Bibles, please take them now and turn to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. We're going to be looking at verses 1 through 3 this morning. As I was in the back and had a chance to see Pastor Ross and his bride and family, I thought what a blessing it is to be in a church that recognizes the benefit of allowing their pastor and family some time to refresh and relax and refocus. We certainly missed you and glad to see you there. I also wondered why of all the elders teaching you had to show up for mine. But I'll just take that as a good thing and we'll leave that be. So listen, if you are a Christian, if your Savior is Jesus Christ, then this morning's text, it's probably nothing new to you. In fact, you might even be wondering why waste our time on such an easy text, a text that has been preached on countless times, a text that most likely you have memorized. maybe even a good handle on, maybe even feeling like you have mastered this text. You might even be yelling at me in your head right now, Brother Doug, are you kidding me? This is what we're going to preach on this morning? Are you serious? I came here for some real meat, something a little more challenging, something that will help me get through my day, something to supercharge my spiritual walk. My friends, I can't speak for you, but I know myself. And I am ashamed of how many times that I fail to fully and deeply ponder and understand and appreciate and value and treasure God's grace. And I'm even more ashamed of how often I fail to extend that same transforming power of God's amazing grace to others, to my friends, my family, even my brothers and sisters in Christ. So yes, I treasure the grace that God showed me through Jesus Christ, but at times I'm not willing to offer that grace to others. And my guess is if you took a few seconds to ponder your past week, maybe even the past few hours, you would be in the same boat as the rest of us. So yes, you may know what grace is, but at times you are not very good at showing it to others. And maybe for some of you, you may sit here this morning completely void of its transforming power. So do I feel strongly about these verses? Yes, I do. Because there is nothing more challenging and grounding and foundational and healthy to our Christian walk than being grounded in the treasures that texts like this hold for the believer. These are the blocking and tackling verses of Christianity. The leaders of this church felt so strongly about grace that they included it in its name. So if you are struggling in marriage, home, raising kids, issues at work, being kind to others, thinking properly about one another, bitterness, envy, jealousy, contentment, loving others correctly, forgiveness, unwholesome speech, anger, family issues, and just about anything else that I can imagine, Understanding this text, remembering and getting this anchored in your hearts, will change the way you respond and deal and trust in all your earthly endeavors and challenges. And most importantly, if you are outside of Jesus Christ this morning, if you have not trusted in Christ alone, as we just sung, as your Lord and Savior, then these verses could literally change your eternity. Because when you understand and take notice of the power of God, understand the blood-soaked cross, then your life is never the same. When you begin to see the resources available to us in Christ, and they begin to hit you with the impact that they deserve, you will never live the same way again. So with that, let's stand together as I read this morning's text and pray over our time. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. Friends, hear this. 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. Holy Father, thank you for these last few weeks that you and I got to spend together to look at this text. Oh God, thank you for revealing my own sinful flesh and attitudes. Thank you for showing me the depths and the magnitude and the gravity at how far you had to come to redeem a sinner like me. Lord, I don't know all the people in our church this morning. I know there's varying things going on. Father, would you minister by the power of your Holy Spirit to each individual as they sit here this morning, and maybe for some you would open their eyes through their need to repent and trust in Christ this very moment. In his name we pray, amen. You may be seated. Now when we think of the book of Ephesians and we think of the subject of grace, we probably think more about verses four and five that follow the ones that I've chosen to focus this morning's teaching on. And if you would allow me, if you will bear with me this morning, I think if I can get your minds and hearts focused on these first three verses of Ephesians 2, and then as a way of closing, simply read the next two verses so that you can meditate and study those and just focus on them deeper on your own. then you will have a better understanding and hopefully a greater appreciation of the great mercy and grace that God has shown us towards the true condition and dilemma that every human being faces. And for some, a greater appreciation for what they have been rescued from and for others what they need rescued from. In Ephesians 2, verses 1 and 3 in particular, Paul is going to tell us in the simplest of terms the complete train wreck, the disaster that the entire human race finds itself in without a Savior. Paul will explain to us the state of our hearts and the true condition of all mankind that is separated from Jesus Christ, our true condition apart from His grace and mercy as human beings in this fallen world. And I warn you now, it is not a pretty picture. These truths about ourselves from God's Word are so important to us that unless God reveals them, we perish. we perish. And so this morning I stand before you and simply plead for your time. I plead for your ear. I simply ask you to listen carefully to these verses so that we might see the immeasurable greatness of God's power in Jesus Christ, which has curred a condition which we have possessed since childbirth. To see the meaning of and the power of amazing grace. And I just want to add that Paul isn't telling this to depress us. He simply wants us to be realistic about our human nature. All around us today, this world of trouble, people continue to say that the solutions to the problems of this world are found in the human heart. And the Apostle Paul humbly and compassionately pleads to you and me and says, no, no, my friends, that's not true. That's a lie. The reality is all of our problems in this fallen world are found in the human heart. Paul says that the cure you will need is not going to be found within yourselves, but somewhere else, and more exacting in someone else. And that is what Paul wants to point us to this morning as we begin and look at Ephesians 2.1. And you were dead. Here is the Bible's description of the current condition, or in the best case, the past condition of every individual on the face of this planet, including every individual in this room this morning, and you were dead. because there is a sense of jumping back and forth from past to present tense. What is very important for you to understand right from the beginning is that if you're a Christian, if Jesus Christ is your Savior, then this is your past condition. You were dead. But if you're not a Christian, and you don't know Jesus Christ, if you have no Savior entrusting your eternity in anything other than the resurrected Jesus Christ, that this is your current condition. You are dead. Now, I'm not making light of any of these issues, but you need to see that man's real problem is not the ozone layer. It's not the lack of meaningful relationships or a deep friend to share every secret with, or a husband, or a wife, or a girlfriend, or a boyfriend. It has nothing to do if you've not had all the proper upbringing and opportunities, or education, or nice clothes, or a big home, or a balanced diet, or a winning football team, or many other things. Man's very real and most urgent universal problem is that he is dead. There it is. Ephesians 4.18 provides additional clarity to what Paul is trying to communicate to us this morning. There it says, man is alienated from the life of God. The Bible says that without a Savior, man is separated from God. Without a Savior, man has no part in the life of God. So the deadness that Paul refers to is not deadness in the physical, it's deadness in the spiritual. Spiritually speaking, and in the end, I promise you, that's the only thing that's going to matter to you. Spiritually speaking, you and God are enemies of one another. Spiritually speaking, there is a great division between you and God. Spiritually speaking, you are dead to God. Your body is alive, but your inner man is dead. So let us be honest about death. To be dead is to be powerless, no ability to respond to any and all stimulus. It does not matter how sincere the appeal, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you hold the person, how much medicine you give them, no matter what you say or how you say it, or even if you beg and plead and weep, nothing will bring life back to them. There will be no response. To be dead means that it is impossible to react or to respond to anything. And so, my friends, there is the Bible's great analysis of man's real problem. The Bible, through the Apostle Paul, says that you need to search your heart for the answers to life's problems. Your problem is, in a spiritual sense, your heart doesn't even beat. Your real problem is that you were dead, or maybe in the case of someone here this morning, that you are dead. But how difficult is it to try and convince someone that you're having a conversation with and drinking a coffee and eating and breathing and walking and talking? How hard is it to convince them that they are dead? That in a very real sense, that they are completely incapacitated, absolutely and completely powerless. That they have zero ability to do anything or to respond to any stimulus on their own. that in their natural born-into state, that they, along with every other human being, that they are born spiritually dead. That apart from the mercy of God, apart from the grace of God shed upon our hearts by Jesus Christ and received by faith, that everyone, and that includes every single person in this room this morning, was or still is spiritually dead and eternally condemned and separated from God for all eternity. You see, what this dead person cannot see is that the true life, eternal life, not the fake life that you see out there, but true life is communion with God. And apart from a saving relationship with God, there is no real life. So yes, you can be eating and breathing and walking and talking. Yes, you can supposedly be doing what you want to do. You can be choosing what you want to do. And yet, if you as a human being, created in the image of God, are not in a saving relationship with the God who created you for eternal fellowship with Himself, then you are not experiencing life. And in fact, Paul says, without Christ, you are dead. So please hear that again. If you are not in a saving relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, then the Bible says you are dead. The newsflash. That is exactly why Jesus Christ came. Jesus came to give life. He came to give life with God the Father, certainly not because we already had life, but because we have forfeited life in our sin. And so the Apostle Paul is saying, here is the status of all humanity apart from the grace of Christ. It is spiritual alienation, eternal separation from God. And that means without Christ, we are all dead, even if we're walking and breathing and choosing and saying and doing. Next, the Apostle Paul goes on to explain to us where this condition of spiritual death has come from, why it is that people without a Savior Why it is that people without Jesus Christ are spiritually dead. Karen, I cannot get this guy to talk to me. There it is. The Bible says that this death has come from our trespasses and sins. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. So to be clear, we're not dead because of a sin. We are dead because we are born sinful. We are not dead because we are born sinless, and then somewhere along our road, we finally commit a specific sin, and then we spiritually die. The Bible teaches that we are born spiritually dead, and that is why we sin in the first place. That is why we are alienated. That's why we are separated from the life of God. Now look at the word there for trespass. The form of that word means to slip or fall or stumble or to go the wrong direction. There has been a transgression, an offense against the law of God. We have misstepped, we have crossed a boundary that God strictly commanded us to never cross. And then next you have the word sin. The word for sin here is taken from hunting. It means to miss the target, to miss the mark. You shoot your gun or your slingshot, and you miss whatever it was you were aiming for. And the emphasis that Paul wants to make here is not that we just missed the target by a little bit. Not that we were, oh, so close. It's not Mr. Baseball Bob Eucharist, just a bit outside. That's not what he's talking about. It's not that we've just barely missed the target. The word means that we have missed it by a really, really, really long way. And without getting too silly, I just want to give you a visual to help you understand just how far off we have missed the mark that God established. If all of us stood up and we all marched down to Bradford Beach in Milwaukee, and I lined us up from youngest to oldest, and I'm like, hey, brother, get a head start. You can run as far as you want, but I want you to jump over to Michigan. At the end of the exercise, there may be some varying degrees of how far they went, but nobody's going to look at Ariel and go, Ariel, you're like a puma, you almost made it to Muskegon. We're not even close. We're not even close. So the reason that we're all spiritually dead and separated from God is because in our trespasses and sins, we have all misstepped, we have all gone too far, we have all missed the target, and the Bible says that we have all missed it by a really, really, really long way. Maybe some of you are saying, I wasn't even aware that God had a target or a goal. What is it? Romans 3.23 gives us some help. There's plenty of verses in the Bible. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You see, ultimately our trespasses and sins is a failure to bring God the glory that He deserves. Romans 1.21 says that although they knew God, they did not honor God. They did not glorify Him as God. That is what sin is. Sin is coming short, and from our visual, Paul means way, way short of glorifying God. You see, we have no problem wrapping our mind around saying that a thief is a sinner, a murderer is a sinner, a rapist is a sinner, and a liar is a sinner, and adulterer is a sinner. Right? We get that, don't we? But the reality is that sin has much more to do with what you don't do than what you actually do. Sin is about what you fail to do. And in your sin, no matter how small you believe it to be, you fail to come to the glory of God. It said you fail, where Jesus directs us in Matthew 5.48, to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. And we all fail where Peter quotes from Leviticus 11.44. You shall be holy, for I am holy. And the reason I want to highlight this is because a lot of times we meet good people, very nice people, and they make sure they let us know why they believe they are such good and nice people. They tell us all the nice things they have done, like, I do good things in my community. I work for the food banks and shelters. I'm a wonderful father. I'm a wonderful mother. I love my wife. I love my kids. I take care of things. I'm a great provider. I'm very generous. I'm kind and on and on and on they go. Listen, nobody in their right mind would ever deny that all those are wonderful things to do and to be and to act. But in Luke chapter 6 and verse 33, Jesus clarifies the lack of any spiritual benefit or relief from doing any and all those good things. Listen closely to what Jesus said. If you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. Even sinners love those who love them. Jesus is saying, so what? Even sinners do good to each other. Yes, it's true, people do good to each other, but Jesus said that these people who do good to each other are still called what? Sinners. Yeah, we're in a reformed church. We can say that word out loud. It's okay. And they are still called sinners because doing good to others doesn't take care of the real issue, which is your sin between you and God. You can't say, well, God and me are okay because I do such nice things for my neighbor Joe. That isn't the point. The point is what you don't do. The point is you don't live a holy life, and you don't live a perfect life, and you don't reach the standard which is the glory of God. So good works is not the issue. Relational goodness is not the issue. Being a good neighbor, and a good father, and a good mother, and a good son, and a good daughter, and a good friend, and a good provider, and a good this or that, that isn't the issue. The issue is the glory of Almighty God. And in that sense, we have all felt miserably in our trespasses and sins. So Paul is just stating the fact that every one of us has failed to meet the purpose for which God created us. And my friends, this isn't just a bad thing. This is a horrible situation. The Bible says that our trespasses and sins is the source, they are the reason for the spiritual death in which all humanity that lives apart from Jesus Christ finds itself. It is this alienation, this separation between us and God that Paul calls death. We are all born spiritually dead because of our trespasses and sins. Now this, my friends, this is completely foreign to what the world tells us about ourselves as human beings, isn't it? The world tells us that we are basically good and if we just put our mind to it, we can do anything. But I have news for you. As it relates to your salvation, those two suggestions that we are good and we can do anything if we just put our minds to it, those two beliefs, they are lethal to a person's salvation. And the Apostle Paul is here to tell us with regard to our salvation that those are lies from Satan, that there is no help in us, there is no good in us that can make us right with God. And furthermore, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves because spiritually speaking, we have no pulse. Spiritually, our hearts don't even beat. Spiritually, we are dead. Now that's very important for us to hear and understand and believe this morning. The Christian message is not, be confident in yourself. We are not a bunch of Nike, just do it Christians. Contrary to what some TV evangelists proclaim, the Christian message of salvation is not, just try harder, do more, be nice to others, just give it your best shot, send me lots of money, and God's going to be happy with you. The Apostle Paul says, here is the beginning of the real Christian message. You're dead because of your transgressions and your sins. Now you won't find a more opposite message of Christianity than that and what's being pawned off out in society today. The Apostle Paul is saying no matter how kind and smart and intelligent and funny a person is, if they are living a life apart from Jesus Christ, that person is spiritually dead. And Paul is speaking of a universal condition as we continue and add this first part of verse 2. and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world." So according to the first part of verse 2, the Bible declares that we all once walked or we all followed in the course of this world. Every one of us either was or still are right in step with the times, perfectly in tune with the world, comfortable and at home following the course of this world. The world or cosmos here isn't speaking in regards to the physical world. It's not talking about planet Earth. Here it is a reference to the ideological world of sin and evil. It is the system of Satan. It is our human society that desires to live our lives without God. So it's not the earth itself, not the mountains and the lakes and the trees. I don't look at Half Dome in Yosemite or a giant sequoia tree or Niagara Falls, and I don't have a sense of pressure to live my life apart from God. Paul here is talking about the world as in its secular society and system that wants me to live my life separated from God. The world that is determined to work out all of its problems without any reference to God. The world that wants to live and act and do as if there is no God. Because it is the course of this world that lives as if God does not exist. Paul means to tell us that it's the tendency of your life, it was the tendency of my life to look like, and act like, and think like, and do like those without a Savior. Just going along with what those in the world are doing, and saying, and wearing, and acting, and watching, and reading, and thinking, and believing. And most importantly, we were like everyone else in going along in our rebellion and our hatred towards God. So when you hear people say, man, I don't need this. I just do what I want to do. The reality is they are not doing what they want to do at all. The truth is they are doing what the world dictates them to do. They are walking according to the course of this world, this cosmos. You see, there is a world and a system at work that people without Christ, they're pressured into being a part of and to follow. There is a power at work within us that wants us to imitate and obey the age in which we live. And it produces tremendous pressure on us to follow and to be governed by it. It's always there, especially to our youth and to our children. Sadly, many of them have caved into these pressures because they allow themselves to get too comfortable and too cozy with the world and its course and its beliefs and its approval, and ultimately with its hatred towards God. Young people, listen and take counsel from an older man. This is why it is so critical for you to choose your best friends and your companions wisely and to be cautious of the amount of time that you give them. Because the lies of those who are apart from Christ do not and cannot reflect the power and the life of God. Because the lies of those who are apart from Christ can only reflect the dominion of the world, the flesh and of Satan. Because they share in his nature of sinfulness and hatred and rebellion towards God. That's who the world follows. They are, as it continues in verse 2, they are following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. You see the world's commander-in-chief is Satan. And he is a personal supernatural reality that Paul refers to as the prince of the power of the air. And Satan has easy access to the hearts and minds of those without a Savior, the disobedient sons that follow and serve him. And they follow him because he has blinded their minds to the glory of Jesus Christ. And his desire is to prevent his prisoners from hearing and believing and trusting in the saving gospel. Satan is always promoting and marketing his evil system of ideas and worldviews, and that is what Paul means when he speaks about dead people following the prince of the power of the air. You see, Paul here is exposing the everybody-is-fine, make-believe world that Satan has created, and he is revealing to us what is really out there. And he wants you to know that there is an organization of God-haters headed by a devious ruler of incredible subtlety and power. who is at work behind the world scene to create a spirit or an attitude of disobedience. And my friend Satan holds the patent on disobedience. He has been against God from the very beginning. The devil and his followers have been and still are in constant opposition to God, constantly manipulating the human race by means of the pressures of the world, leading sinners into constant disobedience against God, who is absolute truth and the only one who can rescue them. And yet, because of his great love for us, his saving grace, God desires to capture our attention and to set reality before us. And all the while, the prince of the power of the air is there fighting back, whispering in our ear, don't listen to this. You don't need God. You don't need saved from anything. It's more fun if you follow me. Follow my ways. You see, this is precisely why we need a mighty Savior like Jesus. We need Jesus not just because we were dead in sin, but also because Satan is standing watch over you and he wants you to do everything, he's doing everything that he can do to keep you dead. This is why by nature people without Jesus are committed to disobedience. It is because they are cut off from God and are disobedient to God because they have no power to obey God. Therefore, they buy into whatever the world is selling, including the current God-hating, don't-even-mention-the-name-of-Jesus nonsense that is so rampant in today's culture. Satan hates all that God desires, and he fights against what should be so blatantly obvious. I mean, do we really need a law to tell people not to throw garbage out the window? Or not to take things from people? Or not to kill others? Or to even cross the street when traffic has the green light? The reason we need to point out the obvious is because there is a disobedient spirit at work within us. And Paul says this spirit is now at work in the sons of disobedience. This is the way children of Satan, the sons of disobedience, this is the way they operate and think and live their lives. And so Paul continues and reminds us in our last verse. 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. The Bible says that not only were we all spiritually dead to God in our trespasses and sin, and not only did we all have a disobedient spirit at work in us, but it also says that we all allowed the course of our lives to be directed and controlled by the passions or the lust of our flesh. And the reason that this person without Christ continues to live in and go along with Satan's world system of disobedience is because a saviorless person can only respond to the strong evil passions of their own flesh. That's why his goal and his purpose and his pursuit is to fulfill the desires of the body and mind. You see, the word that Paul uses there for desires carries with it the thought of an unbreakable resolve, a strong determination. Perhaps the equivalent word of our time is the word drive. Without Christ, the Bible says that we are driven to fulfill our sinful desires because they are what control our body and our mind. Whatever your body wants, that's what you do. Whatever your mind wants, that's what you do. You crave those things and you surrender and submit to the power that they have over you. You become the center of your own world and the only thing that matters to you is whatever it is that you want and you desire. You see, that's what Paul is saying. This is the ugly picture of the corrupt human nature controlled and driven by its internal passions as it tries to exist and fulfill itself totally apart from God. The Bible says that without Christ, we are nothing but dead, sinful, worldly, evil, disobedient people driven by personal lust and desires. Lovely. Like it or not, that's our DNA. That's what Paul says. It is by nature. It means that we are all born this way. We are all born into this condition. There is nothing that we can do about it. I don't know how to make that any clearer. By nature, we do things that God hates. By nature, we rejected the knowledge of God. And by nature, we refused the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. That's why better education, better environment, a new home, a new car, a new boyfriend, a new girlfriend, a vacation, material gain, anti-aging serums will never change man's basic problem, because none of those solutions will ever change our nature. Oh, dear friends, do you see the mess that mankind is in? Do you see how blind we were or still are to this problem? the spiritually dead are lost to the course of this world, which is promoted by Satan, who influences his mind to be disobedient and to hate a God who is absolute truth and perfect love." And in the end, what is his reward? What does the person without Christ get for his obedience to Satan, his loyalty to the prince of the power of the air? Freedom? A gift? Maybe an attaboy? A participation trophy? No. No. In the end, he has gained nothing more than the state in which he is born into. He is a child of wrath like the rest of mankind." The Bible declares that a person without Christ, he is the target, he is the goal, he is the focus of God's holy judgment. So rather than all men being children of God as the world likes to think, the Bible says that those who have not received salvation through Jesus Christ are by nature children of wrath. So apart from the reconciliation through Jesus Christ, every person by nature, through their birth, is the object of God's wrath, His eternal judgment and condemnation. But for those of us in Christ, those of us who in repentance and faith have been healed by the cross of Christ, we can confidently say, Yes, it is true, we were once like the rest of mankind. But now, through faith in the Savior Jesus Christ, praise be to God that we are not like that any longer. Because of Christ's work of salvation in us, we are presently and eternally delivered from the curse of the natural human condition of death and sin and separation and disobedience and divine judgment. And we have been set free from Satan's control. Amen. My brother and sister, do you not want to praise God with a heart which is simply overcome by what He has done for us? Look and ponder the depths from which you have come as a Christian, the condition from which we have been released and raised and delivered from. We were dead. We were dead. sons of disobedience, children of wrath, but God has raised us in Christ Jesus, and now we live for Him." And this gift, this gift of eternal rescue, your salvation, it didn't come to you by your confirmation, or your baptism, or your church attendance, or your church membership, or by giving money. It didn't come to you by your communion, or keeping the Ten Commandments, or living by the Sermon on the Mount, or giving to charity. It didn't come to you by being a good neighbor or living a respectable life. None of those things brought relief from the wrath of God. In fact, hell will be full of people who did all of those things. The truth is, you were dead. And dead people don't need resuscitation because to be dead is to be beyond resuscitation. What dead people need is a resurrection. What dead people need is Jesus Christ, the one who in John 11, 25 and 26 says, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? The Bible teaches that Jesus not only died for our sins, but he rose to provide eternal life. So this morning, if you breathe spiritually, it's not because God just resuscitated you. If you have spiritual life, it's because you have been resurrected. No self-congratulation, no religion of human achievement. It's all of God, none of us. It's all grace. It's all grace. But what if you're not in Christ this morning? What if you're not in Christ and you want to experience this kind of love and forgiveness and grace? If this morning you sense you are dead and without hope, that you are captive to this world and its ideas, captive to the prince of the power of the air. If this morning you sense you need a new direction and a new course, And I say this is a great morning for new life, resurrected life. That this is a great morning to fall into the arms of the Savior and just simply ask Him to forgive you of your sins, to heal you, to save you. Ask Him to turn your deadness into life so that your heart will beat and live for Him. And you know what? He will. He absolutely will. He will turn your spiritual deadness and give you life eternal, dead to self and alive in Christ. To my brothers and sisters in Christ, as you sit here this morning, I wonder if you have truly pondered the magnitude of the grace that has been shown to you. Have you really thought deeply about all this stuff? Have you really sat around and meditated on this? Just what it is that Christ has overcome for you, Have you truly taken inventory of the depth of grace that Jesus Christ has shown you versus the lack of grace at times you demonstrate to others? How true grace died on a cross, but rarely are you willing to die to self or to give of your time or resources or even share the gospel. So, brothers and sisters, what do we do with this? How do these truths reshape our thinking and control our tongues and our attitudes and our responses? How do these truths help us to love one another and respect one another and to serve one another? How do these truths motivate us to support and get involved in the ministry and the life of our church? How do these verses reshape relationships and marriages and cope with medical diagnosis and aches and pains? How do we overcome hurt and loneliness and anxiety? How does the unbearable become bearable? How should these truths about marvelous grace change us? Well, I think the answer should be blatantly obvious. But let me read the next two verses, verses four and five, and then I'm gonna summarize my answer for you and bring this morning to a close. I love the fact they even put this on the bulletin this morning, and I didn't even say I was gonna read this. So how do we do all these things and many more by grounding ourselves in these truths of God's amazing grace, shed upon our dark and hardened souls, by meditating and remembering and living these marvelous truths, moment by moment, day by day, year by year. Listen, you were dead. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved. You were dead, but God. You grossly misstepped, but God. You were a sinner, but God. You were like the rest of the world, but God. Your master, your master was Satan, but God. You were a son of disobedience, but God. You pursued the passion and lust of your flesh, but God. You were God's enemy, a child of wrath, just like everybody else, but God. How sweet grace is that sinners don't receive what we deserve. God holding back what we rightly deserve in spite of our trespasses, in spite of our sins, in spite of our worldliness, in spite of us being dominated by Satan, in spite of living in disobedience and being driven by our passions and desires, in spite of the deserved divine wrath heading our way. God steps in and shows sinners mercy and grace. God took his wrath, diverted it away from the sinner, and poured it out on Jesus Christ on the cross, who died and took God's wrath in our place. Then Jesus went into the grave, victoriously rose out of it for us. His death and resurrection was applied to us, making us one and together with him. We need a life, and that's exactly what God supplies through Jesus Christ. God looks at those spiritually dead, and because He loves them, because He wants to show them mercy and grace, He makes them alive with Christ. What kind of life? Spiritual life, eternal life. This is the great miracle of the Gospel, true and real Christianity. This is amazing grace.