God’s Free Gift

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Transcript:

Well, this week as I was getting ready for this message, I was in my office and happened to look up and see on the wall a couple of things that were hanging next to each other that were both very important to me for different reasons. And to illustrate the message this morning, I brought them to show you the difference that I’m talking about. But one of them, this is my diploma from OU, and I’m not bringing this to brag because it’s done a lot of good for me in my life.

But this piece of paper has meant as much as I was told it would. But this is my bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from OU. And a friend of mine told me that it was ironic I got this degree because it’s the only liberal thing about me.

But it’s not that funny. Let me assure you, as important as this is to me, it was not a gift by any stretch of the imagination. They don’t just hand these out out of the goodness of David Boren’s heart.

I worked for four years. I thought it was going to take me five, but I buckled down there at the end. It took me four years to get it done.

There were semesters where all I did was write papers. Meaning there were semesters where I took leave from the job I was working and I did not leave my house except to go to church. And other than that, I wrote papers.

That it caused me so much stress, my hair started turning loose and has not stopped since then. And my fingernails even grew funny. I worked hard for this piece of paper.

It was not a gift. I earned this. And even as I was thinking about that this week, I thought, well, what about the money for it?

I didn’t pay for it. I got scholarships. But then I thought, no, I had to work for those too.

I had to work real hard for those. And I missed out on a lot of fun in high school to earn that. This was not a gift.

There was a lot of work and there was a lot of effort involved in this. Again, I’m not telling you this to brag. I’m telling you this to illustrate the difference that this is not a gift.

This was the result of effort. But then hanging next to it on the wall in my office is this, that I treasure just as much. For different reasons.

This was a gift. My wife and my children made this for me. And I forgot it even has a little message on the back from Charla and the kids.

It was given to me for Father’s Day. And we happened to be on a little road trip. We were going out to the Glass Mountains in Fairview, out in northwest Oklahoma.

And we happened to stay. There’s not a lot of places to eat in northwest Oklahoma, if you haven’t been out there. I didn’t realize there aren’t really big cities out there.

So we stopped and had a picnic lunch at the Sonic in Watonga, and Charlie gave this to me. And I burst into big manly tears. I love turtles.

And it says Daddy’s Little Turtles. and if you can’t tell what it is, they are handprints from the children. And I love my children.

And most days I love my children more than I love my turtles. Depends on how everybody’s behaving. But they got together and they made this for me in secret.

I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t know about it. I didn’t earn it.

I didn’t pay them for this. There was no effort on my part. This was a gift.

And I show you both of those things again, not to brag about the first one, but to illustrate the difference. Both of these pieces of paper that hang on my wall are important to me, but for two very different reasons. One, I worked really hard to get.

And the other was given to me out of the goodness and kindness of the heart of my wife and my children. It was a gift. And that brings me to what we’re talking about this morning in Ephesians chapter 2.

In Ephesians chapter 2, the Bible describes salvation as the free gift of God. and that’s what we’re going to talk about today is really just defining some of these terms as we’ve been looking over the last several weeks at some basic Christian teachings and what they mean this is one that folks we cannot we cannot miss this truth if we miss this truth it really doesn’t matter what else we get right and as I’ve been talking to you over the last few weeks about Jesus being the Messiah about His sacrifice on the cross being the atonement for sin, about His resurrection, all of those points lead to this point that salvation, because of Jesus Christ, is now offered as the free gift of God. This is hugely important.

Well, I was going to go down another road with you, but we’ll just go to the passage. We’re going to start in verse 3 of Ephesians chapter 2. The apostle Paul says, among whom he’s talking about the children of disobedience that he describes in the previous verse, those who were disobedient to God, he says, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

And what he’s saying here is he’s telling the people at Ephesus, he said, look at the people around you. Ephesus was a center of pagan worship. There was all kinds of wickedness that went on at the temples of Diana there at Ephesus.

And he’s talking to these people, these Ephesian Christians, who had come to faith in Christ and were saved by the blood of Christ and had walked away from that old former lifestyle. And he says, look back at that. That’s where you were, and you were doing the same things then that they are doing now, and he said you were every bit as much a child of wrath as they are.

In other words, you were destined for the wrath of God just like they are. And then last week, I think it was last week, I told you that some of the greatest statements in the Bible begin with the phrase, but God. Meaning, here’s what life was like before, and then God changed everything.

Verse 4 says, But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace are you saved. And he says, so you were walking in this sinful lifestyle. You were walking in this life where you had rejected God, pretty much hated God, as our flesh does.

He said, and yet God, but God, out of His mercy, in other words, out of the kindness of His heart, not because of anything we’d earned, not because of anything that we had done, but because God is good. Because God desired to give it to us. It says He quickened us together with Christ when we were dead in sins and trespasses.

That word quickened means to be made alive. We don’t use that word anymore very much, but it’s a great word. I understand that in centuries past they would use the term quickening for when a woman could first feel the baby move inside of her.

They said the baby was quickened. You could tell at that point that it was alive. So what he’s saying here is that God raised us up.

God made us alive again just like he did Jesus Christ. That as he raised Jesus physically, he also raises us spiritually because we started out dead in sins and trespasses. Now, to be clear on what I believe the Bible means by that, death is always in the Bible a picture of separation from God. Adam and Eve were told in the garden that they would die if they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now, eventually they did die physically, but the Bible teaches us that death entered into the world with that sin. Adam and Eve died spiritually at the moment they ate of the fruit of that tree. And there are theologians who will tell us that that means that us being dead, we can’t respond to the gospel, that we can’t make any kind of choice, that unless God elects us and chooses us, that we can’t even respond to the gospel.

And with all due respect to my Calvinist friends, that’s not what I understand the Bible to teach. That when it says that we are dead in sins and trespasses, what it means is that we are separated from God and cannot make a move toward Him. It doesn’t mean that when the gospel is preached to us, that by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can’t respond.

I realize that’s a fine line there. But it’s important to realize what he means. And in keeping with everything else that the Bible teaches, going back to the Garden of Eden, I understand that phrase, dead in sins, to mean we are separated from God.

That’s what death is. I am separated from my children who’ve gone on before me. I am separated from three of my grandparents and two of my adoptive grandparents.

I am set. Many of you are separated from a loved one today because of death. So when he says we’re dead in sins and trespasses, we are spiritually dead.

We are separated from God. And yet, and yet not because we were good enough to deserve it, not because we earned it, because God is merciful. See, it’s not about us and our goodness.

It’s all about Him and His goodness because He’s merciful. He made us alive. He made us to live again.

And hath raised us up together, verse 6, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Jesus Christ. But not only that, not only has He made us alive again in Jesus Christ, if you are a believer, if you are someone this morning who has trusted in the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made and asked God to forgive your sins, then not only has He made you alive again through Jesus Christ, not only has He raised you from the dead spiritually, but He has also elevated you to sit together in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. so that in the ages to come, yeah, we’re not sitting at God’s hand right now, but in the ages to come so that he might show his exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

In other words, God’s plan isn’t just to save you, but he’s got plans for you beyond that. He’s got plans to lavish grace upon you far, far beyond what you could ever expect or imagine or deserve. And so in those few verses right there, it sort of gives us a contrast between where we started out in this sort of fleshly natural state where we are hostile toward God.

And we are hostile toward the things of God. And we rebel and we sin and we love it. And we reject any attempt that God makes to tell us, no, this is.

. . And we reject that.

We’ve gone from this point to where now we are joint heirs with Jesus Christ because of the grace of God that he shows to us through Jesus. And so Paul is, for the Ephesians, showing this progression, where we start out and where God is able to take us to. And again, lest anybody thinks that we as Christians think we’re better than anybody, I don’t know where the world gets that idea.

And honestly, I don’t know where any Christians would get that idea that we’re better than the rest of the world. We’re so not. Any goodness within us is what Christ put there.

And it starts with a recognition of how sinful we are. My pastor growing up used to say that the church and the Hell’s Angels are the only two organizations in the world where you have to admit to being bad before they’ll let you in. And we better not lose that as Christians, the realization that, hey, we are sinners who didn’t deserve God’s love, but because He’s loving and merciful enough, He gave it to us anyway.

And so we see this progression of where we start out to where God is able to take us. And in verse 8, if you’re not familiar with this verse, you should be. And I don’t say that as shame on you for not knowing it.

I say that because I quote it, I feel like, just about every week. Verse 8 says, For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Everything about this, from the part we just read, where he talks about this progression going from this natural state to God raising us up to share His riches and glory with us, to now Him explaining it, it all goes back to this idea that it is by grace, and that it is through faith, and it has nothing to do with works, and that it is a gift.

And so just to make very clear that we understand what He’s talking about, I want to define some of these terms. I want to explain what these terms mean. And first of all, He says that it’s not by works. Now I’m not necessarily going in chronological order here, more of a logical order.

But in verse 9, he says, it is not of works, lest any man should boast. And what this tells me is that salvation cannot be earned. Salvation cannot be earned. And if there’s any message that we need to promote as a church, as Christian individuals in society, if there’s any message that needs to be heard loud and clear, if there’s any misconception about Christianity and about Christ that needs to be corrected in our popular culture today.

It is this one that salvation cannot be earned. Because many people look at us and think that our belief is that if they’d just be as good as us, they’d get to heaven. And that we’re condemning people, we’re judging people that we think they’re going to be in hell because they’re not as good as us.

That is so backwards from the truth. The problem is that we would all be in hell apart from Jesus Christ because we’re not as good as God demands us to be. We cannot earn our salvation.

This statement that salvation is not of works lest any man should boast means that our goodness is totally irrelevant. Our goodness is totally irrelevant. Now this doesn’t let us off the hook and say to tell you to go out and be just as bad as you want to be because it’s irrelevant anyway, but what it means is stop wearing yourself out trying to do this on your own.

You ask most people in America today if they believe in heaven and hell, let me rephrase that in a less confusing way. If you ask people in America today who believe in heaven and hell how they think they’ll get to heaven, most people will answer that it has something to do with their goodness. And there’s no security.

There’s no security in that. There’s no assurance in that. At what point have you been good enough to earn salvation?

There’s a lot of hope. There’s, well, I hope that I will have been good enough. I hope that God will let me in.

There’s a man that went to a church, the first church I pastored. And I was there for years and preached on salvation all the time. And I would ask him, Jim, do you know for sure that you’re going to heaven?

Well, I hope so. And I don’t say that to make fun. A few months after I left that church, he passed away and I still don’t know.

And it’s not for lack of talking to him, but I thought, have you heard anything I’ve preached? Because I would ask him, Jim, do you know for sure where you’d go? Well, I hope I’d go to heaven.

well why why would you think you’d go to heaven well I just hope that I’ve been good enough for God to let me in and again I’m not saying that to make fun it broke my heart every time that we would talk about it to think I was trying to be so clear that you don’t have to work for this that you don’t have to spend your whole life and beating yourself up over every little thing. If I could just be a little better, maybe God would love me. If I could just work a little harder, if I could just be more like those people, maybe God would accept me and save me.

It broke my heart thinking, you don’t have to do that. I’ve done everything. I’ve said everything I know to say to make it clear, and yet you’re still trying to earn it.

Folks, we can’t earn it because God, God’s holiness, It’s not because God is being harsh or demanding. It’s because God’s holiness requires us to be holy. It requires us to be perfect to get into heaven.

His standard. We have to meet up to His standard. And we can’t.

Because no matter how much good we do, it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve done wrong. And I give the illustration from time to time. that if I murdered somebody, I haven’t.

I admit that to you now, I have not. But if I murdered somebody and stood before the judge, if I stood before Ralph and he was going to judge me and says, what do you have to say for yourself? And I say, Your Honor, look at all the people I haven’t killed.

Do I get extra credit for that? Does it change the fact that I killed the one person? No, it doesn’t change anything.

So if I stand before God and He says, what do you have to say for yourself? If I stand before the Lord Jesus Christ in His judgment in the final day, and He says, what do you have to say for yourself in all this sin that you’ve done? And I say, look at all the other sins I haven’t done.

Or even look at all the good things I did. It doesn’t change what I have done. It never erases that.

See, the scale is not balanced that, hey, if the good outweighs the bad, it’s a standard of absolute perfection. You must be this holy to ride this ride and we can’t get there. So he tells us it’s not of works.

It’s not something you get by being good and going to church and being nice and giving money and being kind to animals and all the other things that people think. It has nothing to do with being good. It has everything to do with being the gift of God because he was good enough, because he was kind enough, because he sent his son to purchase it for us.

so it’s not only not earned it’s given by God’s grace okay it’s offered solely salvation is offered solely because of God’s kindness I know that word grace is a churchy word it doesn’t always mean a lot outside of these four walls my kids hear it all the time I’m going to show you grace because you don’t deserve to go to the party today but I’m going to show you grace my kids hear it all the time, but most people don’t really know what that word means. You say somebody’s gracious, they think it means graceful, like they don’t fall down all the time. That word grace means basically kindness that we don’t deserve.

That’s what it is, kindness we don’t deserve. We talk about God’s grace, what we’re really talking about is the kindness that God shows us that we do not deserve. That it’s not a transaction.

I teach my children that you should be kind to other people, first of all, because it’s right, but also the way you treat other people in general is the way they’ll treat you. Most people are respectful toward me because I try to be respectful toward most people. Unless we’re in traffic, that’s a different story.

But I try to be respectful, And most people return that favor. He says, I’m kind, you’re kind back. That’s how life generally works.

That’s not what happens with God. God looks at us and He doesn’t say, oh, you’re such a wonderful person, I’m going to show you kindness. God looks at us and says, all this sin, all these times you’ve messed up, all this wrong that you’ve done, All these times you’ve disobeyed me and rebelled against me, I’m going to show you kindness anyway.

That’s where grace comes in, is the anyway. I’m going to show you kindness when you don’t deserve it. Salvation is offered to us.

And by the way, salvation. If you’re new to all of this, what does salvation mean? Salvation means that those sins, those things we’ve done wrong, are forgiven.

It means that we have a relationship with God the Father. We are no longer His enemies. but we’re His children and it means that we have eternal life in heaven.

So when we talk about salvation, I want to be very clear here and define the churchy words. Salvation means those three things. We are forgiven, we are God’s children, and we have a home with Him in heaven.

Salvation is not offered because of our goodness. It’s offered by God’s grace. Do you get this?

We’re not good enough, but God was good. God was loving. It all comes from how good He is.

And He’s able to provide us with salvation because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Verses 7 and 8 tell us that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. God desires to not only show us just enough grace to get us to heaven by the skin of our teeth, but God desires to lavish grace on us. God intends to give us way more kindness than we deserve just because He’s kind.

And then it says, For by grace are you saved. It is simply because God desired to save us because God was kind enough to look at us and say, I want to save you anyway and then send His Son to pay for all the sins that we couldn’t pay for ourselves. See, I said earlier the reason why we can’t get into heaven on our own is because all the good that we do can never erase the wrong that we’ve done.

But Jesus took all the wrong that we did. He took all those sins and He took responsibility for them on the cross and He was punished in our place. And so when we trust Him as our Savior, God chooses to remember those sins no more.

It’s not that God becomes forgetful. God says, I’m not holding you responsible for those anymore because Jesus Christ already took responsibility. we don’t deserve any of that we deserve none of that and that’s what makes it grace when God shows us kindness that we don’t deserve salvation is given by God’s grace salvation is received through faith it’s received through faith if we receive it through anything other than faith it’s not grace it’s works the apostle Paul talks about this in a bunch of different places, and says that if something is earned, it’s no longer grace.

If you work for it, it’s no longer grace. It’s something you’re owed. And God doesn’t owe us any of this.

I heard a preacher give an illustration this week that I really liked. He talked about the open hand of grace and the open hand of faith. And that in order to take hold of God’s grace, you have to come to Him empty-handed.

It’s not a, I’m looking for a big book here. Let’s take a hymnal. It’s not the hand of faith that says, here I have faith, but look at all these other things, all these other good things I’ve done that I have to offer you. I’m so wonderful.

I’m so pretty. I’m so intelligent. I’m so wealthy.

I’ve done great things. You can’t take hold of the hand of grace when the hand of faith is full of works. The illustration he gave was that to take hold of the hand of grace you have to come empty handed with the hand of faith folks God’s not interested in our good works at least as far as it has to do with salvation because the Bible says all of our good works are like filthy rags even the best things that we can do are like garbage compared to the holiness of God God’s not interested in us coming to him and saying look what I have to offer aren’t you so lucky to have me God wants people who will come to him and say I have nothing to offer you Except that I believe that Jesus died for me.

Because at that point, we’re no longer trusting in ourselves. We’re no longer trusting in our own goodness. We’re trusting solely and completely in what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross.

He says that we are saved by grace through faith. Not through faith plus works. We’ve already talked about the works part.

But through faith. And again, faith is another one of those churchy words. It’s the only condition placed on us for salvation, so we need to understand it.

It’s the conviction that we need God’s forgiveness for our sins and that we can have it because Christ paid for it. See, I told you last week I worried about faith. Did I believe hard enough?

Did I believe exactly the right things? Did I believe. .

. I had to read God’s Word and calm down and see what He said about it. And faith really is just the conviction.

The heartfelt belief. Not I believe God exists. Not that I believe Jesus was a real person.

Not even really just that I believe Jesus died on the cross. And the devil believes all of those things. And trembles, you’re right.

It is the conviction. It is the heartfelt belief that I am a sinner. That I need a Savior.

And that Jesus Christ died to be that Savior. Some of you may be sitting out there this morning saying, It can’t be that simple. Because we’ve been conditioned that there’s a price tag on everything.

And rightly, I mean, in some cases rightly so. About the only things free to us are the air and the sun for now until the government and the corporations figure out a way to charge us for those too. Not even water is free anymore.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody paid for it. When we had our Easter lunch last week, it was free, and I’m not putting anybody down.

We invited people. We wanted you to come stay. It was free.

But somebody paid for the potatoes. Somebody paid for the salad. Somebody paid for the drink stuff.

Somebody paid for the dressing stuff. Somebody paid for that. And you can come to church for free.

You don’t have to give us any money to be here. Hey, I’m not going to pass the plate again and make you pay your fair share. But somebody paid for the building.

Somebody paid for the electricity. You can drive on the roads for free, but somebody paid for those. Well, you paid for those, but.

. . We’ve been conditioned to think nothing is free.

It can’t be that simple. There’s got to be a catch. If you were here yesterday for the men’s breakfast and heard Brother Greg’s devotional, He made the point very well, I thought, that God’s truth is simple.

God’s truth is simple. There may be passages of Scripture that are complicated, but God’s truth is simple. And the only condition God places on us is faith.

Just believe that you need a Savior and that Jesus Christ is it. That’s all there is to salvation. That’s all there is.

And it seems like too good a deal to be true. Seems like there should be a cost. Folks, there was a cost. And Jesus paid for it. And now it’s free to you.

It’s that simple. And how do we know this? It’s because salvation is a free gift.

It is a free gift. It’s not like that degree that I had to earn. That $40,000 piece of paper.

It’s like the handprint painting that was given to me out of the goodness and kindness of my wife and kids’ hearts. Didn’t cost me a thing. We know what a gift is.

If somebody offers you a gift for your birthday, somebody tell me what was the most awesome gift you were given for your birthday ever. Or Christmas, it doesn’t matter. Anybody?

Your first Bible? Okay. Anybody else?

Doesn’t have to be a spiritual answer. If you really like the mixer you got, you can tell me. Anybody?

A bike. Awesome. Who gave you that bike?

Okay. So it was a gift. Did you have to earn it?

Did you have to earn it? Did you have to go out and work for it? Okay.

Were you always nice to people? Tried to be? Did you ever slip up?

okay all right so just making the point you didn’t earn it it was a gift from santa claus now imagine that you went and gave santa claus a hundred dollar bill for it and said thank you for the gift is it still a gift no you just bought you a bike no but you didn’t have to earn it so it was a gift that’s good if somebody gave you a great gift today and you said oh thank you for the gift I love it so much here’s 20 bucks. It’s not a gift. Even if they give you a new car worth thousands of dollars, if you try to pay anything toward it, it’s not a gift anymore.

A gift is freely given. Or if somebody tries to give you a gift and I don’t want that new car. No, no, take it really.

I don’t want the new car. Take the new car and they cram the keys into your hand. It’s not.

. . I don’t know.

That doesn’t seem like a gift to me. That seems like an obligation. I don’t want it, but I have to take it anyway.

A gift is freely given and freely received. It’s freely given and freely received. He says it is not of ourselves.

It’s the gift of God. Salvation is. It’s freely given and freely received.

He doesn’t force it on us, but we also can’t contribute anything to it. Otherwise, it’s no longer a gift. Something God gives us out of His own kindness.

It’s something that He paid all the cost for and the cost was very high. The cost was that He sent Jesus, His only begotten Son, to die on the cross in a horrendously brutal way to bear the consequences of our sins. He paid the cost and now He offers it freely to us.

The only condition is faith where we with an open hand reach out and receive that gift that He’s given us. And folks, there is, as I said, a world out there who this morning thinks that they’ve got to earn it. And a lot of people will work really hard and try to be good and try to do all the right things.

They may work harder at being good and religious than we do and end up in hell anyway because they’re trusting in what they can do rather than what God has done and what God has offered. And God has given us the message that salvation is a free gift. It’s the best news the world could ever receive.

and shame on us if we don’t tell them. Shame on us if we let them keep going on thinking that they can earn it or that they have to earn it. Folks, we have a responsibility.

We have a responsibility to make sure that those who need that free gift realize that it’s freely offered and can be freely received.

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