Wisdom and the Will (Proverbs 15:13-17)

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Wisdom and the Will

Chet Phillips

Transcript

My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab your Bibles and go to Proverbs chapter 15. I am very thankful today for our community groups and for people seeking to be missionaries in everyday life. I remember Eric came and said, hey, I'm inviting my friend Parker. I'm going to try to get him to come hang out with our church, hang out with our group.

I was like, is he a Christian? Is he not a Christian? He said, um, he thinks he's a Christian. I'm not so sure. Sweet. We'll see.

Let him come on. You know, we'll be glad to have him and be a part of things. And that's that's our hope. That's what we see so often. If you saw, he said they begin to pressure me to get into a group. It's the best harassment he's ever received in his entire life.

It was to come be around people, to come join us in life and to hopefully come be known and loved by us so that you can know and love Jesus and see that he knows you and loves you. And that's our hope. That's what we talk about all the time. That's one of the reasons why we don't have an overly complex schedule as a church. We want you to go be out in the world as a Christian who loves people, who loves Jesus. We want you to join after work social events so that you can help be a missionary.

We want you to be getting to know your neighbors and hosting barbecues and doing stuff with your group to be on mission so that we can see people come to know Christ. There are people that you know right now who don't know Jesus, but maybe one day we'll all get to gather and celebrate that they've placed their hope in Christ. Not that they've become a good person, but they've been made holy and blameless and above reproach through the work of Jesus. I can testify that Parker is holy and blameless and above reproach through Jesus and that he is personally not a very good person. Just like the rest of the people in our group that we're here, just like the rest of the people in our church that we're here only through the work of Jesus, not through our work.

So we're glad to be able to gather on Sundays to study the Bible together. We're going to be in chapter 15 in the book of Proverbs. We're going to look mostly at 13 through 17. There'll be like the rest of our time in the Proverbs. There'll be other verses that we look at, but this is kind of where we're going to spend most of our time this morning. I want to start by talking to y'all about reading a quote and talking to you a little bit about a guy named Viktor Frankl.

He was an Austrian Jew. He lived in Austria in the lead up to World War II. And in World War II, he got married and nine months later, he and his entire family were taken to a German concentration camp. He would spend the remainder of World War II in a German concentration camp. And he, his wife, his father, his mother, and his brother would all die at the hands of the Nazis in concentration camps. In Auschwitz, where he was for some of his time, they would wake up at 4.30 or 5.30 in the morning.

They would give them some tea or some imitation coffee. That's what they had for breakfast. Then they would work till the middle of the day. Then they would give them some sort of soup or stew. Then they would work again until 7 o'clock at night when they would be given a ration of some bread or some cheese.

Not nearly the amount of calorie intake they needed to work 11 hours a day. Most of the time when they brought in the trains, they would immediately take the females to gas chambers and put the rest to work. Most people there slowly starved. And he lived his time through that. When he was freed over a nine-day period, he wrote a book called The Man's Search for Meaning. And this is a quote from that book.

He says, Everything can be taken from a man but one thing. The last of the human freedoms. To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. To choose one's own way. We're going to read another quote from that book later. But we're going to start there.

This idea that he shares and that the Proverbs agree with, which is that you have some control over your attitude. That you have some control over your internal disposition. That you have some control in how you respond to external circumstances. Now, at the simplest, kind of far inside of that, it really is just having a good attitude. Stuff that I tell my six-year-old. When he's upset about something.

I say, yeah, you can't control everything that happens to you. But you can control how you respond. You can control how you act. Well, I'm having a rough day. Yeah, sometimes we have rough days. But you can make it worse.

Or you can make it better. If you talk to your mama like that again, it's going to get worse. That we can choose through our actions and through our attitude how we're going to respond. That's the simplest form of it. Which I will tell you, you can do without Jesus. If you just do that, your life will be better.

It doesn't change your circumstances. But it will make those bad circumstances more bearable. So that's just, we're going to walk through that. That's the whole section of just wisdom. It's helpful. On the other side, when you go further into this, it actually becomes, you become internally unconquerable.

That it goes just from being able to kind of manage your own attitude to actually becoming internally unconquerable. And the reality is we'd all like to be there. So we're going to look at what the Proverbs have to say about this and hopefully grow in this together. So let's pray. God, we ask for help. So that we might capture some of this.

That we might believe some of this. That we might walk this out in light of what you have accomplished for us in the gospel. Our culture doesn't agree with this. And so we pray that you'd help us to listen well. Not as Westerners. As Americans or South Carolinians.

But that we would listen as people who belong to you. And whose story is much bigger and more eternal because of the work of Christ. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Proverbs 15, 13. A lot of times the Proverbs are just one idea.

This one seems like there's a couple of Proverbs in a row that are attacking the same idea. So we're going to work through a couple. But it says this, A glad heart makes a cheerful face. But by the sorrow of the heart, the spirit is crushed. Now at first glance, that's just kind of an obvious observation.

Thanks Solomon, you're so wise. What he said was, if you're happy inside, you'll smile. Wow. But if you're really sad inside, you're really sad inside. That's what it seems like. And so it's like, good.

You've taken this somewhere? Because that's how we're inclined to read this. But I want you to see something. Because even that statement right there is actually countercultural to what we believe. There's part of that statement that you actually, as a good American, don't agree with. So let me help you see it.

A glad heart makes a cheerful face. We're okay with that. Seems true. But by sorrow of heart, the spirit is crushed. You see, we actually are more inclined to think that the problems that we have are not internal but external. That it's actually not what's going on inside of me that crushes my spirit.

It's my parents. It's my job. It's my boss. It's my stepchildren. It's the amount of money I have in my bank account. It's the system.

It's the man. It's capitalism. It's those people who've snuck into our schools and who are indoctrinating our children. Those are the people who are the ones who are like that. We're inclined to think. That's why we read an advice article.

They never respond with, maybe you should change your attitude. They say, maybe you should change your spouse. Maybe you should change your job. Maybe you should change your financial situation. They don't ever respond with, maybe you should be a little tougher. Quit whining.

You're welcome. They don't do that. But there's a reality to this that it's our internal response. It's our internal spirit. That our internal heart, the way we think through the world that affects whether or not we're crushed or not. And there's just part of us that even now is going, yeah, is that really what that's saying?

I don't know if I agree with that. There's Proverbs 18, 14 says this. A man's spirit will endure sickness. But a crushed spirit who can bear. So again, this idea of what crushes the spirit.

Well, this doesn't really tell us, but we know it's not sickness. That sickness in and of itself can't crush a spirit. A spirit can endure sickness, can endure bad circumstances. That if we actually would just take sickness as an idea for bad things happening to us, that there's a reality to, we might can just face whatever comes our way. But if we're internally crushed, who can go on?

Let's keep reading. Proverbs 15, 14. The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge. But the mouths of fools feed on folly. So this is, as you have understanding, you continue to seek knowledge.

And fools just feed on folly. They continue to pursue foolishness. So if you're wise, you continue to pursue wisdom. If you're foolish, you continue to pursue foolishness. Verse 15. All the days of the afflicted are evil.

But the cheerful of heart has a continual feast. Now again, part of that, we're inclined to just think, yeah, that makes sense. All the days of the afflicted are evil. The affliction, I actually appreciate that word because it's so broad. That affliction can be sickness. Affliction can be your job.

That you can be afflicted with the attitude of another. That you can be afflicted, but it's this idea that it's very difficult. That things are hard. That stuff is hurting you. That your outside circumstances are attacking you. And so what it says is, all the days of the afflicted are evil.

And we want to say, yes, exactly. And if I could just get unafflicted, I'd be okay. But the follow-up of that proverb turns it on its head. Because if we were going to write this, we would say, all the days of the afflicted are evil. But he who has a continual feast has a cheerful heart.

Because in our reckoning, your circumstances dictate to you your joy. If you have a good marriage, if you have good friends, they're not toxic. If you have good relationships, if you have a good job, if you have a smart boss. Oh, a smart boss, who can find? If you have the right amount of money. If you have a continual feast, you'll have a cheerful heart.

That's not what it says. It says the afflicted days are evil, but those who have a cheerful heart have a continual feast. So it's actually comparing cheerful heart with being afflicted and a continual feast with evil. Meaning that you have some personal responsibility and control over your attitude that can dictate to you what life is like. And the truth is, you've seen this on some people. You've seen drastic examples of both.

Maybe you haven't seen it in yourself. Maybe you have. But you've seen examples of both. Because you've been in school, had a job, played a sport. And you've watched a crowd of people receive bad news. And you've seen some people be absolutely just crushed by it.

Oh, here we go. I knew this was going to happen. This is exactly how it always works. And you've also seen the really annoying person go, we're going to be okay here. It's like, shut up. We are not going to be okay.

We are going to choose to make this way worse. There's a reality to circumstances that keep us, that we want to act like our circumstances have dictated to us how we ought to respond. The reality is most of the time we don't want other people to think this, but we certainly want that to be how things work for us. So if I've had a bad day, I can be mean to my wife, obviously. But if she's had a bad day, she needs to work on her attitude.

But this is a general attitude that we have, that somehow our circumstances have dictated to us our response, rather than our circumstances are what they are and our response gets to be controlled by us. And look at the beautiful part of that. If you can figure out how to have a cheerful heart, you can have a continual feast. Now, if there's anything that Americans like, it's a continual feast. So let's figure out how to have a cheerful heart.

Part of you may be thinking this is unattainable for you, but let's work past that and just understand mentally that if you can attain it, life can be a continual feast. And the reality is there are people who walk through life continually afflicted and their days are evil. And there are people who walk through life with a cheerful heart and their days are a continual feast. And it doesn't have to do with what the days throw at them because often they're thrown, the same thing's thrown at them. It has to do with how we respond. That's actually extremely encouraging.

Because your joy level does not have to be set on circumstance. That's amazingly encouraging. Because we're tempted to want it to be set on circumstance. But the reality is there's hope here. So let's look at this.

I want to show you a couple different ways to try to think about this. There's a Jewish rabbi. He was also a business leader and kind of a political leader. His name was Edwin Friedman. I do not give my wholesale endorsement of him because he says some absolutely crazy things. But he does say some helpful things and he has an illustration that I think is helpful.

He says imagine that a lot of times life is like... He says an amplifier, but we're going to just use a radio. Life's like a radio with three knobs. One knob is physical reality. Circumstance. The actual reality of what is going on.

There's physical reality to your life. You only have a certain amount of money. You only have a certain amount of handsome strapped around your face. Like you've only got what you got. The second one is dumb luck. Not a Christian concept.

We'll get there. But this is what he says. Dumb luck. And the third one is the response of the organism. That's you. You're an organism.

That's how you respond. Now, he says organism because he applies this to political parties. He applies this to businesses, that sort of thing. Now, he says there are times... Oh, you're only allowed to touch the response of the organism. That's the only knob you're allowed to mess with.

The other two knobs just get set for you. You can only touch the response knob. There are times when physical reality and dumb luck are turned up so high that it doesn't matter what you do with your response. The results are going to be what they are. He says an example of this would be if we were all in an airplane and it broke open and we were flying through the air now. Un-tethered.

Unkept. One of you can smile. One of you can sing. One of you can weep. I can flap my arms like a bird. Physical reality and dumb luck are turned up so high that it really doesn't matter.

Within a few seconds, we're all going to reach the same conclusion. But he says most of the time that's not true. Most of the time, physical reality and dumb luck aren't turned up so high that your response doesn't matter. And he says often the only thing that makes a difference is the response of the organism. That's the one thing that's actually the variable that will adjust something. And it's the one thing that you're allowed to touch.

It's a little bit like growing up in your dad's house. You can't touch the thermostat, but you can put a sweater on. That's how it works. If you only focus on physical reality and dumb luck, if that's all you can talk about, if that's all you tell your group about, if that's all you tell your therapist about, if that's all you think about, if that's all you write in your pain journal about, things won't get better. Because you're not allowed to touch those knobs. You're only allowed to touch how you respond, how you think about it, how you get out of it, how you work your head around it.

Proverbs 14.30 says this, and I think it applies to the same idea. It says, A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. I think a life filled with envy is us looking at those two knobs and just wishing we could touch them and wishing that something had been different. And if I had just had this workout in life, if I had just grown up with those parents, if I had just been able to get into that school, if I had just been able to keep that job, if I had just kept that boss or not had this boss, if I just had that spouse, I wish that life had worked out this way. It's just us staring at the knobs we can't control.

I wish this had happened. I wish I had that relationship. I wish that my life had been like that. I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller. I wish I had a girl look good.

I would call her. We can sit all we want and stare at the knobs we can't control and they will not help us. Or we can think about the one thing that we are able to grab a hold of and respond better. This isn't just the power of positive thinking. It's not going to fix everything in life. Some of your circumstances aren't going to change.

But you can make them better or worse. There's a scene in the office where they look at the boss, Michael Scott, who we use very often in the Proverbs because he's a fool. They say to him, don't make this any harder than it has to be. And then it cuts to him by himself looking directly in the camera and he goes, I'm going to make this way harder than it has to be. The truth is you do that. Something happens and you think.

You look at the camera of your life and go, I'm about to make this way harder than it has to be. My son, I try to help him think about his life, frame things up for him. It was school day. It was early in the morning. He was excited. He had put jelly beans in an Easter egg and he had hidden it.

Then in the morning he had opened his jelly beans to look at his jelly beans. I think he was going to eat his jelly beans. He put them back in the Easter egg. When he went back to open his jelly beans again after breakfast, there were four jelly beans, but there had been five jelly beans. This is a huge problem. Jesus tells the parable of the woman with the lost coin.

Well, I had the son with the lost jelly bean. He was turning the house upside down trying to find this jelly bean. Well, the clock's ticking because we've already gotten ready for school. We've already had breakfast. We only got so much hunt for jelly bean time before we got to go to school. He's distraught.

I mean, it's messed him up. I'm trying to help him find it. Finally, it's like we've got to get in the car and he's just like, you know, you know that look you get when you've lost your jelly bean. He had that. And we get in the truck. We only have a few minutes between us and the school and I'm trying to help not kick him out the door.

Like, just his day was not starting off well and I didn't want it to continue. So I'm trying to help him get out of it. So at first I was like, man, I'm sorry. That's rough. It is. I mean, that's, you know, one-fifth of his wealth gone.

It's a tough day. I'm sorry. Trying to help him, you know. And then I turned to, like, consoling wasn't helping. It was almost like it was adding to it because he's like, you're right, I should feel terrible. And I was like, all right, but you've got to buck up, kid.

But it's just a jelly bean, you know. I tried to be a little intense with him. That wasn't working. So we're just riding and I'm trying to think, like, how do I help him reframe his head? You know, how to help him learn to, like. And so we're just riding.

We've got about a minute left. We're pulling in the car line to drop him off. And I said, I said, are you tough? Something we talk about. I'm trying to help him learn that he can mentally control how he responds to physical things as well, you know. And, you know.

I said, like, you know, like a superhero, you know how, like, they're tough, you know. I said, but you know how superheroes have a weakness? Hmm? I said, I think I've figured out yours. I mean, this, he found a weakness. He's like, well, you know, he's a superhero now in his head and he's trying to think through being tough and he doesn't have any weaknesses.

I said, I think you might be like a superhero. I think I could hit you with a baseball bat and you'd bounce back. And he's, you know. I think I could shoot you with a missile. I know. But I found your weakness.

I found your kryptonite. He said, you know, looking at him like, what is it? He said, where is, what is it? You know, I'll cover it with a shield. It's one jelly bean. He just straightened up and stared at me.

He said, not a lot of jelly beans. Not five jelly beans. One jelly bean. That's your weakness. It'll crush you. All I got to do, you're like Captain America.

If I gave you a jelly bean and then took the jelly bean away, it turned into dust. And he was like, no. You know, like, I'm not weak. A jelly bean won't take me down. I was like, no, you said it destroyed your whole day. You said it ruined everything.

You said that jelly bean was the one thing that kept you sane and now everything's going. No, I'm not. No, huh? He hopped out of the car like, you know. Ain't no jelly bean going to beat me up. I'm trying to reframe for him.

What's your weakness? Extra paperwork? Traffic. How you thought a situation was going to go and then how your spouse actually responded. Your roommate and the dishes in the sink. What is it?

What's your kryptonite? What's the thing that absolutely slays you and you have no choice but to respond this way? They forced your hand. See, there's a reality to we have control how we respond to circumstances. We're going to work on a pool. And we can make life better or worse.

I learned this working on swim pools very, very distinctly. Multiple summers throughout all of high school working on swimming pools. The truth was I would go work on a pool. Sometimes it worked out well. It was nice. There were some times when you'd go to a job and you knew I was going to get paid this much.

It was going to take this long. Nice. And then something would break. And now I'm still only going to get paid this much, but I'm going to work a lot longer. And there were times where things would break and I would have to decide, am I going to do this manually or am I going to go ride back to the store, which is an hour away to get the stuff I need to actually fix it? Or am I going to do the thing that takes forever and peels all the skin off my arm as I sit and just have to fix this thing?

And oftentimes I realized that the only thing I can control was I knew I was going to be there. I knew I was going to have to fix the thing. I knew I couldn't leave until I got fixed. I knew the amount of money I was going to get was set. Everything was set. I was going to be in the sun.

Everything. I could make those next two hours way longer by feeling sorry for myself, by being really upset, by thinking through that other people wouldn't have to deal with this. Or I could take a deep breath, listen to some music, and realize that all of the things I was going to have to do were the same. The only thing I could control was my attitude and I could make it a lot better if I had a better attitude. And the truth is you get to do that too. You get the news at work, you're going to have to stay late.

Well, you're going to have to stay late. You're going to make it better or worse. Your kids spill stuff all over the floor. You're going to make it better or worse. We get to choose. And that's actually really encouraging.

But it gets better. It's beyond just attitude control that makes your day better. Take that. Use that. If you don't know Jesus, it's a gift to you. You don't have to have Jesus to change your attitude.

He helps, but you don't have to have him. But if you want to be internally unconquerable, it goes further. He says this in verse 16. Now we'll read verse 16 and 17. Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it.

You can have good circumstances without the Lord, without love, or you can have terrible circumstances with the Lord and with love, and it's better to have love and it's better to have the Lord. So it's not just circumstances that set your life, joy, and hope. And this actually, because it's now based not just in circumstances, but based in the Lord and his love for us, may I offer you an anchor for your joy rather than a kite. So many of us, our happiness is on a kite. Is it a good day for it? Is there a nice breeze blowing in the right direction?

Everything's good. Blown too hard? Not blowing it all? It's a mess. You ever try to fly a kite when it wasn't the right weather? It's the most aggravating thing?

I did this for like an hour with my boys one time. Something's wrong with the kite or something's wrong with me, but it wasn't working. But some of us have our hope tied to a kite. It's this. But we can actually have it anchored in the Lord so that it's untouchable, so that your joy level, your response to things, doesn't have to be circumstantial.

It doesn't whip around with the wind. See, this moves now from good advice to good news. That you actually, if you place your faith in Jesus, that you can have some things eternally held for you through the work of Christ that are true eternally and that you belong to Him. That's what Jesus came to die for sinners so that all who have faith in Him might be covered by His work and made holy and blameless and above reproach through the work of Christ and be anchored in Him so that we might, even if circumstances are bad, have Him. And if we have Him, then we have everything. And so that we have something to lean into in the midst of bad circumstances to remind us that not only can I control my attitude, but I have hope in Christ.

So I've got three things for us to do coming out of this. Fight for contentment. It's one of the best ways to work on your attitude is to fight for contentment. A tranquil heart brings life. An envious heart rots your bones. If you think things should be better, and that's what you tell yourself all the time, this should have worked out differently, it should be better.

The truth is, at any given moment in life, you can look at what's good or you can look at what's bad. That's up to you. You can show up from work. I can walk in the door from work and I can look at what's good or what's bad in my house. I can walk in because my wife's been playing with the kids and they've been having fun and the house is chaos. And I can tell myself, look at how terrible this house looks.

They should have been doing this. She should have done that. What's she been doing all day? I can find ten things I want to be mad about. I can probably find twenty if you give me enough time. But the reality is, I can also come in and find ten things to be happy about.

Some of you walk in the door, the house is a mess, your spouse has been playing with the kids and having fun with them and you complain that the dishes aren't done. The next day you walk in, the house is spotless but the kid's playing video games and you say, did y'all even go outside today? You're just picking the thing to be mad about instead of finding the thing to be happy about. You can right now make a list on the way home of ten things you like about your spouse, ten things you like about your group, ten things you like about this church, twenty-five things that you loved about this sermon.

Some of you this whole time have been going, I wish Spencer was preaching and you've ruined a wonderful sermon for your bad attitude. But you can do this. You can fight for contentment. You can tell yourself things you like about your house, you like about your drive to work, you like about your job, or you can tell yourself all the things you hate about it and one of those gives life to your flesh and one of them rots your bones. And if you feel a little rotted out, it's quite possible that you're walking around doing that to yourself. Grab the knob you can control.

So fight for contentment. Control your response. It's the one thing you can control. So in a situation, start learning what's outside of my control. That's not the thing to focus on. What's inside of my control?

That's the thing to focus on. That's the thing for me to think through and decide how I'm going to respond, how I'm going to act, what I'm going to do, how I'm going to speak, how I'm going to think, what I'm going to tell myself. I think about this periodically. Paul and Silas in the book of Acts get arrested, beaten, put in jail, and then we're told that they're praying and singing hymns. Now if I asked you, good Christian, can Christians sing in prison?

Yes. Can we find joy in the midst of difficult circumstances? Yes. Can we have an anchor of hope in the midst of a concentration camp? Yes. But we can't even handle traffic.

Well, I'm not in prison. I'll sing when I get to prison. But the house is a mess. Like it's like, what? We can control how we respond. We have an anchor that helps us respond.

I want to read this quote from Viktor Frankl. He says this. He says, Life in a concentration camp exposes your soul's foundation. Only a few of the prisoners were able to keep their inner liberty and inner strength. Life only has meaning in any circumstances if we have a hope that neither suffering, circumstances, nor death itself can destroy. Now if you belong to Jesus, you have a hope that neither suffering, nor circumstances, nor death itself can destroy.

You have an anchor for your joy, for your life, for your hope, not a kite. So that you can respond with joy in the midst of anything and you can respond with hope in the midst of anything and you can control your attitude in the midst of anything. Nobody has forced your hand. Third thing. So first, fight for contentment.

Control your response. Remember the truth. Another way to say this would be to remember good news. Proverbs 12, 25, anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad. That's just a general truth about talking to each other, about how good news works, but also we have the ultimate capital G, capital N, good news in Christ. The ultimate capital G, capital W, good word in Christ.

Proverbs 15, 30, the light of the eyes rejoices the heart. I mean, the light of the eyes is the life that the Lord gives us the ability to see. But it's like the inner light of the eyes. And good news refreshes the bones. We have the good news in Christ. Proverbs 16, 24, gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.

We have the gracious words spoken to us by God the Father through the work of Christ. Capital G, capital W, gracious words spoken to us. Remember what's true. Let's look at our radio again. Physical reality, dumb luck, response of the organism. If you don't belong to Jesus, run with that.

I would like to invite you though to place your faith in Jesus and use this next one which is if you belong to Jesus it looks like this. Physical reality, truth of the gospel, response of the organism. Can I offer you some really good news? You're still not allowed to touch that second knob. Your sin doesn't let you grab it. Your depression doesn't let you grab it.

What the enemy's telling you doesn't let you grab it. Jesus Christ has sealed that forever and ever and ever and ever and he has spoken truth to you that if you belong to him you belong and you are redeemed and you are forgiven and you are given hope that is unassailable. You are internally unconquerable because through Christ you are eternally unconquerable. You still get to troll how you respond. Are you going to believe that? Are you going to remind yourself of that?

Are you going to join a group and tell people that? Remind them of that? Are you going to join a group and listen when other people remind you of that? This is one of the reasons why we need to be around other believers so that you can say something that's completely stupid and they can say to you that's not true. You tell yourself completely stupid lies all the time. You need to get around a group and say them out loud so the people who love Jesus can go what have you been telling yourself?

No. I love you so I want to punch you. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. That's not true for you not if you belong to Jesus. If you don't belong to Jesus run with that. You'll be crushed by your sin.

You'll be destroyed. You're unlovable. You've been unworthy. But if you belong to Jesus you've been made lovable. You've been made worthy through the work of Christ and you are forever sealed in that. You are holy and blameless and above reproach.

You are like a bride presented to Christ without a spot or blemish or any such thing that we belong and that we're loved and that we're welcomed and we don't get to mess with that. Some of you say well I'm depressed. Yeah okay we'll put that on the physical reality knob. You can't control that. You wake up feel like you have no energy. You feel down.

You can't go you know what I'm just going to choose happy today. Sometimes that doesn't work. But you actually do get to choose how you respond. You're going to stare at the depression knob and just say well you're in charge. Are you going to look at the truth of the gospel? You're going to get out of bed?

You're going to get in some sunlight? You're going to get around some people? You're going to say I'm not going to let my feelings and emotions dictate to me what life is. I can't fully control them but I can control how I respond. I don't have to believe all that. Guys this is good news.

And if you belong to Jesus it's eternally good news. Some of you right now are in some really bad situations but you can make them better. You can choose to be afflicted or you can have a continual feast as we choose to align ourselves with who Jesus is and what he's done for us. The band is going to come back up. We're going to sing. I want to say one more thing to those who do have physical depression that you just feel like it's outside of your control.

I want to tell you yeah sometimes it is. Your response isn't. There's places in the Psalms all the time where he says bless the Lord oh my soul. He talks to his soul. Bless the Lord oh my soul. He says forget not all his benefits.

Some of you need to write down we actually have some of these printed up. We will give you one but different passages of scripture that tell you things that are true about you and Jesus. Some of you need to write down things. You walk around telling yourselves lies all the time. I'm the worst. I'm unlovable.

Everybody hates me. They don't even notice when I'm not around. They wish I wasn't around. It's like your radio is turned up too much but you're not grabbing the one knob you have control over and you're not listening to the part where Jesus is coming through the frequency that he's on where he says you are loved. You are welcome. You do have hope.

You do have certainty. You do have security. If you belong to Jesus the absolute worst circumstances that could ever happen to you can happen to you. You're eternally secure. One of the ways we say this on Sundays sometimes is Jesus is alive tell your face. There's hope in Christ so there's joy for us.

That's actually one of the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control that he gives us these things through his work not ours that we get to choose good things because he's offered them to us in Christ that no you don't deserve them but Jesus is great and we praise his glorious grace. So quit looking at the undeserving knob. Quit looking at the circumstance knob and start looking at the king of kings and start responding as someone who's been redeemed. And then tell your face. Let's pray.

God we thank you so much that you redeem that we can run to you in the midst of difficulty that we can run to you in the midst of hurt that we can run to you in the midst of pain that you have forever set reality for us through the work of Christ. Lord we pray for those who are not in Christ that they would come to you that they would repent of sin that they would ask for forgiveness that they would be covered by the grace of Christ. And we pray Lord that we would quit looking at the things we can't control that we would quit focusing on all the things that are negative that we would quit looking at the things that are difficult difficult and hard and quit acting as if circumstance sets our hearts posture rather than you through the power of your spirit and our ability to respond. And may by your grace we respond well.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Easter (Matthew 27:55-28:15)

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Easter

Chet Philips

Transcript

Apparently, I had it on the whole time I was singing, so if you thought things sounded particularly good today, you're welcome. 1 Corinthians 15, 17 says, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Jesus Christ was crucified. He was dead. He was buried. If he stayed that way.

You're dressed up. You look nice. This is a waste of time. I mean, I think you look good. Take your picture. Grab a cupcake on the way out.

But this is a waste of time. This is futile. You are in your sins. That's the primary thing that Jesus came to do is to rescue sinners. To redeem us from our sin. And if he did not rise, he does not redeem.

He does not save. You have no hope. You are in your sin. But if he does rise, then our faith isn't futile. And we are not in our sin. And we have gathered this morning because he does rise.

He did rise. And we have hope. And we have good hope and certain hope. My family are Carolina fans. South Carolina fans. We grew up.

I grew up. We didn't pay any attention to sports whatsoever. We played sports. We did not watch them. We did not talk about them. I knew no one who played.

I knew no scores. I knew nothing. My friends would talk about them at school. I was like, yeah, I don't know anything to what you're talking about. I was playing linebacker in high school. Somebody said something to me about Urlacher.

I responded, who? And that's a mortal sin for a white linebacker. You're supposed to know who Brian Urlacher is. I had to go Google it later. Probably still on dial-up. I had to look it up, try to find out who this person was we were talking about.

But my younger brother, when he was in middle school, he decided that this was a problem for our family. And that we needed to pick a team to pull for. And so he decided that we should pull for the South Carolina Gamecocks. And he brought us all in on it. And he chose in middle school, and he got excited about it. And he had us join him.

And sometimes, when everything's still and quiet, I find myself imagining what it would have been like if he had picked better. I think it was inevitable. My older brother ended up going there. My wife went to USC. We moved here and started the church. So I think at some point it was meant to be for me to be a South Carolina fan.

But South Carolina fans have hope. Because that's all they have. And it's, we say, well, you know, maybe next year. We'll put a whole season. Well, next year. We'll get it together next year.

Based off of absolutely nothing. One of the things South Carolina fans will do is tell you bad players from this year that will be returning next year. This person will be back. We've got 11 seniors coming back. What does that matter? They didn't do anything this year.

Let's go find some new ones. Do you think our coaches are going to get them better in the offseason? Because I've never seen that happen. We'll do it. We'll do for a whole season. We'll do for a game.

You'll hear South Carolina fans say things like, all right. All we got to do is score. Stop them. Score. Stop them. Get the onside kick.

Score. And we're right back in this thing. And they mean down by three or seven or whatever. And there's no reason. Have you been watching the game to assume that we will a score or be stop them. That's not the type of hope that Christians have.

It's not hopeful, wishful, good thoughts about a potential future based off of nothing. Christians have certain hope in finished work accomplished by Christ on our behalf. When we talk about hope, we don't mean I think it will be good later. We mean he has accomplished this. And therefore we have rock solid, unending, unyielding future hope. And that's why we've gathered this morning.

Grab your Bibles. Go to Matthew chapter 27. We are going to look at the resurrection of Jesus. That the resurrection is real. And because it is real, everything Jesus taught, everything Jesus claimed to be, everything Jesus said he was going to do is vindicated and validated. It has a seal on it of certainty and truth.

So when he says he forgives sins, he means it. When he says that there will be hope in his name and salvation in his name, he means it. When he says he's the son of God and we'll see him in power, he means it. Because it's real. So let's pray and then we'll begin to read this text together.

God, we thank you for the certain hope of the resurrection. We pray that as we read this, you would help it come alive to us. That we might see it. That you might captivate our hearts. And for those in this room who have not placed their faith in you, Lord, we pray that they would leave with a certain hope. And forgiveness of sins.

Future salvation. To reign with you for eternity. In Jesus' name. Amen. Matthew chapter 27 verse 55. There were also many women there looking on from a distance.

So they're watching Jesus be crucified. Who had followed Jesus from Galilee ministering to him. I love that it says that the women were there. They stayed. They didn't run off like the men. And that it specifies that when they followed him, they ministered to him.

And that sounds very true. He asked the men, what are they doing? Like, we're ministering with Jesus. We're here to do some stuff. But they didn't help him.

And the women came and they're like, no, we love Jesus. We're going to serve Jesus. They ministered to Jesus. They've been ministering to him. And among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. When it was evening, this is Jesus is dead.

This was Good Friday. There came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there sitting opposite the tomb. So Joseph of Arimathea gets the body, cleans Jesus's body. They lay Jesus's dead body in Joseph's tomb. We're told that it's a new tomb because they would have and it's cut in rocks. So they would have gone in these limestone rocks.

They would have cut out tombs and they would have shelves in there and you would bury your whole family potentially in there. Your whole household would be buried in the same tomb. We're told it's a new tomb. There was only one body in there. It was Jesus's. And they rolled a stone and we're told that this is a big stone.

Rolled a stone in front of the hole cut out in the rock. And this stone would have been basically like a millstone. It had been fairly flat, rounded and sat in a little trench and rolled over the hole. And that was to keep grave robbers out. It was to keep animals out. And so they close the tomb.

And they were told that the Marys know where the tomb is. They've seen it. They saw him buried. That's important. The next day, that is, after the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, Sir, we remember how that imposter said while he was still alive. After three days, I will rise.

Therefore, order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away. And and the last fraud will be worse than the first. Oh, steal him away and tell the people he has risen from the dead and the last fraud will be worse than the first. So the chief priests go and they say, hey, this guy kept telling people he was going to die and he was going to rise again. So it's possible that his disciples will steal the body and then be like, he rose.

Yeah. And that'll be bad. He's an imposter. And that'll make the last fraud worse than the first. And I want you to know that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, they're right. He's an imposter and a fraud.

He's not a good man. He's not a good moral teacher. He's an imposter and a fraud because he said that he was the son of God. He said that he could forgive sins. He said that his blood was going to be poured out as a sacrifice in a new covenant to forgive sins for all who would believe in him. And he said he was going to rise from the grave.

So if he doesn't. He's an imposter and a fraud. They're vindicated. The chief priests and the Pharisees are right. They should have killed him if he doesn't rise. And I want you all to know that's the chief point of Christianity.

Christianity, everything hangs on this. Does Jesus rise from the grave or not? Every once in a while I'll be talking to somebody and they'll be like, I don't know if I can be a Christian. I just don't. I just don't know if you can get that many animals on a boat. And it's like, let's not start there.

That's not that's not. The disciples aren't like I need to tell you some good news. The boat was real. It is real. But that's not the point to debate over first.

You've got to understand. You've got to look at. Did Jesus rise from the grave? Because if he did, then he's king and he's God and we obey. Then we look at the rest of it.

Every once in a while people say, I don't know if I can be a Christian. There's just some stuff in there I don't agree with. Right. Of course. Bible says we're sinners. He's God.

He's going to say some stuff we don't like, you guys. I'd be like you assumed a married couple had been married for 50 years and you just thought, well, they must agree on everything. No. They just learned they had some other things more important that helped them overcome their disagreements. I'd be like you growing up in your house and be like, I'm not sure they're really my parents because I don't like some of their rules. Check your birth certificate.

Have they raised you since you were little? Look at some old family photos. I'm pretty sure you're their kid. That's a bad test. God doesn't think like me. I'm not sure he's real.

I don't think that's a good test. The question is that Jesus arrived from the grave and if he did, then he's king. We obey. We submit. We know he loves us. We know he's good.

We know he's for our good. And we're willing to, where we disagree, understand that we're wrong, that he saved sinners and that we obey and follow. This is the question. Is he an imposter? Or did he rise? So it says this.

Pilate said to them, you have a guard of soldiers. Go make it as secure as you can. So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard. So the stone's been rolled over the hole. They go seal it. We don't know exactly how they did this.

They could have done wax seals that actually had like an insignia in them. There's reports that it was seven wax seals. There's others that say that it was a rope. The scriptures don't tell us. They just tell it's sealed. It was a rope that they put against the wall in some clay.

But they put something on there to show this door has not moved. And they set a guard. Now in my head, and I'm thinking maybe this has to do with like growing up in Sunday school, I always picture two men. That doesn't make any sense. It would have been more than two. It would have been a guard.

They would have set a group there because they were going to have to sleep. They were going to have to watch this for a couple of days. It's probably five to ten. Some sort of a detachment with some kind of leader. They set guards around the tomb. Now this wasn't going to be that difficult of a job.

They're mostly a deterrent. They're here to keep people from stealing the body. Maybe they thought it's possible they'll try to fight us and take it. But that would kind of ruin their plan because they can't steal the body and sneak away and claim he rose if all of us have a big fight out here. But they've got guards.

They've sealed the tomb. They're guarding him. Chapter 28. Now, after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day. So the Sabbath was Saturday.

Jesus was crucified on Friday, Sabbath, Saturday, Sunday morning. Toward the dawn of the first day of the week. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. Though they know where it is. There's also guards there and it's sealed. It's pretty clear which tomb was Jesus's.

And behold, there was a great earthquake for the for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. I love that. It wasn't just an earthquake. Like, you know how someone tells you, hey, we had an earthquake earlier. And you're like, really? I did feel like maybe I shook earlier.

But you don't really remember it. This was a great one. This is a serious earthquake. And the angel rolls the stone back and sits on it. Which I just appreciate that that was his attitude. Rolls the stone back and it sits on it.

And it says his appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. He is bright, dazzling. It's not just like sun brightness. It's like lightning brightness. He was, dare I say, striking. Y'all may not be proud of me.

I'm very proud of me. Verse four. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. Yeah. Seems fair. They're here to be a deterrent to fishermen and tax collectors.

Not angels. He shows up. There's an earthquake, which shook him anyway. And then there's an angel who looks like lightning. He's rolled the tomb back. The thing they were supposed to do is keep that door closed.

Job's already over. Like, oh, oops. He's already done what we were supposed to stop people from doing. And he's just sitting on the stone like what? And it says they trembled and became like dead men. They look like cartoon characters or like Don Knotts in anything you ever played in.

They see this angel. They shake. I like to imagine two of them grabbed each other. And then they just fall out. They're supposed to be tough, strong. And they were.

These were soldiers in the Roman army. But they see this angel. It's over. They just nope out. They fall over. Which is fair.

Because that's not really what they were hired to do. I help manage a firework store twice a year. And on our busiest days, we have security guards. And they're there as a deterrent. Keep kids from pocketing our fireworks. Keep drunk people from fighting in our gravel parking lot.

You know, stuff like that. Help people not smoke inside the building. They're there as a deterrent. But if there's an earthquake and a shining lightning angel rips the front of the store off and steps in, I don't think our security guard is going to be like, now it's my moment. This is what they pay me for. I think he's going to be like, now.

And that's fair. I'm going to do it too. You can have all the fireworks you want. I don't know why you're here. That's what they do. They fall out.

Then it says, the angel, this is verse 5. But the angel said to the women, do not be afraid. Which again, if you meet an angel, that's what you want to hear. You notice he doesn't say it to the guards. It's possible it's because they were unconscious. It's possible because he came specifically to make them be afraid.

He says, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen as he said. Jesus Christ rose from the grave just like he said he was going to. He keeps his promises. We can hope in the certainty of the resurrection of Christ that he is not dead and buried any longer, that he is alive. And therefore, when he says that he forgives sinners, he does.

Come, see the place where he lay. Tell them, go look. That's why it matters. There's only one body in there. They go in. There's no bodies.

Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. So he says, come, look, he's not here anymore.

Go tell his disciples. So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, greetings. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. That is the appropriate response to the risen Christ. Worship.

They come up, they fall down, they grab his feet and they worship. And there's a few things that I think we need to point out here that are helpful. One is, Jesus had feet. Because it was common knowledge to them that ghosts don't. Y'all have seen a picture of Casper. You know it's true.

He's not an apparition. He's not a vision. He is physically, literally there. Also, there is a thing called the swoon theory of the atonement. Or the swoon theory of the crucifixion. That Jesus had his back ripped open by whips.

That he was mocked, spit on, slapped, nailed to a cross. That he was hung on a cross for several hours, stabbed in the side with a spear. And he swooned, which means fainted. And that he didn't actually die. And so they wrapped him up, thought he was dead. They put him in the tomb.

Three days later, he came out because he wasn't dead. There's some problems with that. One is, they did all the things that it takes to kill a person. It's very hard to just pass out from that and not be dead. They also were professional executioners. They knew what they were doing.

They also had people that cared about him, who buried him. Because they were used to having to bury and they knew what a dead person was like. They buried him. But the other thing that I want to point out, if that were true, when they saw him, they would not fall down and worship him. They would have helped him. Even if he could have lasted for three days, wrapped up by himself in the tomb, enough to stay alive, which again, doesn't make any sense.

But if they saw him, he would have looked terrible. They would have run to his aid. But when they see him, he is alive. Gloriously, beautifully, healthy, alive. And they worship him because he has conquered death. And so we worship him.

Verse 10. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me. Okay. We had just been told that they went with fear and great joy. Jesus shows up and says, I'm going to take one of those emotions away.

Do not be afraid. He just leaves them with great joy. That's the result of the resurrection that you are given great joy. Some of you are here this morning. And in your approach to God, you're afraid. Maybe you haven't been in church in a while.

Maybe you felt like it's Easter. I need to get back over there. Maybe you had to work yourself up and psych yourself up. Maybe you stood out in the parking lot and chain smoked three cigarettes before you came in here this morning. Just to get the nerve to come in here and gather with the church. And Jesus says, do not be afraid.

He did not come to die, to be brutally murdered so that you could have a half-hearted, shaky salvation. He did not come and die and rise and conquer the grave so that you might approach him fearfully. He takes punishment on your behalf so that you might have great joy. Do not be afraid. It says, while they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, tell people his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.

And if this comes to the governor's ears, that would be pilot, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. The guards show back up and say, an angel showed up and Jesus left. And they take counsel not to say, hey guys, maybe we were wrong about Jesus. I wonder if anybody raised their hand at the council and was like, have we thought about just like repenting?

Maybe asking him to forgive us? They just are like, let's get enough money together. Let's come up with this lie. They pay them to go lie and say that his body was stolen. They specifically tell them, look, if the governor finds out, which y'all will be very much in trouble for this, we'll cover for you. Now, that lie doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Because the disciples don't benefit much from pretending that Jesus rose from the grave. He was a fraud. He doesn't actually save from sin. If they went and stole his body and then just pretended he rose from the grave, the only thing they get out of it is persecution. They are beaten, murdered for 30 years. They're chased from place to place, put in prison.

And then after 30 years, it gets worse. They're executed. They're tortured. All of them, not just the disciples, but the people who believe their word. They hold to this story. There's a man named Chuck Colson or Charles Colson who was Nixon's hatchet man.

So President Nixon in the Watergate scandal had a lawyer who they called him the hatchet man. Sounds like a nice guy. If you're not familiar with the Watergate scandal, some of you are very familiar. Some of you lived through that. Some of you don't really. You're like, oh, yeah, no, I kind of remember that.

Some of you are like, what? Just know it's so important that from then on, Americans have stuck gate behind everything that has ever happened. Deflate gate. You can go look it up online. There's a fajita gate. There's a very long list of all the things that we just stuck gate behind because of Watergate.

We're like, oh, it's a scandal. Stick gate next to it. But Chuck Colson gets arrested. He was one of the first ones to be arrested. He becomes a Christian in jail or prison. And he says this.

He says, I know the resurrection is a fact. And Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified that they had seen Jesus raised from the dead. Then they proclaim that truth for 40 years, never once denying it.

Everyone was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world and they couldn't keep alive for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep alive for 40 years? Absolutely impossible. Jesus Christ literally, physically rose from the dead.

And we have a literal, physical, certain, eternal hope because of it. First Corinthians 15, 17 says, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Three verses later, he says, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. Faith isn't futile. You're not in your sins. We have a certain hope.

When I was in high school, I took an AP English class. AP classes, you study, you take a test. If you do well enough on the test, you don't have to. You can place out of college stuff. My high school wasn't excellent, but we did have this class, so I took it. Some places, like 30 of these things.

We had this one. I took it. I test well. I placed out of English in college. Do you know what I didn't do after I took that test? Study English ever again.

Didn't have to study it in college. The work was done. It was accomplished. I was free. Well, until seminary when I had to learn how grammar works. But that's not part of the illustration.

The part of the illustration is that Jesus accomplished this for us. We are free. You are not here to take a test. You are not here to be moral enough. You are not here to be one of the good ones. You are not here to learn from all of us how to behave well.

If you are, you have chosen a bad group of people to hang out with. We want you to join a group so that you can all learn to love Jesus more. Not so that you can be a good morals club. We want you to repent of sin. We want you to obey. But the purpose of this is not let's come together and take the test well enough so that God will love us.

It's let's come together and praise Jesus who has already taken and passed and accomplished everything for us. It is finished. He has risen. We have hope. Now, everybody in here is placing hope in something. You're looking at something and saying, if I can just have you, I'll be okay.

If I can just accomplish this, I'll be okay. If I can just make enough money. If I can just have the right relationship. If my marriage can just be good. If I can just get out of this marriage. I'll be happy.

I'll be free. If I can just have children. Then you have children. You're like, well, if they can just behave. And then you're like, if they can just move out. But we pick something to say, if I can just have this, if this will just work.

We say, if I can just make enough money. And then you find out that people on the internet can just decide to buy certain stocks and mess everything up. If I can just have enough money. If I can just control this right. And then there's a man who's just doing his job. And then he realizes he left his garage door open.

So he takes his cargo ship and does a three point turn. And he gets stuck. And the supply chain for the whole world is messed up. These things are not certain. They are not controllable. You're hoping in something that is.

Look, the truth is, and I hate to break it to some of you. We're all Gamecock fans. In something. We've all picked something that we're just wishfully thinking it'll get better one day. That sometime it's going to finally work. And the reality is, even if we get it, how long does it have to last?

Does it have to stay stable? Can you peak and stop? Or does it have to keep getting better over time? Can you sustain it? Some of you have picked something that's always out in front of you. But the reality is, if you ever get it, you'll realize that now you've got to keep it.

You do. Some of you right now are running from your past decisions. Just waiting for your past mistakes to catch up with you. This is uncertain hope. That is to be accomplished by you and kept by you. So I want us to look.

I want you to think about what is it that you keep placing your hope in. That it will fix you. That it will save you. I want us to look at 1 Peter 1, 3, 4, and 5. It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That our hope, if you are in Christ, is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Not through your good works. Not through your intelligence. Not through your good behavior in the past or your ability to promise to be better in the future. Not through you.

Praise Jesus not through you. Praise Jesus not through me. It's not even that he gives us a clean slate and says, keep it together. He takes it. And he keeps it. Which is good.

I don't want it back. I can't do it. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Verse 4. To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Kept in heaven for you.

Who? You. Who? By God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. Now look at that.

What else passes that test? Is your money imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept eternally for you? Is it guarded by God's power? Is it ready to be revealed? Is your health and good looks and muscles, are they imperishable? Undefiled, unfading?

Unfading? Are they kept for you eternally? Are they guarded by God's power? Is your marriage? Your relationships? Your children?

Your good morals? Your ability to not be found out? See a lot of us start off on the I'm going to behave really well. And then that turns into I'm going to hide really well. And I'm going to behave really well in the future. But it's not.

It's not imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. It's not guarded by God's power. If your hope isn't in Christ, may I suggest you get a better hope. If your hope isn't sealed. If your hope isn't certain. If your hope doesn't make you free.

If your hope does not remove fear and leave you with joy. May I suggest you get a better hope. And may I tell you that you can find it in Christ and you can find it in Christ right now. That he can save to the uttermost all those who will call on him for salvation. That we come to him in repentance. Meaning that all you bring is the stuff that makes you insufficient to save yourself.

You come with your sin. That's what qualifies you for salvation is that you need it. And you come and you say, Lord, I can't save myself. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not strong enough.

I can't keep it. I can't maintain it. By the grace of God, save me. And he does. He loves us enough to die for our sins. And he rises so that we might have certain hope.

That we come to him in faith. We trust that he does it. We give him praise and glory. That's why we gather. To worship his name because he's the one who redeems. To praise his name because he's the one who saves.

And if your hope isn't this certain. Might I suggest that you place your faith in Jesus. And you get your fear taken away. You get it replaced with great joy. And you have a certain hope. The band's going to come back up.

And we're going to praise Jesus. And Christians in this room, we're going to get loud. And we're going to celebrate. Because it's not up to us. It's not left on our shoulders. And if you have not placed your faith in Christ, you can.

I know that you're qualified. I know that you're qualified because all you need is sin. All you need is shortcoming. All you need is weakness. That you can come to him right now. And I know that he has qualified us through his finished work on the cross.

So all you have to do is say, please forgive me of my sins. Change me. Help me to follow you. And he will. Don't hesitate. We have this tendency to fight this.

Don't fight this. Lay your fear down. Leave with joy. Be redeemed by Christ. Let's pray.

God, we thank you that we have a certain hope through the resurrection of Christ. That we are guarded by your power, not ours. And Lord, for the person in here who's had these moments right now where the Holy Spirit is pulling on them to believe. Pressing on them and saying, let this go. Turn from this. Trust in me.

Lord, may you break them so that they will not fight you any longer. By your grace will you claim them. May they lay their sin down and ask for salvation to the one who loves and freely gives. Forgiveness without regret. Hope that is certain. May you take fear away and leave in its wake great joy accomplished by the finished work of Christ.

In Jesus' name, amen.

From the Prison to the Palace

From the Prison to the Palace

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are going to be in Genesis 40 and 41 today. So go ahead and grab a Bible, follow along with us.

If you don't have a Bible, there's a blue Bible on the road. It'll be on page 20. I love stories that are told in a way where everything comes full circle. Movies that do this well are really good. I remember Slumdog Millionaire, which is kind of a movie that celebrates Indian culture. It's told in a way where everything comes full circle.

The beginning starts where this guy, he's a contestant on the Indian version of who wants to be a millionaire. He's getting ready to answer the final question, the 20 million rupee dollar question. And they're like wondering, how does this guy who comes from like the lower parts of Mumbai, how has this guy gotten all this way? And they think that he's cheating. So they walk through all the questions with him to see how he answered these.

And the way the story is told is that each question is a point that points back to a different part of his life, a different memory, a different experience. And the story is told where it's all of it comes together at the end. It all points and converges to him being able to answer a question that's going to change his life forever. I love seeing this in stories that we get to watch, we get to read. I love seeing this when it happens in your own life. I got to see this recently.

I was in seminary. And in seminary, I started taking extra counseling classes. I started taking extra counseling coursework of the church I was a part of. I started shadowing different counseling pastors and learning. And at the time, I could not have told you why I wanted to take all this extra work. It wasn't a part of my degree program.

It wasn't something I was thinking I was going to be doing a whole lot of when I got into ministry. But there was something that drew me to it. As I think back now, I think part of that was that so much of my life has been connected to suffering, to loss, to death, to all different kinds of experiences. And I think part of it maybe was me wanting to have an answer, to me being able to want to walk people through the Bible and walk them through suffering. What I didn't realize is that stepping into my leadership here in this church, the two things that I would help oversee are teaching and counseling.

And I just love in my office now, I see this whole bookshelf, and there's a whole bunch of books that are a reflection of that, that everything has come full circle for me and how God is using me in our church. I love stories that come full circle, and I love this story of Joseph, because it's going to start coming full circle as we walk through the last parts of this story. We've been walking through the story of Joseph and seeing at the very beginning that he is gifted in dreams, that he's gifted in helping interpret dreams, that that's something that God has gifted him in, and when he uses it the first time that we see it, it does not end well for him. His brothers end up selling him into slavery, which leads to the situation we walked through last week, where he is falsely accused of rape, and now he is in prison.

He is in the pit, and he is suffering. But we're going to see his story start to come full circle with the giftings that God has given him. And as we see this come full circle, there's a question that still remains. Is he going to continue to be faithful to God? Is he going to, in the midst of everything that he has suffered, still going to trust God? We're going to see that answer today as we walk through his story, and we're going to see a picture of faithfulness, a faithfulness that we are all called to as God's people in spite of circumstance.

That in the mess and suffering of life that we face, God still calls us to faithfulness. That because God is sovereign, he still calls us to be faithful, trusting him with our lives, and ultimately trusting him with the reward. So we're going to see that as we walk through this. Let me pray, and then we'll jump into the story. God, I'm thankful that through the trials of life, we are not alone. That through suffering, you do not abandon us.

God, I pray you would help us see that faithfulness to you is better than anything else in this world. I pray that you would make that clear to us this morning as we walk through this story. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so, Joseph, as we walked through the end of last week, is in prison, but he's, like his other work, has been blessed in his work in the prison, so he's kind of become this honorary warden who's helping take care of the prison. So he's in prison, he's helping take care of the prisoners, of the prisoners, and then he gets two new prisoners, which is where we pick up today in Genesis 40, verse 1.

So it says, sometime after this. Now, that's a commentary note from Moses. We don't know how long he's been in prison, but if it's going to say sometime after this, it's probably been years. So he's years in prison, looking over the prisoners, sometime after this. The cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against the Lord, the king of Egypt. All right, so we've got two positions, two high-ranking positions in Pharaoh's government.

They're now in prison. We've got the cupbearer and the baker. All right, so the cupbearer in ancient Near East government was a very important position. If you were going to assassinate a king, you did it by poisoning. That was the way to get away with it. So they had cupbearers who would drink the wine, who would drink the drink to make sure it wasn't poison.

So they would take a bullet for them. So that was part of their job. Because they were such a trusted official, they had other responsibilities that were important as well. And then we have the chief baker, also a very important position in the kingdom. He makes the food, which also needs to not be poisoned. It also needs to taste good.

Because if it doesn't, it will end up like an episode of Chopped, and his head will be on the chopping block at the end. And that is where we are at. Both of them are in prison. Both of them have committed offense. We don't know what they did. It doesn't tell us.

Maybe Joseph came to them and said, hey, what did you do to get here? And they just said, unspoken. Like, we don't know. But they've committed offense. They're in prison. And it picks up in verse 2, when Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined.

The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, and he attended them, and they continued for some time in custody. So again, Joseph is overseeing these guys. These guys are part of his watch. And it picks up in verse 5. And one night, they both dreamed, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined to prison, each his own dream, and each dream with its own interpretation. All right, so they have some dreams that need some interpreting.

Now, we take a step back for a second. We talked about this a few weeks back. I just want to reiterate it. Dreams have value. All right, they have importance.

There's about three different categories we walked through a few weeks back of dreams. Some of them are just random and weird. Just what they are. Like, if in your dream, your dog becomes a person and starts talking to you about your favorite TV show and then turns back into a dog. That's weird. You don't have to read any more into it.

That's just our brain processing things. It's just odd. There's a second category of dreams that has value because it's the working out of different anxieties, fears, experiences, memories. This is what psychology likes to deal in. This is what Froy, one of the fathers of psychology, liked to help interpret, to figure out what our dreams are telling us. And that has value because that is part of what happens in dreams.

We are working through anxieties, fears, all of that. When I was a kid, I had a reoccurring nightmare of these. We were, I remember I was at my house and there was a party going on and then I look up and everyone's gone. And then all of a sudden, these demons start coming down the street to get me. And you may be thinking, wait, that seems a little more spiritual. It wasn't.

It wasn't spiritual because those demons were from the movie Ghost. Ghost. Because my parents thought it was a good idea at five years old to let me watch Ghost. And I don't know if you've ever seen Ghost. That is not an appropriate movie in any form or fashion for a five-year-old. But there are these little demons that are in the movie that would come up and take people to hell.

And it scared the mess out of me. And I had this reoccurring nightmare that those demons from the movie Ghost were coming to get me. So we have nightmares, dreams like that that are sorting out memories, sorting out fears. And there's a third category where dreams can be very spiritual. That God gives them to us and that He's speaking through them. And what we said a few weeks back is as Christians, whatever dreams we have that trouble us, we bring them into community.

We bring them into the church. We have the Holy Spirit as the church and we help sort them out together to see what's going on there. That's how we respond. That is not how they would respond. In their culture, they had specific people who were gifted in dream interpretation. And these men were troubled because they didn't think they had access to anybody like that in prison.

It picks up in verse 6. When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled. So he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in custody in his master's house, why are your faces downcast today? So he sees them and he sees that they're troubled and he could have just kept walking. He didn't have to ask. In the same way that if you're in the office and you see a co-worker who is obviously upset, whose eyes are, you can tell they've been crying, they're red, you could walk past them because you know if you ask them how they're doing, it may turn into a 20 or 30 minute conversation.

Or, you can be a Christian. You can respond in grace and ask them, hey, how are you doing? And that's what Joseph does. He sees that they're dismayed. He asks them how they are doing. Why are you troubled?

And in verse 8 it says, they said to him, we have had dreams and there's no one to interpret them. And Joseph said to them, do not interpretations belong to God. Please, tell them to me. So Joseph has trusted God with this gift. With this gift of interpreting dreams and it has earned him suffering. He had a dream that his family one day would bow down to him, he shares it, he ends up in slavery.

He eventually ends up in prison. That his life has been suffering because of his dreams. So it would be understandable if they said that and he went, hmm, I wish you had somebody who could help. Like hard pass, like I don't want any part of this. It would be understandable because all of his experiences thus far of trusting the gift that God has given him has earned him suffering. But that's not what he does.

He has faith. Throughout all the suffering, throughout all the mess, he still trusts God with the gift that he has been giving. He still has a healthy relationship with God. So he asks them. He offers help. And it picks up in verse 9.

So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, in my dream, there was a vine before me. And on the vine, there were three branches. So in dreams and in the Bible, Numbers are significant. So this three sticks out. It has significance. And as soon as it budded, it blossoms, as soon as it budded, it blossoms, its blossoms shot forth and the clusters ripened into grapes.

So this is a dream that he can understand. This is wine, grapes language for a cupbearer. Pharaoh's cup was in my hand and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. All right, so that was his dream. Now Joseph jumps in with the interpretation.

Then Joseph said to him, this is his interpretation. The three branches are three days. In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office. And you shall place Pharaoh's cup in his hand as formerly when you were his cupbearer. So he had to have, I'd like to think, a huge sigh of relief at this point.

He's been troubled, which means he's been trying to sort out what this dream is. What does three mean? It's going to be cut into three pieces. It's going to be pressed out like wine. There's all kinds of fears and in that moment, Joseph steps in and helps relieve him. No, no, no.

You will be restored. You are going to be restored to where you were. But this is what Joseph adds. He says, only remember me when it is well with you and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh and so get me out of this house for I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews and here also I've done nothing that they should put me in the pit. So he makes a plea.

He understands that this is one of the high-ranking officials that serves under Pharaoh. He says, remember me. When you are restored, please remember me because my whole life I've been snatched out of my own land, sold into slavery. I'm in this prison, in this pit for doing nothing wrong. And how many of us feel that? How many of us, that's your story?

That so much of your life has been trying to honor God, has been doing the right thing and you've been passed over. Whether it was a job promotion, you get passed over. Whether it was a sale, whether it was an opportunity, you did what was right and those who were faithless pursued and cheated and did all kinds of things to get ahead of you and you are left behind. We can feel how Joseph feels in the pit, hoping to be remembered, hoping that faithfulness might actually be rewarded. So this is Joseph.

He makes the plea. And while the cupbearer is getting good news, the baker hears it and he's like, oh, how about me? He says, when the chief baker saw the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, I also had a dream. There were three cake baskets on my head. And the utmost basket, there were all sorts of baked food. There was all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.

And Joseph answered and said, this is his interpretation. The three baskets are three days. He's got some good news. And in three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head. Seemingly good news. From you.

And hang you on a tree. And the birds will eat the flesh from you. And that's his interpretation. The chief baker was so excited. He's like, man, the cupbearer got good news. I've got to get in on this action.

Tell me, dreamer, what you got? I have number three. That's good news, right? I've got three baskets on my head. And I've baked goods. And there's birds eating it.

And they're flying. Am I going to fly up out of here? How is this going to end for me? Tell me, dreamer, what do you have for me? Now, Joseph is good at a lot of things. He helped build a business empire.

He's obviously a good warden. He's taking care of the prison. He is gifted in dream interpretation. He is not good at giving bad news. Because he says it just like you did the cupbearer. In three days, your head will be lifted up.

And it's like, oh, yes. No, no, no. Lift it up from your head. You will be hung. This ends badly for you. And he gives the bad news and it goes down exactly how he interpreted.

On the third day, verse 20, which was Pharaoh's birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. He restored the chief cupbearer to his position and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. But he hanged the chief baker as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph but forgot him. So it goes down like he said it would and another disappointment happens for Joseph.

Hoping that maybe he might be remembered. That his faithfulness here might pay off. How many days you think he was waiting for someone to come through the prison to come and get him? How many days was he hoping to maybe see the cupbearer maybe see someone that the cupbearer would send hoping that he might be lifted up out of the pit? And at what point did he finally just say I don't know if someone is coming. This is my life.

I am used. I am discarded. I am forgotten. Flip over to chapter 41. After two whole years. He has been in prison for years and two more years of waiting.

That just shows that our timing is not God's timing. It is not God's timing at all. After two whole years Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile and behold there came up out of the Nile seven cows attractive and plump and they fed in the reed grass. And behold seven other cows ugly and thin came up out of the Nile after them and stood by the other cows on the bank of the Nile and the ugly thin cows ate up the seven attractive plump cows and Pharaoh awoke. Alright so by dream that's a nightmare.

That's fairly terrifying. My dreams don't ever get that graphic. My typical nightmares are I show up on a Sunday and I don't think I'm preaching and somebody says hey you're preaching today and I'm like no I'm not preaching. And it's like no you are and my reoccurring nightmare is I show up and I am unprepared and I have to preach. That is my naked in the office dream that happens regularly and that pales in comparison to the horrors of what he just saw. I don't know if you heard that.

There were seven fat cows eating, drinking, just being cows and seven thin mangy looking cows came up and ate them. Cows don't eat. The only thing they eat is grass and corn. That's terrifying to see these thin cows attack these fat cows and there's blood and it's horrifying and it's a nightmare and Pharaoh awakes and he somehow gets back to sleep. And in verse 5 he has a second dream that says he fell asleep and dreamed a second time and behold seven ears of grain plump and good were growing on one stalk. So again Numbers are significant the seven matters here. and behold after them sprouted seven ears thin and blighted by the east wind and the thin ears swallowed up the thin ears swallowed up the seven plump full ears and Pharaoh awoke and behold it was a dream.

So in the morning his spirit was troubled and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dreams but there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh. Some of you all felt this. You have nightmares night terrors things that disturb you and when that happens the appropriate response is you need to find somebody. You need to sort it out. You need to figure out what happened and that is what happens with Pharaoh.

He has this nightmare these back to back dreams and they're significant and he needs help. So he reaches out to his magicians he reaches out to his wise men and there's no one who can help him until finally somebody remembers. Verse 9 it says Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh I remember my offenses today. When Pharaoh was angry with his servants and put me and the chief baker in the custody of the house of the captain of the guard we dreamed on the same night he and I each having a dream with its own interpretation. A young Hebrew was there with us a servant of the captain of the guard.

When we told him he interpreted our dreams to us giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream. And as he interpreted to us so it came about. I was restored to my office and the baker was hanged. Two years later finally the cupbearer remembers. He tells what happened to Pharaoh how he interpreted the dream correctly and we're starting to see that everything in Joseph's life is starting to converge that all that God has prepared him for is for this moment that dreams for the majority of his life have been his downfall have been his suffering but now they're actually going to be his redemption.

That God is orchestrating it all for this moment and Joseph through it all has not given up on hope has not given up on faith in God that he has been given this gift for a reason. In verse 14 it says then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph and they quickly brought him out of the pit and when he had shaved himself and changed his clothes he came in before Pharaoh. So after years in prison Joseph he's got nasty prison garments he's got to be cleaned up. He goes and he changes out his clothes he gets shaved he gets cleaned up he's being brought before Pharaoh and when he's being brought before Pharaoh he gets it.

He has got one shot at this. He's seen what happens to people in the kingdom that do not please Pharaoh. He has one shot one opportunity to seize everything he ever wanted. Will he capture it? Or will he let it slip? You're welcome to everyone under 40 who listen to hip hop.

Verse 15 And Pharaoh said to Joseph I've had a dream and there's no one who can interpret it. I've heard it said of you when you hear a dream you can interpret it. Joseph answered Pharaoh It is not in me God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer. Joseph hear this he is standing before one of the most powerful men in the world. He is a slave a prisoner I mean there's a lot on the line here and Joseph looks at a man who is worshipped like a God amongst his people and says no you're mistaken no it is God my God that is going to give the favorable news. He looks at this king and he doesn't waver.

He still wholeheartedly believes in God trusts in him but through all the suffering his hope is still secure in him. He stares down this powerful man declares who is actually going to give the news here. So then Pharaoh recounts the dream he tells it again we're not going to read it. Joseph gives the interpretation skip down to verse 25 Then Joseph said to Pharaoh the dreams of Pharaoh are one God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven cows are seven years and the seven good ears are seven years the dreams are one the seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years and the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind are also seven years of famine.

It is as I told Pharaoh God has shown Pharaoh what he's about to do there will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt but after them there will arise seven years of famine and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt the famine will consume the land and plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow for it will be very severe and the doubling of Pharaoh's dream means this thing is fixed by God and God will shortly bring it about.

Palm Sunday and the Kingdom of God

Palm Sunday and the Kingdom of God

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. Happy Palm Sunday. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are going to take a break from Genesis to prepare for this week. Today is Palm Sunday, as Matt said, as we've been celebrating this morning, which is the week, the day that Jesus entered into the city of Jerusalem on the week that he was crucified.

So we're going to walk through this in Luke 19, which is on page 512 in your Blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, please take one of those home. That is our gift to you, but we'll be on page 512 in the Blue Bibles, Luke 19. This week is called Holy Week or Passion Week because this is when the global church collectively, with the exception of Eastern Orthodoxy, but the rest of the global church pauses to celebrate the week of Easter. The week that we celebrate Jesus' climactic work, everything that has gone into his coming, we celebrate this week. That on Palm Sunday, Jesus enters into the city as we will walk through in the text today.

And then on Thursday, the church celebrates something called Maundy Thursday, which is when we celebrate the Lord's Supper that was practiced, was first instituted on that day, also foot washing. So in groups this week, we're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper and take communion. I know some of you just freaked out. We're not going to do foot washing. We're not going to do that. It has its place.

It has its meaning, but we're just not going to do it in our groups this week. So if you're scared of feet, rest easy. But we are going to take the Lord's Supper in groups this week. And then on Friday, we're going to celebrate Good Friday. And we'd love to do that here, but this space gets rented out every year. So we're going to join Midtown Fellowship downtown to celebrate Good Friday with them.

And then on Sunday, we'll celebrate the resurrection here on Easter Sunday. So go ahead and go to Luke. We'll get to that in a moment. Have you ever been so, you put so much hope in something. You so looked forward to something, and it didn't work out, and you were crushed. Like your hopes, you were left sad and dismayed.

Like I got to see this vividly on display a few weeks ago. If you aren't on Facebook and we're not friends or haven't had this conversation with you yet, I have some exciting news we're expecting. My wife is 17 weeks pregnant, and it was a surprise. But we are very excited about this blessing. This pregnancy in particular has been very, very difficult for her. All of the first trimesters of her pregnancies have been terrible.

She's been sick in all of them. But this one, this one was especially bad. She was sick multiple times a day throughout the first trimester. And there was one food that really got her through, one food that she didn't see again when she ate it, and that was Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A was a godsend to our family that got us through the first trimester. Unfortunately, in Lexington, we live in West Lexington, so we live right near Lexington High School on the back end towards Gilbert.

Unfortunately, the Chick-fil-A in the middle of Lexington, up until a few weeks ago, had been closed down for renovations. So that means that she wanted something that she could eat that she wouldn't be sick again. She had to travel all the way to the other side of Lexington, to where the one is over at Saluda Point, the one by River Bluff. She had to travel that far just to get something that she wouldn't see again. And she was very agitated by this. She was so upset that she wrote Chick-fil-A, a strongly worded email, telling them, you need to build a Chick-fil-A on our side of town.

You will make money. This is foolish. Please, please, please build a Chick-fil-A over here. And then a couple weeks ago, she saw on Facebook. Someone had taken a picture of a sign from a green field across from Lexington High School and said, the sign said, Chick-fil-A coming soon. And she was so excited.

A lot of people were. This went viral for the people that live on this side of Lexington. She got so excited that finally her hopes, her prayers had been answered. She got the kids loaded up in the car. She ran an errand. And then she went over to the field to see the sign in all of its glory.

And it was not there. It was April 1st. It was a mean, cruel April Fool's joke. And she had gotten her hopes up so much and just crushed. I called her. I was like, are you okay?

And she's like, I'm not okay. She was very, very angry. We do this. We put hope in things. Small things like this. But throughout our lives, we put hope in things.

Maybe you really hoped to get in a specific college, a specific grad school. And you were waiting for the letter to come. And you were waiting for the big package to arrive. And all of a sudden, the small letter came. And you didn't get in. Maybe it was a job that you were putting hope in, that you interviewed for, that you thought you were going to get, or a promotion that you thought that you were going to land and you got passed over.

Maybe it was a boy or a girl, someone that you were hoping that you might have a chance with. And then finally, you put yourself out there. And they rejected you and your hopes were crushed. And we do this. We do this every four years at election cycle. Some candidate stands up, makes a bunch of promises.

People get their hopes up. And they never live up to it. We do this because we are people made in the image of God, which means we bear his image. And we are people created with longing and hope. To hope in God. And what we do is, is we hope and long in other things.

We find replacements for that. And when they don't work out, we're crushed. We're going to see this on display today as we walk through this story. We're going to see this with the disciples as they are so hopeful and the people as they're so hopeful as Jesus enters into the city. So we're going to be in Luke 19.

Let me pray. And then we'll drive in. God, thank you so much that we get to celebrate this time every year that you came and the work that you did for us. God, I pray that you would help us see this story for what it is and what it points to for us. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so before we jump into the text, I want to do a little bit of background.

We haven't, we've been in Genesis, so I want to do some background of how we got to this story. But also, it's important to understand the cultural expectations that the people have when Jesus entered into the city. So for three years leading up to this, Jesus has been ministering to the whole nation of Israel. He is a celebrity. Everybody knows who Jesus is. He has his disciples.

He has crowds and followers that follow him. Everyone, he's a celebrity. He can't go anywhere without crowds coming out. He's healed hundreds. He's raised the dead. He's fed thousands with just five loaves and two fish.

He's done all these great miracles. And everyone knows who he is. There's this big expectation. And as he's doing his work, there are some promises from the Old Testament that people are looking at and saying, I think this might be the one. There are messianic promises, promises that point to the Messiah. Messiah.

And the Messiah in the Old Testament was someone who was going to come and save the people. A hero. Even a king who would come and rescue the people. And the people are looking at Jesus and his work. And they're looking at these Old Testament promises. And they're thinking, this I think is the one.

These promises were vivid. They believed in them. They hoped in them. So much so that in the decades leading up to Jesus, there were other people that claimed to be the Messiah that they put hope in. These false messiahs would come up. They would have disciples just like Jesus would.

They'd have crowds. They'd teach people. But their goal was to overthrow the Roman government. You see, in their context, the Roman government controlled the land of Israel. And the people of God hated this. They hated it.

I mean, we've spent some time in Genesis. We've seen all that went into the promise of them getting the promised land. And to see that this was controlled, this land that was promised to their ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to see this promised land controlled by a pagan nation like the Romans, they hated it. And these messiahs would raise up and they would get the people excited and they would attempt to overthrow the Roman government. And then they would fail. And they would end up on crosses, which is the punishment for a rebel, an insurrectionist, someone who is treasonous.

And there's this longing that a messiah is going to come. But they're looking at Jesus and Jesus feels different. He's reforming all these miracles. He's doing things like Elijah the prophet, like Elisha, like Moses did in the Old Testament. He seems to be the one that is going to come and free the people. So when Jesus shows up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, here's a little bit of what they were expecting.

That he would ride into the city triumphantly. He would come down and he would start to perform signs and miracles like he's done throughout the land. And then he would start to overthrow the Roman government. He would take Jerusalem. And then almost like Braveheart, village by village, they'd start to take the whole land of Israel, town by town, village by village, from south of Jerusalem to the north in Galilee. Jesus, the hope was, he would take the land back.

He would kick the Romans out. And it wasn't just that he was going to get the land back. The hope, if you look at the promises of the Old Testament, if this was going to be global, that Jesus was going to take over the whole world, which to them was the whole Roman Empire that spread across the globe, and that Jesus would rule and reign from Jerusalem over all of the world. All of this hope and expectation was built in to this Palm Sunday 2,000 years ago. It is the reason, as we're going to look at this, that he was so celebrated like a king on Sunday. And it's part of the reason why he was crucified like a rebel on a Friday.

They wanted Jesus to be someone he was not. They had a hope for redemption that was not his plan. But ultimately, God is going to use all of this to bring about his rescue plan. So that is all the expectation that was built in to Palm Sunday. Let's jump into verse 28.

And when he had said these things, he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near Bethphage and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples. All right, so Jesus has been teaching in village to village, getting closer to the city. And now he's right before the city. Geographically, here's Jerusalem. Here's the Mount of Olives.

On the other side is Bethphage and Bethany. So he's getting closer. The people in the city are starting to get excited. They're starting to get stirred up at his arrival. So Jesus is going to prepare for his arrival.

He says, go ahead. And he sends his disciples. And this is what he says. He says, he sent two of his disciples, verse 30, saying, Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied up, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it?

You shall say this, the Lord has need of it. So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. So he says, go to the village and bring me a colt, a colt that no one has ridden. Now we know a colt is either a baby horse or it's a baby young donkey. And we know from the context of the other gospels that what he is referring to is a young donkey. He says, go, bring me this young donkey.

And as Isaac alluded to in his reading, why wouldn't you choose a horse? If you were going to be a king that rides into a city, they were thinking he was going to come in and overthrow the Romans. Why wouldn't you choose a horse? Like a king who is on top of the hill looking down into the city, rears the horse up, rides in. That's a power play. That would really demonstrate military force.

But he doesn't. No, he chooses a humble donkey, which is so picturesque of Jesus' entire life. He came into this world humble as a babe and a stable. His whole ministry has been one of humility and that is how he is going to end this. So, he tells him to choose a humble donkey. What we're going to see as we work through this is that as he's doing these things, he's also fulfilling prophecies in the Old Testament.

He fulfills Zechariah 9.9 that says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. Humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt the full of a donkey. So, he fulfills this.

He tells them to go. And it goes down exactly how he predicted. Verse 33. And it says, And as they were untying the colt, its owner said to them, Why are you untying the colt? And they said, The Lord has need of it. And they brought it to Jesus.

And throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. So, it goes down like he said it would. They bring the young donkey. They throw their cloaks on it. This is a sign of submission. They're submitting to Jesus.

They're saying, We are following you into the city. We've got your back. And then it begins. Verse 36. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. And he was drawing near.

Already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. All right. So, I really want us to picture this scene together. Years ago, I got to go on a Maymester to Israel. I got to do like three weeks there, going throughout the land, doing some studies.

And I got to spend five days in Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, it's important to understand the geography of what this would look like. So, I got a picture. This is Jerusalem. This is taken from the city. That is the Mount of Olives that sits behind Jerusalem.

So, it was a little bit bigger back in the day. That mountain has been slowly starting to erode. But you see how it sits above the city. All right. So, second picture. I took this picture from top of the Mount of Olives.

And it's looking down into the city. You see that golden dome. That is called the Dome of the Rock. That is the third holiest site in Islam. When the Islamic expansion happened and they took Jerusalem, they built that mosque right on top of where the temple used to be. So, I want you to look at that and picture a much bigger temple would have been sitting there.

The entrance to the temple would have been there. And this is why this is important. Jesus is sitting on top of the Mount of Olives. The people are at the base of this valley. They're right before the temple. And they are celebrating His coming.

They're celebrating His entry. And Jesus is looking down into the temple. That's important because to the people, He's getting ready to... He's riding directly into the temple. We know He goes into the temple. And that's where He turns over tables.

But they're seeing this. And there's this expectation that Jesus is coming into the city. He's coming into the temple. This is the place of religious power. This is the place where He's going to set up His throne. Where He's going to rule.

Where He's going to reign from. They were expecting this military victory to come in. They are missing it. They're missing it because they're not seeing it. It is symbolic. He's looking down in the temple.

The place where sacrifices are offered day and night for the sins of the people. He is going to be the final sacrifice that fulfills that entire system. There's this entire expectation. But there's this disconnect. They see Him triumphant like a king. But they fail to see what's really happening here.

But they're celebrating Him like a king. One of the things we learn from the other Gospels while we call it Palm Sunday. Is they break off palm branches. And they set them before Jesus. And palm branches are a national Jewish symbol. It's picturesque of when David would come into the city on a military victory.

And they'd have palm branches. This is all a picture of He is coming into the city. He's going to overthrow the Romans. They shout, Hosanna! Hosanna! Which is a joyous celebration.

A joyous exclamation. We know from the Messianic Psalms what Hosanna means literally is save us. Save us now. They are joyously declaring, This is the king. Come into the city and save us. This fulfills Psalm 118 that says, Save us, we pray, O Lord.

O Lord, we pray, give us success. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. That is the picture that is happening here as the Savior King rides into the city. They just can't see the other part of the prophecies. The Messianic Prophesis pointed to a Savior King, but it also pointed to one who would suffer.

That suffering was the path to kingship. But all they can see is king. All they can see is save us. They can't see the full picture. They have their minds set, hear this, on an earthly kingdom. That's what their hope is.

It's an earthly kingdom. And on Palm Sunday, they have rightfully declared, Jesus is the king of the Jews. The disciples, the people, are excited. But then we get a foretaste of what's to come. Verse 39, And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

So the Pharisees are part of the religious leadership that helps rule the country. They are priests that help rule the country along with another group that makes up a council called the Sanhedrin. It's a council of religious leaders. And the Pharisees represent a big portion of the Sanhedrin. They're the ones that keep the country in order. They're the religious leaders.

And it's long before this, they'd already began to plot to kill Jesus. When Jesus comes on the scene and starts teaching and starts performing his miracles, it's not how they expected. It's not how they wanted. They do not like him. They are looking for an opportunity to kill him. And they just got a picture.

They just got something they can cling to as people are shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna. As they are declaring his kingship, they're finding some ammunition. And they look at him. And I want you to feel the venom and the arrogance of what they say to him. They say, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Don't just silence the worship, the praise that is due to you because you are the God of the universe.

Don't just silence that praise. You need to correct your disciples. They are wrong. They need to be corrected. It's ridiculous. Part of me, when I look at this, I'm like, Jesus could easily just rightfully and justifiably so just do a Thanos snap in a minute and then the Pharisees just evaporate off screen.

Like that, that, he'd be justified in doing so. But he doesn't. This is how he responds. He says, Yeah, the disciples, these people, they could be silent. But if they're silent, the very rocks will sing my praises.

And what he just said was, is that, yes, the people could stop. But creation, that praises the Creator, will still praise me. He just said, I'm going to get my praise because I am God. And you had to know, the Pharisees' jaws just hit the floor. Because what he just said to them was crazy. I mean, see it a little bit from their perspective.

He just said something. Crazy. He just said he was God. I mean, if Matt came up here and led worship, and he started playing, and all of a sudden, he started belting out words. All the songs we sing to Jesus, he started, he like rudely pasted his name on the PowerPoint, and tried to get us to all sing praises to Matt. We would yank him off stage.

He's a big guy. It would take three of us. But we'd get him off. Because that's crazy. It would be crazy to say that if you're not God. But Jesus is God.

And he's fulfilling Psalm 66, 4 that says, All the earth worships you and sings praises to you. They sing praises to your name. And this is why when people say that Jesus doesn't believe that he's God, doesn't say that he's God, it's like you aren't reading the same Bible. Over and over, he's making declarations that he is God. C.S. Lewis says he's either a liar, a lunatic, crazy, or he sings he's God.

You can't say he's just a good teacher. He is saying he is God. And it is that truth that makes the rest of this week so baffling. That Jesus is God. If he wanted to, he could take the city in a moment. He could overturn the entire establishment.

But he doesn't. No, he does. He goes into the city. And he teaches his disciples. He teaches the crowds. As the wolves start to close in on him.

And then on Thursday night, they come from, like cowards in the night, they arrest Jesus and drag him before the Sanhedrin, before this religious council. And he lets them. The God of the universe lets them. And they drag him before this council. And they need a charge to bring him before, to bring him before Pontius Pilate, to have him executed. And you know what charge they charge Jesus with?

Blasphemy. Using, defaming the name of the Lord. Let that irony sink in. They charge the God of the universe with blasphemy. And Jesus doesn't defend himself. They let him take him before Pontius Pilate.

They bring him before Pontius Pilate. He's the Roman governor at the time. He's the one that can really carry out this execution. They can kind of wash their hands and give them to him. And they tell him about this charge of blasphemy. But Pontius Pilate doesn't care.

That's a religious matter. It's a religious dispute. The Roman government doesn't believe in your God. We don't care what you are saying. So they need to say something else.

And they take what was so celebrated on Sunday. His kingship. And they come to Pontius Pilate and they say, He says that he's the king. He's trying to undermine the rule of Caesar. Are you going to let this play? And what's happening here is a political play.

The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, needs the religious leaders, needs the Sanhedrin to keep the people in check. We know from history his governorship is being questioned at this point. That he can't keep this nation under control. So when they make this claim, he's got a really tough decision to make. And while all of this is happening, you have to wonder, where are all the people that so celebrated his kingship on Sunday? Where are the people that shouted, Hosanna!

Hosanna! Who brought palm branches out? Where are the disciples who have abandoned him? All but one. And the one who's there, we don't see anywhere where he's offering a defense. Where are they?

As Jesus is left before this kangaroo court, this disgrace of justice. And Pontius Pilate gives in. As the Pharisees change the city's chant of Hosanna! Hosanna! To crucify him! Crucify him!

And they take Jesus, and I want you to see some of the pictures here of how they mock his kingship. They take a crown of thorns, of long desert thorns, they force it on his head to mock him. The king of the universe to mock him. They take a purple robe, which is a robe of royalty, and they put it on his back that has been torn to bits, and they rip it off to cause further pain, and they put it on him to mock him. They bow down, and they mock his kingship as he suffers the most brutal punishment that the Roman government could ever devise. And they get up the hill, and they nail him to a cross, and they put a sign above his head that says, King of the Jews.

They mock the king of the universe, and like a lamb being silently led to the slaughter, as Isaiah says, he is silent. He offers no defense. And on the cross, the Savior King aspect of who he is starts to fully come into play. That on the cross, the debt of sin that the whole world accumulates, that each of us rack up, all of that is paid for by Jesus. For those of us that have trusted in him, our sin is paid for on the cross. We start to see this Savior King.

That in that moment, sinners have the opportunity to be washed clean. Those of us who are dirty in sin, Jesus, through faith, presents us as righteous and clean before God. That the full cup of God's wrath that is being poured out on Jesus in this moment, for those of us who have trusted in him, that wrath that was meant for us because of our sin gets poured out on him. He takes our place. And then this prophecy that we started in Genesis, that one day a seed would come from Eve, Jesus, and the serpent Satan would strike his heel, but ultimately Jesus would crush his head. That's happening right now.

His heel is being crushed. He is suffering for us on the cross. But right now, Jesus is crushing the head of Satan. He is crushing the work of evil and hindering the work of Satan, our Savior King on display on the cross. suffering is the path to this eternal kingdom as it comes to fruition with his death. And in the aftermath of all of this, in the aftermath of his death, Jesus' followers are crushed. Their hopes were so much tied up in Jesus.

They are dismayed. They are mourning. And you've got to ask the question, why? Why are they so dismayed? Why are they in mourning? And that is because they had a misplaced hope.

Their hope was in Jesus and his kingdom and a temporary earthly kingdom. They failed to hear what Jesus was teaching those three years, that this was bigger than that. They heard the prophecies that spoke about him as king, but they ignored the parts that said suffering was the path. And like all the false messiahs who came before Jesus, seeking to establish an earthly kingdom, they don't. They die. And the people are crushed because of it.

They are left in mourning. And here's the deal. They were right to celebrate Jesus as king. Those shouts of Hosanna, those palm branches were worthy of Jesus. They were correct. They just failed to realize that suffering was the path to an eternal kingdom, not a temporary one.

And in their staggering, in their hopelessness, Easter comes. Jesus rises and he does the one thing that all the other false messiahs failed to do before him. He conquers death and he comes back. And when he does that, he opens their eyes to the bigger kingdom that was always in plan. The eternal kingdom that was always going to come, much bigger than this temporary hope that they had so hoped in. we are just like the disciples because so much of us has so much hope in a temporary kingdom. You know how I know this is true?

Is that we can sing on Sunday Hosanna like we just did. And we can celebrate Jesus as king. We can amen all of it. and then on a Friday in the middle of the week when life hits us we are left hopeless. When the things, when the temporary things, the temporary kingdom that we hope in, that we place stock in, when that crumbles, when that fails, we are left hopeless because we are not trusting in the eternal kingdom that Jesus actually bled and died for. So the question that we are left with are left with is what kingdom are we putting hope in?

Because the reality is there's two kingdoms in this world. There's the kingdom of eternity, the kingdom of God expanding across the globe into eternity and there's this temporary kingdom of this world, of this present age. Which kingdom are we hoping in? Are we building in? Are we longing for? That's the question we're left with.

And if we're honest, some of us see Jesus as king, but really it's on our terms. It's for our kingdoms. It's for the hopes that we put in in this life. I want to walk through a few different ways I think that we do this. And as I do this, I want you to ask yourself, if I don't get blessed in these ways, am I okay? If I don't get blessings here from Jesus, am I really honestly okay?

And the first one is your wallet. is money. I mean, we as Christians, we know that we're not supposed to worship money. We'll say absolutely, no, I don't worship money. But what about the things that money gets us? What about the comforts of this world? Are you really okay if you don't get the things that you've been longing for?

Maybe it's the big truck, maybe it's the second house, maybe it's fill in the blank of what comforts are for you. Am I really okay if I make it to the end of this life and I don't have those comforts? Maybe for you it's status. I feel this myself. I don't like to think of myself as a status person. But I do real estate and I drive a really lame car.

I drive a Prius. And there are times, it's to save money. It's economical and I'm not driving the Prius I can drive my wife's awesome minivan. And I'll go and do some of these showings and I like to think of myself if someone doesn't care about status and certainly doesn't care about cars. I grew up in a family that sold them for a living. But there are moments, y'all, when I get before a client and I have this Prius and they've got a really nice truck and I go, you know what, it'd be really nice to have the status of having a bigger truck.

It'd be fun to drive but it'd be really nice to have that kind of respect. Fill in the blank for you of what money gets you. Are you really okay at the end of the day if you never actually get that level of status? Maybe for you it's not riches but it's not comfort, it's not status but it's security. It's like, am I really going to be okay if I never actually have enough savings? If I never have enough retirement?

Not saying that any of that's wrong but at the end of the day, are you going to be okay if Jesus doesn't blesses this? Because if you are not, you are asking Jesus to bless a temporary kingdom and not putting hope in the eternal kingdom of God. Maybe for you it's not necessarily money, maybe it's work. Like I said in the beginning, some of us put so much identity and hope in a job, in a promotion. When you don't get it, when we get passed over, are you really okay? If you never get your career to the place that you want it to be, are you going to be okay?

Are you going to be left hopeless and crushed? If you never get the validation from an employer, if you never get the validation from clients, are you going to be okay at the end of the day? Is the kingdom of God enough? Are you hoping that Jesus blesses a temporary kingdom? Maybe it's not work, maybe it's relationships. We do this with spouses. that we are doing okay if our spouse is operating in this way, if they are meeting these needs, if they are talking to us like this.

Everything's okay, but when it doesn't happen, we get frustrated. We get entitled. We get angry and we get upset. Are we hoping that Jesus blesses that temporary kingdom? Maybe you're not married, maybe you're thinking about finding someone to marry. Is it possible that you are frustrated, angry, bitter with God because you have not found the quote unquote one?

We do this in relationships, we do this with our own kids. Children are so easy to elevate than the tiny little kings that we worship. that education becomes so important, that how they're raised becomes so important, that following all the correct methods becomes so important. And if this doesn't happen in the way that we hope it is going to play out, we are crushed. We do this with their sports and with their activities that eventually they start doing sports and activities and the schedule that was once centered on on Sundays and community groups and mission and the kingdom of God gets replaced with a whole bunch of other stuff.

And we buy into the kingdom of this world and we sell it to our own kids. We do this with our children, we do this, I'll give you one more, we do this just with standing. Another way of saying standing is power. Two of the disciples did this with Jesus. James and John, there's a story where they come to Jesus and they say, when you set up your kingdom, and when they mean kingdom, they think the temporary kingdom that's going to happen in Jerusalem, when you set up your kingdom, can we set your left and your right? And what they're saying is, can we have positions of power?

And maybe for you that's winning. That life isn't good if I'm not winning. If I'm not being successful. That so much hope is bound up in success that when I'm not having success, what's the point? If I don't have the kind of influence that I need, what is the point of all of this? I could keep going through a long list of things, but ultimately I want you to ask yourself, if you are 75 years old and you don't have blank, fill in the blank for you, are you going to be okay?

Is Jesus really enough? If you don't have that, are you going to be crushed? Are you going to be hopeless like the disciples were when they put so much hope in a temporary kingdom of this world? We kill ourselves for a kingdom that never brings contentment. We serve false kings and idols that were never meant to bring comfort or joy. Church family, we were designed for so much more.

We are just like the disciples. And today for us who are in that spot, that is good news because when Jesus rises on Easter, it changes everything. He opens their eyes to the actual kingdom, the beauty of the kingdom that He had been so, He had been teaching them, He had been calling them to. And you know what I love about Resurrection Sunday? In the Gospel of John, the first words that Jesus says to His disciples, the disciples who abandoned Him, who denied Him, He doesn't come to them and scold them. And the first thing He says to them is, peace be with you.

That is the hope of the Gospel. Yes, we trust in idols. We trust in a temporary kingdom. We fall short. But the good news of the Gospel is that we live this side of the resurrection.

That means we live on this side of hope. That our hope is bound up in the eternal kingdom of God, which is so much better than the temporary kingdom of this world. And we have a so much better King. A King who conquered death, who rode into the city, who became our sacrifice, and on Easter Sunday conquered death with the resurrection so that we could experience the eternal kingdom of God forever. That's the good news of the Gospel, and that's the good news that we get to celebrate as we take the Lord's Supper. The band is going to come up, and we're going to take the Lord's Supper right now.

We're going to take communion and be reminded of what we get to celebrate this week in our groups that on this Thursday, years ago, we celebrate that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, He looked at His disciples, and He took the bread, and He broke it. He said, this is my body that was broken for you. This is going to happen. I'm going to be crushed for you. He took the cup, which is the cup of the new covenant. He said, this is my blood that is going to be shed for you, that as often as you gather, as often as you meet, take this bread, take this wine, and remember my death until I return.

We get to celebrate the good news of the Gospel that Jesus came on a good Friday and died in our place. And as we do that collectively as a church, may we reflect on the tiny kingdoms that we put hope in, coming repentant to the table, repenting of sin, joyously celebrating that we're part of an eternal kingdom. And if you have not trusted in Jesus, our hope for you this week is that you would be confronted by Him. That this Gospel that we so celebrate would become so real to you, that you would see your need of Him. Our hope is that you wouldn't take part in this, but you would take part in the risen Christ.

Let me pray. God, I am thankful that 2,000 years ago you didn't leave us in sin. You came and you bled and you died for us and we get to take that promise right now. God, I pray that you would help those of us who have trusted completely in you repent of believing that temporary kingdoms bring hope when they don't. They bring hopelessness.