Ephesians 2:1-10 - Come alive

A story broke with the 812—Shelby.

In 2016, the year we graduated, she was convicted of an alcohol related charge.

She lost custody of her daughter.

She had always heard the dangers of meth and how it would kill you.

“Let’s find out.”

“It didn’t kill me, but that first time on it got me hooked”

Years of addiction consumed her life.

She had to let other people raise her kids and look them in the eye and say, “You’ll be happier with someone else until I can get right.”

Her dad took her to a grave yard.

“He told me to pick out where I wanted to be buried, because if I didn’t straighten up and get off drugs that is where I was headed. You don’t know how hard that is hearing your parent say that you will die if you don’t get help”

Her father was trying to give her a clear sight of where she was headed.

She was actively pursuing death.

Her father was giving her a lovingly-hard message—calling to her, begging… “Come ALIVE!”

Big Idea: Come alive!

Context

Paul is painting a bigger picture of God’s redeeming grace.

He wants to lead them into worship and adore God.

With growing in their knowledge of God’s power, Paul reminds them of what God has redeemed them from.

This is for them to remember where they came from to show them how God’s power overcomes their brokenness and leads them to sing.

Stand to read

Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV

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.

Leader: This is God’s Word

Everyone: Thanks be to God

Everyone’s encouraged, yeah?

Paul had just prayed for them to grow in their knowledge of God and their capacity to know Him.

They also must remember what God has redeemed them from.

Paul reminds them of their spiritual condition—dead.

At one time, they were dead in their sins (v. 1)

Separated from life with God

Lifeless.

In our culture, we do a good job of hiding from death, so as to not think about it.

Funeral homes do a great job with make up.

Death is no respecter of persons.

The moment someone dies is not often like the movies.

It’s cold and undignified.

Death watches us, stalks us, takes aim and shoots straight. It doesn’t miss.

Spiritually, they were dead in their sins.

Rotten to the core.

In active rebellion against God’s righteousness.

They followed the latest trends and cultural norms

They gave into their own fleshly desires.

They were like the rest of mankind—children of wrath

This includes you and me…

Church,

We are dead without Christ (vv. 1-3)

This is true of every single human being.

This isn’t the funeral home kind of dead where people say, “They look so good.”

This is spiritual ugliness.

At best indifference toward the things of God.

At our worst, we are enemies of God and so evil.

There is a major issue…

“children of wrath…like the rest”

This is the outworking of God’s righteous hatred toward sin.

Anger building up for so long it explodes and it’s justified.

“It’d been a long time coming. Told you it was coming.”

God’s anger and wrath is something people try to dodge because we don’t like to think about what He’s truly capable of because of our sin.

We all deserve to face His wrath—This is an exceptionally terrifying reality.

A lion is a beautiful and majestic.

Jakka in the cage.

Why do we revere lions?—It will unceremonially kill you in an instant.

This will drive us to admire their power and beauty because we know what they’re capable of.

If we are to grow in our awe and wonder of God, we must sit and humbly remember who we were without Him and what His wrath can do because of sin.

Transition

What leads us into thankfulness is that we haven’t received this wrath..

Just when things couldn’t look more hopeless, Paul hits the best phrase in the history of words that have come out of a human face.

Ephesians 2:4–7 ESV

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.

God’s mercy on His helpless enemies flows from His loving heart. Nothing we did to deserve it.

He is under no obligation to save us—He owes us nothing—yet He saves us!

Paul gives us 4 key-Bible words to celebrate God’s character in the gospel.

Love (v. 4)

Before time began, God the Father “in love, predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons” (1:5)

God the Father is committed to saving us in Christ and making us His children through faith in Christ.

Before we ever existed, God had a plan to save us from our sins!

Which leads us to mercy

Mercy (v. 4)

Although you and I deserve the punishment for our sin, God withholds it.

Why does He do this?—Because someone has been punished for you.

God the Father, sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be crucified on your behalf.

Jesus paying for yours sins gives you mercy because you don’t have to pay for them!

God is merciful and doesn’t punish your sins because Jesus took your punishment on the cross!

Which leads us to grace

Grace (v. 5)

God has generously given us His grace by giving us everything we need to be made right with Him!

He gave up His Son so that we could be forgiven, then He raised Jesus from the dead so that you can be raised with Him!

He also gives you His Spirit by faith so that you can live in a right relationship with God!

Which leads us to kindness

Kindness (v. 7)

God’s desire to save you is so that He can show His how immeasurably kind He is toward us.

You didn’t do anything to deserve any of this, but God did so for you to live!

So what do you need?

Church,

We need God to make us alive (vv. 4-9)

God’s desire is for us to live fully alive in Christ

So everything that He did through Jesus in raising Him from the dead, He did for us!

Paul prayed for them to grasp the depth of God’s great power (1:20-21)

He raised Christ and seated Him far above all rule and authority

Paul says that He made us alive together with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places (v. 6)

Jesus is our representative that we’re already accepted into heaven when He came out of the grace!

If our sports team scores the winning point, we celebrate because we won. If our team wins, we win!

We’re not merely spectators.

Because Jesus was raised, we are also raised!

Since we are raised with Jesus, we are also seated with Him.

At a wedding, there are seating charts for everyone to celebrate with the bride and groom.

We are seated with Jesus who is seated next to the Father with full view of every defeated devil of hell!

When He returns, we will take our seats that Christ has prepared for us.

God’s desire is for us to come alive in Christ.

To be completely restored to what He created us for.

Seeing a new human rise from wreckage is moving.

Our sins led us to complete destruction. The world we created for ourselves is a literal hell.

But God offers us a way out at His own expense—Grace.

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

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 is the life God has for you in Christ—You can live resurrected in Jesus

Not because of anything you’ve done—but because Jesus suffered and died on a cross and rose again from the dead.

No one brags about his churchy works. We brag about Jesus alone!

If you’re not a Christian, you need to be made alive in Christ by God’s grace alone.

Will you receive this good news and embrace the new life you’ve been called to?

If you’re a Christian, this is your story to tell.

I was dead in my sins/a rebel/an enemy

Then God made me alive.

Now, I can never be the same.

This leads us to a new way of living.

God has made you new in Christ and given you a new life to show His glory to the world.

Look at what Paul calls us

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

The same word Paul uses for “workmanship” is where we get the word “poem”

It refers to a work of art (Statue, architecture, painting, poem)

The things we do and the way we live should make people say, “That’s a work of God.”

Matthew 5:16 “16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

The instinct of someone who has received the gospel and has a new life is to do good because God has given us His grace.

Our lives are to display the love He has worked in us.

Church

We must live out God’s grace (vv. 10)

A gospel that does not change you did not save you.

The Holy Spirit indwells us and leads us to live our to live Christlikeness.

How do we live in righteousness, being still broken?

Grace. We get to live by the power of the Holy Spirit and see the world and our lives through the gospel.

Shelby got to experience restoration.

She’s been clean for three years and three months.

She’s able to hear how her daughter’s are proud of her.

She’s able to watch them grow.

“My daughter always says that I look so much better nowadays and says she is happy to come home to me”

Shelby didn’t just get clean—Now she lives with this conviction, “I have to do something about this.”

Some people don’t want to tell their story because they aren’t the hero.

She’s leveraging some vulnerable elements of her life in hope to bring other people out of the hopelessness she once felt.

She wants to help as meaning people as possible break the cycle of addiction and escape the living death she once experienced.

As Christians, we must do the same with the power of the gospel.

We get to live in a way that is contrary to the rest of the world—We get to live as confident citizens of heaven.

We get to see things differently than everyone else because we are the workmanship of God, given a new life in Christ!

We get to invite people into this life that God offers us!

A life of redemption and hope in a Savior!

We get to call out to the living dead and say, “Come alive!!”

Will you begin by taking a next step?

What is your next step?

Baptism? Starting Point? Perhaps it’s simply surrendering your life to Jesus.

Take the Next Step

If you’re not a Christian—Come alive.

Confess your sins to the Lord and come alive by faith.

You can say today, “Jesus, I need you. Forgive me of my sins, and help me to live by your grace alone.”

Identify how you’re not living as God’s workmanship.

Invite someone to come alive.