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
- v9 – choose Tree of Life vs Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
- 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?
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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…
- Completely disconnected from God; don’t know Him; will perish unless Truth is revealed to them
- Connected to God…but not “feasting on Jesus” (ie. not relying on Him, not giving up control etc)
- Connected to God and “feasting”
- Ps 16:11