Does Ephesians 2:8 Prove That Faith is a Gift? (03/05/2023)

I'm happy to do it. So I think this morning you might find it interesting. So let me get you to turn to Ephesians chapter two, verse eight, very familiar verse for us.

And I'm gonna read it and then I'm gonna ask you a question brother Otis style. I'm gonna,

I'll have to ask Kenner why God doesn't think. Okay, so Ephesians two, eight, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

Okay, so my question is, does that verse teach that faith is a gift?

So be thinking about that and let's pray together. Lord, thank you so much for another

Lord's day in a still slightly free America, all by your strong hand, because Lord, we see our country tumbling in so many areas.

And yet, Lord, you have your people in different quarters and help us to be salt and light.

Thank you for this time to study and may you be the teacher. We ask it in Jesus name, amen.

All right, so it's kind of a trick question, but I think you'll enjoy mainly what this lesson is.

It's a study on how to study. And it gets into the

Greek a little bit. Now, if you can load onto your computer a software called Lagos, you don't have to study

Greek to learn how to use the Greek tools. And it's a wonderful piece of equipment you can have as a

Christian because it gets into the details. And what's interesting about it is Greek, there are a lot of little arguments.

I don't mean argument in a bad way, but just little discussions. You have it with family at Christmas, when they come in, where you disagree on some doctrinal issue or friends at work.

I remember he always had the most interesting ones. But a lot of the arguments could be solved if you went to the

Greek, because it would just prove it, because it's like math. It is what it is most of the time.

It is what it is, and it will just tell you what it means most of the time. And when it doesn't, you have to go by the context, right?

But you always have to look at the context anyway, which we'll do today also on this. But Hebrew is a little different.

It's not quite as definitive because a lot of the words can mean multiple things.

And so you have to use the context in that case to tell what the word is. What it means in that case. So guess what that means?

It means you have to be filled with the Holy Ghost to know what it means. And that's not a bad thing, is it?

You know what else that means? A lot of the seminary professors that are lost people get it wrong, because they're not filled with the

Holy Ghost. So they choose the wrong meaning. And so anyway. So let's read it in context,

Ephesians 2, 1. And you, now, if you wanna go out and find out who you is, you can go to the first chapter, first few verses and figure out who you is.

But it's talking to the elect in this particular verse, you meaning you

Christians. You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.

So even if we wanna call the elect people sheep and the non -elect people goats, that's a good biblical terminology.

So let's do that for this morning. So even if you're a sheep, there was a time when you were a lost sheep.

And some of you got saved as little lambs. A lot of our grandbabies and our children, when they grow up in Christian homes, get saved at young ages.

But a lot of us get saved later in life. Like I did, I was 24 when I was saved.

But there's a time when you're a lost sheep, you're never a goat. Goats don't turn into sheep and sheep never turn into goats, but you were a lost sheep.

Well, it kind of talks about this a little bit. It says before you were born again, now

God always knew you as his child, by the way, but in time and in space on this planet, when you're living your life, there is a point of spiritual birth for the sheep, where they're dead spiritually and they become alive.

And Jesus called it being born again. So it's very similar to physical birth, only it's spiritual.

So many things relate one -to -one with physical birth, or the same things are true of spiritual birth.

But this is talking about the moment you were quickened, that means brought to life by the Holy Spirit.

And this is talking about the cause of salvation, not the effects of it. This is the direct cause, is the

Holy Spirit calling you and quickening you. And that is the moment of salvation.

And you hath he quickened who were dead. So we were walking dead men just like the goats, weren't we?

We were just as dead spiritually as they are, which is creepy. But what's interesting is they have a human spirit, don't they?

They're human. They actually have a conscience that knows

God is there. And so, Roman chapter one deals with that.

It says they have to willfully put him out of their mind to stay lost. But they do because that's what they want to do.

Naturally in nature, by nature, a lost person wants to stay lost. And we do what we want to do, don't we?

And so the Holy Spirit has to change our want to. That's one of the things he does when he calls us. It's miraculous.

Well, this is talking about that point in time. Now we were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past, you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air.

This is why we say there is no such thing as free will. You do have a will and you make choices and your choices are extremely important, but they're not free, they're influenced.

Free would mean like the king. A king can make choices without asking anybody.

Everyone under him has to ask the king or the enemies of the king, right? And so we're not the king and we're not

God. And so therefore we don't have free will, we have influenced will. And I know I'm being technical and you have to notice this when your friends ask you, the ones that are not in the word and they ask you, you don't believe in free will?

I wouldn't say, no, I don't believe in free will. I'd say, well, tell me what you mean by that. Because what they mean by it is they just mean you make choices and we agree with that, don't we?

So if you say no, they think you think that you're a robot and you don't wanna go there because then you'll spend the whole next two hours arguing that you're not a robot, right?

Because they misunderstand. So I wouldn't like with a baby Christian or someone that just may not even be saved and they ask you that question, don't reveal your whole hand yet.

Just say, what do you mean by that when you say free will? Well, like we make choices and God made us where we can make choices.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe that. And maybe just skip the rest till the next visit because you have to use wisdom to know when to actually explain it as it is.

So otherwise you might choke them with too much meat when they're not even ready for milk yet.

So this verse two though, it shows clearly that even when we were lost, we did not have free will.

We had a will that caused us to walk according to, number one, the world system.

So the world system influenced your thinking and your choices. And secondly, according to the prince of the power of the air, which is

Satan. So Satan and him using the world system influenced every decision you ever made before you were saved.

So the lost people don't have free will. And there's other verses we could go into that prove saved people don't either, but that's not what the lesson's on.

But I thought it's interesting that it mentions that right there in verse two. The spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.

So Satan works in all of the lost people, the children of disobedient, including the lost sheep, as well as the goats.

And he influences their decisions. Among whom also, we all had our conversation.

I mean, our lifestyle in times past. So we used to run with the goats when we were lost sheep. We didn't know the difference.

We just ran with the goats in time past. According to the lust of the flesh.

So now we've talked about the world and the devil, and now it brings in the flesh. So now you have three things that influence your decisions.

So you don't have free will. The things that you choose to do are determined and influenced greatly by your flesh, by the world system, by Satan.

And when you're saved by the Holy Spirit, by the Bible, by your saved grandmother, your saved mom and dad, and so forth, your preacher, all these different things influences.

Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by nature, children of wrath, even as others.

So even the sheep are born with a lost nature, a sin nature, right?

And we have to be saved. But God, and that word, first word in verse four is so important, but, because it just shows

God didn't leave us there. He did not leave us in this state. But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, because he knew us from the beginning of the world, before the beginning of the world, as his own children.

He's always loved us first, before we ever loved him. Even when we were dead in our sins, has he quickened us together with Christ.

By grace, you are saved. Boy, isn't that a beautiful passage? If you got stuck on an island with only a little bit of scripture, that'd be pretty good choice right there.

While we were yet sinners, he quickened us. So while you could extrapolate that and say, you put in all the things the

Bible tells us sinners are, which some of them were mentioned here, while we were yet dead, he quickened us.

Because it says we were dead, right? So while we were still dead, he brought us to life. You cannot bring yourself to life.

You cannot birth yourself physically, can you? You can't make yourself be born a baby into this world. Others are in charge of that, right?

All right, so same way spiritually. So, all right, then we come to our verse. I'll skip down to verse eight.

For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

So the chapter begins with a statement that if anyone would understand it, it would really help them understand how salvation works.

In other words, it starts out with the depravity of man. We were dead in sins, but most people in the world, even the teachers and preachers don't start there.

They like to start with John 3, 16 or something like that. They don't start with why we need

John 3, 16. Why do we need Jesus? And that's a big mistake because the Bible starts in the book of Genesis.

It start the very first topic after creation is the fall of man, the depravity of man.

That he will, whatever, God can give him everything in the world except one thing and he'll want that one thing because he's born with that nature.

And so the chapter begins there with verse one, you quicken who were dead, all right?

So you were dead in trespasses and sin. This is the ultimate statement of total depravity. There are people out there all over the internet,

YouTube, everywhere that will argue, well, but God doesn't mean, you know, Calvin was wrong when he called it total depravity.

Well, Calvin didn't invent the idea and that's where they're so ignorant. You know, it's just sad because theologians talked about it 1100 years or more 1400 years before he ever talked about it.

Maybe not quite that long, but if you go all the way back to Paul and Jesus, that's true, isn't it?

So he did not invent this idea. And what they'll say is, well, yeah, they'll agree with you that man was depraved, but not totally.

He still had the ability to make a choice for Jesus. That's what they'll say. Now, that's just a pure logical argument based on what they want to be true, not based on scripture.

So if they really wanna talk scripture with you, they're going to lose that argument. But if they're with a bunch of other weak babies like themselves and you're the only one that knows it, you're gonna lose the argument probably unless you really know how to argue, which you need to learn that.

You argue by asking questions and you get them to do a circular argument where they argue with themselves.

And then you point out the foolishness to the other friends standing around, works really well. Works really well.

But Jesus did that, didn't he? So there we have total depravity.

And when I say, when I call it total depravity, I am using a theological term because that exact term may not be in the

Bible, but it just like the word rapture is not in the Bible, it describes a thing that is in the

Bible. You with me? So when you use total depravity, you have to understand that there's a lot of Christians that are

Armenians that will immediately just click their brain off because they think you're a

Calvinist all of a sudden. So I'm using it with you in class as a theological term that you need to understand because it helps us categorize our doctrines.

Not the best word to use when you're talking to your friends. Are you with me? Because when you use

Calvin's terms, and I'm not saying he invented the term, but it just turns their mind off and you don't want to do that.

You want their mind to be open. So you got to tiptoe. Don't lie, don't say you believe something that you don't, but ask them enough questions to figure out what are they really asking?

What are they really, how are they defining their terms? And it's always fair game to come back and say, well, yeah,

I agree with you, but I don't define the terms exactly like you do. Well, what do you mean? Well, like free will to me means sovereign will, and I think only

God has that. Oh, where do you get that? Well, think about it. Free means nothing influences your will, but we're influenced by lots of things.

Wouldn't you agree? Get them to answer the question and you go that way. So total depravity means what it means to us.

And there it is right there in the very first beginning of this passage in the context.

So here, the whole thing starts with, you are totally depraved. You cannot make a choice for Jesus in and of yourself because you won't.

It's not that you can't, but you won't. Well, you can't because you won't, all right?

You're just not gonna do it. And so it begins with that idea.

Now, in Genesis 2, verse 17, it says, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that you eat thereof, you will surely die, all right?

And then verse five in Genesis 5 says, in all the days of Adam, he lived to be 930 years and he died.

So God kept his word on that one, didn't he? The truth is he died before that because the moment he ate that fruit, he died spiritually.

And we know that from Genesis 3, 7, and the eyes of them both were open and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together, made themselves aprons.

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden who they had walked with every day since they existed in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves.

Now they're lost, you see? It's just the depravity certainly is there at this point with them.

And that's where it started. Now, people wanna argue about whether Adam and Eve had free will.

I don't think they ever had free will. I think they were humans and they had it. And they'll argue with, well, okay, when they did that sin, is that what invented or created the sin nature?

All theological works you'll read says, yes, that's where it was created. I don't agree with that. They already had a human nature.

They were humans. Now, I do think, I don't wanna go there.

We don't have time. But you have to ask the question if they didn't have some type of nature that was different than Jesus's nature, then why did they sin?

Why didn't they choose not to eat it if they didn't have some kind of nature that had a propensity to sin?

All right? So, that's a whole nother discussion. It's very interesting. I love talking about that.

And it's got a lot of things you can talk about. Where did the sin nature start?

But as far as the depravity part, they were not totally depraved because they walked with God and they knew him.

Don't you think they had a relationship with, at least we know Adam did for a long time and we don't know how long he walked before he was created.

But after she was created, it says, they walked with God in the garden in the coolness of the day.

They both had a relationship with God. So, they were not totally depraved at that point. But as soon as they ate that fruit, they were.

Because they ran and hid from him and didn't want anything to do with God. That's where that started. That I can assure you.

We can debate about the sin nature part some other time. But that, we know where the depravity started. And it's part of the sin nature, but it got worse on that day.

It got embedded in the human genome, if you want to say it that way. All right.

So, we know that the Bible begins with this great doctrine of depravity of man.

It teaches it through and through the Old Testament and New Testament, because without it, we will never understand the beauty of God's plan of salvation.

All right. Now, Romans chapter three, verse 10, gives 12 reasons man cannot and will not initiate his own salvation.

Right there, if you just need one good place to have where you always know where to go, go to Romans chapter three, start with verse 10, go down to verse 24, and there's 12 reasons why a natural person cannot choose to save himself.

He cannot choose to believe in Jesus. He cannot initiate his salvation.

He cannot save himself. Why would we even use the word save if you could save yourself?

Because save implies someone bigger and stronger has to save you, or you don't need saving. Does that make sense?

It's just a total violation of the definition of the word saved to believe in Arminianism, which means that you play a part in it, that you have something to do with initiating your own salvation.

It's such a sad lie of Satan. And it knocks out so much of the beauty of God's word on that.

So if you look at verse 10 there, Romans 3 10, as it is written, there's none righteous, no not one.

So we're asking ourselves the question, can a person initiate their salvation? Can they save themselves? Well, first of all, it says, none of them are righteous in and of themselves.

So they can't just walk into heaven, right? We know that, right? There is none that understands.

There's none that seeks after God. So now look at this. You don't have anyone that's right with God, but it says there's none that righteous.

So you have no humans in their natural state that are right with God. You have none that understand.

Now let's look into this word just a little bit deeper. Sunni ammi is the word.

And it means to put something together. To put it together is the base meaning of it.

It comes to mean to mentally comprehend something. So first of all, there are no righteous humans.

Secondly, there are no humans that can put together in their understanding.

They cannot put together how God saves people. They get it wrong every time. They don't put it together right.

So that tells you you're in for an argument at Christmas. Right? I mean, they're just not gonna get it. Even going to church, they don't get it because the preachers don't get it anymore.

The gospel that's preached predominantly in churches today is not even the gospel. And that's an interesting discussion.

We could have that at another time too. But it's not. And it's sad.

It's tragic and it's lethal from the human viewpoint anyway. So here they don't understand.

They don't comprehend. They don't put it together. And one of the meanings that this

Greek word can come to have in other places in scripture is to act piously. So it's not my favorite definition, but you're certainly not gonna act godly if you can't put together how

God saves people. Right? So you're not righteous and you can't be pious, which means you can't live a good life.

You can't be, you know, you said, well, that's a good man. Well, if you knew everything about him, you probably wouldn't think so.

Right? If you knew all of his thoughts, if you knew all the secret actions, you probably wouldn't think so.

But this right here says, well, not only are they not good, they don't understand how it works.

And then where it says there's none that seek after God, that Greek word means to search something out, to investigate, to crave something, or to worship something.

It has all those meanings in different places in the Bible where it's translated. And so you put that together, there's none good.

There's none righteous. In other words, there's none that understand how it works. And there's none that seek after God.

In other words, they don't crave God. They're not looking for God. They don't investigate to figure out

God. And they don't, certainly don't worship God. So there's none that seek after God.

Now that one verse is also, I think it's in Isaiah. It's somewhere in the Old Testament. I should have looked it up.

I meant to and I forgot actually while I was doing this. But when you think about that, that one verse proves that humans cannot initiate their own salvation because they're not seeking it.

So you might say that it's not so much they can't, it's they won't. They won't do it because they're not looking for it.

Well, they don't understand how it works. So if they found it, they wouldn't understand it. If it just, they walked right up to it and saw it, they wouldn't understand it.

How many people walked right up to Jesus Christ and said, well, you're filled with the demon? The religious leaders of the day said that.

So they walk right up to it and they still wouldn't understand it, but they're not seeking it in the first place.

So they're probably not gonna walk right up to it. So verse 12 says, they are all gone out of the way.

I mean, listen, this is like 12 reasons people cannot save themselves and won't save themselves.

They're all gone out of the way. They are altogether become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, not one.

So it's already said, we're not righteous. Now it says, you can't do any good works. You can't do true good works.

I remember brother Otis asking me, if you, brother David, if you knew you did a good work, was it really a good work?

Interesting question. But here they've gone out of the way. The Greek word is very interesting here.

It means to deviate. So like God says, okay, here's the path you need to walk.

And so they go this way. Or they go this way, or they turn their back on him. That's the last step, by the way.

And they go that way and they deviate. Gone out of the way means to deviate. It also means to shun.

Now, how are you gonna save yourself if you're shunning the one who can save you? But that's what our nature does when we're in a lost state, we shun

God. It also is translated into these two words in other places in the

New Testament, to avoid. So how are you gonna save yourself if you're avoiding salvation?

You're avoiding God, all right? And to eschew. Now, there's a good word we don't use much anymore, to eschew.

Webster says eschewing something is to avoid it habitually, especially on moral and practical grounds,

Webster says. So you are habitually avoiding God and his salvation and his son,

Jesus, and you've gone out of the way, you deviate from his way, you're not seeking it, you don't understand it, and you're not righteous.

And yet most gospels and most churches today say, look, if you'll just choose Jesus, he'll save you.

Just say you want him, just give in to him, yield.

They're telling you to do things you can't do and saying that that's how you get saved.

So that's their little, that's their formula. All of those things I just said are effects of salvation, they can't cause it.

Yielding, well, you won't yield till after you're saved. Repenting, you won't repent till after you're saved, because repent means to change your mind.

The Holy Spirit has got to come to you and call you and quicken you in a moment of time.

Now, I understand how they misunderstand because it happens at the same time. In fact,

I've studied this, it actually happens outside of time. It's not a time thing, it's just, boom, it's all there.

And when he quickens you, there's 33 things he does to you, and I say it in a moment of time because it's the only way

I can talk as a human, we're in time, right? But it's actually an outside of time thing, it's just, boom, and you've got it, isn't that great?

So all those things that churches say you've got to do to get saved, he gave them all to you as a gift. But my question today is does

Ephesians 2 ,8 specifically teach that faith is a gift, or do you have to go find that somewhere else?

So we'll keep looking here. It's a trick question though, but they're fun, don't you think? Okay, so none doeth good, their throat is an open sepulcher, their tongues they have used to deceive people, their mouth is full of like poison of asps under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

You know, you can almost tell by a person's words if they're saved or not, unless they're a new baby

Christian, or saved late in life like me where a cuss word may slip out once in a while, followed immediately by repentance, and running from my wife.

It's fly swatter. Don't you say that C word, y 'all know what the C word is? We can't say it in our house.

We'd be like, we did not say that when mama's home. But anyway, Otis was kind of that way too though, wasn't he?

Like any word you would say like dang, he had a list, he printed out for me, he had like 50 of those things in there, and he went back into old, old literature in his library and showed what that word actually meant when they first started using it.

And they all mean the thing that they sound like. And he said, so don't say those either, brother David. Dang, good point, brother

Otis. I sure as heck won't. But anyway, it was hard to stop saying them, you know, since they still slip out sometimes.

But anyway, so wow, their throat is an open sepulcher.

The words that come out of their mouth are words coming from a dead person. That's what that's saying, a dead person.

And it says that their lips are like poison from an asp.

This is all talking about the words of a lost person. The words that come out of their mouths are words of dead men, full of deceit and poison, cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood. So they're murderers, a lot of them. In their mind, they are.

I murder people in my mind sometimes and I'm saved. I have to repent of that too. Gentlemen, have you ever thought about what you would do if someone came in your house and did something to your wife and kids and killed them and you could find that person?

Have you ever thought about what you would do? I have, I'd be swift to shed blood.

I'd be slow actually, because I live in a country. I'd take them out, tie them to a tree and mess with them for a while.

Now, would I really do that? Lord hopes I wouldn't. You know, I don't think I would. But my flesh would want to.

Well, the flesh is part of the old nature and here it is. We're swift to shed blood.

And then it says destruction and misery are in their way. So murderers, full of destruction, full of misery, wretchedness, calamity is what this word misery means in Greek, wretchedness, calamity.

And the way of peace, they don't know. Have no peace in their life.

There's no fear of God before their eyes. Now think about that. The Bible says the fear of God is what brings wisdom.

They have no wisdom. They have no fear of God. It's debatable if you study scripture,

Old New Testament, whether a person could even be saved if they didn't fear God. The answer is yes, they can, because they get saved in a state of not fearing

God. But the very first effect that happens when you get saved is you fear God when you didn't used to.

Now, let's see if you agree with this. So here's a theory, okay, this is not Bible. I have a theory that a lost sheep is different than a goat, even in his lostness, and that a lost sheep will pray and sometimes get his prayers answered, whereas a goat does not care about that stuff.

A lost sheep worries about dying and going to hell, but a goat may not even think about that.

And I can never prove this. I only know the side of the lost sheep, which was me. I don't know what it's like to be a goat, but so it's a theory.

But I think that a lost sheep does fear God. Did you fear God before you got saved?

I did. I felt like he's watching me all the time. Anybody else, raise your hand if you felt that way.

So some of these things are goat symptoms, but a lot of these as lost sheep, we had them also.

But I mean, there's enough here, there's 12 of them. There's 12 reasons for a lost sheep and a goat, why they will not save themselves.

Would you agree? Now we know that what thing so ever the law says, it says to them who are under the law, that's the lost people, right?

So that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. That tells you a couple of real interesting things when you are getting in a debate with people, is first of all, what does it mean when their mouths are stopped?

It means that if they're arguing that you get saved by works, which is what every cult group and every false

Christian group argues, you say by, oh, I believe in Jesus, but you gotta, right? And you add that in there.

Their mouth needs to be stopped. And this right here is saying that the fact that the law is there will stop their mouth.

What does that mean? You just ask them, well, how perfect are you at your belief? Like, how well are you doing with the you gotta stuff?

Are you doing it consistently? Because if you miss it in one point, you're lost, right? So you can use that, that the law itself stops every mouth that tries to claim that they're saved by the law.

That's what that means. And it says all the world becomes guilty before God because of the law.

So there it stops their mouth. And what was the last part? Oh, it says they become guilty before God.

Yeah, I guess so. Look at verse 20. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be made righteous.

That's what justified means. No flesh is justified by keeping the law, not in God's sight.

So there you have it. The law is all about the knowledge of sin. It doesn't fix the sin problem.

Points it out. Verse 21, but now the righteousness of God without the law, like there's a great gulf between salvation by grace and law.

There's a gulf in between. This over here has nothing to do with this. It has nothing to do with the salvation.

So now the righteousness of God without the law is manifest being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

Even the Old Testament taught that like Abraham was saved by belief, not by works.

So even the Old Testament, the law and the prophets agree with this statement. Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference.

Now that you've heard me talk at length about this interesting phrase you find in the King James, but no other

English version, but it is in the Greek where it says you're saved by the faith of Christ, not by faith in Christ.

You see the difference? So I got to ask you this. If it's Jesus's faith that saves you, then if you have it, wouldn't that have needed to have been a gift?

You see my point? Like if it ain't yours and you get it, it's because someone gave it to you. So we know that faith is a gift, but that's not my question.

My question is, does Ephesians 2 .8 teach that? So we'll keep going here. It's weird, you got way more time in Sunday school to teach than you do in church.

We need to switch that around. I'm going to start teaching at 10 and let y 'all teach Sunday school after all the singing and all that stuff.

All right, this is better. I like this. Okay. Except I lost my place.

Oh, by the faith of Jesus. That's so huge. When the Lord showed me that, that totally changed my life.

I mean, I was saved. I know I was saved, but it changed my understanding of salvation a lot.

For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's your depravity of man. It's always placed in with the salvation verses in the

Bible being justified freely by his grace. Now that teaches us that grace is a gift because it's free.

So we know grace is a gift through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.

Redemption means to be set free by paying a price. So we are justified, made right with God as a free gift because it's because Jesus paid the sin debt.

That says that all in one verse. Freely, the Greek word means without a cause.

Wow. In and of herself, without us causing it. That's what it means in the

Greek. It's interesting because where you see here being justified freely by his grace, that word freely comes from a little root word,

Doron in Greek, it means a gift. Isn't that interesting? The word itself means a gift, translated freely.

So now let's come to our place in Ephesians 2. Let's turn back to Ephesians 2. And we've already studied verses one through three.

The spirit that now works in, and we've talked about that, proves you didn't have free will.

Spirit now works. If you wanna just jot this down, I won't take time to go into it. But 2 Timothy 2, verse 25 and 26 is a huge place.

It shows that lost people don't have free will, that Satan controls their minds. It just flat says it.

So there you see that. But then verse four says, "'But

God, who is rich in mercy for his grace, "'for his great love, wherewith he loved us.'

"'So he loved us first. "'Even when we were dead in sins, "'hath he quickened us together to Christ. "'By grace are you saved.'"

So the cause of God's salvation is listed right there in the first four verses before we even get to verse eight.

It's number one, it's God's mercy. It's not you, it's not me that causes it. It's God's mercy.

Number two, it's God's great love, wherewith he loved us first. That's what caused it, not us.

Number three, God himself brought us to life. He quickened us. That's not us, that's

God. And then number four, by grace, which means it's free gift. So we already know all that in the context of Ephesians chapter two.

Then it talks about the time of salvation. When did it happen? Well, I think this is interesting. He hath quickened us together with Christ.

Well, when did Christ get brought to life? Long time before you got born and I got born.

2 ,000 years ago approximately, that's when you and I were quickened. So we didn't have anything to do with it.

So the time of it, when it was sealed for us was 2 ,000 years ago, when he came out of the grave, we came out with him because we were in Christ.

And then verse six says, and he raised us up together and made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ.

So the cause of salvation is that God quickened us. Now, verse seven says, what is the purpose and the reason

God saved us? So that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace.

He's showing off one attribute of God. There are many, I love to study that. It's a great topic. The character of God, the attributes of God, the names of God, all the things to learn about, little colors of meaning of who he is and what he is and what he does.

But the greatest one that God himself wants to show the entire created universe is the one he calls grace.

That he can love imperfect beings. He can love creatures that don't deserve his love because the angels do not understand that and they're still learning it by watching the church, the

Bible says. They don't get it totally. The angel says, nothing seemed fair to him.

You can see why, right? So we see right there that he did it so that the ages to come,

God himself could show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Jesus Christ.

So there's the reason God made man and saved man was to show his grace to the universe.

The purpose of salvation was to show the exceeding riches of his grace. Now we come to our verse.

So we know the context now and we kind of know what the whole Bible says about it. Not really, but a little bit of a tour through the

Bible. And this is how you study, by the way. When you're studying a verse like verse eight, you never wanna fixate on that verse for three months and only study that, you'll create a new cult group.

You always have to go back to the whole of the Bible and see where it fits in, you understand?

You can't be favorites with this one passage or you'll prove something that's not right. It's gotta fit the whole of the

Bible. So we've kind of illustrated that. Then you have to look in the context of read the whole chapter at least, maybe the first chapter through to where you are to know the context of what's being talked about.

And then we come to our verse. Did you have a question, Jeannie? Okay. Well, then that proves our question earlier, doesn't it?

Where we debated whether the sin nature came because of sin or whether it was already there. Don't you think that teaches it was already there?

He created them. Thank you. Well, the thing is they were not depraved.

It's weird, isn't it? They were not depraved, but they were in that weakness it talked about. They had that.

I just call it a human nature. Subject to vanity.

They had that already. It wasn't caused by the sin, it's what caused the sin. Anyway, I've always thought that.

Now we've proved it. It's for God's purposes. Yes. I want you to text me that verse because I always use the one where it says that he put this treasure in earthen vessels so that he would get the glory.

Same thing, right? But there's two that need to go together. I love that. All right, so let's look at our verse.

For by grace are you saved through faith and it not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. We know later it says not of works lest any man should boast.

So we know that it's strongly teaching that it's by grace, not by works. But the question is, is that verse teaching us that faith itself is a gift?

Let's read it again. It sounds like it. For by grace are you saved through faith and it not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

So, yeah. Well, see, you don't know if it's the grace or the faith or what. That's what's interesting about it.

I remember years ago, I tried to do what you learn in school where you diagram sentences. And I diagrammed this whole sentence trying to figure out this.

And I did figure it out. And I can't find that old study. It must be on an old laptop and I didn't bring it forward or something years ago.

It's an old thing I did in my 20s. But let's look at it here a little bit, restudy it, okay?

So what is the gift of God that's referred to here? Is it grace or is it salvation as a whole, or is it faith?

And that's sort of the question. So when we have a pronoun, we're gonna look at the pronouns in here. And the key one really in this verse is the word that.

Because it is, if you notice it's in italics, is it in italics in your Bible? It is mine.

So is it in italics? It is. It is. Okay, so that means it's not in the

Greek. That's added to make the English read more smoothly. So the pronoun we have to go to is the word that and that not of yourselves.

So what is that referring to? Because whatever that refers to is also the thing that's the gift.

Does that make sense? And that not of yourselves, it is the gift. So whatever that is referring to, the word that's a pronoun, whatever it's referring to is the thing that is the gift grammatically.

So when we look at these pronouns, we have to look for a noun that it matches in case, gender, and number.

How many of you remember that stuff from school? Probably only our school teachers because you're doing it every day, right?

The rest of us forget it and that's okay. And the cool thing about logos is it puts it in there where you can remind yourself.

And sometimes I'll even go Google it up. I'll Google it and say, okay, what does nominative mean?

Nominative, I can't even say it. How do you say it? Nominative. What does nominative mean?

Because you forget. Well, it names it. That's kind of one of the easier ones. But what does demonstrative mean?

Well, it demonstrates it. So that's kind of easy. But you see, you kind of forget these things.

So the cool thing in English and in Greek, you can match the pronoun to the noun because all these things have to match or it's not referring to that noun.

Does that make sense? Okay, so in this verse, the word that, now that same word can be translated this by the way.

So in Greek, you got to kind of use the context to know which one to put, whether it's this or that. And in English, they're kind of different because that means something's kind of far off.

And this is something that's kind of right here. And in Greek, you have to use the same word to mean both.

So it's a matter of interpretation. A lot of the other English versions I've noticed put this rather than that.

I like the King James. So I'm gonna leave it that. To me, it's not a big issue in this particular interpretation.

So the word that though is the pronoun and it happens to be demonstrative, nominative.

And that means it names the subject. It is singular. So that means it has to be matched with a singular noun or verb either.

And it's also neuter, which we don't have that in English. So we have masculine and feminine.

We don't have neuter. So neuter means neither. It's just a thing. It's not a person. It's a thing.

It can mean other things too. But it's interesting that we have that in Greek. It helps a little bit. So here, if you want to match it with grace or with faith and see if they match.

So let me keep this open so we can remember what that one is. So that one is demonstrative, nominative, singular, neuter.

Grace is dative, which means it's not, it doesn't match the nominative part.

That sort of means it's an indirect object if you even remember what that is. I don't care if you remember this stuff or not.

I'm just pointing out how we can figure out which word it refers to, right? It's also singular and it's feminine.

So in Greek, grace cannot match the pronoun because the pronoun is neuter. All right, does that make sense?

It's not feminine, but grace is feminine. Now, if we look at faith, faith is genitive, which means it denotes possession of something, but it's singular and it's feminine.

So since it's feminine, it can't match. Now, if you look at the word salvation, it's masculine, so it can't match.

So you say, well, it doesn't match any of them. Well, you have to be a little bit of a student of Greek to figure this one out, but the word that or this does not refer specifically and individually either to grace or to the word faith or to the idea of salvation, to the word salvation as individual words.

What's interesting though is that in Greek, when you find demonstrative pronouns, which this was demonstrative, the word that was, it can be used in the neuter to refer to an overall general principle.

Isn't that interesting? And I'll give you an example. In 1 Corinthians 11, 24, if you want to jot that down, just a good example of this grammatical truth in Greek, it says, and when he had given thanks, he break it and said, take eat.

This is my body, which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me.

The word this is the same Greek word as that in our verse. It's the same word, all right?

And in this particular verse, it is demonstrative like it is in our verse. It is nominative like it is in our verse and it's neuter like it is in our verse.

But what does it refer to? Well, if you go up there to the nouns, it doesn't refer to any of them because they're masculine, feminine, and all this stuff.

And what does happen though, is it refers to the whole idea of giving thanks and breaking the bread in remembrance of Christ.

That's what we're supposed to do in remembrance. So it's the whole idea. Do you see the point? So when you find demonstrative neuter, it may not match the individual nouns, but it may match the whole concept and say, that's what we're talking about.

It's the whole thing. So obviously in our case here in Ephesians, it's talking about the whole thing.

So listen to it now. For by grace are you saved through faith, that's what the gift is.

The fact that through faith you were saved, I said it backwards, that through grace you're saved through faith, that is the gift.

So you cannot use it to prove that faith, just faith alone is a gift unless you cheat a little bit.

Now you can prove it to teach that salvation is by grace through faith and that that's a gift, because that's what the verse says.

It does not say faith is a gift. Are you with me? Now, so you gotta be careful because someday one of your family members might know

Greek. And so I can prove faith is a gift, reading two eight and he's gonna correct you. He's like, no, it doesn't teach that.

And you're gonna turn red -faced and you kind of get flustered. So that's to us, it's not a big issue because the whole idea of salvation by grace through faith, it's a gift, which means you can't make it happen.

It has to be given to you by God. It doesn't interfere with our theological viewpoint at all, does it? In fact, it probably enhances it, which is what all scripture will do.

Now, so we're about out of time. That's the end of that study, but let me show you a couple of places where you can prove that faith is a gift.

In case you might want one in your pocket. How many of you want one in your pocket? I'll give you two then, two or three.

Romans 3 .22. Now there are people that'll debate this too, but there are minions. So they have a reason to debate it because they've already figured out how it works and they're not changing.

No matter what you show them, they're not changing. Because I've seen people argue against Romans 3 .22.

They're wrong though, because what their argument is, well, let me read it. You don't even know what I'm talking about yet.

It says, even the righteousness of God, which is by, I'm sorry, this isn't even the verse I was talking about.

This is sort of my verse that I threw in here. Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, that proves it's a gift.

We already talked about that. If it's Jesus' faith and you have it, it's because it had to be given to you. There's a proof, okay?

But here's the one I was gonna talk about here. Ephesians 5 .1, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. Did I miss something there?

Oh, I'm in Romans, sorry, Romans 5. Romans 5 .1, therefore being justified by faith.

So we're talking about being saved, made right with God by faith is in the context here.

Jump down to verse 18 in chapter five of Romans. Therefore, as by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

So there, if you go all the way back to verse one, you can track that back to the word faith and it's called the free gift, okay?

Now look at verse 15 in Romans 5, but not as the offense, so also as the free gift for if through the offense of one, many were dead, but more through the grace of God, the gift of grace, which is by one man,

Jesus Christ hath abounded in many. So there it says grace is a gift. So in chapter five, it says faith is a gift and grace is a gift.

So Ephesians 2 .8 doesn't have to prove that because there's other places that do, obviously.

Even down to verse 17 there in chapter five, it says for if by one man's offense goes on saying the same stuff then it calls it the gift of righteousness.

So there's what Ephesians 2 .8 teaches, the whole idea of how we're made righteous is a gift.

All three of them are taught in that passage in chapter five of Romans. Now, Jesus made it clear in John 4, verses nine and 10 where the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that thou being a

Jew asked drink of me? Woman at the well, right? I'm a woman of Samaria, for the

Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. And look at this verse 10, Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that said to you, give me drink, thou wouldst have asked him and he would have given it to you.

So obviously that's at least teaching that the whole idea of salvation is a gift by Jesus himself.

He called it a gift and you should ask me for it. And then Romans chapter six, verse 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.

That talks about the whole idea is free. So that agrees with Ephesians 2 .8. But what about faith is it a gift?

Well, in Romans chapter 12, verse three, and this is the one people will debate a little bit because they'll say, no, it's in this context, it's talking about gifts that God gives to people in the church, different gifts.

It's not talking about salvation. That is false because if you read, you're here you are in Romans 12, three, if you just read right up to Romans chapter 11 and read the whole chapter, the whole thing is talking about salvation.

And as you realize there's no chapter divisions in the Greek, right? So as it moves from the end of what we call chapter 11 into the beginning of chapter 12, the whole context is talking about salvation.

So they're cheating when they argue that. They don't wanna believe that faith is a gift because if it's a gift, they didn't stir it up and cause it.

They don't wanna believe that. So they say, oh, well, this is talking about gifts. It's not talking about salvation. They're wrong.

I went and proved that to myself before I taught this, but you go check it out if you want to, Romans chapter 11.

But knowing that as we read it, it says, where I say through the grace, which is given to me.

So grace is a gift. To every man that is among you, not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God has dealt to every man, a measure of faith.

There's your proof. Not everybody has the same amount of faith. Was it me and you

Ben? No, I think it was me and Matt talking about this yesterday. That it's an interesting thing to think about that God himself says not every person has the same amount of faith.

I'm talking about saved people because God deals to different people, a different measure of faith and says it right there.

So obviously it's a gift if God deals it to you. Having been gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy.

Now here's where it goes into talking about the gifts. Prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith that God has given you.

And so it is talking about gifts, but the whole idea of what they're talking about is you have the gifts because God gave you faith to be saved in the first place.

So there's a really good one. And then John 6, 44, no man can come to me except the father which hath sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the end.

Obviously salvation is a gift of God drawing you to Jesus Christ. And then I'm out of time.

So I'm just gonna give you the passage. 2 Peter 1, verses one through eight talks about faith being a gift.

And then Philippians 1, verse 29 talks about it. It's just one sentence,

I can read that one. For unto you it is given in behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.

So the belief that you have was given to you, all right? And then Acts 3, verse 16, a good one.

And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong whom you see and know, yea, the faith which is by him, that means

Christ. So the faith that this man, that caused him to be saved and to be healed, the faith was by Jesus, which means

Jesus had to give it to him. So you might find it interesting that it took a little bit of study to prove that faith in and of itself is a gift.

It would be a lot easier if Ephesians 2, 8 just made it all match up, but it doesn't. So you don't wanna cheat, but we know that it's a gift and we've seen what

I give about five verses there or passages that flat out prove it. So it's a fact, it's just not taught in that one verse.

All right, any questions? Good, cause we're out of time. So let's pray and we will start church in four minutes.

Lord, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for a group of folks that love your word here in this church and Lord bless each person as the service goes on today and our fellowship time and all of that and bless our online friends and members and students as well.