God is Doing a New Thing
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· 11 viewsResurrection means new beginnings, God is doing a new thing but not unexpected. God is consistent in His treatment of His children but creative in His provision.
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A new day, a curious question
A new day, a curious question
Happy Easter… He is Risen!
Such a joyous time, we meet we celebrate our Risen Savior, and while this Easter may be a bit odd and beset by worry and strife for some, it isn’t unique. There have been Easters in years past that were not the happiest of occasions. Think of the Easters that occured during times of war. The World Wars, or even worse the Civil War. Those were not the happiest of Easter mornings and certainly worse than what we’re facing now. For that matter any Easter morning that took place during the Great Depression was probably a far cry more difficult than the one we face today, but the first Easter Sunday was by far the worst in history.
Think of how the disciples went into that Easter morning. Their beloved teacher, the one they believed to be the Messiah had died a tragic and humiliating death three days ago. All hope was gone. So let’s pick it up that morning.
Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men.
But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. Behold, I have told you.”
So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word.
And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!” So they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”
Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”
And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.
Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men.
But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. Behold, I have told you.”
So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word.
And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!” So they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”
Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers,
From defeat to confusion
From defeat to confusion
They went from utter defeat to utter confusion!
They had figured out He was Messiah and though He told them continually that He would be betrayed and that He must die, they never believed Him. Why not? Because they had their own narrative; their own understanding of how God planned to do the thing they thought He should be doing. They were suffering from something called cognitive dissonance. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines it as the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes. Inconsistent with what or with who? In this case, their thoughts beliefs and attitudes were inconsistent with the reality that Jesus was trying to teach them. He was telling them something that they couldn’t hear or if they heard couldn’t comprehend because it did not fit into their predetermined belief system. It did not fit the way THEY expected God to do the thing He was saying He would do- cognitive dissonance.
The problem is that we all do this. We are all guilty of missing on what God is doing because we’re expecting it to happen a certain way and when it doesn’t happen that way we refuse to see or are unable to see what God is actually doing because we’re to insistent on seeing things our way.
We’ve talked about Joseph before and how he had all of those dreams and surely he must have imagined the various ways in which God would bring those prophetic dreams to pass, but could he have, in his wildest dreams, ever imagined that his journey would begin with a betrayal continue with a failed seduction, be followed by being forgotten by someone for whom he performed a great service and to end with a threat that if he messed up his one chance of redemption, not only you but various of his colleagues would die?
The scripture was plain about the need for Messiah to suffer a betrayal and that it would require His perfect blood to atone for the sins of mankind, but that is not what the people of Israel were seeking. They were seeking a military or political savior that would come and wage a glorious war against their oppressors. But that’s not what they got. Instead they got a rather unassuming man that taught faith and forgiveness who was brutally murdered and left to rot in a borrowed grave.
OK, so they were wrong about Jesus. So what, they loved and respected Him, so the least they could do was to do for Him the traditional thing that was always done for people who died and to pay Him final respects, and even then it was only a couple of the ladies that sought to do it. His disciples couldn't even bring themselves to performing the very basic thing required of them, instead they sought to get back to doing what they were doing when He first showed up.
When the going gets tough, the tough.... go back to the status quo?
When the going gets tough, the tough.... go back to the status quo?
The disciples, much like us, go back to doing what they know. First they skulk then they go back to whatever it was that they were doing before. The problem is that they can’t even see that God has just performed a new thing!
Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A. (Eds.). (2004). Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jesus was on the verge of giving them a great commission and to clothe them with power from on high but they were too blinded by their own concept of what was true and what was right. They were to haunted by their past disappointments, they were too constrained by tradition and false expectations, so when opportunity knocked they couldn’t hear it.
The thing is, God has a plan and the plan is so big it will blow your mind.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Then your light shall break forth like the morning,
Your healing shall spring forth speedily,
And your righteousness shall go before you;
The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
“If you take away the yoke from your midst,
The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
Isaiah 58:8-9
We always seem to want to put God in a box or “figure Him out”. And just when we thing we have Him figured out, we don’t because His thought are higher than our thoughts, and He’s doing a new thing!
Beloved, when the promotion doesn’t come through, when your spouse leaves you or when your loved one dies in spite of all the prayer that you’ve put into it. When the worse happens even when you prayed just right or fasted for so long or whatever it was that you thought God was going to just HAVE to do for you to get what you wanted fails to manifest the results YOU though it should, it is not a time to take it out on God, or to cry out that God is not trustworthy. God is not some magic genie whose purpose is to fulfil your wishes, He has a universe to run and you play a part in a drama that is much larger than you as an individual and God will bring His reward in a manner and time that HE sees fit.
“Woe to him who strives with his Maker!
Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth!
Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’
Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’?
Who are we to question God? Who are we to judge the one who made us and bring correction to the creator?
None of us believes that we would dare challenge God in this way, yet we do it when we lose faith because God did not fulfil His promise the way WE wanted it to be done.
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
We need to learn to stay in our lane, God has His timing and His purpose, we can certainly ask for Him to act in our behalf, and He will always hear our prayer, but there may be things that actually end up better for us when He simply denies our requests. Let’s look at this example:
While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; and I alone have escaped to tell you!”
But pastor, you don’t understand. I’ve been a good Christian, I pray for my loved ones daily. God owes it to me to answer my prayers. Oh really? Do you not think Job had those same bona fides?
See, God doesn’t always bring the victories we expect Him to bring the way we expect or when we expect them. If He promises victory, He delivers it, but He always delivers it on His terms not ours.
See, God doesn’t always bring the victories we expect Him to bring the way we expect it. If He promises victory, He delivers it, but He always delivers it on His terms not ours.
Matthew 28
But pastor, you don’t understand. I’ve been a good Christian, I pray for my loved ones daily. God owes it to me to answer my prayers. Oh really? Do you not think Job had those same bona fides?
While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; and I alone have escaped to tell you!”
Then Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked shall I return there.
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Job was in essence saying, God is God and I’m not! Who am I to question why God allows something to happen. He is still great and worthy to be praised.
But pastor, you don’t understand. I’ve been a good Christian, I pray for my loved ones daily. God owes it to me to answer my prayers. Oh really? Do you not think Job had those same bona fides?
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil. And seven sons and three daughters were born to him. Also, his possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.
And his sons would go and feast in their houses, each on his appointed day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did regularly.
Job was meticulous about praying for his family. He was a good man, he loved God and yet he still suffered loss.
And so the disciples were facing a devastating loss. They had seen with their own eyes the miracles of Jesus. They were so sure that He had come to deliver them from the Romans, they were ready for the great victory, and instead they sat devastated! But we know the truth because hindsight is 20/20. We know that they weren’t, in fact, defeated. We know that they were on the cusp of THE single greatest victory the universe has ever known. The Lord Jesus had just defeated death and the grave and redeemed mankind from the effects of sin and had granted us eternal life. BUT they couldn’t see it, because they trusted their own eyes, their own doctrine, their own understanding.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.
Last week we spoke about the Passover and the Exodus out of the land of Egypt. The people were told what to do and it made no sense to them, but they had the advantage of being slaves. Just weeks earlier, Pharaoh had commanded them to make bricks without straw and though it made no sense they did so anyway because as slave, they had learned to obey without questioning. They were told that God was about to deliver them from their oppressors. And their obedience was rewarded.
He also brought them out with silver and gold,
And there was none feeble among His tribes.
God not only delivered them from the oppressor, He also caused them to plunder him and blessed them with health and well-being.
Not the Easter of my childhood
Not the Easter of my childhood
The Easter message is one of Hope but serves as a stern example to us in that the day started out quite tragically. Certainly not the happy day with bunnies and colored eggs, peeps and nice Easter outfits. Remember, Easter morning started out with a dead Messiah and no hope of seeing the promises fulfilled… except… they were still promises, made by a God who is absolutely faithful.
This may not be the best Easter, and we may not find ourselves in the best of circumstances, but our God is faithful and is not slack in keeping His promises. Take the attitude of Job that says “In the end God is God and I’m not.” Don’t lean on your own understanding. Your understanding is fundamentally flawed. Don’t try to figure God out and expect Him to act in accordance with your patter or beliefs, just listen and obey.
See, God doesn’t always bring the victories we expect Him to bring the way we expect or when we expect them. But If He promises victory, He delivers it, but He always delivers it on His terms not ours.
See, God doesn’t always bring the victories we expect Him to bring the way we expect or when we expect them. If He promises victory, He delivers it, but He always delivers it on His terms not ours.