Gentle & Lowly - "Rich in Mercy" | Ephesians 2:1–10 (2)

Introduction

Without the work of Christ, we are even more dead in our sin than we realized. Today, I’m going to share with you a story that few know about. It happened late one night in the fall of 2012. I was driving home from a friends house. I was nearing the main highway. As I crested a hill, flashing lights lit up my window. My front window. It was a police checkpoint. I stopped the car and a deputy sheriff walked up. He asked for the usual. Licence, registration, and proof of insurance. I was expecting this, so I calmly handed it to him. As he reviewed the documents, he said something that I wasn’t expecting. “This license is three weeks out of date.” I explained that I knew that and was planning to renew it shortly. To which he replied, “I cannot let you operate this vehicle with an expired driver’s license. Please pull into the parking lot.” The pain I felt in my gut was sickening. As he wrote out the ticket, I asked him what the fine was. At which point, I received another piece of bad news. He explained that it required a court appearance. There I would find out the fine. Fortunately, a good friend of mine and his sister were able to come and pick me up. Then take me home. The next morning I renewed my driver’s license. The court date was set for approximately two weeks later. I dressed up in my best suit and showed up early. There were several of us there. Most were dressed in jeans and casual shirts. I was surprised at their lack of care. Then the judge came in. There were a couple of court cases in front of me, so I reviewed everything in my mind as I waited. Shortly before I was to appear, I noticed the car insurance card I had grabbed was the one wrong. It had expired a few months prior. And then they called me up. I’ll never forget what happened next. They read out the charge. Driving on an expired license. They asked my plea. Guilty. And the judge asked what happened. I told him the story. As I told him the driver’s license was expired, he asked me how long it was expired. I said, “Three week.” To which he said, “And they got you?!” He then asked for proof of insurance. I explained that I had one, but it was the wrong one. I asked if I could come back the next week with the correct one. I was facing a fine of up to $125. And I wanted every t crossed and i dotted before I received the final decision. As I asked for this, I’ll never forget his words. He said, “Marc, I believe you are a good man. I’ll consider this proof of insurance. I declare a fine of $10.” And the gavel struck the wood, and my day is court was over. A sense of relief and gratitude washed over me. I thanked the judge and paid the fine. That day, I was hoping that the grace and mercy of the judge would prevail. But in our faith, we don’t need to simply hope. Instead, we know without the shadow of a doubt that the grace and mercy of God meets us in our sin, frees us from our sin, and frees us for good works that Christ has already called us into.

Today is the next part in our series called, Gentle and Lowly, which is also a book by the same name written by Dane Ortland. In it, he writes, “only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake, everywhere we go, the aroma of heaven, and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.” We can only become an aroma from heaven if we experience the heart of Christ. The heart of Christ is at the heart of this series. There are many misconceptions of who Jesus was, what he did, and what he does today. In this series, we’re looking at how the heart of Christ nourishes the souls of those who follow Christ.

Looking at this passage from Ephesians, we see that God's mercy and grace is his gift to us. Paul says in verses 4-5, “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.” As Ortland puts it, the more God's People need mercy, the more they receive it. How does the mercy and grace of God work within us? This passage gives us a play by play of how God's mercy and grace transforms our hearts. We see the need for his mercy, the effect of his mercy, and what to do in light of God’s mercy.

God’s mercy and grace frees us from sin.

Paul says in verses 1-2, “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, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” The first part of this section shows us our need for the mercy of God. It shows us what we are freed from. To put it simply, God’s mercy frees us from sin. How does this affect us though?

Malcolm Gladwell shares a story about Leann Birch, a developmental psychologist at Penn State University, ran an experiment in which she took a large group of kids and fed them a big lunch. Then she turned them loose in a room with lots of junk food. “What we see is that some kids eat almost nothing,” she said. “But other kids really chow down, and one of the things that predicts how much they eat is the extent to which parents have restricted their access to high-fat, high-sugar food in the past: the more the kids have been restricted, the more they eat.” Birch’s study also discovered one reason this happened: the children on restricted diets believed the junk food tasted good primarily because they had been told that junk food was bad for them! Nonetheless, whether they eat a little bit or a lot, they ate junk food. You see, the experiment that was performed is a great example of how we live before Christ. We can have all of the junk food we want, but the only option is junk food. When it comes to life without Christ, we can sin more and less, but only Christ can point us away from sin.

Sin entered the world back in Genesis 3, and it continues to impact our actions, our words, and thinking today. Our Westminster Confession of Faith puts it like this, "This original corruption completely disinclines, incapacitates, and turns us away from every good, while it completely inclines us to every evil. From it proceed all actualized sins." Those actions we take, words we say, or thoughts we think that are not of God, originate within us. Without Christ, we inclined to evil. Even when it looks like we are trying to do good, to be generous, to care for others, deep within, it’s for selfish interests. We do it because it makes us look good, causes other people to praise us, or helps us get ahead in life. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In Romans, Paul re-frames it to look at the why behind the action or word. He changes it from good or bad, for me or for you to, in what way is this action or word or thought glorifying God?

Way back before Noah’s Ark and the flood, Genesis 6:5 says that “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Sin feels good in the moment. Just like with an addiction, it feels like we can stop anytime we want. Instead, we need help. Bryan Chappell say that "our lack of holiness rendered us incapable of a living relationship with a holy God. Because we are spiritually dead prior to God’s placing his Spirit in us, there is no godly restraint on what we do." The beginning of understanding the mercy of God is understanding what the mercy of God rescues us from.

God made us alive through Christ, he freed us by his grace and mercy.

In all the Bible, there is only one thing God is said to be rich in - mercy. Paul then says in verses 4-5, “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.” In the first part, we are freed from our bondage to sin. In this second part, we are freed by the grace and mercy of God. But what is the difference between the two. After all, aren’t these two terms used almost interchangeably? Here’s the difference. Mercy relates to God’s compassion and kindness. Basically, we’re not getting what we deserve. On the other hand, grace includes kindness and compassion, but it is a gift bestowed upon the person. Mercy is not getting something we do deserve. Grace is receiving what something that we don’t deserve.

Putting the two together, mercy and grace provide a future that we have no hope of obtaining otherwise. More importantly, it is all God. God sent Christ to rescue us. God drew us to him by the Holy Spirit. One day, Christ will come back, and he will dwell with us forever. Our rescue is purely because of God, who is rich in mercy. We can try to take credit for it. We can say that it was really us. A good analogy might be with a check. If someone gives you a large sum of money using a check, can you take credit for that money because you signed the back of it? No way. They sent it to you. All you did was receive it. The same is true in our faith. God did it all. When he draws us to him, we simply say yes. But he has done it all. Warren Weirsbe writes, "since we have not been saved by our good works, we cannot be lost by our bad works. Grace means salvation completely apart from any merit or works on our part. Grace means that God does it all for Jesus’ sake! Our salvation is the gift of God." If salvation was because of what we did, we’d be in trouble. We’d ultimately lose our salvation. But because it out of God’s rich mercy, it has no end, and we are secure in the arms of Christ.

There was a condemned criminal on death row who several pastors had attempted and failed to win to Christ. Finally, a layman went to visit the man. Entering the death row cell, he sat on the cot alongside the condemned man. he took him by the hand, and said, “We are in a bad fix, aren’t we?” As waves of emotion overwhelmed him, the criminal broke into tears. The man didn’t need preached out needed somebody to understand and care. Well, God has done that and far more for us. The heart of Christ overflows with mercy and grace. As one author has said it, “Do you know what Jesus does with those who squander his mercy? He pours out more mercy. God is rich in mercy.” In that mercy and grace, he hears our needs. Even more so, he takes us from being dead in our sin and trespasses and made alive in Christ Jesus.

We are not just freed from, but also freed for. We have been created in Jesus and freed for good works.

Paul finishes this section in verse 9-10 saying that our salvation in Christ is “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.” After Paul talks about what we have been freed from and then how Christ has freed us, he moves into what we have been freed for. The Puritan author named Richard Sibbes says, “Whatsoever Christ is freed from, I am freed from it. It can no more hurt me than it can hurt him now in heaven.” Christ has raised from the grave physically and spiritually. Christ has now raised us from our spiritual grave, and one day. One day, as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4, Christ will raise us from our physical grave in order that we will forever be with him.

But not only have we been freed from something, but we have been freed for something. Not only have we been freed for something, but Paul says that it is what we were originally created for. Being saved by Christ isn’t by works, but good should flow from it. Paul is pointing back to the creation mandate, also called the cultural mandate of Genesis 1, where God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” God created us to tend to creation, to have dominion over it, and to steward his creation. Paul is saying that this was the original intention, but our mission for God was stopped by the effects of sin. But now, Christ has rescued us and made us alive from our struggles. Now, we have been saved for the good works that God originally created man for.

One author said that, “to question one’s fitness for God’s work on the basis of his/her own ability is to ignore the power of God. Whom the Lord calls, He prepares and empowers. We are not to rely on our own sufficiency. In that respect no one would ever answer the Lord’s call. The issue is not what I can do for God; it is what God can do through me.” Even the good that we do occurs because of God. God created us. God rescued us. God gifted us. God empowered us by the Holy Spirit. Before we were even born, God prepared good works for us to do. The final piece of the puzzle of God’s rich mercy and grace is that he has called us and prepared for us works to do. These works are in light of our walk with Christ and in light of Christ’s work of resurrecting us from spiritual death and freeing us from the sin that we were once trapped in.

Conclusion

God’s grace and mercy frees us from our sin. His mercy and grace has made us alive through the work of Jesus Christ. Therefore, he has freed us for good works that he has prepared beforehand. John Newton, the composer of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” says, “When I was young I was sure of many things; there are only two things of which I am sure now: one is that I am a miserable sinner; and the other that Jesus Christ is an all-sufficient Savior.” God is rich in mercy. The more God's People need mercy, the more they receive it. God’s mercy rescues us from our sin by the blood of Jesus for the works that God prepared beforehand.