Made Alive in Christ
Ephesians 2:1-10
Intro
Slide
Have you heard the one about a plane that is about to crash? It has a pilot, a scientist, a pastor and a student, but there are only 3 parachutes.
The pilot, knowing first that the plane is going to crash, takes a parachute reasoning, that it takes years to become a pilot and he is worth more than the others alive.
The scientist takes a parachute thinking he is the smartest and he jumps.
That leaves the pastor and the student.
The pastor, having Christ, knows that he will be with the Lord and says to the student to take the last parachute. The student responds that there is no need; there were still 2 parachutes left because the scientist jumped with the students back pack!
Transition
Have you ever thought you had the real thing, only to find out that it wasn’t real at all?
The scientist jumped thinking he had a real parachute.
Maybe you had what you thought was a gold ring, but it kept tarnishing!
Maybe your boyfriend gave you a diamond, but then it turned out to be cubic zirconia!
You thought what you had was real, but then found out otherwise and you were probably sorely disappointed.
Has that ever happened to you?
I would argue that this has happened to all of us at some point.
I would argue that there was a time that many of us here have thought we were alive, and living “good” lives, but only later found out the truth.
And there are probably some here today that believe they are alive and living a good life. Well, if you are not in Christ, you are not really living the life God created for us to live. It is a fake. You are actually dead.
Don’t believe me?
Well, let’s turn to Ephesians 2:1-10
Slide
And see what Paul has to tell us about life outside of Christ so we can know the reality of our situation outside of Christ and hear How God works to give us life.
Let’s read Ephesians 2:1-10
Ephesians 2:1-10
2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Pray
So, Paul starts out helping us see the reality of our situation before being in Christ.
He tells us that before being in Christ,
We were Dead
Slide
Ephesians 2:1 - As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,
You thought you were living life, when you were really the walking dead!
Just like a zombie, you could move and were physically still breathing and going about in this world, but you were spiritually dead, and just didn’t know it.
This death you were in is caused by “transgressions and sins.”
Here we see the truth of
Slide
Romans 6:23 – “The wages of sin is death.”
Now many people live, if you want to call it that, thinking they have life, when they don’t.
They try to improve their life by working, accumulating money, seeking pleasure and comfort, all the while still being dead. This is all of us, in fact, before we are in Christ.
Now, let me ask you.
If you were dead and buried in the ground, would you rather
have a $2000 suit on in your casket OR
be wearing an old shirt?
The answer is It doesn’t matter because you are dead!
But these are the types of decisions that the person without Christ is going through.
They are trying to look better and feel better, but they are dead.
It doesn’t matter if a person who does not know Christ and is outside of Christ
Is sleeping on lower Wacker Drive or
Is occupying the CEO’s office in one of Chicago’s high rise buildings.
They are still both dead, even though they may look a little different on the outside.
We also were dead without Christ.
We need to remember that when we see a person who does not yet know Christ.
That was us at some point.
We need to remember the words attributed to John Bradford, a martyr and reformer from the 14th century who, when watching a line of prisoners heading to execution, said “there but for the grace of God, go I.”
We were dead before Christ saved us!
And we were not only dead,
We were Disobedient
Slide
Ephesians 2:1-3
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.
This disobedience stems from 3 sources Paul tells us. Being dead, we didn’t follow God. Instead,
We followed the temptations of…
The World
Slide
Ephesians 2:2a…when you followed the ways of this world…
Without Christ, our thinking is screwed up and the ways of the world seem right.
But when we receive Christ, we receive the Spirit of Him who is not of this world.
(John 8:23 - I am not of this world.)
Realize that the values that this world exalts are not the values of the Lord.
Tolerance
For example, it seems the highest virtue in our world system is tolerance, which today means that no matter what anyone believes about anything, you have to be ok with it and even support it, or you are intolerant.
What the Bible calls sin has to be not only tolerated but accepted.
To those who are dead apart from Christ, the world system is going to seem right and good and reasonable.
This is why for the Christian we have got to be careful about putting too much hope in changing values through the political process.
Yes, I think it is good to take action to slow the decay process in our society, but the reality is that without Christ changing people, and making them alive, there is little hope to stop the decline in morality in this country or in the world.
It will only get worse without Christ as people continue to follow the ways of the world.
Transition
But it is not only the world system that tempts us toward disobedience, but we also follow the temptations of
The Devil
Slide
Ephesians 2:2b - and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
Now while Satan is not omnipresent, through the work of His demonic associates and his influence in the world system, he is continually seeking to do what he did to Eve in the garden: lying to people about God and seeking to get people to disobey.
He will say things like
You surely won’t die if you sin
God isn’t good. Why would He deny you pleasure if he was good?
God isn’t real…if He were real, then there wouldn’t be evil
God doesn’t care about you…If He cared, you wouldn’t be in the situation you are now.
The devil is a liar and the father of lies. Those lies sound believable, even to believers,
when we are not letting God’s word penetrate and transform our minds.
That’s why Paul tells the church in Rome, saying
Romans 12:2
2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Let your mind be renewed by the enlightening power of God’s word so you can stand strong against the lies of the Devil and the ways of the world.
Transition
A final temptation to disobedience comes when we follow
The Flesh
Slide
Ephesians 2:3
3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.
Those who are not in Christ are controlled by the flesh, and by the flesh I don’t mean our physical body, but by our fleshly, sinful nature.
We want what we want, and our sinful nature does not care if it is right or wrong.
We all have this nature from the moment Adam and Eve sinned in the garden.
Transition
Because of us being dead and disobedient because of all of these negative influences of the world, the devil and the flesh, Paul tells us that
We were Doomed
Slide
Ephesians 2:3b - Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
Without Christ we are doomed to eternal damnation and are opposed to God.
There is no hope for real life.
Transition
So Paul in these first 3 verses of Chapter 2, lays out a picture of how we had believed the lies in the past, how we may have thought we had life, but in reality we were dead!
He shows us the truth of who we were and who some still currently are.
What is the solution for this hopeless predicament?
There is only one hope and that is Christ!
Slide
Ephesians 2:4-5
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.
In Christ,
God gives us life…
Slide
Why does he do this? I mean, we just learned that we were disobedient and done nothing to merit this.
Well,
He tells us in verse 4 the reason.
…Because of His Love
Slide
Ephesians 2:4-5
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions
God makes us alive because He loves us. It seems like we talk about this all the time and that is because we do.
God’s love is a central theme of the Bible.
He created us in His image and He loves us completely
as an act of His will and
as a function of His character. He is love!
We don’t deserve His love in the least.
We were objects of His wrath, acting in ways that were reprehensible to Him.
That is what makes his love so amazing.
Romans 5:8 - God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Transition
And because we do not in the least deserve God’s love or the life that He gives us means that it is
…By His Grace
Slide
… it is by grace you have been saved.6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved…
Grace is unmerited favor. God gives us something which is like receiving the opposite of what we deserve.
Because of our disobedience we deserve eternal separation and death, but God gives us life.
We deserve punishment, but God blesses us with life, real life.
There is no way we could get this on our own.
If God did not reach out drawing you to Him, you would never have life.
In John 6:44
Slide
– Jesus tells us that "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
Apart from God’s mighty work of reaching out to save you, you have no hope of life.
God does the work, God does the reaching, God draws you to Him.
Transition
And he extends His grace
…Through His Gift of Faith
Slide
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
We receive the gift of salvation through faith which God gives us as well.
Our ability to respond is given by the God who created us.
I believe that if you are here today and hearing this message, and if you are currently not in Christ, you have never put your trust in Him, that God is reaching out for you right now and has been drawing you to this point and has given you faith that you might exercise that faith and receive the gift of life that he is giving.
Exercise the gift of Faith and Receive Christ
Though we are not finished with the message, I want to pause here and give you the opportunity that God has provided you to respond to His work in leading you to this point.
Slide
The Bible tells us that we exercise the faith God gives us by receiving Christ by Believing in Him, in Who He is and What he has done.
John 1:12 says to all who received Him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
And
Romans 10:9 says “if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
If you have never done that, and you believe that you have sinned and because of that sin you are dead, then if you are recognizing your need for Christ and believe that He is the Lord and died for your sins and rose from the dead, then exercise the faith that God has given you to believe and receive Jesus as your Savior and receive the Life He gives.
Pray
If you received Christ, then welcome to the family. You are now a child of God and have life in Him!
Transition
But then what? Is that it?
No.
He doesn’t just give us this life to live this life, but
…To Do His Work
Slide
Ephesians 2:10
10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
God has given us life and given us purpose to live the life he gives us.
He has prepared works for us to do so that we could truly live life.
The things He has prepared for us to do is not like the job we hate or the school work that our kids are so glad to be done with.
The things he has prepared for us to do have eternal impact.
What are those things?
So often we are looking for the one thing that we are supposed to do.
What is our purpose? What is my job? Who should I marry?
Now those are important questions, but I believe our job, our spouse, where we live, are actually secondary to the purposes God has prepared for us.
We are here to Glorify the Lord.
Share the good news
We glorify Him by sharing the Good News with those who are lost and dead in their sins.
Be the spouse He wants you to be
We glorify Him by being the spouse to whoever we are married to, that God wants us to be.
I too often hear from people thinking they married the wrong person.
If you are married, you didn’t marry the wrong person.
If you are married, God has called you to be a spouse to your mate that will glorify Him!
“Well, if I do that, I will never be happy!” That is the lie Satan wants you to believe.
I tell you that if you are the spouse that God wants you to be, God will give you peace and strength and joy, regardless of who your spouse is!
Use your gifts as part of the church
I will, once I find the perfect place!
No, that is not what glorifies the Lord. Use your gifts in the church you are at.
Now, this doesn’t mean to be in a church that is not preaching the gospel or teaching the Bible.
It does mean that in the church that is preaching the gospel and God’s word and seeking to glorify Him, that you should you use your gifts even if
You don’t like the carpet
Or there was a couple of messages that didn’t speak to you
Or you didn’t like the way that the worship team played your favorite song
Work hard in the job you have
Now I am not saying that you can’t look for a new job or leave a job you are in, but I am saying that no matter what job we have, we are called o work as if we are working for the Lord.
Be a hard worker and don’t make excuses for being lazy
If you have kids, parent them to know the Lord
Proverbs 22:6 - Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
Raise them teaching them about the Lord, live out your Christianity in front of them.
As you do that, you leave a legacy that will last an eternity!
Conclusion
Are you alive in Christ? If so, then live in the power of the Spirit He gives us to truly be able to glorify Him by doing the work He has prepared for you to bring glory to Him.
I am going to pray for all of us that God would help us by
Strengthening us to be in his word, in prayer, and in fellowship and by
Convicting us of sin and helping us to walk in obedience
So that we might glorify Him and truly live in the life He has given us in Christ!
Let’s pray
