Better...At Obedience

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I'd like us to leave those lyrics up there for just a second.

Yeah, look at that second line.

It's kind of a puritanical way of saying that.

Whatever befall.

None of us jam those two words together in a sentence this week.

You realize that?

Sometimes you come to church and you sing stuff and you're like, Well, what?

I think I'll just mumble like the kid in choir who forgot the words.

Banana, banana, banana.

I'm moving my mouth.

No one knows.

What we're saying in that is what Paul says in the gospel of the Apostle Paul.

He says, Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel.

Now hear that again.

Whatever happens.

That's not fatalism.

That's sovereignty.

We're saying that God is sovereign, which means he's all powerful, but he's also good.

You realize that, right?

He's good, and what he does is right.

He's not there willy-nilly like a kid, you know, with all ten fingers in the holes in the dike, and oh my gosh, this happened, and so uh, uh.

No.

He just sits enthroned over the affairs of this world.

And some days it feels like it's spinning out of control, and he is as in control as he's ever been.

He is weaning humanity off of our arrogant insistence that we can create a world in which that we're safe or we're in charge.

Yes, good luck to that.

You will wear yourself out, you'll drink yourself into a bad habit.

And so I'd like us to go back now that we understand what we mean when we say whatever befall.

Like someone came to me this past week for premarital counseling, and I said, Why do you want to get married?

And they were like, Well, I mean, we just want to get married.

And I said, Marriage is where you live with someone who drives you crazy.

And you love them, and sometimes you want to back over them in the driveway.

And after Pastor Sunshine was done, they wanted to pray for me and my marriage.

Uh and then I said, Let me put it down here where you live, okay?

I said, You want to have kids?

And they said, Yeah.

I said, What if you don't have kids?

Is God still good if you battle infertility?

The corners of the lady's mouth began to quiver.

And I said, By the way, you're signing up to bury each other's parents.

You may have to move her mother in with you if her dad dies first.

You up for that, my man?

Uh, well, uh, see, we just we heard you do a good wedding, and that's why we wanted to just stop.

And what I was trying to say was, are you ready for whatever befall?

And they want to have a Pinterest wedding where they wear suspenders and bow ties.

And come running down the aisle to a black-eyed pea song.

I got my money, let's spend it up.

Hey, can you stop trying to be creative with your wedding and have one of content?

And so I'd like us just to go back to this verse and just sing it with some gusto.

And by the way, you don't have to be like, hey, if I sing this and I'm inviting bad stuff into my life.

God is sovereign and he's good.

And you can trust what he does.

We're gonna look this morning in Matthew 21.

Jesus entrusted himself to his father.

Passion week.

We're gonna look.

The last week of Jesus' life begins today, Palm Sunday.

On the church calendar, we commemorate this.

We're gonna talk about obedience.

We're gonna finish the series called Better by Getting Better at Obedience.

We're gonna look at the life of Jesus as he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, a very innocuous, simple act that has profound ramifications.

And Jesus rides in and he's humming under his breath, whatever befall.

Clad you lead us in this great old hymn.

Let's sing this together, church.

I king of heaven when victories won.

Still be my vision.

Yes, Lord.

Yes, we say to you, uh, still be my vision, because sometimes stuff happens and it kind of blurs our vision, God.

We can't see you clearly.

We get angry, we get offended, and then we just kind of say, Hey, if you're not gonna be God for me, I'll be God for myself.

And so we're here today to repent of trying to be God for ourselves, trying to be a functional savior, trusted in our money and our stuff and our networking relationships and our social media status and all the things that we look to for identity.

None of that stuff qualifies us to be God.

And so, Lord, whatever befall, we want to have a clear vision of who you are and how you are.

And Lord, clarify that vision from your word today.

We don't need a religious beatdown or a religious lecture.

We need the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So help us, God, to the truth, and we'll help ourselves to the truth in Jesus' name.

What everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open up to Matthew chapter 21.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 21.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

And let me say this uh sometimes when you come to church and they talk about things like the triumphal entry or whatever, it's okay if you don't know what the preacher's talking about, okay?

It's not, it doesn't mean you're dumb.

It's just like I didn't grow up in church.

I love this morning.

Lady stopped me and she said, My husband is from East Texas, and we visited a couple weeks ago, and he said, I think that guy's from my neck of the woods.

I is.

Uh I did not grow up in church.

So if you're here today and you're kind of like, hey, I don't know how all this works, just relax, okay?

Uh we're we're gonna, we've been in a series called Better, where we're looking at different things we want to get better at, and today I want to talk to you, we'll finish the series by talking about getting better at obedience.

We're gonna look at the life of Jesus.

Jesus is uh this is what's called the Triumphal Entry or Palm Sunday.

It begins the last week of Jesus' life, which is called Passion Week.

Passion is the amount of pain and suffering someone is willing to endure in pursuit of a goal.

And uh, I'm gonna use this phrase big picture and little picture a lot.

And so let me begin with an illustration.

When I was in grad school, before I met my wife, I went on one date.

Uh and and and I was on a date, and uh actually I met this girl and I kind of wanted to impress her.

And so she said, I mean I'm kind of into art.

And I was like, Me too.

And so called around, found the Kimball Art Museum or whatever it's called there in Fort Worth, and we go and you're walking around looking, and I am thinking to myself, here's two hours of my life I am never going to get back.

Uh except they got to this one part and they said, We have a participatory participatory exhibit, and you know, you kind of, and I was like, Okay, is it like a viewfinder?

No, you go in, have these red velvet ropes, it's roped off, and they like the edge of the stage is the wall.

You're about this close to the wall, and all it is is Polaroids.

You one step, remember those things you took them and shook them, and they kind of the picture developed?

It was those that were they were attached to the wall, and you were this close, and you just walked down, you were in groups of like 25 or 30 people at a time, and you just walk down, it was about 25 feet wide, about 10 feet tall, and you're trying to take it all in, and you're just like, oh, that's interesting, look at that.

And then they had a little holding pin over here where everyone, when you came down the line, and then they locked, they put the velvet rope over that, then they opened this one over here, and they said, Everybody come back here.

And so you walked back here about 25 feet away, and then you were walking like this, and they said, Okay, everyone turn around.

And you turned around, and all of a sudden, with no one told us to do it.

Everybody's like, oh, ah, ooh, ah.

Because what happened when you backed up, these weren't a bunch of little Polaroids, okay?

Disconnected images.

This was a mosaic of the human eye.

Yes, that's what we were like, ah.

Sometimes you see things in the Bible, and you're so close to them, you can't see them for what they really are.

They look like just little one-offs.

Like some of you here this morning, you have a Polaroid in your pocket, and it is your life, and it is not big enough nor satisfying enough, and you are getting frustrated with it, and you shake the picture, it's not developing anymore or getting any bigger.

And not until you back up and kind of see the big picture and where that little Polaroid, where that little moment goes in the big picture of the mosaic of your life, is it going to ever make sense?

The life of Jesus doesn't make sense until you back up and see the big picture.

And what we see in here is a faithful, obedient son who's living in obedience to his father.

The Bible says it like this in Matthew chapter 21, verse 1.

Matthew 21:1

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethpage to the Mount of Olives, and Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you'll find a donkey tied, and a colt with her.

Untie them and bring them to me.

If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, The Lord needs them, and he will send them at once.

This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on donkey, on a cold, the foal of a beast of burden.

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.

They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them.

Most of the crowds spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna and the highest.

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, Who is this?

And the crowd said, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

Very simple.

See, that's when you read that, it's kind of like walking by the exhibit, and you're kind of like, Okay, I think I've heard something like this before.

This sounds vaguely familiar.

That means I should start shopping for an Easter dress, correct?

Because we're getting closer.

It means so much more than that.

Getting better at obedience, there's five things we see in the life of Jesus, I just want to point out this morning.

The first one is simply this the big picture existed long before I got here.

The big picture existed long before I got here.

What do you mean?

Oftentimes, to find our place and get our bearings for motive and motivation for obedience, we we need to see the big picture.

We gotta kind of back up a little bit because much of what Jesus does doesn't make sense apart from the big picture.

Let me say that again and I'll demonstrate.

Much of what Jesus says and does does not make sense apart from the big picture.

Like Jesus would say things that were so controversial that the religious people of the day, the teachers, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they would get so mad they would pick up rocks to kill him, and he would just walk right by them, and Jesus would say stuff like, My time is not yet come.

And he just walked by, and they were just like, Okay, oh, okay, okay, whatever.

Like my wife says to me, Can you pick your clothes up off the floor?

I go, My time has not yet come.

By the way, that works about twice, and after that, she goes, You know, he got crucified, right?

Like, okay, I hear what he's saying, picking up the clothes.

But it doesn't make sense.

You say, What do you mean?

This is one of those things that you're like, if you read this, you're like, a guy, okay, a Jewish guy rides into a Jewish city and he's riding a donkey, big deal.

Except you get down there to verse 5 and he references them.

It says, say to the daughter of Zion.

Now, sometimes when you read the Bible, you're reading along, and all of a sudden they go, whoop, like take a little detour and start talking crazy talk, like right here in verse 5.

What he's doing is he's quoting from the book of Zechariah.

Zechariah was one of the minor prophets of the Old Testament, okay?

The book of Zechariah was written about 520 BC.

Now, look at me just for a second.

Look right here.

What that means is that 500 years before Jesus rides in, God prophesied through a man named Zechariah a prophet.

God spoke and said, Hey, this is what's gonna go down, okay?

Don't forget this.

Matter of fact, I want you to remember it, so I'm gonna I'm gonna communicate through this guy, this prophet Zechariah.

Zechariah wrote these words.

This is Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9 and 10.

Zechariah 9:9

He says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, which by the way is what they were doing when Jesus wrote in.

I mean, people are cutting branches and throwing them on the ground, taking their coats off and throwing them on the ground.

They're welcoming royalty, they're going crazy.

Now, when I preach, a lot of times I just throw out questions.

Here's a question I want you to.

This struck my imagination this past week and a couple weeks ago when I started looking at this.

And he says, Rejoice greatly.

Let me ask you a question.

What does your family celebrate?

Because I'm of the conviction that we don't celebrate very well.

I mean, when's the last time you went to a celebration that was so compulsory that you couldn't help yourself?

Stuff just flew out of your mouth.

Most of us go to parties where we're just kind of like, okay, how long?

I gotta stay when this is over.

Good.

The last time some of you celebrated was at a Chris Stapleton concert at the rodeo last week, okay?

Yes, and that involved adult beverages, and that's a whole nother story.

Yes, but when's it?

I mean, he says 500 years before.

He kind of just predicts, listen to this.

He says, Hey, 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 foal of a donkey.

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations.

His rule shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.

Not only does 500 years before God say, Hey, this is how it's gonna come.

The Messiah is gonna come riding in on a donkey.

By the way, now if you conquer, if you conquer through war, if you're gonna rule through war, you ride in on a stallion, on this white steed.

You're kind of letting everybody know, hey, I'm here to do one thing and one thing only, and that's just demolish people.

But if you're gonna rule by peace, you're riding on a donkey.

So Jesus rides in on a donkey, and what he's saying to everybody in this room.

If you're here in this room and you're like, you know what, I'm not quite there yet.

I'm not a Christian, I'm not a Christ follower, I'm just exploring this.

Remember this today.

God's not gonna come in and just overwhelm you and just slam you to the ground and rule you like a despot.

Jesus rides in on a donkey as if to say, hey, you're gonna find in me a peace you don't find in anybody or anything else.

And that's the thing that's gonna just provoke your imagination and cause you to go, you know what?

I cannot write off Christianity.

It's not some religious despot that's just gonna rule over people.

Matter of fact, Jesus said to his closest followers, his disciples, hey, I no longer call you servants, I call you friends.

And they were like, what?

Because we all have this inborn and inbred sense of how unworthy we are to be in a relationship with a God so perfect.

And by the same token, God has this sense of how he qualifies you to be in friendship with him.

So he rides in on a donkey, very unassuming, very unthreatening.

He's saying, I don't know what you mean.

See, the big picture existed long before I got here.

That's if you pan the camera back from that moment, Matthew 21, back 520 years, that's what you see.

But if you pan the camera back even further, say 1,500 years before, you read in the book of Exodus, where God institutes this thing's called Passover.

I don't know if you've ever heard anybody preach about the book of Exodus, but it's a book in the Old Testament.

Yeah.

It's a book of the Old Testament.

If you're visiting today, we just got done preaching through the book of Exodus.

And towards the end, some of these people were like, How long are we going to be in Exodus until Jesus comes?

But in the book of Exodus, you pan the camera back, you talk about big picture, 1500 years before the triumphal injury, uh, in the book of Exodus, what I mean, 1500 years before Christ, uh uh, God's having this little contest with Pharaoh.

Pharaoh said, Hey, I do not know who the Lord is, I will not do what he tells me to do.

And God says, Let me introduce myself.

And ten plagues he sends more.

Last one, and the most severe, is the is the death of the firstborn.

God says, Hey, I'm gonna kill every firstborn animal, bird of the air, beast of the field, person.

And he says to his people, Israel, he says, Hey, if you want to be spared, here's what you have to do: you have to sacrifice a lamb.

You take the blood of that lamb, you apply it to the doorpost of your house, and when the death angel comes, he will pass over your house, and your firstborn will be spared.

That's how we get the religious celebration called Passover.

At the Last Supper, Jesus is celebrating Passover with his disciples.

So for 1,500 years, people have gotten this habit.

Now listen to this.

This is the big picture right here coming into focus.

People are in this habit of during Passover, they have to select a lamb, okay?

They select a lamb, they keep it for five days in their home.

The reason they keep it for five days is because they have to examine it and make sure it has no defect or no blemish, because you couldn't sacrifice a lamb that was defective.

That was an insult to a holy God.

You wanted to make a sacrifice that that cost you something emotionally and physically.

And so they would keep it for five days to examine it to make sure, okay, this lamb is not defective.

It can now be sacrificed in commemoration and keeping a Passover.

Now, why do I tell you all that?

Listen to me.

The day Jesus rides in, right here in Matthew 21, it's the day everyone's selecting their lambs for Passover.

Remember when Jesus first shows up and a guy named John the Baptist sees him and he says, Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

Jesus rides in as the Lamb of God that's going to take away the sins of the world.

Passover was a required feast for Jewish people.

The city was packed with people.

It was also packed with lambs.

The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that there was over 250,000 lambs being bought and sold that day in Jerusalem.

That's the day you select your lamb.

You keep it for five days.

By the way, Jesus rides into Jerusalem and it begins this five-day process where he gets, he offends the religious leaders, and they send him to Caiaphas, and they send him to this person, and this person, and this person.

And finally, and we'll talk about this on Good Friday at our Good Friday service.

When Pilate washes his hands publicly and says, I find no fault in him.

What he is saying without knowing it is, you now have a Passover lamb that you can sacrifice.

See, the big pictures existed long before you and I got here.

So we have to start with that.

That this big picture existed long before I got here.

And so God's been at work for a long time.

He's not going to stop being at work in our lives.

Let me give you a question to think about.

If the big picture's been here long before I got here, ask yourself this question: how big is the picture you're living in right now?

Because if you and I live in a little Polaroid picture that involves paying the bills and kind of resolving marital conflict and seeing our kids and grandkids, that's not enough to satisfy you.

Second thing we see from the life of Jesus is that hearing makes you responsible for doing.

Hearing makes you responsible for doing.

Let me explain.

John chapter 4, uh, Jesus is, he walks up to a well and he sits down, and his disciples go into town to get food, and there's a Samaritan woman coming out.

John 4 · chapter mention

It's like noon.

Women come early in the morning and get water for their family for the day.

And this woman, I mean, she looks like she spent a lot of time in places she shouldn't be.

And Jesus says, Hey, would you give me a drink?

And she's like, Hey, man, why are you even talking to me?

You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan.

We don't really hang out, okay?

And Jesus is like, I get that, but give me a drink.

And it starts this dialogue between him and her.

And it ends up with her life changing.

She realizes that she's talking to the Messiah, the Son of God.

Well, the disciples come back with food and they say to Jesus, Hey, we got some food.

You hungry?

And Jesus says, My food is to do the will of the Father.

Now, why do I tell you that?

I tell you that because hearing makes you responsible for doing.

Jesus explained his life by saying, I only do what I see and hear the Father doing.

Hearing makes you responsible for doing.

What has that got to do with Matthew 21?

Look at verse 1.

Now they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethpage to the Mount of Olives, and Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, Go into the village, saying to them, Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you'll find a donkey tied and a colt with her.

Untie them and bring them to me.

If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, The Lord has need of them, and he will send them at once.

Now, by the way, I think we've read that so much, we're no longer burned and jolted by the absurdity of that.

That is like you saying to your kids today, go down here to Whole Foods Market, and the first person that comes out and gets into a Range Rover, go knock on the window and go, Hey, I need your keys.

Excuse me.

Yeah, I need your keys.

Could you get out and get your overpriced produce out as well?

Because my dad needs this bad boy.

Thank you for getting the cabretta leather.

This looks fine.

Are the seats air conditioned?

Now that's preposterous.

None of you would say to any of your friends or your kids, hey, go down there and hang out at Whole Foods, or the first person that rolls up in a black Range Rover, tell them I need the keys because my dad has need of this rig.

Yet that's what Jesus does.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Why do I say, hey, hearing makes you responsible for doing?

Keep in mind that their Bible at the time was the Old Testament.

They're living the New Testament out.

And so the New Testament hasn't been written yet.

And in ancient Hebrew, there's no separate word for obey.

The Hebrew word for listen or hear is Shema.

Shema.

You hear in Jewish culture they talk about the Shema, which is Deuteronomy 6 4.

The Bible says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.

The Lord our God is one God.

And it goes on to say, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

When the Bible says Shema, or actually in the Hebrew, Deuteronomy 6, 4, is Shema Shema.

Listen closely.

Hear, hear.

Pay careful attention to what I'm about to say.

There's no Hebrew word in ancient Hebrew for obey.

Why?

Look at me, especially if you got kids.

Because according to the way they thought, hearing meant you would obey.

Some of y'all got kids are kind of going, oh, hang on a second.

Can you imagine never having to repeat yourself?

That's why my wife says to me, hey, babe, you shouldn't let people, you know, I'm crazy.

I grew up in a town of about 4,000 people with a redneck father who would tell us one time to do something.

And it was kind of like, okay, and if you didn't do what you were told, you got a pop quiz.

Here's how the pop quiz went on our farm.

While my dad was unbuckling what I tell you to do.

What'd you do?

Bend over.

That was it.

That was it.

Now, when I first met my wife, we were gotten serious.

We didn't first met.

We were engaged, and she said, I want us to talk about how we're going to discipline our children.

How were you disciplined as a child?

Oh, I got beat.

And she's like, Excuse me?

He goes, Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I wasn't abused or anything.

And she said, What do you mean you got beat?

Oh, my dad tell you one time if you didn't do it, you got a whipping.

You mean spank it?

No, we got a whipping.

Actually, they were whoopings, W-H-U-P-P-I-N.

No G, no I.

And I said, She goes, Well, how would that happen?

My dad would just say, What did I tell you to do while he's putting that cigarette in the corner of his mouth, taking his belt off, and we were just like, we did it again because sometimes we would actually run the numbers and think, how many licks are we gonna get for not doing this?

And we just take our whooping.

And I just, my wife's like, Crestfoss, I said, What about you?

She goes, My parents would look at me and tell me, Marcia, we're so disappointed in you, and it would just crush me.

And she looked at me and she goes, You know what I mean?

No, I got nothing.

My dad never looked at me and said, I'm so disappointed.

Now my dad talked like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

Get off my lawn.

He would talk through his teeth.

What did I tell you to do?

Uh I think this is gonna end up with bend over, so let me just bend over.

No, here's what I'm telling you this.

Don't miss the point.

According to the Bible, ancient Hebrew way of thinking, hearing meant doing.

Hearing and doing were two sides of the same coin.

So therefore, there was no need for an extra word called obey.

They just realized, and so when Jesus said to them this preposterous thing, really, it's the first three words of verse 2, saying to them, Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you'll find a donkey, a donkey tied in a colt with her.

You know, this is like the disciples are sitting there, kind of like, okay, this is like a joke, right?

A Jewish rabbi, a Baptist priester, and a Catholic priest go into a bar.

Are you kidding me?

And Jesus is like, No, I'm not.

No, I'm not at all.

And they did it.

And guess what?

It went exactly as Jesus told them it would go.

Someone came to see me a while back and said, you know, I'm just kind of stuck spiritually.

And I said, the more the person talked, just kind of sense the Holy Spirit.

And I said, Hey, can I ask you a weird question?

And the guy was like, Yeah.

And I said, What do you wish you didn't know?

Excuse me?

What do you wish you didn't know that's in the Bible?

He goes, Oh, yeah, I can tell you that.

I wish I didn't know that I have to forgive people.

And we just started down that rabbit hole.

All of a sudden, it's like talking to Morpheus.

You want the blue pill or the red pill?

He goes, What do you mean?

And I said, Because I think you're stuck because you got some unforgiveness going on inside of you.

We hear it and we know it's true.

We just don't always do it.

But that's why I say to us, hey, hearing, according to Jesus, hearing makes you responsible for doing.

Third thing we see from the life of Jesus, it helps us get better at obedience is simply this our obedience is affected by how we think of it.

Our obedience is affected by how we think of it.

When Jesus unpacks and tells them, hey, go do this.

And then he says, by the way, verse 4, this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet saying, say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.

Translation, hey, when I say your obedience is affected by how you think about it, most of us think about it as this command.

It's kind of like God's telling us what to do.

And yes, I get that.

On the most basic level, that's exactly what it is.

But what if, on a much deeper level, it's not just a command, but it's an invitation.

It's God kind of saying, hey, he doesn't say to the disciples, hey, you guys want to make history?

You guys want to be a part of fulfilling biblical prophecy?

No, he just speaks, and in the in their Hebrew mindset, they were like, okay, you said it.

That's what we do.

And we leave the results to you.

How would it affect the way you think about obedience if it wasn't just a command, but it was an invitation?

Let me demonstrate from my own life.

And I hadn't thought about this in forever just because someone called me the other day and said, Hey, uh, Neil McClendon, right?

And I'm like, well, yeah, you called my cell phone number.

Who do you think answers this thing?

And the guy led and goes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Uh I heard your friend J.R.

Vastor speak, and he told this story, and I'm just calling to verify that it's true because I want to use this Sunday with your permission.

And I said, Yeah, that's exactly what happened.

And the guy's like, flapper gas.

He's like, Are you kidding me?

This actually happened.

And I'm like, Yes.

I was in North Carolina speaking at an event.

After it was over, the people that led worship, they said, Hey, you want to go get something to eat?

And I'm like, Yeah, absolutely.

So we asked the people at the retreat center, hey, is anything open?

They said, probably this only thing open is the huddle house.

Anybody know what the huddle house is?

It's like the first cousin to the Waffle House.

You got the clientele in mind, okay?

So we walk in there, we eat, our waitress comes over and she's kind of doing this, got this funny look on her face, and I'm like, hey, your feet hurting?

What's going on?

She goes, uh I'm just, I don't, my teeth are killing me.

And she kind of smiled, and I was like, Oh my goodness.

All of her teeth were rotting.

And she walked away to get our coffee, and the lady goes, I think she smokes meth.

Okay, great.

And so I thought to myself, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna tip her extra because she ain't got no teeth.

Hey, by the way, giving 20 extra dollars to a woman that got no teeth, that's like spitting in a hurricane.

That ain't gonna do nothing.

But I'm sitting there and we're eating, and I, and so I got the bill, and I was just like, man, I'm so sorry.

So I get up there and I had this sense.

Now, I didn't have language for it back then.

I had this sense the Holy Spirit was kind of going, come on.

Come on, I'm inviting you to something here.

So I get up there to pay the ticket, and she's ringing me up, and I said, Hey, do you have dental insurance here at the huddle house?

Thank you.

You got it.

Yes.

She looked at me, she snatched my ticket and she goes, I work at the huddle house.

What do you think?

Because, see, here's what was happening.

I was trying to make somebody else responsible for what I was feeling.

That makes sense?

Because I was, it wouldn't get off of me.

I was just kind of like, and it wasn't God going, hey, you better do something about it.

It was just this little ps, hey, hey, hey, come on.

Come on.

Let's just see where this goes.

Come on, Neil.

And I was like, You got dental insurance?

Jesus was like, and I said, Well, I'll be here, here's some extra money.

I turned to walk to the door.

I'm walking, by the way, the church gave me a new suburban to drive around that weekend.

I'm like, I'm gonna go ride around town.

This fly ride I got out here, open the sunroof and stuff.

I got almost to the door and I was like, Oh, I turned around, walked over there, and I said, Excuse me.

Her name was Renee.

I said, Hey Renee, if I could find you a dentist in this town and it wouldn't cost you anything, would you go?

I can't repeat what she said.

Uh it was positive, but it had some adjectives in it.

It started with, are you, and ended with kidding me.

Uh, and I said, No, I'm not.

And she wrote her name, number down.

She goes, My mom's number, living with my mom.

And I thought, man, you're 30-something years old, you live with your mom.

That's probably not the way you plan this whole thing to go.

So next day I'm going by the airport, I say, they pull over, I gotta get something to drink at this convenience, so I go in.

Ask for a phone book.

Have you asked anybody for a phone book lately?

They look at you like, hey man, yeah, there's a phone booth down there.

You can call someone a payphone.

I was like, shut up.

So, hey man, I need a dentist.

I need a good dentist in your city, okay?

The guy's like, Well, I don't know, dentist, and write it down.

I call then get back to Sugarland.

I call, long story short, had to find the right dentist, and I said, Hey, here's the deal.

There's a I met a lady, she works at the huddle house, she got some jacked-up chicklets, and she needs some teeth work done.

And the guy's like, How bad is it?

I said, She's got more ears than teeth.

I'll put it that way.

He's like, Okay.

Uh yeah.

And so he said, Well, we can get her in for a consult on Thursday.

I get a call the following, like Tuesday, and the lady says, Oh, sir, we saw your friend and all her teeth, we removed the ones we could remove, but she's got a lot of teeth that are broken off at the gum line and they're infected.

And she said, You need an oral surgeon.

And I was like, Me and my big mouth.

And she said, and by the way, the bill for what we did is this much.

Now, I always like to pay for that.

And I said, Here's my ministry credit card, and this is where I worked at the church.

I just said, Hey, we'll pay for that.

Uh, and so we paid for it.

And I said, You know the name of an oral surgeon?

She goes, Yes, I'll never forget the man's name, uh, Dr.

Brady Simple, S-E-M-P-L-E.

So I wrote down, I called, Barbara answered the phone.

I said, Hi, Barbara.

Uh I said, here's the situation.

I said, I think they called you, oh, yeah, yeah, about the lady that's got the teeth that are broken off at the gum line.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, are you the benefactor?

What does that mean, Barbara?

Are you the man who's gonna be responsible for payment?

Absolutely, okay.

I need your name.

Okay, at the time I'm reading through the book of Matthew.

And I and I just get stuck in a part of the Bible and just read over and over.

And at the time I was reading where Jesus said to his disciples, hey, you're the light of the world.

And so I just since the Lord said, I want you to do things, Neil, that can only be explained by saying to people, I'm the light of the world.

So Barbara says, Can I get your name?

And I said, Yes, I'm the light of the world.

That wasn't her response.

She said, Excuse me.

I said, Yes, ma'am, I'm the light of the world.

I want you to spell that.

And she kind of laughed and I said, Barbara, can I ask you a question?

She goes, sure, sweetie.

I said, are people looking at you?

She goes, Absolutely.

All my coworkers are staring.

I said, I want you to stand up, hold the phone over your head, and I want you to scream out, I'm on the phone with the light of the world.

And she did.

She sat back down and I said, That felt good, didn't it?

She goes, Well, it kind of did.

And she goes, now I need the light of the world.

I need to get your credit card number.

It's like, all right.

And so I gave her the ministry credit card number and I said, Here's the thing.

She said, Well, we're gonna have to treat antibiotic, get the infection down, and then we'll get, long story short, I get a phone call like nine days later, and she says, Oh my gosh, Mr.

McClendon, uh, we got the infection treated and we got all her teeth removed, and now she has no teeth.

And I said, Yeah, they all had to go because they were jacked up.

And she said, Dr.

Simple has a friend that does dentures, and we're gonna get her some dentures.

And I said, Okay.

And I said, I need to settle up with you.

And I said, I'm sitting down.

Go ahead and tell me what's the amount that's gonna hit my credit card.

And she said, Well, Dr.

Simple wanted you to know that he too is the light of the world.

Now look at me.

When God invites you into something, he knows where it's going.

Don't be like, uh, well, uh, see, what?

He knows.

Then Barbara just kind of cackled and because she's kind of mouthy, she said, now I want you to stand up and say out loud, I'm on the phone with the line of the world.

Oh, that's how this works.

You mouthy people up there in North Carolina running your mouth all the time.

Yeah, I get it.

Here's what I'm saying: our obedience is affected and influenced by how we think about it.

So look at me.

Don't miss this.

It's not just a command, it's like God said, hey, go do this because I said so.

What if it's God saying, Come on, you want to be a part of changing the world?

Come on.

That's what obedience is.

Fourth thing we learn from the life of Jesus and the triumph of entry is obedience is most needed in the public square.

It's most needed in the public square.

Look at verse 7.

He says, They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them, and most of the crowds spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

And the crowds that went before him that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, and Hosanna in the highest.

Has that ever happened to you when you go to Walmart?

Can you imagine?

I mean, last night we did a wedding right here, and right before the bride came out, two men came down in tuxedos and rolled out this white runner all the way to the back of the auditorium there.

And the bride came in.

That's never even happened for me.

Why are you telling us that?

I don't get it.

When I say obedience is most needed in the public square, everyone knew what was happening.

Jesus for years had healed people and done stuff, and then he would say this to him.

He said, The Bible says, and he charged them to tell no man.

It's called the messianic secret.

Because Jesus didn't want a surface following.

He didn't want a bunch of people, he didn't want a crowd of homeless people following him because just because they wanted fish and bread.

He wanted a deeper understanding of, hey, I am the Messiah, I am the Son of God.

And he was telling his disciples, hey, the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of religious men and be crucified and died and be buried and I'll rise again on the third day.

And Peter was like, that will never happen.

And Jesus said, Get behind me, Satan.

You don't get it, do you, son?

And so Jesus outs himself after years of saying, Hey, everybody keep it on the down low, he rides in, fulfillment of Zachariah's prophecy, and says, Let's let the chips fall where they may.

Or he's that great theologian Mills Lane, the boxing referee, used to say, Let's get it on.

And people are going crazy.

Say, I what do you mean?

Obedience is most needed in the public square.

Look at verse 12.

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons, and he said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers.

If Jesus is just a prophet from Nazareth, why does he call the temple his house?

Verse 14, and the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

By the way, these are people that had been around religious folks their whole life, hadn't been helped at all.

He healed them.

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant and they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying?

And Jesus said to them, Yeah, it's pretty cool, isn't it?

Jesus says, Yeah.

Have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes, you have prepared praise?

Why do I read that to you?

Look at me.

This is what happens when a big picture person meets little picture people.

These these people just they got one little Polaroid.

And Jesus is like, hey, it's obedient.

I'm out of myself.

I know what's going to happen.

Now, why do I say obedience is most needed in the public square?

Here's why.

Listen very carefully.

Because Christians and Christianity have become marginalized in our culture, and too many of us are okay with that.

We're okay to just, hey, I don't want to get involved in school board politics, I don't want to get involved in the mud district, I don't want to get involved in any kind of political anything or any anything.

I just, if I had my way, I would take my wife and kids and move to the country and build a compound and just live out there.

And here's my question to you that you're fantasizing about doing that.

How do you engage the culture in that environment?

What we've got to be willing to do as Christians is we've got to be willing to just practice obedience out in the wide open of the public square, embrace being marginalized, and also embrace the possibility of being crucified by the culture.

We've got to stop apologizing for our faith.

We've got to stop accommodating everybody but God in our lives.

Because obedience is for the public square.

You should ask yourself, in what ways is God disappointing me these days?

Because Jesus rides in on Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry, and everyone's excited.

They're laying down their coats, they're cutting palm branches because the king, the messiah is coming, and he's gonna do what we've always wanted done.

No, he's not.

And they turned on him like that.

And these same people will call will call out later on.

So we'll talk about it on Friday.

Crucify him.

Crucify him.

Because he disappointed them.

And listen to me, unless you're keenly aware of the ways in which God is disappointing you, play on words, you'll say the same thing.

The last thing we see in the life of Jesus about obedience is simply this I can trust God for what's next.

I can trust God for what's next.

Verse 10, you still with me?

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up.

I mean, who wouldn't want that?

And then hear this.

Who is this?

What they're all stirred up and they only know who they're stirred up about.

And the crowd said, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

Jesus is like, That's the best you got?

I'm a prophet.

Can you hear how offensive that is?

I mean, he's fulfilling 500-year-old prophecy.

He's fulfilling 1,500-year-old biblical mandates, and all they can come up with is like Joe Blow on the street in Fort Bend County right here.

Well, Jesus was a good man.

He was a moral teacher, he's a great example, but he was not the son of God.

And you sit there and go, oh, well, you know, who am I to impose my views upon you?

See, Jesus, more than anybody we know, just kind of demonstrates I can trust God for what's next.

In a midst of a city full of people who are stirred up but have no clue what he's really all about.

He rides in and he's not he's not banking on his social media status.

He knows the people that are saying, Hosanna to the son of David, are gonna cry out, crucify him in just a matter of days.

Why?

Because he disappoints them.

The question before us, whether we can see it or not, is simply this.

Is this enough for you?

Can you obey in the moment and trust God for what's gonna come next?

Or do you have to see 500 years down the road or 1,500 years down the road or even five minutes down the road?

Or do you know enough about God right now as you sit there in that chair to say, you know what?

I think I was created by God for a relationship with God that manifests itself in obedience to God.

And so because of that, I'm just gonna obey.

And let the chips fall where they may.

Will I lose some friends along the way?

Probably.

Will some relationships end?

Maybe.

But remember, it's not just a command, it's invitation.

And you've got to ask yourself, you've got to be haunted in a good way by the question, what's God inviting me into?

Let's pray together.

Let's just take a moment and think about what the word has said to us this morning, beloved.

We want to get better at this thing called obedience, and there's no greater example anywhere than Jesus Himself, the Son of God, who lived in context of the big picture.

The picture's so big that back in Genesis, the first messianic promises in Genesis chapter 3, where God says to the serpent, hey, your bruises heal, but he'll crush your head.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

This thing's all off the reservation right now.

But I got a plan for restoring and redeeming it.

And by the same token, beloved, he has a plan for restoring and redeeming whatever's messed up in your life right now.

So maybe as you sit there in your seat, what you could do is you could just, as that great theologian Taylor Swift says, you could just shake it out.

The Polaroid.

Until it develops enough for you to see clearly the insufficiency of what you've been trying to do.

And you could just hand that to God and say, Would you put this where it goes?

Because I can't see the big picture.

Whether it's fertility, marital stress, adult kids off the reservation.

Can we just obey and then trust God for whatever comes next?

Just think about that for a minute.

Obedience involves humility.

You're gonna have to humble yourself sometimes.

So for some of us today, we need to just embrace humility.

Father, thanks for the word.

It's thought provoking, it's funny sometimes, it's sarcastic sometimes, it's so textured, we can't take it all in in one setting.

But every time we're exposed to it, it provokes us, it invites us, it summons all our mental capacities and says, Hey, think about this.

We're better for it.

So, Lord, I pray for a deeper, richer, thought-provoked definition of obedience today for all of us.

And how that manifests itself in all of our lives through all of our personalities and gifts.

Let our lives be the fragrant aroma of Jesus to those who are perishing.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

Thanks for being part of our service.

Myself and some of our pastors and elders will be available down front.

If you have any questions about anything you heard or questions about our church, also, if you have questions about our church, one of our staff will be available at our next step connection center, the big brown squares on the wall out there.

The one closest to the door is what it says above it next step.

So if you have questions about our church, what does membership look like?

What is that process involved?

Anything about our church, one of our staff members will be there to answer any questions you may have.

We'll be available.

There's literature available there as well.

We're available here down the front.

We can pray with you about anything.

We realize obedience is not always easy.

Sometimes you know things and you're just like, oh, and you just get kind of jammed up with that.

We're not going to get mad at you.

We want to help you.

We want to come alongside of you and leverage you towards obedience, okay?

So if we can help you with something, come and let us know.

We'd love to pray with you about that.

When you came in, if you're our guest today, when you came in, you're given a worship folder, has information about our church, different events.

Uh let me make you aware uh and kind of point to two things that are in there.

Number one is Secret Church.

Secret Church is a teaching opportunity.

It's a video uh uh teaching of David Platt, he's a very uh phenomenal Bible teacher, uh, but he's the head of the International Mission Board.

Uh and in Secret Church, we start we it's Friday night, uh April 21st.

It's back in the warehouse.

There's a workbook that I highly recommend you get because if you think I talk fast, wait till you hear David Platt.

Uh but anyway, you can just kind of take notes as you go along.

He takes a different topic and then just kind of expounds on it from a biblical perspective.

This time he's talking about the Bible, the scripture in the age of cynicism uh uh and and all of that and skepticism.

And so it's a great way to kind of understand how we got the Bible, uh, how we can trust the Bible, all of that.

He'll kind of walk us through all this process.

Secret Church starts at 5:30 and it goes to 11:30.

It's a big commitment.

There's breaks along the way.

We'll have snacks there and everything.

But if you'd like to be a part of that, you can rest your on our church's website so we can plan accordingly.

Second thing I want to make you aware of is our Holy Week services have begun today, it was the first one.

Uh next we have on Thursday or Monday Thursday service at 7 o'clock.

On Friday night, we have a Good Friday service at 7 o'clock.

There's child care available for both of those for kids ages three and under.

Uh, anything older than that, they're welcome to be a part of the service.

There's nothing that'll be inappropriate for them.

Uh, Thursday and Friday are radically different services.

We'll be talking to you more about that this coming week.

Uh, and so we just want to make you aware today's the last day to register for child care for Mommy Thursday or Good Friday.

Uh, and you can register online.

Also, next Sunday is Easter Sunday.

We'll have four services.

We have our regular services.

We're just adding to 7 o'clock in the morning service.

So if you've got family plans for lunch, you're meeting people, the 7 o'clock service is a great service to hit up, and then you can get on the road and go see your family.

Amen?

Stand to your feet, let me speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

God invites you into obedience because he knows what awaits you.

But also he invites you because he knows you.

He believes what you're capable of more than you do.

And so part of obedience is trusting what he knows about you and outgrowing what no longer fits you.

Depart now and think about these things.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you to miss.