Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 9, 2017 | The 3 Greatest Habits - Palm Sunday

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April 9, 2017 | The 3 Greatest Habits - Palm Sunday · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh my, wouldn't it have been great to have been there?
0:04
SPEAKER_00: That would have been so awesome.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: If someone asked you today, if you could get in a time machine and go anywhere, tell them I want to go back to the first Palm Sunday.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: So good morning.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: This is a happy day on the Christian calendar, celebrated by over two billion people, nearly um one-third of the entire world celebrating Palm Sunday, uh Christians.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: In the time I have here this morning, I want to do three things with you.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: One, I want to relive Palm Sunday a little bit.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Second, I want to talk to you about how to experience even today uh the presence of God and his grace, grace of Jesus Christ, his blessings, his favor.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Third thing I want to do is I want to talk to you about mixed messages.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you, you know, mixed messages are sort of she loves me, she loves me not.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, there we go.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: And um sort of mixed messages where someone gives you sort of verbal or nonverbal cues that sort of communicate something to you, and then something else that they do sort of seems to contradict that.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, for instance, if if uh a guy says, you know, we're just friends, but then he calls you every day and texts you twice a day and lets you know every week that he thinks you're the best thing in the world, you know, or vice versa.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: If someone tells you, you know, I've got your back, I'm right there for you all the time, you're the most important person in the world to me, and then they don't call you for a couple weeks.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Mixed messages.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about that third.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: First thing I want to talk about, Palm Sunday, then the presence of Christ, then mixed messages.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Presence, Palm Sunday, let's start with Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Open the Bible if you have one.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Let's read the story, Matthew chapter 21, verses 1 through 9.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: It's a great story.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: And um I'll keep referring back to it all morning because I think it weaves its way in and out of the other two issues that I have mentioned to you, the presence of Christ and mixed messages.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 21, 1 through 9, as they approach Jerusalem, they meaning Jesus and his disciples, and they came to Bethfej on the Mount of Olives, that's just east of Jerusalem.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: As you know, if you've been there with me, Jesus sent two disciples, guessing that Peter was probably one, saying to them, Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt by her.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Untie them and bring them to me.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Umbody getting into your car and starting to drive it out of the driveway.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: If someone says anything and anyone says anything, tell them the Lord needs them and he'll send them right away.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: So you go out and you say, uh, excuse me.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Now, if that person said to you, um, I'm sure you've heard that the president's in town today and he'd like to borrow your car, promise I'll get it back.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: You might say, Show me identification, you know, but um, or be glad to, Ivana, or something like that.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: So um, so so that's kind of what happening, what's happening here.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: It's really rather remarkable.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: And this took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet, quote, this is Zachariah, say to the daughter of Zion, that is Jerusalem, see, your king comes to you.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: There's the four-letter word king, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt the full of a donkey.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: So the disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: The crowds that went ahead of them and those who followed behind shouted, Hosanna to the son of David.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Hosanna and the highest.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Hosanna, remember, is a is uh uh two Hebrew words that has sort of two meanings.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Literally, and in the Old Testament, it usually meant Hoshiah Na means save me, save us now, save us.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing it meant is it became it came to just to mean like whoopee, hooray, okay?
4:15
SPEAKER_00: Hooray.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: So Hosanna and the highest.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Ask, who is this?
4:21
SPEAKER_00: The crowd said, This is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: Here you go.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Once a year, the whole earth, the whole world was sort of tilted, and everybody fell into Jerusalem.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: At least that's the way it seemed if you lived there.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: The town usually had, hard to know exactly.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing the town of Jerusalem usually had about 50,000 people, less than half the size of Topeka.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: And uh, but uh once a year on the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar, about 500,000 people.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: Imagine a half a million people descended on Topeka.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: About half a million people descending on the capital of the Jewish nation, Jerusalem.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: There are people everywhere today.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Imagine you're there.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: There are people, especially children.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: The average Jewish family has six, seven, or eight children in that day.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: And uh kids everywhere, and animals, wow.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: The squawking, I mean the noise is loud.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: No noise from honking cars, no noise from traffic, no noise from airplanes, no noise from but there is noise, and no noise from cell phones, but noise from chickens, lambs bleeding, because it seems like everybody's got a lamb, right?
5:31
SPEAKER_00: There's a lamb tethered up everywhere because lambs are big at Passover.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: So everybody's got a lamb.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: There are all kinds of animals, and the noise from the children, and the smells.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Imagine the smells everybody's cooking.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Don't you love those places?
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Don't you love those outdoor markets, those, those, those, those, those uh bowl games where everybody's cooking ribs in the parking lot?
5:52
SPEAKER_00: There we go.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: And and the smells are fantastic.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's like this humongous market where you can buy and you can sell everything.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: That's Palm Sunday.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: It's so much fun.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: But now imagine this wall, the wall behind me here dissolves, and you're facing the gate of Jerusalem, and all of a sudden, wow, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people, especially children, are pouring through.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: And it's a parade, and there's somebody coming.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: It's a standing.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: And they're all around you, and this noise, and it's just so exciting, and everybody's really happy, and they're cheering, and they're waving palm branches, because that's what they did in that day.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: And then you see the person at the very middle of the whole of the whole thing.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And you go, that's him.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: That's the person everybody's gossiping about.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Because not only are there more people, there's more food, there are more animals than ever before, but there's more gossip.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: Hundreds of thousands of people gossiping about the superstar in Israel that day, the person everybody's talking about, the person the priests and the leaders hate, his name is Jesus, said to be a miracle worker and a teacher from God.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: And there he is.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: You think to yourself, well, he's not classically handsome, you know, he's no Brad Pitt, but wow, you can't take your eyes off of him because he's got a personality.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: He's just, he's radiant, he's riveting, he you can tell there's something special about him, something magnetic, something.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: He has this magnetic personality as Dr.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Kilpatrick of Harvard used to describe it.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: He must have had a kind of magnetic personality that just attracted anyone and everyone.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: And so you just can't stop watching him because there he is at the center of this shouting throng.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And you can't help yourself because as they sweep up the aisles here past you, you find yourself shouting with everyone else, Hosanna.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And for you, it's kind of a combination of save me, Lord, and hooray.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: You know what that word means.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And he sweeps on by and you think to yourself, this is the greatest day of my entire life.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: I don't care, I don't understand how people can hate this guy, and it won't matter anyway.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: There's hundreds of thousands of us who are for him.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: But man, this guy could solve every one of my problems.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: That's Palm Sunday.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: Pretty cool.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Wish I'd been there.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: But we're here and we get to celebrate it.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's sort of that's a nice segue, though, to another question.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, how do we experience his presence in kind of that way?
8:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's been the question I've been wrestling with for the last three weeks with you in our series, The Three Greatest Habits.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: How do we experience God?
8:33
SPEAKER_00: How do we get to know him?
8:34
SPEAKER_00: How do we share in his joy?
8:36
SPEAKER_00: How do we rest in his favor?
8:37
SPEAKER_00: And how do we receive gifts of his grace?
8:41
SPEAKER_00: And the word grace is deliberately chosen there.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: First time you understood the Good Friday and Easter stories, I mean, really understood, really understood, you know, you'd heard about it since you were a kid, but now you saw Jesus hanging on the cross and you realized, oh my, he's there for me.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: He's dying in my place for my sin.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: And you understood that.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: And then you understood, wow, when he rose from the grave, three days later, the resurrection, that there provides me the opportunity, I get to have eternal life.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: I can rise from the dead.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And in the moment that you believed that, that you believed the message of God, that this was Jesus, my son, who's come to die and live for you, that moment, the grace of God fell from heaven and infused your life.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: You received a massive infusion of the grace of God.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: For by grace you were saved through faith, not of yourselves, the gift of God.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Titus 3, 5.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: And his grace that has appeared to the world and changed your life.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: And you at that moment received the gift of salvation, received the gift of forgiveness of sins, received the gift of eternal life, and you became a member, a son, a daughter in God's family.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: But listen, listen to me.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: That was not the only time that God wants to give you grace.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: That was not the last time that you received grace, hopefully.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: God wants to keep giving you, and you want and you need infusions of God's grace throughout your life.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Question is, how do you get those?
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, a young guy named David Mathis is quoting a bunch of old guys who are theologians long dead.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: When he says, God has his regular channels, means of grace, well-worn pathways along which he is so often pleased to pass and pour out his goodness on those waiting expectantly.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: In other words, there are you can position yourself at certain places that God says, I will pour out my grace on people right here.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we we looked at a couple of stories of the Bible.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: We looked at the story of Naaman, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian army who needed healing from leprosy.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: And Elisha said, Listen, the place of grace for you is the Jordan River.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Go bathe in the Jordan River, dunk yourself seven times, you'll be healed.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: Naaman said, I don't buy, I don't like the Jordan River.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Elisha said, Tough nooggies, you gotta go to the Jordan River.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Elisha and Elisha's, you know, soldier said, Come on, quit being a baby, go do it.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: And he did it.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: And he was healed.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: And we're reminded that in that day in 800 BC, the Jordan River happened to be a channel of God's blessing, and you and I should put ourselves in the channels of God's blessing wherever those are.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: We looked in the New Testament story of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, Jericho, who needed relief, wanted relief from his guilt, from his sin, from his loneliness.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: Such a short dude, maybe 4'8, 4'10, 5', whatever, average size is 5'2.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: So he had to be a short dude back then.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: So he climbs a tree, sycamore tree, to see Jesus.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Puts himself in a position, in a place where Jesus was going to pass by.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And to his absolute joy, he heard Jesus' voice.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: He spoke in Jesus here.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: He invited Jesus to his home.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: His life was changed.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: And you and I, like Zach, need to put ourselves in the path of grace.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if it takes fighting, we need to fight to walk in the paths where He's promised his blessings.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes it's exactly what it takes.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: We have to fight our tendency to be lazy and not to put ourselves in the places where God blesses.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: So we concluded what are those three main channels or paths for us today?
12:27
SPEAKER_00: The answer, God's voice, God's ear, God's body.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: That is God's voice.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: He speaks to us in his word and we listen.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Number two, God's ear.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: He bends his ear down to hear us when we cry to him in prayer.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: And third, his body fellowship, where you are right now.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we said the three greatest habits, this is the series that we're finishing today, are listening to God's voice, speaking in God's ear, meeting with God's people.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: And just really quickly to summarize, when we spoke about listening to God's voice, we said, listen, friends, we need to pick up God's voice again.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: We need to pick up this book.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me and the young adults in reading the New Testament at one chapter a day for the rest of the year, taking Sundays off?
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you did that, started when we did, you will have finished John 18 yesterday.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: If not, take an hour off the master's today, because at 15,000 words, which is what you are behind, at 300 words a minute, it'll take you an hour.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Or dip in once in a while and watch, watch Ricky Fowler win that thing, and uh and it'll take you two hours.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
13:37
SPEAKER_00: So number two, not only hear God's voice, but speak in God's ear.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Speak in God's ear.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: Now, what that means is this amazing truth that I have the ear of God.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: He'll actually listen to me.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: I shared with you my difficulty, the mind wanders, I get distracted, and I heard a couple of you, just a couple of you say, I'm like that too.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't matter.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: If you'll wrestle in this, if you'll try it, if you'll keep doing it, God says that's a thoroughfare in which I drop my showers of blessing.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Just do it.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: So join me in praying, spending time in prayer.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Finally, joining God's people, which you've done this morning, because as Don Whitney said in his book on spiritual disciplines, there are some graces and blessings that God gives only in meeting together with other believers.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Or as David Mathis says in the book I've recommended, Habits of Grace, we were made for more than private devotions.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: As nice as it can be to tuck ourselves away in some nook and cranny all by our lonesome and read the scriptures and pray, that's not the pinnacle of our Christian lives.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: We were made to worship Jesus together among the multitude, swallowed up in the magnificent mass of the redeemed.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: And we know that partly because when we open Revelation, we find that's where we're going to be.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: Any day now, after Jesus returns, there's going to be a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language which no one can number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white with palm branches in their hands.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: As they cried out in a loud voice, we're going to cry this out.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Salvation belongs to our God, seated on the throne and to the Lamb.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: I addressed the fact of claustrophobia or other problems last week, but it's going to be cool.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: All right?
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason I share that is that that scene coming up reminds me of the scene that I have sort of set for you this morning, the scene out of chapter 21 of Matthew, the scene that happens, happened in 33 A.D.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: when the Lord Jesus Christ rode into town, and those people who positioned himself along that thoroughfare were positioned along the thoroughfare of his blessing.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: They got to see him, they got to hear him, they got to call out to him and have him hear them shout, Hosanna, and they were meeting with God's people.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: That's a Palm Sunday experience.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: And that experience would be replicated in the church, in the early church.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Just a month or so later, they would together, after Jesus rose into heaven, they would continually devote themselves to the apostles teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Last week we talked from Hebrews 10, the three, they're the three things again: prayer, Bible, and fellowship.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Don't forsake the meeting together, we said.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: All three.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Corey Tinboom wrapped it all up in a sentence when she said, three sentences when she said, When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: Those are the three avenues, channels, thoroughfares of God's blessing.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: To receive grace from Jesus today.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Get this, don't miss it.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: To receive grace from Jesus today, friends, go to meet him today as he comes into Jerusalem.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Hear his voice.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Open his word and hear his voice.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Speak in his ear and join with his body.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: You can mark that one off the list.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: You've already done that.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to talk to you about something, however, that I that's extremely practical, personal, and difficult.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: That actually touches with Palm Sunday as well.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And I'm calling it mixed messages.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Now you know, as I said already, what mixed messages are.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: He loves me, he loves me not, like the government, do not enter, entrance only, or you know.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: You know what it is when someone sort of implies something and then they live differently.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: That's what I see on Palm Sunday.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: And it reflects something I see in life.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: What do I mean when I see it on Palm Sunday?
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, one thing, what I see on Palm Sunday is I see the king riding into Jerusalem, right?
18:16
SPEAKER_00: I can share with you seven ways.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: One did the revive six seven.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Or Jesus announced himself, showed himself as the sovereign, as the ruler, as the king when he came into Jerusalem.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the requisitioning of the animal, like requisitioning your car, that's something only a king can do.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Riding in through that, through that gate, through the same gate that 350 years before Alexander the Great had conquered the land, and that was the very gate of Jerusalem that he had ridden in on his black war horse Bucephalus, and everybody had waved palm branches.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: They had welcomed him in Israel in 300 BC.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: That's the same gate that Judas Maccabees had ridden through when he on Hanukkah 200 years before had delivered Israel from the Syrians, and he rode through that gate and they waved palm branches and cheered him as their liberator and as their ruler.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: That's what happened all over the Mideast.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: In those days, you always waved palm branches when your king rode into town.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: Once Caesar took three days to ride in on his war horse and his chariot, three-day, a three-day victory parade in Jerusalem and Rome.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: You ride in like that if you're the king.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: And to receive and welcome the homage of people as Jesus did, that's as if you're saying, I am the king, I am the sovereign, I am the ruler, I am in charge.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: And then when the children cry out, the disciples say, shh hush, hush, hush, and he says, Hey, even the stones will cry out, and he quotes Psalm 8, which says that these children, that the sons are cheering God, who is the king.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus saying, Yep, that's me.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And then he cleanses the temple as if he owns it, you know, as if my father's house, and on and on.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is announcing that he is, shall we say, the power broker, the problem solver, the liberator, the king, the ruler, and the sovereign.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: That message is clear.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Am I right about that?
20:29
SPEAKER_00: Only as he approaches, as he starts coming down the aisle, you see something which makes your head say, wow, there are mixed messages here.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
20:41
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is it's that he's riding, not on Bucephalus.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: He's not riding on that white horse that he's gonna ride on in Revelation chapter 20, right?
20:51
SPEAKER_00: And he's not riding in a chariot like Pilate did whenever he rode into Jerusalem once a year on Passion Week.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Now he's riding on a donkey, on the full of a donkey.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Friends, that's a mixed message.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you were there, you might not have thought much about it.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: You might have thought, wow, I guess they're short of horses.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, around here.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't find one.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: No chariots available.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: But then there were other things that kind of made you wonder, well, what is this mixed message?
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Friends, there are two parades going on that I know of in the world today.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: A big one in Baghdad.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: This is Iraqi Freedom Day, 2003, Saddam Hussein.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: We toppled them and they're all excited about that.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: This is Freedom Day in Iraq.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: No mixed message there, that's happened.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: At 3 p.m.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: this afternoon in Columbia, South Carolina, there's a big parade for the South Carolina Gamecock girls who won the national NCAA title.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: No mixed message there.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: That victory is theirs.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: A lot of cheering.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Friends, there's a mixed message with Paul.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Palm Sunday.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: And that mixed message actually helps me with one of the biggest problems that I face as a Christian and as a pastor.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: And that is the question of how God keeps his promises.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an illustration.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: The Book of Grief Observed was written by C.S.
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SPEAKER_00: Lewis, one of my favorite little books by him, but you know, during his lifetime nobody knew it was written by him because he wrote it under a pseudonym.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: He was afraid that if people read that book, knowing he'd written that book, they would perhaps lose their faith.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: The story, the backstory of the book is that there was a woman in America who was an atheist and a communist and a Jewess, and she had come to Christ through corresponding with C.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: S.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Lewis and reading his books.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: And she was so moved by him that she took her teenage, two teenage boys from a previous marriage, and she moved over to Oxford to be close to him and to learn from him.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: And while she was there, she contracted cancer, and she was terrified that nobody would take care of her teenage son.
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SPEAKER_00: C.
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SPEAKER_00: S.
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SPEAKER_00: Lewis said, I promise I will.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: She frankly didn't believe him.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: And so to prove it to her, he married her in sort of a small ceremony in her hospital room, just signed it.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: It's clear that it wasn't a romantic marriage of any kind.
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SPEAKER_00: He just wanted to assure her he would take care of her sons.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: And then by amazing grace, she uh uh remission of her cancer.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And and and for three years they lived, and now they reaffirmed their marriage in a Church of England ceremony, and they did have romance.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: They were absolutely, he just absolutely was in love with her, and suddenly, three years later, she got a remission of cancer, and she died within a couple of weeks, and he was absolutely crushed, and he dealt with it the only way that he knew how, which is to put pen to paper.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: And when you read the first couple of pages of A Grief Observed, which is the book he wrote, you say to yourself, Whoa, because it's shrill and harsh, and it's clear that here is a man who is in danger of losing his faith.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: The same man who had wrestled with the issue of pain philosophically in the book, The Problem of Pain, was now wrestling with it on a whole nother level.
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SPEAKER_00: He was wrestling with it on the level of someone who's actually going through it.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: For he relates in the early pages of that book how he had a certain expectation.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: He knew the promises of God.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: It's the same promises, friends, that you and I grab hold of.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you're praying, whenever you're desperate, whenever you're struggling with something, whether it's marriage or money or health, especially even more likely when it's someone you love who's struggling with those things.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And what promises do you grab hold of?
24:54
SPEAKER_00: You grab hold of Psalm 46, God is my refuge and strength, the very present help in time of trouble.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: And you hold on to it and you claim it.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
25:04
SPEAKER_00: And you claim Jeremiah 29, 10.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: I have plans for you, declares the Lord.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Plans not to harm you, but to help you, plans to give you future and a hope.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Don't you love that verse?
25:15
SPEAKER_00: You grab hold of that verse, or you grab hold of Jeremiah 33, 3, call upon me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Or Psalm 50, 15, where God says, Call upon me and I will deliver you, and then you shall praise me.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: And that's what C.S.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Lewis did.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: He grabbed hold of those verses and he found that what happened did not meet up with his expectations of how God would keep his promises.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Now, as you keep reading the book, it is remarkable because he moves from his expectations, which were not met, to his experiences.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: And by the end of the book, even though there's still a bit of gloom in the valley, that valley really is lit bright with the hope of God, for he understands and explains how God answers his promises.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: For the question is not, will God keep his promises, right?
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Question is not, will God keep his promises?
26:15
SPEAKER_00: For God is not a man that he should lie.
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SPEAKER_00: All the promises of God are yea and amen in Jesus Christ.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: The real question is, how will God keep his promises?
26:30
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that what we have here is an issue of mixed messages, where we have a king riding into town, but he's riding into town on a donkey.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: For these promises come to us a little bit with the resounding horns of a king who is a power broker and a problem solver and a liberator.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: And what we need to realize more than anything is that if we cling to a certain expectation of how God always will act and keep his promises.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: When I'm on the side of a cliff, he will always deliver me.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: Then when I find that he leaves me alone, or even worse, that I am surrounded by the wolves, it is then I find that Christians are most in danger of losing their faith entirely.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: As Professor Johns Hopkins once put it this way.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: He said, when life fits our expectations, when reality fits the way we think, we are healthy and happy people.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: But when life does not meet up, when reality does not agree with the expectations we have, then we become disillusioned, then we become depressed, then we become unhealthy.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: So I want to share with you what I would what I would suggest that we understand as the answer to the key question: how does God keep his promises?
28:01
SPEAKER_00: It seems to me there are three answers to that question.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And the first we could call intervention, and this is where God reaches down into the valley and he plucks us right out of the valley, or maybe moves the whole valley onto higher ground.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: What you and I are praying for, this miracle to have happen, it happens.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: It happened in Exodus 14, just that way, didn't it?
28:20
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites run out of Egypt and they're caught right in front of them is the Red Sea, oh, dead here, and behind them, here comes Pharaoh's army.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: They're caught between Pharaoh and the deep Red Sea, and they cry out to God for intervention, and God speaks to Moses, and Moses speaks to the people, and he says, Stand still and watch the salvation of the Lord.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly how it happens.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: God intervenes, the sea opens, he absolutely rescues them, they get through safe on the other side, Pharaoh's army drowns.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: That's intervention.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: Can I tell you that I firmly believe intervention is still valid today?
28:53
SPEAKER_00: I believe there are people in this room who, like I, have seen God intervene in miraculous ways.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: We see it all over the New Testament, don't we?
29:02
SPEAKER_00: Where mother would come to Jesus, my child is dying.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: Jesus over and over again intervenes and saves them.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: No chemotherapy needed, right?
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely solves their problem.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: The problem comes that there we seem to have maybe taught our young people or young Christians sometimes that this is the only way that God keeps his promises.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: So when God doesn't keep his promises this way, then their faith turns into disillusionment.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Now there's a second way, it seems to me, that God keeps his promises, and that we could call cooperation.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: The children of Israel, after leaving the Red Sea, finally come around to the border of the promised land.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: And surely many of them expected as they prayed that God would sweep the promised land clear, clean, like a waitress, you know, clears a tabletop.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: He would wipe it out, they would be able to simply go in, and they would simply, you know, be able to live there.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: But no, God says in Joshua 1.9, have not I commanded you be strong and of good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with you wherever you go.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: It was for you.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Stand and watch me work for you, intervention.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: Now it's with you.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes God's people are very little involved in the cooperation, like marching around the walls of Jericho seven times and blowing a horn and shouting, and the walls fall down.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's a little more involved, like when David, with years of skill and experience at slingshot work, plucks five stones out and throws those stones.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: There is him working and God working.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's a whole lot of work on our side, such as the stories of defeating Hot Saur and Jerusalem and so forth.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: But in cooperation, God works and we work.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: And it's important to realize that that's a legitimate way God keeps his promises.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you're like the young pastor who started as pastorate in central Kansas and was visiting a farmer, and he was standing there admiring the farmer's beautiful cornfields and how everything was ripe.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: And then he said to the farmer, Isn't it beautiful what God has done here?
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And the farmer said, Well, you ought to have seen it when God had it by himself.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: And the point is that it takes God working and it takes us working.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And it's a combination.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: I once was in a with a brother, we were at night and snuck out of a home and we got caught in a field and there was a bull that started chasing us.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's as if it's as if I had said to my brother, well, let's stop here and pray about it.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: He would have said, Well, let's run and pray about it.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it takes both your feet and prayer.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, in fact, many times, it takes you cooperating with God, God working with you.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: And that's how God answers or keeps his promises.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: But there is a third way that God keeps his promises.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: We call it transformation, God working in you, where God doesn't pluck you out of the valley or make the valley into higher ground or even work with you to change the problem or deliver you from the problem.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: It's a little more like 2 Corinthians 12 when Paul says, I've had all of these terrible things happen to me, but the worst of all was this thorn in the flesh that I've struggled with.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: And I prayed to God three times that I might be delivered.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: And God said, I'm not gonna take it away.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: For this thorn is given you to change you and to keep you humble and make you a better person.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Transformation, when God leaves the problem but changes us to adjust to the problem.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's the story of this week, because remember on Thursday night, Jesus is going to be crying out in the garden, Lord, deliver me, save me from this cup.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Do I have to drink it?
33:16
SPEAKER_00: We read in Psalm 22 that he prayed in every possible way, Lord, any way I can get out of it.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews 5, 7, we read, and God answered his prayer.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, how did God answer his prayer?
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Certainly not by intervening and plucking him away from the cross, certainly not even by cooperating and helping him run away.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: No, it was by transformation, by letting him die and bringing him to heaven and transforming Jesus and as a result giving us all salvation.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's what sometimes happens.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: So I confess to you, I regularly, regularly am absolutely suffused in prayer for somebody in this church.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: It was Blake last year, it happens to be somebody else now.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: I just constantly during the day I'm praying and grasping hold of the hem of Christ's garment, saying, please, please, please.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: And I'm praying for intervention.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying, if there's cooperation that's needed, I'll do anything.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: I'll give up some of my life, I'll do whatever it takes, please deliver this person.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, as in the case of Blake.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: Blake is transformed by passing into heaven and becoming a new creature, completely healthy.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And unless I understand, I mean, on one hand, I could say this is just a lot of religious mumbo jumbo.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: This is just a bunch of hypocritical religious stained glass talk about why God doesn't answer prayers.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's what people say who don't understand that yes, God does answer prayer, but he can answer prayer by intervention or by cooperation or by transformation.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: But if you understand that transformation is one of the ways God answers prayer and keeps his promises, then you're able to understand better the whole Palm Sunday story, the mixed message of how the king can come into town and just like those promises of God flood to us through the gates of the city and make us feel so excited because he's gonna solve all of our problems, and then we look, and he's and he's on a donkey right now, and he's not gonna be on a horse until the second coming.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: And somehow one of the things that means is that now he's a servant, now he's a man of peace, now I won't always get that perfect deliverance that I wanted.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes it'll be an issue of cooperation that costs me a lot, and sometimes it'll be a matter of transformation.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: But even if it's a matter of transformation, he promises that he will give me himself, that he'll ride in and make himself available, that he'll give me infusions of grace as I listen to him speak, as I speak in his ear in prayer, and as I meet with God's people, and that transforms me into the person that he can bless.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray with me?
36:35
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray for these dear folks who, like I, agonize with you every week, praying, praying desperately for you to bless the people that we need blessed.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: Rescue our children and our loved ones.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: Help those folks that we know with their marriages or their finances or their health.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: This morning, we welcome you into town.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: You are our king, you are our ruler, you are our sovereign.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: We look forward to the day when you will ride in on a white horse and make everything right.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: And until then, we accept you as the man of peace, the servant who rides in on a donkey.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Amen.