The Kitchen
Spring Cleaning • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Spring Cleaning: The Kitchen
Cleaning out all those things in our life that hinder our walk and relationship with Jesus.
What is a kitchens primary functions? To store and prepare food.
Question? Is your kitchen a good or bad place? It depend?
Good, if it has what we need to feed our family nourishing meals.
Bad, if you have no food or food that does not nourish you family.
But for most of us we have the good and bad food. And depending on our mood or our objective, we will decide what we crave to eat.
Main Point: The Kitchen exposes what we truly crave.
In the spiritual kitchen of our lives, we sometimes crave and rely on things instead of our Savior Jesus. This is called a “functional savior”.
A functional savior is a theological and psychological term for anything other than God that a person relies on to provide ultimate meaning, security, identity, or satisfaction.
While someone may intellectually claim to believe in Jesus as their Savior, their "functional savior” is what they actually turn to cope with pain, escape reality, or feel significant.
If your “functional savior” has failed you. It’s time to “Spring Clean” and turn back to the Savior that never fails.
Ever heard of the term “comfort food?” What is your go to?
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
What do you turn to for comfort instead of Jesus?
What do you reach for when you are tired and weak? Coffee/Energy Drink
29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
When we turn to the “kitchen” of our own making for energy, we find that the high is temporary. Isaiah is showing us that God doesn't just replenish our fuel tank; He changes the engine.
He gives power to the weary because He is the only source that doesn't diminish by giving.
In the Kitchen of our lives, we often grab the quick fix because we don't think God is fast enough. But God is never in a hurry, and He’s never out of resources.
1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. 2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.
1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
David is saying You are my God. Not like a functional savior. Nothing else can replace you.
1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
KJV early / NIV earnestly. It is eagerness to be with the Lord in every situation is more than the time of day.
David’s focus is on seeking. It’s intentional. He says earnestly I seek you. Most of us accidentally seek God when things go wrong or we turn to our function savior.
But David has learned that unless you seek God early and often, your whole being will start longing for things that cannot sustain you like your function savior.
1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
I thirst for you: When does water taste the best?
David longs for God’s presence like a wanderer in a desert longs for water.
David is admitting that the “parched land” is actually the true state of the human soul apart from God. We try to hydrate our lives with functional saviors like: entertainment, sex, booze, and food, but the ground is still cracked.
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.
When he says “Your love is better than life,” he is making a radical statement. He’s saying that if he had life without God’s love, he’d be dead; but if he had God’s love and lost his life, he’d still be satisfied.
7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
You either trust in your functional savior or you trust in the Lord. There is no middle ground. Jeremiah says the person who is truly “blessed” is the one who has moved their trust out of the realm of functional savior and into the hands of a sovereign God.
I love that word confidence. The word originates from the Latin word confidere, (con-FEE-deh-reh) which means "to have full trust". It is composed of two parts.
Prefix: con- – In this context, it acts as an intensive prefix meaning "with" or "thoroughly".
Root: fidere – From the Latin word for "to trust"
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Your heart is a follower. It follows what ever you turn to as your functional savior instead of Jesus. Your functional savior is fools gold. Jesus pure gold.
14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
Clothe yourselves / A taking off and putting on. Spring Cleaning
You have to clothe yourself in Jesus intentionally.
We all have a closet of old habits. Paul says it’s time for a wardrobe change. But the key is that “think about how” part.
We often pray for God to take away a bad habit, but then we go and “think about the how”. How to keeping the same habits. You can’t put on Christ while you’re still holding onto the flesh. You have to let go of the old to wear the new.
2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
You want to grow up? You need the pure milk. Over these 21 days, we are detoxing from the impure stuff so we can regain our cravings for the things of God. When you taste Him in prayer and in the Word, you realize that He is the only thing that actually satisfies the growl in your spirit.
And how do you grow? By tasting that the Lord is good. Notice it doesn't say understand that the Lord is useful. It says taste. You have to experience the sweetness of grace. Once you’ve tasted the real “milk” of your Saviors love, the soda of your functional saviors will start to taste like harsh chemicals.
