God's Grace

• Christmas Eve, the Christ Candle

With Titus 2:11-14

www.FirstChurchBville@gmail.com  @FirstUMCBville  @kerrfunk

• Complete the phrase: “Please be patient with me…”
(God isn’t finished with me yet).

We are under construction.
The WORLD is under construction.

And construction is messy.

• I have a simple message tonight. Four points.

• Our story starts in sin. There’s construction going on across the street, making all kinds of mud. Everywhere. Actually our mud isn’t so bad, but we can imagine if we didn’t have pavement…

          Our efforts to clean ourselves from sin, to redeem
fall short, like trying to clean up mud with a muddy mop.

• Thankfully, God’s grace is available to all!
God cleans us up through Jesus Christ,
No one is excluded from the offer of salvation,
and the offer of salvation is a gift from God.

²³ For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 6:23)

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—
and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—
⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

• The salvation (cleaning us up) includes two things:
one, forgiveness, we are saved from sin
and two, transforms us, empowers us,
enables us, saves us FOR godly (clean) living

• Saved from sin, saved for godly living,
all for the glory of God.
It’s what we’re designed for.
we are made and redeemed for God’s glory and pleasure.

We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

• Into our world Jesus comes, to live in our hearts.
And we are nourished and sustained through fellowship with God.
In act of communion

Titus 2:11-14 New International Version (NIV)

¹¹ For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. ¹² It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, ¹³ while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, ¹⁴ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.