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Good morning, Rise and shine. It is Tuesday, April 14th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. So we've got good, good work to do today. Jesus is ready to meet with us. He's been up, not sure he slept. Glad he let us sleep. But we reset. There's a new day ahead of us. There's all the possibilities of God in front of us for this day. So let's just begin in his presence in this meeting together, consecrating ourselves unto him. It's Taco Tuesday. There's also that to look forward to. I'm gonna be in Franklin, Tennessee here all week and looking forward to getting some tacos around here somewhere today. 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. You know those, this prayer is. It's a simple prayer, it's a deep prayer, but it opens, walks us through a doorway. You know, there's multiple ways to get into today. There's a lot of different doors. There's the door of my to do list. There's the door of my phone. There's the door of the anxiety or the depression that I'm carrying. There's the door of like, I'm late for work and I gotta get in the car and get the coffee and go. I get it. We all go through all those doors from time to time. But the most important door, the best door into today is the door called Jesus. It's the door called consecration. He's like, I stand at the door and knock. Whoever hears my voice, open that door. I'm coming through. Let's go into today through that door. We just did it. That's what that prayer does. Heart, Mind. Sight. Attention. Eyes. Body. Guys, we're waking up to Jesus today. Thanks for being with me. Today's entry is entitled why We Must Understand the Real Problem. Our text. Ephesians, chapter two. We're into the next chapter two of six. We've covered one. We're going to read verses one through three. Hear now the word of the Lord and just open your heart. Let these words like seeds get sown into your heart. These are the seeds of the word of God. No more powerful thing in the universe. Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins, you used to live in sin just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil, the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the Spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature, we were subject to God's anger just like everyone else. The Word of the Lord. Now consider this. The Bible all at once possesses an astonishing ability to be both clear and complex. Like a good Easter egg hunt, one can always find a lot of eggs in plain view. Other eggs are more hidden, but often in places we would expect to find them. The prize eggs tend to require more careful searching. Let's be clear, though, that while much of Scripture's meaning may be hidden from plain sight, none of it is secret. Beware of interpreters and teachers who boast of cracking some kind of secret spiritual code. When it comes to the Bible, beware also of teachers who try to undermine the plain meaning of the text by attacking its historicity, its authorship, and its core theological underpinnings. The best way to delve beneath the surface of the text is to ask the text good questions. For instance, in today's text we might ask, who is the devil? Watch out for modern experts who would label this as ancient mythology, suggesting there is no devil, all the while acting as his unwitting agents to undermine the very source from which we would be warned of his presence. We're going to come back to the Devil in chapter six of Ephesians. The best interpreters of Scripture tend to be those who ask the best questions. Albert Einstein once famously said, if I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask. For once I know the proper question, I I could solve the problem in less than five minutes. The big questions I propose for today are what problem is Paul identifying, And whose problem is it? Is it a behavioral problem, or is it deeper than that? Is the problem caused by our exposure to some toxic contaminant, or is it something we were born with? Is it a problem that some people have and others don't? If everyone has the problem, do some people have it worse than others? Can people have the problem and not know it? Can the problem be solved? Is it a problem for Jews, Gentiles, or both? If all you had was this scrap of the following revealed text, how Would you answer these questions? It will be hard, but for the purposes of this assignment, do not import any other evidence or prior understandings or teachings or experience other than the following words. Here I am again. Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil, the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature, we were subject to God's anger just like everyone else. On your mark, get set, go. Sometimes it's good to ask challenging questions of ourselves and each other. Here's a good one. Am I dealing with the symptoms of the problem or am I attacking the problem itself? We tend to live at the level of our behaviors, which are themselves symptomatic of a deeper problem. Sinful behavior is a symptom. Our sinful nature is the problem. Asking these kinds of questions invites us to delve deeper than our behavioral management strategies and into the nature of the problem itself to understand just how deeply we are affected and infected. This paves the way for the cure to deepen in us. Let's pray. Abba Father, we thank you for your son Jesus, our Savior, who can solve the problem. Because we can be confident in his salvation, we can have courage to understand our problem. Grace us with the self knowledge to understand how the problem is actually our problem. Praying in Jesus name Amen. The journal prompts. How do you understand the problem Paul identifies in this text? How would you describe the interplay between our sinful nature, our disobedience and the devil? Third, does your sinful nature continue to rule your life? How might this be overcome? All right, there's a lot there. We, you know, we. If you were with us back in the Jesus Asking series through Lent preceding this one, we. We dove in on this pretty hard, talking about sickness and symptoms and treating the symptoms versus treating the sickness. These themes, though, they keep come. Some people say, why do you keep repeating yourself? I'm like, because the Bible keeps repeating itself. This is. This is not. This is the same story. It keeps coming around because it. It takes us a while to get this. You know, we're going to sing in a minute and my dad's with me on the singing today, and we're going to sing Nothing but the blood of Jesus what can wash away my sin. Right? We're talking about the cure here, not the over the counter medication. We're talking about the deep medicine, the blood of Jesus. This is a big problem. It requires a big solution. But I was thinking also about this great hymn from Charles Wesley. It's. It's called oh for a Thousand Tongues to Sing. And the, one of the verses says, he breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availed for me. That little line there. He breaks the power of canceled sin. You see, so many people. I know it because I've lived it. The blood of Jesus cancels sin. You receive Jesus, your sins are forgiven. They're canceled. And so many of us. Stop right there. I call that the first half of the gospel. The second half of the gospel is he actually, you see, canceled sin still kind of retains a rogue power. He breaks that power. He. He actually. Not only does he cancel the penalty of sin, he breaks the power of sin. Sin no longer has dominion. And that's what Paul's going to be trying to get across to us in this, in this letter, like, you're free. Get out of that jail cell. It's not locked anymore. You're still sitting in there. You're still sitting in grave clothes. You are alive. You are free. Get up. Go out. The power of sin is broken, but you have to move. You have to move by faith and exercise that power that he's given you. So many of us ask that question about sin patterns we're stuck in. Okay? This is, this is the holy discontent. I'm talking about yesterday. Waking up to the more, the more that Jesus is bringing. Good gracious. We have just stayed in the shallow end too long, friends. It's time to get in the deep end pool. All right, you ready to sing? I am. Let's go. All right, we're ready to sing today. You ready?