Build Up the Hedge - Pastor Raymond Woodward

Ezekiel chapter 22 verse 30 I've enjoyed every moment of the worship service tonight and I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land that I should not destroy it and for words that were the death knell for ancient Israel but I found none I want to read that one more time those of you at the back if you can put that on the screen Ezekiel 22 and 30 and I saw it for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land that I should not destroy it but I found none I looked I asked I was ready but I couldn't find anybody the next verse I don't even like reading therefore I have poured out mine indignation upon them I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath their own way have I recompense Tapani r heads saith the Lord God I don't have a sermon tonight that's not my comfort zone so [Music] Ryan if you'll stay put that'll probably help me and help everybody else God said I'm looking for two things I'm looking for some hedge builders and I'm looking for some gap standards you know from Scripture like I do that a hedge is a protective wall that keeps out enemies that's in every image of every battle in the Old Testament a wall a fence a hedge we read it in the book of Job that Satan he talked to God and he said job doesn't fear you for for nothing you've made a hedge about him you've made a hedge about his house you've made a hedge about everything he has on every side you've blessed him God you put a hedge around him you see a hedge is a protective wall that keeps out enemies especially the devil and when the hedge is broken down it allows satanic harassment in our lives there's a scripture in Ecclesiastes that says that whoever breaks down a hedge a serpent will come through that opening and bite him so it's a very serious thing to lose your hedge Isaiah spoke and in chapter 5 of that great prophetic book God said I will break down the wall thereof I'll take away the hedge thereof and my vineyard will be trodden down when a hedge is broken when a hedge is missing when a hedge has a hole in it it allows God's vineyard to be trampled and maybe most tragic of all in Psalm 80 verse 12 the psalmist says why hast thou then broken down our hedges so that all they which pass by do pluck or anybody can reach in and steal the fruit that was supposed to belong to the people of God spiritual fruit can be ruined there are a lot of impacts when a hedge is broken down when a hedge gets broken down in our families it allows the devil to get an advantage I'm not talking about a legalistic practice of Prayer I'm talking about a sincere heart practice of prayer I'm not talking about if you don't get your number of minutes in every day that suddenly you failed and you're hopeless and you might as well give up that's that's not biblical prayer is an ongoing relationship and conversation with God so away with the notion that if you don't pray like somebody else or as many minutes as somebody else that I'm somehow casting a stone at you I'm not I'm just saying there's a shocking lack of prayer in the modern church world we've got a lot of church we've got a lot of activity we've got a lot of religion we've got a lot of good helpful advice that comes across a lot of good pulpits but we need some hedge builders because you can attend the greatest churches in the world you can listen to great sermons you can scour the internet for inspiring preaching all the time but if we don't talk to God all bets are off and God said I'm looking for somebody to make up the hedge if there's anything in your life where it seems like it's not right it doesn't fit it irritates you it makes you agitate it it's it's sad it's hard it's depressing it's it's a burden then you need a hedge and if you've noticed that it's not right you're God's child you're filled with the spirit if you've noticed it's not right then you can be assured God's noticed it's not right and for reasons that he will only explain to us in eternity probably God has chosen his spiritual program of prayer to push the church forward in every generation that means if we don't pray for the most part God's not going to do what His Word says he's able to do because nobody's building up a hedge there are families in our church family that I believe could be turned around totally if somebody would just do the work of praying but when the enemy looks he sees crumbling stones and he sees moss grown up and he sees weeds grown up and there's huge gaping holes in the hedges around some families and so the enemy has an advantage but God said I'm looking for somebody I'm not talking about you breaking your back doing something crazy or legalistic I'm just talking about making sure that every day you say god you're welcome in my home and the devil's not welcome in my home god you're king here and the devil has no say or no sway in this house I'm talking about maybe going through your family and naming them and saying God keep your hand on my son my daughter my spouse my parents my siblings and devil take your hands off them in Jesus name I'm talking about somebody that gets a burden for a backslider and says I will not rest until they're restored to God building up the hedge God said through Ezekiel he said I'm looking for somebody I sought for a man I want somebody to make up the hedge there's a hole there's a gap I need somebody I need somebody to stand in the gap I'm looking for hedge builders and I'm looking for gap Stander's in the Old Testament kind of warfare when the enemy did break through a wall through a gate often it was just a little hole at the beginning and one soldier one brave soldier would sacrifice his life and he would block that hole and stand in the breach stand in the gap so that the enemy couldn't get in and that gave everybody else time to rally the troops nobody's talking about giving your life physically but we were raised we were birthed we were preached and prayed into existence by elders who stood in the gap and sacrificed themselves in prayer so that this church and other churches could be born and formed and grow there's a verse in Psalm 106 verse 23 therefore God said that he would destroy them ancient Israel had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breech to turn away his wrath lest he should destroy them if Moses hadn't stood up if Moses hadn't said God you can't do this to your people I know they're wrong but God you're merciful I know they're out of your will but God you're gracious and Moses stood in the breach and he turned away the wrath of God by his prayer we read in the Old Testament that more than 30 times God repented now we know that can't mean the way we talked about New Testament repentance that God was a sinner and he repented that's not what it means we would actually use the more modern word relented God was going to do something but because somebody prayed because somebody stood because somebody fought it's not that God changed his character but he altered his action toward mankind as a gap stander said God I know you're right to do this I know you're right to let judgment fall I know that you're right to let consequences come into their life because they're out of your will but God your merciful and so I'm just here to remind you of your promise in your mercy and gap Stander's carry out God's purposes through intercessory prayer for the last several weeks both our adults and our youth on Wednesday nights have been off and on a series called if the young people the the youth staff they they they took the same title but they said they were going to brand it different which basically means we can do it cooler than you can't pastor so they did their own thing but we've been talking about prayer on all levels of this church for the last few weeks and brother Gowen stepped up here to the pulpit and just kind of flowed right into that and quoted what has been our theme scripture for the last five or six weeks if my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven I will forgive their sin I will heal their land I'm not on a rant I just know that we've got a few broken down hedges and I know there's a few gaps and the problem with broken-down hedges and gaps is that every once in a while somebody we love can slip through the crack slip through the hole slip through the gap slip through the breech and we don't want that because he turn it he's too long and heavens to real and we've been talking about prayer for weeks on Bible study night and so I really didn't want to preach this tonight because number one it's not much of a sermon and number two it's kind of like more of the same but until we get it and do it and we see the release of it it's not that we're doing something wrong you know you can do something right but just not be there yet we're on the road we're good people we love Jesus we want to see his kingdom come and his will be done this is not that we're doing wrong we're doing it we're just not there yet we're on the road so don't interpret pasture as beating up on you we're talking down to you or saying you're not right we are right but we're just not there yet but God helping us we're gonna get there there are enough back sliders in the greater Fredericton area to pack this building more than once there are enough back sliders represented by the families in this church to fill up every empty seat in this room but there are also people who've never even had the chance to hear the gospel in this city they don't know anything about Jesus name they don't know anything about the blood or the spirit of the Bible and we're after them too for the last few weeks I don't know what the youth have been doing and they're much better much cooler series I just know they've been talking about prayer and I'm grateful but we've been talking about some prayer patterns and prayer patterns aren't wrong we've talked about the Lord's Prayer we've talked about putting on the armor of God we've talked about praying through the tabernacle and the reason we took time on Wednesday nights to talk through that some people consider that legalism because you know if you've got a pattern of Prayer then you're not really praying and I would respectfully disagree since Jesus himself gave His disciples a pattern for prayer when he said when they said teach us to pray he said here's basically the things you should cover guys and you should do this every day give us this day our daily bread don't just do this at special moments of consecration don't just do this when you get in fellowship with other believers but every day these are some things you need to talk about in prayer and so we walk briefly through some of those prayer patterns in our series on Wednesday and I'm not gonna revisit that tonight I actually got the guys to be ready just in case I wanted to but I don't feel to do that you can go back and you can watch that to your heart's content online it'll be there as long as there's an internet but [Music] I'm concerned you'll interpret my message tonight what little message it is as a downer when it's not it's actually a pastor who knows the potential of this great church in prayer we've seen it brother Scott last Sunday night rehearsed some of the things that God has done this year as the church prayed it's not that we're not doing it or we're not doing it right it's just that we really need all hands on deck some of you the gift you could give Jesus this Christmas would be to establish and carve out a regular daily time in prayer and in the word it's the only nasty thing I'll say tonight you do it for Facebook every day you know more about everybody else's stuff and business and activities you even know what people are eating for dinner and banquets and so if we can do that I'm not saying don't do that go ahead knock yourself out if you're that interested in somebody's dessert you fulfill your gift of knows eNOS I'm not saying don't do that I'm just saying if we can do that we have time and that's the only nasty thing I'll say tonight I just feel compelled to come to this service and say to our young people who've been hearing about prayer and our adults who've been hearing about prayer we're teaching our little children in Sunday school to pray those little elementary prayers that you don't think they do much but my goodness when twenty thirty forty years later they're still living for God those little prayers they're learning to pray they accomplished something so the thing about prayer is God's looking for people to pray I love everything we do he's not looking for people to sing we love to sing he's not looking for people to play instruments we love that that's biblical happened all through the Bible he's not looking for people to organize or strategize we do that and we need to he's looking for people to pray not everybody in a local church family's gonna pray we've got new believers we've got people that are still just checking us out we've got people that are just beginning to attend not everybody's going to pray so if among those of us that are the core of a church if we're not consistently praying we've got an exponential amount of dead weight so to speak because they're just starting they're just learning so we need more prayer not less we need more consistent prayer not sporadic prayer what a rotten rotten sermon but what a necessary word would you lift your hands right now in the presence of God and passers done I'm done [Music] Osho sub ticking [Music] the greatest gift you could give Jesus the greatest gift you could give yourself the greatest gift you could give your family the greatest gift you could give your friends the greatest gift you could give this church is to carve out a faithful consistent daily time in the word and in prayer it will help you like nothing else it'll repair the gaps in your life it'll repair the hedge around your home a Lobato chef sabaha [Music] power ship you Jesus [Music] that's it for preaching tonight if you're visiting with us I know it's probably a little intense and but you do want CCC to be a pray in church for any time you visit us because you never know when it'll be your family yourself your home your kids that have a need and although it takes a little bit of pushing to keep a church focused on praying you do even if this isn't your church and you visit us from time to time you do want CCC to be a pray in church I promise you that because when God's people pray God said I will hear from heaven so we're gonna just end around the altar tonight and I know we've already been here once and that's alright I'm not asking for you to come and pray for anybody else I'm asking for people that would come and we've been talking about this in the last few weeks I'm asking for people that would come thank you and make a commitment not to me not to this church make a commitment to God about prayer just you know where you are in prayer and you know what your next step is maybe you need to carve out a daily time in prayer maybe you need to expand that time maybe you need to make it more consistent somehow maybe you need to take one of the prayer patterns we've been talking about and and just ramp it up a little bit so I'm not asking for anything weird or spooky or strange and I'm just asking for you to come and talk to Jesus for a moment and that'll be the end of our service tonight so if you need to you can slip out thank you so much for being here tonight on a day when the weather's not cooperative what a beautiful attendance in the house of God thank you Jesus thank you Jesus I worship you God [Music] thank you Jesus thank you God thank you Jesus if it helps you lift your hands and pray if it helps you lift your voice and pray if it helps you kneel and pray whatever you need to do you know si si but to push Ledo Laboratory of Shah Baba Casillas you

Channel: Capital Community Church

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Keywords: pastor, raymond, woodward, raymond woodward, preach, sermon, build, up, the, hedge, sunday, evening, build up the hedge, preaching, ccc, capital, community, church, fredericton, nb, new, brunswick, canada, new brunswick, upc, upci, united, pentecostal, international, apostolic, christian, pentecost

Id: UjVOI7uK4lc

Length: 23min 58sec (1438 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 02 2018