The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead

Last week I talked to yall about five signs that showed that we are spiritually alive. It’s good to be spiritually alive isn’t it? What about being spiritually dead? How much fun is that?

How many of us remember when we were still spiritually dead? All of us at one time or another were spiritually dead before we gave our hearts and lives to Jesus Christ when we got saved. In your mind, compare your life before Christ and after Christ. Which “life” do you like better?

Your life before Christ was literally a dead end wasn’t it? And your life after Christ is full of possibilities and blessings isn’t it. But not everyone around us is alive in Christ. Millions of people around us are dead in their sins and are therefore dead spiritually.

Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1-5 we read this: 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. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loves us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ…

There have been a lot of shows and movies in America that are about the walking dead or zombies as they are more commonly called. They are made up to look just horrific and gross. They have body parts missing, they are bleeding all over the place, and their clothes are nasty looking in other words they are just not pleasant to look at!

I described these zombies to you for a reason and that reason wasn’t just to gross you all out and make you feel uncomfortable I described them because the way that theses zombies look on the outside is how we looked on the inside when we were dead in our sins when we were the walking dead.

There is one big difference though in the way we look or looked as the walking dead and the zombies we see on T. V. or in the movies is that on the outside we look relatively normal don’t we? We have all of our body parts, or most of them anyway! We don’t have blood and stuff oozing out of our bodies onto our clothes. Our skin isn’t falling off of us, etc. We look like regular people don’t we?

But regardless of how we look or other people look we are most definitely constantly coming into contact with the walking dead of this world. From the outside it’s very difficult to tell who the walking dead are and who are the spiritually alive people isn’t it?

The walking dead though isn’t a new phenomenon there have been walking dead among spiritually alive people as long as there has been people on this planet. Jesus encountered the walking dead during His earthly ministry too.

In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 23 verses 25-28 we read about this encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees: 25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also. 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

I said a bit ago that it’s hard to determine who the walking dead among us are by their outward appearances but here Jesus shows how to spot theses spiritual zombies. Jesus knew their hearts and could read them clearly but we can’t do that. So, how do we learn to recognize the walking dead among us? We have to learn to watch what they say, what they do, and how they live their lives.

Outwardly they can be beautiful looking people; they can even say some of the right things. They can even claim to be Christians if they want to but Jesus said that they are blind people, and on the inside they are dead and full of all kinds of dead things. Jesus called them white washed tombs full of dead men’s bones. They were full of lawlessness and hypocrisy.