Nothing and Everything

Thanks to all who have stayed to this point and maybe there's someone here tonight and this is the first of the meetings that you've been to. Welcome if that's you. We're so glad you're here tonight.

Our purpose tonight is simply again to open the scriptures, to seek what God has to say about finding peace with Him, finding forgiveness for our sins. And to do that we're going to open the scriptures. And before we open God's word, we're going to ask the Lord to help us to see and to understand what He is saying to us.

Let's pray. Father, again tonight we know that this is not our message. We know tonight that this book that we hold in our hands, this book that we would stand under tonight, is a book that was not invented by human beings.

We're thankful that this is thy word. We're thankful that it is holy, that it is indestructible, that it is unified, and that it has a message for us tonight. Lord, we pray that young and old, that all who are here, saved and unsaved alike, Lord, as we come to thy word tonight, that we would come reverently, respectfully, and seeking to hear the voice of God.

We're longing, Lord, our one goal in mind tonight is to see Christ, is to see thy son in a way that you would have us to see him. And we pray, Lord, that there would be special help, that the Holy Spirit would not only help us as we try to speak and try to relay this message, but Lord, that the Holy Spirit will help each who receives the message as well. We pray especially tonight for those who are not saved.

We pray, Father, for those who are in darkness. There's not a thing that we can do to bring light to their eyes. It must be thy work.

And so we're asking thee, Lord, we're pleading with thee, please do what we cannot do. We ask this tonight, thanking thee again for the cross and for the glories of Christ. We pray that we will set him on high.

We are thankful for him and we pray for help in his name. Amen. I would invite you to turn with me, please, to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2 in the New Testament, and we're going to read the first 10 verses of Ephesians 2, starting at verse 1. And you, Hathi Quickened, whether those words are actually there or not obviously is in question even by the fact that it's in italics in our King James, but it doesn't matter because it's down and further on we're going to read the very same words in verse 5. So they're there, whether they're there in verse 1 or not.

You, Hathi Quickened, here's the point, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked. He's talking to those who are now Christians. They weren't always Christians.

We need to find out what happened. How was it they came from not being Christians to being Christians? And so Paul is looking into their past. He says, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation, our manner of life in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, the desires of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

But God, here is where the story changes. Here is where the difference is made. But God, verse 4, who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you are saved and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and the kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, his masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained, that we should walk in them.

I don't know if you got everything that we read, and it's okay if you didn't. I'm going to sum it up right now, and as I sum it up, we're going to go back through the text, and we're going to try and get what I'm trying to sum up right now. In fact, it's the summation of the good news of Jesus Christ.

That's what we're presenting here tonight. This is what we want you to know, and it is good news. I want to tell you, I've experienced it myself, and there's nothing like it.

And tonight we want you to know this good news. It is all summed up very simply. I want to give it to you just in two halves, two sections, if we can.

I think Paul is really splitting this entire story up into two sections. Here's the first section. What Paul is saying is this, you and I, I'm going to include myself in this, you and I can do nothing.

What are we talking about? We're talking about what it takes to get to heaven, what it takes to please God, what it takes to somehow have access to him, to his family, to his presence. How do we get there? How do we achieve this, what everyone seems to be searching for? How do we achieve the happiness of God? How do we get to that point where we know he is smiling at us? How do we get to the point where we know our sins are no longer in the picture? Well, here's the first point. Here's the first half of the story.

You can do nothing. We'll talk about that in a moment, but I want to get to the second half just right now, just in case it doesn't come out later on. Here it is.

You can do nothing. See, there's not much good news there, but God has done everything. I want you to get that.

Don't forget that. Get it into your mind tonight. There are some sitting here, and no doubt, maybe you've heard the gospel before.

Maybe you've heard it a lot, like I did, and you're sitting there tonight and you're saying, I've heard this, I know this, but why am I not saved? It's because you have never come to this point in your life where you understand, I can do nothing, but God has done everything. After all, if God has done everything, what's left to do? I want to go back for a moment. You can do nothing.

Sometimes we think doing something is better than doing nothing, don't we? I mean, we want to look busy. We're in panic mode sometimes. There's something going on, and we just think we have to do something.

There's a man by the name of John Tunney, who lives in the UK, and at one time, before 2008, he was a paramedic. He was a very easygoing guy, well-liked. He was married, and in 2008, everything turned upside down.

He found out that he had a tumor in his brain. That's what the doctor told him. Of course, the doctor had to do something, and in 2008, he had a biopsy done for a brain tumor, which the surgeon was to go in and to remove the tumor for tests, and John Tunney now needs 24-hour care.

He's lost part of his sight. He suffers from memory loss because the surgeon had removed healthy brain tissue instead of a tumor, and they eventually found out that the tumor could have been controlled with drugs and that surgery wasn't even needed. Sometimes doing something is not a good thing, and doing nothing is better when there is nothing you can do.

Now you say, that's obvious. Is it? Look around you. Look around you in the world, wherever you work, wherever you go to school, and think about this.

How many people in this world are trying to do something to please God? They're trying to do something. In fact, even atheists are trying to do something. They're trying to erase God altogether, but they're trying to do something when all the time God is saying, guess what folks? We're helpless.

We can do nothing at all. We're helpless. Now I want to go through the text for a few moments and just see this for ourselves.

I think of what I was watching. It was kind of an interview. I guess it was a discussion that Timothy Keller had at a college, a university, where he was being asked a number of questions, and he was being asked about specific sins, and what sins will actually take someone to hell.

He said, I'll tell you what takes people to hell. What takes people to hell is this. They are their own Lord and Savior.

They have never acknowledged Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They're still trying to do something. So here's the point tonight.

Here is what splits this group into two, and it is not race, it is not culture, it is not language, but what splits us tonight is this. There are some here who are still trying to do something to get to heaven. There are some here tonight, and you are trying very hard to believe, and you're not satisfied.

You're never satisfied because you haven't learned how to believe hard enough. You're still trying something, and all the time God is saying, you can't do anything. There's some here maybe tonight, and you're trying religion.

You're trying to go to church faithfully. You want everyone to know, and you almost want to get points for how many times you show up on a Sunday morning to whatever church you go to. There are other people who get baptized.

There are people who go through catechism. We're trying everything, and all the time God says, we can do nothing. Listen, first of all, we can do nothing, Paul tells us, because we are dead in trespasses and sins.

Ravi Zacharias said it so well, I don't think it can be said any better. Jesus did not come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live.

How many of us, if we owned a business, would go to the funeral home and see if the funeral director had any corpses or any dead bodies in stock that maybe we could hire to do our work for us? That's kind of a gruesome picture as it is, but the fact is, people who die can't do anything. They don't have any life as far as physically is concerned. They have no life.

How is it that we're dead? God says we are dead. Verse 1, you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. Verse 5, even when we were dead in sins hath he made us alive together with Christ.

How is it that we're dead? Well, the idea and the picture of death is what we see every time and what we experience every time we go to a funeral. Maybe it's someone we love, and now we can't speak to them. They're gone.

We can't joke and laugh with them because they're gone. We grieve. We feel pain.

We feel the separation because they're gone. There is a distance between us now. Maybe they've left us without saying goodbye.

It doesn't matter. They're gone. God says we're dead.

What does he mean? We're separated from him, separated in our sins. There's this gigantic gap, this gulf between us and God. It's called sin.

He says we're dead in that, and not only that, but we're unresponsive. We are totally unable to please God. There's nothing we can do.

In fact, Romans 8 tells us very clearly, those who are in the flesh, those who are seeking to do something just by who they are, by being a good person, they cannot please God, totally incapable of pleasing God. You can do nothing tonight. Friend, if you're trying to do something yourself, there's nothing you can do because God says you're dead in trespasses and sins.

Is that sinking in? Just stop and maybe it takes a while to sink in, especially if there's someone here and you've never heard this before. We're dead. We're unresponsive to God.

You can go to church every Sunday and God doesn't hear a thing. He's not looking for what we can do. We're dead in our trespasses and sins.

Secondly, we're prisoners of the world and ultimately the devil. Verse 2 tells us wherein in times past you walked according to the course of this world. The idea is you once walked following the course of this world.

Now this isn't the idea of following voluntarily. It's more the idea of when you were in school and you got into a little bit of trouble and either the teacher or the principal or someone in authority says, you come with me. You don't have a choice.

You're going and this is the idea of verse 2. Where in times past you walked following after the course of this world. Just following along. There's nothing we can do.

We are prisoners to the devil. We are captive to him and to sin. We are captive to the course that this world is going on.

We're on the sinking Titanic and we're going down with it. You can do nothing tonight. We're prisoners.

We're like all the people during the holocaust who are getting off of those cattle cars and some people think to themselves, well I know that I'm a sinner but you know what there are a lot of sinners out there. Yeah there are a lot of sinners out there. Do you think of the six million Jews in the holocaust or of the millions of other people during the holocaust who are getting off of those freight cars? They were thinking to themselves, well I know I'm a prisoner to some awful people but after all there's millions of us.

I think every single one of them was beginning to realize the complexity of their problem. The gravity of their situation. Is there anyone here tonight and you're realizing that your father is not God right now? Your father is what the Lord Jesus described as the devil and he said in John 8, your will is to do your father's desires.

Here's number three. You can do nothing not only because we're dead and we're prisoners but we're marked by disobedience. We're marked by what we've done.

Verses two and three tell us very clearly. The prince of the power of the air, Satan is the spirit that now works, listen to this, in the children of disobedience. They're marked by this.

They're marked by who they are. Children of disobedience. Do you realize that one sin has marked you and you can't do anything about it? One sin whether it was a lie.

I'm sure everyone here tonight can look back in your history to one single sin somewhere along the line no matter how righteous we think we are. That one sin marks you. It marks us and we can do nothing about it.

It's a stain that gets into our the very fabric of our souls and it's not just one sin. If we were honest we would understand we sin and we sin and we sin and we sin and God calls us children of disobedience. We are marked by sinning against God.

Disobedience means we've disobeyed someone. We've personally offended someone and that someone is the God of heaven. So here we are.

We're dead in sins. There's nothing we can do because we're unresponsive. We can't please God.

There's nothing we can do because we're prisoners to the course of this world. We sin and we follow this world. It is in our very nature and not only that but we're marked before God who sees every thought we've ever committed.

Here's number four. We can do nothing because we are destined for wrath. That sin that marks us.

Maybe there's someone here tonight you're saying sin marks me okay but is that a bad thing? It's not just a bad thing. It's your worst nightmare because God who sees that sin is a righteous judge and as a righteous judge his righteous reaction to sin is wrath and you're headed straight for it and you can do nothing. Is there anybody there feeling the helplessness of that situation? Maybe it's the first time in your life you've confronted it.

I hope you confront it tonight. We're praying that you confront it tonight that you actually stop and think about this for a moment and recognize that's right. I'm without any hope.

I'm drowning in my sins. I'm marked out. God knows every single one of them and if I got what I deserved he would judge me and it would be eternal and there's nothing I can do.

I'm not going to stop there but God. I can't tell you what kind of punctuation that is in verse four but God just at the moment of our total despair just at the moment where you're sitting wherever it is marked out right now but God. You want to know about this God tonight? I want to tell you about him.

In fact I can't tell you enough about what he has done and listen to what it says and this is the point. It is God that makes all the difference. We come and we sit and we think to ourselves okay how can I solve my problem? You can't solve your problem tonight and Paul wants to turn our eyes away from ourselves.

All we are is marked sinners. That's what we are. We are judged and he's turning our eyes somewhere else.

He says okay you see who you are? You're helpless. You can't do anything. Now look.

I want you to see something and it is the most amazing sight you'll ever see but God guess what? He's rich and he's not rich with money like you think. He's rich with mercy. Do you know what that means? That is compassion.

He sees us in our helpless state and he didn't forget about us. He didn't leave us to ourselves. He sees us and he loves us and he is rich with compassion.

Do you want to know just how rich he is with compassion? I want you to see something. I want you to see the very son of God. God in the form of a man and he is standing in front of other men who are taking their fists and without any compassion they are hitting him as hard as they can in his face.

They're pulling the beard from his cheeks. They're laughing. They're mocking.

They're whipping him until his back is like a plowed field. The flesh is torn wide open and finally they nail him to a cross with thorns into his brow. There was no compassion when we nailed him to that cross.

But listen. God was so rich in compassion. The very reason why the Lord Jesus would allow men to do that to him was because he saw us where we were and he did something about it.

And on that cross we hurled our hatred at him and on that cross all that flowed back in return was love and compassion and mercy. Only God could do this. And that's the story of the cross.

At a time when on the cross we see the sons of disobedience at their very worst. We see everything so open and obvious. Our sin is exposed at that very moment.

We see God at his very brightest as he is rich in mercy and reaches out to save the sinner. Do you know what he did on that cross? The Lord Jesus didn't come just to feel our pain. And he didn't just come to understand our temptations.

And he didn't just come to breathe our air. He came to die my death. He came to suffer in my place.

He came to pay my fine. And on that cross God who is rich in mercy punished his son. He did everything.

God who is rich in mercy with his great love. That's not just great in power or great in magnitude. It's great in its quantity.

Love a lot of this great love. There is unlimited love as far as God is concerned. And he is pouring it out.

He chose to love us. This is what God is doing. Tonight God is calling sinners.

Those who have been for so long in love with themselves. Prideful about self. Seeking to do something for self.

He's saying turn away from yourself tonight. Look at what I have done. I have done everything.

You can do nothing. And that is the heart of a true worshiper of God. When they realize my sins were dealt with on his cross.

There was not a thing that I could do with them. It was all of God. By the time we get to the end of verse 9, verse 10, he says for we are his workmanship.

We are his masterpiece. By the time we get done Paul is making it very clear. Do you know why these people were Christians? Because in their state of helplessness God did everything.

Now, how does a person come to know this? How is a person truly saved? We come to verses 8 and 9. They are very well known obviously. And I wanted to put them in their context tonight. We find out first of all that it's not of yourselves.

It's very clear. It's not of who you are. We like who we are.

Naturally speaking we have a lot of pride. God says it's not of yourselves. It's not of who you are.

Secondly, it's not of what you do. It's not of what you do. He says it's not of works.

Not just not of yourselves, but it's not of your works. It's nothing that you can do. It is by faith.

And at this point someone stumbles and trips and says, I have to do something. I have to believe. Well, if you want to look at it that way, but do you want to know what faith is? Faith is merely accepting.

I can do nothing, but God has done everything. And that takes me in tonight. I want you to know something.

You can put it on my tombstone if you want. I want you to know something. I know and have confidence of where I will be for eternity based on one thing.

I can do nothing. God has done everything. I think of what John Newton said, the man who wrote Amazing Grace.

He wrote a lot of poems. And before he died, he was losing his memory. Not a very easy thing to let go, the poor man.

But before he died, losing his memory, there was one thing he always remembered, and he was known to have said this. It's one thing I remember. Two things I remember.

That I did all the sinning. I was a great sinner, and Jesus is a great Savior. Are you there? Have you understood tonight as yet? Even as we go into the last half of this meeting, have you come to realize? It's not about what I can do at all.

God, who is rich in mercy, has done it all. Do you know what He wants? He wants you to thank Him. There's no room for boasting.

And at the end of verse 9, we read, this is all so that no one may boast. No one is going to get to heaven and give a 60 minute interview as to how they got there, or what they did, or what they accomplished, or how they believed. No one is going to do that.

Everyone is going to be in heaven, and their only boast is going to be, I could do nothing. He has done everything. And all the honor and the praise and the glory is going to go to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

The glory is going to belong to God alone. He's done it all. And tonight, He invites you to join the celebration by just acknowledging your helplessness and running to Christ.

I trust you'll do that by the time this meeting is over.