Ephesians 2:8-10 - ”Sola Gratia/Sola Fide” - Journey Through Ephesians

Our Old Testament reading today is taken

from it is Psalm

97. The Lord reigns. Let the earth

rejoice. Let the many coastlands be

glad. Clouds and thick darkness are all

around him. Righteousness and justice

are the foundation of his throne. Fire

goes before him and he burns up his

adversaries all around. His lightnings

light up the world. The earth sees and

trembles. The mountains melt like wax

before the Lord, before the Lord of all

the earth. The heavens proclaim his

righteousness, and all the peoples see

his glory. All worshippers of images are

put to shame, who make their boast in

worthless idols. Worship him, all you

gods.

Zion hears and is glad, and the

daughters of Judah rejoice because of

your judgments, O Lord. For you, O Lord,

are most high over all the earth. You

are exalted far above all gods. Oh you

who love the Lord hate evil. He

preserves the lives of his saints. He

delivers them from the hand of the

wicked. Light is sown for the righteous

and joy for the upright of heart.

Rejoice in the Lord, oh you righteous,

and give thanks to his holy

name. Our New Testament reading is taken

from Paul's letter to the Ephesians

chapter 2:es

8-10. We all have our favorite Bible

passages and this is mine.

For by grace you have been saved through

faith. And this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God, not a result of

works, so that no one may boast. For we

are his workmanship, created in Christ

Jesus for good works, which God prepared

beforehand that we should walk in them.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be

to God. You'll notice the title, Solar

Grat Solafide.

And why would you put those words in,

Emry? Nobody knows what they mean. Well,

I put them in because this is the basic

title of the

Reformation. By grace alone, by faith

alone. This was a radical change and

departure from what the medieval church

was teaching. And Calvin and Luther

found in Paul and most notably in a text

like this that salvation is by grace

alone and faith alone. But what's that

mean? And a lot of people don't know

what it means. And I'm going to argue

that the church in the West, including

the reformed church, has lost what this

means because it's such a radical

statement that we can't believe it can

mean what it believes what it means.

Everything in ourself tells us something

different. So I'm going to give you an

example of what I grew up in or at least

late part of my I I became a Christian

at 20. Okay? And I went to the United

Church and I had an experience with God

and they told me I needed a

psychiatrist. So I knew they weren't the

right

ones. Bless the United Church. So I went

down to the Catholic Church. I could

have been pope by this time if I would

have understood Latin, but I didn't

understand Latin. So, I left. This shows

my level of um biblical knowledge at

this point. So, I ended up down at a

little uh a Baptist church and they had

a a Jamaican preacher and he would be

preaching about being born again. You

know, that that preaching except I can't

do it. Born again, man. I don't know.

Rumba.

Yeah. No more accents.

Okay. And what was really big in this

church is they would have what's called

the altter call. How many of it you have

been to an altar

call. Okay. So, not not a lot. So, I'm

going to explain the altar call. Well,

I'm going to explain it by going to this

guy. Who is that?

Bill. Well, so you all know Billy. Billy

was big, right? Billy was massive. Now,

he was getting older when I came to

this, but he had left a big impression

on the church. And the Baptist loved

Billy. And the basic idea was that Billy

would preach a sermon. You would have

the four spiritual laws and then you

would call people down called the altar

call. They would come down the altar to

the front and then they would give their

lives to Jesus and then they would be

saved. Any questions? Pretty

simple. And then they'd go home and the

churches would come in and say, "Oh, we

got a whole batch. Thank you, Billy."

And take them off and wreck them. No.

Um, that was a joke. But look how big he

was. I mean, just look at that. And he

would go from stadium to stadium. So

this this theology hit the whole North

America and much of Europe. And there

was a whole generation and after a while

the question then had to be when were

you

saved? Now this came from the Billy

Graham idea that you got saved when you

accepted Jesus at the end of the

service. Okay. And that became known as

your birth date. So I was sitting in a

room um and and and I remember this

because I couldn't remember when I had

my encounter. I never went to a Billy

Graham crusade. I didn't have anyone

preach at me. I didn't even go to the

altar. I just had God hit me over the

head. And they were going around this

room and I couldn't remember the date.

So I made one

up like I was like

February 22nd. But these people would

have these stories and everyone had

these great testimonies of these things

that what became important. It was a

marker of your salvation. You had a

moment where you got preached to and

somebody came down and there was a

moment where you said yes to God's yes.

Sounds good, right? Does everybody

remember this kind of stuff going on?

Four spiritual

laws.

Okay. Works really good, doesn't it?

Except this

lady put a fly in the ointment. You know

who that is?

Nope.

It's his wife.

Ruth Bell Graham. Ruth Bell Graham was a

Presbyterian born and raised. Unlike

Bella, who was a Baptist. Nothing wrong

with being a Baptist. We're We're going

to love him. But Ruth was raised on the

mission field in China. Now, here was

the problem. They were going around in

one of these rooms and they were going

on on this when were you saved and tell

us about your salvation. And it came to

Ruth. Now, they must have been sitting

there going, "This is Billy's wife.

She's going to have a good

one." And she stopped and she said,

"I've always

believed."

What? No. But when did you come down and

accept Jesus? She goes, I was baptized

as a

baby.

What? And ever since then, they were

literally writing articles about how

does Billy live with someone who might

not be

saved? Because she refused to tell the

story. She refused to do the Emory and

make up a date. I would have told her it

works, but she stuck to it.

Was she wrong? Is she

out?

H Well, this is why theology matters.

I'm going to tell you right now the next

text and you should love this as your

favorite

text. Theology

matters because I'm telling you right

now, I'm going to answer your question

with three

verses. And I hope that out of this you

will take the power of what Christ has

done and

why Ruth Bell Graham is just as much of

a believer as everybody

else. Let's

pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for

your amazing grace to us. We thank you

that you have poured out your life upon

us.

We ask you to open our eyes and our ears

and set us

free in Jesus' name.

Amen. So, let's remove ourselves from

the Billy Graham for a second and let us

go back in time to the first century

because this is being written in the

first century and Paul is having a real

real problem. Paul's problem is the Jews

and the Gentiles absolutely hate each

other. Saul himself was killing Jews

because of their message of a crucified

Messiah because he hated the Romans so

much, how dare you say the Romans to

killed our Messiah. That's not how it

works. And if Paul knew that they were

eventually going to reach out to the

Gentiles, he would have killed not only

the Jews, but the Gentiles. That's who

Paul was.

Okay. So remind yourself that almost

every letter he writes, this is the main

problem. Jews are

Gentiles. Now we all know that the

Gentiles thought the Jews were pathetic

odd people who they had

conquered. But I want you to understand

the Jews

hated hated the Gentiles. Now I don't

know if there's any Jewish people here.

Bless you. But I'm guessing most of us

are Gentiles.

And I'm going to tell you something

right now. The Jews saw us as the worst

of the worst. Listen

to William Barkley described the

historical realities. Listen to this.

The Jew had an immense contempt for the

Gentile. The Gentiles said the Jews were

created by God to be fuel for the fires

of hell.

God, they said, loves only Israel of all

nations that he has

made. It was not even lawful to render

help to a gentile mother in her hour of

sorest need, for that would simply be to

bring another Gentile into the

world. Until Christ came, the Gentiles

were an object of contempt to the Jews.

The barrier between them was absolute.

If a Jewish boy married a gentile girl

or if a genti a Jewish girl married a

gentile boy, the funeral of that Jewish

boy or girl was carried out. In other

words, they were dead to the community.

Such contact with a gentile was the

equivalent of

death. That was their

world. Now I want you to imagine the

problem Paul has.

He has a group of people that are

worshiping in these churches in Asia

Minor. Remind yourself, Ephesians is a

circular letter to multiple cities. And

in each one of these little cities, he's

got this new weird group called the

church full of Jews and

Gentiles, right? And you got to imagine,

how do I deal with

this? Now, Paul's got an equally big

problem. He's a Jew. Well, he's not

anymore. He's a follower of Christ. But

he has known for years and he was the

best Jew. Read

Philippians that by being a Jew, you

were already in, you were already saved

because you had the covenant with

Abraham and you could keep that and do

the right things. Torah, observance,

circumcision, food, laws,

bad. And then all of a sudden Jesus

comes and these Gentiles who don't do

the food laws and they don't do the

temple observance and they don't do

circumcision and they don't and then

what do you

do? So Paul who had seen the resurrected

Christ, he must have wrestled. It said

12 years he went away in the spirit to

try and understand this stuff. It didn't

just come to him at one night. But as he

prayed and he came around to it, he came

up with this theology

today and it's

transformative and it's also shocking.

Shocking to them as much as to

us. He says

this, for by grace, which means complete

undermarited favor, you bring nothing to

the

table. You have been saved. I can't

express how shocking that is to his

Jewish brethren who spent their lives

doing things like eating the right feet,

staying away from pork sandwiches, blah

blah blah blah

blah. And now he's saying that didn't

matter. For grace you have been

saved. Well, what do we bring into it?

Through faith.

Well, now here's what happens when we

read that. Okay, so we've been saved

through grace, but we bring the

faith. Problem. The Greek doesn't work

that way. It's kind of like saying for

by grace you have been saved through

God's faith. God's the

object. And that makes sense because in

other places he says, "Oh, your faith is

a what? From

God. You don't own that either."

Well, hold on a sec. What do I bring to

this? Do you

see? I got to have something in this. I

got to have some claim in this so I can

at least when I stand before him say,

"Look, I've got

this." And what Paul's saying is, "You

got

nothing." That's a scary place to

be. Do you know why your friends and all

your religions like to do things to make

sure they're right with

God? because it's

security. At least I can stand before

God and said I said said did this, did

that, did the other thing. Paul, you did

nothing. He through grace saved you

because his his

faith.

Wow. This is supposed to shock you. But

he doesn't stop there. And this is not

your own doing.

You have nothing to do with the fact

that you're in the people of God

saved.

What? I thought it's because I said the

sinner's

prayer. I thought it's cuz I walked down

the aisle. I saw my four spiritual

laws. I thought it's cuz I believed in

predestination and went to the

Presbyterian

church. Nope.

I love my Presbyterians, but ain't that

guaranteed. It is the gift of

God. When you give somebody a

gift, are you one of those people that

goes, "Okay, well, once you give me the

20 bucks, I'll give you the

gift."

Right? I saw two really old guys get a

cake

yesterday. Really, really old fellas.

And I noticed something. They gave them

this cake and they didn't pay anything

for

it. A gift from God is your salvation.

It's a

gift.

Wow. You bring

nothing. Not a result of works. How more

clear can he be? And the word works here

has direct connection with Torah. same

word so that they so that no one may

boast. So what's interesting here now he

does something brilliant and only Paul

by the way if you want to know something

Paul is the most brilliant writer you

will read in the first century he really

is and he does this thing so we will not

boast why is that so brilliant because

it's only the pagans who boast about

their relationship with their

gods. So he says God did this to free us

from paganism.

You say, "Well, are you sure, Emry?"

Well, let's go back to well read, by the

way. Psalm 97. All worshippers of images

are put to shame who make

their boast. There we go. In worthless

idols, worship him, all you

gods, he says. Well, when we do, he's

freeing us from

paganism because paganism, you can make

part of that deal. You can boast cuz you

bring something to the table. In

Christianity, you bring

nothing but your

sin for we and then he goes then he

flips and he's laid this out this

shocking truth which I'm sure they were

all sitting there going, "Holy crow,

they've never heard this stuff. Pagans

never heard this stuff and the Jews

haven't heard this stuff." And Paul

says, "Guess what, guys? None of that

stuff you think makes you right with God

is anything. It's a gift. It's salvation

and it's God's faith and it's God's

grace. So shut

up and then he can start once he's laid

this down. And Paul, by the way, anybody

else know Paul's kind of negative at

times? Like I like I had one very lovely

person come and say, "Emrique, it's kind

of dark someday." I'm like, "Yeah, it's

Paul."

Um, for we are his. And then he does

something beautiful. He's laid bare

these people. He's given them no

standing before

God. And then he says the

why. For we are his workmanship. This

word is

beautiful. It is not just workmanship

like a a massive building going up. It

is like an artist. It's comes from the

same word of writing a

poem or doing a beautiful piece of music

or

architecture. He's putting together

something beautiful. We are his

workmanship. And it sounds like when we

think it's about us, the workmanship

gets busted up pretty bad.

How many of us I was talking to somebody

the other day and I was saying thing and

they said, "Yeah, I'm just figuring out

more and more that if I just trust God,

my life goes way better, but when I try

and do it myself, it

sucks." Anybody else?

Well, Paul's saying, "I told you

so. It's by him alone so no one may

boast. For we are his

craftsmanship, created in Christ Jesus.

Not created in ourselves, nothing we've

done, we've been created. This word

created means new creation. Isn't that

beautiful? This is the new creation in

Christ Jesus for the good works. He

doesn't use the same language of Torah,

but the good works of by the spirit to

love one another and bring true

life which God prepared before you were

born. He had this plan for us. Is that

good

news that

we Please note this. He's writing to the

church. He's not writing to Mike or or

or Nolan. I'll pick on him again.

He's writing to the church. He's saying

y'all might walk in it that you might

walk in this new life. So the purpose of

him doing this salvation that you have

no control over is that so you empty

yourself and begin to do the Jesus stuff

which is to recreate and do things and

create this

beautiful beautiful

poem, this beautiful piece of

art. But you can only do it

if you believe in salvation by grace

alone through God's

faithfulness. And I'll tell you

what, it's the

hardest thing to

believe because everything you've been

told since you were born is you have to

earn

it. You've all sitting here been told

you're loved if you do.

Not one of you

isn't. And he says you're loved despite

what you

do. Martin Luther famously was asked,

"Why do you keep preaching salvation by

grace through faith every week?" And he

goes, "Because every week I forget

it." We want it to be about ourselves.

So let me go through this again. Not to

be labor, but it needs to be said.

Salvation is through God

alone.

Alone. Not you at

all. Anybody offended yet?

Not you who've spent 17 years as an

elder. Not you've been a pastor for 25

years and has three undergraduate

degrees. Not

you who go into the Sunday school. Maybe

you get some bonus points cuz you have

to hang out the kids. But no, not even

you. Not you because you're nice and you

hang out and you mow your neighbor's

lawn. Do you see where this come starts

going? None of that stuff. He is saved

because of

him and him

alone. And that's why you're going to

have to trust in your salvation because

you're never going to be able to work it

enough to feel like you've got it.

You're only getting this through

trust. And trust is tough. And you know

where I see how trust is tough? And

where you really see it is when that

person's lying on that deathbed and they

have no more opportunity to

do. Then they're sitting there going,

"Oh, this is

real. I have to

trust." We'll go to Papa John. He's the

best at

this. To have a proper understanding of

the gospel, we must recognize that the

screen's going in and out.

um recognize that we need to lean

entirely upon the Lord Jesus Christ and

his mercy alone as our only hope of

salvation. No one can be justified by

the law. Justification is through faith

alone. You see that? But then my

question back to my friend John Calvin

and I think he'd agrees. I go, "What do

you mean it's through faith

alone?" Well, then we'll go to John Sto.

He'll answer the

question. We must never think of

salvation as a kind of transaction

between God and us in which he

contributes grace and we contribute

faith. For we were dead and had to be

brought to life before we could believe.

No, Christ's apostles clearly teach

elsewhere that saving faith too is God's

gracious gift.

God alone. God alone. God alone. And

guess what? If it's God alone, then it

has nothing to do with when you woke up

to

it. And it doesn't matter if you went

down and had the greatest spiritual

experience at the greatest Billy Graham

conference because your salvation didn't

happen that

moment. you were awakened to the

salvation that he's already

done. Years later, after hearing this

Mary uh Ruth Beld Graham or

whatever, I heard about the story of her

sitting in the room. I wished Carl Bart

was

there. See, Carl Bart got this. He

understood this theology. He got this to

the tea. And of course, Billy Graham ran

Christianity today, the magazine. Do you

guys remember that?

And their big thing was, "Bailey or

Carl, you're over here. You're on the

cover of Time magazine. You're at

Princeton University, but we want to

know if you're really

saved." And so they pulled him and they

kept questioning. Finally, this guy

said, "We want to know, Carl, the exact

moment you were saved. No more playing

games. You got you have all these

theology answers." and he

stopped and he looked at the interviewer

and he said, "I'll tell you exactly the

moment I was

saved." It was on a hill outside of

Jerusalem, 33 AD, called

Goltha. That's the exact moment I was

saved. There's a reason he was

smart. That's the answer they should

have given. And I'll tell you what, if

I'm They never invite me to those things

anymore. But if I was invited again,

that's my

answer because it doesn't have anything

to do with

me. When did they say it was finished?

When I said

yes.

Amen. Didn't You mean it didn't happen?

In February of 1990 in my dorm room?

What? I thought I did that. You see how

it happens? You see the arrogance that

can come in because pretty soon what

they didn't realize is those who

questioned Mary Ruth Bel Graham, they

were arrogantly judging

her based on a marker that they had done

something. From what I know about Ruth

Bell Graham, she was an amazing

person.

H now why does Paul do this? Why is it

all about cro alone? because it is the

great lever level le leveler. And I want

you to go back to thinking about those

Jews and

Gentiles. The Jews believed they were

saved because all those markers. But

once you're told that it's none of that

and it's God alone, then how much

arrogance can you have in those things

anymore? So they hated their gentile

neighbors because they could say, "Look,

I'm circumcised." It's a weird thing to

be proud of.

or I don't eat pork. Another weird thing

to be proud

of. Boy, last night I'm glad we I'm glad

we ate pork. Last night I I was very

thankful. What it does is it takes you

and it puts you on the same plane. And

that's why Paul refuses anything

else. that you were saved because God

saved you because he chose

to. And he was faithful and then he gave

you some faith to wake you up to it. And

if you can take pride in that, good

luck. He just told you before that you

were dead. You were under God's wrath.

Remember

that. JC Ry, good old Anglican here.

Let's let's these old guys are the best.

What will it cost a person to be a true

Christian? It will cost him his

self-righteousness. He must cast away

all pride and high thoughts and conceit

of his own

goodness. He must be content to go to

heaven as a poor sinner saved only by

free grace and owing all of the merit

and righteousness to

another. When we cross that barrier, the

last thing we're going to see is Emry,

how well did you run your session

meetings? Do you know

that? I might shock some of you. I'm

pretty good at

it. Or Henry, how well did you preach on

Sunday? Or Jim, what did you do as an

elder on this day and this day? You know

what it's going to be? Did you believe?

Did you say yes to my yes?

because I've died for you. And I'll tell

you what, that's why I believe there's

going to be a whole lot more people

there than you guys

think. Because a God who dies and says

it's God

alone, then anyone can

come. And that person right now who

you're thinking isn't a Christian and

isn't a believer, don't write them off.

I guarantee every Christian that would

have saw that man on the cross, that

thief sitting beside Jesus, that

terrorist who murdered, and he was

hanging there, thought to themselves,

"Well, he's going to hell." And guess

what? Jesus says, "No, today you'll be

with me

in because it's always been about

him." Right?

Charles Spurgeon. And grace puts its

hand on the boasting mouth and shuts it

once and for all. When you believe in

grace, shut

up. You know the hardest

part? I wrestle with this grace

thing because guess what I have inside

me? Pride.

Emmery loves

pride. He loves to be like, "Oh man, if

you guys knew about that time I was at

Regent and I learned this." Oh yeah. And

then you're like, "Hm, he's he knows

some

stuff." We love that stuff. Don't kid

yourself. And we all do. And when I come

to a text like this and it goes like

this to my region

days because I didn't do anything for

that. I am your equal. We are brothers

and sisters under the cross full of sin

and

salvation.

Amen. Oh, it's coming. Sunday is coming.

And that leads us to the greatest part

of grace. It gives us true freedom. I

mentioned that component of my love of

pride because everyone has

it. Every one of you. It's the sin of

the garden. We want to be like

God. When you understand grace, it frees

you from that because that's an awful

burden to

perform. It's an awful burden to put on

errors, isn't it?

You know why you run into the pastor and

have you guys ever had the pastor

handshake where you go outside and he hi

how are you? How's your walk with the

Lord? Because they're not

free. If you truly be in grace, you get

to be exactly who you are because he

said yes to you knowing who you were.

I'm not saying go and drop explicitives

or anything. What I'm saying is just be

yourself because God's already forgiven

you. We got the freedom to be who God's

created us and we can start beginning a

people of grace that is the workmanship

of

God. Brendan Manning, the good news

means we can stop lying to ourselves.

The sweet sound of amazing grace gives

us from necess

frees saves us from the necessity of

selfdeception. It keeps us from denying

that through Christ was though Christ

was victorious the battle with lust,

greed and pride still rages within

us because you're living in grace. You

don't have to try and act like you don't

have

this. You know the

churches that I have found people fall

the most are the churches are that think

that they've already arrived and are

perfect. Do you know why? Because they

have to live a lie. And then you live a

lie and a lie and a lie and it builds

and it builds and it builds and then you

fall. And boy, when you

fall, we can actually be honest with

each

other. Our culture is not a grace

culture. Our culture, by the way,

doesn't believe in grace. And not just

by saying, "Oh, I'm letting someone in

who's ahead of me in the traffic." Is

not

grace. I'm talking grace who takes

someone who offends you and hurts you

and does things that you don't like and

still showing mercy and love. That's not

our culture, is

it? But God's a God of grace.

In fact, our culture drives us to

performance. To perform and to look good

in front of your parents and your

family. I guarantee a lot of us,

including myself, have done things and

been driven because we want to be seen a

certain way by our

parents, by our

friends. We've lived our lives to do

things a certain way. I had a one

relative I will not mention who every

time we would go to their house they had

the perfect dinner set up. You ever been

to one of those? And they had China. Who

uses china, right?

Okay. It wasn't Jordis. I'm not

related and it was perfectly laid out

and you know and then one day I came

into this place and I was 13. So, I was

now going to show them, you know, and I

put on a beer shirt. You remember beer

shirts? And I had it hidden under my

parka in Prince George. And my dad saw

this and I took the jacket off and there

was Labat 50 in this little Baptist

lady's

house. And I got so much heck. And when

I looked back, yes, I shouldn't have

been rebellious. It was because we were

terrified of what we looked like.

You know, Grace would have said, "This

is a really dumb

13-year-old." And if they wouldn't have

said anything, I'd have been like, "This

is kind of

stupid." But they said

something. You realize you perform for

others. Grace saves

that. Some Melissa Krueger, I don't know

who she is. I hope she's a

Christian. Says, "In Jesus, the

performance pendulum stops. Both the

pride of success and the despair of

failure are absorbed in

grace. This really is the best text,

Mike. It doesn't get better than

this. We are free in this. We no longer

have to judge. We can be united. We can

hang out. We can hang out with people

who like the liberals.

We can hang out with people who like the

NDP. Okay, maybe not.

No, I'm joking. Just joking. Or the

conservatives, God

forbid. My point being is when you're

living by grace, whatever their

politics, you love

them because they're not saved because

of the party they vote

for.

Right? And you know what? Then you get

to sit down and hang out and that person

sitting across the pew from you who is

not your

enjoyment. Like say you're sitting

beside

me, you can look over and say, "God

saved him by nothing just like

me. I'm going to love

him." But this all has a purpose. This

wonderful grace. And I want can't

underemphasize this. And this is where

Pope Paul is just so amazing. I know

he's been hard on humanity, but I

promise you it gets better. And he has a

view of the church that I have trouble

believing, but it's his word, so I have

to. The church is God's worksmanship.

It's his

art. Think of that. How many of us think

that

way? I struggle to imagine that because

I've lived in the church too long.

But I think what he means is when we

walk by this grace and this freedom, we

have an art, a community, a new

creation, we can show the world that's

based on

grace. The church really should be

different from the world. The problem is

when we say that, most people say,

"Let's have more morality. Let's make

new

rules. Let's have nicer clothes so we

can look different from the world." I

would argue that's not the point at all.

I just told you the world hates grace.

What if the church's main reason for

being is to show

grace and really be different than the

world? What if it is actually being a

community where the people who are

broken feel accepted because you're

broken and forgiven?

I know no other place you can get

that. I invite you to go somewhere and

figure it out and go to any group. I

don't care if it's secular, religious,

and within your little time there,

you're going to ask, "What does it mean

to become one of you?" And they're going

to give you

rules and

markers. The church is the one place

where somebody comes in and how do I

become one of you?

Jesus. What?

Jesus. Well, my I must have to do this

is uh

Jesus because you're saved by grace

through God's

faithfulness. Now, you're saying, "Well,

I need morality." Don't worry, we'll

take care of that. We got the Holy

Spirit, right?

I'm not saying we do anything or we let

anyone do everything, but we welcome

everyone because that's who Jesus was.

Philip Yansy, the modern church rejects

the outcasts of society, whereas these

very outcasts were the very ones who

were drawn to

Jesus. And the truth is, we were in

Wall-E for 14 years. You want to see

some outcasts? Woo.

And I'll tell you what though, when I

preach salvation by grace alone, unlike

in the rich churches I preached, they

are people who can't wait to run down to

the

altar because they've got nothing

else. I miss those

days. I'll end with Carl Bartbert.

Grace must find expression in life.

Otherwise, it is not

grace. Here's the truth about grace. We

are saved by grace through faith as a

gift and it has nothing to do with

us. But unless you express that to

others, it's not worth

anything. Unless you take that grace

that you've been given and you pour it

on other

people, it's

wasted. We are

invited to be people of grace, to be his

workmanship. We are invited to be

radical here, to hang out with each

other because of Jesus alone. No matter

what else, we're

invited to be God's

work. And all we have to do is receive

that as

truth and believe

it and then show it to others.

The church can be such a radical

thing when it really lays down its

arrogance and pride, its

markers, and

embraces somebody who's your enemy like

the Jews and the Gentiles had

to. And the only way we're going to do

that is if we really believe that Jesus

or God did it all on that cross.

Now, I hope one thing you do

today, because I know you've done dumb

things this week, cuz I have, too. I

know you

have. I'm not a

prophet. I'm just a human. And I've hung

around with you guys enough,

humans. You should walk out of here so

joyful because all that dumb stuff you

did this week and the rest of your life

is paid

for. and you're saved. And there's

nothing you had to do to get

it. And there's nothing you have to do

to lose

it. You're his

kid. That's good news. Embrace it. And

then let's be a church of grace and

let's do something

spectacular. He's called us here

together. He's called us to North

Glennmore. Let's be that church. Let's

live it and let's invite people to this

cuz I think people want

this. Let's

pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for

your amazing

grace. We thank you that you have saved

us by grace through your

faithfulness. That you have given us

salvation and it was a gift alone.

We're going to forget this, Lord. So

remind us this week and next

week. Remind us and set us

free. Free us from

performative

desires. Free us from judging those, oh

don't look like us. Free us to be a

people who express grace in our

lives in Jesus name. Amen.