But God!

Alistair Begg Radio Broadcast – September 2022

Here’s an uncomfortable thought:  All of us live in sin and our condition, as it relates to eternity, is very grave.  The comprehensive and divine diagnosis is this:  we are dead!  Not only are we dead in our sin (spiritually dead), we are guilty before a very holy God!!  The good news is that He loves us and wants to save us!

God opens our eyes to see the dead condition we are in

Man is confused and lost.  Sin is the problem!  But God is merciful, kind and full of love for us.  God will bring us to an awareness of our lostness and sinfulness.  The human condition cannot be fixed by education or law.  Only by the resurrection of Jesus have we been saved.  And we have a choice to either follow Jesus and gain eternal salvation or go our own way and gain eternal condemnation.

God is extremely merciful.  He gave His only Son to the world.  Not in a reluctant or “only if I have to” way, but in a way that should bring each and every one of us to repentance (turning from our sinfulness and then following Jesus).

God is like a parent who soothes a child’s hurts and encourages them to endure and persevere throughout life.  God does the same thing for us, but we shouldn’t walk away from this knowledge.  Walking away would be showing contempt for God and His mercy.  Through our faith, we are given grace and mercy because of the kindness of God.  His divine plan and will can save you!  Receive Him and be saved!

There are no exceptions, exemptions, excuses or escape from this world as a sinner unless you receive Christ.  So you are either dead or you are alive in Christ.

Believe and be sealed by the Holy Spirit

Salvation is more significant when we compare our old life to our new life in Christ.  God’s power raises us from spiritual lostness and death.  He turns death into life.

There are no degrees of being dead.  We are all dead until we turn to Christ.  Then we can be made alive. 

This diagnosis is true of all humanity.  Our sin is far greater than we can imagine.  It affects everything!

We currently live in a godless culture

The culture is generally hostile to the truth that we are all sinners.  Humanity rejects the thought that God does not view us as good people.  Psalm 14:3 says “They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good.  No, not one.”

Before we become Christians, we are (1) dead, (2) drifting, (3) disobedient, and (4) debased.  This is illustrated in the following points:

1/ Only God raises the dead.  We remain dead until we choose to accept Him.  Only He can save you from eternal death.  But humanity and today’s culture is blind and deaf to the beauty and word of Jesus.  We cannot work this out on our own.  It is extremely important to believe that only God can raise us out of our deadness.

2/ As drifters, we are still dead.  We walk a worldly path every single day as we try to fit in with the culture.  We go with the ideas of this world, because our deadness causes us to drift.  We need to find the narrow path, not the wide path.  Many will continue on the wide path when they could turn and be on the narrow path.  We need to look around and see the world as it really is, because there is a preoccupation with death and darkness.  We need God.

3/ We are sons and daughters of disobedience.  We should be asking ourselves “why do I do what I do and go where I go?”  Everyone serves someone.  Who is it?  God or Satan?

4/ Being debased means we have no direction.  Do you want direction in your life?  The voice of Jesus will call you out of your deadness both physically and intellectually because it is arrogant to believe that you don’t need to be moral in your actions and thinking.  Many say they are only doing what comes naturally.  The truth is, we are messed up and we will experience the wrath of God if we don’t step out of our deadness.

We can turn from the wide path and take the narrow path

We are destined in our deadness to experience the wrath of God.  We are currently enslaved by our sin!  God is full of both love for us and wrath for our sinfulness.  We can understand God’s wrath when we think about things that make us angry, such as injustices we see going on in the world.  In the same way, God is not indifferent to our sin and rebellion. He is not the kind of Father who would say “Go and do whatever you want.”

Coming out of our deadness must be a priority in our lives.  We don’t know how long our lives will be, and we don’t want to die before we turn to Jesus and ask to be saved.  We must grasp the seriousness of His wrath and the wonder of His love because they work together in tandem.

There is no explanation for the cross except for the wrath of God!  The blood of Jesus bore God’s wrath against humanity. 

God’s divine diagnosis of the state of humanity

Yes, we are messed up because we are dead in Christ.  Yet we try to save others from bad situations in life.  God wants to save us from His divine diagnosis of being dead.

Two things you can do today to move from being dead to being alive in Christ:

1/ Understand that you are not saved because of your great character.  You must take action to be “alive in Christ.”

2/ Be a student of His word by reading the Bible and understanding it.

3/ Heed the warnings found in His word.  He can lift you out of the pit of sin with His grace and mercy!

Receive God’s grace

1 Corinthians 2:14 says “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

When we accept God’s word as the divine truth, God extends grace to us for all of our sin.  When our minds are hostile to God, we cannot ever please Him and the end result is eternal death.  When we triumph over our problems and experience God’s peace and freedom, we gain eternal salvation.

The message of the cross can seem like foolishness to unbelievers who are dead in their sins and don’t know they are perishing.  We are deaf and dead until we see the truth.  As we live our lives in selfishness, thinking we are free, eventually we will realize we don’t really have satisfaction.  It is then that we discover we have sinned against Heaven and must take action.  For some, they don’t find out until they die and stand before God.  For them, it will be too late.

Come to the party

In John 11:38, there is the story of Lazarus, who had died while waiting for Jesus to make the long trip to see him.  Lazarus had two sisters, and they were very upset when Jesus did not arrive right away.  When He finally arrived, they asked Jesus to help them.  Jesus went to the grave of Lazarus and raised him from the dead!  In the next chapter of the Book of John, a dinner party is being held to celebrate Lazarus coming back to life. 

This is an analogy to the party we will be attending once we rid ourselves of our state of deadness.  When we head down the narrow path to God’s righteousness and eternal salvation, we are converted from death to life!  There is a glory beyond earth because of the transforming power of Jesus!!

This is a call to our consciences.  God has made us with an innate ability to know right from wrong.  He makes us aware of Himself and His word, found in the holy Bible.  He is knocking on the door of your heart!  Will you open the door and let Him in?  He is speaking to you.  Will you believe and follow Him?

Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now at the right hand of God the Father.  We need to recognize this and stop saying “But God!”