The Most Dangerous Person Alive Is One at Rest in God

Sermon outline

Whatever was cut down in the past year, God makes the stump a holy seed, and the rejuvenation and authority He is giving in 2023 are received not through labour and worry but by remaining in the rest of God, with Christ as our Sabbath.

1. In the year of loss, the stump becomes a holy seed

   Isaiah saw the Lord in the year King Uzziah died, and the passage ends with the land laid waste and yet a stump that will be a holy seed. People who go through something traumatic, a death, a family crisis, the end of a long career, see without seeing and hear without understanding, and become irritable, despondent and cynical. Even in devastation God is preparing a new way, because your life is not over and has not even started yet.

   Illustration: Picture a great oak alone on a grassy plain, stripped of leaves and branches, cut to a stump, then burnt with the whole field around it until only ash and coal remain. That is the stump God calls a holy seed.

   “No matter what it is that you have faced, no matter how difficult it was, God is going to use that as a holy seed because your life is not over yet.”

   • Isaiah 6:1-13
   • Genesis 50:20

2. Hopelessness turns into hope

   Despair is a complete loss of hope, and hopeless means incapable of solution. But believers are in the world and not subject to it, and with the Holy Spirit and a renewed mind hopelessness turns into hope, victory and life. Whatever failed and felt finished, a broken relationship or a traumatic event, you can prophesy to those dry bones and they shall live.

   “Prophesy to these dry bones and say, "Thus saith the Lord, 'You dry bones, you shall live.'"”

   • Ezekiel 37:1-5
   • Romans 8:24-26

3. God restores: Job, Moses and Joseph

   The Lord restored Job's fortunes twice over when he prayed for his friends, and blessed his latter days more than his beginning, though his family still had to console him over what had been. Moses spent forty years in exile tormented by his past and still felt unable to speak, yet God used him. Joseph was thrown in a pit, sold and jailed, and God opened the doors in His time. He knows what you need before you ask.

   “God has not let us go. God has not thrown us to the dogs. God has not allowed us to be a burnt stump in the ground. We are holy seed.”

   • Job 42:10-17
   • Exodus 2:1-15
   • Exodus 4:10
   • Genesis 37
   • Genesis 39
   • Romans 8:38-39
   • Matthew 6:8

4. Be courageous: this year God will make your holy seed great

   Courage is the mental and moral strength to persevere and withstand danger, fear and difficulty, and the Lord goes with you wherever you go. In 2023 God will bring to fruition what you have waited years for, and it will not be by your labour but by His grace, so that all you can say is "but God".

   Illustration: People will ask how you did it. You will have no story of your own effort, only "I was in debt, but God. I didn't have a job, but God."

   “This year, 2023, God is gonna take your holy seed and He is going to make it great.”

   • Joshua 1:9
   • Deuteronomy 31:6

5. Stagnation: let the river flow

   Stagnation is a lack of flow, movement and development that makes a person's past better than their present. If you do not use the gift, the love or the finances God has given, you have stagnated. The blessed man is a tree by a river, not a puddle, and water with nothing flowing in or out breeds algae and becomes undrinkable, so drink from the Word and the Spirit and let it flow out. Change is growth, but change to please God, not people, and the outward change follows the inward one.

   Illustration: A young man gives up smoking to win a girl, and is smoking again as soon as she is out of his life. Change made to please people is temporary.

   “Anything not changing is stagnant. But we must never change to please people. We must change to please God.”

   • Psalm 1:3
   • Ephesians 5:26
   • Romans 12:2

6. Stop fighting battles that were never yours

   Parents of children in their late teens and adulthood have taught them, brought them to church and prayed, and there comes a time to pull back and let what was taught rule. Interfering in every affair does not help; the Holy Spirit is the best teacher. He heals the broken-hearted and has plans to take care of you and give you a future and a hope.

   Illustration: Children who slept on a little blanket beside their parents' chair at church may now be doing something else. Dedicate them to the Lord and let the Holy Spirit bring them back.

   “Because the minute that we are working, God is not working.”

   • Psalm 147:3
   • Jeremiah 29:11

7. Rejuvenation comes through the rest of God

   To rejuvenate is to make young again, to restore to an original state, to take the dry bones and bring them to life. That happens in the rest of God, which is not complacency or doing nothing, but steadfast trust that takes the Word as final. If you are stressed or anxious, you are in control and not God, and you are paying the bills; labour only to enter that rest. Pastor Zubeda's Christmas word on God resting on the seventh day led him to this: for the believer, the Sabbath is Christ Himself.

   Illustration: A bride who has just said yes shows off her ring; she never asks what if he leaves her at the altar. She is simply waiting for the date, living in preparedness. As the bride of Christ, we live the same way.

   “The most dangerous man in the world is the person that's peaceful and in the rest of God.”

   • Hebrews 4:10-11
   • Philippians 4:6-7
   • James 1:4
   • Genesis 2:1-3

In this message