Grace From Start to Finish

Written before the dawn of time. Every traitor belongs to me.

Their blood is my right. Right.

In this this novel that CS Lewis writes, justice demands Edmund's

death. Edmund's doom is certain.

He can't undo what he's done. He doesn't try to find a

loophole in the law. He doesn't come to Aslan asking

for mercy. He doesn't will himself to be

free. He doesn't even understand his

own guilt and the depth of it. He's helpless, completely

trapped in a fate he deserves but cannot escape.

And then Aslan steps forward. The Witch doesn't summon him.

Edmund doesn't ask for him. Aslan comes on his own

initiative. He walks into the Witch's camp.

He he's silent and willing, and he offers himself in the boy's

place. He's bound, he's mocked, he's

killed on the stone table, the innocent dying for the guilty.

And that night all seems lost for Narnia.

Their king is dead. The witch rejoices as she thinks

that she has won. Hope itself dies with Aslan.

But then the next morning, the stone table cracks.

Lewis calls it this deeper magic from before the dawn of time,

that when a willing, sinless victim dies in the place of a

traitor, death itself begins to work backward.

That's the gospel. And that's what we're going to

talk about this morning is what Aslan did for Edmund is what

Christ has done for us, only in a far greater way.

You see, we were the traitors. We were the guilty ones.

Our sin had placed us under judgement, and the law of God

demanded death. And like Edmund, we didn't ask

for rescue. We didn't seek a Savior.

We didn't plead for grace. We didn't find a loophole.

We were blind, rebellious, and completely unable to change our

condition. And that is what Paul has been

telling us. We couldn't soften our hearts.

We couldn't earn God's favor. We couldn't rescue our souls.

We couldn't do a Danny Gokey says and tell your heart to beat

again, right? We couldn't do that.

We were sinless. We were, as Paul says in

Ephesians 2, dead in our trespasses and sins.

As John beautifully said it last week, we weren't weak, we

weren't struggling. We were dead.

And into that hopelessness the true lion of Judah steps up.

He took our place. He bore A punishment.

He was bound, mocked, and slain. And on the third day he rose in

victory. That is the gospel, that we

could do nothing. And God did everything.

When we brought only sin, He brought salvation.

When we were enemies, He made us sons and daughters.

Paul captures it in one sentence and one sentence that has

changed the whole world. If you're not there in Ephesians

2 yet, he says in Ephesians 28, For by grace you have been saved

through faith, and this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God. Salvation is not our idea.

It's not our initiative. It is not our effort.

It is grace. Pure, unearned, undeserved

grace. But before we can unpack the

next couple verses, we have to understand where Paul has taken

us. Because what comes before this

makes today's passage all the more beautiful.

You see, if you were here last week, you heard John walk us

through one of the most breathtaking sections in all of

Scripture. And if you missed it, I would

really encourage you to go back and watch it.

He did an incredible job of helping us see the depth of our

sin and the glory of God's mercy.

And so Paul begins chapter 2 with three words that describe

every one of us apart from Christ.

You were dead, spiritually lifeless, completely unable to

move toward God. And that is what makes verse 4

so stunning. Everything turns on 2 words but

God. While we were dead, God made us

alive together with Christ. As we read in Ezekiel.

He took our heart of stone and replaced you with a heart of

flesh. He made us alive.

He raised us up. He seated us with Christ all by

his mercy and love. And Paul tells us why in verse

7, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable

riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

So that is where we pick up today.

Because now in verses 8 through 10, Paul's going to answer the

question of how does that kind of salvation happen?

If we were dead, how are we made alive?

If it's all grace, where do our works fit in?

And that is where Paul's going to give us one of the clearest,

most hope filled summaries of the gospel and all of Scripture.

So read with me starting in verse 8.

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 work, 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. Paul's going to give us 3 truths

this morning that summarize the entire Christian life.

We are saved by grace, we are humbled by grace, and we are

recreated for good works. And so Paul begins with one of

the most freeing, most hope filled sentences in all of

scripture. For by grace you have been saved

through faith. This is this further explanation

of that kind of weird interjection that he had in

verse 5 where he kind of threw it in there and then he's going

to come back and explain it. As Thielman notes in his

commentary, this is the foundation for the saved status

of Paul's readers. They are made alive in Christ.

They are raised up in him. They are enthroned with him as a

product of grace. Now, so often we make this so

much harder than it needs to be. We take something beautifully

simple in Scripture, which is grace, and we turn it into a

system, right? We start adding rules.

We start adding formulas. We start adding steps to it.

We think we need to prove something to God, or we quietly

believe that he's grading us on a spiritual curve.

Why do we do that? Why do we try to earn what's

already been given? Why do we make grace harder than

it is? Yeah, Paul is going to bring us

right back to center. He says don't complicate this.

Salvation is not a puzzle to solve.

It's a gift to receive. Think of the thief on the cross.

He had no time to earn his salvation.

He had no chance to make things right.

He had no record to Polish. All he could do was to look at

Jesus and say, Remember Me in paradise?

And the Savior said, you will be with me today.

That's what it means to be saved by grace.

Paul is telling us it's not through what you do, but it's

through what Christ has done for by grace.

That's it. That's all that you need for by

grace you have been saved. That is the foundation.

That is the whole message of Christianity in one line.

Because if Paul saying, if you understand this one sentence,

you understand what it means to be a Christian, Paul doesn't

save you. You were saved because you tried

hard. Paul doesn't say that you were

saved because you cleaned yourself up.

And he doesn't even say you were saved because you made a good

decision. He says it's by grace.

And that word grace is everything.

It's it's the Greek word karis, which means undeserved favor,

unearned kindness. Grace isn't something we earn.

It's not something that that we can buy.

It's something that we're given. You can only receive it.

And here is the part that we forget.

Grace didn't find us when we were trying our best.

It found us when we were dead. It found us when we had no hope,

no life, no heartbeat. We weren't reaching up to God.

We were running away from him. And do you remember what that

was like when Grace finally caught up to you?

Right when you realize God wasn't chasing you to punish

you, He was chasing you to save you.

And some of you know this first hand.

You weren't searching for God. He found you.

Maybe he was in a hospital room. Maybe he was in the middle of a

failure. Maybe through a friend's quiet

kindness, Grace showed up uninvited and it changed

everything. I know for me, that is how it

happened. I didn't just wake up the day

that I got saved and said, you know what, I, I think I might

get saved today. That sounds like a good idea.

That sounds great. I'm going to do that today.

Now, I was in Sunday school just like normal, but for some reason

that day God made the story come to life to me like I had never

heard it before. And my story is I grew up in the

church. My my mom just dropped us off to

the church. We were always there.

So it was a normal day for me. But I began hearing it in a new

way because what happened is God opened my ears and my eyes for

the first time. And this was no new story I was

listening to, but I remember that morning looking at Miss

Sepulveda and I was like, this all makes sense.

I need Jesus. And it was as simple as that.

So if you were alive today in Christ, it's not because

something you did. It's all because God did

everything. And that's what makes grace so

amazing, because it's not God meeting us halfway.

It's God coming all the way to us when we were lifeless and

lost. As the Puritan Thomas and Watson

says, grace is free. It's an act of God, not of the

creature. If God should show mercy because

we deserve it, it would not be grace.

And as Jonathan Edwards writes, you contribute nothing to your

salvation except the sin that made it necessary.

And that is the posture that we must have as we did not add

anything to our salvation other than the sin that made it

necessary for Jesus to die. And that is what Paul is saying

to us right now. As he's saying, stop

overcomplicating salvation. You were dead and God made you

alive. That's grace.

And then Paul adds through faith and listen, faith is not a work

you perform to make grace happen.

There have been many that have debated what Paul meant by this.

He says you have been saved through faith and this is not

your own doing. It is the gift of God.

Many people smarter than me have debated this.

Is he saying that faith isn't? Is faith the gift itself or is

it salvation as a whole? Yes, it's both in a sense.

Both, but mainly the whole package.

In the Greek, both faith and grace are in the feminine, while

the phrase and this is not your own has a neuter pronoun.

So grammatically, it most naturally refers not to faith

alone, but to the whole concept of salvation by grace through

faith. What Paul is doing here is his

goal is to remove all boasting and reinforce that none of

salvation originates from human merit.

Grace is God's initiative, faith is God's enablement, and

salvation is God's accomplishment.

Every part of it is his part. Even the faith that reaches out

to Christ is only possible because grace first opened your

eyes to do so. As Calvin said, faith brings a

man empty to God that he may be feel filled with Christ.

So whether you emphasize grace, whether whether you emphasize

faith, whether you emphasize all of it as a whole, it all leads

to that same conclusion. It is not your doing, it is the

gift of God. You didn't work your way to Him.

But what does that mean for you? It means you can stop trying to

prove yourself. It means you can finally rest.

I When is when is the last time you rested in grace?

Like actually rested in the fact that you did nothing for your

salvation? Faith is simply the empty hand

that receives what grace freely gave.

When you come to Christ in faith, you're not adding

something to the equation. You're admitting that you bring

nothing. Faith says I can't save myself,

but I believe that Jesus can. And even that, Paul says it's

not your own doing, it's a gift of God.

That means even your ability to believe is grace at work in you.

God doesn't just offer the gift, He enables you to receive it.

And that is why we say salvation is monogistic.

It's one work. God alone, He doesn't look down

through time and see who might choose him.

He looks down and sees death and it is mercy.

He says live. That is the work of salvation.

Salvation is not complicated. It is not grace plus effort.

It's faith. It's grace alone, through faith

alone in Christ alone. And because it's all grace, it

means that it's all secure. If grace saved you, grace will

sustain you. If grace began the Word, grace

will finish it. You don't have to fear that

you'll mess up because the one who called you is the one who

keeps you. So when the enemy whispers

you're not enough, you can say you are absolutely right.

I'm not enough, but Jesus is. That's right, Grace means it

doesn't depend on how tightly I grip Him, it depends on how

faithfully He grips me. Salvation is the work of the

triune God the Father. God planned it, the Son

accomplished it, and the Spirit applies it.

So from beginning to end, salvation is the overflow of

God's triune love. Grace is not just what God

gives, it's it's who He is. He is grace.

But if grace truly saves us, it also shatters every hint of

pride. And that's where Paul gets at

next. He says we're humbled by grace.

Paul could have stopped at verse 8.

That says everything. That would have been enough.

But Paul knows our hearts. He knows how quickly we twist

grace into something we think we've earned.

And so he adds verse 9 almost like a guardrail, he says not a

result of works so that no one may boast.

You see, Paul here is stripping away every illusion of self

salvation. He's saying, don't you dare

think that you helped because the human heart left to itself

always wants a piece of the credit.

We want to say, hey, yeah, sure, God saved me.

But I prayed the prayer. I walked down the aisle at Falls

Creek five times. I cleaned myself up.

So God, yeah, he might have saved me, but I did something.

I had a part in that. And Paul says, no, you didn't.

You were dead. You were dead in your sins.

And the truth is, is pride is the oldest sin in the book,

right? That's what made Satan fall.

That's what made Adam and Eve be deceived in the garden.

And it is what still whispers to our hearts today.

You don't need help. You can fix it on your own.

Fix you. Think about you.

What Paul says here is grace destroys that lie.

Grace humbles us. Grace says hey you bring

nothing, you offer nothing and you earn nothing.

Salvation is a gift from God from first to last.

It is all of God so that when we stand before him, no one can

boast, only we do his worship. She boasting isn't just pride in

words, it's confidence and self. It's thinking, hey, we can earn,

we can deserve, or we can secure what God has already given.

Our culture celebrates this, right?

I pulled myself up by my bootstraps.

I made something of my life, right?

We love these stories because what happens, it makes us the

hero. It makes us look good.

Why? Because we don't want to look

bad. We want people to look at us and

be like, man, that guy's awesome, that girl's awesome.

But Paul says there are no self-made Christians.

We didn't do anything. No one pulls himself out of the

grave of sin. No one reforms themself into new

life. You can't climb your way into

heaven. You have to be carried there by

the cross. You see salvation doesn't put a

metal on your chest, it puts a cross on your back.

It kills self-reliance and it replaces it with dependence on

Christ. When Judah was really little we

we read the little pilgrims progress.

And if you have not gotten a chance to read that, bring a box

of tissues and get ready. But in that, this is what it

reminds me of little Christian, right?

He's staggering his way down the road.

He's carrying all this guilt and all this shame and he's, he's,

he's feeling the burden and he tries everything to shake it

off. He, he goes to good advice.

He tries moral effort. He tries religious effort.

But none of that works. It's not until he makes his way

up the up the hill and he sees the cross.

There's this beautiful moment that he starts saying, man, I

felt the the bands on my back start to loosen and all of a

sudden I could stand tall and I felt the weight lifted.

And as I turned back, I noticed it was gone.

Completely gone. The load stayed right where it

was until he met the hill of Calvary.

And for the first time, he stands tall.

Not because he's worked harder, but because the cross bore what

he couldn't. In that story, he stays looking

at the cross with his heart full of joy and tears streaming from

his face. You see, that's Ephesians 29 in

story form. But listen, when grace humbles

us, it doesn't humiliate us and it frees us.

When you realize you have nothing to do with your

salvation, there's nothing left to prove.

You don't have to compare your story to someone else's.

You don't have to look and be like, man, that person's got a

perfect life. Or like me.

I looked at these people that had crazy salvation stories and

I was like, I got to add to mine.

I got to add some sin to make God's work in me better.

But when I started to realize that salvation was not my own,

doing it it, it gave me confidence.

It meant I didn't have to hide behind spiritual performance,

right? Perfect attendance at church,

knowing all the Bible verses. Grace allows you to stop

striving and start resting because like we just saying, the

work is finished, it's done. Grace takes the pressure off of

us. It reminds us that your worth

isn't found in what you do, but it's in what Christ has done.

Paul says this grace leaves no room for boasting.

None. Because boasting belongs to the

one who earned it, and the only person who earns salvation is

Jesus. And so, as one writer put it,

even our best works are colored by sin and can never approach

the radical righteousness that God demands, right.

If salvation were by works and heaven would sound like a locker

room or a business meeting or a network meeting, we'd be walking

around throwing out stats, being like, yeah, I saved 20 people.

What'd you do over there, Paul? Trying to be this whole, like,

jiving at each other and being like, hey, what, What have you

done? What'd you do for the gospel?

And it would turn into this boasting of self.

But instead, heaven will sound like a worship service with

every voice, every tribe, every nation crying.

Worthy is the Lamb who is to be slain.

And that is our anthem pulses. God designed it this way so that

no one could ever stand before him and say, hey, look what I

did, because we didn't do it. Christ did it.

That's why Paul says in First Corinthians 131, Let the one who

boasts boast in the Lord. Every bit of praise belongs to

him. Every ounce of credit belongs to

him, because grace should leave us speechless.

And then it teaches us to speak one word, Hallelujah.

And this is where that line from the hymn All Sufficient Mary

just hits so deeply. All sufficient merit shining

like the sun. A fortune I inherit by no work I

have done. I lay down my garments and empty

boast good works now corrupted by the sinful host.

I'm dressed in my Lord Jesus. This is the heart of verse 9.

It's the heart of little Christian.

As he goes to the cross, he meets the angelic beings and

they give them a new clothing because they're saying your

clothing is not enough, it's not worthy, it's tainted.

You have to be dressed in the righteousness of Christ.

And so we stand clothed, not in our accomplishments, but in

Christ's righteousness. That truth doesn't just humble

us, it frees us, and it also liberates us.

It sets us free to rest in what has already been finished.

No more striving, no more boasting, just gratitude.

And this right here is the miracle of grace, not a result

of work so that no one may boast.

And church, this is the part of the gospel that we must never

get over. And maybe that's why stories

like The Little Little Pilgrims Progress still grip our hearts.

That's why it's not just some children's tale.

It echoes our own story. Because deep down we know we

were little Christian bent over under a burden we could never

remove. But then the cross appeared.

And in that moment, everything changed.

That's what happened to you. And that's what happened to me

when I was buried beneath guilt and shame, when I had no words

left to pray, when my heart was cold and heavy, Christ stepped

in. He took my sin, my record, my

failure, and he carried it to the cross.

And he didn't wait for me to move toward Him.

He moved toward me. He didn't help me shoulder the

load. He said, I'm going to completely

take it off of you. Because that's mercy, that's

grace. Not that we tried and God met us

halfway, but that we were dead and God made us alive.

So Paul says, not a result of works, not by effort, not by

achievement, only by grace. That's why I'll never get over

it. That's why you shouldn't get

over it. That's why we shouldn't get over

it, because we can't. How could we ever move on from a

grace that rescued us out of the grave?

And when that sinks in, it leaves us like a little

Christian at the foot of the cross, tears of relief streaming

down his face, whispering he did it, He really did it.

He took my pain, my suffering, and he released me from my

guilt. And in that moment when your

pride is gone and your boasting is silence, that's when worship

happens. It's not forced, it's not

formal. It's genuine, humble,

overflowing gratitude because once you've seen the weight of

sin fall off of you, you can never look at Jesus the same.

And you shouldn't. As Boyce says in his commentary,

nothing that you or I can do, however great or small, can get

us into salvation. If we think there is, we are

still trusting ourselves and our own ability rather than Christ,

and we cannot be saved. Salvation is by grace alone.

All we can do and must do is take the picture God puts in our

hands and thank Him, because it's a lot better than anything

we had ever before. It's, as the hymn says, nothing

in the hand. In my hands I bring simply to

the cross I cling naked. Come to thee with dress

helpless. Look to thee for grace, Phalli

to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die.

Rock of Ages cleft for me. Let me hide myself in Thee.

So Paul tells us that we are saved by grace, that we are

humbled by grace, and then he closes this section to show us

that we're recreated for good works.

He closes this section with one of the most beautiful summaries

of what grace does for us. Says we are his workmanship

created, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God

prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

After telling us that salvation is not by works, Paul now

explains that salvation produces works.

Now he isn't reversing himself here.

What he's doing is he's completing the thought.

Grace doesn't just rescue us, it remakes us.

We aren't saved by good works, but for them.

So when Paul says we are his workmanship, he's using a word

that deserves our attention. In the Greek, it's poema.

It's where we get our word poem. It means something carefully

made, a piece of art, a masterpiece.

Paul is saying that every believer is the creative work of

God, shaped by his hands, designed with his purpose.

A poem doesn't write itself. Trust me, ask my English

teacher. Every word, every rhythm, every

line carries the imprint of its author.

And that's what you are in the hands of God, His deliberate

composition. You're not a random act of

mercy. You're a personal masterpiece of

grace. The same God who spoke light

Into Darkness has written grace into the story of your life.

He didn't make you better, He made you new.

You are his poem of his art, His story, His evidence that grace

doesn't just forgive, it creates beauty out of brokenness.

And the beauty of this poem isn't just how it begins.

It's in how it continues. Every act of obedience, every

word of kindness, every work of faith is another line of God's

grace being written through your life.

And we're not just individual masterpieces, as we're going to

see in the next section. We are part of God's collective

poem, the church. And Ephesians 2 doesn't stop

with verse 10. It moves into verses 11 through

22 where Paul's going to show how grace tears down this

dividing wall. That means a grace shaped church

is a place of humility, reconciliation, service where no

one boasts because everyone has been rescued.

So when you serve the church, you, when you forgive a brother,

when you welcome the outsider, what you're doing is you're

adding another stanza to the poem of grace.

Then Paul says we were created in Christ Jesus for good works.

Notice again, created, not improved, not upgraded, not

recreated. You were created.

This is Genesis language. The old you has been crucified

with Christ. The new has been raised in him,

right? Second Corinthians 517, right?

If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

The Christian life isn't about trying to prove something to

God. It's about living out what God

has already done in you. Jesus said I am the vine, you

are the branches. Apart from me, you can do

nothing, right? The branch doesn't strain to

bear fruit. All it does is simply abide.

It abides in the life of the vine.

And in the same way God works. Good works flow naturally from

our union with Christ. They're not the cause of grace,

they're the consequence of it. And Paul continues, which God

prepared beforehand. That means that the life you now

live in obedience isn't random. It's planned.

Before you ever took your first breath, before you ever sinned,

before you ever believed God had already designed the path of

grace your life would walk. That means nothing in your week

is wasted. That means the emails you write,

the prayers you whisper, the suffering you endure, all of it

can become part of God's workmanship.

The masterpiece of grace isn't a paint, isn't painted in grand

strokes, but in small, faithful ones.

This is the same word Paul uses only one more time in the New

Testament, which is in Romans 923, in order to make him not

make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy which

he has prepared beforehand for glory.

In Romans, God prepared His people for glory, and in

Ephesians He's prepared their path for obedience.

Ephesians 1/4 says He chose us before the foundation of the

world. Philippians 213 right?

It's it is God who works in you both to will and to work for His

good pleasure. That means even your desire to

follow Him is the gift of grace. Every step of obedience is

something He planned for you to take.

The same God who planned your salvation before time began also

prepared your sanctification before time began.

Finally, Paul says that all of this is so we should walk in

them. That word walk connects us right

back to verse 2 where he said you once walked in sin.

This was once who you were, but now grace has changed our

direction. The same God who raised us from

death has also reoriented our steps.

Grace doesn't just change your status, it changes your stride.

Where he says, hey, you once walked in this, now walk in this

walk in the good works that God prepared for you.

Daryl Bach captures it perfectly when he writes, we are able to

live out how God designed us. That's what grace does.

It allows us to live out how God actually designed us in freedom.

And this will become the point in Ephesians 4 through 6 of how

do you walk this out? How do you do what Paul just

said of walking in them? And it's rooted in what was

extolled about God in verse 4 of chapter 1.

And we're also still in the shadow of the prayer of 119.

God designed a path and now He equips us to follow it.

In other words, God doesn't just call you to walk, He gives you

the legs to move. Romans 64 echoes this truth.

Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

And this walk shows up in ordinary places.

At home, it looks like patience when your kids test your limits

because you remember how patient God has been with you.

Right At work, it looks like honesty when compromise would be

easier because you serve a higher master in your

relationships. It looks like forgiveness that

in the makes no sense to the world because you've been

forgiven infinitely more. And in your marriage.

And remember, it means remembering that the same grace

that saved you is the grace that sustains you together.

It's seeing your spouse not as a project to fix, but as God's

workmanship to someone in whom he is also creating something

beautiful. So grace shows up on how you

speak to one another, how you forgive one another, and how you

serve one another. And in the church it looks like

joyful service and quiet faithfulness because the one who

served you 1st is still shaping you to be like Him.

And that is the miracle of grace.

It doesn't call you out of death.

It doesn't just do that. It sends you into life.

It doesn't just simply cleanse you, it commissions you.

You are His workmanship, His poema saved by grace, joined to

Christ and empowered by His Spirit so that your life might

tell the story. And that is the song of

eternity. From Eden's promise to Calvary's

cross to the glory yet to come, one refrain resounds.

All of it is grace. Grace saves.

Grace humbles. Grace transforms.

Paul's message in Ephesians 2, eight through 10 is beautifully

simple and endlessly deep. We were dead, but God made us

alive. We brought nothing but He gave

everything we are not saved by works but for them.

That's the gospel. Paul once ringing in our ears as

we leave this passage. You didn't earn this.

You can't lose this and you weren't saved to sit still.

You were saved to walk. So how do we respond as I invite

Jeff up and and the band friend. If you've never come to Christ,

if you've, if you've never felt the burden, lift it off.

Hear the good news. Salvation is not something you

achieve, it's something you receive.

You don't clean yourself up before coming to God.

You come because you can't clean yourself up.

You bring your sin, your guilt, your exhaustion, and you lay

them at the feet of the One who already paid for them.

Grace is offered right now to all who believe.

So what's holding you back from grace?

What more are you waiting for God to prove?

But for some of you, maybe grace has become an old song.

It it used to move you. It used to bring you to tears

and and service, but now it's just become background noise.

Frank, come back to the wonder of God.

Ask God to reawaken your heart to the miracle that you were

dead and now you're alive. Don't settle for surviving on

stale grace when God offers fresh mercy every morning.

And for those of you that are true believers, keep walking in

grace. Keep trusting that the same God

who saved you will sustain you. You're his masterpiece.

Let your life be the evidence of His power.

Live thankfully, serve joyfully, love freely.

And when you fall short and you will remember.

Grace doesn't fail. The God who began a good work in

you will bring it to completion. So what story of grace is your

life telling? Who needs to hear this grace

this week? That's the gospel of Ephesians

2. Grace saves the Sinner, awakens

the slumbering, and strengthens the faithful.

And one day, when grace has finished it, we'll stand before

our Savior and see the author of this poem face to face.

And every line of our lives will declare the same truth by grace

through faith in Christ alone. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I am grateful. For the salvation that is freely

given, God, you know my own heart, God, of how I feel like I

I need to add something to it. God, I'm grateful for the words

of Paul that were ultimately your words of reminding us that

salvation is not complicated. It's simple.

It's all because of you. It's all because of grace.

Just kind of pray for our hearts this morning as we respond to

the word being preached and into the grace that you have given.

I pray that you would awaken that you would bring to life the

dead hearts in this room that you would show up unexpected and

change their life completely and show them the beauty of grace.

God, I pray for the one that is struggling that that they've

forgotten the beauty of your mercy and grace that whether

life has bogged them down, the pressures of this world have

have have silenced the the beauty in trusting in you.

I pray that they would turn back and God, for the ones that are

faithful, I pray that they heard the challenge to continue to

live in that, to let their life be a testimony of grace.

That they would see that they were created to do good works

and that they would live in them.

That the world would see you because of how they live.

God, we are so unworthy of your salvation and grace.

Thank you for extending it to us and we love you and we thank you

shame. We pray.

Amen. Thanks for listening.

To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to

respond to this sermon, visit our website at

www.heritageshawnee.org.