THE WALKING DEAD (Eph 2:1-3)

So we've picked out some songs this morning that everybody should know, so you shouldn't even hear me singing. Let's see, it's Who Can Light the Fires. Who can light the fires of a thousand burning suns?

Blazing in the heavens, there is only one He is our God. Who commands the nations, commands the nations, building up and tearing down. Silence in its rifles, there is only one He is our God. He is our God.

He is our God. Are you still holding your own hand? He is our God. Everybody knows this song. My soul, my soul. We've seen it time and time. Thank you God that it's not ourselves that we have to trust in.

We trust you and you alone because your ways are higher than ours. Praise you God. Gift of grace is Jesus my Redeemer. There is no more for heaven without Him. My joy, my righteousness and freedom. My steadfast love, my deep and boundless prayer.

To this I hope is only Jesus. His holy bound to religion divine. I can sing all His songs. But I am on my side. The Savior, He will stand. Miss and rejoice. It has been Prince of Peace. He has said that He will bring me home.

By day I stand with joy. To this I hope.

The race is complete. Still my lips shall repeat. It not I but Christ in me. That lyric resonated with me this morning. As many of you know, this past week we saw my mother-in-law go into glory. I can tell you right now, she's in that moment where she says, yet not I but Christ in me.

That's a great truth. There's a day coming for all of us, right? We rest in that great, beautiful truth. And we long for that day, don't we? And in the meantime, we just repeat it to ourselves. Oh, Father, I believe.

Help my unbelief. When I can truly say, yet not I but Christ in me. When you may be seated, let's pray for our time of offering. And I'm going to read some more of our psalm today. Lord, be honored in our time of giving this morning, I pray, that we would not be giving begrudgingly, but out of a heart of knowing that this is an abundance because it all belongs to you, Father.

And that these resources would be used for your kingdom purposes. In Christ's name, amen. I want to read to you as the guys are passing around the plate, verses 5 through 10 of our psalm today, as we come to Psalm 68.

The psalmist says, Father, of the fatherless and protector of widows, is God in His holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home. He leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebels dwell in a parched land.

Oh, God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain. Before God, the one of Sinai. Before God, the God of Israel. Rain and abundance, oh God, you shed abroad.

You restored your inheritance as it languished. Your flock found a dwelling in it. In your goodness, oh God, you provided for the needy. Make no mistake, every single one of us is needy. And our great God provides, amen.

Amen. Well, let's go ahead and open up your copy of God's Word to our study here in Ephesians. And believe it or not, we have actually made it to chapter 2. We've made it to chapter 2. And we're going to be looking at the first three verses this morning of Paul's letter here to the church in Ephesus there in chapter 2.

A very commonly known passage. Many of you may have this portion of Scripture memorized, and that's a great thing, but let's read it. Starting in verse 1 of chapter 2 of Ephesians. And you were dead in your 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 and the sons of disobedience.

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 wrath like the rest of mankind. Now, we're going to stop reading there at a seemingly hopeless state, and hopefully we'll be able to talk through what this is telling us from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

But before we do, let's ask for his help. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we ask right now that in our frail minds that we would be able to comprehend such beauty, such truth from your very breathed-out words.

Father, I pray that the Holy Spirit that is within us would illuminate that truth to us. Lord, guard my lips from error. In Christ's name, amen. Well, we've spent the last 14 weeks looking at the first chapter of Paul's letter here in Ephesians, where we've really seen this magnificent power of God displayed in his grand plan of redemption.

We've seen how God the Father has chosen a people for himself. Before he had even created a single molecule of the universe, he had set his love and affection on a specific people for himself. We've seen how God the Son, he secured those people by blood ransom.

He purchased them. He sought after them. And how God the Holy Spirit is a guarantee of that purchase, of that inheritance that is now ours as children of God. And we've seen how Paul, we've seen Paul's prayer, which we looked at over the past handful of weeks, his prayer for these saints there in Ephesus as he's writing.

And ultimately, as we've talked about since we started this study, it's a prayer for us, because this letter was meant to be circulated amongst the church. And so this is a prayer from Paul for 12 Five Church this morning.

Amen? So we've seen this prayer that we would grow in the knowledge of and in light of the limitless power that we've been brought into union with the Creator. Through this adoption, right? We've been brought into union with the very Creator of all things.

And that's the very same power that, what did Paul say in the prayer? That raised Jesus from the dead? The power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that Jesus himself has as head over the church, as reigning king over all of creation, and that wonderful power that we have been brought into union with.

And now that Paul has prayed this over the saints, for us, the readers, for those that were back then reading this letter, he's praying for us to grow in the knowledge of that great power. He wants us to know it.

He wants us to experience it. He wants us to understand it more fully. And so what does he do? He begins to instruct us as to that great power. He begins to tell us here, as he jumps into chapter 2, of what that looks like.

In other words, Paul starts with God, okay? That's what we've seen. He starts with who is God, and what has God done? And he prays that we would grow in the knowledge of that God. And now, as I said here in chapter 2, he goes into great detail as to what we need to know in order to grow in this knowledge.

What do we need to know to grow in the knowledge of this tremendous power in order to truly grasp this immeasurable greatness of his great love and power towards us? And he does so in a way that really just strips us of any potential pride, tears down those walls of any confusion as to what is actually taking place with this great power.

In a way that, especially in our modern-day sensitivities, goes against the propensity that we have to build ourselves up and to only think positive thoughts. That's what we want. We want to go to church where somebody gives us a little pep talk about how good the week's going to be.

I'm going to go out, and I'm going to live life. Everything's hunky-dory. We're all great. Everything's great. I need that encouragement. I want that. But that's not what Paul does here. It's very different.

We think to ourselves, well, the whole of mankind is innately good. We want goodness. We desire goodness. To think that we start off good, that's what man wants, to think that we start off as children good, and somewhere along the way we tripped up.

We made some mistakes. And now, yeah, we acknowledge we need a Savior, but we need a Savior really in the minds of much of modern-day Christianity to help us get back to good, to get back in the good graces of God.

But deep down there's goodness in us. It's the way we like to think, even though the Scriptures give us a very different picture, a very different picture than that. It gives us the opposite, as a matter of fact, the very opposite.

And Paul points to that truth here in chapter 2, and he does so because he wants us to see the depth and greatness of God's power. Do you understand that? He wants us to see the depth and greatness of God's power.

I'll give you an illustration. Some of you may know we are from Florida. I used to build houses down in Florida. And one time I got the privilege of building a house right on the ocean. You ever seen those?

Everybody go to Florida, you see that house, it's like right there. You step out the back door, you're on beach sand, and you're right there at the ocean. That'd be nice, right? Well, I get the privilege of building this house.

It's a beautiful house. It's massive. It's three stories tall, and people would drive by this house and marvel at how massive it was, how beautiful it was, how ornate it was. They would come in and be overwhelmed with how spacious everything is and the view from the back looking at the ocean, and they would be amazed at all of the beauty of this house.

But here's the thing. I knew something they didn't that caused me to have a greater appreciation of this house. See, what they didn't realize and what they didn't see with their eyes and what they didn't understand and comprehend was that before that house got built, there were 36, I believe, yep, 36, 24 inch wide, 28 foot deep concrete and steel pilings driven into the ground underneath the foundation of this house.

These foundations went down and down and down until it got past the sand and into solid ground so this house wasn't just built on sand. But all they could see was a house built on sand, and it looked substantial, but they couldn't really appreciate the intricacy of this house because they didn't take a look at the plans.

They didn't see the process of this house being built, but my appreciation was deep-rooted, wasn't it? We had to get down to the bottom of it. We drove down to the depths, right? In order for this house to land on foundations, to be on solid ground, and to appreciate that.

And now, this is essentially what Paul is doing in chapter 2. In order to see the power of God in salvation, we must first see the depths that he, the builder, went. We must see the great bottomless depths of how far God went.

Otherwise, we can't truly marvel at the house that he's building. We can't truly understand it. And notice how Paul does it. Let's look at our passage here in verse 1. He says,. And you... Again, who's he speaking to?

Let's make sure we're on the same page. What's that? Yep. He's speaking to Christians. He's speaking to us. He's speaking to the people that he's writing the letter to. He's speaking to believers here.

And you... were... Right? Past tense here. You were... dead... in your trespasses and sins. I like how he says that we were. That's our, you and I, previous state. That's where we were. This isn't just Paul speaking of the worst of the worst.

He's not speaking of just the serial killers and thieves. He's speaking of every Christian, young and old, rich or poor. Right? This is me and you. That he says we were. And what does he say that we were?

Dead. Now, Paul's obviously not speaking of physical death, though that is a result of the death that he is talking about. Right? He's speaking of a spiritual death. The Apostle Paul is telling us that we, Christians, the ones hearing him, reading his words here, were at one point, past tense, dead.

Spiritually. We who are in Christ, who have been saved by the power of God, were like every other person. Meaning that we were spiritually dead. And in what way are we spiritually dead? Look at the passage.

And you were dead in the, and this is key, in the trespasses and sins. This is referring to the realm in which we existed before salvation. Some read these words right here, and they think as if we were dead because we had committed these trespasses and sins.

They're getting the cart before the horse. That's not what Paul is saying here. That's not how it reads, as Paul wrote it. Paul seems to be saying that we were dead because we were in the realm of trespasses and sins.

You catch that? We were in the realm, in the sphere of trespasses and sins. Paul isn't speaking of the act of sin. He is speaking of the state of where we were. You see, committing trespasses and sins is not what made us sinners.

And what does sin lead to? Death. You see, committing trespasses and sin is not what made us sinners. The fact that we were sinners is what made us commit trespasses and sins. It's slight, but that nuance makes a big difference.

Someone isn't a liar because they lie. They lie because they are a liar. Just as we weren't sinners because we sinned. We sinned because we are sinners. This is the state of all mankind. And why is that?

Why is this the state? Why is this the realm, the sphere in which we, Christians, were once in? Meaning that, and we'll see later on, that every person is in. Why is that? It's because of the fallback in Genesis 3, isn't it?

That all of us... Paul mentions it in Romans 5, 12. He says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man... Who is he speaking of? Paul, right? No? Who is it? Adam, right? Back in Genesis 3.

Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin. There's that death. And so death spread to all men because all sinned. Now, Paul's point was not that all men have sinned after the example of Adam.

That's not what he's saying there in that passage in Romans. He's not saying that, hey, all men have sinned because they're just following the example of Adam. And therefore, suffer the cause of death or the curse of death.

Rather, all men share in the consequences of Adam's sin. When he writes, because all sinned, Paul is referring to our union with Adam in his transgression of God's command. We have union with him. It means that we now are born into the sphere, into the realm of trespasses and sins.

It seems like a hopeless state, doesn't it? Subsequently, leaving us in a state of spiritual death. Spiritual death. I think we kind of glance over that. We're like, I don't like that word. Let's think of it more like spiritual sickness.

Right? That's not what it is. It's not spiritual sickness. It's not spiritual deficiency. It's not spiritual indifference. It is spiritual death. Lifeless. Incapable of anything good or holy or right.

And what did this spiritual death lead us to? Look at verse 2 of our passage. He says, in which, right? He's speaking of that sphere of trespasses and sins. In which you, you and I, once walked. Notice that?

Meaning past tense. You and I once walked this way. But here's the interesting part about the language that Paul uses here in once walked. We don't walk in it anymore. Okay? We once walked in it. We don't walk in that way anymore.

Now, here's the question. Do we still have sin? Do you and I still sin? Yes, we do. Of course we do. We still commit trespasses and sins over and over every single day. Even in our greatest praise and worship and prayer this morning.

My prayers this morning that you listened to were tainted in so much sin. I can promise you that it would condemn the whole world. So we always, always in this side of glory are going to have sin and trespasses.

But this is not the act of sin. Remember that Paul's talking about. This is the sphere or realm in which we lived. This is where we're from. This is what we were entrapped by was the realm of trespasses and sin.

And living in the state, what did we do? Look at it. Following the course of this world. Following the course of this world. This world is in enmity with God, isn't it? This world has been subjected to futility.

And this world is going in the opposite direction of holiness at a breakneck speed. And we, ourselves, were following it. You and I were lockstep with it, weren't we? We followed the direction of it. And look at the passage again.

It says, following the prince of the air. Or the prince of the power of the air. The spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience. So not only did we follow the direction of the world, and the world go in the opposite direction from God.

We, like the rest of mankind, followed Satan. That's what Paul says. You may say, well I've never worshipped Satan, pastor. I've never done seances or whatever that may be that they do for Satan worship.

I've never done that. I certainly don't follow him. Scripture seems to think that we did. We followed him unknowingly. Because we were dead. Because the prince of the power of the air is referring to him, isn't it?

This is Satan here that is speaking of. The one that is the deceiver. The one that hates God and wants to pull as many away from God as he possibly can. And the entirety of the world is under the sway of the wicked one, isn't it?

And he is pulling people away from holiness and distracting them. And taking them away and pushing them away. So not only did we follow the way of the world like a herd of cattle that knows no different.

But we ourselves followed him. He was our shepherd. He was our father. The power of the air is referring to the spiritual realm around us. As Paul writes here. As a matter of fact, it's the same kind of realm if you want to flip over to Ephesians chapter 6.

A well-known verse in verse 12. That realm that Paul will later speak of. This is that realm in chapter 6 verse 12 of Ephesians. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

This is the spiritual realm. The power of the air that he is speaking of. Look back at our passage there. Following the prince of the power of the air. The spirit. You see, we now have the spirit, don't we?

We now have the Holy Spirit. We've already talked about that a few weeks ago. As Paul showed us. And that Holy Spirit is at work in us, isn't it? It's at work in each one of us. But there was another spirit.

That spirit, he says, that is now at work. There was another spirit. Before we had the spirit of something else at work in us. Because before we were not sons of God, we were sons just not of God. We were sons, we were heirs.

But not in the same way that we are now. You see, we were sons of disobedience. Just like the ones Paul will later mention in chapter 5 and verse 6 when he says, Let no one deceive you with empty words.

For because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Does the wrath of God come upon us? No. It only comes upon the sons of disobedience. All those that are not in Christ.

We are therefore under no condemnation any longer. But we once were. We once were sons of disobedience. Following the course of this world, the power, Satan himself. That's what we were. And Paul goes on, look at verse 3.

Among whom, among whom, he's talking about the sons of disobedience. The ones that are still sons of disobedience. Among whom we all once lived. Right? There's that past tense again. But remember, where did we live?

He's speaking of the sphere, the realm of trespasses and sins. We all once lived there. In the passions of our flesh. Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. And were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

Do you see the depths? Do you see the actual state of mankind? When we dig down to the core, the reality of where we were. We lived according to the passion of our own flesh. That flesh with the rotting stench of death.

What does dead flesh do? It rots. And we were left in it. We were dead in our flesh. Following, following it's prompting. Carrying out the desires of that flesh. Of this broken God hating body. Of this distorted warped mind.

That's who we were. And we did so because it was our nature as Paul says. This is the state, the realm in which we were. We were just like the rest of mankind. Children of wrath. Wrath. Just like the passage we just read a moment ago in 5 .6.

The wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. John the Baptist said in John chapter 3 verse 36. He says, whoever does not obey the son shall not see life. But the wrath of God remains on him. I hear many professing Christians today asking.

How could a good and loving God send anyone to hell? You ever heard that asked? How could a good and loving God send anyone to hell? But you see when we are confronted with who God is. When we're confronted with the holiness and the justice of God.

And we see that in contrast of who the Bible says that we are. Or we were. And that man is. What we just looked at, children of wrath. Right? Those people who were by nature enemies of God. That followed the course of this world.

That were living in the realm of trespasses and sins. It was in their nature, they were born with it. When we see who man is in contrast to that holy just God. We are left with no choice but to flip that question around, aren't we?

We begin to ask a different question. We begin to ask, well how could a good and loving God not send every single person into hell? How was that possible? Because we cannot even begin to fathom the massive distinction between the holy creator.

And just how vile humanity is and their sin. But we don't want to talk about that today. So people are left thinking that, well we're innately good. But we're not. Not according to scripture. We see all men, every man, every woman, every child, every infant, and believe it or not, every unborn baby.

Every single human being is conceived as a child of wrath. We were all spiritually stillborn. We were born into that realm of trespasses and sins. We were without hope. Enemies of God. Hating his law, hating his lordship.

And I'm sure there's probably some of you in here today that are saying, well, pastor, isn't that a little harsh? I mean, come on, that's a little extreme. Infants? Really? Children of wrath? Come on.

God's a loving God. He's going to overlook that. And my answer is absolutely not. I'm not being too extreme here. As a matter of fact, I would argue that I am only scratching the surface of what scripture teaches on the depravity of all humanity.

I haven't even delved into that yet. We're just kind of covering these verses to get to next week's verse. We're not even diving into the depths of that. But even if I did, here's the thing. I would plead with you to see this truth of the realm in which all of humanity is.

Every human being from the not yet born to the old and everyone in between. I would love for you to see it. And I ask that you see it not as discouraging or oppressive from God, but as a glorious and magnificent truth.

You ask, well, how could that be a glorious and magnificent truth? Because I believe that what Paul is pointing to here in our text is if you want to see the power of God. You want to see God for who He is?

We say that we do. We say, oh, God, show me more of you. Let me see more. I want to see more. Do you really? Because you may have a problem with that more. But for us, us who are in Christ now, we long to see the power of God.

We want to know it more and more. You want to understand it holistically? To really understand the depths of who God is? You want to glory in this glorious gospel that we talk about all the time? You want to see as much of God as He will reveal to you?

You want to love Him deeper? You want to trust Him richer? You want to rest in His mighty hand? Then you must see the depth that He dug down to grab a hold of you and redeem you. You must. That's why Paul starts here.

You see, he didn't save the lovable. He didn't save the indifferent. He didn't save us creatures. He didn't provide a little extra boost of holiness to get us over the finish line, as we would like to think.

Oh, man, you know what? I'm not quite good enough to get over the finish line to be able to stand before our almighty creator. I need a little Jesus to kind of push me over the edge. I just need a little bit of extra holiness.

So I'm going to put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ. That's not how Scripture teaches it, right? We dig down into the depths, and we see that He sent His own Son. He sent His own Son to dig in the dirt, to take our place, to undergo the wrath of the Father that you and I deserved and earned.

I'm going to say that again. The Son of God took the wrath of the Father. Anyone in here not deserve that wrath? Not a soul alive. Only Christ was perfect. And He who knew no sin became sin for us. And then in return places His righteousness upon us.

And He did so while we were still sinners. He came down, and He found us. He dug down to the depths of that foundation. When we were at the bottom, Jesus was there. He purchased us. Now this is a glorious truth, isn't it?

This is why we gather today. For without it, we wouldn't even begin to understand the depths of His great love, would we? We couldn't even comprehend the scope of His majestic power. Paul has prayed in chapter 1, I pray that you would see this beautiful power, this glorious power, that you would grow in the knowledge of this God that has redeemed you, the triune God, that you would grow to know Him more and more and worship Him more and more.

Well, guess what? In order to see that, you need to see where He found you. You need to be reminded of where He came and got you from. This brings a whole new meaning to being adopted as sons, doesn't it?

To being adopted as heirs. Children of God. We're no longer sons of disobedience. We are now sons of the Almighty. He did not make sons out of orphans. He made sons out of enemies. We were not indifferent.

We were enemies. This is a beautiful truth. Look at where He brought us. Think about your own life this morning. You may say, well, pastor, I was saved young, I was saved as a kid. How much wretchedness could I have committed?

I don't think I was an enemy of God. I didn't hate God. My whole life I've always kind of honored and respected God. Well, I would say that if this was pre-being awakened and brought into faith, and every one of us were once in that position as sons of disobedience, we were not indifferent.

We may have thought that we were okay with God. But I can promise you, if you would have had to stand before the Almighty, you wouldn't have wanted nothing of His presence. You would have chosen hell every day of the week because you hated God that much, even as a child.

And I'm not saying that. Scripture's saying that. Don't argue with me. You may be looking, well, pastor, it's a little extreme. You've got to argue with the Bible. This is the state of man. And this is not to be discouraging, as I said.

This is a great truth for us to see, the majestic glory and power of a great God who sought after us. Let's, in light of that, let's now prepare to go to the table as we do every week. This is a beautiful time for us to see what Christ has done on our behalf.

As we partake of the wine and the bread, representing the blood and body of our great Savior who came and sought us and found us, and then the beauty of the union that we now have together in Him. This is but a taste of that great feast that we are brought to, that feast that's only for family.

If you are a follower of Christ, if you have put your faith and trust in Christ and Christ alone, and you are seeking to be obedient, and you are in good standing with a local or even an evangelical church as a whole, you are welcome to this table.

But I charge you to, if you have unrepented sin, let me clarify this. I do this all the time because I don't want to put it on anybody's conscience. This is not penance, right? I say that all the time.

This is not penance. What I'm talking about is if you hate your brother, and you know you hate your brother, and you refuse to repent of it, you might not want to come to the table. We're not saying search and be like, oh man, I forgot about that sin and I didn't repent of it, and now God's going to strike me dead because I took the Lord's Supper.

That's not what this is about. If that were the case, not one of us could ever partake of this Lord's Supper. Repented of sin. But everyone is welcome to this table. We lay everything at the foot of the cross, the one that has paid the price for our sin and our enmity with him.

And if you want to pray with either myself or Pastor Jeremiah, we're always up here if you want to talk to us about anything. If you want to pray there in your seat, pray as a family and partake of the elements, we come around the outsides and come back here in the middle.

So let me pray for this moment, this time of worship. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the great sacrifice that your son has made on our behalf. Lord, I pray that as we partake of these elements this morning, that it will be a time of worship.

This is not a time for us to try and confess all our sins before you. This is a time for us to rest in the fact that you paid for all our sins. Father, I pray that you would mold us as a people. Lord, as Paul prayed that we would see the great power of the almighty God that has redeemed us.

Father, as we've started that today, as we look down at the depths and begin to work our way up to see it in its totality and worship you greater in spirit and truth, Father. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to partake of these elements.

We pray you are honored in it in Christ's name. Amen.