Awakening the Spiritually Dead Through God's Grace

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In this word deadness, there is a profound inability to believe, inability to obey, inability to worship, indeed, inability to see as believable the beauties of the gospel, which leads to the question last time, well then, if that's the condition of people, what's the point in even talking to them? [00:19:07]

What has to happen to dead people is that Christ has to do the miracle of making us alive. We do not make ourselves alive so that we can do what needs to be done. He makes us alive. However, when you get a few verses later into 2:8, that same grace that makes us alive says, by grace you have been saved through faith. [00:185:28]

Our thinking and our feeling and our willing all suddenly come alive to the believability of the gospel, the beauty of the gospel, the irresistible, compelling, wonderful nature of the gospel, and the horror of sin, the danger of hell, and the reality of our own guilt and the glorious sufficiency of Jesus. [00:235:12]

Faith is not here what we do in order to get alive; it's what we do in response to being made alive. So you get over to chapter 5 and you read this: Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. [00:272:08]

We speak to dead people. We say, hey dead people, we go to Pizza Hut, we go to Leanne Gym, we go to Chick-fil-A, and we sit across the table from people we love who are dead in trespasses and sins, and we tell them the gospel. We look them in the eye and say, wake up. [00:340:72]

The shout of the gospel raises the dead. Look, here's the analogy in John 11:43. Jesus cried out. He cried out. Well, that's stupid. No, no, don't be blasphemous. It's not stupid for God to cry out to dead people. Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. [00:395:60]

Faith comes from hearing, Romans 10:17. Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ that we speak. We speak it. He sends us to speak it, but in and through us, God says, wake up. Isn't this amazing? In Acts 26, Jesus says, this is the risen Christ talking to Paul. [00:438:96]

God makes them alive. God gives them eyes, and he's sending Paul to do it. He's sending you to do it. Don't you say they are blind, there's nothing I can do. No, no, there is something you can do so that they may turn from darkness to light. Here's the darkness that they're all in through their deadness. [00:482:47]

You and I speak life. We speak life into dead hearts if the Holy Spirit rests upon us. Here's the picture of what happens. So here's Paul preaching to dead people in Acts 13. The Lord has commanded us, saying, this is his sermon coming to an end, and he's going to thrill the hearts of the Gentiles. [00:523:51]

The Lord has commanded us, saying, I have made you a light for the Gentiles. Paul is made a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. And here's what happens, and when the Gentiles heard this, faith comes by hearing, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. [00:555:51]

Our job is not to decide who the elect are. Our job is not to raise the dead. Our job is to preach the word of God. So if you ask, all right, if everybody's dead and we were dead, what's the point of sharing the gospel with the dead? The answer is God has appointed to give life to the dead. [00:590:08]

Let's go speak it. Let's speak it to everybody. Let's speak it indiscriminately, and as we speak it, let's pray, oh Holy Spirit, come cause them to live. [00:627:68]

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