Greatest Story Ever Told
Notes
Transcript
Good morning My name is Frank and if you have your Bible’s open to Ephesians 2
What is a story you can hear over and over again?
Maybe you have a kid and every night they want to hear the same story read from their favorite little book.
Or maybe it's a movie you can watch anytime and any place and you will never get tired of it.
For me, I literally rewatch Avengers Endgame at least once a month.
I never get tired of it.
When Captain America gets Thor’s Hammer and goes to town on Thanos.
I get unreasonably hyped every time!
And when everyone comes out of the portals and he shouts Avengers Assemble.
It is cinematic perfection
These are the stories we love to hear over and over again!
We don’t get tired of them because they are powerful and they move us.
The story we see in Ephesians 2:1-10 is a story we should never get tired of hearing.
Because it is your story.
It is my story.
If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, this is your testimony.
And we should never get tired of hearing it.
It is the greatest story ever told!
How God rescues us from sin and death and makes us into new creations.
My only hope today is that you see this story as your story.
And that we live in the reality of God’s grace and mercy towards you.
As we start this passage we will begin the story in the tension.
The problem you and I all face.
*BREATH*
[1] 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.
Paul begins by stating the kind of person we all were before we put our faith in Jesus.
He says we were dead.
We were born spiritually dead.
We were born with no desire to seek God or had any ability to respond to God’s goodness and love towards us.
He says we were dead in our trespasses and sins.
It is an interesting statement because it is a little redundant.
The word tresspasses has to do with the breaking of God’s law.
God commands us to not lie.
When we lie, that is a trespass.
Sin is broader than that.
Sin is all the ways we don’t line up to God’s holiness,
We sin with our thoughts, our words, our motives.
When we do things we shouldn’t, that is sin.
When we don’t do things that we should, that is sin.
All tresspasses are sins.
But the word sin is greater than just trespasses.
So for Paul to say we are dead in our tresspasses and sins, he is saying, both by our willful choices and our unintended mistakes, we are incapable of responding to God or doing anything that will make us in good standing with him.
In the BIble, sin is not just a thing we do.
Sin is a state of being.
We are sinful and everything about us is affected by our sin.
But Paul goes on and talks about three forces that we are following or “walking in” that are not only keeping you dead, but are actively putting you in opposition to God.
First he talks about us following the course of this world - In the bible, when we talk about the world we are talking about the preferences, values, and systems that define our culture.
And these values and systems do not align with God’s ideal for us.
Without Christ we all seek validation and the values of this world.
And as we pursue the values of the world, we become more entrenched in a in a kingdom that is opposed to God.
Paul says that we follow the Prince of the power of the air. That is a fancy name for the devil
Jesus calls the devil “the Ruler of this world” and in 2 Corinthians Paul calls him the god of this age.
The devil has one goal and one goal only, to make sure God gets as little glory as possible.
So he is trying to distract you, entice you, tempt you, numb you, and get you to focus on anywhere else except for God.
Satan doesn't care if he is worshiped or acknowledged.
He just wants you to be as useless to God and His kingdom as possible.
So whether it is money, sex, or power.
Whatever it is in this world that will keep you away from God, he wants you there.
The third force that we follow are the passions of our flesh
The flesh is the sinful desires inside you and me that tie us back to the sin of Adam.
We have a sinful disposition and desire to rebel against God and His kingdom.
The influence of the world and the devil is real, but we cannot deny that we desire things inside of us that are opposed to God.
And the scary thing about all this is that our world has shifted to say that your desires are supreme.
That your desires, no matter what they are or how they could affect yourself or others, are not just feelings that you have, but they are your identity.
So for me to suggest that your desires might be bad, is no longer a shot at your feelings but a shot at your identity.
Paul is saying, what makes you dead in your sins and what keeps enslaved to your sins, is the world, the devil, and your flesh.
And you are utterly helpless because of this.
Paul isn’t getting carried away here?
All of us, are created in the image of God and though your sin has not destroyed that image completely, we are so radically devastated by our sin that we unable to come to God
Theologically, Paul is describing the doctrine of “total depravity”; that is, all aspects of our being have been infected with this disease called sin.
Total depravity doesn’t mean every person is the worst they could be.
There is always room for a person to be worse.
Total depravity doesn’t mean that people are not capable of doing any good.
All people have the ability to do good things.
Total depravity means every part of a person (mind, emotions, heart, and will) is affected and tainted by sin.
Paul is describing our “total inability” to reach out to God.
We are morally incapable of responding to God.
And the sad fact is we do not want to respond to God.
We want nothing to do with him.
The dead, those without Christ, are dominated by the world, the devil, and the flesh.
And because of that, Paul said that our title before Jesus is Children of wrath
I know it doesn’t sit well with our modern sensibilities but I think it's worth repeating because we hear it all the time.
Everyone is created in the image of God.
That means everyone is deserving of value and dignity and respect.
No matter what they believe or not.
All people are created in the image of God.
But not everyone is a child of God.
People like to say that everyone is a child of God.
But the Bible doesn’t say that.
John 1 tells us that those who trust in Jesus have the right to be called the Children of God.
That is a privilege and a title only belonging to the followers of Jesus Christ.
Go read John 1:12
When the Bible uses the phrase “Child of something” or Children of something
It's a euphemism to describe what that person is defined by or known by.
Children of God are those who are known by their relationship and faith in God.
They are known by God and therefore they are the children of God.
Later in Ephesians, he calls Christians “Children of the light.”
That means these Christians are known for walking in truth and holiness.
So when Paul said we were by nature children of wrath, he is saying that before Jesus, all of us, our defining characteristic of who we were, were objects deserving of God fair and just wrath because of our sin.
I say this unashamedly because the BIble is unashamed about this.
You and I and everyone in this world, if we did not put our faith in Jesus, we were going to Hell.
And we deserved it.
Paul just gave our resume.
We all deserve Hell.
And Hell is not one degree hotter than we deserve.
Hell is the fair focused wrath of God on all unrepentant sinners for all eternity.
Ephesians 2:1-3 says that we were all helpless sinners, deserving of the wrath of God for all eternity.
We are utterly helpless in our sinful state
There is no self actualization.
There is no pulling yourself from your boot straps.
There is no cleaning yourself up.
There is no getting enough therapy, or going to rehab, or changing my habits enough to fix this
We have sinned on a cosmic scale.
And there is nothing, even on our best day, that we could do to make this right.
Left in our dead state, all we can expect is eternity separated from the love of God in a real eternal Hell.
That is until the two most glorious words entered into our story.
[4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
But God is the greatest interruption we could ever hear!
When we see the phrase, But God, good things begin to happen and change.
[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—
God is rich in mercy!
Mercy is God not giving you what you deserve.
Mercy is tied to the compassion and kindness of God.
We deserve his wrath and because God shows mercy, he doesn’t show you his wrath.
But God is rich in Mercy
He is a Billionaire of mercy
Because of his great love with which he loved us.
God’s love towards you is the reason why he interrupts the story.
It is the reason why he changes the narrative.
You were a child of wrath, but he loved you too much to leave you there.
The entire Bible is God’s radical pursuit, for his glory, to love and save a people for himself.
I just spoke to a bunch of high school students at a local school in town.
I asked the teacher, what is their understanding of God and the Bible?
She said, they see God as an angry God who wants to punish people and the BIble is a book full of rules about what we cannot do.
And I am afraid that some of us have this skewed view of God, that he is the morality police in the sky making sure you don’t have too much fun here on earth.
And he is looking for ways to punish you.
And he is always kinda disappointed in you.
But God is not angry, God is honest.
He is honest about who we are.
And as honest as he is he is drenching the story with his love towards you.
God being rich in mercy and love invaded our story, he entered into our sinful world.
He crossed into enemy lines that is ruled by the devil.
To reach the walking dead who are blindly following the desires of their flesh.
So that he can make them alive together with Jesus
This is not a God who is seeking to punish you, this is a God who is relentlessly pursuing you to love you.
Everyone loves John 3:16 but we don’t talk about John 3:17 enough.
[17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17, ESV)
God did not send Jesus to come to our world to condemn us.
We were already condemned.
He sent Jesus so that we might be saved!
Through Jesus we were made alive with Christ!
When you see yourself in the death of Jesus, where Jesus died on the cross for your sins, you have the right to see yourself in the resurrection of Jesus, because if Jesus is alive, we get to be alive too!
The Hell we deserved was poured into Jesus so that we can experience the love of God forever.
When the world wants to make fun of you and say, Christianity is a crutch for weak people.
I want you to look them in the eye and say “you are wrong, it is so much more than that!”
Christianity is the ICU and I am on the hospital bed
and I wasn’t weak.
I was dead.
and Jesus brings me back to life.
Christianity is a crutch for weak people?
Christianity is the gurney for dead people to be brought to life.
That is not the insult people think it is.
We should be so glad that our God is a God of bringing dead things to life.
Graves to gardens
Dry bones to life
We all must have the same story as Lazarus.
When Jesus shouts for us to come out.
We must come out of the tomb, take off the burial clothes and live as new creations as resurrected people.
[6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
When Jesus died on the cross for your sins.
He took the punishment that you deserved and in exchange he gave you his righteousness.
What makes Jesus good in the eyes of God the Father, is now given to you.
And because of that, when God sees you, he doesn’t see you as an enemy anymore.
He doesn’t see you as children of wrath
But now as beloved children of God.
Those who once had no mercy now have mercy.
And those who were once without hope now have the living hope.
The Lord brought us from:
Hell to Heaven
Slavery to freedom
Gloom to light
Despair to hope
Wrath to glory
Jesus has brought us from Death to life
Because it says God has raised us with Jesus into the heavenly places
What he is saying is that positionally we belong to heaven.
Though we currently reside here, our residency is in heaven with God.
If you have put your faith in Jesus, congrats, you are an immigrant.
You are only here with a passport.
You live here, but your home isn’t here.
This is why the longer you are a Christian, the more this world will become strange to us.
As we enter into a political season, as a Christian, understand it is normal to feel politically homeless.
Because neither the right or the left have the values or the ethics of the kingdom of God.
And the longer we are here waiting for our king and the kingdom, we are going to feel an angst in this world.
And that is ok.
Our job is to continue to pray, on earth as it is in heaven.
And whatever spaces we get to be in and people we get to interact with, we are to leave the aroma of Christ.
Let me explain what I mean by the aroma of Christ.
I have shared this before, I don’t have a ton of fond memories of my dad but my dad was the most cuban cuban guy in the world.
Here is how you can understand him.
In professional wrestling there was a wrestler named Scott Hall.
But he wrestled under the persona of Razor Ramon.
Razor Ramon was supposed to be this suave but shady cuban guy with greased back hair, super hairy chest, and a ton of gold chains.
What is funny is Scott Hall was not Cuban at all.
I am pretty sure he is an Italian man born in Maryland.
But my dad was Razor Ramon.
Gaudy jewelry.
His chest hair is always sticking out.
Always had a cigarette in his hand or mouth.
Never learned english but he loved to talk to anyone with his thick cuban accent.
And despite the fact that he smoked cigarettes a lot the smell I always remember of him is the Old Spice Classic Cologne.
It came in like a small cream color bottle
I feel like he would bathe in it.
Like when my friends came over, or if he just felt a room, everyone would know it was my dad, because the scent of old spice classic would just linger in the room.
As we live in a dying broken sinful world.
That is opposed to Christ.
As we look forward to being with our king in his kingdom.
Our job is to leave the aroma of Christ wherever we are.
So that when people ask us what is different about us, they too have the opportunity to go from death to life and be made alive in Christ.
[7] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
The church is God’s eternal trophy case.
I don’t know if aliens exist but if they do, they will spend eternity in awe at the mercy and love God has towards us.
1 Peter 1 says that the angels long to look at us because we are the recipients of the amazing grace of God.
You are God’s trophies because of how he loves you.
The universe has its mind blown that God would raise us from death to life.
[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.
This reconciliation between us and God has nothing to do with how awesome you are.
Paul wants to make it clear, it is not about what you do.
You can’t earn this.
Salvation is 100% God’s work in us.
We just have to have faith
You might say, but Frank, you just said it, it says we are saved by grace through faith.
I choose to have faith in Jesus.
Therefore I did something.
But Faith doesn’t save you.
You are saved by the grace of God.
Faith is the instrument by which grace is received.
Think about a syringe.
When you need life saving medicine, the syringe doesn’t save you, it is the medicine that is delivered through the syringe that saves you.
Faith is the avenue where God’s grace comes to you.
And regardless, We just read in verse 8 that even the faith to believe in Jesus is a gift given to you by God.
I can't even flex about my own faith because it was given to me by God.
So hear me out maybe you grew up in church and there was never a time you didn’t believe and love Jesus.
That’s beautiful.
And some of you, had that moment, where you intentionally made a decision to follow Jesus later in life after not living or believing in him.
If that is your story, that too is beautiful.
Or maybe your story is like mine.
You don’t have a specific date where you put your faith in Jesus.
But over time, you progressively placed your trust in Jesus and your relationship with him is deeply personal and more real than it ever was.
That is beautiful too.
All those things I am describing are real and beautiful and no one can take that away from you.
But this is what this passage is saying.
Before you even acknowledge God.
Before you're prayed a pray
Before you got serious with church and reading the Bible
God was working in your heart to draw you to himself.
God was wooing you to Himself.
Your response to God in Faith is the evidence that you have received His grace.
It is because of his loving kindness that we are made right with God, not because of something we did.
We are saved by grace through faith alone.
[10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (ESV)
The word “workmanship” comes from the Greek word poiema, from which we get our English word poem.
The Greek literally means, “that which has been made—a work—a making,” and sometimes it is even translated as “poem.”
In other words, this word workmanship literally means work of art.
And I can’t stress this enough.
When God saved you he is saying, this is my greatest work of art.
You can look at all of creation.
God is the Creator. Nothing exists apart from him.
He brought everything into being. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” .
The galaxies, the stars, our solar system are his handiwork.
Yet as awesome as the cosmos is, it is not his masterwork.
His crowning achievement and the thing he wants to show off the most is you and me.
The person who was once a vessel for God’s wrath, he brought back to life and turned into a child of God.
So get this.
Psalm 139 says that you are fearfully and wonderfully made
Acts 17 - everything in your life, from the times that you live to the boundaries you live in, is given to you by God
Where you live, where you work, where you go to church, where you go on vacation, where you go to church is not an accident.
Romans 12 says that when you became a CHristian and received the Holy SPirit, he has bestowed on you different giftings to use for the glory of God in the church.
So I quote those verse to say this.
God has a plan for your life.
We think that God works only in the professional christians.
But the New Testament paints this picture that every person in the church is vital for hte mission.
At Epikos, every single one of you is vital for this mission.
When God made you as a work of art, he doesn’t want you to stay behind glass to just be looked at.
He wants his work of art to do what you were created for.
And what is that: created in Christ Jesus for good works
God has a plan for you
Everyone is called to play in the game.
No one is meant to sit on the bench for God’s kingdom.
You might say, Frank but you don’t know me.
I am not proud of the things I have done in my past.
I don’t know a lot of the Bible, I am still just learning.
My life isn’t where I want it to be yet.
Look at me! I know. More importantly, God knows.
He brought you from death to life.
He is more intimately invested in your story than you even know.
He created you. not for you to sit on your butt for an hour and call that enough.
He created you to do good works!
Martin Luther said, God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.
If we are going to be a church that reaches every neighborhood for Jesus, we will need everyones gifting we have in this church.
If you have the gift of hospitality, go be hospitable for the glory of God.
If you have administrative skills, use that for God’s kingdom.
Let me tell you what that looks like.
If you are a teacher, you are not a teacher that happens to be Christian.
You are a Christian, that happens to be a teacher.
You are not a nurse, that happens to be a Christian.
You are a christian, that happens to be a nurse.
So in the classroom, in the hospital, in the Monday morning meetings, at your desk, in the parking lot.
Wherever you find yourself, use the gifting and talents you have to let people who don’t believe in God, doubt their disbelief.
Let your presence in those spaces make them question why they don’t trust in Jesus and live for him.
And as you have committed to making Epikos your home.
You are committing to joining us in our mission to make more and better disciples.
Help us! Help one another to further this mission by using your time, talents, and resources to reach our city for Jesus.
The good work you could do is join our cleaning team one hour a week to help make sure our spaces look nice for everyone else.
The good work could be you opening your home and leading a small group in your neighborhood.
The good work could be giving financially to support the ministry of the church.
The good work could be all three.
The point is, God has a purpose for you and it is not for you to live passively in your Christian walk.
We started Ephesians 2 saying we once walked in trespasses and sin
We end this with walking in the good works God has prepared for us.
Friends, in light of the resurrection story God has created in all of us, what is your response?
The good news about the gospel is that he has rewritten our story to walk in the newness of life for the glory of God.
But will you walk in that?
Will you walk in the story God has given you?
Lastly, if you are here today and you feel like you story is only up to verse 3 and that the rest is not in your story yet.
The offer for God to interrupt you story only expires when you expire.
As long as you are breathing, you can have God interrupt your story and begin the greatest rewrite of your life.
All you have to do is put your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins.
Receive his grace in your life and begin today to walk in the good works he has created you to live in.
Pray
