It is seven minutes until 11. I'm just saying that to make you aware that I'm aware of what time it is. And I have what I think is a sufficient message, though I feel incredibly like it's an anemic message in terms of the substance of a text of scripture that is very rich. Ephesians chapter two, verses one through 10. You were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God. Those are some of the two most important words in this entire chapter. But God, because verses one through three, pretty dismal, that's our condition. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. See what I mean? There's so much to unravel there. And then these verses. For by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. not a result of works, so that no one may boast. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." Do you see the word in verse 10, workmanship? You may have a note in there because I pointed this out on previous occasions. This is the Greek word poema. You can hear it. You can hear what we get from that. Poem. You are God's poem. You are a creation of God that he is weaving and molding to be in the likeness of Jesus Christ. That's one of the goals of community group is maturity. You're going to discuss that here this week in your community group. You are God's poem. You are God's workmanship. Now I have three points that I want to give briefly. Here's the anemic part that I don't feel like I'm doing justice to because I want to get to some applications. Number one, we are completely dead and unable to reestablish a connection to God on our own. That's verses one through three. When do we become completely dead? When you're born, when you're conceived. That's when life begins, at conception. You don't become a sinner at some point, you are born a sinner. You are born into life, but in reality, spiritually dead. We are dead because of sin. That's what the text says. We have broken the law of God, therefore, we have separated ourselves from God, and we have no ability to get back to God on our own. That is what the text is saying. We have broken bodies and broken minds and hearts that follow the course of this world. Everything is broken because everything a human touches is broken. Humans are broken. All you have to do if you were to want some biblical examples of this is read the book of Ecclesiastes, because the author's going out, he's looking at various things, he's observing the beauty of nature, and then on the other hand he's seeing great injustices in the world. So there are these wonderful things, beautiful sunsets and sunrises, and then you have these horrible things within our Father's world, as the song says. Why is that? because we are born into sin, completely dead, and unable to reestablish a connection to God on our own. That's what death is. But number two, but God initiated a relationship with us. This is a thought that is too big to say briefly, but I have to, and it's true. God took his fierce love and aimed it right at you. He directed that love to you. It says, with great love with which He loved us. Not just love. That's why I'm saying fierce love. Not because it's a trendy word or a catchy word, but because this love, this intense love that God has, He took that love and He directed it at you, at people who offended Him. This is our God. That love involved a violent death. that bore the fruit of love and kindness. It wasn't a free gift to Him. It is a free gift to us because of Him and involved His violent death in order to direct that love to us. It was a costly death. And number three, we accept these truths of my sinfulness and God's great mercy by believing what God has said. The grace is that he's directing love to us, and I don't deserve it. How do I access that love? By faith. I believe what he said. By grace, you have been saved through faith. that is believing God. It is not your doing. It is not because you tried to get to be a better person or to get involved in church or to even be part of our ministry fair. It's not through doing anything because this is not your boasting. This is God boasting in His Son, Jesus, who directed His love towards you. That's what this is. By grace, you have been saved through faith. A couple implications before I give applications. Implications are just things that flow out of the text. We live in our day in an age of authenticity and self-expression. Those are hallmarks of our day. The expression of the authentic self is sometimes what you will hear. It is what I feel and how I see myself that becomes the new truth. that cannot be questioned because it's my truth. This is how we operate today, or how culture at large operates today. Can I say that within the context of our church, we want people to be authentic. We want genuineness. We want transparency. We have to, though, understand in the context of church that my authentic self is dead in sin, and that all I can do is conjure up more of that deadness. The Bible says even all of my works, my good works, are as filthy rags. Because there's a separation between me and God. We want authenticity. We want transparency. But left on our own, apart from Christ, this is brokenness. People are born separated from God by their sin. Lots of broken implications come from this. God knew this, this is the good news. God knew this and still fiercely loved us. Even when we were dead in trespasses and sins is what verse five says. Even when he knew how bad we were, are, he still directed that love towards us. That is an amazing truth. So I have four applications to conclude our time together today. Number one, have you been saved by grace through faith." I cannot come to this passage without asking that question. Have you been saved by grace through faith? This means that you're not trusting yourself. You're recognizing what the Bible says. I'm born into sin. I cannot possibly reestablish this connection. Only Jesus established the connection. It's me on this side. It's God on this side. It is the cross in the middle. Jesus establishes the connection. But I have to believe that. I have to believe that. I have to believe what Jesus said. I have to believe what the Bible says. If you don't know if you are a Christian, if you are not 100% sure, this is all you need. By the way, how do you know if you can become a Christian? Do you feel that? Do you sense that? Do you feel a tugging on your heart? Are you interested in that? Do you know where that came from? It came from God. Because if you're dead in your trespasses and sins, you didn't conjure that up. It was God. He's drawing you to himself. What you need to do when we conclude this sermon is you can simply, in the quietness of the moment, bow your head and say, Jesus, I am a sinner. I want you to save me. Would you do that? And the Bible says, whosoever would call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It is believing the truth. It is trusting Jesus. And he will do his part. Have you been saved by grace through faith? Number two, I want to talk about just briefly our generosity report. I know whenever we talk about finances, as I mentioned before, it's very personal. Do you need to step out in faith? By grace through faith? Do you need to access faith? Maybe you need financial counseling. Maybe it's not as simple for you and you've got lots of things you have questions about. Ask those questions. We'd be glad to direct you to people who can answer those questions. But I'm just simply asking, do you need to Have faith in this. Listen, I need to have faith in this. Like, I'm the one talking about it. I need to have faith in this. I'm telling you the honest truth. I'm telling you the honest truth. I am not doing any preacher embellishment, which by the way is just lying. I'm not doing any of that when I say this. I was working on that generosity thing Monday. Monday. I'm sitting there and I've got sticky notes all over the place. I've got this. It's just a mess. And I am discouraged, because I want to study Ephesians. I don't want to study numbers. And I'm sitting there, but I'm working at it. In our faith promise right now, we're $10,000 behind. $10,000 behind. And some of it's understandable, but it's like I can't get missionaries over here as readily as used to. We're $10,000 behind. As I'm sitting there, I get an email from the office. Somebody gave a donation. So I emailed back, could you just give me the numbers and the designations? I don't need to know names. They know that. Just give me, just so I have an idea. Had a donation of faith promise. Praise God. Praise God. Donation of faith promise. As I'm working on this, folks, do you know how much it was? $15,000. Praise God! I've had people, when I do that in the past, people come up to me, oh, pastor, don't be so over the board with giving. People won't want to give then. Listen, genuine Christians hear that and they're like, God's at work. Do you know why I give? It's not because there's some need and I'm just like, you know, just I get a tax deduction and all this kind of stuff, the government. Forget about all that stuff, even though that's important. I want to be where God is at work. I want to be where God is at work. And that was a little something, a little something to encourage my heart. God's at work there. Rob, God's going to take care of it. You be the mouthpiece. Do you need to exercise faith? Number three, how did you fight bitterness this week? How did you fight bitterness this week? I preached on bitterness last week. This is how we cut ourselves off from the grace of God. I had a conversation last week that was so helpful to me, I'm going to relay it to you. It's with Abby's dad, all right? Marsha, right? Your husband. Your name's Marsha. Martha, sorry. Can I call you Marsha? It's what comes to mind. Martha. So her husband came and talked to me last week. And he said, have you ever heard of bindweed? He said, look it up. So I looked up bindweed. And Abby's dad is like a true blue farmer. Not one of these guys like us that puts a couple buckets out with tomatoes in them. That's not it. Like real farming. Like you go to the grocery store and get that stuff that these people do. And he said, this bindweed, he said, it is a killer. He said, it goes everywhere. So I looked it up. It actually has a flower on it that looks like morning glory. That in itself, just think, when he was telling me the whole thing, I was like, oh man, I wish I could rewind and preach the sermon over again. Because it says, lest any root of bitterness spring up and trouble you. This thing grows roots 20 feet deep. 20 feet. This is the part that amazed me. The seeds of this weed can stay in the ground for 60 years. 60 years. You know the illustration I gave you about running into a person at Walmart? It was a seed. was a seed. You got seeds right now in your heart. And what's going to happen is you're going to be in a situation and there's going to be something that's going to spring up. I just want to warn you like the scriptures warn you that a root of bitterness, like bindweed, can grow way down and it can grow way out. Here's part that her dad was telling me that was, this is what clicked for me of something I had wondered. How does bitterness cut off the grace of God? And he said in this natural illustration, he said this thing soaks up all the water. Takes all the water. That's what bitterness does. So instead of focusing my mind on truths of grace, on Jesus, on how I can help people, how I can have a blessing to others, all I'm focused on is my hurt. And it cuts off the water of God's grace. Cuts off the water. This is how. It's not God saying, hey, you're bitter. No grace for you, man. That's not the way it is. God's always flooding us with his love and his grace directed towards us. But it's us. So I'm asking you, by faith, how did you fight bitterness this week? I gave you a sheet last week. We put it out. Did you take that sheet? Did you use some of those verses? Because I guarantee you, when her dad goes after this root, it's not like just picking flowers off. It is like going all out to get that stuff out, or it's gonna devastate the crops. Bitterness will devastate you if you don't fight the weed and go after it with the truth of God's Word. And by faith, you say, well, if I forgive that person, I don't know what's gonna happen. You don't wanna let that go. By faith, you're gonna trust the Word of God to do its work in your heart. How did you fight bitterness this week? And then the fourth and final, illustration that I have is becoming a safe house as a church. We've talked about that a lot around here. I want to keep it going and I want to give you illustrations that might help. We don't just, I don't just say safe house and it becomes that. We have to work at that. There was a church, I follow a few churches that I, some are like ours, some are not like ours, I just admire the pastor and I just like, but I follow a church and what I find interesting about churches is when they have a problem, how do they deal with it? And a lot of that's not, it's kept behind the curtains, understandably so, but sometimes you get glimpses of different things. There was a church that I follow and I love that had a sizable problem. And I wanted to know how they dealt with it. And I heard one of the pastors stand up and say this. And as soon as he started talking, I thought, oh my word, that's exactly what we want our church to be. This is what he said. This has been and will remain a place where it's okay to not be okay. And the follow up to that is that we don't just want to stay there. It is okay to not be okay. We just don't want to stay there. And for us to be a welcoming church, it has to be a safe place for you. It has to be a safe place for our community. It has to be a safe place for all of us, including the leaders of this church. It's got to be a safe place for me. It's got to be a safe place for other pastors and leaders and staff members. And as we are wading into what we are wading into this morning, I pray that the aroma of this room is the grace of Jesus Christ. One of their leaders had a problem threatening to undo the ministry, and this is how the guy's set up to introduce how they're going to deal with the problem. I think it's admirable, and we want to be this kind of church, that we want to be a place where it's safe to be a confessing church, where it's safe to be a restorative church. I think it's a hoax If we all put on our good church clothes and we come and we are just putting on our best face and nobody ever knows what we struggle with. This is wrong. And yet sometimes we're afraid to share those things because we don't know what's going to happen. We ought to be a safe place where a person could put that out and the Word of God is applied appropriately. And then we walk and we journey with brothers and sisters together because, folks, there are all kinds of problems in this room, beginning with here in the pulpit. We need to be a safe place like this. We are becoming a safe place. How can you help? I wanted to give you this practical way that you can help and have a way to step in faith. We want to hear you share your story. Remember a couple weeks ago, I had Jessica Duckworth share about what God was doing in her life. Ordinary life, just ordinary life, not some big, humongous thing. Ordinary life, how God's working. Because God's at work all the time. You share some of you things with me that I think, oh, the congregation needs to hear this. But I know you're going to be reticent to share that. And not everybody should share everything. But some of you should share more than you do. And you just need the push and the opportunity to do so. So as God works in your heart, would you share that with me? Share that with someone? I've told our deacons this. I've told our community group leaders this. Listen for where God is at work in this congregation so that we could have some of those stories. We could hear people share. We turned the live stream off when Jessica shared so that wasn't this feeling of it going to the whole world. It's for the people in here. So we will do that for you as well. But would you be willing to share what God is doing in your life? Let's pray. We are your workmanship. We are your poem. We are your tapestry of grace. You made the way through Jesus. Help us to walk in your way. Help us to walk by faith. May we know and feel and see the kaleidoscope of your grace in other people's lives as you flow that into our lives. God, thank you for the work that you are doing and you will do. In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen. This concludes our service today. There is a ministry leader meeting in this room over here for next week that Pete's having with ministry leaders. I hope you have a great week. Go in peace.