Episode 43 - Saved By Grace, Not By Works

We unpack what the gospel is, why works can’t save us, and how grace through faith changes how we live and serve. Stories, Scripture, and a closing prayer invite listeners to rest in Christ’s finished work and let good works flow from real faith.

• clarity on salvation by grace through faith
• Ephesians 2 and James 2 in harmony
• why “Jesus plus” burdens people
• how the gospel continues after conversion
• letting God work through us in everyday acts
• the danger of assumptions inside churches
• personal turning points and renewed obedience

If you're in the Rockdale area on Sundays, we are at the American Legion Hall for a little while longer. We may be moving somewhere else, but right now we're at the American Legion Hall in Rockdale, Texas. That's a Carlisle post. We have coffee and donuts. We have oh man, we have hot chocolate and donut holes right now, which is hard for a chubby boy to resist. We can start at 10 o'clock and we'll have prayer and some fellowship. And then at 10:30, worship service starts. We do have a kids' church and we do have a nursery, and we'd love to see you. And if not, we'll be right back here next Thursday with another episode of Let's Connect. God bless.

Transcript

Warm Welcome And New Year Banter

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Let's Connect, the official podcast of Connect Church in Rockdale, Texas, where we want to help you to live a life that matters. One that is both on mission and has a purpose to follow Jesus and make disciples. So let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

All right, welcome in to Let's Connect. I'm your host, Bill Whitmeyer. I've got our joined by our pastor, as always, Ken Ansel. Ken, how are you doing today? I'm great. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. We've taken a this is episode 43. Wow. We took a couple weeks off for Christmas. So I hope everybody had a good Christmas and New Year's and everybody's rested up and ready to go for a whatever it means, prosperous 2026, I guess. Yeah. Um I wish it'd start feeling like winter a little bit. I know you're you're real disappointed. It's it's uh not cold yet. Yeah, it is weird though, isn't it? It's I mean it's eighty we're we're in the first week of January. I don't know when you're listening to this podcast, but well while we're recording it, it's the first week of January, 2026, and it's 80 degrees outside. I think today it was like you know, a little a little brisk. It got down to about 73.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

You know, but still I'm like, man, and I'm sitting here in a sweater vest. I'm fixing to take it off. But you know, my office is always cold, but but uh yeah, so I don't know. Maybe someday we'll get some winter weather and and uh then I'll be happy and and and you'll be you know getting ready for summer again.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Yeah, it's coming. I mean maybe it's already here. I don't know. It is it is odd weather though, but yeah. Oh well.

Odd January Weather And Wind Chime Story

A Friend’s Question: What Is The Gospel

SPEAKER_01 1:54

It's it's i it it's uh it is where it is, and and we're thankful that it's at least Yeah, sunshine. It got a little windy last night though. So I mean there's a I don't know whose bright idea it was, but I did it. But I'm not saying it was my idea, I just did it. And we put this big giant wind chime outside the window of the nurse's hind bedroom. Well, that wind kicked up about one o'clock, and all I could hear was that wind chime and kept me she slept right through it. Oh wow. You didn't get up though. No, no, I just got there with a giant rubber band or something. Yeah, no, I just no, just let it go, let it go. I'll be all right eventually. So So this week, um, you know, we've had a few weeks off and a few weeks to think about things and talk about things, and this uh interestingly enough was uh comes kind of from a conversation I had um with a friend and they are Lutheran and not anybody local, it's somebody from out of the area, but he was asking me about our church, and we got to talking about um the different theological stances between being a um I guess Baptist styled Protestant church and then being a liturgical Protestant church if that's a thing. Um I think liturgical churches are liturgical. They are Protestant in nature because they're not Catholic, but they're still pretty pretty liturgical, pretty, you know, driven by the uh by the liturgy and and in the uh worship books and stuff. And so we got to talking about it, and uh and just as a disclaimer, I mean I've you know, I I grew up going to a school that was a Lutheran school. I was the only Baptist kid in there. Well, my brother was there too, so there was two of us. And then uh, you know, of course, uh I was in the Episcopal Church for a long time before uh the schism there, and then I came back and and into the Baptist church, and so I understand the liturgy, I understand the um the um the back and forth that goes into that and all of that, but he asked me, you know, the uh gospel. Um he didn't have the understanding necessarily of how the gospel works or exactly what the gospel means. I mean, and it was kind of an odd, I don't even know how to really explain it. It was kind of an odd conversation because his conversation was coming from the standpoint of he wants to understand. Uh of course I had given him my go-to, Ephesians 2, 1 through 10, and he read through it and we talked about it a couple of times, and and and then you know, I gave him some other verses to look at. James where talks about your works and faith and and how those pertain. And, you know, he's had that liturgical sense that you have to have the works and and you have to have the good deeds to go along with the faith to be saved, and the concept of having being saved, you know, by the grace of God because of your faith, and then those works and those good deeds come from that faith and from that grace was such a foreign concept to him. And it made me think how many other people um they know the word gospel, they may not understand what it means exactly. They they've heard the term the good news and and may not understand necessarily what that means either. Um and so I I thought that would be a good topic today to kind of talk about from that standpoint because I I I think there probably are a lot of people that are confused by this concept and necessarily what the gospel means and and what the good news means.

Grace Through Faith Versus Works-Based Thinking

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Yeah. Well, I just kind of basing it on the context of your conversation with your friend, the got the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is we can be saved, right? We realize we're sinners, we need a savior, Jesus is that, uh we can be forgiven because it his shed blood, his work on the cross, the empty grave beats death for us, and so he beats sin and death. And that good news or that gospel stands on its own merit, right? It's not uh believe and do good works, and if you do enough one day, you will be saved or go to heaven. Yeah, I don't know, does that kind of fit what you're talking about? Like somebody they're attaching other things to it, maybe rather than just saying, hey, I I mean, whosoever will may come, right? Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, I mean so many of the churches um and and we've talked about this many times in Bible study, we've talked about it right here on this program, you know, that this the Bible, the words in this book, what's said in this book, this comes from God. Every other book that's pretty much written comes from man. You know, the liturgies that we read from on Sundays in different churches, those are man-made. You know, this is a this is a work of the Bible is a work of God. And so as we go through these, so many churches, and not just liturgical churches, because there are non-liturgical. When I say liturgical church, I'm talking about churches that are in the Catholic tradition where you have a read and response and and you're reading from a prayer book. Yeah. Those are what liturgical churches are. But even non some non-liturgical churches, they add things, you know. Yeah, you're saved by faith and your works. You know, um even adding baptism to that. Yeah. And it's about it's about your your your your your devotion to God and to Jesus and to the saints and and and and and things like that. And and they we have these add-ons, I guess is the way to say it, you know. Like options when you buy carbs. Do you want to eight-track take it? Well, your faith isn't that strong, but you've done a lot of really good work, so that makes up the difference. Now that's not how that works. You know, you you you have that faith, and and you you receive God's grace because of that faith. You receive his mercy and then his grace from that faith. And and it's that grace that powers you through your faith to go out and do those works.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Because if I'm not walking with God and and I haven't received God's grace, then how can I do God's works? You know, I I I don't have a relationship with him. So in that case, uh I'm doing what I think he wants me to do and not allowing him to work through me to do the things he wants to do. And and when we talk about that gospel and that good news, you know it it it's that's the whole thing, is is right there. Is that that it, you know, you're saved, you know, and says in Ephesians, I always go to one through ten, but if you go to eight and nine, it says, For by grace you have been saved through faith.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

And this is not of your own doing, it's not it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Preach it, brother. Yeah, grace is unmerited favor. We've done nothing to to have it. That's how we're saved. It's it's and faith the faith we have is even comes from God, and so that we believe we're saved. And and then, yeah, that salvation spurs on good works. If you want to I mean, we won't just go, Oh, I got a ticket to heaven, now I can just stay home and watch the cowboys on Sunday. We we we're in a love relationship and we want to serve. Yeah. Yeah.

Ephesians, James, And Misread Works

SPEAKER_01 9:43

It says uh, you know, a lot of people will bring up James 217, which reads, So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. And a lot of people misinterpret that. You know, there's a biblical way to interpret that, and then there's the world, the worldly way, or or the world of faith, or or or the other ways. And and and they interpret that to mean that if you don't have those works, then your faith is dead. And and in reality, you have that faith, you're saved by grace, but if you're not doing those works, then you really don't have that faith. And that's what it's saying. That faith and that grace given to you as a gift because of your faith, that drives the works. And so many people want to say, well, the works, you know, if you that's how you prove you have faith. I prove I have faith by my relationship with God. I don't have to prove it, I don't have to prove it to anybody else. I don't prove it to the nurse, I don't prove it to you, I don't prove it to any of the folks at our church. I I prove that to God. But the way I show that I have that faith is by those works that I'm doing, that I'm allowing God, I hate I say that wrong every time, that I'm allowing God to do through me. Too many times we come together and we say, Well, I'm gonna do this for God. Well, what does God want you to do? Is that what God's telling you to do, or is that what you're hoping is the right thing? Now here's the thing you can go ahead and do that because it's a good work, and that's fine. But don't confuse that with something God wants you to do and something that you are doing for God. It's okay to do things for God, but don't confuse those two. And sometimes we get those two confused, and and then we have something that we feel like God is telling us to do, and it's outside of our comfort zone. And guess what? A lot of the stuff that God wants you to do, for me, it's putting up door signs on people's doors when we do the door knocker deal, you know, that that's uncomfortable. I know it sounds crazy, but for me, that's an uncomfortable thing. But God tells me to do that. So when the nurse and I go do those, when we sit in the car for a good 30 minutes and we pray together because as outgoing as she acts like she's not, but she's way more outgoing than she wants to let on. But as outgoing as we tend to be, for some reason, man, that is that is that that that's a struggle for us. But you know, we pray about it and we get out and we go do it because obviously I I'm not gonna, you know, it's not something that I would just say, oh yeah, I'm gonna go do all I'm gonna spend all my extra time doing that because to me there's a level of anxiety.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

And and I have to have, you know, that that that walk with God and have God there helping me do that. I know it sounds silly because it's really a fairly easy task, but it's just that's one of those things that bugs me. And and and and and if I don't have God with me to do that, to strengthen me to go do that, I'm not gonna do that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

And the gospel doesn't go away once we're saved. It's it's uh we uh it continually reminds us post-salvation of God's of God's goodness, of his grace and his mercy and his love. And it reminds us of of uh the cost of our salvation, his death, his blood. Sin was a catalyst for that, right? So we we don't want to sin uh because we know what the cost of our salvation was, the death of Christ, and and then we know sin fractures our relationship, our our abiding relationship. So the gospel continues to sanctify us and work itself out in our life. And so it's not a one and done, like I heard it and now I'm moving on. Yeah. Um you know, like yeah. I'm good, I'm there.

Letting God Work Through Us

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah, yeah. I I'm I'm I'm saved, I'm solved, all my problems are solved, and it's and it's just not quite that simple. I was looking for something that I'd written down, but it'll pop up when I least need it. But um, but yeah, when you look through all those and and you start going through those and you realize that over and over and over, it it it says it over and over again, and uh, you know, it the council of Jerusalem, Acts 15, 11, but we believe that we will be saved through grace, through the grace of Lord Jesus, just as thy will. Um, and and and what a lot of people don't realize is that during that council, Peter said a few things that that went against that. And and I don't uh obviously we weren't there. I don't know why it was said, but basically it it it gave into that side that you need those works, and um and Paul called him out on that, you know, and and and so as we go through our time, there are times when we have to and I'm not saying we gotta call people out, but that's why what you're saying is it's so important to reiterate that to even believers, you know. Uh there's a um uh a pastor named Paul Wash here and and and he talks about how and this is where I got it, and and as a as a um visiting pastor, whatever you want to say it, somebody that preached on Sundays. I'm not a pastor, I just yeah play one sometimes on Sunday. But um he said something and I read it and and he had he was preaching at an at a new church, new to him, not a new church, it was a fairly big church, about 400 people in the congregation, and the uh head deacon, the the pastor there had had some medical issues and was out. And so the deacon came to him, the head deacon and and offered him the opportunity to come there and fill in for a few weeks. And he said, Yeah, what would you like me? He said, Well, what's your congregation like? And he goes, Well, it's a it's uh we have a total of 600 people, we have about 400 people every Sunday, and they are a good set of believers. And he said, Okay. He said, What do you what do you think you'll preach on? He said, What do you think you'll preach on? He said, Well, I thought the first Sunday I would preach on the gospel. And the deacon told him, he said, uh, he said, Well, I just told you there's gonna be 400 believers. He says, Well, I appreciate that, but but you can never assume that everybody has the full message there and and really understands it, number one, and then number two, how many have drifted away from that message and may need to hear it? Um I I I have a few pastors in my family, or one of them told me, he said, you know, if you have a Sunday that you don't include that gospel message in your sermon somewhere, that could be the only Sunday there's somebody sitting in your church. They may never come to your church again. Um and I think he get he he references another pastor, and I can't remember who he is off the top of my head, but he said that you know, you somebody shows up to church for Mother's Day or for Father's Day or for Christmas, and you give the best Mother's Day or Father's Day or Christmas service, although I don't know how you can give a Christmas service without the gospel, but but you don't mention that gospel somewhere in that. You don't r mention the good news, you don't mention what it means to be saved and to receive God's grace, then you've possibly missed the only opportunity that individual might have. And so when when you're talking to somebody, when you're when when you talk when when when those conversations come up about your faith, whether that person is a is a born-again Christian or not, you can never talk about the gospel enough.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Yeah. That church with 400 good believers. I mean, that's why I kind of chuckled and said it sounded good. I mean, what what do we do with Matthew 7 that says there's going to be people that did great things in the name of God and Jesus says, get away from me, I don't know you. Well, those are people that were in church. In church. Yeah. The fact that that guy, I'm not being critical, but the fact that he thinks there's none of those people in his church is kind of suspect.

The Gospel After Salvation: Ongoing Sanctification

SPEAKER_01 17:50

I mean, sometimes we've talked about this before where you sit and you know, I'll use me as an example. Somebody sitting back there going, Oh, the judge is, you know, he he knows what he's doing up there. And you can't assume that. You you can't think just because somebody's there every Sunday, they sit there every you told us a story a while back of a of an older lady that came to you, had been a you know, a essentially a matriarch of that church, had been a pillar of it. And she came to you at I think you said like 70 years old and said, Yeah, you know, I want to, I want to ask. You know, yeah. She wanted to become a Christian. Yeah, and and you were blown away. But you you know, the the truth of the matter is everybody is on their own journey, and you can't just assume, well, that person's always here, they're a stalwart of the church. They could be as lost as anybody else, and they're just there because that's where they're supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yeah, faith, faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of God, hearing that good news of what Jesus did, and the Holy Spirit may open up somebody's eyes that Sunday that maybe even thought they had they had heard the gospel. You know, my dad is a good example of that. Uh I th I think, you know, he he grew up in a mainline Protestant denomination, went through the confirmation classes at 12. Yeah. I think was told he was a Christian, thought he was, didn't wasn't a church guy much after that. Uh grandparents got upset at the church, left the church. I never knew them to go to church. Uh and and then he and my dad ends up going to basically like a revival, a mini revival, and hears the gospel and receives it and becomes a Christian, uh, you know, when I was little, little, little, little, little. But I mean that's and one day I was telling that denomination, I saw the pa a pastor of not of of a local uh church, not the same pastor, but I saw him and I said, Man, I you know, I have a lot of uh it's Interesting. My dad heard the gospel in the same denomination that he was raised in. I told him, I said, Man, I just have such a love for for you know your denomination. That's where my dad got saved. And you know, because of that, I grew up in a Christian home. And I walked him through that same story I just shared, and this pastor just looked at me and goes, I don't understand. What do you mean your dad wasn't a Christian? Like from 12. Like, what dude, maybe you shouldn't be in the pulpit on Sunday if you don't get the gospel and and how it's saved. The power of the gospel, it's it's the power of God to save.

Always Preach The Gospel, Even To Believers

SPEAKER_01 20:33

You know, you and I talked or we talked about this in Bible study on Monday. And, you know, if you if you live in the Rockdale area, we do Bible study every Monday. Just you you can find the address and everything on our website. But um I I was telling you a story about my great-grandmother telling me a story about my great-great-grandfather and how, you know, his concern was at at that time, unless you were uh Catholic and maybe some Lutherans and some Episcopalians, but unless pretty much all the other Protestant religions, uh preachers were bivocational. They there just wasn't enough money to uh support pastors, and that wasn't really a thing that came to about being until probably the Depression time period or shortly after that. But his concern was and he was a pastor, he was a farmer and he was a pastor. Um and uh his concern was always that what would happen with a lot of pastors when it became more important to them the growth of their church and the job of being the pastor, and less important the vocation of pastoring, you know, the people. And and that's a different thing. Being a pastor and pastoring the the you know the the church are are are in my mind two different things. And like you were saying, that there there I I don't doubt that there are pastors out there who I've sat through some that you know and I've sat through sermons where they were great history lessons or they were great motivational speakers, but there was nothing about the gospel or the good news. There there was a there at the end, you know, there was an invitation at the end, but it it wasn't gospel-driven invitation, it was more of an invitation of, hey, come on up here and you can be saved and join the church kind of deal. And so uh, you know, it's just so important, and I think that's where a lot of people really never get a good handle on what it means to know the gospel or to be taught the gospel or to hear the gospel. Um we hear that word a lot, and you can look up the definition, but to understand what that means, and and so I I I think there's probably more people like I was, you know, I I carry this book with us everywhere every time we go, and as I was kind of just flipping through it this morning, I realized, you know, this this this uh I started this on October the 14th of 2017, and that was where, you know, for years and years, I was I was baptized and everything in 1980 on on Groundhog's Day, 1980. Easy to remember that way. Yeah, and uh it's funny, and I was pretty uh dedicated, I'll say use that word, until probably about the time I finished up high school, and then I just I would be in church, I would do things in church, but I really wasn't there. And a lot of things in the early in the teens and the 2018s were kind of went sideways in my life, and there finally came a time that October, and it's funny that I I read this and I realized, man, that was the day, October the 14th, um 2017. Yeah. And and as I as I wrote, I'll just kind of read the first part of it, and uh the first thing I wrote is as I start this journey, I'm not sure who'll go along with me. You know, and that was the first line that I wrote in this whole thing, you know, and and that I had reached that point where it quit being important to me what friends thought, what family thought, and what everybody else thought, and it started to dawn on me it's more important about what God thinks Jesus think about it.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah, yeah, man. That's that whole what you're just talking about is interesting to me. And I I think there's a lot of people that have those same experiences, and that'd be great to talk about sometimes. Yeah. When we got saved, but then when did we start following Jesus? Does that make sense? Yeah. And can we separate those two? That that's what's interesting to me, and something maybe to talk about. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, brother. That makes me kind of tear up a little bit to be honest. Yeah, it's really something. Yeah. All right. Well, that's a good last word. That was, man. Thank you.

Pastors, Liturgy, And Clarity About Salvation

SPEAKER_01 25:06

So I'll do it because I can't remember who did it last time, but I'll go ahead and say the prayer and close us out of here. Dear Lord, we thank you for all that you do for us. Father, we love you so much, and we just thank you for giving us the gift of your grace. And we pray that you would lead us where we need to go to help others, to lead others, to find others, to disciple others, to help them to know you, and and and just to come to you, Father, to share your word with our friends and our families, and let them know what it means, what the good news means, what your gospel means, and and and what that means to us and what it should mean to the whole world. Father, I thank you for all that you do for us. Yes, and I pray that you watch over all of us. For it's in Christ's name I pray. Amen. Amen. All right. Well, that is episode 43. If you're in the Rockdale area on Sundays, we are at the American Legion Hall for a little while longer. We may be moving somewhere else, but right now we're at the American Legion Hall in Rockdale, Texas. That's a Carlisle post. We have coffee and donuts. We have oh man, we have hot chocolate and donut holes right now, which is hard for a chubby boy to resist. We can start at 10 o'clock and we'll have prayer and some fellowship. And then at 10:30, worship service starts. We do have a kids' church and we do have a nursery, and we'd love to see you. And if not, we'll be right back here next Thursday with another episode of Let's Connect. God bless.