2:1 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 body1 and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.2 4 But3 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.
(ESV)
Ephesians 2:1-10
2:1 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 body1 and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.2 4 But3 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.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Hey, everybody. I'll try to remember you guys up there. I'll do my best. And there's a lot more of you since last time I was up here. My name is Jeff, by the way.
Collin Hansen:I'm the associate pastor here at Redeemer. If we haven't met before I'd love to get to know you after the service. So, this week we're actually taking a little break from our Exodus study. We've been in Exodus for about 6 weeks and usually when we start a series we kind of start a subseries with it where every 3 weeks we will be going through the main series, and then on the 4th week we would do something like we did the, the Lord's Prayer one time. We went through different Psalms, for about a year or 2 on the last Sunday.
Collin Hansen:And so we had we had something that we would kind of break up the main series with, and so we we haven't started something like that because we're going to be moving into Advent really soon. And so we decided that tonight and next week we will take a brief break from Exodus and look at the second chapter of Ephesians. We'll do that over a 2 week time period. Tonight, we'll be looking at Ephesians chapter 21 through 10. So if you wanna go ahead and start making your way there.
Collin Hansen:Ephesians chapter 2. This is a letter by Paul to the Ephesians. It was circulated well beyond the, the church that was in Ephesus, so much so that the initial greeting to the Ephesians was dropped out after a time. And so it just launches into this letter to, to any believing congregation as it circulated around. And so this is, this was initially to the Ephesians, but, in God's providence it's also to us tonight.
Collin Hansen:So let's go to God's word now. Ephesians chapter 2 starting with verse 1, and let us listen carefully for this is God's word. And you were dead in the 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 in 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. But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Collin Hansen:So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Collin Hansen:Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word and by your spirit, you speak life to us now. God, I pray that that those who are dead would would cross over into life tonight. And those of us who are downtrodden and and feel dead, that we would be brought to a new sense of the life you've given us and secured for us in Christ. So spirit, please instruct our hearts now.
Collin Hansen:We need to hear from you. We are desperate to hear from you because you you alone can change us and you alone are our hope. And so we pray these things, not only for us, we pray this for our world. So Christ come quickly, be near to us in your spirit. We pray this in your name.
Collin Hansen:Amen. I don't really like confrontation. I like to win arguments. I like resolution. I like, feeling vindicated.
Collin Hansen:I like those things, but I don't really like confrontation. I don't really like hard conversations. And I feel like lately I've been having a lot of hard conversations. Times where I've had to drive to meet someone where I know that they're going to say things that I don't want to hear, or vice versa. I'm gonna say things that they don't want to hear.
Collin Hansen:And we really don't want to have these hard conversations. And I've started to realize that as you as you get older, as you grow in responsibility, you have a lot more hard conversations. It's just part of growing in responsibility. Because when you were younger, like in junior high, nobody said, you know, I think Adam and I, we need to sit down and have a hard conversation. No.
Collin Hansen:They said, tell Adam to meet me at the Kmart parking lot. I'm going to punch him in the throat. We had different ways of dealing with things back then. At least we did in Western Kentucky. I'm sorry.
Collin Hansen:Maybe that was just us. That's how we resolved things. But no, we have different ways of dealing with things now. We we we have to have these hard conversations, And maybe we would rather just punch someone in the throat, or you've been in one of those conversations, you would rather be punched in the throat than have to sit through that hard conversation. So why do we do it?
Collin Hansen:Why do we have these hard conversations? You've had them. You've probably had them this week, if not this weekend. So why do we do it? Because we believe that on the other side of that hard conversation there's something good.
Collin Hansen:Now, maybe not easy. Maybe maybe not easy at all. Maybe even harder, but we believe that there's something on the other side. There's something good, maybe we need to clarify something, maybe we just need to, air out our grievances, we need to to really put it all out there. We believe that there's something on the other side that's worth the hard conversation, and so we do it.
Collin Hansen:Here in Ephesians, Paul is having a hard conversation. You see, he wants to encourage them. He wants to remind them of who they are in Christ, But he knows that in order to do that, in order to get to that encouragement, he's going to have to say some things that are difficult. But he's willing to have this hard conversation. He sees the good.
Collin Hansen:He wants to stir up their faith. He wants to encourage them in their good works. He wants to encourage them in their worship of God. And that's what I want us to do here tonight, that we would be encouraged in our faith and in our good works and in our worship of God. But to get there, we have some some pretty rough terrain to cross.
Collin Hansen:Some might call it a Red Sea. That's called foreshadowing, by the way. So, so far in this letter to the Ephesians, Paul has he's been praying for them. He's been praying for them actually kind of in a run on sentence, so a lengthy run on sentence in Greek. This was written down by Timothy, and so Paul would have probably been pacing around.
Collin Hansen:I imagine him all just kind of beat up and like feisty, and he's wanting to send this letter, and and he's he's just kind of rattling all of this off. It's being written down kind of furiously, which is why you get run on sentences, which is why you have these little dashes in in your Bible that say, dash, he says this, then dash back. He's coming back to some other thought. As he's so passionately telling these things, first to the Ephesians, but to us here tonight in God's providence. And so he's been praying for them.
Collin Hansen:And 3 things that he's prayed for them, he wants them to have this this spirit of wisdom, the spirit of revelation to know something. And he wants them to know these three things. What is the hope to which they have been called? What are the riches of the glorious inheritance for the saints? And the third thing is the immeasurable greatness of God's power, namely to those who believe.
Collin Hansen:And as he's as he's calling them into this, he is willing to have a hard conversation. He's willing to say things that are difficult to both say and to hear, And he begins another run on sentence. 1 through 10 is 1 big Greek run on sentence, and he wakes some sleeping dogs. Now if you read the New Testament, you realize that that Paul has no problem waking sleeping dogs. He sees a sleeping dog and he says, that's not any good.
Collin Hansen:Let's wake that dog up. And and so he goes over and he he wants us to to hear these things, to remember these things, to know these things, because he believes in a good on the other side. He begins with verse 1. Look with me. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.
Collin Hansen: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, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. So the first part of this hard conversation is the news that you were dead. You were dead in your sin. He's not pulling any punches. He's not saying, hey, I know you have kind of like a checkered past.
Collin Hansen:I know you got some tough things kind of back there. No. He's saying you were dead. All of you, all of us. Dead.
Collin Hansen:Dead in our sins and our trespasses. Now a complicated thing that comes out of that, if we want to linger long enough, is that only things that have been alive can be dead. Right? That follows. There's some logic to that.
Collin Hansen:Only something that has been alive can be dead. So when were we alive and how do we die? I've been listening to the, the serial podcast, which is, for those of you that don't know, it's like it's a it's a podcast, it's a hipster Nancy Grace. Okay? So just like a trendy true crime, and and so in this they want to go there's a crime that they're investigating, kind of armchair Talk to witnesses, look around at the parking lot, like go back to where it happened.
Collin Hansen:And that's important for us to do too. We were alive, somebody just told us that we died. We need to go back and figure out what happened. So to return to the scene of the crime, when were we alive? Genesis 1.
Collin Hansen:At the creation of all the heavens and the earth, all that we see, all the created universe, we were created to be alive with God. This perfect unity with God, this perfect relationship. Because we were created for this relationship with God and in that relationship we were fulfilled. Everything we could ever want, everything that we could ever be, we had, and we were with God. And then where where's the scene of the crime?
Collin Hansen:That's Genesis 3. That's sin and rebellion. That's the entering in of sin and death and estrangement. Estrangement from ourselves, estrangement from one another, estrangement chiefly from God. And that's where we died.
Collin Hansen:And as we confessed earlier in in 1st Corinthians 15, for all died in Adam. That's where it happened. And if we skip this part of the hard conversation, then nothing else will make sense. If we belittle this problem, if we make it just a flesh wound and not a death, Then verse 4, when we get to the the gospel news, it's gonna seem like a bit of an overreaction. It seems like a bit much.
Collin Hansen:It seems like a bit much that God would become flesh and dwell amongst us. It seems a bit much that he would grow up sinless. It seems a bit much that he would suffer on the cross, that he would suffer the wrath of God on the cross. It seems a bit much that he would be raised from the dead, victorious over the grave, and that he would ascend to the right hand of the father. That seems like a bit much unless we were dead.
Collin Hansen:We inherited this, but we also walked in it. Look at verse 2. We were dead in these trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air. That's Satan, the enemy. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
Collin Hansen:We didn't just inherit this guilt, but we walked and followed. We acted out on these things. We acted out this rebellion. And then we come to the second part of the hard conversation, that is that we all deserve wrath. Children of wrath were by nature children of wrath, is what Paul says here.
Collin Hansen:Children of anger. That we would deserve that kind of judgment. And that is because of God's justice, which we sang about before the throne just a few moments ago. That God is just, that God is holy, and he will he will bring down judgment on disobedience. And so Paul is willing to say, you are dead and you deserved that wrath.
Collin Hansen:Unless we hear these things, the rest of this will not make sense. Unless we believe it and hold it in our mind long enough, Ephesians 2:1 through 3 tells us that in our sin we are guilty, that we are deserving of punishment, and that we should be ashamed of our rebellion against God. Now we have a problem in, in, in a lot of churches of either never starting here or lingering here too long. Some of you are thinking, we're reaching the too long. But this is the hard part of the conversation.
Collin Hansen:He tells us these things. Our sinful rebellion against God really manifests in 3 ways. These are 3 ways, if you're taking notes or writing down anything, this this might be a good time to write these three things out. Our sinful rebellion against God manifests itself in 3 ways. 1 is guilt.
Collin Hansen:Our guilt says, I did wrong. The second thing, manifest it in fear. I deserve wrong or punishment. And the third thing is shame. I am wrong.
Collin Hansen:An issue of being. Now, Brene Brown, she's a author, researcher, speaker, you might have seen her TED talk before. I've read a couple of her books, they've been good. Definitely some helpful points in there. But she she says this about shame.
Collin Hansen:She defines shame like this, shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. I'll say it again, it's kind of wordy. Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Now I'm going to draw some points out of that that she didn't intend, but she's not here right now, so there you go. Paul comes with this hard conversation and he tells us three things about our fear, our guilt, and our shame.
Collin Hansen:And what he says will start with guilt. Our guilt is not a lie. We have trespassed God's law and we are sinners. Paul would go on to tell Timothy that he is the chief among the sinners. He's foremost a sinner.
Collin Hansen:He he will say that straight out, which is also why he's gonna say in verse 3, he moves from you all to we. We all walked in this disobedience. We all lived in this world. We all did this together. He's not just up there at a bully pulpit pointing a finger.
Collin Hansen:Neither am I. We are guilty, our guilt is not a lie. Second thing is this, our fear of punishment is not a lie either. We are by nature children of wrath and deserving punishment. Our guilt isn't a lie, our fear is not a lie.
Collin Hansen:And the third thing is our shame is not a lie. We are flawed. We are deserving of punishment and wrath. Now if you take away or minimize or ignore any of those realities, the rest won't make sense. In fact, the gospel won't make sense when the suffering of the Son of God is just an overreaction, a major overreaction to a minor problem.
Collin Hansen:Paul isn't afraid to wake the sleeping dogs of our guilt, our shame, and our fear. In the midst of all the chaos of us knowing this, alright, so if we've, if we've been paying attention then all this is called into the forefront of our mind, That our guilt is not a lie, that our shame is not a lie, that our fear is not a lie. And it's all right here in front of us. And in the chaos and in the darkness of that reality, but God. To our certain guilt, to our fear of deserved punishment, to our rightful shame, but God.
Collin Hansen:Not that I turned over a new leaf or I finally came to my senses, not that I read a great book or that I finally got my act together, not that I tried harder, but God. In the face of all of our hopelessness and helplessness, but God. And Paul says, know these things, understand these things, do not minimize your guilt, don't minimize that you are deserving of wrath, but God. Look with me at verse 4. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ.
Collin Hansen:By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Because he is wealthy in mercy, and because of his great love for us. See, Paul gives us the drive behind this unexpected contrast to the previous clause. The previous cause of hopelessness is met with but God, that God has done a work in Christ. 1st, that he made us alive with Christ.
Collin Hansen:2nd, that he raised us up with Christ. And then that he seated us with Christ. Paul is saying that what the Father did in resurrecting the Son and raising him from the grave, then exalting him, raising him up to the heavenlies, he has done for us in Christ. And this is because of his mercy and his love. This is why Paul is willing to have the hard conversation that, yes, remember that you were dead, remember that you were deserving of wrath, but remember that God has acted in mercy and love.
Collin Hansen:And in that act, the grace of God addresses all our guilt, all our fear, and all our shame. The grace of God addresses our guilt in making the guiltless guilty, in taking him who knew no sin, Jesus, to become sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. The guiltless became guilty and that is how he has acted on our behalf regarding our guilt. The grace of God addresses our fear In first John chapter 4 verse 18. First John chapter 4 verse 18.
Collin Hansen:John writes this. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Now what he means by that is this punishment that is due us is cast out. See, God, God here is not, just disregarding our guilt or disregarding our fear, he's addressing it in Christ.
Collin Hansen:He's doing something to it. So let's go back. The grace of God addresses our fear because love casts out all fear. That's what love does because love has dealt with our punishment. And until we know that and believe that we will live in fear.
Collin Hansen:The next thing, the grace of God addresses our shame. John, again, in 1st John, this time in chapter 3 says, see what kind of love the father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, and so we are. The psalmist writes this, oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let's exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.
Collin Hansen:He has dealt with our shame in Christ. God is rich in mercy, and he addresses our guilt and our fear and our shame in Jesus. We are loved into Jesus. We are loved into him. You are no longer in bondage to shame, guilt, and fear because you have been loved into Jesus.
Collin Hansen:Now I have a very strange image in mind when I think of that God loving us into Jesus. As I have admitted, when I was a kid I was a fan of magic. My favorite magician was David Copperfield, and sometime in the eighties he walked through the Great Wall of China. He did it. Okay?
Collin Hansen:He did. It's a fact. There's a video. Now, of course, we couldn't see him do it. There had to be a curtain because it was just so magnificent.
Collin Hansen:But I have this image of him in this so you just get a shadow, which with our Hollywood lights we get now. So there's a shadow that's making its way towards the Great Wall of China. All of it, I guess. And he's making his way and then you see like his arm and then he's in the Great Wall of China. And then they show the other side and he passes out.
Collin Hansen:It's magical. You need to see it. It's on YouTube, I'm sure. Just don't post any funny comments. But I have this image of God loving us into Christ.
Collin Hansen:That his great mercy, his great love that he set on us as these dead, side of the road dead. Not like, Hey, I need a little extra help to keep, to keep going here. No. Dead dead. That we were dead in our sins and he loves us into Christ so that we feel as much guilt, shame, and fear as Jesus should.
Collin Hansen:And here's the deal, he feels none because he is in perfect harmony with the Father and the Spirit. That that feeling that he has of no fear, no shame, no guilt is, is given to us because we have been so united to him. That's the work of the Spirit. That's the beautiful work of the Spirit in uniting us to Christ. That we would feel no shame, no fear, no guilt.
Collin Hansen:Now this does not mean that when we sin we don't feel guilty because Paul says we should put that to death. Put that sin to death and repent. Means that we should feel that guilt of, I need to repent from this. I need to turn from this. You should feel that.
Collin Hansen:I should feel that. And we should be repenting continually. But it means, it does mean this, that in Christ there is no guilt, no shame, no fear to be had. God has not lovingly ignored the sin. He has loved us into Christ.
Collin Hansen:Now, we are not in bondage to fear, shame, and guilt, but we can believe the lies of our old master. And the lies work out like this. If you're a non believer, if you're a non believer, this is this is how the enemy lies to you. He says, you were never guilty, you should have no shame, and you should not fear any punishment from God. That's the lie of the enemy to the non Christian.
Collin Hansen:I'll go through it again. You were never guilty, you should not have any shame, and you shouldn't fear any punishment from God. Now the lie to the believer, the lie to the Christian is, you are too guilty for God to forgive you, you are too shameful for God to love you, and you are too wretched to go unpunished. Hear that. Let me say it again.
Collin Hansen:The lie of the enemy to the believer. You are too guilty for God to forgive you. You are too shameful for God to love you, and you are too wretched to go unpunished. And I would say out of those 2 different groups, the the believer and the non believer, and the lies that the enemy has to us regarding fear, shame, and guilt, that most of us in this room are believing some of those lies. And Christ has addressed these lies on the cross.
Collin Hansen:I want us to hold right there just just for a moment because that's a lot that's a lot to to to be kind of processing Because I believe that that God by his spirit wants to liberate us from those lies. Not later, not like when you not not not when you make your new year's resolutions in a couple of weeks. Now. I believe he wants to liberate us, I believe he can liberate us, and I believe that he will liberate us from these lies. I think it's worth our time to pray that he would show us what lies lies we are believing.
Collin Hansen:So God in Christ has addressed these things. And so why? Why? Why has he done this? Look with me at verse 7.
Collin Hansen:This gives us our aim. This gives the purpose and direction here. Number, verse 7. So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. He has done this.
Collin Hansen:He's done this work that he could display his grace and his mercy, and in that be glorified by all creation. Be glorified for his redeeming work. That he calls people out of slavery into sonship, that he has done this work, that he can show these, this immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness in Christ Jesus. It's very important to see how many times Paul is is really narrowing everything down into in Christ Jesus. He adds that a lot.
Collin Hansen:And that teaches us about the exclusivity of the gospel. Teaching us that, yes, this grace is extravagant, it's more than we can comprehend in its abundance, but it comes through Christ alone. It's not just, I I find God in the sunset and the trees, kind of, choose your own adventure grace. Now is God out there? And when you're on your own in in nature, yes, he's there to be worshipped and glorified.
Collin Hansen:But church on your own terms doesn't work because grace on your own terms doesn't work. This is in Christ. That's where this happens. And so we come to him. And Paul repeats something he wants to make very clear in verses 8 9.
Collin Hansen:He said this in verse 5. It was when he kind of jetted out and said, he wanted to remind you before you get ahead of yourself that you are saved by grace. And he reiterates and kind of explains a little bit further in 8 and 9. Look with me. For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God, Not a result of works so that no one may boast.
Collin Hansen:This grace is so outrageous and so overwhelming that it's bound to be confusing. God's love and his grace are so unlike any love or forgiveness that we experience in the world, that surely our hearts will say some, surely I've done something to merit this, or surely I have to do something to merit this. That somehow God made, Jesus, made a down payment and we have monthly installments that we have to keep up with. Otherwise, we default. Or that it's something more like, probation, like you're getting off, you're on probation, you got some community service that you need to do, but if anything happens after this, like, you're, you're, you're going back into bondage.
Collin Hansen:And we approach it like that because it's hard to believe that grace and faith and salvation is a gift. I find it hard to believe that, especially when I start to see my helplessness more and more, and I think this can't be. I see my sin more and more and I say, I I I start running into that shame, I start running into that guilt, I start running into that to those fears, and I get on that cycle. And often our pushback is, well, I was never that helpless. I was never that dead.
Collin Hansen:Or we start pushing back and say, his love can't be that great. Maybe for other people, but not for me. Not not with the things that I have done. That's why we need to go back to verse 4. But God, We have to keep coming back there, but God did a work and he did this in Christ Jesus.
Collin Hansen:He has set his love and his mercy on you and whoever believes in him has life. So 1, verses 1 through 3, that's the bondage to sin. Verses 4 through 9, that is that redemption being called out, this rescue out of our bondage, carried from death to life. And then verse 10, verse 10 tells us that we were freed for something. We were freed for life unto God.
Collin Hansen:Look with me at verse 10. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. The gift of salvation, where God loves us into Christ and where we are a new creation in him. We have a new purpose and we should walk in that new purpose. You might see in your worship guide that the walk and the and the walk at the end were both, in bold because they tie together.
Collin Hansen:There was a way that we used to walk, and there's a way that we've been called to walk in Christ. The way we used to walk, following, selfish desires, following the prince of the air, that that would lead us to disobedience as we as we followed and walked in those ways. Now we walk in Christ in the good works that God has prepared for us. These, this is the terms and condition of our freedom, the terms and conditions of our life with God. Now terms and condition has a really bad connotation with us now because it's just what you have to click through to get to whatever you want.
Collin Hansen:And you it doesn't matter what it says. You're just gonna keep advancing. It's kind of like, the nutrition chart at a Taco Bell. It doesn't matter what it says. I've already made the bad decision in being in here.
Collin Hansen:Like what's up there, that doesn't matter. And so it's just like so it's not that negative terms and conditions like that. It's not not like that. These are the terms and conditions, the essence, the purpose, why we have this life together, what the, what the nature of this relationship is going to be like. Life with God.
Collin Hansen:And he says it's going to be with good works. It's going to be following Christ in in into serving others and loving others as Christ loved and served you. That's the nature of this relationship. We are created in Christ to walk in good works that God has already prepared for us. And so how do we know what those good works are?
Collin Hansen:Well, that's why we have to walk in step with the Spirit of God. That's why it's so critical. And if you have a hard time hearing the voice of the Spirit, root yourself in the word. Go to the word. And if what the spirit is telling you isn't what's in the word, then we've got a problem.
Collin Hansen:But Christ so loves us that he has equipped us. He says, I'm with you always, even to the end of the world. That is because he is going to walk with us by his Spirit to show us how we live out these good works to the glory of God, to the glory of his name. Paul is willing to have this hard conversation about our deadness because he knows about the extravagant beauty of God's redeeming grace. He knows that we were in bondage to sin.
Collin Hansen:We were estranged from estranged from ourselves, from one another, and God. And we have been under the rule of a deceptive tyrant, a vicious ruler. But God's richness in mercy brings us redemption. He calls us out of exile and into sonship. We know him and we worship him.
Collin Hansen:So do you see how our study of Exodus, these themes come into play here? Verses 1 through 3, our Egypt, our bondage to sin and death. Verses 4 through 9, our Red Sea, that we cross from death to life because of God's redemptive act. In verse 10, our Sinai, our terms of life with God. Now that's the giving of the Ten Commandments.
Collin Hansen:We'll get we'll get there in a couple of weeks. That's where we learn about the the nature and the essence of this life with God, to worship Him and to know Him. It's the instruction for what we have been saved for. Our bondage, our redemption, and our life with God to the glory of God. Ephesians 2:1 through 10.
Collin Hansen:This is our exodus from the grave. Let's pray. God, we thank you again for your word and we pray that you would help us by your spirit to believe you, to trust you, that we would see how you have redeemed us from death, that we would answer these questions honestly in knowing that we were dead in our sins and our trespasses, that we were deserving of wrath. And god, by your spirit, may our whole hearts confess that your redemptive work through Christ has set us free. May that be true in the heart of everyone here.
Collin Hansen:Help us to identify the lies that we believe, and by your spirit replace it with the truth of your word. You did not dismiss or ignore our sin, that you did not dismiss or ignore our fear or shame or guilt, but you addressed it actively through Christ our Lord. And that in his resurrection and ascension, we have life. Help us to believe that and to love you with all that we are. We pray this in the name of Christ.
Collin Hansen:Amen.