God is commissioning Ezekiel to prophesy over dead bones. What’s God commissioning you today to say to your dead bones? How will His Word and His Spirit bring life from death? Do you believe it? Can it happen? How does the Lord want you to prophesy to those bones?

God is commissioning Ezekiel to prophesy over dead bones. What’s God commissioning you today to say to your dead bones? How will His Word and His Spirit bring life from death? Do you believe it? Can it happen? How does the Lord want you to prophesy to those bones?

There’s a question in the air. Dare you even go there? Dare you even begin to pry open the complications, the valley you’ve tried so hard to forget? You’ve gotten the GPS out, and have planned a detour, and know the detour roads by heart so you don’t have to go near the valley, but that pesky God, He’s led you out here. He’s set you down. And He’s asked the question?

There’s a question in the air. Dare you even go there? Dare you even begin to pry open the complications, the valley you’ve tried so hard to forget? You’ve gotten the GPS out, and have planned a detour, and know the detour roads by heart so you don’t have to go near the valley, but that pesky God, He’s led you out here. He’s set you down. And He’s asked the question?

In Mark 15, in the middle of perhaps the most well-known of Bible stories, the trial and crucifixion of our Lord and Savior, and we read today a very physical representation of the Gospel and what it is. We see an exchange of sorts take place, and it’s a physical representation of the spiritual reality for all our lives. If we understand this exchange in all of its ironies, all if its injustice, all of its upside-down, inside out reality, we ought to understand the Gospel. And the more anyone understands the Gospel, the more compelling, absorbing, sweet and savoring it should become.

Hope the world offers seems offered as wishful thinking. Politicians say they offer hope, about what? Hope that things will get better? How will they deliver on this hope? By putting another sinner in office to do combat with other sinners who disagree with him for the next four years? People say generally about things or future events, “I hope that happens.” But then the route to make that happen is often out of our control, right? “I hope I have the money then,” not knowing or being able to plan for the car problems that will happen, or health problems that will happen.
 The hope that the world makes, as counterfeit as it is, is what gets everyone out of bed in the morning. It’s why extremely depressed people are people without hope, because there’s nothing to live for. Christ offers living hope. Hope that is already existing, it only waits to be revealed.

Some of the Israelites put CHRIST to the test, Paul tells us, and were destroyed by serpents. Paul sees close relation from the wanderings in the desert to our lives in Christ. When God sends fiery serpents to you, it’s not “God, how could you?!” Rather, it’s “God what are you wanting to prune in me?” Right? “What are you trying to yield in me??”

God wants Paul in Jerusalem. And if Paul is in Jerusalem, than an ambassador of Christ is in Jerusalem. And if an Ambassador of Christ is in Jerusalem, then Christ is in Jerusalem. And so then I ask, what is Christ doing in Jerusalem, again? Who is Christ, and what is Christ about now that His body, through Paul, is here?

I’ve felt the tension that these elders feel. I know, “This person is here today, and they’re not going to like that person who I know will stand up and say such and so.” Or “Oh great, that person’s here today, and my sermon isn’t going to settle well with them,” and though Paul IS going to go to great lengths here to try - and fail we might add - nevertheless try to keep the peace, I wonder if sometimes Christ doesn’t bring peace, but a sword. And lo and behold, if Paul’s gospel is offensive, it’s not Paul’s fault, it’s the gospel’s fault.

Uploaded for the Families of Jim and Janis Woolbright. Eulogy - Jim Woolbright; Message - Kevin Davis.

For the Slideshow for Janis - https://youtu.be/7AKAjEhdU0o