The sermon this morning comes from Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2, starting with verse 1. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that you would walk in them. Pray with me. Our great and powerful God, we thank you for your rich grace We thank You, Father, now that as we look at Your Word, and as we would even try to stare You straight in the face, that You would hold our eyes open, and that Your light would shine into our very souls, and that every shadow would be revealed and cast out, and that You would be glorified as we are turned towards You And as we see this great grace that we have received, this great privilege of being called sons and daughters and being seated with Christ, it is in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I have been cursed throughout my life with delusions of grandeur. I have always looked at myself and have thought of myself as something great, something strong. I have thought of myself as something unbeatable through the course of my life. It has been evident when I was in kindergarten, the kindergarten through the seventh grade was in one building and for some reason as a kindergartner, I thought it was my job to pick on the seventh graders. I constantly got beat up. Once I left the 7th grade and I was in 8th grade, in those days in my school, 8th grade went to senior. As an 8th grader, I thought it was my duty to pick on the seniors. The bigger they were, the more responsibility I had to pick on the seniors. I got beat up. quite a bit. At one point, when I was a Boy Scout, I decided that I should certainly be able to whoop the two biggest boys in the troop at the same time. They were both my size. No, they were both bigger than me. One of them was the varsity member of the football team. And as I faced off against them, I had in my mind the way that it would go. Then, several moments later, I would like to say it was minutes, but it probably wasn't, I found myself laying on the ground, looking up at the sky, wondering, What has happened? I was certain that I could beat these two guys. So I trained for a month or so and I went back and I found myself again laying on my back thinking, what went wrong? Delusions. Delusions of grandeur. I imagine each of you have found yourself in a place where you You've looked at a situation and thought, I can certainly handle that. You've looked at something and thought, I can certainly lift that. You've looked at someone else's sins and thought, surely I am better than that. And we have all found ourselves in the place where we realize we are not as strong as we thought we were. We are not as smart as we thought we were. As we look at these passages now, we look and we see we are not as righteous as we think we are. We look at these passages in Ephesians and any Any idea that we are righteous, that we are holy, that we are perfect in our own power, any idea that we deserve our own salvation should be ripped away. Now, as I have been preaching through the membership vows, we looked at these high and lofty things that we claim to believe. We looked at these high and lofty things that we swore before God that we would do. And as I've met with different people with different levels of humility, they've looked and thought, I know I'm never going to pull these vows off. I would like to say yes. Then as you look at the last vow, it says, do you make this profession, this profession of faith in humble reliance on Christ? Humble reliance on grace. You see, we're not a people who stand bold and proud in our own vows, saying, these are the things that I am, these are the things that I will do, the things that I will accomplish in me. But we look and we see these things and say, I cannot do these things apart from Christ. We look and say, I am not capable. We look and say, I rely on Christ completely for everything, especially my eternity. As you consider the vows that you have taken, or the vows that you should take, I call upon you this morning to humbly rely on grace. As you look forward to giving your account with joy, at the last great day. Now as we go on this journey, the first step, look with me at verses 1 through 3. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. I call upon you first to be troubled by the depths of spiritual death." Be troubled by the depths of spiritual death. So often we say we believe things, we say that we know things, But how much do our emotions reflect the things that we say we believe? How much do our emotions reflect the things that we say that we know? You and I would gladly come together and I would ask you, do you rely on Christ? Do you know that you were so bad that Christ had to die to keep you from going to hell? Most of us, yeah, I know that. Sure, we could walk away with a smile on our face. How do we do that? How do we do that? How do we look and realize that the perfect one and the righteous one had had nails pounded through his hands and feet? Had to be stripped and hung? mocked by his own creation, that I am that rotten. And how do we say it casually? How do we hear it casually? Somehow, my brothers and sisters, we are failing. Somehow we are failing. We are really missing it. There are all of these things, all of these things that we say we know, all of these things that we say we believe, and yet we are unstirred by them. We look and we see that you were dead in trespasses and sins, dead! You were dead! Oftentimes I thought, I would like to have met Lazarus. after he was raised from the dead. How neat would that be to meet somebody who was dead and has been resurrected. Somebody who has been reanimated. This idea of death is striking. If I were to meet someone who said, yeah, I was dead for this period of time, I would be deeply interested. The sight of a dead body is deeply disturbing. Someone once alive, now no longer alive. A body that is supposed to be breathing and not breathing. It's troubling. We are so troubled by it that we take the bodies of our dead and we embalm them. We put makeup on them. We put them in their best clothes. We put a pink light here and there so it shines on them so they look more alive. Because death is so troubling, so disturbing. That's just physical death. How much more to realize you were spiritually dead. Spiritually dead. Dead to God Himself. How much more should we be disturbed by this spiritual death and that is who you were. That is, the people around you, who they are. There's the account of the man, I'm sure most of you have heard it by now, I believe the book in the movie is called 127 Hours or something like that, where a man was mountain climbing and he was going down in this crevice and he grabbed the rock, the rock let go, he falls with it and it pins his arm against the wall. And he's trapped there. And he tries and tries and tries to get his arm out and he can't get it out. and then he takes a knife and he starts poking at the rock trying to chisel enough away to get his arm out and after he'd been there so long he slipped and he stabbed his thumb and it hissed because his thumb had started to decompose and he talked about how troubling and disturbing it was to know that if something attached to him was dead you were dead you were dead in your trespasses and sins. Be struck by this depth. Be struck to know that your soul walked in shadow, walked in darkness, and as we will see a little further, all that that means. So have the appropriate sorrow for those outside of the faith. Those who are dead, spiritually dead, separate from Christ, have the appropriate emotions knowing that this is exactly what you have been rescued from if you are indeed in Christ. Now, why is life outside of Christianity so dark? Let's look again at those first few verses of Ephesians 2. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. This is terrifying. This idea here, and what Christ is saying here, is that if you are not in Christ, if you are not walking in Christ, you are in alliance with Satan. I hate the idea. I hate The idea that I was walking hand in hand with the Prince of Darkness. The one who opposes everything good, everything righteous. So I call upon you, hate every sin because it is the act of rejecting Christ and embracing Satan. Oh, may this grieve you. Every time. Every time where we have what God says and we reject it, we go another path, we are indeed walking hand-in-hand with Satan. It's the idea that this world is walking in death, it is walking in trespasses and sins, When we sin, it's called walking according to the course of this world. One way to look at it and think of it is, in the Garden of Eden, before the fall, before man turned against God, the world was turning in one direction, in accordance with the will of God. But when mankind broke the covenant, when mankind sinned against God, it's as if the whole course of the world changed. and begins turning the other direction. You see, many people, if not everyone, would say, you know, I didn't choose to be on Satan's side. I'm not on Satan's side. I didn't choose to be on Satan's side. Well, the truth is, you're born rotating with the world, going in the wrong direction. You are born that way. traveling according to the course of this world. And, without the intentional work of the Holy Spirit giving you a heart to turn and run the other way, you are going according to the course of this world. According to the Prince of the Powers of the Air. I want to stress this. This is always, in your life, this will always look like an intentional running after Christ. It will never be you coasting along, going the way that you have gone. It will never be you relaxing. So many of us, and so many of you have grown up in these beautiful covenant homes. So many of you have grown up with parents who are believers. So many of you have been set on a nice course. And we could look at your lives and think of you as one of the beautiful people. We couldn't pick out a sin in your life where you were an obvious rebellion against God. But the painful question is, and must be, are you running for Christ? Are you running for Christ? So much of your righteousness may simply be habit that you were taught. And you can walk in this morality. You can walk without fornicating. You can walk without being a drunkard. You can walk without cursing. And you can still be on your way to hell. because your morality is nothing more than habit. Your morality is nothing more than mere morality. But, in order not to go with the course of this world, it's not just getting by, it's running after Christ. It's growing in grace, growing in knowledge, and pursuing Him. So, run after Christ as you run from following the course of this world. Run to know Him more. Run to understand Him more. And know that merely the sins that you've thrown off in the past, or the sins that you've rejected that others are in, isn't your standard for holiness. But Christ is your standard for holiness. Christ who loved the Father perfectly, and loved mankind perfectly. That's your standard. And until you have achieved that, you may not stop running, for you are merely following the course of this world. Our next step on this path, marvel at God's great mercy. Verses 2-6, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world. according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses and our transgressions made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This idea that you were by nature objects of wrath by nature objects of wrath Maybe you've all seen children who are so obnoxious. Children who are so loud. Children who just run amok so bad it feels like by nature your hand would be drawn to their backside. That's the way it ought to be. You and I. by nature, or objects of wrath. The same nature that would discipline that child will attend to that as a holy nature, a holy discipline, a holy judgment, a holy God who could rightly stand over us with the eternal sword eternal God who by right nature could lift you up and throw you into the fires of hell forever and it would be just as God stood over you when you were by nature an object of wrath I oftentimes imagine it like a boiling storm just over our heads those times when you're outside and you hear that rumble of thunder and you feel it to your core. There's times when you look up and you see the clouds churning. There's times when you look and you see the sky turn that off color and you think, oh, is something coming? There have been times in my life where I was clinging to unrepentant sin, and I remember one day I was on this... I walked out of a church building, was up on this hill, and I looked out, and I saw the clouds churning, and I heard that rumble, and I just wondered, have I exhausted God's patience? And there was this fear, and there was this dread, None of us have ever seen what it looks like when God's wrath is fully poured out. We have seen the imagery of the atomic bomb test. We have seen buildings blown apart. We have seen the pictures of people just turned to ash. We saw the imagery of the tsunami as burning buildings and floods chased minivans. We've seen all these dreadful pictures that are just a taste, just a taste of the wrath you and I deserve. And the amazing part is, the wrath that you and I deserve, Christ stepped in front of God's judgment for you and for me. The fire, the flames, the wrath, the anger against your sin and mine poured out on Christ. We look and we say, you spared me. We imagine the cross and the suffering of Christ and we say, you spared me at this cost. Marvel. At God's great mercy, we see a touch of Christ's fear in the face of God's wrath. Matthew 26, 36-39, Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to his disciples, Sit here while I go over there and pray. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and he began to be grieved and distressed. This isn't the grief and distress that you and I know. as you and I worry about tomorrow and what it'll look like. As you may worry about grades, or you may worry about a spouse, or you may worry about children and her parents. We see something much deeper here. Then he said to them, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of death. This is Christ speaking absolute truth here. A soul grieved to the point of death. I have known sorrow. I have been reduced to tears and wailing. I have punched the floor in misery and sorrow and in pain. I have wept bitterly, but my soul has never been troubled to the point of death. This was the great sorrow that Christ took, and this is a picture that should give you a taste and an idea of the mercy that you have received, because Christ took that great sorrow for you and for your crimes. So, look with me again at verses 8 and 9 of Ephesians 2. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not a result of work, so that no one may boast. I call upon you to humbly rely on grace. So much of our reliance on grace is, um, it looks like pride. It looks like pride. It looks like an arrogance. the way that we just take it, and take the grace so casually. My wife has lovingly admonished me in the past, because whenever people offer me money, I say, thanks, and I snatch it as fast as I can, afraid that they'll change their mind. But she always says, you shouldn't do it like that. She says, you should say, no, no, are you sure? And give them the opportunity to say, no, I'm not sure. They never do, but she says, I should do that. See, I've been that way and I'm trying not to be that way, not just to quickly grab whatever somebody will hold out. I've told you the story about the boy before that we were at a flea market and as we walked by one of the stands, he looked at the gyros and said, I have always wanted one of those. He said, but I've restrained myself from spending that $4. And I knew that he'd been to that flea market a hundred times or more, and so something welled in my heart, and I thought, I'm going to buy him a gyro then. And I bought this man a gyro, and you would have thought that I'd given up my firstborn for him. He took this gyro, and so humbly, first he refused, he wouldn't take it, and he said he wouldn't let me buy it, and then once I bought it for him, he looked at the gyro, and he looked at me with these puppy dog eyes, and he looked at the gyro again, and he just said, Thank you, my God. How, how should we receive grace? What posture should there be in your heart as you realize what you have received? as you realize what you really deserve and what you have been given. I tell you, I have to look at myself and I have to look at the way that I've just snatched grace so many times and said, thanks. I'm grieved. I'm grieved by my own posture. grieve by the cavalier way that I have received grace as if someone loaned me a dollar for a can of pop instead of seeing a father give his only son instead of seeing the perfect one give up his life to rescue me so with gentleness view towards your own weakness, with a view towards your own unworthiness, with a view towards Christ's holiness. Humbly, humbly rely on grace. Next, look with me at verse 10. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them This idea that you are God's workmanship. You are God's workmanship. The word workmanship is poema in the Greek there, which is where we get the word poem. And I'm taking a little bit of liberty here. But this idea that you are God's poem? I look at my life. and I wish I was a better poem. I wish that you could look at all the details of my life and say, oh, what a masterpiece. I wish you could look and you would see line after line of beauty and you would look and you would see line after line of obedience growing more and more. But as One man said, and this isn't my quote, as he was praised for being a good man, as a woman left the congregation after a sermon, he said, ma'am if you could look into my soul, you would spit in my face. That's true for me too. I'm like you, I am a fool saved by grace. I'm a weakling, I'm a fool, I'm a coward. I have fallen short so many times and I will. If you looked into my soul you would spit in my face. And I have been saved because of the person and the work of Christ. I call upon you, I call upon you to humbly rely on grace. I call upon you to look at your own life and see how you have fallen short. I call upon you to look at your own life and see how you are falling short. I call upon you to look on your life and see that you deserve the fires and the wrath of hell. God's judgment to look and see that you were by nature objects of wrath. I call upon you to look at the cross and see what you deserve. I call upon you to look and have the right emotions stirred. as you see who and what you have been, as you look and see who and what Christ is, and see the sacrifice that was required to save you. And I call upon you to be a more beautiful poem. I call upon you to look and see the lines that you are writing in your poem. I call upon you to repent. call upon you to repent and walk in righteousness and truth, humbly relying on grace, as you desire to give your report with joy at the last great day. You see, I'm not calling upon you to earn your salvation. I'm not calling upon you to desire to save yourself. You see, none of that is who or what we're capable of being. None of that is who or what we will be. You see, for you to work now as if you're earning your salvation, it would be like my son's working and laboring in the house and looking up at me and saying, now am I good enough to be your son? Now am I good enough to be your son? Do you work that way? Do you labor that way? thinking that you're deserving your salvation, earning your salvation, it breaks my heart to picture my son saying, now am I good enough to be your son? You see, we labor to please our Father. We labor and work to look up and to see Him smile and know He smiles as we throw off our sin. I told you before, I spoke with one of my sons and I told him that I loved him and I was pleased that he was my son. I'm even proud and thankful that he's my son. And in this time of his repentance he looked at me with tears running down his face and said, but why? But why? Why are you pleased that I am yours? And my answer was, because you're mine. Because you're mine. Why do you work? Why do you labor? Why do you throw off your sin? Why? To earn your salvation? No, you're going to hell if that's your plan. No, we throw off our sin because we're His. Because we're His. We humbly rely on grace. As we labor to give our report with joy at the last great day, to hear our Father say, well done, good and faithful servant. What else do we have? What else do I have to give you? Nothing. I stand among you as a sinner among sinners, and I hold this lantern for you now, and call upon you to humbly rely on grace. that you labor to give your report with joy at the last great day. Pray with me. Our God and our King, thank you for the grace that we have received. Thank you for calling us sons and daughters. Thank you for the place that you have put us in, seeding us with Christ in the heavenly realms. Now, Father, may we live this reality. May we labor and throw off every sin and every crime. Father, so that we will indeed give our report with joy at the last great day. To hear you smile and say, well done, my child. It is in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.