Latest / HBCWestminster / Ephesians 2 1 - 10 (February 6 2019)
Transcript
- 0:00Ephesians chapter 2, and if you have your Bibles, you can turn there, Ephesians 2. Our text tonight is the text that includes saved by grace through faith. This is the one. I mean, it's the one. If you guys haven't got Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10 memorized, then I would recommend you remedy that. This is the one that declares the goodness of God and our own wretchedness.
- 0:27And yet His willingness to stoop, to condescend, to become like us, to offer His hand in help and grace and mercy, His willingness to...
- 0:37To save is declared in Ephesians 2. This is our passage tonight. It talks about the contrast between what our lives were like before Jesus and what our lives are like after Jesus. And that once He comes in, once He changes our hearts and our minds and our lives, once He quickens us and makes us alive, once the light of heaven shines on us, even in the most dark places in our hearts, once that happens, our lives are never the same. Are never the same.
- 1:08I did a really hard funeral about 10 years ago. And all funerals are hard, but many of them for a person who has lived a full life and knows Jesus and was looking forward to going home, right? Marian Wilkes. That's not a hard funeral. You know, it's a bummer because we have to be parted for a little while, right? But man, every time you talk to her, she just couldn't wait.
- 1:32She couldn't wait. I even shared with you guys that we were praying against each other at one point. Because I liked Marian so much and she was praying that the Lord would take her to heaven. And I was praying against that. And I told her that. I said, you know, that I just, I was praying that the Lord would spare her life because I loved her so much. And so we were praying against each other. But this particular funeral, maybe 10 years ago, was a difficult one because it was for a former high school student of mine.
- 1:57who had contracted a really rare form of tongue cancer. And I had never even heard of it before. But he had cancer in his tongue, right at the base of his tongue. And he was in his mid-20s, had been married only a few years before, had a young son. He and his wife, who was also one of my former students. Very fast-moving cancer. It took him in a matter of months.
- 2:20Just a horrific, horrific thing because the cancer had spread so quickly and everything else right at the base of his tongue had actually ended up severing his tongue. His tongue one day fell out from the base. And so for the last couple of months of his life was in extreme pain, couldn't speak at all. It was just, it was hard. It was a hard thing. And we praise God for his grace and he knew the Lord.
- 2:47I'm thankful for that. But it was a hard event. And what was, if there was any kind of silver lining at the event, though, it was the fact that I had gotten to talk to many of my former students because they showed up for that funeral. Right?
- 3:05And so these kids were coming back from all over the U.S. They had moved. Many of them were no longer walking with the Lord. Many of them were just in very different places spiritually than when I had known them. And so to have this kind of reunion back together was a really sweet thing. And so I thank God for it. But it was a hard day. But I don't know if that's ever happened to you where you've seen, maybe you've gone back to one of your high school reunions and you've seen people.
- 3:36Now that they've grown up, maybe you have this long period of being apart and then you come back together and you see one another. So I began seeing all of these students and all of them knew me, right? But after 10 years, now I'm looking at these kids and they're just not kids anymore.
- 3:50And they've all started having kids. And they've all had another 5,000 cheeseburgers. And so they look different. And all of these kids are coming up to me. Mr. Gardner, it's so good to see you. Pastor Danny, it's so good to see you. And man, do you remember me? I'm like, I have no idea. I need help. Give me a clue. And I'm talking to all of these different kids. And the transformation that had taken place was so radical, so drastic, that I didn't recognize most of them. Has that ever happened to you?
- 4:21You ever go back and look at old yearbook photos? You're like, who is that guy? Oh, that's me. Right? Wait, what? I asked the staff if they would participate. I'm going to show mine first so that they'll know that I'm not necessarily trying to make fun of them. But I do have some pictures. There I am. I was 17 years old. That was my senior year of high school. Yeah, not much. I mean, you can see it's getting thin there even as a senior. But senior year of high school, right? There I was.
- 4:55This one's one of my favorites. Who's that? That's Claudia. Yeah, it's little Jonathan Booker. There he is. You know, there's a reason. If you guys ever hang around us at all, the little crew that came from California, we always call Claudia Dora the Explorer. That's our nickname for her. And it's because of this picture right here. If you guys have ever seen Dora, that's her, you know. She had the day before, tried to cut her own hair.
- 5:27And you can see the notch taken out of her bangs. Apparently her mom was pretty mad about that. There's a good one. Right? Man, Spencer is like, I can't believe she's going out with me. You know, even then, even then you could tell, you know. Oh, gosh. That's fantastic. Lori Wentz. Right? Man, that's a good picture. Okay, it's a little blurry. This is my sister. There she is in high school.
- 6:02before she became a West Virginian. There she is. Jodi, she looks exactly the same. She hasn't changed at all. That is, I don't know, she's like a junior in high school or something. You guys, a whole group of us went to high school together. There she is, Jodi. There's Jeremy, 40 pounds ago. That's a good one. I like that. Carla looks pretty much the same. Nathan's got the Backstreet Boys haircut, right? The frosted tips that never go out of style. Is that the last one? I think it is.
- 6:35You ever go back and look at old photos like that and you're like, who in the world is that? You know, how much have they changed? And to see how we grow and mature and whatever. Sometimes you look back at old photos and you're like, I don't even recognize them. You know, the same thing is supposed to be true spiritually. Spiritually, we should, after time, be pretty close to unrecognizable. Things should change. We should mature, right? There should be...
- 7:03if you don't see somebody for a period of time, man, what a compliment. What a compliment if they were to think of you spiritually and say, I don't recognize you at all. Right? I'm glad I'm not like I was in my 20s. I'm thankful for that. Because the Lord has grown me so much since then. To hear Adam and Jireh, to hear all of these testimonies about how God took them from then and who they are now. And you think, man, praise God, we rejoice.
- 7:30We rejoice in the change that has happened. And that's what Ephesians 2 is about. Ephesians 2 describes our life before Christ. That's verses 1 through 3. That's our past. Then it describes this moment in time in verse 4 where it says, but God being rich in mercy, right? There's this present moment in time where Christ comes into your life and transforms it and changes it and shines light where there was darkness.
- 7:55There's a present. And then there is a future. I'm going to call it our prospect, just to keep it with peas. I thought about calling it our pew chair. I think it's funny that people call these pew chairs. Sometimes I think it's a funny word. Because it sounds a little bit like how Filipinos say the word future. It does, right? I hope to go to the U.S. sometime in the pew chair. That's what I always think. It's horrible.
- 8:24We'll call it our prospect instead. There's this used to be, now is, and here's what will be in Ephesians chapter 2. And so if you guys have your Bibles, let me read it. We'll pray. We'll go through this quickly and be done for the night. Here we go. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1. 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.
- 8:53carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God. That's a great but God. I've got that one circled in my Bible. Praise God for the but God in verse 4.
- 9:07But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
- 9:37For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And Lord, I pray that you bless the reading of your word tonight. And I pray, God, that we would see the glorious riches of Christ that we have inherited because of the gospel. God, make us aware of your spirit at work in our lives even now, changing us, maturing us, growing us into his likeness.
- 10:05God, I pray that it would be true that we would not even be recognizable from the men and women we were before we knew you. Change us, God, for your glory and for our joy. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, having understood the blessings that every believer enjoys, that was a couple of weeks ago in chapter 1.
- 10:27And having received the Apostle's encouragement and prayer to press on toward knowledge of Christ from last week, and man, Alex did a great job with last week's passage. I can't wait to hear him teach again. The Apostle now turns to an explanation of the change that happens in the heart of believers when they receive Christ. Ephesians 2, 1-10 are some of the most famous and most often quoted gospel verses.
- 10:51In the Bible, William MacDonald says this of this text, no Cinderella ever advanced from such rags to such riches as us. In Ephesians chapter 2. Started so bad and ended so good. Ephesians chapter 2. Well, noteworthy in the first 10 verses of chapter 2 is the number of contrasts that Paul lists. And this is written there in your notes. Living in sins, verse 1, versus living in good works, verse 10. That's how he bookends the passage.
- 11:17The course of this world in verse 2 versus the heavenly realms, verse 6. Death in verse 1, life in verse 5. Wrath in verse 4, kindness in verse 8. In fact, the entire passage hinges on a conjunction of contrast. But in verse 4, these famous verses are all about the contrast between our lives prior to Christ and post-Christ. And so let's look at our past. What were we like? There are five descriptions that he gives in verses 1 to 3.
- 11:46Notice first, verse 1 says, we were dead. We were dead, verse 1 says, in the trespasses and sins in which we walked. We were dead. What does dead mean? Not alive. I mean, that's what it means, right? Not alive. It's crazy to me that people would deny the depravity of man.
- 12:13That we would somehow be able to, at least a little bit, I mean, Jesus maybe reached down, but I had to reach up. I mean, there was at least something that I did. Not according to this. We were dead. There was no life. There was no breath. There were no brain waves. There was nothing. Nothing. We were spiritually dead. Now, sins refers to any wrongdoing. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. And whether one is conscious of it or not,
- 12:42Trespasses means to fall over when one should have stood up. It removes our ability to claim any ignorance at all. Right? Not only were we dead in our sins, but we were dead in our trespasses. The word for trespasses is where we get the word trespass. No trespassing. Right? We jumped the fence and went where we were not supposed to go. We did so willingly. Even though we were dead, we willfully disobeyed. And we were dead. That's our past. Second, we were disillusioned.
- 13:10Look at verse 2. We were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked following the course of this world and the prince of the power of the air. The word for course refers to a specific period of time where certain things happen a certain way, when a certain spirit or attitude prevails. We know that we have come to know Christ if our actions and attitudes change. We were disillusioned. Third, we were disobedient.
- 13:41Verse 2 continues. Following the prince of the power of the air, verse 2 says, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience. And more than merely stating that we were like children who were naively disobeying, the word for children is the Greek word hwios, meaning sons. Paul is saying that we were literally sons of the disobedient one. Now here's what that means. You know, you guys who have had kids know that there are some times when your kids disobey when it's cute.
- 14:12Their disobedience is cute. When is that typically? When what? When they're little? Yeah, littlesons are always cuter. I think the cute ones, the cute disobedience is when they didn't necessarily know that it was wrong. You ever had your kids say a word that you know they're not supposed to say?
- 14:37But they said it, and they had no idea what it meant, right? They picked it up somewhere, and they said this word, and it's just in front of you and your wife, and you're like, whoa, right? That's not one that we necessarily read, and he had no idea. There was a naivety there, right? He didn't know that that was hurting somebody's feelings, that was making fun of, he had no idea. And there are times when there really is a naivety and innocence. What this says is that we are not naive or innocent.
- 15:07It's not cute. Our little sins of disobedience weren't cute. This says we were actually sons of the disobedient one. This is calling us sons of the devil. That's what it's calling us. That's what we were like before we were saved. And I wonder sometimes, we were sons of the devil, now we are sons of God, right? And have entered into his glorious light. And I wonder sometimes which father I look and act more like. My current heavenly father?
- 15:36Or do I ever slip back into old patterns, which make me look like my old dad? We were disobedient. Notice it continues, we were defiled. Verse 3 says, we lived among whom, verse 3, we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, were by nature children of wrath. Children of wrath. We lived, we walked in sin, continued in it.
- 16:09We were defiled, last. We were doomed. We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. And despite popular belief, God does not gloss over sin. I think there are people that really do believe that they might be good enough to go to heaven. They're relatively good people, right? And so they'll go to heaven someday. No matter the amount of good works that we do, however.
- 16:37No man is good enough to go to heaven. Every man has unaccounted for sin to deal with. I think that most people who believe in heaven seem to think that something like an aged and maybe slightly senile grandfather figure awaits them at the pearly gates with an ever-ready, you know, you did your best, kiddo, as they pass into paradise. But that's not the case. Divine wrath, according to this, fills humanity's horizon.
- 17:05Very familiar with the holiness of God, the angels that encircle the throne do not even dare to look upon the judge, but cover their faces with their wings. Praise God for Romans chapter 5 and verse 9, which says that we have been justified by his blood and saved by him from the wrath of God. My favorite phrase that Adam used tonight, and I wrote it down. I write quotes down all the time from different people, but I wrote it down. He said this,
- 17:36The gospel doesn't end the moment you get saved. The gospel doesn't end the moment you get saved. And I think it's good for me, especially at times, to remember the wrath that I've been saved from. I heard a pastor say one time, the person he preaches the gospel to most often is himself. He believes it already. He hasn't lost his salvation. But for us to remember what we've been saved from, sure puts into perspective what we are saved to.
- 18:05I think it was a man a long time ago, long since gone to be with the Lord. His name was C.T. Studd. Said that he wished he could dangle every believer over hell for 30 seconds. I wish I could just dangle every believer over hell for 30 seconds. Just 30 seconds. See it. And man, would that make us excited. That we don't have to go there. We've been saved from the wrath of God. That was us. That's what we were like. That's how all of our testimonies begin.
- 18:36Death, defiled, doomed. Verse 4 says, but God. But God. Look again at verse 4. But God, being rich in mercy. Here is our present. Beyond salvation were we that so beyond salvation and incapable of being saved that it took God himself to make a change. Man, whenever I think my sin is not that big a deal, just consider what it took to be saved from it. God himself had to die.
- 19:04You know, man, that helps to put it in perspective. No one else could have done it. No one else would have done it, even if they could have, but a gracious and loving God. And one of God's attributes is that he is rich in mercy, rich in mercy. And he puts mercy on full display with the words, but God, John Phillips says, the butts of the Bible are always arresting. They are hinges upon which great issues.
- 19:27And so rich is the blessed giver that we talked about a few weeks ago, that though it has been expended by him for six millennia, 6,000 years, and myriads and myriads have been partakers of the rich mercy of God, it is still an unexhausted mine of wealth. But God being rich in mercy, he continues, and because of the great love with which he loved us. Because of the great love with which he loved us.
- 19:58And God's love is so great that even when we were dead and defiled and doomed, his love remained. And this might be the best news all night, right? That no matter how ugly each of us is, no matter how vile and disgusting each of us is, no matter what we do, that God is still rich in mercy and abounding in love. That no matter how many times we turn our back on him, he never turns his back on us.
- 20:32chief Montezuma, lead of daughter, and coerced an Englishman, Sir Henry Ryder Haggard. I'm sorry, no, this guy, Sir Haggard, tells of a man. The man's name was Thomas Wingfield of London. Found himself trapped among the Aztec Indians during the final stages of that Aztec empire. He was forced to marry Montezuma's beautiful daughter.
- 21:01And though he thought her beautiful, his heart remained in London and with his childhood sweetheart. But, being a captive and on pain of death, agreed to marry the chief's daughter. And when the Spaniards eventually invaded, Thomas valiantly fought against them for the Indians and for his wife, but the Spanish brought with them the plague. And Thomas' wife contracted it. And the story goes that many whom it did not kill, the plague left horribly disfigured.
- 21:30His wife's greatest fear was that Thomas would leave her even if she survived because of this disfigurement that she had contracted. She would have surely lost her beauty and when she recovered, she asked for a mirror and was relieved to see that she had not shared the fate of so many others. And here's how that author described Thomas' response. So after seeing his wife, not only has she survived the plague, but she was not disfigured.
- 21:59He says, supposing his wife was now, as many were, a mass of dreadful scars, hairless, blind, with whitened eyeballs, should I have then shrunk from her? I don't know. And I thank heaven that no such trial was put upon my constancy. So he says, I don't know if I'd have stayed with her or not, even if she turned out to be horrifically ugly. I might have left. But listen to how he ends, but I'm sure of this. Had I become a leper, she would not have shrunk from me.
- 22:31What I have shrunk from her may be, but no matter what would have happened to me, she would not have shrunk from me. And I imagine this same interplay between God and us. We shrink from him. He does not shrink from us. We take a step back and he takes a step forward. We are horribly disfigured and ugly. And he says, no matter what, even with that, even with the scars, even hairless. Can I get an amen, Greg? Amen.
- 22:55Even hairless, right? I mean, even that, blind and dumb and deaf and everything else you can imagine, God does not shrink. He is rich in mercy and great in His love. Man, what a verse verse 4 is. Verse 5 continues. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.
- 23:20raised us up with Him, seated us up with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. These three verbs, quickened or made alive, raised and seated, are all in the aorist tense. Now what that means is that according to the divine mind, these events have already happened. I know that we don't feel raised up. I know that we don't seem seated, feel seated with Him in the heavenly places. But in God's mind, it's as good as done. Not only did He save us,
- 23:50He has also raised us, exalted us, and seated us with Christ. There's no question about whether he will finish the work. When he says in Philippians chapter 1, he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it, he will be faithful to complete it. The reason he can say that with such confidence and joy is because in his mind he can already see it. It's done. Which is a crazy thing. We have trouble picturing ourselves in heaven. Do you ever try to imagine what it will be like?
- 24:19You close your eyes and you can imagine a hundred years from now when none of us will be here and none of this will be here a hundred years from now, what that will be like, what we will be doing. And it's hard. It becomes very fuzzy, very quick, but not in God's mind. It's done. Quickened, raised, seated. We are even now in God's mind, seated with Christ in the heavenly realms.
- 24:46You know, the devil loves to try to condemn things which cannot be condemned. He loves to try to mess with us this way, threatening us with being found out. Right? Threatening us with that, driving fear into our hearts and minds, causing us to doubt our own salvation even, as if our own salvation had anything to do with us.
- 25:17The only people who can unearn their salvations are the ones that have earned it. Does that make sense? Surely the devil would whisper in your ear, you've lost your salvation because there's no son or daughter that would act that way. Surely God would not accept such a person. And the only person who can unearn their salvation, who could get outside of the grace of God, is the one who earned it to begin with. And if none of us earned it, then how can we unearn it? I love that. Don't let the devil try to condemn that which cannot be condemned.
- 25:51That's our present. That's who we are in Christ. Now let's look at our future. Our future. Verse 7. So that in the coming ages. Here's what we have to look forward to. So that in the coming ages, He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God.
- 26:17And a result of works so that no one may boast, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. In the coming ages, God has a plan to reveal. Now we talked about at the beginning of Ephesians that the whole book is about this mystery being revealed. What was previously undisclosed is now being revealed to mankind. In the coming ages, he says, he is all about showing himself.
- 26:45He's not hiding. And what is it that he wants to show in verse 7? The immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. God, it turns out, has a five-year plan. He knows what he's doing. He knows where he's going. And in the ages after this one, his plan is to reveal to us for eternity his kindness, grace, and goodness. That is what heaven will be like. It will be us realizing more and more and more and more the kindness, grace,
- 27:14and goodness of our God. He continues in verse 8 with the famous, this is the famous salvation passage, by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of your own doing, it is the gift of God. By grace you have been saved through faith. Salvation initiated by God, completed by God, right, all of the work done by God, by grace and through our faith. I tell this story, and I know I've told it to some of you guys before, but it's one of my favorites, about a young man named Kevin, who was then,
- 27:45The youth group that Hallie and I used to run many years ago. And Kevin is now in his 30s, I think, and has a wife and kids of his own. But Kevin at the time was a freshman in high school when I met him. And you guys know I was the youth pastor at a church called Grace Chapel. Well, we had a sister church in the other part of town called Faith Community. And Kevin was raised at Faith Community. And so it was a good church, a Bible-teaching church. But Kevin had a bunch of...
- 28:11friends that were mutual friends that also came to our church and so sometimes all the kids would go to faith and sometimes all the kids would go to grace chapel and uh and so faith community uh is where he was kind of raised but he ended up switching for youth group and coming to grace chapel for youth group and there was a time where we took all of our kids to summer camp and at summer camp kevin heard the gospel not for the first time for the thousandth
- 28:35time. But that was the first moment where it kind of penetrated. And after one of the sessions, I was outside counseling with Kevin. He's talking to me about his sin. He's talking to me about salvation and Christ and all of that. And praise God, his freshman year, he gives his life to Jesus at a summer retreat, summer camp with Grace Chapel. The first time I asked him to come up and share his testimony, he did a really funny thing. He said, I was raised in a faith community and then I was saved.
- 29:05at Grace Chapel. He said, I was saved by grace through faith. And I thought, oh, that's clever. Oh, you clever boy. But I thought, man, what a funny way to remember that. That's how he shares his testimony. I was literally saved by grace through faith. Each one of us saved by the grace of God.
- 29:28And through our belief. And in case any of us would try to take any kind of credit, even for the faith. Well, I still had to exercise faith. Pastor Danny had to do something. A little bit of the credit is mine. He continues in verse 8 and just shoots that down. And this, not of ourselves. Even the faith that we use to believe is a gift from God. Even that was a gift from God.
- 29:51And not a result of works, verse 9 continues, so that no one may boast. In the end, and this is why I chose the songs that we did tonight. In the end, he is holy. He is holy, holy, holy. But all of the good stuff that we did, all of it is all going to go at his feet. All of it. So that no one may boast. We have nothing to boast over. Verse 10, I like that he ends this way. Because he gives us purpose in our future. We are his workmanship.
- 30:21That's a funny word. The word there is poem. We are his poem. That's the word for workmanship. Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Salvation, although initiated by God, merely received by man, nevertheless results in good works. It's interesting to know that though we are not saved by works, we are saved to work. Work was not created as a result of the fall. Work is not sinful.
- 30:53preceded sin, in fact, and the Lord takes pleasure in the work of our hands if it is done according to his will and for his glory. And the fact that we were created to do good works in Christ Jesus simply points to the fact that Jesus is still working. Jesus is very much alive and very much at work. And every time we work for him, we proclaim him. And there is a startling phenomenon in many churches, I think. And that is that we can say that we believe in Jesus, but we don't have to obey Jesus.
- 31:23And this shoot sat down. He says, no, we were created for good works. That's why we were made. We believe and are saved and our souls are quickened and we have a new nature now that we can go and do good works. And so here's how we'll end. We'll end where we started. Would you be recognized? If somebody you hadn't talked to in 10 years found you on Facebook and said, hey, let's get together. Let's have coffee. Let's go to lunch. I want to catch up. I want to hear how things are.
- 31:52one of your old classmates from college, a friend from high school, right? Your old neighbors that used to live wherever and now they're going to be driving through town. And I know it's been 10 years, but I'd love to come and talk to you. Would you be recognized? Spiritually speaking, would they come to you and say, man, you look a lot like a guy I used to know. But holy cow, do you look different? You act different. You talk different. Something has changed in you.
- 32:21What in the world? They ought to be able to look at your high school picture and your current picture and say, I guess, right? Kind of a resemblance, yeah? But man, something has changed. And if this text is true, that it really is a crossing over from death to life, then that change should be dramatic. A dramatic change. Amen? Amen. Let me pray. God, thank you for this group tonight. Thank you, Lord, for the joy it is to gather together and to sing and to pray and to hear testimony.
- 32:50God, thank you for your goodness to every single one of us. Every single one of us. I can't wait to hear every single testimony of the people in this room, at this church, over the course of time. Thank you that we get a spiritual family like this to enjoy and encourage one another. And thank you most of all for your word. Thank you for the truth that says that it is not by our work that we don't get to boast, that you do all the work. We're grateful because you're the only one who could accomplish it. We love you. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
- 33:19Amen.