We're going to step into the arena of doctrine Because one of the things that is often misunderstood in modern Christianity is the importance of understanding doctrine I remember one time and some of you've heard this story, but I like to tell us I'm gonna tell it again I was at a another church and I was at like it was some kind of event they were having There was some kind of like maybe like a like an outing And I was standing there talking to a young man who wanted to go to seminary And he was asking me about seminary and I was telling him various places he could go and where he could go and to do his biblical training And I said, here's a school that you should go to and it's good because they are very doctrinally sound And the young man looked at me and he said, but I hate doctrine And I stopped him and I said, look, I said, don't hate doctrine Because it is what separates the false teacher from the truth What you believe about God, what you teach about God, what you teach about Jesus Christ, what you teach about the Holy Spirit What you teach about the Word of God is what separates the heretic from the faithful proclaimer of God's Word Doctrine is not a bad thing Doctrine became a bad thing last generation of Christianity when everything became about feelings and nothing became about facts How many of you have seen my train illustration? I do this for kids I draw a picture of a train Now, I just I'll make it very quick This is the engine and then you have the caboose I don't know why the caboose had that, but that's the caboose And we and we say we have we have three things that all are a part of our faith are all part of Christianity We have facts, we have faith, and we have emotion Now, if each one of these cars, the engine, of course, pulling the car, the caboose bringing up the rear and the middle car If these were in successive value, which one is most important? What do you think is going in the engine? Facts A lot of people say faith comes first, but that's not true It doesn't do you any good to believe in something that's not true Facts come first You believe in what's true Faith follows facts And then emotions result from that Jesus Christ rose from the dead I believe that he rose from the dead And thus I express that in hope and joy and passion for the gospel Now, this is how the church often goes today We put the emotions up front And what happens is your faith lasts only as long as the emotion lasts And when your faith lasts only as long as the emotion lasts, guess what? I come to church and I get all high on Jesus And then come Wednesday or maybe even Sunday afternoon I bring nothing at all with me And thus we trust in the truth You could put truth if you wanted to I just always like the facts, faith, emotion setup But you could say truth, faith, and emotion And so doctrine is important because that's what gets the facts What is it that the Bible teaches about Jesus? What is it that the Bible teaches about salvation? What does the Bible teach about me? What's the biblical anthropology? What's the biblical theology proper? What's the biblical Christology? All of those things matter For without them, what would we have? Well, I have my opinion, you have your opinion, and everybody's opinion's equally right That's the moral equivalent of psychotic behavior If everybody's right, nobody's wrong, then guess what? Nobody's right either because nothing's right That's psychotic That's why when somebody says all religions can equally be right at the same time No, they can't because they're saying something different The polytheist and the monotheist cannot both be right at the same time Because the monotheist says God is one, the polytheist says there are many gods There is either one God or there is not one God And the law of non-contradiction States that something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship Cannot And that's the simplest logical law I can't be here and not be here at the same time and in the same relationship I'm either here or I ain't God is either one or he's many, but he cannot be both And thus the two religious systems that say God is one and another that says God is many Cannot both exist on the same plane So all this being said, doctrine matters, what we believe matters, how we express it matters And one of the simplest, most important things that we need to understand When sharing our faith is that we need to have a right soteriology Now I didn't just throw that word out there to be fancy, I wanted you to learn it Soteros is the Greek word for salvation or saved Soteros is to save Soteriology is the study of salvation It's the doctrine of how a person is saved And we have in the New Testament a verse which simplifies and boils down The doctrine of salvation in a very, very simple outline And that's the verse that we're going to look at tonight I used to wear this verse on my wrist I used to have a leather bracelet and I just, I lost it I'd wear it again if I had it But this was the verse, it was at EPH 2.8 EPH of course is Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8 The ESV it reads as such For by grace you have been saved through faith And this is not your own doing It is the gift of God That's our pulpit translation, that's what I teach from the ESV The New American Standard For by grace you have been saved through faith Same And that not of yourselves It changes the pronoun from this to that It's still the same thing It is the gift of God Well that's verse 9 And since I limited us to learning one verse each week I'm going to encourage you to learn 9 and 10 For by grace you have been saved through faith And that not of yourselves is the gift of God Not of works as anyone should boast For we are his workmanship Creating Christ Jesus unto good works That's important to memorize the whole thing But for the rules of the group I said I was going to do one verse a week So I limited it just to verse 8 But yes, memorizing through 10 is good And it is on the sheet The King James Version For by grace are ye saved through faith And that not of yourselves It is the gift of God If you look at these three verses together you notice one thing There is very little deviation in the English And the reason why there is very little deviation in the English Is because the Greek is so clear It is absolutely clear And it doesn't leave a lot open to translational variation So you see in the three translations it is very very simple The Greek Reads as such Reads as such And again I don't expect everybody in here to know Greek Or to be studying Greek But what I do want to go over with you is the word meanings Because this again is where you find Whether or not the translation you are studying Is correct You go back to the original And by the way you can get this online You do not have to be You don't have to have a full library Full of all kinds of expensive textbooks To get the Greek New Testament Go to biblehub.com And I am not plugging this for any website or anything But you go to biblehub.com You can get any translation you want You can get an interlinear translation I brought this to show you tonight My true Greek scholar friends Would say an interlinear is bad But I will tell you They are not all bad But an interlinear looks like this It has the The English underneath The Greek And it also has for you The number at the top That number corresponds to the Strong's Concordance So that you can look up that word And see the root meaning of that word It also has underneath it Whether it is a verb or a noun Whether it is in what case that it is in Whether it is masculine, feminine or neuter All that is on this sheet And it is very simple And the reason why I bring this up Is there are some times When understanding How the language works Can help you understand better What something is saying For instance In this particular sentence It says for by grace you are saved through faith That is not of yourselves What is it that is not of yourselves Well let's break this sentence down Very quickly By the way Those who don't normally come on Wednesday night We sort of treat this like mini seminary We really dig into this stuff Because we think it is fun and it is helpful It gets us deeper But looking at this sentence For by grace are you saved through faith And that not of yourselves The second portion And this is not of yourselves That is a pronoun And what does a pronoun Require An antecedent A word that it points back to If I said Bobby and Keith are going to The movies and they are Going to get popcorn They is the pronoun Which refers back to Bobby and Keith Bobby and Keith are the antecedent Of they And we know that it is a plural pronoun If it were singular If I said Bobby and Keith are going to the movies And he is going to get popcorn You wouldn't know who the he was Right You wouldn't say it that way Because it would be a singular pronoun With multiple antecedents Unless you said Bobby and Keith are going to the movies And he is getting popcorn You would have to refer back to the direct antecedent Would be Keith because it was a second noun But that is not the way we would normally say it You give me some popcorn The reason why I am making all that important Is because the word that is hugely important Because preceding that Are two Nouns What are the nouns that precede the word that For by grace are you saved Through faith What are the two nouns there Grace And faith And it says And that is not of yourselves In some translations it says This is not of yourself And this is Singular But it has Multiple antecedents So the way that you Would determine in Greek Is you would look at the gender Of The noun And compare it to the gender of the pronoun Alright The gender of that In this particular sentence The gender is Neuter So you would look to see which one of the pronouns Has a neuter gender Okay So which is it Ye Ye Where are you at U U R is a participle You meant the noun Yeah this U R is not a noun Yeah U R saved is a You have there A Estes ses Sesos minoi is That's a verb and then you have the participle there So it's not you're looking at it As a noun but it's not a noun in Greek Yes you were It's not alright so Greek In Greek that is neuter What does it refer to Well here's the problem Pisteos is Greek or is the faith And that is in Feminine I can't spell feminine So that means grace is it right No No it's not because grace Is in the feminine as well So now your Singular Pronoun does not match either Of your preceding Nouns That creates a problem for some people But I'm going to solve it for you in just a second But very quickly before I solve it I want to make a point We argue As reformed Christians Those who come out of the Protestant reformation That salvation is a gift of God From beginning to end And that even our faith Is a gift from God Would we agree Those of us who are reformed That even that which we express as Belief comes from God And often times this verse is used To prove that and they'll say see that Is the pronoun it points back To faith is the exact Preceding noun so that Is faith the problem is The genders don't line up So some people say no it's grace And then what do we say to them Well those genders don't line up either That Does not refer to grace Or faith That refers to the entire Preceding clause For by grace are you saved Through faith and that Whole thing Is the gift of God So it's not just faith That's being referenced by that And it's not just grace That's being referenced by that And it's not even salvation Because that word is there too It's not that that's being referenced either All of it That precedes the that Is now being referenced As the gift Yes Yeah we haven't got there yet We're going to talk about that The fact the requirement of the fact That it's a gift is the fact that it comes to a dead person We're going to really I'm going to have to step it up here Yes In the Greek It's gender In English we don't do this In other languages Did you ever take Spanish And you know how in Spanish There were different genders And how different genders worked It's similar in Greek Something we don't have in English What we do but it's not the same We don't ascribe gender to all things Where they do in Spanish Ascribe gender to various things we don't But we do in a sense We talk about ships And we call them she We ascribe it to a ship Or a hurricane often is given a name Well they used to be like lady names But specifically Though this is how This is how the language would work together Yeah this is not English This is Greek I hope I haven't lost everybody My point in this is simply To solve an exegetical issue Because for some reformed folks Who want to make the argument That that refers to faith They're going too far That refers to the entire Preceding clause Yeah and they're reading into it See just because it's saying What we're saying doesn't mean it's saying All that we're saying Hope I didn't just lose everybody We have to be fair with the text And we can't go further than the text goes And people often do that On both sides Those who would oppose what we teach Would argue from other verses We often argue from our own verses This is one of the ones that we often argue from And we often argue incorrectly Arguing that that references faith It doesn't it references the entire preceding clause Yes Are we not saying that this is regeneration For by grace are you saved through faith Yes But now you're dealing with the You're addressing Regeneration Regeneration Is what brings about Our new birth But it is not the only part Of salvation that we enjoy Would you agree That we enjoy adoption That we enjoy justification That we enjoy sanctification glorification And all the other aspects of salvation Which are talked about in scripture The righteousness of Christ Imputed to us our sin imputed to him Those things Yes regeneration is a part of this But regeneration is not the only part of this So that's my point Regeneration is Regeneration is the cause Of our belief We go from death to life And because of that our hearts are open To believing I feel like I may have Lost I may have gone further Than I intended to with this I just wanted to Bring out How language matters and how Understanding the language can help us Make better arguments for our Doctrine understanding We know that salvation is a gift from God This text is so clear And what this text is really clear about Is that the whole process Grace And faith Are both Gifts from God God gives us Grace That by the way the word carite Is from the root caris Means a Unmerited gift it is something that's Unearned Paul tells us That if you think that you earn The grace of God you take grace away You make it a wage That you earned the only thing That we earn from God Is judgment The Bible says The wages of sin is death But the gift of God is eternal life What's that? No you don't you can't And that's why grace is so important to understand That grace is a gift that you Couldn't earn Faith Is an exercise of trust You know we all do it I remember a guy Who told me one time I'm incapable Of expressing faith I said you came in and sat in that Chair well I tested The chair before I sat down I said but you had To trust at some point that it would hold you Well I shook it to make sure He was really argumentative I said You never exercise faith I said you drove here Today in a car where you pressed The pedal to the left Hoping it would stop you you exercise Faith in the pedal well I put Those brakes on I couldn't win I said you If I had to go somewhere And I asked you to go with me You would get into my truck and ride with me Never thinking for a second that my Brakes don't work and you didn't put them on You exercise faith Every day faith is an Act of trust But trust In Christ Is an unnatural Act the bible says That the Natural man Cannot do that which is pleasing to God Romans chapter 8 Faith pleases God And thus it is not natural For the Person who is unregenerate To express faith And that's where we come to Ephesians because I want to go back up And read verses 1-10 now read the Context to see How this verse fits Into the context Because it begins by telling Us about the nature of man it gives us a Very clear biblical Anthropology an understanding of man It says and you Paul is writing to The Ephesians but by extension to us all He is saying And you were dead in the Trespasses and sins in which you once Walked you were dead in those Dead d-e-a-d dead You were dead you were not sick you were Not dying you were not Almost dead you Were d-r-t Dead right there you were dead And you're trespassing and that's an Important word Because Paul expounds on that In other passages such as in Romans 3 where he tells us that No one seeks After God why Because we're dead in sin We don't want to seek after God we want to seek After sin we want to Seek after unrighteousness we love our Sin and when we are Confronted with the holiness of God We are confounded Because we love sin And God hates sin and thus we In turn hate God We don't like to think of it that way but that's what Happens and you just think when you Talk to the natural person the person who has no affection For God no desire for God and you tell Him about God and you start talking to him about God what is his Immediate response I don't like Him he tells me What I can't do he tells me what I shouldn't do he tells me How I should behave and I like those things Thus I don't like him Why do people love God who Are unbelievers Because they create a God in their own mind They're idolaters they create a God that's like them Well my God would never send Anyone to hell You're right Because your God doesn't exist he can't do that You created an idol and you're Worshipping an idol you win You're right I don't argue with that person I say you are exactly right Okay the King James go ahead You were dead Yeah there's a small textual Yeah there's a textual Variation there but I Don't want to get into that right now but yeah It's okay The new King James is based on the Byzantine Manuscript tradition and There's some variations between that The Alexandria manuscript tradition that's where Those 5700 manuscripts we were talking about earlier Well it Doesn't change the meaning but There are some words that you're going To find in certain manuscripts that you Won't find in others and this is what textual Textual criticism Not higher criticism But textual criticism is all about determining What the original was You saw it in italics There you go If you see it in italics that means it wasn't in the original Yeah If it's in the King James In the italics that means it was not part of the original Just keep that in mind Yes ma'am I will keep reminding you I'll do my best And you were dead In the trespasses and sins in which you once walked Following the course of this world Following the prince of the power of the air The spirit that does not work in the sons of disobedience Among whom we all Paul is very emphatic That we all Once lived in the passions of our flesh Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind And were by nature Children of wrath I remember in this very room We used to have a little stage over there That was in the corner Because the door used to be here Before we moved the sound room And I remember teaching on this text one night And I remember a person telling me But we are not sinners by nature No I'm sorry I was teaching on something else And the person said we are not sinners by nature We are sinners by choice I said well we are sinners Both is right We are sinners by nature and by choice But the reason why we choose to sin Is because we are sinners by nature We don't sin We are not sinners because we sin We sin because we are sinners Does that make sense? And it says this is by nature I took the verse out and said by nature Children of wrath like the rest of mankind Paul is using universal language About sin and he says all of mankind Is dead in sin But God The two most beautiful words In the English Bible Because this is where The plan changes Not the plan rather Because the plan has always been the mind of God This is how life changes When God intervenes We who are dead and are trespasses And sins Just like the rest of mankind But God being rich In mercy because of the great love With which he loved us Even when we were Dead in our trespasses and sins That's a beautiful text because it tells us God loved us When we were dead God loved a dead sinner In this way God showed his love toward us And that while we were yet Sinners Christ died for us We see that here Even when we were Dead in our trespasses Made us alive together with Christ By grace you have been saved By the way that same construction is used later in verse 8 He uses the phrase By grace you have been saved twice And anytime we see Any sentence like that used twice In this proximity It's focusing on a theme The reason why he's focusing on death Is to show you The power of the life That he brings It is all of grace He pretty much stops the sentence here He's talking Even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins He made us alive together with Christ By grace you have been saved In the ESV they put a hyphen Between those two As if to say And I think it's correct in the original This is like Paul Paul is just writing and he goes And don't forget Because it is a parenthetical statement Don't forget that the whole Reason why the death matters And all this matters is because It's all of grace And he goes on And raised us with him And seated us with him in heavenly places In Christ Jesus A lot of people don't understand that because they say well we're not seated with Christ right now Well we are in a sense Because we are in Christ And Christ is seated in heavenly places And thus because we are in him Spiritually We are already Our salvation is already completed Salvation is not something we work for Salvation is not something we earn Salvation is something that has Already been accomplished We are enjoying The accomplishments of our king We are not accomplishing our own Salvation It's done Okay So that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of his Grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus for by grace You have Been saved That's in the perfect tense meaning That it's a past tense But it has effect in the future And the focus is on the effect You have been saved in the past Because Christ saved you on the cross But that salvation has an effect That's ongoing and even to now You are being saved And you will be saved Forever Because of that past completed action And this is not your doing It is the gift of God Not a result of works So that no One may Boast No one is going to get to heaven And say Lord I deserve this In fact the only People who are going to say they deserve It are the people In Matthew 7 who Jesus said He is going to say to them Depart from me I never knew you Because they are the ones who say But Lord didn't we do many mighty Miracles in your name and cast out many demons In your name and do these works in your name And I will say unto them what Well I didn't know about that come on in No that's not what he says Well I forgot it was you I just I missed your it was not I had the wrong list Did you believe I brought out the wrong list It's like God no The only people who proclaim their own goodness On judgment Are the people who never understood grace to begin with They are the people who never Understood grace Because they proclaim their own goodness And so It's not works So that no one may boast Not even Paul And he said I've done so much in my life I was a Hebrew of Hebrews I was trained at the feet of one of the greatest of all Pharisees Gamaliel I have the pedigree to pay the bills And even when I face God At judgment I will face With no goodness of my own Having a righteousness that not come from me But comes from Jesus Christ For we And then he goes on verse 10 For we are his workmanship God's workmanship Created in Christ Jesus for what For good works This is where good works come in Because some people think if you preach grace Then you're avoiding the idea of works That you don't believe that good works are important No Never let it be We are not antinomian If you don't know what that means The antinomian Teaches licentiousness The idea that God's commandments Of morality Don't matter Antinomos Antinomian is an anti-law person A person who says the law has no effect Or no value So effectively the person says because of grace I can live how I want What did Paul say about that person? Romans 6 That's right Shall we continue in sin so that grace can abound God forbid By no means This is where good works come in And this again if you look at the train illustration Grace Is the gift We receive that gift through Faith And then because of faith We begin to work For Christ Not To earn Because you can't earn what's already been given But in Example Or in appreciation of what has been done Not to Award or afford Something for ourselves Yes sir By grace through faith And that not of yourselves Yes Prior to regeneration Prior to regeneration Absolutely And it just We don't know What Evil there is In what we do We don't know how bad off we really are We don't know how bad off we are But we do know more than we let on Because I don't know a man alive That would let me take every thought from his life From the last week Put it on a projection screen and show it to his wife So I don't know any man Huh What I'm saying is We don't know how bad we are But we know we're worse than we think If we really get If we really open up the heart we'll understand Well The last thing in this passage he says Which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them God prepared good works for us to do Every one of us Has been called to salvation Salvation has been given a gift from God And that gift is to be used within God's economy for His purposes He has a purpose for you in His church He has a purpose for you in His world And He prepared that for you Before the world was made And that's promised here It says because Christ has saved you Your good works are the result Not the cause of that And your good works have been prepared to you from the foundation of the world That's a beautiful blessing And teaching right here in this passage Now let me give you We're kind of over time I apologize for that Let me give you the fill in the blanks The doctrine of salvation Or soteriology Is only properly understood Within the context of man's Spiritually dead condition Spiritually dead I know you guys like to try to guess the blanks That one was a little awkward Well you could say totally depraved Um Also true But in this particular passage It uses the phrase deadness We've already talked about what that means Number two, salvation is spoken of In three ways in scripture It's spoken of in past, present, and future realities The past tense Speaks of our justification Justification Happened at the cross The present tense When it talks about us being saved Is in the context of sanctification And the future Is glorification You see when Christ died on the cross He justified Or declared righteous All who believe in him Because he took their penalty And he gave them his righteousness And thus justification The act of declaring the sinner righteous Was done right then That was accomplished at the cross Now As a believer You have already been saved But you're also being saved Because you're going through the process Daily Whereby Christ is sanctifying you Through the work of the Holy Spirit within you And I always People come to me all the time Pastor I feel I battle sin And I say great Don't come to me and tell me You battle sin And you're afraid because we're all Battling sin I'm afraid when you tell me you're sinning and it doesn't bother you Because that's The problem If you come to me and say I'm living in sin And it's not affecting my heart at all I would say it's because your heart is desperately wicked It's because it has not Been regenerated If you can live in the muck and mire of sin For a lengthy period of time And perpetual rebellion against God And it not affect your heart Or even for a short amount of time If it's not affecting your heart Your heart is desperately wicked Has not been changed So that's the sanctification And finally future glorification That's something that we will all enjoy Who believe on Christ That one day our bodies will be raised And our life will be with Him in eternity The context of this passage Number three The context of this passage shows How in salvation Grace and works Are not exclusive There are people Who focus On grace only To the point That it becomes antinomian As I mentioned earlier What Dr.