04: Sola Gratia (Grace Alone)

Good afternoon.

Ephesians 2, 1 through 10.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

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.

Please be seated.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here.

Welcome.

We are so we say at Redemption Church Denver there are two ways to get connected.

We say we gather large and we gather small.

So our large gatherings are on Sundays where we gather together as a whole church, and then throughout the weeks we gather small in each other's homes in what we call redemption groups.

So if you would like to be a part of a redemption group, which we highly recommend, uh the best way to get connected is to download our app and then you can uh sorry, hot mic, download our app, and then you can tap connect and uh you'll be able to join a group, or tap groups, and you'll be able to join a group.

So just follow your heart on how you'd like to get connected.

The best way, uh, or uh this is a great time to reach out for that.

So this is a time where we're we're really asking you to reach out and get connected with one of those groups if you aren't now, um, because we'll be launching into our new content in the fall um and sort of establishing those normal rhythms as we move into the fall and uh get into those more uh typical patterns of life instead of the summer craziness.

Um is anybody ready for fall like I am?

Yeah, a lot of fall fans out there, that's what I thought.

Uh so there's a lot of new faces as I'm looking around, uh, which means a lot of you have been breaking the first rule of fight club.

Just kidding, that was a joke from 2001.

We are uh so uh in which case I'm gonna kind of take the opportunity and tell you a bit of who we are.

So we're Redemption Church Denver.

Um we uh are planted out of a church called L2 Church that's been in the area for about 20 some odd years, and so we're a continuation of that story.

And we are uh uh in many cases a church that's been around for a long time.

So you can meet folks and they'll say, How long have you been coming to Redemption?

And they'll say, Well, redemption, well, we've been coming here for about 10 years.

Uh or you'll meet folks and they'll say, Oh, I've been coming here for the entire time that Redemption Church has existed, so about a year.

Um, so expect the confusion.

But where we are now is uh about a year ago, we chose as a church the name Redemption Church Denver.

And uh we since then have moved through a process of kind of recapturing what is gonna be our fundamental identity.

And so we've established a new leadership team.

So there's a whole new team of elders, and we went through that process over the summer of establishing a new elder board.

And the elders have taken the summer to really dive in and see okay, what does the Bible say that this calling means?

Because we want our understanding of church leadership and how we interact with each other to be drawn straight from scripture.

And we want to have biblical reasons and justifications for why we're doing the things that we do it that we're doing.

And so when we started, we said, let's treat ourselves like we're idiots.

And so we changed nothing.

And we uh that was a joke.

You're supposed to laugh and be like, you guys aren't idiots, but you didn't laugh, which means so we uh uh have been going through this study over the summer, and while we're doing this, we're also uh looking to establish some connections for our church.

One of the things that we thought uh it is particularly important and something that's been a real focus for us is embracing our, if you want a churchy word, I'll give you one, embracing our Catholicity.

So Catholic meaning universal, how we're connected to the broader work of the gospel in the city that we're a part of.

Because here's the thing we don't exist to maintain a church.

We exist to see a movement of the gospel in our city.

So that's what we're looking to do.

And so we've been connecting with others that are pursuing a similar thing in a like-minded way.

One is a group of church plants uh in Fort Collins that's trickling south called Crossway, which you probably could have guessed because like every other Christian thing is called Crossway.

Um, but we're the only redemption church.

Um we've also connected with Redeemer City to City.

Um, so I don't know if any of you guys have heard of Tim Keller.

What what?

Uh but he's got a new church planting organization, and we've connected with them, and they have since connected us with others in the city to city network in the Denver area, which has been pretty exciting.

We've also made some great just personal connections with other local churches, most particularly Trinity Church, which meets just outside of Sloane's Lake, a church kind of in a similar situation that we've been really mutually uh growing together in terms of our vision for Denver.

And so what these uh sort of what embracing this Catholicity and the growth of our the elders' understanding of what it means to be biblically rolling out, this is all angling towards what it's gonna feel like to be a part of Redemption Church Denver.

And what we want that to feel like is several things.

We're really leaning in as elders into what the biblical model for that is because we want you to be built up and equipped and cared for by the leadership of the church.

So the first tangible thing that we've done, and by the way, this has been a long summer of like, okay, we're learning to repent to each other.

It's like, I get it, can we just like make a some sort of a plan?

We're all getting a little frustrated with each other about that.

But we're saying we're going slow to move fast.

That's a term I just came up with.

I read it in a business book called How to Win Friends and Think and Grow Rich.

So where was I?

I'm feeling funny today and it's not.

So we're going slow to move fast because we here's here's the great innovation, here's the great vision of Redemption Church.

We think the church really works.

We think it really works to meet together and worship together, and that when we're worship together, we're rejuvenated to go out and bring the gospel into our city.

We think that really works.

We think it really works to make disciples, so that you're personally known by people in leadership who are looking to shape your life into the image of Christ so that you move out as salt and light into Denver.

Uh I've got a picture in my office.

I have one picture, and it's of uh Starry Night by Van Gogh.

It's not the original.

And here's yeah, I have that one picture in my office uh because it's my inspiration for what I want our church to be.

Starry Night.

Uh Van Gogh, he's looking out the window, he's insane, the right side of his head is bleeding, and he paints Starry Night.

And the stars are these swirls and they're amazing and majestic.

It's the glory of God in the heavens.

And then there's a tiny town, and all the lights in each building in the town are on.

And there's a church in the middle of the picture.

It's not the church that would have been there that he looked out and saw when he painted it.

It's the small Dutch Reformed church that he grew up in.

And he painted it there because he longed to go back to his home, which was the church.

And the church forms this connection.

It's the only building that touches that glorious sky and then it reaches down, and the church building, you know what the lights are doing in the church building?

They're all off.

You know why?

Because the light has moved into the town.

See, that's our vision for the church is that we would be this real, tangible, relational connection from this glory that we see in the heavens into a town.

And what are the lights doing in the church?

They're moving out into the city.

So that because the church is there, the city is a more beautiful place to be in.

That's our hope for Redemption Church.

So that's what our vision is going to be moving towards.

And it may seem like, look, this isn't very innovative, this isn't very sexy.

And no, it's it's none of those things.

It's none of those things.

It's very simple.

We think that the power of the gospel, experience, and community really changes lives.

And that when those lives move out into a city, that really changes culture.

So that's what we're gonna zero in on.

So who's with me?

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Okay, so we're in the midst of a series on the five solas of the Reformation.

Um, and uh, I'll explain more after we pray, because now it's time to start.

You thought that was preachy.

One joke that you get when you become a pastor is you get to say, man, that was preachy even for me.

Let's pray.

Father, you are glorious and gracious and merciful.

You purchased the church your bride with your blood.

Lord, what's happening right now is one of the great mysteries of the world.

That we would be gathered together as children adopted into your family.

Lord, you continue to speak to us through your word, and you continue to make your word living and active in us by the power of your spirit.

So we sit here under your word today, and we ask that by your spirit it would come alive in our hearts.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we're going through a series right now to finish off the summer on the five solas of the Reformation.

So in the 1500s in Europe, one of the most incredible revivals in church history took place.

And we've come to know it as the Reformation.

What happened is the Word of God got into the hands of normal, everyday Christians as it was finally translated into a language that they could understand, just their common vernacular.

And so they're reading the scriptures and they're rediscovering the glory of the gospel.

And as the centuries have gone on, it's been become typical to look back at the Reformation and to summarize the key doctrinal rediscoveries that were made during this incredible revival.

And those have come to be known as the five solas of the Reformation.

In order to celebrate the gospel moving into the common language, we describe it in Latin.

These are sola scriptura, which means scripture alone, solo Christo, which means Christ alone, sola gratia, which means grace alone.

That's what we're covering today, sola fide, which means faith alone, and solideo gloria, which means for God's glory alone.

Today we're talking about grace alone, that we are saved by grace alone.

And you know, this sola, I think more than any of the others, acts as like a sentry, you know, like a guard in your mind that preserves your faith.

And I think that if you do not grasp sola gratia, if you do not grasp grace alone, then your faith is a time bomb.

And it's ticking, and it's just a matter of time until your faith is no more.

So sola gratia is of incredible importance because it answers the question of why.

Why does God save us?

And so Paul, when he's writing the uh the letter that we're reading an excerpt from today, uh in this section, he describes the answer to that.

Why does God save the why does God save us?

Uh, if anybody, this is, I've never done this before, but my mouth is really dry.

If anybody has a water, could I have one?

Thanks.

This is my mom.

Thanks we always high five, we haven't hugged in years.

Um so Paul answers this question, why God saves us, and he answers it in two points.

And so these will be the points of our sermon today.

Point number one is God does not save you because of you.

Point number two is God saves you because of his grace alone.

So let's jump in on point number one.

This is Ephesians 2, 1 through 3.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

In that description, Paul describes the human condition in three ways.

He says that we are dead, we are enslaved, and we are condemned.

So we're gonna move through those three in that order: dead, enslaved, and condemned.

So, first, you are dead in our trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

The first thing to note about the human condition is we are dead.

And he says, we're dead in our sins and trespasses.

So a trespass, think of it as a sin that you are intentionally doing.

And uh a sin is so something wrong that you're intentionally doing.

That's a trespass.

A sin is a description of you've missed the mark.

So there's a measure and you haven't been able to measure up to that.

So one is intentional and one is a failure.

One is a sin of commission, one is a sin of omission.

Sins and trespasses.

We stand dead before the law of God, both because we did not measure up to it, and because we intentionally hated it.

We're dead.

So I know what you may be thinking.

I'm not dead.

And there's a sense in which, yeah, that's true.

You can tell because you just asked a question.

So the death that he's describing must be something different than just a physical death.

In fact, as he continues his description of it, it's going to get much much weirder as it gets fleshed out.

But there's at least one thing that we can tell from his use of this term death, is that death is final.

And dead people can't do anything to help themselves.

So in our trespasses and sins, we are dead.

Now the verse continues, and the death gets weirder because you're dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

So you're you're this walking dead.

But you're not just walking aimlessly, you are following something.

And this is where we're getting this idea that we are actually enslaved.

We're dead and we're enslaved.

And Paul goes on to describe that we are following three things.

It's like we're being driven by or pulled along by or captives to these three different things.

And these things that enslave us in this human condition are the world, the devil, and your flesh.

So, the world.

How are we enslaved by the world?

Well, one of the expressions that I love to use, I use it all the time, is you are most influenced by the philosophy that you don't know.

I've said that a lot from right up here.

And what I mean by that is there are aspects of our culture that we just take for granted.

They don't feel like ideas, they feel just so obviously true.

They feel like just a part of reality.

One of those in our culture is you are your productivity.

There is no difference between you and your productivity.

And that can feel so obviously true that it would make no sense to stop answering emails and start praying.

Because it's so obviously true that I am my productivity.

So when we're talking about the world, we're talking about an entire system, a way of viewing life that is in the most complete way secular.

Right?

You may believe in God, you may believe in a higher power, but when influenced by the world, we're living in a way that is as though God does not exist in any real or meaningful way in our lives.

And when we live according to those systems of thought, we are being driven along by the world.

The second is the devil.

Yes, him.

The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and he is working against you.

And I know what you're thinking.

The devil is working against me.

I knew it.

So it may be strange, right?

To even discuss, like the devil, there's this there's this personal force of evil moving in the world and manipulating our hearts and consciences and driving us towards lies.

Now, look, I know that may feel like an incredible stretch, an incredible stretch to even start to believe.

But just there offer this one caveat.

To not believe that such a thing exists puts you in the vast minority of what people have thought throughout all of human history.

And so to not believe that something exists, you're standing in a small group.

Most people, throughout most of time, in most cultures, think that there is such a thing as personal evil forces.

And so the devil has an intention, and his intention is to lie and deceive.

The way that we see him acting in the very beginning of scripture is the way that he continues to act today.

And what are those lies that he tells us, but those things that cut directly against what we're talking about today, which is that we are saved by grace alone, and by God's grace alone.

Instead, what the devil wishes for you to believe is that God does not care, He would not sacrifice for you, He does not love you, and He is not a trustworthy and good father.

That is what the devil wants you to think.

So, whenever we are influenced by the world, and look, that's oftentimes not a hard job.

Not a hard job.

Because the devil can stand next to you and say, look at your past week.

He's not a good father.

A good father wouldn't let one of his kids go through that.

He doesn't love you.

He doesn't care about you.

Maybe he made the world.

But you know what?

Since then, I think he's just kind of been walking away.

That's the devil.

Third and finally is your flesh.

We are enslaved to our flesh.

So when Paul uses the word flesh, don't think like your physicality.

Physicality is not a bad thing.

In fact, it's a good thing.

When God made the world this physical place, he stepped back from all those physical things and he said, This is good.

This is very good.

And remember, the story is not that we go up into a floaty heaven when we die and we just float around.

That may happen for a little while, but the real story is that we are resurrected with Christ.

And God comes to the earth.

It will have been greatly renovated.

He comes to the earth, and we dwell with him in his glorious presence.

Here, you know, when Jesus was in a resurrected physical body, he went and just made a fish.

And he didn't make a fish.

You know, Jesus, you have to clarify.

Most people, you don't have to clarify.

And he cooks a fish and he eats it because he's a physical person.

And that's the type of glorious body that we will have.

So when Paul is discussing flesh, what he's describing are these good desires, these good physical experiences of the world that we have.

You know, those desires for food, those desires for sex, those desires for comfort, these things are good desires, but when they become means of our ultimate satisfaction, then we are enslaved to them.

When sex becomes lust, when food becomes gluttony, when comfort becomes laziness, when we are driven by a desire to just cultivate more of those things, which is often what the world tells us to do, and then the devil says, the only real hope of any comfort is in those, because God doesn't care about you.

Then we are enslaved by the world, the flesh, and the devil.

It is everything, it is the reason that you can't take a break, and it's the reason that you won't get up off the couch to help your wife.

It's both of those together.

Enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the devil.

So that was just enslaved.

We still have condemned yet to go.

So we are dead, we're enslaved, and we are also condemned.

He says we are carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath.

That's where I'm getting condemned, like the rest of mankind.

By nature, children of wrath.

So these other things that we've described, they feel like sort of natural experiences of the world, but here we might be stepping into some weird space, right?

If we are saying that these evil things that we do, they actually incur the wrath of God.

We are children of wrath.

We are objects of God's wrath.

So that when God has his wrath, the object of that sentence is you.

Now I might have had you.

Maybe even through the devil part.

But this is where we might start to lose you.

You know, is the story really that God holds both the carrot and the stick?

Right?

That God holds his wrath and he holds his grace.

And then there's some bloody child sacrifice in the middle, and this is the good news.

Look, I first of all, I hear you.

I get that struggle of right where you're in.

How could we be gathered together to worship a God of wrath?

But I want to offer you some comfort in seeing that the Bible is not unaware of such a critique, but the Bible actually poses a critique that, quite frankly, I think is a more challenging, more deliberate critique.

This comes in the book of Job, which we sang earlier.

In Job 35, 5 through 6, one of Job's friends, with friends like Job's, who needs enemies, saddles up to the sulking Job and asks this.

He says, Look at the heavens and see.

Behold the clouds which are higher than you.

So let's join him there.

We're with Job.

He's having a bad day.

Look at the heavens, see.

God made those.

Clouds, way higher than you.

God made those.

If you, this little speck, if you have sinned, what do you accomplish against him?

If you've sinned, what do you accomplish against God?

And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him?

And Job's friend goes on to say, and if you're righteous, well, what does that benefit God?

He's not like gaining anything.

I remember reading through this for the first time, and it was one of those times where you're reading the Bible and you're like, huh.

And you put it away.

That's a good question.

Look, are my sins robbing God of any of his glory?

This eternally glorious being from eternity past?

No.

No.

So then the question is, well, why would God care?

Why would God care about our sins such that we're described as we're objects of his wrath?

And the answer is in the question.

Perhaps God cares?

What if sin is just as he's described it to be previously?

What if these sins that we do and we do to one another, what if they result in us being dead and alienated from the source of life who is God?

And what if they result in us being enslaved and captives to the devil leading us to death instead of to God leading us to glorious life in him?

Then why would God care only if he cared about that?

Only if God decided, you know, this sin, does it rob me of any glory?

No.

Rob God of glory.

What type of thing do you think you are?

It doesn't rob him of any glory, but perhaps he would care if he cared.

And so here's what we need to see is that sin is real and God sees us sinning and sinning against one another, oppressing and even oppressing ourselves, rejecting him, all of us, every one of us doing it, and our only hope of escape from that, because remember the results of sin, we're dead and we're enslaved, is if God cares.

And if God cares about us, then he must hate with an incredible wrath those things which kill us and enslave us.

So is it terrifying that God cares?

Yes.

And it is our only hope.

It is the loving God that has a wrath.

To say maybe God cares about my enslavement is to say maybe God cares about my sin.

This is at one point our greatest dread and also our only hope.

So here we are.

What is the human condition?

We are dead, we are enslaved, and we are condemned.

Point one.

Why does God save us?

It's not because of us.

We're dead, we're enslaved, and we're condemned.

God does not look at us and say, well, they did something so irresistible, I just can't help myself from saving them.

No, it is nothing in us that drives the salvation of God.

And you may be thinking, yes, but but I chose to put my faith in him.

And so he is saving me because of something that I did.

Okay, so we're gonna move backwards through that sentence.

I chose faith in him.

Him.

Remember, we transgressed and sinned against him.

We hated him.

I chose.

Remember, you're a slave.

You didn't choose anything.

And and I, I, who is this I talking?

You're dead, remember?

No, we are completely helpless.

This is the picture that Paul is drawing.

So point one, it's not because of us.

Point two, it is because of God's grace.

Here's where the text goes.

Ephesians 2, 4 through 5.

But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved.

You see how this wrath of God pivots in this incredible phrase over onto uh the it pivots over this phrase, but God, into this amazing description of why it is that God saves us.

He saves us because of his rich mercy, because of his great love.

So let's move through these things so that this can be established in our hearts and minds.

First, God is rich in mercy.

God being rich in mercy.

What is God like?

He is rich in mercy.

Now, we're gonna have to do some theology now.

So we're gonna have to do some doctrine of God work.

So sentences that we use to describe humans don't really work in the same way that we use them to describe God.

So if I say, uh, who do I see?

Ed.

It's your bald head.

If I say Ed is rich in mercy, and then one day Ed walks along and Ed starts acting like a real hunk of coal.

Welcome.

Then we'd say, Ed is not no longer rich in mercy, but he's still Ed.

Like, look, he's he's still Ed.

Nobody took away from his Edness.

It's still Ed.

He's just not rich in mercy.

That's not the way our sentences work when we talk about God.

When we say that God is rich in mercy, if God stopped being rich in mercy, then he's not God.

God being rich in mercy is not a phase God is going through.

When we say God is rich in mercy, why is God rich in mercy?

Because he's God.

God is one, he's a unity.

And all of his characteristics flow from him being who he is.

So when the Bible says something like God being rich in mercy, we experience God in this way where one of the things that we experience by getting to know him is this incredible richness of mercy because it is him.

So saying God is rich in mercy and saying God is God are the always the same thing.

Because why is God rich in mercy?

It's because he's God.

So what confidence can we have in God being rich in mercy?

We could never exhaust it.

We could never worry of wearing it out or running it out or losing it.

Because when we say God is rich in mercy, we're talking about something fundamental, could never change.

We have this incredible reason to hope in God's mercy.

Then it continues on, because of the great love with which he loved us.

So we need to start to grasp and understand how God's love is so different from our love.

They don't make romantic comedies anymore, but except they just started to because of Netflix.

But there's a long time that didn't make romantic comedies.

So if you remember how romantic comedies work, they work like this.

There's like a meet cute, like you bump into each other, and it's like, oh, hey.

And there's a completely unlikable guy.

And there's a a girl who doesn't like him, completely doesn't like him.

But then she gets to know him and she realizes, oh, there's all these things in him that I actually do really love.

And so she starts to love him because she's drawn in by seeing who he is.

So there's a so him, the one who's being loved, right, the beloved, starts to be loved by the lover because the the lover is drawn in by the beloved.

That's not the way God's work.

God works.

God's love is not drawn in by us.

It is just his love towards us.

It is from him completely and given to us completely and freely.

So that if God were to answer the question, why does he love you?

God would answer by saying, Because I love you.

Tim Keller, full circle, in a sermon called that he preached called How to Change, has this segment where he quotes another preacher of less renown.

And he says, you know, the only answer to give to your wife when she asks why you love her is only to say, because I love you.

Because you might say, well, I love you because you're so beautiful.

And then she would think, well, what happens when I'm no longer beautiful?

Or she might say to her husband, I love you because you're so successful.

And he might think, well, what happens when I'm no longer successful?

And so the answer is, I love you because I love you.

And that's a hard love, even a hard love to receive.

Because why do I want to be loved?

I want to be loved for my list of accomplishments.

I want to be loved because I worked so hard at these things.

I want to be loved because I've been so demonstrably obedient or because I've brought you such a wonderful life.

Instead, what God says to us is, I love you.

You.

All subject, no predicate.

Not you because you know, you.

So that means there is such a thing as a you.

Before you've done anything.

That's who God loves.

That's what it means for God to love us by his grace alone.

So, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

So when does God save us?

It is not after we have become beautiful, it is not after we've become successful, it is when we were dead.

He made us alive.

That's what salvation means.

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

This is great news.

This is really good news.

Like we always say, you know, the Bible, good news, probably heard that before.

Understatement.

This is really good news.

But it gets even better.

Because if you read it, there's these qualifiers, right?

It says, but God, it doesn't just say God who is merciful, it says, but God being rich in mercy.

And it doesn't say because of God who loves us, it says, because of the great love with which he loved us.

So why the modifiers?

Well, it's because the news gets better.

Here's how it continues.

Ephesians 2, 6 through 7 says, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

So not only does God in his grace rescue and bring to life these dead people, not only does he bring them to life, he doesn't just bring us to life and then leave us sitting there and say, okay, I've got you in the door of salvation.

From now on, let's see how well you can dance.

No.

He takes this dead enemy slave and he raises it up in his son to be seated with God's own Son in His glory.

Now, why would God do something like that?

Well, it tells us right there.

Why would God do that so that, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Why is heaven forever?

Why do we spend eternity in his presence?

Well, that's how long it's gonna take for him to show us the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

So we are saved by grace alone, so that God for eternity might show us his grace forever.

Do you remember that doctrine of God work we did where he said, if we're saying God is merciful, then we're saying God is merciful because he's God?

When we're saying God is gracious and he saves us by grace alone, why?

It's to show us more and more of who he is as that gracious God.

We are saved by grace alone, towards an incredible glory.

So, point number two.

Why does God save you?

It is because of God's grace.

One little epilogue now.

I began the sermon saying that this sola, perhaps more than any other, is what preserves your faith.

This acts as like a sentry to guard your mind when you're about to walk away.

And the reason is because it answers the question why.

And for the theologically geeky among you, you may be thinking, this isn't the sola that answers the question, why?

Soli Deo Gloria, for God's glory alone.

That's the why one.

Why does God do anything?

It's for his glory.

Why would he save us?

It's for his glory.

And yes, that's a great one.

We're gonna get to it.

It's gonna be really fun.

But this one, this one keeps you in.

And that's because right after you sin, you're gonna think, how could I turn back to God?

How could he possibly hear my prayers from a broken rebel like me?

And you'll remember, how could he hear them?

Only by his grace alone.

Why could I turn back to him and walk into his presence?

By his grace alone.

The text continues in this sort of summary verses in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, it says, 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.

Will you memorize those verses?

Ephesians 2, 8, and 9.

Do you know why?

Because you need to remember, yeah, it really says that.

It's really in there.

It really does say that.

And it says, it's not a result of works.

Why?

So that no one may boast.

Here's the danger of the boast.

It's dangerous when we start to think, I'll sacrifice for God, then he'll bless me.

I'll give to God, and then certainly he'll be on my side.

I'll give up this sin and then certainly he'll love me again.

I'll demonstrate how committed to him I can be, and then he will be on my side again.

And those become these little boasts.

These little reasons where you say, why am I saved?

Why would God hear my prayer?

Why would he be with me?

It's not by his grace alone, it's because of something in me.

And then what those become is I've just sinned, and so I can't turn back to God now.

I'll turn back to him once I demonstrate my faithfulness to him.

Once I'm able to give to him in a way that I really want to give to him.

Once I've got myself out of this messy place, and then I'll finally turn back to him.

I'll finally have something to show that he might take me back.

And those onces build up and build up.

And you don't turn to him.

And your faith that maybe once was in the hope of a God who saves now is in a God who's small enough that you could appease him.

And his appeasement is just one more step away.

And your faith in him becomes no faith at all.

Becomes faith once again just in you.

And how you can compete with the world.

And a belief in the devil's lies.

And you're a slave again, dead.

That's why this sola has to be built into your mind.

So that when that happens, you don't turn back to yourself, but you turn to God.

And you turn to him, not because you bring anything in your hand, but because he is gracious, because of the great love with which he has loved us, because of his richness of his mercy, because of the glory and the depth of his love that he's shown us in the gospel, where we see that we should have died that death, and instead he died it for us.

Let this one seep into your soul.

He saved us because of his grace alone.

Okay, let's take one question if there is one.

No questions today.

That's right.

Each week we take communion and we come to the table.

And coming to take communion is a two-step process.

It's a process of examination, examining your heart before the Lord.

Uh, and coming to him then, once you've examined your heart and you come to him and you're invited to the table.

Why are you invited to the table?

You guessed it, his grace alone.

And what we're remembering when we're at the table is that Jesus' blood was poured out for us, and his body was broken that we might be rescued by it.

And there is no table, there's no place in all of Scripture where people are invited to a table of feasting to be sad.

There's no place.

And this is not that place either.

We come to the table to celebrate together that we stand in his grace alone, but that his grace is rich and bountiful, and it will nourish us forever.

So examine your heart.

You will find that you come up short, and then come to the table to demonstrate that you are turning to Christ to receive his grace alone.

So let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would work in our hearts, that you would show us and expose to us what those subtle boasts are that keep us from you, and that you would cause us to repent of those things.

And that in our repentance we turn to you and to our dependence on you.

Father, we are slaves to the sin in our lives.

Lord, would you set us free?

That way we might experience the victory that comes from your grace, that it might be the result, the fruit of our salvation, and not something that we use to justify ourselves before you.

Father, teach us dependence, because we are utterly dependent on you, and teach us to trust in the beauty and the glory of your grace.

Would you change our hearts by this?

Father, lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.