Sermon Tone Analysis

Text:  Ephesians 2:1-10

Title:  The Main Thing

 

Textual Theme, Goal, Need:

Theme:  Christians are saved by God’s grace.

Goal:  to encourage Christians to recognize their salvation comes from God’s grace

Need: many people deny God’s grace.

Either they believe they are saved by the law, or they believe there is no need to be saved.

Sermon Theme, Goal, Need:

Theme:  Christians are saved by God’s grace

Goal:  to encourage Christians to recognize their salvation comes from God’s grace.

Need:  We deny or forget about God’s grace.

Textual Outline:

Vs 1-3  How sinful we are

#.

you were dead in your sins

#. in which you used to live

#.

following the world

#.

following the lusts of the sinful nature

#. following the evil spirit, the ruler of the kingdom of the air

#.

All of us lived in sin

#.

Like the rest we were objects of wrath

Vs 4-9  How great God is

#.

God made us alive with Christ

#.

God raised us with Christ and seated us with him in heaven

#.

So that he can show us incomparable riches of grace

#.

Grace and faith are gifts of God so we can’t boast

 

Vs 10  We are the workmanship of God created to do good works.

Textual Notes:

Ways of the world describes the sinful structures of the world and value systems that corrupt.

Ruler of the kingdom of the air:  Evil spirits were pictured as dwelling in the air.

Objects of wrath:  God is going to pour down judgement on the wicked.

See Hebrews 10.  Zeph 1:15; and Rev. 7 bowls.

Vs 2 “lived actually means “Walked”  Parallels the good deeds we are prepared to “walk in” found in verse 10.

 

Sermon Outline:

Begin with a top ten list of reasons we wouldn’t come to Trenton church.

Introduction:  Keeping the main thing the main thing.

Don’t let the minor things bog us down or draw our attention away.

I.  We are the scum of creation in some ways.

Can be seen all over the US and Canada.

II.

God is the glorious savior

III.

He prepared us to do good things.

Conclusion:  We need to focus on the main thing of Christ’s salvation for us.

Sermon in Oral Style:

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

          Ang and I are so happy to be back with you here in Trenton.

For those of you who may be visiting or don’t know our situation.

I served here for a year as an intern last year.

After graduating and finishing up the year long internship, my wife Ang, our son Cory, and I went back to the States for six weeks, back to where we are from originally.

While we were away, the church decided to call me back as a full-time co-pastor with Pastor Jake.

And that began the time of prayers to God to help us understand what he wanted us to do.

And we weighed the pluses and minuses of coming back to Canada and to the church here in Trenton.

Obviously, since we are back, the pluses outweighed the minuses.

But, I thought I would share with you some of the things that discouraged us from coming back to Canada.

 

5 -      No Caffeine.

This can’t be my Mountain Dew.

4- Too many u’s.

Flavour, Saviour, Colour, Neighbour, and Honour are not supposed to have u’s in them.

3-  Every year I have lived in Canada, the hockey season has been canceled.

2-  Its tough to drink milk directly out of a bag.

1- Stars I can handle, but I still have no idea how to draw a maple leaf.

Now, these are just silly examples, but can you imagine if I decided they were major issues.

This just goes to show how silly it can look when we confuse the minor things with the major ones.

*There is a saying, that goes: “We have to keep the main thing the main thing.”

And this is exactly what the church in Ephesus is struggling with when Paul writes this letter.*

And that is what we some times struggle with.

Some of us focus a lot on the other things in life and over look faith completely.

And others who come to church regularly find a pet peeve that distracts them from the main thing.

Ephesus is one of the seven churches written to in Revelation and Christ is angry at them because they have forgotten their first love.

*They have not let the main thing be the main thing.*

*Ephesians 2:1 says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.”*

*Paul starts us off with the Problem.

It’s the main problem we all face.

**We are dead in our transgressions and sins.*

*Dead.

*

 

Death is not a light thing.

For some of us, death is a very recent thing in our family or in our circle of friends.

When you see a body lying in a casket, it just doesn’t look right.

It isn’t right  Bodies are not supposed to stop living.

Friends and family members are not supposed to die.

*Death is violently opposed to the natural way God intended for things to be.*  *And we are dead in our sins.*

Now, in life we are told it is good to have options, well we have options for sin as well.

*We have the option of either transgressing or sinning, according to Paul.

* We have *transgressed, crossed the line* that we weren’t supposed to.

And we have *sinned, or missed the mark*, not doing things the way we were supposed to.

Our problem is that we did what we weren’t supposed to, and we didn’t do what we were supposed to.

And there are three options for forces that lead us into sin.

Verse 2 says, *“you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of the sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.”*

So where does this sin come from?

*Force 1 is the world.*

The world likes to tempt and it always has.  Every generation has had its own *disco inferno* and sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Its not a new thing.

And it’s not going away any time soon either.

You can’t turn on the TV without seeing how glamorous it is to gamble, how necessary it is to have the best vehicle on the market, and how hip and trendy it is to promote the homosexual lifestyle.

Giving in to this world kills.

And where else does this sin come from?

It says it comes from the *“ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is at work in the disobedient.”*

So the spirit at work in the disobedient.

We know that he is talking about Satan.