The Gospel Of Mark | Living In Submission (November 11th, 2018) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, open your Bibles to Mark's gospel.

We're gonna be in chapter 14 today, looking at the first uh 42 verses of that.

Uh now, do we have this we have this picture to throw up here on the screen?

You guys familiar uh with what this traffic sign is?

Now obviously everyone's answer is like, yeah, it's it's a yield sign.

I mean it says but kind of right on it, man.

Like, seriously, you're gonna ask me uh that question.

I mean, yield sign just means uh simply to uh to give others the right of way, right?

And and I think we kind of we can kind of read that, we see that, but I mean all it takes is uh driving around a little bit, driving your vehicle around to to have serious questions and doubts as to whether or not people actually know uh what this traffic sign uh is, right?

Because they don't seem to follow them very well, right?

I remember this, you know, when we used to live up in Barrie, I remember uh there was one of the on-ramps onto the 400 south.

Uh you had uh westbound traffic coming, eastbound traffic, and we would merge onto uh this on ramp, and uh the the eastbound lane had to had the yield sign.

It had one of these uh sitting right there.

But it was amazing.

When I was going westbound and I had the right-of-way, it was amazing how many times people would just blow right through the yield sign going east, and uh it was crazy.

Like it was like literally taking your life in your hands.

That's what it felt like, and and it seemed like so many people were oblivious to they'd not even be looking at all, and they would just drive.

Other people actually had the nerve to like, you know, shout obscenities and kind of you know, move because they were mad that I, you know, I dared to go even though it was the right of way.

It was kind of this crazy, almost sort of death trap uh area.

And I mean, we probably know areas around our town and around the GTA um that are like that as well.

I mean, people just, let's be honest, people aren't real great when it comes to uh yielding.

Okay, well, in Mark chapter 14, we're shown Christ's uh incredible act of submission uh to his father, right?

Mark 14 · chapter mention

Where he yields his his will to his father's will, okay, which is which is awesome because if he didn't do that, there would be no gospel.

Okay, do you know that?

Right?

There'd be no laying down of his life for the sins of the world.

Okay, and so as Christians, we understand how how awesome it is that that he has done that for us, okay, but um, but what we also begin to kind of realize as we as we start to unpack all of that is is that as Christ lived in submission to his father's will, so are we to do the same.

Right?

And and this this is not something that comes naturally to us.

Have you noticed this yet in your in your life, in your in your heart?

We're not very good at it.

Right?

Our our will and our our volition, it it often stands uh you know, diametrically opposed uh to the Lord's.

Okay, we often don't yield to his ways.

We want the right of way.

Okay, so so how are we doing with this, church?

Right?

How are we doing this in the you know everyday life when it comes to your obedience and your walk with the Lord?

Are are we living in submission to him?

You know, or are we growing in this as we uh grow in humility?

Well, these are the things that we're gonna be uh talking about today and and and really getting into as we work our way through uh Mark chapter 14.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

But before we do, uh why don't you join me as we pray?

Lord, um we understand as individuals, as as humanity, Lord, the the pride in our hearts, Lord, and we get, we see that we're not very good at this whole submission thing.

Lord, we struggle with it.

Um bowing the knee to you, bowing our hearts to you is is not something that uh we naturally possess.

And so, Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would continue to uh overwhelm our pride and humble us and get us to the point where submission is something that uh that we are glad to do, Lord.

It is it is something that is sweet to us.

Lord, I pray that as we you know look at the examples of of the disciples who weren't so great here and and the amazing example of Jesus Christ, Lord, I pray that we would be inspired by you here today.

Lord, I pray that anybody who's come in here just wrestling and and and battling their pride in a certain way, any number of ways, Lord, I pray that you would encourage them, Lord.

I pray that you would show us that it is far, far better uh to submit ourselves to you, to your will, Lord, than it is to just live for ourselves.

And so, God, uh teach us these things.

Show us the glories of Jesus Christ this morning.

We pray all of these things uh in his name, amen.

Amen.

Well, here's the first thing if you're a note taker, all right.

I live in submission to the Lord as I'm convinced that he's worthy to receive my all.

All right, there it is.

And it's starting in verse one, we begin to see this, okay?

Follow along with me here.

It says, uh, it was now uh two days before the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread.

And we're gonna get uh into that and what that means and the significance of all of that uh a little bit later.

Okay, but keep going.

It says, And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him.

For they said, Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.

So you definitely get the feeling here that the chief priests, the religious leaders, uh, they just had enough of Jesus.

Right?

They were done and they felt foolish, which they were, and and Jesus kept, you know, pointing out the errors of their of their way and their self-righteousness, and they were kind of they were done with it, and and so now they're seeking a way uh to kill him, uh to bring him down once and for all.

But of course they want to do that without causing a scene.

So they want to save face uh with the Jews, with the people.

You know, keep going, verse 3.

It says, and while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of Pernard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.

Okay now, John's Gospel actually identifies this woman as Mary, as in Mary and Martha, sister of Martha.

But curiously, uh you notice here that Mark uh leaves her name out of it, okay, which is suggesting to us that her act, not so much her name or identity, is what you and I we need to be focusing in on here.

Okay, so let's keep going.

Verse 4.

It says, There were there were some who said to themselves indignantly, Why was this why was the ointment wasted like that?

For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii, which was, believe it or not, a year's wages.

It could have been sold and given to the poor.

And they scolded her.

But Jesus said, Leave her alone.

Why do you trouble her?

She has done a beautiful thing to me.

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them.

But you will not always have me.

She has done what she could, she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.

Which is another clear reference to his his death.

It was going to be happening very soon.

He continues, he says, And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.

To pour out this ointment onto Jesus, signifying, you know, how how all in she is here for for honoring Christ in this way.

You can't you can't put ointment back into uh into a broken flask.

Right?

And then it tells us how expensive it is.

I mean, just imagine, you know, the offering bags just went by.

Imagine putting a year's worth of your salary in there just because, just because you know you wanted to honor the Lord, to show your devotion.

Right?

This is a major gift.

Right?

So I think, you know, the big question that comes out for us in this is why?

Like, why, why does she do this?

Right?

Her critics, they're not exactly wrong, right?

She could have, she could have sold it and given the money to the poor and and dispersed this, you know, differently.

She could have even, you know, given saved a quarter of it for the poor.

It wouldn't have been wrong to do that.

Okay, but Jesus, I mean, he's clearly pleased with her act here.

And and he says that we're gonna be talking about her and this act for the rest of time as the gospel is being shared, which of course we are right now.

So again, the the question remains why?

Like, why?

Why does she do this?

I believe it's because she sees something that the rest of this dinner party uh doesn't seem to see.

Okay, she understands how great Jesus really is.

She believes that he is truly worthy of this gift that she's decided to give to him.

She's convinced of it.

And because she's convinced of it, it's it's compelled this act of love.

She's willing to submit everything she has, this immensely expensive ointment, and she holds nothing back.

Now, maybe you and I are more like the dinner guests there, though, and and we would be tempted to look at this as an extreme act of devotion.

It seems, it seems so over the top, and I mean we're not called to do that.

We we we shouldn't do that, maybe even.

But maybe, okay, just maybe, that that suggests that deep down we're not convinced that Jesus is worthy of such an act.

Something to think about for sure, but let's keep going.

Verse 10.

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.

And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money, and he sought an opportunity to betray him.

Okay, so notice what we're what we're being presented with here.

It feels like the story is just really kind of jerky, right?

It's back and forth to you know three different things here.

Well, well, listen, the the woman's you know, amazing act of uh of generosity, her honorable act here is is bookended by two, I mean, heinous acts of treachery.

Right?

The chief priests and the scribes are you know working towards murdering the first, right?

That's what they're doing.

And and Judas plans to betray his friend, his mentor, his rabbi.

Now, the theme of betrayal and abandonment and defection is it's so central all throughout this chapter here.

See it in the religious leaders, we see it in Judas, obviously, and we're gonna see it in the disciples as well.

And it stands in in direct contrast with what this woman does here, her act of submission to the Lord, and and of course Christ Himself, his act of submission uh to his father.

Which, I mean, play this out with me here, suggests that that anything less than complete submission to the Lord, giving him our all, is on some level, anyways, an act of betrayal.

Because at the end of the day, think about it.

If if Christ died for rebels like you and I, right?

He he he died for us and and and he gives us new hearts and and a new identity and a new purpose, and and we've got eternity waiting for us in heaven, all of that.

Think about it.

How gross is it really when when you know when when we're like, yeah, no, no, I'm not gonna yield this area of my life to you, Lord.

I'm gonna hold that back.

I know that you went to the cross, I know that you gave it all, but I'm not really comfortable with letting you in there.

Not gonna let you have your way in me.

Not gonna submit.

A lack of submission.

It's not harmless, it's not innocent, it's not acceptable just because, well, that's kind of what everyone does.

Everyone struggles with that.

No, it's it's actually somewhere in there in your heart, on a heart level, it's an act of betrayal against our God.

Now you can't begin to live in submission to the Lord, not from the heart, anyways.

I mean, we can always fake it outwardly for a while, but like we're so anti-that around here.

We want to be real, right?

We want we want the Lord to have our hearts and we want to serve him and love him and and submit to him from our hearts as people who who truly want to.

Right?

But but we can't truly submit unless we're convinced, each of us individually, that the Lord is is truly worthy of our submission.

Right?

He's worthy of giving our all.

He's worthy of having our all.

Now, the woman, right, Mary, she obviously was convinced of this.

She was.

And it led to this heartfelt act of submission and devotion to him.

Right?

But how did she get to that place?

That's a pretty good question, right?

How did she get there?

Man, she must have been like, she must have had like special powers or or abilities, or she must have been a real unique case, and and and and I could never be like that.

But how did she how did she get to that where she was so willing to give so much and submit her all to him?

Well, listen, I I I actually don't think it's all that complicated.

I really don't.

We think, like, man, that's that's so far off from me from ever getting to that place.

I don't think it really is.

I think really simply she spent time with him.

She spent time with the Lord.

She she she spent time at his feet, right?

We we know the story about how Martha was in the kitchen getting things ready and kind of grumbling, and and she just went and spent time with him.

She surrounded herself with with people in in that community, with other disciples, and spent time with them as well.

And she she saw him transform her.

She saw him transform other people, she saw his amazing acts, and so she saw how worthy he was of her complete and utter devotion to the point where her heart actually desired to give everything to him.

She couldn't wait to submit to his lordship.

That's what that tells us.

But listen, the same thing goes for us.

We grow more and more convinced of how great God is as we spend time with him.

And listen, that's not news to us, but I believe the enemy is going against that big time.

How many of us have the hardest time finding time in our schedules to even open up this book?

Right?

We all struggle with it, I struggle with it.

We're so busy, we're so overloaded with our calendars, and our calendars are filled with things that aren't bad, but they're not the best.

And what ends up getting squeezed out in many cases is is time spent with the Lord.

And we we don't have the same kind of priority to gathering with other believers on Sunday mornings, and we're kind of hit and miss with all of that.

And and if we do that, it's that's about it, once a week, but then through the week, I'm I'm gonna be preoccupied with so many other things and my prayer life.

Don't even ask me about that, because that kind of feels non-existent.

But all of these things are how we spend time with the Lord.

We put ourselves in the pathway of his grace.

And as we as we as we study the book and as we come and hear about it, and and and we have other people challenge us about those things, we have discussions about it, and as we pray and invite him into our lives and and bring all things before him, guess what?

You're gonna be you're gonna be preoccupied with how great he is, and you're gonna want to give your life to him.

That's the way that that works, not just parts of it.

Not just, Lord, have my family, but not my bank account.

Not that you can have my my bank account, but not my time.

No, you're gonna be like, oh Lord, take it all.

Because you start as you start to give part of it over to him, you realize how awesome that is, how great that is.

And you're like, Lord, just take more ground.

You want you it's not submitting to him becomes something you want to do.

It's willing.

So listen, we can't be surprised when we push the time spent with God off to the side and then find that we don't have this desire to submit to him, and our pride seems to be overruling all of it.

So I live in submission to the Lord as I'm convinced that he's worthy to receive my all, and am driven by the reality that he gave me his all.

That's the second thing.

Verse 12, take a look.

And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.

Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, Where's my guest room, where I may eat of the Passover with my disciples?

And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready.

There prepare for us.

And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

Sounds so familiar to when he told them to go into the city and find for them a cult, right?

And talk to the master.

It's the same uh type of idea here.

Now, the Passover, remember I said we would get back to that?

It was a weeklong festival that the Jews would celebrate once a year.

And this was like mega, mega, mega.

It was major that they would do this.

It was it was the highlight of their uh celebrations, and so many people and soldiers would gather uh in Jerusalem to do this, and and it was a big, big deal.

And and what was that?

Well, they was where they would celebrate how God rescued the Israelites in their past out of Egypt through Moses.

You remember this in the book of Exodus, and you remember all the plagues that God sent, the ten plagues, uh, to convince Pharaoh whose heart had hardened to release his people?

Well, the tenth plague was where the the angel of death, okay, God, had gone through, he went through uh all of Egypt claiming the lives of every firstborn son.

Right?

And again, all of this was because of the stubborn pride of Pharaoh.

Okay, but God told the Israelites, okay, that I'm gonna pass over, literally pass over your household, pass over your home if you were to smear lamb's blood over uh the doorpost of your home.

Okay, so through this act of judgment on Egypt, okay, Pharaoh finally relented and and and released the Israelites.

He said, All right, fine, you can go.

And it says that they left so fast that the bread didn't even have time to rise, hence, hence the feast of unleavened bread, as it was called.

Okay, so the Passover meal would be where they would eat a lamb, right?

To think about these things.

They would eat unleavened bread, they would drink wine together to remember their past deliverance, you know, out of Egypt that God had done, but to also look forward to their future deliverance through the promised Messiah.

Right?

So you can probably start to sense here where Jesus was about to go with all of this, right?

Okay, but first of all, verse 17.

It says, And and when it was evening, he came with the twelve.

And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.

They began to be sorrowful and say to him one after another, Is it I?

He said to them, It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.

He said, For the Son of Man, this is interesting, I love this.

The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

It's a pretty amazing verse.

You see the convergence there in that one verse of both the God's sovereign plan.

Right?

The Son of Man goes as it is written of him.

This is God's plan to do this.

And it says, but at the same time, the responsibility of man in this as well, right?

Woe to the man, right?

Woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

Now, verse 21.

He says of Judas, it would have been better for that man if he had not been born.

That's pretty heavy.

Now, next verse, verse 22.

It says, And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it, he broke it and he gave it to them.

And he said, Take, this is my body.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank of it.

And he said to them, This is my blood, my blood of the covenant or the new covenant, which is poured out for many.

He says, Truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drank it new in the kingdom of God.

Okay, so in this moment, hey, Jesus is demonstrating for his disciples here that they're not simply or just remembering, you know, how they were saved from slavery to Egypt, but how how very soon they will be saved from their slavery to sin.

Okay?

He's pointing to how he will be the sacrifice.

He will be the final sacrifice.

He is the ultimate uh slain lamb.

Through his blood poured out, God will pass over their sins by by punishing Jesus instead of them and making forgiveness available to them and to anyone who would who would submit themselves before him, who would confess their sin and ask him to be Lord.

Okay, that's the gospel.

That's it right there.

And if and if you and I are not deeply driven and motivated by that awesome reality of Christ's sacrifice, his his body and it and his blood shed for us, then we won't ever live lives of radical surrender and submission to him.

Think about it.

The disciples are about to completely defect here, right?

They're gonna leave Jesus hanging in his darkest hour.

But after he rises from the dead and appears to them and shows him what what all of this means here, and they see how how clearly how true this is and how great he is, they live, they live nothing but lives of surrender to him from that moment on.

Because the gospel is driving them to respond in this way.

You know, we've been talking about how as the as the disciples saw Jesus raised from the dead, right?

And they saw him come alive and they realize, wow, and he meets with them and he explains to them what all of these things mean.

Acts chapter 1 tells us about all of that.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

They become deeply convinced of his goodness, and the truth of the gospel begins to drive them to give their lives in full submission to him.

Right?

And I think sometimes it can be easy to kind of read the New Testament in the scriptures and the book of Acts and be like, wow, these guys were incredible.

No, that's how we're to live too.

Do you know that?

That's how we're to live.

That's why we talk about preaching the gospel to ourselves.

Right?

Reminding ourselves daily, all the time, that Christ gave his all.

It was through his sacrificed body and and his shed blood.

You know, if we're not motivated by, driven by that truth and that reality, all of life, do you know this?

All of life ceases to function as it should for a believer.

Do you know that?

If the gospel is not driving you to your obedience, driving you to your surrender, to submission, then life just won't be lived the way that Christ calls you to.

Now you may be thinking, well, what do you mean by that?

Okay, well, write this down.

Okay, if I if I'm not driven by the reality that He gave me as all, if I'm not driven by the gospel, okay, five things.

Five things.

First one, I forget who God is.

I forget who God is.

Now you think, well, wait a second, I don't feel like I've I've forgotten who who God is.

Um yeah, we do.

We we we kind of we lose sight of all of that and we forget that God is God is love.

We that we forget that that's that's the center of the gospel.

That's it right there, that he would he would sacrifice himself for us.

It's amazing love.

I've talked to so many people who claim to be Christians who don't think that God loves them.

Like that's that's the core of the gospel.

How do we how do we not know that?

Why don't we not feel that?

Why do we not think that?

Why does that not drive us?

Well, I believe because we don't think about the gospel.

We don't think we think it's for kids.

We think it's here once and then you move on from it.

No, you gotta be you gotta be driven by this.

You forget that he's love, you forget that he's gracious, you forget that he is God of mercy, you forget how powerful God is.

We pray prayers where we don't really believe that the answer is gonna come, but maybe it's because we we forget who God is, that he is omni omnipotent, right?

He's omnipresent, he's omniscient, he is everywhere, he knows all things, he's all powerful.

We forget these things if we're not driven by the gospel.

How about the second one?

I forget what God has done.

If we're not driven by the gospel, we forget that what Christ has done.

And we start to think, well, I need to earn my salvation and I need to behave so that so that God doesn't like shoot a lightning bolt down and zap me or something like that.

No, you don't.

God already loves you through Jesus Christ, through what he has done on the cross.

You couldn't, you couldn't live the perfect life.

So Jesus did for you.

If you if you forget to, if you don't go, you're not motivated by the gospel, you'll forget all those things.

You'll start to live a super legalistic life.

Thinking you've got to earn his forgiveness, you've got to earn his love, you've got to earn his respect.

No, you've already got it.

He's already done all of that, he's given it to you.

You've been redeemed.

I'm not driven by the reality that he gave me his all, I forget who I am.

I forget who I am.

Listen, countless, countless, countless people are looking for an identity in something other than Jesus Christ.

How many of those people, I wonder, are Christians?

Right?

I want to purchase an identity through the clothes I wear.

I want to gain an identity through sweating off the extra LBs in the gym.

Right?

My identity is what someone has has told me.

My identity is my success.

No, your identity is in the gospel.

Your identity is who you are in Jesus Christ.

What does he say about you?

He says that you're an adopted child of his.

You're a child of the king.

You are 100% loved.

That is your identity.

You're not the style of hat that you wear or the kind of shoes that you wear.

Right?

How insane is it that that's what we think?

And our identity comes crumbling down if we don't look a certain way that we want to look.

Right?

It's crazy.

Our identity changes with the shifting winds and the changing culture and up and down styles and all of that kind of stuff.

Only Jesus Christ gives us the identity that is rock solid.

If you're not driven by the reality that gave you is all, you forget who you are.

You look for that elsewhere.

Here's another thing we forget.

Number four, I forget my purpose.

Forget my purpose.

What's our purpose?

Submission, right?

In one word.

Right?

That's what we're talking about here today.

The bedrock foundation, it's submit our will to the Lord's.

Right?

Submission.

You could say it's to glorify God.

It's to love Him, to love other people, to be missional, to disciple.

This is our purpose as the church.

But we we kind of lose sight of the gospel.

We forget the gospel.

We're not driven about it by it.

We make our lives about any other number of things, don't we?

And we go after this, that, and the other.

It's because we've forgotten our purpose.

Here's the last thing if I'm not driven by the reality that he gave me is all, I forget where I'm heading.

Forget where I'm heading.

Heaven, right?

And eternity with him.

Right?

Kind of makes submitting in the hard areas kind of worth it, right?

Knowing that you're, yeah, when you do that, you're earning rewards in heaven.

He's gonna bless you.

Right now, for a while in this life, as momentary as it is, it's gonna be a struggle, it's gonna be hard.

But knowing that we've got eternity, it's imperishable, waiting for us, how awesome is that?

That drives us now to obey.

That drives us now to submit.

You and I cannot afford to forget these things, to lose sight of all of these things.

Knowing them in a you know, uh a head knowledge, you know, getting the answer right on a test, technically, kind of way, but not where our heart is gripped by it and motivated our obedience and our submission.

That's just not enough.

It's not what Christ's followers have been called to.

It's certainly not why Christ went to the cross and gave us his all.

All right, I live in submission to the Lord as I'm convinced that he's worthy to receive my all, and I'm driven by the reality that he gave me his all, last thing, while grappling with the burden of surrendering my will.

Okay, this is a burden absolutely.

Okay, verse 26, follow along.

It says, And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives, and Jesus said to them, You will all fall away.

For it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.

This comes from Zechariah 13, verse 7.

Zechariah 13:7

He says, But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.

And Peter said to him, Even though they all fall away, I will not.

Right?

And Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me, not once, not twice, but three times.

But I love Peter's reaction here.

Notice how he just doubles down.

He says emphatically, If I must die with you, I will not deny you.

Then they all said the same.

We give Peter a hard time about this, but they all said it.

They all thought it.

They were all committed, and and no doubt, genuinely, right?

Their intentions were pure here.

They didn't foresee what was about to happen, and they thought that they would be by Christ's side till the very end.

Keep it verse 32.

It says, and they went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, Sit here while I pray.

And he took with him his inner circle, Peter and James and John, and he said to his disciples, actually it says, and he began to be, it says, greatly distressed and troubled.

And he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.

You notice the struggle here for him.

He says, Remain here and watch.

And going a little further, he he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

And he said, Abba, Father, which is showing the intimacy with his father.

He says, All things are possible for you.

Remove this cup from me, and then this, you gotta have this underlined in your Bible.

Yet not what I will, but what you will.

And he came and found them sleeping.

And he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep?

Could you not watch for one hour?

Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

And then this is good too.

The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.

And again he went away and prayed, saying the very same words.

And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him.

They were so sheepish about it.

And he came the third time and said to them, Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?

It is enough.

The hour has come.

The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Rise, let us be going.

See, my betrayer is at hand.

Okay, not hard for us to see here the amount of grappling that that Christ engaged in with his father here.

Right?

He he did it more than once.

Right?

And and it wasn't just the reality of the physical suffering that he was about to endure here very soon, but uh but but also knowing that he was going to be absorbing the wrath of God for every sin for all of humanity for all time.

Right?

You remember the verse in Isaiah 53, he was pierced for our transgressions, right?

He was he was crushed for our iniquities.

That is a that is a mammoth burden.

A huge weight that quite frankly, none of us, no one in history, no one understands it.

And before Christ would go on to complete that and and accomplish the mission that God had given him, he had to here in this moment surrender his will to the Father's will.

He had to do it.

He said, Father, all things are possible for you.

Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.

Now I love this quote here from James Edwards.

Can we get that uh thrown up on the screen there?

I love this.

It says, the plea of Jesus suggests that he is genuinely tempted to forsake the role of suffering servant.

Right?

His humanity and his divinity coming together here.

Nevertheless, his will to obey the Father is stronger than his desire to serve himself.

Right?

That right there, that is money, right?

Pure gold.

Right?

And it's what you and I, we have to ask ourselves.

You know, is my will to obey God stronger than my will, my desire to simply serve myself?

As Christians, you and I are gonna have so many moments throughout throughout our lives where we experience this grappling and this wrestling match within us between what we want versus what what God wants.

You know, where we're where we where we know in our minds and in our hearts that that he wants us to submit.

Right?

But but we also there's a big part of us that that just wants what we want.

Right?

And it's it's hard.

Right?

That wrestling match is so difficult.

Part of me wants to give way to him, and we know that that would be sweet, but we fear or we lack courage.

Our pride is strong.

Right?

The spirit is the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Right?

There's part of us that wants it, but our flesh is weak, and we just want to live for self.

I love that insight there in that verse.

That that that grappling with with surrendering our will.

It's it's a huge burden for us.

Right?

Don't you love it?

I love it.

Just how non-sugar coated that is.

Right?

It's not like, well, you know, everything's probably gonna work out, and you know, it may be a little tough, but no, he's like, this is gonna be brutal.

It's gonna be hard.

It's gonna be a grind in your soul over these things.

It was for Jesus.

It's a burden for him, and it is for us too.

But I think we can actually take some encouragement here and in the example of the disciples.

You may be thinking, hold on a second, I know where, you know, I just read it, like I know where this is going.

Like they were so soft, like they just bailed on Jesus uh completely, right?

They don't exactly pass with flying colors.

What is there possibly to be uh to be encouraged by?

Right?

They say they're I'll never fall away.

Right?

Everyone else is going to.

You notice how Peter says that?

Even if they all do, which shows that he doesn't think much of them, does he?

But he's like, I won't.

Right?

But they do.

They scatter just moments later.

Jesus tells them to watch and pray, but they can't even manage to do that.

But hey, they do eventually, don't they?

Right?

We know the New Testament.

We read the story of the church as it's just starting out and as it's growing.

We read Acts.

We read the letters that Peter wrote to the church to encourage them.

We see the life transformation, we see what God has done.

We see that they eventually grow stronger in this.

You work your way through it, it's it's unmistakable.

You see that they're completely surrendered to the word the will of the Lord.

They go to the point of death in this.

Peter did.

Right?

Lives spent serving him.

It wasn't about their creature comforts, it wasn't about what they want.

Well, how did they get there?

Well, because they had these these countless moments, even in these failures, learn from your own too, as Peter would have.

With these moments of grappling over this, and is it really worth it?

And maybe you've made mistakes and you've you've you've doubled down on what you want.

And you start to see, no, I'm dying inside here, and this is not what's best, and there's consequences for it.

But you've also seen those times where you've like, all right, Lord, have your way in me.

And you submitted to Him.

And you see the joy that comes, you see the transformation that happens in you, and you see later on down the road, maybe it's in a conversation with somebody, or maybe it's as you're serving, you see that the Lord uses you to bless somebody else.

You're like, that's why I went through that.

Right?

It is worth it.

It is so worth it.

It's hard, but it's good.

The disciples grappled with this.

We need to grapple with it as well.

Listen, it's what he's doing in you, it's what he's doing in me too.

So I think the question really is will you let him?

You're gonna let him do it.

Will you bow your hearts?

Will you let him soften that?

The stiff-neckness that the scriptures talk about.

That's all gotta go.

Will you live in submission to the Lord?

He's not gonna waste it.

You're thinking, well, I I I've done that, but but I haven't seen how that's turned out for good for me.

Be patient.

He's not gonna show it to you all right away necessarily.

He's doing so much behind the scenes that you and I can't see.

We gotta have faith in this.

We gotta trust him.

But he's using it, he's using it for your good, he's using it in the good of others, he's using it up for the building up of his church.

So will we submit?

Well, we're gonna sing a song right now that expresses these things.

And I would challenge us and encourage us to sing this as your commitment to submit, to surrender, to find strength in your resolve where you've been kind of weak in all of that.

To cry out to the Lord, God, I'm not doing so well here, and and unfaltering.

But Lord, not my will, yours.