You Were Dead...but God - Part A

We were DOA, dead on arrival. As soon as we were born into this world, we were dead. That is separated from God because of sin.

Now that's an important thing to get in our little heads. Unbelievers aren't just sick, they're dead. They lack the capacity to respond to stimuli, in this case spiritual stimuli. So that's important because it shows us they don't need a self-help course.

They don't need a personality adjustment. They need salvation. They need a divine but God moment. Life without Christ may seem like enough at times, but ultimately there is no true hope and joy for the future, especially in the face of death. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip talks about the reality of life without Christ and the joy of living your life with Him. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will help you build your knowledge of who God is and inspire you to follow Him more faithfully. I've noticed that almost every problem that a person has in their life stems from an inadequate view of God. Skip's new book is our thanks when you give $35 or more today to help keep this ministry on the air.

Call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com. Okay, we're in Ephesians chapter 2 as Skip Heitzig starts today's study. I want to talk to you a little bit about your growth, your spiritual journey, the path that you are on and some of the steps that you have taken in that journey. You know, when we were babies, we couldn't move and life was very, very primitive for us. I know you can't remember that far back. None of us can.

But when you were born, you were basically held and carried to different places. You really couldn't do much. You drooled and you kind of bobbled your head. You didn't have much strength in that either for a while. And you were only focusing about as far as your eyes to your mother's face.

That's about all that you could focus on initially. But then you grew. Then you got strength in those neck muscles. You were able to move a little bit better and your eyes were able to focus on objects further than your mother's face. You could see down the hall and as soon as you saw those objects, you wanted to get to them.

You did. So you were put on the floor and you managed to crawl your way over to them. But then you kept growing. And eventually you were able to stand up and you took your first step, which was an abysmal failure, by the way, because you fell down as soon as you took it. But you got up again and you took another step and soon you were able to walk. You were making progress. And before long, you were able to walk well. You were able to run. Then you were able to ride a bicycle. And then several years later, that once helpless creature is now behind the wheel of an automobile.

You got a driver's license and sky's the limit. Now that's normal development. It's normal human development to go through different stages and phases.

And we applaud that and we only get worried when that doesn't happen or if that is delayed. So the first words you ever said were probably not much more than that or maybe something else, but not much different than that. And as soon as you said that weird sound, your parents were so excited that you are talking now. You said a word.

Nobody knows what that word is, but you said it and your parents were excited. Now, if you were to say that word at age 25 to your parents, they would get greatly worried because they would expect much more development than just that single little monosyllabic blah. Well, we also have spiritual growth.

And there are certain steps that every spiritual person ought to be taking toward maturity. I want you to consider that today. I read something that got my attention this week from the Barna Research Group.

You've heard me quote them over the years. They study the lifestyles and beliefs of Christians in different eras of our history. And the Barna Research Group noted that 9 out of 10 adults in our country say that their faith is very important to them. You just ask a person, how important is your faith? 9 out of 10 say very important. So they surveyed those 9 out of 10. And they surveyed them about how they would personally rate their own spiritual maturity. And they noted that most considered themselves to be above average in several areas of spiritual maturity. And that really got my attention because it made me realize that we are living either we are living in a country that has above average spiritual people, or we're not that great at self evaluating.

Maybe we're a little too generous of how mature we really are. Today, I'm going to ask you to consider and evaluate your own spiritual journey. Now we're doing a series and this is the last study in this series called but God and over the last about 10 weeks, we have noted God's ability to intercept a person's life and change their course. That's the whole premise behind the series but God, that he has the power to radically change how a person is at a certain point or for that matter, a nation is at a certain point and change their future. So we studied David, and how he was hated by Saul and hunted by Saul, but God, it says would not permit Saul to hurt him. We looked at the life of Joseph, mistreated by his brothers misunderstood and ignored by fellow prisoners, but God had a different plan for his life. We looked at the world, how at the time before the flood it had become so corrupt that God was practically forced to judge the world in a flood, but God remembered Noah. We looked at the nation of Israel through the lens of Nehemiah, how that prophet noted that Israel failed and because of their failure God allowed them to go into captivity in Babylon, but God is merciful to forgive. We looked at Jonah, how Jonah ran from God, ran from God's calling, but God got his attention, gave him a second chance and sent him to Nineveh. We noticed how Jacob came from a dysfunctional family, remember that?

But that God was able to function quite well in the midst of their dysfunction. We looked in Psalm 49 at death and how death is universal, common to all mankind, but God counteracts death with the promise of resurrection. Then we looked last time at the future through the lens of Daniel, how the future is uncertain to us, but well known to God and God reveals certain parts of the future to us. But now in Ephesians 2, we come to the last and the most personal of these studies because it's about your life. And I could, by looking at this chapter, there are four words that describe your life past, present and future. Four words, wandering, waking, watching, working.

Now there are many more steps, but time only allows us to look at these four major categories. You were wandering from God. Then the second is waking to God, then watching for God. And in the meantime, working with God. Let's at least get familiar with the passage in Ephesians chapter two, beginning in verse one. Paul said, And you he has made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Those 10 verses are the panorama of our salvation. They tell us about our past, our present, our future, and the steps of normal Christian development. I suppose if you wanted to give a title to Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 10, you could call it from the graveyard to glory, from the graveyard to glory, or if you prefer, from Death Valley to Graceland, and I don't mean Elvis's Graceland, but God's Graceland. So verses 1 through 3 explain what we're saved from, verse 4 through 10 explain what we're saved for. Now, one of the problems I face as a Bible expositor is I have the first 10 verses of Ephesians before me this morning, which deserve about an 8 to 10 week series in and of themselves that I could do, and you're going, yes, we know you could.

But I only have the time to sort of just Skip over so many of the details and just glance at some of the highlights, so I want to do that. I want to go through these phases with you, these stages, these steps and levels of development. And the first one is where you were before you met Jesus Christ. You were wandering from God, wandering from God. He says in verse 1, and you He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, but watch this, in once in which you once walked according to the course of this world. You were the walking dead.

Essentially, Paul says. We were DOA, dead on arrival. As soon as we were born into this world, we were dead. That is separated from God because of sin. That's an important thing to get in our little heads. Unbelievers aren't just sick, they're dead. They lack the capacity to respond to stimuli, in this case, spiritual stimuli. So that's important because it shows us they don't need a self-help course.

They don't need a personality adjustment. They need salvation. They need a divine but God moment and intervention. It means that you can put a person in school and they'll just come out a well-educated sinner. You can put a person in therapy and they'll come out a well-adjusted sinner. You can put a person in church and they'll come out a religious sinner.

It's only when you put a person in Christ that they are a saved sinner. Now, according to Paul the Apostle, and we don't have time to get into it, but in Romans 5, he said basically, it all started with one guy. His name was Adam. And when Adam sinned, he immediately died and began another process of dying.

Let me explain. God said, in the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely what? Die.

That's God's promise. So as soon as he took it and ate it, he died instantly spiritually. He was separated from his creator. He began the process of physical death at the same time. So in Romans 5, Paul says, through one man, that's Adam, death entered and it spread so that all have sinned. Death entered, sin entered, death spread. This is why an unbeliever cannot understand spiritual things apart from God revealing it to him, waking him up.

They can't do it. 1 Corinthians 1, the Apostle said, the natural man. Remember that phrase? It means who we are by nature. When you are born, you are born a natural man, a natural woman. The natural man does not understand spiritual things or the things of the spirit. They are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them. It's impossible for them to understand.

That's why an unbeliever says, yeah, you know, I read the Bible. I don't get it. I don't understand it. I can't understand it.

You're right. You can't any more than a corpse can understand something. You're dead. You lack the capacity to receive and react to stimuli. A corpse can't hear anything, can't see anything, can't feel anything, can't react to anything. I've been in enough funeral situations at funeral homes where I've been by the casket and I've been with a friend or a relative of the loved one and they're kind of talking about the loved one and they get kind of spooked. I don't think I should say that in front of him.

As if he can hear you. He cannot. He's dead. And a dead person can do nothing to improve their condition. You can't get less dead than somebody else.

There's maybe different phases of corruption. Put 20 corpses on a battlefield. They're all decaying at different rates, but they can't be any more dead.

Right? My mind goes back to Princess Bride and you know where I'm going with this? Where they go to Miracle Max and they said, my friend is dead. Oh, he's only mostly dead. And everybody knows there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. God says, you're all dead. That's why Jesus put it a very interesting way. He said, you must be born again.

Why did he use that terminology? Because he understood the concept of being spiritually dead. If you are dead, you need a new birth. You must be born again.

Now, what causes this death? Well, it's our nature. It's the sin nature. You are by nature the children of wrath or the children that incur wrath, God's wrath.

But look what it says. You, he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sin. Now, most of us know that sin, harmatia, means to miss the mark.

I've told you before that it's an archery term. You can aim at the target. You can miss nine of them.

Hit the last one right in the middle. You've fallen short. You're a sinner.

It's a common word in the New Testament used 173 times. You fall short. It's what you don't do. You don't make God's mark.

That's sin. A trespass is a different thing. A trespass is deliberate. Trespass means to cross a known boundary.

It's a willful act of disobedience. So, the first time Junior walks across your waxed floors out of ignorance, that's a sin. He didn't know.

You told him, so he will know. The second time he does it, that's a trespass because now he knows better, but he does it anyway. Or to put it in my own example, when I was a kid, my parents took me to Disneyland and it was shortly after it was originally built by Walt Disney. It wasn't that big, but I was so enamored with where I was that I wandered off where I shouldn't go. When I wandered off where I shouldn't go, that was a sin. I did it in ignorance.

But years later, as a teenager, an unsaved teenager you need to know, I climbed over the fence into Disneyland to get in by the Interstate 5 freeway and managed to get into It's a Small World. I was caught on camera and apprehended by the police. That was a trespass.

I knew better. And I was being apprehended while it's a small, small world. That was a trespass. So, he says, you were dead in trespasses and sins, but verse 2, you once walked according to the course of this world. You are a walking dead person. The word walked, peripateo, is the word used here in the Greek language, means to order your behavior.

That's what it means. You walked, you lived, you ordered your own behavior, you walked about or walked around. But one source suggests that it means to meander or to browse.

That it means to wander about loosely without a goal or a purpose. Have you ever gone into a store and bought something you really didn't need? You just say, well, I'll just look. You're window shopping.

Right? You're just sort of meandering. You're killing times. You walk into the store and you buy something. How did that happen? It's called browsing. You were just browsing and you browse your way into buying something.

Maybe somebody said, oh, that looks good on you. Or you need another one or whatever it was, you came out with that thing because you were browsing. Paul's point is you're just sort of browsing what the world had to offer up and down the shelves of the world without any goal or purpose. You were meandering. Remember what it says in the words of Isaiah, the prophet, all we like sheep have what? Gone astray. That's the natural human proclivity or propensity to go astray, to wander. And Paul says that's what you were like before you were saved. That's what all unsaved people are like right now.

Dead men walking, wandering. There was a guy named Robert Robinson who came to Jesus Christ at age 20, became a Methodist preacher and a songwriter. You'll know his song.

This is back in the seventeen hundreds. And he wrote a song, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. You know it. Tune my heart to sing thy praise.

But there's a line in it and every time we sing it, we go, yep, I know that to be true. Prone to wander. Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.

That is the human nature. Even after we're saved, we have that draw and that pull. But that's stage one, wandering from God.

Stage two, waking to God. Verse six. Here's our phrase. But God.

Love that. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Those two words. There they are again.

This little phrase, one of the most significant, eloquent, inspiring transitions in all of Holy Scripture. They appear 45 times. We've looked at just 10. 45 times. Two little words. Three letters each. So easy to say, but so, so significant in what happens after those words appear. James Montgomery Boice said, if we understand these two words, but God, they will save your soul. And Martin Lloyd-Jones noted, these two words in and of themselves contain the whole gospel of Christ. I would add to that and say these two words, but God, are part of the testimony of us all, of all y'all.

They're our testimony. You were sleeping the sleep of death until God woke you up. God woke you up.

He made us alive together. We all have a moment like that. We all have a but God moment. If you're a saved person, you have a moment.

I don't. I never got when people say, well, I've always been a, I've always walked with God. I've never known a time without him. Listen, there was some moment in your life where you realize I really need him.

This has to be real and personal. I'm going to make a decision that God has awoken to me to my need. And that's the but God moment for me.

It was that afternoon in San Jose that I told you about on a number of occasions when I was watching television in my brother's apartment. And I swore I wasn't going to cave in and get saved. And I found myself at the end of the broadcast praying to receive Christ.

It was my moment, my but God moment. That's Skip Heitzig with a message from the series, But God. Now here's Skip to share how you can keep this broadcast going strong, connecting you and many others to the Lord.

You know, we all have a past, a time when we tried to live life on our own terms. The good news is that when you hand your life over to Jesus, he redeems your past, gives you a future full of hope and joy. We want to share that great news with more friends like you all around the world. And you can be a part of that work to change lives. When you give a gift today to keep these messages from God's word going out, you can help redirect someone's eternal future. Here's how to give. Give us a call at 800-922-1888 to give a gift. 800-922-1888 or give online at connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Your support is vital to continue encouraging you and many others with these messages.

So thank you for giving generously. Did you know there's a great biblical resource available right at your fingertips through your mobile device? Skip has several Bible reading plans available in the YouVersion Bible app. You can dive deeper into several books of the Bible to gain new insights. Just search Skip Heitzig in the YouVersion Bible app. And be sure to come back tomorrow as Skip Heitzig explains how you can live your life in Jesus to the fullest potential. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.