RICH IN MERCY

Ephesians 2:1-9

I want to begin our study of Ephesians chapter two with a message meant to survey the chapter as a whole. From there I will retturn, the Lord willing, to the beginning of the chapter and take us through it a bit more carefully.

It seems to me that the theme upon which this chapter sits is that of mercy.

Ephesians 2:4.

God is RICH IN MERCY

He has so much that we could never use up enough of it to cause a measurable dent in the mercy of God.

·   It is superabundant.

·   It is infinite

·   It is overflowing

·   It is inconceivable and

·   It is inexhaustible

The Bible says God is rich in mercy and HE GIVES THAT MERCY TO US.

What a wonderful gift that is.

Ephesians chapter two takes us

·   From our past life

·   Through our positional life and

·   To our parish life

all because of the rich mercy of God.

Notice with me first

I. OUR PAST LIFE

Vs  1-3; 11-12

Riches are a relative thing.

The reason why we Americans do not feel rich is because we are around so many others who are as rich or even richer than we are.

Take any one of us to

·   Calcutta India, or

·   Mexico City or to

·   The impoverished of South America

And all of us would come home thanking God for all we have.

One of the reasons we often do not grasp how wonderful is the mercy of God is because we don’t see ourselves as that awfully bad.

We compare ourselves with those around us and we look like we are pretty good.

So God begins this chapter on the riches of his mercy by explaining how bad it was to be lost – unsaved, outside of God’s mercy.

Notice how He starts out

“And YOU….”

God points His finger right at each of us and says,

·   “I am talking to you.

·   You are the sinner

·   You are the wicked one I am referring to”

Sometimes we Christians forget, don’t we, what we were like before we were saved?

A. You were dead

Vs 1

There is nothing positive about death.

We Christians like to refer to physical death as the doorway to glory.

And that is true.

But the death itself is not positive.

Death is

·   Frightening

·   Painful, and

·   Ugly

Of course, Ephesians is referring to spiritual death, “dead in trespasses and sins.”

But it is still

·   Just as ugly,

·   Just as painful, and

·   Just as frightening

as physical death

Before you got saved, God says you were DEAD!

Not only that but

B. You were disobedient

Vs  2

How many of you like it when your kids are disobedient?

There is just about nothing more disturbing to be around than children who will not mind.

·   Who run through restaurants, throwing food at the other customers

·   Who run through stores, knocking over the displays, all the while mom is running behind them yelling for them to stop

I have seen parents become so discouraged at their kids’ disobedience they will hardly take them out of the home for fear of who they will hurt and what they might break.

God says we were like that.

·   We lived according to the lusts of the flesh and

·   We fulfilled the desires of the flesh

Nothing good about that at all.

God says before

· You were dead

· You were disobedient and

C. You were in despair

Vs 12

You were without hope and without God

In other words, you were absolutely miserable.

The word mercy has a distinct connection with misery.

·   Only the miserable need mercy and

·   Only the miserable appreciate it

Our past life was not so good.

Let’s go on to my second point

II. OUR POSITIONAL LIFE

Vs 4-10; 13-18

Don’t you love those words, “But GOD”?

Notice how things changed from focusing on us to focusing on God.

At first the finger is pointed at us,

·   Telling everybody about all our dirty sin

·   Revealing to the world our ugly corpse.

But then all eyes change their direction.

·   Instead of looking at the wicked and worldly

·   Instead of seeing the satanic and sinful

Our eyes cast heavenward and we see GOD.

All our hope is in GOD.

Stop looking around at the sin in the world and get your eyes fixed on God.

If you need to have your sins forgiven,

Stop trying to work it out yourself and just look to God.

A. He Is Rich In Mercy

Vs 4

One dictionary[1] defines mercy as, “Compassion on the miserable”

In all of our sin and wretchedness GOD HAS COMPASSION.

I just want to spend another minute or two on the word rich.

God is rich in mercy.

Whenever we people think of riches,

We think of

·   Gold and

·   Silver and

·   Diamonds and

·   Money.

We think of

·   Houses and

·   Cars and

·   Boats and

·   Things

We think of

·   Pleasure cruises and

·   Huge pastures of cattle and horses

And God has all that too.

But the greatest riches God has, is in His store of mercy.

God never runs dry of mercy.

His mercy is always

·   Overflowing

·   Immeasurable

·   Infinite and

·   Inexhaustible

And that means

1. All the miserable can seek His mercy.

No one is left out.

·   From the vilest of reprobates to the most gentile of the uppercrust.

·   From the jungles of Africa to the penthouses of New York

·   From the skid row to Wall Street

God is rich in mercy for His great love wherewith He loved us.

2. The miserable can seek Him at any time.

You never reach a place in this life where God’s mercy is not for you.

·   No sin so bad

·   No time so inconvenient

that we can’t appeal for and receive God’s mercy.

3. We can seek His mercy every time we are miserable.

You can come to Him time and time again and receive mercy.

·   You have sinned against God after you said you never would again.

God will still give you mercy.

·   You feel like you have failed Him so badly your could never face Him again

God still grants you mercy.

The fact is, whenever we are miserable over our sin and failures, THAT IS WHEN HIS MERCY IS MOST READILY GIVEN.

B. He raised us up together with Christ

Vs 6

According to the Bible God already views us as sitting with Christ in heaven.

This is one of the reasons why I do not believe we can loose our salvation.

If we could then God could have us

·   Sitting with Jesus in heaven then

·   Falling back down to earth and destined for hell.

It just doesn’t happen that way.

God knows about all our sins before we got saved and saved us from even those sins we haven’t done yet.

And He says we are already raised up with Christ and sitting with Jesus in heaven.

Then

C. He has brought us nigh

Vs 13

It is better than just being forgiven.

He has brought us close to Himself.

Illustration:

Have you ever had a really bad fight with somebody and then you apologized?

The person says they forgive you.

But you can tell things still aren’t the way they used to be?

It’s not like that with God.

As wretched and miserable as He says we are, when He shows His mercy He forgives us completely and reconciles us to Himself so that we are as close to Him as we can be.

Praise the Lord for the gift of His rich mercy.

Because of that mercy and the position it places us in before God we have what I am going to call

III. OUR PARISH (Church) LIFE

Vs 19-22

Notice that vs 1 says you and vs 19 says ye.

·   You is a singular pronoun

·   Ye is a plural pronoun.

When God speaks of our sin He gets personal about it.

He doesn’t talk about the sins of men in general but your sins and mine in particular.

But when He gets to speaking about our life in the church He is speaking to us as a group.

I am so glad God didn’t leave me alone to try to live my Christian life.

I am thrilled He built the church and made me a part of it.

I see three things He gives us in relationship to church

A. We have a House (of God)

Vs 19

That is our church, and it is our place of worship.

We have to have a specific place where we come to worship God.  God is worthy of our

·   regular,

·   dedicated and

·   faithful

worship.

Never neglect the assembling of ourselves together for that purpose.

B. We have a home (fellowcitizens)

Vs 19

That is our congregation and it is our group with which to fellowship

Church is not only about worshipping God but also about fellowshipping with those who come to do the same.

We serve God, but we serve God by serving people.

C. We have an habitation

Vs 22

This is our community where we place our membership

Church is a place to make some commitments.  Our first ought to be to unite in a significant way with the church.

·   We place our membership there.

·   We give our tithes there

·   We build our families there

·   We grow in our faith there.

Conclusion

God’s mercy is so incredible.

·   Consider what you once were

·   Then look at what God made you and

·   Think about where He has now placed you.

And I don’t think we can be anything but thankful to God for His rich mercy towards us.

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[1] Easton’s Bible Dictionary