"Resurrecting Grace" Ephesians 2:4-7 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 through 7 is our text this morning.

Ephesians 2:4–7

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 his immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

Last week we looked at the first few verses of this passage that described mankind's condition apart from Christ.

It describes us as dead in sins and trespasses in verse 1, and we see that phrase repeated again in verse 5.

It describes us as being servants of the devil, held in slavery to our own lusts and passions.

As we are, children of wrath, verse 3 says, like the rest of mankind, we are dead in sin.

There is no shortage for the language the Bible uses to describe people apart from Christ.

Jesus compares them to blind people, unable to perceive spiritual truth.

So much so that the Pharisees ask Jesus after they saw a man healed from blindness, are you saying that we're blind?

And Jesus said, if you were blind, you wouldn't have, you would at least have an excuse.

Jesus compares those outside of Christ to blind people, to lame people that can't walk.

I mean, what is it easier to do?

To tell someone, a lame person, take up his mountain walk, or tell him his sins are forgiven.

I mean, they're both equally impossible for a human being to accomplish.

They're the same amount of syllables.

The point is, somebody who's apart from Christ does not have the capacity to have their sins forgiven.

They cannot follow Christ.

They're spiritually blind, they're spiritually lame, they are spiritually dead.

They don't have the capacity for spiritual growth or the capacity for spiritual life.

Jesus calls them whitewashed tombs.

In the book of Jeremiah, God says that those who are apart from the covenant love of Yahweh have hearts that are made of stone.

They're not capable of spiritual life.

A stone heart can't pump blood is the point.

Through Ezekiel, God declares those apart from Christ as a valley of dry bones.

Not only are they dead, but to borrow the words of Martha, by now they stink.

Those apart from Christ are said to be serving Satan, prisoners of lust, caught in the trap of the devil, Paul says.

In fact, Romans 7.18, Paul says, In me, that is in my flesh, there exist no good thing.

That apart from Christ, there is nothing good about somebody.

So somebody who is absent Christ is spiritually dead, spiritually blind, spiritually lame, compared to dead bones with a stony heart.

And then in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul says, they are unable to understand the things of God.

They are spiritually deaf.

The words of Scripture cannot penetrate their heads or their hearts.

This is why it is not an exaggeration to say those apart from Christ are spiritually dead.

Nothing good dwells in them.

Hebrews 11 says, without faith, it is impossible to please God.

And so somebody who is apart from Christ finds themselves in an impossible situation because they don't have faith in God, they can do nothing that is pleasing to him.

Nothing.

If the greatest command is to love the Lord your God, it follows that those apart from Christ are the greatest sinners.

Because they lack the capacity to do the greatest command.

That is the biggest sin against God.

Failure to love Him.

Every other sin is second, third, fourth, on into infinity place.

First place, failure to love God as you ought.

And without faith, it is impossible to love God.

This is why Paul is not guilty of hyperbolic language in verse 1 and then again in verse 5 when he describes those who are outside of Christ as dead.

We talked last week about where this comes from in the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve were told not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

They did, because they thought in the day they ate it it would be like God.

In fact, God told them the day you eat it, you will surely die.

So they did eat it.

Far from having their eyes open and reaching some plateau of enlightenment, they found themselves under God's wrath, under his curse.

They found themselves spiritually dead.

That day they died.

That day they realized their nakedness and were ashamed.

That day they hid from God.

Not a rational thing to do.

They hid from him.

They died that day.

Not a physical death.

Of course, the wages of death is, or the wages of sin is death.

Their spiritual death will produce a physical death in them.

But the day they sinned, they died spiritually, and every human being born from Adam after that is born spiritually dead.

There's no hope for a dead person.

There's no hope.

A doctor doesn't walk into a room and say, I'm sorry, the patient died.

We've got one last thing to try.

That's the situation of people apart from Christ.

There's no hope for them.

They're lost, they deserve hell.

That's the end of verse 4.

They are at the end of verse 3.

By nature, they're children of wrath, meaning they deserve hell.

With no hope of rescue.

No hope at all.

Yesterday we had a birthday party at our house for seven-year-olds.

And the kids emerge from the woods behind our house and they have in their possession a bird.

The story, and I have no reason to doubt the story, but it is unusual, is that the group of children saw the bird fall out of a tree and it landed there.

And so they scooped it up and put it on a little bed of leaves and bring it to the parents.

First to the moms who directed them over to Dad.

I now have presented to me a possibly, mostly, who knows?

Deceased bird.

But I don't know that.

So what's what's the first thing I do?

I'm jogging my mind back to like CPR lessons.

What's the f you're presented by a group of children with hopeful looks in their face, a bird that fell out of the tall top of a tall tree on a bed of leaves, you're presented him, what do you do?

Step one, check for life.

Okay?

Check for life.

The little tiny bird claws, I don't think on a good day they have much circulation, so I'm not going to check for a pulse in the claw.

I move up and check the neck.

And I'm pretty sure I felt a pulse.

I'm pretty sure.

It could have been my own pulse, but I think it was a bird.

It was seemed faster than me, although I was nervous at the time.

I think the bird had life in it.

So what's the second thing?

I like blow on his face.

I would do mouth to mouth, but I don't want to catch COVID, so I keep a distance and blow.

And uh it didn't really respond.

I'd like to think that it moved a little bit, but who knows?

And so I deduced the bird is alive, possibly stunned from the fall.

Best thing is for us to put it back at the base of the tree, and its mommy will come get it.

Although this looked a little bit old to have a mommy looking for it, but again, who knows?

So the kids put it on a bed of leaves at the base of a tree.

They come back and check 15 minutes later, and the bird is gone.

Gone.

Now there's lots of possibilities, and you are wicked people for entertaining any of them in your minds.

I say the bird lived and flew away.

That's what I say.

And I'm gonna keep saying it.

There's hope that that happens because there was a little bit of sign of life in the bird.

But if the bird comes and the bird is dead, you don't say put it back in the tree and let the mommy come get it.

Do you understand that our situation apart from Christ, it's not like there's a faint heartbeat in us spiritually.

And that if we nestle up next to a church or a Bible, there might be some kind of spiritual life that is fanned back into us.

If a pastor blows in our face, we'll come alive.

No.

Apart from Christ, we are spiritually dead.

Aliens from the covenant, without hope in this world.

There is no hope for us apart from Christ.

And this is a strange plot twist coming out of chapter one.

Chapter one is all about how God has chosen us in Christ from before the foundations of the world.

He set his love on us.

He's going to seal us with his spirit.

We're supposed to be redeemed to participate in the immeasurable riches of Christ.

I mean, that was the plan.

But now when you find a real person in Ephesians, you come across him and he's dead.

The plan's not going according to schedule.

The guy is dead.

People are dead.

Guilty of sin, deserving of wrath, and so now what hope is there?

And that's why verse 4 is such an incredible verse.

Just the first two words.

But God.

You can hang so much hope on those two words.

Because at the end of verse 3, it's over.

You're dead.

There's no spiritual life.

God's love has failed.

You deserve hell.

You can't hear him when he calls.

You can't see him when he walks in front of you.

You can't respond to him with faith.

You're dead.

There is no hope.

But God.

He has a different plan.

He's going to do something different than just let us stay dead.

I'm so glad verse 4 starts with but God instead of therefore.

If this would be a therefore verse, then let's pack it up and go home.

There's nothing here for us if it's therefore.

People are dead in their sins and transgressions, children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

Therefore.

What a horrible verse it would be.

But it doesn't say therefore.

It doesn't say because.

But God.

Something radically different.

Radically unexpected.

God does something different.

And you want to get to what he does different, but you run into some other words.

But God being rich in mercy.

Because of the great love with which he loved us.

You're expecting to find the action word here.

You're expecting to find, but God saved us, but God gave us faith, but God did this, that, or the other thing.

Instead, you run into descriptions that are quantitative words.

You're definitely not expecting a quantitative word.

You're expecting an action word.

If you get an adjective, great.

But here you've got a quantity word.

How much is back on God and how much of mercy he has.

How much of love he has.

He's rich in mercy.

He's rich in love.

And he's pouring it out on us.

I got a credit card in college back my freshman year in college.

Credit card companies just basically gave credit cards to college kids.

You would get like a sign up and you get a Snickers bar.

It was a great deal for a college student.

Now I hold out more.

Like now I want a free flight to Europe or something before I'm going to sign up for a new card.

But back then a Snickers bar sealed the deal.

Those credit cards would come with like a$500 credit limit for some 18-year-old freshman.

Here's a$500 credit limit.

I didn't fully understand the nature of a credit limit.

I thought if you pay your balance, the limit doesn't kick in, right?

You just pay by the end.

That's how I thought it worked.

I didn't know.

I'm coaching a bunch of soccer teams for this club.

I order all kinds of soccer stuff, uniforms for several teams, soccer balls comes.

It was thousands of dollars of stuff.

And I show up at the soccer store to pick it up, and there's the boxes.

Okay, there's the boxes.

They got my name on it and everything.

And I walk in and I give the guy my credit card and he comes back and says, doesn't work.

Declined.

Like, how could it be declined?

You know, I bought like a Slurpee on this thing this morning.

How could it be declined?

Call the credit card company.

Oh, there's a credit limit.

And so, yeah, you're way over if you try to buy those.

So bounce back.

Now, this guy at the the owner of the soccer store, he did not, English was not his first language.

It was not the church.

We had no common bond on which to transcend our language differences.

He did not want to let me go.

I mean, he just bought thousands of dollars worth of stuff to sell to me, and I'm like, I can't buy it?

I learned a valuable lesson that day.

One I'm still learning all the time and reminding myself of.

You can't buy something.

You shouldn't buy something, you shouldn't order something unless you have the money in the bank.

Don't put it on the counter unless you can pay for it.

When God acts on us here, what's remarkable is that he has the grace in the bank.

That's what Paul is trying to communicate here.

He's going to do something to our dead conditions here.

And before he even describes what it is he does to us, he lets us know that God has all of the grace he needs already in the bank.

He has all the love he needs to give to us already set aside.

He's not going to max out the grace card here.

He's got plenty to share.

We have this problem all the time.

We maybe somebody's taking advantage of us, or maybe somebody is wronging us, and we work through in our mind, is this one of those times that I answer a fool according to his folly, or don't answer a fool according to his folly?

And you decide, you work through it in your mind, like, okay, I'm just going to suffer the wrong.

I'm not going to respond to this.

I'm just going to suffer it.

I'll get cheated.

Whatever.

How do I respond as a Christian here?

I show the person grace.

That's what I do.

I show him grace, and then you go to show the person grace, and it's not there.

Like I left the grace right here.

It should be here.

I had my quiet time this morning and everything.

There should be grace here to share with this person.

And yet it is gone already.

It's not even noon, and the grace is left.

That never happens to the Lord.

He's never going to show someone grace and run out of grace, to show someone mercy and run out of mercy, to show someone love and run out of love.

He has all of it.

And so that sets the table for what he's going to do to us.

We're in our dead situation, and yet God has an ample supply of mercy, an ample supply of love.

He's rich in both.

And so now he's going to act on us.

But even before we get to what he does, Paul reminds us again, he's doing this while we were dead in our trespasses.

While we were dead.

You see a neighbor getting physically assaulted or attacked, you might risk your life to defend your neighbor.

Like if you're in the Secret Service, you might risk your life.

Well, you better risk your life for the person you're supposed to protect.

That's just what you do.

If you see a child getting attacked, you would, I think, just about every one of us would risk their life, even if it's not our child, somebody else's child, any child.

You would like to think that you would give your life to protect a child who's being attacked.

Who knows what you would do when it comes down to it, but in our minds, you'd be like, I would, I would die rather than let a kid be hurt in front of me.

That's what we would think.

Do you understand when Paul's saying when God is going to act on us here, when he's going to do things, he's going to show us grace and he's going to show us mercy and show us his love, it is not when we are innocent children that are being attacked.

It's not when we're a neighbor being attacked.

We're not an innocent victim here being attacked by a villain.

God is going to show us things.

He's going to do things to us while we are his enemy.

While we are actively rebelling against him.

That's that moment when he acts on us.

He first acts on us by giving us Jesus Christ.

Jesus comes and dies for us.

He takes our sin on him.

He leads a life that is perfect, and he gives his life to us, and our life, which is sinful, becomes his, and he dies on the cross for our sins.

That exchange happens and he dies for our sins.

He resurrects from the grave on the third day.

And now, 2,000 years later, you're born and you're still spiritually dead, even though God already gave you Jesus Christ.

He already came to earth.

He already died.

And so now what?

And then now what is what comes next?

Let me give you two things from this passage as an outline this morning.

Two gracious acts of God on dead sinners.

Now Jesus has come, He's been crucified, He's been resurrected.

You're still spiritually dead.

You're still a child of wrath.

You're still deserving God's judgment.

And two things happen.

Both of them described in this passage.

We'll look more at the gracious part next week.

Next week's whole sermon will be on the grace alone part.

You've been saved through grace.

But this week I want to focus on what it is that God actually does.

You're dead.

God is the doctor.

What does he prescribe for your deadness?

Two things.

First, regeneration.

Regeneration.

This is absolutely essential.

But God, this is the key phrase in the middle of verse 5, made us alive.

This is a theological word for regeneration.

You are dead, and God makes you alive.

Regeneration means to be brought back to life.

Generation is a biblical concept.

It's from all the bagats in the Old Testament that you have an existence.

Life is imparted to you.

You're spiritually dead, even though you're physically alive, you're spiritually dead.

So you need regeneration.

Your spirit needs to be brought back to life.

You weren't spiritually alive and then died, and now you need regeneration.

You've always been spiritually dead.

It's called regeneration because Adam and Eve were spiritually alive and they died.

So the solution to spiritual death is new spiritual life, a new heart.

The heart of stone becoming a heart of flesh, being circumcised and given a heart of flesh.

The valley of dry bones, the dry bones having life breathed into them and them coming alive.

The spiritually blind person having his eyes open so he can see.

The spiritually lame person being given strength to stand up and walk.

The spiritually deaf person having his ears unstopped.

The spiritually dead person having spiritual life given to them.

That's what regeneration means.

That you are made alive.

The Bible calls us being born again.

And even think of that language, being Jesus in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

No one can even see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.

The word again in the Greek literally means from above, you're born a second time.

You're born a Nothing.

You're born from above.

The Holy Spirit comes from above and acts on you and makes you alive.

That's what it means to be born again.

To be made alive, to be made to walk, to be made to see, to be made to love, to be made most of all to delight in God.

That's what happens when you're born again.

You have no spiritual life, and the Holy Spirit unites your dead heart to Christ so that his life becomes your life, that your life became his life, and he does that through faith.

So you're dead, the Holy Spirit works on you, brings your heart to life, granting you faith, that faith results in a joy and a life and a fellowship with God.

This is not minimalistic language here.

There's no regeneration is not the same thing as people saying, I'm going to make a decision or a commitment.

Regeneration is more radical than even that, although decisions and commitments are certainly part of it.

Regeneration is about becoming Dead and being made alive.

That's what happens at salvation.

That's why it's a language of new birth.

I mean, there's no more overstated way to say that than a new birth.

I told you this weekend was my youngest daughter's birthday party.

We celebrate birthdays.

Every year we celebrate birthdays.

Little kids celebrate their birthdays.

We have a dinner and she gets a red plate, you know, your special plate.

And it's a thing and it's it's happy.

It's a day we celebrate her, and we do that every year.

And it's my mom's birthday today.

Well, celebrate her.

It doesn't, it's not just for kids, all the way up.

You celebrate birthdays.

That's why this language here that when a person comes to faith in Christ, it's a new birth.

It's something more significant than your birthday.

There's nothing more radical or transformative that can happen to you than you being dead and being made alive.

What else could compete with that?

You dyed your hair.

Great.

That's not even in the same league as you were dead and now you're alive.

You got a new car.

Great.

Not in the same league.

New job?

No, not even close.

You had a new baby, a new child, entered your family.

Okay, now you're at least in the right league.

Because that's the birth we're talking about here.

It's even more special than that.

It's a birth from above.

We enter this world by people's choices, man's will, John 1, verse 12 says.

John 1:12

Not true with the spiritual birth.

The spiritual birth is not a product of human decision or of human will, but of God who chooses, of God who saves, of God who sends the Spirit and makes the dead alive.

And without the new birth, there can be no spiritual growth.

Without the new birth, there can be no faith.

Without faith, it's impossible to please God.

Somebody who is spiritually dead can't have faith, they can't be pleasing to God.

What do they need?

They need life.

And now you're dead.

And I put sugar on your tongue.

Are you gonna think it's sweet?

No.

You're dead.

You can't taste anything.

You following the analogy?

The problem is not that the sugar is stale.

The problem is not that the sugar was in the cupboard for 15 years and it lost its sweetness.

I don't know if that even happens, but that's not the problem.

The problem is that you're dead.

Now, if you are made alive, you come back to life, and there's a sugar cube on your tongue.

The first thing you're going to notice, I'm alive.

The second thing you're going to notice, I taste something sweet.

That's what happens in salvation.

That's what happens in the new birth.

You are required to exercise faith.

You are spiritually dead.

God causes you to be born again.

Your new birth and faith are simultaneous, of course.

The new birth is determinative, though.

It's what immediately you are awakened and your eyes are opened to God and you possess faith towards him.

And not only do you possess faith towards him, but guess what?

You realize that God is sweet.

He is precious to you.

Five seconds ago, you were angry with God.

Five seconds ago you were hiding from God, or rebelling against God, or loving yourself more than him.

And after the new birth, you find yourself in love with God.

Why should a newly born person love God?

Because he is rich in mercy and rich in love.

And he directs that towards you.

So capture this.

God in eternity past has set his love upon you.

He designed you because he loves you.

He made you as an object of his love.

He designed you to set his love upon you.

And then people fall into sin.

So Jesus comes and lives a sinless life and dies for your sin.

You now, thousands of years later, are born dead in sin, aliens to the promise, an enemy to God, spiritually deaf, dumb, and blind.

And now God acts on you.

In regeneration, God is the actor, you are the recipient.

And at that moment, you see the preciousness of God.

At that moment, your mind goes back into eternity past and you encounter the living God and his love that he has said on you.

That's what happens.

The love is eternal, and because God is gracious towards you, he directs his love towards you, he sends Christ for you, because he's merciful, he forgives you of your sins in Christ.

God doesn't love you because Jesus died for you.

Jesus died for you because God loves you.

God doesn't show you grace because Jesus died for you.

Jesus died for you as an act of God's grace towards you.

Here's why regeneration is so important.

If God sends his son to die for you, do you think he will forget to save you?

It's a greater to a greater to the lesser argument here.

The sending of Jesus to die on the cross for you was the God giving his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

That's the greater.

So God does that.

Now, 2,000 years later, is he going to forget to save you?

Saving you, giving you spiritual life is less of a sacrifice to him than it was sending his son.

And you need him to save you.

You need him to.

Because you're lost in your sins.

You're lost in your sins.

You were a debtor apart from Christ, you were a debtor who couldn't pay.

You were a suspect who couldn't make bail.

You were a criminal who was convicted.

You were on death row and you couldn't appeal.

And at that moment, you're executed and thrown out into the graveyard.

And at that moment, God magnifies his love to you by granting you spiritual life.

Jeremiah 31, verse 3.

Jeremiah 31:3

I loved you with an everlasting love.

And that's a new covenant prophecy right there, that God will circumcise our hearts, give us, take out our heart of stone, give us a heart of flesh, because he's loved us with an everlasting love.

When God gives us a new heart, it is rooted in the everlasting, eternal love of God.

God is love, first John 4.8 says, and his love is actualized towards us in the person of Jesus Christ and then applied towards us through regeneration.

And regeneration cleanses us.

Titus 2, verse 11 says, the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation.

Titus 2:11

He washes us by the water of regeneration, is the language that Paul uses to Titus.

Notice that regeneration is called washing.

The Holy Spirit cleanses us.

So this is how it happens.

You are supposed to exercise faith in God and love God and delight in God.

Okay?

That's what you are called to do.

However, you're spiritually dead.

So you are closed to God, you're hardened to God, you're blind to his truth, you hear God's commands, your conscience convicts you, you're impervious to all that.

You cannot exercise faith in him.

You cannot be pleasing to him because you are dead.

So God brings you to life.

Now, you might ask, what is my role to play in this then?

If regeneration is God's work, what's my role?

Are you saying I don't have a role?

No, you have a very important role.

You have to resurrect.

That's a key part of this.

Think of Jesus shouting into Lazarus' grave, Lazarus, come out.

Yeah, but Lazarus doesn't have a real role to play.

Yeah, he does.

He's got to get up on out of there.

So what's Lazarus' job?

When he hears the command to get up and come out.

But if God doesn't resurrect him, Lazarus can't obey the command.

That's exactly right.

So God calls you to repent and believe the gospel.

And if God does not grant you that new life, you will be unable to do that.

Nevertheless, you will still be responsible for it because it is a holy command that God gives.

Of course, you're responsible for it.

You're made in the image of God.

So how does God actually bring you to life then?

He brings you to life through the preaching of his word.

Written on the page or hearing it with your ears.

That's how he brings new life.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the words about Christ.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God.

And without hearing about Christ, you cannot exercise faith in him.

And so what God does is he, through the ministry of his Holy Spirit, brings dead sinners to life by causing them to come to life through the preaching or the reading of God's word.

So the commands go out into the world.

A person is dead, the commands just bounce off of them.

They don't impact them at all.

They only seek to, they only accomplish deadening the sinner's heart and making them more recalcitrant to Christ.

But when the Holy Spirit comes to give someone life, he works with the teaching of God's word, with the reading of God's word.

And as the Holy Spirit gives life, the person comes to life and is hearing the word.

It's hearing God calling them to repent and believe and to place their faith in Christ and to love.

And they're now alive.

And so they do that.

That's what regeneration is.

And it sanctifies, of course.

It's peeling back the sin and it's transforming.

Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.

The old is gone, the new has come.

You have new appetites.

You now taste and see that the Lord is good.

Because of this, regeneration is God's sovereign, unstoppable call to a human heart to awaken the heart and cause it to come alive through the application of God's word to it.

It comes with faith, it comes with joy, it comes with love for God.

And this is all of grace.

You don't experience this because you earned it, you experience this because God gave this to you.

You are the tree that bears new fruit because of your faith in Christ.

You don't bear fruit in order to be alive, you bear new fruit because you are alive.

That is regeneration.

But God makes you alive.

You can lead a horse to water.

You know where this is going, right?

But you can't make him drink.

That's the expression.

I don't know if I buy that.

Could you make a horse drink?

Maybe you could.

If it was a small enough horse.

If you were strong enough, you could wrestle that horse to the ground.

You could make that horse drink water.

What you cannot do is you cannot make the horse go, hmm.

That's good water.

That's what you can't do.

Okay, so now applying this to people.

The requirement for heaven is for you to taste and see that the Lord is good.

I can make you go to church.

I can make you listen to a sermon.

And if not you personally, there's at least three people in this congregation that applies to.

But you get the point.

Your parents can make you go to church.

They can make you listen to a sermon.

Your husband or your wife can make you go to church.

They can make you listen to a sermon.

They can strap you down in a chair and read you the Gospel of John and make sure your ears hear it.

They can do those things.

But they cannot make you say, Oh, the Lord is precious to me.

The Lord is so good to me.

That's what regeneration does.

You taste and you see that the Lord is good.

That is the first point, regeneration.

This is about where I was.

First hour also.

Just a crime.

Second point, glorification.

Doesn't stop here.

I mean, this would be outrageous enough, but it keeps on going.

Well, we don't get today.

We'll pick up next week, I guess.

It's not just that by grace you've been saved.

We'll look at that phrase for sure next week.

But verse five, he made us alive together with Christ.

So he makes you alive with Christ.

You're hitched to Christ.

And now, verse six, raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So Jesus now is in heaven.

Right now, the eternal Son of God, the God man, is seated in heaven at the right hand of the Father, making intercessions for us.

We are in him.

So in the mind of God, we are in heaven in some sense.

We're localized, we're physically here right now.

We're only in one place at one time.

We're not God, we're here.

But in the determinative plan of God, we are already going to be in heaven with him because we're in Christ.

So he causes us to be made alive.

And because we're alive, we are in Christ because our life is his life, his life has become our life.

We're in him, who is at the right hand of our heavenly Father, who is seated in the heavenly places, and so that we too will be there.

We're tied to the rope, and the rope gets thrown overboard like the cartoons.

You know, you're tied to the anchor, and the anchor is thrown off the cliff, and you know the person who's tied to you will be.

That's what we has happened with us.

We are tied to Christ, who is thrown up into heaven, and we will be yanked up there with him.

And again, nobody goes to heaven, nobody becomes a Christian against their will.

You become a Christian by God changing your will.

He doesn't drag you screaming and kicking to heaven.

He brings you to heaven and you're eager to go there because of regeneration.

But now that you're spiritually alive, you want to go to heaven, you desire to go to heaven and be with God and worship with God and be with Christ and see the one whom you love, and he's there, and you will be brought there.

The Holy Spirit will bring you all the way there.

He has sealed you at your conversion as the guarantee that you will also be seated with God in heaven.

That's the promise.

You'll be seated with him in the heavenly places because you're in Christ Jesus.

Now, why would God do this?

Why would God design a plan this way?

Somebody asked last week, why did God cause us to be dead in our sins?

Why didn't he just keep Adam and Eve from eating the tree?

Why did he put the tree to begin?

Those kind of questions.

And the answer I think is it's a complex answer, but it's simple to say.

God is more glorified in a world where there is grace and redemption on display than he is glorified in a perpetual Garden of Eden.

Or to say it differently, God is more glorified in a world where there is a cross and an empty grave and redeemed sinners than in a world where the devil didn't enter and where Adam and Eve stayed sinless forever.

He is more glorified through redemption than without it.

That's what I would say.

And I get that largely from verse 7 here, that he does this so that in the coming ages, the coming, the coming ages?

The coming ages, plural?

There's things in the future, there's whole epochs and eras that are in the future that we will be with.

I think he's speaking of the church age, followed by the kingdom on earth, followed by the eternal state.

I mean, there's three ages that we're going through.

He's talking about a long flat earth society, you go off the edge of the earth and you keep on falling.

He's talking about the timeline that ends and you fall off it and you keep going.

All the way in eternity future, he saved you, tethering you to Christ at the cross and resurrection.

He saved you by giving you regeneration so that in eternity future, he would show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

He saved you to magnify his glory in you.

That's what he did.

He saved you to powerfully display and magnify and multiply his glory in you, not just now, but into heaven.

Somehow your redemption is going to be displaying the riches of God's, notice the words, kindness, the riches of his grace, the riches of his mercy in verse four, the riches of his love in verse four, kindness in verse seven, grace in verse seven.

And they're immeasurable.

All those categories, verse seven, they're all immeasurable.

It will take an eternity to display them, which is great news because guess what you have?

An eternity to display them.

Just imagine that God saves you to display his grace in you for all eternity.

This connects us back to chapter one.

Chapter one, God in his mind designs you to show his grace in you.

Then you're found to be dead.

God overcomes your death by giving you life and pulling you right back up into the very heavens that you saw in chapter one.

Right back up where the Trinity dwells in eternal love for each other.

You will be there also for an eternity, displaying the kindness and the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

For believers.

If you understand regeneration and glorification, you would never look down on somebody who's not a Christian.

You look at them with almost thankfulness to the Lord that He saved you and kindness and compassion towards non-Christians.

Because you recognize apart from Christ, that would be you.

The reason you're not as wicked and evil as wicked and evil sinners are is not owing to anything in you.

It's entirely owing to God's work in you.

So you would never be proud or arrogant.

The application to non-believers is simple.

It's Isaiah 55.

Let the wicked person forsake his way and run to the Lord, who may have compassion on him.

If you're here today and you don't know the Lord, place your faith in the Lord.

Believe in his death and resurrection.

Run to him and ask him to forgive you of your sins.

And you might say, but if I'm not a Christian, how do I do that?

You hearing me tell you to do that, you hearing Isaiah 55, run to the Lord.

That's how the Holy Spirit works to save you.

That's what he works in your heart to bring you to life.

That's what he does.

So run to the Lord.

You have to believe in order to be saved.

If you were here's something that's true, you have to believe in order to be saved.

If left to yourself, you wouldn't believe.

But thank God he doesn't leave us to ourselves.

When it comes to salvation, there's only one point worth making, and that's God saves sinners.

Lord, we're thankful that you're a loving God who does save sinners.

And you are eager to save.

And so we give you thanks for extending that salvation to us through our faith in Jesus Christ.

I pray for anyone here this morning that doesn't know you.

I pray this morning they would place their heart in you.

They would believe the gospel.

They would long for heaven.

And they would be transformed as the image of your son through their faith.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.