and Rejoicing in God’s Promises
A) Processing a lot this weekend
- Culmination of Devo Series on God’s Promises- Preparing for Holy Week, reflecting on all Jesus endured in days and hours preceding the crucifixion
- Also in the wake of the emotional news about our good friend Katie, we’ve been reminded that we have no idea what our futures hold, or when God may call us home, which has given many of us a greater sense of urgency when it comes to reaching out to friends and loved ones who are not yet saved.
- With all of these things, Processing God’s power and goodness and providence, and what it really means for us that Jesus overcame the grave.
- Seems like divine timing, having these three trains of thought come together on our big retreat weekend:
a) Our greatest blessing of all is what Christ accomplished on the cross, defeating death and paying the price for sin so we can have eternal life
b) What we’ve been through emotionally, following Katie’s story, has made this real to us this week
c) All other blessings stem from the glorious truth of the Gospel - John 3:16
d) We need to rejoice in that truth, let it sink down deep into our souls, and have it influence our actions and how we live our lives every day.
B) Weekend structure
-Looking at the story of Jesus’ final week on earth
-Hopefully help prepare our hearts and minds for Easter - something I always struggle with. I don’t know what your Lenten season has looked like - but mine has been spent in upheaval, unexpectedly moving our PCS up by 5 or 6 weeks so preparing to move, taking care of an increasingly mobile and cranky toddler, PWOC and other volunteer commitments, squadron social events, combatting flu bugs, attempting and failing to work out more… It’s overwhelming and exhausting and I often feel like I’m being pulled in a million different directions, so it’s a real struggle to stay grounded and focused on my faith, even at such an important and spiritual time of year. So I’m thankful for this opportunity to slow down and spend some time in reflection and worshipping God for saving us.
-Each session covers one of the big events along the journey to the cross
a) Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday
b) Last Supper (Maundy Thursday)
c) Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane
d) Crucifixion and Resurrection!
**You can see the weekend lay-out in the schedule/binder/materials
Before we really dive into our session, let’s take a minute to pray and prepare our hearts. (5m)
C) God’s plan to rescue and redeem His people, which began before the start of time, led up to this one week, two thousand years ago, as His Son prepared to pay the penalty for our sins
- Read the account of the Triumphal Entry in Luke 19:28-41
- Many Old Testament prophesies describe who the Messiah would be and what would happen when He came into His kingdom. The words the prophets used to describe Him include “King of Kings and Lord of Lords”, and describe Him redeeming Israel and reigning on the throne of David forever, in Glory and in peace.
- The Israelites had been oppressed for so long, and were so eager for the Messiah to come rescue them, that they knew many of these scriptures by heart and would have immediately recognized the significance of how Jesus entered Jerusalem for the passover feast, the weekend before He died.
- Zech 9:9 says: “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, He is Just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
- I think many of us are pretty familiar with the main points of this story. We’ve acted it out in Sunday school classes and waved Palm Branches in our churches on Palm Sunday. But as we see, Jesus fulfilled that prophesy by riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and the people went ballistic! I wonder what that would have been like?
D) But as I’ve sat with this passage over the last few weeks, I was struck by all the different dynamics going on here:
- We see Jesus’ acceptance and calm determination to go to Jerusalem, even though He knows what He will have to endure once He gets there.
- How mystified the disciples must have been - don’t understand what Jesus is asking of them or why, or what is really going on. But they just go with it and it all works out just the way Jesus said it would.
- Emotional passion and joy of the people
- The outrage of the Pharisees in v.39, urging Jesus to control the people
- Jesus’ exaltation and glory in that moment, knowing that even if the people didn’t worship him and proclaim Him as the Messiah, the very rocks would cry out
- Then we’re kind of caught off guard by His sorrow and tears at the end, but He’s grieving for the city and the broken people there
a) Fear, acceptance, confusion, rejoicing, anger, exaltation, grief… We’re kind of all over the map here
b) From Triumph to Sorrow, and back again, that is true of the whole Passion Week story
E) Jesus’ last week was full of highs and lows
- Quote from Bible Gateway: “The final week of Jesus’ ministry covers a wide range of emotions and events. We see Jesus overturning tables in the temple; people hanging on Christ’s every word; cloak-and-dagger deals made to kill the Messiah; and fervent 11th-hour prayers offered. But before any of that happens, Jesus must first get to Jerusalem…Palm Sunday, marks the beginning of of Passion Week. It starts with Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, where a hero’s welcome awaits him. The streets are lined with people waving palm branches and singing. They’re ready for him to be their King—but Jesus’ purpose is far more significant than gaining political status and power.”
- Hence the emotionally charged scene: The hopes and expectations of generations of people are hanging on this one Man, and He knows that they have no idea what’s about to happen, or the full extent of what He’s about to do for them.
- Wide range of emotions indeed.
- We can relate to that. Our own lives are emotional roller coasters
- My question for us tonight is: How do we follow in Jesus’ footsteps, staying the course, faithfully walking the road God has set before us, trusting in our Good Father’s plan no matter the challenges we face?
Some points here:
1) Own the Gospel - Do a heart check, make sure you really believe and understand it. Let that truth sink down deep. Everything we think, say, do, and feel spills out of the overflow of the heart (Matt 12:34) Easy for me to talk the talk, but the times I struggle most to walk the walk are when I’m disconnected from the Bible. Not filling my mind and heart with God’s truth or spending quiet time connecting to Him and so what’s bubbling up in my heart and what other people see is not a reflection of Christ but a reflection of how stressed out and tired I am.
2) Like the people in Israel welcoming their King, we need to rejoice and be glad!
I’m in the Revelation study with Beth Moore and we talked about this principle last week. The phrase “rejoice and be glad” is one we’re familiar with in the church. It’s repeated throughout scripture… Specifically we focused on Rev. 19:6-7 where the redeemed are worshiping God as they prepare for the wedding feast of the Lamb. It says: “Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!”
Beth pointed out there that we probably have a tendency to downplay the word glad. We think, “Oh, I’m so glad to be here!” “I’m glad my team won the game.” “I’m glad they have something I like on this menu.” But if you look at the greek definition of that word, it’s much much stronger.
Agalliao. First half = “very much”, and the second half = “to leap”. So the definition is: “To exalt, rejoice with exuberance, often to leap for joy, show one’s joy by leaping, skipping, or dancing, denoting excessive or ecstatic joy and delight.”
Beth challenged us to seriously think about, when was the last time that we got so excited about something that it made you jump up and down? Often, what makes me move the most is either watching my Denver Broncos play, or seeing movie trailers that I’m excited about. Last time I really got excited and jumped up and down or pumped my fists in the air was when we found out that we’d be sharing our next assignment with some of our best friends. It wasn’t necessarily where we wanted to go, but we’d be with people we love and so nothing else mattered.
But when was the last time I got so excited about what God was doing that I reacted like that??? I don’t know. And it hit me so hard when she pointed out that if reading the Bible, and hearing the gospel message doesn’t make us get up and move. WE DO NOT GET IT. If we really understood what we’d been saved from, and how amazing it will be to live with God in heaven forever, we would barely be able to contain ourselves!
- Get excited about God and let that passion inspire us to action. Talk about that a little bit more in the sessions tomorrow. But like I said at the beginning when we were talking about Katie and the reality check many of us got when we found out what had happened - life is short. We have no idea the time or way that God will call us or our loved ones home. So we need to live with urgency - spreading the good news to everyone we know and anyone who will listen because nothing matters more than where we will spend eternity.
3) Celebrate our Blessings. Sometimes when we’re struggling, we need to stop and take stock of how richly we’ve been blessed. Ann Voskamp - “Joy Dare”. A while ago I was really struggling with feeling negative about being down on Korea and needed a “Positive Mental Adjustment”. So I initiated a 7 day Korea Joy Dare on fb. Did help give me a brighter perspective on how blessed we are to live here. Challenge you to do the same.
4) Trust in God’s Promises - seek them out in scripture and memorize them so we have them locked away in our minds and hearts whenever we need it. (Scripture - part of the armor of God!) For example, I tend to struggle with anxiety - particularly at night. A big promise that has helped calm me down and remind me to trust in God has been Psalm 4:8 “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, O LORD, will keep me safe.” Pray you all have been bolstered and encouraged by many of the promises we’ve worked through this year.
5) Respond in Thanksgiving - for our blessings, answered prayers and promises kept. Prayer Journal? Monuments? Set up stones {Esther’s devo!}
6) PRAYER - stay in constant connection with God. It’s the only way Jesus was able to do what He did and endure what He did. Drew on His Father’s strength and kept a Godly perspective on worldly challenges. We’ll get a chance to retreat to the garden and spend some time focusing on many of these things tomorrow.
For now, I encourage you to prayerfully consider what you need to do, and which steps you need to take, in order to have the strength and perseverance to walk with Jesus
We want to equip you with some practical ways to make the message of Holy Week real for you AND your family. So Patti has an activity planned to help you plan out tangible ways to focus on this message and what you’ve learned this week. Before we do that though, let me close us in prayer.
