Our scripture reading for today is from chapter 2 of the book of
Ephesians, verses one through three.
If you've been with us through this study of the book of
Ephesians, welcome to chapter 2. And should and should the Lord
not return by 2032, relax and enjoy the ride.
And how wonderful it would be that he comes back before and
we'll finish the book study with him.
Amen. In our verses today, you'll
notice that in chapter 3, Paul changes the pronoun from you to
we. And every time I share the word
you with you in the next few minutes, I want you to know that
that includes me. So when I say you, you need to
hear you and me. So when we get to verse 3, would
you please join me in reading the Scripture?
Ephesians 2, verses one through 3.
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 together, 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
wraths, like the rest of mankind.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Please be seated. You know, cliches do come in
handy sometimes. Like for instance, plan the
work, work the plan, that's helpful, strategy, then
execution, that's helpful. And actually that helps us
understand a little bit about the progression of Paul's
writings from verse from chapter 1 to chapter 2.
In chapter 1, we remember studying one of the longest
sentences in all of Greek literature started in verse 3,
and it was a hymn of praise to the Trinity.
And Paul began extolling and praising God the Father who
predestined, elected and chose a people for himself.
He planned redemption. And he ends that section with
this wonderful refrain of praise, saying to the praise of
his glory. And then Paul goes into a second
section talking about the second person of the Godhead, Jesus
Christ, the Son who atoned and redeemed his people.
He accomplished the Father's plan of redemption.
And again, Paul ends that section by saying to the praise
of his glory. And then he goes into a section
about the Holy Spirit, and he talks about how the Holy Spirit
guarantees our inheritance. And the Holy Spirit sealed what
the Son accomplished, what the Father had planned.
And he ends again with this glorious refrain to the praise
of His glory. And that's exactly what our 3
verses are, reaching back to chapter 2, verse one, to the
praise of His glory, chapter 2, verse 2 to the praise of his
glory, chapter 2, verse 3 to the praise of his glory.
And then we get to chapter 2 verse one.
It says and you. And there's a pivot from talking
about the Redeemer to those who need to be redeemed, from
talking about the Divine Trinity to those who are made in that
image and to be human beings. We have 5 dimensions in our
existence. So one of those is being
spiritual. We have a spiritual nature.
We have a spiritual identity. We have a spiritual destiny.
And the 1st 10 verses of chapter 2 gives the clearest explanation
of the gospel and perhaps all of Paul's writings. 18 personal
pieces of correspondence used by God himself in 30 years to
change the rest of the world. 18 letters in 30 years to change
the world. So let's dive into our text,
shall we? Let's look at verse one.
Look at verse one and you and he's talking about the Gentiles
and you Gentiles were noticed past tense and you Gentiles were
dead. Now the Holy Spirit could have
inspired Paul to have written the word Thanos.
Thanos is like the the Greek word for the idea of death, the
process of dying. But he doesn't inspire him to
use that word. He inspires him to write the
word Necross. And Necross is the word for
dead, the state of dead. So he says in the past you
gentiles were spiritually dead. How in your trespasses and sins
in which you once walked. Now trespasses is a word that
that means to stumble or to fall off the path.
And by the time we get to the 1st century, this word means
anything that violates the covenant with the Lord.
A simple, stupid mistake to a willful action.
Anything that indicates that we are outside of God's favor and
need restoration. And you combine that with the
typical understanding of the word sin, which is missing the
mark. The Holy Spirit is inspiring
Paul to say that when we are dead in Christ, we stumbled off
the road, we fell into the ditch, and we never made it to
where we were supposed to go. Now, in addition to this
internal reality, which by the way is for those in Christ, our
spiritual DNA, because we're the progeny of our first parent,
Adam, the federal head of all humanity.
So his OG sin affected all of us, but there's also external
forces that are pressing down on us.
Look at verse 2. Verse 2 says picking up from
trespasses and sins in which you once walked past tense, right?
And walked. He's going to use the word
walked. How we conduct ourselves, how we
live our lives, what we do throughout the day, our
thoughts, our feelings, our actions, our emotions.
That's walking. And he's going to talk about
that later in this letter. But right now, he says you were
walking in sins and trespasses, following, first, the course of
this world. Those are the visible
influences. Let's go on following second,
the Prince of the power of the air, these invisible influences,
which is the spirit that is now at work in the sons of
disobedience. And did you pick up on that?
Again, sons of disobedience, this idea of being born with a
DNA. So what was in the air at
Ephesus? Well, if you know anything about
Ephesus, it was the New York City of the western shore of
what is now Turkey. And Western literature has
attested to the fact that forever since Ephesus was
founded, it is the center of the occult.
If you wanted to become a master in the dark spiritual powers of
the world, you would apply for a scholarship to Ephesus.
In fact, the power of the gospel was so efficacious in Ephesus
that the occult masters repented and they came to Jesus and they
burned their books and they followed Christ.
They burned the books from which they learned all of their
mastery of dark magic. And don't be naive, brothers and
sisters. You can still get modern
editions of those very books by which they were tutored.
There is also a big House of worship was called the Temple of
Artemis was beautiful. Artemis is the fertility God of
the Greeks. Rome called her Diana.
Her temple and her thriving congregation of worship
worshippers was remarkable. The temple was considered one of
the Seven Wonders of the World. It was twice the size of the
Parthenon. It was larger than a football
field. It had 127 marble columns 60
foot high. There were thriving economies
around the worship of Artemis silversmiths and wood carvers
that would make miniature images of the gigantic temple presence
of Artemis that you could take home with you.
In fact, some of you know that if you visit Artemis today, you
can still buy your souvenir bobbleheads and Artemis action
figures and take them home with you if you want to.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
When Paul got to Ephesus, he began teaching in the synagogues
and for a few months. Then he started a tent making
business so that he could be financially independent.
And then he rented A lecture hall for two years.
He spent about three years, we think, in Ephesus, and two of
those years he rented A lecture hall where he taught about
Messiah, where he taught to the Gentiles about Jesus, where he
taught about the way, Moses, David, Abraham.
For two years. And through the windows of the
lecture hall you could hear the citizens of Ephesus shouting in
worship, praise to Artemis of the Ephesians, praise to Artemis
of the Ephesians. Do you see why in chapter 2 he
was clear to say no, The Holy Trinity, God the Father to the
glory of his praise, God the Son to the glory of his praise, God
the Holy Spirit to the glory of his praise.
Do you see it, those Artemis rishouts flowing through his
mind as he's sitting in house arrest in Rome years later,
writing this letter to these dear church planters that he
worked with, that he said goodbye to with tears because
they knew he would. They would never see him again.
And they sobbed and they wept and they hung and they hugged
one another. You know, we have temples today
like entertainment venues or temples that you can hold in
your hand or paper temples like financial accounts or offices
that enshrine our position, our power, our prestige.
Not saying anything's wrong inherently with these things.
It's just saying I struggle with the enticements that they create
in my heart when I want to go to that temple and worship.
Let's look at verse 3, verse three, among whom we now he
switches to Jews. And remember in Paul's day,
there were only two kinds of people in the world, Gentiles
and Jews. So when he switches now, he's
saying everyone among whom we the Jews all once lived past
tense in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires
of the flesh and the mind, and we're by nature children of
wrath like the rest of mankind. And there it is again, that
spiritual DNA. This then is somewhat beckoning
the doctrine of original sin. Now, popular history would lead
us to believe that John Calvin came up with this doctrine, but
that's not necessarily true. Actually, the Trinity, the
Apostle Paul, and the church Fathers Tertullian and Agustin
had much more to say about this than Calvin.
And it wasn't until the last century that the concept of
Tulip was pinned on Calvin. But we'll leave that for the
classroom if I were to explain the doctrine of original sin to
younger disciples in the room. So younger disciples here with
us today, let me explain to you the doctrine of original sin.
At the very beginning the first people listen to the accusers
tricks to do something God told them not to do.
God allowed them to for this to happen because they had a choice
and he had a wise plan and would use it for good in the end.
Now because of that choice, they lost their close relationship
with God. And since sin is disobeying this
first sin changed them, making their hearts and lives broken
and far from what God made them to be.
And since all people come from them, their brokenness was
passed down to everyone like a family trait or like a drop of
ink in a glass of water. We are all born with hearts that
lean the wrong way and struggle to do what is right.
Because of this, we often choose to do wrong things and on our
own we don't naturally want to obey God.
And the rest of the Word tells us that even when someone
follows Jesus, this struggle with sin doesn't fully go away
in this life. And this is called personal sin.
But God Forgives our personal sins when we tell Him about
them, and He helps us grow and we still need His help everyday.
Even the wrong things we do goes against God's rules.
And sin brings sadness and sin brings trouble, and it separates
from us from God, and it leads to pain.
And in this life, if it's not dealt with often to even greater
loss. Now Paul spoke again about this
struggle with personal sin and the residue of original sin in
Galatians 5, where he says for the desires of the flesh are
against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are
against the flesh. John picks this up.
And 1st John do not love the world, the desires of the flesh
and the desires of the eyes. And pride of life is not from
the Father, but is from the world.
And Peter adds the accuser to these other two at first Peter,
when he says be sober minded, be watchful, your adversary, the
devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to
devour. For those of us who are in
Christ, isn't it interesting how shocked we are by other people's
brokenness? If this brutal description of
the level playing field of original sin is true, and it is,
and the Holy Spirit in dwells within God's people who blanket
the earth by billions restraining the world, the flesh
and the devil, and yet there are still billions who are
spiritually dead because they are not in Christ.
If all of these things are true, why are we so shocked by other
people's brokenness? Doesn't it seem like this would
be like a well, yeah, Jesus understood that we would judge,
recoil and run from other people's brokenness.
So he was broken on the cross for us, and he showed us how to
move into people who are broken. He was not shocked by sex
workers. He was not shocked by the
incarcerated. He was not shocked by adulterers
and thieves and the homeless and those with mental illness he
knew well long before we attached our diagnostic labels
to them. He even understood the mental
illnesses that may occasionally or can lead to addiction or to
someone to complete suicide and all sorts of spiritual and
emotional complexities. In fact, if you look at the
record, he appears to express public disdain more for the
greedy and the religious hypocrites.
Jesus shows us how to embrace brokenness, not to judge, not to
be repelled, but to shower abundant grace and rich mercy on
broken people, just like He did for you and for me in Pastor
Dane Ortland's book Gentle and Lowly.
And, And if you haven't read it at least once, I highly
recommend you read Dane's book, Gentle and Lowly.
Dane writes when we sin, the very heart of Christ is drawn
out to us. His heart is inflamed with pity
and compassion for his people. He simply cannot give them up.
Now, does that mean that where grace abounds, sin abounds more?
Absolutely not. That is a complete
misunderstanding of the gospel. It's saying that we should not
be surprised if we all start an original sin and even though we
walk in Christ, we still struggle.
And yet He meets us with every spiritual resource we need to
glorify Him according to His purpose in our lives.
Pastor Dane goes on to say holiness and sinlessness are
mutually exclusive, but Christ, being perfectly holy, knows and
feels the horror and weight of sin more deeply than any of us
sinful ones could. And he goes on to say this, the
purer the heart of a man, the more he is naturally drawn out
to help and relieve and protect and comfort, whereas the colder
heart sits still. Indifferent.
So what do we say to this? Having been spiritually revived
by grace, brought back to spiritual life through faith,
and justified before our Father, we thank the Holy Spirit for
indwelling in US and giving us help when we still work at love,
for giving us assistance when we still work at Joy, for helping
us with our patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control. This is what the Word means when
it says, work out your salvation.
Because we still need to work on all of those things.
And praise be to God that He helps us in these things.
And the fruit of the Spirit are not feminine qualities.
Kindness and gentleness are Christ qualities.
Real men possess these traits. When Paul said goodbye to his
best friends in Ephesus, they cried and wept and hugged one
another because they knew they wouldn't see him again.
You see these kinds of things, the fruit of the Spirit, That's
the manosphere of the new covenant.
So if we put this all together so far in Ephesians, we have
this stunning theological sequence that is not just a
bunch of ideas, but all coming to and you.
Here's where we've been. He chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world. He predestined us for adoption.
In Himself. He has blessed us in the
Beloved. We have redemption through His
blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the
riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.
And in Him we have obtained an inheritance and we are sealed
with the promised Holy Spirit who guarantees our inheritance
to the praise of His glorious grace.
And if that's not enough, he has authority over everything in
heaven and in earth, and he is the head of his church.
And after all of this, it says, and you, you know what next week
starts with? You got to come back.
Today was and you but next week, next week are those two life
changing words by which we live and by which we survive not and
you the words are but God. It's the best news you will ever
hear. My friends, you've got to come
back next week. We this is right now is the half
time of a cosmic Super Bowl and our first parents massively
fumble and next week you are about to hear the greatest
comeback story in the universe. Literally you got to come back.
Father, to you all praise and glory for planning our
redemption, Lord Jesus for accomplishment, Holy Spirit for
sealing the guarantee of our inheritance and all of these
things that we might be lifted out of these 3 verses and dwell
forever and forever with you in the Cathedral of heaven to the
praise and glorious of your holy name in which we pray.
Lord Jesus and we all said together, Amen.
Let's stand and sing.