Given to be destroyed
God shut the mouth of my enemy
What’s meant for my destruction
Destroy my enemy

–Luti-Kriss, “The ‘Anni Hilat’ Ion”–

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In Ephesians 2, verse 1, it says, “…and you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 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. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lust of the flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”

Now, what does it mean? What does it truly mean to be spiritually dead?

Well, I have a definition here. It means to be unresponsive to God. Utterly, totally, completely unresponsive to God, but responsive to every sinful stimulus, both human and demonic. Now, even that doesn’t shock you.

But you see, if you understood this text correctly, if you understood what I was saying, you would be shocked. You might even be appalled. And see, that’s the job of the preacher. You look at this text and you yawn. You look at this text and you put it in the category of Reformed doctrine when you should look at this text and weep. What is it saying about man?

Well, imagine this. Well, before we get there, let’s look at what it’s not saying. It’s not saying that man is treading water in a storm and crying out for God’s help. It’s not saying that man is floating unconscious in the water and needs to be revived a bit so that he might extend his hand and the Savior might take hold of it.

What is it saying? Imagine with me for a moment a rotting, putrid corpse at the bottom of a cesspool. A cesspool that was created by the moral filth and pollution excreted from that body, from that man.

You see, you hear he was dead. Then you hear ‘in his trespasses and sins,’ in the sphere of trespasses and sins. Yes, Adam is involved, but not just Adam. His own trespasses and sins. So if you want to get a good picture of what we’re dealing with when we’re preaching the gospel to men, it’s a dead corpse lying at the bottom of a cesspool that was created from the contamination, the moral filth that was excreted from his own body.

And not just that, although he is dead to God, laying down there dead to God, there is someone who’s put a ladle in the pond and is stirring it. He may be dead to God, but he’s animated and responsive to sin and the demonic.

So come to me with your silly preaching and tell me how you’re going to help sinners. You know, for this sinner to be helped, it requires a magnificent demonstration of the power of God that comes only through the preaching of the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.

But now let’s not just stop there. We’re not talking about one individual. Remember, I said we would talk about man. We would talk about man’s realm, man’s culture.

So now imagine you have this pond with a man in it. And then you see another and another and another and another. One corrupt pool after another all flowing into the same stream, all going as fast as it can away from God in rebellion and impurity hell-bent on its own destruction. That’s culture. That’s our society. That’s our world.