Ephesians Series: For His Glory and Fame, Life as Church

Just Look What God Has Done!

 Ephesians 2:1-10

February 16, 2003

I could have selected several titles for the message this morning: Before and After” was one option.  “The Great Rescue” was another.  And “Wow, Look How Bad We Are Without God” was also a consideration.  Each would have been appropriate to describe the text, each pointing us away from ourselves and to God. 

 I settled on “Just Look What God Has Done!”  There are several reasons for this title.  First, it captures an appropriate, though incomplete, sense of awe at God’s grace.  Second, when you say it with the emphasis on “God”, it hints at the overall thrust of the passage, which is how God saved us even though we were dead in our sinfulness.  For me the title means something very significant given the state of my heart and mind this week. 

As a preacher, you always want to come to the pulpit really well prepared.  You want to have spent hours and hours studying the text—its original context and language, and be able to communicate its importance to our lives today.  All of this comes through many hours of preparation.  Most weeks, God meets me in the study times and guides me through to the point where I’ve got what he wants me to say.  Most weeks.  Not this week. 

The past few days have seen me accompanied by a heavy shroud of fog and fatigue.  As a result of a personal struggle, I came to a place of utter incapability. 

Context

Paul writing to a group of Christians in a region called Asia Minor (Modern Turkey), in a city called Ephesus .  The Ephesian church is a good church—Paul identifies them as “the faithful in Christ Jesus”.  His purpose in writing this letter was two-fold: to encourage them to continue in their Christian growth, and to challenge them to go deeper in their faith.

We spent the last two weeks exploring Paul’s call to “know God better”, last week being challenged to become a better thinking community. 

(If, by the way you’ve missed the last week or two, we do have a tape recording of the messages, or you can log onto our church website to read the manuscript version.  I want to encourage you to follow along as we walk through the book of Ephesians because God has led us as a congregation to it, and therefore has many things to teach us as a community of faith.) 

This morning we look at Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1-10.  Now, if you’ve ever been asked, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” you could point to Ephesians 2:1-10 to give a very theologically sound, and blunt definition.  I would go as far as suggesting that these 10 verses provide the clearest description of what it means to be saved.

Ephesians, chapter 2:1-10 is in three distinct parts: life before we were saved by God’s grace (1-3), life after we were saved by God’s grace (4-9) and life in God’s grace through the Holy Spirit (10).

Where We Were

Let’s begin with the way we were, the before picture.  I must warn you, it isn’t pretty!  Paul writes…

[1] 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 sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

1.  Dead in sin

 What does it mean to be dead?  Lifeless, cold, decomposing.  You all have a picture of something that has died.  Paul is not using hyperbole here.  He is giving an accurate description of what life is like without God’s grace and mercy, life under the weight of our sin.  Life like that is death.  There is no hope, no way out, nowhere to go but the grave.

 2.  Following Satan’s way—The World

Romans 12:2, that familiar verse, says, “Do not be conformed and longer to the pattern of this world”, or “don’t let the world squeeze you into it’s mold.”

 Ephesians talks more than any other book about the role of Satan in the world.  Paul acknowledges that the devil is the ruler of the air who fuels the way of the world.  We’re going to hear more about how to fight the devil as we go through Ephesians, but today, the emphasis is on the way he keeps the world trapped in sin.  

Our environment, our culture, works against God to keep us in sin.  You name the sin and I can probably give you an example of how society glamorizes it and makes it look appealing and normative: Lust—look at any billboard or magazine rack; Greed—our entire economy is built on it; self-centeredness—look at almost any commercial, TV show, or self-help book, and you’ll hear the message “how to get what you want”.  I could go on, but you get the picture.

The way of the world—sin—makes us the center of the universe.  It takes our focus off of God.  Satan likes that!  That, as Paul goes on to say, is why we, and those who live apart from God, are objects of wrath.

 3.  Objects of Wrath

 Before God’s grace came to us in Jesus, we were “objects of wrath.”  I bet you’ve never considered yourself to be objects of God’s wrath have you?  That doesn’t tend to jive with our understanding of who God is, does it?

 We don’t talk much about the wrath of God too much, do we?  Perhaps it is because we tend to see the wrath of God in opposition to the love of God, and so, feeling forced to choose, we opt to focus on God’s love.  But in fact, the two are not opposites; they need each other.  God cannot be completely loving if he does not hate the things that rob us of having full lives; similarly, he cannot be wrathful if He didn’t care about us because if he didn’t care about us, he’d be ambivalent.  

 We don’t really think of unsaved people alone those lines—of being “objects of wrath” anymore, do we?  The truth of the gospel has been watered down to the point of impotency.  We conclude that people are generally good and God is just, so maybe it won’t really be so bad on judgment day.  I mean, everyone does some things that are wrong, sure, but they aren’t really that bad.  They aren’t bad people so God will love them, and accept them into heaven, right?  Wrong.

 God’s word says they are dead—enslaved—“by nature objects of wrath”.  That doesn’t mean without any value—if lost people weren’t valuable to God, He wouldn’t have sent his son Jesus to die for us!  No, it is because of how valuable they are that this state of death and slavery, this wrath, is so wrong!  The harsh reality is that outside of Christ, people perish eternally.

 --Only those who understand God’s wrath can understand and give thanks for God’s mercy—PHILIP.

 Where We Are Because Of God’s Great Love

 Paul’s shining a light in the dark corners of our human experience and we’re going, “Oh woe is me…” And then we come to verse four and discover one of the great words in all of scripture: But. 

 [4] BUT because of his great love for us,

 Even though apart from God and living in sin we were objects of His wrath, that doesn’t mean He stopped loving us.  Don’t forget, he created us in His image because he loved us, and, as Paul said in Ephesians 1, “He chose us in him before the creation of the world…in love he chose us to be adopted as his children…for his good pleasure”(1:4-5, paraphrase mine).

 BUT 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.

Because God is merciful, because God is kind, because God loves, because he created us out of his pleasure, he made a way for us to be saved: Jesus. 

Because of God’s love…

	We are made alive—raised from death in sin - with Christ.
	Elevated to a place of honor with Jesus.
	Enjoy His kindness and riches

 God chose to save us through his Son because he loves us, yes.  But he did it to reveal to the world something amazing about who he is: he is loving and merciful.  God did all this to tell what he is like!

Take No Credit!

Pharisees.  You remember what we’ve learned about the Pharisees—the religious elite in Jesus’ day who thought that they earned favor with God through their good works.  They thought they could impress others by their righteousness—which turned out to be self-righteousness.  Paul himself was a Pharisee. 

In fact, millions of people through history have thought, openly or otherwise, that they could earn God’s favor—salvation—by doing a lot of good works.  But listen to what the Bible says about that… 

[8] For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- [9] not by works, so that no one can boast.

God’s grace came to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  We couldn’t pay the penalty for our sin.  Only a divine act of grace could pay for it.  You’ve likely heard Jesus referred to as the “Lamb who was slain.”  Ancient Jews practiced that if there was something they had done to disobey God’s law, they could offer an animal, often a lamb, to be killed at the temple as a symbol of their payment for sin. 

This effectively ended when God sent Jesus to earth to die on the cross.  Jesus would be the “sacrificial lamb” for all people’s sin.  No longer would anyone have to pay for his or her own sin, God paid for it with his own son.  That is what it means to be saved by grace—it is a gift, free, without strings.

The faith part, as in “saved, through faith” comes when we are presented with the choice to follow Jesus for our lives.  Many of you here have made that choice.  You’ve heard the stories of Jesus and you’ve counted the cost of being his disciple, and you have made the decision to give your life to him (MICHAEL and KEVIN).  That was an act of faith.  You believed based on what you heard, based on what you saw in others, and you listened to the Holy Spirit, and said ‘yes’ to following Christ.  You were saved by grace, through faith. 

I know my propensity to boast.  I like it when others know how good a job I’ve done.  I like it when I’m able to drop a hint about some achievement, or act of service, or piece of knowledge I have.  I don’t think I’m alone.  I think we like to boast!

But Paul is saying, “Listen, anything good that you do, is all because God did it first”, or better put “Because God has a hold of your life, anything good that you do is because he is changing you to do good.”  So you can’t boast in yourself, you can only boast in God.  

For His Glory and Fame

We conclude this morning with a look at verse 10.  Paul writes…

[10] For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Interesting.  We’ve just heard that it isn’t good works that win us favor with God.  What does Paul mean now in verse ten when he says we now do good works? 

Illustration: Love-struck behavior

The good we do after we’re saved is a response to God’s grace and mercy.  The good we do after we’re saved is because the Holy Spirit has given us the power to do good—for God’s glory! 

Remember, we exist; we were created, to bring God a good reputation and spread his fame in the world.  We exist as church for His glory and His fame!  Therefore, God reveals himself to the world through us.  When we do good things, it is because, as it says in verse 10, God prepared those things in advance for us to do!

This is bad news for all of us boasters!  We can’t even take credit when we do nice things for people.  God brought those opportunities into our life so that we could display his character to those around us. 

When we do good things (give examples) we’re obeying God!  When we serve others and care for those in need, we point to God’s character. 

When we point to God’s character, what is it called?  There’s a word for it, does anyone know what that word is?  WORSHIP!  Declaring God’s character and attributes is worship, that is why therefore it is possible to live life as worshipper of God.  When we obey God’s call to do good works for his glory, we are worshipping.  

When we worship, either here on Sunday mornings by singing songs and offering prayers, or, as it says in our text this morning, through opportunities for good works that God has brought into our lives, we declare God’s character to the world!  We say, “Just look what God is like”, or “Just look what God has done!”  Let’s pray.

 

(c) Shaun Dyer

Zion Baptist Church of Kensington

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada