Wk 2 - But God, Rich in Mercy and Love

I Like Big Buts – When God has more…

Wk 2 – But God, Rich in Mercy and Love

Ephesians 2:1-6 (NRSV (NRSVA))

Series Slide

Good morning and happy New Year!  2026 is upon us and 2025 is in the rear-view mirror.  That means it’s time for our new sermon series.  I introduced this sermon series last week, but I know several of you may have missed the intro!  The idea actually started in the middle of a sermon a few years ago when I read a passage and said, “Wow… that’s a big but!”  meaning, we read a passage that said all this bad stuff, then we read, “But God…” and it was all the good stuff that God did.

That got me to thinking… each time we see this phrase “But God…”, we are reminded that God has more than the negative of our past.  In fact, it’s like the passage from Ephesians 3 reminds us:

Ephesians 3:20-21 (NIV)

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

I guess you could say, “God has more than we could ever ask or imagine in the year ahead!”  That is the point of this series.  No matter what happened in 2025.  No matter what we’ve been through since 2019… the Covid Pandemic… the largest denominational split since the 19thCentury… wars and rumors of wars all over the world including what seems like a new one every day… not to mention the things that each of us deal with in our personal lives each day… no matter what, God has more for us in 2026.

God is bigger than the sum of our past… mistakes and all…

When we tie the fact that God has blessed this church with 175 years of ministry, right here on this corner of Corsicana… I cannot imagine what God has in store for the year and years ahead.

What we know is that God has immeasurably more than we can ever ask or imagine!

So, as we get started looking at the first ‘Big But’ of 2026, let us pause for prayer…

<Prayer>

Sermon Slide

How many of you have seen the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano” with Tom Hanks? 

As much as it pains me to say anything from 1990 is a classic… Joe Versus the Volcano is one of those cult classics from 1990.

The movie starts with Joe Banks, a former firefighter turned medical documents librarian, and a group of other employees of American Panascope – a leader in the less-than-pleasant end of the medical supply world.  Joe has been dealing with continuous medical issues since he left the fire department, which are only exacerbated by his demanding boss, Frank Waturi.  When Joe goes to see a doctor, he is diagnosed with a rare disease called a “Brain Cloud,” a fatal disease with no symptoms.  He’s given 5-6 months to live, but told all his ailments are psychosomatic.  It is only because of his hypochondria that they found this rare disease. 

He immediately returns to work, quits his job, and asks the secretary out on a date.

The next day, he is visited by a businessman who offers him the opportunity to ‘die like a real man, to die like the hero that he is.’  Joe is given 4 credit cards with no limits to buy what he needs for the trip, so he can travel in style as he goes to the Pacific Island of Wopani Woo to appease their fire god by jumping in the volcano.

As his expedition begins, an interesting thing begins to happen.  As Joe begins this journey, his psychosomatic symptoms disappear.  It seems that he has found a purpose… sure, he’s about to die, but he has a purpose.  He has a new life… Joe becomes a new man.

It is amazing what happens when we turn from who we were to who we are going to be… who God created us to be. 

This season… this time of year… we all want to be made new.  That’s what New Year’s is all about.

But, you do know that New Year’s is really just a made-up time when we think of restarting and renewing.  The truth is, we just made another lap around the sun, and nothing is different on January 1 than December 31.  BUT… it does mark a day when we can say, yesterday is yesterday… last year was last year… and this is a new year… today is a new day… or as the old phrase that has been attributed to dozens of people says it:

Yesterday is history,

Tomorrow is a mystery,

Today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present.

So, with that in mind, let us read today’s Big But passage one more time:

Ephesians 2:1-6 (3 Slides)

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus

Let’s take that in chunks…

Dead because of our Sin

We were dead because of our sins… following the course of this world…

Now that’s a depressing thought, I guess.  Kinda like ol’ Joe Banks… he was alive, but really not living.  He was spending his days walking a circuitous route into a dull, dark building down to a basement office with flickering fluorescent lighting, working in a position without a future for a boss who had lost hope.

OK, maybe our life didn’t look quite that bleak… but prior to Christ we were all dead.  I love the way the commentary by John Stott, “The Bible Speaks Today,”puts it:

The death to which Paul refers is not a figure of speech, as in the parable of the Prodigal Son, ‘This my son was dead’; it is a factual statement of everybody’s spiritual condition outside Christ. And it is traced to their trespasses and sins.

Stott, John R. W. 1979. God’s New Society: The Message of Ephesians. The Bible Speaks Today. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

And the People's Commentary by Boring and Craddock describes death as more than just the event that happens at the end of our lives; it states that death is “the power that permeates and determines human life as a whole.”  It is that prior life before we knew Christ, we were alive, but not really… we were dead to who we could be, who we should be, to who we were created to be.

All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else…

But God was rich in mercy and love.

But God… Thank goodness for the big buts of the Bible… But God what…

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.

There is another scene in Joe Banks' life where he knows he is going to die, not because of the fictitious “Brain Cloud,” but because of his actual situation.  This time, he is working to keep someone else alive as they drift helplessly in the Pacific Ocean.  They are literally waiting to die, when Joe wakes up one night as the full moon rises over the horizon.  In that moment, all of his past and what little future he has met, and … well, let’s watch these 90 seconds that changed everything for him…

Joe v Volcano Moonrise Scene

Joe wasn’t worshipping the moon, and he wasn’t praying to the Roman Goddess Luna.  Joe mustered every ounce of strength he had to rise and worship the God who created everything.  He didn’t pray asking God for something, he didn’t pray blaming God for anything.

Joe looked up and, as Psalm 19:1 reminds us, “the heavens declare the glory of God.” In that moment, his response to God was thanks.

You could say that once he was dead through the trespasses of his life, following the monotonous dead-end life the world offers.  He was living by the desires of his own senses, a child of wrath, like everyone else…

But God

Say that with me…

But God

That’s right, But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved Joe, saved Joe, and raised Joe up.

If you know the rest of the movie, it ends with the classic word, “And they lived happily ever after…”

That is the difference Jesus makes in our lives.  The movie “Joe Versus the Volcano” isn’t just some romcom… it is a carefully crafted parable about life before and after God.

Just as these verses today are carefully crafted verses about our lives before and after God.

Joe doesn’t know the name of the God he worships and thanks. He’s like the Greek philosophers that Paul encountered on Mars Hill in Athens.  We can read their story in Acts 17… they have this temple to all the gods they worship, but then they have an unknown god placed in the middle… Paul tells them who this unknown God is… Paul introduces them to Jesus.

We know who God is, we know him by the name of Jesus, God revealed in the flesh. A God who saves. A God who is rich in mercy, love, and grace.

I’m done with those verses, 1-3.  Those verses are in our past.  If you are in Christ, you are a new creation… If you are in Christ, there is a new creation… everything has been made new.

We don’t have to drag our past with us into the new life ahead.  I am choosing to step into 2026 holding to verses 4-6.

God has immeasurably more for us in the year ahead.  God has more for you, God has more for this church, God has more for this community, and you get to be a part of all that God is doing because of the truth of these verses…

I invite you to read them with me…

Ephesians 2:4-6

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus

May that be our truth in the year ahead.

Communion…