But God

0:16Thank you for listening to the Sermon Audio Podcast for Crossroads Bible Church in Rockdale, Texas. Crossroads Bible Church is a Reformed Confessional Baptist Church that meets every Lord's Day at 10 a.m. for Bible study and 11 a.m. for corporate worship. For more information about our church and for directions, you can find us online at www.crbcrockdale.org. Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Ephesians. Chapter 2. We're going to cover verses 4 to 7. We have made it through our time last week, being dead in sin. And this morning, by the grace of God, we will be alive in Christ. My thesis or my objective this morning is to show you that in the ordering of the story of our lives, and in the expression of his loving kindness, we can see that there is none other but God. In the ordering of the story of our lives, and in the expression of his loving kindness, we see that there is none other but God. One of the great things about the months of November and December, among many things, is the Hallmark Christmas movies. I do say that jokingly, although there are some good ones, a few. The setting up or the preparation of the conflict, the conflict itself, and the resolution of the conflict. Anyone who's ever written stories or movies or books will tell you that is the way you write and tell a good story. And you can't have a good story unless it's framed in that way. There's a logical reason why this is the case. And it can only be answered with a biblical worldview. That story is built into the fabric of creation. It's our story. That's the only way to write a good story because that's the way that God made the world. That's how He ordered creation. I'm not going to labor this morning the reasons why God wrote the story this way and not some other way. But the undeniable reality that we see playing out in all of our lives and throughout the pages of Scripture is that this incredible story of redemption that began in glory and then was thrust into an insurmountable conflict and then was resolved by the single greatest act of love, sacrifice, and mercy ever shown. That is the story. And we see this story play out over the course of history, and we see that exact story play out in our individual lives. Often we see that story play out even in a day for us. Some measure of conflict, and then a gracious redemption or resolution. And again, we can debate the reasons why, but it can't be denied that it is both an experienced reality for us and it is the testimony of Holy Scripture. Last week, then, we hit the peak conflict. The fullness of our sin was exposed in both our actions and our nature, leaving us without excuse. I hope you left last week, although I gave you that light at the end, that you left without hope. And Paul presses that conflict like all good storytellers, so that things keep looking worse and worse for us. To review last week, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. Dead. That's bad, right? You were following the father of lies. You had become a murderer and a liar just like him. That's really, really bad. Not only will your actions evil, but your mind was warped. All of your thoughts and intentions are bent towards evil. That's getting even worse. You were a child of wrath. You were set for judgment and destruction with absolutely no hope of ever coming out of that helpless state you were in. You were dead. You were in the grave. We can cue the sad music, we can fade the screen to black. Just go home. It's over, right? That's not the end, though. Praise and thanks be to God that that's not the end of his story. Nor is it the end of yours. This morning the conflict is resolved. The sacrifice of mercy and love breaks through the conflict. And I hope then, drawing from all those movies you've seen, all those stories that you've read, you have a real sense of the kind of tension that is we're dealing with here. The real tension that exists in the text. Maybe that's because you don't know the real story that all other stories are reaching for. It's only when we weep over our conflict, over the state of our sin, and reach that point of despair, then we find the great resolution. So we will seek that resolution this morning. Stand with me as we read, starting in verse 4 of chapter 2. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses and sins made us alive together with Christ, by grace, you have been saved. And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. This is the word of the Lord. We ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. Perhaps the best two words in the Bible. Amen. You want the quickest and easiest way to articulate the gospel? But God. You were lost and hopeless, but God. That we would know this morning that because God moved, because God acted on our behalf, because God was rich in mercy and love, we are sitting here with the hope and with the future. We can worship him and hear from him this morning because in his story he acted and saved us. I wanted to begin then by defining the word mercy. But God being rich in mercy. And I want to do this so that you fully understand the motivation behind the action of God. Mercy, according to various dictionaries, is the showing of compassion or restraint in punishment. The showing of compassion or restraint and punishment when one has the power and the authority and the justification to enact that punishment, but it is restrained. That is mercy. Growing up playing baseball, we had the mercy rule. Y'all know the mercy rule in Little League? If you were ahead of the other team by more than 10 runs in the fourth inning or something like that, they called the game, right? Mercy. This was just a show of mercy to an inferior opponent, whom you had every right to and certainly the power to pummel them, but restraint was shown. Mercy was given. And in that sense, that was externally imposed mercy through a rule, but our God is rich in self-imposed restraint. If you read the Old Testament with any sort of objectivity, you will see quite plainly that while God does punish very severely at times those sins and disobediences of man, he also shows a great deal of mercy, restraint in dealing with the stubbornness of his people. Certainly we can see how often he could have absolutely pummeled and punished to the fullest extent of his justice and had every right to do that. But God was rich in mercy, and he restrained his justice, or his judgment, rather. So ingrained in the character and nature of God is this quality or this attribute of mercy. It is him. He has every right to crush us back into dust and to punish us all eternally in the fires of hell, but our God is a merciful God. If you could spend some time meditating on that, the reality of God being a merciful God, you would conclude that there is nothing biological in us, nor is there any evolutionary advantage to us as humans to be merciful. Right? And who restrains himself. God that is not just a little merciful, or is acting out of some obligation or some universal rule, but our God is by nature the essence and the source of mercy. And he is rich in it. Mercy is overflowing in him.

14:20It's who he is.

14:26He desires not to pummel and to crush and to destroy, but to display restraint, compassion, to be merciful. Ezekiel 33, verse 10. And you, Son of Man, say to the house of Israel, Thus have you said, Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live? Say to them, the word of the Lord, as I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for you, for why will you die, O house of Israel? This is the expression of a God who is rich in mercy. We also need to need to consider this morning from where does this mercy come? Apart from it being just who God is, being a merciful God, is there a source from which this mercy flows? There is. Read verse four in your text. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us. This is where we begin to feel overwhelmed by the goodness of God. He is merciful to us. He is merciful to us. And certainly that is enough to bring us eternal gratitude. And it is. But he is merciful again, not out of some obligation, but he is merciful because he loves us.

16:32Can you even fathom being loved by God? Can you?

16:41It warms my heart and gives me great joy and peace, unexplainably so, that my wife and my kids love me. I am forever grateful that you all love me. At least most of you do.

17:00But that God loves me. And not just with a little love, but our text says with a great love.

17:13And it is from that great love, which is totally undeserved and in no way merited, that our God shows mercy towards us. He restrains himself from punishing us to the full extent that our sin deserves. Why? Because he loves us. Surely God would be better off if he loved anyone else but me. Surely God would be better off if he loved anyone else but me. I have nothing to offer him. I continually fail him. I've hardly learned any lesson in my life. I'm least among all men. God, why would you love me? But God. For reasons we won't know this side of heaven, our good and gracious God, who is rich in mercy, set his affections upon you. And because he loved you, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, he made you alive together with Christ. This is further completely overwhelming to me that I, that you, would be mentioned in the same sentence with Christ. Look at it again. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. What business does any of us have to be mentioned with Christ? Much less to say to be made alive together with him. That is to say that the same loving God, and the same love that sent Christ, the same love that brought Christ from the grave, is the same love that He awakened you with. The same God and the same affections that was pleased with the perfect obedience of Christ is pleased to show you mercy. That means something that he loves us. I think every married man in this room can relate to that feeling when uh you met your wife, future wife, and there came that day when her returned affection was expressed to you. You remember that day? You sat in disbelief that this incredible woman actually loved me. I ask you to dig deep in the past and find that all. Find that wonder and apply it to our good and gracious God, who tells us that while we were dead in sins, He loved us with a great love. And what does that reality do to us today? What does that reality do, the reflection of that? What sort of person were you after that expression of love from your wife, man? How did that change you? Did you spend a little more time fixing your hair? Did you walk a little straighter? Did you try a little harder? Did you smile a little more? What sort of person ought we to be that the God of the universe loves us? Has set his affections upon us, has shown mercy to us in Christ, and that he sent his beloved son to die for us when we were still dead in sin.

21:44What does that truth do to us?

21:53We will continue though with that section that is uh bracketed. Within those indashes, by grace, you have been saved. We are saved by grace. And it gets even better than being loved by God. By grace you have been saved. If but God, then, are the two best words in the Bible. In many ways, they summarize the gospel, right? The best six words in the Bible are by grace you have been saved. Because that is the gospel. Certainly there is a bit more to it than that, but that's the good news. And it's good news because by grace you have been saved. That conflict, then, that I mentioned as we began, that tension that is so clearly evident in all of our lives, those trials that we go through that give depth and meaning and make our stories unique and interesting, those have been purposed because by grace you have been saved. Consider a life of conflict without the grace of God. Consider a life of conflict without the grace of God, that is, without God at all. Consider sufferings, heartaches, trials, pain, but no grace. There's nothing good there. There's no hope for anything or anyone. We all just live and die, and the universe moves on without us. Without by grace, you have been saved. The world is forever walking in the first three verses of chapter two that we covered last week. Never getting to verses four to seven. And the reason, as we mentioned last week, that Paul can go strong on, go so strong on those verses one to three that we talked about last week, about the despairing state of our sin is because that's not how it ended. I said this last week, and I had to go back and look it and make sure I quoted this correctly. This is what I said last week, end quote. And in this wild and unimaginable redemption, the greater the sin, the greater the grace. And I think what I meant by that in light of our text this morning is this. And I want to put a microscope on this idea of story again. I've mentioned this a few times, especially those stories where things keep getting worse and worse for the characters. You've read these kind of stories. And I think that's why I like Charles Dickens' David Copperfield so much. It's one of those books where a number of the characters, it just keeps getting worse for them. Major blow after major blow. And just when you think things are going to get better, things get worse. Every page I'm sat crying, and if I was bleeding, I'd be bleeding with the characters, waiting for their redemption. And then that beautiful redemption comes, that light shines, all the conflict is resolved, and you close that story thinking, what a story. Another example is particularly relevant for our conversation, congregation and conversation, I suppose. Every mother labors painfully through months of carrying a child, right? Only to then experience that pain being ratcheted up higher and higher. When that mother, though, is holding her new baby, is there anyone who wouldn't say they'd do it all over again? And if experiencing that precious life at the end, if that pain hurt ten times worse, they would still do it. Happily so. Because the greater the pain, the sweeter the grace. That's perhaps what Paul was getting at in Romans 5, verse 20. Romans 5, verse 20. Now the law came to increase the trespass, but were sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. The law given by God, both originally in Adam, right? For as in one by one man disobedience, the many were made sinners, and then further pressed on us through Moses, it carried with it this ultimate purpose that though sin reigned in death, grace would reign all the more through the righteousness of Christ, leading to eternal life. We can shake our fists at God, that he made labor pains so bad, and maybe we do. Or we can thank him for the grace of new life. We can shake our fist at him, that through the fall and the law he has increased our trespasses, or we can fall before him and thank him that though sin abounded, his grace is so much sweeter. By grace you have been saved. If you know the gospel of John, you should be thinking, hopefully, I think I've heard some of that before. In fact, our Lord Jesus said those very same things long before I did. This is John 16, quote. Is this what talking to the Pharisees? Is this what you're asking? You are asking yourselves what I meant by, actually, in this instance, sorry, he's talking to his disciples who are confused about what he's saying, but he quote, is this what you're asking yourselves what I meant by saying, a little while and you will not see me? And again, a little while and you will see me. Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. Our Lord continues. For the joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again. And your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask in my Father's name, he will give to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full. What is it there that our Lord is implying that we should ask for and it will surely be given? What is it? In context, I can't imagine that it's anything else, but that by His grace we should know more and more the unspeakable joy that awaits us at the end of the story. So that we may endure the labor pains awaiting the final redemption of our body and our soul. He tells us in such plain and clear language, you will see me again. That is true. He also says, You are going to be sorrowful, but that your sorrow will be transformed into everlasting joy. Again, take the joy and relief of holding that precious child after labor and multiply it by eternity. You haven't even begun to comprehend what awaits us. By grace you have been saved. Further, I would add no one would read a story, a story of sweet and beautiful redemption, that that conflict that they feel has finally been resolved. And no one would ever say at the end of that, as wonderful as that story was, it would have been better without all of the drama, right? Who looks back in a story and thinks, it would have been so much better if nothing really happened? If their life was just perfect, they didn't have any trials or difficulties, if everyone, all the characters just did nothing but sit around all day in perfect happiness and then the story was over. That's not a good story. So not only does death make grace possible, for without death there can be no grace, but then though death has fallen upon us, grace makes life worth living. You could say death and the fall give life drama and intrigue, and make possible the grace that makes it worth living. Because of grace, life is worth living, and it's worth living well. I can further conclude that such is the overarching theme and testimony of Scripture because Paul anticipates your objections to that exact argument. And if you are objecting to what I just said in your mind, Paul anticipated your objections, and he answered them already for you. Romans 6, verse 1. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into his death, in the order that just as Christ has been raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Grace does not make sin good, but it most certainly redeems our stories. And it makes our stories, our lives, beautiful and wonderful, and worth living. So then we have seen his mercy, his love. We have seen how amazing his grace is in saving us. And then finally, as we close, we'll turn our attention to his kindness on display. His kindness on display. I will wrap it up. By grace you have been saved and raised us up and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Have you ever thought about what it means to be a kind person? Have you? I think we all want to be kind people, right? Perhaps just my opinion, but I do contend that this is the correct opinion, if not objectively true, that kindness is less about being friendly, although that is a part of it, but much more about being considerate. I'll define considerate. A considerate person is one who is carefully thoughtful of others and acts based on that thoughtful consideration. A friendly person will smile, chat with you, and generally be a nice and pleasant person. That's a friendly person. But a kind person that will consider you, think about you, and then will act from that consideration. To be called friendly, then is a good thing. Certainly we want to be friendly, but to be called kind is something wholly different. Something we should all strive for. I've heard many people say this, and perhaps you have to. Would someone be kind if they only did the things for people when they asked for them? Is that kind? Would someone be kind if they only acted in response to things or only moved out of some obligation? That's not kindness. Because kindness requires thoughtful consideration. It's almost too much to even speak of these words, but in the coming ages, our text says that is now and for the rest of eternity, out of the overflow of the immeasurable riches of his grace, the triune God is going to be kind to us. In his thoughtfulness of us, he is going to know what we need. He is going to know when we need it. And even when we don't ask for it, and even when we don't expect it, and certainly when we don't deserve it, he is going to bless us and care for us and be gentle to us and protect us. That's kindness. It's quite enough that we have a God who saves us, but to have a God who is kind to us, that seems too much. Titus 3, for we ourselves are once foolish, disobedient and led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. Not only does his kindness and his goodness display themselves so clearly in our salvation, which is what Titus mentioned there, but as Paul stresses here in our text this morning, that by the grace of God we have been raised up and seated with Christ in the heavenly places so that for the rest of time we will never stop seeing how good and kind He is. They knew what you needed exactly when they needed it, and they were thoughtful, and they just showed up. What was your reaction if you ever had that happen to you? Oh, this is too much. You done that? That is our reaction to the reality that we feel we're not worthy of such kindness and thoughtfulness. And we aren't. But that is what makes grace so marvelous. Who can show endless compassion to an unworthy sinner, saving them from their sins while they are still in their sins, and seating them in the heavenly places so that for the rest of time he may show them the depths of his riches and of his loving kindness and grace. Who can be that kind? None but God. It is there. The depth of our sin that has caused our conflict was there since the beginning of creation, since our conception. That's what we talked about. Last week you could say that sin and conflict for all of us was and is totally unavoidable. And there are only two ways that you can look at that reality. You can get angry at God, that his story is this way that it is. You can curse him, you can wish your life away, or you can thank him and worship him that in his grace he has redeemed your story. And in that ways he can only, in ways that only he can, he crushes you in your sin, that you may know that salvation is in none but God. He peels from you all those notions of independence, that you may know that provision is in none but God. In this way he reveals the true essence of mercy, that you may know that there is loving kindness in none but God. He empties himself and he pours himself out as a drink offering, so that you may know that there is sacrifice in none but God. He tells you how the story ends, so that you may endure and know that there is joy in none but God. He has done everything, including the unexpected ordering of our story and our lives, so that we may know beyond all doubt that there is none other but God. And to that we say amen. For all that you have done for us, Lord. We thank you for the redemption of this story, Lord. It would be a dreadful story about God. We thank you for the beauty that you show in redeeming us, for the loving kindness that you have shown towards us in Christ, Lord, that you have exalted us, Lord, that even seems like I shouldn't be able to say that, but you have, Lord, in Christ given us new life. Given us a hope and a future. Told us the end of the story, so that in joy we may endure even the trials and the sorrows that we go through, Lord. So we thank you for that. We pray and ask, Lord, that we would just look to you in all things. We would trust you in all things, that we would see the beauty and the awe and the wonder in this story that you are writing for us. May we trust and depend solely upon you. We love you, Lord. Ask all these things in the name of Jesus.