Ephesians 2 (part 1)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Today I have the joy of preaching one of the most exciting passages in the

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Bible. The bad news is, if you can't preach Ephesians 2, 1 to 10 well, you can't preach at all.

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So please turn your Bibles to Ephesians 2, 1 to 10 for this great passage, and I want to just unfold it, let you see the riches that are found in this great passage.

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It is really one of those passages that you've probably memorized, that you love to hear.

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You can hear 10 sermons on it and still be reminded of the greatness of the Lord. I think if you wanted to just describe this passage in seven words, it would be these words.

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And if you're a child taking notes and looking for keywords, these are the words of the sermon. Dead, dominated, doomed, mercy, love, grace, and kindness.

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That's the sermon. Dead, dominated, doomed, mercy, love, grace, and kindness.

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And if you can't remember seven words, just let me give you two words, but God. That's the passage,

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Ephesians 2, 1 to 10. And it's a passage of contrast. It's super simple. If you wanted to outline it, there'd be bad news and then good news.

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And the good news is so good because it takes care of the bad news.

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I think of contrast in life, maybe the one that's the most stark to me, especially in light of the weather.

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Kim and I, 30 some years ago, were flying from Phoenix to Omaha. And Phoenix, it was 80 degrees

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Fahrenheit. And in Omaha, it was 20 below Fahrenheit, without windchill. And so when we got off the plane in Omaha, there were news cameras there interviewing people who had experienced a 100 degree temperature change.

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And the good news is we were on TV, the local affiliate there, ABC. And Kim and I talked a little bit about the 100 degree temperature change.

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The bad news is, and this is kind of the old lifestyle that I had, I thought to myself, Grandma and Grandpa just saw me on TV because they never miss the news.

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And I just had some brand new big hoop earring in my ear and I thought they'd kill me. So celebrityism isn't all that it's called for.

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I no longer wear earrings, by the way. We've been going through the book of Ephesians pretty fast, faster than normal, because I want the church to have kind of an overview.

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We've, 15, 20 years ago, have spent a lot of time in Ephesians. But I'm picking certain books of the

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Bible that we'll go through quickly so you can get an overview, so that your taste buds are wet.

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So you might say, you know, I'd like to study that more. So I've been taking two sermons per chapter, and so today is no different.

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Ephesians 2, 1 to 10. Next week, and you can see the breakdown pretty easily, chapter 2, verses 11 through 22.

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Paul is writing to churches in the geographic area around Turkey, and he writes to the church at Ephesus.

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The original manuscripts, the best manuscripts, show in blank.

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In other words, it's a circular letter. It's good for all the churches, and that's why it doesn't have a lot of detail, with people to be greeted, etc.

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Last week, we saw in chapter 1, the great preface talks about grace and peace in verses 1 and 2.

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The great praise, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

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Paul, in this great praise, he talks about the Father choosing, he talks about the Son redeeming by his blood, so we'd receive forgiveness.

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He talks about how the Spirit of God seals us, so that we're protected to the day of redemption.

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And then he has a great prayer, does he not? In verses 15 through 23, Paul has a prayer, and that prayer is essentially this.

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The prayer is that you know more deeply the person and work of the

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Lord Jesus, who was sent by the Father, who we receive his benefits by the

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Spirit, so that we might know. We don't need new revelation, we don't need new information, we need to be reminded and know more deeply what

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God has already done. And now we move to Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10.

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The bad news found in the first three verses, and then the good news found in verses 4 through 10.

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Three key words here in this section, they'll be dead, dominated, and doomed. I don't always like alliteration, but sometimes it works, doesn't it?

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Okay, well I'm preaching today, so we're going to do a little alliteration for half of it. Paul is going to talk about what we were like before we were saved.

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He's going to talk about what our lives were dominated by. He's going to give us some really bad news, and sometimes when you look in the mirror you don't really like what you see.

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But then you realize how great the Lord Jesus is, because he saves people like that. He's not going to rub our noses in it.

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Sometimes when people train dogs, if the dog has an accident, they'll take their dog and put the nose in the dog's accident.

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I'm just trying to be as careful as I can here, how I describe this. And you think, you know what, is that what the

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Lord's doing? He's not doing that at all. He's also not kind of making our past sins romantic, where you think, you know what, those were the good old days when

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I could sin. It's so nostalgic, it's so wonderful for me to go back and relive my past sins.

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He's not doing that either. He wants believers to know what you were, so then you realize how great the

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Lord is. And the first word is dead, and it comes right from the passage of Ephesians 2 verse 1.

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And you were dead in trespasses and sins. You can see the first word there even in your

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English text, and tying it to the last section, he's going to remind them of who they were outside of Christ.

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And the one word that describes it all is dead. You could say lost, you could say dead.

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The Greek word is nekros, if you have a dead tissue on your hand, it's necrotic tissue, it's necrosis, it's dead.

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And you say, well, yeah, but I was walking around, I talked, I had degrees that I got at the university.

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He's not talking about physical death, he's talking about spiritual death. Remember Adam in the garden and Eve? The day you shall eat of it, you shall surely what?

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Die. But they were still walking around. This is spiritual death. This is death to the

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Word of God. I don't care what God says, I don't care about God's glory, I don't care about the exaltation of Jesus, whatever you think is important God, I don't care.

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I have no desire to worship you, I have no desire for fellowship with the saints. You take the reflex hammer and you hit it on the corpse's knee, nothing happens.

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Spiritually dead. The text does not say kind of dead, sick, weak, absolutely dead.

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And sometimes we'll call this doctrine total depravity. Men and women outside of Christ are depraved.

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And when you say total depravity, sometimes you think, well, total depravity is everybody is as bad as they could be.

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But of course, everybody's not as bad as they could be because that's not what we're talking about here. If you were as bad as you could be, then we would say things like this, well, why was

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Hitler kind to certain priests? I also like to think of Hitler was nice to his dog, well, until he killed him later, but he was nice early on to his dog.

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No, this is whole depravity. Think of the word W -H -O -L -E, wholly depraved.

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That is my mind before I was saved, affected by the fall. My emotions, affected by the fall.

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My conscience, tainted by the fall. Everything tainted by sin. The whole, every faculty, mind, will, emotion, body, affected.

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That is total depravity. Colossians 2, and you were dead in your transgressions.

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One man said, as the salt flavors every drop in the Atlantic, so does sin affect every atom of our nature.

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You can't go to a certain spot in the Atlantic Ocean and say, oh, here's some freshwater here. So our entire being is dead, affected by sin.

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And do you see the text? In trespasses, plural, and sins, plural.

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He uses those two words to totally show us the amount of sin that unbelievers do.

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Trespasses, you overstep your bounds, right? When I was hunting with my father, and I remember when

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I first would hunt with my father, I would have a little BB gun. By the way, if I ever did this to my father with the

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BB gun, that was the last time I ever did it. Walking around, and you see these signs, and you go to the farmer's house, and there was the big sign, no trespassing.

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But for unbelievers, you see the sign, and you purposely step over that, you trespass. This is on purpose.

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These are sins of commission. I commit them. But there are other sins, too, sins of things that we don't do.

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And that's that word sin right there in verse 1 of chapter 2. Falling short of a standard.

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So whether it's, I purposely sin, transgressions, or I don't measure up to God's mark because I keep missing it, sins, this is the world that we live in.

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This is the air we breathe when we were unbelievers. From false steps, and wrongdoings, and offenses, to missing the mark, no matter how hard we try.

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Every time we had a New Year's resolution, I'm going to be more spiritual this year. I'm going to read my Bible more.

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I'm going to go to church more. Thinking like an unbeliever, we just never could do it because we were dead in trespasses and sins.

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Our statement of faith here at the church reads, although God created man upright and perfect and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it, and threatened death upon the breach thereof, yet he did not long abide in this honor.

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Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, then by her seducing Adam, who without any compulsion did willingly transgress the law of their creation, and command given unto them in eating the forbidden fruit, which

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God was pleased according to his wise and holy counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory.

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Adam sins, we and Adam sin as well, and now sin has affected our natures.

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Within we are darkened, Ephesians 4 says, in our understanding, having become calloused,

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Ephesians 4 says. True or false? There is none who understands.

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There is none who seeks after God. I hope you said true because that's Romans chapter 3. Remember my little trick, if ever

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I say true or false, I'm probably quoting a Bible verse, so I want you to say true. But now that you know my trick,

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I'm switching it up on you. Those in the flesh, Romans 8, cannot please

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God. That's dead in trespasses and sins. First Corinthians 2, a natural man does not accept the things of the

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Spirit of God because they're foolishness to him. As an old

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Puritan in America once said, how many times does the servant have to spit in the master's face before the master kills him?

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Yes, but the rest of the time I've been an obedient servant, and we know society has been affected by the fall.

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We've been affected by the fall. Our legislature is supposed to be set up in such a way where there are checks and balances. You probably lock your doors at night.

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We realize people aren't good, and total depravity is summarized by the word dead.

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I think it's fair to say that if you don't understand total depravity, many other doctrines are affected. For instance, say, well,

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I don't really get election. How could God elect? Don't I have to do something? Doesn't he have to see what I do, and then he chooses me?

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If you realize that you're dead in trespasses and sins as an unbeliever, God's going to have to do all the work.

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The second word is dominated. Ian Hamilton used this word, and I think it's a good word. I'm looking for the word enslaved.

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But to keep with the alliteration, dominated. We run around as unbelievers, and we think we're captains of our own ship.

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Manifest destiny. We're autonomous. We serve no sovereign here, and yet we're stuck.

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When I was a kid, we used to play with certain cheap toys, and one was something called a

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Chinese finger trap. You ever play with those? Chinese finger puzzles. They call them

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Chinese handcuffs, and they were these little gag toys made out of bamboo, and you put your fingers in there, either your fingers or your thumbs, and then if you tried to get them out, what would happen?

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You'd get stuck. How many people have ever used those? All the people with gray hair raise their hand. Well, if you're younger and you've never done it, it's just a cheap little toy, and you put your fingers in, and you can't get out unless you push it in a little bit to make the bamboo cylinder open up a little bit.

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Dominated. Enslaved. And this slavery is deep. Look at how deep it is. Unbelievers, first of all, verse 2, are dominated by the course of the world.

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They're slaves of the world, in which, verse 2, you once walked following the course of this world.

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You're walking around, dead men walking, kind of spiritual zombies walking around, and you think you're free, but the world is running you.

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You're not running to God, you're running from Him, and the world is selling that very thing. The world has its way of thinking, its way of demanding expectations, its thoughts and philosophies, and unbelievers do whatever the world says they should do.

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No wonder Christians are told in Romans 12, do not be conformed to this world. I could put it this way if you're younger.

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If you're an unbeliever, the world is your BFF, and you do everything your best...

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what's BFF? Your best friend? Best friend forever. Oh, sorry. You got to be careful of the acronym sometimes.

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You're best friends, but they're like an older friend who's the influential one, and you just do whatever the world says.

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Not only that, verse 2, the world dominates unbelievers, and Satan does too.

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Following the prince of the power of the air, that's Satan, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

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Satan is real. He's a fallen angel, and he controls people.

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One man wrote, many are unwitting dupes of evil. Others are willing disciples of the devil.

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This Satan has blinded the eyes of unbelievers, lest they see the glorious gospel of Christ, 2nd

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Corinthians chapter 4. I think it's so interesting, people run around saying, I have freedom to do whatever

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I want as an unbeliever. I don't want to get enslaved in Christianity. They've got all these rules, and I'm thinking, you're already enslaved.

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The prince of the power of the air. I was listening to S. Lewis Johnson, and he has a funny story.

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They had a super liberal preacher, and he denied the deity of Christ and all kinds of other things, but he was famous, because that'll get you famous these days, and he was on the radio a lot, and a man was introducing him.

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So how do you introduce a famous liberal, influential preacher, who's on the radio a lot, and with rhetorical flourish,

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S. Lewis Johnson said, the man introduced him with these words, and now we present to you the prince of the power of the air.

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Satan, John 12, is the ruler of this world. Matthew 9, he's the ruler of demons.

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Did you know that every unbeliever follows Satan's will? Listen to 2nd

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Timothy, that they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by Satan to do

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Satan's will. The unbeliever thinks they're free, but they're dominated. They're dead in trespasses and sins, dominated by the world, and controlled by Satan.

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People always run around saying, well, I have free will. If you mean freedom to sin, I'm with you, unbeliever. If you mean freedom from Satan, Scripture doesn't teach that.

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Freedom from the world, Scripture doesn't teach that. Freedom from God's intervention, doesn't teach that.

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Jesus said, you are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

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He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there's no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature.

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He is a liar and the father of lies. And so unbelievers, like their father the liar, the devil, they do what he does.

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Huge liars. Christians are the bound ones, and unbelievers are free. And lastly, Christians see, as we look back to our old life, that unbelievers, verse 3, are dominated by themselves.

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This could be the worst. It's one thing to be dominated by the world, and dominated by the Satan, dominated by Satan, but dominated by your own self, your own lust, among whom, verse 3, we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind.

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Our own gratification, our own lust, our own selves control us.

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Paul includes himself here, we once all, whether it was Jew or Gentile. Controlled by ourselves, our own cravings control us.

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Our own lusts control us when we were unbelievers. Desires there, in the original language, could be translated a dictate or demand.

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Our flesh demands, our flesh desires, our flesh says, this is what we will. And the problem is, we're good at it.

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Or we were good at it as unbelievers. Indulging. It's not like you just thought about it.

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No, but you indulge, you carry out. It's one thing for it to be theoretical, but it's practical.

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You are carrying out these desires of the body as unbelievers. Because by what a man has overcome, that is what he is enslaved.

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We were slaves to sin. We are

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Abraham's offspring, they said to Jesus, and had not been enslaved to anyone. How is it, Jesus, that you say we shall become free?

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Jesus answered them, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

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They have freedom, like a bird with a broken wing is free to fly. This is the bondage of the will.

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And the third word in this bad news section is doomed. Dead, dominated, doomed.

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Dead, dominated, and doomed. Do you see where I get that third D? Children of wrath, by nature, like the rest of mankind.

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The first lie, I think, in all the Bible was anti -judgment. Who wants to be judged?

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Nobody wants to be judged. But here, the Bible says, left to themselves, without the intervention of God, there's nothing but doom.

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Nothing but wrath. Children of wrath. I should probably just stop and let that settle in for a second.

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Children of wrath. The thrice holy God with his eternal wrath. Remember, the

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Thessalonian church was encouraged, you're not going to have to go through the day of wrath. People hate wrath today, because they want to live in ungodliness, because they'd love to live in unrighteousness.

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St. Clair Ferguson said, Paul does not raise his voice here or use capital letters or underline his words.

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He is psalmized and subdued by what he knows. There is a future day of wrath.

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And I think it's fair to say that if you're sitting here today and you're not a Christian, there's a future day of wrath to you.

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And you, while you think you're free, you're dead in trespasses and sins. You're dominated by the world, dominated by Satan, dominated by your own lusts.

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And there's a day of wrath coming. Solemn is right. By children, by nature, children of wrath.

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Distinctive character, just like your father. Is there any hope for people?

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Would God help us? John Gerstner said, could God possibly help us?

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God? That's the most preposterous appeal of all. It's against God we have done all this sinning.

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It was against His law we violated. It was His commands we disobeyed. It was His image we ruined.

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It was His purposes we were seeking to frustrate. And we are under His wrath. Why would

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God ever rescue us from the judgment in which He placed us? That's a good question.

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And the answer is because God has mercy, He has love, grace and kindness.

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Now we get to the good news. Now we come to gospel preaching. Yes, we've seen the bad news and now we go from verses 1 to 3 with damnation and domination and deadness to the two great words of the

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Bible that maybe describe all of the gospel, but God. But God. I mean,

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I thought the soul that sinned will surely die. I thought the way of the transgressor is hard.

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But God. I'll never forget a time when someone said to me, what if the word in verse 4, the first word was and?

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Dead, dominated, doomed, and God showed forth

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His glory by punishing the wicked throughout eternity in hell. What if it was therefore?

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Therefore God to make sure His holy character and nature was promoted and shown to the world, doomed them all, damned them all.

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But it doesn't say and God, it doesn't say but. Therefore it says but God. John Stott's a commentator and he said, these two monosyllabic words set against the desperate condition of fallen mankind and the gracious initiative and sovereign action of God.

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Listen, a child can say them and understand them. But God.

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This is like the whole gospel in two words. But God. Yes, but I thought we had a lot of guilt and we were dead in trespasses and sins.

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But God. I thought this world dominated me, Satan dominated me, and myself dominated me.

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I dominated myself. But God. I thought I'm on my way to hell. I'm children of wrath, even as the rest.

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But God. God commended His love toward us and that while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. Is there ever a time to look back in your life and see your sins?

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Yes, but like Samuel Rutherford said, every time you do, make sure you look ten more times to the

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Lord Jesus. And that's exactly what Paul is going to do here in verses four through ten. Key words.

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I've said them already several times. Mercy, love, grace and kindness.

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And by the way, when I say those words, you ought to think that's who Jesus is. You want to describe

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Jesus? Somebody, if they came up to you in the street, tell me who Jesus is. What's your truth about Jesus? Don't you hate it when people do that?

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What's my truth? Well, here's the truth about Jesus. Let me tell you about who Jesus is.

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And there's more you can say. But you can talk about His mercy because that's going to relate to their sin.

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You can talk about His love because that's going to relate. You can talk about grace and you can talk about kindness.

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Word number one. You could even ask the question, why would God save sinners? Here's a reason.

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He's merciful. But God, verse four, being rich in mercy.

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I think I've heard it said, good thing God is rich in mercy because we were really rich in sin.

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I thought I was supposed to go to hell. I thought I was doomed for sure. But God is rich in mercy.

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And Paul, just like in chapter one, he just can't wait to extol who God is. Once you get Paul going, he's off to the races.

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Somebody said to me the other day, Mike, why do you keep saying if the camel's nose gets in the tent? I said, well, because if the camel's nose gets in the tent, if the camel's nose gets in the tent, what gets in the tent?

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All the camel. Once Paul gets his nose in the tent of starting to praise, he just can't stop himself.

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This word mercy, rich in mercy. We know the word rich. He's just abounding in mercy.

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This word mercy talks about God having compassion on people who are in distress.

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It talks about God sees someone in a pitiful condition, dead, dominated, and doomed, and he does something about it.

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That's what mercy is. And when you watch the Lord Jesus in his life, I think it could be summed up by the word mercy.

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Jesus went ashore. He saw a large crowd, and he felt compassion for them because they were like a sheep without a shepherd.

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That's the mercy of the Lord Jesus. Two blind men were sitting by the road hearing that Jesus was passing by.

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They cried out, Lord, have mercy on us. We're in a pitiful situation. We're blind.

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Have mercy on us, Son of David. The Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, have mercy on me,

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Lord, Son of David. My daughter is cruelly demon -possessed. Now sometimes we think of mercy, rightfully so, not getting what you deserve.

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So if I were to tell my children, you've disobeyed, well they're a little spanked then, but back in the day, if I were to say to them,

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I'm going to have to give you justice because you disobeyed God and Dad's laws and Mom's law, and so I'm going to give you justice.

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A few times I would say to them, well, I'm not going to give you what you deserve, and we're going to call that mercy. And so then for the next ten times over the next months, they would say,

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Daddy, can I have mercy? Daddy, can I have mercy? And once in a while we would say, you know what?

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You deserve justice, and I'm not even going to give you mercy. And they're like, what are you going to give me? We're going to give you some ice cream, and that's something called grace.

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You didn't deserve it, but you're going to get it. Okay, Dad, I want grace, I want grace. Sometimes it's true, not getting what you deserve we call mercy, but this word mercy is much more active.

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It's God sees someone that's pitiful in a state of hardship, and he does something about it.

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For this reason, Paul said, I found mercy that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life.

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What God does in Christ, it's not simply sympathy, not simply emotion.

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It is those things, but it is compassion for helpless people. Doesn't that make sense?

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If you're dead, dominated, and doomed, you're helpless. That's Romans chapter 5, we're helpless, we need help.

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What in God would move him to help the helpless? Answer, mercy. Does he have a little bit of mercy?

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No, the text says he has riches of mercy for us. No wonder when God tucked

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Moses in the cleft of the rock, and he passes by Moses, what does God show Moses?

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The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness or mercy.

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By nature, God is merciful, showing loving kindness or mercy to thousands. Did you know we're even called in Romans 9, vessels of mercy, not vessels of wrath.

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He saved us, Titus 3, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the

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Holy Spirit. The only hope for people dead, dominated, and doomed is the triune

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God himself, and the good news is, he's merciful. You're here today and you think, you know what,

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I'm enslaved to sin. I can't even extract myself out of this, and I've sinned against this

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God so many times. I do deserve to go to hell. Would there be any hope for me?

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There's a God who's merciful. He's rich in mercy. He loves sinners just like you.

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Well, there's another word we can look at, love. Why would God ever save sinners? Well, he's merciful.

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That's his character in nature. He's love, and we see it right there in verse 4, but God, because of his great love with which he loved us.

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Now, it's one thing to be merciful. You say, well, you know what, I feel pity for you and I'll do something for you, but it's another thing to love those people that are pitiful.

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Gershner said, what is there to love in an unbeliever? Hate. Yes, there's plenty of hate.

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Maybe he once loved us. Maybe he could have loved us for what we once were, but we're beyond love now.

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Maybe he's forgotten who we are. Maybe he's forgotten what we've done. No, Gershner said, he has not forgotten your condition.

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This is the love which loves when there's nothing to love. Isn't that good? This is the love which loves when there's nothing to love.

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Can you imagine? God loves sinners. How does that make you think or feel?

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When I was a younger pastor and preacher, I'm like, all these guys talk about the love of God, that's all they talk about, and they don't want to talk about God's holiness and wrath and justice, and they don't preach about sin enough.

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The older I get and the more trials I go through and watch you go through trials, I think, I'm so glad God loves me.

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I'm so glad he loves you. The day that I found out

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Kim Duncan loved me, I couldn't hardly believe it. You're kind of afraid to say it.

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I know I needed to say it. I felt it. I love you,

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Kim. And then when she said, I love you, I thought it was the coup of the universe that I could trick this girl into believing that this girl would love me, and I probably didn't even do anything against her, let alone now that God of the universe that I've sinned against and spit in his face not once a year but daily for 29 years of my life, and God says,

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I love sinners like you. That's amazing to me. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

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And see, this love that we understand about God, it's a free love. Here's what I mean by free love.

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Don't think the 1960s. I want you to think of this. There's nothing in me to love. There's no conditions.

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It's free. It's of his own free will. There's only room in this universe for one free will, and it's God. There's nothing in us to be attractive or prompt his love.

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Remember just like with Israel, the Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, but because you were the fewest, but because the

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Lord loved you and kept an oath which he swore to his fathers. Why does God love sinners? Because he loves sinners.

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That's his character. That's his nature. We love because he first loved us.

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And here, like mercy is rich, do you see in your text, his love is great. That's emphatic.

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It's a great love. Yes, all his attributes are infinite. I understand that, but Paul, trying to use the

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Greek language to get us to understand, it's not just love, it's a great love. Jesus, love incarnate.

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Listen to John 13. Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come, that he would depart out of this world to the

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Father, having loved his own who are in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.

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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Not my love for him, but his love for me and for you.

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Will tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword? Revelation chapter one, to him,

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Jesus, who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood. There's another word, grace, mercy, love, and grace.

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And this dominates the rest of the verses up to chapter 10. Even when we were dead in trespasses, he made us live together with Christ by grace you've been saved.

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Not just mercy, not just love, but also grace. Grace is probably best defined as demerited favor, not unmerited even, but demerited.

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It's defined as God's sovereign generosity. It's the word that's opposite of any kind of merit or works or goodness that we would do.

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God is called the God of all grace. Second Corinthians eight, I think of the

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Lord Jesus when I think of mercy, I think of the Lord Jesus when I think of love, and so too here with grace, for you know the grace of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich for your sake, he became poor. Second Corinthians benediction, the grace of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Before we ever would say to ourselves ever again,

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God's not fair. God's unjust. These words should remind us.

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Let's talk like a foolish person talks. God's unjust. God's unfair. The wise person talks this way.

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Merciful, loving, gracious. Verse six, he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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And where he goes, we go. He made us alive, raised us up, made us sit because Jesus was dead, buried, raised up, seated in the heavenly places.

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And if you have to think of something that summarizes a lot of what's going on while we were dead, verse five, made us alive.

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Why are you a Christian? Well, the motivation is because God's merciful and kind and loving and gracious.

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But what he did was made you alive. He made you born again. It's amazing.

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This is amazing truth. And the last word is kindness. Mercy, love, grace, kindness, so that in the coming ages,

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Ephesians 2, 7, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

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Did you know the word kindness in the Greek is almost like the word Christ? Very similar.

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Only Paul uses this word and it means this, tender, compassionate, love and action.

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When you need kindness the most, this is that word. It's an attitude. It's a quality of being helpful and beneficial, giving you what you need.

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And why was God doing this? Because this is the light show of the ages in order that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus to put on a display, the cosmic demonstration of how great

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God is. I thought this was so funny when I read this this week and you probably know this slogan, but I never did even growing up in Nebraska.

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When you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he didn't get up there by himself.

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I like it. I'm going to put that into the no compromise repertoire. When you see someone seated with him, raised with him, exalted, the beneficiary of the grace of God and the kindness of God, he didn't do it himself.

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We are walking testimonies of the trophies of the grace of God. It's amazing.

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Somebody called this God's publicity program, promoting himself.

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And he talked about the riches of grace and he still wants to talk about it in verses 8 and following. We looked at this a few weeks ago, did we not, in the

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Sola series? For by grace you've been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.

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It's the gift of God. Paul just can't stop talking about it.

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He just goes on and on and on about the grace of God. How did you become a

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Christian? What's the reason? This is the answer. And then the publicity program is going to be for from him and through him and to him are all things.

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To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. We get no glory. In these next verses, verses 8, 9 and 10, it's almost like he's going to, like a lawyer, prosecute a case so that there's no possible way you can say

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I had anything to do with my salvation except my sins. My contribution was

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I was dead, dominated and doomed. That's my contribution. God did the rest. I didn't do anything first.

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Then God did something. I didn't take the first step. Then God took the rest of the step. No, no. This is all of the grace of God.

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And he goes through and begins to talk a lot about grace. By grace you've been saved through faith, not because of faith.

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Faith isn't a savior. Faith didn't die on the cross. Faith wasn't raised from the dead. But a little bit of faith in the right object, the right object, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, spirit of God, the father in chapter one, saved through faith. And this grace, the salvation, this faith, it's not from yourself.

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We forget that too often. Every single week Luther used to say, I have to preach this to the congregation that I'm at in Fittenberg because we all forget it.

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We are still as Christians having kind of a legal temper, this legality that says, you know what?

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God likes me this week because I had my devotions. God likes me this week because I read my

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Bible in the morning. God likes me this week because I was not kicking a dog this week as much as last week.

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I don't have a dog to kick, but sometimes I wish I did. Did that come out right?

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Kids are on me about getting a new dog. They're like, Dad, you're still kind of sick and you're around the house a lot now and still kind of tired.

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That's a good time to train the dog. Sit. We need reminders like this because the reason why

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God accepts you today, Christian, and the reason why the Lord's Day worship is more important than your daily

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Bible reading, which I still hope you do, which I do, is you need to be reminded that I am accepted in the beloved no matter what

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I did this week because of God and not me. That's why I regularly say, Christian, God's not mad at you.

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Christian, God's not angry with you. How could he be? Because he's shown his love towards you, his grace, his kindness, his mercy.

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He's given you his son. You're in Christ. You're united with Christ. And if God was mad at his son, he would be mad at you, but he's not.

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He's pleased with his son, so he's pleased with you. That's why we have communion once a month to remind you, not did you sin so much this week that you can't take it, but no matter how many sins you've committed this week, you can take it to remember

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Christ Jesus. All the work has been done. It's finished. We respond to God, and we're going to learn this in verse 10 here shortly, with fruits of obedience and faithfulness.

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We're even elect to show holy and blameless living, but that's not the cause. That's not the motivation.

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That's not what keeps us going. Do you like this definition of faith?

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It's an acronym. Forsaking all, I take him. Forsaking all,

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I take him. F -A -I -T -H. Do you like that? Well, even though I love you and I've set you up,

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I hate it. I get it, but I hate it. What would you, if you met an unbeliever, what would you say?

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And if you said, forsake everything, take Christ. If that unbeliever was smart, they'd probably say this.

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I'm enslaved to sin. How can I forsake everything? I believe what you say about Jesus. I believe what you say about my sin.

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I want to trust him, but if I have to forsake all my sins in order to come to Christ, there's no way

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I can. By the way, that's a work. I'd like to forsake it. Once I'm a

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Christian, I'm continually trying to forsake by the Spirit's power, but there's nothing before faith.

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No antecedent before faith. I was so happy I was reading John Owen the other day, and five times on one page, he used the word antecedent.

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To me, it was glorious. Nothing before faith. You're saved through faith. And so you say, well, you know what?

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What if you met somebody and they said, I'm enslaved to a dominating sexual sin and I can't seem to stop?

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I'll tell you what faith is. Forsaking everything, I trust him. Would you say that to a person? I hope not.

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It's a cute little acronym, but you don't have to forsake all in order to come to Christ. You have to trust

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Christ. This is the controversy of Scotland in the 1700s called the Marrow Controversy.

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Yes, I want there to be faithful obedience and holy living in my life, but I don't have to stop sinning in order to come to Christ.

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Would you ever tell anybody that? No. I hope you wouldn't. Nothing in my hands

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I bring. Simply to the cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress. Helpless look to thee for grace.

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Foul I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. Rock of ages, cleft for me.

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Let me hide myself in thee. We're saved by grace through faith.

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Not because of faith. Not a faith that says, I have to clean up my act and forsake sin.

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They'll be forsaking of sin. That's certainly true, but that's not part of faith. That's the fruit of faith. I said this a couple of weeks ago, but it's so good

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I'll have to repeat Spurgeon. At every point of the process of salvation, this is appropriate.

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Not of yourself, not of yourself, not of yourself, not of yourself. Why? Verse 8, it's the gift of God.

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This is the gift of God. God justifies ungodly people. Why? Because He's merciful,

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He's loving, He's gracious, He's kind. And then He says it again in case we didn't get it.

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Not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Oh, we're a boasting people, aren't we?

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Well, except last night. We love to boast. When I was a kid, my favorite part of class was show and tell.

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Bring and brag. As a matter of fact, I think it's a great thing to do if you're a teacher, because then you get to see what's in that little child's mind, and how they pick out things, and how they display things, and how they talk, and they introduce themselves.

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It's just good. And I remember one of my favorite things, you know, a guy would, in Nebraska, I don't know, bring his dad's 32 or something like that in the fourth grade.

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It was a great class. The most trouble, by the way, I ever got in school was I think in fourth grade or fifth grade for show and tell,

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I brought some chicken feet that had been cut off. And I described them perfectly well in an

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Abendrothian style in class, but I got in trouble not for that. I got in trouble because afterwards I figured out if you put the little chicken foot up like that and pull the tendon, it grasps.

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It like grabs girls' hair, if you get my drift. So I could just go up to the girls and do that, and it would grab their hair, and I got in so much trouble for that.

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If there was any smidgen in us that said, we've made ourselves acceptable for God, we would play that card.

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But there's no room for any of that, because the boasting should not be our own boasting.

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The boasting should be 1 Corinthians' boasting. If anyone is going to boast, let him boast in the name of the

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Lord. It's all of God, so that no one may boast, so that everyone may praise.

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Are works important in Christian life? Yes, they don't get you in unless they're Christ's work.

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But once you're in, as it were, by the grace of God, we work. People that don't think you should have any works are antinomians.

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They're lawless people. We're not that. We want to be zealous for good deeds, but we want to get the cart and the horse in the right order.

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The works of Christ, after I'm saved, now our works. For we are

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His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. That's what we should be doing.

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Now we're Christians, which God prepared beforehand. We're thankful for that, that we should walk in them.

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Let it be told from this pulpit that we believe in a sovereign, free grace.

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Nothing antecedent to faith. But after you've trusted in Christ and He's made you alive together with Him, there should be a desire for us to have good works.

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And those good works can never be perfect, but as a father accepts the imperfect work of a daughter because of their relationship, so too our

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Father accepts our less -than -perfect works because He accepts us.

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May it be told from this pulpit, we are not antinomian, but we are not going to let works ever enter into God's salvation unless they're the perfect works of Christ Jesus.

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So what does Paul do here? Paul's been telling people in chapter 1, God is to be praised.

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Let's pray that we can understand this a little bit better. And then now he has like a little cameo.

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Here's the triune nature of God in eternity past chapter 1, and here's how it fleshes itself out on the street.

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We're dead, we're dominated, we're doomed, but God, He's merciful, He's loving,

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He's gracious, and He's kind. And when a God of the universe does something in your heart and makes you alive, you respond with fruits of gratitude.

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Bow with me, please. Thank you, Father, for our section here in this passage. Amazing. So many but -Gods in the

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Bible that are all wonderful. Difficult times, the psalmist says, but you,

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O Lord. Alone in affliction, the psalmist says, but you,

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O Lord. And alone, dominated by our own sins and dominated by Satan, but God.

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We thank you for that. We're thankful, Father, that you loved us and therefore sent your

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Son. It has nothing to do with now you will love us because of what Jesus did. No, you loved us, the

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Son loved us, and the Spirit loved us. And then came our rescue. I pray for Bethlehem Bible Church.

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Would you help us guard the grace of God, guard the riches of His grace so that we might not have any of our works contribute anything.

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We want it to be all of you. By grace we've been saved. And we recognize that even faith is a gift.

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And then, Father, because of our great, great guilt and because of the great grace, would you have us respond with gratitude of doing good works.

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And there's so many things that have been done by this congregation as a reflection of gratitude. We thank you for that, and I pray that you'd help us to do that even more.