THE WAY WE WERE
Years ago there was a popular movie by that name. It was designed to take a nostalgic look at the past as most people want to remember it. We like to consider the past as the ‘Good Old Days’. The Apostle Paul also takes us down memory lane but instead brings us face to face with a startling reality of our condition before Christ.
· The great theme of chapter 2 is the unifying work of Jesus Christ. The work that He did:
smashed every barrier, spanned every chasm, broke down every obstacle which divided man from God and from one another.
1) 1st half deals with our reconciliation to God
2) 2cnd half with Gentile/Jewish divisions
· Chapter 1 describes our spiritual possessions while chapter 2 describes our spiritual position.
1) The grace of God has taken us out of the GRAVEYARD of SIN and placed us in the THRONE ROOM of GLORY.
· Share this morning the sad state of affairs your life was in Christ found you. The condition of mankind from the vantagepoint of God.
1) We live in a humanistic society where apart from the Bible we are taught the basic goodness of man rather than the fallen nature of mankind.
Given the right circumstances, upbringing, enviroment, economic position, career opportunities, peer influence… etc. Mankind with turn out good.
Some years ago the MINNESOTA CRIME COMMISSION released a statement more in line with what the Bible teaches about man’s basic nature.
‘Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish, and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it – his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toys, his uncles’ watch. Deny him these once, and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless.
He is, in fact, dirty. He has no moral, no knowledge, no skills. This means that all children – not just certain children – are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of his infancy, given free reign to his impulsive actions, to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up a criminal – a thief, a killer, or a rapist.’
THE MINNESOTA CRIME COMMISION HAS IN EFFECT INDICTED THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE! Not the first time though
ROM 3:23 All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
PS 51:5 Surely I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
This is probably the most difficult truth in all of Scripture for human beings to accept. We don’t want to believe it and as consequence we have no realistic outlook on who we are. We are hopeless without Christ.
Many of us are like a group of cowboys who years ago saw their first silent movie in a small western town.
A modern miracle to them they watched as the plot included a handsome hero, a beautiful young woman in danger because of an evil villain who had kidnapped her.
As the villain tried to ride off with the young woman it became too much for the young cowboys to sit still for. One by one the drew their six-shooters and fired into the screen trying to stop the outlaw. They riddled the screen with holes but the movie when on.
If just one of the cowboys had truly understood he would have turned around and shot and fired into the projector.
Religion has for years fired at the screen but Jesus Christ came to deal with the projector.
FOUR TRUTHS ABOUT HOW CHRIST FOUND US:
DECLARE OUR CONDITION (1) And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
1. Usually death comes to end life but for the Christian life
came to end death.
Just an interesting fact for some of you: ‘And you he made alive’ is a small phrase which begins this chapter in some versions.
It is actually not there in the Greek but KJV borrows from verse 5 and brings forward to soften the bluntness of Paul’s first statement about man’s condition without Christ.
2. This death is not physical but is SPIRITUAL: It means a
separation from God, having no spiritual life, being unable
to understand and appreciate spiritual things.
GEN 2:17 – In the day that you eat you shall surely die.
Adam and Eve did not die physically on that day but their relationship with God radically changed and they began to experience the effects of physical death.(BARNHOUSE: 3rd floor fell into the second)
Satan in contrast told them, ‘YOU SHALL NOT SURELY DIE’
3. Two basic characteristics of DEATH:
a. POWERLESSNESS:
1) Physically dead person does not respond to physical
stimuli: Does not hear conversations, has no appetite
for food, feels no pain
2) In a spiritual sense that means they do not hear God’s voice, have no desire for God’s Word, and feel no guilt about not doing God’s will.
Interesting story by Ray Stedman about a man in his church who visited another church member who worked at a mortuary.
They went into the room where the bodies were lying on slabs and he pulled back the sheet and said to his friend, ‘Tell him about Jesus’.
Without the spark of the Holy Spirit upon a person’s heart you have just about as much chance of reaching them.
b. CORRUPTION:
1) Dead bodies tend to deteriorate and decay. They fall apart, lose their consistency, begin to rot and smell.
John 11:39 Martha said to Jesus about Lazarus, ‘It is too late, already he stinks. He has been dead for four days’.
Wasn’t too late for the Power of God.
The only difference between one sinner and another is the state of their decay.
One may be a lost derelict on skid row, a drug dealer, a bar owner while another may be the head of some charity.
One corpse is as dead as another and Paul is stating that without Jesus God sees our world as one vast graveyard.
4. Two elements involved in our death which describe the condition
into which we were born in this world.: dead in your trespasses and
sins
a. TRESPASSES: basic meaning is ‘to miss your step, to deviate, to
go in the wrong direction’.
Idea of someone losing their way and straying from the right way or even of a person who beginning to slip fails to grasp what could have broken his fall.
1) It is a failure to reach the goal we ought to have reached:
Looking at God’s design of the universe and refusing to acknowledge Him.
Seeing the wickenness in our own lives and refusing to recognize it as offensive to God.
It is having His truth shared with us and demanding control of our own lives.
b. SINS: basic meaning is ‘to miss the mark’.
This word was actually used in an English Archery game.
They would put a hoop on top of a pole and each man would take a quiver full of arrows and attempt to shoot through the hoop one at a time.
If any man should miss the hoop, then he was called a SINNER. He would have to treat the rest of the fellows to a drink because he was the SINNER. He missed the mark
Problem with that game is that there was only one loser. Fact is that ‘all have sinned and missed the mark, fallen short’.
HANNIBAL this past year they blew the bridge across the Mississippi River.
What was left was a short extension that ended like a diving board. What if we had a CONTEST: Jumping to ILLINOIS.
Take as long a run at it as you like(Some spend a lifetime trying to impress God with their lives).
Some among us might extend out 20-30 feet. Others might trip and roll off the side.
NONE would jump the ¼ mile distance.
Some might be more religious, more moral, more kind to their fellow man but none can match God ‘s righteousness. ALL FALL SHORT
That is our condition: DEAD, CONDEMNED, Without the power to help ourselves.
DECLARE OUR CONDITION
DESCRIBE OUR COMBATANTS (2) 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.
1. Paul gives us not only a Declaration of our Condition before
Christ but also a Description of our Combatants.
a. What was true about us: What elements were at work
to steer our lives in the direction they went?
Word for ‘meander’. That is a good description of the life of a lost person.
When you see a person walking you assume they are headed somewhere and have a purpose in mind.
A ‘meandering’ person is sort of wandering through life, following the easiest path, just existing without real purpose: What’s on TV, What new movies are out, what is the current fad or fashion, what do I feel like doing.
ROOT WORD FOR WEATHER VANE: Whichever way the wind is blowing I will point my life. Just flow along. Everybody is doing it so why not I?
A godly person realizes that any dead fish can float down stream, meander, but it takes life to fight the current, God’s power.
2. Three Powers at work to keep us on a meandering path:
a. WORLD: According to the course of this world
1) The world system that Paul says in Rom 12 puts pressure on us and tries to squeeze us into it’s molt. Pressure to conform, march in step, be politically right
2) Not just in what we wear but in how we think.
b. DEVIL: according to the prince of the power of the air
1) he is a prince: his royal heighness or royal hind end.
2) He has power: Eph 6 ‘our battle is not against flesh and blood but against..rulers…powers. ..dominions’
3) His power is restricted: power of the air.
Air permeates all that surrounds us yet except in LA it is invisible and yet constantly effecting us.
a) he was once a high angel in heaven but now has been cast down and this world is his realm, his arena of battle.
b) NICE IRONY: Paul told the church in Thessalonica that when Christ returns we will be ‘caught up in the air to meet Him’. Devil Turf
c. FLESH: of the spirit that is now working in the sons of
disobedience
1) Air not only surrounds us but is in us.
Satan’s stock and trade is disobedience to God and those who follow him propogate that behavior.
They and the devil are on the same frequency, living out the same life purpose and striving for the same goals.
satan is behind all the fads and fashions of this world.
He orchestrates the course and flow of the world by manipulating the hearts of the children of disobedience. Whose side are you on?
SHOW ME YOUR HEROES AND I’LL SHOW YOU YOUR HEART. Who do you think has it all going? Who do you try to imitate? Who inspires you?
· Two more truths about our condition outside of Christ
· This morning I Declared our Condition without Christ (dead in our trespasses and sins) and I also Described our Combatants(world – flesh – devil).
Tonight I want to Divulge our Conduct and then consider
our Deliverance through Christ.
See some crazy things in the country but one man was driving down a dirt road and saw something interesting:
A Turtle on a fencepost.
Whenever you see a turtle on a fencepost then you know the turtle didn’t get there all by himself.
Paul is showing us in our passage today how we didn’t just end up being a Christian. It is not in us to climb a fencepost:
God found us in a helpless condition and raise us up to unbelievable heights in Christ.
DIVULGE OUR CONDUCT (3) Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh,
indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
1. Part of the process of salvation is always getting honest
with God about ourselves. It is in taking ownership of
our sin.
2. Paul changes his pronouns from ‘you’ to ‘we’.
The point is that this is true of all of us,
of Jews like Paul and Gentiles like the Ephesians,
of pagans and religious people.
‘We too all….’
a. We have to include ourselves in this as well.
3. Consider some of the ugly things Paul says about us.
a. LIFESTYLES: Lived in…
1) Place of residence – City of ME – Citizen Self
Literally ‘turn to and fro, pace one end to other
and turn around for return trip..’
2) The lusts of our flesh: The flesh is that which God has created but has become twisted by sin. Proper desires are taken to offensive extremes outside the perimeters of God’s will.
3) Indulged(CONSTRUCT, gave permission to, make into a new experience) the desires of the flesh and of the mind:
a. This divides the passions of the flesh into two
subdivisions: Flesh & Mind.
Sin is not just about what you do but about what you think. Mind can run in sinful directions without every carrying it out with your body.
Sometimes we sin in deed but other times our mind just entertains itself with sinful thoughts. PERMISSION GIVEN
Bible says, ‘take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’ DON’T LET IT RUN WILD, WITHOUT RESTRAINT
b. DESIRES: really the word ‘will’. Your strong will to do or think something. Give permission to the desires to express themselves in the mind or body.
Our closest English word would be the word ‘DRIVE’.
That is when a normal God-given desires(food/rest/sex) becomes sin is when it DRIVES US, controls us to the point of harm.
Give permission to these drives to construct our life experiences.
Paul Harvey told a story about how an Eskimo kills a wolf.
He takes a sharp knife and coats the blade with animal blood.
Allows it to freeze. Then adds another layer. Freeze. Another layer. Freezes it. Until the knife is completely concealed by frozen blood.
NEXT, he fixes the handle into the ground with the blade up.
A wolf will follow his sensitive nose to the blood frozen on the blade and he begins to lick at it. Tasting the blood he licks faster and faster, more and more vigorous, harder and harder.
So great becomes his craving that the wolf does not notice when he his no longer licking the blood of the blade but now he is being satisfied by his own warm blood.
The Eskimo will find him dead by the dawn.
THAT IS PAUL’S PICTURE OF US AND WE DON’T LIKE IT!
Sin begins to enslave us and conquer us until it begins to destroy all the is precious to us and all the potential for God we once had.
Where does such ugliness come from.
b. LIFESOURCE:
1) By nature children of wrath: Lot’s of argument in theological circles about the doctrine of original sin. Debates in our seminaries(SF Rescue Mission) PAUL COULDN”T BE MORE CLEAR. We sin because we have a SIN NATURE.
a) Way we were born and the way we are without Christ.
Nothing we can do: education can’t free us, legislation can’t change us, enviroment won’t make any difference.
NO ESCAPE.
2) All this adds up to one desperate position: CHILD OF WRATH.
On the road to judgment, enslaved by our passions, manipulated by the devil, in the mold of the world.
A PITIFUL PICTURE but for two simple words.
Two words that make all the difference in life.
BUT GOD
From a child of wrath to a child of God.
DECLARE OUR CONDITION DESCRIBE OUR COMBATANTS DIVULGE OUR CONDUCT
OUR DELIVERANCE THROUGH CHRIST
(4) But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, (5) Even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ(by grace you have been saved),
1. RECOGNIZE OUR REMEDY
a. WHY GOD DID IT: rich in mercy…His great love
1) What Paul has described could not be less lovable but unbelievably God loved us. Even while we were dead in our transgressions…
b. WHAT GOD DID: made us alive together with Christ
1) Only two words in Greek: Made us alive together with is all one word. He ENLIVENED US
We couldn’t have been more dead but now we couldn’t be more alive: God’s life in us. AMEN
HOW DO YOU KNOW IT HAS HAPPENED.
Prayer you prayed? Pew you jumped?
Ray Stedman said that after many years in the ministry he has learned to look for a certain sign which almost invariably manifests that a person has truly come to Christ: Self-centeredness ends.
Want someone else to know, want to pray for someone else’s need, want to serve somebody else. SIGN OF GOD’S LIFE IN US
It is no longer all about me but about loving others in Christ.
2. REJOICE IN OUR RAISING (6) and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the Heavenly places in Christ Jesus, (7) So that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
a. POSSIBILITIES: Compare verses 6-7 to where we started. Lazarus in the tomb smelling compared to John 12:1-2
where a resurrected Lazarus is sitting in the presence of Jesus.
Physically my body exists here on earth but positionally I not only have an advocate at the right hand of God but I myself am there also.
THE AUTHORITY OUT OF WHICH MY LIFE IS LIVED.
b. PURPOSE: To show all of eternity something really
special.
1) Word for Show is often used in legal terminology.
It is that final piece of astounding evidence that closes
the case.
2) My life, your life, are meant to be EXHIBIT A to prove ‘the surpassing riches of grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus’.
3) Considering the condition God found us in and the Position God brings us to in Christ it should say something beyond belief for all time.
Second year of the Civil War an informer in a prison camp disappeared. The Commander ordered that 10 men would be shot in reprisal.
One of those men was William Humphries, a husband and father of many children. Hearing that Humphries was to die a young man named Hiram Smith came forward explaining that he was unmarried and without family. He asked permission to die in Humphries place.
IF you go to the cemetery at the Mount Pleasant Church in Mount Salem you will find a stone inscripted, ‘This monument is dedicated to the memory of Hiram Smith. The hero who sleeps beneath the sod here was shot, October 17, 1862, as a substitute for William T. Humphriey, my father’. How much more honor to God?
Found without hope – powerless –good as dead
BUT GOD sent Jesus: Rich in Mercy, great in Love
He took our place which demonstrates to us and to a lost world Who God really is and Who we should daily proclaim Him to be!
