death portion of Ephesians 2:1-5
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By Grace you have been saved from Death
By Grace you have been saved from Death
Death.
Our Original State. and we are going to look at 3 elements of that death.
First is the cause of Death
First is the cause of Death
Have you all ever watched some of those law enforcement shows where they are investiagting a murder my favorite is NCIS and the Detective or in NCIS, Gibbs, shows up and looks at the body and the medical examiner Ducky and asks whats the cause of death doc. and Ducky would say, I won’t know for sure until I do my autopsy.
Well God’s word has done this autopsy for us.
We are dead
we are dead in the tresspasses and sins in which we walked.
So what is sin and tresspasses well they are basically the same word and
As creator and King, God is rightfully lawmaker and he has given us law and commandments to follow in order to strive after holiness.
And the most commonly used word ofr sin in the bible is translated literally to mean “to miss the mark or fail in duty” when it comes to God’s commands.
In some form or fashion sin is failing to meet God’s standards.
Our God is infinitely holy God and we are called in Leviticus and 1 Peter to be Holy as God is holy which is a command that we have all failed at
And because of that failure, because of that sin. we deserved death.
For the wages of sin is death,
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
And our text tells us today that not only will we die for our sins but we are dead in our sins.
And if you look closely at the text you will see the three ancient foes that lead us to sin.
First is the World,
World
World
Look back with me a the text.
We see in verse 2 that we are “following the course of this world”
This world system that we live in is constantly drawing us away from God and into sin.
The whole thing is set up to be an idol factory.
It takes the Good things of God’s creation and entices us to elevate them to an unhealthy level.
Have you ever noticed how arrogant and selfish an unbeliever is? How self proclaiming they are.
When you are spiritually dead you think you are the captain of your own ship, the writer of your own story, charting your own path
They think Christianity is a crutch for the weak
But in reality, they are nothing special, they are just following the course of this world
Just like everyone else.
They are followers
Walking a well worn
Broad path that leads to destruction
“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates,
“ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’
When the world plays a song, it expects you to dance.
And we all do apart from Christ.
But we also see the second ancient foe and that is the devil.
Devil
Devil
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—
Satan is ruling with his demonic forces right now. Sometimes we forget he is there but he is the prince of the power of the air and is in authority ruling against every good and perfect thing from God.
He is working to lure us into sin and then accuse us of that sin.
I think when we think of Satan we can fall into two main categories:
First we give him too much credit and take none of our own.
The devil made me do it is not always true, as we will see in a minute we do a great job on our own of sinning.
We don’t need his help but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t entice us or use this evil world system he set up to lure us into sin.
Or we give him none which is also dangerous.
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith,
Does that sound like someone we should ignore.
If you knew a lion was chasing you and your family don’t you think you’d try to do something about it.
We are called to put on the armor of God to withstand the devil and we should take that warning seriously.
And we aren't just tempted by the world and the devil but as we see in James and here we are tempted by our own flesh.
So the devil made me do it is not a valid excuse!
Flesh
Flesh
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 each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
We see the word passions here in verse three and it literally means an evil craving or lust, or a self indulgent craving that displaces proper affections for God
And those desires and cravings come from our flesh
or as a commentator called it “our seat of sin and rebellion to God.”
Our flesh is that sinful tendency to seek pleasure, satisfaction and meaning from ourselves.
It takes good desires like success and turns it into materialism
Food and turns it into gluttony
and achievement and turns it into pride
And that evil flesh
well this scripture says we are carrying out what we want to do
what our mind and body desire.
Our desires are ultimately contrary to everything God desires for us. When our flesh is leading the way apart from salvation we are always going to be living in sin.
But no matter the source it all falls at our feet and on our head in wrath
which brings us to the personal nature of this death.
Personal Death
Personal Death
This text is looking right at you
As I said, no matter the source of the sin.
You deserved this punishment that fell on you
Its looking directly at you as a professing christian saying you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked
YOU were following the course of this world
YOU were following the Prince of the Power of the Air,
YOU Live in the passions of your flesh
You carried out the desires of the body and the mind
You were by nature a child of wrath
And praise God that for us, it is in the past tense
No matter if you were saved at 6 or 96
No matter how righteous you think you were
No matter if you were born in a moral Christian home to Christian parents and saved young before you remember much sin or were a persecutor of Christians like Paul.
YOU WERE DEAD!
You were a walking talking spiritual corpse full of death and rotting
You were a skeleton in the valley of dry bones.
Your sin had brought you death.
But it isn’t just personal it is also universal.
It is Universal Death
Universal Death
Universal Death
Our text says “among whom we all once lived”
and that we were CHildren of wrath like the rest of mankind
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
So if the wages of sin is death and we have all sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God
Then we must come to the conclusion that we are all dead
Every human born into this world is a walking talking corpse
They may be walking, talking, maybe even vibrant in life, maybe even feel like their life is great, maybe even feel enlightened but they are walking talking corpses
Importance?
Importance?
So why is this important to know well I think it is three fold and all should lead us as Christians to humility and to praise God more:
First, we need to truly understand what we have been rescued from.
The church over the years has diminished the power of the Gospel.
We have turned the Gospel and our savior Jesus into a self help book for a better life.
People now say, do you have anxiety Jesus is your peace.
Are you tired? Jesus is your energy.
Are you sad? Jesus can make you happy.
Want prosperity? Come to Christ, he will make your cup overflow.
But all of that has diminished the true reason Christ came into the World
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
You have sinned against an infinitely Holy God and because of that you not only deserve eternal death but were dead according to our text today.
And you are guilty of the whole law according to James even by one sin.
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
God is a just God and your sins must be punished, you stood condemned before an infinitely Holy God
You didn’t need a therapist to make you feel better
you needed a sinless savior
You didn’t need a better life now
You needed a savior who lived the perfect life that you could never live
You didn’t need a recipe for success
You needed a sinless savior to die on the cross as a perfect spotless lamb to be your atonement
You didn’t need lessons on how to sin less
you needed a savior who knew no sin to be sin so that in him you might become the righteousness of God.
Thats what you needed.
He didn’t give you a better life now
he gives you life itself!!!
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,
And how much does our Lord deserve our praise for that! Don’t diminish the truth about our sin and our wickedness just to make your flesh feel better
It doesn’t glorify God.
The Second Reason came from
My old pastor, Andy Davis, when speaking on this text, he said, “you will cherish the good in proportion to how much you understand the bad”
The more we understand our sin and prior state and what Christ did on the cross the more we should love our savior.
Those who are forgiven little
Love Little
Friends, you have not been forgiven
Go to the cross and see your sinless savior die for your sins.
You have been forgiven much
And that should humble us, our mountain of guilt should humble us and motivate us to service
And reason number three to learn about our deadness is that we need to understand we could not have saved ourselves
As a Hunter, when you shoot a deer most of the time when you walk up on it you poke it with your gun or bow to make sure that it is indeed dead and when you poke it either does not respond to stimuli and is dead or jumps and runs and you need a new pair of hunting pants.
The point is, dead people can’t make themselves live, dead people can’t respond to stimuli.
Those dry bones in Ezekiel we heard about last week.
They couldn’t make themselves come alive
Apart from Christ and apart from Grace, you were dead, and
And later in this same passage of scripture we see that this is a gift, not a result of works
YOU DID NOTHING TO DESERVE YOUR SALVATION FRIENDS
You don’t give yourself a gift.
That should humble us to service.
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
And in Romans 5 we see it spelled out over and over
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.
For if many died through one man’s trespass
For if, because of one man’s tresspass, death reigned through that one man,
Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men.
In Adam, we all sinned, we all died in Adam,
