Battle Ready: "Benefits of Jesus" Ephesians 2:4-7 Pastor Daniel Reese

Well, here we are, Ephesians chapter two, if you have your Bible.

Many of us use Amazon, right, multiple times a week, I'm assuming, which means that many

of us have an Amazon Prime membership.

When scene and I signed up for Prime many years ago, it was because it offered us free

two-day shipping.

That thing pays for itself just a Christmas time, right?

When scene and I got married several years ago, we made it a priority to travel as often

as we could.

And so one year, several years ago, we decided to go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

because Sina always wanted to go.

So we fly to New York, we do some sightseeing for a couple days, and then we get ready for

the big parade.

Now, my wife is never in a big hurry to get anywhere.

But for some reason, it was important for us to get to the parade at 5 a.m. for a 9 a.m.

parade.

So the day before, we scouted out the route, realized pretty quickly that the stands that

are along the parade route are for big donors, which did not include us.

So now we are facing the prospect of standing on the street for an extra four hours before

the parade even begins.

But then we realized, we have Amazon Prime.

We see if we can get us some chairs delivered to our hotel today.

So that's what we did.

We found some chairs, and within an hour, we had some chairs.

Plus, once we didn't need them anymore, we could send them back, no questions asked.

Which is what we did.

So now the prospect of standing for an extra four hours while people pressed up against

us didn't seem so bad.

So here is my wife proudly sitting in the chairs that were provided to us by our Amazon

membership.

It's dark outside.

I don't know if you can tell that in the picture.

Now when we think of our Amazon membership, those are typically what we consider as benefits,

right?

Free shipping, you can stream TV, things like that.

However, there are many other benefits that we don't take advantage of.

With your Amazon membership, you can use Amazon Photos to store thousands and thousands

of photos for free.

You have access to Audible, which gives you access to audiobooks and podcasts and things

like that.

There is even an option that I'm afraid to say in front of my wife, but they have a

try before you buy.

Meaning they will send you clothes, and if you like them, you can keep them.

But if you don't like them, if you send them back within seven days, you don't even get

charged for them.

You can get prescriptions filled.

And you can also get other discounts from other vendors that Amazon has partnered with.

But believe it or not, I'm not here to sell you an Amazon subscription.

But just make a point that sometimes we are not aware of the benefits that come with certain

things.

Now I believe there are many people who have a relationship with Jesus, but do not understand

all the benefits that He brings into our lives.

So this morning, let's consider a few.

Alright?

So chapter two, we're going to read verses four through seven.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He has 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 in the coming ages, He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness towards us

in Christ Jesus.

So we began our look at chapter two a few weeks ago, seeing that we were all what we

were like without Jesus in our lives.

And our lives were like without Him.

As Paul writes, all of us were like at one time, we were dead in our trespasses and sins.

We were dominated by the world, Satan, and our own flesh.

And we were doomed to face the wrath of God.

But just when everyone and everything looked hopeless, we were completely helpless to do

anything about our desperate condition, God entered into our lives in order to do for us

what we were unable to do for ourselves.

So this morning, we are going to focus on the fact that God, through Jesus, offers so

much more than salvation.

Now, salvation in and of itself is enough.

It is more than we deserve.

But God, being gracious and loving, offers so much more.

Paul emphasizes the fact that nothing that we receive from God is possible without Jesus.

I was made alive together with Christ.

I was raised up with Christ.

I was seated with Christ.

Jesus was made alive, raised and seated at the right hand of the Father as a result of

His resurrection.

And because of my identification and because of my relationship with God, God's grace

has allowed me to experience those same three benefits.

It's also interesting that all three of these verbs are in the past tense.

My first thought is that doesn't seem right.

I haven't yet been resurrected from the dead or been raised up or seated with Christ in

the heavenly realms.

But I think Paul is trying to communicate two things by using the past tense here.

First, I think he's making a point that this is a done deal.

God has already done everything he needs to do to guarantee that I will experience all

three of these benefits in the future.

And there's also a really encouraging thought.

But perhaps even more importantly, Paul seems to be indicating that there is a present aspect

of all three of those actions that I get to experience in the here and now as I live out

my life here on the earth.

And that's what I'd like to focus on this morning.

So let's spend a few minutes together examining how God meets my deepest needs through Jesus

Christ.

Number one, I was dead, but God gave me a new character.

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

Paul tells us, as we saw a couple of weeks ago before God came into our lives, we were

in the spiritual morgue and the cause of death was our trespasses and sins.

We were helpless to do anything about those sins and the spiritual death that resulted.

We couldn't fix it.

So I have a need to be made alive and I can't do that by myself and no one else other than

God can do it for me either.

But God met that need for me.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ

even when we were dead in our trespasses.

It is by grace you have been saved.

Because God is loving and merciful and full of grace, he chose to make me alive together

with Christ even when I was dead in my trespasses.

God didn't wait for me to become a better person or to engage in some ritual or to complete

some task.

When he raised Christ from the dead, there is a sense in which he also made me alive too.

But exactly how does that impact my life here and now?

In order to answer that question, let's think about the parable of the prodigal son for

just a moment.

So remember that the younger son asked for his inheritance, which he squandered on loose

living.

Finally, he had a change of heart.

He returned to his father and when he returned, here is what the father said in Luke 15, for

the son of mine was dead and is alive again.

What exactly did the father mean by that?

The son hadn't died, at least not physically, but when his father described him as having

been dead and now alive again, I think he was making a reference to the fact that he

now had a new disposition.

He had a new character, a new attitude.

He had been transformed from being a selfish, ungrateful son to now one who recognized the

blessings he had and was so thankful for them.

He hadn't gained any new skills or abilities.

He hadn't been transformed physically.

That transformation had taken place in his heart or his mind.

Isn't that exactly what God does through us, through our union with Christ and our sharing

in his resurrection?

God doesn't give us a new brain or new intelligence or any new skills or abilities when we become

believer.

But what he does do is he gives us a new character.

He gives us a change of heart.

Here's how Paul described that change in another one of his letters.

In St. Corinthians 5 he says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has gone, the new has come.

When we are in Christ, God transforms our hearts so that we are able to do all the seemingly

impossible things that Jesus has called us to do.

One being to love the unlovable.

I don't know about you, but when Jesus commands me to love my enemies, I have a hard time

with that.

I have a hard enough time loving those I really like sometimes.

But because Jesus has changed my heart, he makes it possible for me to love those who

are hard to love.

When I was in college, there was a Bible major named Martin that I couldn't stand.

I don't know if you've ever hung out with Bible majors.

I remember thinking of ways that I could physically harm him.

He was arrogant, he had better grades than me, and he was a pretty big jerk.

Now, my freshman year, many of us went on a mission trip to Arlington.

Several buses took us.

And of all the buses in all the seats, guess who gets stuck behind me?

Martin.

Guess who I was going to be sharing a room with?

Martin.

So as I am preparing for a miserable week in my head, I begin to pray to the Lord.

To change my heart or allow Martin to quit breathing.

I really think that was my prayer.

And the Lord was so faithful because a week later at his funeral, not really.

I remember in an instant, in an instant, the Lord changed me.

We had a great week together.

I began to see Martin in a different light.

We became friends, and now he pastors a church in New Mexico.

Sometimes I think we want others to change, but the reality is a lot of times God will

change us.

Second thing is we were able to endure the undurable.

There are many of you who in this room that I admire greatly.

I know that you're experiencing all kinds of pain in your life.

For some of you, it's constant physical pain that you live with day after day.

It's consistent with no end in sight.

For some of you, it's emotional pain of losing a loved one or watching someone you care about

go through some tough times in their lives.

For some of you, it's the spiritual heartbreak of family and friends that don't have any desire

for a personal relationship with God.

And you've endured through all that pain, not because you have some supernatural powers,

but because by God's grace, he has given you a new disposition that allows you to endure.

He allows us to achieve the unachievable.

God often calls us to do things that are beyond our own abilities.

I know that when I first became a pastor many years ago, I hated to make hospital visits.

I felt like I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how long I should stay,

I didn't know how people felt about being in those unflattering gowns with somebody in that place,

but God has completely transformed my mind in that area.

He has given me a whole new disposition to the point that I actually enjoy going to the hospital

and visiting with many of you.

Only God could make that kind of change in my heart.

He allows us to forgive the unforgivable.

I know that many of us have been hurt deeply by the words and actions of others.

In fact, even as I say that, most of you, some hurt comes immediately to mind.

And without a new disposition we are given through Jesus Christ,

it would be impossible for you to actually ever forgive those people.

But as a result of God's grace, I am able to forgive even 70 times 7.

Just like Jesus taught Peter.

He gives us a new character.

The second thing is I was dominated, but God gave me a new environment.

Paul says in verse 2, in which he once walked, following the course of this world,

following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience,

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

Without God in your life, we were powerless to overcome the powerful forces of this world,

the powerful forces of Satan and our own flesh.

But once again, God met that need for us in Jesus.

He provided the way for us to overcome those powerful forces in which we were once in bondage.

Because it says, and he raised us up with him.

When we became Christ followers, we were not immediately raised up from this earth.

Now that will indeed occur one day, but for right now, we are still here on this earth.

But the moment we become Christians, our citizenship is changed.

We are no longer citizens of this earth, but rather we are citizens of the kingdom of God.

That's why later in this letter, Paul will refer to us as foreigners, as aliens.

Peter and the writer of Hebrew also calls us aliens and foreigners in this world.

And one of the things that goes along with this new citizenship is that we are raised up

into a new environment that is completely different than the one we were subjected to before our salvation.

Being citizens of the heavenly realm gives us a whole new outlook on life.

We begin to evaluate and live our lives based on the standards of the heavenly realm rather than this world.

Paul makes it even clearer in this letter to the Colossian church in Colossians 3.

Since then, you have been raised with Christ.

Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

When God raises us up with Christ, He gave us the ability to set our mind on things above, not just things on the earth.

He gives us something to look forward to, something to anticipate.

Now, although Paul doesn't specifically reference it in this verse,

we've already seen that one aspect of creating a new environment for us is that God places us into a body of like-minded children of God

who can hold us accountable and encourage us as we face the influences of the world and Satan in our own flesh.

He gives us the church. He gives us each other.

Now, although God doesn't completely remove us from the influence of the world,

He doesn't completely remove us from Satan or our own sinful nature,

but by being united with Christ, we are placed into an environment where it is now possible to overcome those powerful forces.

We have authority over them.

Without our union with Christ, we wouldn't even be aware that there was a heavenly kingdom alone to be part of it.

The third thing is I was doomed, but God gave me a new intimacy.

Like the rest, we were nature by nature, subjects of, objects of wrath.

Without Christ, without Jesus, we were doomed to face the wrath of a holy God.

And once again, there was nothing that we could do to overcome that fate.

There's nothing we could accomplish, but God met that need too.

Verse 6, 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.

Now, the idea of being seated with Christ in the heavenly realms has many aspects to it.

One implication is that like Christ, we have been raised to a position of superiority and authority

over all evil powers that Paul wrote about at the end of chapter one.

In that sense, being seated with Christ also addresses our need to overcome the domination by the world and Satan.

Being seated with Christ also reminds us that we will one day be seated with Christ in order to reign with Him.

But given the rest of what Paul writes here, he seems to have something else in mind.

Throughout the Gospels, we see that being seated with Jesus put a person in a place of revelation and intimacy.

Think about the woman at the well in John chapter four, or Mary seated at the feet of Jesus while she's listening to him.

Or perhaps the best example occurs during the Last Supper.

Here's a few verses from John's Gospel in John 13.

It says, one of his disciples whom Jesus loved was reclining at the table at Jesus' side.

So Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking.

So that disciple leaning back against Jesus said to him, Lord, who is it?

Jesus answered, it is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I've dipped it.

So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon the Scarlet.

During that meal, John, who he describes as the disciple whom Jesus loved, I love that, was seated with Christ.

It's very interesting that Peter did not directly ask Jesus who was going to betray him.

Instead, he asked John who was seated by Jesus.

By being seated with Christ, John was in a position of intimacy where Jesus could reveal to him what was about to happen.

Now think back to Ephesians again.

Notice the purpose for which God has seated us in the heavenly realms together with Christ.

So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

The purpose of seating us with Christ in the heavenly places is so God might reveal himself to us that he might demonstrate his kindness to us in a way that we can't understand.

This is a sharp contrast.

This is a sharp contrast to the wrath that we face without Jesus in our lives.

When we put all this together, we get a picture of God who desires to reveal himself to us and have an intimate,

personal relationship with him.

And that is only possible with our union with Jesus Christ.

Now I'm sure that we're not even capable of fully understanding the implications accomplished that we could never do on our own.

God has made us to be new creations, one with new characters, new environments, and a new intimacy.

What Paul describes here in these verses is genuine Christianity, lives that have been completely transformed through our identification and union with Jesus.

But unfortunately, many of us have settled for something that is far inferior, where all of our greatest needs have been met by God.

When I was a kid, I remember Pepsi decided to come out with a new look for their soda. Some of y'all will remember this.

They called it crystal clear Pepsi. Remember that?

And it tasted exactly the same, but it was clear instead of brown like we know it.

Now I don't remember why they wanted to change it, but I'm assuming it's because they wanted a larger market share.

They wanted it, they thought maybe if it resembles water people will drink more of it. I don't know what the thought was.

But I remember drinking it and thinking it did taste like Pepsi, but for some reason in my mind it would not, it could not get over the fact that this was not Pepsi.

Long story short, crystal clear Pepsi didn't last long.

They tried to revive it a few years ago, but it didn't last long again.

The same is true with other companies that have tried to market their products in different ways.

I remember green ketchup, remember green ketchup, purple ketchup, that was gross.

Not because it tasted differently, but because I don't ever remember seeing purple tomatoes in nature.

We just want the original, except for Pepsi, no one likes that.

But for the most part, we do not like counterfeits.

And unfortunately, many of those same people have settled for a counterfeit of the real thing when it comes to Christianity.

Rather than living a life that has been completely transformed by God, they are satisfied with something far less.

Some have settled for what I call fire insurance Christianity.

The kind that says, I'll just pray this prayer to make sure I go to heaven when I die,

and I'll just keep living my life the way I want to here on this earth.

I know about this first hand because that was my life.

I didn't want Jesus to transform me.

I wanted to come to church each week and have everybody tell my parents that I was a good kid.

But no one else would ever know that I claimed to be a Christian.

Not at school, not anywhere else.

And the reality is it was exhausting.

It was hypocritical, and that is not what Jesus came and died for.

Some have settled for works Christianity.

One where they are constantly trying to do enough good things to earn their way into God's favor.

Many of the cults that claim to be Christians fit into this category.

And yes, I've tried that one too.

I have busied myself with stuff to do for the church or in the church,

and realized again that that is not life giving.

It was exhausting.

Some have settled for religious Christianity.

The kind of Christianity that figures if I go to church regularly,

if I get baptized, and yes, even if I tied, then it will be okay with God.

And I've got to admit I've tried that one too.

But none of those counterfeits are capable of meeting my deepest needs.

None of them deal with the fact that I was dead and dominated and doomed.

Only the life transforming work of God that Paul describes in this passage can do it.

Some of you have never experienced genuine Christianity.

Perhaps like me, you've tried the counterfeits,

but they just don't meet the deepest parts in your life.

This morning, maybe God is speaking to you, speaking to your heart,

and asking you to join together with Jesus,

so that He can meet those needs that you will never be able to satisfy on your own.

But I'm also convinced that there are some of you here this morning

who have made that commitment at one time,

but you've been deceived into trying these counterfeits,

rather than sticking with the real thing.

Maybe you've been persuaded to try some new formula

that promises to satisfy you more,

but you found that it actually didn't measure up at all to the original experience of Jesus.

I want to encourage you this morning to go back to the real thing.

Let God meet your deepest needs by giving you a new character

that allows you to accomplish what seems impossible.

Let God help you overcome the domination of this world

by lifting you into a new environment in His heavenly realms,

by lifting you into His presence.

Let God reveal to Himself to you as you sit with Him in His presence.

That kind of Christianity always satisfies.

If you have surrendered your life to Jesus,

then rest in His salvation that He purchased for you on the cross.

But if you are still letting your past define you

and keep you from lasting joy,

then maybe you need to come to your senses.

Maybe you need to tap into the benefits that Jesus has to offer.

I'm a big believer that church should be fun,

that we should enjoy being here,

that it shouldn't be awkward or weird for us to shout in church.

We should be able to laugh and relax and enjoy

and bring our burdens here and leave them here.

That's a benefit of Jesus.

Nobody's asking you to pretend here.

Nobody's asking you to be something that He didn't create you to be.

Nobody's asking you to put on a facade.

I remember this one time in the last church, somebody...

He might have been high on meth, I don't remember.

But he came up to me and he looked a little rough

and he had a Hooters t-shirt on,

walked in that church proudly wearing that thing,

walks up to me after the message, after the service,

and goes, Pastor, that was an effin' awesome message.

Right?

He didn't care. He felt released.

He was walking in the freedom.

Now, we had to correct some things.

Hey, maybe not wear that t-shirt around the children.

Right? Maybe not use that language around anybody else.

Right? We had to correct some things,

but man, that guy was walking in freedom.

Walking in more freedom than a lot of us are walking in.

That's a benefit of Jesus.

And so I'm going to pray for us.

I'm just encouraging you.

Get out... Drew got out of his comfort zone.

Praise the Lord. Right?

Like, when we get out of our comfort zone

and we allow God to work and not just do the status quo,

the Lord changes things. Changes things.

And so let's get out of our comfort zone today.

Can we? Let's tap into those benefits.

Let's get that Amazon Prime order now

because of what it has to offer. Amen? Let's pray.

Father, I pray right now that you will...

you will speak to us. You will move in us.

You will just be made real to us.

Father, help us not approach Christianity as fire insurance.

Help us not approach Christianity as a works-based religion

that's going to get us somewhere.

But Father, I pray that we will be able to tap into

the life-changing reality of Jesus.

Help us walk in freedom.

Help us walk in freedom. And so Father, as we sing,

as we meditate, as we pray, I pray that you will minister to our arts.

Pray that your spirit will flow freely among us.

I pray God that we will walk out of here knowing who

we are and you. That we will take off our masks.

That we will take off the facade.

And we will humble ourselves before you and walk in peace.

So Father, I pray that you move.

I ask all these things that Jesus made. Amen. Amen.

We're going to ask the prayer team to be available.

In the front, on the sides, wherever.

Let the Lord minister.

So she needs prayer. You need a hug. You need to confess.

Maybe you come front. Maybe you lay it before him.

Maybe you leave your mask right here on the altar.

You walk out of here knowing that he's rescued you and redeemed you.

All right. Amen.