2 from your softback teminal. So everybody find a softback
teminal and we'll start with number 102. Let's all stand together. We bless the name of our great
God for His electing love. Who has predestined everything
to save the ones He loves. We bless the name of Jesus Christ,
our Savior and our King, who died the chosen race to save
and free salvation bring. Hey. We bless the Holy Spirit
too, who seals the covenant grace, to all the chosen, ransomed ones,
by his effectual grace. We bless the holy triune God,
the sacred three in one. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
for all that you have done. electing love, redeeming blood,
and mighty saving grace, we praise to you. our sovereign God, and
joy to sing your praise. Please be seated. Good morning. We're going to
be looking at Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10 this morning. for our Bible study. What about
works? What about works? That's the
title of this Bible study. I hope the Lord will give us
some clarity on this subject. I want us to bow together for
prayer. Chris Weishi, it's so good to
have you here with us this morning, brother. We're very, very happy
you're here. And today is Jimmy Toll's last
regular Sunday to be with us. Sarah, who he's going to West
Virginia to see, has told me that they would be back on a
regular basis. So, Jimmy, we're going to miss
you, brother. We're so happy for you and for
Sarah. Jimmy starts a new job in Charleston,
West Virginia on the 6th of July. So today he'll be here Wednesday
night and then be moving up there. Let's pray together. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
we ask that you would bless your people with your Holy Spirit. We pray that you would enlighten
the eyes of our understanding. We pray that you would cause
your word to be alive, effectual, sharper than any two-edged sword,
cutting asunder and dividing the thoughts and intents of our
hearts, and that you would reveal to us the glory of thy dear Son,
and cause us, Lord, to find all our hope and all our salvation
in him. Reveal to us the glory of his
person, the accomplishments of his work, and cause us to flee
to him, to come to him, to look to him, to rest in him. We thank you for Jimmy and we
ask Lord your blessings on him as he moves to West Virginia
and becomes a part of the church at Cottageville and pray your
blessings on his relationship with Sarah and Lord that you
would just be pleased to grow them together in your grace and
use him in that fellowship. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. As you know, last February, Mike
Walker preached here and Mike pastors the church in Cottageville,
West Virginia, that's where Jimmy will be attending services. You have your Bibles open to
Ephesians chapter 2. You've heard me say before and
I'll say it again, God's people don't really need to be told
what to do. They need the power to do it.
They know right from wrong. And they loathe their sin. We don't advocate sin. We don't
encourage it. We don't excuse it. We don't
justify it or rationalize it. But the reality of it is there
in our lives, in our hearts. And when Paul said that his conversion
in 1 Timothy chapter 1 was a pattern for all who come to Christ. We saw Wednesday night that the
result of his salvation, the result of his salvation was that
he became the chief of all sinners. So we have this problem in our
hearts, this problem of sin, this problem of unbelief. And
we sincerely desire that the Lord will restrain it from breaking
out into bad behavior. The truth is that sin is much
deeper than just a behavioral problem. When Paul said, the chief of all sinners. He
did not say, well, I know I'm really not, but it feels like
I am. That's not what he said. He said,
I am the chief of all sinners. God's pleased to make you a sinner
and reveal to you the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
more you grow in his grace, the more you see of him, the more
of a sinner you become. You don't become a sinner until
the Lord saves you. Sinners and saints are the same
people. They're the same people. The one thing I don't want to
do is I don't want to put God's children under the law in order
to try to curb their behavior or solve their sin problem. It doesn't work. To the contrary,
it's counterproductive. It's counterproductive for the
strength of sin the scripture says is the law. It only inspires
more sin. And putting someone under the
law in order to try to change their behavior is just like,
it's just like when you drive down the interstate on a trip
and you're breaking the speed limit and you see in the distance
a police officer parked on the side of the road. And what do
you do immediately? Immediately you take your foot
off the gas and you slow down to the speed limit and as soon
as you look in your rearview mirror and he's out of sight,
you are back to your lawless ways. Isn't that true? Isn't
that true? I'm not interested in trying
to get you to respond to the threat of the law. It doesn't
work. It might have a temporary effect
in your outward behavior, but in the long run, it just makes
you more lawless. Just makes you more lawless. So what about this issue of sin? What about all the admonitions
that we have in the scriptures to obey God and to do things
that would be honoring to him? All the commands of scripture,
all the commands of scripture must be met with faith. But listen to this statement,
and I hope that in the next 30 minutes or so, I'll be able to
explain it well enough to where you'll find great comfort in
it. Works, works do not make faith
good. Faith makes works good. Don't look to your works in order
to try to Get assurance of your salvation. Don't look to your
behavior in order to try to figure out whether or not you have faith.
Yes, Ephesians 2 chapter 10 does speak of us being God's workmanship
created in Christ Jesus unto good works which he hath before
ordained that we should walk in them. How do believers walk? Not by sight, we walk by faith. So all the admonitions of scripture
to the child of God are met with faith. In other words, when the
Lord says, this is husbands love your wives as Christ loved the
church and gave himself for it, what is our response to that?
What is our response to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and
thou shalt be saved? What is our response to love
the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your mind,
and all of your soul? What is our response to these admonitions
of scriptures? Here's our response. Lord, what
you command, you must provide. When I look at these things,
Lord, I realize that I'm a sinner unable to do these things. And
so the admonitions of Scripture are met with faith. It is faith
that makes works good. It is not works that make faith
good. Faith is the evidence of our
salvation. And in the end of the day, it's the only evidence
we have. Now, one of the passages of scripture that the Armenians
love to use and the lawmongers love to use is in James, where
the Lord says, faith without works is dead. Show me your faith
without your works and I'll show you my faith with my works. How
oftentimes I've heard that quoted by the one who wants to find
comfort in their works. There's a little slip of paper
in your bulletin. A little white piece of paper
with some numbers on it. You see it? Everybody have a
copy of that? I showed this to my wife and
she said, I don't get it. And I showed it to the men in
the study this morning and they said, I don't get it. I hope that the Lord will enable
us to understand this. Faith, according to the gospel
of God's free grace, grace, faith equals salvation plus works. Now the danger is that you use
works to get assurance of salvation, and in doing so, you move that
number one to the other side of the equation. Four plus one
doesn't equal three. That's a works gospel. And the
scripture speaks clearly against it. The third equation is what James
was writing against. James was not saying that our
works prove our salvation. James was writing against antinomianism. He was writing against Gnosticism. He was writing against those
who would use the gospel as a license for indulging themselves in whatever
behavioral things their flesh craved. They used it as a cloak. The gospel of God's grace, here's
the thing about it. If you haven't been accused of
antinomianism, you haven't preached the gospel. And the natural man
will take the things that he hears about the sovereignty of
God in salvation, and without the spirit of God, he will become
a fatalist. And he'll conclude from the truths
of the gospel that You know, this gives me license, approval,
justification for sinning. And that's what James is right
against. James is exposing the error of
that. He's exposing the error of antinomianism. He's exposing the error of gnosticism. He's exposing the error of those
who would say that, you know, that that's just, That's just
the freedom that I have. Paul speaks of that when he says
in Romans, where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. What do we need for sin? We don't
need the law, we need more grace. Where sin abounds, grace does
much more abound. And in the next verse he says,
shall we continue therefore in sin that grace may abound? You
see, he's making the conclusion. that James was writing against.
Shall we just continue to indulge ourselves in whatever the flesh
desires in order that we might get more grace? No, that's not
what I'm saying at all. How can they that are dead to
sin live any longer in it? Reckon yourselves therefore to
be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ. And he goes on in Romans chapter
6 to deal with that. In Galatians he says, don't use
your liberty, or in Corinthians he says, don't use your liberty
in Christ, your freedom in Christ, as a stumbling block to your
brethren. Don't disregard the needs of
your brethren just because you're free in Christ. And in Galatians
he says, use not your liberty as an occasion to the flesh. So Paul wrote against antinomianism
as James is writing against it. And that's what that last equation
is. We don't take works and remove
them altogether because the scripture says we are His workmanship created
in Christ Jesus unto good works. What makes a work good? Only
if it's done in faith. Only if it's done in faith. That's
the only thing that makes it good. And that's our complete
dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ for His grace. That's
what faith is. Faith is our acknowledgement
of our inability to keep the law of God. It's our acknowledgement
of our complete dependence upon Him to work in us. Is that, do those equations make
sense a little bit? I don't know, logically they
seem to work in my mind, but maybe they'll be helpful to somebody. All right, you have your Bibles open
to Ephesians chapter two. Verse eight, for by grace, are
you saved through faith? And that not of yourselves, it's
a gift of God. Faith is a gift of God. It's
given to you by grace. I wouldn't say that grace is
a gift of God because that would be saying grace is grace. He's
talking about faith. For by grace are you saved through
faith and that faith is the gift of God. Not of works. Not of anything that you do.
You're not going to merit salvation. You're not going to improve your
position with God by anything you do. And you can't lose it
by anything you do. not of works, lest any man should
boast." If it was of works, it would no longer be of grace.
Then we would be able to say, well, God owed me this salvation
because of what I did or what I did not do. Now I want you
to notice the next word, the first word in verse 10. It's
not the word therefore or wherefore, as is in verse 11. The word wherefore is, in other
words, this is the conclusion of that. That's what the word
therefore and wherefore means. The word for means because. So he's not saying, he's not
saying that you conclude that your salvation is through faith
by grace, not of works. Therefore, live your life in
good works. He's saying just the opposite.
He's saying we are saved by grace through faith, not of works,
because, you see the difference? Because, because you are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. When were you created
in Christ Jesus? When were you created in Christ
Jesus? Before the world began. Before the world began. I've
taught you about the aorist tense, the eternal tense. That's what
the word created is in here in this verse. We were created in
Christ Jesus, not when we were regenerated. We were created
in Christ Jesus. God has never seen his people
outside of Christ. We were created in Christ Jesus
from eternity past. See, the reason we're saved by
grace through faith is because, because you are his workmanship. You are his creation. You are
his work. He chose you in the covenant
of grace. He put your names in the Lamb's book of life. He placed
you in Christ. He counted the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ, shed as the Lamb before the foundation of the
world to be effectual for you. That's His workmanship. Because
you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. Unto good works
which He hath before ordained, that you should, what? Walk in
them. Walk in them. And we do. We walk by faith, not by sight.
How many times a scripture speaks of that? Walking by faith. Without faith, without faith,
it is impossible to please God. They that come to Him must believe
that He is. Oh, remember the pit from which
you were digged. Remember that you're a sinner.
Remember that all of your righteousness is bound up in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, I was thinking about
this thing of evolution, the theory of evolution. And
I have thought, well, that lowers the dignity of man to think that
he came into existence through a monkey. But then I thought,
well, that's not consistent. If it really lowers the dignity
of man, that's not consistent with the world's view of man. The world has a much too high
view of man. He exalts man. The theory of evolution doesn't
reduce the dignity of man. In fact, it's consistent with
everything else the world believes about man. He's getting better. He's getting better. Look how
far you've come. Truth is, the best man that ever
lived was Adam, and we've been getting worse ever since. Look how far we have fallen. You know, the other side to that
is that to think that you came into existence through a monkey
is a higher view of man than what is the truth. You came into
existence by the dirt of the earth. At least the monkey's
got some life and got the brain and got some sense about him
and, you know, from dust you came and from dust you shall
return. There's the flesh. There's the
natural man. The theory of evolution doesn't
devalue man, it exalts man. What puts man in his right place
is the truth of creation. Creation is that God reached
down into the lifeless dirt and formed our flesh out of the dust
of the earth. That's our old man. And that's
where it's going to go back to, and it's never been any better
than that. The new man is that life that
he breathed into his nostrils, gave him a new life in Christ. You see that? Turn with me to James. James chapter 1. James chapter 1, look at verse
17. Every good We're talking about good works
now. Talking about good works. What about good works? Where
do they fit in? Every good and every perfect gift, that's not
just salvation, that's everything. That's sanctification also. Comes down from the father of
lights, plural. Who's that? That's his children. You are the light of the world.
You don't take a light and put it under a bushel basket. You
put it up on a hill. You let it shine. Men see your
good works and give glory to your Father which is in heaven.
What is that? In other words, when God's lost
sheep, the unbeliever is not going to give glory to God which
is in heaven. He's not going to do that. When the Lord said,
let your light so shine that men might see your good works
and give glory to your Father which is in heaven, He was talking
about the work of faith being seen by God's lost sheep and
they too wanting that faith and being given that faith. Faith
begets faith. That's what he was saying. But
here's the father of lights with whom there is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning for of his own will begat he us,
plural. Us is the lights. He's the father
of lights. He's the father of God's people.
God's people need to be not put under the law, not told what
they need to do and don't do. They need to be told about what
God has done. when He came down from heaven,
and as He continues to come down in the power of His Holy Spirit,
causing them to will and to do His good pleasure, pointing them
to Christ, causing them to rest in Christ, to rely upon Christ,
you know what I'm confident of? When God's people hear about
how sinful they are, and about how sinless the Lord Jesus Christ
is, when God's people hear about what He's done for them, you
know what they're going to want to do? They're just going to
want to serve Him. They're just going to want to
bow to Him. They're just going to want to give. They're just
going to want to follow after Christ. You don't need to be told what
to do. You need to be given the power to do it, and the power
to do it is the gospel of God's free grace. That's the power
of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first
and also to the Greek. That's the power of God. We've
got no power in ourselves. We're unable. Don't think, well,
I'm gonna participate with God. I mentioned Wednesday night,
I found this book in my library. Five views on sanctification.
It's written by five different authors. Somebody asked me, who
wrote it? Each one of these chapters is
written by a different author. The Wesleyan view, the Reformed
view, the Pentecostal view, the Keswick view, and the Augustinian
view. They didn't ask me to write a chapter, I would have written
it God's view. I read most of this, and I want
to read you just a couple of sentences In this whole book
on sanctification, good works, that's what we're talking about.
This is the closest definition that there is to the truth. In sanctification, the scripture
affirms that God is the sanctifier. It'd be good if he just put a
period right there. and that he accomplishes in individuals
what they could not accomplish by themselves. At the same time,
however, the scriptures are just as clear that people are responsible
for responding to the truth of God and the work of the Holy
Spirit, which permits God to work out the program of his sanctification
in them. That's the closest view of all
these five views of sanctification I could find to the truth. Your
cooperation with God permits God to work out his program of
sanctification in you. If God needs my cooperation in
order to permit him to do anything, he's not God, I am. You say, what about responsibility?
I like what one brother said, responsibility is my response
to God's ability. What is your response to God's
ability? It's faith. It's faith. Lord, help me. Lord, I don't
want to sin. I want to obey you. I don't want my flesh to rule
over me. I want to honor you in my life, but I can't. I'm a sinner. Responsibility
is your response to God's ability. And your response is, I'm not
able, He is. Lord, help me. Let's take a break. Thank you.