SUMMARY KEYWORDS

jesus, life, god, surrender, year, calling, give, lenten season, point, people, motivation,crowd, fan, niners, followers, celebrate, day, faith, dad, fickle.

SPEAKER

Phil EuBank

Hey, Good Morning, Menlo Church. I'm so glad that you are with us as we begin this Lenten season together, a special shout out to our Bay Area campuses in San Mateo, Menlo Park, Mountain View Saratoga. I believe that God wants to do something uniquely in us in this season to prepare for what's next. Now before we dive in too far, I want to acknowledge the elephant in the room. I am not wearing any gear right now. I am, I will say I am rooting for the team that is playing Taylor Swift's boyfriend's team, I am. So just to put it out there. A few weeks ago, we were playing the Lions and I accidentally wore blue and I heard about it. And so honestly, I was just a little scared about what I was going to wear today. And so I chose this and just asking for your grace in the midst of that.

So yep, anyway, if Lent is a new concept for you though, it really just means springtime. But the way Christians have celebrated springtime or the Lenten season for more than 1,500 years, is to think about and dedicate these 40 days leading up to the celebration of Easter with preparation, and it mirrors 40 in a bunch of different places throughout the scriptures. But one in particular is when Jesus fasted and prayed in the wilderness preparing for his ministry.

We celebrate the Lenten season as a way of preparing ourselves to celebrate Easter as well as really this kind of personal reflection opportunity about how our faith is doing this year. And sometimes without realizing it, the things that are most important in our life, they can just kind of slowly drift into a place that is not healthy for our growing connection with God. And so maybe you've never celebrated Lent, or it's always felt a little bit mystical to you. That's really what's at the core of why we celebrate. And before we get started on breaking, the more of that down, I'm gonna pray for us. And if you've

never been here before, or never heard me speak, I pray kneeling. And part of the reason that I do that is to humbly ask God, to open our eyes to open our ears so that we would see what God wants to show us, and hear the whisper that God has for each and every one of us in our time together. Would you pray with me?

God, thank you. Thank you for the fun things that we can get to experience. Even this side of eternity in the midst of so much heaviness in our world. We can still do that, we can celebrate with people who are experiencing and celebrating Lunar New Year this year, we can celebrate and reflect on what Black History Month is going to look like and our experience of it this year. God we can celebrate the Super Bowl. There are so many things in life that we want to not just experience we want to experience as followers of you. And so would you help us God as we think about and pursue what it means to follow you in unique ways during this Lenten season. God thank you for the time that we have together. It's in Jesus name, Amen.

So for you if you are new or newer to faith, this idea of Lent is tricky, right? If you've never fasted before during this window of time, it starts this upcoming Wednesday, and it goes through Easter. And it can be anything. It's not just food, some people they will take the Lenten season as sort of like a spiritual covering for your diet. “You're like I'm giving up carbs.” Like I would just say there's probably something more spiritually significant that you could fast from.

In general, letting God show you and me what would be on the list of some of the most difficult things to surrender, to give up over the course of those 40 days, and then asking God, “Hey, what is the specific thing that you want me to surrender in my life that would be most helpful “to give that devotion to God, where it's maybe gone somewhere else. And early on in our walk with God, maybe there are things that you know, you and I would say, hey, there's some really unhealthy habits in my life, sometimes things that the Bible calls sin. But over time as you follow Jesus, it can be that there's less and less than you would say, “Here's sin that I'm giving up.” Sometimes it's about giving up status. Sometimes it's about giving up success even. There are areas of surrender in your life that should change as you and I follow Jesus.

It's not that these things by the way that we're surrendering over these 40 days are bad. It's a tool that we can have with surrender in which we ask God to transform the desire that we have for that thing, for that act for, that thing that we enjoy into an appetite or a desire for God that we would have that grow. So in other words, if you give up tick-tock reels and instead you replace it over the next 40 days with Instagram reels, you have missed the point like that's not what we have in mind.

During our weekend series, we are actually going to journey with Jesus in His final week of earthly ministry before he would face the cross for you and me. Now, these are often stories or passages that if you spent time in church, they can feel very familiar at a surface level. So it can be easy to assume that God has nothing for us in them. And maybe for you, you're like, “okay, this is a time I can just kind of coast a little” and my encouragement to you is to let God show you something unique that you may have

missed in the past, something that God wants to highlight for you. Don't let your familiarity with these stories blind you to the fresh insights that God will have for you in our study together.

See great storytellers, they understand how to provide the right context level while communicating pace, intensity and detail. When the story is focal point comes into focus. Jesus’ public ministry spans three years, and it has been written down in four books that we call the gospels that expound on his life. Each gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are written by a different author with a different perspective to a different assumed audience. But even with all that being the case, the first two-thirds of the Gospel accounts that we have of Jesus life. His biographies are about the 32 years, and 51 weeks that are the first of Jesus life. The last third of the Gospel accounts cover the last week of Jesus’ public ministry. So it's worth slowing down for. The author is clearly saying there's something unique in this window of time. So we are slowing down.

We are slowing down over the course of the weeks of this series to study those specific passages, and what will often start with Matthew's account of Jesus life, we will jump around to the different biographers and the places where they write from the same stories but with different details to help us gain some unique insight.

Now, in just a few hours, we are all going to be Taylor, I mean 49ers fans like in just a few hours. Last year, 115 million Americans tuned in for the Super Bowl. This year, they're predicting that it will be the largest event on television ever. And if you are in a city where your team is in the Super Bowl, even if you weren't a fan last week, even if you want nothing to do with football you're like trying to find merch right. Like it's if you go to stores today they are sold out. Somebody walked up to me after the last service in an act of compassion, and handed me 49ers merch, because they were like you should have something which was very, very kind right?

Now, there are plenty of us that are new or newer, to 49ers fandom, like we're new to the area we're trying to figure it out. And the thing is, if you are a fan, especially an early on fan, it's easy to have your fandom falter early on if your team is struggling, because bandwagon fans are fickle. We all know this. If the experience of watching the team that you have become a fan of is not up into the right. If it's not uninterrupted success, then fickle fans aren't interested. We're like looking for what the snack options are. We're waiting for the commercial break, right? But even the closest followers of a team will falter and fail. Sometimes we say fans, that's not so great, but followers are incredible. Both need grace. And that's really good news for us. As a lifelong follower of the Cleveland Browns…. That was unnecessary.

Even I have had times where I've had to just turn off the TV. It's too painful, it's too discouraging. It's too disappointing. As easily as we can relate to that happening with our team or with something that we're really excited about when things aren't going well. It's true for way more than just what we are a fan of or what we're a follower of in sports. It's true of our whole life, and it's definitely true of our faith.

In our first week on our Path of Surrender, we see that this is true for Jesus too, that fans are fickle, but even followers fail. We are at the point of kind of a fever pitch of Jesus reputation that had never been higher than the moment we're about to read about what the crowds and it had never been lower with his critics than the passage we are about to read. Today's event is uncomfortable for us because it's a time when Jesus asks for obedience before understanding. See, this is very different from the process that I want God to use in my life. I want God to offer a debate or at least a discussion before he gives a decision for my life.

Especially if you're newer to faith, this might seem inconceivable to you, but Jesus does it a lot. It was actually a pretty normal part of his ministry. He knew that he was always sort of sifting out of this big group of people who was really in and who was just kind of around. And this was one way that he would filter that group of will you obey before you understand. And I think for some of us, if we were honest, we obey to the level of our understanding. The moment that what God is calling us to do in the pages of his scripture, or even sitting here, you feel like God's drawing you to something around the land or something in your life that you should be doing. If you don't have understanding. It's not actually God that you're worshiping and everything else surrenders to it, our understanding becomes the lid of our faith.

When we jump into Matthew's account of the story, it says this, “Now when they drew nearer to Jerusalem and came to Bethpage to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tide, and a colt with her, Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says to you, you shall say, The Lord needs them, and He will send them at once. This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your King is coming to you humble and mountain on a donkey on a colt, the full of a beast of burden.”

See, Jesus has been getting more and more direct with his closest followers early on in his ministry, Jesus would speak in metaphors and illustrations, parables, word pictures, to extend the amount of time before people really connected the dots to who he was and what he was doing. And now he was very openly and clearly saying, I am going to have to die. And then three days later, I'll come back from the grave. You know, what's tricky is, when you've spoken in parallels, parables, and illustrations, and metaphors for a while, I'm sure that plenty of his followers were like, “this is a weird metaphor that he keeps repeating.” But this one actually wasn't a metaphor. It would be the ultimate gift to humanity, that Jesus would offer payment for our sin and suffering, to restore our forever relationship with God. Their expectation of Jesus of their Messiah was way different than that.

See, the overwhelming expectation of the Jewish people. Those who are following Jesus and those who were not in the first century was that this Messiah would be a conquering king, would be a military hero. This idea of rescue would be that he would rescue them from Roman rule and then return Israel to its rightful place in the world. But Jesus, His view was different. His eyes were on the eternal kingdom that would be offered to all nations, not just Israel, and it wouldn't be about temporary military success, it would be about eternal, durable success. On the cusp of what's called the Passion Week, even Jesus’ disciples were likely wondering how and when Jesus would assume the throne that they were waiting for.

In the previous chapter, we see two disciples of Jesus, they have been walking with them every day for three years. And they said to Jesus, hey, can we sit, like when you're in your kingdom, can we do some reserved seating and be like next to you? Is that okay? They still don't get it. But here's the great news. Even though they didn't fully understand they still obeyed. Even though they didn't understand God still use them.

Evangelist and author, devotional writer Oswald Chambers, he phrases, this tension of our faithful obedience this way, he says, “Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the one who is leading.” I think for many of us, if you've been following Jesus for a while, there is a point at which pretty early in your walk with Jesus, where you think to yourself, I don't see how all these dots connect, I see what God's calling me to do in this relationship. I see what God's calling me to do at work. I see what God's calling me to do in this area of my life, but I don't see how God will ultimately bring it to what I ultimately want. And at some point in surrender, we have to say God, even though I don't see it, I trust that you do.

See, it's not blind faith, because we have seen God at points in our life. And hopefully, as our faith grows, even when we don't see all of the picture, we don't see every step along the way. We trust that God does. We trust that beyond my comprehension, beyond your understanding, we can still obey.

So as disciples, they were hearing these instructions from Jesus as though they were preparing for Jesus to take over this throne that they were waiting for. But Jesus was doing something that Matthew calls out for us. See Matthew, who was a tax collector, but Jewish by descent. He was Jewish by blood. He is very intentional. He's assuming that Jewish people are reading his biography of Jesus’ life. And he calls out all these areas where Jesus is fulfilling Messianic prophecies, these future promises and predictions. More than 300 of them in the Hebrew Scriptures are what we call the Old Testament. And while any one of these prophecies might have felt like coincidences… fulfilling all 300 of them that points to this incredible love and Providence of God for people.

So Matthew, he wanted to show the powerful connection, as he prepared his gospel for Jewish readers, the thing that you've been anticipating the thing you learned your entire life, what has been getting taught from generation to generation from generation to generation, from the very first pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus fulfilled it.

See the promise of the Messiah entering in like a conquering hero, but not any kind of conquering hero they'd seen before was not new. In this case, in this case, he would come in instead of a large conquering animal, he would come in on a donkey, small and unimpressive. It was just one more way that God was showing the upside down nature

of the kingdom of heaven, that what is impressive to the world, is not always the way that God chooses to work. It was also a way that Jesus was calling his disciples to obey before they understood, Jesus was actually tapping into something that psychologists have pointed out for how we all make decisions, you maybe you've never heard these words put this way. But there is a concept called systemic processing, which is the scrutiny and comparison of information that all of us use every day. Where we have sort of detailed decisions that we need to make. And we have frameworks and ways we think about it and process information and manage risk. But there is also another way we make decisions. And that's called heuristic processing. And that one is when we use cues like an authority figure, we trust, to make decisions without all of the information and we all do this, too.

Now, don't get me wrong. This has certainly been used to manipulate and do harm to people. But Jesus was using it to train his followers to listen and obey. When he wouldn't be physically with them anymore. He was preparing them for a future reality. He knew the plan, even if they didn't, and he wanted them to trust it. For even when he wasn't around anymore. That's hard, right? We all have different times in our life, where that is an obstacle for us some big some small. If you've been around Menlo for a little while, you know that I grew up in a very difficult home life. And I had an abusive father. And my relationship with him was really messy for a really long time.

This last week actually marks five years since my dad passed away. And our relationship really shifted quite dramatically when I was 16 years old. Before that, I had hated my dad, for lots of reasons, lots of reasons that you would probably agree with. But I woke up one morning, and I just sensed God's love for my dad. And while, it had been very difficult for me to experience that to or to share that. And I had boundaries in our relationship, and it had changed a lot since I was younger, it was still really difficult to feel that love that God had for my dad. And that day, for whatever reason, God just gave me this sense of love for my dad, just like Jesus did. And so I remember I went downstairs at 16. And I found my dad reading the paper at the kitchen table in his underwear. And I said, Dad, I love you.

And my dad looked up at me and at that point had exclusively referred to me as boy. And he stood up, he said, thank you, and He hugged me. And it didn't fix everything. But it changed a bunch of stuff. My dad wouldn't tell me that he loved me until I was in my 20s for the first time. But I watched God begin to melt my dad's heart pver the course of years. My dad would eventually near the end of his life become a Christian. And while the pain of my childhood still required and requires care and counseling, seeing my dad change was a huge part of my healing of being able to see that sometimes God calls me to obedience, before understanding.

And your story may not have quite so happy and ending your story might feel different than that. But I just wonder what was the last thing you obeyed without understanding? Can you think of it? Can you think of the last time at work or with your family or with your finances? Or in your faith? Or can you think of like a key area in your life where you go, “you know what? Yeah, there was an area I didn't totally get it. God didn't give

me all the details of it. But I could see pretty clearly what obedience looked like. And I took a step towards obedience, even though understanding wasn't there,” because I'm telling you if you can't, it may not be God that you're worshiping with your understanding, but you're understanding that you're worshiping with your God.

And I think it's worth taking a step back and saying, God, where are the areas of my life? Because if we really do worship an infinite God, he is going to call you to obedience in areas that you and I don't understand, because our understanding is finite. And his isn't.

Maybe you have someone that God is calling you to love, or a step of generosity that you don't totally understand even how it's going to work. Maybe a step in your career that doesn't make sense for what your resume holds to this point. I would just say seek counsel pray about it. But don't wait until you fully understand before you obey, because oftentimes, that means you will never obey.

I think that for so many of us part of this path of surrender, is surrendering our illusion of control. And understanding that sometimes, sometimes it gets in the way of what we know clear obedience looks like when we have to understand everything first.

The good news is that even though his disciples failed to understand and they did like they did this stuff, without having all the details, they still obey, they still took steps towards what God was calling them to do. In your path of surrender, what about you? Are you a fan or a follower of Jesus? One isn't perfect or blameless, actually both need grace, that's really good to know some, some of us we've been excusing ourselves, and we go, I'm really, really committed. But remember, fans, they might be fickle, but even followers fail. And so maybe for you this year, Lent is a reminder where some things about your faith have gotten off track, you've been a little bit out of calibration in your journey with Jesus. And so without realizing it over the last 12 months, it's just drifted and drifted and drifted and drifted and drifted. And so Lint is the time where God is going to call you back gonna recalibrate your heart and devotion to be able to have a deeper walk with him than you have before.

The second scene that we're going to look at in our time together is when Jesus uses the wrong motivation for the right direction. And I'm so glad that he does. Don't get me wrong, God wants us to have the right motivation. But he will even use the wrong motivation to move us in the right direction. That's exactly what we see, in our passage.

As a parent with young kids, this is easy to spot almost every day. See whether or not somebody wants to do the work, even when a motivation is wrong. If that was the barrier, we would be stuck all the time, like I don't want to is a pretty common theme for kids, right? We want to use these moments as lessons, but we also still need to function as a family for our good even when we don't want to do it. Even when we don't want to show up that way, even when we want to do quick fixes as parents, even when our kids just don't want to get in trouble. Sometimes it takes steps even beyond what we want to do.

But what about something that we all use? For a minute I want to talk about the internet. And I do I just want to say quickly, it was very kind of Al Gore to invent it for us, like super kind. But do you know what the original reason for the Internet was? Some of you were like, Yeah, I helped make it Phil. That's impressive. Many of you are like, helping pioneer what's next. But during the Cold War, the Defense Department developed the technology that we use for the Internet to communicate through a nulcear exchange, where it's switching sites, the locations that were connected, could be destroyed. And it didn't need to depend on central control. But it could still work like that. That was a core reason why the internet was developed in the first place. Now this motivation is what originally eventually led to what we use all the time. It's what has made the world for better or worse, so much smaller every single day.

Imagine if we said we couldn't use the internet because of its original motivation.

Now thankfully, Jesus can use a plethora of motivations, and still direct our lives even when it isn't the way we would have done it even if it isn't the way that we would have wanted it done. And the next scene it shows us this exact idea. It says “The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put them on their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them out on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting Hosanna to the Son of David bless it is he who comes in the name of the Lord Hosanna in the highest! And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and saying, Who is this? And the crowd said this is the Prophet Jesus from Nazareth, Nazareth of Galilee.”

Luke, who's a biographer who write a gospel account of Jesus’ life, he took a whole bunch of eyewitness accounts and so his account, his biography of Jesus, life is way more detailed. And in his account, he gives us the answer to the question we're wondering, did the disciples have to give the reason that Jesus equipped them with to get the donkey? And the answer is yeah, they did. And actually, the reason was to fulfill this prophecy made about Jesus from hundreds of years before he lived, that we find in Zechariah.

Now we see a version of a crowd that would welcome back a conquering hero. That's what we see, in what's called the triumphal entry of Jesus. But the thing is, it was like comically paralleled. Jesus is an ordinary looking Middle Eastern man in the first century. He's writing on a small unimpressive animal, with common clothing, and branches that will be laid on the ground as a sign of honor.

If you grew up with Palm Sunday, as a part of your church experience, this is what it was talking about. It's very popular in our day to talk about the difference between Instagram and real life, right? We have Instagram vision of what a moment like this is, especially if you grew up in church, and Jesus looks amazing, he’s got product and his hair. Like it's colorful, there's just not a dirty thing around him, everything's great. But the real life of what we see here is gritty. The real life of what we see here is hot, and stinky and chaotic, and people are there with the wrong motivation. And he uses it. Anyway.

Matthew, he leaves us wondering why this crowd of people are shouting Hosanna, which probably by this time, they just meant, praise God, but the original word Hosanna in Hebrew, the language that it was originally written in means “the God who saves.” Which is ironic, because it's actually what Jesus was there to do. They would have thought, well, he's here to save the day. And Jesus like, no, no, I'm here to save you for every day, I'm here to save you forever. That was the vision that Jesus was coming to even if they didn't fully understand it.

Well, John, who wrote a biography of Jesus’ life that emphasizes his supernatural acts and power, and it assumes a way wider audience that doesn't understand all of the Hebrew Scriptures. He tells us that this group of people, this crowd, the reason they're there, the reason that they're waiting for Jesus in Jerusalem, is because Jesus had just brought his friend Lazarus back from the dead. And it wasn't like Lazarus was sick, and Jesus kind of like, brought some really good medicine. Jesus arrived at his friend Lazarus his house, four days after he died. He was in a tomb, the tomb was covered, and Jesus asks them to remove the covering of the tomb, which would have been like you showing up a week after your friend's funeral and asking them dig up the grave. It was disrespectful. It was something that would have made them ceremonially unclean. Nobody would have ever asked to do this, but they did it for Jesus. And then to add insult to injury, Jesus commands his dead friend Lazarus, to get up and come out. And I'm sure as long as they were standing there, that moment felt very heavy. Lazarus’ family now feeling frustrated, and maybe even more disappointed in Jesus than they had before tears streaming down their face frustrated and angry until….

They wondered if they saw a shadow, until they wondered if they saw a figure. And sure enough, they did. They saw Lazarus coming out still in his burial shroud, pulling off what was likely covering his face at the time, and no one had ever seen that before. And it showed in just a one little moment, one little manifestation, the kind of power that God would have to raise someone from the dead.

See Jesus, he used this final miracle to show people the kind of power that God could deliver through him. But unlike Lazarus, who was raised to life, but to die again, Jesus would be raised to life on Easter, the Resurrection, and he would never die again. The crowd just didn't know yet. The dots would get connected later.

Sometimes our path of surrender, it means that we acknowledge just how little of the plan we know just how wrong our motivations might be. And yet we still take steps towards obedience to God in our lives, even when we don't fully comprehend, even when our motivations are mixed. The question of motivation is deeply personal for some of us, right? You're here at church or you're watching online, out of duty or out of guilt or out of a deep desire to see the 49ers when right? But I have really good news for you. If Jesus were to speak to you directly, I think he might say, “I care why you're here. But I care more that you're here.”

So much of what it means to walk with Jesus is to continue to take steps, even when our heart doesn't feel perfectly aligned to it even when we don't fully understand it.

Whether you call yourself a fan or a follower or likely a mixture of both. Jesus just wants to spend time with you. Imagine with me for just a second, maybe even close your eyes, that you are in the crowd as Jesus is entering Jerusalem. It's bustling with excitement and anticipation. You see Jesus a humble man riding on a donkey, a symbol of peace rather than a majestic horse of war. The streets are alive with a diverse crowd people from all walks of life gathered to witness this moment. They lay their cloaks and branches from the trees on the ground creating a first century red carpet. The ancient walls and buildings of the city are bathed in the sun's warm glow, casting long shadows the dance on the ground at midday.

You came with all the wrong motives. But for a moment your eyes meet the eyes of this first-century Jewish carpenter who sees you with equal parts compassion, and conviction. The feeling in that moment of safety and surrender is exactly what Jesus still longs for you today. You can open your eyes.

So today, as you see fans or failing followers, during the Super Bowl, remember that God meets both kinds of people as we choose to surrender and obedience to him.

Maybe Lent is a really big step for you, using the next few weeks to join us in this devotional study that starts on Wednesday, get help at Info Central, if you need it to get onto that, maybe that's brand new. Maybe giving up something to focus your attention on the sacrifice that Jesus made for you would feel totally foreign, to the way that you've thought about this every year. But maybe that's exactly what God wants for you.

God doesn't want you to delete that app, stop buying on Amazon, change that routine, because he gets something out of your sacrifice. God wants someone. He wants you, you are who he gets from that sacrifice.

Lent has historically been a season when attention is redirected to God. And in our day, it's even more important than ever.

What if, what if you were directing your attention over these next seven weeks in a way that you didn't feel like you were giving something up? But you gained an awareness of what God truly wanted for you for the rest of your life? Would that be worth the next 40 days? I think that's exactly what hangs in the balance of our act of surrender, that it could be what's at stake for you and me this year, in this day. Let's pray that God would do that for each and every one of us today. Would you pray with me?

God we anticipate so much in our lives, but sometimes we can have a shockingly low expectation of what you can do. And so over these next 40 days, I pray that you would increase our expectation of, of what you can do if we will direct our attention to you; of how you can change our focus, of how you can change our desires, of how you can change our lives, if we will simply say “God, there are good things in my life that I've made ultimate, and the ultimate one in my life you, I have made just good.” Would you

help us to undo that? That exchange even just even just give us a vision of what obedience looks like there? Thanks God that you can use us as fans or followers. Thanks that grace is poured out to each. Thanks that God you call us to obedience even when we don't understand that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you that even when our motivations aren't pure, even when things are messy under the surface for us, God you can still use us and use this time. I pray that you would. It's in Jesus name. Amen.