One of the most famous speeches Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
ever gave was his "I have a dream" speech. It was a dream about a
future America where prejudice was eliminated, and there was
peace and unity among all races. This dream could only become a
reality if men learned to use power in a way that was pleasing to
God. On Palm Sunday we see the King of Kings showing the world
how to use power to make God's dream come true. All of history
and all of life is about the use or abuse of power. Jesus is the only
perfect man, and the one and only perfect king to ever reign, for he
is the only one whoever demonstrated the perfect use of power. By
his perfect use of power he made God's dream come true.
Does God actually dream? Not in the sense of going to sleep and
dreaming, for the Bible says he never slumbers or sleeps. God is
ever conscious and so his dreams are like those we are talking about
in our 50 day adventure. They are desires and goals and plans.
God had all of these, and our goal as Christians is to make His goal
and purpose our own. Jesus did that perfectly, and He submitted to
the dreams of God. He prayed, "Not my will but Thine be done."
God has a will and a purpose, and we re either going with the flow
of His will, or we are resisting it.
Luke 7:30 says, "But the Pharisees and the experts in the law
rejected God's purpose for themselves." God had a dream for
them. He had a purpose for their lives to achieve for His kingdom,
but they rejected it. We see them on Palm Sunday, when the
crowds were shouting, "Blessed is the king of Israel," sulking and
complaining. They refused to join in and acknowledge that Jesus
was their long awaited Messiah. Then they became the perfect
examples of the abuse of power, for they used their position to see
that this king was nailed to a cross.
Their abuse of power did not hinder God's dream, however, for
He uses their evil for good. He had a Son who used His power to
serve, and one of the ways He would serve all mankind was to die
for their sin. So God even used the abuse of power to fulfill His
dream for man. God's dream will come true. Nothing can stop
that, but the big question for all of us is, will I be a partner with
God in making His dream come true, or will I be one trying to
frustrate the dream by abuse of power?
The whole Bible is about God's dream for man, and either man's
cooperation or conflict with this dream. Thomas Curtis Clark has
written this poetic summary.
Dreams are they-but they are God's dreams!
Shall we decry them and scorn them?
That men shall love one another,
That white shall call black man brother,
That greed shall pass from the market-place,
That lust shall yield to love for the race,
That man shall meet with God face to face,
Dreams are they all,
But shall we despise them?
God's dreams!
Dreams are they-to become man's dreams!
Can we say nay as they claim us?
That men shall cease from their hating,
That war shall soon be abating,
That the glory of kings and lords shall pale,
That the pride of dominion and power shall fail,
That the love of humanity shall prevail,
Dreams are they all,
But shall we despise them?
God's dreams! The leaders of Israel did despise God's dream, and they did
abuse their power. Jesus desired God's dream, and He used His
power to fulfill it. Palm Sunday is about the clash between
God-centered and self-centered dreams. Self-centered dreams are
about having power to control and manipulate others. But God's
dreams are about having power to serve others. Jesus had it in His
power to do what the crowds hoped He would do. They hoped He
would use His power to defect the Romans and set them free to
dominate the Gentiles like they had been dominated by them. This
was the dream they thought was about to come true as they
shouted, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord-blessed
is the King of Israel."
This, however, was not God's dream at all. God's dream was
that Israel would fulfill its purpose and become a channel of God's
good news of salvation to the whole world. God's dream was for
His Son to die for the sins of the world and provide the good news
to proclaim, and that Israel would proclaim it. God's dream was
that power would be used, not to control others, but to serve others.
Abuse of power is one of the major sins of all intelligent beings.
Satan abused his power and used it to try and hinder God's
purpose. He used it to manipulate man to disobey God. He tried to
get Jesus to abuse His power, and use it to turn stones to bread, and
thrill the crowds with His magic by leaping off the temple. The
masses were in favor of this abuse of power. They longed for a
Messiah who would feed them by miracles, and lead them by
miracles to rule the world.
The thinking of man is often like this: "What good is power if
you do not use it to become top dog." This is the thinking that
makes it true that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely." Any person who can have power and not abuse it is
truly Christ like, for this was the major temptation Jesus had to
fight and win. He had the power to be abusive, and to fulfill any
self-centered dream He could think of. He could have been the
world's greatest conqueror, and the king of all the world. He could
have had the Pharisees serving Him as His slaves. He could have
had all His enemies at His feet begging for mercy. Every dream
Satan could dream for Jesus could have come true if Jesus would
have chosen to follow those dreams. He chose instead to dream the
dreams of God. He dreamed of being the Savior of all, and the
servant of all.
This was not easy for Jesus. It was His hardest battle in life.
We see Him fighting it on Palm Sunday, even before the great
conflict in the garden of Gethsemene. In John 12:27 Jesus says,
"Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me
from this hour? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.
Father glorify your name." In Gethsemene He had to fight the
battle all over again, and finally even on the cross He had to resist
the temptation to call legions of angels to use heavenly power to
rescue them. The power struggles of Jesus are in a category beyond
our comprehension, but Jesus won every battle, and He came out of
each conflict saying, "Not my will but thine be done." Jesus
fulfilled all of God's dreams for Him, and because it is so we too can
dream God's dreams and see them come true.
We have to make the same decision that Jesus did, which is to
abuse power for selfish ends, or to use power for godly goals. When
Jesus said to deny yourself and take up the cross and follow me, He
was saying that we need to choose what we are going to do with
power. This will mean different things for each of us, but it will
always mean breaking out of some comfort zone. Bill Hybels, the
pastor of the fastest growing church in America, tells of the choice
he had to make to fulfill God's dream for him. He was in the family
business ready to make a fortune when a camp director asked him,
"Bill, what are you doing with your life that will last forever?" He
realized that his life was self-centered and caught up in planes, boats,
and fast cars. He gave up that life to follow God's dream,
and he went on to become one of the greatest Christian influences in
our world today.
David Mains in his book Never Too Late To Dream says some
guilt producing things that we need to hear. They don't fit our
comfort zone, and his quote from A. W. Tozer offends our use of
our freedom of choice. They are not pleasant things to hear, but
you determine if they are true for your life. He writes, "Our lives
have become so busy that we have little time for God. Our lives
have become obsessed with climbing the ladder of success and
resting in the easy chair of entertainment. A prayerless church
exists in this generation. We cannot get people to prayer meetings,
but we have no problem amassing large crowds for Christian
entertainment. Our church schedules are filled with events oriented
toward entertainment, and we have no time left to seek God. We
have become like the Laodicean church. Jesus is on the outside
knocking, wanting to come in and have fellowship with us."
"A. W. Tozer said, "For centuries the church stood solidly
against every form of worldly entertainment, recognizing it for
what it was-a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing
voice of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral
accountability. For this she got herself abused roundly by the sons
of this world. But of late she has become tired of the abuse and has
given over the struggle. She appears to have decided that if she can
not conquer the great god, Entertainment, she may as well join
forces with him and make what use she can of his powers."
If that produces no sense of guilt in you, then you are a better
Christian than I am, for I do not doubt that I spend more time
getting entertained than I do in prayer. My responsibility as a
pastor makes me spend a lot more time in Bible study than in
getting entertained, but most Christians do not have this advantage,
and that means the average Christian in our culture spends more
time being entertained than in Bible study, prayer, worship, and
Christian service. This is an abuse of power and our freedom of
choice. The problem is that we are comfortable in this weak state of
commitment to the dreams of God because we are with the
majority. There is great comfort in knowing you are part of a large
group of Christians who are comfortable in not taking any risk for
the kingdom of God.
We see it in the context of our passage where a good many of the
leaders in Israel did believe in Jesus as the Messiah, but they
became secret believers because they refused to take the risk of
rejection. Don't we quick to judge them, for all of us are probably
guilty of the same cowardice. Listen to John 12:42 and 43, "Yet at
the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But
because of the Pharisees they would not confess their faith for fear
they would be put out of the synagogue, for they loved praise from
men more than praise from God."
They succumbed to the very temptation Jesus had to conquer in
order to save them. He had to lose His life to save it. He had to give
up His dream of acceptance and having the crowds ever cheering.
He had to chose to become despised and rejected. He had to give up
every comfort zone that the human mind craves, and suffer the loss
of all, even His life, to make God's dream for Him come true. Many
Christians refused to follow His example, and they stayed in their
comfort zone, and they failed to be a part of God's dream. They do
not lose their salvation, but they lose the chance to be what God
dreamed they would be. They missed life's greatest adventure, and
it can happen to any of us.
On the other hand, it is also true that everyone of us has it in
our power to choose the way of Christ, and to use our power and
resources to serve our Lord, and the needy world for which He
died. Anne Kiemel is one of the gifted dreamers for Christ. I heard
her in person and have read several of her books. She has a desire
to love every person she confronts and win them to Christ. She is
very successful at it because she really does love them. Her
philosophy of life is summed up in these few sentences she wrote: "I
think you do one of two things with every human being your meet
in the world. You build a wall or a bridge, I don't know about you,
but I'm out to build bridges in my corner of the world."
We don't all have her personality and her gifts, but all of us can
have her dream, for it is God's dream for all of us to be bridge
builders. That is what Jesus chose to do with His power. He laid
down His life on the cross to be a bridge builder between God and
man, and so that man could cross over to be reconciled to God.
Jesus, the Master bridge builder, wants us all to dream of doing the
same, and being agents of reconciliation in a world filled with
conflict and division.
Whether we choose to be a part of His kingdom plan or not, it
will happen, and people will be reconciled to God out of every tribe,
tongue and nation. We already know the final chapter in God's
book. I love the poem that describes Jesus this way:
"I'd not give way for an Emperor,
I'd hold my road for a King,
To the Triple Crown
I would not bow down,
But this is a different thing.
I'll not fight with the powers of Air,
Sentry pass him through!
Draw bridge let fall, 'tis the Lord of us all,
The Dreamer whose dreams come true!"
The self dreams of the masses and the leaders on Palm Sunday
did not come true, but the dream of the King did, for he dreamed
the dream of God for Him, and chose the way of power to serve
rather than the way of power to control. I do not know how old the
boy was who wrote this poem, but he reveals the heart of all people.
We can identify with his dream, for it is self-centered enough so
that even though we may not make the same choice we can
understand his.
"If I were in charge of the world
I'd cancel oatmeal,
Monday mornings,
Allergy shots, and also
Sara Steinberg.
If I were in charge of the world
There'd be brighter night lights,
Healthier hamsters, and
Basketball baskets forty-eight inches lower.
If I were in charge of the world
You wouldn't have lonely.
You wouldn't have clean.
You wouldn't have bedtimes.
Or "Don't punch your sister."
You wouldn't even have sisters.
If I were in charge of the world
A chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts
would be a vegetable.
All 007 movies would be G.
And a person who sometimes forgot to brush,
And sometimes forgot to flush,
Would still be allowed to be
In charge of the world."
I love this poem for it is a perfect example where most of us are
most of the time. Our dreams are for a world that will conform to
us and our likes. That is what the people wanted in a Messiah on
Palm Sunday. They wanted someone who would take charge and
use power to fulfill their self-centered dreams. But instead Jesus
said that if He was in charge of the world He would serve it, suffer
for it, die for it and rise again that it might be saved for all eternity.
And God said that was His dream as well, and so God put Him in
charge. He was a King who did not expect His people to serve Him,
but a King who serves His people.
Robert Fulghum became quite famous for his book All I Really
Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. I discovered his third
book and read it. I asked myself why I do not hesitate to read his
books, and the answer I got is that he writes to serve the reader.
His dream is to serve others by his writing. He does some mighty
strange things. He walks down the street to work in a suit and tie,
and a beanie with a propeller on his head for a hat. He gets all
kinds of responses. People honk, wave, and shout, "Go gettum
grandpa." Teenagers sing the Mickey Mouse song and laugh. Why
in the world does he do it?
He tells us why: "I figure the loss of my dignity was balanced by
the gain in amusement I gave other people. They got to work in a
good humor. They had something to talk about over coffee. I came
to think of my wearing the hat and walking to work as a public
service." Of course it is crazy, but that is the point. He is willing to
be a fool for service. That is what Paul had in mind in being a fool
for Christ. It is taking risks and getting out of your comfort zone
for the service of others.
Jesus did the craziest thing ever. He let His enemies crucify Him.
He gave up His dignity and His life, for He had learned the lesson
His Father wanted Him to learn, and that is that power is for
service. That is God's dream for us all, and when we learn to use
our power, position, and possessions for service, then we are truly
followers of the King, and we will be making God's dream for us
our dream as well.
