The Last Sermon of 2025

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected]. we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media. So be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Good morning, church. How we feeling? Awesome. Well, hey, let me take just a brief moment. I wanna introduce myself. I am Seth Raymond. I'm the youth pastor here at the Met and it's been amazing. I've been here for a couple of years now, and so I'd be remiss if I didn't do this. We are usually having sixth through middle school service next door. So if you are in here and you've never been to Met Youth before and you're a middle schooler, man, we'd love to see you next door next week. And then if you're a high schooler, we have our high school services on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:30. So if you have a high schooler or you high schooler, man, we'd love to see you there. And so it's amazing. We have an environment that's designed just for you. And I'm blessed just to serve alongside some amazing volunteers and leaders to help make it happen. And so, with all that being said, I'm just blessed to be here this morning with you. So I want to take also another moment and just introduce to y' all my family. Some of y' all may know Haley. She's my amazing wife. I got a picture up here for you guys to check that out. She is the Met Kids elementary children's coordinator. So if you've got kids in elementary school, she's the one back there that does all the awesome stuff with your kids. You know, the God time cards and integrating faith into the home. And so I love that. And it's such a huge blessing that I get to work alongside my wife. It's been a dream come true. She used to be a teacher. She and I actually both went to Dallas Baptist. And it was just. It's so nice to literally go through three doors down and then my wife's in her office. And it's awesome. It's such a huge blessing. But we love the Met. Like I said, we've been here for about two and a half years and we just, we love this place. There's no better church. We love it. It's a family. We're together. We get to study the word together, we get to be in the Bible together. And our church does so many amazing things. And so it's just a blessing to be here. It's a blessing to be with you guys. Cause y' all are also what makes this place as amazing as it possibly can be. And so. Yeah. Anyway, we are finally after the Christmas season. Is anyone glad that it's kind of over? Anybody? Or is it just me? Okay, so I'm gonna make you a promise today. I'm gonna be transparent with you. I'm gonna share my thoughts and my opinions and things like that. And then I'm gonna of course read scripture. But man, I wanna encourage you guys this morning that even though now that we're out of the Christmas season, right, man, let's finish the year strong, right? Because it's easy to get into like the post season, post holiday lull or like the post event lull where maybe you get into a position and you're just kinda like, okay, hey, I have just planned the most incredible Christmas like party where all the family is in. And then you wake up Christmas morning and it's all like, it's all happening. You're seeing all your hard work, effort and labor come to fruition. And then you get to the evening and you lay down and you're just completely exhausted and you're wondering when family is going home. And promise to be transparent. And so we went to go see family over the break and I love it. Christmas is my all time favorite holiday because of the family, the friends, the time that we get to spend together. And of course the home cooked food. Oh my goodness. Anybody gain weight over this season? Right. Okay. The New Year's resolutions are coming. You know, I'm going back to the gym, gym memberships are starting. But I'm telling you, this Christmas season has been amazing. And one of the things as a parent, right, I've got three kids. I didn't introduce them a second ago. I just talked about Haley. Cause she's amazing. But my other kids, you can throw that picture back up there. Carson, Teddy and Gemma, they are amazing. I love them to death. Carson is almost 6, Teddy is almost 4 and Gemma is the newest addition to our family. She's eight months old and you don't super see it right now, but there's a giant smile on her face and if there's not, then it's just a real serious picture for the quick like two second moment that she's not smiling. And it's so nice. I love them. And one of the greatest joys as a parent is getting to see my kids experience Christmas morning when they open all the gifts and they're just so excited about everything that they're getting and just seeing that amazing joy on their face. And then the toy, of course, that they play with, they happen to play with for five minutes, and then they're more interested in the box that it came in. Am I right? But it's one of my favorite holidays because we get to see all the incredible things that we do finally come to fruition, and then it kind of settles. As I promised a minute ago, I wanna be transparent. I'm tired. I don't know about you. I'm tired. And being tired, it can be really easy to sometimes just wanna take a back seat, to sit down, to relax, to maybe not put forth a ton of effort and energy, but the season can honestly leave us feeling sometimes just drained, emotionally overdrawn, for sure, because we're just. We're constantly pouring in, or maybe spiritually even a little depleted. Because what I like to do is I wanna teach my kids so much that Christmas. Yes. While you're receiving gifts on Christmas. Yes. That's extremely important. You know, that's great. It's kinda like what we do culturally, but it's not just about the gifts. That's why it's so important. Instead, it's really about Jesus being the reason that we celebrate this season in the first place. We hear the story every year of Jesus being born in a manger and all that, and it's glorious. To me, it never gets old. I love it. If you came to one of our Christmas Eve services, I mean, they were beautiful, but it's such a good reminder of why we do what we do and who we do what we do for. Cause we're celebrating Jesus the Savior, the one that had been prophesied for. For hundreds of years. And then finally he's born and we get to celebrate that. And so I want my kids to also understand. And so spending so much time and effort trying to help their small, beautiful, fragile little minds get into a mindset of gift giving can be challenging. I'll tell you, Haley and I, we have a tradition every year where we go to Target and we give each other a budget where we buy gifts and stuff like that. And what ends up happening is we circle the room together. We circle Target together, kind of picking out those things. And then we split, and I go pick out gifts for her. She goes to pick out gifts for me. Well, we tried to introduce our kids to that this year and let me tell you, it was a disaster. It became very self centered very quickly and I became very much, just leave, let's go home, please. Because chasing a four year old around Target and when he's like, I want this and I want that, and then the other, and then Carson, my oldest, is over here, like, and I want this and I'm gonna do this. And then I think my brother might like this. So he's getting it. I'm like, yes, it's, you know, the light bulb kind of clicks a little bit. But then, you know, you just get overwhelmed so quickly. And then everybody else and their mom happens to be shopping at Target during the Christmas season because it's just the place to be. And we get overwhelmed so easily because we want to teach our kids so much. And so maybe we're overdrawn. Maybe we're even feeling a bit like spiritually depleted to a degree. And this morning, as we start to unpack some scripture here, in just a moment we're gonna be in Ezekiel 37, which is really where God gives Ezekiel this incredible vision. And it's one that's filled with hope, it's one that's filled with life. It's one that's filled with, well, really just the hope in the midst of a really, really tiring and exhausting and depleted and what seems to be a hopeless moment for the tribes of Judah here in Ezekiel. And that's my hope this morning. And my prayer has been that you guys today would not walk out the doors the same as that you would when you walked in, but instead you'd be changed by the renewal of your mind, by your spirit, that you'd be encouraged, motivated, that you would be inspired even to finish out the year strong. As I mentioned a minute ago, the post Christmas, the post holiday, the post event lull can sometimes come. Feel like we need a break and we just don't want to continue to do anything. We don't want to finish because we think maybe that's where it ended. But man, we're this close to getting into 2026. And just like any good off season in sports, they take an off season to train, to equip, to prepare. And that's what I'd love to challenge you guys with this morning, is that we would train, equip, and prepare ourselves for another incredible year where we're gonna see God do amazing things. And so what does that look like? And that's what I Wanna kind of break down this morning through, excuse me, Ezekiel 37. So before we get over there to there, I wanna give you a little bit of context so that you can really understand exactly what's going on here. And then really we'll kinda look at three conditions of like the human soul this morning. That's gonna kind of help us relate to this in maybe a new way, but. Or maybe it speaks life into a situation that you're in currently. Or maybe it's just motivation, inspiration to again, be like a motivational poster. I love those things. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, or the sky's the limit. It's just like passing by one of those things. It's just a subtle reminder. Yeah, they're cliche and yeah, they're kind of weird sometimes, and sometimes they're kind of far fetched. But the truth is like, we can continue to push, we can continue to get stronger, we can continue to grow closer together. And so that's what we want to do. So in Ezekiel 37, throughout the context of this, you have Ezekiel, who was a priest turned prophet. So the Lord goes to him and he tells him, he's like, hey, I'm gonna take you. I'm gonna pull you into this valley of dry bones. And that's kind of where we're going to be in this morning. So in this valley of dry bones, Ezekiel is there. And the bones are really more so probably from the nation that had fallen into or had been scattered throughout, through exile, because they didn't heed the warnings that God had been giving for years and years and years. Right. And this reminds me of kind of the state of. Honestly, my children, we have bunk beds, or used to in their room. They share a room. And we decided that taking or changing the sheets on the top bunk was far more difficult than it needed to be. And it was just a hassle every time, you know, you gotta get on the top bunk, you gotta pull back all the covers, then you gotta like rip this thing. And somehow if you've ever made a top bunk bed, you know what I'm talking about. And the struggle is real. Cause you're pulling back the mattress while trying to get the fitted sheet over there. And then you realize you still have to do the one behind you too. And it's just like, it's just a pain. And so what we do is we took down the bed and we set them right next to each other. But you can probably guess where I'm going with this. Is my kids immediately started to jump from one bed to the other very quick, right? And then making the bed with them, jumping on the bed becomes an impossible task. I would have almost rather left the bed up there. So they're jumping from back, back and forth, back and forth. And I look at them and I say, hey, you're gonna get hurt. One of you is gonna, like, jump into each other, and you're just gonna collide in the air. One of you is going to miss the bed, and you're going to fall on the floor and get hurt. One of you is gonna get hurt. And I had to say this, like, multiple. Multiple times. You're probably wondering why I didn't just, like, grab them and stop them. Well, sometimes experience is the best teacher. You laugh because you know it's true. So I'm like, fine, whatever. Don't listen to me. That's fine. I'm only, you know, somehow magically predicting your future here. And sure enough, one of the kids gets hurt. And I'm not like, yes, finally, I was right. No, it's one of those moments where it's like, you don't want to be right in this moment. You really want to be proven wrong. And so they jump, they get hurt. And I'm like, all right, well, I love you. I care for you. Like, I'm trying to, like, help them, like, calm down in the midst of pain. And then I'm like, I really want you to listen to heed my warnings. This is really where I feel like the people in this passage of scripture were. After, you know, years and years of not listening to God's warning after warning, after warning, they ended up getting hurt. They lost their families. They lost their cities, their towns. They were burned down. They were scattered, sent into exile. They were trying to flee from their lives. Some were taken into captivity. And it's just. It's a huge mess, right? I'm thankful none of us are there this morning. But it's rough. It was a rough situation for them. And so what happens is when. And we're gonna pick up here in verse, in verse 2 of Ezekiel 37, verse 2. But what happens is God takes Ezekiel to this valley of dry bones, and then this is what it says. And he led me around among them. And behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley. And behold, they were very dry. God has taken Ezekiel to this valley. If you could just picture it. And what I kind of think is, really, it was the valley of the bones of all the people that maybe they had lost recently. So this is probably familiar to Ezekiel in some way. This is probably filled with great grief, with great disappointment, with great despair with all of these things. And what ends up happening is God led him around. You see, even in the midst of all the despair, right. We come to this first condition of dry bones, right? So if you're taking notes, this is the first one. We come to this condition of dry bones where maybe things are feeling empty, but the hope is that it's not. You are not forgotten. And this is where you see dry bones. And so I wanna kinda explain a little bit about what bones kinda symbolize within scripture, right. A lot of times it's like spiritual depravity or it's death. And. And when you see bones in scripture and it's starting to talk about this. And so Ezekiel being in this valley of dry bones, and he says, I mean, look, there's a ton of them. There's very many on the surface. And he even goes a little bit further to describe exactly how they were. They were very dry. A lot of times, either after a holiday event, a Christmas, little whatever you want to call it, a lot of times we can. And if we're being honest with ourselves, we. If we are now a Christian, we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We've been in this position. And so we kind of have. Either we either do exist in this state today of being dry bones not filled by the spirit, or we exist in an acknowledgement of like, yeah, I've been there before, or maybe, you know, people who are. Because dry bones, when we're looking at this, can oftentimes resemble people who are spiritually numb. People who are numb, people who may be really skeptical or cynical about the Christian faith, they're not hostile, but they're just really. I don't know if I get it. Maybe they're tired of trying. I could tell you in full spirit of transparency, I've been there. Tired of trying to. Filled with grief or disappointment or shame or guilt that maybe we're just not talking about. We're not sharing, not with a life group, not with friends or family, but we're trying to just bury it as deep as it can possibly go. You know, one of the things, and I understand that that place of spiritual numbness, even as a believer, you see, I'll share with you. Back in 2018, my wife and I, we lost our daughter at five months old. Her name was Scarlet. She obviously was not in the pictures, and I don't share that. For Oz, the Reason I share that is because, speaking from a place of just emptiness, there's nothing worse. And for God to be with Ezekiel in that moment, leading him around in the midst of the despair, in the midst of the anguish, in the midst of the trials, all of it, God is still. So that tells me that, yeah, it's okay that we are empty. It's okay that we can be empty. Because you're not forgotten about. You're not walking through it alone. You're not walking through any of that kind of stuff by yourself. Because we have, thankfully, a church family who loves you very much, you know. And something I tell my students every week is like, man, like your life. Group leaders are here for you. They want to be with you, they wanna talk to you, they want you to share those things. They can walk with you through life. And that's not just meant for students, right? I think that's very true for even us as adults, that we still need biblical community, our brothers and sisters in Christ to surround, to let us know that we're not alone, to pray with us, to encourage us, to challenge us, to motivate us to continue to do and go where God is calling us to go. And things that God is calling us to do. And Ezekiel is telling us this here in the midst of a valley of dry bones, that God is leading him around. These bones weren't things that were just forgotten about, but they were intentional in what God was sharing with him in this moment. And so I've been in that position of being tired of trying. And one of the things that I'm oftentimes challenged with is the question of where am I spiritually numb? Because it can be easy for us to get spiritually numb in some areas, right? Like, maybe we're feeling like we've got it, you know, kind of taken care of. Maybe we're feeling like, you know, I can handle this on my own. Maybe I don't necessarily need Jesus, or maybe I can just, I can do this. Like, things are going really well. Maybe finances are great. Maybe I'm debt free. Maybe I don't have anything going on, and maybe my life isn't falling apart and family members are all healthy and good to go. And I don't necessarily need Jesus to be taking control of anything right now. Cause things are going pretty good. But all that's really doing is drying us out spiritually. And we have to think to ourselves and ask ourselves and do a little bit of self reflecting on saying, okay, well, where in my life, God, do I have Spiritual numbness. Is there something in my heart, is there something in my life that I'm not giving to you? And for some of us, that really could be. I've not yet chosen to give you my life. Maybe I'm still wrestling with you and trying to figure out if you were somebody that I wanna put my hope in, if somebody that I wanna put my trust in. Maybe we're skeptical and we've still got so many questions that are just going unanswered. Or I'm praying and I'm just. I'm tired of not getting anything in response, and I'm just spiritually numb. And we can exist very much in this camp. We can exist very much in this condition where we are dry and getting drier. Because even here in this passage, it says not only were there very many of them, but they were very dry. You see, for years, they had not heeded or listened to God's warnings that destruction was going to come. If they just continued to live the way they were going to live. Destruction was going to come. And sure enough, it did. And instead of scolding and I told you so, instead, God comes down in a loving way, walks amongst the bones alongside Ezekiel, who, by the way, was also guilty. He's also leading this tribe. He's telling them the things that God is telling them, and no one is listening. And so destruction comes. And it's hard when now, in this whole context of the scripture, they start feeling like all hope is lost. And now this is really the condition of the dry bone state, right? Like, you're definitely not forgotten, which is great, but this is really the condition. It just kind of feels like I don't know where to go from here. I don't know what else to do from here, right? And so I'd like to suggest to you this morning that, man, we can turn and have our hope. And look at this, because this is an encouraging message from God to Ezekiel in the midst of all their issues that are happening in the midst of all this, God is trying to encourage them. Like, look, there's hope. Don't give up hope yet. There's still hope. And so if you look. And so, yeah, if you look over into verse six, what begins to happen is you've got God, who's then now told Ezekiel in this conversation that they're having, he's like, he says, hey, can these bones live? He's talking to Ezekiel, and Ezekiel's like, well, man, dude, only you know. God, only you know if these bones are going to live. Or not. So he's proclaiming that you're God, you're sovereign over life and death. You're sovereign over sickness and disease and healing and health, and you're sovereign. So because of that God, only you know if these bones can live. But according to Ezekiel, no. Nope, there's too many, and they're very dry. I can't do anything about that. And that's true. Ezekiel couldn't do anything about that. But here's what I love that God does. He says to him, well, prophesy to the bones and tell him to hear the word of the Lord. I love that part, because as he's telling him to do this, as they're hearing the word of the Lord, they're animating. These bones are coming to life. They're beginning to have composure and structure. And when you start looking at it here in verse six, it says, and I will lay sinews upon them, and I will cause flesh to come upon them, and I will cover you with skin. So you've got this prophecy, which is really just a promise that's in the future. That's what that means. When God is telling Ezekiel to prophesy over these bones, he's telling them, hey, I'm gonna promise you something, and it's gonna come true, because I'm God, and I'm gonna do it. And this is exactly what's going on. And so you've got Ezekiel here, who then goes to them and says, okay, well, literally the next portion. So I prophesied, it's the Lord commanded me to. He tells the bones to hear the word of the Lord. And so we get into our second place or our second condition here, which is really a structure, but without breath. And we'll get to the breath portion here in just a minute, because Scripture intentionally calls it out very specifically. But this is the structure without breath. This is the order without the intimacy. And this is where I think it can be very challenging for us, us as believers, right? It's this idea and concept of complacency. If you don't know what complacency is, complacency is nothing. It's flat, right? There's no growth. There's no elevation. There's no dips, there's no de elevation, none of that. But there's no growth in things that are complacent, right? And so it just kind of is what it is. It remains the way that it is, because that's it. It's complacent. There's no desire to wanna Grow. There's no desire to wanna get better. There's no desire to get deeper into our faith if our faith is complacent. And this is what I'm telling you, church is a really dangerous place for us to be as believers in Jesus is to be complacent with our faith. And so when God then prophesies to Ezekiel and says, hey, come alive, dry bones, Hear the word of the Lord, when he prophesies this to them, they begin to have this structure. But he doesn't call out the breath yet. And so what exact what is this condition? What is this portion of. Of this scripture? Right. This is for us to be challenged. It's something that I'm challenged with every day of my life. When I wake up in the morning, I'm immediately challenged with this. Because I do want to get closer to the Lord. I want to avoid complacent faith at all cost. Because I want to just. The Lord is so good. Scripture says, hey, taste and see that the Lord is good. And once you've tasted man, you don't want anything else because it's just so good. And so for me, I just want to get closer to the Lord. I wanna help other people get closer to the Lord as well. But this structure portion, without the breath, this order, without the intimacy, this looks like you can look alive, but you could be completely missing the point. It could be really challenging for us. It's like I'm doing all the things. I'm waking up, I'm reading my Bible, I'm going to church, but I'm checking boxes. Yeah, I did that. I did that. I did that. I did that. It's faith that has routines, but there's no authentic surrender. It's for those. It's for those. And I promise to be transparent. I've been there more times than I can count or would even like to admit. To just practice a routine, but to not actually surrender what the Lord is calling me to surrender. Yeah, I'll go to church. Yes, I'll serve. Yes, I'll do what you're calling me to do. But I'm not actually surrendering to you. Cause I still feel like I'm in control. And so this is like identifying. This is Christian identity without transformation. This I'll identify as a Christian. I'll say that I'm a Christian. But I'm really not transformed by what God has told me or what my God has done for me. I've not been moved, motivated, or inspired by what God did for me. On the Cross. I'm just claiming it because he did it. It's a factual thing that happened in history. So, yes, I can believe it. But that's the extent, right? I'll identify as a Christian without any sort of a transformation. This is knowing the language of God, but also missing the life of God. It's parenting Christian kids, but we are yet still running on spiritual fumes, or our tank is completely on empty. But we're still trying to raise Christian kids. We're biblically informed, yet also spiritually suffocating. This is the structure. We've gone from bones that are completely dead to. Then I've got some sort of a structure in my life, but there's no closeness. There's no intimacy with the Holy Spirit. There's no relationship. And so yet we have all this structure. And we begin to struggle with how our control then replaces the trust that we have. There's so much structure that lays within what God is doing here. And so God continues in this passage. And like I mentioned a minute ago, man, he calls out the breath specifically, right? This is not a place that we wanna be in for very long, right? Like, it's true. Like, we get very excited. And I see it. I'm gonna be very. I see it a lot in terms of camp, right? When you go to camp, if anybody. If you remember camp when you were younger or if you've recently even been to camp, right? Sometimes the pastor will give, like, this incredible message, and everyone's moved and inspired by it, and everyone's kinda. The emotions are like, way up here. And it's like, yes, I wanna accept Jesus. And then you do. You go to the front, you accept Jesus. Maybe you pray with a leader or you talk to your pastor about it and all. And it's great, and it's huge. And it's a big moment, and it should be. It really should be. But then you get home from camp and it's kinda like, well, now I got school. No, I got friends who are talking to me. I got TikTok that's going back on my phone for seven hours a day. I'm Snapchatting. I'm. I'm doing all these things that I'm just. That are a complete waste and utter useless part of my time. And now I've come to a place where the energy, the hype, the excitement about Jesus, where I heard the word of the Lord. And I've gone from dry bones to having structure and skin and bones and flesh that's on me. Because God is molding me into who he wants me to be. So I've gone from all of that to now I'm just kind of complacent, and I'm just allowing things to happen. And that happens more times than we can think it does or than we think it does. It happens a lot because that same excitement, that same thrill, that same experience that we have, that's so intimate, that's so personal, that's so emotional that we have with the Lord, we allow other things to very quickly pull that from us. And as we do this, we begin to lose sight of the promises that God has given us throughout Scripture all of the time. You know, when you look in Deuteronomy 31:6, when you look at this passage of Scripture, God says, hey, don't be afraid or terrified of them, because the Lord goes with you always. He's never gonna leave you nor forsake you. You flip over to Joshua 1:9, it says the same thing. Hey, hey, don't be afraid. Don't be dismayed. The Lord, your God goes with you wherever you go. If you look over in Matthew 28, 18:20, when God is giving the great commission, he says, go, therefore, make disciples of all nations to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Teach them to deliver everything that I've commanded and to rem. Remember, here's the promise that I'm with you forever and ever and ever. God has continually promised to be with us forever. No matter what trial, no matter what experience we're going through, no matter what condition our soul may be in this morning. God has continued to promise to be with you. And he's done that very here. So he says, prophesy to the bones and tell them to hear the word of the Lord. Tell them that I will put sinews on them. That's like skin and bones and like the flesh, the tendons, all that kind of stuff. If you don't understand that. And then he tells them, hey, breath, this one's really important. If you look at what it says here in verses 12 through 14, it says, Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God. Behold, I will open your graves, and I will raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live. And I will place you in your own land. And then you shall know that I'm the Lord. This declaration right here at the very end of this verse, I have spoken and I will do it. You see, you flip all the way back to Genesis. In our creation story, God says, let there be. God speaks creation will into complete existence ex nihilo. That means out of nothing. He completes everything. He is the author of our salvation and our story. He is the perfecter of our faith. He is our Prince of peace. He is all of these amazing things. He is certainly our Savior and He is our Lord. And this is where we get into this third condition, breath. Because this is where you have the life that God originally intended. You know, the story of redemption is honestly a story that is told all throughout Scripture and even here in this valley of dry bones, right from death to life, from old to new. You know, same thing for us as even in today, in 2025, almost 2026, right? People who have maybe not yet accepted Jesus or experienced the goodness of God or the life that God has for them. And he wants to give us breath. And so he's constantly doing all these things to unite us together in his name, to bring as many people into the kingdom of heaven that we can with us. God wants unity. It's why our church's mission statements. We want to connect people to God and one another. We wanna make heaven as crowded as possible. And God gave us the commissioning to do it when he gave it to us in Matthew 28. Remember to go and make disciples of all the nations. This is what we're called to do. This is the life that God intended us. And so Scripture specifically points this out, because the Spirit, the breath of God, is the most important, important thing. We can have our faith, we can have our time, we can have all the things that we need and still feel this emptiness that can be inside. But it can only be filled by one thing, and that's God, the Holy Spirit. But God originally sets up a structure for a reason. God, I believe, is methodical, meaning he takes his time. He certainly doesn't operate on my time. Praise him for that. But he thinks things through. He knows the plan. He already has it set in motion. He knows what's going to happen day by day, moment by moment, second by second. And so he provides the structure. God provides the breath. He also provides us the purpose. God provides us your purpose, our purpose. You see, when you're looking in this passage of Ezekiel 37, he says, I've spoken and I will do it. This is a declaration from God. And he says this because he's faithful to never fail. Amen. He's faithful to never to never fail. The life that God intended for us is one that is filled in so much abundance of his love. And I'm gonna be closing with this is. The life that God truly has for us is one that is amazing. You know that word abundance? I think about it often because when God, when we ask for wisdom, we knock on the door. It shall be given to you. God doesn't just give it in little tiny increments. Here's just enough. Here's what you need for the next five minutes. He gives it to you, to us, to me, in a box. Abundance. This amazing gift that Jesus laid his life down for is the life that God intended to unite us, to bring all people together, to make heaven crowded. And it's all done out of the desire for a relationship with you and with me. And so this morning, I just wanna close with my desire for you to know who Jesus is more intimately, more deeply. And that when you walk out of the doors, that we can finish this year strong by knowing that we can just go and share the gospel with somebody. We can just tell somebody even three simple words, hey, Jesus loves you. I challenge our students a lot. And this morning I also want to do the same to you. And so some of you today, maybe you're not doing this. And hey, if you are, great. If you're not, great. But some of us are going to go out to eat after this, right? You know it's about lunchtime, right? You're gonna go out to eat this afternoon for lunch. You're gonna spend time with family. You're gonna be in circles of people who maybe don't know Jesus as well as you do, or at all. And my encouragement and my challenge to you is that you would just share with them how much Jesus loves them. Well, how much does Jesus love you? He loves you so much that he sent his only son to die on the cross for you. So that if you just choose to believe in him, he did it for everybody so that you could have eternal life. The greatest gift. You know, the Bible does all the work for us. We don't have to be creative with how we share the gospel. It's simple. He tells us in John 3:16, all it is is just a love for the redemptive story to rescue us out of where we are and to bring us to where he is. And so I'd just like to encourage you and challenge you with that this morning, that today you would make it the Lord's day, that tomorrow you'd make it the Lord's tomorrow and to continue to speak life because God has given you breath to speak and to share with those who are around you. Let's pray. Father God, we love you so much. Thank you for your word this morning. Thank you for your encouragement that God, you reach down to us even in the midst of tiredness, that you reach down to us in the midst of exhaustion, that you reach down to us in the midst of exactly where we are because you want to bring us to you. Father God, I pray that you would give us the motivation, the encouragement today. God, because your mercies are new for us this morning, that we will be able to go out and share you with those who are lost, overwhelmed and far from you. God, that you would be able to help us to connect people to you and to one another. God, giving us biblical community as we celebrate as the bride of Christ. God, to love you, to praise you, to worship you, because it rightfully belongs to you. God, I pray that all that we say and do would bring you the honor and the glory to this day. God, I pray that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's in Jesus. Mighty name we pray. Amen. [00:37:19] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week. [00:37:33] Speaker B: Sam.