God Did It

By Rev. Heidi L. Barham |  March 10, 2024

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Read Ephesians 2:1 – 10 (NIV)
 
Now, if I were to ask for a show of hands of how many of us have ever sinned, even if I stood here with my eyes closed… I could be fairly certain that everyone’s hand would or should go up. 
 
Now I do not say that from a place of criticism or judgment, but just as a statement of fact.  Paul wrote in Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
 
And over in Romans 6:23, we read, “…the wages of sin is death.” 
 
That’s the bad news. 
 
But thankfully there is more than a little good news this morning. 
 
First, I am not going to call for a show of hands!  Besides, I already know the outcome.
 
But second and more importantly, the rest of that verse in Romans 6:23 says, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  
 
Which dovetails with our text for the morning which says, “…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” (Ephesians 4:4-5a)
 
That is why this morning, I want to focus our attention on the theme: GOD DID IT.
 
It was God who made us alive in Christ.  We did not and could not pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  We did not and could not rise up under our own strength.  We did not and could not press on under our own steam. In other words, we did not and could not save ourselves. 
 
The text makes it clear that GOD DID IT.  We needed and still need a Savior which is why God gave His only Son for us.
 
Now, if we look at the first few verses of our text, what we get is a very dark, dismal, and depressing picture of what a life of sin looks like.  The Message says it like this:

It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat.

And while it is true that we live in a world that seems to find little wrong with living by the philosophy, “If it feels good, do it” …that does not mean that we are doomed to spend eternity as hopeless cases or lost causes.  In spite of our past mistakes, salvation was made possible for all us, not because we deserved it… in fact just the opposite was true… but GOD DID IT for us anyhow.
 
And as we keep reading in the text we find:

He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.  (Ephesians 2:5b – 7).
… all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us…

 
GRACE – God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense
GRACE – God’s unmerited favor gifted to us
GRACE – Something we will never deserve and something we can never earn. 
 
And that is the whole point when it comes to salvation and the gift of eternal life.  GOD DID IT because we could not… which is why the text goes on to say:

Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. (Ephesians 2:8 – 9).

Simply put, GOD DID IT because God knew that there was no way for us to achieve salvation on our own. 
 
But Pastor Heidi, isn’t it enough that we come to church on Sundays… that we make it a habit to treat other people right… that we work really hard at living good lives… following the rules as best we can?
 
Let’s look at what Paul had to say in his letter to the Galatians (2:20-21), still reading from the Message:

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.

So, does that mean we should not strive to live right and do good for others? 
 
Absolutely not… that is not what I am saying at all. 
 
What I am saying; however, is that anything that we strive to do in and of our own strength will never be enough to enable us to receive the precious gift of salvation.
 
It is by grace we have been saved through faith, not through good works or living a reasonably clean life. 
 
So, Pastor Heidi, what about what James wrote?  “…faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17).
 
I’m glad you asked.  The answer is fairly simple, we are not saved BY good works.  We are saved FOR good works. 
 
God’s gift of salvation is not merely for our own benefit… but so that we can be a blessing to others.  God gives us this gift of grace… not because of what we have done in the past… but in order for us to accomplish what He has designed for us to do in the future.
 
Let me share a story with you that I think paints a beautiful picture of God’s grace at work in our lives.  This illustration comes from one of my favorite authors, Max Lucado, in his book entitled, “No Wonder They Call Him the Savior.”

Longing to leave her poor Brazilian neighborhood, Christina wanted to see the world. Discontent with a home having only a pallet on the floor, a washbasin, and a wood-burning stove, she dreamed of a better life in the city. One morning she slipped away, breaking her mother’s heart. Knowing what life on the streets would be like for her young, attractive daughter, Maria hurriedly packed to go find her. On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing. Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janiero. Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable.
 
Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture--taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note. It wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village. 
 
It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure pallet. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation. “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” She did.
(Lucado, reprint 2011, Thomas Nelson Publishers)

I like this illustration because it portrays an image for us of Jesus hanging His picture in all the places where He thinks we might be.  And on the back of each picture, He’s written those words to us, “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.”
 
I don’t know all the things you have done in your life… I only know what I have done in mine.  And if you are anything like me… there are probably some things that you would rather not have anyone else know about. 
 
But let me assure you, whatever it was that you did and wherever it was that you did it… Jesus was sure to have left a picture even there… in the most wretched and godforsaken of places. 
 
Yes, even there… He left His calling card, telling you, “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.”
 
And let me just say this, even after we “get our acts together” and come out of those places… if by some strange chance we lose our way and end up back there… back in the very places that we swore we would never ever go to again… we can be assured that Jesus’ picture will still be hanging there bidding us to come home.
 
Now someone might be thinking that it does not make sense that the Lord would want us back if we lost our way after having received the gift of salvation.  And you’re right… it does not make sense… by our standards.  But by God’s standards… it makes all the sense in the world.
 
That is because in the same way we cannot earn our salvation by what we do… we cannot lose our salvation once we have received it. 
 
The Apostle Paul reminds us that there is nothing that will ever separate us from God’s love.  Romans 8:35 in the Message Paraphrase reads:

Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way!  Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture…

Jesus keeps making a way for us to come back to Him, over and over and over, again.  Why?  Because He loves us… absolutely, unconditionally and for all eternity… and nothing and no one will ever be able to change that.  It’s as if Jesus telling us something that I often hear Ron saying… “I love you and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.”
 
Now, if we look at the closing verse of our text for the morning, it says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
 
We are God’s handiwork…. In other words, we are God’s masterpieces, His precious works of art. 
 
And even if we stumble and lose our way at various times throughout our lives… that does not cause us to diminish in value in God’s eyes.  Why?  Because God loves us and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
 
God has a purpose and a plan for us and even when we get off track… God still loves us and still has a desire for us to do the “good works He has prepared in advance for us to do.”
 
In fact, listen to that last verse again as it appears in the Message, “He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
 
God does not let even our most challenging and difficult experiences go to waste. 
 
He can and will use those times when we get sidetracked to make us stronger and to better equip us to carry out the assignments He has for us to do. 
 
After all, who better than the recovering addict to help encourage and support someone battling with addiction – whether to drugs, alcohol, food, gambling or whatever else they may be struggling with?
 
But what about those times when we find ourselves wallowing in depression and despair not because of we have necessarily done anything wrong… but because life has simply thrown us one curve ball too many?  One too many health issues… one too many loved ones who have died… one too many financial setbacks… one too many career challenges.
 
Will God call us back even from those dark places where it feels as though we have lost all faith and lost all hope? 
 
Absolutely… even there… especially there.
 
Because it is there in those dark places that God reminds us that we are never alone… that He has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. 
 
It is over in Psalm 139, that the Psalmist David asks, “Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?”  And in answer to his own question, David realizes that from the highest heights of heaven to the deepest depths of Sheol… there is absolutely nowhere… no place… that God is not.
 
Likewise, Jesus told His disciples, “…surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).  And that is a promise that remains true for us today. 
 
Jesus will be with us always. He will never leave us alone.  He is the sure foundation on which we can stand… He is that solid rock that we read about throughout the Psalms… and He is our refuge and help in times of trouble… because honestly, we could never make it on our own… nothing we could do would ever be sufficient to make us right with God… so GOD DID IT for us.
 
God made a way for us when we were “dead in [our] transgressions and sin” as we are reminded in that first verse of our text…
 
And just how did God do it?  By giving us His Son and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, to take on the punishment that our sins and transgressions deserved… the punishment that led Him all the way to that cross at Calvary… solidifying what He said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
 
There has never been and there will never be a greater friend that we will ever find than Jesus.
 
God knew exactly who and what we would need… so GOD DID IT… God gave us the greatest gift we could have ever imagined… by giving us the BFF of all BFFs… Jesus.
 
And it is with that thought in mind that I want to invite us to stand now and join in singing our Hymn of Discipleship: What a Friend We Have in Jesus #585
 

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