Lived Backwards

March 10, 2026·26 min·2 clips

Ellis conclusion: 'You don't do anything but you get everything' — Ephesians 2:8-9 as the ultimate inversion of the human effort to earn salvation.

1. Richard Ellis delivers a solo Christian expository sermon titled Lived Backwards on his daily listener-supported talk program Richard Ellis Talks. 2. Ellis is the host and sole speaker; no guests appear; the format is a practical sermon drawing from Matthew 4, 5, and 16 and Ephesians 2. 3. The sermon's core argument is that Jesus's commands consistently reverse worldly logic and following them produces results that worldly thinking cannot explain. 4. Ellis opens with Matthew 4:1-11: after 40 days fasting, Jesus refuses to turn stones to bread, refuses to test God by jumping from the temple, and refuses to worship Satan in exchange for all kingdoms of the world. 5. Ellis argues the third temptation is most relevant today: Look where you are being tempted to bow down — naming jobs and ambition as modern equivalents of worshipped statues. 6. Moving to Matthew 5:38-44, Ellis presents the law of retaliation (eye for an eye) as the world's default logic and Jesus's instruction to resist not an evil person as the backwards command. 7. Ellis argues that not retaliating makes the people you do it to go nuts and that God gets into that gap in a way that fighting back does not allow. 8. On the extra-mile principle (Matthew 5:41), Ellis explains the Roman soldier's legal right to compel citizens to carry his pack one mile, and Jesus's instruction to go two. 9. On loving enemies (Matthew 5:44), Ellis makes it personal: Your job is not to fight them. Your job is to love them — and suggests sending flowers to someone who hates you. 10. Ellis applies the love-your-enemies command directly to marriage conflict: I will not pray for my husband. I will not pray for my wife — noting the listener likely does not know fully what they themselves have done. 11. He argues that insisting on judging others reveals you think you are God — and that recognizing one's own need for a savior teaches how to dispense mercy to others. 12. Matthew 16:13-24 introduces Peter's confession (You are the Christ), Jesus's affirmation (on this rock I will build my church), and the immediate reversal: Get behind me, Satan when Peter rebukes Jesus for predicting his death. 13. Ellis uses the rapid oscillation from I give you the keys of the kingdom to get behind me Satan to illustrate how quickly Peter moved from thinking the things of God to the things of men. 14. The sermon wordplay reveal: The title today was lived backwards. What is lived backwards? Anybody figured it out yet? Devil. Lived backwards is devil. 15. Ellis connects the wordplay to Matthew 16:24 — deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me — and to Matthew 16:25: whoever desires to save his life will lose it. 16. The closing draws on Ephesians 2:8-9: the instinct to earn salvation by being good is itself backwards — you do nothing and he does it all. 17. Ellis frames receiving grace as bringing less than nothing and receiving everything: It seems backwards. You don't do anything, but you get everything. 18. The sermon's tone is conversational and direct; Ellis frequently anticipates and voices listener objections in colloquial language. 19. The program includes a mid-sermon break with contact information (855-6-RICHARD, richardellis.com) and a closing fundraising appeal for the listener-supported daily program. 20. Best suited to evangelical Christian listeners engaging with practical discipleship content; those seeking interfaith perspectives or academic theology will find the content narrowly scriptural.

As heard by us

The gospel sounds backward here, and that is exactly the point.

This episode argues for a backwards kind of life: stop trying to earn everything first, and start with receiving, yielding, and dropping the scorecard.

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Why you'd press play

If you keep score, this talk will press hard.

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