Holy authoritative Word to us, in Ephesians 2, beginning in verse 1, for the Apostle Paul writes, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our simple nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and ceded us with him in their heavenly realms in Christ Jesus and ordered that in the coming ages. He might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. It is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he prepared in advance for us to do. This is God's word. You'll now turn into a book. Let's return to the passage that McCabe read just a few moments ago from Ephesians 2. I will tell you that you really need. I know this is a familiar passage. Many of us know verses 8 and 9 of Ephesians 2 by heart, but it will really help you to have this open in front of you this morning. So if you don't have a Bible, which you take one from the queue and let's look at this passage. If you're visiting, we have been in Ephesians now for a few weeks. We are going through the verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph, and we've come to chapter 2. The first 10 verses of chapter 2 are the great, these verses contain the greatest definition in all the scripture concerning grace. There's no verses, there's no 10 verses, there's no two verses, there's no five chapters that describe grace, like it's described in these 10 verses. JC Rye was one of the great preachers, writers, scholars, and theologians of the 19th century, of the 1800s. When he was in college, he was like many of you. He loved the dance, he loved the play, he loved sports. He attended church, but he was not a Christian and he professed himself not to be a Christian. One Lord's day, he went to church, he could not say years later as he talked about. He said, I can't remember what the minister preached on that day. I can't remember about the service except there was a man appointed to read scripture and he came into the pulpit and he read from Ephesians 2 and when he got to verse 8, he read, full by grace, you've been saying through faith and that nodded yourselves as a gift of God, not of works, less than he man should boast. And in that sanctuary on that morning, in that specific moment, JC Rye was converted for the first time in his life. He understood the gospel, he understood grace. Those are our verses this morning verses 8 and 9. So let's pray and ask the Jesus who was there when Paul wrote that in the prison cell who was there in that sanctuary in England when JC Rye was converted that morning and that same Jesus is here. Let's pray and ask him to speak to us and change our hearts and grow us from inside out as we consider his grace in these verses. Our Father in heaven, I'm not up to that task and you know it and I know it and Father, you know my words are sincere and real and authentic. You know that Father these, this is not religious rhetoric, you know that I know in the deepest part of my soul that Father there is no way, there is nothing I could do to communicate to these folks and even to myself, to communicate your grace in a way that would change our hearts and lives. But Jesus is able to teach that way and we pray that in these next few moments we would hear his voice in our hearts we pray that we would hear him speak to us about his grace. Oh Father, I pray that my ministry would be about your grace. I pray that the ministry of independent praise material and that this congregation would be about your grace. So bless us this morning. In Jesus name, amen. Do you really know how you came so far or subtitle? Can you accept grace? Can you? It's not easy. Paul was speaking to Christians in the Ephesian church. The paragraph he was about to write would be the greatest description of God's grace that would ever be written in essence. He asked the Ephesian church to unite how far you've come in that first chapter. He reminded them of their magnificent treasures. He had taken them to the majestic mountains of heaven so that they could look out over all their will so that they could see what they owned all through the first chapter. He said, this is what you own. Then chapter two he began to speak about grace. And while they were standing all those high mountains of heaven overlooking all that they owned in Christ, he said, do you remember from which you came? Do you remember where it all started? And he began to talk to them about the object, spiritual poverty of the slums. He began to speak to them about the mud and the mud and the slums from which they had come. He reminded them that they chased after the filth of sin just like the rest of the world. He reminded them that they had followed after the evil one himself, Satan himself, that they had wanted autonomy like him, that they had fried just like him, that they resisted God's authority just like him. He reminded them that spiritually, they had once been dead. Of course, dead to God, their souls had been dead and rotting in their sins. And then, with verse four, was God's unexpected response to all of this. He is incredible. Wow. He looked at these people that were following after their own loss, following after sins and transgressions of the world, following after Satan. Dead to him. He looked at them in a surprise, incredible surprise. He loved them. He loved them. We saw his unexpected response. We saw his incredible, unbelievable love. And then, we saw the sinners in possible transposition. He was transposed. He was transferred from the depths of this ghetto and slumped to what? To the heavenly realms with Christ Jesus seated beside the Father in heaven. Do you know how far you come? Let's stop for a moment. Go back and let's look at those verses and be sure that we understand this huge transposition. Look at it, as per you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed after the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom, the air. The spirit who is now working those who are disobedient, all of us lived among them at one time, grandifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath with the incomes of the transposition. But the unexpected response, but because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus that in the ages that come He might show forth, He might demonstrate He is incomparable, the incomparable riches of His grace, the transposition from the depths to the heights. Do you realize today that you're seated with Christ in the heavenly places? That's where we ended last week and where did we begin? We began in the slums of sin. Well this morning we want to watch and listen as Paul comes to the heart and soul of his definition of grace. Everything else has been appraile. Those two messages were appraile and now it comes to the heart and soul of his definition. And we hear him change the question ever so slightly. Now he says, do you really know how you came so far? You've come from the slums to the heights, do you know how you came so far? First I want you to look at this passage and see the grace of salvation. The grace of salvation, look at verse 8, for it is by grace. You have been saved, it's by grace you have salvation. The word begins, so the sentence begins forward, F-O-R. We can't let that little word pass. He's saying whatever about to say, rest on the last seven verses. He's saying, this is the logical conclusion of what I've been saying in circle four and draw a line back up around all those seven verses four because of what you've heard. Four is logical because of God's incredible love. He raised you from your spiritual tendence by the power that's only spirit. This is something God did. It's something he did so it is by grace. You've been saved. What does the word grace mean? The word grace means unmerited favor. Go home, look it up in the Webster. Unmerited favor. Undeserved gift if you merit it, it's not grace. If you deserve it, if you burned it, it's not grace. From the slums to seated in Christ in heaven, how did you get there? You were brought there by God's unmerited favor. He did it. God sent His Son to give life to your dead soul. That's grace. God sent His Son to change your heart. That's grace. God sent His Son to die for our sins. That's grace. God judged Him guilty and punished Him for our sins to free us. That's grace. Every aspect. Look at it from every side. Look at it from the top. Look at it from the bottom. Look at it from the sides. All around every aspect of salvation. Grace, you have salvation. A woman stood before Queen Elizabeth the first guilty of a crime. The crime had been committed directly against the Queen. And so Elizabeth was acting as judge. Elizabeth asked this poor lady, would you be my loyal subject? If instead of exercising justice, I exercised grace. Would you be my loyal subject if I did this for you and let you go for it? The Queen was surprised by the woman's answer for the woman replied, that madam would not be grace at all. To found your grace on the future condition of my merit. That's not grace. And then Queen Elizabeth laughed and said, then I pardon you unconditionally, no matter what kind of subject you will be. If we merit God's love, do you understand? If we merit God's love, if we merit God's favor, then it is not grace. I see, we usually say in the beginning, if we merit God's favor, it's not grace. It must be unmerited favor. But after I'm a Christian, God has given me his grace, own condition of what I will be after I'm a Christian. No, no, because then it's thesis to be grace to you understand. It's grace before your Christian. It's grace today. He become a Christian and it's grace for a million years after. You think I'm a Christian? It must always be completely in heaven a million years from now. God's unmerited favor. You say, John, that is scandalous. That kind of grace is scandalous. That's right. He is. It's just scandalous. Do you know that there are evangelical churches that will not preach this early in my ministry? I ran across the ministry happen to be baptized. And he said, he believed that Christ died to people's sins. But he didn't believe in grace, not like this. And he said, John, and I was talking about this in Scripture and I said, how could you get around it? And he said, I know it's there, but he said, if I preach that in my congregation, my people would go out and sin like a biscuit variance. And we laugh. That's exactly what he said. We laugh. But he was serious. He was saying, John, it is scandalous. That's why the Pharisees hated because it was grace. It was unmerited. And in their religious condition, they wanted to merit and to favor and to be deserving. A man sat in my office crying. He had been fighting a hard battle for the last year. This was several years ago. He had been a practicing homosexual. We'll call him David, that one, his name. He had become a Christian. He would become a Christian. He would repent every sin. He would contripe and broken the love of the Lord. But he was in his struggle with his deep-seated feelings and his soul and heart. And he came into my office and he had slipped and fallen once again. And he sinned. He was miserable. His heart was broken. He wanted to love Christ. But the sinful nature kept on striving. In that day, he was just on the stage. Through his tears, he said, John, I couldn't be a Christian and fall again and again. I couldn't be a Christian and act like that. And finally, he said, I know what you're going to say. But he said, I want to know what Jesus would say if he were sitting here. I laughed. I said, I'm glad you asked that because I hadn't known what to say to you until it's very moment. But since you asked that, I can't answer that question. I know exactly what Jesus would say to you. You came into Jesus and you said, Jesus, I fall again. I said, Jesus would say, David, don't you understand that is why I died. I did not die for anything that you have done right today. I died for what you did wrong. Do you understand? If we deserve it, it's not grace. The grace of salvation, if you deserve it, you cannot have it. You can't have it. He won't give it to you. You all can say, I deserve it. Say, can't have it. I'm a Presbyterian. I'm a bat. I've been a member of church for 50 years. I preached. I've written a Zian Sermons. I'm an elder. I'm a Deacon. I'm singing a choir. I read my Bible every day. I pray for the hours every day. God says, can't have it. Can't have it. If you think you deserve it. The grace of salvation. Finally, secondly, I want you to see the grace of faith. Look at verse 8. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourself. Now, there are some who say that Christ dying on the cross of our sin is grace. He died on the cross of our sin. That's grace. Now, the rest is left to us. We must get there the best way we can. We must get to the cross and exercise our faith. That is our word. God's done his part. We must do ours. That's what some folks say. Now, those folks are right in two aspects. Christ dying for our sins. That's grace. They're also right in saying that we must come to the cross and faith or the cross will do us no good unless we go to the cross and embrace that cross and faith. It's not appropriate for us. But they are gravely wrong when they say that faith comes only from us and that God has nothing to do with giving us faith. Let's think about that. Some people read this verse. Look at it. Some people read this verse and say that the antecedent of this is faith that this refers back to faith. Let's read it that way. For it is by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this faith is not from yourself. Others read this verse and say that the antecedent of this is grace. Let's read it that way. For it is by grace, you have been saved through faith and this grace is not from yourselves. Are you going to think that I think it refers back to faith? I don't know. It really is. It's a toss up. It could be the one. So which do we think it doesn't matter? It doesn't matter. The Bible from Genesis to Revelation plainly teaches that our souls are dead to God and alive to sin when we're born. That's what Claire was talking about this morning. She had a sin nature when she was born. Here's a little baby and he's 19 inches long and it can't walk. He can't talk. He can't have a conscious thought. He's just laying there and all this little baby does is eat and sleep. There's babies only a few hours old. Has that baby done a sin? No. Is that baby a sinner? Yes. Why? Because there's a nature to sin. Remember this? This is a book in that I have in my study. It's an ugly thing in black. I gave this to Claire one day and I said, Claire, get water out of that. She's a pretty sharp girl. She's smart and she looked at it but she said, I can't. It's impossible. I said, if you had a million years, could you get water out? No, couldn't get water out of her. Well then I asked her. I said, all right, let's pretend it's not a book in it. Well, let's just pretend it's your sin nature. Blacker than this, but if let's pretend it's your sin nature. Get faith out of it. Get some faith out of that sin nature. That's impossible. You can't get faith out of a sin nature. That's right. That's right. The very essence of sin nature is not to have faith. Paul said in Romans, Romans 3.11, there are nuns thinking about the world, thinking about everyone in the world. There are nuns who seeks after God. We can't. We don't have, we have a sin nature that would never seek after God. Jesus was preaching you. Jesus preached this. Jesus was preaching to a crowd like this in John the 6th chapter. You know what he said? No one can come to me. No one. Not one of you can come to me unless the father draws him. But we don't like to hear that. We want to be autonomous. We want to come anytime. We want to, Jesus, if you can't come, unless the father draws you. Well, how does the father draw you? Jesus said it in John 3. I tell you the truth. No one can even say the kingdom of God unless he's born again, unless the Holy Spirit comes and changes his heart, changes his sin nature and gives him the ability to have faith. So it may refer to faith. For by grace you've been saved through faith and this faith is not from yourselves. But even if the this dramatically first back to grace, it does not change the meaning. It's impossible for us to have faith unless God changes our heart. And beside that it's still doesn't matter because if the faith came for ourselves from ourselves then it wouldn't be grace. It wouldn't be grace. It would be Jesus died and we had to faith. And that's not grace. It would be our work or some of it would be. It wouldn't be grace. You know, I love the story. One of my favorite stories in all the gospel is the story of life in John 10 and 11. Go back and read that this afternoon and think about this message. It would take on a whole new meaning. Remember Lazarus had been dead in the grave for several days, not hours, days, and buried? And Jesus came to the tomb and he brought Lazarus forth and Lazarus lived for several days and months and years. Well, what have you gone to Lazarus about after he had been raised from the dead? He had been alive for two weeks. He had come back from the grave at least two weeks and he'd been walking around living and breathing. What if the Pharisees had come to Lazarus and said, you know, it's well and good that you said that Jesus had something to do with your resurrection with you being alive now. But Lazarus, you're not giving yourself enough credit. Look at you. You're breathing right now. You're breathing. You're taking a breath. You're breathing on your own. That's you. That's breathing. Unless you were breathing. Now you wouldn't be alive. So Lazarus takes some credit. What was we supposed to say? But I couldn't think for anything. And that's God has threatened me from the dead. Unless God had quickened my lungs, unless God had made me alive, unless God had given me the ability to breathe. I wouldn't be breathing as foolish for me to take any credit. Just so, even though we have faith in Jesus, somebody confess that when you're exercising faith, you're exercising faith when you looked at Christ for your salvation, when you say, just as I am without one plea, that that blood was you're exercising faith, you're exercising faith when you pray. You're exercising faith when something bad happens in your life. And you say for all things work together for good to those that love God, to those that are called according to his purpose, you're exercising faith. So it takes some credit. And you say, but you don't understand, I was dead. And unless you've raised my heart from the dead, I wouldn't have this faith. It's just like Lazarus breathed. Grace, if you deserve it, you can't have faith. If you have it, he gave it to you. You see, you can't get around it, can you? It's just grace. Third, I want you to see the gift of grace. Look at verse 8. The last part of verse 8, it is the gift of God. This is my favorite part. It is the gift of God, not by works. It's a gift, redemption is a gift, regeneration is a gift, being born again is a gift, salvation is a gift, faith is a gift, justification is a gift. You know what? This is a real problem.
Most of us would say jokingly, I love to get gifts. You know, that's not true. We love to give gifts. We usually give them conditionally by the way, but we really find it hard to receive gifts. Our pride gets in the way. What happens when you receive as a stanchial gift from an unexpected source? You do everything you can to deserve the gift. I knew a man who just couldn't receive gifts. He simply could not receive them. I love this. I played games with him. If you gave him a gift, he gave you something of greater value. This is a great thing to do. I could give him a gift and always know he's going to get something greater value back. That's a neat system. But seriously, I mean, this is great. You know what was wrong? In a gift that you gave him, he saw it as making him a debtor to you. If you gave him a gift, he said, I'm indebted. And he would go out and do something so he wouldn't be indebted to you anymore.
Think about this for a minute. So many Christians say, oh, I believe in grace, but they look at their Christian lives as if they're paying a debt. If that's what you think, I've received grace and now I'm paying the debt. No, no, a thousand times. No. We said early, you can't pay the debt before you come and you can't pay the debt after you come. It's impossible. Yes, our Christian lives are there out of love and out of devotion and out of gratitude, but not out of indebtedness. It's a vast gift. In one way of thinking it was indebtedness, the Christian life is such a great burden. That's why the Pharisees' lives were so burdensome. They were trying to pay a debt. We are free. Absolutely, totally, completely free. It's a gift. It's a gift. And it's so hard to receive. We're like Neiman. Neiman comes down from Syria and he has leprosy and he brings millions and millions of dollars worth of wealth to give to a lion's shape, a lion's shape with healing. A lion's shape said, it's free and Neiman said, no, I want to buy. I want to buy. It's like I won't give it to you. You can't have it. You can't have it by buying. It's free. Take your wealth back home. Neiman, your leprosy's gone. It's free. One of the most difficult gifts I ever received was given to me 30 years ago by a very poor man in Whitewood, Virginia. A valley on the back side of the world. You can't even get there from here. I was working there during the summer and this man was a Christian serving in a church where I was working as an assistant during the summer. And he asked me, he asked us, he asked Janet, he asked me to dinner. He lived in a trailer with his wife and they worked extremely poor. They didn't have enough food to ask us to dinner. But we went and there was a very wonderful, such a delicious meal. It was wonderful. At first I said, no, I don't want it, because I knew he would have to sacrifice. I knew he would have to go without food to give his gift. He would be a tremendous sacrifice for a given his wife. And yet if I had not accepted it as a gift, I would not have honored him. And that's what God wants in our lives. He says to us, here's the gift and we say, I don't want it. You had to sacrifice. Look at the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Let me do something for it. God says, no, that would not be honored. He's that one. It's the most wonderful thing in the world. It's great. It's just great. Imagine what the person, are you a Christian? And this crowd has got to be someone here that's a professing non-Christian. You know that you don't know Christ. Isn't this a great thing? You've come to church this morning thinking you'll hear some burdensome message and you come grace. If you deserve it, you can't have it. It's free. You can't have it. If you pay for it. Isn't that a great thing? The grace of salvation, the grace of faith, the gift of grace. If you deserve it, you can't have it faith. If you have it, he gave it to you. Grace, it's free. You can only have it. If you don't pay for it. Fortunately, I want you to see finally the humility of grace, the humility of grace. Look at verse 9. Not by words. So that no one can boast. I don't have anything, God, in all of my salvation, all this wealth, spiritual wealth, you've given me. I don't have anything. It isn't from you. You gave it to me all. In Luke 18, there's a story about the Pharisee, the self-righteous Pharisee that wanted to earn it all. He went up to the church to pray, just like people today go up to the church. He walked in and church and he said, God, I thank you. I'm not like other men. This is 18, Luke 18 and 11. God, I thank you. I'm not like other men. Thank you. I'm not like other men. Robbers, evil doers, adulterers, or even like this white collar feet, this tax collector here. God, look at me. I fast, twice a week, twice a week. I fast. In a time. You know how much money I gave the church last year? Do you ever think that way about yourself? God, look at me. I'm thankful I'm not like him. I would never do what he's done. God, I'm thankful I'm not like her. I never do what she's done. God, I'm not like that, Robert. You ever think like that? That's boasting. God, I'm not like that, Robert. That's boasting. God, I'm not like that adulterer. That's boasting. God, I'm not like that liar. That's boasting. God, I go to church. I've been a member of independent. I'm a charter member of independent. That's boasting. God, I tie. I gave, in fact, I gave 30% of what I earned last year to the Lord. That's boasting. God, I pray. I pray two hours every morning. That's boasting. I look at this one job and I said, wait a minute. You ever thought about this? The Pharisee, it says, thank God that he was not those things. And you say, well, maybe he got it right. Maybe he wasn't boasting. No, he didn't have it right. And yes, he was boasting. He wasn't saying, God, I thank you. I was once like that. And I thank you that you've changed me and by your grace, you've changed me. And I'm striving. And I'm still sinful, but you've changed my thank you. But what you've done, that's not what he was saying. He was saying, God, in my own self, by my own character, by my own noble character, I thank you that I'm not a Robert. And God wasn't heaven saying, but you are a Robert. You're saying, God, in my noble character, I thank you that I'm not an adult, or you say, but you are an adult. And God, I thank you in my noble character that I'm not a bit God, but saying you aren't equal to. I mean, ask the question this way. If you're done right now, I mean, this second, and just like that, instead of me and my black robe, you were looking at God and all in this glory. And that's an initial question. Why should I let you into heaven? What would you say? God, we're down to the basics now, down to the basics. You want to get into heaven, God says, why should I let you in? You want to be seated in heavenly places, Christ, why should I let you in? I want to ask you, are you going to talk about you and what you've done? Are you going to talk about him and what he's done? You're going to talk about one of those, and you can't talk about both, and all eternity depends on him. One month before he died, John Calvin wrote his will. He knew he was about to die, he was sick, he was frail, he knew he wouldn't last much longer. And so he wrote out this will, this is the opening part of the will, I'll read the whole thing, just the opening part of it. Listen to him. This is the greatest theologian, one of the greatest theologians that ever lived, a great saint. Listen to him. In the name of God, I, John Calvin, servant of the Word of God in the Church of Geneva, weakened by many illnesses, thanked God that he has shown not only mercy toward me, his poor creature. And it's been patient with me and all my sins and weaknesses, but what is much more, he has made me a partaker of his grace to serve him through my work. I confess to live and die in this faith which he has given me in as much as I have no other hope or refuge than him, upon which my entire salvation is grounded. I embrace the grace which he has offered me in our Lord Jesus Christ and accept the merits of his suffering and dying that through them all my sins are buried and I humbly beg him to wash me and cleanse me with the blood of our great redeemer as it was shed for all poor sinners so that I, when I shall appear before his face, made bear his likeness. Did he say anything about what he had done? No. He only talked about what God had done. God, I'm a poor sinner. I have no hope. It's all by grace. If you save me and be because of your mercy. But then he seems to change more over I declare that I endeavored to teach his word and to expound holy scripture faithfully according to the measure of grace which he has given me and all the fighting, disputations which I led against the enemies of the truth. I employed no cunning or any sophistry, but I fought his cause honestly. It seems like he's saying, game back to his words. Listen, oh my, but oh my will, my zeal were so cold and sluggish that I know myself guilty in every respect. Without his infinite goodness all my passionate striving would only be smoke. Indeed, the grace itself which he gave me would make me even more guilty. All my striving is smoke. Thus my only confidence is that he is the father of mercy who has such desires to reveal himself to such a miserable sinner. That was John Gauvin. I'm not worthy to die if she makes this. What was his only hope? The grace of God. Grace, if you deserve it, I'm sorry. You can't have it. Faith, if you have it, he gave it to you. Grace, it's free. You can only have it if you don't pay for it. Grace, grace, if you're boasting, you don't have it.