Ephesians: God Helps Those Who Are Helpless (2:1-10)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

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The second lessons from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 10.

Ephesians 2:1–10

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

Following the course of this world, following the prince of power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sands of disobedience.

Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

For God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love 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 and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not of 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 and eat with him.

The word of the Lord.

Church, by grace, you have been saved through faith.

Let's pray.

Merciful Lord, you are high above all the nations, and your glory is above the heavens, and yet you humble yourself to behold the things in heaven and earth, and you take up the lowly out of the dust.

So, Lord, we pray that we who read from this your word would read it clearly, that you would give us the sense, so that we may understand your life-giving word and behold Christ.

And in beholding Christ, we may say, today this scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing.

It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So, church, we've been journeying together these last two weeks through Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

And we've had one question in our minds and in our hearts, and that question is, why bother with this thing we call the church?

It's something that Paul has on his mind as he's writing to this first century congregation, this letter that's meant to circulate around uh the surrounding area of Ephesus.

And Paul gives us very important answers to consider.

Why do we bother with this thing called the church?

Why do we bother to be this thing called the church?

We've seen in chapter one that the church is chosen in Christ, redeemed in Christ, and sealed by the Holy Spirit in Christ.

We bother with the church because God has bothered with us as the church.

And so we endeavor to be the church, this the church that the Spirit illumines, illumines in hope and in the glorious riches of God's inheritance and in power, a resurrection power.

So, friends, as I started months ago to discern, you know, where do we go next?

What's the next sermon series look like?

What ought we to learn from God's word?

I really got a prayerful sense that Ephesians was the book for us to look at in this particular moment.

Maybe some of us have even been asking that question, why is it that we bother with this thing called the church?

And I gotta be honest, I got really excited when I started to get a sense that Ephesians might be the text for us.

I got excited because preaching Ephesians means I get to preach Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 10, which is today's text.

Ephesians 2:1–10

And this is perhaps one of my top three favorite texts in the New Testament, perhaps in all of Scripture.

This is perhaps one of the clearest, most resounding, like a like a bell of the gospel through all of Scripture.

This is a passage that was uh of renewed importance through the Reformation and this rediscovery of what it means to be saved and assured in Christ.

This is the passage that, um, upon hearing it, one of my heroes of Christian heroes named J.C.

Ryle, who was the first bishop of Liverpool in the 19th century, upon hearing this passage, it said that his heart was renewed and changed.

Even though he'd spent decades growing up in the church, going to church Sunday for Sunday, he had never encountered the power of the gospel until he heard this passage being read.

So I got really excited to preach this passage.

I got so excited that I prepared not just one sermon this morning, but two.

And lucky you, you get to hear both.

Don't worry, I'll give you the cliff notes perhaps of the first sermon, and I'll let you decide which is the superior of the two.

The first sermon I'd like to call God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.

And this sermon, like the next, hinges on verse eight.

If you have your Bibles, if you have your order of service, open it up to Ephesians chapter 2 here.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

This sermon hinges on verse 8.

By grace, you, church, have been saved through faith.

The question for us is what do we mean?

What are we talking about when we talk about grace?

And here's the answer I'd like to supply in this sermon called God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.

The answer to what is grace is this: try your best, and God does the rest.

Apply yourself diligently to keep God's commands, to perform the Ten Commandments, to do the right things and to not do the wrong things, you know, to be kind and help an old lady across the street from time to time, to take in your bins on the same day you put them out, that kind of stuff.

Do your best, and maybe your best effort, well, it won't be perfect.

Let's be honest, none of us are perfect, you know, but God sees you trying.

He sees you're giving it a good college try.

And so maybe your best effort, like mine, is like a B minus.

And maybe heaven really requires like an A to get in.

And so God, because He's, you know, generous enough to fudge the numbers a little bit, goes, you know, you're you're you're really trying sport, so how about we take that B minus effort and we'll bump that up to an A?

How about that?

Try your best.

God does the rest.

The good news of this sermon is that God might just fudge the numbers for us.

And the application for this sermon is keep on striving.

Keep doing good things, doing good works to earn your salvation before God.

So I guess at this point I want to ask if this sounds like a familiar sermon.

I'm not asking for a show of hands.

I'm wondering how familiar this idea is.

Because, friends, I can't tell you the number of pastors I've heard deliver this kind of a sermon, or variations of this sermon.

And there are books sitting on the best seller shelf of Christian living that essentially riff on this sermon.

Do your best.

God does the rest, God helps those who help themselves.

And perhaps most worryingly, this is a sermon that I hear Christians preach to themselves on a regular basis.

I've served at a handful of parishes, and at each of those parishes, I've spoken with people who essentially say, my hope of salvation is that I do all the right things.

My hope of salvation is that I'm doing all the do's and I'm don'ting all the don'ts, and at the end of the day, God sees that, well, he's satisfied with what I'm doing.

Or perhaps more worrying yet, I'm worried that God isn't satisfied with my best doing.

The trouble with this sermon is it makes very little sense of what's preceded verse eight and what follows after verse eight.

The troubling thing about this sermon, God helps those who help themselves, is it doesn't reckon with the wild reality of what God's grace really is.

Not just making up the difference, but doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

What we are powerless to accomplish, God has done for us in Christ.

And so, friends, I'd like to give my second sermon.

This second sermon is called, is not called God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.

It's called God Helps the Helpless.

Because this is the heart of grace.

And if grace is at the heart of our faith, then we better figure this for what it is.

God does for you and I what we cannot do for ourselves, and that is grace.

And it's by this grace you have been saved through faith.

So there's a couple of questions I want us to ask to make sense of this reality, on which our whole faith and salvation hinges.

I want us to ask of verse 8, what are we saved from?

And knowing that, what then is grace?

And knowing grace, saving grace, what does a saving faith look like when it's put into action?

In our brief time together, saints, I want us to see that God helps those who are helpless.

And that is the good news of God's word.

So what are we saved from?

We are saved from this helpless condition we are in without Christ.

Let's look at the first three verses together.

Well, let's read verses one and two.

Paul says this you 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.

So I want us to catch right here is that first clause.

What's our condition apart from Christ?

You are dead in your trespasses and sins.

A trespass is like a boundary crossing.

We've probably seen no trespassing signs.

In this sense, it's a moral failure, it's a violation of God's law.

And elsewhere in Romans chapter 3, Paul says we are all guilty as trespassers of God's law.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

We do not hold a perfect record of keeping God's commandments.

None of us do.

And so therefore, we are dead in trespasses and sin.

Sin is like a missing the mark, it's incurring guilt because of wrongdoing.

And Paul says here, we are dead in our trespasses and sin in the following of the way of the world.

It's as though we're sitting on a stream and gently being carried away in death and trespasses and sins.

This is the pattern of the world into which we are born.

And it leaves us lifeless.

So there's a movie that came out a number of years ago, because I like to keep my references up to date, so I'm gonna quote a movie that came out 25 years ago.

Um this is a movie called The Sixth Sense.

And if you don't know, if you haven't seen The Sixth Sense or don't know the twist, there's really nothing I can do for you at this point because it's been out for 25 years.

In this movie, uh Haley Joel Osmond, this small boy, he's a small boy then, um, has this unexplainable ability to see ghosts.

And so he's in in a in perhaps its most famous scene, he's talking to his psychologist, Bruce Willis.

And that's how you know it's fiction, because Bruce Willis is playing a psychologist.

Um that was mean-spirited, wasn't it?

Bruce Willis, if you're watching, please forgive me.

Um but you know, here's here's Haley Joel Osman talking to his psychologist, and of course the famous line is, I see dead people.

But it's what he says next that really catches my attention.

He says, I see dead people, but they don't know they're dead.

They go about their business, they walk around the world.

They perhaps they garden, perhaps they have successful careers, perhaps they curate their Pinterest boards and scroll through the news, but they don't know their true condition.

And of course, the huge twist of the movie is what?

Bruce Willis himself has been dead this whole time.

He wasn't even aware of his true condition.

And friends, it's this moment that reminds me, or I'm reminded of this moment by our text here in chapter 2.

Apart from the life of the world, who is Christ, we are without life.

But we don't know what we don't have.

We walk around the world as those who are dead in sins and trespasses.

But what's more, not just that we're lifeless, we are apart from Christ, by nature, children of wrath.

Did you catch that in verse 3?

Here we are walking around dead in our sins and trespasses, following the pattern of the world, 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.

See, it's important that we understand Paul's meaning in saying nature here.

He's not saying that God created us, you know, uh to be matchsticks.

God didn't create us with the thought that I just can't wait to just destroy them one day and just take out my full fury and wrath on these people one day.

That's not the sense of it's not it's not our nature as created, it's our nature as corrupted.

Because we bear a corrupted nature as those who are born in Adam.

And to be children of wrath, it doesn't mean we're matchsticks, neither does it mean that God just has a really bad temper and he flies off the handle from time to time.

Rather, John Stott writes, Pastor John Stott writes, that wrath is God's personal, righteous, constant hostility to evil, his settled refusal to compromise with it, and his resolve instead to condemn it.

Children of wrath, therefore, means outside of Christ, we are dead because of sins and trespasses, enslaved by the world, the flesh and the devil, and condemned under the wrath of God.

And that's why David can write in Psalm 51 that I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

So what are we saved from?

If we're going to take salvation seriously, we need to reckon with our state apart from Christ.

We are saved from lifelessness, from death itself, and condemnation in sin.

John Stott continues by saying this is the biblical diagnosis of fallen man in fallen society everywhere.

Because did you notice Paul is talking about the rest of mankind in verse 4?

And he's using the pronoun we.

He's not just saying the worst of the worst, the baddest of the bad.

Paul's saying this is all of us.

This is the condition into which all of us are born.

So, friends, I gotta think this blows up any kind of help yourself and God does the rest theology.

Because what can dead people do for themselves to bring themselves back to life?

I mean, that's their real problem, isn't it?

Maybe the walking dead can go about doing gardening or cultivating hobbies or going about their career, but they cannot solve their number one problem, which is that they're dead.

Therefore, we're left in a place of despair, aren't we?

And if I were to end the sermon right here, we're in a pretty tight spot.

This is why I want us to take so seriously these next two words.

The first two words in verse four.

But God.

I can't think of two words more suited to being triple underlined, circled, exclamation points.

Here's our condition apart from Christ, 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.

Apart from Christ, what are we?

The walking dead, spiritually lifeless, but with Christ, we are made alive.

In fact, we are made so alive that we share in his exaltation, we are, spiritually speaking, seated with him at the Father's right hand.

And this is all about what Jesus is about.

He says in John chapter 10 that I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

John 10 · chapter mention

And in John chapter 4, he says, Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

John 4 · chapter mention

The water I give him will be in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

Jesus came to bring life to the lifeless, to make alive those who are otherwise dead.

God has done for us in Christ what we cannot do for ourselves.

Before we got our current vehicle, 2012 Hyundai Sonata, we drove around a car that I really liked.

I had a really soft.

This is my second car illustration, by the way, in two weeks, and I still don't know how an engine works.

Um not really high on my priority list.

But we drove around a 2000 Toyota Camry that we purchased in Texas, and I love this car.

It came with a tape deck.

But this car was not meant for Canadian winters.

We purchased it in Texas, it was meant to stay there, but we brought it with us anyway.

And uh by last winter, it just gave up.

And more than once did it just decide, I am not starting today.

Um But what Rachel and I were especially thankful for on those days is the help of a really uh kind and uh and generous neighbor uh who who can remain nameless.

I think Ned would appreciate that.

Um, we called him up and we said our car's dead and we need help.

And sure enough, five minutes later, in pulls the SUV and out come the jumper cables.

And these jumper cables get hooked up to our dead battery, and they get hooked up to the SUV's very much alive battery.

And what happens?

The life of the fully charged battery becomes the life of this dead battery.

And what this dead car cannot do for itself is done for it by the generosity shown in the life of this battery.

So this is an imperfect illustration, friends, for sure.

But it's an illustration of what our vital and lively union in Christ is all about.

What is Christ's by nature becomes ours by grace, through faith.

When we put our trust in him, we are united to him in his crucifixion, in his resurrection, in his exaltation.

Everything that belongs to Christ and his life becomes ours through faith.

This is what Paul talks about elsewhere in Romans chapter 6.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

If we have been united with Christ, Paul writes, in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

The crucified, resurrected, an exalted life of Jesus becomes.

Yours through faith.

This is not a case of do your best and God does the rest.

God has done everything.

He has given you the life you would otherwise not have.

And freely and generously so.

So perhaps the church isn't really a holy rollers club, given all this.

Let's think about that for a second.

Why do we gather as the church?

Why do we go about the business of being the church?

Well, perhaps we're inclined to say that it's a good idea to gather and do good things and do good things in our neighborhood and community, and for sure that's the case.

But we are first and foremost a community gripped by grace, a community brought from death into new life.

We're less a holy rollers club, less a social do-good club, and we're more of a rehab center for the naturally self-righteous, for the dead, and for the condemned.

We need to gather together as Christ's body to be renewed in that life that is ours through faith.

And we need to do this.

We need to gather around his word and around his table, where we receive this gift of life afresh, again and again and again.

We need to be reminded that we have been brought to new life.

The question remains why did God do all this?

Why did he take the helpless and give them hope?

Why did he take the lifeless and give them new life in Christ?

This is where I want us to land.

Paul gives us an answer.

Why did God do all of this?

Verse 7.

So that in the coming ages God might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Why did God do this?

Oh, because he saw you're giving it the old college try?

No.

Because God wanted to show you how immeasurably rich he is in grace towards you, in doing for you what you cannot do for yourself, and giving you mercy and kindness and showing you the great love with which he loved you, God saved you for no other reason than he wants you to know how wonderful he is and how lovely he is and how splendid he is.

And so that you would know how greatly loved you are in him.

The same God who apart from God in Christ, we are children of wrath.

It's this same God who takes the initiative towards us because he's rich in mercy and because he has great love.

This God wants to show you the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness.

And so we read in 1 John chapter 4 in this is love.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

And John concludes by saying, We love because he first loved us.

We don't love God to earn his love.

God gives us his love freely.

We're those who get to respond to his love.

We are made beneficiaries of God's kindness in Christ.

So what does all this mean for us?

Let me suggest two things.

Because God has brought life to the lifeless because of his freely given mercy, we don't get to brag.

Verse 9.

All of this is not a result of our works so that no one may boast.

There's no room for bragging in the Christian life, as if I am just killing it with regards to righteousness these days.

Boy, I am flawlessly keeping God's commandments.

He must love me.

There's no room for feeling superior or looking down our nose at others or feeling self-important, and that's just as true with how we interact with other Christians as it is with those who aren't Christians.

We are those who have been saved by grace.

It is not our doing, it is a free gift that is earned.

Salvation is not our paycheck for doing all the things that God's asked us to do.

No.

Salvation is the free gift that He's given us in Christ.

It's unmerited and it's freely offered to all.

So we have to guard ourselves against superior attitudes.

We have to see ourselves as servants of all, because that's what Christ has been for us.

And then the second thing we do is we walk in good works prepared beforehand.

Did you see that in verse 10?

See, we'd be wrong to say that good works have nothing to do with salvation.

They have a lot to do with our salvation, but they have nothing to do with the front end of salvation, nothing to do with earning it before God, nothing to do with getting God to notice you or think well of you.

Good works are not what earn salvation, good works are the fruit of saving faith.

Good works are those things that come naturally from a heart that has been made alive in Christ and cannot help but bear good fruit of patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control.

All of these things that well up within us when we know how good God is towards us in Christ.

And notice that the good works that we walk in are prepared by God beforehand.

God prepared for us good works to walk in well before we even gave him a single thought.

It's a little bit like uh like when I was young and I had no money, um, you know, so like two weeks ago.

Uh like let's like I was like six or you know, five or six, and you you got no money when you're five or six.

What you have is what your parents give you.

But Christmas time comes year for year regardless.

And year for year, when you're a young child, and maybe parents, you can relate to this on the other end, um, you want to give your parents gifts that are gonna make them happy and delight them.

But you have no money to purchase them.

So what happens?

Well, mom would give me$20 to go and get something for dad, and dad would give me$20 to go give something for mom.

And you know, it's not like when my parents opened these gifts, they thought, this is what my money bought.

They were delighted to receive a gift from their well-loved.

And this for us is what good works are in Christ.

God has prepared them beforehand for us to walk in.

He's gone and given us all the grace we need to perform the good works he's called us to, but he's nevertheless delighted to receive them.

He's nevertheless delighted to be glorified by them.

So we don't get to claim ownership over any part of our salvation, even the fruit of our salvation.

It is all God's doing for us to build us up and to glorify him.

This is what I think is so remarkable about our post-communion prayer.

Having feasted on God's grace, we give God thanks, and then we ask Him for grace to do the good works you have prepared for us to walk in.

We don't ask for grace to do good works before we come to communion.

We pray for grace after God has given us his grace.

Saints, it is by grace, by God's work, that you have been saved from death and condemnation through faith, trusting in Jesus, being united in him.

So here's where I'd like us to end.

Do you know God's saving grace for yourself?

Do you know him to be rich in mercy and great love towards you?

Do you know his unmerited favor and goodness?

See, perhaps you're not a Christian and you're tuning in.

And if you are, God bless you for hanging in so far.

I want you to know that God is immeasurably rich in grace and kindness towards you.

He does not desire the death of a sinner, but rather that they might be saved.

And he offers freely the gift of salvation to all.

Recognize your own lifelessness and call out to Christ to do for you what you cannot do for yourself, to make you alive.

Or perhaps you're like JC Ryle and you've gone to church for decades, trying to do all the right things, to help yourself before God, having never considered the grace of God in Christ.

Now, friend, is the time to repent of self-righteousness and to accept the free gift of what God has done for you in Christ.

Turn back from your works.

See, to choose to trust in our works rather than what God has worked for us is to say, what Christ has done for me isn't good enough.

I can do better.

Instead, lay claim to what Christ has done for you by putting your trust in Him.

And if you are a Christian, rejoice.

This is a gift that God wants to give you always.

Put off the works of the old life and walk in the good works that God has prepared for you to walk in.

By grace you have been saved through faith in Amen.

There is no more for heaven than to give.

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May God bless you and keep you today and every day.