Sermon Tone Analysis

Scene 1/ You can’t be alive when you’re dead; unless God does something about it.

Eph 2:1-10

That is the simple truth of Ephesians 2:1-3.

When this passage speaks of death it is a spiritual death, a separation from God.

There is no ability to please God and therefore all hope is lost.

Hell is not a place to party with your mates.

Hell is a place where there are no mates, no love, no fellowship just separation from all that is good, where all hope is lost, forever!

Ephesians 2:1 gives us a simple and straightforward reason for this hopelessness.

Without Christ our sins cannot be dealt with.

All that we do and are is an offense to God and why should he allow something so offensive into his home.

Would you allow a truck load of rotting, unwrapped rubbish to be dragged through your house and left lying about everywhere?

Now I am not talking about hubby’s bait box which he forgot to clean out and left in the laundry.

I am talking about tons of rubbish, all rotten strewn throughout the house.

So why should we expect the stench of our sin to be allowed into heaven?

Why should we expect that God would allow corruption to pollute his throne?

God is a Holy God, pure without imperfection and our sin our desire to live life our way is simply incompatible with the very nature of God.

It is rebellion, worse it is seeking to make our desires better than God’s.

One commentator puts it this way;

“The unbeliever is not sick; he is dead!

He does not need resuscitation; he needs resurrection.

All lost sinners are dead, and the only difference between one sinner and another is the state of decay.

The lost derelict on skid row may be more decayed outwardly than the unsaved society leader, but both are dead in sin—and one corpse cannot be more dead than another!

This means that our world is one vast graveyard, filled with people who are dead while they live (1 Tim.

5:6).[1]”

The Zombie Apocolypse is here now and we are living in it.

We just don’t realise it!

You can’t be alive when you’re dead;

PAUSE Unless God does something about it.

And he has done something about it.

Have a look at Eph 2:4-10

Christ was raised from the dead.

He overcame death.

Because he was without sin.

Because the one true perfect man.

Jesus the second person of the Trinity, God born as a man.

Lived a perfect sinless life in obedience to his heavenly Father.

Because of this, because of God’s love for us while we were still sinners.

Because his heart breaks over each and every one of us.

Gave us the gift, the gift of salvation.

Grace & Mercy.

Undeserved kindness and merit we could not earn.

Now in Christ we are alive, not dead.

Without Christ we are dead, in Christ we have life eternal;

In Christ we are not resuscitated, we are resurrected.

It is a whole new existence now.

Before we were dead, now we are alive.

We are united with Christ, we are not only allowed into God’s house.

We are welcomed as joint heirs, free from any corruption.

There is no rotten bait smell on us anymore.

Instead we are created into a masterpiece, an illustration of God’s great creative power.

A masterpiece designed to do good work as an example, a living illustration of God’s goodness.

It is more than a dramatic change.

It is a total transformation.

A transformation that is not just spiritual.

A transformation that is not just about us.

It is a transformation that changes the relationship between entire peoples.

Scene 2/ Ephesians 2:11-13 tells us that you cannot be united when you are divided; unless God does something about that as well.

Without Christ there is division & strife between peoples, in Christ there is unity.

If you want to honour God, you need to honour your brothers and sisters who are united with you in Christ, even if they are different from you!

And isn’t this one of the greatest challenges.

Many years ago I was serving as a Youth Pastor in a large inner city church.

In this church there was a young Vietnamese uni student.

She wanted to get baptised and it was my responsibility to make sure that she and her sister understood what Baptism was all about.

Toni & I were invited to her parent’s home; the hospitality was incredible from this couple who really struggled with English.

Now their hospitality, while incredible is not uncommon in many cultures.

Their story of escaping persecution in their homeland, and taking up clothing manufacture in Australia because their qualifications and grasp of English were not up to the standard required to work in their profession as teachers is not that unusual either.

Their story of working long hours to pay for their children to get an Australian university education is also not that uncommon.

But what blew me away was the unity we had in Christ.

These people were committed Christians, we were struggling to communicate.

Our cultures were very different.

But here I was, a young pastor sitting in the house of a mature man, a leader amongst his own people and we had a bond that was far beyond culturally expected hospitality.

This was the unity of Christ.

It is this unity which is unique in the world.

Other religions do not have it.

There might be a common set of beliefs, but it is a commonality amongst diversity.

Other groups may have a unity, but it is a unity of ethnicity, a unity of having been born into a certain group.

It may be a unity of country of origin, of belonging to the same sporting club.

The unity of being in Christ is very different.

It is more than a common set of beliefs.

It is a common relationship with our creator.

A relationship which makes us one.

Equal in God’s sight because we are all equally in need of God’s grace.

Scene 3/ Life & Unity is a sign that a group of people belong to God, no matter how diverse those people are.

When that life & unity is evident, then Christ is honoured and we are living lives worthy of our calling

Have a look at Ephesians 2:14-18

These words were written to a mainly Gentile church.

There were the Jews & then there was everyone else, the Gentiles.

Those who had not received the commandments and laws of Moses which are referred to in verse 15.

There was not unity.

There was exclusion.

This was the holding of people at army length because they were considered unclean.

This was seeing others as inferior.

A gentile could not enter the temple in Jerusalem to worship God.

That was only for Jews.

This was racial segregation punishable by death.

There was a wall in the Jewish temple, separating the court of the Gentiles from the rest of the temple areas.

Archaeologists have discovered the inscription from Herod’s temple, and it reads like this:

No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surrounds the sanctuary and enclosure.

Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.[2]

But this is not how things are now.

There are no longer those who are close to God and those who are far off.