367: Made Alive | Dave Sloop

Introduction

Good morning. We are in Ephesians chapter two, verses one through ten. This is the classic text on the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. In fact, as I was looking at this passage, I realized that not by design, but almost every single time, this verse—Ephesians 2:8-9—finds its way into my sermon. As I start to recite these words, many of you will be able to repeat them in your head:

For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith. And this is not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one may boast. — Ephesians 2:8-9

This is a classic, familiar text. But I have a confession to make. When I saw that this was our lectionary passage for this week, there was part of me that thought, I don't want to write a sermon on that. Everybody already knows this. This is elementary, one-oh-one level stuff. And I opened and started to read the text, and with fresh eyes, God cut my heart with a reminder of what he has spared me from.

The Power of Grace and Our Past

Can I ask you a question? Is it possible to have the grace of God grow stale in your life and mine? It is. Is it possible to sing songs like Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, like this? It is.

A couple weeks ago, Melissa's closest college friend, a girl named Katie— they're like sisters— they talk every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. She called Melissa and said, I need you to pray. She said, Matt, her husband, has been having headaches and he's going in to get an MRI, and we're not sure what's going on. So Matt went in, and the scan of his brain revealed a mass so large that the doctors initially said this can't be a tumor. It's probably a swell or a brain bleed. It can't be a tumor. So they came back the next day for a more sophisticated MRI and a second opinion, and they determined that it was, in fact, a tumor—a really large brain tumor in this front part of his brain.

Katie's sister works for Johns Hopkins, and she was able to email this image to one of their top neurosurgeons. And within moments of seeing the image, he said, I'll take the case. Within a couple of days of that first MRI, they're sitting in front of a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, and he said, this needs to come out right away. In fact, you're scheduled for surgery the day after tomorrow.

Again, we're five days into this discovery. We're going to take this out on Thursday. He said, I want to make sure you understand what we're dealing with here. People who have this form of brain cancer are generally looking at months, but if we get it all, we're going to put something called a chemo wafer in your brain and it might extend your life.

Can you imagine? We were devastated as we experienced the thought of losing Matt, but also, as a dad and as a husband, I just couldn't help but put myself in his shoes and imagine someone telling me, you're probably not going to see your kids grow up. Probably not going to see them graduate high school, much less see who they marry, what their kids are going to look like someday. I mean, they were watching the story of their life be rewritten in real time. And we were crushed.

So Melissa cleared her schedule, and a week ago Thursday, Melissa went down to be with Katie as she sat for what would likely be the worst day of her life— Matt getting this tumor removed. This is a picture of Matt on the day of the surgery. And much to everyone's surprise, after the surgery, that surgeon who told them what we were likely up against came out with two thumbs up and said, I've got good news.

I just want to tell everyone, too, that we're not out of the woods. We don't even get the pathology report until Tuesday, this coming Tuesday, but the doctor—the surgeon—came out with two thumbs up and said, we have every reason to hope. There's a lot of evidence that this tumor has been there for a long time, which means it's slow-growing and low grade, and we think we got it all.

In fact, they didn't even put the wafer in the brain. He said, you have every reason to hope. And so Melissa has this video— I'm not going to show it— but it's a video of Katie, his wife, coming back out into the room where all of her people were waiting to surround her and comfort her in her grief. And instead, she said, it's good news. Instead of tears of mourning, there was just a chorus of joy as people wept and praised God. And again, we're still hoping, we don't know how this story will end, but for the time being, there is hope.

This is Matt two days after that surgery, with his three kids. Do you think that he feels a new lease on life this day? Do you think there's a gratitude he's experiencing that he didn't even know existed three weeks ago?

Our Spiritual Deadness and Need for Grace

See, Matt had a problem. He knew something was off, but he didn't know how bad it was. Then one day, he went in to a surgeon who said, This is killing you. It was a death sentence. Matt didn't need medicine. He needed a miracle. And there was a surgeon who knew what to do, and he set Matt free from the very thing that was killing him.

Do you think Matt will ever forget that day? Maybe. Maybe fifteen years from now, it won't be top of mind like it is today, but all he will need to do is look at that picture, and it will renew his gratitude.

Have you forgotten who you were? If the grace of God has become stale for us, it is not because we have graduated from our need for it. It is because we have lost touch with who we were and what he has saved us from.

If you will open to Ephesians chapter two, starting at verse one, listen to what Paul says. This is your testimony, and it is my testimony if you were in Christ. This is your origin story.

And you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. — Ephesians 2:1

Paul says you were dead. He does not say you were bad. In other words, this is not primarily about your behavior. He says you were dead. There was something fundamentally wrong with you. In fact, he says, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live.

Or in the ESV, it says, walk—that there's a kind of living that reveals a certain kind of deadness. What's he talking about here? He's clearly talking not about physical death because dead men don't walk except on TV. He's talking about a spiritual death.

What is that? If you are physically dead, then you are incapable of engaging your senses with the physical world around you. You can't see, you can't hear, you can't taste, you can't speak, you can't think. You can't reach for anything because you can't move, because you are physically dead to the physical world around you.

What does it mean to be spiritually dead? Have you ever thought of that? To be spiritually dead means that you are incapable of engaging your spiritual senses with the spiritual world around you. You cannot understand spiritual things. You cannot hear spiritual things. It doesn't click for you. You can't see with spiritual eyes.

Paul would say it this way in 1 Corinthians 2:14:

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him. — 1 Corinthians 2:14

Why? Because they are spiritually discerned. He cannot understand them. Did you hear the two reactions? The man without Spirit does not accept the things of God. In other words, there's a resistance, there's a hostility to anything from that deity that is supposed to be over me and define for me what is right and wrong. And in our old state, we say, no thank you.

But it's not just hostility—there's an inability there. It's not just that he does not accept it; he cannot understand it. Why? Because these things are spiritually discerned. If you are spiritually dead, it means that you cannot understand, perceive, see God for who he is. But it's not just that you can't see God; you also cannot seek him. You will not long for him, you will not love him, and you cannot have a life that pleases him.

Paul would say it this way in Romans 3:10-12:

There is no one righteous, no, not one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away and together have become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. — Romans 3:10-12

Do you believe that? Now, some of us might hear that and think, I know some good people. They’re not Christians. They don't claim to believe in God—they’re morally upright. And of course, that is true according to our human standards. But do you know what God says about our good efforts, our righteous deeds? Filthy rags. He says they’re like filthy rags.

In the original Hebrew, that word filthy means something a little more offensive. Filthy is a pretty benign translation. It is offensive. My presenting my goodness to God is like spitting in his face. We cannot meet his righteous standard. And if you're honest with yourself, you know it. Because the moment you have a season of moral purity, you start looking at others and going, I’m a lot better than all these other people. It's pride. You're doomed.

The moment you are more generous than you were last year, you pat yourself on the back. It's pride. You see, when you conquer sin in one place, it starts to come in through the back door elsewhere. You can't escape it. You know why? Because you're spiritually dead.

And therefore, the next thing Paul says is that when you're dead, here’s how you walk—in transgressions and sins. It's the only way you can walk. It's the only choice you have. The idea of transgression is to be off the path. God has set a path of righteousness, and you are not walking on it. The idea of sin is to miss the target. There is a target for righteousness that he demands from the people he created. You have missed the target by more than a little. We are off the path; we have missed the mark. And that is how we walk because we're dead spiritually. That’s all we can do.

And Paul says that there are actually a lot of people doing that with you. He said, when you were living that way, he characterized it this way: you were following the ways of the world. Is there a way of the world? Is there a way that the world says here is where you can find life? Through your success at work, through your accumulation of wealth and material goods, through human relationships. We try to find life through the success of our children or even sensual pleasure. Does it work? It doesn't. It’s a mirage.

There are so many things that we reach for, and as soon as we grasp them, we realize it was a mirage. It’s sand slipping through our fingers. We can't hold on to it. We find that we’re like broken cisterns that can't hold water, and suddenly we are empty again. It doesn't work.

Did anybody happen to see this? Maybe fifteen years ago, Tom Brady was interviewed on Sixty Minutes. Have you seen this? He had already gotten three Super Bowl rings. He's like married to a supermodel. He has more money than he knows what to do with. And the guy interviewing him said, we were really surprised, therefore, to hear Tom Brady say this: he said, you know, people look at me and they think, man, this guy's arrived. I mean, he's made all this money, he's achieved more success than he ever thought he would in football. And he goes, me, I think, got to be more than this. And the guy interviewing him looked back at me and said, well, what's the answer? And you watch the smile drain from his face. And he says, I wish I knew. I wish I knew.

Proverbs 14:12 says,

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end, it leads to death. — Proverbs 14:12

Even in laughter, there is an ache in the heart. And that video interview is a living picture of that reality—that even in Tom Brady's overwhelming success, behind his laughter, there was an ache, a disappointment. This wasn't it. It didn't work. It wasn't enough.

Following the Wrong Master

Have you ever wondered why, universally, we in the world are all reaching for something that has been debunked and disproven as a sufficient basis for building your life upon? Do you know why? Paul’s going to tell us at the end of verse 2. He’s going to say, you weren't just following the ways of the world; you were actually following someone else. Or maybe a better way to say it is, you were following someone else.

Or maybe a better way to say it is that you were following someone else. You were following the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. Who is he talking about? He’s talking about Satan. And here’s how he describes him:

He is the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. — Ephesians 2:2

Now, we don't like to talk about Satan that much in the Western church. It’s uncomfortable, push that into a category with other weird stuff. We just avoid it. But do you know who was quite comfortable talking about Satan? Our Savior. In John chapter 8, listen to what Jesus says—just a few highlights from this passage. He's having an argument with some people who don't believe what he's saying, and here's what Jesus says in verse 8:43:

Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. — John 8:43-44

He who belongs to God hears what he says. The reason that you do not hear is because you do not belong to God. Do you know what he's saying here? He is saying, you cannot see me and you will not seek me. Do you know why? It’s not just because you made some mistakes—it's because you have chosen the wrong master. You are under his influence, and you're under his leadership.

He is the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. And in the ESV, it actually says the children of disobedience. Do you know why? Because Satan produces a certain kind of kid. He is a rebel, and he is disobedient. See, we will never understand our need for grace until we begin to see ourselves for who we really are. We are enemies of God. When we reject God in his way, we align ourselves with his sworn enemy. And do you remember Satan's sin? He said, I will be like the Most High. I will be like God. And we have said, us two, we are with you. And we have joined his army.

C. S. Lewis would put it this way: we are not merely creatures in need of improvement; we are rebels who need to lay down our arms. This is who we were. We were his enemies. And Paul's going to say it wasn't just you wicked Gentiles; it was us Jews too. In verse 3 he says, 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. We were enemies of God. All we knew to do was sin and transgress, and therefore, we were objects of wrath.

That is a tough statement there—objects of wrath. We were deserving of the punishment that sin demands. Romans 6:23 says:

The wages of sin is death. — Romans 6:23

A wage is something you earn for yourself. And God's been saying it since the garden. He told Adam and Eve that in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. What’s going on here? When we choose sin, when we rebel against God and join Satan's army, we cut ourselves off from the source that gives us life. We are the ones who walked away. And if we die in our sins, we die cut off, and we experience eternal death.

But God: The Mercy and Love of God

And Paul says it wasn't just you—Gentiles; we deserved it too. We were enemies of God and objects of wrath. And then in verse 4, James Montgomery Boice would say, if you understand these next two words— it will save your soul. And if you recall them, reflect on them, and live by them, it will transform your very life. The next two words are:

But God. — Ephesians 2:4

You are enemies, objects of wrath, but God, who is rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us— what's Paul saying? He's saying, God is the first mover in our salvation. In fact, he's the only mover. God doesn't come 90% of the way and hope that you'll reach back with 10%. God comes the whole way.

See, there are two kinds of religions. One variation says, I will be good enough to please him. You find that through the Ten Commandments, the Eightfold Path, or the Five Pillars of Islam. It’s all some version of, I will be good enough for God to justify myself before a holy and righteous God. And then there is Christianity, which says, I will come to you.

Do you know why? Because you're dead, and dead people can't move. They can't reach. They are continually transgressing and sinning. So do you know what Jesus did? He came in the flesh. And the path that we couldn't walk, he walked it. And the target we couldn't hit, he hit it. But God, because of his great mercy and because of the great love with which he loved us, he made us alive with Christ.

He didn't just begin the work—he will finish it. He started it, he will complete it. We do not contribute—this is not a partnership. It is all his doing. He made us alive with Christ.

How does he make us alive with Christ? The implication here is that in order for us to be alive, someone else has to become the object of God's wrath. And that was Jesus, the one who walked the path and hit the target. He became sin, he absorbed it, he absorbed the wrath of God, and God was satisfied.

He says, I made you alive with Christ. What part did we play? We laid there lifeless and dead like Matt on the operating table while the surgeon did what only the surgeon could do. You do not help him; he saves you completely. He does all of it.

But that's not all. It says God raised us up with Christ. See, Jesus didn't stay dead. We died with Christ in the sense that we get forgiveness of sins, but he didn't stay in the grave. He was raised to life. And Paul is telling us that we get newness of life. His Spirit comes and lives inside us, and we are sanctified.

Do you know what he's saying here? You're saved by grace, but guess what else? You are sanctified by grace too. You didn't do that part either. I'm going to put my Spirit in you and teach you to obey me. That's how much God knows that we can't do it because we're spiritually dead, but he doesn't stop there either. He says, I raised you with Christ and seated you in the heavenly realms with him in Christ Jesus.

He saved us by grace. He sanctified us by grace. What does he mean? You're glorified by grace. You're seated, past tense. He's there; you're there. Why? Because your life is hid with Christ in God. If he is there, it’s as good as if you were there. You are going there. Your place is secure.

If he saved you when you were an enemy, he will complete the work now that you're his child. We can't lose it. It is secure.

But there's something else about that word seated. Why does someone sit down? Jesus is seated in heaven. You sit down because the work is done. My dad said this to me last night— Christianity is not a religion of doing; it is a religion of done. It is finished.

What were Jesus' last words on the cross? It is finished. There is nothing more to contribute. The work is finished. You are justified by grace. You are sanctified by grace. You are and will be glorified by grace.

And some of us might even be thinking, well, what about the faith part? It says you're saved by grace through faith. Didn't we do the faith part? Paul interrupts the sentence and says, that's not from yourself; even faith was a gift. He moved in you so that you could love him because in your deadness, you could not on your own. That is grace.

You know what? He's going to say at the end, in verse 10, even the good works that you do—those were prepared in advance that you might walk in them. It's all grace.

Application

Do you know that? Some of us today need to remember who we were. We need to look at the picture and allow our hearts to be stirred with gratitude— from who we were and who we would have otherwise been.

But then, there are some of us here today who are discovering for the first time who we are: that we are enemies of God, that by nature, we are objects of wrath. That's who we are. We are the ones that walked away. But God— but God, who is rich in mercy— he sees you and he loves you. And do you know what he'd like to do for you today? He would like to do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

If you will bring yourself like a patient on the operating table, he will make you alive with Christ. Would you let him?

Conclusion

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your Word. Thank you for how it changes us. God, we need you. That is what grace is. You did it all. I pray that some of us today would remember that so that our hearts would be grateful, and that others of us would discover it for the first time. Lord, would there be some that would experience new life today? We pray it in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you stand with me as we worship?