Out of the Miry Clay
By Pastor Matt Black
20
August 2006
Lord's Day morning
Ephesians 2:1-3
Introduction: Open your Bible to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. We enter into a new chapter this morning, Ephesians chapter 2. The title of this morning’s message is “Out of the Miry Clay.” Let’s stand together and read Ephesians chapter 2 and verses 1 through 10.
[Stand and read Ephesians 2:1-10]
We are looking at verses 1 through 3 this morning, and this seems to be a passage about man and sin, but really, as we meditate on this, we are going to find that this text is not so much about the lostness of man, but about the grace and mercy of God. We will not esteem God; we will not realize how precious He is to us until we see what He has rescued us from. We are a redeemed people. We were in the filthiest slave market in the universe. We were in an horrible pit! We were in that bottomless pit of death.
In Psalm 40:2 David says the same thing Paul says in Ephesians 2. Paul says—you were dead, but God made you alive. David said the same thing, but in a different way. He says God did an amazing thing in my life! “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”
Do you remember the horrible pit that your life was before God shined into your life? All you knew in life was that filthy, dirty, miry clay of the world that kept shifting and changing, and you had to shift and change with it. Sometimes it brought you down to your knees. We loved and lived for the miry clay of sin. What a sad life we had without God! With God, our foundation is firm. Our feet are set on a rock! God never moves! He never changes! What a salvation we have this morning.
We need to look deep down into that horrible pit this morning. There are some things we must not ever forget, or we will begin to take God for granted. We must always be remembering the great salvation that God has given to us. God has saved us! But what has saved us from sin, from eternal destruction, from an eternity of wrath and misery! This morning we are going to look at three things we must not forget.
Here are the points of the message:
Ø Don’t forget where you came from
Ø Don’t forget what captivated you.
Ø Don’t forget …
We are forgetful people. When things are going great, it’s so easy to become proud, and self-reliant, and ungrateful. We are liable to take credit for what God has done for us. So let’s remember something this morning...
I. Remember where you came from!
We see God so clearly now from the height of the rock. But there was a time in all of our lives when we did not know the Lord. What a sad and selfish time that was! Now we are in the heights with Christ Jesus. We are “seated in the heavenlies”, and everything makes sense. We sometimes get upset with those we are trying to share the Gospel with because they don’t understand. Paul says in this text. Don’t forget where you came from! Yes, you are elected and adopted! You are now accepted in the Beloved Saviour! You were raised from the dead with Christ, and there is no name that is named that can harm you. You are protected by the One whose Name is above all names! He has put all things under His feet. He is the Head—the Sovereign Ruler over all things for your sake—for you who are part of His Body, the Church!
Paul brings us to the very gates of heaven in chapter one, but in chapter two, he reminds us where we came from! Paul says in verse 1, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins…” We came from the brink of destruction, and the Lord brought us out of the miry clay, out of the horrible pit, and He set our feet on the Rock Christ Jesus! He quickened us—put life deep down into our dead soul. The Bible says unless a man is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3). The opposite of death is life. We were dead, walking to our doom, and Christ interrupted our lives with an infusion of resurrection life!
A. Beware of misdiagnosis! Remember where you came from. Be careful not to misdiagnose what that horrible pit is. Man’s horrible pit is not that man has not yet evolved to his full potential. This text says man is not evolving—he is not becoming better! He is becoming worse. He is corrupted and cold toward God. Paul says, we are all by nature “dead in trespasses and sins”. We cannot miss the rock-solid, unmistakable diagnosis of the mess that man is in.
Illustration: Man today is in such a horrible state, and he is in a very unsafe and catastrophic situation. Man has misdiagnosed his problem. A misdiagnosis of a disease would be catastrophic—disastrous! Imagine you go in to the doctor with an illness, and he gives you the wrong medicine. Or you need the right ventricle of your heart operated on, and instead the doctor cuts open the left. Or imagine you go into the doctor for a kidney transplant, and instead he operates on your spinal chord. That would be disastrous! Imagine you enter an emergency room with chest pain. The doctor tells you it’s only a chest cold. You can see that misdiagnosis is FATAL!
So Paul brings us to verse one, and he gives us that unmistakable diagnosis. He says, here is the cause of all your problems! Here is the reason for all the war, the sadness, and the sickness; all disease and all death have its root in this. Paul says: You were “dead in trespasses and sins”. This is an ugly subject, but we cannot know the greatness of God’s love and grace except on the backdrop of the ugliness of sin.
Application: People constantly do this in the spiritual realm.
Ø They say, you know my life is a mess. What I need is a better job. And so they live their whole life climbing the corporate ladder, only to find that their life is still a mess when they get to the top.
Ø The mother says, my life’s a mess. What I need is real love. So I’ll divorce my husband and find “Mr. Right”. Of course, Mr. Right doesn’t exist, so this woman goes from man to man thinking this will solve her problem.
Ø A young woman says, I feel so depressed. What I need is self esteem. So she goes on a diet, buys all the latest clothes—she even whitens her teeth! Where is she after all the props are installed to her self-esteem. Still in the same mess as the first!
Our problem is not that we need a better job, or a better spouse, or self-esteem! Our problem is found right here in verse 1: we are dead to God! We have no spiritual life in us.
B. We need to understand the correct diagnosis.
We were spiritually dead when we thought we were alive. No one thinks of him or her self as dead—certainly not ‘dead’ towards God! After all, we are able to think about God, judge whether we believe he exists or not. Even in our lostness, we have all cried out to God in a moment of trouble. That does not seem like death![1]
1. A definition of our condition. What is this word “dead” mean here? Death is the absence of life. So when we are dead, we are missing out on life. What is life? Turn over to John 17:3. This is Jesus’ prayer to the Father. What does Jesus say is life? “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” So death is not to know God and not to know Christ. There is no communication between you and God. Apart from God’s grace we are in a helpless and hopeless position.
2. An illustration of our condition. We are “worse than LEPERS”!
Turn over to Luke 17:11-13. We read that “…it came to pass, as [JESUS] went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: 13 And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
When Jesus encountered these lepers, He found that they were begging for mercy. Have you ever heard of this type of leprosy? It is living the life of a zombie. Your body begins to rot while you are living. As we think of their awful condition, we can understand their desperate cry to Jesus. Yet our own innate spiritual condition is worse than leprosy.[2] We are “surrounded by lepers this morning, fellow lepers who are born with a spiritual disease infinitely more subtle and sinister and abhorrent than any leprosy or cancer or virus ever known. Yet we rarely grasp the terrible threat facing each of us in our human condition, and so even less often experience astonishment over what God has done on our behalf…”[3]
3. The realization of our condition.
The lepers when they saw Jesus they “stood afar off: 13 And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When we realize our condition, we really can do nothing for ourselves. That is Paul’s point. We are worse than lepers. We are dead in our sins. It is not that we are spiritually sick and need to drag ourselves to the drug store, take the cure and regain our health. No we are dead. We may seem alive on the outside, but spiritually, we are worse than lepers. We have nothing that appeals to God. We must come to God empty handed. All we have to offer God is our leprosy.
We certainly have no right to God’s forgiveness. Many people think that it is God’s job to forgive them. God owes me nothing! I am a sinner. We must see that it is God’s mercy alone that delivers you and me from our condition. Being a nice person doesn’t do it. Getting disciplined in my life doesn’t do it. Going to church, being involved in the community or being a good neighbor is not enough to take away my sin. None of this stuff is able to make me right with God!
So this morning, do you remember where you came from? We are like a “brand plucked out of the fire” (Zechariah 2:2).
II. Secondly, you need to remember what captivated you. You will never understand the liberty and freedom you have in Christ until you understand your former slavery. So many people say, “I could never be a Christian, they’re too restrictive”. Isn’t it amazing that the world has turned the freedom and liberty we have in Christ upside down? We’ve been set free from sin! We don’t have to sin any longer! But Paul wants us to remember the captivity we were in so that we can value all we have in Christ. He says in verse 2, “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
A. First we were enslaved by the world.
Paul says, remember the past? In time past, he says in verse 3, “ye walked according to the course of this world”. What does that mean? The word “course” is the word “aion”. It means eon or age. It has a beginning and an ending. It is applied to the time of this world. It’s short! It’s not going to last very long. And yet we were banking on it!
So many people are banking on the happiness of this world. They’re “walking according to the course of this world”. They’re putting all their investments in the stock market. They are investing in their physical health so that they can live as long as they can. They don’t realize that there is coming a day when as 2 Peter 3:10 says, “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” Jesus says in Matthew 24:35, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Remember when you walked according to the “course of this world”? You invested in it. You gave your life to it. Jesus says it so clearly in Matthew 6:19-21, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: 20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Where was our treasure? Where was our heart? We were captive by the world.
Application: We were living for all the things that pass away. Remember that? Remember when you just HAD to watch the latest movie. You were captivated by it. You walked according to this temporary world. You HAD to scale the corporate ladder. All you had was this life. You were a slave to it. You neglected the most important things. You neglected your own soul. You walked according to the temporary course of this world!
B. You were enslaved not only by the world, but by the Wicked one.
Paul says in verse 2, “according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:” That seems hard for us living in 21st century civilization to imagine. Satan wants you to think he doesn’t exist. He is a very real being. Peter tells us to take him seriously. He says in 1 Peter 5:8, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”
1. First we see Satan’s domain. That’s what Paul means. He’s called the “prince of the power of the air”.
2. Then we see Satan’s disciples. God has allowed Satan to control the lives of those who have given themselves to sin. Who is that? That’s all of us! Paul says in verse 3, that Satan is sets the tone for the “spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past…” Do you see that Satan’s realm is universal? He’s set up the “spirit” or “attitude” of the age. Remember when you were caught up in all that? Remember when you cared what all the latest fads were?
How do you know if a person is a disciple of the Wicked one? Simple look at his life. The Bible says the lives of these people is where Satan works—He is that Wicked one who “now worketh in the children of disobedience”.
The Lord says that those who break His laws are acting just like the devil. Jesus says in John 8:44, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” You know if you will realize who controls the fads and fashions of this world, you wouldn’t be mimicking the world. Some of us mimick the world in various things we do. Do you know the greatest form of flattery is IMITATION! If you are impressed by the world you will imitate the world. And you know who sets the example for the world to imitate? It’s right here in our text. Satan himself! Romans 12:2 tells us that we shouldn’t be like the world. Paul says, “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” We as Christians must no longer imitate Satan. As Paul said earlier in chapter one of Ephesians, verse 18, “The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”. Why would we hang on to the fleeting fads of this world when we are promised “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4)?
So we need to remember where we came from and what we were held captive by. We were held captive by the world, and the wicked one, and thirdly…
C. Thirdly we were enslaved also by our own Wickedness. Before we were saved, we thought we were pretty good people. We may not be perfect, but there were plenty of people worse than us! But the end of verse two does not say we are good people. It says something far different! What does it say? It calls us “children of disobedience” It says all of us were innately wicked. Wickedness and disobedience gave birth, and we were it! Paul says “Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others”
Look at the ropes that enslaved us in our wickedness.
1. Our works. “children of disobedience… Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past”
2. Our desires. we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind
3. Our nature. and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others”
Look at all that God has delivered us from!
Conclusion: Don’t ever forget what God has
done for you! Remember where you came from! Remember that horrible pit.
Appreciate the grace of God. You were helpless and hopeless. You were your
own worst enemy! You were enslaved by your own works. Remember the things you
used to do that you didn’t want to do, but you had no way to resist them?
Remember the irresistible desires—the pride, the lust, the self-fulfillment?
That was all ingrained in your nature. God has freed you from that! Don’t
ever forget that horrible pit you came from. God has set your feet on the Rock
Christ Jesus!!
Closing Hymn: 353 Search Me O God