Making Sense Out of Life

Hearing God Speak

As is our custom during these Wednesdays of Lent we read from the Passion History as compiled from the four Gospels. Last week we finished reading the account of the Chief Priests and elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas’s release and to have Jesus crucified.  

And from then on Pilate tried to set Jesus free but the Jews kept shouting, “If you let this man go you are no friend of Caesar’s. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the Judge’s Seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement which in Aramaic is Gabbatha. It was the day of preparation of Passover week, about the sixth hour. “Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews, but they shouted “Take him away, take him away, crucify him.”

Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar”, the Chief Priest answered. When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere and that an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood”, he said, “it is your responsibility”. All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children.” Then he released Barabbas to them and handed Jesus over to be crucified.

The soldiers took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. As they led him away, they saw Simon from Cyrene who was on his way in from the country and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and your children for the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs who never bore, the breasts who never nursed. Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us” and to the hills, “Cover us” for if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?

Two other men, both criminals were also led out with him to be executed. They came to a place called Golgotha which means “The Place of the Skull”. There they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall, but after tasting it, he refused to drink. And there they crucified him, along with the criminals, one on his right, the other on his left. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. The Chief Priest of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The king of the Jews’, but that this man claimed to be the king of the Jews.” Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.” 

Sermon –

My son was writing a term paper for class on “muscle memory.” Muscle memory... what's that?  He said muscles have the ability to remember what we do repetitively, you don’t have to think about it, your muscles remember. As an example, when you are typing if you want to type the letter “a”, what happens? Your left pinky just goes to the correct key on the keyboard. If you want to type the letter “j”, your right index finger jumps to the “j” key. That’s muscle memory. And if you play a musical instrument, you don’t have to think about the notes; they just respond and go where they need to go. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing.

Now, did you ever think of the advantages of having spiritual muscle memory? That’s what God tries to develop in us. If we develop spiritual muscle memory by hearing the concepts again and again, we will know exactly what is happening in our lives, we won’t have to think about it and we will know exactly what God is doing. So, over these seven weeks of Lent, we are trying to develop some spiritual muscle memory with our sermon series titled Making Sense Out of Life.

We are reviewing the seven concepts from Experiencing God, talking about one principle each Sunday and then again on Wednesday so that we hear it again, and again, and again. Then when life is not making any sense, we won’t have to think about it, we will know exactly what God is doing, we will know exactly His plan, we will know exactly what is going on. We will know how to respond, we won’t be confused by the events and we will fall into God’s plan. The concept from Experiencing God that we are looking at this week is:  

GOD INVITATION TO JOIN HIM IN HIS WORK ALWAYS LEADS US TO A CRISIS OF BELIEF THAT REQUIRES FAITH AND ACTION

Tonight I thought I would just pull a section out of the Bible and we would review these concepts. We will see God’s invitation and how people dealt with their crisis of belief; God’s invitation came in some very strange ways as you will see. Then when things happen in your life you will have muscle memory, it will be like typing or like playing an instrument, you know exactly what’s happening, you won’t give it a second thought, it won’t shake you  up, and you won’t worry about it. You will know exactly what God is doing.

So let’s look at Luke Chapter 5 which talks about Jesus calling His disciples, a man with leprosy, and  healing a paralytic and let’s see how the theme for this week fits in so perfectly. Verse 1 begins, “One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore.” What was God’s invitation to Simon? He wanted to use Simon’s boat. “Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” Jesus wants to show that He is God. God is the only one who can do miracles so if Jesus does a miracle, it would show people that He really is God, so, again, He is inviting Simon to become involved with Him in His work, inviting him to “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.

Simon answered, ‘Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.’”   Here is another crisis of belief; Simon had been fishing all night and hadn’t caught anything, he was convinced that going out again wasn’t going to work. And, Simon was an experienced fisherman - Jesus was a carpenter – Jesus is telling Simon how to fish? That’s a real crisis of belief!

But a crisis of belief requires faith and action so Simon said, “’But because you say so, I will let down the nets.’” Simon had faith in the words of Jesus and that faith lived itself out in the action of dropping the nets. And what happened? “They caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.” When you use that principle and follow God’s invitation, when you pass the crisis of belief, you see God work. These disciples saw God work, they saw a miracle, they saw something only God could do!

Then verse 8 continues, “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’   For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.’” Jesus gives another invitation to join God in His work; He is fishing after men’s souls. “So they pulled their boats up on shore…” and they are faced with another crisis of belief, do they follow Jesus and become a fisher of men or do they stay in their present occupation and continue to fish for fish? So what did they do? “They pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.” Faith in those words were played out in action, they followed Jesus.

Then in verse twelve we read about a man with leprosy. And it’s key to remember that Isaiah Chapter 35, written 700 years before Jesus walked the face of the earth, says that when the Messiah comes, “the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame will leap like a dear, and the mute tongue will short for joy.”   So verse 12 begins, “While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.” What was the invitation to work with God? Leprosy! Having this dreaded disease was God’s invitation to the man to work with Him. “When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.’” God’s invitation, leprosy, required a crisis of belief on the part of the man. He had to actually go to Jesus in faith and in faith ask for a healing. And, “Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing, he said. ‘Be clean!’ And immediately the leprosy left him.” Leprosy caused a crisis of belief that required faith and action. The man actually had to go to Jesus and trust in Him for the healing. And did he get his miracle? You bet he did, he experienced God, he witnessed something only God could do!

Then beginning with verse 17 we read about Jesus healing a paralytic, “One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick.” Remember when Jesus came to earth He set aside His God power, we’re going to talk more about that next Sunday as we continue this series, and the power of the Holy Spirit was there for Jesus to heal. The people who were rebelling against Jesus and accusing Him of blasphemy were the Pharisees and the teachers of the law and Jesus wanted to show them that He is God. In fact, if you skip down to verse 26, you can see the outcome of this whole thing, “Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, ‘We have seen remarkable things today.’” That was the outcome Jesus wanted.

But lets back up to verse 18, “Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus.” Here, again, illness is the invitation to work with God. And for the man’s friends, their invitation to work with God was having a friend who was ill - “Do we bring this guy to Jesus or not? Is Jesus really able to heal? Are we giving our friend false hope?”

And they passed their crisis of belief and took him to Jesus which required both faith and action. Verse 19 continues, “When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.” The man’s friends experienced two crises of belief: first, should they bring their friend to Jesus? And then, the big crowd presented another crisis of belief: is God saying to stay away?  But they proceeded with faith and action and   took their friend to the roof, removed the tiles, and lowered him right down in front of Jesus. They passed their crisis of belief, and acted in faith and action and “When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

Then we continue with verse 21, “The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, ‘Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, ‘Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Get up and walk”? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…He said to the paralyzed man, ‘I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.’ Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God.”

Jesus was trying to reach the hard hearts of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. He was trying to show them that He has the ability to forgive sin, that He is the Savior, the Messiah, and to do this, Heinvited the paralyzed man and his friends to join Him in His work. That required a crisis of belief on the part of the paralyzed man and his friends, they had to actually go to Jesus in faith and ask for healing. They acted in faith and acted out their faith in action and received their healing.

And, again, verse 26 “Everyone was amazed”.   That’s what God wanted to do, He wanted to amaze everyone. “They gave praise to God.  They were filled with awe and aid, “We have seen remarkable things today.”   Everyone there had, in essence, experienced the power of God.  But for them to experience it, God had to invite them to join Him in his work which led to a crisis of belief which required faith and action.

So, what is in your life this week that doesn’t make sense? Illness? Economic uncertainty? Family problems? We don’t like any of those things. But after going through these examples, spiritual muscle memory will kick in and you will look at the problems in your life know exactly what it is all about - it’s God invitation to work with Him. It will result in a crisis of belief, it will require faith, and it will require action. But as we’ve seen, when we respond in faith and take it to God we will be amazed because we will have experienced God! Amen!

Prayer -  

Heavenly Father, we ask that as we review these concepts, our spiritual muscle memory kicks in and that when things come into our lives, we would see them as Your invitation to work with You. Help us, Lord, to view it that way and to follow You in faith and action. And we pray this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.