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Sunday, 26 September 2010 - Ten Must Know Verses - Ephesians 2: 8.

Good morning. I could start off this morning is by asking you to tell me what "the gospel" is? Or maybe - just how we're "saved"? (And then follow it up by asking what we actually mean by 'being saved'!) And if I did - I'm sure some of you who've been around church for a while would immediately trot out a verse or two from the Bible in response? But I'm also confident that none of you would be able to encapsulated all that the gospel is in just one verse. Each statement you come up with will be but one of a number of facets of the jewel that is - 'the gospel' - the 'Good News'.

Well this morning we're going to be looking at one of these facets in our series of ten 'must know' verses from the Bible. But to abuse a well known quotation - "no verse is an island" - which is why I'll be reading the verse in its context before we look at it. So you might like to be finding Paul's letter to the Ephesians which starts on page 1173 in the church Bibles.

I'm actually feeling a bit of deja vu this morning. Earlier in the year you might remember I spoke on Galatians Ch.3. Well in today's talk we're covering much the same subject but from a different perspective. Galatians might have been Paul's first letter - but Ephesians will be one of his last - almost certainly written from house arrest in Rome. It's content revolves around living the Christian life united with our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ - and also with each other in the body of Christ. One of Paul's central motifs in it is - 'being in union with Christ' (or as we most often see it translated, just, 'in Christ') It was written to a mature church to help them be more mature - and also to remind them what their salvation was all about.

And by now you should have found Ephesians. As always - it's hard to break into the flow one of Paul's letters - so I'll read from 1:18 to 2:10:

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no-one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

The ninth most searched for verse on one Bible internet site - and hence our ninth 'must know' verse for today - is verse 8. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God" (although we should note that v.9 is a closely linked continuum - and Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones - who's comments I'll be referring to later - also brackets in v.10 and makes it into a homogeneous three verse statement).

But before we look that verse - let's step back and look at the setting - or at least the picture Paul paints for it. And let me do it with a few graphics.

In 1:21 Paul talks about "Rule, Authority, Power and Dominion". Now he could be talking about these in a neutral sort of way. But if we think about what he says elsewhere in Ephesians - say 2:2 and 6:12 - then very obviously he's not!

They are the dark powers of this world and the spiritual forces of evil. And for a time - Jesus Christ came to live in the place where their power held sway ~

which also unhappily happens to be our natural realm of existence from the time sin entered into the world. And the beginning of chapter two just rubs that fact in a total unequivocal manner - as if we needed it pointing out to us. Although - perhaps some of us do.

But on the cross - Jesus broke the vice-like grip these evil authorities and dominions had on humanity. He nullified their power to destroy. And He did that so completely that God the Father has seated Him at his right hand in the heavenly realms - far far above their power base!

I think it was C.S.Lewis in one of his books has someone ask during a surreal imaginary day-trip coach trip to heaven - "But where’s the other place?" And he's shown a small crack in the ground that you can hardly see and told - it's down there. That speaks eloquently of the relative difference between the two dominions - Satan's place - and God's kingdom.

But here comes the real shocker. If we are 'in Christ' - if we are in union with Him - we - says 2:6 - are seated with Him in the heavenly realm. Which is why one preacher a while ago used to keep saying, "keep looking down" (rather than the more familiar saying of keep looking up).

But a warning. That doesn't mean (as I've heard some Christians consider it to mean) that we can be cocky towards Satan and his powers. Even angels don't do the that. They say when dealing with Satan, "the Lord rebuke you Satan". And so should we. We of course must resist Satan. The Bible tells us that. But the Bible also tells us - only after we've purposefully submitted ourselves to God. In a war it's wise to not be cocky towards your enemy.

But Paul's picture of us being seated in the control room of the Kingdom of Heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ does beg a question - particularly in the light of what I've just said about us still being in a war with the powers of evil in our earthly realm. Are we (if we're Christians of course) sat - as Paul seems to be saying - with Christ in heaven right now? Well - there's a 'Yes' and 'No' answer to that. It's what some people call, 'now, and not yet'.

If Jesus Christ died for you - took the punishment for your sin - removed the barrier between you and God - then 'yes' there's a seat right now with your name on it in God's Kingdom. And because of this - the Father gives to us now - in this earthly life - experiences of our new citizenship. So we can reasonably expect 'supernatural thing'’ to happen for us, and through us, on earth. Not perfectly of course - but some definitely - because of the presence of God's kingdom in us. And as I heard a Christian missionary home from Afghanistan say recently - God says to us, "come up here, and see things from My perspective". But of course - we will only fully experience what it means to be a citizen of heaven in the future.

And all that - to set the context for reading, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God". Which means that one aspect of being saved is us being lifted out from under the unchallengeable domination of the kingdom of darkness and raised to a position of privilege with Jesus in the Kingdom of God.

But it would appear that the Ephesian church was in danger of losing sight of the reason behind them being found sitting with the Lord Jesus Christ in heavenly places. And sadly (jumping out of this letter for a moment - and moving on some years to John's revelation on the island of Patmos) the first letter of the risen, glorified Jesus to the seven churches is addressed to the angel of the church at Ephesus - in which Jesus says - "I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love." Why had they? Well the answer might well be that they'd forgotten what Paul told them in Ephesians 2:8.

So what had they forgotten. Well to answer that I'm going to draw heavily on some teaching of a well know preacher of the last century. Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones was famous for drawing great detail out of every Bible verse. And he does that with Ephesians 2: 8-10. I'm not going to regurgitate all he says this morning - but I am going to draw on a few of the things he emphasises.

And just to let you know his overview of Ephesians 2:8 - he says - 'that in certain respects we can say that there is no more important doctrinal statement anywhere in the letter.' He goes on to say - not only is it a central statement for evangelism (that's telling other people about what God has done for them) but it also drives our entire practice of the Christian life.' At least, it should do. But why?

Well it all comes down to what 'grace' means - the unmerited, undeserved favour that comes directly and solely from the gracious character of God.

But Martin Lloyd-Jones starts by asking what's the point of the description of man in the first three verses of Ch.2? (And by man, he means men and women, as he uses the masculine pronoun to mean all humanity.) 'What is the point' - he asks - 'of that horrible description of man by nature as the result of sin, if it is not to show that man, as he is in sin, deserves nothing but retribution. He is a child of wrath (that's God's judgement) both by nature and by conduct - by his whole attitude to God - living according to the course of this world and governed by the prince of the power of the air. That's the sort of creature he is - dead in trespasses and sins.'

And Paul - when writing to the Romans - doesn't mince his words either: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."
So without a shadow of a doubt - we are all guilty before God for failing to be the people we were intended to be in relationship with God. And because of that, we ended up in the kingdom of darkness and under Satan's destructive dominion. End of story: or it should have been - because as Martin Lloyd-Jones goes on to say - 'we have no kind of right whatsoever to salvation'.

But - but - 'the whole glory of salvation is, although we deserved nothing but punishment and hell and banishment out of God's sight for all of eternity, yet God, of His own grace and wonderful mercy, has granted us salvation.' Or as Paul writes to the Colossians, "He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

'So', says Martin Lloyd-Jones, 'the fundamental proposition is, that us being rescued and saved comes to us entirely from God's side. And what is more important is this, that it not only comes to us from God's side, it comes to us in spite of ourselves'. 'That' he says 'is the entire meaning of the term 'grace'. I still like the acronym -

But it all means the same - salvation is given to us - not earned.

Now if you're a Christian and of a certain age and era you'll immediately know the context for the words… "I want you to get up out of your seats..." They were the words that always came at the end of a Billy Graham Crusade. The invitation to respond and say - in the words of a hymn of the same era - "I have decided to follow Jesus".

And it was also - is also - the way that we often present the Good News about Jesus dying in our place - taking our punishment. 'Will you accept Jesus as your Saviour?', we ask. Nothing wrong in that - provided we also recognise that us accepting God is not the whole story. It's not even the start of the story. It's only our necessary conscious response to part of it.

Martin Lloyd-Jones considers there's a real danger of us thinking that 'my belief' saves me. 'So', he says, 'I must never speak of 'my faith' in a way that makes it of myself - because that again will surely give me grounds for boasting. He says "not of works" (where he's calling even our believing a 'work') lest I should boast. My boasting should be entirely excluded.'

John Newton got it right in his hymn 'Amazing Grace'. "Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved". First God Himself needed to show us our need of being saved - the why - and what from. Then to show us the answer that He had provided to our predicament. All of us who know Jesus Christ as our personal savour will have a different story to tell of how that worked out for us. And because God knows us as individuals - He will have treated us in different ways. For some it may have been a gradual process (particularly if you grew up in a Christian home) and for some it might have been a dramatic event. But always it's His story in us

An illustration going the rounds in my earlier life helped me to see the part I played in accepting Jesus as my saviour, and the way that fitted in with Him having actually chosen me: you come up to an arched porch that is the entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven. Over the doorway are the words "Whosoever wants to, may come in". You accept Jesus as your saviour - and you enter the Kingdom. Then you look back at the archway you've just come through - and above the entrance on the inside you see the words "I chose you. You did not chose me." (Oh - and by the way - this is nothing to do with predestination - if some of you start to wonder.) The invitation is to all of us - because the Bible tells us that God is not willing that any should be lost - and all should be saved. In this our choice is valid - because it's down to us to respond to what God has already done for us. But because it's a choice to accept something already done for us - there's nothing to boast about.

And as far as Martin Lloyd-Jones is concerned, it's all very logical that we can't boast. He takes us back to the beginning of the chapter and asks - 'How can a dead man raise himself?' If you can do that, boast. If not - don't!

When Paul laid into the Galatians about them forgetting salvation was by God's grace alone - it was because they wanted to add religious observance to the gift of life that they already possessed for free. They wanted to try and show they also earned it by keeping the Law. And I said at the time I spoke on Galatians Ch.3 that that's a bit like trying to mix oil and water.

We don't know what the Ephesians might have been trying to add so they could boast - but if we look at Revelation - it might be that they were just really hard-working, Bible believing, truth defending, persevering, and hardship-enduring Christians! All the things in fact that Jesus commends them for! But had they fallen into the trap of thinking that all the good things they were doing were adding brownie points to their salvation? Had they started to forget that 'it is by grace they were saved, not works', so they had nothing to be proud about in their own right? If that was the case - then what their pride had done was deaden their sense of how much God had done for them. So Jesus says to them in Revelation 2:4, "I hold this against you, you have forsaken (some versions say 'lost') your first love".

It was of course the Pharisees' problem. They didn't see themselves as bad people because the Pharisees' movement had originally been set up to glorify God within the Jewish nation. But over time they'd lost sight of their original motivation - and when Jesus stepped onto the scene the outward structure had become more important than inner truth. And perhaps there's a warning there for us too - individually - and as church. But I digress.

Philip Yancey for his book 'What's so Amazing About Grace?' added a strap line to his title. He says. 'There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less'. And I'm sure that Paul would have jumped up and shouted 'Amen!' to that statement.

In fact, Martin Lloyd-Jones uses Paul as an example of someone who really knew what grace was about. He talks about a blaspheming Saul of Tarsus - who hated Jesus and tried to exterminate the church - but - after meeting the risen Lord Jesus - could say "I am what I am by the grace of God". He then goes on to say - "If when you get on your knees before God you do not realise you are a 'debtor to mercy alone', I confess I do not understand you. There is something tragically defective, either in your sense of sin, or in your realisation of the greatness of God's love". That's telling us, isn't it.
He goes on to say, 'The real trouble with many of us is our concept of what it is that makes us Christian. It is so low. It is so poor. Our failure is that we don't realise the greatness of what it means to be a Christian.'

And that is probably the reason why evangelism isn't happening very much in England. Not just in South Ruislip - but generally throughout our country. And if we've lost the vision of our message - if we've lost our first love - if we've lost the sense of the awesomeness of being loved and redeemed by the living God - if that message of God's saving grace no longer makes us excited - how on earth is it going to make those totally wrapped up in the world around us excited! Someone once said - the gospel is more 'caught' than 'taught'. So is anybody going to 'catch it' from us?

I heard a guy a short while back telling that where he usually preaches one person a week was getting saved. You know where that is? To Muslims in a predominately Muslim country! People who - in accepting Jesus Christ died for them - freely pardoning them - could well have been putting themselves in danger. But they'd caught the vision of what it means to be saved by grace in a culture predominately driven by a works based religion!

So how do we recapture the vision of this verse - that 'it is by grace we have been saved, through faith - and this not from ourselves, it is the gift of God'?

Well we can start with prayer. We can start with confessing to God that we've lost the vision of the greatness of His salvation - both for ourselves and for those going to hell around us. And we can ask Him to (using the words of an old hymn) 'Give us a sight oh Saviour of your wonderful love for us - the love that brought you down to earth, to die on Calvary. Help us to understand it. Help us to take it in. What it meant for you - the Holy One - to bear away my sin.'

We can also listen with our hearts open to those who teach the truth about what God has done for us - not just from a platform - but through the written page (book as well as Bible) and tape or CD. Any way that God can speak to us. And we can also share the truth that saved us with someone else. That's a guaranteed way of focussing the reality of the truth in our own lives.

This Summer I was on a Christian holiday. In one of the talks a guy took out his handkerchief and laid it out over the front of the lectern. He then said (using the handkerchief to represent Jesus) that Jesus Christ wiped up all our mucky sin and then He carried it all to the cross to take it's punishment in Himself for yourself. That picture may do nothing for you - but it moved me to see again the greatness of grace to sinful me.
So what's going to work for you - to move you to see - again - or for the first time - the greatness of the fact that - "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God."

Granville Richards