Ezekiel | Week 6 | Bill Bush | Full Service

So here we are. Ezekiel chapter 37. I feel my voice about to go. Let me take a sip of water.

Alright. So hope out of hopelessness. How do you come back from a dead end? How do the cardinals come back from the how far behind they are right now?

Anyways, verse one. The Lord took ahold of me, and I was carried away by the spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with bones. He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor. They were scattered everywhere across the ground, and we were completely dried out.

So God takes them by vision, and where he took them to was a valley

where the Israeli army had defied God when they'd made a deal. He sent Babylon to discipline to overrule him, but he basically said they're gonna control. They made a a treaty with them of what they're gonna do, and then they violated and tried to fight themselves. They basically, we're gonna get ourselves out of this problem. We're gonna save ourselves. They thought they're doing the right thing, but they really were fighting against what God said was gonna happen.

And they got annihilated. And so in this moment where God's trying to bring Ezekiel hope, he takes him to the very place where all hope was lost, and he shows him this this this he walks amongst these bones that are now completely dried out skeletons baked in the sun,

and and and and that's where he takes them, which would have been weird as a moment to bring hope because that, first of all, would show the shame because in their culture to they were really about you need to properly bury a body.

You need to wrap it, have a ceremony to honor it. So this entire army, the Babylonian just left them out there. And so he takes them to this massive defeat where there's nothing but death and not only dead, long dead, dry bones. We'll see that he's actually referring to Israel itself as having dry bones,

to just being dead. And then he asked this question, son of man, can these bones become living people again? So right in the middle of this vision he shows him that's good. Thanks for reminding me of all this great defeat and death. And then he goes, can they they be alive again?

And what's interesting is he asked them a tough question. The the way it's worded, it almost implies you know the answer is no. You know the answer is no. There's no way possible that dry bones can be a living body again. But he asked it in a way, but unless God can do it.

And so he asked this really tough question, and really if you wanna know what he's asking him, he's like, hey, Ezekiel, do you trust me? And I think that's what we gotta realize. When we run into tough moments, when we run into life times that don't make sense or maybe you've become dry bones,

it seems like life's dying, like this this relationship seems dead or or or or my career or or even in a physically healthy thing, you're facing actual physical death or you've lost somebody, and it just seems hopeless. It seems like your faith is dry. It's dead.

The thing you gotta understand is God is gonna bring reality and he's gonna ask you a tough question. If you're ever gonna let God take a dead end and turn it into the end of death, you have to be willing to let him ask you the question, do you trust me? Because that's really what he's asking.

So that's why his answer makes more sense. His answer sounds like he's hedging his bets, like is he but he actually answers with faith. When he says this, oh sovereign Lord, I replied, you alone know the answer to that. Meaning, he's actually showing faith. He's like, I know the technical answer is no, but you're involved.

You asked me do I think that something could happen? And what he's really saying is, if you want to, yes. If you want, I don't see how it's gonna work. I don't understand. I don't even know what you're gonna do, but I do trust you.

And that's that's that's kinda something we gotta remember as we go through life, and it doesn't make sense.

He says he says that. So then in verse four, it says, then he said to me, God told him, speak a prophetic message to these bones

and say, dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord says. Look, I'm gonna put breath into you and make you live again. I will put flesh and muscles on 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 what does he ask him to says, alright. If you trust me, then here's what I want you to do. I want you to preach to all these bones.

And you're gonna tell them that I'm gonna break them alive again.

That's what you're gonna do. Well, you realize he's been preaching for seven years. He wanted to be a a priest in the devil. He's already been preaching, and and and and he's like, I've been preaching to dry bones, and now that's what you want me to do to continue to carry this message. You want me to talk to a literally field full of skeletons and tell them they're gonna come to life. That makes no sense. That sounds kinda dumb. But you know what? I've been a pastor for over thirty years, and I'm gonna tell you something. There's a lot of times I'm preaching to a room full of dry bones.

Oh, not you guys. The 09:00 service. They're terrible.

He asked him to do something that makes no sense. You said you you're gonna bring hope, and the way you're gonna bring hope is you want me to trust you, and you want me to trust you by doing something that seems useless.

That's the first quality we need to remember that if you want to see God take a dead end in your life and turn it into the end of death, if you want to get past dry bones, you have to listen to God's word. This is like the broken record soapbox of this entire series.

Israel ends up in the problem because, yeah, they may be God's people. They believe in God. They they believe who he is. They believe he's real, but they won't believe what he asked them to do. How about you? Could the reason that you're just constantly stuck in dry bones mode, you constantly

can't see the hope, is because God's asked you to do something, but in your mind, it doesn't make sense for what you want the answer to be, so you just won't do what he's asked you to do. Well, you're gonna stay dry bones.

We have to actually listen. And what I mean to listen to God's word is you're listening to me talk about God's word right now. When I say listen is you gotta take God's word, let the holy spirit speak to you, and go, what does that mean to for me to apply to my life, and then actually do it.

And that's why sometimes we get confused. We've been in a time where God has been using us. We've seen a lot of dry bones come in life. A lot of you sit in this room. We've baptized over 600 people this year. There's people that are coming to Christ in a world that seems like it's going to hell.

And and all this crazy stuff, and and and and and you're wondering, I'm sitting here going, you know what the answer is to you that you're struggling as a Christian? Is you need to give, you need to serve, you need to start sharing your faith, you need to be a disciple, we need to be the church. And you look at me like, does that have to do with my marriage problem? What does that have to do with this? It has everything to do. Do what God asked you to do.

You do what he asked you to do.

The problem is we don't like to do those weird things because that doesn't seem like our answer.

And that's the problem. We need to humbly just listen to his word. That's the first step. How about you? When God comes and asks you the tough question and basically, do you trust me? Yes. Okay. Then I want you to be an actual disciple. I want you to live according to my advice and my word.

And when I do that, then here's what happens next. Verse seven and eight. So I spoke this message.

He didn't fight with God. He didn't say that makes no sense. It's a waste of my time. You know, I don't have enough time to hang out with these bones. He goes, so I spoke this message just as he told me.

Suddenly as I spoke, was a rattling noise all across the valley. The bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons.

Then as I watched, muscle and flesh formed over the bones, then the skin formed to cover their bodies, but they still had no breath in them. Hold on to that. Still had no breath in them. That's the next point. But so basically, you listen to God's word, and then what you gotta do is step back, continue to listen to God's word. Just continue to be faithful,

and then you look to God's power. You look to God's power. He didn't know how it's gonna work. He just did what God said, and then he got to sit back and watch what God was gonna do.

And he did something that made no sense to him. That doesn't work. That's not how the real world works. Bodies don't you don't just form bodies out of bones. But God did after he just did what he asked him to do. Who actually made all this happen? God did. It was God's power.

He just was willing to listen to him and do what he asked. So he got to see God's power work. So why do we struggle with that? Why do we not wanna listen to God? A lot of times it's because what we're asking God to do when he says, here's what I want you to do, go, that doesn't seem to connect to what I want to have happen.

But then even when we do, say, okay, I'm gonna listen to what he said. We never really see God's power come together, and I think there's a reason. Well, maybe I'm the only one. I'll be honest. I'll pick on myself.

I believe that many of you might be like me. I think the number one reason why we don't wait around we try it once. Oh, I listened for ten minutes once. Nothing happened. Is we don't have patience.

I think the key ingredient to what letting God work is because listen. He's already been preaching to dry bones for seven years. He's already watched for hundreds of years, and now God acts. And I think we want God to do our plan

in our timing. And even if we surrender, alright, I'll do what you said to do, God. I still want it to happen in my timing. We're not patient. And a lot of us are not patient, and we don't even realize we're not patient. I recently came to the the realization that I am not patient in a way that I never knew.

I am an inpatient driver, but I didn't think I was. Some of you know you are. You road rage, you like to cuss, you swear at people. I drove here yesterday with that bat in my car, and I did not feel the need to use it. I didn't. But then I started thinking at this one moment it happened, and I go, but

if I really think about it, I am much more subtly impatient. It's kinda like Hulk. My secret is I'm always angry. You know, I'm always subtly impatient. And here's how I figured it out. Driving from my house to here, every every day when I come.

I live down Power Road. I come up Power Road. If I hit all the lights and there's no traffic and all the lanes are open, I could get here in like six, seven minutes.

If there's narrowed lanes and I miss the lights, especially this time of year where more people are going in and out, a trilogy on the side there, I miss that light, that infuriates me. It can take almost twenty minutes to get here. And I realize

I suddenly play a game in my head and get impatient because I get mad when it takes almost twenty minutes. And here's where I know I'm impatient. I actually take care of my dad. I never leave some place late.

I always get here. I'm I'm even if it takes me twenty minutes, I'm early to whatever I have to be here for. So I'm getting mad that I'm getting here thirteen minutes less early than normal just because.

And I really noticed that when they were doing all the construction and then you had to narrow down and right south of Ocotillo, you have this little strip, and then all of sudden it becomes school zones.

And when I finally hit me that I go, wow, I'm impatient, is when I was doing that one day and I realized, without even thinking about it, as I came up to talk to you, realized I was gonna miss the light. I swerved in and out of some cars so I could be pole position. I wanted to be in one of the front three lines

because then I knew what I was gonna do is the second that light turned green, I was gonna floor it because I had about a 100 yards before it goes to 35 miles an hour because I'm not dumb. I'm not gonna speed in a school zone. And so but I but I sped up to get around everybody so I could be the first one to go 35 miles an hour.

And you ever do something, and you you always do it, just suddenly, it hit me. I'm like, why am I doing this? Best case scenario, I got here six seconds faster.

But you carry that constant stress when you drive that way.

Maybe some of you are like me when it comes to how we listen to God's word and then look for God's power.

We try what he says to do once or twice. And then immediately we're right back. That didn't happen fast enough. I'm impatient. I'm impatient.

And then what happens is you're sitting here kinda in this story too, he's like, his power came. There's a body again, but there's still no breath. They're still not really alive. And that's where a lot of us get stuck. Oh, yeah. You're here. Your body is here in church,

but do you have the breath of life, which we're gonna see in a minute, is the holy spirit. Is the holy spirit empowering you? Look what it says in verse nine through 14.

He said to me, speak a prophetic message to the winds. Son of man, speak this prophetic message and say, this is what the sovereign Lord says, come, o breath, from the four winds. Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again. So he uses thy winds.

That's the same word for breath. That's the same Hebrew word. If you go back to Genesis, the story of creation and when he created Adam and Eve, what did do? He took dust to the ground, turned it into a body, and then the holy spirit. He breathed

life into it. It's the same word he breathed the spirit into it. That, yeah, you may have a body, but you're not really alive without the spirit. So it's kind of this recreation.

It's going back to the same thing. It's back to, okay, you might have a body, but you might need to have the spirit. And that's where a lot of us get stuck. You're a body. You're showing up. You think you're God's people, but are you living in the spirit? Do you have the spirit?

And so he says that. And so he goes, so he did it. So I spoke the message, verse 10, as he commanded me, and breath came into their bodies. They all came to life and stood up on their feet, a great army. That's kind of an interesting thing. They started out as an army,

but they were fighting the wrong battle in a selfish way, their own way, listening to God. He brings life back to them, and guess what he immediately calls them again? There's still an army. That's what we are as Christians, as the church. You realize God breathed life into us through the cross,

not so we can just individually go do whatever we want and fight whatever battle we want. He called us to be an army again with a mission.

And that that's what it means to be in the spirit. We gotta be on mission. We gotta go back to being the army, but go to the battle he told us to go to. Quit fighting the battles we wanna fight, and go where he told us to fight.

And so he says this, he goes, then he said to me, son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. Now he's explaining it. They're saying we 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. And when this happens, oh 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 have said. Yes. The Lord has spoken. Who took care of all this? Whose power was it? Who's the one that made it all happen? God. And he said, then you won't know.

And when you're reading this, this is kind of a prophetic utterance that has an already not yetness to it. It's why I don't preach every word of every book. My goal is to equip us to get you to kinda read the bible when you're not here. And what you understand is is when there's these prophecies,

all the old testament the new testament helps us understand the old testament, because a lot of these prophecies, they have an already not yet. There was an immediate within that generation or so that this prophecy was gonna be fulfilled, and that's what he's saying. He did. Seven years later, he brought them all back.

But he's really referencing the ultimate end. The book of Revelation when God pulls together all the covenants, all the people, he's gonna call even Israel back. And and and and and the reason we know that is the book of Revelation quotes the book of Ezekiel more than any other book in the Bible.

So as he gets near the end, it's talking about this ultimate representation. But in this time, he was saying, I will bring you back. And we're really living in an area where he did bring Israel back together as a nation, but they're living like the zombies without the spirit.

They're back as a nation, but they don't know Christ. They're not putting their faith in him.

But he's saying the same thing for us in the New Testament. The church talks about this too. The New Testament talks about what we need to be as a church, that we need to trust, that we need to know it's God that'll do it. In other words, we need to listen to God's word, look to God's power. And if we really want hope and to see God take dead ends and turn it into the end of death, is the last thing is we have to live through God's spirit.

That's the piece a lot of us are missing. You come to church, you look at God's word, you listen to it, but even if you're trying to listen to it on your own, are you really engaged in trusting the holy spirit?

The new testament talks over and over. The old testament talks about the spirit, the new testament explains it. Even how the spirit works in our life. The reason Jesus said you will go on to do greater things than me is because right now it's just me and you're following me, and my powers localized to me. But after I go, I'm sending you a helper, the holy spirit. That's me in all of you.

So if I'm a Christian, I have a power in me that's the same power that rose Christ from the dead. And if I surrender and I tie into that, I can have power and go on to things. In other words, when you look at the trinity

and how God saves us and brings life to us and and helps us get past death, is the father thought it, the son bought it, but the spirit brought it. And if you don't trust the holy spirit, if you don't live through the spirit, that life isn't being brought to your life.

And it comes with listen to God, look to his power, but live by the spirit. How does that even work? How do you live by the spirit? I was looking in the New Testament. There's so many passages in here that talk about it. So many things. And and as I was trying to summarize it up, cause there's all these little, like, live by the spirit. And most people when they say live by the spirit, they're thinking feelings.

Well, spirit told me to stop here because I saw that butterfly land on my car windshield and then It's like, no, that's probably the bad burrito you ate last night. Living by the spirit isn't some mystical feeling. Living by the spirit can be summed up in one word, Surrender. You surrender to God's love,

you surrender to his spirit, and you let him give you the fruit of the spirit and the power. He changes us. He's the one that changes our heart.

And then as his power comes in, we then choose to obey and listen from that love. You need to surrender. Stop trying to get God to do what you want him to do and just surrender to what he's asked you to do. And trust in the spirit and wait for the spirit, the power of the spirit. So how does that work when we surrender?

He says, we're now a great army. Well, if you're gonna be an army and go into battle, would you like to have armor? If I said, guys, you know, everything's gone chaotic. We're now at an there's a war outside. Every one of our enemies is attacking.

There's the army showed up. We need everyone to fight. There's a bunch of supplies out there. Would you run out there and make sure if you had to fight that you're gonna get every piece of armor that's possible and get a gun and get a lot of ammo? Or you say, no, I'm good. I'll just go out there, you know, I

got a Kubaton thing. I got that little thing I attached to my you know what those things were? They're not seeing someone tries to attack you, you can break free, but putting that anyway. Sorry. Stupid reference. One person, like, I know what it is. And you'll probably send me a picture of it later.

Would you do that or would you go, can I have two levels of body armor? Matter of fact, can I be one of the people in that tank right there? You know, you would wanna be ready. Right?

Yet we're called to be an army, and we're called into a fight, and we're called into a fight that we have to surrender to the spirit to get the armor that the spirit empowers. Yet we don't even think about that fight, and we don't even think about armoring up through surrender.

And he talks about it in Ephesians chapter six. Every one of these letters talks about here's what it means that Christ loves you and we're saved from his love, but now we need to learn to live from his love. Then he transfers into here's how that works in marriage. Here's how it works in parent. Here's how it works in relationship.

But then he ends so many of these letters end with, but a final word, you need to live by the spirit. You need to live by the spirit. Well, in Ephesians,

Paul's writing this, and he's been chained to a bunch of Roman guards throughout his life. He's So looking at these Roman soldiers, and he goes, you know what? I can make a good example. Here's a good illustration from this this armor that a soldier wears. And he starts describing this armor of God that's empowered by the spirit of God when we surrender to this and we put the armor on.

And and there's some cool things about it. First of all, a Roman soldier only has protection on the front side, none on the backside, which means quit running from the battle. You need to turn into and face the battle. He talks about the the the the

the shoes that we'll see in a minute. They put these nail things through their shoes, make like classic cleats back in the day, and then they would plant their feet. And what they would do is they'd fight in a box formation, so you didn't have any armor on the back, but everybody's protected. But if it all broke down and you ended up in more of a classic

melee,

you had like a battle buddy. And what you would do is if you were fighting in a in a more advanced force, you had the better armor. And what you do is you take your nail, you'd plant it into the ground. Your battle buddy right behind you would plant theirs right up next. Not only do you have those nails, you have each other, and you are more stable. And two Roman soldiers could fight off 12 to 15 to 20 people that were not armored up like them.

They were very well able to fight. And then the sword that they wore, they had this little battle. So because the big long sword, great in ceremony, but if you're in a close quarter battle, it's not it was this short little sword because it was meant to be fought up close and personal. And that's called the word of God.

You gotta know how to use it, and you gotta be up close and personal in that fight using it.

And so anyways, he uses this illustration, and here's what he says. He says a final word, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God's armor. So he's gotta be strong in the Lord and his mighty power. That's surrendering to the spirit, listening to the word of God, looking to God's power,

and living through the spirit by armoring up. So here's what you do. Put on all of God's armor so you'll be able to stand firm against all the strategies of the devil. There is an enemy that has strategies against us. He says, for we are not fighting against flesh and blood, enemies,

but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. So there is an enemy that has a strategy that's trying to destroy us is faith. And how many of us in this room, you say you're a Christian, you come to church, and you never even think about that battle.

You know why? Because one of his number one strategies is to distract. You think the battle is all about who gets gets wins the next election. If you are a Christian, that is not our primary battle. It never will be. Most of us want someone to win because we think that person will make my life more comfortable.

And that's not the goal. Of course, our faith should inspire our voting. We need to be good citizens. We're called to do that too. But what I'm saying is quit making it all about that. The enemy wants you to be stuck in what you can see so you'll ignore what he's doing that you can't see. And

we have to understand first step to restraining the Holy Spirit is understand we are called to be an army in a fight that no one else sees. And you have to realize it and you have to armor up for it by surrendering

to the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, you will not be prepared for it at all. These fights go on and you gotta be ready. And you know what? The more you get into the word, the more you armor, the more you pay attention,

the more you'll start to notice it. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of these guys that there's a demon behind everything. There's not some weird thing. Life sometimes is just hard and sometimes it's just that's what it means to be like. Like, the fact that, you know, every time I wake up that something hurts now, I feel like I'm old enough that I'm gonna deal with that the rest of my life.

That's not the enemy attacking me. That's called age attacking me. That's a result of death, but that's just something I gotta deal with. But there are times that if you pay attention, you're gonna notice that there's something deeper going on, and you're blaming something else.

For example, we've had so much stuff going around here. I know the enemy hates it when a church is moving forward. He has a strategy, try to slow down those who are moving. He wants to discourage Christians. And he's using everything he can to get us fighting with each other

instead of fighting for each other and moving the gospel forward. And I noticed that we were my wife and I have had a few more little fights almost break out. Well, they kinda do. Breaks out is a little skirmish. We kept it from going to full war.

And it got really weird. We went on a leadership retreat with our lead team to really plan and and and she's there and we talked. First night, she snaps at me. And I'm like, what is going on? I'm confused. And she goes, I'm angry with you. And I go, wait. Why are you angry with me? What did I do? And she goes,

I don't think you did anything. I'm just irrationally angry with you. What am I supposed to do with that? You know what I did with it? Her irrational anger caused me to have some rational anger. At least I thought it was rational. I go, if you're gonna be rationally angry with me, well, then I'm gonna be angry back at you.

But we started to realize this makes no sense. Why are we just so we caught ourselves.

We started to snip, and then we said, this is deeper than that. Let's be encouraging to one another. Let's pray, and let's move on. Thought, yay. We won. Enemies o and one. Next morning, get up. She walks up to me at breakfast, and with everybody else, I say something, and I could tell by the way she went, and looked at me and walked off. And everyone noticed. They looked at me. Everything okay? I go, well,

I think I'm in a fight again, but I'm too afraid to go confirm it.

So then later on, we're talking. Same thing happens again. I'm getting mad. She's getting mad. No reason. We do it again. And finally, the third time when I said, what is happening? And and and you know what? This almost happens every year when we go on these retreats. Every year. Whenever there's something big like this, it happens.

And she finally looks at me. She goes, I think this is spiritual. And she's not the one to say everything's spiritual either. It's like, you know what? Does it feel to you like you're almost got your defense set up and there's an enemy prowling around your lines poking at different spots looking for a weakness in the fence?

And she goes, that's exactly what it feels like. And I go, me too. So we committed to just stopping, catching it, and understanding that the enemy is trying to throw a curveball at us. The enemy is trying to confuse us. And so, yeah, we almost got in a fight seven times over this few days,

but the enemy was over seven because we understood there was something deeper going on and we stopped and we addressed it and we armored up. And we continue to do what it says to do here. Matter of fact, I gotta hurry up with my sermon otherwise because she works in the children's ministry at this service and

if I go along, I'm gonna get some more irrational anger.

Shh. Don't tell her I said that. I don't need any more irrational anger than I can handle.

I say stuff like that and I wonder why she gets irrationally angry at me. Hey, another realization I just had. Good for me. Therefore,

put on all this so you'll able therefore, put on every piece of armor, verse 13, so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle, you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness. So the belt of truth is the first thing. That's what would hold all the Roman armor together. We need truth. I bring truth. I promise you as your pastor, I'm not gonna tell you what we wanna hear, what we need to hear. And sometimes I say stuff that if you are a Christian that just wants to be here as a spiritless body, a breathless body that's showing up, I'm gonna challenge you. And

you can get mad, you can agree, or you can act apathetic. I don't understand the apathetic. I'd rather you either get mad at me or or agree with God's word. But the the middle one, it makes no sense to me. But here's what you have to understand. When I read stuff like the belt of truth, if you are a follower of Christ,

well, if you're anybody on this planet, you need to understand this truth. Reality is always your friend. Reality is always your friend. You can not wanna hear a dose of reality, and you can live in your dream world all you want, but your dream world ain't the real world.

And so we need that. We need the belt of truth. It holds everything else together. If you can't face truth, you're lost already. So he says, and then the body armor of God's righteousness, the thing that really protects us, the body armor, is what Jesus did for us on the cross, not our own effort.

It's the his righteousness that he's given to us, and that protects us. He goes then, he goes, for shoes, put on the peace that comes from the good news so that you will not be fully prepared. The shoes that we're supposed to plant are in the ground firmly is the gospel.

It's God's love. It's not our own actions. We need to plant our life in the love of Christ. You need to plant yourself in the gospel of the good news.

And he says, in addition to all these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. He's gonna shoot at us, throw stuff at us, and faith needs to stop that, and put on salvation as your helmet because the enemy will mess with your head.

And you gotta have that salvation. The idea of that God is the one that saves. It's not you saving yourself.

And then finally he says, and take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. We'll come back to that. It's the only offensive weapon we've been given that we need the word of God. And then he says, pray in the spirit at all times and on every occasion, stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.

So he he said you gotta put on all this armor. You gotta wear it. And what he's saying is when you trust the spirit, you you have the gospel. You have God's righteousness.

You have a helmet of salvation that protects you from the mental attacks. You have the belt of truth that shows you reality for what it is. And and you have that shield of faith to stop things. Hey. I know there's gonna be lies, and I use faith, and I can believe and trust God and move forward. And then I have the sword of the spirit,

which I stand to fight with, with the feet planted in Christ's love. And you fight with the word of truth, the sword of the spirit. Are you armored up, or are you going into a fight with no armor? I mean think about the sword of the spirit. It's the one weapon.

Do you train with that weapon? Do you keep it clean? Do you become proficient with it and do you carry it with you wherever you go? Because the reality is there's a lot of people with guns in this room right now. This is Arizona. You know, they say don't mess with Texas. The phrase is don't even look at Arizona.

That's why you're all so terrible through COVID. Get two Arizonas in a room, you'll have four opinions. But one thing is, I guarantee, my fear if someone comes through these doors with a gun is not them. One of y'all is gonna accidentally shoot me.

Probably on purpose. I don't like what he's saying. Whoops. Sorry. I thought you were the perp. But the reality is all of you that carry, if you're smart, you know that you're proficient with that firearm. You practice with it. You keep it clean.

And then the reason you always have it with you is you know that the one time you don't bring it is the one time you wish you had it.

And now I'm willing to say a lot of you that have begun and have that principle do not do the same thing with the word of God. Come on. And if you have a hard time being in the word of God and reading it and letting it go through you and you say you're a Christian, every excuse you come up with,

here's the real truth. Here's the belt of truth. You are getting played by the enemy. He is messing with your head, manipulating you and beating the snot out of you. Men, we're the worst and you don't like being told that you're terrible and you're getting beat, but you are. Why don't you stand up and start winning

by planting your feet in the gospel with the belt of truth and grab the sword of the spirit. Because it reminds me a lot, the sword of the spirit is the game of baseball, hence the bat. Who would go up to bat without cleats on their feet to stand without a bat in your hand?

I mean, you go up to bat with no bat wearing flip flops? I mean, why? What would be the use of that? This isn't handball. I mean, can you imagine trying to face a 90 mile an hour fastball in flip flops and bare hands?

What are you gonna do? Whack. That ain't gonna go very well. Or you could try to avoid the pitch altogether matrix style. You know? But if you're gonna go bad, if you're gonna try to win a game, if you're gonna score, if you're gonna move forward in this battle,

if you're gonna hit the pitches that the enemy's throwing at you and turn them around, and take the thing that they're trying to hurt you with and stop you, and send it back the other way to victory, you have to step up to the plate.

And you need a bat. You need the sword of the spirit. And you need all of the armor.

And you know why? Because that's where you score. That's where victory comes from. A lot of us, you're in the game, but you're always on defense. You refuse to step up to the plate. You refuse to grab a bat and know how to use it. You refuse to do that. And you know what happens when you do that?

You end up like this little league team.

When the dad was late, he ran into the outfield. His son was playing right field, so he stopped. Son, how's it going? And he goes, we're losing. 18 to nothing. And he goes, oh, man. I'm sorry. Are you disappointed? And he goes, no. Why would we? We haven't even gotten up to bat yet.

You see, they still had to get up to bat. Many of you, life seems like a dead end because you won't bat. You keep playing in the field, and you keep getting scored on. You think, this is terrible, God. Why are you letting this happen? Why? He says, get the armor. Surrender. Listen to my word.

Look for my power by living through my spirit, and armor up and do what I ask you to do, and grab a bat and go up the plate, and you'll turn the game around. You will turn the game around. But here's the problem. You gotta be wise to the strategies of the enemy. Right? Right. Well, the enemy likes to throw curveballs.

And if you ever played much baseball, sometimes a curveball is the bane of many hitters. But I learned long ago that a curveball, if you know it's coming, if you know what to look for, if you are prepared properly, it's actually pretty easy to hit. But I had a hard time with it.

So I needed to learn how to hit a curveball. So I went to my parent who knew how to hit a curveball, my mom. It's not a dad story. You know, baseball is gonna talk about his dad. Nope. My mom.

She was really good. Matter of fact, I knew she could hit a curveball because we used to have an all star at the end of the year. If you're an all star, we would do a parents versus the players game, and my mom was the only mom that would play.

And I pitched and had the distinction of giving back to back to back home runs to parents. First to my dad and then to my mom. And the home run my mom hit is because I threw a curve ball. I realized it didn't fool her.

She hit it further than my dad's home run. So I went to ask her because my dad didn't have enough patience. His answer to hitting a curveball is swing at the first fastball you see. And I go, that's terrible advice.

So I went to my mom, and she goes, alright. I'll show you how to hit. How do you how do you do it? And it's the same thing to armoring up. They go, first of all, you walk up to the plate. You do what you always do. You take the feet, and you plant that foot. Kinda like planting standing firm

with the shoes fitted with the gospel. You plant your feet in the love of Christ. Then she said you'd step in there, and when you bat, you wanna keep more weight back than forward. You wanna kinda evenly, but just a little bit back. So you wanna have the bow. You wanna maintain a power posture.

And then when you swing to hit a ball, it's it's pretty simple science. You step, and where the power comes is from this transference of the hips rotating, throwing the weight forward along with the hands. And when you get the ball just like that, you you're gonna mash that pitch.

And you hit it. Well, here's the problem with the curve ball. It fools you. It tricks you. What it tries to get you to do is to throw the weight forward too soon, and then you realize the ball's not there yet, so you try to hold the hands back. Now the weight's forward. The hand's over here. You're off balance. And if you're lucky,

you might swat it like that, and that's why you hit the ground balls or little pop ups or something like that. That's what a curveball is. It's a trick pitch. The enemy loves to throw curveballs to us. And my mom say, you gotta understand the scenario you're in. You gotta know that if you're behind in the count, one and two, o and two, a lot of pitchers, that's a good spot to get an off speed pitch. You gotta realize that. You gotta look for it. And the other thing you gotta do is learn to and watch the spin of the ball. And what you have to learn to do is keep those hands back and keep that weight back planted firmly,

and you wait and you wait. And when that pitch comes and they try to fool you, it doesn't fool you. Wait till it occurs right where you want to, and you just uncork, and you take a strikeout into a home run. That's exactly what it means

to have victory, to be able to let God take a dead end and turn it into the end of death. But we gotta listen to God's word. We gotta look to God's power, and how we look to God's power is by living through his spirit, surrendering to the Holy Spirit, armoring up and knowing that you need his word. You need his power. But the number one thing he said to do in that passage, I love in the passage, you might have missed it, but he said the thing that sets it all up, the ability to keep that weight back and use that bat, is you have to plant

that foot. You gotta plant that foot. And he says, You need to be ready to stand firm. And it says in verse 13, When you've done everything you can to stand, the very next word is, he says, Then stand.

So what we have to do is choose to go to the plate, plant that foot, face the pitch. And when I've done everything I can to get ready to stand,

you stand in the love of Christ. You stand with the word of God. You stand and you face that curveball and you wait and you swing away. And when you swing away, you take a strike out and you turn it into a home run and then you walk off.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.