05-Ephesians: “But God: Two Words That Change Everything.” | Ephesians 2:1-10

Well, last week we ended with Christ on the throne. He was seated at the father's right hand. Far above every principality, every power, every might, every dominion. The same power that had pulled him from the grave, we saw was the power that was directly pointed towards us who believe. I I want us to again let that sink in for just a minute.

I want you to feel the weight of what Paul had said that God had directed the power that raised Christ from the dead towards everyone who believes. That's incredible. We saw that we are chosen. We saw that we're adopted, that we're accepted, that we're redeemed, that we're forgiven, that we're sealed, that we're we're made hes, that we're made the body, the church of the one who reigns over all things. which then begs the question, okay? Well, that's the question that Paul is about to answer because a a doctrine that does not land somewhere just turns into flowery decoration.

And one thing I've learned about the Apostle Paul as I've read his books over the years is that Paul is not about flowery decoration. He is about building towards a payoff. He He's going to take everything that he just said about the king and he's going to directly apply it to those that the king died for, to the kind of people that we were, the kind of people that we are, the kind of life that we were created to walk in. This morning, we stand on the doorstep of chapter 2. And so, let's step in.

I'm going to do something a little bit different. And I'm going to have us just soak first in Ephesians 2, verses 1-10. And you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world according to the prince the power of the air. The spirit who now works in the sons a disobedience among whom also we all 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 as the others. But God who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Now, as a reminder, we just came out of chapter 1. And as we ended that chapter, Paul led into this.

He said that Jesus has all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Christ is on his throne. All of creation is at is at his feet. His enemies are under his boot. And now we stand into step into chapter two and we see that you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins.

This you is those of us who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and we're told that he made us alive. Now this implies that we were dead. Now so many times we be like, "What are you talking about? I wasn't dead. I was alive." Well, you were physically alive, but spiritually you were dead.

You were gone. I was dead. I was gone. I had no hope. This speaks towards spiritual death.

And Paul affirms this by saying that we were dead. Now, what's interesting is Paul uses this word necross. Now, this word in in his original language was applied to dead corpses. Literally Paul is saying you are as a dead corpse. Now let me ask you a question about a dead corpse.

Can a dead corpse bring itself back to life? No. Can a dead corpse do anything? All it can do is be dead. The only way that dead corpse is coming back to life is if something comes along with great power and brings it back to life.

You might be asking, well, why does Paul use this kind of language? because he wants us to understand that while we were dead in Christ, we were not just spiritually sick or spiritually weak, we were dead without hope in and of ourselves. A little bit of an illustration for you. A lot of people in this world, and maybe you are one of them, maybe you are one of them if you're listening to this. You think you're driving around like this 1969 Mustang, and you're like, "Hey, I got a I just got a few dents in me, but all in all, I'm looking pretty good." You know, I might just need to pull those out a little bit, but all in all, I'm road ready. Now, of course, this is just you.

You recognize that other people, though, they might look a little bit more like that. Not everybody's looking as sharp as you. Some people got quite a bit more dense than you do and they certainly got some rust. I mean, sure, it's driving around and everything like that, but it's barely hopping along. But the reality of our situation for all of us before Christ is we're this.

We are dead on the blocks. We are rusting out and we are going nowhere. Going nowhere on our own. This car also is not ever fixing itself. I don't know if you've ever thought about that.

Have you ever said or known somebody to say it's like, well, you know what? I'll come to church once I fix myself. I'll come to Jesus once I fix myself. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that. Family, just as this car is never going to fix fix itself, none of us will fix ourselves by ourselves.

It it's just impossible for us to do that. Now, this leads us to these words that Paul uses of trespasses and sins. Now, it's really easy for us to confuse these words largely because they're synonyms. I mean, they they are very close to one another, but they are very distinctly different. And I hope to explain to you what I mean by that.

Now, we've talked about this recently that sin is anything that we think, say, or do that displeases God. This is the definition that we use in arowana. Now more specifically when Paul wrote this and when his audience read this they saw it as missing the mark. This is literally what this means. So what Paul is saying is literally everyone has missed the mark.

All have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Every single person is shooting at the target and you are completely missing. Every single one of us are shooting at this target and we're completely missing. Now we're like okay we get that pastor but what does trespasses mean?

Doesn't it mean the same thing? It doesn't mean the same thing, but it applies to it. You see, trespasses literally means deviation from the path. There's a difference, is there not? That arrow when you let it go out of out of that bow, it has a path to travel before it even has a chance to hit the mark.

Let's see if I can give you a a picture of this. Now, I came up with this illustration years ago when I was working with the youth because again, youth just like us who are older often think they're pretty good. God should accept me because I'm pretty close as far as humanity is concerned. Now, we could talk about this all morning long about how wrong that is, but let me give you a a picture of what I'm talking about. So, I would talk to them about New York City.

All of us heard about New York City. Everybody, whether you like it or not, New York City. Okay. How about Paris, France? You guys ever hear about Paris, France?

Okay. How many world travelers do we have in here? Anybody world travelers? How many people who have ever wanted to world travel? Okay, more hands.

A lot of you. How many of you just content to live here in the Salt Lake Valley? Okay. How many of you just don't even care what I'm just kidding? I'm not gonna say that part.

Still going for that participation. and I'm going to keep trying. Eventually, I'm going to get there. But picture this. So, you're leaving New York City and you want to fly to Paris, France. And yes, that arc, I know it seems weird, but that's actually how you do the travel.

When we flew to uh when we flew to the Philippines, it was the same kind of thing. You take this big arc. It's actually the shorter path. That sounds strange, but just trust me, that's how that works. So, here you have the correct path to fly from New York City to Paris, France.

So you leave that that process by which you're traveling that's that's the proper path. But deviation from that that's where trespasses comes in. And this is why this matters. Those of you that think or those that you know that think just a little bit of sin's not a big deal. This is what I told the kids.

I said, "Look, let's just say that you're off by one degree heading to Paris, right? There's 360 degrees. You're 1 1360th off the path. What could possibly happen? Instead of perish, you end up in Orleans, France, hundreds of miles away.

Are you seeing how just a little trespass can lead to large deviation? None of us is righteous. No, not one. And this is that thing that Paul is trying to communicate that all of us at one point we're walking in devian from God. And that devian then leads to missing the mark.

But Paul is saying of his audience in which this is what you used to walk in according to the course of this world. Finally, the world leads us on the wrong path. According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. Now notice what Paul says. He says, "You once walked.

This is past tense. That means the believers should not be walking in the ways of the world post Christ. Amen. That is how we should be living is not in the ways of the world. Before Christ in our lives, we walked in trespasses.

We walked in sins. This is what we were known by. And this is the important part because we talk about this often. Look, after you come to Christ, it doesn't mean that you walk perfect. But it doesn't happen.

We are told in Romans 8 that we are being conformed into the image of the son. We are being made to be more like Jesus, but we should be walking in the spirit. This is that Galatians 5 fruit of the spirit. If you're not looking more like the fruit of the spirit and you're looking more like the fruits of the flesh that are also talked about in in Galatians 5, there's a problem. But people who are walking in Christ should be more and more looking like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Those should things should become more and more evident in our lives. We should start looking less and less like the world, less and less like the the deviation of the flesh. But the thing is is we are not self-directed when we are pre. This is the thing that we need to understand as well. Many people that you know think, "Oh, I'm choosing which path I'm going.

I choose what master I serve." No, you don't. None of us do. You think you serve yourself, but what we're really end up serving is this prince of the power of the air. So, either you are serving Christ or you're serving the enemy. It's one of these two camps.

There is no in between. There's no camp of Chris or camp of Jim or camp of anyone else. It's either Christ or it is the enemy. Amen. Okay.

Are we understanding what I'm saying right now? So, at first this seems kind of weird, but this statement, how Paul says this is very important for these guys because it speaks a language that they would have understood. It speaks towards something both that the Jews would have understood as well as the Gentiles would understand there in Ephesus. And the reason why they would understand this is because they had a view of of eternity different than well in the world that different from what we think. Now, what I'm about to say is going to be a little bit hard for us in our current context.

Maybe not as much for you that are watching at home depending on where you're at, but those from the Salt Lake Valley, this is going to be a little bit difficult. But stay with me because it's going to make sense. Okay. So what I'm going to say is this is why they would understand this because they understood that there were three heavens. You're like what?

Yes, there are three heavens. It's not just not necessarily what you think they are. This is what they would have understood in the first century. The first heaven was the air and the atmosphere. This is where the birds fly, right?

This is the realm associated with the powers of the air. This is like demonic forces and so forth. This is that prince of the power of the air. This is what Paul is saying is that the enemy of our souls is the prince of this first level of heaven. The second level of heaven that they would understand is the celestial realm where the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars exist, right?

So other than the g the solar system and the galaxies and all of that stuff, that is what they would have understood the second heaven to be. And then the third heaven. Well, this is where God's presence is. This is when Paul talks about being caught up to the third heaven. This is what he's talking about.

So, are you understanding how this is different than maybe the local context tries to teach? So, this is actually what we're talking about with the three different levels of heaven. So, when they hear the prince of the power of the air, they're thinking this first heaven. This is very real to them. So whether or not they're Jews who understand the enemy of our souls or they're the Greeks who understand Artemis who was the patron god of Ephesus, this is what they would have been thinking in this moment.

So Paul's not introducing a new idea. He's refraraming the idea. And what he's saying is you used to walk and you used to march in cadence in alignment with the prince of this first heaven. And he says this spirit who now works. Now what he's going to say is this this work this which is that word eneria that we talked about this is that activated power that we were talking about.

He's saying that this enemy this prince of the power of the air is actively working in people's lives even in that day. Even in this day we talk about the world the flesh and the devil as things that we need to address. That devil is actively at work in the lives of people. And this is what he was saying. This is the activated power of Satan in the lives of the sons of disobedience.

Now, when I think of a son, I think of myself as the son of Ron and Heidi. Okay? But but I also think of myself as my own person. Like I'm not necessarily subservient to them. I have personal regency, power, and rule.

This is not what Paul is saying. Paul is saying that these sons of disobedience, they are owned. The picture is not just people who disobey. These are people who are ruled and belong to disobedience. They don't have a choice but to disobey.

Now, when you think about that, when you look at people who are not believers in Christ from that lens, suddenly when you see these reprehensible things go on in the world around us, it begins to make sense. They're just being what their nature is, right? By nature, this is what they are. This is what we were, right? Among among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

A sense of disobedience Paul is saying including himself is this is what we once were. We were given into the lust of the flesh. We were fulfilling the desires of the flesh of the mind and not just our thought life but this was also bringing that thought life to life. This is actively living out the lust of the flesh. Paul is reminding his audience that this is who we used to be.

This is a something that we have to keep in our mind. So many people ask themselves, "Well, am I even saved?" Like, look, if you look like you're living in the flesh, that's something you seriously have to ask yourself. Now, I'm not going to tell you if you are or you're not. That's not for me to say. But again, if you're looking more like the lust of the flesh, the fruit of the flesh versus the fruit of the spirit, you got serious questions, right?

Just because you speak words out of your mouth does not mean that you're his. And this is the thing that you need to understand. This is the thing that we as Christians need to ask ourselves. Are we actually growing in the spirit? Are we actually looking more like the word says Christ looks like?

He is our model. It's there. There's not. So, so often we act ignorant in this. I don't know what it means to be a Christian.

Well, then read the word because it shows us what that's what that's supposed to be. Just in that Galatians 5, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And if you're struggling with any of those things, so we talk about this here as well, and and I love to bring this one up and it got brought up in Aana here by one of our our clubbers at one point because she was able to call this out with somebody. It's like, well, I'm struggling with the fruit of self-control. Well, it's not fruits, family.

It's fruit. All of those things are tied together. If you're struggling with one, you're likely struggling with all. And if you're struggling with them all, then you're likely living the fruit of the flesh. And so, you stop.

And if that's you right now, there's hope. We go to Christ and we say, "Lord, reveal this in me and sing like that song," come live in me. Right? Come be in me. Come guide me.

Come direct me. Come save me. And then walk with him, family. Because the reality is we used to be children of wrath. Before the saving blood of the lamb made us new creations, we were children of wrath by what we were, not by what we did.

This is an important thing. Paul is reminding his audience and us that this is the state we were in before Christ, right? Our fallen nature. We were born into this wrath. We were born into a nature that was opposite of our God.

But this is where now we get to see everything change because at this point before Christ everything seems hopeless. We see seem completely separated from God. And we ask ourselves what hope do we possibly have in that moment. And we get to verse four that says, "But God who is rich in mercy be because of his great love with which he loved us." This but God. So we have humanity that's enemies with God, children of wrath, children of disobedience, hopelessly separated from anything good and of God.

But God changes everything. But why? I mean, God is looking upon this. I mean, I I'm sure there's probably some of you crazy enough to try and restore this, but that's not my first choice. And the reality is is this doesn't even talk about how bad we are when we look at a holy God.

I mean, we might as well be rusted dust on the on the ground by comparison. And we have to ask ourselves, why would God give the effort? Why would God give the time? Why would God expend the resources? But it's simple.

Paul says it because he loved us. And the thing we need to understand about this, and this doesn't even begin to touch the truth of this. Paul says that that love was great. This is a great love. But there's even more.

His great love is the fuel to be sure. But there's something else about God's character that makes this happen. And it comes in the form of his mercy. It comes in the form of our God's mercy. Now, mercy is one of those things that we call here at Sunrise a little big word.

It's a little big word because it means something that seems to be difficult for us to understand. But the reality is is that mercy is not something to understand. It has a very simple meaning, but has a very powerful meaning. It means that we're not receiving what we deserve. We were children of wrath family.

We need to stop thinking and and people that live outside these walls need to stop thinking that they're as good as they are because we are not compared to our holy God. We are as nothing. We are worthless. We are putrid. But God, God decides to not give us what it is that we deserve.

Right? So, think about it this way. You don't pay a payment on something, you deserve a penalty. Mercy is someone not exacting that penalty upon you, right? You deserve punishment for something.

You commit some crime and they let you go. That's an example of mercy. Now, think of all the things that you've ever done in your life that are an offense to our God, and yet he is willing to not give you the punishment that you deserve. Think about the most horrific thing that anyone has ever done in history and understand that his mercy is willing to forgive even that. That is the kind of mercy that we're talking about.

This is talking about people who are deserving of eternal separation and judgment from our God. And yet he is willing to extend us extend this to us. And he does so because of his rich mercy. Our God is rich with mercy. And in doing so, extending this mercy.

He's chosen to make us alive who believe in the Lord Jesus. We were once dead in our sins and trespasses, but now we are alive. But we're not just made alive. This is the thing that I love about the truth of our God and what he speaks in his word. We're not just made alive.

Paul then affirms we were raised up together and he made us to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Again, think about that. The worst things that have ever been done, God has willingly extended mercy to cover even those things. But not just so that we can skate by and be somewhere in a corner in his eternity. No, no.

We've been made to sit together with Christ in the heavenly places. There's something going on here that goes beyond even mercy. We're told that he raises us together. He sits us in these heavenly places. And all of this was made possible by the same power that we learned about last week.

What is the exceeding power of his greatness towards us who believe according to the working of his mighty power? Again, that that mighty there is that this overwhelming power that only God possesses to overcome every obstacle, things that we could never possibly do that he willingly gives out to those who believe, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. And the thing that we need to understand is this is not a temporary position. I don't know if you've ever seen or been part of one of those like royalty things for a day where like they're going to like, hey, for the day you get to be this special person and wear this crown or have these special positions or this stuff or whatever it is. This is not for a day.

This is not for a time. This is for all time. That in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Paul here is speaking towards eternal life. But in doing so, he's also doing doing surgery on the worldview of both Jews and Gentiles.

Now, for the Jews, they were expecting the Messiah to come and to set up his age. For the the Romans, for the Gentile Ephesians that were there, they regularly would hear about the ages of the different Caesars, right? The Caesars would talk about the coming golden age that would come was to come, but they never really saw the golden ages. They kept seeing something more like iron. Now, does that sound like any political system that you might be aware of about every four years, every two years, people show up and tell you how they're going to bring everything back to the way it used to be and it's going to be sunshine and lollipops for all of eternity.

That's that's a common thing. Politicians throughout all ages tell the people what they want to hear so that they can gain power. And that's what these Romans were used to is people just coming along and making promises and everything just seemed to continue to fall into garbage. But what Paul is communicating here is that there's something else that's going on that goes beyond both pro groups are given this picture of an unfolding exhibition of the the riches of God's grace. that this picture of what God is going to bring about is not just one age, but age after age after age after age of God continuously revealing himself to them. Every age is another opportunity for God to point at the redeemed and say, "Look at the riches of my grace." Now, I want to pause here for a second and I want to think about what I just said about the future that we share in if we're in Christ.

The future that we're assured if we've chosen Christ. Now, I'm not sure about how much you thought about eternity, but what we just talked about to me sounds awesome. It sounds alive. It doesn't sound boring. I don't know.

Some of you have probably thought, well, you know, I I've seen those pictures of heaven and sitting on the cloud with a harp does not sound like a lot of fun to me. That's not what eternity is going to be. It is just going to be one endless epic after another. Our time, our eternity with our king, I cannot even fathom or even understand how amazing it is going to be. And this leads us to how all of this becomes possible.

Now you might remember last week we spoke about God's multiaceted power with Christ seated on the throne having subdued his enemies at his feet. And and today we've seen images of his love and his mercy poured out upon us with promises of endless ages of blessings upon blessings upon blessings. But there's a huge elephant that's in the room as that Paul's kind of left us with here. And that elephant is centered on the fact that we were called children of wrath. We were told that our very nature was made us enemies of our God.

We deserved literally God's foot on our throat. That's what we deserved in our sins and our transgression. So, so what happened? How is it that God can just overlook our sin? Well, he didn't.

You see, Paul told the Romans that the wages of sin is death. In other words, our sin earned us death. That was the currency that was given to us because of our sin. That's what we deserved before we knew Christ. But then we were shared the critical part in the back half of this verse.

But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The thing that we need to understand is every sin that you've ever committed, every sin that I've ever committed, every sin that has ever been committed has a price attached to it and a price that cannot be paid by any of us. But a price that is demanded by a just God to be paid. That is the reality of our situation. That is a reality of the sons of disobedience and those who are by nature children of wrath that are outside these walls are facing even now.

There's nothing that we can do. There's nothing that we can say. There's no amount of money that we could pay that could ever make us right before a holy God in of ourselves. It just can't happen. You know, plenty of people who try and make their way themselves.

But the thing is is everything that's offered up is tainted in itself is just another gift of wrath to our God. So what in the world could happen? And this is where Paul now moves into verse 8 and we see that that but God takes yet another level. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Here in this word grace, we have the other side of that coin with mercy. So whereas mercy was not getting what we deserve, grace is getting something that we do not deserve. Again, another little big word that really has a simplistic definition, but has an eternally huge meaning. This grace coming from our God, we do not deserve it. A lot of us walk around all puffed up in our chest like we're so good and God owes us the world.

He owes us nothing and yet he offers us not only salvation for all of eternity but a place at his side. That is grace upon grace upon grace. And we were given this salvation. Salvation from sin and death. Salvation from being enemy of God.

Salvation from eternal separation from his God. And this is accomplished, we're told, through faith. But faith in whom? Faith in the Lord Jesus who sits enthroned in power over all of creation with a foot his foot on the necks of his enemies. The one who willingly left the glories of heaven.

The one who took on flesh who lived a perfect life went to the cross suffered unimaginable pain allowing himself and notice what I said allowing himself to be nailed to the cross. who stayed on that cross willingly took upon himself our sin and shame. What was ours to deal with, he took upon himself. He willingly died the death that we deserved. And he went to the grave that was meant for us. This is what our God did.

And three days later, he defeated death by bursting forth from the grave. Hallelujah. So that now for those of us who have placed our faith in Jesus, we can claim this truth again written by Paul in Romans 6. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him.

For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Now, the next part that Paul mentions is incredibly critical.

This is not of ourselves. You, me, we, we save nothing. All we do is we accept this gift. We accept it, right? There's no paying it back.

This is the greatest gift that any of us ever will receive, that anyone will ever receive. And it comes to us free. And I like to just make sure that this is clear. It was not free. It's free to us.

But it cost him everything. It cost him his life. This is not of works. We respond to the invitation. This is God is offering everyone a ticket to his table, his eternal table, and we have to choose to respond to it.

Right? So, the other night, the family and I, we went to Stars on Ice over here at the Maverick Center. So, we purchased these tickets. Now, I imagine, and I don't know this for sure, but there were probably some people who had tickets purchased for them, given to them, and they didn't go. Maybe you've seen that you purchased something for someone, you gave it to them, and then they just left it on the counter and didn't actually use it.

Right? If I wanted to give you and and and I love to do this with the youth again as well is think of think of the concert or event that you would most like to go to in your life and let's say that it cost a billion dollars whatever that thing would be. As far as I know, there's none of us in this room that could purchase or or even think to hope to purchase something worth a billion dollars. Even if we were to collect all of our wealth together, we would probably not even be able to touch a billion dollars. Now, somebody offers you that ticket for a billion dollars.

What's your job at that point? Accept it. Use it. Right? Everyone in this world has has to accept what they're going to do with the gospel.

This is God's ticket to everybody in this world. this truth of who Jesus is and what it is that they have he has done for them. Everyone has to choose what they're going to do. Are they going to come to the table or are they not? And unfortunately, a large amount of people are going to say, "Nah, don't need it. I've got this myself.

I don't want to owe anything to anyone." Well, we already talked about this. You already owe something and you'll never be able to pay it. And he's saying, 'Look, I got you. I'm willing to take care of it. I have already take taken care of it.

But part of the thing here is so many of us try and work and so many of you know, especially in this local context, there are people that are trying to do the work themselves and that is something that cannot happen. In fact, many of you, even if you're not talking about the local context, just those of you that have lived in the church or been raised in the church, you've seen a lot of people who have tried to through works of self-righteousness somehow show themselves to be closer to God. Maybe. Now, what is Paul saying next is so important for us to see that no one should be able to boast. Family, I don't boast about salvation with Christ.

I am grateful and thankful. I'm humbled by what it is that he has done for me because I didn't contribute anything to the process. All I did was graciously receive what it is that he offered. And even the ability to receive, he had to help me with that. But certainly, there has to be something, you might say, that we're supposed to do.

And there is something that we're supposed to do. It's but it's not about how we're saved. It's about how we live. Paul continues in verse 10, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." And when God created everything, what did he say after he created everything? He said it was very good.

I'm just going to tell you this is before Adam and Eve broke everything. After Adam and Eve broke everything, it wasn't very good anymore. It was very bad, including us. But this was God's intention. Now, I'm going to give you a little nugget, and we don't have time to flush it all out.

A lot of you want to attribute perfection what you think perfection is. Don't do that. Pay attention to what God says perfection is. This is what I mean. Because people will say, "Well, obviously there was something wrong because God allowed the potential for sin, so it couldn't have been very good." Well, I'm sorry, but when the prime reality, the one who created everything, says that the potential to sin is very good, guess what?

That's part of being very good. And I know I struggle with that. And again, that's a thing that we can wrestle with. But that's the reality. We have to find out what is his very good and we have to go for that first.

But what we do is we say okay so God God created this thing. It was very good. Adam and Eve broke it. We've continued as children of wrath this entire time. But now we have Christ.

So what is it we're supposed to do in response to this thing? Well, we are supposed to understand that we were created for good works. So, what's the implication of this family? We don't do good works because we're trying to be saved. We do good works because we are saved.

Do you understand the distinction and the difference because of it? Amen. I don't run around doing this pastor thing, thinking that maybe because I'm a pastor, I might have some higher place or even get a chance to be at the table. I do this because I believe this is what God has created me to to do. And every single one of us who have Christ in our lives, we have to ask him, "Okay, Lord, you created me.

You gifted me. You have a certain set of good works set aside for me that are in alignment with you. Help lead me towards that." Too much of the church in America today is sitting on its douff. No offense, but we're we're sitting on our desks. When we leave this place, we need to not leave our Christianity in this room, right?

What Christ has done for us needs to live outside these walls. and and not just from the hours of like 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. and because that's my my Bible study and my prayer time. It's every moment of every minute of every day because we are now his. And we do this because this is what he has created us to be. Now, as we close this morning, I want us to look back at where Paul has brought us. We started in the grave.

We were dead in our sins and our trespasses. We once walked in lock step with the enemy, the enemy of our souls. We were children of wrath by nature. Not just by accident, but because this is what we were born into. But then we saw those two words. despite of where we were, despite of what we were, but God who is rich in mercy, who is great in love, who made us alive, who raised us up, who seated us with Christ in the heavenly places, and not because we earned it, not because somehow we were more special than anyone else, not because we cleaned ourselves up, but it was by his grace through faith, not of works, lest any of us should boast.

So then we have to ask ourselves, okay, because all of this is true, what do we need to do about this? What are some things that we can do about this? First, stop trying to save yourself. It's not your job. If you've never trusted Christ today, I pray that you would do it today.

Stop performing. Stop trying to chase after something you can never grab hold of yourself. Instead, receive the gift that he already paid for and offers to you freely. Second, if you're already in Christ, name one place you're still trying to add your works to on top of his finished work. You can't add anything to his work.

That's not why we do it. We're not trying to add to what it is that he has already done. And confess that thing. Whatever that thing is that you're chasing, that you're beating yourself up over and you think, "I need to add to my salvation." Confess that and then rest in his grace because it is complete and it is total. And third, ask the Lord every morning this week, what good work have you prepared for me to walk in today?

What good work have you asked me to you have for me to walk in today? Family, the truth is we were dead, but God. Now, let's go live in it. Amen. Amen.

Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for this morning and the privilege that it is to be called your children. And Lord, I pray that we would continue to more and more just understand the overwhelming love that you have for us, the unbelievably rich love that you have for us that was demonstrated on the cross. And Lord, that that love that even today pours out to us. Lord, I pray that we would have a deeper understanding of your mercy, a deeper understanding of your grace, and that we would be able to communicate that with any and all who would listen.

And Lord, that we would understand that there is nothing that we can do to add to the salvation that you have already secured, but instead we would live lives of working out these good works in response to what it is that you've done. Because now by nature we are your kids and we want to be about loving our our father in heaven. We want to be about honoring our father in heaven. And we want to be about communicating to this world what has changed and what has transformed that they may see the good deeds, the good works that you do through us and that they themselves might in turn praise our father in heaven. in whose name we pray.