C Palm Sunday | Moving Over Luke 19.28-38 by Tim Isbell | Preached 3/28/2010 |
Thesis: The key to following Christ is to surrender the “driver’s seat” to him. |
When he was in high school, Roger worked at Brinks Armored Car Co. in San Bernardino, CA. His job was to take care of the coins. They’d get 40 tons of coin from Las Vegas. Roger’s job was to wrap them using a complicated machine. He could wrap $10,000 worth of quarters an hour. That’s 10 bags, each containing $1,000 and weighing 80 lbs.
One day Brinks got a call from a Bank of America in downtown San Bernardino. They were in a panic: "We've got to have some coin within the hour." But all the Brinks armored trucks were gone. So his manager backed his '49 Ford pickup into the bay. They loaded $25,000 of coin in a '49 Ford pickup. That's over a ton. The pickup sank nearly to the ground. Then they drove to B of A."
Roger was in a T-shirt and blue jeans. They drove up to the front of the bank, parked the truck, and Roger’s manager said, "Stay here with the truck while I go in and get a dolly." Roger whistled and tried to look ordinary as he stood by the sagging truck for 20 min. Roger remembered thinking, I don't have a badge or a gun. If anybody notices what is in this common looking pickup, I'm in real trouble!
But nobody ever noticed; they just didn't see the bags of money for the commonness of the delivery system.
Point 1: Sometimes people are fooled by the delivery system
Roger’s story reminds me of Luke 19.28-38 (read it)
If Jesus had arrived sitting atop a strong white horse and surrounded with armed soldiers people might have recognized him as a King, a Lord, someone with great power. But he rode in on a donkey.
That Palm Sunday crowd 2000 years ago was fooled by the commonness of the delivery system
But most of us aren’t fooled. We’ve heard many times that God came to earth and lived humbly.
Most people know the rules for checkers: to win you capture all your opponent’s checkers before they capture all of yours.
But in giveaway: to win you must lose all your checkers before your opponent can lose all hers.
Palm Sunday crowd 2k yrs ago misunderstood the game.
But most of us aren’t fooled by that, either. We’ve heard the teaching many times that in the Kingdom of God that the way power works is turned upside down.
One of the magnificent 19th-century British military expeditions conquered no new lands for Queen Victoria. Military historians compare the landing in Ethiopia in 1868 to the Allies invasion of France in 1944.
For 4 years Emperor Theodore of Ethiopia held a group of 53 European captives (30 adults and 23 children), including some missionaries and a British consul, in a remote 9,000-foot-high fort deep in the interior. By letter, Queen Victoria pleaded in vain for the captives release. Finally, the British government ordered a full-scale military attack from India to march into Ethiopia—not to conquer the country and make it a British colony, but simply to rescue a tiny band of civilians.
It included 32,000 men, heavy artillery, and 44 elephants to carry the guns. Provisions included 50,000 tons of beef and pork and 30,000 gallons of rum. Engineers built landing piers, water treatment plants, a railroad, a telegraph line to the interior, plus many bridges. All to fight just one decisive battle, after which the prisoners were released, and everyone packed up and went home. The British expended a fortune to rescue a handful of captives.
This son, Jesus, loaded onto his own shoulders the guilt and shame of every human who ever lived, and who will ever live, and carried all this guilt and shame to the cross.
God’s was a far bigger expedition than the British expedition to Ethiopia.
The Palm Sunday crowd 2000 years ago couldn’t comprehend the price Jesus was about to pay for their salvation.
But most of us aren’t fooled. We’ve heard John 3.16 before, and been told many times how great is the Father’s love for us.
But even if we intellectually accept these things, it still is very hard to just “throw down our crowns” and follow Jesus as Lord. Why?
Because life not just about mentally accepting a set of concepts.
When I was 16 I got a drivers license. My parents had a Plymouth station wagon with a manual transmission. My dad took me to the DMV and on the way home he asked me if I wanted him to turn into the Coy Elementary School parking lot and drive around a little. I said yes, so when we got there he stopped the engine, got out, and we traded seats.
We drove around the lot a few times, and eventually he asked me if I thought I was ready to drive home. That was about 1 mile away. What could I say? I said, “Sure.”
As soon as I turned onto the road I could hear his voice tense up. I could tell he was trying not to panic; but then I was sort of in a panic myself. I had pedaled down this narrow road on my bike many times, with cars whizzing by me only a 3-4 feed from from my handle bars. Now I was driving a car and, thank goodness, there were no bikes to share the road with. That station wagon seemed too wide than my lane!
As long as my dad sat in the driver’s seat he was in control. But when we exchanged seats, he had given up control to me. For the rest of the ride home, he terrified.
Many years later I experienced the same thing when I taught my kids to drive.
It’s the day we remember Jesus riding into Jerusalem.
As Jesus entered, the crowd cheered. Everyone there had an agenda for Jesus:
“We’ll shout ‘Hosanna’ as long as you do what we want you to do.”
But If Jesus is sitting in the drivers seat of our life then we’re not in charge anymore. Not of our wallet, our ambition, our mouth, anything. If we surrender the driver’s seat then our life becomes his life! Scary thought.
Surrender is the glad and voluntary acknowledgement that there is a God and I am not him. It’s when I relinquish the driver’s seat to the Lord Jesus.
It means trusting that his purposes for me are better than my purposes for me. It’s trusting God in everything, one day at a time.
Surrender is not easy, but it leads to freedom and life.
We love to hear…
We don’t like this message.
News flash: You cannot will or work yourself to a better life; you must surrender.
Jesus has a lot to say about death to self, but it is always the death of a lesser self, a false self, so that a better and nobler self can come to life.
It’s always death to desires and behaviors that will end up killing us anyway.
As hard as it is to accept, on the other side of death to self is freedom and life.
They lay out a way of life that is the greatest single way to freedom for addicts the world has ever known.
Which step do you suppose says, “Now try really hard not to drink”? NONE.
Which step says, “Now decide that you’re not going to drink anymore.” NONE.
The most powerful strategy against addiction never asks people to decide to stop doing what they must stop doing.
The Blue Book does not try to mobilize an addict’s will. Every addict has already tried that a 1000 times and failed.
Ask yourself this question: “Why is it that I can’t stop? I say and I feel in certain moments in my life, ‘Never again. I know that way is death.’ I say never again, but I do it again. Why do I do it again when it violates everything I think I believe and value?”
The Blue Book’s answer: “We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness, with sufficient force, the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even one week ago.”
It means we stop quarrelling with God over the 1-2 areas where we already know our lives do not please him. Instead. We trust that his judgment is better than ours. One day at a time.
Then we search for the rest of God’s will for us and when he shows it to us, we surrender that, too. One day at a time.
“It’s my car and my life. The door is locked to you. You just stay on the roadside while I drive off and live my life my way.”
Everyone who takes this position thinks it will lead to freedom. But they invariably end up in slavery to the powers of this world.
“You’re welcome to ride along with me, and help me when I need it. But I’ll continue to enjoy the pleasure I get from this habit, this secrecy, this manipulation. Just stay in the passenger seat because I don’t trust what you’ll do if I trade seats with you.”
It’s not much of a life, but many people never get beyond it. Year after year they keep failing in the same areas that they know displease God.
They invariably discover that he’s a much better driver through all kinds of road conditions. And they invariably enjoy the ride.
How about you, will you offer him the driver’s seat this Easter week?
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