Our text tonight is from the book of Ephesians. It is from the New Testament. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 10. Ephesians is after Galatians. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 10. I will be reading from the English Standard Version. Hear the word of the Lord. by grace through faith. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins, in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immensurable riches of his grace, in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. God bless the reading of his inspired and Holy Word. Ephesians is one of the writings of the Apostle Paul. And here, in chapter 2, Paul is reminding his audience, the Ephesian believers, of their former status when they were unbelievers. Yet. Because in chapter 1, he mentioned all the benefits, all the blessings the spiritual blessings that they received when they have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ you can read it chapter 1 verse 4 it says there even as he chose in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy this is what we call the election and we also have redemption forgiveness of sin sins and salvation all of these things he mentioned in chapter 1 and if you can you can also summarize chapter 1 as the Trinitarian work or the work of the Trinity in our redemption that we are elect by the Father redeemed by the Son and the Holy Spirit who applies that blessing of redemption, the work of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us and also who regenerates us. All of those things are in chapter 1 of Ephesians. But chapter 2 is very shocking because it is here that the Apostle Paul, he told his audience that you are sinful people. You are dead in sins. And because of that, man cannot save himself by his own doings. He cannot do anything to save himself. So because God himself made a way, he came to the rescue and he provided a way, which is salvation by grace through faith in Christ. Therefore, the central message of our text tonight is that because God showed His mercy and love to us sinners, then we can be saved only by His grace through faith in Christ. Let me state that again. Because God showed His mercy and love to us sinners, then we can be saved only by His grace through faith in Christ. And tonight we will be considering three things, three truths. First, we are sinful. That is verses 1 to 3. Second, we are saved by grace. Verses 4 to 9. And third, we are saved and created to serve. Verse 10. Let's go back to verse 1. For our first point, we are sinful. In verse 1, it says, You were dead and trespasses in sins. After Paul told Ephesians on how God blessed them with all spiritual blessing in Christ, he now reminds them about their former status and conditions. And that's the first one. We are dead in the trespasses and sins. Of course, this dead, this deadness, is not physical. It's not just physical. Dead, we are dead in the sense that we are alienated. We are separated from the one who gives life. And that is God. And this morning, it is the Holy Spirit. We heard that God gives life to a dead person. The same thing Paul said in Colossians 2.13, You who were dead in your trespasses, in the uncircumcision of your flesh. In other words, we are lifeless. We are hopeless. Hopeless people. But the question is, how did man become dead in sins? How did man become sinful? This condition of death is due to the sin of Adam, in which all of humanity participated and suffered the consequences. We saw, we can read that even in Genesis, the book of Genesis, where our first parents disobeyed God. As Paul declared in Romans 5.12, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. That is why we have the doctrine of the original sin. We inherited the sin of Adam. We are sinful. We sin because we are sinful. Some say that a man or a woman can only be called sinful or sinner the moment that he or she actually commits a sin. No. We sin because we are sinful. We were born in sin, conceived in sin. And for all have sinned in comfort of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death. This is why we are dead in sins. And it says, we are conceived and born with sin, but we also learn about sin in this life. In verse 2a, if you can see there, in which you once walked. The word walk there is a metaphor for one's conduct in everyday life. It is not a literal walking, or you can walk step by step. It is a conduct of everyday life. It is a practice so in which you once walk. Paul is reminding the Ephesian believers. So we are born as dead men, and we also live as dead men. We are the true walking dead in sins and trespasses. That's who we are. The example of this is King David. In Psalm 51, and we just sang this hymn, or this psalm. David said, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. I am evil, born in sin, he said. He confessed. And not only that, we follow the course of this world. In other words, we live in accordance to the sinfulness of this world. The Ephesians had formerly conducted themselves in line with the prince of the power of the air in verse 2. When we were without Christ, we are followers of the devil. He is the prince of the power of the air. It is hard to accept, but that is the reality. That is the truth when we were without Christ. We are followers of the devil. Think about that. when we were without Christ. And not only that, he continued by saying, we are sons of disobedience. This is the disobedience of unbelief. And hence, rebellion against God and His commandments. Disobedience is always related to unbelief and the disobedience of God and His commands. That is actually and exactly what Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. That's why we are sons of disobedience. And the parallel passage of our text is in Titus chapter 3. We're the same and similar wordings of the Apostle Paul in Titus 3. For example, verse 3 of Titus 3. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, Slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy. Hated by others and hating one another. In our Heidelberg Catechism, it is stated that we have a natural tendency to hate God and our neighbor. See, that's the worst thing. And Paul now adds in verse 3, Among whom we all once lived in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh. It is very interesting that in verse 3, Paul himself, he included himself. We, he said, among whom we all once lived in the lust of our flesh. Because in verse 1, he was just referring, he's talking to his audience, you who were dead and sins. But now in verse 3, he included himself. We all once lived in the lust of our flesh. The point here is that both Gentile, his audience steeped in immorality, and the Jew, who imagines that he can save himself by obeying the law, are living in lust of the flesh. So flesh here refers to the corrupt nature. In Romans 1.21, if you can read that, it's a very strong language there. Therefore, God gave them up and the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. That is a huge thing. God gave them up. And it says in Galatians 5 as well, that the works of the flesh, he enumerated sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, feats of anger, Rivalrous, dissensions, divisions, envy, and drunkenness. Those are the works of the flesh. And he said, Paul said, that we all once lived in these kinds, in this lust of our flesh. We've all once lived and enslaved in the passions of our flesh. And the worst thing, he said, is that we are by nature children of wrath. Children of wrath. The wrath of God stands in contrast with His love that Paul mentioned in Ephesians 1, 4-6. In love He predestined us. That is in contrast to that. The contrast of that is His wrath upon us. We deserve God's judgment. As it is written, he who disobeys the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Those who disobey his son, the wrath of God remains on him. And we are by natural children of God's wrath. So by nature, what does it mean? By nature, a dog barks. And by nature, bird flies in the sky. That's his nature. That's the nature of a bird. And listen to this. By nature, we are liars. By nature, we are sinful. By nature, we hate God and our neighbors. By nature, we are doomed to eternal punishment in hell. And by nature, we are children of God's wrath. That's who we were. That's who we are when we were without Christ. And we think that we can earn our salvation. Some people think that they can work out for their salvation. They can earn salvation by their good works. We have nothing. What we have is the guilt. What we have is the wickedness, the accursedness, the wretchedness that we inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve. That is the bad news. So the more you acknowledge how sinful you are, the more you will appreciate the grace of God. And thus, we are going where we are going. The Apostle Paul did not just announce the bad news, but then he also announced the gospel, the comfort that we have in Christ. So verse 4. Verse 4 says, But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. That is the gospel. That is our encouragement. If you notice, if you have read the writings of the Apostle Paul, his style, I like his style in writing. He would write, he would give you the bad news, and then he would also comfort you with the good news. In verse 4, this gives us hope. We were hopeless, we were lifeless. But then in verse 4, that is the beginning of our hope. So this leads us now to our second point. We are saved by grace. It gives hope for the hopeless and lifeless and dead humanity. So when God revealed Himself to Moses at Mount Sinai, He declared the Lord a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That is in Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 to 7. So you see, the God in the Old Testament is a merciful God and loving. And it continued, the same God, which Paul is talking about here, He is merciful, He is rich in mercy, and He is full of love. He is gracious to us sinners. And because God is merciful and compassionate, He loved us, it says here. But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved from the wrath of God. That's a good news. Earlier, he said that we are children of wrath, of God's wrath. But here, he said, we will be saved by Him from the wrath of God, through Jesus Christ. Now, when love is directed to sinners, viewed in their wretchedness and sinfulness, it is called mercy. That is mercy. It is mercy according to His love. Not only that. It says in verse 5, He quickened us together with Christ. In other words, God regenerated us through the working of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is a new creation. Being born again, that's the message that we heard last Lord's Day in the evening service. We were born from above, born by the Spirit. That is called regeneration. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. We cannot regenerate ourselves. So regeneration means a resurrection from the dead, a making alive, which God works in us without our aid, without our help. Just as a dead body cannot talk and move, so a man, dead in sin, cannot save himself, apart from the regenerating work of the Spirit. And according to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again, to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. See the contrast here? hopeless, and then born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And He raises up and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So although God is angry at sin and transgression, He is also rich in mercy. He is full of love. That is our God. He is abounding in grace. And we have a ready program that says abounding grace, or amazing grace. God is abounding in grace. In Christ, He made a way of escape from the forces of evil and has bestowed new life upon us. This is entirely a gift of His grace, rooted in His kindness. Because of our deadness and bondage to sin, there is no initiative, there is no merit, there is no effort on our part to acquire and inherit this precious gift. We only receive these benefits, these gifts, by faith. Faith is the instrument, the gift that God has given us to receive the forgiveness of sins, the benefits of Christ's redemptive work on the cross. So it is not just about the forgiveness of sins, but also our participation in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. This is possible because we are in Christ. We are united in Christ. Our identity is in Christ now, not of the devil. We now belong to Jesus Christ. We are no longer called sons of disobedience and children of wrath. Rather, we are now children of God through Christ, our Savior. And the most beautiful thing in verses 8 to 9, where it says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast. And by the way, for you parents and grandparents, this is a beautiful verses or memory verse that you can teach your children, your grandchildren. Teach them to memorize these verses. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. It is a beautiful memory verse. For by grace, you are saved. The idea here, it is completed. You are saved through faith. The expression clearly indicates that the ground of our salvation lies not in us, but in God alone. We cannot obtain forgiveness of sin, righteousness before God, and salvation by our own merits, but that we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God only by His grace for Christ's sake through faith alone when we believe that Christ suffered for us. It is only through faith by the grace of God. Why? Why not works? Why not our good works? Because by works of the law, no human being will be justified. No works of the law, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in His sight. And if we are justified by grace, then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. It is excluded. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. So if we say that we are saved by grace plus, or in addition, like our own good works, it is no longer by grace, Paul says. Paul declared in Romans 11.6. So we say and we believe that we are only saved by the grace of God. Heidelberg Catechism question and answer 62. Why can't our good works be our righteousness before God? Answer, because the righteousness which can pass God's judgment must be entirely perfect and must in every way measure up to the divine law. But even our best works in this life are imperfect and stained with sin. So we cannot say that we are saved by our own good works. Why am I emphasizing this? because over and over again we are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation that has been dealt with. People think that they can contribute to their salvation. I remember this morning from Pastor Reverend Godfrey, he thought about eternal life as a gift, not a goal. There are some people who think that you can achieve by doing good works. You can achieve the eternal life by doing good. By doing good works. Be careful. Do not forget what the Word of God says. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. There is nothing that we can add to the finished work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ on the cross. This is to safeguard us from thinking that we can be saved by our own good works because our own deeds are considered as filthy rugs. There is nothing that we can do in awe to the finished redemptive work of Christ on the cross. He's done it for us. That's why he said, it is finished. It is finished. That's our comfort. Those three words from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ on the cross. It is finished. That is our comfort. He's done it for us. He accomplished it for us. The thing that we can do is to believe in Him, to put our faith in Him. But when the goodness and lovingkindness of our God, our Savior, appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become ears according to the hope of eternal life. So the sole basis for our salvation is by God's grace. But Paul also clarifies that it is received by faith. We receive the gift of salvation by faith. In faith, it's God-given instrument for us to believe and put our trust in confidence in Christ Jesus. So the more you appreciate the grace of God, the more you will be motivated to obey and do good works. That leads us to our third point. We are saved and created for good works. The Apostle Paul is not against good works. Here in verse 10, it says, that for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So the proper response of a sinner saved by grace alone is to live in accordance to God's character and his commands. You are not saved by doing good works, but you are saved to do good works. What are these good works? It is not mentioned here in verse 10. Paul is not exhorting at this moment, but simply saying that man is not saved by his own good works. And he is saying that good works is the result of God's work of new creation in us. After all, we were elected in Christ before the foundation of the world to be blameless, to be holy and be blameless before Him. However, the exhortations of the Apostle Paul will be found in the later chapters of this book, specifically in chapters 4 to 6. So the book of Ephesians can be divided into two. From chapters 1 to 3, you can see there the indicatives or the exposition of the Christian faith. And chapters 4 to 6 are the imperatives, the commands, the exhortations, the exhortations for Christian living. To put it simply, chapters 1 to 3 graze in. Chapters 4 to 6 graze out the application. So it is there, it is stated there. For example, in chapters 4, 1 to 6, Paul's exhortation to unity and love, Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility. Chapter 4, 17-24, the new life, the new way of life versus the old. Never walk as the Gentiles do. Put off your old sack. Again, chapter 4, 25-52, the new creation walk in love. It says, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Those are the good works. Exhortation to the whole church in chapter 5. Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. 522-33. Exhortations to the Christian household. Wives, submit to your husbands. And husbands, love your wives as Christ loved his church. Chapter 6, 1-4. Exhortation to children. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. And then the last thing are the exhortations to slaves. Slaves, obey your masters with a sincere heart. And masters, do the same thing and stop threatening your servants. Those are the good works that Paul will later exhort the efficient believers. The point of this is that Paul is not against good works, but he is saying that good works are a result of being saved, not a ground, not as ground in order to be saved. So good works are necessary, not unto or for salvation, but it is necessary as evidence and proof of being saved. That is to clear the issue that we are called, we are anti-law. We are not. Actually, the grace of God being saved by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ, this gives us motivation to obey God and His commandments. If you can remember our outline, 3S, that is basically the outline of the Halleberg Catechism. Sin, salvation, and service. Our third point, and I will close with this. Like in the third part of the Heidelberg Catechism, question, the first question there is question and answer 86. The question is this. Since we have been delivered from our misery by grace through Christ without any merit of our own, why then should we do good works? Answer, because Christ, having redeemed us by His blood, is also restoring us by His Spirit into His image, so that with our whole lives, we may show that we are thankful to God for His benefits, so that He may be praised through us, so that we may be assured of our faith by His fruits, and so that by our godly living, our neighbors may be won over to Christ. See, this gratitude, good works, is put on the third part. Not on the second part, not on the first part. Because God showed us how sinful we are. And we are in need of a Savior. That's why we are called sinners. And Jesus Christ is called Savior. He is our Savior. We are sinners. And God showed us through His Son, Jesus Christ. By his grace, he saved us. And now that we are saved, we should be motivated in gratitude for what he has done for us. Obey his commands for his glory alone, for our sanctification. That is our proper response. So the more you are motivated to do good works for God's glory, the more you will enjoy obeying his commands out of gratitude. So in conclusion, congregation of Christ, we are reminded through the message of the word of God of our former status without Christ, which is sinful. Because of our sinfulness, we cannot save ourselves even by our own good works. So God, in His rich mercy and great love, He saved us by His grace. Out of gratitude, we ought to serve God by obeying His commands. Out of gratitude, do good works, not for your own salvation, but for our sanctification and for the glory of God. And by doing so, others may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. We are all sinners saved by grace. Let us pray. Our gracious God and loving Heavenly Father, We thank you so much for showing us our need of Savior, for showing us our sinfulness, our wretchedness. But at the same time, thank you for comforting us by your gospel, what Christ has done on the cross, what he has accomplished for us. We thank you that you have given us the gift of faith, That by faith alone, by true faith alone in Christ alone, we can be saved. And cause us as well, through the working of the Holy Spirit, that we will be motivated to do good works for your own glory and not for our own. Bless us together and bless us, guide us, preserve us for the rest of the week. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.