Preaching and Preachers

No SubstituteWhat is it? Well, negatively, it is not a mere sickness. There is atendency to regard man's essential trouble as being a sickness. I donot mean physical sickness only. That comes in; but I mean a kind ofmental and moral and spiritual sickness. It is not that; that is notman's real need, not his real trouble. I would say the same about hismisery and his unhappiness, and also about his being a victim ofcircumstances.These are the things that are given prominence today. There are somany people trying to diagnose the human situation; and they cometo the conclusion that man is sick, man is unhappy, man is the victimof circumstances. They believe therefore that his primary need is tohave these things dealt with, that he must be delivered from them.But I sug~est that that is too superficial a diagnosis of the condition ofman, and that man's real trouble is that he is a rebel against God andconsequently under the wrath of God.Now this is the biblical statement concerning him, this is thebiblical view of man as he is by nature. He is 'dead in trespasses andsins', that means, spiritually dead. He is dead to the life of God, to thespiritual realm and to all the beneficent influences of that realm uponhim. We are also told that he is 'blind'. 'If our gospel be hid,' saysPaul in 2 Corinthians 4: 3-4, 'it is hid to them that are lost: In whomthe god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believenot'. Or as Paul puts it again in Ephesians 4:17ff., man's trouble isthat 'his understanding is darkened, because he is alienated from thelife of God through the sin that is in him'. Another very commonbiblical term to describe this condition of man is the term 'darkness'.You have it in John 3:19: 'This is the condemnation, that light iscome into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, becausetheir deeds were evil'. And in the First Epistle of John you findthe same idea worked out. Writing to Christians he says that 'thedarkness is past and the true light now shineth.' The Apostle Pauluses the same idea exactly in Ephesians 5. He says, 'Ye were sometimesdarkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.' These are the termsthat express the biblical diagnosis of man's essential trouble. In other27