From Death to Life

Introduction:

My family recently discovered a show titled “Home Free.” I’m not sure if you are familiar with the premise of this show or not. The show featured 9 couples from various walks of life competing to win a “dream home.” The host of the show had purchased 8 homes that were going to be remodeled for a deserving family. Each episode, the couples were split into two teams, and assigned a specific area of the home to remodel. The show followed the drama of teams competing for a chance to move on to the next round.

At times you could sense the tension between couples and teams as they had placed their hopes and dreams into this second chance at life. Many of them had given up everything for a shot at winning this home. There was even a sense of desperation because this was it…

At the end of each episode judges are brought in to examine the remodel and critique the work, ultimately deciding the winning team which is automatically safe for the next round. The losing team has to face the host who then decides which couple is to be eliminated. It’s such an interesting social experiment.

The remain safe couples are loaded onto a bus and the eliminated couple stays behind. They are completely dejected, hopeless, angry, hurt, confused, embarrassed… They had rested their dreams and future on wining.

Here’s where the show gets fun! Each couple that is eliminated actually wins the home that was just remodeled. Talk about tears!

In one particular episode, a male contestant was particularly angry… at first he didn’t want to shake the host hand. He told he host his decision was wrong, that he shouldn’t have been eliminated. He grieved about the loss and wrestled with the loss of his last chance. After some time, the host gave the couple an opportunity to meet the deserving family that was going to receive the home. He guided them into the home, and then pulled from drawer their picture. They were the deserving family!

I loved the reactions! The once angry man who argued about the judges decision was immediately overwhelmed with the kindness and blessing he was just given. You know, what stuck with me about his first reaction to being given this amazing gift… “I don’t deserve this.”

Dead in your trespasses:

Paul has just laid our for us this amazing truth that in Christ we have:

Every Spiritual Blessing (Eph. 1:3)

We are chosen by God to be Holy (Eph. 1:4)

We are predestined for adoption, we are God’s family (Eph. 1:5)

We have redemption and forgiveness in Christ. (Eph. 1:7)

God’s mystery of reconciliation has been revealed to us (Eph. 1:8-9)

We have an inheritance held secure by the deposited Holy Spirit into our lives which is our seal of promise. (Eph. 1:10-14)

But it’s hard to appreciate a gift you don’t think you need…

See, Paul took us through a journey of what we have “In Christ” but now we need to remember what it’s like “Outside of Christ.”

Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

The first truth Paul is contrasting is this:

We Are Dead:

Everyone at one time is spiritually separated from God… That is all of us.

Separated and alienated from God

Why? Notice what Paul says, “our trespasses and sins” yielded the consequence of separation.

One can appear to have life and vitality in the physical, or the mind of a scholar, and have the success and fame of a superstar, but Paul says regardless of our earthly standing, we are all dead outside of Christ.

We Are Enslaved:

Ephesians 2:2 in which you previously lived according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of this power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.

Follow the ways of this world.

Non-Christian value system.

This value system is created by and energized by Satan (The ruler of this kingdom)

This is a value system organized and without reference to God. Secularism.

It is an assault on our sinful tendencies and enslaves those within it:

political oppression, bureaucratic tyranny, materialistic thinking - glorifying the consumer, by poverty, hunger, unemployment, racial discrimination, or any form of injustice.

People find themselves in Pop-cultural bondage. Driven by our senses through the influence of society that demands our attention.

Encourages disobedience towards the things of God.

Just for free: Too many times, we as God’s people try to apply the wisdom of this world inside the church.

If we forget our previous spiritual condition we sometimes default to fallenness. It becomes easy to apply man’s prescription instead of God’s.

Remember, God’s Kingdom is Alice in Wonderland. It’s upside down from the value system of the ways of this world.

The world says:

“Be great and leave your mark!”

Jesus says, “If you want to be great, serve” Mark 10:43

The world says:

Follow your heart and trust yourself

God’s word says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” God says, “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jer. 17:9-10

I was at a men’s conference once and the speaker was using 1 John as his text. I’ll never forget this…

1 John 1:8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

He then said, “We all have the infinite capacity for self deception.”

The easiest thing, and perhaps the most dangerous thing is to assume that Spiritual alienation doesn’t apply to you.

It’s always a good time to pause and take an inventory. To look at your life and decisions and ask the difficult question, “Who’s way am I following?”

Following our own desires

Eph. 2:3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carting out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

It’s a “Burger King with a side of Sprite” kind of world.

Burger king has a new slogan..

It used to be “Have it your way”

now it’s “Be your way”

Do you remember Sprites slogan?

“Obey your thirst”

The world is “thirsty”

Paul is speaking of the bondage of the self

In the physical:

Paul is not objecting to the natural desires for food, or sleep, or love… It’s when these things are perverted into gluttony, laziness, or lust.

The natural consequence of what we sow. Sin has built into it judgement… Alcohol abuse leads to cirrhosis of the liver.

Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever one sows that will he also reap.

A mind unable to see the truth of God’s kingdom.

We not only suffer under the passions of the flesh, but of the mind as well.

intellectual pride, false ambition, rejection of known truth, vengeful thoughts…

The desires of the flesh cover all sorts of ugly:

ancestral pride, race, religion and righteousness...

“Where ‘self” rears it’s ugly head agains God or man, there is “the flesh”

Education and wealth does not provide access or give the capacity to relate to the Spiritual realm.

Listen, however respectable a disguise the flesh adopts, our ingrained self-centeredness is a horrible bondage.

We are condemned

This description of the fallen condition ultimately leaves man condemned.

God’s wrath is not like man’s wrath.. it is not a “fly of the handle at any moment full of malice or animosity, arbitrary wrath.

God’s wrath is not impersonal.

The Message of Ephesians c. We Were Condemned

So what is his wrath if it is neither an arbitrary reaction nor an impersonal process? It is God’s personal, righteous, constant hostility to evil, his settled refusal to compromise with it, and his resolve instead to condemn it.

You know where you stand with God.

The Message of Ephesians c. We Were Condemned

We need, I think, to be more grateful to God for his wrath, and to worship him that because his righteousness is perfect he always reacts to evil in the same unchanging, predictable, uncompromising way. Without his moral constancy we could enjoy no peace

The Message of Ephesians c. We Were Condemned

Death, slavery and condemnation: these are the three concepts which Paul brings together in order to portray our lost human condition.

The Message of Ephesians 3. Resurrected with Christ (2:1–10)

For what Paul does in this passage is to paint a vivid contrast between what man is by nature and what he can become by grace.

Praise God we have Ephesians 2:4-5… But God,

Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You were saved by Grace!

The Message of Ephesians 2. Man by Grace, or the Divine Compassion (2:4–10)

Thus God has taken action to reverse our condition in sin. It is essential to hold both parts of this contrast together, namely what we are by nature and what we are by grace, the human condition and the divine compassion, God’s wrath and God’s love.

Like the contestants of the show Home Free:

We were judged

We were hopeless

We were lost and without the resources to redeem our situation.

BUT GOD!

Loved ones - if you are watching this today and you are realizing for the first time you’ve been living in a system that uses and abuses you.

You have value and worth

You have been created in the image of God

Yes, sin has broken us… BUT GOD moved to redeem us.

Respond to him today… Just simply say to the Lord “I surrender”

If you took that step or need to talk with someone, I’d love to hear from you. Please connect with us:

Harvest Bible Chapel Nashville Central .org

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Church Family… Next time you feel alone, or the temptation to judge, or the desire for revenge, or the sting of pride, or the pull of jealousy.. Remember these words, “BUT GOD”

Now listen… don’t be like Las Vegas.. “What happens here stays here.” Let’s take this with us!