Rescued Together: Kenneth Mbugua on Ephesians 2:1–10

Ken Mbugua
Well, good evening. Let me ask you to turn your Bibles to Ephesians in chapter two, if you’re not already there, join me in reading God’s Holy Word, and you were dead in 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, 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, and raised us up with Him and seated us with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us, in Christ, Jesus, For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ, Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. This is the word of the Lord I I have a couple of questions for you this evening. The first one of those is, can you speak in Starbucks? I’m from Kenya. I’m not asking whether you’re allowed to speak within the premises. I’m asking whether you you know the language called Starbucks. I’ve come a few times. We we have coffee where I come from, believe it or not, we actually grow it. But sometimes when I step into a Starbucks, it sounds as though I I need to learn a new language just to be able to make an order. Most recently, on this particular trip, I I encountered a strange little temptation. As you’re in line, I felt some some intimidation, a little bit of trepidation as to whether when I get to the counter, I am able to speak fluently in Starbucks. You see when the person in front of you is ordering is something that sounds like he wants a trenter of Caramel Macchiato with ice and sprinkling of this and a dash of that and a drop of water shaken together and served in this. And this, you start feeling intimidated about what you were planning to ask at the counter. And this little thing, it’s a passing little temptation that can come and go, but I found it amusing that I pastor Ken boogwa, Ken, who’s been a Christian for many years, that I would be tempted to boast in being able to speak fluently in Starbucks, that when I Step up to the counter, I’ll do something honorable, put in a good one, so that by the time I’m standing to wait for my name to be called, and I can say, You know what I I fit in. I was able to to perform well. This, to some of you, might sound silly, in some ways, it kind of is, isn’t it? But you see that little thing I experienced there, our temptation to boast in something so trivial, is it’s, it’s more of a pointer to something that’s, it’s quite core in me, and I believe in all of us, our temptation almost a need to boast in something. See, boasting is always with us. Boasting is, in many ways, at the very core of how you live out the life that you are living out. It’s fairly impossible to go through life without a kind of of boasting. Sometimes you’re conscious of exactly what it is that we are boasting, and sometimes we are unconscious about it. Sometimes our boasting shows up in feelings of insecurity or even shame and embarrassment, or sometimes it’s just simply a subtle sense of being pleased with ourselves. But boasting is inevitable. You and I could boast about things as petty and trivial as the kind of shoe we are wearing, or we could boast about how our kids have turned out great, and just accidentally share information. You could boast about your net worth. You could be boasting about how fit you are physically, about the number of steps that you walk every day. You could, in a subtle way, boast about your zip code in such a way that when you’re asked your zip code, you know where you live, and as you share it, you feel like a thing that’s a little boasting, and I’m not from that neck of the woods. I’m from this part of town. You could boast about things as vain as how beautiful your hair is, for those of you with hair with the shape of your nose, or you could even boast about how greatly the Lord is using you in someone’s life, particularly who you see come from a place where they are not flourishing in their walk with God and and through your intervention, your ministry, your prayer, your discipling of them, You you watch their lives change. You see their marriage strengthened. You see habits of sin that habituated their lives loosen their grip on them. And, and you could boast in that. You could point to that constantly and, and it could be the thing that you live your life out of boasting is in the world around us. It’s a sizable part of the logic behind advertising. It’s the glue, oftentimes, that defines our tribes, demarcates even our tribes, what things or rather, which person or which ideologies do we boast in it’s the stuff of our very identities. And so friends, I ask you a more serious question than maybe what I started off with, which is, what, what collage of boastings Make up your boasting this evening? You who’s sitting here, if we were to pry open your heart and to see even the petty stuff that you’ve just become too smart to let us know, but it’s actually what’s going on in your heart. I ask you, what? What collage? What collection of those things make up the person that I’m looking at today, the person who’s hearing my voice this evening. You see, the content of our boasting is a critical thing when it comes to living out the Christian life. One author, his name is Walter Marshall. In his book on union with Christ and sanctification, he says that Christ in you is the only means of producing real righteousness. Christ in you is the only means of producing real righteousness, and do not get this wrong. That’s where this story of the new creation is headed, a complete redemption, remaking of this humanity that has been destroyed by sin and has now been recreated in Christ. And you saw how the passage ends? Did you see? How it ends, where are we headed? Verse 10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ, Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Pastor John Piper told us already that that that those good works are coming, isn’t it?

Ken Mbugua
It’s going to be 40 imperatives in chapters four, five and six. The Book of Ephesians cares about real righteousness. But you see, before we get there, we have to do some work on the back end. And the work in the back end of the people I’m looking at who profess to be Christians has a lot to do with this question. What do you boast in before we start speaking about the household texts and husbands and wives and children and parents and masters and servants, before we start speaking about sanctification, about the unity in the local church, chapter one, two and three are quite interested in in what are you glorying in? What are you boasting in? Whether we like it or not, our boasts reveal where we are living out our lives from. What’s that source of life that you are living out. Is it Christ, or is it something else? It’s not for you to answer me with a correct answer the way I know how I’m living my life. The source of that life is by examining carefully the things that I am boasting in, but you see the passage we’re looking at this morning is going to offer us a lot of help. Paul doesn’t do what some friends might do to you, which is command you to be encouraged. Just be encouraged, as opposed to actually encouraging you. Paul doesn’t say, Stop boasting in yourself. Boast in Jesus, and then leaves you to yourself. Paul actually takes our hands, and he means with these first three chapters to show how any other boasting you or I could ever dare have is absolute vanity, and to paint such a glorious picture of what God has accomplished in his son for us that there will be only one song ring in our hearts, a boast against Jesus. He does that for us in this passage by specifically pointing us to two realities, which is what we’ll spend our time looking at. The first reality is he? He points us to our true nature before we were in Christ. And secondly, he’ll point us to God’s nature revealed through Christ, well, to the first one, fallen nature. What were you before you were in Christ, do you really remember how bad it really was? Forgetting the starting point of your salvation is setting yourself up to live a life even though you’re a Christian, boasting in the wrong thing. And so Paul begins in chapter two here, or continues on. I should say in chapter two here, by saying that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, dead in our trespasses and sins, what a complete word that he uses to describe what we were before we were in Christ, the state of our living in sin was complete and total. It’s a full word that can be turned around and looked at from different directions, to be thus bound, so completely bound to a life of sin is in itself a death, isn’t it? We who are made to live for God, when we are living not for God, but for sin, we are not living life anymore, but something. Other than than life death describes the state of sin as having had a complete effect on you, not perhaps in quantity or even in degree, but but the state of your nature before you met Christ was you were entirely corrupt. There was nothing in you that was good, even though you did not sin to the uttermost. The potential to sin to the uttermost was in you. This is the state in which Christ found you. Paul, in using the word dead in our trespasses and sins. Wants to make it clear that though you and I might think of ourselves as having had some trouble having fallen in some ways, that’s a flawed view of where Christ found us. Just like you cannot be a little dead. You are not partially bad, you are not partially evil, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. You were singularly enslaved to sin. This nature is not only a state, but it is a state that was lived out. It was worked out. Paul will do that in this section nature, life that flows out of that nature. And so you will expect that when he speaks about a new nature that has become ours in Christ Jesus, that these are the works that flow out of that nature. So if our nature was that we were dead in trespasses and sins, we should not be surprised then that the deeds that came out of that were evil and vile. Uses three words specifically to help us understand this, the world, the flesh and the devil. He’ll use flesh and body and the devil the world. What were you before you met Jesus? This was your kind? What was my kind? What was our kind? The world, if you’re doing a process of classification, the place where you are classified, the group that you belong to, is those who are of the world, the sons of disobedience. In your sinful pride, you most probably distinguished yourself from certain kinds of evils going on in this world. It’s a fallen world. It’s a corrupt world. Look at the trends that it has. Look at the ways in which it’s denying God. You You likely, in your sinful pride, saw yourself as a bit better than you know, the worst of the worst in the world. But that’s not how God classified us. We were a part of those sons of disobedience. We were a part of this world system. That’s where we belonged. In First Corinthians, six, nine to 11. Paul will there say, Oh, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves. Nor greedy nor drunkards nor revilers nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And then he continues to say, what and such were some of you. And such were some of you friend? Do you think of yourself as being better than that list? Do you feel slightly insulted to be mentioned in a list like that, do you see Paul’s preaching of the gospel? It includes a continuous speaking to the people that he means to articulate to the riches that are theirs in Christ. But this is the starting point before you can be able to revel in the glories of the gospel. You have to understand and not in a flippant light way where you were found by Christ. And that’s this list for. This was us. This is where we belonged. Paul continues on with his list. It’s not just the world. As far as a classification, he speaks of the flesh, the body. This was your entire makeup, fleshly desires. It’s passions. Fleshly passions, completely devoid of the influence of the Spirit.

Ken Mbugua
You were one who was reduced to beastly impulses of canality. There’s no fear of God. You who are made in the image of God to know God instead, because of that separation from God, the impulses of the flesh the mind are the ones that ruled you, friends. That’s not the description of a human as we were created to be. That’s a description of the beasts that were to be ruled over by humans. But since the fall, when Adam chose to not rule and reign over the beast, over the crawling beasts of the land, but but be ruled over by a beast? Well, that’s produced as beastly men and women. It’s how it’s described here. We were those who are not only classified as belonging to the world or those who are ruled by the flesh. We are basically told that the devil was our Lord. That’s what we were following. Have you ever described yourself like that, Paul? Have you ever thought of your past life as a life that was satanic, as the way in which you were leading yourself, as it being nothing short of demonic in its path? So you see that the enemy would love for you to think that the satanic is is only confined to the spaces of the Ouija board, whatever that is, and goat heads and chantings and villages in Africa where there’s witchcraft way out there, but surely not you. But that’s how Paul is describing you. For you to understand where you are, you need to understand that this is, this is the realm you lived in with people whose sins are that obvious and plain, the world led by the flesh and with the influence of Satan we have just come from Easter? Have we not seen that Satan entering into Judas looked very much like greed, and Satan, who demanded to sift Peter like wheat, looked very much like a fear of man. In what ways does Satan work amongst us? In what ways did Satan work in our lives? Yeah, we who have in many ways, managed to sanitize our past. Paul is removing the cover, and he’s showing us that we were, we were dead in our trespasses and sins. That means we were of the world, together with all the rebels, we were those who are led by the flesh, carnal instincts and the devil was the one who was leading us. You see, our problem was not merely that we did evil things. Our problems is that we were we were evil in and of ourselves. If it were merely a few regrettable things that we had done before we met Jesus, that would be one kind of story. But the issue was ourselves. We were the problem. You were the problem. Paul is describing that early stage in a way that’s akin to trying to wipe water out of an ice cube that’s melting. The sin that’s coming out of us is very similar to that. The problem is not that there’s water that’s been splashed on the ice cube. The ice cube is water the sin that. Is coming out of us is the natural consequence of what we were, not, as though we were something different and there was sin that was outside of us. Well, the conclusion of this is the wrath of God, because it is in none other than the holy and righteous one that we live and move and have our being. He is the one who defines reality, our judgment, your judgment, my judgment, was the very same fact as the holiness of God. Those were not two separate things, that which is by nature, evil is by a natural consequence, destined for

Ken Mbugua
wrath one could have very well declared that we were as good as dead, which is the definition here, we were as good as already condemned. There was no otherwise. We only had one thing coming. There was only one right thing that was deserved by us, and that is wrath we were, in many ways, like one who possesses a check that he hasn’t yet cashed, but he already has that money, doesn’t he? In our nature, we already had that wrath. It belonged to us because of who we were. Tell me, my friends, what kind of boasting Do you think survives this indictment, is there any kind of boasting a person like that can do if you in that state were to be seen the fullness of your sin? Would there be anything you would point to in yourself? Would you show up in public with your head lifted up high, and take the finger and point to self and say, What? Yes, I know, but what? But you don’t know my lineage. You don’t know my dad. You don’t know the people I have on speed dial. What will you boast in you’ve not seen how far my son can throw the ball? Are you hearing how silly starting to sound? Have you checked out my new car? What could you boast in you see when we boast, what we are making clear is we, we have a blindness. We are not seeing reality clearly. You’ve never heard of anyone drowning thinking at that point of disaster, of near death, of the quality of his watch, there’s only one thing that matters then, and nothing else you might perhaps even think to yourself this evening, well, well, this is a mixture of categories. The boasting we’re speaking about is in the category of salvation. We cannot boast in anything, because, you know, we cannot do anything to save ourselves. But my sweet jump shot doesn’t belong to that category. My hard work in the workplace doesn’t belong to that category. My accolades, my acumen, this business acumen that’s made me advance belongs to a separate category, to which I ask you, what other category? There’s only one category you, and what Paul has just described is you in totality, in your entirety, were dead. There is no other category. There is no other you. What other life could this be that you speak of as saying, You know what? There’s my salvation, and I boast in Jesus for my salvation. But when it comes to you know life, I ask which, which life? Because what you had was death. What were you speaking of? Where have you sourced this other life that you are? Are living in which you are able to boast in your cells last year, in the progress you have made in something that makes you different from the people around you, from those you might even look down upon, what life is that or you see, Paul wants to make it quite clear you were dead. And if you’re going to point to anything in your self, the minute you point your finger at it, you hear this. That thing is Exhibit A of your sinfulness that demands that it deserves nothing but love. Stick out God’s holiness and examine it clearly you do not find in it if you have been there, unless it’s someone else, but if it’s you who has been there, if you have touched it, if you have been involved in it, outside of Christ, you are capable of nothing other than sin that earns you and makes you worthy of God’s divine wrath. But Paul is only done with half the work for him to cure our boasting, he’s going to point us to the second nature, which is the nature of Christ. You see, he continues on, and he says, But, but verse four, God. Being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved, and raised us up with Him and seated us with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us. In Christ Jesus, you see what comes after the really, really bad news. What comes after that is a but where the story was headed was. It was headed to our condemnation, it was headed to our judgment. But then the story is stopped, the story is turned around. And I ask you, what turns around our story? What turned around, oh Christian, your story, well, we have the full answer with the very first word we can end the sermon now, but what? But he saw your potential, but he realized you had what it takes for us to reach the nations, but he saw how he could make use of you in a local church, anything, no but God, but God, not your potential, Not your inclinations, not how you were better than others, not how you deserved anything different from any other but God or dare I remind you again of Peter and Judas. Judas Satan enters into him. Judas, just before they sat at a table. Judas betrays Jesus. Guys. Is there any difference between him and Peter? The passage literally tells you about Christ, speaking about the table that he was set up in his kingdom. The very next thing is Peter, what Satan? What deny him? They’re exactly the same people. What’s the difference? Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you. Take away that But Peter Judas, the exact same person. There’s nothing apart from the intervention of God that has defined who we are. But then it speaks about this god. What exactly about God? It says this God being rich in mercy, you need to understand your nature. If you’re going to cease your boasting, you need to understand the nature of God. That’s the nature of this god. He’s a God who is rich in mercy. He’s a God who is great in his love. He’s a God who is immeasurable in the kind. Of kindness that he has poured out towards us. So you see our nature, the works that flowed out of us were dead works God’s nature. He is mercy and love and kindness, and he doesn’t stay in him. He acts upon us in accordance to who he is.

Ken Mbugua
How exactly did he walk upon us? Notice the greatness of His mercy being put on display. The passage says, Even when we were dead, do you want to know how loving God is? You need to understand how dead you are. You will not see how great God’s love is, how rich he is in mercy, until you really understand just where you are, and once you see it, you will see that indeed, what he does for us is nothing other than glorious, that that you would save that mean, do you not want to ask, at What point to just give up on something. Is it not too defiled? Has it not gone too far? Is it not too late? Is it really worth it to go after can to go after you? But it says, Even when we were there, so great is His mercy, love and kindness that it reached all the way down to exactly where we were. And the story is not yet done. What did he do from there? He made us alive, together with Christ, Jesus, and the story is not yet done. What did he do? After he made us alive, raised us up to be seated with Christ in the heavenly places, who the very ones who were dead in their trespasses and sins, categorized as belonging to this realm of the world, together, the sons of disobedience, the ones whom the devil had his fingers in puppeting them doing His will, the ones who were beastly in nature, the ones who were deservers. By nature, they were deserving of wrath. He takes those same ones, and now they are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. It’s quite important to note here that the greatness of the glory of this grace is demonstrated in the fact that this salvation for you and I has been accomplished in Jesus, that when you and I would not go after us, seeing where we had descended to God came for us. He took upon himself the form of a man. He entered this polluted realm called the world, being found like a man. He took upon himself. Your sin made it his own. He suffered on the cross like one who deserved that wrath that you deserved. He entered the grave that death that we deserved. Is it? Right that John asked the question, what manner of love is this? What manner of love is this? But you see, after three days, he rises together with us, so that the life that is ours is nothing other than the resurrected life of Jesus. So if you’re asking, what life is this now that I possess, which life is it? It is the life of who it is, the life of Christ. So that when you point at Christ, you point at me. When you point at Christ, you point at his bride, you point at his church, these ones who deserved nothing but wrath because of the. Great grace of God, they have been exalted to sit with Christ in the heavenly places. This is why he wraps up by saying, It is by grace that we have been saved through faith. It is not your doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. You see, one thing that doesn’t exist in this realm of the new life we have in Christ. What does it exist in this new realm? What does it what can’t exist in this new realm? Boasting cannot exist in this new realm. What do we have? Paul will ask that we have not received all of it has been given to us. And what is it that has been given to us? Nothing short of glory in Christ, we have become heirs of God. We should ask, what does one who was on divine death row? What is he doing, sitting on the throne of God? Let me tell you what you’ll never say. Well, something inside there you will never say that. You will point to God and say, What marvelous, what glorious grace is this? Any crowns that you have, you will cast them at his feet. You will say, All praise, all glory, all honor, be unto Him alone, brothers and sisters, that’s step one to living out the Christian life that we have to the degree that we are boasters in ourselves. It’s to the same degree we will not know the practical outworking of this life. I wonder this very evening, what potential there is in conversations we have with one another if we abandon boasting in ourselves abandon boasting. For example, in being right, you wonder if you knew what you have become in Christ, and just went like, yeah, no boasting. We boast only in Jesus. I know who I really am. I know where God really found me. I know everything I have has been given to me by grace. You wonder what types of conversations you will have in church. You wonder the type of conversations we will have in the families that make up that church, in the marriages that make up that church in the parenting that makes up that church, the kind of life that will be lived out in those conversations and those interactions and those disagreements will be not your self life, but it will be the power of the newness of life. But to the degree that you and I hold on to a boasting in ourselves is to the same degree that we deny the power of the resurrected life that is in us. Father, we plead with you that in your mercy and grace, you would grant that we all would continue to diminish, that the life of Christ in us would be sin through us. We ask this. Your son’s name