Googling God
Googling God
Ephesians 2:8-10
David Riley
Eagle Rock Baptist Church
April 22, 2007
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
NASB
Introduction
A brand new word was introduced into the English language in the year 2000 that symbolizes one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. It is a word that not only was unknown just five years ago, but today has taken such a life of its own it has become a verb that we use almost every day. It is the word "Google." It has its own entry in the dictionary. It means, “to search for information on the web, particularly by using the Google search engine.”
Two young men, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their thirties, did not realize when they started tinkering with a computer idea in their garage that they would invent, discover, and give to the world a door as wide as the sky to walk into a sea of information, as deep as the ocean, with just the click of a button.
Google is the world's most popular internet search engine. Recently, in just one week, a billion new websites were added to the service. It has now become a touchtone of American culture. The average Google search takes about a half-second, driven by 10,000 interconnected Google computers. If you are computer friendly at all, there is hardly a day in your life that you don't Google something.
What if you could Google God? What I mean is - what if you could Google how to have a relationship with God and receive God's own personal website on how that can happen. What do you think you would find? Believe it or not, I am one-hundred percent certain I know that if you could indeed Google God Himself and ask the question, "How can I have a relationship with You?" this would be the next thing you would see on your computer.
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
NASB
There are three words in those three verses, which believe it or not, totally explain how anyone can have a relationship with God and what that relationship with God would mean. They are the words "by," "through," and "for." If you will remember those three words you will never get confused on how a person can have a relationship with God, how a person can go to heaven, and how a person can (to put it in biblical terminology) be saved.
The vast majority of this world, regardless of their religious persuasion believes that the way to heaven is somehow connected to being a good person. If you do enough good works and enough good deeds, you earn your way into heaven.
In a nationwide survey taken a few years ago, right here in America, 55% of all Americans said that a good person can earn their way to heaven. That is not all - 58% of Episcopalians, 59% of Methodists, 76% of Mormons and 82% of Catholics agreed. Incidentally, 38% of Baptists said that a good person can earn their way to heaven.
If you believe that then you need to listen to these three words again and you need to keep them in the right order. If you get them out of order then you will be totally wrong in understanding how to have a relationship with God.
I read a story that had a lot more meaning for me, it was the story of a farmer who was helping one of his cows give birth and his had the calf about half way out of that mother cow when he noticed his four year old son had walked down to the fence and he was soaking in the whole thing. The dad thought to himself, "Great! Four years old and now I've got to start explaining the birds and the bees to my little boy." He started to say something and then he said, "No, I'll just see if he has any questions and then I will answer them."
After he had safely delivered the calf and put it down and everything was over, this dad walked over to his little boy and said, "Son, do you have any questions?" That little four-year old wide eyed boy said, "Just one daddy. How fast was that calf going when it hit that cow?"
I am convinced when it comes to understanding how to have a relationship with God the vast majority of this world and a lot of people in church have it totally backwards. If you want to keep it straight, you've got to keep those three words in mind and you will learn what God says about how you can have a relationship with Him. Just as school is all about reading, writing and 'rithmetic, salvation is all about three words.
I. Realize Salvation Is God's Gift
Ephesians 2:8a
8a For by grace you have been saved
NASB
Next to Jesus, I think grace is the most beautiful word in all the Bible. It is the Greek word, "charis" which gives us the name "Karen." The reason why grace is so beautiful is not because of the way it sounds, but because of what it means. It is unlike anything else in the world.
First of all, grace is something no one deserves. There are three ways that God can deal with you and me. God can deal with us according to justice that is He could give us exactly what we deserve. God could deal with us according to mercy that is He doesn't give us what we deserve. God has done something totally and radically different. He has chosen to deal with us by grace whereby He gives us what we do not deserve.
As hard as it is to believe, God has not provided a way for us to have a relationship with Him because we deserve it; He did it in spite of the fact that we don't deserve it. Jesus Christ did not die on the cross for us because of our goodness, but in spite of our badness.
Romans 5:8 says,
Romans 5:8
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
NASB
To emphasize this we go on to read something else about grace and that is it is not only given to people who do not deserve it, but it cannot be earned. Verse 9 says,
Ephesians 2:9
9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.
NASB
"Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it." (Ephesians 2:9, NLT)
Let me tell you how the average person thinks of Jesus dying on the cross. He thinks that Jesus made a down payment for our forgiveness, but that we have to make the installments. Yes, we believe that Jesus died for our sins as a down payment, but then we've got to make the installments of going to church, giving money, doing good deeds, paying our taxes and somehow that helps to make the payment for our salvation.
Let me give you a clear definition of what grace means. Grace means that salvation is totally and completely free, because Jesus Christ paid for all of it. You cannot win it as a prize. You cannot earn it as a wage. You will not deserve it as a reward. You can only receive it as a gift. In fact, this is what is so weird about salvation. If you receive salvation as a gift you have it. If you try to earn it by your goodness you will never get it.
Since I took up golf a number of years ago, I've become a student of the game and I've learned a great deal about it (one of the things I learned is I should have never taken it up). If you ever go to a tournament and watch the pros tee off, before they hit the first ball, they will walk over to each other, shake hands and they will exchange scorecards, because the rule in professional golf is: each golfer keeps the other person's score. It is then the responsibility of each individual golfer to check the other golfer's score at the end of the round before he signs his scorecard to make sure it is correct.
In 1957, in the U.S. Women's Open, Jackie Pung made the single greatest mistake that a professional golfer can make. She signed an incorrect scorecard. The problem was she signed for a whole score lower than what she actually made. Do you know what the penalty for that is? Immediate, instant disqualification and though she had won the U.S. Open by a stroke, you won't find that in the record books, because she was disqualified.
Here is the point. If you want to have a relationship with God and you want to go to heaven when you die, you want to receive eternal life, if you sign the scorecard marked good-works, good-deeds, the best I could do - you are going to be disqualified.
Salvation is not a bargain that God makes with you; it is an offer that God gives to you. It is not a reward for those who work hard enough to earn it. It is a gift for those who are willing to admit they don't deserve it, but they will receive it as a gift of God's grace.
I. Realize Salvation Is God's Gift
II. Receive Salvation By Godly Faith
The first word was the word "by". We understand now what that means. "For by grace you have been saved." The second key word is the word "through." The text tells us,
Ephesians 2:8a
8a For by grace you have been saved through faith;
NASB
Faith is the flipside of the coin of salvation; heads is grace and tails is faith. Think of salvation like a gulf. Two rivers flow into that gulf; the river of grace and the river of faith. Grace is God's hand giving salvation. Faith is our hand receiving salvation.
Notice something else. Even this faith according to the Bible is,
Ephesians 2:8b
8b and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
NASB
Everything that involves salvation, whether it is grace or faith or salvation itself is a gift of God. In John 6:28-29 there was just a brief moment in the life of Jesus in which He was talking to the disciples and it gave Him an opportunity to reveal a great truth. The disciples asked Jesus this question,
"What shall we do so that we may work the works of God?" They were saying, "How can we do something great so people will say, 'That was a work of God!'" Listen to Jesus' answer.
John 6:29
29 Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."
NASB
Jesus said even our faith is a work of God.
Faith is not a good work you do for God. Faith is God's work He does in you. Grace is not a reward for your faith. Your faith is the result of God's grace.
I want you to understand what the Bible means by faith. When the Bible talks about faith it doesn't mean believing in something; it means believing on something. There is a tremendous difference. I can make it very simple. Children believe in the Tooth Fairy. I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You can believe in a chair and believe that chair will hold you up, but you don't believe on the chair until you sit down on that chair. Let me give you a true-to-life story that illustrates the power of what I am talking about.
There was a motorcycle officer who was going through a Los Angeles suburb on his way to work. As he neared an intersection, a red pickup truck went past him without even slowing down for the stop sign. The officer turned on his flashing lights and radioed the station that he was in pursuit of this truck.
As his unit pulled up behind the truck the officer was thinking, "This guy is just probably late for work", but unknown to the officer the driver of that pickup had just robbed a grocery store. Sitting on the seat beside that driver was the paper bag with the money and the gun he had used to pull off this robbery. As the officer pulled up beside him this man put his hand on the gun.
The truck pulled to the side of the roadway and stopped. The officer parked his motorcycle, walked over to the driver's side of the pickup and he said, "Good morning sir, may I see your license?" Those were the last words he said. The driver stuck his arm out of that truck and fired the gun. The barrel of the gun was only two inches away from that officer and the bullet hit the officer in the center of his chest and he was knocked to the ground seven feet away.
For a few moments all was quiet, then to the shocked amazement of the gunman, the officer slowly stood to his feet. The driver couldn't believe it. He even said out loud, "You must be Clark Kent!" Still in shock, the policeman slowly began to brush the dirt from his uniform.
After two or three seconds the officer came to his senses, pulled his service revolver and fired two rounds into the side of the truck. The first round went through the window destroying the windshield. The second round went through the side of the door and ripped into the driver's left leg. The terrified robber screamed, "Don't shoot any more" and threw the gun out along with the bag of money.
That officer's life had been spared because he was wearing a bullet proof vest; a vest that was only 3/8 of an inch thick made of dozens of layers of an extremely tough fabric called "kevlar".
Now fast forward. A few months later, another officer, Ray Hicks and his partner went to serve a search warrant on a well known drug dealer in the city of Inglewood, California. As his partner knocked on the door, Hicks yelled out, "Police!" and started to knock down the door. Four slugs were fired through that door and one hit Ray Hicks. The impact was almost exactly where the motorcycle officer had been hit only a few weeks before, squarely in the center of the chest.
The last words of Ray Hicks were "I am hit" as he sank to the floor. The coroner later reported that the policeman probably lived less than a minute, because the bullet had ruptured an artery that fed blood to the brain.
Police officer, Ray Hicks was 27 years old. He left a wife, three children and the bullet proof vest in the trunk of his car parked thirty feet from where he died.
What's the point? A police officer can believe in a bullet proof vest all he wants to, but until he puts that bullet proof vest on and commits his life to it; it won't do him any good.
It is not enough just to believe that a man named, Jesus Christ, lived 2000 years ago or believe He was born of a virgin or believe He performed miracles or believe He died on the cross or even believe He was raised from the dead. It is only when you, by faith and complete trust, surrender your life to Him that He becomes your Lord and your Savior and you then have a relationship with God.
I. Realize Salvation Is God's Gift
II. Receive Salvation By Godly Faith
III. Reflect Salvation With Good Works
I know the question you are raising right now. You are wondering, "So goodness has nothing to do with salvation? All I have to do is give my heart to Jesus Christ and then I can live any way I want to live and still go to heaven?" Well, not exactly. In fact, not at all, because there is one other word and that is the word "for." Your good works, your doing your best, your trying your best, your doing the right thing, they do play a part in salvation, but not the part most people think. Listen to verse 10,
Ephesians 2:10
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
NASB
Good works are not the price of salvation; they are the proof of salvation. Good works do not produce salvation. Salvation produces good works.
Even then, your goodness is still a result of God's grace. All of the good things you ever do are the things that God prepared for you to do before you even did them according to this verse. Martin Luther said it better than anyone.
"No one can be good and do good unless God's grace first makes him good. No one becomes good by works, but good works are done by him who is good."
Just so the fruit does not make the tree, but the tree bears the fruit....therefore all good works, no matter how good they are and how pretty they look, are in vain if they do not flow from the grace of God.
The truth of the matter is once you establish a relationship with God, that is, once God saves you He isn't finished with you. He is just started with you and He has great things for you to do. He's got good works He has prepared beforehand so that you would walk in them.
The world has it all backwards. The world says you've got to work so you can make something out of yourself. God says, "I've got to make something out of you so you can work." Here is the point and I am going to make it very easy to remember. A person does not have a relationship with God because he does good works. He does good works because he has a relationship with God.
I will never ceased to be amazed at how many people continue to get it backwards when it comes to God, grace, faith, good works and salvation. You can keep it straight if you will just remember those three words and keep them in order.
BY grace THROUGH faith FOR goodwork.
I read a story about a very wealthy man who was on trial for murder. The trial, he thought, wasn't going all that well and it looked like he might be convicted, so he was able to get a friend of his to go to an elderly juror and bribe him to hold out for a verdict of manslaughter. The elderly man accepted the bribe, because it was a great amount of money. The jury was out three, four, five, six, seven days and the wealthy man was just going crazy, but in the end the jury came back in and brought in a verdict of manslaughter. Instead of getting the death penalty, this man got twenty-five years in prison.
As the relieved man was being lead out of the courtroom, he happened to get a chance to whisper in the old man's ear and he said, "Thanks. Did you have much trouble getting the other juror's to vote for manslaughter?" The old man looked at him and said, "You bet I did. They all wanted to vote for acquittal!"
You can try to bribe God with your good works if you want to. You can try to get a lesser punishment or get some consideration, maybe get a break on letting you into heaven, but what you don't understand is God has already acquitted us at the cross. All we have to do is accept it. By grace through faith for good works - that is what salvation is all about.
Googling God
Ephesians 2:8-10
David Riley
Eagle Rock Baptist Church
April 22, 2007
I. Realize Salvation Is God's Gift
II. Receive Salvation By Godly Faith
III. Reflect Salvation With Good Works