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For those of you who say hi to me on the way out this morning, you might notice that I have some casual shoes on. I came in from the parking lot and I thought I had a rock in my shoe. Actually, my shoes were disintegrating, so I went back home and changed shoes.
So I'm just alerting the fashion police in case that becomes an issue later. Normally, I would be the fashion police, but that's a whole other deal. But you know what? It was great because on the way home, I was praying and I just thought, you know what, I'm just going to turn on some Christian radio and maybe get a little preaching and think about it.
And what a blessing. Here I turned it on and I heard about how a sinner is much like a child playing in the street. And God is the picture of a girl in a white dress with flowers. And the boy in the street throws dirt on this girl who has the flowers and she doesn't get mad.
She gives him a flower. I thought that is horrible. That is so demeaning to the gospel. That's so demeaning to God. Then I get home, I change my shoes, I get back in the car, I turn on the radio again.
I don't know why. And I hear the gospel described, receiving Christ, being forgiven of every sin you've ever committed as, quote, the best deal ever. This isn't a car. It's not laundry soap. And then another guy gets on the same station and says that, he says, it's like Jesus took all the wrong notes.
He's a musician. He says, it's like he took all the wrong notes I ever played in my life and turned them into a beautiful song. Exactly. Listen, they aren't wrong notes. They're not mistakes. God doesn't turn them into a beautiful song.
What he does is he gives you spiritual life. Now, I don't know about you, but when I read the Bible, I never think, you know what? Somebody made this up. A bunch of guys, thousands of years ago, even though they died and lived at separate times, they all got together and somehow conspired to put together the Bible.
I hear that argument, but you know why I never believe it? I never believed for a second. A couple of reasons. One is, first of all, the Bible says what? It's inspired by God. It's not made up by men.
It's inspired by God. And men wrote it who were moved along by the Spirit of God. But secondly, if I just think about it using what is not so common, some common sense, I am certain of two things. No group of men in the ancient world could have written a document that would stand the test of time and the scrutiny of unbelieving scholars who mercilessly tear every bit of it apart, looking for conflicts and errors.
Secondly, that no one would write a book, or more correctly, 66 books in our English Bibles, that so thoroughly paints mankind and even themselves, the writers of these books, as much more than slightly imperfect.
These are not pretty good people that we see in the Bible. They are sinful, sometimes horribly sinful. And in terms of religion, there is no religion in the world other than biblical Christianity that does not simply tell people to reform themselves.
That their eternal destiny lies either within themselves, that they are somehow God, or in their ability to keep a set of rules. If you just do this, and this, and this, and don't do that, and that, and that, your reward will be great.
And you know what? If we are not careful as Christians, we can do exactly the same thing. We can turn Christianity into a list of do's and don'ts. I joke about it sometimes. When God saved and we started going as a family to Grace Community Church, and the kids would bicker or whatever, we came up with a list of Sunday rules.
We don't do this on Sunday and we don't do that on Sunday. Why? Not because we had a set of Sunday rules, but to point out the absolute hypocrisy and the ludicrous nature of having a set of rules of things that we do on some days and we don't do on others.
Do's and don'ts. Christianity is not a list, it is a lifestyle. It is surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But we can make it seem as if the grace of God is somehow applied to us after all we can do.
That's Mormonism. We can make it like somehow we, of our own free will, choose to stop sinning, choose to stop rebelling, choose to love God, choose to obey Christ. And you know what? It's so predictable.
I remember when I first got saved and I got involved in an evangelism program at Grace Community Church and we would go out and people would turn in cards. This was a great program, had a few problems, and I'll tell you one of them.
They would fill out these cards when they visited the church and it said, I want to be visited. So six months later, without calling them or anything, we would show up at their door. So we'd catch people going out to a nightclub, whatever they were doing, and we'd just say, hey, we're from Grace Community Church.
Can we talk to you for a minute? Oh, sure, but I'm kind of busy. Okay, I can see that. But can I ask you if you're a Christian? And so many times they would say, well, yes, I am. And then we would say, well, if you were to die tonight and appear before God and he were to ask you, why should I let you into my heaven, what would you say?
And the number of times that we would hear this, one of these three responses is remarkable. Either I'm a good person, I've never done anything really bad, or the good I've done far outweighs the bad.
Now, each of those individual statements, when they said them, they could be true. Maybe they were good people in some sense compared to their neighbor maybe. Maybe they'd never done anything really bad.
Maybe the good they've done far outweighs the bad, but that's not the issue. That is nothing like biblical Christianity. And it's not surprising that so many people, even churchgoers, would be confused about this.
Over the past several decades, the very foundations of the Christian faith have been jettisoned, have been thrown overboard in favor of Christianity light. Let's face it, preaching, teaching about sin is not marketable.
It doesn't sell books, it doesn't attract crowds, and it is not a popular topic to talk about in church. First of all, unbelievers don't want to be reminded of their standing before a holy God. People who are marked by lifestyle of sin don't want to hear about how they're going to stand before a holy God and stand judgment before him.
They don't want to hear about the reality of hell. They want Jesus, but they want one who just simply solves their problems, gives them a better life, makes them happy, and demands nothing. It's easy.
It's fire insurance. But praise God, his word has not changed. It proclaims what the world does not want to hear. And by the grace of God, I hope to proclaim that to you this morning. My purpose this morning is simple, and please open your Bibles to Ephesians 2.
Ephesians chapter 2. My purpose this morning is simple. You cannot understand the holiness of God in spite of Mike's 2 and maybe 3, 4, or 5 weeks in Isaiah 6, or the electing purpose of God in spite of 9 weeks there, if you do not understand who you used to be.
To be clear, sin so pervaded your actions, thoughts, and even your being, that there was no part of you that did not bear the mark of sin. Without a firm grasp of what you have been saved from, yourself, your natural inclination towards sin, your inability to keep the law of God or to please him in any way, you will never, never fully appreciate the wonder of salvation.
What is that wonder of salvation? That a thrice holy God would choose to save a wretch like you and like me. You will never grasp the fullness of the good news until you grasp the fullness of the bad news.
When you go out and evangelize, if you tell people, Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, they might listen. If you go out and tell people, you are bound for hell because you are a sinner, and you will stand before a holy God and he will judge each and every sin, you probably won't get many listeners.
But they have to understand that. Now you can couch it in different ways, but unless you say, listen, this is you, this is who you are, this is the reality of your life, they can't be saved. You don't get saved because one day you wake up and think, you know what, I'm going to attack Jesus Christ onto my life.
You wake up, spiritually speaking, you recognize with horror the sin that you have committed against the holy God. You long to be forgiven. And listen, when you are forgiven, it's not like, oh, you know, I'm so glad I don't have to worry about going to hell anymore.
Your life has changed. You have a joy that cannot be measured. Why? Because you knew you were a sinner. Somebody told you about it and they gave you the answer and you flee to the cross. Ephesians 2, verse 1.
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 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, 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. This is just a remarkable passage set here after just a great chapter, chapter one.
And here we have this text that tells us who we used to be looking at verse one. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. Again, what makes this so remarkable? You were dead in your trespasses and sins.
What makes it amazing is what's just come before it. Paul just spent all of chapter one in an explosion of praise because of the great work of the Trinity and saving the souls of Christians. You know this, but chapter one, verses three to 14, one sentence in the Greek, over 200 words, and it is like Paul just starts to write this letter and he can't contain himself.
He wants to praise God because he's thinking about salvation and the great work of God in salvation. In fact, he gives praise to God in verse three of chapter one for every spiritual blessing. In verses four, five, and six of chapter one, he praises God for election, for predestination, for adoption by God.
In verses seven and eight, he praises God for redemption of sinners and the forgiveness of sin. In verses nine and ten, he praises God for the mystery of God's plan to sum up everything in his son, Jesus Christ.
And in verses 11 to 14, he praises God for the assurance of the believer's inheritance. He spends all that time talking about the great work of God, and then he starts chapter two, and he says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
I mean, we could talk more about chapter one, about how he talks about Christ being seated and all the blessings that are ours in Christ. But it's interesting that after all that, after the lofty praise that he gives God, he starts out chapter two and says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
Now, the Greek word for dead is nekros, and it means, I looked this up, it means dead. Yeah, you'll be blessed by that. What happened, though? Why was Paul so lofty, and why did he go from such high praise to talking about dead?
You were dead in your sins and trespasses. Did he lose his train of thought? Did he become confused? Did he think, you know, enough of that good stuff, let's start talking about the bad stuff? Is there some logical break here?
The answer is no. May it never be. If we view all the praise for what it is, a burst of thankfulness, and we get to chapter two, verse one, and we look at it, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins, this is like a flashback.
He says, look how great our salvation was, and you know why it was so great? It was so great because you couldn't do anything about it. You were dead. Nothing. Dead. John Calvin said this, the lofty terms in which he, Paul, extols the grace of God towards the Ephesians are intended to rouse their hearts to gratitude, to set them all on flame, to fill them even to overflowing with this thought.
They who make divine goodness the subject of earnest meditation will never embrace new doctrines by which the very grace they feel so powerfully is thrown into the shade. In other words, if you understand your deadness, your inability to do anything, then you will, as you read chapter one, you will go, what a great God who has saved me when I could not do this for myself.
Now notice it says you were dead. You didn't become dead. You didn't die. Were, the word were, is a participle, and it indicates an ongoing condition. And if we study this scripturally, and we will for a moment, you were dead from the very moment you were born.
When you're born physically, you are spiritually dead. You are dead in your trespasses and sins. Before salvation, the Ephesians and every single believer, dead. Dead in trespasses, which is a deviation from living according to what has been revealed as the right way to live.
In other words, here's the straight line that we are to walk, and we veer. We just kind of wander all over the place. Much like a drunken man trying to do one of those tests I used to give. Sins, sins, what is that?
It's simply failing to meet the standard of God. But this deadness is clearly spiritual deadness, as is evidenced by Paul's just concluded praise in chapter one. Bringing, for God, bringing the Ephesians to spiritual life.
He gives them spiritual life. Now, what does it mean to be spiritually dead? Here, it wasn't too long ago, I had one of the Pharaoh boys up here on a one-a-night, and I told him to be dead, and I threw a sheet over him, and I said, you know, now your job is to be dead.
And, of course, right away he started giggling and everything, and I'm going, now dead people can't giggle. And I said, are you okay under there? And he said, yes, and I'm going, you can't answer, you're dead.
But what can a dead person do? Being dead is simply an inability to respond to anything. You have no capacity to do it. You can't go to the graveyard and, you know, you're not Jesus, you can't say, arise.
And this deadness, this inability to respond to the things of God, manifests itself in three ways. Three aspects of deadness. First, this condition of being dead in sins and trespasses, trespasses and sins, is universal.
Every single person suffers from it. Romans 5, verse 12. I'm going to be going through a lot of verses this morning, so if you want to just jot down a note or two, that's fine, but I don't expect you to flip around because you will wear out your Bible.
Romans 5, 12. Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered into the world, and death through sin. And so death spread to all men, because all sinned. This is a doctrine known as original sin, and what this verse would tell us is that sin entered the world through Adam.
Adam was our representative, our head, as it were. And we say, well, you know, couldn't we have an election and pick somebody else to be our representative because Adam really blew it? No. In God's sovereignty, in his choice, he chose Adam.
He formed and made Adam, and guess what? Adam had an advantage that we don't have. Adam was created perfect and had no sin nature. He had a free, truly free will. He wasn't pulled one way or the other.
He chose to sin. And because of his choice, every single one of his progeny, and by progeny, that means children, successors, us, we have a sin nature. No one escapes this spiritual death. We are born dead in our trespasses and sins.
When we look at little babies, even Faith Binney, did you ever look at her and just think, oh, what a cute little bundle of sin, of rampant rebellion against God. Well, that's the truth. Every single child comes into this world literally an enemy of God.
It's a shocking concept, but it's true. I mean, I've said this a million times, but who teaches a baby how to be selfish? Who does that? And the answer is you don't have to teach them anything about that.
They know. We come into this world bent on pleasing ourselves. So this spiritual death is universal. Second, the spiritually dead person is in bondage. They are in bondage. Romans 6, verses 16 to 18 says, Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
Listen. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
Notice the stark terminology. You were slaves of sin. No one ever volunteered to become a slave of sin. You were born that way. And sin is not freedom. Look, it says you were freed from sin. The burden and the chains that once were obvious have been broken.
You've been set free by the Lord. Another verse on the slavery of sin, 2 Timothy 2, 24 to 26. The Lord's bond servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.
Paul writes this letter to Timothy to tell him how to run a local church. And it's not just about the sovereignty of God and salvation, even though that's indicated here. It says that God grants repentance.
But it shows how Satan uses sin to hold captive those who are enslaved to it. In verse 26, the idea of, or the verb, come to their senses has the idea of becoming sober. So deluding is the influence of sin that it is like a perpetual state of drunkenness.
Just as a drunk cannot perform certain actions, an unsaved person, one who is enslaved to sin, cannot choose to be freed from the power of sin. Listen, if you've seen anybody drunk in your life, and probably many of you have, and you ask them, you know, would you like to walk a straight line?
Many of them will say, oh, I can do that. Can you recite the alphabet backwards? Whatever we would have them do. Count to ten backwards. Oh, yeah, absolutely, I can do that. And then watch them do it.
It can't be done. The power of sin is all pervasive. It is, in fact, slavery. They don't have a freedom of mind. They are a slave to it. Spurgeon said this. And if God does require of the sinner, dead in sin, that he should take the first step, then he requires, God requires, just that which renders salvation impossible under the gospel, as ever it was under the law.
Seeing man is as unable to believe as he is to obey, and is just as much without power to come to Christ as he is without power to go to heaven without Christ. In other words, we can say, we might just as well say, go to heaven as believe.
The unsaved person has no inherent ability to believe. He has no inherent ability to obey. He has no inherent ability to repent. The power of sin is so strong, the Bible describes them as dead. Now, let me be even more clear about this.
I am not saying, nor does the Bible say, that everyone is as bad, as sinful as they could possibly be. You could have people that, by our standards, by the world's standards, they could be upright citizens who do things that are good in the community, who serve the community, who just seem to be regular people, doing their thing, not hurting anyone.
That's not the issue. The issue is what's in the heart. And their heart is set on, not the things of God, but on pleasing themselves. The sinfulness of man, this deadness in sin, does not mean that everyone sins as often or as grossly as possible.
It simply means they do not and cannot obey or please God. So it's universal. It's all pervasive. And third, the condition of spiritual deadness is terminal. And you say, well, logically, how can a dead person die?
Well, Romans 6 .23 says, for the wages of sin is death. And this does not mean that we will simply die physically, but that we, if not for the grace of God, are bound for an eternity of spiritual death, subject to the wrath of a thrice holy God for all of eternity.
The wages of sin, in other words, what somebody earns for a life filled with rebellion against God, of literally being God's enemy, as Romans 5 would tell us, is an eternity not apart from God, as we hear so often preached, but with only one aspect of God, one attribute of God, the unvarnished, unrestrained wrath of God poured out eternally on that soul forever in hell.
That's a sobering thought. Try preaching that. Try walking up to somebody and say, would you really want to be exposed to the wrath of an all-powerful God for eternity in hell? Start a conversation like that.
See how it goes. But when we understand God's holiness, his otherliness, his separation from sin, his complete unwillingness to abide even the slightest sin, we have to marvel at the depth of his forgiveness, his mercy, and his love.
Let's go to verse 2. My wife often says I spend too much time on point one or point two, and the last time I preached she said, you didn't really have a point. And I said, well, that wasn't true. I really only had one point.
I didn't think I needed to stress it. And today, you know what? I have one point two. Not one point two, but one point also. And I really want us to get our minds around this concept of the sinfulness of man, who we used to be in this sense.
We can intellectually understand that God is holy, that he's separate from sin. But that kind of loses a little something if we don't understand the vast gap that exists between a holy God and a sinful man.
As high as we could possibly imagine and as low as we could possibly imagine doesn't even begin to describe the gap that exists. Verse two. 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.
Paul notes that a change has taken place in the lives of the Ephesians. They were dead in their trespasses and sins, and now he notes that they formerly walked or lived as the world would. The word walked gives testimony to the totality of the conduct of those dead in sin.
It was the end all and be all of their lives. People who sin, that's all they know how to do. What does the Bible tell us? Without faith it is impossible to please God, it is impossible to obey him. Sinners sin because they don't do things to the glory of God.
These people are not focused on eternity, but on the here and now. This is the way of the world. Believers used to live in that world system. They did, you did, we all did. Did what the world does. 1 Corinthians 6, verses 9 to 11.
Paul writing the church at Corinth, a church that had many problems, says this. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
And here's the key, verse 11. I mean that's a horrible list of sins we would say. Verse 11. Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God.
You know, it just, as I went to this passage, I just said, you know, Christians are so quick to pull out lists like this and say, look, these are the people who will not go to heaven. And what about homosexuals?
And what about these people? And what about all this? And look at these words. Such were some of you. Well, there are a lot of implications there, but one is this. That list of sinners, all of them, can what?
Can be forgiven. We've all sinned in many ways, but thanks be to God that He is not simply a judge. Imagine that. Imagine if God was just in heaven going, I see that sin, boom! Hell. How long would we last?
I would venture to say that the entire human race would have been about, you know, two minutes in existence. Adam and Eve would have sinned, and then after the next sin, that's it. I don't think any of us would be here.
God is not just a judge, but He is a Savior. Notice further in verse 2, believers used to be followers of Satan. They lived, they walked according to the prince of the power of the air. Every believer formerly walked in the ways of the world and was a disciple of the prince of the power of the air.
Now, Satan and his demons, sometimes, and this really boggles my mind because so many people are so concerned about Satan and his demons. You know what? I'm concerned about them too, but I don't really know where they are, and I don't really worry about them.
They are not omnipresent. Satan is not everywhere. How do I know that? Because the Bible tells me that. It says he roams the world seeking for those he can devour. It says that he appears before God. It never says that Satan is everywhere, all over the place.
Where can I go from my presence? It's about God, not about Satan. Satan is not sovereign, but by virtue of having so many followers, so many disciples, being so in control of this world system, Satan certainly can be said to be the God small g of this age.
His influence is all around us. Certainly this is a sinful and fallen world. It's filled with sinful, fallen people. Believers used to be sons of disobedience. They were those who were in steady, what verse 2 says, they were those who were in steady and defiant opposition to God.
Now some people want to claim neutrality in all this. I'm not a follower of Satan. I'm not against God. I'm kind of neutral. Can you be lukewarm? Can you be neutral? Can you be agnostic? Does the Bible allow for that?
Bible would teach over and over again that you either love God, you either love his son or you hate him. In verse 2, that very concept of being a son of disobedience indicates you are in fact at war with God.
Rebellion against him. There is no neutrality. That whole idea is just a lie that people tell themselves to make themselves feel bitter about their sin. Verse 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.
As unbelievers, Paul writes, you used to live for the momentary desires of the flesh, those things that made you feel good and brought momentary happiness to you. Indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind.
Well, indulging is a Greek verb. It really means to make or to do. And literally, this phrase is doing the wishes of the flesh and of the mind. This is the very definition of hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure.
This is how the world lives. It is, in fact, the very definition of depravity, of sinfulness, of pleasing oneself and ignoring God. Now, the good news after that bad news is that even though every single person is dead, born dead in their sins and trespasses, they follow the worldly system, they're comfortable in their slavery to sin, they are disciples of Satan, and they rightly deserve the eternal wrath of God.
Verse four follows verse three, and it starts, and I'm not going to go into all of it, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. He makes sinners, those who hate him, alive.
And what's the result of the transforming work of Jesus Christ? What is the result of the cross of Jesus Christ? What is the result of the gift of faith that God provides? I have several aspects here.
First of all, God grants forgiveness of sin. Colossians 2 .13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him. Note this. Having forgiven us all our transgressions.
All of them. An absolute pardon for every sin ever committed by those who entrust their souls to the person and work of Jesus Christ. You can't hold anything back. Who is Jesus Christ? We know this well.
The second person of the Trinity, eternal God, who came to earth, was born to a virgin, was fully human, yet never ceased to be fully God. He obeyed every aspect of the law, a law designed to demonstrate the fact that you and I could never keep it.
He not only kept the law, but he never sinned in any way. Because he was God and man and never sinned, he alone could pay the price for the sins of others. We've learned that in 2 Corinthians 5 .21, but I want to move on.
First, God grants forgiveness. Secondly, God grants repentance. 2 Corinthians 7 .10. For the sorrow that is occurring to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world produces death.
Listen. You will often run into people during the course of your life who are depressed. They are upset. They feel guilty about the things that they've done. Believe me, I've met thousands of people who felt guilty about the things that they've done.
That's not the issue. The issue is, do they want to wallow in their guilt? Do they want to wallow in that? Or are they looking for forgiveness? Are they looking for repentance? Is the Holy Spirit so convicting them of their need of a Savior that they come to Christ?
It is God who gives a change of mind about who He is and who we are. That is what repentance is. It is saying, you've gone 200 miles an hour that way, chasing after everything that you ever wanted, and now God says, I want you to change your mind entirely and to pursue Me with even greater vigor.
God grants repentance. He also grants spiritual freedom. John 8, 34 -36. Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever.
The son does remain forever. So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed. Jesus talking about the slavery of sin. The bondage of sin. And only He has the power to break that. God grants spiritual freedom.
I marvel, and I want to be quick, but I marvel at this idea of 12-step programs, of turning your life over to higher power and everything else. Nothing else in life can set you free, the Bible would tell us, except for Jesus Christ, belief in Him and His deliverance.
Fourthly, God grants absolute deliverance. Colossians 1, verses 12 -14 Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Listen, He delivered us from where we deserve to be in this kingdom of darkness, being ruled and reigned over by Satan, and He didn't just put us anywhere, He put us into the kingdom of His beloved Son.
We have been transferred, we received an unbelievable promotion, as it were. You can't even imagine the difference between being in that house of slavery, in that house, that domain of darkness, and then being transferred into the kingdom of His beloved Son.
Fifthly, God grants eternal life. Romans 6 -23 I read part of it earlier, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. And I even heard it on the radio today, you know, just receive this free gift, that's all you have to do.
Well, here's the problem, can a dead person even stick out his hand and say, give me that free gift? The answer is no. He must be given spiritual life by God. Yes, it is a free gift. What does that mean?
It means that there's nothing we can do on our own to qualify ourselves for it. It is an absolute free gift of God, but He gives it, and He makes us willing to receive it. Sixthly, God grants hope. Every believer has hope.
1 Peter 1 -3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
A living hope. Let me tell you something, understanding who you were, understanding what God has done, and what He has promised you, you have a hope that no one can take away. When Peter wrote this, and I'm going to be talking more about 1 Peter in the weeks and months that follow here, but when Peter wrote this, his basic point was this, no matter the circumstances in your life, you have eternity with God.
You have a blessing that cannot be taken away. You have hope, because these difficult times that we live in, no matter how bad it gets, are nothing compared to the surpassing greatness of what awaits us.
All right, seventh. God grants us everything we need for this life. 2 Peter 1 -3 Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.
We want, we struggle with things, we look for answers all over the place, whether it's in, I talked about this last week in Sunday school, psychology, whatever the places are that we look, whether it's new books, like whatever that book is, The Promise, which is nothing new, it's just new age packaging, or repackaged, but there are so many different places that people go looking for help, and look at this, God has granted us some things pertaining to life and godliness, some of the answers, He's given us some things that are helpful, or He's given us everything pertaining to life and godliness.
The Word of God stands, and God says that He has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness. We need not look for answers outside of the Word of God. Also, God grants His constant presence within us.
We have the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 6 .19 says that the Holy Spirit resides in us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Also, God grants us the promise that He will not lose us. Our salvation is secure, John 6 .39 and 40.
Tell us, Jesus says that of all that the Father has given Him, He will lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. He has also granted us, you and me, those who used to be dead, positions as His personal ambassadors.
2 Corinthians 5 .18 says this,. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. What does this mean? This means that we have the responsibility, the obligation to entreat to beg, to urge people to come to Christ.
God grants us the promise of being transformed. 1 John 3 .2 says that we will be like Christ, because we will see Him just as He is. God also grants eternity with Him, and freedom from sin, sorrow, pain, and even tears, in Revelation 21.
Many other promises. So what do we do? Again, what is greater than thinking about the Word of God in your life? What brings more joy to you than thinking about how He took you who did not love Him and gave you a love for Him?
How He transferred you from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light? How He has caused you to be spiritually alive, to be able to understand the Word of God, to rejoice with God's people, to look at even the baptisms, to see, to hear the people who have had their lives changed and to rejoice in that?
Now, why did God save you? Why did God save anybody? Because they were good? No, we've seen that's not true. We've seen that every person starts out dead in their sins and trespasses, an enemy of God, enslaved to sin, and unable to free themselves.
So why? For His glory. That's what Ephesians 1 is all about. God did it. He saves people who need saving. Why? Because it is right and good for Him to receive the glory. Now, what if you're sitting here this morning and you're convicted that you are still dead in your trespasses and sins?
Is there any hope for you? Absolutely. But only in Christ Jesus. The Bible is clear. The Word of God is not hidden. Man is sinful. Man cannot save himself. And no one, as I said in the beginning, no one would make up a religion like that.
Every religion in the world has some solution, something that you can do apart from faith, apart from belief, apart from turning your life completely over to Christ. And that is why the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
It's too simple. It's too easy. There must be more that we can do. Mankind longs for a long list of things that they can do. But the Bible says that you can be saved only one way. By the intervention of God who supernaturally changes the desires of dead and lost sinners, giving them spiritual life, causing them to be born again, taking out their hearts of stone and giving them hearts of flesh, turning them from rebels into loyal sons and daughters of God.
That, friend, is the gospel. That is why the bad news is so important because you cannot get to the good news unless you understand the bad news. You cannot preach the gospel. You cannot hope to see God transform lives until those people know where they are.
Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, what a blessing it is to think that You transform lives and that only You can transform lives. How we deserve nothing from You, that we had nothing to offer, that we were spiritually dead, Lord, but You, even as Your Word says, gave us life.
You brought us to spiritual life. Father, I think about the many, many of us here who have family, friends, dear ones who don't know You. Lord, would this just be a day of hope, even as we consider what You have done in our own lives, Lord, knowing that there is nobody, no one beyond Your reach.
Lord, You bring the dead to life. All power with regard to spiritual transformation resides in You. You can speak a soul back into spiritual life as easily as You spoke the universe into life. Father, would You be pleased to use us to preach the gospel?
Would You be pleased to bring about the circumstances in the lives of those we love so dearly who do not know You? Father, would You convict them of sin? Would You convict them of their need for a Savior?
And Lord, for anyone here this morning who does not know You, I would pray that You would grant them forgiveness as well. Grant them new life in Christ Jesus. Grant them a hope that cannot be taken away.
Father, would You just drive each one of us to reflect on Your goodness to us? A holy God condescending to sinful man. A living God condescending to dead men to give them newness of life. In Christ's name we pray, amen.