Eph 2:1-10                                        “From Life to Death”                                    Calvary 032209
There are times in our lives when change is clear, when we recognize that we cannot do things the same way we’ve been doing.
Move to the states
Work                          Eliana’s birth
And even though our minds immediately think of the difficulty of change, when we look at what these changes bring us, we appreciate it, and rejoice in it.
Move – opportunity
Work – independence and financial support
Eli – a reason to smile and a cause for hope each and every day.

 The letter to the Ephesians was not written to a specific church but as a general letter written to believers in the entire region and was to be read in all the churches.
Its purpose was to help the churches recognize that their expressed faith in Christ was something that makes every aspect of life different and better than what it once was.

The text read for us this morning begins by looking at how our lives were or would be without Christ, then acknowledges who God is and what God does for us in Christ Jesus, and ends with how what God did and continues to do for us affects, and changes our lives today and how it should influence our future.

It says, “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world. All of us once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath.”

Think of your life before you came to know Christ, or if you grew up in the church and always had a close relationship with God, imagine what your life would be like without God, without Jesus Christ?
What would be your priorities?
How would you deal with difficult times?
What would be your measure of happiness and success?

-I would imagine that our priorities would be things like money, possessions.
But would it ever be a satisfying or gratifying priority? there’s always a better paying job, a bigger house, a nicer car and we would spend our life chasing after things that no sooner would we get them, no sooner would they be obsolete and we would run after what’s next.
-Going through difficult times would be a nightmare. Who would we turn to, where would our help come from? Friends? Family? They can’t always be there for us, because they also have their struggles. They won’t always have the ability to help and we would be left alone.
And what about our measure of happiness and success, we would depend and lean on our emotions, and situations to make us happy?
But it’s our human nature that our emotions are not the same, happy, sad, excited depressed and sometimes for no reason, you wake up in the morning and you feel one way or another. And the same with situations, some might make us happy but things always change.

So without God we would rely on things that would be temporary, and would not fully satisfy.
A great image that we get of life apart from God is seen in Ecclesiastes. The author writes, “I, the Teacher, when king over Israel, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business….vanity and a chasing after the wind.”
 “I said to myself, I will make a test of pleasure, enjoy yourself. But again this also was vanity.”

That is the image we get of life without the presence of God without God’s grace.

The conclusion that the writer of Ecclesiastes comes to is that apart from God life has no meaning or purpose. He concludes, “There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him, God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy.”

God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ, raised us up, and seated us with him in Christ Jesus (vs 4)

That is what God does for us, that is what this season of Lent invites us to see, by examining our lives, and recognizing our sinfulness and our brokenness apart from Christ. That is what prompts our anticipation of Christ’s death and resurrection.

In our sinfulness and in our brokenness, God in his rich mercy and out of his great love, Gave us life, not just temporary life but eternal life with Him.
As his children we are raised up and seated with him in Christ.

Jesus said, “In my father’s house there are many rooms, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John14:2)

Now in Christ, we are restored to the reason why God created us in the first place. To be his children, to rejoice and be glad that the creator and maker of this universe and all that is in it, including us, desires a relationship with us, and cares for us. God wants us like Paul sais in Thessalonians to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances and the only way to be able to do that is to look to God and to have faith in Christ. That is God’s will in Christ Jesus for all of us.

It is not a tradition to be practiced once a week while in church, but to be as our text this morning says “our way of life.”

We often assume that speaking of a divine plan for a person's life only makes sense when we are speaking about the great heroes of faith, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Billy Graham, and Pope John Paul II. They are the modern successors to the apostles, since their lives changed the world.
Ephesians makes the transition from heroes of the faith, like Paul, to every Christian. Every Christian has some “good works” that are his or her divine calling. These works are not burdensome commandments but are an appropriate response to the extraordinary salvation already extended to us by God.

God is continuously working on us, bringing us up in maturity, shaping our hearts, and growing our faith. We see that pointed out in Samuel, who "continued to grow in stature and in favor with the LORD and with men." (1 Samuel 2:26) And we hear it in the exhortation of Peter, who concluded, "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 3:18) The writer to the Hebrews, likewise, commands, "Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity…" (Hebrews 6:1)

These are the examples and commands that demand that we grow and develop in our faith. Someone said, "Men and women who do not press on in their Christian experience to gain the fullness of their inheritance in Him will often become cold and formal."

How do we decide what good works are God's plan for us? They cannot be simple variants of the passions that motivate the actions of all human beings. Ignatius of Loyola (d. 1556) composed a process of spiritual discernment for Christians who are seeking to find out what God intends for them. The most important rule is, “The love which moves me and makes me choose something has to descend from above, from the love of God.”
As Christians, we need to order our way of life around God first. The passions and concerns of daily life remain part of Christian experience, but they now belong to something greater.

Our faith in Christ has to make a difference in how we live our lives, it has to be evident not only to ourselves but to everyone who comes in contact with us. Jesus’ first disciples were ordinary people but how they lived their everyday life, made people recognize that they were different.

If we do not live each day seeking God’s will, searching for how God wants us to live our lives, we can easily become cold and formal, and our faith can become a routine that we do without thinking.
Our lives should rotate around God not the other way around.
We need to place God in the center and see how everything in our lives, what we believe, and what we do glorify God and is according to his will.