Series Restoration:
Define restoration to the audience – summary. The act of making new or as if new again: face-lift, facelifting, refurbishment, rejuvenation, renewal, renovation, revampment.
John Ortberg states, “You are not your handiwork; your life is not your project. Your life is God’s project. God thought you up, and he knows what you were intended to be. He has many good works for you to do, but they are not the kind of ‘to do’ lists given by spouses or employees. They are signposts to your true self. Your ‘spiritual life’ is not limited to certain devotional activities that you engage in. It is receiving power from the Spirit of God to become the person God had in mind when he created you-his handiwork. God made you to flourish-to receive life from outside yourself, creating vitality within yourself and producing blessings beyond yourself” (The Me I Want To Be, page 14).
Scripture Text:
Ezekiel 37:26-28: “26I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. 27My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. 28Then the nations will know that I the LORD make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.’”
Ephesians 2:10 NLT: “For we are God’s Masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
Sermon Title: God’s Dwelling Place?
Theme: God’s presence?
Can or will God dwell, live, hang out, reside with His people? The answer is “Yes!”
God wants to hang out with you! Does that shock you? Amaze you? Are you thinking “Ya right pastor!”
Many of us here today need to bring God into the picture of our life on a daily basis. We need to decided to allow His presence to hang with us. His desire is to hang with those who love Him and are open to listening to His voice.
Thesis: God wants us to know that he desires to dwell among us His people and He is around today if we open our eyes to see Him and embrace Him. He would love to even restore our relationship with Him so that His presence is with us always. God wants to hang out with His holy people.
Opening Illustration: Wing Clips - Evan Almighty: Reveals how most of us would react if God appeared to us today in our real world.
Ortberg’s quote about God’s Presence:
Now let us bring God into the picture. The reality with God is that we are never speaking or acting in his absence. The psalmist said, ‘Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.’ However, God allows us to sometimes feel as if we are away from him, which I think he does for a reason. Do you ever drive differently when you see a squad car behind you? Why? It is not because your heart is changed. It is not because you see that squad car and think, Oh, I want to be a good driver. You don’t want to get a ticket! You don’t want that little light flashing in the rearview mirror. You see God doesn’t want forced compliance. God is so immense that if he were ‘to visible,’ people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God makes it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there” (The Me I Want To Be, Page 133).
Understanding that God is always present means understanding that He is always right here with us to cultivate to work on our relationship with Him.
T.S. - Our text talks about a coming new covenant of peace with Israel, God and the world. To better understand this passage and the concept of restoration let’s explore what a covenant is:
I. What is a covenant?
A. A covenant is a solemn agreement to engage in or refrain from a specified action. It is commonly found in religious contexts, where it refers to sacred agreements between God and human beings. Definition from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant.
1. What is unique about this covenant:
a. This one includes peace.
b. It will be an everlasting one.
c. This one promises and increase in their numbers.
d. It promises that God will place His sanctuary among them forever.
1). This means He will dwell, live or even hang out with His people on a daily basis.
B. Hebrews 8:1-13:
1. 1The point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven,
2and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man.
3Every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices, and so it was necessary for this one also to have something to offer.
4If he were on earth, he would not be a priest, for there are already men who offer the gifts prescribed by the law.
5They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
6But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises.
7For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.
8But God found fault with the people and said: “The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 9It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.
10This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
11No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
12For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.ӣ
13By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.
C. The truth is God is the only one who has the ability and the power to make and keep Covenant promises.
1. Quote: John Ortberg, “There is God. It is not you.” (The Me I Want To Be” - Page 60)
a. I find it amazing how many people think they are God or can do a better job than God. Yet they break their words – break their promises – act fleshly and choose to not to forgive minor things.
2. Movie clip: Bruce Almighty
a. This clip deals with such an attitude with God and with others.
b. Today many people want to be the Almighty ones! But they fail – they mess up and lack wisdom from above to deal with the simplest of issues. There is only one Almighty One and that is God - “Abba” – “Jehovah” – “I am” – He is the one that makes deals – or covenants with His people.
c. he has made one available to you and I today and it’s wrapped up in Jesus – His death – His Words- His life – His resurrection from the dead – His Ascension into Heaven.
4. Remember – God is the One who fulfills His promise of a Covenant. Jesus fulfilled the Covenant of peace promised to the Israelites and to us today.
5. The book of Hebrews verifies this truth – even though most people in Israel today have not embraced this new covenant with their Messiah nor have many in the rest of the world.
II. God wants to hang out with us His children?
A. I love hanging out with my kids and my Grand kids. We talk and with the boys we wrestle and just enjoy each others company.
B. Does God dwell with us today?
1. Can He or will He live in me?
a). Paul said we are the temple of the Holy Spirit
1). I Corinthians 3:16: 16Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 17If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
2). I Corinthians 6:19-20: 19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
3). 2 Corinthians 6:16: 16What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
b). God lives in us if we are Born Again!
1). Acts 17:24-25: 24“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
2. How do I know He is living or dwelling with me?
a). He promises to be our God.
b). We will be His people.
c). What does it mean to be the people of God?
B. Psalm 92:12-13:“The righteous will flourish like a palm tree…they will flourish in the courts of our God.”
III. God’s desire is to restore you not replace you!
A. God does not look at you as throw away material but something that can be put back together and restores so that He can hang out with you.
1. Quote Ortberg, “God designed ‘and redesigned’ you to be you!
2. Quote Ortberg, “Jesus does not come to rearrange the outside of our life the way we want. He comes to rearrange the inside of our life the way God wants” (Page 63).
3. Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
4. Romans 12:2 NLT: “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”
5. Then the world will know about God, about His power and His deity.
a). That He makes people and nations holy.
b). That He is the true and one and only God of creation.
c). God’s dwelling among His people will be a testimony or proof of God to the world of He being the great “I AM!”
Conclusion:
Since God is present everywhere, when we talk about the presence of God we are really talking about the realization of God’s presence, the perceiving of His presence, becoming conscious of His presence daily.
Scripture makes it clear that we need to become aware of God’s presence:
(Genesis 28:16 NKJV) Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it." God reveals Himself to those that seek Him earnestly. (Deuteronomy 4:29 NKJV) "But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. As always God desires that we seek to come near Him and when we do then He reveals Himself to us. (James 4:8 NKJV) Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Quote: Living in God’s presence practically. Is there some practical rule for growing in the presence of God? How do we do it? We make progress living in the presence of God the better we learn to live less and less in the presence of self. There are all kinds of ways you can divide the human race; the men and the women, the rich and the poor, the literate and the illiterate, the Christian and the non-Christian. We can also divide the world into two parts: those who spend most of their time living in the presence of self and those who try, as far as possible to live in the presence of God” (Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.).
Altar call:
John Ortberg: “God’s plan for you to become the best version of you, but right now there are two versions of you. There is the you God made you to be-and there is the you that currently exists. What do you do with the gap” (Page 37)?
Quote: John Ortberg, “God is right here, right now, in my real world” (Page 134)
