Empty And Void 2 by Apostle Femi Lazarus: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The Foundations of the Earth Are Pillars

God has put structures in place as protocols — foundations and pillars on which the earth was designed to rest. The reason people suffer, the reason there is injustice, the reason there is so much pain in the world is not that God is absent. It is that those foundations are out of course. And they are out of course because God's children were convinced they have no business with this place — that their only assignment is going to heaven.

Heaven is real. But if a person has lived hell here, the chances of misbehaving and missing heaven are high.

God is not happy when people suffer. It breaks his heart. The image of human beings being lined up, hands tied behind their backs, and shot one by one — God sees that. Millions of people's dreams, plans, visions, and ambitions end there. That is not something God is indifferent to.

The Bible Has Been Used as a Weapon

A journal from 1785 written by a slaver described the brutal methods used to discipline enslaved people — methods so grotesque they cannot be repeated here. And those people read the Bible. They claimed the Bible.

Psalms 82:1-5

"God stands in the congregation of the mighty; he judges among the gods. How long will he judge unjustly and accept the persons of the wicked? Defend the poor and fatherless. Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy; rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course."

The Bible is not the problem. People have recruited certain things inside it and used them for their own advantage and against people. Just as a knife can cut tomatoes or kill — the issue is never the word. It is the hand holding it and the heart behind it.

A generation is now asking questions, finding those things, and — if care is not taken — hating both the people who introduced this God to them and God himself. That reaction must be anticipated and addressed with honesty.

Poverty Is a Weapon

Anywhere there is poverty, people can be recruited.

A person who has not eaten in three days has no stable ground to stand on. They become available for whatever will meet the immediate need. This is not a moral failure — it is a structural one. And those who engineer poverty understand exactly what they are engineering.

The equation God is looking at is not balanced: some people have more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes, while others cannot afford basic emergency care to deliver a child in a public hospital. A woman died in a city — her life leaving her on camera — because hospitals demanded a police report before treatment. Injustice has killed people who had what it takes to lift a nation.

Deuteronomy 8:18 — "But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant."

Do not think about abundance as new cars. Think about it as justice on the face of the earth.

The Shift from Beneficiary to Lifter

Matthew 6:25-33 establishes that the people of God should not be consumed by anxious pursuit of what they will eat and drink. But the teaching goes further: if the orientation shifts from "who will help me" to "who can I lift," something changes. Insight arrives at a different level. Divine partnership is offered at a different level.

God is looking for people he can partner with — saying: let me go with you on an assignment from place to place.

There are people who may never be reached by the most prominent voice in any room — but they can be reached by the person sitting next to them. The reach of God's love is not limited to those who are already inside the building. John 3:16 — for God so loved the world, not just Christians. As long as people are made in his image and breath is in their lungs, he is moved by their condition.

What God Is Fed Up With

Amos 5:21-24

"I can't stand your religious meetings. I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I am sick of your fundraising schemes, your public relations and image making. I've had all I can take of your noisy ego music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice — oceans of it. I want fairness — rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want."

That is the nature of God: righteousness and justice. Anywhere these two principles are held up by people, there will be peace. The church is not called to be a factory for producing well-dressed, well-prayed people who retreat from the world. It is a factory for equipping people to go outside — where the actual work is.

Matthew 11:28: "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me."

The invitation is not to more religious activity. It is to a different kind of life — one oriented around his burden, not around personal survival.