Grace at Work

Introduction

It seems to be an inevitable fact of life that if something existed when you were born, you just take it for granted. You don’t give as much thought to how it works and why it’s there, or most likely don’t appreciate it as much as those who lived without it. Take for example the internet. Those of us with a little gray hair or less hair on our heads can easily remember a time without the internet, and we can remember what it was like as it was born and came into existence in our life. The younger among us have always lived with it and don’t know what that was like, and maybe don’t appreciate it as much as those of us who were older. Those who can remember that awkward sound of connecting or trying to connect to the internet and hoping that nobody else picked up the phone while you were trying to sign on, and cannot relate to the amazement of you staring in front of that computer screen and saying, You mean that those people in this chat room are on the other side of the country and we’re talking live?

And that whooshing sound, you mean they’ll get that mail right now, and that they can respond right back to me, and I’ll get it right now. That I don’t have to put a stamp and take it to the post office. You remember all of that? Just the amazement of how quickly those things moved, and how younger people, and if we’re honest, even older people now just take it for granted that that’s the way it works, and that’s the way it is, and we never stop to really even think about it. And I would venture to say that most in this audience are probably like me, they don’t really even understand it now, how it works, but we just know that it does. That can be true of spiritual and biblical things.

If you’ve been a Christian for a long time, and maybe especially if your parents were Christians and always brought you to church, there are probably certain spiritual realities that you just take for granted, and maybe don’t give a whole lot of thought to. And fail to recognize that there’s a whole world of people out there who don’t know what you know, and who aren’t experiencing what you experience and may not understand it the way you understand it. And again, if we’re honest, even those of us who are seasoned Christians and think of ourselves as good Bible scholars, we may not fully understand it. But we just accept that it is what it is. The text that our brother read for us in our Bible reading this morning is going to be the text of our lesson in Ephesians chapter 2.

And I want to talk about grace this morning, because I think grace is one of those subjects. It’s a subject that we take for granted as Christians, but maybe one that we have a difficulty completely understanding how it works. And I think we certainly know and recognize that the world at large, even including a lot of the religious world, has difficulty understanding how it works, and how it can be reconciled with things that they see to be contradictions in Scripture. And so let’s talk about this idea of grace and see how it reconciles with faith and as well as works of obedience or conditions that we must meet. Again, we know that much of the religious world struggles with that concept of how grace corresponds with faith.

And certainly how grace and faith corresponds with obedience or conditions that might be placed upon man’s salvation. How can those be reconciled? You and I may have accepted that they are reconcilable, but not really, kind of like the internet, not really knowing how it works, just accept that it does work. So let’s see if we can shed some light on that subject, or more correctly, see if the scriptures can shed some light. Have you turned with me there to Ephesians chapter 2? Let’s reread the text this morning and comment it on it as we go along. Ephesians chapter 2. Let’s pick up in the reading in verse 4. But before we do that, let’s think about what the first three verses have said. The first three verses of Ephesians 2 were all bad news.

I’m reading from the New King James, and in verse 1 it says, and you, and then in italics it says, He made alive. It being an italic means that it’s not there in the original. And I think it’s best to just leave it out if it wasn’t there in the original, because to me it takes away from the punch, if you will, of this text. And so let’s reread that, leaving out those italicized words that aren’t there in the original. The New King James says, and you who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

Again, if we leave out those italicized words, all of that is bad news. It speaks of our condition outside of and before Christ. We were dead. We were powerless, what the word dead means in this context. We were unable to affect that condition, to change our spiritual realm in any way. But two of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture follow that despair and despondent condition when he says in verse 4, but God, you were dead. You were powerless. There was nothing you could do but God. God could do something. God was not dead. God was not powerless to change and to affect that condition. But God, who is rich in mercy. Because of his great love in which he loved us. Let’s talk about that God who is rich.

He would go on to say in verse 7, his exceeding riches. If you need something, it makes sense to go to somebody who has that something. And maybe it makes greater sense to go to somebody who has that something in excess.

God rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us. Keep reading in verse 5. Even he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses. And then and only then, despite the italicized words that the translators may have added in verse 1, then and only then does it say in verse 5, when we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive. Because of his great riches, because of his love for us in our unlovable condition is implied there, would be stated explicitly in the book of Romans. But in our unlovable condition, he loved us and he made us alive. We could not, but he could. But God made us alive. And then he adds the parenthetical statement by grace you have been saved.

1. God’s Grace Is Key

There’s the topic of our lesson this morning. We were saved by grace. And in fact, that’s our first point. God’s grace is key. Without God’s grace, there’s no sense to continue the sentence. There’s no point to talk about anything else. God’s grace. By grace you have been saved. You’ve heard grace defined. It just simply means a kindness shown, a gift given. In this situation, though it’s not inherent in the definition of the word, but in this scenario, it also means that it was an unmerited or an unearned gift. We were powerless. We had nothing to earn that gift, that kindness, but it was shown to us anyway. Rich in his mercy, God loved us, and by grace you have been saved. We’ll pause here to make a side point.

God’s grace is key to our salvation. It’s key to our spiritual, physical, everything about our existence. But it’s also key in our lives and our relationship to others. God did not send his grace to us in the form of a bucket, where he accept expects us to accept that grace and just store it up and keep it for myself, as the song says that’s in our song book, let us be channels of blessing. God intended us to receive that grace, but also to show grace to others, even others who don’t deserve it. And so this grace is key to our salvation. He’ll go on to say, keep reading there in Ephesians 2, verse 6 now, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

There’s the life, raised us up. We were dead, but he made us alive. How did he make us alive?

2. Faith Is Our Response to God’s Grace

Verse 7, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For he emphasizes again, for by grace you have been saved through faith. Now here comes the difficulty for some argue and reason, if it’s a gift, then by default, I need to be, in fact, have to be absolutely passive. And that just doesn’t fit this verse. It doesn’t fit all of Scripture. And it really doesn’t fit with really the whole concept of gifts and kindness. The fact that I, and you, by the way, are undeserving and can do nothing to earn or even deserve our salvation, in no way nullifies the concept that there’s still something that I must do in response to God’s grace. By grace, you have been saved through faith.

And so faith, Paul says, is our response to God’s grace. Now, those of our religious friends and neighbors who think we are to be completely passive in this relationship with God, get around this verse by saying that Paul will go on to say that faith is a gift of God. Keep reading. For by grace, verse 8 again, you’ve been saved through faith and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Some of our religious friends think that faith is the gift. In other words, faith isn’t something you have in response to God. Faith isn’t something that’s generated from your understanding of nature of scripture, that you believe in God now as a response to Him. They believe that what this is saying is faith is something God gives you.

You have no control, you have no power, no conditions, nothing you can do. Not even faith is yours because God will give you the faith. There’s two problems with that, two big problems with that. Number one is grammatically, it doesn’t fit this context. The word faith there in Ephesians 2 and in verse 8 is feminine. And the word gift is neuter. In the Greek language, like many languages, gender matters when we’re attaching verbs to nouns and adjectives to nouns and adverbs to verbs. And so in the Greek language, and so these two words, gift and faith, are grammatically incompatible. It cannot refer back to faith. Just grammatically, that doesn’t work. But also scripturally, that just doesn’t work. I believe that any honest reader of the New Testament will read through the New Testament and the passages about faith, that without faith it’s impossible to be pleasing to God, a Hebrews 11 and verse 6.

You must believe that I am He, Jesus would say to His disciples. I believe any honest reader of the New Testament has to come away with the conclusion that faith is something we do in response to God. But again, an honest reader will still come away with the conclusion. That doesn’t mean I’ve earned my salvation by believing in God. But it is my response. It’s something I do in response to God’s revelation. And so faith is my response. Paul goes on in verse 9 of our text and say, not of works, lest anyone should boast. There are no works, there is no faith, even that I can come up with, that I can have in my life that will earn this gift. It’s still a gift.

3. Grace, Faith, and Obedience Are Completely Reconcilable

But there comes the rub, again, in many people’s minds of reconcile. How can it be a gift? If there’s something I must do in order to get the gift. Doesn’t that make it wages and earning rather than gift and grace and giving? Let’s see if we can illustrate it with a biblical story. Let’s start this story in the New Testament, although it’s an old testament story. Hold your finger there in Ephesians 2, and let’s look in Hebrews chapter 11. And what we’re going to see in this story is that grace, faith, and obedience are completely reconcilable. The story is about the destruction of the city of Jericho. Do you remember that story in the Old Testament? The children of Israel finally, finally believed in God and crossed over the Jordan River, went into the promised land, and they were to destroy the city of Jericho.

And the particular, unusual way in which that city and the walls around that city were destroyed are a favorite story of many from the Old Testament. But let’s look at what Hebrews 11 says before we go back to Joshua 6. Hebrews 11, and let’s go all the way down to verse 30 of Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11, verse 30 repeats the off-repeated phrase of this chapter by saying, by faith. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled seven days. And so if this were a Bible class, I would ask you the most obvious, easiest question is what caused the walls of Jericho to fall down, according to Hebrews 11, verse 30. Faith, by faith. By faith the walls fell down. That’s what the text says.

By faith. It was their faith that caused the walls of Jericho to fall. Is that all of the story? Is that everything? Was it just their faith that did it? Did they do it? Well, to answer that question that you already know the answer to, let’s go back to Joshua chapter 6, where that story takes place. Joshua has accepted the mantle of leadership after the death of Moses, and Joshua is now their commander of their army. He is now their mediator, for lack of a better word, in the place of Moses. And it says in Joshua chapter 6, verse 1, now Jericho was securely shut up because of the children of Israel. None went out, and none came in. You know that in ancient times the great defense of these cities, these territories were walls.

They had heard that the children of Israel were coming. They had heard of what had happened in Egypt many years before. And so they shut up the city. They locked the doors, set the alarm, and they were ready to defend themselves because of the children of Israel coming in. But it says, verse 2, and Lord said to Joshua, see, I have given Jericho into your hand, its king and the mighty men of valor. Again, in a Bible class setting, I would say, according to Joshua 6, verse 2. How did they get the city of Jericho? Someone would correctly answer, well, God gave it to them. That’s a gift, isn’t it? God gave it to them. And someone else would say, now wait a minute. Are you saying I was wrong in Hebrews 11, verse 30 when it said, by faith?

No. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down. But God says, I’ve given it to you. We don’t have any trouble reconciling those two, do we? And so now God says, Joshua, I’ve given you the city. And now something, if we’re not careful, something strange to our ears happens, beginning in verse 3. After God says, I’ve given it to you, he says, you shall march around the city, all the men of war, and you shall go around the city once. This you shall do six days. And then he gives the more specific instructions of what they’re to do, how they’re to go around it for six days, what they’re to do special and different on the seventh day. And if you were that type of person in Joshua’s day, you might say, Now, wait a minute, I don’t mean to be picky, and I don’t want to be the troublemaker here, but why are you giving us all these instructions if God’s given it to us?

To which Joshua would probably say, Won’t you be quiet and do what you’re told? But more particularly would say, Yes, God has given it to us, but he still wants us to do something. He’s still giving you instructions. You see how the fact that God says, I’ve given you the city, now here’s what you do, doesn’t erase the fact that it was still given to them. And doesn’t erase the statement in Hebrews 11, verse 30, that it was by faith. So he gives them those instructions. They carry out the instructions, they walk around that city wall six days. The seventh day, they walk around that city and they break those pictures and they blow those trumpets, and I haven’t researched this, but the internet makes stuff up, so I’ll make stuff up.

Maybe this is where the saying, it’s all over, but the shouting comes from. Because they’ve marched around it, they’ve blown the trumpets, and the only thing they need to do is shout. It’s all over but the shouting. And when they shout, the walls fall down. Skip ahead to verse 16. And the seventh time, this is Joshua 6, verse 16, and the seventh time it was so, when the priest blew the trumpets, that Joshua said to the people, shout. Shout, for the Lord has given you the city. Now that you’ve done everything that God’s asked you to do, shout, because God’s given you the city. Now the city shall be doomed, verse 17, by the Lord to destruction, and all who are in it. Only Rahab, the harlot, shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that were sent.

And you by all means keep yourselves from the accursed things, lest you become accursed when you take of the accursed things and make the camp of Israel accursed and trouble it. But all the silver and gold and vessels of bronze and iron and consecrated to the Lord shall come into the treasury of the Lord. So the people shouted when the priest blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, they shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. Now wait a minute. They took the city.

But that it was by faith. And they had to do what God told them to do in order to receive the gift. Those three things mesh perfectly in this story grace, gift, faith, and obedience. One does not cancel out the other. God gave them the city. There’s no right thinking Israelite who would go into that city after the walls had fallen down and were doing what God had told them to do, collecting those treasures. And there’s no right thinking Israelite who would pause and say, I’m a military genius. Look what I did. I want all y’all to pause. This was me. I did this. It was my marching. I’m heavy footed, and it was my marching that did it. I screamed louder than the rest of you.

It was my shouting that brought the. Nobody in their right mind would have made that argument, would they? Every one of those Israelites would have said, God has given us this city. But every one of the right thinking Israelites would also say, but we needed to do what God told us to do. Even though we didn’t understand how that in any way would make a wall fall down.

Conclusion

Is it a gift? Paul says it was. By grace you have been saved. Does faith play a role? Scripture says it does. By grace you’ve been saved through faith. Not of works, lest you should boast. No one who comes through and is now saved in the status before God can say, that’s what I did. But every right thinking Christian who comes to God has to say, but I needed to do what God told me to do. I’ve said this before, and it bears repeating, though, in this context. I believe these three things do not conflict at all. They can easily be reconciled in Scripture and in our minds. Grace, faith, and obedience. But it also needs to be said that God didn’t call us to be theologians.

He called us to be disciples. And sometimes I just have to accept that the internet works. I don’t know how. But I don’t have to understand in order to benefit from it. And I don’t have to understand how God works, and how grace doesn’t cancel out faith, and how faith doesn’t cancel out obedience. I think I can understand it. I think this story illustrates how it can be reconciled and understood. But I can just accept it and do what God tells me to do. If God tells me to march around a city, I’m going to march around a city, even though I don’t understand how that’s going to bring the walls down at all. If God tells me to be baptized in water for the remission of my sins, I think I’ll do it.

Even if I don’t understand how that washes away a single sin. Grace by faith. And the scripture will tell us it’s an obedient faith. Would you obey your faith this morning? Would you accept the grace of God? Would you march around that city of sin and have it destroyed in your life? Would you render obedience to the gospel this morning? Would you be saved by grace through a faith that obeys Jesus Christ this morning? Can we help you in that as together we stand and as we sing?