My wife and I can be morbid. Over the last several months, we have discovered a YouTube channel where a mortician answers questions about her practices and life’s vocation. It is fascinating – but again, we can be morbid! 

Being a pastor, I have been around the dead quite a bit. I can still remember the first time I went to the hospital and sat with a member and her dead father for about 45 minutes waiting for her mother to arrive. Honestly, it is something you get used to. 

Although I have never worked in a morgue or funeral home, let me paint you a hypothetical picture. If you were to walk into a morgue full of 20 bodies with a buffet of wonderful tasting, nutritious food and say, “All right, boys! Lunch time!” What would the response be? Nothing! And why? Uhhh … maybe because they’re dead?

This silly illustration is not meant to be grisly, but rather a reminder to preachers and those who regularly listen to them. Or may I add, those who pray for those who are not Christians to become followers of Jesus. In Ephesians 2:1, Paul states, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” The picture that Scripture paints is not that man is sick in sin and just needs a little help to encourage him to come to Jesus. No! Scripture says he is dead in sin. Ephesians 4:18 states that the understanding of an unbeliever has been darkened. Suffice it to say, we are more deeply bound in sin than we want to admit.  

How does such a doctrinal understanding of the depths of our depravity relate to church, ministry, and the preaching of the Gospel?

First, consider that if sinners are dead in sin, God must bring the life they cannot muster. This work is called regeneration, by which sinners are brought from spiritual death to eternal life. A physical illustration of this could be seen in Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel was a prophet commissioned to preach to a valley of dry bones. As he preached, God did what only God could do. He brought those bones back to life. This is what we preachers must remember each Lord’s Day. We preach the Gospel; God by His Spirit works regeneration. It’s just that simple – and once we get it, we do not need to seek to manipulate conversions. (More on that in a later blog post.)

Second, don’t expect dead people to enjoy nutritious food. I have heard people say often, why does the world do what it does? Why would they even want to do such a thing? We must remember, a sinful nature is repulsed by the things of God, and they have no desire for the healthy teaching of the Word. We need to remember Paul’s admonition to Timothy to preach “sound doctrine,” or healthy teaching. Who are the ones that will long for this healthy teaching? The ones who have been made alive in Christ, church-going Christians who now have the ability and delight to “taste and see that the Lord is good” through His Word.

We must never forget that the church is a place for Christians to grow in their understanding of God and to serve His people. The Lord’s Day services should be likened more to a buffet of nutritious food for the saints than anything else. The dead in sin are not meant to enjoy our nutritious food yet. Only a confrontation with the power of the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit can give them such an appetite. Let us not shape our churches in such a way that we are trying to appeal to or make the lost feel comfortable in their sin.  

Each church’s theological convictions will be laid bare every Sunday by how they worship. We should self-critically ask ourselves: what do our church services say about our beliefs on sin, Christ, and the holiness of God? We must pray that those still dead in their sins are convicted of their need for repentance if they choose to meet with us. 

Likewise, we must seek to help our churches understand that the Lord’s Day is a time to nourish the living with the Bread of Life: feeding hungry souls through the preaching of the Word, mutual edification of brothers and sisters in Christ, partaking of the Lord’s Supper, prayer, worship, and singing. 

Let’s let the living church be the church – and the world be the world. 

Soli Deo Gloria!