Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

You have a magnifying glass and hold it up before the sun until you focus the rays on a piece of dry wood and set it on fire.

Now, while you see the wood burning to ashes, tell me, what is it that burns?

Does the heat of the sun burn the wood or does the wood burn?

The heat that you feel while the wood is burning, is it due to the sun or to the wood?

Of course, it’s both, at first the fire is purely and simply the flame of the sun, but afterwards the wood itself begins to burn; the sun burns the wood and then the wood itself burns.

In like manner, the love of God comes into our heart, and then our heart loves too, and in both cases “love is from God” (1 John 4:7).

No man is a Christian unless he himself loves God with his own heart, but yet our love to God is nothing more or less than the reflection of God’s love to us.

Ephesians 2:1-10 explains how humanity, though spiritually dead and deserving of God’s anger, is gifted salvation because of God’s marvelous grace and love for us.

Believer’s are God’s masterpiece in whom and through whom He performs his good works.

As a result, I feel this passage provides the best summary concerning salvation in all of Paul’s writings.

Ephesians 2:1–10 (ESV)

By Grace Through Faith

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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 in the sons of disobedience— 3 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.

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

What we were (vv.1-3)

Paul begins our passage by making it clear that unbelievers do not accidentally sin, but defy God by deliberate disobedience in verses 1 - 3.

Deliberately Indifferent to God

We first find out that we were “dead”.

But Paul is not speaking in physical terms, rather he is implicating a spiritual death.

The Greek word here means “to be completely indifferent toward the things of God”.

Furthermore, “trespasses and sins” denote conscious and deliberate rebellion.

Acting in Disobedience to God

Next, he expounds on this by stating that we “walk” in this rebellion.

For example, think about what walking is.

Walking is not some internal process that’s going on.

Walking implies action.

Walking implies movement.

Every step you take is a tangible, physical action.

Each step is a movement in some direction.

Paul wants to explain that our trespasses and sins weren’t just internalized, they were externalized through our actions.

Our intentional and deliberate actions of disobedience.

Paul then melds our actions and our spiritual death together when he explains what we were doing.

He speaks of “this world” not just in a physical sense but also in a spiritual sense, in other words ethically and morally.

We know this because he equates “following the course of this world” with “following the prince of the power of the air”.

In ancient times, this word “air” referred to the dwelling place of evil spirits.

Paul’s point is to bring to our awareness that the reason we took these actions is because we were subscribing ourselves to the value-system Satan has created in this world.

That doesn’t mean that non-Christians realize that their values are created by Satan.

In fact, most everyone would outright deny ever having anything to do with him.

But Satan controls us by placing things in front of us that we find attractive, and we oblige him by pursuing them like they were our own ideas.

Subjecting Ourselves to God’s wrath

As a matter of fact, Satan’s greatest accomplishment is convincing us that we are in control;

and it’s an easy thing for him to do because humans LOVE to be in control!

But the truth is that if we are not surrendered to God, then we are surrendered to evil.

This does not mean that Satan always turns us into drunks or murderers or other types of despicable people, more often he is much more subtle that than.

His most common tactic is to play on our own selfishness and conceit to give us a false sense of self righteousness.

We believe that:

we can decide between good and evil,

our definition of justice is the only correct one,

don’t judge me but I can judge you,

if you don’t like what I have to say then you are just a hateful bigot.

Sound familiar to anyone?

However the truth is that someone else is always in control,

either God is in control of us through the Holy Spirit

or Satan is in control of us through wordly temptations and deceit.

What God did (vv.4-9)

Nevertheless, Paul contrasts the desperate state of sinfulness that humanity suffers in verses 4-9 by saying that God is rich in mercy and love towards us.

I don’t think Paul intended this, but I believe the next two words we read are the most powerful words in the entire Bible.

“BUT GOD”,

just think of how many evil thoughts, desperate situations, and broken lives can be answered by these words.

“I just want to get revenge”, BUT GOD makes me better than that.

“Times are really low in my life, I feel like everything is crashing down on me”; BUT GOD has a plan for good to come out of this.

“I have destroyed my own life, I am a terrible person and deserve every bad thing that happens to me”; BUT GOD can change me!

There is no excuse, protest, or condemnation that the world can throw at you that can’t be refuted by “BUT GOD”.....the scriptures explain this fact in

Seriously, try interjecting “BUT GOD” into everything you think and do from now on and see how your life changes.

Showed us mercy because of His love for us

Moreover, we saw in verses 1-3 that we deserve wrath and judgement.

“But God”.....He loves us so very much and He grants us mercy!

Raised us to spiritual life in union with Christ

In addition, we receive this mercy through Christ, by being unified and raised with Him.

Because of this, we have the opportunity to receive something we don’t deserve, that is what grace is.

Due to the fact that Paul has been talking in the past tense up until now, many translations render the phrase “you have been saved” in past tense so that it makes grammatical sense in English,

but the Greek word sense here implies a continuous act.

Christ’s sacrifice allows us to come into God’s presence when we accept Him as Lord and He continues to secure our place with God for all eternity.

Paul reinforces this thought by stating the reason we are offered salvation is “so that in the coming ages” (eternity), God can “show the immeasurable riches of His grace towards us in Christ Jesus”.

Understand that “show” indicates there is a display going on.

We are to be the exhibition to all of creation of the wisdom and love and grace of God.

What a privilege!........Many will experience God’s wrath, but we get to be examples of His grace and mercy!

Offered us the gift of salvation

Not to mention that all of this is a free gift that God gives us simply for accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior.

Not only did we not earn it, but we cannot earn it, ever.

The self-centered, self-righteous world takes this statement as a negative, complaining against God that they are in a situation they cannot get themselves out of.

However, Christians realize that, really, it is a glorious and unimaginable statement of God’s love for us.

True, we cannot get ourselves out of our sinful nature.

But we don’t have to, Christ has done the task for us!

For one thing, have you ever paused to think about just how jealous the ancient Israelites must be of us?

Go and read Leviticus, it’s an entire book filled with the laws, rituals, and sacrifices they had to do continuously as God’s people, and even then only one of them, the High Priest, was able to enter God’s presence once a year.

Their lives were dominated by constantly sinning, and making atonement to God for it, in a never-ending circular pattern.

Furthermore, none of it even guaranteed they would go to heaven.

Did you realize that?

The Old Testament Law has no guarantee of salvation, only guarantees of judgement.

The Pharisees despised Jesus for the same reason the world does today.

Because He offers us what they never can.

What we are now (v.10)

In light of this, Paul tells us how salvation changes life for a Christian in verse 10.

God’s new creation

Uniquely, “workmanship” is a very personal word.