The Testimony of Grace
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a trespass is when we occur a debt, our sins pile up like debt. Every time we sin we go further and further into debt.
Stories and Testimonies
What sort of testimony will these kids have?
You have to know the bad news in order for us to understand the good news.
My prayer is they will have a testimony of lifelong faithfulness to the King.
I know if we had a time of testimonies among those who are here today there would be stories of some dark and painful seasons
Time’s in your life where you were running the opposite direction of Christ.
Times when you were living as a rebel to the king, as one who was indifferent or even antagonistic to the Gospel.
I love hearing stories and testimonies of how God redeems, renews and restores people back to himself.
Not only do I love hearing individual testimonies, but i love hearing stories of families, of towns or cities that repent and turn to Christ.
We often think about testimonies as being personal, but there are corporate testimonies as well. In fact, the story of the bible is the testimony of the people of God.
Have you ever thought about that? How the bible tells your story?
Because God is growing us up into one body, we are one people, we are the bride of Christ.
So when we read about the exile, that is our story,
when we read about the exodus, that is our story
In Ephesians chapter 2 Paul is telling the Ephesians about their testimony, and this is just as true of the gentiles as it is of the jews, and it is just as true of Paul as it is for us and the kids who just walked back.
And like many testimonies we here, this one starts with a very dark backstory…
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
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—
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.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
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—
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.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
Sins
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
1
Paul begins chapter 2 by stating the reality of sin’s curse on all humanity.
He says, you were “dead” in your trespasses and sins.
If you remember in the garden of Eden what was the conseequence of disobaying God?
look at what God says to Adam in Genesis 2.17
Literally in
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Much like children, Adam and Eve first had to learn to obey God and in doing so they would mature to the place where they could handle the knowledge of good and evil.
And what did God say, for the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
literally translated it would say, “for the day you eat of it dying you shall die.
So this death is a holistic death
dying you shall die.
because of sin, mankind is constantly dying
So when Paul says,
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
He is saying that you, you Ephesian gentile people, were dead
You were spiritually dead, like all mankind outside of christ
You were a slave to sin
You were alienated from God
you were under the power of death
you lacked the capacity for spiritual life.
you know, we often think that our spiritual condition apart from the work of Christ is not all that bad.
People are not spiritually dead, they are more like spiritually sick, they have the spiritual sniffles, and Jesus is the medicine.
Everyone has some sort of spiritual life inside of them, a light within that if they only listen to that light they will choose Christ. (this is more in line with paganism that with Christianity)
Dead, not sick
for the wages of sin is not illness, but death.
What sort of death is this?
going back to the garden we see that God say that if Adam disobeys and eats from the tree, he will die… The literal understanding of this is dying you shall die.
dead people cannot have no life in them,
The death of sin is a holistic death
Spiritual, relational, emotional, and physical. Sin brings death to all things.
Not sick
dead people cannot hear, they cannot see, they cannot respond.
We often think we are not dead apart from Christ, rather we are spiritually sick, we have the spiritual sniffles, and Jesus is the medicine.
There is a reason why we don’t go to cemeteries to ask the dead to make a decisions. We don’t ask the dead to chose life, they are unable to chose anything because they are dead.
this is reinforced by the way we share the gospel
This is the picture the bible gives us of our spiritual status apart from Christ, who is the way, the truth, and THE LIFE.
We struggle to share the gospel as life to those who are both dying and are dead.
We fail to see the power of the gospel as that which brings life from death
Instead we talk about how Jesus can help you when you’re having a bad day
or, Jesus is the cherry on top of your already perfect life.
Yet, this Jesus is not all that interesting to people.
This Jesus is not even all that interesting to Christians.
And this is why we have to remember our testimony, we have to remember the story of our redemption
Now, for these Christians in Ephesus, and for us today, to truly begin to understand the power of the gospel we have to understand our reality apart from Christ.
This is our story, before Christ we were dead.. dying we shall die.
The story of the person who walks away from a horrific car accident without a scratch is a better story than the one who walks away from a pillow fight without a scratch.
Paul wants all the glory to go to God for what he has saved us from, and what Christ has saved us from is far more horrific than we realize.
In fact, we see this when we look at what were were dead in.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
Paul does not leave this death as a general sort of death, but he says were were dead in the trespasses and sins
So what does it mean that we were dead in our trespasses and sins?
And why use the words, “trespasses AND sins” aren't they just synonyms?
in fact, many commentators say yes, they are fully synonymous and there is no difference in meaning.
but to take these words a synonymous is to flatten them out and lose the power of what Paul is saying.
Example***
The World’s Strongest Man Competition
If I want to tell you about the strongest man in the world, it is better to describe the fact that he can pull an massive tour bus with a rope, that he can lift the front of a car with ease, that he can pick up over 800pounds and walk it back and forth on a field.
I could just tell you, haf-thor Julius beer-spin is the strongest man in the world
Its better to describe the world’s strongest man than just saying, “he can lift more than anyone else”
Or I could tell you how he
However, for you to appreciate the strength of the world’s strongest man, you have to know what a tour bus is, you have to know why kind of car he was able to life up, you have to know how much 800 lbs weighs...
pulled a greyhound bus
lifted the front of a car
carried 825 pounds
And for us to know how powerful the gospel is, we have to know what it saved us from, and trespasses and sins, like the car or the tour bus, describes the the power of the gospel.
how he deadlifted 1041 pounds
There is so much more appreciate when you hear and understand the details of a story.
And this is what paul does in verse one.
So what is Paul saying when he says we were dead in our trespasses and sins?
To understand this significance of this, we need to, of course, look to the OT.
And we will see that understanding Trespasses and sins allows us to understand the glory and power of this testimony.
So if we were to go back to the OT and try and figure out the connection between trespasses and sin the best place to look would be in the sacrificial system.
And this would be exactly where Paul wants us to look because the trespass and sin offering were closely connected.
They were both atonement offerings that demanded death.
which is why we were dead in our trespasses and sin
because, t
yet, each one highlighted a different aspect of our need for atonement.
1. The sacrifical system illustrates well how death and sin and connected.
2. the whole sacrifical systme, both the ones ones that dealt
They add the colorful details to the story of our need for redemption.
Trespass and Sin Offering
Trespass and Sin Offering
Both of these offerings are found in the book of Leviticus
a trespass is when we occur a debt, our sins pile up like debt. Every time we sin we go further and further into debt.
The Trespass Offering
Sins
The trespass offering deals with the debt of our sin.
the offering was a coming to the alter with a goat as compensation and restitution for what he has done.
So the sin incurred a debt, and God allowed people to bring a ram as compensation and restitution.
So at the heart of the trespass offering is paying back a debt.
This is why there is often confusion around the Lords prayer
says,
For give us our debts/trespasses as we also have forgiven our debtors/ those who trespass against us
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
There are people who memorize the verse in different ways, because the idea goes back to the trespass offering, we pray that God will forgive the debt of our sins.
and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
Trespass = Debt
Trespass = Debt
When we sin we occur debt, and our sin debt piles up the more we sin.
its like having a credit card with no limit, while also having no job with income.
You go out and purchase a $800 stove, and a $1800 refrigerator you immediate fall into $2600 of debt.
However, a stove and refrigerator do you no good unless you have food in the house… so you go with your credit card and buy $400 of groceries, now you are $3000.
And the problem is, there is no income to take care of this debt.
So as Paul says we are dead (spiritually speaking) in our trespasses… in this example with the credit card, you would be financially dead unable, not unwilling, but unable to payoff your debt.
There is nothing we can do to pay back the debt of our sin. Every time we sin, we go further and further into debt without any ability to pay it back. for we are dead in our trespasses
So for us to be free from this debt, we need someone who has great riches to save us!
Looking back at verse one we will see that we are not only dead in our trespasses, but we are also dead in our sin
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
The sin offering is also found in
The sin offering had to do with being made clean.
Israel had to offer a sin offering when they would become ceremonially unclean
If you touch or eat something that is unclean, if you get leprosy you become unclean.
To be unclean is to be driven away from the presence of God.
Do you remember the story of Christ healing the leper in Mark chapter 1?
The leper was outside the city, for those who had leprosy were unclean and were not allowed in the temple.
To be a sinner was to be unclean, unable to draw near.
So Israel would come and offer a sacrifice that took cleansed them from their sin, that washed them of their uncleaness.
And apart from the sin offering, they would remain far away.
So Paul is saying we are dead in our sins.
meaning, that every time we sin we move further and further and further from the presence of God
Every sin we commit is another step away from God.
Paul illustrates this point in verse 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—
2
You can see Paul talks about how we, when we were dead in our sins walked, we moved, not toward god, but we moved away from God.
we walked following the course (or pattern) of this world,
We walked, following the prince of the power of the air, this is satan, the Spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
So when we were dead in our sin, we walked following Satan, we walked his course, and it was his spirit that was at work in us, and is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
And who are the sons of disobedience? Well to answer that we need to know who the father of disobedience was.
WHo was the first one to follow the patter, or course of Satan? Adam.
Adam is the father of disobedience when we sinned in the garden and rather than obeying God he obeyed the serpent.
And what happened to Adam after he sinned? he had to leave the presence of God. He had to leave the Garden, he started heading east…
And who was the the first son of disobedience? Cain!
Cain followed the same course that Adam had.
And what happens to cain? he goes further east to Nod, he continues to walk away from the direction of the garden, which was the temple of God.
So when we walk away from the presence of God, and before the work of Christ, before we were adopted as son of God (as opposed to sons of disobedience), we were dead in our sins. Walking away from God unable to turn back.
Paul goes on in verse 3 to flesh out the dire reality of humanity apart from Christ.
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.
So we are spiritually dead in our trespasses
We have a debt we cannot pay, and every sin only adds to the the debt.
And we are spiritually dead in our sins
walking away from God, each step following the path of Adam and cain moving further and further away from the presence of God.
And we all are in this depraved state, for we all lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
This is the story of those outside of Christ, and this is the testimony of you before Christ saved you.
So this is the bad news, this is the details of who we are apart from Christ. And now Paul is about to give us the good news of what God has done in Christ to remedy this dire situation of our being dead in our trespasses and sin.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
But God, being rich in mercy
God is rich in mercy
paul choses to use the word rich when speaking of God’s mercy
The word Rich literally means to abound in wealth, to having an abundance of earthly possessions that exceeds normal experience.
to having an abundance of earthly possessions that exceeds normal experience, rich, wealthy
For us to have the debt of our trespasses paid, there must be one who is abounds in the riches of mercy.
God has the wealth, the riches, the abundance to pay our sin debt, To pay that credit card bill for us.
There is no debt of sin that the riches of God’s mercy cannot pay.
Paul then says, “because of the great love with which he loved us”
because of the great love with which he loved us
This great love corresponds to us being far away in our sin
you see, “Great love” is a love that draws near, though our sin, our uncleaness, has driven us away from the presence of God, because of his great love he has drawn us near.
God has not loved us from afar, love is not love if it keeps us at a distance.
This is what the incarnation demonstrates with such glory,
God loved us with such a great love that he sent his son to come get us, so that who ever believes in him will not parish, will not die in their sins and trespasses, but rather have ever lasting life.
This is the love of God, that he came to us to bring us to himself.
God left the garden headed east to rescue the sons of disobedience, adopt them into his family so they would become sons of God, and then bring them back to the garden.
Which Paul says in verse 6
and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
He raised us up, he entered the death of our sin, he went east of the garden away from his temple, and brought us back
He raised us up and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
he has brought us into the sanctuary of God
He has made us holy
Remember what holy means, able to stand in the sanctuary of God
What a glorious gospel! We were unclean sinners running away from God unable to turn back, yet because of his great love, he drew us near, he made us holy, and he has seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ.
In verse 7 Paul deals with our trespasses, with the debt we have in our sins.
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
This is such a great verse, Pauls says that Christ has come and rescued us, brought us to himself, seated us in the heavenly places for a reason...
SO THAT in the coming ages he might SHOW the immeasurable riches of his grace
You and I are living and breathing exhibits of the richness of God’s grace!
Throughout the ages God has called his people to live to showoff, to demonstrate, to reveal and and signify what it looks like to be men and women who who have been drenched in the grace and kindness of Christ!
APPLICATION***
Now here is the question that must be asked,
Do you see yourself as a living and breathing exhibit of God’s grace and kindness?
Do you see yourself as a living and breathing exhibit of God’s grace and kindness?
Imagine the story of your life being filmed as a movie for the whole world to see, what sort of character are you?
Are you the type of character you would cheer for if you were watching the movie?
Are you character who builds up others around you? are you the character who who is sacrifices for the good of others?
or, are you the character that shows up on the scene as unpredictable, tense, or foolish?
Are you the actor or actress who’s speech is seasoned with salt, or the one who is abrasive and disrespectful.
Here is an interesting experiment you can run the next time you watch a movie.
Watch what makes the hero a hero
The most admirable hero’s in any good story are so great because they act like Jesus.
The are brave, willing to stand against that which is evil.
They are loving, self-sacrificing, wise, focused, hard-working, winsome, kind and full of grace
Villains are villains because they don’t act like Jesus
they are cowards, self-serving, self-centered, crude, evil, manipulative, short tempered.
So, if you were the character in a movie, which character would you be?
What does you life look like at work? - do you play the hero or the villain?
What about when you are home with your kids?
How do you treat your spouse?
What would your neighbors say about your character in the movie?
Your life is to be a living and breathing demonstration of God’s grace and kindness, however so often we live our lives as demonstrations of anger, bitterness, cowardice and pride.
Church, this is not what God created you to be, this is not the character he casted you to be.
What has God created you to be? what sort of role has he casted you to play?
Look at v.10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
You are his workmanship
The word for workmanship is ποίημα (poy-ay-ma) which is where we get our english word poem.
You are the poem of God, and as his poem you were created or written in Christ Jesus for good works.
This is your script, this is your role, this is who you were created to be, one who lives out the good works of Christ.
And these works, this script was prepared before you were even created so that you would walk or live in them.
you see, the sons of disobedience, like cain walked eastward away from God away from his presence, but God has created you and saved you to walk in the presence of God.
And as we do, the whole world will see the grace and kindness of God displayed in your life!
And this sort of demonstration is not something you can muster, its not something you can earn, its not something that you can even boast in… for to walk in and with Christ is only because of what God has done for you!
demonstrate this point clearly
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Church, your salvation is all of grace, your part in God’s redemptive poem has nothing to do with your good works, it has nothing to do with your ability to be a good person.
For your role in God’s drama is given to you only by the grace of God, and it is received through the faith God gives you.
You cannot muster up the strength to walk as
you see, there is no room to boast in the character God has created you to be. For you are who you are only by the grace of God.
It is by grace you have been saved - it is not your own doing, for it is a gift of God.
And now, as men and women who have been given this great gift of salvation, the gift of grace, and mercy, and peace, and love, and joy, and righteousness, and truth and glory…
Now you are as God’s divine poem, his workmanship, to live as a people who reflect and show off the love of God to a world in desperate need of Christ.
Lets pray.