Our Need for God's Sovereign Love - Eph. 2:1-9

Our Need for God’s Sovereign Love

Two Little Words That Say “I Love You”

By: Jim Gentner

Intro:

Our text is Ephesians chapter 2 where we will examine our state as Gentile unbelievers and what God has done to redeem us.

In order to get some context for this text let’s look at a couple things:
1.       City / Church
a.       In the establishing of the Church at Ephesus you can parallels to the establishment of Jewish Church. Like John the Baptist, Apollos paved the way for Paul by preaching repentance. Then Paul preached the baptism of Jesus Christ, so was born the Church of Ephesus.
2.       Text
a.       The letter to Ephesus is organized into 2 sections: chapters 1-3 foundational teaching and chapters 4-5 application.

Even though we are going to jump into chapter 2 we will have to keep in mind the whole time that 1-3 are a continuous thought so not to take Paul out of context. Thankfully he gives us a clear look into what he is thinking when writing this letter in Chapter 3.

[Read Eph 3:4-6 – Central Idea – Everyone]

4When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

So just keep in mind this mystery that Paul wants to explain to us in the coming verses.
Exposition of Eph 2:1-3:

[Read Eph 2:1-3 - Everyone]

 1And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2in 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— 3among 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.

v1. Paul starts chapter two off with the most explicit/direct statement of our spiritual nature then any of his other letters. This is similar to the language he uses in pretty much all of Romans but specifically in Romans 5:12 which we are all familiar with:

[Read Rom 5:12 – from notes]

12Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

We see Paul refrencing the fact that since Adam men have died because sin entered the world here in Ephesians we see that it is our spiritually dead state he is talking about.

v2. I don’t believe this verse is as tricky as it might sound, from what I have found the consensus is that this is talking about Satan and the ‘World System’. We were following Satan when we were living in trespasses and sins. I think Jesus explains it best when rebuking the Jews in the Gospel of John.

[Read John 8:44 – from Notes]

44You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him.

The Jews were claiming their ‘right standing with God’ based on who their Parents were. And Jesus judged them based on their sinful actions regardless of heritage.

v3. Here at verse three notice the shift Paul makes from talking at the Gentiles to recognizing the sin of both Jews and Gentiles alike. In Romans chapter 3 he explains this further by seemingly pulling off some terrible hermeneutics and cutting and pasting all kinds of verses together:

[Read: Rom 3:9-18 - Everyone]

9What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one;
11no one understands; no one seeks for God.
12All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one."
13"Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive."
 "The venom of asps is under their lips."
 14"Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness."
15"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
 16in their paths are ruin and misery,
17and the way of peace they have not known."
 18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes."

This scripture illustrates the first point of what we now call the ‘Doctrines of Grace’, Total Depravity. That we are helpless, we are not just really, really; really, sick but completely unable to even take a cure if it was given to us.

Charles Spurgeon has said: “No man ever made himself to live. No preacher, however earnest, can make one hearer to live. No parent, however prayerful, no teacher, however tearful, can make a child live unto God. “You hath HE quickened,” is true of all who are quickened.”

 So what is the mystery? If you remember Paul is writing to us to reveal this great mystery of God saving the Gentiles. Now most of us, especially before we ever heard Pastor Keith preach, would not give these verses a second thought. “It’s simple; Paul is just showing how the Jew and Gentiles are utterly sinful. God has the power to save us both”

Depravity of the Jews:

To understand what’s going on here we need to go back to the Old Testament to get some context on these verses.

We obviously won’t be able to cover the entire Old Testament, luckily for you Pastor Keith suggested if I ever wanted to preach again I should keep my sermon under three hours. So now you can look forward to just 2 hours of Old Testament readings so make sure you thank him when we are done.

We will spend time looking at one example in particular but just think about the reoccurring pattern in the Old Testament? From the beginning to end we see the Jews, Gods chosen people, falling into sin, angering God, God punishing them, they repent, God saves them and it happens all over again.

Think about these great men in the book of Judges that mark these cycles like Samson, Gideon, Deborah, continuing to the book of 1st and 2nd Kings and so forth. Today we’ll look at Isaiah chapter 10.

As we have learned over the last few weeks the Jews once again have sinned against God. And when God needs to send them a Prophet we are not talking about some of them falling into sin one day. We know now that their action are just inexcusable and persistent even going so far as to sacrifice their children to Baal.

[Read Isaiah 10:5-11 - Everyone]

 5Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!
6Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
7But he does not so intend, and his heart does not so think;
but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few;
8for he says: "Are not my commanders all kings?
 9Is not Calno like Carchemish [Kar’Kem’ish]? Is not Hamath like Arpad [R’Pod]? Is not Samaria like Damascus?
10As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols,
   whose carved images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
11shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols as I have done to Samaria and her images?"

We will not analyze this text deeply as Pastor Keith has been covering Isaiah. But we can all see that God is once again fed up and putting a stop to the sin of the Jews. But if we had just started reading Isaiah in this verse we would get the impression that this is some kind of capricious God who is over reacting. But even with our flawed human mind do we not wage war against evil doers like Hitler to bring justice and end the suffering their sin causes?

Well how much more so when the crimes are committed against an infinitely Holy God by his own people.

Hope for the Jews:

But in each of these examples what happens in that cycle, well let’s just read further in Isaiah and see.

[Read Isaiah 10:20-21 – from notes]

 20In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. 21A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.

A remnant! There was always a remnant. Why? Because God is faithful to his promises. Even amidst a sinful nation he made a covenant with his people to save them.

So that’s why the Jews have hope; not simple because they believe God will save them but because he has already done it, over and over again. God has proven himself faithful to his word, and even now [as in the time period Paul is writing his letter] the Christian Jews like Paul know that even though they are utterly sinful, God can save them.

Depravity of the Gentiles:

Now with an understanding of the Jewish mindset and their hope in God where does that leave us Gentiles? Well let’s think back to those Old Testament stories of nations that went up against the Jews.

Midianites / Amalekites / Ammonites / etc… and in our example the Assyrians

Most of these nations if not all were either dispersed or simply destroyed; there was just no mercy for them. Let me sum up the picture Paul paints for us back in Ephesians of this Jewish mindset we are trying to understand.

Again Spurgeon: “Sin poisons the well-head. Sin is in our brain; we think wrongly. Sin is in our heart; we love that which is evil. Sin bribes the judgment, intoxicates the will, and perverts the memory. We recollect a bad word when we forget a holy sentence. Like a sea which comes up and floods a continent, penetrating every valley, deluging every plain, and invading every mountain, so has sin penetrated our entire nature.”

We have already seen that like the Jews we are dead in trespasses and sin, living in the passion of our flesh and by nature children of wrath. But as if that wasn’t bad enough as Gentiles it doesn’t end there.

Paul goes on to say that we are separated from Christ, alienated from Israel, strangers to the promise, without Hope and without God!

Do you see the problem? The Gentiles have the same sinful nature as the Jews but have nothing to save them. No messiah, no heritage, no promise, no hope, no God. We are utterly guilty and have no one to plead our case.

Spurgeon puts it like this: “The fact is, that man is a reeking mass of corruption. His whole soul is by nature so debased and so depraved, that no description which can be given of him even by inspired tongues can fully tell how base and vile a thing he is.”

Are you depressed yet, do you see yourself as wretched before an all knowing, all powerful, Holy God?
Exposition of Eph 2:4-9:

If so then you are now ready to read verse four … But God! Stop wait did Paul just say But God, you mean that’s not the end of me. I know we have to read the rest but think about it, after four thousand years this is the first time the Gentiles ever heard those words! [Not literally of course.]
 
[Read Eph 2:4-6 - Everyone]

4But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— 6and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

It is Valentine’s Day so we had to talk about love, well it just doesn’t get any better than this. How amazing is his mercy and love in light of the utter depravity and hopelessness of the Gentiles, that he would love us!

Let me try to illustrate to you the reason why this love just does not come across in most evangelical churches. And in very evangelical style I’ll use a movie to make the analogy, take the movie Saving Private Ryan. In it you have a group of soldiers who sacrifice themselves to go into the midst of a warzone and help bring a soldier safely home.  The false view of God’s love would say that where you are in the midst of this battle on earth and he loved you so much that he sent his Son to sacrifice himself to help get you safely home.

 If we take into account the Bible, more specifically what we just read, it would be more accurate if the movie were called ‘Saving Adolf Hitler’. The fact that God sent his Son to sacrifice himself to save the very people that want to kill him.

Spurgeon: I take it that the highest proof of Christ’s power is not that he offers salvation, not that he bids you take it if you will, but that when you reject it, when you hate it, when you despise it, he has a power whereby he can change your mind, make you think differently from your former thoughts, and turn you from the error of your ways.

So why would he do this? Let’s continue

 [Read Eph 2:7-9 - Everyone]

7so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

We see that this plan of God’s is to show his grace towards sinners like us. Can you think of anything more loving/gracious/merciful then to save not only a people that are dead but are at war with you?

Just in case Paul has not been clear about God’s sovereignty in our salvation we have verses 8 and 9. And now that you understand your nature as unbelievers why would want anything to do with your salvation?

Conclusion:

Think of how encouraging it is to know that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is solely and completely responsible for your salvation. As Paul said to Timothy, “The Lord is faithful, he shall establish you, and keep you from evil.”

Spurgeon: As I have sometimes told a brother who has denied the doctrine of final perseverance, when I have seen his holy life, “Never mind, my brother, you will persevere to the end, and you will prove the doctrine that you do not believe.”

To conclude let me close with Paul’s prayer to us Gentiles:

[Read Eph 3:14-21 – from notes]

14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

 20Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.