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There are times in our personal lives when what we want most is to hide something we did or said or wrote. This isn’t easily done. The Bible tells us: nothing remains hidden, all is revealed (Mark 4:22).  It’s the inability to destroy the past that haunts us.

• A deadly mess. (Ephesians 2:1-3,11-12)
  • This state of death described in verse two is so prevalent.  Paul states that it is the “course of this world” and that we follow the “Prince of the Air.”  It’s an interesting phrase, I think what he saying is that air is everywhere, and at the same time it’s nothing.  That’s what living in disobedience to God is!
  • You were following your own desires and animalistic in behavior. We followed the flesh, impulses of our bodies.  We followed the mind, the constructs of evil thinking.
  • And because of this we were an object of wrath.
    • God’s wrath – We don’t like to talk about this, but God hates sin.  His anger is directed toward the unrepentant.  Hell is a reality and it is a painful reality.
    • Your own wrath – Sin degrades our bodies, our minds, our hearts.  It leaves us with self-loathing.  We wonder where we went wrong and why we failed.  While hell is an eternal reality, we sometimes force ourselves to live in hell here on earth.
  • Part of this deadly mess is the separation we experienced from God.
    • As gentiles we were excluded from the people of promise and without hope in God.
    • We were “strangers” or “aliens” from the promises of God.  We were isolated.
  • Here in this passage is the cycle of both addiction and self-destruction.  Our desires lead us to plan sin, our sin leads us to self-hatred, our self-hatred leads us to assume no one else loves us as well, and because of that we exclude ourselves from everyone not just God.  That isolation increases our pain and our desires for sin once again increase.
• A gracious encounter. (Ephesians 2:4-9,13-18)
  • God is the major player in this scene.  God’s love came, God made you alive, grace saved you.
    • Our sinful desire wanted our own works to save us, but they couldn’t.  Our desires only brought death – not life.
    • It is God who interrupts this cycle by being a friend to us in our loneliness and by giving us a new heart with new desires and a new mind with new plans.
  • Today, just as in Paul’s day.  We can say goodbye to our pasts by allowing our pain to drive us to God and away from the sinful desires that bring more brokenness.  There is an easier way than being arrested, we call it repentance.
  • If you wanted to draw an arrow out from “Pain” to a new box and that is “God’s Grace.”  This is not an easy journey, for it requires us to do several things…
    • First, stop acting naturally.  It is natural to sin, but in order to let go of our past we must turn from our sinful nature and to God.  We call this repentance.
    • Second, we must accept God’s work.  It’s against our wiring to be gracious accepters, we want to give, and we want to do it ourselves.  As childish as it sounds coming from a toddler who wants to do something for themselves, it sounds as childish coming from us.
    • Third, we must allow God to demolish our barriers.  The best way to do this is by confession.  Because not only does it remove our barriers, our facades, our aliases, but it accomplishes the final step.
    • Fourth, connect.  Both with God and people.
  • But, Paul says, “It’s not our work,” and he’s right.  Our work is really letting God work.  God in fact has done the work, we just merely need to accept it.  Of all the “work” required repentance and faith are the hardest!  Just turning and believing – that’s it!  Everything else is done for you, baptism, sealing with the Spirit, living a new life!
  • Paul says that we are dead, dead people don’t do anything!  It’s the work of God who according to verse six raises us up with Jesus Christ!  His resurrection becomes our own resurrection!  His past becomes our past!  His life takes the place of our death!
• A new creation. (Ephesians 2:10,19-22)
  • We are a new creation, a combination of Jewish insideness, Gentile outsideness all made into one new humanity.  It’s a fresh start for everyone.
  • 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”  The only way to start over, is to become a new creation with a new life in Christ.  It is the only way to substitute our past with the past of Christ.
  • Once we become a new creation we see that we are not created for the old works of sin.  No, we are created for good works.  These good works are to allow God to build us together into a temple for him.
    • The word “Temple” here does not indicate the larger temple in Jerusalem.
    • The word indicates the inner part of the temple, the part where God dwelt.
  • We only become that together – why?  Because God is bigger than us, and when we are banded together for God’s glory and our lives are touching each other then that strengthens us from the isolation that leads us to sin.
    • The word used of Christ in verse 20, is cornerstone which was often not a foundation stone, but a capstone.
    • This stone held the building together, uniting walls and preventing sway.  Until we allow Christ to be over us, we will in fact be driven by our desires, we must surrender under him.

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