Holy Spirit III | Pastor Jake Sweetman

Join us on this thought-provoking message as we delve into the profound message of transformation and mission through the Holy Spirit. As we journey towards the anticipated Holy Spirit Conference, we explore the dual aspects of the Spirit's transformative work in our lives—regenerative and vocational. Discover how the Spirit not only renews us as new creations in Christ but also sends us out with a holy mission to impact the world.

Through vivid biblical imagery and compelling insights, we unpack the vocational side of the Holy Spirit's work, drawing from the prophetic vision in Ezekiel to illustrate our calling as a "battalion of builders" in spiritual warfare. We examine the spiritual armor we wield against powers of darkness and how we are called to transform desolate places into flourishing gardens, mirroring the mission given to Adam and Eve.

Learn practical takeaways on being spirit-filled warriors—alive, aligned, alert, and active—embracing community and discipleship as we overcome evil with good. Discover how your daily life can reflect God's victory over darkness and how the church stands as an army of empowerment, united in purpose and driven by love and joy.

Tune in to understand how living a life led by the Holy Spirit means being equipped for God's mission, cultivating the hearts of humanity, and expanding His kingdom on earth. Whether you're new to faith or seasoned in your spiritual journey, this episode will inspire you to be a part of God's transformative work. Subscribe now to deepen your understanding and walk empowered by the Spirit.

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Transcript

 We're talking about the Holy Spirit as we make our pilgrimage towards Holy Spirit Conference, which is going to be absolutely outstanding.

And we've been focusing so far on how the Holy Spirit is the spirit of transformation.

Everybody say transformation.

He turns wilderness into gardens.

Gardens.

 And what we began exploring last Sunday is the Spirit's transformative work is actually twofold in our lives.

It's both regenerative and also vocational.

The regenerative work of the Holy Spirit is that you get born again through faith in Jesus, that the Spirit leads you to that place of faith, and He makes you a new creation.

And then from there, He does sanctifying work in your life, that He wants to go to work on your heart.

And so we talked about that last Sunday, how the Holy Spirit wants to transform your

 character.

And there was such beautiful altar ministry happening at the end of the service or services last Sunday as people were coming, repenting of sin, and God was moving in their lives.

It's so awesome.

Today I want to turn our attention to the vocational aspect of the Spirit, how He transforms our lives missionally.

That what He's done in us, He also wants now us to partner with Him so that He can do that work through us in the lives of other

 And so we're going to be looking over the course of the next two Sundays at two key images in the Scripture that tie to the vocational work of the Spirit in our lives, that tie to our empowerment.

How many know it's one thing to be made new, it's another thing to be sent out.

And that's the vocational side of the Spirit in our lives.

He doesn't just give us new hearts, He gives us a holy mission.

 Several weeks ago, I was on a field trip with my son, Winston, for his fifth grade class trip to Washington, D.C., which, friends, was a marathon.

I have to be honest.

It was like 7 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

six days in a row looking at...

 Everything.

All of it.

Just ask me about a monument.

I've been there.

I promise.

But we were looking at this one monument for the Korean War.

And our tour guide was telling us that her dad was drafted into the Korean War when he was younger.

And after that experience, he described what that was like to his daughter, our tour guide.

And he said to her that when the draft happened, I didn't even know where Korea was.

I just knew that I was called to serve.

 And that line really struck with me because that's like the Spirit-empowered mission that you and I are all sent out into.

We don't always get the map.

But we do follow the one who sends us out.

And so that's what we're exploring today.

The Holy Spirit empowers us and sends us to do the kinds of good that pushes back darkness.

And so appropriately, the first image that we'll look today in the Scripture is the image of an army.

Everybody say army.

And then next Sunday, we'll look at the secondary image.

 of a people who are called to rebuild ancient ruins.

And so together, in the Bible, we actually see that the church is a battalion of builders.

A battalion of builders.

And actually, we see those two images together in the book of Nehemiah, where post-exile, after they've come home from their Babylonian captivity, the Israelites are rebuilding the city, rebuilding the city walls.

And the book of Nehemiah says that they're doing so with their tools in one hand and a sword, a weapon, in the other hand.

 we're a battalion of builders right that's like the church they're rebuilding the city of jerusalem which is itself a picture of the kingdom of god being established on the earth and they're simultaneously equipped to build and fight

 We are that picture.

We're called to build up the body of Christ.

We're called to cultivate flourishing lives and families and community.

And all of that, what we're going to see today, all of that is actually warfare.

It's our means of pushing back the powers of darkness whose destiny is ultimately defeat.

So today, I want to focus us on the image of that army and how the Spirit empowers us for spiritual warfare.

That's a term that gets used a lot.

 We'll be looking quite a bit at the book of Ephesians if you want to put a marker in your Bible there.

What does spiritual warfare actually entail?

To help us get started, we'll begin in the book of Ezekiel.

 Ezekiel was a prophet, a priest, who was one of the Israelites that were exiled to Babylon.

And while he was in Babylon, God gave Ezekiel visions.

And some of those visions had to do with Israel's past failures.

Some of those visions had to do with Israel's future hope.

And the vision that we're about to read is a vision concerning the future hope, not just of national Israel, but collectively of the whole people of God.

 that this vision is ultimately fulfilled through Jesus and His church, Jew and Gentile, through faith in Christ, become the family of God.

So that's what this is going to tie to today.

Ezekiel 37, beginning in verse 1, says this, that the hand of the Lord was on me, and He brought me out by the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Lord, and He set me, listen to where the Spirit set Ezekiel, He set me in the middle of a valley, it was full of bones.

Bones.

 So Ezekiel is led by the Holy Spirit and he's led to a place of desolation.

He's led to a place of brokenness.

It's kind of like when Jesus went into the waters of baptism and he came up out of the waters and the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove and Jesus is now empowered for his mission.

Where's the first place that Jesus is sent after the reception of the Holy Spirit in that moment?

 into the desert, into the wilderness, to face off with Satan.

Being Spirit-filled means that you are signing up for the mission of overcoming the evil one.

Being filled with the Spirit does not mean that you're signing up for a life of ease.

It does not mean that you're signing up for a life of platforms.

It does not mean that you're signing up for a life that is dictated by your preferences.

It means fundamentally that you are empowered for God's mission to overcome the presence of evil in the world.

 And so Ezekiel was brought to a valley of bones, and the Spirit led me back and forth among them.

I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.

And he asked me, Son of man, can these bones live?

And I said, Sovereign Lord, this feels like a trick question.

You alone know.

 And then he said to me, prophesy to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones.

I will make breath enter you and you will come to life.

I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin.

I'll put breath in you and you will come to life.

Then you will know that I am the Lord.

So I, Ezekiel, prophesied as I was commanded and as I was prophesying there was a noise, a rattling sound and the bones came together bone to bone.

I looked and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them but there was no breath in them.

 Then God said to me, prophesy to the breath.

Prophesy, son of man, and say to it, this is what the sovereign Lord says.

Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain that they may live.

So I prophesied as he commanded me and breath entered them.

They came to life and stood up on their feet a vast army.

 Then he said to me, son of man, these bones are the people of Israel.

They say our bones are dried up, our hope is gone and we are cut off.

Therefore prophesy and say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says.

My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them.

I will bring you back to the land of Israel.

Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord.

And when I open your graves and bring you up from them, I will put my spirit in you and you'll live and I will settle you in your own land.

 Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.

So Ezekiel has this amazing vision where God transports him into a valley that was full of bones.

How many want that visionary experience from the Lord, right?

But this is what Ezekiel experiences.

In the Hebrew, the wording communicates that when Ezekiel has this vision, he's astonished.

He's amazed at the sheer amount of the bones.

It was an overwhelming amount.

And God gives Ezekiel a thorough tour.

Takes him all up and down the valley.

Everywhere Ezekiel looks are dead men's bones.

 And what's more, the bones are unburied.

They're strewn along and piled atop one another along the surface of the valley floor.

Now Ezekiel, being a Jewish priest, knew very well the ceremonial and honorable requirements for those who had died in Israel.

 He also knew that the law of Moses dictated that when somebody had turned away from the Lord and they had gone after idols and given their lives over to injustice that they would not receive the ceremonial honorable burial.

Rather they would be left unburied.

So what Ezekiel is looking at is a valley full of people who have lived and died dishonorably.

 Lastly, the bones, they were very dry signifying that these people had been dead for a very long time.

They'd sat so long in the Mesopotamian sun that they were bleached white.

 Now Ezekiel has absolutely no context for the kind of miracle that he's about to witness.

He's got nothing in his frame of reference for what he's about to see.

Nothing like this has ever been performed in Israel ever before.

Sure, in the Jewish heritage there are stories of resurrection.

People like Elijah and Elisha who both raised young men from the dead.

But when those resurrections happened, the boys had just barely passed.

Their blood hardly cooled in their veins.

Ezekiel is facing something astronomically larger than that.

 And what he's about to learn is that what he's facing is nothing compared to the power of God.

You see, how many know that a bigger mess is just a setup for God to do a bigger miracle?

And that's what God is about to do.

Now you ought to know that the biggest miracle in your life is your salvation.

 because your biggest mess is your sin I don't know if you knew that but your biggest mess is not what they did to you it's not what they said to you your biggest mess is the sin in your own life and the fact that God redeems you from the domain of darkness and brings you into the kingdom of His beloved Son that is the miracle of all miracles that you have been saved out of the power of sin and death the Bible says in the book of Ephesians that because of His great love for us God who is rich in mercy

 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.

It's by faith that you have been saved.

That verse is the fulfillment of what Ezekiel is about to see.

So God commands Ezekiel to prophesy first to the bones and then to the breath, which is symbolic of the Holy Spirit.

And as Ezekiel does, the bones form into bodies and the bodies become living beings.

It's a two-stage process.

And this two-stage recreation process is significant

 Because it recalls the two-stage process of when God created Adam in the beginning.

That first God formed Adam from the dirt and then he breathed the breath of life into Adam so that he became a creation, he became a living being.

So here in Ezekiel we have a picture of new creation.

 Even amongst such a scene of hopelessness.

And you need to know today that no matter how hopeless your life looks or how hopeless your life feels, God can still make a new creation out of you.

It doesn't matter how far you've fallen from the original vision of the life of Adam.

God can still make new creation out of you.

He can raise you up again and restore you to His plans and His purposes for you.

And that's what God does for the Valley of Bones.

 And just like Adam was born for a battle to overcome the serpent, so also now Ezekiel's valley is filled with a vast army of new creation warriors.

Now this connection to the creation of Adam explains the next part of the story.

That when you read it, if you pay attention, actually is quite surprising.

Because this group of resurrected soldiers, they're not sent out to war.

 They're not sent out to fight with the Babylonian armies or with the Assyrian armies or anybody else.

No, these resurrected soldiers, they're sent home to the promised land, to Jerusalem, to Israel, to the promised land that has now become a wasteland.

 And when they get there, their purpose is to make the wasteland back into a promised land.

A fruitful, flourishing garden where people are obeying, loving, serving their God and living under His blessing as a result.

That's what the army is sent to do.

God says, I will settle you back in your land.

That's where they're supposed to go.

Now this army is ultimately fulfilled in God's people, the church.

And so this begs the question, if the church is like an army, then what exactly is the kind of warfare that we've been called to?

 Because this army doesn't fight in the traditional sense.

In fact, their fighting looks a whole lot more like farming.

This is Garden of Eden imagery.

You see, in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament, the prophets often described Israel post-exile, post-Babylonian destruction.

They described Jerusalem in a way that's supposed to invoke the imagery that the order and the beauty of the garden has now descended back into and reverted back into chaos.

 Jeremiah calls the promised land a haunt for jackals.

It's become infected by the destructive influence of the serpent.

And so sending the army back to Jerusalem wasn't just a homecoming celebration for the soldiers.

No, they were indeed heading for a fight, just not the kind of fight that we tend to think of.

They were heading for the fight that requires the recultivation of desolation back into a garden.

You get the picture?

The prophet Isaiah describes something like this in Isaiah 2.

 He says, in the last days.

That's the time that Peter says it is when he stands up on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit comes upon 120 people praying in the upper room.

In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest of mountains.

It will be exalted above the hills and nations will stream to it.

Many peoples will come and say, come, let's go to the mountain of the Lord.

Skip down to verse 4.

God will judge between nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.

They will beat their swords into plowshares.

 and their spears into pruning hooks.

Now this prophecy has an ultimate fulfillment in the age to come, when Jesus makes all things new at His second coming, when literal war will be no more.

But even in the church age, where we now live, it has an initial fulfillment in the fact that God's army does not fight, what does Ephesians 6, 12 say, does not fight against flesh and blood.

 Rather, we fight against rulers, against authorities, powers of this dark world, and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

So you and I, we're not fighting with other humans.

We're not fighting in the political realm.

We're fighting in the spiritual realm.

We are fighting against the same bad guys that Adam and Eve were meant to be fighting against.

 And the way we fight is by being empowered by the Holy Spirit to deeply and widely establish what Isaiah describes, the mountain of the Lord's temple, the garden of God's temple, that is the church.

That is the mission of the Spirit-filled person that we become oriented towards.

When the Spirit fills us, we now let go of our old mission and we become oriented towards the mission of God that His temple would fill the entirety of the earth in these last days.

 That's why when Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was gifted to the church, and he quotes that first line of Isaiah in the last days, because the mountain of the Lord's temple had now been firmly established in the world with Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of that temple, and now you and I, the living stones of that temple, are joined to Him.

We've become a part of the army of God, not who fight with swords and guns, but who fight with plowshares.

 who go to work in the garden of God cultivating the hearts of humanity to become holy habitations for the Most High to dwell within.

So as Ezekiel sees, we are an army.

But we don't fight in the traditional sense.

We get our hands dirty in the soil of human hearts and we turn wastelands into gardens.

The New Testament calls it making disciples, teaching them to love and obey Jesus.

This is how Adam and Eve were meant to overcome the serpent.

Did you think that they were actually supposed to battle a snake?

 course not the way that adam and eve overcome the serpent is by extending god's orderly fruitful kingdom throughout the whole world so that chaos is pushed back so that the whole earth becomes god's habitation leaving no room for the serpent until finally he's cornered and there's just one last step you got to take that's the picture of warfare in the bible it's the same with the church the spiritual warfare that the new testament describes

 is not one where we focus our time and attention doing battle with the demonic realm in our prayer closets, though I love prayer.

Rather, we battle by bearing witness to and demonstrating the power of the good news of Jesus, cultivating the territory of human hearts into holy habitations for the presence of God.

Paul captures the whole thing very nicely in one sentence.

Look at Romans 12 and verse 21.

This is the purpose of our lives.

This is the purpose of the church.

So succinct, so beautiful.

I could take a lesson from Paul.

 Romans 12, 21.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil.

How?

How?

Yeah, you overcome evil with good.

Now that word overcome is a war term.

It means to conquer, to prevail.

It's the same Greek word from which we get the word Nike.

 which isn't just a shoe company, it's the Greek goddess of victory in war.

So pay special attention to what this verse is teaching you.

You conquer evil, you do battle by doing good.

That's the imagery of Ezekiel's army.

You conquer the serpent, you kick out the jackals, the demonic powers that are at work in this world, by helping that which is desolate to become that which is flourishing once again.

And so at Cathedral you'll find we're very intentional about this.

We call people to actual belonging in the church.

 We call people to actually become growing, maturing, engaged members of the body.

And here's an idea.

We actually want to get involved in your life.

 We want to come alongside your marriage, your finances, your habits, your work, to support you and see you experience the abundant life of Jesus through the ways of the kingdom of God in your world.

And as we do that, we are participating in the mountain of the Lord becoming chief among the mountains such that all the nations will stream to it.

Make sense?

So let's just break this down based upon the picture of Ezekiel's army into some practical takeaways.

Number one, spirit-filled warfare means that we must be alive.

 We must be alive.

I know that you are, but sometimes you've got to notify your face, okay?

We must be alive.

Now, there's a lot of things that we could say about this point, but I want to point us to the fact that Christians are called to be a community who are brimming over with love and joy.

When the Spirit came upon those lifeless bodies in the valley, they became alive, and it says they stood up on their feet.

They weren't defeated anymore, and their posture communicated that.

 Now, of course, that's a picture of when we get saved, filled with the Holy Spirit.

We come alive.

And our attitudes, our outlook, the way we carry ourselves should reflect that reality.

And how often when somebody asks you how things are going at work, the first words out of your mouth are complaint.

Friends, complaint is the language of death.

The Apostle Paul says that in response to the complaint of the Israelites in the wilderness, God released the angel of death to them.

Complaint is the language of people who are looking back.

 Complaint is the language of people who have forgotten the purpose of their salvation, that they would be used by Jesus to cultivate human hearts into gardens for God.

Listen, we need to be people who are alive with faith and joy.

It's important.

When the agenda of the enemy is death, it is an act of war to be alive.

Come on, choosing to encourage yourself in the Lord is an act of war.

 Right?

Shout out to the gift of speaking in tongues.

Whoo!

Man.

The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14 that the purpose of that gift is to edify the individual believer.

It's to build you up.

I thank God for that gift.

Because some days I don't feel alive, but when I go into my room and I close the door behind me and I begin to pray in that heavenly language, I can feel my spirit start to get reinvigorated and rejuvenated again.

That's a gift from God for the life of the believer.

 We got to be a people whose lives are prophetic declarations that light has won over darkness and that hope is the bedrock of the future.

And that's especially true when it feels like darkness is closing in around you.

I'll never forget this moment I had where I was outside grilling in our backyard and I walk inside and the first thing I see is Nicole holding our six year old daughter Mabel horizontally over the kitchen trash can because Mabel is vomiting into the trash can.

 It was a crazy scene to walk in on.

But this was the most amazing part.

She finishes vomiting and then she turns and looks at me and gives me a thumbs up.

 Dead serious.

It was amazing, right?

Like we would all do well to take a page out of Mabel's playbook, okay?

Sometimes life get hard.

Sometimes life gets messy.

But here's the good news.

We win.

Come on.

So our sense of joy and faith should be anchored to that ultimate reality.

Dead, joyless Christianity is an oxymoron.

 And it only happens when we lose touch with the reality of our salvation.

King David prayed, Restore the joy of your salvation to me.

Salvation is a joyful, life-giving thing.

Listen, if the Holy Spirit is like life-giving waters, when He comes into your life, don't you think that should make you a life-giving person?

Shouldn't you get transformed by the One who is life-giving?

And yet some of you, you make a sport out of not smiling.

 Like you think smiling somehow makes you more pious or something.

It's like you're saving up all of your joy for when it's really worthwhile spending it.

Like you're just waiting for certain milestones in life.

Like when I get here or when I do that or when I achieve this, then I'll give myself permission to be happy.

Until then, I'm going to be serious and stoic.

 Can I just tell you this?

There is no destination that you will reach on this side of heaven.

There is no destination that you will reach in this life that will ever make up for how miserable you chose to be along the way.

 The point is joy in the journey.

Joy in the journey of following Jesus, obeying Jesus, serving Jesus together.

And we're journeying together and we experience joy and faith.

Oh, and together really is the key.

It's like so, so important.

That's where the life of Christianity is most strongly experienced, is together.

The God of this age is autonomy.

Which means that the plagues of this age are anxiety, apathy, nihilism.

 And of course they are.

If you're the most important thing in your world, you will be anxious.

You will be passionless.

You will have hopelessness in your life.

Right?

You've got to topple down the idol of autonomy from the throne of your heart, because autonomy is antithetical to the kingdom of God.

And as long as you pursue self, you will be at odds with the work of the Spirit in your life.

 The Spirit wants to plant you in the church.

What does 1 Corinthians 12, 13 say?

We are all baptized.

Here's what the Spirit did to you.

Sorry for all you lone rangers.

He can't take it back.

You were all baptized by the Holy Spirit, by one Spirit, as to form one?

Yeah, one body, right?

Now, if the Spirit of life puts you in a body, don't you think that the life you're meant to experience is in the body?

On the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached, 3,000 got saved.

 The first thing that it describes them doing is spending a lot of time together.

Going to each other's houses, prayer meetings together, sharing meals with one another, gathering in the temple together, taking communion together.

Communion.

Like co-mingling, hanging out, being generous to one another, following the apostles' teaching.

That means submitting themselves to a rule of life that was higher than their own preferences.

They were overflowing with life as the community of the Spirit through discipleship and fellowship.

 Like the valley of bones, they were being formed and coming together.

And when they came together, there was a rattling.

People paid attention.

It says that daily God was adding people to their number.

Daily people were getting saved.

No wonder the church looked so attractive.

So joy-filled.

So faith-filled.

Listen, I'm just saying that God, our God, is a joyful, life-giving God.

Misery is the business of the other guy.

 And it's not a coincidence that He's flying solo.

Our God, three in one.

He's a community unto Himself.

No wonder He's so happy.

I got nine minutes left.

The devil is a liar.

Spirit-filled warfare.

Spirit-filled warfare means that we must be aligned.

Everyone say aligned.

 The next verse in 1 Corinthians 12, even so the body is not made up of one, but of many.

It's like we reflect the Trinity, three in one, many in one.

That means that you have a place you're supposed to take.

A part you're meant to perform and a people you're meant to march alongside.

Be accountable to and accountable for.

When Ezekiel looked out at the valley full of resurrected bodies, he could tell they were an army.

Not because of their uniform, but because of their unity.

 They were standing in formation, aligned as an army would be.

Hear me so carefully, all you free spirits.

How you stand out in the kingdom of God is by standing in your place.

This is why we do church membership.

This is why we don't do you belong before you believe.

You don't, actually.

That's not the message of the Bible.

 The message of the Bible is that you come to faith in Christ, you submit yourself to the Lord Jesus, and that's how you belong in the family of God.

I'm sorry, that's what the Bible teaches.

Okay?

That statement is not true.

It's not a biblical truth.

The truth is that you are actually called to belong on the basis of your belief that we are a community of people who are confessing Jesus is Lord.

Yeah?

Some of you are looking at me like, I know, Instagram theology got a hold of your brain.

 Let's clean it.

Let's wash it.

It's not the Bible.

Okay?

We call people to genuine belonging.

In the book of Ephesians chapter 4, Paul actually talks about that a church put in order is a church that wins the war.

 Not a church full of a bunch of autonomous people doing their own thing, taking what they want and then going out and living life how they want to live.

That's not a church that wins the war.

You've got to come into alignment.

You see, formation is powerful because as soon as you start putting things in order in your life, you'll be able to identify what's missing, what's malnourished.

Like if your life were a wheel and you had all these spokes, and if one of those spokes was shorter than the others and you tried to roll that wheel, you would know.

 Because everything's in its rightful place.

It's in order.

And the same principle is true for the body of Christ.

It's by order and formation that we can see if somebody is missing in action.

That's why armies have alignment.

So the general can see somebody's missing.

Where is that person?

Imagine if I had a hundred bricks piled just in a giant pile up here on this stage.

 I asked you to close your eyes.

I took a brick away, asked you to open your eyes.

Would you be able to see based on your eyes if that pile of bricks was now 99 instead of 100?

Of course you wouldn't be able to.

But if I took those bricks and I built them into a wall and they became ordered,

 and I took a brick out you'd be able to see just like that that something is out of place listen order reveals gaps order reveals opportunity for discipleship I have a question for you cathedral have you taken your place?

are you in line?

now I know in an age of autonomy that these questions are basically sinful they are offensive but a good soldier knows that autonomy in battle

 equals death.

While alignment creates strength and leads to victory.

Which means you have to be willing to submit yourself to one another, Ephesians 5, 21, and submit yourself to church governance and leadership, Hebrews 13, 17.

Listen, one of the primary outcomes that Jesus died for was the unity of the church.

To bring down dividing walls of hostility between mankind.

Do not spend your life trying to build up what Jesus has torn down.

Through your distancing.

 through your preferences, through your individualism, through your self-expression.

No, no, no.

Do not tear down what... Do not build up what Christ has torn down, nor should you be a person who tries to tear down what Jesus is building up, which is His church.

Don't be a critic.

Be a builder.

We'll talk about that next week.

The serpent's agenda is division and self-preoccupation.

The lamb's agenda is submission, unity, and humble service of others.

And when you embrace that reality by getting in place...

 You are doing spiritual warfare that is hitting the devil where it hurts.

Number three, spiritual warfare means that we must be alert and active.

We must be alert and active.

How are your toes?

Okay, I'm stepping on them.

They hurt?

Your toes hurt?

No?

You feel good?

Be alert and active.

Ezekiel sees the vast army stood upon their feet.

 They are at attention.

They're ready to be sent by the Spirit towards the desolation.

They're ready to get gardening.

They're ready to kick out the serpent through lives of consecrated cultivation.

Listen, when you came to Christ, the Spirit handed you a plow.

But if your hand ain't on it, it's not going to do anybody any good.

You were born again into a battle.

 And the way you fight in that battle is by doing the good works that God has put in front of you.

The way you used to walk through this earth, Paul says in the book of Ephesians, was under the power of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

No matter how purpose-filled you thought you were, ultimately you were just another one of the walking dead.

You were subject to the powers that were acting upon you.

It was a pathetic kind of existence.

Now, your life is meant to be prophetic.

Meant to prophesy of the victory of God, the demise of the devil.

 Throughout how you conduct your daily life.

Ephesians 2.10.

We're God's handiwork.

This is who you are.

This is your identity.

Created in Christ Jesus to do good works.

Which God prepared in advance for us to do.

For us to peripeteo, walk in daily.

You've been born again.

You've gone from death to life.

And your life is meant to prophesy that the enemy's days are numbered.

God has prepared work for you to do.

No matter how ordinary that work might feel sometimes...

 It welcomes the kingdom of God and pushes back the powers of darkness.

And please don't be like a starry-eyed kid who reads that verse and has grand dreams of fame and glory.

Maybe your destiny is fame.

More power to you.

I love it.

That's not what that verse is about.

This verse is not about a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

That's not what God has prepared for you.

This verse is not about the Wizard of Oz at the end of the yellow brick road.

In fact, this verse is not about anything at the end of any road.

 works that God has prepared for you are not at the end of a destination.

The good works that God has prepared for you are along the road.

It's journeying together.

That's how you know someone is led by the Holy Spirit.

Not the person who's waiting for tomorrow.

The person who's like, God can do something today.

God can do something through me today when I show up to work, when I go to the office, when I get on that Zoom call.

 when I serve breakfast to my family God can do something for me today in the ordinary that's the good you're called to and Paul actually goes on to describe in the rest of Ephesians what the spiritual warfare entails through our daily lives the four categories he hits being a maturing member of the church who works to build up the body of Christ with your gifts literally join the church be a functioning member not a casual observer that's warfare because you're building up the temple in a land of desolation

 Number two, live righteously and pursue holiness.

That's warfare because you're guarding the temple against the entrance of the impurity of the serpent.

Number three, worship together as a community of the Spirit.

Sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs and give thanks to God together in the name of Jesus Christ.

That's warfare because you're literally singing about the victory of God.

Number four, conduct your family and work life

 According to the values of the kingdom, your personal world should be ordered by the kingdom of God.

And that's warfare because the kingdom values are upside down to the values of the world.

So as you go out there and you live the way the book tells you to live, you're actually pulling the rug out from underneath the devil's feet.

You're disrupting his plan to sow discord and destruction into the world.

 And if you do these things, not only will you be performing the good works that God has prepared for you, you'll be kicking more devils out than a Pentecostal at a 24-hour prayer meeting, friends and family.

God is concerned with your daily... I can say it because I'm a Pentecostal.

He's concerned with your daily life.

How you live.

You'll be doing what Adam was meant to do.

Guarding the sacred space of God's temple.

The garden of the church against the infiltration of sin and impurity.

 Cultivating the garden through the discipleship of self and others.

And expanding the garden, overcoming the serpent through faithful witness to the gospel.

Listen, this is so important.

To be alert and to be active fundamentally means that your life is no longer about you.

Your life now revolves around God and others.

And as you pour yourself out for God into others...

 That's how you experience flourishing.

Book of Proverbs says that he who refreshes others will themselves be refreshed.

 God wants to get things through you, and you're never going to miss out by saying, here I am, God send me.

Because if God can get stuff through you, He will produce flourishing on the inside of you.

And this is how you take dominion.

Hear me, this is how you take, this is how the church gets victory, is by orienting themselves towards God and one another, and towards the world around us.

God said to Adam and Eve, I want you to take dominion over the earth.

How?

By being fruitful and multiplying.

In the New Testament, we call that making disciples and building up the church.

 Now we're convinced that the way we take dominion is by building up our brand.

We think if I can enlarge my personal footprint, then I'll have the kind of influence that can really make a difference.

Maybe so, but it'll be limited.

The way you take dominion is not by building up your personal influence.

The way you take dominion is by reproducing the life of Christ into other people.

 This is how it works.

Take dominion by being fruitful and multiplying.

My theology professor gave me this great example.

Temecula, the wine country of Southern California, pray for it, okay?

It's not that great, but we can believe God.

We can believe God.

Alright?

Temecula exists today because people in Orange County a few decades ago kept on having babies.

And as they kept on having babies, guess what they needed to do?

Spread out.

 They need to fill up more room.

Because as you multiply, you take territory.

So there's a place called Temecula that exists today that didn't exist a number of decades ago.

But the reason it exists is because people understood reproduction.

 The church needs to understand what all those mommies and daddies in Orange County understood.

It's not about building myself up.

It's not about my own brand.

It's not about my own influence.

It's about multiplying the life of Christ, getting my hands dirty in the hearts of humanity and cultivating them through discipleship so that that becomes a holy habitation for the Most High.

And as we multiply, we spread out, we take territory, we get dominion over the world.

We corner the serpent.

 Until that day when he is crushed under our feet.

If anybody got this, it was a woman named Henrietta Mears.

Wasn't a preacher, wasn't a celebrity.

She was a Sunday school teacher at her local church in Hollywood.

And when she took that post, the Sunday school was 450 kids.

A few years later, it was over 4,000 children.

Because she understood the power of discipleship.

 Henrietta Mears never built a brand.

You don't know her name.

But the likes of Bill Bright, Campus Crusades, Billy Graham, heard of him.

James Rayburn, Young Life.

They came out of her discipleship.

Because she wasn't focused on gaining influence.

She was focused on multiplying influence.

 let me just speak to all the leaders in the room I would rather you approach your neighborhood group season thinking who are the two people that I'm going to multiply myself into rather than who are the ten people I'm going to get dependent upon me I'm not concerned about how influential you can be in the masses what I'm concerned about is can you multiply yourself into somebody else who can now go and do what you do because you might be able to benefit ten but two of you can benefit twenty-five

 Okay?

Come on.

If we multiply ourselves by discipleship, by being alert and active to the gardening that God has called us to, don't you tell me this church can't take territory in Los Angeles and throughout Nashville.

All it takes is one person sowing their life into another.

Laying themselves down.

Believe in God.

What you put in me, you can put in them.

That was the vision of Ezekiel.

 In the beginning of Ezekiel's prophetic career, in Ezekiel, you can all stand, in Ezekiel chapter 2, it says Ezekiel has a vision of God.

And as a result of that vision of God, Ezekiel falls down on his face like a dead man.

Like a pile of bones.

But then in Ezekiel chapter 2, it says God said to Ezekiel, stand up.

And God breathed the Holy Spirit into Ezekiel.

 that's funny, that's the same exact thing that happened to the valley of bones in Ezekiel 37 what the text wants you to understand is that what happened for the army first happened to a man what happened to one guy

 who then responded to the work of God by saying, I'll go.

I'll make my life a prophetic witness of the goodness and the glory of God.

And as a result of that, yes, a whole valley full of dry bones became a vast army for the work of God.

All it takes is one person.

Say, I'm God.

I'm available.

God, I'll give myself over to your work so that we can see armies come to life.

In the name of Jesus, we thank you, Lord, for your presence.

 for your Holy Spirit who calls us we love you just take a moment across all locations right now and just turn your heart to God why don't you just begin to pray say God here am I send me Holy Spirit come remove the God of autonomy from the throne of our hearts we give ourselves to you we give ourselves to you come Lord Jesus

 Come, Lord Jesus, come on, let the Word of God hit you today.

Let the Word of God hit you today.

Where are you clinging to autonomy?

Where are you resisting the alignment of the Holy Spirit, the activity that He wants to empower you for?

Come, Lord.

Do a work in our church, in Jesus' name.

Amen.