It's Time For Your Comeback

Yeah, how about that? We added 400 new, very comfortable padded seats. Huh? That's great. There's a bunch of people in the front there. You're the only ones clapping. The ones in the back did not clap at all. The reason we didn't fill the auditorium is because that's all the resources that we had for now. And it's got supplies. We're going to add more seats. Actually, the theater style ones are next. But I thank God for providing these, and it's worth coming a little bit early for, isn't it? I mean, those are really nice. So just keep that in mind. Next week, come a little before 11, and you'll get to sit in the good seats. All right, let's take your Bible, turn to John 12, and also get out your outline. I want to read an unusual passage for Easter Sunday, but one that I think you'll see is extremely significant for us. John 12, 23. John 12, 23. Jesus replied, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Would you say that with me? My Father will honor the one who serves me. Those of you who have been serving the Lord in children's ministry, our elders, our deacons, the people in our Easter production, those of you who serve in the park, wherever you serve God in your business, in your home, in your neighborhood, the Lord will honor you. Expect him to honor you. And now my heart is troubled, Jesus says, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. Know it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, Jesus says, glorify thy name. A while back someone gave me a Calvin cartoon, maybe you've seen it. It says, God put me on the earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I'm so far behind, I think I'll never die. Ever feel that way? I'm going to give you a feel like there's always more things to do than you have time to do. It's true for most of us. This is an extremely fast-paced society. And time is at such a premium in our lives. We never have enough of it. We're always looking for more. Do you ever feel like you're barely hanging on? If you don't watch out, it's like rush hour starts when you get up in the morning and ends when you go to bed at night. It just doesn't happen from 7 to 9 or 4 to 6. It's all day long. I read a recent survey here in Allegheny County that said 65% of people in our county feel they don't have enough time. And the people with kids under the age of 18 living at home feel the most pressed for time. How many does that describe? How many of you have kids, teenagers and below, at home? Am I right? Do you feel like it's the nuts in your house? Yeah. And those who feel they have the most time, most discretion time, are your teenagers. That makes sense to me, doesn't it? Anyhow, time is our most precious commodity, no question about it. Far more important than money. You can always get more money, but you can't get more than 24 hours in any one day. And friends, if you waste time, literally you're wasting your one and only life. And so we try so many things to save time. I mean, everyone's out to do it a little faster. Cook a little faster. Write a little faster. Drive a little faster. Call a little faster. Speed dialing on the phones. I mean, it's nuts. While I was away, I read Bill Gates' new book called Business at the Speed of Thought. And he says some things in there that are pretty astonishing. He warns us, he says in there, if the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about re-engineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity. Faster, faster. He calls it his digital nervous system. And everything's going to be going faster. Well, you know, I thought about that. Well, normally when we talk about velocity, I like that. I like to motor fast from place to place and so on and so on. But he's talking about things going so fast that we won't even know they're happening so fast. And what will happen to us if we keep doing more and more things faster and faster? What will we do? We'll just keep adding to our basket of things to do. You know, the idea is to free up your time so you'll have more time to do what you want to do. We had a prayer walk that Pastor Dave helped us go through on Good Friday morning. And we had some stations here in the sanctuary. How many of you were part of that? Let me see your hand. So just a few of you had time for that on Good Friday. But it was powerful. And right over here, I sat down and it was one of the first places I stopped. And a businessman from my Friday morning group stopped there. And afterwards, he said, you know what? I never left that station over there. He said, I just went to one. He said, because I realized that every place I go, I'm always telling God I got to hurry up and hear from you and go on to the next place. He said, it's like I drive into God's filling station and say, give me a buck real quick. That's all I have time for. I don't have time to fill her up. So I decided just to stay there and let God fill me up. I said, you know, how many of you say that's true for your life too? You're in such a hurry. You rarely have time for God to fill you up. I know it's a struggle for me. And so I want to talk about time for a few moments. But in the context of how Jesus sought time, no one had a more profound sense of time than he did. And although he never wore a watch or never looked at the face of a clock, it was Jesus who said, look at the top of your outline. The hour for the son of man has come. The hour to be glorified. I want to look at three moments in time in Jesus final week. Moments that changed us forever and speak to us in the middle of the most stressed out, fast paced, rat race, pressurized society that history has ever seen. Now, if you were here for the dramatic presentation, some of these things will be revisualized in your mind. The first one talks about Palm Sunday. And part of what we just read here, Jesus, the Bible says, prepared in Bethany to walk into Jerusalem for Palm Sunday. What an event that was. And yet it was a time, Roman numeral one in your outline, of dissonance, a time of disharmony. Things appeared to be going really well on the outside, but underneath something was very wrong. There was a tension because Jesus time was just not quite yet. Now, this story starts with Jesus in the home of his friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. By the way, let me pause right here and ask you a very personal question. If you knew you had one week to live, would you spend two days of that week in the home of a friend? Why did Jesus do that? I believe he was fulfilling what he taught. That is, he was living in community in the important times of his life. Jesus Christ, the most influential man who ever lived, found time to be with us. If anyone in the world could have made it on his own, it was Jesus. But he chose to demonstrate what you and I need to do. And that is to be in relationship with people where we'll be loved and we can love. Where we'll be celebrated and we can celebrate. Where we'll be supported and we can support. Are you doing that? Let me just ask you. When you walk out of here, do you have a group of people that you can say, you know what, that's my support group. That's the group that I know cares about me. Jesus had a group like that. He had disciples and even had friends. I'm going to ask you, if you haven't got a group, then take a step as an Easter offering to God to get in a beta group, get in an alpha group and get started in relationship. You won't ever be fully alive until you walk with others in this path of faith. Then Jesus began to head into Jerusalem. A great crowd, the Bible says in verse 12, was there. What is a great crowd? Do you know how many people were there on that day? Josephus the historian tells us that there were 2 million Jews there for the Passover. Now, I've been to Jerusalem. It is not a large city. I mean, it's not nearly as big as Pittsburgh. And people must have been packed. And they were all, as you recall the scene from the play, they were waving these palm branches and laying down their garments so that he could walk on them. And there was this huge expression, this outpouring of emotion for the one they were calling the king. And they yelled, Hosanna, Hosanna to the king. Just as another aside, it's interesting to me. We don't have many parades today except for, you know, big time ball players, maybe if they win a championship. And people will go to a sporting event and they'll stomp and cheer and shout and clap and carry on. They'll be called what? Fans, good fans. Yeah, they're a great fan. And if you cheer and shout and stand and clap in church, you call it what? A fanatic, right? Why is that? I never did understand that. It's because we're supposed to be reverent in church, Pastor Jay. Well, remember, Jesus never rebuked the people for cheering and shouting and lifting their voices to him. Even though there was a dissonance to it. Why? Because it wasn't quite his time. You see, his popularity was sky high. He'd been doing his healings, miracles had been happening. His teachings were incredibly profound. But there was something else going on. You see, along the street, the people that lined the street weren't just welcoming Jesus as he desired to be, but as they wanted him to be. There were political activists there. There were religious revolutionaries who wanted to see the Jews, the Pharisees thrown out. There were people who wanted healing. There were people who had seen Jesus, you know, multiply the loaves and fishes. And they wanted a miracle. They wanted to get in on this good stuff. They had an agenda for the Son of God. And friends, that's a very dangerous place to be. And that's why Jesus said, it's not yet my time. Frankly, I don't know that things have changed all that much. Have they? What about today? I could take you up into my library or into a Christian bookstore and show you book after book after book that's been marketed because people have found God as a way to get their will done. I have books and seen books and know of books that tell you how to get God and get happy. Get God and find peace. Get God and get healed. Get God and lose weight. That's a hot one right now. Get God, get rich. And on and on it goes. And we all want to get God for some reason that promotes our agenda for ourselves. We'll fill up the church. We'll go to a group. We'll do whatever we can to get spiritual if it's going to mean that God will help me find a mate or fix my marriage or help my family or feel better about myself or get my business on track or help me mix with the right people. Friends, please hear me. That's coming to Jesus for the wrong reasons. That's your agenda. Not necessarily God's. And then what happens when God doesn't seem to deliver on your mate or your business or losing weight or getting rich. You know what you do? Or getting healed or fixing your friendship. You point your finger. You say, you know, God, I just don't know if you care about me. And you start doing this. And I don't mean this in any kind of a harsh way, but I know some of you here today and you're angry at God because he hasn't given you what you wanted. And you're blaming him for that. Dear one, may I tell you in love today, I don't think the problem's with God. Very often we're trying to force open a door that God's not in at all. Last week when we were away, Carol and I rented a car, as you normally do when you go to a different city. And that first night when we got back, we went out to eat and parked our car in this rather large parking lot and went in. It was a little later than usual. We came out. It was dark out. And we'd rented a nice convertible because it was Arizona and the sun was great, just like here. And we came out after dinner and I went over to the car and put the key in and jiggled it and the darn thing wouldn't work. And I said, well, you know, try the one on the other side and it wouldn't work. This isn't good. And I noticed the key felt strange. It felt kind of clunky or something. It just didn't feel right. And I thought, oh my goodness, I know what happened. They were in a hurry back there when I got the car and they must have given me the valet key and it only opens a certain way. I don't know what the secret is. I tried the trunk. I went back and tried all the doors again. And I'm thinking, oh, this is really great. You know, it's 10 o'clock at night. I'm in a strange city. I'm sure the rental people are gone. I don't know the AAA. I don't know anything. I can't walk. And this isn't good. And I'm starting to draft in my mind my letter to the president of that rental car company. How could they, I mean, what kind of idiot would give me the wrong key? And Carol said, after maybe a couple minutes of me jiggling around and just thinking, she said, honey, what's that car with like four stalls down? It looks just like this one. Oh, this one. Opened right up. That was our car. This was somebody else's car. The good thing was, this didn't have an alarm in it. I'd been in jail. So I erased my letter to the president of the company and realized that I was the idiot, not him or the guy. I mean, I mean, totally, it's a mistake. But I was totally wrong. And I was blaming the wrong person. I wonder, does that ever happen to you? Ever been that way with God? If you're here today, I want you to know it takes courage to surrender your agenda for God in order to ask Him, Lord, what is your agenda for me? That may be the most important message for anyone here this Easter. For you to say to God, you know what, Lord, I'm willing to do whatever you want me to do. I'm here for you, not the other way around. The second thing about timing in Easter that I see in this passage, it's so powerful, is that it becomes for Jesus a time of destiny, Roman numeral two. He says, for this very reason, I came to this hour. You see, after Palm Sunday, the Lord began to move relentlessly toward the cross. Isaiah 50 verse 7 prophesies of this moment. And the prophet writes, he set his face like a flint. In other words, I see him locked on like a radar beam to the cross because he knew that was his destiny. He moved from their mission to embrace his own. From all of their celebration, he says, now, now is the hour. Now is the time. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. And have you ever noticed, if you've read the Gospel of John particularly, from this point on, the narrative moves from what used to be weeks and days at a time down to hours and minutes. And 40% of the Gospel of John is spoken in hours and minutes because God wants us to know just how central to Jesus' life this last few days really were. Dear ones, listen. This is so important. If teaching could have saved us, then the Lord would have gone on teaching and teaching and teaching and he was the best teacher that ever lived. If loving others could have saved us, he would have gone on loving people throughout long years of his life because no one loved others the way Jesus did. If doing miracles could have saved us, he would have performed more and more miracles, more spectacular things than we could ever have imagined. And yet Jesus knew that teaching and loving and working miracles was not enough to save the world. He knew that he had to die. It was his time of destiny. And you see, we wish it could be another way too. We wish it could happen through teaching or through doing things or serving things or other things. There's always in this, you see, an inherent danger that somehow our actions will prove that we are really sincere about loving God or that we're a little more love worthy if we behave a certain way or do certain things. And friends, I want to say on this Easter Sunday there are a lot of us here today that are far from God because you don't think you have a chance of ever getting where God wants you to be. You just don't think you're even close. You look at people around, you say, I'm just nowhere near where these people are. And I'll never get there because I've got to keep working at it and working at it and working at it. You need to know something. Our works have nothing to do with our salvation. And they have nothing to do, really, with our acceptance before God. You know, there's a popular little thing out there, a little bracelet that has on it four letters. You know what the letters are? WWJD. Now, you don't have one of those on right now, do you? I mean, you might. In fact, I expect maybe some of you really do. You might have a T-shirt or a coffee mug or a bumper sticker and those letters stand for What Would Jesus Do? And it's been interesting. I mean, that little phenomenon has been quite well reported in the media and really pretty well accepted in the culture. Kind of an interesting thing and I'll tell you why that's so. Most people, even non-believers in the culture, are not bothered by you wearing that little bracelet because they think of themselves and they may even say, Well, that's nice. I'm glad that works for you, is what they'll say. That's your way and I have my own. Because in their minds, they're relating that, you see, to how we're gaining acceptance before God. The real issue in America is not What Would Jesus Do? The real issue in America is What Has Jesus Done? That's the real issue. Because the cross, where Jesus suffered for our sin as the only payment that will present His Father before the heavenly throne, is the standard. I didn't say it. Jesus said it. And there's nothing wrong. Please don't. If you wear one of those bracelets or that's fine. But never substitute that for the grounds of your acceptance. You're accepted because of what Jesus has done. And you know, this is important not just for those of you who are wondering about how to get right with God, but for those of you who know God. It's even important for someone like me. Because where do you go to find grace to change? How many of you need to change a little bit today? Tap your spouse right now and tell him that. He was talking to you, honey. I need to change today. But something rises in me that wants to try a little harder to change. And the cross to me is beginning to be a place where I find this irresistible drawing of the heart of God to me. Because I realize more and more that I cannot change of myself. You know, as you've come to learn over the last months, if you listen to Kevin Lehman and we talk a lot about this in Real Families, this whole birth order thing, I'm a first born and so I had this sort of perfectionistic thing in me that's really a pain. It's really a pain. I mean, I can pick out a flaw at 500 meters and my staff doesn't like that and certainly my wife and my kids have been patient with me all these years. But I'm kind of like Prime Minister Winston Churchill. I mean, sometimes when you're wired this way you even kind of defend yourself by finding faults in others when there's a fault in you. Prime Minister Churchill was drinking at a dinner party and got slightly tipsy. This isn't a real spiritual illustration but it works. He was slightly tipsy. He'd had one too many and Lady Astor, one of the British royal family, became very, very indignant that the Prime Minister was bobbing and weaving his way through the evening barely able to stand. She was sneering and insultingly said to him, Sir Winston, you're drunk. He said, Lady Astor, you're ugly. Then he added, and tomorrow I shall be sober. You just have a way of covering. And for years, I've really tried to work on those parts of my character that weren't conformed to Christ in a way by just trying harder to do better, to be like Jesus, the golden rule. And you know, a little improvement came along. I've got to tell you, I don't know when it started but in the last few years I found myself drawn, listen, drawn to the cross like never before in my life because I've come to discover that it's there that the power that I need to change is released in my life. In fact, the Bible says it's when I'm weak then He is strong. When I just confess to the Lord that He's done whatever needs to be done for me at the cross, then He releases in me whatever I need to do to change. And that's the miracle of grace. And I've gone from nitpicking to thanksgiving. And it's beginning to change me because God's grace is released in me. I can sense it. What's around me that was due us was carried by Him. Have you come to that point of understanding that nothing else will change you but the cross? I want to introduce you to a person right now who just a year ago was having great difficulty with all this. He was in the midst of a spiritual battle and he discovered freedom at the cross as well. I want you to welcome today. Would you please give a warm welcome to Peter Adams as he comes to share his testimony. Hey, Peter. Welcome. You'll notice we have to move things around a bit because when we move these lights back, I discovered early on, it suddenly makes it difficult to see the podium. So hopefully this will be a little bit better for you. Do what you can do. What an honor and a thrill this is for me to be able to do this on Easter Sunday in this great church. Thanks for being asked to Pastor Jay and to Sue. My testimony is not unlike several others that we've heard from this podium. My life before I came to know the Lord was an unending desire to be the best that I could be at my job. I had no regard for the collateral damage that I was causing in the lives of the ones that I loved. My priority was always myself first and my family. Myself first, my job second. My family was always tucked in third place. My idea of being a good father and a husband was that of being a good provider only. I was married to my childhood sweetheart and I had three beautiful children, but I had no time for my family and certainly no time for friends. I was in control of our destiny. The family was just going to have to wait and make do while I was at work. I spent all of my time at the office in order to escape the responsibilities at home. I lived a life on the road and it was complete with all its temptations. I fell in with the wrong crowd. I was doing the bar scene, drinking with clients and customers, telling dirty jokes and making last call at the local strip joints. I was on overseas flights in my business class seat and watching the in-flight movie with my glass of wine in my hand while my wife was at home changing diapers and baby bottles in her hand and all was as it should be in the world or so I thought. Eventually my ego had outgrown my hometown and I remember coming home one day to inform my wife that I had an offer from a company in the Middle East and I intended to take it. I was going to leave those minor details of selling our home and packing up our kids and our belongings to my wife, Judy. The outbreak of the Gulf War later caused us to move to Australia with my wife and my children dutifully in tow. My own personal and portable cheering section. They forever followed my lead, forever loyal and unquestioning and forever cheering me from the sidelines. They left their family and their friends for me. I didn't. I took their sacrifice completely for granted. In January 1998 came the inevitable crash for me. I suddenly stood on the edge of losing everything. A situation arose in my life that I couldn't control. That I had not been a good father to my children and I wasn't the husband that my wife deserved. I realized that I had always come first and that I was the focus of my life and I wasn't a believer in the Lord. I came here to North Way that day seeking help. It was the first time I had ever gone to any church without having to be dragged kicking and screaming. I used to hope that there wasn't a God because if there was I was in bad trouble. I left her that day thankful that there was a God and knowing that He was going to be my only hope. I began to participate in some of the ministries here at North Way like Generations and Alpha and the Drama Team. I left my old life in the dust and I knew that I was starting down the road to salvation. I knew that Christ was alive and I was excited about everything that I was discovering. My spirit was soaring because of that. I had come to the point where I had a deep desire to know all that I could about Jesus and yet I still wasn't ready to make a commitment to Him. My pride wouldn't allow it. Not yet anyway. Then all of a sudden the spiritual journey seemed to come to an abrupt end only after about three months after it started. I was growing weary of fighting internal battles that I seemed to be fighting on almost a continual basis. I was in a spiritual war the likes of which I had never known before. Those of you who have gone through this know what I mean and some of you may be going through it today. I had tremendous relief when I found out that these spiritual battles were really the enemy's attempt to hold on to me. I knew the Lord was truly in my life then as the enemy saw me slipping from his grasp and he was fighting desperately to hold on to me. I walked into North Way last year on Good Friday to watch the Easter performance. I came that night in the midst of fighting one of the worst spiritual battles yet. I was questioning why I was here and why I was even bothered to continue trying. I was confused as to why my spirit no longer seemed to soar. I was terrified that Jesus had turned his face from me. I was definitely losing ground to the enemy. When the performance started I remember relaxing and the battles subsiding. As the play unfolded I remember watching the Easter story and really seeing it for the first time and my heart was aching for Jesus. The crucifixion scene was a turning point in my life. That powerful portrayal of Jesus' torture and execution. When Jesus was dragged bleeding and broken onto this stage and the spikes were driven into his hands and feet, for the first time in my life I understood. He endured these things for me and for us. His sacrifice had made me a forgiven sinner. I could leave the guilt and the shame of my former self at the cross. And I realized that for the previous few months I'd been gladly accepting his gifts of forgiveness and love, grace and mercy and yet I still hadn't fully accepted him. Was I now taking his sacrifice for granted like I had everything else in my life? How could I know that Jesus died for me and not be willing to surrender my life to him? It was time for something about Jesus. I knew also that it was my pride that was still the enemy's toehold on my life and it was time to get rid of that permanently. He whispered my name like he had so many times before. This time I listened to him and I gave my life to Jesus Christ that night. My life has never been the same since. In closing, I want to thank you and your church, Pastor Jay. When I fell from that lofty perch that I built for myself, it was Jesus Christ and the persons of Pastor John and Pastor Jeff that were there to pick me up and dust me off. And even after all the times that I had denied the very existence of Jesus, he was still there for me. I now realize that Jesus was always there for me and that he would never turn his face from me. And I'd especially like to thank my wife, Judy. She kept me in her prayers for all those lonely years. Her love for me never wavered throughout her ordeal and her love for me is not unlike the unconditional love that Christ has for all of us. The love and the grace of the Lord flows through her to me. Thank you, Judy. Thank you. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Peter. You know, when somebody shares a story like that, there's so many details that are left out. But you heard enough to identify with Peter. He talked about receiving the gifts but not the person. That's some of you today. He talked about knowing that Christ died for him but not being willing to give himself to Christ. That's some of you today. What time is it for you? Is it a time of dissonance? Is it a time of destiny? Is it a time of deliverance? I want to close with this. The cross is for us a place where we can come and find deliverance, a place where God enacted the victory that he promised he would from the foundations of the earth. And, you see, the thing that many people misunderstand is, you know, well, I know about the cross, but let's get past that. That's just sort of the beginning point. Well, it is a beginning point, but it's also the point where you ensure your ongoing victory. Now, someone's got to be thinking, well, I thought on Easter we should focus on the resurrection. What's all this stuff about the cross? And the fact of the matter is this, friends. The cross is where God did the work. The resurrection was simply the Father putting his stamp of affirmation on the work that the Son did on the cross. It's like this. Just recently, if you watch basketball, the University of Connecticut beat Duke, and that was a sad day for a lot of Southern fans. They were expected to win, and they lost. Duke lost. And UConn got this great trophy for being the national basketball champs. Now, that trophy is a symbol of what God, well, not what God, but what UConn did in that basketball game. They won the game. It's this sign. It's the stamp that God says, yes, what my Son did is adequate for you wherever you are. And that's why Paul writes in Philippians 3.10, I want to do everything I can to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection by sharing in his sufferings. It's only through the cross that you come to know the power of his resurrection. And so the cross is available to you today. And I just listed five things. Just write them down and fill in the blanks. Number one, to restore your relationship to God. The cross works to restore your relationship to God. I've talked about that at length today. Also, it works to reconcile you to others. You see, the power of the cross is when you have been forgiven, you can forgive others. And all the things that you struggle with, at least there's a resource there for you to draw on, to find, to love others as Christ loved you. Next, it releases us from bondage. Colossians 2.15, the Bible talks about the fact that Jesus exposed the sham authority of the principalities and powers of the earth and paraded them in the streets of the unseen world as having been defeated by the power of the cross. Whatever your bondage is, and it might not just be a bondage or addiction to a substance or a habit. Friends, it might be bondage to old religious stuff that just gets on you and you can't move. Some of you are going to get up and walk out today and be exactly the same because you are so encrusted with religious stuff. You need to be free from it and receive grace today. Next, the Bible says that the cross demonstrates Christ's rule over affliction. By his stripes we are healed. There's healing today because Jesus bore those stripes on the cross. And finally, it reveals our purpose and fulfillment. The cross is the only way that we can find God's designed order and destiny. I know so many people that are just knocking themselves out to keep going in the corporate ladder of life. And you know what? There's nothing wrong in working hard. But if you're looking for fulfillment there, you're not going to find it. You can get a bigger house and a bigger car and a bigger position and a bigger staff and have a smaller heart if you just keep adding on the layers. You see, all God really is doing in Easter time is this. He is saying, I love you. I love you so very much. And it's so hard for us to hear that. And yet, our heart yearns to hear. I was with a couple doing some counseling not long ago and they had not been getting along at all. And it was a pretty serious situation. And after nearly an hour together, the man leaned over and he was somewhat frustrated. He didn't know what to say and he said, Honey, I just want you to know I love you. And there was this stillness. The air was thick. I was waiting for her response. And it was quiet just like it is right here now. What's the only appropriate response to I love you? When someone says that, what's the only words you're waiting to hear back? What, thanks? Hey, that's nice. Okay. I know it. No. Al