Sermon Tone Analysis

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…

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

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,

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.

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