To turn back in your Bibles to
the book of Ephesians Ephesians chapter 2 I Want to invite you
to join us in a series of messages we are going to be preaching
over the next several weeks that can be circumscribed as basic
Bible doctrine Basic Bible doctrine and what this opportunity will
be about is is to give all of us an occasion to once again,
particularly for those of us who are longtime believers in
the faith, an opportunity to revisit those fundamental teachings
that constitute our salvation. And we get to discover how joyfully
Joyfully we are in our God for having kept us from the day that
he saved us to this very hour by those truths with which he
gripped our heart in the beginning and brought us to a saving knowledge
of himself. For those of us who know the
grace of God, these truths are precious to our soul. They are
eternally precious to our souls. And whenever we get an opportunity
to hear them, we thank God for them all over again. On the other hand, there will
be some of us who have heard these things for many years and
imperceptibly, or maybe intentionally, we have let these things slip
from our hearing. so that as you hear them today,
you may not find yourself rejoicing in the truth as you did the day
that God grabbed your soul when you were in desperate need of
him and brought you out of the pit and gave you life and faith
in Jesus Christ. Today, you may not be as joyful
in these truths because you may have been removed away from the
hope of the gospel. I hope not, but it may be the
case. You'll discover that shortly. But as it is also in every church
where we grow in the word and we have the joy of meeting new
people in the faith and young Christians who are enthusiastic
about the word of God and about the gospel and about truth. For
those of you who are new, you will be hearing some remarkable
things today that you probably have never heard. and they will
grip your heart and they will cause you to see your God and
the way that God saved you in a fashion that you could have
never contemplated. This is the nature of amazing
grace. So the title of our message today
is the gospel of your salvation. Part one. You were dead. You were dead. That was the condition before
God came and got you. Dead. What a God. What a God. The writer to the
book of Ephesians is the Apostle Paul, and he's setting forth
in doctrinal form, reminding this blessed church of Gentile
believers, an eclectic group like you and I really, of exactly
what God did in saving us And as he explains to them what God
did in saving them, he reminds them of the state that they were
in before their salvation, which state, ladies and gentlemen,
I don't think most people are aware of. You know that the enemy
of God's glory in man, that thing which has stripped man of the
unique attribute of God's being by which He's enjoying to commune
with God and to know God and to fellowship with God and to
enjoy God forever. The enemy of God's glory in man
is death. Death is the enemy of God's glory
in man. See, God is a living God. The
God of the Bible is the true and the living God. It is His
nature to be alive. It is the essence of God to be
vitally alive in all of His faculties. God is the living God. And we
do admit, don't we, that all things have their existence in
God. We all live and move and have
our being in God, don't we? Every living thing proceeds from
God, who is the life of all things. You guys do believe that, right?
But the reality is, is that mankind, human beings, you and I, before
a work of grace occurs, you and I are dead. our spirit at the
level of our spirit at the level of our Understanding at the level
of our mind in our soul before salvation. We are dead Read it
for yourself Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 listen to the language
very carefully and you The happy quickened is not in the original
language and you Who were what there? trespasses and sin now, this
is a remarkable proposition a remarkable insight on God's part through
Paul concerning the world if you actually believe the Bible
is the Word of God God's depiction of the whole human race from
Adam to the present is that we are spiritually what dead now
this again is remarkable because when you look around your world
and in my world the last thing that the world will affirm is
that it's dead and especially the 21st century. We live in
a society where we taught, where we laud being alive. My, our
generation will say that it is the most alive generation that
has ever existed on planet Earth. We talk about how in touch we
are with our feelings, how well we know ourselves, how aware
we are in our culture, and don't we live large as human beings? I mean, the media is filled with,
and your television is filled with, and advertisement is filled
with how lively humanity is. to tell the truth, it constantly
tries to allure you under the assumption that we are living
large and life is great. It could never be any better.
And let me say something about that just so we can start going
to work. There is a tug in our hearts that makes us want to
buy into that proposition. There's something in our soul.
Somebody put the AC on, I'm getting warm. There's something in our
soul that causes us to want to buy into the proposition of all
the vacations and all the advertisement and all the little clips you
watch on TV about how happy people are and wanting to go here and
do that and do stuff you never did before. Isn't that right?
And you know, sometimes we get a little bit envious of how the
ungodly can just live such a great life You say, not me, Pastor. Where you better than David?
Because David said in Psalm 73, he says, truly God is good to
Israel and to all that are of an upright and clean heart. That's
what he said. David is acknowledging God's
goodness to his people, right? That's Psalm 71 verse 1. But
watch this, Psalm 71 verse 2, David says, but as for me, he
was having trouble that day. But as for me, you know what
he did? He separated himself from the church for a moment
and started being honest about the struggles in his own heart.
See, David, what I love about David is he told the truth. He
says, now God is good to Israel, Psalm 73 verse 1. God is good
to Israel, but as for me, my foot had almost slipped. I had
all together fallen away from that foundation upon which I
stood. Now, the man's just being honest. You know what he said?
He says, I was envious of the wicked. Have you ever been there? I was like, David says, I was
like, God, how come they living it up like that? I mean, look
at what I'm going through. Look at all the trouble I'm going
through for you. Why can't I have a little bit
of that David says I was envious of the foolish when I saw the
what? prosperity of the wicked Now Saints James tells us in
the book of James chapter 4 that there is a spirit within us that
lusted to envy We crave to have those things we crave to experience
this what I would call a facade of a life We crave for it. That's
kind of the battle that we fight. I But the reality is children
of God the reality is and David said in Psalm 37 verse 1 This
is before he fell into this temptation, you know how we can give you
the law before we fall into the temptation Then we have to come
back and say almost messed up to Psalm 37 verse 1 says do not
fret yourself at the way of the wicked When they start to prosper
in the way, don't get angry Don't envy the wicked But see, that's
the tug that goes on. And what I am sharing with you
as I lay a foundation for this doctrine that I'm going to share
with you is that unless you see the world like God sees the world,
you will be deceived into thinking that life exists out there. But here's what God says. The
world is dead. The world is dead. At the level of their spirit,
The world is dead and and the first truth of the gospel of
your salvation And I want you to grasp this saints as we work
through it The first truth of the gospel of your salvation
is this you and I outside of christ Before there was a real
work of grace in our heart We're just as dead as they were Now,
you know what dead is watch this dead You know how you go to a corpse
and you look at the corpse after the Embalmist has taken care
of him and made him look like they're alive. And you go, boy,
he looks so alive. And then you start talking to
him and say, man, you remember the days when we used to kick
it like this and we used to kick it like that and kick it like
that. And to your amazement, he doesn't respond. That's because
he's dead. Are you hearing me? You're trying
to engage in a relationship with him. That's inconsistent with
the reality He's dead and Prior to God doing a work of grace
in your heart in mind. God was talking to us But we
were dead We were dead Absolutely dead in our spirit This is an
essential truth as we work through the message of the gospel, because
there are several aims that I want to achieve. I want to make sure
we tell the truth about God. I want to make sure we tell the
truth about man. I want to make sure we tell the truth about
salvation. Because in telling the truth about God, man, and
salvation, we will be giving God the glory. I heard our elder
say that this morning. I don't know how to frame it.
Maybe, he said, maybe we can put it best like this. He says,
we have a natural tendency to steal God's glory. Where have
y'all heard that before? We say it all the time. It is
a fundamental error in our human makeup to steal God's glory. And at the area of salvation,
we have done it in a very, very serious way, particularly in
the church. Let it then be understood as we contemplate our first point,
that man in his natural state is spiritually what? Dead. He spiritually did that's Ephesians
chapter 1 2 verse 1 It's also stated in Ephesians 2 12 where
the Apostle says at that time when you were Gentiles in the
flesh You were without Christ You got that you know what that
means you were dead Being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel
and strangers from the covenant of promise Promises having no
hope and without God in the world. You know what that means you
were dead. I To be dead is to be without Christ. To be dead
is to be without God. For to have God, you've got to
have Christ. And when a man or woman is living
outside of Christ and living outside of God, no matter how
large they are living, their life is a life of death. We're
dead. We are separated from the promises
of God. We have no hope. There's no prospect
for eternal glory or eternal bliss, because we are separated
from the life of God. See, death is separation. It's the separation of the core
life from the embodiment of that thing by which life is expressed.
The core life. For mankind, we have a spirit
and we have a body. And when we physically die, our
spirit and body separate, don't they? And we say concerning our
physical body, it's what? Dead. And in the spiritual dimension,
when we are separated from God, alienated from God, we may be
living in a physical, biological sense, emotional, psychological
sense, but we are dead spiritually because our life is not, here's
the psychological term, connected to God. We are going about our
life, but we are going about our life disconnected from god
This is what paul is describing in ephesians chapter 1 chapter
2 verse 1 and as well in ephesians chapter 2 12 to go on to develop
it what he teaches us is that not only are we dead in a in
a in a real spiritual sense, but we are alienated and we are
estranged and we are separated from the Life of God chapter
4 verses 17 through 19. I want you to see how he lays
down what we call the first tenet of the gospel of our salvation
by which every believer comes to confess that salvation is
nothing less than God coming to us and Giving of giving us
life where there was no life before We read in Ephesians chapter
4 verse 17. Here's what he says. I This I
say, therefore, and testify in the Lord that you henceforth
walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind,
having their understanding darkened and being alienated from what?
The life of God through ignorance that is in them because of the
blindness of their heart. Boy, that's a bad case scenario,
isn't it? He says, don't walk like you
used to walk. And here's how you used to walk. You used to
be alienated from the life of God. You used to be blinded in
your understanding. You used to walk in the vanity
of your mind. I know that was true for me.
How about you? This is exactly a perfect description of what
I was before God revealed his glory to me. I was walking my
own way, doing my own thing. I was ignorant of God, ignorant
of truth, and I was separated from God. That's what the text
is teaching us. alienated from God. Go back to
our text and let's work it through just a little bit. Man is in
his natural state, spiritually dead, and according to Paul's
language, he uses a term that I have recognized as the title
of a sitcom or a series of movies that are prominent today. You know, folks really love to
watch these gory movies, you know. Have you heard of the movie
called The Walking Dead? I don't watch it. Ain't no gospel
in it for me, so I don't watch it. But I'm just saying, I'm
just saying, I'm just saying people like to watch the walking
dead. But you do understand that we
are accepting with that statement a paradox or at least a contradiction
in term, right? How can you be walking and dead? Well, Paul is getting ready to
explain that right now. We read in Ephesians 2 verse
2, wherein you were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past
you what? See, that's where they got the
title from. That's where they got it from.
Some movie script writer was inadvertently reading the scriptures
and came across Ephesians 2, 1 and 2, the walking dead. We're
in time past you walked you walked according to the course of this
world now what he's doing now I'm going to share with you again.
If you don't know he's describing what it means to me to be spiritually
dead What does it mean to be spiritually dead your lifestyle?
That's the word walk. It's a it's a Greek term Parapet
a which means to go about to have your course in this world
you went about according to the course of this world. You know
what that means, ladies and gentlemen? You were actually dictated by
an agenda that you didn't know anything about. You were actually
under the control and the influence of a system of belief that was
held by a collective group of which they foisted on you from
your earliest days so that as you grew up, you lived in lockstep
and conformity to that system. Paul called it the world. The
world now, it's not the physical world. It's not the biological
world. It's not the cosmos. It's this world system When you
are not truly saved You actually have no theses to operate on
your own Someone has to give you one And because you are born
of humanity, humanity gives you a philosophy, a worldview, a
system of belief. So as you grow up, you believed
what the world believed, and you acted like the world acted,
and you did what the world did. This is part of being what Paul
said in Romans chapter 12, 1 and 2, conformed to the world. y'all
remember that we would grow up and we would find ourselves doing
things that the world told us to do and even in our mind we
would say now this is kind of stupid but everybody else is
doing it so i'm gonna do it too like crazy clothing that didn't
fit right hairstyles and shoes and then You don't want it. I
know I Listen, I know the enemy the enemy loves to make fools
of God's pinnacle of creation Because he likes to make men
act more stupid than he's supposed to be Like when we're growing
up we get taught by the course of the world how to use dumb
language And we call it cool But it's ignorant speech that
does not perpetuate or propagate good thinking, good morals, good
conduct. And that's the way of the world.
And even grown folks, I'm talking highfalutin folks, I'm talking
about people living in the higher echelons of society, get caught
up in these group dynamics where they're doing crazy stuff. I
told you one time years ago when I was a younger man in the faith
I went to one of the large churches here in the Bay Area and they
had asked me to come do a Sort of short sermon that on my experience
in Africa and I was in a it was in a singles group You know how
churches want to have all these categories, right? So you got
your singles group you gonna get in trouble today with all
the categories that's popping up now You know that right? But
but back then it was only three categories, you know married
and singled and divorced maybe But we got trouble today. Don't
we you start slicing up these categories? You're gonna be in
trouble But anyhow, i'm ministering to the young singles No, not
young singles all singles because I remember some of those singles
were older than me like in their 50s and 60s You know when you're
in your 20s, you're not quite sure how devastating Life had
been You kind of see things in a little bit more surreal fashion.
But as you get a little older, you realize, boy, we're messed
up, aren't we? But anyhow, I'm supposed to share this story
with about 50 people. But before I shared the story,
the youth pastor or the associate minister had the people separate
in groups. He had the men on the right side
of the building and the women on the left side. And he went
around handing them pieces of paper. I do not lie from the
pulpit. He went around handing them pieces
of paper. And I'm so glad. I'm so glad
that he didn't hand me one. Because in those days, when I
preached, I didn't have the mercy I do now. But on the paper, everybody
had a word that was actually the name of an animal, whether
it was a horse, a pig, a cow, a dog, or a cat. Now follow me,
this is what I mean, the vanity of the mind, ignorant of God,
because you're separated from him spiritually, and so you give
yourself over in groups to foolishness. These grown people, supposedly
in the church, right? This is supposed to be a Christian
educational environment. Blew me away. I'm up against
the back wall with one of my, you know, young men that's running
with me, And the facilitator said, take the sheet and the
piece of paper and whatever name is on it, start making the sound
of that animal. I kid you not. So the brother
started and his was a cow. Moo, moo. And you know what he's
supposed to do? He's supposed to wait for the
sister on the other side with a cow. piece of paper. Moo, moo. And they supposed to come together.
You know what we call that? The vanity of the mind because
of an alienation from God and biblical truth that's supposed
to keep you sober. And this is what goes on in our
world when men and women are not grounded in biblical truth.
Foolishness to them is wisdom. Are y'all hearing me? And so
the first doctrine that you and I must get a handle on is the
doctrine of our human depravity. It is not a physical death. It's
a spiritual death. We are living according to the
course of this world, but we are dead. Otherwise, how can
Jesus say in John Luke chapter 9 verse 60, let the dead bury
the what? He's talking the spiritually
dead, separated from God, alienated from God, buried the physically
dead. You and I all died in Adam, didn't
we? 1 Corinthians 15, 22a, in Adam,
all what? And the joy of the father, of
the prodigal, when he came back home was to sing and celebrate
with everyone, saying, this my son was lost, is now found, he
was dead, and now he's alive. The doctrine I want you to grasp
with all of its implications, at least in our text, is this.
that when God came to you in saving mercy, He didn't come
to you negotiating with you in some civil fashion about a contract
by which you could enter into a better life now and then go
to heaven later, kind of like you were all right, but you just
had a few problems. No! Prior to your salvation,
you didn't have a few problems. You were dead. And salvation
is not a bilateral agreement. It is a unilateral agreement
on the part of God himself to save you in your dead state You
got that? That's point number one. It's
very critical to get because in our religious age We are trying
to recover the dignity of men even in the church at the expense
of the glory of God I want to call your attention therefore
to point number two in our outline to be spiritually dead and is
to be controlled by our sinful nature. To be spiritually dead
is to be controlled by your sinful nature. This is going to come
a little close to home because you're going to worry if you're
still trapped by it and you might be, you might not be. But we
are told over in verse 3, After we read verse 2, where in time
past you walked according to the course of this world, according
to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
worketh in the children of disobedience will come back there, among whom
also we had our lifestyle in time past in the lust of our
what? Our lifestyle in time past before coming to Christ was in
the fulfillment of the lust of our flesh. That's one description
of what it means to be dead. Fulfilling the lust of the flesh
the second thing Paul says is fulfilling the desires of the
what flesh and of the mind and as such we were by nature children
of wrath even as others Point number two to be spiritually
dead is to be controlled by our sinful nature life for mankind
for the natural man is lived at the core of his lust and The
word there, lust, is a term that means deep and profound passion. Thumia is the Greek word from
which we get the term thermometer. Yeah when you read the thermometer
and You take a thermometer stick it in your mouth If you got a
fever the thermometer goes past ninety eight point six or whatever
the case may be a hundred hundred one hundred two That's a thermometer
Epithumia is the term for deep and profound passion and what
God says is when we don't know God we live at the level of our
deep-seated passions They dictate for us our life. We live at the level of our core
passions. Ecclesiastes 6, 7 says, all the
labor of man is for his lust, for his belly. See, we have fallen
from the dignity of having a relationship with God so that all we live
for is to fulfill our love. Am I telling the truth? Is that
how you used to live? See, when you woke up every day,
your whole thought process was, how can I fulfill my desires?
How can I get what I want? How can I work my life, orchestrate
my life, navigate my life where I ultimately gratify my carnal
passions? And when a man or woman is living
with that as the primary object of their life, you are still
dead. You're still dead. At the core
of your being, you're waking up. And you know what's sad about
that? It's kind of tragic because it's like, Actually, it's like
Come on now you never get that thing satisfied. Am I telling
the truth who here has ever really had your lust? satisfied No one
and so it's a tyranny a pursuit of something that you can never
achieve This is why God kind of likened it in the Proverbs
as to hail hail have opened her mouth wide and lust says come
on Come on, and it can never get enough So we labor and labor
and labor in our unsafe state and we are never satisfied. That's
the text from which they got the song. Can't get no satisfaction. This is an old folk song. You young people don't get this. And God has to do that to us
in order to let us know satisfaction is never found within ourselves. You cannot satisfactorily achieve
the goal of gratification in yourself by your lust, because
your lust is constantly driving for something. And you know how
we pursue one thing, we get it, and it wasn't all that? Then
we run to something else, and it's not all that? You swear
this is going to be the one? And then you get there, and it's
not that either? And you keep running. You know what we're
doing? We're being distracted by our lust, the way to hell. We're being distracted by our
lust on the way to hell because you understand that God gives
us a mind, he gives us a body, he gives us time, he gives us
talents. All of these are stewardships that God gives us. And I don't,
I really don't have the right to waste my time. I really don't
have the right to run nilly-willy in this world, get old and die
and go to hell. If you have already bought into
the proposition that we are dead spiritually by nature so that
the real experience of salvation is not a Bilateral agreement
where you come to God and say God now you work this out for
me and I'll do that for you But God has to actually save you
one of the things we teach people is you can fall prey to thinking
that you can get to your deathbed and try to make yourself right
with God all you want to but we know legions of people who
by the time they get to their deathbed and Their heart is so
hard against God. The idea of you coming to God
when you want to is another distraction. It's just another distraction. Child of God don't let it happen.
And so what Peter what Paul describes for us under this second point
is that we are driven and we are controlled by our Sinful
nature and there are three terms that I want you to see here One
is the desire that phrase there is a word for the for the wheel
The other one is the I'm sorry The lust is the term for the
passions the desires of the flesh is the term for the wheel that
means when you and I reach a peak in our pursuit of something,
our will is given over to the achievement of it, and then we
go after it. But it still requires another component. And it says
in verse 3, not only are we driven by the lust of our flesh, by
the desires of our carnal flesh, but we are also driven by our
mind. Do you see that? The Greek term
there, I'm not gonna bore you with it, simply means this. You
spend a lot of time Thinking about your lust. The term there
means to give your mind over fully to it. Like you work it
through. You know how when you get fixated
on a goal, I mean, you actually dream about it, right? And then you kind of wake out
of that ram sleep and you half sleep and half awake. You still
work in that thing. Because the mind must be engaged
in the volition or the desire for the thing that you want so
that you can actually start working towards achieving it. And what
that means is this. You are very aware of the goals
that you are trying to achieve when you are outside of God.
Your mind is involved, your passions are involved, your volition is
involved. Essentially, the whole man is involved. Got that? So you can never say, I didn't
know. You did know. You were driven
by your passions. And what it means to be spiritually
dead is to be controlled by our sinful nature in that context.
And here's the sad thing about that. When we are unsaved, ladies
and gentlemen, we love our sin. Got that? You love it. Take this text. Meditate on this
job chapter 15 verse 16 your job says we drink iniquity like
water Watch the picture big old draft of water Going down the
throat to the very last drop and then we lick the bottle and
shake the bottle to get more out of it You got that how much
more abominable and filthy as man which drinks iniquity like
water And you know what's sad about that We tell the world
it's all right. We pursue with an avarice our
lust and we go out. Remember the rich young ruler
came to Jesus and in one of the gospel accounts, this is the
way he came. The text says, I think it's Mark, he ran up to Jesus
and he fell down at Jesus' feet and he started worshiping Jesus.
Good master, good master. Watch this. What must I do to
obtain eternal life? You and I would have said, man,
that brother is right on the brink of glory, wouldn't we? I mean,
he has come to the right person. He has come with the right question.
Am I telling the truth? He's come to the right person
with the right question. He's come with the right posture. Told you,
you don't come to God standing up. Get on your knees. And Jesus
saw that and Jesus said, brother, listen, you're right there. Let
me tell you what to do. Sell everything you got. Give
it to the poor and follow me and glory is yours. That man
was right on the brink of eternal life. But you know what the text
tells us? He got up, turned around, and
walked away being very sorrowful because he had a multitude of
riches. Can I tell you what happened? And this is where people are
deceived today. Can I tell you what happened? At the level of
his emotions, he contemplated eternal life. At the level of
his mind, he negotiated eternal life from a doctrinal standpoint
because he was a Jew. But at the level of his volition,
he was still committed to his riches. And this is a picture of people
who come to church ostensibly looking like they are serious
about God, but at the level of their will, they are not committed
to the cost that it requires to obtain eternal life. A lot
of people are that way. And so he left Jesus and went
on back to live in large, enjoying his life, doing his thing. He
did have one badge, and that's this. I actually met Jesus one
day, and we talked about eternal life. And what happened, man? Well, you know, it was too much.
He wanted too much, man. I ain't going with that. Point
number three. Point number three. The natural
man is not only dead spiritually, not only is the natural man controlled
and governed by his sinful nature in these three areas, the will,
the lust, and the mind fully given over to it, but the natural
man is at war with God. He's at war with God in his mind. Well, you notice what the text
says in the last part of verse 2 and then the last part of verse
3 and we're going to look at a number of texts to underscore
this. Wherein in time past you walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now works in the children of what? The children
of disobedience. This is how God describes the
unsaved world. You can clearly see them as unsaved
because they are sons, are children, are people of disobedience. Isn't that fairly clear? Disobedience. The Greek term
for disobedience there means that they refuse to listen to
God. They refuse to listen to God. You know how when we are disciplining
our children, This is what I love about the Bible. He gives us
very logical, anthropomorphical terms by which we can relate
to this glorious God. Now, those of y'all don't have
children, y'all planning on having children? Okay, we'll wait till
y'all get there. But for those of us who've been
there and done that, here's what we know. When we tell our children
to do something over and over and over and over again, and
they don't, You know what we say? You're not listening to
me. You're not hearing me. You're
not hearing me. Because the first principle of
obedience is listening. You've got to listen to God.
You've got to hear God. You've got to hear him as God. You can't just keep doing your
own thing, call yourself a child of God, it doesn't work. Got
that? Got that? That's exactly what he said.
And he's saying the men and women who are operating under the power
of the prince of the air, in this text, that's the influence.
We'll talk about what God has to overcome in order to bring
you to himself in a moment. These people are called the children
of disobedience. And over in verse 3, the latter
part, he says, and by nature we are children of what? Wrath! Even as others. Do you understand
what that means? When you and I are under the wrath of God,
and we are all born under the wrath of God, The wages of sin
is what? That's exactly right. So we're
born spiritually dead. That means we're under God's
judicial wrath in Adam. Nobody's born alive. We're all
born dead until a supernatural work of grace occurs. But then
we are under the wrath of God in that the life that we live
is a life that's lived at variance towards God. This is John chapter
3, verse 36. John 3, 36. Our Lord plainly
told us in John 3, 36, after explaining the fact that men
love darkness rather than light, that they will not come to the
light, that their deeds might be manifest as being wrought
in God. This is why people don't like to have sound, deep, profound,
exegetical Bible teaching because they don't want to be exposed
for really how they're walking. Listen to what Jesus says. The
man or the woman that believes on the Son hath everlasting life,
and he that believeth not the son shall not see life, but the
wrath of God abides on him." How do we understand that? The
unbeliever is already under the wrath of God. The unbeliever
is already under the wrath of God. He's dead spiritually. His
life is not committed to God. But not only is his life not
committed to God, his life stands over in opposition to God. This is the area we need to talk
about now. Because one of the things that God had to do when
he awakened you and I, and I'm going to talk about that in a
moment as we get to the glorious aspect of his rescue. Do you
remember when you were living like hell and over time you began
to see the world system for what it was and it started to apprehend
you? Because you started seeing people
not only living indifferent to God, but actually hating God. You remember that? You remember
how you thought your buddies was just like you? And that you
were just ignorant and foolish and just doing your own thing.
But over time, as you entered into deeper conversations with
them, they had actually studied this thing through. They had
already taken a conscious volitional position to hate God. Remember
that? How it shocked you? How deep
the antipathy and rage against God was? I mean, from time to
time, because you grew up in the church, maybe you start trying
to throw little Bible verses at them, and you saw those horns
come up, and the fire come out their eyes, and the rage started,
you went, whoa! Here's what you discovered, that
you were in an army that had recruited you from your birth,
and was training you through a dialectical process to hate
God. And even if you weren't consciously
aware of your hatred towards God, you were still doing the
things that constituted hating God. And so what our Bible says
is that when we are haters of God, we are under the wrath of
God and you and I are at war with God. Go with me in your
Bible now to Romans chapter 8. I want you to see this. This
is Romans chapter 8. I'm going to be reading verses
5 through 8 to explain that so that we can move forward. So
when men and women are spiritually dead, they are separated from
the life of God. They are alienated from God.
But not only are they alienated from God, they are at war with
God. They are God's enemy and God is their enemy. And this
is what Romans chapter 8, verse 5 through 8 explains for us. These are necessary insights,
ladies and gentlemen, so that we can see where we are and where
our loved ones are as well. Romans 8, 5 says, for they that
are after the flesh, that is the carnal life, the life without
God, they do mind the things of the flesh. But they that are
after the spirit the things of the what? Listen when I watch
people tell me they love Jesus and the preponderance of their
time is committed to carnality You are not fooling me Next verse
for to be carnally minded Is death Paul has just defined for
us the psychological reality and spiritual reality of the
man or the woman who is dead. They are carnally minded. When the mind is fixed on self-gratification,
you are dead. Got that? Completely dead. Completely dead. Now listen to
what he says. Because the carnal mind being dead, To be spiritually
minded is life and peace, but the carnal mind, verse 7, is
enmity against God. Now again, that's one of those
old Saxon terms that we don't have in our present vernacular
frequently, but it means to be at war. Enmity means to be at
war. I'm gonna give you four or five
verses Remember when Adam and Eve fell into sin and God in
his gracious mercy gave them a renewed covenant and he told
the woman He said to the woman who actually ended up talking
to the serpent now, you know, you jacked up when you talking
to a snake But but he says to her listen He says to her I'm
gonna put enmity between you and the serpent and I've told
you this for years That was God's mercy to her Because, see, if
you think you can play with a poisonous snake and it not kill you, you
are stupid. And you actually need to have
enmity put between you and that snake in order for you to be
saved. That was God's goodness to her. Am I telling the truth?
You know what he did? He put in her psychologically
an aversion to the devil from that time on. Lord, put in my
soul an aversion to everything that's not like you. Put in my
soul and aversion to the devil and aversion to sin and aversion
to the flesh Everything that's not like you. I want you to make
me to be repugnant towards it. Am I making some sense? So now
the devil is going to war against the woman a woman against the
devil and we see this in what we call biblical Theology the
constant conflict of the flesh and the spirit. Is that right?
That's the conflict and one of the things you can tell by which
you know, you are actually saved is that you are entering into
that conflict But before salvation, you loved the devil. He loved
you. And y'all both hated God. You were enemies of God. The
text tells us in the Gospel of Luke as well concerning this,
that in Luke chapter 23 verse 12, that Herod and Pontius Pilate
were two adversaries until they came together to kill Jesus.
And James chapter 4 verse 4 puts it this way. Whosoever is a friend
of the world, is an enemy of God. Now, ladies and gentlemen,
I'm giving you a lot of Bible verses because we are dealing
with a fundamental doctrine today. And I also am. I'm doing it because
I don't want any of you to escape. I don't want any of you to escape.
I don't want any of you to escape today and die under the wrath
of God. Having rejected the simple truth
about the gospel of your salvation. When you and I do not have a
relationship with the true and the living God, all that we have
been talking about up to this point describes us. We're dead
spiritually. We're given over to our lust.
And then we're made to go to war against God in the school
and camp and society of the world system. See, it's really as simple
as this. If you would honestly examine
yourself and you think about how the world talks, acts, governs
itself, and it jazzes you, you on the wrong team. You on the
wrong team. You're on the wrong team and
God is wanting us. Now I want to go on to the next
point. I want to wrap this up quickly so we can get moving into the
table. Point number three, the natural, I'm sorry, point number
four, the will of natural man. The will of natural man is bound
to both his nature and satan's authority. We have affirmed that
man is spiritually dead. We have affirmed that to be spiritually
dead is to be controlled by our sinful nature. We have affirmed
that the natural man is at war with God. Is he at war with God?
So what Romans chapter 1 teaches, Colossians chapter 1, first Corinthians
2 tells us that he's at war with God. Point number four the will
of natural man is bound to his nature and Satan's authority.
I'm going to establish three Verses to affirm this in John
chapter 8 verse 44 and 45 where our Lord is speaking to the rulers
of the church and they were constantly seeking to discredit him as the
Messiah weren't they and They just didn't know where this dude
came from They couldn't understand his doctrine and it's teaching
and these were the rulers of the church and guess what they
were doing They were lauding themselves as being sons of God
You know what a master said about them in John chapter 8 verse
44. He says you are of your father the devil Now watch this and
the lust of your father you will what you know what principle
he's affirming I've been teaching this for years The kind begets
kind principle. Every fruit bearing tree will
bear fruit of its own kind. Jesus said, I know you're of
the devil because of the way you act. Watch what he says. He was a murderer from the beginning
and he did not abide in the truth Because there is no truth in
him when he speaks the lie He speaks of his own for he is a
liar and the father thereof verse 45 Watch this and because I tell
you the truth you do not believe me Our lord exposed their hearts
for being at war with him the subsequent verses of chapter
8 will tell us that he indicts them for wanting to kill him
I know you're of the devil, he says, because I'm telling you
the truth and you want to kill me? Is that enmity or what? Is that war or what? Is that
hostility or what? And before we go on to our next
point, the great lesson that the gospel teaches us in terms
of our Lord's coming into the world in His incarnation and
dealing with His own religious culture is this. You can be in
the church and you can have a Bible and you can have a religious
system and you can actually hate God enough to kill Him. Because
that's exactly what they did, didn't they? We must therefore
conclude that the whole religious system of Jesus' day, with the
exception of those that He saved, were spiritually what? Dead.
You and I are spiritually dead when we're outside of Christ,
outside of God. You and I are in our natural state, bound to
our carnal mind, our carnal passions, and we're also bound to Satan. Now, I'm getting ready to touch
on it, but I'm not going to develop it fully. But this is the coveted
area in which man really has fallen prey to lots of lies in
our present culture. And that's this, that somehow
you think you actually have the arbitrary freedom in yourself
to choose teams. I'm trying to keep it as general
as possible. And what I mean by that is you
actually think you have the freedom to come to God, but you don't. You know how you know you don't
have the freedom to come to God? Because you haven't come to God
yet. You've been saying it all your
life. I'm coming. But you haven't come. Now watch
this. You haven't come to God First,
because you don't want to. That's the mental predisposition
of the whole human race in their unregenerate state. The Bible
says in John chapter five, verse 40, you will not come to me that
you might have life. Got that? You know how the baby
Christian and the nice Christian and loving Christian, we try
to do it in the kindest way, get you to come hear the gospel.
and you find 500,000 ways not to hear the gospel. Do you know
why? Because you don't want to hear the gospel. You don't want
to hear the gospel because by nature you are at enmity. You're
at war with God. And every time you hear any kind
of Bible teaching, you go in the other direction. You cut
it off. You avoid it. You circumvent
it. Watch this. Not only are you
not willing to come according to John chapter 540, but you
cannot come. You don't have the power to come.
You don't have the ability to come to God according to John
chapter 6 verse 44. No man can come unto me except
the Father, which sent me, draw him. And what we say to this
religious generation, that if you ever come to God, don't lie. He drew you. He got a hold of you. He actually
overcame your prejudice and your will and brought you to himself. Don't lie on God. This is not
a bilateral agreement. Not only were you not willing,
you didn't have the ability. Pastor, how come I didn't have
the ability? Hold on now. I know we went to public school.
I know that. And I've only been preaching for about 50 minutes.
But the title of our message is, you were right. that's right when you're dead
you don't do any negotiating you don't sign contracts you
don't make promises you don't make vows the work that brings
you into the life of God by which you enjoy God is all together
on God's side you got that So, when God deals with us, He
has to overcome a lot of stuff, saints. He has to overcome our
prejudice. He has to overcome our group
thinking, like the world system. He has to overcome the devil
that has control over us, because the devil has control over us,
blinding our minds. Through lies, we are constantly
being, as it were, blinded by his propositions. This is 2 Corinthians
4, verses 4-6, as well as 2 Timothy 2, verse 24. We are slaves of
Satan, controlled by his will until God himself grants repentance. You know how God calls you and
I to repentance? He tells us to repent and believe the gospel.
Well, you're not repenting until God gives you grace to repent.
Are you? All right, so all I need is an
honest person. If you've never been at grace before, let me
help you understand the simple gospel. Are you ready? An honest
person ain't going to hell. I know that's bad English. An
honest person is not going to hell. All I need is an honest
person in the house. You are not, by yourself, willing
to come to God. Repentance is not something that
you find in yourself capable of doing. If you ever repent
and if you ever come to God, you will have to ask God to do
it for you. God, help me to turn. God, help
me to repent. Because whatever goes on, this
I know, that what that preacher said makes all the sense in the
world. Here I am 550 years old and still
separated from God. Right? Listen, I'll deal with
the will in another doctrine, but here's what you and I must
know. Your will is not free willy-nilly to fly to the left or the right.
It's bound by your nature so that the prejudice of your inclination
Always drives you to make choices that are in your own best interest
and while you are at war with God You will never ever make
decisions to come to God Am I making some sense? Yeah, I bring bring
you this brings us to the last two points and we'll wrap this
up and That's this point number six point number five God has
to wake us up and and walk us out of the prison house of sin
and spiritual death before we come to know him. Can I make
that proposition good? Go with me in your Bible to the
book of Acts chapter 12. I'm going to read six verses.
This is going to be illustrative of the very point that I want
to make. Now I love brother Peter because first of all, he likes
to eat like me. And the second thing about Brother
Peter that I am coming to love even more is that Peter likes
to sleep like me. When you get older, sleep is
spiritual. It's a sign of maturity. And
it's one of the riches of his grace that he bestows upon his
beloved. Because he gives his beloved
what? So you young people with all
of this pent-up energy, you are defrauding yourselves of one
of the virtues of life. Because I could go into the physiology
and the blessings of being sleep, like regeneration and healing
of the body and the mind and all of the good stuff that goes
on with it. But we'll leave that to another day and we'll take
all your sleep while you keep running the streets. Peter serves as an example to
affirm the proposition that I have just made that in order for God
to save you he has to come get you Because where you are the
state that you are in you are inexorably bound inextricably
bound in that state and in that state you aren't even Conscious
enough to call on God the Bible calls spiritual death a kind
of sleep a sleep Sleep David said in Psalm chapter 3 verse
13 Lord deliver me from the sleep of death Don't let me go down
to the pit like those that sleep the sleep of death And the reason
why the Bible uses sleep as a metaphor for death is because everybody
gonna get wakened up one day To meet God Y'all got that. So here's the picture and this
is the goodness of God to us in the salvation of our souls
and You and I, like Peter here, is going to be described as a
situation in which God himself must intervene. Now, about the
time that Herod King, the king, had stretched forth his hand
to vex certain of the church, he killed James, the brother
of John, with the sword. And because he saw that it pleased
the Jews, he proceeded to take Peter also. Then were the days
of unleavened bread. And when he had apprehended Peter,
he trapped him. Peter's bound now, right? Like
you and I are bound to Satan. And he put him in a prison. And
you and I are prison-bound sinners under the curse of sin, are we
not? Until God liberates us. Now watch this. And he delivered
him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him. Do you understand
in the spiritual dimension, that's like the devil having you surrounded
by a whole legion of enemies, adversaries, demons? Only it
really don't matter, because you are already dead and sleep. I would expand this to say that
the goal of the enemy in capturing you and putting you in prison
is so that you won't know what the liberty that men and women
in Christ have. Secondly, his goal is to keep
you sleep. Because he knows there's a day
of judgment wherein we all have to stand before God. And if he
can keep you sleep until you die, when you wake up, it will
be too late. Listen to the language. And when
he had apprehended him and put him in prison, he delivered him
to the four quaternion of soldiers that kept him, intending after
Easter to bring him forth to the people. Peter, therefore,
was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing of the
church of God for him. What a church! And when Herod
would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was what?
There go my man, between two soldiers. Now you know you sleep
good when you can sleep between your enemies. He was bound with two chains. That's the condition of the unsaved
person. Bound by sin. Bound by Satan. And he sleep. Now watch this. And the keepers before the door
kept the prison. Boy, you trapped, aren't you?
This is the condition of unsaved man. He's spiritually dead. He's
in a sleep state condition. He's in bondage to the adversary. They've got him surrounded. He's
locked in prison. And there's someone watching
the door. Humanly speaking, there's no way out. And what we tell
men and women is salvation has never been by works of righteousness,
which we have done. Salvation can never be the work
of the flesh, the power of your mind, the capacity of your intellect
by which you somehow escape all of these gins and traps that
have you stuck. If you got any scintilla of a
sense in your brain and you see yourself in that condition, you
have but one thing to do. Call on God. Here's the problem. You're dead. Back to square one,
are we? And we'll deal with that down
the line. Listen to what it says. Peter didn't wake up, saints.
God did something for him. Watch it now. Verse seven. And behold, the angel of the
Lord came upon him and a light shined in the prison and he smote
Peter on the side. You see that? Peter wake up. My brother was in a deep sleep
and He raised him up saying arise quickly and this man's chains
fell off from his hands and the angel said unto him gird yourself
bind on your sandals and so he did and he said unto him cast
your garment about you and do what and I submit to you that
the angel of the Lord here is the same person that told Peter
several years ago, Peter, follow me, I will make you fishers of
men. That the angel of the Lord is
the Lord Jesus Christ himself. That if Christ is going to save
you, he must come by his spirit in the preaching of the gospel
and come get you out of hell. He has to come get you. And he's
got to first wake you up. Wake up, child of God. Wake up,
sinner. Open your eyes for the first
time to the reality of your hell-bound condition. Wake up. The Lord
is with you right now. Wake up and discover that he's
dropped the chains off of you by no work on your part, by no
effort on your part. By the time you look, God has
delivered you, set you free, and then he's telling you, follow
me. Put your coat on. Put your shoes on. Let's go. Let's go. Let my people go. Let them go. Do you see that? We call this the sovereign work
of a God of all grace saving you all by himself. Do you see it? That's why we love the Word of
God, because it casts the right vision. And he went out and followed
Him, did not know whether it was true or not what was going
on. I love it! Isn't that how God works? Salvation
is like a dream, isn't it? You know, when God saves you
out of the pit, out of bondage, out of hell, and you experience
the liberty where with Christ makes you free, you just wonder
if it's real or not. You're rubbing yourself saying,
you know, I feel good. I feel like God has saved me.
I feel like he's delivered me. But you know, I'm not quite sure.
This is where you have to grow in grace and in the knowledge
of the Lord. God has to take you first through that first
gate and then through that second gate. He's got to get you all
the way on the outside. So you look around and say, you
know, it's true. Our brother is free. Listen to it verse 10 and when
they were passed the first and second ward they came unto the
iron gate that leads unto the city Which opened to them of
its own accord? Do you see the God of sovereign
providential salvation working from the point of your death
your sleep your bondage coming to get you waking you up and
breaking the shackles, raising you up, clothing you in his righteousness,
putting the preparation of the gospel of peace upon your feet,
causing you to follow him out of the prison, out of the first
gate, out of the second gate, and the gates are opening up
on their own accord. You know who's opening those
gates? The angels of God who are ministers to those who are
heirs of salvation to help you get down the road so that you
can know the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free. And
don't you dare find yourself liberated by a work of sovereign
grace and turn around and tell somebody you had something to
do with it. You were dead. Two more things. What we teach
is this. We can clearly affirm that we
are dead, by the remedy that God had to meet out for our salvation. That's 2 Corinthians chapter
5, verse 15 through 17. Raise it up there. I just want
you to see it. I'm not going to expand this because I'm ready
to eat. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Plus I got seven messages
for you. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse
15. Here's what it says. I'll start at verse 14. Here's
what it says. 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse
14 good for the love of Christ constrains us because we have
concluded it is our judgment that if one person died and who
was that for all then we're all what this is what we call sanctified
thinking the remedy for our sin problem is an affirmation of
our condition If Christ died for our sins, it means that we
weren't sick, uninformed, misguided, blind, ignorant. Those were all
symptoms. It meant that we were dead. For
His death was a substitution for us who were already dead. His death was a payment for the
penalty of our sin that we had committed against God in order
to deliver us from our death. His death is an affirmation by
which you and I now live if we are believers in Christ. And
he goes on to give us an ethic. You might as well get that, chapter
5, verse 15. Here it is. And he that died
for all that they which, what? Should not henceforth live unto
themselves but unto him which died for them and rose again."
Why did God save you? In order for you to live for
His glory. The last point. The act of salvation
is designed to render all glory to God. All of it. All of it. To God be the glory. All to Him I owe. Sin has left
a deadly crimson stain And by his blood and righteousness He
has washed it white as snow. I give him all the glory all
the glory for all my salvation Don't let me ever twist my mouth
to steal your glory and saying that I did something to save
myself When I was dead And God gave me life and faith in Jesus
Christ. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.