Made Alive

Welcome

Hey guys! If I haven’t met you yet, I’m Luke, the new Next Gen Director here. I’d love to meet you soon. I’m thrilled to be here and to be preaching the word tonight.

And I’m so excited for this new season we get to be in together. My prayer and hope for us…it’s simple… is that the Lord would light us all on fire to be disciples of Christ and to make disciples of Christ for the glory of God.

THAT’s what we’ll be running after together. Now, lets get into the word…

READ Ephesians 2:1-10

PRAY

Introduction

*hold up DEAD/OFF iPhone*…alright, what’s this? Right, an iPhone. You see, its not lighting up, its not working. Right now, as it sits in my hand, its dead.

Lay it down, stare at it…tap it on the podium…put it on the ground…set it on a chair. Uhhh…its not working??? Guys, its not turning on.

OHH, I have to DECIDE to actually DO something to turn it on, make it alive, give it power!

In a similar manner, you and I are like an off or dead iPhone without Christ…DEAD in our sin without Christ…That’s why the title of my sermon is MADE ALIVE. We’ll look at our text in 3 sections tonight: Our Place Before Christ, Our Place In Christ, and Our Future In Christ.

All in the hope that you’ll see that the main point of these verses is that in our sin, we are spiritually dead children of wrath…BUT GOD choses to make His people alive…all because of His great love, mercy, and grace.

Brief Connection

Two weeks ago, Matt preached in Ephesians 1 and left us with a prayer from the apostle Paul. This prayer ends with Paul just bursting with praise to God. And now, Paul shifts his focus from Christ to us…and then brings us right back to Christ!

Our Place Before Christ

Paul begins with our place before Christ. We are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins before God. What can something that is lifeless do? NOTHING.

Paul uses “trespasses” and “sins” in a similar way to show our fallenness and how bad we miss the mark of God’s standard.

Paul goes on here saying that we walked, lived in, our trespasses and sins. In our place before Christ we didn’t just mess with sin a little bit, we LIVED it, LOVED it, and knew nothing BUT our sins and trespasses.

And…he’s not done yet! Walking in these trespasses and sins in our place before Christ actually means we were following the way of the world and after Satan!

In Colossians 1, Paul calls this the “domain of darkness”. We’re comfortable in the dark before Christ…that’s where we prefer to be.

What that means is your sinful state is SO much worse than you think it is. That little white lie? Those foul words you let out around certain friends? Those are actually marks of a spiritually dead person before Christ!

We get into trouble often because we don’t really believe Paul. We try to make sin not seem so bad. Instead of thinking of sin like it is…a mark of following after Satan, in the domain of darkness…we convince ourselves that everyone else is doing it…so why can’t I?

This applies to sins like gossip, hatred, impurity, and all the rest. Dabbling in sin as a Christ follower is like being cool with hanging around in a graveyard…if you’re alive..you don’t belong there in Christ!

This section of our place before Christ ends with Paul continuing to describe our deadness. We once lived in the passions of our flesh and would do whatever we wanted to do. No regard at all for the Lord, only for ourselves.

Romans 3:10–12 says it like this “as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.””

Better yet…this goes one step FURTHER. Paul says we were by NATURE children of wrath. That means our very state, who we were as people, was sinful. We were born into it.

Some would claim that we can think of it like we’re drowning at sea, Christ throws us a life preserver, and us placing faith in Christ is like us grabbing hold of the life preserver…but that’s NOT what the Bible says here!

What these first 3 verses show us is that actually we’re lifeless at the bottom of the ocean…we have no hope of getting ourselves out. And what we actually need is for Christ to dive down, scoop us up, and bring us back to life!

Did you catch what words are used in these verses? “And you were dead”, “sins in which you once walked”, “among whom we all once lived”, “and were by nature children of wrath”. They are ALL past tense!

If you’ve placed faith in Christ…verses 1-3 USED to describe you…not anymore! If you haven’t placed faith in Christ, please listen up for what could be your reality if you would repent and believe tonight.

Our Place in Christ

Our next section is our place in Christ. Look at verse 4…BUT..GOD!!! This is where the Lord steps into our fallenness with His mercy and love!

God steps in with His mercy…which He has A LOT of (rich in it) and His great love EVEN WHEN we were dead in our trespasses…made us alive together with Christ!

Why did God do this? “Because we brought ourselves to life, decided to follow Christ instead of Satan, started to live out Christ’s desires, and changed our own natures.”

NO!!!…It’s all BECAUSE He is rich in mercy AND His great love. God made you alive not because of anything in you…but because of WHO HE IS! He looked at you and saw a spiritually dead person, we could never even begin to try to earn this!

I know there are some in here that struggle with feeling unloved, forgotten, not cared for, maybe even unlovable. And that may cause you either to isolate and shell up or lash out.

If you are a Christian, God has made you a Christian because He has a GREAT LOVE for you! So don’t isolate, be embraced by the warm love of the Lord. Don’t lash out, find all that you need in the great love of God.

This is a deeper love than you could ever wrap your mind around!

If you’re not a Christian, you’ve never encountered this kind of love before…and man do we want you to!!

See the great love God has shown in verse 4 to His people…repent and believe in this God who loves!

The Christian has been made alive TOGETHER with Christ, unified to Him by His blood! Paul makes it super clear…we are saved by God’s grace! He did it…you never could!

One Bible scholar said it this way “Verse 4 is like a lighting bolt from Heaven.” (Baugh). In the midst of the lostness, death, and darkness of verses 1-3, GOD steps in mightly!

The Lord not only saves us but raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly places! In us being unified with Christ, we are actually seated with Him!

My question is…HOW? How does the person dead in sin, following Satan, doing whatever I please, sinner by nature…become seated with Christ in the heavenly places? There’s only one answer guys…grace. The sweet, powerful, effective grace of God.

And this speaks directly to the person in here tonight who is struggling with self worth. Or feeling abandoned or forgotten. If you have placed faith in Jesus, God has not forgotten you. God has made you new because He loves you. And He hasn’t and will never leave you…if you believe in Christ He has seated you with your Savior!

God made us alive with Christ because of Himself. To what end? So that what will happen? Verse 7…that God’s grace in kindness toward us believers in Christ might be displayed! God is for HIS glory! If He was for yours, there would not ever be any glory to be celebrated!

Even our own salvation isn’t about us, God’s the main character!

Verses 8 and 9 are just the bread and butter. They summarize perfectly the whole nature of our salvation: by grace you have been saved through faith. You’ve likely heard that before if you’ve grown up in church and student group….but what does that mean exactly?

It means that you being saved was ONLY an act of God. It is by grace that we are saved through faith. Grace does not make faith unnecessary. No, grace is what makes faith possible!

Without the grace of God…no one comes to faith in Him!

How could I possibly say such a thing? Because the rest of verse 8 makes this very clear: you being saved is not your own doing but a gift of God! It does not stem from any type or amount of works we could do…so that no one may boast!

Why is it that no one may boast? Because God raised us up with Christ to put His immeasurable riches of grace in kindness toward us on display!

It’s widely known that your generation, most of you, are the most anxious generation there is. There’s lots of causes and possible causes for this: smart phones, internet, social media, so on.

However, I would argue the main reason people your age are so anxious is because you either don’t know or have forgotten the MASSIVE truth of verse 8-9.

This also speaks to the prideful person who thinks that “if I just try really really hard, I’ll earn God’s favor”, “I got this”, “my life is up to me and me alone”.

You could never earn your salvation…God’s favor! It can’t happen in your natural state outside of Christ. (Even in Christ, it’s the Holy Spirit carrying you!) If that’s you struggling with anxiety or pride tongiht tonight, let the truth of these verses wash over you: God has done it!

You don’t have to worry, your biggest problem (of sin and being a sinner) is solved in Christ alone!

Be humbled under the weight of His glorious grace.

This is why we can’t walk (constantly, continuing) in sin as Christians…God has made us alive in Christ and dead to our old sinful ways! It’s like if I were to say “man, I really want to connect with these students, I want them to like me, so I should start using their sayings.”

So, if I start going around and saying 6,7 all the time, talking about rizz, or saying cap or bussin, it’ll never work right? It’s cringy and weird.

Same goes for the person made alive in Christ! We don’t live anymore in the dark graveyard of our sin, Christ has brought us into glorious light with Him!

Our Future in Christ

We end this section with such an encouragement from Paul regarding our future in Christ. The follower of Jesus is God’s work of re-creation, making us into the image of Christ. We have been re-created, made alive with Christ, born again for good works…that God Himself has prepared for us, that we should live them out!

These good works look like obedience that brings glory to our Father in Heaven. And they are works that don’t end until the Lord calls us home. God’s grace that makes us alive doesn’t just leave us here purposeless…His grace enables the purpose of your life!

Odds are many of you are worried about how your future will shake out…commit verse 10 to memory! God has good works for you…that He’s already planned out specifically tailored for you!

They are works that will bring God glory by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit in your life. Jesus spoke to this in John 15:8 “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”

Follower of Jesus, you were made alive to walk in God’s good works. So, fueled by grace, make disciples, serve others, be dedicated to your local church, honor your mom and dad, glorify God in what you say and do, do your school work even for the glory of God!

And as you live these out, take rest in knowing that God will work in you as He pleases.

Conclusion

Our place in Christ is dead in sin, children of wrath by our sin nature. Our place in Christ is radically saved by God and His riches of mercy, love, and grace. Our future in Christ is joyfully secure in what He has planned specifically for us.

We have been made alive by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Bible alone, for the glory of God alone.

My big question for us tonight is this: How does knowing your place before Christ, your place in Christ, and your future in Christ, as a believer, affect the way you view God AND how you live?

PRAY