-Transcript-
00:37 Amen. Glory to God. Thank you for joining me.
00:41 Good to be here today. I hope you’re having a great day. Welcome to the cafe.
00:46 Today we’re talking about such a wonderful topic, being saved by grace. Saved by grace. It’s so wonderful.
00:52 We’re not saved by what we do. We’re not saved by our performance. How wonderful is that? We’re not saved by some, you know, person that we can’t relate to.
01:06 We’re saved by grace. And Jesus, He can relate to us in every way because He walked this earth. He dealt with the same things that we deal with on a day-to-day basis, and He can relate.
01:18 And that’s the unbelievable brilliance of God, in that God both created us and knows us intimately and created the world and everything in it. And so He’s all-powerful and all-knowing. And then He said, I’m gonna go ahead and send my only begotten Son, who’s God in the flesh, to live this life, not in comfort and ease, not as a rich, you know, ruler, but as a man of no good report, of a man from Nazareth.
01:50 Nathanael, I believe it was, had said, what good you can come from Nazareth? He was a carpenter’s son. There was no room for him at the end. He had asked Peter to show him a penny.
01:59 Jesus Christ is incredibly relatable. If you’re an average, everyday, ordinary person, you can relate to Christ. If you look at afflictions you go through, you look at what Christ went through, you can relate to Him, and you can say, you know what? He went through a lot more than I went through.
02:13 Oh, how He’s relatable. And oh, how He’s loving. And oh, how His love saved us.
02:20 We’re saved by grace. How do we look at salvation? I mean, honestly, how do we look at being saved? Do we look at it as something we must do? Do we look at salvation as an ongoing performance, something that we have to continue to do?
02:36 You know, there’s a lot of works-based salvation out there in Christianity today, whether it’s known or not, you know, whether people are consciously aware of it or not. You see it everywhere.
02:49 You say, okay, I love God, so I have to do a bunch of things, and then I’ll be saved, and then I’ll be right with God. No, He loves us so much already that while we were yet sinners, you know, the key word there is sinners, right? While we were yet sinners, He sent His Son to die for us. And that Son, Jesus Christ, was gloriously resurrected from the grave.
03:10 Let me get to the text verse here, Ephesians 2:8-9. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, notof works, lest any man should boast. There’s so much in this verse, it’s so beautiful. For by grace are you saved through faith.
03:30 Salvation comes only by grace, and that’s only from God. And so when we look at being saved, a lot of people will say, I found God, or Pastor so-and-so saved me. No, you didn’t find God.
03:44 God’s known you all along and has chosen to reveal Himself to you and open your eyes to the truth. That’s number one, and that’s biblical, Amen.
03:53 There are people that were wicked in the Bible, and there’s times that Jesus even remarked He wouldn’t open Himself to them because He knew their hearts. He knew they were wicked.
04:03 In the same way that Christ was literally doing that on earth, God, I believe, has done that, where He’s blinded people to the truth because they are wicked, and they don’t belong in His heaven, Amen.
04:15 So if you’ve been saved, that’s by God’s grace that He opened your eyes, Amen. He’s known you, and He’s had a plan for you, and He has graciously opened your eyes, and He has graciously allowed someone to be part of that, that Pastor so-and-so, to be part of it, that mission worker, or that person that loves the Lord.
04:35 You understand it’s a privilege to serve God, that if I can ever help win a single soul to the Lord, and only God knows, that that is a privilege He’s bestowed upon me, that I could then have take part in this great work, and enjoy a heavenly reward for it. That’s a privilege.
04:54 He doesn’t need me, right? We often think God might need us, and that’s why we must work, and here we realize in Ephesians 2:8-9, that we are not going to hold God in debt to anything, that God is not going to be a debtor of man, and that God’s not a respecter of persons,
05:13 and He will simply bestow grace upon who He’ll bestow grace upon, and those that He won’t, He will not, and He is a wise judge, amen, the wisest ever, and He knows, and therefore, we must trust Him, because you may say, well, I know somebody, and they’re not saved.
05:34 Well, number one, anyone can be saved, amen, because the Bible says that God desires all to come to repentance, and essentially to the knowledge that they need to be saved.
05:46 2 Peter 3:9-10, the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but as long-suffering to us were, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
05:59 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up,
06:09 and so we see in 2 Peter 3:9-10, several truths, one being, the Lord does not want anybody to perish, to go to hell, okay, but that many have rejected His free gift of salvation through their own free will,
06:25 and they will see that hell there very soon, because the Lord’s gonna come as a thief in the night, and everything changes, where you no longer have that opportunity, as I understand the Bible, to be saved.
06:40 When the Lord returns, that’s that. Now I know if you were something like, okay, you lived through the Tribulation period, and you’re in the Millennial Kingdom, yeah, I think then you do have a chance to be saved,
06:51 but assuming that you’re part of the rapture, as a church goes up to be with the Lord, and you reject the Lord, Tribulation starts, chances are, unless you’re going to be martyred, you will not be saved, as I understand it,
07:09 and so I know that the book of Revelation can be somewhat deep, and somewhat complex, but truly, one thing that is simple is that the Lord doesn’t want any to perish,
07:23 He wants them all to be saved, and another truth is that He desires people to use their free will, I mean, He gives them free will, and if we think that He doesn’t give them free will, then how are we all here? Are we all robots?
07:36 No, of given free will, that’s how sin entered the picture in the first place, Adam and Eve, well, Eve first, then Adam, ate of that forbidden fruit, that was free will, the devil beguiled them, how?
07:50 By tricking them, by enticing them, right? He tempted them, and then that that lust overtook them, and they sinned, and that’s how sin entered the picture, so God gave His first man here on earth, Adam, free will
08:02 and we still have free will today, and that’s how you could have a lost person that goes to hell, that had the opportunity to be saved, and chose not to be, but for those that are saved,
08:15 we can thank God that it’s by His grace, that He opened our eyes to it, and gave us an opportunity to be saved, and there’s nothing that we have done, it only comes by the grace of God,
08:25 and it’s only by faith in God, so what can we do? Oftentimes, I think preachers will harp so much on the grace factor, that we eliminate something that we can do, or the one thing we can do
08:35 , and what is that? Have faith, we are justified by our faith, we can have faith, we choose to believe, Abraham was justified by his faith, we are justified today by our faith, what do I mean by that?
08:48 I mean that if we believe what God has presented in His Word, through the writing of the 66 books there, that was Holy Spirit inspired, if we believe specifically the Gospel,
09:02 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, if we believe that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried three days, and risen again according to the Scriptures, and we believe that He was seen by people after He was risen, right,
09:19 that it wasn’t just a myth, that it truly happened, if we believe that Christ died for us, and was gloriously resurrected, and is ascended up to heaven as the right hand of the Father, if we believe in Christ’s substitutionary death for our sins,
09:31 that we have a sin that we couldn’t pay, we couldn’t do anything with, if we believe that we cannot repay our own sins, that our works cannot save us, that only Christ can save us, and if we believe in what Christ did for us, if we truly believe, then we’re saved,
09:45 I don’t know how many times I said believe, but it’s important, if there’s an emphasis there, Amen, we are justified by our faith, we believe, Abraham was told, hey you’re gonna have a child,
09:55 Abraham was very old, Sarah was very old, they were looking around saying people our age don’t have children, and God said no, you are, he spoke to him directly,
10:06 said no, you’re gonna have a child, and your child is gonna create this impossible-to-number group of people, and if you really study that, it’s not just the Jewish people that Abraham fathered, but he ended up fathering all believers through the bloodline that leads to Christ,
10:20 so all that believe in Christ, that gets credited back to Abraham in terms of the lineage, which is very important to the Lord, because it’s written throughout the Bible, verifiable,
10:31 and Abraham, not even having a child, believed God, and the Bible says that that was accounted to Abraham, that it was accounted for his faith, that that made him justify, his faith justified him, not his works, not who he was, not where he was from,
10:49 not how much money he had, not his skills or talents, nothing but his belief, and so it brings it back to us, if Abraham did nothing but believe, and he was justified before God,
11:00 and he is the physical manifestation of all of God’s people, right, in terms of the father, the patriarch, as they say, if that’s Abraham, then how much more so do we, are we justified before God by simply believing in what Christ did for us on the cross, that’s it, that’s all we can do is believe
11:19 , and so I think it’s very important that we understand this, and number one, we don’t try to work our way into heaven, because that won’t work, or that we try to impose legalism in our life to the point where we always fail, as the Jewish people, they were under the law,
11:34 and they always fell short, right, and it was a really ugly thing, the law was just presented to show that no man could keep it, and so we don’t get to the point of legalism where we just can’t keep the law, but that we believe, and we say, you know what,
11:46 Christ did this, and thank God he did it, because he, I’m forgiven for sins past, present, and future, now that doesn’t give me license to sin, that doesn’t give me a motivation to sin,
11:56 that gives me a heart for Christ, and you know, Christ himself says, if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments in the Bible, and so we must love Christ by keeping his commandments,
12:06 which means to love our neighbors, to abhor sin, to love God with our heart, mind, and soul, body, how can we do that, how can we love God if we’re going to go willfully sin,
12:15 because we’re not under the law, I mean, that’s just a complete contradiction, and so the way that this works is that we love God, we have faith, and then we follow the Lord, amen, that leads us, that love and that faith leads us to service,
12:28 it leads us to good works, as James says, faith that works is dead, it’s true in the sense that if we believe in God, we love God, we’re gonna have a desire to serve him, we have a desire to tell others about him,
12:39 we’re gonna have a desire to do what he wants us to do, amen, and that all starts with faith, and I want to get to this before we wrap up here, it says here in Ephesians 2:8-9,
12:52 and specifically verse 9, not of works lest any man should boast, you know, salvation doesn’t come from works, and the reason why is, again, why would God ever want to be in debt to man,
13:04 he created us, and so he’s not gonna be in debt to us, we’re not gonna say, oh God, we earned earned our way up here into heaven, no we didn’t, we didn’t do anything,
13:13 and so we can never boast of it, we should never, we should be very careful with being proud, as Christians we should never be puffed up, we should never thumb our nose up at others,
13:22 we should simply look at ourselves as fellow people, that just by faith and by the grace of God, by the grace of God having faith to trust in Christ as our Savior, being saved,
13:34 but not being any better than anybody, the man on death row or the person in the White House or anyone in between, we’re no better, we are just simply believers,
13:43 and we’re better off, but we should never be proud, and pride seems to creep its way in, sometimes to the church house, sometimes even to ministries, and it’s unfortunate,
13:54 and what we need to do is understand that God, he loves people, he wants them to be saved, he loves his creation, as the book of Peter mentions, and we need to turn to God in these last days and thank him for saving us,
14:06 and live peacefully and humbly wanting to serve him, not reluctantly, and not out of a legalism, but out of faith.
14:15 Thank you so much for joining me, take care, God bless, Amen.