Drop It (Part 1)

Intro

Welcome, introduce self, intro series (DROP IT; tell a neighbor to DROP IT)

looking at 3 people who realized they needed to drop some things to get more of Jesus)

Really this is about making Jesus your LORD. You hear LORD all the time; what does it mean?

Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:24-26

Matthew 16:24–26 ESV

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

Bible is FULL of paradoxes…First/Last, die to live, Jesus coming not to BE served, but to SERVE.

This is a huge one. If you try to keep total control of your life, you’ll lose it. If you want to be saved, if you want to be free, you’ll give it up; you’ll let go of control.

Really what I’m going to try to do this week is show you some places where the world and Jesus disagree about what is best for you.

Where YOUR FLESH and Jesus disagree.

And I want to show you that Jesus’s way is better. Any other way is a lie that won’t deliver.

Not about getting you to behave. It’s about showing you how you can truly have a satisfied life like God wants you to.

All week we will talk about what we need to drop in order to know Jesus better. We are going to start today by talking about our past.

WRITE THIS DOWN

Getting past your past means giving God your present.

I want to show you an example of what this looks like in scripture, and then talk about what this might look like for us today.

Luke 8:1–3 ESV

1 Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.

Jesus is fully into his ministry at this point;

teaching, healing, forgiving sins.

And it might be really easy to glance over v. 2-3; but they are so important, and what we are going to focus on tonight.

Before we get to Mary, a quick note to you girls;

If you’ve EVER felt belittled, made less than, or pushed aside by the church, I want to apologize to you. God has always had BIG plans for women.

Jesus had women in his inner circle, they served right alongside the other disciples, they played key roles in the early church, and God has always seen you as equal and as valuable.

Tonight we are going to talk about one of these women; Mary Magdalene. You might not know a lot about her.

We learn two things about her here;

She’s a follower of Jesus

She’d been healed of demon possession

Let’s talk about that second one.

“7” is a number of completion in the bible; not necessarily mean there were 7 individual demons, mostly means that she was COMPLETELY demon possessed.

Wasn’t something that bothered her sometimes, it consumed her.

We don’t always know exactly what this might have looked like; but we know it would have been evident to everyone around her.

“Did you hear about Mary? Look at Mary, she’s acting crazy! What is wrong with her?”

This would have DEFINED her to everyone who saw her.

You might be able to relate to that.

__

Here’s the lie I want to deconstruct today. We live in a world that says you can NEVER outrun your past.

Who you were is who you will ALWAYS be.

SO many times, somebody gets slapped with a label, and they can never outrun it.

Teenagers would NEVER do that, right?

Maybe it’s something less harmful, like everyone thinks you’re the smart kid because you won the spelling B in like 4th grade.

But sometimes, the things from our past give us a lot more hurtful labels.

The world will try to tell you that you are nothing more than your past. That who you’ve been is who you will always be.

And the trouble starts when WE start to believe these lies, too.

And we believe so much that who we’ve been or what we’ve done prevents us from ever doing better. From ever making a change.

That’s a LIE. And if you’re believing that tonight, that lie might be stopping you from knowing Jesus, or knowing him better. We have to drop our past.

GETTING PAST YOUR PAST MEANS GIVING GOD YOUR PRESENT.

How do you give God your present? Simple; make Jesus the LORD of your life.

Remember what that means; don’t take it lightly.

It’s trusting that HE knows what is best for you.

If you don’t believe that yet, I hope I’ll be able to show you the rest of this week that God really does know what is best for us FAR more than we do.

If we make him Lord today, it can change our lives.

Let me tell you how the rest of Mary Magdalene’s story goes.

First, we see her at the cross when Jesus dies; she remains so committed to him, that when others abandoned him, she followed him even to the cross.

Mark 15:40 ESV

40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.

Next, after Jesus has died, she is on her way to attend to the body, and look what happens.

John 20:11–18 ESV

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

She was the FIRST person to see Jesus after his resurrection. SHE is the one that gets to go tell the disciples that JESUS IS ALIVE.

She was the very first missionary of the Gospel;

Millions of people since have done the same, telling people the good news that Jesus is alive.

You think after that, people thought of her as the woman who used to be demon possessed?

No, I think they thought of her as the woman who was saved by Jesus, set free by Jesus, and who now lived for Jesus.

The same can be said of you.

No matter what your past, no matter what you’ve done, Jesus has come to set us free.

Galatians 5:1 NLT

1 So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.

If you know Christ, he has set you free. What we see here though, is that followers of Jesus can give up that freedom!

When we choose to continue in sin, to continue in things we’ve done in the past, it’s like being set free, but walking right back into the jail cell.

Don’t get back in the jail cell! Maybe you’re here, and you’re following Jesus, and you KNOW that there are things in your life that are keeping you from following him fully.

DROP IT! Jesus has so much more for you.

drop it, and remind yourself today that He is LORD, and that HE gets to call the shots in your life.

If you don’t know Jesus; you’ve never told him you want him to be in charge, never asked him to be forgiven of your sins; what are you waiting for?

Forget the past, forget yesterday; RIGHT NOW, in the present, you can be set free.

I don’t know your past, but I know that there is NO ONE that Jesus cannot save.

the bible is full of murderers and adulterers and demon possessed women and everything else who have been saved by God, not because THEY’RE good but because He is.

And he can save you tonight, too.

Drop your past. Give him your present.

Forget what’s behind. Press on to what’s ahead.

Just like Mary, if you give God your present, he will use your life to do amazing things for the Kingdom of God.