What Jesus Said About His Death, Burial, And Resurrection Series

“Jesus Said”

What Jesus said to His Followers

“About The Death, Burial and Resurrection”

NOTE: This sermon is done in four five minute segments throughout the worship service.

Michael Wiley

April 12, 2009

Introduction:

Are you listening?

Men, how many times has your wife asked you the question, “Are you listening to me?”

Fact is: Most of your activities are focused around listening.

We know that listening is more than hearing. You could say, ‘Listening is hearing with a purpose.’

Good listening is built on three basic skills: attitude, attention, and adjustment.

Listening is the absorption of the meanings of words and sentences by the brain. Listening leads to the understanding of facts and ideas. But listening takes attention, or sticking to the task at hand in spite of distractions. It requires concentration, which is the focusing of your thoughts upon one particular issue.

I bring up listening today, because in spite of its importance, most of us are poor listeners.

Here is a listening quiz for you: about 40 seconds/ four sentences ago, I told you that ‘Good listening’ is built on three basic skills: What are they?

Attitude, attention, and adjustment.

I bring up listening today, because in spite of its importance, we can see as we read the gospels the Disciples were extremely poor listeners. We can see that they didn’t get a lot of things, But the biggest thing they missed was Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. If you peruse the gospels (Mt, Mrk, Lk, and Jn.), You will find Jesus tells His disciples no lest than 15 times, that he would be murdered and walk from his own grave.

Yet, we can see, they didn’t get it. They didn’t get it

BREAK

Transition:

We have a tendency to only really listen to those things that really matter to us!

I’m sure if we looked hard enough we could find that the Disciples had a problem with all three of the listening skills. What are they? Attitude, attention, and adjustment.

Some go so far to say that we only actually ‘hear’ 25% of what someone says. We do this for various reasons. One of them, (I believe) was the Disciple’s key issue, “Adjustment” or what I like to call “Filtered Listening.”

The Filtering of the Gospel

When I am working with a database, I can filter the report results. For instance, I can tell the computer I just want it to give me a list of people in my data base with the last name that begins with B

We filter when we listen, when we only listen for the parts we want to hear, or to the parts that fit our preconceived ideas.

So, if the speaker is saying something that doesn’t fit our filter—he/she is listing names that begin with G instead of B, we filter out the message.

The Disciples had a preconceived idea of what the long awaited Messiah would look like and Do.

They were incorrectly taught by the Rabbis, and the Jewish Midrash confirms this, that Elijah would return to prepare the way for the Messiah, then He would come and remove the Roman government from power in Jerusalem and sit on David’s throne.

At a time when the Disciples really needed to listen and seems were listening in Matthew 17,

10The disciples asked him, "Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?"

11Jesus replied, "To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things. 12But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands." 13Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist. (Matthew 17:10-13 NIV)

So, we ask then,

Did they put too much weight on their teachers?

And,

Did they fail to ask, ‘where does it say that?’

Were they really listening? Or just filtering what Jesus said through what they had been taught.

Listen: The true grace of Christ is found in His word. Satan doesn’t want you to know that. He works day and night to keep you from God’s word and the freedom that is found when one opens it, and received from its pages

BREAK

Don’t listen and you could die.

Back in May 2008, A 23-year-old young man was crushed and killed and three others died after a helicopter crashed in Cranbrook, British Columbia. All on board the helicopter, two passengers and the pilot of the helicopter, were also killed.

The Helicopter was flying low over the houses, doing power-line checks

Witnesses say that the pedestrian could have stepped three feet to the left or right and not been hit, but, because he was listening to his iPod he never heard it coming.