Sunday, August
25th
Ephesians
2:1-10
Matt Rawlings
What
is the best news you've gotten in your life thus far? Think about it for a
moment. What is the best news you've ever gotten in your life thus far?
·
Was
it that you graduated?
·
Was
it when the love of your life said yes or asked you to marry them?
·
Or
was it when you got the dream job you always wanted?
·
Maybe
it was when you got your first home?
·
Or
when you found out you were pregnant?
·
Or
when you passed the test you studied so long for?
·
Was
it when you found out you were getting a little brother or sister.
·
Or
maybe it was when you found out you were going to take the trip you'd always
dreamed of.
·
Maybe
for you, the best news thus far was opening an envelope from Fannie Mae and
reading that all of your student loans are paid off.
Let
me read to you what were some of the responses to the same question that was
posted on Reddit a while back:
·
That my
father no longer has throat cancer
·
My dad
retired from the Air Force this year, which means he won't have to deploy
overseas anymore. best news in a few years. :)
·
I
got a job offer this morning. Not the best news in here, but after a long
string of rejections I can't put into words what a relief it is.
·
That
after being homeless with my mother, little sister and little brother we are
finally getting a new home in the city.
·
"You'll
make a 90% recovery"
·
HIV
Negative
·
My two
year old no longer needed to take her heart medication.
·
Knowing
somebody loves me now.
·
My dad
didn't die from 4 massive strokes. After 7 months of uncertainty, he is home
with family.
·
I sold my
house, bought one with cash and I am debt free.
·
That I
passed my PhD defense
·
Ater a
35-day stay in the NICU, hearing the words, "We're going to discharge you
guys tomorrow."
What
is the best news you've gotten in your life thus far?
A
few years ago, my brother was diagnosed with a rare form of Amyloidosis, which
is a disease where proteins are deposited in your body's organs - the most
dangerous of all being the heart - and it causes them to fail and shut down. The
diagnosis for the form of Amyloidosis that he had was 100% fatal and normally
in the 12-18 month range. I remember getting the call when I was at a
conference and thinking that was horrible news. It changed my perspective on
the time I had with my brother and made me evaluate my relationship with him. I
then began to think about my relationship with all of my siblings as well.
Often,
bad news can be the very wake-up call that we need to make changes. I remember
the first funeral that I preached at. It was for a 24 year old who was gunned
down – most likely connected to a gang and drugs. It was horrible. It
dramatically changed his brother. Yes, he grieved but he was different and he
saw that his choices mattered and he pursued relationships and career maturely
after that.
For
my brother – it changed his perspective when he was diagnosed with Amyloidosis.
He went through many different treatments that all didn’t work. We all prayed. Practically
his whole church and everyone he knew prayed for him. Some of the best news he
ever received was when he went to a routine check-up and they discovered he
suddenly no longer had the disease. Somehow, his body had been healed and a
couple of years later, he is still disease free.
What
is the best news you can imagine? This morning, we will be unpacking Ephesians
2:1-10. And in our passage, Paul is writing to Christians in the area around
Ephesus and he is reminding them of the worst news that they ever had. You see
they were dead but they didn’t know it. They were truly the walking dead and
they were following their flesh, the world and the devil. And then Paul says,
so were we all. We were all dead in our sins.
If
you haven't trusted in Jesus to save you, I have some bad news. You have a
fatal disease. You are already dead spiritually. You are not only following
your own passions, you are following the course of this world and the devil is
at work in you. That is pretty terrifying on its own. But One day you will physically die. And
because you are a child of wrath - you will experience the just, eternal wrath
of God. That is some bad news. It is
meant to puts everything else into perspective. But let’s read the passage now,
because it tells us the rest of the story.
“And you were dead in the trespasses
and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world,
following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in
the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our
flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy,
because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved - and
raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his
grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 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.” Ephesians 2:1-10
What
is the best news the Ephesians ever received? What does Paul tell them? What is
the Holy Spirit saying to us? I believe that God wants us to see our life in
perspective. God doesn’t ignore suffering and pain and hardship and difficulty.
But He does want us to see our troubles and difficulties in perspective and
keep our hope fixed in the one place that is completely sure. We may ride up
and down in the swells of life and sometimes, it feels like you can’t see over
the top of the wave you’re going up. But God wanted the Ephesian church to have
perspective. He wants us to have perspective and then to live our lives in
light of the greatest news we ever could receive.
Main Idea: We were
dead and hopeless, but God made us alive to show His grace.
If
you don’t have a personal relationship with God – if you haven’t trusted in
Jesus and His sacrifice for you for forgiveness and experienced new life in God,
let me shoot straight with you. I don’t want to manipulate you but I do want to
give you a clear, accurate diagnosis of the condition you have.
For
those who are Christians, let me help give you perspective from this passage –
because we need perspective if we are going to have true joy and true hope. Here
it is – here is the diagnosis from Scripture, here is what God tells us about
our condition...
1. Left to ourselves,
we are the walking dead
"And you were dead
in the trespasses and sins..."
Paul has just been reminding his readers of who they are in Christ and what
they have because they are in Christ. In the verses just prior to this he
praised God for exalting Jesus and putting everything in subjection to Him and
making Jesus Christ as head over all things for the church. Now, he reminds
them of who they once were – they were not always in Christ – they were “dead, in the trespasses and sin in which
you once walked”.
Paul is saying that you lived in a constant state of trespassing or
transgressing – in a state where you are continually breaking the law and will
of God through failure or false steps. And you are walking in sin continually. Paul
writes, that you were once spiritually dead. He is saying you were once lost
under the complete and utter dominion of death. You didn’t know any spiritual
life. Not only were you born into a state of spiritual death, alienation and
separation from God, but, you were dead because of your sins and transgressions
in which you once walked.
And because you were dead in sins, there was no hope for you. When life
ceases in something – it is dead. That is the same thing here – having no life.
And no one expects something that is really dead to come back to life on its
own, because it has no power, no life within it. Instead, Paul says that they
lived in a state of death, walking in their transgressions and sins.
"...in which you once walked,
following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience..."
He is saying to them (and God is saying to all of us) that we all once
walked in death, we all followed the course of this world, we followed the
devil and his desire to sin. Who is the “Prince of the power of the air”? What
is “the power of the air”? This is not the Holy Spirit, who is at work in the
life of every believer. We once were not filled with the Holy Spirit – instead,
we followed the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. We
weren’t just dead in sins and trespasses, the devil was at work in us. We were
truly evil and opposed to God even though we may not have known it. We belonged to the devil. And we followed
the devil, who Paul refers to as the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the
prince of the powers of darkness. In ancient time, the place where evil spirits
lived was referred to as the air or the realm of the heavens near the world,
where principalities, powers, world-rulers of darkness and spiritual forces of
wickedness dwell.
Paul is saying, you may have thought you were free to do as you like, but
you were dead people walking, being controlled by the world, your own fleshly
desires and the devil. The devil was once powerfully at work in you, compelling
and influencing you when you were a son or daughter of disobedience. You were
once a rebel against God’s authority like all sons and daughters of
disobedience, listening to the archenemy instead of the Creator. Paul isn’t
saying that it is just non-Jews who were once like this though – he is saying
that we all walked this way – every human – no matter their heritage, all of
humanity was walking in death.
"...among whom we all once lived in the passions of our
flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."
We all once lived in the desires – the passions, the lusts of our flesh. We
lived in a constant state of being steeped in the passions of our flesh. Carrying
out the desires of the body and the mind…It is living like we want and living in a way that seems best to us. This
subtle alluring way says to do as you will. Do what you want, do what feels
right, do what feels good; it's your thing – do what you want to do.
But this is not God’s way to live – this is the world’s way to live; living
by the flesh. From the very beginning of mankind, Satan tempted Adam and Eve to
live as they thought best – to do as they wanted. They were tempted to do what
they thought best, instead of living as God said was best. What is pure Satanism in its most refined definition – it is do as you
will. What is that spirit that is at work in the sons of disobedience? What is
the sin nature driving us to, apart from God? It is the most heinous evil but
it is insidious. It is palatable even and it is "just do what you want".
Do what feels right. Live for yourself. Look out for number one!
This is truly evil. Because this mentality says that there is no God. Or
rather that we are our own gods. This mindset says that we are not accountable
to our Creator and Maker who is God. This way of living, if left unchecked,
leads to utter debauchery and all kinds of evils in the sake of doing what
seems right in our own eyes.
This living by the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the
body and mind says that God, who designed and created us doesn’t know what is
really best for us, He doesn’t want what is truly best and He doesn’t have the
right to tell us how to live. This mindset twists the good intentions of the
boundaries that God gives mankind for our own good and says that God doesn’t
want our good, that God doesn’t want our joy.
But whatever God says about how we are to live really and truly is for our
good and ultimate joy. The Scripture here is saying that apart from being in
Jesus Christ, all of mankind is trapped in the passions of the flesh, carrying
out the desires of the body and the mind, and are by nature, children of wrath.
All of mankind inherited a sinful nature and we were all personally deserving
of divine wrath – which is God’s holy anger against sin and the judgment as a
consequence.
"He
who believes in the Son has eternal life ; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." John 3:36
What a damning statement. The wrath of God abides on him.
We are by nature children of wrath. Do you think you know yourself? Are you aware of the
insidious desires that are at work within us to make us serve the fleshly
desires of doing what the sin nature desires? Do you recognize these as
belonging to being dead in our trespasses and sins? All of us were once the
walking dead. We all lived condemned lives on death row – we all have committed
the same sin as Adam and Eve over and over and over again. Every one of us, in
our very nature was born a child of wrath – and to wrath we are all destined on
our own.
What is the product of a life lived in the pursuit of do as thou wilt? It
is the justified, righteous, holy and fully earned, unrelenting, never-ending
wrath of God. Prior to being in Christ, we are all the filthy, rotten,
disgusting, walking dead, who deserve the eternal wrath of the eternal God of
all, whom we have all offended. That is what we deserve. We deserve no less. This
is who we once were. Dead, sinful by nature and sinful in our thoughts and
actions, led by our own flesh, giving into the temptations of world and
following the devil. We were beyond lost – we were completely hopeless to
rescue ourselves.
But look at verse 4 – Paul gives us the best news we could ever receive and
it puts everything else into perspective. It
is the most relieving, joy-giving news we can hear. It’s the second thing we
are going to focus on from this passage and it is just this.
2. God mercifully
makes us alive in Christ Jesus
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love
with which he loved us..."
No one except for God has power to make dead people alive again. No one
else would want dead people. No one else
would rescue you and I from such a living death, that we all deserved and
earned.
But God! But God did something for we who were helpless and hopeless. But
God is more powerful. But God initiated and had mercy on us and chose to love
us.
These first seven verses of chapter 2 are all one sentence and the main subject
of this entire sentence is God. God, who is rich in mercy and God who is great
in love. God is not only holy and completely good – this passage tells us that
God is rich in mercy and great in love. That is who God is – He is in His very
being, rich in mercy. He is overflowing with mercy and delights in mercy. And
Paul tells us that what motivated God to intervene when we were dead and
walking in death, is that God is rich in mercy and He loved us greatly. And
verse 5 makes the wonder of God’s mercy even greater – He loved us.
"...even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ- by grace you have been saved..."
It is as if God saw us, when we were dead, rotting corpses, smelling bad
and looking like the worst thing you can imagine and then God said – I want
him! I want her! I want Matt – I want you! This is because God is rich in
mercy, and because of the great love with which He loves us. So now, we have
been set free so that we no longer have to live in the passions of our flesh. When
we were dead, God made us alive.
Like God is the main subject of the first seven verses, the main verb in
these verses is “made us alive”. This is what God has done. He has resurrected
us spiritually with Christ. This is the ultimate fulfillment of Ezekiel’s
vision. We are the true spiritual house of Israel, God’s chosen people, a new
humanity brought together in Christ Jesus.
"The hand of
the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set
me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. He caused me to
pass among them round about, and behold, there
were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry. He said to me,
"Son of man, can these bones live?" And I answered, "O Lord GOD,
You know." Again He said to me, "Prophesy over these bones and say to
them, 'O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.' "Thus says the Lord GOD to
these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to
life. 'I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with
skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am
the LORD.'" So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there
was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its
bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin
covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then He said to me,
"Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath,
'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
on these slain, that they come to life."'" So I prophesied as He
commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on
their feet, an exceedingly great army. Then He said to me, "Son of man,
these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, 'Our bones are
dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.' "Therefore
prophesy and say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I will open
your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will
bring you into the land of Israel. "Then you will know that I am the LORD,
when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My
people. Ezekiel 37:1-13
God performed this miracle in us – He made us alive in Christ and saved us.
What are we saved by? By Grace! Grace is God’s favor towards those who don’t
deserve it and only deserve wrath. Because of mercy, because of love, we were
saved by grace. What part of that is because of us? None of it. We were a pile
of very dry bones in the desert who couldn’t even hear the prophecy of the
words of God – but God made us alive and gave us ears to hear and eyes to see
and mouths to speak and feet and hands to act and gave us new minds.
"...and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus..."
In the resurrection of Jesus, we were made alive and raised up when He was
raised up. It is already done - in our union with Him, we share the new life
that He received when He rose. And now, God counts us as raised up with Him. We
are no longer in bondage. We no longer belong to the devil and we no longer are
held captive by our sinful desires. Instead, since we are in Christ, we are
figuratively seated with Him – He is far above all principalities and powers
and we are seated with Him in that sense – no longer needing to fear any evil,
because we are in Christ and He is above all else. So we too have a position of
authority over the evil powers. We can stand against the devils schemes now,
since we are in Christ and we don’t have to give into the devil’s temptations.
We are not physically seated with Jesus yet, but Heaven is where we belong
now. Heaven is our true home. If you have not been made alive in Christ, you
have a place reserved for you and it is a place of wrath that you will one day
occupy. If, however, you have been made alive by the mercy and love and grace
of God so that you have placed your faith in the sacrifice of Jesus on your behalf,
then you have a place reserved for you that is a place of ultimate goodness,
ultimate kindness and eternal joy. Your place is with God seated with Him in
the heavenly realm in Christ Jesus. And now God counts you as belonging with
Him in Christ. Heaven is your home – where you belong and heaven will be your
final dwelling place. But why did God do this? Verse 7 tells us, He saved us.
"...so that in the coming ages
he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in
Christ Jesus."
God has done this, so that we might be trophies of His grace. He has shown
immeasurable of kindness to us in Christ, so that in the ages to come He might
show off His grace. I like what F.F. Bruce said about this verse, he said, “Throughout
time and in eternity the church, this society of pardoned rebels, is designed
by God to be the masterpiece of his goodness."
God has saved us so that we might be satisfied in Him and Him alone for all
eternity. Maybe your life hasn’t turned out the way you thought. You may have
suffered and you may be suffering now. You may be listening and all you can
think of is that you have been abused and misused and mistreated by people.
Maybe even people who you thought you could trust or people who said they loved
you. Please know that God sees your pain, He sees your hurt and He grieves over
what has been done to you. And He holds out His hand to you and calls you to
come to Him and find rest. Come to Him and find healing. Come to Him and find
His grace.
You may feel dead inside and God is gently calling your name and He wants
to make you alive in Christ. God wants you to experience His kindness in the
redeeming love of Christ. He wants you to place your faith in Him, trusting in
Him, that He knows what is best and wants what is best for you, even though you
may not have all the answers. Because He wants you to experience His grace that
makes all things new. And by the grace of God He will save you.
God saves us by His great grace so that all who see it will truly marvel
and give praise to the God of all grace. Verse 8 tells us though that it isn’t
our faith that saves us. Faith is just the door that God put into our life that
we step through and enter into His kingdom through. But it is the King’s good
grace that puts the door into our life and it is the King who calls us and
enables us to step through to begin with.
3. God saved us
completely by Grace, to show His grace
"For by grace you have been saved
through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God..."
By grace we have been saved through faith – and then Paul clarifies for his
readers because he doesn’t want them to get the wrong idea. And the Holy Spirit
doesn’t want any of us to get the wrong idea. Because if we think that our
salvation rests on even the merit of our faith, then we will be misled into a
false hope, an unsure and unstable hope – like a rope bridge across a chasm
with rotted out boards for the walkway. It will just be a matter of time before
we fall through.
You see, there will be those times, when our faith is weak and we don’t
feel like we have enough faith. And if you falsely believe that your salvation
relies on your ability to sustain and keep and have enough faith, then you will
surely lose hope at some point and fall into despair. But if instead, you see
that your faith is meant to stand on God’s grace, then you will be like the
Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s progress, who realizes that God’s grace has placed steps
in the slough of despair and all you need to do is stand on them. What we are
called to do is rest on them, trust in His grace and walk by faith on His
gracious gift to us.
There is nothing about our salvation, from start to finish, that began with
us. God passed by our rotting corpses and made us alive and raised us up. He
gave us a new heart and a desire for Him, and he gave us new eyes to see Him,
because our old hearts were dead to Him and our dead eyes were unable to see
His beauty and desire to follow Him. He gave us a new heart and new eyes and He
is the one who is restoring and making us into His image.
Our salvation, all of the grace and immeasurable kindness we have received
in Christ, is a gift from God. And our Faith is the response that receives what
God graciously gives to us in Christ. God’s amazing rescue and resurrection of
we who were dead is all of His grace. And Paul tells us in verse 9, that our
faith and our salvation is...
"...not a result of works, so that no one may boast."
Why did God love us? Did He see something lovely? Did He see our good
works? Did He foreknow the choice we would make and choose us because of it?
Did He marvel at our great faith and feel compelled to save us? No – our
salvation and even our faith by which we receive our salvation isn’t of
ourselves – it is a gift and not the result of any works of our own, even our
ability to have enough faith, whatever that means – so that none of us can
boast.
Our salvation isn’t based on any human merit or ability to earn God’s
approval. It would be like Adam boasting that he created himself, when God was
the only one who could create him. No, it wasn’t anything Adam did in the first
creation to make himself. Clearly, Adam was God’s workmanship. Paul is saying
that we can have no self-confidence before God, we cannot boast in ourselves
and no trusting in ourselves will save us. We cannot claim even the slightest
credit for God accepting us by His grace. The only thing we bring to the
equation is death – dried up bones. And in a similar way, verse 10 tells us
that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.
"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
In Christ, we
are a new Creation. We are a radical new humanity in Christ. Did you get that?
We are no longer of our human father Adam. God has made us radically new. God
has made us a radical new humanity in Christ. Out of Jew and Gentile, He has
made an entirely new radical humanity in Jesus Christ That is the title of our
entire series in Ephesians and that is because the whole letter to the
Ephesians is all about who we are in Christ – we are a radical new humanity in
Christ - and then it spells out what we have in Christ and who we are called to
be.
This morning,
I don’t want any of us to walk away from here bored with being a Christian. Listen
– you are God’s workmanship and you have been created in Christ. Paul wanted
the Ephesians to grasp who they were in Christ and then live in that reality,
because it makes all the difference and it puts everything else into
perspective. But the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write these words not just
for the Ephesians then, but for us now. And our Loving Father, through the Holy
Spirit, is speaking to you this morning.
Bob, he is
speaking to you, and James and Beth and John
and Eileen and Pam and every one of you in this room. He is speaking to
you and me and God wants each and every one of us to really grasp who we are in
Christ. We are not our own workmanship – we are His workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus. Because he loves you and He wants you to know His grace and
kindness and he wants you to shine like stars in the heaven that show His grace
in the midst of darkness, leading the way, lighting the path of so many weary
travelers.
Doesn’t this
good news make you want to make disciples of Jesus Christ? Doesn’t this good
news make you want to tell people all of the good things that Jesus commanded
us, for our good and our joy? Doesn’t it make you want to live to rescue
people, so that they can be adopted by God and no longer be children of wrath?
Oh – good
works, those aren’t to make us impressive or earn us any favor – they are meant
to help us know and understand the joy of living for our Creator and to show
just how good God’s design for humanity is. He has re-created us in Christ
Jesus, so that we might do His good works. It says we were created in Christ
Jesus FOR good works.
The purpose
that God re-created us is so that we would now be able to have joy in Him as we
carry out His commandments. And it says He already prepared the good works for
us – He even predestined the good that we would do for Him, so that we would
give Him glory. He is our Creator and Maker and He knows what is truly best for
us, He wants what is truly best for us and He will enable us to walk in His
good works – for our good and His glory. And God also prepared good works for
us, so that we would tell of His goodness and kindness to a watching world
through how we live.
So, let us
all ask, what good works has God prepared for me to walk in, to show his grace,
to show His goodness, to show how He has changed me and redeemed me? What good
works has God prepared for me, so that I can know learn how to live in Him,
live in joy, live in the way that He originally designed mankind?
God intended
Adam and Eve to reflect Him and image Him in all of their works and He gave
them good work to do that would reflect, image and show His greatness. Instead,
mankind walked in darkness and carrying out the evil deeds of the flesh.
“But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved...”
And He saved
us not by works but by His grace – never lose sight of that – we are never
saved by our works. No! But God saved us so that instead of following the devil
and following our flesh, we might follow His ways and so show who we are in
Him. We are saved by His grace, we are made into new creations, so that we can
actually do what God created mankind to do in the first place – good works to
image Him, to show His glory and to testify to His workmanship.
