Ephesians 2:8-10 Lent 4, 2021
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
CHOSEN!
By God’s grace
For God’s glory
How do feel about being chosen?
How do you feel about being chosen by God? I
It’s an important question to ask.
First, because its reality. You and I didn’t lift a finger to choose to become a follower of Jesus. God did the choosing. He saw to it that we came into contact with his message of forgiveness, and sent the Holy Spirit to lead us to trust that message.
Second, it’s an important question to ask, because the way we answer that question has an immense impact on our attitude toward God, toward each other, and toward the rest of the world.
And third, the way we answer that question affects what we do and say every day of our life.
So today, we look at these words of St. Paul, 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
In the light of these words, we consider:
CHOSEN!
By God’s grace
For God’s glory
Think back to when you were chosen for something.
Maybe you were picked to sing in a select choir or as first chair in the school band, or a spot on a sports team or a part in a play. Or think of applying for a job.
How does it feel to see your name on the “made it” list or listen to the person on the other end of the phone say, “We’d like you to work for us?” Those are fist pump moments! We can’t wait to tell our s and family!
Now being chosen for an activity in school or for a job, — these situations all have something in common. When we are chosen, we are chosen based on our qualifications. We are chosen because the “chooser” believes we have the right stuff to get a job done.
But things are entirely different when we talk about being chosen by God. God doesn’t’ choose us for salvation based on our qualifications, or any good sees in us. It happens because of God’s decision to reach out to us and help instead of leaving us stuck in sin. That is his decision to rescue us.
Let me illustrate. This is a true story, but I’m not going to mention a name. I’m simply going to refer to her are “our friend.”
It was a January night in 1997. Our friend finished the PM shift at the nursing home she worked at. It was snowing, but not that much, only 3-4 inches was forecast. It was however very cold, and the wind was howling. No travel was advised.
But our friend drove a four-wheel drive pick-up; had a blanket, extra coat, and a sleeping bag along in case; she had made this 12-mile drive home many times at night. As an extra level of security, she had one of these new cell phones to call her husband in case she needed it. All she wanted to do was get home and get to bed.
So, our friend set out the way she had done so many times before. She headed west to the edge of town where the state highway would curve then she would head south. Did I mention the wind? It was really blowing that night and hard to figure out exactly where the road ended and where the ditch began. After several minutes of driving, she found herself stuck.
She called for help. Help set out. But there was a problem.
The searchers drove up and down the highway. They couldn’t find the pick-up. Eventually there was communication between the sheriff’s department and her cell phone provider. Her phone was being picked up by a tower different than they expected. The search widened, but they still couldn’t find the pickup.
In the end it would take an Air Force jet to fly over and get a lock on the coordinates of her cell phone signal, a civilian pilot to fly overhead to help a team of people on snowmobiles to zero in on location. When that group knew they were close, they asked her to put on the pick-up lights, to finally locate her. That used the last bit of juice left in her battery. They got her to safety at the beginning of what would have been her third night in the pick-up. The rescue took 40 hours. Searchers were out in wind chills of 70 below. She was found four miles west of where she was originally expected to be.
Let’s get back to this “being chosen” idea. When God chooses us, it’s not like him going out looking to hire people or choosing people for his choir. He’s not making his choices based on what we can offer him.
Rather, when we hear it is by grace you are saved God is telling us he is choosing to rescue us, like the way rescuers found our friend.
Like our friend, we are stuck and facing a life-threatening situation.
Spiritually, we are stuck, not in a winter blizzard, but spiritually stuck in sin. Like our friend, we set out thinking we are fine. Like our friend, we are often confident we aren’t doing anything all that bad by ignoring the no travel advisory.
Sin and temptation, it’s like that. Take for example the sin of pride. There is nothing wrong with feeling good about the successes we have in life, whether they are financial or personal. But pride creeps in this way: instead of humbly crediting the blessing of God for success, pride leads us to take the credit for ourselves.
When we do that, a bunch of attitudes start to form in our minds.
- If we credit ourselves for every aspect of our success, we will logically need to find excuses for things that go wrong; if we are proud, it’s pretty hard to take personal responsibility, so we need to find something else to blame. Often it’s people. Sometimes it’s God himself.
- When we are full of pride, we are likely to become critical of others! After all, they haven’t achieved what we have achieved. There must be something wrong with them! And if we have a bold and outspoken personality, we might be quick to criticize folks either behind their back, or maybe to their face.
- And what do you think happens? Is it possible that we push away from us the people we are criticizing and attract ourselves to a limited circle of s who agree with us? Is it possible that they reinforce our pride and make it even harder to see?
Sin, it gets us stuck. How does God dig us out?
Well, the Bible says: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18) God has used total failure to get people’s attention. Think of Peter who whose pride led him to claim that even if all the disciples denied Jesus, he never would. He would sacrifice his life, rather than deny his Lord. Remember his fall. And like our friend, he had the whole Easter weekend to think about what he had done.
Or hopefully, before we totally disgrace ourselves, we listen to what God says: To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. (Proverbs 8:13) or what John writes:
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father[a] is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17)
God warns us that if our attitudes are mirroring what we see in the world, the people we see on TV and the secular stars of social media, we might very well be on the wrong road.
Let’s get back to our friend. After the ordeal, she had this to say: “I should have never left. I was kind of angry at myself because I did that. All these poor people had to help me, because it wasn’t too smart of me to do that,” she said.
Of the rescuers, she said, “I love them all, the lot.”
God chose to rescue you, and me, from sin. It took far more than God going out in a winter blizzard with 70 below wind chills. It took God to devise a plan to ask the Son to take our place, a plan of total sacrifice.
- God the Son became human, that is what Christmas is all about.
- Jesus began his ministry with his baptism, preaching, and healing and really shaking up the system as he drove the money changers from the temple.
- Jesus clearly revealed that he was true God to his leadership team of Peter, James, and John up to a special mountain. There he reveled his glory as his face shone like the sun and was visited by Moses and Elijah, the two leading prophets of the Old Testament. That is what Transfiguration is all about.
- He went to the cross, accepting responsibility for all that God hates in us, and paid for it all by his suffering and dying. That is what Good Friday is all about.
- Finally, he rose from the dead, to proclaim forgiveness. God no longer holds us accountable for the wrongs we have perpetrated. That is what Easter is all about.
Like our friend, we as rescued penitent sinners have a different attitude toward the wrongs we commit. She said she was angry at herself for doing what she did. So, we as chosen, rescued penitents, we must be angry at ourselves for the wrongs we’ve done in the past, and the ones we fall into today.
Secondly, realizing our poor choices cost Jesus so much, and took so much loving sacrifice to fix, it humbles us. We as chosen, rescued penitents realize we aren’t as good as we need to be, and we are certainly not better than anyone else.
Finally, realizing we are a chosen, rescued sinner, leads us to have a high opinion of our rescuer. Our friend said, “I love them all, a lot.” So, we love Jesus, and the Father, and the Spirit who works faith in our hearts. We love them a lot. What else can we do?
We can do what God has chosen us to do. You see, people who are chosen by grace, we are chosen for God’s glory. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
You see, God is asking us to do something. It follows logically when we have a strong feeling of appreciation for what God has done, we want to say, “thank you.”
So, what does that “thank you” look like?
Well, if Jesus went way out of his way to rescue us from sin, we have got to want to do sin’s opposite. We want to live life God’s way, staying away from sin and living in love. We do it, not just because it’s the right thing and we’ve discovered that it feels good to do the right thing. We do it because we have a new outlook on life with a new purpose. St. Paul put it this way: 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. As the chosen rescued people of God, God has reshaped us, recreated us to be doers of works that are an eternal blessing to others.
St. Peter builds on that thought when he wrote: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9) To declare God’s praises.
So, we do what is good and right…
- Not just because it provides a better life for us and others, even though it does…
- Not just because we find joy in doing the good and right thing, even though that happens too…
- We do what is good and right to serve the purpose of glorifying God. Our purpose is to do all we can, so people see God as the loving God who saves them from sin, and to let people know that we are doing all we do out of praise to him and love for him. This glorifies God.
- Finally, doing good this way, helps to keep that sinful pride that we were talking about earlier, in check.
We can learn how to do this. That is why I invite you to participate in our Bible study, entitled Our Spiritual Service, this Sunday at 10:30. We will offer it here in church and live on a Zoom conference. With this study, we hope to grow in appreciation of the gifts that God provides and discuss ways to effectively use our gifts to help people and to see our glorious God.
God has chosen us. He’s chosen us by his grace! He’s chosen us to give him glory. That’s an exciting way to live. Amen.