Ephesians 2:1–10

0:00 I think one of the most interesting things that's happened in the sports world, for those of us who are fans of sports over the last few years, is the rise of prediction models. Like live prediction models for who's going to win a particular game, given where the game stands at a particular moment. You've probably seen these things. It's not the same thing that sort of Vegas does, right, with its odds of winning. Because what they do is look at the past and they have a model and they say, this entire game is likely to be won by this team.

0:31 And there's a such and such percentage that, you know, we expect this particular team to win by. That's not what these prediction models do. What they do is in real time, they look at the situation on the field and they say, given the way things stand right now, we think that there is a 78% chance, for example, that the University of Louisville is going to beat Virginia, right? And as time clicks down and the lead grows or shrinks or whatever, the prediction model will change. I think it's super interesting to watch those when you're looking at a game.

1:02 Not so much because they're good at what they're trying to do, but because they are so hilariously bad at it. At the end of a game especially. You ever notice that? There are so many times in the course of a game, basketball, football, wherever it is, where the prediction models with great confidence and even great cockiness will say our prediction in the graph right there's a graph of this one going up and this one going down they'll say our prediction at this moment in the game with 30 seconds left is that such and such is going to win with 99.9 percent confidence and then bam there's a pick six or there's a foul or there's an unexpected home run or whatever it is, and the lines go like this. It's like 99% hop, right? And it reverses, and it goes from 99% for one team to 100% for the other team, and it happens way more

2:03 often than you expect. Now, why, other than the fact that I'm just kind of a nerd like that, is that so exciting to me? Because I like seeing the great reversals. I like seeing what happens. I like seeing people's reactions on Twitter or X or whatever you call it now. I like it when everyone is expecting one thing to happen and then wham, everything changes in an instant. And the loser turns into the winner and the winner into the loser. That's what we're talking about today as we look at the next section of the book of Ephesians. A great reversal, not just that it has happened to a sports team, but that has happened to you and me as Christians. So Ephesians, let me invite you to turn there if you've got a Bible. If you want to use one of these red pew Bibles you can find sort of scattered throughout the room. You can find the book of Ephesians and in fact our entire text on page 976. So the page number is not actually there. You'll just see a big the letter of Paul to the Ephesians at the top. Then down inside that page you'll see a big number one, a big number two.

3:06 Those are chapters. So we divide the Bible up into a whole bunch of chapters. And then within those chapters, you'll see little numbers that are not footnotes. They're called verses. So we've divided those up as Christians, mainly so we can do this kind of thing right here. We can look at the Bible, talk to one another, and be able to kind of see what we're talking about. So if, you know, if you're new to being at church, if you're new to the Bible, that's great. We're glad that you're here. You need to know that we're going to spend almost all of our time this morning inside chapter two. And when I say something like, so look at verse seven, or look at verse three, or look back up at verse one, you'll know that you should find that little number within chapter two, unless I specify otherwise. And if you'll do that, it'll make a whole lot more sense of what I'm talking about this morning. Honestly, if you're not looking down at the Bible and seeing the words that I'm actually looking at and talking about, you're probably going to be lost this morning. But just because I'm talking about a particular thing and you're not going to be looking at it, right? But if you'll pull out a Bible, open it to Ephesians chapter two, kind of do go where I tell you to go,

4:08 look where I tell you to look, I promise you this whole thing will make a lot more sense. By way of background, Ephesians is one of the 13 letters written by the Apostle Paul to various churches throughout his career. We have 13 of them. We know that there were at least 14 that he wrote. In all likelihood, there were more than 14 that he wrote, but we know about 14. We have 13. This one, the letter to the Ephesians, probably unlike most of the others, was not probably written to any one church in particular. It was probably meant to circulate among several churches that had been founded in the Roman province that was called Asia Minor.

4:46 So if you have a world map in your head, it's going to be western Turkey. And there were several different churches that had been founded in what is now western Turkey. And probably Paul wrote this letter to be delivered by ocean to Ephesus, the big port city in that area. And then the letter was supposed to be copied and moved to or sent on to other churches within that area. The most prominent of those cities, of course, was because it was the port city. It was Ephesus. And so that's the city and church that gives this letter its name. Probably Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome in about A.D. 62.

5:21 So you're talking about 30 years or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus. That's when the book was written. Paul had been working all his life since his conversion to plant churches throughout the Roman Empire. He finally found himself in prison in about A.D. 61, 62, something like that. And then he sent out a flurry of letters from prison, Ephesians being one of those letters. It seems like the main thing Paul is wanting to do in this letter for all these churches in Asia Minor is solidify them in their identity as Christians.

5:57 He wants them to understand themselves to be Christians and then to live their lives in the light of that identity. Now that was a challenge because the Ephesians had all kinds of identities that they would have had pressing on them for attention, right? So they were Roman citizens for one thing, which was a big deal. To be a Roman was a huge deal in the world at the time. And so that identity would have been competing with their Christian identity for primacy in their lives, right? Paul wants to say, look, fine, you're a Roman citizen, but above that, you are a Christian, a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

6:30 They also, at least in Ephesus, would have thought of themselves as Ephesians. Ephesus was an incredibly rich city. It was a port city. In fact, it had the biggest pagan temple in all the Roman Empire, the great temple of Artemis. So if you look back in Acts, when it tells the story of Paul actually going to Ephesus, one of the things when Paul gets the city all incited against him and angry at him what they shout because this is their identity is great is Artemis the goddess of Ephesians great is Artemis of the Ephesians so they would have thought of themselves as Ephesians and Paul wants to say that okay that's fine you can be an Ephesian but you're also a Christian and even more so you're citizen of the kingdom of heaven. So what he wants to do through the course of this book is lay out for these people, all of them, the Ephesians and everybody else, this is what God has made you as a Christian. This is what God has done for you. And now this is what you're supposed to do

7:33 in light of that. Well, today we're going to be looking at half of chapter 2 of this book. So we're going to be looking at verses 1 to 10 of chapter 2. You can see it kind of broken up there Bible. And in that section, Paul starts to deal with some of these questions of identity. But he does so with this huge goal of establishing in the Ephesians' minds that, yeah, okay, I'm a Roman, and I'm an Ephesian, and I'm lots of other things. Maybe I'm a patrician, or maybe I'm a, you know, maybe I'm a servant of a great household in Ephesus. But above all those things, I am a Christian.

8:08 And so Paul wants them to know that despite all those other identities that are pressing on them, he wants to tell them who they are in Jesus Christ now this passage if you look at it chapter 2 it really continues without a hitch from the end of chapter 1 if you if you look up there chapter 1 say verses 20 to 23 it ended with this soaring description of Jesus being raised from the dead and enthroned in heaven above all the powers and authorities and demons and angels and all the rest of it. And then chapter 2 just begins with, and you, right? And so there's no big break between the idea of chapter 1, of Jesus being enthroned in heaven, and chapter 2, and he just moves on into, and you. And he finally gets to the point, really not until verse 4, where he says, and you, God has made alive with Christ and seated you in the heavenlies. So that's the logic.

9:00 Christ has been raised and enthroned, and you have been raised and enthroned with him. That's how the logic works. Okay, let's read it. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1. He says, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing it's the gift of God not a result of works so that no

10:00 one may boast for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them all right so Paul's aim in this book is to get these these Gentile believers they're all Gentiles right the people in Ephesus the people in Asia they're all they're all Gentiles there would have been very few Jews and so he's talking to Gentiles here and he wants to make them think of themselves above all as Christians and not as sort of second-class citizens next to the Jews. He wants to say, you are fully, you Gentiles are fully folded into the family of God, so you should think of yourselves as Christians. So chapter 2 is really all about bringing these Gentile readers fully into the kingdom in their own minds. Like he doesn't want them on the periphery of the kingdom sort of saying, yeah, I'm sort of second-class, but those Jews, Those are the ones who are really at the center of the kingdom.

10:56 No, Paul's saying, come on in. I'm going to show you why you're fully a part of this kingdom. He does that in chapter 2 in two steps. The first step, which we're looking at today, just deals with these Gentile readers as human beings. He just looks them in the eye in verses 1 to 10 and tells them how God has saved them from their sin and rebellion against him. You're a human being. You've rebelled against God. You're sunk in your sin, all the rest of it. and God has saved you. That's the first thing he wants to deal with them about is you're human and you need to be saved. Second, step two in the second half of this chapter, he deals with them more particularly as human beings who are Gentiles. So not just human beings, but you're Gentile, so you have this particular problem that the Jews don't have, and that is that you're excluded from all the covenants that God made with the Jews. Like you guys are outside of that, And so we've got to deal with that, and we've got to bring you in on that also.

11:55 And so that's what he does in the second half of chapter 2. We'll talk about that next time. Today, we're looking at the first 10 verses, and the main idea is this. If you are a Christian, if you are a Christian, then God has stunningly saved you from an utterly hopeless situation. And he's put you in a place of unspeakable blessing. If you are a Christian, that's an important phrase. If you are a Christian, then God has stunningly saved you from an utterly hopeless situation. He's put you in a place of unspeakable blessing.

12:29 I want to unfold this text through three points. Number one, who we were without Jesus. Number two, what God did for us. And number three, who we now are as the people of the King. who we were without Jesus. That's number one. Number two, what God did for us. And number three, who we now are as the people of the King. All right, so let's get started. Number one, who we were without Jesus. We're going to be talking here in this point, particularly about verses one through three. Let me tell you a little bit about the structure of this passage, because it's important. The passages made, these first 10 verses are made up of two sentences. You got the first sentence that runs from verses one to seven. That's all one sentence. There's only, there's, you know, there's a main subject and a main verb of it and everything else is just sort of dependent clauses sort of hanging on to that but it's one big sentence from one to seven then you have a shorter sentence from eight to ten verses one to three do not contain the main verb of the sentence believe

13:33 it or not paul drone drones goes whatever on and on and on for three verses without getting to a subject and a verb he only gets to the subject and the verb in verse four everything else in verses 1 to 3 that we're about to look at, it's just set up, right? Now, your English Bibles don't do it like that. Your English Bibles put a subject and a verb right up front. You see that in verse 1? You were. You were. That's a subject and a verb. It's a hard subject, a hard verb, right? That's what your English Bibles do. But the only reason your English Bibles do that is because in our way of speaking and hearing language in English, we don't like to wait a long time before the subject and the verb get there. I mean, if you walked up to somebody and said, you being this and this and this and this, and being this way and this way and this way because of this, this, this, and this, by the time you get to the main subject and verb, your listener is like going, what are you talking about? Right? And we talk to young preachers here at Third Avenue when we're trying to train them,

14:38 And we tell them sometimes, your sentences are too pretty. You have too many dependent clauses on them. You have too many things stuck to them. You've got to get to a subject and a verb really fast. Because that's how we English hearers like to hear things. But not the Greek mind. That's not what's going on. We don't like to wait a long time. The Greeks were fine with it. The way Paul has actually written this whole thing here, it sounds more like what I did just a second ago. It sounds more like this. And you, being dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and being by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

15:21 Okay, you see that's doing a couple of things, right? I mean, for one thing, because he's not getting to the subject and the verb, the tension is rising, right? It's just, this is true, and this is true, and this is true, and this is true, and you're leaning in and trying to hear what he's saying. The tension is rising, but also your attention is locking in. You're listening to him as he says what he's saying because you're waiting to see what comes on the heels of it. It just creates this tremendous rising tension that finally gets resolved in verse 4.

15:57 All this being true, and this being true, and that being true, and that being true, yet God, and all attention releases. We'll talk about that more later. Another thing I want you to see about the sort of big structure of this is that it just comes directly out of what Paul's been talking about in chapter 1, verses 20 to 23. You see that? There's just no big break here at the beginning of section 2. It flows right out of chapter 1. Christ has been raised and enthroned, and you, even though you didn't deserve it, even though you were dead and destroyed and condemned in your sin, you too, because of Christ, have been raised and enthroned.

16:35 God has done the very same thing for you that he did for Jesus. So that's how these three verses fit in the larger flow of the text. But what does it say in the midst of that sort of rising tension? If your attention is locking in, what does Paul want you to see? Well, the main point of verses 1 to 3 is to paint a picture of what we were before God acted to save us. If you're not a Christian here this morning, then it's a picture of what you are. Sitting right there in your chair.

17:07 It's a picture of what you are if you're not a Christian. And there's really nothing to say about it except that the picture Paul paints here is bleak in the extreme. And some people have said that the picture Paul paints here of human nature and the human condition is the most pessimistic understanding of human nature that has ever been written. And what Paul does here is describe our condition apart from Jesus before God acted to save us in three ways.

17:42 Three things that are true about us as human beings. Gentile, Jude, doesn't matter. Three things that are, if you're a human being, this is true of you. We are dead, we are enslaved, and we are condemned. We are dead, we are enslaved, and we are condemned. All right, let's look at it. First thing he says there in verse 1 is that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. Now that's directed first and foremost at these Gentile readers.

18:14 So that's the you there. You Gentiles were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. But if you look down at verse 5, he ends up saying the very same thing about we, referring to the Jews. He himself is a Jew, right? So we are dead in our trespasses. So what Paul means to say here is not just that the Gentiles are dead in their trespasses, not just, you know, one particularly bad group of people, not just one nation or one tribe is particularly bad and the rest of us are okay. It's not just the Nazis or whatever bad group you can come up with in your own mind.

18:48 It's all of us, all of humanity apart from Christ, apart from the life-giving Spirit of God are spiritually dead. Okay, now what does that mean? Well, I mean, to begin with, that was the promise of the curse in Eden. In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And that's what happened. It didn't happen to Adam and Eve physically immediately. But when Adam and Eve fell into rebellion against God and pulled all the rest of us with them, and when you and I ratify that decision of rebellion against God every single day of our lives, you know what happens?

19:25 By declaring independence from our creator, we declare independence from the source of our very life. Did you ever think about that? The sentence of death in Eden was not arbitrary. It wasn't just something that God pulled out of a hat. And it's not as if God could have said, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely be turned into a toad. No, death is the fitting punishment for declaring independence from the source of your life. What happens when a light bulb declares independence from its plug? It goes out. And when you declare independence from the source of your very life, guess what happens?

20:00 You spiritually die. And Paul says that's true of all of us. Now, that can be a hard thing to get our heads around. I mean, you take that little nugget of teaching from Paul into your day, and you start applying that to various people that you see throughout your day. My neighbor over there is not a Christian. He's spiritually dead. That person is spiritually dead. My boss is spiritually dead. That bright, shiny person over there who has many, many millions of dollars, spiritually dead. It's hard to do.

20:32 Because you look at a whole lot of people around you and they don't look dead. They look like shiny, happy people and they seem very much alive. But Paul's point here is not that we're always aware of our deadness. It's just that it's an objective fact. Friends, nothing that is dead is aware of its deadness. If it becomes aware of its deadness, it has come to life. The point is not that we're aware of it.

21:04 It's that it's an objective fact. We are cut off from God because of our rebellion against him. Isaiah says it like this. Your sins have made a separation between you and your God. Which means, of course, that our deadness is not something that we can fix for ourselves either. If something is dead, it can't fix the problem for itself. Lazarus in his tomb couldn't fix the problem for himself. And you can't fix the deadness problem for yourself either. No, if there's going to be any more to your story, if there's going to be any more life to you, that's got to come from outside of you.

21:39 Something or someone has to act on you to bring you to life. You can't do it yourself because you're dead. That's Paul's point. Second, Paul says there in verses 2 and 3 that we're not only dead, but we are enslaved. See that? You're dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, spirit that's now at work, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desert, and all the rest of it.

22:11 He says you're not just dead, you're enslaved. Now, that may seem like a kind of mixing of metaphors, right? How can you be both dead and enslaved? I thought you just said we were dead and we couldn't do anything. Well, it is a mixing of metaphors, which is not against the rules, right? We're talking about literature, so you can take multiple metaphors to make multiple points. But also, it starts to make a little bit of sense, doesn't it, when you kind of think about it and try to put it all together. I have no idea if Paul had any concept at all of zombies. No idea. And yet, that's kind of what Paul is describing here, right?

22:46 Someone who is dead, and decomposed, and decaying, and desiccated, and yet who is driven by the basest imaginable desires. The zombie's not aware that it's dead. The zombie's not aware that it's unalive. It's not aware that it's undead. It's not aware of its desire. All it knows is desire for human brains or flesh or whatever it is, right? It's driven by the basest of desires, even though it is dead that's the kind of picture that paul is talking about here and if you look at it you can see that he says we are as these dead decaying people enslaved by three different but reinforcing forces so for one thing he says that you see it there verse two we follow the course of this world we follow the course of this world in other words in our spiritual deadness we just do what the normal course of the world tells us to do that's what we do we don't have any real agency in it we

23:48 don't fight against it in our spiritual deadness we're just like a we're just like a dead fish going down the river we just go wherever the river takes us i went salmon fishing once in alaska the guy that i was with told me look this is not really it doesn't really count as fishing because you don't have to do anything all you do is like you throw the hook out into the river and then you jerk the hook across the water, and it snags in the mouth of a fish that just happens to be passing by, and you jerk the fish out of the water. It really requires no skill whatsoever. And if you can't do this, then you're a moron. Well, I went the entire day and never caught a single salmon.

24:24 So I was like, dude, this requires more skill than you are letting on, because this is ridiculous. But what I did notice in this whole thing, what I learned, is that salmon, what they do is they, they, they, when, when, uh, what's it called? When they want to have babies, when they want to lay eggs. Spawning. When they want to spawn, they swim, they swim up the river, against the river, right? And then they spawn, and then depending on the kind of salmon that you've, you've got, a lot of them will start making their way back toward the ocean. But what happens after they've spawned and laid their eggs is that they start decomposing and dying, even as, or decomposing and decaying, even as they are alive.

25:04 And so sometimes, when we were there near the end of the season, so they were going sort of the wrong way and there's a bunch of, is you jerk the hook across the river and you pull one out and you would pull out this fish that was sort of flopping and yet its flesh was falling off of it because it was decaying and decomposing even as it was alive. And then when they die, of course, and stop flopping in any way whatsoever, they just follow the course of the river down into the ocean until they're gone. That's kind of the picture that Paul is talking about here.

25:37 We value what the world tells us to value. We define right and wrong by how the world tells us to define right and wrong. We do, in our spiritual deadness, just whatever the world tells us to do. We sing and we dance and we play our little monkey harpsichord in exactly the way the world demands that we do so that we can gain its favor. We just go along with the course of this world. Friend, especially if you're here and you're not a Christian, really tell me, look me in the eye and tell me, really, what do you value that the world does not value?

26:22 What do you think is right that the world thinks is wrong? What do you think is wrong that the world thinks is right? Where are you swimming upstream? my guess friend is that you're not you're going along with the course of this world another thing he says there that we're enslaved by is the prince of the power of the air we follow the prince of the power of the air that's a reference to satan he's called similar things throughout the bible the spirit there the spirit that's at work in those who are disobedient maybe satan himself or maybe a kind of general influence that satan rules over that sort of affects everyone, right? The grammar can go either way. I'm happy to talk about that with you at the door. It's fairly boring, but it leaves us kind of in limbo about which way to go there. Is the spirit that's at work in the disobedience, is that Satan or is that some more general influence that Satan rules over? But the point is that you need to understand this. If you're not a Christian, then you are under the power and influence of Satan. The things you do and the things you say, the things

27:26 that motivate you, the things that make up your agenda in life are according to Satan's agenda, not God's. You may not even be sensible of that, but it's true. What I can tell you is that a whole lot of people who become Christians, especially if they had to live a whole lot of their life prior to becoming a Christian, when they become a Christian, they look back and they say, yes, that's exactly right. I was living according to the course of the world. I was living under the influence of Satan.

27:59 And a whole lot of people look at religion. They look at Christianity and they say, I don't want that. I don't want that. I want to be free. I want to be free from religion. I want to be free from the demands of God. I want to be free from any of the demands of Scripture. I'm not going to be a slave. But you see what Paul's saying here, right? You are a slave, whether you like it or not. You're either going to be a bondservant of Christ and a member of His kingdom, or you are, in fact, A bondservant of Satan. Enslaved to evil like a zombie that's not even aware that it's dead. Another thing in verse 3 that Paul says we're enslaved to is the passions of our flesh.

28:36 The desires of the mind and the body. And this is what we mean when we talk about human beings being bent toward sin. Christian doctrine about sin and about humanity is that everything in us, our bodies, our minds, our motivations, our values, our loves, our desires, everything, all of it is bent away from God and toward further rebellion against him. And Paul says it like this in Romans. He says, the mind that's set on the flesh or captured by the flesh does not please God.

29:10 Indeed, it cannot. You're not free if you're apart from Christ. You're enslaved to the world, to the flesh, and to the devil. It's a bleak picture, isn't it? We're spiritually dead, unable to see the goodness and beauty of God, and so enslaved to the world and the flesh and the devil that if we were ever to get a glimpse of the beauty and goodness of God, we would recoil from it in horror.

29:42 That's who we are. but it gets worse. The third big thing that Paul says here is in verse 3 that we are by nature children of wrath. We are by nature children of wrath. There's a few things to talk about here. I mean, first of all, the wrath that he mentions there, even though he doesn't say it, is the wrath of God. I mean, it's pretty clear. It's the wrath of God. It's God's settled and unmoving opposition to sin and his determination to destroy it. A lot of people don't like the idea of the wrath of God because when they think about wrath, They think about a lashing out, right?

30:16 They think about a parent who's lost his temper or a boss who's just kind of gone off the handle and is just yelling at everybody. That's wrath. Not with God. Not with God. And if you find that idea of sort of explosive lashing out scary, I can tell you that the wrath of God is much, much scarier because it is a fiery-eyed opposition to your sin. It's a cold determination to destroy it.

30:51 That's what wrath is. God is implacably and immovably opposed to sin, and insofar as we are people of sin, God is opposed to us. Another thing there, To say that we're children of wrath. The image that's supposed to come to your mind there is not children, children. You're not supposed to think of a bunch of toddlers under God's wrath. This is a Hebrew idiom. It's a Hebrew way of speaking. That's really similar to that phrase up there in verse 2. Where Paul says that the spirit of Satan is at work in the sons of disobedience.

31:26 Well, what that means is that they're the children of disobedience. They're people who are marked by disobedience. Disobedience is their father, so to speak, metaphorically, right? and so they've taken on the characteristics of disobedience. Same thing here. This means that we're marked by wrath. We're destined for wrath. Right down into the middle of our souls, there is nothing but the expectation of wrath. It's a sobering thought, right? Because if you're not a Christian, then right now you're sitting in your seat wherever you are, and you are someone who is destined for wrath.

32:02 You're someone who is marked by wrath, and every expectation is wrath. And the only thing, the only thing that will change that is a sudden and absolute reversal of your situation. How does that happen? When he says by nature there, we are by nature children of wrath, he simply means that from the very moment we're conceived, We're marked as those destined for wrath.

32:34 David says it in Psalm 51. In sin, my mother conceived me. That doesn't mean that, you know, David's mother was committing fornication when she conceived him. It's not that she was sinning when she conceived. It means that he was sinful from the moment he was conceived. From the moment the sperm hit the egg and the DNA did its thing, right? He is a sinner because he's in the line of Adam. Same thing's true for you. In very nature, from the very beginning, from conception, you, me, all of us are destined for wrath and death, as if our very souls have turned to iron and were cast into the ocean. Look, friends, what you see here described and declared in these first three verses is you if you have not come to Jesus and been saved. It's you. This is who you are apart from Christ.

33:27 you are dead in your sin, you are enslaved to the world, the flesh, and the devil, and you are destined, as you roll down that river, for nothing but wrath and condemnation. I know, I know that is not a fun thing to think about, and maybe you didn't wake up this morning on a kind of pretty Sunday morning to think that you were going to come here and think about zombie fish destined for wrath. And yet, friend, the only way you're going to understand the greatness of the salvation that God offers in Christ, the only way you're going to want that and see your need for that is if you first understand the awfulness of the situation your sin has left you in. The only way you're really going to get and feel the relief of verse 4 filling your lungs is if you feel the sting of the deadly water that's filling them first who you were before christ maybe who you are without him here's number two what god did for us what god did for us so so that's the build-up

34:36 in verse three you being dead being enslaved being condemned and then this incredible release in verse 4, but God, all these things are true, and yet God did something. People have said for 2,000 years that those two little words, but God, are the two most powerful words in the entire cosmos, because they have the power to reverse everything. I mean, think about it, think about the power, just think about the power of the little word but how it has the it has the power to change everything somebody comes to your door mr so-and-so i'm sorry your son has been involved in a car accident but he's okay you sit down in your doctor's office and you say i'm sorry to tell you this mrs so-and-so you have cancer but it's imminently treatable with a 99 success rate the word but has the power to change the entire layout of reality. And when you put the word God behind it, it has the

35:40 power to give life. And the thing is, these two little words show up all over the Bible. Adam and Eve sinned, but God clothed them. The whole of humanity could think of nothing but evil all the time, but God saved Noah. Abraham was a pagan and a worshiper of false gods and demons, but God called him and changed the world through him. The sin of the nation of Israel stank to high heaven. Nevertheless, God said, I will save them.

36:13 Friends, you could say that the whole point of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is contained in those two little words. This was true, but God did something else. So what did he do? Well, let's look at what Paul says he did. He puts it in three words. He puts what God did in three words. And in fact, they're words that Paul actually coined himself. He made them up because we don't see them anywhere else in ancient literature. So if you look down at verses 5 and 6, you can see them. They're the words, made us alive together with him, raised us together with him, and seated us together with him.

36:51 So each of those words, it's just one word that Paul just made up because there were no other words in the Greek language that could quite capture what God had done, right? Now, the Greeks had words for made alive, and they had words for raised, and they had words for seated, right? That's not the problem. It's not that they didn't know about those concepts. They even had a way to say with him, right? So in multiple words, you could say, you know, raised us up, and then with another word, with him, right? Seated us with him. They had a way to say that.

37:22 But Paul didn't even want that much distance between what God had done for Jesus and what God did for you. He wanted what God did for Jesus and what God did for you to be so close together, so wrapped up with one another that you don't even get out of the word. So he made up words to talk about that. Let's look at it. So look at what's, think about those words. Made alive, raised, and seated, or enthroned. Made alive, raised, and seated. Each one of those things is a distinct thing that happened to Jesus at the end of his earthly life, right?

37:58 He was made alive from the dead, he was raised up, which is a reference to the ascension here at least, and he was seated or enthroned at the right hand of the Father. Those things happened to Jesus. But here's the kicker. When Paul writes those three words here, he's not talking about things that happened to Jesus. He's talking about things that happened to you. You were raised with him. You were made alive with him. You were seated with him.

38:29 It's just an extraordinary thing to think about. God made us alive with Christ. He made us to be seated in the heavenlies with Christ. He raised us up with Christ. You see the point? What Paul is saying there is that what happened to Jesus physically also happened to you spiritually. That's the Christian doctrine of union with Christ. And pound for pound, I think this is the most unfortunately ignored doctrine in all of Christian theology.

39:06 The fact that your salvation is one because you are united to Christ. Here's a quick definition of what it means to be united to Christ. Union with Christ is the intimate, vital, And spiritual unity between Christ and his people. In virtue of which he is the source of their life and strength. And through which they receive all the benefits of salvation. It's the vital, that means living, intimate, also kind of living. Spiritual unity between Christ and his people.

39:37 It's not like your Siamese twins physically with Jesus. It's a spiritual federal union between you and Jesus. In virtue of which, because of which, he's the source of your life. And it's because of that union that you receive all the different blessings of salvation. Now, that idea came, it gets worked out by Paul and the other apostles in several places, but it came from Jesus himself when he said that he is the vine and we are the branches, right? In other words, what happens to the vine to which the branches are connected, whatever happens to Jesus, the vine also happens to the branches that are connected to him.

40:15 So let me try to illustrate this. Why is the resurrection of Jesus vital to the gospel of Jesus Christ? Why is it vital to it? I don't mean why is it pretty. I don't mean why is it a good explanation point on the end of this sad story of crucifixion, right? That's usually how we treat it. Well, I understand the nature of Jesus dies for me, pays the penalty for my sin. I get that. So why did he have to be resurrected? If all your sins were paid for on the cross, why did he have to be resurrected?

40:47 I mean, why couldn't the penalty for your sin just be paid and Jesus stay dead? I think a lot of Christians have a lot of problems answering that question. And yet the answer is because if the vine remained dead, then the branches remain dead also. You are united to Christ. What happens to him happens to you. Only what happens to him happens to you. So if he's dead, then you are dead. Look, this is why I say that pound for pound, this is the most neglected doctrine in Christian theology.

41:20 You only get the blessings of salvation because Jesus earned them by right and you're hanging on to him. It's not as if Jesus sort of, you know, wins the blessings of salvation and then has them shipped to you by Amazon. You only get them because God pours them out on his head, and you just happen to be hanging on for dear life. There's a Puritan who said, look, it's like this. The union, a believer's union with Christ works like this. It's as if someone is pouring oil on the head of the king, and the oil runs down, and the only reason you get any of that blessing whatsoever is because you're snuggled up right next to him, and the oil drips down on you.

42:04 But it is not as if God pours that royal oil on top of Jesus, and then moves over to your throne, and pours it on your head. No, you only get it because you're sitting and embracing the king. It's true of all the blessings of salvation, all of them. Justification. You know what justification is, right? It's a declaration that you are righteous. Do you know why that declaration is declared over you? It is because that declaration by right comes down to Jesus.

42:39 You, Jesus, are righteous. and therefore all those who are united to you are righteous. Do you know why you're going to be resurrected at the last day? It's because Jesus won the blessing of resurrection and you're just a freeloader. Do you know why you're going to be glorified on the last day? It's because Jesus will be glorified and you're just a stowaway. Do you know why you were made alive with Christ?

43:10 Because he was made alive. Do you know why you were raised up to the heavenlies? Because he is raised up. Do you know why you're seated and enthroned in heaven with Christ? It's because he's enthroned. All of it is his. It's all his, which means that day by day, minute by minute, you are dependent on him for all of it. The Christian life is not just a matter of sort of saluting Jesus and saying, you know, thanks, your majesty, for what you did. I'm going to go out and do my thing now. No, if you ever let go of him, if you ever let go of him, you lose it all.

43:45 Which makes it a very good thing that he says he will never let go of you. So that's what God does. He unites us to Christ. Gives Jesus everything that belongs to him by right. And then we get it. But why? Why? Why does God allow that union to happen at all? Why does he give us all these blessings? Well, if it's true, as Paul says there again in verse 5, that we're dead in trespasses, then it's a huge question. Like what would overcome that, right?

44:15 If we're just these zombies that are being taken along by the course of this world and the power of Satan and our own base desires, why would God do this? Well, God gives Paul, God through Paul, gives four reasons for it in these verses. He does this, verse 4, because of mercy. He does this, verse 4, because of love. He does this, verse 5, because of grace. And he does this, verse 7, because of kindness. Now, all those words have their various nuances.

44:46 But surely, without me going in and defining them all for you, you can see the point, right? He did all of this for us zombies because he loved us. And because of that love, he showed us mercy and grace and kindness instead of what we deserved, which was wrath and death and condemnation. okay but why why did he love us why did why did he love us it's not not because of anything in in us paul's made that abundantly clear it's not because of anything we've done or anything that sets us apart from the rest of the corpse of humanity that that's not it it's like it's like paul set up in chapter one he chose us sheerly and solely because of his great purpose of grace and determined to pour out kindness on us.

45:30 Why? I think there are only a few places in the Bible that really sort of get to that why. One of them is Romans 9, and at the sort of end of Romans 9, Paul starts to ask this question, and he ends up just throwing up his hands and going, I don't know. You know, just who am I, the pot, to look at the potter and question him, right? That's what Paul does with it. One of the other places that does this is Deuteronomy chapter 7, where God is trying to explain his love to the people of Israel.

46:01 And he tells them, first of all, I loved you. And then he says a whole bunch of reasons that were not the reason that he loved them. So he says, I loved you, not because you were the biggest of all peoples. That wasn't why. You're pretty pathetic, actually. Not because you're the greatest of all peoples. No, it's certainly not that, because you're just this little, you know, no-name tribe. You're even kicked out of your homeland. It's not because you're so numerous. It's not because you're so great. No, I loved you. And then he says, because, and you think you're going to get the reason. I loved you not because of these things. I loved you because, and then what comes after that is just a simple, I loved you because I loved you.

46:38 That's it. And why did you love us? I loved you because I loved you because I loved you because I loved you because I loved you all the way down into eternity. I loved you because I'm God, and I loved you because I love you. Look at the last phrase of this section. Verse 7, so that all of this, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Jesus Christ. You see the end, the end, the goal, the purpose, the reason that God did all of this was so that he could put on a cosmic fireworks display of the immeasurable riches of his grace by being kind to us. You know what you are, above all, if you're a Christian? You are a trophy in God's trophy case. What he wants to do is show you off. You are one instance of God showing off his great grace to heaven and hell and all the cosmos. Look at this. Do you know

47:45 what this person was before I got there? This person was dead and enslaved and condemned. His soul was so turned in on itself and devouring itself in sin and selfishness and godless desires that it's a wonder it didn't eat itself entirely. But look what I've done. Friends, heaven's not going to be about God looking at you and going, look what he did. It is, look what I have done. That's how great my grace is. That's how far down into the filth it reaches.

48:18 That I could save even that. Friends, I hope you can feel the relief and joy that that gives to the Christian. We Christians can get so wrapped up in whether I'm good enough or whether my faith is strong enough or is my faith even the size of a mustard seed and my good enough witness, if I've done enough quiet times, my good enough example to my children.

48:51 But don't you see? Don't you see the logic Paul's laying out here of the gospel? That's the point. The point is that there's no glory in it for God. If he takes a perfect person and saves him. Yeah, you know, this one was pretty good. Spotless thought life, perfect Sunday school attendance. I just, you know, had to buff him up a little bit, but he's good. Heaven and hell and the cosmos would just shrug at that. Like, that's not grace. That's dessert.

49:22 It's deserving. No, no, no, the point, the point is that he says, look at this one. Sunken sin, hopeless, doesn't do his quiet time. Sins over and over and over again. And yet I showed him grace. Look what I did with her. There's glory in that for God. And friends, there's confidence in it for us. Do you get stuck in that kind of thing sometimes?

49:54 I don't know if my faith is enough. I get so afraid, and I wonder if that sort of cancels out my faith. I have my doubts that take strength from this. Charles Spurgeon wrote about this in one of his sermons, preached about it. He said, there is a day coming when all of Christ's sheep shall pass again under the hand of him that saved them. And in that day, not one, not one of the whole redeemed flock shall be missing.

50:26 As the long roll of God's ransomed family is called, it shall be asked, where is Miss Little Faith? Is she here? And she, on that day, will answer to her name, not at all in the trembling way in which she used to speak when she was upon the earth, but she shall answer it in full voice. I am here. And when it is asked, is Mr. Much Afraid here?

50:58 He will reply in jubilant tones, glory be to God, I am here. No matter how weak, no matter how feeble you may be, if you are a child of God, you shall certainly be there. And the inheritance shall certainly be yours. That's what God did. Here's point number three. Who we now are as the people of the king.

51:32 So in the last little section there, 8 to 10, Paul, essentially what he does is grab this trophy and he turns it back and forth. Let's it glitter and shine a little bit. Shows us what God has made us into now that he's united us to Christ. He says three things about us. He says that we are a people of grace. we are a people of faith and we are a people of goodness we're a people of grace we're a people of faith and we're a people of goodness so the first thing he does there in eight and nine is just remind us again he's been on this since the very beginning of the book but he reminds us again that this salvation that we've been given by God had nothing to do with the fact that we deserved it in any way whatsoever that's what that phrase means it is by grace that you have been saved Now, he's already said the same thing up in verse 5.

52:21 He kind of can't help himself. He just lets it fly before it's supposed to be there in the argument. But this word grace really lies, I think, at the heart of the way Paul thinks about the whole gospel. If you had one word to describe, you know, what is the nature of this good news of Jesus, Paul? He would say it's a gospel of grace. And essentially what it means is getting what you don't deserve. Getting good things that you don't deserve. You might think of it as a kind of supercharged mercy.

52:54 Mercy is not getting the bad thing that you do deserve. If your child deserves discipline and you don't give it to him, you say, we're going to give you mercy today because we're not going to give you the bad, painful thing that you do deserve. That's mercy. But grace is bigger than that. Grace is more than that. It's getting something good anyway that you've already forfeited, that you've already disqualified yourself from. And Paul says here, that's what your salvation is. It's supercharged mercy. It's grace. You didn't deserve it. In fact, you forfeited all of it by rebelling against the God of the universe.

53:27 But God, in his great mercy and kindness and goodness and grace, gave it to you anyway. You're saved by grace. He has there the words, through faith. That's a theme Paul develops over all his letters. The way we take hold of all these blessings of salvation, The way we grab it, sort of, is through faith. But why faith? What does that mean? And why don't we take hold of these blessings of salvation through something else, right? Through obedience or love or courage or charity, as the Roman Catholic Church says, or whatever.

54:03 Why faith? Well, it's because faith, in its action, when faith acts, it necessarily declares its own moral bankruptcy. In a way that love, charity, courage, obedience, they don't. Love, charity, courage, obedience, they stand up and they say, I'm doing this. I'm not morally bankrupt. I'm doing a good thing. Faith, by its very nature, says, I have nothing. I have to reach out and grab on to something else. That's what faith is, right? It's a grabbing.

54:34 It's not like the world talks about faith. It's not wishing for something. It's not thinking something might be true even though you don't have any evidence for it, right? It's not that. In the Bible, it's a grabbing. It's a leaning, right? You size something up and you rely on it. You put your weight on it. That's what faith is. And faith is, by nature, empty. It's morally bankrupt, and so it grabs onto something else. And Christian faith says, I am morally bankrupt, and the only thing I know to grab onto and rely on for salvation is Jesus. That's why it's faith.

55:08 When you look at the middle of eight there, some people think that the middle of eight, this is not of your own doing. Some people think that this is the faith, but it can't be that. That this is talking about the whole of salvation. It's not just talking about faith. It's talking about the whole thing, right? And how do we know that? Well, it's because the second clause in verse 9 doesn't make sense. If it said, and faith is not your own doing, faith is the gift of God, okay, not as a result of work so that no man would boast. It just sort of falls apart, right? Because faith by its very nature doesn't boast.

55:39 It just doesn't work. It's talking about the whole salvation. But you see the picture? see what paul is saying there you're people of grace you're a people of faith your trophies of god's of god's goodness his undeserved goodness and your own faith in him is declaring that you don't have any room for boasting your very faith is saying i didn't do anything for this i didn't earn anything all i did was rely on jesus who did do the things and then finally he says we're people of goodness so what's all this aiming for like why does god do this yes it's for his glory and so will be trophies but what about the meantime well verse 10 we are his workmanship created in christ jesus for good works which god prepared beforehand that we should walk in them i think what's super interesting here is that this verse is chock full of creation language so workmanship created prepared.

56:38 See what Paul's getting at there? He doesn't lay it out in all its detail here, but he's saying that in saving us, in uniting us to Christ, seating us with him in the heavenly realm spiritually, God is launching a new creation. It's like Paul says in another place, if anyone is in Christ, bam! New creation. Right? That's what happens when Jesus comes. The new age that is to come erupts into the present age. And you and I, as Christians, as those who are united in Christ, are now little sparks of eternity that are flashing in this present dark age.

57:14 That's who we are. Shining like stars, Paul says, in a dark universe. And what's our goal? What's our goal is little sparks of the new heavens and new earth. Our goal, Paul says, is to do good. To follow the way of life our God has prepared beforehand for us. Friends, you serve an amazingly good God. A God who looked at your sin, who looked at your deadness, who looked at your decay and decomposition and moral bankruptcy and did not say, and they shall die.

57:59 But he said, but I will save them. Let's pray. Our God, we thank you that you are a God of great reversals. You see your people sunk in their sin. You see your people dead and enslaved and condemned. Instead of just letting us wash away into the depths of hell, you save us. You pull us out of those dark and cold waters and you set us on high with Jesus.

58:32 Our God, we pray that even today, your Holy Spirit would do the work of giving spiritual life in this place. Lord, cause somebody in this room for the first time in their life to see the beauty of Jesus. To see the glory of King Jesus. And come to him and bow their knee to him. And worship him and honor him. And trust in him for salvation. Lord, do that today, we pray. And we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen.