Sunday Night: It Must Be
Place: BLCC
Date: 4/2/17
Text: Matthew 26.36-46
CT: As followers of Jesus we must accept God’s will for our life.
FAS: In his book Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton wrote fifteen lines that have become known as "the Merton Prayer": Merton was a priest who devoted his life to the Lord.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), p. 79; submitted by Haddon Robinson
LS: Do we seek God’s will for our life or do we seek what we deem is what is right for our life.
Anyone recognize who spoke these words.
Mary, I know what I'm going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next year and the year after that. I'm going to leave this little town far behind, and I'm going to see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum. Then I'm coming back here, and I'll go to college and see what they know, and then I'm going to build things. I'm going to build air fields. I'm going to build skyscrapers a hundred stories high. I'm going to build bridges a mile long."
So says George Bailey in the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life. As it turns out, George is wrong. He doesn't know what he's going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next year and the year after that. As it turns out, what he is supposed to do tomorrow is pretty much what he did today. God's plan for him is to do the ordinary thing—which, of course, is the last thing that George wants to do.
Ever had those kind of dreams. All the things you are going to get and acquire. The stuff I will have. The things I will do. The things we say when we are 17.
But than life catches up and we realize that the dreams we may have are not in line with what God would want for us. God actually says we must lose what we have to reach Him and His ideal. Lot of truth to that.
Mark 8. 34-38, 34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
What does God have planned for you? Do you seek to know or do you just ride the flow? As humans we have dreams of what we would like to become or achieve. As followers of Jesus, what should drive our actions? Jesus shows us in his final days what it really means to follow God’s will.
Jesus was a man. That is hard for us to comprehend sometimes. He had wants and desires. He felt pain and sadness. He cherished those around him. He even depended on them at times for encouragement and help.
Yet Jesus was One with God and had to deal with what God’s desire for him as the Son of God was. He had to lay aside any earthly desire he had.
In the time leading up to the Passion, Jesus’ death, many things had to be weighing on Jesus. The “man” had to be tempted to try and avoid what must come. Wouldn’t you?
Jesus had a destiny. Jesus actually had a secret ambition he had to fulfill. The profound enormity of the situation came to a head at Gethsemane.
The real battle for Jesus had to be fought right there at his familiar place he had often gone to rest and pray. Gethsemane was a beautiful place. A garden. A place where Jesus was drawn to reconcile in his mind what must be done.
We read this and I believe can’t really grasp what our Savior had to be feeling.
Read Matthew 26.36-39, 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 (John and James) 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.”
That reads pretty easy. Do we really get the feel for what Jesus is facing here?
I would like to play a clip from Jesus Christ Superstar that has always touched me. It made me as a young man realize what Jesus fought as a man to be One with God. It demonstrates the struggle my Savior had as he came to grips with doing the Father’s will.
PLAY CLIP: Gethsemane scene from Jesus Christ Superstar, Ted Neeley, Track 13 on DVD.
LYRICS: I only want to say if there is a way
Take this cup away from me
For I don't want to taste its poison
Feel it burn me, I have changed
I'm not as sure as when we started
Then I was inspired, now I'm sad and tired
Listen, surely I've exceeded expectations
Tried for three years, seems like thirty
Could you ask as much from any other man?
But if I die
See the saga through and do the things you ask of me
Let them hate me, hit me, hurt me, nail me to their tree
I'd wanna know, I'd wanna know my God
I'd wanna know, I'd wanna know my God
Wanna see, I'd wanna see my God
Wanna see, I'd wanna see my God
Why I should die?
Would I be more noticed than I was ever before?
Would the things I've said and done matter any more?
I'd have to know, I'd have to know my Lord
Have to know, I'd have to know my Lord
Have to see, I'd have to see my Lord
Have to see, I'd have to see my Lord
If I die what will be my reward?
If I die what will be my reward?
Have to know, I'd have to know my Lord
Have to know, have to know my Lord
Why should I die?
Why should I die?
Can you show me now that I would not be killed in vain?
Show me just a little of your omnipresent brain
Show me there's a reason for your wanting me to die
You're far too keen on where and how and not so hot on why
Alright I'll die
Just, just watch me die
See how, see how I die
See how I die
Then I was inspired, now I'm sad and tired
After all I've tried for three years
Seems like ninety
Why then am I scared to finish what I started?
What you started, I didn't start it
God, Thy will is hard but You hold every card
I will drink Your cup of poison
Nail me to Your cross and break me
Bleed me, beat me, kill me, take me now
Before I change my mind
Jesus Christ Superstar - Gethsemane (I Only Want To Say) Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Now, don’t know if you like that music or not? Happens to be one of my favorite songs. It shows what Jesus had to be experiencing as he was away from his disciples to pray. We read:
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!”
The first time Jesus only asks them to watch. The second time he told them to prayer for themselves to be able withstand the temptation they faced. Their temptation was nothing compared to what Jesus was facing but they couldn’t stay awake.
This shows the need Jesus had for their support in this time of his greatest need. This may be hard for us to grasp but it does reveal Jesus’ incarnation as a man. Both God and man.
Jesus pleads, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
Jesus is facing his biggest temptation of his life. The devil had been defeated before by my Lord. Jesus knew whom to turn to in these times of temptation. In the desert he had turned to God and that is what he does now.
Jesus is not wrestling with God here. Jesus is yielding to God despite all the devil is trying to do. Jesus could have said no to God.
What was being expected of Jesus at this moment was unimaginable.
Jesus was sinless and yet he was to die and be separated from God for the sins of the world. Not just the sins of the people then but of the sins of all people to come. Me. You.
2 Corinthians 5.21, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus lays the temptation out before God in his words, but he does not shrink from it and yields his will to God’s will.
Jesus holds firm and does the will of God. The time had come for God’s mission of salvation through the cross to arrive.
Jesus has set the example for us. When life does all it can to tempt us away from God’s ideal for us, the way has been made for us to follow. Jesus reconciled us to God.
Just as it was a must for Jesus to follow the will of God, it is a must for us as well. Jesus says to follow him and in doing so you will be showing your desire to seek God’s will with Him. God will be pleased as he was with His Son.
We are invited to be a child of God because of what Jesus did in his Death, Burial and Resurrection.
