Sunday Sermon: By Grace Through Faith (Ephesians 2:8-10)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the book of Ephesians. Here's Pastor Gabe.

The Apostle Paul writing to the church in Ephesus, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that 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.

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.

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.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Let us pray.

Our God, as we come to your word today, I pray that your grace is shown to us, that we understand the mercies of God that are upon us.

We did not deserve to be saved, and we have done nothing to merit our salvation.

It has been given to us by God, through your son Jesus Christ, filled with your

Holy Spirit by grace. And so we come to understand this all the more fully today, the goodness of our

Lord God, through your son Jesus, in whose name we pray, and all God's people said,

Amen. Thank you, you may be seated. So we go very basic with the start of this particular section today.

We had started a couple of weeks ago in Ephesians chapter 2, looking at verses 1 through 3, understanding that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and we were like the rest of mankind, children of wrath.

And then in the next week, last week, we looked at verses 4 through 7, 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.

Another verse that you know from memory, and our children have learned it in Awana, goes right along with this,

Romans 5, 8, but God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us. And then expounding upon this, that Paul has laid out in this doctrine, from Ephesians 2, verse 1 through verse 7, he summarizes it this way, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

Not a result of works so that no one may boast. We know those two verses quite well, we cannot forget verse 10, for we are his workmanship.

It's not by our works that we are saved, but we are yet his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And Paul is getting rather redundant over the course of these 10 verses that we have read, because he's stated matter -of -factly already, by grace you have been saved.

That was in verse 5. And then we get to verse 8, and he says it yet again, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

Why does Paul get so redundant with this phrase? It's so we would understand we're saved by grace.

It is not by our works. It is by the goodness and mercy of God.

Right at the very beginning of verse 8, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

Let us understand all three of those words that are being emphasized there at the beginning of this statement, grace, salvation, and faith.

What is grace? I heard Albert Moeller define it just this past week listening to the briefing.

Grace is simply unmerited favor. We do nothing to merit the favor of God.

He just gives it to us because He is good. Not because we have done anything good, for as we see in Romans 3, we can do nothing good.

It is in our nature to rebel against God. And in fact, in that rebellion, we hate God. But God shows

His love for us in this way, by sending His son Jesus to die for our sins.

And all who believe in Him have eternal life. This is by the grace of God.

When we were going through Galatians, I expounded upon this definition of grace, though we've repeated it over and over this way in the seven years that I've been teaching here.

Unmerited favor, that's the definition of grace. But yet we see a definition even deeper than that, and it was from the author

Jerry Vines that I had drawn this definition when we were in Galatians. Grace is even deeper than unmerited favor, it's demerited favor.

What does that mean, and why do we call it demerited favor? Well, it's because by our works, we've actually demerited our place before God.

We don't merit our salvation, but we've demerited our standing before God as being worthy of His wrath because of our sins.

And yet God shows us His grace, though what we deserve is judgment. And that's why that definition, demerited favor, goes even deeper than unmerited favor.

So there's our understanding of grace. It's by grace that we have been saved, salvation.

Salvation that is given to us by God from what?

What have we been saved from? And this is something that I have gone through with my children when we're sitting around the table or around the piano and we do our family time, just as Jim does with his family.

And I've asked my children, when we talk about salvation, we talk about Jesus being Savior, what is it that He has saved us from?

Our sins, certainly. Certainly. We have been saved, we have been forgiven our sins, we are able to stand before God righteous because of the salvation that we receive in Christ.

Certainly that. He saves us from our sins. Secondly, He saves us from the effects of our sins, which would be death.

Romans 6 .23, for the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord. So we have earned death because of our sin against God. We deserve to perish. And when we believe in Christ as Savior, He has taken that penalty for us and has saved us not only from our sins but even from the effects of our sins, which is death.

When Jesus rose from the grave after dying on the cross, dying for our sins, rising from the grave, conquering death, so that all who believe in Him, we will not experience the sting of death, but we receive resurrection, a resurrection like His, as Paul also explains in Romans 6.

So we've been saved from sin, we've been saved from the effects of sin, the wages of sin, which is death. Thirdly, we have been saved from the wrath of God.

God has even saved us from Himself. And that is most especially what we are talking about when we talk about salvation.

God is good, we are not. And being holy and righteous in a manner and a measure far beyond we can even fathom,

He is perfect, He is impeccable, He is great, we're not.

And so what we deserve is eternal separation from God. What that means is the wrath of God would destroy us in judgment were we to perish in the state that we are born in.

As descendants of Adam, having inherited his sin nature, we all in our hearts rebel against God and what we deserve for that is judgment.

God being so good and righteous and holy, He is a just God, described in Deuteronomy as all

His ways are justice. This is a word that you hear thrown around a lot even in the news today, justice.

Everybody has their own definition of what they think justice is. Everybody thinks that if I've been wronged, if my feelings are hurt, if you've hurt my feelings,

I demand justice. That's not really justice. You want comeuppance maybe, but you don't want justice.

God is just and all His ways are justice. And so God being a just God and a good

God, He is not going to allow sin to go unpunished. He most especially will not allow rebellion against His name to go unpunished.

And it's because He is good that He will judge wicked sinners.

Paul Washer is known for saying, Paul Washer, a popular evangelist within Southern Baptist circles and even beyond,

Paul Washer has said the scariest news, whenever he goes and he talks to high school kids or college students, one of the things that he'll often start his messages with, he'll say, the most terrifying news that you can hear is that God is good.

Why is that terrifying? Why is that scary to hear that God is good? Because the other part of that is you are not.

And if God is good and you aren't, then He has to do something about that.

He is not going to allow ungood to remain if God is just.

And so He will punish the unjust. And that's why the news that God is good is terrifying when we understand what

Scripture says about that. But God doesn't leave us in a place where we would otherwise perish in His wrath.

It is His Son who paid the price on the cross for our sins. He drank the cup of God's wrath.

When we read Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and Him praying to God in Matthew 26, Father, if it be

Your will, let this cup pass from me, not as I will, but as You will. The cup that Jesus was asking to pass from Him was the cup of God's wrath.

Talked about in Psalms as being a cup of foaming wine, well -mixed, and all the wicked of the earth will drink it down to the dregs.

And that's what Jesus took for us on the cross. And everyone who believes in Him, we receive the righteousness of Christ.

I quoted to you from 2 Corinthians 5, starting off the service this morning. It's in verse 21 where it says,

He became sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God through Him.

God looked at His Son dying on the cross and He saw our sins placed upon Him. And what we receive by faith in Christ, we receive

His righteousness which is placed upon us. So when God looks at us,

He sees not the children of wrath like the rest of mankind, Ephesians 2, 3, but He sees the righteousness of His Son.

And God the Father loves us with the same love and passion and intensity that He has for His own

Son. Called in Romans 8, 29, the firstborn of many brothers. That means there's going to be many more who will come after Him.

Jesus, as described in Hebrews, is our elder brother. And all of us who are born again in Christ, we are adopted into this family as sons and daughters of God.

By the grace of God. And all of this in an understanding of salvation. The study of salvation, by the way, is soteriology.

That's the word that we use to describe the study of salvation. And we understand being saved from our sins, being saved from the wages of sin which is death, and being saved even from the judgment of God.

This is what Christ saves us from. So we understand we are saved by grace.

We understand even what salvation is, and it is the grace of God that we've received this salvation. We've been saved through faith.

Now, what is faith? Well, according to Hebrews 11, 1, faith is the assurance of things hoped for.

Some of your translations may say substance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.

Now, I love that word substance to describe faith because faith really is a thing.

It is a thing that God gives us, and I want to make that clear.

You did not manifest your faith. You did not sit around one day and you're thinking to yourself,

I want to have faith. You concentrate real hard. And then boom, it pops into your head,

I believe. That's not how that happened. You did nothing to bring about your faith.

God brought about faith. He put it in your heart. And I think the reason why we argue about this concept is because we've lost a doctrine that precedes faith, which

R .C. Sproul said was even the heart of the Reformation 500 years ago, 502 years ago now.

And that was the doctrine of regeneration. That God has regenerated the heart to understand

His word and receive it, and it is by the declaration of His word, the gospel that you heard, the good news that Jesus died for our sins, that all who believe in Him will have everlasting life.

When you heard the gospel, you believed it because your heart was regenerated in the

Holy Spirit. One of the key passages that goes with this looks very similar to what we're reading here in Ephesians 2.

It's Titus 3 verses 4 through 7. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our

Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our

Savior, so that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Paul here in Titus 3 is hearkening back to words that Jesus shared with Nicodemus in John 3, who is hearkening back to words that were spoken to the prophet

Ezekiel in Ezekiel chapter 38. And it is where the

Lord promises, I will sprinkle clean water on you. I will take out your heart of stone, the heart that is hardened against God, and I will give you a heart of flesh, a soft heart to receive the word of God.

And I will give My Spirit to you, and I will cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey

My rules. This is all the word of God through the prophet Ezekiel, Jesus repeats it with Nicodemus in John 3,

Paul carries it over in his letter to Titus in Titus chapter 3. It's the concept of regeneration.

See our heart is hardened against God until God regenerates our heart to believe

Him and seek after Him and love Him. And He does this, all this, the work of the

Holy Spirit through the teaching of His word. Romans 10, 17, how do we get faith?

Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ, but we can't understand the word of Christ until God gives us the heart to understand it.

As we've been going through Ephesians, we've been talking about concepts like predestination and election, and we talk here even about faith being something that we do not give ourselves, but that God gives to us.

And all of this by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit that He does in our hearts.

And whenever arguments about this arise, well, I did this, you know, I believed and therefore

I am saved. Well, certainly you believed and as far as you're concerned, you made a decision, you made a choice.

When the gospel was given to you, you made a choice whether to believe it or whether not to believe it.

But then when you start reading in the theology of it, and by reading theology, I mean simply you come to the word of God and you read about your salvation.

When you read about it, you find you did not make any decision on your own merit.

Because again, it's not by our merit that we receive salvation from God. It is demerited favor.

Rather, it is something that God gave to you. And that's what we recognize as we go on here, as we see in Ephesians 2 .8,

I'm adding chapters to Ephesians now. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

Now, where the debate often comes in is what this is, what I mean by this, very literally the word this.

What is this? And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

Well, what is this? So some will say, well, this is grace. Certainly.

If you did anything to earn grace, then it isn't grace. Because if you had to merit it, then it wasn't unmerited favor.

So yes, this is not your own doing. The grace of God is not your own doing. Salvation, that's certainly not your own doing.

You couldn't save yourself. We even read at the very start of Ephesians 2, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world.

My friends, how many dead people can respond to my voice right now? Zero. Zero is the answer.

No one can respond to my, no one who is dead can respond to my voice. And the same is with us.

When we're dead in our sins and our trespasses, we cannot respond to God. It's because he regenerates our hearts from being dead to alive that we hear the gospel and we understand it.

It's the difference between you who heard the gospel and the atheist next to you who heard the same gospel but it didn't change him.

It's because your heart was regenerated to believe it and his was not. And it's not that any of us should ever have this attitude or this understanding of like, well, you know, if that's what you're saying,

Gabe, then that means that there's people around here who really want to come to God but they can't because he won't let them.

No, that person does not exist. There is no such thing as a person who is trying to find

God but just can't. I want to come to God but he won't let me come to him.

No, that's not how that works. Because, again, this is a matter of nature and in our sin nature, we hate

God. The person does not want to come to God because they hate

God and that is our natural disposition as descendants of Adam to hate

God. Let me give you an illustration from, borrowing this from Charles Spurgeon, and I think this works well for us

Kansans who, especially those of us who grew up around farms. If you had a pig and you were feeding this pig a wonderful steak dinner, okay, even set out the tablecloth out on the ground, you set the steak dinner out there, even maybe gave him a nice little goblet of some wonderful beverage.

You set the table all nice and neat. You've got all the fixings, everything right there, a steak dinner for this pig.

And next to that steak dinner, you put a bucket of slop. It's garbage. It's the leftovers.

I mean, it's the leftovers of leftovers. It's the stuff that you can't stomach but for some reason the pig has enzymes in his stomach that he can eat this stuff.

And you let that bucket of slop right there and you put that in front of this pig. Where's the pig going to go?

Slop. That's what he's going to eat. That's exactly what he wants. It's like he can't even smell the great steak dinner.

You don't want that anywhere near the bucket of slop but that's where the pig is going to go. He's going to go eat the slop.

Why? Because he's not refined. If you just train the pig a little bit better, maybe he'll go to the steak dinner.

It's in his nature to eat the slop. So he's going to go to the pig slop. To get somebody to eat the wonderful course meal, they got to have their nature changed.

You'd actually have to change the pig's nature from being a pig to being a person who wants a wonderful steak dinner.

Something other than a pig. The pig wants the slop. See before you came to Christ, that's what you wanted.

You wanted the garbage. And even if you in your life before you came to know

Christ, you even played religion. Right? You put on a good face.

You went to church. You maybe even wore the suit and tie. You could repeat all the phrases that you were taught in Sunday school.

You knew all the cliches. You knew all the key memory verses but you were just playing religion.

You didn't really know God. You didn't really have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Even in that state, you're still going after the slop.

Why? Because you were going after your works which is garbage compared to the work of a holy

God. Isaiah 64 .6, even our best deeds are as filthy rags before a holy

God. If you're in Dave's Bible study class on Sunday morning, you've been in Mark 10 lately, and it's there in Mark 10 that the rich young ruler comes before Jesus and says, good teacher, what must

I do to be saved? What did this rich young ruler believe was the thing that would save him?

What did he think it was that was going to save him? Now, whenever we read this story, what do we focus on?

His wealth, right? After all, he's the rich young ruler. We don't call him the self -righteous young ruler.

We call him the rich young ruler. So we focus on the wealth, especially since after the rich young ruler walks away disheartened,

Jesus looks at his disciples and says, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

So because that's what Jesus says, we tend to focus on the riches aspect of this young man.

But the reality is he was trying to get into heaven by his works. He came to Jesus saying, what do

I have to do to have eternal life? And Jesus said, well, you have to obey the commandments. You need to honor your father and your mother.

You need to not murder, not steal, not bear false witness against your neighbor.

The rich young ruler says, all of these things I've done since my youth. I just kind of wonder if in his heart he's going, yes, he's giving me the answer

I want to hear. I just need to be a good person, and that's what I've done, and I'm going to get to heaven. Then Jesus goes, but I hold this against you.

And in Mark 10, in Mark's version of this story, it actually says Jesus looking at him loved him.

He loved him enough to give him the tough answer. Even when

Jesus knew it was going to make him turn around and walk away, because he knew the heart of this young man.

It's exactly why Jesus asked him when he came up, why do you call me good for there's no one good but God? He knew this young man did not think of Jesus as being sent from God.

Just thought of him as being a good teacher. And Jesus looking at him loved him and said, I hold this against you.

Go and sell all your possessions, give them to the poor, and then come follow me, and you will have treasure in heaven.

And the young man walked away disheartened, it says, because he had many great possessions.

Jesus found the chink in his armor, the thing that he was not willing to give up, his stuff on earth.

So he really wasn't as righteous as he thought he was. But, you know, this rich young ruler may have well been even more righteous than a lot of us are, but even his wealth could not get him into the kingdom of heaven.

And it's the reason, or yeah, it's wealth in works or possessions, either one.

But it's the reason why Jesus then looked at his disciples and said, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

His disciples looked at him astonished and said, then who can be saved? The disciples' reaction is this.

According to the Jews, a person who had a lot of wealth had a lot of favor from God. It's because God had blessed him with all this wealth.

But now you're telling me he doesn't have the righteousness to enter the kingdom of heaven? So his disciples say, then who can be saved?

They got it, they understood. And it's easier to get the largest animal in the

Middle East to go through the eye of a needle and have it survive the trip than it is to get a rich man, to get rid of all of his possessions in which he has placed his faith and trust here on earth, and enter into the kingdom of God.

He was trying to do it by his works. There's a story that I heard of an evangelist.

This is a true story, though I'm not including the name. This is not a parable. An evangelist was sitting on an airplane.

He was reading his Bible, and there was a man that was next to him on the plane and said, hey, nice Bible.

And I guess the man next to him thought he was striking up, you know, a Christianly conversation with the evangelist.

The evangelist said, thank you. And he said, I'm a Christian too. And the evangelist said, oh, yeah? And the man said, tell me what do you think it takes in order to get to heaven?

How is a person saved? And the evangelist said, we have to be perfect.

You have to be perfect from your birth to your death. That's how you get to heaven. And then he went back to reading his

Bible. And the man next to him was going, wait a sec, what? You have to be perfect from your birth to your death?

That's your answer? That's how you get saved? You have to be perfect from birth to death?

And the evangelist said, oh, I'm sorry. I guess I should have expounded on that a little bit. The word impeccable is pretty good.

That one applies. So you have to be impeccable. Character, behavior, keeping

God's law, everything from birth to your death, you have to be impeccable. That's how you get to heaven.

He goes back to reading his Bible. The man's next to him going, this is absurd.

I've never heard a man with a Bible say this before, that the way that you get into heaven is that you are absolutely perfect.

And the evangelist, noticing that he's worked this man up now, has said to him, what did

Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5 to those people who were there listening to him?

He said, unless your righteousness is even greater than the scribes and the Pharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.

So how do you get there? You have to be impeccable. The fact of the matter is that we can't be.

We're not. Even if you were to start right now being good for the rest of your life and you kept all of God's laws, you still wouldn't be impeccable because of all the laws that you've broken before that.

And God is perfect and holy, and we cannot stand in his presence, and so we do not deserve to live with him forever unless we can likewise be as righteous as he is.

He said, the good news is, and this is the gospel, that Jesus came to die for our sins.

He paid the price, the penalty, that we had incurred against God because of our rebelliousness against God.

And Jesus not only forgives us our sins, but he clothes us in his righteousness.

That's what he says to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3. I will clothe you in white garments.

So the church of Laodicea, a really arrogant church who thought they had absolutely everything and they didn't need anything, and Jesus said, no, you're pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

And I tell you, come to me and I will clothe you in white garments. It's in Christ we are clothed in his righteousness, and now we have that impeccability because it's not a perfectness of our own, but it's been given to us by Christ.

And that's how we get into the kingdom of God, by faith in Jesus. It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

All three of those things that we mentioned there, grace, salvation, faith, all of those things are the gift of God.

My friends, even repentance is a gift from God. In Acts 5 .31,

God gives repentance to Israel. In Acts 11 .18, God gives repentance to the

Gentiles. In 2 Timothy 2 .25, God grants repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

God does this. Your salvation, the faith that you have, all of these things are gifts that are given to you by God.

So in Romans 10 .17, when we hear, faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ, all of this was

God's work in your heart to bring you to saving faith. I'm halfway through verse 8, and it's noon.

I still have verses 9 and 10 to go, so hold on tight. Here we go. Just kidding, it's not going to take that long.

Verse 9, it is not a result of our work so that no one may boast. And I think tying that in with the story of the rich young ruler, it was not by his works that he could gain salvation, and he had no room for boasting in himself.

Jesus even tore down that tower right there in front of him. This boasting that he thought that he had because of the righteous things that he had done, but Jesus loving him showed him that his righteousness was really self -righteousness.

It is not by our works, and again, if we did anything to earn the salvation that we have, then it's not grace.

Not a result of work so that no one may boast. Our boast is instead in God. It's in Christ Jesus, not in ourselves.

Verse 10, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Now, that is a terribly important verse to remember with verses 8 and 9, but that's the verse that we often leave off.

And then what's sometimes understood, in fact, this is very, very common, and I even encounter it in the

Southern Baptist denomination, it's commonly believed that if I just prayed a prayer and maybe

I was also baptized, I can live like the devil for the rest of my life and I'm still saved as long as I prayed that prayer when

I was a little kid. But my friends, you find that teaching nowhere in the Bible.

In fact, in Jesus' very first parable in Matthew 13, he explains that there are going to be those who will demonstrate some manner of faith early in their confession or what might appear to us to be a conversion.

But then the trials of this world will come along, or there will be stresses and anxieties, or there will be temptations that will come our way and it will turn out to be that the faith that we claimed that we had was never actually genuine in the first place.

These are the seeds that fell on the path, the seeds that fell in the thorns, the seeds that fell in the rocks.

There was no root. And so though some kind of plant sprouted up at one point, it withered away and died because it wasn't rooted in Christ.

It's those who fall in good soil and grow up and produce a harvest that demonstrate that the faith that they had in Christ is genuine.

It wasn't some passing opinion, but it was real and it was true. My friends, you can't just say a prayer and then live like a hellion the rest of your life.

You can't do that because it turns the gospel of God into a magic spell.

It's like, what are we, wizards? Just recite this incantation, da -da -da -da -da -da, dunk yourself in this water, boom, no matter what you do from this point on, you're getting into heaven.

No, that's not the case. But rather, understanding verse 10, we realize we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared for us beforehand. This goes back to everything about foreknowledge and predestination and election we were reading back in chapter 1.

God prepared these works for us beforehand that we should walk in them.

Walk in them. You will continue in them. So your nature, your orientation has been changed from someone who previously hated

God to now you love God and you desire him. You hate the sin, the garbage, the slop that you were previously feeding from and that trough that you bellied up to.

And instead, you're seeking after the riches and the fullness and the glory of God that has been given to us in Christ Jesus because your nature has been changed.

So that passage we looked at at the start of our service this morning in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

In Christ, you are a new creation. The old is passed away. The new has come.

And so you hate the thing that you previously loved. You hate your sins. You despise it.

And it doesn't mean that you'll live perfectly. But in those moments that you fail and you fall into sin and temptation, you're disgusted by it.

God, this is the old man. This is the wretched man that I am. I don't want this.

I want your riches and your glory. And so you seek after Christ, and you pursue him, and you chase after him, and you walk in his steps.

What does it mean to follow Jesus? We use that phrase, but what does it mean?

Do you understand the meaning of it without just using it as another one of our Christian cliches? Following Jesus means that you follow after him.

It means that you want to imitate him. It means that you want to be like your Lord, who you know has saved you.

When was the last time that someone said to you that you are a model of Christ to me?

Paul said to the Corinthians, it's not so far -fetched for us to think of such things. In 1 Corinthians 11, 1,

Paul said, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. And in Hebrews 13, it says, we are to look up to those who taught us in this manner of faith and imitate their faith.

When was the last time someone said of you that you are a model of Christ to me?

Now, when I asked that question, and the first place your mind went was, well,

I can tell you that person isn't a model of Christ to me. Folks, that's self -righteousness. You're now trying to make yourself look better because you're pointing a finger at that guy and saying, well, he's not a model of Christ.

That's not the question I asked. Are you pursuing Christ and can now be a model of Christ to another who needs an example to look to as to what the righteousness of God should look like in a person's life?

What does justification look like? What does sanctification look like? Growing in holiness. May we be that demonstration to one another.

Now, when it comes to testing the grace of God and how alive it is in our lives, there's a couple of different ways here that we can test these things.

Number one, you can test your response to God when he tries you. Number two, you can test your response to people when they try you.

Let's look at that first one. Your response to God when he tries you. It's in 1 Peter 4, 12, and 13 that we read, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.

That's verse 14. And then verse 15 goes, but rejoice in that you have been included to share in Christ's sufferings.

Astounding. That when we go through a trial or some sort of difficulty in life, we're supposed to rejoice?

We're supposed to praise God for this trial? Yes, my friends, because if you believe that God is sovereign and you do not praise

God for your trials, you will resent him for them. How do you respond to God when he tries you?

And God doesn't put us through trials because he hates us. He actually puts us through these things because he loves us.

As we see there in 1 Peter 4, 13, and as Paul has said multiple times as well, we become sharers in the sufferings of Christ that we may be made to be more like him.

And in Hebrews 12, we read that God disciplines those whom he loves. If he didn't discipline you, it's because he doesn't love you.

Becky and I were even in our kitchen the other day talking about a particular trial that we're going through, and she's the one that said it, even though I feel like as the pastor husband,

I should have been the one to say it. But she's the one who said, what is God teaching us through this, and how are we supposed to rejoice through this?

Do you praise God for your trials, knowing that it is producing something in you great for those who love

God and are called according to his purpose? So that's number one. Second way to test your positioning with God and the grace that you have received in Christ Jesus is your response to people when they try you.

So your response to God when he tries you, now your response to people when they try you.

And I say people, not just brothers and sisters in the Lord, not just unbelievers, but all people.

How do you respond to people when they try you? Again, understanding that God is sovereign, and he is working all things together for good, that person has been placed in your life to try you even for your perfection and for his glory.

And if God has showed you grace who did not deserve it, and you have received the grace of God, then shouldn't you also show the grace of God to those persons who try you?

In fact, this is how emphatically Jesus made that point in Matthew 6. If you do not forgive others their sins, neither will your heavenly

Father forgive you your sins. Now, the point here is not Jesus saying, you need to forgive in order to earn the forgiveness that God is giving you.

That's not what he's saying. But if you have received the forgiveness of God, you will show the forgiveness of God.

If you're not showing the forgiveness of God, test yourself because there's a possibility you don't actually have the forgiveness of God, and you're still living in self -righteousness, believing that you're better than someone else.

I don't have to give this person forgiveness because I've done far better things than they have.

Oh, no, you haven't. Romans 3 .23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus to be received by faith.

And as Paul expounds on this theology further, when he gets to Romans 6, he says, therefore, in view of God's mercies, we should not be submitting the members of our body as slaves to unrighteousness, but we submit the members of our body to him as slaves of righteousness.

As Bob Dylan once said, everybody's got to serve somebody. You're either slaves to righteousness or you're slaves to unrighteousness.

You're either a slave to Christ or you're a slave to the devil. And if you know that you've been saved by the grace of God, then you must walk in those works that he has given to you in Christ Jesus, that he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So let me bring all of this to a close here in Ephesians 2, 8 through 10. For by grace, you've been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

As we sang this morning, we are saved in Christ alone.

In Christ alone, my hope is found. By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, the gift that is given to us, the mechanism that God has used to transmit that gift to us and the one who has given it to us, by grace through faith in Christ.

Verse 9, it is not a result of works so that no one may boast. In other words, it's not because of our works that we are saved, but it is because of the work of Christ.

And now that we have been saved in Christ, we've been saved by the work of Christ, we are to do the work of Christ.

Verse 10, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus that no one may boast.

Sorry, I read the same line over again. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which

God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. If you are here today and you do not know a relationship with Jesus Christ, if some of the things that I've shared with you this morning were even foreign to you and you don't recognize this gospel, and maybe somebody told you something different when you were younger.

Friends, if anyone ever tells you it's by your works that you come to salvation, run. That's not the gospel.

But you have heard it is by the grace of God that you are saved. And you've come to know this for the first time, then please remain at the end of church and I would love to talk with you more about what it means to be a

Christian and take you through the scriptures that you may know salvation that you have in Christ Jesus.

If you were to die today, you would go to be with the Lord forever in glory. May we all understand these words well.

May they be refreshing to us when we hear them. May it be good news to know we're not saved by our works.

We're saved by His work in Christ Jesus. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.