Ephesians 2:1-7

You know I asked him to sing that song.

I should have told him when to sing it instead of singing it

right before I preach. Makes me cry every time.

It's good to see you all. There's more of you than I

thought there would be today. Our passage for today is

Ephesians chapter 2 verses one through 7.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Go ahead and sit down. You don't have to stand,

although I have to stand. Kent Hughes in his commentary

on, on Ephesians, refers to these verses and, and likens

them to to climbing at the top of Mount McKinley, having

started at Death Valley just 80 miles away.

And that you on the one hand, you start 280 feet below sea

level and by the time you get to the end, you're approaching

15,000 feet. It's it's a passage that takes

us from the lowest of lows and takes us to the very throne room

of heaven. And I'm excited to preach this

morning. Let's go ahead and we'll start

by reading our our passage. It begins and it says, and you

are dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly

walked according to the course of this world, according to the

Prince of the power of the air and of the spirit that is now

walking in the sons of disobedience among them.

We too, all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh,

indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're

by nature children of wrath even as the rest.

But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with

which He has loved us even when we were dead in our

transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved. And He raised us up with Him and

seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches

of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Backing up just a little bit, if we go to Ephesians chapter 1,

Ephesians 1:18

verses 18 and 19, Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers and

he prayed that the eyes of their hearts might be enlightened so

that they will know what is the hope of his calling and order,

the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the Saints, and

what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who

believe. As we approach our text today, I

believe we would do well to see it as a as an enlarged

commentary on the surpassing greatness of God's power being

exercised towards us. In last week's text, Paul

highlighted God's power in a resurrecting and exalting Christ

In the coming weeks, we'll see God's power once again emphasize

when he talks about how God used his power, how God exercised his

power to to reunite and reconcile Jews and Gentiles and

how that Paul is in possession of his Apostolic ministry as a

result of of God's power. But in today's text, Paul is

going to emphasize that every Christian has been the recipient

and object of God's life giving power and that God has acted to

bring them from death to life. Regarding the structure of our

passage today in the in the original Greek, for those of you

that are Greek scholars, verses one through 7 comprise one

sentence in which the subject doesn't even appear until verse

4, and the main verbs, of which there are three, don't appear

until verses 5 and 6. The main point of these verses

being that that God has made sinners alive, that he has

raised them, that He has seated them with Christ in the

heavenlies in order that the greatness of his mercy and

kindness might be displayed in the ages to come.

The apostle doesn't begin our chapter there, though.

Chapter 2 begins not with the discussion of grace and how it

has been applied to the lives of believers.

Instead, instead, Paul prefers to to vividly describe what the

lives of the believers looked like before God transformed

them. There was a there was a desire

on on Paul's part to to make incredibly clear just how

desperate their situation and and by extension our situation

was before Christ. I mean, take for example, and

just contemplate the the phrase you know, and you were dead in

your transgressions and sins. I mean, it rolls off the tongue

so easily. You know, I fear sometimes that

we fail to appreciate the, the magnitude of, of, of that

statement. You are dead in your

transgressions and sin. Billy Crystal, that esteemed

theologian, had this to say as as as a miracle Max about death

in the 1987 called classic The Princess Bride.

He said, he said, he said there's a big difference between

mostly dead and all dead. You know, mostly dead is

slightly alive, but the man is. When the man is all dead, he

muses, you know, there's only one thing left to do, to search

through his pockets for loose change.

And, and, and Paul says this is this is your position.

You are, you are not mostly dead.

You are not a little bit alive. You are you are dead, dead

without hope as a song we sang earlier, he said without hope

and without light. So Paul begins our our passage

by reminding the Ephesians that that before God acted on their

behalf that they were dead in their trespasses and sins.

This, this is death that he that he speaks of must surely

describe their, their physical, I'm sorry, not their physical,

but their spiritual state, not their physical condition.

Because as we go on and verses and verses 2 and 3, his

characterization of their, of their actions demonstrates that

they were very much alive physically.

This idea of, of, of spiritual life and death is something that

that Jesus spoke of himself. And in John chapter 5, verse 24,

John 5:24

when he says truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my words

and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come

into judgement, but is passed out of death into life.

This the same understanding of, of a spiritual death is it's

something that was was familiar to the to the Jews of that day.

I mean, even those within Hellenistic Judaism, Philo

writes saying that estrangement from God is to be considered as

true death in contrast to physical death.

We, along with with Paul, should not hesitate to affirm to to the

world at large that however physically fit or however

mentally fit, however alert a person may be apart from God,

that person is dead. And those who who live in the

body without a relationship with Christ are dead.

Even while they live, they, they're unable, just as a, just

as a person who is physically dead is unable to communicate

with, with someone else. So those who are spiritually

dead or unable to communicate with God are separated from God.

He says that we are dead in our trespasses and sins.

I mean trespasses and sins. They're, they're, they're

synonyms, but they do have slight differences.

Decide to have of trespass involves making a wrong step or

crossing a known boundary or deviating from a right path.

I don't know where he's sitting, but my son Caleb regularly

accuses me of trespassing on the pickleball court when my feet,

inadvertently or not, stray into the kitchen.

To sin, on the other hand, carries the connotation of

missing the mark are falling short of a standard and and

taking together these these two words, they they cover both our

sins of of omission and Commission sins, the things that

we have done and things that we have not done.

Paul goes on to say in verse 2 that that trespassing sin were

the hallmarks of our lives before Christ.

He says that they walked in trespassing sin.

This this idea of of walking speaks to their manner of of

life both in their conduct and their lifestyle.

Paul identifies 3 influences as controlling and directing their

prior existence. This is that they had walked

according to the course of the world, that they had walked

according to the Prince of the power of the air, and that they

had walked according to the lusts of their flesh.

What does Paul mean when he says that the Ephesian believers had

in times passed, walked according to the course of this

world? And the Greek gets literally

translated according to the age of this world.

You know 2 concepts are at play here.

The first is that of time. The evil day in which they lived

is contrasted with the age to come.

The second is the idea of of the world which fits its values,

whatever they may be, whether it's whether it's secular

secularism, consumerism, communism, capitalism, edgerism,

any ISM, whatever it is that the world is putting out there,

these things fight against God's Kingdom in their past.

Paul says it that these these unbelievers had fallen into

lockstep with the ways of the world.

John started in talking about how it is that the world

influences the lives of individuals.

Says this. He says people tend not to have

a mind of their own, but to surrender to the oppressive

influence of the popular culture.

We were all the same until Jesus liberated us.

We drifted along in the stream of this world's ideas of living.

The second controlling influence that Paul references is the

devil referred to in this text as the Prince of the power of

the air. Elsewhere in Scripture, he is

described as the ruler of this world in John 1231.

Where is the Prince of demons in Mark 934, or even as the God of

this world in Second Corinthians 4/4?

Paul describes him as presiding over the spiritual forces that

are influencing and shaping the behaviors of those in rebellion

against God. So what Paul is saying here is,

is not only are the standards of the unregenerate in accordance

with the temporal values of the world in which they live, but

they're also under control of the ruler of the realm of the

air, or Satan. The spirit is said to be working

among the sons of disobedience, The sons of disobedience.

I read that and I said that should be the name of a heavy

metal rock band, and it is. I do not recommend their music.

This idea of the sons of, of disobedience, it carries A

connotation not necessarily just of disobedience to a command,

but also of a of an unbelief, a a heartfelt refusal to place

one's confidence in something. So, so when, when, when Paul

talks about the sons of disobedience, in this case, he's

talking about those who have not believed the word of truth, the

gospel that was that was preached.

If we go to 1st Corinthians 113, it says in him you also, after

listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your

salvation, having also believed you were sealed in him with the

Holy Spirit of promise, that there are some that on hearing

the gospel, believe the gospel and we're sealed by the Holy

Spirit of promise. These are not the sons of

disobedience. The sons of disobedience are

those who, who, having heard that, reject that message, who

refuse to place their confidence in the Word of God.

And verse 3 there's a there's a shift.

No longer does does Paul speak directly to the Ephesians as

though he's speaking to them and not including himself.

Prior to this time, he's he's talked about you and you and

you. But by the time we get to verse

three, he says among them to we all formerly, all of a sudden he

includes himself in this in this in this message, he links his

experience with with theirs. It's not as though somehow their

experience with as being an under generate people was

different than his. We all share this same

experience. All human beings in an

unregenerate state are seen in the same state of rebellion

against, against God. There's not, there's not just

pockets. Paul states that in addition to

our having walked according to the course of this world, in

addition to our being under the influence of of Satan, that we

also formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh.

When Paul speaks about the lusts of the flesh in this context, he

is identifying the flesh as that which is opposed to God, that

that inclination toward those thoughts and behaviors that are

contrary the character of God. The desires of the flesh are are

parallel to the works of the flesh that are listed in

Galatians 519 through 21. Those being immorality,

impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife,

jealousy, outbursts, anger, disputes, dissensions, factions,

envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

You might have noticed as I as I read the text that they're that

that that in our list are included desires of both the

flesh and the mind. It depicts a person that is

given over not only to their base physical desires, but also

to a thought life that runs counter to what God desires.

I'm struck as I as I read this passage to to to see just how

pervasive depravity is. When we read this passage, we

don't see that every person is as depraved as they can be, but

we certainly would be remiss to think that sin has not marred,

at least in some degree, every nook and cranny of our

existence. Paul reminds his readers that

their former physician wasn't that of a child of wrath, even

as the rest this phrase like like the sons of disobedience as

a way of saying that they were, that they were marked by or

characterized by or destined to. What Paul is saying here is that

they had been destined to experience the wrath of God had

he not intervened on their behalf.

The wrath of God. It's not something we speak

about a lot. Sinclair Ferguson describes it

as the settled hostility of God's holy will toward

everything that rebels against him.

In his letter, Paul speaks of the future day of wrath that we

can be certain of because because it's also seen at this

time in a limited way. And then we go to Romans 18, and

it tells us the wrath of God is revealed at this time against

all unrighteousness. And while the wrath of God is

not always revealed in a spectacular way, it is often

seen even in the abandonment of sinners to their own lusts and

desires and to the unrestrained consequences of their actions.

So it's a dark picture that Paul begins painting here at the

beginning of of chapter 2. Death, slavery, and condemnation

are are the three primary designators of of our lost human

condition. No mention here is made of human

beings bearing the image of God, albeit imperfectly.

John Stott writes that Paul's diagnosis remains outside of

Christ, that we are dead because of transgressions and sins,

enslaved by the world, the flesh and the devil, and condemned

under the wrath of God. That said then, it's a

monumental failure to recognize and appreciate the gravity of

the human condition apart from God, and yet we see it every day

that people fail to appreciate it properly.

It explains people's naive faith in superficial remedies.

I have the opportunity every three months to to teach our new

members class and we walk our way through the Baptist Faith

and Message. And I'm reminded of a portion of

Article 15 which reads Means and methods used for the improvement

of society and the establishment of righteousness among men can

be truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the

regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in

Jesus Christ. There's there's an understanding

there in in in those words of just how desperate the situation

is that faces an unregenerate world that to try to address

that by any means other than the gospel is foolishness.

The Bible supplies us well with images to help us understand the

the total inability of our of our dead human nature.

I mean, imagine being at Lazarus's tomb.

He's dead. He's been there three days.

Jesus comes, and it's not like one of us runs into the tomb and

says, Lazarus, Lazarus need to get up.

Jesus is here. Come on now.

He's a wonderful savior. All you got to do is reach out

to him. Just take the first step and

he'll meet you halfway. And of course, of course we

wouldn't say something like that.

You know, he's been dead like 3 days.

I mean like dead dead. Like I said, he stinks.

And yet when Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave, he

came. You know, Jesus gave mirrors to

hear, the strength to move, breath to live, and a will to

obey. Lazarus responded.

He came out of that grave. Yes he did.

But Jesus was responsible for his new life.

Verse 4 marks the turning point in our passage, I think when we

read about the spiritual death, when we read of this enslaved,

when we read about the top condemnation that marked the

lives of those without Christ were were unprepared for the

glorious but God that we find in verse 4.

You know we were objects of wrath, but because of his great

love for us, God exercised mercy upon us.

We were dead and dead people as we spoke about do not rise, but

God has made us alive with Christ.

We were slaves in a position of dishonor and powerlessness, but

God has raised us up with Christ and sent us in a position of

honor and power. Pope again's in verse 4 by

announcing that God's response to humanity's seemingly helpless

plight was motivated by his overwhelming merciful and loving

character. Paul hears his echoing Old

Testament themes that emphasize God's willingness to rescue his

people time and time again, even when they deserved wrath.

Time after time in the Old Testament, God is described as

abounding in steadfast love or abundantly merciful in context

where he might have justifiably poured out His wrath upon his

people. There's perhaps no place better

stated than in than in Romans 58, where we are told, but God

demonstrates his own love for us, and that while we were yet

sinners, Christ died for us. In the opening words of verse 5,

Paul restates our former position.

He says even when we were dead in our transgressions.

It serves to further highlight the mercy and the grace of God.

I think when we, I think when we go back and we see that there

was a but God, you know, there in verse 4, you know, because

because of that, But God, I think that we, I think that we

accept something, you know, maybe, maybe it won't be quite

as bad. You know, perhaps, perhaps a

little bit of mercy will be bestowed upon me, but I don't

think anything prepares an individual for for that

overwhelming outpouring of mercy and love that accompanies

salvation. It's like it's like when the

when the prodigal son decides to come back home and he and he

comes home and say, no, I want to tell my dad, no, I'll just,

if you just let me in the house, that'd be good enough.

That's the that's the mercy I anticipate when I read but God,

but that's not the mercy that I receive.

So Paul reminds his readers that though they deserved to

experience the wrath of God out of abundance of mercy and love,

he acted on their behalf. Paul uses 3 verbs here to

describe what the Father has done for us.

And he adds A prefix to each one of them which which denotes that

that these verbs are done together with these verbs are,

you know, made alive, so made alive with Christ to be raised

with Christ, to be seated with Christ.

When we, when we look at these terms, we see that they're terms

that were referred to just earlier in the in the previous

chapter when it speaks about God's actions toward his own

son, that he raised him, that he ascended, that he sits at the

right hand of the Father in heaven.

These these same types of actions that God performed for

his own son, He's now done for us.

Truths like this the church has affirmed for for nearly 1700

years. You go all the way back to the

Apostles Creed and it speaks about, about Christ being being

raised and, and ascending to heaven and sitting at the right

hand of God the Father. What should what should excite

the believer's mind when, when, when Paul uses this language,

though, is that is that he's not just writing about the Father's

actions toward Christ, but he's that he's writing about his

actions toward us as a believer. That he has done these very

things for us, that he has raised us, that he has, that he

has made us alive, that he has seated us in the heavenlies.

I mean, here's the here's the amazing truth of our spiritual

recreation. You know, just just as as God

breathed into lifeless dust to give life to Adam, the Lord

gives spiritual life to those of us who are spiritually dead.

This alone God can do this is we cannot bring life from death.

A dead person cannot will themselves to breathe.

A truly lifeless person will not do what we say, no matter how

passionately we exhort them. Yet we we're spiritually dead.

In our transgressions and sins. God made a lie.

This verb to make alive is used 11 times in the New Testament

and in every instance but one it refers to God having the power

to enliven. Whether it be to to bring life

forth as in the case of of Isaac being born, whether it be in

reference to the future resurrection of of our physical

bodies or or as it seems most likely in this case to the birth

of spiritual life in a believer. We see this application in John

663 where Jesus tells his disciples that it is the Spirit

who gives life. The flesh profits nothing.

The words that I've spoken to you are spirit and life.

I said earlier that we didn't get our three verbs until you

got to verses 5:00 and 6:00. And we have the 1st that we've

been we've been made alive. And before he goes on to to the

second third, he makes a makes a short digression by interjecting

the words you know, by grace you have been saved.

This language of, of grace once again emphasizes the the free

nature of God's action taken on behalf of unbelievers.

It's not it's not an action that's taken out of any

obligation whatsoever, but only from generosity.

Those dead in their sins and trespasses had no hope of

deliverance from God's wrath outside God's grace.

The verb here is used in the perfect tense, expressing a

completed action with continuing results in the present time with

the IB, with the idea being that God by His grace initially

saves, but that by that same grace he keeps believers safe

from God's wrath and the grip of sin from which they have been

delivered. The same effusive language

regarding mercy and generosity is one that would have been

familiar to to Paul's readers, especially within an urban area,

because it's because it's language that is used to to

describe the the generous benefactions of of Roman

emperors on behalf of their people.

Perhaps Paul uses the same language to to describe God's

action towards unbelievers. You know, just to illustrate how

it is that that God's benefactions far outstrip

anything that the Roman Empire had to offer.

Paul goes on to say that not only has God made us alive with

Christ, but that we have been raised with Christ.

This is this is resurrection language in which the believer's

spiritual resurrection is seen in conjunction with Christ's

physical ascension. Romans 811 tells us the spirit

of him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in the lives of

believers, and surely our resurrected life demands new

values. You know no more are we to walk

in the ways of the world under under the directions of Satan

and enslaved by our fleshly desires.

Rather as Colossians 3, one and two sums up the responsibility

of our resurrected believer, saying, If therefore you have

been raised with Christ, seek the things above where Christ is

seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above

and not on things on earth. Paul's words encourage us to

live differently. The sins that assaulted us

yesterday can be met and overcome by the risen power of

God in us. Tomorrow does not have to be

like yesterday for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Moving on, we come to the third main verb of this sentence,

describing yet another facet of how it is that God's grace is

worked out in the lives of believers.

We're told that He has seated us with Christ in the heavenlies.

Just as God raised and seated Christ in the heavenlies

physically, so has God raised us and seated us with Christ in the

heavenlies. In a spiritual sense, although

our position is in the heavenlies, we remain on earth.

You know, we live a resurrected life, for the resurrected Lord

are being made alive in Christ, are being raised and seated with

him. It's a present reality, but one

that still anticipates a fuller realization in the future.

It's similar to what we read about in in Romans 815 where it

says, we have received the spirit of adoption in verse 15.

But by the time we get to verse 23, it says, but then I'm sorry,

it says, but then goes on in verse 23 of the same chapter to

say that we eagerly await adoption, the redemption of, of

our bodies. It's it's a, it's a yet, and

it's a now and yet to come. We're coming out of verse 7.

It's that portion of the text where Paul explains to his

readers why it was that God acted so powerfully on their

behalf. It's not because of anything

they had done. There's nothing in and of

themselves deserving of His gracious action on their behalf.

We're told instead, that the Father made alive, raised and

seated believers with Christ in the heavenlies, in order to

demonstrate in the ages to come, the surpassing riches of His

grace. The word surpassing here denotes

an extraordinary or exceedingly great amount.

You know, it suggests that the that the grace of bounds it

knows. I'm sorry, it suggests that His

Grace knows no bounds. Paul goes on then to use three

prepositional phrases to describe how this grace is

dispensed. It's in kindness toward us in

Christ Jesus. I spent a few hours, I spilled a

lot of ink trying to deal with those phrases 1 by 1

individually. And I, I found myself rather

dissatisfied with the results of my labour.

So this morning, as I was, as I was looking over my notes, I

was, I was struck by the thought that, you know, perhaps I've

overcomplicated things just a little bit.

What what what Paul really seems to be getting at here in these

words is that is that the surpassing riches of God's grace

are most vividly viewed in the person of Jesus, you know, and

his work on our behalf. You know these are these are the

these are the same sentiments that are shared by the apostle

John in in first John 49 and 10, which reads by this the love of

God was manifested in us that God sent his only begotten Son

into the world so that we might live through him in this is

love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his

son to be a propitiation for our sin.

Paul tells us in verse 7 that God has acted in towards sinners

that the kindness of God might be revealed.

We've read a lot about the doctrines of grace as we've gone

through Ephesians so far in the 1st, 1st chapter, we've talked

about predestination and choosing.

Even in our text today we see the sovereignty of God

emphasized and how it is that he's acted on our behalf.

But as but as we're reading verse 7, I want us, I want us to

see this, that, that, that he says he does these things, He's

acted in these ways that we might recognize his grace and

kindness. Brian Chappell writes this about

verse 7. He says these words obligate us

to make sure that the doctrines of grace do not obscure the core

message of the kindness of God. We are not saved by right

thinking any more than we are saved by right action.

There is no cause for boasting among those who know that their

salvation is a gift from God. Rather, greater humility, love

for God, and love for His people flow from those who recognize

that their daily existence and eternal destiny are entirely a

gift from God. God loving us entirely out of

His mercy. At this point, I'm sorry.

God loving us entirely out of His mercy is the point we miss

if we focus on the doctrine of His action rather than on the

beauty of his kindness. How wonderful it is, Sinclair

Ferguson writes, that Paul combines together with the

lavish love displayed by Christ toward us with the ultimate

purpose of God. Our blessing and God's display

of his own glory are not antithetical, as though the

glory of God could only be displayed at our expense.

No, God's glory is best seen in the undeserved and unexpected

character of what has been done for us in Christ.

The effect of that in our lives will shine out of God's display

cabinet for all eternity. That's great.

Father, we thank you for for your word.

Lord, we confess that you are, that you are merciful, that your

kindness knows there's no bounds but your own good pleasure.

God, we are grateful for the way in which you have, that you've

made us a life, or that you've, God, you've raised us upward,

that you've seated us with Christ in in the heavenlies.

God, I pray that we would not lose sight of how far you have

brought us. Amen.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about Heritage

Church or if you'd like to respond to this sermon, visit

our website at www.heritageshawnee.org.