A Real and Living Faith - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa

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All right, everybody, grab your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians chapter two.

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Ephesians chapter two. And we will be continuing on in our series through Paul's letter to the churches in Ephesus.

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And as you're turning there, please allow me to pray for our time together. Father, I thank you.

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I thank you for your word. And your word is life.

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And I ask that you would use it this morning to reveal

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Christ to us. That you would help me to decrease and for his gospel to be put on explicit display.

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I ask that you would use these words by the power of your spirit to chisel and mold us into the image of your son.

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And that you would help me this morning, preach Christ, your

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Messiah, the chosen and anointed one. And we ask all of this in his meritorious name.

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Amen. Centuries ago, Alexander the

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Great conquered all of the known world. And if you pick up a history book, they are littered with stories of his conquests.

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One story goes like this. He was looking to conquer a specific city, a city that was strongly defended and walled.

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That was a city that had a king who had a great army that made

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Alexander's army look small. Alexander goes to this walled city and stands outside of it and beckons for the king to come.

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To come talk to him about his terms of surrender.

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Well, of course, this was somewhat laughable to the king who had an army that dwarfed his.

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And so the king accepts his invitation to talk about his terms of Alexander's surrender.

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Alexander was unwilling, however, to lay down his sword or his desire to capture that city.

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And he demanded that the king with the bigger army lay down his arms and surrender himself.

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The king, somewhat baffled by Alexander's request, leans into him and says something to the effect of, why should

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I surrender to you? I have the better defenses.

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I have the bigger army. Alexander replied famously or infamously, depending on how you take it, allow me to demonstrate why you should surrender.

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And he looked to his men and told them to start marching. And they did.

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And where they marched was off of the end of a cliff. About 10 or so men deep into these men jumping to their deaths at his behest.

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He stops and looks at the king. And the story famously goes that the king then surrendered.

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The question is, why did the king so readily surrender to Alexander's plea and demonstration?

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Because he knew that Alexander's men were not just men who believed in Alexander's cause, but they were men who were willing to do anything because they believed in the cause that much.

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So much so that they would jump to their deaths if it meant winning a war before it began.

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Alexander's men believed him totally. Alexander's men were radically influenced in their behavior because of what they believed.

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Also, the king. The king believed Alexander and it radically influenced his behavior.

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What am I getting at? I'm getting at this. When you have faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, when he has radically saved you by grace through the instrument of faith, it's going to change who you are and what you do on a radical level.

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So much so that when Jesus asks you, demands of you, commands of you to pick up your cross and walk with him, you're readily available for the death sentence.

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And what that means on a very practical level is that we live our lives differently based on that, which we believe.

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If we're willing to die for something, namely Jesus Christ, then we should be able to live for him as well.

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See, maybe an overlooked portion of this story is, yes, the men jumped to their death at his behest, but up until this point, they had done everything that they were required to do to become the soldiers that were trusted to travel with them.

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They ate the right food, they exercised, they were at the right place at the right time, they lived the life of a soldier.

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And Christians likewise are to live lives of discipline like a soldier.

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Now, of course, this comes at the tail end of a passage about grace.

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If you remember last week, we covered verses eight and nine of Ephesians chapter two, which says, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

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And this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.

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We ended on a crescendo, a gracious crescendo that works do not add anything, discipline does not add anything to our salvation, that God, because of his loving kindness, extends to us by the power of his spirit, salvation.

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And any sort of self -reliance, any sort of help that we might offer God is completely vile in the sight of God, because we could not merit it.

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Remember, we were dead in our transgressions and sins, according to Ephesians two, verses one through three, we were following the course of this world, we were influenced by the devil and his schemes, and we were all destined for wrath, and we rejoiced in this beautiful truth, and we should, because we are in fact saved or justified by faith and by faith alone, by virtue of the grace that we have been given.

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However, we must understand, though grace and faith are both gifts, we must exercise our faith if it is to be a genuine faith.

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In other words, as the old adage goes, we are justified by faith alone, but we are not justified by a faith that is alone.

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In our text today, the argument continues and it completes itself.

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And friends, getting this right matters, because if we confuse how faith and grace and works work together, it's a difference between being saved and not saved, it's a difference between being a heretic or a proclaimer of the gospel of truth.

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In fact, this is one of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation.

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You see, the Roman Catholic Church believed that it was grace plus works that saved us.

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And of course, they come to this conclusion by comparing Paul's words that we are in fact saved through faith alone with James' words that faith without works is dead.

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But as I have always said, if we seem to see a contradiction in the Bible, we must assume that we are the problem and not the words on the page.

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That's not to say this isn't a hard issue to discern. Martin Luther famously, though he recanted before he died, that James was not to be put in the

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Bible because of what James had to say about works and faith because he was so committed to the truth found elsewhere in the

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Bible that we are saved by grace through the instrument of faith alone.

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The friends Paul and James are not enemies, they are friends and they are arguing the same thing, which is this, not that works justify or save us, but rather when we are saved by grace through faith, works necessarily follow.

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So in some ways, yes, this is a theological sermon to help us discern the distinction between grace and faith and works, but it's also a litmus test or barometer for whether or not we are in fact saved.

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As Paul has said elsewhere, we must work out our salvation with fear and with trembling for it is

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God who wills and works in us. So if you would please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and all sufficient word.

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And because we are wrapping up what I believe to be one argument in these first 10 verses, let me read starting in verse one of chapter two.

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This is the word of the Lord. And you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

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But God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

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For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourself, that is the gift of God, not of works so that no one may boast.

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For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen. Amen, please have a seat.

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As we look at our text today, which is Ephesians chapter one, verse 10, I want you to see four things.

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And the first of those four is this, God's crafting grace.

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In verse 10 we see immediately, as Paul begins to argue this next part of his assertion that we are, he says, his workmanship.

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But of course, there's that pesky little word for there, which shows us that there is a continuation in argument.

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There's not just this new idea, although it is fresh, so to speak. It is building off of the argument before, but it is most certainly continuing the thought that he had in mind.

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It's not enough that we understand that we are saved by grace through faith. We also must understand that we have a living faith, and a part of that living faith is understanding first and foremostly that God crafts believers.

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God crafts believers. It says that we are his workmanship.

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And of course, the antecedent here is God himself. That is the one who was just talked about in verse eight.

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It is his gift that gives us, it is his gift of salvation. Not ours.

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It's not because of our works. It's because of his kindness. It's because of his grace.

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And in that, we are his workmanship. In other words,

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God is the workman. This should not surprise us. This should not surprise us, nor should we neglect this reality.

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From beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation, God has always been an initiator.

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When you look at Genesis 1 .1, for example, the first sentence in the entire Bible, it says, in the beginning was

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God. It doesn't say in the beginning was a world that was created. It doesn't say in the beginning was man.

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It doesn't say in the beginning was some good ideas. It says in the beginning was God. And that sets the tone for absolutely everything else that we read.

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The Bible is about God, and it is about his dealings with humanity. And it's about him stepping in the way.

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Genesis 3, man sins, falls into rebellion, and thrusts all of creation into hell.

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And what happens? God acts first. He looks for the man, and then he clothes them when they realize that they are naked and ashamed.

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He doesn't wait for them to make loincloths for themselves to fix their problem.

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No, he does it himself. He calls

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Abram out of a idolatrous place, and he tells him where to go, and that he would be the father of many nations and many

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Christians, so much so that he would cause them to be as many as the sands in the seashores or the stars in the sky.

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He promised and made sure that kings would come into existence, that his Messiah would then come through.

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He called the prophets in times of rebellion when Israel decided to reject their God, and he sent us

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Christ to stand in the stead of sinful humanity. Why?

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Because he initiates. Because he gets involved intimately with our mess.

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It's no surprise, then, that we are his workmanship, that we are his art project.

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Other parts of Scripture show us specifically that God is that type of a

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God, that he works on us, that he chisels and molds us and conforms us to his son,

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Jesus Christ. Isaiah 64 is the backdrop of Romans 9 when

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Paul says, or do you not, or does not the potter have authority over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

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This picture here in Romans 9 is God is this sculptor, and he's working with clay, and he's chiseling and molding and bringing about the most beauty.

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And the idea here, if you've never seen it before, my uncle growing up was actually a sculptor, and he would have this wheel that he would throw on, and he would make these beautiful pots, and he would take others, and he would take parts of them that were falling off or that he wanted to cut off because it wasn't the shape that he wanted, and he would throw it in the bucket, and then he would take the other, and he would bring it to completion until it was exactly how he wanted it.

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And then once he got it to the shape he wanted it, he put it into what's called a kiln where this fire would set it ablaze and turn it different colors and bring out even more stability and beauty.

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So it's no surprise, then, that Paul uses this imagery to help us understand

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God and how he works with human beings because he molds us.

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He gets rid of the dross, and he puts us in a furnace of affliction to bring about more stability and more beauty.

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So God is the workman, and we, the saints of God who have been saved by grace, the people that he has been talking about thus far, the church, those who have been saved by grace.

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Or more pointedly, if we follow the entire argument thus far, it is those who have been chosen by the

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Father, who've had their sins forgiven by virtue of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and those who have had salvation applied to them by the power and the work of the

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Holy Spirit. But let's drill down into this word workmanship just a little bit more because if we don't understand that, then we actually don't understand what it means to be a

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Christian. Martin Lloyd -Jones, a preacher and commentator who

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I have learned to grow immense respect for, said, if we don't understand what it means that we are the workmanship of God himself, then we may not know

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God ourselves. This word workmanship literally means the work of a craftsman.

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And the imagery that is being employed here is someone who, for instance, makes a crown.

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So yes, God in Romans 9 is put forth as someone who uses clay and likens us to clay.

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Here, it's more of like iron work or a work that brings about something that is beautiful like a crown.

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Another commentary that I read said that it could also mean literally just a work of art.

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And so you could theoretically read this as for we are his work of art. We are his art project wherein he is bringing about beauty and glory.

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Another interesting fact, this Greek word here is thought to be the word where we get our word poem from.

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So you also could read it for we are his poem. That thing that he is writing and bringing forth in beautiful stanzas and phrases and poetic words.

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In other words, we are God's masterpiece. Now, have you ever thought about that? Now, of course, we run in certain theological circles and we're not often telling one another how awesome we are, right?

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I mean, I'm a firm believer in not telling you guys how awesome you are all of the time because when we do that, we forget what the

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Bible says about us. And as soon as you walk outside of these doors, the world is going to try to tell you to think you're awesome all the time about absolutely everything.

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And they're going to tell you you're awesome. And that clouds our vision to see the reality of what the

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Bible has to say about us and our need for a savior. But the

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Bible has, especially in the book of Ephesians, beautiful words and beautiful pieces of imagery that show us what

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God thinks about his saints. The Bible says that he sings over us in the

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Psalms. It says here that we are beautiful masterpieces, poems, crafts being built up to beauty.

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Do you think about God's work in your life in that way?

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Children, would you look at me for just a second? You know how many of you are drawing right now or coloring something about the sermon or whatever the case might be and you're using different colors and maybe you're getting the pencil out to like draw extra lines.

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And then you're going back with another favorite color of yours. What this passage is teaching us is that's what

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God, if you love Jesus, is doing to you throughout the course of your life.

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He's coloring you and making you more beautiful in his sight.

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He's making you less sinful and more holy so that we can stand in front of him on judgment day and hear well done, good and faithful servant.

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So God and his grace crafts us into loveliness.

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We're not lovely. We don't deserve his grace and yet he is actively and utterly working in our lives to bring about what otherwise would lay dead in the tomb with our sinful nature.

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But praise be to God that that is not the case. Saints are in fact his workmanship.

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Secondarily, God's creating grace. God's creating grace.

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So we've seen God's crafting grace, how he is chiseling and molding us and bringing us to a state of beauty and holiness through his grace, which by the way is leading to works.

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But secondly, God's creating grace. Look with me back at our theme verse, verse 10.

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For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

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Maybe two of the most important words in this phrase are in and for, but we'll get to that here in just a moment.

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The first word I want you to consider is the word created. It's an interesting word. It's only the second usage in the entire

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New Testament of this specific word. You gotta love it when that happens. But it's a little bit better than when a word is only used once.

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Or if Paul creates it, that produces other challenges. But here, it's used one other time and it's in Romans 1 .20.

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In Romans 1 .20, Paul is of course making the argument that God's wrath abides upon sinful humanity because of its rejection of the one true

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God. That there is no such thing as a person who doesn't know

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God exists. There are only truth suppressors in the world. And that God has displayed his wrath by giving sinful humanity precisely what they want, which of course is their sin.

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And he says this, for since the creation of the world, his, that is God's invisible attributes, both his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

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Now that's a long verse, but what I want you to see here is that this word creation here talks about the world being created, ex nihilo, that is out of nothing.

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God is capable of creating something out of nothing.

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But the creation being talked about here is one that's even more miraculous, even more beautiful, even more stunning than that of physical creation itself because it's physical recreation, or as a

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Puritan I was reading this week said, a renovation.

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It is a spiritual renovation. It is an undoing of everything in our spiritual house, so to speak.

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But it's not just a reordering of chairs or a moving about of different rooms.

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It is a complete demolition down to the foundation and it is built up yet again.

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So Christians are not just being formed and not just being made beautiful by God's active working and whatnot.

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They are also new creations in Christ Jesus. They are new people with new desires.

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They no longer are governed by, as Ephesians 2 has said, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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But here's my proof, 2 Corinthians 5 .17, Paul says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, in other words, if anyone is a

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Christian, he is a new creation. The old things passed away, behold, new things have come.

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Paul echoes the same reality in Galatians 6 .15 when he says, for neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, that is

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Greek and Jew and Gentile, but new creation. You see, friends, in this being created in Christ, this recreation, this spiritual renovation, we get completely new hearts and new desires.

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This is the promise of Jeremiah 31 .31, the promise of the new covenant, that our hearts of stone would be removed and our hearts of flesh would be installed where we, and here's the promise, that we would all know

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God and that we would all love and walk in his statutes, his law, his good works.

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And so we have, and this is full circle here, the opposite of Ephesians 2, one and three.

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We have new spiritual eyes to see God with, to love Christ with, new spiritual ears to hear his word and his gospel, new spiritual hearts that beat red with blood for him, that have affection that swells for his truth and for his people and his church.

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We have new spiritual hands that put our hands to work for him. But we're not just created or recreated, we are created in Christ Jesus.

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That's the next phrase, we are created in Christ Jesus. And this is huge theologically throughout the entire book of the book of Ephesians, remember, in verses three through 14 alone in Christ or some modification of that was mentioned 11 times.

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And Paul is not going to slow down because he wants us to understand that salvation by grace through faith is in him.

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Our molding is in him, through him and for him like everything else.

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Salvation is also in his person. After all it is of his fullness, the

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Bible says that we receive grace upon grace. We as sinners graced by his grace, receive the benefits of his death, we receive the benefits of his life and we receive his very life itself.

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Salvation is bound up in Christ. We must have faith in Christ. We must cut off ourselves from all self -reliance and it must be

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Christ and Christ alone. And I remember

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I said something that I got a lot of emails about not necessarily people from this church but people who watch it online because I said faith in Christ will not even save you.

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It's Christ who saves through the instrument of faith.

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Christ is end all be all. If you still have faith in your faith to save you, you are not saved.

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But if you're leaning wholly on Christ, so much so that you are living for him, you have reason to believe that you are saved.

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This is pointing to a doctrine that is often called union with Christ but also it's showing us that Christ must be formed in us.

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Which by the way is what works is all about. Though works do not save us, though there is no boasting in any work that we do,

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God works and then he works works in us in Christ by forming

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Christ in us. And so the question becomes, well how does he do that?

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How does the Christian possess the mind of Christ?

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Now people spiritualize that verse and they try to say, well, we have by the spirit the mind of Christ.

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So we think Christly thoughts. Well, have you been paying attention to the Bible? We're not too good at that.

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We need to as Romans 12 says to be renewed in our thinking. Our minds even after we are saved need continually, need continual cleaning, rearranging as it were because of the noetic effects of the fall.

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So how do we have the mind of Christ? Because we have the Bible. But of course we have the

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Holy Spirit. So don't let me, don't hear what I'm not saying. The Holy Spirit is responsible for so much.

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Now I know in a church that is largely cessationist, it's hard for some people to wrap their mind around the fact that we actually love and appreciate the work of the

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Holy Spirit. In fact, we are so blown away by the work of the spirit that we feel like it's our job because to defend him and other people are ascribing things to him that are not true, but he does.

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He applies salvation and he takes dead hearts that will not respond to spiritual stimuli and resurrects them from spiritual death and causes them to walk in a newness of life all the while pointing to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And friends, that's better, hear me on this, that is better than any foot growing 0 .5

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inches as whatever his name is with the dreadlocks pulls it.

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It's better than any glitter falling from the sky. It's better than being slain in the spirit and falling back and barking like a dog.

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Friends, our spirit changes our dead hearts and causes us to swell with affection for our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and makes us to love his law, makes us to cherish it and causes us to walk in it in a way that is pleasing to him.

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Praise God for the Holy Spirit. Secondarily, he forms us into the image of his son in Christ by the

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Holy Scriptures. The Holy Scriptures are continually forming us to his image. This is why you must live with your nose in them.

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James 1 .18 says, and the exercise of his being

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God's will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. Do you know how the Holy Spirit brings sinners to life?

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He brings them forth according to James 1 .8 by the word of truth, not by fuzzy feelings, not by a prayer that was said one time, but by the word of truth so that we would be the kind of first fruit among his creatures.

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1 Peter 1 .23 echoes this reality when he says, for you have been born again.

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Now you remember when we talked about that. You've been brought to spiritual life. You have been regenerated, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible.

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That is through the living and enduring word of God. This is why it's so insulting to the

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Holy Spirit. When there's stories out there, I was at a garage sale. I saw this awesome thing on the table and God just changed my heart.

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I knew, I felt his presence and so I'm saved. No, you're not. The Bible tells us that there must be the word proclaimed.

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There must be preachers, which is why we must send them. For how will they hear unless they have a preacher,

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Paul says. Which brings me to my third point. It's not just the Holy Scripture, but it's the preached

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Holy Scripture. In Ephesians 4, which we will get to in years to come, in verses 11 and 13,

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Paul says that Jesus himself gave some as apostles, they're dead, they're gone, okay?

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And some as prophets, also no longer active unless we're talking about it in the

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Puritan sense, preaching, and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers.

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Now these continue on. For the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain the unity of faith and of the full knowledge of the

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Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

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So the preached word is given to us by God giving us preachers, teachers, pastors, and evangelists so that we might grow, so that we might be built up, so that we might be encouraged.

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And of course, if you look at 2 Timothy 3 .16, it's so that we can be convicted, so that we can be rebuked, so that we may be complete or perfect.

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Not that we will attain perfection in this life, but that God is, through the preached word, perfecting us and bringing us to holiness, to good works.

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And not only that, but he also forms us to be perfected to the image of the Son or forms Christ in us by divine discipline and ordained suffering.

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Many of us, if not all of us, are very stubborn. And in order for us, much like the kiln in my uncle's backyard, have to be put in the flame so that we might stiffen up.

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Steel on our spines might be placed there and that our faith might be fanned by the flames of affliction.

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So in Hebrews chapter 12, verses five and six is about, it's the most uncomfortable and most comforting passage, maybe in the whole

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Bible. It's quoting another verse, of course. And it says, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the

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Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines and he flogs, or depending on the translation that you have, scourges every son whom he receives.

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Suffering is never fun, but it's almost always needed because it brings about in us a holiness that otherwise wouldn't exist.

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It propels us to do good works, which is the end of it all, right?

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This is the end of the argument here. In verse 10, he goes on to say that we were created in Christ Jesus for good works.

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Good works is the reason that we were created in Christ Jesus, and it is what we are being formed into.

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So you see here, salvation is a much bigger puzzle than just being justified. It's being justified, sanctified.

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It's being declared innocent and guilty, being declared innocent, having the assertion of guilty being removed from you, being pulled, right?

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As it were, out of the courtroom where you have been declared innocent and you are being thrust into the family room and treated as a son and daughter and being trained up in the way that you should go.

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You see, the ways in which we try to train our children is no different than the way that God treats us as his children.

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In other words, the purpose for God's molding, the crafting and creating is that we would do good works, that we would act like Christians, that we would reflect the moral character of God.

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And friends, this is huge because there are ditches on both sides of this throughout the evangelical world.

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You've heard them. Legalists, ooh, horrible boogeymen, antinomians, both, both of these camps or theological positions are vile in the sight of God.

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We love talking about the legalists because we don't like to follow rules.

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But the antinomians often do not even get talked about. So what is a legalist?

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A legalist is somebody who tries to add their works in hopes that it would garner favor with God and add to their salvation or keep their salvation.

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This is the problem that Paul addressed in the book of Galatians. On the other end, you have antinomianism, which means no law, which means, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace.

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I don't have to do what God says because it's been paid for on the cross. I don't actually have to care about living like a

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Christian because God did that for me in Christ. And there's different sects and different ways of thinking about that.

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But that's the gist, the umbrella. But what the Bible teaches is, no, you are saved by grace alone through faith alone.

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You don't have to be a Christian to be a Christian. And by that,

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I mean, you don't have to live like one to be saved. You are saved by grace alone through faith alone.

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Everything that you try to add means nothing.

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That's why you can't boast. And yet, if you are saved, you will care about the law.

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You will work. You will be a new creation who has new desires, who wants to please their father, not to gain his approval, but out of joy, out of delight.

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Not duty, delight. We work from God's love, not to get

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God's love. Children, would you look at me for just a second? I wanna illustrate for you that point that I just made about how we do good things,

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Christ honoring things out of God's love, not for it.

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Right? Think about it this way. If I was to say, here's a candy bar.

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If you do these things, I will give you a candy bar. If you draw me a good picture,

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I'll give you a candy bar. And you said, okay, I'll do that. You draw a pretty picture, and then you give it to me.

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And then I say, well, good job, here's a candy bar. That would be you trying, right, to do what

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I asked you to do by duty, because I asked you to.

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And that making me a good picture would make me happy, thus you get a candy bar.

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But the other way around it is if I gave you a candy bar, and I said, hey, will you draw me a picture?

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I just wanted you to have this candy bar. Will you draw me this picture that I would like, and it would be beautiful?

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You said, well, yes, I would love to draw you that picture because you give me candy bars. That's the difference.

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And friends, that's the same truth about us. We work because God has worked on our behalf.

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We do not work so that he show us favor. We work because he has shown us favor.

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The 1689 Baptist Confession in paragraph two says the same thing like this.

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These good works done in obedience to God's commandments are the fruits and evidence of a true and lively faith.

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And by them, believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify

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God whose workmanship they are created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life.

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You see, it flips it on its head. The gospel is an affront to the legalist and the antinomian.

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The third thing that I want you to see after we have looked at God's creating grace and his crafting grace is

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God's predestinating grace. Moving on in our theme verse, he says, which

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God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

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I won't spend a ton of time here because we've talked about predestination at length.

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Predestination means to determine beforehand, to pre someone's destiny, as it were.

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God chose those whom he would save. He chooses who he molds.

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He chooses who he recreates, and he chooses how they would do good works.

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God prepared, in other words, these good works before the believer was created in Christ Jesus. And of course, this was most likely as part of his plan in eternity past that began in Ephesians 3 through 14 at the covenant of redemption.

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It's all bound up in that reality, which is why Ephesians 1 .4,

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if you remember, states that God chose us in him, those who were saved, right, before the foundation of the world in order that we might be holy and blameless before him in love.

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We are saved from wrath and saved to holiness. We are saved from the world, the flesh, and the devil and saved to good works.

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And God predestined that to happen before the ages began. Everything that you do by way of pleasing

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God was foreordained by God himself. Which means you can trust him in your sanctification because God knows the path of the righteous.

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This is the point of Psalm chapter one, verse six, when the psalmist exclaims, for Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

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When he speaks of knowing the way of the righteous, it's not that he knows some facts about it, but that he is intimately acquainted with it, he is involved with it, and he is affecting it, and he is moving it.

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Friends, God predestined to mold you, to recreate you, and to walk with you in your doing of good works.

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Here's the payoff of that. It's a custom fit. Each of our stories is completely different.

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We are different people with different dispositions and different stint struggles, and God leans into all of our messes and creates a plan.

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Now that I'm kind of on this journey to get more healthy and to lose weight,

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I'm looking at all of these websites to figure out what the best diet is, how to go about this with this kind of workout plan, and how does this, and everybody's got an opinion, and everybody's got a custom plan, and all

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I gotta do is give them so much money, and they will individualize my own plan.

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What I eat when I wake up, what I eat before I work out, what I eat after I work out, what I eat for lunch, what

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I eat for dinner, what I eat when I wake up in the middle of the night, because you gotta have a snack so the metabolism will keep going, right?

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Because that's where all the weight is lost, so on and so, right? The custom plan. But in Christ, every believer has their own custom plan, and it's free.

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It's grace. It's personally designed for each individual, and it's also very progressive.

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That is that it happens over time. Nobody wakes up in the morning, and is all of a sudden just the holiest person on the planet.

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Now, you're a new creature, so your base desires should be different, and you should be able to look back and go,

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I'm not the man I need to be, but I'm no longer that man anymore. I've slain those dragons.

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I've put those demons to death, and I am now walking with Jesus. And I am ever increasing.

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So how do you know if you're saved? Well, Paul is saying, if you're looking at your life and you're seeing good works, you have reason to believe that you're saved.

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If you look at your life and you say, I'm no different than I was before I was a Christian, except I believe in this thing called grace, you don't believe in a thing called grace.

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You have not been saved. And friends, that should be sobering. That should be sobering.

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And we should all ask ourselves, are we bearing the fruit in keeping with repentance?

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Have we been transformed and changed by the grace of Christ? The last thing that I want you to see is

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God's workshop of grace. God's workshop of grace.

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Here we have our favorite piece of linguistics.

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We have a purpose clause. He continues on by saying, so that, right?

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So that we would walk in them. So we are God's workmanship. We've been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God predestined that we would walk in them. It's almost the same thing.

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If you have been saved, you will walk in good works. You will walk according to the law.

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Why? Because God predestined it and he's molding and he recreated you.

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And the question you have to ask yourself, does God do all of that and fail? If so, your God is too small.

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If you can't put a certain sin to death with the power of the spirit, your

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Holy Spirit is pretty weak. Now, with that said, the

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Holy Spirit is not weak. So we have to sort out our salvation with fear and trembling.

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Now the old man clings. Colossians 3 and 4 make this very clear. And so there are sins that are harder to kill than others.

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There are certain proclivities that we have that we need more grace for. And there are sins you don't even know about yet that you'll find out later or your spouse will help you.

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Why? Because if God revealed all of our sin to us at one time, our heads would just explode. No, we can't deal with that all at one time.

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Jesus dealt with it on the cross and progressively reveals it to us. And progressively, because we have been recreated in Christ Jesus, molds us and fits us and crafts us like a beautiful masterpiece into trophies of his glorious and amazing grace.

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Amen. Amen. What's interesting here that I wanna draw your attention to before we close is this word walk.

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So that we would walk in them. What's happening here is Paul is summing up everything that he is saying.

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He has just shown us and put on display the anatomy of salvific grace. He started, remember, with walk.

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In chapter two, verse one. We were, right, formally walking according to this world.

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Walking, being influenced by the devil and his schemes. Walking according to our own fleshly desires that hated

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God and wanted nothing to do with him. And God in Christ, throughout the rest of those verses, but God's us.

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If you don't know what I mean by that or you weren't here, go listen to a previous sermon, but it comes from verse four.

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God stepped in and he does this great reversal where we used to walk one way.

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Now, by the power of the spirit being created in Christ, having been molded by the father, we now walk a different way.

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That is our conduct of life absolutely and utterly changes. A commentary

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I was reading helped me to understand, which it gets a little nerdy, but hang in there.

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The verb walk is what's called an aggressive aorist subjunctive in the Greek, which expresses the coming about of a conduct which contrasts with a prior conduct.

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So linguistically, what's happening here is a bridge has been built between verses two and verse 10.

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And Paul just goes, and I want you to hear me on this. Watch. Look what

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God did. Look what

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God did to save you. Look who you used to be, sinner.

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And look what God has done to make you a saint. Does that cause you to worship?

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That God would so save sinners to build his church that he could call us masterpieces?

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Does that cause you to look at your brothers and sisters in Christ differently? Some people started a greater sin deficit outwardly.

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But what this text teaches us is we all started there inwardly. That there's no one exempt from needing this same balm.

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Not one of us, not one of us didn't need the cross.

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Not one of us was exempt from being the reason that Jesus Christ, the eternally generated son who put on flesh, was nailed to the cross, having blood streaming down his body.

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It was filleted like a horribly beaten steak. To absorb the wrath of God, not one of us.

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And not only has God in Christ said it's his record that I'll choose to honor when

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I see you on judgment day. But I'm going to love you into loveliness.

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And I'm going to cause you to walk in my statutes. And you will do it out of love and affection for me.

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And so heaven may be the final showroom where we all stand in glory with our

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King Jesus. But what Paul is trying to show us is that here on earth,

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God is already showing what he can do in the church visible, here and now.

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In so other words, friends, the church itself is the workshop of grace. He's going to begin to now unfold as we get into it, what the church is all about.

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Because remember, before Paul could talk about what the church is, how it functions, and her beauty and glory, he needs to tell us how the church came to be.

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And he just did, and he dropped his mic. Do you feel that way? Because that's what happened.

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And so how do we use this text? How do we apply more specifically this text? In closing,

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I have three uses for you that I want you to consider. The first one is this, do good works because they glorify

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God. So when we understand that we do good works, we obey the law, which by the way, we didn't get into it, but it's fleeing according to Colossians 3, 5, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry.

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It could be summed up in the 10 Commandments, the law in the Old Testament, but we'll get into that more later.

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I believe in context, he's actually speaking out about chapters, verses three, six. He's going to lay down for us how we ought to live and think.

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So those specific good works are to be unveiled. But we must do good works out of the understanding that God has worked in us because it glorifies

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God. Jesus says in Matthew 5, 16, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your

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Father is in heaven. If you remember just last week, we talked about how when we love one another,

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God's love is put on display in the world. Well, when we do God's work, that God is working in us, it shows the goodness and greatness of our

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God. It puts his moral perfection on display. And so when we maintain, for instance, the biblical sexual ethic, when the world is trying to shove homosexual marriage down our throat, we may think, well, we speak up, we're not really doing anything.

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Well, people may not listen. I mean, that's what Ephesians 2 tells us. The world doesn't listen to the things of God.

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Their ears are closed off to it. They're dead in their transgressions and sins. But we, from our side of things, we get to display and glorify

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God the Father. Secondarily, remember God does the working, so work.

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Or I could say, work, remembering that God does the working. This is huge.

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Salvation is not doing a work for God, but God doing a work in and through the believer. Philippians 2 .13

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says, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

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So you might be saying, well, how can I do good works? How can I put one foot in front of the other? How can I flee all of these things?

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How can I trust in God? How can I obey his law? See and taste that the

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Lord is good, first of all. And understand that it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

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He delights in bringing you to beauty. Thirdly and finally, remember

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Christ died to make his people good workers. Do not crucify the

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Lord again by rejecting his beautiful law. Titus 2 .13

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and 14. Paul says, we are looking for the blessed hope in the appearing of the glory of our great

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God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good works.

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The salvation of a people. Jesus secures a body of believers.

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He secures a church, a bride for himself, and he is washing her and he is purifying her and he is causing her to be zealous for good works.

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Now, which is why I hate it when preachers get in pulpits and they have nothing but negative things to say about the church.

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The church is this, the church is that. The church is nasty. The church is failing. The church is in trouble. No, it's not.

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The church is beautiful and she is being molded into the image of Christ by a God the

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Father and a Holy Spirit who cannot fail. And he is purifying for himself a beautiful bride.

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They might be small in number, but they are mighty in power and God is behind it all.

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Friends, God is the cause of the gracious salvation that you have received.

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He is the cause of the faith that you use to bind yourself to his grace, which is his son,

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Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the cause of your sanctification, which brings about the holiness that you have been saved to possess and to promote in the world.

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And Paul wants you to go right now, whoa, whoa, and worship in the light of it.

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For those of you who do not know Christ this day, who have not bowed your knee to our savior, who do not cherish him, love him and call him

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Christ. Or for those of you who are self -deceived, who like reform doctrine, who like playing church.

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You tired yet?

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Are you tired of working? Are you tired yet of trying to save yourself?

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Are you tired of propping up your manmade crown? Paul says in Romans 5, for the one who does not work,

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God justifies the ungodly. That's the story of us all.

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And it can be your story as well. Repent and believe on him today. Denounce your self -reliance, trust in Christ and bask in what he has done to get you to that moment, to this moment right here.

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Pray with me. Father, we thank you. We thank you that you have saved us for those of us who are saved by grace through faith.

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And we ask that you would continue to help us to see the beauty and glory of the good works that you are working in us.

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Not so that we would try to garner favor, but that we might work out a favor that has been shown to us in Christ.

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I pray for those who may not know you this day, that you would be convicting them of sin and propelling them even now to a life of Christ likeness, that you would help them to be humble in this moment and to see their need for a savior.