I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Ephesians 2. We're going to focus our attention just on two verses in this marvelous chapter, Ephesians 2, this chapter that really details for us the unfolding plan of God's salvation and His great provision for us of His grace. Ephesians 2, I'm going to read verses 8, 9, and 10. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not a result of works so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." This is God's living word to us today. I read a fascinating statistic recently about the song that has been recorded the most number of times by the greatest number of different vocal artists. Have any guesses what that song is? Yes, it's the 1779 classic hymn by John Newton, Amazing Grace. And grace is amazing. But as J.I. Packer observes, amazing grace has become for many people boring grace. Boring grace. That might seem a bit of an extreme statement, but there is certainly some degree of truth behind it. what was once the central Christian doctrine, that very thing that fueled the Protestant Reformation, what has thrilled Christian believers for centuries, is, at least among Christians in the Western world today, something that is rather treated as a humdrum subject, taken for granted, and not something that we perpetually celebrate together in the way that we should. If you want to talk politics, You want to talk sports? You want to talk economics with any of your Christian brothers and sisters? I guarantee you can get a spirited and a lively conversation going. But if you want to talk about God's grace with the same people, you might find that it's a little hard to get the conversation started and to have it be rich and meaningful. It might be polite, but it's likely that it won't be that kind of invigorating, Bible-saturated, edifying conversation that it really ought to be among we who are recipients of God's amazing grace. Today we come to the halfway mark in a series of messages that we are unfolding on each Reformation Sunday as a countdown to the celebration of our church's 300th anniversary on October 26, 2015. And in preparation for that momentous occasion, we have been looking each year at one of the five solas of the Reformation. These are the five rallying or battle cries that were raised by the reformers. That word sola is a Latin word and it means alone like solo. These are five indispensable interdependent beliefs about which the church of Jesus Christ cannot survive. And the implication in using the term sola or alone does not mean that these five things stand in isolation from each other. No, they are inseparably linked. Just as Josiah sang us a beautiful solo during our offertory worship, he wasn't standing alone. He was with the company of other musicians and voices from the back, but it was a solo alone. And so in the same way, the church cannot survive without the interworking of these interdependent foundational five essential truths that the five solas provide for us. And so as I say, these five things became really the rallying cry, the battle cry of the Reformation. And they are Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, and glory to God alone. We have previously looked at Scripture alone, and we have looked at Christ alone, and today we are going to delve into the third of these five foundational statements, grace alone. Grace is the only means by which God confers salvation upon us. And contrary to popular opinion and much misguided theology, salvation is not offered as a 50-50 proposition. Salvation is not offered as an 80-20 proposition. Salvation is not offered as a 90-10 proposition or even a 99-1 proposition. No, salvation is offered to us by grace alone. It's not a question of you doing your part. And God doing His part, it's not a question of what some people think is actually in the Bible and isn't. The saying, God helps those who help Himself, that is not a biblical truth. No, the idea that you do your part and God does His part is what we might want to call a sound of music theology. If you know that play or you know the movie version of it, you may remember that song that Maria sings to the captain when they become engaged. And she sings, nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good. Oh, that's a lovely song. And the sentiment in it is very touching and it's very sweet. It does reflect a very deeply misguided notion in the human heart that there must be something, there must be some good that we can do that will outweigh the sin and will outweigh the evil that is in our lives. Oh yes, of course, we'll need a little bit of divine assistance for it. But if we're careful, If we follow according to the plan, yes, yes, we will be able to pull it off. Well, that is a sort of thinking and a brand of heresy that has infiltrated and corrupted the church in so many eras of her history. It is the very thing that the Reformers were seeking to counteract with their bold declaration that salvation is by grace alone. alone means that grace plus nothing equals salvation. As Christ's followers, we need to recharge our spiritual batteries with a radical, life-changing, perpetually exciting understanding of what God's grace is and how it comes into our lives, how it reshapes our lives. And in order to possess a lively and a life-giving understanding and appreciation of God's great gift to us of His grace, we need to have an equally robust and an equally deep understanding and appreciation of the devastation that sin brings into all of our lives. You see, the very good news of the Gospel is lost on us if we fail to understand the very, very bad news about our sinful, fallen condition. Many fail to recognize the seriousness of sins, or as the Puritans phrase it, the sinfulness of sin. It is the human tendency and the natural inclination of the human heart to overlook it, to minimize it, to excuse it, to rationalize it, and to explain it away. There are few today, and perhaps even few among us who react to sin within us in the same way that the tax collector did in the parable that Jesus told of the tax collector and the Pharisee. The tax collector who beat his breast and cried out to God, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. David's great confessional psalm, Psalm 51, which we sing portions of from time to time, is a similar cry to God for His mercy. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your steadfast love. According to Your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. against you. You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sights, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgments." In these very few opening verses of that psalm, David uses several different word pictures to describe the sinfulness of sin. He describes it as My transgressions." Transgressions are crossing over a forbidden boundary. That is serious rebellion against a sovereign ruler. And we've all stepped over the line, David is saying. We've all stepped over the line, crossed the forbidden boundary. We've crossed the boundary of God's moral law and as a result, we are at war with Him. David also says, my iniquity. My iniquity. Iniquity is perversion. It refers to our original sin, the state into which we are born, our innate total depravity. And total depravity, as I've told you before, doesn't mean we are necessarily as bad as we possibly could be, but it means that not one cell in our body has not been tainted and touched by sin. My transgression. My iniquity. My sin. What the word picture is here is really what we would describe as an archery term. It's an archery term. My sin is falling short. It's missing the mark. And because of sin, we don't just miss the mark. We don't even hit the target. David says, I have done evil in your sight. He makes it all so very personal with his use of those first person pronouns. My sin. My iniquity. My transgression. My evil. Sin leaves us in a deplorable state before God. Expanding on these same themes, Paul makes a medley of Old Testament Scriptures and puts it like this in Romans 3. In Romans 3, he said, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. No one is righteous. We have zero righteousness apart from God. Zero righteousness. And you either have zero righteousness apart from God or you have 100% righteousness in Jesus Christ. And there are no numbers in between the zero and the 100. You're zero or you're 100. Nothing in between. As some of you repeatedly remember and make a personal mantra as it were from Isaiah chapter 64 verse 6, all our righteousness are as filthy rags. No one is righteous. And Paul goes on to say no one understands That is, no one has spiritual perception. No one has spiritual insight. In writing elsewhere, Paul will tell us that without God's Spirit working within us, the things of God are foolishness to us. We cannot understand them. We cannot accept them. We may have a rational understanding of Christianity and the teaching of the Bible, but such head knowledge does not have a heart-level appreciation and acceptance of God's grace apart from the Spirit of God. No one is righteous. No one understands and no one seeks God. Those who have no righteousness, Those who are incapable of understanding spiritual things have no inclination. They have no desire to seek God. And more often than not, those who remain in these categories, they resent the very suggestion that God needs to be gracious to them. To them, the thought that we need to get right with God and that we need His grace to do so seems very misguided and very wrong-headed. And so I ask this morning as you contemplate these words of Paul, this truth from God's Word, does that no one include you? You see, unless God changes our thinking, which is what grace is all about, our minds will always tell us to turn away from God. We sang earlier grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that is greater than all my sin. And this grace is a gift. It is an unmerited gift. It is God's favor coming to us. God does not owe us anything. And the greatness of this gift is described in those verses from Ephesians 2 that we read earlier. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not a result of works, so that no one may boast. God's grace is greater than sin. God's grace is more powerful than our misguided thinking. It is more powerful than our misplaced priorities and affections. Donald Gregg, Barnhouse, a great pastor and theologian from the 20th century, recounts the following little story in a book that he published on these two verses from Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. This is during the late 1800s in the very worst slum district of London. There was a social worker whose name was Henry Morehouse. One evening as he was walking along the street, he saw a little girl come out of the basement store carrying a pitcher of milk. She was taking it home. But when she was just a few yards from Morehouse, she slipped and fell and her hands relaxed its grip on the pitcher and it fell and it broke on the sidewalk. ran into the gutter, and the little girl began to cry as if her heart would break. Morehouse quickly stepped up to see if the girl was hurt. He helped her to her feet, saying, don't cry, little girl. But she kept shedding her tears, repeating, my mommy will whip me. My mommy will whip me. Morehouse said, no, little girl. Your mommy won't whip you. I'll see to that. The pitcher isn't broken into that many pieces. And he stooped down beside her. He picked up the pieces and began to work as if he were going to put it back together. Well, the little girl stopped crying. She had some hope. She came from a family where pitchers had been mended before. And perhaps this stranger could repair the damage. She watched as Morehouse fitted several of the pieces together until, working too roughly, he knocked it all apart again. Once more, she began to cry. And once more, Morehouse had to repeat, don't cry, little girl. I promise you, your mother will not whip you. Once more, they began the task of restoration, this time getting it all together except for the handle. Morehouse gave it to the little girl, and she tried to attach it. But naturally, all she did was knock it over again. Well, this time there was no stopping her tears. She would not even look at the broken pieces of pottery lying on the sidewalk. Finally, Morehouse picked up the girl in his arms, carried her down the street to a store that sold crockery, and he bought her a new pitcher. Then, still carrying her, he went back to where the girl had bought the milk and had the new pitcher filled. He asked where she lived. When he was told, He carried her to her house and set her down on the step and placed the full pitcher of milk in her hands. Then he opened the door for her, and as she stepped in, he asked her one more question. Now, do you think your mommy will whip you? He was rewarded for his trouble by a bright smile to him and a reply that said, oh, no, sir, because this pitcher is much better. than the one we had. That is such an illustration of the way that God's grace comes to us, the way that God's grace changes, and the way that God's grace converts the filthy rags of our righteousness into the righteous robe of Jesus Christ. All of us are created in the image of God. But that image was broken due to the way in which our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned by disobeying God's righteous law. When they did that, like the milk pitcher, that image was broken beyond repair. Yes, we still have all the broken pieces of that image. And although broken pottery may have some value, if you're an archaeologist, it's worthless when it comes to carrying milk So in the same way, human nature in its broken state is useless for pleasing God or earning heaven. Ask yourself, did the little girl do anything to win Morehouse's favor? Did she try to repay him for the pitcher or for the milk? Did Morehouse even act like he wanted or expected repayment? Such a picture. Such a picture of God's grace. There is no way that we can fix our own picture. We need God's grace to do that. Grace alone. Grace that is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not a result of work so that no one may boast. It is an act of God's grace that opens our hearts and gives us the ability to respond in faith to welcoming Christ's rule in our lives. Many of you know the account in John 11 of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been dead and buried for four days. The process of decomposition had already begun and as a result, his sister Martha objected to the stone being rolled back from the grave saying, Lord, by this time there will be an odor for he has been dead. Lazarus situation was not grim. Lazarus situation was not serious.