Our Role In Changing Us

All right, good morning. So I want to start with an illustration that I heard

from someone else long time ago, years ago.

And it goes like this. You need a picture for this illustration work.

You have to picture like you're having a yard sale in your front yard.

So you got all the tables set up and all the stuff that you own is on the tables, okay?

And this is like a metaphorical yard sale, so it's not like a normal one.

So all the stuff's there on the table, your TV and your silverware and your

grandma's China and all that, it's all there.

And there's accompanying price tags for all the stuff.

And the price tags that are on all your stuff are not like a normal yard sale.

It's not what you think you could get someone else to pay.

The price tag reflects what you think that thing is worth. Okay,

what that thing is worth to you.

And then on these tables, we also have, like, this is a metaphorical yard sale,

so we can do crazy stuff with that.

So on the tables are not only everything you own that you could put on a table

at a yard sale, but literally everything you own is on these tables with the price tag.

So your house, your boat, your truck, if you have a vacation home,

like, all that stuff is there with the price tag of whatever it is it's worth to you.

And things that you could not buy and sell in a yard sale, but all the other

stuff in your life is also on these tables, okay?

So you've got your grandma, your husband, your wife, your kids,

your enemies, the guy at work that annoys you, your church, your boss, your friends, okay?

All those people with price tags of what they're worth to you.

And while we're doing this, also, all of the other things in your life,

even things that are like intangible, okay?

So your comfort is there with the price tag of what that's worth to you. Your integrity.

You can imagine there's a little box labeled your free time and then there's

a little price tag like what is your free time worth to you?

Other people's opinion of you, like all that sort of stuff. Every single element

of your life is there priced as it's valuable to you. So are you picturing it?

So the idea is someone could come along and could compare the tags to see what's

worth what to you. What do you value most? What do you value more?

Someone could look and go, hmm, does he love his children more or free time

more? Like which one is it? You could look at the two tags, you know, or you could whatever.

What did he put, what price did he put on his boat? Alright,

what price did he put on his grandma?

You know, oh, oh, oh, you got, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, all right.

And so whatever it is, but you could look at every single thing and you could

figure it out. Then you go, okay, well, what my boss thinks of me and my integrity.

Like which one of those is more important? And you could almost like predict

what kind of decisions you'd make with your life if you could just look at all

the price tags of all the things, okay? You following it? So.

In this series, we've been talking about some things, and I wanted to make them clear.

So there's a graphic or a thing that I drew up the very first week of the series,

and if you could put it up on the screen now.

It looked like this. You may remember. We talked about how there's three different

transformations in the Christian life, conversion, spiritual growth, and glorification.

Those of you who were here, you remember this? Okay.

So at conversion, there is something that happens, and we talked about this

in the first week of this series, something that happens called regeneration.

And what I believe regeneration is, to make it match the illustration, is this.

Regeneration is when the Holy Spirit comes into your life, okay?

When God shows up at your yard sale and changes all the price tags to match

what he thinks they are worth.

That's regeneration. God comes

into your life and says, this is the actual value of all these things.

And the reason I think that this is important, and the reason why I remembered

this illustration when I first heard a pastor say it, I was like,

oh, that is very helpful because regeneration is something that,

like when we see it in the Bible, like one of the verses that describes it in

the Bible is 2 Corinthians 5, 17.

It says, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Okay,

so you place your faith in Jesus Christ, you are now a new creation.

And I could imagine someone placing their faith in Jesus Christ and then saying,

well, what does it mean that I'm a new creation?

So there was me, and then I trusted in Jesus, and I really do,

I believe in him, I follow him now, but the Bible says I'm a new creation,

and when I look in the mirror, I look the same, right?

I got the same hairstyle, I got the same acne, I got the same mom,

I got the same dad, I got the same spouse, I got the same personality,

I drive the same car to the same boss, I got all the same problems.

In what way am I a new creation? I place my faith in Jesus Christ,

but I look at all the elements of my life and I go, it seems like I'm the same

person that I was before.

And that's why I thought this illustration was helpful.

Regeneration is not you get a new body, you get a new personality,

you get a new spouse, you get new kids. That's not what regeneration is.

It's new price tags. It's new values. It's a whole new way of looking at the

world that you're still in.

And so, if regeneration is the new price tags and the new way of living,

then what spiritual growth is, is the next year,

the next five years, the next 20 years,

investigating the price tags and memorizing the price tags and living according

to the new price tags because those values really are now your new values.

And so this process, and that's why we have these things as like moments in

time, and then this is sort of a process, see the guy growing.

This process of growing in godliness or growing toward holiness or increasing

in obedience, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes it's called sanctification.

But this process here of growing in holiness is what we have been talking about

throughout the series. And today I wanted to ask a question about it.

Whose job is it to make sure that this happens to you?

And there are a couple of answers that I think are, like, I think there's more

than one right answer to this question, but when we think about whose job is

it to make sure that I am obedient, to make sure I grow in holiness,

what I wanted to show you is a couple of Bible verses as we just start off.

These couple of Bible verses might look like they contradict each other.

I don't think they do, and I think that'll become clear as the sermon goes on.

But let's start with 1 Thessalonians 5.23 and 2 Corinthians 7.1.

So we'll start with 1 Thessalonians.

Paul's writing to these Christians, and he says, Now may the God of peace himself

sanctify you. Do you remember that from previous weeks, right? Set you apart as holy.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.

And may your spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless for the coming

of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If all we had were this one Bible verse, and we were trying to answer the question,

who is responsible for your sanctification?

That you would be set apart as holy.

Who is responsible for that? If we only had this one verse, what would the answer be? God, right.

Paul's saying, may God sanctify you completely. And even when he says,

may your spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless,

it doesn't sound like he's even telling them to keep themselves sound and blameless.

He's saying that someone else would do that, right, for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

However, same author, different letter. Look at 2 Corinthians 7, verse 1.

2 Corinthians 7:1

He says, therefore, dear friends, since we have such promises,

and that's referring to the verses that came just before this when he was talking

about, he was quoting verses from the Old Testament on how they were to separate

from the other nations around them and that God would be a father to them.

And so in response to those Bible verses, he says, therefore,

dear friends, since we have such promises, let us cleanse, what's the word?

Ourselves from every impurity of the flesh and spirit, making our sanctification

complete in the fear of God.

Wait, I thought God is the one that sanctifies you completely,

but this verse says you should make your sanctification complete we should cleanse

ourselves isn't that interesting.

Depending on how you grew up, some of you might go, what does that even cleanse

ourselves? I didn't even think we could cleanse ourselves.

I thought that's what we believe in Jesus. I thought Jesus is the one that cleanses me.

Yes, if we're talking about cleansing as like forgiveness of sins,

for your record to be wiped out and for you to be considered holy because Jesus

forgave you of your sins, yes, that is something you cannot do yourself.

I don't think that's what he's referring to here. I think he's saying,

as we live our lives, as you're making decisions, okay, cleanse ourselves from

every impurity of the flesh and spirit.

When we see things that are impure and we see things that are pure,

what are we supposed to do?

We're supposed to choose the pure over the impure.

I think cleanse ourselves is talking about the way we live our life.

Stop doing dirty and start doing pure.

Making your sanctification, your set-apartness in God, complete in the fear of God.

So if we only had 1 Thessalonians, we would say it's God's job to sanctify us.

And if we only had 2 Corinthians, we'd probably say it's our job to sanctify

us. I don't think these two verses contradict.

In fact, there is another Bible passage that talks about God's job and our job,

all in the same paragraph, all in the same sentence, depending on how you punctuate it, okay?

It's all one thought all together in the book of Philippians. So I wanna show it to you.

This is a Bible passage that we looked at last week and I told you last week,

we're probably gonna revisit this next week. And sure enough, we did.

Philippians chapter two, verses 12 through 13. I want you to see both sides

of both us and God and what we do together are found in this one Bible verse.

So Philippians chapter two, starting in verse 12, says this.

So then, my dear friends.

Just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence.

Now here it is. Look what he says to them to do. This is where he makes the

command. He says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out his good purpose.

Do you see both sides there? It's an interesting verse, isn't it?

He says, work out your own salvation, for God is working in you to desire and

to work out his good purpose.

So I guess what I want you to see in this passage is there are two people that are doing work here.

Do you see that? Like there are two entities in this verse that work.

He says, work out your own salvation, right, with fear and trembling.

So he's saying, take seriously, and I think he's talking about how they live

their Christian life. When it comes to you being separated from sin,

you need to do it. You need to work out your own salvation.

Then he says it again later on, that enabling you both to desire and to work out his good purpose.

So you are definitely doing work here. It says that.

And it also says, for it is God who is working in you.

So this verse has you doing work and it has God doing work. Do you see that?

All right, so two different entities here are doing work.

Well, who does what? Like, how does this work? So it's my job to make sure I'm

obedient, but then God plays a role in me being obedient.

How does this work together? So I do work, yes, you're supposed to do work.

You are supposed to obey God.

And God does work, yes, he does. Well, what is God's work? Like,

what is the thing that he does? This is so mysterious.

Not really, the verse actually says it. It says, for it is God who is working in you.

And if you're wondering, what work is he doing in me? It literally says it in the next clause.

It is God working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out his good purpose.

So if we're trying to figure out what is God's job and what is our job, it's very simple.

God enables and you do.

Do you see that? God enables you to do it. Then you do the thing he's enabled you to do.

That's our role in spiritual growth or sanctification or growing in holiness

or whatever it is you want to call it.

Now, why does this matter? Why is this important that we do our part?

We talked about God's part last week, right? When we talked about the Holy Spirit

in us. Why does our part matter?

Especially some people even, I think, sometimes ask it this way.

They would go like, well, I mean, if I'm saved and if God loves me and forgives

me, what does it even matter what I do?

Why should I cooperate with God toward personal holiness?

And so I want to give you three answers to that question. Okay,

there are probably more than three. I'm just gonna give you three answers that I am aware of.

Why should I cooperate with God toward my own personal holiness? So here is number one.

So that God will use you, okay? So here's our question. Why would I cooperate

with God? He's enabling me. He's giving me the desire to work out his good purpose.

Why should I do my part, okay? So number one, so God will use you.

This is 2 Timothy 2, verse 21 that I'm gonna read.

2 Timothy 2:21

It says, so if anyone purifies himself from anything dishonorable,

he will be a special instrument, set apart, useful to the master,

prepared for every good work.

Now, interesting, we have the same wording here that we had in that other verse.

He's saying the person is supposed to purify themself, right?

If anyone purifies himself, to which we go, wow, how can you even purify yourself?

I think if it's talking about your salvation, like forgiveness of sins,

I don't think, then you can't purify yourself.

I think what he's talking about here is as you live your life,

there is that which is dishonorable, there is that which is honorable.

If anyone says no more to this, for now on this, right?

Anyone who purifies himself from anything dishonorable, he will be,

now look at this, as you make these decisions, he will be a special instrument

set apart, useful to the master.

That's got to be a reference to God there, right? That's the Lord.

So do you want to do God's will with your life?

Well, then you should do your part in spiritual growth.

All right, reason number two. So I'm going to give you three reasons,

all right? The third reason is the one I'm really going to focus on because

I think that's the big one, but I just, I really like doing things in threes.

So let's just do this. So I'm going to give you another one.

But I'm really going to spend a lot of time on the third one.

Here's the second one. Because you love God, or because you love Jesus.

Why should you be concerned about your own personal holiness?

Because you love God, because you love Jesus.

John chapter 14, verse 15 says this. If you love me, you will keep my commands.

John 14:15

It's a very short verse. You can memorize it today if you really wanted to.

Jesus said this. He said to his disciples, if you love me, you will keep my commands.

So why would I keep his commands? Well, because I love him, right?

In fact, there's even an implication here. If you don't keep his commands,

you don't love him, right?

Because if you love me, you will keep my commands.

And so this attitude, I think sometimes people do this. They'll be like,

well, I think I love God, you know, but I'm not going to obey his commands.

Goodness gracious, there's so many and they're hard.

So, but I mean, I think I love God. I just don't obey his commands.

No, if you love me, you will keep my commands. That's what he said.

So, I thought about it this week, and here's an illustration,

I've used this even before.

So let's imagine that I am married, okay? And I am, so it's not hard to imagine.

Okay, so imagine my wife Heidi says to me when we first got married,

imagine if she said to me, Mario, for the next 60 years, I'm going to forgive

you for whatever it is you do wrong.

Okay, I've just decided ahead of time, I'm going to forgive you for anything

you do wrong for 60 years.

This is actually something that really did happen when we got married.

In fact, today is our wedding anniversary. We've been married for 24 years.

So 24 years ago today, or somewhere around, did we do it as we got married,

or was it like a little bit after? Do you remember?

It was on the day? Okay. So we did this thing called the 60-year grace period,

okay? And we said it to each other, okay?

It was the 60-year grace period. I'm going to forgive you for whatever you do

that like offends me or bothers me for the next 60 years, and we said it to

each other. We're going to forgive each other for whatever we do wrong.

Now, the point of 60 years, I think, was kind of tongue-in-cheek.

It wasn't because we intended on one day in our 80s to be like,

well, I've had just about enough.

We said 60-year grace period, but we kind of meant like, we're just going to

stick it out for our whole life, right?

I'm just, whatever you do, I'm going to forgive you for whatever it is.

We're sticking together for our whole life, but we called it the 60-year grace

period. Now, imagine this.

Imagine if my wife said to me, I'm going to forgive you for whatever you do,

Mario, and imagine if my reaction to that was, oh, think of all the stuff I could get away with.

A 60-year grace period. Think of all the things I could do to inconvenience

her. Think of all the things I could do to annoy her.

Think of all the things I could do to bother her. Think of all the things I could do to harm her.

Oh, I could get away with so much. Now, if that was my reaction to her forgiveness,

wouldn't it be true that I don't love her?

Of course, if my reaction to her forgiveness is, oh, think of what I can get

away with, that just shows I don't actually love her.

And I think in a similar principle, we find this, when someone goes,

oh, well, yeah, I think I love God, but I'm going to keep doing that which he

tells me not to do, that which he says displeases him, I'm just going to keep doing it.

Well, yeah, if you keep doing it, that shows something that you don't actually love him.

If you love me, you'll keep my commands.

And then here's the third one. Why should I cooperate with God toward personal holiness?

It is essential to having an eternal relationship with God.

Now that point right there it is essential to having an eternal relationship

with God that depending on how you grew up that will sound either awesome or heretical.

But I want to explain it to you. I do believe it is essential to you having

an eternal relationship with God that you would have personal holiness.

So let me show you what I mean.

Matthew 7, verse 21 says this.

Matthew 7:21

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven,

but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Jesus said these words. Jesus said this in the Sermon on the Mount toward the end of it.

Apparently there is something that that

you can that's an indicator of whether you enter the kingdom of heaven or not

and it's the one who does the will of my father in heaven and he starts off

by saying not everyone who says to me lord lord will enter the kingdom of heaven

so i'm guessing some people who say to him lord lord are going to enter into

the kingdom of heaven some of them will

but not all of them right not everyone who says to me lord lord so apparently

there are people who say, Jesus is my Lord, in fact, it's double Lord.

This is like, you are really my Lord, Lord, Lord.

Okay, so not everyone who calls me their Lord twice, not every single one of

them is gonna enter the kingdom of heaven, right?

Not everybody who professes that Jesus is the Lord enters into the kingdom of

heaven. Well, which ones do?

Only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Well, are you taking this out of context, Mario? Because that can't be right.

So maybe you're just taking this one.

I don't think I'm taking it out of context because the verses right after this,

Jesus brings up Judgment Day and says that there were people show up and they

will say, we were followers of yours.

And he's going to say to them, depart from me, lawbreakers. I never knew you.

Like you didn't follow God's will. And so I never knew you.

And Jesus will say, depart from me. And then right after that, Jesus

does the parable of the wise and the

foolish builders and there's the guy that builds the house on the sand and there's the

guy that builds the house on the rock and the guy that builds the house on the sand when

the storm comes the whole house gets blown away and it's obviously this

symbol for like judgment those people who are judged by God and then the people

who are not judged by God the symbol is the house that's built on the rock and

the house that's built on the rock Jesus says what it means you don't have to

figure out like what is this an allegory for Jesus said the person who hears

my words and puts them into practice is the one whose house is built on the

rock and not going to get swept away.

So, I mean, if you just zoom out and look at the context, you just find more of the same thing.

And in fact, even if I was taking this verse out of context,

it doesn't really matter because this is all over the Bible.

Hebrews chapter 12 sounds like this. James chapter 2 sounds like this.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention James 2 · chapter mention

First Corinthians chapter 6 sounds like this.

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

Like, this is all over. Hebrews chapter 12 verse 14 says, without holiness, no one will see the Lord.

Hebrews 12:14

James chapter right around verses 20 through 26, says that faith without works is dead.

And in the context, you can see what it means. Faith without works is dead.

It is useless and unable to save a person.

1 Corinthians chapter 6 gives a list of sins and says, like,

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

the people who practice these things, they will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

It's all over the Bible.

I can imagine someone could hear all this and go, what? Well,

then, so are we saved by our works?

So, like, obedience is the thing that gets us into the kingdom of heaven,

so we are saved by our works? Like, man, this sermon took a twist ending that

I didn't even see coming, Mario. I thought we were saved by grace.

In fact, I could have swore you taught us that we were saved by grace.

I thought we were saved not by our own efforts at holiness, but saved by what

Jesus did when he died on the cross on our behalf.

Yes, you were taught correctly if you were taught that. We are saved by grace.

Well, but wait a minute. Well, let us wait a minute because what I want to do

is I want to make it very clear that if you've been taught that before,

okay, including by me, you were taught the truth, and so I want you to see it in the Bible.

So we've covered the fact that you do not enter into the kingdom if you don't

do the will of God. That's clear.

Now, let's also look at the verses that say you're saved by grace.

So I picked two. Ephesians chapter 2, I think, is the most simple and easy one to understand.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Ephesians chapter 2, starting in verse 8.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Says, for you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves.

It is God's gift, not from works, so that no one can boast.

I don't see how that could be more clear. We are certainly saved by grace and

not by earning it through our obedience.

I have heard it said that not from works means that that's a reference to the

Mosaic law, and that all that Paul was trying to say here was,

you're not saved by obeying the ceremonial aspects of the Mosaic law, but you do,

you are saved by works in addition to grace.

That's not what it says. There's nothing in here that indicates it's some sort

of reference to the Mosaic law, and the words around it don't match that.

You are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves.

It doesn't say this is not from the Mosaic law, but it's from the new laws that

we're going to do now that we're New Testament people.

No, it says you're saved by faith, by grace through faith, and this is not from

yourselves. It's not something you do.

It is God's gift. Okay, gift means you didn't earn it.

It was given to you, not from works so that no one can boast.

There aren't any works to boast about. Okay, so we're saved by grace. Yes.

Let me show you one more. Luke chapter 18. This is Jesus speaking.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable. This is the verse just before the parable.

It says, he also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they

were righteous and looked down on everyone else.

I think it's important. Sometimes before you read a parable,

it is good to read the verse just before it.

Because it's good, like you can interpret the parable based on what it said just before.

Sometimes Jesus tells these stories not randomly, but in reaction to something that just happened.

So Jesus was around actual people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous.

And they were looking down, everyone else, look at all, I obey all the rules.

And look at these people, half the rules, quarter the rules, none of the rules.

Look at me, I am a righteous person. Jesus saw people like that and said,

oh, I've got a story for you. Here's the story, verse 10.

Two men went up to the temple complex to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee took his stand and was praying like this, God, I thank you that

I am not like other people, greedy, unrighteous, adulterers,

or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I get.

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even raise his eyes to heaven,

but kept striking his chest and saying, God, turn your wrath away from me, a sinner.

I tell you, this one went down to his house justified rather than the other.

And we might go, which one went to his house justified? Keep reading.

Because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles

himself will be exalted.

Oh, the one who goes away justified is the humble one and not the exalted one.

The one that listed all his righteousness and said, look how righteous I am,

is not the one that's justified.

It's the one who said, God, turn your wrath from me, a sinner.

This is important because the word justified, and I've said this here at church

a lot, the word justified in the Bible means like credited as righteous,

like counted as righteous in God's sight.

There's only two people in the parable. The person who is considered to be righteous in God's sight.

It's the tax collector who said, I'm a sinner, I'm not worth anything,

please forgive me, and not the guy who trusted in his own works.

It seems to me if we are saved by our own righteous efforts,

Jesus would not have told this story this way, right?

Okay, so we are saved by grace, we know that for sure, and we will not enter

into the kingdom if we do not do the will of God the Father.

So what do we do with that? How do we reconcile these two teachings?

So you could put up that slide. How can these two teachings be reconciled?

And I put on here, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom

of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

And for you are saved by grace through faith. This is not from yourselves.

It is God's gift, not from works, so that no one can boast.

But when I say, how can these two teachings be reconciled? The question I'm

asking today isn't how can these two particular verses be reconciled?

Because I don't think that's as important. I'm saying, how can all the verses

that sound like this be reconciled with all the verses that sound like this?

Because if you just took these two out and pretended that there were no other

verses in the Bible, I'm sure you could come up with something.

You could say, well, the only one who does the will of my Father, that would be Jesus.

So Jesus is the only one that does the will of the Father, and he does that

on our behalf, which is how we're saved by grace, okay?

Well, yeah, that works with just these two verses. It doesn't even really work

because he said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord. So this is someone

who would come to him and say he's the Lord. Jesus is not who's being referred to here.

It's someone who would come to him and call him Lord who's being referred to here.

So the point isn't to try to figure out how just these two verses reconcile.

The point is, what do we do with all the verses that say you have to do the

will of the Father to enter into heaven, that holiness is required to see the

Lord, that faith without works is dead, and such a faith cannot save someone,

with the verses that say it is God's gift and it is not from works,

and you believe in him and you're saved.

So, I will start by answering this question this way.

For 2,000 years, Christians have tried to reconcile this. This is kind of called

the grace versus works debate.

And it has been going around for about 2,000 years now.

And Christians have tried to understand this. And I guess by saying this has

been a debate for 2,000 years, I guess what I'm saying is there is more than

one answer that a Christian might give to this question. Can we get the question back up real quick?

There's more than one answer that someone might give to this question.

You may ask me and I'll give you an answer and you may ask a different

pastor who might give you a different answer and you might talk to a third pastor who

might give you a different answer from the first two okay so what

I'm telling you is in answering this question all I could do this morning is

give you the answer that I believe is true okay all I can do is tell you what

I believe okay now you might go well is that the one that's right well yes of

course by that I mean by that I mean I think it's right because I believe everything

that I think is right which before you go, that's arrogant. You do too.

You think everything you believe is right. Like, if you knew something was wrong,

you'd stop believing it, right? We only believe things we think are right.

Okay, so I'm going to give you the one that I believe is right.

I'm going to tell you what I believe. And this was taught to me,

I think it was in my early 20s.

And once this one thing that was taught to me in my early 20s got into my head,

it made sense of not only these two passages.

Once I understood the thing that I'm about to tell you, it made sense to me

of all of these kinds of passages, and all of these kinds of passages.

There was one thing that once I learned this one thing, when I come across James

and it says, faith without works is dead, and without holiness you will not

see the Lord, and only the one who does the will of my Father.

And when I come across, it is God's gift, and it is not from works,

and he was the one who was justified rather than the other.

And believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.

When I come across those passages, there's one thing that I learned,

that once I learned that one thing, it made sense of all the passages on both sides.

So do you want to know what the thing is? Here it is.

We are saved by grace, and those who are saved will have works.

Let me say it again. I'll use different words, but mostly the same words.

We are saved by grace, meaning not by earning, through our own efforts.

And those people who are saved by grace will have works, or they're not saved.

So to be right with God we can't

be like the Pharisees in the in the the parable

that I just read to you from Jesus who trusted in themselves and listed all

their own efforts as their righteousness before God you can only come to God

as a sinner and ask for mercy and you can receive forgiveness because Jesus

Christ died in the place of sinners.

And in reaction to that mercy, you obey.

In reaction to his grace, you pursue holiness. You pursue God's will.

You work out what he worked in you.

It is important to not believe that you have earned God's favor,

that salvation is a payment that comes to you in exchange for your obedience.

And at the same time, if you are not obedient, if you are disinterested in doing

God's will, you should be scared to death that you're not saved.

So let's circle back to our opening illustration. For those who trust in Jesus,

the Holy Spirit enters in and makes them a new creation.

By grace, they're still the same person technically, but all new price tags, right?

All new values, all new purpose, all new way of life.

And now God in you enables you to live according to his new ways and you are

responsible to do it. You are responsible to do that which he has enabled.

And if you love him, and if you want to serve him, and if you will enter his

kingdom one day, you will. You will.

Let's pray.

God, thank you for being clear to us what our responsibility is in obeying you.

Like we need your word to say to us, obey, cleanse yourself,

purify yourself, walk away from that, walk toward this.

We need you to tell us to do that. We are responsible to do that.

And yet, I think Philippians chapter two makes it really clear,

we could never do it without you working in us, enabling us to desire and to

work out your good purpose.

So I guess on behalf of the believers in this room and if you agree with this

next thing I say, you feel free to say amen at the end of the prayer. But Lord, we say to you,

thank you for sanctifying us. We ask you to sanctify us completely.

And we say to you, we will do our part in sanctification so that we would complete

our sanctification before you, that we would do what you've enabled us to do.

So we tell you what we will do and we thank you and praise you and worship you for what you have done.

We love you, and we say these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let me end with these good words from God's word. Work out your own salvation

with fear and trembling, for it is God who is working in you,

enabling you both to desire and to work out his good purpose. That is good news.