Ephesians 2:1-10: Why Jesus Came to Earth (Part 3)

Grace, Gratitude, and the Purpose of Christian Good Works

Many things have happened in this building over the last 27 years. When I was here, I think of one where there was a flying squirrel stuck up on that bulletin board up at the top. And my secretary at the time, Lenita, of course, if you know Lenita, she's in a wheelchair and can't walk.

And so it was Lenita in a wheelchair and me running around here in 1998 trying to get that squirrel out of the sanctuary.

Don't worry.

I like to have that on videotape. I can also remember being in the baptismal font and someone, Carl, knocking the speaker into the water while I was in there. But it wasn't connected. And so I'm here today.

Before we had air conditioning, there was summers that were brutal in here. And so the deacons thought it was a good idea to put a fan down here. And the fan was blowing my notes. I didn't preach from an iPad in those days.

And my notes were going everywhere. So like they teach you in preaching school, I tried to make sure I had eye contact. And I tried to turn the fan off. But it didn't have a safety feature on it. So my fingers went through the fan.

I'm now bleeding. Do I suck my thumb while I'm preaching?

What do I do?

In the baptismal waters, we've had some interesting things happen from very cold water to dirty water. Remember the first person I ever baptized in 1997, I started to dunk them under. It was a lady. And I realized that I hadn't calculated things properly.

And I was going to smash her head into the side of the baptismal. And so halfway through, I just kind of turned a little bit and still dunked her. But I think we could make things the most interesting in the baptismal font if we did this.

This would cause a lot of stories through the years, but probably not many laughs. What if, when Pastor Steve now baptizes you in the triune name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, he keeps you under until you go to glory?

We just hold you under. 20 seconds later, glory. Which leads me to my question this morning. Why, dear Christian, are you here? Why are you on the earth? The Lord could have designed it in such a manner that if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you think about the God-man who dies on the cross for sinners, who raises himself from the dead.

When an unbeliever would look to him by faith alone, by grace alone, then that person would be snatched up to the clouds and to go be with Jesus. He would be taken up. He'd be glorified. Why did he leave us on the earth?

And so this morning, I'd like to address that. And I think you know the answer. And the answer is, he's left us on the earth for good works. We don't get saved by our good works. We get saved by the Lord Jesus' good works.

But we're left on earth for a purpose. What's the purpose of your life? Why do you exist? And furthermore, how can you be motivated to do those good works? So if you have a Bible today, I'd like you to turn to Ephesians chapter 2.

As you know, we're in the book of Luke, the gospel of Luke, normally. But with Christmastime, we kind of have a little mini-series that we'll end today from Ephesians to verses 1 through 10. And really, my goal for you this morning is to remind you that you're on earth for a purpose.

That is to do good works. But your motivation for those good works has to do with God who saves. I want it to be tied together. There's grace, and then there's gratitude. And of course, in this passage, we see guilt in Adam, grace in Christ.

And then out of gratitude, we do good works. Every one of us is on earth to do good works. And if you think about the Lord Jesus, couldn't you say of his life, he does good works? You just watch him, and you'd say, that is a man who goes about doing good.

He is good. He does good. And everything he's doing, from healing the blind to raising people from the dead to preaching, everything he does is good. And like our master, we want to, therefore, do good works.

We want to make sure that we go around as Christians, little Christ, to do good works. Again, not to get ourselves saved, because perfection is needed for salvation. But since we're saved, is there fruit of God's salvation?

Is there evidence of God's salvation? Is there good things for us to do? And of course, we know the answer to that question, those questions. Yes, there are many things that we can do for others, for the good of ourselves, and for the glory of God.

If you're a good servant, and you're working well for the Lord here at Bethlehem Bible Church, I want to say thank you. It's kind of that 80 -20 rule, where 20 of the people seem to be doing all the work.

And I just want to say, thank you for your service. I might not notice everything, the elders might not notice everything, but the Lord, he notices. Other people are here, maybe you're a little complacent today.

Maybe you think, you know, I could just use a little boost in my enthusiasm to serve. I could just use a little bit of, well, let's be clear, we're in New England. I could just use a kick right about now to do some good works.

Some of you might be discouraged. I've talked to some of you, and you've said to me, you know, I look around and see all the people at BBC, and I'm wondering why more people don't serve and do.

Good works.

And it's kind of discouraging. Don't they realize from where they've been saved from and where they're going? So whether you have a season of you're really on fire, or you need kind of the coal stoked, I think today's message will be important for you.

P .S. If you're a mom and you've got, like, the Kranz, 20 kids at home, sometimes there are just seasons in life where you just can't seem to do a bunch of ministry. Your ministry is, Haley said this to me the other day, Haley, my daughter.

She said, some days I say to myself, I didn't get anything done today, but both of the children are still alive.

That's right.

So of course, we've got different, you know, we've got people that are retired. They've got tons of time to do good works. We've got brand new mothers, and they don't have as much time. But I just want you to know, as a Christian, you are on earth to please the Lord by good works.

So Ephesians chapter 2, we will see that verse 10 is going to land the plane. And Luther would be right when he said, faith is a busy thing. We trust in the Lord Jesus. And after we trust in the Lord Jesus in the category of justification, now we move to the category of sanctification, or holy living, and faith is busy.

Luther would also say things like this. God doesn't need your good works, but your neighbor does. And so today, we're going to talk about doing good things. So back to Ephesians chapter 2. As you know, the passage is pretty simple.

Verses 1, 2, and 3 talk about our need of salvation, our state spiritually. And then chapter 2, verses 4 through 9 talks about the solution, or the remedy of God's grace. And just to remind us all, it'd be good to just work through it.

Can't really preach through Ephesians 2 enough. Let's take a look at the bad news, just as a quick reminder, using the three words we looked at last two weeks. And then we'll get into the grace of God.

Verses 1, 2, and 3 of Ephesians chapter 2. If you don't have a Bible, grab one. Paul takes us back to, as Spurgeon said, to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged, to use old English. This is where you came from.

And again, it's good for us as Christians to be reminded, is it not, that we have a pretty dark past. Our resume spiritually, our CV spiritually, is pretty bleak, pretty bad, pretty humbling. And we're going to need to have a rescuer.

You see the first word in chapter 2, verse 1, you were dead in trespasses and sins. Obviously, we're physically alive as unbelievers, but we're spiritually dead. And that word dead is where we get the word necrosis.

You've seen dead tissue before, maybe in your hand or something. These are spiritually dead people. And also, they're slaves. They're dominated. Remember, in verses 2 and following, the world dominates them.

Following the course of this world, you see it in verse 2, Satan straightjackets them. Following the prince of the power of the air, that's a name for Satan. Satan forces everyone into religion. All religion is forced.

False religion, that is. And then, I didn't talk about it much, but it seems like this is almost the worst prison of all. Verse 3, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

I mean, you'd think after thousands upon thousands of years, even in the Western civilization, that we might have mastery over things. But you can read a book by Paul Johnson called The Intellectuals, and the smartest people in all the world from Rousseau on down can't master their own lusts.

Can't somehow bridle their own desires. And so Paul is saying, remember when we were unbelievers, we were in a sorrowful state. We needed mercy and grace and more. Verse 3 of chapter 2, we see that we were by nature children of wrath, and so we had a date with destiny, and that didn't look good.

It's almost like Paul could go on and on and on about how bad we were without Christ, and he'll talk more about that in chapter 4 verses 18 and following, but he can't stand it any longer, and so he has to turn the corner.

And you know those two great words that summarize the gospel, Lloyd-Jones says in verse 4,.

But God.

He's so happy to think about the intervention of God, the grace of God, where God breaks in to the state of man and does something about it. It's one thing if you'd want to save but didn't have the power, but God has the power, the desire, the attitude of saving, and God, the initiator of salvation, the author of salvation, we say that's right.

Here we go.

Here's the good news. We've looked at ourselves in verses 1 to 3, and as Samuel Rutherford said, for every time you look at yourself, make sure you have 10 looks to Christ, and now we just see the work of Christ, and we see those wonderful four words that we talked about last time, mercy, love, grace, and kindness.

That's what people who are dead, dominated, and doomed need. Let me read the verses, and you can see those words just kind of pop out. Remember back probably 20 years ago, there's those kind of pictures that didn't seem to make any sense, and if you stared at it long enough, if you stared kind of through it with kind of a 3D deal with your eyes, you could see the 3D stuff come out.

Remember those things? You know what I'm talking about? What were they called, by the way? Maybe they called that Nebraska, but in New England, we called them stereograms. That's what they were called, stereograms.

All right.

What's my point? That's what you're asking right now, aren't you? My point is if you stare at this long enough, you're gonna see kind of like mountaintops, these words come out. You're gonna see the word mercy.

God has great pity toward us because we were in a pitiful state. You're gonna see the word love, that at its own cost, the cost of his son, he rescues. You're gonna see the word grace, that it is God's demerited favor.

We didn't even earn anything, but God just graciously intervenes, and you're gonna see the word kindness. This just kind of gentle, just as a mother is kind to a sick daughter, that's the kind of language.

And so look for those words as I read them in Ephesians 2, four and following. 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've 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.

And so Paul is writing to people at Ephesus. Some of you have been to Ephesus with me, and it's this pagan land, this worshiping land of this false god, Diana. And Paul is saying, by the way, let me tell you the real one that you should worship, the God who can take dead people enslaved to sin, who have a date with destiny, and he can change everything.

He just changes because of who he is. And then in verse seven, we talked a little bit about how God was wanting to show people that. Do you see it? That in the coming ages, he might show or demonstrate, so all would know, so angels, so saints would all know this is who God is, we're his handiwork.

Now, in case we wanna say somehow we're involved and we help get saved, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 are written. Ephesians 2, 8, for by grace, you've been saved. He repeats that again, it's by all of grace.

You wanna give a testimony? That's your testimony, it's by grace and grace alone. Charlie, sometime I'd like you to sing the song by grace alone, I think it would work well for the sermon, all right? Did anybody understand what I just said?

We just sang that song, right, by grace and grace alone?

Okay, good.

I'm trying to keep you involved, I'm trying to keep you paying attention.

Here we go.

I think I've told you before, the old Mike would say, this is God's word, sit up, take notes, and it's all on you. That's still kind of true. But I'm trying to help you pay attention. It's a sin to make the Bible boring, did you know that?

And by the way, when you're teaching your children around the dinner table, I hope you're enthusiastic, I hope you're excited, I hope you're fired up about it, I hope you just don't take the Bible and say, sit down, here's the Bible, open wide, I have a duty as a dad and a mom to teach you the Bible, here we go.

I think probably that was kind of my attitude back in the day, and then the Lord said, the Lord gets a hold of you, and then it's something different. And I always remember this with the kids. They'd all have their little Bibles, two-year-old Bible, five-year-old Bible, real Bible, graduate to the real Bible, and I would hold my Bible and I would say, daddy, I could just see the kids kissing the Bible.

What does that have to do with anything? Nothing, but I'm trying to get you to think. Now let's get back to the passage. No, it has everything to do with everything. So that we don't somehow sneak our own goodness in, kind of undercover, in an undercover way, get our own merit in.

Paul now just is gonna explain it all the more. What's grace look like? What's a salvation by grace look like? And so he says in verse eight, it's through faith. We are saved through faith. Remember, not because of faith.

God doesn't say, I see that you believe, now I can work. No, no, faith is non-meritorious. Faith by its nature, it's just trusting. It's an assent, it's an agreement. He also says that it's not your own doing.

So he's just basically piling on statements in these verses to make sure that we have no wiggle room to say somehow that we saved ourselves, that we are our own savior. This is language that's kind of like back in the Exodus account, where God pushes the Israelites to the Red Sea, and you have the Red Sea behind them, a mountain to the left, a mountain to the right.

And in front of them, you have Pharaoh's army. And that's why the Lord says salvation is of the Lord, or from the Lord, because we can't go through the Red Sea on our own. Here's the mountains, here's Pharaoh's army.

We are helpless. Someone has to rescue us or save us. He keeps going. Remember verse eight, at the end, it is the gift of God. You don't work for anything that succumbs to salvation. It's a gift, not as a result of works.

There's one more thing, has nothing to do with Christian religious ceremonies, for a purpose so that no one may boast. Now, if I ask you what are some good ways to interpret the Bible, I wonder what you'd say.

Probably you'd say to me, oh, context is important. Context, context, context, you'd be right. You'd say things like, well, let's make sure we understand the Old Testament in light of progressive revelation, newer revelation in the New Testament, and you would be right.

If you said things like, let's make sure we interpret the cloudier passages in our mind in light of the clearer passages, you'd be right. You'd probably say things like, you know, there's one divine author, one divine mind, and we should probably understand all the Bible as a whole, kind of what we say analogy of scripture in a systematic way, and you'd be right.

But maybe one of the best things you could do when you need to interpret the Bible is to what? And I know you know the answer. Keep reading. I think of Deuteronomy 29, 29. The secret things belong to the Lord, right?

So the secret things belong to the Lord. Let me read you the verse. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. And we kind of stop there.

We don't understand something, secret things. But if you keep reading, Deuteronomy 29 says that we may do all the words of this law. So we understand while we can't grasp everything, what we do know we should do.

That's Deuteronomy 29, 29. Now, when I started memorizing the Bible verses 30 years ago, 35 years ago, I had a little memorizing pack of verses and it had Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, but it didn't have verse 10.

I mean, well, it didn't have verse 11 either in some little packs you can only have so much. But 10 is crucial. 10 is critical. Ephesians 2, 10 is important. And it's tied in even with the first word in English, for.

He just got done talking about grace through faith, not your own doing that no one boasts. Verse 10, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

You, dear Christian, who once were dead in sins, dominated by the world and Satan and your own lusts, have been saved and rescued by the glory of God.

He saved you.

And after he saved you, you have a purpose. Not to work to stay saved, not to work so that other people can stay saved. You work because out of gratitude, out of the spirit of God dwelling in you, you'd like to do good works.

This is an often overlooked passage. We know what I think, but I'd like to settle in a little bit now and think about this passage and then go to one other book of the Bible to tie it all together. And here's what I want tied together.

That guilt in Adam, Ephesians 2, 1 to 3, but God, grace in Christ Jesus, the God-man who loved you, sought you, bought you by his redeeming love, should lead to a life of good works flowing out of gratitude.

And that you'll hear at this church stressed a lot, grace that leads to the gratitude. Christianity cannot be do good without the underpinnings theologically of grace. It is not Christian living to say, I just want to be good because I want to be good.

It's I'd like to be good, I like to do good works because Jesus paid it all, all to him I what? Oh, it loves so amazing, so divine, it demands my soul and it demands me. Here's a good motivation for good work.

Let me give you a few motivations for good works. One, you're his workmanship. These are just right from verse 10. You're his workmanship.

Before we were Christians,.

We would think this way of ourselves probably. I am a self-made man. I am what I am and I'm gonna come up with all the stuff financially and intellectually and everything else. It is grace that saves and it's grace that made you into something.

You are his workmanship. The same language is used of God making something in creation in Romans chapter one, verse 20.

You're his making.

God made you in a special way to serve him. The Greek word is where we might get the word poem. I've heard sometimes people say, God made you his special poem. I don't know if I want to go that far, although it sure makes you warm on the inside, doesn't it?

But he's made you, fashioned you. Think about somebody that makes something. I mean, I remember during Y2K in 1999, people would say, we can't even make pencils anymore if the computers go. But if you think of a craftsman and they just make something with their hands, wood, a woodworker and making something.

Here, although we were in Adam and now we're in Christ, he's made you his workmanship. Something that can affect people and God does things through people. And you might not know this. It's kind of not well known, but this language of workmanship and created, in the Old Testament, it's only of Israel.

Israel, I have created, Isaiah chapter 44. You're my handiwork. And now all of a sudden, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, and I'm looking around seeing lots of Gentiles today. It's not just the Jews who are his handiwork, it's the Gentiles too, where God forms people to do things for him.

Hard work catechism. How many things are necessary for you to know that in this comfort you may live and die happily? I'd like to live happily and die happily. What do I need to know? Three things the Heidelberg Catechism says.

First, how great my sin and misery is. Sounds like Ephesians 2, 1 through 3 to me. Second, how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. Sounds like Ephesians 2, 4 through 9 to me. And third, how I am to be thankful to God for such redemption.

Why am I motivated to do ministry and do good works? It's because of course God saved me out of my state, but now God has created me. I could even say this, God has given you spiritual gifts to help and to do things, perfectly creating you to be his workmanship so that you can serve other people and serve him.

Not only that, what's another good motivation? Because it gives you purpose created in Christ Jesus. Do you see it in verse 10? Created in Christ Jesus for good works. People run around all the time and say, I don't have any purpose in life.

Why am I on this earth? Why do I exist? Billions of people. What if you only read Ecclesiastes? I'm under the sun. I live. I die. My grandkids remember me. My great grandkids don't know who I am. It's over.

Dead. If I only had Ecclesiastes, how would I live? How would you live? But all of a sudden you think there's something that God does. He transforms people. He graces people. He makes them his workmanship, and he creates you in Christ Jesus, through Christ Jesus for good works.

You have a reason to live. You're not created by your own good works. You're not created because of your own good works. God creates you. He then recreates you in salvation, and then he creates in Christ Jesus good works.

I mean, he's thought of everything, has he not? God's activity through Christ Jesus yields good works. One writer said, believers hate sin, love God, and are obedient and do good works. However, they do this neither of their own nor independently from God.

Rather, the Holy Spirit, having infused life in them at regeneration, maintains that life by his continual influence. So it's one thing to say, you know what? I've been given a new nature, and I'm a work in Christ Jesus.

Now what do I do? How do I do it? I have to come up with my own works. No, God has done all that. Yeah, but God, when did you plan that? This is crazy. What's the text say? Here's another motivation to do good works.

God planned his good works, your good works in eternity, which God prepared beforehand. And God created your good works before time began. Some people say, well, I don't believe in predestination. Well, the words in the Bible, it's in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 4.

Could it be that this verse here is more powerful than he chose us in him before the foundation of the world? Because here, not only does he choose us in eternity past, he's created and prepared our good works in eternity past, prepared in advance for us to do.

I wish I'd think about this verse more often. Here's what I tend to think about it. I tend to think about it when I'm flying on an airplane and I say things like this. Lord, you know I'd love it if no one sit next to me because then I'd have extra room.

But if somebody needs to sit next to me and I need to preach the gospel to them, sometimes I'll say to the person next to me, you know, there's two kinds of people you don't want to sit next to on an airplane.

And I'll say, who's that? And I'll say, insurance salesmen and pastors. I said, I'm the latter. And one lady said, no, I think you're an undercover deputy. I think, what do they call those on the airplanes?

Flight what? Yeah, you're a marshal. I said, no, I'm not. Ask me a question about the Bible. I'll give you an answer. No flight marshal's going to know that. It's kind of like when I go to hospitals and visit people.

If you're Roman Catholic in the area, you get these little cards. So you get free parking at hospitals if you've got a card and that you're clergy. And so I go there and I don't want to pay the $12 or whatever.

And so they'll say, do you have your clergy card? Because I'll say clergy. They say, no, you have to have a clergy card. And I said, you know, excuse me, sir or ma 'am, I don't have a clergy card. I'm the pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church.

And I can prove it. Ask me any question about God and I'll answer it. Then they just shake their head with the Boston disgust and say, here you go.

I haven't had to pay yet.

So if I just step back, even physically now and just think about it, God has done everything, hasn't he? He's done everything. There's no excuse for us to say, well, I can't do it or anything else. But I tend to think about back to the story that, you know, God prepared that person sitting next to me in seat B when I was in seat C.

And this was all planned. I thought I'd change the flight, redirected the flight. It's just all been planned by God. And the only thing I have to do is to walk in them. They're all prepared that you might just walk in them, prepared beforehand, appointed for you.

The Lord has done all that for us so that we can walk in them. So there's no excuse for us to say, I can't. You're you're a workmanship of God. I'm not sure if I'm able to do it. Created in Christ Jesus.

I don't know if I have purpose in my life. I'm too busy consuming myself. No, no. It's all about the Lord. And he's even prepared them ahead of time so that you can walk in them. And you say, yeah, but if I walk in them and I don't do really a great job, will God accept those?

OK, I want you to think about this for a second. Will God accept your less than good works as a Christian? Now, if you want to get saved, you're not a Christian and you're trying to do good works to God.

You better make sure those good works are perfect because God accepts nothing less than perfection. But if you're a Christian and think, you know what? I'm kind of rusty with my service. I'm not really that good at it.

I'm probably going to say the wrong things. Somebody needs encouragement and I haven't been trained. And, you know, I'm just afraid. I'm paralyzed to serve because I don't do things perfectly for the Lord.

Should you still go ahead and serve? I want you to know that I am preaching today with 100 percent moral resolve and conviction and every attitude I have right now to preach to you is perfect. I have no desire to look good.

I have no desire to come across well and to make you think I'm eloquent. My point is this. I want to say no to all those and kill those desires and honor the Lord and to say, you know what? My attitude should be under the Lord and I'm just a worthless servant.

What am I supposed to do? Just obey. But I'm saying if God accepts you, won't he accept your good works that he made ahead of time, created ahead of time, that you might walk in them? Say, well, I don't do things perfectly.

It's OK.

Have you ever had somebody draw a picture of you when they're four years old? I've told the story many times. If you walk into my study right over there, I have pictures of children who draw pictures of me.

And in the old days, I had this kind of hair that they would draw, kind of looked like James Dean at the time here. Now I have this hair that looks more like, I don't know who, Hulk Hogan or something.

But they always put this down when they're drawing me and then stick figure. And when they come and give me a picture of me, I always say, that's nasty. That is so wrong. You get an F in art school. Who's your parent?

I take that thing, I rip it up, and I just throw it and say, get back to your mother. What do I do? And I'm dopey, but I know what to do. And I get down on my knee and I say, thank you. It looks so wonderful that you would take the time to do that.

I appreciate that. Hold on right there. Pastor's going to get some tape out and he's going to tape it up. And there it is, one that I have right now. It has a picture of God, which is against the commandments,.

But the picture of God.

And it says, yes. And then it has a picture of somebody smoking a pipe.

And it says, no.

I thought, what kind of legalist do we have here at the church? But it's up. Here's the point. You're laughing for a reason. Now I want to make sure you understand this. God will accept your works that have less than the perfect attitude because he accepts you in Christ.

You're accepted. And so it's OK to fail. It's OK not to have a great attitude to serve someone. You just go do it anyway. And you say, you know what? I accept that little four year old. So I accept their less than perfect works.

So for Christians, I mean, here's a classic illustration. We have so many families here, so many couples that you might say if you're a couple, how could I ever give counsel to another couple because I have problems in marriage and we don't have the perfect marriage and we don't but we wish we were better.

We'd want to do these things rightly. And so I see couples and I say, you know what? You'd be perfect to go minister to this other couple that's going through a trial and you don't have to have a perfect marriage in order to talk about the perfect savior who has a perfect marriage.

And if God accepts you in Christ Jesus, he accepts your less than perfect works. My point is everything's been provided by the Lord to do good works and we never should say I can't do that. I'm not able to do that.

I'm not good at that. If you see an opportunity to minister, you should say it's been all planned and I should do that.

That's our response.

It's fruit and evidence. It's not lay back and let God. It's not let other people do it. We want to do good works not to get saved, but because we're saved by free grace. All right. Here's what I'd like to do.

I'd like you to take your Bibles and turn to Titus chapter 1 and I want you to see how this goes together in one other book. You say, what goes together? Graced in Christ, serve out of gratitude. Not just the message of evangelicals and mainline Christianity, do good.

The message of Christianity is not do good. The message of Christianity is we couldn't do good. Jesus had to do good. And in light of Jesus is doing good. Now we can do good, but it's not be good, be nice.

That's not the message of Christianity. If you're here as a visitor today and you think I don't know anything about Christianity. Christianity is about the God man who perfectly obeyed the father and died on the cross to rescue sinners.