Raise Up: Youth Sunday | Part 2

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Good morning.

Thanks, Levi.

How are we doing?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

If we haven't yet met, my name is Molly, and it is the single greatest joy of my life to serve as Awakening's youth director.

Thank you.

Roland and I work together in discipling teenagers in the love and wisdom of God and equipping them that they might love God not just for time in their life, but for a lifetime.

You've probably seen us at the front of Del Mar with really loud music, or maybe you've noticed the teenagers that serve during teardown, but today they're everywhere.

We've got Calvin back at the soundboard, we've got them greeting up front, leading in worship, carrying rolling through family time.

They're doing everything.

And on behalf of the youth team, we are so grateful for a church that highlights and invests in the spiritual development of teenagers.

We're in this spirit this series called Raise Up, because it is a core value here at Awakening to be a strategic training center in raising up the next generation of world changers.

And this morning, we're talking about the power of God.

Scripture says that God is powerful.

We've heard it before.

We know that it's true.

But when chaos and suffering come and ransack our lives, if you're anything like me, this powerful God that I know I have access to seems far off.

That maybe he's not as powerful as he says he is, or if he is, maybe he just doesn't care enough to intervene.

I knew I was writing this sermon on this topic a month ago, but I've had a lot of those moments this week.

Moments of feeling powerless and stuck and begging for God to intervene.

My father's been in the ICU for about a week now, really, really sick.

And test after test and treatment after treatment, the only thing that I have been able to do is sit in his room and be far away and pray.

What does a powerful God mean when my dad is still sick, still in pain, and when his prognosis has not changed?

And if you feel as powerless as I felt this week, I'm right there with you, and I think that God has something for both of us this morning.

That maybe his power is not the splitting of the sea that we think it is, but it is something deeper and richer and fully concerned with you.

So before I get any further, would you please pray with me?

Jesus, thank you that you are near to us however we come in this morning.

Rejoicing or grieving.

Thank you for laughter and thank you for teenagers and thank you for your word.

Help us as we seek to hear from you.

We need you to open our eyes, to soften our hearts, and to help us handle your word with care.

Jesus, may it be your word and will that lingers and sticks and stays, not ours and not mine.

May we know you better because of something that you do today.

Amen.

I grew up in sunny Sacramento, California, home to the Capitol and not much else.

I don't come from a church family, but my dad started taking us right before I hit middle school, so I was a youth group kid.

Youth group was the place I went to eat pizza and played crazy games that combined soccer and frisbee and dodgeball all into one.

Or this game that we called Pole, which is where all 50 of us middle schoolers would hang on to this tall steel pole in the middle of the gym while leaders tried to pull us off.

That was the entire game.

Just the last person standing one.

My dad signed a lot of liability waivers.

Youth Group was the place where I was hearing the scriptures preached and taught and wrestled with.

And youth group was the place that I went as a refuge from home and school and all the other parts of my life that were hard.

And at youth group I felt like I could just be until I caught the attention of one boy my year.

When I've shared this story with my teenagers, we've called him Bob before, so today we'll call him Bob.

At first, Bob was just a nuisance.

He would take up any opportunity to pester me or tease me in a way akin to how my brother would.

And then he started spreading rumors about me and my family.

At first, just really dumb stuff that was obviously not true.

But then he would gossip and tell lies that were more crafty and nasty and destructive.

The kind of lies that kept kids from wanting to hang out with me, the kind of lies that my friends started to believe and then start pulling away from me.

He was popular and fun and well liked, and soon his words had isolated me.

Now I was actively avoiding him any chance I could.

He became more direct and more disparaging, and over time it kept escalating.

At this point, my youth pastor noticed, and I told him as best as I could at 12 years old about what had been happening.

And I remember he shrugged and said something about emailing the kids' parents, and that was it.

There was no intervention.

I expressed again and again to my youth pastor, my leaders, to Bob, to Bob's friends, how much I was hurting and how it made me hate coming to youth group because I was being harassed the whole time.

I did everything that we tell kids who are being bullied to do, and it did not stop.

In fact, it only got worse.

I was wholly powerless against this kid, and what was I supposed to do except believe everything that he had said about me?

The fear and shame I felt when he would be cruel to me at youth group followed me home.

Because when so many people confirm the same thing about you, either actively or passively, it's only so long before it starts to feel true.

One night at Youth Group, towards the end of the night, I was coming down the stairwell and into the hallway that leads to the gym.

As soon as I stepped off the stairs, Bob and his friends jumped out from behind the door as if they had been waiting for me and pelted me with basketballs into the corner.

Me, 12 years old, back to the wall, shielding myself from blow after blow.

This had escalated from childish teasing to now physical danger, and I snapped.

I ran outside, holding back tears, got into my dad's car and told him what just happened.

And he just got quiet.

The kind of scary dad quiet that fills up the entire room and sucks out all the air and makes you shrink in your seat.

And he didn't say anything on the car ride home.

He just seethed and I just cried.

I was so torn and sad and scared and did not understand why this was happening to me, and at this point was really struggling with the belief that it was all warranted.

Eventually, my dad and I pull up to my house and he speaks for the very first time and he says, I'll take care of it.

I had no idea what that meant.

How was I supposed to know what that meant?

He literally said nothing else, just I'll take care of it.

And then we didn't talk about it again.

For whatever reason, I ended up back at youth group the next week.

I came late so as not to mingle and with every intention of keeping to myself.

I went up to walk the same stairwell as the week before, and again, out of nowhere, Bob is there.

I was trying to keep my head down and ignore him, so I sprinted up the stairs and he followed me.

And I remember my stomach dropping and a feeling of defeat washing over me.

I knew I was stuck.

I knew he had every intention of belittling me and hurting me, and it was made very clear at this point that no one in the youth group cared or had any interest in stepping in, and I was alone.

I'm running up the stairs, and I really am not very fast, never have been, so he's gaining on me.

I'm running and panicking now, and the next thing I know, I hear this high-pitched yelp from behind me.

I turn around, and my older brother is holding this kid up by the collar against the wall, putting the fear of God in him.

My big brother, sent by my father to confront Bob, took creative liberty and used some very choice words that I cannot say at a pulpit.

I stood long enough to see my brother and hear everything he had to say, and then I booked it.

And this kid never bothered me again.

In fact, he stayed away from me as far as he could for the rest of middle school.

Yeah.

This is the point in the story when I tell you I don't condone violence, and I would never suggest this as a solution, and I won't tell your teenagers to do it.

But the reality is that I was powerless in this situation.

I'd done everything you were supposed to do, like confronting him myself and telling my leaders and praying he would stop, and none of it did anything.

In fact, it only got worse.

And the power that my father brought into the situation by sending in my older brother to be the muscle taught me two things.

One, my father had my back.

My brother had my back.

And they loved me by stepping into the situation themselves, and it is their presence and actions, however dramatic, that stopped the bullying.

Two, who I was and who I am is a person with intrinsic value that was not being honored nor reflected in the circumstances I found myself in.

And unlike the other adults around me, because they loved me, they would not leave me in this alone.

Instead, they stepped in and influenced the situation in a way that only they could.

Church, I'm here today to remind you and me that this picture, this suffering, powerless child, and the father who intervenes is not a new story.

As a church, we're spending a year in the Gospels, and time and time again, we see Jesus stepping into our personal chaos and suffering and exacting his power.

To intervene in a way that only he can.

This narrative is familiar to us, but the conversation that I have with teenagers more than any other is a feeling of anxiety and powerlessness that comes from growing up in a chaotic and unpredictable world.

Our teenagers are existing in environments where demands and stressors are always changing, between school and sports and family and friends, and I haven't even mentioned anything from online.

Places where the finish line keeps moving, they are never enough, where they cannot control the bad things that happen to them or their families.

They're learning firsthand the reality of living in a world that is truly broken, that they are broken, and coming to this great fork in the road, when I need help, where do I turn?

And what does help even look like?

These are true of you and I as well.

This picture of this powerless child, this is us.

We find the end of ourselves really quickly, so where do we turn?

Where is God in all of this anyway?

Why am I coming to him and nothing is changing?

In the pit in your stomach that follows, the feeling that you are alone in your suffering, your pain, your confusion, your decision-making is a universal lie that I believe God has spoken against.

So today, we're gonna be looking at an encounter with Jesus of a person exactly in that place, a person acquainted with pain and hopelessness, and see how the power of God enters the scene in an unexpected way and what that means for us today.

So turn with me to John 20, where we will read about Mary Magdalene grieving at the tomb on the third day of Jesus' death.

How Jesus appeared to her, and she encountered the power of God in the exact place she had no clue would come.

We'll pick this up in John 20, verse 11.

John 20:11

It will be on the screen.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying.

As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, Woman, why are you crying?

They have taken my Lord away, she said, and I don't know where they've put him.

At this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, Woman, why are you crying?

Who is it that you're looking for?

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, Sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've put him and I will get him.

Jesus said to her, Mary.

She turned towards him and cried out in Aramaic, Reboni, which means teacher.

Jesus said, Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

Go instead to my brothers and tell them, I'm ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news, I have seen the Lord.

And she told them that he had said these things to her.

In high level, we see a woman grieving the loss of her teacher, of her Lord as she calls him, grieving so intensely that she doesn't recognize Jesus, and then Jesus reveals himself and she flips out, and he sends her to be the first person to tell the disciples that Jesus was seen alive.

Hold on to that, we'll return to it.

But to fully grasp the magnitude of this moment, we have to zoom out a little bit and look at Mary Magdalene as a person.

To look at her as an individual and her relationship with Jesus as having gone far, far beyond this moment that John describes.

She's not there randomly.

There's a reason she's at the tomb grieving.

There's a reason she's there alone when no one else is.

There's not a ton written on Mary Magdalene in the Gospels, but there is this short account in the book of Luke that sheds really helpful light.

Luke would say in Luke 8, 1 through 3, that Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.

The twelve were with him, and also some women who had b women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases.

Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had come out.

Joanna, the wife of Chezah, the manager of Herod's household, Susanna, and many others.

These women were helping to suck them out of their own means.

What is Luke saying here?

Mary was a student and a participant in the ministry of Jesus, that she was traveling alongside the twelve disciples, witnessing Jesus teach and perform miracles, that her life was lived alongside Jesus in his season of ministry, cluing us into the fact that they did life together, or in the same community, and all of the relational quality and intimacy that comes with such proximity.

A few other women are mentioned in the text, but Mary Magdalene is the only one who is described to have been delivered out of something.

Not only did she have this teacher-student relationship with Jesus, but she had personally experienced his healing power.

In such a quick verse, Luke describes a really harrowing manner of suffering that Mary was subject to: possession of seven demons.

Apparently, one wasn't enough.

Imagine for a moment the torment and suffering and hopelessness that must have been her life for we don't know how long.

What does such suffering say about the circumstances of her physical well-being, her emotional health, her spiritual state?

Not even to mention the social ostracism and scorn she must have experienced from those in her community.

That to be possessed in the culture she lived in would have assumed a great sin she or a family member had committed that had brought such evil upon her.

That in some way she was unclean or guilty and ultimately responsible for her suffering.

This would have been a holistic burden in her life.

Physically debilitating, spiritually dead, socially isolated way of suffering.

This was the life that Mary came from.

And Luke so quickly tells us that she was delivered and now was among the first followers of Jesus Christ.

Which brings us to our first point for the morning is that God's power receives us, receives the unexpected, the beaten down, the sinner, exactly as we are.

There was no prerequisite of strength or righteousness to being in relationship with Jesus.

And if you and I are not proof enough of this, add Mary to the pile.

The healing power of Jesus brought restoration to her life where she could not.

This is not the power that you and I can conjure or trip into, it is the power that comes when the presence of God enters the desperate and hopeless scene.

But God does his most powerful work in the darkest of circumstances.

And for the human, the person at the center of the suffering, encountering Jesus changes them.

It is not the changing of the circumstances alone, it is the love that works in tandem with the power.

I think of my story.

It was all the more moving in my life that I knew my father and brother loved me and were acting out of a protective heart for me.

It was not so much the action itself, though it helped, but the person behind it and my relationship with them.

Power and influence are one thing.

Them being enacted in love is an entirely different one.

The power of God received her just as she was, and the result was life and purpose transformation.

That experiencing this kind of love changes you.

Jesus took a woman who was helpless and he turned her into a traveling student, learning from the mouth of God Himself, that where Jesus found her, he did not leave her.

And now Mary's life was built around Jesus.

He changed her and she followed him faithfully, an entirely new trajectory to the life she once lived.

This is why we see her at the tomb.

Her personal healer, her teacher, was just executed on a Roman cross and she's grieving, weeping.

That again Mary found herself helpless, except this time her rescuer was dead.

And I can't help but wonder if Mary was asking herself the same question: Is God really as powerful as he says he is?

Let's return to the tomb in verse 11.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying.

As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, Woman, why are you crying?

They have taken my Lord away, she said, and I don't know where they've put him.

Mary's incredibly desperate.

She went to the tomb and found it empty, clearly from the text, believing that someone had taken Jesus.

Then, as she's weeping, she looks in the tomb a second time and sees two angels.

But there's no indication in the scripture that she understands the reality of there being two angels in the tomb, because she doesn't freak out and she talks to them like they're just two other people.

They ask her why she's crying.

And Mary's answer tells us exactly what was going on in her mind and heart at the time that she did not know that Jesus had risen.

That as far as she knew, someone had stolen Jesus' body and now he was gone.

Not only was she grieving the violent and unjust death of Jesus, but someone had disrespected his burial and stolen him, and she had no idea of how to know where he was taken.

Mary says, They've taken my Lord away.

She calls him Lord.

A title of honor and respect and reverence that a servant would call their master.

This is who she was mourning.

She was at the tomb because what else do you do when you love someone but be where they are?

And now her grief is cut afresh and multiplied.

Picking up in verse 14, at this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, Woman, why are you crying?

Who is it you're looking for?

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, Sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've put him and I will get him.

Jesus said to her, Mary.

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, Raboni, which means teacher.

Mary's overwhelming grief literally blinding her from recognizing Jesus.

But who would she have expected to see alive at the tomb?

Not the guy they just buried in it.

Jesus starts by asking her the exact same question the angels just asked her, why is she crying?

And then he adds a more personal question.

Who are you looking for?

Jesus is not asking because he doesn't know.

He's getting to the root of her grief.

She's mourning a loved one.

He's preparing her for the next moment where he calls her by name.

He must have said her name a hundred times while she traveled with him, and it is this that finally opens her eyes.

Jesus calling her by name opens her eyes because they had a personal relationship.

Jesus says her name, and instantly Mary cries out Reboni, which means teacher.

This is who Jesus was to her, her teacher.

And when she realizes that he is there in front of her, alive, she cries out in relief and joy.

This encounter with Jesus shows us that this gospel, this risen and victorious God, is first and foremost personal.

That as much as we know he came to receive and restore humanity, he came for Mary to comfort his grieving friend and show her firsthand the power that raised him from the dead and what it meant for her.

That seeing him move in such a miraculous and personal way tangibly shows us this God who loves us.

Which brings us to our second point is that God's power reveals himself to us.

Yes, we have this cool and dramatic moment where Jesus literally reveals himself to Mary, but there's more going on.

What happens immediately after it clicks for Mary?

Starting in verse 17, Jesus said, Don't hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

Go instead to my brothers and tell them, I'm ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news, I have seen the Lord.

And she told them that he had said these things to her.

A couple things are happening here.

Not only is this gospel personal, but it is final.

Mary's reactions and words really matter here, and this passage ends with Mary declaring him Lord again and then booking it to tell the disciples that he was alive.

Mary had called him Lord before.

She believed.

Mary had seen firsthand Jesus live the perfect life that the Bible tells us he lived.

She had seen him perform miracles and heal people and call people to himself.

The Gospels tell us that Mary was at the cross.

She watched him be tortured and executed.

She watched her Lord and teacher die.

She was likely among the women to help bury him.

She was in blinding grief at the tomb, and now he was standing before her alive.

This is why I believe that the second time she calls him Lord, when she says, I have seen the Lord, we're to understand the added weight to it.

That Jesus had done much in Mary to transform her from who she once was to the faithful woman that we see at the tomb.

We are to see the full weight of his transformational work in her life and him doing what he said he would do.

That Jesus really did get the last swing in, that the tomb that held him for three days would not hold him a moment more, that death was nothing against the power of God revealed in the person and finished work of Jesus Christ, and Mary saw all of it.

God revealed himself to her over time.

He had long been at work in her and around her, and this moment of reunion is so much more than it seems to be at first read.

And isn't it true that the more we draw near to him and see him, the more he does in our lives, the more his character and power are revealed?

What is more moving than the culmination of these events?

Than God revealing himself as victorious.

He already held this power, but now he had exacted it, and Mary was witness and sent to tell the disciples.

Mary Magdalene was the first person that the Gospel of John describes armed with the good news of the gospel.

But it is worth noting what kind of witness Mary would have made and why Jesus chose to tell her in the first place.

Mary's testimony would not have been considered reliable because of her social position as a woman.

But more than this, this was the seven demon-possessed, deeply grieved woman.

The woman so overcome by pain that she didn't recognize angels sitting before her.

Jesus was not ignorant to any of these realities.

He chose and sent Mary intentionally.

It should strike us that the person the people that God chooses to be recipients and ministers of his gospel are the unexpected and the weak.

This is who Jesus chose to be the first evangelist, probably the most unreliable witness he could have picked.

And it is her that he sends before him to tell the disciples he was alive.

We see again in full that there is no prerequisite to being used by God because the power is not ours in the first place.

This gospel is not contingent on anything you or I could ever do.

It is not earned and it is not partial, meaning that whoever you are, wherever you come from, whatever you've done, cannot keep you from the love of God, and it does not exclude you from being used by Him.

Mary, in and of herself, would not have been a compelling nor believable witness, but that did not matter, because she was armed with power outside of herself and sent by the God who holds all power himself.

The news that Mary carried was world-changing, the event that our entire faith hinges upon.

And God put the news of his resurrection in her hands.

Which leads us to our final point for the morning is that God's power raises us up.

Jesus calls the weak, the lonely, the poor, the broken.

He does not need to.

We do not supply anything to God that he doesn't already have because he lacks nothing.

But when Jesus reveals himself to Mary, he invites her to participate with him.

He sends her out on his authority to be a minister of the gospel.

He calls us to do more than what we are able to do, and he backs us with the power to do it.

Which is where you and I come in.

Not only are we recipients of the restorative power of the gospel, but we are participants in it.

That by inviting us into personal and transformational new life in Jesus, he is also sending us out to be messengers of it to a broken and messy world that needs it too.

God is well acquainted with our weaknesses.

They do not surprise him.

He knew who Mary was when he called her, and he knew who she was when he sent her.

Mary could go and tell the disciples that Jesus was alive because where our power ends, the power of God keeps going.

That this God who raises up the unexpected is all the more revealed and on display when he uses people as they come, with their story, their mistakes, their shortcomings, and his power at work in them and through them.

At the end of ourselves, we find a God who longs to personally comfort, to reveal himself as sufficient for all our insufficiencies, and turn the broken in our lives into something really beautiful.

Part of that is raising us up to step into what we cannot do and watch him fill in the gap.

Mary did not have the power to convince the disciples that Jesus was alive.

And John doesn't tell us how they reacted to her.

John doesn't tell us if they believed her.

We don't know how this scene plays out, but it was not the last of it.

Because God is always doing more than you and I can fathom he was doing.

And now, in the scriptures, we have the story of this woman from Magdala, who God chose to be a minister of his gospel.

That we would learn something from her life.

Not that Mary was impressive, but that the power of God rested on her weakness and he used her obedience, her faith, to do something that only he could, something good.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul describes it this way: that his grace is sufficient for us, for his power is made perfect in our weakness.

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me.

This is what God does.

He takes our weaknesses and makes it the resting place of his power.

That he has not forsaken you nor left you without hope, help, or hope.

And for us today, these are still true.

So I want to lead us towards two encouragements.

First, for the hurting and the waiting and the needy in the room.

The greatest predictor of God's future faithfulness is his past faithfulness.

Because he has been faithful to you and I in the past, he will continue to be because that is who he is.

Look no further than the cross and the resurrection to see God's great love for us.

But do not forget what God has done in your life.

How he has made himself known to you.

When you find yourself asking the question, why am I coming to God and he isn't doing anything?

Remind yourself of a time where he did show up, or he pulled through when you didn't think that he would.

Where were you when God met you?

Where has God brought you out of and who has he transformed you into?

Consider Mary's story and consider yours.

Remember how far God has brought you.

Know that he has not left you.

Be available for where he might send you and know that he will go with you.

If my dad took care of me the way that he did, how much more will a perfect, powerful, heavenly Father take care of you?

And lastly, be encouraged by the faith of those around us that God is still doing this work today.

As someone on the front lines of young people encountering and deepening their relationships with the Lord, he is still calling people to himself.

He is still restoring and awakening people to new life.

You can grab any student from our youth group, they're right there, and they will be able to tell you something about this powerful God.

That they have stories about God moving in their lives, and whether they know it or not, God is using them right where he has them.

It is the student who told me that she felt God for the first time at youth camp.

How his presence was thick in the air and it brought something tangible to her faith.

It is a student who was experiencing great anxiety and he held out his hands and asked God for peace, and God gave it to him.

It is a student who felt God calling her to share her faith, and the very next kid she heard at school was looking for a church, she brought him to awakening.

It is a student who broke down in tears and cried in my arms when I told her that God loved her.

It is a student who, anytime I praise her for her accomplishments, she makes sure to tell me all the ways that God helped her get there.

It is a student who sent me the most encouraging text out of nowhere when unbeknownst to her I was having the worst day, and then yesterday dropped off flowers and told me she was praying for me.

It is a student who told me he wants to lead worship for her middle schoolers because God met him in worship.

And he wants them to have the opportunity to experience God like he did.

It is a student who journals all the hard things that are happening in her life.

She lists them out, every one, and she ends the list with, but I trust you, God.

She tells me that she writes it down and she works until she believes it.

These are all real stories of students in our youth group.

Most of them are in this room.

God is calling and using teenagers.

We don't expect that teenagers would be the ones leading in church or advancing the gospel, and yet they are.

God's power seeks and calls up the unlikely.

The teenagers in this room are leaders and representatives of Jesus to a world that needs him, and we the church are all the better for it.

The witness of the young and the unexpected will push us towards our God because he is the one who called them in the first place.

There's great hope for us because the God of all power is alive, and how else are we to respond but in worship?

To look to God and the great lengths he has gone to prove his love for us, to thank him for the new life that he has given us and be encouraged by the faith he is producing in those around us and be moved to faith ourselves.

So as we go to worship, stand and pray with me.

Heavenly Father, it is by your power that we might know you at all.

That we have breath in our lungs to respond to you and worship as you deserve.

That you would love us enough to come and make your dwelling among us.

Thank you for Mary.

Thank you for the power of our stories.

Open our eyes to how you want to reveal yourself to us, and may your perfect power rest on us as you send us to do your will on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.

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