Can a Spiritually Dead Soul Thirst for God?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, is it true to say that every man has a thirst in his soul for God he
00:00:10.360 | is trying to fill with sin, and also to say that every man is spiritually dead?
00:00:16.200 | In other words, is it right to talk about a spiritual longing being filled by sin
00:00:21.840 | in a spiritually dead soul? How do you think about that?
00:00:27.000 | I have three kinds of responses to this. One, definitions are always crucial. The
00:00:36.920 | question is, is it right to talk about a spiritual, underline the word spiritual,
00:00:43.120 | longing in a spiritually dead soul, that is in the unregenerate. If a
00:00:51.360 | person means, can a spiritually dead person have a religious longing? And the
00:00:58.800 | answer is yes. In fact, that's what religions are driven by, desires and
00:01:05.240 | longings that the spiritually dead people have, very deep desires and
00:01:10.360 | and willings and choices and passions. But if we stick to the New Testament,
00:01:16.640 | the most relevant New Testament definition, is it right to talk about a
00:01:22.280 | spiritual longing in a spiritually dead soul? The most relevant definition in
00:01:28.760 | this regard is to take the term spiritual longing in the same way as
00:01:34.120 | spiritually dead, and that means spiritual is enlivened and prompted and
00:01:42.440 | shaped and guided by the Holy Spirit. That's what spiritual means. And the key
00:01:47.240 | text there is 1 Corinthians 2, 13 and 14, and the opposite of spiritual is not
00:01:53.640 | secular or non-religious. The opposite is natural or minus God, a human being
00:02:02.720 | minus God, human being minus spirit. So the text says, "We impart these teachings
00:02:09.520 | in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting
00:02:14.240 | spiritual truths," there's the phrase, "spiritual truths to those who are
00:02:19.520 | spiritual." And then he clarifies, verse 14, "the natural person," that's the
00:02:25.320 | opposite of spiritual. So a person just what they are by nature apart from God.
00:02:31.000 | The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are
00:02:35.760 | folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are
00:02:40.120 | spiritually discerned. So now the question is, is it right to talk about a
00:02:46.800 | Holy Spirit enlivened, prompted, shaped, guided longing in a soul that has no
00:02:56.240 | Holy Spirit given life? And the answer is no. Those souls don't have any such
00:03:02.680 | longing. So that's my first observation, which is basically to clarify the
00:03:07.560 | definition of spiritual. But there's more that needs to be said to help fill out
00:03:16.680 | the picture of what we mean by spiritually dead. It does sound strange,
00:03:21.240 | this is my second observation, it does sound strange to lots of people to think
00:03:26.960 | of a dead soul with the incredible amount of activity that the dead soul
00:03:34.240 | has in the New Testament. If you just take the main text on deadness
00:03:41.640 | in Ephesians 2, the deadness apart from Christ, this soul that is dead is
00:03:49.920 | amazingly energetic. Let's just read it and listen. "And you were dead," this is
00:03:55.160 | Ephesians 2, 1 to 3, "and you were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once
00:04:00.160 | walked." So you know, a walker who's dead. "According to the course of this world,
00:04:06.680 | according to the Prince of the power of the air," so this soul is very responsive
00:04:11.320 | to the world and the devil, verse 3, "among whom we all once lived or
00:04:16.720 | conducted ourselves." So this soul is conducting itself, it's making choices,
00:04:20.920 | it's acting in ways that are appropriate to its nature, in the passions of
00:04:27.280 | our flesh, and then it says, "doing the desires of the body and the mind." So
00:04:31.560 | there's plenty of desires, there's plenty of doing, there's plenty of living, there's
00:04:34.900 | plenty of walking. This is an incredibly active soul, and that's not unique to
00:04:42.360 | Ephesians 2. As Jesus said in John 3, "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and
00:04:47.880 | what is born of the Spirit is spirit." In other words, our first birth makes us
00:04:52.760 | merely flesh, and our second birth makes us alive to the Holy Spirit, and our
00:04:59.120 | spirit comes alive. But when we are just flesh, when we're natural, to use Paul's
00:05:05.800 | language, there are, Paul says, lots of works of the flesh. He says the works of
00:05:12.400 | the flesh are sexual morality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity,
00:05:17.520 | strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and
00:05:23.600 | things like that. In other words, a dead soul is a very active soul, which is
00:05:32.840 | strange. We must not confuse deadness of soul or spirit or heart with inactivity
00:05:41.560 | or having no powers at all. The dead, natural soul is filled with energy to
00:05:48.880 | desire and to do, which now leads to the third and last clarification
00:05:54.240 | that I wanted to make. What the questioner, I think, asks is, "Can a
00:05:59.720 | spiritually dead person have a thirst for God that he's trying to fill with
00:06:07.800 | sin?" And in that sense, he says, "Is it right to talk about a spiritual longing
00:06:15.000 | that is a real longing for the true God," I think he means, "in a spiritually dead
00:06:22.120 | soul that is unregenerate?" In other words, I think he's asking, "Is there such a
00:06:27.480 | thing as a true seeker?" There's a lot of churches built around seeker-sensitive
00:06:34.320 | views of church, and here's Paul's answer, but stay tuned. There's more. His
00:06:42.480 | answer is, Romans 3, 9, "Jews and Greeks are under sin, as it is written, 'None is
00:06:48.360 | righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God.'" Now that's a pretty
00:06:56.200 | strong statement. No one, apart from Christ, apart from the Holy Spirit, no
00:07:00.240 | dead soul seeks for God. Now what does he mean? Because we don't want to say more
00:07:05.200 | here than we should, and I think Romans 8, 7 and 1 Corinthians 2, 14 are
00:07:11.880 | what he means. He says, "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, it
00:07:18.440 | does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh
00:07:23.400 | cannot please God." Or, 1 Corinthians, "The natural person does not welcome, does not
00:07:29.880 | receive the things of the Spirit of God, that is, who by their unrighteousness," he
00:07:36.920 | says in chapter 1 of Romans, "suppress the truth." So I think what Paul means by
00:07:43.120 | "no natural person," no unregenerate, unborn-again person, seeks for God, I
00:07:49.920 | think what he means is, yes, they have longings of heart and desiring hearts
00:07:56.120 | and yearning hearts, and yes, this longing, desiring, yearning heart was made by God
00:08:03.220 | and for God, and yes, this longing for something more than what is in this
00:08:11.060 | world is true. As C. S. Lewis said, "It's a sign that we're made for another world."
00:08:17.080 | It says, "Hunger is evidence that we're the sort of people that were made for
00:08:22.040 | food, and this aching and longing for something we know not what seems to
00:08:26.760 | point to the fact we were made for something else, and yes, this longing and
00:08:31.400 | desiring and yearning will only be satisfied by God." I think Paul would say
00:08:37.520 | all that, I think he would agree with all of that, but then he would say, "No, our
00:08:41.880 | longings and desires and yearnings are not for God in this sense, that is, we do
00:08:50.520 | not want the true God. We don't want the true God. We don't like the true God. We
00:08:57.080 | don't admire the true God. We don't respect the true God. We don't trust the
00:09:01.520 | true God. We don't delight in the true God. Our longings are for what we think
00:09:08.200 | this God might be or should be or could be, and that turns into rejection.
00:09:14.680 | As soon as the real God begins to make himself truly known, Romans says, we
00:09:20.040 | suppress it, we hold it down unless we're born again, unless the Spirit
00:09:26.480 | gives us eyes to see that the true God is beautiful and desirable, we won't seek
00:09:32.520 | him. We'll seek and seek and seek and seek for what we know not, but we won't
00:09:36.800 | seek the true God, and to the degree that the true God starts to be visible to us,
00:09:41.640 | we suppress that knowledge until the Holy Spirit is at work. So, question, final
00:09:48.000 | question again. Is it right to talk about a truly spiritual longing for the true
00:09:54.640 | God in a spiritually dead soul? No. Not if we mean that a
00:10:01.640 | spiritually dead soul can perceive the true God and want him for who he is. It
00:10:08.240 | can't. It can't see him, it can't want him, it's hostile to him, and it can't please
00:10:13.640 | God by embracing God or seeking God as the true God. The dead soul does not want
00:10:19.960 | God for who he is. The dead soul suppresses who God is and creates
00:10:26.280 | alternative gods. Yes. Thank you, Pastor John. And we're gonna break now for the
00:10:32.680 | weekend, but we return on Monday with a doozy of a question, because there is an
00:10:36.840 | important debate in the Church in recent years over whether or not the ethics of
00:10:41.360 | the New Testament are final and binding, or whether they're merely suggestive and
00:10:46.280 | set a trajectory the Church can reshape and modify over time. This is such a
00:10:51.720 | crucial topic. I'm your host Tony Rehnke. We'll see you on Monday.
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