Ephesians 2, look beginning with
verse 8. Two verses of scripture. Ephesians
2, verse 8. For by grace are you saved through
faith. And that not of yourselves, it's
the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should
boast. For by grace are ye saved." I've
been looking at this text for some time and this is the subject. Saved by grace. Saved by grace. If you turn back to the book
of Genesis, hold your place there in Ephesians 2, but turn back
to the book of Genesis. Genesis 6. It's in this chapter that we
see this word grace used for the first time in Scripture.
Do you have Genesis 6? Look at beginning with verse
1. It came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face
of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons
of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they
took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said,
My spirit shall not only strive with man, for that he also is
flesh. Yet his days shall be a hundred
and twenty years. And there were giants in the
earth in those days. And also after that, when the
sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bare children
to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of
renown. And God saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that
he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy
man who I have created from the face of the earth both man and
beast and creeping thing, and the fowls of the earth, fowls
of the air, for it repenteth me that I've made them." Well, that would just be a miserable
passage if it ended there, wouldn't it? It'd be right. It'd be just. Man would get what he deserved.
But listen to these ten words that follow. But Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord." Grace. It means to find favor in the
eyes of someone. It means to be accepted by Him. Unmerited, undeserved, unearned
favor. Now turn back to Ephesians 2
with me. And I'll ask this question. How? How is a man, how is a woman,
how is a young person saved? What's scripture say? For by
grace are you saved. Saved. Kept. Kept safe. Kept safe and sound. Rescued
from danger. Rescued from destruction. Saved
from peril. Saved from suffering. Saved from perishing. Saved. How is a man saved? Is it by
religious duties? Is it by religious deeds? Turn
with me to Romans 3. We need to be clear about this,
don't we? How is a man saved? Look at Romans 3 verse 20. Therefore, by the deeds of the
law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight." That's
clear, isn't it? By the deeds of the law, there
shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is
the knowledge of sin. Well, is it by works of righteousness? I hear men say that. I hear men
who claim to be preachers say that. They have a checklist of this,
this, this, this, and then all a man has to do after he's done
those things is just live a righteous life. Sounds so simple. Paul writing to Titus in Titus
3 verse 5, he said, "...not by works of righteousness which
we have done." Not by works of righteousness
that we've done. It's not by blood, it's not by
the will of man, it's not by the will of the flesh. How are we saved? What's our text say? Grace. Grace. Saved. We sing that, saved
by grace alone. That's my only plea. Scripture
declares, listen, that we are called by His grace, that we
believe through His grace, that we are justified by His grace,
that the believer is a partaker, how? By His grace. We have an everlasting consolation
and a good hope through grace, saved by grace. And listen, Scripture
declares this, that we will continue in His grace. I want you to consider just a
few things from this text. By grace are you saved. That verse doesn't say by grace
you can be saved. It doesn't say you might be saved.
It doesn't say you should be saved. What's it say? For by grace are ye saved. And if a man is saved, if he's
truly saved, there's only one way that he can be saved, and
that's by grace, by God's sovereign grace. We're saved by grace through
faith. Faith is the means by which we
lay hold of grace. We're not saved through ordinances.
That's not what this scripture says, is it? It's not what God's
Word says. Men get caught up in those things,
but we're not saved by ordinances. We're not saved through the deeds
of the law. We're not saved by grace through
the deeds of the law. We're not saved by grace through
our feelings. How are we saved? Saved by grace
through faith. Faith in Christ. Christ is the means, it's the
instrument by which we receive and enjoy and rejoice in salvation. And before anybody gets the wrong
idea, this saving faith, it's not the product of man. It's the gift of God. For by grace are you saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." We receive
salvation by grace, and God gets all the glory. It's all of Him. And any works of righteousness
done by a man, how's that possible? By the grace of God. If you look
back at Ephesians 2, look at verse 1. You hath he quickened. You hath he made alive. Why did we have to be made alive?
Well, read on, because we were dead in trespasses and sin. That's our condition. That's
the condition of every man before God, dead in trespasses and sin. That's the estate, that's the
condition of man by nature, all the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Read on in verse 2, wherein in
times past you walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience." We read last week about these
feet, these feet that are swift to shed blood. How do they walk? They walk according to the prince
of the power of the air. They walk according to the course
of this world. Verse 3, among whom we all had our conversation,
our citizenship, our behavior in times past, in the lust of
the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh, and of the mind
and whereby nature Children of wrath, even as others. Children
of wrath. God's wrath. God's wrath for
sin. Listen, that's what we were born. That's what we were when we were
born. David wrote this. He said, Behold, I was shapen
in iniquity. In sin did my mother conceive
me. And as such, we should have had to endure
God's wrath forever, eternal punishment, an eternity in hell. Verse 4, But God, but God, Could there
be two more beautiful words that go together than that? But God. He doesn't leave his sheep to
themselves. He doesn't leave his people in their sin. But God. God who is rich in mercy. for His great love wherewith
He loved us. And He hath quickened us together
with Christ. By grace you're saved. And He hath raised us up together
and He hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus. He made us sit together. He maketh us to lie down in green
pastures. Think, who wouldn't lay down
in a green pasture? We wouldn't. He has to make us
do so. He made us sit together. Who wouldn't want to sit together
in heavenly places? By nature, we wouldn't. He made
us. I was thinking about this when
the boys were young, and I know this is hard to imagine, but
there were times when they would fuss at each other a little bit.
They might have just a little squabble with each other. The
thing that seemed to work better than anything is we would bring
them in the living room and we would make them sit together. That's what our Lord does with
us. He makes us sit together. I don't think we'd ever, we'd
never get along otherwise, would we? He didn't make us. made us sit together in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might
show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness towards
us through Christ Jesus." There's a change there, isn't
there? If you read those first few verses and you read that
description of who and what we are, And then you read, By grace
are you saved. There's a change. There's a change. First, there's a change of mind.
Our Lord said this. He said, My thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. There must be a
change of mind. In Matthew 16, the Lord came
into the coast of Caesarea Philippi And he asked his disciples, he
said this, he said, whom do men say that I, the son of man, am? What does this world say? Who
do they say I am? And they said, well, some say
you're John the Baptist and some say Elias and others Jeremias
or one of the prophets, just some religious man. But then he said unto them, Whom
say ye that I am?" And Simon Peter answered, and he said,
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And the Lord
answered him, and he said, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for
flesh and blood hath not revealed that unto thee. but my Father which is in heaven." Change of mind. Nathan the prophet,
he came to David. Remember that he told David a
story. David had sinned against God
when he took Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. And the Lord sent Nathan
to David And he came to him and he said
to him, he said, there were two men. There were two men in one
city. One was rich and the other was
poor. And the rich man, he had exceeding
flocks. He had everything. But that poor
man, he had nothing. He had one little lamb and he
bought it. And he nourished it up and he
grew it together with him and with his children and ate from
his table, drank out of his own cup, lay there in his bosom and
that lamb was like a daughter to him. And there came a traveler
to the rich man. That rich man again who had that
great flock, but he didn't take of his own flock, did he? He went to that poor man's house
and he took that one little ewe lamb from him and he dressed
it and he served it to that fella. And when David heard that, his
anger was greatly kindled. That's what scripture says. And
he said to Nathan, he said, as sure as the Lord liveth, the
man that did this shall surely die. And not only that, but he should
restore that lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because
he had no pity. Don't you know David was up on
a pretty high horse when he was bringing judgment on that man? And Nathan turned to him and
he said, David, thou art the man. Thou art the man. There was a change of mind in
David there. What did he say? I've sinned
against the Lord. A change of mind. I'm a sinner.
There was a time I didn't know that, but I do now. A change of mind about my sin,
a change of mind about who God is, A change of mind about who
the Savior is? Peter said, Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God. Only God can reveal that. Second,
there's a change of masters. In Exodus 21, we read that description,
that account of that bondservant. If you buy a Hebrew servant six
years, he'll serve. In the seventh year, he'll go
out free. If he brought a wife with him,
well, she'll go out with him. But if the master gave him a
wife and she bore him children, they were to stay with the master. And if that servant should plainly
say, I love my master." I'm convinced he didn't say that
before, but now there's a change of,
I love my master. Turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter
1. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, look
at verse 9. 1 Thessalonians 1, verse 9. For they themselves show of us
what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how you Turn
to God from idols. Turn from idols. What are some
of those idols? Pride, the love of self, lust,
ambition, rebellion. That's our old master. Turn from
idols, false ideas of who God is. from religious ceremony,
that used to be our idol, that used to be our master, religious
ceremony, materialism, even family and earthly ties. An idol can be anything, anything
that prevents us from looking to Christ, anything from looking
to God. But he said, you turn from idols.
You change masters. You're no longer serving that
master. You turn from idols to serve the living and true God
and to wait for His Son from Heaven whom He raised from the
dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. Who was my old master? Idols. Oh, a change of masters. He said,
you turn to serve the true and living God. Well, third, a change
of manners. Turn with me to one more passage
of Scripture. Turn to 1 Corinthians 6. Know ye not that the righteous
shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Be not deceived, neither
fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor
abusers of themselves with mankind, nor deceivers, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor
drunkards, nor revelers, nor extortioners shall inherit the
kingdom of God. Look at that list and you think,
well, that's a pretty rough bunch. We read on,
what's it say? And such were some of you, but
you're washed. You're sanctified. You're justified
in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit. of our God,
a change of manners, the sanctification of the Holy
Spirit. We're born, the believer is born
of God. A new life, a new nature, a new
heart, new desire dwells in a believer. Except
a man be born again He cannot see the Kingdom of God, a new
person born by the Spirit of God. The believer loves holiness and
hates sin. Ye are also justified before
God. Our sin put away, accepted in
the Beloved, not by works, not by anything
we've done or ever will do, but by His free and sovereign grace. For by grace are you saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God. lest any
man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them." A change of mind, a change of
masters, a change of manners. Isn't that a miracle? The miracle
of God's grace For by grace are you saved. It's all, it's all
of Him. You, what's it, you hath He quickened. Now if I have to be quickened,
if I have to be made alive, that can only mean one thing, I was
dead. I want to read a poem to you
in closing, or I want to try to anyhow. twas battered and scarred, and
the auctioneer thought it hardly worth his while to waste his
time on the old violin, but he held it up with a smile. What
am I bid, good people, he cried, who'll start the bidding for
me? One dollar, one dollar, do I hear two? Two dollars, who'll
make it three? Three dollars once, three dollars
twice, going for three, but no. No, from the room, back of the
room, far back, a gray bearded man came forward and he picked
up the bow and he wiped off the dust from the old violin and
tightening up the strings, he played a melody, pure and sweet,
as sweet as the caroling angels sing. And the music ceased, and
the auctioneer, with a voice that was quiet and low, said,
what now am I bid for this old violin? As he held it aloft with
his bow. 1,000, 1,000, do I hear 2? 2,000,
who will make it 3? 3,000 once, 3,000 twice, going
and going, said he. The audience cheered. But some of them cried, we just
don't understand. What changed its worth? And swift
came the reply, the touch of the master's hand. In many a
man with life out of tune, all battered and scarred with sin,
is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd, much like that old violin. A mess of pottage, a glass of
wine, a game, and he travels on. He's going once, he's going
twice, he's going and almost gone. But the master comes and
the foolish crowd can never quite understand the worth of a soul
and the change that is wrought by the touch of the master's
hand. the change that was wrought.
A change of mind, a change of masters, a change of manners.
And one day, even this body, even this body will be changed. This vile body will be changed
and fashioned like unto His glorious body. All, all by His grace. By grace are you saved. All right.