July 12, 2025 • 26 mins
Today on Bold Steps Weekend with Mark Jobe, you'll be learning how to be alive in the Spirit. From the book Ephesians chapter two, Pastor Mark dives right into this message from this series called When You Believe, Everything Changes.
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S1 (00:00):
Today on Bold Steps Weekend with Mark Jobe. We're learning
how to be alive in the spirit.
S2 (00:05):
When you are spiritually alive, you will not want to
be put in a spiritual coffin because your spirit will say,
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.
S1 (00:36):
Welcome to Bold Steps Weekend with Mark Jobe. Mark is
senior pastor of New Life Community Church in Chicago and
president of Moody Bible Institute. And I'm Wayne Shepherd. We're
in Ephesians chapter two today, Mark, which talks about being
spiritually alive. But that's not something we can do on
our own.
S3 (00:51):
No it's not. And Wayne, I know some people will
be shocked to know there's a lot of dead men
walking and the Bible talks about we can be dead
spiritually even though we're alive physically. And it talks about
a moment in time that has to come where we
become alive spiritually. And this is a powerful, powerful insight
(01:15):
into what it means to be born again and going
from death to life.
S1 (01:19):
If you have a copy of the scriptures with you,
turn to Ephesians chapter two. As Mark begins.
S2 (01:24):
We all have nightmares. Some have nightmares of being chased.
You run and run and run, and all night you're
being chased. And about the time they catch up to you,
you escape and run and you're panicking and you hide
and run and they chase. How many of you had
that nightmare before? Some have nightmares of falling off buildings.
(01:49):
You're falling, falling, falling. Seems like you're going to hit.
And you never do, right? I'm told that if you do,
forget it. Life's over. So don't. Don't ever hit. Some
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
(02:11):
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
(02:36):
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 Chile. Um, and just
thousands of feet under ground and and just the claustrophobic
(02:57):
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
(03:18):
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.
(03:39):
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
(04:00):
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.
(04:21):
I read an article that just, uh, 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
(04:41):
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
(05:02):
that her daughter 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
(05:25):
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
(05:49):
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
(06:09):
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.
(06:29):
He says, as for you, you were dead. In your
transgressions and sins, hold on. Dead, yea, dead. And 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
(06:52):
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
(07:16):
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,
(07:38):
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
(08:05):
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,
(08:28):
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
(08:52):
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 is
in the spirit. So Paul looks at these people and says, before,
in your formal life, at another time you were dead. Spiritually,
(09:16):
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.
(09:39):
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
(10:01):
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
(10:25):
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
(10:48):
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?
(11:08):
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
(11:32):
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.
(11:57):
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.
S1 (12:25):
You're listening to the Bible teaching of Mark Jobe on
Bold Steps weekend. We'll continue the message in a moment.
You can learn more about Mark in this ministry when
you visit us online at Bold Steps, or connect with
Mark and the team on your favorite social media page.
You'll find us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Now, this
comment came in via Facebook recently from Roger who said
(12:47):
thanks for your inspiration. I enjoy your messages on the radio. Well,
thanks for that good word and we love hearing from
our listeners. So stop by and introduce yourself on social
media and let us know where and how you're listening.
We look forward to hearing from you soon. All right,
as promised, let's get back into the second half of
today's message, where Mark has more to say about being
(13:07):
made alive.
S2 (13:10):
Let me tell you why I believe this. I believe
it because. Do you remember the story? I mean, there's
several places in Scripture, but one of them that comes
to mind is that when Mary was pregnant with Jesus,
she encountered her cousin Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with
John the Baptizer. When they encountered these, two pregnant women
(13:35):
encountered each other. The Bible says that the baby within
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?
(13:55):
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
(14:17):
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,
(14:40):
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
(15:00):
how to sin. So could we teach a little course
on sinning? One on one? Never had a parent ask
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
(15:20):
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
(15:44):
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
(16:07):
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
(16:28):
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
(16:51):
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
send 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,
(17:14):
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,
(17:34):
by the way, I believe that every child, it's not
the sin nature that condemns it, 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 can sin. I believe every child goes to the
presence of God. But it's a sin nature that gives
us a propensity to sin. That's why when Jesus came
(18:00):
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
(18:22):
without a man. Because if she had been pregnated 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.
(18:43):
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,
(19:07):
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.
(19:28):
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
(19:49):
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
(20:13):
will die forever. The Bible declares that you live when
you know God. If you're separated from God, that's considered death.
There's a whole bunch of people. In fact, the majority
of people that you encounter on the streets, the majority
of people in Chicago, their spirits are dead. Their bodies
(20:33):
are alive. Their minds are alive. They're socially alive, but
their spirit is dead inside of them. It means that
God is speaking, but they don't sense God. God is moving,
but they don't hear God because they're walking around as
dead men, walking dead spirits. Paul said, you used to
be like that. You were dead. And then he goes
(20:57):
on to describe what it means to be spiritually dead.
He says in verse two, in which you used to
live when you followed the ways of this world, and
of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the
spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
He gives us three characteristics of spiritually dead people. Number one.
S1 (21:28):
Well, next time, Mark Jobe will address the question. What
does it mean to be spiritually dead? So let me
urge you to please join us again for this important lesson.
And I'll also remind you that there is a way
for you to dig deeper on your own. Right now,
at Bold Steps Weekend, we have an online resource center
with a variety of helpful books and Bible study tools
that you'll definitely want to check out. And right now,
(21:49):
we've got a special bold step gift available for our listeners.
It's a book titled envy a Big problem You Didn't
Know You Had. I love that title written by our guest,
Mark pastor Mike Fabares.
S2 (22:00):
Yeah. By the way, many of you are familiar with
pastor Mike because he's on the radio. He's written several books.
He's a graduate from Moody Bible Institute and actually on
the board of directors as well. And so love pastor
Mike and his ministry. I was thinking about this topic
of envy and how oftentimes we just don't consider ourselves envious.
(22:27):
Pastor Mike, if you were to help someone self-diagnose, whether
they have envy, what would you point to? What should
they be looking for?
S4 (22:36):
Well, I would start by saying, are there any people
in your everyday world that you just find yourself erring
on the side of being critical when you really shouldn't
be and you think, well, why am I not happy
applauding their success? Right. This is hard, but we need
to look at the people that we are critical of.
And if you look hard enough, you often find it's
(22:58):
because I'm really envious of what they get that I
don't have. What they've accomplished that I haven't been able
to accomplish, that they make so much money, so much
more money than I make. There's a lot of reasons
that we, um, just spring into gossip and criticism and
just talking behind people's back in a negative way. And
usually we can start to realize what's happened is something
(23:20):
really between me and God. It's really not between me
and them.
S1 (23:25):
Pastor Mike, are envy and jealousy interchangeable?
S4 (23:28):
Not really. Um, there's a kind of jealousy that's appropriate
in the Bible, right? God says he's a jealous God
in Exodus 34. There's a time for you right to
rightly in your marriage. Be jealous if there's something threatening
that relationship. But envy is always seen as something wrong
in Scripture, and we're never to envy anyone. And what
envy is, is taking a jealous feeling when I have
(23:49):
no right to feel jealous. And now I start to
have a a bitterness toward that person for accomplishing or
achieving or securing something that I haven't been able to.
And Jesus tells parables about this. You've got to be
careful in your own heart to guard your heart against
this kind of envy, because it is different than jealousy,
because sometimes jealousy can be appropriate.
S2 (24:09):
That's great. So there you have it, pastor Mike Fabares.
We would love to get this book into your hand.
It's called a Big problem. You didn't know you had envy.
Thank you, pastor Mike.
S4 (24:21):
Of course. Thank you.
S1 (24:22):
We'll send you the gift of this book when you
support this ministry. Send your gift and request envy in
the mail to Bold steps. 820 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago,
Illinois 606 ten. Once again, 820 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago,
Illinois 606 ten. And if it's easier, maybe more convenient,
(24:44):
you can call us. Just dial 800 D.L. Moody. That's
(800)Â 356-6639 or request pastor Mike Weber's book when you donate
any amount online at boldsystems.org. Of, and today you can
easily step up from being just a listener of Bold
Steps weekend and actually become part of the team today
(25:05):
by signing up as a bold partner in supporting the
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It's quick and easy when you go to bold steps.
And by the way, if you haven't already, we encourage
you to check out our daily program of Bold Steps
(25:27):
airing Monday through Friday. For more details and where and
when to listen, just go to Bold steps.org. Thanks for
joining us today. I'm Wayne Shepherd, inviting you to join
us next time when Mark continues this discussion on being
made alive. He'll be diving into part two and you
won't want to miss it. So we'll see you next
weekend right here on Bold Steps Weekend with Mark Joe.
(25:50):
Bold steps is a production of Moody Radio, a ministry
of Moody Bible Institute.
Today on Bold Steps Weekend with Mark Jobe. We're learning
how to be alive in the spirit.
S2 (00:05):
When you are spiritually alive, you will not want to
be put in a spiritual coffin because your spirit will say,
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.
S1 (00:36):
Welcome to Bold Steps Weekend with Mark Jobe. Mark is
senior pastor of New Life Community Church in Chicago and
president of Moody Bible Institute. And I'm Wayne Shepherd. We're
in Ephesians chapter two today, Mark, which talks about being
spiritually alive. But that's not something we can do on
our own.
S3 (00:51):
No it's not. And Wayne, I know some people will
be shocked to know there's a lot of dead men
walking and the Bible talks about we can be dead
spiritually even though we're alive physically. And it talks about
a moment in time that has to come where we
become alive spiritually. And this is a powerful, powerful insight
(01:15):
into what it means to be born again and going
from death to life.
S1 (01:19):
If you have a copy of the scriptures with you,
turn to Ephesians chapter two. As Mark begins.
S2 (01:24):
We all have nightmares. Some have nightmares of being chased.
You run and run and run, and all night you're
being chased. And about the time they catch up to you,
you escape and run and you're panicking and you hide
and run and they chase. How many of you had
that nightmare before? Some have nightmares of falling off buildings.
(01:49):
You're falling, falling, falling. Seems like you're going to hit.
And you never do, right? I'm told that if you do,
forget it. Life's over. So don't. Don't ever hit. Some
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
(02:11):
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
(02:36):
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 Chile. Um, and just
thousands of feet under ground and and just the claustrophobic
(02:57):
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
(03:18):
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.
(03:39):
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
(04:00):
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.
(04:21):
I read an article that just, uh, 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
(04:41):
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
(05:02):
that her daughter 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
(05:25):
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
(05:49):
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
(06:09):
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.
(06:29):
He says, as for you, you were dead. In your
transgressions and sins, hold on. Dead, yea, dead. And 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
(06:52):
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
(07:16):
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,
(07:38):
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
(08:05):
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,
(08:28):
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
(08:52):
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 is
in the spirit. So Paul looks at these people and says, before,
in your formal life, at another time you were dead. Spiritually,
(09:16):
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.
(09:39):
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
(10:01):
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
(10:25):
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
(10:48):
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?
(11:08):
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
(11:32):
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.
(11:57):
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.
S1 (12:25):
You're listening to the Bible teaching of Mark Jobe on
Bold Steps weekend. We'll continue the message in a moment.
You can learn more about Mark in this ministry when
you visit us online at Bold Steps, or connect with
Mark and the team on your favorite social media page.
You'll find us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Now, this
comment came in via Facebook recently from Roger who said
(12:47):
thanks for your inspiration. I enjoy your messages on the radio. Well,
thanks for that good word and we love hearing from
our listeners. So stop by and introduce yourself on social
media and let us know where and how you're listening.
We look forward to hearing from you soon. All right,
as promised, let's get back into the second half of
today's message, where Mark has more to say about being
(13:07):
made alive.
S2 (13:10):
Let me tell you why I believe this. I believe
it because. Do you remember the story? I mean, there's
several places in Scripture, but one of them that comes
to mind is that when Mary was pregnant with Jesus,
she encountered her cousin Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with
John the Baptizer. When they encountered these, two pregnant women
(13:35):
encountered each other. The Bible says that the baby within
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?
(13:55):
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
(14:17):
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,
(14:40):
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
(15:00):
how to sin. So could we teach a little course
on sinning? One on one? Never had a parent ask
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
(15:20):
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
(15:44):
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
(16:07):
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
(16:28):
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
(16:51):
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
send 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,
(17:14):
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,
(17:34):
by the way, I believe that every child, it's not
the sin nature that condemns it, 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 can sin. I believe every child goes to the
presence of God. But it's a sin nature that gives
us a propensity to sin. That's why when Jesus came
(18:00):
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
(18:22):
without a man. Because if she had been pregnated 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.
(18:43):
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,
(19:07):
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.
(19:28):
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
(19:49):
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
(20:13):
will die forever. The Bible declares that you live when
you know God. If you're separated from God, that's considered death.
There's a whole bunch of people. In fact, the majority
of people that you encounter on the streets, the majority
of people in Chicago, their spirits are dead. Their bodies
(20:33):
are alive. Their minds are alive. They're socially alive, but
their spirit is dead inside of them. It means that
God is speaking, but they don't sense God. God is moving,
but they don't hear God because they're walking around as
dead men, walking dead spirits. Paul said, you used to
be like that. You were dead. And then he goes
(20:57):
on to describe what it means to be spiritually dead.
He says in verse two, in which you used to
live when you followed the ways of this world, and
of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the
spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
He gives us three characteristics of spiritually dead people. Number one.
S1 (21:28):
Well, next time, Mark Jobe will address the question. What
does it mean to be spiritually dead? So let me
urge you to please join us again for this important lesson.
And I'll also remind you that there is a way
for you to dig deeper on your own. Right now,
at Bold Steps Weekend, we have an online resource center
with a variety of helpful books and Bible study tools
that you'll definitely want to check out. And right now,
(21:49):
we've got a special bold step gift available for our listeners.
It's a book titled envy a Big problem You Didn't
Know You Had. I love that title written by our guest,
Mark pastor Mike Fabares.
S2 (22:00):
Yeah. By the way, many of you are familiar with
pastor Mike because he's on the radio. He's written several books.
He's a graduate from Moody Bible Institute and actually on
the board of directors as well. And so love pastor
Mike and his ministry. I was thinking about this topic
of envy and how oftentimes we just don't consider ourselves envious.
(22:27):
Pastor Mike, if you were to help someone self-diagnose, whether
they have envy, what would you point to? What should
they be looking for?
S4 (22:36):
Well, I would start by saying, are there any people
in your everyday world that you just find yourself erring
on the side of being critical when you really shouldn't
be and you think, well, why am I not happy
applauding their success? Right. This is hard, but we need
to look at the people that we are critical of.
And if you look hard enough, you often find it's
(22:58):
because I'm really envious of what they get that I
don't have. What they've accomplished that I haven't been able
to accomplish, that they make so much money, so much
more money than I make. There's a lot of reasons
that we, um, just spring into gossip and criticism and
just talking behind people's back in a negative way. And
usually we can start to realize what's happened is something
(23:20):
really between me and God. It's really not between me
and them.
S1 (23:25):
Pastor Mike, are envy and jealousy interchangeable?
S4 (23:28):
Not really. Um, there's a kind of jealousy that's appropriate
in the Bible, right? God says he's a jealous God
in Exodus 34. There's a time for you right to
rightly in your marriage. Be jealous if there's something threatening
that relationship. But envy is always seen as something wrong
in Scripture, and we're never to envy anyone. And what
envy is, is taking a jealous feeling when I have
(23:49):
no right to feel jealous. And now I start to
have a a bitterness toward that person for accomplishing or
achieving or securing something that I haven't been able to.
And Jesus tells parables about this. You've got to be
careful in your own heart to guard your heart against
this kind of envy, because it is different than jealousy,
because sometimes jealousy can be appropriate.
S2 (24:09):
That's great. So there you have it, pastor Mike Fabares.
We would love to get this book into your hand.
It's called a Big problem. You didn't know you had envy.
Thank you, pastor Mike.
S4 (24:21):
Of course. Thank you.
S1 (24:22):
We'll send you the gift of this book when you
support this ministry. Send your gift and request envy in
the mail to Bold steps. 820 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago,
Illinois 606 ten. Once again, 820 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago,
Illinois 606 ten. And if it's easier, maybe more convenient,
(24:44):
you can call us. Just dial 800 D.L. Moody. That's
(800)Â 356-6639 or request pastor Mike Weber's book when you donate
any amount online at boldsystems.org. Of, and today you can
easily step up from being just a listener of Bold
Steps weekend and actually become part of the team today
(25:05):
by signing up as a bold partner in supporting the
ministry on a monthly basis. When you give a monthly
gift of $30 or more, you'll also receive a special 50%
discount on Moody Publisher items online. So become a bold partner.
It's quick and easy when you go to bold steps.
And by the way, if you haven't already, we encourage
you to check out our daily program of Bold Steps
(25:27):
airing Monday through Friday. For more details and where and
when to listen, just go to Bold steps.org. Thanks for
joining us today. I'm Wayne Shepherd, inviting you to join
us next time when Mark continues this discussion on being
made alive. He'll be diving into part two and you
won't want to miss it. So we'll see you next
weekend right here on Bold Steps Weekend with Mark Joe.
(25:50):
Bold steps is a production of Moody Radio, a ministry
of Moody Bible Institute.
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