Who Is In Control?

Intro

Ever since I was a kid, I have been a fan of video games. Even to this day I enjoy playing them every once in a while.

And if you know much about my family make up, more specifically my sibling order, you would know that I am the oldest.

And when I was around 9 years old, my brother would have been around 4 because we are about 5 years apart.

And so when I was 9 I remember getting a Super Nintendo for Christmas one year. It was the latest and greatest system out there at the time. A serious upgrade from my original Nintendo.

And I can remember opening it up and putting that new game in and playing it for the first time and loving every minute of it.

Well, as I mentioned I had a 4 year old brother at the time who also wanted to play it. And being the sophisticated 9 year old that I was, I knew he didn’t have what it takes to be able to play Super Mario World.

So what I did was I gave him a controller and had him sit in front of me. And he would play, but unbeknownst to him, his controller wasn the 2nd player controller in a 1 player game. And guess who had the 1st player controller? You guessed it, it was me.

You see while he was mashing buttons and watching the screen thinking he was rescuing the princess, it was really me who was controlling the characters.

He was none the wiser. It was the illusion of control that gave him comfort. Even though in reality, someone else was actually in control.

This morning we are bringing an end to a 4 part series we have been going through called “Thirty Pieces of Silver”.

In this series we started out looking at the payment Judas received to betray Jesus, a mere 30 pieces of silver. And we can get critical of Judas and say how could he do it.

Well at some point Judas believe that those 30 pieces of silver were worth more that what Jesus was offering.

And over the last several week we have been asking the question, what kinds of things are we tempted to trade Jesus for? What things do we sometimes value more than what Jesus has to offer us?

Power in the Text

The things we’ve mentioned up to this point—wealth, comfort, power—all stem from one theme: control. We struggle to give up control and often are willing to trade Jesus for it.

Jesus gives us a master class in being fully human, even knowing the consequences of relinquishing control and obeying God in spite of it all.

Matthew 26:36-46 NIV 36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” 40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” 43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.

45 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

In our text this morning we find Jesus in Gethsemane. He asks his disciples to pray (which they failed to do when it got in the way of their comfort) (vv. 40, 43).

As he prays, Jesus wrestles with the emotion he is experiencing, knowing what is ahead (vv. 38–39, 42). He acknowledges that this is not something he wants to go through. He is asking if there is any other way for God’s wrath against sin to be satisfied.

This is the cup he is speaking of; the cup of God’s wrath which is about to poured on Jesus’ human body on the cross.

Despite his desire to avoid the cross, despite the fact that his will would be to find another way, he submits control and asks for the Father’s will to be done.

This passage is directly followed by Judas’s betrayal (vv. 48–49), Jesus’s arrest (v. 50), Peter’s attempt at controlling the situation (vv. 51–55), and the scattering of the disciples (v. 56).

Jesus though he was God in the flesh. A member of the triune Godhead, submits to the will of Father God because of his love for us and his desire to demonstrate obedience.

And part of this is really hard to fully wrap our heads around. But the key takeaway here is that Jesus demonstrates for us what it looks like to relinquish control.

Big Idea/Why it Matters

There is a human desire for control, but we also don’t want to be controlled.

You can imagine how this affects our relationship with God and our natural ability to let go and let God accomplish his will in and through us.

So much of what gets in the way of people truly experiencing a spirit-filled life in Christ is an unwillingness to submit and give up control.

It impacts everything we do as followers of Jesus. Look at all the things that we are called to do...

Give generously

Be a living sacrifice

To submit to spiritual leadership in the Church

To serve others

To avoid sin and live a holy life

All of these things require us to give up control because if we don’t then we will get in our own way every time.

We have a God who loves us more than we could possibly imagine. He is also a God who does not force his will on us.

While Jesus is, well, Jesus, we recognize that he was fully human in Gethsemane. He moved from asking God to change the plan to understanding and submitting to the only plan that would matter.

“Loving God does not always mean that we want to face what God calls us to face; it does mean that we choose to face it anyway. Thus when the test arrives, Jesus summons all his disciples to rise to face it—ready or not

You and I have to make a decision about who is in control. We have to understand that God’s will is more important than the way we want things to go.

Application

COVID sent all of us into a new reality, one that challenged our perceptions of control.

First, we had no idea just how bad the virus was or how to control the spread. But we tried—there were reports of people even washing their groceries before bringing them inside.

And some will hear that and say yep, that was me. Others will laugh and say how ridiculous. It just further makes my point that none of us really knew what to believe. I still don’t in a lot of ways.

The pandemic shattered our perception of control, but it is almost comical that instead of running to Jesus, many decided to make this a fight for our “personal liberties” instead.

That need to control is so strong. We just want to do things our way. don’t tell me I have to wear a mask or quarantine or change anything about the way I do things. That isn’t what I want to do.

And to this day I don’t know what response to all of this was the best one. But I know one thing. If Christians would have spent more time praying about this virus and seeking to be the light that a confused world could look to rather than complaining and acting like medical researchers on Facebook because of something they Googled then maybe the world would have taken notice.

Maybe God was giving the Church an opportunity during this pandemic, but we were so concerned with our loss of control that we missed it.

And if not COVID, believe me, things in this world will get worse, and you and I will have to loosen our grip and allow God to be in control if we hope to endure it.

Jesus prays that, if it be morally consistent with the Father’s redeeming purpose that his ‘cup’ be taken from him, that is what he deeply desires. But more deeply still, Jesus desires to do his Father's will.

His deep commitment to his Father’s will cannot be doubted. But in this crisis, Jesus is tempted to seek an alternative to sin-bearing suffering as the route by which to fulfill his Father's redemptive purposes.

He prays in agony; and though he is supernaturally strengthened (Lk 22:43), he learns only that the Cross is unavoidable if he is to obey his Father's will” (Kenneth L. Barker & John R. Kohlenberger III, Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Abridged Edition): New Testament [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014], Matthew 26:39).

When we consider what we want and how we can control situations, Jesus models looking out for what is best for the whole, rather than for himself.

The reality is that if you are going to serve God for any amount of time. And I don’t just mean go to Church. But to really serve. To seek his will. To step into his calling. To go, do, and be all that he has called you to.

Then you will have to give up control because he is going to ask things of you that you aren’t going to want to do. Or to give up things that you don’t want to give up.

Closing

At the end of the day we are like my brother with a controller in our hands that in reality isn’t doing anything. It is a perceive control.

Likewise, while God may not force his will on us, he isn’t going to allow us to get in the way of what he wants to do. He just might find someone else, or remove us from being a roadblock to the place he wants to go.

As we look ahead to the resurrection, we are humbled by gratitude that Jesus did choose to obey unto death.

It is a death that paved the way to life.

We recognize our humanity and its tendency to manipulate, purchase, or impose power to control our own destinies.

And yet, we would have no future without relinquishing our whole being to the God who saves us and transforms us from the inside out.

We can’t grow until we allow the Spirit to rearrange our priorities, our desires, and our need for control.

Are we willing to trade Jesus, to minimize his saving work, to keep our grip on our perception of control? It seems like the smart move is to pray as Jesus did: “Not as I will, but as you will”