Sermon Tone Analysis

God’s Grace – A Creative Masterpiece

Good morning!

I am so glad to be here with you this morning!

Thank you so much for inviting my family and me up here to spend this Lord’s Day with you.

I consider it a great honor to be invited into your pulpit to not only share God’s Word with you but to also be considered for the Senior Pastor position here at the Baptist Fellowship of Randolph.

This is not our first time here, some of you might remember.

In 2014 my family, including my two oldest who are not here today because they have grown up, came here to present our ministry to plant a church with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) on the Island of Saipan out in the Pacific Ocean.

You guys lifted us up before the Lord during our 4 years of ministry in Micronesia.

Thank you for that!

If you were able to come to the potluck last night, you got to hear the about the Joneses, so I will not go over all that again this morning.

If you were not here last night, the short version is this.

I am Billy Jones, that talented lady that I just sang with is my wife Joy.

My youngest child William is sitting over there.

My wife and I have been married for 25 years this coming June.

We have been doing ministry together even before that.

We met at a Christian University and started ministry in a Chinese church!

I started teaching the Bible when I was just 15 years old, 10 years after I was saved… I don’t know what took me so long… God Saved me when I was just 5 years old.

I still remember kneeling in the cinder block hallway outside of my Sunday School room, asking in earnest for God to forgive me of my sins and to save me from the punishment of Hell.

He did, He saved me by the richness of His Grace!

That is what I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about Grace.

That same Grace Joy and I just sang about.

Our text this morning is Ephesians 2:1-10.

Let’s start by reading God’s Word.

1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Grace is the topic this morning and it is the central thought in this passage.

The title of the message this morning is “Grace – God’s Creative Masterpiece.”

I want to walk you through this passage and show you how the message of the Cross is a message of beauty.

The most beautiful painting ever painted, the best story ever written, the most glorious sculpture ever carved, and how you can be a trophy in that masterpiece He has created.

It is going to take me a minute or two to get there, so strap in and hang on, lets look at our text again.

Ephesians 2:1-3

1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

My first point for you this morning is this:

We must REALIZE our sinful state, that we are stillborn, we are spiritually dead.

We all are born dead because of our sin nature inherited from Adam and we live as a slave to our sin nature, accomplishing the goals and whims of Satan.

Every single one of us came into this world a sinner.

There are no exceptions.

God’s Word tells us, “All have sinned, all have fallen short of God’s standard.”

Every single one of us.

“One who is dead spiritually has no communication with God; he is separated from God.”

We are all born totally separated from God.

Paul explained to the Ephesians and to us that when we are living in that spiritually dead state, we are serving the Master of the Word.

The Prince of Power of the Air, this Spirit is working in the Sons of disobedience… Who is that you ask, who are the “sons of disobedience?

Well, that is you if you have not experienced the Grace of God.

That is me before I accepted Christ.

That is every person born on this planet who does not have faith in the saving Grace of Jesus Christ.

I want to make sure you get this.

Everyone who enters this world does so in a spiritually stillborn state.

As such, you have no relationship with God, without faith in God’s Grace, you serve Satan.

This verse tells us that every person without Christ lives “in the lust of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, ….

Children of wrath.”

Ephesians 6:12 tells us, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Max Anders said it like this, “We followed the ways of this world.

That is, we lived according to the non-Christian value system.

This value system is created and energized by Satan (the ruler of the kingdom of the air).

This does not mean that non-Christians realize that their values are created and energized by Satan.

In fact, most would probably deny it.

Nevertheless, Satan, in his craftiness, places the things in front of us that we, in our sinful condition, find attractive, and, therefore, pursue as though they were our ideas… Our Satanically energized value system motivated us to gratify illicit desires.

As a result, we were objects of wrath, meaning God’s wrath, just like all other non-Christians.”

But wait pastor, you said this sermon was something about a beautiful masterpiece… a trophy…

I am getting there!

Listen to this story.

Satan thought for sure this time that he would add Martin to his trophy collection.

He had his game plan outlined in sinister detail: blind him from seeing the gospel during his formative youthful years, offer him the lie that he could take care of his own problems, hook him with addictions, and destroy his marriage.

“By the time I’m through with him, he will be all mine,” Satan thought to himself.

So confident was he, that he began his celebration early by giving a thumbs-up to his demon henchmen.

“Boys, take some time off.

Martin is going in our trophy case.”

Martin lived most of his adult life in the gutter.

Over the years, his heart had become as hard as a rock.

He would scoff with disdain whenever anyone would share the gospel with him.

“I don’t need any religion.

I’m a man’s man,” was his rehearsed speech.

Over the course of life, he became an alcoholic which ruined his career and marriage.

By the time he was 50 years old, he was as good as dead, an accident waiting to happen.

Unknown to Martin, God was at work in his life.

Martin did not know that God also has a trophy case that is filled with trophies that resembled Martin.

God takes personal pleasure in redeeming people just like Martin and in showing them off as trophies of His mercy.

Thus God had a plan for Martin’s life: replace his heart of stone with a heart of flesh, open his eyes to see his need for a Savior, and allow other believers to have a burden for him.

God wanted to heal Martin from his addictions.

The result: Martin became a trophy of God’s mercy.

He was saved.

He was added to God’s great trophy case of believers, of people who have experienced God’s great mercy.

Now, whose trophy are you?

The first step in refusing to be in Satan’s trophy case is REALIZING our sinful state, that we are still born, we are spiritually dead.

For our next step let’s look at:

We must REPENT of our sins, turning to faith in the salvation offered by the creator.

Ephesians 2:4-8

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,