MOUNTAIN OF FIRE AND MIRACLES MINISTRIES
International Headquarters, Lagos, Nigeria.
Sunday Worship Service
June 18th, 2023.
Topic: DEAD MEN IN THE SANCTUARY
Text: John 11:38–44, Revelation 3:1, Proverbs 7:22, 27, 21:16, 11:19, 18:21, 21:6, Revelation 20:12–15.
Ministering: Dr. Daniel Olukoya (G.O. MFM Worldwide)
Revelation 3:1 (KJV): “And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”
Lazarus had just one problem. Only one problem. But it was a big and mighty problem. A giant problem indeed. There was only one thing wrong with Lazarus, beloveth, but as a result of that one thing that was wrong with him, all things were wrong with him.
What was wrong with him? He was dead. Popularity does not count much when a man is dead. Handsomeness is irrelevant when a man is dead. Beauty has no value when a woman is dead. Academic qualifications have no voice when a person is dead.
In fact, to be quite honest with you, all things that we think are important lose their importance when death comes. All things that we hold dear lose their attraction when death comes.
A man of God was ministering somewhere in the street, and people were listening to him. There was a highly educated young man there as well, listening to this man of God. As the man of God continued to minister, this young man kept looking at him. So when the man of God finished his sermon, the young man went to the man of God and said, “Man of God, I have a question for you. In the last ten minutes, you have been talking about the heavy load of sin, but I do not feel any load on my head”.
The man of God replied him with a question and said, “If you put a heavy load on the head of a dead man, will he feel it?” He said “No, he will not”.
The man of God asked him, “Why?” The young man replied, “Because he is dead.” The man of God then said, “Likewise, the reason you cannot feel that you are carrying a heavy load of sin on your head is because you are dead.”
Beloveth, there is only one thing wrong with the people of the world today. They are dead, as far as the Bible is concerned. As a matter of fact, the world has a large population of dead people who move about as if they were living. It is a common sight to see dead men eating, drinking, laughing, crying, and getting married every Saturday in churches all over the place.
These dead people are all around us. As you are listening to the message this morning, you may be dead, as far as the Bible is concerned.
The Bible said, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead.” Meaning that sometimes before we begin to carry a corpse to the grave and say “Oh, this man is dead”, he might have died many years ago. We are just celebrating that he is dead now, but sometimes he probably never lived.
As you are here now, beloveth, you are certainly physically alive, no doubt. But do not assume that you are necessarily spiritually alive. It is possible that you are sitting down here this morning and have been coming here but have been dead a long time ago.
There are some simple signs that you can use to tell whether you are dead or alive. It is a simple thing to find out whether you are spiritually alive or dead.
Look, the first simple sign for any scientist or biologist is this: dead men have no appetite. When Lazarus was alive, he got hungry regularly. But once he died, he lost all interest in all the food his sisters were preparing, no matter how appetising the food was. No matter the delicious aroma that came from the kitchen, he was totally uninterested. No matter what combination of food was put on the table, he had no appetite for it anymore. Why? He was a dead man.
So one of the signs of spiritual deadness is a lack of appetite for God. This does not automatically imply a lack of appetite for church. You may be coming to church, no doubt. This does not indicate a lack of appetite for praise, worship, dancing, and shouting that God is good. It is easy to get church and God confused. You can have an appetite for church without an appetite for God. Lack of hunger for God means no spiritual appetite, and that usually means spiritual death. It will be a tragedy if you leave this morning’s service and your spiritual death still remains.
Once you notice that the Bible is a bore to you, you find it so boring to read, and although Jesus said it is more important than our daily bread, if you have no appetite to read it, it means that spiritually, you are dead.
There are thousands of people who come to church but have absolutely no hunger or appetite for God. There are people who are not interested in any Bible reading of any kind, even the little daily quiet time; they are not interested; they are dead. Many of them have different versions of the Bible in their homes, but they do not read any of them.
If you ask them to bring it, you can see that the whole of the Bible is new, apart from the book of Psalms. That is only where they are confessing victory over witches, and that is why it is dirty; the rest of it is clean.
It is easy to be jumping up and down the whole place and shouting “pastor preach!” but you are a dead person because after the service and you are asked the message, you do not know because you have no appetite for God; you are dead. The kind of word that will change your life is not the kind you hear and jump up and down. It is the kind you hear, and you fall on your knees and say, “Father, I am dead; revive me!”
It is easy to diagnose if you are dead spiritually. Check on your appetite for God, or your lack of it. When last did God sit you down and say “Son or daughter, I want to talk to you” and you said “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”? When was the last time you read ten chapters of your Bible nonstop? When was the last time you sat down to memorise the Word of God?
Do you find it easy to read your Bible the way you read newspapers or magazines? Or are you the type of person who reads the Bible because you want to go and minister somewhere or evangelise? You do not read the Bible for yourself; you are a dead person.
Or are you just reading the Bible because you want to argue with somebody? You are a dead person. It is tragic that when Jehovah’s witnesses face some “born-again Christians”, they find out that those “born-again Christians” have no knowledge of the Bible at all. Some cannot even open the chapter about the end of the world; they do not know where it is.
Some even come to church without their Bibles. Some come with the Gideons International Bible, which has just the books of Psalms, Proverbs, and the New Testament. And they come to church without even opening the Bible and expecting magic to happen; they are dead.
When Lazarus was alive, he was an active man. But the moment he died, all traces of activity ceased. That happens to a person too when he is spiritually dead. There is a complete absence of spiritual activity. They will not be able to point out one thing they are doing for Jesus. Once your life is not invested in the things of the kingdom, it is a dead life as far as heaven is concerned. And for many, there is already a vacancy for their position in heaven. Their position is being advertised. And when God begins to advertise your position as a vacancy, there is indeed trouble.
You have time for magazines; you have time to watch football, sports, television, and even home videos that are all over the place now; but you have no time for the things of God. You can talk to your friend for two hours, but you cannot talk to God nonstop for thirty minutes. There is no love in your heart for prayer, whereas prayer is a love affair between you and the Lord Almighty.
If you say you love a man or a woman, you can sit down and talk to them endlessly for hours. It is the same thing with prayer: it is a love affair between you and the Lord Almighty. The lack of activity for God on your part is a good indication of spiritual death.
Meaning that there are plenty of dead pastors and plenty of dead churches that are filled with human corpses. Mary and Martha loved Lazarus, but when he died, he no longer seemed aware of them.
There is no awareness in a dead man. Dead men do not love people or see danger; they are unmoved by tears or crying. They are totally insensitive to everything happening around them. When you are unable to measure and evaluate things around you on a spiritual basis, it is spiritual deadness. Beloveth, I stand before you here this morning to say that there are only three things a dead man needs:
1. Life!
2. Life!
3. Life!
The place of your spiritual deadness can be discerned from the daily routine of your life. You wake up in the morning with no prayer: deadness. You wake up in the morning, no quiet time: deadness. You wake up in the morning, without talking to the Lord about your day? Deadness. You wake up in the morning, and the first thing you rush to is your tooth brush and the bathroom. You have plenty of perfumes, but you do not have the aroma of the Holy Ghost. You do not talk to God at all. The only time you talk to God is when you have a bad dream or when you know you are going to have a challenging day.
So we can tell your deadness by the daily routine of your life. Now you rush into your car or a bus, mumbling words you ought to have mumbled at home. It is deadness. And when you carry that weak anointing into your place of work, then the enemy overshadows you. The first thing that Lazarus did when he heard “come forth!” was that he stopped living amongst the dead. You may be calling fire prayers, anybody can call fire prayers, but as far as heaven is concerned, he is a dead person.
How to Identify Dead People.
– Anyone who goes to prostitutes, whether enlightened or crude, is a dead person.
Proverbs 7:22 (KJV): “He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks;”
Proverbs 7:27 (KJV): “Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”
– If you lack understanding in the things of God, the Bible calls you a dead person.
Proverbs 21:16 (KJV): “The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.”
– When you are pursuing something you know is bad, the Bible calls you a dead person.
Proverbs 11:19 (KJV): “As righteousness tendeth to life: so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.”
– The Bible also says that as long as you are misusing your tongue, you are a dead person.
Proverbs 18:21 (KJV): “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”
– When you steal to get rich, you tell lies to get rich, you can sell your body to get rich, and the Bible calls you a dead person.
Proverbs 21:6 (KJV): “The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death.”
– When you have a familiar spirit, a witchcraft spirit, or you are a lodge member in the occult, as far as the Bible is concerned, you are a dead person.
– When all you think about is how to get money, how to get rich, and how to amass wealth, you are a dead person. Carnal mind is deadness.
Romans 8:6 (KJV): “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”
Unfortunately, if this deadness is not arrested, then the final deadness, which is in Revelation 20:14, is where a person will end up.
Revelation 20:14–15 (KJV): “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
And whosoever (pastor, man, woman) was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”
What is the implication of this? Many living corpses are going straight to the second death. If you are living with any known sin now, you are dead. This is why many people fall easy prey to the enemy. Once your soul is in the camp of Satan, you are dead. When you do not commit sin, Satan is a parasite. When you sin, he becomes the master, and he is the one who distributes death. By the time people are singing “We shall gather at the feet of Jesus” at a person’s grave, Satan has already gathered the person a long time ago.
What do we need to do here this morning? We need to sit down and think:
– Am I really alive?
– Am I revived?
– Is there revival in my soul?
– Have I improved beyond where I was, last year?
– Am I allowing my enemies to dictate the pace of my prayers, or am I praying because I want the power of God in me?
PRAYER POINTS.
1. My Father, break me and re-mould me! in the name of Jesus.
2. All my virtues that sin has stolen, I recover you now! in the name of Jesus.
3. O God, arise and revive me! in the name of Jesus.
4. My prayer life, receive fire! in the name of Jesus.
God bless you🙏