Battle Ready: "The Need for a Savior" Ephesians 2:1-3 Pastor Daniel Reese

Well, good morning. We're back in Ephesians, which is good or bad, depending on how you feel about that.

Here we are. I've spent the last week just kind of going over chapter one in my memory, and here we are starting chapter two.

I'm going to go through three verses today, and so it's a great time to restart.

So if you're like, man, I botched it on chapter one, just that's okay. Let's start in chapter two and get these verses down and memorized. How about that?

This morning, as we begin to think about the sanctity of life, and especially as we look at our texts this morning,

I hope we understand that one of the major ways that the enemy attacks is to attack life. Over 900,000 babies were aborted in 2022.

Almost 50,000 people committed suicide, while over 1 million people attempted it.

There are celebrations from time to time around the country when someone receives the death penalty.

As one generation gets older, there are more and more schemes to take advantage of them.

At least 10% of adults aged 65 or older will experience some form of elder abuse, either by family members or care facilities.

We need to value life because every single human being from conception until death is an image bearer of our Creator.

We are made in His image, created by a God who holds all things together.

The enemy is after life, and one way that He attacks, one way that He works is to get us to worship creation over the Creator.

Where we see created things is more valuable than human life.

If you were to kill a panda in China, that was back in the 90s, you would face the death penalty.

Today, it's punishable by 20 years in prison.

But at the same time, China has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, and it is completely legal.

So I begin to ask this morning a question. Why do we need a Savior?

We spent nine weeks taking a look at Ephesians chapter 1 in marveling how God has entered into our lives

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

and poured out a tremendous spiritual blessing for those of us who are His children.

We've seen how God has chosen us before the creation of the world and has predestined us to be adopted into His family.

We've seen how Jesus has redeemed us from slavery to sin and an empty life.

We've seen how the Holy Spirit in our lives is a guarantee of our spiritual inheritance.

And we've seen how God fills our lives with His resurrection power, but that still doesn't answer the question,

why did we need God to do that in our lives?

Now, perhaps Paul realized that his readers may have been asking that very same question.

And so here we go into chapter 2. Paul takes his readers back to what their lives were before they experienced God's grace.

Let's read the first three verses of the chapter together.

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,

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.

Now, there is a sense in which we don't want to get too caught up in what our lives were before Jesus redeemed us.

The Bible is clear that our present lives are not to be paralyzed by thinking too much about what has happened in the past.

We want to leave the past behind because we are a new creation in Jesus.

But at the same time, I don't think we fully recognize the significance of what God has done for us

without understanding exactly what we were at one time.

So as Paul continues writing here in chapter 2, it's like he holds up this big gigantic mirror

that allows his readers of this book, that allows us to see what we were like before God intervened in our lives.

And frankly, it's not a very pretty picture.

In fact, there is a sense in which it is one of the hardest truths of the Bible

because most of us really don't want to hear how bad we are apart from Christ.

But in just three short verses, Paul gives us a clear and complete picture of what our lives once were.

So let's take a look in the mirror of God's Word.

Let's see what we were before, what our lives were like apart from God.

So what was my life like before Christ?

Number one is I was dead.

I was dead.

Let me take you back to the question I asked just a minute ago.

Why do we need a Savior?

I think that most followers of Jesus would answer that question something like this.

I need a Savior because I have sinned, because I'm guilty before God.

So I need a Savior who can forgive my sins and take away the punishment that I deserve.

And while that statement is absolutely true, it just doesn't go far enough.

What Paul makes really clear in this passage is that without a Savior, we're not just in God's doghouse.

We're in the morgue.

If any of you like those crime shows like CSI, Criminal Minds, those of you that like those shows,

one of the key characters in all of those shows is who?

The corner.

Is that what you said?

Somebody said it.

So you're wrong.

Okay.

Undertake.

Well, close.

Corner.

Who has to examine the dead bodies to find out how they died and why they ended up in the morgue.

How they got there.

Now, fortunately for us, Paul has done the work of spiritual corner and tells us why we ended up in the spiritual morgue.

Paul uses two words to describe the behavior that leads us into our spiritual death.

Now, all those, the words are often used as synonyms by Paul and other New Testament writers.

They have a slightly different meaning.

The first one is trespasses, that word trespasses is a word that means to take a false step, to go off a path, to slip or to fall.

As used here in this picture, it's a picture of us wandering from the right path, whether that occurs as a result of inattention

or whether that's just a flat out deliberate act.

We have taken a step off the right path.

We have trespassed.

The second one is sin.

It's missing the mark.

This word comes from an archery term, which means missing the mark.

As used here in this text, it is a picture of us failing to hit the target of God's standard for our lives.

So it includes both sins of commission, meaning doing something in opposition to God's moral standard.

It also includes sins of omission, failing to do what God has commanded us to do.

And we're all guilty of both of those types of sin.

Our morality at times fails to live up to God's standard.

And I am confident that we have done things that God has commanded us not to do.

And I'm confident that we have not done things that God has commanded us to do.

The trespasses and sins in our lives, they don't just make us sick.

They are our spiritual cause of death.

So why is it such a big deal that we are dead and not just sick or not just in God's doghouse?

To answer that question, let's think just for a moment of a couple of characteristics of what a dead person is.

The first one is they're unable to respond.

Something that is dead is completely unable to respond towards surroundings or to others in any other way.

Before God entered into our lives, we were completely unable to respond to Him in any way since we are spiritually dead.

We can't do it.

That's why it's crucial that God is the one who initiates our relationship with Him.

As we've already seen in Ephesians chapter 1 in his letter to Rome, Paul explains this idea in even more detail.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

In Romans chapter 8 verse 6, he says,

Romans 8:6

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile towards God, for it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the spirit.

If in fact the spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.

So Paul makes it really clear that apart from the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are incapable of submitting to God or even pleasing God.

As we've already seen, the only way to get the Holy Spirit in our lives is through the grace of God which He provides through His Son, Jesus.

Another characteristic of a dead person is their body begins to decay.

When a person dies, his or her body begins to decay immediately.

This is why they keep the bodies in the freezer.

This is why they take a body and they almost immediately and quickly embalm it for a funeral.

Because without the life in the body, our bodies will waste away quickly.

Without Christ, this is also an accurate picture of what is happening to us spiritually.

Since we're spiritually dead, since we cannot respond, and there is not a thing that we can do about it on our own,

we then begin to decay spiritually.

Our lives are becoming more and more corrupt each day.

As I was thinking about this whole idea of being spiritually dead this week,

the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead came to mind.

When we read that account in John chapter 11, we find that by the time Jesus arrived at Bethany,

John 11 · chapter mention

Lazarus had been dead for four days and his sister Martha commented about the odor that resulted from his decaying body.

If you have the King James version, I love this in the King James in John chapter 11, it says, he stinketh.

John 11 · chapter mention

I love it. I love it.

The other thing that is readily apparent from the account is that Lazarus didn't do anything in order to be resurrected.

He was completely dependent on what Jesus did for him.

Before God initiated a relationship with him, before God initiated a relationship with us, we are all spiritual Lazaruses,

rotting away, completely helpless to do anything about our condition.

We were dead in our transgressive, transpasses and sins.

The second thing we notice is that I was dominated.

The second characteristic of our life from God is that we really don't have any control over our lives.

Our lives are dominated by three powerful forces that we can't break free of on our own.

The first one is the world. Paul tells us that we follow the course of the world.

Paul is describing here a life in which we are habitually conformed to the ways of the world.

That our behavior is determined by these powerful influences all around us, our culture's attitudes,

our culture's habits and preferences and desires.

We are influenced by those constantly.

In his letter to the Galatian church, Paul writes about how we were slaves to that system of belief before Christ.

He says in Galatians 4, in your notes it says 4-4, it's actually 4-3.

He says, so also when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world.

So if you go back and look at that verse in context, you'll find when Paul writes when you were children,

he is referring to our lives before we became Christ followers.

And just as he writes in Ephesians, it is clear that without Jesus Christ in our lives,

we are slaves to a worldview that is totally and completely hostile towards God.

The scriptures are filled with warnings to us as believers to not be consumed by that mindset.

Here's just a couple in Romans 12 verse 2.

Romans 12:2

Paul says, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

John tells us in 1 John 2.15, do not love the world or anything in it.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

But the problem is, is that without Christ, we're just not capable of freeing ourselves from the ways of the world.

If that was the only force dominated our lives, that would be bad enough.

But there are two additional powers that also dominate our lives without Christ.

The second one is Satan.

He says, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience.

We've already seen Paul write about the idea of rulers and powers at the end of chapter 1.

And we discovered that Jesus has been raised to the right hand of the Father far above all these other powers.

We also saw that all these other powers have been placed under the feet of Jesus.

So how is it that the ruler of the kingdom of the air can have power over our lives?

The kingdom of the air, that phrase is just another word for the earth where mankind lives, where we dwell.

And according to this verse, there is a ruler who has the power in this world, who has power in this world.

There is no doubt here that Paul is referring, is writing about Satan and the demons that he controls.

We see this all the time.

As I said at the beginning, Satan attacks life.

He convinces us that creation is better than the Creator.

Why do you think the world is going crazy over global warming and cows that fart too much?

Why do we protect animals more than the unborn?

Why do we care more about how we are offended instead of us offending God?

Is it because that it's because that's the game that Satan plays?

He makes us begin to think that man is our enemy, that your opinions are truth and mine are ignorant.

He likes to stir up conflict in churches over the color of the carpet, or because money is being spent a certain way.

The prince of the power of the air is our enemy, and we have to guard ourselves against his schemes.

We begin to hear things like, well, I'm just not getting fed here, and there are so many problems in that church.

So we go to another one until we find something wrong with that one.

I always tell people to look at the common denominator.

Because it seems like wherever you go, there's some issues, right?

I can't tell you how many times and how many people I know who are excited about the new year.

I hear things like, I can't wait for 23, because 22 kicked my teeth in.

I'm not bringing the heartache and the pain into this new year that I carried with me in the last year.

But do you know what? The same people who said those same things this year said them last year.

I can't wait for 22, because 21 kicked my teeth in.

I'm not bringing all those troubles I carried last year into this new year.

And they've been on the same cycle for the past decade.

We have to fight against that attitude, because that is exactly what the enemy wants.

He wants to rob you of life. He wants to steal your joy.

He wants you to be miserable. And in some of us, he's winning.

Fortunately, for those of us who are believers, Jesus has already defeated Satan on the cross.

But even though Satan has already defeated, Satan doesn't surrender without a struggle.

And he will continue to make his influence felt in this world.

And before we had Jesus in our lives, we were completely powerless to battle that influence.

In fact, the literal interpretation of this passage is that the ruler of the kingdom of the air is the spirit who's at work in the sons of disobedience.

Now, I can't help but think that Paul was influenced by the words of Jesus when Jesus spoke to the religious leaders who were questioning his divinity.

In John 8, 44, Jesus says, you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Before we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, that describes exactly what our lives were like.

We were sons of disobedience, and the devil was our father.

There was nothing we could do to get out from under his influence.

Before Christ, we were dominated by the world.

We were dominated by Satan, but there was also a third force that dominated our lives, our flesh.

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

Now, Paul is not referring to our physical bodies, but rather the sin nature that we are born with.

Every person who comes into this world enters it with a sin nature.

No one has to teach sin, because as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve, every person is born with a sin nature.

No, Daniel, my child is precious. My child is perfect.

No, your child is a little sinner.

I can give you countless examples using my own children to illustrate that point.

Do any of you have kids where you tell them to not do something, and they look you square in the eye, and they do it anyway?

I do.

Any of you dads ever get hit square below the belt because you told them no, and that's how they responded?

I have.

I have never once thrown myself on the floor and thrown a fit because I didn't get away, get my way in front of my children, but yet that's what they do.

Why?

Because they're little sinners.

Our sin nature is kind of like a worm and an apple.

Do you know how a worm gets into an apple?

Because I always assume that it ate itself into the apple from the outside.

But what I discovered this week is that the worm actually comes from inside of the apple.

What happens there is an insect lays an egg and the apple blossom, and sometime later the egg hatches in the middle of the apple and the worm itself eats itself out.

We are born with that sin nature inside of us, and it continues to make its way out day after day.

And just like the world and just like Satan, this sin nature, our flesh, dominates our lives until Christ enters into it.

Look at how Paul described the sin nature in Romans.

We've already read it, but let me read it again.

Romans 8, verse 6.

Romans 8:6

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile towards God, for it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Notice that Paul writes that those controlled by the sinful nature cannot submit to God's law.

It cannot please God. Without God's help, there is no way that we can ever live lives that are pleasing to Him.

It's impossible because our very nature prevents us from doing so.

So apart from God, I was dead.

Apart from God, I was dominated.

And also apart from God, I was doomed.

And were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

The result of my spiritual death and my domination by the world, by Satan and the flesh is that I am under the wrath of God.

What that means is that all of us are inherently deserving of the divine judgment of God.

And since God is a holy God, He cannot sit idly by when people transgress His law,

when they fall short of His standards and live their lives according to the principles of this world,

according to Satan, according to their own flesh.

And frankly, most of us don't like to think about the wrath of God a whole lot, do we?

And so I think we often get a wrong picture of what the wrath is like.

We tend to picture God just getting angry from time to time.

Lashing out in anger, destroying cities, sending people to hell, and then we kind of forget about it.

But when we look at what the Bible teaches about His wrath, we find that His wrath is consistent.

His wrath is controlled. His wrath is judicial.

Perhaps this is what makes it so frightening.

God's wrath is an inevitable response to all that stands in opposition to His righteousness and His holiness.

God's wrath has both present and future elements to it.

Jesus Himself spoke of the present aspect of God's wrath in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on Him.

Notice that Jesus made it very clear that those who reject Him have God's wrath remaining on them,

and the verb remains is in the present, not the future tense.

In other words, there is an aspect of God's wrath that we experience right here and now when we choose to reject God.

I think this is what Paul was referring to in Romans when he described how God gives those who reject them over.

He gives them over to their shameful lusts, and that they experience the painful and deadly consequences of their behavior.

Of course, I don't think anyone hears like this, right?

But there were several people back in Texas who would say things like, well, this is just the cross I have to bear.

This is just the life that God gave me.

God must be trying to teach me something through this.

My response was always, no, it's because you make bad decisions.

There are consequences for sin, and there are many people who are having to deal with them.

Sometimes his wrath looks like he just gives us over to it, and then we just have to reap the ramifications of that sin in our lives.

But obviously, there's a future aspect to God's wrath.

Paul writes about that in Romans chapter 2, but because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart,

Romans 2 · chapter mention

you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath when his righteous judgment will be revealed.

For those who do not respond to the grace and mercy of God, there is a future judgment to be faced.

And at that time, those people will experience the wrath of God, and they will be separated from him for all of eternity, for eternal torment.

In a sense, this has to be one of the most depressing messages I've ever preached.

There's a whole lot that I, there's not a whole lot I can really do with what Paul writes here in a positive light.

The fact of the matter is that all human life apart from God is just not a pretty sight. Not a lot of hope in that, is there?

But on the other hand, this also has to be one of the most exciting messages for those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ.

Because it shows us the awesome greatness of what God has done for us.

He has reached down into our lives, and He has delivered us from death to life.

He has freed us from the domination of the world. He has freed us from Satan.

He has freed us from our own sinful natures, and He has delivered us from the wrath that we deserve.

We're going to see that even more clearly next week as we get into chapter 2.

And God did all of these things, freed us from all of these things, not because we deserved it, but because of His grace and mercy.

If you're here this morning, and you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, then you are exactly as Paul described in these three verses.

You are dead, and dominated, and doomed.

But perhaps God has been speaking to you. Perhaps God has been drawing you to Himself.

Maybe you have some questions that you need to work through.

I'm telling you, the solution to your issues, the solution to getting right with God, is not to put more money in the offering plate.

It's not to say 13 Hail Marys before you go.

Don't leave here this morning without responding to His call.

You can do that right where you're sitting, and pray to God, and ask Him, thank Him for drawing Himself to you, for drawing you to Him.

Confess your inability to overcome your own sin, and ask Him to forgive you.

Place your faith in Jesus Christ alone as your payment for sins.

Not anything you can do, not anything you can earn.

You don't have to use fancy words, just speak to God as a friend, and tell Him what's on your heart.

But if you have surrendered your life to Him, if you have trusted in Him as Savior, maybe you just spend some time this morning thanking Him for that.

Praising Him for how good He is.

I often think about my life sometimes, what would my life look like if God didn't intervene?

What would my life look like if He didn't rescue me?

I think of my wife, and I think of my children.

I think of this church.

I wouldn't have Him. I wouldn't have you if He didn't intervene in my life.

So maybe we just respond just by thanking Him for that, understanding that without Him we are completely hopeless, completely broken, completely doomed and devastated by sin.

When was the last time you stopped taking advantage of His grace and just really surrendered your life again to Him?

Confess those things to Him.

Lay those things at His feet, and give Him praise because He has redeemed you.

Give Him praise because He has rescued you.

Give Him praise not because of anything that you did, but because of His grace and mercy.

So I'm going to pray for you. If you're struggling, if you have questions, then confess those things to God.

Ask somebody around you.

We don't necessarily have all the answers, right?

But God is faithful, and if He's drawing you to Him, He'll be faithful to complete it.

But at the same time, if you have surrendered, maybe we just spend some time thanking Him for that.

Are you living your life under God's wrath?

Meaning are the consequences of your sin hindering you from having joy, hindering you from walking in the fullness of life?

Maybe we confess those things today as well. Let me pray for us.

Father, I pray right now.

I pray for salvation to come to this room.

I pray, God, that as we look in the mirror, that we will see ourselves as wretched, as broken.

That without Jesus, that was our destiny.

But God, also, as we look in the mirror, I pray that we will see the picture of righteousness in the person of Jesus.

That when you look at us, you see us as righteous because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

So, Father, I pray you move. I pray you speak. And I pray you just minister in this place.

I pray that your voice will be heard louder than the music.

That your voice will be heard in our lives so that we know how you want us to respond.

So, Father, we're thankful for Jesus. We're thankful for your grace. We're thankful for your mercy.

I thank you that I'm no longer dead. I thank you that I'm no longer dominated.

And, Father, I thank you that I'm no longer doomed to spend eternity apart from you.

So, God, I give you praise for that. I pray that you will be honored as we respond to you.

And I call these things in Jesus' name. Amen.