't see me face to face, but I'm gonna let you see my back part. I'm gonna let you see the..." He ain't even there. He says, "I'm gonna let you see the residue of where I was. You can't handle where I am, not yet, but I'm gonna wrap myself up in an earth suit one day because I got a FedEx package of grace and truth".
It's alright if you gotta listen to the sermon five, ten times. I'm wondering, boy, you ought to see the comments online right now, like what? I told y'all Jesus is coming. Listen, Romper Room school is over. We've been in this thing enough to allow God to help us go just a little deeper in this and you can't see Jesus like you've been seeing him before, you got to see him, that's the glory, that's the glory, that's the glory, hallelujah, that's the glory, hallelujah, that's the glory, hallelujah, that's the glory, hallelujah. It was a living revelation of God, the law is but a letter, the law it's letters written on what? Stone, that's what the law is.
2 Corinthians 3, I want you to see this in the NLT, 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 6 and 7, listen, listen, listen, listen, 2 Corinthians 3:6 and 7, "He has enabled us to be ministers of," the what? "New covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but this new covenant is a covenant of the Spirit". People don't get that. We're not talking about how many scriptures, you know, that's important. We're not talking about how long you've been saved, how long you've been reading the Bible, that's important. We're talking about understanding the Spirit which raises you above, you're still the created, but you're the created that's being influenced by the eternal.
And we ignore the Holy Ghost like he ain't real. We really do, and the only way you have fellowship with the Holy Spirit, you gotta engage that fellowship through prayer, allowing the new creation to lead you into holy living, and then you encounter things like he said something to you and it happened in three hours, or he told you to do that and you did it and it's like, what would happen if Christian people were spiritual people? See, we don't know him. What would happen if our lives were led by the Spirit?
And you ain't ask nobody, "Well, what the Bible say about drinking wine"? You ain't gotta ask that. "Well, what the Bible say about me having to forgive them, they hurt me". You ain't gotta ask that, but if your life was Spirit led and Spirit fed, you would build the intuition on the inside of you to know by the Spirit. That's the ultimate place where God's trying to take us. He's trying to take us to life in the Spirit, and he said, "I've made a covenant that is administered by the Spirit," and that's why so many people have a problem with the teaching of grace, because it contradicts a law based flesh performance and says, yield to the Spirit, follow him, and he wrote it on your heart so you know.
You know to do because you don't know how you know to do, you just know he got in there and he started doing dictation in your heart, and you just know to do, you just know to do. "The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit," there it is, "gives," come on, "life". Alright now, there we go. Life came from the Word, the Word became flesh, put on the earth suit, then the Word and Jesus and the Father are one, and the Spirit now doing the same thing they doing because they all one. You keep trying to separate them to satisfy religious doctrine, but this covenant is spirit administered. The old agreement was administered by rules, 613 laws, take out The Ten Commandments you got 603 rules trying to get born into your life, morality into your life.
And the old covenant was a rule led agreement, do this, this, this, this, this and this should happen and it never did, and he told you at the beginning, I didn't give you this to give you life. The Ten Commandments were not given to give you life, alright now, it was God's character. There's a lot to be said about that because you see The Ten Commandments in the New Covenant, but it's, the difference is it's being administered by the Spirit and not by rules. "The old way, with laws etched in stone".
See, I gotta say something. Eventually, we're gonna have to deal with it. I'm trying to be a little light on it, but the 603 were in tablets, the Ten was the only thing etched in stone. The problem is that Ten etched in stone, that was perfection, flawless perfection. That was God's character, glory and essence in those Ten Commandments, too much for you to handle. So, "The old way, with laws etched in stones," and see, that's why I'm, you know, "led to death". That was the whole purpose, was to lead you to death, "though it began with such glory," so it started with glory, "that the people of Israel," now watch this, "it began with such glory that the people of Israel could not bear to look at Moses's face," started with glory, but see Moses was a mortal, started with glory, couldn't handle it.
Watch this, "For his face shown with the glory of God, even though the brightness was already fading away". Son of the... under Jesus, we have eternal glory, under the law we have fading glory. It's fading away, and you know that's what happened? Think about when we were under the law, we first got saved, we got under the law, everything looked like it was pretty good, it started fading away and we ask ourselves, are we still saved? But once you got under the grace of God, the grace seemed to be grace, upon grace, upon grace and even in your rough day, the glory of the grace of God was still there. It still did something to you today as it did back whenever.