Tearing Down & Uprooting

Going to be speaking out of Jeremiah chapter one tonight. And I'm going to be referencing, especially here in the beginning, some of what Janet taught us last week, and then also some ways that the Lord spoke to us through Janet and then through his gifts in operation. And honestly, like, Janet is literally in my, like, 10 top. I don't know how many, three or four Bible teachers of all time. Like, I love Janet Roberts.

Somehow I forgot that she was teaching on Jeremiah. I guess a month ago she started it. And then. So even though she's my favorite, I forgot that. So sorry.

Josh would never forget that. But I forgot that. But in forgetting that, the Lord had been speaking to me for a couple of days leading up to last Wednesday out of Jeremiah 1:10. And this may sound weird, but I think the Lord just has to do these things with me because it takes me a while to see it. But there were several mornings in a row that I even Woke up at 1:10.

And so I knew God was speaking to me. This happened several days in a row. I knew he had a clear message for me. In Jeremiah 1:10. We're gonna look at more than Jeremiah 1:10.

Some of you are already reading it, because I'm the same way. But we'll get there in a minute. But we're going to read more verses than that. But we're really going to focus on Jeremiah 1:10. And the Lord had been speaking to me personally.

But then when hearing what Janet was, what the Lord had Janet bring, and then kind of the events that unfolded as there was a message in tongues given and an interpretation last week. I'll talk about that in a little bit. I knew that God has a message for all of us in this. By way of a very quick and sloppy and not worthy review, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what Janet laid out last week. But I really encourage you to go back and listen to that message.

Not only was it incredible, but I believe it was a now word for the church and really a warning, a loving warning for all of us. But Janet showed us how Jeremiah's message to Judah really began. We're talking about the southern part of Israel. His message to the people of God there in Judah began at a time of cleansing of the nation. There had been really wicked kings.

And then Josiah became king. And several years into his reign, he had done a lot of things for the kingdom of God. And then Jeremiah was set as a prophet. Janet taught us last week that the people of God, the people of Judah, we're living Kind of under a false security based on God's long suffering in the past. And I felt particularly convicted at even that idea that we can kind of we need to rest.

Our security is in him and his long suffering with us and his patience with us. But for us to be dismissive of our practices and the focuses of our life, that the Lord will was calling us back. And I felt a parallel to Israel in that way. And Janet brought to us profound ideas as it relates to revival and reform. I don't have time to lay that out, but to reduce it in the summary she gave us.

Revival changes the hearts of people. Reform changes aspects of society and specifically institutions in society. Revival leads to reform, and reform begins with revival. So as Janet taught us, Jeremiah was called to bring a strong message to Judah. It was one of judgment.

Last week, the Lord brought a strong message to us through Janet. But in Jeremiah's case, the message was brought to a people that didn't want to hear it. Hopefully that's not the case of all of us. And at the time, there were false prophets telling the people, everything's gonna be okay, and ultimately we know it is. But they thought they could continue in their practices and their compromise and their lethargy.

And in this false sense of security, there's kind of this mix of, like, grabbing on to what their itching ears wanted to hear. And God sent Jeremiah and who was called from the moment he was conceived in his mother's womb. And Janet talked to us about that the first time she taught on Jeremiah and the consecration of the call. But now Jeremiah has the dismal task of bringing a warning to the people that if ignored, would lead to many casualties and much destruction. Fairly accurate, Janet.

That's okay. I made it sound better. I knew I would. She didn't say that. I just pretended she did.

But in the task, Jeremiah wanted to quit the ministry, but he couldn't, because the word of the Lord was like a fire burning in his heart. And I can tell you, I come to you with feeling this message like a fire burning in my heart, but not because I'm so consecrated or so called. Hopefully I am those things to some measure, but because of the intentionality of the Lord in my own life, I am burning with this. Jeremiah was one that was. He was tough and tender.

He was called the Weeping Prophet. He was a tender warrior, like the Men's Saturday. Like, if you have a pulse, he said you could come. I mean, then he said, it'll be really challenging, so maybe you could just go as A weeping, tender warrior. But Jeremiah, he was fearless and he was bold.

He was tough and he was tender. And that's super important as we our voices crying in the wilderness as prophets to the people of God. And I don't just mean those of us that have a microphone. I mean those of us that are set in this hour to announce what God is saying. Someone once said, and I tried to find who it was today, I couldn't.

So someone once said, you have no right to preach on hell until you have wept because of it. I think that's a good instruction for those bringing the Thus saith the Lord. I don't mean just from the stage. I mean with our neighbors, to our families. And Jeremiah did indeed weep over his messages.

Why am I taking time to tell you this? Because this isn't some corrective, heavy thing. It's a pleading the Lord with us. Jeremiah was likened to Jesus. There were.

If you read through the. Through his prophecies and through the book of Jeremiah, there are many similarities, but many acknowledged it. Even when the disciples. Even when Jesus asked the disciples, who do people say that I am? Remember their answer.

Some say John the Baptist, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. So there was a definite parallel. And just as Jeremiah was the weeping prophet, Jesus wept over Jerusalem. I've been praying for all of us today that we would hear his weeping, his pleading. I had the privilege of teaching the second installment of my class with rds.

This little light menu on the book of Revelation. Did you like it, Kenny? They were a tough crowd today. A little bit. But we were all weeping at the end and just asking for a spirit of Revelation to see the one on the throne.

There's one on the throne that holds the scroll, and then there's the Son that comes and opens the scroll. And in that worship context, the window that John the Revelator was seeing, there's an invitation to see behind the curtain of what's happening in heaven. And then we get to enter into that. Jesus doesn't come as this angry man full of justice. He is full of justice.

And he is passionate about the truth and people living righteously. But he comes as a weeping. It comes as a weeping pleading. In Matthew 23, verse 37, there's a lament for Jerusalem. This isn't passive aggressive.

I'm really asking. Do I sound particularly loud?

Okay, good. Keep it as it is, I guess. Sounds like I'm yelling. I don't mean to be. O Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. These are Jesus words. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing? He said this through weeping Jeremiah, and I believe Janet referenced this, said, oh, that my head were water and my eyes a fountain of tears. Then, in other words, I would have the substance in my body to weep day and night for my people.

May we hear the one weeping over his desire to see a church alive and awake and uncompromising. So I come to you in the context of teaching right now out of Revelation. I always kind of get in a different zone and place with the Lord when I teach on those topics. And so I'm coming to you from that place. And I think the Lord has intention in it.

There's a statement that I repeated with the students about the book of Revelation, but specifically the sections we looked at today, looking at the letters to the churches, I've said over and over, we have to remember, like, when we approach the book of Revelation, it was one of the genres that Revelation hits. It was a letter, it was a prophecy, or not was is, and it's an apocalypse. But in the letter portion, we have to remember it was written to a real group of people in Asia Minor. It was written to what's now modern day Turkey. There were churches with strengths and weaknesses, and so it was written to them, but it was written for us, so it can't mean anything to us that it didn't mean for them.

So it goes for the book of Jeremiah. This was written to a real people group, and it was written to them, but it was written for us, so may we receive it in that way. The Lord has a word for us in this time and in this hour. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but it is dramatic. He has a word through the prophet Jeremiah, and he has a word for us.

It was written to Judah, but for us. We're going to look at seven verses in Jeremiah 1, but then we're going to focus almost exclusively on verse 10, Jeremiah 1, starting with verse 4. The word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born. I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

Alas, sovereign Lord, I said, I do not know how to speak. I'm too young. But the Lord said to me, do not say I'm too young. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.

Declares the Lord, verse 9. Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over the nations to do these things. To uproot, to tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant. I wanted to.

Initially I was gonna title the message tonight, Deconstruction, God's Way. But then I read like four articles on deconstruction over the last few days. And the authors of those articles said, you can never put a positive slant on deconstruction. So we're not titling it that. So why did I tell you that?

I don't know. I just wanted to because I thought it was really creative at the time. But maybe heresy. Deconstruction is never good.

But I am going to talk to you about tearing down and uprooting. God sent Jeremiah. He said, this is me sending you. And he sent him to uproot, to tear down, to destroy, and to overthrow. You guys excited about this message?

This kind of destruction makes up most of the book of Jeremiah and really all the prophets for that matter. But it doesn't end. The commission to Jeremiah doesn't end with destruction. Janet did a beautiful job showing that to us last week. He said, I've also sent you to build and to plant.

But there are some things that need to happen. First, the same power with which God brought judgment against the brokenness of Israel is the power with which he promised to rebuild what was broken and to plant where things had been uprooted. But if he's promising to build what has been broken and to plant where things have been uprooted, that means things have to be torn down and things have to be dug up. Isn't that fun and exciting? It really is.

Paul explicitly warns in second Timothy3.5 about those that are always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of truth. And there is a pleading in his heart for us that we would come to the knowledge of truth. Well, at the end of Janet's message last week, she asked me before this not to mention her. So I'm trying to mention her as much as I possibly can. But at the end of her message, she just prayed, Holy Spirit, would you minister, would you speak?

Would you speak to the hearts? And then a message in tongues came from one of our elders, Jonathan Daniel. And then God brought a message through an interpretation of those tongues through Michael Roberts and Summer. Daniel transcribed it for us. I'm gonna read it to you.

Cause I think it's important for what we're gonna look at tonight. This is what the Lord spoke to the refuge last Wednesday. I said that I would come to bring peace. Bring a sword. There will be times when families will be divided because of your commitment to me.

It may cost you on your job, it may cost you finances because of your commitment to me. It may look different for each and every one of you. I will share with you what that will look like for you. Pick up my cross and pick it up daily. For each day will have another opportunity for you to bring my word.

Ultimately, bring my sword. But be of good cheer. Do not be afraid. I have overcome the world. I will take care of you.

I will replace anything a hundredfold what you may lose, not only in heaven, but on this earth. As I've said in my word, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Tonight I'm going to speak on the idea of tearing down and uprooting. But don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid. For the sake of building and planting, many I've talked to as of late, friends, fellow sojourners, even staff members this week have been experiencing a season of stripping away. This has been my experience over the last couple years, and I took hold of what you prayed, Pastor Andrew, like, let's don't pitch our tent in these seasons of death and destruction. And that's not what the Lord wants. We're not to pitch our tents there.

But there is a tearing down and uprooting because of what he's sending. And I'm telling you, he's after some things. He's after some modes of operanda, he's after some ways of thinking, and he does it in this unique way through the tearing down and the uprooting. I can tell you at age 54, probably in the last two to three years, so these early years of my 50s, I have experienced more uprooting and more tearing down than any other time in my life. And I can testify to you with confidence.

The Lord is so in it. Maybe not every detail of how it's expressed, but ultimately his plan in the midst of it. Not only is nothing wasted, but he's in it. He's in it. He's in it.

I tried to come up with a list that would have some kind of rhythm, that would be easy for you to remember. I failed. So just don't have an attitude. Just bear with me. I did my best.

I'm just gonna give you a list of four things that we need to know about the tearing down and the uprooting the first one, number one. Tearing down and uprooting it is necessary for revival. And God wants revival, and we want revival. Come on. I mean, is it true?

Do we want revival? It's not a trick question. It does require some things, but it's not a trick question. In Isaiah 57, verse 15, the Lord speaks through the prophet. I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite, the lowly.

I think it's a heart where some things have been uprooted. The heart of the contrite. We've allowed some things to be torn down. And he's leaving no stone unturned. That's something he spoke to different ones in leadership and then over our body.

About five years ago, he started speaking that he's leaving no stone unturned. It's not an unfamiliar idiom to you guys? It's an idiom that means make every possible effort to achieve a goal, to find something, implying a thorough and exhaustive search or attempt. He's leaving no stone unturned. We want revival.

It's a searching out. And in the same idea of leaving no stone unturned, I'm going to read out of Ezekiel 36, 24 through 27. Ezekiel's prophetic ministry and Jeremiah's prophetic ministry did have some overlap. This is what Ezekiel said to the people of Judah. For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries.

And I will bring you back into your own land. I will also sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. I will give you a new heart. Say new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you.

Say new spirit. He's here to do it tonight. He's here to start it tonight. A new heart. A new spirit.

I will remove your heart of stone. He's leaving no stone unturned. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you because you and cause you to walk in my statutes and to carefully observe my ordinances. He wants to tear down some walls of protection that we've built around our hearts.

The phrase heart of flesh, the word flesh there literally means full of senses and feelings.

So the phrase heart of stone denotes a hardness or a deadening of feelings. And some of you are just fine with that because it's easier to navigate the treacherous waters when you don't feel. But he says, that is not. I will tear down that wall if you'll let me. And I'm sending the prophets to tell you I'm tearing down some things, I'm uprooting some things so that I can rebuild and so I can plant the phrase stone there.

And I'm telling you I believe the Holy Spirit led me to this. So clearly. I don't think it's a stretch. Just stay with me. The word stone there is a word that's used many times, but particularly in the Old Testament and the top three biblical applications of the word stone.

And I'll show you why I'm sharing this with you in a moment, but just lean in a stone. One of the predominant applications is a pillow used for the head.

Like when Esau saw the ladder, you know, he was laying on a stone. It shows up as a pillow for the head. That's the first one. The second, a cover for a well. And the third most predominant application is a hand missile for stoning.

Why is that important? Because these walls of protection, these hearts of stone that he wants to tear down, are often built. Think about the pillow in an effort to numb the pain.

And the problem with that is we're lulled to sleep. It's spiritual lethargy. And I'm telling you, for me, there are times I'm like, lord, help me not have to feel all of this. I don't want to feel all of this. But in that pleading with him, if I take this heart of stone around my heart, it's like the pillow under my head, I'm in lethargy, and he's wanting to tear it down.

So the pillow for the head, the COVID for the well, these stony walls that we've built, become an obstacle to the living water flowing into us and flowing from us. The stony heart, its spiritual lethargy. It's stopping the flow of the spirit of God into us and out of us. And these walls of protection, we like that they're there. But he's like, no, I'm gonna give you a heart of flesh for a heart of stone.

Do you want revival? Then I'm gonna tear down some things. I'm gonna uproot some things. And then the third one is a missile for stoning. If we're not careful.

These walls of protection that we build, and it's just to protect the pain, it's just to protect the struggle, they often become a people around us and he says, I'm coming to tear that down. Jeremiah, I'm sending you. Those stones have to come down. Those buildings have to come down. Those fruitless plants have to be uprooted.

And he's leaving no stone unturned. He's tearing down church brick by brick. Don't resist it. Things we need to know about the tearing down and uprooting. Number one, it's necessary for revival.

Number two, this is just something you need to know about. Tearing down and uprooting. God's wrath and God's discipline are not the same thing. We often confuse it. It's not the same.

And in my season, I've just been like, God, is this punishment or. Or. No, it's discipline. Well, discipline. Sounds like I'm getting in trouble for something.

No, no. God's wrath and God's discipline are not the same thing. God's wrath is directed at his enemies. The people of Judah were not his enemies.

That's good news. I'm a lot more excited than you are. The people of Judah were not his enemies. We're not his enemies.

To you. A message of wrath tonight. Oh, will it turn to wrath to the American church if we don't wake up? Absolutely. But it is a message of discipline.

The people of Judah were not his enemies. God's discipline is reserved for the ones he loves. We know that. But in terms of letting that breathe in our hearts, we have a harder time. The Bible instructs us, don't be upset by God's discipline and don't reject his correction.

We're to welcome it. Why do we welcome it? Because it's proof that he's our Father and it's proof that he loves us. He delights in correcting his beloved children because we are his and he knows what he's bringing us to. His goal for discipline in both the Old and New Covenants is to train his people in righteousness and to bring them into life, giving submission to his will and to his word.

In First Corinthians 9, 24, 27, it says, do you not know that in a race all the runners run? But only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.

So I do not run aimlessly. This isn't just an aimless running around hoping that life turns out okay and the Lord will toss us a few crumbs of his presence. No, no, no. I'm not boxing as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified.

I love this passage of Scripture in the context of what we're talking about, because when we think about disciplining our bodies for the sake of health or athleticism or for the race, then we go, okay, wait, that kind of discipline isn't punishment. But yet when we think about the discipline of the Lord, we kind of divide it in our hearts and minds as punishment. But the Hebrew and Greek words translated as discipline literally mean instruction, training, rebuke, reproof, warning, and correction. Discipline is a vital aspect of the spiritual life, and we run from it. You can't be a disciple without discipline.

It's actually the same word. Discipleship is a lifelong learning process of following Jesus and His way, not our own. God's discipline is not because he's angry. It's actually quite the opposite. It's because he loves us, and it's because he's holy, and if we're going to be his kids, we're going to do it his way.

Revelation 9 or Revelation 3:19 and 20. And the Lord really highlighted this in our class today on Revelation, because we really only unpacked or looked at the verses of the letter written to the church in Laodicea. So in Revelation 3:19 and 20, this is taken from that. It says, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent.

Like, be thankful. Be thankful that I tear down and I uproot, because it's a sign that I love you, that I have a plan for you. Like, be zealous about it, be happy about it, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and.

And eat with him and he with me. Well, I told the students today, I've always loved that image, that picture of Jesus standing at the door and knocking. Just his kindness, his pursuit of us. It's really unbelievable. I mean, the letter to the church, right before Laodicea, Jesus is revealed as the one who has the keys of David, who can open any door he wants to.

He opens doors. No man. And he shuts doors that no man can open. Basically, he's like, I don't have to knock. I have the keys.

Yet I stand at the door and knock. I love that image. But do you know that image is in the context of discipline? And for those of us that are crying out, like, lord, we just want to please you, we Want to satisfy your dream? For my life and for the church.

He says, okay. I stand at the door and knock.

When we hear him knocking, how often are we like, oh, boy. Like, I'm coming with reproof. I'm coming with discipline. Because you're still alive and you need transformation. And as long as we reject the process, revival can't come.

Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verses 2 and 3. I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound. My beloved is knocking. And these are his words outside the door, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one.

For my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night. And this is her response because she understands the knock. Like, invite me in, and we're gonna talk about some stuff. I'm gonna affirm you, but I'm gonna deal with these walls of protection. I want you whole and these patterns that you're repeating because of trauma, because of pain, because of your own choices.

I want to come after them. She understood it. And even though he was saying, my love, I'm knocking. I want you, her response is, I took my clothes off already. Do I have to put them on again?

I bathed my feet. Do I have to soil them again? And he's here before us, not with wrath, but with love, knocking on the door. I've talked about this so much over these last couple of years, but five or six years ago, in a prayer meeting, Pastor Steph said to me, terri, the Lord's making you the woman you always wanted to be but never thought possible. I told the students today through tears, I said to the Lord in that moment, yes, do it, God.

And if he would have shown me all the ingredients of what that would mean, I wouldn't have said yes. I can't even tell you for sure. I would say yes today. But I do know that the fruit of it I would not trade. So he's knocking and he's tearing down the stones, and he's coming not with wrath, but with discipline.

Will you open the door?

What you need to know about tearing down and uprooting, it's necessary for revival. Number two, God's wrath and discipline are not the same thing. Number three. God sometimes wounds us to heal us.

He wounds us to heal us. God instructed the prophet Hosea, it's one of the great mysteries of the Bible, to take Gomer as his wife. Different debates. Some theologians say, well, Hosea was saying that she should be his wife before she was actually unfaithful. But most theologians agree, no, God fully knew and he was setting up a story of a faithful husband pursuing an unfaithful wife.

So God commanded Hosea to take an unfaithful woman, and it set up a model of Israel's broken relationship with God. Israel had been chosen and loved by God, yet had been unfaithful to him through their idolatry. And just as Hosea redeemed his estranged wife and sought to continue his relationship with her, God promised to redeem Israel and renew their relationship with him. It was written to them. But for us, this story is an unforgettable picture of God's strong and ending love for his covenant people.

But in God's pursuit, Hosea's pursuit of the unfaithful wife. Hosea representing God, Gomer representing you and I. God strips Gomer of grain, of wine, of the fabrics that would be the covering of her clothes. He caused her vines and her fig trees to be ruined. And we look at that as oh, that's the wrath of God.

No, it would have become the wrath of God if she didn't respond to the discipline of God in Hosea 2:14, 16. This is God speaking about Gomer. This is God speaking about you and I. Therefore, I'm now going to allure her and I'm going to lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards.

Remember when I said her vines were ruined? It's in the wilderness that he gives it back. And he makes the valley of Achor, the place of a lot of death, a door of hope. And it's in that place she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband, and you will no longer call me my master.

There is something about the wilderness, there is something about the stripping away that turns our heart to recognize the beauty of this one. We cannot get out of it. But it is at the end we say, no, I belong to you, husband, not master. I don't look at the tearing down and the uprooting as unkind. You're actually bringing me into intimacy.

We go further into Hosea, and in chapter five, God says he's going to be like a lion to the people of Judah. He says, I'm going to tear them to pieces. That's God, and it's not even his wrath. He says, I'm going to tear them to pieces and then go away until they seek my face. Going to go away until they earnestly seek me.

And then in the first verse of Hosea 6, it says, Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us. He has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds. Are you saying the trouble I've walked through is because I've done something wrong? No, I'm saying that our humanity needs instruction and training and correction.

We need refining. We try to separate the two. The refiner's fire is because he's making us like beautiful gold. That's who represents his beauty. He's bringing us forth as gold.

And in eternity we're going to say thank you for all of it, God, as we enter into our reward. And he does it so that we can know his healing and his restoration. The lion then comes to breathe his breath. Ooh, I feel the Holy Spirit on our stinging wounds. He will bind us up, but we have to let him tear down the wall.

Romans 11:22 speaks of the kindness and severity of God, and he is both.

I wrote this statement down. It felt kind of out of place when I wrote it down. But the Lord, I really feel like it was the Lord that wouldn't let me erase it. We've got to stop putting band aids on soul level wounds.

These soul level wounds are often what inform how we view ourselves, how we view God, and how we treat others. It's not working. We can't put band aids on soul level wounds. It's like if we have this terrible thing against our body where we're in need of stitches and surgery and we just cover it up with a band aid, it doesn't work. It's not going to heal that way.

We have to let him in. And our response when there's a wound, it's like when you're a little kid and you skin your knee. We put our hands over that wounded place on our knee, right? And then your mom or dad's like, baby, you have to remove your hands. I have to get to it to heal it.

Like, that's our response. And I'm telling you, I've seen the picture over my own life over the last couple of weeks. And I was praying for you today. This is what we've done. Like, no, stay away.

I'm good. It'll heal. Just please leave me alone. And we can't do that. He's tearing down and he's uprooting because he wants to renew us and establish us.

And that's the fourth and final thing we need to know about the tearing down and the uprooting. It's for the sake of building and planting.

Jeremiah 24, verse 6. So closer to the end of the book, after all of this, that he's sent to Judah, he said, but I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down. The day's coming, friends. I will plant them and not pluck them up.

God's calling us to the Isaiah 60:1 reality. I'm going to read a few verses out of that.

The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives. And release from darkness. And release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor in the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness.

A planting for the display. A planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. So when he's uprooting stuff, he's saying, because you're becoming a planting of the Lord for my splendor. An oak of righteousness. Verse 4.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated. They will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. I'm telling you, he wants to do it. I can hear the sound of revival drawing near. But it won't come without the uprooting, without the tearing down.

We're called to be oaks of righteousness. To display the Lord's splendor. We will rebuild the ancient ruins. We will restore places long devastated. But we have.

Some of them have to be devastated first. We will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. But we must first revisit the ancient ruins. After the walls are dismantled stone by stone with God. We will rebuild.

Psalm 32, verse 3. When I kept silent, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. This is specifically talking about a silence over our sin and even our pain. Things that have been done against us, we cannot hold it in. We have to let it come.

Just coping with the pain is not healing.

It allows the enemy to continue to have a foothold, and he's after it. There's different ways we cope with the pain very quickly. Pastor Trent, if you wouldn't mind coming to the keys. We're gonna respond to the Lord. We cope with the pain through isolation, pulling away from relationships.

We cope with the pain through introjection, holding the pain inside. We deal with the pain by projection, turning the pain outward. We attack others, we criticize, we blame, we rage. We cope with the pain through addiction, medicating the pain. Tv, social media, food, alcohol, pornography, whatever it is.

We cope with the pain through addiction. We cope with the pain through codependency, relationship addiction, the need to rescue people, the need to fix people, the need to be rescued, the need to be fixed, enabling people, controlling, being people pleasing. We've got to come out of agreement with those things. We've made these vows with things. This is for you, Gracie.

Vows are declarations we make most often at times of offense or hurt, whether intentionally or subconsciously. We build up that wall and we say, no, that's never gonna touch me again. And many of us have made decisions in childhood and we're doing pretty well with what we've been through. But he's leaving no stone unturned. They affect our relationships in childhood.

It's time we renounce these vows we've made because if we don't, we're gonna continue to be trapped in vicious cycles of unhealthy or beliefs. I'm here to tell you some of you have settled with things being just okay in your lives, in your marriages, with your kids, coming to church, and you're here on Wednesday night, like, I'm there. I could be doing other things. And he's saying, no, it's all these stony places in your heart that I want to tear down. And there's these plants that aren't fruitful, these trees that aren't fruitful that have to be uprooted so I can get some new seed down in you.

Because I'm telling you, the new trees that are coming, they're going to grow quickly, they're going to provide shade for many, and it's going to be beyond what our wildest spiritual dreams have envisioned. But we have to start with The Yes. So three nights in a row of or mornings of 1:10am Terri, I'm coming to tear down. Like, is there any. Is there a stone left in my life?

Yes, and I'm coming to uproot. But I need you to set your gaze on me. Because what we're building, what we're growing is worth what you think yourself. It's worth infinitely more than whatever you're self preserving for, for the pain, whether it's the regret of your own sin or what's happened to you. It will define you until you get free of it.

He's not okay with it.

It's Jesus in Luke 4:18 that quotes Isaiah 60:1 about the plantings of the Lord and the ancient ruins being rebuilt.

Because he is coming. He came to earth and he's coming again. But he wants to send the Spirit to make us alive in him again. But we can't keep. And Janet encouraged us in this last week.

We don't get to decide. Like, you can have that room, but not that closet. You can have this part, but not that. You don't know what they did to me. And I can't keep giving of myself because of the ways they are towards me.

Don't be thinking about people that are holding those things against you. I'm talking about us. We have to let go of it.

Because tearing down and uprooting is necessary for revival. And it's not the same as the wrath of God. It's the discipline of God. Because he loves us and he sees what we're becoming. We say yes to it.

The tearing down and the uprooting. Because sometimes he wounds us like a surgeon, cuts us open so he can heal us.

And he does it so he can rebuild and establish us. So Lord, in the name of Jesus, may your sons and daughters here. You're weeping like a hen over her chicks. I want you whole. I want you restored.

I want you vibrant. I want you alive. A little plant isn't enough? A washed out building isn't enough? No.

I'm bringing you into something better.