Part 2: The Plot

Let's talk about connecting the dots. Do you remember dot-to-dot pictures? Like when you were little, maybe you might have tried these; you connect the dots and the dots work together to create a picture. Now, what do you imagine that this dot-to-dot picture might be portraying? I'm pretty sure it's a dolphin, right? Well, sometimes to me, dot-to-dots are what it feels like trying to figure out God's purpose behind all sorts of seemingly random things that happen to you. The dots are our individual experiences, often painful experiences. It could be anything. Maybe your parents got divorced, or you lost a good job, and then you had to move, or a loved one died. It could be anything. But we look at these dots in our lives and we try to figure out how could God bring any kind of a cohesive purpose out of all of this suffering.

And sometimes it could be very tough to try to connect the dots. You tried different ways, but you just can't see the big picture of how God could do something great in all these seemingly random dots in your life. There are times when God is not making any sense. There are times you feel like, why is all this happening? What is God doing here? What's the big picture? Do you ever feel like that? Well, that is what the people in today's Bible story felt like in spades. If you have ever tried to make sense of these seemingly random things in your life that you're pretty confident God is working through, but you just can't see how, you're really going to relate to this story.

So grab the message notes that look like this. You can also download them if you're watching online as we continue our series, "Light in the Darkness, the Journey to the Cross in the Gospel of Mark." My name is Radea. I'm one of the pastors here. I want to welcome you to church. Whether you're joining us here live, watching over in venue, joining us on Facebook live—more people joining us on Facebook live every single week—or maybe watching on cable, it is so great to have you here. We are doing this series for the 40 days of Lent. Those are the 40 days leading up to Easter to try to see with fresh eyes these dramatic but maybe overly familiar events leading up to the crucifixion of Christ.

Today, the plot. Do you ever ask yourself how did Jesus go from Palm Sunday, crowds of people adoring him, to being killed in less than one week? How is that even possible? How do you connect those dots? It does not seem like it makes any sense. It seems like a catastrophic tragedy unless you know the plot. Not the plot against Jesus, but the plot of Jesus to make all that happen. This morning I want to look at how something that seemed totally senseless at the time was actually part of the plot that Jesus was hatching. And I want to show you how he was connecting dots that went back thousands of years and went into the future thousands of years. How it really did make sense even though it seemed senseless at the time. And then I want to apply this to our own lives.

We are going to look at one of the most famous episodes in the life of Jesus Christ. Every kindergartner in church knows this story. Yet this is one of the, if not the most, least understood story in the entire Bible. Because to really understand the verses that we're gonna look at today, you need to connect some dots. You need to look at the whole broader historical context. Now, if history makes you roll your eyes in your head and go, "Oh, history, that's always boring," get ready for this because we're gonna do some high-powered jet speed turbo charge history for five minutes. I'm just gonna download it to you, just fire hose level strength, and then we're gonna really dig deep into today's passage and then apply it to our own lives. So are you ready for this? Do you feel totally focused on this? Are your seat belts fastened? Okay, here we go.

It all begins 200 years before Jesus Christ was born. The Syrians rule Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jewish people. And they, for some reason, decide to turn the temple into an altar to the pagan god Zeus. They go into the Holy of Holies and they slaughter pigs on the altar. They force Jews to eat pork. They make keeping the Sabbath illegal. They are trying to eliminate the Jewish faith from earth. They try to oppress the Jews in so many ways. And then finally, a great Jewish hero arises. Judas Maccabeus, and he rides in with his brothers down from Galilee in the north and he liberates Jerusalem and he rededicates the temple. He cleanses it. He drives out the foreign oppressors, and the people are so excited they wave palm branches and they shout, "Hosanna," and this is commemorated to this day in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Happened 200 years before Christ. So Judas Maccabeus is a great hero. And then his family, the Hasmoneans, start a dynasty.

Now there were highs and there were lows in this dynastic reign for the next several decades. But I want to give you just a few of the highlights or lowlights. Don't worry about all these names. I'm gonna tell you just let the whole story roll over you, all right? Judas Maccabeus' brother Jonathan is named High Priest, but he is betrayed and assassinated. So his brother Simon is then named High Priest. Sadly, he is also betrayed and assassinated. So his nephew Aristobulus is the new High Priest. By now, everybody in the dynasty is paranoid about being betrayed. So to keep from being betrayed, he acts quickly and kills his own mother, imprisons or kills four of his brothers. Just keeps kind of the one cool brother around, right? So is he safe? No. He is overthrown by that brother that he left alive. Then one of the next High Priests, Alexander, kills 6,000 of his own people because he just suspects them of treason. Then 50,000 more die in a civil war. Then his son Hyrcanus takes over, but he is soon overthrown by his brother and exiled. But then he comes back from exile, kicks his brother out. But then he is physically maimed by his own nephew. Oh, forgot about the nephews, just was taking care of the brothers there. But his nephew steps up, maims him, and Hyrcanus II is exiled again.

Now that nephew, Antigonus Mattathias, becomes the new High Priest until he is executed by the Romans, who are the new bad guys in town, leaving only his niece, Maryamne, as the sole adult heir to the family dynasty still alive there in Jerusalem. An ambitious social climber who wants to get into the royal lineage marries her; you might recognize his name, Herod. Here's where we start getting into Bible times. And then she is killed by her own husband Herod along with their sons because he's trying to get rid of any relatives of the Hasmonean dynasty who could challenge him for the throne. And then Herod remembers Hyrcanus II. Remember him? That twice exiled guy who had been maimed by his nephew? Well, he is invited by Herod out of exile to be Herod's guest at a state dinner. And you just kind of want to shout down through history, "Don't do it! Don't go!" Just like a word of advice, if Herod ever invites you over, if Herod ever says to you, "I'd like to have you for dinner," don't accept the invitation because Hyrcanus II is executed by Herod at the state dinner. You don't want no more details than that.

But after Herod dies, eventually a Roman Pontius Pilate is appointed by Caesar to govern Judea. Just one example of his sort of laid-back administrative style. At one point he orders soldiers to beat and kill random Jews who were standing in the town square just to protest taxes. He's like, "Come and protest!" His soldiers are dressed in plain clothes under robes. They're hiding their swords. And when they start to protest, he gives a little cue to his soldiers and they just slaughter everybody who came to protest. So do you see the picture I'm painting? This is the stew that history has been brewing for Jesus. This is like Shakespearean level intrigue, all these assassinations and counter-assassinations and skullduggery and all these nefarious plots going around.

Now you might be asking, "Why did they all want us—this is all centered on one square block in Jerusalem, the Temple." Now it was focused on the Temple because this was the seat of power in Jerusalem; much more powerful than a king was the role of high priest. Now you might be asking, "René, why would anybody want to go to Jerusalem in those days?" Because there's always like the War of the Roses going on, all these political assassinations. But millions of people came to Jerusalem every year for the Jewish festivals. Wouldn't they want to stay away from their own safety? Listen, they loved their country. They loved their faith. They just didn't like their leadership. I probably shouldn't ask this, but have you ever been at some point in your life, whether you're a Republican or Democrat, at some point have you ever loved your country but not really loved the leadership? Right? We can all relate to that. That's the way these people felt. Man, they loved their country. They were super patriotic, but they were really ready for a change in their leadership because you just heard what the last several decades for them had been like. They wanted the Romans out. They wanted the Temple administration out.

So much so that in the years right before Jesus shows up on the scene, some Jewish people flee to the desert south of Jerusalem and start kind of a protest movement. Now this was in the days before the printing press, so they couldn't print pamphlets, but they had scroll factories, rows of people producing scrolls to distribute all throughout the nation. How do we know? Well, one day they hid some of those scrolls in caves when the bad guys came looking for them, and in the dry desert air, they were preserved for 2,000 years. And in the 20th century, those scrolls were rediscovered, now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact, another one was just discovered last week. I don't know if you saw that in the news. What were the Dead Sea Scrolls? They were copies of the Hebrew Scriptures with prophecies about the Messiah, a man that God would send to restore Israel. And these prophecies became wildly popular to the point where expectations were at a fever pitch in Jesus's day. I mean, remember Harry Potter mania? Everybody was reading these books. That was kind of like how it was with this. Everybody knew the prophecies because among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there were commentaries on the Old Testament scripture, and they all emphasized all of the messianic prophecies that were in these scriptures. So they expected the Messiah to show up any day now.

This was the psychological climate in Jerusalem the day Jesus rides into town. The people are so stoked, especially because there's these new foreign oppressors in town, the Romans. And the people are thinking just like Judas Maccabeus kicked out the Syrians 200 years ago, bicentennial fever, the new Messiah is gonna kick the Romans out. And all this sets the stage for what happens in today's verses. Mark 11, starting in verse 1. We're gonna work our way through the verses with the help of the questions there in your notes. You don't have to write down the answers if you're not a note-taker, but the details are so important that I don't want you to miss them because they will help you begin to connect the dots and see Jesus's plot. Alright, we're gonna get inside Jesus's head once we know these details. Watch this.

It says, "As they approached Jerusalem and came to Beth Fage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives." Hit pause. Where is that? "Well, the Mount of Olives and these two villages were to the east of the temple." Jesus specifically chose to enter the temple complex through the tiny Eastern Gate. Why? Why enter from the east and not the much larger and more popular southern steps? Well, remember those prophecies that were becoming so popular. One of them predicts how the Messiah will arrive. In Ezekiel 43:2 and 4, "I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the," where? "The east. The glory of the Lord entered the temple through the gate facing," what? "East." So why enter from the east? A prophecy about the Messiah that he would enter that way? And Jesus knows they know that prophecy. He's beginning to stoke up the crowd here.

Verse 2, "He sends two disciples ahead of him," now watch this, "saying to them, 'Go to the village ahead of you and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied up there with which nobody has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.' And if anybody asks you, 'Why are you doing this?' say, 'Well, the Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.' They went and found a colt outside in the street tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, 'What are you doing untying that colt?' They answered just as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it." Okay, what is all this about a colt? It is mentioned specifically four times. Why a colt? Again, very deliberate move by Jesus. Goes back to those Bible scrolls again that everybody was reading. Zechariah 9:9 says, "Here's how the Messiah is going to enter." Watch this, "Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout, daughter Jerusalem. See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious." Watch this, "lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, exactly as Jesus did." So why a colt? Another prophecy about the Messiah. Again, Jesus knows, the people know these prophecies. They're getting excited. They've been watching him for three years. Nobody's ever seen a leader like him. So charismatic. He speaks with such authority. He sure would make a great Messiah. And Jesus is saying, "Watch this. I'm fulfilling all of these prophecies." You think the people are gonna get pumped up? Watch this.

Verse 8, "Many people spread their cloaks on the road." And this was like spreading the red carpet at the Oscars or something. "While others spread branches that they had cut in the fields." Okay, let's examine this to help you connect the dots and paint the picture. Many people. How many people is many? Because in the movies, it's like 10 extras, right? Historically speaking, this was probably over 1 million people in this crowd. How do we know that? Well, the Bible says elsewhere these people were the out-of-towners who would come in for the Passover feast. The ancient writer Josephus, who lived there in the first century, says based on the temple census, over a million people came in for this pilgrimage every single year for Passover, sometimes up to two and a half million. Now, our mall in Washington, DC, can hold a million people at capacity. So this is something like the crowd that is welcoming Jesus into town. A little different than all those low-budget Jesus movies with 12 extras, right? And it says they spread branches. John gives more detail, says they were palm branches. Why palm branches? Well, if you look at any coin minted in Judea during the first century, almost any coin, you will see a palm on one side of the coin. The palm was their version of like our American Eagle or the Stars and Stripes. The palm was the national symbol of Israel. So the picture here is like this. The people are waving the Israeli national flag at a gigantic parade. And what are they shouting? Next verse, verse 9. "Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, 'Hosanna.'" What does the word Hosanna mean? I lived my whole life, grew up in church, and nobody ever explained this one to me. Well, it's a Hebrew word that basically means save us now. Save now, Lord, save us now. So are you beginning to connect the dots? Are you starting to see the people? Are you feeling this? A million people waving their flags, chanting at Jesus, "Save now, save now, save now." It's Messiah-mania. And look at the rest of what they were saying. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." What is the crowd shouting? I used to think it was just like random verbiage. No, they are quoting verses from Psalm 118, which scholars like D.A. Carson say had become the unofficial national anthem of Israel by the first century associated with the triumph of Judas Maccabeus. They're singing their national anthem. These people are what somebody called a GPC, a giant patriotic crowd. And giant patriotic crowds have their own personalities. The giant patriotic crowd, they are ready to rumble. Jesus just give us the word. They are self-consciously repeating the scene from 200 years before when Judas Maccabeus rode into town, kicked out the foreigners, and rededicated the temple. And they're thinking it's going to happen again. Jesus is gonna go to the temple. The Romans are going down.

And then what does Jesus actually do? Page two of your notes. He does something so unexpected that it outrages them all. Jesus goes straight into Jerusalem. He looks around, comes back the next morning. So you can imagine the suspense is mounting. Verse 15, "On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and," watch this, "and began driving out the Romans and other foreign oppressors and he cleansed the temple of the unreligious people." Wait, is that what the Bible says he did? No, but that's exactly what the people were expecting that he'd do. This was their expectation. This was the next dot in the picture that they knew he must be drawing. Instead, here's what actually happened. "On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. And Jesus wouldn't allow anybody to carry merchandise through the temple courts. He said, 'Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for,' what? 'All nations. But you have made it into a den of robbers.'" Now sometimes we make Jesus into all such a bland figure. He's like Mr. Rogers in a robe, you know what I mean? Like he's so harmless. Definitely not Mr. Jesus Rogers of Nazareth here, right? What's he doing?

To really get what he's doing here, you have to know something about the temple complex. So let me show you what it looked like in those days. There's the main temple there in the middle. Overlooking the whole plaza was a Roman fortress. And Roman guards were always patrolling, keeping an eye out for any potential trouble, right? And on the sides of the main temple, the two biggest courts were called the courts of the Gentiles. And remember a Gentile is anybody who is not a Jewish person, and the Romans, the Greeks, the Africans, they were Gentiles. And these courts were supposed to be giant welcome mats where all the non-Jewish people could come and worship God, together with the Jewish people on the temple mount. But these courtyards had become filled wall to wall with vendors selling merchandise to people visiting the temple. They were meant to be a beautiful, peaceful, serene place of worship, and instead had turned into a flea market. And what kind of flea market? People selling animals to sacrifice at the temple. So it's not just a flea market, it's a noisy, smelly, chaotic flea market. The Gentiles are being crowded out of the court of the Gentiles. And Jesus is furious. He goes through this huge space, clearing it out, kicking out all the merchants. Why? Why overturn the tables? Well, because they were a barrier to God for the Gentiles. And Jesus was all about removing barriers to God for anybody, Jew, Gentile, anybody. Zeal for this consumed him. He said, "This is why the Son of Man came," right? In Luke 15, he tells three parables in a row to say, "I'm here to seek the lost: Son, the lost coin, the lost sheep. I'm here to seek the lost. I'm here to bring the outsiders in." So instead of kicking Gentiles out, he's making room for more Gentiles.

Now how do you think the giant patriotic crowd feels about that? Not too good. How do you think, having learned a little bit of their political history, the chief priests felt about that? Well, you see it in the next verse. "The chief priests and teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him." And you understand this a little bit having learned some of their history, right? They wanted to protect their power at all costs. And you see this kind of thing happening in every culture. So final question, really the underlying question of this whole story is why antagonize so many people? Why did Jesus, when he had the crowd in the palm of his hands, pun intended, as he was riding into Jerusalem, they would have done anything for him. So why did he deliberately take everybody off like this? Does Jesus Christ have like the worst political instincts in the history of human politics? Or is he just connecting the dots a different way?

Well, from Jesus's perspective, here's his plot, much more on this next weekend. But all those people, those million people, were traveling into town that week. Why? For Passover, for the Seder, the annual feast remembering how the children of Israel were set free from Egyptian slavery by the blood of the Passover lamb. Well, Jesus sees himself as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world as the ultimate Passover lamb. He intends to be sacrificed in Jerusalem at the same time that all the Passover lambs are being sacrificed. Now, to be crucified on Passover is going to take some doing. Because nobody wants to have executions on Passover. And the only people who can cause executions legally there in Jerusalem are the Romans anyway. So to make this happen, he has to get three groups to violently oppose him: the common people, and the chief priests, and the Romans. The problem is each of these groups is very, very suspicious of the other two. But he had to get them all to agree Jesus has got to go, and he's got to go now. How can he make them all feel that way? Well, where's the overlap in this Venn diagram? Overturning the tables in the temple. Because the common people got very upset, "Hey, that's our temple that we love!" The chief priests got upset, "Hey, that's our authority you're undermining." And the Romans looked down from their fortress and saw somebody claiming to be king, causing a riot. There's only one king to them, Caesar, so check, check, check. Jesus successfully alarmed all three groups brilliantly.

Okay, but why? Why would he choose to do the one thing that would alarm them all and galvanize and unify their opposition? Because from Jesus's perspective, he had to die that week at Passover, saying, "Yes, I am the prophesied Messiah." But in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine. What a story. And as we see what happened next in the coming weeks, as we continue in the Gospel of Mark leading up to Easter, the tension is just gonna keep ratcheting up. But for today, let's just stop right here and let's think about three faith lessons from this story. That was a lot of info, so just take a deep breath. And what does this mean for you and me today? Jot these down.

Number one, God's agenda is not always my agenda, right? God's agenda is just not always my agenda. The people's agenda was a political revolution. Jesus's agenda was a spiritual revolution. See, every human revolution has a flaw, and it's this. The new people have the same old human nature, right? As you saw in the brief look at the Hasmonean dynasty, the new people get into power and it turns out eventually they've got the same exact flaws as the old people. This is why Jesus is the only true revolutionary king, because he gives us liberation from the sin that poisons all of our best endeavors. Watch Jot this down. Somebody said, "We come to God with our felt needs, but Jesus goes to our root needs," right? Their felt need. That, I mean, it was a real need. Was liberation from the oppressive Romans, but Jesus knew their real root need was liberation from themselves.

I love this quote from Tim Keller, who we quote a lot around here, but this is a good one. "God always gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he does. If you learn this, you'll live a contented, non-anxious life. If you don't, you won't." That's good, isn't it? God's agenda isn't always our agenda. Now, to be fair, I think most of us come to Jesus first with our own agendas, right? That's how we first begin a relationship with God. We've got some problem that we need help with, and that's normal, but at some point as your relationship with Jesus deepens, you begin to realize it's not about you hiring Jesus as a life coach to solve your problems. It's about you bowing before Jesus as Lord, as King, and saying only you know what's best. Your agenda, not my agenda, and your way, not my way, and that leads to point two.

God's methods are not always my methods. Not only is his agenda different, but his ways of accomplishing that agenda are totally different than my agenda. I mean really different. Watch this, track with me here. Last weekend we saw how back in Mark 8 it says Jesus began to teach his disciples that he would have to be killed. That's a pretty weird way of accomplishing your agenda. In order for me to accomplish my agenda, I'm gonna have to die. And one of his disciples, Peter, says, "No, I rebuke that kind of thinking. We need you to stay alive, Jesus." But verse 33, "When Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan.' He said, 'You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.'" This week I've asked myself often, "How many times could Jesus say that last phrase to me? René, you don't have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns." Human concerns, like comfort. I love comfort. Pleasure. I love to have fun. The comfort and fun, even though there's nothing wrong with comfort and fun, but it's just that God's concerns go way, way beyond my comfort and fun. His ultimate agenda for me is that he wants to shape me and shape you into Christ-likeness. And his methods for getting there are a lot different than my preferred methods for getting there. He uses inconvenience to teach me patience. He uses pain to teach me about trust. He uses difficulty to teach me about faith. In fact, have you ever grown through a tough time in your life that you wish wouldn't have happened to you, but you definitely grew through it? Can I see a show of hands if you've ever grown through a tough time in your life? Don't you kind of hate to admit that, right? At the time, it's confusing, but his methods are not always my methods.

And finally, we see in this story that God's timing is not always my timing, right? Have you discovered this yet? Very important lesson. I gotta be honest with you, so many times I think I worship Jesus exactly like these people in this story. "Hosanna, Jesus! You're great! Now! Save me now! Save me now! Save me now!" And I know exactly what it is that you're supposed to do. See those Romans, go and get them, see that problem, go and get it, and do it right now. And when Jesus does something else on some other timetable, I get frustrated and I get mad, just like the people in this story do. Important lesson. Never judge God's love for you by your own clock. Never assume God doesn't love you because he seems to be delaying. He's got a timetable; it's just not your timetable. So look at these three points. These are just facts about life. So if God gives you what seems to you to be plan B instead of plan A, the wisest thing to do is not to keep going, "Why didn't I get plan A? Why didn't I get my plan A? Why didn't I get plan A?" The wisest thing to do? Roll with plan B because that's what you got, even if plan B involves a cross.

Watching the Winter Olympics this week, two of the US team figure skating bronze medalists were a married couple, Alexa and Chris Canirham, and it's a miracle that Alexa is even alive, let alone skating. In 2016, she got a mysterious abdominal pain. She had one major surgery, two major surgeries, three major surgeries. The doctors were stumped. For ten months over 2016 to 2017, she could barely walk, let alone train. At one point, her very life was in danger, and here she is hoping to go to the Olympics. Well, she and her husband are Christians. I didn't know this until Friday when I read an interview with her, and she says in this interview she had to choose to believe that God was working through it all even though it made no sense to her. She said this, look at these great quotes, "I lost a lot of faith in myself, but I grew in my faith in God. I learned God will take you through places you don't understand to get you to the place he wants you to be. So I learned to say his will, his way, his time." And when I read that on Friday, I'd already written the sermon notes for this weekend, and I just got goosebumps because that's our outline. God's agenda, God's methods, God's timing, his will, his way, his time.

This week can you say his will, his way, his time? I guarantee you will have a chance to apply this this week. Traffic delays you, job interview doesn't work out, your prayers aren't answered the way you want. Say his will, his way, his time. In fact, say that with me out loud right now. His will, his way, his time. You might want to jot this down somewhere, put it somewhere where you can see it all week this week. His will, his way, his time. Here's a verse that pulls all this together for me, Isaiah 55:8 and 9. And let's read this verse out loud together. Let me hear you. The Lord says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "In fact, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." You know, like I said when we started, there's so many times in life that we try to connect the dots. All the things that happen to us. We try to fit them together to create a cohesive picture. What is God doing here in my life? It doesn't make sense. But the problem is, like those people on Palm Sunday, most of us only see say three or four dots. We don't have enough information, so we say I can't understand how God's gonna make this all work together for good. I don't see what God is doing here. It seems like a catastrophe. But the thing about God is God sees dots we don't see. Dots way off our page, and he sees them working together to produce a masterpiece picture that he's creating in you and in history.

The dots that Jesus was connecting that day went all the way back thousands of years to ancient prophecies and all the way forward thousands of years into the future. Would you like to see how Jesus was connecting those dots? You want to see the big picture he was creating? The Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, says, "Here's what heaven is like. After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that nobody could count from what every nation, Jew and Gentile together." That's what God wants. Every nation, every tribe, every people, every language standing before the throne and before the Lamb, and they were wearing white robes and they were holding what? Palm branches in their hands. That's the real revolution. That's the real everlasting Palm Sunday. There's the masterpiece that Jesus is creating. You know that the people that day wanted him to be their mayor, and he is the Lord of glory. The best thing they could imagine was Jesus securing the gates of their town while he was busting wide open the gates of heaven. That's the big picture. And the big idea today is God does have a plan. He has a big picture, and God's plan will always surprise me, and God's plan is always better.

Now let's make this very personal. As we wrap up the message, as kind of the closing illustration, I want to ask Trent to come back out. Trent Smith and I were talking about the theme of this message a week or so ago, and Trent went home on Monday and he wrote a song about this, and as he sings this, I want to invite you to think about these lyrics and maybe even make this your prayer. Can you say, "God, I don't understand why you're answering my prayers in this way, but I choose to believe that you see dots I cannot see and that you are creating a masterpiece in me and around me and in history."

I don't know, I'm not sure where this road is going. How do I choose which path to take? And even though I feel alone, I am not forsaken. Help me, Jesus, help me walk by faith. Couldn't be that you knew all along? Couldn't be that your wisdom is strong enough to bridge this impossible spell? I believe that you got it's your plan that you're even a masterpiece, a masterpiece. You're even a masterpiece, yeah, you're more than you do. What you do, and it's a beautiful masterpiece, a masterpiece. You're making a masterpiece out of me, out of me.

Take my doubts, take my fears, take my heart's frustration. Take my life, I surrender 'cause I know that you knew all along. And I know that your wisdom is strong enough to bridge this impossible spell. I believe that you got it's your plan that you're even a masterpiece, a masterpiece. You're even a masterpiece, yeah, you're more than you do. What you do, and it's a beautiful masterpiece, a masterpiece. You're making a masterpiece out of me.

I'm learning how to trust your promises enough. Have your way, have your way, have your way. And I'm learning who I am. I'm learning how to stand on your name, on your name, on your name. And I'm learning how to be a liberated me in your grace, your grace, and your grace. And I'm leaning into love, learning how to live unashamed, unashamed. You're making a masterpiece. You're moving behind the seams, yeah, you're moving. You do what you do, and it's a beautiful masterpiece, a masterpiece. You're making a masterpiece out of me, out of me, even me.

Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me? Lord, we want to say to you in our hearts your will, your way, your time, some for the first time, some as a recommitment, just your will, your way, your time in my life. God, I know some people in this room are going through such tough times. I pray that you would help us realize, though it seems catastrophic now, you do love us and you do have a plan for us, and you can weave even our mistakes into the masterpiece that you're making that goes beyond our imagination. And so we want to yield to you today and especially receive the forgiveness of sins that you bought us on the cross as the ultimate Passover lamb. And in these weeks leading up to Easter, help us to understand that more and grow in that more. In Jesus' name, Amen.