Lo I Have Come to Do Your Will 1986

I'd like to begin by reading two passages, both of them brief. The first from Hebrews chapter 10, starting in verse 5, which is really a quote taken out of Psalm number 40. Or it moves into that.

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body thou hast prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure. Then I said, Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God, as it is written of me in the roll of the book.

I have come to do thy will. And from Matthew 21, verse 8, Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road, and others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him shouted, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest. And when he entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred. Who is this, they said.

And the crowd said, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. On the surface, it looked as though everything was fitting together. Jesus comes in triumph, and the city is alive with joy and praise.

But beneath the surface, this is the beginning of the final sifting of Jesus' flesh and blood ministry. In this city, which appears to be so unified around Jesus, there is no unity. Everybody except Jesus is intent upon doing his own thing.

The crowds are shouting, Hosanna, because they believe that they have at last found a king who will be able to throw off the Roman yoke and bring them into freedom. The religious establishment, which is also the political establishment there, watching this joy hardens into the decision that this guy has got to go. He's got to be killed.

We can't allow this to go any farther. The disciples are rejoicing because they are now sure that they bet on the right horse, that they're going to be in on the ground floor of a new regime. And Judas, with the shrewdness of a serpent, can see already while nobody else sees it that things are beginning to fall apart.

I'm getting out. I'm getting off this ship before it sinks and takes me down with it. And in every case except Jesus, the question governing the action is, what's in it for me? Are my needs being met? Am I being fulfilled? One man in this seething, churning sea of humanity, one man is being led by the prayer which ruled his life from the beginning, your will.

I've come to do your will, Father. I've come to fulfill your purpose. I see a cross up ahead, and I choose it.

I choose it because I know that that is your will. One week from this day, this city will have put itself under judgment, judgment from which Jerusalem has not recovered in twenty centuries and from which it will not recover until the day that it says, and it will, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. One week from this Palm Sunday celebration, the only light in that city will be the light burning and shining in the glorified body of this man who will have passed through his baptism of fire and come out on the other side the firstborn of a new creation.

He will have resurrection light, incorruptible light, earth-shaking, life-changing light, contagious light because he went to his cross with the prayer, not my will, your will, Father, your will. Then he will gather his little band of disciples together. He will raise them from the dead by washing their sins in his shed blood and by teaching them to live the prayer he lived.

I have come to do your will, O God. And by teaching them to carry their cross, just as he carried his, put in simplest terms, the only people who survived Palm Sunday got beyond the hosannas without sinking under a night of judgment that followed into their graves were those who learned to repent of their arrogance and be washed in the blood of the Lamb and who learned also, and you can't just do that and not do this, learned to live the prayer I have come to do your will, O God, put themselves under the yoke of the Lamb and say now and pray and live, I have come to do your will, not my will, your will. These are the ones who received the Holy Spirit.

These are the ones who fulfilled their call from God. And these are the ones who changed the face of this earth and are still changing it. Now the Christian world, 1986, particularly the Christian world as we find it in this country, is very much like that first Palm Sunday.

All over the place they're shouting, Hosanna! Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus! It's wonderful why we have Christian radio. We have Christian television. We have Christian rock concerts.

We have Christian bookstores. We have Christian sex manuals. We have Christian presidential candidates.

We have Christian church buildings and properties and holdings all over the land. But the driving force of Christendom, and never forget this, the driving force of Christendom is what's in it for me. Is it meeting my needs? Find out what the question is, what the needs are, meet those needs, and you're going to draw multitudes.

The only problem is, the minute we hold up the cross, and not just the cross as something done for me, but something I have to join, become part of, they run! Now, Roy, you're welcome here, but you've got to sit down and stay in one place and not move and not say a word until this service is over. Roy, you hear me? Roy? You got me? Okay. Meanwhile, Jesus, the same yesterday, today, and forever, is calling us to follow him on a road that's very, very, very different, a road that leads to life, a road that leads to the Father's presence, a road that leads to unspeakable joy, much fruit.

But the immediate destination of that road is a cross, not just Jesus' cross, your cross and my cross. And the only ones who answer that call and follow him on that road are those who are willing to get under the yoke and pray with Jesus, not my will, your will, whatever the cost. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, Sacrifices and offerings I have not desired, thou hast not desired, but a body thou hast prepared for me.

In burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure. Then I said, Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God. He died on the cross, he rose from the dead, poured out the Spirit, and is pouring out the Spirit upon us now in order that we can forsake forever the what's-in-it-for-me world, including the what's-in-it-for-me Christian world, and enter the kingdom of God where every citizen of that kingdom prays the prayer of the King and lives the prayer of the King.

Lo, I have come to do your will. I have come to do your will because your will is the only door that leads to life. Whoever saves his life loses it.

Whoever loses his life for my sake keeps it. 1 John 5, verse 11. This is the testimony that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

He who has the Son has life. He who has not the Son has not life. And to have the Son is to walk in his will.

To believe in the Son is to live and walk in his will. Peter was a dead man. He was getting along fine.

Everything looked okay on the surface, but he was dead until the day that he forsook his old life and started following Jesus. That's the day he rose from the dead. Matthew was a dead man until the day he left his old life.

It wasn't just a matter of leaving the tax office. It was a matter of leaving the whole thing. The tax office was just a symbol of that.

He began to follow Jesus. That's the day Matthew rose from the dead. Mary Magdalene was a dead woman until the day she forsook her old life.

Jesus is the will of God. To walk with him and in his will is life. Unspeakable life.

It's like walking out of jail. It's like coming up out of a grave. And it's wonderful.

But you only experience that life when you begin to pray and then to live. Lo, I come to do your will and leave your own behind. Lo, I have come to do your will because your will is unspeakable joy from the beginning of the journey to the end of the journey.

It's not hard. It's easy. Much easier than the way of self.

Much easier than the way of sin. Much easier than the way of anxiety and anger and bitterness and self-pity and all this other stuff we're dragging around with us. It's joy.

If you keep my commandments, says Jesus, you will abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. If you do my will. These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

His will is not grief for joy. It's not loneliness for joy. It's not frustration for joy.

To say, Lo, I have come to do your will is not a sacrifice for joy. All the time, every day, in season and out of season, in the lean years and the fat years, it's always joy. I have come to do your will because your will, O God, is a cross that frees me from myself and my sin and my fear and my compromise and my unnecessary anger.

Needless, all the time angry. Frees me from all this. When I come, bring the whole mess to Jesus at his cross.

Sin, sorrow, anger, fear, loneliness, bitterness, self-pity, fall down into that tomb, into that grave, and sink beneath the pool of the Lamb's blood and it all disappears and I'm free. Don't be afraid, Jesus says to us, to deny yourself. Take up your cross every day.

Follow me to my cross. Die with me. Because every time you do that, you come to life.

You're set free. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, he said in John 12. And we picture, you know, that all of a sudden the bands begin to play and he marches up to the throne, but the place where he was glorified was Calvary.

That's where it was. And any gospel and any prophet and any preacher who offers you glory, apart from the cross, his cross and your cross, he's deceiving you and he's cheating you. The place where the glory of God comes to rest upon our lives is that place where we die to ourselves with the Lamb of God.

While we live, says Paul in 2 Corinthians, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus might also be manifested in our mortal flesh. Finally, I come to do your will because your will is the resurrection power that frees the captives and heals the sick and raises the dead. Jesus did not go to seminars to learn how to heal the sick.

He did the Father's will. As He did the Father's will, healing just flowed out of Him, rushed out of Him like a river of living water. I have come to do your will, O God, He said, and as He did it, the poor heard the good news, the captives were free, the eyes of the blind were opened, and the oppressed were set free and delivered.

And we carry resurrection life with us and we minister it, we give it, and things happen as we walk in His will. His will, His grace, His mercy. And so, this Palm Sunday, while Jerusalem again rings with the hosannas of the multitude whose lips will very soon be screaming for His blood, and while American Christendom continues to move powerfully in terms of the world, on the one question, what's in it for me? Is it meeting my needs? Will you dare to pray instead the prayer of the Lamb? Lord, I have come to do your will, O God, not my will, your will.

How long are we going to sit around and lick our wounds? How long are we going to sit around and nurse our little hurt feelings? How long are we going to allow our loneliness to be our excuse for doing nothing? When the door is open and the Lamb says, Come, I have work, my kingdom. Take one step in my will as my spirit cries, and He will, God. Will you this day, He says to each one of us, will you this day receive my yoke, receive my spirit, and press on to answer the call of the living God that burns in your heart right now? Lord, I have come to do your will, your will.

We're going to have, again, silence. Silence continues. We're listening.

The day will come when we'll be shouting praises, but right now we need to learn to listen. I'm going to ask for total silence, and then I'll break it in some way. Let's just wait on God and let Him speak to us and direct us in our hearts.