Can You Help Yourself?
Maybe you’ve heard the catchy phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s catchy. But I’ve got some bad news. It’s a lie. How do you respond to bad news? I typically try to find a way out of it. I try to figure out what I can do to get out of the situation. Paul tells us some bad news in Ephesians 2:1-3: And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Our Problem
We’re guilty people. When he says that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, those words mean that we broke God’s commandments. Whether we actually did something that broke God’s commands, or said something, or even thought something, we are all guilty of not living in ways that God wants us to. We don’t have to look farther than the 10 commandments to see that. One of the 10 commandments says that we must not kill. Jesus explained that even if we have a hateful thought about someone, we’ve broken this commandment. Have you ever killed anyone? Probably not. What about spoken in an angry way at someone? Most likely. What about ever had an angry thought about someone? Definitely. You’re guilty. Another commandment says that we must not commit adultery. Jesus explained that if we’ve even lusted in the privacy of our own minds we’ve committed adultery already. Have you ever committed adultery? Maybe not. What about looked at something and it caused you to lust? Most likely. What about ever had a lustful thought? Definitely. You’re guilty. Maybe even daily guilty for these two. Maybe even hourly. And guys that’s just 2 of the 10.
And since we’re guilty, number two, we deserve punishment. Look in verse three: we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Wrath there is talking about God’s anger at sin. Sin, breaking God’s law, is offensive to God. When we sin, it means that we’ve lived in a way that rejects that God is real and rules everything. Imagine if you had a child and you hit a point where they just ignored you completely. They lived in your house, ate your food, took your money, but they didn’t talk to you, didn’t follow your rules, made a mess of your house, never thanked you for anything, and were evil to their brothers and sisters. You’d punish the fire out of that kid! They deserve some punishment. And that barely scratches the surface of how we’ve treated God. We deserve punishment.
Man is it really that bad? Well, it actually gets worse. Number three, we’re dead. Did you notice that he didn’t say that we struggle with sin. We sometimes sin. He said that we’re dead. Dead people don’t get up and fight sometimes. They’re totally lifeless. Constantly walking in sin, following Satan it says, that’s the prince of the power of the air. These three verses paint a picture of us that can’t get much darker. But it can get more graphic. Look at how Paul describes us in Romans 3: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Phew. Guys, this is our problem. On our own we’re guilty before God, we deserve his punishment, and even though we are physically alive, we are spiritually completely dead. This is our problem. This is bad news.
Our Story
How’d we get into our situation? What’s our background story? There’s actually some good news here. The good news is, we didn’t start out this way. We weren’t created with the problems of Ephesians 2. Back in Genesis, at the beginning of our story, it says that when God created man and woman, he looked at them and said that they were good. Now, he wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t wrong about us, like he was optimistic that we’d be good, and then we proved him wrong. He spoke truth. We were created good, even morally good. That’s really good news. Because God wants us to be how He created us. He doesn’t want us to be broken, guilty, and dead. He wants us to be good and beautiful, because that’s how he made us. And He wants us to know him. We used to want to be in a relationship with God and spend time with Him. It used to bring humans joy, make them happy, to follow God’s commands. But now, you know that you don’t always want to be in a relationship with God. How often are you sitting around the house with an extra hour of free time and you just think, Man I just REALLY want to read my Bible and spend time with God. Or how often do you get cut off on the freeway and think, “I’m going to happily be gracious to this person because is pleases the God of the universe!” We don’t naturally want to follow God’s commands now. We do a million other things rather than spend time with God. But we used to want to. Nothing used to make humans happier. We, all of humanity, messed our goodness up at a real, historical event. Like a plane crash, everything was destroyed. What was this event that wrecked everything?
We call it The Fall. Back in Genesis 3, after God made everything good, the real man Adam and the real woman Eve made a decision to doubt God’s words, to doubt his instruction, and to follow God’s enemy instead. It’s not just that they stumbled upon some fruit they shouldn’t eat, no, they made a conscious decision to rebel against God. They chose not to find God satisfying and to look for satisfaction somewhere else. That decision brought sin into our story, and now all mankind is infected with sin. Adam stood as our representative, and he failed. So we all failed. Romans 5 says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. We now inherit Adam’s guilt, but still yet guys, we’re guilty on our own. We’ve all broken God’s commandments on our own, without any help from Adam. Our story is a story of how we lost the goodness God created us with.
Our Hope
We know our problem and our story, but what’s our hope? Look at the wording of verses 1-3 again: And you WERE dead in your trespasses and sins in which you ONCE walked…among whom we all ONCE LIVED…and WERE by nature children of wrath. Those are all past tense. Paul’s talking about a past situation. So there’s a way to move on from this news in a good way. Now look at verse 10: For we ARE his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. That’s a preset tense reality. We ARE his workmanship. We WERE dead, but now we ARE his workmanship. And then in Ephesians 4:1 he says, I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, URGE YOU TO WALK in a manner worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called. He’s talking about the future. He’s asking them to please God with their future actions.
There’s hope for dead people here! We’re going to look at it a TON next week, but let’s just see our hope in the most famous verse in the Bible. Look at what John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God so loved the world. This world. The world of Ephesians 2. A world filled with dead people, dead people following God’s enemy, dead people who deserved God’s wrath, dead people who were aggressively hating God, that’s the world that God loved. He chose to love us even though we acted this way. And he sent his son, Jesus, to live and die for us, so that we could have hope. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection from the dead is what restores us to the goodness that we were created with. Our hope is Jesus, God’s love for us. And look at what Jesus said in John 6: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Jesus recognized that we were dead when he came for us. He recognized that dead people don’t do anything, they can’t help themselves, BUT he said that His Father can draw those dead people up to life.
Maybe you feel dead spiritually this morning. You’ve never known God, never talked to God. There are people who’ve been coming to church for many years who have never actually been brought to life, because they’ve never found their hope in Jesus. Your great hope to be alive spiritually, to have spiritual life, is to believe in Jesus and give your life to him.
If you’ve already done that, then Ephesians 2:1-3 is in your past. You were dead! Now you’re alive. But here’s the reality, sometimes it still feels like we’re dead. We still struggle with sin; we still want to live life our own way. Paul recognized that throughout his life. In one of his first letters he said that he was the least of the apostles, then in a later letter he said he was the least of all the saints. And then in one of the final letters he wrote, he said he was the chief sinner. The biggest sinner. You see the more and more Paul saw of how good God is, the more of his own sinfulness he saw. Maybe you’re in a place right now where you’re seeing more and more of your own sinfulness, and you’re wondering if you could actually BE a Christian since you are so sinful. You’re wondering if you’re still dead in your trespasses and sins.
I want you to see 1 John 3: Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. This is your hope. Because of Jesus, you are God’s child right now, even though you’re not perfect and still struggling with sin. But when Jesus appears again, you’ll be created new. You’ll be made like we were originally were, without sin. It’s coming. It’s going to happen. So keep fighting sin. Keep trusting in Jesus.