[SPEAKER_00]: All right, Ezekiel 37, y'all, if you have a Bible with you, go ahead and open it up there with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ezekiel 37, and also, John chapter 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to go back and forth a little bit between those two texts today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ezekiel 37's going to write in the middle, sort of pass the middle of your Bible, if you're looking for Ezekiel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, John, Matthew Martin, John, fourth book in the New Testament, John chapter 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: And actually, I want to begin by reading a little bit out of John.
[SPEAKER_00]: John 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Lena Redforce is E.037.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to hang out there mostly and look at this cool story in E.037 about this valley of bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of my most favorite old testament stories, just so interesting of what God does and shows to the prophet Ezekiel.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in John chapter 11, we have a story that I think parallels what God was doing with Ezekiel and showing to Ezekiel in that story in Ezekiel 37.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in John chapter 11,
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what happens, verse one, says, now a man named Lazarus was sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poor perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the sister sent where to Jesus, Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one you love is sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he heard this, Jesus said, this sickness will not end in death.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it is for God's glory that God's son may be glorified through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's my question today and kind of the whole message really hinges on this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the connection between the love of God and our sufferings?
[SPEAKER_00]: The struggles that we go through, the difficulties we endure in this life, and I asked that question because, and I've preached on this before, so we've talked about some of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to reiterate some of this bring this back up because I think it's so important for us and so helpful to us, helpful to me, hopefully it's helpful to you as we think about the trials, the sufferings that we go through in life because we all do.
[SPEAKER_00]: to remember that there is a connection, there's a real connection, and Jesus actually shows it pretty clearly here, what the connection is between our sufferings and God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, verse 5 again, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, Martha Mary and Lazarus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus loves them.
[SPEAKER_00]: His relationship with them, these are His friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, verse six, that the actual Greek word there is not the word yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the word so, saying that there is a connection between Jesus loves them, so he's about to do what he's about to do, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus loves them so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: He stayed where he was two more days, so that Lazarus would die.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how much he loved them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get all hope to have that kind of love in our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like somebody that loves us that much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody really, because Jesus has a point here.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has a purpose here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've already seen it, and we'll get to it at the end of the message.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to just listen and think about how would you answer this question?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the connection here between his love and our pain and suffering and trials that we endure in life?
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that God's love can coexist with our suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: So people don't believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people struggle to believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's love can't coexist with my suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God really loved me, I wouldn't be suffering the way that I'm suffering.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't be going through what I'm going through.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't have lost that person that I lost to when I lost my job.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't have run out of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't be sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't be going through my kids wouldn't be doing this or if I whatever the suffering is, whatever that entails, it must be because God's
[SPEAKER_00]: Angry at me because he doesn't like me because he doesn't love me and I just don't believe the scriptures really teach that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I think they teach the exact opposite of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: that God's love and our sufferings can coexist in a really unique way and it has a reason and has a purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's go to Ezekiel 37.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at what happens here in this particular story.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, some context, the prophet Ezekiel, he was a prophet to Judah, the southern kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you know the story, Israel splits into over the course of its history and there's the northern kingdom of Israel or Samaria and there's the southern kingdom of Judah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ezekiel is a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah, after they are taken into captivity in Babylon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he spends pretty much his entire ministry in Babylon with the people of God, prophesying and preaching to the people of God who are in captivity, who are literally slaves and exiles in Babylon, they are suffering, they are struggling, they are a people who feel like at least, they have been forsaken by their God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as a consequence, they have no home, they have no place of worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, think about this, the temple was the center of their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, they were religion, but really everything that they did, the temple was the center of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were not with the temple.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they couldn't go to worship the Lord as they wanted to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they had no identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were people who were not a people anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: just exiles in this, in this foreign nation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, Ezekiel is specifically commissioned by God to preach to them during that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where the people find themselves as we open up Ezekiel 37.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's read there again.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hand of the Lord, this Ezekiel's vision, God gives Ezekiel a vision of something that he wants to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, the hand of the Lord was upon me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and he set me in the middle of a valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was full of bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: He led me back and forth among them.
[SPEAKER_00]: God does that a few times in the Scriptures where he takes somebody, and he wants them to see something, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like very clear that God wants to be very intentional to show his Ezekiel something very clearly here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when he takes Abraham out from his homeland, he tells him to go to the land of what would become Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he makes him walk the whole land.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he did.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tells him, walk north and south.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's in west like cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole land takes his Eculin to this valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he leads him back and forth among the bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bones that were very dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are not bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are not even skeletons.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are just bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Scattered, that's the point here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not even a resemblance of a human body anywhere to be found.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just bone here, bone there, bone there, bones everywhere I'm walking through this valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is chaos.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is utter brokenness, utter destruction.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no way of knowing who anyone is or was.
[SPEAKER_00]: You get the point here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no identity to these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what got us showing you, ZQ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because these people feel this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is who they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Into exile that they're in, and Babylon.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're told in verse 11 that this is the house of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, they had gotten themselves in this position.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now listen, sometimes our suffering has happened to us as no fault of our own.
[SPEAKER_00]: That does happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of you are going through things like that, where it is just something happening, like sort of an out there effect of something upon your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you didn't do anything to get yourself in that situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just is what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes, however, we must remember that many times, our suffering does do happen as a consequence of our own sinfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as true as well, both of those things are true, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not a, we can't take anybody suffering in a vacuum and just assume that everybody's suffering is the same, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody says a unique story to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's has context.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this particular situation, the nation of Israel had gotten themselves in this place.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Zika walks back and forth among them.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants him to see, he wants him to see desperation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants him to see that this is not just bad, this is hopeless, but that's what this is, that's what this value is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think he wanted to Zika to care about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you ever struggle with being cynical about things?
[SPEAKER_00]: You ever struggle with being cynical about other people's sufferings?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or your own sufferings, even?
[SPEAKER_00]: You ever go through something for so long that you're just like whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I just don't care anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've gone through it, they've gone through it or you're tired of hearing about it from somebody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're tired of saying it yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it may be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I just don't even want to talk about it anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: So God is leading his ECO back and forth to go, like, no, his ECO look.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to pay attention, this is real, this hurts, devastation, and then you ask him a question, son of man, verse three, can these bones live?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that's a question in that kind of valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, he's not looking at skeletons.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not looking at dead bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, okay, if there's a dead body lay in there, can this dead body live?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, maybe, maybe he's not really dead, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, no, destruction, just bones everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can these bones live?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to make this clear before we move on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, God loves you, and God loves me, God loves us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: and he doesn't need him.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need our opinions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when he asks a Zekeal this question, is he looking for a Zekeal to kind of pontificate about what he thinks can happen here?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a $3 word for you all today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I used it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, is God asking a Zekeal to guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: Zekeal, can these bones live?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think, dude?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you see, wanting a Zekew to give him an answer of like, well, God, you know, I don't know, looking at this, this doesn't look like, you know, like right down something, he's not, he's not jeopardy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's not asking, he's like, oh, what's your best answer to this question?
[SPEAKER_00]: He just wants Zekew to think about what he's seeing and seriously consider even from a human perspective, what this is and what can be done about this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer is, who knows?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the answer, I would come up with
[SPEAKER_00]: Ezekiel gives, I think, the right answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the title of today's message.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, oh, sovereign, Lord, you alone know.
[SPEAKER_00]: The technical Hebrew there is just simply Lord, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, you know, is always the right answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always the right answer to these kind of situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, God's not asking as equal to guests about anything or give his best opinion on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just asking them, like, I think God wanted as equal to give this kind of, like, I wanna see your faith here as equal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have faith in this moment?
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, you know, that word Lord is the word Adonai.
[SPEAKER_00]: Say Adonai, Adonai.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the Hebrew word for just Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you see in your Bible, capital, L-O-R-D, all caps, that's Yahweh, that's the name, Yahweh.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just the word Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the Hebrew word for Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the word Adonai.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the word, it comes with the connotation and context of really the sovereignty of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we say, I don't know, we are saying, sovereign Lord, Lord of all things, Lord who is in control of everything, Lord who is high and lifted up, you are the Lord, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what Ezekiel says, Lord, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's interesting in Ezekiel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He uses this word out of Nye, more than any other book of the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: In all of the Old Testament, the word out of Nye's used, 217 times outside of Ezekiel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He alone uses it 214 times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And self, he uses it as much as the other 38 books of the Old Testament combined.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Ezekiel, as he writes his book here, Ezekiel, he wants it to be clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Israel, you forgot in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, Yahweh is, I don't know, he is sovereign.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're in a place where you feel like nothing can change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing can get better, nothing can improve.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where my hope comes from.
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes from Adonai.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's his EGEO's message to the people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he answers this question, Lord, Adonai, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: says nothing to do with Ezekiel trying to tell God what his opinion about the situation is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know means I trust you God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, means you're the sovereign Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, means you're in control.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, means I'm humble before you got.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that you will make a way to accomplish your will.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, means this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means I'm not really sure about things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really know a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot that I don't know, but here's what I know today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let me just encourage some of you in this room this morning that if you're in a place in your life right now and maybe feeling like you're in a valley like that of just chaos and confusion and what is going on and I can't figure this out and why does this keep happening or whatever it may be.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can't utter any other prayer out of your heart and out of your mouth, say this prayer today to the Lord, Lord, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I can't figure it out, but I trust you, and you know, I believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can believe that, if you can trust the Lord and that, I think you're a long way towards where God wants you to be, just, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So back to John 11 real quick, I'm kind of keep your bookmark in, is equal 37, but I'm thinking about John 11, I told you, there's a lot of parallels here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse 17 in John 11 here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, on his arrival, so Jesus travels to Bethany where Lazarus had died.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_00]: And many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord Martha said, Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I know that even now, God will give you whatever you ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: You hear the real human response of Martha in this moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am frustrated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, that Lazarus, my brother, has died.
[SPEAKER_00]: That hurts.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been here, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's struggling with this moment of opinion, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is true, but it's like, man, here's what I think you should have done, Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she does have the faith to go, but I know, I know Lord that you know, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is her Ezekiel moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, but you know, and I believe that the Lord will give you whatever you ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe this, and Jesus says to her, your brother will rise again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Martha answered, I know he will rise again.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the resurrection, at the last day, and Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me will live, though he dies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes Lord, there's that word, Lord, yes Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: She told him, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: who has to come into our world.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the point of this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point of this story in John 11 is not that Lazarus comes back to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point of this story is Martha right there in that moment, confessing the deeper truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a better miracle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you'll ever read John 11 and think, what's the greatest miracle in John 11?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not Lazarus walking out of tune.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Martha confessing, you're the Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe in you that you are the resurrection and a life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is who Jesus claims to be, so he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is not this whole, I have opinions about this and I'm going to tell you what I think and then as you stop there, she does have her thoughts, but she says to him, I still trust you, Lord, I still believe in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know this thing didn't turn out the way I thought it was going to turn out, but I trust in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he said to me, is he kill speaking here?
[SPEAKER_00]: He said to me, so God tells him, prophesied to these bones and say to them, dry bones, here, the Word of the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what the sovereign Lord, I don't know, this is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will make breath enter you and you will come to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will put breath in you and you will come to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you will know that I am the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hold on to that because that's the answer to my question at the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the connection here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Between God's love for us and our suffering, he says, then you will know that I am the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I prophesied, as I was commanded, and as I was prophesying, there came a noise, listen to this scene, a rattling sound, how creepy is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the bones came together, bone to bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's the three things we learned in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing is this, that God can do this thing called restoration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Restoration, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Restoration means a change in our circumstances.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we pray for restoration all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys pray for restoration in whatever relational thing or health situation or financial situation or whatever it may be.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're praying all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: God can fix.
[SPEAKER_00]: He absolutely can restore.
[SPEAKER_00]: He can fix what is broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: He can and he does that.
[SPEAKER_00]: God can do this for anyone at any time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But notice, notice that when God brought these bodies back together now, they're human-looking bodies,
[SPEAKER_00]: dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: They alive yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Restoration at change of circumstances happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not scattered bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: At least now there's just dead bodies laying on like this is weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now there's just dead people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's the restoration that has happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think God is illustrating something with his EQ, like, yeah, listen, me changing a circumstance, that's a light work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: God can do that any time again.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Martha coming and going, Jesus, you could have restored this before he even died.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted you to restore his health.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Martha wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus is saying, I wanted something better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Restoration is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not as good as the next two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two is regeneration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regeneration, regeneration means a change of hearts.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what happens to a person when the Holy Spirit breathes life into them.
[SPEAKER_00]: True, spiritual life, the new birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe to Martha when she was speaking to Jesus, I believe I wanted the restoration of my brother's health, but what I got instead was regeneration of my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got the change my perspective from Jesus can just heal.
[SPEAKER_00]: To Jesus can change my life and my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a greater miracle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I say that that is a greater miracle than just changing a situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at his eco-36, actually, because this was promised.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is eco-36, 26, great, great memory verse right here, if you wanna put something in your mind and heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will give you, this is him speaking to Israel, God's speaking to Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will give you a new heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: and put a new spirit within you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I'll put my spirit in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't just want to bring you back from exile.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to imagine at that time they were probably praying over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh God, just get us back to Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we want.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we need.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they forgot that they used to live in Jerusalem and were just as sinful as they were now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would restoration be the end of the story in God's mind?
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course not.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted something better for them, didn't he?
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I want to give you a new heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to put my spirit in you to change you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me ask you this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you pray more often for new circumstances or for a new heart?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not wrong to pray for your circumstances.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you should, all the time you can, and we should.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think even deeper than that, and what we should trust the Lord with every day is, God, whether or not you change my situation, I want you to change me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: He fundamentally transforms us when we come to life in Christ and we put our faith in Jesus, we are brought from death to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then again, this is really an ongoing process.
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that you guys know this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Of just the Lord's softening our hearts, changing our perspective about things, making us new by new, by new, by new, by new every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just more and more like Christ God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, change my circumstances, but please change me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's regeneration.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then the third one that God is clearly illustrating here in his 37 is Resurrection.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if restoration is a change of circumstances, regeneration is a change of heart, resurrection is a change of eternity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Resurrection is a key theme throughout all of the Bible, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's God's design for human beings that we would not perish.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't create Adam and Eve to die.
[SPEAKER_00]: created them to live and yet sin enters in that breaks that fellowship with God and now death is part of the story for all humanity for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Death is part of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sin has separated us from eternal life in God, but what has God done?
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we know because we sing it every week and we take a minute every week to remember it and we preach on it every week that God sent His own son, Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: into the world to be a perfect human being, the only perfect human being who has ever lived, and to pay the sin debt that all other human beings owe to God that has separated us from Him and from His life, that He would die, the death that you and I would deserve on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we take upon himself our sins and the wrath of God, he would bear it, he would die, and then three days later that he would rise to life and that whoever believes in him, whoever confesses, you are the sovereign Lord, Jesus, whoever confesses faith in him would never perish, but would have eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is resurrection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Spiritually, it's already happened to you if you're a Christian, you've already been spiritually resurrected.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, that's regeneration.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then one day, physically,
[SPEAKER_00]: You will be resurrected to eternal physical life with Christ in Christ forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is what Jesus said to Martha and Mary, I am the resurrection of the light.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were looking forward to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This day that would come where there was a like they believed in some sort of general resurrection.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't know exactly what that meant or what that was going to be all about.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus was moving their hope from just a situation to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the resurrection.
[SPEAKER_00]: We look to Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just some thing that we wish for, when we look to Jesus and we are resurrected in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regeneration and resurrection go together.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we just read in John chapter 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: Martha believes in Christ and Jesus said, whoever believes in me will never die.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a promise to hold on to most most funerals I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I preach that verse because I just love that the promise of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope for it, even at a funeral we can rejoice and say, if he's in the Lord, he's not dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's in the Lord, she's not dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's with him now spiritually.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then one day we, with them, will be raised physically and live eternally resurrected.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the connection then in the mind of God, in the mind of Christ, between our sufferings and his love for us?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the connection there?
[SPEAKER_00]: The connection is this, it's his glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: His glory, God's eternal glory is the connection between his love for us and our sufferings.
[SPEAKER_00]: So go back to Ezekiel 37.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no breath in them, verse 8, look at verse 9.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he said to me, prophesied to the breath, prophesied to the man and say to it, this is what the sovereign Lord says, come from the four winds of breath, breathe into the slain that they may live.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them, and they came to life, and they stood up on their feet, a vast army.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that too, because now it's not just are you alive, but you have purpose, you're in formation, and you're an army ready to go and accomplish something, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which got us prepared in advance for us to do, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not just saved to be sat down and watched from the silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're saved to be employed into the service of Almighty God in four, His glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said verse 11,
[SPEAKER_00]: Son of man.
[SPEAKER_00]: These bones are the whole house of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say our bones are dried up and our hope is gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are cut off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, prophesied and say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will bring you back to the land of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you, my people, here it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll know that I am the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I open your graves and I bring you up from them, I will put my spirit in you and you will live.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will settle you in your own land.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you will know He says it again, that I, the Lord, have spoken and I have done it to clears the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said, in John chapter 11, this story will not end in death, but in the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't end in death.
[SPEAKER_00]: Death was in the middle of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it ended that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus didn't lie about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was all for what?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that Martha and Mary and Lazarus, and by the way, all the other Jews around the town who saw this happen would see.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the resurrection in the life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all for His glory so that we would see and know and love and glorify and worship the one who gives life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you can change your circumstances, but he can change your heart and he can change your eternity much better, much deeper, much greater than just changing the things about our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: He can change us and he can raise us from the dead as he raises on some Jesus from the
[SPEAKER_00]: Is God mean for putting you into valleys?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that make God mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, we do a lot of these things to ourselves, and even the things that we don't do to ourselves, we get into those situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we will trust in the sovereign Lord through those things,
[SPEAKER_00]: We will see and we will learn and we will know something that we would never know otherwise.
[SPEAKER_00]: That he is the sovereign Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the Resurrection in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He can make the driest and most scattered of bones live.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he does.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't learn that if you're never in the valley.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't learn to see and know the shepherd if you don't walk with him through the valley of the shadow of death.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's always the point, and y'all listen, because God loves us, because Jesus loved Martha and Mary, He wanted something better for them than just to heal their brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted something better.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted something better for us than just to always change our circumstances.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he does that, praise God, because he does that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're praying for healing, keep praying for healing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll pray with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: you're praying for a financial thing like let's pray for it and we're going to trust Lord, you need a job but a pray for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look out for a job for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to help.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to do what we want to do whatever we can to surround one another and provide for each other and let the Lord provide for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so much deeper than that, we want to pray out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to pray and I want to pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: for the greater miracles of heart change and the hope of the resurrection that we have in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's better, church, it's better.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's kind of the application of today, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wherever you're at, whatever value you find yourself, maybe walking back and forth and right now, if you feel like there's just dry bones and scattered chaos everywhere in your life,
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can confess, Lord, you know, over that situation, Lord, you know, I promise you, you will receive a greater gift than just the restoration of that problem today.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he does that, we praise him, but if he doesn't, you have hope and you have joy and you have faith to trust him through it and keep trust in him through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He brings dry bones to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's our God, amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the God, that's the God we serve.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the God we love.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the God that we worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, when we're done here today, I'm gonna dismiss this here in just a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have prayer room open.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you need prayer for anything, we'd love to pray with you all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll hang out right here as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can pray for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just talk with you about anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanna encourage you, as you go today, as you go,
[SPEAKER_00]: Just consider that prayer, consider that that faithful prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just your next step today, Lord, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna lay this down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna walk with you through it, whatever you call me to, whatever you're calling me through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I believe you are the sovereign Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe you can restore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe you can change my heart, and I believe I have resurrection in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I can have hope today in every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me pray for you guys, pray with me as we pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's just ask the Lord to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, we thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you that you give us little glimpses into your work like this, like a ZQ37.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a simple but profound and amazing,
[SPEAKER_00]: illustration of the truth that we don't always see.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see chaos and we see fear and we see brokenness.
[SPEAKER_00]: We feel the confusion and we feel the heartache and the loss and the loneliness.
[SPEAKER_00]: We feel those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so God today, without trying to guess why, those things are happening to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I myself want to confess, and I just pray my brothers and sisters would confess with me right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, Lord, you know, you know, we believe you see us, we believe you care, and we believe that you are working something deeper within us, and through us, and we could ever ask or imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: regeneration, thank you, God, that we know Christ, if we know Christ, thank you, that we are saved, made right with you by His blood and resurrection, that we know our best days are ahead, that we know these dry bones will live, that they do now and we're kind of getting the first fruit to that now, but one day, fully, finally, and eternally, we will live as we've never lived before, and we will live forever with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we hope for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, lead us in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let us go out of these doors, just with hope in our hearts, knowing, knowing that you are the God, who changes, not just circumstances, you change our hearts and you change our eternity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we trust you Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lead us in Jesus name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, love you guys so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll have a great Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm hang out right here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pray your rooms open as well.