The Walking Dead

All right, you may be seated. Thank you to our worship team, who does a great job every week. We appreciate that, even though Brad decided to embarrass his wife. And uh And listen, you're the one that's got to go backstage and deal with it now.

Alright. Anyway. I thought I should return that to Brad. Um All right.

Well, you pray for me this morning. I've been. battling the flu all week and so we're playing a little injured. But In the spirit of late, great Larry Bird, we will overcome.

Now take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 2. And I do want to look at a text with you this morning. We're going to jump back into Ephesians. We've been studying Ephesians here. We took a break over the holidays.

And we're going to dive back into Ephesians. We're going to jump into Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 3, a short text this morning. By way of reminder, when we were in Ephesians, we looked in chapter 1. In chapter 1, we can kind of summarize in sort of two big parts and then some smaller parts, but the big parts are this section on the spiritual blessings or benefits that we have in Christ. That's really chapter 1, verse 3, outside of the little intro there through verse 14.

And then verses 15 through 23, you see the first of a couple of prayers that Paul has for the Ephesians. And in that particular section, he's focusing on this hope that they have. And they have a hope, namely because of the resurrection power of Christ that awaits, that has exalted Christ. And as you'll see when we get particularly next week, even into the text, you'll see that that same kind of power is available for us. And so he's sort of beginning to seed this idea of the power that we have available in Christ.

And he's going to cash that out. But before he gets there, he Uh kind of walks down a road. That is very puritanical. If you've ever read the Puritans, sometimes the Puritans can feel depressing if you read them. There's a book that one of the Puritans, a guy named Ralph Venning, a 17th-century Puritan, wrote called The Sinfulness of Sin.

And it's about 250 pages of just basically talking about how bad sin is and what a mess sin is. The Puritans can be misunderstood because the Puritans do that for a very important reason. And if you spend any time reading Puritanical literature, you'll understand quickly that they're actually not depressing at all. What the Puritans are attempting to do is to garner the deepest appreciation for the gospel that you can possibly have. And to do that.

They understand something that has been lost. It's been so lost on our American context. And this is why it's one of the reasons why Puritanical literature and sermons and things like that are almost seen as kind of oppressive. to the modern reader. Because we've lost the capacity.

to really understand The depth. The darkness? the nature of sin itself. And it feels like if we talk about it, somehow we're having like this. fundamentalist bully pulpit of some kind.

And yet It just simply is impossible to comprehend and grasp the depths and glories and amazing nature of the gospel. If we don't understand the sinfulness Of sin itself. Years ago, when I was a youth pastor, we would take a missions trip each year to West Virginia. I had done, years before that, I had done work in a homeless mission up there. And so I would take kids from Texas and we would go up and travel up and spend a week in West Virginia doing our own kind of mission camp experience.

And we would engage in ministry and so forth, but I always planned one fun kind of event during that time, whether it was whitewater rafting up in southern Pennsylvania on the Ohio Pile and Yof Ghania River. One year we decided that we did mountain biking, but one year we decided to go spelunking. Where you, if you, you know what speed lunking is? Speedlunking is where you go caving, down into a cave, right? But we didn't go with like the little like half-hour tour that you walk through and you see all the fun stuff with the lights.

This was like a guided thing where we took the group down and we went deep. And we went all the way back in. And I remember we got to a place where we were at the end of the cave. It's called Laurel Caverns. And we were at the end of the cave as far as you could go all the way down.

It was narrow. And there's, you know, I don't know, 15, 18 of us. And we're all down at the end. And it's time to turn around, which is sort of weird when you feel like you're down at this cul-de-sac in the earth. And our guide said, now I want everybody to turn off their lights.

And so we all turned off our lights on our helmet at the same time. My first thought was: I sure hope they all come back on. But we turned off our lights. And as the lights went off, I saw for the first time in my whole life Pitch. Black.

darkness. I'd never experienced it where it felt like you could almost like grab it. It was so palpable. And we just stood there for a moment in the pitch black. And then when you turn your lights on again, what happens?

The lights, certainly they elucidate what's around you, but they're almost blinding. at that point. Because it takes your eyes a little bit to even readjust. at that point to the light. What this sermon is is for us to sort of go back into the darkness.

And we'll turn the light on next week. But for now, we kind of need to think about the darkness for a little bit. To understand some things. And we're going to kind of go through the text actually somewhat quickly. And then I want to sit for a minute with you by way of application as we talk through this idea.

So I've called this the walking dead. Um some of you probably watched that zombie kind of thing. Maybe you're into that kind of thing because you're sinful. Um no, I'm kidding. I'm just joking.

I love dark kind of stuff. That's like some of my favorite movies are very dark. No country for old men. But anyway. You'll see why the walking dead here, it's right out of verse 1 and 2.

But as we move through this, let's just think of three aspects of a believer's former state. And so let's think about who we were in that way. Look with me in verse, let's go ahead and start up in verse 19 of chapter 1, just to sort of remind ourselves of a context. And then we'll get into chapter 2. And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe?

According to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead, seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and above every name. That is named not only in this age. but also in the one to come. Mm-hmm. And he put all things under his feet, and gave him as head over all things.

To the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all, the victory of of the exalted excuse me the exalted Christ. Mm-hmm. Coming out of that. We might expect him to jump right to the glories of our salvation. But to get us to a place of experiencing that glory enough, he has to go back into the cave.

And so we pick up in. Verse one. And you We're dead. You were dead. is what I'm going to call our former implotment.

Now If you're new to Lifeline, you wouldn't recall a series that I did back in the early fall. In that series. We talked about the ark, the big metanarrative of scripture, and how we are created, we are fallen. We are redeemed and we are recreated. One of the terms that I introduced to you in that series is this term: implotment.

And the emphasis of this term is just kind of if you Thread it out. The term itself. To be implotted means to take your life and see where in the plot of the narrative. you are and to adjudicate, to assess, and to orient yourself appropriately to where you are within that narrative arc and to understand yourself within the movement. And so what he's going to do is say, you...

had a previous kind of orientation. There was a way about you before. And the way about you before placed you in this fallen category, and he wants to position them there. He's gonna do it through kind of two aspects. On the one hand, he's gonna talk about your position.

And on the other hand, he's going to talk about your practice and placing you in here so that you can see yourself how you were in your former state.

So he says and you were dead, In the trespasses and sins in which he once walked, following the course of this world.

Now, The Greek doesn't say we're dead. The Greek reads like this, and you, being. dead in the trespasses.

So why does your translation say were and places it in the past?

Well, it does that because in Greek oftentimes you'll have these sentences, and sometimes they're very long. Ephesians is known. For its long sentences. There are eight sentences in Ephesians that are incredibly long, they go multiple verses. The sentence here.

Likely goes from either verse 1 through 7 or possibly even all the way through verse 9 as one whole sentence.

So the main verbs of the sentence are what everything that is verbal in nature outside of that hinges upon. What are the main verbs? If you go down to verse 5, you'll see, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together. With Christ. By grace you've been saved.

And raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places. Verse 5 and 6 give us these three main verbs: made alive, raised up, seated with Him.

So then you have lots of other ideas that are kind of moving around this.

So you got like participles that are called, ing. Verbs that run, other verbs, but they're all subservient to the main verb.

Well, the main verb is what's happened with you now. He raised you up. He has made you alive. He has seated you with him. He's given you a future position in heaven.

These are the gifts that he has given to you. Having given you those, all the other verbs are going to kind of dance around that. And so here we have this statement, and you Being dead.

Well then when you look in verse 2 it says in which you once little word pote formerly if you have an NIV it might say that walked so what we learn is that verse 1 and 2 are talking about a position before antecedent to the main verbs And so it's given us the translation and you... were dead. The fact that it's a participle is important because what it's telling us is this is the kind of way you lived. This was how it was for you. You were in this paradoxical way a lively dead person.

You were Always acting. Out of death. Repeatedly, again and again.

So you have this position and this practice that couples with it. That deadness Was the antithesis in that way of the resurrection power of life? I don't know if you recall, famous story, right, in your Bible. is Luke 15. when the uh prodigal son comes home.

When the prodigal son comes home, what is it that the father says to him? This my son. Verse 24 was what? Dead. But now he's alive.

Right? He's been found. See, that's framed that way because it's this idea. Was he dead?

Well The answer is yes and no. He was walking around, he was wallowing in a pig sty, he was falling apart at the seams. Was he dead?

Yes. He was in the body. But he was dead in regard to anything meaningful about life. And so it was with you and I. We were dead in the trespasses and sins.

Trespasses and sins there. Are two ways of saying the same thing. They're not, this isn't a different idea that trespasses are one thing and sins are another. But rather, trespasses and sins are the same. Two ways of saying the same thing.

We call that a hendiatus, in which you once. Walked. And this is where we get our title, The Walking Dead. You have a former kind of implotment. You were being dead.

Now, I want to spend a little time thinking about how that gets described. Because the way that that gets described is significant for us because there's utilization of three very familiar categories, and you see them show up very apparently. Yeah. Following The course of this world.

So you walked. which is a way of saying a metaphor, you've lived. You're acting, 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 body and the mind.

Now, What do you notice when you read through that? Following the course of this world. You see the prince and the power of the air And then you see the passions of our flesh. You see the world, the devil, and the flesh.

So, what you see is that there's an enslavement that we had as we were living. As the walking dead to the three great enemies. that we have in this world. Namely, the world, as in the system of thought. Particularly, we could say something like the zeitgeist of the age.

But it's been, while different iterations, It has been consistently a zeitgeist that has been repetitively opposed to God. Same principles, different artifacts along the way, but always over against the kingdom of God.

So we have the world We have the devil. And then we have the flesh.

So let's think about each of these just for a moment, in particular how they're described. You see the word following? If someone would get me a glass of water, that would be a wonderful blessing. Thank you. Um Okay, okay.

You see the word following? The word following there, much like the next word following in verse 2. Is the Greek word kata. And that is the word for according to.

Now, the reason I want you to highlight that is because when you see that in Ephesians, oftentimes it means to live by the standard. of to have something you possess by the standard.

So to live in this world. According to, is to live in this world according to the standard of the, and then you have this course of this world statement. course of this world. The word for course is the word eon.

Now that sounds like a Buck Rogers kind of term, like you would have a thank you very much, Jeffrey. Kudos. Your place in the kingdom is secure. Oh uh uh Uh Oh, much better. Um This idea of eon is like a, think of it as age.

Think of it as age. And not age in the sense of how old I am, but age in the sense of this age has certain characteristics and qualities that are typical of the kinds of beliefs The kinds of ideas, the kinds of senses about how we do life.

So philosophers call this all different kinds of things. Charles Taylor, Canadian philosopher today, who's very influential in Christian circles. one of the most influential, talks about what he calls a social imaginary. And what he means by that is that we position ourselves in a particular kind of way with different social relationships, and we do that in a particular way in this world. We do it that way without even thinking about it.

It's just how we are in the world, and yet we accept that as the norm. And we accept that as the norm because it's just the air that we've breathed. We would have to be of a different age, if you will, to be able to reinvent our social imaginary in that sense. And so we have to be aware of that. This is one of the points that I really want to drive home with you.

We, he said, lived according to. The eon of this and then the word for world is cosmos. We lived according to, think of it this way, the set of values. the set of values that were typical of a system world. that ran opposite God.

So that the way that we typically did our lives was predicated upon a completely different kind of way of looking at things around us.

Now that's significant, and the reason it's significant is. I have a hunch. And probably the hunch comes from my own life in honest assessment. That one of the things we struggle to do when we evaluate holiness in our lives. Is we evaluate holiness from a starting point that is a kind of accepted norm.

Okay. In that accepted norm often has to do with how we even view ourselves in regard to others. It's not that we will stand up and go, well, I'm doing pretty well. I'm holier than old Pelletier over here. You know, I'm doing okay, but I'm I'm not quite as holy as McKeever.

But I'll get there one day. Um I don't think that we consciously do that by any stretch of the imagination. I do think we kind of probably implicitly do some of that. if we're honest. The bigger issue is that Society has created a kind of normal way of being for us.

And what I don't think we do very well is we ask this question. is the normal way that society functions itself a good starting point. is perhaps It's true that there are things about the fabric of our culture. that are themselves completely unholy. and that perhaps we need to radically rethink.

Like just I jotted down a few kind of categories here to just mention and for you to think about. Like what are the norms? The social norms for entertainment. It might the social norms. For entertainment that Christians then spring off of, maybe perhaps we should even question aspects of them.

Should we think about? Whether that actually is a social norm that matches the eon of this cosmos. Or is it the kind of thing that maps onto the kingdom? of God in Christ. How you do business.

Right? How you do business. Business is business. And Dallas Willard always used to say, business is never just business. It's never just business.

How do you do it? When you read literature, right? When you read all kinds of, there's lots of great. prod productive literature out there. What kinds of principles?

Are you garnering? What kind of reality is being shaped by them? Uh norms for like politics. Like y'all watched any of the GOP debates? You watch them?

Have you seen how the rhetoric has been completely reframed in the last two election cycles. There was the the deb debates never happened like that. years ago, ever. But Now it's accepted. To take personal shots at people.

It's accepted to bring up people's children. in debates. It's accepted to just live off of ad hominem kind of things to try to undercut somebody to avoid actual substantive policy discussions. And now this is just the way so now people enter into it going, Well, that's the new rules. That's the way it goes.

Uh money. The way that we perceive the use of money. How we conceive of it in a Western world where the normal is utterly opulent compared to the rest of the world. Speech. What's normal in how we talk to each other.

May i it's just the culture of our family. We're just a very aggressive family. Really? You're just passionate. Oh well Think through that.

What's become norm? What's become the air you breathe in your relationships and how you handle those relationships? I think it's worth us asking. If maybe we've lived by the wrong norms. It's obvious when it comes to kids, right?

Like my kids, when they were growing up, especially when they were younger, they would always kind of do this one. And I know your other parents never faced this, but we did it, the Hurlbutt Household. They would say things like, Can I go here? Can I do this? Can I have blank?

And if I said No. Here's the answer.

So if you have younger children, this is where you prepare yourself because this you will face 9,475,000 times.

Okay, they will say this to you. But Johnny's parents let him Um Sally's parents said she could have it. And what does every good parent do at that point? They say I don't care. care.

I don't care. If Johnny's dad wants to pay for your college, well then maybe we'll have a negotiation.

Some kind of But I don't care. I always used to tell my kids two things. I'd say, I I could care less. Like, do you think it ever i moves the meter that somebody else has something and you don't? It doesn't at all.

But there was one other response, too, to that. And that was, I would often tell them, this is the worst way for you to make your case. Like, there's other ways for you to go about this. You're starting with the worst. Because now I just want to say no for fun.

Okay. Right? When you begin at a place. Where your norm, where what you want, where what you desire. Is brought to you by looking out at the eon of the cosmos, then that's typical of somebody who's not been changed.

That's the kind of person. who is getting their value structure from someplace else.

So, therefore, what you take in actually matters as a believer because you could end up looking like your former self. If you're not careful. Because you're just accepting the norms of everything around you. the course of this world. who feeds the course of this world.

The prince of the power Of the air. The ruler, the arconta. Is the Greek word? The ruler of the word for power here is actually the word for authority.

Now This may be a little bit of an odd concept for you, but it's a biblical concept. The devil has a certain level of authority. in the world.

Now I know. I know that when we sometimes pray, I understand why we say something like the devil has no authority here. But the very fact that we might pray and say and claim The name of Christ, the authority of the gospel, the power of God, and say that the devil has no authority here is itself a bit of a tipping of the hand that there are realms in which the devil has authority. And that needs to be put, so to speak, in your cosmology, the way that you look at the world. Right.

What else would it mean? For the devil to tempt Jesus into offer to give something to Jesus. Right? That's what what he does. There's this dynamic where his he has this a capacity, for example, to ravage Job's life.

But now where does he get that from? He has no authority outside of the sovereignty of God.

So God. has permitted the devil to create and establish to feed and to fuel a kind of system of the world. He is in that way alive and well, feeding that sense system. The prince of the power of the air in in Paul's day, it's thought That in this other dimension about us, the air about us, what's happening?

Well, all kinds. Of metaphysical, all kinds of spiritual realities, all kinds of spiritual warfare. In fact, yesterday I reached out to a couple of people. Asking them, quite honestly, to pray for me, in part because I, it's been a while since I have felt the spiritual warfare. Against my own life, like I felt yesterday, in particular yesterday morning.

was uh at an astonishing Almost. Palpable level. You ever felt that? Physical? You ever felt that spiritual?

You ever felt that emotionally? You ever felt that psychologically? You ever felt drawn down to a place of deep, dark defeat where you feel like, oh. I feel oppressed. In that dynamic?

The prince of the power of the air. The devil What does he do? What did he do?

Well In their case, that is, in those who are lost, The God of this world. The one who has authority in the world system. You don't have authority in the church, you don't have authority in the kingdom of God. He doesn't have authority over your life as a believer. But In the kingdom of the world.

The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers. To keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who's the image of God. Listen. What has he done? He's taken them to the back of the cave.

He's taking them down to the cul-de-sac. The lights off. And it won't turn back on. It won't come on. When we turned off our lights The thought that went through my head That's what's materialized.

is the light will not come. On. What does that mean?

Well, one thing that means is that when you are praying for non-believing family, Don't pray for him to clean up their act. Don't. Don't pray for them to somehow get their lives together and figure it out. You pray. That they will.

Let's see. Yeah. See, seeing. in God's kingdom is believing. This is what he's showing us.

I mean, two verses later is my favorite description of the gospel in all of Scripture, right? To see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. That's what happens. To be converted is simply to see Jesus for who he is. Once you see him, you can't unsee him.

Once you see him, you can't put that vision back in the bottle. You see him for who he is. But they're blinded from seeing. You were blinded from seeing. And you did not.

Garner. Your own sight. But it was given to you. The capacity to see. Because the prince of the power of the air has blinded them.

That's why later. He'll point out that even now as believers, what is our wrestling? It's not against flesh and blood, but it's against rulers and authorities and powers. And we'll talk all about that when we get to Ephesians 6. Look at your text.

Following, which by the way is the word according to. the prince or the power of the air. In other words, what's the standard of the world's ethical norms? The devil.

So don't live according to the world because that's according to the devil. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

Now, there's two ways of interpreting spirit. There.

Okay. The two ways are: it's a reference to the devil, as in the evil spirit. That is now at work in the Sons of Disobedience. The way the English is framed, that's kind of probably how you mostly read it. I'm not sure that's the best way.

It also could be the spirit, meaning your spirit. And what does that mean? It means that back then. According to the Prince of the Power of the Air, that's what was defining your inner life. And that's what's working.

in the sons of disobedience, he's saying. What's working is the kind of inner life that has been informed. By the prince of the power of the air, the kind of inner life that's been formed by the zeitgeist, the eon. Of the present cosmos. That's what's been informing you in that way.

You who are sons or daughters of disons or daughters of disobedience, among whom we all once lived. In the passions, we mention the word desire. Last week, in a message from 2 Peter, and that desire is not always bad, but often. In fact, 35 times in the New Testament, epithelia is used. I'm sorry, 38 times that's used.

35 of them, it's negative. It's only three that it's either neutral or positive.

So it's not always that desires or passions are bad, but the prevailing vision of the New Testament is that unrestrained desire, as we mention, is a negative. in human life. the passions of the flesh. Carrying out the desires.

So, if passion's there is the way we would typically use the word desire in our English, what's the word desire there? The word desire is actually the word that's most commonly rendered will in English. What's the word palema?

So read it like this. We all once lived in the desires of the flesh. That is our baser urges of our nature, carrying out the will. of the body And the mind. The will of the body and the mind.

The word for mind is... Technically, the word for mind is noia. Noose, this word for mind. The word there is dia noia. Dia is a little.

Preposition that goes on the front. Which forms this compound word, and it means through the mind, your thoughts. It's the idea. What goes through your mind?

So what he's saying is what's gone through your mind. What's been habituated In your body. is the result of the flesh. That was the case for you when you were lost.

So Put this all together. When you were lost, what kind of person were you? When you were lost, you were someone who normed your life according to the world. You were enslaved that way.

Now You didn't wake up in the morning and go, ah, I'm going to follow the devil today. I understand that. What he's saying is, you did, though. You didn't do that, but what you didn't realize is the norms of that society were formed. By Satan in his ethical system.

So it was formed by that.

Now, that may have come in the form of self-deification. It may have come in the form of manipulation. It comes in the form of power and how you manipulate people through the abuse of power. Comes lots of ways. Yeah.

But that norm Informed by the devil, became the standard for you. And in doing that, it wasn't as though you said, I don't want to. Yeah. No, no, it mapped on nicely. With Your internal life as a son or daughter of disobedience.

who was informed by the devil so that You were happy to live that way. fulfilling the Desires? Of your body and of your mind. It's one of the reasons why, if you say to someone, that's not a good way for you to live. And they look at you like you have nine heads.

Because to them you do have nine heads. You don't make any sense. Because the norm the norm in which they're living. is in complete contrast. to the norms of the kingdom of God.

This is the point that's being made.

Now And we're by Nature. Children of wrath, like the rest of mankind, is how verse 3 finishes out. The world, the flesh, the flesh, And the devil. Come and inform you and now you have a particular kind of Essence. You had a particular kind of essence as a lost person.

You were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. This is a reference to the doctrine called original sin. Original sin. We read about it in your scripture reading. Romans 5:12 through 14.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world. Through one man, and death through sin. And so death spread. to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given.

But sin is not counted where there is no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses. Even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Now, here's how I think is a helpful way to think about this: original sin. First, the implication of original sin. Is that your sweet little bundle of joy that you love so much and you cradle, and they're just as cute as a button, is a sinner? And you should realize that soon, because if you don't, you'll realize it in just a little while. Yeah.

You'll never have to teach them to disobey you. You'll never have to say, here's how you disrespect your mother. Just listen. And the reason you don't have to teach them that is because it's innate. It's empirical.

G.K. Chesterton famously said the adoption of original sin is the only sin that is empirically provable. Or the only doctrine that is empirically provable. Because it's obvious.

So, Lose the idea in your mind that people come in neutral and they choose good or they choose bad. Just lose that. That's mythological. People come in and they're not as bad as they could be. Right?

They're not. It's not that that child could never do moral good. Oh, heavens, no. There's atheists that have done wonderful moral things. My goodness.

It's not that at all. But it is the reality that to conform your life to the glory of God and reflect the capacities that that image. has given you to be able to do and reflect his glory is simply not available to someone by their own lights. Because they don't have light. And so they're in darkness, living according to a system and the norms of the world.

And they are that because Adam was like that, and they've done two things. One, they were born. Yeah. The second is They practically followed suit.

So, I'm a sinner both by my position and by my practice. If we were to go right back to where we started with this implotment idea, so it's kind of like you have like a Republican form of government, right? You have a representative who's making decisions and voting, representing you as a constituent in that way. Adam was our. What was was our representative head?

Representing us in humanity. And as a result of his fall, as a result of that, Adam and Eve, now we all. Have that position. We see another text that points to this, Psalm 51. Against you and you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

This is David repenting after his sin with Bathsheba. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. His point is, I came into this world bent, and now what have I done? I followed suit. What have I done?

I've screwed it all up. What have I done? Because he acted according to the ways. of the world. Yeah.

Now What does all this mean? Say, okay, Brian, we were bad. Why didn't you just say that?

Well, I'd like to just give you three quick points of application. As believers. Before I do that, though, I'd like to say something if you're here and you're not a believer. What I've shared with you isn't probably very convincing. You would just say you have a very negative view of humanity, you're a complete pessimist, and you've read too many Puritans, Brian.

No. What I would suggest to you is this. That Um When when you have conditions from birth, You don't even think about them. You don't even know. I have an eye condition called amblyopia.

So when I look at you all with two eyes, I see you just fine. Right. Um but if I cover this eye You guys look like a like a bunch of blobs. I think some of you are bigger blobs and smaller blobs. Don't be offended, but...

Um But you just see a bunch of blobs. I just see color patches. That's all I see. Out of this eye. This eye has compensated for this eye.

So, as I look, I don't think about it. I don't go throughout my day and think, oh, another day with amblyopia. It's just part of how I engage the world. But every once in a while If this gets covered, I go, man. I can't see Jack Diddle.

There's sometimes a little bit of an awakening. that occurs. with that. See, as an unbeliever, Brother, sometimes you stop and you go, oh man. My life does feel kind of purposeless.

What really am I doing? Why does it feel like I am spinning my wheels? And you kind of think through it and you get back on the horse and you keep going. I would encourage you to stop a little longer. I'd encourage you to keep the eye covered for a little longer.

I'd encourage you to think. What's actually wrong? that perhaps I'm not seeing Clearly, and perhaps I could be given a new way to look at the world.

Now if you're a believer. have forgotten what it was like to just see like this. You may have forgotten. If you grew up in church, it's actually one of the, I don't want to say dangers, I think child conversions are wonderful. But as you become an adult, it can be one of the things that you got to be careful of.

And that is that you're not like, you're going to say to everybody you're a sinner. I know that. Like you're going to say, oh, the Lord rescued me from my sin. But You didn't play the tape out very well. About what your life would be like without Christ.

And so that lack of appreciation causes you to sort of see in some ways the gospel as a kind of life enhancement. You're thankful for Jesus because he's injected some purpose here and there and made you feel a little bit better about yourself. But the radical nature. of the goodness and wonder of the gospel gets lost.

So let me give you, as a believer, three warnings. regarding your relationship to your former state. Here's the first. Don't forget the amazing nature of grace and lose a thankful heart. Don't do that.

Let me illustrate it with a quote from J. C. Ryle. Evangelical Anglican of the Nineteenth century. He said, learn to have a deeper sense of your own wretched sinfulness and corruption, and to be more deeply grateful that by the grace of God you are what you are.

Alas, there's too much complaining. Too little thanksgiving among the people of God. There's too much murmuring and poring over the things that we do not have. There's too little praising and blessing. for the many undeserved mercies.

that we have, may God pour out upon us. a greater spirit of thankfulness, and praise. Remember what your life could be like. Remember what it was.

Some of you came to Christ as an adult, and you go, that's easy for me. I know. But some of you have been a believer long enough. You've lost your acquaintance with what your life would be if it weren't for grace, and you need to get out of presumption and back into a thankful heart. Number two.

Don't forget the darkness of sin, and here's what I mean. I want you to not forget it. Because you need to hate it. You need to hate it. You need to be repulsed by it.

And I don't mean you need to be repulsed by your neighbor's sin. What I mean is you need to be repulsed by your own sin. You need to hate that sin robs everything life-giving from you. I mentioned Ralph Venning in his book, The Sinfulness of Sin. All God's works were good, exceedingly beautiful, even to admiration.

But the works of sin are deformed and monstrously ugly. For it works disorder, confusion, and everything that is abominable. And a longer quote from Venning, it is against man's well-being in this life.

Well-being is the life of life. And sin bears us so much ill will that it deprives us of our livelihood and of that which makes it worth our while to live. Man was born to a great estate. But by sin. which was in his treason against God he forfeited all.

Sin is against the quiet of a man's natural conscience. It wounds the spirit, makes it intolerable. Sin is against the beauty of man. takes away the loveliness of men's very complexions. It alters the very air of their countenance.

Sin is against the loving and con I love this the loving and conjugal cohabitation of soul and body. Think about that. I was meant to live as an embodied soul. in this beautiful sort of like My soul and my body in a sweet conjugal relationship, happiness together with one another, so to speak. And sin disrupts it.

They were happily married. And lived lovingly together for a while till sin sowed discord between them and made them jar. Just going back into the garden. Right? in the bliss of the garden.

That was the case for Adam, but now it's different. Don't forget the darkness of sin, and don't dismiss seeing it in yourself. And then finally, number three, don't lose sympathy. and grow in frustration with the walking dead. It's easy.

The low-hanging fruit. And it's one of the reasons, and it's just a little bit of a conviction I have in preaching. Yeah. Uh sometimes you'll hear me be more I'm just going to be honest with you. You'll hear me be more critical sometimes about conservatives than others.

Do you know why? It's not because I'm not a conservative. I'm a conservative. It's because I'm not all that interested in preaching to the choir. I'm just not.

I'm not super interested in saying a bunch of things that all of you are going to go, Amen, amen. Yeah. Judgment is to begin at the house of God. One of the things we have to get better at as a church is looking not at all the weaknesses of the world and then giving our amen to the weaknesses of the world. That's the easiest thing in the world.

Like, that's the low-hanging fruit. Who can't do that?

Okay. What we need is to be able to look and say, what are we missing in the sins of our own lives? that we're not seeing clearly. Listen, the world is going to be the world, friend. Don't read the news and go, can you believe it?

Yeah. Yeah. I believe it. I believe it every day. I see it and I believe it.

That's the world. If you wake up in the morning and that surprises you, you've been asleep long, far too long. This world's a mess. It's a disaster. But here's the deal.

You and I. Have a responsibility. And that is, we have to live a faithful, Holy life. against a tide that is coming only stronger. Only harder.

In a gale-force wind that blows, and we have to maintain ourselves. And as we maintain ourselves, here's what we have to maintain. And I think it's probably going to be the greatest difficulty of the church moving forward. is how do you maintain a soft heart? How do you maintain a soft heart toward people?

Who just can't see. They just can't see. Does the world Garner more frustration. From you? Then it does love.

Does the world garner from you more anger, and vitriol, and frustration? than it does compassion, grace. Prayer and pleading. What does it garner from you in your life? Because the posture of a believer toward the world.

Right? What is it? Let me give you a little text. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral.

Does the sexuality of this world frustrate you? It does me. Nor idolaters, it's adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality. Nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And you go, that's what the world is.

And such were some of you. Such were some of you. But You were washed. Uh y you notice it's passive. You didn't wash yourself.

You didn't clean up your crap and figure it out. You were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. Do not let frustration with the darkness win the day in your heart.

It's only going to make you bitter, angry, curmudgeonly, and ornery. Don't do it. Stay soft. Stay soft, celebrate the glories of the gospel. And pray that the Lord would turn the light on in the back of the cave.

So that they might see. Father, I pray that you would draw us close to you. to see you very clearly. Very precisely, Lord. Um and in that Mitigate our frustration with the world.

Lord, we we are Uh we have no tolerance for the devil and we shouldn't. Give us a heart of compassion for those who can't see because of his machinations. And I pray that you would free us, Lord. To be thankful to glory in the gospel received and to hate sin more. In Jesus' name, amen.