A small biography is on the left-hand corner of your bulletin, and I'll trust that you can read that for yourself, but it doesn't say, I don't believe, that there are three children and three grandchildren in the Jeffrey family, and we are thrilled to have them with us. This is their very first visit to the United States. And we trust that God will continue, as he has been already, sustaining him and using him wherever he has gone, that God will use him this weekend as well. Peter, come and preach God's word to us. It's good to be with you. It's taken a long time to get here. I think this meeting has been planned for about two years. So it's taken a while for us to get here. I'm sure some of you are saying, where on earth is Port Talbot? I'm sure none of you ever heard of Port Talbot, the place that I live. Well, I can tell you I never went to Amityville either. But my three children have, you see. And when I said I was going to, yeah, when I said I was going to Amityville, my three children quite independently said, Dad, that's the House of Horrors. So you were famous worldwide. for the House of Horrors. My wife and I were in Spain. I was off on the sick last year from this time, from September through to Easter, and just before we started back preaching, we went to Spain for a couple of weeks to get a bit of sun, and we were in a hotel there, and they were showing films in the afternoon, and one of them was Amityville House of Horrors 4. So you're famous even in Spain, you see. But this isn't a house of horrors tonight. And I trust for some of you tonight this will be a house of grace. Because that's what it's all about, isn't it? A house of horrors is part fact, part fairy story, part made-up. A lot of it made up, probably. But what I want to tell you tonight is not made up, not one sentence of it, not one comma of it. What I want to bring you tonight is the Word of God, and the Word of God's mercy, and the Word of God's grace. And I want us tonight to look at the passage read in verses 8 and 9, and, God willing, tomorrow night we'll look at verse 10. For by grace, says Paul, you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For by grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourselves. This is the gift of God." Now, Ephesians 2 is one of the great chapters in the New Testament on the theme of salvation. I think if you were to ask most Christians what's the best chapter to explain the Gospel, they would say Ephesians 2. It is a superb synopsis of the whole Gospel of God's love to us. And like all New Testament teaching on salvation, its emphasis is that salvation is of God. It's something that God does. And that's what our text is talking about tonight. By grace you have been saved. It's not of yourself. It's not of your own efforts. It's not of your own volition. It's not something you've earned or worked up or thought out. This is the mercy and gift and grace of God. But before Paul begins to deal with this, in the first three verses of Ephesians 2, He begins to describe the condition of man in sin, and it seems to me that Ephesians 2, verses 1, 2, and 3 really are the key to our whole understanding of the gospel. This really is crucial, you see, these first three verses. Because unless someone believes and accepts the truth that's embodied in these three verses, then the good news of God's salvation will have no effect on them whatsoever. Whatsoever. You see, if you were sitting tomorrow afternoon on Jones Beach, sitting on the beach, sit on your towel or on your chair, licking a nice, big, gigantic ice cream, let's put yourself there now, right? You're slick sitting on the beach and the sun is warm, we trust it will be, and you're licking this ice cream, and then someone comes along and tells you, do you know that on Jones Beach, we've got the finest team of lifeguards in the United States? Now, you wouldn't doubt it. You wouldn't start an argument and say, well, they've got better ones somewhere else. You wouldn't argue. You'd accept the truth of it. You wouldn't doubt it. But you'd go on licking your ice cream, and it wouldn't make a scrap of difference to you. Transfer yourself now from the deck chair with your ice cream, a mile out into the bay, cramp in both legs, going down for the third time, all your life flashing before your eyes, and then someone comes with exactly the same news, we've got the finest team of lifeguards in the whole of the United States. And what do you do then? Well, you shout for these fellas to come and save you. The news hasn't changed, but your situation has. On the deck chair, you don't need the lifeguards, so what? Out in the bay with cramp going down, drowning, then you need the lifeguards, it becomes the most important news you've ever heard, and you cry to these men to come to your aid. Well, so it is with the gospel. Until you see you're a sinner, you won't want a Savior. Until you see you're a sinner under the wrath and the judgment of God, then Jesus will mean nothing to you. And you can hear and hear and hear of the grace of God in the Gospel, but it won't touch you. You won't deny it. You won't say it's not true. But you won't cry to Christ either for grace and for salvation. So these first three verses of this chapter are very, very important. Paul is laying down here why we need salvation. Now this whole thing is crucial, you see, because we are conditioned in Britain and here in America, we are conditioned by the whole social and education system to believe that man is essentially good. And all that he needs is a little help and a little guidance. Or perhaps we are told that man is an evolving creature and he's getting progressively better. And give him a couple of million years and he'd make something of himself. Now this is what our system is always telling us. We have it from early days in school right through to a university education. But this viewpoint you see, both these viewpoints, that man is evolving and that man is essentially good, both these viewpoints don't need God. If those are true, you don't need God. And you don't need a gospel. If man is getting better, what do you want a gospel for? If man is essentially good, what do you need a savior for? If man is evolving into something better, well, what about Jesus? He's of no use to us. If you believe those, then you won't want God and you won't want a gospel. But I'm to tell you tonight that both those views are untrue. Man is not like that. Man is as described in these first three verses of Ephesians 2. Let me read them to you again. You, says Paul, God has made alive. You who once were dead in trespasses and sins. in which you once walked according to the course of this world, just like everybody else, according to the prince of the power of the air, that's the devil, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom, he says, we all, there's no exception to this, Paul, me, you, every one of us, we all at once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath, just the same as everyone else is. Now that's what man is like. He's not essentially good, but he's dead in sin. He's not progressing to a better state, but he was created in perfection and he fell from a better state to the state in which he is now in. That's what man is like. Now that's not just a matter of theology. It seems to me it's a matter of common sense. It's the only viewpoint that fits the facts of history. Man's history is full of killings, and full of lust, and full of war, and disturbance, and bitterness, and the 20th century is probably worse than the 19 before put together. Man's history is full of these things, and it's not getting any better. Now, do the essentially good view fit that? Do man as an evolving creature getting progressively better fit the facts of history? Well, I would say no. But the Bible view of Ephesians 2, 1, 2, 3 does. Why do men behave as they do in Northern Ireland and plant bombs? Because man is as he is. Why Yugoslavia? Why the Middle East? Because man is as the Bible describes him. Why you were bitterness, you were jealous, you were envy, you were broken marriages, you were adulteries, you were divorces. Why? Because man is as God says he is. Man is a sinner. And if that's the case, his greatest need is salvation. But how is he going to get it? Well, our text says it. By grace. By grace you are saved. It's not something you do. By grace you are saved. Now, saved is a great biblical word. It's one of the great words of the Bible. But what does it mean? You know, we, we, I think sometimes as evangelicals, we are prone to churn words out without giving a lot of thought as to what we're saying. And there are particularly jargon words, and saved can be a jargon word, you know. But what does it really mean, saved? Well, in our text, Paul is addressing Christians in the town of Ephesus, which is in Turkey now. The town is still there. The ruins of Ephesus are still there, great ruins of Ephesus. You could go there and see them. But at the time of writing, they were Christians, but they weren't always Christians. Previously they were, as Paul describes them in these first three verses. And the consequence of that, he says in verse 12, was that they were in this world without hope and without God. Because they were like that, they had no hope in this world and they were without God. And that condition was hastening them to an eternal hell. But they had been saved from that. They had been saved from that. If you read the passage in the Acts of the Apostles in Acts 19, which describes how the gospel first came to Ephesus and how Paul preached to these people, you will see that they were saved from the power of sin in their lives there and then. This wasn't pie in the sky when you die. This salvation changed their lives as they were then. You see, there were two things about the Ephesians. They were idolaters. They worshipped this great statue of Diana of the Ephesians. And when they were converted, they didn't want that. They stopped worshipping this idol. And that had a great influence on the commerce of Ephesus. Because the people who were making a fortune selling these idols couldn't sell them any longer. And there was a great turmoil. Why weren't they buying them? Well, because they were Christians now. And the Christian doesn't do this. It changed their lives. And not only that, you see, but Ephesus was famous for its magic practices. You can go to the British Museum now and you can find scrolls called Ephesian scrolls. And they were scrolls of magic formulas. And we are told in Acts 19 that the first things these people did when they were converted was to make a bonfire of these magic scrolls. They brought them all together. They were worth thousands and thousands of dollars and they pile them all up and they put a match to them. Why? Because they were Christians now. They were saved from the influence of sin in that way in their lives there and then. But they were also saved from future wrath and future judgment, and they were saved from the consequence of their sin in hell. Now that's what the Bible means by being saved, and it's just the same for us now as it was for those folk in the first century. Now let me ask you a question. Have you accepted the biblical truth of human nature in the first three verses of this chapter? Have you really accepted that? Then if you have, you need to be saved, because that's describing you. It's not describing the fellow down the road who beats his wife. It's not describing a boss in work who cheats the taxman. It's not describing some drug pusher or some criminal. It's describing every last one of us. And if what God's Word says is true about us by our nature, then we need to be saved. But how can we be saved? Well, our text tells us very clearly and very simply. And it tells us essentially two things. First of all, in our text, there's a very strong and a very positive statement. By grace are you saved. That's a strong and it's a positive statement. And then so that that's clearly understood, and to remove any possibility of misunderstanding, Paul adds this equally strong negative statement. And he says, not of yourselves. There's the positive statement, by grace are you saved. And then to underline that he says, not of yourselves. Now let's take the negative first. We are not saved. We are not saved from the guilt and power and consequence of sin by our own efforts. That's what he's saying, by our own efforts. Not of works. That's what he's saying, not of works. In other words, we can't deal with our own sin. Now if you I'm going to say you've got a grain of sense. That would be arrogant, wouldn't it? You've got more than a grain of sense. It doesn't matter if you've got a bucket full of sense. You would know you can't deal with it. You can't deal with your own sin. You can't deal with your nature. You're fighting it all the time. You try to turn over a new leaf. You try to pull yourselves together, and then the whole thing comes back again. We can't deal with our own sin. Now, this truth is detested by most people. And popular, non-biblical Christianity refutes it vigorously. So, once again, we see how crucial verses 1, 2, and 3 are. I'm not apologizing for coming back to these verses because they're key to everything. Really are. If we believe and take these verses seriously, then not of works becomes inevitable. See, Paul doesn't say that man is sick in sin. He says he's dead in sin. My friends, when you're dead, you're dead. There is no such thing as half dead. or partly dead. If you're dead, you're dead. That is, that man is utterly and completely helpless in the grip of sin. What can the dead man do? He can do nothing. What can the man dead in sin do? He can do nothing. He is helpless in the grip of sin. He's unable to do anything about that sin. He cannot do anything. Now let me stop on that point because this grits with so many people. I'm sure the Americans are no different from the Welsh or the English. This grits on us. This business we can't do anything about our sin. Now you say, now hang on a bit. Are you saying that my pride and my anger and my envy is the same of somebody else's murder or somebody else's rape or somebody else's mugging of old ladies. Now, that's what sticks with us, you see. Well, let me tell you an illustration. Let's imagine three men running through a jungle, chased by a tribe of cannibals, hungry cannibals. And they're chasing these three men, right? There's me, there's Pastor Mike, and there's Carl Lewis, the Olympic long jump champion, right? There's the three of us running through the jungle, and we're chased by these hungry cannibals, and they're going to catch us before long. And we are running as fast as our legs will take us, and then we come to this clearing in the jungle, and there's this great big precipice, this cliff, 200 foot deep, and there's a river at the bottom full of equally hungry crocodiles. And there's this chasm, 30 foot wide, this chasm, right? And the only way to get across is to jump, the three of us. I go first because I'm the oldest. Now I run This little bypass thing is pounding away as hard as it can go, and I run and I launch these cannibals that are behind me. There's a sense of urgency about this matter. And I launch myself into this 30-foot gap. And I soar 5 foot, 6 foot, 10 foot, and plop all the way down to the crocodiles. I've missed by a mile. Now Mike comes along. Now he's younger than me, this All-American wrestler. And he is a go, right? And he runs. Now he soars way past my little 10 foot. He gets to 15 foot. By a miracle, he gets to 20 foot. And then, plop, he finishes up in exactly the same place I finished up. He's missed. He hasn't missed by as much as I did, but we're in exactly the same hole at the bottom. Then Carl Lewis. Three Olympic gold medals for the long jump? Well, Carl Lewis has a goal. And he runs, and he launches himself out. 10, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28 feet. His fingers just touch the edge, and Plonky goes down the same way. Now you say, well, Carl Lewis, boy, you didn't miss by much, but he finished up in exactly the same spot as I did. You see, the point I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter how much you miss by. If you miss, you miss. And if we are sinners, we are sinners. It doesn't matter how much we are sinners. It doesn't matter if we think, well, my sin is more respectable than his sin. All sin in God's sight damns us to hell. To miss the mark when God says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It doesn't matter if you fall short by a mile or by an inch, you've fallen short. And that's what sin is about, you see. There's a tendency in us all to think that my sin is not as bad as somebody else's sin. That's why we like reading about these people who make the newspapers for the awful things they do, and it gives us some sort of comfort because we're not as bad as that. But we are, you see, in God's sight. Sin is sin. And in practical terms, This means that religion and morality cannot save a soul. It means I can live a life in the eyes of society that is blameless and still be condemned by God. That's what it means in practical terms. It means I can be brought up in a Christian home and go to church all my life and still be unsaved on the way to hell. Now that's frightening, but that's the truth of it. Morality and religious observance always elevate some, you see, and denigrates others. We like to feel we're better than somebody else because we are religious and we are moral. But the gospel makes paupers of us all. The gospel reduces us all to the same level. The gospel says there is no difference in God's signs. The gospel condemns everyone. The gospel, in spiritual terms, kicks away the crutches, the moral and ethical and philosophical crutches that we like to build our lives on. It strips us naked and it says, not of works. Not of works. No matter what those works are. Not of works. Yet in spite of the clarity of the New Testament message, Some still cling to their own efforts as the means of salvation. I think the greatest heresy the devil has ever invented is salvation by works. But does it work? Let's imagine again now. Let's imagine a man dying and coming before God. It doesn't happen like that, but let's just pretend for a moment it does. And God says, now why should I let you into heaven? And the man says, well, you know, God, I've been good. I've lived a good life. I've tried my best all my life. You ask my wife. I've been a, I've been a good husband. I've been a good father. I mean, kind. I've been honest. I was even religious. God went to church. And then God will ask this man, come here, let me show you something. And God will show this man the cross. And he said, you see the cross there? There's my son nailed to that cross with a crown of thorns on his head. There's my Son bearing all the ridicule and the filth of the world. They spit on Him, they mock Him, they laugh at Him. There's my Son bearing the sin of the world, because I laid on Him the iniquity of you all. And there's my Son on that cross bearing my wrath and my judgment upon your sin. Do you see that? And the man will have to say, yes, I see it. And God will say, well, you don't think you need that to enter into heaven? You think you can get in by your goodness and your kindness? You don't think you need this cross to enter into heaven? And the man will have to be honest, it's God he's dealing with, and he'll have to say, no, I don't really think I need it. I don't need it. And God will answer, you may not need it, but I need it if a sinner is to enter into my presence. My wrath, says God, must be appeased. My broken law must be atoned for. My word which says the soul that sins shall die must be kept. And all your goodness and morality and religion fails miserably to achieve this. Only the death of my son on the cross can achieve that. Therefore depart, he cursed, into everlasting damnation prepared for the devil and his disciples. You see, what I'm saying is this, that salvation by works totally fails to take into account the holiness and the purity and the justice of God. Salvation by works only sees sin as a moral or a social blemish and not as an affront to the word and the law and the character of a holy God. And that's why it will always fail. My friends, salvation has to be of grace because our sin is an affront to God. Our sin isn't just a matter of breaking the laws of the land. It isn't even just a matter of breaking the laws of God in some impersonal way. Our sin is a swipe at the crown on the head of God and saying, God, you will not rule over me. I don't want you, God. Every sin we commit is an insult to the character and the holiness and the beauty and the loveliness of our God. God has to be taken into account, and God needs the cross. We need it, but God needs it, too, to atone for the sin and the law which has been broken and to make us right with him and make us acceptable with him. And salvation by works just fails miserably to do that. You can come to church all your life and not be saved. You can have all your doctrines right. You can believe the Bible from cover to cover. You can be a five-point Calvinist and go to hell if you are not born again of the Spirit of God. And I've met some of them too. It isn't what you, you can say I tick them all off. It's that your heart is right with God. That God has come in and God has done something for you. Something glorious and something inexplicable. And that's what this word grace means. It's not of works. What is it then that saves us? It's grace. It's grace, says our text. Grace is the undeserved favor of God. It is God doing for us. what we can't do for ourselves and God doing for us what we don't deserve. Grace is God saving us. You know, grace isn't an abstract notion. Grace is God working. I believe in salvation by works, I'm going to tell you tomorrow, but it's God's works, not ours. Grace is God working. Grace is God loving the unlovely, pardoning the guilty, saving the lost. And grace is the unique and special work of God. Nobody else can exercise grace. The world doesn't understand grace. We're going to sing at the end that lovely hymn of John Newton, Amazing Grace. It must have been about 20, 25 years ago in Britain. It became top of the hit parade, Amazing Grace. I don't know if it was like that in America. They had that crowd of Scottish fellows with their bagpipes playing it. And it became the top record and the top song. Amazing Grace. Because there were no words, just the music. And they had it on one of these pop programs on the television, and it was the days before videos, and they just put a picture on to illustrate what the song was about. And do you know the picture they put on? A gymnast on the parallel bars. That's how they understood grace. He was graceful, balancing on the bars. That isn't what Amazing Grace is talking about. The world doesn't understand grace, because it belongs exclusively and peculiarly to our God. But he gives it, you see. He gives it. Grace is the unique work of God. Let me give you another illustration of grace. Last century, in the really worst slums of London, there was a social worker named Henry Morehouse working. And one day, as he was working in those slums, he saw a young girl in rags and tatters, as they would have been in those days, carrying very carefully a jug of milk. And she was walking through those cobbled streets of London with this little jug of milk in her hands. And suddenly she tripped, and she fell, and the jug went and smashed into pieces, and the milk was all over the place. And she just sat on the ground, and she wept, wept. And Moraes went and he tried to comfort her, you see, and he said, well, don't cry, don't cry. But she wept, and she wept. And she said, my mother will beat me. She said, my mother will beat me. It was the only jug we had. We have got no more money. My mother will beat me. No, no, he said, let's try and mend the jugs, says the social worker. And he picked up the pieces that were on the floor, about four or five pieces, and he put them together. And it looked all right, didn't it? The jug was now together. Until he took his hands away, and the thing fell to pieces again. And she cried again. And he said, let's try again, he said. And he put the pieces together until just the handle was not together. He said, you put the handle on now. And she put the handle on. A bit rough, and the whole thing fell together. And this little girl was crying her eyes out. She saw no hope. And so, more or less then, he picked her up. And he carried her off down to the shop. And he bought her a new jug. And he carried her up with the new jug. to the milk shop, and he filled the jug up with milk. She had a new jug now, filled to the brim with milk. And he carried her all the way home, and he put her on the doorstep, and he opened the door for her, and he said, now will your mother beat you? Oh, no, she said, we've got a better jug now than we had before. Now, that's a poor illustration, but it is grace, you see. We made a mess of things. We've made a mess, not only in terms of our social relationship, that's only a symptom. We've made a mess of our relationship with God. Yeah, we are made in the image of God and look how we behave. You haven't got to look at somebody else, just look at your own heart. Look at your own mind. See the corruption. See the filth there. We've made a mess of things. God comes and he makes us anew. And that's what grace does, you see. God doesn't just put the pieces together. A Christian is not a patched-up sinner. He's a new creation. We'll deal with that tomorrow night. He's a new creation. And God saves in such a way that we can never again lose what we lost before. He gives us a salvation that's eternal. I give unto them eternal life, says Jesus. And they shall never perish. My friends, we don't deserve grace. None of us. Our sin is our own fault. It's not the fault of society. It's not the fault of your parents, or your upbringing, or your education, or your lack of opportunities. Your sin is your sin. My sin is my sin. And I'm answerable to God for it. And we deserve hell. but in Christ we receive grace. As John Newton puts it, amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see. Who wants works when you can have grace? Who wants your pathetic little own efforts when you can have the power and the love and the omnipotence of God working for you? But how do we get grace? Well, our text says through faith. By grace you are saved through faith. Now bear in mind that Paul has already said that salvation is not of works, not of our own efforts. So faith is not some good thing that we do. Faith, he said, is the gift of God. It's something God gives us. You see, faith is not vague optimism. Faith is not self-confidence. We are not saved by faith, we are saved through faith, to be accurate. Faith is the channel by which the saving grace of God comes to us. And faith is not a step in the dark. It's quite the opposite. It's a step out of the dark into the light. Faith, you see, looks towards what God has done. It looks at oneself and one's own pathetic efforts. It sees no hope in oneself. It sees all the efforts we've made to try and do this, and it's all the failures. Faith has got no hope whatsoever in man's own ability. It looks to God. It looks to the cross in wonder and amazement. It can hardly believe what happened there. That's faith. My friends, if you can look to the cross and think of it as something matter-of-fact, then you've never understood it, and you've never had faith. I'll tell you the language of faith. died he for me, we just sang it, who caused his pain. For me him to death pursued. Amazing love, says Charles Wesley. How can it be that thou, my God, should die for me? That's faith. It looks to the cross in almost unbelief. Is that a paradox? How can it be that thou, my God, should die for me? That's the language of faith. And faith throws itself on the mercy and the grace of God. You know, the only reason for the existence of faith is the grace of God. Because that's the only object worthy of faith. We don't have faith in faith. We don't have faith in the pastors, or the preachers, or the elders, or the church, or the Bible. Our faith is in what God has done for us by sending His Son to die on the cross, laying on His Son all our sin and all our guilt, pouring upon His Son as our substitute all the wrath and the judgment that should have come upon us. And faith looks to the Lord Jesus Christ. And faith trusts that what Jesus did in dying in our place on the cross of Calvary is enough to satisfy God. And faith believes God. And faith calls upon Jesus to save my soul. Faith, you see, in the Bible isn't just an intellectual exercise. It isn't just something that runs through your mind and you say, yes, I believe this, and tick off a series of propositions. Faith moves. Faith is an action. Faith believes and acts upon that belief and turns to the Lord Jesus Christ and says, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. It looks at what God has done and trusts what God has done. As I said at the beginning of the sermon, this trip of mine to the States was talked about about two years ago between Pastor Mike and myself. And then he invited me to come. And I said, well, that's nice. I wouldn't have come to America unless I was invited. But he invited me. And then a couple of months ago, he sent me some tickets. And the tickets were all paid for. Now, that's not a bad thing, is it? So I had the invitation. And I had the tickets, all paid for, it didn't cost me a penny. And they were in the desk drawer of my study for months. But that didn't get me to America. The invitation and the fact that the tickets were there, all paid for with my name in them, that didn't get me here. I could have been looking now at the tickets in my desk and I wouldn't have got one inch from Port Talbot to Amityville. I knew that they were right, I knew they were genuine. I knew there was an ability and a power, if you want, in those tickets to get me 3,000 miles across the Atlantic. But I had to do something, didn't I? I had to act on what I believed. I had to take those tickets up to London, to Heathrow Airport, and I had to get on the aeroplane and trust the people who prepared the plane and the pilot they knew to fly the thing. And I had to trust these people to get me across the Atlantic. Everything was prepared for me. The invitation was there for me. The price was paid to get me here. But I had to respond to what I believed. And that's what faith is. You can believe tonight that you're a sinner. You can believe tonight that Jesus loves sinners. That Christ died on the cross to save you for your sins. You can believe that and go to hell. You can't. You've got to act upon what you believe. God will not have faith for you. God says, believe, trust, turn, come, says God. One of the loveliest verses in the Bible is the little word, come. I've done it all, says God. I'm not saying, I've done 95 and you've got to do 5% of it. I've done 100% of it. It's finished. When Jesus died, he said, it's finished. There is nothing more. to be added to the work of grace. But God says, believe and come to me. My friends, don't believe and then leave it. Don't believe and say, yes, I believe these things, and just leave it sort of floating in the air as some abstract concept. Come to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith and say, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And you can trust God, you see. You can trust him. He's worthy of your faith. I'm not worthy of your faith. If you had faith in me, I'd probably let you down. But oh, Jesus never lets anybody down. Never has. Jesus has got a track record in this business of salvation that's 100% perfect. He says, no one who comes to me I've ever cast out. That's what he says. No one who's come in repentance and faith really believing they're sinners, really believing that God loves sinners, really believing there's nothing they can do to save themselves, but God has done it all. There's no one who's come to God like that, who's gone away without the saving grace and mercy of God, warming their hearts, encouraging their minds, thrilling their souls. God's got a track record on this. You've got a problem tonight. Your problem is sin. It's you, and it is a problem. You might think it's not a problem. You might think, well, it doesn't bother me now. It will. Because one day you'll stand before God, and you'll answer for that sin. You'll answer for every sermon you've ever heard, and you'll spurn it. You'll answer for every sermon you've enjoyed, and spurn the reality of the message of it. God says, you trust Jesus. That's the essence of it all. Have faith in Him. Put yourself in His hands. Let Him do the saving work. Just about this time last year, the cardiologist told me that I had a serious heart condition. And he said, you need an operation. And so, fair enough, I needed an operation. You know what they do in this operation, don't you? They get a saw. Now, switch off if you're a bit nauseating. They get a saw, and they saw you down here, and they open you on out, and they stop the heart. The heart is stopped for about seven or eight hours, and they do this bypass. Now, you take Mike Gaydosch there now. He's a nice fellow, and I like him very much, but I wouldn't trust him to do a heart operation on me. I'd trust him to preach at my funeral service, perhaps, but I wouldn't trust him to do a heart operation on me. Why? Because he hasn't got the qualifications. and he hasn't got the skill, and he hasn't got any experience in this. So I trust the surgeon. They tell me this surgeon has got a track record. He's good. He's done this. And he did it. And my trust was not disappointed. He did a good job. You see, now you've got a heart problem too. You might not need a bypass. What you need is something worse. You need a new heart. Your heart is like a lump of stone, says God, and I will take away that lump of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh. I'll give you a new heart, says God, with new desires and new ambitions and new loves. And God, you see, has got a track record of being successful in giving you hearts. You can trust Him. You can trust Jesus. I'll tell you how much you can trust Him. Because God so loved you, God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. He gave Him to die on the cross of Calvary. He gave Him to be nailed, to be rejected and despised and rejected of men. He gave Him to bear the wrath of God upon you, saying, that's how much God loves you. You can trust God. It seems silly to have to say this, but we're living in such peculiar days, you see, that men have to know they can trust God. And it doesn't matter what your sin is. It doesn't matter what you've done. Let me tell you this tonight. It doesn't matter what you've done. Things you've been embarrassed for the world to know. God loves sinners. And the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, can cleanse us from all our sin. All our sin. Every adultery, every lying, every foul language, every act of drunkenness, every drug pollution, everything, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sins. You can stand before the vilest sinner on Long Island tonight and you can tell him, there's hope for you, man, in Christ. There's no hope anywhere else, but there's hope in Christ. Why? Because salvation is by grace. It's not by what you do or what you don't do. It's by the love and the mercy and the grace of God. One of the great Scottish preachers of the last century, a man named David Dixon, he said this in one sermon. He said, I've taken all my good deeds and I've placed them in a heap, he said. And I've taken all my bad deeds and I've placed them in another heap. And I fled from them both to Christ. That's what faith is. Because your good deeds can no more save you than somebody else's murders can save you. It's not by works, good or bad or indifferent. It's Jesus who saves, and Jesus only. My friend, if you're not saved, and you know if you're not saved, if all you are is a Baptist, it's awful to go to hell being a Baptist, isn't it? There are millions of Baptists. I'm not trying to be funny. There are millions of people who think they're just right with God because they're Baptists, or because they're Presbyterian, or because they're Evangelical, or because they're this, that, and the other. You're right with God when you're saved. When the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed you from all your sins, then you're right with God. Then you can be a Baptist if you want, or a Presbyterian if you want, because you're right with God. I know it's the only thing that matters. It's the only thing that matters. And I trust that by the grace of God tonight you will look to Jesus. And you will say, Jesus, I need you. I need you. Now none but Christ can satisfy you. That's what the old hymn said. And another name for me is life and life and lasting joy, Lord Jesus, found in thee. And there is. Well, my friends, you've turned to Jesus. You want to talk to me afterwards? I'll be around. The other pastors here will be around. There's plenty of men here to talk to you. But go to Jesus. And as we sing in a moment that lovely hymn about amazing grace, remember what John Newton was like. John Newton, the man who wrote that last hymn we sang, was a slave dealer. Filled his boats with slaves from Africa, shipped them across the Atlantic, slowed them, sold them to the cotton plantations in the emerging states of America, a vile, untruth, ungodly, blaspheming drunkard of a man, but he was saved. He could write amazing things. He could write how sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ear. Why could he write those things? Because he realized he had nothing to offer God, but God had everything to offer him, and God offered him Christ. and he embraced Christ, and his life was changed, and he became a minister in the Church of England, and he could write those lovely words. And it doesn't let me say it again, it doesn't matter who you are or what you are, you can be saved by the grace of God. You won't be saved any other way. And grace comes to us this night. I don't care how you come in through those doors, but you can go out a new picture in the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't let it float away again. It may be that God's been speaking to some of you for weeks, Maybe some of you should have been saved weeks ago, humanly speaking. And you've been putting it off and putting it off. Don't do it anymore. Ask God tonight, and I will be praying. God, be merciful to me this time. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the grace of the Gospel. We thank you for the mercy that saves people like us. God, we know. We know what we are. We put on a face before other people, but we can't. We can't put on a face with you. You see everything. You know everything. And God, if there are people here tonight, and there probably are, who are not Christian, who are only religious, who've never known the love of Jesus flooding their hearts, and the grace of God warming their souls, oh God, have mercy tonight, have mercy. And deal again in grace, our God, to our souls, and come again in mercy, and show us how great your love is. Save people, our God, save the people, for your glory and honor, we ask it. Amen.