"Without Hope & Without God in This World" by Neal Pollard

Good morning.

We moved to Bowling Green a little over 7 years

ago, and we We became acquainted with a phenomenon

that we had known a lot about, but we had never been able to experience

it up close. I'm talking about sinkholes.

We live in the Pennyroyal Plateau, and so it's a karst terrain.

And what that means is that we live in one of the densest regions

in the country for sinkholes. There have been 60,000

sinkholes mapped that we know about under the soil.

The largest cave system on Earth, I've been told, is the state of

Kentucky. And that's where these sinkholes can become a problem.

You think about some of the incidents that you have heard about that are more

infamous. Back in Caldwell County, back in 2015,

you may remember that after heavy rainfalls, a sinkhole 60

feet wide and 20 feet deep opened up.

The local head of the fire department's mother, Nancy Fox, was driving

her car on where she thought the road was, but that

was the sinkhole. And she and her car went down in that, and she perished

in that sinkhole. Maybe you remember in 2019,

the Louisville Zoo had the sinkhole that disrupted business

for at least a short period of time while they had that mitigated.

But of course, when anybody thinks about the sinkhole problem in Bowling

Green, They think about what happened on February 12th.

Of what year was that, Chuck? 2014, is that right?

Where you had the SkyDome over this

area display where a sinkhole opened up and 8

Corvettes fell down into it, some of them priceless

and invaluable. There is nothing like the feeling

of knowing that even the very ground underneath you is

not steady and something that you can't count on being there.

But I guess if there's anything that's worse than that, it is

being in a situation to where you're over a sinkhole and you

don't even know that it's there. You ever experienced

an emotional or a spiritual sinkhole where

you felt like the ground beneath you was not steady and you didn't know

what to do? You know, there— Francis

Schaeffer talks about how there are so many people who don't even consider

the— the way that they're looking at life.

And they go along living as if they are the height, they're the top,

and there's nothing above them, no God. And he illustrates this

with the humpback bridges that span the streams across Europe for 2,000

years, that people were able to walk over those bridges and

to take their loaded wagons across them, and they had no concern

whatsoever because the bridge would hold the weight.

But no one would think to drive heavily loaded trucks over those bridges

because they would not bear the weight.

If we think that we're at the height of everything, that we are

the one who determines what life is all about, then life is good. As long

as there's no pressures, there's no problems, then it's going to work.

But as soon as difficulties come into our life,

we realize that that worldview will not sustain us. We can rock

along like things are good, and then there's a sudden death,

or perhaps it's the loss of a job or some financial

difficulty, or maybe it's a failed relationship,

and we find ourselves— and one of the ways that we might describe ourselves is

that we are without hope, we feel hopeless, or maybe

we feel like we're without God. Paul writes some individuals in

Ephesians, chapter 2, that were just like that.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

They are individuals who had lost without hope and without God.

And as he describes them in that way, that hopelessness was guiding their

lives. He said, but now in Christ Jesus, things have changed so

that you can stand firm. And he says that 4 times in

Ephesians chapter 6. The difference that's made

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

when there is a hope in your life and when there's not.

Paul writes to them and he says, now you are his workmanship created

in Christ Jesus unto good works. Which he ordained beforehand

that you should walk in them. But now remember, you who

were called Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision

in the flesh by those that are the circumcision made in the flesh

by hands, remember that at that time you were separated

from Christ. You were excluded from the commonwealth of Israel,

strangers to the covenant of promise, without hope and without God

in this world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who

were sometimes afar off are made near by the blood

of Christ, Ephesians 2:10-13.

Ephesians 2:10–13

In the 1,189 chapters of the Bible, did you know that

there are only 3 verses in our English Bibles where the words without

and hope are found together? The first time is in the Old Testament,

and it certainly is an individual who had every reason to have

no hope. He had lost everything financially that he had had

in his name. He had lost many of the people in his life. And because

of this, he has friends who come and accuse him of being the

problem. No wonder he says what he says in Job

Job 7:6

7:6. He says, all my days are spent without

hope. I think there are a lot of people that we would,

if we had a deep meaningful conversation with, if we got

down to the brass tacks, to the heart of it all, they would say,

I spend my days without hope.

Now, if we were to go to the New Testament and we find a second

time in which these words appear side by side, we see

the difference that's made with Christ. Let us hold fast

the profession of our hope without wavering,

for He is faithful. Hebrews 10:23. There's not just a

Hebrews 10:23

reversal of the words of hope and without, but there's a reversal of fortune

because here are individuals who say, I can draw near

to one who is faithful. And so I have hope.

I'm not without it. The other

place where we see this phrase or these 2 words together is

in our text, but they give us the opportunity to see

3 powerful truths that I want us to see together from Ephesians 2:10-13.

Ephesians 2:10–13

If you have your Bible open there, I'd like for us to notice that.

The first powerful truth I want us to see is,

as Paul expresses it, is what we were formerly.

Paul is going to use that word 4 times in Ephesians

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2. And when we see a word repeated,

especially in the way in which Paul does it, Paul is giving us an emphasis.

He is saying that this is important and I want you to consider it.

And so he's talking to individuals, Gentiles, and he says,

I want you to see your life before. If we're

ever going to see what our life could be,

we have to see where we came from. We've got to understand where we

were before God and before hope came into our lives.

And that's exactly what Paul is going to show us. First of all, Paul says,

I want you to remember your former predicament, in verse 1 and verse

2. And that is expressed in the phrase in

which he says that you were formerly dead dead in

trespasses and sins. Now I want you to think

about what he's saying. He said, here's the what, they are trespasses and

sins. These are going across the line to places that God does

not permit. It is missing the mark where God sets a target

for us. And Paul says, these were the things that characterized

your life before, trespasses and sins. Here's what that takes in.

That takes in my unintentional sins, things I didn't mean to do.

It takes in the things that I did in ignorance and the things

I did in carelessness. It takes in the things that I

knew I was doing that were wrong, the intentional sins, but it also takes in

those sins that I did in rebellion against the will of God.

Not only did I know it, so did folks maybe even show me in the

Bible, but I said, I don't care what you say, I'm going to do that

anyway. He says, you were dead in those things.

He says, you were formerly, there's the when. That's the way

it used to be. This is life before. This is what Paul would call the

old man in Ephesians 4:22. And then

Ephesians 4:22

we have the who. The who is the world, is the prince,

and is the spirit. What is it that influenced us in our

lifestyle of sin? It's the world we live in.

A world that's dedicated and devoted to self and therefore to sin.

It's the prince of the power of the air. This is the devil. He's the

one who tempts us. He's the one who influences the world. And then

it's the attitude, the spirit that is now at work in

the sons of disobedience, the mindset that says, me first

and my wants. I don't care what it costs. I'm going to

do it because it feels good. And Paul says, you were dead

in those things. Being dead in those things means that you

were separated from God. And so here's the predicament. It's an ugly

picture, but it's the before picture. We've seen all

of the, maybe the diet ads or perhaps even the facial surgeries

or even the implants or whatever it is. And we see the folks before and

then we see them after and we see what a difference it is. And Paul

is painting the before picture. He says, I want you to see your

predicament. But then he drills down. Paul mentions a

former passion. He says that you live— you formerly

lived in the lust of your flesh.

Now there's significance in Paul saying it that way. He says,

this is where you lived. You took up your residency here.

This is where you were comfortable. This is where you made your

life. He says, this is how you lived. You lived in

them. You indulge the desires of the flesh

and of the mind. It's the old mantra of the world that causes it to

struggle that says, if it feels good, then I'm going to do it. It's the

struggles we have in our life when it's guided

on based on what I feel or what I think or what my body wants.

You know, they say the heart wants what the heart wants, but so often we

miss the target. It's the flesh wants what the flesh wants.

And Paul speaks to the Ephesians and he says, here's the before picture,

before we come into Christ, before we're in a right relationship. He begins

this section by saying, this I say in the Lord and testify

that you henceforth walk not as the other Gentiles walk in the vanity

of the mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from

the life of God through the ignorance that is in them according to the deceitful

lust. And now you've been past feeling, you've given yourself over,

to sensuality, to perform every kind of impurity with greediness,

Ephesians 4:17-19. That meant something to

Ephesians 4:17–19

the Ephesians in the first-century world. But if Paul were to take that and

put it into 21st-century terminology,

what would he be talking about? Maybe he'd be talking about pornography.

Did you know that 12% of the websites on the web

are pornographic in nature. And maybe 12% doesn't seem like a big

number, but that's over 30 million websites.

Not only that, did you realize that $3,000

are spent on pornography every second of time?

That on any given moment across the world, in any minute,

a million people are consuming pornography.

And the last figures that were given were in May of 2026,

858 million unique individuals

logged on to watch pornography in the last month.

But not just that, 2.14 billion people

were consumers, were patronizers of pornography

in the world last year. And so this

is a pervasive thing that certainly Paul, were he to address the 21st

century people, would say, this is, that former passion that

characterized you or should characterize you before you come into Christ that you

give yourself to. Or perhaps it's fornication, premarital sex.

The CDC says that by the age of 44,

95% of all people in this country

have engaged in premarital sex. Or perhaps it's illegal drugs.

I was baffled by this, amazed by it, Last year,

11 million people were said,

or I guess with the statistics that were combined, were guilty of

driving under the influence of marijuana in our country.

2 million more in addition to that were driving

under the influence of another illegal drug. 20% of high

school students say in the last month that they were using an

illicit drug, usually marijuana.

Or perhaps it's homosexuality. The statistics

tell us that the average homosexual male has 3 to 4 more times

of partners than his heterosexual counterpart, and because of HIV,

has a higher mortality rate. And with all of these that we might mention together,

Paul is saying that you indulge the desires of the

flesh and the mind, and as a result of that, you are the children of

wrath. God reserves his wrath for those in disobedience.

But then Paul says you had a former partition. If you have the

old King James, it says this middle wall of partition.

And what Paul is expressing by this is saying that there was a time,

there was a problem that was not common to everybody. It was a Gentile problem.

Before Christ came to this earth and before the church was established,

the Jews had a special relationship with God. The Gentiles,

they had mythology and they had idolatry. They had no concept

of God and Christ and salvation and eternity and even sin.

Paul says that law was a partition that kept you separated.

But then he indicates that there is a former place.

He says that you were far off, but now you

are made near by the blood of Christ, verse 13.

I don't know how many of you remember back in 2002 that there were

2 US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut who decided

to go up, do a routine 14-week maintenance trip to the

International Space Station. And they were doing their work just fine until it

happened in February of 2003 that the space shuttle Columbia

exploded. And NASA decided right there that they were

not going to— they were gonna suspend their launch program indefinitely.

So you're these 3 guys, you're Pettit and Bowersox and you're Nicolae

Babudarin, and you're up there on the space station and you have no

ride home because the shuttle was going to pick them up and take them back.

What's your options? Well, on the space station,

they had these Soyuz Russian capsules,

the best of 1960s Russian technology at

their disposal. Oh, and not only that, but they had tried it back in 1971

and 3 of the cosmonauts died in an explosion in

that, and that was their legacy. So here they are in the space

station. They want to be back home. What are they going to do? Are they

just going to wait until maybe somebody can come? They hopped in that capsule

and they took the risk because they did not want

to be away from home.

What Paul is saying to us here is we got to understand

where we are when we're without God and we're without Christ in this world.

We're away from home, we're far from him, and we

need a desire to be back home. Perhaps some of

you may suffer from separation anxiety disorder. It's a real condition.

It's a condition in which you have a heightened concern and distress

if you are not able to be with something or with someone that

you feel attached to. It is by all accounts something

that you try to work through. It's an unhealthy condition. But there are so

many people who are far off from God and they have no idea about the

separation that exists. And God has us here in this world to

create not an anxiety, but a desire to

be close to God in Christ. And so Paul says, if we're ever going to

appreciate what we have now, what God came

to bring us, we've got to understand where we were before.

And so Paul, with these 4 statements, says,

here's what it was like before.

But second, I want you to notice with me that Paul points out

the change from what we were. He does this in

the contrast to those formerly statements with 3 phrases that he uses.

And with these 3 phrases, he's showing us the change that

Christ came to bring. And I want you to notice how beautiful it is

and how applicable it is to our lives. The first thing he says

is, but God.

There was the way things were before, but God.

This is a beautiful phrase that's found throughout the Bible. Did you know that in

some of the most pivotal moments in Bible history, this phrase plays

a prominent role? There's the days of Noah.

Remember Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 3 that there's only 8 souls

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

that are saved The whole world, because of their iniquity and

sin, they perish in the flood.

But Genesis 8:1 says, but God remembered Noah

Genesis 8:1

and all the animals, and He dried up the ground.

By distinction from what the world faced, because of God,

Noah and the grace that he experienced, he had something

different. Or I think about Joseph. Joseph has been

mistreated by his brothers. He's been sold into slavery.

He has been mistreated and put through so many different things.

And in Genesis 50:20, when he's gone through all of that, he says,

Genesis 50:20

as for you, you meant it evil for me, but God

meant it for good that he might save many people

alive. Or how about 1 Samuel 23:12?

1 Samuel 23:12

Saul wanted to kill David, but God saved him

or delivered him from death. Or what about Jesus? The rulers of this

world, 1 Corinthians 2:8, hung Him on a cross and

1 Corinthians 2:8

placed Him in a tomb, but God raised Him up, Acts 2:24.

Acts 2:24

And so you have God coming along and saying at those lowest moments,

in those hopeless moments, in those godless moments, here's what Christ

came to do. But God makes all the difference. Listen,

but God commended His love toward us in that while we

were yet sinners, Christ died died for us, Romans 5:8.

Romans 5:8

But God, the second

phrase that shows us what Jesus came to do to change what we

formerly were is, but now.

There's the before picture. But now in Christ Jesus,

you who were sometimes afar off are made

near by the blood of Christ. You know, in this particular

part of the chapter, Paul talks about what they were excluded from. It's in

our text. He says that at that time you were without Christ.

You were estranged from Israel.

You were strangers to the covenant of promise. You were without hope and

without God in this world. They, the Gentiles, literally were.

They didn't have access to God the way the Jews did. But what's the

application for us? If we

look at the before picture, we are the spiritually uncircumcised.

If only those in Christ are the true circumcision, Philippians chapter 3,

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

We are excluded from Christ if only those in

Christ are those that have access

to God, Romans 8:35-39.

Romans 8:35–39

There is no holy nation for us, no place for us to

call our identity if only those in Christ are part of God's

holy nation, 1 Peter 2:9. We are

1 Peter 2:9

perished not being part of God's special seed if only in

Christ through baptism, we find ourselves Abraham's seed,

Galatians 3:26-29. We have

Galatians 3:26–29

no hope if hope is only found in Christ, 1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians 4:13

4:13. And we have no God

if we can only call God our Father by being in Christ,

Romans 8:15. But now,

Romans 8:15

but how do we get to the now? We look at Paul's words in Colossians

Colossians 2:12–13

2:12-13. He says, you were buried with Him by

baptism into death and raised with Him by of faith in the operation

of God. Baptism spells the difference that

makes us in union with our Savior. Why would we debate or argue

with the thing that brings us close to Jesus Christ?

We'll say more about that at the end. And then Paul says,

so then. At the end

of the chapter, he says, no matter what you felt like you didn't have before,

in Christ, you're no longer strangers. And you're no longer

foreigners. How many of you know what it feels like to be a stranger?

I grew up the son of a preacher and my dad moved quite a bit.

And so had to start over a lot, go to new communities. And when

you go to somewhere new, you don't know what classes you should take.

You don't know what people you should and shouldn't hang around. You don't know the

teachers. You don't know the bullies to avoid. You're a new face and you're not

always a welcome face. But when he says

that you are a foreigner, he's not saying you're from a different part

of the culture. He's saying you're from a different culture altogether. You speak a different

language. You have different customs. You have a different culture.

You may even be a different ethnicity. You're totally different. These Gentiles

did not have what the Jews did, but now in Christ,

that's all been taken away through Christ, verse 13 and 14,

and through the church. You're no longer an alien,

that's somebody who is in somebody else's country who doesn't have

a right of citizenship. And Paul

says, all that's been taken away,

that estrangement, that being a foreigner, so then

you have a place in God's body.

God can take the most hopeless situations and he can

change them. I don't know if you know this or not, but the southernmost

part of Africa used to be known as the Cape of Storms.

It would shred ships and it would entomb sailors. And people were

afraid to try to go around the bottom of Africa until a

Portuguese explorer named Vasco da Gama.

He was able to go around and to navigate through those storms and find a

path through and to establish trade from Europe to India.

And pretty soon they were going from Europe to India and beyond.

And then cartographers began to change the name on the map. It's no longer

the Cape of Storms. It's now called the Cape of Good Hope. And so it

is. God takes our hopelessness and He makes

us, through the storms that we face, in a position to have hope.

Paul says, you didn't have it before, but now you have

it. But finally, I want you to see the difference that being in Christ

makes. We can see that in 3 statements

that are made in this chapter. We see, first of all, where we

are from Christ. From Christ,

we're in this position that we've already talked about in the first part of

this lesson. We're estranged from Him. We can't see Him.

We live life apart from His guidance. You know,

I mentioned about the Bureau of Standards in a sermon before about how much water

is in 7 blocks of fog. I went

out for my run this morning before sunrise. After that rain last night, I suppose

it caused it. There's all of this fog. Running as slow as I

am, I can see things just fine, but I'm meeting cars and they

can't see so well. You know, the fog,

as little as it is of water, obscures their view.

And I think about how we let our problems and our troubles and our sins

do just that. They eclipse our view of the S-O-N.

And Paul says, that's where you were from Christ. But by contrast,

see where you are with Christ. You're made

alive with Christ. You're seated with him. You're together

with him, verse 4 and verse 6.

Where we are in Christ, with Christ, is so

much different. But how do we get to be with Christ?

When Paul says that you were far off, but you're made near by

the blood of Jesus Christ. I am made alive with him.

I'm seated with him in heavenly places. Through the blood of

Jesus Christ. But the question is, how do I contact that blood?

I can't physically, literally do so. Jesus died 2,000

years ago, thousands of miles from here. You know, there's a lot

of blood in the human body, but only so much.

Suppose God's plan of salvation was you have got to literally

find the blood of Jesus Christ and have a drop of that blood

applied to your soul. You have to go through whatever trouble it

is. Talk about pilgrimages, man, there wouldn't be a pilgrimage like this one where you

go all the way across the world to the place where the blood of Jesus

is held, or maybe it's in places all over the world, but there's only so

much. What would you do to get access to have a

little of that blood applied to you?

But that's not how it works. But God helps us to know how the

blood gets applied. In John 19:34, the Bible says

John 19:34

that Jesus shed His blood in His death. When Jesus died,

we remember that in the Lord's Supper this morning, He shed His blood

as He was giving up His life. But Romans 6:3

Romans 6:3

says that we contact the death of Christ in baptism.

Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper in Matthew 26:28. He says,

Matthew 26:28

this is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the

remission of sins. The blood of Christ remits our sins. But when Peter

preaches Jesus the first time, he says, repent and be baptized every one of you

in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins.

Revelation 1:5 says, to Him who loved us and washed

Revelation 1:5

us from our sins in His own blood.

But then we see in Acts 22:16, and now why do you delay?

Acts 22:16

Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins.

Hebrews 13:12 says, Jesus, to sanctify the people suffered

Hebrews 13:12

outside the gate. In His own blood, He sanctifies the people,

Hebrews 13:12. But Paul says in Ephesians 5:25-27,

Hebrews 13:12 Ephesians 5:25–27

we are sanctified, we're set apart by the washing of water by

the Word. God doesn't want us to miss it.

We don't have to go somewhere and have physical, literal blood of Jesus

applied to us. The blood is applied in the act

of baptism. When we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, We're willing to

change our minds that leads to a change of action. Through that,

in that act of baptism, the blood being the what,

baptism being the when, the blood being the why,

baptism being the how. And so Paul is saying, this is

how it happens. This is how you get to be with Christ.

And on the other side of that, you're in Christ.

This is a book that's all about the blessings that we enjoy in

Christ. And usually we focus on chapter 1,

I see the clock. I don't have time to go through it, but I want

you to think about all the blessings in this chapter. In this

chapter, we have the kind mercy

and his riches. And you could break that down. Kindness, not severe or

harsh. Grace, undeserved favor that brings

us salvation and riches. We understand that in a materialistic

society, but this is unparalleled inheritance that's found only

in Christ, 1:6-11. Another blessing is good works.

Do you see that as a blessing? That you don't just come into Christ to

be, you come into Christ to do. God says, I give

you purpose. Another blessing is nearness.

We just walked through that and we see how the blessing

is we get to be near to God in a way that we can only

be through Christ, Hebrews 4:16.

Hebrews 4:16

There's reconciliation. This reconciliation

happens in the church. I know this is an unpopular statement,

but the reconciliation that we need is only found in the one body.

And what we have got to do is investigate is where is that one

body? What is that one body? We want to be a part

of the one body, the New Testament church.

But then there's a spiritual growth and a spiritual building. That's part of the blessings

that we enjoy. That we come into Christ, we have those blessings,

and we build upon that, and we help others to experience what we have

in Jesus Christ. In Christ are

all spiritual blessings, Ephesians 1:3.

Ephesians 1:3

So what Paul has done is, is he has shown us where we were before,

what life was like. You may have grown up in the church,

you may have known the truth all of your life, you never had to discover

it, But there was a time in which you were outside of a right relationship

with Him. And here's the truth of it. As Christians, there are times in

our lives where we turn away from it. We go back to where we were,

Hebrews 10:26 and following, and we need to go through that process all

Hebrews 10:26

over again of coming back to Him. We can find ourselves

as Christians walking in darkness, being without God and without hope,

though we know where it is. But then Paul says,

look at the difference that's made. When you're in Christ,

what he does with you, what you formerly were, and what that

means for you now. Leslie Weatherhead was an

air raid warden during the bombings of Great Britain,

in London particularly, in the fall of 1940 through the summer

of 1941. It was an unpleasant job.

After the bombings, the air raid wardens who gave warning would often have to go

through and search through the smoking rubble

for survivors and those who didn't. Leslie, on this particular occasion that he wrote about,

heard the sound of a little child that was sobbing softly.

He turned the corner and there he saw a 9-year-old

boy who was crying. He went up

to the boy and he asked him, Son, where is your father?

And he says, He is in the service overseas.

Where is your mother? She was killed last week.

Where are your brothers and sisters? Where are your aunts and uncles?

He says, we've been separated from each other. I have no idea where they are.

Seeking to be compassionate, Leslie Weatherhead got on his knees,

put his hands on both the boy's shoulders, and he said,

son, who are you? The boy began to cry louder

as he said, Mr. I Ain't Nobody's Nothing.

I wonder how many people are there that we're surrounded by every day who

are living without hope and without God, who feel that very way,

who have no idea what their purpose in life is or what should be

the foundation of their lives. God wants us to allow them to

be able to hear him who says, behold, I stand at

the door and knock. If anyone will hear my voice, and will open

up, I will come into him and I will dine with him and

he with me. Revelation 3:20.

Revelation 3:20

We don't live without hope because of what Christ did

at the cross, because of the church that he purchased with his blood.

And he gives us the way whereby we could have access

to everything God has promised to give anyone. It comes

by way of the cross and the Savior's plan

of salvation. We've already reviewed that this morning. Perhaps you have yet to

obey the gospel and you need to do so. We want to give

you that opportunity today. Phil's going to lead us in a song to encourage,

to invite. If you need to answer that call to

come into Christ, to call upon the name of the Lord, we would encourage you

to do so. Or perhaps you're a child of God who's lost your way.

And need to come back home. If you need to, to express

something publicly or ask for our prayers, we'd be happy

to pray for you and with you. If you need to respond, why not now

as we stand and sing?