Ephesians 2 Remember What You Were

Jonathan Newlon

Uniontown Church of Christ

1 May 2020

Ephesians 2:11-22 Remember What You Were

Introduction

Memory can be a funny thing. I can’t tell you how many times I try to recall an event to someone only to be seemingly corrected by someone else who was there. They remember the event much differently than I do. After that, the two of us end up arguing about what really happened and what the details of the event were. We may agree on the main point of it, but in our own minds, we remember the details very differently. Memory is so interesting. What we choose to remember verses what we forget can tell a lot about a person. With that in mind, let’s read Ephesians 2:11-22 together and see what Paul encourages the Church of Ephesus to remember.

As Christians, sometimes we tend to be very forgetful of our own past. It may be because remembering what we were before becoming a Christian can be a painful thing. It can be a scary thing. However, it is important that we do not forget what we were before being saved by Christ. When we forget what we were, it’s easy to look down on someone else who may be now where we once were. It’s easy to think of ourselves as being better than someone who hasn’t been saved by the Lord yet. It’s easy to think of ourselves as better than a new Christian or someone who isn’t as “spiritually mature” in our eyes.

The issue here is pride. Pride can be a very dangerous thing. Pride can lead to things like false testimony, lying, stealing, self-glorification, and a whole list of other sins. When we fall victim to our own pride, we tend to glorify ourselves rather than God. Remember what the writer of Proverbs 16:18 said, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” What I want us to do today, is to take a look at some great men of faith throughout the Bible. I want us to look at not only what they became, but most importantly to our context this morning, what they were before they became great.

I. Moses

Let’s start off our journey of looking at faithful men who came from iffy places with Moses. Let’s start off by examining what Moses became. Moses, without doubt, became a great man of faith in the Lord. This is a man who talked often with God, himself. This wasn’t just in prayer, but actual two-sided conversation with the Lord God Almighty. He became the leader of the nation of Israel who performed miracles of God in front of the most powerful world leader of his time. He would go in front of the Pharaoh of Egypt and perform mighty miracles from God and secure the release of his nation from slavery.

God would give Moses the law by which God’s people were to abide. This started with the ten commandments and then would develop into the entire book of Leviticus. This is the law that would teach us what sin was. This is the law that would give us a temporary system of atonement for sin. This is the law that would look forward to a Messiah. This is the law that would be fulfilled by the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the greatest moment of Moses in the Bible was where he appeared with a transfigured Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Moses’ great faith was shown to be true and so was his eternal reward. Moses appeared in Matthew 17. Starting in verse 2 it says, “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.” Moses was certainly a great man of faith.

Now let’s take a look at who Moses was before becoming the great man of God we know him as today. Initially, Moses shouldn’t have even survived childhood. Before his birth, the Pharaoh of Egypt made a decree. We see it in Exodus 1:22, “Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.’” Moses ended up being saved by the daughter of Pharaoh due to the grace of God.

Not only should he not have survived childhood, but he also ended up being a fugitive of the law and exiled from his homeland. Exodus 2:11-15a reads, “One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, ‘Why do you strike your companion?’ He answered, ‘Who made you a prince and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid and thought, ‘Surely this thing is known.’ When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.” He would go on to be a shepherd, the lowest of the low in the eyes of the Egyptians.