Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-10
Theme: Let's Go Traveling!
1. The Road of Sin and Death
2. The Crossroad of God's Grace
3. Walking in Christ through His Holy Spirit
INTRO:
Grace and peace from God our Father, from Jesus Christ our Savior and from the Holy Spirit who cleanses us and infills us with God's Power and Presence!
Each year while I was in grade school one of the things that we normally had to complete was one or two major projects for the year. I remember this one year that I decided that my project would be to collect and identify as many different types of tree leaves as possible. It was a fantastic project. After everything was done, I ended up with finding and collecting nearly 100 different types of leaves from all kinds of trees. How did I do it? First, of all our school system had a teacher that had amassed quite a collection of rare and unusual trees in her yard that helped out quite a bit. Then secondly, I wrote to the Forestry Department of all 50 US States and territories asking them to send me some information on their state tree along with any samples they could send as well. I was amazed at how much information and samples that they sent back.
The one that amazed me most was the information I received back from the state of California on the Redwood Tree. The more I read about the Redwoods the more I wanted to see them. And so, I made myself a promise. One day if at all possible I would travel out to California and spend some time in a Redwood forest. It took me over thirty years but I finally found myself deep in the heart of a redwood forest loving every second of it.
But I almost missed it. Our family had doubled up the trip to the redwoods with a trip to see Mt. Rainer and Mt. St. Helens and travel down the coastline of the state of Oregon to the upper part of California. After traveling and seeing all those sites we found ourselves almost out of time and needing to make our "redwood" portion a quick look and see. The only place available to see them was at a commercial park which while it was highly entertaining and valuable, it left a little bit to be desired. I wanted to see and experience the redwoods in their natural environment. But they were still as majestic and beautiful as I had dreamed them to be.
We were running out of time and had to get back to Medford, Oregon where we were catching our flight and I was a little melancholy. I still wanted to see the redwoods in a forest setting away from all the commercial adventures and tourists. By happenstance, we stopped at a ranger's station near the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park where the ranger told us that if we would backtrack a few miles we would find ourselves off road and in the middle of a Virgin Redwood Forest. He warned us that we would find ourselves on some very narrow dirt roads stuck back in what would seem nowhere country. That was all it took. We quickly got back in the car and started backtracking.
Wow! Was my boyhood dream ever realized! For a whole day we got to enjoy hiking through those woods looking at these majesty redwood trees. It was just nature, pure wonderful glorious nature. I had the time of my life. It was God time. It was sacred. I got to be in an environment in which there were just trees, birds, animals and plants. I have nothing against tourists stops or commercial adventures but here the middle of this Redwood forest heaven and earth were touching. Those little dirt roads and little paths took us to places that I believe looked like part of the Garden of Eden.
Our scripture passage this morning talks about roads, paths and walkways. After sharing a prayer of blessing and a prayer for his readers to grow greatly in wisdom, knowledge, revelation and power the Apostle Paul shares with us some truths concerning a person's New Life Walk with Christ. He shares with us the road of death that all of us once traveled. He then shares with us the Cross walk of God's Amazing Grace. And finally he challenges us to walk in the power of our New Life in Christ.
I. Paul begins by reminding his readers both Gentile and Jew that once we all traveled down the road away from God. We all walked down the road of Sin and Death.
The Apostle Paul is not being negative in describing this walk. Rather, he is being quite realistic. Paul is wanting his readers both Jew and Gentile to remember that without God there is only the enslavement of sin and its ensuing destruction and death both physical and spiritual. Paul here takes a moment to step back and remind all of us what our LORD desires for us and has done for each and every one of us.
Today, there is not a great deal of appreciation in hearing a message that deals with the subjects of sin and/or death1. The subjects of sin and/or death are uncomfortable. They are not pleasant. But as we all know the subjects of sin and/or death are a part of our present reality.
For many people sin has been absorbed into a misunderstanding of God's grace, mercy and love. It's as if we need sin to ever be able to speak of God's grace. It is true that when we speak of saving grace that we do naturally assume that we are also talking about the reality of sin. However, what has tragically happened in the last few decades is that sin in its most proper sense (idolatry, rebellion against God, missing the mark) has become much more accepted. There is a growing trend even inside the Body of Christ to believe that sin or sins in general don't really matter. That it really doesn't matter that I have sinned before coming to faith or that I sin after coming to faith.
More often than not the conversation goes something like this:
We sin. Everyone sins. Sin caused the Fall. Sin brings about chaos, destruction and even death. But is that not simply a part of being human? Is it not the fact that we humans have sinned, will sin and will continually sin?
There seems to be a intergenerational backlash happening over the subject of sin and grace. Many have felt that the older generations overdid their emphasis on sin. That they all too well pointed out what they thought was and was not sin damning those who did such things. As a result many believed that an overriding spirit of legalism and judgmentalism arose forcing out a spirit of grace, mercy and love.
As a result the ensuing generations began to focus more on grace, mercy and love than sin and sinful acts which was not a bad thing in and of itself. We do need to know that God's Grace is greater than sin, any sin - thought or committed. However, I believe that now sadly many believe that God's grace allows us to live without any absolutes or rules. We have mistaken God's grace for a Holy License to live any way and do anything we wanted to do.
This has been born out in the way in which such books as "Fifty Shades of Grey", movies like "Deadpool" and TV Series like "Games of Thrones" have found a home in the hearts and minds of not only those who walk in the ways of the world but also in those who consider themselves a part of the Body of Christ. This has been born out in the way unforgiveness, greed and sensuality have found a home in the hearts and minds of those who consider themselves a part of the Body of Christ. On the surface it appears that we have adopted a type of antinomianism that believes there are no absolutes, no moral or ethical laws. That as long as one believes in grace then what one does in the flesh, sees in the flesh or lives out in the flesh does not matter.
As a result in recent years a zeal for holiness and righteousness has waned and many believe that a life of holiness is now outdated. That such a lifestyle if it were possible is no longer possible in the post modern world. Regrettable, we have become a generation that has accepted sin and has been ignorant of its impact both in and outside of the church.
That is one of the reasons why the Apostle Paul doesn't want us to lose sight of either grace nor sin. He too had to deal with the same issues we have to deal with today. He wants his readers to know of God's plan of rescuing, redeeming and restoring creation back into His image. A plan that was put in place because of humanity's sin. A plan to combat the reality that when humanity sinned an evil was let loose not only in the hearts and minds of humans but upon the whole of creation as well.
This is why we see in this passage that the Apostle Paul takes so much time to speak about the "present age" and "ruler of the power of the air" and "the spirit" that works among people whose lives consist of disobeying the LORD. Paul wants us to be aware that something cosmic happened in the Garden that affected both Jew and Gentile and all of creation.
I believe what Paul is trying to do is to help us get a truer picture of ourselves. It's like a spiritual CT Scan or a spiritual MRI. We know that something is wrong but we don't always understand what is wrong. So, our doctor has us go in for a CT scan or an MRI which will enable them to see deeper into our minds and our bodies. Hopefully as a result they will be able to help us or at least tell us what is going on that is causing us difficulties.
Paul wants us to understand that it is not some genetic default or accident of nature that has caused mankind to become broken. Paul wants us to understand it is not something that can be taken care through mere education or moralistic teaching. Paul wants us to understand that it is not something that can be taken care of by possessing more money or things or having more beauty or power.
When mankind sinned a power/a spirit was unloosed and if we listen to that power and that spirit it will us to experience chaos, destruction and death. We see that not only being spelled out in Genesis chapters 2-3 but also in chapters 6 - 11. This power of the air and its ruler of course is Satan and everything and everyone that opposes the LORD. That power led Adam's children not only to sin and be enslaved by sin but to be enslaved so much that every action and every thought on earth was saturated by sin. That power led to the God's judgment of the Great Flood.
And even after the Flood when man was given a reboot the problem of sin remained. In only a few generations mankind was once again mired in worldwide sin. However, this time the LORD came down and confused the languages along with shortening human's life span. All of this was done to impede the onslaught of chaos, destruction and sin.
This morning, we are to understand that Sin, the power of Sin and the powers of Satan, evil and the demonic were let loose because of our rebellion and our turning away from the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. We gave sin its power and we allowed Satan to have rule over what was to be our dominion. We were created to reflect God's image bearers on His good earth. It was to be our joy and privilege to fill His good earth with acts of holiness and righteousness. It was to be our joy and privilege to fill His good earth with works that would bring glory and honor to Him.
Instead, much like Esau who sold his birthright and his blessings for meager bowl of bean soup, we traded our genuine humanness, our ability to reflect God's Holy Image for lowly physical desires. We believed the lie of the Satan who said that we could be like God if we would allow our flesh to dominate our spirit. We believe that it was more important to give into our fleshly desires than to allow our spirit to be in control. We arrogantly believed that we had the power in and of ourselves to create a world in our own physical image. And by doing so we turn away from the Giver of Life and embrace the exact opposite - sin, chaos, destruction and eventually death both physically and spiritually.
That is the condition of this present age. It's a mess. It's a mess we can't fix on our own. It's a mess that we cannot educate ourselves out of, we cannot buy our way out of it nor can we browbeat our way out of it. It's a mess that has affected all of creation. It's a mess that has darken our hearts and our minds. It's a mess that affected the way we display ourselves physically. Increasingly, we as a society no longer understanding that we were made male and female in the image of God. Sin has so tainted us that all around us people are doing whatever and whenever all that they think is right in their own eyes. We are ever so much closer to being like the people were in the days of Noah when wickedness was great all over our earth.
Paul is wanting us to get a clear idea of the truth concerning mankind in general and mankind's spiritual state without God. Paul's world was no stranger to sin. From the ruins of houses in Pompey we know that a majority of middle class and upper class homeowners had wall art that at best could be considered hard core pornography. It was not uncommon for children and for the advanced aged to be left out on the street to die from the elements. Divorce was rampant, homes were broken and living together with multiple partners was seen as merely part of the New Age under César Augustus. Stealing and lying we are a part of normal life.
II. But Paul does not want us to live in a pool of despair. Instead, immediately after giving us a clear picture of where mankind is without God, Paul wants us to rejoice in God's Amazing and Wonderful Grace. Paul wants to remind us of the CROSS WALK OF JESUS THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!
Just as in my trip I was beginning to think that I was never going to enjoy the beauty and splendor of the Redwoods so too before Jesus mankind was looking as if it too were never going to live what we now today could call an Abundant Life. It looked like all was lost for humanity. Even the Jews who had been chosen by the LORD to be His change agents had themselves so bungled up the will of God that they too suffered from the same sinful conditions as the Gentiles. Each group was hopelessly enslaved in sin.
But God came down in Jesus. God came down in Jesus to rescue us, redeem us and restore us to be His Image Bearers of Holiness and Righteousness. God came down and in Jesus we who were once dead in our sins have now been made alive in grace. We today can be and are saved by pure grace - PURE LOVING AGAGE GRACE. We are saved because Jesus so loved us that He came and died on a cross forever defeating the powers of Hell, death and the grave.
What God in Jesus Christ did on the cross was the final act of love that we see Him doing through His Incarnation, His Baptism, His Wilderness Trials, His Preaching, His Miracles of Healing and His Prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane. God in Jesus came as Israel's Messiah, as the Son of Man who became mankind's representative, who took upon Himself all suffering and sin and in fact became sin on the cross and by his death and resurrection defeated the power of Satan, sin, evil and death.
The Apostle then says this amazing thing in verse 6 - "He raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places, in King Jesus." (KNT).
It is Paul's understanding that what happened in and through Jesus can happen in all of us who believe in Jesus as Messiah, Savior and King. Jesus has been raised and so too have we who believe. Jesus has been installed in all of His glory and so too have we be raised in His glory.
All of this has happened through God's amazing, unbelievable and magnificent agape love called GRACE. Our God, the Only True God is rich in mercy. The Bible tells us that God's grace is beyond measure.
God hates sin. He hates what it does and has done to man and to His good creation. God hates that sin damages and destroys His image bearers. God hates sin which misuses and abuses His good creation.
So, God came in Jesus and died for us thus enabling us to be the recipients of His amazing mercy, grace and love. Our God - the True God is neither stingy nor does He expect us to somehow work of our salvation. God does not expect us to earn our salvation because it is beyond our capability. We were enslaved and dead in our sins. There was nothing we could do to reconcile or repair the damage we had done to ourselves by turning away from God. Without God's prevenient and providential grace we were without hope.
But praise be to God, He has in Jesus rescued us. Instead, our LORD in Jesus took on our image and died the death that was meant for each and everyone of us. The Satan (THE ACCUSER) thought by getting man to rebel that he could forever destroy God's good creation. The Devil thought he had been able to mess up all the works beyond repair or redemption. But God who loved us so much that He took on our likeness and died in our stead. God in Christ Jesus took upon Himself the totality of all creation's sin.
And in the resurrection our LORD and Savior King Jesus began the New Age of Salvation through the outpouring and infilling of His Holy Spirit. Now, for the first time all of mankind could be rescued, redeemed and restored. What had happened in the Garden - the unleashing of a power that led man to sin was once and forever defeated. King Jesus defeated the Satan, the Accuser, the Father of all lies and his dominion. Our King Jesus defeated Satan and all evil that day on the Cross of Calvary.
When Jesus left the tomb that morning all of creation was transformed. Today, what is true of Jesus can be true of us. Just as Jesus was raised from the dead we too can be raised from the Dead. We can experience in the here and now New Birth. The penalty and the power of sin can be broken in our lives. We do not have to succumb to sin and its temptation. We do not have to be forever enslaved to sin or to our fleshy desires.
We need to remember the words of songs like "YIELD NOT TO TEMPTATION" which remind us we need to do is to do as the chorus says:
"Ask the Savior to help you, comfort, strengthen, and keep you.
He is willing to aid you; He will carry you through"
III. Paul tells us that in Christ we have been given a new road to travel - we have been given a New Life to Live.
I remember back to that trip through those Redwoods. Many of the paths were barely large enough for our small rental car. Many of them required that we get out and walk the foot paths which lead us deeper and deeper into the heart of the Redwood forest. But with each step we entered into a whole new world. A world of majesty, beauty and wonder. A world away from the noise of the "present age" and a world where we could feel, we can taste, we could hear, we could see and we could touch God's Power and Presence. It was a sacred world where heaven and earth touched.
As wonderful as that Redwood Forest was it pales in comparison to the wonder and splendor of living a life of New Birth. This morning, we do not have to bow down to the powers of this age. We no longer have to allow sin nor our own flesh control us, our families or our communities.
We see this being played out over and over again in the lives of those we read about in the book of Acts. When the powers of this age demanded that some people have more than others what did the Early Church do? It took its resources and shared with those in need. It did not look for the government through its tax system and charity programs to meet the needs of the poor and needy. Rome had already proven that no matter how much money it extracted from its citizens it would never solve the needs of the poor, the uneducated, the sick and the needy.
Instead, through the power of the Holy Spirit the Early Church knew that it had been given the power to rescue, redeem and restore mankind. All it had to do was to radically die out to Jesus and then the Life that the Holy Spirit made possible. And what a life it was.
In Christ we see that the poor matter. In Christ we know that people everywhere need and deserve education. In Christ we know that healing medicine needs to be given to the sick regardless of financial standing. In Christ we know that all mankind should be equal regardless of power, position, gender or age. In Christ we know that all people should be treated with dignity and honor. In Christ we know that every person is of value - every person bears the image of the Lord God Almighty.
It has been estimated that there is more than 1.8 Quintillion dollars of value on this planet. Some say more while others say less. The Rothschild Family is estimated to be worth somewhere between 500 - 900 trillion dollars alone. What does all of this mean? It means that if you took all that wealth ( 1.8 Quintillion dollars) and divided it among the people God has placed on our planet then each person would be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $ 250,000 each.
But pastor, you are crazy if you think that somehow people would share their wealth.
No, more crazy than Jesus - God in Flesh did!
Did you know that Harvard University was named after its first benefactor - John Harvard? Did you also know he was a young minister? A young minister was instrumental in starting Harvard!
Did you know that Yale University was started by the clergy who were living at the time in Saybrook Colony?
Did you also know that the Methodist Church was responsible for the building of many of the hospitals that we have in the United States in small towns and communities?
Did you know around 1905 there were some fantastic reports of what the Church was doing all around the United States:
Kenneth Scott Latourette a famous professor at Yale reported that 25% of the student body was actively enrolled in Bible classes and attended regular prayer meetings.
The ministers living in Atlantic City, New Jersey reported that over 90% of their city was attending worship and believed in Jesus Christ as Savior and LORD.
250 stores in Portland, Oregon agreed to curtail their business or close each day from 11 to 2 to allow their people to attend prayer meetings.
Ah, but you say - that was back then. We all know that originally America was founded on Christian principles and back then nearly everyone was a Christian. It was easy back then. The same can't be said today.
However, listen to the spiritual report given around the time of the end of the American Revolution just around 110 years earlier. A time when today many believe that America was a spiritual giant:
+The new America had less than five million citizens and yet over 300,000 of them were confirmed to be chronic alcoholics. Public drunkenness was at an epidemic high and the abuse of alcohol was the major cause in over 15,000 deaths per year.
+ Most women were afraid to walk the streets at night for fear of being attacked and molested.
+Profanity was common place both in everyday language and in prose and poetry.
+The Methodist Church was losing more members than it was gaining while the Baptist were reporting that they had entered into a spiritual winter phase. The Lutheran Church had fallen to such low numbers that there were ongoing talks that they would have to unite with the Episcopal Church. Bishop Samuel Provost of the Protestant Episcopal Church had not confirmed anyone for so long that he decided that he was out of work and took up another job.
+The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall in a correspondence with his friend the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison stated that the Church 'was too far gone ever to be redeemed.' Voltaire affirmed that thought and Tom Paine echoed, 'Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.
+Christians were so few on the young nation's college campuses in the 1790's that they met in secret. The Bible had been dragged out of different libraries and burned in public to the delight of the community.
That was America in the late 1700's. By 1905 our country had transformed for the good.
We need to understand this morning that in Christ and through the power of His Holy Spirit our world can be transformed. Yes, we must realize alongside the Apostle Paul that
+Sin leads to destruction and death - without God we are dead spiritual and physically.
+ But we also must realize that at the Cross Roads of Life on Calvary's mountain, God in Jesus made a way. God in Christ made a way for all mankind to be rescued, redeemed and restored.
+In Christ and through the indwelling power of His Holy Spirit our lives and the lives of others around us can be transformed.
Today, we look a great deal like our ancestors from the 1780's and 1790's. We have the same issues of sin that they experienced. Currently our nation is enslaved in both the sins of profanity and pornography. Our nation is enslaved in a myriad of addictions, broken homes and broken lives. But like them we too can experience a similar revival that transformed our nation first in 1792 - 1800 and then again in 1858 - 1860 and once again in 1904 - 1905.
You say, that is all well and good. But we can't change the world. We can't make the Roshchild's or anyone else share their wealth. We can't stop all the swearing, all the brokenness and all the sin.
You are right. You are 100% right. But all of us can light a fire. All of us can be a fire filled with the infilling presence of God's Holy Spirit. We can be God's salt and light in our world, in our work places, in our schools and in our homes. We can live out the life that God died for us to live - the life of a genuine human being living in God's grace, mercy and love and being transformed into His likeness. We can be the Image Bearers that God created us to be producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit all around us. By doing that we will be witnesses of the power of the Resurrection and the power of what a life transformed by Jesus can be lived out in the 21st Century.
Our world will not be transformed by some great outpouring of God's Spirit alone. Just as God chose to work in Adam and Eve, in Abraham, Moses, Ruth, David and Daniel he chooses to work through us. Just as God poured out His Spirit in His disciples who went out and gave their all to rescue, redeem and restore their world so too have we been given that call and that mission.
I think we would all like to see Jesus come riding a white horse through the sky and supernaturally changing everything as he goes. However, until the time of His Second Coming the LORD has chosen His Church - His Body to be His Change Agents and His Ambassadors. The Lord has chosen His disciples to go out and build the Kingdom of God through the power and presence of His Holy Spirit.
The question we must ask this morning is - Are we a part of God's Transforming People? Are we a part of His Prayer Team? Are we a part of His Change Agents? Are we a Part of God's Dream Team doing all we can to rescue, redeem and restore?
Or have we listened to the lies of the Devil who tells us that it is too late? That God has abandoned our earth? That things have to get worse and worse? That the best we can do is to hunker down and wait on the Second Coming?
It is time that we understand that the Devil is a liar and will always be a liar. He lies about the fate of the Church. He lies about Revival. He lies and lies and lies.
The Truth is King Jesus is on the Throne and He has all power and authority both in Heaven and here on Earth. The truth is the Holy Spirit is active and alive on earth - seeking those who want to be saved and infilled with His Holy Spirit. The truth is today is the Day of Salvation and the Day of Victory. The truth is we need to quit whining and start winning souls to the Kingdom of Heaven. The truth is we need to quick complaining about things being broken and be the people of healing and restoration.
In order to do that we need to:
+Renew our salvation and our walk with Christ. We need to realize that we have been raised with Jesus and we need to seek the things which are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
+We need to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to the LORD JESUS CHRIST. We need to not conform to the world but allow the Holy Spirit to renew our minds.
+We need to not be weary in doing good for in due season we will reap a great reward for Jesus.
This morning as we close - Do you know Jesus Christ as Savior and King? Have you allowed Jesus to forgive you of your sins and have your allowed His Holy Spirit to infill you with power from above?
This morning are you on fire for the LORD or in hiding? Are you being an active change agent doing what you can to rescue, redeem and restore our world for King Jesus or are you merely waiting in the wings for the Second Coming?
As we close this morning our altars are open for any who would just like to come and pray.
Closing song and invitation
1 For an interesting article to read and contemplate - https://relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/26172-why-doesnt-anybody-talk-about-sin-anymore
