On the stage? All right. David, will you move the podium? Steven, will you help me? Ah! Yay! I'll get back here so you can... I've been in these red and blue lights. I look all cool. How's that? And now I can't see y'all at all, which means you can sleep. All right. Ephesians chapter 2, starting with verse 1. I hope these have become some of your favorite words in the Bible and your favorite words in the English vocabulary in the world as you have studied and meditated on them over the last week. Ephesians 2, starting with verse 1. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the Spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts like the rest. We were by nature objects of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace that you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith. And this, not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship. created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. Grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of God stands forever. Amen. One of the great feats of the Israeli army was they put together a delta force And this force searched the entire world. They literally did. They searched the entire world. And they found a criminal named Alfred Eichmann. Dr. Eichmann had spent his years, his younger years, at Auschwitz. And he had been a Nazi, they called him the physician of death, studying the human, person, studying how much pain a human could take, studying what would be the most efficient ways to kill. And he was personally responsible for the torture and the death of thousands of Jews. And decades after World War II was over, the Israeli army found Eichmann living in a middle-class suburban neighborhood in Africa. and brought him back to Israel, and they tried him. And when they put him on trial, they brought in an eyewitness who, as a boy, had seen Dr. Eichmann, who had been in Auschwitz and been one of the few survivors. And this boy named Yehiel DeNour walked down into the courtroom, and the international cameras were rolling, and the courtroom was packed, and you could cut the tension with a knife. And DeNour walked down front, And he looked up, he kept his eyes down the whole time, and he looked up, and he saw the bulletproof glass, and inside of it he saw Alfred Eichmann. And De Niro just started crying like a baby. He literally went hysterical. And they had to take him out of the room and recess the court until he could recompose himself. Mike Wallace later interviewed him on 60 Minutes. And I asked him, what was it that he saw that just caused such convulsions? What was it that scared him so? Did he see the face of evil itself? Was he reminded of all those horrible images of Auschwitz? He said, no, no. I said, what was it that caused that response? And he said, I looked up and I saw that he was a man. I saw that he was just like me. And for the first time in my life, I realized that if he could do those crimes, I could do those crimes. And Mike Wallace turned at the camera at the end of his little interview and he said, so what is Aikman? Is he evil personified? Is he a horrible monster? Or scariest of all, is he normal? The Bible answers that He is normal. That we have everything that He had in His heart, we have in our hearts. That just as He was dead, we are dead. Just as He is enslaved to the prince of the power of the air, so we're enslaved to the Spirit who's now working in the sons of disobedience. Just as He was a slave to the world, Spirit of the world, so we are enslaved to the Spirit of the world. Just as He was enslaved to His flesh, we are enslaved to our flesh. He's normal. And I want you to understand that. That's one of the main things we tried to talk about last week. And if you don't understand that yet, then you're really not ready to believe the Bible. If you don't understand this about you, yourself, then you're not ready for the Bible yet. You're still looking for directions. You're looking for a new start, and I know that's why people come to RUF. You come for two or three reasons. You come because you're just dead bored, and I understand that. You come because you're good boys and good girls, you've been that your whole life, now you're good men and good women, and this is what good men and good women do. Or you come because you want a new start. Maybe you're kind of messing things up with your sin, and you want a new start. And you're not going to mess up this time. And I want you to know, if you come for any of those three reasons, I'm glad you're here. Because if you weren't here, I wouldn't get paid. But, just, well, you know. No, I'm glad you're here. But I want you to know that you are not ready for grace. Let me rephrase that, because that wasn't well said. If you come for those reasons, I want you to understand that you are still dead. You are still dead. You are a character out of the movie 28 Days Later. I mean, you're a zombie. You don't look dead. You're walking around. But you are spiritually dead. You do not respond to the Lord. And the question that we have to ask is, how can God save people like us? And the answer is, with great irony. He saves us by making the truth the opposite of what you would expect. He saves us with great irony. So what does He say to do first? The first thing I want you to see is that God acts first. Let's go back to these great verses, verses 4 through 6. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The first thing that God has done is He raised us from the dead. He raises dead people. We're unable to hear Him. His words don't make sense to us. And He gives us ears. We're blind. We don't see spiritual reality. All we see is the world. We don't see an eternal difference. We don't see how in the world it can be wise to turn down and to try to say no to the world. All we see is the things the world has to offer. And He gives us eyes to see. We don't feel spiritual reality. Do you remember one life when you didn't feel it? Do you remember when you used to kind of just go to church and go to camp or whatever and just kind of scope the room out for chicks? Some of y'all still do that. I can't blame you. But, you know, it was just nothing. It was just nothing. And the singing was just nothing. And the teaching of the Bible was just nothing. You couldn't feel anything. You were dead. You were leprous. I heard a story today. I'm a guy who was converted, and he said, he was giving his testimony to the pastor and to the session, and he said, you know, I don't understand what y'all have done lately, but it's gotten a lot better around here. He said, I used to come and I just hated it. The songs were terrible, the sermons were boring, nobody here was friendly. And then about six months ago, the music just got better, and the songs got meaningful, and the sermons got interesting. What happened? The pastor smiled and said, you got converted. And that's what happens. We're dead before then. 1 Corinthians 2 describes it like this. It says, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Now, this is hard to understand, but it's key to understanding the gospel. The Bible wants you to know this. If you were a Christian, it's because God did something to you first. And that is counterintuitive. That's a long word. I felt like I needed to say that. Was that impressive? That's ironic. That's not what you expect. You understand what true irony is? Irony is not rain on your wedding day. Rain on your wedding day is sad. That's frustrating. It's unfortunate. Irony is when the truth is the opposite of what you expect. And you don't expect to hear that God's been working on you first because guess what? You're dead and dead people don't know what's going on. It's like this. You remember when you were a kid, something like this probably happened to you. You're a kid, you wake up, and you get out of bed, and you go to the breakfast table, and your mom kind of looks at you with this kind of wry grin on her face, and she says, how'd you get here? And you said, Mom, I got out of bed and I came to the breakfast table. And she says, yeah, but before that, you said, I don't know. I was asleep. And she says, do you remember where you were last night? Do you remember that you fell asleep over at your cousin's house on the floor? Huh. How did I get home? Remember that? And she said, your dad picked you up, carried you home, carried you to the car, put you in the car, drove you home, got you out of the car, took you inside, put your pajamas on and put you in bed. That's how you got here. And he said, well, yeah, but I did just kind of wake up and go to the breakfast table. And that's the way it is with Christianity. People ask, well, you know, why are you converted? Why are you going to heaven? Well, because I've trusted in Jesus Christ. That's right. But something had to happen before then. It's not just a matter of God making a way of escape possible for us. You see, the Bible does not describe salvation as simply a matter of we're drowning and He throws us a rope. It describes it more like this. We're dead. Dead in our transgressions and sins. It's in the text twice here. You're dead. You're in a morgue, right? You're naked. You're in the drawer. It's cold, but you don't care that you're naked. Why? Because you're dead. It's good. You don't care that it's cold. Why? Because you're dead. The morgue is on fire, but you're not getting up and running out. Why? Because you're dead. Thank you. You're not getting it. Actually, you're not. Nobody's saying it, but we're going with it. And the Holy Spirit walks in, and He pulls the drawer out, and He brings you to life. And you wake up. And you notice that you're naked, and you run up to Him for clothes. And you notice that the morgue is burning, and you run out. And if you ask somebody, I ask you the question, how did you get here? How did you get saved? Well, I ran out. I ran to the Holy Spirit. I grabbed my clothes, and I ran out. But why? Because He made you alive. That's what we sing when we sing that song, and can it be. Right? Long I am prison, long I... I can't remember. How does it go? Long I am prison, lay fast bound... Shoot, I want to sing. Man, I can't sing. Fast bound in sin and nature's night, thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke the dungeon flame with light, My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed Thee." God had to work on us first. He worked on us first. And not only did He raise us from the dead, but He gives us everything we need and nothing that we deserve. Look at this text and see how it matches up with all of our needs. We were dead and He made us alive. We were slain. But He enthroned us with Christ. If we are seated with Christ, then we are seated on thrones. We were children of wrath. And He had mercy upon us. And it's all by grace. He says it again and again. By grace you have been saved. Everything you need, He gives us. Purely by grace. There's a story of a girl standing in the street and she's crying. The pastor is on his way home and he finds her crying and he says, what's wrong girl? And she said, Mom is going to beat me. Mom is going to beat me. Why is your mom going to beat you? I dropped the milk jug. This was one of the days when you had to take the jug down to the store to get it filled with milk. She said, it's our only pitcher and I've broken it. He says, well don't cry, we'll put it back together. And so he starts trying to put it back together and they almost get it together and she grabs it by the handle and it falls apart again and she just absolutely You know how little girls do, they just fall apart, disintegrate right there in the floor. And so he tries to put it together again, and she stops crying while he's doing that, and he gets it together, and she grabs the handle, and it falls apart again. And so he picks her up, and he takes her three stories down, and he goes in and he buys a picture. And then he goes back to the dairy store, and he gets it filled with milk, and he carries her all the way to her doorstep, and he puts her on the doorstep, and he puts the picture in her hand, and says, will mama beat you now? And she says, oh no, this is a much better picture than we had before. And that's the gospel. It's everything that we need. All of our needs perfectly met, and we do nothing for it. We just receive it. That's the second thing I want you to see. God acts first, but secondly, God acts freely. He does it for free. Verses five through nine, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ for by grace you have been saved. and He 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 and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." You can see the freedom by the fact that when it comes and how it comes, and by what's given. You see the fact that it's by grace, by when it comes. It comes while we're still dead. He doesn't wait for us to wake up. He doesn't wait for us to make us alive. And I want you to get this, because you don't. When you get this, your attitude about yourself changes. It really does. You know, it's funny, because some of you all still take me seriously, and I don't get it. It's pretty fun. I was talking to Brian yesterday, and I asked him if he had time to hang out. He said, yeah, but I figured out you're real busy. I said, Brian, what do you think I'm busy doing? Y'all got this persona thing, you know, thinking I'm somehow important, and we know I'm not. And that's no big deal. It's kind of fun. Y'all leave me alone. But what frustrates me, what makes me sad, It's how seriously y'all take yourselves. Not in a way like being a grown up and getting your work done. That's fine. That's good. I encourage that. But in just stressing out. And feeling like everything you do, your entire future rests upon it. And you're so afraid to get something right or get something wrong. You just want to go, guys, you're messes. I'm a mess. I am a stinking mess. And when you begin to understand grace, you don't take yourself seriously anymore because you realize you're a mess. That's what God says. God saves messes. It's kind of funny. And I mean, I want you to get it because I want you to relax. I want this Christianity thing to be a joy to you. And it's not. For a lot of you, it's this thing you do because you have a guilty conscience. Going to RUF is not going to alleviate a guilty conscience. Jesus will take away your guilt and with that will alleviate your conscience. But God, I can't give you enough things to do to alleviate the conscience. Or you come to RUF because, like I said, that's just what good people do. And I feel like Christianity is not helping y'all much because you're so reclaimed and you're so... tight, and you furrow your brows a lot, and you want to get it right. Just relax. Do you understand what you did to get grace? You needed it. That's it. I went through college on a need-based scholarship. That is the way to go. I had friends who were in the Vanderbilt Honors Program, you know, and they had to go to all these seminars, and they had to keep up 3-5, and they had to, they just studied, and they stressed, And it was unfair because they had to take harder classes. And they still had to keep a grade point average. You know what I had to do to keep my scholarship? I had to stay poor. All I did to earn my scholarship was be poor. I could do that. Hey, Dad, don't work any overtime and we're good. All right. That's all you've done to earn grace. You needed it. And guess what? You ain't going to stop needing it. So chill out. God's not going to say, oh, sorry, no more grace for you. You don't need it anymore. I guarantee you, He's not going to say that. And as long as you need it, you're good. And that frees you and that changes you. Did I read 1 Corinthians 4, 7 yet? I need to. It's good. Let's read it again. For who makes you different from anyone else? And what do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? We've done nothing. What do we have that we haven't been given? We've earned nothing. It came when we were dead. It came by faith and not by works. And again, that's kind of what we've been talking about already. I want you to understand that you didn't make God like you by doing things right first. And since we didn't make God start to like us, we ain't gonna make God stop liking us. What does it mean that it comes by faith? It means faith is trusting something else. And it means that it comes when you stop stressing out on the treadmill, or when you stop running away from God. Either way, because both are the opposite of Christianity, and you're ready to trust something else. and throw yourself on something else. I was a lifeguard for two years. It was a lot of fun, except for the whole life-saving part. But if you've ever had to swim out and save somebody's life, it's kind of weird. Because the only thing, I mean, you know how to do it, but you cannot do it until they let you. I mean, you can kind of knock them out and that kind of thing, but it doesn't really work. It never worked for me anyway. And you swim out there to them and you go, look, you can keep doing this. You know, they're kind of doing this and swinging and everything. It was always kids that had to go out. They would always, they're mothers. Dads never do this. Mothers would always get in the deep end of the pool, the 11-foot end, and get their six-year-old kid on the diving board who can't swim and say, jump to me, I'll catch you. Don't do this. Okay? And so the kid jumps right on her face. She gets a big drink of water. She's freaking out. Well, he can't swim, so what do you think he's doing? Right? So he's just panicking, banging around her face, and she's kind of panicking, banging around his face. I swim out there, and I just stop. I'm not a good lifeguard. You're supposed to throw a rope. You're supposed to reach, throw, and go. I just go on out there. And I get out there outside, and I say, you know, come to me. I'll save you. But you've got to stop doing that. You've got to stop trusting in yourself. You got to stop that waving around, John, and just let me pull you in. As long as you're doing everything you can to save yourself, you're going to drown. And that's what faith is. You know what those kids did every time? I never really got that far. Because what they always did every time was they just went, oh! Because they could see that I was not drowning and Mommy was. And that embrace is faith. It didn't save them. Faith doesn't save you. Faith attaches you to something. I saved them. I drug them in. But before I could drug them in, they had to stop trusting in themselves. And you've got to stop trusting in yourself. Some of you are trusting in your worldly desire to get as far away from God as you can. You're trusting in your own knowledge and your own ability. I'll be able to come back whenever I want to, and I'm going to kind of treat God like a teddy bear. I'm going to get security from Him so I'll feel better about myself after I go off and sin. And some of you are just trusting in yourself, and I'm going to do enough, and I'm going to appease my conscience, and I'm going to be good, and I'm going to be right. And you're both trusting yourselves, and you need to come to Christ. And that's what faith is, when you stop trusting yourself and when you trust something else. It's by grace because it comes when we're dead. It's by grace because it comes by faith. And it's by grace because faith itself is part of the gift. That's hard for you to understand, isn't it? What does he say? He says, not of yourselves, it is a gift of God. Not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. And what our temptation is, is to make is to make faith the one law that we can keep. Our mentality is this. God gave the world ten commandments, and nobody could keep them. And he was really bummed by that. So he was like, damn, that's too many. So I'm going to send Jesus, and we're going to replace the ten commandments with one commandment. You think this, be honest. And that one commandment is, believe upon Jesus. And everybody who can keep that one commandment, Ten commandments is too high. Nobody could jump over it. Let's make it one commandment. And you think you're saved because you kept the one commandment. And it still works. It's an easier work, but you still think you saved yourself. And you're wondering if that faith was strong enough. Did I really do it? That's why you worry every other year about whether you're really saved or not. Is my faith really strong then? Because you think salvation depends upon how well you did the one work. Guess what? Faith was part of the gift. And that makes no sense at all. God rewards us with salvation for something that He gave us. But, you know, if you're at my house Sunday night, then you know my illustration for this. But I'm going to tell it again because it's the only one I've got. If y'all come up with a better one, I'll tell a better one next year. But salvation is like that Christmas present you bought your mom. You remember? You all know the story, right? You know that first Christmas present you bought your mom? And you didn't know what you wanted for Christmas, so she told you. And you didn't have any money, so she gave you money. And you didn't have a car, so she drove you to the store. And you didn't know how to wrap Christmas presents, so she wrapped it for you. I did that. I know I did that. It was a little pen type thing, and I took it back to my room and I rapped on it for an hour and a half. And I wrote this little note, I can't rap, and brought it to her in a big box, and she rapped it for me. And put it under the tree. And Christmas Day comes, and I got that present, I was so proud of it. And I gave it to her, and she unwrapped this present that she had picked out, that she had paid for, that she had driven to the store to get, and that she had rapped. And she opened it, and she thanked me for it. And that is salvation. That God gives you faith. And so you do what faith does. You trust him with the faith that he gave you to trust him with. And what does he do? He pours blessing out upon you for it. He just gives it to you. God acts first and God acts freely and finally. And before we go any further, let me just ask you this question, because it's important. Are you born again? Are you trying to be born again? It's going to be a new start for me. I ain't going to be like last year. I ain't being born again. That's constipation. Are you born again? Do you see it? Do you see spiritual reality? Do you see your sin? And are you resting in Jesus? I want you to see that God acts fruitfully finally. His action works. For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. It is 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. God does something. And this is maybe the hardest thing for me to get people to believe. God's grace actually does something. It's like bleach. You don't have to wonder if you spilled the bleach for long, do you? Get something on your clothes. I wonder if that was bleach. Yes, it was. I lived in the 80s when we used to bleach out clothes for fun, you know, and I had a friend of mine. Bleach jeans is the cool thing. Now, you're supposed to go to the store and buy these acid wash jeans, but we didn't have the money to do that. So we just kind of pour bleach on them. And he did that to his jeans, and he was getting out of the car one day, and his girlfriend reached over to grab the back pocket, and the entire back of his pants just fell off. The bleach was just eating him alive. That was a good day. But God is like that. I mean, you can tell when He touches, it works. If He wants something to happen, it happens. And He created us for good works. And these are the good works that we walk in. We do them. Jesus isn't doing these. We do them. And I want you to see the order of them first and the assurance second. First of all, I want you to understand, we don't do these to earn grace. We do these as a result of grace. He saves us to do good works. They show that we're alive. Right? You know, if I see you laying down on the street one day, I'm going to ask you what you're doing there. And if you don't answer, I'm going to take your pulse to see if you're OK. If I'm trying to find out if you're alive, I'm not going to go look for your birth certificate. I'm not going to go get your mom and ask if you were ever born. I'm going to see if you've got a pulse. And if you're wondering if you're converted or not, if you're a Christian, if you've been born again, the answer is not to go, well, I think on September 13th, 1997, I was born again. What you do is you check to see if you've got a pulse. Do you love Jesus? Is there a sin in your life that you're repenting of? Is there anything in your life that you are doing just because you love Jesus? Is there anybody in your life that you're showing love to? Or are you just living for yourself? If those things are there, if you're showing, if you're displaying the love of Christ, then you are alive. And these words come from grace. Grace produces these words. And it produces them in a funny way. You just do it out of joy. A couple of years ago, I was playing golf with Reed Saban and Brennan Sanders. They've gone on from us. But we were playing, and Brennan and Reed hit this 195-yard shot. to a blind green. I mean, the hills were so bad they couldn't see where the green was. They had a general idea of where it was. And Reed hit his shot to about 10 feet short of the pin. And Brandon hit his to about 12 feet short of the pin. It was unbelievable golf shots. And when they saw those shots, they were so fired up that they became just ridiculous golfers over the next five or six holes. I mean, just smashing their drives down the fairways, hitting greens, hitting putts. It was amazing how good a golfer those two shots made them. Do you know what? Those two golf shots landed right next to me when I was about 40 yards short of the green. And they couldn't see me, so I just put them in my golf cart, drove up to the green and threw the balls up there. That's how they got so close. It was just fun. And they just couldn't believe it, you know? Can you believe we hit this green? I was just like, no, I can't believe you hit the green. Because you didn't get close. But man, they became better golfers. Grace is like that. It makes us into new people. And it changes the way we act. And then we go out and we are able to do great things because we're confident. These works are demonstrations of grace. They're motivated by grace. But I also want you to see that they are works that are grace filled. OK, what are the good works? This is where we blow it. It's not being happy, go get them, sweet, you know, Christians. Did you hate that word? Okay? You just don't see that in the Bible. It's being honest. I get asked this all the time, right? I asked Hunter, who wanted to be our emcee this year. He said, I don't know, because, you know, getting up on stage, it gives you that kind of reputation, and I'm not sure I live up to it. I don't know what you think that reputation is, OK? All I want is honest people who, when they mess up, are willing to go apologize. That's it. Broken people who know how to walk with the Lord and know how to be servants. That's what salvation by grace produces. What else could it produce? And that's why, if you're an unbeliever and you're here tonight, we owe you an apology. Because Christians have defined the Christian life as being, you know, a republican agenda. We've defined it as being this kind of moralistic crusade. We've defined it as being uptight and right. The Christian life is about being your servant. If you're a non-believer, we owe you an apology because we, as Christians, should be your servants, your slaves. And we've refused to do that. We've tried to make you feel guilty and feel like we're better than you. And I apologize for us. That's what Jesus came to do. He came to be the slave of the world. And that's who we ought to be. And finally, I know you've been waiting for that for about 20 minutes, finally, This faith comes as a fruit of His grace. Faith comes. This faith unites us to the One who is salvation. Again, it doesn't save us. It unites us to the One who is salvation. Boston went skydiving this summer. There's two ways you can go skydiving. You can either take all these classes and learn how to do it, or you can go and get on these harness and attach yourself in a tandem skydive to somebody who knows how to do it. That's a lot easier. That's what he chose. That's what I would do. That's what faith is. It attaches you to life. And it's a hard word. It's one of those Christianese words. But basically, it just means this. In order to have faith, you have to have a certain amount of knowledge. You know what you're having your faith in. You have to know the facts of Jesus and the cross. You agree with the facts. You say, yeah, I believe that. And then you trust Him. Billy Graham used to tell this illustration, and it worked for him. So I'm going to try it, see if it works for me. He used to say, this is an example of faith. There's a guy who was one of the great high wire walkers in the world. He's the guy who walked between the two World Trade Centers when it was, can you believe somebody got on a high wire and walked between two World Trade Centers? That's nuts. But anyway, he was walking, he constructed a high wire over this waterfall. I don't think it was Niagara Falls, it was another one. And he walked across it and gathered his big crowd. He walked across it and he came back and he did all these tricks on it. But then he carried a wheelbarrow across it and back. And he filled the wheelbarrow up with bricks and he walked across it and back. And then he looked out at the crowd and he said, do y'all think I could carry this wheelbarrow across the rope, across the wire with a human being in it? Who thinks I could do that? And a bunch of people raised their hand. Yeah, of course you can do it. And he said, who's going to get in the wheelbarrow? And that's faith. It's not believing that Jesus died to save people, it's trusting yourself on Jesus to save you. Will you pray with me? Our Father in heaven, we pray that you give us the faith to walk. We pray that you give us the faith to get in the wheelbarrow, Lord, and trust the Lord Jesus to save us. Will you give us that gift? Father, will you overwhelm us with your goodness to save us? We pray in Jesus name. Amen.