JESUS IS ONLY SAVIOR IF HE IS LORD (Eph 1:15-16)

Easter Worship and the Risen Christ

Here we go.

You, my God, have saved my soul. I am yours forevermore. I won't be moved of this, I'm sure. You, my God, have saved my soul. When you came by the air, I'm living big. I am free and you are by your grace alone.

Sing of your love for us forevermore.

...worship this morning. Hallelujah, Christ has risen. Christ has risen indeed. Darkness has been vanquished. The brilliant light of hope has come. Come, let us worship and celebrate the good news. Hallelujah, Christ has risen.

What once was dead is now alive. You gave to me the breath of life. You brought me up out from the grave. I'm bursting out with songs of praise. What once was dead is now alive. You gave to me the breath.

You brought me up out from the grave. I'm bursting out with songs of praise. I'm bursting out with songs of praise. My God has saved my soul. I am yours forevermore. I won't be moved of this, I'm sure.

You, my God, have saved my soul.

We've sung about this morning. We praise you, God. Lord, as we get to worship this morning corporately, I pray that you are honored in this time, that you are glorified, that your name is lifted high.

Father, there's nothing of us, all of you. We praise you, God, that that tomb is empty. Lord, that you did what you promised, and we know, God, that that is true. We praise you for it. Thank you, Jesus.

Amen.

In John chapter 11, Mary and Martha were very discouraged with their current circumstances. And when Martha approached Jesus, she says, if you would have only come here sooner, then death would not have occurred.

And Jesus said these beautiful words to Martha. He said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this? What a wonderful truth this is, Martha.

Christ the true and better Son of God and Son of Man Who went and never sinned Who brings us back to life again. Dying, He reversed the curse Then rising, crushed the serpent's head. Christ the true and better Isaac Humble Son of sacrifice Who would climb the fearful mountain There to offer up His life.

Humble and joyous Son There salvation was provided. Oh, what full and boundless love True and better The champion Christ the storm We have died with Christ.

We believe that we also will live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin once for all.

But the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Because He lives I can face tomorrow. Because He lives. Because I know life is worthy.

Just because.

Father, we thank you for this corporate worship that you've allowed us to meet here this morning to praise your holy name. Thank you, Father God. Thank you for this season, this time that we look back and we see that not as in the Old Testament but in the New we get to look back and see that it is spent as we continue this worship in a time of offering.

We praise you, God. In your name we pray.

Amen.

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.

His appearance was like lightning and his clothes white as snow. And for fear of him, for the guards were trembling and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.

He is not here, for He is risen, as He has said. Come and see the place where He lay. Church, the tomb was empty.

Amen.

Amen. Thank you. Well, today is Easter, a celebration of the resurrection of the Savior. Right? The one and only Savior. But here's the thing. To us, those of us in here who are in Christ today, every Sunday is Resurrection Day, isn't it?

As a matter of fact, that's one of the reasons the Christian church has historically gathered together on Sunday because of that reason. And the reason that we find it so important is because the physical bodily resurrection of Christ is paramount to the Christian faith and should remain at the forefront of all of our worship.

But that being said, I'm not going to preach a traditional Easter sermon today. We are going to continue our study here in the book of Ephesians. So go ahead and open your copy of God's Word to Ephesians chapter 1.

And we're going to start in verse 15 today. But as a brief recap, maybe for some of those that weren't here with us over the past few weeks, we last week just wrapped up looking at this long run-on sentence by the Apostle Paul that began in verse 3 of chapter 1 and went all the way to verse 14 where we saw God's grand plan of redemption just pouring out of the Apostle Paul and unfolding.

We saw the past, the present, and the future redemptive plan of the triune God. The fact that God the Father chose us for adoption before the foundations of the world. The truth that God the Son has redeemed us by blood ransom.

And that God the Holy Spirit has guaranteed our inheritance as sons, as those that have been adopted and brought into the household of faith until we get into glory. And this leads us into verse 15 here where we read, the Apostle Paul says, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the work of His great might, that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Amen. This is the reading of God's Holy Inspired Word.

Would you join me in praying that God would illuminate our hearts and minds to this truth? Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word. Father, thank You for allowing us together this morning. For those of us that are in Your Son, Christ, where we stand redeemed, we stand righteous before You, not because of a righteousness of our own, but because of the righteousness of the perfect Holy Savior that has been accounted to us through faith and repentance.

So Father, I pray this morning that as we look at Your Word, that You would guard me from error. I'm a fallible man who can speak untruths, but Your Word is infallible. So I pray that I would be true to that Word.

I pray that You'd guard the hearers today. I pray that You'd guard us as we open up this truth and study it and evaluate it and look at it, that only truth would be spoken today and heard. In Christ's name, amen.

Faith in the Lord Jesus and Lordship Salvation

Well, Paul starts out this new section as we kind of transition into a new train of thought. He starts out with this phrase, for this reason there at the beginning of verse 15. And you see, every single time that Paul uses this phrase in the Greek, he's always referring to what he's getting ready to say in connection to what he has already said.

In other words, meaning that verses 15 through 23 that we just read are understood in light of verses 3 through 14 that we recapped a moment ago. And Paul does this, and he makes this transition and connects these two with a prayer.

He goes to the source once again. After he has laid out this beautiful plan of redemption from a triune God, he then goes into prayer. You would think that after he made that declaration that we've been studying over the past few weeks, after he makes this wonderful declaration, this great plan of redemption there in verses 3 through 14, that Paul would say something like, now, saints, now that you've heard about this, now that I've reminded you of this plan, go and live in light of it.

You would think that that's where Paul would go instantly, but he doesn't. Now, he does eventually in this letter. But here, in the immediate, he goes to praying for them. He goes to praying that essentially that God would give them the strength to go and live it out, and to experience this great truth, to live in light of being redeemed, being purchased, being chosen, being sealed by the Holy Spirit.

And so, over the next few weeks, if you stick with us, we are going to be looking at this prayer in greater detail. But today, what I want us to do is I want us to focus on the transition into the prayer.

Verses 15 and 16. So look there with me at verse 15, where he says, for this reason, and just as we said a moment ago, for this reason, because of God's grand plan of redemption that we just talked about, past, present, and future, that God has sealed the triune God, because of that, plus because, and Paul here, he goes on to point two distinguishing markers of the people he's writing to and the people he's getting ready to pray for.

He says, because I have heard of, number one, your faith in the Lord Jesus, and number two, your love toward all the saints. And because of these things, because of the truth that we just laid out, and because of your faith, and because of your love, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

So why is the apostle Paul not ceasing to give thanks for these believers in Ephesus that he's writing to? And remembering them specifically in his prayers? It's because he hears accounts of evidence that they are recipients of that glorious blessing that he spoke about previously.

Did you catch that?

He's praying for them because now he has heard of the evidence of that being true about them. These two distinguishing markers, faith in the Lord Jesus and love for one another, has given Paul a confidence that these people there in Ephesus and the others that he's writing to have truly been chosen.

They have truly been purchased. They show fruit of being redeemed and sealed for future glory. And why is that? Because he hears of the evidence of that fruit being produced in their lives. So let's look at the first one, the first of which being their faith in the Lord Jesus.

You know, we hear a lot about faith in Jesus here in the Bible Belt, don't we? It's kind of a common phrase. You go to church, you hear about it. You speak to your neighbors or coworkers. Everyone kind of has a general idea about a faith in Jesus.

As a matter of fact, we moved here, my family, we moved here about seven years ago from Florida, and I have to be honest, I have yet to meet a person here and spoken to one single person who has not said the sinner's prayer and claims to have faith in Jesus.

I've not met one.

Have you?

Now, I'm not saying there aren't out there. I just haven't come in contact with any of them. Every time I talk to any person, it's like, oh yeah, I prayed the prayer, I got baptized, whatever that might be, and they have faith in Jesus.

Nearly every person I meet. Despite the fact that usually the person I'm talking to rarely attends church. They know very little about the word of God and are often living in some sort of outright sin.

That doesn't matter, right? Because they prayed the prayer. They were baptized. So, they're covered. They're good. After all, once saved, always saved, right? And this is the result, unfortunately, of a distortion of the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ.

I'm going to give you a little bit of history here to kind of give you a context for why culturally here in the Bible Belt, and particularly here in Northeast Arkansas, struggles with this type of thinking.

See, back in the 70s and 80s, professors at Dallas Theological Seminary down in Dallas, Texas, they began promoting and teaching something known, what they like to refer to as free grace. They refer to it as free grace.

We actually refer to it as easy-believism. A man by the name of Zane Hodges, that was a professor there, he actually wrote a book, The Gospel Under Siege, where he attacks and denies the traditional understanding of salvation.

And so he, Zane Hodges, he and others around him claimed that a person can be saved by a intellectual ascent that accepts Jesus as their savior. Did you catch that? They believe that the gospel is an intellectual ascent that Jesus is the savior.

Meaning, to be saved, all a person has to do is believe in Jesus and accept his free gift of grace. Wait a second. Doesn't that sound right? All a person has to do is believe in Jesus and accept the free gift of grace.

See, here's the problem. It only sounds somewhat right to us because this just goes to show you the fact of how prominent this way of thinking has become within the church here in the South. Well, everywhere in the world, but primarily here in the Bible Belt.

It has penetrated our culture. And as I said a moment ago, we usually know it better as easy-believism. Walk the aisle. Say this prayer. Never doubt it. Even if you go out and live like the devil, it doesn't matter.

We have this idea that a person comes to Christ by making Christ their savior. By believing in him and making him their savior. And then later, at some point in life, they then decide to make him Lord.

It's an easy-believism. Thankfully, God used men like Dr. John MacArthur to fight against this distortion. In response to this, he wrote a book called The Gospel According to Jesus. I highly recommend it.

If you want to dive into the study of this and get to know what Scripture teaches in a greater way, find that book. It was written in 1988, I believe, but it is still in print. You should find it, read it, study it, learn it.

It's a great resource. In this book, he showed that Scripture teaches what we refer to as Lordship Salvation. Lordship Salvation. Remember our passage that we're looking at here in Ephesians. What is the first characteristic that Paul sees?

He says he's heard of their faith in what? The Lord Jesus. He doesn't write that as just nicety,.

Does he?

Every word is precise, isn't it, in Scripture? There's a reason that he puts it in there like this. Lord isn't Jesus' first name. Jesus' name is not first name Lord, middle name Jesus, last name Christ.

These are identifying markers of who Jesus is, and he is the Lord to these people. The faith that Paul had heard about in regards to these people, these Christians that he's writing to, was obviously not a mere shed faith.

It wasn't just a communicated, yes, I believe in the intellectual ascent of what Jesus did. Even a truly meaning heart of saying, yes, I believe Jesus did pay for my sins. Meaning that they weren't just giving lip service to him as their Savior.

Their faith was being lived out to him as Lord. This is what the Apostle Paul is hearing about. This is evidence of a true conversion. This is why he goes on to pray the way that he does for them that we're gonna look at over the next few weeks.

This is why he has confidence in the fact of what he's just previously said about redemption is true about them because the Apostle Paul, you gotta know, he's sitting in prison as he's writing this letter, so he's obviously getting word from somewhere.

So there's people, there's Christians coming in and out and telling him. Maybe people are writing him and telling him about this lived out faith, this trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, this obedience to Christ, and man, he's overwhelmed with it, and he loves them.

I've heard of your faith in the Lord. You see, believing in what Jesus did is not enough, is it? It's not enough to just believe in what Jesus did. As a matter of fact, turn with me to John chapter two.

I want you to see something here. John chapter two, I want us to look at verses 23 and 24. At this point in Jesus's ministry, there are people that are following him. They're flocking to him. They love what he has to offer.

They love what he's doing. And then this account here in John chapter two, starting in verse 23, points that out. He says, now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name.

Many believed in his name. When they saw the signs that he was doing, but Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people.

Did you catch that?

These people believed in his name. As a matter of fact, they had the evidence of who he was. They could see that he was doing the works of God. He was doing miraculous things, and they believed it. They saw it with their own two eyes, and they believed in his name.

Isn't that all we have to do? Not according to this. Jesus, he didn't entrust himself to them. He knew their heart. He knew their motives and their reason for believing. Those motives were not sincere, were they?

These were not sincere motives of belief in who Jesus is. Here's the problem, because Christ had not revealed himself to them, which is essential. You have to see Christ for who he is, and the only belief that these people could even possibly have is essentially a selfish belief.

It's a selfish faith. What do I get from this Jesus? What can Jesus do for me? They saw all the signs. They saw all the wonders that he was doing, and it's just like the people today hearing that believing in him allows them to escape hell.

There are churches that have VBSs. I've actually heard an account of a VBS with a big 55-gallon bucket over here, and another one over here, and one of them was heaven, and the other one had a fire in it, and you had to walk up and put your name in it as a kid and say, which one did you want to go to, heaven or hell?

Just believe in Jesus and drop your name into the bucket without the fire, or if you want to go to hell, don't believe in Jesus and drop it in the bucket with the fire, and then the ones that dropped it in the bucket without the fire, they claimed are saved, and then baptized all the kids.

What are they believing in? What are they doing? And here's the thing. They're children. These are children that they don't have ill intent per se. They're believing what the adults are telling them. There's no doubt in their minds this heaven and hell is real, and I want to go to heaven.

I believe there's a Jesus, but belief isn't enough. I want you to see something else. Flip over to the Gospel account of Luke chapter 9. Luke chapter 9. We're going to start looking in verse 57. I want you to see Jesus' response to people that are desiring to follow him through belief in who he is.

Luke chapter 9, starting in verse 57,.

Says,.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him,.

Who is this?

Someone speaking to Jesus, right?

He said,.

I will follow you wherever you go.

I believe.

I believe in you, and I will follow you wherever you go. Verse 58,. And Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. It's a weird response, right?

It seems odd. Let's keep going here. To another he said, Follow me. So he calls someone to follow him. But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, Leave the dead to bury their own dead.

Luke verse 60,. And Jesus said to him, Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. Yet another said, I will follow you, Lord. Another declaration, right?

Of belief. I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my house. Jesus said to him, No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. What's Jesus saying here?

Is he saying that we shouldn't bury our dead? Is he saying that we should never say farewell to our family when we leave? Of course not. What Jesus is pointing to is that in order to follow him, everything else must pale in comparison.

We are not following him for what he can give us. We are following him because he is our Lord. And when it comes down to it, we see it over and over again where people come. They come down some altar call and they pray a prayer.

They're emotionally stirred. I believe they have the best of intentions. They truly believe at some level what's going on, but they're coming to Jesus for what Jesus can give them. And then they later fall away.

Were they ever saved?

No.

Because Christians will persevere. Because a Christian comes to Jesus in repentance. A Christian comes to Jesus as Lord. You can't even begin to understand what Jesus did at the cross unless you understand that he is Lord.

These two cannot be separated. We'll talk a little bit more about that here in a moment. This is essentially what John said in 1 John 2, 3. Very familiar passage. He said, And by this we know that we have come to know him.

How do we know that we've come to know Jesus? According to John, he says, If we keep his commandments. What does that mean? If he's Lord. If you obey him. That's when you know that you're in him. John's simply repeating Jesus' words.

Jesus' words back in John 8, 31 says, So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him.

Right?

Here we go. The Jews that believed him, I believe what you're saying. I believe that you're doing miracles. I believe in you.

He says,.

If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. Seems like an awful lot of ifs. True faith. True conversion. Lordship salvation is a changed heart. A changed heart. As Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 5,.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Has the old passed away? Has the new come? Have you been made a new creature? Because when you come to Jesus as Lord, you are something categorically different than what you were.

Because you've come to him in repentance.

And faith.

Faith in who Jesus truly is. Do you know what repentance really means? It's a turning away. It's a turning away from something. What faith is, is you're turning to Christ, aren't you? Think of it in this way.

Christ is over here. And everything else is over here. I've been walking this way. And now Jesus has awakened me. The Holy Spirit has brought life into me. And I turn around and I see Jesus. And what do I do?

I turn from sin.

I repent.

And I look to Jesus and Jesus alone. And I walk away from the sin. My back is to the sin. My back is to everything else. Because Christ is Lord. He is the only object of my affection. He is the only object worthy of praise.

He is the only one in this entire created universe that is worthy of lordship. And so I turn.

I repent.

I love how Pastor Jeremiah puts it. He says, faith and repentance are two sides to a single coin. You can't have faith without repentance. And you can't have repentance without faith. The two go hand in hand.

This is why Jesus must be Lord. Jesus is the Lord of your life. Here's the thing, though. Jesus is already Lord. Whether you submit to His lordship or not, He's Lord. He reigns. He's Lord of all. He's Lord of everything.

And we must submit to Him. Now, here's the thing. It's not as though we don't still war against the flesh, is it? I don't want to leave you discouraged here thinking, Pastor Nathan said that if I don't live a perfect life and I don't obey Jesus perfectly, then I'm obviously not a Christian.

Please don't walk away thinking that because I've felt that at times in my life, and that will burden you down. That will weigh you down because we're still left here to war against the flesh. But it's not as though we don't war against the flesh.

It's that we now war against the flesh. There's a key distinction here, right? It's not as though we don't war against the flesh. It's that we now actually war against it. Before, we were enslaved to it.

We obeyed it at every turn. We loved it. We longed for it. But now, even though there's a bit in our flesh until we reach glory that's pulling us back towards the world at times, that gravity keeps pulling us back, we're fighting it.

That's what a Christian does. I'm fighting it. I want to serve my Lord. I want to obey my Lord. I want him to shine in my life. I don't want that anymore. And every once in a while, I keep going back to it and longing for it.

And Jesus, as the good Lord that he is, he is drawing us back in. God the Father is a good Father. He's drawing us back in. That's why he gave us the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we talked about last week.

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is working in us, that sanctifying work where he is convicting us and he's making us despise the things of the world more and more.

I don't know about you,.

But I despise things in the world a lot more than I did 10 years ago. Can everybody attest to that? I despise it so much more than I did 10 years ago. And I look back at it and I think, man, I loved it in comparison to what I feel now.

And I'm hoping in another 10 years I can look back and go, man, I hate the world so much more than I did before because God is working in us because Jesus is our Lord, right? And we do so, we long to do so because we long to be obedient to him.

And when we see someone, when we look at someone around us that professes this truth in Christ, that says, I have belief in Jesus, we can say that if they're not living out that faith with Jesus as Lord, we have no confidence in that faith.

And you should neither. Just as James said, what good is it, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? You got to understand, James is not saying that works are equal with their faith.

What James is saying is a true faith will be worked out. A true faith is one that makes Jesus Lord. Well, it doesn't make Jesus Lord, except the fact that Jesus is Lord, right? Let's be precise with our words, right?

But James is saying, you can tell me you have faith all day long. Well, he says it in James 2, verse 18, he says, but someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

What are works? Obedience to the Lord. Lordship salvation. James says in the next verse, in verse 19, he says, you believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Believe in Jesus all you want.

Believe in Jesus with all the sincerity in your heart. And if Jesus isn't Lord of your life, that belief is nothing. It means nothing. It has no saving power. It will do nothing because it's not true faith.

Because true faith comes in repentance, turning away. Belief alone is not enough. It must be accompanied with that. We're turning away from our old self because we cannot serve two masters, can we?

That's what Jesus said.

You can't serve two masters. And turning to Jesus in faith requires what I mentioned a moment ago, that turning away from everything else. If you lost someone dear to you today, is Jesus still enough?

Is Jesus still Lord? If you lose your job today, is Jesus still Lord? If you get into an accident and are bound by a wheelchair for the rest of your life, is Jesus still Lord? Or do you long for the things of this world?

If you never find that spouse, is Jesus still Lord? There's no such thing as coming to Jesus as Savior and not simultaneously coming to Him as Lord. And this is the first reason that Paul gives in his confidence that they are of the beloved that he has mentioned.

He has confidence, and that's what he's getting ready to pray for them.

Love Toward All the Saints

So let's look at the second.

Paul also points to a second fruit here. Look back at verse 15 in our passage in Ephesians 1.

He says,.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints. I couldn't help but think of John 13, 35, where Jesus says, By this, all people will know that you are my disciples.

By how?

By good morals? Did Jesus say, by your good morals, everyone will know you're my disciple?

No.

Ah, by your profession of faith, everyone will know you're my disciples. By your baptism, everyone will know you're my disciples. By your works, everyone will know you're my disciples. Now, he says, If you have love for one another.

That's the identifying marker. Matthew 22, 34. You can turn there with me if you would like. But Matthew 22, 34 says,. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. He's trying to trap Jesus. Verse 36, it says, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment. And I'm sure these men were like, yeah, that's it. Love God. And then verse 39, he says,. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. For on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

This is the distinguishing marker of being obedient to the Lord, right? If Jesus is Lord, you're being obedient to the Lord. You are changed. You are something different. And 1 John 4, 20 says, If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. That's pretty bold, right? We could go all day long with passages like this over and over again in scripture.

But I want you to notice here in our text. He says, your love toward some of the saints. Is that what Paul heard about? Your love towards the likable saints. The ones you get along with. I've heard about that.

I've heard you've got some really good clicks there in that church. No, he says, your love toward all the saints. He's heard of this church that is living out the faith that they claim. They're proving themselves to have Jesus as Lord of their life.

And he has confidence in this truth that they've been redeemed because of this. And Paul makes a big deal about this. As a matter of fact, we're going to get to it sometime in the year like, what, 2028?

Somewhere in that range. We're going to get to chapter 4 in Ephesians, right? But Ephesians 4, he says, I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling which you have been called.

These are Christians. You've been called according to his purposes. And he says, with all humility and gentleness and with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.