Sermon Central
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The Walking Dead!
Contributed by Steve Keeler on Jun 11, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: I look around me and see a world full of the living dead. The sad part is they don’t know they are dead. Paul reminds the Christ follower that they too were once part of "The Walking Dead". And at the time, we didn't know we were dead either!
“The Walking Dead” by Steve Keeler
“1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
As you know, I’m a movie buff. Some time ago, they released a movie called “The Sixth Sense”. Pure fantasy. In the movie, a little boy seems crazy to every one but as it turns out, he’s not crazy, he just sees ghosts.
The ghosts he sees have a problem as well, they don’t know their dead. One of the ghost he meets is a psychologist who tries to help the boy overcome his problems. The climactic moment of the film is when the boy looks at him as says, “I see dead people!”
Seems people have an ever increasing fascination with death, dying and the dead. One of the biggest of these interests is zombies. Zombies are dead people who somehow have returned to the living. And for some reason, they have a hunger for human flesh. One of the top rated shows on TV is called “The Walking Dead” showing people are truly fascinated by the subject.
Just for the record, before anybody gets the wrong idea, I don’t believe zombies or ghost of the dead are real. The Bible is crystal clear on this matter. When someone dies, they don’t come back to haunt or eat the living. Thank you God!
Still, I have to agree with the little boy in the movie, I too see dead people. I look around me and see a world full of the living dead. The sad part is they don’t know they are dead. They’re born, they live, they marry and find pleasure, they hate, they give and receive and they even sit in churches sometimes. They live full lives yet they’re dead. We are literally surrounded by spiritual zombies.
Our Scripture today speaks to the desperate condition of the lost. It also reminds every Christ follower of what they were before God saved them by His amazing grace. We are reminded of who we were before we met Jesus and made Him Lord of our lives. This Scripture points to the hopeless circumstance, the helpless situation of those who don’t know Jesus. I see dead people! Today, I want to look at why those who are trapped in the bondage of sin are like the walking dead. If you have never been saved, this message, I hope, will show the truth about sin and it’s consequences on your life. If you’re saved, this message will remind you of what you once were and how thankful you should be that Jesus pursued you, transformed you and saved you by His grace.
I see dead people! I look around and I see people hopeless and helpless lost in their sin with no way out on their own.
Paul is writing to the Ephesian believers to remind them of where they came from, to remind them of the kind of folks they once were, to remind them that they were once lost and dead in their sins. He writes to them to remind them that it was through Jesus they had been made alive.
Paul was writing to the believers but there is a message for everyone that hears these words of truth. He’s writing to you and me today. So, today, I’m going to talk about your past. As I do, you should rejoice that Jesus has delivered you from death! If you don’t know the Lord, this will describe your life. The good news is, I’ll give you a way out today so you don’t have to remain part of the living dead! The way Paul describes his readers is “dead”. They were a bunch of corpses, dead bodies walking around. But it’s not physical death but spiritual death he’s talking about. He’s saying that the lost are dead within and need to turn and repent and come to the Lord.
We all have a pretty good idea of what “dead” means. When somebody is dead, they are unable to respond to stimuli, they are totally unable to function at all. They lack the power and ability. Their body is reduced to an empty, inanimate thing that can’t see, can’t hear, think or respond. The voices they once heard, they no longer hear. Their eyes that once saw such beauty can no longer see anything. Their body, once alive is now reduced to an empty shell.
