"Buried Alive" - Part 2

Hi, this is John O's Danting, lead pastor of Evolve Church, and this is the Evolve Church Podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Hello, Evolve Fam.

Honestly, what a privilege and an honor it is to be able to gather together in rooms like this.

Just want to look through the lens of this camera today.

You know, it's it's beautiful to me that we can experience church and community together through online means.

And people have been doing online church long before the pandemic.

And there's lots of reasons why people want to gather in this way.

And I just want you to know we see you today.

We're glad that you're here with us.

And whether you uh took some time this weekend to step into the room with us in person for one of our new microservices, or whether this is just a priority for you to gather and worship with us from home.

We love you.

We're grateful.

Way, way back on April 11th, I started a series called Buried Alive.

And I just real quick, I want to know, we've been having an argument at Evolved Church in the offices.

Is it buried or is it buried?

Buried or buried?

Is it buried alive or is it buried alive?

I want to know.

Comment in the chats for me right now.

If you're buried alive, give me a thumbs up.

And if you're buried alive, give me a fist bump emoji.

Buried thumbs up, buried fist bump.

I say buried alive.

I don't know where you're at, but I want to know.

I want to know.

So we started this series April 11th.

That's the Sunday.

Our family went into quarantine, and Pastor Lauren Young stepped into Evolve Church in person and just taught such a beautiful word.

And so we're coming back to this series, Buried Alive.

Today is part two.

Uh, if you didn't watch or hear or listen to that first part, you can still do that.

You can go uh to our YouTube channel and watch that on demand or to our audio podcast and have a listen to that message.

It's there for you.

But I'm gonna do a quick recap.

We talked about um the chapter in the book of Romans, chapter eight, which is kind of where we're gonna live for the next couple of weeks, and how Romans 8 deserves to be put in the front rank of all the books in the Bible, of all the chapters in the Bible.

Romans 8 deserves to be put in the front rank for its rich and comprehensive portrayal of what it means to be a Christian.

Prominent in this description is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 8 as a chapter, and that's from a theologian named Douglas Mu, Romans 8 as a chapter is rich with language and picture of what does it mean to follow Jesus?

We talked in part one how there's a good and a holy tension between the person that we used to be and the new creation that we're becoming, how things die in our life, things are buried to give life to the new things that are coming alive in us.

And part one's big question on April 11th was what pieces of the old you need to stay buried so that the new you can be truly alive?

In this tension of learning to trust and follow Jesus.

If you're brand new to faith, or if you've been following Jesus for decades, there exists this tension between the old us, the sin nature, and the new us made alive in Jesus.

Things that have been buried, things that are coming to life.

We've been buried, we've been alive.

We've been buried alive.

Romans 8, 1 through 4, those first uh few verses is where we began, and Paul kind of unpacks these two types of people: people who are controlled and dominated by an old sin nature, and people who are controlled and led by the Holy Spirit.

Which one are you?

You can't be both.

There's tension in the middle, but you can't, you have to choose.

Are you going to be led by the Holy Spirit of God, or are you going to give in to the compulsive nature of your old self?

And regardless of where you're at today, uh, Jesus didn't sacrifice his life so that you could stay captive to the weight of sin or bondage or religion.

Jesus didn't yield and surrender his life as a human and give up his life at the hands of the Romans on the cross so that you would have to live under the weight and the bondage and the captivity of the old sin nature.

Jesus paid the penalty that sin owed in full, that penalty was death, so that you could come alive spiritually in freedom and relationship with the Father.

I love 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17.

2 Corinthians 5:17

It puts it this way: this means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

If you've just started a journey of following Jesus, if you're still curious but you're leaning into the message of Christ, you have become a new person.

The old life is gone, a new life has begun.

Jesus, before he went to the cross to die, sat with his followers, sat with his disciples.

We read about it in John 14, and Jesus said, If you love me, obey my commandments.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you.

And Jesus was saying, I'm about to leave you, I'm about to go, I'm about to die, but I'm gonna ask the Father, and he's gonna send you another advocate who will never leave you.

He is the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth.

And so there was this promise to the followers of Jesus before Jesus died.

And then next week's Sunday, um May 23rd, uh in the faith calendar is Pentecost Sunday.

And in the in the Christian story, that's the Sunday where the Jesus followers were gathered, and that promise came to pass.

The Holy Spirit was poured out for the first time on humanity as a connection to this surrender to the life of Jesus.

And I want to put it this way: a life lived in surrender and submission to the leadership of Jesus is a life open and surrendered to the gift and the leadership of Holy Spirit.

You can't separate the two.

And if you've made an intentional and beautiful and heartfelt, all-indecision to follow Jesus, have you asked God for the gift of Holy Spirit to fill up your life?

So, in part one of this series from Romans chapter 8, verses 1 through 8, we began to understand just what it is that the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives.

Romans 8:1–8

What is it that the Holy Spirit wants to help us bury and bring to life as we learn to trust and follow Jesus?

And the first two thoughts we shared in part one is that the Holy Spirit, first of all, wants to free us from condemnation, set us free from the guilt and the shame and the weight of sin.

That's what the Holy Spirit wants to do.

And the second thing we talked about is how Holy Spirit wants to transform the thoughts in us that lead us to destruction.

The old nature, the one that's been buried, that that includes thoughts that try and lead us to destruction.

Holy Spirit wants to set us free from those kinds of thoughts that lead us to destruction.

So we're going to pick up in Romans 8 today for the few minutes we have remaining.

And I just want to remind you again, regardless of where you're at in your faith journey, if this is brand new, if Evolved is just becoming home, or if this is family and you've leaned into the message of Christ for years and years and years, listen to what Romans chapter 8, picking up in verses 9 through 11, has to say to us today.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And here's what it says but you are not controlled by your sinful nature.

You are controlled by the Spirit, if you have the Spirit of God living in you.

And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to Him at all.

And so here's the clear picture that if you've accepted Jesus and asked God for the gift of Holy Spirit, rest assured that that promise is yours and been delivered on.

And you don't have to wonder anymore.

If you've asked, you've received.

You don't have to wonder.

Verse 10, Christ lives within you.

Wait, I thought Jesus went to the cross and I thought he died, and I thought he rose again and went and is seated at the right hand of God the Father in eternity.

Yes, but this beautiful thing called Trinity and Jesus and God and Holy Spirit being one, the Spirit of Christ is whom you receive.

So verse 10, Christ lives within you.

So even though your body will die because of sin, in other words, the world that we live in is broken.

All of us are in the process of decay.

Isn't that depressing?

At some point, we're gonna graduate and we're gonna step into eternity.

These bodies are gonna die.

Your body will die because of sin.

The spirit gives you life.

Or that could be translated, your spirit is alive.

The spirit makes you alive because you have been made right with God.

Verse 11: the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.

And just as God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by the same Spirit living within you.

Okay, verses 9 through 11, Romans chapter 8, what does this all mean?

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And I'm gonna pull two thoughts out of this today from these few verses in Romans chapter 8, verses 9 through 11.

Romans 8:9–11

The first thought is this the old sin nature wants you buried in the belief that God is out there somewhere and requires striving and some kind of checklist to know fully.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to the truth that He's made himself at home within you.

He's made himself at home within you.

Romans 8, verse 9, but you are not controlled by your sinful nature, you're controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit living in you.

Romans 8:9

The message translation, Eugene Peterson, dove into this text and unpacked it in modern words for us to understand deeply.

And here's what Eugene says in the message translation.

But if God has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him.

Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about.

When you make the decision to follow Jesus, the Spirit of Christ, God Himself, takes up residence in your life.

Takes up residence in your soul.

God himself has taken up residence in your life.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to the truth that He's made himself at home within you.

That word home, let that just settle into your soul today.

God's made himself at home in you.

The God of the universe, the creator of heavens and earth, has made himself at home in your life here, today.

Does that bring you peace?

Does that bring you some sense of awe and wonder?

Home, this picture, that language, that that idea of home is so different for so many of us.

And I know that.

Depending on your story, your origin story, how you grew up, what home was like, depending on your current moment, what it what home feels like.

When I say home for some of you, that means loneliness, isolation.

When I say home, for some of you, that means chaos and unrest.

When I say home for some of you, that means joy and fulfillment.

I thought about home for me.

You know, the idea of traveling.

I forget what traveling was like.

Do you remember what traveling was like?

I haven't traveled in such a long time.

But the idea of traveling away somewhere and staying in somebody else's house or staying in a hotel, sleeping in strange beds and eating at strange tables.

And maybe you can relate to this idea of like loving vacation or loving time away, but there's nothing quite like coming home.

Coming home to peace, coming home to rest, coming home to laughter, coming home to working through conflict, coming home to sitting in pain with each other, with people that we love, coming home to finding rhythm and sharing food and solving problems, coming home to creating boundaries, coming home to bringing correction, bringing discipline, expressing intimacy at home.

That's the list I put together when I think about home.

These are the things I thought of peace, rest, laughter, working through conflict, sitting in pain, finding rhythm, sharing food, solving problems, creating boundaries, bringing correction, bringing discipline, and sharing in intimacy.

I referenced John 14 earlier, but in verses 16 and 17, listen to what Jesus said.

I will ask the Father, he'll give you another advocate who will never leave you.

He's the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth.

The world cannot receive him because it isn't looking for him, it doesn't recognize him.

But you know him because he lives with you now and will later be in you.

And this is what Jesus promised to his followers.

You know the Holy Spirit.

Before they were filled with Holy Spirit, they knew the Holy Spirit because they knew Jesus.

You know Jesus.

Come on, church, you know Jesus.

You're learning to trust and follow Jesus.

And so take heart and take confidence today that Holy Spirit has made himself at home, has taken up residence in your life.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to the truth today that he's at home in you.

He's at home in your life.

He's not a foreigner there, he's not just a guest, he's at home.

He's at home.

And what does Holy Spirit want to do?

Well, he's made himself at home in your life.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you peace.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you rest.

Holy Spirit wants to lead you alive into laughter and life.

The Holy Spirit wants to help you work through conflict.

The Holy Spirit is present to sit with you in your pain, in your trouble.

The Holy Spirit wants to help you find rhythms, share nourishment for your soul, for your spirit, solve problems, bring correction, make you alive by creating boundaries, expressing intimacy.

And before I continue, I just I want us all right now, in the middle of this message, to just pause and pray.

And if you would with me, just assume some kind of open posture.

That might mean just kind of putting resting your hands on your knees or lifting your hands out open.

And if you're in a living room with family right now, or if you're in a vehicle driving, keep your hands on the wheel or pull over, however you're listening today, but just would you assume some kind of posture that says, God, I'm open, I surrender?

And I want you to pray out loud with me.

Just say this, thank you, Holy Spirit.

That you see me, know me, and love me as I am.

Not from afar or from a distance, but up close in person.

I thank you for making yourself at home in my life, and for making me alive to that beautiful truth.

Thank you to the Holy Spirit that you've made yourself at home in us.

You've taken up residence in our lives today.

Maybe the weight of a global pandemic and COVID-19 and the last 14 months and the ping-pong of restrictions has convinced your heart that you're alone.

And I simply want to bring you back to hope today, bring you back to this truth.

The Spirit of Christ, the same spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead, has taken up residence in your life, has made himself at home in you if you've made the decision to follow Jesus.

The second thought today is this the old nature wants you buried under the weight of sin, where all you can see is where you fall short and how you're not good enough.

But Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to seeing and experiencing the life that only He can bring.

The old you, the old the sin nature wants to just keep you buried under the weight of condemnation, where you fix your eyes on where you fall short and the things that you're not good at or not good enough, or those kinds of narratives in your heart.

The Holy Spirit wants to circle you back and make you alive today to experiencing the life that only the Holy Spirit can bring.

Romans 8, verses 10 and 11.

Romans 8:10

But for you who welcome Him, in whom He dwells, even though you still experience all the limitations of sin, you yourself experience life on God's term.

It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive and present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself.

When God lives and breathes in you, and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus, you are delivered from that dead life.

With his spirit living in you, your body will be alive as Christ's.

How many of you remember the TV show Extreme Makeover Home Edition?

Comment in the chats for me.

Somebody throw up a meme of Ty Pennington if you can.

But if you remember the TV show Extreme Makeover Home Edition, I want to know that I'm not all by myself.

And I was thinking about this TV show today.

If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a family in need, a family in crisis.

They're limited in how they live and where they live.

And then this team of builders and designers take their existing home and they renovate it into something entirely beautiful and brand new, yet it's still the same house.

So same structure, same home.

This well-deserving family gets surprised usually, and then they get moved out to like a temporary location.

This team kind of blitzes their house in a short period of time, transforms their home and turns it into something absolutely gorgeous.

And then they park a bus in front of the house, and then they bring the family back, and then there's this big reveal.

All the neighbors, friends, support, care, community, this team of builders, they all gather around, and at the top of their lungs, what do they shout?

Type it in the chats.

Come on, you know what they shout.

Move that bus! The bus pulls away, the family cries, and then they are ushered into their new home.

Why?

To improve the quality of life for this deserving family.

Right now, somebody's gears are turning.

I can hear it.

You can see it.

You are the deserving family.

You are.

Tap your chest.

I am.

I'm the deserving family.

I'm the deserving son.

I'm the deserving daughter.

You deserve for not a Holy Spirit to take up residence in your life, but to renovate your life and bring you alive to the kind of living that only Holy Spirit can bring.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to the truth that He's made himself at home with in you, and He wants to bring you fully alive to seeing and experiencing the life that only He can bring.

Now, Holy Spirit can only do this through renovation.

Renovation.

Here are some synonyms for the word renovation, repair, improvement, renewal, restoration, upgrades, renovation.

That's what the Holy Spirit wants to do in your life.

Here are some antonyms for the word renovation, damage, destruction, harm, hurt, neglect.

What if Ty Pennington and the Extreme Home Makeover team looked at the house and then made a 3D rendered video of what the house could look like, gave that to the family and said, here you go, here's what you could have.

What if that was the show, right?

They walked into the house, looked at what they currently had, and then just made them like this cool 3D rendered video of what they could turn that house into.

Well, there'd be no victory, there'd be no story, there'd be no tears, there'd be no newness, there'd be no renovation, there'd be no show.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to the truth that he's made himself at home in you, but more than that, he wants to bring you fully alive through renovation to seeing and experiencing the life that only he can bring?

What if the family kept fighting and arguing with Ty Pennington?

What if they didn't get shipped off to another location, but they stayed on site with the team of builders and designers and experts, and they were arguing with Ty and this team.

Every time they wanted to remove a wall, they'd be like, no, no, no, leave that wall where it is.

Every time they wanted to throw away that old ratty couch and be like, no, no, no, that's been in our family for years.

What if the family was on site, constantly pushing back against this team of renovators, being like, no, no, don't change that.

No, no, no, no, no, leave that there, right?

Well, there would be no reveal.

There'd be no move that bus moment.

We wouldn't have a show.

This is actually a powerful picture of what Holy Spirit is longing to do in you today.

Except He doesn't move us out of the house, he invites us into the process.

And so the question is when Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive and bring you to experiencing the real life that he longs to give you as he's made up residence in you, are you going to push back?

Or are you going to invite that renovation?

Similarly, Ephesians chapter 2 says that it wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old, stagnant life of sin.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.

You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief and then exhaled disobedience, old you, buried you.

We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat.

And the writer says, It's a wonder that God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us, but instead, here's what God said.

Did immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us.

He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ.

We've been buried alive.

He did all this on his own with no help from you, no help from me.

And then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Do you see it?

God takes our sin-dead lives and makes us alive in Christ.

But he does it through his son Jesus.

The old nature wants you buried under the weight of sin where all you can see is where you fall short, and how you're not good enough.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to seeing and experiencing the life that only he can bring.

The difference between us and homemaker makeover family edition is that for us, it's as though Ty moves right in and patiently and lovingly works alongside us to see the renovations through to completion.

Because that's what Holy Spirit's doing inside of you constantly.

Right there on the living room television is the 3D rendering of what our lives are becoming.

The 3D rendering of what our lives are becoming.

Jesus.

God-made flesh.

And so today's big question is what is it that the Holy Spirit is working out in you right now?

Working to renovate and renew and improve and restore and repair and upgrade.

What's he been whispering?

What's he been nudging in your heart?

What is it that feels damaged?

What is it that feels destroyed in you right now?

What is it that feels hurt, neglected, wounded, harmed?

Because here's what I know to be true.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to the truth.

Not only that he's made himself at home, he's taken up residence in you, but that he wants to bring you fully alive to seeing and experiencing through renovation the life that only he can bring.

I just sense today, in the middle of the noise, in the middle of the chaos, in the middle of the politics, in the middle of the uh undivided hearts, in the middle of the disunity, in the middle of the questions.

Can we just pause for a moment and invite the Spirit within us to show us how he wants to renovate in our work, in our life today, to bring us alive.

And if you would just repeat after me, thank you, Holy Spirit.

That you see me, know me, and love me as I am.

Not from afar or from a distance, but up close and personal.

Thank you for making yourself at home in my life, and for making me alive to that beautiful truth.

Today I choose to submit and surrender to all the damaged, hurt, and neglected parts of my life to your loving and transforming work in me.

Fashion, shape, and renovate my life into the image of Jesus Christ.

I ask in his name.

Amen.

I've got some homework attached to part two of this buried alive series.

I've got some homework.

The old nature wants you buried under the weight of sin where all you can see is where you fall short and how you're not good enough, and then keep you trapped there.

Holy Spirit wants to bring you alive to seeing and experiencing the life through renovation that only He can bring.

So I want you this week, today even, right after this service ends, just name one thing.

Just name it.

Name one thing, one area where you know you've fallen short, one area where the enemy's always reminding you that you're not good enough.

Just name one thing.

Name it.

Write it down, journal it, type it in a note on your smartphone.

Write it with a pen and paper, but name it.

Maybe it's been losing patience with my family, taking shortcuts at work, not giving my best with my spouse or partner, turning to something, anything other than Jesus to try and find my peace.

Name it.

Name that thing.

Holy Spirit will help you see it.

With love, with grace, name it.

And then I want you in prayer to invite the Holy Spirit to help you make change this week.

One habit, one new practice every day to help shape you into the 3D rendered image of Jesus Christ.

It's who we're becoming like.

It's who Holy Spirit is working out in us bit by bit, transforming us into the image of Jesus.

Don't take it all on.

Just one thing this week.

One thing.

Name it.

And then invite Holy Spirit to help you put into practice one new routine, one new habit each and every day to move you towards being set free from that habit.

Little homework for you.

All right, join me back next week.

Um, part three of this series is on Pentecost Sunday, which is kind of cool as we continue to talk about what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us.

And next week we're gonna talk about your worth, your identity as sons and daughters as we continue looking at Romans 8 together.

I want you in the room for that.

This is important.

I actually think everything flows out of what we're gonna look at next week.

But before we close today, I want to pray with you.

If you've been watching a part of this online service or listening to this audio podcast, and up to this point, you've never made a personal decision to surrender your life to the leadership of Jesus, and you've never invited the Holy Spirit to make himself at home in you.

I want to give you that opportunity today.

As I've been talking about being set free and being brought to life and what the Holy Spirit wants to renovate in us and make us more into the image of Jesus Christ, something's come alive in you today as you've been listening.

You've been leaning into the truth of who Jesus is, not just in the world, but in your home and in your life.

And so I want to lead you in a simple prayer.

If you want to make this decision today for the first time, just repeat after me.

Say, Dear God, thank you that Jesus paid my penalty info.

Today I choose to surrender my life, all of it, to the perfect work of Jesus.

Holy Spirit, I invite you in.

Would you make yourself at home in me today?

Today I choose grace, unconditional love, mercy, and forgiveness to build my life on who Jesus is.

Amen.

Thank you so much for listening to today's message.

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, hop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit EvolveChurch.com.

We hope to see you soon.