Risen Generation 4.19.24

What does it mean to be made alive?

If you know the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, the first 3 chapters of the Bible, God creates Adam and Eve and they get to live in this Garden of Eden where everything is perfect and they get to live in perfect peace with God. And God gives Adam & Eve the freedom to enjoy everything he made but there was just one thing he couldn’t do and if he disobeys this one command of God he would die. Ultimately we know that Adam did exactly what God told him not and Adam didn’t physically die immediately, but what immediately happened is he and Eve were kicked out of the garden, and they no longer had access or relationship with God. Now a real consequence of their sin was they were eventual going to physically die, but they greater problem is they were now cut off from God. And when scripture talks about this death as a result of sin, it is often this spiritual death that Adam & Eve experienced being banished from the presence of God.

That brings us to the passages we will look at today

God gives a clear understaning of the consequence of sin

pg. 411

Ezekiel 18:20–24 ESV

20 The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. 21 “But if a wicked person turns away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 22 None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has done he shall live. 23 Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? 24 But when a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice and does the same abominations that the wicked person does, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds that he has done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, for them he shall die.

Ezekiel 18:30–32 ESV

30 “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, declares the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. 31 Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? 32 For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live.”

Would any of you want to live in a world where evil and wickedness is left unpunished? Where there is no justice? Why?

So if we want there to be judgment of evil, what happens when we do evil? Do you want that same justice to be applied to us?

Here’s the point, according to scripture and proven true by our conscious, we all have sinned and done evil things? And just like for Adam and Eve sin resulted in death, so it does for us.

Because we have been separated from God by our sin, rendering ourselves spiritually dead (like a flower cut off its bush and put in a vase), we are in desperately in need to be made alive, brought into right relationship with God

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Ephesians 2:1–10 ESV

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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— 3 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. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

To be made alive is to no longer live for your own selfish ambitions doing what the world does and being guided by pleasure, and enslaved by sin but to be free to live for God and to live righteously, no longer bound by sin.

We all are going to experience the natural death of these bodies, but the real difference will be whether we experience freedom in our souls in this life and whether we are separated from the presence of God for all eternity in the life to come.

Jesus is our way to assurance of new life!