My First Sermon - Preached on Aug. 3rd in Midale Baptist Church, SK

Today I am speaking from, the book of Ephesians. So if you have your Bibles here with you this morning, you can turn there with me. Before we begin reading, let me just give you a brief background on where our passage comes from.

As the gospel spread in the book of Acts, Paul traveled through Asia Minor, which is called Turkey today. One of the cities which he traveled to was called Ephesus. We read in Acts that Paul entered the synagogue in Ephesus and spoke boldly there…arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God (Acts 19:8). Paul stayed in Ephesus for over 2 years teaching the followers of Christ. Later on his missionary journey, Paul, as he was passing by the city of Ephesus, met with the elders of the church. During this encounter Paul says, I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God (Acts 20:27).

From this point forward, Paul moves over to Jerusalem where he is imprisoned and he remains a prisoner for the rest of his life eventually ending up in Rome where he dies. During Paul’s years in prison, he spends countless hours praying to God, and praising God, and thanking God for the church in Ephesus. Finally, Paul writes a letter to the church in Ephesus to encourage them and teach them as they continue to follow Jesus.

Our passage today comes from that letter which Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus. So let’s read the passage! I’m going to read it for you, and you can follow along in your Bibles.

Ephesians 2:1-5

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 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. 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. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

So I am just going to work my way through this passage one verse at a time.

Paul begins this section of his letter by reminding his audience of their former condition: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. It’s important at this point to remember who Paul is talking to. Who’s the you that Paul is writing to? It’s the members of the church in Ephesus – the very people of God. That’s going to shape the way we read this passage, because Paul’s not talking to unbelievers or to worldly people, he’s talking to the saints. As for you, yes, you the members of the church at Ephesus, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

I still remember the day that the full force of Paul’s statement hit me. Paul is very careful about the words that he chooses, especially in these first few verses. He says, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

I know for myself that for a good chunk of my life as a Christian I had no idea what that meant. I was raised in a Christian home and I was a pretty good little boy, or at least I thought I was, (my parents might tell you different). As a young person I thought I was doing pretty well compared to my peers.

I think sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking that we were pretty good people before we were saved. And maybe even subconsciously we believe that God’s getting someone really special by saving us.

But look at what Paul says in verse 1! He says, You were dead in your transgressions and sins. He doesn’t say you were pretty good, or you were ok, or even you were bad. He says, You were dead! There’s no spiritual life in you at all because of your sin and disobedience to God’s law!

As for you, Who? You, the members of the church in Ephesus, notice Paul’s careful choice of words, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air. They were dead and they used to follow the way of this world and of the devil but they no longer do. Something changed. In fact something big changed if they are no longer dead in their sin! And we'll talk about what it was that changed in a few minutes because Paul’s not finished talking about their former condition.

Moving on to verse 3, Paul says, All of us also lived among them at one time. And skipping down to the end of verse 3, Like the rest, we were by nature objects of God’s wrath. In case we were hoping that it was only the members of the church in Ephesus who were dead in their sins and transgressions, Paul now includes everyone. It’s no longer you, the church in Ephesus, were dead; now it’s all of us also and like the rest, we.

So let’s walk through this verse and see what Paul is getting at. All of us also lived among them at one time. Lived among who? We look back up to verse 2 and read, those who are disobedient, the people who follow the ruler of the kingdom of the air and the ways of this world and are dead in their transgressions and sins.

That means that you and I are not excluded from Paul’s reminder to the Ephesians of their former condition. Just as they were dead in their transgressions and sins, you and I were dead in our transgressions and sins in which we used to live when we followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air.

Back to verse 3. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Please note that Paul is not simply talking about a moment in our lives where we caved in to temptation to our sinful nature. In the original language the words gratifying and following express that this was a continuous gratifying and a continuous following. Paul’s not just saying that we gratified the cravings of our sinful nature and followed its desires and thoughts, he’s saying that the continual pattern of our lives was gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and the continual pattern of our lives was following the desires and thoughts of our sinful nature.

Paul teaches this very clearly in Romans 8:

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires…The mind of sinful man is death; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

So, All of us, also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts continually as the pattern of our lives.

Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. What does it mean that we were by nature objects of wrath? It means that our very essence and being – who we were deep down inside – made God angry! We were dead in our sins, followed the ways of this world and of the devil; we were disobedient and rebellious, continually gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts and all of this goes to show how we were hostile enemies of God, fit for punishment. It wasn’t just that we did sinful things; we were by nature of objects of wrath. Our whole being was consumed with sin and God’s natural reaction was to destroy us with his fierce wrath!

Even hearing about God’s wrath makes us uncomfortable. But I want us to get a good look at what it is to be an object of God’s wrath. Let me read for you a couple verses from other places in the Bible.

Job 20:23-26 - This is Zophar’s description of how God’s reacts towards the wicked and godless.

When he has filled his belly,
God will vent his burning anger against him
and rain down his blows upon him.

Though he flees from an iron weapon,
a bronze-tipped arrow pierces him.

He pulls it out of his back,
the gleaming point out of his liver.
Terrors will come over him;

total darkness lies in wait for his treasures.
A fire unfanned will consume him
and devour what is left in his tent.

The heavens will expose his guilt;
the earth will rise up against him.

A flood will carry off his house,
rushing waters on the day of God's wrath.

Such is the fate God allots the wicked,
the heritage appointed for them by God.

Reading that sends chills up my spine! God is a holy God and just judge and he cannot and will not let the wicked go unpunished!

In Mark 9, Jesus tells us about the fierce wrath of God in judgment:

If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

The book of Revelation talks about the how the wicked will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath, and they will be tormented with burning sulfur…and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever!

When we look at the intensity of how God reacts towards sin and wickedness – when we see how fierce his wrath is for the wicked, we get a better picture of just how detestable and sick sin really is. But it gets worse for us! Paul quotes the Psalms and the Prophets in Romans 3 to show that everyone is wicked and everyone is locked up under the power of sin! He says,

There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.

So when you read the places in Scripture that tell you how God feels about the wicked and their sinfulness. And when you read the verses that describe God’s fury and fierce anger and how he pours out his wrath on the wicked. We need to see that that is how God felt about us and that same wrath and judgment was in store for us. When Zophar describes how God sweeps away the wicked man with his fierce wrath, he was talking about you. When Jesus warns about hell and how awful it will be and when we read in John’s revelation about torment and burning sulfur in the lake of fire, we need to see that those passages are talking about us before we were saved.

That’s why Paul writes to the Ephesians and to us saying,

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins 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. 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 object of wrath.

BUT because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.

We were hopelessly lost in sin; we were dead in our transgressions and sins, but God made us alive because of his grace and mercy and love toward us. And now we know why Paul has gone to such great lengths in all of his letters to remind his readers of how they were dead in their sin and slaves to sin. Because through understanding our sinfulness and depravity before we were saved, we see just how great God’s love for us really is, just how rich God’s mercy toward us really is, and just how magnificent God’s grace towards us really is! God looked down upon a world of disobedient, corrupted, depraved, and rebellious, God-haters and he loved them and he had mercy on them and he gave grace to them. That’s how great the love of God is! It can look upon the sickest of sinners and save them from their impossible condition. In Romans 5 Paul says this,

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man some one might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. We see the depth of God’s love for us because of who we used to be when God stepped into our lives and saved us. We see the depth of God’s mercy in what he did for us – he made us alive with Christ.

God stepped into our lives in a powerful way, and resurrected us from the dead. Now we are no longer dead in our transgressions and sin, we are alive in Christ. We’ve been changed on the inside. We are no longer by nature objects of God’s wrath because all the fierce wrath of God that we deserved was poured out, full strength, on Jesus. Jesus traded places with us. He became an object of wrath, so we could become sons and daughters of God. What incredible mercy! What amazing love! What awesome grace! We are now alive spiritually. We’ve been made new on the inside. We have a new nature. This is the good news – the gospel.

Now I want to remind all of you, that this passage was written to the saints in Ephesus – to the church – to the people of God – to those who have been saved and made alive by God. And it’s my hope and prayer that all of you here this morning are saved and have been made alive by God. But some of you may still be dead in your sin. I want to show you a how you can test yourself by our passage this morning to know whether you are still dead in your sins or have been made alive.

Paul says, as I mentioned earlier, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air…All of us also lived (past tense) among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. As we said before, all of these things used to be the way that disciples in Ephesus lived, but something changed. God made them alive and at the time of this writing these things are no longer true of them. They no longer follow the ways of this world, now they follow the ways of God. Their lives are no longer characterized by disobedience and rebellion, now they are obedient to things that God has commanded them. Their lifestyle is no longer characterized by gratifying the cravings of their sinful nature and by following its desires and thoughts, now they live to please God and their minds are set on what the Spirit desires. Why? Because God has made them alive; they are resurrected people; new creatures with new life. The old has gone and the new has come. They have been changed from the inside out.

So you can test yourself against the Scriptures to see if you are truly alive. Ask yourself: Am I still following the ways of this world and the ways of the devil or am I following the ways of God as revealed in Scripture? Am I living in disobedience or am I living in obedience? Am I living to gratify the cravings of my sinful nature or am I living to please God according to the commands set forth by God in Scripture? These are the indicators of whether you are still dead in your sin or have been made alive with Christ by God.

If you find that in light of the Scripture you are still dead in your sins. Then there is good news for you. God is loving and merciful, forgiving and gracious and he sent Jesus to earth to die under his wrath so that your sin could be pardoned and so that you can be made alive! All that you have to do is repent of your sin, which means to acknowledge before God that you are dead in your sins and that all of these things that we talked about in the first 3 verses of our passage are true of you, and now you must turn away from your sin and turn to God and his ways. Ask him for forgiveness and mercy – ask him to make you alive. And secondly you must believe that Jesus Christ has accomplished this for you and that he will save you!

But I trust and pray that most of you who are here this morning have done this and have been made alive and are the very people of God, the church. And for you, I have three applications of this passage.

The first application is this: As the people of God, we NEVER outgrow the gospel. Sometimes as Christians we believe that the gospel is the message by which we were saved, and then from that point forward in our walk with God, we move on to bigger and better things in the Word of God. This attitude is absolutely wrong. The people in the church of Ephesus, were deeply familiar with the gospel, it was the message through which they were saved and made alive; yet Paul still took the time to remind them of the gospel by which they were saved. Personally, I don’t think the disciples in Ephesus had forgotten the gospel. Rather, the nature and importance of the gospel is such that Paul reminded them of it again! As we grow to understand more and more the depths of the gospel which saved us, we grow to understand more and more how deep the Father’s love for us and how rich the Father’s mercy toward us and how AMAZING the Father’s grace for us. Paul understood the power of the gospel and the depth of the gospel and so he preached it not only to the lost, but to the found!

But we lose sight of the gospel so easy. We so easily lose focus on what God has done for us when we were still hopeless! Even as quickly as when we take a day off from reading our Bible, the wonder and power of the gospel fades from our view. We need to daily be coming to the words of God and reminding ourselves of the gospel, meditating on the gospel, growing in the gospel, living in the wonder and power of the gospel! And so I challenge you, to preach the gospel straight from this passage to yourselves regularly.

Application #2 goes like this: One of the ways that we grow in our understanding of God’s love is by growing in our understanding of our condition before we were saved. Because, part of understanding God’s love is understanding what kind of people he loved before he changed them and made them alive. This is probably one of the most neglected truths in the church of North America. We spend so much time in the New Testament reading about Jesus and how he has saved us and we hardly have a clue of what he has saved us from. That’s why some one can hear the gospel, and not be impacted! Jesus is the hope that we have for salvation, but if people don’t realize that they are dead and that they so desperately need to be saved, then it’s not good news to them. It’s foolishness. There’s an evangelist in the States who likens it to walking up to a person and offering them the cure to some obscure disease that they’ve never heard of. The person would say, what on earth are you talking about? I don’t need that. People must realize that they are sick with the sin disease to ever appreciate the gospel. We need to get into the Old Testament and get others into the Old Testament. The Old Testament shows us the holy and just character of God. It shows us God’s law which in turn shows us our sin. The Old Testament is the story of Israel, God’s chosen people, who reject the law and live wickedly because of their sinful nature, and whose disobedience is really a pattern for all of humanity. The Old Testament shows us the desperation and the longing for the Promised One, the Messiah, the one would fulfill all righteousness and usher in the kingdom of God and make possible the atonement of their sins. If all we needed to know about was Jesus, God would have only given us the New Testament, but he gave us the Old Testament too so that we would know how people lived under the curse for thousands of years until the Deliverer and Redeemer finally came. When is the last time you read the prophets? Over and over again, God tells people through the prophets what they really look like and act like under the strain and slavery of sin. And that’s who we were before we were saved. Let’s get into the Old Testament and into the prophets and grow in our theology of sin, so we can grasp more of the how great God’s love for us in our salvation.

And my last application, #3: When we read this passage and hear again of the great love of God and rich mercy of God and amazing grace of God that has saved us and made us alive – we ought to be moved to thanksgiving and devotion. When we realize a new depth of God’s love for us and gain a greater understanding of how wonderful our salvation really is we should be moved inside with deep emotion. Our lips should be exploding with the praise and worship of God. Because when the depth of this good news washes over you in the Spirit, you can’t keep your mouth shut! Praise and adoration and thanksgiving will be ringing off your lips! And suddenly it’s no longer a burden to be obedient or to do the things that God commands. You obey out of a deep affection in your heart for the God who saved you, even when it’s hard. You give him your everything, you devote your life to him and to his service, to his work, because you want to see him glorified.