Guilt, Grace, Gratitude - [Ephesians 2:1-10]

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I would invite you to open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2, because when you're having a week, you look at something like Ephesians chapter 2 and you go, that's what
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I want to preach. I want to preach some good news. Ligonier did a study, a survey, last year.
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He surveyed Christians and non -Christians alike. The interesting part to me wasn't what the unbelievers said.
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It's what the believers said. Evangelicals, professing Christians, 52 % of them agreed with this statement.
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Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature. What does the
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Bible say? There's no one good, right? 23 % agree with this one.
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Even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation.
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23%. 32 % agree with this one.
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Religious belief is a matter of personal opinion. It is not about objective truth.
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How can you be a professing Christian and say that religion is not about objective truth?
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I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.
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But I came up with my own statistic this week, and it is true.
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100 % of those here today, 100%, are bound for hell unless God intervenes.
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100%. That's the message of Ephesians 2, verses 1 -10.
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Let me read our text. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.
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Following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
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But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, 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 coming ages he might show the immeasurable 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 your own doing.
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It is the gift of God, not a result 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 that we should walk in them.
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Now this morning, if you solve a sign on the way in, we're going to look at, I don't have a 5G message, you know, that will come next year.
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I have a 3G message. We're going to look at the 3Gs of the gospel.
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Guilt, grace, gratitude. Because gratitude is the only proper response to God's work on our behalf.
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And really, if you think about it, when anybody wants to get baptized and they're writing out their testimony,
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I almost want to just say, read Ephesians 2, 1 -10 and adapt to your own life.
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Because that's what this is. It's a testimony. Paul's writing everyone's testimony who is in Christ Jesus.
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Because it's a look at before Christ, when Christ arrests you, and then what happens to your life after you are saved.
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Before, during, after. Our first G, guilt.
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Guilt. We're going to see that it is a universal gift, universal guilt.
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That is to say that every single person is guilty. And there's a spiritual deadness that attends this guilt.
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Look at verse 1. First part of it says, and you were dead. You were dead.
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Again, this is a testimony of every Ephesian, every person in Asia Minor that read this letter, and of everyone here today.
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There was a time in your life in which you were spiritually dead. And this letter is written to the same group that Paul just told in Ephesians chapter 1.
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Ephesians chapter 1 proceeds. Ephesians chapter 2. He just told them. Beginning in verse 3, when he bursts out in praise to the
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Father. He says that the Father has given us every spiritual blessing. That the Father chose us before time existed.
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That he determined to adopt us. Then it tells us in verse 6 why he did that.
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In Ephesians chapter 1 verse 6. To the praise of his glorious grace.
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In other words, for his glory. The Father did these things. Why? For his glory.
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Then he moves on to the Son. And the work of the Son. He says that he redeemed us through his death.
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Jesus did. That in him we have forgiveness of sin. The sure hope of heaven.
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Then he tells us why. In verse 12. For his glory.
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For the glory of Christ. Verse 13.
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Paul begins talking about the work of the Holy Spirit. He says he sealed us. Guarantees our inheritance.
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Why? For his glory. That is to say the glory of God. Father, Son, Spirit. If you want to know why we believe in the
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Trinity. Why we worship the Triune God. It is because it is a work.
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Salvation is a work of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is why we worship them.
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And before salvation, again, Paul says the readers were dead. Dead in their sins and trespasses.
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Now this death, spiritual death, and is akin to a spiritual inability.
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Having no capacity to choose spiritual good. The London Baptist Confession of Faith says it this way.
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From this original corruption. That is to say the fall. Whereby we are utterly indisposed.
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Original sin. Disabled and made opposite to all good. And wholly inclined to all evil.
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To proceed all actual transgressions. In other words, our inability is a result of the fall of Adam and Eve.
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We inherit a sin nature. And we are incapable of escaping this inclination to sin.
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We are bent towards sin. We are wicked from the womb. Romans 5 .15
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says this of Adam's fall. It says many died through one man's trespass.
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That is verse 15. And then verse 18 says therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men.
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We want to avoid the error of Pelagius. Pelagius said ancient churchman
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I suppose we could say. Whose opponent was Augustine. Who said that Adam's fall applied only to him.
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In other words, his sin was his and his alone. But that ignores what
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Paul writes in chapter 5 of Romans. Lorraine Bettner said this about inability.
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Human inability. He said as the bird with a broken wing is free to fly but not able.
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So the natural man is free to come to God but not able. How can he repent of his sin when he loves it?
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How can he come to God when he hates him? This is the inability of the will under which man labors.
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People don't like to hear about this. They want to talk about free will, right? They want to talk about their exercise of free will.
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Well, here's the problem. You don't have a free will. Paul writes in Romans chapter 6 that we are slaves to sin before salvation.
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Jesus said, you know, I talked in Sunday school about people who want to pit the red letters, the good stuff, against the black letters, all the rest of the
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Bible. It's a false dichotomy. The Holy Spirit inspires all of it. And to say that somehow
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Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is against Jesus, the
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Holy Spirit against Jesus. No, the Trinity always works together as we saw in Ephesians chapter 1.
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Jesus said in John 6, 44 that no man can come to me except the
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Father draws him. No one has the ability. It's that spiritual inability over and over and over again.
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John wrote about it in John 3. He said that men are lovers of darkness. They love their sin.
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Hate God, love their sin. So we come out of the womb as bent towards sin, sinners by nature, but we also sin by choice, right?
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This is our testimony. This is our spiritual inability before God intervenes.
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There's also a universal spiritual rebellion. We like to talk about the brotherhood of man.
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Well, here's the brotherhood of man in verse 2, in which you once walked following the course of this world before salvation, you were enslaved to the world.
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Every believer was a slave to sin, but he or she was not alone, right? It's like kind of a perverse.
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We are the world. We're going to all hold hands and affirm one another in our sin.
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You're a sinner. I'm a sinner. Let's sin together. A good way to look at it is at the end of Romans chapter 1, after he's talked about the decline of mankind into all manner of perversity and sin.
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Paul writes this in 132. He says, though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die.
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They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. We look around at our society and it is amazing how quickly things have changed.
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Things that once, you know, if you were to do a survey 10, 15 years ago and ask what people thought about homosexual marriage, most people look at you like, what are you even talking about?
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And now if you don't approve it, give hearty approval to it, you're some manner of bigots.
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We are the world. We sin together. We affirm one another in our sin. The natural course of the natural man in the natural will is to be like everyone else, but we reserve for ourself, you know, just a little bit of goodness, right?
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We're not as bad as other people, even though we're all in this together.
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O 'Brien said this, he says their behavior, talking about unbelievers, has been determined by the powerful influence of society's attitudes, habits, and preferences, which were alien to God and his standards, totally opposed to God.
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We are the world, and together we're going to hate God. We're going to rebel against him.
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Everyone else is doing it, and that is somehow convincing to unbelievers before God intervenes.
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Again, what about free will? Luther said this, free will is an empty term whose reality is lost, and a lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all.
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In other words, it doesn't exist. Free will. The Bible never allows for free will other than three persons, and I like listing them,
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Adam and Eve before the fall, and the Lord Jesus Christ, because everybody else is born with a sin nature, is a rebel by nature.
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Lorraine Bettner said it this way, she said the fallen man is so morally blind that he uniformly prefers and chooses evil instead of good, as do the fallen angels or demons, linked in arms, worshipping each other, worshipping each other's sins.
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It goes on, he talks about they are literally sons of Satan, verse 2, following the prince of the power of the air, who is
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Satan, by the way, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
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There are many things we don't know about the world of angels and demons, I mean, there are books written about them that are bad books, they're terrible books, don't read them.
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There are many things that we don't know about it, but we know this, Satan is in charge of the demons, and Satan is in command of this world system.
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He's the ruler of this world he's referred to, and there's a bit of irony in that.
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Unbelievers rebel against God to the point where they are called his enemies, we'd see that in Romans 5 and also in Psalm 5 and Psalm 9, but they are so loyal to Satan that they are called his children, the sons of disobedience, they belong to him, they are his sons and daughters, unbelievers.
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And it goes on, it gets worse, we have universal spiritual condemnation. I mean, talking about total depravity, the doctrine of total depravity is what?
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It's not that everybody is as bad as they possibly could be, not everybody is a mass murderer or a cannibal or anything else, but everyone's inclination always is toward sin.
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Look at verse 3, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.
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Our minds, our bodies before Christ control us, we do what feels good.
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We're natural born hedonists, to be sure, unbelievers don't try everything that they think of, but they learn to rationalize more and more, they sear their consciences, their sin goes from one level to another, to another, to another, it's
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Romans 1. Then again, if we think about it, we're talking about total depravity, it would be when we approach unbelievers and we tell them to repent, it'd be like telling a fish underwater that he should be like a bird and fly in the sky.
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And the fish would look at us like what are you talking about? I don't understand what you're talking about because I'm a fish, you dummy, stop talking to me.
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But if a fish could talk, if it was the incredible Mr. Olympian, he would say
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I don't want to fly, I'm perfectly satisfied right here in this water. Unbelievers think what?
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I mean there are many unbelievers who think that they're spiritual, right? You hear that all the time. I'm spiritual.
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I'm finding my own way to God, I have my own path. Spirituality is not the mark of salvation.
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Being in Christ is the mark of salvation. And no matter how spiritual someone may claim to be, if they're dead in their sins and trespasses, then they are totally depraved and they are outside of the kingdom of God, they're not in Christ.
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Verse 3 tells us that they were by nature, before salvation, these believers here were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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In other words, every single person on the planet is a child of wrath. Everyone is.
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We've already seen them described as sons of disobedience and here they're called children of wrath.
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Persistent, characteristic disobedience to the law of God makes one subject to his wrath, right?
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You sin constantly, over and over and over again. You do the things that are displeasing to God.
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Your every thought and intent is opposite to God because you don't care about him. You hate him.
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If you did love him, you wouldn't do these things and your mind would be renewed and you would be transformed.
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But you don't have that capacity of yourself so over and over and over again you are subject to the wrath of God.
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You are a child of wrath. And that has to be one of the most detested doctrines in all of the world.
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Why do I say that? Because if you go to an unbeliever and you say, what do you think about hell? Well, I don't believe in that.
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I'm going to heaven because I'm better than most people, right? If you go to most churches and you ask them what they teach about wrath, what do they teach?
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Nothing. Why? Because it's not fun to talk about.
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Nobody wants to come to church on Sunday and feel bad when they leave. Don't tell me about wrath.
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Tell me about the love of God. Tell me that he's going to affirm me.
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There are many so -called Christian preachers who don't even want to touch that doctrine. The wrath of God.
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What does it mean to be subject to the wrath of God? Well, it's not like God is getting madder and madder and madder and madder.
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That wrath is fixed and it's fixed against sin for all time. One day
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God is going to unleash that wrath and it's not going to be a pretty picture. But from the moment of conception, every beautiful little baby sets off on a path to judgment 100%.
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Unless God intervenes. If things take their natural course, a baby is born, lives, and dies.
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What happens? Unless God intervenes, it's not going to be pretty.
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It's going to be eternity in hell. It's a sobering thought for parents, isn't it?
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As young as a child is, from the moment they can understand what you're saying, you should be teaching them about God.
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Teaching them about forgiveness of sin in Christ. Why? Because you want them, when they can, to believe.
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You want them to be delivered from this. You want God to be at work in them. That's the first G, guilt.
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Second G, grace. First notice the mercy of God.
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The mercy of God. But God being rich in mercy. Paul sets up this picture of hopelessness.
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All human beings set on their own hopeless little paths, pursuing their own sinful desires, unable and really not even desiring to turn from them.
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Just wanting to fulfill themselves. They don't have a care about judgment day.
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It's almost like when you were a kid, did you ever do this? Thinking somehow that if you went to mom and dad or mom or dad together, that somehow there'd be less punishment or maybe your brother or sister or combination thereof would get punished worse than you.
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Maybe there's strength in numbers kind of thing. Somehow we think that if we chain ourselves together as sinners, assure each other of our goodness, that when we appear on judgment day, things are going to be better for us.
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But that's not true. And it would all be hopeless if not for the two words that start this verse.
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But God. But God changes everything.
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Mercy is God's compassion for those in need. He sees those he chose before the foundation of the world.
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And what are they doing? They're his elect. They're to be his children. And yet they're linked arm in arm with the children of Satan.
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They're heading for destruction. And he acts. He intervenes.
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He changes things. Think of the billions that God sees in rebellion against him.
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And on some he has absolute mercy. He has absolute compassion.
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And on others, he doesn't. And some will object and say, well, it's not fair that God has mercy on some and not on others.
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If we know one thing about God, the world says he has to be fair. No, he doesn't.
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It's not fair. Fair is God leaving every single person to their own devices.
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Do it on your own. They're spiritually dead. They're spiritually blind.
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They're spiritually deaf. They're morally incapable of doing good. How's that going to work out?
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Romans 9. This question of fairness does come up. Paul addresses it.
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Listen to what he says. After explaining that God has compassion on some and not on others,
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Romans 9 verse 14, he says, what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part?
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In other words, is God unfair? He says by no means.
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For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. And I will have compassion on whom
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I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy.
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Every single person. I mean, it's like a conveyor belt of depravity. We're all on it.
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And God plucks some off. We all would choose to stay on that belt.
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We all would be just like everybody else. Even as we're going off on the cliff into hell forever, we wouldn't say a thing because that's what we want.
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And God says, not you. I chose you before the foundation of the world. I'm taking you off of that conveyor belt.
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You're mine. And I'm going to set my affection on you. I'm going to give you mercy.
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I see you. I see your plight even though you don't. I am not going to let you suffer my wrath.
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Paul describes God as being rich in mercy, this compassion for people in need.
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He sees us and he's abundant in mercy. He's not short of it, but he only applies it to those whom he chooses to apply it.
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And the first recipients of his mercy were Adam and Eve. Let me just read
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Genesis chapter 2, verses 16 and 17. And the
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Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.
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For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. So what did they do? They ate of it.
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Right? So what would we then expect? Death.
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God said you do this and you will die. But rather than give them justice, rather than be fair, giving them what they deserve, he showed them mercy.
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Genesis 3, 21. And the Lord God made for Adam and Eve and for his wife, garments of skins and clothed them rather than kill them.
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He killed animals and clothed them. One man said only the person who has experienced the greatness of God's mercy can understand something of how great his wrath must be.
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When you wake up and you think about the mercy of God toward you, it's at that moment, the more you contemplate that, right?
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The great intervention of God that you understand how great his wrath must be.
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So that's the mercy of God. Let's look at the love of God. In verse four, the second half of it because of the great love with which he loved us, he's moved with compassion.
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He sees his children in danger and he acts compassion without action would be worthless.
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And that's what love is. It's his action. God's love is not emotion. You know, I say often to my wife,
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I love you. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that I emotionally love her. But if I don't, if I don't ever demonstrate that, then what does it mean?
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It doesn't mean a whole lot. But God's love, think about it, is not like ours.
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Not only does it not wax and wane, but before we even existed, Ephesians one tells us
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God loved us. He said his affection upon us. Why?
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Ephesians one verses four and five says this, in love at the end of verse four, in love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.
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Again, this picture of we're sons of disobedience. And God says, no, I'm not going to let you remain as it were in the family of Satan.
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I'm going to adopt you and I'm going to do it through Jesus Christ, through his work.
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I'm going to place you in him. Those he chose before time existed are slaves of Satan, children of Satan.
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But God's love is nothing like ours. It's not the kind of evaluative love.
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It's not like God looks at me in 1992 and he says, you know what,
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Steve, you're nothing like I thought you were going to be. Forget it. If I was him, that's what
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I would have said. Instead, God looks down and says,
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Steve is exactly like I knew what he was going to be. He's hopeless, but that's not the point.
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His love isn't preconditioned upon my effort, my place in life, anything about me.
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The problem is we too often make it about us and it's not about us. It's about, as we read in Ephesians one, the glory of God and for his own glory, he takes me, removes me from where I am, spiritually speaking, and adopts me.
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God sees our pitiful estate and says, I will have my son now. He's mine.
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I will shape him. I will fashion him as I have planned from all eternity.
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He loves believers so much that he sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to save them.
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He took action. He calls them. He sends the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus lives that perfect life we're commanded to live.
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He obtains the righteousness, the record of perfection needed to enter heaven. And the father treats all believers, all who are in Christ as if they live the life that he lived.
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Jesus also paid the price for our sins on the cross. And then he rose from the grave on the third day.
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Ephesians five to says this Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God.
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Again, the idea of God loving, it's not emotive, it's action. Christ loved us.
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And what did he do? Gave himself up for us, laid down his life for us.
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And then God raises us with Christ. Look at verse five again. Even when we were dead in our trespasses.
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I'll just supply God made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
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We were dead, spiritually dead. But when our representative head, our new head are the second
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Adam, Jesus was raised from the dead. So were we in effect, we no longer have to fear death, right?
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Turn for a moment to Romans chapter six, Romans chapter six. Paul discussing the same thing.
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It explicates it a little bit more at length, gives us an easier picture to follow.
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I think Romans chapter six verses four to eight, we were buried.
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Therefore with him, that is to say with Jesus by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life.
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For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
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Now I'm going to just pause going reverse six in a moment. Christ experienced spiritual death in this sense, that separation from the father.
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When he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's suffering the penalty for sin at that point.
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He's paying the price for sin. And as it were, the father turns his back on sin.
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He made him who knew no sin to be sin. Why that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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We're going to verse six. We know that our old self was crucified with him. He took our sins, our old nature and was took it to the cross in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
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Whom the sun sets free is free indeed for one who has died, has been set free from sin.
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Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. And that's what Paul's talking about in Ephesians chapter two.
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We have been raised with him. We've been brought to newness of life. His resurrection is not only the guarantee that our sins are forgiven, but that we can be assured of our own resurrection and eternal life.
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And that's why he came right so that he could be the firstborn of many brothers. The church is the bride of Christ.
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Believers are the bride of Christ and his resurrection secures our place in heaven.
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We talked about the love of God. Now the grace of God verse seven, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
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Where are those coming ages? It's the time without time.
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It's all of eternity. It's heaven. It's beyond time, really.
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For all eternity, the super grace of God toward us will be on display forever and ever.
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We will be in awe, overwhelmed by the grace of God. I mean, we could sing on a loop amazing grace because we're going to fully believe it.
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We're going to love it. We're going to be amazed by it. Hendrickson says this.
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He says, mercy pities, right? This is God having compassion on us. Grace pardons unmerited favor.
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So it's one thing to have compassion on us, then take action. And this is ultimately grace is that pardon.
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It saves all the way delivering men from the greatest woe, which is everlasting damnation and bestowing upon them the choicest blessing, which is everlasting life for the soul and body.
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Again, mercy means not giving us what we deserve, right? Mercy is not giving us what we deserve.
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And then grace is giving us what we cannot deserve. We cannot escape hell because we are sinners by nature and by choice.
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But we are pardoned that fate because of Christ. We cannot earn heaven because we cannot attain the perfection that's needed to get there.
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It is granted to believers through Christ. And that is grace. So we've seen guilt, grace and now gratitude really kind of a summary statement in verse eight for by grace, you have been saved through faith.
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And this not of your own doing. It is the gift of God. This verse alone just slays any kind of idea that it's salvation is works based or that it's salvation by grace through faith plus something else.
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There's something that must be done. If we could list any act of good or act of virtue, whether it's baptism or taking communion or getting married in the church or walking around the neighborhood on Saturday morning evangelizing people to your cult, whatever those supposed good works are, they don't have any merit before God, none, because all of our works are like a polluted garment.
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There's nothing we can do to somehow say, look at my works, God, you must let me into the kingdom of heaven.
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And yet that's what every religion other than Christianity teaches do this and God will grant you into entrance into heaven.
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Those people are either lying or they're deluded. There's only one way to heaven and it's not by law keeping.
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How do we know that? Because nobody does it. Bible tells us there's no one good. There's no one righteous.
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There is no one who seeks to please God says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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And Jesus himself tells us that the only way to the father is through him. But God graciously gives us faith and those he gives faith to believe and are saved.
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So did they do something to be saved? Some will say that they had to believe. Now, is that true?
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Does God believe for you? And the answer is no, he doesn't. He gives you the faith to believe without that faith.
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You can't believe. And as a dead person, you can't believe dead. People can walk the aisle or sign a card or raise their hand or what have you, but they cannot believe apart from an act of God.
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What did Jesus say? You must be born again. The Holy Spirit must cause you to be born again.
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And in that moment of new life, you believed you repented, you put your faith in Christ, but that faith was not generated by you.
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It was granted to you. That's what it means when it's a gift. Yes, but I had to accept it.
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That's right. And if you were still dead in your sins and trespasses, you would never accept it. How many times did you hear the gospel before you believed?
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For most of us, it was more than once. You think, well, yes, but I did believe and I'm going to hold on to that.
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Okay. I don't know what to tell you. Here's what I know. When you get to heaven, not only is there no high five, but there's no glory in it.
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God will not share his glory with another. And if we look at Ephesians chapter one, what do we read over and over again for his glory, for his glory, for his glory, we are objects of his mercy and his love and his compassion and his grace.
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Why? So that he might be glorified so that we might in ages to come, worship him over and over and over again with a deepening love and affection and knowledge, dare
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I say of all that he has done for us. You were happily dead in your trespasses and sins, merrily traipsing about with every other child of Satan.
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It's like we're all, I mean, I'm, you know, we're locking arms. We're skipping around. We're happy, but God intervenes.
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I mean, we might expect in Ephesians chapter two, or at least I would expect some people to say Ephesians two verse four should start like this, but you being rich in knowledge, being wise chose to believe.
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That's not what it says. It had to be a supernatural work because you could not do it.
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Look at verse nine, not as a result of works so that no one may boast.
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It's not any kind of work to believe. We say it over and over and over again.
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Salvation is monergistic. It's God alone working. Why? Because he's got a spiritual corpse to work with.
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He's not asking you to cooperate with him. He gives you life and you choose then to come to him.
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Why? Because you're a new creation. Your will is absolutely bound until that moment he sets you free.
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No one can boast. Why? Because something is done to them. They're granted salvation full and free.
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And so how do new creations respond in gratitude?
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Look at verse 10. For we are his workmanship. Other translations say his craftsmanship.
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I like that because it really gives us the picture of being works of art that God shapes and molds.
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We are the clay. He is the potter. He is shaping and molding us, refining us.
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We have trials. We have difficulties. We do good things. We do bad things.
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But through it all, God is at work in us. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.
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There is no other way. Created in Christ Jesus for good works.
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Now we get to the good works part. It's after salvation, not before salvation.
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And people today now, they want to say, well, you know what? Christians do good works.
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And then they want to define what those good works are. If you're a Christian, then you need to do this and you need to do that.
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Well, unless the Bible says that, I don't feel bound by that.
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But there are things that we do that Christ, the Bible commands us to do.
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But notice here, it says, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
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Now, let me just be real clear about this. There are people who say, well, you know, and I absolutely support this.
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Abortion is horrible. It's a horrible sin. Therefore, it's okay to overlook the fact that we're going to lock arms with Roman Catholics and Muslims and Mormons and everything else, and we're going to protest against abortion.
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Here's the problem. We who are alive are now linking our lives with living zombies to protest sin.
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What we ought to be doing is turning to them and saying, repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.
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Abortion is terrible. But there are people right next to us who need to be saved.
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So what do we do? We do new works, different works. Our old way of living was me, myself, and I.
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Selfish. Patterned after Satan and the way of this world. But we don't do good works contra the
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Roman church to earn merit. Contra other so -called
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Christian religions. We do them out of gratitude. God so loved us that he sent his son, the
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Lord Jesus Christ, to pay the price for our sins and redeem us. And our response is thanks.
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No, our response is awe. Our response is,
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I can never repay you, but let me serve. Let me do something. And God even equips us to do these good works.
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He gives us spiritual gifts. The Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12, tells us that he gifts every single believer with a spiritual gift.
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Why? So that we can serve one another. I don't know what your spiritual gift is. I know that you have one if you're saved.
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I know that you should be serving in some capacity if you're saved. If you would have told me in 1992 that my spiritual gift was teaching,
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I would have said, we need to have a talk. I don't even like talking in front of groups of people.
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Why is that? Well, because I was prideful. I was sinful. I was arrogant. I was all those things. I'm still prideful and sinful and arrogant, but I love teaching.
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We do these things out of joy. The Holy Spirit gives us these gifts and we think, in light of all that God and Christ Jesus has done for me, how can
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I disobey God who has granted me these spiritual gifts and not serve the body of Christ?
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We don't do them so that we look good. We don't do them because we are good.
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We do them because we're redeemed. Because we love other Christians. This idea of just do something to look good.
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Here's what Spurgeon said about that. I just like this quote. He said, Morality is a neat cover for foul venom, but it does not alter the fact that the heart is vile and the man himself is under damnation.
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Men will be damned with good works as well as without them if they make them their confidence. That is to say, good works rather than Jesus Christ.
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Good works are not what is going to get us into heaven. It's Jesus Christ and him alone. But because we're in Christ, because God is at work in us, we do good works.
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That's the gratitude part. Like I said, it's before, during, after.
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Before Christ, sin. As I'm being drawn, as I'm being convicted, as the
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Holy Spirit has worked for some of us, it's like that. For others, it's a little bit of a process and they can't really name a time and a date.
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But we recognize that something happened. We changed our mind. There was a moment in time where the things that we knew were true, we now know are false.
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And the things that we refused to believe, we now believe wholeheartedly. We embrace
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Christ. And it's because of that, because of the love which
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God has placed upon us and in us, that we respond in gratitude. What is the gospel?
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Spurgeon once said that he could put it into four words. Christ died for me.
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If you're here today and that's your testimony, praise the Lord. Think back on who you were, what the
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Lord has done for you, and now ask yourself how in some small way you can show your gratitude.
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If that's not your story this morning, if that's not your testimony, then I would beg you, I would urge you to think how is it possible that I can be good enough to get to heaven, and the truth is it's impossible.
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Only one person lived a perfect life, the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's only by faith in him, by trusting completely in him that you can be saved from the wrath of God, which is as sure as the snow this afternoon.
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It's more sure than that. It's coming. Let's pray.
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Father, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you for the good news.
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We see the bad news. We see it in our own lives. We see it in the world all around us.
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Sin enslaves. Sin corrupts. Sin blinds men into thinking that they're something they're not, that they deserve something from you.
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Father, we praise you that you interrupt the natural course of events.
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You intervene in the lives of your people. You set your affection upon them. You transform them.
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You change them. You cause them to have new affections. Apart from you, we're hopeless, helpless, and without any opportunity of avoiding your wrath, but you provide the way for anyone here who does not know you today, from the youngest to the oldest.
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I pray that your spirit would convict, your spirit would cause regeneration, that you would draw them to the
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Lord Jesus Christ, that you would grant them faith even this hour, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.