God's Grace to Zombies

It is so good to be with you and what a beautiful day the Lord gave us. Beautiful Easter Sunday and good to be back.

I understand. Am I right, Brother Greg? This is the first Sunday night you've met in a long, long time. Pretty much.

In a year's time, two or three. Well, it's good to see you. I'm glad that you have not gotten out of the habit of a simple trembling with the saints coming together to hear His Word proclaimed and do pray for me as I seek to do that this evening. We're speaking of God's grace to zombies.

That will become clearer, I trust, as we go this evening. But for a grace preacher at a grace conference to be speaking on grace you'd think, well, what could be more natural than that? And yet I think I've probably sweated over this message more than any others. And I guess it's simply because it's something that I've preached on a hundred times, and probably you've heard preached on a hundred times, and we sort of mullied over what in the world could we say new, something fresh. But I have learned a long time ago that just because I preached something from the pulpit doesn't mean everybody heard it. It doesn't even mean everybody was going to remember it. So there's a sense in which repetition is indeed the mother of learning.

So we'll be repeating some things I tried to stress that you know, have heard, but perhaps we'll be coming at it from a little bit different angle tonight. Let's think back to this morning, and we were looking at the work of the three persons of the Trinity in our salvation. And as you looked at that, we looked at the work of the Father in election and predestination and so forth, then the work of the Son in redemption. And you might think that of the three persons of the Trinity, which one gets the shortness shift here? I think you would say, well, it seems to us that it was the work of the Holy Spirit. I mean, after you've devoted about six or seven verses to the other two persons, you get here to verse 12 and verse 13 and so forth, two and a half verses to the work of the Holy Spirit.

Why so little? And I think the answer is to be found in the fact that Paul knows where he's going in this letter. And he knows that he's going to be amplifying this theme. And that's what we're finding in our text tonight. It's as if we're putting that little section under a microscope and blowing it up.

And we're taking a real in-depth look at exactly what is being said here. So it's like he's continuing. Now, he's had a little prayer in the interim. We're going to be talking tomorrow night about Paul's prayers in the book of Ephesians.

And let me just touch on this first one, the one we'll be looking at mainly is over in chapter 3. But there is a prayer beginning in verse 15 and running down through the end of the chapter. And it's really not clear where the prayer ends. Paul is simply asking God to allow the Ephesians to be enlightened with the knowledge from heaven of a couple of things. Number one, the ramifications of their salvation, the inheritance that this thing has brought to them. And secondly, and this is where I want to major on tonight, that they would understand the nature of the power that has worked on their behalf in salvation.

Now, as I said this morning, we hadn't dealt a lot with the resurrection of Christ. But I want you to see it here in chapter 1 verse 19. Paul is praying that you might know what is the exceeding greatness of His, that is God's power toward us who believe. According to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places.

Do you understand what he is saying? Paul is saying I want you to wake up and understand what kind of power was being exercised on your behalf when you were saved. It's the same power that raised His Son from the dead.

And we will see that more enlarged as we go into our section tonight. Now this sort of reminds me that it is possible, and sometimes it happens quite often I think, that people are truly converted, truly saved, and they do not grasp the enormity of what God has done for them. We're sort of like the frog in a hail storm. You know we know something got us, but we don't know what it was or where it came from, you know. It has hit us and we know something has changed and we know something is different.

But we don't really understand all the ins and outs. And so Paul is praying for the Ephesian saints that they would have this enlightenment to be able to grasp what exactly God has done on their behalf. And it's all about this subject of grace. And we will learn why grace is indeed amazing grace as John Newton put it.

We also saw that this is a top-down description. This is not the story of man found his way up to God. It is the story of how God reached down to man.

He has the high ground. He is telling us the full and complete story of which we have a minute knowledge of. We are indeed at least were at one time in a condition called zombies.

Now I call it that. I do not understand pop culture's infatuation with zombies. If you get it, please explain it to me. I don't really understand it. But I do know that today our culture and its movies and so forth, they love that theme.

And why I don't get it. But I do know we've been out in Wyoming in the summers. In fact we're due to head back out that way at the end of this month for probably about six months. We have a ranch out there and we've been working on about a hundred year old cabin to make it an off-grid place where our family can come and visit and so forth. And I put out the word to my family that when the zombie apocalypse begins, we've got the place you need to bug out to. I think we can hold them off. I mean it's remote.

It's back in there and it's the perfect spot for that. So come on down when the zombies start coming around. Well what in the world is a zombie? Now I'm not up on all of this stuff, but best I can tell a zombie is sort of a corpse that has been reanimated somehow.

It's the walking dead, right? Well you can't find a better description of the saints before their salvation than that terminology. As we're going to see here tonight, that's exactly what Paul describes not only the saints in Ephesus but himself as well. He uses the term we and us.

We were in this state of alive on one level but dead on the most important level. And he implies right here in the first verse of chapter 2 as he continues and notice he really doesn't finish his prayer. In some sense he's going to answer his prayer.

He's going to explain the very thing that he's asked God to give the Ephesian saints the ability to grasp. Notice we began in verse 1. You have been quickened the old King James said.

I sort of still stick with that because when I'm cutting my fingernails every now and then I hit the quick. You've had that experience. That's the part when you hit that you come alive, right?

And that's exactly what the word means. You've been quickened. You've been made alive. Why did you need to be made alive?

You were dead in trespasses and sins. Now remember he is writing to those back in chapter 1 that he said God chose us in Christ from the foundation of the world. This is a description of the elect.

Can I emphasize it one more time if that's you throwing something at me? Election to life does not itself bestow life. Notice these are the elect and yet they are described by Paul as once have been dead in trespasses and sins. They are not alive yet. Whatever that means they don't have it yet. And what we are looking at is the process by which dead zombies, you and I, are brought to a state of life with God.

What does this look like? Well we call it being born again. Well actually we describe it in several ways. A new birth, sometimes a new creation, but especially a new life, a resurrection from a state of death to a state of life. And now you begin to see why he described the power that works in us in salvation as akin to the same power that raised Christ from the dead. It didn't just raise him from the dead. It raised you and I from the dead. Here we are on Easter Sunday and yes we celebrate the fact of Christ's resurrection.

But our knowledge and our experience goes beyond just the mere fact. If you are truly a Christian tonight, you have experienced some semblance of the same resurrecting power. You were once in a state of death.

You have now been made alive in Christ. Now I want to emphasize that you were not dead in every way. A zombie is not dead in every sense.

I mean for the dead they give it around, right? I mean that is why you have to be scared of the zombies. They are the walking dead. They are the animated dead. And in the very same way that we in our dead state were the walking dead.

We will see that explained in just a minute. You always note the zombie by that zombie walk, you know. Well so it is that those who are dead in trespasses and sin have a walk that betrays the fact that they are not truly alive. Alive in one sense.

And I'm guilty. I confess sometimes in our preaching we use illustrations like, well look a lost man certainly can't believe in Christ. Can this pulpit believe in Christ? You know it's dead. Can a dead sinner believe in Christ?

Well we are not quite being honest with the Scripture. A lost man is not dead in every way. He certainly is alive in the sense that he is able to think. He is able to exercise logic. He has the power of volition to some degree.

He can make choices within a certain sphere. He is not dead on every level, but in the sense that is most important. Whether he is alive to God, he is dead as a doornail. He is as dead as this pulpit in that sense. He is unable as I mentioned a moment ago when you cut your fingernails, you hit the quick. That is the part that responds, correct? And the dead man, the man lost and dead in trespasses and sin has no ability to respond correctly to God.

Now he responds to everything else. Notice he is selectively dead. I struggle for ways of explaining this, but I trust that you look back on your life as when you would say in my lost state, there was a time when I had absolutely no use for God.

No use for the, you know, look at those fools going to a place like this on Sunday night. Had no use for the worship of Christ and yet something happened that what you were dead to you are now alive to. And contrary wise, not only that but the things that you were alive to, alive to sin, alive to this world, alive to the opinions of everybody around you, suddenly you become dead to those things, alive to others.

You now love what you once hated and you hate what you once loved, right? That is the nature of conversion. The Old Testament describes it by this sort of heart transplant that God is taking away a heart of stone unresponsive and putting in a heart of flesh that will respond to the things of God. Notice we're not being made robots, but something is happening within that is changing us.

That's what he is saying to the saints at Ephesus, those who are the elect of God, chosen in Christ from the foundation of the world, and yet still dead in their sins until something happens. Got me? You with me?

Alright. I want to look at this zombie walk just for a moment before we leave this passage. Notice in verse 2 for dead folks, again they got around, in which in times past you walked. You walked in this deadness.

And three things, three ways that you can identify this zombie walk. You walked according to the course of the world. You walked like an earthling.

Well you say, well what else could I do? I am an earthling. Well yeah, you walked like people on this planet walk, like everybody else walked. You walked like the natural man walks.

You're following the course of this thing he calls the world, the cosmos, this system of things that is around us. I'm fascinated by the fact that we have these fads that come through our culture. Have you noticed that? Suddenly you ladies, a new style of dress or perhaps wearing your hair comes across and all of a sudden everybody's got to do it that way.

Have you ever noticed that? I remember the first fad I was ever aware of and that was Davy Crockett hats. Some of you old fellows remember Davy Crockett. He had to have a coonskin hat. I mean it was just like every boy in America had to have a coonskin hat. How did that happen that way? Don't you see something strange about these fads that pass through?

You remember the hula hoot? And the first time I ever saw one of those things. And all of a sudden everybody in America, I wish I would have thought that up, everybody in America had to have one.

How does that happen? And it's like when this gets faddish everybody is influenced in the same direction. Everybody has to walk the same way. Notice they walk according to the course of this world and John reminds us in his epistle, love not the world, neither the things that end the world, if men love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Right? So that's the way you used to walk you Ephesian saints. Secondly, notice you walked according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience. There is a spiritual element to this thing called the world. That the world is the manifestation of a kingdom of this spirit who elsewhere is called the god of this world.

The spirit that works among the children, the sons of disobedience. There's a supernatural element to this thing. You're being animated by a spirit. I think I've shared with you before that how do you identify a spirit? If my cat starts barking, what's happened?

I think I see the problem. Your cat's been possessed by a dog spirit. He looks like a cat on the outside but there's a dog spirit within driving him to do dog things.

Right? And so it is with spirits. We see demoniacs possessed with a spirit.

You remember the Gadarene maniac going around in the graveyard naked, cutting himself. You sense the nature of the spirit within by the action of the man possessed by the spirit. Here we see that Satan is the one who is animating lost man. And Paul is saying Ephesians used to be animated by the same spirit, the same zombie type of behavior you once exhibited. Now you probably are saying, preacher you don't know what you're talking about. Are you telling me that all lost men, the lost world around us is actually possessed being moved by a spirit, a demonic, satanic spirit? Well that's what I'm telling you. Because you think when I say that, that I'm talking about spinning heads and projectile vomiting, you know that's what we've been conditioned to think of by Hollywood when we think of someone possessed by a spirit. No I'm talking about the man in a three piece business suit sitting up in the corner office of a high rise skyscraper. You see the spirit, again back to 1 John 2, don't love the world, all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, the lust of the eyes.

He said that's what the world is. That's the spirit of Satan that moves lost man. That's the evidence of it. It has nothing to do, you think that the person possessed by the devil is the drunk out there in the gutter or the prostitute on the street corner. Well yes, but that's not really the normal manifestation of satanic spirit. The normal satanic spirit is, I got this, I'll do it my way, I'm better than you. This spirit of pride and arrogance and the seeking to exalt oneself, that I'm better than you are, that is the evidence of this satanic spirit. Well we've got to move on.

Well I don't have any word to go tonight, not either. But notice that the third thing is that you not only walk according to the course of the world, you walk according to the spirit that moves lost men, but you're also walking of course according to the lust of your own flesh, your own fleshly desires, your own carnal desires. Isn't it strange that we who have a spiritual side component of our makeup that we're so controlled by fleshly physical things. If you've ever owned horses, remember the first time we had a couple of horses for my daughters, and the first time they got loose we were out there in the neighborhood chasing them all over the place, and a lady who knew a whole lot more about horses than I knew said that's not the way to catch a horse. And she went into our little barn and came out with a bucket of oats and stood out there and shook that bucket of oats and before long those horses came right back to where they left. And you say well she must like oats.

No, she doesn't like oats, they like oats. She knows what their nature is going to respond to, right? And so it is that the devil knows what your nature is going to respond to. He knows how to attract, he knows how to tempt, he knows how to seduce through the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh.

We want to look better, we want to look good, we want to be better than everybody else. And we have these appetites that demand satisfaction, and it is those things that Satan uses to control the minions, the zombies under his rule and power. What Paul is saying, Ephesians, that's where you were, that's what you were, and there you would be. You were, and notice the one that gets me is that last verse. The last phrase of verse three, you were by nature the children of wrath just like everybody else. Now this is the elective God he's talking about, okay? But there was a time when there was absolutely no difference between you and the non-elect.

You live exactly like they live, right? You were just like them, you thought like them, you were controlled by Satan, just like them. Dead you were and dead you would be except for one thing, and the most beautiful words I think in all the Bible is what follows in verse four, but God. Back home at Grace Bible Church we had a new pulpit, a fellow in my church built this new pulpit.

Beautiful, it's almost more like a work of art than a piece of furniture. And anyway he built it and he carved into the little face plate up here those words, but God. So every time that I got into the pulpit there to preach, those words are staring back at me.

And what wonderful words they are. He's not saying but you, but you wised up, but you had enough sense to come in out of the rain. No, you didn't. The reason that you are where you are today is not because of you, it is because of God. We could say in fact, old Ralph Barnard I think one times defined grace as in spite of. It's not because of you, it's in spite of you. You were not cooperating.

You were not, you didn't bring anything to the party, let's put it that way. There was nothing you had and we try to define this term grace, unmerited favor, that's probably about as good as we are going to do. We sometimes say that grace, if it's grace, is free grace, pure grace, can't mix it with works or you destroy it. And thirdly it's sovereign grace. In other words grace is in the hands of the grace giver.

He doesn't have to give it. He can give it if he wants to, he can withhold it, it's sovereign grace. But saying grace is free grace is like saying country butter.

I mean what other kind of butter is there? What other kind of grace can it possibly be but free grace, pure grace, and sovereign grace? And that is of course where Paul is taking us. You were dead as a doorknob in the sense that truly mattered. As far as your eternal destiny is concerned, you were in this dead state. Even though you were not a corpse, you were an animated corpse, you're out there walking controlled by the Spirit of Satan. You were as dead as this table, this pulpit when it came to changing your position. In other words you were dead in that sense. You couldn't get yourself out of it.

Let's think about those three words a minute. Born again, a new creature, a resurrection, those are three words that you cannot do for yourself. No one can do for yourself. You can't birth yourself, right? You can't make yourself a new creature.

You can't do creative things. That belongs to God and God alone. And you cannot raise yourself from the dead, right? Notice that all three of those terms that describe this change from death to life are three things that you and I are incapable of performing in ourselves.

There are some canots. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit. They're foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them. Paul will say in Romans 8 that the man who's in the flesh cannot please God. He's not subject to the law of God.

He can't be. You understand there is an inability that goes along with this dead state that I can't get myself out of it. I can't change my state. If it's going to change, I need somebody else's power to be at work on my behalf.

I need nothing short of divine power to work. And that is what Paul is describing. We were dead in sins and he has quickened us, raised us together with Christ. And he puts in little parenthesis there in verse 5, by grace you're saved. Now he goes back to verse 8. He's going to say that again in verse 8.

It's like he can't help himself. He's already jumping ahead. In case you miss it, it's by grace that you're saved and he's going to go on to define that.

But before he does he wants you to realize the full ramifications. Remember Christ back in chapter 1 was raised from the dead. And where did He go? I mean we think of Easter as Christ being raised from something, a tomb, the grave.

But what Paul is describing is yes that's part of it, but what really makes Easter fabulous is not only what he was raised from, but what he was raised to. That 40 days later he did what? He ascended. Ascended where? To the right hand of the Father. What's he doing up there? He's sitting on the throne.

He's running the show. And what he ends that prayer with here in chapter 1, if you glance back at that, he's put in all things in chapter 1 verse 22, he's put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. Now notice that what Paul is stressing is again this sense of a union between the believer and Christ.

You've been raised. Notice this reference to the church. Christ is the head of the church. The church then is his body.

Notice that between the head and the body there's a union, a vital living union. And we might ask ourselves, well what church is this? Which church is Paul talking about here? You may be aware that there are landmark Baptists is the name associated with them that deny that there is anything such as a universal church. And every church in the New Testament is a local church.

Well I certainly don't want to in any way degrade the importance of your local church. But it's very difficult for us to read these words and understand this to mean anything else than there is a mystical body of Christ that is universal, comprised of all the saints in all places whether in heaven or earth, whether here in America or over there in Africa. There is in fact we might although we have churches plural used several times in the book of Acts, the churches of Judea and so forth. But when it comes to body how many bodies of Christ does he have?

Well we're going to be turned, we can cheat and go to the back of the book and look at the answer in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 4 there is says Paul one body. So though there are churches many, as far as local churches are concerned, the church he's talking about here which is identical with his body, there's just one of those. And it is mystical in the sense that you cannot perceive it with your senses. We're not aware physically of this union. It's a spiritual union and yet it's a real union. Just because it's a union by the spirit doesn't mean it's not real.

It's actual. We are connected with Christ our head. And so if He has been raised from the dead to life, ascended to sit on the throne, if that's where our head is then in some sense we are raised and seated in heavenly places.

You see the logic? And that's what he goes on to say in verse 6, just sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. You say I don't feel like I'm in heaven right now. I don't feel like I'm sitting in heavenly places. Preacher am I to somehow close my eyes and visualize myself floating up there seated right there alongside Christ? That's not what Paul is saying. What he is saying is through this union with Christ you are joined to Christ and your head wherever the head goes the body is going to get there eventually.

That's been my experience. The head is seated in heaven on the throne of God. Where are we going to be someday? Seated with Christ on His throne. Just like I sat down on my father's throne you are going to sit down on my throne.

That's what he promises us. We are going to reign with Christ on the earth. That's what Revelation is telling us. So in other words it's not that we somehow visualize that we are actually there, we are not you know the old kid in the back seat saying are we there yet. Well no, not in a physical sense but in a true spiritual sense because of our union with Christ yes we are reigning seated with Him in heavenly places. Oh I wish we had an hour or so to go into all the ramifications of that. But that's an amazing thought. But it's that we in union with Christ we inherit His history.

Notice in verse 5 backing up there we were dead and now we've been raised together with Christ and we've been made to sit together with Christ in heavenly places. I told you about our ranch out in Wyoming. You say brother Mark how did you get that ranch? I married that woman right over there. You say you didn't buy it? No she did. No she did. But because of the marriage union whatever she possessed became mine. I got all her possessions. She got all my debts. It's a pretty good deal. What I owed she got and what she owned I got.

Right? In other words you understand that in a sense I bought that ranch although I didn't actually buy it. She did but it's mine as if I had bought it myself. When you enter into a living union with someone you are inheriting not only what they have but you're inheriting their history. Paul will say I'm crucified with Christ nevertheless I live yet not I. Well wait a minute Paul were you actually hanging up there on the cross next to Jesus?

That's not what he's saying. But being united with Christ I am joined not only to His person, not only to the attributes but to His history. So that in a real sense when He died I died. The law has no more claim on me because I'm joined to the one who died on a cross. I'm just as dead to the law as He was when He died.

And not only do I possess because through that union with Christ this union with His history you and I possess the union with the fact that He is seated in heavenly places right now. We had a I try to illustrate this what if we back in Utah I was living in Wyoming at the time and this was big news all our news came out of Salt Lake City so it was almost like we were more a part of Utah than Wyoming. But they had a murderer named Gary Gilmore.

Anybody remember that name some of you old folks? Gary Gilmore had committed murder no question about it. The Supreme Court had done away with the death penalty. And Gary Gilmore in pleading guilty demanded that he be executed. Now a lot of this goes back to Mormon doctrine. They have this idea they call blood atonement but there are certain sins that Christ cannot propitiate, cannot forgive you of murder being one of them. And so the only way that you can be forgiven of those kinds of sin is by what they call blood atonement. You've got to have your own blood spilled in order for that sin to be forgiven.

Okay this is Mormon stuff. And so Gary Gilmore insisted on being put to death by a firing squad. You see the logic here? They took the thing all the way to the Supreme Court and they finally ruled that yeah okay if he demands to be put to death by firing squad that's how we'll do it. And sure enough they executed the guy. Suppose Gary Gilmore before his execution had some heart problem and needs a heart transplant. And suppose they take a heart out of somebody who never committed murder and put that heart in Gary Gilmore. Do you understand that the heart inherits the guilt?

Because when they take aim to execute Gary Gilmore guess where they're aiming? Right at that transplanted heart. Even though it wasn't there when he committed the crime because it is in union with him the heart is considered just as guilty as he was. And so it is that through our union with Christ what pertains to him pertains to us. And my what a blessed thought that is. Well we can't camp here.

Let's go to the sort of the heart of the argument here. It's a verse that I hope you have memorized. 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. We say I don't know brother Greg. I put that in my top ten verses to memorize.

Maybe number one. There's probably no more important text in all the New Testament describing to us the nature of salvation than that verse. Now there's a whole lot of things you need to know but if you want to know the mechanism, if you want to know how it happened here's the explanation. It is by grace through faith. Let's talk about that a minute. You're not being saved by grace for faith. You're being saved through faith.

You see the difference? If we said that you're being saved because of faith on the grounds of faith then faith itself becomes a meritorious thing that earns you salvation. That there's something about faith itself that God just loves faith so much that if you'll give me some faith I'll give you salvation. It turns faith into a meritorious work.

You understand? No we're not saved for faith. We're saved through faith. It is the instrument by which salvation comes to us. That's the mystery that Paul is explaining here. Remember the gospel came to you. The missionary came and preached the gospel and the Holy Spirit worked to bring him to you and you to accept the message and you believed. But now he's putting that under the microscope.

Here's how all that works. The instrument that saves you is not a thing that in any way adds anything to the work of salvation. There is a text in Romans 4 where Paul says a strange thing and I read through this many, many times without ever getting it. It says of faith that it might be by grace to the end that the promise might be sure to all the seed. Now notice he said it's by faith. It's by the means of faith so that it might be by grace. Now whether we understand it or not what he's saying is there's something about faith that is compatible with salvation by grace. It fits that mechanism.

You say, well what are you talking about? Because what we say when we talk about believing, we're talking about the receptive organ of the soul. It is not the productive organ of the soul. It does not add anything at all to the work of salvation.

It is simply the organ of the soul that receives salvation. Okay, preacher illustrate. Okay, I'll read it.

Okay, I'll try. Let's say you go to hear a wonderful symphony. Now that may not float your boat but many of you, I know this very musical church, suppose you go and hear a wonderful orchestra, world class, present this beautiful symphony.

You heard it. The ear was the means. Your hearing is how the beauty of the music entered your soul. Does your ear add anything to the beauty of the music? Does it contribute one iota?

Nothing. The ear simply receives. Do you see the principle?

We therefore talk elsewhere. Paul uses the phrase the hearing of faith. Faith has to have an object. But faith doesn't produce the object. Faith simply recognizes and receives the object like your ear. This hearing receives the music of symphony so you have the hearing of faith.

The soul hears the object, the message of salvation and receives it. Go to a museum. Look at a beautiful painting on the wall. Does your looking at the painting add anything to the beauty of the painting? Does your looking at the painting improve the painting? No, but the looking at the painting is how you receive the beauty of the painting.

You see the point? Faith works like that. It doesn't add anything to the object. It simply is the receptive organ of the soul. The old Puritan said it's the empty hand by which we receive the grace. Now, by which is filled by grace. Now why did God do it that way? Well, we've already seen one reason because faith is compatible with grace. But there's another reason and it's found in this second verse here that so that no man might boast.

It's not of your production. It's his so that no man might boast. We do know that God is jealous about his glory. He declares in Isaiah that he's not gonna share it with anybody, not gonna give his glory away.

He's going to make sure, and this is how he does it, that you and I who are the recipients of this thing called salvation, that we know, we understand how it happened. We know that it wasn't us. We are not like dumb animals. I think I've told you some of my sheep stories. When I've been here in the past, when I was a kid, my dad bought up these mangy culls from some big ranch out in West Texas and turned them over to me. And I learned a lot about ministry, pastoring out in the pasture.

It was my laboratory. And I do remember rainy nights when I'd have a ewe down in the far end. All the other sheep are inside the barn and I've got to go out in the cold and the rain and locate this thing 10 o'clock at night. Pouring down rain, cold, and I finally find that old ewe laying down there.

She's gonna lay there and die. And I wasn't feeling very good shepherd-y, I guess you could say. Rather than laying the sheep on my shoulder and carrying her back to the barn, I kicked her all the way back to the barn.

I had to kick her across a roaring creek. She wasn't going, but yeah, you are. You are, sister. You're going. She's safe. Everything's okay. And does she lay down over there and just look at me with adoring eyes, worshipful, you know, all filled with thankfulness over the marvelous salvation? No. She's just a dumb sheep.

She looks at me like, big deal. So what? My friend, you're not dumb sheep. You're capable of recognizing the state that you were in.

When God goes to work and realize I'm in trouble. You remember the prodigal son? There's a good example of what we're talking about. He's out there in that far country, slopping pigs. He can't even eat slop. And he came to himself. What a strange statement. Where had he been? That's where he'd been. And he came to himself. And you'll notice how just everything falls right into place. That's the key. When he came to himself. I wish Brother Greg I knew how to do that, folks.

I'd get me a two-by-four and see if I could whack him. Oh, thank you. I needed that.

I never have found the spot. But the young man, he came to himself and said, this is nuts. What am I doing here? I'm starving. Back at my father's house, there's plenty of stuff. There's bread.

Hired servants get treated better than me. I'm going home. And he got up and he went. You know the story. And listen to the father. This, my son, was dead. And he's alive again.

That's the resurrection we're talking about. No, he wasn't dead in every way. And yes, in one sense, he knew the way home even when he was in that far country. But he wasn't about to go back. He had no use for home life back there.

His father, oh, he's the deadbeat. Let's get away from him. But then when he woke up, when he came to himself, that's the world thinks you and I have lost our marbles. And the truth is we're the only ones who've got our marbles. We picked them up. We used to be out in left field.

We picked them up and came in from left field. When God saves us, our eyes are going to be open to that fact that we cannot do this by ourselves. There's not much that we necessarily need to know, but a few things are necessary. And that's one of them. That I cannot save myself. That God's the only one. And that he's provided a way through his son. And therefore, we have absolutely no ground of boasting.

Nothing we can brag about. Paul will ask in 1 Corinthians 4, 7, who maketh thee to differ from another? It's a rhetorical question.

We're supposed to know the answer. If I differ from you, if you're going to hell, I'm going to heaven, I know who made the difference. God Almighty. It wasn't me. I was in zombie land. I was walking like zombies, living like zombies. I was headed. I was in a death camp. And I was headed straight for the second death. I was a child of wrath, just like everyone else. That was the only thing I was good at, is storing up God's wrath for the day of wrath. That's it. And God intercepted me and stopped me in my tracks.

Or I would bust hell wide open. And then finally, this last verse. We're his workmanship.

There is a controversy among Calvinists and Armenians. You know, you're here on Sunday night. You all are theologically astute. And you know, the real deep minds. I'm right, aren't I? Yeah. And so you want to know.

Inquiring minds want to know these things. And one of the disputes between Armenians and Calvinists is over this relative pronoun found in verse 8. The one that says, and that, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It is a pronoun. Poioma in Greek.

No, no. Tutto. I'm getting the wrong word.

Tutto. It means that or this. And we Calvinists, we read verse 8 and we naturally think, well, when he says that, not of yourselves, he must be talking about the faith, right? But the Armenians point out that tutto is actually a neuter pronoun. And faith is a feminine word. And you know anything about foreign languages, you know that the gender of a pronoun has to agree with its antecedents. So they would say it's impossible for that, that not of yourselves, to be referring to faith. Well, the problem is grace is also feminine and who in the right mind thinks somehow that even salvation would be of themselves.

Nobody disputes that. So we'd ask, okay, I grant you that, but then what does that talk about? When he says that, not of yourselves, that what?

That what? And I think part of our problem, here's my solution to the problem, is that we're looking earlier at the phrase in verse 8, verse 1, the first part, by grace are you saved through faith. We're trying to find the antecedent there. I don't think that's where it's found. I think it's found in verse 10. In other words, Paul omits it in verse 8.

He assumes you've got enough sense to keep reading and to realize what it is. It's this Greek word poioma. In my translation, workmanship. Some you'll find craftsmanship.

My old mentor used to say doing. It's this work, this work, this craftsmanship, this artisanship, this masterpiece, what God has done. We are His workmanship.

Do you see the contrast? Not of works, of your works, lest any man should boast. Because you are His workmanship. You are the masterpiece that God is fashioning like a sculpture. I think someone asked Michelangelo one time how he did these sculptures. He was trying to do a sculpture out of this big block of stone of an angel and he said, I knock away everything that doesn't look like an angel. For example, how does God conform us to the image of Christ? He knocks away everything that doesn't look like Jesus.

That's how He does it. And when we're through, we are this masterpiece. We're going to be glorified. We're going to be made like Him, glorified because He's knocked away everything that doesn't look like Jesus. And that's what Paul is saying.

It's not you doing this. It is God working like a sculpturer, creating this wonderful work, this workmanship, this craftsmanship. And notice it is created in Christ Jesus unto good works. You think by now that workmanship is a four-letter word? Well I guess literally it is, but you know what I mean.

I mean it's a dirty word. You know we don't say that in Calvinistic circles. But Paul is not afraid of it.

But notice the order. You're not saved by works. You're saved for works. You're saved unto good works. That's the whole point of what God is doing in salvation. He will say to Titus, we are this peculiar people.

And I don't mean oddball, although some of us fit that. But you're a peculiar people, zealous of good works. That's the whole point of salvation. You say, well I don't believe God to do that thing. You know I believe in predestination. Well I'm glad you do because notice these are good works which He has foreordained. He's foreordained that we should walk in them. The same God who predestinated us unto salvation in the first place has predestined us to these good works.

That's the whole purpose of what He's done. Well I hope you have made a little bit of sense out of all this. But if we go back to thinking about this day, Easter Sunday, about the resurrection of Christ, again I want to emphasize we of all people believe that. Yeah, we believe it.

It's there at the end. We believe in the Word. We accept the testimony of God.

But we have experienced it ourselves. We have passed, Jesus said in John 5, they believe in me have passed from death unto life. They have eternal life. They've passed from death to life. What do you call passing from death to life?

I call it resurrection. And so there is some truth to the hymn. You ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart. That subjectively in here we reflect the objective truth of the resurrection of Christ.

And may that be true in all of you. If it's not, then you need to come into a saving union with Jesus. Jesus Christ through faith.

We've looked at the mechanism. We see how it works. It is through faith that we receive Jesus and all that He is. May that be true in your life and mine.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for this passage, for its importance in our life, for Lord just keeping us on the right path. We know how prone we are, our nature to boast. We still fall prey to that old satanic spirit. But Father, we thank you that our eyes have been opened. We behold the work of a Savior who did for us what we could not possibly do for ourselves. And Father, our eyes have been opened to see it and to receive it through trusting in Him.

Lord, bring us to that point if we've never come. May we turn away from all else, all self-boasting, all self-works. And may we cling to what Christ our Savior has done for us. Thank you. Bless us as we ponder these things. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.