Usually, this is the part of the service where I would go down, and Pastor Nick would come up and preach. But as we prayed for this morning, Pastor Nick is teaching at a pastor's conference in the Philippines, and it's my privilege to bring you the Word of God this morning. We're going to be looking this morning at—despite, I know that your orders may say one thing. I had to make a last-minute call for various reasons. We're not looking at Matthew 5 today. We're going to be looking at Ephesians 2. And for our reading this morning, we're going to be looking at the... We're going to start with Ephesians 2, verse 1, and then read through verse 10. So hear the word of the Lord to his people. And you were dead in the 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, 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 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 towards 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. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Father, what a... I don't want to pick favorites in your scriptures, but Lord, what a glorious, what a glorious passage this is. And so Lord, we pray that as we meditated upon it this morning, that we would be made to see and to be aware once again of the greatness of the gospel, of the depth of our need, of the wonder of the fact that you have set your love upon us. Lord, that we would be reminded that we have nothing to boast of. Lord, that is the The great application this morning is to see ourselves as small and you as great, and to worship you and live joyfully in response to that. As we have read in your, just now, that we should walk in the good works that you have prepared beforehand for us. Lord, we pray that you would open our eyes, that your spirit would illumine the text to us this morning as it is open to us. We pray this in our Savior's name. Amen. Really, if you wanted to have like an elevator pitch, a one minute summary of God's purpose and plan for creation, for humanity, not just a summary of the gospel, but like the bigger picture of why the gospel. It's all here. You'd have a hard time doing much better than simply reading these 10 verses. Like we talked about this morning when we went to the confession of sin, that first we have the bad news. Everyone starts dead. Dead and trespasses in sin. Following the prince of the power of the air, in case you're unclear who that is, that means Satan. That we are by nature children of wrath. But if you talk to people that you know that you meet on the street, is that how they would describe their situation? That I'm dead in trespasses and sin. I'm following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air. That's not how they think of themselves, is it? The urge for them to minimize their guilt and their need is so strong. I mean, we all do this by nature, don't we? We wanna say, oh, sure, sure, I've made mistakes. Yeah, I have some regrets, but who does it? I'm only human. And maybe you, this morning, don't recognize yourself as ever being the person like is described here in this text. You might say to yourself, hey, I grew up in a good family. I was raised right, I worked hard, I still work hard. I've never heard anyone, I've never been arrested, I've never been to jail. I mean, yes, I mean, I know, I've met some people like Paul's talking about. They grew up in a bad situation. Some people, they're just bad seeds. They're just born a little off. But I'm not following anyone, much less the power of the prince of the air. I make my own decisions. And yes, I make some mistakes, but who doesn't? And that's exactly the problem, isn't it? Who doesn't? In Philippians, Paul tries to head off this line of thinking where he says, look, if you think that you have some reason for thinking that you are living a life that is acceptable to God, let me tell you about myself. He says, though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. In other words, Paul's saying, I was as upright and apparently righteous and religious as you can be, and yet he doesn't hesitate to include himself in this. He says, we all once lived in the passions of our flesh. Paul says, no, the issue is not a few sins and a few foibles, a few mistakes, a few regrets here and there. that the issue that each one of us have is comprehensive. You are like debris that's being carried down the river. You're going where you're carried. You might not realize that you're being carried because that's what you want. but the reality is that you are being carried along. Nonetheless, the debris being floated on the river says, this is what I want. I'm going exactly where I want. You are being carried. And the language is harsh, isn't it? You're dead in sin. You are children of wrath. That sounds bleak. That sounds unwelcoming. That sounds fire and brimstone. How do we respond to that? What can we change to avoid that? Well, the answer to that is right there in the statement of the problem. What can someone who is dead do to change their situation? And so the bad news is bad. And the bad news being very, very bad is what makes the good news very, very good. If you go to the doctor with abdominal pain, And you're doubled over, and the doctor looks at you, and they run some tests, and they run some scans, and they say, well, it looks like you've got a really bad case of gas. Here's some medication. You'll probably be fine tomorrow. That's nice. That's helpful. But it's not exactly earth-shattering good news that you were able to get a solution to your problem. But if you talk to your doctor and she says, you have appendicitis, and if we don't get you on an operating table in the next few hours, it's gonna burst and you will probably die, then it's very, very good news that you have a solution to your problem. And so for us, the bad news is that every person is born into sin, and that bad news is as bad as bad news can be. Every one of us is born dead. dead in sin and trespasses, unable to do anything to change that state, and unwilling to do so. And so if verses one through three are the statement of this very acute, bleak problem, then verses five through 10 are the solution. We were dead. that we were made alive. We were children of wrath, but now we're raised up with Christ and seated in the heavenly places. We followed the course of this world, but now we walk in the good works which God has prepared before them. So verses 1 through 3 is the problem, verses 5 through 10 is the solution, and verse 4 is the why. It tells us the heart of God for his own people. And so this whole message Since I didn't give Daniel a title for this message because I changed the last minute I would call this message the why of the gospel and so this Which is also our first point the why of the gospel is And so we talked about how those first 10 verses in Ephesians really gives you that 30-second elevator pitch of God's plan for humanity. But if you had to trim it down further, if you had to summarize the gospel in just two words, how would you do it? You might think Jesus saves, or maybe I think that Christ wins is also a great one, or death dies, But we could certainly do worse than these first two words of verse four, but God. R.C. Sproul said that that word in this verse is his favorite word in the whole Bible. And if you want to understand Reformed theology, read this verse a thousand times. And this whole passage is one that pulls back the curtain and shows us the behind the scenes story of how someone passes from death and sin into life in Christ. You and I, we look at our lives as an audience member. We see someone hearing about Jesus. being told of their need to repent of sin. Maybe there's someone who grows up in the church. Maybe there's someone who, and they embrace it from an early age, or maybe it's someone who, after a crisis event in their life, realizes their need for a savior. Maybe they hear a simple message and they respond quickly, maybe, and have a sudden and radical conversion experience. Or maybe they're simply compelled to admit the truth of the gospel. Like C.S. Lewis, who recalled his conversion, saying, I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England. As I, one of my, one of the greatest privileges of being an elder in this church is getting to do the elder interviews for membership. And we get to, you guys get to hear the testimonies that are given before people are voted on for membership. But we get to hear the, you know, the director's cut, the much longer version of them. And it is glorious. And the thing that is always just impresses me is the testimonies are like fingerprints. And like no two people have the same one, that through very different circumstances, God brings them to himself. But regardless of all that variety and all the different types of external circumstances in people's lives, there are always commonalities. And to one degree or another, you know, you have to start with, we realize that God is holy and we aren't. that we need forgiveness and it only comes through placing our faith in Christ's work for us. Some of us understood more and some of us understood less, but those elements were there. But Paul is bringing us backstage and showing us what was happening behind the scenes. And that was that you and I were dead, but God. Look at this passage. I mean, where is my contribution? Where's your contribution? Do we make the first move? No, we're dead in sin. But I have to respond to God's offer in faith? Yes, but how? And Paul says, that wasn't from you, it's a gift. I responded in faith because I was given faith. What is my contribution to this amazing good news that the dead are made alive? My contribution is the dead body. My contribution is my need. But God, this good news has one source and one source alone, God. He initiates, He acts. But why does he respond to our need in this way? Is it out of obligation that, well, I made them, so I guess I gotta save them. No, he sees us in our need and he rushes to meet it because he is, Paul says, rich in mercy. This is the only place in the Bible where God has said to be rich in something. And perhaps it's a bit surprising that it would be mercy. After all, mercy means to respond to sin and misery by showing compassion, rather than responding to sin with what it deserves. And we're being told that God sees the people dead in sin and trespasses, and his response to them is compassion. Instead of pulling away from them, he draws near. Because of who he is, he meets their desperate need. God being rich in mercy. It's not something that he became. It is something that is at the core of who he is that has been revealed by our need. Dane Ortlund in his wonderful book, Gentle and Lowly, which I will confess that I had him do the hard work of finding the good Puritan quotes, going through the thousand pages, thousands of pages of Puritan quotes. So when I quote Thomas Goodwin, I credit Dane Ortlund for finding these quotes for me. But he says, a statement like that is taking us into the inner recesses of the creator, into the heavens, holy of holies, behind the inner veil, disclosing to us the animating center of God's very being and nature. And Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan writer, says, he is the spring of all mercy. It's natural to him. It's his nature and his disposition, because when he shows mercy, he does it with his whole heart. When we say that it is at the core of who God is, we're not saying that God is only merciful. He is also holy. He is also wrathful at sin. But mercy is at the core of who he is. When we say that God is love, mercy is the response of God's love to our need. Mercy is at the core of who he is, and his heart must pour out mercy on his people, even if it means that he needs to provide them with a substitute so that that mercy can be poured out. and justice and holiness joined together and maintained. If God being rich in mercy seems abstract, if it seems hard to get our arms around, then we can turn to the gospels and we can look at the very concrete, very non-abstract, very tangible ways that God was rich in mercy. But rich is a relative. After all, I've met some pretty wealthy people. And the funny thing is, you can meet someone who is a millionaire many, many times over. And you might just think to yourself, look, you're rich. And they will say, I'm not rich. I'm well off. I'm comfortable. Rich in the United States in 2025 is perhaps different than the definition of rich in the US of 1790 or in the Aztec Empire or the Ming Dynasty or Ethiopia in 1980. Rich is relative. And the reason I say this is because if richness is relative to circumstances, then what must it mean to say that God is rich in something? We have an infinite need, but God meets it with the inexhaustible resources of his mercy. Micah 7.18 says that God delights to show mercy. He doesn't give it grudgingly. We don't have to kind of pull it out of him. It's his joy to be merciful. And we'll see this if we just take a quick dip. I know we're in verse 4, but we're going to take a quick dip into 6 and 7. We Reformed people like to emphasize and talk about that we have a God-centered theology, that ultimately God's purpose for all things that he does is to display his glory. That it is his passion to show himself as worthy of honor and to receive that honor. That we talk about having a God-centered rather than a man-centered theology. It was a very simple children's catechism that we did with our kids, and many of you who are parents of young kids might have done this as well. where you don't get very far into it when you hit this truth, when the question is, who made you? It all starts with, who made you? God. What else did God make? Any kids remember? God made all things. Why did God make you and all things? for his own glory. Throughout scripture, over and over, we hear the refrain of why God is working in history for his people, and it is for his glory. And so when God says, I want to display to all creation my glory, what is most wonderful, most worthy, most excellent, when he wants to reveal himself as worthy of worship, He does it by displaying His unconditional covenant love for His people. Verses six and seven, He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming age, He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. being rich in mercy towards his people is absolutely central to who he is. And so we've been looking at the why of the gospel. We're going to look now at the why of God's mercy. Once again, any of you who have young kids or have any of you who have been young kids, sometimes when you make a statement to a, you say something to a three-year-old, they say, why? And then you explain why. And then they say, why? And they keep on just peeling back that onion more and more until you get to a place where you're just like, just because. We're going to get to that. That's kind of what's happening here. We see that God's response to us being under wrath, being dead in sin and trespasses, was to unilaterally reach out to make us alive in Christ. And so our natural response is, why would he do that? Now the text answers, because he is rich in mercy. And then what do we do? And if we say in response to that, well, but why? Why is he rich in mercy? We're able to dig one layer deeper because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses. And to some extent, and if we say why beyond that, why did he love us? Why did he set his great love upon us? And that's where we say, just because, we don't know. We can't go any further than that. But God's mercy is rooted in his love. God's mercy towards his people, his mercy is his love and action towards humanity. God's mercy flows out of the inexhaustible spring of God's love. The love that God has for his people isn't just long-suffering, isn't just patience, it isn't just that he's willing to put up with us. Zephaniah 3.17 says, the Lord is, your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will say, he will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing. That's the love that God has for his people. He doesn't grudgingly accept us. He rejoices over us. He exalts over us with loud singing. But though the The love that Paul is speaking of here is inexhaustible. It's very important for us to realize that it is not indiscriminate. I don't see how we can escape that truth. Paul is speaking to a group of people and he says to them, you were dead in sins and trespasses, that you were children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But something happened that changed their status. that they were dead, but they were now alive because of the love with which God loved them. That love brought about mercy, which brought about the gift of new life. I don't see any place in this text for that love to fail to do its work. It's a matter of the dead being made alive, of choosing to remain dead is not an option. So the conclusion that we come to is that this love is not indiscriminate. It is directed at a particular group of people. Perhaps our response to that might be, that sounds elitist. That sounds like you're setting yourself up as better than other people. That's exclusionary. If we hear, because of the great love with which he loved us, and like we said, we get to that, if we ask like the three or four year old, why, we can't get any further than that. It's not, this is not an elitist idea, because all that we know is that it's not based on anything that we've done. It is not based on anything about who we are. It is not based on any kind of difference or superiority in those that he has set his love on. He loved us when we were most unlovable. He loved us when we were dead in our sins and trespasses. In other words, God loves his people for his own reasons. In Romans 9, 15, Paul quotes God's words to Moses in Exodus, and he says, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. That is not rounds for pride. That is not grounds for boasting. What did I do to contribute? Nothing. What did I do to set myself apart? Nothing. I was dead and I was made alive. So that work was not initiated by us. It was not accomplished by us. It was not applied by us. Nothing less was required than for God the Son to enter into His own creation that He spoke into being as a helpless, dependent baby to live a perfect life, not following as the rest of us did the course of this world, but perfectly following and obeying the Father in all things, and then being nailed to the cross like a murderer or a thief. And somehow on that cross, taking upon himself the penalty, all the wrath that justice demanded of his fallen people, dying and then triumphing over death by rising again on the third day and ascending into heaven. That is what had to happen so that God, who is rich in mercy, could also be the God who is just. That is what had to happen so that children of wrath could become children of God. And maybe this might sound, maybe this might sound perfectly normal to you. To me, when I sort of understood this, it sounded odd, but that all of those things, all of the work of Christ was not what had to happen so that we could be loved. God's love for his people extends back into eternity. Even as, as Paul says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he protests in us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. If I want you to understand anything, well, not anything, one thing I really want you to understand, Christ did not die for you so that you could be made lovable. Christ died for you because you were loved from all eternity. Your sin is not and never has been an obstacle to Christ's love for you. Your sin was an obstacle to Christ's fellowship with you. And it is because of his love for his people that he is committed to destroying every obstacle, anything that could keep him from his people. that would prevent him from delighting in them, and from them delighting in him. Sin stood between Christ and his people, and so he destroyed its power, and took its penalty, and will destroy its presence. Death stood between Christ and his people, so he conquered it, rising from the grave as a promise of the resurrection that awaits each of us. And the reason that I make a point of emphasizing it is because if there is anything that I want you, that I want to accomplish this morning is to leave you with the knowledge that there is nothing left that you can point to in your life, in your character, in your choices, in your accomplishment and say, this will earn me more of God's love. And that there is no failure in your life, in your choices, in your accomplishments that you can say, this will lose me, God's love. We, each of us, we want to deserve to be loved. And maybe it's embarrassing to admit, but if you're married, have you ever said to yourself, to your spouse, something like, what do you love about me? Maybe it's, you know, springing from a cute romantic moment, or maybe it's maybe deep down coming from a place of pain from you feeling unloved by your spouse, or maybe you feel unlovable. But regardless of where it comes from, ultimately, deep down, the thought is the same. Tell me why I deserve your love. Truly undeserved love is very hard for us to accept. It's humbling. It leaves no room for pride. It leaves no room for boasting. And all it leaves room for is gratitude. We love because we're finite, because we need. We have a need, and love fills that need. But that's not the way that God loves, and that's not why God loves. He does not love us because he's missing something. He loves us because he's overflowing with love. He loves because, as John says, God is love. And that is our anchor in deep waters. And we're going to need it, because whether it's someone succumbing to the temptation of an addiction that they had thought and hoped and prayed that they'd left behind, or a parent that feels helpless to break the cycle of sin that they learned from their parents and are seeing it play out again with their own children. Maybe a flagrant sin, maybe one that may seem minor, but whose hold on you seems unbreakable. there will likely come a time where at least some part of us says, because of who I am or what I've done, I can't be loved. But here is the reason that God's love for his people never fails. It's because he sets his love from all eternity on a person, not on their words, not on their deeds, not on their thoughts, not on their faithfulness, not on their works. He loves you as you, not for what you bring, not for what you've done, not because of what you've earned. He loves you as you and does not love you less for what you fail to bring. Thomas Goodwin. which is so rich in this, says that God's commitment is that I will love such a one. Let his condition be what it will be. If he fall into sin, I will fetch him out of it again that I may delight in him. The covenant of grace is a covenant of persons and God gives the person of Christ to us and the person of the Holy Ghost to us and he chooses our person simply as such. And when we grow in our confidence that God's love for us has nothing to do with our works, that he loved us with a great love while we were dead in our sin and trespasses, then our sins and our failures don't mean that we have to hide from God in shame, but now that our need can draw us near to him because he is the one who is rich in mercy. I can't come to the end of a message like this without doing my best to make clear a couple of things. The first is that these indescribably great blessings of confidence in the love and acceptance of God aren't promised to every individual. They are for those that, as Paul says, by grace have been saved through faith. And so if your faith is not placed in Christ and His work alone for the forgiveness of your sin, if you don't see the need for Christ's death, for the forgiveness of your sins, then these promises are not yours. I'm not saying this to exclude you. I'm saying this to plead with you. Because the second thing I want to make clear is that they can be for you. If you hear that diagnosis of your life, that you are one who's being carried like debris down the river of sin and rebellion, powerless to change your course and say, No, I know that that way only leads to misery and death, and I want off this ride. And only Jesus can do it. Then there is no reason to delay, and there is no better time. You can reach out to one of the pastors and elders here, and we would love to talk to you about becoming a follower of Christ. And for those of you who do know Christ, who want to love him more, want to follow him more faithfully. D. A. Carson says that you can't be mature unless you experience for yourself more and more fully that you are loved by God. That's true and Growing in that is not simply a matter of, let's do a word study on the Greek word agape, or let's read some Puritan books with really like half-page long subtitles about love. We're gonna have the opportunity next week, this coming weekend, to have, you know, we have our sort of our mini conference on the love of God. That's valuable. That's wonderful. That's important. All of those things are helpful. But in Ephesians 3, Paul prays for the church to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. You may be filled with the fullness of God. I'm pretty sure that's at least part of where Dr. Carson got his conclusion from. And it shows that it's not simply that understanding God's love is not simply information to be consumed, but like all good things, it's a gift to be received. So I'd like to close by praying Paul's prayer for the Ephesians. for the saints of Kings Cross Church and of every church. Let's pray together. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Amen.