There’s a real heart wound. Not physically; it’s a spiritual wound and it’s deep. And it comes with birth. It’s imprinted within our very nature.
It explains why people who grow up in even the best environments go bad. It explains why some of the most educated cultures of the world have done some of the most heinous crimes against humanity. Only the heart wound explains those things.
It’s a deep wound. But the truth is we don’t come into this world good. That’s the hard truth. We come into this world wounded – with a fallen, self-serving nature that often corrupts life; with no connection to eternity – even though there is a sense of it in our heart that we bear all the way through this life. We have this innate sense that there’s something more, but we’re not connected to it. We come into this world alienated from the God who made us.
That’s the truth, Until we engage what our culture doesn’t want to see; until we think about why we are the way we are, and why we struggle the way we do, we’re cutting off from the very lifeblood of learning, how to become an authentic man.
At the core of being an authentic man, a man must come to terms with himself and his nature, and why he is the way he is, and how he’s been equipped for ill or for good in this world. Part of that is discovering the deepest wound of all, which is the heart wound. Today, we’ll talk about the implications of what all this means.
Heart Wound Defined
By this wound we mean that we are all fallen and flawed creatures, at odds by nature with our Creator and with each other.
Ephesians 2:3 says: “We started out bad, being born with evil natures.”
By ‘evil natures’
it means selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed and because of that, there are
no born good guys. There are no ‘pure hearts’. There is no one who has natural nobility. Those don’t just arise out of nature. Instead, Romans 3 puts it this way:
“There
is none righteous; not even one. There
is none who understands; there
is none who seeks for God. All have
turned aside. Together they have
become useless. There is none who
does good; there is not even one.” Romans 3:10-12
There are no pure hearts. Men are not born good men. We’re all fallen and flawed creatures and the world is our
journey to find redemption from that.
The Pain That Flows from This Wound
Four things, the Scripture says:
1. First, We’re born separated from God. Ephesians 2:12 says: “Remember that you were once separate from Christ, having no hope and without God in the world.”
This is how every person enters the world: separate from Christ and without God. That’s because, as we learned Yesterday, the original unity between God and man was severed when our first parents – it’s unfortunate it goes back to our first parents, Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God, dismissed His word, and in their own flesh decided to go their own independent way. In that moment, because of that heinous crime against heaven, their natures were cursed and the relationship with God was broken and that condition became permanent. It was passed down to every generation that flowed out of their loins, which means all of us. So we all come into the world with our relationship to God broken and with out natures cursed, that is flawed, or contained in such a way that the only thing that we really think about the most is ourselves. And that’s called depravity. That’s why Romans 5:18 says:
“Through the one transgression, there resulted
condemnation to all people
afterwards.”
We all enter the world separate from Christ and without God.
2. Secondly, we’re bound to a life of futility. Solomon puts it this way in Ecclesiastes 1:14. He says:
“I’ve seen all the works which have been done under the sun,
and behold, all is
vanity and striving after wind.”
Without God, without a sense of God in our life, the only motivation left is to get all we can, while we can. The only two realities for man without God are pleasure and pain. That’s it. That’s how we live our lives: trying to escape pain; trying to pursue pleasure in whatever forms they take. That’s because there’s no higher purpose unless something happens along the way to alter that perspective. That pursuit -- that vanity – is imprinted within us because our nature is limited to seeing this life as all that there is.
3. Third, we’re enslaved to a corrupt nature. Here’s the way Job said it, in Job 5:7. He said:
“Man is simply born for trouble
as sparks fly
upward.”
That’s why in Scripture
we’re called sinners.
Now that’s a very unpopular
term today.
The word ‘sin’ really means to miss the mark.
and the Scripture says we were born sinners.
We are sinners. We go out and prove it by sinning. What that means is that we go out into life and we just keep missing the
mark. We miss it in our
marriage; we miss it in our parenting; we miss it in our personal lives; we miss it in our
relationships with each other; we miss
it with our ethical edge. We
just keep falling a little short. We can’t seem to fully measure up.
If we refuse to see why that’s taking place – if we refuse to see that that’s part of our nature – then we cut ourselves off from the solution of how to change it all, and we become enslaved to that sin nature.
4. Finally, we’re bent to do evil. Galatians 5 says, when we talk about missing the mark and the bent that we have to do evil:
“But when you
follow after your own inclinations, your lives will produce these evil results:
impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure, idolatry, hatred, and fighting,
jealousy and anger; constant effort to get the best for yourself; complaints
and criticism; the feeling that everyone else is wrong, except those in your
little group. And there will be envy
and murder and drunkenness, and wild parties and all that sort of thing.”
‘I’m guilty’ -That’s not because somebody trained me that way. As the verse says, I just had a natural bent – an inclination – in that direction, as I came into the world; as I inherited this nature, then I just lived it out. Unless I make some supernatural contact that changes all that, I’ll just naturally move in that direction because it’s me.
Communities Given to This Wound
When a culture – a community, gives itself to believing it’s good or it can be good and it doesn’t need God, it begins to move away from the things that are noble and right, and it begins to move in and actually begins to live out the depravity at a community level. Not only that, but while it does that in its own depravity, it also begins to approve of those things that a more righteous culture would look at and go, ‘Man, that is way off the mark!” And yet a community can get so lost in its own depravity that it doesn’t see it anymore.
It’s interesting when you look into the Old Testament, you see a once-godly community move into its depravity without God, and you see what surfaces. In the New Testament, you see in the Romans and the Greeks a culture that didn’t need God and moved away from that, thinking ‘We can do it! We have the goodness in ourselves.’ You see that same depravity arise, and you see it in our day, as well.
A. In the Old Testament
Look at the description of the culture that believes it’s
good and it can do it without God. Here’s what it says in the book of Hosea:
“Hear the word
of the Lord, O, sons of Israel. (This is the prophet speaking to this culture.) For
the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of this land, because as He looks
at it, there’s no
faithfulness or kindness
or knowledge of God in the land. (‘we don’t need God; we can do it ourselves.’ But now here’s what is
going on in the land as God is removed.) “There
is swearing; there is deception; there is murder; there is stealing; there is
adultery. They employ violence so that bloodshed follows bloodshed,
therefore the land mourns and everyone who lives in it languishes, along with
the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky; and also the fish of the sea disappear. (The whole environment is even corrupted.) And yet, and yet, let no one find fault; and
let none offer reproof because in this culture, they have gone deep in their
depravity.”
Does that sound like some country
you know?
B. In the New Testament
Go into the book of Romans, and here’s what it says. It’s speaking of the Roman culture, it says:
“They did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, so
God gave them (‘Okay, you don’t
need Me. You can do it on your own,
because you’re so good.’ So God gives
them …) over to a depraved mind, to do
those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness and
wickedness, and greed and evil and full of envy and murder, and strife and
deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent,
arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without
understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful and although they
acknowledge the ordinance of God, [they have rules; they’re still on the books]
that those who practice
such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but [
just like in Hosea’s day] they give
hearty approval to those who practice these things.”
Does that sound like someplace you’ve been to?
C. In Our Day
Even in our day, as we move away from God – as we become a culture of depravity – always the same symptoms surface. You have adultery, you have bloodshed, you have deceit, Corruption and you have people trying to excuse it all. That’s because we refuse to see the obvious.
There’s something wrong deep in our hearts.
The Implications of This Heart Wound Called Depravity
Let’s bring it all down now to how this gets played out in everyday life for you and me.
A. Generally: Here’s what depravity means to the everyday guy who’s out on the street today.
1. Depravity means we’re all dysfunctional by nature. It means we don’t function properly. We like to think of dysfunctional families ‘that’s not my family’ or another person who’s dysfunctional. ‘That’s not like me; I’m functional.’ No. The Scripture says we’re all dysfunctional at some level. We’re all selfish; self- absorbed, manipulative, blame-minded, greedy, or immoral. At some level, we’re all there. We may not practice it openly and outwardly – maybe we’re too slick for that - but inwardly, we wrestle with those very things.
We’re inclined to these directions, and we don’t have to be taught them. They just surface naturally. You see it in that little infant when you go to take the toy to put it away, and they clutch it and they scream out, “Mine!” They go over, when you have another little child that comes into the home, to beat them up, because they want what’s theirs. Right? And you ask, ‘where did they learn that?’ You weren’t teaching that. No, you didn’t have to teach it; it was imprinted. Depravity means we’re all dysfunctional.
2. Depravity means - and this is very important, guys, for us here on the quest for authentic manhood – most of my real problems are in me; not out there. You know what my depravity leads me to do? I think it leads every man to do this - to play the ‘blame game.’ It’s to look at my world and say, ‘you know, what’s really wrong with me is my employer just doesn’t understand me.’ Or, ‘what’s wrong with me is my wife just doesn’t meet my needs.’ Or ‘my family just doesn’t understand.’ Or, ‘if I just had enough money, because they don’t pay me enough for what I do’. Always my mode of operation is to look outside of myself and excuse me, and blame everything around me for my problems. What we do to ourselves when we do that – and anytime a person or group of people begin to blame everything around them - we doom ourselves to a mediocre life.
When you hear blame constantly coming out of someone, that’s a person who’s never going to get anywhere, because they’re always going to be saying, ‘the reason I can’t get there is because of someone else’. They see most of their problems out there.
Blame goes all the way back to the fall in Genesis 3:9-13.
“Then the Lord called to the man and said to him (this is after they had gone their own independent way, disobeyed His word and decided ‘we’re going to do it ourselves.’) And God comes that day and He says, “Adam, where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of Thee in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (so the man said, “yeah, I did it.” No, that’s not what he said. He asked Adam a direct question: “Did you eat…?” But see, now, he’s fallen. So he’s playing the game. He’s our chief architect of this new game we’re going to play for generations.) “No, it was the woman You gave me. She’s the problem.” And so God turns to the woman, and she says, “it’s not my problem; it’s the serpent You put here.”
‘You’re the problem, God, because if You hadn’t put the serpent here, I wouldn’t be in trouble.’ And that’s the way we play the blame game. That’s the way some of you will play the game today or next week to avoid facing the real wound.
3. Thirdly, depravity cannot be eradicated by education, a better environment, self-understanding or willpower. We must be saved from our depravity. Education can make you better on the outside; it can’t transform you from the inside. Willpower can allow you to put things together, but it can’t transform you. Education or Will Power can cover depravity for a while, but they cannot eradicate it. That’s why Jesus said in John 3:7. He talked to a guy who was very together – at least on the outside – and He still said to him, ‘Nicodemus, you must be born again.’ That’s the only way this wound can be eradicated.
4. Depravity can wear all kinds of sophisticated masks to hide itself - the education mask, the personality mask, the rule-keeper mask, the religious mask. Some of the most depraved people look good. They think smart. They act decent and respectable. They’re culturally acceptable, but in truth they’re slick at sin. Their education has just made them slick. Their personality has made them manipulative; their religion has made them outwardly acceptable, but inwardly they’re slick at sin.
Did you ever wonder – did you ever find it interesting that when Jesus Christ was here on earth the people He got agitated with the most – was most confrontive with – was the religious class? The religious leaders? He talked the strongest to those guys. The clerics. Look what He said here in Matthew 23. He’s talking to the Bishops of the First Century.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of robbery and self-indulgence. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like white-washed tombstones which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”
You hear of Child abuse or Adultery or Corruption in churches, don’t you? And you wonder, “how can that be?” It’s when a man, regardless of the collar he wears, uses his vocation and his personality and his religion to hide the wound that he won’t face. That’s how it happens! It shouldn’t cause anybody to pull back and go, “I just can’t believe that!” No, that’s exactly the opposite response from what we should have. We should be going, “I can believe that, because I see that in me.” And if I don’t know how to deal with it, it will get me, just like it got them.
5. For me, depravity means that I can’t trust ourselves alone. That’s why the wisdom of the Proverbs says this: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Proverbs 14:12
What that means is instinctively I am going to think selfishly. And my perspectives are going to be selfish. That’s why I need the counsel and the interaction of others. When we talked about friends and mentors, I need them to see life as it really is – not how my rose-colored depravity paints it to be. There are issues some of you men are dealing with right now -- you’re absolutely convinced you know what the answer is. If everybody else would just shape up and get their act together, you’d be okay. Yet, if you got some righteous men to come around you to talk to you about it, to help you penetrate that wall of depravity that can only see things ‘my way, or on my terms, in my time’. Then you would see a whole new world. It would challenge you to be a real man. That’s what we mean by depravity.
6. Admitting my depravity is the first step to finding a real relationship with God. That’s why you often find the greatest sinners make the greatest saints. Have you ever wondered about that? How some guys can have such a miserable life -- and then they turn it around and they have such a strong and aggressive spiritual life. It’s because they know the depth of their depravity. That’s why the relief from it is so magnificent to them. That’s why it’s so important to admit our depravity. It’s out of the depth of that depravity that they find the need to be so close to God. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said this:
“Blessed are
the poor in spirit [the ones who
come to the end of themselves. They understand that they really
do have this issue in their life.]
.. for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.”
You don’t have to tell them that they’re depraved. They live with a sense of it every day, but it actually becomes an asset because it drives them to God.
7. Finally, progress in authentic manhood will parallel my growing understanding of the depth and extent of my depravity. Paul, at the end of his life, said these words in 1 Timothy1:15. A spiritual giant, at the end of his life; at the height of his maturity, he says this:
“Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am the foremost of all.”
That’s what made him great -- his humility
to understand his nature. It also made him a man who
could rise above that depravity because he was so aware of it. Any man
who gets to the top spiritually will get there, carrying this in his
heart.
B. Specifically for Men: What are some of the specific male problems in depravity? Here are three.
1.First, for men depravity means that we have a natural tendency to avoid domestic responsibility. Why is it that the Scripture over and over tells men to lead their homes? Because our tendency over and over again is to not do that.
Why does it tell men over and over to love and protect and provide for their wives - as Christ loved the church? It’s because our tendency is to ignore those things.
Why does it tell us over and over again to treat them as equals – as a co-heir of the grace of life – to give our hearts to our children? Why is that John the Baptist, when he came, one of his missions was to turn the hearts of fathers to their children? It’s because the hearts of dads oftentimes turn away from their kids naturally. They get consumed in other things, and so the Scriptures are there to redeem the depravity that is innate within us. It’s because we don’t naturally go those directions.
2. Secondly, depravity means that men will have a tendency to rule harshly over women and children. Why is it that in every culture women have to fight for equality and dignity? And why is it in every culture children have anger towards Dad? Genesis tells us why.
Genesis 3:6 God is speaking to the woman and He says, ‘Your desire shall be for your husband.” But then the next verse says, “And he shall rule over you.”
That’s part of the curse. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for ‘rule over’ - ‘mishaul’ – is a word that implies ‘he will dominate’, he will rule harshly over you.
Now that he’s fallen, he doesn’t know how in his nature to lead you in a way that would allow you to be all that you need to be. What he’ll do naturally is move into the situation and with the strength of his personality, and with the strength of his frame, he’ll take advantage – naturally. He’ll rule over you.
Not only that, but look how Paul speaks of dads and children. He says this in Ephesians: “And fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.”
Why does he have to say that? It is because the natural tendency of dads is to provoke their children to anger. The natural instinct is to tell Children what he did wrong! Instead of affirming or building him up. Why do we have a natural tendency to wound? Because it’s in our nature. We need to be redeemed from that.
Paul says, “Dads, don’t provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
3. Then, finally, depravity means that men tend to get lost in their careers and personal pursuits and ignore God’s greater purposes for their lives. Of all people, Solomon knew that, because that’s exactly what he did. here’s what he said about himself in the book of Ecclesiastes:
“I’ve
enlarged my works; I’ve increased houses, pools, gardens. I’ve collected for myself silver and gold and the pleasures of men – all that my
eyes desired. I did not refuse them. And then
I considered all my activities
and behold, all was vanity and
striving after wind.”
It’s empty. men will naturally
move that direction
unless something pulls them back to that which is noble.
Is there a solution to all
this? There
is. It’s a radical solution; it’s a mysterious solution; it’s a life-changing
solution; it’s a supernatural solution; it’s a faith-leaping solution. Stay tuned for Tomorrow
👍🏽 Robert Lewis
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