Made Alive– Part 1

people have nightmares about being paralyzed. You're paralyzed. You can't move a bone in your body. You try to scream and you can't scream. Your mouth opens, but it doesn't come out. And you just you feel like there's not a bone in your body that can that can do anything. Ever had that nightmare? Okay, some of you have all of them. You must have a lot of nightmares. I like I had that one, that one, that one. And one of the worst nightmares that people mention, though, is

the nightmare or the dread of being buried alive. What a terrible feeling it would have to be to be buried alive. Recently, we've all watched with rapt amazement at the miners that were buried in in Chile, um, and just thousands of feet underground and and just the claustrophobic feeling that they must feel. But the nightmare of thinking that somehow you would be put in a coffin and put six feet under the ground, only to wake up and realize that you were buried alive. What a nightmare

that is. I'm told that George Washington had such a fear that they would bury him alive, that on his deathbed he talked to his servants, and he made them vow that they would not bury him until 12 days after he was dead. I mean, he just wanted to make sure I don't want you to bury me alive. So wait 12 days and then you can bury me.

In fact, there was a scare in the early days because during some of the hundreds of years ago, during some of the Middle Ages and some of the other plagues that hit, uh, some people were actually literally, seriously buried alive, in part because when some of these dreaded plagues hit. The doctors and other family members did not want to get too close for fear that they would get the plague, so they sort of rolled the bodies into coffins, not want to touching them, not wanting to

get sick. And there's historical evidence in some of these places that actually people woke up and found themselves buried. I read an article that just in August of this year, there was a young mother in Mexico, Miss Hernandez, that was grieving over a baby that she had had, and the doctors had pronounced the baby dead, and they had put this premature baby in a coffin, and they were about to begin, commence the funeral ceremony to bury this.

And as the mother was weeping and crying and so forth, she thought she heard some noise in this little coffin. Now that's spooky. And she she kept hearing the noises. So finally she opened the. She opened the little coffin that her that her daughter was in. And lo and behold, the baby was crying and moving around. It had been mispronounced and saved her from a burial. But here's the thing. When you are alive and when you are well, you cannot be placed in the coffins of the dead. Because

when you're alive, that's not where you belong. When you're alive, that's not where you want to be. When you're alive, you want to burst out and say, I am not dead. I am alive spiritually. The same thing is true when you are alive spiritually, you will not tolerate being in the place of the dead when you are spiritually alive. When you are spiritually alive, you will not want to be put in a spiritual coffin because your spirit will say, I am. This is not where I belong. My spirit

is alive and well. And when you're alive. You cannot be contained in the coffin of the dead. Ephesians chapter two. Paul begins this second chapter of Ephesians with a very interesting statement. He says. Verse one. As for you, now he's speaking to believers. He says, as for you, you were dead. In your transgressions and sins. Hold on. Dead? Yeah, dead. I mean, he's talking to a bunch of people that are Christians, believers. They know God. And he's saying to them, hey,

you were dead. And I'm sure they probably looked at one another and said, dead. I mean, when were we dead? Well, there's a lot of ways of being dead. You see, I believe in the trichotomy of man. That means that you compose. What makes up your being is body, soul, and spirit, as found in First Corinthians chapter five. Your body is the physical part of you. When you're born, that little naked baby, everybody sees it, holds it, slaps it,

makes it cry. That's the physical part of you. But then there's an unseen part of you called the soul. The soul is that part of you that houses your intelligence, your personality, your intellect, your will. And then there's another part of you. There's the body, there's the soul, and then there's the spirit. The spirit is the intangible part of you. It's the part of you that relates to the spirit world and more importantly, that relates to God. Because God is a spirit and they that worship him

must worship him in spirit and in truth. Now we are more aware of the physical world because the physical world is what we see, touch, smell, feel. So we're very aware of the physical world. We're somewhat aware of the soul world because it's the thinking world, the thought world, the personality world. But sometimes we're oblivious to the spiritual world because we can't see it. We can't touch it,

we can't feel it. We walk right into the spiritual world and don't always know what's happening in that unseen world around us. But the spiritual world is as real as the physical world. So Paul is speaking to these believers and he's saying, you were dead. Now were they dead in the body? No. Were they dead in the soul? No. They could think and live where they were dead. As in the spirit. So Paul looks at these people and says before, in your former life, at another time you

were dead. Spiritually, you were dead. Now when were they dead? Well, in order to understand when they were dead, we have to understand how they died. He tells us this. As for you, you were dead. In what? In your transgressions and sin. What put them spiritually to death was their transgressions and sins. Now we all pretty much know what sin is, but some of us aren't quite sure what transgressions mean. Well, let me define it for you. To

transgress Talks about our other translations say trespasses, transgressions. There are similar words and synonymous basically to to transgress speaks of a man as a rebel, or our lack of desire of going God's way. When I when I'm a transgressor, it means that I know what's right, but I don't want to do it. Speaks of my rebellion towards God. God's authority. Sin speaks of our failure to meet God's standard. So one speaks about our desire to do our own

thing and the other speaks about our failure. So what killed our spirit was our desire to do our own thing and our failure to meet God's standard. It makes me ask myself this question. However, when you were born, you had a body, you had a soul and you had a spirit. Was your spirit alive when you were born? When did your spirit die? That's a good question, right? Let's think about that for a second. It's transgression and sin that kills our spirit. Can a baby sin a newborn?

Can they sin? Oh, no. They're not even aware how to sin yet. There's no conscious of right or wrong. They don't have the ability to sin. I believe that every child is born with an innocent spirit within them. That when you are born, you are born body, soul and spirit, and the spirit that the spirit part of you is innocent, free and responsive to God in a child. In fact, let me go. Let me go a step further.

I believe that even when a baby is in the womb of its mother, and doctors and other people call it a fetus, I call it a child. I believe that as that baby is developing its body, that it's also developing its soul, but it also has a spirit.

word Roger. We love hearing from our listeners. Stop by and introduce yourself and where and how you're listening, and we look forward to hearing from you soon. Right now, let's go back into the second half of today's message, where Mark Jobe has more to say about being made alive.

Elizabeth's womb jumped, was filled with the spirit. The baby in the womb was filled with the spirit when encountered the baby Jesus within the mother's womb. So what's it? Tell me? It tells me that that unborn baby had a spirit And that the unborn baby was able to be filled with the spirit even within its mother's womb. That's why I'm so pro-life. To me, when an unborn baby is not born, it's not a mass of tissue

or just some, uh, product of the mother's womb. It's a child with a soul and a body and a spirit. So that baby, when it's born, it's born with a spirit. And that spirit is alive and innocent unto God. And what kills the spirit is that once a child reaches the age where they start sinning and oh, they will. Oh, no parent has to teach a child to sin. I've never had a parent come to me and say, you know, we need to teach a course. On how to sin for children. Because my kids are so good. I mean,

they're just so innocent and good. They just don't know how to sin. So could we teach a little course on sinning one on one? Never had a parent asked me that. Most parents I have had parents come to me with four year olds and say, pastor, can you do an exorcism out of my kid? Because I, you know, he's got some spirit in him. I don't know where he got it from. I have had parents come to me like that, but but but here's the thing. Listen, children don't have to be taught to sin. Why not?

Here's the thing. When a child is born, they're born with a spirit. Their spirit is clean and and and uncontaminated. However, every child is born with a sin nature. Now, some people believe, and some traditions of faith believe that because a child is born with a sin nature, the sin nature has to be cleansed from them at birth. And so some people do infant baptism in order to cleanse the sin, nature and so forth. But. But I want you to understand something a sin. Nature never condemns us

before God. It is sin that kills our spirit, not a sin nature. A sin nature means we have the propensity to sin, that we're born with a disposition to sin. Where did we get that from? We got it from Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were were created without a sin nature. They were made by God, without a sin nature, but they were made in the image of God so that God did not create robots. God did not wind Adam and Eve up and say, you will love me, serve me, and never sin. Yes, we will

love you. We will serve you. We will. No he didn't. He didn't create him that way. He created them with the power to make choices. And there came a time when they made a choice to sin against God. As soon as they chose to sin against God. The Bible calls it the fall of man. as soon as they sinned. Every child that was born after Adam and Eve inherited the sin nature. Cain and Abel inherited the sin nature.

Their children inherited the sin, the sin nature. Every generation, from people in Africa to Europe to Asia to Australia, everybody that's come from Adam and Eve, which is all generations. We've all inherited the sin nature. That means that the moment that you were born, you were born without sin, but you were born with the propensity to sin, that when you got old enough, you would sin. That's why, by the way, I believe that every child, it's not

the sin nature that condemns us, it's sin. That's why I believe that a child, every child that dies before the age of accountability, before they know right and wrong and sin. I believe every child goes to the presence of God. But it's a sin nature that gives us the propensity to sin. That's why when Jesus came Adam was created without a sin. Nature. Every child after Adam

had the sin nature. When Jesus came, Jesus had to be born of a virgin and not through the seed of man, because the sin nature is passed down through the seed of man. That's why Mary became impregnated without a man. Because if she had been impregnated by a man, that child born would have the sin nature. So therefore Mary was was was held the impregnation of Jesus, but without the seed of man. So that Jesus, when he was born, he was born without the nature to sin.

That's why the Bible refers to him as the second Adam. There was the first Adam with the sin nature, and Jesus was born also without a sin nature. He became the second Adam, the firstborn. The Bible tells us among many brethren, are you tracking with me? Just not. I want to make sure I didn't lose anybody. Okay, this is important. I know it's theology, but it's important. Now, we were dead. Because by the time we reach a

certain age, we've all sinned. And what happens when we sin is that we kill the spirit, that part of us that relates to God, that part of it, that's that hears the voice of God. And we sin and sin and sin and sin and sin. So our spirit dies. It's dead. The word used for death here means separated. The Bible says, I want you to understand that when you see the word death in the Bible referring to our spiritual life, it means separated. For example, the Bible

says that some of us will have eternal life. Here's what I want you to understand. The Bible teaches that we will all exist forever because your soul and your spirit are eternal. You will exist forever. I will exist forever. You will exist forever. Your cussing. Drunken neighbor will exist forever. Everybody will exist forever. Some will live forever and some will die forever. The Bible declares that you live when you know God. If you're separated from God, that's considered death.

To be separated from God is considered death. But we all exist forever. So when the Bible talks about you were dead in your trespasses and sins, your spirit was dead inside of you because it was separated from God. And when something is dead, you can speak to it, you can tap it, you can move it, and there's no response because it's dead, Paul said. You used to be like that. He gives us three characteristics of spiritually dead people. Number one, when we're spiritually dead, we are

spiritually The unresponsive to God's Spirit. But we are still influenced by other spiritual forces.

a day on their farm. He could pick an apple from their orchard, scramble up some eggs straight from the chicken coop. Catch a jar full of lightning bugs. Uh, Aaron and Jason. Is that offer open to men as well as boys? I think I'd like to sign up for that.

of us. So lies are for all of us, big or small, boy or girl. But I think just some of the ways that God designed, uh, boys from the beginning, that desire to lead, that desire to matter, um, that desire to shepherd those are all God given desires. But the enemy slithers in, as he did in the garden, and he can tend to warp those desires. And so we tried to help boys think about, yeah, you're different than your sister. You're different than your mom. And, um,

that's good. We celebrate that. But how do you need to be on guard as a boy and in the future, as a band.

us differently. Uh, Jason, as you raise your boys, as you speak into your boys lives, uh, especially at this age. And you have teenagers, but this this book is from 6 to 12. What? What is the truth? That you feel like? This is the main truth I want to impart to them to combat these lies.

grow in Christ's likeness together. And so that isolation that a lot of times Satan wants us to live in and feel like we're the only ones that are struggling with this, or we are the only ones that are involved and that nobody would understand where we're coming from. It's a lie. And we live better and we live more complete. When we live in community, we're open with the people around us.

won't want to miss it. That's Tuesday on Bold Steps with Mark John. Bold steps is a production of Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.