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It is so good to be with you
and what a beautiful day the Lord gave us, beautiful Easter
Sunday. And good to be back. I understand, am I right, Brother
Greg? This is the first Sunday night
you've met in a long, long time. Pretty much. In a year's time, two or three. Well, it's good to see you. I'm
glad that you have not gotten out of the habit of assembling
with the saints, coming together to hear His word proclaimed.
And do pray for me as I seek to do that this evening. We're
speaking of God's grace to zombies. That will become clearer, I trust,
as we go this evening. But for a grace preacher at a
grace conference to be speaking on grace, you think, well, what
could be more natural than that? I think I've probably sweated
over this message more than any other and I guess it's simply
because it's something that I've preached on a hundred times and
probably you've heard preached on a hundred times and we sort
of mull it over what in the world could we say new something fresh
but I have learned a long time ago that just because I preach
something from the pulpit doesn't mean everybody heard it It doesn't even mean everybody
was gonna remember it. So there's a sense in which repetition
is indeed the mother of learning. So we'll be repeating some things
I trust that you know, have heard, but perhaps we'll be coming at
it from a little bit different angle tonight. Let's think back
to this morning, and we were looking at the work of the three
persons of the Trinity in our salvation. And as you looked
at that, we looked at the work of the Father in election and
predestination and so forth, then the work of the Son in redemption. And you might think that of the
three persons of the Trinity, which one gets the short shift
here? I think you would say, well,
it seems to us that it was the work of the Holy Spirit. I mean,
after you've devoted about six or seven verses to the other
two persons, you get here to verse 12 and verse 13 and so
forth, two and a half verses. to the work of the Holy Spirit.
Why so little? And I think the answer is to
be found in the fact that Paul knows where he's going in this
letter. And he knows that he's going
to be amplifying this theme. And that's what we're finding
in our text tonight. It's as if we're putting that
little section under a microscope and blowing it up. And we're
taking a real in-depth look at exactly what is being said here. So it's like he's continuing. Now he's had a little prayer
in the interim. We're gonna be talking tomorrow
night about Paul's prayers in the book of Ephesians. And let
me just touch on this first one. The one we'll be looking at mainly
is over in chapter three. But there is a prayer beginning
in verse 15 and running down through the end of the chapter.
And it's really not clear where the prayer ends. Paul is simply
asking God to allow the Ephesians to be enlightened with the knowledge
from heaven of a couple of things. Number one, the ramifications
of their salvation, the inheritance that this thing has brought to
them. And secondly, that they, and this is where I want to major
on tonight, that they would understand the nature of the power that
has worked on their behalf in salvation. Now, as I said this
morning, we hadn't dealt a lot with the resurrection of Christ,
but I want you to see it here in chapter 1, verse 19. Paul
is praying that you might know what is the exceeding greatness
of His, that is, God's power toward us, ubalit. according
to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ
when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right
hand in the heavenly places." Do you understand what he's saying?
Paul is saying, I want you to wake up and understand what kind
of power was being exercised on your behalf when you were
saved. It's the same power that raised
His Son from the dead. And we will see that more enlarged
as we go into our section tonight. Now, this sort of reminds me
that it is possible, and sometimes it happens quite often, I think,
that people are truly converted, truly saved, and they do not
grasp the enormity of what God has done for them. We're sort
of like the frog in a hailstorm. You know, we know something got
us, but we don't know what it was or where it came from, you
know? It hit us, and we know something's changed, and we know
something's different, but we don't really understand all the
ins and outs. And so Paul is praying for the
Ephesian saints that they would have this enlightenment to be
able to grasp what exactly God has done on their behalf. And it's all about this subject
of grace. And we'll learn why grace is
indeed amazing grace, as John Newton put it. We also saw that
this is a top-down description. This is not the story of man
found his way up to God. It is the story of how God reached
down to man. He has the high ground. He is
telling us the full and complete story of which we have a minute
knowledge of. We are indeed at least were at
one time in a condition called zombies. Now, I call it that.
I do not understand pop culture's infatuation with zombies. If you get it, please explain
it to me. I don't really understand it.
But I do know that today our culture and its movies and so
forth, they love that theme. and why I don't get it, but I
do know we've been out in Wyoming in the summers. In fact, we're
due to head back out that way the end of this month for probably
about six months. We have a ranch out there, and
we've been working on about a 100-year-old cabin to make it an off-grid
place where our family can come and visit and so forth. And I
put out the word to my family that when the zombie apocalypse
begins, We've got the place you need to bug out to. I think we
can hold them off. I mean, it's remote, it's back
in there, and it's the perfect spot for that. So come on down
when the zombies start coming around. Well, what in the world
is a zombie? Now, I'm not up on all of this
stuff, but best I can tell, a zombie is sort of a corpse that has
been reanimated somehow. It's the walking dead, right?
Well, you can't find a better description of the saints before
their salvation than that terminology. As we're gonna see here tonight,
that's exactly what Paul describes not only the saints in Ephesus,
but himself as well. He uses the term we and us. We
were in this state of alive on one level, but dead on the most
important level. And he implies right here in
the first verse of chapter two, as he continues, and notice he
really doesn't finish his prayer. In some sense, he's gonna answer
his prayer. He's going to explain the very thing that he's asked
God to give the Ephesian saints the ability to grasp. Notice
we began in verse one that you who, you have been quickened,
the old King James said. I sort of still stick with that
because when I'm cutting my fingernails, every now and then I hit the
quick. You've had that experience. That's
the part, when you hit that, you come alive, right? And that's
exactly what the word means. You've been quickened, you've
been made alive. Why did you need to be made alive?
You were dead in trespasses and sins. Now, remember, he is writing
to those back in chapter one that he said God chose us in
Christ from the foundation of the world. This is a description
of the elect. Can I emphasize it one more time,
or have you thrown something at me? Election to life does
not itself bestow life. Notice these are the elect, and
yet they are described by Paul as once have been dead in trespasses
and sins. They're not dead, they're not
alive yet. Whatever that means, they don't have it yet. And what
we're looking at is the process by which dead zombies, you and
I, are brought to a state of life with God. What does this
look like? Well, we call it being born again.
Well, actually, we describe it in several ways. A new birth,
sometimes a new creation, but especially a new life, a resurrection
from a state of death to a state of life. And now you begin to
see why he described the power that works in us in salvation
as akin to the same power that raised Christ from the dead.
It didn't just raise him from the dead, it raised you and I
from the dead. Here we are on Easter Sunday.
And yes, we celebrate the fact of Christ's resurrection. But
our knowledge and our experience goes beyond just the mere fact. If you're truly a Christian tonight,
you have experienced some semblance of the same resurrecting power. You were once in a state of death.
You have now been made alive in Christ. Now I want to emphasize
that you were not dead in every way. A zombie is not dead in
every sense. I mean, for the dead, they get
around. Right? I mean, that's why you
gotta be scared of the zombies. They're the walking dead. They're
the animated dead. And in the very same way that
we, in our dead state, were the walking dead. We'll see that
explained in just a minute. You always note the zombie by
that zombie walk, you know? Well, so it is that those who
are dead in trespasses and sin have a walk that betrays the
fact that they're not truly alive. Alive in one sense, and I'm guilty. I confess, sometimes in our preaching,
we use illustrations like, well, look, a lost man certainly can't
believe in Christ. Can this pulpit believe in Christ? You know, it's dead. Can a dead
sinner believe in Christ? Well, we're not quite being honest
with the scripture. A lost man is not dead in every
way. He certainly is alive in the
sense that he's able to think, he's able to exercise logic,
He has the power of volition to some degree. He can make choices
within a certain sphere. He's not dead on every level,
but in the sense that is most important. Whether he's alive
to God, he's dead as a doornail. He's as dead as this pulpit in
that sense. He is unable, as I mentioned
a moment ago, when you cut your fingernail, you hit the quick,
that's the part that responds, correct? And the dead man, the
man lost and dead in trespasses and sin has no ability to respond
correctly to God. Now he responds to everything
else. Notice he's selectively dead. I struggle for ways of explaining
this, but I trust that you look back on your life and you would
say, in my lost state, there was a time when I had absolutely
no use for God. No use for the, you know, look
at those fools going to a place like this on Sunday night. Had
no use for the worship of Christ. And yet something happened that
what you were dead to, you're now alive to. And contrary wise,
not only that, but the things that you were alive to, alive
to sin, alive to this world, alive to the opinions of everybody
around you, suddenly you become dead to those things, alive to
others. You now love what you once hated
and you hate what you once loved, right? That's the nature of conversion. The Old Testament describes it
by this sort of heart transplant, that God is taking away a heart
of stone, unresponsive, and putting in a heart of flesh that will
respond to the things of God. Notice, we're not being made
robots, but something is happening within that is changing us. That's what he is saying to the
saints at Ephesus, those who are the elect of God, chosen
in Christ from the foundation of the world, and yet still dead
in their sins until something happens. Got me? You with me? All right. I wanna
look at this zombie walk just for a moment before we leave
this passage. Notice in verse two, for dead
folks, again, they got around, in which in times past, you walked. You walked in this deadness.
And three things, three ways that you can identify this zombie
walk. You walked according to the course
of the world. You walk like an earthling. Well, you say, well, what else
could I do? I am an earthling. Well, yeah,
you walk like people on this planet walk, like everybody else
walks. You walk like the natural man
walks. You're following the course of
this thing he calls the world, the cosmos, this system of things
that is around us. I'm fascinated by the fact that
we have these fads that come through our culture. Have you
noticed that? Suddenly, you ladies, a new style
of dress or perhaps wearing your hair comes across, and all of
a sudden, everybody's gotta do it that way. Have you ever noticed
that? I remember the first fad I was ever aware of, and that
was Davy Crockett hats. Some of y'all old fellas remember,
you know, Davy Crockett. He had to have a coonskin hat.
I mean, it was just like every boy in America had to have a
coonskin hat. How did that happen that way?
Don't you see something strange about these fads that passed
through? You remember the hula hoop? And the first time I ever
saw one of those things. And all of a sudden, everybody
in America, I wish I'd have thought that up, everybody in America
had to have one. How does that happen? And it's
like when this gets faddish, everybody is influenced in the
same direction. Everybody has to walk the same
way. Notice, they walk according to
the course of this world. And John reminds us in his epistle,
love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man loved the world, the love of the Father's not in him, right?
So that's the way you used to walk, you Ephesian saints. Secondly,
notice you walked according to the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience. There is a spiritual element
to this thing called the world, that the world is the manifestation
of a kingdom of this spirit who elsewhere is called the God of
this world. the spirit that works among the
children, the sons of disobedience. There's a supernatural element
to this thing. You're being animated by a spirit. I think I've shared with you
before that how do you identify a spirit? If my cat starts barking, What's happened? I think I see
the problem. Your cat's been possessed by
a dog spirit. He looks like a cat on the outside,
but there's a dog spirit within driving him to do dog things,
right? And so it is with spirits. We
see demoniacs possessed with a spirit. You remember the Gatorine
maniac going around in the graveyard naked? cutting himself. You sense the nature of the spirit
within by the action of the man possessed by the spirit. And
here we see that Satan is the one who is animating lost man. And Paul is saying you Ephesians
used to be animated by the same spirit, the same zombie type
of behavior you once exhibited. Now, you probably are saying,
preacher, you don't know what you're talking about. Are you
telling me that all lost men, the lost world around us, is
actually possessed, being moved by a spirit, a demonic, satanic
spirit? Well, that's what I'm telling
you. Because you think, when I say that, that I'm talking
about spinning heads and projectile vomiting. You know, that's what
we've been conditioned to think of by Hollywood when we think
of someone possessed by spirit. No, I'm talking about the man
in a three-piece business suit sitting up in the corner office
of a high-rise skyscraper. You see, the Spirit, again back
to I John 2, don't love the world, all that is in the world, the
lust of the flesh, the pride of life, the lust of the eyes. He said, that's what the world,
that's the spirit of Satan that moves lost man. That's the evidence
of it. It has nothing to do, you think
that the person possessed by the devil is the drunk out there
in the gutter or the prostitute on the street corner. Well, yes,
but that's not really the normal manifestation of satanic spirit. The normal satanic spirit is,
I got this. I'll do it my way. I'm better
than you. This spirit of pride and arrogance
and the seeking to exalt oneself, that I'm better than you are,
that is the evidence of this satanic spirit. Well, we've got
to move on. Well, I don't have anywhere to
go tonight. Not either, but notice that the third thing is that
you not only walk according to the course of the world, you
walk according to the spirit that moves lost men, but you're
also walking, of course, according to the lust of your own flesh,
your own fleshly desires, your own carnal desires. Isn't it
strange that we who have a spiritual side component of our makeup,
that we're so controlled by fleshly, physical things. If you've ever
owned horses, remember the first time we had a couple of horses
for my daughters, and first time they got loose, we were out there
in the neighborhood chasing them all over the place, and a lady
who knew a whole lot more about horses than I knew said, that's
not the way to catch a horse. And she went into our little
barn and came out with a bucket of oats, and stood out there
and shook that bucket of oats, and before long, those horses
came right back, to where they left. And you say, well, she
must like oats. No, she doesn't like oats. They
like oats. She knows what their nature is
going to respond to, right? And so it is that the devil knows
what your nature is going to respond to. He knows how to attract. He knows how to tempt. He knows
how to seduce through the lust of the flesh, the pride of life,
the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. We want to
look better. We want to look good. We want
to be better than everybody else. And we have these appetites that
demand satisfaction, and it is those things that Satan uses
to control the minions, the zombies, under his rule and power. But
Paul is saying, Ephesians, that's where you were, that's what you
were, and there you would be. You were, and notice the one
that gets me is that last phrase of verse three. You were by nature
the children of wrath just like everybody else. Now this is the
elect of God he's talking about, okay? But there was a time when
there was absolutely no difference between you and the non-elect. You live exactly like they live,
right? You were just like them. You
thought like them. You were controlled by Satan
just like them. Dead you were and dead you would
be except for one thing, and the most beautiful words I think
in all the Bible is what follows in verse four, but God. Back home at Grace Bible Church,
we had a new pulpit. A fella in my church built this
new pulpit. Beautiful, it's almost more like
a work of art than a piece of furniture. And anyway, he built
it and he carved into the little faceplate up here those words,
but God. So every time that I got into
the pulpit there to preach, those words are staring back at me. and what wonderful words they
are. He's not saying, but you, but you wised up, but you had
enough sense to come in out of the rain. No, you didn't. The reason that you are where
you are today is not because of you, it is because of God. We could say, in fact, old Ralph
Barnard, I think one times defined grace as in spite of. It's not because of you, it's
in spite of you. You were not cooperating. You didn't bring anything to
the party, let's put it that way. There was nothing you had. And we try to define this term
grace, unmerited favor, that's probably about as good as we're
gonna do. We sometimes say that grace, if it's grace, it's free
grace, Pure grace, can't mix it with
works or you destroy it. And thirdly, it's sovereign grace. In other words, grace is in the
hands of the grace giver. He doesn't have to give it. He
can give it if he wants to. He can withhold it. It's sovereign
grace. But saying grace is free grace
is like saying country butter. I mean, what other kind of butter
is there? What other kind of grace can
there possibly be but free grace, pure grace, and sovereign grace? And that is, of course, where
Paul is taking us. You were dead as a doorknob in
the sense that truly mattered. As far as your eternal destiny
is concerned, you were in this dead state. Even though you were
not a corpse, you were an animated corpse. You're out there walking,
controlled by the spirit of Satan. You were as dead as this table,
this pulpit, when it came to changing your position. In other
words, you were dead in that sense. You couldn't get yourself
out of it. Let's think about those three
words a minute. Born again, a new creature, a resurrection. Those are three words that you
cannot do for yourself. No one can do for yourself. You
can't birth yourself. Right? You can't make yourself
a new creature. You can't do creative things.
That belongs to God and God alone. And you cannot raise yourself
from the dead, right? Notice that all three of those
terms that describe this change from death to life are three
things that you and I are incapable of performing in ourselves. There
are some cannots. The natural man cannot receive
the things of the Spirit. They're foolishness unto him,
neither can he know them. Paul will say in Romans 8 that
the man who's in the flesh cannot please God. He's not subject
to the law of God. He can't be You understand, there
is an inability that goes along with this dead state that I can't
get myself out of it. I can't change my state. If it's
going to change, I need somebody else's power to be at work on
my behalf. I need nothing short of divine
power to work, and that is what Paul is describing. We were dead
in sins and he has quickened us, raised us together with Christ. And he puts in little parentheses
there in verse 5, by grace you're saved. Now, he's going to say
that again in verse 8. It's like he can't help himself.
He's already jumping ahead. In case you miss it, It's by
grace that you're saved. And he's going to go on to define
that. But before he does, he wants you to realize the full
ramifications. Remember Christ back in chapter
one was raised from the dead. And where did he go? I mean,
we think of Easter as Christ being raised from something,
a tomb, the grave. But what Paul is describing is,
yes, that's part of it, but what really makes Easter fabulous
is not only what he was raised from, but what he was raised
to. That 40 days later, he did what? He ascended. Ascended where? To the right hand of the Father.
What's he doing up there? He's sitting on the throne. He's
running the show. And what he ends that prayer
with here in chapter one, if you glance back at that, he's
put all things in verse 22, chapter one, verse 22, he's put all things
under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the
church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth
all in all. Now notice that what Paul is
stressing is again this sense of a union between the believer
and Christ. You've been raised. Notice this
reference to the church. Christ is the head of the church. The church then is his body. Notice that between a head and
the body there's a union, a vital living union. And we might ask
ourselves, well, what church is this? Which church is Paul
talking about here? You may be aware that there are
landmark Baptists, is the name associated with them, that deny
that there is anything such as a universal church. And every
church in the New Testament is a local church. Well, I certainly
don't want to in any way degrade the importance of your local
church. But it's very difficult for us
to read these words and understand this to mean anything else than
there is a mystical body of Christ that is universal. comprised
of all the saints in all places, whether in heaven or earth, whether
here in America or over there in Africa, there is, in fact,
we might, although we have churches, plural, used several times in
the book of Acts, the churches of Judea, so forth, but when
it comes to body, how many bodies of Christ does he have? Well,
we're gonna be turned. We can cheat, go to the back
of the book, look at the answer. Ephesians chapter four, verse
four, there is, says Paul, one body. So though there are churches,
many, as far as local churches are concerned, the church he's
talking about here, which is identical with his body, there's
just one of those. And it is mystical in the sense
that you cannot perceive it with your senses. We're not aware
physically of this union. It's a spiritual union, and yet
it's a real union. Just because it's a union by
the Spirit doesn't mean it's not real. It's actual. We are
connected with Christ, our head, and so if he has been raised
from the dead to life, ascended to sit on the throne, if that's
where our head is, then in some sense, we are raised and seated
in heavenly places. You see the logic? And that's
what he goes on to say in verse six. He has raised us up together
and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. You say,
I don't feel like I'm in heaven right now. I don't feel like
I'm sitting in heavenly places. Preacher, am I to somehow close
my eyes and visualize myself floating up there, seated right
there alongside Christ? That's not what Paul is saying.
What he is saying is through this union with Christ, you are
joined to Christ and your head, wherever the head goes, the body's
gonna get there eventually. That's been my experience. The
head is seated in heaven on the throne of God. Where are we going
to be someday? Seated with Christ on His throne.
Just like I sat down on my Father's throne, you're going to sit down
on my throne. That's what He promises us. We're going to reign
with Christ on the earth. That's what Revelation is telling
us. So in other words, it's not that we somehow visualize that
we're actually there. We're not, you know, the old
kid in the backseat saying, are we there yet? Well, no, not in
a physical sense, but in a true spiritual sense, because of our
union with Christ, yes, we're reigning seated with him in heavenly
places. Oh, I wished we had an hour or
so to go into all the ramifications of that, but that's an amazing
thought. But it's that we, in union with
Christ, we inherit his history. Notice in verse five, backing
up there, we were dead and now we've been raised together with
Christ and we've been made to sit together with Christ in heavenly
places. I told you about our ranch out
in Wyoming. You say, Brother Mark, how'd
you get that ranch? I married that woman right over there. You say, you didn't buy it? No,
she did. No, she did. But because of the
marriage union, whatever she possessed became mine. I got all her possessions, she
got all my debts. It's a pretty good deal. What
I owed, she got, and what she owned, I got, right? In other
words, you understand that in a sense, I bought that ranch.
Although I didn't actually buy it, she did, but it's mine as
if I had bought it myself. that when you enter into a living
union with someone, you are inheriting not only what they have, but
you're inheriting their history. Paul will say, I'm crucified
with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I. Well, wait a minute,
Paul, were you actually hanging up there on the cross next to
Jesus? That's not what he's saying. But being united with Christ,
I am joined not only to His person, not only to the attributes, but
to his history. So that in a real sense, when
he died, I died. The law has no more claim on
me because I'm joined to the one who died on a cross. I'm just as dead to the law as
he was when he died. And not only do I possess, because
through that union with Christ, this union with his history,
you and I possess the union with the fact that he's seated in
heavenly places right now. We had a, I try to illustrate
this, what if we, back in Utah, I was living in Wyoming at the
time, and this was big news, all our news came out of Salt
Lake City, so it was almost like we were more a part of Utah than
Wyoming. But they had a murderer. named Gary Gilmore. Anybody remember
that name, some of you old folks? Gary Gilmore had committed murder,
no question about it, but the Supreme Court had done away with
the death penalty. And Gary Gilmore, in pleading
guilty, demanded that he be executed. Now a lot of this goes back to
Mormon doctrine. They have this ideal they call
blood atonement, but there's certain sins that Christ cannot
propitiate, cannot forgive you of, murder being one of them.
And so the only way that you can be forgiven of those kinds
of sin is by what they call blood atonement. You gotta have your
own blood spilled. in order for that sin to be forgiven.
Okay, this is Mormon stuff. And so Gary Gilmore insisted
on being put to death by a firing squad. You see the logic here? They
took the thing all the way to the Supreme Court and they finally
ruled that, yeah, okay, if he demands to be put to death by
a firing squad, that's how we'll do it. And sure enough, they
executed the guy. Suppose, suppose Gary Gilmore,
before his execution, had some heart trouble and needs a heart
transplant. And suppose they take a heart
out of somebody who never committed murder and put that heart in
Gary Gilmore. Do you understand that the heart
inherits the guilt? Because when they take aim to
execute Gary Gilmore, guess where they're aiming? Right at that
transplanted heart. Even though it wasn't there when
he committed the crime, because it is in union with him, the
heart is considered just as guilty as he was. And so it is that
through our union with Christ, what pertains to him, pertains
to us. And my, what a blessed thought
that is. Well, we can't camp here. Let's
go to the sort of the heart of the argument here. It's a verse
that I hope you have memorized. By grace are you saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. would say, I don't know, Brother
Greg, I put that in my top 10 of verses to memorize, maybe
number one. There's probably no more important
text in all the New Testament describing to us the nature of
salvation than that verse. Now, there's a whole lot of things
you need to know, but if you wanna know the mechanism, if
you wanna know how it happened, here's the explanation. It is
by grace through faith. Let's talk about that a minute.
You're not being saved by grace for faith. You're being saved through faith. You see the difference? If we
said that you're being saved because of faith, on the grounds
of faith, then faith itself becomes a meritorious thing that earns
you salvation, that there's something about faith itself, that God
just loves faith so much that if you'll give me some faith,
I'll give you salvation. It turns faith into a meritorious
work, you understand? No, we're not saved for faith,
we're saved through faith. It is the instrument by which
salvation comes to us. That's the mystery that Paul
is explaining here. Remember, the gospel came to
you, the missionary came and preached the gospel and the Holy
Spirit worked to bring him to you and you to accept the message
and you believed. But now he's putting that under
the microscope. Here's how all that works. That the faith that saves you
is not a thing that in any way adds anything to the work of
salvation. There is a text in Romans 4 where
Paul says a strange thing, and I read through this many, many
times without ever getting it. In Romans chapter four, in verse
16, let me read it to you. He says, therefore it is of faith. And he's talking about salvation.
It is of faith that it might be by grace to the end that the
promise might be sure to all the seed. Now notice, he said
it's by faith, it's by the means of faith so that it might be
by grace. Now, whether we understand it
or not, what he's saying is there's something about faith that is
compatible with salvation by grace. It fits that mechanism. You say, well, what are you talking
about? Because what we say when we talk about believing, we're
talking about the receptive organ of the soul. It is not the productive
organ of the soul. It does not add anything at all
to the work of salvation. It is simply the organ of the
soul that receives salvation. Okay, preacher illustrate. Okay,
I'll try. Let's say you go to hear a wonderful
symphony. Now that may not be your float
your boat, but many of you, I know this very musical church, suppose
you go and hear a wonderful orchestra, world-class, present this beautiful
symphony. You heard it. The ear was the
means. Your hearing is how the beauty
of the music entered your soul. Does your ear add anything to
the beauty of the music? Does it contribute one iota?
Nothing. The ear simply receives. Do you
see the principle? We therefore talk elsewhere. Paul uses the phrase, the hearing
of faith. Faith has to have an object. But faith doesn't produce the
object. Faith simply recognizes and receives
the object, like your ear. This hearing receives the music
of a symphony, so you have the hearing of faith. The soul hears
the object, the message of salvation, and receives it. Go to a museum,
look at a beautiful painting on the wall. Does your looking
at the painting add anything to the beauty of the painting?
Does your looking at the painting improve the painting? No, but
the looking at the painting is how you receive the beauty of
the painting. You see the point? Faith works
like that. It doesn't add anything to the
object. It simply is the receptive organ
of the soul. The old Puritan said it's the
empty hand by which we receive. The grace is the open mouth by
which is filled by grace. Now, why did God do it that way? Well, we've already seen one
reason because faith is compatible with grace. But there's another
reason, and it's found in this second verse here that so that
no man might boast. It's not of your production,
it's His, so that no man might boast. We do know that God is
jealous about His glory. He declares in Isaiah that He's
not gonna share it with anybody, not gonna give His glory away.
He's going to make sure, and this is how He does it, that
you and I, who are the recipients of this thing called salvation,
that we know, we understand how it happened. We know that it
wasn't us. We are not like dumb animals. I think I've told you some of
my sheep stories when I've been here in the past. When I was
a kid, my dad bought up these mangy culls from some big ranch
out in West Texas and turned them over to me, and I learned
a lot about ministry, pastoring, out in the pasture. That was
my laboratory. And I do remember rainy nights
when I'd have a ewe down in the far end. All the other sheep
were inside the barn and I've got to go out in the cold and
the rain and locate this thing at 10 o'clock at night. pouring
down rain, cold, and I finally find that old ewe laying down
there. She's going to lay there and die. And I wasn't feeling
very good shepherdy, I guess you could say. Rather than laying
the sheep on my shoulder and carrying her back to the barn,
I kicked her. all the way back to the barn. Had to kick her across a roaring
creek. She wasn't going, but yeah, you
are, you are, sister, you're going. I finally get her back
to the barn, get her inside where now she's safe, everything's
okay, and does she lay down over there and just look at me with
adoring eyes, worshipful, you know? all filled with thankfulness
over the marvelous salvation. No, she's just a dumb sheep.
She looks at me like, big deal, so what? My friend, you're not
dumb sheep. You're capable of recognizing
the state that you were in. You can wake up when God goes
to work and realize, I'm in trouble. You remember the prodigal son?
There's a good example of what we're talking about. He's out
there in that far country, slopping pigs. He can't even eat slop. And he came to himself. What a strange statement. Where'd
he been? La la land. Zombieland. That's where he'd been. And he
came to himself. And you'll notice how just orderly
everything falls right into place. That's the key. When he came
to himself. I wish Brother Greg I knew how
to do that, folks. I'd get me a two-by-four and
see if I could whack him up a, yo, thank you, I needed that.
I never have found the spot. But the young man, he came to
himself and said, this is nuts. What am I doing here? I'm starving. Back at my father's house, there's
plenty of stuff. There's bread. Hired servants
get treated better than me. I'm going home. And he got up
and he went. You know the story. And listen
to the father. This, my son, was dead. And he's alive again. That's
the resurrection we're talking about. No, he wasn't dead in
every way. And yes, in one sense, he knew
the way home even when he was in that far country. But he wasn't
about to go back. He had no use for home life back
there. His father, oh, he's the deadbeat.
Let's get away from him. But then when he woke up, when
he came to himself, that's the world thinks you and I have lost
our marbles. And the truth is we're the only
ones who've got our marbles. We picked them up. We used to
be out in left field. We picked them up and came in
from left field. When God saves us, our eyes are
gonna be open to that fact that we cannot do this ourself. there's
not much that we necessarily need to know that a few things
are necessary and that's one of them that I cannot say myself
that God's the only one and that he's provided a way through his
son and therefore we have absolutely no ground of posting It's a rhetorical question. We're
supposed to know the answer. If I differ from you, if you're
going to hell, I'm going to heaven, I know who made the difference.
God Almighty. It wasn't me. I was in zombie
land. I was walking like zombies, living
like zombies. I was headed, I was in a death
camp, and I was headed straight for the second death. I was a
child of wrath just like everyone else. That was the only thing
I was good at, is storing up God's wrath for the day of wrath. That's it. And God intercepted
me and stopped me in my tracks, or I would bust hell wide open. And then finally, this last verse,
we're his workmanship. There is a controversy among
Calvinists and Armenians. I realize y'all, you're here
on Sunday night, y'all are the theologically astute and the
real deep minds. I'm right, aren't I? Yeah, and
so you wanna know, inquiring minds want to know these things.
And one of the disputes between Armenians and Calvinists is over
this relative pronoun found in verse eight. The one that says,
and that, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. The relative
pronoun, poiema in Greek. No, no, tuto, I'm getting the
wrong word, tuto. It means that or this. And we
Calvinists, we read verse eight and we naturally think, well,
when he says that, not of yourselves, he must be talking about the
faith, right? But the Armenians point out that
tuto is actually a neuter pronoun. And faith is a feminine word,
and you know anything about foreign languages, you know that the
gender of a pronoun has to agree with its antecedent. So they
would say that it's impossible for that, that not of yourselves,
to be referring to faith. Well, the problem is grace is
also feminine, and who in their right mind thinks somehow that
even salvation would be of themselves? Nobody disputes that. So we'd
ask, okay, I grant you that, but then what does that talk
about? When he says that, not of yourselves, that what? That
what? And I think part of our problem,
here's my solution to the problem, is that we're looking earlier
at the phrase in verse eight, verse one, the first part, by
grace are you saved through faith. We're trying to find the antecedent
there. I don't think that's where it's found. I think it's found
in verse 10. In other words, Paul omits it
in verse 8. He assumes you've got enough
sense to keep reading and to realize what it is. It's this
Greek word poiema. In my translation, workmanship.
Some you'll find craftsmanship. My old mentor used to say, doing. It's this work, this work, this
craftsmanship, this artisanship, this masterpiece, what God has
done. This, we are His workmanship. Do you see the contrast? Not
of works, of your works, lest any man should boast, because
you are His workmanship. You are the masterpiece that
God is fashioning. Like a sculpture. I think someone
asked Michelangelo one time how he did these sculptures. He was
trying to do a sculpture out of this big block of stone of
an angel and he said, I knock away everything that doesn't
look like an angel. For example, how does God conform us to the
image of Christ? He knocks away everything that
doesn't look like Jesus. That's how he does it. And when
we're through, we are this masterpiece. We're going to be glorified.
We're going to be made like Him, glorified, because He's knocked
away everything that doesn't look like Jesus. And that's what
Paul is saying. It's not you doing this. It is
God working like a sculptor, creating this wonderful work,
this workmanship, this craftsmanship. And notice it is created in Christ
Jesus unto good works. You would think by now that work
is a four-letter word. Well, I guess literally it is,
but you know what I mean. I mean, it's a dirty word. You
know, we don't say that in Calvinistic circles. But Paul is not afraid
of it. But notice the order. You're
not saved by works. You're saved for works. You're
saved unto good works. That's the whole point of what
God is doing in salvation. He will say to Titus, we're this
peculiar people. And I don't mean oddball, although
some of us fit that. But you're a peculiar people,
zealous of good works. That's the whole point of salvation. You say, well, I don't believe
God do that thing. Those things, well, you know, I believe in
predestination. Well, I'm glad you do because notice these are
good works which he has aforeordained. He's aforeordained that we should
walk in them. The same God who predestinated
us unto salvation in the first place has predestined us to these
good works. That's the whole purpose of what
he's done. Well, I hope you have made a
little bit of sense out of all this. But if we go back to thinking
about this day, Easter Sunday, about the resurrection of Christ,
again, I want to emphasize, we of all people believe that. Yeah,
we believe it, it's there in the Word. We accept the testimony
of God, but we have experienced it ourselves. We have passed, Jesus said in
John 5, they that believe in me have passed from death unto
life. They have eternal life, they've
passed from death to life. What do you call passing from
death to life? I call it resurrection. And so there is some truth to
the hymn. You asked me how I know he lives. He lives within my
heart. That subjectively, in here, we
reflect the objective truth of the resurrection of Christ. And
may that be true in all of you, if it's not. and you need to
come into a saving union with Jesus Christ through faith. We've looked at the mechanism,
we see how it works. It is through faith that we receive
Jesus and all that he is. May that be true in your life
and mine. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for this passage, for its importance in our life, Lord, just keeping
us on the right path. We know how prone we are, our
nature, to boast. We still fall prey to that old
satanic spirit. But Father, we thank you that
our eyes have been opened. We behold the work of a Savior
who did for us what we could not possibly do for ourselves. And Father, our eyes have been
opened to see it and to receive it through trusting in Him. Lord, bring us to that point
if we've never come. May we turn away from all else,
all self-boasting, all self-works, and may we cling to what Christ
our Savior has done for us. Thank you, bless us as we ponder
these things. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
God's Grace to Zombies - 2
Series Easing Through Ephesians
Pastor Mark Webb speaks from the book of Ephesians in the second message of the 2021 Spring Bible Conference.
| Sermon ID | 45211257425735 |
| Duration | 55:11 |
| Date | |
| Category | Special Meeting |
| Bible Text | Ephesians 2:1-10 |
| Language | English |
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