Before anything else can be said about grace, Scripture says God is good to all: He holds all things together, His mercy is over all He has made, and He pronounced His finished creation very good. That common grace is the backdrop for everything else — the order of the world is itself a gift of a gracious God, given without regard for merit.
God’s graciousness also appears in discipline. Proverbs describes the rod of correction as a mercy that drives folly far from a child, and warns that a child left undisciplined brings shame. But this grace can be presumed upon — Scripture warns against quenching the Spirit or despising what God has spoken — so the sermon closes by urging believers to test everything, hold fast what is good, and abstain from every form of evil rather than treating grace as license.