"Free to Surrender" by Ps Shane Willard // 12 Dec

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hello everybody, it's so good to come into

you, um, into your homes today to open

up the Scripture.

Today I get to open the Scripture up

and I love doing that.

And so what we always do when we

open up a Scripture is we ask, what

happened?

And then we ask a more important question,

what's happening in me right now because of

what happened?

And so I want to tell you the

story of four different people, um, from the

Scripture, um, who went through a troubled time.

And I want to talk to you about

how to build your faith in the middle

of a troubled time.

We, I think we almost ruined the word

faith, that faith, um, for the last 250

years has become a what word, like what

do you believe?

Do you believe what I believe?

And it's, it became a what word when

faith actually in its rawest form is a

who do you trust word, not a what

do you believe word.

If you're going to make it anything, it

should be a how do you see the

world word.

And so I want to, um, I want

to look at these real people, real places

at real time, um, and how they dealt

with this and, um, and let's see if

we can find ourself in this story.

This is a guy named John the Baptist,

uh, who was a forerunner of Jesus and

he's in prison and he's writing, he's sending

somebody to find out something about Jesus and

the nature of his ministry.

And this is what it says.

Now, now when John heard in prison about

the deeds of, of the Christ, he sent

word to his disciples and said to them,

are you the one who is to come

or should we look for another?

And Jesus answered them saying, go and tell

John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk,

lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear and

the dead are raised up and the poor

have good news preached to them and blessed

is the one who is not offended by

me.

Now in Hebrew, this is something called a

ramez.

It's an allusion to something else that John

would have known.

He's almost directly quoting Isaiah 61, but he

leaves out an important part.

Let me just read Isaiah 61 verse 1

Isaiah 61:1–3

to 3.

Uh, the spirit of the Lord is upon

me because he anointed me or he Christed

me to, to, to bring the good news

to the poor, to send me up to

bind the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the

captives and the opening of the prison to

those who are bound.

Well, John's in prison.

So here's what's going on here.

John's in prison.

Jesus quotes Isaiah, but he leaves out the

entire part about setting prisoners free.

It's an allusion.

It's like John is saying, hey, are you

the one who's going to establish the kingdom?

And Jesus is like, yes, I'm meeting this,

but he leaves the part out about John

getting out of prison.

And John would have figured that out pretty

quickly.

He would have memorized Isaiah 61.

So when Jesus quotes Isaiah 61 and leaves

the part off about a prison escape, well,

that's Jesus's way of saying, I'm doing what

I'm supposed to do, but you're going to

have to be in prison for now.

So John is doing nothing wrong except following

God and he finds himself in prison.

Here's another story.

It's from Deuteronomy 32.

That very day, the Lord spoke to Moses,

go up to this mountain of the Eberim,

Mount Nebo, which is in the land of

Moab opposite Jericho and view the land of

Canaan, which I am giving to the people

of Israel for a possession and die.

Go there and die on the mountain, which

you go up and be gathered to your

people.

As Aaron, your brother died on Mount Hor

and was gathered to his people because you

broke faith with me in the midst of

the people of Israel at the waters of

Meribah Kadesh in the wilderness of Zen.

And because you did not treat me as

holy in the midst of the people of

Israel, for you shall see the land before

you, but you shall not go there into

the land that I am giving to the

people of Israel.

So in this story, Moses spends 40 years

leading the grumbling people out of Egypt into

freedom.

And God says, after 40 years of object

cause and struggle and, and, and, and meaning

and going for it after 40 years, he

doesn't get what he was shooting for and

he has to go somewhere else to die.

So in the first story, this guy's doing

nothing wrong.

He finds himself in jail.

In the second story, the guy is faithful

for 40 years, makes a few mistakes, and

he finds himself missing out on what he

thought he always wanted.

Here's a third story, um, about a guy

named Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was a kid prophet and he gets

very disappointed with God.

And this is what he says in Jeremiah

20.

Oh Lord, you have deceived me.

So he's calling God a liar.

He's like, hey God, I'm calling you out

on your lie here.

You have deceived me and I was deceived.

In other words, you got me.

You got me, bro.

Hey, you got me good.

You are a stronger than I and you

have prevailed.

In other words, I give, I submit, I

tap out, right?

You deceive me.

I was deceived.

You got me.

You're stronger than me.

You prevailed.

I tap out.

I have now become a laughingstock all day

long.

Everyone mocks me.

For whenever I speak, I cry out, I

shout, violence and destruction.

For the word of the Lord has become

for me a reproach and a derision all

day long.

So in this story, Jeremiah is just doing

his best to hear God and say what

God's saying and it's backfiring on him and

people are laughing at him and mocking him.

And now the word of the Lord, which

should bring life for him has become a

reproach and a derision all day long.

Here's a fourth story about a lady named

Mary.

And behold, you will conceive in your womb

and bear a son and you shall call

his name Jesus and he will be great

and he will be called the son of

the most high.

And the Lord God will give him the

throne of his father David and he will

reign over the house of Jacob forever and

his kingdom will know no end.

Sounds like good news.

And Mary said to the angel, how will

this be since I'm a virgin?

And the angel said to her, the Holy

Spirit will come upon you and the power

of the most high will overshadow you.

Therefore, the child to be born will be

called holy, the son of God.

That's Luke 1, 22 to 25.

Now skip before 13 verses.

And Mary said, behold, I am the servant

of the Lord.

Let it be to me according to your

word.

And the angel departed from her.

Now in Mark chapter three, verse 20, this

is what it says.

Then he went home and the crowd gathered

again so that they could not even eat.

And when his family heard it, they went

out to seize him and they were saying

he is out of his mind.

So this child ends up becoming an adult.

No one's buying this story.

In the Mary story, you imagine trying to

convince people you didn't know anything.

And let me just a quick cultural thing.

In their world, if you got pregnant and

she would have been probably 13.

I mean, the way marriage worked, you had

your first period and then you were sort

of betrothed within six weeks and then married

pretty quickly after that.

So if you were pregnant before the appropriate

time that what your family did was they

did something called sitting Shiva with you.

Sitting Shiva is a ritual of mourning the

death of someone.

It's seven days where you sit with them

after someone has died.

But in this case, they would have done

sitting Shiva with her.

And then after that, she would have been

considered dead.

This is why later they end up in

a town way far away.

But then Caesar requires everybody go back to

their hometown to do the census.

And it just happens to be the time

she's fixing to give birth there in their

home town.

And you don't you mean to tell me

not one person had a spare room, not

one person had a spare couch, not one

person had a spare space on the floor.

No, she finds herself in a barn because

she had been disowned.

So in this story, she is submitting to

the will of God and she ends up

in a barn in labor.

In this story, Jesus is submitting to God

and the crowd is calling him out of

his mind.

In this story, Jeremiah is submitting to God

and people are mocking him all the day

long.

In these stories from the narratives of Scripture,

John the Baptist is doing everything God's called

him to do and he ends up in

jail.

In these stories, in these narratives, we should

be able to find ourselves in these stories,

that their story is not unlike ours.

Sometimes it's not that we're doing something wrong.

Sometimes we're doing everything we could do to

follow God, but we find ourselves in a

jail.

We find ourselves in this oppression.

We find ourselves being mocked.

We find ourselves being tried in some cases

disowned like Mary.

In some cases people think you're out of

your mind, right?

In some cases, but what you find in

this story is that the people in this

story, they weren't necessarily doing a lot of

wrong things.

Actually, some of them were doing nothing wrong.

Sometimes the story of our journey in faith

with Christ is a journey of the struggle.

And the question is, is what does faith

look like in that struggle?

Not how do I have enough faith to

get out of the struggle, but what does

faith look like in the middle of it?

This is Luke chapter four verse twenty-eight.

When they heard these things, all in the

synagogue were filled with wrath.

That's a bad — if I put it

in today's language, after he finished preaching the

sermon, the whole church was infuriated with him.

And they rose up and drove him out

of town and brought him to the Brava

Hill on which the town was built so

that they could throw him down the cliff.

I've had some — I've had mostly positive

responses to my sermons, but never a negative

response that included throwing me off a hill.

This is what they're doing.

Jesus is just following His Father.

He's just doing His best.

He's doing everything He could do to fulfill

what God had given to Him in the

world, and people are trying to throw Him

off the cliff.

Now, let's ask ourselves what happened in these

stories, and then let's see where we find

ourself in it.

One, Jeremiah and Mary were simply doing the

right thing.

And even in that, it fell apart.

The idea that if we're doing the right

thing, it will all work out is —

it'll all work out like we imagined.

That's just a myth.

It's just not true.

It doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

This is Mark 14, verse 32.

Mark 14:32

And they went to a place called Gethsemane,

and He said to His disciples, sit there

while I pray.

And He took with Him Peter and James

and John and began to be greatly distressed

and troubled.

And He said to them, My soul is

very sorrowful, even to death.

Remain here and watch.

So Jesus is having a despairing to even

live.

He's in so much pressure.

And going a little further, He fell on

the ground and prayed that if it were

possible that the hour might pass for Him.

In other words, if there's any way that

we can get around this, let's not have

this be the way.

And He said, Abba, Father, all things are

possible for You.

Remove this cup from Me, yet not what

I will, but what You will.

What you find in Christ is not the

absence of doubt.

You don't.

You don't find the absence of questions.

You don't find the absence of certainty.

You do find the absence of certainty.

You definitely don't find the presence of uncertainty.

You find Him despairing to life itself.

You find Him doing everything God's asked Him

to do, but yet having profound doubts, profound

questions, but profound uncertainty.

But what you do find that is moving

is surrender.

I know you could do all things, and

if you can, remove it.

But if you can't, I'm going to trust

that you are God and I am not.

That is the invitation to live.

Some observations about this.

The cup was an ancient symbol of wrath.

So there was a struggle for surrender, even

with Christ.

The pressure of this makes Jesus collapse to

the ground and despair at life itself.

See, the problem in this story is that

it brings up all kinds of questions about

what we think God is like.

So the questions we hear a lot in

the middle of trying times is, why can't

God just fix it?

He could fix it like that.

Like, all things are possible, right?

If all things are possible, why wouldn't God

fix it like that?

And evidently Jesus pointed that out as well.

So did Jeremiah.

So did Moses, right?

So evidently our struggle is their struggle.

So here's the challenging part of the story.

Jesus either can't or He won't control Judas

who betrays Him.

He either can't or He won't control the

disciples who desert Him.

He either can't or won't control the Jewish

leaders who are conspiring against Him.

Jesus either can't or He won't control people,

places, and things, because that's how religion works.

Evidently Jesus chooses a greater ethic, which is

love.

And love requires us to surrender, even to

the point of death.

Love says surrender is where life starts.

Control will put us in jail.

Surrender is where life starts.

Evidently what we find in this story, and

I hope this inspires us, is that Jesus

can only control His own surrender.

He can't control them.

He can't control them.

He can't or won't control them.

He can't or won't control Him.

He can't or won't control that.

He can't or won't control that.

But what He can control is His own

surrender.

And if Jesus is a bullet point on

a pamphlet, this is very difficult to live

by.

But if Jesus is the fundamental way we're

supposed to see our world, then maybe we're

not called to figure everything out.

Maybe we're not called to be certain about

everything.

Maybe we're not called to live doubt-free.

But we are called to a profound life

that invites us to surrender to our lack

of control.

Maybe one of the lessons we learn from

this story is that life actually starts when

we fully surrender and admit we can't control

it.

So let's ask a few questions about this

because we don't want to just know what

happened.

We want to ask what's happening in me

right now because of what happened.

So a couple of thoughts about this for

us today.

Are we in the prison right now of

trying to control someone?

We just can't get them to do what

we want.

And at some point, hopefully, we don't live

our whole life in the prison trying to

control somebody else.

At some point, we realize that we can't

control them while remaining in love, so we

will surrender.

So sometimes we find it easy to submit

our lives to God, but actually what this

is calling us to do is to also

submit their lives to God.

That if God's at work in me and

God's at work in them, we can trust

God with them as well.

Number two, are we trying to control our

circumstance?

We just can't get it to move.

Obviously, right now in the world, there's a

virus pandemic.

And part of the invitation, I think, in

this is for those of us who are

control freaks and like to figure everything out

and we're the problem solvers.

But part of that is when you can't

see the problem and you can't control the

outcome.

I own a business and that business is

in a bit of peril if crowds can't

meet.

Maybe you're a part of a tourism industry.

Maybe your job is in peril.

And so what it does is it makes

us — we ask the same questions the

Bible characters ask.

So don't feel bad when you ask these

questions because they're the same questions Jesus asked.

If it's all possible for you, why can't

you fix it another way?

If your hand isn't short, why don't you

do something about — is there another pathway

through this?

But the invitation of Jesus doesn't stop with

the question.

It stops with the surrender to, hey, when

it's out of my control, I'll surrender.

In the story, John the Baptist surrenders and

he has life.

Moses surrenders and has life.

Jeremiah surrenders and ends up being one of

the greatest prophets of all time.

Jesus surrenders, and obviously that story is still

being told.

Mary surrenders, and that story is still being

told.

Maybe the invitation to live and build faith

in trying times is the invitation to surrender

despite our lack of being able to get

our head around it.

Number three, are we learning to surrender which

leads to freedom?

That what we find in the biblical narrative

is surrender leads to freedom.

Number four, control and manipulation lead to prison.

Surrender for even them leads to freedom.

So here's my question as I look straight

into your room.

Are you surrendered?

The question isn't, do you have enough faith

to get out of it?

The question isn't, is there a Bible verse

that answers the whole thing?

Somebody wrote me the other day and said,

Shane, what's the Bible say about the coronavirus?

Nothing.

It wasn't around.

The Bible doesn't say anything about rocket ships

either.

That's not a thing.

But the Bible does tell the moving, inspiring

narratives of how people navigated their struggle, and

that is inspiring.

Because the truth of it is, people say,

where is God in all this?

Well, God is present in those health care

workers giving their lives.

God is present every time a young person

picks up food for an older person and

drops it at their front door to make

sure they're not in danger.

God's present in that.

God's present anytime we suffer a little for

the sake of the most vulnerable.

God's present in that.

God is present in all the narratives, not

because of the lack of struggle, but because

of the struggle itself and the invitation to

surrender.

So one of the ways we build faith

in trying times is we say yes to

the invitation to surrender, because surrender is freedom.

Can we admit that our control isn't working?

Even our attempts to control it, it's not

working.

Our attempts to control them, not working.

That true love is surrendering to God for

us and also surrendering to God for them.

Surrender versus control gets to the question of

who God is.

Are we still trying to control it while

proclaiming with doctrine He is God, or can

we surrender that God is God and we

are not?

The question in trying times is can we

let God be God?

What you find in the stories of Jesus,

Mary, John the Baptist, Moses, and Jeremiah is

that oftentimes it isn't something you've done, and

it's not God being mad.

It's just life, and that life runs on

a cycle of death and life and death

and life and death and life, and the

meaning in life is often found in the

struggle.

Can we live surrendered instead of trying to

control it?

May Christ be bigger in our world today.

Grace and peace, everybody.

Hey, wow, what a challenging message.

Thank you, Pastor Shane Willard.

That is incredibly motivating and stirring in my

faith, and the challenge is to live in

that realm where we are free to surrender,

and I think everything we do right now,

I'm going to encourage you right now to

participate in the action and the outworking of

that message and let that be real in

your life this week.

Hope you got some good notes and really

stir your faith up in that.

Hey, listen, before we go, I want to

thank you for your faithfulness and giving as

a church, and I really want to thank

you for participating in us through what has

been, for some of us, difficult times, but

I really see the faithfulness of you all,

and I want to thank you for that

today as we give today, and obviously the

prompts are all on the bottom of the

screen.

You can go to our giving online page,

but can I really encourage you right now?

Never has there been a greater time to

participate in the Kingdom of God.

Right now, I believe, is this is the

hour for the church to rise, and I

believe it rises in the church as individuals,

so I'm going to encourage us all as

we participate in giving today that right now

you ask God, God, what can I really

give in a little bit of excess?

Obviously, we've got the gifts of groceries and

a lot of stuff happening at Christmas, and

we want to be a church that blesses.

We want to be a church that consistently

reaches to the lost, and we want to

be involved in evangelism in this season, so

why don't you ask your heart right now,

God, where am I at with my giving,

and I want to encourage you right now.

Let's be faithful in our giving.

I really want to thank you, and right

now, let me pray over you as you

give today.

Father, I thank you for these incredible men

and women of God, even young people, even

children.

God, I thank you for them at this

Christmas time, which is a season of giving,

and I pray, Lord, as people give today

that your hand of favor be upon their

life.

God, I speak blessing over your people today,

the blessing of God that maketh rich and

addeth no sorrow, that in our spirits we

would rise today, knowing that we are blessed,

and I declare God over Inspire Church right

now, as we continue to function through this

season, God, that we would see your hand

at work, and we would see lives influenced

and changed, and Jesus' mighty name, we give

you praise today, and Father, I thank you

right now for the amazing opportunity we've got

this afternoon, where the team is going to

meet, and I want to thank you right

now, team, as you prepare to come, and

I'll see you at 2 to 4, and

we're going to pray a blessing over you.

Thank you, team.

Look forward to seeing you.

Don't miss it.

It's going to be fantastic, a drive through

at church.

God bless you.

Love you all.

Have an absolutely fantastic week.