God's Thoughts On Zombies

Eph 2:1 – 10 God’s thoughts on Zombies

1) All of us start as zombies (vs 1)

You were born as a zombie (vs 1)

Vs 1 – We are all born zombies (the walking dead, alive in our sin)

2) What do zombies do? (vs 2, 3)

Blood lust – likewise, we too – lust after things of this world

Is not blood lust a good description of most of our sins – gossip is eating away at one anothers reputation, sex, anger, so many sins could be described as blood lust

3) What happens to zombies? (vs 3b)

You need to destroy them. – you can’t negotiate with them (eg Shaun of the dead clips)

God’s view on sin – wrath

We don’t like wrath, but its imp we don’t skip it

Its real

Its shows God’s attitude to sin, it doesn’t make him squirm

God detests it – like how we feel when we think of someone messing with a baby

Righteous anger – God vs sin

Not sin as something distant, but that thing you did last night, today, this week.

God’s wrath boils against it – God is passionate, where do you think passion came from.

But that’s not where the story ends – another of God’s passions is his love and mercy – vs 4, 5

4) God loves zombies (vs 4)

Vs 5 – made alive again – now this is more like vampires

Because you can’t get zombies back to life, but you can kill the head vampire and get them back to life – that’s what Jesus did, he killed death

What happens next is ridiculous – vs 6,7 we get honoured

What is God thinking? Craziness

5) How does God save zombies?

By Grace (vs 5 & 8)

Vs 8,9 – the classic, grace = undeserved favour

God saves, redeems us from being zombies to his place of honour

This makes sense – for his glory, not what we do, but our response – trust, faith in him.

Eg Seinfeld – ‘it’s not you, its me’ – that’s what God says. But he means it.

The order is so imp – humans are born zombies (vs 1), but he loves us, so I redeemed you.

But remember my honouring of you is because of Jesus and his gift of grace.

6) Danger of isolating verses

Danger – if we read scripture in isolation

Stop there – saved by grace lets sin

Start at vs 10 – lets get working

Put together – we get a proper theology – saved by grace, so live it out!

a. Return to zombie ways (vs 1 – 9 only)

b. Hard working zombies (vs 10 only)

7) God’s work of art – zombies turned to humans. (vs 10)

One more compliment from God

Vs 10 = workmanship the greek infers, work of art – ha, ha, I bet you didn’t think that when you looked across at someone else in church

Not work of art – like boring old landscape painting

But work of art, like opera house – uniformly pleased with

Then vs 10b – what should art work do – bring glory to its maker

Whats our role – yes to everyone, no. Yes to our God, look out for Gods work in the world – big and little. Reminds me of Gal 5 – keep in step with the spirit.

Which is like the final vs of chpt 22 – God lives in us by his Spirit – so get at it.

Grace doesn’t mean life after Jesus is a holiday, when we were zombies we were dead

Now we are alive, we can actually get involved in Gods work in the world.

The worst thing we could do is say, phew, Jesus thanks for freeing me. Gee I’m hungry I might go snack on some randoms brains – cos that’s just living like a zombie again.

We have been brought back to life – so look alive, live life like someone who has been set free.