Ephesians (6) ~ 2:1-10

Transcription

1 Ephesians (6) ~ 2:1-10 Today we're in the second chapter of Ephesians. The emphasis in chapter one is on the realities of the Christian life on the vast treasures we have in Christ. Now, in chapter two, he underlines the revolution of the Christian life by homing in on our spiritual position in Christ. At the end of chapter one we have a marvellous picture of Christ and the church. They are bound together as a single living organism. They are bonded together inasmuch as he is the head and the church is his body. The key question is: where did God get the basic material to start making this church? And what an illuminating answer we find in these verses! He starts with those who are rejects, who could be written off, who are worthless, who are only fit for the trash can. He begins with the most unpromising and unlikely material. See how he ends he ends with a church that shares the exaltation of Christ in the highest heights of glory. What a transformation. What a revolution. That s the outrageous grace of God at work. He builds his church with the crooked timbers of humanity so that the glory is ascribed exclusively to him. He sees us not only as we were, he sees the potential in our lives of what we can become. The difference comes when we revere him as one who is rich in mercy, as one who because of his great love for us has made us alive in Christ. That s what he has done. He has taken us out of the great cemetery of sin and placed us into the throne room of glory. As Warren Wiersbe so aptly puts it: It s away with the grave clothes and on with the grace clothes. Look at what the apostle says in verse 1 we were dead! That s what we were outside of Jesus Christ. We were as dead as dead can be. What a desperate position to be in. Spiritually speaking we had no life. That s the awful plight of man without God. He is dead. That s not all though. We were dead in transgressions. We have trespassed and that means we have stepped out of line. We have fallen aside when we should have been standing upright. We have rebelled against God. And, to make matters worse, we were dead in sins that means we have completely missed the mark, we have failed to reach God s high and holy standard. We have fallen short of the target God set. He set the goal and we didn t make it. That s our basic problem. We were dead. That s the state of every sinner today the unbeliever is not sick, he is dead. He doesn t need resuscitation, he needs a personal resurrection. He doesn t need the kiss of life to revive him, he needs new life to change him. All lost sinners are dead, the good looking, the good living, the good, the bad, the indifferent, the hardened sinner on skid row, the tramp sleeping in a box under the arches, the man with a million in the bank, all are dead. The only difference between one sinner and another is the state of decay. One may not be as bad as the other, but one corpse cannot be more dead than another. This means that our world is one vast graveyard. An Irishman was asked to define a cemetery. He said it was a place where dead people live! Our world is full of people who are dead while they live spiritual zombies. It s the live human in a morgue syndrome. We were not only dead, the opening phrase in verse 2 indicates that we were deluded. He says this was the way we used to live. It was the norm so far as we were concerned. Ours was not only a living death, it was a walking death. We didn t know any better. The devil had pulled

2 the wool over our eyes. He led us up a blind alley. The great deceiver conned us. We followed the ways of the world before they gave their lives to Jesus the people at Ephesus were no different to anybody else. Their hopes and their dreams were controlled by all that this world had to offer. And people today are just the same. Paul says, there s the big difference. That s what you used to be. Yes, you still live in the real world, but it has ceased to be the controlling influence in your life. When you found life in Jesus you saw through the superficial sham of all that the world has to offer. They had been influenced by the ruler of the kingdom of the air he was like the proverbial Pied Piper, he played the tune, we liked what we heard and followed behind. He s talking here about the devil, we were his poodles. He had us eating out of his hand, such was his control of our lives. It takes two to tango and we spent our time dancing in the dark with the devil. That was until Christ changed us and we saw the light. So Paul has been showing us that we were dead and deluded, now in verse 2b he reminds us that we were disobedient. There s much more to it than meets the eye. Paul was not simply saying that we were disobedient children no! He was saying that we were sons of the disobedient one. That is, we were children of Satan, our father was the devil. Remember the teaching of Romans 3 it was by one man s disobedience that sin entered the world so we are heirs to a disobedient spirit. We were on the side of the devil and he is the sworn enemy of God. We rejected the rule of God over us. Then in verse 3 he goes on to describe us as being defiled. It s not really a pretty picture. There we see ourselves as God saw us. We were doing what comes naturally. We were slaves to sin. We were searching for pleasure. We were always living to gratify our many desires. Whatever we wanted, we went after it. We were controlled by natural desire and natural depravity. We were fallen creatures. We were grovelling in the dirt, in the muck and mire of sin. We had sunk low in the gutter. We had reached the bottom. And because of the sheer magnitude of our condition, is it any wonder Paul goes on to declare in verse 3, that we were doomed. We were by nature objects of wrath. By nature we were children of wrath, by deed we were children of disobedience. We were bound for a Christless eternity, destined for hell. The unconverted person is, according to John 3, condemned already. The sentence has been passed, but God in his mercy has stayed the day of execution. That s to give men time to get right with God. That s precisely what we were. Paul tells it like it is. And we should never forget it. The great evangelical prophet Isaiah would encourage us to look back to the rock from where you have been hewn and the pit from which you have been rescued. We were without God, without hope, and without Christ. We were sinners by birth, by choice and by practice. Our lot was cast in a world controlled by the evil one. And our destiny at the end of the road was an eternity banished from the presence of the Lord. Such was our past condition. That was yesterday, what about today? Thankfully, that s not the end of the story. The Holy Spirit doesn t stop there. He leads us into verse 4 and the opening two words grab our attention: but God. We have spent some time looking at sin s work against us, now is the time to zoom in on God s work for us. In verses 4 and 5a, he has shown his love to us; and in verses 5b and 6, he has shared his love with us. You can see the richness of his love in verse 4. Thank God for that but what a blessed but it proves to be. The buts of the Bible are always arresting. They are the hinges on which great issues turn. Paul has just

3 painted a very black and bleak picture of man s depravity and the wrath of a holy God. Now, he draws attention to God s mercy and his love. God is rich in mercy. And more, he is rich in wisdom, rich in majesty and might, rich in glory. He has lavished the vast treasures of his mercy upon us. And it s never too little, too late. In his infinite mercy he does not give us what we deserve. But in the greatness of his love, he gives us what we do not deserve. See who he loves. You and me. Hell deserving, devil embracing sinners, he doesn t just pity us, he loves us! There s the wonderful reality of his love. He loved us even when we were dead in transgressions. He did not turn away from us, he came toward us. He did not shrink from us even though our condition was wretched and hopeless, no, he came to save us. Yes, we were far gone, but in love he reached out to us. Thank God, he showed his love to each one of us. It s as personal as that. We can say with Paul: He loved me and gave himself for me. Praise him for he has shared his love with us but how has he done it? He has plucked us from the tomb! Verses 5 and 6 put it like this: he has made us alive with Christ and raised us up with Christ. The only thing to do with a dead person is to bury him. There is no other solution to the problem of death. A corpse can be washed and groomed, all sorts of things can be done to enhance it, but it s still a corpse. Some people look better in death than they do in life! And the only place suitable for it is a tomb. But look, God is not daunted by death. Our transgressions and our sins brought us to the place of death. But then... God acted in grace and power. He quickened us, he made us alive, he plucked us from the tomb. The resurrection of Jesus was the key. Because all our sins were dealt with on the cross, when he arose it became possible for us to arise to a new life. God raised us from the tomb in which our sins had placed us, just as he raised Christ from the tomb in which our sins had placed him. The debt was cancelled. Sin s penalty was paid. Death s hold was broken. We were made alive with him. Grace triumphed over guilt and the grave. God reached down and raised us up. But look again and see where he has put us he has placed us on the throne! The awesome wonder of it all. We are seated on his glorious throne. In Christ we are already seated where he is. God has enveloped us in Christ so that when he looks at us, he always sees him. No matter how or when God looks at us, he sees Jesus. In the heights of heaven we see a throne where God sits, where Christ sits, and where he has seated us as well. We sit there together. I just can t even grasp it, let alone understand it plucked from the tomb and placed on a throne. Wow! Those verbs made us alive, raised, seated are all in the aorist tense. It means, it is already done. That s now, it's something we can revel in at this moment of time. We have looked into the past and seen what we were in the yesterdays of life. We have viewed the present and seen what is ours to enjoy today. What are the prospects for the future, what about tomorrow? You can read all about it in verses There is grace in verses 7-9. His grace is revealed through us in verse 7. The sin of man gave God the ideal opportunity to show a side of his character that might never have been fully revealed. In creation, he displayed his wisdom and his power; in redemption, he has demonstrated not just his grace, not just the riches of his grace, but the incomparable riches of his grace. That grace is seen in the church. She will be the object of awe and admiration in eternity itself. All will see the throne of God, all will see the Lord Jesus, and they will see us there as well. Trophies of the grace of God and he is the one who gets all the pleasure in showing us off.

4 In verses 8 and 9 we notice that his grace is revealed to us. Here is one of the greatest summaries of the gospel message in the New Testament. The gift is salvation and it is made available to us by the grace of God, and it is received by us through faith. It s a gift, we can t purchase it, work for it, or earn it it s free. We have nothing to boast about for it s all of God from start to finish. And we close by looking at this wonderful verse verse 10. The emphasis here is on growth. Good works are part of God s plan for your life and mine. They are not the price of salvation, they are the proof of salvation. John Calvin wrote: We are saved by faith alone, but faith that saves us can never be alone. They are the evidence that God is at work in our lives, they are the token that we have passed from death to new life in Jesus Christ. There s a lovely thought here for Paul reminds us that we are his workmanship. The Greek indicates that we are his poem, his masterpiece. Each of our lives is the canvas on which the master is producing a work of art that will fill the everlasting ages with his praise. We are meant to be a visual aid, a live exhibit, an advertisement of all that the grace of God can do in our lives. We may be rough, uncut diamonds, but he s still working on us and he hasn t finished yet. When he does, that will be eternal ecstasy. And, when you think of what we were, and look at what we now are, then we should be thrilled and excited with what we shall be. The chorus sums it up: thank you Lord for saving my soul, thank you Lord for making me whole, thank you Lord for giving to me, thy great salvation so rich and free. Why does God work in us so that he might work through us. The Bible shows many examples of this important principle. God spent 40 years working in Moses before he could work through him. At the beginning of his ministry, Moses was impetuous and depended on his own strength. He killed an Egyptian and had to flee Egypt, hardly a successful way to start a ministry. But during those 40 years as a humble shepherd in the desert, Moses experienced God s working in his life, a working that prepared him for 40 more years of magnificent service. There are other prime examples Joseph suffered for thirteen years before God put him on the throne of Egypt, second to Pharaoh. David was anointed king when he was a young man, but he did not gain the throne until he had suffered many years as an exile. Even Paul spent three years in Arabia after his conversion, no doubt experiencing God s deeper work to prepare him for his ministry. God has to work in us before he can effectively work through us. The works Paul writes about here have two special characteristics. They are good and they are prepared. It means that God has a specific plan for your life. There s nothing airy fairy, it s not pie in the sky. He is talking about the gracious plan of a loving heavenly Father for the will of God comes from the heart of God. The challenge we all face is this: what kind of clothes are we wearing are we still clad in the grave clothes of the old life or are we adorned with the beautiful grace clothes of the new life. Are we still lingering around the tombstones in the graveyard of sin or have we moved on to an elevated position near the throne have we moved from a position of utter depravity to one of unsurpassed intimacy? At the end of the day, it s who you know that makes all the difference. A famous actor was the guest of honour at a social gathering - he received many requests to recite favourite excerpts from various literary works. An old preacher who happened to be there asked the actor to recite the 23 rd Psalm. The actor agreed on the condition that the preacher would say it after him. The actor s recitation was beautifully intoned with great

5 dramatic emphasis. When he finished he received lengthy applause from an adoring public. The old preacher stood up and his voice was rough, his diction anything but polished. But, when he finished, there wasn t a dry eye in the room. When someone asked the actor what made the difference, he replied: I know the psalm, he knows the shepherd!