Recognizing God

Some of you sawl the picture of Arika’s feet swollen the other day and I thought about sharing it but decided that it would probably be the last thing you would want to see on a Sunday morning.

But the third trimester is just annoying and uncomfortable.

and you are constantly having to make sure everything is okay with the baby

you are constantly having to count how many times the baby moves an hour to make sure everything is okay

You are constantly having to look up any weird pregnancy symptoms that you have to make sure everything is okay

We start going to the doctors weekly beginning this next week to check on the Baby

but its so important that you do all of these things because all of these signs and appointments are met to keep the mom and the baby safe.

and if you are not paying attention and recognizing these signs the pregnancy can end badly.

because all of these things make sure the baby and the mom are healthy.

you can put the life or the mom and the baby in danger.

and the truth is our relationship with Christ is the same way.

Because Christ is always moving in our lives.

He is calling us to go places, He is asking us to give things up, He telling us what he wants us to do and not to do.

but we have to recognize where exactly God is moving in our lives because if we aren't recognizing God it is hard for us to have a healthy relationship with Him.

We need to look at our life and

Phone Story?

And we have to ask ourselves am I recognizing where God is moving in my life?

I want everyone to say that our loud with me because this is really the question we are going to be digging into today?

So say it with me “Am I recognizing where God is moving in my life”

because like I said we need to recognize where He is moving in order to have a healthy relationship with Him

and in todays story that we will be digging into there are two groups of people

there are people who recognized how God was moving.

and there were people who did not.

and we are going to be looking at these two groups

But before get into the story I want to give you some background information because this story takes place on the last week of Jesus’s life.

and Jesus knows this, which just imagine knowing this is the last week of my life and knowing how painful his death would be. It would be awful.

but since this is the last week of Jesus’s life the events that take place in this story are important.

So I am going to invite us to lean in this morning because this passage starts off Holy week for us.

So we will be in this morning.

so lets lean in this morning to see what Gods word has for us today.

Luke 19:28–44 NIV

After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ” Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They replied, “The Lord needs it.” They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

So Jesus at this point is two miles east of Jerusalem

and like I said this is the last week of his life and he is getting ready to enter this city

and really He is getting ready to complete what he came down to do which is die for us.

but before He enters Jerusalem we see him ask two disciples to go to the village ahead of them

to get a colt which has never been ridden and he tells the disciples that if anyone ask them what there doing then they will just say “The Lord Needs it”

and if I was following Jesus and he told me these instructions I think I would have to step back for a second and ask Jesus “are you sure you want me to do this?”

Because you cant just go and take someones animal.

It would be like if I just walked up and took a car and when the owner comes up to me and ask what are you doing with my car and I just look at them and say “The Lord Needs it” and drive away.

But look at what happens because the disciples end up doing what Jesus asks them to do and the owner does come out and they say “The Lord Needs It” and somehow the owner is okay with it.

and they bring the donkey back to Jesus.

But what I want to you notice is these people in this story recognized how God was moving and we faithful to what he was asking them to do.

The disciples recognized what Jesus was asking them even when it made zero sense,

the owner of the colt must have recognized what God was doing because He didn’t know what these guys were going to do with his animal, but he let them use.

The donkey might have even known because he has two random guys untying him

And whats amazing is if either one of these were not recognizing that there was something special about what Jesus was asking, Jesus wouldn't have a donkey to ride in on.

Sometimes God calls us to do things we do not understand.

He calls us to talk to a person or do something and we ask ourselves why is he wanting us to do this, it makes no sense.

But we recognize that it is of God and often times thats where we are faithful.

and what I love is because when everyone is recognizing that God is moving and being faithful Gods purpose is being accomplished.

and yo

Jesus gets the donkey! (right?)

and this sets Jesus up for what is called the triumphal entry to Jerusalem.

and Jesus gets on this donkey and rides into Jerusalem

and you see all of these other people who are in this category of people who recognize God is doing something here

because they are laying palm branches and their cloaks alongside the road as really an act of worship.

and as they get closer it says they started thinking about all the miracles that Jesus has done since they were with Him and started chanting:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the lord, Peace in Heaven and glory in the highest”

But the reason they are so excited is they recognize God is doing something here.

Because they recognized how God has moved in their lives in the past and they also recognized that in the Old Testament scripture it talked about how the Messiah would come riding on a donkey.

and they were able to look at these two things and go “wait a second God is doing something here.

and they got excited about it and started to praise God for it.

and we have a similar thing happen in our life when we recognize what God is doing.

when we are studying scripture (and digging into God’s word)

and when we are reflecting back on how God has moved in the past.

and it is exciting and we praise God when we see it.

So we have these people who recognize God, but then we have the other category of people who do not recognize God

and this is picking back up in verse 39 because here you see the story shift.

because in the midst of these people who are recognizing God (praising His name)

there are also people who do not.

and in this case it is the Pharisees because the Pharisees tell Jesus to get these people to stop chanting and praising Him

and like we talked about last week Pharasies were the people who did nothing but Study scripture, discus it and pray.

Yet they failed to recognize God moving

because they had there own ideas on how God would move (probably ideas that to them made a lot more sense then the things Jesus was doing)

But these people who devoted their lives to God completely failed to recognize how God was moving.

and what is crazy is that these Pharasies are really church people.

they are us!

Because what happens in our lives (myself included) we miss revelations of where God is calling us because we get stuck in our ways

we get stuck in our own ideas

we think this is how God is going to move and if he moves differently well thats to bad.

because we get stuck in our ways.

and Jesus morns when this happens to us.

because look at verse 41 because it says Jesus approaches the city of Jerusalem and sees it and it says that He starts crying

and Jesus didn’t weep because of the injustice that was occuring in the city, He didn’t weep because it was the last week of His life, but He weeped because His people didn’t recognize Him.

and Jesus talks about the judgement that was coming for them

and the passage ends with Jesus saying all of this because “you did not recognize the time of God coming to you”

There is a pastor by the name of Josh Longanecker that says “The greatest tragedy of anyones life is that God could be standing in their midst and they not recognize it”

Because God is standing in our midst, He is in our lives, He is wanting to be in our lives and still somehow we fail to recognize Him.

I don’t know about you all but I do not want to be like the Pharisees who are so caught up in what they are doing that they fail to miss what God is doing.

I don’t want to be like the people in this story who were praising God at the beginning of the week in this passage but then by the end were shouting crucify Him.

But I want to be the people who were recognizing God and doing His will regardless of how crazy it seemed.

What would happen if in our lives we got rid of the things blocking us from seeing God.

What would happen if we stopped saying this is how God is going to move and just started asking God how do you want to move?

Because we are the body of Christ,

but we are only the body of Christ if we allow the head (who is Jesus) tell us when and how to move.

If you tell your arm to move and it doesn’t move thats there is probably something seriously wrong.

So I want us to ask ourselves this question we asked in the beginning: am I recognizing where God is moving in my life?

Say it with me again: am I recognizing where God is moving in my life?

Because when we do we are the body of Christ and the gates of hell will not overcome this church.

the gates of hell will not overcome Christ Church.

I am going to pray but I want to end today with the song Open the eyes of my heart.

and I want this to be our prayer this morning for God to open our eyes and our hearts to recognize Him in our lives.