A sermon based upon Ephesians 2:1-10
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Third Sunday After Epiphany-C, January 20th , 2019
(3-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)
At Chatsworth High School in Los Angeles, he's known as Mr. Memorial. His real name is Brian Rooney; he's the science teacher at the school. Since 1970, he's spent over $200,000 of his retirement money and savings contacting every city and town in this country by mail or by fax, seeking to learn information on any men and women who have given their lives for this country during wartime.
"My mission," said Rooney, "is to bring humanity to every one of them." That mission actually began in the jungles of Vietnam 38 years ago with a promise he made to a dying solider. Two simple words were whispered to the young Army medic Brian Rooney as he leaned over the mortally wounded soldier, trying to read the name on his dog tags. "Remember me." Rooney promised he would.
Brian Rooney now spends much of his time cataloguing memorials for the war dead, making sure these memorials are cared for, and that these soldiers are remembered. His work led to a bipartisan bill of law providing federal support for a national registry of veterans' memorials. Rooney himself has personally cataloged and visited the memorials for over 8,600 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines from 50 states. (Los Angeles Daily News, May 23, 2003, p. 3, quoted from https://www.lifeway.com/en/articles/sermon-gift-wage-salvation-eternal-life-ephesians-2).
YOUR WERE DEAD… (v. 1)
On that battlefield, the young medic, Brian Rooney, realized that the freedoms he enjoyed were bought by the blood, tears and deaths those who paid the ultimate price. We too cannot escape the fact, that by living in this country we have been given a ‘gift’; a gift of freedom that has been purchased at a tremendously high price. We have been given a gift that we did not earn, have not paid for, and that we have not deserved. Our freedom is a ‘gift’ we dare not forget.
In the same way, as Christians we have received a gift for which we have contributed nothing. In fact, as we shall see, we not only are undeserving of this gift, our text reminds us that there is no way we could have ever earned it. Paul reminds us that we could not earn this gift because we were dead; ‘dead in transgressions and sins’ (Eph. 2:1).
Don't underestimate the significance of this statement. The picture is a hopeless one. It is a picture of the worst thing imaginable. It is a picture of death. Paul is saying, that left to our own devices, we remain dead toward God, are dominated by evil powers, and we, by our own human nature, are deserving of death, wrath and destruction. Alone there is absolutely nothing we can do to change our outcome.
Back in 1995, Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon starred in a provocative movie called Dead Man Walking. The movie was based on the true story of a young man named Matthew Pouncelot who was convicted of murdering a teenage couple in Louisiana. While Matthew Pouncelot was wasting away on death row, a Roman Catholic nun, Sister Helen Prejean visited him regularly. Sisten Prejean listened to this criminal, gave him a Bible and tried to get him to admit his crime. But, in spite of her best efforts, the convicted killer adamantly refused to admit he had done anything wrong until the day his execution drew near. “I’m not sure he was even capable of showing any remorse for what he did,” Sister Prejean said. Matthew was led to the execution room, where he faced a horrible death by electrocution.
Here, Paul says, that naturally, we are all like ‘dead-people walking’. It’s a somber and sobering sight to see a dead body of anyone, and how much more so when it is a family member. There’s nothing pretty or sweet about death. It’s a ghastly and a horrible thing. As a prominent preacher once said: “You can fill a church full of flowers, and you can sing all manner of pretty songs, and you can say all kinds of beautiful things, but that corpse in that casket is a ghastly sight, which we want to quickly hide away” (WA Criswell).
‘There’s nothing so final as death’, that pastor went on to say, ‘there are no degrees’ or differences in death. Dead is dead. When I hold a funeral service in one of our churches, the children of God are often embalmed, neatly dressed, and laid out peacefully in their casket, but they are still dead. On the news, when we see horrible pictures of victims of war from the Middle East. Those mangled bodies are no more and no less dead than that beautiful corpse that we lay to rest here, in our cemeteries. For you see, we may dress it up, but there are still no degrees in death --- death is still death. We are still dead. And this is what God says about the person who lives outside of Jesus Christ, we are ‘dead in transgressions and in sins.”
Another way Paul describes our condition outside of Jesus Christ, is that he we "like the rest, by nature we were deserving of wrath" (Eph. 2:3). Paul is not saying that we become this way by doing evil, but Paul says we are by nature or by birth deserving of wrath; that is we are born deserving this just like everyone else. In the Old Testament, David said we are ‘born in sin and conceived in iniquity’ (Psalm 51:5). Do you teach your children to lie? Do you? Do you? I couldn’t conceive of a father or a mother that loved his child that taught the child to lie. Did your children ever lie? Who taught them to lie? They are born that way. You never put it in them. They lie. Your sweet little baby, no matter how well you raise them, will lie. It’s natural for them to lie, so if you don’t teach them differently, or they will become habitual liars.
Do you teach your children to be selfish, to seize and grab things? From babyhood, from infancy, they seize and grasp and are selfish. Did you teach them? They are born with a wart in their nature. Chuck Swindoll used to say there is a ‘bent in the baby’. By nature, God says, we are the deserving of wrath. We are born that way. We weren’t educated that way. We weren’t trained that way. We were born in iniquity and in sin.
One time there was a flood in India, and the whole country was covered with the boiling, turbulent, rushing waters. On a little island in the path of the flood, there were gathered there a few inhabitants, and among them a hunter. And there came onto the island out of the flood animals as they were able to make their way to the little bit of dry ground. And as the little group was there huddled together on the island with the swirling waters around, a tiger swam out of the stream and climbed up, wet and shivering and afraid, cowed and timid. The tiger swam to the island and at one end crouched down there afraid. The hunter took his gun and walked down to the end of the island and shot it. What a cruel, bestial thing to do! That tiger, so cowed, and so cold, and so wet, and so afraid; that hunter went down there and mercilessly and ruthlessly slayed it. But this was a tiger, and how could you go to sleep on the island and have any peace and any security with a Tiger running loose? Now, he’s timid and afraid and cowering, but tomorrow, he’s a vicious man-eater and hunter, and the hunter knew it, and slew it.
Now, a human being by nature, Paul says, is dead in transgressions and sins. By nature, the human person is deserving of wrath (Ephesians 2:1-3). This is why we humans need salvation. If we are left to our own devices and to our own destiny, we are left without a way of redemption or salvation, and we will eventually destroy ourselves. In the novel “Lord of the Flies”, a shipwrecked group of children land on an island and believe they can start civilization over. They make themselves a leader and start to organize themselves with rules, laws, and customs. It isn’t long, however, until jealously, pride, contempt and deception began to develop. Some of the children end up murdering another. By the time you get to the end of the story, the children, even in their ‘new’, ‘pristine’ world of paradise become just as corrupt, cruel, and crooked as their parents and the problems they wanted to correct. And do you know that this was not a religious novel, but it was a book we read in 9th grade English. It was a creative story that expressed most verifiable biblical truth of how impossible it is for humans to overcome our sinful nature, because, as Paul says, without Christ we are ‘dead in trespasses and sin’ and we are ‘by nature children of wrath’.
BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED (v.8)
Last year, near the end of June, the whole world watched as 12 young boys in Thailand, where trapped with their soccer coach 2 and one-half miles deep in a cave that was filling up with flood waters. After a soccer practice, they went with their coach into the cave and had walked almost a mile when the waters began to rise and they had no way out. They were trapped deep within the cave with no way of escape on their own. If it had not been that the world came together to rescue them, they would have all been lost; without hope, without help, and without life.
This is the picture of the human race the apostle Paul paints when he says we are ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ and we are ‘by nature children of wrath’. It is a chilling picture. It’s similar to the feeling created by the famous quote from Arthur Clark, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Only two possibilities exists in this universe. Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both possibilities are equally terrifying.”
How can we dare sleep at night, if this is how the world is, how life is, and how, if we are left to ourselves, how we will be, and how we are? And if we are this way, how can we be saved? How can we hope for anything beyond this life, or beyond the realities of sin, death, and wrath which we face in this world? How can we find any hope? This is what Paul has been leading up to the whole time. He never wanted to leave us hanging, nor only tell us how hopeless or helpless we are. No, Paul has given us these two very ‘depressing’ pictures of ourselves, and of our world, to help qualify, clarify, and contrast the greatest truth he really wants to share; which he shares in the next two verses: “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-- it is by grace you have been saved (Eph. 2:4-5 NIV)
Look carefully at what we are reading. Listen closely to what you are hearing. On His own initiative, God has acted on our behalf. We were ‘dead in trespasses and sins’, but God’s mercy makes us alive. We were ‘by nature children of wrath’ but God, because of the great love with which He loved us, God saves us by grace. All by Himself, because he is the God who is love, God has taken action to transform our condition and change our situation.
Why? What impulse moved God to have anything at all to do with us? Why did God come to save you and to save me. Maybe a story will help. Shortly after the Korean War, a Korean woman had an affair with an American soldier, and she got pregnant. He went back to the United States, and she never saw him again. She gave birth to a little girl, and this little girl looked different than the other Korean children. In that culture, children of mixed race were ostracized by the community. In fact, many women would kill their children because they didn't want them to face such rejection. "But this woman didn't do that. She tried to raise her little girl as best she could. [This went on] for seven years, [but then] the rejection [started taking its toll]. [Finally, this unwed mother] did something that probably nobody in this room could imagine ever doing. She abandoned her little girl to the streets."
"For the next two years, this little girl had to figure out life in a hard world, which was made even harder because of she was obviously different. People were terribly harsh with her. She was tagged with one of the ugliest words in the Korean language to describe her mixed lineage. It didn't take long for this little girl to draw conclusions about herself based on the way people treated her. "But in her ninth year of life, something unexpected happened that changed everything. First, this girl found an orphanage and was taken in. This meant some measure of security would return for her, and she wouldn't have to make food, clothing, and shelter her daily pursuit. The second thing that happened was within a few days of her arrival. Word came that a couple from America was going to adopt a little boy.
"'All the children in the orphanage got excited, because at least one little boy was going to have hope. He was going to have a family.'" So this little girl spent the day polishing up the youngest boys - giving them baths and combing their hair . . . " Everyone was wondering which boy would have their dreams come true. "The time came when the couple arrived. I'll let you hear what happened in this girl's own words: 'It was like Goliath had come back to life. I saw the man with his huge hands lift up each and every baby. I knew he loved every one of them as if they were his own. I saw tears running down his face, and I knew if they could, they would have taken the whole lot home with them.
"(And then) 'he saw me out of the corner of his eye. Now let me tell you, I was nine years old but I didn't even weigh 30 pounds. I was a scrawny thing. I had worms in my body. I had lice in my hair. I had boils all over me. I was full of scars. I was not a pretty sight. "'But the man came over to me, and he began rattling away something in English. I looked up at him. Then he took this huge hand and laid it on my face. What was he saying? He was saying, 'I want this child. This is the child for me." (Lee Strobel, "Meet the Jesus I Know," Preaching Today Audio #211.)
Paul uses several words to speak of God's saving movement toward us. We read of His rich mercy, His great love, and His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. But the single most powerful word to describe why God did for us what He did, is a word that explains why a dead sinner on his way to destruction can suddenly respond to the good news of the Gospel is the word grace. Three times in four verses, we find this word. But it's in v. 8-9 that Paul breaks the word wide open. “For by GRACE you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God's gift-- not from works, so that no one can boast.”
Nicky Gumbel, a pastor from England, who created the famous introduction to the Christian Faith known as the Alpha Course, tells of two university friends. One eventually became a judge but his friend chose a different path in life. He made bad choices & turned to a life of crime. He was caught & brought before a judge. The judge was shocked to see the man in the dock was his old university friend. The judge however could not waive the penalty for his old friend. His friend was guilty & the appropriate punishment had to be given. The man was fined $10,000. This was justice. What happened next, however, showed the kindness & mercy of the judge. After announcing the verdict & dismissing the court he went down, took off his judge’s wig & wrote out a cheque for $10,000. He paid the fine for his old friend.
No illustration is perfect but there is a sense in which this is what God has done for us. Both God’s righteousness & His love were fully expressed in the love & mercy God showed us in Christ “…even when we were dead in transgressions”…Even when we were still sinners, Paul wrote elsewhere, ‘Christ died for us’ (Rom. 5:8). What a powerful intervention. We were spiritually dead but He “made us alive with Christ.” Do you see the contrast here? By nature we were dead, but in Christ we have been made alive. Like that judge paying the fine for his friend, all that God has done for us shows His incredible love & grace.
CREATED IN CHRIST JESUS TO DO GOOD WORKS, (10 NIV)
What should be our response to such ‘amazing’, ‘astounding’, saving grace?
I find it most interesting how Paul ends this part of his discussion about God’s salvation. He says we are ‘saved by grace.’ Then he says it is a ‘gift of God’ given to us to prepare us to ‘do good works’. He does not say that we are ‘saved by grace’ just to have faith, just to receive the gift, just so we can go to heaven when we die, or just so that we can ‘be good’ people. Isn’t it interesting that none of these are the proper way of acknowledging God’s gift of grace?
Paul says we respond to grace by realizing that: “We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:10 NIV). The Christian life is a life we live filled with the adventure of doing ‘good works’ without fear of what might happen or not happen to us. We are to live to do good. This is what this Christian life is really about.
Dr. Alfred Heasty was a medical missionary in the wilderness of Africa for many years. After his death, his wife remembered her husband, saying, "When I married Alfred I thought I was marrying a doctor. I thought I would have to put up with long hours and late calls and the like, but I had no idea I was marrying a missionary too."
She described living in primitive conditions, but then she said, "One of the few luxuries I had were my Cool Whip containers." Can you imagine Cool Whip containers being a luxury? She said, "We used them in Africa to store our food, because they kept the bugs and rodents out of our home. The bugs were about the size of mice and the mice were about the size of cats."
She said, "I remember one day Alfred came home for lunch and apparently on his walk home he saw some prisoners eating their meal off the ground. The men guarding the prisoners just poured the food on the sandy soil and the prisoners ate their meal mixed with sand and the dirt and the bugs."
She said, "My Alfred saw that and came home and told me about it; and then he announced that he had arranged to give the guards medical care, if they promised to give the prisoners their food on a dish. And they agreed." She said, "My husband asked me to gather all my Cool Whip containers."
"My Cool Whip containers! 'What are you thinking, Alfred? What are we going to do? Have bugs in our food?'"
She said, "Alfred just looked at me and said, 'What are you afraid of?'"
"I'm afraid of the Gospel, Alfred."
And he said, "So am I, but isn't it wonderful?"
This wonderful grace of God is about learning how to live life full of adventure and service, and to live without fear. But it’s not only a ‘living’ grace, and a ‘doing good works’ grace, it’s also a ‘dying’ grace. A young woman named Katherine. Ten years earlier she was in a church youth group. Ten years later, too young in her life, she had cancer. She fought against that cancer with everything she had; and when there was no more that they could do for her, she told her pastor: I know how to live, but how do you die? I'm scared."
But even with her fear, she handled her last days with dignity and with grace. On late evenings when she could not sleep from either pain or worry, she would call her mother. They would talk sometime by phone, sometime her mother would come to her bedside, either way, they would open a hymnal and sing together. "Our God our Help in Ages Past our Hope in Years to Come." They would sing, "God of our life, through all the circling years, we trust in Thee. In all the past, through all our hopes and fears, Thy hand we see." They would sing, "When we've been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun, we've no lest days to sing God's praise than when we first begun." (From a sermon, “What’s In Your Future?” by Donovan Drake, preached on March 22, 2009).
They would sing like this until they could trust God’s future together. Then she could rest. You know how to die when you know God’s love and grace. This is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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