Ephesians 2 - Luke Kennedy

Made Alive in Christ

2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Jew and Gentile Reconciled Through Christ

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Okay. Alright. We're continuing a series from Ephesians. And last week was fantastic. Stuart shared from Ephesians chapter 1. Who was encouraged by that last week? Ephesians chapter 1. It's so good to have some amazing teachers in our church these days. I'm going to be sharing around Ephesians chapter 2. Are we ready? Okay. And I'm hoping for this part it is going to be on the screen, okay? So we got a little thing working there. Okay, alive in Christ. Can we get the can we go? Hugo. Ephesians chapter 2. Here we go. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the rulers of the kingdom of the air, the spirit of who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following his desires and thoughts, we're just being led along. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. Let me come back to that in a minute. But because of 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've been saved, and God raised us up with Christ and has seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Jesus Christ, in order that, this is a long compound sentence, in order that in the coming ages we may show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace that you've been saved through faith. And this is not from ourselves, it is the gift of God, not by our works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he prepared in advance for us to do. Let's start right there. How good is that verse? Incredible, incredible piece of writing. Let me go back to the very top and talk a little bit about sin. Sin is this concept of what happens when those who are created in the image of God, to be presence carriers of God, to reflect God into the whole world. That's our purpose. That's what it means to be a human, if you weren't sure about if AI was confusing you. It means to be a reflector of God, to carry the nature of God, to be created in his image, and then to reflect it into the world for God's glory. That's the beautiful call to be a human. But sin is what happens when we perpetually do not worship God and do not reflect God into the world, but we reflect something very different. That we try to put ourselves above God, and then we reflect something very different into the world. And we've thought, you know, I think in the world right now, we're starting to see some of the results of what can happen when we try to replace a loving, gracious, justice-filled God and his reflection in the world with ourselves, reflecting myself and my selfishness. We're seeing pretty clearly what can happen right now. You're seeing Jeffrey Epstein files, you're seeing some of the most dark things of humanity, but here's the reality is what else would you expect when you try to replace God with yourself? And in fact, we probably haven't even seen the bottom of the barrel yet. The depravity of replacing God with self. God is so good, and we are here to represent God in the world. But this sin is not what we were born into and saved into. We were born into Christ. It's a very different identity and calling that we have. Um, God is historically opposed to this soul-destroying concept of sin. He's opposed to it. God hates it. And he hates it because it's the dick it's the decay of humanity, it's destroying your life. It's has a life of its own. It's its will is to destroy you, and God is against it. He's seated in opposition to it. If you imagine sitting in a table, one chair this side, one chair that side. Just stay with me, Hugo. Um, one chair this side, one chair that side. Um he's he likes to Okay, multitask. He's a multitasker. He's probably playing chess at the back right now, as well as doing this. Keep going, keep going. Keep going, mate. There we go. Okay, all right, we're good. If you imagine yourself, I I'm seated in the place of sin and and selfishness, I'm seated in opposition to God. God is in opposition to this soul destroying sin. And I'm seated in the opposition seat of that sin. And when I proudly take that seat of sin and selfishness, I am not because God doesn't love me, but I am literally putting myself in opposition to God and his will, which is to restore humanity. Does this make any sense? This is not a good position to be in, in opposition to God. That's not where you want to be. But that's not the end of the story. We're gonna get it, it's getting it's gonna get better. When I was 16, I went to Indonesia for the first time. It was my first time overseas. I was come from a small town, Warwick, and which is a small town outside of Toomba. And we were we were up in the mountains of Borneo, and we were uh climbing mountains, and we were we were speaking in villages up in the mountains where the orangutans are. It rained constantly. I remember climbing mountains with um remember when you had hair gel, remember that kind of hot time when it was really hard? Blink 102 vibes, and and it would the rain would pour so hard and it would just burn your eyes, you know. And so we remember climbing to the top of the hill, and we're in this little village, and and so we have a translator, and we're doing this skit. Remember back in the days when skits were big, bring back skits, that's what I say. Um, and we're doing this skit called the sin chair. Has anyone ever heard of the sin chair? The sin chair is this sticky chair, and you would put this chair and would have a sign on it and say, do not touch. And and so if you touched it, you would kind of get stuck to it. And the whole idea was if you touch it, you would the person, and it's a kind of a humorous skit, you would kind of get stuck to it, and then you have the chair, and you're trying to get out of it, but you can't get out of it, and then Jesus has got to come and save you out of the chair. Well, anyway, well, I was the Jesus in this in this skit. Um, and the girl was not really cooperating, she was not really receiving my help, and and she was stuck in a chair, but I kept telling her it was time I was trying to set her free, but she wasn't really understanding the skit because she hadn't practiced. Anyway, uh, so I I pulled the chair and accidentally I pulled the chair and I I hit the light bulb above us and it smashed. Well, that was the only light bulb in the whole village, and so I'm thinking, oh no, I've just smashed the only light bulb in the village, and it's gone out, and the pastor gets up and he says, Well, I guess that's the end of the service. And I felt so bad, and I we we had to leave. Um, and we we don't worry, we bought them a new light bulb. But that was kind of my first introduction to missions was quite a quite a fail. Um, hopefully the guys who went to India had a better experience than this um with us recently. But this idea of the the sin chair was this seated in opposition, stuck in this seated opposition towards God's goodness. God's goodness versus my seated chair. But here's here's the the amazing part is that Jesus takes us from being stuck in a chair of sin and he makes us alive in Christ and He seats us in a new seat. It says, He seats us in the heavenly realms next to Christ, and I become in Christ. This is the new seat. This is a new identity that I have. I'm no longer trapped in my past, I'm no longer stuck and weighed down by the sin of the world. Now I am alive and I'm alive in Christ. You can see why this idea of being in Christ is the most important part of my identity. Maybe I should change my pronouns to in Christ on my Instagram handle. It's the most important part about who I am, is that I'm I'm in Christ. I'm with Jesus and He's set me free, He's made me new. I came into the church when I was 14 years old from a very violent background, uh full of anger as a young man, probably with a pretty big attitude sitting up the back, um, thinking, um, you know, this is not my this is not my world. And I remember throughout the service, something began to change in my heart. And this desire to know God, and to, and it was like hope started bursting in my heart, and I started to imagine and dream and hope, what if my future could be different than my family's past? And by the end of the service, I had prayed this prayer, God, if you're real, come into my life because I want to know you. And that day, something dramatically changed in my life. Not my circumstances, but I walked in with a lot of anger and fear, and I walked out with the same circumstances, but I knew something was going to be different. And it certainly was. God, I was now in a moment of surrender, I was in Christ. Everything was new on the inside of me. That's my story. You could be alive in Christ today. It's not just breathing, it's being connected to the source of life for everything. Verse 8. Let's have a look at verse 8, Hugo. Verse 8. Where are we? Verse 8. For it is by grace that you've been saved through faith, and this is not of yourself, it is the gift of God. How do you become whole in God? This is this word saved. It means to be made whole. How do you become whole with God? It's not by yourself. It's pretty clear there, isn't it? It's not by yourself. It is a gift of God, it's a grace, it's God's gift to you. How do you get it? Through faith. Now, it is not lost on me how many times I've thought this sounds a little bit like Peter Pan, um, where Tinkerbell comes and says to Peter Pan, every time you remember this? I watched this with my kids recently. Every time someone says they don't believe in a fairy, somewhere in the world a fairy dies. But if you believe, they come back to life. I I understand that sometimes it may sound like, well, just just believe, just believe, and then everything's great. And if you don't believe, God dies. And the world kind of took a hold of that and just been trying to kill God with unbelief ever since. But it is a little deeper than that. And the word here for faith isn't just wishing upon Tinkerbell or wishing upon a star, it's actually allegiance language. Now, Paul comes from a time of empires and kingdoms, fidelity language, loyalty, trust. These are the values of his day and the kingdoms that he was a part of. This is all wrapped up in this idea of faith, pistos. It's this word faith, but it means much more closer to loyalty than it is to wish upon a star. I have given my loyalty over to Jesus. I am with Jesus, and in that moment, God receives me into Himself. I've become alive in Christ. It says, You were under the ruler of the power of the air. You were your allegiance was with one thing, but now your allegiance is with another thing. It's now with God. It's more than my work, it's more than being Australian, it is to Jesus. That's my allegiance. And faith is this mechanism of that change of allegiance. So last week we talked about um Stuart shared so well and talked about the idea of um God knowing you before you were even born, thinking of you before you were even born. But here in this scripture, we learn that not only were you thought about, but good works were prepared for you to do even before the world was born. Not only were you known, but God has a contribution through your life to the world to give. This is what we call purpose. Yeah? We starved a purpose. We need purpose. God has a purpose for your life, and He has prepared it long ago. He's not confused about your life. This is such good news when you feel like you're going through a really hard thing. You can feel like I've lost my purpose, I'm going through a hard thing. Maybe it's a physical challenge or financial hardship, and it seems like you're not moving forwards in life. But you need to keep coming back to the truth of before even the world was created, God had prepared good works for you to do, had prepared contribution, and nothing can stop that. So let me ask you this: what is the result of this separation, turn, restoration? The changing of my seat from dead in sin to alive in Christ. What is the result of this newfound intimacy with God? We're gonna read it in verse 14 to 16. This is a kind of a cultural moment. We got it here. There we go. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups, he's talking about Jews and non-Jews in this church, in the Ephesian church. He has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he has put to death their hostility. In a radical turn of events, the outcome of this unity with God now, the result is no more separation between us. That's the result. That's kind of crazy, right? God's love for you, the result of it is that you would love your brother and your sister. That we would love each other deeply. This is the result. If you think about this, and talk about this in marriage, and you think about a triangle, I have a picture of this, Hugo. Um a picture of a triangle, and you've got God at the top, and then you've got me and you, and we've got all these kind of barriers between us. Yeah, background, economic, nationality, language, culture, preferences, opinions, all these barriers. And it's like the closer we get to God, the more we get closer to each other. And the barriers start breaking down the closer I get to Jesus, the more I can love you. That's the idea. That's the same in a marriage, by the way. That's why it's so beautiful to marry someone who knows Jesus and loves Jesus and surrendered to Jesus, is because I'm so confident that even on my wife's worst day, I know Jesus is gonna get her. And she knows the same about me that I'm gonna go away and then Jesus is gonna get me. Jesus is gonna say, No, no, no, no, no. Love your wife. Go back and love your wife and apologize, even though it's 99% not my fault. You know this. He's gonna call me back to her because the closer I get to him, he's calling me back to her to back to unity. Does this make sense? So for them, it was Jewish and non-Jewish. They had so much cultural divide, so much animosity. I can't get into all of the details. But one of the things that makes me so proud in this church, one of the things I just this is not a um a correction, this is like it, this is an encouragement, okay? One of the things that I love about seeing in this church, and I'll watch it, is to see Australian um amazing people, and some of the people in our church like business people, people who are doing great things in life, going and finding immigrants in our church and bringing them into their circle. People who are new to Australia, new to the city, maybe even new to English, and then inviting them to their parties. That makes me proud. And I think that is a picture of the church. That is a picture for Australia right now. It makes me so happy to see so much cultural divide, and I'm watching this and I've lived overseas, so I get this. They have no idea even what they're talking about. The English is poor, all of the lines of communication are all missing, but there's a heart towards I want to include you in this community. That's the church. The government cannot do that. That's the church. That's the role of the church. We bring people in. We talk about assimilating into Australia, but the government can't do that. That's the church. We are the people who assimilate people, not just into a country, but into the family of Jesus, into Christ. There's so many languages in this church, there's so many different backgrounds in this church. You know, we've never once ever had an issue of people um having issues over country or culture. We've never had one issue in this church. Why is that? It's because of this. It's because we are relentlessly calling people to follow Jesus. And the natural result of following Jesus is loving my neighbor. Um out of the love of God in my heart, I I'm always looking for the outsider to bring in. Always. It's just the way it is. So yes, we need more sustainable immigration in this country. Yes. But what is the church's role in all of this? It is to look at the person in front of me and love them well. That is the role of the church. It is it is to love them with unreasonable hospitality. And I I want to say if you are here in Australia from another place, I want to say, I'm glad you're here. Welcome. We're glad you're here. We got one amen. Amazing. Yeah? We're glad you're here. And I want you to be not just part of Australia, I want you to be part of the family of God. And you may have thought you'd come to Australia for a job, but you didn't. God brought you here for a reason. God brought you here, maybe for many of you, to introduce you to his great love for you. Some of you will go back to your country and you will go back knowing Jesus deeply, and you will affect everywhere you go with the love of God. Some of you will stay and be part of the future. And I want to say, because I know what it's like to live in a country, to be an extreme minority, less than 1%, my whole basically my whole adult life. I lived as an extreme minority in Japan. Okay. And I want to say, if you're here, and what I used to say to every Australian who went to Japan was if you're going to be in Japan, love Japan. Speak well about Japan and help build the future of Japan. That's what God has called us to do. That's the invitation. That was my challenge to every Australian who came to Japan with us. That's my challenge here, too. God has a plan for Australia. If you are part of it, then be part of it. Come welcome. Be part of the future. Help us build. Speak well. Be a part of speaking faith. Be a part of the solution for this country to come to a healthy place of knowing God. Is this okay? Yeah? We want you here. Um, Christians have been doing this from the very beginning, by the way. This is not a new thing. Christians were the people who were looking after Roman babies who were thrown onto the street, mostly girls, who were unwanted. Christians were the ones who were going around the streets, collecting babies and bringing them into the church and raising them as their own. This is the heart of the church to take people in and say, come and be part of the future with us. The future that God has prepared and build something together. Can I pray with us? All right, cool. Thank you, God. God, I thank you for taking me out of the seat of opposition and putting me in Christ, seating me in Christ. By your grace. I couldn't have done it myself, and you did it for me. And I'm thankful.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

And so many here are the same. We're so thankful for you. And I pray for people here maybe feel like they are stuck in that seat of opposition.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

I pray today there would be a moment of surrender and faith. Faith to go from that seat into a seat in Christ. Being made new, being set free, becoming part of the family of God, being loved deeply.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

So I pray we'd surrender that today.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Pray there's people here who need to surrender to that today. They would. Give them courage, God.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

To say yes to you.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

And I pray for others here who do know you right now. And I pray our hearts would turn outwards. And we would love our neighbors as deeply as you have loved us, God. We would treat people the same way that you have treated us. And I thank you for all that you're doing in this church, bringing people in from all over the place. And I pray this church would have great confidence.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Great confidence in you. And I pray over the future of our city. I pray you're blessing over this city, God.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

And with all of the challenges happening right now, I pray your blessing, God. Bless this city. Bless it, Lord.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

May I come to know you and your great plans to set people free.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Thank you for the so many other churches right now who are in a moment of prayer right now in this spirit moment. We're joining with them. Pray your blessing on them. May you swing open the doors of the church to welcome in those who don't have a home. This Tuesday night, Lord, I just pray that you begin something of bringing people into a place of belonging in the family of God. Open people's eyes to the way, the truth, and the life that is you, Jesus. We thank you for our God. We love you. Bless your people in Jesus' name. Amen.