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00:02 Good afternoon all of you. Okay, now um maybe I'll do the Bible reading since
00:08 there's no Bible reader. Okay. Ephesians chapter 2 uh verse 1-13.
00:19 Okay. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1-13. Okay. Sorry, verse 1 to 10. I'm sorry.
00:24 Verse 1 to 10. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you
00:31 used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is
00:38 now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one
00:44 time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires
00:50 and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wroth.
00:56 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive
01:02 with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have
01:08 been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the
01:14 heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. in order that in the coming ages he might
01:20 show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in
01:25 Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from
01:32 yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. For
01:40 we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God
01:46 prepared in advance for us to do. Let's open with prayer.
01:52 Heavenly Father, thank you that as we open your word, we we can hear you speaking to us. We pray that you open
01:60 our eyes and our hearts to see the glory of your gospel, to see the glory of your
02:06 grace, Lord, to understand the the depths, Lord, of our previous wretchedness and how you have lifted us
02:13 by your grace to the hearts. We pray that you'll instill in us uh repentance,
02:19 faith, and obedience in you. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
02:25 Now, how often have you heard a sermon on sin? Or if you walk into a Christian
02:31 bookstore, uh how often have you seen a Christian book talking about sin?
02:38 It's not a very popular topic, right? I mean, you can walk into a Christian bookstore and find lots of books on
02:44 being successful, on uh living a fulfilling life, on
02:50 believing in yourself. But I don't think I've ever come across a book on sin.
02:57 Maybe we find it too pessimistic, too confronting, too defeating. We we we
03:03 want to think that we are actually not that bad. And we like to think of ourselves as basically nice people.
03:11 So if you were listening to the passage that we just read, you may have noticed that the Bible doesn't describe us as
03:18 basically nice people at all. So today I'm going to be giving a sermon on sin.
03:25 It's a very important topic because if we don't understand our sinfulness then
03:30 we we won't grasp how great God's grace is and we won't see the need for us to
03:36 be saved. So we're going to go straight into the passage. Okay. And we're going
03:41 to start with verses 1 to three of chapter 2 which tells us how we were once dead in our sin.
03:49 Now when we when you try to tell the gospel to people often the greatest uh difficulty is to convince them that they
03:56 need to be saved. So they ask you saved saved from what?
04:02 You know if you tell them well uh God offers to make you rich then you say yeah I can understand that or say God
04:09 offers healing then they say yes I can definitely understand that. But say God
04:15 uh and of course there are many preachers who use those kind of tactics and and you know they gain a following because they popular because they offer
04:22 these things. But if you tell somebody you are a sinner, you need to be saved and forgiven and often you get a blank
04:30 look. Now, in order for us to truly grasp the
04:35 blessings that we have in Christ to understand how blessed we actually are in Christ, we need to understand how bad
04:41 we were before. And that's what Paul does in Ephesians chapter 2 starting
04:46 with verse one. Okay, let me read to you. This is from another uh translation. Just now read the NIV. This
04:53 one is the ESV. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following
04:60 the cause of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons
05:07 of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,
05:13 carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of
05:19 wroth like the rest of mankind. Now, before you became a Christian, we
05:26 were dead men walking. Have you seen the movie dead men walking? It was a I don't
05:31 know quite a few years ago. It's about um uh I think a a prison where they keep
05:37 those kind of uh prisoners for execution and just before they're about to be executed as they walking to the
05:42 execution site I don't know is it the the electric chair or whatever it is uh you know somebody will yell out dead man
05:49 walking which means this is the last walk that this man is going to take because he's going to be dead very soon
05:54 after that dead man walking now we were also dead in the trespasses and sins in
06:00 which we once used to walk. In what sense were we dead? Well, we were dead
06:07 not physically obviously but spiritually we had no life in us because we were
06:12 separated from God who is the source of all life. Now a dead person is
06:18 completely unaware, completely powerless, completely oblivious. That person cannot uh make himself alive,
06:26 cannot do anything. And so it was with us before we became Christians. We could
06:32 not do anything to bring about our own salvation. Not only that, we were completely even unaware that there was a
06:38 problem. We we were unaware that we were spiritually dead. We were unaware that we were so desperately needing
06:44 salvation. We couldn't turn to God on our own. Now I want to go deeper into this a bit.
06:51 So uh to introduce a bit of uh theological thinking here. So bear with me. Among Protestant Christians, there
06:57 are two views on whether people can actually turn to God by themselves or not. Okay? So they're classified into
07:05 the Armenians and the Calvinists. Now the Armenians believe that although
07:11 human nature has been seriously corrupted by sin, but people are not completely helpless, they can still make a choice to decide whether they want to
07:17 believe in God or not. So they they think that God gives every sinner in
07:22 this world the the grace to be able to repent and believe. Okay. So therefore
07:27 it's up to them to decide freely whether they are going to have faith in Christ or not. So if they have faith then it is
07:33 their contribution. This faith is their contribution to their salvation. But on the other hand the Calvinists
07:39 believe that because of sin people are totally unable to even believe the
07:45 gospel without God's help. So all sinners are completely slaves to sin.
07:50 They are dead. They are blind. They are deaf to the things of God. And if they left to themselves, they will never ever
07:55 make a decision for God. So when someone comes to faith in Christ, it's because
08:01 God has first acted in their heart to give them new birth by the Holy Spirit.
08:07 And that person is made alive spiritually and given the ability to have faith. And therefore even their
08:14 faith is a gift of God's salvation as well. Now I won't um tell you what I think uh
08:23 yet but I want to go through a few verses in the Bible which um I want you
08:29 to think for yourself which view which position do you think better explains the verses in the Bible that we're going
08:34 to look at. Okay. Genesis. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man
08:41 was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. So basically
08:48 this verse is telling us that people are only evil continually in their thinking.
08:53 Jeremiah can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also
08:58 you can do good who are accustomed to doing evil. So what he's saying is a leopard cannot change his spots. That
09:05 phrase actually comes from the Bible. Okay. If you are accustomed to doing evil, there's no way you can do good.
09:11 Romans 3, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands and no one seeks
09:18 for God. See, nobody would seek for God normally. Okay. John chapter 6, Jesus
09:25 said this, "No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him." And
09:32 then he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the father." So unless
09:39 God works in you, there's no way that you will come to Christ. Romans 8,
09:46 for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit
09:52 to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
09:57 So those who are in the flesh, referring to unbelievers, okay? Those who do not have God's spirit, they cannot. There's
10:03 no way they can please God or submit to his law. 1 Corinthians, the natural person does
10:10 not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they
10:17 are spiritually discerned. In other words, if you don't have God's spirit, you cannot understand the things of God.
10:23 2 Corinthians. In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the
10:29 unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of
10:34 Christ who is the image of God. So he's saying that the Satan, the god of this
10:39 world has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that it's impossible for them to see the truth and the glory and
10:45 the light of the gospel. Another one.
10:51 Oops. What did I do? It's not working. Ah. Oops. Here. Okay.
10:58 Matthew Jesus said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth." He's praying to God that you have hidden
11:04 these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such
11:10 was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my father and no one knows the son except the father
11:16 and no one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses
11:21 to reveal him. So Jesus is saying that unless uh I
11:27 choose to reveal the father to you, you would never know the father. Jesus is saying that you know for people to come
11:33 to God, God has to actually reveal to them and God often chooses to re reveal
11:38 it not to the wise and understanding people but to the little children to the
11:43 to the non-impressive people. Okay, that is God's will. Another similar passage
11:51 um maybe have the next slide. Okay, here another similar passage. God chose what
11:57 is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose
12:04 what is low and despised in the world even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human
12:11 being might boast in the presence of God which is saying that again those who
12:16 come to God God chose to reveal himself to them for them to understand and often God chooses the people of no consequence
12:23 the non-impressive people so that nobody can boast I was so smart I managed to
12:28 come to God and so we come back to today's passage message. You were dead. Dead in the
12:36 trespasses and sins in which you once walked. And uh verse three, you were by
12:41 nature children of wroth. By nature it says here, children of wroth like the
12:47 rest of mankind. Now from these verses, I believe that
12:52 the Calvinist position seems to explain the verses better than the Armenian position. I don't know about you. Okay.
12:58 You see the Armenian position that I described earlier is not really a biblical objection. That means it's not
13:04 because they feel that the the Bible verses don't say that, but it's more a philosophical objection about human free
13:12 will. Because in the Calvinist point of view, only those in whom God works are
13:18 made alive and have faith in Christ. But if that is the case, then it's actually God who decides who gets saved. Right?
13:25 Because God gives that person the ability and God chooses them. God decides, God predestines them. And so
13:32 God chooses who is Satan, who is not in that view. And so for the Armenian, that is very hard to to accept because if
13:39 that is true, they think that human beings have no free will. See that is the objection where this position came
13:45 from. Now I'm not here today to resolve uh philosophical questions much as that
13:50 is very interesting. Okay? I'm I think there are good answers to those objections, but that's not my topic
13:56 today. My topic today is to look at what the Bible says. You see, for us, the supreme authority is the Bible. And it's
14:04 the scriptures and not the human reasoning, human logic. You see, if we
14:10 should always believe what the Bible says first and foremost, and not what our finite minds tell us makes sense or
14:16 not. So, what does the Bible say? Well, it says that you were dead in the
14:21 trespasses and sins. We all walked in this way. It says we followed the cause of this world. We were worldly. We
14:29 followed the prince of the power of the air that is Satan. The power of Satan is at work in every unbeliever. It says
14:36 here we lived in the passions of our flesh. So you can see here the unholy trio of
14:43 the world, the devil and the flesh all working to influence us to make us dead
14:49 in our sin. See, we just can't help ourself in our sin.
14:55 Let me give you an example. Internet pornography, okay, is now everywhere.
15:00 Now, technology has made our lives much easier in a way, but it's also made it easier for us to sin in the privacy of
15:07 our own bedrooms. See many people including many Christians and including
15:12 even many pastors around the world are addicted to internet pornography and it
15:18 has destroyed many marriages, many people's lives.
15:23 Verse three says that we not only carry out the the sinful desires of the body
15:29 but also the sinful desires of the mind. And if you are honest with yourself, you
15:34 know that you are, or at least you used to be, slaves to greed, slaves to pride,
15:43 to bitterness, to hatred. You see, most of our sins actually stem
15:49 from our minds. That is the root cause of most of our sins. Jesus said this. He
15:54 said in Mark 7, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from
15:60 within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft,
16:05 murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil
16:12 things come from within and they defile a person. So look, even things like
16:18 sexual immorality, adultery, they are not just simple acts. They start with
16:23 thoughts. They start with our attitude of our hearts.
16:30 A lot of people think, "Hey, you call me a sinner, but you know, actually, I'm not that bad. At least I'm not like a
16:37 murderer or rapist or, you know, like some of those uh I won't say that, but I'm quite a decent person. I'm basically
16:44 a nice person compared to a lot of other people." So, it's natural for us to be blind to our own sin because that's what
16:52 sin does to you. You know, I'm a neurologist and there are certain brain conditions that make a person unaware
16:60 that they have it. Okay? In in neurology, we call it a nosnosia, which is a fancy medical term to say
17:07 that um this person has a brain condition. For example, they had a stroke and after the stroke, they they
17:12 don't even realize that they've had a stroke. They think that I'm perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with me. Okay? Even though they can't move their
17:18 arm, okay? They think, and this is a word that only neurologists use. I don't think Dr. Peter actually knows that
17:24 word. Okay. Yes, that's right. So, it can happen,
17:29 isn't it? Yeah. So, you see, sin is like that. Sin does that to us. It blinds us
17:35 to its own presence and we are not even aware of his deadly effects on us.
17:40 Now, the problem is with us is that we think of sin as merely being things that we do wrong, bad things that we do like
17:47 maybe murdering or lying or stealing. Okay? And because we don't do those
17:53 things all the time, hopefully not, we think we are actually okay. But in order
17:58 to grasp how sinful we actually are, we need to see things from God's point of
18:03 view. So in in the book of Acts, Paul is giving a sermon in Athens and he said
18:10 that God I won't read through the whole thing, but basically he's saying that God is our creator. He made us. He gives
18:17 us life and breath and everything else that we have. And why? Verse 27, so that
18:23 we should seek him and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. In
18:28 other words, God expects us as his creatures to seek him.
18:35 Romans 1, for God's invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and
18:41 divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
18:47 So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as
18:52 God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
18:59 Again here people are supposed to give honor to God as God because he's the one
19:04 who made us. We supposed to give thanks to God. But how many of us do that? How many of us honor God? How many of us
19:12 give thanks to God? Seek after God. See, we actually owe him everything. He
19:18 sustains our life. He gives us every breath that we draw. We are supposed to We owe him our gratitude. We owe him our
19:25 allegiance. We owe him our obedience. We owe him our love.
19:30 Now Jesus was asked by someone uh what is the greatest commandment in the law?
19:36 And what was Jesus answer? Jesus said the most important is quoting
19:42 from the book of Deuteronomy here. O Israel the Lord our God is the Lord is
19:47 one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
19:52 with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is
19:60 no other commandment greater than these. Now, how many of us have loved the Lord
20:06 our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and all our
20:13 strength? And how many of you have loved your neighbor as yourself?
20:18 Now if you haven't and I know I haven't then you have broken the two most
20:24 important commandments of God and in fact you have broken the whole law of God because Jesus says another similar
20:31 passage that on these commandments hang the whole law of God that basically these are a summary of the whole of
20:36 God's law. You see it means that we are really sinners.
20:42 In Romans chapter 14 it says for whatever does not proceed from faith is
20:49 sin. Now this is actually a very startling verse. Whatever does not come
20:54 from faith is sin. You see we human beings are used to evaluating uh outward
21:00 actions alone because we can't read other people's mind. So we only can see what they do. But God can see the heart.
21:07 And in God's standard, true good is not just the action but the motive
21:12 underlying the action. You see, true good is what is done out of faith in God. What is done out of love for God,
21:20 what is done for his honor and for his glory. Everything else is sin.
21:27 No matter how good it looks on the outside. Now if we use this standard to judge our actions and other people's
21:34 actions, how many of us can say that we are truly good? Now think of the very religious people.
21:40 Now a few months ago when there was the typhoon Hayan in Philippines, I was in the Basam Malam and uh there was a bunch
21:47 of uh people from a Buddhist association doing the relief funds collection, you
21:53 know, collecting money for charitable purposes. These are good deeds surely, right? and they put me to shame because I wasn't standing there collecting money
21:59 for typhoon hayan relief. But in God's view, these deeds do not proceed from
22:06 faith and therefore they cannot be considered truly good.
22:11 You see, even being religious is in itself, it can be in itself a self-serving thing. It's a way of
22:18 serving our own interest and rejecting God's rule. Why? Because religious people do good deeds.
22:26 so that they can earn merit with God so that they can bargain with God and manipulate God you know to to do
22:33 something for them you see a lot of Chinese thing like that isn't it go to the temple to pray and offer this and that why so that oh please help my
22:39 daughter to do well in the exam all these kind of things see we want something from him that's why we go and seek him so people seek God not for who
22:47 he is but for what they can get out of him see a religion of good deeds is
22:53 basically relying on myself rather than relying on God's mercy. Therefore,
22:59 religion even religion is a form of rebellion against God.
23:05 Or think of the philanthropist. Now, I think it's become a trend for the very rich billionaires, especially in the
23:11 United States, to give away a lot of their money to charity. Now, we have no idea what their motives
23:17 are underlying that. It's a really good deed that they're doing, giving so much money to charity, right? But you can
23:22 actually do good deeds with the wrong motive. And that makes the deed no longer good. See, in God's eyes, that
23:29 deed is sinful. So, a a billionaire giving away money not because of a
23:34 sincere desire to help people, but maybe to uh to gain honor, to gain praise in the eyes of men or to outdo all the
23:42 other billionaires and show off how generous I am. That would not be a good deed.
23:47 Now, you and I may not be billionaires, but we are the same. You see, our good deeds are often so often impure in
23:55 motive, mixed motives, self-s serving. Just take for example, some of you may
24:00 have just put some money into the offering bag. Now, have you put it in there out of
24:06 pure gratitude to God because of all that he has given you? Or maybe you're doing it because next door is looking at
24:12 me to see whether I'm going to put money in or not. I need people to accept me, to approve of me. So, maybe it's a peer
24:17 pressure that makes me put the money in. Or is it to to uh bargain with God? Oh
24:23 God, I need something from you. Therefore, I'm going to put money in and then after that you better answer my prayer.
24:28 You see, imagine if imagine if our thoughts could be broadcast to other people. Wouldn't that be terribly
24:35 embarrassing, very shameful because then they would know what we are really thinking deep down inside. So even when
24:42 we are really nice in our actions, very polite on the outside, deep down our thoughts can be full of venom. Isn't it?
24:48 We all know that. And all of us are sick to the core with sin. And yet we don't
24:54 realize it most of the time. We think we're actually okay. Now, if people are all sinners, then why
24:59 is it that so many people and even unbelievers are such nice, decent people? Well, one of the reasons is
25:06 we've just sinned because we don't know their hearts. We can only see the outside. But another reason is God
25:11 restrains sin in us. You see um he puts the government in place, the state there
25:17 to punish sinners, evildoers, so we are afraid of punishment so we don't dare to sin. Or we are afraid of being disgraced
25:25 and shamed. We don't want other people to know that we are like that so we don't do it. Or just common civil
25:30 decency. We had a good upbringing. Our parents taught us how to do the right thing so we don't do it. Or just the
25:36 natural love that is in each person. We don't do it to people who who are you know who love us. But all these things
25:43 actually just restrain our sin. They do not abolish our sin altogether. And when the conditions are right, our sin
25:49 bubbles to the surface. Our sin breaks through like a tsunami breaking through the barriers.
25:54 So I give you an example now. I like to read history in my spare time. It's like
25:60 a hobby of mine. And I was reading this history book, The Third Reich at War. It's about Nazi Germany at war. Now
26:09 before World War II, there were lots of communities of Jews living among uh
26:15 living in the major cities of Europe, especially in Eastern Europe, which where Poland and Soviet Union now is.
26:22 Now, of course, there were in inevitable tensions simmering underneath the surface between the Jews and the local
26:28 people, but they all kind of got along fine. And then when Nazi Germany went to
26:34 war, they invaded uh the previous Soviet Union. what is now the western Ukraine
26:39 region. And of course, we all know the Nazi Germanists hated the Jews and they all started killing Jews wherever they went. So when they invaded the Soviet
26:46 Ukraine, they started killing the Jews. And the local Ukrainians, a lot of them rush to help to kill the Jews. These
26:53 were the neighbors that they've lived with, they rub shoulders with on a daily basis, in the shops, in the streets, in
26:59 the workplaces, people that they knew. And in one city in the western Ukraine
27:06 called Leviv, they gathered the Jews together and they used clubs full of nails to beat them to death. And the
27:13 witnesses saw hundreds of Jews with blood streaming down their faces. There were holes in their heads, their eyes
27:18 were hanging out the sockets, the broken hands, and all these corpses everywhere. Pretty gruesome. And then they took all
27:25 these corpses and piled them in the town square and gave the locals 24 hours to do whatever they wanted to the bodies.
27:31 mutilate them, take out all their anger on them, and then they got the remaining Jews to clean up the mess. And after
27:37 they clean up the mess, they got the Jews to dance. After that, they killed those Jews with clubs as well. You see,
27:43 in just a few weeks in one town alone, 7,000 Jews were killed. That is just one small example of the kind of savagery
27:51 that had happened during the Second World War. There were lots more worse things. And that is an example of the
27:58 human heart. The same kind of thing has been repeated again and again throughout history,
28:03 isn't it? Last year on this stage, we heard a testimony of somebody from Rwanda in this country where Hoous one day
28:10 turned on their tootsie neighbors that they've been living together peacefully for so long and then they started
28:16 savagely killing them. So many were killed. Same kind of thing on a smaller scale
28:22 happened in this country in the past as you all know. Now all these people, the Hoous, you
28:28 know, the Ukrainians, they're not sociopaths, you know, they are they're actually nice, decent people in ordinary
28:35 times, very normal people. But when the conditions were right, when all the restraints were removed, there were no
28:41 rules and they could get away with anything. You could get away with murder, then all the inner viciousness
28:47 of people rise to the surface and they just act out the sin that is dominant all along inside. And that can happen to
28:53 us too. Now maybe a less uh gruesome example. Do you know that at least in
28:59 the western countries um hotel rooms right they have the x-rated channel the
29:05 pay-per-view channel and uh apparently 50% uh of the guests in the hotel rooms
29:11 view those x-rated shows and they account for nearly 70% of the in room
29:17 profits in the hotels. So there was this uh town in the Midwest of the United
29:23 States and there was a youth pastor's conference in this hotel. So youth
29:28 pastors from everywhere around the United States gathered on into this hotel. Okay. A few years ago and took up
29:36 almost every room in the hotel was filled with youth pastors. At the end of the conference, the hotel manager told
29:42 the conference organizer, "Hey, you know what? The number of guests that tuned into the adult movie channel broke all
29:49 our previous records by a huge margin, far and away outdoing any other
29:54 convention that we've ever had in this hotel. Now, those youth pastors perhaps they
30:00 were less likely to dabble in pornography at home or in their office, but it wasn't because they were more
30:06 godly, right? It was because they were afraid of getting caught if they did it at home or in the office. But when they
30:11 were out of town, when they were in a hotel room by themselves, no accountability, no one watching, no one
30:19 ever will find out what I did. They gave free reign to their sinful impulses.
30:25 Youth pastors, it can happen to any of us. Now, for those of you who travel a lot overseas for business, I'm sure it's a big temptation. So, bring along your
30:32 wives or something like that. Now my point from these examples is we are all
30:38 sinful people through and through. So don't kid yourselves that you are not. If you have lived long enough, you
30:45 also will know from personal experience how other people who seem very nice can
30:50 hurt you can can be horrible and how you also can be horrible to other people as well. Now what the Bible says is so true
30:58 when we look at our own experience in life. We were dead in trespasses and sins. We were completely helpless to
31:05 change ourselves to save ourselves. It says we were sons of disobedience.
31:11 Sorry, never mind. You have the passage in your head. I hope we were sons of disobedience because disobeying God was
31:17 basically like a normal way of life for us, right? We were in our very nature children of wroth destined for eternal
31:24 punishment. Now I've spent a lot of time talking about sin because it's absolutely
31:30 fundamental for us to grasp how sinful we are in order that we can grasp the
31:36 wonder of God's grace. The picture here is not of humans somehow being able to
31:41 reach out to God and say I'm good enough to at least you know turn to God like the Armenians say but the picture is
31:48 bleaker than that. It says that human beings are unable they're dead. They unable to do anything to get out of
31:54 their sinful state. We were enslaved. We had no desire to change. We were not
31:60 even aware of our desperate state. We were completely helpless. And that is when God's grace comes in
32:08 and he makes us now alive with Christ. So verse four-7,
32:15 verse four begins with but. one of the most wonderful butts in the Bible. It
32:22 tells a huge contrast between what we were and what we are now. You see,
32:27 between our helpless, fallen condition in the past and God's gracious action
32:32 towards us. So, it's not human beings reaching out to God. It's God who takes the sovereign initiative to reach down
32:40 to helpless humanity. Verse four, but God being rich in mercy, because of the
32:48 great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By
32:56 grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so
33:03 that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
33:12 God didn't have to save us. He would be perfectly just and right to just punish us as we deserve. We are sons of
33:18 disobedience. We are by nature children of wroth. But because of his rich mercy,
33:24 because of his great love, because of his grace, he didn't do that. He reached
33:29 out to us. Now, if you don't know what the word grace means, it just means an
33:34 undeserved gift or favor. So when we were still dead in our sins.
33:40 Even when we were God's enemies, we were rebelling against him, God made us
33:45 alive. He gave us new life into our dead souls in Christ. And so spiritually, he
33:51 resurrected us from the dead. And not only that, he raised us up to heaven to
33:57 sit with him in Christ Jesus. Notice how it says all this in the past tense. It's
34:03 not like it hasn't happened yet. It says you have been raised up with Christ. Vers 6, you have been seated with him.
34:10 It's in the past tense. It's already happened. Now, we have already been resurrected. Of course, not bodily, not
34:15 physically. And we have already we are already now sitting with Christ in heaven, although not bodily physically,
34:21 but it will happen one day. What he's referring to is the spiritual reality.
34:27 The spiritual reality now will lead to the physical reality one day. We were once dead, but now we have been made
34:33 alive. We were once by nature children of Roth, but now we have the privilege of sitting with Christ in heaven. We
34:39 have the most intimate relationship and union with Christ. So if you are a Christian, no longer are
34:47 you dead in your sins, in your trespasses. Previously you did not have a desire for
34:53 God, but now God has created in you a desire for him.
34:58 Previously you were unaware or unconcerned about sin but now you are
35:05 grieved by your sin and strive to be holy and to please God.
35:11 Previously you only loved yourself but now you are beginning to love God to
35:17 trust God. See God has given you new life. He's for forgiven all your
35:22 previous sins. And not only that, you are now in intimate union with Christ
35:27 and you have a place in heaven with him. What a great salvation God has given to
35:32 us. And why does God do it? It says in verse 7, so that in the coming ages, he
35:38 might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. In other words, so that he
35:46 will continue to show us more and more grace. So our grace that we have received now in salvation is only of the
35:53 beginning. Okay? Because there will be an eternity to come. And every day
36:00 after day and age after age in this unending time, God will continue to pour out his grace, his kindness immeasurable
36:08 on us in Christ forever. That is how wonderful his grace is to us.
36:14 Paul wants to emphasize to us to make sure that we understand that all this does not come from us. It is by God's
36:21 grace. The emphasis is on grace. In chapter one, he emphasized grace. But here even more in chapter two, the
36:27 emphasis is that we are saved by God's grace. Verse eight,
36:33 for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.
36:39 It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.
36:45 Salvation is a free gift of God. We didn't do anything to deserve it. We did
36:50 not do anything to obtain it. It's not a result of works that is of our good deeds.
36:56 See, in every other religion except Christianity, uh it's about men reaching out to God,
37:03 men putting in the effort, uh trying to be good, trying to do good so that one
37:08 day God will accept them and they can enter the blessed state, whether they call it heaven or nirvana or whatever else.
37:15 So ultimately all religions are about relying on myself to get there. It's
37:22 basically pride, isn't it? I can do it. If only I try hard enough, I can do it. God will accept me. But Christianity is
37:29 the only religion, if you can even call it a religion. It's the only religion where you cannot earn your way to
37:35 heaven. The Christian message is basically this. There's bad news and there's good news. If you don't get the
37:42 bad news, you won't appreciate the good news. The bad news is we are all totally
37:48 vile, sinful creatures. There's hopeless situation. We cannot help ourselves. We
37:54 cannot do anything to reach God. Nothing that we can do can ever be good enough
37:59 uh uh for God before we became Christians. Our good deeds are like
38:04 filthy rags to God. And that makes us feel pretty small, isn't it? Makes us destroys our pride.
38:11 We can't do anything to help ourselves. We can contribute nothing to our salvation.
38:17 But then there's the good news. And the word gospel means good news. The good
38:22 news is that God has reached down from heaven to us and he has freely offered
38:29 his forgiveness, his mercy to us who are unloving, unloly, undeserving, abhorent
38:36 people. He has done everything that's necessary to save us. And we all uh
38:42 everything that is necessary to uh uh for our salvation is completely done by God. All we need to do now is to believe
38:50 that this is true and that's it. Now that's why Paul says salvation is by
38:57 grace through faith. Faith is important. If you have no faith, if you don't
39:03 believe that this is this gospel is true, then you can't receive this gift from God. But if you put your trust in
39:08 God, if you place your faith in Jesus Christ, then you will receive God's gracious gift of salvation.
39:17 And so because salvation is entirely by God's grace alone, nobody can boast I
39:25 was saved or because I was smart enough to believe Jesus. I picked the right religion. No, the the Armenian might be
39:34 able to boast that at least I was clever enough to decide for Christ. That's my contribution at least to salvation.
39:39 Everything else by God's grace. But the Calvinist says, you know what? Even my faith comes from God. Without God's
39:46 grace, I would be heading to hell be because you know without this miraculous
39:52 intervention of God in my heart. There's no way I would have chosen him. I would never have turned to God. God worked in
39:59 me to give me this faith in him. So salvation is totally completely from
40:04 beginning to end a work of God and man does not play a part at all.
40:11 Verse 10, our last verse. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
40:18 good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
40:24 The main emphasis in today's passage is God's free gift of grace. But of course,
40:30 when we emphasize grace, somebody's bound to say, well, if it's only by grace and not by works, then my works
40:36 are irrelevant. It doesn't matter how I live. I can do whatever I like. I'll still be saved because of grace. Now
40:41 verse 10 corrects this kind of misconception. Salvation is not by good works is true
40:48 but it is for good works. To put it another way, grace is the
40:54 basis of our salvation. But good works are the goal of our
40:59 salvation. See, grace enables us to be saved. But we are saved for doing good
41:06 works. We are God's workmanship. God made us. He created us to do good works
41:11 which he prepared beforehand that we should walk in good works. The whole point of God saving us is not so that we
41:17 will just go straight back and wallow in our sin again, but we are saved from sin. You see, we are saved so we can be
41:24 out of sin to live holy life to please God.
41:29 So now we've looked at the whole passage. What are the practical implications for us? How should we
41:36 respond? Well, number one, recognize you are a
41:41 sinner. Recognize that you are a sinner. Your sin is not just the bad deeds that you
41:46 do, but the whole direction of your life, your attitudes, your thoughts, which is geared towards yourself and
41:53 does not include God in the picture. See, sin is refusing to let God take the
41:58 control. Sin is refusing to let God be master of our lives.
42:06 Sin is basically doing it my way for me, myself and I. And we are all guilty of
42:13 sin all the time. Second, realize that you can't do
42:19 anything to earn God's favor. You can't. Don't think that by coming to church, by
42:25 being involved in a lot of church stuff, by giving money to charity,
42:30 that you know somehow you can deserve to be saved by God. No, God saves you not because of what
42:37 you do, but purely because what Jesus did for you on the cross. So don't have
42:42 a mentality that God owes me something. God doesn't owe you anything. Because
42:48 you can actually never do anything to put God in your debt, but we owe him everything.
42:55 Third, put your faith in Jesus Christ. Believe in Jesus. Since you can't do
43:01 anything to save yourselves, throw yourself at God's mercy and receive his free gift of grace. Having faith in
43:09 Jesus is not just about mentally agreeing that the Christian message is true, but it actually means trusting in
43:15 Jesus personally that he will save you. Staking all your uh all your whole life
43:21 on the confidence that Jesus will save you and therefore turning away from your
43:26 pre previous lifestyle of sin. That is believing in Jesus. It doesn't matter whether you are not yet a Christian. It
43:33 doesn't matter if you have been a Christian for years. The key is still faith. Okay. Every day we must
43:40 acknowledge our sin. Every day we must realize that it's not by our own merits.
43:46 We cannot rely on our own merits to be saved. And every day we must turn to God
43:51 and trust him that his grace alone is enough to save us.
43:58 Number four, realize you are saved for good works. Get the sequence right. It's
44:05 not uh good works leading to salvation. No, it is salvation leading to good
44:10 works. No longer are we to walk as in verse one, walking in trespasses and sins. No,
44:18 in verse 10, we are to walk in good works.
44:23 So today, if God has spoken to you, you've heard the gospel message, you
44:29 realize, I'm a sinner, I can't do anything to win God's favor, I want to
44:34 put my trust in Christ. May I invite you to come forward at the end of the service because there'll be somebody
44:40 here who will talk to you, who will pray with you, who will discuss things with you, and you can sign up for the alpha
44:46 course as well. Okay? Don't be shy. Nobody will bite your head off. If you want to find out more, please do come
44:53 forward at the end of the service. Right, let's close now in a word of prayer.
45:01 Heavenly Father, we are truly amazed by your love, your
45:07 grace and kindness towards us. You chose people like us to be yours. We who once
45:14 walked in trespasses and sins, who lived in disobedience and rebellion and were
45:19 children of wroth. You redeemed us by sending your son to suffer and die to take our penalty for
45:26 sin. Father, help us to see our sin for what it really is and to realize that apart
45:33 from you, there is no good in us that can bring us to you.
45:38 Help us to daily place our trust in your son and to get rid of pride and
45:44 boasting. Enable us to walk in the holiness and good works which you have prepared
45:51 beforehand for us to do to your glory and honor now and forever more in Jesus
45:56 name. Amen. Want to thank the Lord for Dr. Tan's
46:02 message.
