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Well, Ephesians, chapter two. If you're new to Cornerstone, we go straight through the Bible. We're here in the book of Ephesians. I'm going to be looking at the first ten verses of chapter two. Paul writes this. And you, he that is the Lord 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 in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts 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 trespass, 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. Now, notice with me here. In these first 10 verses, Paul uses the word dead to describe us. Twice in verse one and again in verse five. And then twice he also uses the phrase made us alive to describe what Jesus does for us, also in verse one and verse five. And so Paul starts this second chapter of Ephesians, drawing a distinction between a spiritually dead life and one that has been made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, I know this might sound like a contradiction of terms, but Paul is saying here that we are all born alive. Dead. That's what he's saying. We are all born alive. Dead. That is to say, we are all born physically alive, but spiritually dead because of trespasses and sins. We are all sinful by nature, and thus it is our nature to continue to sin. See, David understood this in Psalm 51, verse 5, when he says, surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. He understood the reality that God defines the nature of man as being fallen sinful. We're born into sin because we've inherited his sin nature from our great, great grandfather Adam, who rebelled against God, and thus we've inherited that through the DNA. All of us are sinful. By nature. And thus we by nature sin. And so we're all born dead and we all need to be made alive. That's Paul's point here in Ephesians 2. And when you trust Christ as your Savior, he breathes the breath of life into a dead soul so that we can become spiritually alive. Think of it like this. I heard this illustration once about how a glove is made in the image of a human hand. And by itself that glove has no life, it has no purpose. It just exists until a human hand, until life goes within that glove. And then the glove takes on purpose and meaning and the reality is true about us. See, we are all made in the image and likeness of God, our Creator. But we have no real purpose. We just exist until the life giving person and power of the Holy Spirit comes within us. When we have a relationship with Jesus, we trust Christ by faith. Then the very power and presence of the Lord breathes life into our otherwise dead soul and gives us purpose and forgives us. And now we don't just exist, now we actually live. He's made us alive. But you see, the physical side of us is all we do see. The physical part of us that is within, the physical part of us is unseen. And as a result we don't really pay much attention to the spiritual side. All our attention is generally focused on the external person, the physical side. And so we are careful to take care of our physical selves. We feed it, we clean it, we exercise it, we take care of it, we nip it, we tuck it, we do a lot of stuff to maintain that physical side. Because that's the part that we see, that's the part that's tangible. We can feel it, we can touch it. You can't see the spiritual side. And yet the spiritual side is more important than the physical side because the spiritual side will outlive the physical part of us. The physical part of us is just decaying. Like right now you are decaying as we speak, right? That's why you took a shower this morning. Hopefully that's why I used a little deodorant. Because you're decaying. We are all on this physical path of decay. We're going to return to dust, but our spirit lives forever. That's the real essence of who we are. So the question becomes, to whom do you belong? Because if you're not made alive by the Spirit of God, then you will be eternally separated from God when your physical body returns to dust. See, hell is something that people don't want to talk about. But the reality is you can't appreciate heaven unless you understand what God saved us from. And God sent his only son to rescue us because he doesn't want any to perish. He wants none to perish, but all to come to repentance. God doesn't want any to suffer the consequences of rebellion against him and thereby going to hell. Do you know the Bible says, Matthew points out that hell was created originally for the devil and his angels. When the devil led a coup, a rebellion against God and he was expelled from heaven, the Bible says he took a third of the stars with him, a third of the angelic beings rebelled with Satan, and thus hell is prepared for them. That's going to be their ultimate judgment. God doesn't want any of us to go there. But if we align ourselves with the enemy in rebellion against God, that will be our future consequence. And yet what Paul is writing here is he's saying, listen, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. God made you alive through Jesus Christ. What Christ accomplished on the cross was for our benefit, to rescue us, to give us life through faith in him, so that we wouldn't perish. We would be able to go to heaven when we die. And so the real essence of a person is spiritual, not physical. And that's why we must give it the attention that it deserves, because our spirit will outlive our body. And Paul is going to tell us here in these first 10 verses of Ephesians 2, that there are three things that have always worked against us to keep us dead. And there are three things that work for us to make us alive. So if you're taking notes, we'll start with the three things that work against us to keep us dead. And these three things he mentions the world, the devil, and the flesh. Look again in your Bibles at verses two and three. Paul writes, in which you once walked. Okay, he's talking about before we came to know Christ according to the course of this world. There's the first word. According to the prince of the power of the air. That's the devil, the Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, verse three, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh. There's the third term, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature notice, by nature, children of wrath, just as the others. What does he mean by the others? Well, he means the others who aren't believers, just like we once were. Not believers. He's writing to the church at Ephesus, he says, you all have trusted Christ as your savior. He goes, this is what you once were. You walked by the ways of the world. You were influenced by the devil and you were persuaded by your own flesh. That's why you lived a dead life. And he says, don't fall back into the dead life. Don't give in to the world, to the devil or to your own flesh. These are the three things, everybody that works in concert against us to try to keep us dead. But if you know Christ as your savior, you've been made alive. So don't fall back into the dead ways of the world. The devil and the flesh. Now look, let me break these three down. The world. What is the issue here that he speaks of? Well, what he's trying to remind us of is the fact that the world has one objective and that is to squeeze you into its mold. The world system, the world culture, is basically saying to everybody, just believe as we believe. Accept our culture, accept our philosophies, accept our standards, accept our values as the world defines them, and just be squeezed and molded into, into the image of the world. And then the world rather patronizingly looks at Christians and says, and you don't know best we do. So just shut up, sit down and be conformed like the world, okay? That's the message of the world. Look, we see this all throughout history. We see it in our Bibles. You remember when the Babylonians came and besieged Judah and they took captive thousands of Jews, deported them to Babylonia. And among the thousands that they took captive were Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael. Four young Jewish men, really probably still boys in many respects, because some scholars believe they were 16, 17 years of age, took these guys, deported them to Babylonia. And what was the objective of the Babylonians? We're going to indoctrinate you and we're going to change your environment. So they removed them from Judah to Babylonia. We're going to change your identity, we're going to give you new names, we're going to re educate you in the ways of the Babylonians and we're going to introduce you to a new religion. It's a pagan religion. And their attempt was we're going to indoctrinate you in this way so that you will forget who you were and where you came from. See, that's the objective of the world too, to try to change your understanding, particularly as Christians, of who you are in Christ. But if the world you see, if the World can capture you at the identity level. All right. See, nothing's new under the sun. Everybody, if they can change your identity, then they can mold you into their image so they'll get you confused about your identity. And that's why when Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael get over to Babylon, their names get changed to pagan names. Their Jewish given names in Hebrew mean strong things. Daniel means God is my judge. Hananiah means the Lord is gracious. Mishael means who is what God is, and Azariah means the Lord helps. But then they get over to Babylon and they're given Babylonian names. Daniel to Belteshazzar, meaning may Bel protect my life. Bel was one of the Babylonian gods. Shadrach Hananiah was changed to Shadrach means illuminated by the sun God, Ra. Mishael was changed to Meshach, who was what? AKU is another God. And Azariah was changed to Abednego, which means a servant of Nebo. So they were given these Babylonian cultural names to try to shape their identity and then mold them into the image of the culture. Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold. Those four young men stood true to who the Lord was in their lives. They. They did not bow down. They did not give in. They did not cave to the culture. They understood who they were in the Lord. And that's how they stood, and that's how they remained. Be like a Daniel in this day. Everybody. Be like a Daniel in this day. We don't even have to look to the Bible. We can see the indoctrination tactics used by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Hitler's youth movement shaped millions of children who were indoctrinated with rewritten history and distorted biology about, quote, a superior race. And thousands of teachers joined the Nazi Teachers association and believed the propaganda and spread the propaganda. And that's why Hitler wrote in mein Kampf, page 376. Listen to what Hitler wrote. Quote, through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell and also the other way around, end quote. And so that's what the culture still wants to do. Squeeze you into its mold to make you believe that paradise is hell and hell is paradise. To make things that used to be called wrong, now people celebrate as right and vice versa. That's the molding of the world. Paul said in Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. See, it starts here. What do we know to be true and Right. And how do we live our lives accordingly? Not only is the world working to pull us back into a dead life, so is the devil. Of course he is. In verse two, he's referred to as the prince of the power of the air. This, this is the devil. This is Satan, Lucifer, the fallen angel. He goes by a variety of names and titles in the Bible. Jesus calls him a liar and the father of lies. Jesus said he was a murderer from the beginning. John 8:44. And Paul says here in this passage that he's the prince of the power of the air, because that's where he operates. In the air, in the unseen realm. And the. And the four main tools that Satan pulls out of his toolbox every time to try to pull you back into a dead life. Temptation, condemnation, deception and accusation. Those are the four common tools that Satan pulls out of his toolbox. He'll tempt you to try to fall into sin. He'll condemn you. He'll whisper lies into your ears. Deception. And then finally he will accuse you. He's the accuser of the brethren. He will do everything he can to try to pull you back into a dead life. But remember that for the believer, Christ defeated Satan on the cross. In Colossians 2:15, the Bible says, having disarmed the principalities and powers, Jesus made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. Now look, that isn't to say that Satan has no power. He still has plenty of power and he is actively working in the world to sow evil. But the verse I just read from Colossians 2:15 means that Christians are no longer held under the dominion of the enemy because he's been rendered powerless for the believer by the cross of Jesus Christ. And so the only. Listen to me on this. The only power and authority that Satan has in the life of the believer is what we give him. It's what we give him. And he'll do all he can to use whatever we give him to bring us back into a dead life. Don't you submit to him. James 4. 7 says, Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee. Then of course, number three on the list is the flesh. Our own flesh, our own sinful instincts. Now listen, please don't anybody think that all human desires are sinful. They certainly are not. God gave us many of our human desires. But do you know that sin usually is taking the good desires that God has given us that should be exercised and enjoyed in a godly way. And instead we take good desires and we exercise them in wrong ways. And so we have to be mindful of the fact that our own flesh is wanting to dominate our spirit and we have to die to self daily. Paul lists a bunch of the Acts of the flesh in Galatians, chapter five, just so we can be reminded in case we don't know enough about ourselves. But listen to the list he says. He talks about sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties. And then he adds, and other sins like that. Because he's trying to say, not an exhaustive list. Don't think you're off the hook. If I didn't read your sin issue, I probably did. I saw myself in here a lot of times. The idea is, look, our flesh wants to dominate. It wants to pull us back into a dead life. Don't submit to the desires of the flesh. Paul would tell us in Romans 8, 12 and 13. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the spirit, you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. So those are the three things constantly working against us, trying to keep us dead. Don't fall back into a dead life. Then real quickly, three things he mentions that work for us. Because Jesus is working for us to make us alive. And he talks about mercy, love and grace between verses four and seven. Look again in your Bibles, verse four. But God, who is rich in mercy, circle that word. Because of his great love, circle that word with which he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses, 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. Circle that in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, God is working his mercy, love and grace to make us alive and to keep us alive. And we need to lean into those things. Not to the world, to the devil or to our flesh. We need to lean into God's mercy. God is merciful. We need to lean into God's love and to God's grace. Now, the word mercy here, by the way, Paul says God is rich in it, okay? He doesn't have just a little bit. He's rich in mercy. Mercy has to do with God's loving kindness and compassion that he doesn't treat us as our sins deserve. See, justice is getting what we deserve and mercy is not getting what we deserve. You know how like in the, in the court systems, if somebody is found guilty, they might sometimes, you've heard this phrase, throw themselves on the mercy of the court. What does that mean? It means that they acknowledge their guilt, but they are appealing to a merciful judge to be lenient. And see as, as Christians, when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we acknowledge our guilt before God and then we appeal to his mercy and that we can thank him that he is a merciful judge who does not treat us according to us. Our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquity. Psalm 103:10. That God is a merciful judge. Psalm 103:8 says, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. Abounding in it. Number two. Paul reminds us about the love of God. In verse 4, he says, because of his great love with which he loved us. And again, it's descriptive here. It's great. His great love. The Greeks have four different words for love in their language, and the New Testament was written originally in Greek. And the Greek word used here is agape. It's the highest form of love. It's an unconditional, immeasurable love of God. And Paul says that God's love is great. Jeremiah 31:3. Jeremiah quotes God when the Lord says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have led you with cords of kindness. That's the love of God. And the Bible says that God demonstrated His love. He proved it. He didn't just say it. Romans 5:8. God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He showed it. He demonstrated his love for us. It's John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son Jesus. See, this is a loving father that we have. But the enemy again using lies, deception, accusations, condemnation. Many of you think God doesn't love you because you believe the lies of the enemy, that you're not worthy of his love. Can I just say something? Get over that unworthy part. We're all unworthy. And he loved us despite our unworthiness. Right? Like he loved us despite our unworthiness. God does love you. Augustine once said, quote, God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. He doesn't love our sin, but he loves us despite our sin. And he's made us alive through faith in Christ. The last word here is grace. That in the ages, as a verse seven, in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches. Again, very descriptive. Exceeding riches of his grace. By the way, how does his grace differ from his mercy? Well, mercy is not getting what you deserve because God is a merciful judge. But grace goes further. You see, mercy withholds punishment that we deserve. Grace gives us blessings that we don't deserve. He goes even further with his exceeding riches of his grace, he chooses. God chooses to bless us rather than to curse us. And his grace is expressed to us in various forgiveness of sins, adopted into his family. Abundant life now, eternal life then. By the way, abundant life doesn't mean we don't have problems still because we live in a fallen world. But now we know the One who walks us through our problems, so we have a measure of joy we didn't have before we knew Jesus in the midst of whatever pain or suffering we're going through. In other words, the exceeding riches of his grace, God continues to shower us with his goodness, his blessings and ways we certainly don't deserve. But it's his love. It's the heart of a father in his love for his children. And he has made us alive through faith in his son, Jesus Christ. Don't fall back into that dead life church. Stay alive. Lean into his mercy, his love and his grace. And if you don't know Jesus as your Savior, surrender your life to him today. Would you bow your heads with me as we pray? Father in heaven, we thank you for this time in your Word. And we recognize the things working against us to try to make us dead, to try to return us to a dead life, the world, the devil, our flesh. But we thank you, God, that you have lavished upon us your mercy, your love and your grace. And you've made us alive through faith in Jesus Christ. And I pray right now, Lord, for any who are here or watching online who don't know you as Lord and Savior, that they would surrender their life to you today and trust Jesus for the forgiveness of sins that what you did on that cross was sufficient. So I'm going to pause in my prayer with your head still bowed. And I just want to invite you, if you don't know Christ as your Savior, I invite you just to pray and ask him right now. It just begins with a decision that you'll yield your life and surrender to His Lordship and trust him today. You say, well, Pastor Gary, how do I do that? It begins with a decision that I can lead you with in a simple prayer. If you would want to pray this prayer, you can whisper it right where you're seated. If you're watching online, you can pray this prayer with me and you can just make it yours as I pray it. You pray it. Just say, lord Jesus, thank you for loving me. Thank you for dying on that cross for the forgiveness of sins. I admit I'm a sinner like everyone else and I ask you to forgive me. Come into my life, Lord Jesus, and save me today. Thank you for your mercy and your grace and your love expressed on that cross. I trust you by faith as my Lord and Savior and I thank you in Jesus name, in Jesus name. Now please hear me on this before we close. If you prayed that prayer, there's going to be a pastor down front to give you a Bible to remember today's decision. And if you prayed it online, we'll mail you the Bible. Just text the church, say, I have decided. The numbers on the screen, 703-844-9969. We'll mail you a Bible wherever you are around the world. God bless you everybody. Have a great day.