Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program. I'm glad
you could join us today. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'll be preaching from the book of Philippians
in the New Testament, Paul's, the Apostle Paul's letter to
the church at Philippi. And the title of the message
is God's Good Work. And that'll be from Philippians
one and verse six, God's Good Work. And what I want to preach
to you today from the word of God is show you how the work
of salvation, a sinner saved by grace, in its beginning, in
its continuation, and in its final, as it comes to the finality
of salvation and glory, is all the work of God. And the people
whom God saves are the fruit of God's good work. And so we're
gonna talk about, first of all, how God is the one who gets all
the glory in salvation, the confidence of salvation, the assurance of
salvation. Every bit of it, the glory goes
to God and none to us. It is all God's good work. Now
that doesn't mean that we're not to do anything or there's
nothing for us to do. We who are saved, as being the
recipients of a gracious, merciful, powerful work. We do many things
in response and as the fruit of the work of God, the power
of God, the goodness of God. And so you might hear me on this
program, if you follow this program any at all, you may have heard
me emphasize this fact, that salvation is not conditioned
on you or me. It's not conditioned on the sinner.
In other words, it's not up to us to make the difference between
saved and lost, but salvation is conditioned on the Lord Jesus
Christ alone, who by himself, God in human flesh, as the surety,
the substitute, and the redeemer of his people, fulfilled all
those conditions, and as a result of that, we who are saved are
the fruit, the creation of God, if you will. And over here in
Philippians chapter 1, listen to this. The apostle speaking
to believers at Philippi, in verse 5 of Philippians 1, he
says, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day
unto now, verse 6, being confident of this very thing. Now listen
to these words. That he which hath begun a good
work in you will perform it, he will finish it. And that word
finish, that word perform, that word finish, it's related to
the word perfection, perfect. He will perfect it. He will complete
it. He will bring it to its conclusion
that he intended for it when he began it. So he which has
begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus
Christ. And the day of Jesus Christ refers
to his second coming. It's the day of the final glorification
of all of God's true people. So God began the good work in
you and he will complete it. Now, again now, this is speaking
of the work of God. He says in verse seven, even
as it is meat for me to think this of you all, that is, it's
appropriate for me to think this of you all, because I have you
in my heart, inasmuch as both in my bonds and in the defense
and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of my grace,
or with me of grace." That's one other translation of it. In other words, Paul's saying
that your salvation and my salvation is all of the grace of God. The
grace that God gave me, He gives to all of His people. And that's
what brings us together in fellowship. And it's the grace of God that
is based upon the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in His cross
death, His obedience unto death. He died, He was buried, He arose
again the third day. to meet all of the conditions
of the salvation of his people. And you can break it down this
way. Christ's obedience unto death is the fulfillment of all
righteousness. That's what God requires for
salvation. He requires righteousness. Now
God is holy and we are not. God is righteous, and we are
not. We're sinners. We fell in Adam. We were ruined by the fall, and
we're born into this world spiritually dead. We have physical life,
but we don't have spiritual life, that quality of life that connects
God's people to God. We don't have that. And therefore,
whenever we hear or see spiritual things from the Word of God,
by nature, as we are born into this world, we will reject them,
we will ignore them. They don't mean anything to us.
I quote all the time, 1 Corinthians 2 14, the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them. He can't know the value of them.
He can't even know what they are. He knows enough to either
reject them, devalue them, or hate them. And that's what the
Bible teaches about me by nature and about you by nature. You
see, the problem with salvation conditioned on the sinner or
salvation by the works or the wills of men and women denies
what the Bible says about us. The Bible says about us that
we are dead in trespasses and sin. We don't have spiritual
eyes to see the beauty and glory of the things of the Spirit,
the things of Christ, the things of the Gospel. We don't have
spiritual ears to hear with a hearing ear, with an obedient ear, the
things of the Gospel, the things of salvation by God's grace in
Christ. And when we hear them, we'll
reject them either in several ways. We'll either turn totally
against them in hatred, or we'll just ignore them and go along
our way. And so until we're given spiritual eyes and ears, we won't
see these things. Now, when does God give a sinner
spiritual eyes and spiritual ears? It's in the new birth.
Christ told Nicodemus in John chapter three, except you be
born again, born from above, that's the new birth. That's
not our original physical birth. We're born dead in trespasses
and sins in the physical birth because of our connection with
Adam. You see, Adam brought all people,
the whole human race, into a state of sin and death. And so, in
order to see and hear and know and believe these spiritual,
valuable things of the glory of God in the gospel and how
God saves sinners by His grace, through the blood and the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who fulfilled all conditions to secure
my eternal salvation and final glory. Until I'm born again,
I won't see the kingdom of God. That's what he said in John 3,
3, except you be born again, born from above, you cannot see
the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, same thing. What do
you mean you can't see it? It means you cannot understand
it savingly. You cannot believe it and love
it and live by it. You cannot enter the kingdom
of God. Christ told the disciples in Matthew chapter 13, he said,
blessed are your eyes for they see. Blessed are your ears for
they hear. He was contrasting them with
the Pharisees who closed their eyes and covered their ears lest
they be converted. They didn't want this salvation
that Christ presented. And that's all of us by nature. And so what God does is He shows
His people. He gives them a new heart, the
scripture says. That's regeneration. Brings them
from spiritual death to spiritual life by the power of the Spirit
under the preaching of the gospel. The Bible says the gospel is
the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Now
the believing there is the evidence of spiritual life. It's not the
cause of spiritual life. It's not the ground of spiritual
life. It's not the source of spiritual
life. The cause and the ground and
the source of spiritual life is the grace of God totally based
on the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. His
righteousness, the merits of His obedience and death charged
to our account. And that's justification. To
be justified is to be forgiven of all my sins on a just ground. And what is the just ground?
The blood of Christ. You see, the forgiveness of sins
is not based upon what I do or what I think or what I change.
Most people today, they think you're forgiven based upon your
confession. But that's not what the Bible
says. I know the Bible says if you confess your sins, He is
just and faithful to forgive it. But the if there is not a
conditional if, it's an evidential if, it's evidence. If you confess
your sins, all right, you know that you've been forgiven. Well,
what is it to confess my sins? It's to confess that all of salvation
is conditioned on Christ and none of it on me because I'm
a sinner. And so, all of these issues of
eternal life, you see, come to play here. It's the work of God. Now, one other passage that I
quote quite often on this program is Ephesians 2, verse 8, and
some following verses. Listen to this. Ephesians 2,
8. It says, by grace are you saved,
but through faith. Faith is necessary now. You know
why? Because it is a God-given gift
to all whom He has justified, all whom He chose before the
foundation of the world, all whom Christ redeemed on the cross.
So he says, for by grace are you saved, through faith, and
that not of yourselves. That faith doesn't come from
your natural thoughts and yearnings. That faith, that not of yourselves,
that faith is the gift of God. Now some commentators will say,
now that's not referring to faith, that's referring to salvation.
My friend, it's referring to both. All of salvation is a gift
from God. You know what the Bible says?
In Romans 6, 23, that the wages of sin is death, but the gift
of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. There's
no part of salvation that you can say, I earned that, I deserve
that, I worked hard to get that. No, it's all God's good work. It's a gift from God. So going
back to Ephesians 2.8 now, he 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. You see, if you
or I make the difference between salvation and being lost, we'd
have room to boast. If it was conditioned on my faith,
I could say, well, I believed and they who perished didn't. Or if it's conditioned on faith
and repentance, I could say, I believed and repented and they
who didn't, they're on their way to hell because they didn't
do what I did. You see what I'm saying? And
so that's the issue. But look at verse 10 of Ephesians
chapter two, listen to this. He said, now remember, grace
through faith, not of yourselves, not of works, lest any man should
boast. And verse 10 says, for we are his workmanship. A sinner saved by grace is the
work of God. He or she is the workmanship
of God. You're not a self-made person.
You're not even a self-willed person. If you were willing to
believe, willing to repent, willing to be obedient, it is God who
worked in you. You see, it is God who gave you
that will and desire to do those things. Apart from God's good
work, you wouldn't be willing to do any of that. Not according
to the scripture. You may be willing to be religious,
You may be willing to join a church and get baptized. You may be
willing to try to be a moral, sincere person, but you would
not willingly submit to Christ as the Lord your righteousness,
apart from the Spirit of God doing that great work, God's
good work in you. And so he says, for we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. In other words, the work
of God comes through and in and by the work of Christ. And what
work did he do? Well, he came to this world.
God, the Son of God, second person of the Trinity, and he united
himself with human flesh without sin, not sinful flesh, He was
conceived in the womb of the virgin by the Holy Spirit, and
he was born of the virgin. He walked this earth as God-man. You see, that's what qualifies
him to be the savior of his people. He is both God and man in one
person. He's the only one who could fulfill
the conditions of salvation. And so he walked this earth in
strict obedience to the law, absolute perfection. And he went
all the way to death, the death of the cross, to fulfill all
righteousness, to meet every requirement, every stipulation,
every condition of the salvation of his people. And so he died
because God's justice had to be satisfied. You see, the sin
debt of Christ's people, his sheep, his church, God's elect,
was imputed to him, charged, accounted, reckoned to him. Bible
says he was numbered with the transgressors. And so he died
for the sins of his sheep. All the iniquity of all his sheep
was laid upon him. That's a legal, that's a metaphorical
way of stating the legal imputation of my sins to Christ. And he died for me. And he was
buried and arose again the third day because he finished the work.
He completed the work. He put away my sins. And he brought
forth an everlasting righteousness of infinite value whereby God
could look at a sinner like me and say, not guilty, justified. His righteousness is imputed,
charged to me. Now, that's justification. Now,
if I've been justified, at some point in time, God's going to
bring me under the gospel. And by the power of the Holy
Spirit, He's going to begin a good work in me. And that good work
in me is the new birth. Regeneration. That's the giving
of life. and conversion, that's bringing
me to faith in Christ and repentance of dead works. And so this is
what he's talking about in verse six here, Philippians 1. Look
at it again. Being confident of this very
thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform
it until the day of Jesus Christ. He will complete it. He's going
to perfect it. Now what that means, it's not
up to us It's not conditioned on us to perfect it, God will
perfect it. But let me finish Ephesians 2
in verse 10. Remember what he said, we are his workmanship
created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Now look at what
it says there, it doesn't say because of good works. It doesn't
say conditioned on good works. It says, unto good works which
God hath before foreordained that we should walk in them.
Part of the completion and perfection of God's good work is the perseverance
of his people based upon his preservation of his people. Now look over at Philippians
chapter two. Here's a verse of scripture.
that a lot of people take out of context and try to prove that
they'll say something like this. They'll say something like, well,
we're saved by grace, but we're kept by our obedience, or we'll
continue in salvation by our faithfulness. And that's not
what the Bible teaches. Many denominations who call themselves
Christian, they believe that you're saved by grace, they claim
it's grace, but it's not. And then if you don't keep on
being obedient or faithful or whatever, you'll lose that salvation
because your continuance into it, unto final glory, is conditioned
on you. That's a false gospel, my friend.
Now understand what I'm saying. Are God's people, now think about
it this way. You look at Philippians 2 here
in just a minute. Are God's people who are saved
by grace, who are born again by the Spirit, those in whom
God began this good work, are they all required to continue
in the faith? To persevere in the faith? To
keep on keeping on? Yes, they're required to. Why? because it's conditioned on them,
and if they don't do it, they're going to be lost again, and maybe
finally end up in hell? No, no, not at all. This good work that God begins,
he preserves, and listen to this. I'll read the verse that people
take out of context first. But he says, this is Philippians
2 and verse 12. This is right after the apostle
had beautifully displayed and communicated the work of Christ,
who was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
In Philippians 2 and verse 12, he says, Wherefore, my beloved…
Now, that wherefore means this. For this reason or because of
this, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence
only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling." Now, a lot of people will stop there
and they'll say, now, look, you better be careful. Work it out. Do your best with fear and trembling,
fearing that God would cast you out. trembling that you might
end up not being saved at all, if you don't do enough, if you
don't believe enough, if you don't repent enough, if you're
not sincere enough, if you're not diligent enough, if you're
not moral enough. You say, that is not what this
verse is teaching. But let me read verse 13. Let's
go back and read verses 12 and 13 together. He says, He says
in verse 12, wherefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not
as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Now look at verse
13, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do
of his good pleasure. See, this persevering, continuing
in the faith, holding on to it, living out of the grace of God. It's the salvation that God works
in his people and we cooperate because God has given us a heart
to do so, but it's his good work. The source of my perseverance,
of my continuing in the faith, is not my goodness or my power,
it's the goodness and power of God. And when he says, work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling, he's talking about
work out of this salvation. Here's my state before God. God
has saved me by his grace. He has done a great work within
me. God's good work. He sent His Spirit to bring me
under the preaching of the gospel and the Spirit has birthed me
again spiritually. He's given me a new heart. He's
given me a new life, spiritual life. He's given me faith to
grab hold of Christ. to believe in Him. He's brought
me to repentance of myself, turned me away from self and my works
to Christ and His work. He's bring me to be submitted
to the righteousness of Christ in the gospel as my only righteousness
and ground of justification before God. He's given me a desire to
believe in Him and to fight sin, to war against the flesh. He's
given me all those things, you see. And so I'm to work out of
that, that state. I'm to be aware of that with
fear that is with great respect to God. Oh, what an awesome God. A merciful God, a loving God,
a gracious God who is both just and a Savior. And with trembling,
trembling because I know that to stand before God in the end
without Christ is eternal death and damnation. For it is God
which worketh in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure.
So back here in Philippians one and verse six, this is what he's
talking about. Being confident. I'm confident. Now what is my confidence based
on? The word of God. My confidence
is not based upon the fact that I'm a preacher. or that I'm a
servant of God, or that I'm doing my best to obey God, that's not
my confidence. That's the fruit of that confidence,
because the confidence is in the word of God. Romans 8, 33
says, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It is God that justifies. Now, upon what ground will God
not lay any charge to me if I'm His elect? And who are His elect
people? Those who believe, who the Holy Spirit has brought to
believe, given the gift of faith. But what is my confidence that
He won't charge me with my sin? Verse 34 of Romans 8 says, who
can condemn us? For it is Christ that died, yea,
rather is risen again, seated at the right hand of the Father,
ever living to make intercession for His people. So what is he
saying here? The confidence is this, God saves
me by His grace in Christ, God keeps me in His grace in Christ,
and God will bring me to glory by His grace in Christ. And the
evidence of that is the good work that God has done in me
in the new birth, giving me spiritual life to believe in Christ. Now, that's what it's all about.
You say, well, aren't you really preaching once saved, always
saved? Yes, I am, if the salvation is of the Lord. You know why
most people don't believe, or many people don't believe once
saved, always saved? Because they believe that it
was conditioned on them to start with, and therefore it must be
conditioned on them to continue. And if you do something to gain
it, you can do something to lose it. But you see, what I'm talking
about is God's good work. I'm not my own work. I'm not
my own workmanship. If I'm a sinner saved by grace,
I'm God's good work. Do you understand that? That's
the whole issue now. That's what it really means to
be saved by the grace of God in Christ. Over in the book of
Hebrews chapter 10, It speaks of that. It talks about in verse
23, let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering.
Now here's the condition, here's the confidence, for God is faithful,
that promised. What did God promise? He promises
to save his people to the uttermost, to the nth degree, not part of
the way. but all the way. This is God's
good word. Hope you enjoyed this message
and hope you'll join us next week for another message from
God's word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1-1-0-2-3. Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia
31707. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.theletterrofgrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.