Made Alive (Preaching Workshop)

Welcome

Good morning! I’m excited to be preaching from God’s word this morning a message from Eph 2:1-10. Let’s read it together, pray, and then dive in.

READ Ephesians 2:1-10

PRAY

Introduction

One of the joys of being a dad is watching my daughter learn about the world around her. One of the very important things she’s been learning recently is the magic of batteries.

She’s beginning to grasp that if she gets a new toy and it doesn’t turn on like she hoped it would, she just needs to ask me, her dad, to put in batteries for her. Instead of losing hope of ever enjoying this precious toy, all she has to do is ask dad to step in and turn it on.

In a similar way, you and I MUST COME to this realization. That we can, we MUST come to our Heavenly Father for help in ALL THINGS…especially when it comes to precious souls.

As our passage makes clear, without Christ humans are DEAD in our sin…and we need to be made alive with Christ! And it is the Lord alone that we must come to, God we must rely on for ANYONE to be made alive.

The title of my sermon is MADE ALIVE. We’ll look at our text in 3 sections today: Our State Before Christ, Our State In Christ, and Our Future In Christ.

Brief Context

We jump in near the beginning of this letter to the Ephesian believers, right after the apostle Paul finishes writing out a prayer for them. And now, in chapter 2, he shifts his focus from Christ to us…and then brings us right back to Christ!

Our State Before Christ

We begin with section one: our state before Christ. We see here that we are spiritually dead, lifeless, in our trespasses and sins before Christ.

At the outset here, this should liberate us in our hope to see our loved ones saved and transformed with the Gospel…YOU can’t make them alive, only God can!

Getting frustrated with how your unbelieving friend or family member is living is like walking into a morgue and getting upset that all the bodies are dead!

They don’t need 7 Steps to Living At Their Full Potential…they need to be made alive!

In our state before Christ, we walked, or lived in, our trespasses and sins. We didn’t just BARELY cross the line, we RUSHED to violate the commands of God.

We weren’t sort of missing the mark, we weren’t even trying! We LIVED it, LOVED it, and knew nothing BUT our sins and trespasses.

Hear me: your sinful state is SO much worse than you think it is. That little white lie? Those foul words you let out around certain people? The videos you look at when no ones watching? The way you talk about people behind their back? Those are marks of a spiritually dead person!

We get into trouble because we don’t really believe Paul. We try to make our sins and our trespasses not seem so ugly. Instead of thinking of sin like it is, we convince ourselves that “everyone lives like this, so why can’t I?”

Dabbling in sin as a Christ follower is like enjoying hanging around in a graveyard…if you’re alive..you don’t belong there in Christ!

Paul ends this section by stating that we were by NATURE children of wrath. Our very state, who we are as people, is sinful. We were born into it…into original sin.

Our greatest enemy is not the outside world. Its not your spouse, your children, or your boss. Your greatest enemy is YOU!! Due to your inherited sin nature!

Now, while that it is true…don’t glance over the tense of the words here…“And you were dead”, “sins in which you once walked”, “among whom we all once lived”,. They are ALL past tense!

For the believer…verses 1-3 USED to describe you…not anymore! For the unbeliever, verses 1-3 are your present reality…please listen for what could be your reality if you would repent and believe today.

Our State in Christ

Our next section is our state 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 AN ABUNDANCE of (rich in it)…and His great love EVEN WHEN we were dead in our trespasses…and He 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!

Recently, I attended a Christian club in a local high school. There were a couple students that got up to share what they called a “faith story” and it essentially was a type of testimony to share how the Lord had been moving in their lives.

As I listened to these students share, I couldn’t help but feel heart broken, because it was a lot of “I’m just trying my best with God” or “I’m trying really hard”.

The sad reality is, this is how many of you would share today. A “pull myself up by my bootstraps” kind of story.

You DID NOT and CANNOT earn your salvation! The Lord knows your best and its not enough!

Stop trying to work your way to the Lord OR thinking that you did…rather, be embraced by His mercy and great love.

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 alone!…Him giving us more than we deserve!

God made us alive with Christ because of Himself. To what end? For what purpose? Ephesians 2:7 “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” 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 even clearer on this. They summarize perfectly the whole nature of our salvation: by grace you have been saved through faith. You’ve likely heard that before….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!

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!…because God always has been, always is, and always will be the hero!

Our tendency as humans is to be self-centered. We default into operating like the world revolves around us. We think and operate in the mindset of “I don’t deserve any inconveniences”, “I am in control of my destiny and no one is getting in my way”, or “I will never ask for help because I can’t be seen as weak, that will harm the image I fight everyday to protect”.

The reality is, the believer’s state in Christ is that of a sinner redeemed, NOT by what you did or do but by the grace of God. This passage OBLITERATES human pride and leaves us in all of our God who is rich in mercy, love, and grace.

Let us repent of our selfish pride and bask in the gift and work of God for our salvation.

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!

As Justin Holcomb highlights, we can’t seperate verse 8 and 9 from verse 10. We are God’s workmanship, we belong to Him. And any “good works” we’ve been created in Christ Jesus to walk in is purely by HIS grace alone.

So, follower of Jesus, you were made alive to walk in God’s good works. Fueled by grace, go and make disciples, serve others, be dedicated to your local church, glorify God in what you say and do, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor, 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 state before Christ is dead in sin. Our state in Christ is made alive by His grace. Our future in Christ is prepared for us by God Himself.

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…may we live like it.

PRAY