Grace

Saved by Grace

Want to just begin this morning by thanking all of you. I think it is all of you who have given gifts to us since we’ve arrived, made our welcome so very welcome. We went to our Airbnb and filled it up with things. There was a tree there. It was wonderful to be able to arrive and have so many things. We opened with refrigerator, the freezer. It was like stacked full of food, pre-made food for us to eat. We ate something called tater tot hot dish; tasted exactly like tater tot casserole. It was good. Thank you. Thank you for doing that.  Church. I am excited that you have called me to be the lead pastor here at Calvary. Of all the responsibilities that come with such an important role, I believe the preaching of God’s Word is one of the most important things that we do. It gives fuel for fulfilling the call to make disciples. It serves as a platform for the strategic casting of vision of our church. It builds unity among our people. It’s one of the tools we use to reach out to our community in bringing conviction and repentance and building a community centered on the gospel. But it only does these things when we’re faithful to preaching the gospel, and all that the Word of God says. Not shying away from those things that are hard to hear or that are unpopular in our culture. And we need to hear the hard, true word of the Lord, because we need that to soften our hearts and minds and conform us so that we become more like Jesus every week. And so with this in mind, as we begin this relationship of preaching that we’re going to have each and every week, I would like to turn to the Lord for help and for guidance. So would you pray with me Calvary, as we begin?

Lord, we pray that as a church that we would not ever stray from the clear teaching and understanding and application of your word given to us by the prophets and apostles. Written by your spirit through the through the inspiration of men who wrote down your words so that we would have the ability to know what it is you want to communicate to us. I pray that our time each and every week in Scripture would be a time of asking the question, God, what would you have us to hear? How are we not like Jesus enough yet? Show us, Father, how we could be more like Christ in the way we live our lives and the way we glorify you and the way we treat one another. So I pray, Lord, for our preaching here at Calvary Lord, that you would be glorified in all of it, as we are faithful to what you have said. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Well, this morning we begin a series that I thought might be fun for a couple of different reasons. It’s called My Favorite Things. John Chaco said that the music for this series should be obvious. And I want to tell you, at no point, don’t get your hopes up. At no point will I sing Julie Andrews for you. That will not happen. That would ruin Christmas. That would be horrible. That would be your least favorite thing. However, I was inspired by that idea of favorite things to share with you some things about me and my family so that you can get to know us a little bit. And also, I want to share with you some of the doctrines of Scripture that are near and dear to my heart, that are near the heart of the Lord. They are vital to the Gospel and to our mission of sharing the gospel today. And these are things that have had a profound impact on me as a follower of Jesus, that have shaped who I am. And so each week in this series, I’ll briefly share two of my favorite things in this world and one of my favorite doctrines from Scripture that comes from our passage for the week. There may or may not be a correlation between those things. I will leave that up to you to decide.

This morning, I’ll start with the two most precious things to me in this entire world: my wife and my kids. Rachel and I have been married 21 years. We had our anniversary just this past December 16th because this month needed more packed into it. So, 21 years now, we were married right out of college. We were both students at Cornerstone University, which is in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Allow me to use my handy map. It’s right here if you’re wondering where Grand Rapids is. And so we have a wonderful relationship. She has worked in early childhood education, both as a teacher and as an administrator. And she just left a first grade teacher’s aide position to come and be here in Rochester. And she is very excited to be here at Calvary. She loves the Lord and is incredibly supportive of the church and supportive of ministry. She is my teammate. My second favorite thing is my two kids, and I know that’s actually technically two things, but I feel like if I had chosen just one of them, there would be fights. Sammy is 12. You can call him Sam. I cannot. Those are the rules, for some reason. He is an excellent student. He’s a really happy guy. He is a kind and considerate young man. He loves both playing and watching baseball. It is his passion. He really, really enjoys that. Ali is my sweet little 10-year old girl. Ali is short for Aletheia, which is the Greek New Testament word for truth. By the way, it is spelled Ally, not Ali, which has been spelled a few times since we’ve been here at Calvary. She is not Muhammad Ali. She’s Ally, A-l-l-y. She is incredibly intuitive, very observant, very insightful. She might want to be a doctor someday, and I told her, dear, we’re moving to the Mecca of that place. So that sort of thing. And she also loves dogs and soccer in that order. Both my kiddos are originally from Ethiopia, which is obvious. If you check out a family photo of us, (that’s not like a recessive gene or something), they are adopted from Ethiopia, which is an important part of our story as a family. We are an adoption family. We love and celebrate adoption in our home, which is another one of my favorite things which we will get to in just a few weeks.

This morning the place that I want to take us in Scripture is to a doctrine that is right at the heart of Christianity. It’s the truth that sets Christ and His Gospel apart from every other worldview and every other philosophy that you will ever hear in this world. It’s the doctrine that explains the cross. If you don’t understand the cross, you need this doctrine. The cross sits right at the fulcrum of human history. Everything that came before the cross led up to it, everything that happened after the cross, including what’s going on right now, has flowed from it. And so this doctrine sits right at the center of Christianity. And it’s this doctrine, this truth, this message of scripture that God, the Father, by His spirit, through his son, uses to transform people. And it’s the doctrine that you and I have new life and hope and peace and everything that we’re celebrating here at Christmas. And of course, the doctrine I’m talking about is the doctrine of grace. A lot of you opened your presents yesterday, and you kind of saw it coming. You knew what was in there. And it’s either because you explicitly said, this is what I want for Christmas, or you dropped enough hints that there’s no way your spouse didn’t know that’s what you wanted for Christmas.

Grace, on the other hand, is a gift of God that nobody saw coming. Nobody saw it. We didn’t ask for it. We don’t deserve it. It’s so unimaginably expensive that we couldn’t possibly buy it ourselves. In a sense, every sermon that is a sermon should be an unpacking and examining and applying of the various truths that are part of God’s grace. But this morning, I want to take you to a passage of Scripture that summarizes God’s grace, focusing on just how unbelievable it is. When it comes to our relationship with God, grace is our favorite thing. It is my favorite thing. And I hope after this morning it is your favorite thing. Please open your Bible to Ephesians 2:4 I will have it on the screen as well. We won’t be able to fully plumb the depths of this little section this morning, but I love the way it’s so clearly explains the most important truth that you will ever hear. We’re going to look at first at the blessings of grace, these present blessings. What does it mean for us to be blessed by grace? Then we’re going to look at the purpose of grace. And then finally we’re going to we’re going to look at the undeserved nature of grace, which is, by the way, the hardest part for people to accept. So let’s start with what grace is and what it does. Beginning in 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 – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now the first thing to see is that God’s grace solves a problem.

We didn’t look at it, but the first three verses in this chapter, Ephesians 2:1-3 describe our problem of sin in really dire terms. It says, Dead in our trespasses and sins. See, our rebellion against God has spiritually killed us. For the one who doesn’t have God’s forgiveness of sin, there is no spiritual life. Paul uses phrases like ‘sons of disobedience’ and ‘children of wrath’. These are names that have contours that we could discuss. But I’m going to summarize it now by saying that without God’s intervention into our situation in some way, we would still be enemies standing under the judgment and righteous anger of God. Were it not for grace, that’s where we would be. That’s our predicament. And that’s the problem that grace solves. See, what grace does is it pays the penalty of our sin. It satisfies the judgment of our sin, and it appeases the wrath of God against our sin. Wrath is righteous anger, the wrath of righteous anger of God against our sin. And it does this so completely that a person who has God’s grace can say, I will never stand in judgment before God for my sins, and God is no longer my enemy. He’s my father. He’s my Father. How is that possible? Well, let’s unpack this, let’s unpack Grace, First, it’s possible because of God’s mercy and love. These are character qualities inherent in God’s nature that motivate him to give us this grace. Do you see how Paul phrases it there in v. 4? Look at v. 4.   But God being rich in mercy. In his very being, in his character, the Lord is a merciful God. If you ask, what is God like? You can start with He is a merciful God. And He’s not just kind of merciful. You know, lots of people are kind of merciful. He is rich in mercy. He’s filled with mercy. He’s not like a wicked ruler that only sometimes decides to show mercy. He’s not like me. I’m merciful when the mood strikes me, when I’m not too upset, that’s when I choose to be merciful, right? When I happen to have a tender heart about something, that’s when I choose to be merciful. But God is not occasionally merciful. He’s rich in mercy. The word actually means rich or wealthy. God is loaded with mercy. He’s got tons of it. His inclination toward us in our sinful state, then, is to be merciful, because he understands our predicament even better than we do. He gets it even when we don’t get it. You can see that in v.5. If you look at v. 5; see where it says even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God who is by nature rich and mercy and who is motivated by great love toward us. Because of that, mercy gives us His grace, and he does it even while we’re still rebelling against Him, even while we’re still violating His laws. So even while we were hating and rejecting and defying God, God’s love compelled Him to act in mercy toward us. Now, a person who’s defying God doesn’t actually think to themselves, I am in defiance of God. That’s not how that person reasons. A person who has a casual view of sin, or by the way, who believes there’s no such thing as sin, that person doesn’t see the danger. They’re in rebellion against God, but they don’t see the danger. They can’t see that they’re actually spiritually dead and separated from God.

I had a toothache that started last week, and it got worse as we started to move closer to Rochester. So it began while we were packing, and it got worse and worse, and it really started bothering me just as we were pulling into Rochester. And so I texted Kyle Slatterblom on Tuesday. I said, Dude, who’s your dentist? I need your dentist. And so this is not a joke. The first place I went, the first visit I made to any place in Rochester was to the dentist. Before going to a gas station, I went to the dentist and I got there and the dentist asked me to describe the problem, and I put it in small terms.

I have a I have a small problem. I have a little trouble with my tooth. That’s how I put it. I hadn’t been to the dentist in a while, so I thought I could play it down right. And I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t flossed in a decade. So I started flossing like two days before. You know what I’m talking about? Gums are all bleeding and stuff. Like, No, I take good care of my teeth. Right?  So I get in there and I’m playing it down, small, little, it’ll be okay, but I get a little bothering me a little bit, a little something going on back there. They took an X-ray and I heard the dentist say to the technician, not to me, but to the technician, that I have a cavity so big quote, it stretched the ability of what a filling can do. That is not what you want to hear from your dentist, by the way, I just wanted my tooth to stop hurting. I didn’t want to usher in a brave new era of dentistry. That dentist could see what I could not see. I thought I had a little problem, I thought I had a small problem. From his point of view, from the point of view of truth, he could see the seriousness of what was actually going on. Friends, from God’s perspective, He can see that our little sin problem is actually spiritual death. And being that he is rich in mercy, and because he loves sinners with great love, even while we are spiritually dead in our sins, He makes us alive. V. 5: He made us alive together with Christ, meaning God has united us together with Jesus in His Resurrection. See, our sins were laid on Jesus and He died for them. And then He rose and he overcame death. When you put your faith in Jesus, what happens is your sins are removed. Jesus then takes the punishment for those sins and you are now alive because you are united spiritually to Jesus and Jesus is alive. That is a fact so amazing that Paul has to stop right in the middle of what he’s saying. Do you see that? There’s, like, a little hyphen ” -by grace you have been saved”. I’ve got to stop and tell you this. That’s what he says. I’ve got to stop “By grace, you have been saved”. You don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve it. Everybody always wants what they deserve. Even in church, we do not want what we deserve. Would a merciful and loving thing for God to do, to come into this world and do all the work necessary to remove the sting of sin, to raise us from the dead. And more than that, Paul says that not only has He raised us from spiritual death and given us unity with Christ, He has seeded us with Christ in the heavenly places.

Now, that sounds good, but what is what does that mean? You say, Kyle, when I woke up this morning, I was very much in an earthly place with my earthly situations, my earthly problems. What does this mean? Well, when the scriptures talk about Jesus being seated at the right hand of the Father or sitting down in heaven, it’s a picture of Jesus reigning over the earth, particularly over the evil powers and the demonic authorities that have been given some room to move for a time here on Earth. Being seated with Christ right now, like Jesus is next to the Father, means we are no longer under the authority of evil. That’s what it means to be seated right now with Christ. We are no longer under the authority of evil. We are no longer shackled to sin. We no longer have to sin. If you have Jesus, you no longer have to sin. Our new lives in Christ are set free from the controlling powers of evil. If you have Jesus, you can now honor the Lord. You are free to be a son or a daughter of obedience, not disobedience. You know that phrase, the devil made me do it. The only people that can say that accurately are people who don’t know Jesus. If you have Jesus, the devil can’t make you do anything.

By Grace, we have been saved and raised and seated. That’s all right now. But why has God done this? What’s the purpose of that Grace? Let’s look at v. 7. …”so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. The reason God acts out of the riches of His mercy and his great love for us and does so when we do not deserve it at all, is to make a demonstration of His grace. So what we become, when you accept Christ is a living, breathing example of God’s grace. And by the way, we’ll serve that role the rest of our lives. For all of eternity, those who are united to Christ will be a reflection of the immeasurable riches of God’s grace. If you want to know what these immeasurable riches are, what you would need to do is go back to the beginning of Ephesians and unpack all of what this incredible grace includes leading up to this passage. For now, I’ll just say that this grace is packed with so much mercy and kindness and generosity from God that you can spend the rest of your life trying to quantify it and you will not reach the end. It is immeasurable what God has done for us. You ever been reading God’s word and thought, Why didn’t I see this before? You ever do that? I didn’t notice this before. I never saw this before.

You ever heard somebody’s testimony talking about the grace of God in their lives and you see something you have known or at least had in your brain but never really understood till you saw it at work in another person? That is the unpacking of God’s grace, because from beginning to end, our new lives are entirely an act of the undeserved grace of God. 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. There probably isn’t a more concise or clear statement of what grace is than these two verses. And I would encourage you to actually memorize these. Memorize these. It’s a great way to be able to share the grace of God with others, to be able to unpack this very simple understanding of grace here. Our salvation in Christ is not based on anything that we have done, or anything that we could have done, or based on the sort of people that we are, or how well we live our lives. It is entirely from beginning to end a work of God that He does for us while we are completely undeserving. In fact, recognizing how undeserving you are is actually the first step toward understanding grace. You’ve got to get there first. You need to see that it is a work that God does when you’re completely undeserving. Faith is putting your trust in the spiritual realities about Jesus that we just talked about. Faith in Jesus is saying, I am not trying to impress God because my spiritual deadness is unimpressive. Not because my good works aren’t impressive enough, it’s because my spiritual deadness is unimpressive. I am putting the full weight of my hope in the promise that when Jesus died, He died for me. When Jesus rose, I was united with Him. And I am alive because He is alive. And when I die and stand before the Lord, I won’t pay for my sins because they have already been paid by Jesus. That is faith in Jesus. When you put that kind of trust in Jesus, you receive his grace. And you’re transformed by that grace. So many people are working to earn God’s salvation. In fact, the majority of the religions and the secular philosophies of our day are all some form of salvation through goodness, salvation through earning. Only Jesus says, Come and believe. Come and believe. Come find rest in me. Trust that I have done everything necessary to save you. That salvation by grace through faith. If Salvation from sins was a project that you participated in by your works, then you’d have some reason to boast about how well you’re doing.

And let me tell you, it’s interesting that Paul brings boasting up here. That boasting is the reason some people don’t like the idea that grace comes only through faith. That boasting that that pride. You see, some people have built reputations as a pretty awesome spiritual and moral person. They’re pretty great. In fact, the people around them admire them for their good, upstanding character. And, you know, a lot of those folks like to hang out in church communities. They like to be part of churches because that’s where they find their moral character is celebrated the most, around the good people. Sometimes it’s hard to tell these folks from those who are serving out of a heart of love because of what grace has done in their lives, because the behavior oftentimes looks identical. But scratch the surface, move past the veneer of goodness, and you find people who want credit. They want to boast in their accomplishments, and they’re very judgmental of people who don’t behave the way they behave. You can start to see that they’re not really trusting in grace at all. They’re trusting in their good works. Thinking that’s what makes them acceptable to God. Calvary, I love the grace of God. I love the grace of God because it gets my eyes off of myself and onto Jesus and what He did for me. See, God looked at all the wretched and sinful and awful things that I have done and said, I love you. I’m going to show you mercy. That trust that Jesus has paid it all and he’s set you free. I’ll never forget the night that God lavished his grace on me.

I told the story very briefly during the Q&A during the weekend that I was here a couple of months ago, but I think it seems appropriate to tell you here now in more detail, because I’m a very good example of a guy who does not deserve it. And no one would make the mistake of thinking that I did. I put my faith in Christ when I was 20 years old at a camp in northern Michigan called Camp Barakel. I grew up going to this camp as a kid. It was a place that I went to I really loved. I enjoyed my time there, and I was only a nominal Christian at 20 years old at the time. I could tell you the gospel, I could explain the gospel to you, but I did not follow Jesus with my life. I had a head knowledge, but not a heart love for Jesus. But I wanted to counsel at Camp Barakel because it sounded like fun. And so I lied my way into a counseling position, into a ministry position at this camp. I knew what to say to the camp director in order to get him to bring me into a ministry position. By the way, I think it’s important to point out that I don’t lie my way into ministry positions anymore. That was old Kyle. Old Kyle. New Kyle doesn’t do that. So I get up to this camp and I’m suddenly immersed in a world where all these other 20-year-olds really love Jesus. And it’s very clear that I don’t. It’s very clear there’s something different between us. And I start to hear this gospel that’s being shared, and I’m starting to get a little bit worried. One night during the training period, we went to a chapel session and the pastor was teaching at this chapel session, and he was teaching us Psalm 23, the passage that we were going to teach the kids all summer long. And so he started and you may know Psalm 23, it starts out The Lord is my shepherd. And suddenly it dawned on me I was going to be teaching kids that the Lord should be their shepherd, their guide for life, and he’s not mine. And I realize just how big a hypocrite I was going to be teaching this to kids all summer long. And so I left that chapel that night, and I started walking around the camp, and I started to pray. But it wasn’t, you know, prayers, like, oh, God, changed my heart, make me new so that I can be a good counselor. It was more like, God, you know how it is between you and me. Get me out of here. I’ve made a huge mistake. And I started walking around the camp. The camp has a west and an east side. I was on the west side of the lake. This lake in the middle of it. And I walked all the way to the east side around the lake, praying this. And then I heard my name being called from the other side of the lake. I was supposed to be at a prayer service and I wasn’t there and they thought I’d gotten lost or hurt or something, so they were out looking for me. So in addition to being a fraud, I was also in trouble for not being where I was supposed to be. And so I started to work my way back around the lake. And of course, the fastest way around a lake is right at the very edge. There’s a trail that runs all the way around this lake. And so I went down to the trail called the Lake Trail, and I started to walk my way back around the lake. And as I got back to the West Side, I suddenly got very angry because I felt like I had been tricked. You know how centers are, right? It’s all about me. I’m the victim. And so I stopped at one point on this trail that goes all the way around the lake. And I stopped and I turned toward the lake and I put my head to the sky, and I said, God, if you want me to stay, you’d better tell me right now or I am leaving. In all my audacity, you know. And I looked down where I had stopped on this trail. And some kid had painted on some rocks. I will serve the Lord with all my heart and soul. And it underlined it with a birch branch. I could have stopped anywhere on that trail, but I stopped right there. And in words, God would say, No, you’re going to serve me. And I wouldn’t have described it this way then, but I would describe it now. That’s where regeneration took place. I felt a flood of incredible guilt over my sin and my incredible need for repentance to turn to Jesus and say, I trust you. My life is yours. And so I went back up to the place where I was staying. Some of the other guys who were counselors came out and prayed with me as the floodgates of my face opened up and I just wept and wept and repented and confessed and trusted in Jesus. And God began a journey with me that night that’s led to here at Calvary.

And now I consider my life the way Paul considered his life when he spoke to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:24. “I do not account my life of any value, nor as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I receive from the Lord Jesus to testify to the Gospel of the grace of God.” It’s all Grace Church. It’s all grace. And the more fully we understand and embrace and live out this grace, the more effective will be at reaching our community that desperately needs the unearned grace of Jesus Christ.

Would you pray with me? Father, thank you for your grace to us. Thank you for how you have lavished Your Grace on those of us who are sinners, who are undeserving, who desperately needed a relationship with you, even though we didn’t see it. You saw it and you came. And you’ve opened our hearts and you’ve changed our minds and you set our course to following after you. We count our lives loss for the sake of the glory and the grace of Jesus Christ. And I pray, Lord, that this body, this church, would be a gracious community, eager to accept sinners amongst us. Eager to go and to share Christ with those who need him. Eager to live out this grace for your glory. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Now, Calvary, go and share this gospel, this good news, this grace with others. Have a wonderful week.