Well, good morning, friends. I bring you greetings from the Berean Bible Church. If you have your Bibles, I'm going to ask that you would turn with me, please, to the book of Ephesians, the second chapter of Ephesians. And this morning I would like to address the subject, God's spectacular grace. And so if you would follow with me, we'll read together from Ephesians chapter 2, commencing at verse 1. And you, he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prints of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. I want to ask that you would bow with me, that we might ask God to open our hearts and to help us hear his voice this morning. Please pray with me. Oh, our blessed Lord, we thank you for your holy scriptures. We thank you for the blessed privilege that we have to be together in the name of your son, to worship you, but now, Lord, to hear from you through your word. And so we ask together that you would give us hearts that are open, that we would have hungry souls, that we would have teachable spirits. We pray for the blessed and wonderful work of your spirit, taking your truth, making it known to us, and turning the spotlight onto the Lord Jesus Christ, that he may be glorified, that he may be exalted. And this we pray together in Jesus' name, amen. John Newton's hymn, Amazing Grace, it is the most sung, it's the most recorded, it's the most loved hymn in all the world. There is no other song that comes close in terms of the number of recordings, in terms of the frequency of its performances. It is estimated that every year, Amazing Grace is publicly sung at least 10 million times. Newton's song has experienced international popularity. It's also had incredible longevity. 245 years and it's still going strong. And yet among the billions of people who are familiar with that song, who maybe even enjoy singing or listening to Amazing Grace, remarkably few understand the concept of grace that is outlined in Newton's hymn. Many Christians can quote Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 and 9, surely the most famous of all verses on the subject of grace. But I wonder how many professed believers truly understand and are truly astounded at God's spectacular grace. One thing for sure is that Charles Spurgeon and his preaching grandfather, they understood well that salvation is by grace. On one occasion when Charles was to preach at a church out in the country, he was delayed on his way to that meeting. So much so that the service actually began before he arrived. And as he approached the chapel, he perceived that someone was already in the pulpit preaching. But who could that preacher be? I mean, he was supposed to be the preacher. And as he walked closer to that building, he recognized the voice of the man behind the pulpit. It was his own grandfather. And as Charles came in the door and he walked up the aisle, the old preacher behind the pulpit said, here comes my grandson. He may preach the gospel better than me. But he cannot preach a better gospel. Charles responded and he said to his grandfather, you keep going, grandfather, you keep going. But the old man would not agree. And as Charles came up and entered the pulpit, the old man quickly said to Charles, his grandson, I was preaching from Ephesians chapter two. By grace, you are saved. Now you just take it from here, Charles. You see, Charles and his grandfather had such a clear grasp of the biblical truth of grace that it was not difficult for Charles to weave his words into his grandfather's words and just keep continuing to preach that sermon. When Charles got to the part in Ephesians chapter 2 that says, not of yourselves, And he was beginning to explain that man is unable, he has an inability to save himself and that salvation could in no way be of ourselves. Suddenly, as he's preaching, his grandfather, who was sitting behind him, pulls on the back of his coattail and he simply says, I know most about that. And so Charles moves out of the way, and for the next five minutes, his grandfather continues to preach on that very point about not of ourselves. And then he graciously moved out of the way, and the younger Spurgeon continues on. And now and then through the sermon, as Charles was continuing to preach from Ephesians 2, he would hear a word come behind him from his grandfather simply saying, good, good. And even occasionally, as he was unfolding these truths, at one point the grandfather interrupted and he simply said, tell them that again, Charles. Tell them that again. Years later, long after Grandfather Spurgeon had died, Charles would say whenever he was actually reading Ephesians chapter 2, He seemed to hear in his head that dear voice saying again, tell them that again, Charles. Tell them that again. And friends, I suggest to you as we come to Ephesians chapter 2 this morning, it's as if Paul knows that he needs to repeat himself. Twice in the opening paragraph in Ephesians chapter 2, Paul tells us that salvation is all of grace. If you are saved, or if you would be saved, it is only by grace. Now Paul is writing to Christians, people who had experienced grace, but they too need to hear about grace again and again and again. It is simply not possible for us to work our way into God's favour. For the simple reason is that we have a sinful nature, that we are spiritually dead, that we are under domination, and that we are damned before Him. God must intervene in His grace. But still, even as Christians at times, our hearts fight against this whole idea of salvation by grace. We want to have a part. We want to contribute. And so we each need this truth burned into our brains. Salvation is by grace alone. And so friends, as we consider this theme this morning, I know it will be a theme that many of you know of. But it is a theme that we need to hear again and again. And I want to warn you at the outset that there is no more humbling subject to study than the grace of God. And yet, whilst at the same time, there is no more God-exalting thing than grace. There are two things that I'd like to draw to your attention from the first eight verses this morning. We're going to look firstly at what we were before grace. And then I'd like us to see together, secondly, what we are by grace. So the first thing we're going to look at now is what we were before grace. From time to time at home, I like to pull out an old box of photographs that we have stored away in a cupboard. I love to look through those old images. And one of the things that is quite amazing, as you look at those old images, is the changes that have taken place over time. Perhaps you've done this, perhaps you can relate to this. You see a photograph, maybe it's of a relative, someone in the family, maybe it's in a frame and it's on the wall at home. Maybe it's a photo of you. And you look at that and you wonder at the changes that have happened. And you might secretly think, what's happened to me? Perhaps you look at the size of your figure back then and you now look at yourself and you think, well, the circumference has changed. Or maybe, like I find myself doing, I look at the photographs from years ago and I look now and I think, something's happened up here. We look at a photograph of what we were. And then we look at a mirror of what we are, and it's obvious. We are no longer what we were. Well, Paul shows us what we were before grace. And I want to show you three things here that Paul mentions three things that he highlights of what we were before grace, and they each start with the letter D. The first one we see is we were dead. We were dead. Look with me back at Ephesians 2, verse 1. And you, he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins. In verse 5, he repeats himself. even when we were dead in trespasses. So the apostle is simply saying that in our sinful nature, we're not in the hospital just a little sick. We're not even critically ill in the intensive care ward because of sin. No, Paul is saying we were in the morgue We're pronounced dead by God. Dead in our sins, he says. What's the difference? What's the difference between the intensive care ward in a hospital and a mortuary? There is a difference. In the intensive care ward, you're still breathing. But in the morgue, you're cold. You're clammy. You're lifeless. And Paul says, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. We sinned. We were constantly failing to reach God's standard of perfection. We were those who were always falling short of the glory of God. And in the end, it really meant nothing to us because we were spiritually dead. We did not listen to God. We did not want to listen to him. We did not hear him. We did not desire him. We did not choose him. We couldn't do any of those things for the simple reason we were dead. Yes, truth might have been announced in a sermon or in a conversation, but it was impossible for us to see it. That's how it always is with the unconverted. Yes, even those who are exposed to the best gospel presentation. So God's word goes out, but there's no response. I was like that. You were like that. You were dead. There are no degrees of deadness. You can't be half dead. You are dead in your trespasses and sins. And so that means all that you and I did by way of contributing to our salvation, all we could give was a corpse. We sometimes see those old photographs and we might think as we see those old images, that's not a very complimentary photograph of me. And we don't want anyone else to see that photograph and we sort of put that one aside. I have three daughters and there have been times when their photograph has been taken and conscious understandably of their way that they look and the way that they're presented. They see a photograph that they don't like of themselves. Dad, don't put that on Facebook. And I said, but photographs don't lie. Photographs are simply an image taken at one point in time of what actually is. What is written here in Ephesians 2 may not exactly be very complimentary, but God doesn't lie. This is how it is. And friends, can you see? Christian friend, can you see that prior to grace, it's very simple. You and I, because of sin, we were spiritually dead. We were in a spiritual morgue. I think this whole description that Paul is using in this opening sentence here, in a sense, it takes us to that scene of Lazarus in John chapter 11. Lazarus dead in the tomb. And if we think of that scene and we think of what Paul is saying here, without the grace of God, we're like Lazarus. We're dead in the tomb of our sins. Paul wants us, if you like, to picture that scene. He would have us come. Let's go to Bethany. Let's go to the burial place of Lazarus and let's come and look and let's bend down and let's see Lazarus, see him there lying dead. There's no breath of life in his lungs. His chest cavity is not going up and down. He's all bound up with grave clothes. We may bend closer and we may smell him. Can Lazarus get up by himself? Can he even raise one finger? No. He's dead. And this is why your religion cannot save you. You're dead. Your works cannot save you. You're dead. You can't do anything. God says you're dead in your sins. And you desperately need the grace of God. And those of us here who are Christians, This is helpful because we need to be reminded of what we were. Before the grace of God intervened in your life, you were spiritually dead. And without the saving grace of God, you would still be putridly dead in your sins. And so the first thing we see in this passage by way of what we were before grace, we were dead. But the second thing that we notice that emerges in verse 2, We were under domination. In our pre-converted state, we may have been spiritually dead, but we were like the walking dead. I say that because of verse 2, where Paul says, in which, in that state of being dead in your sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world. Now what Paul is doing here, he's leaving the photograph and he's showing to us video footage. He's recorded, as it were, how we walked. He's recorded where we walked. This is not a still image. It's like what Paul is doing here. is he's rewinding the video. And he's taking it back in time. And then he presses the play button. And here it is, verse 2. This is what we were before God saved us. This is how we lived. We walked according to the course of this world. We were going the same way as everybody else. God was not in our lives, and we didn't want him in our lives. We walked with the crowd. We didn't walk with him. We lived as we wanted to. We lived according to the world, its ways, its system. And so there's a sense in which we can say, when the world told me to do something, I did it. We may have been, even in a Christian family, We may have regularly gone to church, but in our hearts, this is what we were. Notice what else Paul mentions here, not just walking according to the world, but he goes on in verse 2, in the middle of the verse, to say, and walking according to the prince of the power of the air. And so now he's saying prior to our conversion, we were slaves to Satan. We lived our lives following him as our master. He further describes this at the end of verse two when he says, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. So when the devil told me to do something, I did it. We were not as free as we might have thought. So much so that Paul says in 2 Timothy 2.26 that we were ensnared by the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will. That's what we were. We were under the devil's domination, or we could say it this way, we were enslaved to Satan. But if you look with me now at verse three, because he's still got more to say, how we walked, he says in verse three, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. The term flesh here, in very simple terms, it means our human fallen nature. You see, all that really in the end mattered to us was our own self-centered world of indulgence, our own little selfish environment, our pleasures, maybe our personal ambitions, and that was our focus. Our bodies did what we wanted them to do. Our minds thought what they wanted to think. That was our whole focus. When the world told me to do something, I did it. When the devil told me to do something, I did it. And even when my own fleshly desires told me to do something, I did it. We were under domination. Oh, there may have been some sort of Sunday dress. A veneer of respectability might have been on the outside, but in our hearts, in our unconverted state, this is what we were. We walked with the world, we walked with the devil, we walked according to our own sinful lusts. We were under domination. And now friends, seeing those things, seeing what we were deeply humbles us, doesn't it? This is far from complimentary. But my Christian friend, this is, this is what we were. Looking at the footage of the video at the past, it gives us an accurate record of our old condition. But you know what else it does? Surely it prepares us for worship. Because when we begin to understand something of what we were, we are left all the more amazed at God's spectacular grace. Oh, how the grace of God amazes me. It loosed me from my bonds. It set me free. What made it so? His own will, this much I know, set me, as now I know, at liberty. But are there some here this morning, and that video camera is still recording? It's still running. It's still recording your life. Yes, you may be in church today. And maybe you've done church for years. But in your heart, you're following the course of this world. You're enslaved to Satan. You're following the devil. You're not obeying and following the Lord Jesus Christ. You're locked into your sins. And you can't get free by throwing in a little bit of religion because you are under domination. You are enslaved to your sin. You are enslaved to Satan. Oh, that the spectacular grace of God would break into your heart this morning and set you free. That's your only hope. We were dead. We were under domination. And the third thing that I draw your attention to, it's at the end of verse three now, it's what I'm calling, we were damned. Where Paul says, and we were by nature, children of wrath, just as the others. Just as the others. You and I, are no different. You and I are no different to the rest of the world. We came into this world with a sinful nature as the rest of the world did. We conducted ourselves according to the ways of the world and the devil and the flesh. And God is not indifferent to that. You see, here's the thing for us. we might very quickly and very easily dismiss our sin, regard it lightly, fob it off as, well, it's no big deal, everyone makes mistakes. God is infinitely holy and sin is a contradiction to his nature and God is furious with all that which is impure. And Paul deliberately uses this phrase at the end of verse 3, that we were children of wrath. Wrath, it's that settled hostility of God's will toward everything that rebels against Him. In our preconverted state, we were under God's wrath. We were children of wrath, like all of mankind. This whole issue of the wrath of God is not something just reserved for the future out there somewhere. It was what we were, damned under his wrath. And if it wasn't for the grace of God intervening in our lives and giving to us the gift of faith so that we may believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we would still be a child of wrath, just like the rest. But you see how frightening This one is, the wrath of God is upon those who are outside of Christ. It is upon those ones right now. You may think that sitting in church or mingling with God's people, that somehow that will earn you credit with God, it will somehow deflect away something of God's anger and God's wrath towards you, but that's not how it works, my friend. This part of the Bible clearly teaches that without the grace of God in your life, You are spiritually dead, you are under domination, and you are damned. And this is what many of us were before God saved us. Paul is showing us, yes, what we were. But now I want us to move forward and look at the second thing, what we are by grace. Paul puts away the old photos. Paul puts away the video footage, those things that show the old you, and now Paul holds up a mirror. Could we not call it the mirror of grace? Look with me at verse four. It's a glorious change in the text. Verse four. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us. And so what did this merciful, loving, gracious God do for you, Christian friend? Well, we keep going. Verse 5. Even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. It was God in His grace that came to us when we were spiritually dead, and he was the one who gave to us life in the Lord Jesus Christ. We didn't earn this, we didn't deserve this. And you know, when you're dead, you can't even ask for it. It's undeserved favor, isn't that what he says in the brackets at the end of the verse? He can't wait even to get to verse 8. He's got to say it in verse 5, by grace you have been saved. We didn't make ourselves alive. We didn't contribute in any way to our own spiritual resurrection. Paul is very clear in this passage. This is something that God only did. It's a work of His spectacular grace. And so if we drop then down to the most famous verse in this passage, verse 8. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. If we quickly go back to Bethany, If we go back to the tomb of Lazarus and we think again of that scene and we think about that describing us, we were like Lazarus. We were rotting in our putrid sins. We were bound up as it were in the sins like Lazarus was bound up in his grave clothes. We were trapped behind this immovable stone of the dungeon of our rebellion. And our only hope was for the effectual call of God to be given, to call us to life in Jesus Christ. Everyone knows dead people can't see, dead people can't hear, dead people can't understand, dead people can't choose, dead people can't call out. Why? Because they're dead. And that's when Jesus calls to Lazarus in that tomb. Lazarus, come forth. And what happens to him? That dead man is made to hear. That dead man begins to breathe. That dead man gets up. That dead man is walking. That dead man is no longer a dead man. He's a live man. And it's in the state of that spiritual deadness that man is utterly and he's completely unable to do anything for himself. But when Jesus Christ effectually calls such a dead sinner to himself, when he speaks, the dead are raised. You think about the Lord Jesus in his gospel, in the gospel accounts of his ministry when he was going about and healing the sick and when he was raising the dead. Can you think of a time in the gospels when Jesus spoke to the dead and they refused to rise? No. They came to life every time. When the Lord Jesus calls, you come to life. Christian, can you see? When you were dead in your sins, when you were unable to do anything by way of saving yourself, it's the grace of God, His free, His powerful, His effectual work in your heart that raised you from spiritual death to a spiritual resurrection. It's because of God. It's because of His grace that you are now spiritually alive and you are free from the dominion of Satan and sin. You are no longer under the wrath of God because for you, the wrath of God was taken by the Lord Jesus on Calvary. And so you can say, as I can say, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And so yes, this passage does humble us, but friends, it puts us on our knees to worship God. It sets us free from our grave clothes with Lazarus so that we might live a life of worship. It gives us energy in our feet that we might run for Him, that we might serve Him. It frees us from the grave clothes with Lazarus so that we might be those that are serving him. It loosens our tongues so that we might praise him. It sets our hearts ablaze so that we might love him. His grace transforms us. It doesn't matter what our background is. It doesn't matter what our age is. God's spectacular grace refreshes us to serve Him. There is nothing like grace, God's grace. It's spectacular. And look at verse 7, friends. Verse 7 says that in the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. In other words, it shows to other people, people who will come after us, it shows them what the marvelous grace of God can do, the marvelous grace of our loving Lord. It displays His richness. They can look on and it gives them hope that what God did for him or what God did for her, that same God could do for me. This doctrine of grace glorifies God, not just now, not just in this life, not just in the decades to come, but for the ages to come into eternity. There will be a theme of worship in glory, which will be a theme of praise for the grace of God. In the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Could it be that there are some here this morning and you are caught in a horrible crisis? You are without God's grace and your condition is more critical, it is more urgent than anything you could imagine. Now, several years ago, what's about six years ago, you remember there was that horrible tsunami that came crushing onto the shores of Japan. Imagine, my friend, that on that day you were at that beach. And you are with your family, you are on a vacation, you are on a holiday, and you are just enjoying yourself. And to your horror, you look up and hear coming from the ocean towards you at incredible speed, a speed that you knew that you could not outrun. You saw this huge wave billowing and billowing and billowing up before you. You had no hope. No hope. My unconverted friend, your crisis this morning is worse than that. Because you are spiritually dead and you can do nothing to help yourself. You're bound in your sin, you're enslaved to Satan, and you are right now, according to the Apostle Paul, under the wrath of God. And therefore, your only hope is for God to break through his astounding grace into your life. And perhaps now you're thinking, I can see that. I understand that. I hear what you're saying. So what is there? What shall I do? My friend, the Bible says if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. Paul says here in verse 8, salvation is by grace through faith. Completely rest, my friend, completely rest in Jesus Christ, in who He is, the spotless, the sinless, the eternal Son of God, who came to this earth, who lived a perfect life, perfectly obeying the law of God, who went to the cross and had sin placed upon Him. Put the rest of your soul, as it were, upon Him, who He is, and what He has done on your behalf. If you hear his voice today, do not harden your heart. And if you are hearing his voice, it's only because God has given you ears to hear. But by grace, you have been saved this morning. Or by grace, you can be saved. God's favor, freely given. to those who do not deserve that favor. It's God's free, sovereign, undeserved favor to hell-destined sinners. We don't earn it, we don't deserve it, and yet it's what God freely and sovereignly can bestow. May none of us get weary. May none of us get tired of hearing or speaking about the grace of God. Paul never did. And as Grandpa Spurgeon would say, Tell them that again, Charles. Tell them that again, that you are saved by grace alone. Can you see now, my friend? I hope, if nothing more, I've reminded you of what you already knew, that God's spectacular grace humbles us. And it is to the praise of His glorious grace. and may he receive all the glory from his word this morning. Amen.