The Way We Were #2

You can't no more change your nature than you could grow a third arm, and you wouldn't even want to because you like your life the way it is. This is what Paul is talking about. This is the depravity of man.

This is the total inability of man to save himself or to improve his spiritual condition. That's where we all were. Thanks for being with us on The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hi, I'm Bill Wright. We're continuing our series, Your Sin and God's Salvation, with part two of Don's message, The Way We Were. Last time our teacher began illustrating that the bondage we were in prior to God saving us was really threefold. We were enslaved by the world and by Satan. Today we'll come face to face with the third problem, our own evil desires, also known as the flesh. We'll be in Ephesians chapter two, so turn there in your Bible as we join Pastor Don Green now in The Truth Pulpit. Paul goes further and says and gives this third aspect of the slavery, of the captivity to evil powers. It's not just foreign, outside you evil powers that you were enslaved to.

You were enslaved to your own evil desires. Look at verse three. Verse three, among them we too all formerly. So Paul, like we said last time, expands it out and says this is true of Jews and Gentiles alike. This is true of all of mankind.

There are no exceptions to what I'm saying here. He's making universal declarations of truth, dogmatic statements about the lost condition of mankind. Among them we too all formerly, there's the past tense, let me just remind you, lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind. It's true that you were subject to external forces that were beyond your control, but you were also subject to internal forces, motions and sinful evil desires that dominated your own heart. But what he's saying here is, is that we lived in the lusts of our flesh. We owned this. This was ours. These were our desires. These were our sinful ways.

And it's what was inside you as well. Maybe you could put on the show for others, especially those of you that were raised in a Christian home. But wasn't there rebellion in your heart? Wasn't there an indifference to Christ? Before you were a Christian you weren't animated by a sincere love and devotion for God as the supreme desire of your heart and living in humble repentance and looking forward to the second coming of Christ where He would come and take you as His own.

Some of you young people now, just cold and indifferent to the gospel even if outwardly everything looks fine. Look, you're hostage to that. You can't no more change your nature. You can't no more generate holy desires than you could grow a third arm.

And you wouldn't even want to because you like your life the way it is. This is what Paul is talking about. This is the depravity of man. This is the total inability of man to save himself or to improve his spiritual condition.

That's where we all were. The depravity of man, this evil within, explains our lost world, our lost society. Why are there wars? Why are prisons overflowing with people who have done reprehensible things? Why is there widespread abortion? Why are there broken families? Why do men and women like you and me persist in evil habits that we know are destructive and wrong?

Why? It's because they have evil minds. It's because they have evil hearts. It's because unsaved men hate Christ and hate His righteousness.

And when you turn away from the light, all you can do is walk into deeper darkness. This is the case of humanity. This is the case of mankind. Don't think for a moment, beloved. Don't allow yourself to be swept up by sugary-sounding philosophies that say that there's a spark of divinity in each of us.

There's not. There's a core of evil in unsaved men that explains the world in which we live. To see the world around us and to deny the spirit of the age is just utter folly and foolishness.

It's willful blindness. And the point here, beloved, is not to talk about the world out there. It's for you to realize as a Christian that that is the spirit that animated your life before Christ. Whatever the particular manifestation of your evil desires were, whatever the sins were that you loved, whether you were proud and boastful in your intellectual arrogance, whether you were a slave to alcohol and drugs, whether you were profane, whether you were immoral, some of you, no doubt, we won't even go there.

Look back at your past. Realize what God saved you from, but realize also furthermore that that is what owned you. The reason that your life was so off track, the reason that you were so polluted, looking back on it, the reason you were so polluted wasn't just the world. It wasn't just Satan. Although they were contributing factors, there in your heart were the lust of the flesh that reigns supreme and you indulge those desires of your flesh, you indulge those desires of your mind. And in indulging them, it's obvious that you were never going to be the means of your own escape. That's why you couldn't overcome your evil habits before you were a Christian. Your life, beloved, flowed from what was inside you. And with others of evil mind, with other unsaved men, at the core, even if you didn't fully understand it, at the core you hated Christ and you hated His righteousness and you resented the demands of the law that were on your conscience. That was the fountain from which your life flowed. And so, this trip down spiritual memory lane, you were captive, you were enslaved, you were in bondage to a whole host of diversified forces that were way beyond your capacity to recognize, let alone to escape.

You were enslaved by the world, you were enslaved by Satan and you were a slave to your own lusts. Now, I don't enjoy dwelling on the negative like that, but do you understand that as a church and as a pastor, we have a responsibility to let God's Word speak for itself? We can't resent this and say, oh, I want positive stuff, I want to know how to live a better life and a better marriage and all of that. No, we take God's Word on its terms and we go through it systematically and we let it speak to us as providence dictates the timing, but we let God's Word speak.

And we don't resist and watch this, beloved, please, please pay attention with what I'm saying right now. We don't resist and we don't resent when Scripture tells us what we used to be like. A true Christian says, that's all true.

That was true of me. A true Christian embraces this. A true Christian doesn't hide his sin any longer.

And though we don't have to have a public ceremony where we all get up to a mic and vomit out our past unrighteousness, we don't need to do that. In your heart, look, if you're a Christian, in your heart, you're looking at this and saying, wow, this is true, this is true, this is true. I don't mind telling you as your speaker, the world, Satan, evil desires of me, true, true, true.

It's a true false test and every answer is true of all of us, either in our former life before we were saved or of your present life now if you're resisting Christ. See, Scripture just totally humbles and crushes the pride of man. It leaves us with no avenue of declaring our own power or no avenue of declaring our own self-righteousness or declaring our own wisdom. When we open the Bible, beloved, when we open the Bible and we read what God says, we are not seeing the wisdom of the world. We are not seeing what attracts the world. We are opening the Bible in order to get the wisdom of God and the power of God, even though the world defies that and denies it and rejects it as utter folly and foolishness and fables.

We don't care. They're wrong. Scripture is true. And part of the outworking of your repentance, part of the way that you bring forth the fruit of a changed life and a reoriented heart is that you increasingly and clearly look at the world and say, I stand opposed to all of it. I reject the philosophies of the world.

I take my stand and I receive my truth based on the Word of God alone. You can't have your feet in both camps. You can't straddle the fence. You can't love the world Monday through Saturday and come in on Sunday and pretend that this matters to you.

You can't have it both ways. You must reject the world. You must reject the devil. You must reject your own sinful, indulging self. You must come to Christ in such thorough repentance that says, I am leaving everything behind.

I reject everything about my environment. I disown all claims to self-righteousness. I reject the devil. I reject my sin. I disown myself. Oh, Lord, I come alone, naked to you and ask you to save me in your holy mercy.

That's the only way it could be. You separate yourself from all of this anti-God world Satan internal stuff that Paul describes in verses 1 through 3. And then, in part, you spend the rest of your Christian life learning and mortifying it all the more.

You reject it in principle and then you work it out in practice. And that's why you can't indulge your sins. That's why you can't indulge your evil thoughts. That's why you can't be the same.

You've rejected it all. And a true Christian would not want it any other way. We see the world philosophy as ugly. We see Satan as a sadistic foe, bent on destruction not only of our souls, but the souls of others around us. He's going to successfully deceive countless numbers into an eternal destruction. With all of that evil in the world, the devil, inside us, with all of that undeniable wickedness, you do not expect a holy, righteous God to overlook that, do you?

The one who deserves all worship, the holy, righteous God of the universe, the Creator who dwells in unapproachable light, who is kind to His enemies day after day, giving them sun and food and air to breathe, while they continue to reject Him in a world that is arrayed against Him, which would gladly turn its nuclear weapons against God, if only it could. You don't expect a holy God to just bypass that, do you? To just wink at that and say, oh, it's okay?

No. See, you were captive to evil powers. That's the negative side on a positive, righteous side. Point number two, you were condemned by God. You were condemned by God. God is righteous.

God is opposed to all this evil, and it will not go unpunished. Look at the end of chapter 2, verse 3. Paul says, you were by nature, by intrinsic existence. Here's what you deserved. You were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. This phrase, children of wrath, shows that our very nature, a child owns the nature of his father, for better or for worse. By nature, what your nature called forth was the enduring wrath of God. Before your salvation, you deserved judgment. Scripture says the wrath of God was abiding upon you. It's revealed from heaven, Romans 1, verse 18, against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, all of it, including yours. And so it's not just that there were these wicked forces that were opposed to your spiritual well-being. God had you, viewed you, you were in a condition of deserving his wrath. God's wrath is not an angry tantrum. Let's vindicate the righteousness of God right here. When we think about the wrath of God, don't equate it with the way that you blow up when you don't get your way. That is not what we're talking about here at all.

We're talking about something much, much different. God's wrath is his settled, determined opposition to sin and all that opposes his righteousness. It's not an explosive anger. It is a relentless determination that righteousness will be vindicated in the end. God's righteousness will be vindicated in the end. He will not tolerate one rebellious molecule in the universe when all is said and done. That's settled. That is not subject to negotiation, which means that in your unsaved state, you were trying to swim upstream against a determined wrath and the eventual outcome of the current of that great river was going to sweep you away.

There was no way that you could resist it. One writer said this, and I quote, He is a holy God and therefore he does not stand idly by when people act unrighteously, transgress his law, show disdain to him as creator, or spurn his kindness and mercy. He acts in a righteous manner, punishing sin in the present and especially on the final day.

End quote. Chapter 2 verse 1. 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. They were by nature disobedient. 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. That's pretty harsh truth, but it's true.

It's pretty severe, but it's right. And the whole point of Paul's saying it right here at this particular point in Ephesians is this. Paul intends for you to appreciate how great your salvation is.

What's here in the center is simply to help you understand and appreciate the vast wonder of what God has done for you in Christ. Beloved, when Jesus lived and died and rose again and he ascended into heaven where he lives and intercedes and makes intercession for all of the saints. When Jesus lived his righteous life. When Jesus came down from heaven, you just get lost in the wonder of it. When Jesus Christ, the eternal son of God, came down incarnate in the form of a babe and grew and lived a perfectly righteous life, which he offered as a sacrifice for the sins of everyone who would believe on him at the cross. When he was buried, when he was raised again, Scripture says, for our justification.

When he ascended into heaven from where he rules with power at the Father's right hand, you realize the greatness of our salvation. You were dead in sin, but now you're alive in Christ. You were enslaved to this world. Jesus said, I have overcome the world. You were enslaved to Satan.

Scripture said from the very beginning, Christ would come and bruise him, crush him on the head. You were enslaved to your inward lusts. Christ gave you a new nature. You were born again and a new heart, a new creation. The old things passed away.

Behold, new things have come. You are a child of wrath and Christ bore that wrath on your behalf on the cross and carried it away so that your slate would be clean. So that you might be justified, declared fully righteous in the presence of God and his law with no charge left to condemn you.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. By grace you have been saved. Understand how you got there. Look back down the barren trees of spiritual memory lane and see the destruction that was left behind in your wake.

A vast arid desert behind you from which nothing good could grow. And now, extending the metaphor a little bit, here you are in this place of blessing, surrounded by the great spiritually lush riches of Christ. Blessings all about you freed from the world, freed from Satan, freed from your lusts.

Forgiven, declared righteous with a hope of heaven forever and ever and ever. And realize how you got to where you're at today. It wasn't you. You weren't smart enough.

You weren't strong enough. You weren't righteous enough to even want it, let alone to choose it. When you recognize the desperate lostness of your prior condition and you realize now you are in Christ, then you realize that God made you alive together in Christ. That God saved you.

Watch this. That God motivated by great love and mercy on your soul. That God energized with unlimited power to accomplish His will. That God in perfect mercy, perfect grace, illimitable love, punished Christ Jesus Himself for your guilt in order to give you the gift of eternal life which you did not deserve and you could never have earned on your own. Realize that one day we're going to stand in front of a literal man, the God-man, Jesus Christ.

One day we're going to see Him face to face. We're going to be in the presence of the one who died to cleanse you from guilt. The one who lived a righteous life that could be credited to your account. The one who overcame the world. The one who defeated Satan. The one who defeated sin and death and hell. And we're going to be in His presence. And we're going to belong there because He died and rose again to do that for you as a gift.

A gift. Drop down to Ephesians 2 verse 8. In all of your undeserving, beloved, in all of your wretchedness, in your total lostness, verse 8, by grace you've been saved through faith, that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, freely given, bought at one great price.

The blood of Christ. You see, only when you look back down the lane of your pre-conversion existence do you ever begin to appreciate the riches that have been bestowed upon you. What should you do today? What should you do right now? You should give thanks to God and His Christ for your salvation. You should be resolved to obedience. You should be resolved to gratitude. You should be resolved to magnify Christ for this inexpressible gift that saved you from so much to give you so much more. As Christians, we are truly recipients of the greatest gift in the universe, salvation through Jesus Christ. And Pastor Don Green will present more of our series, Your Sin and God's Salvation, next time here on The Truth Pulpit.

So be sure to join us then. But right now, here's Don with some exciting ministry news. Well, my friend, it's always meaningful for me to be able to preach God's Word to God's people and to share it with you here on the radio.

Recently, I completed a series that is one of my all-time favorites. It's called The Bible and Roman Catholicism. It was several messages designed to test Catholic teaching by what Scripture says. We'd like to share a copy of that with you, a full, complete CD album of 10 messages.

Just go to our website and request it, or you'll find the downloads. We just want you to have this material at no cost as our gift and ministry to you. Thanks, Don. And friend, as Don mentioned, visit us at thetruthpulpit.com to learn more. I'm Bill Wright. Join us again next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.