1. "Our spiritual death is the necessary presupposition of grace. We are naturally not able to save ourselves or even prepare ourselves to be saved. And this is true of absolutely everyone. And this is essential to understand if you're going to understand Christianity."

2. "Friend, if you want to find salvation, you don't start with the journey inward. There's no answer finally there."

3. "Friends, if there's any place you will not find this gospel of Christianity, it's in the self-help section of the bookstore. Christianity is not a self-help product."

4. "We don't earn salvation as a wage. God gives salvation freely as a gift. You want to talk about wages we earn? The wages of our sin is death. If salvation is to come to us, it must be by grace, not through our work, but by our faith and trust in God's work in Christ."

5. "True religion is not a monument to the religious, but rather to the God we worship. Salvation is a gift, and our life is a response."

6. "Friend, according to the Bible, if you're a Christian at some point in your life, the Spirit of God spoke to your spiritually dead heart as fully and as life-givingly as Jesus spoke to Lazarus at the tomb and said, Come forth."

7. "Friends, we are on the ocean liner of God's grace. He is carrying us home to Himself. There will be no storm that comes which will stop the route that God has determined for His own."

8. "God has given us a new past. Do you wish you could get rid of your past? Friends, Christ can give you His past. He can give you that life of perfect obedience as your very own, and your old past can be gone forever."

9. "A poor man may have none to spare, but a rich man has so much abundance that he can give and give and give and still have more. That's the idea. God's riches are immeasurable, inexhaustible. All the demands that can ever be made on the grace of God will never impoverish Him or even diminish His store of mercy."

10. "God's purpose is to show Himself by means of showing us—revived and shaped by the immeasurable riches of His grace toward us in Christ Jesus."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ephesians 2:1-3, what was our spiritual condition before God acted, and what three influences were we following in that state?

2. In Ephesians 2:4-5, what two attributes of God does Paul identify as the motivation behind God's saving action toward us while we were dead in trespasses?

3. What three actions does Paul say God has done for believers "with Christ" or "with Him" in Ephesians 2:5-6?

4. In Ephesians 2:5, what phrase does Paul insert parenthetically to emphasize how salvation has come to believers?

5. According to Ephesians 2:7, what is God's stated purpose for saving us in the way He has, and when will this purpose be fully realized?

6. What specific phrase in Ephesians 2:7 describes the nature of God's grace that He intends to display through His kindness toward us?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Paul emphasizes we were "dead" in our trespasses (Ephesians 2:1, 5) rather than merely sick or weak? How does this shape our understanding of what kind of salvation we need?

2. Paul uses three verbs to describe God's saving work—made alive, raised up, and seated with Christ. How do these three actions work together to describe the complete transformation God accomplishes in believers?

3. What does it mean that believers are already "seated with Christ in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6) when we are still living on earth? How does the sermon explain this present-yet-future reality?

4. How does the phrase "so that" (hina) in Ephesians 2:7 connect God's saving actions in verses 5-6 to His ultimate purpose? What does this reveal about the relationship between our salvation and God's glory?

5. Why does Paul describe God's grace as "immeasurable riches" (Ephesians 2:7)? What does this language suggest about the nature of God's grace compared to human resources or merit?

Application Questions

1. If salvation is entirely a gift of God's grace and not something we earn or contribute to, how should this truth shape the way you relate to other Christians who are at different stages of spiritual maturity or who struggle with different sins than you do?

2. The sermon emphasized that if God saved your spiritually dead heart, no one you know is beyond hope. Who in your life have you mentally written off as too far gone for the gospel? What specific step could you take this week to hold out hope to them?

3. Paul says we are "seated with Christ," meaning we rest from self-justifying striving and reign over sin. In what area of your life are you still striving to earn God's acceptance or prove your worth rather than resting in what Christ has already accomplished?

4. The sermon stated that our community should display life "utterly inexplicable apart from knowing Christ." What is one specific way your small group or church community could demonstrate grace, joy, or sacrifice this month that would only make sense if God's grace is real?

5. Considering that God's purpose in saving you is to display "the immeasurable riches of His grace" through your life, how does this change the way you view a current trial, disappointment, or difficult circumstance you are facing?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Ezekiel 37:1-14 — This passage shows God's power to bring life to dry bones, illustrating the same spiritual resurrection from death that Paul describes in Ephesians 2:5.

2. Romans 6:1-11 — Paul explains how believers have been united with Christ in His death and resurrection, reinforcing the "with Christ" language of Ephesians 2:5-6.

3. Romans 3:21-26 — This passage demonstrates how God displays His righteousness and grace by justifying sinners through faith in Christ, connecting to God's purpose of showing His grace in Ephesians 2:7.

4. John 11:38-44 — Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead provides a vivid illustration of God's powerful call that brings the spiritually dead to life, as referenced in the sermon.

5. Revelation 7:9-17 — This vision of the redeemed multitude from every nation shows the ultimate display of God's grace that Ephesians 2:7 anticipates "in the coming ages."

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Five Fingers of a Good Story and the Sixth Question: Why?

II. What Has God Done? God Has Saved Us (Ephesians 2:5-6)

III. Why Has God Done This? For His Own Glory (Ephesians 2:7)

IV. We Are God's Display of His Grace

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Detailed Sermon Outline

A good story I was taught as a kid in school answers these questions: who, what, when, where, and how.

The five fingers of a good story. So here goes: who? The Capitol Hill Baptist Church. What? Met to worship God.

When? On Sunday morning, March 28th at 11:00 a.m. Where? At Anacostia Park under the protective covering of the skating pavilion. How? Well, we gathered coming mainly by car because of the rain and with the permission of the District government and the National Park Service.

Okay, these were the five fingers of this good story that I was taught. This is how you can make your writing direct and clear and to the point.

And yet we somehow feel there's more to the story.

The police commissioner, or the head of the police in Boulder, Colorado, just a couple of days ago said the who, the what, the where, the when, the how. But she said, what we all want to know now is a sixth question: why? Why questions are part of our very nature.

Knowing an actor's intentions, whether in a wicked action like the murders in Boulder or in a wonderful action of generosity and benevolence, knowing the why completes our understanding. As humans, knowing that why can add sympathy when someone acted badly, let's say, stole some bread, but for a good reason, to feed his family. Well then we understand an otherwise reprehensible act differently. In fact, sometimes knowing the reason for an act can entirely change our view of an action. So for example, think of a young man putting himself in a position to be killed.

Normally, that's at least unwise and usually bad.

Yet in Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities, when Sidney Carton substitutes himself for his look-alike Charles Darnay to meet Darnay's decreed fate of execution by beheading, Carton's action, putting his head literally on the executioner's block, It takes on a whole different meaning. When tragedies happen, people ask why in order to understand, to make sense of some pain. When we're about to lead our children through the jabs of a vaccination or the disappointment of no second bowl of ice cream, we have to teach them that present pains have future payoffs. Tomorrow's good is the reason for what today's feels like what's bad. When good things happen, we're often satisfied with them alone.

We've won the free vacation, we got the job. She said yes, the doctor's report was good. I'm so taken up with the good thing itself that I usually don't ask any further questions. And yet, in this letter to the Ephesians that we've been studying, It's those revelations of future truth even about the best matters, which increase our reasons for thankfulness and which may be so grand and glorious that they completely reorient how we understand everything about our life in this world. Our little passage today has great power in it.

It's three verses in Ephesians chapter 2, three verses in Ephesians chapter 2 where Paul both summarizes a great thing that God has done for us, but he also lets us know something of why. Ephesians chapter 2 verses 5 and 6 are what God has done. Verse 7 is why God has done it.

So verses 5 and 6 are what God has done, and verse 7 is why God has done it. And I pray that as we study this together, you will be built up and your soul will be given reason to adore the God that we worship, the God of our salvation. Listen to the beginning of Ephesians, chapter 2.

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, the spirit that is now at work in 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 the great love with which He loved us, and now the verses we're concentrating on this morning, Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you've 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 God might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. So the first basic question is, what has God done?

What has God done? The answer is, God has saved us. We see that there in verses 5 and 6, Even when we were dead, you see that phrase in verse 5, even when we were dead in our trespasses. Our spiritual death is the necessary presupposition of grace.

We are naturally not able to save ourselves or even prepare ourselves to be saved. And this is true of absolutely everyone. And this is essential to understand if you're going to understand Christianity. We are totally dead in our sins. By the fall, we are deprived of all our created capacity for spiritual good.

Our spiritual appetites of hunger and thirst have been canceled. Righteousness naturally looks unattractive to us. Our spirits are not broken and contrite. But proud and confident. And that pride and confidence is repulsive to the God against whom we're rebelling.

As we thought about when we were considering those first three verses at the beginning of chapter 2, we learned that the Bible teaches that sin has permeated the whole human race. By Adam's sin we were all ruined. We were poisoned. Paul calls us there in chapter 2 verse 3, Children of wrath. Being servants of his enemy, the devil, we ourselves became his enemy.

We seemed beyond salvation. Our spiritual death had brought about our physical death. Through sin, the Bible tells us, death entered the world. This is the problem with the idea that salvation really originates in ourselves or in our own choices. Friend, if you want to find salvation, you don't start with the journey inward.

There's no answer finally there. We learn here that God saved us by grace. You see that phrase in verse 5? That really emphasized, Paul's really emphasized that here. Several of you have asked me this week, why does he change from all of the usses to you?

Everything around it is us, us, us, it's this first person plural. All of a sudden, then only there in this little set of verses, it's this punchier second person, you. By grace you have been saved. I'm not sure. It's certainly true.

I think he's trying to emphasize the point, if nothing else, that we are saved by grace. Friends, how else could we be saved? This is the very essence of Christianity, not what we've decided or done or resolved to do or not do, but what God has done. God hasn't merely passively foreseen that we would believe, we were dead in sin, we weren't going to believe anything, we weren't going anywhere spiritually. We've got to remember this.

Friends, this is one of the cardinal errors of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church contains many of our friends and much truth and a good bit of falsehood on the most important things. And this is part of that. The Bible is clear that we are saved by grace alone, that God is the one who saves us.

Our role is to receive and rest on Christ and Christ's righteousness by faith. God calls us out of that state of sin and death, which we were in by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ. Just think for a moment, what were you saved from?

Well, from what we were just thinking of a few moments ago.

From God's righteous judgment on our sins. So we've been liberated both from our bondage to our sins and from the punishment that we deserve from God because of our sins. And we have been freed from that by Christ's redemption of us. He has atoned for us. He has borne our punishment.

He has paid our penalty. He has bought us forgiveness for our sins and a restored fellowship with God. That's what God has done in His grace.

So if you've come to church today because you haven't been here for a while, or perhaps ever, and you wonder what it would be like to meet in a church outdoors, maybe even on a rainy morning, you were curious what you'd find, perhaps wondering if we could be of of some spiritual help to you? Well, I hope we can be. But one way we'll do that is by telling you of your problem because of sin. And another is in telling you that you can't solve this problem yourself. Friends, if there's any place you will not find this gospel of Christianity, it's in the self-help section of the bookstore.

Christianity is not a self-help product. So the truth is that there is a God, and that this God has made all of us in His image, and that we were all made to know Him. But in Adam and ratified by our own choices, we've all revolted against Him. We've all done what we've wanted rather than what He's wanted. And God is completely good to judge us for that and would be wrong not to.

But in His amazing love for us, He sent His only Son into this world to live a life of perfect goodness and trust in His heavenly Father. He followed His directions in all. He died on the cross not because He needed to die because of His own sins, but He chose to die for us and our sins, taking the sacrifice, the penalty God's wrath for all of us who would ever turn and trust in Him, He bore it Himself on the cross. God, we know, was able to exhaust His wrath against us because the sacrifice was Himself perfectly good and infinite. And so God raised Him from the dead.

And when He raised Him, as we'll come to in just a moment here in Ephesians, in Ephesians, He raised all of us. Who would be in Christ by faith. He accepted the sacrifice of Christ, and He calls everyone now to repent of our sins and to trust and believe in Him. New life can be yours today if you will repent of your sins and trust in Him. If you want to know more about what that means, talk to any of us around here.

Our salvation is by grace. So those who teach us that we have to save ourselves by our own reason or our own righteousness or even by our own humility are not teaching the truth. If we're to be saved, it must be by God and His grace. Our own statement of faith begins in Article 4, We believe that the salvation of sinners is wholly of grace. And could Paul have been any clearer here with this wonderful news?

We don't earn salvation as a wage. God gives salvation freely as a gift. You want to talk about wages we earn, says Paul, the wages of our sin is death, Romans 6. If salvation is to come to us, it must be as we see here, by grace, not through our work, but by our faith and trust in God's work in Christ. Friends, I want to make sure this point is clear.

Here we see this amazing teaching. We don't gain salvation because we deserved it or desired it or did it ourselves. We have salvation simply and solely as a gift of God's grace. How mistaken some people are to feel that religion is composed of brass plaques in memorials, in buildings named in their honor. Friends, gifts of money or lifetime service may show true godliness, but they'll never make it.

True religion is not a monument to the religious, but rather to the God we worship.

Salvation is a gift, and our life is a response. So if you're a Christian here, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There are no grounds for boasting in our salvation. God has made this clear. Just as Christ's first coming was all of God's doing, it wasn't planned by men, it wasn't proposed by men, it did not rely on humans' joyful acceptance or reception, or their careful cooperation, it was all of God's sovereign and surprising will.

So today our own salvation comes by God's work alone, there's no ground for boasting for us. Indeed, God has saved us as He has by the Father's electing and the Son's atoning and the Spirit's regenerating, exactly so that we will not boast of ourselves. But so that we will boast of Him. So, as a church, let's pray that God exalts His grace among us. Let's pray that God make us zealous for Him and for His actions, and that our own lives will clearly reflect this in the gracious way that we have of relating to one another, knowing that we ourselves are objects of grace.

If God has so dealt with us, can we deal with others any differently? Paul has three verbs here which help explain what God has done in saving each and every Christian. The verbs are overlapping in their significance. They're referring to the same action, but three different aspects of it. You see this made us alive together with Christ here in verse 5.

It's part of the big resurrection preview language. And I say resurrection because corpses don't bring themselves to life. God made us alive. He calls and He quickens us in the calling. God calls us powerfully, like Christ calls Lazarus.

God's Spirit is the Spirit of life, like Austin was just reading to us from Ezekiel 37.

And this is a call that's never refused. It is naturally accepted by our newborn natures as the sparks naturally fly upwards from a fire. God gives us a new birth, makes us a new creature, makes us alive again. We are passive until we are made alive, renewed by God's Spirit, and giving us a new life he gives us a new heart. He gives us new loves.

We find ourselves loving things that a year earlier, when we were spiritually dead in our sins, we couldn't care less for or maybe even disliked. We now inexplicably, maybe to ourselves, find ourselves loving praying or singing God's praises or hear him bragged about or extolled or reading his Word. And I love the way that Paul here said, Us. Did you notice that? He's not just writing about some private, unique experience that only he had had as an apostle.

This is an experience Paul knew all Christians shared, but only Christians shared, because God's grace in forgiving our sins only comes through faith in Jesus Christ, never apart from faith in His life, death, and resurrection for us. So if the image that dominated those first three verses that we looked at a few weeks ago is a radical one, death, and that Paul uses again in the first phrase here in verse 5, the image that dominates these verses is no less radical, life. It's that contradiction of from death to life that Paul is talking about here. We thought back in chapter 1 about God's election of us, His choice of us, and of the Son's atonement for us on the cross. Well now here in this passage we see the saving work of God's Spirit as He comes into the hearts of those whom the Father has chosen and the Son has atoned for, and He quickens them, giving them life, made us alive.

Do you know the name for this life-giving work of God's Spirit? It's regeneration. He regenerate to start to begin to give life, regeneration to give life again, to give new life. And that's exactly what God's Spirit has done in the case of Christians. So if you're here as a Christian this morning, I hope you understand this.

Don't underestimate what has happened in your life. Just because you haven't had a dramatic emotional turning point, don't therefore imagine that a dramatic change has not taken place in your soul. Friend, according to the Bible, if you're a Christian at some point in your life, which you may only fully discover when you're in heaven, but at some point in your life, the Spirit of God spoke to your spiritually dead heart as fully and as life-givingly as Jesus spoke to Lazarus at the tomb and said, Come forth. Friend, don't fail to realize the tremendous thing that God has done for you and the change He's worked by bringing your poor soul from death to life. And if this is so, if you've known it in your own life, then can anyone you know really be beyond hope?

I mean, if God has gotten ahold of your heart, when it was dead and disinterested and dismissive. Do you really think you know people who are categorically worse, more dead than you were before you were converted? While there is life, there is yet hope. If God has not finally summoned someone to appear before Him, who are we then? To know whether or not our hearts, knowing rather what our hearts were like, to know that he will not yet honor his word preached and his love shared and his gospel news explained to some rebel against him.

I pray that we as a church will major on holding out hope to those people who think they have none. Oh, brothers and sisters, let's hold out this hope And you see here how God has done all this. He's done it by uniting us with Christ, raised up with Christ, seated with Christ. Throughout these verses, every spiritual blessing we have is with Christ. He made us alive with Christ, verse 5.

The life we now have, we have because God included us in Christ. Christ has become our head, His Word, our will, His Spirit indwells us.

Friends, this is why we as a church should be marked by joy. Regardless of what circumstances may be, childcare is diminished, the walls are gone, the weather is various, legal settlements go up and down, COVID restrictions change and don't change. People's opinions about how to deal with them vary. But friends, all of this is to the splashing of the waves on an ocean liner. We are on the ocean liner of God's grace.

He is carrying us home to Himself. There will be no storm that comes which will stop the route that God has determined for His own. Friends, we are enjoying seeing His sovereignty worked out against some amazing obstacles and challenges. It says here that God raised us up with Christ. Think of the challenge of death and the tomb.

Verse 6, raised us up with Him. Because Christ was raised, we are now raised by His power to this new life. And this resurrection spiritually is a sure pledge to us of our bodily resurrection to come. And by the way, speaking of bodily resurrection, Baptism is a wonderful picture of our bodily resurrection, and we hope to have baptisms again coming up soon, sometime in the next few weeks. So if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you have not been baptized as a believer, could I exhort you to follow Jesus' command to be baptized?

Speak to me or one of the other pastors of the church about that. Anyway, Paul writes to us here that we are also seated us with Christ in the heavenly places.

See that in verse 6, Seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This is another example in Ephesians of the present as a down payment on the yet to be in the future. People have said, so wait, we're already raised up with Christ? Is this just in the past because it's so certain to happen? Or are we already in some sense raised up with Christ?

We are already in some sense raised up with Christ. And what about the seated with, are we seated now in the heavenly places? Yes, we are already in some sense seated now in the heavenly places. Friends, we've seen this several times in Ephesians. If you look back at chapter 1 for a second, look at chapter 1, verse 11.

In him we have obtained an inheritance. We've obtained it already. But then you look down at verse 14, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it? So there is a sense in which we've obtained it, and there is a fuller sense in which we will have possession of it ultimately. It's the same thing that's being referred to here with our being seated with Christ here in verse 6.

Our new life, our position, all we have is in Christ. We have much already and more is to come. Now in this life right now, this raised with Him and seated with Him, implies many things, not least among them, these couple that I'll mention. Number one, resting from our work. We are seated in that sense that God sits down in the seventh day.

The work is completed. There's no more work to be done on this. We are done with any striving after God. We don't labor to earn His adoption of us.

Any self-justifying striving is over. We are seated in that sense of resting.

But there's also the aspect of this seated of our ruling and reigning, our ruling and reigning over sin and death. We are no longer under subjection to the prince of the power of the air where we were when we were dead. Now we have been saved by grace. God has made us alive and raised us up with Him and seated us with Christ. Now again, does this reigning over sin and death seem too strong an image?

Would you like some evidence? All right, Christian, let's take your own life. Why do you think you're in better shape spiritually now than you were five years ago?

What happened? Try to trace out those circumstances. See if you see something of God's hand at work. This would be a good thing for you to discuss with your family or friends over lunch. Maybe you think, well, I'm not in better shape than I was five years ago.

Good thing to discuss. Maybe you think, well, I'm in better shape and that I've gone through a lot, but I still am trusting in the Lord.

That's good, good thing to discuss. Maybe you think, no, I'm definitely better spiritually than I was five years ago. Good thing to discuss. Why is that the case? What are the tools that the Lord has used to help bring you to that place?

These powerful expressions here of God saving us and making us alive and raising us up and seating us with Christ, these are all not the experiences, remember, of some special category of Christians. Just Paul the Apostle. These are all Christians. Friends, this is what it means to be a Christian. We are united together in Christ.

We have all been united to Christ by His Spirit. By faith we have fellowship with Christ in His grace, in His sufferings, in His death. Paul says, In His resurrection and in His glory. Now, friend, if you know yourself here to not be a Christian, let me just urge you to stop trying to find happiness and meaning in yourself or in your own works or your own ideas or in a new job or a better relationship or improved health or further education. What you need is nothing more than a whole new life.

And such a tremendous thing can be given by no mere moral resolve or religious reform. Salvation is a new start. Such spiritual life as you can't find inside yourself, you'll only find it in Christ. We do a study through Mark's gospel that we would love to do with any of you who want to. If you just talk to me or anybody around here, we go through Mark's Gospel just helping you to read a primary source about Jesus and to see what Jesus is, who He is, and what He offers.

Christian friend, you know the truth of what I'm saying. There is no hope to our own virtue. All our hope is only in Christ. He has given us what we could never have given ourselves. He does what would otherwise seem impossible.

So God has given us a new past. Do you wish you could get rid of your past? Friends, Christ can give you His past. He can give you that life of perfect obedience as your very own, and your old past can be gone forever.

Or if you know yourself to be a sinner here this morning, what a hope there is in that. It is Christ who gives us new life. And you see what that means for us as a church. Our community should display life which is utterly inexplicable apart from knowing Christ. The kind of carefulness, and the kind of joy, and the kind of service, and the kind of concern, and the kind of sacrifice, and the kind of giving, and the kind of friendliness.

And the kind of hopes that we have should be explicable only in terms of such a miraculous work of God in us. So this is what God has done for us. He has saved us by His grace. But let's go on to the second question, number two, why has He done this? Why has God shown us such grace?

And for this we turn to our last verse, verse 7.

We see here that He has a purpose in saving us, and in saving us as He has. See it in verse 7. It's right there. It's that first word, hina, so that, so that. It is so helpful to know God's purposes.

How can you know God's purposes? Only if He tells us. It's like sometimes in counseling with couples. I just have to tell the man or the woman, I think what you're looking for is a telepathic spouse. I think if you want somebody to know something, you're going to need to tell them.

Friends, God has told us what His purposes are. So should we pray about what His purposes are? You can certainly do that. But you should also read God's Word where He tells us about Himself and His purposes. And once having learned what God has revealed, you should trust Him.

When will His purpose be fulfilled? Well, it says here, in the coming ages. Look up in chapter 1 and verse 21.

Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. This is the same idea that Paul also used a couple of verses later in chapter 2, verse 2 that mentioned us in our sinful state following the course of this world. That's the same language, this age.

So what Paul presents, what the Bible presents is that basically there are two ages. So when he says here in verse 7, In the coming ages, he doesn't mean like in the future or in so many years, but in the new age, that is when Christ returns. God's purposes are not all fulfilled today or this week or this year, so please turn off your TV for those people you're listening to that are telling you that. They are lying to you. They do not know the hour of the Son's return.

And only at His return will all of God's purposes be fulfilled. So He interrupts our history by Christ's bodily and visible return, and only then will His purposes He's sharing with us here come fully to pass. Now if all is not clear to you yet, that's because, friends, God hasn't done everything yet. As Peter said to some early Christians, who were exhausted by the delay of God's coming justice. Peter said to them, you, realize God's delay means salvation for those who still need to repent.

So if you could please put up with suffering a little yourself, it will mean salvation for others who've not yet repented. Friends, God's timing is perfect. In His purposes. All right, then what exactly is it that the purpose of God has revealed? Well, according to verse 7, we read it is that God might show, that He might display.

There is something that God wants to demonstrate. God has something to prove, not because He has to, but because He wants to. And what we read of here is really the vindication of God by the exhibition of us. God means to elicit praise to Himself by His choice of us and His rescue of us from the depths of verses 1 to 3 to the heights of verse 6. As he says in Romans 3:26, It was to show His righteousness at this present time so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Just, the one who is the judge, who says what is right, and the justifier, the one who takes the sinner and makes him righteous in His eyes. How much of our future will be taken up in seeing and contemplating and relishing and delighting in all the wonderful things that God has done for us, His people, even in ourselves, all of which are gifts for His glory. Friends, just consider this: why Has God saved us in the way he has? Why has he regenerated us by his grace? For his own glory.

That's the answer we get here. Now we get more than that. We saw in verse four last week, God saved us because of his love. But a love like God's is a love he wants to display. Look at what it is he wants to show.

The immeasurable riches of his grace.

In kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Have the deprivations of the COVID culture made you poorer or at least feel impoverished? Look at the riches God holds out for us here in Christ. God desires to display His mercy and His grace. God has shown mercy as He has in order that in the coming ages He might show His mercy and grace.

He might show the incomparable, immeasurable riches of His grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Friends, even as God made a display of Pharaoh in the Old Testament, He was displaying His mercy in Paul's salvation. He makes His Apostles as a sign. He holds up emperors and whole nations as a display. He is God.

A little virus so small that the unaided eye could never see it has brought even the mightiest of nations to their knees. Unwarranted self-confidence has been dented. So here we see that God willed to display His grace and show His kindness. Incomparable richness was expressed in Christ. Deep wells of love.

No one else could love like this. No one else is in such a position to display such saving grace as God, and no one was in such a state as to need it as those of us made in God's image but who had rebelled against Him. Friends, this is why in our membership interviews at our church we always have you share the gospel and then your own personal testimony. We want to make sure that you understand that by nature you're bringing nothing to God of spiritual merit that requires his affection and forgiveness. But your only hope is in Christ's cross, in God's grace, that you are not believing in a kind of self salvation that you've learned to put Christian words to.

It's natural for us to think that we can save ourselves, but we want to make sure with each person who comes into membership here that you're understanding that if you're saved, it's because only of what God has done in Christ. Here Paul mentions the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. God wanted specifically to demonstrate his grace in its fullness and its goodness and its Christ-centeredness. This is what God has from eternity past determined to show, this immeasurable or exceeding riches, riches beyond limit. A poor man may have none to spare, but a rich man has so much abundance that he can give and give and give and still have more.

That's the idea. God's riches are immeasurable, inexhaustible. All the demands that can ever be made on the grace of God will never impoverish Him or even diminish His store of mercy. God's grace is richer than you or I have ever seen or can tell or can properly reflect in our own lives. His grace is more than we can ever fully know.

It's like the higher numbers or greater distances or faster speeds than we can calculate. His mercy, as we so often sing, more, more than our sins. As Spurgeon provocatively put it, you cannot sin so much as God can forgive. If it comes to a pitched battle between sin and grace, you shall not be so bad as God shall be good. His grace is greater than His promises which flow down from His grace, greater than even we all put together have yet known, and even all those who've come before us.

God's ability to give is greater than our capacity to receive. God fulfills His promises of grace to us beyond what we could ever measure. The riches of His grace, he says here, are immeasurable. They are higher. They are deeper.

They are broader. They are longer than we can even conceive. God's grace and kindness to us includes, of course, Christ's entire journey from the glory of eternity past to the incarnation and the humiliation, the cross, and then the bodily resurrection and the ascension. The very language Paul uses here of the riches of his grace is clearly meant not simply to acknowledge a reality, but to appreciate and praise the characteristic grace of God. That's clearly intended by the language he uses here, immeasurable riches of his kindness and grace.

God has been so good to us in Jesus, in choosing sinners like us, in preventing us from being worse sinners than we were before He arrested us by His grace. This whole letter so far is showing us how kind and gracious God has been to us. He has given us to me. He's given to you, if you're a Christian, the forgiveness of our sins, the everlasting righteousness of Christ as our very own salvation, all through sheer grace, solely for the sake of Christ's saving work. Is this not kindness?

And again, notice the us. Paul says here, He includes himself. As we read it, it includes each one of us that know Christ. It includes me. Friends, what brings us together is that we can all give testimony of his kindnesses to each one of us in Christ Jesus.

What kind act has he done for you? Choosing us? Giving Christ for us, watching over us, graciously guarding us, drawing us, calling us to himself, watching us, accepting us, and adopting us. We have been guided and led and taught and sanctified. Friends, we could go on all afternoon with verbs which describe the kindnesses of God to us, as Paul says here in verse 7, In Christ Jesus.

And of course, this includes our receiving the Son's bearing the wrath of God, bearing the fullness of what we have deserved in an eternity of hell's torments. This is why you shouldn't play around with annihilationism. The idea that you're just extinguished after death is not what the Bible teaches, and it makes Christ's atonement a lighter thing. You hear God's love more faintly when you misunderstand the Bible like that. Hell's torments are eternal, and Christ's love is greater even than that.

Christ's atonement, Christ's intercession in Christ Jesus. You know, I've often thought people walking by our building on 6th and A may think of us simply as some civic group for the promoting of virtue. Oh, I'm not really religious, but Churches, they're kind of good things. Friends, that's never been true. It may be exposed more now as what is thought of as virtuous around us changes.

So what happens if we don't change to reflect every change in value that goes on in the current world around us? Well, it shows that we never have been about just being a public virtue society. We always have been about something else.

We've always, in fact, been a group of needy people saved by God's grace through Christ. Sometimes some cultures will think us good. Other times other cultures will think us terrible. Neither way is determinative for what we do. We are determined by the grace of God in Christ, by our knowledge of our sin and our need for salvation.

We've actually been less about showcasing us or even our church as we have been always about displaying the truth about God's character. That's why, the why of God's grace. I do notice the time and we should conclude.

Therefore, I must go to an illustration from history. George Washington understood that Americans must fulfill our civic duties because we are actors on a most conspicuous theater, peculiarly designed by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity.

That's something of the idea we've seen here in Ephesians. Only in the Bible the point is not us and our nation, but God and our salvation. God's purpose is to show Himself by showing us. That's what you want to get your head around.

God's purpose is to show Himself by means of showing us.

Revived and shaped by the immeasurable riches of His grace toward us in Christ Jesus. Isn't that amazing? That lines up with what we'll see in a few weeks when we get to Ephesians 3:10, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that He has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. In the book of Revelation when John showed the great multitude of the redeemed from every nation, in Revelation 7:13 when He points to them, what does the elder ask when he's pointing to them?

Who are these clothed in white robes, and from where have they come? The redeemed become the basis for God showing Himself. Brothers and sisters, we shall be the means of God's being praised, both for His justice and His grace.

That is how God will be glorified by justifying sinners like you and like me. We see that we are to be a public exhibit, a demonstration of God's kindness to us through Christ our Son. That's why our public services focus as they do on God's kindnesses to us in Christ. And this helps us to understand that as we begin to place our lives within the context of the church, and the church within the context of the larger thing that God has been doing, we see that we are just a small part in this vast picture of God's character displayed in the creation. In the Exodus, as He makes the most mighty nation on earth, Egypt, just a stage for His own actions to save His poor people.

Or on the cross, as God acts for our salvation. That's how your life, that's how this local church, and all this sifting we've been going through, and all of this, don't lose the main point. The point is God and His goodness and His righteousness and His justice and His mercy and His grace, and we are being tied tried, rather, and tested in order to prove God. We are His piece of evidence. That's what He is making us through trials and tribulations and prosperity.

Second and final historical note: the Civil War was a bloody war. When Richmond, the Confederacy's capital fell, A brief message in enormous letters was prepared on a giant cloth banner. And that banner was draped across the entire west front of the Capitol, facing what's now the Mall. It was lit with gas lamps, and so could be read at a great distance.

And it was simply a quotation of Psalm 118:23, this is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.

At the end of history, can you imagine such a banner being stretched across Christ's church? Can you imagine that motto across local congregations around the world and down the ages?

Can you imagine that being stretched across the Capitol Hill Baptist Church?

Or across my life?

Or yours?

This is the Lord's doing.

It is marvelous in our eyes. Let's pray. Lord God, we are awed by the greatness of youf purposes.

And we are humbled to think of our place in them. Fill us with youh Spirit. Get glory to Yourself, even through us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.