Gospel Course - Salvation Is Only By God's Grace - Ephesians 2:8-9

All right, we've been in a Bible teaching series called Gospel

Course and it is the basic fundamentals of the faith.

And I was just thinking as we were singing these songs, just

how preaching the gospel for multiple weeks over has just

really changed my heart to just make it love it, make me love it

so much. I'm so thankful for what Jesus

did for me and the simplicity of the gospel.

I pray we would never get over it what Jesus has done for us.

But this gospel course, we've been starting from the very

beginning of what is the gospel? What does that word mean?

And we learned that it is a death.

It is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

The word means good news. And that is the best news that

you'll ever hear, that someone else died in your place for you

to be able to know God. And so we're going to pick that

up today in Ephesians chapter 2. If you have a Bible, you can

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

turn to Ephesians chapter 2. And while you do that, I want to

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

admit to you tonight that I had a moment this week that I was

weak. I had a self-righteous moment

this week. If you guys ever had one of

these where you feel like you're better than somebody else.

I was outside of my office in the Pearl District 13th in

Everett, and there was a guy riding a bicycle.

He was about to cross the street and he had this emblem on his

helmet I'd never seen before. And so I just said, hey man,

what does that thing mean? And he began to explain it to me

and I did not. I was not tracking with what he

was saying. It was a little conspiratorial.

And I was like, man, that's what you're saying is a little out

there. And as I began to ask questions

in probe at the truth of do you have anything to back up the

things that you're saying? He eventually just started

cursing at me and rode away. So I was like, what, what just

happened? And in that moment I actually

said, how can someone actually be this way?

Like how can they think the things that they think?

And it was in that moment that I believe the Holy Spirit said to

me, you were just the same without Jesus.

I wasn't into the things that this person was into, but I had

other things that weren't true that I was basing my life off of

things that I believe, things that I did.

And I can even think back to a time when I was a late teenager,

early adult, I don't remember. I was lost.

And I was I used marijuana regularly and I had a Christian

friend of mine sent me down and tell me why here's from the

Bible, why you shouldn't do that.

And I was just like not hearing a word that he said.

Have you ever had a time like that where you look at someone

and think, why are you the way that you are?

But really, if it wasn't for the gospel, you would be some other

kind of way just like them. No ability to hear, no ability

to have common sense even except that you believe.

Have you ever maybe been on the other side of that?

Have you ever been judged by somebody that thought they were

better than you? It doesn't feel very good to be

on the other side of that, does it?

Well, today we're going to find the answer to this.

Judging one another is really the grace for others in the

grace of God. So our big idea for today is

that salvation is only by God's grace.

So grace will be our theme. If you couldn't tell it in the

songs, Grace was the theme of our songs today.

Salvation is only by God's grace.

So let's read Ephesians chapter 2 verses, 8:00 and 9:00.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of

yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of

works, lest any man should boast.

These probably are memory verses for you.

If you've been in church for a long time, you've heard these

verses before. But for some reason the church

in Ephesus needed to be reminded of this.

In Ephesians chapter one, there were some high and lofty things

said about them. They were chosen.

They were in God, man. God had a plan for them before

the foundation of the world. If you, if you're a believer

man, God has been working in your life and he comes to

chapter 2. Look at Ephesians chapter 2 and

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

verse one and you have ye quickened who were dead in

trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to

the course of this world, according to the Prince of the

power of the air. And it goes on.

They were being reminded. Don't forget about who you used

to be. And we don't need to go hanging

on to the old man. We're told to put him off and

put on the new man, but we can't ever forget that this whole

thing is really God's grace to begin with.

So before we jump into the rest of our Bible study, let's take

just a moment and pray. I want to give you about 30

seconds to just settle yourself in prayer, breathe, ask the Lord

to teach you, and then we'll continue.

So let's pray. God, we come to you tonight

anticipating that we'll hear from you even out of the

simplicity of your word. I pray that we would be forever

changed, not because of the power of my sermon, but because

of the power of the gospel and how you use your word in our

lives. Would you use this time to equip

us for this week? I pray in Jesus name, Amen.

All right, so your, your big idea for today is that salvation

is only by God's grace. If you're going to follow along

with your outline, you'll see in point number one that we all

need God's grace. This is what we really need.

We've seen in some previous weeks that our greatest need is

to to reconcile with God and our lostness and we need God's

grace. It says in verse 8 of Ephesians

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2. For by grace, are you saved

through faith and man. These words have just been the

echo of Christians for generations.

By grace are you saved through faith?

But let's take a moment and breakdown verse #8 for for some

of these common words. So first, salvation is the same

for everyone. That's what the word saved

means. Salvation is the same for

everyone. There is no different way to get

to God. There's only one way.

And it doesn't matter what your lifestyle was like, what sins

you had done. There is no conservative or

liberal gospel. There is one gospel.

There's only one gospel that saves.

So being saved is I give you the definition the act of saving or

preservation from destruction, danger or great calamity.

The way that God saves us for by grace are you saved is by his

grace. We know that is God's desire to

save these a couple common verses The Bible says that he

wants all men to be saved no matter what their background is

like, no matter what their nationality or their skin color

is like or whatever they think whatever they do, He wants all

people to be saved. Romans 10 says whosoever can be

saved, anybody that chooses to believe in the finished work of

Jesus on the cross, they can be saved.

But it is this grace that is the means of salvation.

Grace is the means of salvation. So just in case you forget what

the word grace is, I'm going to help you out with your your

grammar or your vocabulary. The free unmerited love and

favor of God. Sure that we could use this word

in other ways, but for today's sake in the Scriptures, grace is

the unmerited meaning, something you did not deserve or earn the

unmerited favor of God. We often use that that phrase

like give me some grace, right? If you've got a test do and

you're past the deadline, you're hoping for grace.

So if you're asking for grace, it's something you don't

deserve, right? You're like, hey, listen,

please. I know I should have cut me some

slack. That's what we all really want.

We want grace, don't we? I need grace.

You need grace. We need to give grace to each

other. I used to do jail ministry, six

years. I've lived in Ohio for longer

than six years, but for six years, on my lunch break, I

would go to the county jail, do a Bible study with a bunch of

guys in the jail, and my friend Fuzzy would come with me.

I wish I would have had a picture of Fuzzy.

He was he, he was at Woodstock. So he's an old hippie.

And he had this big Gray beard that he hadn't shaved since

Vietnam. And Fuzzy has this acronym for

GRACE that I put in your notes for you to help you never forget

what it means. That's a that's a meme you'll

never forget. That's not my friend Fuzzy.

That's that's what you're feeling like whenever you need

some grace, right? But did I not put it in here?

There we go. Grace is God's riches at

Christ's expense. That's what grace really is.

When we're talking in the Bible about for by grace are you

saved. God gives you something so much

greater than you could ever deserve, and it came at the cost

of Jesus. And we see that Jesus died for

sinners while we were yet sinners.

You did not deserve the cross. 1st 1st Corinthians 15 says that

Christ died for our sins. So think about this.

If you were a Sinner when Jesus died for you, how did you

deserve it? But aren't there times whenever

we're confronted with another person that disagrees with us

and we somehow feel like I'm better than them?

And really, it wasn't anything that we did in the 1st place.

It was really it was our faith. Because faith is what enables

grace. Faith is what enables grace.

So God's desire is to save his means is through grace, but

faith is the choice that we make to believe what He said.

So I have another definition for you.

This is a fancy 1 the ascent of the mind or understanding to the

truth of what God has revealed. So my faith isn't just in

something that I feel or some theoretical concept.

Faith is to believe what God has said.

When I simply believe that Jesus died for my sins and choose to

act upon it in faith, that is what we would call saving faith.

The book of Romans tells us that we are justified by faith.

That's a judicial word that means I'm made just as if I

hadn't sinned because of my faith.

Not because of my works, not because of my ethnicity or my

political views. I have peace with God because of

my faith and what he said. You guys know this faith is the,

this is the basis of Christianity, right?

We walk by faith and not by sight.

It doesn't mean that we don't get to do the math.

You have a book, you can do the math.

You can take God for his word. Go ahead and study it, read it,

love it, eat it, enjoy it, but you still have to have faith.

You weren't there for the crucifixion, you weren't there

for the resurrection. You weren't there to see this

written down and preserved over the last several thousand years.

You just choose to believe what it says.

So I put it to you this way in your notes.

To receive God's grace, we must have faith that Jesus took our

place. To receive God's grace, we must

have faith that Jesus took our place.

And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that sounds too

simple. I just need to believe

something. I think that doesn't quite sound

right. Because in our natural world, we

reward good behavior. We punish bad behavior.

The gospel is somewhat backwards because we can't do it by

ourselves. This isn't a thing that we can

do to accomplish on our own. It says in verse 8 of Ephesians

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2 For by grace are you saved through faith and that not

of yourselves. So this is not a thing that you

were able to do. You, you buy you did have faith

that wasn't chosen for you by the way, you chose to have

faith, but there's no act that you did that made you right with

God and some kind of works. This is not something you can

do. Christians really we're not

self-made people. Do you know the phrase

self-made? There's no sense in which we can

say, look how hard I've worked. Look how good I am.

Look at all that I've done because if it were not for the

grace of God, we will not have any of it.

We could not live the life that God has intended for us to live

without his help. We would not be able to do it.

But there are some pretentious people in this world that think

that they're self-made. And I think there's a picture,

there's a lesson in this. So Kylie Jenner is quoted saying

there's really no other word to use other than self-made because

that this is the truth, that that is the category that I fall

under. Although I am a special case

because before I started Kylie Cosmetics, I had a huge platform

and lots of fans. I come from a rich family.

I have a big following. I start a business.

Oh, it's successful. I wouldn't call that self-made,

right? But is that not how Christians

are? Many times we get a little

excited about ourselves. We think we're doing really

good, we're working really hard. And really, it's just the grace

of God laboring in and through US.

Don't be like Kylie Jenner unless you get saved.

Don't be like her. Pray for her.

Go ahead, man. Why not?

God wants all to be saved. It doesn't matter how famous you

are. Have you ever this?

Listen, this is a pause. This might sound weird.

This is unscripted, but have you ever thought that every person

you see on the screens that you watch is a real person?

Well, maybe not with AI, but most of them are real people.

You can pray for them. The actors that you watch, the

things that you see, man, you should be.

You should be praying for people, All right?

We can't do it by ourselves because you can't earn a gift.

I mean, come on, you guys should see these points coming by now,

right? Verse #9 says it is the gift of

God. And you guys know how gifts

work, right? A gift is a thing that we give

to somebody else because we love them.

And we've seen you can go back in time on our YouTube and

Spotify to find out that God loves you and that's why he died

for you on the cross. But maybe have you ever had a

gift giving experience that didn't go so well?

My wife is in another room, so I can say this right now and you

can you can tell her later. It's fine.

When we first got married, I was like, I was such an idiot.

OK, so this is just really on me.

I'm sure when we first got married, I tried to give her

jewelry like, oh, here's this necklace thing or here's this

like wrist thing that you, I don't know, I'm not a girl.

This looks cute. I'm sure you'll like it's, it's

real gold or something. And every piece of jewelry that

I bought her, she was like and literally returned it multiple

times to where I was like, you know what?

I'm I'm not trying anymore. I'm sorry.

You just don't get any jewelry. Buy your own jewelry.

I don't know, but a gift has to be received, right?

My, my, I'm not offended. It's fine.

My wife rejected my gifts. She said, no, I, I returned your

gift. And this is the same way that

salvation works. We all get the choice.

We're presented the option. The gift of God, the Bible says,

is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

God offers this gift to us, to humanity.

He's good. He offers everyone.

Not everyone may get an entire gospel presentation in their

language, but God is drawing all men to Himself and He is able to

present to them the good news that they can hear and believe.

The gift must be received. So we all have to have a day

that we understood, and we chose to put our faith in what God

said to receive the gift. This is how the gospel works.

It's not something that we can do on our own.

There's no boasting in a gift, right?

I did not work hard. This this verse also says the

wages of sin is death. A wage is what we work for.

A gift is just something I enjoy.

I can maybe boast, hey, look at this wonderful gift someone else

bought me, but I don't get to take the credit for it myself.

You also can't work hard enough. See, this isn't something you

can do by yourself because there's not enough work that you

can do. Verse 9 says that it's not of

works. So again, remember where we are

in verse 8. By grace are you saved through

faith, meaning that salvation is not of works there.

There are no sacraments, there's no active baptism, there are no

rituals, there's no church attendance, there's no speaking

in tongues that will save you. Believing the gospel is the only

thing that will save you. But I know some of you.

You're the the type a hard working getter done kind of

people. Anyone like not I'm raising my

hand, but not for me. Anyone else?

All right, Yeah, I see you. All right.

I got you. I got you locked in.

Now I know who you are. You're going to do it because

you have to do it, and you're going to get it done.

You're going to do it right. You're going to do it on time,

and you're going to. You know, I'm not I'm not quite

built that way. You can't apply that to your

Christian life. We want to apply diligence for

sure, but there's not enough that we can ever do to reach a

bar that says I'm worthy of God's love.

There's no amount that we can labor for.

OK, does he finally love me? That's not how the gospel works.

It's not of works. In fact, we're not justified by

works. We saw that word justified

earlier. We're justified by faith, but by

the works of the law. Anything that you could

accomplish, they will never be enough for you.

And since this is true, that you can't work and earn your right

standing with God, you don't get to brag.

Verse 9 says, lest any man should boast, I will boast in

Christ alone his righteousness and not mine.

You don't. You don't get to boast in

anything else there. There's nothing that made you a

a Christian other than the gospel and what Jesus did.

And sometimes we get a little too excited about who we are.

So perhaps you've forgotten about the word boast.

It means to glory, to speak with laudable pride and ostentation

of meritorious persons or things.

There's a there's a one for you. You might have to Google some of

those other words. It's it's to be overly proud

about something. It's not just pride.

Like, man, I love my kids or, you know, I worked hard today.

I feel good about a good day's work.

This is like what I glory in. This is what I find my

satisfaction in. And it's a little pretentious.

It's a little over the top. Like, stop it.

We can't boast in our own works, we just simply don't get to,

Paul says in Romans chapter 3. Where is boasting then?

Romans 3 · chapter mention

It is excluded by what of works, nay, but by the law of faith.

See, faith is really the thing that's like the most important

thing to God, faith in what he said, because it rules out your

ability to say, look what I did. You see if you have anything

going for you in your Christian life, man, I've got a job and a

career and I'm out of debt and I'm working hard.

I've got some things. Maybe you got a house or a car.

Maybe you're sober. Maybe you've got some marriage

years under your belt. Maybe you've got victory over a

particular sin. Maybe things are finally going

your way. Really, you would not have any

of it without Jesus. You might live some kind of

life. It might be a Kylie Jenner kind

of life. It might be my friend on the

bicycle and their own kind of world kind of life.

But you wouldn't have anything that's really worth living if it

wasn't for your faith in the gospel.

And I, I'm humbled by this, this week, just in my own life, that

salvation is only by the grace of God.

Is there something that comes to mind for you today?

If you're the hard worker, are you trying to achieve some

standard? Have you ever believed that if

there's not a time that you've accepted the free gift, man,

that's the best place to start. Sometimes whenever I'm listening

to somebody else speak, I like to find a particular thing that

I feel like, man, that's that's what I'm hearing today and

circle it. I would encourage you to do the

same as we take some time now to settle down and think about what

should I do after hearing from God's Word.

So I think I put some things on the bottom of your page to help

you reflect For you, maybe let's just think about you before you

think about anybody else. Have you accepted the free gift?

Is there somebody else that you've been judging?

Have you forgotten the grace of God and think about our church

or think about this community? What kind of church could we be

if everybody in the room had this kind of understanding of

the gospel? Man, this isn't about me.

We're doing stuff. But man, really, God's just

blessing it. He's just doing what he's doing.

Wouldn't that be a cool people to hang out, hang out with?

Wouldn't that be contagious or infectious when people come into

the room or come into our Bible studies?

How could this perspective of the gospel change our church?

And lastly, would you take this attitude and this message and

get it out on the street and share it with somebody else?

On this day in May, I have some friends coming into town that

are going to be missionaries to Scotland.

And I'm just kind of a wacko. When my friends come in town, I

like to take them into the city and share the gospel of

strangers together. And so that's what we're going

to do on. This is a Saturday in May at

11:00. If you want to show up at 13th

and Everett, we'll give you a brief rundown of how to share

the gospel. We have some tracks that's we

have like a the cheat codes for you.

Does anyone remember back in the day before video games were

crazy fancy, like you had to actually remember the cheat

codes or like beat the level and write it down?

OK, We give you the cheat codes for the gospel right here, man.

I'm like giving you the game Genie of the Bible.

And if you're not ready to share that with other people, that's

OK, man. Come just be with us.

Just be present. We'll do the hard work, man.

We'll love on people. We'll share the gospel.

We, we train our people to be able to do that.

Well, just come be with us, hear somebody else do that, man.

Just be a part of getting the good news to other people.

So make that a prayer point. If you can't make it, ask the

Lord why. See what he says.

So typically we end our services with a a time of prayer.

And I want to give you just a moment to pray on your own.

You have those points at the bottom of your notes.

If you feel like, man, I think I'm doing good.

God's working in my life. My heart is clear.

Think about some people in your life that need to hear the

gospel. Pray for them, spend some time

asking God to work in their heart to ask for an open door.

I'll take just about one minute and then I'll lead us in a

prayer and we'll conclude.