AI OVERVIEW: today's teaching text is Ephesians Ephesians 2 1-10 um okay uh as you and you as you as for you and you were in which you 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 now at work in those who are disobedient all of us also lived among them at one time gratifying the Cravings of our flesh and following the desires and thoughts like the rest we were by Nature deserving of Wrath but because of his great love for us God who is rich in Mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions It Is by Grace you have been saved and God raised us up with Jesus with Christ and seated us with him in the Heavenly Realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable Riches of his Grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus for it is by Grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves it is a gift of God not by works that no one can boast for we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus which advance to do this is the word of this is the word of the Lord thanks be to God God thank you Isaac good morning AO two decades ago in South Africa white security police officer Mr vanderbeck looked across the courtroom into the face of a withered 70-year-old black woman he had just been tried and found guilty of several murders including that of her husband and her son the basic facts of the case are these Mr vanderbeck and some of his fellow officers entered This Woman's house shot her son her only son at Point Blank Range then burned his body as they partied nearby several years later vanderbeck returned and took her husband the woman didn't find out what happened to him until almost 2 years later when he returned for her she was taken to her husband he was bloodied beaten bruised but he was still alive he looked very strong she said ready to breathe a sign of relief until vanderbeck DED him with gasoline and set him Ablaze there're no question that Mr vanderbeck was guilty there were Witnesses and he confessed to many crimes including these so what do you want asked the judge how should man the trial was surely slashing through her causing her heart to Hemorrhage and new she's frail but her voice is strong I want three things she says first to be taken to the place where my husband's body was buried so I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial secondly I want Mr vanderbeck to become my son I would like for him to come twice a month and spend a day with me so I can pour out on him whatever love I still have and finally she said I want a third thing I would like Mr vanderbeck to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to forgive this was also the wish of my husband and so I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and Lead Me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr vanderbeck in my arms Embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven as the court assistants led the elderly woman across the courtroom toward him Mr vanderbeck overwhelmed by what he heard fainted he didn’t know how long he lay on the floor he was helped back to Consciousness by singing the people in the courtroom family friends neighbors all of them victim of Decades of Oppression and Injustice had begun to sing softly but certainly Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a Wretch like Me I once was lost but now I'm found was blind but now I see this morning I want to talk about Grace Grace is one of the those churchy words it's one of those words that we use over and over and over again it's a word that's better caught than taught and while that is true most of the time it's impossible even then to lay hold of it over time are busy and independent pull yourself up or down by your bootstraps nice rather than kind culture in a world in a culture like ours Grace can lose lose its power to make an impression say the word grace and perhaps the first thing that comes to your mind is saying grace before a meal or getting a good parking space I have a friend who talks about parking Grace maybe it means nothing to you or maybe there's the popular uh acronym for Grace God's riches at Christ's expense it's pithy right it's also impotent if you say it enough at best we have Al often narrowed it to the good that we get from God or the good that we give to others even when they're undeserving Grace we say is a gift it's unmar favor it's undeserved but the truth is is that Grace while it is a gift it's not about what is given a gift is always about how it comes the relationship that is assumed when the gift comes so when we hear a story like the one of the South African woman and officer vanderbeck we Wonder Could I see myself giving Grace like that woman it's a good question to be sure but almost none of us asks could I see myself needing Grace like that officer I want to suggest to you that until and unless we can put ourselves in his place the kingdom will be Out Of Reach for us we're doing a series called This is there is more and so for the next few weeks we'll be doing a deep dive into the book of Ephesians and in it Paul gives us this gorgeous breathing bunch of scripture in this Lea in this letter it's kind of an inhale and an exhale it's not a a book that explains a thing or deals with problems in a particular church or scolds a person or educates it's this book that kind of just breathes and asks you to reach for more and asks you to see more it's a giant loud unignorable letter if we believe the gospel if we believe that we are able to know an unknowable God because we have a God who so loved the world if we believe that we have the power in us that raised Jesus from the dead that we live according to and with and through a resurrected Jesus that if we believe that the enemy is alive and well and coming after us and we believe that this is in fact War if we believe that Christ is alive and well and we are his body in other words if we believe that we know how this story ends despite the state of the world the state of our nation the state of our neighborhoods the state of our marriages the state of our families Ephesians is spectacular if we believe the gospel if we don't then it reads like poetry or it reads like hyperbole or it reads like hot air or it reads like something that is not powerful or lifechanging or life transforming or Transcendent if Ephesians isn't true then Grace isn't amazing at all but it is in 50 years of being a pastor Eugene Peterson said in his book practice Resurrection my most difficult assignment continues to be the task of developing a sense among the people I serve of the Soul transforming implications of Grace I would have to agree nothing has changed my life more than my understanding such as it is of the grace of God the more I thinkink into Grace the more I'm Shook Up by it this sermon shook me up this week the more I get it the more I want it the more I have it the more more I say like David it's too much it's so much I can't handle this it's so much so we have our work cut out for us today it's going to be quick just going to give you a map I'm going to give you a small map to help unpack what Paul says about Grace and what he's trying to say about Grace and to do that we have to give it some room to breathe so the text that we have is Ephesians 2 veres 1-10 and I want you to know that you have to see grace through different lenses depending on where you are with God now that sounds crazy at first because we think that Grace is just something that we're always going to see the same all the time you have to Grace you have to experience it to grow into it and as you grow into it you mature in how you see grace and how you use Grace and how you experience Grace when Jesus was uh missing from his family for a couple of days because he was a child and he just decided to stick around at the at the temple at the synagogue with the uh with the leaders and his mother found him and she said what what are you doing and he said I got to be about my father's business he didn't understand at that point yes you do have to be about your father's business but not today today you're supposed to be in the Caravan with your parents and you are out of pocket my son so she takes him back and the Bible says that he at that point he grew with Grace in God and with men and so not only did Jesus grow but Peter exhorts us to grow in second Peter he urges people to grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ like children we grow in Grace so we can take so much grace When We're Young young in our belief and we're young in our faith and as we grow we begin to be able to take on more we begin to see more we begin to see it differently we begin to use it differently and so I want to talk about three lenses of Grace today three lenses through which we see and experience Grace the first is who we were without Grace the second is who we are with grace and the third is how we live in Grace and these are stages of growth for us in Grace so who we were if we look at Ephesians 2 1-3 it says as for you you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you 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 now at work in those who are disobedient all of us who lived among them at one time gratifying the Cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts like the rest we were by Nature deserving of Wrath first thing I want you to know about this passage is that even though it says as for you you were dead and that kind of makes things a little bit uh weird because it's actually the word and it's a conjunction it's not as for you the actual word is just and because there's the continuing of a thought and when we look in Ephesians 1 what we find and Chris preached about this last week was we find that we have the power in us that raised Jesus from the dead that we have a resurrected Jesus who is now sitting at the right hand of the father and so basically what this passage begins with is Jesus was dead he was resurrected and now he sits at the right hand of the father and by the way you were dead too you were dead in your trespasses you were dead in your sins and then you followed the ways of the ruler of the air which is another way of saying the enemy and you followed your own your own way and so he says that you not only were dead but you acted like you were dead you acted like you didn't care about what what thus saith the Lord we were content to stay in our sin we were never going to get out of it except that Jesus did what he did and made the Holy Spirit available to us we followed the enemy now don't minimize this I was talking about this uh this passage with a friend of mine this past week and he said he said well be careful that you don't make people feel bad first of all you all know me right cuz I hear laughter I hear some people laughing but second of all we cannot understand Grace truly apart from our need for Grace Grace is not one of those things that we can understand intellectually it's not one of those things that we can look at the Bible like it's a textbook and then figure out like well how is it defined you cannot understand truly Grace apart from your need for Grace imagine Jesus in the in the wilderness With the Enemy and the enemy says to him hey turn those stones into bread or he looks at me he says Hey throw yourself off of that throw yourself off of that high hill and then he says hey look I'll give you everything here I'll give you the kingdoms of this world if you just bow down to me now we look at that story and we say look what the enemy is doing to my Jesus or we look at that and we say could I be like Jesus and say I'm going to meet you with the word of God but if we're honest we are the enemy we are the tempter that's who we are how many times have you asked God to just fix a thing take the stones of my empty bank account and turn them into bread how many times have we tried Force his hand Jesus show me that you're here throw yourself off of off of the the the cliff I'm going to generate a lot more text; The transcript is long; The tool will process; We cannot see its internal result; We'll wait for the tool's response.
YOUTUBE DESCRIPTION: The gospel is full of “incomparable riches” that offers a dead person life, a broken community wholeness, and racial divisions unity. Only by the gospel of Jesus and the power of the Spirit can such things happen…and more.
