Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Almighty God, you welcome you.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Hey there. If you're new to Restored Church, we want to welcome you and thank you for tuning in. You're listening to a portion of our Sunday worship gathering. We believe the church is not an event, but a family you belong to, so we would love the opportunity to connect with you. If you want to learn more about our church or if we can help you in any way, please Visit our website, www.restoredtemecula.church, and click on Contact. With all that said, we, we hope you enjoy the message.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: All right, for those of you that I don't know, my name is Mike. I'm one of the elders here. I get the privilege of sharing God's word with you this morning.
And so far the rain hasn't come, which is pretty cool.
Let's just continue to pray. It comes at, like, 2 o' clock today, so the team has some time to break down without it being rainy, but just a little bit of housekeeping. Herrick shared some information that I didn't update him on this morning. The family lounge is not right out there. It's actually right in the back of the room over here today. So if you need it, go ahead. You're free to use it.
Yeah. So that wasn't his fault. It was all my fault on that one because I didn't inform him about it. But, yeah, I'm gonna pray to get us started.
So would you guys pray with me?
All right.
Yeah. Father, thank you.
Thank you for your faithfulness.
We see it so clearly in Jesus, just the sacrifice that he made so that we could be here to be people reconciled to you.
Just thank you, Jesus, for the most precious thing, your blood cleansing us.
And so this morning, I pray that you would have your way in this place, that you would meet each of us individually and corporately.
Yeah. That our hearts would be more formed into your way.
Our hearts would be formed by you, that you'd be just transforming us moment by moment.
Thank you, Lord, for this time. May I not get in the way of anything you want to do this morning.
May this be an offering to you.
We thank you, Jesus. We pray this in your name. Amen.
All right, so, yeah, so for the last eight weeks, this is actually going to be our ninth week, we've been hosting this thing called Alpha. And I know many of you have heard about it. Some. Some of you have been there for it, and it's been really, really cool. It's actually been probably one of my favorite parts of the week each week for, like, the last eight Weeks.
And I think that's because I've enjoyed seeing people and sitting with people that are just genuinely desiring to explore Jesus and who he is, what he's done.
Trav. What's up, buddy? Good to see you, dude. It's been a while. Sorry, guys. It just caught me off guard.
Yeah. But, yeah, it's been one of the biggest. One of the coolest things for me to be able to walk with people. They have genuine questions.
They're able to be themselves and explore what it's like to walk with Jesus. And so with that, though, I've realized that being a Christian, we sometimes can make barriers to people in that space, honestly. And we do it unintentionally, too. It's not like something we're trying to do. We do it unintentionally.
You know, we use terminology that people don't use outside the church. At times, we use words that people are like, what does that mean? I don't know. And then they'll ask a question, and we'll use more words that they don't understand. And it just becomes more and more confusing. And before we know it, we become, like, a barrier to people seeing who Jesus is instead of him seeing him more clearly.
Yeah. Follow along, please. Do we got it?
Okay. We almost got it.
All right, well, I'm just going to go ahead and read.
It says in verse 12, Jesus went into the temple and threw out all those buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, it is written, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves.
So my first point for us this morning is Jesus cleanses what doesn't belong.
From the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden, we see God wanting to dwell with his people, with his creation. We see that with Adam and Eve, God makes that place.
He creates Adam and his image and likeness, and he creates Eve from the rib of Adam. And they dwell with God, they walk with God. They experience just his presence in beautiful ways. And then the fall comes.
When the fall comes, there's a chasm that happens there. A holy God can't dwell with an unholy people, a sinful people. That's dangerous for them, actually.
And so this happens. And eventually God calls this guy named Abraham out of a place to follow him.
And he gives this promise to him that we see in Genesis 12 in verses 2 through 3. And it says, I will make you into a great nation. I will bless You, I'll make your name great and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and all the peoples on earth will be a blessing through you. And so we see like this was a promise to Abraham, but it was for all nations.
It was supposed to go beyond just the immediate.
And then later on, hundreds of years later, in Isaiah, through the prophet Isaiah, in chapter 49, verse 6, it says, I will also make you a light for the nations to be my salvation to the ends of the earth.
So this was something he was speaking to the nation of Israel, but also was foreshadowing what he was going to do through Jesus.
So this has been God's intention all along. And so the nation of Israel was a place where God had chosen for a time to dwell.
We see that his presence led them out of Egypt, it led them into the desert. And eventually we see that they build this tabernacle after God's fashioning. He gives them the directions on how to do it. And this is this place where God's Spirit comes and dwells. His presence dwells, heaven meets earth and in this place and he meets his people in that place.
Eventually it goes beyond that to the temple that we see as well. And so this space is what we call consecrated. It's a consecrated space. Now it's a word that even in the church people might be like, I don't know what that means. And that's great, cause I'm here to share it with you today.
So consecration involves setting apart people, objects or spaces for sacred use.
What is consecrated is reserved for God and his purposes.
So this happens in the Old Testament. There's all like, if you've read through the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, you'll see that there's all these rituals and they have oils and spices and all kinds of different things that they do and smoke and all kinds of different things that happen. But essentially those things were there to, to be a part of like this process of setting things apart exclusively for God so that they become holy through his presence.
And it wasn't like a one time thing. This was supposed to be ongoing. Something that like stayed set apart. Now this is sort of a foreign idea for us, so I'm gonna give us a silly example right now. Say I had, oh, my cell phone's down there, my cell phone.
And I got a new cell phone and I put on the cell phone just apps that were dedicated to like, there's the Bible app, I had a journaling app. I had like a prayer app on there and then every other app on that cell phone, I just deleted them all, deleted every single one.
And then I turned off all the notifications so I couldn't get any interruptions whatsoever.
So the do not Disturb was on at that point. See, this would be. Now, it would be an instrument set apart for one use, and that was to connect with God at that point. And that's what consecration is, is something to be set apart exclusively for God and his purposes.
So that this tool, this phone became a tool for spiritual life essentially, at that point. And practically, like, we have a space that we call the prayer room. It's on the west side of town, over, I guess, that way.
And that space for us is actually a space that's consecrated to seeking God in prayer. We don't use it for anything else. It's exclusively for that. And so we have these places. It could be a tool or an object. It could be a space, or it could be a person that's consecrated.
Now, Israel's supposed to be that. They are supposed to be these people that were set apart for God and his purposes and to be a light to the nations around them.
They were supposed to live differently. They weren't supposed to conform to the ways of the people around them. And they were supposed to actually draw those other nations to Yahweh, the God of Israel.
And for them to actually be drawn away from their foreign gods. That was the idea.
There was actually space for that. We would look at numbers 15, I believe, and you'd see that there was space for the outsider to be able to come in, to be connected to God. And so that way. And so.
But the thing is, in our text here, it's not happening whatsoever.
We have Jesus walking into these courts. And so this area was actually.
We had the temple and then there was a court around it. And this court was humongous. It was like, they say it was about 30 football fields. Was this space, 33, 0 football fields, really big space. And this space was called the Court of the Gentiles.
It was a space where Israel could come in, Jewish people could come in, but also the other nations could come in and observe what was going on within that temple space and all that stuff.
And during this time that we're looking at was actually during the Passover. So there was pilgrims from all over that were coming to sacrifice and to worship God. And then there was people from outside the area as well that were not Jewish that were coming to that space as well. And they would come into these courts but, but these corps were filled with merchants and money changers.
And these merchants and money changers were totally disrupting what God would want in that space. Cause we see Jesus flipping tables and all that stuff. And on top of it there was exploitation that was happening in there as well.
The reasons why they had the people selling animals and all that stuff is cause pilgrims, it was hard to bring animals to sacrifice to God. So they had animals there for them to be able to buy. We see the doves, the dove was something that someone that didn't have that much money could buy. But these things that they were selling, they were jacking up the price. I mean, it was way huge markups. Huge markups. And then the money.
There was a temple tax that was to be given. And this was something that God instituted, so it was fine. But you weren't allowed to use Roman money for it. So they were changing the Roman money for the half, the Hebrew half shekel. And so that was like two days wages that they were exchanging it for. And they were doing an exchange rate on that too. And so you think, okay, there's all these people that are sort of exploiting the Jewish people. But what was happening was the chief priests were doing the same exact thing because they were taking a cut of it.
They were exploiting their own people, which was horrible. And so these people are coming from far away.
Imagine you're taking a week or two off of work and during that time you didn't get vacation time.
They're taking a week or two off of work, then they're exchanging money and they're getting jacked up on that. They're gonna pay, they wanna pay the temple tax, two days wages at that point. Like, you can't just imagine what this was doing to the people. They're becoming, actually the chief priests were becoming barriers to God. For people experiencing God in that place. And this was just horrible. Jesus wanted to have nothing to do with it. They were more concerned with their prophets than they were and keeping up their rituals than they were with people meeting God in that space. And beyond that, you know who else didn't have a chance of being in that space was the Gentiles. Cause it was being crowded out. So people that were curious about God didn't get to experience God because it was being crowded out by selling stuff. It was horrible. So they were distracting from the worship. And so now I was thinking about this man. It took me back to a time when I was like 16 years old and my, I had a buddy there was like Six of us that used to sort of roll together all the time. And we'd go to our one friend's house, and his parents were super generous.
They would.
We'd hang out there all the time, and they had a really nice home and all, but we'd go in there and we were total knuckleheads. Like, we'd be fighting. We had, like. Herrick's. Talked about how he had a fight club when they were in high school or whatever.
We had one, too. And what ended up happening is there was holes that got put in walls and all kinds of stuff. And one day, my buddy's dad, we were hanging out in the back room of the house. Big old game room, pool table, video games, couches, all that kind of stuff.
And his dad comes up the stairs and. And he's like this. He's got a bat in his hand. He's hitting it into his other hand, and he's like, hey, guys, you got two choices.
You can either get out of my house right now, or you can meet my friend. I'm like, there's only one choice at this point, you know? And this was in the 90s, so now it'd be like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe people are doing that. This was in the mid-90s.
I guess it wasn't socially acceptable, but it happened.
But I think it displays something. It's like when. When something belongs to you, you don't tolerate it being corrupted. You remove the things that don't belong there. Essentially what you do at that point. And so, you know, Jesus in this scripture is claiming authority over his home. This is his space.
He gets to call the shots. What happens here and what doesn't get to be here.
In Mark 11:17, it says, My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. So this is the same moment in Mark that we're talking about in Matthew, but you have made it into a den of thieves.
This is actually quoting Isaiah 56, 7 and Jeremiah 7:11.
In those moments when those were written by each of those prophets, the nation of Israel is doing something very similar to what they're doing in this moment as well. So this was actually a prophetic rebuke for the chief priests. They would have known exactly what was happening, and Jesus was confronting it. And this offense that they had and the space that was intended to be for blessing, they were actually. And it was consecrated to him.
They were actually using it for something else. And the place wasn't glorifying God, and that was its Original intention.
And so for us today, this can be sort of hard to understand. The temple isn't any longer. It was destroyed in AD 70 and we're meeting in the NPR of a middle school.
Yeah, so. But what the New Testament teaches is that the temple now is the people of God. Each of us is the temple, the dwelling space of God individually and collectively.
First Corinthians 6:19 says, don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?
It's supposed to be set apart, consecrated for his purposes.
Romans 12:1 2. Paul hits on this. He says, therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship.
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God.
We're supposed to take an active role, an active role in cleaning out, clearing out but what doesn't belong so we can make room for what God's purposes are in our lives.
You know, Jesus demanded the temple to be purified from the worldly intrusions. And consecration requires us to examine the intruders that occupy the space that God owns. And each of us, if we're Christian, whether that be divided loyalties like building our life around comfort or our schedule, and only God gets only what's left at that point.
Or it be around financial security, which quietly drives our decisions more than us trusting him, knowing that he's the one that gives us everything we have.
It says that Christians, we've been cleansed by the blood of Jesus and set apart as instruments for righteousness. That's Romans 6:13 talking about instruments for righteousness for his purposes, guys.
So as the chief priests were supposed to be set apart, they instead were acting more like Rome.
In Rome, we've heard all the stories. They're very oppressive upon the people.
They exploited the people so that the people in high places got what they needed and everyone else served them.
And this is what the chief priests were doing. They were taking from the poor so they could have more comfort and whatnot.
You know, I was thinking about this, and honestly, like, as much as it angers me, it saddens me too. And the reason being is because these guys were missing out.
I mean, honestly, think about how much they're missing out. Like they were people that were serving God in this place and they were settling for lesser things. They're just settling for money. They're settling for prominence, for status, instead of serving God and being surrendered to him and what he wanted for that space and for their lives.
See, Jesus is willing to disrupt your and my life to restore what belongs to God.
He's willing to disrupt it.
Yeah. And on top of that, I think about all these people that were coming to seek God and they just, they created barriers for people actually experiencing the God of the universe.
We don't want that. Right. It's horrible.
But I think there's a reality that like, just like them, our compromise can actually be a barrier to people as well. What happens in private actually never stays in private.
It affects others. So let me ask you this question.
What have you normalized that Jesus would confront and purge?
What have you normalized that Jesus would confront and purge in your life?
It was about 12 years ago. I was on a business trip in Chicago.
I'd go on these trips and I'd be around the same guys from all over the United States. It was sort of like a group of guys that I would hang out with because they were friends with the guys I worked with.
And I always felt like an outsider.
I mean, I'd go out to the sports bar, watch the game, have a drink or two, but I didn't want to get into the late night thing with them or anything like that. I'd do the Irish goodbye.
I'd get out of there pretty early and just disappear back to my hotel room.
But I always felt like an outsider. And I felt like I was never really accepted in that crowd.
And there was one night where I stayed too long, had too many drinks, and by the end of the night the guys were like, oh, yeah, Mike, we're so glad. You're like one of us. You've been hanging out, you didn't give the Irish goodbye all that kind of stuff. And I like that. Next morning I woke up and I was just like, so crushed.
I felt like this conviction, like, man, I didn't represent Jesus well last night.
And actually more than that, I actually was worshiping their acceptance more than I was him.
And I was like, dude, this really stinks. And so my Irish goodbyes came a lot more after that. But in that moment, I had to, like, do some hard work because my obedience to God was not like on point in that moment. I was actually disobedient to him and I was following some other idol, which was acceptance.
So that was a moment where I had to go and do some cleansing, do some heart work. Let me ask you this question.
What are you Allowing into God's temple?
What are you allowing into his temple? What are the things that he would not have in there that Jesus would say, I want to clean that stuff out. I want it to be gone?
See, Jesus doesn't just cleanse the temple to have it cleansed.
He also restores what he intended.
And that's what we see here.
So join me back in Matthew, verse 21 or chapter 21, verses 14 through 16.
The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.
When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that he had, he did. And the children shouting in the temple, hosanna to the Son of David. They were indignant and said to him, do you hear what these children are saying? Jesus replied, yes.
Have you never read?
You have prepared praise from the mouths of infants and nursing babies?
See, Jesus doesn't just cleanse the temple. He removes things. He cleanses it.
Jesus doesn't just cleanse the temple to remove things. He cleanses it to. To make room for what he desires.
Have you guys ever noticed, like, when you slow down for a second, all the distractions sort of go away?
I can hear his voice better.
Yeah, maybe a couple people.
Yeah, okay. All right, all right. A couple of us. Okay.
Yeah. Things get cleared out there. Leaves room for him.
Here's the thing is, he was already there.
It's not like he goes anyplace. It's just we're too distracted to notice that he was there in the first place.
Jesus cleared out the space so that the needy could come in, those that were lame and were blind.
He cleared out the space so the outsider could come in and observe the glory of God. That was happening in that space.
In that space, you could see the children running around praising God. Like, what is better than seeing that? I mean, this is, like, the coolest thing ever. I love every week when I see this front row, there's a row of girls. Got our middle school girls, but then we also have our elementary school girls, and they're up here, hands out, just praising God with their voices, like, just surrendered to him.
Such a beautiful thing. Like, it actually bolsters my faith in that moment. We see faith rise in spaces where God is doing things, where Jesus is having his way.
Yeah, he was reestablishing his house as being a place of prayer and deep dependence upon God is what he was doing there.
And what happens in that. God's. He manifests himself in these places where people are touched and lives are changed and people are like. People are Saved in those places as well. When they see God at work, people get saved. That's what happens. They get transferred from the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.
That even the gentile nations would come and they would see the God of Israel doing great things. They'd be terrified. You see it all throughout the Old Testament. They're terrified of him. But at the same time, there's something that's drawing, that's happening there at the same time. So as well, these blind and lame. It wasn't that they were just healed. Think about it. If you're blind and lame in that day, like, what happened to you? What happened to you? We talked about this a couple weeks back. What happened to you?
What's that?
They're outcasts. Exactly. Total outcast.
They couldn't provide for themselves. They had to depend on others.
Think about, if they were healed, what did that mean for them?
They got back dignity.
They could actually possibly go do some kind of work to be able to provide for themselves.
This was a restoration of beyond healing. It was a restoration of dignity for these people as well.
It's beautiful. Jesus was breaking down barriers for people individually, but he was breaking down barriers that the religious establishment had created, maybe intentionally, unintentionally, to people seeing who God is and his house being a house of prayer.
Yeah. God's kingdom was breaking through. We see these kids. Hosanna to the Son of David.
Just like, save us, Messiah.
They're praising him. It's beautiful.
But the religious leaders, what are they doing?
They're standing there.
They're missing out. They're missing out on. Everything's like, could you imagine? Like, you're standing there and Jesus just healing people, and you're just like, yeah, whatever.
Yeah, we're indignant. This isn't what we wanted.
Yeah. All right.
See, the people that needed him welcomed him.
The people in power were threatened by him is what happened. People in power were threatened by him. And the people who should have recognized him, missed him.
Oh, and the outsiders, they could see him clearly at that point.
It was beautiful. I was thinking about this church.
I've been seeing this happen here. The good part.
The good part of it. I've been seeing it happen here where people. Faith has been rising.
People have been experiencing God in beautiful ways. Lives have been transformed.
And we become. We've been a praying church for a while. Like, I know some of you are, like, maybe you pray too much, but no, that's unashamedly. We're praying church, but we're actually becoming A house of prayer.
And what I mean by that is that everything we do is saturated in prayer.
This whole gathering, you're like, man, I've heard multiple prayers this morning. And we've worshiped God and all these different ways through song, through prayer, through giving, through the proclamation of his word. We're worshiping him in all these ways, but also outside of this space and small areas and individual areas, we're seeing people that are becoming more and more prayerful people that are seeking God for transformation in their lives. But beyond that, like, to the ends of the earth to see God renew all things. And we're praying into it together.
And it's beautiful. I mean, the prayer room. Oh, my goodness. One of my. Herrick says one of the highlights of his week is one of the highlights of my week, too. Because there's something beautiful when God's people come together and are just like, we're so desperate to see him break through. We're so desperate to see him transform this city that we live in that more and more people would come to know who he is, that his.
His power, his manifest power would be seen here in this place.
I think about last week, the baptisms. Oh, man.
Just knowing a little bit of the stories behind some of these people being prayed for for years and years, like faithful family members praying for other family members that they would come to know Jesus. And then just to see people getting baptized out there, like. Like public proclamation that they're following Jesus, they've died, their sins, been raised to life in Him. Absolutely beautiful.
About a month ago, I was in the prayer room, and it was a day that I'm usually not there.
I usually go to The Thursday morning, 5:30, if you want to come. That's a plug.
It's wonderful. You get to see the sunrise while you're praying. I mean, it's beautiful. And.
Yeah, but that morning, it was sort of a strange morning because usually we have musical worship at the beginning.
This morning, in the moments that we don't have a musician there, we actually. What we do instead is we praise God with thanksgiving. We praise him for who he is, what he's done, and we read through some scriptures and we just reflect on, like, how good he is. It's not like we're praying for the things that are going on in our hearts. We're praying. We're just praising him for what he's done.
And so this is one of those moments.
And one of the guys in the prayer room that morning, excuse me, one of the guys in the Prayer room. That morning, he came in and he said, my back is hurting me.
Just out of nowhere, the day before, it had been hurting. Just came on.
And then we started. And I didn't really think much of anything of it, which probably wasn't the best thing, but the whole hour went by, and then the last minute, the Holy Spirit was like, hey, you need to go pray for him to be healed.
And so we all got done. Everyone's up giving high fives and hugs and all that kind of stuff, saying goodbye. And I went up to the guy and I said, hey, is your back still hurting? He goes, yeah, it is.
I was like, all right, can I pray for you? He's like, yep.
And I said, can I put a hand on you? Where it is? Show me. And he showed me. And so I put my hand on it. It was like, up on his upper back, right below his neck.
It wasn't anything spectacular. It was just like, thank you, Jesus.
Thank you for your love for him.
Thank you for that you have a healing ministry and that you desire to heal whether it's now or in the future. And I just prayed for his back to be healed in the name of Jesus. And that was it. Gave him a hug. Didn't even ask him if it was better. I mean, come on.
I was like, I gotta get going. And it's horrible.
But what happened was I walked away. Totally forgot about it.
I get a text message later on that night, and he goes, hey, man, thanks for praying for me. My back is healed. I haven't had pain all day.
Yeah, it was beautiful. And see, God prompted it, and God healed him. We just got to be observers of what God was doing at that point and give him glory in that moment. It was absolutely beautiful. And so I see it happening. That's not. I'm just giving one example from the last month at Alpha. The other night, we were talking about God healing, and there was stories all over the place. It was crazy. It was so cool. Like, God's glory was on display. His power, his healing ministry was on display. And this is just a little taste of what God is doing.
He's up to stuff, guys.
When he. Here's the thing is when he clears the crowds out and he restores what's broken. And that's the thing, he's restoring what's broken. What has been not visible before because there's been barriers to it becomes visible in those moments.
And so in this next section, we're gonna get into Matthew 21, 17, 22, and Jesus gives us this visual picture of when life looks one way on the outside, but it's different on the inside.
And so let's read it. Matthew 21, verses 17 through 22, it says, then he left them, went out of the city to Bethany, So this is like a couple miles away, and spent the night there. Early in the morning, as he was returning to the city, he was hungry.
Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he went up to it and found nothing on it except leaves. And he said to it, may no fruit ever come from you again.
At once, the fig tree withered.
Then when the disciples saw it, they were amazed. How did the fig tree wither so quickly?
Jesus answered them, truly, I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you tell this mountain, be lifted and thrown into the sea, it will be done.
And if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask in prayer.
Jesus actually didn't have.
I think this is like one of two destructive miracles that he did.
Sounds so weird to say destructive miracle.
But this fig tree wasn't producing fruit. It only had leaves. And at first glance you're like, man, that was really harsh. Jesus, why would you kill this tree?
Like, would any of us kill a tree like that?
I guess we chop them down. But, yeah, it seems sort of harsh. But this fig tree that actually grows in Israel is a fig tree. That what you see on it is there's these early, edible, like, blossoms that come the fruit that comes at the same time or right before the leaves come.
And so this fig tree didn't have any fruit. It only had leaves that happen in that moment. In Matthew 7, 16, 20, Jesus is talking about trees again here, and he says, you'll recognize them by their fruit.
I guess all kinds of plants are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles. In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can't produce bad fruit. Neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.
Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So you'll recognize them by their fruit.
What we'd see throughout the Old Testament, Jeremiah, Hosea, and actually it's spoken of in Luke as well, is the fig tree is a symbol of the nation of Israel.
FF Bruce says the cursing of the fig tree has always been regarded as a symbolic import, the tree being in Christ's mind, an emblem of the Jewish people with a great show of religion and no fruit of real godliness at the temple. There was a lot of religious activity that was taking place.
The tree had leaves, but neither one of them had fruit. There was no fruit to be shown in that place.
And quite honestly, this is sort of a scary part for us because this could be any of us. We could look good on the outside. We could do all the religious activity. We could go to this, go to that. I'm part of this group. I'm part of that group. I serve in this area. I serve in that area.
But what's going on inside? What fruit is our tree producing? That's the question.
Is it the fruit of the spirit or is it the fruit of something else?
So when we talk about consecration, a consecrated life doesn't just look good, a consecration. You could think of it as, like, the preparation of the soil of our heart so God's power could be manifest in our lives.
In each believer, we'd prepare that soil of our heart so that God could grow something out of that place that good fruit could come. And fruit isn't the goal. That's the thing. Fruit is just the result of a rightly ordered heart.
Life after God, empowered by the Spirit.
What is the goal? It's God's glory.
It's God's glory that you'd see his glory that we would be a part of what he's doing in that.
So consecration prepares the soil.
The spirit produces the fruit.
God's glory is seen by all that are around at that point.
And we think about, like, we're people that love glory. Who doesn't love a beautiful Temecula sunset?
I mean, there's days we'll just stand out there and the neighbors come out, and everyone's like, oh, my goodness, this is amazing. It's beautiful. The pinks, the purples, the clouds, and the way they sort of settle over the valley and all that kind of stuff. It's absolutely gorgeous. There was actually at Alpha, we had a day, a full day. It's called, like, Alpha Day is what we called it.
And all of us, at the end of the night, we went out and we stood on the back patio of a person's house, and we just watched the clouds. We could see the clouds sort of wisping through in the high winds. And then the sun started to set, and it just became this, like, you can't even paint it. It was so beautiful.
But it's not just the creation that we see this in. We see this in people's lives. When lives are transformed, it's absolutely amazing when people are healed, when children are praising God.
It's beautiful.
So.
What does your life produce?
Not what it looks like on the outside, but what is being produced.
All right, I'm going to call up the band.
You guys can come on up.
So you're like, man, this is sort of rough. Mike, here's the cool thing. Jesus shows us the way, guys.
He says that he's the way.
And so he doesn't just expose fruitlessness in our lives, he actually models what fruitfulness looks like.
Jesus was when he said he was finished when it is finished. When he was on the cross, there was a couple things that were finished.
Like the tyranny of Satan was finished.
Like he was claiming his stake. This is mine. But also what he had done, what he had fulfilled. He did everything that the Father set him apart to do. That was the beauty of it. He did everything.
He lived a life completely consecrated to God, to the Father, deep life of prayer and dependence.
And he showed that to us. He gave an example here. Like he withered. Like he did a miracle that withered a fruit tree in that moment.
But he also said that you can have faith that moves mountains. You're like, what does that look like?
What is faith that moves mountains? Anyone ever question that? Like, what is a life that moves mountain of prayer that moves mountains? I don't know, but he shows it. That's the cool thing.
You don't just wither a fruit tree. Just like when you pray for someone, they. They don't just get healed because you prayed for them. Well, they do, but you couldn't do it otherwise. It's not like it's something that happens in like two minutes, you know, we don't just. Someone doesn't just get healed. And so the idea here is that faith that moves mountain was actually a sort of a term that was used back then.
And it just means that you'll be able to accomplish something that seemed seemingly impossible to through trusting God. And that's what he's calling us into, is trusting him more deeply.
And here's the thing. It's the same power that destroyed the fig tree is the power that lives inside of each of us, guys.
It lives inside each of us creating new fruit.
I know there's multiple people here that own fruit trees.
We have them.
I don't have one.
My family has one.
But you have them because you wanted to bear much fruit, right?
You don't just have a fig tree to have it. You don't have an orange tree just to have it or a lemon tree or a lime tree.
And the beauty of it is, like, this last season, my parents, they had a tree, and it just kept on producing more and more fruit. Like, they just kept on bringing bags of fruit over to our house. And when you have a healthy tree, it just keeps on. You just keeps on giving.
Think about all the lives, people that we see fruit in their life, what happens? They're just able to give.
They give freely because they've been. So much has been produced in them, and it's beautiful. Like, Jesus said that he came that we may have life and have it in abundance. And that's like, when we bear much fruit, we're living in abundance at that point. And it's beautiful. And it happens because we're abiding with him. That means we're staying connected to Him.
We're allowing him to do that work in and through us.
See, Jesus lived the most fruitful life ever.
He was consecrated to the Father's purposes.
He bared much fruit.
He had a perfect life, perfect, sinless life.
He died the death that we deserve in our place so that we could be with him forever.
He gave it all on the cross.
Like, it talks about a curtain being ripped in the temple so we could have access to God. And for a Gentile, that's a really good news, because until that moment, there's going to be limited access.
Yeah, we see. What belongs to God is set apart for Him.
His presence is experienced and fruit is produced. Guys.
So, prayer team, would you come up, please?
I want to lead us this morning. I think. Here's what I think. I think most of us that are here.
Is it fair to say that we want to produce good fruit in our lives? We want God to produce good fruit in our lives. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. There we go.
So I want to give us an opportunity this morning to pray a prayer of consecration before him.
Would you guys stand with me if you're able?
And I'm going to ask you to put out your hands. If this is something you want. If you don't want it, that's fine.
But if you do desire this, put out your hands.
This isn't anything special. This is just us saying, we're open to you. Lord, I want to hand my stuff off to you, and I want to receive what you have.
And this is a prayer of faith. He said that we pray when we pray in faith that he gives us things.
All right, I'm going to pray this out loud, you guys, silently in your hearts and What I want to encourage you to do is to reflect upon these things as well. We desire that the soil of our hearts would be freed up to be able to allow God to grow what he wants in us.
So, Lord, I thank you for who you are and what you've done.
I confess my sin before you and ask for your forgiveness.
So maybe the Holy Spirit right now would be bringing up sins, specific ones or patterns of sin that you've dealt with or maybe currently dealing with.
Just turn those things over to him. Ask him for his forgiveness. Thank Jesus for his blood that cleanses you.
Just be aware of those things.
Turn them over to him.
Allow him to have his way with them.
Lord, I cast off distractions.
Keep me from you, keep me from doing what you want to do in and through me.
So what are those things that maybe even in this moment you're just distracted thinking about the game later on today or the grocery shopping, whatever it is.
Maybe there's big things that are going on in your life that are distracting you. Not that like we want to ignore these things.
We don't want them to rule us and take us away from our eyes being fixed on him.
Cast those distractions to him.
Release them to him.
Let him have his way in those spaces.
Lord, I surrender my gifts to you and lean into your strength.
His strength is made perfect in our weakness.
He's gifted each one of you so richly.
But leaning into our own strengths leaves no room for what he wants to do.
So surrendering. What are those gifts that you lean into all the time? Just lay them at his feet.
Allow him to have his way.
Yield to his strength, what he wants to do in and through.
The last thing here.
He is so generous to give his spirit.
So, Lord, fill me. Fill us with your spirit. Please fill us afresh with power, with faith, with courage to continue on this path.
Jesus, thank you.
Thank you that you were the perfect sacrifice. You were the one that models what it looks like to live a consecrated life for the Father.
Lord, as a church, we desire to be people set apart for your purposes, to be instruments of your grace and your mercy.
Would you fill each person, please, Lord, give them direction for the things that you would have them do, to move into those spaces by faith and faith alone.
We thank you, Lord.
Thank you for each person here, their willingness just to be set apart for you.
As we sang earlier, just May that fire come.
Just a fire set apart for you, Lord, for your purposes.
Praise you, Jesus, Pray this in your name.
So maybe there's something that God brought up during that time of prayer that you would like to share with one of these faithful people up here that would be willing to pray for you. Maybe there's something else that's going on in your life. I want to encourage you to come up and get prayer. Don't let this moment pass. God's doing stuff and he wants to continue doing stuff.
The band's going to play for us for the Next probably like 15, 20 minutes, then Herrick will be up in a few minutes.
Love you guys.
