Under new management - Eph 2:1-10

Title: Under New Management
Date: September 16, 2008
Text: Eph 2:1-10

Introduction

- An illiterate couple had just been saved. They met with a group of believers who dressed alike.
- The men wore red shirts while engaged in a certain project, so the woman made one for her husband.
- He came home after the meeting, however, with a look of disappointment on his face because the others had a message printed on their shirts but he did not.
- His wife, undaunted by her inability to read, sewed three words on his shirt, which she copied from a sign in a store window across the street.
- He wore it to the next meeting and came home bubbling with joy.
- He said all of the men really liked the inscription because it so aptly described the wonderful change they had seen in his life.
- It turned out that his wife had written, "UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT."

The Way We Were

- Eph 2:1-3
- Before we accepted Christ, we were just like everyone else out there
- Without Jesus, this world is a very dark and hopeless place
- People are doing their own thing
- Thousands upon thousands of people are just going through the motions, getting up, going to work, carousing around, and then going to bed to do it all again the next day
- What a hopeless and futile way to spend your life!
- Jesus says broad is the way that leads to destruction
- Mat 7:13
- Millions find their way onto the road to destruction
- Mat 24:37-39
- People think it will go on forever the way it is today
- But the answer is no, it will not
- In the days before the great stock market crash of 1929, people were living it up
- Millions of people were playing the stock market
- Even if they had no money, they would borrow money to buy stocks and then use the stocks as collateral
- Then suddenly there was a dip in the market, on Sep 3, but it recovered, and then dipped again
- The same thing happened October 4, only this time it did not recover, the slide continued, people started sweating, the decline continued, then suddenly on Oct 21 people panicked and on Oct 24 the stock exchange was overwhelmed by people selling stocks
- People were jumping out of the windows of their Wall street offices
- It’s the same with the world around us – one day we will reach the end of the road, and there will be a precipice and hell waiting for us at the bottom

Jesus gives us love, life and promotion

- Eph 2:4-6
- Jesus gives us love
- This is the gift Jesus gives us
- Our life does not have to be like a hamster on a treadmill
- There can be purpose for our life, a reason for being
- Our life can have value, not just for ourselves but for other people and for God
- Jesus gives us life
- He forgives our sins and cleans us up, and makes something special of us
- He even says that not only does God come to live with us, but we get to live with him
- Verse 6
- When God looks at Jesus, he sees not only Jesus, but us as well
- Its as though we are already there, its so real

Jesus gives us a new purpose in being

- Eph 2:7-10
- This new purpose comes solely through God’s grace
- It is a gift, something he gives to us without our have earned a penny of it
- It is like someone gives you an inheritance
- You did not earn it
- It is a free gift
- The fresh start that comes through Jesus is given to us, pure and simple
- And with this new beginning in our life, God gives us a purpose
- Verse 10
- God is working on us, like a sculptor with a hammer and chisel
- It takes time to create a masterpiece, but that is what God is doing
- Verse 10
- We are his workmanship, created to do good works
- When we were dead in our sins we weren’t created to do good works, no this is after we have become a new creation
- Now we are in a position for God to be able to work through us

Conclusion

- Years ago a drunken man in Chicago headed toward Lake Michigan to drown himself.
- As he stumbled past the Pacific Garden Mission, someone helped him through the open door.
- He collapsed in front of the preacher and fell asleep.
- The superintendent cared for him, gave him a bed, and explained the Gospel to him the next morning.
- That day Harry Monroe was transformed by the grace of God. Later he was to preach the Gospel from that same platform where once he had slept in a drunken stupor.
- Mr. Monroe became superintendent of the mission, and when he died, it took all day for people to pay their respects. A newspaper editorial described him as one of the most useful men in Chicago.
- Mr. Campbell then raised this penetrating question: "What made the difference? The world would not have missed the penniless derelict if he had jumped into the lake, but God saw great value in him!"