I'm excited to be here with you guys as we get into this today.
And part of the thing is, I love the scripture
that we're going to be talking about.
And I love what Paul has to say here in Ephesians.
And part of what I like about this
and part of what I enjoy about this passage
and the power of what we're going to hear today
is that it really tells the story of Christianity.
It tells the story that we're all a part of.
And I think if you're like me, I get really energized
by good stories.
In terms of being able to hear stories,
in terms of being able to connect to that,
I'm probably like the rest of humanity,
all the way back to Homer and the Iliad.
And when we begin to think about a story
and we begin to hear about these stories,
we just begin to get sucked in.
And I remember sometimes with our kids,
we would read a story at night.
And my old ones would play like he's too cool.
And then we'll get into the story.
And then it'll just start like he starts leaning in.
And then by the end he's like, dad, don't stop, you know?
Because stories just suck us in.
And there's some elements to this that are dramatic.
And we're kind of like always seeking to hear
what is going on here.
And we're drawn to that.
And we're drawn to good stories.
And they have the right elements to it, right?
All stories kind of have a formula.
And if you don't have some of that,
that's a lame story, right?
And when we begin to think of lame stories,
maybe you've told some, you know,
I know that I've told some stories.
But if you don't have all those elements together,
it really doesn't work well at all, you know?
So if you're telling your friends,
hey, listen up, this thing, I gotta tell you about it.
So I was walking to class and I fell.
Yeah, that's the story.
You know, that's just a lame story, right?
That's just information.
And you say to your friend,
hey bro, you just wasted two minutes of my time.
You should buy me lunch because you just wasted my life.
I don't get those two minutes back.
And you know, and maybe you find yourself in those places.
Maybe you find yourself telling lame stories.
If you find yourself telling lame stories,
I got two hints for you.
One, at the end of that lame story,
you know, sometimes you're telling that story
and you know that somehow this is not gonna land really well.
Like in the midst of it, you're like,
oh, I know the end of this story
and it's not even worth finishing.
But I have to finish it because it'd be awkward for me
to just stop talking now, right?
And so you just kind of continue the talking thing.
And if you do, here's two hints
to be able to continue the story just to a safe face.
One, add in that you found $5
at the end of the story randomly, right?
Just $5.
And I've been using that a while.
So maybe you need to, you know, have some inflation.
Maybe $20 is better.
So he's like, man, so I was walking to class and I tripped.
When I tripped, I found $5.
You know, I was like, okay, it's worth hearing.
20 bucks.
You can buy me lunch because I had to endure that,
you know, or whatever.
The other thing is for you to be able to say,
then I threw up.
I guess the other really helpful end to a bad story.
You know, if you don't know what to do,
you're just like, yeah, then I completely just barfed.
I just completely threw up there.
It was such a moment, you know?
And so, you know, it's just this things
if you have bad stories.
But in terms of good stories,
let's talk about good stories
that don't have throw up in $5 at the end of them,
like the gospel has neither of those.
And so when we begin to think about this whole idea,
what does it look like?
You have things like this idea
that there is an issue or there's a problem, right?
And so you don't have a story
unless there's something that they're trying to overcome
or there's some kind of issue.
And that's really the foundational piece
to every single story.
And if you don't have anything that's the issue,
if you don't have anything that's the problem,
it's just history, right?
It's just telling you a few facts
that are scattered throughout some sort of a timeline.
And that's just boring, you know?
And so when we begin to think about that,
and then we kind of get connected to that,
to the problem, right?
Why is this happening?
What are the effects that this is causing?
That this problem is manifesting in someone's life?
What does this look like?
And so we begin to kind of plug into the characters
and we begin to plug into the event
because we begin to see, okay,
this is something that's happening here.
And then what we begin to see is
is that after we see this problem
and we begin to see the effects of the problem,
we begin to be, you know, the story is again,
just history, unless there's a solution
that's intertwined with that.
And we see this solution that comes up.
And all of a sudden in a good story,
you're like, oh my goodness.
And here's the answer to that problem.
And now we're connecting all the dots together.
And now all of a sudden it's making a whole lot of sense.
And then at the end of this,
what we begin to see is there is a,
there is a pathway to what happens after the solution.
And this sort of reality is different
than when we came into the beginning of this.
So there's a new reality that happens at the end of this.
And here's the new life of the characters
or here's the new storyline.
And for us, what happens is that we begin
to kind of track with that.
And that begins to mimic our life.
And we begin to be drawn to that
because we are living stories all the time.
Because for us, we're in the midst of issues.
We're in the midst of seeing those have effects
upon our lives.
We're in the midst of trying to find solutions
and finding the solutions
and hopefully having a different life after that.
That's just a part of what it is.
And so we're naturally drawn to that.
We're naturally drawn to those stories.
And what I wanted to talk to you about
is the greatest story ever,
is the most significant story ever,
is what God's story is throughout all of humanity
and why you should listen to this
and why this should be something that you pay attention to.
Because today in these 10 verses,
we're going to fit together the entire storyline.
What I have to tell you is probably the most concise
understanding of what God has done in the,
to humanity is to humanity and for humanity
that we can see.
And so I'm incredibly excited about this.
And I want you to hang on
because what we're going to see
is what God has done for you.
And I hope that this story makes sense to you
because it has incredibly significant implications.
And especially if you're here, if you're seeking God,
if you're trying to figure out what this is all about,
what we're going to be talking about today
is this thing that in terms of Christianity,
in terms of religion, we talk about being saved.
What is it that we are being saved to?
What are we being saved from?
What is that process of what it looks like for salvation?
And so when we begin to think about that,
what is that?
And as we begin to have this idea,
this idea of being all in,
how is it that we plug our life into a better story?
And how does that end up looking in our lives?
And so we're going to take,
we're going to go through all of this
and see what God is doing in terms of humanity,
in terms of our lives.
It says this, we're going to start in chapter two verses one.
We'll throw it up here.
It says this, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked.
We'll just stop it there.
And so you were dead in the trespasses and the sins
in which you once walked.
When we begin to see the beginning of the story,
when we begin to have an understanding,
you heard the whole text there in the very beginning.
And now when we begin to think about what this is,
this introduces the problem.
And when we begin to think about the problem,
when we begin to understand this,
one of the things that is most profound in this
is this story is so much deeper
than most of us give it credit for.
So when we begin to think about this,
oftentimes we can say, there's problems in our lives.
There's things that we can understand.
There's some things that when we begin to process this world,
we can say, I can get on board with the fact
that everything's not the way it is,
that I need to be better in this.
I need to stop that and start this.
And we go back to New Year's resolutions
and saying that there's some things
that we need to have fixed.
And I wish I could be this kind of person.
And I'm not sure what I need to be doing over here.
And I can't stop doing this.
And I really want that.
And this is just who we are, right?
And this is the problems that we deal with.
And I don't know the problems in your lives,
but I do know that your lives aren't problem free
because you're a human, right?
And because you are aware of your surroundings,
you're aware of your life.
And so we have this thing.
But the problem is when we begin to have our life
intersected with the story of Christianity,
what we must understand is at the very beginning
that our problems, when we begin to look deeper
into this, go much deeper than we can imagine.
And so I have some bad news for you today
and some good news.
And the good news is better than the bad news,
but we'll start with the bad news, right?
So this is the reality that when you begin to think
of all the things that are wrong in your life,
when you have those that are maybe really acute
and you're having depression issues with that,
or you're having some anxiety about these things
that are not right in your life,
or maybe there's some minor things,
all of those are connected to something deeper.
All of those are connected to something more profound.
And when you begin to ask those questions, why,
when you begin to kind of go deeper and say,
okay, I need to get to the bottom of this,
why are these actions happening?
What's the foundation of this?
What's the root of this?
What we begin to understand,
what we begin to unpack is something
that is incredibly frightening to us.
But I want us to dive into this,
because if we don't get to this,
the solution that's given is in proportion
to the problem that's revealed.
And I need you to understand that,
because if not, we'll play acute Christianity.
We'll just kind of do a fly by.
We'll kind of say, I just need more encouragement.
So I'm here.
I just need inspiration.
So I come to resonate.
I just need some motivation
and I need some people around me,
but that's not your problem.
What your problem is, is this, first slide.
And you were dead.
You're dead.
You were dead in your trespasses and sins
in which you once walked.
This is the reality.
It's inescapable.
This is what is at the core of what is wrong.
And it goes deeper.
When the Bible is trying to reveal
what's going on spiritually,
what's going on in your soul,
here's the metaphor that is happening.
The metaphor that is being presented to us
is not sick and healthy.
It's not kind of frustrated and joyful.
It is death and life.
And so what we need to understand
is that when we are seeing this story
and we're understanding this problem,
when it comes to what the essence
of what it means to be saved or to follow Christ,
the place that we have to start
and the problems that are in our lives
and the things that are going wrong is this.
They are a product, not of needing encouragement
or motivation, they're the product of death.
And when you go all the way back in time,
the great preacher Charles Spurgeon asked,
when he was teaching this to his people,
he asked him just to imagine,
and this is a little bit graphic,
but I think that we need to get the gravity of this
so that we understand the glory of something else.
The gravity of this is he says,
you need to, right now, in the space that you're in,
in this body that you inhabit,
imagine what is coming for you and me in one point
in this day that you are in.
In one point in this day that you will die.
That one day that you will die.
And he says this, one day my body will be a carnival of worms
eating my flesh, decaying.
And that is that reality.
And I don't know if you've been around dead people.
I don't know if you've been around a dead body
and especially a dead body that has not been prepared
for a funeral.
This is something that is disturbing.
This is something for us,
we're not really made to see this, right?
And it's a reality that once you see this,
once you have an understanding of death
and a corpse that is laying there,
that it's not something easily removed from your heart,
and not a memory that's easily removed,
because when you see that,
it is not made up to look fleshly.
But when you begin to see a corpse,
you know, the flesh, the blood is not there,
the color is not there.
It is lifeless whenever you've seen something absolutely still.
If you've ever touched something
and it's completely ice cold,
this is the reality.
And for us to say, I just need a little pick me up
once a week so I come to resonate,
or I kind of pursue God a little bit.
You're missing the story.
You're missing the idea.
You're not understanding the essence
of what is being communicated to you by the Bible.
The Bible says you were dead.
You were dead in your trespasses
and sins in which you once walked.
This is the reality and we need to understand that.
And what happens is when we begin to think
about all the behaviors and all the things like this,
we're chasing back to what is the cause of this?
And this is what is causing all of these things.
And when we begin to think through this,
what is it that we're dealing with?
Where does this come from?
And the Bible gives us three areas where it comes from.
And when we begin to look at this,
Paul is saying, okay, so you're dead in Christ
and your transgressions.
And here's where that's coming from in verse two.
It says this, it is the, and you were,
sorry, following the course of this world,
following the prince of the power of the air
and the spirit that is now at work
and the sons of disobedience,
among whom we all lived in the passions of our flesh,
carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.
And we're by nature, children of wrath,
like the rest of mankind.
You need to get that, right?
Because it describes how it is that we become dead.
It describes the pathway that we follow.
And it's threefold.
One is we follow the course of this world
or the ways of this world.
And we begin to think about all of the culture
that we live in and what this really speaks into our life.
The culture is telling you not the story of Christ,
but the story of self.
And the story of self exalts you above everything else
and you rebel against God
because you place yourself first.
And this is what you're all around.
This is what the culture leads us to.
And so we begin to think through the politics of this world.
We begin to think through the choices
and belief systems that we have,
not in terms of what does God think about this,
but what does culture have to say to this?
And so I ask people all the time as they say,
what should I believe about this?
This simple question is first,
not what is popular in the culture,
but what does God have to say about this?
What does God have to say about same-sex marriage?
What does God have to say about war and peace?
What does God have to say about this issue in politics
and debt and all of those things
that are things that we're trying to figure out.
All of these popular ideas that are in our heads
that we're trying to figure out,
what do I believe about that?
What are you letting speak into your mind?
What are you just assuming?
Well, this is just how we think
because everyone thinks this way.
And it says we're following the course of this world.
See, there's a social dimension to this.
There's a social dimension to the death that overtakes us.
It's because we're in this.
And if you don't understand that,
if that's something that you don't necessarily get,
pull yourself out of your culture for a while.
When I was in college,
I spent 10 weeks in Estonia, country and the Baltics.
And it's a way different context of life.
And I remember being there and after 10 weeks,
kind of getting an understanding
of what it was like to live as an Estonian,
what it was like to live in that country
and kind of understanding at first I came in
and like, this is so weird.
Why don't you shower every day?
This is just annoying for all of us, right?
These are just weird things.
I don't understand these aspects.
And then I began to love it.
I began to love this aspect.
And then I came back to the US
and when I came back to the US,
I was ill-prepared for what I would experience
when I got removed from my culture
and got put back into it,
there was a different set of eyes.
And so I went into a mall, I remember,
and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm overwhelmed
by the consumerism, by the materialism.
I spent 10 weeks away from that.
And when I began to see everything
that's just vying for my attention
and beginning to see how we freely just give ourselves
to the necessities that we are entitled to,
it just, it was dark.
And I began to realize, oh my goodness,
that's significantly different
than I would have ever thought.
If we pull ourself out of Facebook for a while,
if we pull ourself out of the TV shows
and then reinsert and you said,
really, this is what we entertain ourself by.
How is it that we think the way that we do?
As your pastor, I feel like there's part,
I'm warring against the culture
that is being inserted into your life
in many more hours than we meet together,
much more than 90 minutes of talking about Jesus
and a church service could do.
Because this is what our hearts are called to.
There's a social dimension.
Number two, there's a spiritual dimension.
Following the prince of the power of the air,
death comes to us because there is somebody,
it says they're actively working
in the sons of disobedience
and the daughters of disobedience, right?
That's a saying that's not like, oh, girls, no.
Yes, it's happening, both genders.
This is going on.
And it's interesting as we begin to understand
when we interact with dark things,
and for maybe those of you who are in sociology,
there's just, when we begin to understand how that works,
those theories aren't robust enough
to understand the darkness in this world.
There is something else that is going on.
And this might be freaking you out.
You might have this, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Like this, this like kind of, oh my goodness,
is really, there's some spiritual things happening.
The Bible says that there is something at work.
The prince of the air, this is Satan.
This is demonic activity that is tempting us,
that is trying to say, no, here's what's normal.
Come on, do you really think that you're that bad?
Do you really think that you need to repent of that?
You're just having fun.
Come on.
Man, the church is so hardcore, just lighten up.
This is college, have some fun.
Whispering in our ears, the lies.
No, man, just feel good.
If it feels good, it's right, right?
You can't deny your body.
If you wanna do it, figure out a way to do it.
If not, you're not being who you are.
You're not being uniquely you.
It's the lies, and they sound so pretty,
and they lead you into dark places.
And when you allow yourself to be kind of motivated by that,
to be affected by that, it leads you to dark places.
Leads you to dark places.
There's a spiritual dimension to that.
Number three, it says this, following our passions,
and our desires, apart from Jesus.
This is where, the cravings that we have,
the passions and the desires that we have,
the things that are in our lives,
the things that we say, this is just what I desire.
This is what I want.
There is an inward dimension to this.
There's something that is dark about us,
not because necessarily you made an active choice,
but because it has affected all of humanity,
and we pursue ourselves, and we rebel against God,
and the pursuit of self and the rebellion of God
creates desires in our hearts that are apart from God.
And when we fill those desires and we say,
I am going to validate that desire,
and not the desires of God, what we do
is we get brought into places of death,
not places of life.
And this is our issue.
And this is the idea that is over and over,
revealing itself to us.
And these are the problems that are perpetuating for us.
And when we begin to talk about this,
if we don't understand that you are dead and not alive,
that you're not just uninspired,
that you're not just discouraged,
that you're just not unmotivated,
that you're dead, we're never gonna get anywhere.
And I think that for too long,
what we've thought is this,
that we were frustrated in our transgressions,
that we were tripped up by our sins,
but really just still good people.
And Paul is going to point us
into the direction of true salvation,
of walking with God in a way that affects all of our life,
and we cannot run from.
He says, here's the two options,
dead or alive.
And if we strip everything away,
here's the phrase that we're talking about.
You were dead, but God made you alive in Christ.
Not, you were uninspired
and had a few things that you couldn't handle,
but God gave you inspiration in a chicken soup
for the soul kind of way, from Jesus Christ.
That's not the way it works.
And yet that's often the way that we approach God.
And that's kind of the mindset that we have in this.
And we get to this place,
and I have to help you to understand at this point
in this talk that you are dead.
And if you don't take that seriously,
you'll never get to the root problem.
And I know that that's dark,
and I know that you're saying this sucks,
and I know that you're saying I wish I hadn't come here,
sorry I invited you, you know.
But this is the point.
This is this idea.
This is what's going on here.
And when we begin to understand this,
I need you to know that death is death.
And when we get to see Jesus raising people from the dead,
he did so in different ways.
See, Jerry is his daughter,
a little girl who'd been dead for not very long.
You see this guy that they're taking out
in a funeral procession,
and he'd been maybe dead a day,
and Jesus heals him, he stops the funeral,
freaks everybody out, and he gets up off the,
you know, the mat that they're carrying him out
of the city on, and then you have Lazarus.
Lazarus has been dead for so long
that one of Lazarus' sister says,
hey Jesus, not a good idea, he's gonna stink.
There's some decomposition that has happened.
We don't have modern things to fill his body,
so it doesn't do this so fast.
So this is not going to work really well.
The problem is, in terms of a stinky body in Lazarus,
a day old dead, or just minutes old,
they're all dead.
So it doesn't matter if you find yourself here
and say, Keith, I cannot, you know,
you don't understand how deep the issues are
that I'm dealing with.
There's a lot of stuff, I'm dead and I'm stinky.
Or some of you are here and you're saying,
you know what, I don't know if I have
a whole lot of outward displays.
I'm doing pretty okay,
and you might be like Jerry's daughter.
You might have the life looking still in your life,
and you might have something that you still feel warm,
but you are dead inside,
and we need to all get on the same page.
Because this is a big deal,
because it says, and this is, if we go on,
it says that you are by nature.
Let's go up to the previous verse.
It says, it says, it's your child of wrath,
it's your children of wrath.
We'll get there.
And it says this, you are by nature children of wrath,
like the rest of mankind,
and this is the idea, this is where we get to,
this is the understanding,
and how it is that we are seen by God,
and you're like, what's up?
That is so unfair, really.
That seems like a really big deal
for my little white lie.
That seems like a really big deal,
but you know it goes deeper than that.
And we know that what we're dealing with
is not just the behavioral thing,
but the eschew of our hearts.
And here's what God says, it says over and over,
this is what I'm after, I'm after something deeper,
I'm after the right story.
A few weeks ago, me and my wife went to this movie,
we're actually trying to see another movie,
but the movie, they canceled the movie when we got there,
and we didn't want to draw, this is down in Lewiston,
I don't know why we drove down to Lewiston to see a movie,
there's movies here, but you know,
it's being a good husband, that's what it's called.
And so we drove down there, and so we're like,
okay, we'll just see a movie, and so we saw this movie
called Saving Mr. Banks.
Saving Mr. Banks is a story about Walt Disney
and his desire to make a movie out of the book at that time,
the story of Mary Poppins, and how over and over
he had been trying to get the rights to Mary Poppins,
and the person who had written the book
would repeatedly refuse to give him,
and finally she was out of money,
kind of out of these resources, and she says, okay,
I'll let you take and make Mary Poppins into a movie,
but I have some very specific things that I want to do
to put parameters around the story,
and so the movie is that her talking with Walt Disney
and fighting with Walt Disney,
and she is seen at some point to see,
this woman is just cranky,
this woman just won't be reasonable,
and the problem is that Walt Disney misunderstood the story,
that he didn't get the essence of what was going on,
that he thought that Walt Disney,
or thought that Mary Poppins was about Mary Poppins.
The story was about the kids,
that was about the subtle love affair
between Mary Poppins and Bert, you know,
and all of this stuff.
This is what, this was seemingly to be the story,
but she repeatedly goes back,
and while she has a difficult time articulating,
the story is not about that.
The story is about Mr. Banks.
The story is about how Mr. Banks is saved,
and as it looks back into her life,
there's such rich realities of her saying,
this was the story of my life.
This was the story that is not just a story I made up,
but a story that is out of the fabric
of what I've experienced,
and I will not let you damage this story.
I will not let you take liberties with this story.
I will not let you modify the story
because this is the story,
and in some ways your heavenly father
is in the same way for us.
When we fly off and do things that are outside of his will,
when we live in ways that we weren't intended,
he says, this is a big deal.
The story that I've written for your life
is incredibly beautiful,
and I will not let you rewrite it.
I will not let you modify it.
I will not let you take this story
and make it into something else.
There's a story that needs to be told,
there's a story and there's a way,
and so for us to do this,
I need you to understand that you are dead
and that you are an object of wrath,
that this is not the intent of the story,
and I'm not going to let this story.
There is something beautiful to be revealed here.
I'm not going to let this story be damaged,
and praise God that he didn't just say, do your best.
Praise God that it's not just the guy that says,
hey, just put another ladder up the mountain
and we'll just climb it,
and whatever that looks like and whatever religion,
we'll just call it good,
but he says there's a specific way,
there's a specific story,
and it's the only way that this works,
and it's the story of the gospel,
and here's what it looks like.
We were dead in our transgressions.
Verse four.
But God, being rich in mercy,
because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions,
made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him,
and seated us with him in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming,
there we go, so in the coming ages,
he might show the immeasurable riches
of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
This is this amazing moment.
See, when we talk about this problem,
we talk about what's going on,
we also have to talk about the solution.
We also have to talk about what is going on.
This is not just bad news,
but the proportion of the good news
is relevant to the bad news.
That is the same, that there's something greater in this.
When we begin to understand what is going on,
here is when we begin to see that,
but God made us alive together by Christ,
and what happens, how did he do that?
So we have life now, we aren't living in death.
This is the work of Jesus in the world around us,
and he raised us up with him.
So we were enslaved, we were enslaved in this.
There's some stuff that we can't get out of,
and for some of you, you understand this very easily.
There's some stuff that you've been working on,
there's some stuff that you said, I can't stop doing this.
This seems to be me, and I don't want it to be me.
That there's some stuff, we're dead,
and we're enslaved to this,
that we want desperately to be out of it,
but there's something that we're captured by.
This is this, God raised us up with him.
With him, you don't have to be who you used to be.
Once you understand the solution,
once you understand the issue,
that there was some junk that was happening in there,
and you keep getting drawn to that,
and you keep having these desires,
and you keep giving in to these desires,
and you don't want to be that,
and you can't keep having these issues,
and these just become these issues,
but that doesn't have to be who you are.
God's made you alive, death, life.
Do you feel?
Do you understand what being alive is all about?
Being raised up, being able to be freed from that.
So not being able to say, hey,
the group will define who I am.
The group will define what I think about things.
Being able to be protected against spiritual attacks.
Being able to overcome the desires of your heart,
and seeing your desires change.
This is what being raised up looks like.
This is what life, new life,
he says you've made a new creation.
The old has gone, the new has come,
and so you start having new desires.
One of the things I love is hearing about people.
This is the way I used to walk.
I used to be like this, but now I'm like this.
I used to be like this,
but it wasn't that I just white knuckled this thing,
I just incorporated some new disciplines,
and I got inspired in this,
but I actually began to have a new desire in my heart,
and that desire was something different,
and I began to follow that desire,
and this is why Jesus says my yoke is easy,
my burden is light, because he gives you a new heart,
not because he gives you a new commandment.
But some of you have never experienced
the new heart side of this thing,
and so you walk and you try to marginalize guilt
and try to walk in this way
that you try to be a good person,
but Paul gets to that.
Paul gets to this understanding of this idea
that all the time, if we don't understand death
and life, what we do is we walk in a thing called works,
and it says this in verse eight.
It says, for by grace you have been saved, through faith,
and this is not by your own doing,
it is the gift of God, not a result of works
so that no one may boast.
This is two sides of this thing.
Either it's about you or it's about God.
The vast amount of people, if they believe in a God
and they have a spiritual life
and they begin to think about what this actually looks like
and they begin to have a near-death experience
or they begin to think about death,
they get close to death,
what begins to happen is they begin
to completely misunderstand what the gospel is,
and they begin to move into this thing
called a workspace gospel, and that basically is this,
I can be good enough to deserve heaven.
I can be good enough to deserve a better place,
and we have people that die and they're always
in a better place, why?
Oh, you know, why would God send them to,
he was a good person, why would God send them to hell?
It's completely missing the point.
You see, when we begin to align this
and we begin to have our logic of spirituality
defined by our culture,
what we begin to have is this idea
that somehow inherently if we are generally good people
and stay out of prison for most of our life
and generally do good things
and have the average of 2% that we give
to some sort of a fund or a charity,
that generally God says, hey, you know,
I know that bar was really high and you did your best,
so come on in here, you're a good old guy,
you did pretty well, and we can't fathom that.
And so somehow we think that we're good enough
and many of you have worked towards your spirituality
with this idea of being inspired enough
or being moral enough so that you could be pleasing to God
so that somehow you could answer the question,
where am I gonna go when I die?
How am I gonna have satisfaction while I live?
How do I get rid of guilt and shame?
And that is somehow based upon stuff that you do.
That is not the gospel.
That is the false gospel.
And that is one of the most damaging ways
that you could ever think about your heavenly father,
your creator, because it leads you down paths
that ultimately are dead ends.
But it's pervasive and it hints up.
And for some of you, you've had taste of grace
and you've walked back into works.
You were either an object of wrath
and you're trying to get there on your own by your works
or you're an object of grace by not your work
but the work of Jesus Christ.
And I want you to understand that
and I want you to get a clear picture of this
because once you begin to see what does that take,
let's just do the logic.
Okay, so if you're good, how good do you have to be?
If you're bad, how bad do you have to be?
Where's the line?
Who makes those decisions?
Do you know what that is?
Or are you just kind of generally putting yourself
in terms of everyone else and saying,
generally, am I a good person or a bad person?
But no one is making that distinction
on what exactly good enough is.
Are you good enough?
You can't answer that question.
Why?
Because there's no standard of good enough.
And so are you really basing your joy right now
and your final destination for eternity
on something that's a marginal idea connected to logic?
This is very clear.
What I want to tell you today is this,
for by grace you have been saved.
You've been made alive only by grace,
not of your own doing.
It is the gift of God and no one can boast about that
because it is a God thing and you say the only way to life,
the only way to be free,
the only way to live in a way that doesn't reflect the death
that is my nature is to allow God to do something in me,
not for me to be enough.
Dead or alive, those are your options.
Not better than most, not pretty well off,
dead and alive, not because of you.
I was thinking about this and I was thinking of masterpieces
and I was thinking about, listen to a guy talk about this
and I was captured by this idea and this illustration
of God's power and power.
This is an illustration of Michelangelo
and Michelangelo did a great work
and this great work was called David.
Maybe you've heard of David, it's a sculpture.
Even though you may not be into sculptures,
you may have heard of David
and David was a project that was started in 1463
and in 1463 this David piece was started by another guy.
They had this piece of marble that was carved out
and they started it and it was one of the biggest pieces
of marble that they would ever use for a statue
and so one guys began to carve it up,
began to do the feet and legs and stuff like that
and then they just stopped it
and for almost 40 years they stopped the process
and this giant piece of marble set out
and part of the reason was because it had some imperfections
in it, it was flawed, it was too thin and it was too porous
and so this just sat there and then finally in 1500
they said, hey, we have this big piece of marble,
we need to carve it out and just make it as best we can
so what we're going to do is we're going to put it up on the top
kind of far away where people can't really see it
and so they asked for people to do it
and Michelangelo said, pick me, pick me
and so that's exactly how he did it in the history books
and so 26 year old Michelangelo takes him
for two years, spends time making David
and as he begins to carve this out
it begins to be apparent that it is something special
and so he carves it and carves it and carves it and carves it
and so then he's done with it and he presents it
and everybody says, oh wow, this is fantastic
and we can't put this up on the roof
in part because it's six tons, you know
and so this is a massive statue
and they begin to say this is a masterpiece
so we have to put this in a place and so they display it
and then finally they begin to move it inside
and today if you go into Florence there is a whole building
that is just given to David
and I say it's not just given to David, there's other statues
but no one knows those other statues, right?
When you go to David and so here's a picture
there's a picture before that or another picture, let's say that
and this is David and so this is this thing
you walk down this hall, there's these statues
some of them are unfinished and then you arrive at David
keep your eyes up, so this is this thing
where you walk into this and it's just about David
so you walk through, you see David, you go out of the exits
you go to the gift shop and buy pictures of David, right?
This is just what you do, this is just how this is happening
and so this is this masterpiece and this has become this thing
and so just think through this, what if...
I know this is silly
what if David talked?
what if this statue began to talk to us, you know?
and what if this statue, you know, this David
what if he says, look at me
this is awkward, okay, let's just go with it
bask in my glory, you're like, I am 17 foot tall
look at my muscles, they're rock hard, you know?
so look at...
I am David, you know?
what would we say to David?
we'd say, hey bro, you really didn't do that much, man
this is a little arrogant of you to be proclaiming yourself
to be such a big deal, like you didn't say, hey, you know
I'm gonna get a chisel, I'm gonna knock some of this stuff off, you know
hey, could you give me that, you know, that intense
like smoldering look, you know
I can't really do that, I just look like I'm squinting
so you can't really get that, but hey, this is what I want
you know, you didn't do anything, you know
you were not an active participant in this
you were a passive participant in this whole thing
there was a master who saw a flawed piece of work
and took and chiseled
and made you into a masterpiece
not because of anything that you've done
we have to understand
this is what this looks like
for us
when we begin to understand this is not of what we have done
this is not who we are
the last verse, verse 10 says this
for we are his worksmanship
created in Christ Jesus for good works
which God prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them
this is this beautiful identity
he closes this whole thing out
this is the end of the story
this is what happens
this is the new you
this is how you walk from this
there was a problem
there was all the things that created the situation
that created the problem
there's the solution
and there's the newness of walking past this
and here's where we get that you
or God's workmanship
not something that you did on your own
you were created in Christ Jesus to do good works
not works that earned your approval
but in response to God to be able to say
I meant to make a difference in this world
and here's the thing
God prepared in advance for you to do this
God has a plan for your life
but the question remains
it doesn't happen when you're just hopefully good enough
it doesn't happen when you're trying hard
it doesn't happen when you're just trying to be inspired
it doesn't happen when you're trying to be motivated
when you're trying to figure out
how to get a little bit more encouragement
until you realize you were dead
but God made you alive in Christ
and I want us to take that
and ask ourselves that question
in this moment
to be able to say
have I tried on my own
or have I said I'm dead
and God you make me alive in Christ
and that's the question I want to ask us
just as we conclude this
just as we understand what's happening here
the story of God
is that the story of your life
the story that he has written throughout
all of humanity
is that the story that is being told of your life
is that the story that can be told in your life
is that the story that you have aligned your life towards
have you aligned your life towards
I'm trying to be good enough
or have you aligned yourself
and saying
I need to be made alive
because I want you to understand
the story that God has for you
the story of new life
the story not of just a try harder
the story of change deeply
the story of something that happens
that you cannot explain
and I want to invite you into this
we talk about being saved
this is the story of being saved
and I want some of you to be saved
I want some of you to say
I'm all in
when we begin to talk about this series
and we think about how this
we're kind of coming to the close
of this aspect of Ephesians
to say
I'm dead
I've tried I'm dead
that stuff inside of me
that's gross
you're right
I want to be made alive
I'm tired of doing this on my own
are you alive
are you dead
your two options
are you in Christ
being made alive
I want to invite you into this story
you have three options to respond to this
for those of you here who say
I need to respond to this
on your connection card
you can check that box
say I want to know more about Jesus
or in that box you can say
I want to be made alive in Christ
today is what we're going to sing
in just a minute
there's going to be people in the back
and they're going to have a name tag
says I can help you
and if you can pray right now
and ask
this incredible story
ask Jesus to begin to write this story
in your heart
to say I'm all in
this is what this looks like
and I don't want us
to simply just fly by this moment
because the scripture demands us to say
where am I
am I alive
or am I dead
so let me pray over you
as the band comes up
and then I'm going to invite you to stand up
God
help us
I pray against the spirit of good enough
in this place
I pray that right now there's some people
that are in their minds
just trying to convince themselves
now it's not really me
or I pray that right now
you would begin to speak to their heart
Lord I pray that people would just give you a chance
Lord they just pray
make yourself real
Lord over this place
Lord I pray that people would just begin
to ask the question are you real
make yourself known to me
help me to know am I alive
or do I need to take action this morning
so I pray for courage
I pray for people who understand the story
that's being written
and how today it might be the time
and the moment that they intersect
that story with their life God
so I pray for courage
I pray for clarity
Lord allow us to see what you're doing
in your holy name
Amen
