Guilt, Grace and Gratitude

Well, good morning. It's a privilege to be here and to open up the word of God with you. As We're gonna be looking at Ephesians chapter 2 and as we turn there, bring greetings from our church, Reformed Baptist Church Riverside, which used to be almost across the street from you before both of us moved off of Blaine in Iowa. but we're actually, I, as I was heading over here, I just was curious, 7 miles from you guys, so we're off the 60 and Valley Freeway now and a little bigger building just like you.

What a blessing to see churches that take God's word seriously. trust in a sovereign God who is at work in this world, who is alive and real, and, to have two churches in this city there seeking to point people to Christ. It's a privilege to be here. We consider you guys in many ways a sister church and just so thankful to be here and we're gonna be in Ephesians chapter 2 this morning.

As I turn there, I see a bookmark that I had saved from last time I was here in March, Alvin Davis's baseball card. And I share that, Alvin, because I was a little kid when I first met him. My dad was an agent for a while in the world and he introduced us cause he, my dad had represented someone with the Mariners and it just, and it was, there were two things that always struck me about Alvin as a kid from Riverside. wow, he's from Riverside.

And two, he's a Christian and that was a privilege. My dad was around Christian athletes growing up all the time and there's so many great men when I was a little kid. That I saw living their lives for Christ in a very public way and it was such an encouragement for me. So it's a a privilege to be able to preach even here with Alvin this morning.

I remember that we got re in touch, in touch with each other when our softball teams were playing. he was like first base as he was with the Mariners. I'm like, hey, you're Alvin Davis, aren't you? My dad's Gary Lambert and he's like, oh yeah, how you doing?

So anyways, Alvin, I'll ask you to sign this afterwards. I'm kidding. Anyways, we're gonna be looking at Ephesians chapter two and in many ways, this is a reformational text as we approach the 500th anniversary of the Reformation next month, 1517, October 31st, Martin Luther nailed the 95 thesesis to the chapel door of Wittenberg and from that point on, a great reformation began. and as you look at Luther's life and I've been doing that recently because last year we made a little film about Martin Luther with adult actors, kids doing the voices, and, we're doing a sequel now, about Katie Luther's life, that we'll show at our church.

We'll have it online and share it with you guys. But, looking at Luther's life, he was a man that was plagued by fear. he felt great guilt for his sin. And nothing he could ever do seemed to, to make him right with God.

He struggled greatly with that. In fact, he chose to become a monk hoping that this higher aesthetic living, this separation from the world would bring appeasement between him and God. And yet it was, it failed him. He writes, I tortured myself with prayer, fasting, vigils, and freezing.

The frost alone might have killed me. I constantly walked in a dream and lived in real idolatry, for I did not believe in Christ. I regarded him only as a severe and terrible judge, portrayed as seated on a rainbow. Oh, how tragic.

He didn't see Christ as the savior, he saw Christ as a judge and it, it drove him almost crazy. And he confesses that he didn't understand how God could set such a high standard that he could never attain to. And then one day, of course, many of us know this, as he's studying the scriptures in that monastery in Wittenberg, he reads Romans chapter 1, verse 17. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed, talking about the gospel.

From faith to faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. And a light bulb goes off. We know it's the Holy Spirit at work, but he says that at last meditating day and night by the mercy of God, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous it was a righteous gift of God, namely by faith. He lived by this gift, it was by faith.

Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and it entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open. In many ways, Ephesians chapter 2 reflects this reality that we'd read in Romans chapter 1. In fact, all Romans 1 through 5 is very much the same theme that Paul will, will be looking at right here today. we ourselves know this guilt.

If we're honest with ourselves, we know we're not good enough. We know there is no perfection in this lifetime. but Paul in this, scripture will move on and point out there's a beautiful thing called grace. And this grace is God moving towards us, not us moving towards him.

And in that way we respond by faith, out of gratitude. to serve Him, to love Him, to glorify Him. So listen for those three, I hope helpful terms of alliteration, guilt, grace, gratitude. That's what we'll be looking at.

But let's, let's read together. From Ephesians chapter 2, God's word, beginning in verse 1, 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 we 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 in kindness towards 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 work so that no man may boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Would you pray with me together? Father God, we come once again before you. So thankful we can call you our father. For in and of ourselves we were lost.

We were separated from you. Our sins were detestable before your very face and yet by grace, You move towards us. You gave us the gift of faith, to trust and to believe in you, rescuing us from our sins because of the complete work of Jesus Christ and Lord, we thank you for that reality. So today, would you come, oh Holy Spirit and minister to our souls, Open up these words, these words are alive and yet our souls at times can be so dead still.

They can be so callous due to the world and sin and temptations and hardships that we face. So this morning on this your day, our Lord, open up these scriptures to us. Use the, the feeble attempts of my flesh here, despite that, be glorified. Open these words, open our hearts that we might see Jesus.

We ask this in your great name Jesus. Amen. Well, it is a real privilege to be able to open up these scriptures cause these scriptures have changed my life. When we see, as Paul describes our guilt, when we are reminded that we once were dead in our trespasses, in our sins, as Paul says, sons of disobedience.

That's not a great TV show title. That is a horrible state to be in. We lived after our own passions of our flesh, whatever caught our fancy. We carried out those desires in both our body and our minds.

We were children of wrath. This is a horrific and yet very descriptive reality of what human beings are post fall, post Adam and Eve. Some of us might have appeared pretty good in our lost state, right? We were moralistic.

We maybe were raised in church, didn't embrace Christ, but we knew a good way to live. Maybe we were raised in a false religion that taught, to be extremely moral with a some a a a way of appeasing God and so we tried to be as good as we could. On the exterior, we were those whitewashed tombs that Jesus called the Pharisees out. We were Pharisees because we were In a parent's good, but at our heart, at our core, we had no desire to please God.

We had no desire to bring glory to His name. We wanted to bring glory to ourselves by people saying, you're a good boy, you're a good girl. And then there are those of us who on the other spectrum, we didn't care. We lived out every passion, every desire we had, thinking that would bring some fulfillment in life.

Wherever we were. Whatever we were doing before we met Christ, it was all for our own pleasure. It was all for ourselves. It was all of sin.

Our decisions, our choices were tainted by this, and our end goal was to bring glory to ourselves. As Romans 3:23 says, many of us that memorized, for all has sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We fell short of the glory of God. sometimes people ask, can you define what sin is and it's, it's helpful to say, well, there's 10 commandments that can show our failures in it, but Paul sums it up very simply, we failed.

We were not able to, we fell short of the glory of God. And so we see in verses 1 through 3 here in Ephesians chapter 2, this was our status quo. This was our everyday existence. In storytelling, this was the setup.

This was the, the, the moment where we get introduced to the character and we say, well this is their everyday life. But like in any good story, something interrupts that status quo. I've taught film and screenwriting and I always love that, looking at a film for that moment where life changes all of a sudden. We meet Woody in Toy Story and life is good.

He's the king of the, the playroom. All the toys listen to him and life is, his status quo is he's the leader and life is good. his boy. loves him and then what happens?

Something changes, a status quo changer, Buzz Lightyear shows up. And he shakes up this perfect little world that Woody was living in and Woody is fit to be tied. And I don't need to explain the rest of the wonderful film Toy Story to you, but there, it's a good moralistic tale. But in many ways what Paul is sharing with us is this great story.

It's the greatest story ever told. For those of us who are Christians. We However, are not like Woody, the hero of the story, we're actually the bad guy. We're the one who is sinning against God.

We're the one who's rebelling against God, and yet, In verses 4 through 5, we see. But because of God's great love for us, because of his rich mercy. He made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our transgressions. We were separated from God, we, we couldn't move towards God.

And Paul even explains this to us in Romans 3:11, none of us were seeking God. You see, for me that was a, a quintessential scripture. When we see that in and of us, we might have been religious, we might have been moralistic, but we really were not seeking God. We were children of wrath and deservedly so, but God, are those not two of the most beautiful words attached to each other?

But God over and over in the scriptures, you see this, the children of Israel rebelling against, against God, not caring about God, but God. And Paul says, but God, Moved towards us. Because of our sin. Life can seem so hopeless, so dreary, so unbearable, but God.

And what did God do? He made a way. He, he, he had a plan. And he made us alive in Christ, while we were dead in our sins.

He saved us from our sins through Jesus. He made us alive in Jesus. And sometimes we might ask why? Why did he do this?

it wasn't like we were these cute little kids centers, like you see a kid like, no, it's mine and oh that's cute. We were rebels In fact, we were rebels to the point that we were standing at the gates of heaven, if you will, not begging that God would let us in. But actually cursing him. Spitting upon him, reviling him and saying, get off the throne.

We deserve to be on the throne. We want the kingdom, but we don't want God in it. To quote a great U2 song sung by Johnny Cash. Why did God do this?

We were the detestable rebels. And there's really only two simple answers. One, because it pleased God. But Paul explains to us, it was because of his great love.

It was because of his rich mercy towards us. As you guys were just singing. This is amazing love. Not only has he forgiven us of our sins in Christ Jesus, But he actually loves us.

Detestable rebel sinners that we are. I think sometimes for kids, especially those of us who grew up on Star Wars, rebels are held up fairly high. We think rebels are good people and in some ways a rebellion against an evil empire is not a bad thing. But we were rebels against the most glorious God, the most beautiful creator.

And yet Paul reminds us even in the chapter 4, in love, he predestined us for adoption and sonship. And so we ask why? Well, in verse 6 of chapter 1, as I just said, It was in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of His glorious grace. We'll never fully understand.

I think all of eternity we're continue to continue to go. I get to know you. I get to be with you, I get to, to live in this redeemed world and this eternal existence. I, I'm still amazed by this.

We're still gonna sing, this is amazing love. It's, it is astonishing. We're never going to fully understand it, but God's word says it pleased him to do so. And we know That this guilt that we had transformed by grace, it moves us to gratitude, doesn't it?

It moves us to worship God the way that we should. And we praise Him for His glorious grace. Take a look at verse 4. 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.

Knowing our sin, knowing our rebellion. I do believe our common enemy often wants to rob us of this reality, to rob us of the joy of knowing that our Heavenly Father in Christ loves us. Yes, we need to hate our sin. Truly, let's not be deceived.

Read Romans chapter 7 again. We all struggle with being the wretched man that knows what we should do, but we don't do it. But aren't you so grateful for Romans 8:1? Those who are in Christ, there is no longer condemnation.

That's what I'm talking about when we talk about guilt. We don't have to live in damnitable guilt that perhaps God is not happy with us anymore and there is no hope of heaven. That's the state that Martin Luther was living in constantly before he came to an understanding it is by faith. You see, we have been adopted as God's children through Jesus Christ.

God loves his love for us. I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. God's love for his son. spills over now onto us.

That's the beautiful thing about grace. And now he calls us his sons and daughters. He invites us to not just call us Father. But the word Abba, daddy, it's a closeness.

Our Heavenly Father's love for us because of Christ, it is covenantal now. It is fixed, or as Sally Lloyd Jones writes in the Jesus storybook Bible, it is never stopping, it is never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love. And our simple faith needs to be rooted in this love. Our faith needs to be rooted in the objective reality of what Christ has done for us.

In fact, Paul reminds us later in chapter 3 of Ephesians, if you look at verse 17 there and chapter 3, he says that he, he actually is praying for the Ephesians, but in turn for us, that we will be strengthened in our faith and rooted, grounded in love. Verse 17 chapter 3 says, I pray that you be rooted and established in love and may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Of course, this brings us back to Ephesians 2:5. It is by grace that we have this love.

It is by grace that we are saved. So you see, if the first part of Ephesians 2 is focused on the guilt, what we were as sinners before God moved towards us, Paul quickly reminds us in verse 5 that It is by grace we're saved. We have hope in Christ's resurrection, now and in eternity. Because of God's saving grace, we are guaranteed a bodily resurrection and eternal home with God.

And verse 8 reminds us. Of this That we are monuments now. We are his workmanship. Of surpassing riches of God's grace expressed in kindness, of which we are and forever will be the recipients.

Isn't that amazing? Now and forever, God is pouring out his kindness towards us. Because of grace through Jesus Christ. I marvel at that.

I really do. And of course, now we come to one of those key scriptures that many of us memorize when we first became Christians. If you grew up in a Christian home, we memorized it young. Next to John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8 stands out because we were once guilty, seeking our own pleasure in God because God and His kindness saved us from our sins in Christ Jesus.

We're reminded that it is by grace we have been saved. How? By being good enough? By being really kind, by keeping the 10 Commandments.

No. The key, the key two words in all of the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. By faith Abraham. was reckoned righteous because he was a good guy.

Because he really obeyed God. Because he never messed up. That's my sister. no, by faith.

Hebrews 11, the, the, the, the, the hall of faith if you will, over and over and over, by faith, by faith, by faith. We are saved. And this is a gift of God by faith alone. Grace alone, Christ alone, those are the echoes of the Reformation, and those were not new teachings.

You go back and look, people taught that. There was an institution that tried to squash it at times, that tried to say, oh no, it's faith and good works. They took James chapter 2 out of context. But Paul here is very clearly saying, we are saved by faith alone.

It is not by any work that we have done. We were stained by sin. Our works were filthy rags. The way that we receive this free gift from God.

is by faith alone. God awakened us from our dead state. We saw our sin really for what it was for the first time before a holy God. And then we saw there was a way.

Jesus himself, the way, the truth and the life. And we had hope. The first time in our lives, we embraced Christ as our savior. Some of us, I was a young, I was a boy.

But I felt as a young boy, the weight of my sin. I had disobeyed my parents and something fairly tragic had happened. A closet door fell and broke a lamp. Everyone's like, oh, what happened?

There was no car accident or shark attack or anything like that. It was but I, my parents didn't spank me and they, they just had me sit in my bed and think about how, disobeying them was, the consequences of my sin. And then God broke through and for the first time ever, I connected the reality that when I disobeyed my parents, I disobeyed God. And if I disobeyed God, that means I'm a sinner.

And if I'm a sinner, There's such thing as judgment. I'm, I was not a prolific, theologian at 5. But I knew I needed Jesus. And I came to Christ and I was baptized at that age and I'm so thankful for His grace.

Paul told the Colossians that we were rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin. And so we received this salvation by faith alone. Yet even this faith was a gift from God, a sign of God's grace towards us. As Paul says, we can't boast in it.

We have nothing to boast about. If there's anything we could boast about, we could boast about how much of a sinner we were. That's all we give God. That's all we contribute to this scenario, if you will.

BB Warfield, the late great Princeton theologian explains, it is not faith that saves, however, sometimes we get that confused, but faith in Jesus Christ. It is not strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or in the nature of faith. But in the object of faith.

No, we're always semper reformato. We're always reforming, we're always coming to an understanding and that's something in my adulthood that I began to understand more. have you ever had somebody pat you on the back like, oh, you've got strong faith. Boy, I really admire your faith.

And, and I don't want to be patronizing and I don't know what they're trying to say, but I want to say I, I, I really don't. My faith is limited, my faith is weak, it falters at times. If we're up to the strength of whatever I could conjure up, I would not be saved. But it's not the act or the nature of faith, but is rather the object of faith.

Who are we trusting in? Ourselves? Or in Jesus Christ. As Tim Keller writes, it is not the strength of our faith, but rather the object of our faith that saves us.

And so we are justified, we are made right with God, we are saved from our sins and from hell through Christ's perfect atonement. We don't add anything to it. I like how James Montgomery Boyce explains it in his book, Whatever Happened to the Gospel. Justification is a declaration of God based on the work of Christ.

It flows from God's grace and it comes to the individual, not by anything he or she might do, but by faith alone. We may state the full doctrine as this. Justification is the act of God by which he declares sinners to be righteous because of Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. And I'm sorry if that maybe that sounds a little repetitive.

I think he's already said that 2 or 3 times. This is the gospel. This is the good news and it wasn't just when we were saved, we need this every single day. Of course I'm preaching this at the church where the pastor wrote a great book called The Gospel Prayer.

And he talks about preaching the gospel to yourselves, but I have to remind myself of that all the time. And this is what Martin Luther, this is what the reformers were trying to convey. They didn't do it perfectly. My wife and I just watched a, actually really great documentary on PBS this last week about Martin Luther, and it was very helpful.

He was a man of his day. He was a sinner saved by grace. He wasn't perfect. He belched and drank beer and cussed.

But he was coming out of quite an institution. He was at a very strange era in humanity. He's trying to come back to what does the Bible teach versus man's tradition. And I'm not saying that to justify him.

But the Roman Catholic Church had blended justification and sanctification. They've moved beyond the Bible. They were teaching that salvation wasn't monargistic, it was synergistic. It was God and man working in concert with each other.

You could buy your indulgence and get, a little time out of purgatory. There was a lot of heresy being preached at this time. And that's a very difficult place to live. It can create a constant state of soul searching, of, of evaluation, of torturedness.

Because we know that we are sinners, we know that we make mistakes, and if God's not pleased with me, How can I be saved? But as we are reading here this morning very clearly, salvation is a gift from God. We're justified, not based on our good works, but on the very good work of Jesus. Amen.

And this is something you can read throughout the New Testament. This is not proof texting. Go and read 2 Timothy chapter 1, go and read Titus chapter 3. Go and read Romans.

No one can be justified by keeping the law. As Paul told the Romans in chapter 3 once again, we are justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Ain't that beautiful? God the Father is pleased with God the Son, His perfect atonement.

And so when we are in Christ, he is pleased with us. My pastor said sometime in the last year we're going through the Gospel of Luke. We have to remind ourselves, it's not just like, OK. I've declared our Jesus is righteous and so I'm letting you slip by.

He declares us righteous. it's not just as if we were or because I'm overlooking it. We have Christ's righteousness. That's the, the the beautiful thing about justification.

It's not just that it's sin wiped clean and we're at a zero status in our bank account is sin. We're all of a sudden now injected or are flushed full of the greatest treasure a man or a woman could ever have. You look at your bank account and all of a sudden it is infinite. like what is going on here?

Righteous, righteous, righteous, righteous, righteous. I could never earn that. Oh good, I helped the lady across the street or oh good, I prayed this morning or oh good, I did this there. I've added one token of righteousness into my account.

No. Where? Declared righteous. We have Christ's righteousness.

It is imputed, not infused. We are given this. So God the Father is pleased with us. He loves us because of his grace towards us and so because of grace, we no longer have to live with damning guilt.

We are no longer condemned and now we move into a state of living that comes out of gratitude. We're no longer motivated out of guilt. But we are inspired by grace and that gratitude overflows and this is why the gospel isn't just for when we are saved, it is for us every single day. Paul explains this in verse 10.

Let's read that again. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in him. I love when I'm talking to various groups of religions out there that We teach James to, faith without works is dead as if you have to have good works to be saved. I love the flow of verses 89 and 10.

We're saved by grace, by faith because of what Jesus did. And in this, God does the work. He, as one translation says, we are his masterpiece. We are his workmanship, as, as Paul told the Corinthian church, we are a new creation.

The first of what will come one day, a glimpse of how Jesus promises in revelation that he behold, he will come and make all things new. The Christian today is that sneak peek where the trailer, if you will, of the great film that is coming, of what recreation will look like. We are that masterpiece. We are that workmanship.

We are that new creation. And how does that manifest itself? What does that look like? He has prepared for us good things to do.

Good things that point to our Father, that point to his glory, that bring honor and glory to His name, so that the world goes. What is up with these Christians? These people are weird. Why, why are they going to streets flooded in Houston?

They're leaving the comfort of their homes and they're taking every boat they have and every means they have, they're taking food and water and, these Christian organizations from Samaritan's Purse to the, the, the Baptist relief Group, the Assemblies of God, all these people, all these Christians are like, I'm there. I want to help. That's just a small recent example that I can think of. There's so much that can be done in the name of Christ.

So much that we are free to. Now that we're no longer fixed on like, how can I be right with God? How can I be saved? We're now living in this objective state of I am saved, I am justified, I am free.

It doesn't matter about my life anymore. I'm free to serve God, I'm free to love God. I'm free to glorify God. And that's the difference.

Those good works aren't earning merit. They are bringing glory to God's name. We are his ambassadors now. We are his, I hesitate to use this in a modern sense, but we're his foot soldiers or better yet, we are his cleanup crew.

We are the, the team that has now arrived on the beachhead and we're planted flags in the name of Christ. They're saying his kingdom is coming and his kingdom is here. We're in the already but the not yet. Get ready, judgment will come, but you can escape it.

And God is so worth it. He is so worthy of our affection and our praise and our worship. Oh, I hope you'll see this, I hope you'll come to this. You see the difference?

If we're motivated by guilt like Martin Luther, we'd be locking ourselves up in a monastery or a convent right now trying to do something or we'd be, riding around on bikes, knocking on everybody's door, not because we really care much about the people but because we're storing up tokens now in our account. But when we are motivated through grace out of gratitude with what God does, it changes everything. We have been created in Jesus to do good works, to bring glory to God. We are free to serve God and our neighbors, not out of guilt, but because of our gratitude for God's grace towards us.

Jesus summed this up when someone asked him. can you explain to us what we should do? what's the, can you, can you help us understand how the law fits into all this? And he explained that's, it's not that you can be saved by the law.

But he summarized it and said, Let me summarize this for you. Love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Here's what Martin Luther wrote in his little treatise called Christian Freedom in 1520. Here is the truly Christian life.

Here is faith really working by love. When a man applies himself with joy and love to the works of that freest servitude in which he serves others voluntarily and for not, not to gain a thing. Himself abundantly satisfied in the fullness and riches of his own faith. Oh, that is beautiful.

And even as I read it, I feel convicted. Because I don't always voluntarily serve God. I don't always do it out of knot. I do it sometimes to get a pat on my back.

I do it sometimes because I feel bad. I do it sometimes because I feel like oh I gotta do this. But when we are fully abundantly satisfied in the fullness and riches. Of what God has done for us.

When we see that he has done above and beyond what we can possibly imagine, that's what he'll tell the Ephesians later. Then we're not worried anymore about ourselves, about our future. We are free to love, we are free to serve our neighbor here and now. We're not wrapped up with trying to make a name for ourselves.

We're not wrapped up trying to find out what our identity is. We're not wrapped up trying to figure out what our purpose in life is. We know our purpose. What is man's chief end?

Amen. To glorify God and enjoy him forever. That is a beautiful reformational statement. We're made to bring God glory and not out of duty, not out of, there is a, there is an obligation truly, but not a oh no, it's out of to enjoy him.

I try to impress that on my kids, church, Christianity, the Bible. Any of us until God moves in our hearts and wakens us to these truths. It just seems like, OK, here we go. I'm not saying that about all my kids, but I want them to understand you were made to enjoy God.

All the Legos in the world, all the Star Wars movies in the world will be just gone in a second. You'll find a little pleasure in them and then you'll want a new set. You'll find a little pleasure in watching Star Wars a couple of times and you'll want a new movie. But if we can be fully satisfied that we were made to to to glorify God and to enjoy God, that is our purpose now.

We are set free from the trappings of this world to be radical agents of change. This is how men and women moved to islands in the Pacific where cannibals lived. Didn't matter anymore They were radically changed by grace. And they have such a desire that others would experience that too, that others would come and worship God in the way that God had revealed Himself to them.

Gratitude for what Christ has done in your life flows from a life transformed by grace. It will truly set you free to live for Christ and to truly believe that dying is gain. And this was God's plan all along. In fact, look back in chapter 1, verses 4 and 5.

Paul writes, God chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love He predestined us for adoption as his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure. Guilt, grace and gratitude. So wrap up here, I, I just hope to encourage you, even as I have been encouraged to look at these scriptures.

We did once stand before God guilty. We violated one point of the law. We violated all of the law. If we look at all of those 10 commandments.

We all broke them in one way or the other. the Pharisee didn't believe it. Well, I've never committed adultery. I've been faithful to my wife.

Well, have you ever looked on a woman and thought, boy, she's hot. You, you can commit adultery in your heart. In fact, Jesus was far more focused on the heart because the, the outward workings are just a manifestation of the heart. But thanks to his grace.

We can be grateful that he has come near to us. As Paul says in verse 13 of chapter 2. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Jesus died a very real death.

The god man suffered. He was innocent. He had no sin, no guile. He laid his life down for us.

We were the guilty ones. As Paul told Titus, Jesus gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good deeds. Once again, another reminder, may we, dear Christian today, be zealous for his kingdom, for his glory. May we live as free sons and daughters of the highest God.

And yes, when we mess up, when we sin. Maybe not shackle ourselves a sin. May we remember we can repent now. We don't have to make it up because we already have forgiveness.

But as John writes in First John, if we confess our sin before our Father. He is faithful and just to forgive us. May we remember that the life as Martin Luther writes, the very first treatise on the 95 thesis is the life, the Christian life is a life of repentance, living humbly before our God, confessing our weakness, confessing our sin when we sin, and constantly returning to this good news of Jesus Christ. And God, who's faithful.

He's faithful to forgive us. You need to remember guilt is gone, grace is here. We are free in Christ Jesus. Let's be grateful as we love him by loving others for his glory.

Let's be grateful as we serve Him by serving others for His glory. And just a, a last note, there could very well be someone here visiting today, a family member, a young person. He doesn't know Jesus. You don't understand this.

Maybe you understand Martin Luther to a certain extreme. You're like, man, yeah, every day, every Sunday I go home from church and I'm just like oh. Either hate the message or hate God because God's too good and I can't be good enough. There's a simple answer, a simple, simple answer.

And Jesus said it. Today is the day of salvation. Repent. Turn to Jesus, turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Look full in his wonderful face, and the things of this world, they'll begin to grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Oh, confess your sin. Experience forgiveness in Christ. Be set free today.

Talk to one of your elders, one of your pastors, one of your parents. Talk to a Christian here. We can't make you a Christian. So I'll leave you with this challenge.

Cry out to Jesus, oh God, change my heart. Oh God, would you help me believe? Would you help me see my sin? Help me see that Jesus is the savior.

Help me experience this grace that this Bible is talking about. I don't understand it. But I know you can change my heart, oh God. Let's pray.

Father God, we come before you, so thankful for your mercy, so thankful for your grace, so thankful that you gave many of us in this room, faith to believe. And Lord, that faith isn't something conjured up by ourselves, Lord, it is based solely in the objective reality of who Jesus is and what he did. He came and lived the perfect life we couldn't live. He kept the law perfectly.

And he also died a death that should have been our punishment. He took and absorbed your wrath on that one day on the cross, what would have taken us all of eternity. To experience. And through his death and resurrection, he has conquered both death and sin.

There's great hope for the one who puts his faith in Jesus. The sinner on the cross experienced it in just a moment before he died. And Lord, I pray that even today there may be some in this room who experience it right now, that they would know that they are a sinner before a holy God, that they deserve your punishment. But there's a way of escape, and that there is a life that can be remade by you to live in a way that brings glory to your name, and that we can enjoy you, Lord God.

Do a good work, Lord, in the souls of those here who don't know you. Lord, do a good work in the souls of us who know you. Whether we've walked with you for 1 year or for 30 years, Lord God, we need the good news of Jesus Christ today. May it encourage us, may it restore us, and Lord, may you use us for your glory.

Lord, use cornerstone to be a light in this world for your glory's sake sake, Lord, and use the individuals here as they scatter out into the community just like our church will as well. Lord, to to proclaim this good news to our neighbors, our co-workers, our families, Lord, to those who are lost, that we might point them to Christ, for he is worthy of our praise. Lord, we also pray as we, take up a collection here to continue, your good work, Lord, through this local body. Lord, bless those who are giving.

May they give not out of guilt but out of gratitude, Lord, for the good things you have done. may they give to be the hands and feet of Jesus, Lord, to see your name proclaimed and glorified to this local body. Lord, we also pray for Pastor Milton and his family as well as they have experienced the loss of a loved one. We're so encouraged that, his father-in-law knew you and loved you and that Lord, even now he's experiencing bliss untold in your presence.

And yet, Lord, the consequence of sin is for those left behind. Those who have to deal with missing a loved one, have to deal with the grief of an unnatural separation. We were meant to live, Lord, and yet the curse of sin has brought death. Oh, thank you.

That the sting of death for those in Christ is not eternal. We praise you for that good news. Bless the Milton family, Lord. Use them for your glory's sake, even in this time of grief.

We ask all to see your name, Jesus. Amen.