SUMMER BREAK: I Can Impress God With My Good Works

Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)

Today I want to focus on two ideas, or sometimes really bad theology, that can creep into the church, and a lot of times we do believe it. And one is the idea that we can impress God with our good deeds. I don’t know if you have experienced that, right, where it’s like, “man, I’m gonna impress God if I do this and do that.” The second part to that that is actually a little bit more dangerous, that hopefully we can have some clarity on today, is the idea or false belief that we can earn our salvation by good works. And hopefully, again, like I said, we can look at God’s Word, and we can allow the Holy Spirit to minister to us this morning.

Our Attempts to Impress People

I think all of these things are formed throughout our lives. We are constantly trying to attempt to impress people. You agree? If you’re not agreeing, you’re probably lying. It starts from a young age, right? When you think about dating, right? Or when you met your wife, and before you got engaged, and all this silly stuff that you did to try and impress her, and to show that you are the one. Just before I met Venessa, I had a female friend. We weren’t dating, but we were just kind of feeling things out, and I had an old Beetle that I was driving, and she said, “We should go to the movies.” I said, “Well, I’ll drive. I’ll pick you up.” And so I vacuumed the car, it was all nice, and I got there, and we just got in. I drove several miles, and we ran out of gas. And I had to push her while we were going to the nearest gas station—I think it was too far. By the time we got there, I was all sweaty and all embarrassed. And so, it’s like, well, there goes that impression piece, right? Luckily, it went way better with Venessa.

Maybe even just with all of our achievements, right? There is such a push in our lives to say, “What’s the next best thing and big thing that I can achieve,” right? “When I have this, and when I have done that, then I can really be impressive.” And maybe even today, it’s you bringing your motorcycle, right? And you spent all weekend trying to clean that thing up, and it’s like, “I’m gonna have the cleanest bike.” I had back in the day—now I only have a mountain bike—but back in the day, I had a little Honda Shadow. And when I had some of these events, and I always tried to clean up that chrome. It’s like, man, that thing’s got to shine, right? And then I got lazy. It’s like, “Eh, I’m not gonna impress anybody,” right? And it’s always impressive when you go to some of these bike rallies and you see these incredible bikes, and the care that people take to clean, and how they take care of it.

Achievement-Driven Culture

But it is built into our lives. We live in an achievement-driven culture. We learn from a young age that effort and results are rewarded. This mindset, while beneficial in many aspects of our lives, can lead us to believe that we can earn God’s favor through our actions. So when this mindset has been part of our lives all the time, no wonder that this can creep into our relationship with God, and where we might think, “Well, if I’m just acting and doing all the right things, then I’m gonna be in good standing with God. Then I’m gonna experience his favor.” And I have done that many times as a kid, just growing up in church, and not really understanding the salvation message. And it’s like, “Well, if I just go to church, then God is not gonna be mad at me.” And you walk around constantly thinking, “Okay, now I’ve done something wrong. Now God is gonna zap me.” And we totally don’t have a good biblical understanding of God’s grace and his love and the whole salvation message.

Busyness and Distractions

And just—life is so busy. Again, when we’re in church and when we’re in work and school, our calendar is truly full. It’s like we’re just in this achievement mode on, “What can I achieve next so that I, you know, can earn more money or can please my parents or please God,” right? And we see even this story in Luke chapter 10. If you have your Bible with you, I want to encourage you to turn with me to Luke chapter 10, starting in verse 38. It’s a well-known story for those of you that are part of church family. There’s some of you, this might be a new story.

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations…

You can highlight that word there, “distracted.”

… by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

A little sassiness there.

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

In this busyness of our life and trying to maybe achieve God’s favor in doing, we can really miss out on the one thing that God actually wants us to experience, and that is a deep relationship with him. And there’s a couple of things that we learned from this passage. And again, if you don’t know the story, Jesus visits with his inner circle. He’s really good friends with them. And one of the sisters are slaving away. She’s in the kitchen. She’s preparing a meal. And I don’t blame her, because again, when you understand Jewish culture, it is very much a hospitality culture. And here you have Jesus coming into, with his disciples probably, and somebody’s got to cook. Somebody’s got to prepare a meal. Somebody’s got to clean the house, right? When we hear that we’re gonna have visitors, it’s like, man, clean the toilet, right? Vacuum. You get the house ready. You’re trying to be a good host, and rightfully so. And so Martha is just scrambling, she’s preparing the meal. And again, imagine Jesus is visiting. You probably don’t want to just put, you know, whatever Minnesota dish. You’re gonna bring out the best. Not gonna do potato tots, probably, right? Is that the…? You are gonna scramble to bring out the steak and lobster. And so Mary, on the other hand, is hanging out with Jesus.

And so today, I want you to know this: to deepen our relationship with God, we need to eliminate distractions that pull us away from his presence.

This past week, I had the joy to be home. I had extra vacation days, so I stayed home for two days. And usually, I don’t like that. I don’t like to stay home. I want to go away when I’m on vacation. And there was just all of these things that I needed to do, right? And so you clean, you try and repair, just that—it’s a long list of things. And so I’m just up early in the morning just thinking about all of these projects that I have, and you know, at least in my mind, I was like, “Man, I’m gonna be able to read, to spend quality time with God,” and then you find yourself again it’s like, man, there’s just so many distractions and things that are pulling us in a different direction. And so this is happening to Martha as well. She is—again, I can totally understand it. She’s serving. She’s preparing a meal for them. And Mary is using that opportunity to be at the feet of Jesus. And just to say, in our life—and even as this summer is starting and kicking off here for us—what is that gonna look like? Right? Are we gonna be so busy, be so distracted, that we, again, miss those moments where we can be at the feet of God? Or will we look back at the summer and it’s like, man, it was just crazy busy, full of distractions, and I didn’t spend any time with him?

Mary’s example teaches us the importance of seeking an intimate relationship with Jesus, one that goes beyond surface-level interaction to a deep, personal connection. This is at the heart of Jesus. He wants to have a deep, personal relationship with us. But again, one of those things that can get in the way constantly is distractions. It is not easy for us in our culture to actually sit still and to just be in God’s presence, to pray, and to read his Word.

Now, the other part of it is, in our world and society, there is some work that we need to do. So there needs to be a fine balance here. We must be both worshipers and workers. But don’t just focus on the working piece. And a lot of times for us in our culture, and as Minnesotans, and as hard workers, that’s easy for us to say, “Man, I’m just gonna go, go, go. I’m gonna work hard.” But then we miss out on the worshiping piece.

Bad Theology

So here’s where the really bad and dangerous theology can creep into all of this. To say, “Maybe I can earn my salvation by my good deeds. Maybe I can earn my salvation through good deeds.” Now, Isaiah 64 tells us this. It says:

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

The prophet Isaiah is saying, “Hey, you can’t do it. It is messy when you’re gonna try and save yourself. When you think through your righteous acts and through your righteous works, it is just not gonna cut it. Actually, God sees it as a filthy rag.”

Why Do We Fall Short?

So why does our works fall short? Why won’t your work cut it? Well, God is perfectly holy and just. His standards are beyond our human ability to meet. Our best efforts can never bridge the gap between us and a holy God. Romans 3:23 reminds us, it says, “For all have sinned and all for short of the glory of God.” We are talking about a huge spiritual gap. Because we live in this sinful world, right, and before we have received the salvation message, received the gift of salvation in our lives, there’s a gap between us and God. And nothing that you and I can do in the flesh can build that bridge. There’s only one thing that can build that bridge, and that is what Jesus Christ did on the cross for us.

No amount of good deeds can erase the stain of sin. The Law given to the Israelites were never intended as a means of salvation, but to show them their need for a Savior. Galatians 2:16 states, “By the works of the law, no one will be justified.” And that’s the beauty even of the Law, when we look at the Law, right? And where Jewish people right now are missing it when you’re not a believer, it’s like, trying to obey all of those laws. And guess what? The laws were created to show us that we are in need of a Savior. Because we can’t do it. We will constantly fail. We cannot do it in our own works.

Timothy Keller with this quote, it says, “Christians don’t believe that goodness gets you to heaven. Christians believe it’s exhausting to rely on your own goodness to please God.” It will wear you out if you’re gonna live in that reality or with that false truth or lie that you can please God through your works. Nothing that you and I have that we offer to God can impress Him.

How Can We Impress God?

There is though maybe two things here that we can—or one thing that we can ponder on how to impress God, and that’s in Hebrews 11:6. And it says:

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

There’s only one way to impress God, and that is through our faith, when we have absolute faith in him.

This week I got the opportunity to watch the documentary that’s on—I think it’s on Prime, I’m not sure—on the Blue Angels. I know there’s some Blue Angel fans out here. Really enjoyed the documentary. I want to encourage you, if you have some time, you can watch it. So impressed with the pilots and the quality of the men and women that’s part of this group. But what was interesting to me—usually from what I could pick up with commercial airliners, the pilot will check everything before they take off, right, and go through all of the instruments, and make sure there’s enough fuel and everything. But with the Blue Angels, there’s kind of a culture in there where the pilot will do the salute to the rest of the crewmen, and he will get into his plane, and he won’t check any of the instruments or the condition of the plane. It’s about total trust in his crew. And God wants that, in a sense, from us as well, where we totally trust Him with our lives and with every situation in our lives.

I don’t know about you—and because a lot of us are control freaks, you know, maybe thinking that, you know, you’re a Blue Angel pilot, just to get in and say, “Well, let me just make sure that there’s enough gas. Did these guys really check everything?” And a lot of times we treat God the same way, acting like he doesn’t have our best interest at heart. And it’s like, no, we can trust God just in the same way that these pilots are trusting their crew members, even more so. We have a God that is perfect, a God that has proven himself faithful, right? We can trust him with our lives.

The Gospel Message

Ephesians 2 verse 89 says:

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and it is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works that no one can boast.

And so here’s the heart of the gospel message for us today. And you got to—if you’ve missed everything else so far, listen to this. Salvation is a free gift given by God. You and I don’t earn it. We can’t earn it. It is absolutely the work of Jesus Christ on that cross that have given us this incredible blessing of salvation. And that you and I can now be called righteous, right? And to be justified, to be standing justified before God. But it is totally a gift from God. Nothing that you and I can do. Because we can try and boast in the stuff that we can do, but guess what? It will all fall short. You and I have absolutely nothing to give. Now and again, I will be having coffee with people, and it is amazing through the conversation sometimes how these works-based theology can creep into the conversation, where people are worried about their salvation, thinking, “Oh, I have to earn it,” right? And it’s about doing the right thing. But this is it. It’s like for us to realize that you and I can relax today, and to say, I’m putting my trust not in myself. I’m not putting trust in my good gifts and putting trust in my abilities, but I’m all putting my trust in what Jesus Christ did on the cross.

The Purpose of Our Works

Now for us as believers, that doesn’t mean there’s not work to be done. There is a purpose for works. Micah 6:8 says this:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

So what do we do? And when you study the Bible, you always see, sometimes there’s a tension between the book of James and the book of Romans. It might seem like they’re contradicting each other, but they’re not. When you read James, you might feel, or kind of get a sense that he’s saying, “Hey, you have to work to earn your salvation,” but that is not the case.

So when we are saved, when we have received salvation, our works are a response to God’s grace, not a means to earn it. James tells us, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” And so what he’s saying, when you have received Christ into your life, there will be fruit of works. The good works will come out of your life because the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. Our works are the outpouring of a heart transformed by the love and grace of God. We are called to live out our faith through acts of love, kindness, and service, reflecting the character of Christ in us.

I’ll give you a last quote here:

“Good works performed by believers aren’t the basis of salvation but should be understood as the necessary evidence of that salvation.”

So this morning, the takeaway for us is this as we look at biblical theology on salvation—and believe me, and you might be fully aware of doctrine in certain denominations that says that we have to work for our salvation. And this is not the case. What a blessing this morning. Christianity is probably one of those only religions where God has done all of the work, right? Where we don’t have to work for it. This is why it was so incredible—when you study the book of Ephesians, this was a crazy concept when Paul was teaching to the Ephesians, the Ephesian church, because they were used to trying to please all of these different gods. And suddenly Paul is saying, “Hey, you don’t have to try and please God. Jesus Christ already did it on the cross.” Is that good news? It is.