The sermon you are about to hear was recorded at Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral, Florida. For additional sermons and more information, visit our website at truegraceofgod.org. Good morning, everyone. It's a joy and a delight for me to be with you. I bring you greetings from my home city of Sheffield and the church that I'm part of called The Crowded House. in Sheffield. I leave behind a wife of some 31 years, the bride of my youth, Janet, and four grown children and some in-laws, in terms of daughter and son-in-laws, and four grandchildren. And I leave behind a church and all of these are a delight and a blessing to me but I bring greetings from them to you as a church and very thankful for the great reality of the gospel that despite being separated by 5,000 miles and many cultural differences that we know the great reality of being in Christ together. And that's the connection that supersedes, that trumps everything that might make us different and disconnected. I want to open God's Word to you, so please do so, into Ephesians chapter 2. When I was invited to speak this morning, I was asked to speak about grace and I can honestly say that that is not a burden to me. There is no better theme of which I would rather speak on than this great truth. I'm going to read chapter 2 of Ephesians through to verse 10. Ephesians 2 verses 1 to 10. Let us hear God's word together. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked. following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved. And He raised us up with Him and He 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 towards us in Christ Jesus. for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing it is a gift of God not a result of work 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. There was once an empire known as the Soviet Union and there was a leader of that empire by the name of Khrushchev the premier of the Soviet Union a man of great power and great cruelty but he tells a story of uh... when there was a time in the soviet union when there was a uh... literally a wave of petty thefts occurring in the factories it was all centralized as i'm sure that you know uh... they all had very strict targets to reach uh... five-year plans that they have to meet uh... and he uh... the leadership of the soviet union was very concerned about these thefts because they threatened to undermine the productivity coming out of these factories and so they decided to tighten up security in all of the factories the length and breadth of the Soviet Union and in one of the timber yards in what was then Leningrad is now St. Petersburg again they put a guard on the gate and he was a local man and he knew the workers in that factory and one occasion he was guarding the gate and out came one of the workers, a man by the name of Piotr Petrovic and he was pushing a wheelbarrow with a large sack on it full of suspicious looking material As he approached the gate, the guard stepped out and he said, Petrovich, he said, what do you think you're doing? He says, I'm just going home. What's in the sack? Come on, I wasn't born yesterday. He said, tip it out. He said, but it's only sawdust and shaving. You think I'm a fool, he said. Tip it out. So, Pyotr Petrovich picked up the sack, tipped it out and it was just sawdust and shaving. So, he allowed him to put it all back into the sack, took it home. The same thing happened the next day, the next day, the next day, the next day. At the end of that week, the guard was completely exasperated. Petrovich, he said, come on, please tell me what you're doing. I know you're up to something. What is it? Look, here's the deal. If you're honest with me and tell me what you're doing, I'll let you go. and uh... petrovich looked at him and he says uh... and they said uh... he said what i'm doing taking out wheelbarrows that's a very good illustration of what we're like as christian And what I mean by that is that we are so easily distracted by the incidentals. You see, the guard looked at this sack full of sawdust and shavings and thought that was a problem. And he forgot to see, he failed to see that the real problem was the wheelbarrows. It was a timber yard, they made wheelbarrows, wheelbarrows were being taken out. That's what Petrovich was stealing. And we as Christians are so easily distracted by those incidentals that we ignore what is really important. We're more concerned about the sawdust and shavings than we are about the wheelbarrows, the things that matter. You see, we do this with behavior, don't we? We're distracted by the sawdust of moral compliance. What we're looking for from people who profess Christ, what we're saying is, you've got to live differently. And we expect people to live differently, which isn't a wrong desire, but that becomes a be-all and end-all. If somebody behaves like a Christian, then we think that they are a Christian. And all the while, underneath this moral compliance, Underneath these good works, there is a heart that loves itself. There is a heart that is full of idolatry, rather than a heart that is captured by Christ. You see, for all our claims that Christianity is a religion of the heart, our problem is that we most always revert to externalism. We want people to behave better. We want people to be more moral. We want people to comply with our own moral code. And when we do that, what we do is we slide into this thing called legalism. That is cold, shallow, crushing legalism. And legalism is this conviction that somehow we can please God according to our own strength, according to our own capacity, according to our own ability, we can please God. That whatever God requires, we can deliver it. That's what we believe. That's what legalism is. But legalism is the very opposite of grace. Legalism might look good because it does produce moral compliance, upright behavior, but it is the enemy of grace. And because legalism is always bad and grace is always good, therefore moral behavior, moral compliance that springs from legalism is the enemy of the gospel. Good works separates us from God as much as evil deeds. That's what the gospel says. You know, there's two equal and opposing errors. There's this conviction on the one hand that we can please God by our behavior. Somehow we can dispose God towards us by what we do. That's legalism. There's another error that says it doesn't matter how we live, God's going to love us anyway. That's an error too. The problem with many of us as evangelicals, we think, well, if we're going to have one error, we want this error of moral compliance because it looks better. But that is still an enemy of the gospel. That is still the very opposite of grace. That is still a very denial of the good news that it is only what Jesus has done for us that saves us. It's only what He has achieved that matters. There was a man by the name of Martin Luther. He said this, I suspect you might be a little bit offended by it, but please listen to it. He says, we will sin. He's talking to Christians. He said, we will sin while we are in the world. So be a sinner and sin boldly. Isn't that outrageous? We will sin while we're in the world. Of course we will. Well, be a sinner and sin boldly. See, I fondly imagine being part of a church that is full of sinners who sin boldly. I think that would be a glorious church to be part of. Sinners who sin boldly. Now, you might be shocked by that. You may think, what is this crazy Englishman saying? What is that weird guy at the front with a strange accent trying to say to us? Surely one of the elders is going to stand up and call him out as a heretic. Well, hear me out. You see, because rather than having a church full of sinners who sin boldly, which I say that I want, this is what I think we've got. I think we've got churches where sinners sin secretly. Yeah, we do sin while we're in the world, but we sin secretly, we sin furtively, we sin behind closed doors, we sin in the secret recesses of our own hearts, and all the while we retain a facade of respectability. We look good, clean, shiny people. But when people can't see us, where people can't see us, That's where there is that festering sore full of maggots just eating away at us. Whereas, let's have communities of grace That's what the name of your church is, after all. Let's have communities of grace where people say, yes, we are sinners and we can sin boldly. Where we have the freedom and the confidence to know that when people find out that we are sinners, they're still going to love us. They're still going to accept us. They're still going to welcome us with open arms. A church, imagine this, where those from the society around you, that the rest of the society around you regard you as the dregs and the nobodies and the no good and the dropouts of society. Imagine, if you have a church where you sin boldly rather than the secret sin that you do do, that's the kind of church where people are going to come, flood to, because they're going to find something that they can't find anywhere else in the world. You see, without open sin, there can't be open and irresistible grace. That's what Luther was saying. The sad thing is that for many of us, church is like a piece of theatre, isn't it? It's like a performance art. So, it's a weekly event at which everybody turns up and they play their part in putting on the show. before walking off stage left into their lives a struggle of conflict of compromise and a failure until the next week when we put on the show again when we do that bit of theatre again now of course we know we shouldn't be like that but sadly for many of us it is like that we know we shouldn't behave like that but sadly for most of us we do but when the gospel of grace is at the heart of our church, setting its culture, setting its values. And when the Holy Spirit runs a church and makes much of Christ, then we're a people who are suffused with grace. We're a people who are saturated by grace. We're a people who are, as it were, drowning in grace. And that's what the world needs. And that's what we need. That's what I need. Grace, you see, is the most precious doctrine of which the Bible speaks. And yet, it is the one that is so alien to our nature and so despised by our proud hearts. So, what is grace? Grace is the Father, God the Father's undeserved blessing and favor which comes to us in His Son by His Spirit. Grace is God the Father's undeserved blessing and failure, unreserved blessing and failure which comes to us through God the Son by God the Holy Spirit. Grace isn't something that we receive like passive recipients. You know, where you're sitting on your chair and somebody comes up and gives you a cup full of something and say, hey, here's a cup of grace, have a sip. That's not what grace is. Grace is something powerful. Grace is something dynamic. Grace is something that transforms us, that captures our heart. Grace actually becomes that which defines us. That's the beauty of grace. let me show you what I mean. I've just given you the kind of headlines and I've tried to kind of get your attention by that quote of Luther. Well let me show you what I mean from the Bible because this is where we've got to go isn't it? This is the point of reference, chapter 2 of Ephesians. Now this falls into three sections and we find Paul emphasizing a particular emphasis, an aspect of the truth about God and us. Now, not all of what he says is going to be easy to hear, but all of it is necessary to believe if we're going to get this outrageous grace of which he speaks about. So, let's have a look at verses 1 to 3. Just before we get into that, Sometimes when I'm preaching, Paul talked about his thorn in the flesh, didn't he? This thing that God had given him that kept him humble. Well, I'm a preacher and I do a lot of preaching. Well, I have this affliction when I'm preaching that I get an itchy nose quite often. And it's not a thing you can do discreetly, is it? You've got an itchy nose and you're doing that when everybody's looking at you and they think, what's wrong with the guy? Well, I've got an itchy nose. I'll just tell you a quick story. I was doing some teaching in a church not far from where we were. I was doing a series for them and it was a charismatic church, good godly people, loved the Lord. Their worship was quite a bit different to the way that I would do it, but they loved the Lord. Well, I got my itchy nose and I was so embarrassing that I had to just say, look, I'm sorry, I've got an itchy nose. Can't do anything about it. This woman came to me and she said, I've noticed Steve that you often have an itchy nose when you're preaching because you're often doing this and it's just because my nose is itching as I talk. Obviously some kind of cartilage problem that I've got with my lip and whatever. And she says, She says, I notice that it's when you're particularly gripped by the Spirit that your nose itches. So she says, I think it's a sign that you've been equipped and empowered by the Holy Spirit particularly. I just thanked her for her kind words and her reassurance, but it just didn't really impress me that much. I mean, a sign of the Spirit is an itchy nose. signs and wonders maybe, but not an itchy nose, surely. Thousands of people getting converted, praise God, but an itchy nose? I'm not convinced. I think it's just an itchy nose, so please bear with me. So let's have a look at verses 1 to 3. A truth that hurts. A truth that hurts. You see, in order to give us a true sense of who God really is, we need to get a true sense of who we really are. And that's what Paul is doing here. Before he's going to get on to re-emphasizing the good news again, he's already done it in chapter 1, he has to stop and remind us of the bad news so that we might appreciate the good news and be overwhelmed by grace. That's his intention. Now, in the original, these three verses here are just one long sentence, and that serves to intensify the impact of what he's saying. And he makes three observations here, in verses 1 to 3, and in each one, he widens his statement. So, in verses 1 and 2, he's talking to the Ephesians. He says, and you were dead in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked. In verse 3, He includes himself and his colleagues as Jews. They were Gentiles, predominantly. They're Jews. And in verse 4, sorry, at the end of verse 3, he throws the net so wide that he covers the entire human race, Jew and Gentile alike. And these are the things that he says. He says, first of all, we are dead. It's as though Paul is saying If you begin to forget for just one moment the incredible things that God has done for you, that I've just expounded so eloquently for you in this first chapter, then remember what you once were. He says, you were spiritually dead. There was no life within you. There was not even a spark of interest in God. You had no concern for God. You had no concern for His glory. You had no concern for His Son. You had no concern for His people. You had no concern for anyone but yourself. You were dead in your transgressions and sins. Now, behind this word transgression or trespass, is the idea of crossing the line, stepping over the boundary. That's what trespassing is, isn't it? It's going into some territory that isn't your territory to go in. That's why it's called a trespass or a transgression. Behind this word sin, in verse 1, is the idea of missing the mark, failing to hit the target. That's what sin is. So Paul says, in other words, as far as God was concerned, you were nothing but rebels, going where you shouldn't go, and failures, failing to do what God wanted you to do. So, that's the first bit of bad news, you were dead. The second bit of bad news in verses 2-3 is that you were slaved, because that wasn't the end of the human predicament. They were ensnared, they were enslaved by the world, the flesh and the devil. In following the ways of the world, They shared its attitude. They bought into its values. They also followed, much like a dog on heat, the ruler of the kingdom of the air. Isn't this a terrible description of the human race? And the final aspect of their slavery was the control by their sinful nature there in verse 3, where he talks about carrying out the desires of the body. You know, left to our own devices, we labor under this terrible delusion, don't we, that we're somehow in control of our lives, that we're people who are in control of things. We can run our own life, we make a good job of it. And yet, how many of us struggle with food? How many of us struggle with simple personal habits? Something trivial like biting your nails. Something more serious like viewing pornography. We find ourselves wanting to fulfill the desires, the raging passions of the body, don't we? And we find ourselves incapable and yet we still claim mastery. But we can do things. We can do it our way. We can achieve whatever we set our minds to do. We can be whoever we want to be, as our cultural myth declares. But far from being masters of our own destiny, little gods in the world of our own making, Paul says, no, we're dead. We're enslaved to cruel and demanding masters. What a description of the human race without Christ. Some of you here this morning may not be Christians. Well, this is the truth concerning you. It's bad news. Maybe you've just begun to see something of that. That's why you're here. Or maybe you haven't and you're offended by what's been said. But I ask you to just hang in there and bear it some more. Because Paul hasn't finished. Not only were we dead, not only were we in slavery, we were also doomed. This is a point where Paul applies this scathing diagnosis of the human race in our natural condition, left to ourselves and to our own devices. He says we're objects of wrath. You see, it isn't simply the fact that we're not doing well on our own, but God is neither amused nor indifferent to the human condition. Our rebellion, our cowed service to all that is opposed to him, provokes him to anger. Not a passionate rage, as it were, of uncontrollable nature, but a calm and a settled antagonism. It really is the case that Paul presents a terrible picture of the human race without God, because he wants to leave no room at all for self-congratulation, no room at all for self-righteousness. He wants to tell it like it is, the bad news so that we might then see just how good the good news really is. Because look at verses 4 to 7. Truth that exalts. Now, in these verses, Paul provides for us a comprehensive and a compelling picture of what God has done for those very same people that he's described in verses 1 to 3. That's why I ask you to bear with the bad news, because this news, no matter how bad that is, this is even better. And you'll understand how good this good news is when you actually believe how bad the bad news really is. But it's a bad news, good news scenario. If we want to know how good news is, then we need to look at this three-dimensional masterpiece that Paul paints for us here in verses 4-5. First of all, he talks about our past. But God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. You might have been dead in your trespasses and sins, says Paul to this church in Ephesus, but not anymore. And what's the cause of this transformation? The God of love and mercy and grace has made us alive in Christ. That's what He's done. We were dead, not now. We were dead, now we're alive. Why? Because God has done it. God has resurrected us. God has made us new. The same power, Paul is saying at the end of chapter 1, the same power that he exercised when he raised Jesus from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion, is that same power that he's exercised in you. In taking you from death to life. From darkness to light. And it's present as well, look at verse 6. He's raised us up with him, he's seated us with him in the heavenly places. So incredible is this awakening that Paul can describe Christians as those who are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. That's our present position. Why? Because we are in Him. We don't have time to look at the profound significance of that, but simply to say that our life is now hid with Christ in God. To all appearances, you see, Christians are pretty much the same as anyone else, aren't we? There's nothing unusual about us. There's no glow. Although, I had a man in one of my churches when I was younger who used to think he could see a glow around people. And so, I think a purple glow meant that they were good. And a blue glow meant that they were bad. And a white glow meant that they, if I remember correctly, meant that they were almost kind of almost in heaven. I don't know whether that meant that they were about to die. and I was a pastor of the church and this man tried to break into our house on one occasion while we were away and I kind of confronted him about this and as I was just saying, Dave what do you think you were doing? He said, Stephen I need to tell you I don't see a glow around you. I was relieved by that but This was a figment of his imagination, because Christians don't have glows around them. We don't have halos over our head. We don't kind of levitate six inches off the ground, do we, so we don't get our feet dirty. That's not what we are. But we are seated with Christ. The truth of what we are is, as it were, hid in terms of the full glory of it. But there is going to come a time when He appears, when we will be seen for what we truly are. That's part of our hope as Christians. And why has God done this? Why has God, what has caused God to act with such love and compassion? Why has God exercised such energy on our part? Well, Paul takes us into the future in verse 7. So that everyone will see just what a great and a gracious God he is. One day, I love this thought really, even as I'm anticipating saying it now, my heart is filled with joy. One day, God is going to put us on show at the center of the universe and he's going to call the whole of creation, the whole of the angelic order, fallen as well as those who are not fallen. And he's going to say, look at what I've done with these rebels and failures. Look at what I've done with these wretched individuals who were dead, who were enslaved and who were doomed. Look at what I've done with them. I've transformed them. This is what kind of God I am. This is how powerful I am. This is the majesty of my grace. This is the effectiveness of my death. These are the people that I've rescued and given life to and placed in a position of honor and glory so that you might see that I'm a God who is worthy of eternal praise. When I get into heaven, this is how I like to think about it. When I get into heaven, imagine me dying. Not too graphically, but imagine me dying. and then I go to heaven, I walk through the gates and I just imagine like the whole of heaven ready to receive me. You've got the angels there, you've got all the saints who have gone before me, you've got the throne at the end and I walk through the gate and everybody's cheering and shouting and screaming and whooping and whatever and what are they doing? They're not saying, hey look at Steve, isn't he great? Isn't he good? Isn't he glorious? What a dude! They're not saying that. They're saying, can you believe it? This is Steve Timmis. Wow! What has God done with him? You know what he was like, what a jerk he was. What has God done with him? You know how he acted such an idiot on all those occasions. See what God has done with him. He just looks like Jesus now. Wow! This God is a great God. To take a schmuck like Timmis and make him like this. This is what you call grace. God has done it so that every one day, everybody will know what He's like. So that everybody will look at Him and be, in a very English word, gobsmacked. I love that word. Are you familiar with it? Gobsmacked? You should be. Start using it, really. Gobsmacked. Okay. Gob is slang for mouth. Okay, in England. So, you've got a big gob means you've got a big mouth. Shut your gob means be quiet. So, gobsmacked is like when you're so amazed by something, you go like this. You kind of smack your gob. Okay, gobsmacked. Well, that's what it's going to be like in heaven. People are going to be gobsmacked. They're going to see you walk through the gates. The angels are going to go, wow! Okay, let's have a look at verses 8 to 10. Truth that humbles. This is the third and final point. I'm just very conscious of the time. Truth that humbles. Paul basically is engaging in a mopping up exercise at this point. He's told it like it is about us, he's told it like it is about God. Now he wants to be sure that we've got the point. He wants us to anticipate that event described in verse 7, you know, that moment in heaven when people see what God has done with us, by bringing us now, in the present, to the point of amazement. He wants us to be sure that we really do understand the full force and magnitude and splendor and magnificence of the grace of which he's talking. He says, we haven't contributed to our rescue and transformation, not one bit. There's not one tiny, incy bit of good work that has somehow made this transformation take place. Why? Because we were dead. That's why. dead people don't walk, dead people don't talk, dead people don't work, dead people are just dead, they just lie there, they don't move because they can't move, they're not aware of things, they're just dead, they're corpses, they're lifeless by definition, well that's what we were, so how on earth can we contribute one bit to our salvation, we don't do it, We've not contributed to our rescue. It's not like you've got a corpse that's lying there at the bottom of the ocean and like you sink down and you'd send divers down and the dead person is putting out of his arms saying, look here I am, come and get me so I can have a proper burial. He's dead. He's not even aware that the divers are coming down for him. There's not one thing that we can lay claim to. There's no goodness that we can ever assert. There's no integrity that we can ever display. There is no virtue that we can present by way of any counter-argument. There is absolutely nothing in the bank. There is absolutely nothing in the tank. There is nothing. I know that within me lies the seedbed of every known sin. That's what a preacher by the name of Robert Murray McShane said. I know that within me lies the seedbed of every known sin. I know that within my heart even now as a believer There is a capacity for me to commit the most senior sin. It only takes the right condition for that seed to germinate and bear fruit. That's how flawed I am. That's how in need of grace I stand. And it's everything that I am is because of grace. Nothing else beside. I was at him and Dusty's house last night and they were showing me a video of John Piper saying John Piper is bad. With the back track of Michael Jackson singing I'm bad, I'm bad. Come on, I'm bad. Well, Steve Timmons is bad. Left to his own devices. There's not one good thing in me, not one good thing at all. I'm bad, truly bad, evil, wretched, left to my own devices. We all are. Whatever we are now, it is entirely because we're God's workmanship, because He's a master craftsman who's at work. We're His new creation and we're called to live lives that please Him. We're enabled to live lives that please Him by His grace. We want to live lives that please Him by His grace. Even the desire to please Him, He's given us. Even the faith to believe in Him, He's given us. We've been made for good works, but even God has prepared those beforehand in advance for us to do. We didn't make them up. We didn't conjure them up. We didn't think about them. God prepared them for us. So even if you go out and you witness to your neighbor and that person becomes a Christian, it's no good work that you can assert God prepared that back in eternity as an event for you to do. That's why it's the truth that humbles, isn't it? That's why it's the truth that grips us, that thrills us. John Newton, the famous ex-slave trader, the author of the hymn Amazing Grace said this, I am not what I might be. I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. But I thank God I am not what I once was. And I can say with a great apostle, by the grace of God, it is that I am what I am. Okay, what are we going to do with this? Let's get to the conclusions as we finish. The application, the implication. What are we going to do with it? Well, the first thing I hope we're going to do with it is we're going to praise God because of it. You see, one of the key characteristics of Christians is that they're a thankful people. It's a very simple thing, isn't it? But Paul, when he's talking in Philippians chapter 2, he does that great description of who Jesus is. and he talks about us as being, in terms of what God has done for us. And then he says, do everything without grumbling or complaining. And you come from these great lofty heights of a high Christology, where he's talking about Christ, just down to the nitty-gritty business of daily behavior. Don't grumble, don't complain, be thankful. And when you understand grace in this term, in terms of those of us who are dead, who are doomed, who are enslaved, who God has transformed, who God has given His Spirit through His Son, He's rescued us, how can we be anything other than thankful? And what a powerful apologetic for the Gospel thankfulness is. How different it would be from the attitude of people around us. A world that is full of complaints and strident demands for our rights. Imagine what it is for people to be preoccupied with thankfulness. Are people overwhelmed by what God has done for us in Christ? The people who are known for their gratitude. Wouldn't that be intoxicating? Well, if you believe the gospel truly with your heart, then you can't be anything else but thankful. And you won't just be thankful for Jesus and miserable about everything else. We'll be thankful for Jesus and therefore thankful for everything else, because we'll know that God is at work. Even in the midst of hurt and disaster and pain and suffering, we will be thankful for God's grace. With tears streaming down our eyes and our hearts breaking because of grief, we will be thankful for God's grace. And we know what God is doing and we know what a great God He is. So let's be thankful and secondly, let's do the good works that we've mentioned. If God has prepared good works for us to do, well, get out and do them. It's as simple as that, isn't it? Just get out and do them. True worship isn't primarily about what we do when we meet together on an event like this. It's about a life that is lived to the glory of God out there, day by day, moment by moment. It's about doing the good works so that people see those good deeds and glorify our Father who is in heaven. Now, this term good works is deliberately non-specific. It covers the whole range of our lives and activities. It's about being to others what God has done for us. It's about treating others with grace. We don't like doing that, do we? We don't like treating people with grace. Let's be honest about it. Here's a scenario. Track with me on this one. Two people. You've got two friends. It's your birthday. I know that sounds a bit like a rap artist, but it's your birthday. And some of you won't get that, because you're too old. But I'm down, so it's okay. So, it's your birthday. And your first friend turns up, just knocks on the door, you open it, walk in, sits down on your sofa, you've got a coffee, been a bit of a hard morning so far, just thought I'd call in, say hi. Yeah? Great, lovely, great to see you. Give him a coffee. start talking for a while, just puts the cup on the side, gets to us, okay, gotta go now, bye. Doesn't he know it's my birthday? Another knock comes on the door, your friend there with a big bunch of chocolates, a big box of chocolates. It's your birthday, happy birthday! Here's a gift for you, and not only have we got this gift for you, I've also arranged you to go on some extreme sport, bungee jumping. You're afraid of heights, but it's the thought that counts. And then, after we've done that, we got a great meal together. You're on a diet, but it's your birthday. It's okay, it's the thought that counts. And you have a great day. Okay, these two friends, when it's their birthday, which one are you most disposed to give a present to? Be honest, which one? One or two? Two, of course it is. You might say, I know I've got to be Christian here, it's going to be one. You might say, I've got to be Christian as you're answering this question and say one, but you know in your heart of hearts it's two. Because we're legalists at heart. Because we don't like grace at heart. It's about being to others what God has been to us, being gracious. Those are the good works that God has prepared for us in advance. He's so transformed us by His grace that we're men and women of grace. And thirdly and finally, bask in grace. This is one that we need to hear often. Let's bask in grace. Really, let's just go back to it often, remind ourselves of the Gospel often. Let's tell one another that Jesus has died for us. Jesus took our place, He bore God's wrath, He bore our sin, so that we don't need to bear it anymore. He made us right with God because we can't make ourselves right with God, and we can trust His Word. Make the decision now, in this moment, to trust Christ and His finished work. If you're a Christian, do it again afresh. Say, thank you, Jesus, for my salvation. Thank you, Father, that you gave your Son to do the work that I could not do. Thank you, Father, for giving Jesus to do the good works that I could not do. Thank you, Father, for rescuing me in Christ. so that he might pay my sin, that he might take your punishment, so that he might make me right with you. Thank you. If you're not a Christian, this is the centre point of history. This is the centre point of the universe. This is the defining moment for you. Hear the good news and respond to it. You don't have to carry the weight of your sin anymore. I promise you. You don't have to face the prospect of an angry God anymore. I promise you. Because Jesus has done it. You don't have to! If you're not a Christian this morning, here, please hear me on this. You are spending your life trying to justify yourself. You really are. That's the narrative of your life. You're trying to justify yourself in your relationships. Maybe you're promiscuous. You jump in from one bed to another bed to another bed. Why are you doing that? Because you're trying to justify yourself. You're trying to, as it were, make your life worthwhile by your sexual exploits. Maybe it's your career. You're trying to climb the corporate ladder. You're working all the hours that there are in a day in order to be successful. Why? Because you're trying to justify yourself. And these sexual exploits, this career that you're having, maybe you're just a slob because you've just kind of given up on it and you don't care anymore. But the problem is that whatever way you're trying to justify yourself, It's crushing you. You can't do it. It won't satisfy. You'll get to the top of that corporate ladder and all you'll see is the world from a dizzy height and you'll want to throw yourself off. You'll jump from bed to bed to bed into the end. You don't care who's in that bed next to you. But you don't have to do it because Jesus has done it. You don't have to work with a guilty conscience and think, what's God going to say one day? Because Jesus has paid it. But if you're a Christian, let me tell you this. This is great news, really. Nothing, absolutely nothing you can do can make you any more acceptable to God than you are at this moment in time. Nothing. Let me tell you some other good news. Nothing that you do, absolutely nothing, can make you any less acceptable to God than you are in this moment in time. If you're in Christ, you can't add to your salvation, you can't take away from your salvation. You can't do any good works to make Him happier with you. You can't do any bad works to make Him less happy with you. In Christ, you're complete. That's justification. In this world, we will sin. So be a sinner and sin boldly. Because when you know that you're a sinner who sins boldly, then you're going to go running to the cross. Then you're going to go running for more grace. Then you're going to throw yourself upon Jesus. Let me finish with a final illustration and then just a short story. Imagine your day begins, you wake up, you're alarmed. As soon as you open your eyes, you say, praise God, a new day to serve Him. You get out of bed, you have a quick shower, brush your teeth, and you do your quiet time, your devotionals. You have a breakfast, very thankful for God's provision for you. You go out the door, thankful for God's provision of a home. You get into the car, going to work, thankful for God's provision of your job. As you're driving along, somebody cuts in front of you, so you just wave at them, please feel free. You pray for them. You get to work. Your coffee breaks, somebody says, hey, I'd like to talk to you about Christianity. Let's have lunch together. Great. You talk to them about Christianity. You explain the gospel to them. They become a Christian. Somebody's overhearing it. They listen in. They want to become a Christian too. Lunchtime in two converts. Praise God. You thank God for using you this way. You get through your day. Your boss says you've just been an exemplary employee. Thank you for that. You praise God for being gracious and letting him use you to commend him. to people, you go home, you just spend time with your family and you delight in that all your kids are Christians, you have a great day, you lie in your bed and you lie there and you think, oh father, thank you for what a great day it's been today, that you've blessed me, that you've used me and I'm just ready that I can talk to you like this. You have final prayer, close your eyes and you go to sleep. The next day you wake up and you've got a splitting headache. And not only that, but you know, you slept through your alarm and you haven't got time to do your devotional. You just drink a coffee, spills down you and you say, you know, I've gone like that because I can't swear in the pulpit. So, you go out the door, you bang the door because your wife's saying something that you don't want to hear. You jump in your car, you drive down the freeway, somebody pulls in front of you and words come out of your mouth that you never read in the Bible. anywhere in the Bible. You didn't see him there. And you find yourself capable of hand gestures with such dexterity you never knew your fingers could do what they're doing at this moment in time. A colleague comes to you at work and says, hey, you're a Christian, aren't you? Yeah, so? Well, somebody was just telling me that they became a Christian through talking to you. Could you explain to me the gospel? Now this is your boss and you don't want to tell your boss because it might have implications on your career. So you fudge the issue completely. And then you get home and your headache hasn't got any worse and the kids are just a mess, your home's a mess, your wife hasn't done her job properly and you wonder why on earth you married her. And then you feel guilty for being critical of your kids and screaming at them and shouting at your wife. And you go to bed and you think, OK, I've got to end the day with prayer. I didn't begin it with prayer. But then actually you think, how on earth can I? What a schmuck I am. Look at my day. Failure. I can't pray. You see, day one, you prayed because you'd performed. You don't believe in grace. Day two, you didn't pray because you failed. You don't believe in grace. God accepts you on day one, not because of your performance, but because of Christ. God accepts you on day two, not because of your failure, but because of Christ. He accepts you no less on day two than He did on day one. He accepts you no more on day one than He does on day two. That's what grace is. So, let's ask God to get it into our heads and our hearts and let's actually enjoy it. Enjoy who we are in Him. Now, here's the story. In Greek mythology, and I end with this, there was an island that was inhabited by Sirens. That was the name given to them. They were hybrids, half birds, half women. And they would sing the most beautiful, captivating songs, beguiling songs, as ships sailed past the island. And the sailors would be drawn irresistibly to that island, and they would hit the rocks, and the ships would then be plundered, and the sailors would meet their death. Different heroes in Greek mythology had different methods of avoiding that fate. One of them, a man by the name of Odysseus, would fill his own ears with wax of his sailors and tie himself to the mask so that he wouldn't be seduced by that beguiling music of the sirens. Orpheus, on the other hand, played such beautiful music on a harp but the sailors took no notice at all of what the sirens were singing and they sailed right on by. Grace is that beautiful music. As a church that is called Grace, may God grant you to play such beautiful music, not only that it seals our hearts for Christ so that we don't go back into what the world has to offer, But those in the world are drawn irresistibly, not to the rocks of disaster, but to the rock of life and find salvation. Let me pray for you. Father, I pray for my brothers and sisters. I thank you for them. I thank you for the grace that is evident here. And I pray that great grace might be upon them. Lord, overflowing grace. Lord, Lord, just saturate them with your grace, please. Let them believe the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, to the extent, Lord, that it transforms their lives, their hearts, their relationships, their mission, how they do their work, how they relate as husband and wives, as parents, as children, as neighbours, as colleagues, as employers, employees. Lord, let them be men and women defined by grace. May there be a great grace revolution here, in this part of the world. that will be for the praise and the glory of Jesus. Amen.