Legs falling asleep and heart change...its all the same
Notes
Transcript
WE have all had these experiences
AS you feel your pulse race and your heart start to pound you realize that the words that are coming from the mouth of your friend are words about a character flaw they have seen in you and it is with a heart of love for you they are bringing it to your attention.
You think to yourself how could I not have seen this until now
Maybe you think NO THAT’s not true....it can’t be true
Or maybe....they are just jealous of me
as you look at what they are saying longer and harder you realize they are right....OUCH it stings.
Some people might have a pressure in their chest
Some people might have a pit in their stomach
Maybe your the person that gets a headache
but the reaction is physical and real. You’re vulnerable in a way that is uncomfortable, but now you have to decide what to do with it.
2. You have been sitting for quite some time
a. Possibly in an uncomfortable position
b. Maybe you were sitting in a hard chair
either way you had lost feeling in your right leg about 10 mins ago and now you have to stand up. At first the new blood flow back into your leg is refreshing, but before long there is a gripping pain that now engulfs your whole leg. Breathing in shallow breaths trying not to scream or cry you can only sit and wait for the pain to pass and the new blood flow back into that leg normalize again.
For I will gather you up from all the nations and bring you home again to your land.
“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.
“And you will live in Israel, the land I gave your ancestors long ago. You will be my people, and I will be your God. I will cleanse you of your filthy behavior. I will give you good crops of grain, and I will send no more famines on the land. I will give you great harvests from your fruit trees and fields, and never again will the surrounding nations be able to scoff at your land for its famines. Then you will remember your past sins and despise yourselves for all the detestable things you did. But remember, says the Sovereign Lord, I am not doing this because you deserve it. O my people of Israel, you should be utterly ashamed of all you have done!
Israel’s hard heart
-This was the time in the history of Israel when they were in captivity that Isaiah had warned them about. King Jahoiachin was in Babylonian captivity with his people
-Israel was facing the reality of where their decisions had led them.
-The blood that was shed of innocent people, idol worship.....by not driving the other people completely out of Canaan like God had told them to do they were tempted to worship other gods and slowly over time their hearts were losing life, looking less like the people they were created to be (free, alive in their covenant with God) and were looking more like the people God was disgusted with and wanted driven out of Canaan.
-Israel as a people had functionally forgotten all that God had done to free them, provide for them in the desert, and lead them into the promise land of Canaan.
-The blood of the covenant had grown cold and death started to set in for the people of Israel
-They had lived so long outside of the blood of the covenant they had spiritual death.
-Similar to Necrosis which is cell, organ, tissue death because of the lack of blood supply to that place in the body
-Israel had left the covenant and were no longer in the flow of that covenant which lead to a spiritual heart death where they no longer were interested in what God thought, what hurt him, What he wanted for them.
God’s promise of Redemption
-the sprinkling of the water is not reference to baptism rather it is a reference to the cleansing ceremonies that were required in Leviticus for the cleansing rituals of the people from things that would have made them unclean.
-You can hear the eagerness in the voice of Ezekiel for God to restore his people
“Your filth will be washed away and You will no longer worship idols”
-Israel had become comfortable in their own filth and sin.....because they were surrounded by their own sin they had no understanding of how bad it had become
-Day by day they slipped into a place of death and because it was slowly killing their spirits they were becoming desensitized to it all
-Kind of like the frog in the boiling water…we know this tale
-If you throw the frog in boiling water he will jump out, but if you put him in room temp water and slowly turn up the heat it’ll be boiling before he knows he’s in danger
-God is telling Israel when I cleanse you ....you will see your errors and your desire will be to stop doing what is damaging to your relationship with Jesus
-In fact God tells them they will enjoy the covenant with God so much that when they look back on their sin it will disgust them that they ever did those things.
With God’s spirit in them their motivations change, their desires change, and in turn the fruit that comes from their lives will change and instead of death and destruction coming from their lives
God will bring a bounty from their lives as a transformed community
God shows Ezekiel the possibilities after the redemption
Chapter 37 God shows Ezekiel in a vision what he wants to do with Israel......it’s the valley of dry bones
-Son of Man can these dry bones live again?
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. They are saying, ‘We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished.’ Therefore, prophesy to them and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel. When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the Lord. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live again and return home to your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done what I said. Yes, the Lord has spoken!’ ”
God was telling Ezekiel that when this transformation had happened internally it was going to have ripple effects externally not only on them but the generations to come.
-Again he says he will put his spirit in the people of Israel
Is there a place in your life where you can see your story in the story of Israel?
It started out as a small place of hurt in your life, or something you thought would go unnoticed and have no effect on your life.
-Slowly this small spot in your life completely disappears and you may have even forgotten it was there
-It has become a dead issue in your life and it possibly without you knowing has caused distance in your relationship with Jesus or with other people and you have no clue what was happening because it was such a slow change.
Application
1. When God is preparing a work in you he also is preparing a work through you
When God is showing us a place in our lives....a place in our hearts where it is cut off from the life changing blood of Jesus.
-maybe this is something in your life that you have forgotten about
-maybe it is something you have given up hope will ever change
-maybe it is sin that has been left not dealt with
Jesus wants to bring that place in our life back into the flow of the blood of Jesus and give new life to that area of your life.
-It’s possible this will cause pain....similar to when a part of our body has had the blood flow cut off for a time and then the blood rushes back into that place.....
-when your leg falls asleep because you sat on it wrong....there is pain when the blood starts to circulate again.
-When stroke victims have a blockage....there have been situations where it is the blood flow that rushes back into the blood deprived brain that causes inflammation and damage to the brain
I have a clip I want to show you....it’s from the newer version of the Narnia movie
-Lucy and Susan have watched Aslan die and come back to life
-Aslan is preparing to save Narnia from the rule of the white witch
-He first wants to set the people who had been transformed into stone free and give them life again
This visual can give us a tangible example of what God wants to do in us
So if we have places in our lives that we have not surrendered to the Jesus and we bring that to him....there might be some pain in that place in life when the blood of Jesus flows through our lives in that area.
-restitution can hurt
-bringing up the past in order to surrender it and allow it to heal
-Forgiveness may hurt if it means letting go of that control
2. Your Healing can bring healing to Others
BUT ALONG WITH OUR OWN SPIRITUAL HEALTH AND HEALING GOD CAN BRING ABOUT TRANSFORMATION AROUND YOU
-the healing in your life can lead to healing of your family life
-healing in a relationship can transform other relationships connected to those people
God wants to bring wholeness to our lives and he can use that process of healing to reach beyond our lives and into the world that desperately needs that healing
-sharing with people what has happened in your life
-sharing the source of the transformation that has taken place in your life
Our Transformed lives will transform the lives around us