This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. I am Pastor Tom
Holliday, and we're continuing our look at the book of Ephesians, Ephesians
chapter two this week, verses one to three today. Ephesians chapter two is in
many ways the Easter story made personal.

If you're a fan of those makeover kind of shows or articles, in one way it's
God's magnificent makeover, what he's done in our lives. This is a chapter that
tells us that the Easter story is our story. As we walk through Ephesians
chapter two this week, we're going to learn a lot of things.

We're going to learn a couple of words that can destroy our lives for eternity,
unless we see what God can do. And we're going to learn two words that change our
lives for eternity when we trust what God alone can do. We're going to learn some
things about why you and I do the wrong things that we do in life.

And we're also going to see some practical ways that you and I can begin to see
ourselves through the eyes of faith. We're going to see this week the place of good
works in the life of a believer. And we're going to see what God is building and
how he is building it, the unity that he wants to build into our lives.

These next five days, we're going to be talking about all those things. Ephesians
chapter two begins with the first verse talking about this personal life
history, your spiritual life history. And it's a true, honest, but not pleasant,
not pretty beginning.

Ephesians 2. 1 says this, "As for you, you were dead "in your transgressions and
sins. " The Bible here says that we are dead without Christ.

And for a lot of us, that's hard to believe. When you go to an executive who's
running a multimillion dollar company, they're on demand all day from work and
they're involved in their kid's life all weekend, and you tell him or you tell
her you're dead, and they're going to look at you like you're nuts. Well, this is
talking about spiritual death.

This is talking about living a life unconnected to God. And there's two words
that are used here to describe this place of spiritual death, of
unconnectedness, in your trespasses and in your sins. Trespasses, that's a word
that, the picture there is a failure to hold to the path you've wandered from
the path.

And sins, the word there is the word that has the idea of missing the mark. Sin
is a failure to hit the mark. Missing the mark, wandering from the path.

Wandering even though we hadn't really intended to and willfully and
rebelliously going in the wrong direction. Whichever, he's saying, we've missed
it. We're living in spiritual death, which one definition of that is not
connected to God.

God made us to be connected to him. We're not connected to him. So whatever good
things, exciting things we might be doing in life, we're missing out on the main
reason that God made us.

And the Bible pictures that as spiritual death. You were dead in your
transgressions and sins. Spiritual death in this world and also separation from
God for all of eternity is what awaits us if we don't see something happen.

Verses two and three of Ephesians two say some more about this spiritual death.
Beginning in verse two, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of
this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at
work and those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time,
gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and
thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. Now, if sin brings spiritual
death, these verses talk about why in the world would we sin? These couple of
verses we've just read explain the three things that we all follow to our
spiritual death.

They talk about the world, the devil, and our sinful nature. Did you pick up on
that as we read through those verses? We all followed after the ways of this
world.

The world there isn't talking about just the geography of the world, but the
worldly way of thinking. The drive to attain impressive material riches, to come
to a place of power over people, this idea that the only thing that's really
real is what I see, that's the course, that's the way of this world. And it's
extremely powerful.

It affects all of us. We tend to follow the ways of this world. If we don't tend
to follow, then why is fashion fashionable?

Why don't people just wear what they like? Why do they have to wear what
everybody else is wearing? Because we are affected by what everybody else is
thinking.

And people are thinking selfishly. And when we follow that, Paul says here, we
follow that to our own spiritual death. We're following the world, we're also
following here, here he says, the devil.

In fact, there are two names used for the devil here. The ruler of the kingdom
of the air, that's a strange name, and a spirit, the spirit who is at work in
those who are disobedient. The idea of the kingdom of the air there is this
world that we live in.

The idea of the spiritual realities that we come against in everyday life. And
Paul is referring here to the fact that Satan, for a brief time, has been given
a brief amount of power in this world. He is able to work evil.

God's allowed him that power. For some reasons we understand, for many that I
don't know that will ever understand, even when we get to heaven, but I trust
God. I know that God's done it for his good purposes.

And for a brief time, Satan has some measure of control and power, and he uses
it to tempt us and to cause us to go in the wrong direction. That's a reason
that we face spiritual death. He's the ruler of the kingdom of the air.

He's the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. What is it that
causes me to go the wrong direction, to want the wrong direction in life? What
causes me to want bad things rather than good things?

Why do the temptations that I have, why can't I just easily say no to them? Why
do I find myself chasing after them? If you've ever asked yourself those
questions, here's the answer.

There is a spirit who is at work in us. And we have this desire to be
disobedient. And one of Satan's major tools in what he's doing in our life is
the lie.

He lies to us. When John 8. 44 talks about Satan being the father of lies, he is
the one who comes and says, if you do this, you're going to be happy.

He doesn't say, oh, and by the way, it's going to ruin all of your relationships
down the road. You'll be happy for five minutes or five months, but down the
road, it's going to ruin everything. He lies.

There's just enough truth in the lie. There's just enough believability in the
lie that we buy it. And because of that, we end up in what Paul calls spiritual
death.

It's the world, it's the devil, but that's not all. It's also our sinful nature.
We gratified, Paul says, the cravings of our sinful nature and we followed its
desires and its thoughts.

We can't just blame the world or Satan. Temptation is found within ourselves and
we say the yes within ourselves. In fact, in that verse I just read again, did
you notice the three ways that our sinful nature speaks to us?

It talks about cravings and desires and thoughts. Something I want, something I
think, something I need. When I go after that craving, that thought, that
desire, all of a sudden I end up with the lie and I end up with spiritual death,
separation from God.

Paul is saying here in the first three verses of Ephesians 2 that this is true
of all of us. This isn't just the spiritual history of a few people. This is
true of everyone.

Everyone faces spiritual death because of what happened in the Garden of Eden at
the beginning of creation. We all face spiritual death, separation from God. And
because of this, Paul uses a phrase at the end of chapter three that is shocking
to many people.

He says, because of this, we were by nature objects of wrath. You know, it
sounds so nice and so comfortable to talk about the universal fatherhood of God,
to declare that all of us, all mankind, we're all brothers and sisters under one
God. That's nice, that's comfortable, but it's simply not true.

It's not true according to what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that apart
from a relationship with God, apart from what Jesus Christ can do in our lives,
we are objects of wrath. Because of the sin in our lives, God's going to pour out
his punishment, his wrath against that sin.

A holy God is not going to allow sin. He's not going to allow evil. And without Jesus,
that would be the end of my spiritual life history.

That would be the totality of who I am. No matter what I did in this world,
whether it was a lot or a little, what determined who I really am for all of
eternity would be this phrase, objects of wrath. But that's not the end of the
story.

Now, wrath is God's response to sin, but Jesus, because of his love for us,
allowed God's wrath to be poured out upon him on the cross. He took it for us.
What Paul is telling us here is that before Jesus Christ, we are spiritually
dead.

He's helping us to picture something true about all of us. We don't just need,
when it comes to life, we don't just need a resuscitation, we need a
resurrection. You can't do CPR on a dead person.

And we are spiritually dead. That is why we need Christ. Now, some spiritually
dead people look better than others and act better than others, but our problem
goes much, much deeper than getting ourselves cleaned up a little bit or acting
a little bit better than the guy next door.

We need a resurrection. That's why what Jesus did at Easter is so important. He
died for us and he lives for us.

Sin results in death. However fun or exciting or tempting it might look, the
truth remains, the wages of sin is death, spiritual death, separation from God.
Sin kills.

It kills our innocence, it kills our ideals, it kills our human will, but that
doesn't have to be the end of the story. God has a new end to the story because
of what Jesus Christ has done for us. We're going to get to that tomorrow.

As we end today, I want to take a moment to talk to God about the realities of
what we face today, to be honest to God about these realities. Would you pray
with me? As you talk to him, would you say, Father, first of all, I want to thank
you in advance for what Jesus has done.

We don't have to live in this spiritual death, but I also want to be honest about
the lies that are told to me still every day and how tempting it is to follow
after the ways of the world or my own selfishness. And to think that somehow I
can find there a life that I can't find in you. I just say to you clearly right
now, I'm reminded by these verses, that is simply not true.

It may seem true, it may feel true for a few minutes or months or moments, but
it's not true. Life is in you, hope is in you. And God, I want to live a life
that's connected to you.

So I thank you that you have changed my spiritual history because of what Jesus
Christ has done. I thank you in Jesus' name, amen.