Today on Summit Life, a compelling message from Pastor J.D. Greer. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.
As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. You know, when something goes wrong in the world, we tend to look for someone to blame. Lately, it seems to be the other side of the political line, but it could also be a corrupt business practice or a flaw in the education system that makes things go haywire. But today, Pastor J.D.
reveals that the actual problem with the world isn't found in one political party or a flawed system. It's actually inside all of us. Today's teaching is part of our series called Mystery and Clarity. And if you've missed any of the previous messages, you can catch up at jdgreer.com. But right now, here's Pastor J.D. with a message from Ephesians Chapter 2 that he titled, But God. I'm going to start off this morning by reading a verse to you that is really on the surface very negative. But before I do, I want to tell you that the backdrop of this verse is really positive. And that's one of the things that makes the negativity of this verse so shocking to us. Ephesians 2, 1. You have your Bible?
I certainly hope you do. If you will open it to Ephesians Chapter 2. Ephesians 2, verse 1 says that we, as a race, are dead in our sins. But the backdrop of that verse is actually very, very positive because it is that God created us good.
That's one of the things that makes this verse so shocking. You see, we were created in God's image. And because we were created in God's image, we are capable of extraordinary acts of goodness and courage and kindness and love. We all see that. We see a man selflessly taking care of his wife in their old age.
We know people who have sacrificed their lives for their friends sometimes, even for complete strangers. I see it all the time right here in our church. Just last week, I see the way that so many of you responded to. Now, there's five areas I've put out in front of us. The five areas that I feel like God has given us as a church to pray about and to dream about what we can do in these areas.
I mentioned the homeless and the orphans, the foster kids, the prisoners, the unwed mothers, high school dropouts, and how we could make a difference in those areas. And just the way that you respond to that, some of you that are coming and saying, look, I've got an idea about this and I want to know how I can be a part of that. Now, look at how you respond with just such generosity and selflessness. And we see the goodness that God created us with, and that's because you were created in the image of God. And again, that's one of the things that makes Paul's indictment so shocking here in verse one. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. It is offensive. And I want to focus on two words in this verse that dispel two very ingrained myths in our culture about evil.
And what makes this so offensive to us? These two words at the beginning here are going to correct that. The first word is the word you. You were dead in trespasses and sins. Not other people, but you.
You were dead. You see, we recognize that some people are bad, but we always think it's somebody out there who is really bad. So we put locks on our houses to keep the bad people out.
And we put locks on top of those locks and then a security system on top of the two locks and then a dog on top of the security system and some of us buy guns in case the dog and the locks and the security system doesn't work. Keep the bad people out. Whatever culture you're in, you tend to look at people outside of that culture as the bad ones. Other nations, people of other religions, they're the ones with the problems.
So we need a strong national defense to keep whole nations of people out. I'm going to give you an example right here in our own country. If you were raised as a religious conservative, as I know that many of you were, it's the people outside of that tradition that are the ones with the problem. It's the dirty libs, right?
Hollywood, MSNBC. They're the depraved ones. They're the ones destroying family values. They're the ones undercutting the backbone of society.
Of course, the ironic thing is that they're all sitting around this morning thinking about how bad we are. People in the church are judgmental and proud, and they cause strife and war. And in a lot of ways, honestly, Jesus agrees with them. Jesus taught that religion brings out the worst in people. Religion has a tendency to make people proud, and that's the mother of all sins.
It was religious people who led in the crucifixion of Jesus. A lot of times we think it was people who lived a long time ago, who were outside of our time period. They're the ones who had the problems. Oh, but now we've progressed and we're educated and globalized and sophisticated. And of course, there are some ways that that's true. When it comes to issues like the equality of women or racism, we certainly have progressed a little bit. But there's a whole new set of vices now that we celebrate. Religious people are more fundamentalist than ever. People are more violent than ever. People are greedier and they crave power more than ever. We got sexual depravity and family dysfunction worse than ever. Plus, we're the proudest and most self-sufficient generation ever to walk the face of the earth.
And for all of our progress, the bloodiest century of mankind in recorded history was the 20th century. The Bible teaches that as a race, we're not getting better. If anything, we're getting worse. I don't believe in evolution. I believe in devolution, if anything. I don't believe we came from monkeys but it certainly looks like we're headed there.
We're getting worse. The point is there are no categories in the Bible. There's not religious people or irreligious. There's not primitive or advanced.
There's not educated or backwards. There's just bad people in Jesus. That's it. But let me show you this one other way. Whenever we have a problem in a relationship, we usually think that it's the other person who has the problem, not us. I have yet, I have yet, in all my years of counseling, I have yet to do a single marriage counseling session where a couple came in and sat down and both of them said to me, sincerely, no, no, no, no, it's not her, it's me. I'm the one who's got all the problems. No, it's always the other person.
Elizabeth Taylor has been married eight times. And after each one, of course, if you listen to her, it was always her husband's fault. And after a while, you're like, you know, the common denominator here is you.
For many of you, in every broken relationship of your past, you always see yourself as the victim. Your parents were idiots. Your boss was a jerk. Your roommate was unreasonable.
Some of you college girls are on your fifth roommate in two years. You know that conversation you have when you break up with somebody and you're like, you know, it's not you, it's me. God is saying here, no, no, no, it's not me, it's you. You're the problem. I've noticed that I get most annoyed at things in others that I freely do myself. For example, I'm sitting at the light.
This happened this week. Light turns, guy in front of me doesn't go. And I'm like, what's the problem? And then I look and I can see in his rearview mirror, he's texting. And in all my righteous indignation, I just lay on that horn like, how dare he? If anybody knows me in this church, you know that I am the last person on earth who has the right to be righteously indignant at somebody who is texting while driving, right? Or I hear my daughters yelling at each other.
This happened this week too. I hear them yelling at each other upstairs. And so I go upstairs and I scream at them. We do not talk to each other like this. All the problems, all the dysfunction of the world is not out there. It's right in the mirror. You, you are dead.
That's what he says. The second key word that challenges how our culture looks at sin is that word dead. You see this refutes the idea that sin is primarily something that we do rather than who we are. Most of us think of sin as a set of bad things that we do, adultery, stealing, racism, watching Grey's Anatomy, whatever, right? But the word dead shows us that sin is not an action.
Sin is a condition of our heart. It's not that we do bad things and therefore that makes us bad. It's that we do bad things because we are bad. It's not that we steal and cheat and therefore that makes us greedy. We steal and cheat because we are by nature greedy. In other words, we're not sinners because we sin.
We sin because we are sinners. I see this in my kids. Nobody has taught my kids how to be jerks to each other.
They're just boring experts at it. My wife and I don't run around our house, you know, screaming mine to each other. She didn't get that impulse from her environment. That's her nature.
She was born a sinner, a varsity level sinner. Sometimes it amazes me how much I have to tell my two-year-old no. I'm gonna take a string for an hour. I don't say anything but no. I don't ever walk around the house saying to her, yes, Ryan, yes, yes, keep that up. Good job. I'm just like, no, no, don't punch your sister. Don't destroy that tower of blocks they're building.
Why did you get so much pleasure in that? It's just their nature. We are and our nature's dead. And I don't know if you ever embraced what that means, but that means that there's nothing you can do.
You are helpless. You see, Americans prefer to see sin as an action rather than as a condition because if sin is an action, then we feel like we can cure it with our own checklist of good actions. As Americans, we're the can-do people. I read my Bible. I don't cheat on my taxes.
I didn't cuss this week, except for twice, and that's because the roads were icy, but, you know, that's excusable. Therefore, I'm okay. And all that checklist does is cover up the fact that our hearts don't love and desire God at all. We're spiritually dead and we can't do anything for ourselves.
We need a God who can make alive. You ever open your refrigerator and you see that little Tupperware thing at the back of your refrigerator and you're like, I wonder how long that's been in there. And you pull it out and you kind of look at it from the side and you open it up and you smell it. And then like four hours later, you wake up and you're like, what just hit me? Now, when that happens, how many of you, your response back to that situation is like, I know the problem is that doesn't have enough spice. It needs a little black pepper sauce or a little ketchup, and it's going to be just five.
No, you don't cover that up. The problem is it was dead when you put it in the refrigerator. It was dead when you put it there.
The curse of death was already in it. And now what's happening is it just takes a while, but then that stench just takes over everything. We are in our nature already dead and we are rotting. We might smell okay for a while.
We might learn to cover up areas of stench in our lives with religion or manners or culture or self-discipline, but we are in our nature dead. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. We hope you've been enjoying today's teaching and that it's been an encouragement in your daily walk with God. Before we continue, I wanted to remind you about a daily resource that can also help you stay connected to God's word throughout the week. Our daily email devotionals written by Pastor J.D. offer insightful reflections on the Bible and practical applications for your everyday life. Each day's devotional corresponds to our current teaching series here on the program, so you can stay plugged into the themes and ideas we explore here each day. And best of all, it's completely free. To sign up, simply visit J.D.
Greer dot com slash resources and enter your email address. We'll take care of the rest. Thank you for your support that makes this resource and the rest of Summit Life possible. It's because of friends like you that we are able to proclaim the gospel each day to a dying world. Now let's get back to today's teaching with Pastor J.D.
Greer here on Summit Life. Verse two, he describes what that spiritual death looks like. He's going to give you three phrases in the next few verses that all basically say the same thing.
Verse two, there are sins in which you once walked following the course of this world. What's the course of this world? What does the world follow?
St. Augustine said this 1,500 years ago. Three things the world follows, money, sex, power. Money, most important thing in all the world.
So the world says get all you can and hold on to it. Sex. Nobody should be your boss in the sexual area. You know what you need.
You know what you want. Nobody should tell you what to do. Power. The world says get all you can. If you can be the richest, do that. If you can be the most beautiful, use that.
Whatever you can do to be better than others, major on that because that will give you power or leverage over others. Our world lets these three things rule them rather than God. They value these things more than God. They seek these things more than God.
Second phrase, following the prince of the power of the air. That's a reference by the way to Satan. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Now I say to you, somebody following Satan or somebody filled with the spirit of Satan and you get the image of a guy with a bunch of tattoos out in the woods somewhere sacrificing animals. But what this verse tells you is that money, sex and power, that's what Satan is working in. He is the one making those things appear attractive. The one following Satan is not the one sacrificing kittens at midnight. It's the one who is living for money, for sex and for power. What that tells you is Satan's behind a lot of what we call entertainment because these are the themes of most of our shows that we watch. It's making it appear more attractive than it is.
He's at work. Verse three, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. Again, this is just another way of saying the same thing the other two phrases said. Our lives are controlled by the desires of our body and our minds rather than by the will of God. Our body says have sex and we obey it. Our body says spend a bunch of money on meat and we obey it. Our body says live a life of luxury no matter how stingy you have to be or who you have to hurt and we obey. We don't want anybody to make the rules or to control us. I teach my kids that sin is the big I problem.
It's the middle letter of the word sin. I. It's that I want to control my life rather than God. I want to call the shots. My desires are more important and more controlling to me than the will of God is. We have expressed our self-will both in terms of omission and commission. Commission are the things that we do that we should not do. Omission are the things that we failed to do that we ought to have done. We almost always think of sin in terms of commission. Things that we do that we shouldn't have done but the much bigger sins are ones of omission. It's not just that we're selfish and we steal and we do things to hurt others. We have failed to love God supremely in our hearts and to love others like we love ourselves. And it's the sins of omission that are behind the sins of commission.
He goes on he says and we were, watch this, some of you are not going to like this but you need to learn to love it because it's the truth. We were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. You're like children of wrath? Wait a minute are you sure that's what it says in Greek? Maybe it should maybe it says children of sadness or maybe confused children or the lost kids or something like that. No it says wrath. Children who deserved only God's wrath. I know that is horribly offensive. You were by nature a child of wrath.
Why? Because what we have done what you have done is cosmic treason. We kicked God off the throne and put ourselves there in his place and then in every possible way we minimized him and we glorified ourselves. We served ourselves not him. We exploited creation for our purposes not his. We made our desires the lord of our lives not his will. Even our sins of that come from a lack of self-control or blasphemy.
You say how how does that work? I'll give you to think of it like this. A guy who has a problem for example looking at pornography. He's not sitting around thinking you know I'm gonna do this to blaspheme God.
But he is blaspheming God. Let me let me prove it to you. I always tell guys who struggle with pornography who say they feel like they can't control themselves and they get this design they can't control and they have to look. I'm like you could turn off that desire like a light switch. They're like you're crazy there's no possible way that I could do that. I guess you could.
I'll prove it to you. I say you're sitting there you know by your computer it's like midnight you're you're you're looking at pornographic images you feel like you can't stop and then all of a sudden the door behind you opens and your mom walks in. Bam off like a light switch. That desire. Why?
What just happened? It's not that you quit lusting for women. It's not that you know you suddenly developed a self-control plan. It's that the presence of your mother right was greater than even your desire for these images. The embarrassment that you would feel in front of her.
The fear of what she might say or what she might think. That greater fear overcomes this desire. Well think about that in terms of God. You know that God's always watching. You know that God is displeased but you don't care what he thinks.
You have so minimized him that he's lower than your mother because if you did care what he thought you would know that he was watching and you wouldn't want to do that in front of him. So you've minimized him in every possible way and that unspeakable blasphemy that cosmic treason deserves God's wrath where our culture says well God should just get over it though. I mean forgive and forget but we want God to be mad at everybody else's sin. We see injustice in other places and we think God should be mad at that.
We see greed and exploitation on Wall Street and we say that should be punished. We see injustice taking place in parts of Africa and China and we say that ought to be punished. We're okay with God being mad at others. We're okay with God being mad at Satan. We're just not okay with God being mad at us. We say well God should just forgive us.
Isn't that what like God does you know and then his job? But for God just to turn his back on our sin and not make it right would be unjust and we love justice don't we? We always cry out for it when somebody treats us unjustly.
The bank makes an error and you lose 10 grand you go down to the bank and you demand justice. That's why there are horns on our car. We want to let people know what you just did that was transgression and you were in sin and I'm going to punish you with noise. We love justice. We deserve to be punished. There's nobody we can pass the blame to. We can't blame the world for being a bad influence on us because who created the world system? We did. We can't blame Satan because he never forces us to do anything.
He simply baits the hook and lets us bite it. You say but haven't we all done good things? I'm a big History Channel guy. He's my inner nerd and one of the most you know as I watch one of the most confusing and disturbing images that keeps getting repeated on the History Channel excuse me you've probably seen this is that little clip where Adolf Hitler plays with the kids. Have you ever seen that? And the reason it's disturbing is because it actually looks like he likes them.
He looks like he loves he looks like a kindly it looks like my granddad playing with these kids he enjoys them and you're like that's really kind but it's hard for you to see that and call that good in the light of the rest of his life. His life is one that is so atrociously evil that even his good things don't really seem to be that good. What if our rebellion to God was the same way in God's sight? What if our cosmic treason means that the whole bent of our light is so evil that it's hard to even call our goodness actually good? We deserve the wrath of God and I know again some of you don't like to hear it but you need to hear it and you need to learn to embrace it and to love it because it is the truth and only by knowing the truth can you ever be set free. We deserve God's wrath. Our blasphemy against God deserves the eternal punishment of hell. Yes, hell is a terrible place.
It is so offensive to educated people but hell is not one degree hotter than we deserve it to be. Verse 4. Verse 4 begins with the largest conjunction in the universe but God.
Would you stop and just let that sink, the force of that sink in for just a minute. You are helpless, yes, but you are not hopeless but God. Being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he has loved us. Many theologians and Christians talk about salvation so coldly and doctrinally as if it was some kind of ritual or rite of passage. Our salvation is bathed in tender love. One of the greatest truths found in scripture today on Summit Life with Pastor and Author J.D.
Greer. And if you happen to join us late today or if you'd like to catch up on any of the previous messages, you can find them all free of charge at jdgreer.com. So Pastor J.D., last week we finished a teaching series called Freedom in the In-Between through the book of Galatians and today is the last day for our listeners to get a hold of a great resource also from the book of Galatians. Can you remind us what freedom in the in-between means? Yeah, you know, it actually has a lot, kind of several meanings but the primary one that we're going after is that if you're a Christian, there's a point in your past when God saves you and there's a point in the future when you're going to be with him in heaven but then there's also this in-between time right now and there's a freedom that God wants to experience now. Yes, we haven't gotten all the way to glory and all the benefits of being in the presence of God but we are freed for the abundant life that God has.
We're freed from condemnation of the law. We're free from even the limitations of our own sinful flesh by this incredible power of the Spirit and so we put together a seven-part Bible study from Pastor Tim Keller. It's a small short study guide with just really great but deep meaning and so I think this is one of those resources you'll find yourself going back to again and again.
Today is the final day to reserve your copy so don't delay. You can give now by calling us at 866-335-5220 or you can give online right now at JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Benovitch. Be sure to join us next week when Pastor JD reveals how we can be made alive in Christ as he continues our series titled Mystery and Clarity. See you next time on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
