Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] It was when I was 20 years old that I actually placed my faith in Jesus Christ and chose to follow him. And so I had lived a significant chunk of my life outside of a relationship with Jesus.
[00:00:16] And it's always interesting to me, people that I went to, that I grew up with in high school and college, that didn't really know where my life went, when I would run into them every once in a while. And you know how the conversation goes, you're kind of catching up a little bit. And then the question comes, so what do you do?
[00:00:33] And I would say, well, I'm a pastor.
[00:00:37] Blank look on their face. And now they would never say this, but here's what I believe that they were saying in their mind. Like, they're thinking about what they know of me and my life, and they're thinking about what they think a pastor should be like. And they're saying, how do those things add up?
[00:00:56] And when they respond that way, there's this little twinge of shame and guilt about my past.
[00:01:03] I ran into my sixth grade teacher one time, and I knew that she was very outspoken about her faith as I went through school. And so I ran into her later and I thought, oh, she's gonna be so excited to hear about what God has done in my life. And so when I visited with her, she's like, well, what are you doing? And I said, I'm in ministry.
[00:01:23] She just started shaking her head.
[00:01:25] She said, you are the last person I would have ever thought would go into ministry.
[00:01:32] I'm thinking like, like, like decades of teaching, maybe hundreds and thousands of kids, like, I'm dead. Last of all the people.
[00:01:43] We all have a past.
[00:01:47] The Apostle Paul.
[00:01:49] As we head into chapter two of Ephesians, he wants us to understand if we want to become who we are. That's the theme of this series. If we're going to become who we are as followers of Jesus, we need to understand who we were.
[00:02:10] We need to understand who we are, past tense, before we knew Jesus. And I want to remind you right now that Paul is writing this letter to Jesus followers, the church in Ephesus.
[00:02:25] And here's what Paul says. Ephesians 2, starting in verse 1, he says, as for you, you were. Whoop.
[00:02:34] You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live.
[00:02:41] Paul just starts out, and he just says it, you were dead. What is Paul saying when he was talking about this idea of being dead? Certainly they weren't physically dead.
[00:02:51] Well, Paul wants them to understand that outside of a relationship with God. We are spiritually dead. We are disconnected from, from the life of God. And we see this all the way back in the very beginning of the Bible when God says to Adam and Eve, don't eat from that tree or you will surely die.
[00:03:12] They ate from the tree.
[00:03:14] And did they die physically?
[00:03:17] No, they died spiritually. Their lives were separated from the life of God and the storyline of the Bible from there on out. Is God trying to reestablish a relationship with us, to bring us back to life Spiritually, all of us were once dead.
[00:03:38] And then Paul tries to explain when we are dead spiritually, there are influences that will just carry us along in this life. And he starts to explain those to the church in Ephesus. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins and in which you used to live when, when you followed the ways of this world.
[00:04:01] One of the things that influences us is this world, this external cultural influence. That's what the Paul, that's who, what Paul's talking about when he talks about the world. It's like a worldview or a world system that is actually opposed to the kingdom of God. There's a kingdom of this world and there's a kingdom of God and they are opposed to one another.
[00:04:24] And when we don't have the life of God in us, we are naturally carried along by the world, the way that the world thinks.
[00:04:34] And now, just to get specific, if I were to try to explain to you, how do you recognize the world?
[00:04:42] Here's how you recognize the world. The world is that kingdom or system where things that the Bible calls sin out of bounds in God's mind are actually acceptable and sometimes even celebrated.
[00:04:56] Whereas the things that the Bible would say are right and good oftentimes seem strange or wrong. When you see that kind of thinking, you realize that is the world at work. There is a worldview that is influencing. Let me just take one example. Just think about the biblical sexual ethic.
[00:05:18] Now, sex is a gift from God to be enjoyed. But God says that gift is to be enjoyed between one man and one woman in the context of a committed marriage relationship.
[00:05:33] Take that message into the world.
[00:05:37] People say, that's strange, that's weird.
[00:05:42] Sometimes they might even go further than that. Like that kind of thinking that is regressive, that is actually oppressive.
[00:05:51] Some people go as far as say, that's hate speech in our world.
[00:05:56] That's because there is a world system. There is a way of thinking, a worldview that just carries us along in our culture.
[00:06:05] It's the way that we're raised. It's. It's the way that we're educated. It influences us.
[00:06:11] You need to hear this, friends. Peer pressure.
[00:06:14] It's not just a teenage thing.
[00:06:16] All of us are influenced by the culture around us. It is the water we swim in. And if we don't realize it, it influences us without our notice.
[00:06:29] Just like a fish doesn't realize that it's in water. Sometimes we don't even realize that we are in the world and how the world influences us, and it just carries us along. But that's not the only influence. There's this external cultural influence. But Paul wants us to know that there is another influence.
[00:06:48] A supernatural oppositional influence, he says. And the ruler of the kingdom of the air, we followed the ways of this world. And the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
[00:07:05] At this point in world history, in God's economy, the devil, he will be defeated. But he is loose right now. He has influence in this world and in our lives.
[00:07:18] He is personal.
[00:07:19] He is a personal embodiment of evil.
[00:07:23] He is powerful.
[00:07:26] And what makes it so difficult, friends, is you can't see him.
[00:07:30] He has the power to influence you, but you don't even realize it sometimes. And he wants to speak to you. He wants to put thoughts in your mind. He wants to create doubts in your mind.
[00:07:42] He wants you to doubt whether God even exists.
[00:07:47] Is God really even out there? I look at everything that's going on in the world. Can there exist actually be a God?
[00:07:54] And he also wants us to question God's goodness. Like. Like if there is a God, why is he letting all this happen in the world? Maybe he exists, but he certainly can't be good or this world would be better than it is.
[00:08:09] The Evil One wants us to question God's motives.
[00:08:12] Anytime we talk about God and what he wants for us, sometimes the Evil one will say, he just wants something from you. You can't trust him. That's what he did with Adam and Eve. Did God really say he wants to create doubts in our mind?
[00:08:28] And if we're not aware of it, we just follow along the ways of the world. And the ruler of the kingdom of the air, an external cultural influence, a supernatural oppositional influence. But there's also an internal, personal influence that you have in your life.
[00:08:48] As we continue to read, all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires. And Thoughts.
[00:09:01] When Paul talks about this idea of the flesh, that Greek word sarks, it doesn't mean just our physical body. Paul is using this as a theological term.
[00:09:11] He wants us to understand.
[00:09:13] This is the idea of our broken human nature, what we were born into. This brokenness that we were born into.
[00:09:22] Sometimes even in the niv, it used to be translated this sinful nature. Just to help us understand. Paul is talking theologically here. He's not just talking about our physical body.
[00:09:32] And that nature that we have, that we are born with, it naturally turns itself in on ourselves.
[00:09:40] Meaning that we just simply. We want to be the center of the universe.
[00:09:46] God's kingdom is to come to this earth. He is to be the center of the earth, center of the universe. But we want ourselves to be at the middle of everything. We want to be autonomous.
[00:09:58] We want to be captain of our own boat.
[00:10:04] And that's evidence that we have a flesh.
[00:10:09] Do you realize that you were born that way? With that kind of a heart posture?
[00:10:16] You don't think you're born that way?
[00:10:19] Raise a kid.
[00:10:22] There is a reason it's called the terrible twos.
[00:10:27] Why?
[00:10:29] Because they're not emotionally intelligent enough to filter their behavior.
[00:10:34] But they are well aware that they want self to be at the center. That's why sometimes the very first things that kids could learn to say is mine, I want that. I want it to be mine.
[00:10:46] Or if they don't get their way, they lose their mind.
[00:10:52] We were born with a flesh.
[00:10:56] And apart from God intervening in our life, whatever desires we have, we just want to control them ourselves. We want to do it in our way. We want to gratify and follow those desires. We want to be independent from God.
[00:11:13] We don't want him to be the center of the universe.
[00:11:17] Then Paul goes on like the rest.
[00:11:21] Here's the result.
[00:11:23] We were by nature deserving of wrath.
[00:11:30] Deserving of wrath?
[00:11:35] You think that's true?
[00:11:37] Seems a little bit harsh maybe, huh? Whose wrath?
[00:11:44] Paul's talking about gods.
[00:11:49] And when Paul talks about God's wrath, he's not talking about uncontrolled outbursts of some kind of angry passion.
[00:11:55] But it is God's constant displeasure and his reaction against the sin. In this world.
[00:12:04] God is opposed to grieves his heart. It makes him angry.
[00:12:10] Why? Because sin separates the us from him. Something that he's love. Sin not only destroys us, it destroys people. And God hates that.
[00:12:23] So who's deserving of that?
[00:12:28] Paul makes it clear.
[00:12:34] All of us.
[00:12:37] All of us, we're following the ways of the World, the ruler of the kingdom of the air, and we're following our flesh. And as a result, we deserve God's wrath.
[00:12:48] I love that Paul right here, though, he moves it from second person and he makes it a first person plural. He includes himself, all of us, every one of us. If you think that you are outside of that, that you're somehow better, you're missing the point of what Paul wants us to under. He needs us to understand that we are in a grave condition. We are dead before God, and we are following the ways of the world. The ruler of the kingdom of the air, and we are following our flesh.
[00:13:17] Now, every one of your script scripts are different, but the story is the same.
[00:13:24] It's all of us.
[00:13:25] All of us need to be rescued.
[00:13:29] Why is it so hard for us to grab ahold of that man? I think, especially in our culture, in our world, there's this thought that permeates that really, at the end of the day, we're all basically good.
[00:13:46] There's good in me.
[00:13:48] I'm not deserving of God's wrath.
[00:13:51] Or.
[00:13:52] One of our favorite things to do is instead of comparing ourselves to God's righteousness, to his holiness, we just compare each other to each other.
[00:14:02] Because I may not be perfect, but I might be better than you.
[00:14:07] If I can figure out that there's at least one pool of people out there that I might be above, that makes me think I'm okay.
[00:14:16] They're the ones. They're the problem.
[00:14:19] They're the ones that Paul is talking about. Paul says, no, it is all of us.
[00:14:25] And it's hard to accept because if he's right, that means that every one of us is in desperate need to be rescued.
[00:14:36] We are in desperate need to be rescued.
[00:14:39] That gives up our autonomy. We can't rescue ourselves. God has to do something for us. He needs to raise us to new life.
[00:14:49] These first three verses, friends, in Ephesians, chapter two, Paul wants us to understand the depth and the breadth that sin affects our lives.
[00:15:03] But Paul wants us to also understand that even though we are in desperate need, that doesn't mean that we're worthless.
[00:15:13] The scripture makes it really clear. All of us as well, all of us, every human being that you know is made in the image of God. God's image is stamped on their soul. And because of that, there is inherent worth and value and dignity and even capability.
[00:15:34] Despite the fact that we are completely dead apart from the life of God, God finds something in us that is worth loving.
[00:15:46] And what does he do?
[00:15:48] He steps in he steps in with what I think are two of the greatest words in this section.
[00:15:58] But.
[00:16:01] And God.
[00:16:04] But God.
[00:16:06] But because of his great love for us. God, who is rich in mercy, made us. Us alive.
[00:16:14] Salvation, change, resurrection in this life. It is God's initiative.
[00:16:20] It is his intervention, it is his grace that allows that to happen.
[00:16:26] He made us alive.
[00:16:29] It's like he took the AED and He put it on us and boom, shocked us into life.
[00:16:37] Just so you know, I was saying that one time and I confused AED with iud.
[00:16:44] Turns out they're a very different thing.
[00:16:47] I had to be corrected.
[00:16:53] But God.
[00:16:58] God intervened when we desperately needed him too.
[00:17:04] Let me just read this whole section.
[00:17:07] But because of. And what I want you to do, I want you to just listen to how Paul describes the heart and the character of God. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich, rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead.
[00:17:29] Transgressions.
[00:17:31] It is by grace that you have been saved, that we're rescued.
[00:17:36] And God raised us up and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show his incomparable riches of his grace expressed in what? His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
[00:18:00] The enemy wants to create doubts about God. Paul certainly doesn't.
[00:18:04] He wants it to be clear. It is his mercy, his love, his grace, his kindness. All those words kind of overlap each other, but the idea is that God moves toward us with his passion and compassion.
[00:18:21] But I need to bring up an idea that we've already talked about.
[00:18:26] How do we think about God's wrath and God's love?
[00:18:32] Sometimes I listen to people. They want to separate those two things. Like somehow this God of wrath over here is very, very different from this God of love.
[00:18:44] And we don't think about. How do we pull those things together? They seem like they're pulling polar opposites. Friends, they are not.
[00:18:51] As difficult as it might be for you to conceive, God's wrath is actually an expression of his love toward everything that he made.
[00:19:03] Paul's not talking out of both sides of his mouth, saying that we are deserving of wrath and God's love and kindness and mercy and grace has been extended to us. How does that fit together?
[00:19:13] Why is that an expression of God's love? What kind of a God would he be if he looked at the sin and the brokenness and the injustice in this world and said, yeah, whatever.
[00:19:29] No, God cares about those things. They matter to him because that Sin and that brokenness, it is destroying what he loves, the people that he loves, the creation that he loves, and it's being destroyed. Those things have to come together. How did they come together? God's wrath and his love, they come together, friends, at the cross of Jesus.
[00:19:56] It is that place. That's why everything. We look to the cross to help understand everything in this world. God's wrath, his hatred towards sin meets his love and his compassion for who he has made. But instead, God pours out his wrath on who, not the ones who deserved it. He poured out his wrath on his Son so that those who did deserve it could have their sins taken care of, that they could have the righteousness of Christ.
[00:20:29] God's love and his wrath come together at the cross.
[00:20:35] And this is a major theme throughout the entire book of Ephesians, because here's what it says that God did.
[00:20:44] I'm gonna bracket it here for you.
[00:20:47] It says, and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him. God raised us up and seated us with Christ and seated us with. With him in the heavenly realms, in Christ Jesus.
[00:21:03] If you read, if you've been reading through the book of Ephesians, if you're doing your, you'll notice these phrases come up over and over again between 30 and 40 times throughout the book of Ephesians. This idea of being in Christ with Christ, with Christ Jesus, what is Paul trying to explain? He's trying to explain a theological idea, what theologians call our union with Christ when we come into a relationship with him.
[00:21:30] What Paul is saying that everything that is true of Jesus now becomes true of us because we are in Christ with Christ, with him, over and over. This idea of union with Christ, just let that sink in, friends, for just a minute.
[00:21:53] Everything, everything that's true of Jesus is now true of us because we are in him.
[00:22:06] Probably the most clear way, and I think powerful way that Paul explains this idea of union with Christ is in 2nd Corinthians 5:21.
[00:22:17] Sometimes theologians call this verse the Great Exchange.
[00:22:22] It says this God made him and that him right there is Jesus. God made him, who had no sin, not one sin whatsoever, to be sin for us or to become sin for us, so that meaning this is the result. So that in him.
[00:22:43] So that when we are in union with Christ, we might become the righteousness of God.
[00:22:52] Powerful friends.
[00:22:55] What did we bring to the table?
[00:22:58] Dead, broken, sin.
[00:23:02] And Jesus said, I'll take that.
[00:23:06] Jesus said, that's mine.
[00:23:09] What did we get?
[00:23:11] We got the righteousness of God, the righteous Life we should have lived.
[00:23:20] God says it's declared as if that is you.
[00:23:25] The broken life that we did live, that became Christ's life. The great exchange. God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. That's who you are, the righteousness of God. So as we're reading this book of Ephesians, which is God's vision for us as individuals and his church, we need to become who we are. We need to become the righteousness of God. Living out what God says is true of us. That is who we are and whose we are. We live that out, meaning that we go all in with him and we try to become like Jesus. We live the kind of life that Jesus lived because we are the righteousness of God, because we're in Christ, he made us alive.
[00:24:18] And because we have the righteousness of Christ, that also means we have all the privileges afforded to Christ.
[00:24:26] We have the honor afforded to Him. We have the security of our sonship that is afforded to him. And we also have the responsibility, the responsibility to live out the life of Christ in this world.
[00:24:44] The great exchange.
[00:24:47] That's what Paul wants us to understand. That is who we are and whose we are. And we've got to understand it and we've got to to believe it.
[00:24:56] So the question is, if this is true, that we were dead and Christ can make us alive in him, how do we do that?
[00:25:08] How do we make that great exchange? How does God do that in our life? What is it that we are invited to do? Paul continues to make it really, really clear for us.
[00:25:19] He says, for it is by grace.
[00:25:23] Again, it's by grace. This unmerited favor, this undeserved gift.
[00:25:29] It's not something that we could do for ourselves. God had to do. It's by his grace you have been saved, rescued, brought back to life. How do we do it? Through faith.
[00:25:43] That is the means to be able to become who we are in Christ. We do that by faith.
[00:25:52] So many times I think in our culture when we think about faith, we just think about it as kind of a mental ascent, like I just need to believe some things are true. That's not what the Bible talks about when it's talking about faith.
[00:26:06] It's talking about the fact that we put the weight of our life hands of Jesus. We put our trust in him over everything. We give our life to Him. It is about trust. It's not just about believing things. It is about active trust in Him.
[00:26:29] Faith is the means by which grace is received.
[00:26:34] And then Paul wants to make it really clear what our salvation is not.
[00:26:40] It is not from yourselves.
[00:26:44] What did you bring to the table?
[00:26:47] Nothing.
[00:26:48] You brought deadness to the table.
[00:26:52] You do not save yourself by yourself. He says it is the gift of God. That idea of grace and that idea of gift, they go together.
[00:27:03] A gift we just receive from him. It is a gift of God. And then he gives us a second knot. It is not by works, meaning that there's not this list of things that if you do these things, that makes you acceptable to God, that makes you alive to God. No, it is not by works. Why? So that no one can boast.
[00:27:29] Nobody can stand before God and say, look at my resume.
[00:27:32] Look at what I did. Aren't you proud of me? We didn't do anything.
[00:27:41] I want to say this.
[00:27:43] What I've just described is not complicated to understand, but it's really, really hard to live out.
[00:27:55] Here's why.
[00:27:58] Everything in our world, when we think about how it is that we approach God, how it is that we make ourselves acceptable to God in the world that we live in, when we follow the ways of the world, it is all about this word religion.
[00:28:16] That's what the world.
[00:28:18] That's what the world tells us.
[00:28:21] What is religion?
[00:28:23] Religion simply says that what God wants from me is he wants those works. What he really wants is me to do certain things. And if.
[00:28:34] If I accomplish, If I do the things that God is asking me to do, what I can do is I can become who God says that I am.
[00:28:47] I get an identity by the things that I do. What that means is that we earn it.
[00:28:55] This is how the world works. And it's not just how the world describes religion and God. It's how the world works and just about everything.
[00:29:03] I mean, if you. You can substitute the word God for boss.
[00:29:07] My boss says that if I do the right kind of work, then I am a valuable, worthwhile employee.
[00:29:14] It can be your coach. Your coach says if I do the right things, then I am valuable in who I am as an athlete.
[00:29:25] It can be your friends. It can be relationships. If you do the things that are required of you as a. Then you are worthwhile as a friend.
[00:29:34] The message of our culture in just everything is, I do, I accomplish, I succeed, and then I matter.
[00:29:46] That's what the world tells us in everything.
[00:29:51] And that's why, friends, it is so difficult for people sometimes to conceptualize and understand the grace of God. In the Gospel, Paul, as he unpacks this with Us. He wants us to understand that there's a very different way around this triangle that is very different from this world.
[00:30:11] And it's about this word, grace.
[00:30:16] A grace that we receive by means of our faith, putting our trust in him. And what Paul says is when we do that, we get an identity.
[00:30:30] That's what the first few messages in and around the series, just trying to figure out who we are and whose we are.
[00:30:37] That is our identity. We are loved, we are valued, we are chosen. Not because of anything we did, because God extended His grace toward us.
[00:30:49] So does that mean that works don't matter? Like, well, we don't have to do anything?
[00:30:53] No, no, no, that's not true.
[00:30:56] The Bible says this.
[00:30:59] In fact, Paul says it immediately after.
[00:31:01] He says, for we are God's handiwork, we are his workmanship, we're his masterpiece. For what? What does he want us to do? Created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
[00:31:18] God has works for us to do.
[00:31:23] But the difference is we do works out of an attitude of gratitude.
[00:31:34] So different, so different.
[00:31:37] It is not about earning. It is about responding to a grace that we've received with incredible gratitude and saying, my life belongs to you. I will do anything that you ask me to do. Could anybody be loved like this?
[00:31:53] You deserve all of me. I give all that I am to you. That's our faith response to him.
[00:32:01] You could never say that. The gospel is not about effort and following after Jesus. It is about effort. There is effort in following Jesus, but there is no earning anything before God.
[00:32:19] The gospel is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning.
[00:32:26] So here's the question.
[00:32:28] If so much of life goes around this side of the triangle and the gospel is completely opposed to that and goes around the other side of the triangle, how do you know?
[00:32:38] How do you know how you're living your life? How you're thinking about God and the gospel and what it is that he's done for you?
[00:32:48] Here's your assignment. I want you to get a little reflective about how you approach life.
[00:32:54] Because if we're trying to go around this side of the triangle, there's some things that we're going to see, especially if being religious and doing good works, if we're really crushing it, what you're going to see in your life is pride.
[00:33:12] I got this.
[00:33:14] Look at, look at me, look at my resume.
[00:33:18] There will be pride because we think we've accomplished something.
[00:33:24] We missed the gospel.
[00:33:26] We don't understand.
[00:33:28] We haven't really Taken to the deepest places of who we are, the reality of what the gospel teaches us.
[00:33:36] Let me just.
[00:33:37] Maybe this will blow your mind, but I hope it at least makes you think you can be incredibly religious and you can be incredibly outwardly moral and still be spiritually dead.
[00:33:58] That needs to rest on us. That thought needs to rest on us a little bit. That was one of the major things that Jesus brought when he was bringing his kingdom to this earth. He was always confronting who, The Pharisees, the people that had pride because they did the works, they had the resume. But he wanted them to understand you're missing completely the kingdom of God. In fact, he told them one of his most famous parables that we tell all the time, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. And so many times we think about that. The big part of the story is about the younger son that went off and lived this wild and crazy life. Maybe because we so identify with that that we've lived a little bit of a wild and crazy life. That wasn't the point of the story.
[00:34:40] Jesus told that parable to the people that were religious and confident in their own righteousness. Read it.
[00:34:48] He tells us that's why he tells the story. And, and what do you see in that story? The older brother, the righteous one who did all the right things. At the end of the story, he is still outside.
[00:35:00] He missed the heart of the Father. He's still outside.
[00:35:06] Jesus left it hanging there. We don't know if he ever came in. He missed the party with the younger son. And that's partly how you will know if your life is full of pride and self righteousness. You will look at people that are outside the younger brothers and you will have contempt, you will have judgment, you will have condemnation because you think, get it together, figure it out.
[00:35:33] Do what I did. Somehow you think, or we can think that we got it right.
[00:35:41] That's not the gospel.
[00:35:43] We can't earn it if we feel like we're crushing it.
[00:35:48] We have the potential to move toward pride if we're looking at our works and the things that we're doing. If we feel like we're failing, we're not doing a good job, we will land in a place of fear.
[00:36:03] We'll get fearful.
[00:36:05] Because if we're trying to go around the circle this way, we've got to earn our identity for God. How do we know if we've done enough?
[00:36:12] Like, I've done a few things, but have I done enough? And we get fearful. Like, where do I actually stand with God, we don't know and we're fearful if we don't understand the gospel. We don't know what it is that God has done for us.
[00:36:33] And I want you to get reflective in this way because I think this is one of those questions.
[00:36:39] You can just bring the reality of this to a head.
[00:36:45] The question is simply this. If you were to die today and you were to stand before God and he were to ask you, why should I let you into my kingdom, what would you say?
[00:37:04] What would be your answer?
[00:37:08] In doing evangelism on the college campus and throughout my life, I've probably asked that question hundreds, if not thousands of times to people.
[00:37:17] And the answers are almost always the same.
[00:37:20] Very few people answer this in a way that fits what Paul is talking about here. So many people, they'll immediately start to say, well, I, I did this, I did these things, or I didn't do these things.
[00:37:38] I know I'm not perfect, but I really, really tried.
[00:37:45] And that's probably true. I'm not saying that that's not true, but it's not the gospel.
[00:37:51] The only way that we can answer that question before God is I don't deserve to be in your kingdom.
[00:38:00] Honestly, I deserve your wrath, I deserve your punishment.
[00:38:10] But God, who is rich in mercy, it's the only answer. We throw ourselves unto the mercy and the grace of God.
[00:38:24] And we realize when we actually come to the place where we realize that we desperately needed that and God came to us in that our life will always be about a life of gratitude.
[00:38:39] We don't do what we do to try to earn anything. We do what we do because we are so grateful that God came to us place of need and lifted us up.
[00:38:52] That's the gospel that Paul so desperately wants us to know.
[00:39:00] Last question.
[00:39:03] Have you put your faith in Jesus?
[00:39:08] For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.
[00:39:13] What is your faith in? Have you put your trust in Him? Are you trusting in yourself in some way to meet God's standards?
[00:39:26] Here's my invitation. Put your trust in Him. Don't wait.
[00:39:30] The invitation of the scripture is so clear. Repent and be baptized. That idea of repentance, it goes together with faith. Repentance is to turn from from our sin and to turn toward him to put our life. We repent from sin and we put our faith in Him. We put our trust in him.
[00:39:48] Repent and be baptized.
[00:39:51] And baptizing ourselves.
[00:39:53] The reason that we're baptized is because it is a visual demonstration of this union with Christ.
[00:40:02] When we are Baptized. The picture. We have died with Christ. Christ, the death that I deserve to die. Christ died for me.
[00:40:13] When we are pulled out of the water, it's like we are resurrected with Christ to new life. His life is now my life. We're just telling ourselves, we're telling the world. We're telling all the demons and enemies in this world. I'm with him.
[00:40:30] My life is covered and united with him.
[00:40:34] Put your faith in him and go public with your faith.
[00:40:39] We're gonna be doing that in about three weeks. Don't wait.
[00:40:42] Sign up.
[00:40:44] Go public with your faith.
[00:40:46] There's so many times I hear people and they'll say, like, I just need to get some things figured out in my life. No, you don't.
[00:40:53] You need to put your faith in him and you need to identify with his death, burial and resurrection. Don't wait.
[00:41:01] Today.
[00:41:02] Today is the day of salvation.
[00:41:07] For it is by grace that you've been saved.
[00:41:12] It is not of yourselves.
[00:41:16] It is a gift of God.
[00:41:19] Not.
[00:41:20] Not as a result of works so that none of us combo.
[00:41:28] Thank you, Jesus.
[00:41:31] Let's pray.
[00:41:39] Jesus, thank you for your word.
[00:41:43] Thank you that you've showed us a way that is so different from the world.
[00:41:49] It is so counterintuitive how we live out any other area of our life.
[00:41:56] We always feel like we've got to earn something.
[00:42:00] But, Jesus, it's not true of you.
[00:42:04] You came to us.
[00:42:08] Thank you.
[00:42:10] Thank you.
[00:42:11] It's in your powerful name that we pray.
[00:42:15] And all God's people said amen.
