The love of a God who would seek us even as we are. Eph 2:1-10
So often, it seems, we go to a museum and see the vast works of an artist.
The oil on canvas, bronze, marble, clay, and stone. The pen and the pastel, all of these mediums have one thing in common; the human artist (in most cases), attempts to find the very finest material, the highest quality of workmanship with which to work. The artist seeks to find a flawless piece of material striving for a perfect work.
God contrarily, visits the graveyard, dragging up the dead and rotting corpses of humanity. He goes to the prison door and beckons those held in bondage to sin. He invites the hurting and hungry to come and to eat, and to drink, without price (Isa65).
He seeks to invite, inspire, and exalt us with his love.
The freedom we find in Christ Jesus and the power that we receive through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit keeps us mindful of:
1. Our disappointing past.
A. Unsaved, and since we were unsaved we were dead spiritually.
- Lost without direction or purpose.
- Lost without a guide or a directive.
- Lost in that, we are either unwilling or unable to take a step forward or take a step backward.
We were quietly existing literally shackled in our sins, and smothreed by our misery. We were there bodily, but we were dead, we were dead to love, life, hapiness, and all that has any lasting value.
Notice the similar characteristics:
- A dead person cannot do anything that a living soul is capable of.
- A corpse cannot hear the conversation going on, the mourners weeping, nor the music selected by friends and relatives.
- The unsaved spiritually dead man is like a corpse in that there is nothing he can do for himself. No food, no water no movement, he is shackled and chained on a southbound train racing toward eternal hell!
- Eph 2:1 “ Dead in sin”
- Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death.”
- James 2:26”For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead”
- Isa 59:1-4 Reminds us that- the problem occurs when we surrender to the idea that our disssapontments some how will doom us for eternity.
2. the portal by which we escape wrath vs 4-6
It begins and ends in the strength and brevity of our prayer life.
B. There is a poem by an unknown writer that says,
“There is a place where thou canst touch the eyes of blinded men to instant perfect sight;
There is a place where thou canst say, arise! To dying captives bound in endless night.
There is a place where thou canst reach the store of hoarded gold and free it for the Lord.
There is a place upon some distant shore, where thou can send the worker and the word;
There is a place where heavens resistant power
Responsive moves to thine instant plea; there is a place – a silent trusting hour- where God himself descends and fights for thee.
Where is that secret place? Does thou ask where?
O’ soul, it is the secret place of prayer.
- Prayer is our telling God that we have all of our confidence in him and none in our own native power. It is building our portfolio in heaven investing all that we have in a accumulating wealth with God.
- Jesus illustrates this in the parable of the pearl of great price and the treasure in the field.(Matt 13:44-46)
C. WE COME TO GOD THROUGH THE PORTAL OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST JESUS.
Grace= Gods, riches, at, Christ’s, Expense
1. The at makes the difference because: It was in that smallest word that a Holy and triune God summarily slaughtered his son, delivering the death blow to a innocent lamb and sprinkled his blood upon the Holy altar for infinity.
2. Hebrews 9:11-14
3. Why? Because his children needed a means by which the could come into His presence, into his Holiness. We were in a desperate need for forgiveness, we asked, and God sought the way to provide for us.
We have a loving God who beacons us home, to fellowship and a loving and nurtering relationship with Him. Will you trust Him today?
