Video Transcript: Lesson 17 The Fuel for Revitalization

Hello, welcome, right back into this great conversation that we are having about  church revitalization, bringing health and vitality and renewal back into your  ministry. I'm so glad that you're doing this. I know I often say that throughout  this, but I truly am. I'm in I'm in the trenches trying to do this very thing with you.  And I'm encouraged that you're doing this, that I'm not alone in this, that there's  a whole army of people out there who are trying to do their very best to see  God's Kingdom grow. So we're going to continue our series on revitalization.  And today, you can see from the screen, we're going to be talking about the fuel  for revitalization. What are the things that are going to make revitalization kind of go? We just talked about the gospel, which is kind of the the first things the most important. And now we're going to talk again about some of the elements, two  things in particular, that make the church go that make ministry go that make  revitalization go. So let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you so much for this day.  Wherever this is being heard, Lord, I pray that this lecture would just draw us  back to the truth of your word. And it would encourage us and also challenge us  Lord to clear our minds of false idols and things that Lord we have falsely  attributed power. So God, we love you, we thank you. And we ask that You  would bless us in this time, amen. Okay, so let's talk about the fuel that powers  revitalization. Now, the word revitalization, it means to, like bring back to life or  to to re reintroduce life to take something that was not alive. And to bring it back  again, we saw that when we were doing that, in depth study on Sardis, that  church revitalization for them was actually a work of resurrection. Because if you recall the scripture that says you have the reputation of being alive, yet you are  dead. So if we're trying to bring something from death back to life, it's an  impossible challenge. It lies beyond your ability, I don't care how capable you  are, how charming you are, what a great scholar you are. Bringing something  from death to life is just beyond your ability. It requires divine power. And that  power, this fuel for bringing death to life is is given to us as a gift through the  Word, and the spirit. And those are the things we're going to be focusing on  today, in this lecture on the word in the Spirit, and how God uses them, to bring  about new life and revitalization. And to do that, we're going to be looking at a  great example of how this actually happened. Although not technically an  example of church revitalization, it's, it's really helpful and quite informative. So  this morning, or this afternoon, or this night, whenever you're watching it, we're  going to be looking at Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones from chapter 37 In the  book of Ezekiel, so we're going back to the Old Testament. And the reason we're doing this is that it provides a helpful demonstration for understanding the power of the Word and the Spirit in restoring life to God's people. Now, if you're not  familiar with this story, it really comes towards the end of the Old Testament in  the kind of chronologically it comes in a time when Israel, the people of Israel  are in captivity. The Babylonians have come they have destroyed Jerusalem,  and the people who live there have been carted off and they are living in 

captivity. In just a very down dark, depressing time. The country's been  overthrown, the temples been burned down. All the buildings have been leveled, the walls have been knocked down. The people are taken away by a foreign  enemy. And it looks like God's plan for the people of Israel. It's over like there.  There's nothing left the northern kingdom of Israel has fallen You know, some  time before that, now the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem, they have fallen,  there's really kind of nothing left. Now, in the midst of this, what is seemingly the  end of the story for Israel, God gives one of his prophets, a man named Ezekiel  a vision, in in this vision, he sees a big valley. And in this valley, our bones just  innumerable in number a whole valley, scattered with bones. And the bones  represent the current condition of the people of God. I mean, it's, it's a very apt  thing. They're, they're in this valley there, there's no life to them, there's no hope  for them. There's no power within them, you know, skeletons can't bring  themselves back to life. So, in the midst of this, you know, very difficult time in  which his vision in his mind God asked a question to Ezekiel. That is a question  any of us doing trying to do revitalization need to ask, in in he asked whether or  not he thinks that there could be any life left in these bones? Could these bones  come back to life? And I guess that's the question for you and me, wherever  we're at trying to do revitalization is, do we believe that these bones can come  back to life, these these dry, withered bones that we're trying to do something  with? Can they be brought back to life? Now, obviously, in this vision, if you are,  if you're familiar with chapter 37, you know how it goes. And in this wonderful  story, God reveals himself as the God of revitalization, he revealed himself to be  the God of resurrection, who works this life giving power through his word, and  His Spirit. Okay. That's how life comes back into these dry bones. So we're  going to take that great principle and apply it into our own ministry context. So  let's talk about each of them individually. First, let's talk about the life giving  power of the spoken word. Now, I'm going to be reading from Ezekiel 37:4-6.  And if you've got a Bible in front of you, you can read it along or you can just  listen to me. Then he said to me, God's speaking to Ezekiel. Then he said to  me, prophesy to these bones, and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the  Lord. This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones, I will make breath  enter you, and you will come to life, I will attach tendons to you, and make flesh  come upon you and cover you with skin, I will put breath in you and you will  come to life, then you will know that I am the Lord. So the interesting thing here,  if you take note is that as Ezekiel obeys God, and He speaks God's words, the  bones begin to take on the characteristics of life again, he goes, prophesy to the bones, speak to them. And then he begins by saying, here now the words of the  Lord and then he proceeds to speak the words of the Lord, he speaks this  prophesy over them. And then all of a sudden, these bones start, you know, you  can imagine them starting to rattle around on the floor of the valley, and the  tendons and the skin and the muscle and, and they come to life, and then 

there's a breath of life in these bones. So we see right here that God through His word, the power of the spoken word, was able to do something that Ezekiel  could have never done on his own. So I think there's really just easy parallels we can draw between the dry bones and trying to do a work of renewal in our  ministry. Now, first of all, we have to hear and then respond to God's word.  Listen to these texts that speak about the power of Scripture. Hebrews 4:12.  Scripture is living and active. It says it's alive. Scripture isn't just a dusty words in an old book. Scripture actually has the quality of being alive and it's active and  it's moving and it does things it make things happen. It changes circumstances  and situations. In Jeremiah 23:29, says scriptures like fire, and like a hammer  that breaks a rock into pieces. So, Scripture again here it has forced, it does  things it moves. It breaks things down. Right Ephesians 6:17, Paul says that the  word is the sword of the spirit. It's how God moves. He either he cuts hearts  open, he, he pricks us, this powerful weapon that the Spirit uses to convict us to  encourage us it's a weapon. And then II Timothy 3:16. It says scripture is useful  for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Scripture is  useful it has, it has value to it, and it has a purpose. And it can teach it can  change our minds. It can rebuke it can call us to repent, it can correct us get us  back on track, it can train us so it can build us up. It can do all these things, the  power of the spoken word and of course, the word as we read it, but we're  sticking kind of with a spoken word and teaching and encouraging each other.  So what this all comes down to is this, that the Word, the Word of God, as  revealed in Scripture, it is the primary means by which God works in the church.  And it's certainly the primary means by which God speaks in the church. That's  why we have scripture. So let's think What does Scripture do it contain? Or what what is it? It contains the gospel that leads to salvation? How could we know the story of the incarnation, the death and resurrection, ascension and return of  Jesus Christ, if it were not for the testimony of Scripture. So the God worked  salvation through the revelation of His scripture to his people, it contains  doctrine about the right thinking about God, to how in a world that's full of all  kinds of idols and competing views about God, how do we know which is the  right one about God? Well, because we turn to Scripture, God has revealed  himself in Scripture. If you want to know who I am, this is who I am. This is how  I've made myself known through history. This is how I shared myself, this is how  I woven myself into the story of human history, okay. And then it's the primary  means by which we have direction on the practice of the church. How are we to  live? How is the church to function? What kinds of things are we supposed to  do? I mean, we wouldn't know about the Great Commission and to go into all  the world and make disciples. If scripture had not told us to do that. We wouldn't  know we're supposed to forgive each if scripture did not teach us that we would  not know that we needed to repent if scripture did not teach us that. So all of  these things are just pointing like the word, the centrality of the word. Not just 

that, though, but the power and the force behind God's word. And that's what he  uses to move his people from death to life, right. The story of the dry bones  coming to life, it's not just the story of revitalization is, it's what God always does, every story of conversion isn't it's a story of God's Word, the Gospel, bringing  something that was dead now to life. It's the same model we see over and over  and over again. So I would say this, just as I said, revitalization is really  impossible. Without this act of repentance, and being humbled and being built  up by the gospel. I would say in the same way, revitalization is truly impossible,  apart from a commitment to the teaching and the application of his word. Now I  know that sounds so basic, but I think it's our failure to do the basics that lead us to, to the decline that we may all be experiencing at one time or another. So how do we, how do we really just elevate the Word of God in our churches? How do  we get back to this primary focus on the word? There's a few things about, you  know, restoring our sense of authority in God's Word. We can start every  meeting with a scripture devotion, a short reading or reflection, but just like  every time anybody meets it, we begin by looking at what the Word says. And  just even something like that. that the more that the word is spoken, the more  people are going to begin to respect it, but also begin to hear it in new and fresh  ways. If you're a person who does a lot of teaching at your church, or you're the  main preacher, you could do a sermon series on the word or you could teach a  class on the word or if you're lead small groups, you could teach on the value of  God's word. I mean, you could do anything with it. But just something that really, really reaffirms, like, Hey, this is, you know, the things we've been talking about,  you know, today, but in this lecture, but also in the other ones, just the value, the authority, the power of God's word, and coming back to that, that God's word is  the bedrock, and you're going to build on something that my church did for quite  a while, as we were reclaiming the centrality of the word in in our lives and in  worship is we did a scripture affirmation every week for several years. And right  before we would read the scripture for the sermon, we would do this. And so we  would read something, you know, like in Matthew 4, where Jesus says, Man  does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Or we would read from Psalm 119. Lord, Your word is a lamp unto my feet, a light to my path, or also from Psalm 119, I have hidden your word in my heart  that I might not sin against you. We could do the II Timothy 3, All scripture is  God breathed, you get the idea of the the text of Scripture that refer to the  authority of Scripture, again, the Hebrews 4:12, the word of God is living and  active, all those sorts of things. And every week, we would read those together  over and over and over. And it just really reemphasize the power, the authority of God's word. Okay. And we would just often when a situation would come up, we  would affirm Scripture as our final rule as an our authority. This wasn't about  personal preference. We wanted scripture to speak directly to this. And we still  do this. We're just going through a series on marriage and gender roles. And 

that can be very tough and very complicated. But every week we start off, or I  start off teaching by saying, whether we want marriage to we're informed by  what it looks like today in our culture, or we want to go back to something that it  was 50 years ago. We can't rely on that we have to go back and say whatever  scripture says, that's our rule. That's our final say, it's not what we want. It's not  what the world says. It's what Scripture says. So we still do this in our church  years down the road, we're always trying to find ways to reaffirm the role of the  importance of the word in ministry. Okay, so enough on the word. Just as  Ezekiel talks about the word, he also demonstrates the on limited power of  God's Spirit at work in bringing about renewable, so the spirit is also the means  by which God restores life. So let's go to Ezekiel 37:9-10. This is a Ezekiel  recounting. Then he said to me, again, God speaking to Ezekiel, prophesy to the breath, which is the same word as spirit, prophesy, Son of man and say to it, this is what the Sovereign Lord says, come from the four winds, oh, breath, and  breathe into these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as He commanded  me and breath entered them, they came to life and stood up on their feet, a vast  army. So Ezekiel is prophesying here, you know, there's a sense of like this, this  winds sort of almost like a Pentecost sort of experience, where the wind blows  and life enters into them again, the spoken word, ushers in the breath of the  Spirit of God into these bones, and they spring to life and now they're standing  up and they're this vast army, these pile of bones are now living and active, and  not just that they came back to life, but now they're, they're a force or a vast  army, they, they cannot be stopped, they, you know, you wouldn't want to meet  these guys anywhere. So, so just like the word churches, must be the  beneficiaries of the Spirit in order to come back to life. So it's the combination of  the Word and the Spirit and really You can't have one operating without the  other, because they really work in tandem. But as we focus on the spirit, we  really want to see the spirit at live and, and moving just like truly a Holy Spirit led ministry. And nothing, I think, makes people sense that life is returning to the  church, as when there is a sense of the presence and the movement of the Holy Spirit. There's there's just nothing that I think turns hearts, and humbles people  and excites people, like a real sense of the work of the Holy Spirit. Now, this  presents to us a real challenge, because we have the word in front of us and we can preach the Word and we can teach the Word and we can study the word at  all times. But the Holy Spirit is a whole lot trickier than that. Jesus teaches  Nicodemus you know, the Holy Spirit, it blows where it will just like the wind,  and, and we don't have any control over where and how and when the Holy  Spirit's going to move and to do things. So that's a real challenge for us talking  about revitalization, because the spirit lies outside of our ability to control it,  however the New Testament repeatedly demonstrates that the activity of the  Holy Spirit is linked to and made available to the church through prayer, that  prayer, somehow, in God's design of the universe, prayer is linked to and 

connected to the work of the Holy Spirit. And this is in Luke 3, John 14. Acts 1,  Acts 14, Acts 2. Again, when the when the Spirit shows up on Pentecost, what  were the disciples doing, they were in the middle of a 10 day prayer meeting,  right. And then the spirit moves in response to that. So we'll talk a little bit about  getting prayer up and going in, in some different kinds of practical ways in just a  moment. But before I do that, I do want to just offer a few words of caution to  anyone who is seeking to bring about revitalization, and is counting on a fuel of  some way to do that. That is something beyond the work of the Word, and the  spirit. And often when if you read a book on church revitalization, or you go to a  conference, you hear somebody speak about it. The focus is often that you need to have some kind of a structure or follow some kind of a program. And if you do that, if you do with this other church did, and follow these steps, you will see life  returned to your church. There's a gentleman who's written a wonderful book,  called Can These Bones live? Bill Henard, and he has a great comment on this.  And he says, following a particular methodology or program does not guarantee  success. One might greatly desire for the church to revitalize and grow. But  genuine church growth calls for more than personal passion, it requires God's  Spirit. Church revitalization begins with laying the foundation of God's word as it  is preached and followed through a movement of God's Spirit. The two are  inseparably linked. So before we, you know, hitch our wagon to some kind of a  program, or 1-2-3, if you just do this, you know, your church attendance will  double and really I take great precaution and reservation when whenever  reading things like that, because it's the word in the spirit that really is going to  be the fuel. So trying some kind of new method isn't really going to do it. In the  same way. As you think the answer is updating technology, changing dress  standards for worship, getting involved in different social media platforms. Now,  I'm not saying any of those things are bad in and of themselves, and they might  actually help ministry. But if you think about the fuel for revitalization, what's  going to take dead bones and bring them to life? Not because your church has a better website or you're now on Instagram or Facebook or something like that. It  takes a lot more than that. And then one follow up. One last thing is this idol we  have sometimes in revitalization is this idol of cultural relevance, we just need to become more relevant to society. Now, I will be the first one to say that it is very  important that a church or a ministry will understand its community, who you are  trying to serve the needs in the community, and how you can effectively  communicate the gospel to it. that that's, that's a given, you have to do that. But  at no point was this at no point in Scripture was the church ever challenged to  become more faithful to God? By becoming more like the world around it? Listen to it again. At no point in Scripture was a church ever challenged to become  more faithful to God by becoming more like the world around it. And so let's stick with what Scripture says. Word and Spirit through through the ushering in of  prayer. So getting back to prayer, let's just talk about, okay, what are some 

things that you can do to get prayer going, okay? Now, remember, we need  prayer, because you're trying to do something, it's impossible, yet it's  achievable. And what you're going to be doing here is like praying rain, in a  famine, you know, in a, in a great drought, there's nothing you can do to bring  rain except just pray for it. Just ask God to just, you know, let loose and just  send down his spirit in a great work of the Kingdom. Okay, so let's talk about  this. So I guess this is just a basic question is, are you praying for this? Like, are you? Are you praying for the spirit to show up in your ministry context, like daily,  are you just praying and praying and praying and say, God, send rain? God, we  need you to just pour out Your Holy Spirit on this place. Apart from the work of  your spirit towards we can do nothing, even Jesus tells us, you know, I'm the  vine, you're the branches, if you're cut off from me, you can do nothing. So apart from Jesus, apart from the work of the Spirit, that he says, We can't do anything. So just praying for this daily, all the time, for God to help you as a leader, for  God to help you in your teaching, for God to help you in counseling for God to  work in the lives of other people, for the Spirit to give, bring about the hearts of  repentance and renewal. This is all work that has to be done by the Spirit. And  the only thing you can do is to pray. So keep praying, praying, praying, praying.  Now, that's obviously your responsibility as a leader, but the question is, who  else is praying, this goes all the way back to the very first lectures when I was  challenging you, who else is praying for this with you? There needs to be more  than just you get other people praying, you know, moving the just like the  kingdom of heaven, in your favor, just the wind. We weren't the wind just  Ezekiel had in, in the valley that the wind is blowing and bringing these things to  life, the wind that raced through in Jerusalem on Pentecost, we want that and  we we want this movement of just God's people just praying and calling out his  name and, and desiring the work of His Spirit. So who else? Who else is  praying? I guess that's a big thing. And who have you asked? Are they praying?  Have you checked in with them? Or is there a time that you get together and  meet with them and, and pray for these very things? Have you trained them in  any way? And not just people in your church, get people outside your church  say I need you to help with this, I need you to pray over this, okay? And kind of  the next thing is really just kind of this same ideas of building an intercessory  prayer team, someone who's going to stand between the God of heaven and  your ministry, and just stand in the gap and plead and beg God for the work of  His Holy Spirit. So that that's really we're up to work of the word and the work of  the Spirit applied. That is the fuel that brings something dead back to life. And so I'm gonna pray over you as we wrap this up. Father in Heaven once again, we  turn to you in prayer. And Lord, let me pray for all my brothers and sisters  watching us God. May I be counted as a member of their prayer team. And,  Lord, I ask that your spirit would pour out on them, God that they would be in  such a place of repentance, and seeking your will. That Lord you would just 

freely give and offer your Spirit to them. And God I also pray that in their hearts,  that you they might be already just on fire with a renewed love for your word and desire to teach it and a desire Lord for others to just enter into the truth of your  word and to be transformed by God. Thank you so much for all my friends  watching this. And I pray you will do great things in and through them by your  word and your spirit. pray this in Your name, Amen. All right, we're gonna come  back with one more piece about getting started. And looking forward to spending some more time with you