Sermon Central
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Wrath And Grace
Contributed by David Mcallan on Nov 28, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: Paul describes the spiritual blessings Christians have in Christ. He prays that Christians would realize the lofty position to which they have been called. He describes the absolute reign of Christ & His triumph over the would-be powers of the age.
- This doesn’t mean that men & women cannot do good, but it does mean that we had no ability or inclination to believe
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- Here is the human dilemma - an inability to get right with God
- This is the norm for today
- People think that by throwing a few dollars to charity, they can “please God”
- People think that by doing some amount of “good”, they can bargain their way to eternal life
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- The apostle is telling us that this is utterly impossible
- Stay with me though, because whilst unbelievers are dead, God has done something to make them alive if... & I will tell you what that “if is” later
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- But firstly, lets see how this deadness has come about
2. We were Led Astray (v.2)
A little clock in a jeweler’s window in a certain Western town stopped one day for half an hour at twenty minutes after eight. School children, noticing the time, stopped to play; people hurrying to the train looked at the clock, and began to walk more slowly; professional men, after looking at the clock, stopped to chat longer in the sunshine; and all were late because one small clock stopped. Never had these people known how much they had depended upon that clock until it had led them astray.
Q. Have you ever been led astray? It’s painful isn’t it!
Eph 2:1-2 .. 1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
- People walk or live according to the course of this world
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- The course of this world is a “dog eat dog - win at all costs mentality”
- It is a world that calls good, evil & evil, good
- It is all the perverted ideas propagated by the television & glossy covered magazines
- It is the cultural bondage of materialism, worldliness, the denial of absolutes
- It is secularism, self, pride, ego & all that goes with it
- It is an antagonism to God & a desire to explain the world apart from Him
Julian Huxley wrote, “Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat”. He also wrote, “For my own part, the sense of spiritual relief that comes from rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous” (Religion Without Revelation [Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979]).
- You can’t tell me that the likes of evolutionary theory is not driven predominantly, by an anti-god agenda
- It tries to explain the world apart from a personal Creator
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- Paul says that men & women have been led astray by the prince of the power of the air
- Behind it all, he says, is Satan & his demonic spirits who influence the world of men & women
- He works to falsify all that God is & what He has done
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- In Rev. 20 we are told that he leads nations astray
- In 2 Cor. 4, Paul says that he blinds the eyes of the unbelieving to the truth about what God has achieved in Jesus Christ
- Men & women are led astray & what is so sad is that they do not even know it
