"But God" | Ephesians 2:1-10 | Russell Cravens

The message of Ephesians is that you are rooted in a love that you didn't earn before you're sent into a mission that you couldn't live on your own.

We're going to say that every single week because we want you to understand that this is a strong letter for all of us.

Last week at the end of chapter one of this letter to the Christian churches in and around Ephesus, God spoke to us through this written prayer.

So the prayer that we talked about was that our the eyes of our hearts would be open to see the immeasurable greatness of God's power displayed in Christ's resurrection from the dead and who now reigns over all things.

But that raises an important question as we approach chapter two.

What has that resurrection power actually done in us?

So we desperately need the eyes of our hearts to be open to see the immeasurable greatness of God's power displayed in Christ's resurrection.

We desperately need the eyes of our hearts open.

So Paul is going to move from what God did for Christ in chapter one to what God has done for us in chapter two.

So with that in mind, let me ask you a question.

How many of you would consider yourself a problem solver?

Raise your hand if you're like, when there's a problem, I work hard to solve it.

Like 14 of you.

Okay.

So there are some problems that you can solve with a little bit more effort.

Maybe the right tools, maybe a good YouTube video.

So a couple months ago, we were downstairs eating dinner, and this horrific screeching started happening in our living room.

And everybody's like, what's going on here?

And we realized it was a refrigerator.

And so we're like, oh, well, it'll go away.

And you know, it went on for a few days and it didn't go away.

And I think we just begin to get used to the noise, you know, kind of an accompanying the noise of our home.

And and I thought, you know what, I'm going to figure this out.

And so I have a couple of options.

I can call like a technician to come out.

I know how that goes, right?

You call a technician to come out and they're like, you need a whole new refrigerator.

Or I'm going to figure this out.

So I pulled the refrigerator out from the wall.

I began kind of fooling around with it.

And I find me and ChatGPT find where the source of the screech is, and I'm thinking to myself, I can fix this.

I can fix this.

And so I found the part, I ordered it.

ChatGPT ordered it for me, actually.

I ordered it, got it, and and and I so long story short, I it took me a little while, but I fixed it.

And I and it cost me like 14.

Thank you, Jeff.

Thank you.

And that is exactly what I did not get from anybody in my home because like people are walking in after I fix it, and I'm like, y'all hear anything?

They're like, no, what's going on?

You know, like who's like, I fixed the refrigerator, you know?

And they're like, okay, cool, dad.

You know, whatever, no big deal.

Well, there's some, you know, there's something about that that that is very satisfying, right?

Identifying a problem and figuring out what it needs, what needs to change so that you can fix it yourself.

But many years ago, I became aware of a problem I could not fix.

There was this emptiness in my own soul.

I didn't have the language for it then, but now I would describe it as a God-sized hole in my heart.

And every human being experiences some version of that emptiness.

We sense that something is missing.

And every human tries to fill that hole with something.

And that effort will bring moments of satisfaction, but no matter how much is poured into that empty spot in your own soul, the emptiness eventually returns.

And what we recognize as a God-sized hole, that emptiness we feel is a symptom of a serious problem that the Bible describes as being spiritually dead.

And as a result, we're walking in the wrong direction.

So we don't merely have an empty space that needs to be filled.

And because of that, there's a solution that we need that we cannot provide for ourselves.

I mean, if the problem was ignorance, we would just need more information.

If the problem was a lack of discipline, we would just need to try harder.

But if the problem is death, we don't need improvement.

We need a resurrection.

This is the condition Paul begins to describe in Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

So I'm going to walk through this passage and I want you to know that these ten verses are ten of the most important verses in the entire Bible.

And so I'm going to walk right down and they're going to be listed one by one on the screen.

And I want you just to sit with these as I teach them and let them begin to rest deeply in your heart as we consider what Paul is saying to the church of Ephesus, what God is speaking to us in this moment.

Look at verse one.

Paul says to the Christians that are in the churches in and around Ephesus, he says, You were dead in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked.

Dead.

I mean, maybe a moment ago when I said we have a problem and there's a God-sized hole in our heart, and I said it's a symptom of a larger problem of spiritual death, maybe there's something in you that felt like, whoa, like that's a little intense.

It's true.

Paul's saying you were dead.

You're not struggling.

You're not spiritually inexperienced, not mostly good, but occasionally misguided.

It sounds strange because the people Paul is describing here were still physically alive.

I mean, they had jobs and relationships and decisions and desires.

Paul even says in this that they are actually walking, but they're walking in the wrong direction.

They're walking in their trespasses and sin.

How can these dead people walk?

I mean, you can you can be very active and still be walking in the wrong direction.

Paul is describing the spiritual death.

It's not the absence of activity, but it's separation from the life with God.

And some might say, well, my life is good.

I'm fine.

I don't need God.

But spiritual death can be difficult to recognize because we measure ourselves against other people in the same condition.

Dead people are quite happy to reassure other dead people that they are alive.

So a person's life might appear successful by every measure that this world offers, and still that person is disconnected from God.

So Paul continues in verse two and three.

What he's going to do here is he's going to name three forces that shape this old walk, this way of living as spiritually dead people.

Three things the world around us, the enemy against us, and the flesh within us.

Look at the first one in verse two.

Following the course of this world.

The world here isn't like the physical creation.

He's speaking about a system of values and desires that are organized without reference to God.

Maybe you've been to the airport and you've gotten on one of those moving walkways at the airport.

I've decided that there are two types of people in this world.

They're the, well, there's three types of people.

They're the people that are like, I'm not using that.

So they walk alongside.

Then there are people that get on it and stand and just let it take them one direction.

And then there are people that get on it and walk because it doubles their time, right?

Maybe you've been on one of these things at the airport.

How does it work?

Well, you don't have to make a conscious decision with every step.

You simply stand there.

And the walkway is carrying you in a direction.

It may or may not be the right direction.

Paul is saying that this world has a course.

It has a direction.

And if we never stop to question it, we'll be carried along by the world's definition of success and identity and pleasure and what it means to live the good life.

The first force that shapes the way spiritually dead people live is the world around us.

The second one is this, the enemy against us.

And verse 2, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

So people in Paul's day believe that evil spiritual powers occupy the atmosphere between the earth and the highest heavens.

And Paul isn't saying that a demon causes every bad decision, but he is saying that there is an intelligent enemy at work in the world opposing God's purposes.

And it brings to mind for me what we've already read in chapter one that I feel like is important in this moment.

Because he's already said that Jesus has been raised and seated above all of these powers, every ruler, every authority, every dominion.

But do not live unaware.

These evil powers are working against you, and they are very real.

Third thing the flesh within us.

So the problem for those that are spiritually dead is not just what's around us, the course of this world, or what's against us, this evil power.

It's also within us, the flesh.

And it doesn't just refer to our physical bodies.

It's it's describing our fallen desire to live independently of God.

And that desire affects both our appetites and our thinking.

We pursue what we want, then we we use our intelligence to justify it.

Now, don't miss this.

Paul in verse 3 doesn't exclude himself from this diagnosis of those that are spiritually dead.

He says, among whom we all once lived.

Here's what Paul is doing.

I mean, he's showing us the reality of our condition apart from Christ.

If you are in Christ, this no longer defines you, this way of living.

And what I would encourage you to do is ask God to open your eyes, open the eyes of your heart so you can see more clearly what God has done for you.

Now, if you're listening and you've never surrendered your life to Christ, this passage describes the seriousness of your problem.

And I'm pleading with you, I beg you to see your condition honestly so you can recognize the need you have for Jesus in your life.

We continue down the passage, and Paul's diagnosis becomes even more serious with this final phrase in verse 3.

Speaking of this group of people.

And we're by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

Just a moment about God's wrath.

God's wrath isn't an explosion of temper, he's not throwing a fit.

God's wrath, as the Bible describes it, is his settled, righteous opposition to every problem that destroys what he loves.

A God who looked at sin with a shrug would not be a holy God.

This phrase, children of what wrath, it describes people who naturally stand under God's righteous judgment.

And apart from Christ, this is our shared condition.

I mean, look at this whole picture.

Paul is needing these Christians in the church in Ephesus to understand that apart from Christ, or before Christ, they were dead in sin, followed the world under the enemy's influence, driven by disordered desire, born into judgment.

This is not a problem you can just naturally work your way out of.

Dead people cannot make themselves alive.

What's so interesting about these verses is that the grammar of this long sentence reinforces Paul's point.

So in the original Greek language, starting in verse 1, it through 3, it never reaches the main subject in verb.

So nerd out with me here for a moment, because this is so important.

Paul begins and you being dead, and then he walks this sentence along, saying, we walk, follow, desire it, disobey, but but we never become the subject of our own rescue.

So if this sentence is going to change, another subject must act.

And we get to the two words in this passage which ought to just begin to stir in us a desire to praise and sing songs to God and worship God and live more fully devoted to Jesus.

Two words, but God.

When did this happen?

When you are spiritually dead.

God is the subject of this sentence because God is the subject acting to solve your biggest problem.

You needed a resurrection from spiritual death.

You needed to be stopped from walking in the wrong direction.

You needed to be saved.

But God is the main actor in this sentence.

God did not look out and say, I think they're pretty close to righteousness.

So let me just give them Jesus.

Oh, they're pretty smart.

I think I can really use them to build a church No.

Apart from Christ, what Paul's saying to the Ephesians, what God is saying to us is that we're dead.

But God.

It has to be thousands.

I started thinking about all the times that I've written about it in books or spoken about it in conversations.

And I just before the Lord, I was like, God, has this become kind of unimportant to me?

Have I lost a sense of how really, really dead I was?

I mean, there's only one kind of dead.

You're not like kind of dead, but and for those of you that are in here that you've followed Jesus for a long time, maybe you've heard the story of the gospel many times in your life.

And if you're really honest, maybe what you'd say is it's kind of become ho-hum.

Do you realize that at one point in your life, for those of you that are Christ's followers, you followed the course of this world.

You were giving in to the enemy's desire to for you to walk in the wrong direction.

You gave in to the appetites of your flesh.

But God.

And in this moment, we we don't look at this and be like, oh, I'm awesome.

We go, oh, thank you.

God.

Thank you.

God, I want to know more about who you are and how you work and why this matters.

So let's notice why God acts.

Verse 4.

But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us.

Paul doesn't say God saw us doing our best or found something lovable about us or anticipated we'd be useful to him.

God acts because of something true in him.

Rich in mercy, great in love.

For those of you that are here that are listening, you might think, Well, I'm I could see how God would save somebody else.

I mean, they're a good person, they're real smart, they've got good people skills.

I'm not so sure God can save me because I got some real nastiness in my life.

I got some desires that are really, really evil.

Paul did not save them because there was anything good in them.

God can save you because he's not looking at whether or not you're a good person because we've already decided you're spiritually dead.

God can save you.

Why?

Because he is rich in mercy and great in love.

And this amplifies what Paul has already said in chapter 1, verse 4.

When he says, in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.

Let's just consider this idea of adoption for a moment as we're thinking about what Paul is saying to us, what God is speaking to us.

We have some neighbors that have become very close friends.

And Eric and Regina Chang is their name.

And they had two sons, and they felt called by God to adopt a child.

This child, his name is Ezra, and Ezra is now five years old, and Ezra is a total trip.

I'll be sitting in my living room and I'll hear the doorbell ring and I'll go, and it's Ezra.

He has come pouncing down the block and he's come to our house because he wants to play with our dog, and he comes in and he doesn't even ask anymore.

He just comes in, plays with the dog, and then he makes his way to the snack cabinet and he gets popcorn.

And if we don't have something there that he likes and he puts in his order with Genie, like, hey, you guys are running out of Cheez Its, okay?

He makes his way out to the refrigerator we have out in the shed and he'll get himself a little Sprite Zero.

He'll come into the house and he'll come sit on the couch right next to me and then he'll He, I mean, I know what's coming.

He said, Uncle Russell, blues clues.

And so I find on blues clues, we don't watch a lot of blues clues in our house anymore, but I don't feel like I have an option.

And so I put on blues clues and he's sitting on the couch.

I'm sitting on the couch and he's just eating Cheez-Its and drinking his Sprite.

Every time I see him, every time I see him, I'm reminded that he did not choose to be in this family.

But with his whole heart, he knows he belongs.

Every time I see him, I consider what it means for him to have been adopted.

He was in a bad state.

And these parents felt called by God to go and find him.

Was there anything good in him?

No.

They didn't even know anything about him.

They just said, we choose you.

You're going to come and be a part of our family, and you're going to get to enjoy all the benefits of being a part of this family.

Why?

Because we love you.

And not only are you going to enjoy the benefits of this family, you're going to enjoy the benefits of the Cravens family.

I mean, it's like the love is wide.

You were spiritually dead.

And God, not because there was anything good in you, or you raised your hand and you said, Hey, I'm pretty smart, or I'm pretty good looking, or I can do great things for the kingdom.

No, you were walking in the wrong direction, but God looked at you and said, I choose you.

Come into the family.

Come into the family, and you get to enjoy all that there is as a part of my kingdom.

And look at verse 5.

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, he 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.

Okay, check this out.

God did not wait for our condition to improve or to meet it, he didn't meet him halfway.

He came all the way to us while we were spiritually dead and completely unable to make ourselves alive.

That is grace.

It's not a reward for effort, but life given to people who had none.

And now notice the word with repeated three times.

So God made us alive with Christ, raised us with Christ, and seated us with Christ.

So God came to us in Christ to carry our sin to the cross and inner death on our behalf.

Then God raised Jesus from the dead, and now through faith, we're united with Christ so completely that his resurrection life becomes our life.

So God did not just like from a distance take his little magic wand and go, okay, you're a Christian, you're a Christian, you're a Christian, you're a Christian.

No.

God became flesh as a man to get a hold of us and get a hold of our hearts with.

It communicates intimacy.

It communicates closeness.

And this same power that Paul's already prayed that you'd see, the power at that empty tomb is the power that's holding you now.

Which means that the evil powers that Paul just named in verse 2, the Prince of the Power of the Air, they no longer define you.

They may still oppose you, but they cannot remove you from being with Jesus.

They cannot separate you from him.

So as I'm reading this, I'm like, God, why have you done this?

Why have you chosen to make spiritually dead people alive?

Why have you chosen to raise us with Christ and seat us with Christ?

We've seen in verse 4 that there's a motive here, and that is out of his rich mercy and great love.

In verse 7, we're going to see the result.

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

I want you to know, Paul, in one of his letters to the Corinthians, said, This message is foolishness to those that are perishing.

And if you're looking at as an outsider, you're looking in, you may be thinking to yourself, okay, hold on, time out.

What Christianity teaches is that we're spiritually dead, but God, because of his mercy and love, chose to be with us to rescue us, to solve a problem we could never solve on our own.

And why is he doing it?

So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness in Christ Jesus?

Like that sounds like foolishness.

You are, believer, the evidence of God's immeasurable grace.

Why?

Because when anyone sees a spiritually dead person made alive, the response is not, what an impressive person.

It is what an awesome God.

Look at verse 8.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.

You do not get the worship, you do not get the glory, you do not get the accolade.

Who does?

God.

It is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast.

So Paul is closing every door here to the idea that we've contributed to our rescue, that we've had anything to do with the solving of this great problem.

Grace means that God acted when we could do nothing for ourselves.

And faith is not the work that earns salvation.

Faith is when we decide to surrender knowing that we cannot solve this problem on our own.

Some of you are living with that like God-sized hole in your heart, and you've been trying to put stuff in it: some entertainment, a relationship, more money, a better job, accolade.

And what you know is that for a very short period of time it feels like it satisfies, but there is just those moments when you lay your head on the bed at night and you know you feel empty.

It is because apart from Christ, you're spiritually dead, and what you need most is to surrender to the beautiful truth that God, because of his mercy and love, makes available to you a rescue.

We did not work our way to this new life.

God found us in death.

Paul's gone on in verse 8 to say it's the gift of God, not a result of work, so that no one can boast.

We did not work our way to life.

God found us in death, so we boast only in his grace.

If the problem is death, we don't need improvement, we need a resurrection.

It's a gift of God.

There are other places in this passage where this is true also.

Where the moment that we go from being dead to spiritual life, it's a decisive, clear moment of salvation.

But it has ongoing effects in our lives.

And so for believer, if you're here, you say, How can I live arrested by this beautiful truth even after having become a follower of Jesus?

It is it is not beginning to look at the goodness in your own life, it's beginning to see in a new way, like the eyes of your heart be opened in a new, fresh way to how lost you were and what it means for you to be found, and what this means about who God is.

We boast in his grace.

And this raises an obvious question if it's entirely a gift, not a result of works, do works matter at all?

And Paul answers this immediately.

And as the letter to the Ephesians is unfolding in the next nine weeks, we'll see more of this and what this looks like for people that truly understand that they were spiritually dead and made alive in Christ.

But look at verse 10.

It says, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

So in verse 9, Paul excludes our works, and then he calls us God's workmanship.

Salvation is not the result of our work because we are God's work, recreated for good works.

Before we do anything for God, we receive what God has done for us.

And one fascinating thing about the way that this passage is written is that he frames it with these this word walk.

So verse 2 says, dead in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked.

You can see that on the screen.

Then verse 10, he says, Good works that we should walk in them.

Here's what Paul is saying to the church at Ephesus.

Here's what God's saying to you.

We once walked in sin, following the world.

Now we walk in good works, following Jesus in the right direction.

Grace makes that walk possible, but you still have to take steps.

You would say, Yeah, I do believe that is what saved me some years ago, and you would have a story about a turn in your life.

But what happens oftentimes is we know that we have this encounter with Christ, and at some level we understand that we were spiritually dead and made alive in Christ.

But as we live out our Christian life, we think that we have to continue just working for God so that He doesn't kick us out the front door.

The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is made available to you.

It's the same power that's holding you in Christ.

I mean, grace is not just what saves you, but it's what sustains you.

Do you feel that?

And that might make some of you nervous because you think, well, Russell, if you say that, then people are gonna never feel like they have to do anything good for God.

But what Paul's saying here is that God has done a work on us, and in response to that, we get to take steps in gratitude for God doing this work in us.

So everything we do as a follower of Jesus, it's not to earn a place before God.

It's not to prove that God made a good decision.

It is out of this sense of I am so grateful that though I once followed the course of this world, though I had desires within me that deserved the full wrath of God, though I was separated for God from God, and he saved me.

And so I want to honor him with my life.

Three movements in the passage as I begin to bring this to a close.

You were dead, God made you alive, and now you get to walk in the life he's given you.

And maybe you're here, and that's not your story yet.

I'm glad you're here.

This is not an invitation to a religion or a more religious version of yourself.

This is an invitation to new life in Christ.

Anyone who surrenders to Christ is forgiven, made alive, and welcome home.

You don't have to earn it because you cannot earn it.

It's made available to you.

Just surrender.

We want to help you take this step of surrender.

In just a few moments, we're gonna all stand up, and there are gonna be people in the four corners.

And if you want for somebody to pray with you so that you can be saved, then we would love to do that with you.

For those of you that already believe this, this passage leaves us with two things to do.

The first one is this rest.

Like just be at rest.

Stop living as if your relationship with God depends on your most recent performance.

You are not holding your salvation together.

God's grace is when in when you fail, which you will, and I do, confess it.

When you fall, get back up.

So rest and then walk.

Grace enables you to walk in a new direction.

So my call to action for this week is simply this I want you to start each day asking God, what good work do you have for me today?

Not to earn a place with you, God, but in response to what you've done for me in Christ.

I was dead, now I'm alive, I'm seated with Christ.

So I want to do something with that.

Who can I love?

Whom do I need to forgive?

Where can I serve?

What can I give?

Who can I invite into a faith conversation, maybe invite to church?

So just each morning this week, just see what happens.

You go, God, I'm going to walk as someone who was spiritually dead, but now is alive in Christ.

And so help me to see who to love and who to forgive and who to serve.

What I need to give.

Rest and walk.

We do good work in gratitude for what God has done for us.

You were dead, but God, being rich in mercy, made you alive with Christ.