But God Online

But God

Prayer

We ask not of you, O Father, silver and gold, honor and glory, nor the pleasures of the world. Grant us grace to seek your Kingdom and your righteousness, and give us what we need for body and life. Behold, O Lord, our desire. May it be pleasing in your sight. We present our petition to you through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is at your right hand, our mediator and Advocate, through whom you sought us that we might seek you; your Word, through whom you made us and all things; your only Son, through whom you call us to adoption, who intercedes with you for us, and in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; to him, with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honor, praise, and glory, now and forever. Amen.

Source: Augustine of Hippo

Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-10

2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,

2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world

and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air,

the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

3 All of us also lived among them at one time,

gratifying the cravings of our flesh m

and following its desires and thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

4 But because of his great love for us,

God,

who is rich in mercy,

5 made us alive with Christ

even when we were dead in transgressions—

it is by grace you have been saved. 6

And God raised us up with Christ

and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,

7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace,

expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8

For it is by grace you have been saved,

through faith—

and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9

not by works,

so that no one can boast.

10 For we are God’s handiwork,

created in Christ Jesus to do good works,

which God prepared in advance for us to do. [1]

Sermon Points

Do you remember when you were a baby.

From the moment you were born your parents started to look after you.

They fed you, clothed you changed you.

You did not do much except, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom and cry… a lot.

Then you started to get control of your head, your neck muscles got stronger.

You could look around, maybe even lift yourself off the ground and roll over.

Before long you could stand, perhaps take a step or two

You began to make sounds.

At first it was a babble, then perhaps a syllable or two

Then you were walking, talking, and getting into everything possible.

Saying things that you heard without understanding what they mean.

Eating everything that you found

Finally, you started to go to school and learn all about math, science, social studies, art, music, and language.

You got tested along the way to show you understood what you needed to

This is a normal path of development for human beings.

No one has ever been born speaking fluently and doing advanced mathematics.

This would be abnormal.

The same thing happens if you do not develop at the same pace as your peers.

Tonight’s scripture is all about a normal spiritual development…

And it can be a hard one to understand.

In fact, it is one that different Christians have different Ideas about.

So tonight, lets have a look at the spiritual development that we all go through in life.

There was a research group in the US that asked Christians how important is your faith to you.

9 out of 10 answered very important!

So, they asked those 9 out of 10.

They asked how you would rate your spiritual maturity,

Most answer that they were above average in all areas of spiritual maturity

So, as we go through this passage today it will give us a chance to examine our own spiritual development and spiritual maturity.

We are going to look at this using 4 simple words; wandering, waking, watching and working.

This is a very broad overview and could be broken down into many smaller parts but for the sake of tonight it will be kept broad

Wandering from God

Waking to God

Watching for God

Working with God

2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,

This is a very powerful start and very important for us to understand our place in our spiritual journey.

This verse teaches us where we are in our maturity and spiritual development, but telling us what we are

We are the walking dead, not the undead zombies as in the TV show, we are not physically dead.

Instead at birth we are spiritually dead, separated from God because of sin.

This is important to understand because it is a key part of understanding our faith.

The Greek used to describe this state is Nekros which only means one thing DEAD.

So we are not spiritually ill, or spiritually challenged, we are spiritually DEAD

To make it clear, many people when they describe coming to faith use the analogy of a drowning man.

You are sinking under the waters of sin and Jesus reaches out to you, all you need to do is reach out and grab his hand and you can be saved.

This is not accurate at all.

WE ARE DEAD, not struggling in the water.

We are at the bottom of the lake of SIN.

DEAD.

Jesus needs to dive into the water,

swim down to us,

drag our corpse back to the surface

and bring us back to life.

A rather large difference in understanding. People of the world who do not have Faith are not sick, or drowning. They are dead. The lack the ability to respond to any spiritual stimuli.

This means that no self-help course, no personality adjustment will help.

If the go to school they become a well educated sinner, if they go to therapy the become a well adjusted sinner, If you put a person in church..

They come out a religious sinner

It is only when a person is put in Christ that they become a saved sinner.

This is what Adam did when he ate the apple. He began the process of death for all humans.

In Romans 5:12 we are told:

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

We are born spiritually DEAD. This is why unbelievers cannot understand spiritual things unless God saves them. They do not make the choice, God does. They are DEAD. They cannot do anything.

1 Corinthians 2:14

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit

They cannot know or understand God, they think everything about religion is foolishness.

We should not be surprised by this, the dead cannot respond to anything, you can poke them, speak to them, slap them even and they will not respond. It is the same with the spiritually dead, they cannot respond.

Furthermore, they cannot become less dead. There are no variations of the levels of dead ness unless you are a fan of Monty python or the Princess Bride where it is possible to be mostly dead, yet not all dead.

Everyone is dead, drowned at the bottom of the lake of sin. And it only God that can do anything to save us.

Remember that Jesus said we needed to be born again to be saved in his conversation with Nikodemus.

3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Born again. How many of us choose to be Born.

No one. None of us had any part of our physical birth. Our parents are whey we were born.

Spiritual birth is the same. It is God who creates our spiritual re-birth and brings us to life.

2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,

Yes, we are still on the first line.

Accepting we are dead we need to understand that we are dead in transgressions and sins.

I think we need to know what the difference between these two things is.

I believe we all have a good understanding of what sin is after looking at the 10 commandments over the last few weeks in Sunday Bible Study

We know the depths of the commandments and how they are impossible for us to follow meaning we are always in a state of sin. Even the simplified form given by Jesus:

37 Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ i 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

is impossible for us to obey fully.

But what about transgressions, this is for those people who have not learned about God.

Just because you are not aware you have broken a law does not mean you are innocent. If you break a law in a country and you didn’t know that you broke the law you are still charged, prosecuted and sentenced according to that country’s laws.

We know that God created everything. So everywhere is God’s country and people need to obey God’s laws, even if they do not know them.

Now we look at verse 2:

2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world

and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air,

the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

We are the walking dead, living in this world.

Following the ways of this word.

Peripteaow – is the word used here. Meaning to order your behavior. Basically to move around the world according to our own desires in the world.

Meandering around, not really with a bigger purpose.

Wandering From God.

The walking Dead.

As in the hymn Come thou Fount – we are prone to wander. To wander from God.

This is the stage of spiritual maturity that all those who are dead to God are stuck at, and the one many of us find ourselves struggling against. Wandering From God to chase our own worldly desires.

BUT GOD,

This is where we wake to God. We had been wandering. Walking from God in the world.

4 But because of his great love for us,

God,

who is rich in mercy,

5 made us alive with Christ

even when we were dead in transgressions—

it is by grace you have been saved. 6

And God raised us up with Christ

and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,

Understanding this phrase But God is core to understanding salvation. Its core to understanding our faith. This is the testimony of every Christian. Everyone who is Christian…

Everyone who is Christian can say But God as the starting point of their salvation.

No one can claim they have always been a Christian,

No one can claim to have always walked with Christ.

We all know that everyone stumbles and falls, that no human being is capable f keeping God’s commandments at all times in all they do and everywhere they go. Keeping them in action is challenging, keeping them in thought is impossible.

So, everyone who is Christian, even those of you who were born into Christian families. Have a moment where they realized that God was working in them and had awoken them to their need for him in their lives. This is the importance of conformation that I spoke about in my sermon in January of this yea.

Amazing Grace sums this up nicely. I was blind, but now I see. We were blindly wandering around the world, spiritually blinded but God opens our eyes so that we may see what it is that we truly need for life.

So why did God do this?

Why did he change the walk of life we were upon?

Why did he chose to swim down to the bottom of the waters of sin and bring us back to life.

who is rich in mercy,

We were living broken and poor in sin and God’s mercy is what takes us up out of this state.

because of his great love for us,

God loves us, all of us, everyone who is saved and everyone who is a sinner. God loved us all before we even knew who he was. He loved us and gave his mercy to us even when he knew we were dead spiritually.

Romans 5:8

7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God loved us when we hated him, when we did not understand who he was, or even care to follow any of his laws. He loved us so much that he sacrificed his only son for us when we would have done absolutely nothing for him.

When you start to see through your opened eyes everything that God has done in your life you will begin to understand the greatness of his love.

And God raised us up with Christ

This is incredible, God raised us up in Christ.

This is where I wish we still help onto the English language and had not let it deteriorate so much.

We were quickened with Christ is the most accurate English translation of the Greek word, Sune-ez-o-poi-a-sen. Quicken use to mean to be restored to life, to be reanimated or reborn in spirit.

How did this happen? How were we raised from the dead.

Some people say they had an epiphany and realized god was real, or they came to the realization on their own. They chose to come to God. DEAD people cannot do that. Dead people cannot do anything. Dead cannot reanimate themselves. God made us alive. GOD not us.

Now we are Woken to God and ready to begin to watch for God.

7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace,

expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Paul loves this phrase In Christ, it appears often in all of his writings.

Paul is telling us that we will be seated with Christ Jesus in the ages to come with God in all of the riches of his kingdom.

The promise of eternal life is given here one God has saved us.

This is the new beginning, we have been raised from the dead spiritually, recognizing that we are a child of God. Now we begin to understand that this world is just a small part of the eternal life that has been promised to us.

We begin to wonder about what will happen after we die. We should be looking forward to the return of Jesus because of the glory it will bring

In 1 Thessalonians chapter 1:

8 The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, 9 for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

We should eagerly be watching and waiting for the return of Jesus.

Not just passively living in this world. But eagerly watching and waiting for Jesus Return of that we can return to our home in heaven.

You see verse 7 tells us that God loves us so much that it will take all of eternity to show us all of his graces,

7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace,

We should always be looking forward to our time with Christ. It should be a focus of our lives and what we do in this world.

And thus the working with God!

For it is by grace you have been saved,

through faith—

and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9

not by works,

so that no one can boast.

10 For we are God’s handiwork,

created in Christ Jesus to do good works,

which God prepared in advance for us to do.

We were Dead, we were Woke to spiritual life and understanding and we can look forward to the richness of God’s glory that we will have in our eternal life through the ages with him.

Yet, we have something which we need to be doing now.

I could spend a long time on

For it is by grace you have been saved,

through faith—

and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9

not by works,

so that no one can boast.

But that will have to wait for another time. Instead let us look at verse 10.

God created us, we are his handiwork

And we were created in Christ Jesus to do good works.

Literally we are the works of God’s god, we are his masterpieces

We are his works of art here upon this world

We may not always feel that way, but the reality is while we may be aware of all of the ways in which we fall short, we are still under construction, God is still at work within each of us and we do not know when he will finish.

Phillipians 1:8 tells us this:

4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

God started working in us and began to make us into the person he has called us to be the day he saved us from being drowned.

However, God’s work in you to bring you into the masterpiece you can be, is done so that he may work through you as well.

When God uses you to do his works in this world you will begin to understand what it means to be fulfilled.

God will work through you at every point of this development.

God is constantly at work in you, when you are strong, when you falter, when you feel like you cannot do things. God is at work in you and through you.

God can change the world through every person that he has saved by using these flawed people so that they can do good works in the world to bring glory to his name.

Paul asked God 2 questions on the road to Damascus.

Who are you lord?

Most of us have asked this question, and maybe even feel we have an answer to this question in our lives.

We may have accepted him as Jesus Christ our savior, who saved us from our death and brought us into life through his sacrifice.

The second question is one that many of us have not asked.

Lord what do you want me to do?

What are the good works that you have prepared for me, so that no matter what calling you have called me into, no matter what profession you have called me into I may be able to serve you and do your works humbly in this world to bring Glory to your name.

Where are you in your spiritual developmebt?

Wandering from God

Woke to God

or

watching for God and working with God

Let us Pray

Final Prayer

Merciful, holy and faithful Lord Jesus Christ,qqqqa you died for our sins and were raised for our justification, in view of your resurrection, we ask that you would awaken us also from the grave of our sins and iniquities, and grant us your grace that we may partake in your resurrection at the final resurrection of all the dead.

[1] The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Eph 2:1–10.