Salvation By Faith

Jul 19, 2026

Linked Podcast: After The Amen - Ep. 38

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Hey, have you ever thought, think of a time when you maybe thought, if I just do enough, maybe they'll approve of me. You ever thought that before? Maybe I do enough, they'll approve of me. Um, well get this. One time I'm playing the greatest board game of all time. Okay? You guys might like board games. Uh maybe you don't. Maybe you have certain preferences and styles and opinions of what is the best board game, but this is the best board game, okay? It's called Monopoly. Okay. Um, before you uh decide to throw hate on it, we're gonna do a little vote, okay? If you guys like the game, raise your hand. Ready, psycho. Okay, sweet. Good job. Way to go. Uh if you don't like the game, raise your hand. Yes! This is the church we want to preach to. This is great. If you don't, uh it might be your no, I'm just kidding. It's fine. We're you stick around, stay here still. Um, yes, I'm I'm with a couple of my older brothers. Uh I am six or seven kids. Six, uh it's not cool anymore. Um, yeah, it's bad. Um one of them's eight years older than me, one of them's four years older than me. We're just hanging out on a Saturday morning. We play this game all the time. I'm 10 years old the time. I think uh in the back of my mind, you know, we're gonna play this game and we're gonna have some fun, okay? So we start playing, we're rolling dice, we're having fun, we're uh landing on chances, we're laying on community chest, we're doing the free parking thing, we're laying on railroads, and we're like, let's put them all together, do other things where you get more money if you have them all. We're rolling triple doubles where you get thrown in jail if you do that. Like, I hated that rule. It's like I did a good thing, but yet I get thrown in jail for it. It doesn't make any sense. But we roll doubles to get out of jail. If you don't get it, then you have to pay to get out. It's like this is yeah, all the rules in the game. You pass go, you collect $200, right? It's an amazing thing. So um we're putting all the work in, right? All along in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, if I can win as a 10-year-old, maybe, just maybe, my brothers will respect me, maybe, or they might even love me. Like, as if, yeah, it sounds bad. It's like this is pretty dark. It went dark quick. Okay. Um, I get it though, bad expectations, right? It's a board game. Jordan, you gotta get over it. Okay, just relax. I'm 10 years old, right? Um, we get down to one of where one of my brothers goes bankrupt, right? He uh he he's out of the game, but he wants to stick around, he wants to watch, so we'll let him kind of hang out and do that. So currently, I feel as if I'm winning the game. Seemingly like I'm like, I got I got a decent amount of money, a decent amount of uh property, what I feel like is good. Um, I feel like I'm in a good spot. So here's what I got, all right? I have these three. Anybody a big fan of these three? One person, okay. One person in the room is a fan of these three. I don't know where y'all go, but this is where it's at, okay? This is the great spot. No, the blue. Wow, okay, that's not fun. Because we're gonna be not friends in a second. So once you realize where my brother was at, okay. Uh so I have these three properties. I practically sold my soul to get these. I did things outside of the game, like, hey, I'll commit to doing your laundry for a month. I'll commit to doing your bed for a month, I'll commit to doing your dishes, whatever it looked like. I'm like, I'm not losing this game. We're gonna do it. So three hotels, right? One, two, three. Uh, my brother happens to have probably another monopoly over here. Uh, but also he has the stinking blue ones. He's got hotels on him, and these are just the worst properties to get because the likelihood of someone landing on them is super rare. But if you do land on them, you're like, well, I'm donezo. So um we get to the point where my brother had rolled quite a bit. I I'm here at this point, I'm at North Carolina Avenue, okay? I roll the dice man a two and a three equals five. One, two, three, four, five. I land on Park Blace. I'm like, oh no, here's half my money. I'm gonna give them up half my money. All right. Now, the odds of landing these two back to back and one passing is just astronomically not, it's just the they're not there. However, you want to communicate that, it's not happening. Uh, so my brother stops the game and he goes, Hey, just to let you know, if you roll snake eyes, you're gonna lose. And I'm like, thanks for the thanks for the encouragement, I guess. Is that what I'm supposed to believe? I guess for at this point, uh, thanks for the encouragement. I guess I'll try not to roll snake eyes. So the whole time he's rolling his turn, I'm like, please, God, do not roll snake eyes. Like, don't do it. This is the worst. I get the dice. This isn't gonna happen. It's impossible. All the other combinations can happen. Roll, and what do I roll? This is the worst ever in the whole wide world. I land on boardwalk, and this is literally the worst. Um, so I think in this moment, all right, I just rolled it. It's not what I want to roll. Maybe my brothers will be like pretty nice. They'll be like, hey, you know, you tried really, you tried really hard. You put a lot of time and effort in this thing, man. You you're, you know, this is just this I won, but like, you did a good job. No, my brothers did the exact opposite. They're like, oh, Jordan rolled snake eyes, what a loser! You're the worst. Oh my goodness. And my other brother stands up and jumps in with him as part of the victory. He, I'm like, you're already out. What does this even matter? He's just like, it I won. Whatever. He he jumped down with the other brother to say he won. Uh, all along this whole thing, I'm like, man, I have this down. Why in the world did this happen? I rolled snake eyes. What I thought what I was gonna get was total opposite. I'm putting in work, putting in time, putting effort, putting strategy, putting all the right in, but what I get is nothing in the end. I'm happy to say that after seeing a counselor for a couple years, I'm I'm no longer traumatized. No, I'm just kidding. Mostly kidding. Uh no, it for real, it just takes us back, just a simple question off the top, right? Can you think of a time when you thought, if I could just do enough, man, I think I'm gonna win their approval. In this case, for me, it was a simple game of Monopoly, but I think if we're all on us, we've had some of these thoughts, right? Maybe I'll fit in a little bit more. Maybe I'll get in with the cool crowd, maybe I'll get in with what X, Y, and Z, whatever fits your situation. So today, we'll think on that question for a bit, and we're gonna step into week six of our deep our digging deep series, right? It's been a great series so far. You guys liked it so far? Been good? Um, today we're we're we're we're doing this this whole series because we want to dig deep beneath the surface of what these popular and familiar passages are. So today we have uh Ephesians 2, 8 through 9. Anybody heard of this one? Okay, a lot of headnogin or noggin? A lot of head nodding. That's great. Says this for by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. And what we're gonna start off with the top is just this three-letter word, four. Joe often says uh when he preaches, he'll say, What's the therefore? Therefore, right? We want to know the backstory of it. And that's simply what this three-letter word is. What what happened beforehand? So we're gonna step back and go back and understand why Paul is even doing this in the first place. What's Paul, what where's he currently? Yeah, get some context around what we got, right? Paul currently, he's on house arrest, he's in prison. He's he's isn't literally has to stay home all the time. His house is guarded by Roman guards. They're gonna be like, dude, your missionary trip to Rome set you in a bad spot. We gotta have you on lockdown so no one else hears this uh this news because we don't like it. Um, I know you love it, but we can't have you preaching anymore, so stop doing it. So he does what anyone else does uh when they're in house arrest. He turns on Netflix, right? He just watches Netflix for hours. No, he doesn't, right? He spends time writing letters. He wants to continue to advance the gospel, he wants to continue to push it, even though he's being genuinely in physical house arrest. So this letter specifically is written to the Ephesians church, right? And he starts off uh really awesome. He starts off an incredible way of writing the gospel story. If you ever wonder where's the gospel spelled out really clearly without me having to maybe hodgepodge pieces together, read Ephesians chapter one. You will it will blow your mind. It's so good. Um, all in all, and and and through that, the quick paraphrase of Ephesians chapter one for the sake of time this morning is this God, because of his love and grace, planned from eternity to save sinners through Jesus Christ, adopt them into his family, forgive them completely. Oh cut off, give them an eternal inheritance, seal them with the Holy Spirit, and do it all so that his glory will be praise. That's just a quick paraphrase. When you read through it, you're just like, wow, this is just so many good nuggets of goodness in there. And that's our chapter one, right? And begins the chapter two by saying this. We're gonna read through this whole span of spot. It says this, 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. This is our natural condition. Prince of the power of the air, Satan. We're naturally following his flow, his fuel. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once live in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and we're by nature children of wrath. By nature, it's our very nature, like the rest of mankind. But God, it sounds like a familiar song. I was making it okay, you got it. All right, 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. And he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Then here's our text this morning. For by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, that no one may boast. He finishes with, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. So now that we have a little bit of our four, the three-letter word explained, right? What happened beforehand? Paul is tied down in prison. He is writing these letters to make sure his people know that what God's grace is good, right? So we're gonna spend some time just on this word grace. Grace is a tough word to explain to somebody. We have uh names we've called their children is grace, right? But the actual meaning of grace has a simplistic term, but to actually explain God's grace covering it is such a crazy thing, right? Um, it's not like I think everything that we have in this life is attached to works or effort or something like that, right? It has something attached to it. Outside of God's grace, everything in our world exists around the fact that we have to do something in order to gain something. So we're putting in time and effort, blood, sweat, tears, we're punching in, punching out because what? We're gonna get some something in return from it. God's grace is the only thing that doesn't do that. And you don't see everybody walking around going, handing out $100 bills to people, right? You don't have people coming knocking on your door going, hey, uh, can I mow your lawn for free? Because that would be incredibly graceful, right? So this is this is the type of thing that we're talking about. It's a really tough thing to kind of comprehend because everything that we have in this world is attached to a beneficial system to where we have to do something in order to get something back. Does that make sense? Grace in its simplistic terminology is this undeserved favor, kindness, you don't deserve it. It's an unmerited favor. You can't possibly get it, you can't pay it back, you can't do anything with it. You didn't earn it. This grace, God's grace, it not only saves us, which we're gonna we're gonna read about in just in a few seconds, but also secures us. It secures us in our relationship with God. This is God's good grace. And so we step into saved, right? By grace you've been saved. What have we been saved from? We've been saved from the delivered from God's wrath. And naturally, we're born with sinful nature that that keeps us separated from God, right? So our our eternal, uh, our eternal destination is already bound towards hell. So what God is saying here is by grace, you are saved from the final judgment to go, God, I have I have a pass because I believe in it, right? And then we step into the last that's where how is this possible? Is through faith. By grace, you've been saved through faith. We're gonna come back to those in a second as we put this all together, right? But faith is just simply a trust, a reliance, a belief in Jesus and in him alone, right? I can't do it any other any other way, but by faith and trust and reliance in him. So we're gonna fly through some of these points, right? Just to kind of get the context of what we're gonna do. We have these next few points that we're gonna roll out. We're gonna roll out four different points real fast. We're gonna go pretty quick because we want to not just understand the text. We don't want to just get it all up in our brain. We want to see what God wants us to do with it. Okay. So first point off the top is just simply this salvation is God's work, it's God's work and his alone. Okay. Very simple understand, can be very complex to understand at the same time. Then we step into this this next section. It says, and this is not your own doing, okay? It is the gift of God, not a result of works that no one would boast, right? But you think of me for a second. By God's good grace in sending Jesus, and we think about this for a second, okay? Between grace and faith. God's grace and sending Jesus to die in my place is means it came and met me where I was, okay? I'm here. God's grace, sending Jesus to come die for me in my place. It wasn't as if I had enough belief and thought to look at this grace and think, you know what? I'm gonna get there. I'm just gonna believe so hard, wholeheartedly that I'm gonna get there. No, it had to come down. This grace was given. So then by faith, by trusting, by submitting to, and by putting my faith and trust in this grace, this is where I'm saved. And this is the seal that's that's that's bonded, right? And nothing to do with that, uh, your own your own ability. So this is why when we look at it, we call it a gift, because both grace and faith are something that neither of you can wake up tomorrow and go, yep, you know what, I'm gonna muster up enough faith to be able to carry on the rest of the week. None of us can muster up enough grace and actually pay for someone else's penalty, right? Can't do it. You could pay for a bill, maybe, but you couldn't pay the actual uh eternal, eternal destination for them. And that's the whole reason that it's called a gift, right? In the first place, is because it was given by God. Both grace and faith are something we can access, not something that we actually accomplish on our own. Some of us maybe been given something in the past, right? It's a gift, right? Um, for me and my wife, you know, we we were given uh something pretty cool back uh several years ago now. We were with in a community group down in St. Louis, Missouri. Our I'm driving my car down the highway, and it just totally just goes to junk. It whatever. Uh probably should have put oil in it. That's something they're supposed to do with cars, but I didn't put oil in it, yeah. So um sounds right, yeah. Uh so our community group takes time to text each other privately. I didn't know this was happening, but they put some money together, some funds together. They wrote us a nice card, a nice note inside there, and said, Hey, we would love to just give this to you. Now, what I could have done is I could have gone, hey, what's this lump sum of money? I know there's about 16 people attached to it. Let me go back and pay them all back individually. But that'd be like a loan, right? That'd be ridiculous. That'd be goofy. It would be actually offensive to them because they're wanting to just give the gift out of their own generous heart, right? That would be defeat the purpose of this gift. And this is what Paul is trying to get at. This is a gift. Except this gift would be genuinely impossible to pay back. It's incomprehensible. You would not be able to tally the amount. You would not be able to count it up and go, oh yeah, I know the amount now, so I can go give this back to God. Because if I just do enough right things and good things, then I can do it, right? Faith and grace are together. We're not saved by what we do, but by God's grace through faith. So now we've seen point number one, right? Salvation is God's work. We also see now point two, just how we receive this gift is by grace through faith alone. So it makes sense to us a little bit more. And now we're gonna dig into just a little bit, just this not a result of works. What's Paul trying to get there? Get there. It's really ultimately some of these same lines together. It's not your own doing, it's not a result of what you're trying to get across. But Paul's explaining that no human effort or achievement can save you. So a work or a works in this case, just simply a deed, maybe an action, an accomplishment, right? I mean, if we we think about this for a second, you could go solve world hunger today and go roll it out tomorrow. You could go adopt a kid tomorrow. You could um fight for social injustices, right? You could do all the right moralistically things that are inside of you that you want to carry out and you can get them all done and accomplished. But receiving salvation, being saved by God is impossible on your own ability to carry it out. And this is what Paul is trying to help us understand. It's not a result of your works, your deeds, your accomplishments, your ability to pull it off. But we see in this text that grace by grace through faith alone, not on our ability to carry it out. So now that we've seen what, number one is our salvation is God's work. Number two is by grace through faith alone, we're gonna see that it hasn't has what? Nothing to do with a human effort. So that no one can boast. So we look at that as our last little text at the end. So that no one can boast. No one can possibly take credit. So if we look at boasting, boasting is such a weird word, such an odd thing, but it in its in its uh simple definition is just to simply glory in oneself or to take credit. So think of this for me a moment. Have you ever been around somebody or someone walks in a room, maybe even been the guy or the girl walking in the room and you do this? But you walk in a room and and someone's like, uh someone tells you out loud that they're like, dude, yeah, I I did that and I got it done. It just feels it feels cringy, feels odd. It'd be like if someone um brought in a puzzle piece and anybody, any puzzlers out there by the way? You guys like puzzlers? Any puzzle? That was more than the other services. Great, good job. Way to go. Um it would be like me and my wife spending a lot of time doing the whole puzzle, and homeboy brings in the final piece, puts in the last piece, and he comes to church on this today, and he goes, dude, you and guess what I did? I finished a whole puzzle. A whole puzzle this past week. You're like, No, you didn't. We did almost all the work, right? It's it just feels odd, doesn't it? Whether they did the thing, whether they'd actually accomplished the full job or not, it still feels odd when people put themselves forward when they boast about their own self and taking credit. But you can see why in this case, it would be so odd for someone to take credit for something that a man could possibly not do. It's impossible to pull it off. Which brings us to our final point, right? What he gets the credit, only he gets the credit. So we've broken down our text a little bit, right? We understand from a from maybe from a definition to a knowledge standpoint of what that looks like. Um let me just say this for a second, too. There have been thousands of books written on the book of Ephesians alone. So you go Google, uh, what book should I read about Ephesians? You'll see thousands of different books from a long time ago all the way to the current. Um, tons of different perspectives, ideas, thoughts, tons of different interpretations of what things actually mean. So we come to the end of just breaking down the text a little bit. I wanted to take a moment today, this morning, just to help illustrate this the best that I could. When it comes to grace by faith, we're saved. So again, a little bit of complication here, but it's a little heavier than it looks. Did you guys want me to spill it? Just be honest. Okay, thought so. I did too. I just wanted to walk away. Um, we've been talking a lot about uh the past several weeks, we've been talking about uh how God's uh God's goodness, right, has provided, He provides grace, but then Israel uh really Rebels against it, right? So they're rebellious. And this is what's going to represent a little bit of our lid, right? Um, or fast forward to some of the Pharisees type of day, they're religious. You could probably call these both the same because they're both lost people. So this is what this one's gonna illustrate. There's nothing in either of these jars, not a single thing. Oh, a little bit of water, sorry. That was from last service, but um this lid is representing just a rebellious person, the religious person. This picture is full of water, there's a ton of it. And this is gonna represent God's grace. This first vessel, cup, person is open to receiving the gospel. Right? They have no lid on it, they have not caused anything to go down with it, right? So I want you to notice again, there's nothing inside here already. There's no stones, sticks, dirt, anything that can muster up its own self to really get it. Okay. Now, as God's grace gets poured out over this person, fills it, goes down to the bottom, gets it all full. What I want you to notice though is that just because the person prays more or reads more or does more, serves more fights the injustices, doesn't mean that this stops and that this finds an additional source to offer anything else to go into it. Dirt's being added to it. This isn't picking up feet and going walking off and going to find its way to get it something else, right? God's grace is being poured into it over and over and over into it. Such a beautiful thing. Now, before I fell to the top, I want you to understand. God's grace is not end out. So this is this is just an end. This is just a visual. As it's being poured out, what's this gonna do? You like Monopoly? You like the other thing I said, you know the square. It's overflowing. It's at this point that it overflows, that God's grace by his spirit is something we can access. So I can access fruits of the spirit, I can access his grace, I can access salvation, I can ask, I can access everything that he would have to offer that he writes out. We're just gonna pretend like this is just continue, this is just gonna continue going, but my arm's gonna break off, so I gotta let it go. But you get the point this morning. Um the remaining time I have left, I'm just gonna break down a little bit of what uh has happened to me in my life, all right. Personally, um I grew up incredibly religious. Maybe I could just say religious, right? Um my religiousness got me to an empty place, all right. So when I was uh growing up, I went to a fundamental Baptist church. I uh had um one of my first really initial like thought around what church should look like was very unauthentic. I was probably around seven or eight years old when I realized, like, man, people just aren't the same. My family specifically are just a little, we we we we say we do one thing, like we go to church and we act right, we shake hands, we may give hugs, tell someone we care for them, but then we step out of the church, it's like so not that way. And just a little bit how messed up it was, we kind of like we'd I should say kind of, we straight up would make fun of people on the way to church, make fun of people outside of church. We would live like as if God's grace was not even a thing throughout the week. And we come in and be like, oh dude, my cup is full. You wouldn't believe how close I am to Jesus. On top of all this, I had incredible validation issues. I had just all sorts of things trying to put my best foot forward to grew up in a really competitive, really uh big competition house where we just always compete against each other in sports. I would be the first one to tell you, I'm gonna one-up you all the way because I would say how many tackles I had in a football game. Even if I only have five, I would tell you I had 10. If I took second uh third place in a in a meet at for Verb Wrestling, I would tell you I actually took second and then I beat one of the better kids. If I if I was talking about church, I would tell you, yeah, I got that burst memorized. Of course I have it memorized. We're there every week. Um, of course I prayed for you. Why would I have not prayed for you? I I go to church, I do this thing, so this is what I'm supposed to do. And so I for the longest time I had so many validation issues from that that it became like like second nature that I just wouldn't stick out to anybody. So then I decided I don't even know what age, couldn't even tell you. Decided to exaggerate the truth, decided to lie to the point where if I just said it enough, I'd probably believe it enough. But if I just said and exaggerated, I found that people would actually pay attention to me. But they'd be like, dude, oh wow, you had that many touchdowns in the game. No, I didn't, but I wasn't gonna let them know that. Um, it became so much of who I was, guys. Like I genuinely believed every bit of it. It became second nature. And um it bled into my my high school, bled into when I went off to college. I remember going to college and I spent five years at college, paid all this money, and I only got an associate's degree. I'm not making fun of the fact I have an associate's degree, it's a great accomplishment, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I could not bear to come home and tell my parents, my brothers, family, friends, whoever, that I um that I only got an associate's degree to spending five years there. So I remember having this meeting just where I'm about to walk off campus with my one of my professors, and she goes, Hey, if you just spend about a year to a year and a half year, a little longer, you're gonna get your bachelor's degree. You don't know what I heard out of that conversation? You pretty much have your bachelor's degree. So I would tell people that. I'll tell people, hey, I have a bachelor's degree in church music and in biblical studies. Yikes. Yeah. Um, so when you go to look for a job every college, what do you do? You you build a resume. You go look to try to fill out your application, and you turn your resume in, you say, hey, this is what I did. I believed it so much that I would write out that I had a bachelor's degree on my on my uh I would write down my resume on my applications. Enough so that I was like, no one's checking these things, so I might as well just keep writing it. And I didn't even think twice about it anymore. So we decide that God, I should say, we decided God had really, we felt like God was calling us to go plant a church, start a church from scratch in a living room, five people in a living room, uh, to St. Louis, Missouri, about three hours east of where we were currently at in college. Um, this is all still going on. And we decided after the first um for the first three to four years, we were going to um we were going to not take a salary from from the church because it was up and coming. We weren't gonna take anything because we want to make sure the money got to the right spot, right? So I got a different, I got a secular job. I worked as a banker. Um, I worked there for about three to four years. My buddy, who we happen to plant with, he goes, Hey, uh, we have an opening at Citibank. This is currently where he worked. Thousands of employees, right? He worked in the main uh one of the main headquarters buildings. And he goes, We have an opening here. You should come apply for it. Be better salary, better hours, blah, blah, blah, right? Um, he goes, Yeah, we're looking to hire in this department. I'm not sure what you think. And I was like, Cool, what department is it? Guess what department he said? The fraud department. As if God's not more humorous than you think, right? I don't even think twice about it. Let's go, let's do it. I get a better salary, why would I not? Benefits, I'm having kids, we gotta pay for these bills, right? Let's go do it. So the lady that's onboarding me to this job, I put in my two-week notice of the current job I was at. She calls me a week or so before I even start. She goes, Hey Jordan, super stoked about having you. Can't wait for you to get here. Uh, you sound like you're gonna nail it, it's gonna be good. She said, everything checks out. But this one thing, and I'm like, Well, what is it? We're gonna take care of it, it'll be fine. She goes, Hey, I called your school and they told me you have an associate's degree, but you wrote on your resume that you have a bachelor's degree. And I'm like, Oh no, I have been found. And I was in the back of the teller room, I'm like counting money, and she's telling me, and I'm like, oh my goodness, what am I gonna tell uh my wife? What am I telling my pastor? I'm gonna tell my community group, they helped me get the job. I was broken, I was messed up. It's crazy. People tell you time heals things, it just does not that time does not heal things. But I was wrecked, super humiliated, embarrassed. Here I am moving to plant a church. I'm one of the called pastors, and I'm the biggest poser in the whole wide world. I'm meeting with people one-on-one, talking about their spiritual journey, where they're at with Christ. And I'm giving advice to them, and I'm such a fraud. So I legit this time go to counseling. I spent the first two or three uh two or three sessions talking to the counselor, Christian counselor, uh, where he's like, dude, um, I don't think you actually believe in God's grace. I don't think you actually believe what you preach and what you teach. He's like, you're just constantly trying to earn everyone's approval, everyone's everyone's stuff around you. He's like, what I want to encourage you with is go this week and just try to think and pray through and ask God to open your eyes when it looks like to God's grace. And I remember after the fourth session, I drive home and I'm like, man, I, God, how is it possible? How is it possible you could love me for who I am? Such a silly thing, right? Such a small thing, such a simple thing. But I couldn't process it because I'd been lying to myself and others for so long. And while talking to the counselor, talking to God that night, man, I believe by grace I was saved through faith that day when I came to know, man, I can't do it. And you love me just how I am. The associates only version of myself, the this many tackles in a game kind of self. This person who doesn't read his Bible when he says he does, version of himself. Let me come back to this for a moment. Um my lid, I put a lid on it. Man, I couldn't receive it. I did everything I could do. But it was so hollow, so empty, so broken, so messed up. I thought my religiousness would get me there. Um, this extra grace that God continues to pour out is called common grace. Okay, common grace is things that we can enjoy almost a severe-like in some ways, because God allows us still, as his grace is poured out, he calls it common grace because I can enjoy creation, I can enjoy um trees, flowers, grass, birds, mountain ranges, hills, valleys. I can I can enjoy all sorts of things, good food, good music. But I'm missing the one thing. And it was by grace, through faith, that God just totally erect my life and said, Hey, I'm taking your lid off, dude. I need you to believe me, I need you to trust me. I mean, this is what grace is, right? Paul says in Romans 11, 6, but if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be called grace. And the amount of freedom that I can live with knowing, not even between just me and God, but it affected our relationship with my spouse, my kids, pastoring, leading, loving people where they're at, loving people really where they're at, meeting people where they're actually at. No more fronts. Today, am I perfect? Absolutely not. If you get to know me for one good moment, you're gonna be like, this guy's a wreck. But it's by the power of God and his goodness, his endless grace, man, that I am actually able to stand here to believe by faith that he does what he does. So here's the deal, okay? We start off with Monopoly. How does that look like it rolls into our everyday life? Man, you might think this today. You might think, man, when I roll the dice, or I've been rolling the dice for a while, and I feel like I continually get snake eyes. Or you know what? My parents rolled the dice for me, and they showed me what life I've been dealt. So we blame, we push it off ourselves, we don't take responsibility, right? You might be the person who's rolled and you got some awesome stuff in your life, and you're like, wow, this is awesome, but your religiousness loves trying to pretend like you gained salvation. I mean, think about where you're at this morning. His grace has covered you. No matter what you roll, you can roll snake eyes, you can roll doubles, you can roll any combination of the dice. It does not matter. No matter the circumstance, situation, the pace that you're on, or you feel like you're off. The successes, the failures, the sin struggle, the brokenness, you feel like you're the path you can't get off of it. You're like, what am I gonna do? As a staff who've been reading this book, it's super good. It's called You're Never Meant to Do It All. I highly suggest you read it. Super good book. Um, he says this in this in this quote only God can restore us to our true selves and right relations. And only by resting in the divine benediction can we answer the question, Who am I? Y'all want to know how to answer that question. It's not in your own ability to carry it out. It's by believing and receiving God's good grace, right? That's our big idea this morning is that we would believe and receive God's good grace. So whether you're the rebellious person who just says, you know what, God's just not for me, leave me alone. If you want to be hollow and empty and broken, not living as you're intended to live, this is where this is gonna get you. If you're religious today and you're acting like as if I pray better, I read more, if I pray more eloquently, if I just serve a little bit more, if I just do a little more, then maybe I will accomplish this thing. It's not gonna happen. It's disrupted. Maybe you're someone who says, Man, this sounds good. Like I want to believe it, but I just can't, Jordan. That's good for you. I just can't get around to believe it. Where do you think that that faith is gonna come from? Is it gonna come from another conversation that you're having with someone who's telling you, hey, you're, yeah, I feel like I'm missing something in my life, or man, I've just been dealt this bad card. No, it's not gonna come within yourself. It's gonna come with you, understand how good how good God's grace is for you. So this morning, as we close, man, we get to this place and we say, Jesus, help my unbelief. Regardless of circumstance and situation you find yourself to be in, believing and receiving God's good grace is the one thing that's gonna set you free and it'll set you free forever. Let's pray. Father, we, God, we just say thank you for being so good, so kind to us. That while we are still sinners, God, you chose to die in our place. It makes no sense. We have relationships, God, friendships, family members that we will often treat based on how they treat us. Conditional, but you will come to us, God, with this grace that's overflowing. And so good, so kind, so gentle, so sweet. And we're grateful for that this morning, God, that we get to think about how good your grace truly is to us. Help us to the person in the room who may be religious or rebellious, God, that just think through what it looked like to believe and receive you for the first time. For any of us in here who are struggling in our daily walk, who maybe even have received Christ, but want to pretend if we just do more, that you're gonna approve of us more, you're gonna lavish more grace on us, more love, but that's impossible. I pray that you'd help us to understand what Paul is mentioning here, God. That it truly is by your grace, through faith, that we are found in you. It's none of our ability, it's all by you. We love you. We ask all this in the name of Jesus. Amen.