Latest / Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ) / "Without Hope & Without God in This World" by Neal Pollard

Transcript

"Without Hope & Without God in This World" by Neal Pollard · Cumberland Trace Church of Christ (Formerly Lehman Ave Church of Christ)

0:14
Good morning.
0:21
We moved to Bowling Green a little over 7 years
0:25
ago, and we We became acquainted with a phenomenon
0:29
that we had known a lot about, but we had never been able to experience
0:32
it up close. I'm talking about sinkholes.
0:37
We live in the Pennyroyal Plateau, and so it's a karst terrain.
0:42
And what that means is that we live in one of the densest regions
0:45
in the country for sinkholes. There have been 60,000
0:50
sinkholes mapped that we know about under the soil.
0:54
The largest cave system on Earth, I've been told, is the state of
0:57
Kentucky. And that's where these sinkholes can become a problem.
1:01
You think about some of the incidents that you have heard about that are more
1:05
infamous. Back in Caldwell County, back in 2015,
1:09
you may remember that after heavy rainfalls, a sinkhole 60
1:13
feet wide and 20 feet deep opened up.
1:17
The local head of the fire department's mother, Nancy Fox, was driving
1:21
her car on where she thought the road was, but that
1:25
was the sinkhole. And she and her car went down in that, and she perished
1:29
in that sinkhole. Maybe you remember in 2019,
1:33
the Louisville Zoo had the sinkhole that disrupted business
1:37
for at least a short period of time while they had that mitigated.
1:40
But of course, when anybody thinks about the sinkhole problem in Bowling
1:44
Green, They think about what happened on February 12th.
1:48
Of what year was that, Chuck? 2014, is that right?
1:52
Where you had the SkyDome over this
1:56
area display where a sinkhole opened up and 8
2:00
Corvettes fell down into it, some of them priceless
2:04
and invaluable. There is nothing like the feeling
2:08
of knowing that even the very ground underneath you is
2:11
not steady and something that you can't count on being there.
2:16
But I guess if there's anything that's worse than that, it is
2:19
being in a situation to where you're over a sinkhole and you
2:23
don't even know that it's there. You ever experienced
2:27
an emotional or a spiritual sinkhole where
2:31
you felt like the ground beneath you was not steady and you didn't know
2:35
what to do? You know, there— Francis
2:39
Schaeffer talks about how there are so many people who don't even consider
2:43
the— the way that they're looking at life.
2:46
And they go along living as if they are the height, they're the top,
2:50
and there's nothing above them, no God. And he illustrates this
2:54
with the humpback bridges that span the streams across Europe for 2,000
2:58
years, that people were able to walk over those bridges and
3:02
to take their loaded wagons across them, and they had no concern
3:06
whatsoever because the bridge would hold the weight.
3:10
But no one would think to drive heavily loaded trucks over those bridges
3:13
because they would not bear the weight.
3:16
If we think that we're at the height of everything, that we are
3:21
the one who determines what life is all about, then life is good. As long
3:25
as there's no pressures, there's no problems, then it's going to work.
3:29
But as soon as difficulties come into our life,
3:33
we realize that that worldview will not sustain us. We can rock
3:37
along like things are good, and then there's a sudden death,
3:41
or perhaps it's the loss of a job or some financial
3:45
difficulty, or maybe it's a failed relationship,
3:51
and we find ourselves— and one of the ways that we might describe ourselves is
3:55
that we are without hope, we feel hopeless, or maybe
3:59
we feel like we're without God. Paul writes some individuals in
4:02
Ephesians, chapter 2, that were just like that.
4:06
They are individuals who had lost without hope and without God.
4:10
And as he describes them in that way, that hopelessness was guiding their
4:13
lives. He said, but now in Christ Jesus, things have changed so
4:18
that you can stand firm. And he says that 4 times in
4:21
Ephesians chapter 6. The difference that's made
4:25
when there is a hope in your life and when there's not.
4:30
Paul writes to them and he says, now you are his workmanship created
4:34
in Christ Jesus unto good works. Which he ordained beforehand
4:38
that you should walk in them. But now remember, you who
4:42
were called Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision
4:45
in the flesh by those that are the circumcision made in the flesh
4:49
by hands, remember that at that time you were separated
4:54
from Christ. You were excluded from the commonwealth of Israel,
4:58
strangers to the covenant of promise, without hope and without God
5:02
in this world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who
5:05
were sometimes afar off are made near by the blood
5:09
of Christ, Ephesians 2:10-13.
5:13
In the 1,189 chapters of the Bible, did you know that
5:18
there are only 3 verses in our English Bibles where the words without
5:22
and hope are found together? The first time is in the Old Testament,
5:27
and it certainly is an individual who had every reason to have
5:31
no hope. He had lost everything financially that he had had
5:35
in his name. He had lost many of the people in his life. And because
5:38
of this, he has friends who come and accuse him of being the
5:42
problem. No wonder he says what he says in Job
5:46
7:6. He says, all my days are spent without
5:52
hope. I think there are a lot of people that we would,
5:55
if we had a deep meaningful conversation with, if we got
5:59
down to the brass tacks, to the heart of it all, they would say,
6:02
I spend my days without hope.
6:07
Now, if we were to go to the New Testament and we find a second
6:09
time in which these words appear side by side, we see
6:13
the difference that's made with Christ. Let us hold fast
6:17
the profession of our hope without wavering,
6:22
for He is faithful. Hebrews 10:23. There's not just a
6:26
reversal of the words of hope and without, but there's a reversal of fortune
6:30
because here are individuals who say, I can draw near
6:34
to one who is faithful. And so I have hope.
6:37
I'm not without it. The other
6:41
place where we see this phrase or these 2 words together is
6:45
in our text, but they give us the opportunity to see
6:49
3 powerful truths that I want us to see together from Ephesians 2:10-13.
6:54
If you have your Bible open there, I'd like for us to notice that.
6:58
The first powerful truth I want us to see is,
7:02
as Paul expresses it, is what we were formerly.
7:07
Paul is going to use that word 4 times in Ephesians
7:10
chapter 2. And when we see a word repeated,
7:13
especially in the way in which Paul does it, Paul is giving us an emphasis.
7:17
He is saying that this is important and I want you to consider it.
7:21
And so he's talking to individuals, Gentiles, and he says,
7:25
I want you to see your life before. If we're
7:29
ever going to see what our life could be,
7:32
we have to see where we came from. We've got to understand where we
7:36
were before God and before hope came into our lives.
7:40
And that's exactly what Paul is going to show us. First of all, Paul says,
7:43
I want you to remember your former predicament, in verse 1 and verse
7:47
2. And that is expressed in the phrase in
7:51
which he says that you were formerly dead dead in
7:55
trespasses and sins. Now I want you to think
7:59
about what he's saying. He said, here's the what, they are trespasses and
8:02
sins. These are going across the line to places that God does
8:06
not permit. It is missing the mark where God sets a target
8:10
for us. And Paul says, these were the things that characterized
8:15
your life before, trespasses and sins. Here's what that takes in.
8:19
That takes in my unintentional sins, things I didn't mean to do.
8:23
It takes in the things that I did in ignorance and the things
8:27
I did in carelessness. It takes in the things that I
8:30
knew I was doing that were wrong, the intentional sins, but it also takes in
8:35
those sins that I did in rebellion against the will of God.
8:38
Not only did I know it, so did folks maybe even show me in the
8:40
Bible, but I said, I don't care what you say, I'm going to do that
8:44
anyway. He says, you were dead in those things.
8:48
He says, you were formerly, there's the when. That's the way
8:53
it used to be. This is life before. This is what Paul would call the
8:57
old man in Ephesians 4:22. And then
9:00
we have the who. The who is the world, is the prince,
9:04
and is the spirit. What is it that influenced us in our
9:08
lifestyle of sin? It's the world we live in.
9:11
A world that's dedicated and devoted to self and therefore to sin.
9:16
It's the prince of the power of the air. This is the devil. He's the
9:19
one who tempts us. He's the one who influences the world. And then
9:23
it's the attitude, the spirit that is now at work in
9:27
the sons of disobedience, the mindset that says, me first
9:31
and my wants. I don't care what it costs. I'm going to
9:34
do it because it feels good. And Paul says, you were dead
9:39
in those things. Being dead in those things means that you
9:43
were separated from God. And so here's the predicament. It's an ugly
9:46
picture, but it's the before picture. We've seen all
9:50
of the, maybe the diet ads or perhaps even the facial surgeries
9:53
or even the implants or whatever it is. And we see the folks before and
9:58
then we see them after and we see what a difference it is. And Paul
10:00
is painting the before picture. He says, I want you to see your
10:04
predicament. But then he drills down. Paul mentions a
10:07
former passion. He says that you live— you formerly
10:11
lived in the lust of your flesh.
10:15
Now there's significance in Paul saying it that way. He says,
10:18
this is where you lived. You took up your residency here.
10:23
This is where you were comfortable. This is where you made your
10:26
life. He says, this is how you lived. You lived in
10:30
them. You indulge the desires of the flesh
10:34
and of the mind. It's the old mantra of the world that causes it to
10:38
struggle that says, if it feels good, then I'm going to do it. It's the
10:41
struggles we have in our life when it's guided
10:44
on based on what I feel or what I think or what my body wants.
10:48
You know, they say the heart wants what the heart wants, but so often we
10:52
miss the target. It's the flesh wants what the flesh wants.
10:56
And Paul speaks to the Ephesians and he says, here's the before picture,
11:00
before we come into Christ, before we're in a right relationship. He begins
11:03
this section by saying, this I say in the Lord and testify
11:07
that you henceforth walk not as the other Gentiles walk in the vanity
11:10
of the mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from
11:14
the life of God through the ignorance that is in them according to the deceitful
11:18
lust. And now you've been past feeling, you've given yourself over,
11:21
to sensuality, to perform every kind of impurity with greediness,
11:25
Ephesians 4:17-19. That meant something to
11:30
the Ephesians in the first-century world. But if Paul were to take that and
11:34
put it into 21st-century terminology,
11:37
what would he be talking about? Maybe he'd be talking about pornography.
11:43
Did you know that 12% of the websites on the web
11:47
are pornographic in nature. And maybe 12% doesn't seem like a big
11:50
number, but that's over 30 million websites.
11:56
Not only that, did you realize that $3,000
12:00
are spent on pornography every second of time?
12:04
That on any given moment across the world, in any minute,
12:08
a million people are consuming pornography.
12:12
And the last figures that were given were in May of 2026,
12:16
858 million unique individuals
12:21
logged on to watch pornography in the last month.
12:25
But not just that, 2.14 billion people
12:30
were consumers, were patronizers of pornography
12:34
in the world last year. And so this
12:37
is a pervasive thing that certainly Paul, were he to address the 21st
12:42
century people, would say, this is, that former passion that
12:46
characterized you or should characterize you before you come into Christ that you
12:50
give yourself to. Or perhaps it's fornication, premarital sex.
12:54
The CDC says that by the age of 44,
12:57
95% of all people in this country
13:01
have engaged in premarital sex. Or perhaps it's illegal drugs.
13:06
I was baffled by this, amazed by it, Last year,
13:10
11 million people were said,
13:14
or I guess with the statistics that were combined, were guilty of
13:17
driving under the influence of marijuana in our country.
13:22
2 million more in addition to that were driving
13:25
under the influence of another illegal drug. 20% of high
13:29
school students say in the last month that they were using an
13:33
illicit drug, usually marijuana.
13:36
Or perhaps it's homosexuality. The statistics
13:40
tell us that the average homosexual male has 3 to 4 more times
13:44
of partners than his heterosexual counterpart, and because of HIV,
13:47
has a higher mortality rate. And with all of these that we might mention together,
13:52
Paul is saying that you indulge the desires of the
13:56
flesh and the mind, and as a result of that, you are the children of
13:59
wrath. God reserves his wrath for those in disobedience.
14:04
But then Paul says you had a former partition. If you have the
14:07
old King James, it says this middle wall of partition.
14:11
And what Paul is expressing by this is saying that there was a time,
14:14
there was a problem that was not common to everybody. It was a Gentile problem.
14:19
Before Christ came to this earth and before the church was established,
14:23
the Jews had a special relationship with God. The Gentiles,
14:26
they had mythology and they had idolatry. They had no concept
14:31
of God and Christ and salvation and eternity and even sin.
14:36
Paul says that law was a partition that kept you separated.
14:42
But then he indicates that there is a former place.
14:46
He says that you were far off, but now you
14:49
are made near by the blood of Christ, verse 13.
14:53
I don't know how many of you remember back in 2002 that there were
14:58
2 US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut who decided
15:02
to go up, do a routine 14-week maintenance trip to the
15:06
International Space Station. And they were doing their work just fine until it
15:11
happened in February of 2003 that the space shuttle Columbia
15:15
exploded. And NASA decided right there that they were
15:18
not going to— they were gonna suspend their launch program indefinitely.
15:23
So you're these 3 guys, you're Pettit and Bowersox and you're Nicolae
15:27
Babudarin, and you're up there on the space station and you have no
15:31
ride home because the shuttle was going to pick them up and take them back.
15:35
What's your options? Well, on the space station,
15:39
they had these Soyuz Russian capsules,
15:43
the best of 1960s Russian technology at
15:47
their disposal. Oh, and not only that, but they had tried it back in 1971
15:51
and 3 of the cosmonauts died in an explosion in
15:55
that, and that was their legacy. So here they are in the space
15:59
station. They want to be back home. What are they going to do? Are they
16:02
just going to wait until maybe somebody can come? They hopped in that capsule
16:07
and they took the risk because they did not want
16:10
to be away from home.
16:14
What Paul is saying to us here is we got to understand
16:18
where we are when we're without God and we're without Christ in this world.
16:22
We're away from home, we're far from him, and we
16:26
need a desire to be back home. Perhaps some of
16:30
you may suffer from separation anxiety disorder. It's a real condition.
16:34
It's a condition in which you have a heightened concern and distress
16:38
if you are not able to be with something or with someone that
16:42
you feel attached to. It is by all accounts something
16:46
that you try to work through. It's an unhealthy condition. But there are so
16:51
many people who are far off from God and they have no idea about the
16:54
separation that exists. And God has us here in this world to
16:58
create not an anxiety, but a desire to
17:03
be close to God in Christ. And so Paul says, if we're ever going to
17:06
appreciate what we have now, what God came
17:10
to bring us, we've got to understand where we were before.
17:15
And so Paul, with these 4 statements, says,
17:18
here's what it was like before.
17:21
But second, I want you to notice with me that Paul points out
17:25
the change from what we were. He does this in
17:30
the contrast to those formerly statements with 3 phrases that he uses.
17:34
And with these 3 phrases, he's showing us the change that
17:38
Christ came to bring. And I want you to notice how beautiful it is
17:41
and how applicable it is to our lives. The first thing he says
17:45
is, but God.
17:48
There was the way things were before, but God.
17:53
This is a beautiful phrase that's found throughout the Bible. Did you know that in
17:57
some of the most pivotal moments in Bible history, this phrase plays
18:01
a prominent role? There's the days of Noah.
18:04
Remember Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 3 that there's only 8 souls
18:07
that are saved The whole world, because of their iniquity and
18:11
sin, they perish in the flood.
18:16
But Genesis 8:1 says, but God remembered Noah
18:21
and all the animals, and He dried up the ground.
18:24
By distinction from what the world faced, because of God,
18:28
Noah and the grace that he experienced, he had something
18:31
different. Or I think about Joseph. Joseph has been
18:35
mistreated by his brothers. He's been sold into slavery.
18:39
He has been mistreated and put through so many different things.
18:43
And in Genesis 50:20, when he's gone through all of that, he says,
18:47
as for you, you meant it evil for me, but God
18:50
meant it for good that he might save many people
18:54
alive. Or how about 1 Samuel 23:12?
18:58
Saul wanted to kill David, but God saved him
19:02
or delivered him from death. Or what about Jesus? The rulers of this
19:06
world, 1 Corinthians 2:8, hung Him on a cross and
19:10
placed Him in a tomb, but God raised Him up, Acts 2:24.
19:14
And so you have God coming along and saying at those lowest moments,
19:18
in those hopeless moments, in those godless moments, here's what Christ
19:22
came to do. But God makes all the difference. Listen,
19:25
but God commended His love toward us in that while we
19:29
were yet sinners, Christ died died for us, Romans 5:8.
19:33
But God, the second
19:37
phrase that shows us what Jesus came to do to change what we
19:41
formerly were is, but now.
19:44
There's the before picture. But now in Christ Jesus,
19:47
you who were sometimes afar off are made
19:51
near by the blood of Christ. You know, in this particular
19:55
part of the chapter, Paul talks about what they were excluded from. It's in
19:59
our text. He says that at that time you were without Christ.
20:03
You were estranged from Israel.
20:07
You were strangers to the covenant of promise. You were without hope and
20:10
without God in this world. They, the Gentiles, literally were.
20:14
They didn't have access to God the way the Jews did. But what's the
20:18
application for us? If we
20:22
look at the before picture, we are the spiritually uncircumcised.
20:25
If only those in Christ are the true circumcision, Philippians chapter 3,
20:31
We are excluded from Christ if only those in
20:35
Christ are those that have access
20:39
to God, Romans 8:35-39.
20:43
There is no holy nation for us, no place for us to
20:47
call our identity if only those in Christ are part of God's
20:51
holy nation, 1 Peter 2:9. We are
20:55
perished not being part of God's special seed if only in
20:58
Christ through baptism, we find ourselves Abraham's seed,
21:02
Galatians 3:26-29. We have
21:06
no hope if hope is only found in Christ, 1 Thessalonians
21:09
4:13. And we have no God
21:13
if we can only call God our Father by being in Christ,
21:17
Romans 8:15. But now,
21:21
but how do we get to the now? We look at Paul's words in Colossians
21:25
2:12-13. He says, you were buried with Him by
21:29
baptism into death and raised with Him by of faith in the operation
21:32
of God. Baptism spells the difference that
21:36
makes us in union with our Savior. Why would we debate or argue
21:40
with the thing that brings us close to Jesus Christ?
21:44
We'll say more about that at the end. And then Paul says,
21:47
so then. At the end
21:51
of the chapter, he says, no matter what you felt like you didn't have before,
21:56
in Christ, you're no longer strangers. And you're no longer
22:00
foreigners. How many of you know what it feels like to be a stranger?
22:05
I grew up the son of a preacher and my dad moved quite a bit.
22:09
And so had to start over a lot, go to new communities. And when
22:13
you go to somewhere new, you don't know what classes you should take.
22:17
You don't know what people you should and shouldn't hang around. You don't know the
22:20
teachers. You don't know the bullies to avoid. You're a new face and you're not
22:23
always a welcome face. But when he says
22:27
that you are a foreigner, he's not saying you're from a different part
22:31
of the culture. He's saying you're from a different culture altogether. You speak a different
22:35
language. You have different customs. You have a different culture.
22:38
You may even be a different ethnicity. You're totally different. These Gentiles
22:43
did not have what the Jews did, but now in Christ,
22:46
that's all been taken away through Christ, verse 13 and 14,
22:50
and through the church. You're no longer an alien,
22:54
that's somebody who is in somebody else's country who doesn't have
22:57
a right of citizenship. And Paul
23:01
says, all that's been taken away,
23:05
that estrangement, that being a foreigner, so then
23:09
you have a place in God's body.
23:12
God can take the most hopeless situations and he can
23:15
change them. I don't know if you know this or not, but the southernmost
23:19
part of Africa used to be known as the Cape of Storms.
23:23
It would shred ships and it would entomb sailors. And people were
23:26
afraid to try to go around the bottom of Africa until a
23:30
Portuguese explorer named Vasco da Gama.
23:33
He was able to go around and to navigate through those storms and find a
23:37
path through and to establish trade from Europe to India.
23:41
And pretty soon they were going from Europe to India and beyond.
23:45
And then cartographers began to change the name on the map. It's no longer
23:49
the Cape of Storms. It's now called the Cape of Good Hope. And so it
23:53
is. God takes our hopelessness and He makes
23:57
us, through the storms that we face, in a position to have hope.
24:01
Paul says, you didn't have it before, but now you have
24:05
it. But finally, I want you to see the difference that being in Christ
24:09
makes. We can see that in 3 statements
24:13
that are made in this chapter. We see, first of all, where we
24:17
are from Christ. From Christ,
24:20
we're in this position that we've already talked about in the first part of
24:24
this lesson. We're estranged from Him. We can't see Him.
24:29
We live life apart from His guidance. You know,
24:32
I mentioned about the Bureau of Standards in a sermon before about how much water
24:37
is in 7 blocks of fog. I went
24:41
out for my run this morning before sunrise. After that rain last night, I suppose
24:44
it caused it. There's all of this fog. Running as slow as I
24:48
am, I can see things just fine, but I'm meeting cars and they
24:52
can't see so well. You know, the fog,
24:55
as little as it is of water, obscures their view.
25:00
And I think about how we let our problems and our troubles and our sins
25:04
do just that. They eclipse our view of the S-O-N.
25:08
And Paul says, that's where you were from Christ. But by contrast,
25:12
see where you are with Christ. You're made
25:16
alive with Christ. You're seated with him. You're together
25:21
with him, verse 4 and verse 6.
25:24
Where we are in Christ, with Christ, is so
25:28
much different. But how do we get to be with Christ?
25:32
When Paul says that you were far off, but you're made near by
25:35
the blood of Jesus Christ. I am made alive with him.
25:39
I'm seated with him in heavenly places. Through the blood of
25:42
Jesus Christ. But the question is, how do I contact that blood?
25:46
I can't physically, literally do so. Jesus died 2,000
25:50
years ago, thousands of miles from here. You know, there's a lot
25:54
of blood in the human body, but only so much.
25:58
Suppose God's plan of salvation was you have got to literally
26:02
find the blood of Jesus Christ and have a drop of that blood
26:06
applied to your soul. You have to go through whatever trouble it
26:10
is. Talk about pilgrimages, man, there wouldn't be a pilgrimage like this one where you
26:13
go all the way across the world to the place where the blood of Jesus
26:17
is held, or maybe it's in places all over the world, but there's only so
26:20
much. What would you do to get access to have a
26:23
little of that blood applied to you?
26:27
But that's not how it works. But God helps us to know how the
26:31
blood gets applied. In John 19:34, the Bible says
26:35
that Jesus shed His blood in His death. When Jesus died,
26:39
we remember that in the Lord's Supper this morning, He shed His blood
26:43
as He was giving up His life. But Romans 6:3
26:47
says that we contact the death of Christ in baptism.
26:52
Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper in Matthew 26:28. He says,
26:55
this is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the
26:59
remission of sins. The blood of Christ remits our sins. But when Peter
27:03
preaches Jesus the first time, he says, repent and be baptized every one of you
27:07
in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins.
27:11
Revelation 1:5 says, to Him who loved us and washed
27:15
us from our sins in His own blood.
27:18
But then we see in Acts 22:16, and now why do you delay?
27:22
Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins.
27:26
Hebrews 13:12 says, Jesus, to sanctify the people suffered
27:31
outside the gate. In His own blood, He sanctifies the people,
27:34
Hebrews 13:12. But Paul says in Ephesians 5:25-27,
27:38
we are sanctified, we're set apart by the washing of water by
27:42
the Word. God doesn't want us to miss it.
27:46
We don't have to go somewhere and have physical, literal blood of Jesus
27:49
applied to us. The blood is applied in the act
27:53
of baptism. When we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, We're willing to
27:56
change our minds that leads to a change of action. Through that,
28:00
in that act of baptism, the blood being the what,
28:03
baptism being the when, the blood being the why,
28:07
baptism being the how. And so Paul is saying, this is
28:10
how it happens. This is how you get to be with Christ.
28:14
And on the other side of that, you're in Christ.
28:18
This is a book that's all about the blessings that we enjoy in
28:22
Christ. And usually we focus on chapter 1,
28:25
I see the clock. I don't have time to go through it, but I want
28:27
you to think about all the blessings in this chapter. In this
28:32
chapter, we have the kind mercy
28:36
and his riches. And you could break that down. Kindness, not severe or
28:41
harsh. Grace, undeserved favor that brings
28:44
us salvation and riches. We understand that in a materialistic
28:48
society, but this is unparalleled inheritance that's found only
28:51
in Christ, 1:6-11. Another blessing is good works.
28:56
Do you see that as a blessing? That you don't just come into Christ to
29:00
be, you come into Christ to do. God says, I give
29:04
you purpose. Another blessing is nearness.
29:08
We just walked through that and we see how the blessing
29:11
is we get to be near to God in a way that we can only
29:15
be through Christ, Hebrews 4:16.
29:19
There's reconciliation. This reconciliation
29:22
happens in the church. I know this is an unpopular statement,
29:26
but the reconciliation that we need is only found in the one body.
29:30
And what we have got to do is investigate is where is that one
29:33
body? What is that one body? We want to be a part
29:37
of the one body, the New Testament church.
29:41
But then there's a spiritual growth and a spiritual building. That's part of the blessings
29:45
that we enjoy. That we come into Christ, we have those blessings,
29:48
and we build upon that, and we help others to experience what we have
29:53
in Jesus Christ. In Christ are
29:57
all spiritual blessings, Ephesians 1:3.
30:01
So what Paul has done is, is he has shown us where we were before,
30:04
what life was like. You may have grown up in the church,
30:08
you may have known the truth all of your life, you never had to discover
30:11
it, But there was a time in which you were outside of a right relationship
30:15
with Him. And here's the truth of it. As Christians, there are times in
30:19
our lives where we turn away from it. We go back to where we were,
30:21
Hebrews 10:26 and following, and we need to go through that process all
30:26
over again of coming back to Him. We can find ourselves
30:29
as Christians walking in darkness, being without God and without hope,
30:33
though we know where it is. But then Paul says,
30:37
look at the difference that's made. When you're in Christ,
30:40
what he does with you, what you formerly were, and what that
30:45
means for you now. Leslie Weatherhead was an
30:49
air raid warden during the bombings of Great Britain,
30:53
in London particularly, in the fall of 1940 through the summer
30:57
of 1941. It was an unpleasant job.
31:01
After the bombings, the air raid wardens who gave warning would often have to go
31:04
through and search through the smoking rubble
31:09
for survivors and those who didn't. Leslie, on this particular occasion that he wrote about,
31:13
heard the sound of a little child that was sobbing softly.
31:18
He turned the corner and there he saw a 9-year-old
31:22
boy who was crying. He went up
31:26
to the boy and he asked him, Son, where is your father?
31:30
And he says, He is in the service overseas.
31:33
Where is your mother? She was killed last week.
31:37
Where are your brothers and sisters? Where are your aunts and uncles?
31:41
He says, we've been separated from each other. I have no idea where they are.
31:45
Seeking to be compassionate, Leslie Weatherhead got on his knees,
31:49
put his hands on both the boy's shoulders, and he said,
31:53
son, who are you? The boy began to cry louder
31:57
as he said, Mr. I Ain't Nobody's Nothing.
32:01
I wonder how many people are there that we're surrounded by every day who
32:05
are living without hope and without God, who feel that very way,
32:09
who have no idea what their purpose in life is or what should be
32:13
the foundation of their lives. God wants us to allow them to
32:17
be able to hear him who says, behold, I stand at
32:21
the door and knock. If anyone will hear my voice, and will open
32:26
up, I will come into him and I will dine with him and
32:30
he with me. Revelation 3:20.
32:35
We don't live without hope because of what Christ did
32:39
at the cross, because of the church that he purchased with his blood.
32:44
And he gives us the way whereby we could have access
32:48
to everything God has promised to give anyone. It comes
32:52
by way of the cross and the Savior's plan
32:55
of salvation. We've already reviewed that this morning. Perhaps you have yet to
32:59
obey the gospel and you need to do so. We want to give
33:03
you that opportunity today. Phil's going to lead us in a song to encourage,
33:07
to invite. If you need to answer that call to
33:11
come into Christ, to call upon the name of the Lord, we would encourage you
33:14
to do so. Or perhaps you're a child of God who's lost your way.
33:17
And need to come back home. If you need to, to express
33:21
something publicly or ask for our prayers, we'd be happy
33:24
to pray for you and with you. If you need to respond, why not now
33:27
as we stand and sing?