By Grace, Through Faith
First B Jackson
2025-06-01

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Good morning, everybody. How we do? Who made us, and we are his, the sheep of his pasture. Would you join us in singing house of the Lord? Hey, you can have a seat here for a moment.

Nick's got few announcements for us. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to First Baptist Church. We are absolutely delighted that you are here today. And in order to encourage people to move to the front and into the middle, now is a good time to do that.

Sometimes we give away prizes. We've got kettle corn for the people on the front row today. Let's give it up.

Let's give it up. Let's give it up.

It is not too late for you to move forward. There's a whole row up here. If you move into the center or fill in the spaces, more people are coming in. Please do not stand in the back. Come in so that when people are coming in from the side, they don't think it's full in the front.

Thank you very much. So glad you're here. It is the men's weekend, by the way. Sorry. The men's Wednesday group is meeting.

It's not for this slide. They're meeting this week. I forgot to make it, but I'm glad Berkeley is back there to remind me. 06:30AM. You can show up down hall, get a breakfast.

All men are welcome. There's a testimony. It's a great time and a great way to meet people. Phil Baxter's sharing this week. You know that's a good one.

It's gonna be a classic. Make sure you show up, guys. And we have Amy. She's gonna come up and talk to us about VBS real quick. Come on up.

Let's give it up for Amy. There you go. Alright. Oh my God. So busy.

So busy. Oh my goodness. Okay, girls. I don't know. Pick between Arizona or Tennessee.

Find a But here's the thing. Wherever we go, don't worry. God is gonna be with us the whole time. I know Scott will be there soon. Hi.

Oh, hi. How are y'all? Wow. So many people. Okay.

So we have VBS coming up. I'm so excited. We are less than a month away. So excited. And this is Scout, our main traveler with us, and he is gonna be there with us.

And just wanna let you all know, please sign your kids up. It's really important that you know, we already have 51 kids signed up. So that's that's a lot. Last year, I think we had 20. So this is really good start.

The next slide is really important because in order for that to happen, we have oh, there's a clicker. Gotta get used to this. We need volunteers. Because in order to lead this, we need adults helping. Youth is great.

Also, seventh through high school, college, that would be so helpful. And let me tell you, you don't if you're like, I don't really work well with kids, we have registration. We have so many other options in order, to find what fits best for you. So you don't have to lead and teach. You can be in the background background doing doing things things like like the the snack snack or registration on the first two days.

If you can only help on one day, that is such a great support. Because like I said, we have 51 kids already signed up and, yeah, there's gonna be a lot, which is such a huge blessing. Our church has grown in the children's so much. Oh, did I go too fast? Oh, okay.

So Ellie was like, are we having a lemonade stand? That's my daughter. And I was like, no. This might be a little confusing, but I'm asking kids to maybe have their own lemonade stand to start raising money for our mission field. And our mission this year is going into the first be benevolence fund.

It's for people. We talk about it all the time. For people that come into our church that are either traveling here for a minute or they're trying to stay or they need a need, all of our VBS mission fund money is gonna go back into that mission field. And so we're really excited about that, but I wanted to let kids know that maybe you can start raising money by having a lemonade stand, putting up a sign. I can make posters, with the VBS information if they want it.

Just have them come to me, and I can get them set up for that. And I think that's it. Oh, no. One more thing. Sorry.

Donations. So I put these little flyers out on the bulletin board near the office. You can either take a picture of this or grab a flyer. These are just things that maybe you have around your house not to be purchased. But, you know, if men, y'all are working on car things and you're like, oh, this is an empty can of I don't know what car stuff I don't know.

I don't do that. So whatever. But if you clean it out, maybe the kids are not going to use it. It's more display. Like, maybe, you know, when you're on a road trip, sometimes things break down.

We had a flat tire last week, so it was pretty fun. But I'm just thinking, like, if y'all had some things, we could make that part of, like, a display that that's part of road trips. Sometimes there's detours and things that come up. So that's what it means by empty car. I just wanna clarify that one.

But everything else should just be if you have at home, you can donate for us to borrow. It's not for us to keep loan. Or if you're like, yeah. I don't want this anymore. We will take it.

So thank you all so much for listening, and let me get my travelers on the way. Nice. Okay. Go. And

if you want your items back, be sure to label it. Here's some sad news. Carl Klammer right over here. This handsome fellow is gonna be leaving us soon on June 22. We're holding a potluck to say goodbye to him.

We're gonna do a chicken and waffle style. The church will provide the chicken and waffles. We're still looking for volunteers to help cook. Contact me if you wanna help with that. But bring a dish.

Would you something something that works with that fruit, something breakfasty would be really helpful. But we're gonna miss poor Carl, but come say goodbye to his family and send sweet words to him for before he leaves. And for the first BBQ, the first one's coming up. If you haven't been here this before, out on the lawn, we cook a big breakfast. It's a big mess.

It's wonderful. It's joyful. Would you come next week and enjoy a free breakfast and get to meet the people around you? It's a super good time. And Compass Women's Care is gonna speak to us for just a couple moments.

This is Carolyn Worszyniak. She has a kind word for us here today.

Or two. A word or two. Yes. Thank you. Nick, those are hard acts to follow, aren't they?

Everything's joyful here, isn't it? Good morning. As as Nick said, I'm Carolyn Worszyniak, and I'm the executive director of Compass Women's Care. And this morning, I am very excited to share that Compass Women's Care is celebrating a milestone. This is our fortieth year in ministry.

We've been serving women and families since 1985, and these are women and families that are facing facing unplanned and planned pregnancies. And it was all started by seven men here in Jackson. Not women, but seven men got together and saw a need for helping women in, back then, it was called the Jackson Hole Crisis Pregnancy Center. Later on, we changed the name to Turning Point Pregnancy Resource Center. And in 2023, we relocated and rebranded to Compass Women's Care.

So over the years, so many of our First Baptist family and congregation here have served with us. Judy Basie was our executive director and nurse manager for many years. Pastor Ray was the chairman of our board and served for six years. Tanya had a ministry to the Hispanic moms, pregnant and young moms, and they always just had a blast, didn't they, Judy? And we've had many volunteers.

I was started to sit by Liz Jacobson over there. She used to do all of my data input for me. Karen Lundy is one of our newest volunteers. Christy Hammond, who's on a trip, not here. Many of you met have met Christy and John.

She is one of our nurse volunteers. She's put in over two hundred hours with us over the last year and a half. So we really appreciate her. Linda Eggers was involved from the get go. And so many here, Susie Baldock, so many have served on the board, Diane Geek, and we just appreciate it.

And as important, the church does consider us one of their domestic ministries and has donated to us quarterly for many years. And so many of you are our faithful donors, and we really appreciate it. We are staffed by our nurse manager, Katina, and we do have three volunteer nurses also. Sarah Beth Dippel, who now has relocated to Michigan. She is our rock star marketing specialist.

Of course, that's Carolyn right here. And Koni Cervantes is our translator and has a great ministry to our Hispanic clientele and is also our education specialist. We are very blessed to have our own doctor Mary Gurlin, who has been our medical director for twelve years. And most recently on the back row, I see you, Ray. Ray Espinosa has joined our board this past month.

So we're so happy to have a representation here on our board from from First B. So all of our services are free, of course, confidential. And our role is to confirm pregnancies. So we are there for moms to come in to answer the question, am I pregnant? And along with that, we do options counseling, which is, of course, parenting, adoption, and we do not refer for abortion, but we medically educate and and minister to those ladies.

If they decide to proceed with abortion, we have a post abortion ministry where they can come in and we'll help them after after their abortion. So we recently started a new program called In His Hands because about one out of four women experience pregnancy loss in miscarriage. So this nice beautiful box is something we can give to women called In His Hands. There's a little necklace in here that says, you carry part of my heart in heaven because we know those little miscarried babies are in heaven. But there are just so many things in here that help ladies in their journey of healing, and that's so important particularly before they're pregnant again.

So we also are starting a new program partner partnering here with First Bee. We met with the staff. Christy Hammond is going to be heading up the Embrace Grace program, which is how pregnancy resource centers partner with churches all over The United States. And this is for single pregnant women to connect them to a church family and to have a twelve week curriculum that's very dialed in. And then at the end, for the whole church to give them a baby shower.

So when Christie gets back, we'll speak more about that. It's very, very exciting. So everything we do at Compass is after the pattern of Christ's ministry. We meet and greet and see women with compassion. Jesus sees us all with compassion, and and he cares.

And then we help them. We don't say like the good Samaritan could have. Oh, looks bad, but hope you'll hope you'll do okay, you know, and and walk away. So we offer so many services and resources that are helpful, and we hope to leave them with hope. Ultimately, be disciples of Christ, and that is why we are called Compass Women's Care because we are a device that aims women and families toward Jesus, our true north.

So yet several years ago, our board updated our mission and vision statements, and I just wanted to quickly share those with you. Compass Women's Care is a Christ centered ministry that with compassion, help, and hope promotes promotes the sanctity of all life, born and unborn, through the provision of abortion alternatives that empower women and men to choose life. And then our vision statement is through the provision of free and confidential pregnancy testing, limited ultrasound, pregnancy options counseling, compassionate support, and Christ like ministry. Compass Women's Care's vision is to erase the perceived need for abortion in Jackson Hole and the surrounding communities. And we serve women all the way from Big Piney to Idaho Falls and Pocatello.

We have a a huge area from which women come to see us. I have two staggering statistics for you. One is a joyful statistic that when we can get abortion minded women in our door, and we do that through very high end marketing, eighty five percent of women who see and or hear their baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound, and they have a screen to which they're viewing their baby, eighty five percent do decide to parent. So that's a very joyful out outcome. Also, another statistic is that sixty percent of women who are desperately seeking pregnancy help are online during the wee hours of the night.

So last year, we dug deep in our pockets, thanks to donors like First Bee and and you all. And we started a 247 nurses line so that when these women contact this line, they are answered by a professional nurse within two minutes. And then they set the appointment for us. So we may walk in and at 10:15, we have an appointment for an abortion minded woman who's driving here, say, of your ministry. And we just appreciate that, so it's really easy to sign up for four.

And we let you know the outcome too. So all that to say is we're about to really ramp it up and have a big fortieth celebration. We have Abby Johnson coming to be with us on July 10. You may have seen the movie or know about the movie Unplanned. Abby was one of the most prolific Planned Parenthood directors and was even awarded Planned Parenthood director of the year nationally.

And then one day when she was in an abortion, God just tapped her on the head, bopped her, I guess, and touched her heart as she walked out. And she never looked back, and now she is one of those the most profound pro life advocates and speakers in The United States and also has a ministry called and then there was none. And she's helped over a thousand men and women leave the abortion industry. So like uncle Sam, I want you and you and you and you to attend and join with us for a fabulous seated dinner, a wonderful inspiration message from Abby, and just to connect with like minded people and just enjoy a beautiful evening on July 10. The invitations were mailed out to those on our donor list on Thursday.

I've put extra invitations on the two tables by the entrance, and also it'll be on our church's website. So we're looking forward to it. We've been in the throes of planning, and we're just tickled pink. So thank you all for letting me share our ministry moment.

Alright. And for anything else, just go to the church's website. Here's a great opportunity to move forward and into the center so you can make room for other people. Stand up, greet your neighbors, and we'll bring you back with song in just a moment.

Wanna share a verse here from first John three one. It's see what great love the father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. And, God, thank you for that. We have sung this, but we just want to say out loud, thank you, God, for your mercy. We don't get what we do deserve.

Instead, you have given us grace. You've given us life. You've adopted us into your kingdom, and it is by faith. It is by your grace to us and faith in you that we're allowed to be called sons and daughters in the most high. Thank you, God, for this privilege, and we worship you with joy.

In Jesus' name, amen. I'm and Lord, that is our prayer. We do want to taste and see that the Lord is good, and you promise us that we will, God, that as we seek you, you will be found. Thank you. Thank you that you are near.

Thank you that you are close to the brokenhearted, Lord. Anybody here that is, feeling any kind of pain, loss, grief, that you are so near and dear to us. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for being our all in all. Amen.

Amen. You can have a seat here for a moment, and I'll invite our ushers to come on forward. We're gonna oh, we get to hear a piano duo. And by the way, God has been so gracious, and we have a new piano here that that doesn't go out of tune every week, and we're just so grateful. And so we get to hear a little bit on piano.

Before we do, Gary, may I ask you to pray? Sure. Here you go. Here's a microphone for you.

This on? Yeah.

Okay. Let us pray. Lord, we just thank you for this time that we can come and place our offerings to you, Lord. Lord, I pray that the heart in which we make these offerings to you, Lord, will truly bring you honor and glory. Lord, I pray that you'll help us to use your resources, Lord, to grow your kingdom, not only here in Jackson, but all over the world, Lord.

We just thank you and pray and give you give you praise in Jesus name. Amen.

You know Brad? He's one of our elders. Hey, Brad. We count match today. Look at us.

I just look better in this shirt than you do that, sir. Can I pray for you?

We get to share the stage one last time, and this is how you do it. I know.

God, I'm thankful for my bud, and I pray that well, this this message right here, right down the middle of the plate, the gospel, it would fall fresh on us, Lord, that we would hear it with New Year's. And thank you, God. It is truly, by grace, through faith that we have been saved. And I pray that this message of your love and forgiveness would would truly touch touch our hearts, Lord, and it would come out through our hands and feet. In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen. You can tell Carl tried to guess what shirt I was gonna wear. Thank you, brother. Kids, you don't want to be here for the next thirty five minutes. No children today.

Okay. Well then, sorry guys. Well, we'll start with a really gentle question then. Do you remember where you were on nineeleven? If this is your first time at First Baptist Church, we welcome you here.

But I I I would bet for most of us, if we take a minute and we settle and we think, we can remember exactly where we were at various points through that pivotal and terrible day as we learned what was unfolding over the skies of DC and New York and Pennsylvania. Or more positively, do you remember where you were when you met your spouse or the first time you held your child or maybe when you met your best friend? Or do you remember where where you were when the lights came on regarding the truth and the implication of the gospel message on your life? I have a couple of those moments over the course of about a year as I was coming to faith, but one in particular stands out and is cogent for today. Now for in for context, in 2010, I would have called myself a Christian.

I attended church. I put money in the plate. I prayed to God when I needed his help. I tried hard to live what I thought was a good life. But I was introduced to a mutual friend of mine who at the time was a young adult pastor, and he asked me two questions.

And I I think I've told you about these questions before, but they're they're so relevant to today's message that I want to bring it up again. Now as I present these two questions, I want you to think to yourself, how would you answer these? On a scale of one to 10, if you were to die today, right now, how sure are you that you would go to heaven? And if God were to ask you, why should he let you in, what would you say? Now at the time when I was asked this, on a scale of one to 10, I said I was a seven.

I thought I lived a pretty good life. I attended church, put money in the plate, and prayed to God sometimes, even before meals. But I knew that I also even if I never would have admitted this out loud, I knew that I also lived mostly for myself with a side of God. But then my new friend, he asked me if I had ever sinned. Had I ever done anything in my life that didn't fully trust and submit to God?

Did I have inappropriate relationships with women? Did I ever not fully love my neighbor as myself? Had I ever seen somebody else have a material possession and thought that I wanted it and was more worthy of having that thing? Check. Check.

Check. But then my new friend showed me Romans six twenty three. He said, especially the part where it says, for the wages of sin is death. Wage is what you are due. The wage for labor or for work is money.

The wage for sin is death. But then to my great delight, he also showed me our text for today, which is Ephesians two eight through 10. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. Did I want to be a 10? And he told me I could be.

Because the Bible makes plain as day that you can have assurance of your salvation, but only because of the perfect work of Jesus Christ on the cross. And the proof that that sacrifice would be forever sufficient, that Jesus' work was done there, is the empty tomb. That I cannot personally run up a debt that is greater than the payment that Jesus made that day on Calvary Hill. So that's what we're going to look at today. Here's our text.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we're as workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we would walk in. Now there are plenty of texts throughout scripture that that really succinctly summarize the core message of the gospel. This is just one of them.

And if you've been in church long enough, you've heard a message preached on this text. This is a classic text from the apostle Paul. It's so rich and yet the meaning is so simple. And if you don't do scripture memory as part of your walk with Jesus, I would recommend, man, this is a great place to start. You want to have you want to have text in your back pocket that you can bring out in conversation?

This is relevant for a whole lot of stuff. This one just happens to be really special to me because of the way that God used it in my life personally. But here's the thing. Sometimes we as Christians, we assume that we learn the gospel and then we sort of move on from that as if it's Econ one zero one, Econ two zero one, three zero one. But the Bible knows nothing of that because the majority of the time that the gospel is preached in the Bible, it's not in evangelism.

It's in reminding the saints of the truth that transformed their lives. The Bible preaches the gospel more often to believers than to unbelievers. So that's why we gather. We remind ourselves of the truth about us and about Jesus all the time. And I try to make it my goal in any quiet time.

I have a sheet of paper that lives in my Bible that asks me to asks myself two basic questions. Is my quiet time glorifying to God and increasing my love for him? Is my quiet time glorifying God and increasing my heart's desire for him? Because my fleshly tendency in my Christian life, if I'm not careful, is I fall into routine with God instead of into relationship with him. You may have heard of this as the the paradigm of religion versus relationship.

And that a lot of what we're talking about is what I preached on back in March. Because I get busy, and then I don't spend the time thinking deeply about what I'm reading and about my relationship with God, meditating on his truth. Instead, I read the Bible like it's a newspaper, and I pray like it's a chore. And maybe that's you. Instead, I have to reroute myself constantly that I am not my quiet time, my achievements, my ident my roles, any of that sort of thing.

I'm not my sin. I am a child of God, and I get to spend time with him every day. So our summary for this text, straight from the text for our outline today is going be simple. And if you thought I was going to cut it, sorry. Grace, faith, works.

Really straightforward. Grace is unmerited favor, a receiving of kindness from God that we do not deserve. Faith then is trusting in God. It's a confidence in things not yet seen and an assurance of things hoped for, as the writer writes in Hebrews. Works then proceed from faith in Jesus and are in accordance with God's law and bring him glory.

Grace, faith, works in that order and in that order only. And that's what we're looking at today, to remind ourselves of the very truth that once rocked our world. And in case you haven't had that experience, in case you have no idea that moment that I'm talking about, thank you for trusting us with your time. I hope that First B or wherever your church home is starts to feel like home very quickly. But I also would encourage you to take this time today to think about why have you not given your life fully over to Jesus?

Why do you have no idea what the guy's talking about upfront? And to be clear, we don't all have to have dramatic conversion stories. I pray for my kids that they wouldn't. But every conversion story should have dramatic change in the person's life that experienced it. Does that make sense?

So here's our first point for today, grace. This is the first part. This is Ephesians two eight. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God.

Man, do you get that? And I mean, get it on a fundamental level. How much of your salvation is due to your works? According to the Bible, none. Your is accomplished only through faith in the grace of God, and even that is a gift.

Now, want to be very clear on this point, at the risk of putting too fine a point on it, but Paul does, so I'm going to. If you think that coming to church on Sunday and living a good moral life is what's going to get you into the kingdom of God, then you are farther from the kingdom of God than the drunks and the sexually immoral and the atheists that skipped the false pretense this morning and slept in. Not because they're better than you, but because this is not a linear progression. This is a vertical transformation. And those that are living in sin tend to be more likely through life circumstances to be made aware of their need for a savior and the fact that he was provided.

So I don't care if you're teaching Sunday school, if you helped beautify our church campus yesterday or if you serve as an elder. You cannot be good enough for God. No amount of good works can overcome even one bit of stain of sin on your life. As a counterexample, humans in general throughout history and basically every other religious system thinks of salvation like the scales of justice. You've all seen this image at some point.

The idea, like I hoped back in 2010, I thought that maybe if I had enough good deeds, they might outweigh my bad deeds, and that somehow God would let me in. But the biblical image is that if there is one iota of bad, one bit of sin on that side of the scale, and you trust in your own righteousness, it automatically outweighs anything that you could do. Because God is so perfect, so holy, so loving that he cannot be in the presence of sin, even the tiniest bit of sin. And it doesn't matter what that sin looks like. You will be forever removed from the presence of God, which is what we call hell.

If you put one tiny portion of yeast in the dough, it leavens the entire loaf. Or a more modern example, perhaps at some point, you've accidentally left a small piece of metal in the microwave. How did that go? My point is that any amount is too much. And with sin, the dose does not make the poison.

The poison even existing is poison enough to kill you. And we all have some of that poison of sin in our life. And so we are all in need of the antidote, but praise God it's been provided. And with salvation, it's all the same. This is what the Old Testament law was supposed to show, that there is an unattainable perfect standard of holiness that no one can reach apart from the grace and the forgiveness of God.

So it doesn't matter if that one sin in your life is just a simple careless word in traffic or if it's genocide. If it's thinking poorly of somebody or murdering them. Sin is sin. And when it comes to justification, it's all the same. We are all in need of a savior.

Sin, at its core, is anything that does not fully submit and trust God. Anything that does not fully trust and submit to God. The only thing that can the only one that can do anything about it is Jesus. Not not your pastor, not your parents, not even you. Jesus.

And it's an entirely different paradigm from how the world thinks. We are not saved through our strength. We are saved through the recognition of our weakness. So let's say, it's the weather is nice now, but let's go back to February and think about how badly some of us wanted to bounce out of here for a little bit. And let's think that you go on vacation to one of the really nice parts of Hawaii.

It's a beautiful white sand beach. There's massive waves crashing. There's the nice little fruity drinks. So you're there and you're super excited to get there. Drop your bags, you settle, and you're going go out for a swim.

And as you're going out there, there's this big sign and the lifeguard authority has said, hey, do not swim in between in between these cones out here. It's like, alright. I thought this was still America. Rules, who needs them? So you're out there swimming around and then and then you kind of swim over there a little bit and the lifeguard, you know, blows that shrill whistle and gets out that bull horn and goes, hey, you're swimming too close to it.

Get away. Well, now those rules are annoying and embarrassing and a little offensive. But okay, you go back to do your thing. But then you forget about it again and you go swimming and then you're pulled out by the riptide. And after minutes of struggling, you can no longer see the shore and you don't know where you're going.

And you're running out of strength and you're running out of hope and you're pretty sure there's a shadow beneath you that wants to eat you. But in that moment when you're about to give up, the lifeguard shows up and grabs you and you cling to him. And he says, you can't make this swim back, but I'm here to do it for you. Right? That is the model of our salvation.

That is Christianity. This is why Jesus told Nicodemus, who was a professional holy man. He was the teacher of Israel. This is why Jesus told Nicodemus that he, even he, had to be reborn. Nicodemus' entire life was about good works and about preaching about God.

And yet Jesus told him in John three five, truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of the water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Now the good news, of course, is that the real work of justification has already been done. The cleansing of your sin is fully accomplished. Fully, freely, forever forgiven. You've heard me say it time and time again because I want you to know it.

The bill has been paid, and we know that it's true because of the empty tomb. But the tricky part is trusting that in full because we as humans, we always want to add to the work of Jesus. Now, none of us would be so bold as to say this out loud, but we kind of operate as if we're going, Jesus died for my sins. Thanks, Jesus. I'll take it from here.

Jesus died for my sins, so I have to be a good moral person and go to church on Sundays. And that sounds silly. Right? But that's how a lot of us act. Jesus died, so I go to a building on Sundays and then pretend like my life is fine?

No. Instead, grace, as we said earlier, is unmerited favor from God to us. It is goodness and graciousness shown to someone who doesn't deserve it. Grace is not a wage paid to a good or even an okay person. It's a gift.

Grace is showing love to the person that you should hate, to your enemy, to the person that purposely did you wrong. If someone breaks into your house, mercy is just not shooting them. Grace is figuring out what that person actually needs and loving them enough to do it. And all of us were the thief breaking into God's house. And yet in his perfect love, he showed us not just mercy, but grace.

Grace, it has been said, is God's riches at righteousness at Christ's expense. G r a c e, grace. God's righteousness at Christ's expense. Through Jesus, we receive not only righteousness and the forgiveness of our sins, but an eternal life in the kingdom of God that starts not just at death, but here and now. You are not only off death row, you are adopted into the household of God, where true life and joy are available to you now, where God always intended you to be, in his house, with his people, living on mission.

And that is grace. And we can spend a lifetime talking about it and studying it, and understand it the first day, but also still not plumb the depths of it. But we can have faith in that grace, and that's why we re gospel ourselves constantly as racists. And that's our next point, faith. So here's our working definition for today.

Faith is trusting in God, a confidence in things not yet seen, and an assurance of things hoped for. Grace awakens faith. Faith is an awakening to the facts of the gospel. It's the prodigal son coming to his senses and awakening to the reality that is already actually his. That he has a father with unfathomable riches, and so that he doesn't have to stay there in the pig's diet just like us.

So the son gets up in that in that parable, and he's got his pre rehearsed apology speech asking just to be a hired hand in his father's house. But before he can even say one word, the father sees him at a distance and runs to him and kisses him on the neck and puts his robe on him. He has restored his son in grace and love that was previously unimaginable to the younger son. Before the son has even showered off the filth from the pigs, he has showered with blessings from his father. And it's the same for us with our sin.

We do not clean our lives up before we come to Christ. Christ washes us clean because we are never too far from God. And if you have something in your life that you feel is disqualifying you from a life with God, well, then join the club Because the only qualification for membership in God's church is a recognition of your weakness that you are actually entirely unqualified on your own. But if instead, like the older brother in that prodigal parable, if you think that God is lucky to have you in his family or on his team, if you think that belief or faith is anything that you have accomplished, then you don't get it because even your faith is a gift and you don't earn a gift, it is given to you. But you have to have faith in the giver.

And this is what the older son didn't understand. And it's what many of us forget at times, myself included. If you receive a lavish gift, there is no one to give you credit for being the one that opens the gift. All honor is due the giver. So Yamazaki 18 is probably the best whiskey in the world in my opinion.

If you want to argue about that, buy a bottle, bring it to my house, we'll do a tasting at my house and your expense. But let's say you give me a bottle for my birthday. We're sitting around the fire in the backyard, and we pour just a little bit. Don't get too excited. Don't email me.

But we pour just a little bit, and we're having it. There is no credit due to me for my generosity. It's your gift. I'm just opening it and doing with it what you intended. It is not about the recipient of the gift, it is about the giver.

But once the recipient opens the gift, you're expected to use it and do something with it like the giver intended. If you're a rancher, and let's say you do everything by hand, everything. They used to when they settled this valley. But let's say, in my amazing and benevolent and theoretical generosity, I buy you a tractor and everything that goes with it. But then I come back and visit you in a month and you're still doing everything by hand, I'm probably going to be a little bit upset.

Or what if, instead of using the tractor to do work, if you use it to go for a joy ride into town and pick up groceries? I gave you a gift that can do amazing amounts of work. I I increased your capacity like you would never believe you can feed families like you never have before, and it'd all be easier. Use the gift like it's intended instead of just to clog traffic. And that's true for us, Christian.

Similarly with God, Jesus did not die and resurrect so that we could have behavioral modification. He died so that we might be reborn and adopted into the family of God, and then live out of that in joy. And that brings us to our third and final point for today, works. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus. Why?

For good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. So what does it mean that we're created in in Christ Jesus for good works? It means you're a new creation in Christ. We hear it all the time, but I don't think unless we meditate on it, we actually get how big that is. Because you were made new.

In Christ, you did not level up. This is not that weird overnight software upgrade on your phone that makes it slower and yet more prone to die over the course of a day. No. You died to Christ and were resurrected with him and are, in God's eyes, a brand new creation. You can live, yes, in the flesh, but through faith.

If you want that encouragement later, that's First Corinthians five. We always have to remember that Jesus did not come first and foremost to teach or to set an example. He came to die. And even though he told his disciples they couldn't understand it, and the world still can't understand it, and oftentimes we forget it, which is one of the reasons why we gather. If Jesus had only been a teacher or a leader or an example, that wouldn't make us new.

But the perfect sacrifice of Christ does, if we would but allow ourselves to die in him. But our text makes clear today that you were made in Christ for a specific purpose, to do the good works that God prepared in advance for you to do. When it says created in Christ Jesus here, it's the Greek word ktizo, k t I z o. This is the same word that the rest of the Greek uses referring back to the Hebrew narrative in Genesis for God's creation of the world. Do you get that parallel?

That's created new by the word of God. That moment when you were saved by faith, you were made new. But why? To do good works. So we need a definition of works.

If we get nothing else from today, I want to make very clear, good works flow only from faith, a true saving faith in Jesus. Good works flow from faith. Faith precedes works. Salvation precedes works. And if that work is not from faith ultimately, it's not what Paul's talking about in our text today.

Or here's Jesus in John 14 where he says, very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I have been doing, and they will do even greater works than these because I am going to the father. Notice this is not optional. Jesus doesn't say can or might. He says, will. That's kind of terrifying because think through your Bible, Jesus did a lot of good works, and a lot of them were miracles.

And yet, we're called to do those and called to do greater still. What can Jesus be talking about here? Well, I think we have to look at at what Jesus ultimately came to do. Three things. He came to die on the cross.

He came to preach repentance and the coming of the kingdom of God. And then in authentication of those first two, he did miracles, he did healing, and he did provision for the worldly needs of those around him. Now, of course, only Jesus can accomplish the saving work of atonement on the cross. But he did call his disciples to die to themselves in Matthew sixteen twenty four, and that remains true for us today. Take up your cross and follow me.

The apostles then later kept that same prioritization of ministry as they were building the early church. So the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said, it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. This is talking about taking care of widows. This is a clear prioritization of ministry. What this is in recognizance of is that everyone is one day going to die.

So that the greatest good then is the saving of a person through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Now don't mishear me, please. We do both. Jesus did both, and this church does both. We meet the worldly needs of those around us, but it was an intermediate means to the end goal of salvation.

And of course, we have to look at what Jesus said to his disciples right before he ascended to the father. This is after the resurrection, after or after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, before the ascension. Jesus is on the beach with his disciples and he says to them, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Those were the last words to his disciples. This is the pregame speech.

These are the marching orders from the general before they hit the battlefield and this is what he told us to do. Similarly, in Matthew 22 and the great commandments, he summarizes the entire law and the prophets in saying, shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So all the other commandments in scripture, all the one and others that I've talked about before, they stem from these two. This gives us the lens to evaluate everything that we do in our lives. Are we rightly prioritizing missions for the glory of God, or are we doing it for ourselves?

And we have to be careful. We have to check our hearts on this stuff. Because if we do good works to earn anything, whether it's for our ego or to be thought well of by men or to even earn our salvation, it is not a work of God. I can do that even preaching up here. If I preach for your approval or to earn anything, then I'm living in sin right here from this pulpit.

I have to preach and I have to lead for the approval of God for the advancement of the kingdom. Now, for example, this gathering on Sunday, this is not a feel good club. This is not something we do to check check a box off the list. We don't even gather so that our kids might become good moral people. No.

This is a ministers' conference. As Paul says in Ephesians four, so Christ gave the leaders of the church to equip the people for the works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up. Church, your staff, your pastors, your elders, we don't exist to be the ones to do the work of ministry. We exist to equip you guys for doing the work of ministry, calling you into the joy that is available to equip His people for the works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up. How do you tell what kind of plant something is?

You see what sort of fruit it bears. An apple tree bears apples. This time of year in the Tetons, huckleberries come from huckleberry bushes. Christians bear Christ exalting fruit. And how do you tell when something is biologically mature?

When it can reproduce itself in kind. And I can't tell you what this looks like, specifically in your life. Only you can, in tandem with the Holy Spirit. It looks different for everyone. For me, it's leadership, teaching, exhortation, discipleship, and administration.

Maybe for you, it's pastoral care for taking care of those with a broken body or heart. Maybe it's teaching kids. Lord knows Amy needs the help and volunteers downstairs. But whatever it is, pray with God, talk with your community group, talk with your family, and start today. Make sure, though, that you have the firm foundation of faith through grace because you know it's a gift and then put it to use.

This is the coolest place in the world to live on mission. We're all missionaries here, every single one of us. We just have to keep that mindset. Everybody that you see, everybody, believe it or not, needs to be reminded of the truth and the power of the gospel. That's why you're here.

That's why you are set free. But you can't kid yourself when you're not fooling God. If there is no fruit, if there is no change in your life, then you have not yet received God's grace fully. You have not opened the gift of faith. You are not yet his workmanship in that Ephesians two passage.

His poema, his masterpiece is a great translation of that Greek word. But a great summary of all this we looked at recently in the men's study. Thursdays, noon, fellowship hall, be there. Galatians two twenty, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

That's a verse. Church, it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you. And we only live now by faith in the son of God. There are only two options. You are either living for God or you are living for the prince of this world, the devil.

There is no third option. There is no neutral party. There is no Switzerland in this war. Trees that do not bear good fruit are chopped down and thrown into the fire, it says in Matthew three ten. For we have received grace from God in forgiveness and rebirth.

That is a gift that cannot be valued and should not be left open because that grace grace was expensive. If I let you borrow my truck, which is not a particularly nice one, but you crash it and I forgive you, that does not make the cost of that accident go away. And I think we all know that. I'm just saying, no, no, you're fine. I'm going to bear the burden of that cost.

That's how forgiveness works with God. God does not wink at sin. He paid for it expensively with the blood of the son of God. And this is so practically important. This is why these verses in Ephesians two are back to back to back, because you have to they are inextricably linked.

You have to get the order right. We are saved by grace through faith, and that keeps us from living like self righteous Pharisees that either look down on others or become anxious about our own state of affairs. And those are really the only two alternatives when you live out of your own strength, looking down on others in condemnation or anxiety. No. The gospel assumes explicitly that you will fail and makes provision for it, that you will not fully trust God, that you will not love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength all the time, that you will not love your neighbor as yourself.

That's why confession of sin is not just for sinners, but it's also for saints. It's for those that are in the church. It's a provision of grace for you. And if you aren't confessing something to God and to others, it doesn't make me think that you have it all together. It makes me think that you don't fully understand the grace of God.

But God paid for that sin. It's all taken care of. So we recognize it, we confess it, but we don't stand around navel gazing feeling badly about ourselves. No. We put our sin at the foot of the cross, we remind ourselves of the truth of our identity, and then we get to work doing the the works that God appointed in advance for us to do.

Church, God doesn't teach old dogs new tricks. God makes old dogs new, And it's beautiful. And then and only then do we work out of that joy and gratitude. Only when we know that can we move on to working for him. This is the burden that is light.

This is the slavery that actually feels like freedom. This is the deeper level of productivity and good works. And we'll still need to be wise about our commitments. We'll still need to take Sabbath rest. Even God did that.

But when you work out of love, it's different. So are you closer to God than you were a year ago? Do you delight more in him than you did a year ago? If not, I'm willing to bet that what's going on is you have forgotten the core of our verse today, or maybe you never knew it. And if you're willing to make that admittance to yourself, that is a phenomenal first step.

If you're willing to say, I didn't get it, or I still don't get it, that's awesome. We're going to have some friends and I are going to be up here at the front after worship, and we would love to talk to you about it. But be honest with yourself, with us, and most importantly, God. But hop in with us. Join us in the body of Christ.

And if you're feeling in this moment that you have not yet taken the state the step of faith in being baptized, man, it's warm enough outside. Let's go use the rivers and let's freak out. Right? Like, it's awesome. But I'll invite the band back up, and I'll close with this.

Because as we think about what to do with our faith, it's important to think that if God gave us the provision for the ability to work, that one day he is going to recognize those good works. Jesus taught in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 that one day God is going to look at those that use the talents for his glory, and he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.

Don't you want to hear that from God? Don't you think giving up time and treasure and effort on this earth that is going to end is worth hearing that from the creator, from the savior, from the provider? Well done, good and faithful servant. But let's not waste time idling about. Church, Jesus is coming back soon.

And I'm not buying billboards. I'm not selling you a book. I'm not picking a date. But he promised he's coming back. And on that glorious day, when the clouds are rolled back like a scroll, when Jesus comes in glory on the clouds, I don't want to have any doubts about how I spent my time.

I want to see Jesus coming back and going, yeah. And I want that for each of you. And it's available to you. But I'm not going to heaven because of my good works. That just makes me a self delusional Pharisee.

That's a seven on a one through 10. But God did a work in me. He put his spirit inside me. Not because I was strong, but because he is strong. Through grace, he gave me the gift of faith.

And then he left me and he left you to do the work of the kingdom, To die to self, to preach the gospel, to take care of those around you that need it. That's true freedom. Christ died to set us free. But don't use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Use your freedom to love and serve those that are around you.

That's Galatians five. And we do it all to the glory of the only one who deserves glory. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. I don't have it. Grace through faith.

It's a gift so that you may do the good works. So now let's sing together one more time in church. Let's sing. Let's worship God together, and then let's go out and live on mission. And then, with hope, we have a great week of worship.

Thank you.

Nothing comes close. Nothing comes close to the door. Oh, mighty. Nothing as sweet as he's done. I wanna leave you with this, little benediction here from oh, I had one from Romans fifteen thirteen, but oh, there it is.

And I can't read the words. There it is. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace.