Without deep relationships and a devotion to reach those far from God, our unique gifts, wirings, and placements terminate on ourselves and we become as stagnant and lifeless as the Dead Sea. There is a way that feels right but leads to bondage and decay. God’s way is a promise of life and freedom.
If you have your Bibles, please grab them; that’s our reading for today. That will be the text that we walk through, but I also want to reference the three or four verses right in front of it. You can believe me and trust that I’m accurately explaining those verses, or you can just open to Mark 10 and look back to see it real quickly. I think it would be very difficult to argue that you and I do not live in a culturally discontented season. We have more than any generation that has ever lived on the face of the Earth, and yet there is an angst, frustration, and anger in us that we try to mute. Let me give some examples: We are safer than we have ever been. I’ll just age us all up in this room right now. Has anyone ever been in the back of a pickup truck on a freeway? Can you believe that was crazy? Now, if you saw that, you’d be dialing 911; it would be so disorienting for you. When I was a kid, that was just how you got around—six kids in the back of a pickup truck going 70 miles an hour on the freeway to your next destination. If there were seat belts in the car, they were lap belts, which would just break your pelvis and smash your face into the dash. We have more safety, by and large, more disposable income, more entertainment, more places to play, more things to do, and more information than any generation that has ever existed on the face of the Earth, and yet it’s just not working. In fact, all the sociological data says we live in an age of discontentment. No matter what we get, we discover it’s not the thing we were looking for. Here, I’ll say this as one of you: I’ve lived here for 21 years, and the suburbs are peculiar. We present as pretty and all put together, but I’ve pastored here too long. The sheer number of men and women who use Adderall, Ritalin, bourbon, weed, and wine just to take the edge off their restlessness is epidemic. It’s not just a couple of us; it’s a lot of us. I’m not even going to mention the sexual perversity here. I’m not just talking about pornography, which is perverse; I’m talking about adultery, swinging—it’s an under-the-surface gross place. If you don’t believe me, ask a police officer. If you don’t believe me, if you think I’m exaggerating, ask any police officer you come across. It is grotesque beneath the surface, covered up by beauty. It presents as a quaint little series of suburbs, yet there is so much pain, so much weight, so much brokenness, so much addiction, so much confusion, so much frustration. It’s like collectively, we feel we should be more than we are. We have this thing in our chest where we know there’s more, and we’re hungry for it, yet we can’t seem to find it. Now, this angst is not new to our generation; it is part of being human. Henry David Thoreau said it this way: «The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.» Do you hear it? There’s something—I can feel it in me—there’s something more. There’s something I’m supposed to be doing, and I just can’t seem to find it. So let me shut up and watch Netflix, right? It haunts me; let me avoid quiet, let me avoid solitude; let there always be noise so that I don’t have to think. Then it bubbles over in the evening, and I’ve got to have some bourbon. There’s nothing wrong with bourbon; it’s a good gift of God’s grace. It’s just when one bourbon becomes three. It’s when one glass of wine becomes three. I just think three is the tipping point; now you’re starting to take the edge off of what? Mass discontentment. Benjamin Franklin said it this way: «Most men die at 25; we just bury them at 75.» So you come to this place where you think, «I guess this is just what life is,» and you shut it down. But you can’t shut down the angst of the soul; the soul will not be quieted. It will haunt you and keep trying to get you to look up, and so many of us get stuck. We feel stuck in ourselves; there seems to be more here, and we just can’t get it out. The Bible has language for this; the Bible calls this decay, bondage, death in the soul of a person. That’s why we’re doing this gospel series—because there’s good news for those who feel stuck in themselves. Here’s our sentence: we started last week. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to last week, please go listen to it; it’s foundational. It’s only about 56 minutes long; you’ll be fine. You guys love that long-form podcast anyway. I know some of you are listening to Rogan for four and a half hours, and you’re thinking…
