Well, if you have a copy of the scriptures this morning, I want to invite you to turn once again to the book of Ephesians, the epistle of Paul, the apostle to the Ephesians. And we're continuing this ongoing exposition of this letter. And today we are focusing upon Ephesians 2, verses 8 through 10, Ephesians 2, verses 8-10. Let me invite you, as you're able, let's stand once again in honor of the reading and hearing of God's Word. Again, I'm reading from Ephesians 2, beginning in verse 8, wherein the Apostle Paul writes, For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them." May God bless today, once again, the reading and the hearing of His Word, and let us join in prayer. Gracious and loving God, as we stand once again before the open Bible and before the God-breathed words that are here, we ask that you would give us attentiveness to thy word, that you would give us the illumination of the Holy Spirit, that you would open our eyes, unstop our ears, loosen our hearts and minds so that we might be able to receive and read and hear thy word with profit today. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen. You may be seated. Well, we started last week looking at Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 10. And we looked at the first seven verses. And I called this passage, Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 10, I called it the Mount Everest of the doctrine of salvation in the New Testament. These are some of the highest heights in all the Bible addressing the doctrine of salvation. And we started off last time noting, especially in verse 1, Paul's statement, and you, Ephesian believers, hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sin. And we noted Paul's description of man's spiritual state apart from Christ as being spiritual deadness. I suggested that what we need is not the hospital analogy. It is not that we are very, very sick. But we need the morgue analogy. We are dead in our trespasses and sin. We are not apart from Christ in our unregenerate state. We are not floating in the water, about to drown, hoping that a life preserver is sent to us so that we might grasp it. But we have drowned in sin and we are lying dead at the bottom of the sea. God did not just rescue us. He picked us up from death and quickened us, revived us. He took spiritually dead men and brought them to newness of life. And it is His work from beginning to end. As Paul puts it in Romans 5.8, but God commendeth His love toward us And that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were yet dead sinners, Christ died for us. And then we meditated, did we not, on verse 4. Those famous two words that begin the teaching that pivots from describing us as the children of disobedience and children of wrath. And it says, but God, two of the greatest words in scripture, but God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ by grace ye are saved. And I noted that R.C. Sproul said that if we want to understand the biblical doctrine of salvation, then we ought to read those verses about a thousand times and it'll begin maybe to sink into us what salvation is about. We had there at the end of verse 5 that little parenthetical statement, by grace ye are saved. And our passage today, particularly starting in verse 8, we will see an expansion, an expounding upon that little statement. By grace ye are saved, as Paul will teach to us the biblical doctrine of grace. He will meditate with us on what we mean when we say that salvation is by grace. And then, interestingly enough, as we'll see when we get to verse 10, He will also proceed to offer instructions to us on the topic of good works. When, in a state of spiritual deadness, we could do no good thing, God reached down His hand and took dead men and brought us to life, and then their issues from such men good works. And we discover that God has not only ordained our salvation, but He has also ordained our sanctification, which includes the issuing from our lives of what is called in the Scriptures good works, that is, acts of service to God and to man that are pleasing in God's sight. And that's what we want to meditate upon today, the expansion of Paul's teaching to us on the doctrines of grace and salvation being a work of God, but also how out of transformed lives there are issues, good works. And so that's our goal today as we continue this climb up on this Mount Everest, of the New Testament approaching the doctrine of salvation. So let's start looking at verse 8, again, where Paul is expanding upon what he said in verse 5, by grace you are saved. And now in verse 8, he says, for by grace are ye saved through faith. Now, one of the things we might immediately address here is who is being addressed by this letter and who is being addressed by this statement? For by grace are ye, that's a you plural, for by grace are y'all saved through faith. Who are these people to whom he's speaking? Well, they are the believers at Ephesus. We could go back to chapter 1, verse 1. To the saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Paul is talking to believers. And he's talking to people who have been saved, who have been rescued by God's grace. People who have received, as Paul says in chapter 1 and verse 7 of Ephesians, redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. So he's talking to believers. Unbelievers, will not be able to read this as profitably as will believers because what's being unfolded is our experience helping us to understand and interpret for us from an authoritative apostle what we experienced when we came to faith. And the term he uses is salvation. We were saved for by grace are ye saved. And the question arises, what were we saved from? Were we saved from ourselves? Were we saved from our sin? Were we saved from the sins of other people? And the Bible's answer back to that is essentially that we were saved from God. We were saved from the wrath of God. the wrath of God that should have been poured out upon us because we are sinners, we have inherited a sin nature, and we have committed actual transgressions, and we are deserving of the wrath of God. In Romans 5 and verse 9, Paul says, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. We are saved from the holy and just wrath of God. In Romans 1.18 Paul said, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. We who had suppressed and held back the truth in unrighteousness We who were deserving of God's wrath for our sin, we have been saved from experiencing that wrath being justly poured out upon us. In 1 Thessalonians 1 and verse 10, Paul wrote that in Christ God delivered us from the wrath to come. Yesterday, Llewellyn and I were driving in Charlottesville and we drove down 29, and we happened to go, we didn't know it was going to be there, past a line of political protesters that were out in force in various cities. And there were people out there with handmade signs. And one of the signs I noticed in the crowd was a lady holding up a sign, and it said, give us what we deserve. Give us what we deserve. Of course, she meant that in a political, way, give us what we deserve. But from a spiritual perspective, no reasonable man who knows his condition in sin and his actual transgressions would ever hold up a sign before an all-powerful and all-holy and all-righteous God and say, give me what I deserve. because we deserve God's wrath and punishment. But by God's grace, we were saved by the life, the death, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Did this come about because of any merit, any favor in us? No, Paul says. It came by grace. And there's the word grace. It's a Christian word we throw around. We sing the hymn, Amazing Grace. We name our churches, Grace Baptist Church, or we name our Christian schools, Grace Christian School, and so forth. But it's a word that we use so often, so many times, in so many circumstances. that the real meaning of it can be dulled to us. Grace means unmerited or undeserved favor. We're back at Romans 5.8. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. not when we had rehabilitated ourselves to a certain acceptable level, not when we had lifted ourselves up with our bootstraps, but while we were yet sinners, while we were spiritually dead and could not even lift our hand out to get the medicine, Christ died for us. By grace, ye are saved. If we were to ask, I think, probably any professing evangelical Protestant Christian whether or not he believes Ephesians 2, 8, for by grace are ye saved through faith, my guess is that 100% of them would say, yes, I believe that. But if we pressed a little further and we asked, well, how do you perceive that Salvation came about. Many of them would argue in some form or another for the necessity of man's cooperation in salvation. Yes, they might say, God saves, but I must do my part. I must accept. I must do something or say something to meet God somewhere in the middle. And maybe he goes a really long way. I only go a very short way. But there must be some cooperation. So I was talking with some folk this morning about the tradition of altar calls. I grew up with this in Southern Baptist churches. There would be an altar call at the end of the service. And people began to think that you become a Christian by the outward act of walking down the aisle. Or you can become a Christian by the outward act simply of voicing the so-called sinner's prayer. There's no official sinner's prayer, right? It's just a way of saying, confessing your sin. I'm a sinner and in need of a Savior. But there's some cooperation, right? I do something outwardly and God responds. We cooperate together and we get me saved together. But, as we noted last week, If we are spiritually dead, and that's what Paul says we are, this means we can do nothing. This means salvation is not a cooperative effort. It's not a team effort. It's not synergism, but it is monergism. It is one acting and the actor is God. It is not based on what I have done. It is not based on any merit in me. It is not based on any meritorious actions or any meritorious words that I have performed or uttered. It is by grace. If we let that really sink in, We begin to understand just how radical the biblical notion of grace is. What Paul is describing here is not what we might call a domesticated variety of grace, but it is grace in the wild. It's not a house cat, but a lion. Grace in the wild, I have done nothing, no meritorious actions, for by grace are ye saved through faith. Now, after Paul says that salvation is by grace, he adds that it is also through faith. And we need to talk a little bit about that statement, that salvation is by grace, but it is through faith. The word, little preposition that's rendered with the English word through, beneath that is the Greek preposition dia. And we also get words like via, through, a means, an instrument of accomplishing something. God saves us by grace because of no merit or favor in us, but the means he uses to bring about our salvation is faith, belief, and trust in Christ. Notice the words are very important. Every word matters in the Bible. Notice that it doesn't say, for by grace are ye saved because of your faith. And actually, there's a completely useful way of saying that in Greek. If you were to take that little preposition, Dia, if I could go a little grammar nerdy on you for a moment, and you were to put an object behind it that was in what is called the accusative case, that reflects a causal situation. So there's a perfectly fine way in Greek where you could say, because of faith, By grace are you saved because of your faith. But that's not the word that's used here. Every single time salvation is described, the object is put in what's called the instrumental case. It's always you're saved by grace through faith, by means of faith, with faith as the instrument of your salvation. Paul is not saying, that we are saved because of faith, because of our cooperation in believing or trusting. But by the means or instrument of faith, what Paul is saying, we'll see this as it's unfolded, is that even our faith is something that God himself gives us. And he uses that as a tool or an instrument for our salvation. That's why he adds just after this, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. And that not of yourselves. The great pastors and theologians of past years called the two things that are being described here in verse 8 using Latin terms. First of all, they talked about sola gratia. that salvation is by grace alone. And they used another little term, sola fide, that salvation is by faith alone, faith as the instrument or means that God himself sovereignly uses. The Apostle Paul, in other places in his writings, describes this faith as an instrument of our salvation as justification by faith. We are justified or made right in the presence of God by means of the faith that he himself gives to us. Paul states this very clearly in Romans 4, verse 28, when he wrote, therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Notice every single time it's not justified because of faith, but justified by faith. Faith is instrumental. And without, apart from our doing of things that are meritorious in His sight. In the final phrase in verse 8, notice Paul adds, in case we haven't gotten it, It is the gift of God. Our salvation by grace through faith that is not of ourselves, Paul sums it up, it is the gift of God. What is a gift? Anybody here like getting gifts? I do. I like giving them also. What is a gift? A simple definition of a gift is a thing given willingly to someone without payment. A thing given willingly to someone without payment. If I have to do something in order to get a gift, then it's not really a gift, is it? It's a wage or a payment. And there are all these companies, marketing companies, right? They've got these schemes, right? If you'll, we have a gift waiting for you at our exercise center. But we have a gift waiting for you at our timeshare presentation. And it would entice you to come to that, but really it's not a gift, right? They want to get something from you so you can get this supposed gift. But a gift, again, is something that's given willingly to someone without payment. If I have to do something to earn the gift, it is a wage. It's a reward. It's a payment. If I have to earn a gift, I'm just getting what I paid for or worked for. But Paul says salvation is not a wage or a reward that we have earned. Instead, it is a free gift that we have received. Throughout this study, I'm going to be comparing some things Paul says in other places in the scriptures. And one of the places where we get most light on this is from Romans. one of the great letters of Paul's writings. And in Romans 4, Paul describes justification by faith and salvation as a gift. And in one of those places in Romans 4, he talks about Abraham in the Old Testament. And he looks at Abraham as a model for someone who was justified not by works, but by faith. And so in Romans 4, verse 2, Paul says, for if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God. For what saith the scripture? And here he quotes Genesis 15, verse 6. Abraham believed God. And it was counted unto him for righteousness. And then Paul says this, Romans 4.4. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. That's a really key verse for understanding Ephesians 2.8. If you work for something, the wage or reward is not grace, but it's the fulfillment of a debt. If you think that you can work hard and God is indebted to you and he has to save you because of all the meritorious things that you've done, you've completely misunderstood, distorted the biblical understanding of salvation and grace. Paul continues in Romans 4 verse 5, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." That's what it means to be saved by grace through faith. It comes as a gift, not something we have labored to earn or to merit or receive as a reward. Paul makes a distinction between receiving something as a wage or reward and receiving it as a gift. And another example of this, another famous passage, we use this often in the Romans Road, Plain of Salvation, Romans 6.23. Notice the contrast. For the wages of sin is death. Our works do earn a reward and a payment, and that payment is death. Paul contrasts, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. See those two polarities? Wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. This quite naturally leads to Paul's next statement in verse 9. Not of works, lest any man should boast. Not of works, lest any man should boast." If men were saved from God's wrath because of their own works, their own efforts to do what is pleasing to God by serving God and serving man, if man could be saved by his own meritorious works, then that man would have a grounds to boast. He could give himself the glory, even if it's just a little bit. Even if he says, you know, God made most of it, but I did this little bit. And I did my part. God did his part. I did my part. He would have some ground for boasting. I did my little part. But if he is saved only by the grace of God, which comes to him as an unmerited gift from God, Who gets the glory for His salvation? God does. God gets all the glory. The God of glory gets all the glory when He saves men by grace through faith. Paul presents to us a God-glorifying and God-exalting understanding of salvation. And it's so easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking about our own merit and our own glory rather than giving all the glory to God alone. In fact, we could say that the statement here in verse 9 supports a contrast that Paul makes between justification by faith that comes as a free gift and justification by works. All religions, we might justifiably say, outside of biblical Christianity are based on works. Do you want salvation? Well, there are man-made religions that will give you a list of all the things that you must do. And they will tell you if you will just do all of these things, Then you will have salvation. I just happened yesterday to pop up on my YouTube feeds the live conferencing of the Mormon Church, the Latter-day Saints Church, and they're having their big spring conference. And I listened a little bit to one of the presentations. And Mormonism uses a lot of the same language of Christianity. They speak about Christ. They speak about the gospel. but they mean something completely different by it. And they will tell you, oh, if you will just live by our standards, and if you will just follow the principles and do all the things we ask you to do, if you will just avoid caffeine, and you will avoid this, that, and the other thing. And that's very intriguing, and it's very drawing for many people, because it seems so simple. If I just do all these things, then the end result is salvation. Or think about Islam. There's no grace in Islam. If you say the Shahada, and if you pray five times a day, and if you make a pilgrimage to Mecca, and if you give a certain very small actual part of your income, not towards charity to all men, but charity to your fellow Muslims, and if you fast during Ramadan, which ends up not really being fasting, but eating a big meal in the morning, eating a big meal in the evening and the studies show that most people in Islamic nations actually gain weight during Ramadan rather than losing it. But if you just do this list of things that we want you to do, then you can have salvation. All other religions outside of biblical Christianity function just like that. Here's a list of things you must do. Here are the works you must accomplish. Biblical Christianity, however, is not based on works, but on grace through faith. Remember, even our faith is a gift from God. We are not saved because of our faith, but by means of our faith that God gives to us in Christ. The Apostle Paul articulates this in Galatians 2, verse 16, when he wrote, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. By that he means faith in Christ and also the faithfulness of Christ. Even as we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Again, every religion outside of biblical Christianity says you're justified by doing this list of things. In his exposition of Ephesians, R.C. Sproul points out that the doctrine of salvation is what distinguishes Bible-believing Protestant Christians from the Roman Catholic Church. We have some people today who say the Reformation is over. There's no difference between Protestants and Catholics. But that's simply not true. There are many differences, many we could trace. We could talk about devotion to Mary and we could talk about even the canon of scripture, adding books to the Old Testament. But at the heart, R.C. Sproul said, is this idea of salvation. Rome says the instrumental cause of justification is baptism. They teach baptismal regeneration. If you do this work of baptism, then you will be saved. But Bible-believing Christians say that the instrumental cause of justification is faith, faith alone. It alone is the means by which we are brought into a saving relationship to Jesus Christ. The basis of it is grace. We are saved by grace through faith without any consideration of merit. The source of our salvation is the grace of God. Period. Full stop. This is why we can call Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 the Mount Everest of the biblical doctrine of salvation. This is where it is articulated, and we can climb the heights, and we can enjoy the vistas, the beauty of what is revealed here. But notice, Paul does not stop at verse 9. He proceeds in verse 10 to describe the kind of life that should flow out of the person who has been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as taught by the Bible alone, to the glory of God alone. And there should be conduct that should characterize this person who is saved by God's grace. R.C. Sproul adds this in his commentary. He says, there is another formula of the reformation. A friend of mine calls it the blessed reformation. That time when the gospel had nearly been lost, the preaching of it had died down like the embers of a fire about to burn out, and then God awakened men to the truth of the gospel and began reading their Bibles, and they blew on the flame, and the fire was restored. And we have various formulas that come out of this. We mentioned the solas, sola gratia, by grace alone, sola fide, by faith alone. But Sproul points out that another one of these formulas that came out of the Blessed Reformation was this statement. Justification is by faith alone. but not by a faith that is alone. We're justified by faith alone, but not by a faith that is left alone. What does this mean? It means that true faith will inevitably manifest itself in the performance of works of obedience. And so Paul explains this in verse 10. when he writes, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Notice he starts off again with the first person plural, for we are his workmanship. Paul is including himself as an apostle right alongside these Ephesian believers. And through the inscripturation of God's Word, Paul is including himself right alongside of us who are sitting here in Louisa, Virginia, this morning. For we are His workmanship. The term rendered here is workmanship. In Greek, it means something made. a piece of handiwork, a creation. We can think of somebody, maybe if you're a woodworker and you go out in your shop and you create something, you make some piece of labor, maybe some piece of furniture or something else, some whatnot or whatever, and you've made this and you're rightly proud of it. And if we use that dim analogy, Paul says, we converted believers We who have been lifted off the bottom of the sea, who were dead in our trespasses and sin, and who have become new creatures in Christ. We are God's handiwork. We are his workmanship. And we have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works. This is a really important distinction and so easily lost. We are not saved by works. How can you say it more plainly than Paul does in verse 9? Not of works, lest any man should boast. But once we are saved by His grace through faith, one of the evidences of that is that good works, service to God and man that is pleasing to God, flows naturally out of our lives. This term good works is used over and again in the scriptures, and over again it's described as a vital part of the Christian life. Let me just survey a few places in the Bible that mention this term or this concept. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ tells his disciples, he tells them, you're salt and you're light. You're like a city set on a hill that cannot be hid. And then he says in Matthew 5, 16, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father, which is in heaven. Lord Jesus approved of good works. We were reading this on Wednesday night. We were in Second Timothy 3, 16. the teaching about Scripture. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for approval, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. And then, right after that, in 2 Timothy 3.17, Paul says, to what end has Scripture been given? This God-breathed, inspired Scripture, that the man of God may be perfect, may be mature, thoroughly furnished, equipped, unto all good works. In Titus 2.13, a passage we'll eventually get to in our Wednesday night study, Paul writes to Titus and he says to the Christians there, to Titus and the believers, that they are looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, And then he says of Christ in Titus 2, 14, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. The Christian is to be has been redeemed to be spent, redeemed to be zealous, not lukewarm for good works. but zealous for good works. There's a lot of confusion that's arisen about the little book of James. And there have been people through the years who've said that James contradicts Paul. It's not true. But James was writing in a situation where some people had so stressed the grace of salvation that they had neglected what was taught in Ephesians 2.10. That because we are God's workmanship, that good works should naturally flow from our lives. And so James wrote in James 2.17, even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead being alone. The faith alone that justifies is never faith that is left alone, but it's accompanied by good works. The Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2, 11 and 12 said, Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conversation or conduct among the Gentiles, that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation, the day of Christ's second coming. So he gives it as a reason that, as a remedy for those who would despise and speak against Christianity. And that's been the way it's been from the beginning. You can go back and read some of the writings from the early days of Christianity. There was a guy named Eusebius of Caesarea who wrote the first history of Christianity. In one of his writings, he talked about plagues that would come and how people would become sick and they would die and there would be these pestilences. And he said that the Christians, first of all, would care not only for their own who were sick, but they went into the homes of their pagan neighbors and cared for them also. And this was such a stunning witness that many people, God used it as a means to draw many unto Christ. Think of our current culture today. Who do you think it is in our culture today, largely, who cares for the orphans? Who's on the front lines of adopting children who need to be in a home? It's Christians, of course. We're on the front lines of that. That's who we are. We are his workmanship, created unto good works. This is how we operate. Good works for us is not a dirty term. We're not confusing it with bringing about salvation. As we often say, it is not the root of our faith. That comes only as a free gift from God, but it is the fruit of our faith. It's the overflow of our faith. It's the evidence of our faith. Sometimes people who are diehard against the sovereignty of God and salvation will say that we don't believe in good works. I always say, look at our Confession of Faith, our Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, based on the Westminster Confession of Faith. If you want to understand a biblical view of good works, read chapter 16 in our Confession of Faith. It is a beautiful statement of what a balanced biblical view of good works actually are. It starts off in chapter 16, paragraph 1, by noting that good works are only such as God hath commanded in his word, his holy word. So those who say, you're doing good works if you go on this religious pilgrimage, or if you keep this diet, or something like that, they're trying to lay out unbiblical commands. Those are not good works. The good works that are commended are things that are within the scriptures. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. True religion that is pure and undefiled is to help the widows and the orphans in their distress. That's a biblical definition of good works. If you look at chapter 16, paragraph 2, it explains good works. It says, these good works, those biblically sanctioned, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith. And by them, believers manifest their thankfulness. All of our ethics are gratitude, right? Not to earn something from God, but to say, thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for the mercy and grace that was given to me. These acts also happen according to chapter 16, paragraph 2 of our confession. They strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glory God whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus, thereunto, that having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, or the goal, eternal life. Again, it's a treasure trove. Read chapter 16. In paragraph 6, it notes that even though our good works may be sincere and are accepted by God, they are also accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections. Even the good works that Christians can do are always going to be filled with weaknesses, many weaknesses and imperfections. Notice also in verse 10 that last phrase, after it says, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, Paul adds this, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. This is really something that is mind boggling. We talked before about the wonder, the mystery of election, where Paul said in Ephesians 1.4 that God hath chosen us in him before the foundations of the world. That's the mystery, the high mystery of election. God's choosing us for salvation before the foundations of the earth. But now Paul says in Ephesians 2.10 that also the good works that flow out of our lives have been foreordained by God. I can't wrap my mind around that. Such an intelligence that is able to know who will be saved, but also the good works that will flow from them. The all-sovereign, all-wise, all-knowing, all-kind God has set each one of his saints apart for particular and peculiar good works to be done to his glory and honor. It might be there in the godly raising of your children. God has foreordained this, decreed this. It might be there in the teaching of your grandson, Bible verses. It might be there in the prayers you faithfully offer up to the Lord. It might be there in the care you extend to orphans and widows, in the generous giving you offer to support the church and its mission and its missionaries across the world, in the visiting and comforting of the sick, the aged, the infirmed, and the weak. And it's there in a thousand other things, a million other things. that the Lord has set out for you, beloved, to do, to bless His name and to be a blessing to your fellow men and especially to your fellow believers, those who are of the household of faith. We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. Okay, friends, we have climbed to the top of the mountain. We have learned more. Many of us, perhaps most of us here already knew this, some of this, but it helps to be repeated, expanded upon and heard for the thousandth time. We have learned about the biblical doctrine of salvation. We have seen it in the wild, not in some domesticated false show of what grace truly is. We've seen the lion and not the house cat. Will it fill our minds and our hearts with a greater appreciation for the gospel, a greater admiration for our God when we consider the good news of what God has done for us in Christ? Harry Ironsides was an evangelical minister of the past generation. And he tells a story of how once he was in a meeting and there was a mature Christian who stood up to give his testimony of how he came to the faith, how he was saved. And he gave his testimony and he told about how God had in his mercy sought him out and found him and how God had loved him and God had called him, God had saved him, God had delivered him, God had cleansed him through sanctification, God had healed him. And he offered a great witness to the power and the glory of God in salvation. And Iron Says says that after the meeting in which this man gave this testimony, one of the fellows who was present came up to him afterwards and said to him, he said, I really enjoyed your testimony of what God did for you. But I just have one question. It seems to me that you didn't mention anything about your part in salvation. Salvation, after all, is really part us and part God. You should have said something about your part. This older, mature Christian replied, oh yes, I apologize for that. I really should have said something about my part. My part was running away from God. And his part was running after me. till he caught me and subdued me to his self by grace through faith. Amen? May I invite you to stand together. Let's join in prayer. Gracious and loving God, we do give thee thanks for this passage that has warmed the hearts of so many believers through the years as we have pondered what has happened, what transpired to bring us from the darkness into the light. And we do give unto thee all the glory, all the honor that is due unto thy name. Help us to be humble and faithful Christians and help us to pursue things that please thee and serve thee and that serve our fellow men and our neighbor, and especially our fellow believers, and help us to do this understanding that these are things that you have foreordained, that you have ordered ahead of time that we should do. And help us to revel in that and to enjoy that and to be generous in spirit as we pursue thee and the things of thee. We ask this in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.