The Story - Chapter 27

in your ear, this is what I want from you. You may have been hearing this for six weeks, a year, ten years. God will just keep talking to you as His child? It's not like human beings, you know? I say to my kids, would you go out there and fix this or do that? Tell them again, and the third time my voice gets a little higher, and the fourth time I'm really, really mad. It's not the way God works with His children. He keeps saying this is what I want you to do, this is what I want you to do. With all the things in the world God has to be worried about, your life and living in obedience to Him is a priority for Him. Jesus had just been raised from the dead. He had all this stuff in His life that He had to do before He was to be raised back to life in heaven where He came from. But He started out with the least important person in the whole story, a woman who was standing there crying. So when you look at yourself and all the needs that you have, remember this story. God cares for you. I talked to a man one time about his prayer life and he said, I never bother God with the little things in my life, it's only the big things, you know, that I bother God with. He had a wrong idea who God is. Everything in our life is important to Him because it means that we're going a certain direction and He wants to shape it. So I was impressed with the great power of God that He comes and stands by people in need and says, here is your guidance from Me. And then in this story I was impressed with the reality that God always is able to fulfill His plans. In Matthew chapter 27, Jesus had been preaching to the people in that area about what He was going to do and the news spread because crowds came to those things and they passed the word on and the leaders of the Jewish nation thought that Jesus' life was over. And this whole Jesus movement was passed. Jesus planned to come, live His life, proclaim the truth of God and start a new wave of people following Him. They decided that they should kill Him and end all this. And they thought when He hung on the cross and His last breath was gone it was all over. Then someone remembered, well, wait a minute, I've heard that He said after three days He would be raised from the dead so we better guard the tomb and make sure that His disciples don't come and roll the stone back and steal His body and then tell us that He was raised from the dead. Then we'll have this mess forever. So they rolled a stone in front of the tomb and they sealed it so that they could tell if somebody had rolled it back, put their own mark on it like an identification mark so that in the wet putty that was there they would know it was really their mark. They were protecting themselves by guarding the tomb from people who had come from the outside to get Him to roll the stone away and get His body out. But the real danger for them was inside the tomb. There lay Jesus dead. But the Father was going to come and breathe life into His body. No stone could keep the Father away and nothing could be done to change it. While the women were on their way some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priest everything that had happened. When the chief priest had met with the elders and devised a plan they gave the soldiers a large sum of money telling them, you are to say His disciples came during the night and stole Him away while we were asleep. If this report gets to the governor we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. This story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this day. They decided to guard the tomb and make sure that no one got in. But they didn't realize that the problem was they could not guard against God. What the Bible lets us know is that there are a lot of people who think or are under the illusion that they can control God. They think they can pass laws to make God stop doing things or start doing things. Even people think that they can say, I don't believe in God and then they are free from the responsibility of God. The Bible teaches us that the great power of God is not controlled by human beings. No one controls God. And whenever God has a plan that He wants to work out it always works exactly as He wanted it to work. His Son was laid in the tomb for three days, that was the plan, and then He would bring Him back to life. There was not one thing the Roman soldiers could do or the Roman government could do to stop this. They could make their plans, we are going to guard the front of this tomb so they can't come in and take Him, but they could not stop what God was doing. Let me tell you something important. When you are following God, you say to God, I want you to run and control my life, and He tells you what you should do. It may not work out exactly as you think it was going to because when we look at things we think about right now and the next step and the next step and the next step. We don't always have God's plan in our mind. But when you know what God wants you to do and you begin to follow that faithfully, His plan always works. Always works. Now there will be moments in the process of this plan that you will think this is a disaster. But remember this story. The Roman government, the most powerful government in the world, could not stop what God did in Christ. Impossible for them to be able to stop it because God has all power and authority. And whenever He has a plan for your life or a direction for your life, He will bring it to the end result. It doesn't matter how many people try to mess up God's plan in your life. It doesn't make any difference how much pressure people bring on you to change that. God always works His purpose. Now, in the process of living you will find that sometimes you mess up God's plan yourself. You start down this road trying to obey Him and all of a sudden for some reason you get distracted and you start making choices based on your own desires and wills and interests. And all of a sudden it looks to you like the whole world has changed and the plan is going to stop. But all you have to do at any point in your life is stop and say, God, I've lost the plan. Forgive me for this. From this moment on I'm going to continue to do exactly what you tell me to do. And God will make sure that the end result is better than if you hadn't messed up to start with. You see it again over and over in the Bible in the story of David and many other great characters of Scripture. God's plan always works. People mess up His plan, but if they stop and say, okay God, I messed up, now I'm going to do it your way, they find out that the plan turns out to be better than they thought it was going to be if they hadn't messed up. God's plans always work. No one can stop them except the person who says, I refuse to do what you tell me to do. The power of God is unbelievable because it's so much greater than anything else that we know. And of course in this story what we see is not only these things are sort of peripheral, but the very focus of what God was trying to do in His own disciples, in the lives of His own people. He was dead, buried in that tomb, His body decaying. You could have taken anyone in the world, brought them to that tomb, opened it up, looked at the body and said, what are the chances for this man? They would have said no, none. And they were right in human terms. There was not going to be anything else in the normal course of life for Jesus except decay. But then the power of God came into the body of Christ and His decaying flesh became fresh flesh. His clotting blood became flowing blood. And He got up off that slab, took off the wrappings and walked out. You'll come to times in your life when you think it's dead, there's no hope, nothing can help me now. You don't come to many hopeless places in your life, you're very unusual. Everyone in the world faces circumstances where you say, I cannot see a way in the world in which I can get done what needs to be done or where I can accomplish the things I want to accomplish. But if you're following the direction God has given you and you're faithful in doing it, you will discover that those impossible circumstances are transformed into circumstances that are exactly what they need to be. You don't know that the other people around you understand that, but God will work in the minds of people around you to help them think the way they should think and do the things they should do until suddenly what's impossible for you to do or anyone else to do suddenly becomes a reality. Every one of the disciples that God chose to be with Jesus and to walk with Him became towering leaders in the Christian community, 12 guys, only 11 at the end, and the whole world has been changed. If God tells you to do a job, whether it's to be a witness for Him, tell your story about what He's done, or simply to present yourself and say, God, there are things inside of me I can't control, would you control them for me? You will discover in your life a power that you never ever knew was around. It does not come unless you live a life of faithfulness, for stepping out to do things that are impossible is a normal scheme in the Bible. Over and over again you see God coming to people saying, I have a job for you, David. There's a great giant that no one in the whole world is able to fight, but I want you to fight him. Now, David was young, and young people often don't know that they're limited in their ability, but he grabbed his stones and he went out and he killed the giant. As you read through the Bible and the story, you've seen other heroes. Almost all of them were people who said, I can't, in the beginning, Moses. I can't speak. He became the greatest spokesman for God. Don't listen to your human nature when God says, I have a job for you. Look instead at the mighty power of the resurrection. Whenever Moses said he couldn't speak, God said, Moses, who made your tongue? Who made your voice? If I can make your tongue and your voice, I can certainly give you words. God keeps reminding us that the limitations we see are limitations only in our mind, for when he asks us or tells us what we need to do, the assurance of success is guaranteed. That's why the resurrection is so important to us. If he can make a dead body live, certainly I have some life in me. He could do even a better job with one that's already living. Why would I ever say no to God? Why would I ever think that this is impossible if it's the will of God? Why should I ever think that it can't happen if God says that's what I'm to do? In Jesus' last days with his disciples, Matthew ties the story of the resurrection with the guards who come to the report that Jesus has been raised. He turns from the guards and says, then the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, he did this for those that doubted and those who didn't. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, since I have all power and authority, go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. Big job? Here's how he ends, and surely I will be with you always to the very end of the age. You can't witness. You can't share your story with your friends. Why? When Jesus, who has the power of life and death, is inside of you, and he will give you the words, and he will give you the power. I don't have time to make disciples, help people learn how to follow Christ. When the person who made the universe is standing beside you to give you time, all the time you need to do his job. The great difficulty for the church is our presumed boundaries. One of the great stories that I read one time, a man had a dog, and he didn't want his dog to get away, so he put a chain on the dog, his collar, and he drove a stake in his yard, and the dog would try to run after cars, and every time he'd run after cars, the chain would jerk him around, and he would fall back. He did this time and time again, until finally he learned, I can't get past this chain, and so he would just run around in a circle. He wore the ground out where he would run around in a circle at the end of the chain. One day, the man noticed that the chain had rusted in two. But the dog stayed in the circle. We presume that we're limited in our human flesh, but when you say to God, take control of my life, the chain is broken, because you no longer live in your power and in your wisdom, but you live in the wisdom and power of God. And the resurrection is there to tell us he can take any dead slab of meat and do whatever he wants with it, as long as it belongs to him. Did you bow your heads? Let me ask you if you've been hearing over and over from God about something you should do. You may need to apologize to somebody. Maybe God's told you to encourage somebody. Maybe he's told you that you ought to stand and publicly say to the world, Jesus Christ is my Lord. You may think you have changed. I'm afraid or ashamed. I don't know what's going to happen. Those are all illusions. If God has told you something, it's yours. Maybe he has a job for you to do. Maybe he's asked you to become a member of this church and to be a part of the mission of Christ and his community. You know if the thought has been coming to you over and over again about something you should do, that's God talking to you. He cares enough about you to give you personal instructions. If you will take him up on that deal, nothing can stand in the way of you accomplishing what God wants. He has the power to make come to pass everything he asks you to do. What he needs from you is to say, okay, God, I will do it. Father, I can't ask you to speak to us in our own minds because you do that all the time whether we ask it or not. What I am asking is that you make clear to each of us what you are telling us that we should do. We would ignore all the things that come to our mind that tell us there's some reason we shouldn't. Only one reason we should. If the Lord Jesus is standing beside us saying this is what I want you to do, give us a spirit of submission to you. I want you to think about your relationship with God and what he said to you. If you know what God wants and you want today to make a promise that you are going to do it, I just ask you to stand where you are, come to the front, share with me or Carl, this is what I know God wants and today I'm ready to do it. I'm going to ask the instrument to play and as God speaks to you, as real as he spoke to Mary, do what he tells you. I'm going to ask the instrument to play and as God speaks to you, as real as he spoke to Mary, do what he tells you. I'm going to ask the instrument to play and as God speaks to you, as real as he spoke to Mary, do what he tells you. I'm going to ask the instrument to play and as God speaks to you, as real as he spoke to Mary, do what he tells you. I'm going to ask the instrument to play and as God speaks to you, as real as he spoke to Mary, do what he tells you. I'm going to ask the instrument to play and as God speaks to you, as real as he spoke to Mary, do what he tells you. I'm going to ask the instrument to play and as God speaks to you, as real as he spoke to Mary, do what he tells you.