Grace Makes Us Humble AND Confident? Yup!

Last week I began a series of posts asking the question “What does love look like?”

John 1:14 says that Jesus came from the Father full of grace and truth. That verse gives us a very simple yet very profound definition of love: love = grace + truth.

Understanding how grace and truth work together is essential to having a healthy love for God and having a healthy love for one another.

Last week we looked at one of the fruits or characteristics God’s grace produces in the lives of believers: humility. The Christian’s love is a humble love. The love that is born out of spiritual humility is a love that knows who we are in light of who God is. It is a love that knows we are great sinners who have found great grace. It is a love that puts the needs of others before its own. It does not make us think less of ourselves so much as it makes us think of ourselves less.

Today and tomorrow I am going to look at another fruit grace produces in the believer’s life that, at first glance, may seem to run counter to humility: confidence because of God’s grace.

One of my favorite books of the Bible is Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet who lived in Jerusalem in its very darkest days. Before the end of his ministry, Jerusalem was besieged and fell to the growing world power of the time: Babylon.

Another prophet Jonah went to the Assyrian capital city of Ninevah and gave them a “doom and gloom” message and the people of Nineveh turned and repented. Jeremiah was charged with a similar “doom and gloom” message for Jerusalem, but they completely ignored it. There is a lot of bad news, frustration, and pain in this book. But throughout the book there are some of the most precious promises of grace anywhere in the Scriptures. One of those passages is Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NIV)

But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

Even when the world is literally coming against you, when your hope and trust is in the Lord, you will not be overrun. Neither heat nor drought, can wither the life that is rooted in the life-giving water of God’s grace. That assurance comes with a God-grounded confidence that your life is always going to produce fruit. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.

People who are full of God’s grace are confident people. I want to share three things I have been learning that show why this is true, and then tomorrow give you a picture of how this confidence shows itself in the life of a person that is living in and living out God’s grace.

First, people who are living in God’s grace are confident in their relationship with God. People who are living in God’s grace have great confidence in their relationship with God because they know their standing before God is based totally on grace. When we are living fully in God’s grace we know we are loved for who we are in Christ, not for what we do or how successful we are or are not. This produces great confidence because it means there is no power within us or without us that can shake our status as God’s chosen ones. Nowhere is it said better than in Romans 8:38-39 (NLT),

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Oswald Chambers wrote,

When once a saint puts his confidence in the election of God, no tribulation or affliction can ever touch that confidence. When we realize that there is no hope of deliverance in human wisdom, or in human rectitude, or in anything that we can do…this is the finest cure for spiritual degeneration or spiritual sulks.

Grace gives us confidence because it means our standing before God will not ever be shaken.

Second, people who are living in God’s grace are confident in God’s relationship with them. Not only does grace secure our position before God, it also secures God’s position with us. Hebrews 13:5-6 says,

For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.” So we can say with confidence, “The LORD is my helper, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me?”

It is good to know that grace allows you to stand blameless before God. It is better to know that that same grace commits God to you no less than He is committed to Himself, His Son, or His Spirit.

I think of the confidence that young David had as a teenage boy that enabled him to walk up to the giant Goliath. A warrior whose armor alone weighed more than his young opponent!

Goliath looked at this kid and laughed! But David was a teenager after God’s own heart who lived in and lived out God’s grace. So deep were David’s feet rooted into the water of God’s grace that he exclaimed: (1 Samuel 17:45-47)

You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies—the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.
Today the LORD will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head.
And then I will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel! And everyone assembled here will know that the LORD rescues his people, but not with sword and spear. This is the LORD’s battle, and he will give you to us!”

David’s confidence was not in his own abilities with his sling, as good as good as he was, it was in the power and might of His God whom he knew was committed to his victory.

That leads right to the third point: people who are living in God’s grace know the source of their confidence is God. The unshakable confidence that grace gives, lies in the unmatched power of God. In Isaiah 44 God challenges anyone to find anything or anyone in which more confidence can be found. He says in Isaiah 44:1-28 (NLT),

But now, listen to me, Jacob my servant, Israel my chosen one. The LORD who made you and helps you says:….I am the First and the Last; there is no other God.
Who is like me? Let him step forward and prove to you his power. Let him do as I have done since ancient times when I established a people and explained its future….
Did I not proclaim my purposes for you long ago? You are my witnesses—is there any other God? No! There is no other Rock—not one!…
Pay attention, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I, the LORD, made you, and I will not forget you. I have swept away your sins like a cloud. I have scattered your offenses like the morning mist….I have paid the price to set you free…
I am the LORD, who made all things. I alone stretched out the heavens. Who was with me when I made the earth?
I expose the false prophets as liars and make fools of fortune-tellers. I cause the wise to give bad advice, thus proving them to be fools.
But I carry out the predictions of my prophets! By them I say to Jerusalem, ‘People will live here again,’ and to the towns of Judah, ‘You will be rebuilt; I will restore all your ruins!’
When I speak to the rivers and say, ‘Dry up!’ they will be dry.
When I say of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd,’ he will certainly do as I say. He will command, ‘Rebuild Jerusalem’; he will say, ‘Restore the Temple.‘”

Let me put this in some historical context for you so that you catch the full brunt of the force of this text. God spoke this to Isaiah around 700BC. At that time people were living happily in Jerusalem! Nothing needed rebuilt. Nothing needed restored. People were worshiping at the Temple. Jerusalem did not fall until 586BC—124 years later! 47 years after that, in 539BC, a man named Cyrus, the king of Persia decimated the Babylonians who had conquered Jerusalem. And the next year, Cyrus issued this proclamation: (2 Chronicles 36:23)

This is what King Cyrus of Persia says: “The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build him a Temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Any of you who are the LORD’s people may go there for this task. And may the LORD your God be with you!”

God knew that a man would be born more than a century after He spoke whom He would help to conquer the conquerors of Jerusalem and who would rebuild His city and Temple.

When God is at your side it doesn’t matter who is on the other side! God always wins!

God has never lost! Never! He is unbeatable! He is unstoppable! And when He says “I will be your God and you will be my people,” you become like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. [Your] leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.