God’s Grace Makes All the Difference
By Pastor Matt Black
03
September 2006
Lord's Day morning
Ephesians 2:1-6
Introduction: Open your Bible to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The title of this morning’s message is “God’s Grace Makes All the Difference.” Let’s stand together and read Ephesians chapter 2 and verses 1 through 10.
[Stand and read Ephesians 2:1-10]
I want to look at God’s grace this morning, but we can’t look right into it. It would blind us. Grace is like an intricate painting—there are many different colors, textures, and perspectives. The closer you get to it, the more brilliant the details become. Verse 5 of our text says, “By grace ye are saved”.
We look out at the congregation here this morning, and I see that God has touched your lives. I see God’s grace. But everyone of us has a story. And yet, at least here on earth all of our stories have the same beginning. We all begin “dead in trespasses and sins”.
I. God grace gives Hope in a Hopeless Situation. The more desperate the situation, the greater the grace. The more hopeless the situation, the greater the miracle. Grace is like a diamond on the dark backdrop of our sin. We all have painted different pictures, but the canvass is the same. We are all born “dead in trespasses and sins.”
It’s a depressing situation. Why?
A. There’s no Life.
Have you ever been to a funeral? A funeral is sad because there has been a loss of life. The person you once knew is not with you on earth any more. You see their body. There’s no life in it.
Explanation: Ephesians 2:1-3 is probably one of the top 3 most depressing passages in all of the Bible. It’s like going to a funeral. It is a glimpse into who we really are—it’s not how we see ourselves but how God sees us. There’s nothing but hopelessness in these verses. God created us knowing we would all be born “dead in trespasses and sins”—hopelessly lost! Sin abounded. Sin is ugly. It’s dangerous. It’s destructive. There is no life in death. Death is the antithesis of life.
Illustration: How do you know that life has departed? There are several signs:
· No life means no perception. When death comes all sensory perceptions are gone. A strawberry pie with whipped cream will not stir the appetite of one who has no life. They cannot enjoy it. When you’re dead you lose all sensory perception.
Ø The dead can’t see.
Ø The dead cannot hear.
Ø They cannot talk.
Ø They cannot taste
Ø They cannot think or talk or perceive anything!
Jeremiah asked the question in Jeremiah 6:10, “To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear? behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the LORD is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it.”
1 Corinthians 2:14. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
· No life means no response. If you cannot perceive something, you will never respond. You can call the dog, but he cannot respond. Call him all day long, and he’s not there licking your hand because he can’t. He’s dead. You may talk to the person lying in the casket, but you don’t expect them to talk back. If you call someone who is alive, you expect a call back. You do not expect that from the dead. That would be errie and strange. Why? Because it would defy all the laws of nature and normality. Something is severely confused and strange if you start talking to the dead. There is no life.
Ø No spiritual life means no response. The Bible is irrelevant to spiritually dead people. They have no way to respond to it apart from the grace of God.
Spiritually dead people seem to be able to hear and understand God, but it is really just an illusion. Jesus described it this way in Matthew 13:14-15, “…hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”
What did God say to Israel of old? “All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people” (Romans 10:21).
Christ says as the embodiment of wisdom in Proverbs 1:24, “I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded”
· No life means no function. When we die, our heart stops pumping. The blood stops flowing.
Ø That which is alive is soft…
Ø Warm
Ø Pliable, flexible, and functioning
Ø There is movement
Ø There is growth
Ø To see something living is exhilarating because it’s alive. There’s something happening. There’s movement and ability and agility and possibility.
Possibility and ability and agility cease when life ceases. Functioning stops.
Ø That which is dead can’t move
Ø When life ceases, the heart stops, and the muscles begin to harden.
Ø Ability and agility ends. The body is no longer flexible.
Spiritually dead people may look like they are active. Sometimes the best dressed person at the funeral is the one in the casket. The dead can look pretty good. Some of the best looking people in churches are spiritually dead. Jesus called these kinds of people “whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27).
Spiritually dead people have:
Ø Hardened and impenitent hearts (Romans 2:5).
Ø A reprobate mind (Romans 1:28). It’s carnal, fleshly and good for nothing (Romans 8:5, 7).
Ø Eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear (John 12:40).
So there’s no life in the spiritually dead. There’s nothing exciting. It’s dead. It’s depressing. And so when there is no life, then that leads to there being no hope.
Those without Christ have no answer, so they are caught the web of despair and hopelessness. See even though we are all dead in sins, we are all really dead to God and though dead IN sins, we are alive TO sin. Sin is like a cancer very much alive in us, but it makes us dead to everything else. So we are alive to sin, but dead to God—entrapped “in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind” (verse 3). The idea of “lusts of the flesh” is simply another way of saying the sinful habits that drive us. Like a slave master we are driven to do things that we know in our conscience is wrong. There’s no way out outside of the grace of God.
People outside of Christ have so solution to their sin and slavery, and so hopelessness reigns. You can classify it however you want to, but there’s enough hopelessness to go around. God’s grace in Christ is the answer to hopelessness. Look at verses 4-5, “4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)”
God grace works best in the most hopeless situations…
· Christ is our hope for financial hopelessness: you think, “I’ll never be able to pay these bills, never be able to get out from under this debt”. If Christ can pay your sin debt, if you follow Him in His word, He can get you to the place where you “owe no man any thing, but to love one another” (Romans 13:8)!
· Christ is our hope for relational hopelessness: You might sense that the unhappy situation that your in can never be changed—can never be reversed. Don’t you know it is Christ who says “Behold, I make all things new!” (Revelation 21:5). You are part of Christ’s body. Christ is your head and your spouse. He can work in and through you in your marriage, and in any relationship!
· Christ is our hope for career hopelessness: You might be stuck in a day to day job that you absolutely despise, but given the market, and given the environment, you see no place to go. There’s a sense of hopelessness being stuck where you are. But you see in Christ, “we live unto the Lord” (Romans 14:8), and whatever we do, we do it “heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23). God is your employer.
· Christ is our hope for locational hopelessness: this idea that “I’ve been in this apartment. I’m tired of apartment living. I’ve wanted my own home, but I haven’t been able to work it out.” Don’t you know this world is not our home, we’re just a passing through? “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal” (Matthew 6:20).
There’s all kinds of hopelessness. But Christ is the answer to it all. You were dead Paul says, “But God” stepped in!
Illustration: My wife Jill you know is a nurse. During her nurses training she would do clinical studies in the hospital. If there was a serious emergency like an imminent loss of life, an audible alarm would go off. Those of you familiar with this setting know that this is called a Code Blue, or sometimes it is shortened to just “code”. When someone codes you hear an audible solid alarm and you may see a straight flat line on the heart monitor. When code blue occurs, the doctors and nurses are trained to drop what they’re doing and rush to the site of emergency. The person who is coding has stopped breathing, or their heart has stopped beating. All measures are taken to restore life. The saddest part of it all is when life has slipped away. When it is gone it is gone. A person can never be brought back from the dead.
My mother died when I was 15 years old. I will never see her again while I’m living on this earth. When a person’s life is over, that’s it. Once life is gone the death certificate is written, and there are no measures whatsoever to bring that life back. It is like that in the spiritual realm. We cannot bring ourselves to spiritual life. Jesus disciples in Matthew 19 asked Him, “Who then can be saved?” It is a valid question. Christ answers in verse 26 and says, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
Actually, God can do anything. There is no hopelessness with God. That’s not in God’s economy! Can God do anything?
Transition: If all you’re looking at in your life is verses 1-3 of Ephesians 2, then you’ve got trouble. That’s all about you. When we’re talking about you, there’s nothing but hopelessness; there’s nothing but shattered dreams and broken hearts. You don’t need a self help book. You see God’s point is that you can’t help yourself! Stop looking to yourself. Stop deceiving yourself.
But now let’s make a U-Turn in life! That’s what we need to do. You look at what man does. Nothing. You can’t help yourself. You can’t get an edge in life. You’ve fallen off the edge. You’re down for the count. You’ve been KOed by the terminal punch of sin and death! There’s nothing good in you. Now that’s man’s economy. That’s our neighborhood. That’s where we live. But God doesn’t live in that neighborhood. You can be knocked out cold in God’s neighborhood and still win the fight! You can be dead in trespasses and sins—You can code blue—the line.
II. God grace makes Useful that which you thought was Useless!
Verses 1-3 look pretty useless don’t they? Look back at your former life. Pretty wasted isn’t it. Ah, but that’s before God steps into the equation! God’s grace makes useful that which you thought was useless!
A. First we see a new equation. God steps in and makes all the difference. “But God”! (verse 4). We looked at God’s everlasting love for you last week. Let me tell you—you paint the situation as dismal as you can. Go ahead and be born dead in trespasses and sins. Go ahead and be God’s enemy. Go and be the just recipient of His wrath. Add all the sins that you ever sinned into the equation. Add all the sins of this whole church into the equation. Add an infinite number of sins into the equation. Let me tell you—sin plus all the vile hatred in the world plus the love and mercy of God seen through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ always equals redemption! It equals forgiveness! God mercy and love always trumps man’s sin and misery! Any time you put God in the equation there is hope.
B. Then we see a new direction. Everything that has lead up to this point no longer has to define where you are going. In fact, God is so good at what He does He can take all the sins and rebellions of your life, and all your hardness of heart, and use them to make tomorrow better because of your past! That’s grace. You were dead in sins. You were going down, down, down. But know you are going up. Even when we were dead in sins” the Bible says—God’s done something. He’s “quickened us together with Christ”… and then what did he do? He “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” We were going down, but now we’re going up.
C. Then we see a new vitalization. God has “quickened us together with Christ”. In John 11:25, we hear the words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”.
You say, but you don’t understand how bad I’ve messed up! No! You don’t understand how good God is! In God’s economy nothing is wasted! God takes all your sin, and He applies something to it called grace. You are not controlled by your past, you are controlled by God’s future! Think about a man named Lazarus.
A. Lazarus.
Let’s go on a journey to Bethany, a small town about two miles outside of Jerusalem. A man has died. He died young. Let me read you the obituary: Lazarus of Bethany, age 30, died today. He is survived by two loving sisters Mary and Martha. He died of an illness that worked rapidly. He dies. Christ could have stopped him from dying. But he didn’t. He could have come shortly after his death. He didn’t. He waited. Four days. Four excruciating days. The body was rotting and stinking.
Turn over to John 11. We read in verse 32, “Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. 33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, 34 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him! 37 And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? 38 Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. 39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. 40 Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? 41 Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. 42 And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. 43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. 44 And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
Application: There are some of you here today and you think—why didn’t God save me earlier? You have regrets. “Things would be different if I would have just come to Christ earlier! I wish I could have been spared from the life I lived outside of Christ.” Don’t you know that God wants to take all your past and use it so that He can make your future better? Christ waited 4 days at the grave of Lazarus because that was His plan. You can trust God’s plan. It’s the very best plan for you. If God wanted to save you earlier He would have. God knows better than you do!
B. The Lord.
I want to take you on another journey. This is just on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a little bit outside the city. We see a man hanging there. His forehead is pierced. His whole body is bathed in His own blood. Iron nails can be seen to be poking out from the flesh of His hands just under his palm, between the bones, and out of His feet. He can barely breath. He is there with a peaceful but sorrowful look upon His face. From a human perspective, it seems to be a shocking turn of events. Here is a man that not long before was loved by all Israel. He was much sought after. Poor and rich alike loved Him. He healed people who had suffered for years with diseases. And now he is crucified. He is breaths His last breath and dies.
That’s not where the story ends! Three days later, Christ is raised from the dead! Christ is alive! He’s conquered death and hell. He’s ascended to the right hand of the Father. He’s enthroned! He’s seated at the right hand of God. Is that amazing. But wait—if you are a believer, you are part of this. Look at our text in Ephesians 2:6. It says that God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus…”
Application: Here’s the application. God made you to have dominion over the earth. But because of sin, we are dominated by everything. A worm will have dominion over you when you die. There is coming a time if the Lord tarries when little worms will be crawling in and out of the eye sockets of everyone of us here.
Here’s the application. In Christ, you are seated in the heavenlies with Christ. You have dominion with Him. You are under His authority, not sins! You were dead in sins, but no longer. Paul says in clearly in Romans 6:12, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.” You don’t have to listen to sin, you have to listen to the Lord. He’s made you alive. You can hear His voice. John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Listen to God’s voice.
Conclusion: Just imagine after Lazarus is raised from the dead. They just had a huge celebration. Martha and Mary had a great big dinner. People are stuffed and tired and getting their coats on. Lazarus starts wrapping this material around him. Martha and Mary look at him strangely and ask him, what’s up? He says he’s going back home. He’s going back to the grave. He likes it there. That’s crazy right? Well, it’s just as strange for any one of us to go back to where we used to be and put on the grave clothes and the lifestyle we once had.
We are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Let’s look over at Colossians 3 as we close, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”
Closing Hymn: 134 And Can It Be?