Ephesians 1:15-23; 2:1-5
Chapter
2 begins by saying “And you…” (It was great stuff until now.) “hath he quickened” is in italics, if you
read it in the king James, which means that it’s added by the translators to
help us to understand what it’s saying. But
it has there “hath quickened”, the
phrase there, down in verse 5. So it
isn’t anything that isn’t included in God’s Word as part of the idea here. He begins in Chapter 2 by saying “And you hath he quickened…or made alive…who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Now it’s going to describe our state before
we came to Christ. If you’re here this
evening [or whenever, online] and you don’t know Jesus personally, it may be
a little hard for you to take, but this is your present condition. “And
you hath he made alive who were dead
in trespasses and sins.” Now the
idea is, this is spiritual death. Obviously you’re sitting here tonight, you’re
not physically dead. There’s only two
people ever that have been born spiritually alive, that was Adam and Jesus Christ
[I beg to differ, I don’t believe Adam was born with the indwelling Holy Spirit
in him--he hadn’t partaken of the Tree of Life yet, and never did as long as
he lived. I say John the Baptist and
Jesus Christ were born with the Holy Spirit already indwelling within them.
Remember how Elizabeth (John’s mother, Mary’s cousin) said how her baby
leaped within her when Mary (pregnant with Jesus) approached her?
A secondary issue—but I do beg to differ,
editor.] Everybody else
who has been born physically is spiritually dead. Your children, as cute as they are when you
see them, they’re born spiritually dead. You,
if you don’t know Jesus Christ, are alive physically, but dead spiritually.
That’s why Jesus said “to enter the kingdom you have to be born again”
(cf. John 3:3-8), you’re born of water, but you also have to be born of the
Spirit. This whole idea, again, you don’t know Christ,
you hear people talking about being born again, that’s the idea. You’re physically alive right now, you have
a soul, you’re conscious, you make decisions, you know what’s going on, you
have an awareness [which the animals just don’t have (read 1 Corinthians 2:11)].
But you’re dead spiritually. And that is because you are out of fellowship
with God. So it says here “you who were dead in trespasses”, and
that’s the way we were, dead people don’t hear, they don’t complain about the
food. They don’t see the movie, this,
the screens, you know. We were dead in
trespasses and sins. Now you can see
how much we have participated or contributed to our salvation--we were dead
in trespasses and sins [and also dead to any kind of spiritual understanding,
real understanding of God’s Word]. Verses 2-3, “Wherein in time past you walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power
of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among
whom also we all had our conversation [Greek: “conduct”, king James way of saying
“conduct”, “lifestyle” ] in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind [the biggest sex organ in a human is
the mind]: and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
Now this is what it tells you about the existence that we had before
we came to Christ and for those today who don’t know him.
It says that ‘they walk,’ now it’s the Greek word that means “to
meander” or “wander”, means “to walk without destination”—“to wander, meander.” That we were meandering
according to the course of this world.
Now, interesting words. Greek “incord echata” [not sure of spelling],
that means “down”, we were held down, that we were meandering, and it was under
the suppression of this world’s system.
We really didn’t have choices. In
my generation we grew our hair long, wore bell-bottoms. I mean, late sixties, we thought we were “free”,
we thought we were making our own decisions, we were meandering, being fed on
a menu by the prince of the power of the air, what we should look like, ideas
of rebellion, you know, drop-out, freak-out, LSD, marijuana, blow your mind,
flip-out, drop-out, whatever. It says,
when we were in the world, we were meandering according to this world--and again,
it uses “the course of this world” is where we get the root word “weathervane”.
It means to be blown without direction, according to the course of whatever
the world was blowing our
way. “And
according to the prince of the power of the air”, Satan, and his influence,
as he decides on styles, as he brings hems up this year, bellies out, more skin,
less cloth. “According to the prince of the power of the air, who now worketh”--energizo, energizes--“the children of disobedience.”
Now this is incredible. I want
you to think about it, because you know, in Ezekiel 28 it tells us there that
Lucifer, Satan, in his pristine state, before he was fallen, ‘Thou Son of the
Morning, Lucifer, was the head cherub. He’s
evidently of the order of the cherubim’s. It
seems that there are seraphim [Hebrew: burner
(could it be like they’re a spirit version of a rocket-powered angel—with after-burner’s?--makes
you wonder.)], there are angels that are different. Michael is “the”, definite article, archangel,
there’s only one of what he is. Gabriel
seems to be in charge of earth announcements, he’s
got some special work to do. But there’s
another strain of heavenly creature called cherubim, and it tells us in Ezekiel
28 that Satan was the head cherub, he was in charge of worship. [There may only be three cherubim, Lucifer (now
Satan), Michael (who took Lucifer’s archangel position when Lucifer fell), and
Gabriel.] And that the timbrel and the pipe were founded in him (Lucifer) the
day that he was created. Now it’s interesting
when they do a survey nation-wide among youth and they ask them “What is the
first thing you turn to when you have problems?” And across the board they say “Music”. Drugs, alcohol where like 3rd, 4th
and 5th, parents were in the 20s, rabbi’s
and pastor’s were in the 40s. Music, what a powerful, powerful force. [The power of music is in the musical notes
which are like the carrier waves in radio. The
musical notes convey with power the lyrics--right straight into the brain, almost
on a subconscious level.] And I don’t
think there’s anything wrong with music in and of itself.
Nothing is evil in and of itself. But
what a powerful medium. You know,
it’s interesting, if you let your kids listen to worldly music--besides smacking
yourself and pulling your beard like Nehemiah--you should check out the lyrics,
listen to what they have to say, listen to the message that’s being conveyed.
And look, we can’t be a bunch of old fogies.
I mean if our kids come to us and say, “Oh, the kids are saying this…”
Let’s get it, let’s sit down together.
Let’s read through the album cover, let’s look at the lyrics. Let’s talk about it. Let’s see what they have to say. You don’t just say “No, take the album out and
burn it, there’s a demon in every album…” No,
we don’t want to be in that camp,
you know. I mean--but it is incredible,
incredible things they can do on an instrument. Satan energizes the children of disobedience.
It’s incredible, whether you’re playing music, sometimes you’re playing
sports, there’s a thing called “the zone” that you get in.
I remember as a musician, and I’m a musician at heart, there were just
certain nights, we’d be playing, and everything would click. I
mean, the band would sound like a locomotive, it was better than drugs, it was
better than sex, I mean it was a high for me that was better than anything in
the world--everything just went, you know, it was amazing. And you never figured out what made it happen,
or how. Athletes talk about that, being
in the game, and all of a sudden “getting in the zone”, and
every single thing clicks and goes perfectly right. And it’s interesting because it says Satan “energizes
the children of disobedience.” [He is
called the prince of the power of the
air. Before radio and TV we couldn’t
really have a concept of what that meant, but Satan has the power and uses his
power to charge the very air with his bad attitudes much like the air on earth
is filled with radio-waves from radio transmission towers, as the late Mr. Herbert
Armstrong once commented.] He knows how to “anoint” as it were, for his
purposes. Someone gave me an album of
one of my favorite bands before I was a believer. And we were on the way to school with the kids
and I put it in and played it for them. They
listened to it one time and have been singing those songs ever since.
I wish I could get them to learn Christian songs like that.
That was the end of it. That’s
all they wanted to hear after that…Amazing, it says, “While we were unbelievers,
being suppressed by the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air, who energizes the children of disobedience”, and he says,
“among whom also we all had our conduct or our manner of living (king James
uses conversation) in times past, and it was
in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires or the will of the flesh and
of the mind, and were”--notice this--“by nature children of wrath even as others.”
By nature. One of the reasons a dog acts like a dog is
a dog’s nature. It’s not a mystery. When you get a puppy I don’t know what you think
it’s going to be when it grows up, but it always grows up to be a dog, and you’re
kind of surprised. [laughter] And it says
human beings without Christ are by nature ‘children of wrath’ [by nature like
the spiritual father of this evil world, Satan, who is full of wrath, and broadcasts
that attitude worldwide.] And we were
like that. And it says ‘we lived in the
will and the desires and the lusts of our flesh and of our mind’ because again,
man created as a [combination of] body and spirit, on a plane [way] above the
animal’s existence. [cf. 1 Corinthians
2:11. There is a spirit in
man that gives man an intellect and mental faculties, a mental output far superior
to the animals. Maybe we’ve been able
to teach a monkey or ape basic American Sign Language (very, very basic), but
that same monkey or ape cannot comprehend literature, mathematics, physics,
chemistry, write music, symphonies, create and build cities, cars, trains, computers,
aircraft. The output of the basic human
brain is so far above the smartest of the animals
brains of equivalent size and quality that they differ exponentially. A famous brain scientist, Dr. Kuhn, said there
must be a non-physical component to the human brain that grants this awesome
power of human intellect and intelligence beyond that of the animals.
This “human” spirit is called in the Bible the “spirit of man” in three
or four different places (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:11;Romans
8:16 Ecclesiastes 3:21).] Again, man is created in Genesis as spirit,
soul and body on a plane above the animal system. God three times in that first chapter uses the
word “bara” that means in Hebrew “made something from nothing”, once when he
created the heavens and the earth. And
then it tells
us that “he formed”, not created, the plants, so forth, out of that. But then it tells us that when he created the
animals, the fish, the whales, that he created, “bara”, something from nothing
again, and he created them “a living soul”.
He formed their bodies from the dust of the ground, but then it was time,
because it wasn’t just a plan anymore, to give it a higher realm of existence,
and God created consciousness, life, and placed it in. [Solomon in Ecclesiastes says there’s a spirit
in both man and animals, but the difference is in what happens when each dies,
the spirit in the animals goes downward and the spirit in man (with no distinction
between good and evil) goes upward to God. The difference between animal brain output and
the output of man’s brain is what is so amazing. The spirit in man, of man, gives the human brain
an intellect, understanding and output exponentially greater than even the smartest
animal brain. There are no
End