Tour 2: Fall - The River of Death

What Did You See?

First ask, “What did you see?”

  • We looked at the second epoch: the Fall

  • And everything tipping from life to death and decay

  • Even the unbeliever knows something isn’t right

  • We looked at Romans 1, we groan under this; even the creation is frustrated and groaning

  • The gravity of the fall pulls on everything in the opposite direction; we don’t catch health

  • Satan came with a counter-narrative; he is a liar and he counters life and fruitfulness and the glory of God

  • The Cosmic battle is between truth and lie; the real war is between life and death

  • Satan’s ultimate scheme is to destroy relationships because that keeps us from being fruitful & glorifying God

  • An isolated life is a fruitless life

  • Satan is fine if you are a pretty green fig tree

  • We looked at the illustration of downstream life & downstream death

  • Satan tries to get us to believe false worldviews that attack God’s truth and His Meta-Narrative

  • When we lose the Meta-Narrative, we shrink up into our own little story, our own script

  • We looked at three consequences of losing the Meta-Narrative of God:

    1. All about me and my script

      • Satan’s promise is that we will be happy and significant if I can get my script fulfilled, but that is a hollow promise

      • Instead we end up frustrated, angry, worried and subject to a bunch of death emotions

      • We saw the vignette of the family each trying to get their scripts fulfilled

      • We talked about Ralph Maclean’s story as a POW and return and the little girl’s question

    2. Isolation and the loss of relationships

      • We heard from our interviewees about being lonely

      • We have a lot of contacts, but are increasingly lonely

      • We see each other as a salesman; everyone has an agenda

      • We looked at Jesus' statement that a grain of wheat remains alone until it falls into the earth and dies

      • We saw the second half of the family vignette and the little girl burning her mom’s script

      • We looked at Isaiah 46 and that God brings about his plans

      • We looked at Jeremiah 29:11 and the word “shalom”

    3. Dependency vs. true freedom

      • God distributes power and talent so that the smallest creature might flourish

      • The enemy consolidates power and makes dependents, destroying the incentive to be fruitful

      • We see this in the state and in the church, and it can happen in the family and the workplace

        • ​We talked about Ephesians 4 that the leaders are to equip the saints for the work of the ministry

      • We talked about looking at our own personal gauges (story of Air Force simulator)

        • Do we manifest a lot of these dead emotions (anger, worry, frustration, etc.)?

        • Are we a complainer?

        • Are we a controlling person?

        • Satan is okay if we just polish the lamp; if we go to church; pray; read your Bible

          • As long as you are not bearing fruit, he will be happy with you, because there won’t be any downstream life

Then ask, “What struck you?”