Dead Man Walking (Ephesians 2:1-3)

Our scripture reading for today is from chapter 2 of the book of

Ephesians, verses one through three.

If you've been with us through this study of the book of

Ephesians, welcome to chapter 2. And should and should the Lord

not return by 2032, relax and enjoy the ride.

And how wonderful it would be that he comes back before and

we'll finish the book study with him.

Amen. In our verses today, you'll

notice that in chapter 3, Paul changes the pronoun from you to

we. And every time I share the word

you with you in the next few minutes, I want you to know that

that includes me. So when I say you, you need to

hear you and me. So when we get to verse 3, would

you please join me in reading the Scripture?

Ephesians 2, verses one through 3.

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 together, 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

wraths, like the rest of mankind.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Please be seated. You know, cliches do come in

handy sometimes. Like for instance, plan the

work, work the plan, that's helpful, strategy, then

execution, that's helpful. And actually that helps us

understand a little bit about the progression of Paul's

writings from verse from chapter 1 to chapter 2.

In chapter 1, we remember studying one of the longest

sentences in all of Greek literature started in verse 3,

and it was a hymn of praise to the Trinity.

And Paul began extolling and praising God the Father who

predestined, elected and chose a people for himself.

He planned redemption. And he ends that section with

this wonderful refrain of praise, saying to the praise of

his glory. And then Paul goes into a second

section talking about the second person of the Godhead, Jesus

Christ, the Son who atoned and redeemed his people.

He accomplished the Father's plan of redemption.

And again, Paul ends that section by saying to the praise

of his glory. And then he goes into a section

about the Holy Spirit, and he talks about how the Holy Spirit

guarantees our inheritance. And the Holy Spirit sealed what

the Son accomplished, what the Father had planned.

And he ends again with this glorious refrain to the praise

of His glory. And that's exactly what our 3

verses are, reaching back to chapter 2, verse one, to the

praise of His glory, chapter 2, verse 2 to the praise of his

glory, chapter 2, verse 3 to the praise of his glory.

And then we get to chapter 2 verse one.

It says and you. And there's a pivot from talking

about the Redeemer to those who need to be redeemed, from

talking about the Divine Trinity to those who are made in that

image and to be human beings. We have 5 dimensions in our

existence. So one of those is being

spiritual. We have a spiritual nature.

We have a spiritual identity. We have a spiritual destiny.

And the 1st 10 verses of chapter 2 gives the clearest explanation

of the gospel and perhaps all of Paul's writings. 18 personal

pieces of correspondence used by God himself in 30 years to

change the rest of the world. 18 letters in 30 years to change

the world. So let's dive into our text,

shall we? Let's look at verse one.

Look at verse one and you and he's talking about the Gentiles

and you Gentiles were noticed past tense and you Gentiles were

dead. Now the Holy Spirit could have

inspired Paul to have written the word Thanos.

Thanos is like the the Greek word for the idea of death, the

process of dying. But he doesn't inspire him to

use that word. He inspires him to write the

word Necross. And Necross is the word for

dead, the state of dead. So he says in the past you

gentiles were spiritually dead. How in your trespasses and sins

in which you once walked. Now trespasses is a word that

that means to stumble or to fall off the path.

And by the time we get to the 1st century, this word means

anything that violates the covenant with the Lord.

A simple, stupid mistake to a willful action.

Anything that indicates that we are outside of God's favor and

need restoration. And you combine that with the

typical understanding of the word sin, which is missing the

mark. The Holy Spirit is inspiring

Paul to say that when we are dead in Christ, we stumbled off

the road, we fell into the ditch, and we never made it to

where we were supposed to go. Now, in addition to this

internal reality, which by the way is for those in Christ, our

spiritual DNA, because we're the progeny of our first parent,

Adam, the federal head of all humanity.

So his OG sin affected all of us, but there's also external

forces that are pressing down on us.

Look at verse 2. Verse 2 says picking up from

trespasses and sins in which you once walked past tense, right?

And walked. He's going to use the word

walked. How we conduct ourselves, how we

live our lives, what we do throughout the day, our

thoughts, our feelings, our actions, our emotions.

That's walking. And he's going to talk about

that later in this letter. But right now, he says you were

walking in sins and trespasses, following, first, the course of

this world. Those are the visible

influences. Let's go on following second,

the Prince of the power of the air, these invisible influences,

which is the spirit that is now at work in the sons of

disobedience. And did you pick up on that?

Again, sons of disobedience, this idea of being born with a

DNA. So what was in the air at

Ephesus? Well, if you know anything about

Ephesus, it was the New York City of the western shore of

what is now Turkey. And Western literature has

attested to the fact that forever since Ephesus was

founded, it is the center of the occult.

If you wanted to become a master in the dark spiritual powers of

the world, you would apply for a scholarship to Ephesus.

In fact, the power of the gospel was so efficacious in Ephesus

that the occult masters repented and they came to Jesus and they

burned their books and they followed Christ.

They burned the books from which they learned all of their

mastery of dark magic. And don't be naive, brothers and

sisters. You can still get modern

editions of those very books by which they were tutored.

There is also a big House of worship was called the Temple of

Artemis was beautiful. Artemis is the fertility God of

the Greeks. Rome called her Diana.

Her temple and her thriving congregation of worship

worshippers was remarkable. The temple was considered one of

the Seven Wonders of the World. It was twice the size of the

Parthenon. It was larger than a football

field. It had 127 marble columns 60

foot high. There were thriving economies

around the worship of Artemis silversmiths and wood carvers

that would make miniature images of the gigantic temple presence

of Artemis that you could take home with you.

In fact, some of you know that if you visit Artemis today, you

can still buy your souvenir bobbleheads and Artemis action

figures and take them home with you if you want to.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When Paul got to Ephesus, he began teaching in the synagogues

and for a few months. Then he started a tent making

business so that he could be financially independent.

And then he rented A lecture hall for two years.

He spent about three years, we think, in Ephesus, and two of

those years he rented A lecture hall where he taught about

Messiah, where he taught to the Gentiles about Jesus, where he

taught about the way, Moses, David, Abraham.

For two years. And through the windows of the

lecture hall you could hear the citizens of Ephesus shouting in

worship, praise to Artemis of the Ephesians, praise to Artemis

of the Ephesians. Do you see why in chapter 2 he

was clear to say no, The Holy Trinity, God the Father to the

glory of his praise, God the Son to the glory of his praise, God

the Holy Spirit to the glory of his praise.

Do you see it, those Artemis rishouts flowing through his

mind as he's sitting in house arrest in Rome years later,

writing this letter to these dear church planters that he

worked with, that he said goodbye to with tears because

they knew he would. They would never see him again.

And they sobbed and they wept and they hung and they hugged

one another. You know, we have temples today

like entertainment venues or temples that you can hold in

your hand or paper temples like financial accounts or offices

that enshrine our position, our power, our prestige.

Not saying anything's wrong inherently with these things.

It's just saying I struggle with the enticements that they create

in my heart when I want to go to that temple and worship.

Let's look at verse 3, verse three, among whom we now he

switches to Jews. And remember in Paul's day,

there were only two kinds of people in the world, Gentiles

and Jews. So when he switches now, he's

saying everyone among whom we the Jews all once lived past

tense in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires

of the flesh and the mind, and we're by nature children of

wrath like the rest of mankind. And there it is again, that

spiritual DNA. This then is somewhat beckoning

the doctrine of original sin. Now, popular history would lead

us to believe that John Calvin came up with this doctrine, but

that's not necessarily true. Actually, the Trinity, the

Apostle Paul, and the church Fathers Tertullian and Agustin

had much more to say about this than Calvin.

And it wasn't until the last century that the concept of

Tulip was pinned on Calvin. But we'll leave that for the

classroom if I were to explain the doctrine of original sin to

younger disciples in the room. So younger disciples here with

us today, let me explain to you the doctrine of original sin.

At the very beginning the first people listen to the accusers

tricks to do something God told them not to do.

God allowed them to for this to happen because they had a choice

and he had a wise plan and would use it for good in the end.

Now because of that choice, they lost their close relationship

with God. And since sin is disobeying this

first sin changed them, making their hearts and lives broken

and far from what God made them to be.

And since all people come from them, their brokenness was

passed down to everyone like a family trait or like a drop of

ink in a glass of water. We are all born with hearts that

lean the wrong way and struggle to do what is right.

Because of this, we often choose to do wrong things and on our

own we don't naturally want to obey God.

And the rest of the Word tells us that even when someone

follows Jesus, this struggle with sin doesn't fully go away

in this life. And this is called personal sin.

But God Forgives our personal sins when we tell Him about

them, and He helps us grow and we still need His help everyday.

Even the wrong things we do goes against God's rules.

And sin brings sadness and sin brings trouble, and it separates

from us from God, and it leads to pain.

And in this life, if it's not dealt with often to even greater

loss. Now Paul spoke again about this

struggle with personal sin and the residue of original sin in

Galatians 5, where he says for the desires of the flesh are

against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are

against the flesh. John picks this up.

And 1st John do not love the world, the desires of the flesh

and the desires of the eyes. And pride of life is not from

the Father, but is from the world.

And Peter adds the accuser to these other two at first Peter,

when he says be sober minded, be watchful, your adversary, the

devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to

devour. For those of us who are in

Christ, isn't it interesting how shocked we are by other people's

brokenness? If this brutal description of

the level playing field of original sin is true, and it is,

and the Holy Spirit in dwells within God's people who blanket

the earth by billions restraining the world, the flesh

and the devil, and yet there are still billions who are

spiritually dead because they are not in Christ.

If all of these things are true, why are we so shocked by other

people's brokenness? Doesn't it seem like this would

be like a well, yeah, Jesus understood that we would judge,

recoil and run from other people's brokenness.

So he was broken on the cross for us, and he showed us how to

move into people who are broken. He was not shocked by sex

workers. He was not shocked by the

incarcerated. He was not shocked by adulterers

and thieves and the homeless and those with mental illness he

knew well long before we attached our diagnostic labels

to them. He even understood the mental

illnesses that may occasionally or can lead to addiction or to

someone to complete suicide and all sorts of spiritual and

emotional complexities. In fact, if you look at the

record, he appears to express public disdain more for the

greedy and the religious hypocrites.

Jesus shows us how to embrace brokenness, not to judge, not to

be repelled, but to shower abundant grace and rich mercy on

broken people, just like He did for you and for me in Pastor

Dane Ortland's book Gentle and Lowly.

And, And if you haven't read it at least once, I highly

recommend you read Dane's book, Gentle and Lowly.

Dane writes when we sin, the very heart of Christ is drawn

out to us. His heart is inflamed with pity

and compassion for his people. He simply cannot give them up.

Now, does that mean that where grace abounds, sin abounds more?

Absolutely not. That is a complete

misunderstanding of the gospel. It's saying that we should not

be surprised if we all start an original sin and even though we

walk in Christ, we still struggle.

And yet He meets us with every spiritual resource we need to

glorify Him according to His purpose in our lives.

Pastor Dane goes on to say holiness and sinlessness are

mutually exclusive, but Christ, being perfectly holy, knows and

feels the horror and weight of sin more deeply than any of us

sinful ones could. And he goes on to say this, the

purer the heart of a man, the more he is naturally drawn out

to help and relieve and protect and comfort, whereas the colder

heart sits still. Indifferent.

So what do we say to this? Having been spiritually revived

by grace, brought back to spiritual life through faith,

and justified before our Father, we thank the Holy Spirit for

indwelling in US and giving us help when we still work at love,

for giving us assistance when we still work at Joy, for helping

us with our patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness, and self-control. This is what the Word means when

it says, work out your salvation.

Because we still need to work on all of those things.

And praise be to God that He helps us in these things.

And the fruit of the Spirit are not feminine qualities.

Kindness and gentleness are Christ qualities.

Real men possess these traits. When Paul said goodbye to his

best friends in Ephesus, they cried and wept and hugged one

another because they knew they wouldn't see him again.

You see these kinds of things, the fruit of the Spirit, That's

the manosphere of the new covenant.

So if we put this all together so far in Ephesians, we have

this stunning theological sequence that is not just a

bunch of ideas, but all coming to and you.

Here's where we've been. He chose us in Him before the

foundation of the world. He predestined us for adoption.

In Himself. He has blessed us in the

Beloved. We have redemption through His

blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the

riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.

And in Him we have obtained an inheritance and we are sealed

with the promised Holy Spirit who guarantees our inheritance

to the praise of His glorious grace.

And if that's not enough, he has authority over everything in

heaven and in earth, and he is the head of his church.

And after all of this, it says, and you, you know what next week

starts with? You got to come back.

Today was and you but next week, next week are those two life

changing words by which we live and by which we survive not and

you the words are but God. It's the best news you will ever

hear. My friends, you've got to come

back next week. We this is right now is the half

time of a cosmic Super Bowl and our first parents massively

fumble and next week you are about to hear the greatest

comeback story in the universe. Literally you got to come back.

Father, to you all praise and glory for planning our

redemption, Lord Jesus for accomplishment, Holy Spirit for

sealing the guarantee of our inheritance and all of these

things that we might be lifted out of these 3 verses and dwell

forever and forever with you in the Cathedral of heaven to the

praise and glorious of your holy name in which we pray.

Lord Jesus and we all said together, Amen.

Let's stand and sing.