Categories
Christianity

3/28/2010 Sunday

Last night I was really contemplating whether to fall back into laziness and skip today, or follow through with the rebirth of commitment. I’m glad I followed through and caught Pastor Rick’s sermon today at Calvary Baptist.

Dead or Alive: Its A Wonderful Life

John 14:6

  • we need the Way, we need the Truth…but why do we need the Life?
  • what caused me to be dead? what killed us?
  • Gen 2:7 – life was breathed into man; predisposition to operate for God
    • v9 – choose Tree of Life vs Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
      • Tree of Life: fruit of righteousness (Proverbs)
      • to have God as truth, way, life
    • death: Tree of Knowledge
      • “good” is now judged based on standards of man (ie. what we feel is good, what we like, what is good for us (relatively))
      • self-determination
  • death = deprivation/absence of life function previously enjoyed
    • 1 Cor 2:14 – forfeit of spiritual life
  • spiritual life connection to God (breathe of life) moved out…Satan filled the spiritual vacuum (Eph 2:2)
  • everyone born spiritually dead to God, instead of being spiritually alive
  • Rom 6:23a, 2 Cor 4:16 – the Fall allowed entropy of bodies to begin
    • Jesus and Last Supper is chance for us to re-choose and return to the Tree of Life
  • give up trying to build your life your way
    • pre-occupation w/ personal adequacy
    • afraid of failure
    • connecting w/ people for affirmation, not relationship
    • pre-occupation w/ making a living, not a LIFE (ie. Gen 3:23, 11:4 – “let’s build a city!”)
    • John 14:1-3,6 – Jesus says I AM the way…I’ll build you.
  • give up trying to fix everything for yourself
    • the lie of “living is about getting everything under control”
    • the desire for practicality, pragmatism, self-reliance; the hate of uncertainty
    • how is it possible for you to KNOW God if you only want Him for predictability and control? Contradictory, since God is UNPREDICTABLE
    • Isa 50:11
      • Are you trying to help God put you where you want Him to put you, instead of waiting for Him to place you where He wants?
      • The demand to walk a path w/ predictable outcome is an urge of the flesh. -Crabb

    • Isa 50:10 – essentially Jesus will apply this verse and says “give up trying to fix your life yourself; I AM the life you must choose”
  • give up your pseudo-safety
    • pre-occupation with safety and feeling of safety; Isa 30:10,11 – “tell us we’ll be safe!!”
    • Ez 13:10,12 – whitewash; we are fixated on physical life/health/living; defining life w/ physical here&now
    • manufactured safety vs I AM
  • give up trying to overcome your deadness
    • some of us fixated on living it up; trying to feel alive; addiction to adrenalin and immediate gratification
    • entertaining self to “life” (when actually, its death)
    • Jer 2:11,13
    • medicating your deadness w/ wrong things
    • whitewash…your walls of life are not built upon Jesus; whitewashed walls will crumble and fall…
  • Three types of people…
    1. Completely disconnected from God; don’t know Him; will perish unless Truth is revealed to them
    2. Connected to God…but not “feasting on Jesus” (ie. not relying on Him, not giving up control etc)
    3. Connected to God and “feasting”
  • Ps 16:11
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x