Ephesians 2:1-10

The story goes that a young woman was planning her wedding. Her mother was there with her every step of the way. She was there for her daughter as they picked out the dress and the invitation. She was there when her daughter signed up for the bridal registry. She was there through addressing the invitation and picking the caterer. The mother even took the lead when picking the site of the reception.

At the last minute when the plans started falling apart the mother was there. She picked up the pieces and made everything work. In the end the wedding was beautiful. The bride was able to enjoy her day because she knew that her mother was taking care of her.

When it was all over a friend of the mother who had seen it all commented: "You did all that work and nobody even noticed you. Even the Father of the bride got a place in the ceremony all you got was a seat on the front row." The mother of the bride just looked at her daughter and said, "It's not about me anyway."

Well, Paul is talking about salvation to the Ephesians. He is saying that our salvation is a gift of grace. My salvation is a gift of grace! "My Salvation?" Maybe "my" salvation is not about me. Let me explain.

Paul begins by saying "You were dead through the trespasses and sins." That is the universal human condition. We were all once lost in our sin. All people have sinned. We have all rebelled against God. As a result were dead: dead to God and dead to ourselves.

When a person is dead they can't help themselves. It's like the guy who went to the doctor after decades to get a checkup. After running test after test the doctor said he had discovered cancer, or heart disease or some other potentially terminal condition. The doctor went on "if you can come to me years ago I could have caught it and treated it. But it's too late now."

Well it is too late for the human race. As a species we have a terminal case of sin. Maybe if Adam and Eve had gone to God before they ate the forbidden fruit, we wouldn't be in this situation. But that is in the past. It is too late for us now.

"But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." We may be lost "but" God is rich in mercy. "Out of his great love for us." As in "For God so loved the world." That great merciful God, because of love, has saved us. We may be lost, but it is not about us. It is about God's mercy and love.

We have been sentenced to death because we have been found guilty of crimes against God. We have offended the moral order of the universe. We have defaced the image of God in us and in our neighbor. And the sentence for each offence is death.

But God, out of his mercy and love has dropped the charges! Not because we deserved to be acquitted and pardoned of all charges. In fact we just keep sinning - it's our human heritage. But God loves us so much that he has made us alive in Christ.

So Paul exclaims "by grace you have been saved!" We have been saved by grace through faith. That means that our reprieve from the wages of sin is a free gift. Faith is merely the way that we accept the gift. Paul adds: "this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

We can't boast of our own salvation. Can you imagine someone who had been in a coma for decades being cured by a Dr. using a ground breaking treatment? Would that person boast "I have been brought out of this coma and brought back to health by my own doing!" No, they would credit the Doctor for their recovery. They would say "My Doctor is so dedicated he did not rest until he applied his great medical intellect to find a way to bring me out of my coma!"

So we can't boast of our salvation. But many Christian do. They think that they have done something great by being saved. But all they have done is accept the gift of salvation.

So our salvation is all about God. God's mercy and love led Him to save us from death. Why? "So that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Yes, God saved us because of his love. Yes, that salvation was a gift of God's grace and an expression of His great mercy.

But what did he save us for? So he could love us and be merciful to us and gracious to us for all eternity. Paul said, "For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." He recreated us in Christ so that we could serve him.

We were saved to serve God. God's purpose was to fulfill His desire to love us and be gracious to us. And then to enable us to serve Him!

My Salvation is not about me. Your salvation is not about you. It's about God. It's about God's grace and love. It's about God's mercy. It's about God's goodness forgiving us.

It's not about our works because we could do no works without God first enabling us. We were dead! God brought us back to life and we are his.

Yes, I am saved by grace through faith. But that is only the case because of God. Praise be to God for His mercy and love and grace. Praise be to God for his forgiveness. Praise be to God for his goodness. I proudly proclaim that I am saved, but that's not about me. It's all about God!

John 3:14-21

One day I was visiting a church. It was one of those churches where the congregation carries on a dialogue with the preacher during the sermon. The preacher was obviously a learned man and was preaching on a difficult topic. As he progressed into the sermon people in the congregation started responding with, "Yes" "Uh-huh" and "Amen." As he got further in to the sermon the pace of the responses picked up as people began to catch on to what he was trying to say. Finally he got to a particularly difficult and important point in the sermon and everyone could see it in his mannerisms and face. Then above the "amens" and other responses an alto woman's voice gently rose over it all and she said, "Make it plain, preacher. Make it plain." And you know what? He did!

That's what Jesus does here in this passage from John. He makes it plain. Nicodemus a very learned teacher of the law, a Pharisees, a respected religious leader, came to Jesus asking about the Kingdom of God. Jesus told him that he must be born again, but Nicodemus misunderstood. So Jesus explained it to him and made it plain.

John 3:14-21 is part of that explanation. And Jesus makes it so plain that John 3:16 is often quoted as a summary of the Christian faith. Jesus makes it plain, but so often we don't. In our sophisticated attempts to understand the gospel we make it more complicated. In the process we completely lose sight of the original point.

The first point we lose sight of is that "God so loved the world that he sent his only Son." It doesn't say that God kind of liked the world. It certainly doesn't say that God could care less for the world, but some might think that from the church's lack of care for the world. It doesn't say that God felt sorry for the world, yet pity is the deepest emotion some "church people" feel for the world. It doesn't even say that God had a warm fuzzy feeling about the world, even though for some warm fuzzy is their definition of love. It says that he "so loved the world."

If fact he loved it so much that he what? What did he do because he loved the world? He gave his only begotten Son. No, God didn't just send Jesus to the world like you send a child to camp, God sent him to die. Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, came to suffer and die for the world. I have been struggling to come up with a definition of "so loved." And words seem to fail me. How do I express the depth and breadth of God's love.

But Jesus made it plain. He simply said, "My Father loves you this much" then he spread his arms on the cross and died. Yet we lose sight of this fact. We forget that God's love came first. Our whole religion, the church, who we are as God's people, even our salvation is the direct result of God's love.

"For God SO LOVED the world that he GAVE his only begotten Son!"

The second point is that "everyone who believes in him shall have eternal life." No, this is more than accepting certain doctrines about Jesus like he is the Son of God and that he rose from the dead. That is "believing about," this speaks of "believing in." It is a matter of trust. Maybe another way to phrase this is "everyone who trusts in Jesus shall have eternal life."

But that is too plain for most people. Like Nicodemus we wonder if there must be more. So people do more than wonder, they make up more. They come up with tests of doctrine and faith. They ask if you are pro this or anti that and if you answer wrong they decided they are not a believer. They make a list of fundamental doctrines and no matter how much you place your faith in Jesus if you don't ascribe to those fundamentals of the faith, they judge you as unsaved and damned to hell. Sometimes people think that if you don't go through the right rituals you don't have eternal life. They decided that you are unsaved because you church baptizes in the wrong way or serves communion in the wrong way. Or maybe that you must be lost because your church ordains women or doesn't ordain women.

But Jesus made it plain. "Everyone who believes in him shall have eternal life." It's simply a matter of trusting in Jesus. Now don't get me wrong doctrine and rituals and practices are all important. But they are an issue of serving God rightly not of receiving eternal life. The only thing necessary for eternal life is faith in Jesus.

The third point is that "God sent his Son not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him." We Christians really do a bad job of remembering this one. We are so busy condemning the world we forget to try to save it. I think it was Charles Finny the famous evangelist who said, "You have to get them lost to get them found." It is true that sometimes people have to be convinced of their sin especially in the "I'm OK, you're OK" society we live in. But frankly sometimes the church is so busy getting people lost we forget that our real goal is to get them found.

Why is it that so many in our society see traditional Christians as the enemy. Of course we oppose sinful and hurtful life styles. But if we were ministering to the world rightly, they would see us as well meaning people who disagreed with them. They see the church as hateful because we are so busy condemning we forget to be about the business of saving. Yes we need to stand for what is right and what is wrong, but not at the expense of failing to offer salvation.

Jesus made it plain, "Those who dwell in darkness are condemned already" so he came to save them. If God sent his only begotten Son to save the world and not condemn it, then we should go forth for the same purpose. We should go into the world to save - to offer hope and love and strength. Yet too often we go forth to condemn.

At this point some of you will be saying, "Make it plain preacher make it plain." Well Jesus already made it very plain! God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son to die on a cross. Out of love he did this so that everyone who believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. He didn't do this to have an excuse to send people to Hell, because we were all headed there anyway. He did it to have a way to bring people to heaven.

Do you believe in him? Have you put your whole trust in him and been born again? He came for you because he loved you. He came that you might know his love and glory eternally. Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and let him save you - that is after all why he came.

But perhaps you already believe in Jesus. Then follow his example of love. Go into the world not to condemn but to save. Live your life so that others might see God's love in you and be saved through Christ. If God so loved the world that he sacrificed his life for it, shouldn't we love it enough to make sacrifices too?

"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up." The Children of Israel were wandering in the desert. Now the desert is an awful place to wander. Some would say that there is not much in the desert. It is true there is not much water. There is also not much food. It might be more correct to say that there are a lot of things in the desert. There are a lot of prickly plants. There are a lot of snakes and scorpions. There are also a lot of vultures to remind you of what will happen if you don't get out. The weather is also not pleasant. It is burning hot in the daytime, and bitterly cold at night.

The Children of Israel had been in the desert for a while and there seemed to be no end in sight. Some began to complain. The Bible says, "They became impatient upon the way." And they began to say, "Moses, why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in this desert? There is no food or water out here. All we have to eat in this awful manna day after day. We roast in the day and freeze at night. And all for what? Some pie in the sky promised land."

The people complained too much, so God allowed fiery serpents to plague the people. The serpents bit the people. Finally, some of them came to Moses and asked him to pray to God that this plague would end. It took a while, but they finally turned to God.

Now God's plan all along was to save the Children of Israel not to destroy them. After all God was leading them out of slavery at the time. God heard their cries of pain and it hurt God. Their Heavenly Father felt the fiery serpents just as they did. And God saw that they were turning back to their Lord. So the Gracious One in heaven heard Moses' prayer of supplication.

God devised a way to save the Children of Israel from perishing without letting them forget the lesson they had learned. God said to Moses, "Make a bronze serpent. It will remind the people of their disobedience, but it will also be the means of their salvation. Then nail the bronze snake to a pole. Lift it high so that it can be seen from every part of the camp. When anyone is bitten by one of the serpents all they need to do is look up at the bronze serpent and they will be healed."

Moses did as God directed and the people were saved. But, I imagine there were a few stubborn people who didn't look up. The Bible doesn't tell us this, but human nature being what it is, it follows that some refused to follow God's directions. I imagine there were some who would not look up and be saved. Because of their stubbornness they would not look to God for salvation. And they perished.

You know, the Children of God have always been in a wilderness. I'm not talking about the terrain in Israel and the Holy Land. I am talking about the spiritual surroundings in which the people of God live. This world is an awful place to wander spiritually. Often times it is hard to find spiritual food. The world knows nothing of the bread and water of life. And in this desert the nights are dark and as cold as a dead heart, and the days are as hot as the fires of Hell. On top of this there are many sins, which wait to sting and bite.

Many people perish because of these dangers. They perish in a wilderness of sin because they have no spiritual food or water. They are bit or stung by various desires. Some wander lost in the darkness and cold of night. Some swelter under the hellish heat of the day. Just look at the world around you! People are possessed by the sins of greed and lust. Many are possessed by the desire for drugs. People ignore those in need around them because they are chasing after the desires of the flesh. Many are lost in this wilderness of sin. All suffer in this spiritual desert, but many perish.

But God is not blind to what is happening. God sees, and God cares. God sees the perishing. God hears their cries of anguish. Our Heavenly Father even feels the pain of their suffering.

God loves the world and does not wish that any perish. So God decided to make a way of salvation for the people. But this situation was a lot bigger then that time in the desert. The scope of the problem was wider. It was not just a group of pilgrims in the wilderness. It was an entire world of people lost in sin. The cause of suffering was not just a few hundred snakes. It was all the demons and serpents of hell. Sin and death were devouring God's Children. The solution had to be a global one not just a local one. It had to heal the world of the effects of sin. It had to cure death itself and ensure eternal life.

So God went to work. Moses was not around, and anyway, this job was too big for him. First God took the sins of the world. The Almighty poured them out of an old dusty flask. Then God mixed them with the tears of a mother and a father. Then God called his son. And God poured the sins of the world upon him. And as if that were not enough, God took his only son and nailed him to a pole. Then God hoisted him up high for all to see. Choking back the tears God said, "Look at what I have done for you. Look upon the sins of the world poured on the only righteous person to ever live. Look upon your torment. Look upon death! Look, and be saved. And the light of Christ's death shone for the whole world to see.

But you know how human nature is. There were some stubborn people. They refused to look up. They would rather look down into the shadows and perish. They loved the darkness. And refused to accept the light. And they perished.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so must the Son of Man be lifted up, for God loved the world so much that he gave his only son so that whoever trusts in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God sent his son to die, not to have an excuse to condemn the world, but that through his death the world might be saved. Those who look up to him for salvation will be saved. And those who don't look up to him will perish because they do not trust in God.

Through Christ the light of salvation has come into the world. But people loved the darkness because they were evil. And some refused to come to the light. But others came to the light and were saved.

Christ was lifted up for us. He bore our sins. He endured our punishment. And he died our death for us. What wondrous love is this that God sent his only son to die for us. So look upon the cross and see your suffering and shame. Look upon the cross and see the way that God saves you. Christ was lifted up for our salvation; look up to him to be saved and sanctified.

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