Gospel—R. Thonney
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Let's begin our meeting this evening with #25 on the hymn sheet.
Life at best is very brief.
Like the falling of a leaf, like the binding of a sheath. Be in time.
Bleeding days are telling fast that the dye will soon be cast and the fatal line be passed.
Be in time.
This last week in Bolivia, I had the privilege of joining a few days with Bev Hall and Tim Kaiser and Jason Van Holstein.
Down in Bolivia, they met me at the airport at Santa Cruz and traveled down with them and to Argentina.
But in our trip from Cochabamba, Bolivia, to Potosi and then down to the border of Bolivia, we went by the place where.
It was about a year and a half ago now that a truck was coming up.
From the South of the country to Porto SI, loaded with fruit and there was quite a few young people and older ones too on there. They're right on the back of trucks when there's no buses. And in this certain area we went by it, the place.
They were repairing the road and his trucks stopped on the side of the road to.
Let a bigger vehicle coming down the road go by, and what the driver didn't realize is that the shoulder was soft and they stopped on the side and all of a sudden the sugar gave way and the truck just went right over and all that fruit was on top of those people.
There are four dead. One of them was a nice, dear young brother, 21 years old.
Gone to be with Lord at a moment's notice. Nice to see a lot of young people here tonight. We're glad the children are here too.
But oh, the brevity of life, it really impresses me, you know?
Almost 60 now, but.
I don't feel that old. I don't know how you young people are looking at me, whether you think I'm an oldie.
Or not, but I'll tell you what it seems like yesterday I was a young person sitting where you're sitting.
Life is very, very. Take it seriously.
My best is very brief, like the falling away, like the blinding of a shame.
Bleeding days are coming and the die will shoot begun.
And the faith will blind me by us, he and I.
Begins I.
Been quiet. A voice of Jesus called. Living in time.
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Oh, I pray you count across.
I can hear priceless all your heart beginning in time.
You're in time, you're in love.
While the points of Jake, it's a scissors of scouting millions of the millions of.
No warning voice. May the Lord your happy choice and whatever my resource.
Daytime apart from darkness into lightning, from the way that seem afraid.
Oh my sorry for having tonight.
Like to turn to Ephesians chapter 2.
We've been talking a lot about Ephesians one, and quite a few comments have been made about chapter 2 as well, and I'd like to take up this in the context of the Gospel.
In our concerns.
Me, because I've been brought up in a Christian home myself, and I know how easy it is to grow up in a Christian home and take everything for granted. Perhaps you do not question what is said in the meanings, but what really comes home as a burden to my soul is have you?
Truly made these things personal for yourself. It's not a matter of justice accepting them in a mere mental fashion. It is recognizing the testimony of God concerning yourself and accepting that testimony that will bring salvation.
Happens way too much. I really believe that there are those who pass amongst us who are not real.
You know, sometimes I look around and I like to watch as I'm speaking the gospel as to how people may be accepting it. I'm certain that I am not a very good judge of how the word is getting through.
But sometimes you can see as I talk, a complete blank.
On the face of someone. Now I have to take when I see that a complete blank on somebody's face as they're listening.
Eat one of two different cases. Perhaps it may be a real believer, but completely asleep.
That's a possibility, but the other possibility that concerns me even more is what we were talking about this afternoon. We heard about that a person may be completely dead.
Not talking about being dead physically. I think you understand that we're talking about being dead spiritually. Let's read these first verses of the second chapter of Ephesians. Listen carefully, please.
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And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time passed, you walked according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation.
In times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
But God.
Who is rich in mercy?
For his great love, wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace ye are saved, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of his grace and His kindness toward us.
Through Christ Jesus, for by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them.
In the first three verses of this chapter we have painted for us by God the natural condition of every human being born into this world.
First of all, in verse one it talks and says that we are dead in trespasses and sins. Sin brings death. The wages of sin is death. Death in the scripture is presented as a separation.
Physical death is when my spirit and soul depart and are separated from the body. That is physical debt, but spiritual death is separation from God. You're not physically dead. You're sitting there. You're listening to me.
Now you're not physically dead, but if you have not accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you are spiritually dead.
And it is. It seems like a hopeless case for me to sit here or stand here and speak to you as you're sitting there. If you are dead, if it depends on me, nothing will ever happen. You'll continue to be dead for the rest of your existence.
Here on planet Earth and you will go into a lost eternity dead in trespasses and sins. You know a dead person is completely unresponsive, has no ability to feel. He enjoys a person that is dead in trespasses and sin, enjoys his sin. He has his flings. There's no reason to feel any qualms of conscience. No, he's dead.
It's amazing to me when you meet up with people that are dead.
Unresponsive.
Remember being at a auction in Lawrenceville one time in that was kind of wandering around looking at the different stuff that was to be sold.
There was a man and his wife in front of Maine facing me.
And he used the Lords name in vain.
Jesus Christ, he said.
It hurt and I looked at him in the face. I said that's my savior.
Total blank.
He had no idea what I was saying.
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Didn't register.
Dead in trespasses and sins.
If you're a real believer, you hear God's name taken in vain. I tell you it'll hurt. It hurts.
If it doesn't register with you, I say, are you dead in trespasses and sins?
That's the condition here, but not only so notice in verse 2 There's.
Other things that are mentioned in our natural condition, it speaks of this world when we're not talking, when it talks about this world, about the created world. Created world is a wonderful place, although it has been damaged a lot by man's greed.
But still it is a wonderful place. But when it uses this world, this word world.
Here in this verse, it's talking about a system of things that man has created.
To be comfortable without God. Yes, it's a system and it says we walked according to the course of this world. According to the Prince of the Power of the Air, there is a personality that is working in this world. It's called the Prince of the Power of the Air. Satan himself, he is operating.
Here in this realm that is called.
The world and the world, young people, we've heard it today and I don't think I need to harp on it that much. But for all of us, your old and young alike, your world is a system of things that it is that is at enmity with God, James says. To be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God. You can't be neutral when it comes to the matter.
God, in this world you have to take a position. Don't think you can mix the two things up. If you want to be a friend of this world, you constitute yourself the enemy of God. Let's be clear about it. There is no question in the word of God.
And then it says notice in verse three, among whom all also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts.
Of our flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and whereby nature, the children of wrath, even as others. Here it talks about the lusts. Here's something inside of us and Satan uses those lusts, those desires.
Of the.
Flesh and of the mind to control a person.
As he wants to take them down to destruction, you say I'm just going to have a little, little pleasure, Okay, That's what you think. Satan is a master at using those lusts, those desires in you and me for his purposes. And if you allow them to work, he will take you not where you think to go, but where he wants you to go.
It's scary to see the youth of this country.
So messed up.
We go to the youth village in Vincennes, IN and it is tragic to see where those kids are. A lot of them say they're Christians, a lot of them, and they're messed up. They admit they're messed up. They don't try to hide the fact that they're messed up.
Satan is very successful at taking the lusts of man and sometimes I give the illustration, it's like somebody that wants to.
Get on a horse. Before you get on a horse, you put into the horse's mouth the bridle, and then you swing the reins up over the horse's head and you get on to the saddle and that horse may want to go off to the right and you pull the reins and he has to go to the left.
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He's not looking at you. He thinks he'll go where he wants to go, but it's not where he wants to go. You have something inside of his mouth that controls him. And so Satan uses the lusts of the flesh and of the mind to control a person.
Let me tell you what happened one time down in.
A place in Bolivia. It's a town called Siete Suyos.
It's a mining town in the South of Bolivia.
And when we got there to a conference, the brethren of the town told us what had happened.
Several days before a young man, about 18 years of age.
Came from an unsaved home, but he liked to go out and drink with his buddies. And one day he came home pretty drunk. And his mother was not a believer, but she didn't like to see her son drunk all the time, especially at that age. And she proceeded to give him a good balling out and he got angry at his mother. He said, mother, you're going to be sorry you said that to me.
And he took out out of the house. And Sitisuyos is a mining town.
And it's built around.
Deep ravine and he went up the road and he took off his hat and he threw it down, took off his jacket and he threw that down, took off his shirt and threw it down. And by that time he was up to a place where they have a big bell that they usually ring at 12 noon. And he got up there and he took one dive down into the ravine.
And they had to go down and pick up the pieces.
Satan is the lusts of that young man to.
Take him right down to destruction. Maybe you don't like drinking, but whatever lust it may be in you, maybe the lust you have is after something that is considered fairly clean in this world. But that's the way men are controlled by the Prince of the power of the air. It's a reality in the world that we live. Let me tell you give you another illustration of.
These verses.
One of the Lord's own disciples. His name was Judas.
Is scary. He had accompanied with the Lord Jesus for 3 1/2 years, could not have had a better opportunity to get to know the Lord and to truly accept him as Lord and Savior. But Judas Iscariot loves something else more than he loved the Lord Jesus. He loved money and he loved because he was the treasure of the.
The disciples, as they went around, he kept the bag. I guess that would mean he was the treasurer. And when they had to buy something, he pulled out the money and he paid for it. But Scripture says he was a thief. He took some of that money that was really the Lord's money, and put it into his own pocket. He probably felt, well, nobody will ever know about it. The Lord knew about it all along.
But the time came towards the end of the Lord's life down here and one day.
The Lord Jesus was in a home where they made him a supper, and one of the women, Mary, came with a very expensive perfume and opened that perfume box and poured it on the Lord Jesus. Judas started a rumor. What a waste. We could have sold that for 300 pence. That's almost a year's wages. That's a lot of money, and we could have given it to the poor and it says the Scripture tells us.
That he didn't really have interest in the poor. It was because he was a thief. He had love of money in his heart. That was the lust that Satan used to control Judas Iscariot. When the Lord rebuked him, say let her alone, she's done a good work. That was too much for Judas Iscariot. He made a plan going to sell him. Jesus has walked out of a lot of traps.
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And ago and make an agreement with the chief priests to betray them and.
And I'll have the money in my pocket, and then Jesus will just walk out of the trap and nobody will ever know it.
Things did not happen the way Judas Iscariot calculated that they would happen. Jesus did not walk out of the trap. He submitted. It was the time for him to go to the cross to die.
And Judas saw that the innocent blood was condemned. He took those pieces of money in, threw him at the feet of the chief priests and scribes.
Money can't.
Calm, a bad conscience. Can't do it. Poor Judas. He could have come back to Jesus. Jesus would have forgiven him. But he didn't do that. He did not have faith to do that. He would rather went out and hung himself. Awful. And Satan took him. Just like a writer on a horse.
And drove him right into eternal ruin. You know, it's pretty sad picture that we have painted in those first three verses, but we get now to verse four. And here's where everything changes but God. We bring God into the picture. But God who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us. Oh, how I love that, but God.
You know, if it wasn't for God coming into the picture, there would be no hope for any of us but God, who is rich in mercy. I love this.
You say you need a lot. He's got a lot. You'll never exhaust his stores of mercy and grace.
No, God is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us. Well known gospel verse for God.
So loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.
But have everlasting life. God knew what was going to happen to His Son when he sent him into this world.
You know, if I knew.
By sending one of my boys to a certain place in the United States that he was going to be mistreated and killed, I would not send him. But God knew what they were going to do with Jesus. And I marvel at the heart of God when the Lord Jesus was here in this world, everywhere he went, he dispensed blessing. He fed the hungry. He raised the dead. He gave sight to the blind.
He healed the sick. You would think that's the kind of a person we need around to empty some of the hospitals around here.
People were not interested, they reacted and called for his blood.
Not merely his death, but the most awful death possible. They crowned his head with thorns. They spit in his face.
You know, I've had people spit at me, but I've never had anybody come right up to my face and spit in my face.
What an awful insult to the very Son of God.
They hit him in the face.
They took him outside the city of Jerusalem. And, you know, I don't think we grasp very well the awful gruesomeness of crucifixion. They stretched out his hands. They pounded spikes through his hands and through his feet.
And there they hung him to die.
What did God do? Did he come to rescue him? You know, if I saw my boys being mistreated outside the window of my home, you think I could sit there and just watch it happen?
No way.
And God watched it happen. Why didn't he do anything? You know why?
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For God so loved the world, that's why.
That's God's love. There was no other way for you and I to be saved but for Jesus to die. There he hung for three hours. They ridiculed him.
They mocked him and after three hours the sky got dark, and for three hours it was dark on Calvary.
In those three dark hours, God himself.
Remembered every sin that this guilty Sinner has ever committed, and laid it on Jesus, and then he picked up the rod of his judgment and punished him.
So he didn't have to punish this guilty Sinner.
Oh, what a Savior God who is rich in mercy for his great love. Wherewith he left us, Jesus died. A soldier pierced his side and outflowed blood and water, the testimony that life had been given.
They took him. They buried him.
But the third day he rose out of the tomb.
God raised him from the dead. Now, because of what Jesus has done, full and free salvation can be offered to every single human being on the face of planet earth. God is no respecter of person. The message is to all.
Go ye into all the world, the Lord Jesus said. Preach the gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.
He that believes not shall be damned.
That was the message.
The salvation of God is for everyone. Are you saved?
Or are you dead?
In trespasses and sins.
Please listen, how can you have life? You know how God gives life.
Fate comes by hearing and hearing.
By the word of God.
Listen when God speaks.
I like what an older brother sometimes tells us. He says it's not a matter so much of understanding what God says.
As listening to what God says, that is important.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Are you listening? He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. How important to listen? Maybe you say, well, I can't understand it. I don't understand a whole lot about this book.
But I believe it, and that's where you're going to get the blessing, believing God.
Remember when I worked at Chicago Wesley Memorial Hospital in Chicago?
One day I was in the lunch room and eating lunch and I had some gospel tracks in my pocket and across the table from me a doctor sat down. He was quite a good doctor, quite a well known doctor in that hospital. He was Jewish.
Jewish doctors generally are fairly good doctors.
He saw the track in my pocket and he read the title of it and sticking up above my pocket. And so I pulled one out and I slid it across the table to him and he looked it over a bit and then he slid it back across the table at me. And he said, problem with you Christians is that you're blind. You believe what you can't understand.
I said.
Wait a minute, Doctor, can I ask you a question? Supposing I come to this hospital and I understand that you never make a mistake.
The diagnosis of a disease and giving the right kind of medicine. You never make a mistake. That's the fame you have here at this hospital. I come here and I'm sick and you tell me I got a certain disease. I don't understand what you're telling me about the disease I have, and you give me a prescription and I don't understand anything about the prescription you've given me. I only understand one thing. You don't make mistakes.
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Am I blind to believe you?
Even though I don't understand you without a minute.
No, I guess not, I said. Neither am I blind to believe a God who cannot lie?
He kind of shuffled his feet, he says. Well, we'll talk about it another time. He got up and left.
But that's what it is. It's believing God that brings the blessing for your soul.
Not a matter so much of understanding. Understanding may come in time.
And it will. But it's believing God that brings the blessing.
God, who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead.
In sins hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace are ye saved. Quickening is the old English word for giving life. He's given us life in the Lord Jesus Christ together with Christ. It says that's what a dead person needs is life, and that's what he gives to the person that simply believes in Jesus. I'd like to go back.
To John's gospel a little bit just to confirm this, please.
John, Chapter 5.
And read a few verses here.
Verse 21.
Whereas the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them.
Even so the sun quickeneth whom He will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father which hath sent Him.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word.
And believeth on him that sent me.
Hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.
You got five fingers on your hand. There are five things in this verse that Jesus speaks about very clearly. The first two relate to us.
He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, Are you listening? Are you hearing?
How important it is for us who preach the gospel to make it as clear as possible so that we'll get in. Are you hearing?
Do you believe?
Him who sent Jesus. If you do, scripture says that you have everlasting life number 1/2.
It says shall not come into judgment or condemnation and #3 is passed from death unto life. You know you need more than natural light to get into God's heaven. You need.
To be born anew, you need to eternal life to get into God's heaven. This life with which we've been born is a life that loves sin.
Yeah, you like one kind of sin. Maybe I like a different kind of sin, but that's natural to everyone of us.
But if we're going to get into God's heaven, we got to have a completely different life. If you could get into heaven without being born again, you would be so terribly miserable. You'd want out of there as fast as humanly possible.
You would not be comfortable there.
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But let's go on here, verse 25. Verily, verily, I say unto you.
The hour is coming and now is when the dead. This is the spiritually dead.
Shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. How wonderful this is.
You know, dead people, naturally speaking, don't hear. You can shout all you want, they do not hear. But what is this that Jesus says the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God? It's because God imparts life by speaking, his precious living.
Everlasting Word. And that's why it's so important for you to listen to what God has to say to you.
That's the way God imparts life. The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that here shall live.
Let's go on a little bit further here. For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life.
In himself.
Verse 27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.
You know the judge that's going to sit on the throne of judgment in the final day.
Is going to be a man people that have rejected God in their lives when they come to stand at the great white throne because they've died in their sins, they're going to be raised in their sins. And when they look at that great white throne to see the one that's sitting there, they're going to see a man sitting there.
Very clearly, the Scripture says he's given him authority to execute judgment.
Because he is the Son of man, people are not going to be able to stand there and say.
God, you don't understand what it is to be a man.
Going to be a man on the throne that's going to judge them.
How solemn did you know that every single human being on the face of planet earth that has ever lived is going to come face to face with Jesus?
Sooner or later, there is no way you can avoid it. You can deny it.
You can try to ignore it, but you can't get away from this fact that you are going to come face to face with Jesus.
One of these days.
You can know Him now as your Savior, or you will have to face Him as the judge in that final day. Oh, the awfulness, the terror of people that will have to face Him in that day. Verse 28. Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in which all that are in the grave shall hear His voice. Now this is.
Bodily resurrections. Talking about graves. This world is a big graveyard.
All that are in the grave shall hear His voice, and shall come forth. They that have done good unto the resurrection of life. They that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. There are two resurrections. The first resurrection is the resurrection of life.
And here is where everyone who has trusted in the Lord Jesus will be included. If they have died with faith in the Lord Jesus, they're going to hear His voice.
Oh, what power there is in the Lord Jesus. And he's going to call them out of this, their tombs.
And they're going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, the resurrection is going to take place. But there's another resurrection. Every single cemetery on planet Earth is going to be completely emptied of the bones and the dust that are in them. Every single one.
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And sometimes I've walked through.
Towns in southern Peru, sometimes in Bolivia too, where the town is completely abandoned, and walk outside the town and there's the cemetery and sometimes the bones are laying around. There's a skull there. Who in the world that skull belonged to? One day that skull is going to be raised back to life. He's going to empty every single cemetery in the world.
No one is going to escape.
When he calls, they will come, and those that are lost, the scripture tells us.
Are going to stand before a great white throne.
You know, it scares me with the way people in this country are used to treating.
Judgment in the courts of the land, how they bargained with the authorities will drop all accounts except all charges against you except one, if you plead guilty on this account.
And so they make a bargain and they get all those charges dropped and they think they're clear. They're clear with human authorities. They're not clear with God.
You've got to get the matter straightened out according to God's requirements of righteousness, not according to your own. You do not set the standards. God sets the standards.
How important that is to realize. And in that day before that great white throne, it tells us that heaven and earth have gone. They disappeared before the face of him that sat sits on the throne. No place to run and hide there. They stand suspended in space. And the books are open. God is a bookkeeper.
Every single word, every single act.
Every fight you've entertained in your mind is written by the hand of God and has to be accounted for. Either Jesus paid for it on the cross of Calvary, or if you will not have him, you must pay your own sin debt in the Lake of fire forever. And there they stand, nowhere to escape. And the books are open.
No need to rush things, there is no time here.
In very detail, everything comes out, things the person perhaps is completely forgot about.
I'm amazed at how much I forget about what's happened in my past years.
But God doesn't forget. It's all written there. And then it says there's another book. It's the book of life in which you're written, the names of all those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the last search is made through the Book of Life, and it says he that was not found, written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. How awful, solemn.
Our desire is that there would be not one.
How tragic, if even one person.
And you know where you're sitting in this group tonight? I don't know where you're sitting.
The Spirit of God knows and He singles you out. Don't resist the convictions Spirit of God brings to your soul.
Be way too awful to think that somebody sitting listening to the Gospel in the conference at Saint Louis in 2003 decided not to accept Christ.
And the Lord came, and he left behind for awful judgment. I cannot accept that as a possibility. It is my responsibility to plead with you to wake up to listen to God's Word tonight.
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It's way too awful.
People don't think.
Of the future they just live for now.
Now I am asking you to think seriously tonight about where you stand with God.
Don't put it off any longer.
Let's go back to Ephesians chapter 2.
We got down to verse 5.
He had quickened us together with Christ. By grace are ye saved, verse 6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. What's the difference between being quickened and being raised up? Maybe we think of them as the same thing, but I like to think of it in this way.
Being quickened is being given life. That's what a dead person needs. But being raised up is being taken completely out of the place of death. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus, the place you occupy is completely different than the place a person of this world occupies. He's lifted you completely out of that place.
It's not the same.
Don't try to make it the same.
You know when the Lord Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead? Lazarus.
Dear man that he was died, but Jesus spoke a word.
And Lazarus came out of that tomb bound hand and foot. I often wondered how in the world he came out. But the Son of God had spoken. Lazarus come forth, and when the Son of God speaks, things happen. And he came out of that tomb.
Did Lazarus continue to live in the cemetery after he was raised from the dead? No. That's not the place for living people to live. It's the place for dead people.
Dear young people, dear older ones too, if God has given you light, He's not only given you life, He's raised you up completely out of that place of death. How far has He raised us? He's made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ.
Oh, I love that. Oh, you say? I thought I was sitting here in St. Louis, MO. What does this mean?
I can put it in this way. If I was elected to be president of the United States, I don't think I'll try that endeavor, but if I was.
And I was elected. I could say my place is the Oval Office in Washington, DC.
That would be true. Time has not come for me to take that place yet, but that's my place. So we can say we that are believers in the Lord Jesus, our place is seated there with Christ Jesus. It's as sure as if we were already there. And really that's the way we're looked at here. But it doesn't stop there either. Verse seven says that in the ages to come he might show.
The exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. Oh how wonderful this is. God is rich beyond our ability to understand, and when He begins to display the riches of His grace, it's going to take ages.
When Satan showed to the Lord Jesus the glories of this world, it only took a moment of time for him to scan.
The whole horizon when God begins to show the exceeding riches of His grace.
It's going to take the ages to come.
Oh, how rich is our God?
We are too poor to buy from such a person that is so rich.
He is too rich to sell to us poor beggars.
He gives it fully and freely. Notice verse 8. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God.
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Through faith or by grace, we are saved. Grace means God's unmerited favor. You know, South America, the idea of grace, and I sense that sometimes people up here are starting to get this wrong idea of what grace is. It's a virtue I possess. And since I possess this virtue, God looks at me with favor.
That's the sense of grace that it's used of times in South America.
That is not the biblical sense of grace. Grace is.
Unmerited favor. I deserve judgment and he saved me. That's grace and it's through faith. Faith is the means simply believing God. Somebody has put the illustration.
In a train, there's the locomotive and the cars behind it. They're all running along at the same speed.
Those cars don't have any engines on them. How come they run at the same speed as the locomotive? Because there's something called the coupling. And with that coupling, those cars run at the same speed as the locomotive. They are connected to the power, and what will connect you to the power to be saved is faith.
Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that faith is not of ourselves either. Where did that faith come from? Sometimes people think, oh, or just a big flash in the blue and they had a whole bunch of faith. That's not the faith we're talking about here. We've already mentioned it, but it says.
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
So faith that is scriptural is faith that is based on God's precious word. Here it is written out in black and white. You couldn't have any clearer than you have right now.
That's the faith that we're talking about. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. No one will ever get there by works. But do works have a place? Yes, they sure do.
Not to be saved, but after we are saved.
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and you show by your life that you are saved by good works.
Somebody has put it this way and it was a help to me.
We are saved by faith without works.
But the faith that saves works.
And that's the faith of God. James is very clear. Faith without works is dead.
Oh, you say I don't. I didn't think I was saved by works. No, you're not. But if you're truly have the faith, which is of God, it's a faith that works.
And it will be evident in your life and mine too, if you truly have believed God.
So we are created unto good works. Just this closing thought.
Sometimes, you know, we are so try to be so clear that we're not saved by works that I think we.
Do not emphasize sufficiently that we are saved unto good works.
Scripture speaks an awful lot about good works. Are you doing some good work? Have you done some good work today?
We're saved unto good works.
Jimmy Smith used to say, and I liked his little poem, he said I could not work my soul to save, but I would work like any slave in love to God's dear Son. That's the proper perspective of works, not to be saved, but because I am saved in gratitude to God for all He's done for me, to do all I can.
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To show him how grateful I am for his saving grace.
Let's just pray.