WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 We're going to read together from the New Testament from Ephesians chapter 2 verses 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:17.519 1 to 10 and Douglas is going to come and read for us. 00:00:17.519 --> 00:00:20.519 Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 10. 00:00:20.519 --> 00:00:30.199 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, 00:00:30.199 --> 00:00:38.200 following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, 00:00:38.200 --> 00:00:46.120 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, 00:00:46.119 --> 00:00:51.399 and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. 00:00:51.399 --> 00:00:59.000 But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:08.120 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved, 00:01:08.120 --> 00:01:14.599 and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. 00:01:14.599 --> 00:01:23.399 So that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. 00:01:23.399 --> 00:01:31.479 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, 00:01:31.479 --> 00:01:35.959 not a result of works so that no one may boast. 00:01:35.959 --> 00:01:42.039 For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:47.960 which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Amen. 00:01:50.840 --> 00:01:55.880 We are in a series on the letter that Paul the Apostle wrote to the Ephesians. 00:01:55.880 --> 00:02:02.680 He wrote this letter sometime between 60 and 62 in the first century, 2000 years ago, 00:02:02.680 --> 00:02:08.840 and he wrote it to a church that he had planted, but a lot of people had come to faith from a pagan, 00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:14.759 polytheistic background since he had planted the church, and so he's writing to these believers that 00:02:14.759 --> 00:02:21.000 he has not met yet and saying, I've heard about your faith, and really it's a letter that he writes 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:26.840 to the church, to Christians, to followers of Jesus. If you're a Christian today, Paul, by God's 00:02:26.840 --> 00:02:33.560 authorship has written this letter for you, to you, and he's saying, I want you to know what happened to 00:02:33.560 --> 00:02:39.000 you when you became a Christian. If you're a Christian today, Paul says, I want you to understand 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:43.560 everything that's taken place in your life to bring you here. And so we looked for the first few 00:02:43.560 --> 00:02:50.199 weeks at what he says about how God, from God's perspective, how God has brought us into faith, 00:02:50.199 --> 00:02:54.120 and he said, you can go all the way back into eternity and know that God shows you, 00:02:54.759 --> 00:02:59.480 loved you, redeemed you before you were ever a twinkle in your parents' eye, before you were ever 00:02:59.479 --> 00:03:05.799 born, you're blessed from eternity all the way into the future. And then in chapter two, he turns to 00:03:05.799 --> 00:03:11.560 say, now let's look at it from your perspective. What happened in your life? How did you become a 00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:17.319 Christian? And last week, we can't, last week was very important to get to this week, but we can't 00:03:17.319 --> 00:03:22.919 review it too much because we'll take, I'll just preach the same sermon over again. But last week 00:03:22.919 --> 00:03:27.639 we said that Paul said, if you're a Christian today, you need to remember, you need to know, 00:03:27.639 --> 00:03:34.279 you can never forget that you were dead in your sin, that you had wandered away from God, you were 00:03:34.279 --> 00:03:40.759 born and very actively, from very early in your life, you wandered off the road of love that God 00:03:41.479 --> 00:03:47.719 made you for, the love for him, love for your neighbor. He talks about that in terms of trespasses 00:03:47.719 --> 00:03:53.079 and sins, both things that we actively do and things we fail to do. And we've wandered away from 00:03:53.079 --> 00:03:56.919 God and he says, every single human person, no matter how much money you make, no matter what 00:03:56.919 --> 00:04:03.319 segment of society you're from, no matter what race or ethnicity you are, you, you are dead in sin. 00:04:04.280 --> 00:04:10.919 And so in verses one to three, it's all about who you are before Christianity outside of Jesus, 00:04:10.919 --> 00:04:16.519 verses four to ten is all about who you can become, who God makes you when you find Jesus, 00:04:17.240 --> 00:04:22.839 really verses four to ten is all about how to become a Christian. So this is, this is the heartbeat of 00:04:22.839 --> 00:04:28.519 Christianity. Ephesians two eight nine is very famous for by grace you have been saved through 00:04:28.519 --> 00:04:35.639 faith, it's not your works. Very famous, very important, the essence of Christianity right here, 00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:40.919 Ephesians two four to ten. And let's think about it together, how do you become a Christian? 00:04:42.359 --> 00:04:46.039 And if you're a Christian today, do you know how you became a Christian? Do you remember? 00:04:46.839 --> 00:04:50.279 And that's what these verses are about. And it's all about the dashes. 00:04:50.279 --> 00:04:58.199 It's all about the conjunctions. It's all about the prepositions, the grammar, you know, the more 00:04:58.199 --> 00:05:03.399 and more you become a Christian, you read the Bible more and more you realize more and more how 00:05:03.399 --> 00:05:10.919 important the grammar is. And I looked at six to seven translations of Paul's letter here this week, 00:05:10.919 --> 00:05:17.959 and just tried to look in verse four or five, sorry, for how people set this little section apart. 00:05:17.959 --> 00:05:23.959 And then in verse five, and you see there's dashes, by grace you have been saved, dashes. 00:05:24.839 --> 00:05:30.359 Why? Because Paul is interrupting himself. And he's saying everything I'm trying to tell you, 00:05:30.359 --> 00:05:35.719 I can put in these parenthetical comment, by grace you have been saved. And then if you jump down 00:05:35.719 --> 00:05:42.519 to verse eight, he adds two words for by grace you have been saved through faith. And so these 00:05:42.519 --> 00:05:48.279 two little lines, by grace you have been saved, by grace you have been saved through faith, 00:05:48.279 --> 00:05:54.519 they're parentheses, they're inside of dashes. And it's Paul saying, let me take a moment to 00:05:54.519 --> 00:05:59.959 interrupt myself and tell you the heartbeat of my argument, exactly what I'm trying to say. 00:06:00.919 --> 00:06:05.240 And if you look through verses four to 10, there's all sorts of conjunctions and prepositions, 00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:14.439 some of the best in all the Bible. You were dead, verse four, but God, rich in mercy, 00:06:14.439 --> 00:06:20.920 that great conjunction, you were dying, you were condemned, you were enslaved, but God. 00:06:20.920 --> 00:06:26.840 Very next verse, even when you were dead, even these great moments, these prepositions. 00:06:27.639 --> 00:06:33.639 And then by grace you have been saved, the prepositions are everything, by grace through faith. 00:06:33.639 --> 00:06:39.000 And if you flip them around, if you get them backwards, if you misunderstand the prepositions, 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:45.000 you've lost Christianity. And if you don't yet see what they mean, you don't yet understand 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:51.079 Christianity. And so we've got to look at that. And there's this apocryphal story that gets passed 00:06:51.079 --> 00:06:57.800 around. We don't really know if it's true, maybe apocryphal, I hope it's true, about the great 00:06:57.800 --> 00:07:05.000 author C.S. Lewis, that there was a conference in Oxford, University of Oxford. And the question 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:10.040 of the conference was, all the scholars were saying, is there anything about Christianity 00:07:10.040 --> 00:07:14.759 that's different that you can't find in the other religions and the other philosophies, 00:07:14.759 --> 00:07:18.840 in the other worldviews? And all these great religious scholars were standing up and saying, 00:07:18.840 --> 00:07:23.960 well, okay, well, what about the incarnation that God became a human? And some religious 00:07:23.959 --> 00:07:29.639 scholars stood up and said, well, no, we know from other myths and legends and places that there are 00:07:29.639 --> 00:07:34.439 stories where a God takes on a human form. And they said, well, what about the resurrection? 00:07:34.439 --> 00:07:38.680 Resurrection is unique to Christianity. And they said, well, no, we know in other stories, 00:07:38.680 --> 00:07:43.799 in Hinduism, there are stories where somebody dies, a demi-God dies and comes back to life again. 00:07:44.839 --> 00:07:49.879 And the story is that C.S. Lewis walked into the room late, and he said, what is all this 00:07:49.879 --> 00:07:54.199 argument about? What is the ruckus going on here? And they told him, we're trying to, we're wondering, 00:07:54.199 --> 00:07:59.159 is there anything about Christianity that is unique that you can't find anywhere else? In any 00:07:59.159 --> 00:08:07.639 worldview, any philosophy, any religion, and C.S. Lewis said, that's easy. It's grace. That God would 00:08:07.639 --> 00:08:13.560 love people exactly at the point when they don't deserve it. But God, you were dead, but God, 00:08:13.560 --> 00:08:18.759 he said, it's grace. You can't find that anywhere else. It's what makes Christianity different. 00:08:18.759 --> 00:08:25.159 Now, let's see it. Let's consider it through faith by grace, you're saved. We're going to take it in 00:08:25.159 --> 00:08:31.719 reverse, all right? Through faith. How do you become a Christian? How did you become a Christian? 00:08:32.200 --> 00:08:38.039 Through faith, Paul tells us. Now, it's very important, remember, the prepositions, it is not 00:08:38.039 --> 00:08:45.319 by faith, not by faith, but through faith. And what this means is that basically what Paul's telling 00:08:45.320 --> 00:08:53.800 us is that your faith, your believing, your trusting is not what saves you. Your faith does not save 00:08:53.800 --> 00:08:58.520 you. Now, this is the best way I can think to illustrate it. I've heard this before from other 00:08:58.520 --> 00:09:04.760 people in a different variation. If your car is broken down on the motorway, you're in a pretty 00:09:04.760 --> 00:09:12.040 dangerous situation. And you need to be saved. Your car needs to be saved. And so you pull out, 00:09:12.039 --> 00:09:19.159 I don't know what we call this in Scotland, but I would call it a tow strap, a tow strap, a rope, 00:09:19.159 --> 00:09:23.480 you know, and you would attach it to the front of your car and you would hook it to another car. 00:09:24.039 --> 00:09:29.319 And that, you get pulled, your car and you would get pulled to safety. Now, if I ask you, what is 00:09:29.319 --> 00:09:35.879 it that saved you? And where's the power of that salvation? Would you say it's the tow strap? 00:09:36.679 --> 00:09:40.599 Right? And here's how you can answer it. Take, if your car breaks down on the motorway, 00:09:40.600 --> 00:09:44.920 take a tow strap, hook it up to the front of your car and just lay the tow strap out on the ground 00:09:44.920 --> 00:09:51.159 and then see if you become saved. See if you end up at the garage, if you end up back at your home, 00:09:51.159 --> 00:09:55.720 right? Where will you, you will stay right there. If you hook a tow strap up, but you don't put an 00:09:55.720 --> 00:10:00.519 engine on the front of that thing, you're not going anywhere. And this is exactly what Paul's 00:10:00.519 --> 00:10:07.240 saying. It's not your faith that saves you. The tow strap, your faith is the instrument of your 00:10:07.240 --> 00:10:14.440 salvation, not your salvation. Faith is the thing by which you receive the power, the engine of 00:10:14.440 --> 00:10:20.440 salvation. But it's not the power itself. And so Paul goes out of his way to say, right after he 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:25.639 says, for by grace you have been saved, through faith, it's not by your works. It's not by your 00:10:25.639 --> 00:10:32.120 merit. It's not by anything you do. And that includes faith. Faith is not a work, a merit, 00:10:32.120 --> 00:10:37.240 something you do. Your great faith by which God says, okay, because you believe, I will give you 00:10:37.240 --> 00:10:42.200 salvation. Not at all. Because if it was the case, then you would be saved by your faith. 00:10:43.080 --> 00:10:48.440 No, faith is the instrument, but the material cause, the real power of your salvation is 00:10:48.440 --> 00:10:55.480 something else. It's grace. You see the prepositions? By grace. Grace is the power through faith. 00:10:55.480 --> 00:11:01.080 Faith is the tow strap. Faith is the instrument by which you receive it. And that means that faith 00:11:01.080 --> 00:11:06.680 is a, even faith is a gift. You know, what can you do today if you want to become a Christian? 00:11:07.879 --> 00:11:14.440 God says over and over again, Paul says, cry out in faith and say, I believe. Look at Jesus and say, 00:11:14.440 --> 00:11:20.440 I believe. And there really is something active about that. You do have to take a step of faith 00:11:20.440 --> 00:11:25.960 and believe. You have to do that. You have to own that. But what happens when that happens in your 00:11:25.960 --> 00:11:33.480 life, eventually what happens is you'll look up and you'll realize, wow, the only reason I ever said, 00:11:33.480 --> 00:11:40.360 I believe, is because God gave me the faith to believe. That even the faith by which I received 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:47.400 was a gift itself. You see, it's God all the way down from top to bottom. It's nothing you do. 00:11:47.400 --> 00:11:52.360 You don't participate. What do you bring to your salvation? Not your, not the quality of your faith. 00:11:52.360 --> 00:11:59.080 You bring nothing but your sin. You bring your deadness. And even faith is a gift all the way 00:11:59.080 --> 00:12:04.759 from top to bottom. Now, this is what Lewis was talking about. This is what makes Christianity 00:12:04.759 --> 00:12:12.440 different. In Buddhism, you follow the eightfold path and hope for salvation. In Islam, you follow 00:12:12.440 --> 00:12:18.840 the law of God. And you hope for salvation if you can maintain the five pillars very carefully. 00:12:18.840 --> 00:12:25.240 And every other religion, Hinduism, every religion that's ever existed, you are saved and you hope 00:12:25.240 --> 00:12:33.160 to be saved by your performance, by your merit. And Christianity is different. Christianity is 00:12:33.160 --> 00:12:39.720 the only worldview, the only religion, the only hope for being saved despite your performance. 00:12:40.680 --> 00:12:45.720 And it's not even your faith that saves you. No, no, not the quality of your faith, but something 00:12:45.720 --> 00:12:51.639 completely different. Faith is saying, Augustus, top lady is great, him, we're going to sing it in 00:12:51.639 --> 00:12:59.639 a minute. Nothing in my hands I bring simply to the cross. I claim naked, I come to thee for dress. 00:12:59.639 --> 00:13:05.960 Helpless, I look to thee for help. You bring nothing. It's all God from top to bottom. 00:13:05.960 --> 00:13:09.879 So the question then becomes, okay, well, how exactly then does God save you? 00:13:09.879 --> 00:13:15.399 What is the power? Where is the power of salvation? Where's the engine that pulls you by way of the 00:13:15.399 --> 00:13:23.320 tow strap? And the word that he gives us here is by grace. Grace is the answer to that. And the word, 00:13:24.600 --> 00:13:31.639 the word grace really in some sense just means gift when Paul uses it. Buy a gift by giving 00:13:31.639 --> 00:13:37.320 something away to you. It's totally a gift from top to bottom. Okay, so sometimes people can 00:13:37.320 --> 00:13:42.840 approach the idea of grace and they can think about grace as a substance, as a thing. They can 00:13:42.840 --> 00:13:50.440 talk about the grace that they receive in taking the Lord's Supper, the grace of lighting a candle 00:13:50.440 --> 00:13:55.960 in a church, the grace that some people will talk about that they're looking for when they walk down 00:13:55.960 --> 00:14:02.040 the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the pilgrimage, looking for a religious experience, laying flowers 00:14:02.039 --> 00:14:08.039 down before some statue. People are looking for grace as a thing all around them. And what Paul 00:14:08.039 --> 00:14:12.679 teaches is something very different. Grace is not a thing. Grace, these words he gives us in verse 00:14:12.679 --> 00:14:21.799 four and five is God's love, God's mercy, God's kindness. Grace is God's disposition. Grace is 00:14:21.799 --> 00:14:29.159 the fact that God wants to give people gifts who do not deserve it. It's his love. Mercy is a word 00:14:29.159 --> 00:14:34.839 that means when you give, you give help to the helpless. When you give something to the poor 00:14:34.839 --> 00:14:40.839 in a way that they don't have it, they could never get it. That's God's grace. It's all synonyms. 00:14:40.839 --> 00:14:46.839 Grace is the language of gift. It's undeserved favor. It's entirely a gift from top to bottom. 00:14:46.839 --> 00:14:52.839 Now, I talked about the toe strap with faith. The best way I can think to talk about grace 00:14:52.840 --> 00:15:00.360 then is not as fun of an illustration at all. But there's a guy by the name of John Barclay. 00:15:00.360 --> 00:15:06.519 He's down at Durham University, not too far from here. He wrote a really important book about grace 00:15:06.519 --> 00:15:11.960 a few years back. And one of the things he says about it is that when you read the apostle Paul 00:15:11.960 --> 00:15:20.360 all throughout his letters, he's talking about grace or gift, gift giving in a culture where in the 00:15:20.360 --> 00:15:26.360 Roman, Greco-Roman Empire, especially in Rome or in other cities, gift giving was very different than 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:33.000 maybe the way we think about it or maybe not. It was more of a mafia type mindset, if you will. 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:38.039 Somebody might come and give you a gift that show up at your door. I want to bless you. Here's a gift. 00:15:38.039 --> 00:15:44.200 But in their hearts, the whole culture was kind of built around, I really expect you to give something 00:15:44.200 --> 00:15:49.720 back to me. And there's going to come a day where I show up at your door and I say, remember that 00:15:49.720 --> 00:15:54.680 time I gave you that gift? And you're going to say, now here's what I need you to do. So there's a real 00:15:54.680 --> 00:16:01.720 culture of reciprocity. And Paul uses this word grace, because he explodes this idea of gift 00:16:01.720 --> 00:16:07.720 giving in the ancient world by coming and saying, we in our culture don't really have true gift 00:16:07.720 --> 00:16:14.840 giving. And he says, but let me show you what a real gift is. It is when God, the absolute God loves 00:16:14.840 --> 00:16:20.840 you at exactly the point you don't deserve it in such a way that you could never possibly repay that. 00:16:20.840 --> 00:16:26.840 That's a real gift. You know, he enters this word gift, grace, into the ancient, the Greco-Roman 00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:32.840 world and says, you've never seen real gifts. And the real gift is that God loves you and you don't 00:16:32.840 --> 00:16:40.840 deserve it. That's his grace. That's where the power of salvation is. Now, one of the things that 00:16:40.840 --> 00:16:45.800 the theologians will talk about when they talk about this is the another, here's another way to think 00:16:45.800 --> 00:16:52.840 about it. This is a more helpful illustration, maybe. When you were born, when you were born, what did 00:16:52.840 --> 00:16:59.800 you contribute? You know, when you were first born, literally, physically, from your mother's womb, 00:16:59.800 --> 00:17:04.840 what is it that you brought to the table that day? You know, I've been around for birth, and I can 00:17:04.839 --> 00:17:10.839 tell you, the baby doesn't do a lot. They don't do much. You know, they're receiving entirely. And 00:17:10.839 --> 00:17:15.839 the theologians will say, you know what, you look at that and you realize there's a gratuity, a graciousness, 00:17:15.839 --> 00:17:21.839 even in being created from the very beginning. When you think about who you are, all you have, your 00:17:21.839 --> 00:17:28.839 existence, what do you have that you've not been given? You can't exist without somebody else doing 00:17:28.839 --> 00:17:36.839 the work. And you see, just like in creation, also in new creation, what do you contribute to your 00:17:36.839 --> 00:17:41.839 birth, your new birth? You don't contribute anything to this physical life. What do you contribute to the 00:17:41.839 --> 00:17:47.839 spiritual life, to the new birth? Nothing. You know, there's a gratuity, a graciousness in creation 00:17:47.839 --> 00:17:53.839 and new creation. It flows through all of who we are. And that's God's grace. And so, before we move 00:17:53.839 --> 00:18:00.839 to the last thing, we have to think about the gift precisely. What is this gift precisely? Just in a 00:18:00.839 --> 00:18:06.839 couple minutes. What is the engine? What is the power itself? What is the gift God gives in grace? 00:18:06.839 --> 00:18:13.839 And you can see it there in verse five. And now you've got to look at this fairly carefully to see what 00:18:13.839 --> 00:18:21.839 Paul's doing. He says, even when we were dead, and then there's a threefold movement, God did what? 00:18:21.839 --> 00:18:26.839 He made us alive together with Christ. And then remember, the by grace you have been saved, that's 00:18:26.839 --> 00:18:31.839 parentheses. So you can cover that up with your hand for just a moment. He made you alive together 00:18:31.839 --> 00:18:37.839 with Christ. He raised you up with Christ, and he seeded you with Christ in the heavenly places. 00:18:37.839 --> 00:18:43.839 So he says three things. The real gift. What is it? Now, he's talking about something that happened in 00:18:43.839 --> 00:18:51.839 the Gospels. Jesus came back from the dead. He was raised up. Jesus ascended into heaven. That's the 00:18:51.839 --> 00:18:55.839 second thing he's talking about. Jesus sat down at God's right hand. That's the third thing he's 00:18:55.839 --> 00:19:00.839 talking about. All of that happened in the Gospels in the Book of Acts in the middle of human history. 00:19:00.839 --> 00:19:07.839 But here's the surprise part of it. He doesn't just say Jesus came back to life. Jesus ascended. 00:19:07.839 --> 00:19:16.839 Jesus sat down. He says, no, God made you alive together with Jesus. He says, God raised you up into 00:19:16.839 --> 00:19:23.839 heaven with Jesus. God set you down at the right hand of the Father with Jesus. The gift, the 00:19:23.839 --> 00:19:29.839 surprise, the thing that no human being could have ever expected is that Paul is saying that whatever 00:19:29.839 --> 00:19:37.839 happened to Jesus in the middle of human history is now true for you already. Before you were ever 00:19:37.839 --> 00:19:44.839 born, before you ever twinkle in your parents' eye, before you ever did anything good or bad, God 00:19:44.839 --> 00:19:52.839 already did it, and he included you in it. And so we call this union with Christ. Another way to say 00:19:52.839 --> 00:19:59.839 it is that we are so virtually connected. Now, virtually, that doesn't make sense to us in 2024. But 00:19:59.839 --> 00:20:05.839 the old word, virtual, in old English is a word that we used to use to talk about salvation. And 00:20:05.839 --> 00:20:11.839 virtual means something that is effective for you, something that's true of you, even though you 00:20:11.839 --> 00:20:18.839 weren't there for it. Virtual, virtual reality, something that feels real to you, even though you're 00:20:18.839 --> 00:20:23.839 not really in it, it's not real. Well, the old word, something that's actually become true of you and 00:20:23.839 --> 00:20:29.839 effective for you, even though you never participated in it, really. The Gospel says this, you are so 00:20:29.839 --> 00:20:35.839 virtually connected to Jesus. You're so covenantally connected to Jesus that when Jesus went to 00:20:35.839 --> 00:20:44.839 death, he carried your sins, your real sins. When he died, it's as if you paid the justice of your 00:20:44.839 --> 00:20:51.839 sins right at that moment. But also the positive side, when he came back to life, it's as if you did too. 00:20:51.839 --> 00:20:57.839 When he ascended into heaven to be with the Father, you're there with him. When he sat down on the 00:20:57.839 --> 00:21:05.839 throne, God said, and you too are now a son or daughter of the King enthroned with Jesus. That's 00:21:05.839 --> 00:21:12.839 the gift. That's grace. That God loved you in the midst of your trespasses and sins all the way to the 00:21:12.839 --> 00:21:21.839 point to look at you and say, I see you in the exact same way I see Jesus Christ, my son. 00:21:21.839 --> 00:21:30.839 Sinless, forgiven forever for you, seated, enthroned, adopted, son, daughter, it's union with Christ. 00:21:30.839 --> 00:21:38.839 It is the gift. It is grace. Grace is that while you are not lovable, you are not lovable based on 00:21:38.839 --> 00:21:46.839 your qualities or performance. God loved you so much that he identified you with Jesus every step of the 00:21:46.839 --> 00:21:54.839 way, that everything that's true of him is now true of you. Now, faith just simply says, wow, I see it, I 00:21:54.839 --> 00:22:02.839 believe it. That's faith. Let's close. Let's do the third thing. Let's apply this pretty personally. 00:22:02.839 --> 00:22:11.839 And it's to ask, how can you become a Christian today? Or if you are a Christian, do you remember, do you see how 00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:17.839 you became a Christian? And are you living out of that? Are you living in that power and through that power? 00:22:17.839 --> 00:22:24.839 Do you get it? Do you understand the gospel? Do you see that you are saved by grace as a gift through the instrument 00:22:24.839 --> 00:22:29.839 of your faith and all of it is not by your performance, something that's been given to you? 00:22:29.839 --> 00:22:36.839 Martin Lloyd-Jones, the great preacher in London in the middle of the 20th century, in his really helpful book on 00:22:36.839 --> 00:22:42.839 spiritual depression. Everybody struggles sometimes with spiritual depression. He wrote a book about it. 00:22:42.839 --> 00:22:50.839 But he writes in the beginning of it that when he's explaining the gospel to people, he'll often do this, 00:22:50.839 --> 00:22:55.839 often say, are you ready to say, are you ready to say you're a Christian? This is what he says. 00:22:55.839 --> 00:23:02.839 To make it quite practical, I have a very simple test. After I've explained the way of Christ to somebody, 00:23:02.839 --> 00:23:11.839 I say, now, are you ready to say that you're a Christian? And they hesitate. And then I say, what's the matter? 00:23:11.839 --> 00:23:17.839 Why are you hesitating? And so often people will say, I just don't feel like I'm good enough yet. 00:23:17.839 --> 00:23:26.839 I don't think I'm ready yet to say I'm a Christian. And at once, I know, and he's quite extreme here, 00:23:26.839 --> 00:23:34.839 he says, I know that I've wasted my breath. That's what he says. Because they are still thinking in terms of themselves. 00:23:34.839 --> 00:23:42.839 They think they have to do it. It sounds very modest, very humble to say, well, you know, I just don't think I'm good enough. 00:23:42.839 --> 00:23:50.839 But it's a very denial of the faith. The very essence of the Christian faith is to say, he is good enough. 00:23:50.839 --> 00:23:58.839 I'm not good enough, but I am in him. That's what Paul is saying. Now, if you're a Christian today, or you're not a Christian today, 00:23:58.839 --> 00:24:01.839 and you want to become a Christian, or do you want to know how you became a Christian? 00:24:01.839 --> 00:24:07.839 One of the struggles that all of us will feel is the language Paul uses here of the lavishness of this message, 00:24:07.839 --> 00:24:12.839 the treasure, the gift, how much God wants to give you His wealth, the wealth of His love. 00:24:12.839 --> 00:24:19.839 And we struggle with it. If you're a Christian, you forget about it. If you're not a Christian, you don't know that you want to come and receive it. 00:24:19.839 --> 00:24:25.839 And one of the reasons for that is because you really do want to earn it. You want to perform. 00:24:25.839 --> 00:24:32.839 And one of the reasons I think that's so true of us is because we are driven, we are in a culture of performance all the time. 00:24:32.839 --> 00:24:38.839 And so when it comes to Christianity, we also want to perform for that. We want to earn it. We want to get it by merit. 00:24:38.839 --> 00:24:48.839 This couldn't be more obvious than the workplace, the university. You can't get a promotion at your work without performing well. 00:24:48.839 --> 00:24:56.839 You can't get a good job in 2024 in our commercial markets without having marketable skills. 00:24:56.839 --> 00:25:01.839 You've got to prove yourself. You've got to perform. And you've got to show that you are better than the next person. 00:25:01.839 --> 00:25:13.839 You're competing against all sorts of people in all your life. But there's nowhere that I think can undermine in the heart our ability to receive the message of the gospel than dating culture. 00:25:13.839 --> 00:25:21.839 It's, you know, dating culture. There's nothing more performative, nothing more merit-based than dating. 00:25:21.839 --> 00:25:28.839 Right? So when you go out on dates, you know, you've got to be some of you are in this world right now. Some of you have been in this world. 00:25:28.839 --> 00:25:33.839 Some of you were in this world so long ago, you can't remember it. But remember dating. 00:25:33.839 --> 00:25:40.839 Dating is when you put on your best clothes, you smell the best you possibly can. 00:25:40.839 --> 00:25:51.839 You create a facade, an image of yourself that's not actually real. You put pictures online of yourself that are, you know, a few years old, that haven't quite been updated yet. 00:25:51.839 --> 00:26:02.839 You create, you're performing. It's a performance narrative and in some sense it's necessary. And it's not only that you're performing hoping that this other person will like you, maybe even love you. 00:26:02.839 --> 00:26:11.839 You're also competing against all the other people that are vying for that person's attention. You're performing in every direction and it's so difficult. 00:26:11.839 --> 00:26:21.839 And that's why when the Bible talks about marriage, it says, you want to understand the gospel, look at true love in marriage. 00:26:21.839 --> 00:26:27.839 Very different than dating. Very different than the type of love that we create through the performance of dating. Right? 00:26:27.839 --> 00:26:34.839 And why? One of the ways you can get at this, I'm doing premarital counseling for a few folks right now. 00:26:34.839 --> 00:26:39.839 I'm about to give them the answers. This is what they need to say in premarital. 00:26:39.839 --> 00:26:45.839 When you're premarital counselor, if you're engaged, ask you, why do you want to marry this person? 00:26:45.839 --> 00:26:50.839 Give me five reasons, five reasons, which is one of the questions I do ask. 00:26:50.839 --> 00:26:54.839 Why do you love them? What's the right answer? 00:26:54.839 --> 00:27:03.839 Now, it's something to say because they make me laugh, because they're beautiful, because I love being with them. 00:27:03.839 --> 00:27:05.839 And those are all very good things, very good qualities. 00:27:05.839 --> 00:27:12.839 But the only right answer to this question, why do you love them? The only right answer is, I love them because I love them. 00:27:12.839 --> 00:27:14.839 That's the only right answer. 00:27:14.839 --> 00:27:17.839 And you see, what is true love? 00:27:17.839 --> 00:27:24.839 True love, real unconditional love, is not based on conditions. 00:27:24.839 --> 00:27:32.839 And that's why marriage, when you reach that point in marriage, it's such an helpful illustration of you have been saved by grace through faith. 00:27:32.839 --> 00:27:41.839 Because being saved by grace through faith is saying to you, God loves you despite the conditions, despite your qualities, despite your performance. 00:27:41.839 --> 00:27:46.839 And so, Blaise Pascal, the great philosopher and mathematician, he said it like this, 00:27:46.839 --> 00:27:52.839 there's someone who says they love somebody else because of their beauty, really love them. 00:27:52.839 --> 00:28:00.839 And this is his answer. He's writing this in the 18th century. He says, no, because smallpox is going to take that beauty away, 00:28:00.839 --> 00:28:03.839 but the person will still be there. 00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:11.839 You see, when you base your love, when you ground your romantic love on conditions, you've got to know in qualities, that's going to go away. 00:28:11.839 --> 00:28:20.839 But the person is still there. And the same thing happens in the Gospel, the marriage of all of history, that God, Jesus Christ, the great groom, came for his bride. 00:28:20.839 --> 00:28:22.839 And what did he see? 00:28:22.839 --> 00:28:29.839 He saw a bride that was not beautiful. He saw a bride that did not meet the qualities and conditions of merit. 00:28:29.839 --> 00:28:39.839 He saw filth, he saw sin, he saw the heart, he sees you, he sees me, he sees our deadness, and he says, and I'm going to come and love her unto beauty. 00:28:39.839 --> 00:28:44.839 He went to the cross, not because you were beautiful, but to make you beautiful. 00:28:44.839 --> 00:28:52.839 For by grace you have been saved, and you receive that by faith. Why does God love you? Because he loves you. 00:28:52.839 --> 00:28:54.839 No other reason than that. 00:28:54.839 --> 00:29:00.839 Now, let me close with this. Some possible objections. 00:29:00.839 --> 00:29:04.839 Are you ready today to say, I'm a Christian? 00:29:04.839 --> 00:29:10.839 I'm saved by grace through faith. Are you ready to see that again? Are you ready to live out of that? 00:29:10.839 --> 00:29:16.839 Why not, if not? And let me just close with a couple possible objections and we'll pray. 00:29:16.839 --> 00:29:23.839 One might be, I hear what you're saying, but I just don't know that that's true yet. 00:29:23.839 --> 00:29:29.839 I'm a person of science, and I don't yet know that Jesus really did die and rise from the dead. 00:29:29.839 --> 00:29:34.839 That might be something you say, okay, let me say, if you're thinking that, I don't yet know if it's true. 00:29:34.839 --> 00:29:42.839 You are on the right path. That is the right question. Is this true? That is exactly the question you need to be asking. 00:29:42.839 --> 00:29:51.839 And you really, what I would say is, I would invite you to say, really dig deep and investigate your own beliefs and look for what's real. 00:29:51.839 --> 00:30:01.839 Sometimes people I've talked to in our city will say, I want to believe this, but I'm not a person of faith like you are. 00:30:01.839 --> 00:30:06.839 There are some people that are just people of faith that are other people that just aren't people of faith. 00:30:06.839 --> 00:30:15.839 And let me say, oh boy, will you please investigate the assumptions, the real beliefs that are going on in the core of your heart when you say something like that? 00:30:15.839 --> 00:30:21.839 There is no person out there that is not a person of faith. Every single person is religious. 00:30:21.839 --> 00:30:30.839 You wake up every morning and you trust all sorts of authorities that are speaking into your life, but you never did the empirical investigation. 00:30:30.839 --> 00:30:37.839 That's faith. You wake up in the morning and you believe that your mind is actually projecting reality as it appears to you. 00:30:37.839 --> 00:30:43.839 You and I both talk about the color red and we believe we're seeing the same thing, but you don't know. 00:30:43.839 --> 00:30:48.839 There's a thousand ways this is true. You don't know that you're not living in the matrix right now. 00:30:48.839 --> 00:30:55.839 It's true. Everybody begins with faith. Faith is the ground of all possible existence. 00:30:55.839 --> 00:30:58.839 Everybody's a person of faith. Everybody's a religious person. 00:30:58.839 --> 00:31:06.839 And if you're saying, I don't yet know if it's true, investigate. You're on the right path. You're asking the right question. 00:31:06.839 --> 00:31:10.839 He really did rise from the dead. Now that leads me to the second. 00:31:10.839 --> 00:31:16.839 Maybe you say today, I don't yet know I'm ready to say I'm a Christian or I want to become a Christian. 00:31:16.839 --> 00:31:20.839 And it's because you think, you know, I'd really have to change too much. 00:31:20.839 --> 00:31:24.839 I'd have to subscribe fully to the moral code of Christianity. 00:31:24.839 --> 00:31:31.839 I don't know that I can yet say I believe in the exclusivity of the sexual ethic of Christianity. 00:31:31.839 --> 00:31:39.839 I've heard many people say that. I don't yet know that I can change my views on the moral side of the Christian faith. 00:31:39.839 --> 00:31:47.839 And look, there's something to talk about in that. But let me say, when it comes to the gospel, the question is not, can I subscribe? 00:31:47.839 --> 00:31:55.839 You know, it's not a podcast. It's not a list of propositions. It's not a set of philosophical determinations. Not at all. 00:31:55.839 --> 00:32:01.839 What is being offered to you is not a list of rules. It is a person. 00:32:01.839 --> 00:32:10.839 The gospel is a person. It's Jesus Christ. It's faith that God really did become a human and die and rise again for you. 00:32:10.839 --> 00:32:14.839 And the ethics is important, but that's not the gospel. 00:32:14.839 --> 00:32:19.839 The first thing to simply ask is, did Jesus rise from the dead or not? 00:32:19.839 --> 00:32:25.839 And if he did, the question is not, can I subscribe? It's, do you see the truth? 00:32:25.839 --> 00:32:30.839 God's not asking you to subscribe. He's asking you to say, is this real? 00:32:30.839 --> 00:32:33.839 What is? You don't have a choice. What choice do you have? 00:32:33.839 --> 00:32:38.839 If a man died and came back to life in the middle of human history, is there a choice? 00:32:38.839 --> 00:32:44.839 It's just real. It's just you acknowledging it, saying, yes, I believe. That's all. 00:32:44.839 --> 00:32:52.839 The third thing maybe today you're saying is, I'm not yet ready to say I'm a Christian because, like Lloyd-Jones pointed out, I'm not good enough. 00:32:52.839 --> 00:33:00.839 If you only knew my past, if you only knew what's going on in my life right now, the hidden and secret sins, 00:33:00.839 --> 00:33:05.839 and I just, let me say you're Rika. That's exactly. 00:33:05.839 --> 00:33:08.839 And let me finish Lloyd-Jones quote that I mentioned earlier. 00:33:08.839 --> 00:33:17.839 You know, Lloyd-Jones says, the person who says, oh, I'm not good enough, if that's you today, you are denying the gospel. 00:33:17.839 --> 00:33:22.839 You're denying God. You're denying the very essence of the faith and you will never be happy. 00:33:22.839 --> 00:33:29.839 You think that you're better at times and then again, you'll find at a different time, you're not as good. 00:33:29.839 --> 00:33:33.839 And you will be up and down forever. Am I good enough? Am I not good enough? 00:33:33.839 --> 00:33:38.839 How can I put it plainly? He says, it doesn't matter if you've almost entered into the depths of hell. 00:33:38.839 --> 00:33:43.839 It does not matter if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin. 00:33:43.839 --> 00:33:47.839 It does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God at all. 00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:51.839 You are no more helpless than the most moral and respectable person in the world. 00:33:51.839 --> 00:33:58.839 You know, you are not saved because you're a moral respectable person and you're not kept out of the kingdom 00:33:58.839 --> 00:34:05.839 because you're not a moral respectable person. You're saved by grace through faith alone. 00:34:05.839 --> 00:34:12.840 Lastly, today, most of the people in this room, I know you and I know that most of the people's room are Christians. 00:34:12.840 --> 00:34:17.840 You're a believer. You're saved by grace through faith and you know that. 00:34:17.840 --> 00:34:21.840 But maybe today you come and you don't feel like it. 00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:27.840 You might come today saying, I've lost my passion for this gospel. 00:34:27.840 --> 00:34:29.840 I've lost my zeal and hunger for this. 00:34:29.840 --> 00:34:37.840 I think one of the things I've seen is that there's this pretty common sociological experience within Christianity. 00:34:37.840 --> 00:34:42.840 Early Christians enter into the doldrums six months to one year in. 00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:46.840 If you become a Christian, you're really passionate and zealous for the gospel. 00:34:46.840 --> 00:34:51.840 And then about six months to one year in, you start to, that passion starts to go down and diminish. 00:34:51.840 --> 00:34:55.840 And then you start to wonder, is it me? Am I really a Christian? 00:34:55.840 --> 00:34:59.840 Or is it the people around me that they're not really Christians? 00:34:59.840 --> 00:35:03.840 Or is it the church I'm a part of? There's not just enough passion and hunger in the people. 00:35:03.840 --> 00:35:05.840 What is it? What's causing this? 00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:09.840 It's something that tends to happen to everybody that comes to faith at some point. 00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:13.840 And those are important questions to ask, but let me say, as we conclude, 00:35:13.840 --> 00:35:18.840 here's the trap that we're all as Christians prone to falling into. 00:35:18.840 --> 00:35:26.840 That the quality of our faith, the quality of the way we feel about the gospel, 00:35:26.840 --> 00:35:28.840 is the measure of the gospel itself. 00:35:28.840 --> 00:35:35.840 In other words, Paul says, you are not saved by your faith, but through your faith. 00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:40.840 And your faith is not the merit that gets you to Jesus. 00:35:40.840 --> 00:35:44.840 In other words, you might be questioning your salvation today. 00:35:44.840 --> 00:35:46.840 You might be questioning the salvation of other people around you, 00:35:46.840 --> 00:35:50.840 because you think there's not enough emotion there. 00:35:50.840 --> 00:35:52.840 There's not enough zeal. There's not enough passion. 00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:59.840 And the trap is, are you simply having faith, trusting in your faith? 00:35:59.840 --> 00:36:02.840 Trusting in the emotions of faith. 00:36:02.840 --> 00:36:05.840 It's not your emotions that save you. It's not your zeal that saves you. 00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:08.840 It's not your faith that saves you. 00:36:08.840 --> 00:36:11.840 Don't put your faith in your faith. 00:36:11.840 --> 00:36:13.840 Put your faith in Jesus Christ. 00:36:13.840 --> 00:36:17.840 And then you may find that your passion reignites 00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:22.840 when every single day you're saying, my faith is not about how I feel right now. 00:36:22.840 --> 00:36:24.840 It's about Jesus. 00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:28.840 And then your heart will swell back up again with joy. 00:36:28.840 --> 00:36:30.840 We've got nothing to boast about. 00:36:30.840 --> 00:36:32.840 Augustus Toplady, let's sing it together. 00:36:32.840 --> 00:36:37.840 Rock of Ages, nothing in my hands I bring simply to the cross I cling. 00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:42.840 The prayer you can have as we sing is the only merit that can set me to rights with God 00:36:42.840 --> 00:36:44.840 is the merit of Jesus. 00:36:44.840 --> 00:36:45.840 Let us pray. 00:36:45.840 --> 00:36:50.840 Father, nothing in our hands we bring simply to the cross we cling. 00:36:50.840 --> 00:36:55.840 Naked we come to thee for dress. 00:36:55.840 --> 00:37:00.840 We bring before you our sin and our guilt and our condemnation. 00:37:00.840 --> 00:37:04.840 And we receive this morning from you the grace of Jesus Christ. 00:37:04.840 --> 00:37:05.840 Thank you, Lord. 00:37:05.840 --> 00:37:11.840 I pray for somebody here today that maybe is not yet been ready to say, I'm a Christian. 00:37:11.840 --> 00:37:15.840 That they would be able today to say, I'm a Christian. 00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:19.840 And that they would see all they need to do is trust. 00:37:19.840 --> 00:37:23.840 All they need to do is believe in something that's already been done. 00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:26.840 And I pray that you would reignite the faith of many, many in this room 00:37:26.840 --> 00:37:30.840 as we struggle to maintain our zeal and passion for the gospel. 00:37:30.840 --> 00:37:34.840 And that you would do it by refocusing our hearts on the gospel itself. 00:37:34.840 --> 00:37:36.840 And we pray for this in Jesus' name. 00:37:36.840 --> 00:37:41.840 Amen.