Before and After | Pastor Brandon Beals | Venture Church

Hi, and welcome to Venture Church Online. My name is

Kelsey and I'm our online campus pastor. We're so glad

that you're joining us. Drop a comment below of where

you're streaming from. We would love to interact with you.

We hope that you enjoy today's service.

Last Sunday in October.

Isn't it crazy? Beautiful weather, all kinds of things happening.

It's great. As you can tell, we are in If

you're new, we are in the middle of a building expansion.

Please excuse our mess.

I am going to warn you that we are taping,

texturing and whatever they do smoothing all the dry wall.

So this sanding, that's the roord I'm looking for. Thank

you Morgan. So this haze that you see in here,

this is not because our worship team did this for effect.

This is actually powder from the drywall. I'm gonna warn you.

It happened in the first service, it'll happen again. But

I'm telling you up front my voice is going to

start getting horse because I'm inhaling drywall as I'm preaching,

and I have water to help me. But don't worry,

I'm not going to get you sick or anything. If

I run into you in the lobby, but I did

want to warn you about that we are progressing in

our expansion. We are praying and you are going to

partner with me and praying that we are done by

Christmas Eve.

That's the goal.

So we want to be done in time for all

the guests that'll be here for Christmas Eve. I want

to show you several weeks ago, we challenge you to

give to help us buy the extra chairs we need

to fill the balcony in the extra space, and you

raised enough money to buy three hundred.

And fifty chairs.

The goal was three hundred, so you went way beyond,

so awesome job. We are currently in our goal to

raise nine hundred thousand dollars. We have reached two hundred

and thirty eight thousand dollars. So thank you again for

your generosity, and we do really appreciate that. I'm continuing

our series that I started last week through the.

Book of Ephesians.

I want you to turn to Ephesians chapter two. I'm

gonna read the text I'm gonna teach from. Then we'll

pray together.

I do want to say this people always people always

come up to ministers and.

They say things like this, Brandon, I just want to

go to a church where they preach the Bible. That

is usually code for there's something that a minister talked

about during the message that ticked you off. So rather

than say that, you say, I just want you to

teach the Bible. And then oftentimes when the ministers teach

from the Bible, they don't like what they hear. So

I'm gonna teach you from Ephesians to today. Don't blame

the messenger. You all want me to teach from the Bible.

That's what I'm doing.

This is gonna get intense before it gets better. So

Visions two, Verse one, it's set up. You were dead

in the trespasses in sin in which you once walked,

following the course of this world, following the Prince of

the power of the air, the spirit that is now

at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we

all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying

out the desires of the flesh and the mind. And

we're by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. Welcome,

but God, being rich in mercy because of the great

love with which He loved us, even when we were

dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved and raised up with

Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places

in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He

might show you the immeasurable riches of His grace in

kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you've

been saved through faith. And this is not of your

own doing. It is the gift of God, not a

result of works, So that no one may boast, for

we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus, for good

works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Buy your heads and close your eyes. I want everybody

to repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say, Dear Jesus,

speak to my heart, change my life in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Today we're going to talk a little bit about before,

in a little bit about after. How many of you

have ever had situations that you thought were bad but

they ended up being worse than you thought. It was

about eleven years ago, my right shoulder was tweaky, so

I thought I got to go to the doctor. Maybe

I need a cortizone shot. Maybe I need an arthroscopic surgery.

And I go into the doctor and takes a bunch

of others. Some MRIs comes back and he says, Brandon,

it's worse than you thought. You have a severe arthritis

and your right shoulder. You have to get your shoulder replaced.

So it was eleven years ago. I had a surgery

that at the time was an experimental surgery. It was

called a RIEM and run shoulder replacement. But I did that.

That was before eleven years ago. Eleven years later my

right arm.

Awesome.

Couldn't be happier with the end result. It was this summer,

my left shoulder a little bit tweaky after working out.

Just go to the doctor.

Probably need a cortizone shot, maybe a slight arthroscopic surgery.

And I went into the doctor.

He took the X rays, did the MRI, and came

in and met with him afterwards, and he said, mister Beals,

I said, that's my dad, not me.

He said, it's worse than you think. And I'm thinking,

oh no, here we go again. And he said, you

have bone on bone. You need to get your shoulder replaced. Awesome.

Sometimes things are worse than you think. So right after Christmas,

I got to start the new year on December thirtieth,

getting my right shoulder replaced and going through rehab not awesome.

Paul talks to us about who we used to be.

Now.

I want to prep you with this because I always

tell you this. I say it so much it probably

just goes over your head and you don't think about it.

But I always remind you that I got saved from

the world. And what I mean by that is that

I didn't grow up in church, that I remember what

my life was like pre Jesus, that I remember getting saved.

I gave my life to Christ when I was in

high school, you know, like fifteen years ago.

Something like that. And if you're like me.

And you had a definite before Jesus, in a definite

after Jesus, you remember the before like you never forget

who you were before, because the contrast on who you

were before is so dramatic from who you are now.

So Paul is talking about the before and the after,

and the before is scary. And there are some of

you that are here right now and you were living

in the after. But you have people in your family

that are in the before, you people in your family

that you're praying for that are lost. You have kids

that are lost, you have a spouse that's lost, you

have friends that are lost. And I think one of

the conundrums that we have is we understand when the

Bible says things like this, but we have to contextualize

it to our situation. And we don't want to think

that the people that we have in our life that

are lost, that they're really this lost. But Paul wants

to talk about who you were before, and he gives

this full length picture of our terrible spiritual condition in

our before in church. I want you to know you

thought it was bad, It was worse than you thought.

Paul starts off by saying verse.

One, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. Now,

we hear that and we think, oh, he means metaphorically dead.

We're kind of like a zombie, like we're dead, but

we're walking around and depending on who the director is,

we might even be running around and be able to think. No,

that word in the original Greek, when Paul says you

were dead, he's saying you are a corpse. You are

a dead body in a graveyard. Dead means you were

spiritually dead. When someone is physically dead, what we mean

by that is that they don't respond to physical stimuli.

When someone is spiritually dead, it means they don't respond

to spiritual things. In other words, they can come to

an anointed spirit filled worship service and feel nothing, meaning

that they can come and sit under anointed spear it

filled teaching and sit there with an attitude that their

arms are folded and be skeptical and critical while they

hear it. Dead means you are unimpacted by spiritual things.

Death means separation. You see in an unbeliever is not sick.

They're dead. In this world that you and I live

in is this vast graveyard of dead people. But the

scariest thing is they think they're alive. Like everywhere you go,

you're surrounded by dead people who don't realize their state.

They think they're alive. So you before you were dead,

but you think that's about It's worse than you thought,

because Paul says, not only were you dead, but you're

also a slave. He goes on in Ephesians two two

and three. He says, in which you used to live

when you followed the ways of this world.

So that is the NIV. But the ESV says.

It says in the way you once walked and walked

is a better translation than once you lived.

It's the way you used to walk.

You see, in the Jewish culture there is this metaphor

of walking, and walking is meant to illustrate how you

and I relate and conduct our daily lives. And Paul

is saying, you're not just dead. Before you weren't just dead.

You were a slave and you were enslaved in three

different areas. He says, For first off, you were a

slave to the world. Did you know that the world

has the system that it's trying to suck you into.

Did you know that the world has a pattern. The

world has values, the world has beliefs that it wants

you to adhere to. And by the way, if you

don't allow yourself to be acclimated to its system and

its pattern, your scene is ignorant.

Your scene is intolerant.

If you don't accept the world's values, your judge not

only are you dead, but.

You're slave to the world.

Paul told us in Romans, he said, don't conform to

the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the

renewing of your mind.

Paul is trying to emphasize that in year before you were.

Controlled consciously and even unconsciously.

By the values of this world. That you walk, as

Paul said, the course of this world. So, but it's

even worse than that, because you're not only a slave

to the world.

But he goes on and he says, in which the

way you used to live when you followed the ways

of the world.

And the ruler of the kingdom of the air.

So not only are you a slave to the world,

but you are a slave to the ruler of the

kingdom of the air.

What is that?

That is another term for the enemy. It's a term

for Satan. Like before.

This encouraging you were slaves of the world, and you

were slaved to the enemy. What is the enemy? We're

told in Johnny what is his number one strategy? And

ploy he lies, he deceives. What's you to think about

our world? What does he do?

The enemy tries to tell you what's right is wrong,

what's wrong is right, what's good is bad, what's bad

is good, what's up is down is up? He tries

to twist everything. And we read God's word and it's

clear what is right and wrong, but the world says

that's wrong. It's the opposite. And then where we really

get messed up is when there's someone that we love

that is in the before, because what the Bible tells

us is right and wrong isn't necessarily the way that

the people that we love are living their lives.

But they're good people.

So what happens is we get stuck in this moment

where we get confused because we know what we've been

taught when we grew up, and then we start blaming

our parents. We start blaming our upbringing or it was

some youth pastor I had when I was in high

school or something like that, because my kids don't live

this way and they're good.

So we get all confused and we get all messed up,

not realizing.

That the world has a pattern, the world has a system,

and you and I in our before, we were slaves

to the enemy.

And the number one ploy that he uses is what's.

Good is bad, bad is good, up is down, evil

is right, and so on and so forth. And if

you don't agree with that, it's because you're short minded,

it's because you're ignorant, it's because you're judgmental and legalistic.

When we think of the air, when something's on the air,

what does that mean? I mean it's on TV. Maybe

I'm dating myself. Maybe they don't say that today. Maybe

it's not like a gen Z thing. But like us

old people, something was on the air, men, it was

on TV, it was on social media. I don't think

it's an accident that the devil is the prince of

the Kingdom of the air, because what influences our cultural

opinions more than anything else, what we watch online, what

we read online, what we see on TV. Like, is

it any surprise that those things.

That shape the culture the most might possibly be ruled

by the Kingdom of the air. And then finally he

goes on and it's worse than you thought. Not only

are you.

Dead, but you're slaved to the world. You're slave to

the enemy. And he says in verse.

Three, you're also all of us also lived among them

at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and

following its desires and thoughts. Not only all that, but

you're also a slave to your flesh.

You and I were born with this nature that wants

to control our body and mind and encourages us to

disobey God. Have you ever thought about that? Like, our

initial impulses are usually to do something that's bad, like

at the minute, something that isn't good for us.

Like I always joke that if I could eat any.

Food that I wanted to eat for the rest of

my life, I would choose Dick's drive In. And if

ali ight was Dick's Drive In, I would die of

heart failure. My cholesterol would shoot through the roof, I'd

have high blood pressure, I would not be able to

walk around this platform without intensely perspirating. Because the nature

is to do things that aren't good. We want one

more drink, We want to feel good. We want to

do what like satisfies our nature. Like we we struggle

our whole life fighting against this flesh. Paul talks a

ton about this in Romans, and I don't have time

to cover all the scripture, but I want to read

just one passage Romans seven point fifteen.

Now this is Paul talking.

He's super Christian, like he wrote half the half the

New Testament. Like Paul is the guy that talks about

like I beat my body to bring it under the

submission of Jesus, like this guy is our example.

And here's what he says.

So super Christian says about himself Roman seven fifteen. I

do not understand what I do. For what I want

to do I don't do. But what I hate I do.

I know I should work out it's good for me,

but I want to watch TV. I know I should

only eat one of these dozen donuts, but they're there,

and if I don't eat them, die will. So technically

I'm doing this selfless thing to help her.

No, I mean this is the way.

Like what I want to do I don't do, but

what I hate I do. Like you and I the before,

we are slaves to the world and the pattern of

the world, and the ideas of the world, and the

the values of the world. And we are a slave

to the enemy, who is a liar and a deceiver,

and we are slave to our own flesh. I don't

know about you, but this seems so hopeless, Like if

ef Hesians ended here, it'd be a bummer. As bad

as it is, it's worse than you thought. He goes on,

and he says, as a result of all of this,

the end of verse three, he says, like the rest

we by nature are deserving of wrath. So I'm dead,

I'm a slave, and I deserve wrath. I didn't really

have to look up what the word wrath meant in

the original language to know it didn't sound good, but

I decided to look it up anyways. Wrath is just

as bad as you thought. You see the state of

someone who does not know Jesus, a lost person, an

unsaved person. In the eyes of God, they are deserving

of wrath. Wrath means divine response to human sin.

It is God's judgment of sin.

I know this is not a popular thing to preach

from the platform because it's not really seeker sensitive. Every

single person is going to die, and when you die,

the Bible makes it clear that you will stand before

God and give an account for your life.

And if.

You've given your life to Jesus, like we talked about

last week, if you've heard the message, you believe the.

Message, you are adopted, you.

Are a son, you are a daughter, and you are

guaranteed an inheritance. If you did not do that, you

are deserving of wrath. And I am super sorry if

that messages with your family situation because of what is

going on with your kids because of what is happening

with your spouse. Don't be mad at me. Paul wrote

these things. Romans five. Paul even goes on and he

describes us like we were God's enemies.

If Ephesians two.

Ended here, if I just close in prayer, like the

weather outside right now, it's like a bye week for sports.

The Mariners just lost, like couldn't get any more depressing.

If everything ended here, this would be a bummer. But

that's only the first three verses of Ephesians two. Here's

the rest.

So that is who you were before.

But God, you might have gone to the doctor and

gotten a bad report. But God, some of you, like

PB my Marria just falling apart. It might be, but God,

now have you seen my finances? They are horrible. But God,

I mean, you don't know what is going on in

my life right now. I don't and it might be terrible.

But God, this is who you were. You know who

I was before I found Jesus. I was dead. I

was a corpse in a graveyard. Now, I was a

slave to the world. I was a slave to my flesh.

I was a slave to the enemy. I deserved wrath

and at just the right moment Jesus crossed my path.

Everything changed. But God. But God, being rich in mercy,

because of the great love with which He has loved us,

even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us

alive together with Christ. By grace. You've been saved and

raised up with Him, seated with him in heavenly places,

in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he

might show I love this word immeasurable riches of his

grace in kindness towards us. In Christ Jesus. That is

who you were, But this is who you are. You

were deserving of wrath.

But who are you.

Now He has raised you up? You are seated next

to him in heavenly places.

I mean Church.

That is some seriously good news. But God, for by

grace you've been saved through faith. And this is not

of your own doing. It is the gift of God,

not a result of works. So that no one may

boast but God. We are alive in.

Christ because of His great love.

Three times it talks about his incomparable immeasurable riches of grace.

Every time we do communion.

I always describe communion as grace like it is this

gift grace means unmerited favor. You are given it. You

didn't deserve it, you couldn't earn it, But because He

loved you so much, he gave it to you. I

think what Paul wanted to do is make us so

aware of the before that we were dead in a graveyard,

that we were slaves, that we were deserving of wrath.

He wanted us to understand the gravity of our actual

condition so that he could magnify even more God's love

and mercy. Isn't it crazy when you talk about the

before darkness? That's all it is. But in that darkness,

light breaks free the focus of Ephesians, and this is

good news. Isn't You and I are sinful people and

we should be thankful for everything that God has done.

The focus isn't on I am a sinful person, but

the focus of the rest of Ephesians on God. That

we were dead and enslaved. And by the way, you

cannot appreciate what Jesus has done for you unless you

understand your beforehand state. You have to understand the before

to appreciate the immeasurable gift of grace that has been

given to you and Remember.

We talked last week that that is our choice.

That you're given the opportunity to hear the message, believe

the message, respond to the message, and when you do that,

you and I are adopted into sonship daughtership.

We are as adopted.

Children, and from that point forward we are guaranteed and inheritance.

You can only appreciate the blessing if you understand where

we came from. Three times in the Gospels we read

about Jesus raising somebody from the grave three times, literally

raising somebody from the grave. He did it to Jarris's daughter,

the widow's son, and also Lazarus. Here's a picture of

what Jesus does for us.

When we hear the gospel and belief.

We were dead in our sin and he resurrected us.

You see, when you're dead in your sin, you don't

need to be resuscitated, You need to be resurrected.

Our salvation.

Is a resurrection from the dead and a freedom from slavery.

And here's the wildest part about that. If the story

ended there, if that was really the end journey, I mean,

what a relief we made it.

But that's just the beginning. It's not the end. You see, we.

Weren't raised to be alive wandering around in a graveyard.

The same resurrection power that took us out of sin

helps you and I live a life for Christ so

that we can glorify him.

Now we get to verse ten, which.

Is so cool. So listen to this verse. I'm speaking

this over you. If you're watching online, this is for you,

if you're listening to this podcast on the air, whatever,

this is for you. So that is who you were before,

and this is who you are now. And here's the promise.

We are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do

good works which God prepared.

In advance for us to do.

The English Standard version doesn't use the word handiwork. He

uses the word workmanships. You and I are God's workmanship.

But I don't like that one either. I like the

New Living translation says you and I we are God's masterpiece.

That word in the original Greek. I read it, and

I was amazed when I really started thinking about it,

because the word in the original Greek for handiwork, workmanship, masterpiece.

It's the word that in our English language we get

the word poem from.

Okay, follow on I'm not a poetry guy. Okay, so

someone reads me a poem, I'm like, I don't know

what I'm supposed to do with this. I feel awkward.

But when somebody writes a poem, they put like all

of their heart and all of their emotion and all

of their expression and their thought and their energy into

this poem. Like this poem that they read that they wrote,

like has so much depth and meaning that there's so

much underneath it that you're supposed to understand that tells

the story of what they're dealing with in that moment,

or what they've been set free of.

That poem means everything.

And when you look at it from that point of view,

that's the way it feels about you. You're a masterpiece.

You are a work of art, and He created you

to do good. Here's the thing. You aren't saved, clearly

from this passage by your good works. You cannot good

yourself into heaven. There is not enough good that a

dead slave can do who's deserving of wrath that will

exempt them of it. You're not saved because of your

good works, but you are saved for good works, and

God prepared.

It in advance for you. To do. Salvation isn't the end,

it's the beginning.

Before we were walking this path, it was deserving of wrath.

I mean, we're getting pulled into the world. We're dealing

with the struggle of our flesh the whole time.

The enemy is messing with us. That is the path

that we were walking before.

But now we walk in these good works.

That God has prepared in advance for us to do.

Some of you, you are you're new to faith, and

you're wondering what's next?

What do I do next? What next? Is discovered? What

this good work is that God has for you? Because

He's prepared it for you in advance.

He didn't just have a plan for you to find him,

but he had a plan for you afterwards. Now some

of you are here and I'm done, so I promise

I'll close in a second. Some of you are here,

You're hearing all this, and you're thinking, what about my

kid who doesn't love Jesus. Some of you are here

right now, and you are thinking this is a little

bit overwhelming because I like at church the very first

time and a friend invited me, what do I do

with all of this?

I don't ever want you to forget what we.

Talked about last week, that he chases after you, that

he seeks you, that your whole life, he is pursuing

you because he knows, without him, without hearing the message

and believing the message, he knows where your life is heading.

And so if you're here, you're worried about your kids,

you're worried about your spouse, you worried about your friends,

believe Jesus is pursuing them. I always say that if

you made a list of every single person that you

knew and who is the least likely person to be

saved that list, you might have been on that list

for someone at some point. And Jesus is in the

business of taking the least likely because no matter what

is happening, but God, that's what this whole thing is about.

But God, the odds might be stacked against you, But God,

everybody about your head's close your eyes almost did that

whole six to seventh thing just to be weird. The

Huskies did it yesterday, So I thought, why not. If

you're here and you don't know Jesus, but you want to.

I'm a count to three. When I say three, just

raise your hand.

That's all you have to do.

We'll pray a prayer together, and that begins this journey

with Jesus where you get to discover what these good

works are that God has for you.

Also know that there's probably some of you.

If you were honest, you would say, man, I am

constantly getting pulled back into.

The before it sucks me back, and I don't want

to do that anymore. PB.

I want to say today, man, I want to live

for Jesus. And if that is you, when I say three,

I want you to raise your hand. So no one

looking around if you were ready to say now, I

was dead in my transgressions, but I want to leave

this place knowing I am alive in Christ. When I

say three, I want you to raise your hand. Here

I go one, two, raise them up, now, three, keep

your hands up. Our ushers are going to run around

and give you a card. And all this card does

is it describes what you do next. It's us giving

you advice on what are some next steps. I'm gonna

invite everybody to stand upon your feet. I want to

close by leading us in a prayer. And this is

just simply a prayer where we say we believe in

you Jesus. We want to follow you, Jesus. And for

those of you that raised your hand, if you believe

this and mean this, when you pray, you leave this

place in the after. You might be living in the before,

but you leave in the after. So I want to

invite everyone here to pray this prayer with me.

So bow your heads, close your eyes. Repeat after me.

Everyone say, Dear Jesus, I stand before you today, and

I admit I've made mistakes. But today I ask you

to forgive me, and I invite you to come into

my life and to change me.

I choose from this day forward to serve you with

my life.

Thank you for forgiving me and for saving me in

Jesus' name.

Amen. Yeah, that's amazing, man.

I was so encouraged to seeing so many people responding

to that message. Church.

Can we just give a handclap.

To the Lord for all that he's doing in the

lives of people here in this room right now. Maybe

you're online that are watching it so encouraging. Hey, before

we get out of here, I just want to direct

your attention.

To really quick two things.

The first thing is as a reminder that next Sunday

we get to celebrate ventures twenty first birthday. Come on

makes a noise, that's going to be an amazing time.

You are all invited to join us next Sunday night

at five pm for to I mean maybe there's going

to be a taco truck for some food trucks and

some desserts. And then immediately following that at six pm,

we're going to be doing a live album recording evening

with our Venture Worship team. They're going to lead us

in a night of worship. So excited about it. Hey,

we love you, hope you have an amazing rest of

your day, and we'll see you next Sunday.

Thank you again for joining us. If you enjoyed today's service,

go ahead and subscribe to our channel so you can

see future messages. If you'd like to learn more about

Venture Church, you can click the link that's in our bio.

We hope to see you again