Words have the power of creation. Jesus is the Word of God. If we think of our lives as a field or a garden, there are a

What is the area of my life I keep hoping no one will walk into?

Most of us have a tree line we don't point people toward. We show off the neat rows and quietly hope the overgrown part stays unvisited, even by God.

For Yahweh says to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem, “Break up your fallow ground, and don’t sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to Yahweh, and take away the foreskins of your heart, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go out like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.

Jeremiah 4:3–4

Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

Psalms 139:23–24

They heard Yahweh God’s voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden. Yahweh God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” The man said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

Genesis 3:8–10

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”

John 4:16–18

Why does one neglected area seem to spill into everything else?

A closed-off room with mold does not stay contained, and a weed does not stay in one corner of the lawn. The sermon says chaos in one part of a life keeps moving outward whether or not anyone sees the connection.

I saw the earth and, behold, it was waste and void, and the heavens, and they had no light. I saw the mountains, and behold, they trembled, and all the hills moved back and forth. I saw, and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the sky had fled. I saw, and behold, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all its cities were broken down at the presence of Yahweh, before his fierce anger.

Jeremiah 4:23–26

But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin. The sin, when it is full grown, produces death.

James 1:14–15

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place.

1 Corinthians 5:6–7

A little yeast grows through the whole lump.

Galatians 5:9

Can words really bring life to something this far gone?

God stood over a formless, empty world and spoke light into it. The sermon's claim is that he still does that, and that the same word which made the world is the word that meets the wreckage in a person.

The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Genesis 1:2–3

…seeing it is God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:6

Yahweh’s hand was on me, and he brought me out in Yahweh’s Spirit, and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass by them all around; and behold, there were very many in the open valley, and behold, they were very dry. He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I answered, “Lord Yahweh, you know.” Again he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and tell them, ‘You dry bones, hear Yahweh’s word. The Lord Yahweh says to these bones: “Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and you will live. I will lay sinews on you, and will bring up flesh on you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you will live. Then you will know that I am Yahweh.”’”

Ezekiel 37:1–6

For as the rain comes down and the snow from the sky, and doesn’t return there, but waters the earth, and makes it grow and bud, and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do.

Isaiah 55:10–11

What does it look like to actually let him in?

The sermon gives ordinary routes for the word to reach the uncultivated ground: a Sunday sermon acted on, a Bible read and responded to, a honest sentence from a friend, a confession spoken out loud. The man who told his wife he was done, and then changed his mind after the service, is the shape of it.

But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror; for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom and continues, not being a hearer who forgets but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.

James 1:22–25

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective.

James 5:16

Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens his friend’s countenance.

Proverbs 27:17

For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart. There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

Hebrews 4:12–13

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer. Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already pruned clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

John 15:1–3