Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

We live in an age where “branding” has become a trite phrase.

It means “self-promotion.”

Today, everyone “promotes themselves.”

They tell about the good things they do through elaborately staged Facebook and Instagram posts.

They ensure you know their latest accomplishment, their newest outfit, and their ideal vacation.

It’s all about “look at me.”

It has infected the church where “marketing” takes center stage.

We need to “market the church” to the world to hear the gospel.

The world needs to experience how wonderful we are, how friendly we are.

We promote programs and events that draw attention to us.

Honestly, we believe we are drawing attention to God, but it is easy to lose God in the noise of activities.

God had a different way of getting the world to notice him.

It still has to do with the church, but it doesn’t take out a Google ad or post on Facebook.

It is more complicated than that.

But if the world sees what God is doing, they will be intrigued.

Let’s find out God’s plan to get the world’s attention.

Discussion

Who We Were

Ephesians is about God putting together one church of different people so the world will know his power.

In this lesson, Paul describes a before and after picture and puts us in the mirror.

Something dramatic happens.

The first three verses use charcoal colors to paint our dim position in the world.

“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.”

(Ephesians 2:1–3, ESV)

In this passage, the term “walk” is the bookend of the section.

This first part describes how we conducted our lives before Christ entered them.

Our spirit had the stench of decomposition.

The future was no more.

No life was there.

Paul uses the conjoined twin words of “trespasses and sins” as his mirror.

The terms indicate many things.

One is a slip or a fall by the wayside.

Sin strays from the road because we ignore we are drifting.

We know better but choose poorly.

My daughter had a first-grade teacher who reminded her students, “Use your good judgment.”

Paul said when it came to our spiritual lives, we didn’t.

We knew better but did it anyway.

Paul wants us to face what sin is—the failure to be what would be and ought to be.

We are either unable or unwilling to become what God intends.

So, we are always short of the mark.

But where does this come from?

It comes from a diversion.

Who distracts you the most?

You might blame TV or someone who wants to always talk to you.

The trust is we are the ones for most of the distractions.

We start thinking about things we need to do, and then our mind jumps to another topic.

Paul says we followed all the spiritual values and beings of the world as a dog responds to a dog whistle.

But why? Don’t we know better?

Sure we do, but that’s not the point.

In the same way, we are the one who distracts ourselves.

As Paul says, we follow this course that continues to work in those who are disobedient because of “the desires of body and mind.”

We often let those words direct us to the seedy places, the filthy spots.

We are much too sophisticated, too refined to engage in all of those “dirty sins.”

But sin doesn’t always have an ugly face with a wart on its nose.

You can wear makeup, dress in tuxedos, and play tennis.

Ladies and gentlemen are sinners because they are at the whim of their desires.

When Paul described the “works of the flesh” (a word he uses in our lesson today), they are not all sensual or immoral things.

“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:19–21, ESV)

Do you get angry?

How about things like character assassination?

Let’s get more base.

Are there people in this world you don’t like?

How do you treat them?

Do you call them demeaning names?

Do you share the post that inflames passions and makes others angry?

Do you wish others did not have what they have because “people like that don’t deserve it”?

All of the ordinary things of life, the traps all fall into are covered.

The respectable sins such as gossip and looking down at others lurk in the shadow of desire.

All are because we want something.

We want to look important, better.

We want more money, more status, more of the world like we want it.

Welcome to the “desires of body and mind” like the rest of mankind.

The best of us are not better than the worst of us.

And none of us can climb out of the pit we fell into.

It takes something else…it takes God himself.

What God Did

I n verse 4, you feel a hard U-turn with the word “but.”

“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—” (Ephesians 2:4–5, ESV)

What did God do for us?

He made us alive with Christ.

It is a word that can mean “raise from the dead” in the same way Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb.

It goes even further.

We come to life, but we are also sustained in life from that moment forward.

But it is “with Christ.”

We are joined with Christ to come alive.

It harks back to Paul’s statement of Romans 6 of “dying and being buried with Christ in baptism” and then being “raised with him.”

The method is to identify, go to the grave, and come back with him through his resurrection.

We are not only cleansed of past sin through God’s plan, but we are sustained in this new life through God’s plan.

In short, God doesn’t make us better.

He makes us new.

But how did this happen?

It doesn’t happen on our own.

It is through God’s mercy and grace.

God sees the helplessness of man and knows how to save him.

Mercy is when you see something so pitiful and know you can change that.

Grace is a word that becomes trite but never with God.

He gives a treasure that can never be repaid.

It is a favor never able to be returned.