Dead Men Walking - Ephesians 2: 1-3

0:55And the title of this message this morning is Dead Men Walking. Dead Men Walking. And as you're turning there, I want to share with you just a brief story from my personal story from my childhood. Somewhat of a traumatic story, but I think it relates to the text very well. It was a typical Sunday morning, much like this morning. I was in elementary school, probably 11 or 12 years old. Lived in Houston at the time, both my parents. And myself, and we were headed to church like we did every Sunday, driving down I-10 and our little maroon Toyota Camry.

1:41And in a split second, everything changed. We had been hit by an 18-wheeler. And it was like everything slowed down in slow motion, and you saw everything like a slow-motion movie. And to this day, I can still replay that as if it was yesterday. All of the sounds that you hear in a car accident, the crunching of metal and the breaking of glass, the smells of the gasoline spilling and the rubber burning, all of these images, I can replay it like it was yesterday. I remember seeing out the window the emergency responders coming with their big machines to cut the door and pull us out. And fortunately, no one got hurt, really, you know, seriously injured. It was a very traumatic experience. And as traumatic as that was, though, in the moment, I didn't really realize how bad it was. It was kind of like you were just in the movies and everything was just happening, and it was pretty surreal. It wasn't until after.

3:00Maybe even a week or two after, when I was looking back on that accident and looking at some of the photos, back then we had, you know, you had to get the film developed, right? It wasn't on your phone. And it wasn't until then, I was reflecting back on that moment, that it really set in how bad it really was. There's something about looking back and remembering that it really just has that effect. And you start to see how desperate that time really was. And perhaps you can relate to that. Maybe you have a similar story or some story where you look back upon and it just grips you all over again and you realize just how terrible it was. And I tell you that because that is exactly what Paul does in Ephesians chapter 2 in our passage this morning. You see, at the end of chapter 1, he concludes a prayer that he has prayed for the Ephesians, and he reminds us of the incredible power of God that was displayed in Christ when he resurrected him from the dead.

4:20He speaks of his resurrection power, and then in chapter 2, he continues this thought, and he reminds us of how desperately we needed that. Power pointed at us. We needed that power to resurrect us. Let me read our passage this morning again, chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. It says, And you were dead. 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. Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

5:19See, Paul takes us back to the scene of the wreckage, if you will. And he shows us the depths of our own sinful condition apart from Christ. He shows us just how desperate of a situation we were actually in apart from Christ. And he does it so that we might understand just how great God's saving power truly is. And that was Paul's prayer in Ephesians 1. And that is my prayer for all of you and for all of us here this morning.

5:54And our outline is quite simple. I don't have a PowerPoint, but I think you'll be able to get it. First, we're going to look at our spiritual condition apart from Christ. That is, we're going to look at what we were. What we were. And secondly, we're going to look at our lifestyle apart from Christ. That is how we lived. So, two things: what we were and how we lived. Well, let's begin working our way through this text by looking first at what we were. What were you before Christ found you?

6:31Well, Paul says, you were dead. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. Well, let me draw a few things out here. First, notice that he's speaking of the past, right? He says, you were. But he does it in an interesting way. I think most of the English translations that I looked at, they went ahead and translated that as past tense, right? You were dead. And it was a past event. But in the Greek, it's actually a, Paul uses a present tense verb. It literally reads, and you being dead, being dead. It speaks of a continual, ongoing existence. And so he uses the present tense to describe something that takes place in the past. Why would he do that? Well, Hollywood's kind of figured this out, right? If you've ever seen a movie and someone is trying to relate, or they're trying to relate a Past event, what do they do? They do a flashback and they replay that event as if it's happening in real time.

7:39And they do that because it's much more impactful that way, right, than someone just getting up and giving a monologue about something that happened in the past. They help you relive that moment. And that's essentially what Paul is doing here. He's taking the reader back into time. He's taking you back into time and asking you to watch those events again, to replay them. Remember your life before Christ. Remember what that was like. Remember the condition you were in. And specifically, remember that your entire existence was defined by one word. One word. Dead. That's the second thing that I want you to notice. You were dead. You were not sick.

8:34You were not dying. You were not almost dead. You were dead. Your life apart from Christ was a living death. That's what Paul says here. And it's an incredible word picture that he gives. And I might add the most accurate one I think he could have used. You see, generally speaking, what is death? Well, death is. Simply a separation, right? It means a separation has occurred. That's what death really is. And we know this to be true of a physical death. If you've ever been to a funeral, right, and usually they have the body laying here in a casket up in front. And what is a person made of? A person is made up of two things: a body, their flesh, right? Their flesh and bones, and a spirit. And when someone dies, their body and their spirit are separated. That separation occurs.

9:40And to draw out Paul's argument, when that separation occurs, the body is left lifeless or powerless. It cannot move, it cannot speak, it cannot think or reason, and it certainly cannot change its very condition. The body is dead. It is powerless. And that's physical death. But that's not really what Paul's talking about here. He's writing to people who are alive. He's writing to the Ephesians. And so he's speaking not of a physical death, but a spiritual one. He's speaking of a spiritual separation that has taken place. And it's the separation of a person's soul from the living God.

10:32You see, when a soul is separated from God, it dies. There is no life there. It has been cut off from the source of life, the source of spiritual life, and it is left powerless. In much of the same way in physical death, so too in spiritual death. When your soul dies, it cannot resurrect itself. It cannot breathe new life into itself as if to change its condition. It's dead. And this is consistent, really, with the way Jesus spoke to Nicodemus in chapter 3.

11:17What does he say in chapter 3 of John? He says that unless a person is born from above, something outside of himself, they cannot see the kingdom of God. They cannot. Spiritual death brings about an inability to be born again in and of yourself. And this is exactly what Paul is wanting us to remember here this morning. He's wanting you to remember that time in your life where your soul had been separated from God. And that is how you existed. And you were completely and utterly powerless to resurrect yourself.

12:02Next, notice what causes this kind of condition. The condition is spiritual death. You were dead. And notice what it says next in the text. It says you were dead in, or literally, by reason of, or because of, what? Because of your trespasses and your sin. And specifically, your sin. That's what caused your spiritual death. Now, I know there's other parts in scriptures, in the scripture, that point to Adam's sin, right? That Adam is responsible for the sinfulness of all humanity. And that would be true, right? Romans 5, right? Through one man, sin entered into the world, and death through sin. And so death spread to all men. That's true.

12:58Through Adam, we inherited a sinful nature. But what Paul is drawing out here is something a little different. He's not pointing to Adam in this text in particular. He's not saying this spiritual death that you find yourself in is Adam's fault. It's not your parents' fault. It's not your spouse. It's not your kid's fault. It's not your dog's fault. We always blame the dog. Whose fault is it? It's your fault. You are responsible for your own spiritual condition, your own spiritual deadness. I am responsible and was responsible for my own spiritual deadness. You see, we all have personally sinned and fallen short of God's glory. We are the ones who have offended God. We are the ones who have deviated from the truth, right? Trespasses. We are the ones who have missed the mark. We have sinned and violated God's perfect law. It's our fault. And that's what Paul is pointing out here. And notice also, we didn't just sin one time, right? It wasn't just one sin, although that would have been enough. That would have been enough to bring about our death. The wages of sin is death, Romans 6, 23. But Paul says it's trespasses and sins, plural, right? There's multiple of them. And I think that if you were to roll back the tape, if you were to roll back the film of your life and press play, we would not have to press play very long for us to see the plurality of our trespasses and sins.

15:00Right, all the things that we did that we shouldn't have done, all the things that we should have done but didn't do, right? All of the thoughts, the evil thoughts, and the sinful thoughts and the sinful desires that arose in our heart and maybe we never expressed, but we wanted to. We just didn't have the opportunity. Right? And we could go on and on and on. It wouldn't take very long to realize the plurality of our sins. And so, to summarize, what Paul is saying in verse 1, our spiritual condition apart from Christ is that we were dead. And we were dead because of our own sins, our own trespasses.

15:49Right? That was our condition. That was what we were apart from Christ. Well, next, I want you to see what Paul describes as our former way of life. That is our lifestyle. That's how we lived in that time apart from Christ. Notice what it says in verse 2 at the beginning. It says, We are dead in our trespasses and sins in which we formerly walked. Now, walking, if you're familiar with Ephesians, is really just a metaphor for life that Paul uses. He uses it here. He uses it in chapter 4, verse 1, chapter 4, verse 17, chapter 5, verses 1, and also verses 15.

16:45So he's bringing up our way of life, how we lived. And he says that we lived as dead men walking. That's our title. And dead men walking. Perhaps you've heard that phrase before. It was used, from what I can tell, in the American prison system to speak of a person that was condemned to death row, condemned to death. And they were being held on death row, separated from the outside world in a cell. And as they led this condemned man down the hallway to the death chamber, the guard would cry out, Dead man walking, right? Dead man walking here. And they would point to the individual. And I think the symbolism is clear, right? What were they saying? Well, the condemned prisoner, although physically alive, right, walking down the hall, in the eyes of the law, they were already dead, right? Their fate was sealed. They were just simply living out their death sentence in a cell, completely cut off from all of life. And they were just waiting for their appointed time of judgment.

18:06And this is exactly how Paul describes anyone who is not in Christ. Those who are spiritually dead, again, are separated from God, just like we just described. They're separated from God, they are condemned to death because of their own sin, and they're simply just walking around on earth, living out a death sentence, awaiting for the final judgment. Dead men walking. It's incredible imagery. And there's a connection here that I don't want you to miss. And the connection is this: our spiritual condition is directly linked to our lifestyle. The physical reflects the spiritual.

19:00And put it another way, how we live our lives is a direct reflection or a true reflection of our spiritual condition. They cannot be separated. And so, how does Paul describe this former way of life? What does it look like? Well, in verses 2 and 3, I want to give you really four characteristics of how a spiritually dead person lives. Four characteristics. Number one, Our thinking is defined by the world. That's number one. Notice what it says. It says that we lived according to the course of this world. According to the course of this world. The word according to, it means conformity to, right? Or in step with. It's another way to put that. And we're a lot of Aggies here, even if you're not an Aggie. I'm sure you've been to an Aggie football game, hopefully. Hopefully, you stayed through halftime, right, and got to witness the nationally famous Fighting Texas Aggie Band.

20:08Right? And what do they do? They form on the north end of Kyle Field and they are in perfect lines, right? Perfect lines in perfect rows. And they begin marching up and down the field and crisscrossing each other in perfect unison. Every step and every turn, especially the tubas. They are coordinated according to the drum major's commands. They are perfectly in step with the drum major. And that's a word, I think that's a picture of what is meant by according to. We lived in perfect step with the course of this world.

20:53Well, what does that mean? What does the course of this world mean? Well, the word course speaks of an age. An era of history, a period of time. And specifically, it speaks of a period of time that is characterized by a mindset, a thinking, the prevailing mindset and thinking of the age. Perhaps you remember from your school in history, right, talking about the age of reason or the age of enlightenment, right? And they use those titles to characterize the thinking and what was going on during that time. And so that's what Paul's referring to here. He's referring to a mindset or a thinking of a particular age. And he's saying that the spiritually dead conform or are in step with the thinking of their age. They think like the world thinks.

21:52I'm currently reading an interesting book right now. It's called When a Nation Forgets God by Erwin Luther. I don't know if you've read that. There's some copies of it over in the other building. But it's a book about Adolf Hitler, right, and how he was able to persuade an entire group of people to commit some of the most incredible acts of evil. And it talks about how he went about doing that, right? How did he do that? Well, he did it by changing the way people think. He went after their mind, the philosophy. And it goes on to talk about how Hitler was a real master at manipulating the masses to gain a following. And it talks about how in Hitler's Germany, the people were to see and hear only what the government wanted them to see and hear.

22:53They really censored everything, right? All of the films, the movies, the publications, the news, the books in the schools. Everything was censored, and everything was geared to change the public narrative, what the public heard and saw. And they went to great effort, right? They went to great effort to reassure them that what was being promoted was in their best interest. It was for their good. Don't talk about the bad stuff. We're not going to tell you about the bad stuff. But if we have to talk about the bad stuff, we're going to redefine it in terms that are good.

23:36And so that's essentially what Hitler was able to do. He was able to change the narrative and really redefine the thinking of the masses. Redefine evil as good and good as evil. And then he promoted it far and wide. I was going to read you a quote from there. That Erwin Luter brings out, he said, all of this led to what he calls a cultural current. I found it very applicable to our times. It says, I've observed, as I'm sure you have, the power of what I call a cultural current.

24:18Quote, that is a dominant idea promoted by the media and willingly adopted by a critical mass of people. And this people want to believe a myth so badly that they will close their minds to all contrary evidence. And when such a cultural movement gains momentum, people will start staring at the facts and filter out what they don't want to believe. Contrary evidence will be ignored and reinterpreted to fit their deepest wishes. And the more people who believe the myth, the more difficult it is for those who wish to counter it. And he goes on to say, in a spirit of euphoria, all the warning signs are brushed aside, and before we know it, we are living in a world where facts do not matter. End quote.

25:15Sounds like Romans 1 that was read earlier, doesn't it? Right? Exchanging the truth of God for a lie, being handed over to a depraved mind to practice things that are worthy of death. It's not too far off, I don't think, from what's going on today either. You see, every individual who is not in Christ is controlled and conformed by the spirit of the age in which they live. And there is no area of life that goes untouched. Those who are spiritually dead allow their morality to be defined by whatever and whoever will tell them what they want to hear. They allow their opinions of all sorts of things to be influenced by whatever the news publishes.

26:07The spirit of the age tells them what social issues are important and how to think about those things. It tells them what language to use, how to dress, what cars to drive, what kind of home you should own, how you should spend your time, how to spend your money. It informs their views of gender, marriage, of God, of sin, of the world, of death, of life, of heaven, of hell. It informs all of it. They allow their thinking to be brought in conformity with the way that the world thinks. And such is the way that we lived when we were dead in our sins. We lived according to the course of the world, and we allowed our thinking to be defined by it.

27:01Well, that's number one, the first characteristic. And unfortunately, it doesn't get any better. Notice, not only did we live according to the course of the world, but we lived according to the prince of the power of the air, of the Spirit now working in the sons of disobedience. That's number two. Let me restate that another way. Our loyalty was devoted to the devil. Our loyalty was devoted to the devil. Now, that may be a little shocking of a statement, to put it that way. You may be thinking, well, I wasn't that bad.

27:41I was bad, but not that bad. I wasn't in league with the devil. Well, Paul said it, not me. We were in accordance with the prince of the power of the air. What does that mean? The Ephesians would have readily recognized and understood what Paul was saying. If you remember back in Acts, right, when Paul came to the Ephesians and he preached the gospel to them, and he was performing all kinds of miracles, and people were getting saved. It records for us in chapter 19, verse 18, that many of those who had believed kept coming and confessing and disclosing their practices. Speaking of really satanic practices.

28:30And many of those who practiced magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone. They piled all up their satanic magic books and they burned them and they counted up the price and it was an incredible amount of money, 50,000 pieces of silver. So they understood what Paul was talking about. That was their life. For us, we didn't really probably grow up around a bunch of satanic practices. At least I hope you didn't.

29:02Maybe you did. But for the Ephesians, this is a very vivid statement for them. So let me just unpack this a little more. It says that we lived according to the prince of the power of the air. The word prince, it speaks of a ruler or a commander, a chief leader. And this ruler has power or authority. He has the right, he possesses the right to rule over those who are under his authority. And then notice where this prince rules. It says he is the prince of the power of the air, of the air. That's the realm of his power. Now the air was, it just speaks of the territory between the earth and heaven.

29:54That's the concept that's being presented here, kind of the atmosphere that we breathe into. And in Paul's day, that was considered to be the dwelling place of where all the kind of the evil spirits dwelled. And so we have this ruler with authority in the earthly realm. Who is that speaking about? Anyone come to mind? It's Satan. And if you were here last week, I mean, this is a biblical concept, I think. If you were here last week, Kevin preached in Job chapter 1, right? He talked about the conversation between God and Satan. And what does God ask Satan? He says to Satan, from where do you come? And Satan answers him and says, from roaming around on the earth. I was walking on the earth.

30:53That's where he was. That's where Satan is. He's roaming around. And what is he doing while he's roaming around? What is he doing? He's working. Satan is at work. That's what it says in the text of the Spirit now working. And that is the word we get energy from. So he's working. He's energizing. And notice where he is focusing his work. In the sons of disobedience. And the sons of disobedience, that's where he is spending his time.

31:30He's devoting his attention specifically to the people who have committed themselves to disobeying God. That's literally what it's talking about: the offspring or the descendants of unbelief, the sons of disobedience. The sons of disobedience are the ones who have suppressed the truth in unrighteousness, and they have committed themselves to rebelling. And so, when we put all this together, right, the devil controls or he rules the spiritual atmosphere that is in the world and that's currently at work. And he is currently energizing those who are in a state of rebellion against God. You see that?

32:18And this is what the rest of Scripture affirms. Satan, of course, was the first son of disobedience. He was the first one to rebel, and he took a bunch of angels with him. And when he was cast down to earth, he was allowed to roam around, and he was given limited authority. And what's the first thing that Satan did? He changed the narrative. He changed, he set up a system of thinking that was opposed to God. And he finds Eve, and he says, Eve, God didn't really say that, did he? Right? If you eat that fruit, you're not. Really, going to die. That's not really how this thing works. Let me tell you how the world works. If you eat this fruit, your eyes are going to be opened. And you're going to see and you're going to be like God. You're not going to die.

33:16He changes the narrative. And of course, the rest is biblical history. They conform their thinking, they get in step with the thinking of the age, and they align themselves with the devil. A perfect alliance is formed. And we are no different. We were no different. Such is how we lived. We adopted the world's way of thinking, and that led us to align ourselves with the devil and his agenda. So our loyalty was devoted to the devil, apart from Christ.

34:02Well, let me give you a third characteristic, and that's found in the next phrase. Paul goes on to say that among them, among them, who is he talking about? He's talking about the sons of disobedience. And he says, among them we too all lived. He's saying, again, Paul, all of his companions, and really the Jews, the Gentiles, everybody, right? This is, he's talking. About all of humanity. We were all dead because of our sins, and we all lived this way.

34:37And this word lived here is, again, another interesting word. It literally means to turn back and to turn back and to turn back, right, over and over again, turn back. And what did we keep turning back to? Well, it says we all lived and we turned back time and again to the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And this is a natural progression, isn't it? If our thinking was defined by the world and then our loyalty was defined or devoted to the very one whose goal is to exalt himself, it should not surprise us then if our very actions are dictated by our own selfish desires.

35:30It naturally flows out of that. Just as Satan sought to exalt himself and pursued his selfish intentions, so too we pursue our selfish desires and we do it above everything and everyone else. Self begins to take top priority in our lives. And that's number three. When we were spiritually dead, our actions were dictated. By the flesh. Now, Paul here is not talking about our flesh like flesh and bone, right? He's talking about the lust or the desires that are produced by our sinful nature.

36:16Our sinful nature that we've been talking about produces lusts. And the word lust here is really any strong desire. It could be a good one and it could be a bad one. We typically think of bad desires when we hear the word lust. But it could be any strong desire or craving, right, would be another way to put that. And the point here that Paul is making is that those cravings, right, those lusts drove our actions. And we kept turning back to them over and over and over again because we were enslaved to them, as it says in Titus 3.3. We were enslaved to our own desires and our own cravings, so that whatever we wanted, that's what we pursued. And we were relentless in the pursuit of those desires. That's what it means when it says we indulged in them. We were indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind. We didn't just keep those things to ourselves. No, we made all of the necessary preparations in order that we might carry them out.

37:29That's what he said. Says by indulging. So let me summarize that by saying this. Whatever wins your affections will control your life. Whatever wins your affections will control your life. And that's the problem with spiritual deadness. We set our affections on ourselves and the things that we want rather than upon God. And then when this happens, our desires become our master. And it dictates every thought and every deed that flows from it. I don't have to remind you, I won't read it for the sake of time, but Galatians 5 reminds us of all the deeds, the deeds of the flesh that flow out of that kind of life.

38:26And those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. So that's the third description. Our actions are dictated by our fleshly desires. Well, lastly, let us look at the fourth and final characteristic of someone who lives as spiritually dead. And it's found in the remainder of verse 3. It says, and we lived and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. Paul says that he, along with everybody else, everybody else in the world, Jews, Gentiles, male, female, all of us, we all lived and existed as children of wrath. Children of wrath. That's how he describes the humanity without Christ.

39:23It's kind of an interesting term. It's the only place I could find where it's used in Scripture. Children of wrath. Of course, it makes it a little difficult to try and explain what it means, but I think there are a couple of other passages that I want to bring in that I think may shed some light on it and bring all of this together for us. Let me give them to you. You can turn there if you want, or you can just write them down. I'll read them. But the first one is just a couple pages over in Ephesians 5, verse 6.

39:58Paul had just, in the verses preceding, had just listed out several lists of sins. And in verse 6, he says, Let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of these things, these things being the sins he just listed, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. There's our word again, the sons of disobedience. You see, our sins not only separate us from God. And cause death, spiritual death, but they bring about God's wrath. The wrath of God comes upon them. And God's wrath speaks of God's righteous anger towards sin. God has a right to be angry at our sin.

40:50And he is right, because he is a righteous judge, he is right to punish that sin. And so the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Let me give you another verse. John chapter 3, verse 36. John chapter 3, verse 36 says this: He who believes in the Son has eternal life. But he who does not obey the Son will not see life. But the wrath of God remains on him. The wrath of God remains on him. Those who do not obey, right, those who do not obey the Son, have the wrath of God presently remaining on them.

41:35Wherever they go, wherever they run, God's wrath follows them, right? It remains, it sticks to them. Even to the grave, they cannot hide from the wrath of God. That's what it's saying there in John 3. Romans 2 is another one you can write down. Romans 2 puts it like this: it says, Because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, Heart, you are storing up wrath, literally stockpiling sin after sin, right? One on top of the other, stockpiling wrath for yourself in the day of wrath.

42:13The day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Scary picture, right? And that's how we were, that's how we lived. We lived as children of wrath, sinning and going on sinning, sin after sin, stockpiling the wrath of God for the day of wrath. And you know when that day of wrath is? It's in the future. It's coming. Pastor Tom hasn't gotten there yet. Revelation chapter 6 might be a little bit. But I'll remind you of it.

42:51It starts in verse 12. John reminds us of what that day is going to look like, and he starts describing the events that take place on the day of wrath and God's judgment. And he talks about how there's a great earthquake, and the sun is to become darkened and black. The moon will be like blood, the stars falling from the sky, and the sky split apart like a scroll when rolled up. And he goes on to say that every mountain and every island will be moved out of its places, and the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the rich. And the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains.

43:40And they cried out to the mountains and to the rocks, and they said, Fall on us and hide us from the presence of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand? So when Paul says that they were by nature children of wrath, this is what is awaiting those who are dead in their sins. They are destined for God's judgment, and they will not be able to stand.

44:25And such is how we lived when we were apart from Christ. We were storing up wrath for the day of wrath. So I think Paul has clearly made his point, right? That we were dead in our sins, and we were utterly powerless to resurrect ourselves. We could not change. We had no hope of changing our spiritual condition apart from Christ. But I don't want to leave us there, right? Kind of a bleak sermon. So, I want to leave you with what I think are the two most beautiful words ever recorded in Scripture. At least in my opinion. And they're found back in our text in the beginning of verse 4.

45:21But God. But God. Your mind, you were dead, right? You were dead in your sins, but God. But God made you alive in Christ. God resurrected you from the grave, and He gave you eternal life. It's incredible. Your mind was conformed to the thinking of this world, but God, God gave you a new mind in Christ. He gave you the mind of Christ. Your heart was devoted to the devil, but God. God gave you a new heart, one that was devoted to God only.

46:11You were enslaved to your own fleshly desires, but God gave you His Spirit. And His Spirit was inside you that causes you to desire the things that God desires, right? Not your fleshly desires, but He gives you the power to say no to God. Sin. Isn't that amazing? And lastly, you were by nature a child of wrath. You were awaiting God's wrath. But God, but God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever, anyone who believes in Him will not perish. They will not see God's wrath, but they will have eternal life.

47:02But God, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the truth of your word. And Father, life is too short and eternity is way too long for us not to consider these things carefully. And so, Father, I pray that for those of us here this morning, that God, that you have miraculously resurrected from the grave, I pray that this would be just a wonderful reminder of where you saved us from. God, and a reminder of just how great and how merciful you have been to us and what great power that you have directed towards us that we might live this life serving you.

47:46And Father, if there's anyone here this morning who perhaps is still dead in their sin, I pray that what was spoken here this morning would be a revelation to them personally. That they would see their true spiritual condition and turn to you for salvation. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.