Ephesians chapter two, verses one through 10. Hear the word of God. 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 prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works and the sons of disobedience. among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our 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 and sins, 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 and 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. Let's pray and ask God to bless his word to us this evening. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this portion of your inspired, inerrant, infallible word. We pray that by your Holy Spirit, you would help us to understand what is taught here and that you would apply it to our hearts and lives for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, even as we start looking at this, I want to remind you of the context that we have already seen in the first chapter of Ephesians. We have seen two weeks ago, in the morning that the first 14 verses or so are about, in a general sense, God's sovereignty, in a specific sense about election and predestination, and that those things specifically have God's glory as the consequence of knowing and understanding them. And then we look more at election and predestination that Sunday night two weeks ago, and then last week we looked at Paul's prayer. And we are seeing that the beginning chapters of Ephesians in particular emphasize doctrines that we normally think of in association with Calvinism. And that is true. Once again, tonight, if you've looked at your bulletin at the sermon title, total inability, the part of total depravity that really concerns us here, and irresistible grace. total inability and irresistible grace. Those basically are reflected in the two sections of these first 10 verses of chapter two. With the first three verses really presenting the case of what we were. and the rest of the passage going into how that has changed. So I basically would have you look at the passage that way, what we were and how that has changed. So first look at what we were. Verses 1 through 3, I want to just read this again, but before I do, let me point out that in the first verse, the words he made alive are not present in the Greek. That doesn't mean that they don't fit here, but they are taken rather from later in the passage in verse five, made us alive together with Christ, that that's what's going on. But you have what is essentially an incomplete sentence here. And because we Americans don't like incomplete sentences, they've made some completion for us here. But there's an idea that is thrown out in the first three verses, and it is that idea that we're supposed to pick up about what we were, and then the emphasis is on what we've become, how we've become that. And so He Made Alive is just applied to make the verse make sense to American ears and eyes, but not really there. and you who were dead in trespasses and sins, is what he starts with. If you're a Christian, and he's writing to Christians, if you're a Christian, this is something you need to know about yourself, is that you were dead in trespasses and sins. Now, you sometimes hear an analogy about the gospel and evangelism of a drunk in the ditch who is told to get up and walk and sober up. Christianity, some say, is like that. Here is an almost helpless person who needs to take his situation in hand and correct it. But that's not a good analogy. The analogy, whether it's a drunk or not, whether he's in a ditch or not, we need to see him as dead and unable to do anything. Dead particularly in trespasses and sins. That's the kind of spiritual deadness each Christian possessed before becoming a Christian. Paul is putting this here, not so much to make an argument in general, as though he were defending Calvinism for Calvinism's sake, or the five points for the five points sake, and not presenting so much in general the doctrine of total depravity, As it is, he wants us to understand and remember and keep them in mind, bear in mind what we once were. He's doing that, if I get ahead of myself a little bit, in order to highlight for us the grace we have received. So you were dead in trespasses and sins, not dead in terms of sleepiness or unawareness or paying no attention, but dead in trespasses and sins, unable to do those things that we might otherwise need to do. So he says that to us first. In which you walked, those trespasses and sins in which you walked according to the course of this world. He's saying that we who are Christians now had a manner or tone of life, a walk through life that was after this particular manner of trespasses and sins. That's the way the Bible characterizes our lives before we became Christians. Now, some of you might be that were. converted later in life, might say to yourself, about yourself, no, I wasn't all that bad before I became a Christian. I'm better now, but I wasn't all that bad. The way the Bible characterized it, the way God inspired Paul to write about it, is that our lives were characterized by trespasses and sins and deadness in them. That's how we walked. according to the course of this world. That is, according to the way of all mankind since the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden. That's where we've all been. He's saying, you were no different. You were like that. You had that sinfulness. And then he parallels that phrase according to the course of this world with another one beginning with the same word, according to the prince of the power of the air. Well, who is that? Well, he parallels that with another identifying phraseology or clause about him, that prince of the power of the air is the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. I'm guessing even most of the young ones who might be listening are able to identify that one as the devil, that's Satan. So Paul is saying, God through Paul is saying that before we were converted, before we were Christians, we walked in trespasses and sin the same way the rest of the world does, the same way the devil wants us all to. We lived according to the plan and design and intention of the devil. And you say, well, I never gave the devil any thought before I was a Christian. I never, I wasn't trying to follow the devil or the world for that matter, I was just rocking along. Or maybe even trying to do pretty good. But the Bible characterizes it this way. Look at verse three. After speaking of the devil working now in the sons of disobedience, and making a contrast, he doesn't work now that way in us, but he does now work in the sons of disobedience, and that's just basically the people of the world, all those who have not been converted to Christianity. And he identifies those sons of disobedience further, verse three. Among whom we also once conducted ourselves. We were in there with them, he says. In the loss of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. That's where we were. That's where we ourselves were. conducting ourselves according to the course of this world along with the people of this world identified in verse two as the sons of disobedience, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were, Talking about us here, among whom we also once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature, we were by nature, children of wrath, just as the others. Wrath is what we deserved from God. Now understand, one way of addressing this is to say that Paul is telling us there are two kinds of people in the world. And how many times have you heard that said and the whole world or the people in the country or whatever are divided into two categories, not three, not 20, but two categories. Well, the Bible does that here. And the two categories are those who are by nature children of wrath and those who were by nature children of wrath. Christians and non-Christians. The world is divided that way and only that way in a religious sense. There's not another group that can be grouped in there as, well, halfway being between children of wrath and those who were not children of wrath and were children of wrath. No, one of those two categories. One of those two categories. I think it's very instructive the way Paul presents the contrast between these two categories and the way he presents our own situation and also the situation of those who are unconverted yet and non-Christians What is instructive about it, I think, about the way he presents it, is he's not talking about the depravity and inability and deadness and Satan following character of the non-Christian for us to understand that about them alone, but so that we understand that's where we came from. He is not characterizing the non-Christian for us so that we can judge him, but so that we can be reminded that that's us before our conversion. That's a picture of us. You might be thinking now, maybe you should be thinking now of ways that you can see that in your pre-conversion self. Wow. I walked according to the course of this world. I hate to admit it. I walked according to the prince of the power of the air. I hate to admit it, but that's true of me. That's true of you. We could be saying that to ourselves about ourselves. And we could be saying the Bible identifies my pre-conversion walk or life as being the same as that of non-Christians Who am I to judge them? We shouldn't, should we? Maybe our sins are different sins from theirs. Maybe our sins don't have quite such aggravation or aggravated levels as theirs. But yeah. The walk, the life is to be identified. Scripture identifies it with that of the non-Christian. And identifies that of the non-Christian as being characterized by worldliness, by being followers of and in tune with the devil, by being dead in trespasses and sins. So the doctrine of total depravity is there and total inability is there. The deadness is inability, right? People can't do much. Sometimes we preachers maybe feel like we're preaching to the dead, and you sometimes hear references to bring them back to life, but not by our strength at all. There is an Old Testament reference to that kind of thing in Ezekiel, I believe it's chapter 36, the valley of dry bones that in response to preaching, the bones come together and rise up and in response to the work of the Holy Spirit, they are given life. But apart from that kind of thing, apart from the giving of spiritual life, yeah, that God does. We are preaching, when we're preaching to Christian, to live people who may be sleepy and drowsy sometimes, but when you're speaking to the non-Christian, you're speaking to those who are dead, and we used to be dead. If you go and visit a funeral home, while they have several bodies there that are to be buried or cremated, you don't expect that there will be somebody in there doing something, exhorting those people to come back to life or do something else. It doesn't happen, we know that. They're dead. in terms of physical death. But the non-Christian is dead spiritually, we were dead spiritually, without any ability to respond, any more than a regular dead body has ability to respond. If you're used to fishing with George on Saturdays and he's in the morgue, you're not going down to the morgue expecting to say, George, it's our fishing day, come on, let's go. He's not going to go. He's going to lie right there. He can't do anything. Well, spiritually, Before we were converted by God and His power, we couldn't do anything. The non-Christians that we address now can't do anything spiritually. They can't make themselves repent, they can't make themselves believe. So that's the first section of the passage. And then I want to note the words with which the second section of the passage begins. But now. Or rather, I'm sorry. There's another passage that has but now. But God. But God. There was this bad situation for spiritually dead people But God did something. God takes the initiative. It's not, and you who were dead in trespasses and sins, you were that way, all of this stuff was bad with you, but you did something. It is, but God did something. The initiative is with God. Let's look at how that initiative is described. But God who is rich in mercy, just a description of God and his nature, because of his great love with which he loved us, very parallel to foreknow in Romans 8, 29. But God, because of his great love with which he loved us, Even when we were dead in trespasses, just reminding us of what's in those first three verses. So we were dead, but God made us alive together with Christ. Not just made us alive, but made us alive together with Christ. warrants a sermon of its own at some point. The relationship with Christ, but it's certainly Christ. It's certainly Christ, it's mentioned at the end of each of the next two verses. But that parenthesis at the end of verse five, by grace you have been saved. How were you saved? You were dead. How were you made alive? How are you saved? By grace, by God, by God's grace, because of his great love with which he loved us. Not because of something we did or had done, or might promise to do, or might be hoped to do, but because he loved us. Well, the whole context of the first part of chapter one reminds us that that love and that working of God is because of his own decision, according to God's free will, not man's free will, according to the good pleasure which he purposed in himself. at the end of verse 9 in chapter 1 is one of the ways that that's said, but said multiple times in that passage. We are not only no longer dead, and we should always remember that we were, but we are now given new life, spiritual life, and we are, as scripture puts it here, saved. We'll save from what? We'll save from the wrath that we were children of according to the end of verse three, just as the others are. By grace you have been saved, not some other way, by grace. and raised us up together in verse six, 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. And then it repeats, for by grace you have been saved and goes on and we'll come back to that in a minute. But recognize we were dead Here are the things God did. He made us alive. He raised us up, both of those together with Christ. He made us sit together with Christ in the heavenlies. We have to recognize that's been done. Even the sitting together is basically a past tense, made to sit, is a past tense. God has done that. Our situation is not just no longer dead, but fully alive, and even so much alive that we are raised up and seated in the heavenly places. Now that applies to you who are seated in Pflugerville and me who is standing in Pflugerville. But in heavenly places, I'm seated. I have another way to put it that fits with kind of English ways of speaking. We've got one foot on earth and one in heaven. even now. The spiritual realm which is invisible to us, we partly occupy even now while being still here on earth. And so what has been done for us is glorious but that's not the end of it. Verse seven refers to the future, that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. There is an eternity to come, and in that we will experience the exceeding riches of his grace beyond even the riches of the grace that we presently enjoy. But how does that all come about? By God doing it. God is the subject of all of the verbs in that chain of things. God made us alive together with Christ. God raised us up together. God made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ, that in the ages to come, He, God, might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Now, you need to understand if this has happened to us already, by God's initiative, God doing it, then the grace that is spoken of here really is the eye in the Calvinistic five points. It's an irresistible grace. We were dead, unable to do anything to accomplish this. And yet God by His grace drew us by His Spirit irresistibly to faith in Jesus Christ. So it's in a sense summarized with the method by which it's done and the means in verse eight and nine. For by grace you have been saved, again that's repetition, through faith. and that not of yourselves. What's not of yourselves? Faith is not of yourselves. You didn't decide to believe. It's not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not of works, there are not methodologies by which you can work yourself up to believe. It's not a works list anyone should boast. As we were looking at Friday night, as we've been seeing already in chapter one, God gets the glory. We can't boast, we can't glory in the things that have happened here. This is for God's glory. Save through faith, which is not of yourselves. Faith is a gift of God. Faith is not a result of works, nor is our salvation the result of works, lest anyone should boast. And then to, again, sum it up, verse 10 says, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. We're God's workmanship, not ours. Not the preachers, not the elders, not our parents. We are God's workmanship. God did it. God did it all. God gets all the glory. He did it because of his great love with which he loved us is more the ultimate reason, but an intention for why that would happen is created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Instead of walking in trespasses and sins and according to the course of this world and according to the prince, of the power of the air, we are created in Christ Jesus anew to walk in good works. We are God's workmanship to walk in good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Again, that's not us either. That's God's work. not that we don't have a responsibility to walk as Christians, to walk according to our calling, and we'll be told that specifically later in Ephesians, but yeah, it's just all God. Total inability and irresistible grace are, if you will, the two sides of the conversion experience for us. On our side, nothing is contributed. And on God's side, something that is of grace from Him and that is powerful and that does actually change us and change our status and change our destiny from wrath to the exceeding riches of God's grace in the ages to come. We don't believe in Calvinism just to be right and just to have right doctrine. We believe in it because it shows us that all the glory belongs to God. We believe in it, yes, because the scriptures teach it, but The fruit of it is recognizing that God gets the glory. The fruit of it is giving God the glory for our salvation. So when you go back over these two sections, realizing that that's the main point, and you go to the first section about what we were, do recognize Yes, the non-Christian still is that. No, he can't save himself, nor can we do it. And so as we, as I was saying yesterday morning, so we don't need to manipulate him as though somehow that's what's going to save him. It's not going to. Rather, it will be the fruit of the irresistible grace of God. God's Holy Spirit never goes home at the end of the day saying, I worked on old George all day long. I couldn't get him to believe. He just kept resisting my grace. No, the Holy Spirit is not that weak. that lacking inability to accomplish his own will. Scripture again in the first 11 verses of chapter one pointing out how much That is all done in God's will. And now here again, it is God in verse four, but God who is the initiator, who is the one who grants us grace, grace being that which we don't deserve. To me, this is glorious. To you, this needs to be glorious. It needs to be not, well, I've checked off, I've learned two more of the five points of Calvinism. That's not the goal of the sermon. That's not the goal of Paul writing this. It's not the goal to get you to change your mind about the five points of Calvinism. It is to recognize the glory of what God's done for you, to recognize that when we evangelize, we do it in dependence on God, that the people we're evangelizing can't respond apart from God's glorious grace, aren't willing to respond, don't want to respond, are prejudiced against the gospel, things we saw again yesterday morning at the conference. God is a gracious God, our God. Your God and my God is a gracious God. He's been gracious to us. And lest we ever exalt ourselves and think highly of ourselves because we're Christians, Paul reminds us, remember where you came from. Remember what you were. Think lowly of yourselves before you came to Christ. Not just of other people that aren't Christians, but of yourselves before you came to Christ. And remember your dependence, even now, on the grace of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, how we thank you that you came to dead people and showed your grace and raised us from that spiritual deadness and gave us life and seated us, raised us up and seated us in the Christ Jesus. So that in the ages to come, we would indeed experience the great glorious wonders of eternity with you. Oh Father, how we thank you for the grace involved in that. How we thank you for the love behind that grace, love that was not granted to us because we somehow deserved it or because you foresaw that we might deserve it, but love granted to dead men before the foundation of the world for your glory. Help us to remember that in Jesus' name, amen.