If we wanted to put a title across these few thoughts this evening, it would be simply this, what we were and what we are. Now this evening we'll probably only get through what we were. It's always good to be reminded, isn't it, of where we came from as far as God is concerned. The situation we found ourselves in before he moved in grace and love towards us and took us into his family through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not that we should dwell on it necessarily, we don't want to be overly indulgent in our past and what we were before conversion, but it's good to be reminded of it. What we were then, verses 1 to 3. What Paul is saying there is pretty stark, pretty outspoken we might think, because what he's saying there that each one of us before conversion were dead. We were depraved. We were deluded, we were disobedient, we were defiled, we were darkened and we were doomed. Dead in sins, depraved through sin, deluded by Satan, disobedient to God, defiled by sin, darkened in our minds and doomed because of our sins. Not the sort of, perhaps, a thing that we might write in a CV. Not the sort of thing that we could take any pride in. Maddie and Martin taking new jobs in the recent past. I'm sure they didn't want that written in their CV as they went for a job. It's not very, very kind in a way. But it is true, as we shall see as we go along. I'm told that in California, never been there, but I'm told that there is a very high mountain, the highest mountain in that particular area. It's called Mount Whitney. And yet, 80 miles away from that high mountain, that mountain that would see you as you were on it, feeling that perhaps you were on the top of the world, 80 miles away, there is a valley, and it's called Death Valley. The bottom of the world, you might say. The contrast between the two places, I'm told, is immense. There on the top of the mountain, it's very cool, you're in the cool breezes, it's got beautiful views, it's a lovely, lovely place. Down in that valley called the Valley of Death, it's unbearably hot and it feels hostile as you're in it. There, in that valley, you don't look up, rather you don't look down as you do on the mountaintop, but you look up at the world above. You look up at life, up to the rest of the world. So close together, these two places, and yet so different. One, a place of pleasure and enjoyment. The other, a place that you would escape from very quickly, where you'd find yourself there. Paul says that's the two places that, one of which we will occupy in our lives. And he goes on to point out that those who are without Christ occupy the valley of death. And in verse 3, he reminds us again that it's even as others. We are all tarred with the same brush, as it were, he tells us again and again. And the thought of being dead before we are regenerated by God through the Lord Jesus Christ's death on Calvary's cross. The words that he used there are an absolute statement. He's not saying that we're just merely in danger of death, but we're in a state of real and present death if we are without Christ in the world. Verse 1, James would write across that, would he not? Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. David would write across it, born in sin and shapen in iniquity. That's the situation we find. And just to emphasize this thought of us being absolutely dead, truly dead, of no use whatsoever. There was a man called Jeremy Bentham and he was a benefactor when he died of the University College Hospital in London. He decreed that he would be a benefactor, he would leave all his worldly goods to that faculty, provided, provided that his body was preserved after death and that it was wheeled out at every board meeting of the directors. afterwards. Now I meant to check this story just to see if it was true. You go away and check it on your Google. Jeremy Bentham, University College Hospital. But I'm told that though it was 160 years ago when his body was preserved, that even to this very day his body is wheeled out wearing coat and hat to every board meeting. Takes some believing, doesn't it? I must go and Google it. I meant to this afternoon and forgot. His body is wheeled out and he sits there at every board meeting. The chairman of the meeting makes an announcement when he takes the roll call of all who are present. He says, Jeremy is present but not voting. He couldn't, could he? He's dead. But he's there. This is what Paul is saying about you and I before we are in Christ, as we've been saying in this lovely epistle. Before we are in Christ, we are like that. Yes, we are very much alive. But as far as God is concerned, we're absolutely dead. Paul says dead people can do nothing, and certainly not those whose spiritual state is apart from Christ. How can this be, you say? We're alive, we're not dead. But the area that matters most, our never-dying soul, has no life except it be regenerated by God through the auspice of the Holy Spirit and faith in Christ's death on the cross. That is when we become alive, as far as God is concerned, spiritually alive. That never-dying soul, if we were preaching the Gospel tonight, we would be making a great point about that fact, that you and I are made up of three parts, tripartite beings, body, soul and spirit. The body, that part that is visible of each one of us, that part which, dare I say, we take more concern about than the other two, the spirit and the soul. That body which will return to the earth from whence it came, eventually. That spirit which I believe is given to us to allow us to communicate with God, returns to God when we die. But that soul, that very real you and I, lives on forever and forever down through the ages of eternity. And we don't take enough, perhaps, even we who are believers of many years, perhaps we don't take enough concern about the health of our soul. Certainly not perhaps as much as we do of our bodies. body, soul, and spirit, that never-dying soul only has life through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Harsh words, certainly. How, you say, can Paul possibly justify such statements, such a stance? In verses 2 and 3, he says those who are spiritually dead are under the sway of three things, the world, the flesh and the devil. Those three things govern our behavior, govern our way of life. What about the world? Well, the world I understand is, that word is used 186 times in the Greek New Testament. And almost without exception, every mention of that, the world, has an evil connotation. Nothing good about it at all, the world. In Galatians chapter 1 and verse 4, Paul calls it this present evil age. And that's the thought behind the word world when it is used in the New Testament Greek. Those without Christ, Paul says, are captive to the social and the value systems of this present evil age which is hostile to Christ. And you and I know much of that. We are bombarded on every side by this world in which we lived and we're encouraged to live by its systems, by its standards. We're encouraged to join its societies and to enter fully into its way of life. This is the world and God calls it in Holy Scripture, this present evil age. We're slaves. Slaves to the ideas, the philosophies, the excesses and the propaganda of man's thinking. That's what we are, particularly when we are without Christ. And it's very difficult perhaps for us always to keep ourselves clear of that particular situation. We are human still and these things still come upon us. This present evil age then is the world in which we live. In verse 2 he talks about the devil, he says, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. John in chapter 12 and verse 31 calls him the ruler of this world. Matthew in chapter 9 and verse 34 says he's the prince of demons. And Paul again in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 4 says the God of this world is Satan. God with a small g. He's the God of this world. The devil dominates and energizes the spiritually dead. That's the truth of it. And then we come to the flesh. In verse 3, he says that we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. The thought here is that the dead are not only corrupted from the outside by the world, and not only from beyond by Satan himself, but corrupted from within as well. The story is told of a little girl whose mother upbraided her for kicking her brother in the shins and pulling his hair. Why did you do that, she said. Well, mummy, she said, the devil got me to kick him in the shins, but I pulled his hair because I wanted to. You see the thought? This present evil world that encroaches upon us and takes us over is through the power of Satan, but also we have a responsibility not to do those things that are wrong, not to do those things that are sinful. People then sin under the influence of the devil, but they also sin of their own volition. The dead then, those without Christ, are dominated by the world from without, and we all know much about that, particularly in the days in which we live. They're dominated by the flesh from within, and they're dominated by the devil from beyond. That was us, that was you, that was me, to a degree or other, before we became in Christ. That was us. It was all we knew and it was a perfectly natural thing to do. We were held in subjection to Satan and forced to live in accordance with his, and notice, God-opposing will. We were slaves to Satan and we needed freeing. Those whose lives were characterized, Paul says, by disobedience. Disobedient to God, disobedient to God's Word. We ought to say here, I suppose, that we're not all equally depraved. One commentator I read said this about it. He said, there's room for deprovement. Now I don't know whether that's a real word or not, I meant to Google that as well. Deprovement, the opposite to improvement. And he said we are all capable of being, of deprovement, of being worse than we are today. I can remember Dick saying quite often from the platform here that never lose sight of the fact that each and every one of us has that within us that renders us capable of being the very worst criminal, the very worst sinner that there ever was. We've all got that ability within us, that propensity within us. We're all governed before we are in Christ. We're all Satan's slaves. So we're not all equally deprived. There is room for deprovement. People are capable of good, of course they are. People are capable of dignity, but it's always imperfect. No part of the human mind, the emotions, the heart, the will, is unaffected by Adam's fall in the Garden of Eden. All of us are in the sight of a holy righteous God, totally depraved and capable of any sin at all. So here we are. As I say, if we were preaching the gospel this would be fairly hard, fairly harsh. But tonight we're thinking of this just to remind ourselves of where God has brought us from, from what Christ has lifted us out of. We cannot raise the dead. It's a physical impossibility. Doctors and surgeons can bring people back to life instantly if they've only died for a few minutes. But we cannot raise the dead. The best that man can come up with is that we're either well, sick or dead. That's what the world... If we're well, We're well because we've taken good advice and we're on a good diet. We exercise regularly and we take lots of vitamins. This is what the world's view is of being well. If we're sick, we go to the doctor in the hope that he can do something for us. And if we're dead, well, we're beyond help anyway. This is what the world thinks of being well, being sick and being dead. But you know with our soul, our soul is in death's valley. And when you're in death's valley with your soul, all man's help will avail nothing. There's nothing we can do to become children of God, to have that eternity to be spent with God, that eternal life. Nothing that we can do at all to overcome that particular situation. What we were then, that's the situation, that's what we were like before God moved in mercy and grace in our lives and brought us into his family through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ at the cross at Calvary. I'm going to leave it there tonight. And next time, in the will of the Lord, we'll consider what we are in Christ. Because the next few verses, down to verse 7, tell us that beautiful story, that beautiful, wonderful situation that we can find ourselves in. The heights of life, if you like. the mountaintops of life, resurrection life, that's where we can find ourselves. So if we just read in closing down from verse 4 to verse 7, just to give us a bit of a lift as we go to prayer. Verse 4, but God who is rich in mercy, For his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace ye are saved, and hath raised us up together, made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus, the heights of life, resurrection life. Amen.