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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.
Created in Christ Jesus unto good works
Series Ephesians Series
| Sermon ID | 46252036431837 |
| Duration | 54:04 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Ephesians 2:8-10 |
| Language | English |
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