BROKEN FOR US: Grace and the Gospel

Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)

No Gospel Without Grace

This morning I want to share with you really a profound and important gospel message. You can't go wrong with the gospel message, amen? And I think the reason why I’m sharing it is, again, to remind us of our brokenness and just what Jesus did on the cross for us, so that we can really appreciate Easter, and so that we can really appreciate this season, because a lot of times it’s just easy to go through life, and we know, hey, we need to be excited about Easter, but it’s like, “Why do I need to be excited about Easter?” And so hopefully today that will bring some clarity to you again. And when we preach the gospel message, there’s something that always goes with the gospel message, and that is this word “grace.” And you will see it throughout this passage today, and I pray that you will experience that grace this morning in your own life.

Several years ago I took a Salem missions team to Israel, and we were doing some ministry in Palestine, and we ended up in a little area where we could spend some time in the Dead Sea, and it was just amazing in the Dead Sea kind of just, you know, you’re floating with the salt density that they have there, and then on our sabbatical we were able to go back again to a different area, and the salt density was even more intense there, right? And so when we think about the gospel message and this word “grace,” it’s like going to—or you have to see it together, otherwise it very much would be like the Dead Sea without salt. It will be like macaroni and cheese without cheese. It will be like a rock band without a drummer, a baby without dirty diapers (maybe we can go with that one), Bentleyville without Christmas lights, a car without a steering wheel, Duluth roads without potholes, coffee shop without coffee—and then I kind of went in the flesh, I was thinking about some things about Walmart and Packer fans, but I just said, I just rebuked, said, “Get behind me Satan,” so I will not share that with you this morning. And so we need to hang on to this word “grace” as we think about this incredible gospel message.

The Problem

So here’s the problem, Romans chapter 5:12.

Therefore, just as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this a way, death came to all people because all sinned…

And so here’s our challenge, here’s our problem that we all deal with—that when Adam allowed sin to enter into his life, that impacted everybody, and we all feel and experience the consequences of sin. And the good news this morning: we are all sinners, and we all have experienced the impact of sin in our lives and in our families. And really when you read that, that feels a little bit unfair, right? You can almost get a little upset, it’s like, “Man, I can’t believe Adam and Eve messed up like that,” and now we deal with that same consequences, and you see it throughout time in their kids and then next generation, and then it gets to a point where you have the Flood, right, and destruction, and then again, a kind of same thing, that sin just there the whole time, and constantly people are trying to deal with it, and you see the sacrifices, but ultimately nothing can deal with this. Nothing is powerful enough except… and we’ll get to that. I’ll share with you.

And so this morning I want to encourage you to turn your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter 2, and we’ll start in verse 1 to 10. I’ll give you a second to find that; you can do the Bible app or there’s a Bible in front of you. If you have your Bible, I want to encourage you to highlight several things. So Ephesians chapter 2:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of the world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

I’m gonna just stop there. Paul is communicating to the believers, and really this passage speaks to our lives too, and he is addressing our conditions before a relationship with Christ. And so he is talking about our condition and saying, “Hey, as for you, in your past, if you have not given your life to Jesus Christ, you were dead in your transgressions, in your sin.” And so he is not talking about a physical death here, but he is talking about a spiritual death. And so just as soon as you and I make those first noises as a baby and we are being born into this world, we are being born into sin, and we can see the impact, and we are spiritually dead, right?

And then God—and then it kind of just goes through the consequences, and it says that you and I wrestle through some of these things. We wrestle with our flesh. Can anybody relate? Anybody wrestle with their flesh now and again? Right? All of us. It’s always there. It’s always in front of us, the stuff that we don’t want to do we do, right, and the different temptations and things that’s out there and how we sometimes give into it. And then he says, “hey, there’s just this pull in the sin of this world and our culture that impacts us.”

And then thirdly, he reminds us that there is a spiritual one, there is an enemy, there is a devil at work as well in our life. So that’s a lot to handle, right? Your flesh, that’s big enough, that can keep us busy for a long time just to get that into control. Then you have all of the pressures of the world and the worldly culture, and then the enemy as well that is trying to bring destruction to our lives, to discourage us, to lead our paths and our purpose into destruction and to see death to it in God’s plan for our lives. And so there’s this constant battle, and we were living in that reality.

And then he continues, verse four:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

The Reality

So here’s the reality this morning as he paints this really dark picture. And it says, “Without a Savior, all people are dead in sin and incapable of any spiritual good; and that without a Savior, all people are captured and blinded by an evil supernatural spirit named Satan.” Right? So that sounds heavy, that sounds dark.

It was so funny this morning as we were working on the Keynote—Nick usually comes in and just spices it up, makes it a little pretty—and he clicked on my Grammarly to make sure it’s somewhat spelled correctly for a South African, right? And Grammarly made a note, I think it highlighted “blinded,” and it recommended to take out “blinded” because it might be too offensive, right? It’s like, “Maybe you need to use a different word.” And it’s like, no, we need to understand the weight of the reality of the things that we are living into this world, that we were blinded, right, and that there is a world out there that is still blinded and that are being affected by all of these things that are coming against them. But it says, “But God,” right? And then it’s like, we’re gonna hear about God’s grace.

God’s Solution

Now this morning, just kind of how to get our heads around this idea of grace—because we hear it, we hear it a lot in church, but what does that all mean for us? So here’s just several definitions:

Grace is the love of God shown to the unlovely (that’s all of us), the peace of God given to the restless, the unmerited favor of God.

Grace is God’s riches at Christ’s expense.

Grace is everything for nothing to those who don’t deserve anything.

And then from Cru Ministries:

People tend to think of God’s grace as being merely forgiveness. This is the greatest gift, but not His only one. Grace is an unmerited gift from God in any form. Paul rightly recognizes that every gift you receive from God is grace—even the abilities and strength you seem to possess naturally.

And then from Matt Chandler:

Without a heart transformed by the grace of Christ, we just continue to manage external and internal darkness.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is our situation and our reality before Christ and what the world is still experiencing. But then we have this little note here, verse four, it says, “But God…” He comes and changes everything in our lives. We get to a place where we get to experience hope and where we get to experience the light of Christ and where we can experience freedom, right, because of his grace in our lives. And so, as we work towards Easter and as we’re getting excited about Easter, it should stir up in us—when we look back at our lives, the things that we were involved in, right? And then “But Christ,” how Christ came in and he changed and transformed, and he set us free, and he gave us hope, right? And that’s what we get to experience, that nothing is impossible for God, that God can come into this life and into the situation in our own brokenness, and because of Christ’s brokenness on the cross, now you and I get to experience healing and restoration and hope. Can I hear an amen? That’s exciting. That’s wonderful news for all of us.

By Grace Alone

And then it just, it reminds us that it is by grace and by grace alone. We are not saved by our works, right? Nothing that you and I can do can earn that. All of those things will fall short of that grace. It’s only by faith in Jesus Christ and what he has done for us, nothing else. And yet so many times—I know in my own life, right?—trying to do all the right things, trying to restore my own brokenness and things, and it was only when I gave over and when I gave my life to Christ, right, and to start that process and to really realize like, “Hey, I can’t do this.” Everything falls short. It doesn’t matter how many times I go to church, right, or all of the religious stuff that we sometimes do. It’s got to be His presence. It’s got to be really that revelation again of what Jesus Christ has done on the cross for us and opening up our hearts with faith to receive Him. And in that moment is when things start to change in our hearts. And there’s an ongoing process. That sanctification, that growing and that healing takes some time.

And even in all reality, when we think about our brokenness—a lot of times, when we give our life to Christ, there’s still some deep hurts and brokenness that you and I experience, and we have to be intentional in the way that we reach out and allow to have conversation with God, to pray, to seek help and say, “God, come and restore me.” But yet again, a lot of times we are so embarrassed, and we think, “Oh, maybe I’m just gonna hide this from God,” right, “and I’m gonna just hide this from other people. I can’t allow people to see my brokenness.” And that is so the wrong approach in that God really wants us to first of all be honest with Him. He knows our heart, he knows our brokenness in any case, and he wants to sweep in with the work of the Holy Spirit and to start to bring healing and start to bring deliverance in those lives. And then he put the body of Christ next to us—Dean preached a little bit last week about this, that we need each other—because when we are hurting and when we’re dealing with these heavy stuff, a lot of times we have the temptation to go into isolation, right, and then you’re just open again for lies and voices of the enemy, and so the sooner we can come out and the sooner we can come and bring our brokenness into the light, then God can come and restore. He actually has done that already on the cross for us. So His healing and restoration and salvation is available for us every day. But it’s just about, can we take the boldness, can we be vulnerable enough with our brokenness and weaknesses and to say, “Lord, here I am. I surrender. I give over. You have done it in any case. I don’t need to carry all of this brokenness and hurt any longer.” And it is by grace.

You Have a Purpose

And then he says, “Hey, you are his handiwork,” right, “and he Created you with a purpose.” What a contrast. When we just look at that first part, the first part looks so dark, you know, when it talks about our transgressions and how we’re influenced by the flesh and by the enemy and by the world, and then it turns around with what Jesus Christ has done, and it reminds us like, man, you are created in his image by God himself. Your life is not wasted, right? And then he has a plan and a purpose for your life, and at the end of the day, all of us need to kind of go and figure that out. “God, what do you want with my life? Why have you blessed me with all of these wonderful gifts and talents,” and some of you have many wonderful gifts and talents, you know, except Dean. He used his gift up last Sunday with the one good sermon. So it’s done, so pray for Dean.

But it is, it’s like—and then God comes—sorry, I think he still loves me, right? That was just for the text that I received all Saturday. So Dean was in my head. I was like, “Man, I got to step up my game here this morning,” right?

But it is beautiful when we realize again, just, “Man, I am created by God. I am created by God.” You are loved this morning. And it’s not just a button that you and I wear—it’s a good reminder, right?—but at some point God’s Word, his promises, need to hit our hearts and our mind, and we need to walk into that reality and say, “Hey, I don’t have to listen to the lies of the enemy. I don’t have to live in that brokenness anymore.” There’s something way more beautiful and better, and God will come and he will take that brokenness, and as he restores us, guess what? Now, as we live out our purpose, we lift up God as well, and he gets all the glory. And that’s why Paul is saying like, “Man, I’m gonna only boast about my weaknesses,” because, as I’m boasting about my weaknesses, God gets all the glory, right, and I don’t have to act like I’m all strong and that I have it all together. We can be a church where we’re actually pretty vulnerable and say, “Man, there’s all stuff that’s happening in my life.”

Grace Is For Everyone

This week Venessa and I experienced all kinds of challenges. I can’t go into all of the details right now, but I was just realizing again how vulnerable life is, right? How vulnerable—there’s just so many different things that can happen. So Sunday in our conference, right, we do a whole weekend, beautiful, fun date night, all expanses, like Venessa got away again with a really expensive date night, and then yesterday she just took me for a walk. So again, you know, please have that conversation with Venessa. She needs to step up her game. And then Sunday morning we wake up, and I was like, man, you figure out some stuff and you deal with some brokenness pieces, and like, “Ugh, I just thought we had this in control,” and then, you know, you deal with stuff, and you realize the brokenness, and then even through the week, it’s like for us to just be on a place where we’re constantly in that need of Jesus Christ, constant need of Jesus Christ, and where we just pray for his grace.

And so this morning, as we come to the Lord’s table, I really want to encourage you, if you have never given your life to Jesus Christ, to really make that a priority this morning. Jesus Christ died for you. If watching even this online, I want you to know that you are loved and that you can experience the grace and the forgiveness of God this morning in your lives. Don’t let your sin and your brokenness hold you back from the freedom that God has for you. And so I want to just, as we come to the Lord’s table this morning, just want to pray for us. So let’s pray.

If You’re sitting here this morning and you can relate to this passage in Ephesians and just that life before Christ—if that’s you this morning, if you are walking in darkness and being influenced by the flesh and influenced by the spiritual world, by the enemy, and you just even wonder, “How do I break free from all of this? Where’s the hope this morning?” The hope is available, and that’s in Jesus Christ. And so this morning it maybe just, it starts with a prayer for you to just invite Jesus Christ into your life and just say, “Jesus, here I am. I’m a sinner in need of a savior, and I believe this morning that you died on the cross for me. Thank you for dying on the cross for me as a sinner, and I just receive your forgiveness now in my life. I repent of my old life, and I pray now that you will just create in me a new life, a new person, in Jesus’ name.”

If you prayed that this morning for the first time, we would love to hear from you and encourage you and support you, and so please let us know with an email, with a text, or just have conversation with the staff as well.