Overview
Grace, the first time the Bible uses the word, looks like walking with God. Genesis 6:8 says Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and the very next verse explains what that means: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. In this Grace 2023 Conference session, Rev. Jon Ryan traces that one figure of speech across scripture. Walking with God is not literally taking his hand, since God is spirit; it is choosing to move in his direction instead of your own or the crowd’s. He follows the walk through Noah, the strait gate of Matthew 7, Abraham, David, Adam hiding in the garden, the highway of holiness in Isaiah 35, and Barnabas seeing the grace of God at Antioch.
Transcript
Grow in Grace: A Subject We Cannot Exhaust
Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here with you. Been looking forward to this for quite a long time.
And what a fitting song, right? Build a boat and you look at Noah. But if you take your Bibles, please, and turn to Genesis chapter 6. What I want to look at together with you this evening is a specific aspect of grace. Here we’re going to see the first occurrence in the Bible of grace.
As we just learned, grace had been around since before the creation. But we get to learn about it. You know, during the course of this weekend, you know, pick up some special things that are just for you to take home to consider more deeply.
This topic of grace is just, we cannot exhaust it as we work this understanding and take the time to listen to different perspectives. It’s just incredible. At the end of Peter’s life, in 2nd Peter, he writes that he’s about at the end of his life. He says his decease was imminent. And he closes that epistle that he was privileged to write with grow in grace. So that’s something we can all do.
We can all grow in grace. We can understand it more and more. Jesus Christ, when he was 12 years old, was, he stayed behind when his parents had brought him to Jerusalem for a feast. And they left to go home. And it’s recorded in Luke 2. And they realized when they got to the first night’s rest that they didn’t have Jesus with them. And they turned back. In three days it took them to reunite. And he said, wist ye not, or knew ye not, I must be about my Father’s business. You know, his mom and his stepdad Joseph had taught him the details of his birth and who he was.
The fulfillment of this that God had promised all the way back the time of Adam and Eve. And it closes out chapter 2 of Luke that Jesus Christ increased in wisdom and in favor, in grace with God and man. So we can certainly grow in our grasp and understanding of grace.
The First Occurrence of Grace in the Bible Is in Genesis 6
Here in this first occurrence in Genesis chapter 6, things have gotten to a pretty sad state. Now it’s been centuries, literally, since Adam was first placed there in Genesis chapter 1. Adam lived over 900 years. He was able to teach Enoch. Enoch was around for 57 years of Adam’s life. And then Enoch had Methuselah. And Methuselah is the oldest man that ever lived.
And Methuselah lived to the first year of the flood. So you’ve got, well, actually a couple thousand years, just about, from the time of creation, from time that Adam and Eve were first entrusted in the Garden of Eden with the privileges that God gave them. And here we’re going to see that man has, you know, the freedom of choice is one of God’s big things.
And man has chosen poorly. It says in Genesis chapter 6, verse 5, And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. So this is a distressing point because God made man, you know, he put him there with access to him to, you know, they had the Word written in the stars.
Adam had certainly learned from God what was going on and what life was supposed to be. And yet people have the choice.
Two People Walking in Two Different Directions
If this evening, if you were to get together with somebody at your table and you decided, hey, you want to meet for breakfast tomorrow? And then why don’t we go for a walk together? Let’s meet right outside the front doors. We’ll go for a walk. And you set a time. And you go out there and you say, okay, we’re going to walk.
And you decide to take off in this direction. And they decide to take off in this direction. You’re going for a walk, but you’re not together. You’re walking in two different directions. You have to decide, we want to do this together. So somebody has to submit or you’d come to a decision, let’s together go in this direction.
Noah Found Grace in the Eyes of the Lord
Well, these people in Genesis 6 have just gone in every direction available except the right direction. And look what it says in verse 8, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. So what does that mean? He found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Well, the next verse begins to clue us in. Verse 9, These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
There’s one definition of grace, is he chose to walk with God. He had respect for what God had to say, for the direction that God would have him to move in. In this situation, he’s not going to literally move in a certain direction. He’s going to stay right amidst all these people, but he’s going to begin to move with God. See, walking is a figure of speech. God is spirit.
You’re not going to literally come down and take his hand, but they’re going to walk together. They’re going to move together. This man Noah is giving respect, giving the stance of, I’m going to do what God would want. Not what these other people I know, maybe some of them were relatives, friends, but I’m not going to do or go in the direction that they’re going in. I’m going to choose to go where God would have me to go. That’s a great key to growing in grace, is we have the choice all the time to do what we want to do personally, to do what other people are doing, but that’s typically not the best.
The Strait Gate and the Broad Way in Matthew 7
Keep a marker here in Genesis and go to Matthew, please. Matthew chapter 7. Here Jesus Christ is teaching, and certainly Jesus Christ understood grace, and he understood the choices that man can make. In Matthew chapter 7, this is part of what’s called the Sermon on the Mount.
Chapter 5, 6, and 7 are all this amazing teaching of Jesus Christ, and we get to verse 13. He states, Enter ye in at the strait gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
See, the people of Noah’s day certainly chose to go the broad route, and it ended in destruction. Every person except for Noah and his family, his wife and his three kids and their wives, were destroyed. God didn’t destroy them. It was a consequence of their action to disregard God. So Jesus Christ is warning, don’t fall into that trap, going the broad way, the popular route. Go this narrow way, the way that leads to life, and God makes it pretty clear.
Abraham: Walk Before Me and Be Thou Perfect
You know, in Genesis, if you go back to Genesis, look at 17. Genesis 17, for a second. We’re going to learn, like Rico just told us, about many different individuals. One of them is Abraham, but I just wanted to read to you this couple of verses here in Genesis 17, verse 1. And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am the Almighty God. Walk before me and be thou perfect. And this is in the tense of the verb that is to continue to walk before me.
See, Abraham grew up in this area down, which is Kuwait nowadays, and Ur of the Chaldees, and God told him, you need to move. So to walk with God, he had to leave this area that he had grown up in, where his parents, his mother, and father had grown up in, his brothers lived. And he had to go to a different place that God would ultimately show him, and he obeyed.
He walked with God. This chapter 17 is filled with grace. It’s the fifth time that God talked to him. God changes Abram’s name and Sarai’s name by adding the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet to each of their names. It’s just all about grace, and he walked with God.
David Walked With God and Took Five Stones
Look at 1 Kings chapter 9. 1 Kings, David, it says also, walked with God. In 1 Kings chapter 9, verse 4, here this is to Solomon, and we read in verse 4, And if thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep my statutes and my judgments, Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel forever. As I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel. So David walked with God.
David, we learned, one of the most well-known occurrences or records of David is when he took on Goliath, this giant of the Philistines, literally a giant man, had come to threaten Israel in a man-on-man battle, and all of Israel was hiding. And David, 17-year-old David, came to the front and said, when he heard this threat, he said, who is this uncircumcised Philistine that dares to defy the armies of the living God? And he wasn’t going to count on his own ability. He went to the king and said, I’ll go take this guy on.
And the king says, you’re a youth, this man’s a man of war from his youth. And David recounted how God had taken care of him as he was watching the sheep. A bear came in, a lion came in, and he was able to protect the sheep that he was entrusted to guard.
And he says, this Philistine would be like one of them. And then it says he picked out five stones. It wasn’t going to take five stones to kill Goliath. It was only going to take one. But five is the number for grace. He knew God was going to be the one that was going to give him this victory in this situation.
Adam Hid From God Instead of Walking With Him
Here’s another man that walked with God. Go to Genesis chapter 3. We can learn how to walk with God more and more consistently. I trust all of you walk with God.
We are in this oikeos to do a walk together in newness of life. But here, look at this just to grasp and understand this a little more. In Genesis chapter 3, here’s Adam and Eve in the garden. And they’ve been given instructions that they can enjoy everything in the garden. But God doesn’t want them to experience evil, to experientially know the evil, to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And yet the adversary gets involved, the serpent.
And he deceives Eve. And it says in verse 5, Genesis 3 verse 5, For God, this is the serpent talking to Eve. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. Here they’re presented with another way to go. Another way to go, instead of going God’s way.
Look at the result. In verse 7, And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking. They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam and said, Where art thou? Is Adam walking with God? No, he’s hiding from God.
See, God’s all grace. God wants the best for his guys, his couple. And yet, where are you, Adam? And he’s in hiding, because they chose to walk in another direction. And they’re going to bring about calamity. And God has to set about to make the plan to restore this destruction that’s going to happen. See, so how important is walking with God? And we can get distracted at times.
Trust in the Lord and He Shall Direct Your Paths
We’re not going to do it perfectly, but we can consistently check ourselves. I want to walk with the Father. What direction do I go in? Go to the Gospel of John, chapter 5. I’ve grown to appreciate more and more Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. These two scriptures that are so familiar to us, where it tells us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and to lean not unto our own understanding, but in all our ways acknowledge him and he shall direct our paths.
So that’s how we walk with him. We don’t lean to our own understanding. We don’t follow the crowd, the broad path that leads to destruction. Poets have written about that. Robert Frost, I believe, wrote about a road that was less traveled. But rather, we acknowledge God and he directs our paths.
We learn how to walk with him. Which way do I go in this situation, God? And he will surely let you know. He’ll surely clue you in to the best direction to move in.
Jesus Christ: I Can of Mine Own Self Do Nothing
Here in John, chapter 5, Jesus Christ certainly knew that the way to walk was not his own device, his own routine or manner to go in, his own choice. Look what it says in verse 30 of John, chapter 5. John, chapter 5, verse 30, I can of mine own self do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.
See, I can of mine own self do nothing. He relied every moment of the day on God. What direction do I go in God? Even when he got to the most critical time of his life, in the garden, when he’s praying. And his choice would be, if this cup can pass, let it pass. But not my will, but thine be done. He trusted that God’s grace and the direction to walk with God, according to God’s grace, was greater than what he might choose.
He could have assessed all the great things he had done, the many miracles. He could have gone through, he went through some consternation. He said he sweat drops of blood, right? He went three times to God with this question, but it was always my will. Not my will, God, but yours that needs to be done. That’s how we can learn how to walk.
The Highway of Holiness in Isaiah 35
Go to Isaiah, please. Isaiah 35. Isaiah 35. I’ve been growing to appreciate this book of Isaiah more and more. Quite an amazing man. And in 35, verse 8, it says, And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for those, the wayfaring men, though fools shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon. It shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. And they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
There is a way to walk that is this highway of holiness. Now, it doesn’t mean that we won’t have any challenges or any troubles if we walk with God. It’s just that all those challenges can be overcome.
My Grace Is Sufficient for Thee
Paul, in 2nd Corinthians 12, says, God, can this thorn of the flesh be removed? He had had quite a number of challenges, but he came to the conclusion, as God told him, my grace is sufficient for thee. When you’re weak, then you’re strong, because I’m involved.
When we realize we can’t do it by ourselves, which all of us want to come to that realization, we can’t do it by ourselves. We maybe have gained experience and prowess in certain areas of life. That doesn’t mean, well, then we don’t need to pray anymore. No, we need to pray to say, okay, God, show me what I need to do, the way I need to walk.
Walk in the Steps of Abraham, Even as He Walked
Go to 1st John, way in the back, 1st John chapter 2. You know, in the book of Romans, it says, in verse 12 of chapter 4, that we are to walk in the steps of Abraham. See, Abraham walked with God, and we’re to walk like he walked. Doesn’t mean we have to travel over to that part of the world, but we just have to continue to faithfully walk as he walked. It was counted unto him for righteousness.
And here, in 1st John chapter 2, in verse 5, But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected. Hereby know we that we are in him. He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. How often, over and over again, God uses this figure of speech of walking.
God wants us to walk with him. Jesus Christ surely walked with the Father. We can walk as he walked. We’re told in Ephesians chapter 5 to be imitators of God and to walk in love, walk in light, walk in spiritual maturity. God wants us to walk together.
Barnabas Saw the Grace of God at Antioch
Let’s close in the book of Acts, please. Acts chapter 11. And here, some amazing things have happened, transpired. In the previous chapter, Peter went to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile, and with God’s direction, he learned that no longer was the separation Jews and Gentiles, but that was done away with Christ. God said, what I’ve cleansed don’t call thou common. And he came to the house of Cornelius.
And in answer to his prayer, it says, Cornelius had prayed at the beginning of the chapter, and God sent, he said, go send for this guy, Peter. And Peter came and led these Gentiles, these Romans, this Roman centurion in his household, into the new birth. God’s grace wasn’t by their works, it was just by God’s grace. And here, they come back and Peter reports to the leadership in Jerusalem what’s happened and what occurred, and they now have turned a page.
And the word somehow spreads quickly to this group that’s in Antioch, which is north of Jerusalem a little ways. And it says in Acts chapter 11, that verse 19, Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice and Cyprus and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only. So that’s what had happened back in Acts 7, there had been this great persecution, Acts chapter 8. And then it goes on and says in verse 21, And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord.
And what it says, and I don’t want to skip verse 20, And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. The word’s already reached them that we can speak to not just Judeans only, but to the Gentiles. And so, word’s gone out to Jerusalem and they send Barnabas up.
Verse 22, Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church, which was in Jerusalem, and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch, who when he came and had seen the grace of God, was glad and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. What did he see? He sees a group of people that are no longer bound by previous restrictions, that they are walking with God hand in hand. Wow, we can speak to others than just the Judeans? And they were doing it.
And it says, the hand of the Lord was with them, and many people were believing. And Barnabas saw this and said, there’s the grace of God. That’s what we want. We are a group of people here in St. Augustine, Florida today. And we can walk with the Father and walk in this grace and see great doors open up to us as we live and move together in newness of life. Thank you very much.
Key Takeaways
- The first occurrence of grace in the Bible is Genesis 6:8, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and the very next verse explains it: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
- Walking with God is a figure of speech. God is spirit, so you are not going to literally take his hand; walking together means moving together, which requires someone to decide, let’s together go in this direction.
- Matthew 7:13 and 14 set the two ways side by side. The people of Noah’s day chose the broad route and it ended in destruction, and Jesus Christ warns against that same popular way.
- Abraham was told, Walk before me and be thou perfect, in a verb tense meaning to continue to walk, and in that same chapter God added the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet to Abram’s and Sarai’s names.
- David took five stones against Goliath when it was only going to take one, because five is the number for grace and he knew God was going to give him the victory rather than his own ability.
- Adam is the counterexample: when he chose another direction he hid from the presence of the Lord God, and God’s question was, Where art thou?
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does grace first appear in the Bible?
Genesis 6:8, where it says but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Rev. Jon Ryan notes that grace itself had been around since before the creation, but this is its first occurrence in the text, and it arrives right after Genesis 6:5 describes every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart as only evil continually. The next verse explains what Noah found: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
What does it mean to walk with God?
Walking is a figure of speech. God is spirit, so you are not going to literally come down and take his hand; walking together means moving together in the same direction. Rev. Jon Ryan illustrates it with two people who agree to meet for a walk and then set off in opposite directions, so they are walking, but they are not together. Walking with God means choosing to go where God would have you go rather than leaning to your own understanding or following the crowd.
Why did David pick up five stones to fight Goliath?
It was not going to take five stones to kill Goliath, it was only going to take one. Rev. Jon Ryan points out that five is the number for grace, and David knew God was going to be the one to give him the victory. David was not counting on his own ability: he told the king how God had taken care of him while he was watching the sheep, when a bear came in and a lion came in, and said this Philistine would be like one of them.
Scripture References
2 Peter 1:14; 2 Peter 3:18; Luke 2:49; Luke 2:52; Genesis 1; Genesis 6:5; Genesis 6:8; Genesis 6:9; Matthew 5-7; Matthew 7:13; Matthew 7:14; Genesis 17:1; 1 Kings 9:4; 1 Kings 9:5; Genesis 3:5; Genesis 3:6; Genesis 3:7; Genesis 3:8; Genesis 3:9; Proverbs 3:5; Proverbs 3:6; John 5:30; Isaiah 35:8; Isaiah 35:9; Isaiah 35:10; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Romans 4:12; 1 John 2:5; 1 John 2:6; Ephesians 5:1-2; Ephesians 5:8; Acts 10:15; Acts 11:19; Acts 11:20; Acts 11:21; Acts 11:22; Acts 11:23; Acts 7; Acts 8
This text was prepared from the teaching audio. Please verify scripture references against your own Bible.
