Furnished & Ready
Stewardship • Sermon • Submitted
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· 3 viewsIt is not uncommon for many of us to undermine God's investment in us. But if we turn our attention to Jesus and His accomplishment for us on the cross our perspective or self image is bound to be transformed.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Last week we learnt from the account we read in Mark 11:1-3 of a donkey and cloth ready and prepared for the lord’s use but could not be of service because (1) it was tied down (2) the custodian didn’t know of God’s plan and purpose for what was in his possession.
Likewise, many of us are gifted and talented but bogged down with the pressures of life and other physical limitations and therefore not available for use in the Kingdom of God.
Today’s message highlights that you are indeed furnished and ready to be used if you are saved.
The problem however is that many of us are still tied back to what we are saved from because we focus on ourselves instead of on Jesus and His finished works on the cross.
Key Text
Key Text
On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”
So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”
Let us pay a little bit of attention to the text
What the Lord needed was in someone's possession.
Everything He needs and will ever need is readily available here on earth. If you follow the sequence of creation, you will notice what he needs before creating man.
The person was ready and willing to let it go.
There is a fundamental truth that governs giving which is a heart of gratitude to God He is a giver of all things. Let's look at Abraham our father of faith Gen 14:18-20
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying,
“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.
And praise be to God Most High,
who delivered your enemies into your hand.”
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have.
and everyone who was willing and whose heart moved them came and brought an offering to the Lord for the work on the tent of meeting, for all its service, and for the sacred garments.
Everything that we need to do what God wants us to do is already available.
Quite often is that we do what we want to do and ask to bless it.
Let me encourage you to change tact by finding out what God want to do, and then find out where you fit in and enjoy the flow. Phil 4:18-19
I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.
There is a provision in His vision
The problem just like the disciples we don’t know how or where to locate it.
However when and if we ask God will always show us where to go or what to do.
Who are you?
Who are you?
Everyone who believes in Jesus as a son has been born again and given the power to become the Son of God
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
Paul emphasised the significance of our call, in Eph 2:8-10
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.