Hey, podcast listeners! Thanks for streaming today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast. To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org slash donate or follow the link in our show notes. Now, here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program.
On today's edition of Pathway to Victory. What was our condition apart from Christ? We were in a desperate situation. Paul says we were slaves to the world. We were slaves to Satan. We were slaves to ourselves apart from Christ. Well, then what was God's motive in saving us? God saved us for no other reason than He loved us. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. In the physical realm, we are born living and when our time is up, we die.
But in the spiritual realm, we are born dead, and only the grace of God can bring us to life. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress provides a sobering look at our desperate human condition and God's loving solution. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress. Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Did you realize that Pathway to Victory publishes a bimonthly magazine?
And if you're not already taking advantage of this uplifting resource, I'm going to make the process easy for you today. Right now, I'm offering the next three editions of Pathway magazine as my gift to you. Pathway magazine contains daily devotional readings and fascinating features on Christian living.
To request the next three editions of Pathway magazine right now, just follow the simple instructions at ptv.org. Well, all this month on Pathway to Victory, we're conducting a brand new study that I'm calling Holy Living in an Unholy World. It's based on Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and it's about accessing the wealth of resources that God has set aside for anyone who follows him. You see, every single person on earth was born spiritually bankrupt.
Did you know that? We're spiritually broke, but God in His mercy has opened up His treasure chest of spiritual gifts. And in this new study, we'll discover that God has supplied everything we need to enjoy a rich relationship with Him. Now, I've written a brand new book that complements our teaching series, and it goes into far greater detail on this topic. My new book is called Holy Living in an Unholy World, and after today's message, I'll explain how you can request your copy. But right now, let's open our Bibles to Ephesians chapter two.
Today, we're going to consider the spiritual condition of those who have not experienced God's transforming grace. I titled today's message The Way We Were. 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 Christians at 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 as 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 were spiritually dead in your trespasses and sins. 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 lust 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? 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, cosmos, in the New Testament is used 186 times. It always refers to the world system, the world system, the power system of Washington, D.C., the entertainment world in Hollywood. The world systems, and an unbeliever is a slave to those systems. 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. 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. Second 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. 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. 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 a 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. But here's the gospel of Jesus Christ. God takes that wrath that we deserve and he poured it out on his own son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we sing the words on that cross where Jesus died. The wrath of God was satisfied. But the unbeliever doesn't experience that grace.
He becomes the object of God's eternal everlasting wrath. What was our condition apart from Christ? We were in a desperate situation. We were spiritually dead, incapable of making any response. We were depraved, getting worse and worse in our spiritual sickness. And we were doomed to an eternity of separation from God.
It doesn't get much worse than that. But then, Paul says two words in verse 4. But God. But God.
Ladies and gentlemen, the only hope we have is that God would intervene in our desperate situation. You know, that is true throughout Scripture, but God can change everything. 1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, There is 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 are 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? God takes somebody who is absolutely spiritually dead and makes him alive.
Now, he has a choice. I do not believe in irresistible grace. I think you can say no to God.
The Bible is filled with illustrations like that. But that spiritually dead person will never come to spiritual life and grab hold of the gospel apart from the intervention of God. Isn't that what 2 Corinthians 4 says? For God, who said, light shall shine out of darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. What did God do in our situation? First in today, it's because God has resurrected you. He has given you spiritual life, the ability to respond. But not only that, he released us. He's resurrected us, but he has also released us. Look at verse 6. And he has raised us up with him. Now, some people think that's the same thing. He's saying the same thing twice, resurrected us and raised us.
No. 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' 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 realm 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 and those claws 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?
Lazarus stumbles out of the grave from the darkness to the light, and Jesus said, 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 is 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. We were dead, we were depraved, we were doomed. But God has resurrected us, he has raised us, he has reinstated us. And why did he do it? What was God's motive in intervening in our situation?
You know what some people say? They say, well, God was lonely up there in heaven. He wanted somebody else to have fellowship with so he wouldn't be lonely, so he created us. And when we messed up, he saved us so he wouldn't be lonely any longer.
That borders on blasphemous. Ladies and gentlemen, God got along just fine for billions and trillions of years without you or me. He doesn't need us to make him happy.
He's self-sufficient. Some other people say, well, God looked down on us and he saved us because he saw something worthwhile in us. What does God say about us? He says we were dead, depraved, and doomed.
That's hard to see anything good in that. No, there wasn't anything good in us that he saw that motivated him to save us. Other people say, well, God looked down the corridor of history and he saved those he knew would eventually trust in Christ as their Savior. It had to do with what they would do one day.
No, listen to what Charles Spurgeon says in rebuttal to that. He said, oh, if God were to put my salvation in my hands, I should be lost in 10 minutes. But my salvation is not there.
It is in Christ's hands. Well, then what was God's motive in saving us? 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 and 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 Boyce used to tell the story of a, true story of a social worker in London named Henry Morehouse. One day Morehouse was on his way home and he saw a little girl, a ten-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.
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, Morehouse 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 Morehouse 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 Morehouse 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 have 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 is undeserved grace in our lives. You and I can't do anything to earn salvation.
It's only by God's grace that we can go from dead in our sins to alive in Christ. This is one of the many truths that we mine from Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And it's the thrust of my brand new book on this topic. My book is titled, Holy Living in an Unholy World. The first few chapters in my book deal with our spiritual wealth in Christ.
That is, the treasure chest that's spilling over with blessings we receive as believers in Christ. The second part of the book deals with our spiritual walk. It answers the pressing question, how are we to navigate through the darkness of today's world? And how do we remain resilient with an evil agenda working against us?
I answer these questions and more in my highly practical book, Holy Living in an Unholy World. A copy is yours when you give a generous gift to support the growing ministry of Pathway to Victory. Before our time is entirely gone for today, I want to say thank you to those who support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. In the past year, we've reached more people with the good news of Christ than ever before. We've been blessed with opportunities to add new cities to our radio and television outreach, but there's still more work to be done. And because of partners like you, we're able to reach men and women around the country and around the world with God's truth. Thank you so much for your faithful support, and I look forward to hearing from you today.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. When you support the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you the brand new book by Dr. Robert Jeffress, Holy Living in an Unholy World. To request your very own copy, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. And when you give $75 or more, we'll also send you all 19 messages from the brand new Holy Living in an Unholy World teaching series. These messages come on both DVD video and MP3 format audio discs.
You'll get all that along with the companion study guide. Again, call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. Now, if you'd prefer to write, here's that mailing address, P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. That's P.O.
Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins. Next time, Dr. Jeffress answers this important question, how can we have a right relationship with God? Well, the answer lies in these three words, faith, grace, and works.
No, we can't earn our salvation through good works, but our actions still matter to God. Learn more in the message, the three most important words in the Bible, Wednesday on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Picture yourself relaxing aboard a luxury cruise ship as you sail the Mediterranean Sea on the Pathway to Victory Journeys of Paul Mediterranean Cruise. This 11-day journey will take you to unforgettable destinations in Italy, Turkey, and Greece.
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