©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

03/23/03

A View Into The Heart Of God

Ephesians 2:1-7

3/23/03 A View Into The Heart of God

We return to our study of the book of Ephesians this morning,

and with our return

we return, too,

to one of those passages in Scripture

in which the writer says everything that needs to be said in a handful of words.

This is a passage that paints for us

the most glorious panoramic view of life as it really is

in just a few bold strokes.

It is a passage that moves very quickly,

changing points of emotional focus so fast

that is difficult to keep up with what’s happening

unless we keep listening carefully to each step Paul leads us through.

It is a passage that, if we hear it correctly,

and if we have ears to hear,

will profoundly alter our attitudes toward Christ,

toward ourselves,

and toward our God’s involvement in our lives.

It is a passage that equips us as Christians

to be both absolutely honest about our past

and yet at the same time

absolutely filled with hope for our future.

And I think some of you here this morning

understand just exactly what an amazing thing that is.

It is just natural for us to believe

that our future is determined by our past.

In fact, the perpetuation of that lie

is at the heart of Satan’s efforts to keep us forever in a state of fear,

and frustration,

and defeat.

It is our enemy’s great delight

to keep our eyes focused on our past,

on that time before we knew the healing touch our Lord

and then tell us that it is that history

that will determine our future.

And because he can point to real failures,

and to real events and actions in our past lives,

because we retain all the memories of that life we lived without our God,

his attacks seem to be rooted in the truth.

But the real truth is

that the entrance of our God into our lives

changes everything forever.

It does not alter the past, of course,

but it does profoundly and eternally alter our future,

and it dramatically alters the way in which our past impacts that future.

It breaks that cause-and-effect link

between where we’ve been

and where we’re going in Christ.

This will make more sense as we move through these verses together.

And just to help us better wrap our minds around what’s going on here,

let me share with you the 4 progressive steps Paul leads us through in this section of his letter.

1. He begins by telling us who Christ is.

2. Then he reminds us who we once were.

3. Then he tells us who we have now become.

4. And then He tells us why God did what He did for us through Christ.

And, if we are to see the power of this passage,

it is essential that we see these four steps as a whole.

We have already looked in some detail at the first of those steps,

the one in which Paul tells us who Christ is.

Paul actually offers this description of Christ

as his preparation

for his description of God’s work in us.

He tells us that what God has accomplished in and for us is...

EPH 1:19-23 ... in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

We’ve spent enough time with that passage

so that I’m simply going to let it speak for itself this morning

and then move on to the next words Paul offers us,

the words that remind us of who we once were,

the words that are designed to create for us

the greatest contrast we could ever imagine.

Immediately after presenting this majestic picture

of the One who has done all things perfectly,

the One who, both by right and by power,

now possesses supreme authority over the entire created world,

the next thing Paul says is, “And you...”

Have you ever read “Pooh’s Book of Big and Little”?

I remember during Joni’s preschool years

we had several great children’s books

that helped to teach by contrast.

There was “Pooh’s Book of Big and Little”,

and there was another great one by Richard Scary.

Each page would present a set of opposites -

the elephant next to the mouse

or the bus next to the bicycle.

Well, this section of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians

is God’s book of big and little,

or perhaps more accurately

it is God’s book of good and bad.

Immediately after presenting this picture of the ultimate good - Christ Himself,

Paul goes on to show the opposite -

“And you...”

EPH 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

EPH 2:2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

EPH 2:3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

This description of us prior to our union with Christ is truly fascinating.

It doesn’t talk about our worth or our value,

but it does talk about our nature outside of Christ.

It’s so different from our normal human point of view.

We human beings are almost never honest

either about ourselves

or about one another.

We much prefer to believe

that we’re all a sort of blending of good and bad.

We’ve all got some good in us,

we’ve all got some bad,

and if everything goes as it should

the good atones for the bad.

I’ve attended a number of funerals in my life,

and I’ve noticed that it is not at all uncommon

to have the description of the dear departed

bare little if any resemblance to the person everyone had known in life.

For obvious reasons,

we are far more comfortable with a blending of the good and the evil within us,

telling ourselves that we’re really not all that bad.

You know... man is basically good,

and all of that bad stuff is just the result of bad parenting

or social pressure.

But when God talks with us

He always tells us the truth

because only the truth has the power to heal

and the ability to set us free.

And the beginning of that truth

is that outside of Christ we all “...live in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and are by nature children of wrath...”

Now why in the world do we need that knowledge?

Well, we need it first of all because it’s true.

We need it because an honest understanding of human nature separated from God

is the only way we will ever understand

the kind of redemptive work

that needs to be accomplished within us.

It may sound far more comforting

to say to the man with prostate cancer,

“Don’t you worry,

this little problem you’re having is just a typical aging thing

and it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

But it is a message of comfort

that will result in the man’s death.

The problem we face as human beings

is not that we simply haven’t achieved a proper balance

between good and evil in our lives.

The problem we face

is that apart from the redemptive work of our God

we have no hope whatsoever.

And there is another major reason why we need this knowledge about ourselves as well.

We need it

because it is the beginning of our understanding

of the true nature of our God’s love for us

a love that He demonstrates with His actions toward us

in the face of the truth.

It is bound up in our human nature

to look for some reason why God shows us His kindness.

In our minds it just simply must be linked in some way to our performance.

“Nothing comes from nothing,

nothing ever could,

so somewhere in my youth of childhood

I must have done something good.”

And yet here is our God telling us

that at the point where He chose to step into our lives

everything we did,

every action,

every thought,

every goal,

every reasoning process,

every impulse was in every way offensive to Him

because it all came from a heart

that was self-centered

and in rebellion against our Creator.

Do you know what that tells me?

It tells me that our value to God,

and whatever it is about us

that motivated our God

to care enough about us to be willing to die in our place for our sins against Him,

whatever that was,

it had nothing to do with our performance.

It tells me that our value to our God

is rooted in our individual, unique human identities.

God likes you.

He enjoys you.

He highly values having a friendship with you,

values it so much

that He has done everything that needs to be done

in order to make it possible for you to enter into a friendship with Him.

And there is something else I see our God saying to us here, too.

I see Him telling us

that we need never ever be afraid

of His rejection of us because of our performance.

Look at this -

look at how our God responded to us

at that point in our lives

when absolutely everything we did was offensive to Him.

He reached out to us in love and compassion

giving His own life for us.

ROM 5:10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

I mention that this morning

because there are very likely some of you here

who are allowing your own sense of shame

to keep you from reaching out to your God.

You came to Him in faith at some time in the past,

accepting His offer of forgiveness through Christ.

But you’ve allowed yourself to get pulled back into some of those traps

that were so much a part of your life before the King.

And now you look at yourself

and find yourself filled with a sense of shame and failure.

And a lie has taken root within you.

It’s a lie that’s telling you

your failure has caused your God to turn His back on you in disgust.

He gave you a second chance

and you threw it away.

And now you just know He wants nothing to do with you.

Let me tell you the truth.

It is for damaged people that Christ died.

If we could have fixed ourselves

we would not have needed a Savior.

Salvation through Christ is the gift of God,

but it is not a gift He gives once

and watches us to see how we do with it.

It is the gift of Himself that He gives to us again and again each new day.

LAM 3:21 This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope.

LAM 3:22 The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail.

LAM 3:23 They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.

There is something I want to try to communicate here,

and I’m not sure I know how to get it into words.

We’ll start with this:

the salvation that we have received through Christ

is not a gift from God,

it is the gift of God.

It is the gift of God Himself.

We have not been given a place in the orphanage,

we have been given the Father our hearts have always longed for,

the Father who walks with us each day,

who understands that we know nothing about life with Him

and everything about life without Him.

This is not a father who, before he leaves for work,

says to his 12 year old son,

“Today you will build a new bookcase for the livingroom.

I’ll check your work when I get home.”

This is a father who says,

“You and I have a project we’re going to work on together today.

We’re going to build a bookcase together.”

And then he places His hands on ours when we cut,

and he sands with us,

and shows us where and how to drill, and glue, and fasten.

And when we run ahead of him,

or refuse to listen,

and cut the board to short,

he throws it away and places his hand on our shoulder and says,

“Let’s try that again. We’ll do it together this time.”

And if we cut ten boards too short,

or twenty,

or two thousand,

each time he once again takes our failure

and removes it from us forever,

and gives us another brand new board.”

The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning...

You see, it’s not just that we are given a pardon.

What we are given is an eternal love union with God

who each day once again pardons us,

bathing us in a lovingkindness that never ceases,

and compassion that never fails.

I think we sometimes tend to view salvation

as being the gift of God’s forgiveness,

or the gift of the removal of our debt of sin.

We view it as the spiritual equivalent of the complete payment of all of our monetary debt -

all the credit cards paid off,

the car loan paid,

the mortgage on the house paid in full.

But to view it in that way

misses the mark completely.

It is true that, through Christ, we do receive forgiveness of our sins,

but we receive that forgiveness

not as an end in itself,

but rather as a byproduct

of our receiving the One who forgives.

I’ve spent so much time with this in the context of our Ephesians study

because everything Paul says to us here

depends upon our seeing God’s heart attitude toward us

in the face of our failure.

That is why Paul gives such a brutal description of us prior to our union with Christ,

telling us that we were “by nature children of wrath, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind...”

It is only when we see ourselves correctly at that point in our lives

that we can then begin to see our GOD correctly,

the God who, in the face of our utter moral failure,

reaches out to us in absolute love, and compassion, and kindness.

And here’s the crucial point in all of this -

that heart attitude toward us never changes...His compassions never fail.

Whatever it is that’s causing you that sense of shame before Him

is something He already knows about,

something He understands perfectly,

and something He longs for you to share with Him.

So, Paul begins by describing who Christ is.

Then he talks with us about who we were.

And then, the 3^rd thing he does

is to tell us who God formed us into

in response to our faith in Christ.

EPH 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

EPH 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

EPH 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...

Because of His great love with which He loved us...

even when we were dead...

made us alive,

and raised us up with Him,

and seated us with Him...

There is a lot of doctrine packed into those words that we’ll have to leave for another time,

but there is also a powerful visual image being given to us that I don’t want us to miss.

It is the image of our God

reaching down to us

at the point of our greatest helplessness,

our greatest need,

picking us up in His almighty hands,

placing us by His side,

then keeping His eternal arm around us, keeping us close as He proclaims to all the created world,

“Look! This is My child, My beloved, My friend,

the one in whom My heart delights.”

And the picture does not stop there.

Paul takes it one step farther

when he then goes on to tell us why...

Why did God do what He did?

Why did He reach into our lives in love

when we had nothing in our hands to offer Him?

Why does He reach into our lives in love now

when most of what we try to offer Him now

keeps crumbling and falling apart in our hands?

What was His goal?

Why has He done all that He has done for us?

In what I personally consider to be

among the handful of most amazing statements in all of Scripture,

Paul answers that question in Ephesians 2:7.

After telling us of this remarkable redemptive work that our God has done in and for us,

he then tells us that God as done what He has done... so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

In other words,

Paul tells us that God has shown us this remarkable kindness through Christ here and now

so that He would then be able to continue to show us the riches of His kindness for all eternity.

The only way that even remotely begins to make sense

is if we allow ourselves to believe

that our God really, truly does love us,

and that our presence with Him

and our love for Him truly does bring Him joy.

We have a lot more work we need to do in this passage

as we seek to understand the mind of God.

But we can never even begin to correctly understand the mind of God

until we have first looked into the heart of God

and seen to our utter amazement

that we are in His heart.

That’s the why.

Next week we’ll try to make a little more progress with the what.