Talk 4 - Ephesians 2 v1-10

0:00 · Speaker 1 I'm just going to come up for a moment. Thanks so much to everybody involved this morning. It's great to hear from Claire. Now, Garth mentioned PowerPoint. I've helped Garth with tech. He's far more overhead projector than he actually is PowerPoint. I'm just, even he was raising the bar a little bit for himself there. Yeah, fuzzy felt.

0:16 · Speaker 1 That would be more your thing. Definitely, definitely. I'm grateful to hear that it was so good to have the Gardner girls as well. And Gardner is a name that's obviously ringing throughout the service this morning because I want to introduce Gray to you. don't you give Gray a little bit of a Glen Abbey welcome? And some of you will have heard the podcast that I recorded with Gray a couple of weeks back, so you'll know the background. I'm just going to give a very brief one of those. Gray and I met, we studied, began studying together for, it was a part-time master's in St. Andrews in what was called Bible and Contemporary World in their school of theology there.

0:54 · Speaker 1 And we started there. You finished in 2020, isn't that right? I finished in 2021. Work out from that what you will. It just took me a little bit longer. But we connected very quickly, sort of started a close friendship, which has remained throughout. And we've always been keen. Certainly, Gray's been very keen to come this direction.

1:15 · Speaker 1 I'm also keen to go the other, but he's got here first. So that's that's so good. So just that he and his wife, Jen, are over for a few days. So I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions, Gray. First of all, I suppose, tell us about, first of all, your family, and then also where you serve as well in ministry, and just give people a little bit of an idea behind that.

1:35 · Speaker 2 Sure, yeah. Well, thank you for having me. We're really grateful to have the chance to be here. So we also have Gardner Girls, no relation, I don't think, to these Gardner Girls that sang, but we have four. Charlotte, who's eight, Finley, who is five, Joelle, who is three, and Millie, she's the only one who got to come with us, who is eight months old, I think, today or yesterday. So, yeah, so she's the one who got the tag along. She won the lottery. The other girls had to stay back.

2:01 · Speaker 2 So she's going to get to have lots of pictures made that she'll never remember, which will be fun.

2:07 · Speaker 1 And whereabouts do you serve back at home?

2:09 · Speaker 2 So I serve at a church called Forest Hill Church, and it's in the Charlotte area. So Charlotte is on the border of North and South Carolina. So we live down on the South Carolina side, and we have a few different campuses, congregations around the Charlotte area.

2:24 · Speaker 1 Brilliant. and I'm going to give him time to speak. So if you want to hear more about that connection, you can still listen to the podcast afterwards and find out more. We had a bit of a conversation there. I'm going to pray for Gray. First of all, he's got the energy to get through this because he flew overnight on Friday evening, arrived about up north where you're staying about five o'clock yesterday afternoon and basically turned around to me at about eight o'clock and said, right, I'm done. So thankfully, I've had a good night's sleep, but pray for that and pray for us as he comes to teach for us now. Let's pray together.

2:54 · Speaker 1 Father, I just want to pray for Gray now as he opens your word for us. Give him, yes, the energy. And thank you for how you've been working in him in preparation by your spirit of wisdom and revelation to just open this passage up for us. We pray that we will be receptive, that you will soften our hearts, as I often pray, and open our ears and make us ready to respond to the riches of your word. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

3:27 · Speaker 2 Thanks, brother. Well, Glenn Abbey, it's really good to be with you this morning and just so grateful for Chris and getting able to know him and see his walk with the Lord, his care and love for you over the years. And we've been talking since 2017 about trying to find a way to come over here. So we finally made it happen, which I'm really grateful for and that Jim's able to come along. You got the short end of the stick with this relationship. If Chris were to come over, which hopefully he will sometime and preach at Forest Hill, everyone would immediately be just locked in. The accent alone, there would be intrigue. He would be granted an extra 20 IQ points just by virtue of the accent.

4:15 · Speaker 2 Mine, on the other hand, you're probably like, can this guy even read? Who is this that's talking to us this morning? but I can read so we're gonna you know we'll at least strike that off this this morning but I'm real excited to jump into the series and specifically the passage that we have and so if you have a bible I want to go ahead and encourage you to turn to Ephesians chapter two and if you have been around church or have been a believer for a long time my guess is this is a passage that you're somewhat familiar with. It is a foundational gospel passage in the New Testament. And so when Chris said, hey, we're doing Ephesians, you're going to line up on Ephesians 2, 1 through 10. And immediately I was like, yes, this is the best. It's such a, I mean, it's such a rich gospel passage. And then I started studying it and preparing to preach.

5:07 · Speaker 2 And I thought, okay, there's actually going to be some challenges here. Because on the one hand, this passage is so good, I kind of feel like I can only mess it up. Like, what can I say to help you really get this passage? It's so rich and good. It's kind of, I was trying to think of an analogy. I think it's gotta be like a diamond salesman who only sells diamonds on the phone. You know, like who's just calling people and trying to describe how shiny they are and the different cuts and the way the light refracts and how beautiful it is. It's like, great, but to see and appreciate a diamond, you have to see it in front of you have it in your hand and turn it over.

5:46 · Speaker 2 And so this morning I'm kinda like the diamond salesman on the phone, I'm just, I'm trying to point you to something that's so beautiful, so much better than what I can adequately describe to you. But I thought there's another challenge as well. And I think this challenge comes in the fact that for many of us who are accustomed to gospel truths, we can so easily by familiarity Familiarity become numb to those truths. For us, landing yesterday, driving yesterday afternoon to the North Coast where we're staying, driving back this way this morning. I mean, it's like everything we're looking at out the window. We're just admiring the landscape and the beauty, which is a bad idea because I'm already driving on the wrong side of the road, which I've never done before, which is just, if we're honest, it is a little reckless by the United Kingdom not to make me do a test or something before I could drive. So that's something y'all should try to vote in because it was too easy for me to get a rental car. But we're driving and I'm trying to not go into the wrong lane, but I'm just admiring the beauty of the geography here.

6:58 · Speaker 2 And my guess is for many of you who call this home, you can get numb by familiarity to even your surroundings, can't you? We have a way of getting inoculated against things that become familiar to us. And so my hope and my prayer this morning is that we can together be reawakened to the beauties of the gospel and what God has done for us in Christ as explained and described in this passage. And that where there are places where by familiarity we've become numb, that God would shake us out of that slumber, that he would prick our hearts in a way that help us to come alive to these truths again. And so the passage is Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 10, and let's read them in the entirety now. Paul says, 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 end of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving 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.

8:26 · Speaker 2 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 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by work so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. So Paul in this passage frames out a really clear understanding of what he does for us in salvation and in the gospel. And so he's speaking to the church, which means he's speaking to believers in Christ, those who have been saved.

9:20 · Speaker 2 And so the first thing that we see as he talks about this salvation is that he wants to remind the church of what they are saved from. And what we see in verses one through three is that we are saved from sin. We are saved from sin. Beginning in verse one, he says, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sin. So first of all, we see what is the result or the impact of sin on our lives. That's really what verses 1 through 3 are doing. Paul is trying to help the church remember where you were. Or he's helping those who have never heard and experienced the gospel.

9:59 · Speaker 2 He's trying to help them see where they currently stand. And so what he's saying, first of all, is you need to recognize that because of your sin, you were dead. dead to God and on a trajectory towards natural death. Now notice that he says these two words, transgressions and sins. So sins, as most of you probably know, sin is a word, it's an old archery term. And so it refers to when an archer pulls back his bow and his arrow, the arrow misses the target. It goes off the side. So sin generally is this idea of how we miss the mark of God's righteousness in our lives.

10:38 · Speaker 2 But this idea of a transgression, or later he's going to say trespass, is specifically a failure to obey one of God's commands in his law. So what he's saying is the result of us being generally sinful, missing the mark of God's righteousness, and also transgressing his law, is that we are dead. We'll come back to that in just a moment. But I think the rest of these verses in two and three show the pattern of the way we become dead. So in verse two he says, you used to live in these sins when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air. The image that comes to mind is this image of like a herd or crowd where people are just mindlessly following in the direction that everyone else is going. We see here that there is deception. He's saying that we were dead because at one point we were deceived.

11:41 · Speaker 2 You used to live this way. You used to follow the ways of the world, the pattern of the culture of this world that's broken and marred by sin, but who is being led by the ruler of the kingdom of the air. Now, Paul, you're going to see this as you continue on through Ephesians, especially when you get to Ephesians chapter six, but Paul is not shy about naming the power of evil that not only leads society and the world to be broken, but also tempts and deceives us. Now we can have a tendency in the enlightened Western world to kind of progress our thoughts away from believing in a personal powerful force of darkness. And so when you start talking about like the name of Satan, you get eye rolls many times out culturally. Even for us in the church, sometimes we can be a little suspicious of that. But Paul is very clear here that there is a deception that's happening in this world, and there's a deception that happens in our own hearts and minds as a result of a very real person who is ruling this world whose name is Satan.

12:52 · Speaker 2 And Satan's goal is to be what he's called in other places, the father of lies, and to help you doubt God's word and to believe what is false to be true and to believe what's true to be false. And Paul here is saying, you were dead, but you were dead because at one point you were also deceived. And look at this deception. What is the purpose of Satan's deception in our lives. His purpose is our disobedience. Verse two, he says, you're following the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient. ESV would say the sons of disobedience. He said, all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its thoughts and desires.

13:41 · Speaker 2 The purpose that Satan has in deceiving us with lies is so that we would continue in a downward spiral of disobedience and sin and transgression. And the result of disobedience, and you know this by experience, the further apart from God's standard and way of holiness, the more your life disintegrates. The further away from God's way you get, the more your life begins to implode. and that is Satan's desire for you and for me, that we would be tricked by the deception into disobedience. And I think for many of us, when we start thinking about the idea of disobedience, I think we can be tricked and deceived into thinking many times, That seems a little strong to describe me. I'm a good person. I'm a good person.

14:39 · Speaker 2 I'm not really disobedient. And we can begin to self justify, right? And so we could hear this and think, yeah, that's those people. But I would just remind you of what God's law actually says. So let's just consider a few of the 10 Commandments. So thou shalt not have any idols. That's like King James Version. I don't know why I said thou shalt.

14:59 · Speaker 2 I never use the King James Version, but here we are. Thou shalt not have any idols. All right, what is an idol? You're like, great, I don't have any little figurines in my house, I'm not worshiping idols. Well, an idol is not just a statue. An idol is anything or any person that you love in your heart more than God. And so the question is, have you ever loved anything in your heart more than you love God? Okay, all of us right now, guilty.

15:24 · Speaker 2 You keep going down the list. How about thou shalt not murder? You're like, I never killed a person. I'm good. I'm great. Well, Jesus would say on the Sermon on the Mount that if you've ever had anger in your heart towards a brother or sister, then you've committed murder in your heart. So like some of y'all getting ready for church this morning, you just killed somebody by your anger because they were going too slow or you were, you know what I'm saying? Like you're guilty.

15:45 · Speaker 2 We're all guilty. You keep going down the list and we could just go tick by tick. I mean, thou shalt not bear false witness, which means, you know, don't lie. You might say, "Well, I tell the truth, I'm not a liar." Well, how many of you have ever updated your phone software to the new iOS, or Android, whatever the Android version of that is, and the screen pops up that says, you have to check it and say, "I have read and agree with all the terms and conditions." If you have checked that and not actually read the terms and conditions, you're a liar. And we've all done that. And you see, those are simple and maybe funny ways of thinking about it, but what it does is it illustrates this fact that, man, if you really want to get serious about God's law and looking at it, we are all disobedient.

16:32 · Speaker 2 We have all fallen short of the glory of God. So now the question is, what is the result of this? You see the downward spiral. There's deception that leads to disobedience, that disobedience leads to us being spiritually dead, but then finally, that spiritual deadness and our sin and our disobedience, what does it lead to? It leads to us being condemned. Look at verse three. Like the rest, the rest of who? The rest of mankind, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

17:07 · Speaker 2 The ESV would say children of wrath like the rest of mankind. Gilbert preached a couple weeks ago and I know he taught on this idea that not all of us, by virtue of being humans, are born children of God. we're all born creatures of God we bear the image of God but children of God being his son being his daughter is a right that is given only to those who have been adopted into his family by being justified by faith and what that means is that if you come into this world like apart from Christ that you are dead you are deceived you are disobedient and you are condemned you are actually deserving The word says there. Like you have performed in your life well enough to earn wrath. It's like thanks Chris for bringing the American to make us all feel bad about ourselves today. But it's important we get this, not just 'cause it's in the Bible, but because you're not gonna understand the glory of God's grace, they're not gonna shine as bright until you see the darkness of the background.

18:11 · Speaker 2 And what can typically happen, again because we're enlightened 21st century Westerners, is we can think are my sins, I mean, really, are my sins deserving of wrath? Like, have I really done enough? Like, what kind of God would condemn me on the basis of my sins? Like Hitler, I get that. Me? I think it's helpful to understand the way that God judges us. And so, if I hit this pulpit up here, I'm not really guilty of anything. It's just plastic and metal.

18:47 · Speaker 2 If I go across the street at my house and hit my neighbor, I'm guilty, we call that assault and battery, I might be going to jail for that. But if I go to Washington D.C. and I hit the president, I just committed a federal crime and I'm going to prison for a really long time. Now I could argue, I could say, it's the same action. I hit my desk all the time, why is it a big deal that I hit the president, why am I going to jail for that? Why are there different consequences for the same act? And the reason is because the consequences for an action aren't meted out just on the basis of the action themselves. The consequences correlate with the worthiness of the person sinned against.

19:32 · Speaker 2 So what happens when you and I sin against an infinitely holy God? It doesn't matter how little the sin is. Our sin against an infinitely holy, sovereign, majestic, good God is always cosmic treason, deserving of infinite consequence. The bottom line of these first three verses, if you are a believer, it's simply this. remember where you came from. Like remember what was true of you. Remember the depths to which Christ had to go to redeem you. And if you're here this morning and you're skeptical or trying to consider faith for the first time, what I would just want you to think about this morning as we continue is what if this is true?

20:39 · Speaker 2 What if these words really are true? And what if this morning, apart from faith in Jesus, you actually do sit in a place where you are spiritually dead and condemned? My hope is that this morning you will not leave here without wrestling through that truth. The good news though is that I do have good news to share. Because Paul is explaining to us what was true for those of us who are in Christ. But God has made a way. God has made a way. We are saved from our sin, but we are saved by His grace.

21:23 · Speaker 2 And this is how the passage continues. One of the greatest turns of phrase in the New Testament. In the ESV it says, "But God." In the NIV it says, "But because of His great love for us." who is rich in mercy. He made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace that you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and he seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

22:02 · Speaker 2 I want you to see the power of God's grace. Again, we can be so numbed out by this idea. We sing about grace. We believe in grace. It's these beautiful truths, but we can so often have head knowledge because we're good theological people. You get good theological, biblical preaching. And it's so easy for our heads to be separated from our hearts to where we don't feel in our affections and our desires and the warmth of our feelings, the realities of the truths that we believe in. Look about the power of what he has done for you.

22:35 · Speaker 2 Where you were dead in your sin, he has made you alive again. Where you were deceived, he has enlightened you with the knowledge of the glory of God in Christ. Your mind can now understand heavenly things. Where you were disobedient, God has shown you mercy, but not just that, he's given you a new heart that can actually desire and walk in good works. Where you were condemned, he has actually raised you to sit in the heavenly places alongside his son. Hint, that's in the throne room. and to be co-heir with Christ over all things. What does Christ own?

23:12 · Speaker 2 Everything. And God, by his grace, has taken you from being this dead, deceived, disobedient, condemned creation to now being an alive, obedient son and daughter who's going to receive the inheritance that the Father has for us. the grace of God is powerful in chemistry they have the language of a catalyst it's a change agent you drop a catalyst into a chemical formula and it changes things God's grace when it comes into a sinner's heart like it changes things it transforms you which begs the question if if you you say you believe in these truths of the gospel, but your life has not changed, and you don't see yourself walking away from sin and towards God, have you experienced the grace of God? It's a question we should wrestle with because His grace is powerful. But second, look at the motivation of His grace. God in His great love for us. It says that he is rich in mercy.

24:32 · Speaker 2 The motive of God's grace towards us is his love. Romans 5:8 would say, "But God demonstrates his love for us "in this, while we were still sinners." Not after you got yourself cleaned up a little bit, not after you went to church a few times, not after you learned, you know, we used to call them sword drills, you know, you learned where all the books of the Bible are, not after you did a couple of quiet times or served or whatever else. While you were still a sinner, God and his love move towards you. See, we can have a tendency, I think, to believe that in God's love, like he's just given us an opportunity to respond. So like the image would be, we're out in the ocean and as sinners, we're drowning in the ocean and God and his love, he throws out a life raft with Jesus written on it and we just have to cling on to it and he'll reel us back in. And that's what salvation is. But the passage here is talking not just about someone being saved because they're trying to do it on their own, but they can't.

25:34 · Speaker 2 The passage here is talking about someone who is not drowning, but who is dead. So the image is not of us drowning. It's the image of us having already drowned and at the bottom of the ocean. And the image is of a God on a ship who loves us so much that he sheds off his glory to dive into the ocean, to go to the bottom of the sea himself, to bring us back up onto the ship, to resuscitate us by breathing his very life into our lungs. It's God and his love which makes the first move in initiating towards us through the cross. His motive, his love, which if you just want to apply that for a moment, to consider what that actually means. I want you to go in your mind to the moment in your life you're most ashamed of. Maybe something you did or something you said.

26:38 · Speaker 2 And my guess is if you're like me, you got there pretty quickly. 'Cause these are the thoughts where when you lay your head down in your pillow at night, this is what comes pretty quickly 'cause the accuser will want to put this in front of you consistently. What this passage is teaching us is that in the middle of that moment was the moment where God was moved by his love to come towards you. In the middle of that moment, that moment that racks you with guilt and shame. It was in the middle of that moment, while you were still a sinner, that God, his love moved him towards you. God is overflowing with love. He loves you far more than you can ever love yourself. His motive in showing us grace is his love, but consider also the measure of his grace.

27:39 · Speaker 2 The measure of his grace. In chapter one, you heard a couple weeks ago, It uses this word like lavish. God lavishes his grace upon us. It's an exorbitant amount. It's extravagant. And if you look at this language of what he's actually doing for us, I mean, it says that he has raised us up with Christ. He's seated us with him in the heavenly realms. And then in the coming ages, he's going to show us the incomparable riches of his grace.

28:09 · Speaker 2 You see, God's measure of grace, It's past, it's present, and it's future. It's past because it covers our sins. It's present because it gives us everything we need to live in the moment in a way that glorifies him. And it's future grace. It's gonna cover all of our future sins. And on top of that, provide every spiritual blessing. Now, if you think about it this way, you think about the difference between mercy and grace. It says here that God is rich in his mercy.

28:40 · Speaker 2 Now mercy, as you probably know, is not getting what you deserve. And so what we deserve on the basis of being dead and deceived and disobedient is condemnation, right? So God's mercy is saying, I forgive that. You're back at zero. His mercy is not giving us what we deserve. Now his grace, on the other hand, is saying not only am I going to forgive everything, but I'm going to look at you from this point forward, not as a sinner, but as a saint, not as a child of wrath, but as a child of mine, an inheritor of all things. A way to think about this could be, like if you were to imagine, if you had millions of dollars of credit card debt, what if a wealthy benefactor came to you and just said, hey, out of my love for you, I'm going to pay off all that debt. It's done.

29:33 · Speaker 2 You're at zero again. you buy. Thank you, Jesus. You know, thank you for that. He's going to say, but I know, because my guess is if you have millions of dollars of credit card debt, you probably have some pretty horrible spending habits, right? Those don't just go away overnight, do they? So he's going to come to you. He's not just going to forgive you, but he says, you know what?

29:53 · Speaker 2 I know that you're probably going to go into debt again by yourself. So here's what I'm going to do. Here's a debit card that's attached to my bank account. And my bank account has endless resources, more than you'll ever need. And anytime that you go into debt again, just swipe this card and that debt can be wiped out. Man, that's amazing. But then he goes a step further. He says, you know what?

30:18 · Speaker 2 It would bring me so much joy if you would just take that and just buy whatever makes you happy. I mean, just go crazy. All the best things, the best home, the best furniture, like best clothes, whatever you need or want, this is open for you. Go spend and enjoy the riches that I have. That is grace. And friends, what God has done for us in Christ is he has shown his mercy in forgiving us of our sins, but he's shown us grace in promising to give us spiritual blessings untold that will take eternity for us to understand. And of course that doesn't always relate to material blessings here and now, but the promises that we have, our relationship with God and peace and joy, that makes zero sense based on whatever circumstances we might have. Now what's so interesting to me is that in verse seven, you might be asking, why did God do this?

31:21 · Speaker 2 Verse seven, it kind of explains this. there's what's called a henna clause in Greek, which is basically like an equation. This happened and because of it, or it happened because of this reason. So the words that it uses here is in verse seven, God has done all of this for us in order that, the reason why he's done all this for us, is that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace. So I just want you to consider for a minute. One of the reasons why God has redeemed you is so that he might continue to lavish you with grace. I have a hard time understanding that picture of God. But man, how would it change my outlook on things if I believe that on a daily basis?

32:22 · Speaker 2 So we see the power of God's grace. We see the motive and the measure of God's grace. But finally, I want you to see the means of God's grace. How do we get there? How do we receive this? And the truth is, as you well know, is that this grace is completely unmerited. And it's like Paul and the Holy Spirit through Paul. He knew that our tendency and the tendency of human nature is to believe even if it's just like a 1% amount that we've earned it, we're gonna hold on to it.

32:51 · Speaker 2 And we're going to say, well, I know I didn't really deserve it, but there's some little part of me that was good enough for God to give me a second chance, and that's why he did it. It's like Paul knows that's happening, and so he says in verse 8, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. He's like, let this be clear, not from yourselves. It's the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. The means of God's grace is simply believing by faith that Jesus on the cross took on the full punishment and condemnation that you owed due to sin. And that in his resurrection, his resurrection, as one of my friends says, was God's amen to Jesus's it is finished on the cross. And that when Jesus was raised again, that you also by faith in him are raised to new life and that you will experience life in the Father as his son or daughter for all eternity. It's belief in those truths alone that grants you access to this grace.

34:05 · Speaker 2 Now my experience is that pastorally and even just personally, especially for men, This is the place where we get tripped up the most. Now when I have conversations with men at my church or in the community, it is easy to convince them of sin. Like I start talking about sin and they're like, yeah, I know, and guess what comes up? There are heaps of shame and embarrassment and guilt that they carry because of it. Like getting, sin's not an obstacle. The obstacle comes in understanding the free nature of the gift of salvation. Because men especially, I think women too, but men tend to have more performance-driven mentality of we get what we deserve.

34:50 · Speaker 2 And how can we get this grace that we have not deserved? And this is the piece that I hope you can latch on to. Because if it sounds too good to be true, then maybe you're finally starting to understand grace. Because it is too good to be true. It's far greater than anything we could imagine. And you can kind of self-evaluate. Have I really understood the nature of this grace by asking yourself this simple question? When I think about God,

35:24 · Speaker 2 and when I think about how he feels about me right now, what is his facial expression? And I think that will reveal to many of us, so for me, mine would be of a father who I know loves me but is over on the side of the football field or in your case, I'm talking American football, so let's say the football pitch, right? Did I do that well? The father who's on the side of the football pitch watching you play, and you glance back over at him. You know he loves you, but his arms are crossed. He's kind of scowling. And you just know he's a little bit disappointed in you.

36:20 · Speaker 2 And I think for me, that can be my tendency to see God of just, he's primarily looking at the ways that I'm continuing to mess up. But friends, the truth of this passage and the truth of the gospel, which we have to preach to ourselves regularly because we'll forget this, is that if these words are true, then when you think about God, what you should see is the reality that God is looking at you, if you have trusted in Christ, with not just a smile on his face, not just with arms open, like excited and ready to embrace you, but Zephaniah 3 would talk about God singing over us and rejoicing in us, not because we deserve it, but because of his great love and grace. Now, what happens in your devotional life when you begin to believe that? I mean, what happens when you sing these songs and you begin to see a God who is just overflowing in his grace and mercy to you? What kind of joy does that begin to rise up in your heart? That's what the effect of God's remarkable grace can have in your heart.

37:36 · Speaker 2 But lastly, I want you to see this because the passage doesn't just end with what his grace does for us, but there's this reality that God's grace comes to us on its way to other people through us. So we're saved from our sin. We are saved by his grace, but we are saved for good works. We're saved for good works. verse 10, it says, for we are God's handiwork. The Greek word there is poema, which you can hear the root. It's where we get our idea of poetry. He's saying, for we, those who have been saved and redeemed by God's grace, we are God's special new creation, his artwork,

38:22 · Speaker 2 where the beauty of his grace can be demonstrated, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Grace is a change agent. It's a catalyst. It's meant to transform us so that we now become agents of grace in the places where he's called us to live and to work and to play and to learn. And so what might this look like to do good works? And you'll notice works is a part of the equation. It's just not a part of the equation on how you become saved. It's faith in Christ that equals salvation.

38:59 · Speaker 2 What a lot of people tend to do is they say, my faith plus my works is what equals my salvation. Sometimes we can get in the mindset of saying, it's just my faith equals my salvation, and we'll leave out works altogether. But we need to see, they're included here. It's my faith in Christ equals my salvation plus works. Works are what he's calling us to because he wants us to be a part of his new creation work in the world. And so he calls us to do things that are spirit-filled actions of showing his grace to the world around us, like discipling other people or mentoring a younger couple or believer or serving in production or the kids and serving our brothers and sisters in the church or doing acts of mercy and compassion out in the community for those who are less fortunate, right? You can get the idea of any spirit-filled action that brings glory to God can be considered a good work, making God's grace visible to your neighbor. And of course, what is the purpose of our good works?

40:01 · Speaker 2 Is it so that people would see you doing good works and say, oh, you're a really good person? No, it's like Jesus said in Matthew 5. It's so that the world might see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. So as we close, Ephesians 2, 1 through 10, we just see this beautiful picture, the fullness of this gospel message. God saves us from sin, by grace, through faith in Christ, for good works that resound to his glory alone. Jesus didn't just come to make bad people good. Jesus came to make dead people live again.

40:56 · Speaker 2 And so if you're here this morning and you're a believer and these are truths that you have cherished for any length of time, here's my invitation to you today. To consider, is this grace gripping and transforming my heart and my life on a daily basis? Is my life so marked by this grace that I would be considered a gracious person? Does my worship, my level of engagement with God in these spaces, and my private devotion in quiet times, does it reveal a heart that has been transformed by the grace of God? And even today, take a moment to thank God for his graciousness to you. And if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, I would just invite you to consider the truth of your standing today before God and to consider the offer.

42:01 · Speaker 2 The offer to you today is simply to lay down your sins at the foot of the cross to receive this great gift of grace by faith. and to have your eternity forever changed as you experience God's grace today and forevermore. Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for your grace. I wish I had the ability to understand it better and to share about it better because surely it's far greater than even we can understand or describe. And I pray this morning that we would be truly captured by a vision of your goodness and your love and your grace towards us, that you would lead us to worship you, not just in our song today, but in our daily lives. I pray blessings on Glen Abbey Church that this would be a church that continues to be marked by the grace of God.

43:12 · Speaker 2 Jesus, we thank you for all that you've done for us. We pray in your name. Amen.