What a great day to be in the house of the Lord. Amen. Please open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 2, if you would. If you're new here, my name is Ricky. I'm one of the pastors here at the church.
We've been in the book of Ephesians for a number of years, and right now Lenny is wondering why the screen says 1 Peter 2 and I've just said go to Ephesians 2. Here's the problem, Lenny. The problem was I looked at my message yesterday and I thought, you know what, there's just not enough Grace in it. Grace is like cowbell. You can never have enough of it in your message.
And so we're going to— we're going to keep the same 4 points, Lenny, but I'm going to be teaching them from Ephesians, where we've spent a lot of time to hopefully make some connections between what we've been hearing. And particularly this morning, we're going to talk about what we are calling the core 4. I think Alec Shoft is the guy that came up with the pithy name for them. The 4 commitments that we're trying to unite together around and why those are the 4. So we're gonna be looking at Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 through 10 to kind of kick us off, and then we'll walk through a number of sections of the book today.
Ephesians 2, verses 8 through 10. By God's grace, this should be familiar to you, but it should be no less exciting. The news should sound no less good for hearing it the hundredth time. Amen. Ephesians 2, verses 8 through 10.
This is God's Word: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. This is God's word.
And Lord, I pray for your blessing on the preaching of the word of the Lord today.
And then, well, here's what I believe every human being knows deep down. We were made for more. More than just making money, more than even just finding a spouse and having a perfect love story, more than having a fulfilling or rewarding career, more than being entertained. We were made, we were hardwired for more. But life then is constantly frustrating for us because we have been cut off and alienated from the things we long most deeply for.
And I think we long most deeply for 3 things. One, we long to be connected to our Creator. We search for our Creator in every sunset, in every great movie, in every ecstatic experience, but we've been cut off from that Creator, that one that we have been made to know and be known by. Second, we long for a true, Family. That's what we are looking for in every wedding and every Christmas.
But ultimately, our families often end up with jagged edges. They have brokenness in them. There's grief and conflict and loss and hurt. And third, we long for a true purpose. This is what we try to find in a career path and an all-consuming hobby.
But ultimately, we cannot be what we were made to be. We cannot do what we are made to do because, again, we've been cut off from God and our true purpose.
But Ephesians lays out the glorious truth that changes all three of those things, and that truth is simply grace. Grace means simply the undeserved gift of God's affection and love. It is a gift, not that we did anything. In fact, Ephesians lays out the opposite, that we've done all of these things. We've cut ourselves off from God. We've run away from from God, we've alienated ourselves from God, and yet God responds with grace, with undeserved love. And that grace changes everything for us. First, that grace restores us to God.
It restores us to the thing that we were made for. Ephesians 2 says, uses the language that we were once far off from God because of our sin, but now have been brought near to God through Jesus Christ. Second, grace means that we are restored to a true family. Paul— we'll talk about this in a second— but uses the extreme illustration of Jews and Gentiles, right, opposed in every way to one another, brought together in Christ, creating that family that we were made for, that we long for. And third, grace restores us to our purpose.
As we just saw, this grace changes us, and then we become his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we have a purpose on our lives. So I truly believe that grace is the longing of every human heart, that we long to experience grace, to live grace, to share that grace with others.
And what we see then in Ephesians is the connection between grace and the church. The grace of God, when it comes into our lives, when it comes into the world, creates a church. A church, a body of people restored to God, restored to one another, restored to purpose, and then sends that church out into the world.
Now, the irony then, though, is that every year, I don't know if you keep track of these statistics, every year we hear statistics that in the US, fewer and fewer people are going to church, right? Fewer and fewer people every year. It's not like it's gonna suddenly go up, I don't think. I think this is where we're at. And here's the problem, here's the irony.
The people that leave church, what they are looking for deep down is actually the church, right? They leave the church because they're looking for purpose, looking for family, looking for community, looking for a connection to the divine, right? They leave the church looking for those things, But Ephesians shows us those things are actually all found in the church. The problem is so often the church does not do a good job of actually being the thing that God created it to be, despite the fact that the church is, I believe, the deep longing of every human heart. We were made for it.
6 · The pastor signals the structural shift into the sermon's body by introducing the four core commitments, framing them as the church's response to the grace described in Ephesians
So what does that then mean for us as a church? Well, we want to be what Ephesians is laying out for us. And so we— our attempt to be what Ephesians is laying out is summarized in these four kind of what we're calling the core four commitments and their responses, as you'll see, to God's grace coming to us.
7 · The pastor expounds the first commitment—Sunday corporate worship—grounding it in Ephesians
So the first commitment: Sundays, gathering. We experience grace and then we respond to worship.
Sundays are where we experience grace and respond in worship. You see this all throughout the book of Ephesians. It begins in Ephesians 1:3. Where Paul can't even get into the body of the letter without saying, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places." And he just keeps praising God through the whole book. Ephesians 3:20, "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.
Amen." Paul is, if you could imagine him singing and talking alternatively throughout Ephesians, he sings and then he talks and talks and sings, back and forth, back and forth. Why? Because when grace comes to us, when we are restored by grace to God, worship is the response.
8 · The pastor clarifies his definition of worship, distinguishing between a narrow view (singing only) and the biblical view (all acts of responding to God in the gathered assembly)
Now, when I say worship, a lot of you are thinking like, okay, so the main point of the whole gathering is just the singing time? Like, that's the main thing?
Then why do we spend so much time with you talking? Like, that's— should we get back to the singing? Well, when I say worship, I don't just mean singing. I mean all of what the Bible calls worship, that this response of seeing our Creator and our hearts responding in worship.
9 · The pastor tells the story of Danny, a worship leader who persistently taught the band that their purpose was worship, not performance
Look, I started playing on the worship team when I was 14 because I liked music.
But one of our worship leaders, his name was Danny, would remind us over and over every practice— Neil remembers this— every practice he would just remind us, we were— we're here to worship, guys. We're not here to show off. We're not here to do cool synth solos. We're here to worship. That's what we're doing.
Everything else we're doing on the band, it's just to help people see who the Lord is and respond in their hearts to him. And he would say it, and I would be like, cool, cool. I got a cool part, though. You know?
And over and over, after about 100 Sundays, I think it finally sank in. Oh, that's what I'm doing. And Danny later contracted cancer, and he would— he would come to church and I would talk to him, and he was physically uncomfortable. He would admit it was difficult to focus. It was hard to even focus on the message.
It was hard to sing. One of the hardest things was he wasn't able to sing freely the way he longed to, but he came every possible Sunday he could. And until the Lord called him home because of what he'd been telling our team for decades, that when you come here on Sunday, it's not ultimately about you. It's ultimately about him. It's ultimately about us gathering, because gathering to God, because God has gathered us to himself, and then seeing the Lord and responding in worship.
That is what we are made to do.
10 · The pastor offers a hypothetical scenario—a young mother unable to fully focus during the service due to caring for a child—to illustrate that even partial, distracted participation in corporate worship is seen and valued by God as an act of worship
You know, sometimes when you have young kids, I was talking to somebody about this recently, when you got a 2 or 3-year-old and you come and maybe, you know, the child has to sit with you in the service, or maybe they're 9 months and, you know, and you're kind of half focused. And Jen has many of these Sundays where you're half focused on the teaching and songs. You can maybe half sing one of the songs and you got to feed the baby, and then you're trying to half listening to the message and you just, You leave and you think, "What was the point of all that? I don't even remember the 3 points.
I think I remember half of 1 point, sang half a song, and now I'm leaving." But that sacrifice from that young mom matters to God as an act of worship. That young mom offers half a song, whatever she could, and the Lord sees it and is glorified. And that is a response, right? That's a response to grace because grace draws us to God, unites us to God, and when we gather in God's presence, everything we do from the beginning to the end of the service is worship, right?
11 · The pastor unpacks the various elements of the Sunday gathering—preaching, singing, baptisms, dedications, communion, prayer—and redefines each as an act of worship rather than mere religious activity
When we hear the word preached, what we're really doing is not learning a few decent life tips, 'cause you can just find that at a TED Talk. You can find that on a popular blog. No, what we're doing when we open this book is we are beholding God in his word, responding in worship, and are being changed on the most most fundamental level of our hearts. That's what we're doing when we sing. We're not just enjoying the music, but we are singing as an act of worship. And as we do that, we find ourselves encouraged and strengthened and blessed.
When we cheer for baptisms or child dedications, we worship. When we take communion, we remember what Christ has done and worship. When we pray for things, we come to the Lord in worship and offer then in light of who he is and what he's done, prayers for what he would continue to do.
12 · The pastor applies the theology of Sunday worship by calling the congregation to prioritize Sunday gathering, to view all acts of service (greeting, serving, giving, inviting) as worship, and to recognize that the purpose of Sunday is not excellence in performance but the corporate response of worship to God's grace
So what that means for us is this: we believe Sunday is the best day of the week. We make Sunday something that we as Christians build our lives around, not something we fit in when it is convenient.
We, we, we commit that in light of what God's done for us, in light of his grace to us, man, we are going to be here. To respond, to behold what he's done and respond in worship. And I wanna encourage everybody who serves on a Sunday team that what you're doing in serving donuts or in greeting people or in helping people find a seat, that is not just doing stuff, that is an act of worship to the Lord. I wanna encourage you that if you give to the church, that moment of giving when the funds leave your bank account, whether it's, you know, online or with a check or whatever, that is an act of worship. You're saying, Lord, you are this valuable.
Like, we honor you with what you've given us. When we invite others to church, we invite them to behold who God is and see the deepest longing of their heart found in their Creator that they can be restored to with grace. All of it, all of this, that's why Sunday is here, not because we think our band is the best or our teaching is interesting. We're here to worship. That's why we commit to Sundays.
13 · The pastor transitions to the second core commitment—community groups—framing it as living out the new family identity created by grace
Second, Our second commitment is to community groups. We live then the grace of the new family of Christ together. We live the grace of a new family of Christ together.
14 · The pastor expounds Ephesians 2:13-16, showing that Christ's work on the cross did not merely reconcile individuals to God but created one new unified people out of formerly hostile groups (Jews and Gentiles)
Ephesians 2 says it this way, verse 13: But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.
By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might— listen to this— might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
15 · The pastor critiques the American individualistic "me and Jesus" Christianity, arguing that Ephesians' consistent use of plural pronouns ("we," "us") demonstrates that redemption is corporate, not individualistic
One of the things we fight in America is Americans often think of their faith as just me and Jesus, and they think of their relationship to the church as, okay, it's me and Jesus, and then if you, church, can help me, in my relationship to Jesus, then great. And sometimes churches respond then by going, okay, yeah, yeah, well, I guess you're, you know, I guess it is you and Jesus. So we'll just offer things to kind of help you and Jesus, which, listen, I'm not saying it's not important. Your relationship with God is not important.
But Ephesians 2 uses the words, if you notice this, we and us constantly. Have you noticed it's not a lot about I and me? It's a lot about we and us in the book of Ephesians. That redemption, this act of grace, when God reconciles us to himself, he does not reconcile us as individuals, just like, but we're all individuals. No, he reconciles all of his people together to one another and to God at the same time.
And he kills the hostility because why? Because if our sins against God have been forgiven through Jesus Christ, and so surely our sins against one another can be forgiven through Jesus Christ. And if that reconciles us to God, how much more then will it reconcile us to one another?
16 · The pastor uses the Jew-Gentile division in Ephesians 2 as an analogy for all human divisions—cultural, ethnic, political, familial
I mean, think of Jews and Gentiles, just in the example of Ephesians 2. They were separated by culture and ethnicity and skin tone and heritage and politics and religion and favorite food.
I bet they couldn't even decide what the potluck would be, right? It'd be like, oh great, you're bringing that ham, you know, like, you know, Just offensive.
And that's a picture of the whole world. That microcosm between Gentiles, that's a picture of the whole world. There are countries broken with war and conflict. There are, on a micro level, families ravaged with jagged edges of sin that cut one another. And all human relationships, listen, fundamentally, all human relationships apart from grace become this: I do this for you, you do this for me.
Or usually it's more, you do this for me first and then I'll do this for you, right? That's every relationship. That's your employer, that's a marriage outside the gospel, that's even friendship. As long as you do this for me, I'll do this for you. And what grace does is it comes in and creates an entirely new kind of community in the world that the world has never seen before.
Because it's not people coming in and going, 'You do this for me, then I'll do something for you.' It's the grace of God through Jesus Christ, Jesus coming and saying, 'I do all of this for you,' and we— it takes our breath away, and we respond saying, 'Okay, then we will act like you and show grace to others.' He shows grace to us, we show grace to others. And that builds an entirely different kind of community where we're not just a bunch of random individuals wondering, 'Well, what can you do for me?' It brings us together in Christ and we then cling together in a relationship based on grace and not I do this, you do that.
17 · The pastor shares his personal testimony of experiencing grace-based community as a socially anxious teenager
Look, I experienced this in this church as a teenager, right? I was a— everybody that knows me can attest— I was a weird, socially awkward teenager. I had a lot of anxiety about what people thought of me.
I had so much anxiety that I could not invite people to hang out. Because I was so afraid that they would say no and I'd be rejected. Like, and it's funny, but it actually was like super deep in there. And that was only changed and broken because of this church. I remember there was one guy in our church, some of you guys will remember him growing up.
His name was TJ. TJ was the opposite of me. He was cool, he was friendly, he was good at sports, you know, he's all that stuff. And if you think TJ and me, and you're like, TJ needs nothing from me. I'm not adding anything to his pickup basketball team, right?
I'm not adding any funny jokes as we're watching a movie. I'm just a weird, socially awkward young teenager. And he just kept inviting me. Hey, Ricky, what are you doing on Saturday? You wanna go play basketball with us?
Like, just spoiler, it wasn't because I was the next, like, you know, Penny Hardaway or something. Like, they would put me in out of pity.
And then this is the worst part. You know that when you, like, dribble the ball and people encourage you, that things are bad. Like, you brought the ball down real well. I mean, good job. You know, I mean, we're— this is not good, right?
So there was none of the I do this for you, you do this for me. Instead, him and that group, so many people in our church, like the Morales family, just kept inviting me over to play volleyball, not because I was good. But because they had been changed by grace and then were showing that grace to other people. And guys, let me tell you what, that changed my life.
18 · The pastor applies the theology of grace-based community by explaining the practical function of community groups: they provide a structured way for people in a large church to live out grace-based relationships regularly by putting a night on the calendar and showing up, not because of what they can get from others, but because they have been gathered by grace to show grace
And here's— and you think, okay, what does that have to do with community groups, basketball, all this stuff? Here's what we realized as a church, especially with the size we are, right? You got, you know, maybe a couple hundred people in this room right now. You cannot be friends with all of these people equally, right? And coordinating schedules with 200 other people gets nuts. So here's what we found.
Just— this is just a practice. This is us trying to apply the biblical principles of Ephesians 2. We've just found it's helpful to find a group in your part of the city where you put a night on your calendar that you get together with other people and begin to live out that grace-based community and family that you— that we have in Christ. It's just— it's just helpful. Like, this is what we found over the years.
We've had small groups in our church for really almost— I think from the inception of the church for the last 40 years. And what they've done is they've just been helpful because we just go, okay, you know what? Life is busy. Life is crazy. I'm going to put this night on my calendar and I'm going to show up.
And the people there that I meet, I don't need anything from them. They don't need anything from me. We're there gathered by grace to show grace to one another. We get to live out that community identity. So that's why we're committed to community groups.
19 · The pastor issues specific applications for community group participation: resist individualistic Christianity, commit to staying connected, act as family by grieving and celebrating together, and recognize that mercy needs are often met by community groups
And so a few, few ways to apply this. First, I wanna encourage you, commit to stay connected with one another at the church. Don't drift back into the American me and Jesus Christianity. Remember your blood-bought identity by grace, reconciled to God and to one another, and live that out. And act then, commit to act as family as best you can.
Grieve with one another, celebrate promotions with one another, meet needs with one another. When Chuck came on as a pastor, was restored as a pastor a while ago, we had him go and look at all the mercy ministry needs of the church, of people that needed rides or people that maybe needed some practical help. And we were like, hey, Chuck, you're gonna get in there and you're gonna help with these mercy needs. And he was like, all right. So he found a bunch of needs and he talked to a bunch of people.
And you know what the crazy thing was? Already met. Like this person that needs rides, yep, their community group's already organizing rides for them. This person that was in the hospital, yep, their community group's already bringing meals to them. And so Chuck kind of came back sheepishly and he's like, I don't really have anything to do there.
Hey man, can you give me something else to do? Because the community groups are doing too good of a job. Now, of course, there were a couple of situations where he's able to get in and add some extra help. But that's what we want. That, that I think is Grace-based community.
It's like this person had a baby, doesn't affect me at all, but I'm making them a meal and bringing it to them. Not because I get something out of it, but because Jesus has given something to me. And out of that, I show grace to others. All right. So that's number 2, community group.
So let me just encourage you, if you're not in a community group, this takes time. You're not going to— let me just warn you, you're not going to show up and they're going to be your best friends night one. You know, one of the things I love about community groups is that they're diverse. There's people, different ages, different different backgrounds, and you're gonna have to get to know them. But let me just encourage you, getting to know them is never gonna be a waste of your time.
Because you know one thing about them. You may not have the same background, same family, same ethnicity, same anything as them, but you have one thing in common. You have been shown the grace of Jesus Christ and it has changed your life. So on the most deep fundamental level, they are your brother or sister. And you can build a relationship out of that that's stronger than anything else.
20 · The pastor transitions to the third commitment—discipleship—framing it as a new emphasis for 2023
All right. Third, discipleship. Discipleship. Now, I'm really excited about this because this is a little bit of a new element that we're adding in 2023 to the church.
21 · The pastor expounds Ephesians 2:10, showing that grace is not static but transformative—it creates new people designed for good works and progressively changes every area of life
Ephesians 2:10, as we read, talks about the grace of God coming to us and then immediately follows it up and says, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
What does that mean? Well, grace comes to us and it does not leave us standing still. Grace comes to us and it begins to change us and it begins to rearrange us. And that's exactly what we see in the book of Ephesians, right? Grace comes to us and it changes everything from how we speak to one another to the way we think about sexuality, to the way we the way we live out marriage, to the way we parent, everything in our life begins to change because of the grace of God at work in us.
22 · The pastor distinguishes community groups from discipleship using a family party analogy: community groups are like the large gathering where you catch up with many people, while discipleship is like staying afterward in the kitchen for deep, personal conversations
Now, this is where we've realized we need to add a layer, if I could say it that way, to our church. Now, community groups are great because they carry kind of the value of family, that grace-powered family in our church. But even with 12 people, you can't always get to the deepest life issues, right? So community groups in my mind are like this. They're like when you have a party with your extended family.
Like my family was all from El Paso, right? So if you're in El Paso, you always know like any family thing, you get like 10 people, 20 people, I don't know, cousin so-and-so, whatever. Like everybody's there. But then, and you get to catch up with everybody for a few minutes, but then you stick around and end up in the kitchen talking to your cousin or your aunt And really opening up about like, okay, mijo, how, you know, this is my aunt's conversation with me a lot. Okay, mijo, why aren't you, why are you not dating anyone?
I'm just concerned for you, you know, like, no. But you end up, or talking to your cousin and be like, man, honestly, man, this year has been terrible for me at school, man. And you're like, oh bro, what's going on? And so you begin to have those conversations that get to the deepest parts of your life. The community groups are that family party, but discipleship is where you stick around and begin to open up the deepest parts of your life.
And that's what grace does in the book of Ephesians, right? What Paul is doing in the book of Ephesians is he's taking grace and he's applying it to the details of our lives, the deepest parts of our lives. And so that's what we want to— honestly, just to be frank, we want to get better at that at Cross of Grace.
23 · The pastor shares his personal experience in a discipleship relationship during college that met weekly at 6 AM
In college, I experienced some of this where I did an internship at a church in the Washington, D.C. area, and he was like, hey, so part of the internship is we're going to start meeting together every Thursday. And I was like, cool.
He's like, all right, so, you know, Thursday morning, we'll see you. You know, I'll see you at Starbucks. I'm like, cool, got it. And then I asked him, oh wait, so what time do we get there? Like, like 8 or 8:30, 9, something like that.
And he's like, 6. I was 19 and I was like, 6.
6:00 AM? PM I could do, but you know, he's like, yeah, 6:00 AM, we'll see you there. And how often is this? Yeah, every Thursday. I was just like, oh my gosh.
So in college, I don't think I ever had woken up before, you know, 8:00 AM. And I hated it, but man, did I grow. And it was really one of the first times I opened up all the parts of my life, right? All the potential relationships I had, all of the areas of deep sin struggle. And at 6 AM, I began to walk with a group of guys who took the grace of God and began to apply it to the deepest parts of my life, and I began to change.
And we as a, as a church, we believe fundamentally that change must be powered by the gospel of Jesus Christ, right? By the grace of Jesus Christ. We are not trying Look, our attempts to change as a church are not kind of rise and grind Twitter or Instagram posts, right? Like, yeah, 4:33. I see this thing where guys are just working out earlier and earlier, and I'm just like, at some point you're just working out last night.
Like, this is— but they're just like, yeah, rise and grind. Like, here we go. And I'm doing this and I'm doing that. I'm learning French while I'm bench pressing, you know, just like, what is happening?
But here's the problem. All of that stuff, all that good stuff, it doesn't change us on the deepest, most fundamental levels of our heart. Only grace can do that. And I experienced this again in that same group where that year I was— just to be totally transparent with you guys— at 19, I was caught using porn. And the pastor I was meeting with called me, and I just tearfully confessed what had been going on.
And he listened to me, and I just thought, okay, he's gonna just say, You're the worst. This is it. I never want to talk to you again. And I still remember what he said on the phone. He said, Ricky, as you have confessed your sin to the Lord, it is my joy to express that you have been forgiven and that I love you as a friend and the Lord loves you as a son.
And at that moment, something in my heart changed. That's grace. Only grace can do that. And so we at Cross of Grace want to be committed to applying grace into the deepest parts of our lives.
24 · The pastor announces the church's new discipleship initiatives for 2023: a free 9-lesson curriculum available to everyone, and specific discipleship groups addressing purity (Freedom Fight), grief (Grief Share), and marriage (Reengage)
And so a couple new things we're gonna do this year. First, we've developed a discipleship curriculum that anybody can use, that we're gonna give away for free. For the last 1 to 2 years, we've had a group, a couple groups of guys and girls go through a curriculum that has some structure, and they found it really helpful. And, and so we're gonna offer this to the whole church. And so we worked on a 9-lesson curriculum that has 9 important key kind of principles for discipleship to get people started, right? It'll, it'll hold your hand if you've never done this before.
All you need is at least one person and one time and begin to meet. Right. And so you can get that in the back on the back table today. Is that right, Becky? So it's free.
This is a little— and it's a real booklet. It's not like a weird thing. It's like it looks like a— Becky is amazing. She made us a little book, guys. So we have a discipleship book for you.
And if you don't know anybody, see point 2, find somebody in your CG and just begin to ask, hey, man, anybody want to get up at 6 a.m. and start talking to me? About the deepest parts of my life. Ricky said it was great and it is great. So discipleship curriculum, we at some point we want to encourage everybody in the church to walk through these 9 lessons with somebody else. And then after that, begin to just keep meeting.
There's a Bible reading plan that accompanies it. We can give you suggestions after that. But, but that's one way to put this into practice. Stick around after the party, open your life up. That's what discipleship is about.
And then next, we have some specific discipleship groups we're seeing. That are going to be helpful in applying grace to specific areas of life. And so we have already had the Freedom Fight ministry, applying grace to the fight for purity. We've had Grief Share, which is wonderful. Grief Share is kind of half community, half discipleship, but it very much is helping people apply the grace of God to the issue of grief and loss and to learn what it means to follow Jesus through that.
And then we have a new thing that we're starting at the end of February. You're going to hear more about it, called Reengage, which is a marriage discipleship group. So it's a number of weeks in a row that couples commit together and they commit to applying the grace of God, to opening themselves up to— and this is the key— opening themselves up to other people who've been changed by grace. So there's no judgment. Opening themselves up and beginning to apply the grace of God to different areas of their life.
And I would— let me just say this— the material is fantastic. I'd love to see every married couple go through it at some point. This can just strengthen your marriage, but it's especially helpful if there's been brokenness or hurt or an area you feel stuck in as a couple. So that starts at the end of February. So again, with discipleship, a few key ways to do this.
Find a discipleship kind of group that is particular to an area you need to apply the grace of God to, or just grab that curriculum today and begin to walk through that with somebody. Take Take a free copy, go over it, pray about it, and see who the Lord would bring to mind. Reach out to them. Don't be like Ricky, afraid of calling people. Reach out to them and say, hey man, would you like to start meeting?
25 · The pastor transitions to the fourth and final commitment—evangelism—framing it as the outward expression of grace to those who have not yet received it
All right, fourth and last, evangelism. Evangelism is where we share the grace of God with others.
26 · The pastor expounds Ephesians 3:7-8, showing that Paul received grace not only for his own salvation but also as a commission to preach the gospel to the Gentiles
You see this, for example, in Ephesians 3:7-8, where Paul says, of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of grace which was given to me by the working of his power. And to me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Do you see the connection, the grace connection there?
God's grace comes to Paul, and Paul's like, I can't believe it, I've been restored to God. But then Paul also says, I've been given more grace, which is, a task, a mission, a purpose to share the grace of God with others. Look, Cross of Grace, you were made to be the church, and the church was made to be the light. The church was made to show the grace of God to the world around us, desperately in need of that grace.
27 · The pastor reframes evangelism, arguing that it should not be viewed as a burdensome task added to an already-full life but as the restoration to the life-giving purpose for which we were created
Now, I don't want evangelism to just be another to-do on our list. A lot of times Christians treat evangelism as like, oh gosh, now I got to go I got to add another thing to my to-do list. Now I got to grab random strangers and tell them about Jesus and be like, hey, buckaroo, you know, have you ever thought about dying and what's going to happen right then? You know, stranger's like, man, are you all right? Like, I'm just kidding. That could— the Lord could use that kind of stuff.
But that's often the category we put it in. Rather than, I think, seeing it the way the scripture holds it out as our task to share the grace of God with others is a restoration to a deep, fulfilling, life-giving purpose. The purpose that we long for, that we look for in our career or in our hobby, it's really fundamentally found in this task of sharing the grace of God with others.
28 · The pastor tells the story of a foreign exchange student at UMBC who was saved through a Bible study
And I got to experience this when I was interning with that college ministry in DC. One of the campuses we were working with was UMBC, which is University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Some of the smartest kids in the area, all the nerds, all the people you're going to work for were there. And, and there was one particular foreign exchange student who hung out with our college students, but she was not a Christian. In fact, she'd never— she was hanging out with the Christians because they were friendly and because she'd never heard anything from the Bible. She'd never read the Bible. She never heard anything about the Bible.
So they just— our group started befriending her and inviting her. And then one day in a Bible study with one of the girls in our group, God saved her. And she was different. She was different after that. And I remember rejoicing, you know, coming from this meeting where she was sharing what God had done in her heart and seeing, you know, the transformation that grace wrought in her.
And then walking out into this campus to UMBC and seeing the whole campus of thousands of students walking back and forth from class to class. And I remember having the thought, this could happen to any of them. This grace of God that changed her life could change any of their lives. And it was like my eyes got opened because I'd been a very closed, like, I'm not gonna talk to a lot of people. And, and just opened my eyes to see, man, all of these people need the grace of God, and grace could change any of them.
29 · The pastor issues concrete application for evangelism: personal gospel conversations, participation in neighborhood outreach, and inviting people to Alpha, a low-pressure evangelistic course
So this is what we're going to do. We want to be more intentional, especially coming out of this COVID season, more intentional than ever at evangelism, sharing the grace of God with others. Now, some of that is just going to be personal. Some of that is we just want to equip you with the gospel to be able to walk this out in, in the places that God has placed you in your daily lives. But we also have a couple things where we're going to band together and work on together.
So one of those we've had historically is our neighborhood outreach, where we love and care for this community around the church building. And so we're going to continue to do that. You're going to hear more about that. And then we have a new initiative that you heard about this morning, which is Alpha. Alpha is something we've done years ago and are bringing back.
It's a short course consisting of a meal, a talk about what Jesus says, and an open discussion. It is a great, low-pressure way to invite people to hear about the grace of Jesus Christ. To— for you to be able to say, listen, it— like, this thing has changed me. Grace has changed me. And I'd love for you to hear, like, why that is.
Or people tell you, you're really different. Why are you so different? Invite them here. Well, this is why I'm different. You want to come here?
You want a free meal?
So step 1 is to identify your mission field and begin to pray about what has God done that— so Jonathan's gonna remind us, but at the end of the service, if you have not already, we have this giant door. Some people are missed last week and they're like, what's with the door? It leads to nowhere. It's a metaphor. And what we're doing is the door is a reminder that every church has a door for a reason, because we're not meant to build walls around us as a church and just live here, as nice as that would be sometimes.
We're meant to go out beyond these four walls to our communities, to our families, to our neighborhoods. And so we're encouraging everybody, write your first name and write your mission field, the place that God is sending you. And we're going to just keep praying over these places and names as we go forward.
30 · The pastor synthesizes the sermon by restating the main thesis: grace is what the world longs for, and the local church is God's chosen vehicle to deliver that grace
All right. So let me wrap this up. Here's what I believe. I believe that the thing that can change the world is not a political movement. It's not a social movement. It's not even lifting people from poverty, though those can be good things.
It's not eradicating a disease, even though that can be good. The thing that will and can change the world, the thing our world longs most for is the grace of God. To be restored to God, to be restored to a true family, and to be restored to a true purpose. And here's what I know. The church, the local church, is what God has decided is gonna be the vehicle of the grace of God to the world.
It's gonna be the place that introduces others who long for that grace of God to the grace of God, where they begin to see that grace forming an entirely and radically new, different kind of community.
So then I want to end with the words of R.C. Sproul. R.C. Sproul had this great phrase he'd often say. He would often say, "Right now counts forever." And so here's what I want to just bring before you today.
These 4 commitments may seem simple. They're just, okay, we're going to show— so this is the plan, Ricky. We're going to show up on Sunday. Eat food with people in their houses, talk about our darkest secrets, apply the grace of God to them, and then share with others. That's the plan that's going to change the world?
Yeah, that's the plan. And here's the good news, church: it has changed the world.
From the very beginning in a small backwater part of the Roman Empire in the first century to now, there have been more Christians every successive generation than the generation before. And this movement of grace through the vehicle of the church has gone from the Middle East to the Roman Empire to Europe to Africa to Asia to North and South America. It is a movement that is low-key transforming the world around us. And so in this moment, let me just encourage you, right now counts forever. With our lives, we can either make an investment and become part of what God is doing in the world, or we lose that opportunity forever.
So let's commit together that the grace of God would change our lives, rearrange them, and allow us to share that grace with others. Amen.
31 · The pastor closes the sermon with a comprehensive pastoral prayer asking God to make grace more than a concept in the lives of the congregation, to bless each of the four core commitments (Sunday teams, community group leaders, discipleship relationships, and evangelism initiatives), and to empower the church to live differently because of grace
Would you stand and let's pray. Lord, we pray today that the grace that we sing about every single Sunday so well, so led so well by our worship team, that grace that we hear proclaimed in the pulpit by the men who serve us with the preaching of the word, the grace of God that we talk about in our community groups, the grace of God that's just on our church sign. Lord, we pray that that would not just be a concept, but something that would come into our lives and rearrange us, that we would live differently because of it.
And Lord, I pray that we would, as we take up these these kind of core commitments in a new way this year, that you would bless the work that we're putting our hands to. Lord, I pray over all the aspects of what we do. I pray for our Sunday gathering teams, Lord, all the people that serve on Sundays. Lord, empower them by your Spirit, that they may be changed by grace, that they could welcome us every week to behold the grace of our God and be changed. Lord, I pray for our community group leaders right now, and I pray that these couples would would lead the way in building communities that are grace-based, not works-based, that aren't communities that are, you do this for me and I do this for you, but rather, look how much God has done for me, let me do all of this for you.
I pray that they would be those kinds of leaders in our church. Lord, I pray for discipleship. Lord, I praise this new initiative where we're going to encourage people to grab some time together and grab this little booklet and begin to open up the word together. Lord, I pray that you would I pray that you would bless that work. I pray that you would allow us to change on the deepest levels of who we are as husbands and wives and parents and employees, Lord, that you would meet people.
And I especially pray for this new initiative of Reengage, this marriage discipleship ministry, Lord, that you would restore marriages through it. You would strengthen marriages through it. Lord, I pray that you would save marriages through that, Lord, in the name of Jesus, that the grace of God will begin to change that. And I pray then last, Lord, for our initiatives to share the grace of God with others. I pray over our neighborhood outreach team I pray that you would give us favor in this community, that we'd be able to serve people.
And I pray for all those inviting people to Alpha starting just in almost less than a week, about a week from now, that there would be many people eager to hear about the grace of God. Even though if they don't know that that's what they long for most, Lord, we know that that's what they long for most. I pray you'd go before us. In Jesus' name, amen.