Creflo Dollar - Sin Will Never Be Greater Than Grace - Part 2
Sometimes we talk as if sin is greater than grace. Sin is not greater than grace. We have more faith in sin to send us to hell than faith for grace to send us to heaven. Somehow or another we think sin is more powerful than grace. "Oh, you know the grace of God is this. But watch out the sin, sin". Sin will never be greater than grace. Grace will always be greater. What was the scripture? I think it's Romans 5, "When sin abounds, grace does much more abound".
Stop treating people like they're infected with something or that they experience something that you don't. Now, it may be in different categories. It may be in different degrees. Maybe you greedy, maybe you can't stay out the refrigerator, But we gotta stop doing that. And then in Hebrews chapter 9 and in verse 28. Hebrews 9:28 yeah, he says, "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation".
Look at this in the NLT. I'm gonna officially teach on this from A to Z, but he says, "So also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people". He was offered one time for all times to take away the sins of many people. He will come again but not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who're eagerly waiting for him. I think sometimes we think, well, the day we got born again, that that's when we got free from our sins.
Now, the day we got born again, that's when we got free from the sin nature. The man sin, that old man, we got free from the old man. The day you got born again was not the day you stopped sinning and neither is this something to justify sinning. It's just what life brings your way. And life brings some stuff your way. Sometimes you're not as polite as you want to be, but you get better. You learn how to be more polite, okay? So getting born again was not the entrance into perfection. And that disappoints a lot of Christians because self righteous people look forward to being self righteous. And when we bring everybody on this level of understanding, self righteousness has a hard time existing.
So the day I got born again is the day I got free from that sinful man, is the day I got the Holy Spirit on the inside of me. It's the day that I had a guy to work with me, to help me to transform, hallelujah, to transform myself or to transform with the Holy Spirit's help. So that when the day Jesus comes back, I'm gonna be just like him. I go on the journey now. I'm ready to go on the journey and on that journey, I'm gonna develop character, I'm gonna develop in love, I'm gonna develop in all of those things that I may not have right now. But it amazes me how church people come to church, get saved, and they think that all of a sudden we're all supposed to magically be flawless in our character, flawless in our speech, flawless in our love.
Now, that's when we start growing in all of that. That's when we start getting better at loving, better in character, better in all of that kind of stuff. And because we're human, we might not get it the first few times, but the Holy Spirit is gonna stay with us and he's gonna help us and we're gonna be transformed into these amazing people because we could keep feeding on the Word and we keep encouraging. But this little stuff about, well, you know, when you go to church and, "You know what I saw you drinking wine at Red Lobster". And now they're condemned to hell or, "Oh, you know, they got a divorce". "What happened? I thought the Holy Ghost was with them".
That all comes from that kind of attitude that assumes this fake perfection without Christ. See, I am perfect today and you are perfect today, but we're perfect in Christ. Everything I have is in Christ. I'm righteous in Christ. I'm redeemed in Christ. I'm holy in Christ. I'm perfect in Christ. But it's the Holy Spirit that's helping me to live the reality of that as I am in that transformational journey to be like Jesus at the end of this. Oh man, but we preach sin hard. You know, we get up and we tell people, you know, "I tell you what, you gotta watch out for that grace stuff, man because if you think grace, if you think grace is just gonna be there every time you sin, you got another thing coming".
You're talking about Jesus and he will outlast your sin. You hear me? Jesus will outlast your sin. There ain't nothing you doing now that's gonna outlast Jesus. Unfortunately, some Christians have a hard time with this because they struggle with, "All my life I've been trying to be perfect". And the deception is you never were. Do you understand me? You never were. Calm down dude, you never were. But somehow religion and church told us a story and we believed the story that after we left the prayer room, we are now perfect.
Well, I can tell you some things that happened the next day. If we could preach on the next day after saved, if we could have a morning after Bible study, it's not so. The journey starts and you would be shocked how bad some of those addictions were. Now some stuff happened supernaturally, absolutely. You got born again and some things happen supernaturally. That's the mercy and grace of God. Some of that stuff had to happen or you gonna kill yourself.
So God might have came in and I met a lady yesterday at the grocery store. She said, "Pastor Dollar my son and I came to one of your healing services". We used to have them over there at the chapel. "He had an incurable cancer and you laid hands on him and prayed for him. And 43 years later". I said, "What do you mean"? She said, "Yeah, he's 40 something years now". And I said, "Well, I don't even remember it". I don't remember. I mean, come on, I done pray for people all over the world, but it was so good to hear that, to know that grace and mercy shows up and does things for you sometimes when you don't have faith.
Oh, let's hang there for a moment. By his faith be made whole, yeah. By faith be made whole, yeah. By faith be made whole, yeah. But faith is not the power. The power source comes from Jesus. Faith is the instrument that attaches itself to Jesus. And I asked the question. I said, well, I said, "Lord, well, you gotta have faith to be made whole". Yeah, you really do. Be careful how we make rules on Jesus. And then I found two places where he healed somebody that didn't have faith at all. We just gotta read. We gotta quit sitting there listening to people who make up stories. "All right, pastor, you gotta show you... can't say that, and not tell us where it is".
Book of John chapter 5, you remember the boy in Bethesda? And Jesus asked him about wanting to be made whole, you know, go out and get in the pool and he kept making excuses. "I ain't got nobody to put me in the water". Then Jesus said, somebody says, "Well, they're always getting ahead of me". That man didn't have no faith in Jesus at all until Jesus just said, "Take your bed up and go". And grace and mercy healed him. And then later on, he got to know him. Then he could have faith in him. I'll tell you another situation. This was good.
John chapter 9, the guy who was born blind and they asked, "Who sinned? You or your parents"? And Jesus said, "Neither that my glory might be seen". Alright, you gotta read the whole chapter. But this boy didn't know Jesus. In fact, they said "Who did this"? "Some dude spit on some stuff, told me to put on my eye and I did it". And they said, "On the Sabbath"? "Yeah, I guess so". And they started fussing with him. "Well, you're not supposed to do it on the Sabbath". He like, "Dude, I don't, know none y'all talking about. I don't even know the dude. All I know is I was blind but now I see". And in verse 38 Jesus says, "Do you believe"? He said, "Would you believe"? And he says, he said, "Lord, I believe. And then he worshipped him".
So there is mercy and grace to heal you. You didn't have faith but sometimes the grace and mercy come and do it anyway without your faith. And then later on, you get to understand, "Oh, who did this"? And now you can have faith. Why is it that I can go on the street and get a guy and bring him in here? He don't even know Jesus, he don't pray in tongues, he don't come to church, he don't do none of the stuff all you church folks do, but he can walk down this aisle and all of a sudden he'll get healed.
Why does that happen? Because the grace and mercy of God says, "Even though you don't have no faith because you have no knowledge of who I am, I have favor, I'll favor you with a miracle right now and then you'll get to know and I'll ask you, 'Do you believe after the miracle?' And then you can use your faith after that". Be careful that we don't get to telling people, "Well, you can't get this unless you have faith". Because he's a God of grace. I'm not too sure if God hadn't allowed me to go through everything I went through so I can just shake up the body of Christ.
Some of them think, "That man". "What's wrong with"? But I mean, I'm just reading. I didn't just get it out of the air. It's just, I got right of the book and it's... oh, you remember the dude who had the son who threw himself in the fire and he was a lunatic and then the disciples tried to cast him out and couldn't cast him out. You remember what his father said? His father said, "Lord, I believe". Watch this. "But help my unbelief". What did he say? "I believe but I doubt sometimes".
And Jesus went ahead and healed his son anyway. We cannot allow our religion to judge people in such a way that all we do is run them away from God because they don't practice religion like we do. This thing is getting real and the worst thing we can have in the body of Christ right now is a bunch of phoniness, bunch of phony people trying to act like they're perfect and they're afraid to become vulnerable to let you see on the inside of them to say, "Here's what I'm like right now, but I'm still saved Jesus is working on me. I don't like what I'm doing. I don't like where I'm going. God's working on me".
And we won't even give him a chance. We just touch not the unclean. You too? You just got that nice nasty. Don't nobody see it? You nice nasty. You nice nasty, intelligent, nasty. And I know it's, I know it's different. What I'm talking about here this morning I know it's different for you who are visiting the church this morning. I didn't put a suit on because I just didn't feel like wearing one. I just didn't want to wear one and I was praying, "Oh Lord, please don't let me offend anybody". And God was like almost like he said, "Boy, please, you're way over that". But those of you who've been saved, look how far God's brought you. You're not what you used to be. Are you? You're not what you used to be. My goodness. You're not perfect yet but you are not what you used to be.
So what does that say? Let me be patient with another man's journey. Don't let me get, you know, now that you're here, you act like you never traveled where you were to where you are right now. Stop it. You traveled that way. Now, Lord give me empathy so that I can see another man's situation. So help me in my mind to walk in his shoes just for a minute and let the love of God come out of me. Let the love of God come out of me.
I was in Lagos, Nigeria and I knew the Spirit of God sent me there to see and then to affirm and I came into a ministry who in 1989 when I was first there, most of them came up and said, "Well, we were in diapers when you started coming here". And I'm like, "Oh, no, they don't be trying to make me seem like, you know, no diapers or nothing like that I ain't". I'm coming rocking better, but I ain't there. You don't be pushing me. And I heard the gospel of grace, the radical gospel of grace, not the mixture preached with such conviction.
I took a breath and said, "Wow, they preached to me everything I have ever preached on this message". And I said, I had to, I was about to break down and cry the ugly cry. I said, "They got it. They got it". And I'd finished teaching and I just sit down and we gonna... who's coming up next? And I'm like, "Oh my God, they got it". And then I sat there and I'm thinking, "Well, your last name is the name of a guy I used to preach with in the nineties". "Oh, yeah, that's my father".
I'm like, oh, I was like, wow. And then one of my friends from back there in 1980, I was always the youngest one, which is the reason why I can talk like I'm the oldest one but I was just the youngest one sitting in a room full of folks who were 20 years older than I was. I was sitting at a table one time and it was me and, Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagen, T.L. Osborn, Doctor Fred Price and Brother Copeland and I sat down and I looked around me and I was like, "Oh, I'm in the wrong seat". Brother Copeland said, "You right where you need to be, sit down".
Just so I could experience what I'm experiencing today. What I'm teaching on grace, I'm teaching in the future. And I heard one message after the other, the next message. and then this friend of mine who is 76 years old said he just got this message and he turned, he said, "Pastor what I was doing, I was telling the ladies of the church to roll their hair up and don't put no makeup on". He said, "One day I went by the bus stop and their hair was down and they had a lot of makeup on". He says, "I'm wasting my time. What am I doing"? He turned on a dime and started preaching the gospel of grace. And I was able to tell them now this is what's gonna happen next.
And well, all those friends you're gonna see if they're real friends because you ain't gonna hear from them no more. And oh, you're gonna go from being famous to infamous and then you're gonna be, you're gonna be the guy that you know, the fake teacher and you're gonna, and you, it all pass over, don't worry about it. Just keep preaching the good news and to prepare them for what to come. And I thought, man, there are people like that all over the world. I may go all over the world and find all these radical grace preachers. But I stood up and I affirmed that they are an official dealer of the gospel of grace in Lagos, Nigeria. Grace is being preached, it's being preached.
And just what we said today to you. If all of my sins, now watch this. If all of my sins have been placed on the body of Jesus Christ, why are we still approaching God like that didn't happen? Either it did or didn't. Either he has forgiven you of your past sins, your present sins and your future sins. And I know some of you got problems with, "Well, I can deal with my past sins. Oh, I can even deal with my present sin". But brother, daughter, you talking about some stuff in the future that I ain't even did yet. Well, when Jesus forgave us on the cross, all of our sins were in the future. I don't know why that's so hard to believe.
And we just got to start nailing this stuff that we've been buying all these years, just religion and church and the preacher, he's supposed to be flawless, and now all the church people believe that the preacher is perfect. Ain't nobody in no pulpit nowhere perfect. They all have their own issues which is why fathering is so important. It's why relationships in ministry is so important. So you don't get out there by yourself and then you start becoming a victim of your own secret. You need to have somebody you can trust to say, "Hey dad, I need to talk to you". And I need to be accountable to somebody.