Robert Jeffress - The Way We Were
Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress, and welcome again to a Pathway to Victory. In the physical realm, we are born, and when our time on earth is done, we die. But in the spiritual realm, the opposite is true. We are born spiritually dead, and only the grace of God can bring us to life. Today, we're going to consider the spiritual condition of those who have not experienced God's transforming grace. It's a sobering look at our desperate human condition and God's loving solution. My message is titled "The Way We Were," on today's edition of "Pathway to Victory".
This week, I was reading the story of the 19th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Bentham died in 1832, and he stipulated in his will that all of his estate would be left to the University College Hospital, with one stipulation, one condition. Every year, at the annual board meeting of the hospital, Bentham wanted his embalmed and preserved body to be wheeled into the meeting and placed at the conference table. And so, to be sure they got the money, the hospital did that for years. They would wheel his body in, put it in front of the conference table, and the secretary announcing the attendance would say, "Jeremy Bentham, present but not voting".
Why did he never cast a vote? There wasn't anything that kept him from casting a vote except that he was dead, and dead people don't vote. What's true in the physical world, ladies and gentlemen, is true in the spiritual world as well. It doesn't matter how many times an unbeliever hears the gospel of Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter how effectively or powerfully the gospel is presented. An unbeliever, a non-Christian, will never vote for, will never choose, Jesus Christ as his Savior, never. Well, then, how is it that anybody can be saved? That's what we're going to discover this morning in Ephesians chapter 2.
If you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians chapter 2, beginning with verse 1. You know, this letter to the church Christians in Ephesus is about the riches we have in Christ Jesus and how our spiritual riches ought to change the way we live every day. And, in chapter 1 of Ephesians, Paul describes, from God's point of view, all of the blessings he's given to believers. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heaven". And, remember, he lists seven of those blessings. You could organize them this way: God the Father has selected us, he's chosen us. God the Son has saved us. God the Holy Spirit has secured us and has raised us up to sit with Jesus Christ in heaven.
All of those verbs are in the past tense, even though some of them are still future for us. Why is that? Paul's speaking from God's point of view. God isn't bound with time. He doesn't see the past, present, and future. He sees everything, it's already complete. In fact, everything God has planned for you, in his eyes, have already happened. So we get the heavenly perspective in chapter 1. But, when we get to chapter 2, Paul describes our experience from our point of view, and we see our point of view in simply the way we used to be before Christ to the way we are right now. What has God done for us?
Well, let's compare how we were with the way we are right now. First of all, when we get to verse 1 of chapter 2, Paul tells us about our desperate situation. That's the way we were. We were in a desperate situation. If you don't believe it, look at what Paul says, he said, first of all, we were spiritually dead. Before you came to faith in Christ, you were spiritually dead. Look at verse 1, "And you were dead". Say that with me, dead, dead. What does dead mean? Dead. You are spiritually dead "in your trespasses and sins".
Now, that goes against what we hear today in the world. You know, the world basically has three different views of the human condition. Most people believe, most unbelievers especially believe, that man is basically good. We may have a few defects and flaws here and there, but most of the time, most people will do the right thing. We are basically good, and if there are any defects, it's because our environment is not what it should be. So the unbeliever focuses on changing the world, changing the environment of the world, so that man can reach his full potential.
Now, we know that's not right. We know man is not basically good, if we look at scripture. And so, many Christians have adopted the second view, and that is, man is basically sinful. Because of Adam's fall, we have inherited Adam's guilt and his corruption. And, apart from Christ, we will sin, we will do things that disobey God. We don't train our children to do evil. We don't have to train them to lie, to be self-centered, to cheat. We have to try to help them unlearn that inclination. Why? Because all of us, including children, are born spiritually dead. Paul says, not only were we dead apart from Christ, if that's not enough, we were depraved.
Look at chapter 2, verse 2 again, "We are dead in our trespasses and sin, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them, too, we all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind". Now, you might wonder, "Well, if we're spiritually dead, how do we walk anywhere"? Paul says, people are spiritually dead, but they're walking around in trespasses and sin. How can a dead person walk? Have you ever seen a zombie movie before? You know what zombies are? They're dead, but they're walking around looking for flesh, human flesh, to eat.
One of the most popular shows on television just a few years ago was "The Walking Dead". It's about zombies, and if you watch that program, you'll notice that the zombies in every episode get worse and worse looking. They're more and more decayed, there's more flesh hanging off their arms, their smell gets worse. They are dead, but they think they're alive, and all they want to do is get more flesh to eat. Well, the Bible says a non-Christian is depraved. He may be alive physically, but all he wants to do is to indulge his flesh. And what's interesting about spiritual zombies is they really think they're alive.
Non-Christians think they're alive and having the time of their lives, and they pity people like you and me who are Christians. They think, "Oh, those Christians, they are just slaves to their religion. They're slaves to their fables. They can't really live life like I am". And they're spiritually dead and don't even realize it. Did you know, by the way, that every one of us is a slave? The question is not, are you a slave? The question is, whose slave are you? We're all either serving God or serving ourselves or serving Satan, but we're all slaves to someone or something.
Paul makes this point in Romans chapter 6, verses 16 and 17, he says, "Do you not know that when you present yourselves to somebody as a slave for obedience, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were committed". We're all slaves to somebody, but we get to choose our master, that's the great thing.
Now, go back to Ephesians 2 for a moment, look at whom the unbeliever is a slave to, verse 2, "in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the power of the air, and according to the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience". An unbeliever, the non-Christian, is, first of all, a slave to the world. Now, by world, Paul doesn't mean planet Earth. The word world, kosmos, in the New Testament, is used 186 times, It always refers to the world system, the world system, the power system of Washington DC, the entertainment world in Hollywood, the world systems. And an unbeliever is a slave to those systems. He wants to walk and talk like everybody else.
A non-Christian wants to dress like everybody else. A non-Christian has the same musical taste as a non-Christian. They conform to the world, the world system, but not only are they slaves to the world, they are slaves to the prince of the power of the air. That's a reference to Satan. The Bible teaches that Satan is the God of this age, as Paul said. He is the prince of the power of the air. He is temporarily in charge of the world system. An unbeliever doesn't know he's serving Satan when he follows the course of the world, but he is.
And not only are we slaves to the world system and to Satan, but we're slaves to our own desires as sons of disobedience. You are a slave, no matter how free you are, to whatever it is that controls your life. By the way, you wanna know who your master is, whom you're really serving? It's whatever you can't say no to. Whatever in your life you can't say no to, whether it's a person, whether it's a drug, whether it's alcohol, whether it's an immoral relationship, whatever you can't say no to is your master.
2 Peter 2:19 says, "By what a person is overcome, by this he is enslaved". Paul says we were slaves to the world. We were slaves to Satan. We were slaves to ourselves apart from Christ. Not only were we dead and depraved, but thirdly, and this really gets bad, we were doomed. Look at verse 3, "And we were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest". What wrath is he talking about? He's talking about God's wrath, God's anger. We were born into this world as objects of God's wrath. Now, I know it's politically incorrect to talk about the wrath or anger of God. That's why I love the Bible, it's so politically incorrect.
Did you know the Bible talks about God's anger or wrath at least 600 times? The Bible talks about the anger, the wrath of God. But it's interesting, there are several different Greek words in the New Testament for anger. There's thumos, that word literally refers to a rage, a Vesuvius-like explosion that you may experience on the North Dallas Tollway when somebody cuts you off and you just boil over in rage and indignation, and you want to go chase that car down and tell that driver and give him a piece of your mind you can't afford to lose. I mean, that is thumos, that kind of rage, and a lot of people assume God is like we are, and he just gets angry and gets out of control and can't help himself.
That's not the word, the word that's used to describe God's anger, most of the time, is the word orge, and it literally means to grow ripe. It refers to a kind of anger that is just steadily building and building. It is God's settled opposition to that which is evil. One commentator notes, "That is what makes God's anger so frightening. It is consistent, controlled, and it's always just". And God's orge, his anger, is like water that builds behind the dam, and that water keeps building and building and building, until one day the dam crumbles, and that water is poured out on the residents below. God's anger, his settled opposition, his wrath is building toward people every day.
Every sinful action, every sinful thought only increases God's anger toward that person. And one day it will be poured out on every unbeliever, at the Great White Throne judgment. But God can change everything. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "There's no temptation that has overtaken you but such is common to people; but God is faithful, who won't allow you to be tested beyond that which you're able". Maybe somebody has done something to hurt you, to offend you, to scar you for life. What does the Bible say about that?
That person meant evil against you, Genesis 50:20, but God is able to use it for good to bring about this present result, and preserve many people alive. We need God's intervention, and it's beginning in verse 4 that Paul describes how God intervened in our desperate situation with his loving liberation. Look, if you will, at God's miracle, first of all, what he did for us. First of all, he resurrected us. But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, here it is, verse 5, "He made us alive together with Christ". Our resurrection, what does that mean, our resurrection?
You know, you've heard this analogy perhaps before, I may have used it before. Imagine you're on a cruise ship out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and one of your fellow passengers accidentally falls overboard, and he's in the water, and he's about to die, when you see a life preserver. You see his desperate situation, and you throw him the life preserver. Nobody else has a life preserver, you're the one that throws the life preserver, and that drowning victim possibly has a choice to make. He can try to save himself, but he's not doing a good job at that, he's drowning. Or he can grab hold of the life preserver and be taken to a place of safety.
Now, that's an analogy of a non-Christian. When he talks about resurrection, he's talking about what he did for Jesus on that Easter Sunday morning, he made him alive. But, remember, 40 days after Jesus's resurrection, on the Mount of Olives, he ascended into heaven. And that's what he's alluding to here, just as God raised up Jesus from one realm of existence (planet Earth) to another of existence (heaven) he has raised us up to a new way of living, a new world, not the world of spiritual zombies or spiritually dead people, but the world of those who are alive to Christ. And that's why Paul said in Romans 6:2, "How can those who have died to sin still live in it"?
Why would you ever want to live in that old world you lived in before you were a Christian that was filled with disobedience to God? Remember, when Lazarus died, his sisters participated in the wrapping of his body in those cloths and 100 pounds of spice to slow down the decay of the body. But after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, in John chapter 11, what did Jesus say? "Unbind him and let him go". Those grave clothes need to come off. They were fine for the grave, but they have no place in the world.
And in the same way, God has said, when we are saved, we leave behind the old grave clothes, the stinking, wretched, grave clothes of sin and disobedience. Grave clothes are not suitable for the world, they're suitable for the tomb, for the grave. We've been raised to a whole new way of living. Why would anybody go back into a tomb? Why would anybody put on those filthy grave clothes, those filthy habits that have no place in the kingdom of God? That's what God has done for us. He has not only resurrected us, he has raised us, and, thirdly, he reinstated us.
Look at verse 6, "And he seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus". What does it mean, God seated us with himself? Remember, Jesus, right now, he's at the right hand of God the Father, he's in the power seat, he's equal to God. But, when you trust in Christ as your Savior, you are in Christ, which means, if you're a Christian today, you are just as close to the heart of God the Father as his own beloved Son Jesus Christ. We have been reinstated into a relationship with God.
Look at this in verse 4, God's Motive, "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us". God is filled with mercy. Mercy means God not giving us what we deserve, eternal death. And, not only that, he's filled with grace, verse 5, for "(by grace you have been saved)". Now, look at verse 7, he saved us "so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus". God saved us for no other reason than he loved us. He felt compassion for us. He looked down on our desperate situation, and something moved in him to help us.
Ladies and gentlemen, your salvation has absolutely nothing to do with you. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's all about God, a compassionate God, a grace-filled God, a God who is willing to forgive anyone who asks. The late James Boice used to tell the story of a true story of a social worker in London named Henry Moorehouse.
One day Moorehouse was on his way home, and he saw a little girl, 10-year-old girl, carrying a pitcher of milk, and she stumbled on the curb. The pitcher slipped out of her hand, and it was broken into several pieces on the ground, and the milk ran out into the gutter. And he saw the girl begin to cry, and he approached her and said, "Honey, why are you crying"? She said, "My mother will whip me, my mother will whip me, my mother will whip me". He said, "Let me help you".
So he tried to put that pitcher back together, and he got the pieces together, and then they would fall apart again. And the girl started crying more loudly, "My mother is going to whip me. My mother's going to whip me". Finally, Moorehouse took the little girl down the block to a crockery shop and bought her a new pitcher. Then he took her to the store and filled it up with milk. And Moorehouse said, "Now do you think your mommy's going to whip you"? She smiled and said, "No, not at all, because this pitcher is more beautiful than the one we had before".
Now, why did Moorehouse intervene in that situation? Why did he take time to stop? Did he receive any money for doing it? No. Did he receive recognition? Nobody saw it. He did it because he felt compassion for her. And that's what God has done for us. God created us because he did want to have fellowship with us. He didn't need us, but he wanted it. And yet, even though we were made in the image of God, sin has shattered us spiritually. And God had every right to discard us, to do away with us, and start over again if he wanted to with somebody else, with some other creation. But he didn't discard us, he didn't even try to repair us or fix us. Instead, he offers to make us a brand new person if we trust in Christ.
"For in Christ, we become a new creation, old things pass away, behold, all things have become new". What's God's motivation in doing it? His love, his compassion. And you and I were dead in our trespasses and sin, but God, who is being rich in mercy, has raised us up and made us alive together with Christ. "For by grace, grace you have been saved through faith". Praise God for his mercy, his undeserved grace in our lives.