God's Longings For Your Life #3: Renewal Series

God's Longings for Your Life #3: Renewal

Hebrews 10:18-25

Sermon by Rick Crandall

Grayson Baptist Church - Sept. 14, 2014

BACKGROUND:

*Over the past two Sundays, we looked at some of God's greatest desires for our lives. And we began with God's rescue: God wants to rescue all of us from our sin and eternal death. His commandments help with that, because they teach us how much we need to be rescued by God.

*No matter how hard we try to obey God's laws, we find that can never keep them all. And the just punishment for our sin is eternity in the horrible place called hell. But God loves us so much that He wants to rescue us from that terrible fate, even though the only way He could do it was to come into the world as a man, and die on the cross for our sins.

*That's what the Son of God spoke about to His Heavenly Father in vs. 5-7:

5. Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me.

6. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure.

7. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come in the volume of the book it is written of Me to do Your will, O God.'''

*And that's why vs. 10-12 tell Christians that by God's:

10. . . will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

11. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices (i.e. the same Old Testament sacrifices), which can never take away sins.

12. But this Man (Jesus), after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God,

*One of God's greatest desires for your life is to rescue you from eternal death. And He will, if you will trust in our crucified and risen Savior Jesus Christ. But there's more, because God also wants to have a relationship with us. Jesus wants to be our best friend, and in John 15:13-15, Jesus said:

13. "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.

14. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.

15. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends. . ."

*God the Father also wants to be our Heavenly Father. He wants all of us to be able to be able to sincerely pray, "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. . ." But we must be born again into the family of God, and we are born again when we receive God's Son Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

*God wants to rescue us, and He wants to have a close relationship with us. But Christians: God also wants to renew us. And all Christians need these times of spiritual renewal. Today's Scripture helps us see how we can be renewed. So let's begin by reading Hebrews 10:18-25.

INTRODUCTION:

*Way back in high school I used to have a muscle car. It was a 1966 Oldsmobile 442. It had a 400 cubic inch engine with 350 horsepower. That car was a rocket ship!

*Every once in a while, you'll see one of those great, old cars driving around. One of our neighbors up in West Monroe has an early sixties Corvette convertible. He gets it out of his garage every once in a while, when the weather is just right to put the top down. That car is beautiful. It looks like it's in mint condition. But that car had to be renewed! And Christians: God wants us to be renewed.

*One of the best Old Testament places to see this truth is in Isaiah 40:28-31. There God began with these questions:

28. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. There is no searching of His understanding.

29. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength.

30. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall,

31. But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

*God wants His people to be renewed. One of the best New Testament places to see this truth is in Romans 12:1-2, where Paul said:

1. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.