Salvation by Grace Not Works
Tom Shrader concludes a multi-week study of Ephesians 2:1-10 by focusing on verses 8-10, explaining that salvation is entirely God's work — chosen by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and applied by the Holy Spirit — with no contribution from human effort. He contrasts the intuitive human tendency toward works-based religion with the counterintuitive biblical truth that grace alone, received through faith, reconciles sinners to God. Shrader closes by affirming the security of salvation, drawing from John 10 and Romans 8 to show that nothing can separate believers from the love of God, and that the good work God begins in His people He will faithfully complete.
“God saves sinners — the Father chooses those He will save, the Son dies for those chosen by the Father, and the Spirit regenerates and causes us to be born again, and He is the one who sustains us.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ephesians
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 49 min
Themes: grace, salvation, faith, works, forgiveness, security, God's love, redemption, new believer, doubting salvation, struggling with worthiness, feeling unworthy, performance-driven, seeking assurance, young adult, skeptic exploring faith
Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-10, Ephesians 1:4, Romans 5:1, Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8, Romans 5:10, 1 Corinthians 2:14, 1 Corinthians 1:31, John 6:44, Titus 3:3-5, Acts 13:48, Philippians 1:3-6, Galatians 3:3, John 3:16, John 3:36, John 5:24, John 6:47, John 10:11, John 10:14-15, John 10:27-29, Romans 8:28-39, 2 Corinthians 5:14, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Matthew 5:13-14
Theological Themes: soteriology, grace alone, sola fide, justification, election, perseverance of the saints, total depravity, regeneration
Full Transcript
Setting the Context
Open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians. If you need a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will bring you a copy. If you are someone who picks up a Bible every week, that is fine, but you ought to have your own. Head over to the bookstore afterwards and Brenda or somebody will be in there to help you figure out exactly the translation and type of Bible you need. We are more than willing to provide those for you. If you go about two-thirds of the way back, you will reach the New Testament, and it is on page 150.
This is our third or fourth week looking at chapter 2, verses 1 through 10, and this will be our last time in these verses. What I want to do is offer a summary, focus in on verses 8, 9, and 10, and then close the loop on this section of Scripture.
Reading the Passage
Let us read those ten verses again. He is writing to believers, so if you just took communion and you believe you are a follower of Christ, you are the recipient of this letter. Verses 1, 2, and 3 are in the past tense — this is what you were.
"You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working among the sons of disobedience. Among them, too, we all formerly lived in the lusts of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest."
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised up with Him, and seated us with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ."
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. That is not of yourself. It is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we could walk in them."
What You Were by Nature
Here is the baseline the passage establishes. As you came into this world, you were a child of disobedience, and because of that, by nature, you are a child of wrath. Your sin demands God's judgment, God's wrath. You were dead in that condition.
Then in verse 4, everything changes with two words: but God. God moves. God acts. God intervenes. That was our only hope.
We saw this last week in Romans 5. Paul writes, "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Then in Romans 5:6, "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Verse 8: "But God demonstrated His own love toward us, and while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Verse 10: "For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son."
Paul lays out the condition plainly: you were helpless, you were a sinner, you were an enemy of God. That is your natural condition. But in the midst of that — in verses 6, 8, and 10 — Christ died for you. Therefore we have peace with God. How do we get peace with God? Through the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other way.
Spiritually Dead, Unable to Respond
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The wage of sin is death. But God initiates. God moves. Motivated, as you see in verse 4, by His great mercy and the great love with which He loved us, He reconciles. Out of mercy, love, and forgiveness, God does a miracle. He takes that which was dead spiritually and brings it to life.
As natural men and women we were separated from God because of our sin — spiritually dead, unable to comprehend spiritual truths, blind and deaf to the truth. Two verses we have returned to over these past weeks make this plain. First Corinthians 2:14: "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him" — and then Paul raises the stakes — "nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God because the Spirit does not indwell him. Spiritual things are beyond his grasp in the absence of the Spirit of God.
Jesus said it this way in John 6:44: "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." This speaks not about permission but about ability. The natural man — the condition all of us are in spiritually when we enter this world — is spiritually dead, deaf, and blind. Spiritual things make no sense. We do not have the ability or the capacity to understand or decipher them. In that condition, uninfluenced by any external force, we would stay there forever.
But God. God, being rich in mercy and motivated by His love, moves. He sends Christ so that while we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive with Christ.
A Parallel Pattern in Titus
A parallel passage Paul writes in Titus 3:3 follows the same pattern. He is speaking to a believer and he says, this is what you were. "For we also were foolish ourselves" — foolish, disobedient, deceived...
Salvation Is by Grace Alone
We were enslaved. This is what we did — what a spiritually dead person would do. We were enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our lives in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But then the same pattern appears again: "But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us. He moved. He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which were done in righteousness, but according to His mercy by the washing of the regeneration, renewing of the Holy Spirit."
We were spiritually dead, but God chose in His sovereignty. God, being God, can do as He pleases. He needs no one's permission to act in any way. In man's sin, God was not under obligation to save anyone. No one will be saved unless God moves, chooses, and elects them, and Christ dies for them — but He was under no obligation to save anybody. He could save everybody, or He could save some.
God determined — and we saw this back in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 4 — He chose us in Him before the foundations of the earth. That choice, as we saw last week, was not based on any merit. God says, "I'll have mercy on whom I will have mercy." It is not based on anything that is in man.
John MacArthur, speaking of the verse we are going to look at in a moment, says this: "This last phrase is one of the clearest statements in all of Scripture concerning God's sovereignty and salvation." That verse is Acts chapter 13, verse 48. Paul is preaching — first to the Jews, now to the Gentiles — and Luke records: "When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed."
Who believed? Those who had been appointed to believe. That word "appointed" means to inscribe or enroll — those God had brought in, those He had chosen. In His sovereign will, being rich in mercy, with a love He had for those people, He chose them in spite of them, not because of them. So if you are one of God's people, He did not choose you because of something intrinsically valuable or enticing in you. He chose you in spite of you, not because of you. This is not a source of pride — it is a source of humility.
Ephesians 2:8–10 and the Heart of the Gospel
Today we focus on verses 8, 9, and 10 of Ephesians chapter 2. Once you think around that passage for a while — and maybe initially, as it was for me — it becomes an important set of three verses of Scripture, and you find yourself going there again and again. Speaking of salvation: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, that not of yourself, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no man should boast."
When he talks about salvation, he is talking about deliverance — being delivered from the bondage of sin, from the effects of sin, from hell, from the wrath of God, and restored into right relationship. God and sinner reconciled. God did that, and He did it based on grace, unmerited favor.
This whole concept of grace is, in my mind, essentially unique to biblical Christianity as opposed to any other religion in the world. Every other religion is fairly intuitive. Biblical Christianity is not — and here is what I mean. You can go into some unreached people group, and they will have some sense of spirituality, some sense that there is something bigger than them, and that somehow the gods are angry. They are offering some sort of sacrifice or worship — to the sun god, fire god, rain god, moon god, whatever it may be. We know that something is not right, that something is wrong with us, and we intuitively understand that somehow God and man are separated. What we feel, almost as the most natural thing, is that we need to do something about it. Religion is very appealing to us.
A Personal Journey from Works to Grace
Let me speak autobiographically. I was born and raised in a Catholic church. During this time in the church calendar, we were in church every day. Lent was always that crunch time where you gave up things — broccoli, asparagus, all the things you didn't want anyway — you set them aside. I have had all sorts of discussions with people about this, so I am not making a broad comment on what was taught there. Here is what I am telling you: I never heard that salvation was available by grace. I always heard it was available through works.
Now, I understood that Jesus died for our sin — I got that. He did His part of the deal. But I was taught that I ought to do my part. In essence, life boiled down to good works and bad works, and salvation was based on the idea that if I had more good works than bad works, I went to heaven. If I had more bad works than good works, I went to hell. And there was a point in the middle where God really couldn't decide, so I went to purgatory. That was my version of it — that was what someone's religion had become for me.
By the time I was about a sophomore in college, I had a pretty large bad stack and a pretty short good stack. I figured there was no way I was going to make this work. So I fundamentally gave up. It was in the midst of that giving up that I was introduced to the concept of salvation by grace.
That is when I heard the gospel. As I have said over the last two weeks, the gospel had been proclaimed to me before — but it was not until one particular point in time, March 6th, 1980, around 8:20 or 8:30 in the morning, that God opened my ears and opened my eyes. Someone who was once dead, deaf, and blind was now alive, and could see, and could hear. That is completely a work of God. What I was shown at that point is exactly what this passage teaches: salvation is not based on works, but on grace. There is faith — but that faith is the first fruit of saving grace.
Grace Is Counterintuitive
Grace is counterintuitive. When someone wrongs you, the natural instinct is to get even — they punch you, you punch back. When you think about God and trouble, your instinct is to think you need to fix it yourself. When grace is communicated clearly, it begins to raise all sorts of questions.
I remember walking along with someone I know very well and explaining salvation to him, taking him through the idea that we are saved by grace through faith. We were talking, going back and forth with point and counterpoint. Then he stopped and said, "I want to make sure I got this. You're telling me that I can go to heaven simply by saying I believe that I've sinned and Christ died for my sin. It's that simple?" I said, "It's that simple."
Then he said, "Once that relationship's in place, it can't be broken. So you're telling me — and this is how you know you've explained grace fairly well, when you get questions like this back — you're telling me I could come, using your terms, Tom, repentance and faith, and kill somebody tonight and go to heaven. Is that what you're saying?" I said, "Here's what I'm saying. While we don't recommend that, yes is the answer to the question." And I thought, okay, we got grace. We communicated grace, because it should stagger you. It is amazing grace when you hear it.
Bernie Madoff and Nana
Consider how we think as humans. Think of a bad person — I always use Jeffrey Dahmer, but at a certain age nobody knows who he is, so: Charles Manson, Saddam Hussein, Bernie Madoff. Then over here think of a good person — Gandhi, Mother Teresa, your grandma, Nana. Here is the deal: Bernie Madoff and Nana, in their natural state, both deserve hell. It does not take more of God's grace to save Nana versus Bernie.
Salvation is completely a work of God. It is not of yourself. It is not a result of works. There is no reason for you to be boasting. First Corinthians chapter 1, verse 31: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." Salvation is by grace, not through anything that you could do, so all the praise and all the glory and all the honor go to Him.
Works Have a Place — But Not in Your Salvation
Are works saying they play no role in our lives? No. Works play no role in your salvation — they don't contribute to your salvation. What I am saying is that God saves sinners. God does the work beginning to end: the Father chooses, the Son dies, the Spirit applies at the appropriate time. But there is then fruit in a life.
Verse 10 says we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. Ray Stedman writes this: "Notice how carefully Paul is to put works in its right place. You don't obtain anything from God by working for it. You never deserve anything but judgment at His hand." I want to be clear on that point, because I had this discussion this week. If God were to send me to hell now, He would be unjust. That is really important, because I'll hear believers say, "If God were to send me to hell, you should never question that." But He said you've been saved by grace through faith. If subsequent to that He were to send you to hell, that would be unjust — He would have lied, and He cannot lie. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That is how deep this idea of grace is.
Now, right after Paul talks about not being able to earn salvation, he says there is going to be a difference in your life. Life will change. There will be works. He is the vine and we are the branches. Jesus prayed the night before He died, "By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and prove to be my disciples."
More Wicked Than You Imagined, More Loved Than You Dreamed
Here is a concept that knits it all together, a sentence we use around here on staff all the time: you are more wicked than you ever imagined and more loved than you ever dreamed. We are desperately wicked. Even as we come to Christ — though we are now saints — we still struggle with Satan, the world, and the flesh. The depths of our sin are not just those big sins you can see, like murder or adultery.
Consider parenting. In my own situation, many of the mistakes I made as a parent were driven by pride and driven by my own desires. I didn't go through the parking lot, so if this offends you, I'm sorry — but I really don't care whether you have an honor student. It doesn't matter to me at all. I would question why you feel compelled to announce that at every stoplight. If I were to read it the way the parent reads it, it would be, "My kid is an honor student," not "My kid is an honor student." What would compel you to put that on your car? I think that's worth thinking about.
We Are His Masterpiece
There is a key word in verse 10: workmanship. The word translated "workmanship" is the same word from which we get the English word poem — a piece of literature. One author writes: "The word translated workmanship is really the word poem. We are his poem." Or perhaps better stated, we are His masterpiece.
God is working out in our lives a tremendous exhibition and demonstration of His wisdom, His power, His love, His life, His character, His peace, and His joy. He is training us, teaching us, and bringing us along.
God's Masterpiece on Display
Applying the paint to exactly the right place at exactly the right time, God produces a marvelous masterpiece to be put on display. This is to result in good works, kindness, love, mercy, compassion, helping one another, meeting one another's needs. And this is exactly the same point that Jesus makes in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, around verse 13: "You are the salt of the earth. Don't let the salt lose its savor. You are the light of the world. Let men see your good works."
You are not the masterpiece in the sense that you are running around saying, "Hey, look at me." You are His masterpiece — the display case of His grace, mercy, and works in you. It is so that people will look at you and not say, "Oh, what a marvelous masterpiece," but rather, "What a marvelous Master." They will look at you and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
That is God's plan: that our lives are to be unique and different. The way we deal with things, the way we respond — not perfectly, but in such a way that when people step back, they see something that brings honor and glory to Him. We are saying, "It is not me, it is Him." The works they see, the transformation they see, is the result of this simple sentence: God saves sinners.
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit
We have talked about the Father choosing and the Son dying. But when we were in Titus 3 last week, let me just read this to you. Titus 3:5 says, "He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we did, but by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit." God did that work. God caused us to be born again. God is the one who produced that.
So hopefully we have put that whole picture together. There is one piece that is not dealt with there, but it comes up all the time as a question: Is this relationship breakable? We are in right relationship with Him. There are times when we feel hot, times when we feel cold, times of more intensity and passion, times of less. Can this ever be broken? Is it possible for this to be undone?
Confident of This Very Thing
In the book of Philippians, just to the right of Ephesians, Paul introduces himself in the first chapter and extends what we looked at in a normal greeting. Then he says in verse 3, "I thank God in all my remembrance of you, always praying with joy in my everyday prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now." Look at this: "For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." And Galatians 3:3 says, "Having begun this work by the Spirit."
I am a man with a lot of incomplete projects. I have a great many books, and if you randomly grabbed ten books out of my office, I would venture to say there is probably only one that has been read cover to cover. I begin many things and then lose interest. But God began this good work in you, and He does not leave any task — including His work in your life — incomplete. You can trust Him.
The Commodity of Trust
I believe that the commodity that has taken the biggest hit in the last ten years is not gold, oil, or water — it is trust. Hardly anyone trusts anyone anymore. It feels to me, and it could be that I am just getting old, but it feels as though everything I thought was firmly in place and everything I esteem and value is now shaky. It seems as though all the values have shifted.
I stopped the other day to visit a fellow who is 93 years old. He is in a kind of live-in hospice — not in a life-threatening situation, but he needs care around the clock. If you do the math, that means he was born in 1917, the same year John Kennedy was born. If he was born in 1917, he did not just experience the Depression — he lived in it.
I thought it would be interesting to simply talk with him. I asked if he minded if I wrote things down, and he said he was flattered that I wanted to. So I said, "I hear we are in the greatest challenge since the Great Depression. What was that like?" He said it was very difficult. He told me that Goodyear Tire put an ad in the paper that said "Wanted: one man to change tires." He got there early the next morning — very early — and he was 70th in line. He finally got the job, and he said you never asked what it paid; you were just grateful to have the job. He worked from seven in the morning to six at night, eleven hours a day, six days a week. His first paycheck — whether it was after one week or two, he was not entirely clear — was $16.50.
I asked him, "How did you do it?" Because everywhere I go it just feels so heavy, and I am completely open to the possibility that it is me. He said simply, "We just worked hard."
Suspicious of a God Who Might Change the Deal
Pretty soon, we become so suspicious of everything. If I said to you right now, how many of you honestly believe that healthcare is going to be revenue neutral to the government, there wouldn't be many hands that would go up. They're basing their whole thing on it, and you don't believe them. I don't believe them.
When we grow that suspicious of everything around us, we come to God and think, I wonder if He'll change the deal. I wonder if He'll take away my benefits. But He who began the good work will continue it. There is no reverse in this process. He is relentless with His people — the hound of heaven on His people — and He will do whatever He needs to do in your life and mine to shape us, mold us, break us, polish off the edges, put us in the fire, and bring us out to be His people for His glory.
What Jesus Said About Eternal Life
Let me read you four passages, all from the Gospel of John, from the lips of Jesus.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."
John 3:36: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life."
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my words and believes Him who sent me has eternal life."
John 6:47: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life."
Present tense. When does eternal life end? You know it doesn't cease. And here is the key: it doesn't depend on you. It is all about Him. You didn't get yourself into it, and you can't break this off. He began that good work, and He will continue it.
He Will Never Leave You
There will be times when you really look like His child, and there will be other times where you think, no, I don't think so. There will be times when you can just feel it. I could use my relationship with Susan as an example — there are moments, even now after all these years, where if she just puts her hand on me, I will tingle. But the majority of the time we are simply doing fine, and sometimes, because she is not the easiest person in the world to live with, it is not so good. But He began the good work, and He will continue it.
Maybe you had a parent who abandoned you, or a spouse who abandoned you, or an employer who dealt you dirty, or a world that just took advantage of you. We bring that baggage to our relationship with God. He will never do that. He will never leave you. He gives you grace.
I met with a couple of ladies this week, and one of them was recounting a great deal of sin in her life. She had come here and heard a gospel of grace, and she sat there literally weeping, because in her mind — and this is what religion does — she was thinking there was no way God could ever forgive her. She said, "I don't deserve to be forgiven." That is exactly right. None of us do. But God, in grace, gives unmerited favor.
The Good Shepherd and His Sheep
Let's look at one more passage. Turn to the Gospel of John — page 81 in the Bible, John chapter 10. The little heading probably says "Parable of the Good Shepherd."
Verse 11: "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."
Verse 14: "I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, even as the Father knows me, I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep."
Verse 27 describes the relationship between God and man, and if you are a follower of His, you can put your own name in there: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life."
Hearing His Voice and Knowing Him
Here is a characteristic of the relationship between the Creator God and His creature: they hear His voice — not just audibly, but with understanding. I had the gospel proclaimed to me many times, but it wasn't until that one day that I truly heard it. So if I am a child of God, I hear His voice and I know Him — there is relationship there.
Paul in the book of Philippians says he counts all of his accomplishments — the King James puts it — as dung, compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. Not knowing about Him, but knowing Him. Not simply being doctrinally sound, though that matters, but it is a relationship with a person, not a relationship with a book. This Scripture is simply a vehicle for us to come to know and understand the living God. We study the Word of God to know Him.
The Security of the Believer
"I know my sheep, and they follow me." Jesus said, "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments." He doesn't say everybody who keeps His commandments loves Him, because there are some who will follow the letter of the law. The Pharisees would do all these things, and yet Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, "On that last day, I'm going to say to you, depart from me, I never knew you." But there is a life change that takes place, and He gives them eternal life.
What does that look like? "And they shall never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." The Father has given them to Him. He is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. That is how secure you are. That is how certain this is.
The Grandfather's Dime
The illustration I use all the time when I read that passage is my old grandpa, my mom's dad. Tough old bird. Here is what he used to do with us as little boys. He'd take a dime and put it in his palm, then close his hand, and say, "If you can get my fingers off of this, you can have the dime."
So we'd mess around, and I'd pull this finger off, and then I'd get this thumb off, and then I'd get to where I could see the dime. I'd pull this finger off, and about the time I got that one, another one would come down. The old coot never gave me the dime. But he occupied me for hours — that was his version of babysitting. I'd spend hours working at this thing and never got the dime.
I think of that when I read this passage. He gives them eternal life. They'll never perish. No one can snatch them out of His hand. The Father has given them to Him, He is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. That is how secure you are in this. That is how certain this is.
Romans Chapter 8
Let's look at one more passage — the book of Romans, chapter 8. When I started this series, I said I find myself going back to two passages of Scripture over and over again: Second Corinthians chapter 5 and Romans chapter 8. Think about this in the context of our relationship with God.
Verse 28: "And we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and to those that are called according to His purpose." My obligatory comment here is that everything does not work out well for everybody. All things work together for good specifically to those who love Him.
All He foreknew, He predestined — predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many. Those He predestined, He called. Those He called, He justified. Those He justified, He glorified. The implication is that none of them are lost along the way. Everyone who was chosen before the foundations of the earth is predestined, called, justified, and glorified — no more than were elected, and no fewer.
Nothing Can Separate Us
"What shall we say then of these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" Verse 33: "Who will bring a charge against God's elect?" Verse 35: "Who can separate us?" — and there is the phrase we have looked at over and over again. What compels Him is His love for us. Rich in mercy is His love for us. Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 14: "The love of Christ compels us, controls us."
Who will bring a charge against God's elect? Who can separate us from the love of Christ? What can separate God's love for you from you? Then he gives the list. Tribulation — it means squeezed under hard pressure. Distress — the idea of being hemmed in on all sides. Persecution — affliction for the Lord's sake. Famine — the absence of the necessities of life. Nakedness — not just being physically unclothed, but the idea of being destitute, unable to meet even basic needs. Peril — danger. Sword — a dagger used as a concealed weapon in assassinations.
"In all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights nor depth" — and here is the catch-all phrase — "or any other created thing." That is everything other than God Himself. None of it is able to separate us from the love that is in Christ Jesus.
The Chain of Salvation
God saves sinners. The Father chooses those He will save. The Son dies for those chosen by the Father. The Spirit regenerates, washes, and causes us to be born again, and He is the One who sustains us. So that those of us who began that journey will complete it.
A Man in Hospice
The other day I was talking to a man I've known for years. I found him in hospice and asked how long he had been there. He said since November. He was one of those guys — someone who had been in a Bible study I used to do all the time — one of the most positive, upbeat people you could meet.
He said when he first came in, he was a little discouraged, maybe depressed. But then he remembered that God had placed him there for a reason, and that He is faithful. Then he said something I found myself taking notes on. He said, "I talk to Him on a different scale." I asked what he meant. He explained that everything else is stripped away. There is nowhere to go. He is not on a calendar. There are no appointments to keep. He doesn't have to think about eating — they bring him food when they bring it. He said, "I talk to Him, and I tell Him every day — I want to die. Every day I want to be with Jesus. But I know He left me here for a reason."
He said, "My world is very small. But I still have my family and staff, and I try to share with them." As I walked through that place, I didn't get into every room. When his nurses came to take care of some things, I went to walk the halls for a while. I can walk a long time in a place like that, poke my head into rooms, and see what is going on. There was just something totally different about him. I'm sure that if you are a caregiver and you have a choice of which room you are going to take, room 311 is—
Closing the Series: What We've Learned
When you truly understand that God saves sinners, God is magnified and man is minified. When you understand that He who began the good work in you will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus, you find security — not a false sense of hope, not cockiness, but genuine security. And in the midst of all of that, you have a great source of encouragement.
"If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature and the old things have passed away." Second Corinthians 3:18 tells us, "We are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, from the Spirit." You are an hour and a half closer to being with Jesus than you were when you walked into this building, and He left us here for a reason.
Living Boldly in His Work
He tells us to live boldly and confidently — not based on ourselves, our own skill level, or our own gift set, but based on who He is. He did the work. He started the relationship. You see how big He gets and how small you get, and everything just gets put into its own place. You don't have to try to conjure up worship and adoration for a God that big.
We are more wicked than we ever imagined, and more loved than we ever dreamed.
God Brings People to You
Consider the person who is ninety-three years old, confined to a corner room at the end of a hallway, and yet upbeat in spite of those circumstances. Unless you were an absolute stiff, you would talk to that person — about life, about what they've learned, about what it was all like. God brings people to him every day, and He will do the same thing in your life and mine. When you are stripped away like that, you see Him clearly. Everyone who comes in the door is someone God is bringing into your life. God is bringing so many people into our lives that sometimes I want to say no more rather than welcome another.
An Invitation to Pray Together
Every Sunday in this room there are those who are rejoicing, and we want to rejoice with you. There are those who are weeping, and we want to weep with you. There are prayer requests and there are praises, and we want to be available to you for exactly that.
Father, thank You for Your Son Jesus Christ. Thank You that You save sinners, that You deliver us, that You reconcile us to Yourself through Jesus. We indeed are more wicked than we ever imagined and more loved than we ever dreamed. Your grace forgives. Your grace sustains us. You began a work in us and You will continue it. Father, we love You. We love Jesus. We are grateful for the Spirit that opened our eyes to see this truth. Thank You for that work in our lives. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.