I want to take a few minutes today and just give you a brief snippet of my personal testimony. I don't like to bore people with my personal testimony because after all it's my personal testimony. But the principle I want to share with you is this. I must never ever presume that if you're in the sound of my voice, on whatever platform you're listening on, and you are a professing Christian, I must never presume that that means that you've heard the gospel. I know that's a sad commentary, but I care about you enough to be able to say, at least consider, that maybe you haven't heard the gospel. I count my conversion date in this early spring of 1996. That was after having been a professing Christian for 23 years Since my senior year in high school. I had been a professing Christian and I had been told after attending church Sometimes three times a week most often Saturday, excuse me Sunday morning Sunday night Tuesday night Attending men's groups other activities at the church Sitting in the pew listening to the preaching every Sunday morning and Yet I did not hear the gospel What did I hear? well, what I heard was that I was absolutely in need of Jesus and That's true. I Heard that Jesus died for my sins. I That is so true. Thanks be to God and he rose again and I wasn't quite sure how that affected me, but he rose again and That he gone to be with the father they had sent the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit was now in dwelling me but Grace was necessary Absolutely necessary. That's the preaching I was hearing But it wasn't sufficient that all of God's saving purposes and Christ were subject to my free will. In fact, the preaching I heard back then was very emphatic on that point. God will never violate your free will, we were told. And we said, wow, that's profound. No idea that what we were really listening to was a form of Greek philosophy, but but it sounded good And so We were told that Jesus was absolutely necessary grace was absolutely necessary But we had to add our faith by an act of free will That somehow between what God had accomplished in his son and was now subject to what we could accomplish by responding to it. And between what God had done and what we do, not only initially in believing, but continuing and doing the things we should do so we don't lose our salvation. that at some point in the future, if we played our cards properly, we did all the right things, that we would be saved. And we were saved now, but we could lose our salvation. So we really never knew whether we were going to make it to heaven or not. But that was the gospel I heard. What happened to me was in 1996, I had gone through a very difficult season of my life. And I had been a child of the 60s, and I had learned to like alcohol and drugs. And so when I came to Christ in 1973, it was another experience. I was having an experience with Jesus. And so it was a very experiential thing for me. There was little or no theology, little or no Bible teaching with my conversion. It was just receive Jesus and have this experience. So I did, and I had that experience. It was, I see now as certainly a very spiritual experience, but it wasn't a conversion. And then the theology I listened to for the next 23 years reinforced the fact that I was still in control. that ultimately even God's saving purposes in Jesus Christ were subject to me. My choices, both initially in conversion and throughout the balance of my Christian life, were the determining factor as to whether God's saving purposes would be effective, whether I would make it to heaven or not. I didn't know better. I hadn't had a Christian upbringing and I hadn't studied theology. I was just being told by people that I believed were credentialed and appointed by our denomination to tell us these things, and so we believed it. And from time to time we'd see a person backslide or leave the church or walk away from the Lord, go back into drugs and alcohol and so on. Well, that's what can happen. Be careful. People renounce their faith. And we didn't want that to happen. It was a very scary thing to think that could happen to any of us. So it was in 1996 that I entered a 12-step program to do some long unfinished business with the latent addictions that were plaguing me from the 60s and early 70s. And it was reading those first three steps, and the first step particularly, in which it said, I was powerless. We admitted we were powerless, and that our lives had become unmanageable. And I remember the moment, sitting in that meeting hall, where I actually had, I think, an illumination to consider a mercy, a moment of grace, to be willing to admit that I couldn't save myself from my addiction. I had to be saved from it. It's like one old-timer said in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting one time, my name is Frank, and I'm an alcoholic, which means I'm going to drink today unless I'm saved from it, and I can't save myself. Well, that was a profound thing to me. I can't save myself? I thought I was responsible for saving myself. I mean, I had even been told by one of my pastors that God had done all he could do, that Jesus had done all he could do, and it was up to me now. And that was the problem. Knew myself well enough to know that whatever God left up to me was was a precarious thing to do And so I began to take this seriously that I wondered if this was in the Bible These first three steps. I am I've been on powerless and that my life is becoming manageable That I realized that I could be restored to sanity, that a power greater than me could restore me to sanity, and that I chose to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. So I went back to my Bible and I began to search the scriptures. And the Spirit illuminated my mind to the fact that the gospel that I had been hearing for 23 years was only half the gospel. And as I searched the scriptures, I discovered that I can't save myself and that attempting to save myself and help God finish his purposes in my life was nothing that God had ever called me to do, and that the gospel was not in any way about human achievement. The gospel was the declaration, the proclamation of what God had accomplished in his son on my behalf. It was a finished work. Let me just read to you a text from Ephesians chapter 2. This is a good testimony point here. Ephesians chapter 1 is a wonderful declaration of what God has accomplished in eternity and in time to provide salvation for his people in his son, in him, in him, repeatedly. And then in chapter two, he begins with this saying, and you were dead in your transgressions and sins. And you were dead in your transgressions and sins. In other words, God has done all this glorious things. He's accomplished these things on behalf of his people. And in the meantime, you were dead. You didn't contribute anything to what God accomplished on your behalf. It wasn't because you were so lovable. It wasn't because you were so religious. It wasn't because you went to church often enough. It wasn't because of anything that you did to contribute to it. God has already accomplished it long before you were a twinkle in your father's eye. You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air. the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we also all formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." Listen, nobody from that point of view, nobody in that spiritual state can contribute anything to their salvation. And then in verse four, we have this wonderful adversative, the stark contrast, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. That's the basis of our salvation, mercy and love. Even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. Finally, I understood the true meaning of the resurrection. Was I had been made alive together with Christ? In Him my resurrection occurred when he was raised from the dead by grace you have been saved he says and Raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. I The Bible doesn't teach that by grace you is possible for you now to be saved if you do the right things, you say the right prayers. By grace you have been saved, he says, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness and toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved, he says that a second time. through faith and this not of yourselves it is the gift of God not of works so that no one may boast end quote there's nothing in there that talks about how necessary it is for me to add my part to God's work in order for me to be saved now do I believe yes question isn't whether we believe the question isn't whether we come to a point where we believe or not of course we believe the question is why do we believe the principle is is that being dead in trespasses and sins imagine if you will real quickly a friend of yours comes by and he wants to go do some witnessing some old-fashioned street witnessing And you're hip to that, so you grab your little pocket New Testament, hop in his car, and you're driving down the road, and he pulls into the parking lot of a funeral home. Well, your first thought is, well, there are a lot of grieving families in there and perhaps you're going to go in in the family room and offer to witness to some of these people about eternal life and the gospel and life in Christ. And so you walk in with your friend, except he walks right by the family room and goes back to the slumber room. That is the place where they have the bodies in the caskets awaiting funeral. your friend picks out opens his New Testament and starts preaching the gospel that my friends would be irrational now can God raise the dead of course we'll put all that aside for a moment you get my point dead people can't respond to the gospel let alone contribute anything to their salvation that's the point Nobody told me that. I had been given half the gospel and it made me half crazy. I had been given half the gospel and my life looked like it. It wasn't until I admitted that I was powerless and that I came to Christ on the basis of mercy and His great love with which He had loved me, and on the basis of his finished work on my behalf alone that I found joy in salvation. I found release from the religious neurosis that somehow in the final analysis I saved myself with Christ's help of course I have since discovered that all the world's religions, including many of those that call themselves Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, much of Pentecostalism, and much of Evangelicalism even, still teaches this synergism, that salvation is accomplished through a joint venture between God and man, faith and works. The Bible doesn't teach that folks. That's not the gospel It is by grace you have been saved and grace is not only necessary grace is sufficient If this is the first time you heard the gospel if this is the first time you heard the gospel of your salvation which God has accomplished in his son and That you believe Understand that that faith is a gift of God and That you can now trust him And you can place your whole trust and rest in his finished work on your behalf it is accomplished it is done Listen when Jesus died at the cross. He didn't say it is almost finished He said it is finished and you can rest in that Knowing that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it Philippians 1 6 Well, thanks for listening I had I wanted to share that with you today. I had an occasion today to realize that what a gift I have been given and understanding the gospel of my salvation in Jesus Christ, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ's finished work alone. Amen.