Sermon Tone Analysis

Ephesians 2:1-10

 

! Introduction

            I have known Jake Suderman since I was young.

What I remember most about him is that he was an administrator at Lion's Manor.

That was his vocation.

More recently, I have discovered that he also had several avocations - tennis and wood working.

Perhaps this isn't a good illustration because now that he isn't an administrator at Lion's Manor any more perhaps his avocation has become his vocation.

All of us have a vocation, the thing that is our main job, our main pursuit.

We also have avocations.

My vocation is being pastor, but I also enjoy going cross country skiing as often as I can.

Using this way of looking at things where would you place your faith in Christ?

Is Christianity your vocation or your avocation?

If it is the main thing in your life, where does the motivation come from?

Does it come from duty or passion?

Once or twice I have met people who were dead, but were brought back to life.

Perhaps they had a heart attack and flat lined, but were brought back or perhaps they had been in a severe accident and recovered from the accident.

Often after an experience like that people have a new lease on life and it is not surprising that they make new decisions about what is important and what is not important.

The truth is that every one of us has experienced death and has been brought back to life.

Has that experience caused us to make following Christ our passionately held vocation, the main thing in our life, because we love God so much?

These are the questions which we must answer as we read about this renewal after death that has happened to every person who is a Christian.

It is described in Ephesians 2:1-10.

!

I.       The Living Dead

            The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, defines "Zombie" as a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means, such as witchcraft.

The language comes from Haitian religious practices.

In modern times, the term "zombie" has been applied to an undead race in horror fiction, largely drawn from George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.

The idea of someone who is living dead is a horrible thought and rightly assigned to horror fiction, but when I read the opening verses of Ephesians 2, I thought it was an apt description of what we once were.

!! A.   You Were Dead

            In the first verse of this chapter our beginning position as people is that we were dead.

Wood says, "The most vital part of man’s personality—the spirit—is dead to the most important factor in life—God."

The verb used here describes not something that we chose or became, but something we were.

The cause of our being dead was our trespasses and sins.

The word trespasses refers to the fact that we have fallen off the path, we have made a fatal mistake.

The cause of our slip was sin, which at its root is hostility to God.

But what is really interesting is that although we were dead the text says that we were still walking about.

Notice the interesting juxtaposition of the words "dead" and "in which you once lived."

Because of sin, we were dead.

But at the same time we were walking about, acting out in rebellion and disobedience.

As we read that we realize that "zombie" or "living dead" are apt descriptions of who we were.

Neufeld says, "Life apart from God is a living death….These dead are highly animated—they /walk/, /trespass/, and /disobey/."

!! B.   Worldview of the Living Dead

            The word "following," in verse 2, suggests a worldview, a lifestyle for those who are dead.

Three phrases describe that lifestyle.

It is according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air and according to the spirit now at work among those who are disobedient.

These descriptions help us understand how those who are spiritually dead live, which is how we used to live.

They follow the course of this world or as Neufeld describes it, “the spirit of the age.”

How would we describe this worldview?

One of the primary aspects of it is that it is a self centered worldview.

People live by what is best for them.

For example, everyone wants the benefits which comes to them from the government but no one wants to pay their taxes.

Everyone wants to buy things for the cheapest price possible, but everyone wants to sell their product at the highest price possible.

So a pop, which probably costs a few pennies to make sells for fifty cents at Superstore because there is abundance of competition and sells for $4 at the MTS center because there is a monopoly.

You say, well that is how a market based economy works, but we must realize that the reason it works is because it seeks to find balance on self centeredness.

There are many other values of this worldview such as those listed by Paul in 2 Timothy 3:2, "For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…"

            Where do these values of the living dead come from?

Paul goes on to say that the living dead are animated by "the ruler of the power of the air."

There is an evil spirit at work, a power at work among those who are the living dead.

I have often wondered how people can be so wicked.

How can you murder your wife and your daughters as was reported in the court case in Ontario recently?

How can you stay in power by oppression and violence as we have seen in Syria?

How can you sell drugs which addict and could kill those you sell them to?

Evil is provoked by an extremely evil power.

Neufeld quotes Wink who says, "The very air humanity breathes is an atmosphere contaminated by the lord of evil and his lackeys (cf.

Wink, 1984:84)."

Yet the next phrase shows that those who are the living dead are not so only because they have no choice.

There is an evil spirit at work, yet it is at work among those who choose disobedience.

This is what it means to be the living dead.

This is what all of us were.

!! C.   Don't Count Yourself Out

            Several of you have shared your testimony with us and we are looking forward to hearing many more.

My testimony is very similar to others who grew up in the church.

This is what often we hear, "I don't have a very exciting testimony.

I grew up in a Christian home and when I was a teenager I made a commitment for Christ and have been living for Him ever since."

Sometimes with such a testimony we may not believe that we ever were the living dead.

We don't really believe that we were under the power of the course of this world.

It is interesting, if that is our thinking, to realize how Paul structures this passage.

When he begins he says, "you were dead."

Who is he talking about?

He may be talking about the Gentiles, who came from a wicked pagan background.

He may also be talking about those who have recently become believers.

It almost sounds like an accusatory "you" in which he could be saying, "you people who come from a pagan background were dead, but we Jews did not experience that."

But as we read on, we discover in verse 3 that he is not making such a distinction.

Whether he is talking about Jews or long term Christians, when he says "we," he makes it very clear that "all of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh."

Paul was able to boast about all the things which made him a righteous person.

He was a Jew with a stellar pedigree, but he still calls himself the worst of sinners in I Timothy 1:16.

He understood that in spite of the appearance of righteousness, he also had been among the living dead.

I think it is important for all of us to understand that we were among the living dead no matter what our testimony is.

We need to understand that, as Paul says, all of us were at one time living in the passions of our flesh, which does not only mean in sexual sin, but also in selfishness and greed and many other things.

We need to understand that all of us followed the desires of the flesh and senses and that it was, and perhaps still is, natural for us to do exactly as we please.

We need to think about our life and discover what it was that made us dead because unless we understand that we were dead, we will never fully appreciate what comes next in this passage.

!! D.   The End of the Living Dead

            As the living dead, we were by nature, children of wrath.

Neufeld says, "/Wrath/ must be understood not as a divine fit of anger, however, but as God’s meticulous attention to and response to rebellion, oppression, and the defilement of creation."

Every person who has not been made alive is spiritually dead and being dead means being under the judgment of God.

The finger of God which pointed the way out of the garden of Eden was intended for us as well and we remain under the sentence of that judgment to this very day.

Every person who is among the living dead is under God's righteous and justified wrath and so is eternally dead.

!

II.

The Living Living

!! A.   But God

            If we should hear, "They were in an accident, but no one was hurt," we would say, "That is good news!"

If we should hear, "The tumor is malignant, but if we do surgery soon it is easily treatable," we would say "That is good news!"