← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
On Metastatic Sin Cancer
00:24:39
To bear the image of your Creator means when other people see you, they see your Creator.
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Foreign. Wake up, Wake up. It's time to rise and shine and give God the glory. You want to sing that? It's Saturday. We might as well do it. Okay. Rise and shine and give God the glory. Glory. Rise and shine and give God the glory, Glory. Rise and shine and give God the glory Glory. Children of the Lord. I could hear you out there. Some of you like. Okay, okay, you got me. I'm going to do it. Well, it is Saturday. It's the first Saturday of lent. It's actually February 21st in the year of our Lord 2026. It's actually my pepaw's birthday today. He'd be way over 100 years old. But Peepaw, I'll never forget. I asked him one day, peepaw, what's your favorite Bible verse? Without hesitation, he said, I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of the wicked. That's Psalm 84. Well, got some goodness today to work through. You know, I'll be. We'll be walking six days a week through this journey. The Sunday. Sundays are not properly included in the days of the 40 days. So we'll have a different kind of a offering on Sundays, but we'll be hitting the Saturdays together. Let's jump in today with consecration. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. So, guys, we're some of you who are new, I know you've already been tempted to get down there on playback. Speed. And speed me up to 1.25. Somebody said the other day, I speed you up to 1.8.
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I'm like, come on, why are you
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in such a hurry? Guys, we're trying to slow down to the pace of Jesus himself. Do you know. Do you know what that pace is? Is three miles an hour, the speed of walking. We are walking with Jesus to the cross. Okay, let's get in step with him. That's what the 40 days of Lent are about. I'm not trying to say somehow sanctimoniously that I read and speak at the pace of Jesus, but maybe I've had people tell me, jd, we have a hard time keeping up with you because you go so slow. Like, well, hey, let's Just bear with each other. Okay, I will allow 1.25. All right, let's dive into today's entry. It's entitled On Metastatic Sin Cancer. Our text is Genesis 1, chapter 27. Hear now the word of the Lord. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God he created them male and female. He created them the word of the Lord. Now consider this. The Bible tells us that when God first created human beings, he made us in his very image. Made in God's image is a phrase bandied about so much in Christian circles, it has become cliche. This truth is actually mind blowing. To bear the image of your creator means when other people see you, they see your creator. Clearly something went wrong somewhere. Because Toto, we aren't living in that Kansas anymore. What went wrong is both simple and complex. Our ancient forebears, the original humans, the OG the prototypes, turned against God. They wanted to be their own gods. This broke the bonded relationship and resulted not in the loss of God's image, but in the loss of God's presence with us, effectively rendering the image of God broken and bankrupt. Now, to continue our cancer metaphor, think of the image of God as a super internal, albeit unseen organ of sorts. Not just existing at the very core of our being, but running throughout our whole body and connected with every other system and organ in our body. Think of this super organ as the system that infuses and profuses divine DNA, also known as the eternal organization life throughout our bodies. And it doesn't just course through our bodies. It also connects our beings and bodies together in a supernaturally extraordinary way. The image of God is the touch point and interface where we know and experience abiding union with with God and with others created in God's image. When our ancient forebears willfully broke the covenantal relationship with God and rebelliously hid and turned against one another and blamed each other for their failure, thereby claiming victimhood. The image of God was not removed, but rendered blood null and inoperable. It was like a cancer entered our genetic code and decimated the image of God from the inside out. Eternal life was gone. Not only was our quality of life greatly diminished, but our quantity of life was severely limited. With sin came death. What's important to understand is that we didn't start the fire. It was already burning when we got here. It seems unfair, and perhaps it is, but those are the simple facts. Let's be clear. We didn't initially cause the problem. However, we were born with the problem. And yes, we have contributed to it in such a way that it is immaterial that it didn't actually begin with us. It might as well have. Let's give Paul the the last word on this today from Romans 5, verse 12. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin and so death spread to all mankind because all sinned. That's the biblical definition of what I'm calling metastatic sin cancer. And I know I can't let that hanging dash hang. So now to the gospel, which is the good news of the cure at Romans 5:19. For as through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you for your son Jesus. Lord Jesus. We know we didn't cause the problem, but we now have the problem of sin and death. And therefore we are part of the problem. We are sorry for the ways we have misunderstood this and responded poorly as a result. We want your image to be fully restored in us so we might live life to the fullest for your glory, for others gain and for our own good. Come Holy Spirit and teach and train us in the cure of this gospel. Praying in Jesus name. Amen. Our journal prompts so what do you make of this way of imagining the image of God in us? Does it resonate? Where do you struggle with or push back against it? And what are the implications of it? These are big questions. Hey, Jesus asking, right? Asking for Jesus asking for a friend. You know the Bible, it makes sense for us out of the situation that we find ourselves in. And again getting back to one of the earliest days of this, this journey we've been on. So easy for me to locate the problem in you, not you in particular but out there like you know, it's not really with me. I'm a pretty good person, right? I'm. I'm not a bad person. And this is where we get lost. This is where we completely just miss what the gospel is all about. We want to think that it's a good to great program or maybe a little bit bad to get better program, bad to better. No, this is not self improvement. This is not self help. We'll get, we'll talk about this more self can't help. This is not good to great. This is not bad to better. This is darkness to light. This is death to life. This is chaos to new creation. This is lostness to love. It's catastrophic change. But it begins by coming to grips with this notion that I was born in this cancer. And for some of us, man, it was like lung cancer and it just showed up quickly and it was stage four. And we're like, we have all the symptoms pretty early on and our life is a disaster. For others of us, it's been more like colon cancer, completely silent killer. We didn't. In fact, we grew up quite self righteous thinking man, I got it together. Not bad person, done good, helped a lot of people, managed my sin, at least in public. But then it's just stage four and it's got us. There's the problem isn't out there, the sobering reality, friends, we got to come to grips with, like I'm part of it. I've got that cancer in me. It is wrecking me. No matter how well I present. I have this separation from God that has completely handicapped my life. Maybe I've been able to. To present well, like I've overcome it. But no, I've actually hurt a lot of people along the way. Anyway, I think you're starting to pick up on this. We have to come to grips with the fact that I am not a sinner because I sin. I sin because I am a sinner. And Jesus cuts right to the cure. He doesn't want to treat the symptoms. He doesn't want to manage the sin. He doesn't want some over the counter drug. He wants to go with the chemotherapy of his blood. His life for yours, right?
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His.
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His. Through the. Through the disobedience of one, the cancer came to all of us through the obedience of the one. The cure can come to all of us if we will receive this, if we can get to that place. All right, you ready to sing Saturday? We got to get on the fields today. I'm going to hand it over. Thankful Dad's with me again here today. Here we go. All right, everybody, we're four for four so far with you singing here. And it's just not the same anymore if you're not here and everybody knows it. And you know my old friend Jeff Estes.
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Yeah.
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Okay, well, Jeff, he's not a singer. So whenever the songs come on, usually he just says, I skipped the song. But he said, when your dad is on there, I keep on and I.
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You better be there, Jeff.
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Okay, you heard it, Jeff. Now I'm going to. We're going to sing a good one today. Again. This is one of the. We're trying to return to the Lord with all of our hearts. It can take time to get all of our heart Gathered back together.
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I know it. These are wonderful songs because people are
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dealing with a lot of things in their heart.
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Oh, goodness. So much more than 50 years ago. A lot going on and a lot of us don't know exactly what to do every time. But you just got to have faith that God's going to lead you and what to do.
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That's right. That's. That's what we're. That's what we're doing. We're growing in our faith. Jesus is changing us from one degree of glory to the next. He's asking us some questions along the way. What are we singing today, dad?
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Nearer My God to thee, page 345.
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345. We're going to sing all five verses. And let me pitch this here.
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Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer to
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Thee E' en though it be a
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cross that raises me still all my song shall be Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer, my God, to thee near to Thee Though like the wanderer the sun gone down Darkness be over me My rests a stone yet in my dreams I be Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer to Thee There let the way appear yes unto heaven all that thou sendest me Embarrassing angels to beckon me Nearer, my God, to thee Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer to thee verse 4. Then with my waking thoughts bright with Thy praise Out of my hairy grace
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be
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so by my woes I'll be Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer to the last verse. Or if on joyful wings Cleaning the sky, sun, moon and stars forgot Upward I sigh, still my song shall be Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer, my God, to Thee Nearer to Thee Amen.
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Well, there we go. That's our prayer, isn't it? Nearer, my God, to Thee that's why we want to start every day with the wake up call. I always say if you want to win the day, you got to win the morning. And you know, dad, that's really where I. Where I learned that was from you. I remember one morning, I was probably 13, and I woke up earlier than usual. And normally when I wake up, you'd already be long gone to the farm. And that morning I woke up before the sun got up and I noticed a light on down the hall and I walked down there and there you were sitting in the chair, drinking coffee with your Bible in your lap.
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Praise God.
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And that was when I. I remember that's when I started drinking coffee. I started getting up early those days because you were up and I wanted to Be with you. And you remember in those days there was only two kinds of coffee, Folgers and Maxwell House.
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Yeah.
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No Starbucks?
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No, we had Folgers, and it was cheap.
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And you made it in that Mr. Coffee kind of coffee maker. And. And I remember one day soon after that, I said, dad, would you slide your Bible over to me? And I started reading it and been trying to read it ever since.
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I didn't slide it. God slid it.
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Amen. That's exactly right. God slid that Bible over to me, and I've been trying to read it just like you ever since. And waking up trying to win the day by winning the morning. And so thanks for that.
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Well, it was just. Glad I did it.
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And, you know, I'm always encouraging people to. To just start. I often say, you know, when the best time to plant a tree is. And so then they'll say, 20 years ago. But you know when the second best time to plant a tree. Today. Yep, today. You know what? Let the past be the past and start today. And you know, there's people who are observing your life and they're watching your ways. And it's amazing just how the power of an example can be to just encourage someone else. You don't even know who's watching. You don't even know what they're doing, but what they're seeing is Jesus as we're following them. So it's time to hit the fields. It's going to be a good Saturday today, and there's going to be people you'll see you don't normally see. So be ready to encourage them with a good word, with a blessing. Call somebody today, Write somebody from your past and tell them what they meant to you. Golly, it'll do wonders. So you ready to hit the fields? Ready? Get your seeds for The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.
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And I'm David Walt.
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We'll see you on the field.
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All right, Sa.