Made Alive in Christ: Part 1 (3)

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Introduction

A. We must know we are dead before we can hope to come alive.

B. The first three verses are depressing. But they help us to see that we are saved from death unto life.

I. You were dead

A. You—Gentiles; all of us.

B. Sins (hamartia) a miss. Missing the mark.

1. Sin is the failure to hit the target of life. The failure to be what we ought to be and could be.

2. Good husbands, making life easier for our wives. Good wives, understanding and supportive. Good parents, really disciplined, training our children. Good children. Good workers on the job. Loving and forgiving people.

3. Have we come up to our full potential?

C. Transgressions or trespasses.

1. Paraptoma—a slip or fall.

2. It is losing the way, straying from the right road, failing to grasp, slipping away from the truth that we could have known and should have known.

D. The idea of both words is failure: failure to hit the target; failure to hold to the right way; failure to make life all that it should be.

E. We know that robbers, murderers, razor slashers, drunkards, and gangsters are sinners, but failure takes in all of us.

F. You were dead. Sin kills three things.

1. Innocence. We are never quite the same. Psychologists say we never forget. It is like a stain that cannot be removed. We carry guilt. We are unsure of ourselves.

2. Ideals:

a) The fatal power of sin is that each sin makes the next sin easier.

b) The first stage hates a thing with horror. The second stage sins, but is unhappy and knows it is wrong. The third stage does it without any qualms.

c) Kills the will.

1) After so long, we are helpless against a sin.

2) We become slaves.

3) “Sow an act and reap a habit; sow a habit and reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny.”

G. Look at the text:

1. We have all lived in sin.

2. We followed the ways of the world.

3. We followed the ruler of the kingdom of the air (the devil).

4. We followed the spirit that is now at work in those who are disobedient.

5. We gratified the cravings of our sinful nature

6. We followed the desires and thoughts of our sinful nature.

7. We were objects of wrath.

8. We were dead in sin.

H. Now do you feel sufficiently depressed, guilty, and lost?

II. We are alive by God’s grace

A. Because of His great love for us.

B. God is rich in mercy.

C. He made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.

D. It is by grace that you have been saved.

Illustration
A salesman called on same client twice a year for ten years. The client never placed an order. Each time the salesman said “Thanks, I wish I had 75 more just like you.” After ten years the client placed an order and asked why the salesman would wish for 75 more like himself. The reply: “Well, actually 1 have 300 like you, and I wished that I had only 75.”
Floyd Strater, Sermon Outlines on Ephesians, ed. Sam E. Stone, Standard Sermon Starters (Cincinnati, OH: Standard, 1996), 15–16.
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