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­­­­LSB Ephesians 2:1-10

1 And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Ever come across someone who you're trying to share the good news of salvation with and they say. Saved? From what? I'm not lost. What is it exactly that I need saving from?

These days people are going the opposite direction. We have christian deconstruction. De-vangelicalism. People getting saved from being saved. Walking away from christian beliefs and morals and freed from God's revealed morality. Saved into the supposed freedom of no God, no rules.

Rescued from God's moral law into the freedom of depravity. And that's actually kind of an easy sell. If you're dead, stop aggravating yourself by living according to rules and regulations of the living God. You are dead, be dead. Quit the rules, quit the sky God, relax and be dead.

I understand the argument. Like I said, it's an easy sell getting dead people to act like dead people.

I bought a book this week and I was disappointed. I bought it because of a single quote from it that I love. And it was advertised on a christian channel of speakers that I enjoy. It's called Men and Marriage.

And the quote that I love from the book is this; Civilization is built by men with families to feed. Civilization is built by men with families to feed.

I love that quote. Civilization happens when men are tamed into faithful monogamous husbands and dads who need to go to work to provide security and safety for their wives and children. When that occurs thriving follows. Thriving for everyone. Civilization.

I was disappointed because the book recognizes that recipe for thriving but never mentions a God who revealed that moral code that brings the thriving. It's not a moral book so much as a political book. It's championing the politics of consevative values. And that's great as far as it goes.

But his premise is sort of; somehow western civilization happened and faithful marriages happened and families happened and thriving came. We built the most dazzling wealth of thriving in this nation, by far, that the world has ever seen. And it developed out of faithful marriages and stable families and moral decency. And he's weeping that it's gone.

And that's all well and good but we have a book that defines the parameters for thriving. And we can look down through history and understand how the phenomenon of a nation built on God's laws could lead to the most incredible thriving the world has ever known. This book is the reason.

And the abandonment of this book has had - and is having - a wholesale effect on the utter end of thriving. Families are shattered. Children go unparented. Decency is gone. Have you driven highway 95 lately? Courtesy is gone. Manners are gone. Education is failing. Wholesale. And the economy is following suit. We're on an unsustainable trajectory into what? Death.

Listen, when the book simply states that the wages of sin is death*, it isn't talking theory in the next life. It is, but it's also death in the present. Civilization is dying. The thin veneer of decency that defines civilization is vanishing before our eyes. Death is here. Death is now. Death of thriving will utterly sweep us away. *Romans 6:23a

And the progressives are preoccupied with death. They have a fixation on death. Really for everyone, except them, of course. Death for babies. Death for old people. Death for old white waspy males. Death for anyone that wants to die. Death for civilization. Death for democracy. Death, death, death. It's what they do.

And is anyone really surprised? Because the book says; The wages of sin is death. Why would we think the two would not march hand in hand. Of course! Freedom! Absolute personal autonomy! Absolute freedom is what they're selling, but it turns out it's in a shiny package that looks so good, but when you open it up, it's death.

And that's actually what Paul is going to talk about here in Ephesians 2. In chapter 1 he's told us that we are wealthy beyond our understanding both in this world and in the one to come, because we are joined together with Jesus, and it turns out Jesus has been lifted out of death, out of the grave, and sits at the right hand of God.

And we have been adopted into that family. We are in Christ. We are fellow heirs of all He possesses and He possesses everything! That's our position In Christ. We're inside Jesus at the right hand of God the Father.

So in Chapter 2, Paul wants to talk about the before and the after of salvation. On your own, you were this, but God intervened and did this. The comparison should make anyone who reads it want to be a christian. You were dead and on the fast track to an eternity in hell without God, but God intervened and now you're rich beyond your wildest understanding.

You know, men have listened to philosophers for centuries. For all the ages. Wise men who have it all figured out. And Oprah of course. But in about 10 verses, Paul is going to go so far past any philosopher, you could put them all on top of each other and it would be an ant hill next to the Sierra Nevada range.

That's because Paul's words are inspired by God and are revelation from God, to men. While philosophers are just smart men throwing sparks into the darkness.

You want answers to some of life's big questions? Listen to Paul 'splain why things are the way they are. Information beyond man's finding out. Spelled out. Free of charge.

1 And you were dead in your transgressions and sins,

And you were dead. And the guy who says What do I need to get saved from? I'm not lost. I'm not dead. In fact you, and all your rules, are trying to kill me. Go away. Take your God and your rules and go away. That guy is a walking dead person, and he doesn't know it.

Listen to Jesus talk about the walking dead. In Matt. 8:22. He calls a certain fellow to walk with Him, to be His disciple, to come out of death, to life, and the guy has some reasons not to do that.

21 And another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” 22 But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.”

The walking dead. Our bodies alive. Our souls living. But something is dead. We're like zombies walking around. Paul uses this dichotomy when he tells Timothy that people who opt out of God's revealed morality are dead while they live.

1 Tim 5:5 Now she who is a widow indeed and who has been left alone, has fixed her hope on God and continues in petitions and prayers night and day. 6 But she who lives in self-indulgence is dead even while she lives.

That's not limited to widows. Self indulgence is what the walking dead do. That's how they roll. That shiny package that looks so good. It has death inside.

Listen, God told Adam that on the day, not the week, not the month, on the day that you eat that forbidden fruit, you will die. Eve ate and Adam had some too, and he lived 930 years or something like that. Was God's warning empty? What is this death that makes us walking zombies?

Ephesians 4:17,18 spells it out for us; 17 Therefore this I say, and testify in the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their mind, alienated from the life of God

Sin causes death. And death is here defined as alienation from the life of God. Alienation from the life of God. Those other things are symptoms. futility of mind. Thinking absolute personal autonomy is a glorious achievement while it is really just a shiny present with death inside. That's futility of mind.

Romans 1 expands; 21 For even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,

28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind, (a reprobate mind) to do those things which are not proper,

Reprobate minds. When you abandon God, your mind is affected. God gives men over and their broken minds can't think right. It's like God cuts men loose in stages. Increments. And as He turns them over to their broken thinking processes, reprobate minds, they can no longer add up even the simplest logic.

A recent study was just completed and the data is in. Any civilization, whether they honor God, or not, any civilization that abandons the basic morality of no pre-marital or extra-marital sex only in faithful monogamous marriages that lead to secure loving families, will fail in three generations after those basics are abandoned.

You can study it. It happens every time. It has happened often enough that we can assemble data that shows the effect clearly. It isn't rocket science. It's more like gravity and jumping off a 10 story building. The outcome is completely predictable. Disaster. Collapse of civilization.

We're seeing it with our eyes. We're well into that 3rd generation. We've even named them. Boomers. Gen X Gen Z. When built-in morality from loving moral families fails, then you have to fall back on civil law.

In California, civil law refuses to punish common thieves. And large corporations, having lost the last resort of even civil punishment, are pulling out of California. The business model fails.

We're right at the cliff and reprobate minds can't run over the cliff to sure death fast enough. That's a form of insanity. When God leaves, insanity wins. We have history to study that, and yet it's happening before our eyes.

There's a name for that. Judgement. This is a fascinating concept. Without God we're like the pigs that the demons possessed that ran headlong over a cliff to their deaths. That's the picture of a world divorced from God's moral law. Frightening to watch. 3 generations to complete collapse and we're right there. God is judging our nation, and it isn't future, it's now. Fasten your seatbelts.

Does this sound like the rantings of an ultraconservative political activist. If that offends you, let me clarify. I'm not an ultraconservative political activist, I'm a Bible teacher telling you what it says and using the news headlines to illustrate what the book says.

Divorce God's moral laws and bore deeper and deeper into depravity and God turns away and lets you go until you find yourself swallowed up in death. Quite literally.

All of Adam's race is somewhere in that formula. If conscience and prevailing civil morality is within godly boundaries, thriving comes. Even for the walking dead. Physical thriving comes with moral living. I mean, you still go to hell, but on this earth, simply aligning with God's moral law brings thriving. I give you exhibit A. The mormons.

It works for any society. Align with God's commandments and thriving just is built into the cosmos. I give you exhibit B. The USA from 1776 until post WWII. Somewhere in the 1960's we started the descent. No fault divorce. The pill. Extramarital sex is OK. Tolerated. The LOVE generation. 1st gen. 2nd gen. 3rd gen. Pinch yourselves, here we are. We're well over the cliff in freefall as we speak.

These guys that ask you to pray for America to thrive again are delusional. The best we can hope for is to snatch a few embers from out of the fire. God is still in the business of saving individuals, even in a nation in the midst of freefall into judgement. That's what we pray for.

1 And you were dead in your transgressions and sins,

This is situation normative for Adams race. Somewhere in the cosmos of death. Moral to a degree and perhaps thriving civilizationally; or not. But we all begin in death, because all have sinned. Death is all there is.

But listen to Paul define what I've just been describing. Big questions. Big answers. Why are things the way they are? Here's why.

1 And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience,

This is fascinating, because all we need for proof of concept is to open our eyes. This explains why someone walks into a University and kills 3 people in Las Vegas last week. The guy had 12 loaded magazines. He just wasn't very competent at killing.

Our world of dead people with broken minds stand around wondering, how does this happen? Is there such a thing as evil? Where does this depravity come from? Why is there evil?

Verse 2 has answers.
2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world

Sin causes death and all have sinned. Multiply that fact with the common denominator that every person born is a sinner, and actually, the odds are against there only being one mass shooting yesterday.

The natural course of this world is sin. Morality and decency and courtesy are actually achievements above the normalcy of sin. Society and civil law still bring judgement on open murderers. Well some of them anyways. Abortion doctors are exempt. But this shooter was neutralized within a few minutes by police.

If he'd kept his inner evil limited to looting stores in California he'd have been good to go. But mass murderers elevate the threat level to a point where even a society that has abandoned God, has to act.

The course of this world is sin. Varying levels of course. It begins with coveting. Dissatisfaction. Somebody got more than you did. It's not fair. And you indulge that sin. Deep in your thought life. Anger comes. Hate comes. If it goes out of control you show up at an auditorium with a 9mm Glock and 12 loaded magazines.

But the course of this world is sin, and it's built in. Adam's seed has the sin gene built in. That's what Paul means by walking according to the course of this world. We all have the sin virus. The whole earth is infected with sin.

But it gets worse. That verse isn't finished with this world's sin problem yet. Paul goes deeper into the source of the problem;

2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience,

Who or what is the ruler of the power of the air??! That sounds ominous. It is. Jesus acknowledged that Satan is the ruler of this world. When he caused man to rebel against God, Adam, at the fall, in the garden, he also caused a domino effect.

Sin is transferred from father to child. Forever. And thus the entire human race is removed from the life of God. Death reigns. And Satan is in a war with God over glory. Satan wants God to not have His due glory. Satan wants the glory that is due God, for himself. And because of sin, all men are removed from glorifying God and they become the pawns, the dupes of Satan.

And Satan is organized. We'll see that in chapter 6 when we get to our warfare against him. But it isn't just Satan. He has armies of demons. Unseen. In the air. And they are organized to bring chaos and death.

And because we're all infected with sin, and removed from God, we are willing participants. Unwitting dupes. The power of the air has got us marching in lock step. Our brains are broken. We march to our death and we hate God. We love our sin. It's so shiny. So pretty. So fun. Sin is fun. And it's wrapped up in such pretty boxes. Sex. Drugs. Lies. Thefts. Murders.

And Satan and the demons and the world system infected with that evil can taylor make a suit of evil that fits each and every person. From the little old lady down the street who isn't hurting anyone to the abortion doctor that's filling the pharmaceutical industry with colegen from baby parts and pieces and everything in between.

Satan has designed this cosmos with a trap for every person. Religion is a huge one. False religion. I'm good. I'm spiritual. I'm OK. You're OK. All kinds of different fashions in the cosmos, the world system of Satan's rebellion here. We are willing participants in Satans war, because it's fun fun fun, until actual death catches up with all the fun in that pretty box.

We're born dead. We love our sin. And Satan's fanning that fire. He's just blowing oxygen onto the fire that we were born with. And we're dead to God. We can't respond to God. We're dead. Death renders it's objects unresponsive.

We were going up Highway 361 the other morning and we swerved to miss a black cow but there was another black cow a few hundred feet further, just off the road, and that cows feet were pointing up at about a 40 to 55 degree angle.

Nothing anyone does is going to get any further response from that cow. He dead. And Paul tells us, in the world we were born into, that describes our status spiritually. Removed from the God I was designed to worship and glorify. Dead. Spiritually dead. Dead to the one thing I was built for.

How often these days do we hear, I don't believe in organized religion, but I'm spiritual. I'm very spiritual. Just not religious. People who are quote unquote spiritual just have a closer connection to the prince of the power of the air.

Yes, that's a thing. I never tell those folks their spirituality isn't. It is. there are very real connections to the spirits of rebellion and unrighteousness that are unseen around us. People tell me they're spiritual, I believe them.

All these spiritual people but they fear the walls might cave in if they ever darkened the doorway of a godly fellowship. Listen to verse 3.

3 among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

The entire human race falls into that category. Children of wrath. Willing dupes in Satan's war against God.

Without God, we are worship machines, designed by God to be worshippers and that energy is re-directed back onto ourselves. Our fallen flesh has fallen desires and we play the long game and the short game of making ourselves happy.

People who are out in 25 degree weather at 4:00 AM running or walking are playing the long game. They think they're paying it forward but the goal is the same. Personal happiness. Some of us are playing the short game and ordering cinnebuns from Connie so we can be happy tomorrow morning.

Our minds are engaged. I've quoted Blaise Pascal before. He agrees with what Paul is saying here.

“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
― Blaise Pascal

Our minds are engaged in the fulfillment of our lusts. Long game, short game. That fellow that purposed in his heart to murder people at UNLV yesterday played the long game.

The gun was purchased legally. The ammunition and the 12 magazines had to have been pre thought. And then, we'll never know, but it's a short jump to assume that he was combining suicide with the righting of what he felt were his wrongs against him. Someone else got the job he deserved.

Murder of others and ultimately himself would be his final desperate act to fulfil his lust for happiness. Pascal was right. These verses of Paul's explain why evil continues to happen. It's built in. And the prince of the power of the air is at work in the sons of disobedience.

You say, you're painting a very dark picture Mr. Galli. What about all the lovely people who are just going about their business trying to maintain decency. What about people who give their whole life helping others?

Hey, sometimes the long game is working your way to heaven by a life of service to others. We've got everybody from the pope to the guy taping bombs onto little children and sending them into an Israeli crowd. All different motives. All different long games. All fall into this same description that Paul has just given. All are subject to the prince of the power of the air.

Think about the air when crowd mentality turns violent. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass and the crowd was shouting Hosanna. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

He didn't give them what they were hoping for. He didn't overthrow Rome. He didn't free them from their oppressors. He didn't make them meals of fish and loaves. And within a very few days, less than a week, that same crowd was shouting Give us Barabbus. Crucify Him. Crucify Him.

I don't think that was entirely inborn wickedness from Adam's seed. I think the air sometimes is full of unseen forces that multiply the natural wickedness of fallen humans.

How did an entire nation get drunk with anti-semitism in the mid 1930's. I believe the prince of the power of the air can at times be an unseen multiplier of wickedness.

We are wicked from the womb. But then Satan multiplies it when it suits his long game. Satan rules this planet, and the truth is, everyone born here into Adams fallen race is born condemned. This planet is slated for judgement. Cataclysmic judgement. It's a doomed planet.

OK, some of you are thinking, do I have a long game in all of this depressing bad news? I do! I do. And it's in verse 4. But as a photographer I've learned to use contrast to build my scene. And I'm in good company, because that's exactly what Paul has done here.

We are born dead. Born doomed to utter destruction . . . the entire planet of us along with Satan and the demons. Utter destruction is coming.

Vs. 4 But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

There's a reason why we call this message, the gospel. Gospel means good news. Good message. We were utterly condemned, but there's hope. There's good news. There's a way to safety. Rescue is available.

That fellow that we began with, who has no clue of imminent judgement needs to understand that he is dead to God and God is removed from him. And that his broken thinking has trapped him in a death spiral.

Good luck with that. I think our modern era of ease and safety and plenty and comfort has made it harder than ever to tell people of the tidal wave that's a quarter of a mile away coming towards them. Death happens. And then it's too late.

Everyone has this pretty box and they don't believe death is inside. Not only that but there's the fact that we're trying to convince dead people to come to life and they're dead, blind, deaf, unresponsive.

When we come back to this passage in a few weeks in 2024 we'll delve deeper into that concept of evangelising the dead. Only a miracle can wake the dead. That's the spoiler. That's the teaser.