The Prophets | Ezekiel #2 (37:1-14)
The Prophets • Sermon • Submitted
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Morning TCLA fam [insert personal detail from the last week]. Welcome to any who are new or haven’t been here in a while! I’m Devin, a pastor here at The Commons LA
Hello Zoomers! [identify a few out loud]. We’re grateful for technology to connect us together until the day we can be in one another’s presence all together again.
ABOUT TCLA: We are a church that is committed to living Jesus centered even through a global pandemic. Jesus has opened up the presence of God on earth by his life, death, burial, and resurrection and everyone is invited into it.
Our vision for 2021 is to: "Be formed in the presence of God." We want to go from a Christianity with mere ideas about God to a Christian faith that is increasingly lived as an everyday experience WITH God.
Jan- Scripture sets the boundaries for our formation with God.
February- Prayer is the continual activity by which we engage the presence of God THROUGHOUT the day.
March- This month, we are focusing on how Meditation ingrains true beliefs into our minds that presses formation into our hearts and souls. Christian Meditation is the practice of deeply focus on God. When you memorize scripture, you are allowing it to seep into your soul as a sponge.
Open your bible to Psalm 27.
Why do we NEED meditation today?
Studies show that we see 3,500 forms of advertisement everyday. Advertisers don’t just offer you a product, the good ones offer you a set of beliefs. They are all painting a narrative about life now and life on the other side of their product and trying to hook our hearts to DESIRE what those beliefs offer us.
Every new iPhone needs a new story and a new set of beliefs “If I have this camera, I will take better selfies, stand out more on [insert preferred dating app] so I will find THE ONE!”
One of the greatest reasons you and I are so malformed as 2020 has revealed to us is because even if you have attended church your whole life you may know the intellectual doctrine that scripture supports, we don’t embrace the beliefs the scriptures teach us to hold.
I may intellectual know God is a loving Father who provides for me, but that doesn’t mean I believe it!
I might intellectually know Jesus is alive and will use my life for glorious purposes, but that doesn’t mean I believe it!
God will not FORCE formation on you. The kingdom of God doesn’t advance in spite of a church that refuses to take God at his word. It only advances WHEN the church takes God at his word.
God shows us WHO HE IS by WHAT HE HAS DONE. That is a massive realization. When we read the stories of Jesus in scripture, we naturally detach ourselves from them as “back then” activities of God that He won’t do “right now”.
But God is unchanging, so what he did in those circumstances shows us WHO HE IS AT ALL TIMES and WHO HE IS AT ALL TIMES dictates what he will do in our circumstances.
So, we are going to seek to close the gap this year between our head knowledge and our heart belief by MEDITATION. In fact, Satan is banking on you NOT to believe God at His word. I once read that “The most terrifying thing to Satan on the earth is a church that takes God at his word.”
Our faith is small because we are more immersed in the beliefs of the world than the beliefs of the scriptures.
TAKE EBENEZER CARDS! Take a new bookmark for our reading plan too.
PHRASE-BY-PHRASE MEDITATION:
Psalm 27:4 ESVOne thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
Psalm 27:8 ESVYou have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”
2 minutes prayerful meditation.
Dismiss to Meet & Greet: What’s one way you’ve grown as a person in the last 12 months?
Welcome Back:
TCLA Line: 424-242-8110 [printed on your handouts] for CONNECT & Q&A
Pre-sermon announcement
Open to Ezekiel 37
We open the scriptures each week because we need to hear from God’s word what Jesus has done to right our relationship with God through the gospel, how grace transforms us to live immersed in the life of God, and how God invites us to participate in His peace bringing work in the world.
Short Prayer
Lottery Christianity: When I was little my dad would buy me scratch cards. Anyone know what scratch cards are? Lottery. I remember the rush of the grand prizes printed on the border of the ticket- how many Ninja Turtle Action figures could I buy with THAT MUCH MONEY!? Then you scratch off the powdery nasty stuff little by little. One in a row..... TWO IN A ROW! .... Then a poop emoji. Just kidding, we didn’t have poop back when I was young. UGGGHHHH. So close. Next one! Ugggggggghhhhhh another close one. Man, we’re SO close to winning, let’s try another one.
PS- If we want a just society, we should abolish the lottery. Guess who doesn’t buy lottery tickets? Financially responsible people. Guess who does buy them? Poor. It’s a tax on the poor that peddles false hope so we have a little bit more money for our schools. William Wilberforce, after leading the fight to abolish slavery in England in the 1700s was asked what he’d like to abolish next and his answer was the Lotto. Alright, enough rant.
BACK TO THE SERMON: Now Imagine if the lottery were not random, but we appointed the wisest man in America to CHOOSE who to win. Of course she or he would need to be a member of Mensa, would take their eggs sunny side up, and would _______ [that’s just wisdom!]. Then imagine he chose you. You just were selected to win a billion dollars. Woa. You’d be so grateful, but after thanking them you’d just take the money and live your life. If you ran into him on the street, you’d be effusively grateful. You might invite him to your Thanksgiving dinner every year. You might even start a scholarship fund and name it after him. We know we didn’t EARN our lottery win… but it’s not like we couldn’t have lived our life on our own- it just wouldn’t have been as great! But... He did kinda CHOOSE us, right?!
One of the greatest plagues that is disempowering Christianity in our generation is a kind of LOTTERY CHRISTIANITY. We feel so thankful that Jesus did what he did for us… but it was like the guy who selected a lottery winner— and we won. He took our life to the NEXT LEVEL and we have some commemorative obligations to prove we’re grateful. Buuuuuuuuttttttttt.... it’s not like we couldn’t make a life on our own. It just wouldn’t have been as great as it is… except with Lottery Christianity we still feel this emptiness that doesn’t go away. So we figure it must just be that Jesus fulfills us SPIRITUALLY just like other people are fulfilled spiritually by Buddhism and Yoga and Islam and Judaism.
[Didn’t Jesus tell a parable like that?! Finding buried treasure in the ground? He did! Do you remember the application of that parable? GIVE UP EVERYTHING FOR HIM. Not, I’ve won the lottery! The parable builds my argument! If our Christianity doesn’t give us a Jesus that compels us to give up everything we have, it’s NOT THE REAL JESUS!]
Resurrected Christianity: But the scriptures and the teaching of Jesus tell us that God didn’t take us from neutral to rich. Through Jesus Christ we have been brought from death to life. There are lot of beautiful people in Los Angeles. But the scriptures say most of them are spiritually dead. Not spiritually poor. Dead. This is not just about having good theology. Death to life changes EVERYTHING, because it means WE’RE ALIVE in Jesus! How different our Christianity would be if we remembered this morning that we were dead but have been made alive in Christ!
Today we’re going to see just how ASTOUNDING the impact on your day-to-day life will be if you plant deep in your soul the biblical truth that apart from Jesus Christ, you do not have true life.
Transition into text
1 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. 2 And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. 11 Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
What a strange picture! This is the THIRD of FOUR visions in Ezekiel:
The other visions in Ezekiel are all related to the God’s glory- we saw them last week: In Ezekiel 1, God’s presence comes to Ezekiel in Babylon riding upon his glorious chariot; In Ezekiel 10, God’s glorious presence leaves the Temple in Jerusalem because of their unrepentant sin; and in Ezekial 43, God’s glorious presence returns to a new temple. Each of the visions deal with the fundamental issue of GOD’S GLORIOUS PRESENCE. This vision today is like cracking open our spiritual chests to reveal the “Why” behind God’s decision to reveal or remove his presence from people.
Remember, Ezekiel is with the first batch of exiles taken back to Babylon.
v1 “In the Spirit of the LORD” Ezekiel is taken to a valley (we don’t know where)
“Full of bones”. Elephant graveyard in Lion King, anyone?
This might be surprising to you this morning, I know it’s certainly something that our world would never tell us but Ezekiel does this morning...
BY OUR NATURE, WE ARE SPIRITUALLY DEAD.
BY OUR NATURE, WE ARE SPIRITUALLY DEAD.
In v11 God tells us these are “The whole house of Israel’s Israel’s bones. God tells Ezekiel that He has heard Israel saying “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.”
Israel knew something that we do not know in our day. By saying “we are indeed cut off”, Israel is acknowledging the just judgment of God- to be spiritually or relationally removed from his presence. They were ‘dead' because God had clearly rejected them and sent them into exile at the hands of Babylon.
Sin is the cutting out of God from our lives and God’s just judgment is to ‘cut us off’ from his presence. Sin is the source of our death- we cannot have things our own way AND be alive to God. Sin is dethroning God and making ourselves God. It’s an impossibility. It is death. When you disobey God’s law, you are marching out from God’s presence where REAL LIFE is found.
Isreal was living out something physically that is still true of us Spiritually apart from Jesus. The whole bible bears us witness that we are dead before God because of Sin:
In Genesis 2, God told our first parents Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed him and ate the fruit from the only tree in the garden that eating from was off limits, they would die.
In Genesis 3, they are cast out from God’s manifest presence in Eden because of their sin has shown that they cut themselves off from God relationally.
The Prophets were sent by God to warn his people that if they do not turn from their sin, God would turn from them in judgment and they would prove to be spiritually dead.
In Matthew 23: Jesus condemned the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, for having the appearance of life but being filled with deadness.
In Luke 15, Jesus tells us that the prodigal son was “dead” before returning home to the Father when he became alive.
Ephesians 2 in the New Testament tells us that we are dead in our ‘trespasses’ and the uncircumcision of our flesh.”
Interestingly, Revelation 20 tells us that Death and Hades themselves will be cast into the lake of fire, ‘which is the second death’. How can death, die? Because the bible is NOT most concerned with our physical death, but with our spiritual death.
THE WHOLE BIBLE IS THE STORY OF HOW GOD CREATED US FOR LIFE IN HIS RELATIONAL PRESENCE, BUT SIN CUT US OFF, SO THROUGHOUT HISTORY HE HAS BEEN DRAWING NEAR AND MAKING A WAY FOR US BACK INTO HIS PRESENCE.
This state of DEADNESS before God is the most urgent need any human being can have because....
2) Spiritual deadness means every area of our life is not as it is supposed to be.
2) Spiritual deadness means every area of our life is not as it is supposed to be.
In verses 7-8, God tells Ezekiel to prophesy over the bones and they rattle and shake and come together. IMAGINE THE SIGHT! But they are standing there, clearly inanimate and lifeless. This lack of life is represented by the bones coming together at Ezekiel’s words and sinews and flesh and skin coming upon them… but there’s no life in them!
THERE ARE ONLY 2 BIBLICAL OPTIONS WHEN IT COMES TO OUR STATUS BEFORE GOD: SPIRITUALLY DEAD OR SPIRITUALLY ALIVE.
DEAD WHILE APPEARING TO BE ALIVE: To be rejected by God is to be ‘dead’ because the only thing that can be called ‘life’ is found in God’s presence.
You might be the most put together person in the world, but without God you are dead. You might do your duty as a Christian and attend church and give 10% of your income and be committed to community and talk about Jesus with others… and be spiritually dead.
HERE’S THE REALLY SCARY THING: Many spiritually dead people are dressed up like living people in churches in America. They know how to go through the motions without being relationally alive to God. They are no more alive that the most staunch, God-hating atheist!
AW Tozer said: “It is my considered opinion that under the present circumstances we do not want revival at all. A widespread revival of the kind of Christianity we know today in America might prove to be a moral tragedy from which we would not recover in a hundred years.”
He’s referring to the fact that if we in the American church are perfecting a methodology for manufacturing people who are “Christian” looking based upon their activity but without real spiritual life inwardly, it would BE DISASTROUS.
Signs of spiritual deadness:
Jesus is ignorable or forgettable: The gospel tells us not just that we have forgiveness in Jesus, but that we have GOD through Jesus. When you’re spiritually alive, GOD is the center of you life because he’s the most exhilerating thing you could ever have! A sure sign of spiritual deadness is finding Jesus uncompelling because it reveals you have never tasted him.
Numb conscience to sin: you don’t want to love Jesus. It’s a spiritually dead thought to say “I’ll obey Jesus when...” When you first start dating someone, your whole life is bent around the person! The gospel invites us into the greatest relationship imaginable! God reconciles us into relationship so intimately through Christ that we can please him and we can also grieve his heart.
Discontentment running your life: Rather than draw near to Jesus for his own sake each day, our main priority is to seek gratification in our next life goal, our next promotion at work, or our next date, etc.
I praise God in one way for the pandemic because it has sifted out many spiritually dead people from our churches. The church has been cut in half! What a blessing it is for someone who assumes they are living a full life but that God just isn’t that satisfying to realize that they’ve actually never tasted Him! Maybe you’re sitting here wondering if maybe there’s more to Jesus than your church life has given you.
What a gift it would be to be made alive to God today!
Thank God we aren’t left to ourselves!
GOD WANTS TO MAKE US ALIVE.
GOD WANTS TO MAKE US ALIVE.
I have a question: What can dead people do? NOTHING! We can’t make ourselves alive- that’s why scripture uses the word “dead” and not “sick” to describe our ultimate spiritual state. We don’t merely need healing or resuscitation, WE NEED REGENERATION. That’s why Jesus said in John 3 to Nicodemus “Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.” That’s the scariest thing to us because it means we can’t fix our problem on our own.
I saw Raya & the Last Dragon this weekend— anybody else see it? Well in the end.... I’m kidding! It’s a good movie. But just like any other Disney movie, in the end the solution comes down to people doing something to fix the problem. That’s because we couldn’t possibly embrace the idea that we can’t actually help ourselves. Our culture says “Live!” by expressing ourselves, making ourselves unique, by charting our own course, or by fulfilling our every desire.
The fact that we can’t bring ourselves to the point of owning our helplessness is reflective of one of the most disastrous effects of sin: its distorting our vision of God’s heart, of God’s character. When we are cut off from God by sin, one of its effects is that we look back at God through warped lenses and we think that God couldn’t possibly be our solution!
But scripture corrects our distorted vision. In this passage in Ezekiel 37, the setting is the deadness of humanity but the focus is on the activity of God. What does God do when he sees a valley of dry, dead bones?
2 And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
GOD INITIATES! When we choose ourselves in sin and are cut off by God’s right judgment, God doesn’t sit back and bask in his decision. God initiates his life-bringing work! God’s heart is to bring LIFE to humanity who has chosen DEATH: God comes to Ezekiel to SHOW Him what He WILL DO. Not what He CAN do.
God asks Ezekiel “Can these bones live?” As I meditated upon this passage this week, the Lord showed me something I had never seen before. When God asks Ezekiel “Can these bones live?” He’s testing Ezekiel’s expectations of God. Will Ezekiel be more focused on the deadness of the bones or the life-giving power of God? I wonder how many of us believe in our deepest being that God could never (or *would* never!) give us a deep, unshakable spiritual life in Jesus. Ezekiel kind of avoids the question— “O lord God, you know”. It’s as if we are left to ponder the question for ourselves.
That’s exactly what God wants Ezekiel to see here: “I want to give them life!”
5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
God tells Ezekiel to “prophesy” over the bones. They obey the sound of Ezekiel’s voice and come together and are covered in flesh and made into a human army in verses 7-8.
But there is still the problem of LIFE. If Israel was simply sick with sin, they should have responded to God’s discipline in exile by repenting and waking up. But in Ezekiel 36 we see that even in exile, they were spiritually dead like these bones. Many of you have heard the famous passage in Jeremiah 29 about God’s desire for the people in Babylon: “Build houses, plant gardens, seek the welfare of the city, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” How’d they do? BAD!
19 I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries. In accordance with their ways and their deeds I judged them. 20 But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the Lord, and yet they had to go out of his land.’ 21 But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came.
Even with the harshest of discipline, Israel was proven to be Spiritually dead.
So God gives Ezekiel a second command:
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
Some of you know that the word for “breath” in Hebrew, ruakh, is the same word for wind and Spirit. All three are mysteriously intertwined here- the wind blows and becomes breath in their lungs and bodies strewn across the ground are lifted up by this wind-breath that enters their lungs and makes them alive.
What is going on here? Always let scripture interpret its own prophecies! In verses 12-14 God tells us:
12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
GOD MAKES US ALIVE BY THE GIVING OF HIS SPIRIT:
GOD MAKES US ALIVE BY THE GIVING OF HIS SPIRIT:
To be made alive to God is nothing less that to have Holy Spirit enter into you and bring you life in Jesus Christ. God wants to make us alive by giving us His very presence!
REGENERATING PRESENCE: If you have tasted the bitterness of sin and the goodness of Jesus and trusted him by faith, you have experienced REGENERATION. The very life of God has entered into you not as a thing that God gives, but as God Himself indwelling you! When we say “Christianity isn’t about religion, it’s about relationship” it’s not that we decide to be friends with Jesus so that we don’t feel so alone anymore, but that we are supernaturally indwelt by God!
SANCTIFYING PRESENCE: Every moment of life becomes CORAM DEO: the Latin term meaning “Before the Face of God.” In scripture, to have God’s face turned toward you is to have the presence of God surround you. Christianity isn’t about religion and what we do for God to make ourselves alive, but being made alive by the relational presence of God inside us!
Hopefully you are asking the question...
How do we know when the Spirit of God is moving in us?
How do we know when the Spirit of God is moving in us?
“Know” God’s Relational Presence Experientially: V14 makes it clear that the end goal of being made alive by God is to know God intimately. If you are alive in Christ, you will FEEL God not because he makes you emotional but because he revives your soul! The fundamental activity of the Holy Spirit in the world is opening the eyes of the blind and reviving the hearts of the dead to see and feel who Jesus really is. If you have the Spirit of God, you will feel the reality of your Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus. God won’t feel real to you every single day, but He will feel real to you OFTEN.
Love God Passionately: 7 years at MH. Heard “all you contributed to your salvation was the sin that you needed saving from!” & “It’s not what you can do for God but what he has done for you in Jesus!” That’s true in one sense. We should emphasize God’s love for us more often than we speak of our love for God. There are only two Psalms that make the statement “I love the Lord.” Dead people don’t make themselves alive. But AFTER we are saved by Jesus and made alive to God by the Holy Spirit, all of our life becomes a response of loving adoration to God bringing us life. If you have God’s Spirit, you will know the love of Jesus and you will desire to love him in return.
Obey God reverently: We all want to love God passionately, but when we aren’t flooded with loving affection for God, we are still called by Jesus to obey.
Obedience to God is a life and death issue. In Jesus, you are made alive as a child of God. Sin is choosing death. Any good Father is intent on leading his kids into life and not death. Into wise fruitfulness and not foolish destruction. The two main ways the Father disciplines us as his kids are thus: consequences for sin and by withdrawing the felt experience of His presence. When you are tempted, you must know that it is not just a choice between following God’s rules or having fun. It’s a choice between God’s felt presence and power and feeling God’s absence in our sin and not being used by God. It’s a choice between fruitfulness for God and fruitlessness in yourself.
SUMMARY OF THE SPIRIT-LED CHRISTIAN LIFE: Our entry to the Christian life is only due to the sovereignty of God giving you life; BUT the quality of our Christian life is largely up to our response to God’s Spirit; BUT the glory of your Christian life ALL goes back to God.
When we Know, Love, & Obey Jesus Christ, it’s proof to us that the Holy Spirit is at work!
COME ALIVE! Some of you need to be made alive in Jesus christ today!
WAKE UP! Others of you were made alive by the Spirit a while ago, but need to be woken up from your spiritual slumber.
8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Both cause you to lay down and appear lifeless.
Response is the same… look to Jesus!
If you desire this work of the Spirit this morning, look to Jesus Christ.
If you desire this work of the Spirit this morning, look to Jesus Christ.
THE GOSPEL REVEALS TO US THAT JESUS BECAME SPIRITUALLY DEAD LIKE THE BONES OF EZEKIEL 37 SO WE COULD BECOME AS ALIVE TO GOD AS HE IS:
EN-SPIRITED LIFE- Jesus lived a life filled with and led by the Holy Spirit. When he healed the sick, it was not out of his own god-ness but by the Holy Spirit. In Jesus, we see a Spirit-led life.
CROSS- on the cross, Jesus was abandoned by the Spirit of God and experienced the lack of God’s relational presence so powerfully that he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He was abandoned by the Spirit so that He could bear the spiritual death of our sin that we see in the valley of dry bones.
ASCENTION- Jesus rose from the dead, conquering sin. But after 40 days with his disciples he left them and poured out the Holy Spirit! In his own words it was BETTER for them that he leave so that he and the father could send the Holy Spirit to FILL US.
Application: Be filled with the Spirit to experience life
Application: Be filled with the Spirit to experience life
In Ephesians 5, Paul calls Christians to ‘be filled with the spirit’.
That MUST mean that GOD is willing to fill us but that we must pursue it!
That MUST mean that GOD is willing to fill us but that we must pursue it!
How do we PURSUE the Holy Spirit?
Prepare: Most Christians in our day are laying down on the valley floor like the dry bones of Eze 37!
In Scripture the spirit is compared to Wind. Breath. Fire. All require a vessel to be seen.
Put up your sail. Prepare your sacrifice. Inhale with your lungs.
The Holy Spirit is loved and honored when we live in a way that it dependence upon him to show up.
2) Pray: Ask! [this is after ‘prepare’ because we can’t ask for God to bless a life of disobedience!]
11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
God is generous, we are fearful. God is not intimidated by our weaknesses, but we are!
END: Lottery Christianity makes our faith about us, but true resurrection Christianity finds true life in pouring ourselves out in love for God and our city.
It will mean the laying down of us and our life agendas, but it will gloriously mean being empowered for more in our city than we could ever imagine!
PRAY TO END
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
What barriers keep you from preparing and praying for more of the Holy Spirit? What do you think would change in your life?
Q&A
Response
1) Communion:
2) Prayer: Message TCLA user Mens/Womens prayer
3) Ministry: Embrace the Presence & Power of God
4) Praise God in Song: Without singing loud and proud, we won’t feel the joy we were created to feel through song.
Announcements:
Continue in worship:
Giving- churches we support, ministries we engage,
Community- No such thing as a solitary Christian. Beware going it alone! Join an MC and reap the fullness of the Christian life
Special Invitation
BENEDICTION: