Jesus Unfiltered - Love - Love... Trusts!, Part 2

Let's be honest for just a minute. Are you disappointed with God? Do you feel like really down deep He let you down? Didn't come through when you needed Him most?

Well, if you feel that way, you're not alone. And God has something very important to say to you today, something that will shed light on the pain and the injustice that you feel. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this international teaching and discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians. Well, in just a minute, we'll continue our series, Jesus Unfiltered, with a second half of Chip's message, Love Trusts. But before we get to that, if this is your first time listening to Living on the Edge, or you want to learn more about what we do, go to livingontheedge.org.

You'll find resources there on tons of topics and countless programs to enjoy. Today, Chip's back in John chapter 11 when Jesus arrives in the town of Bethany after his friend Lazarus has died. Well, let's pick it up in verse 23 as we hear Christ comforting Lazarus' sisters.

Here's Chip. And notice what Jesus does. He says, your brother will rise again. And Martha answered, kind of theologically, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

I mean, you know, I think that was sermon number 32 in our backyard. I believe that. You're going to work everything out someday, some way. But her emotions are crying out, that doesn't feel very good right now, right? And then he does something.

See, he wants to do more than fix her problem. He wants her to see and know a person in a way that she has never known him. And Jesus looks into her eyes and he says, I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though he die. And whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

And then I think just with a tear in his eye, do you believe this? This is the gift. This is why I let it happen. My purposes are bigger than your purposes. I don't want to give you a theological lesson.

I don't want to just tell you it's going to be okay. I want you to look into my eyes and kings and prophets and people and religious leaders have longed to know who I really am and unabashed with no metaphor, no parables. Martha, the answer is not fixing a problem. The answer to your life is a person and you're in his presence. The living God loves you. I am the resurrection. My purposes are bigger than your issues and problems and I want to do something in you and through you and for you that's big.

Not just taking care of what you think will make you happy. And I love it. She goes, I believe.

I do trust. I do believe that you are the son, the Messiah of the living God. And I think out of excitement, then she goes back to find her sister. And she went back and called Mary and said, the teacher is here. And notice he's asking. He wants us to come in our times of confusion.

He's asking for you. And when Mary heard that she got up quickly and she went to him, now Jesus has not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. And when the Jews had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out. They followed her supposing that she was going to the tomb to mourn. And when Mary reached the place where Jesus was in Psalm, she fell at his feet. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. She's fixated on the same thing as her sister.

They've been talking together and I'm thinking they had some private conversations. Like I thought he really loved us. I did too. I sat at his feet.

I mean, think of all the time. I thought he cared. Why didn't he come? Why didn't he come? Why didn't he fix it? Why didn't he answer? What's going on?

And because Jesus' purposes are bigger than our specific issues in our life and he wants to do things that are beyond what we can imagine, we get to see a side of the heart of God that we would have never seen if he would have healed him long distance or walked back and touched him and healed him. Imagine the picture. Here's this woman violating almost every cultural code. She's been weeping. These are her closest friends. She walks out. She falls at Jesus' feet and I imagine she's clinging to them and looking up and saying, Lord, if you would have been here, if you would have been here.

What she's really saying is if you cared, if you really loved me, you would have come through. And Jesus' response to her is the one that I am so glad he has to me and to you. When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.

And those are very interesting words. There's a knot in his stomach. There was hurt in his heart. There was this sense of the fallenness of man and what sin has done and what death does and the pain of people. He loved her deeply and being fully human and fully God, something down inside was just aching and hurting even to the point that some translate this word, there was anger. There was anger toward this messed up world and that was never God's original plan.

And he responds, where have you laid him? Come and see, Lord, they replied and then Jesus wept. You know, you may not feel like God really cares and he may not do what you want him to do when you want him to do it and he may not have the plan that's in your mind played out, but I want you to know regardless of what you're in or through right now, he cares and he's weeping with you and for you. But his purposes are bigger. They're bigger than fixing our problems or making our life work out. Contrary to the American evangelical gospel that sort of somehow is filtered everywhere, he's not your self-help genie or mine so that someday, someway you can find the right person, have wonderful kids.

They all get into Stanford or MIT and live a wonderful life and then have grandkids and sing Kumbaya around the Thanksgiving table and no one ever gets cancer, no one ever dies, no one ever has any problems, no one ever has bumps in their marriage, no drunk drivers never hit any of us. If we just believe somehow and love Jesus, everything will be great and when it's not, we're deeply disappointed because that gospel is not the gospel of the Jesus of the New Testament. That's an American filtered self-promotion prosperity gospel where what we want to do is use God, not worship him. Notice the observation the Jews said, see how he loved him. But no matter what you do, no matter what Jesus did, there's people that can twist what you do. Some of them said, well, yeah, you may love him, but could not this person who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?

The application is love trusts God's purposes. Even when it disappoints us, Mary and Martha were deeply, deeply disappointed. Some of you here today are deeply disappointed with God. You did it God's way.

You kept yourself sexually pure and your marriage is not going well. By now, you thought, I love God. He knows my heart and my clock's running out and I'm single or I'm single again and whoever this wonderful woman or man that I've been asking God about for years now to come into my life, I don't see it happening. For others, it's, you know what, I've done it God's way in my career. I tell the truth.

I shoot it straight. I follow him. Or, you know, I've been really faithful in my finances and I believe being generous really honors God and I've given the first portion of my income and I went bankrupt and you're disappointed with God. And what it does is it leaves some residue and some wounds and you can kind of go through the process and you need to kind of come to church and you kind of, but something's happened in your heart.

It's hard to trust him now. It doesn't mean you're going to bail out of the whole faith but the passionate follower you once were is kind of dulled. God wants you to know his purposes are bigger and they're different and his timing is different and his plans are different but he loves you. I've had times, nothing. It was like limbo. God, if you care then, I mean, it's not too, like I kind of was going through that. Some of you like, I'm not like a young chicken now.

I'm in my 50s. Right? Right?

You know, like jobs in your 50s, like, yo, you know? So, I mean, I remember praying in King James. Actually, I don't know why. I was really mad. Is this how they'll treat thy serpents when they obey you? Maybe little King James would help, you know?

But it was. I was totally confused. Last night, I wasn't totally confused. When I get here, I always reach back and I say, oh God, I'm not the first person who's felt like this, who wanted to bail out, who wanted to question your love. And for me, I go back to Joseph and I think of a young guy about 17 that gets a clear word from God, and here's the picture, and it's going to be, you know, I've given you leadership gift in some day, some way. Even your family's going to bow down to you, and I've got this great plan for your life, followed by your brothers betraying you and selling you, followed by a false accusation of rape, followed by going into prison, followed by being forgotten when you're in prison.

13 years of God really loves me. He's got a great plan, but bigger purposes. And I think we could have kind of done sort of one of those pull up the news truck, Joseph, how's it going?

You're 19 years old. Well, I'm working Potiphar's house and his wife's really coming in onto me and I'm trying to avoid temptation and hey, how's it going? Well, I'm in prison now.

Well, how's it going now? Well, you know, I kind of did some good things for the baker and, you know, the wine tester. I told him a dream and I'm running a prison and God has forgotten me completely, except he hadn't. Joseph had a different time, a different plan, a bigger purpose, and he ended up being the second most powerful person in the world in all of Egypt. And by the time he got near the end of his life, after forgiving his brothers, he would say to them, you meant this for evil when you sold me into slavery, but God meant it for good.

In fact, he would say, you didn't even send me here. God sent me here through your willful, wicked sin, but God meant it for good to preserve a whole nation alive. If you will hang on, if you will trust, loving is trusting, especially when you don't understand and when it doesn't make sense and when it's scary and when it's dangerous and when it costs a lot. And that's what it looks like to love God, especially when the culture is counter to our faith.

Love trusts God's purposes. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We'll return you to Chip's message in just a minute, but let me quickly share with you God has called us to do incredible ministry work all around the world. And when you regularly give to Living on the Edge, you're a part of what we do. So consider becoming a monthly partner today. Then visit livingontheedge.org.

We appreciate your generous support. Well, with that, here's Chip. Jesus then solves the problem. This is the part that sort of the crescendo, this is where the movie gets really good. Jesus once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. He has compassion. He has a plan. There is timing. There are purposes and he will act.

And he's going to do it here and he's going to do it in your life and he's going to do it in mine. Take away the stone, he said. But Lord, ever the pragmatist Martha, the sister of the dead man said, by this time the odor is bad, for he's been there four days. Jesus said, did I not tell you that if you circle this word believe, you will see the glory of God? So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked and said, Father, I thank you that you've heard me.

I know that you always heard me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here that they may, circle the word again, believe that you sent me. When he said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, cloth around his face. Jesus said, take off the grave clothes and let him go. How did he raise him from the dead?

What did he do? He spoke. He spoke. What's the scripture say? How did God create the universe? It says, out of nothing he spoke the word and things came into being.

Here's the application. Love, trust God's word even when it seems impossible. God promised, I got a plan for you Chip, don't bail out. God promises, you know what, I'm going to use your life someday, some way, maybe not the way you think, maybe not when or how, but someday, some way, I got a plan. Love, trust God's word. Quick side application, are you in it?

Are you in it? God takes the written word, he makes it the living word by the power of his spirit and as you read it, faith is burst and gives you hope and strength. You can't obey God without God's will, but you can't obey God without being in his word. And what's going to happen is you will hear and see and God will speak to you in ways, but it won't be because I became a lot better teacher.

It'll be like God has been preparing and speaking to you. Trusting God's word when it seems impossible. It seems impossible to be a young person and be sexually pure, trust God's word. Seems impossible to take a bold, loving, winsome stand and do radical things for our LGBT neighbors and friends. For some of you, it seems impossible because you're so uncomfortable.

For others, you're so fearful of what might happen to your career. Trust God's word, do what he says. It seems impossible in this current economic environment to give the very first and best of your finances to God.

I mean, I just can't see my way clear. We got an email from a person who's taking the 90-day challenge and this person sent an email and said, I know God wants my priorities aligned and I know that begins with my finances and so I'm taking the 90-day challenge. I'm giving the first 10% of my income.

I've done that for the last couple of three weeks. And I just learned that by the time the 90-day challenge is, I lose my job. And I just thought I would tell you all, I think the issue isn't money. I think it's trust and it's going to be a little harder, but I'm going to fulfill all that God wants me to and continue to trust him.

Are you ready? Even though it doesn't make sense, I will project this story will have an amazing ending at some time. See, it's not emotionally agreeing with God. It's trusting his timing, his purposes, his plan and his word. And as you do, God changes you.

And as you do, then he uses you. Don't you believe like Esther there's windows of time where you say, could it be? And I think she was scared that God's placed us here at this time in history for such a time as this.

Trust his word. The epilogue is an interesting ending. There's always two responses when God does something great.

Therefore, many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what Jesus did, notice this, believed in him. Dead, it wasn't just unconscious. It wasn't just a little bit of sleep. It wasn't that he was in a coma of four days. He stinketh.

He was dead, dead. God can do the impossible. Jesus is God. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. And then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. This is the leadership of the Jewish community. What are we accomplishing? We got a big problem here.

This man is performing many signs. If we keep letting him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. Boy, that'd be terrible, wouldn't it? Someone who loves people, raises people from the dead, feeds the poor. I mean, we got a really problem here as religious leaders. And then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation. The word temple here has the idea of their position in the nation, their power. This text tells me and you and them is there's two reasons why we refuse to believe and trust God's timing and plans and purposes and feel like he's abandoning us. And those two reasons are our position and our power. What threatened them was this miracle working Messiah was going to usurp their position and their control of the outcomes and what they wanted their life to look like and remove them from power. People would believe in this Jesus Messiah and they would lose their authority and their power and their position.

And it looked that way for them. But in our day, your position and your power, it can be played out socially, economically, your work, your family, what it's got to look like, where your kids have to go to school, what team they on, did they make the traveling team, all of your priorities and my priorities revolve around. So what's the position and what power or control or outcomes do we unconsciously or very consciously demand? And when they come in conflict with God's plan and God's timing and God's purposes, then you come to, am I going to humble myself and trust that he loves me even when part of it seems so difficult? The final application is love trusts Jesus with life's outcomes even when they result in conflict. When you do what God wants you to do out of a heart that trusts him, there are times that everything doesn't turn out all right. There's times where it results in conflict in a relationship or potential conflict at work or conflict in some of the people that are closest to you. Jesus did everything right.

He loved people and his reward for raising someone from the dead was they doubled down on the opportunity to kill him. Lord, you know the world that we live in. You know what's going on in the minds and the hearts of every person in this room. Give us the grace to trust and not bail out. Give us the grace to trust your timing, your plan and your purposes regardless of the outcome.

In Jesus' name, amen. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and the message you just heard, Love Trusts, is from the third volume of our Jesus Unfiltered series titled Love. Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute. The Bible tells us we love because Jesus first loved us. So in our study in the Gospel of John, Chip will help us better understand this divine love.

Discover from Christ's perfect example five foundational qualities of godly love that can lead to more fulfilling relationships with others and a deeper connection to our Heavenly Father. Now, if you've missed any part of this series, the Chip Ingram app is a great way to catch up anytime. Well, before we go any further in today's program, here's Chip.

Thanks so much, Dave. I want to take just a moment to talk about something today that's very important. God, to my amazement and it humbles me, is using Living on the Edge in incredible ways.

And I just have to tell you, we get testimonies from people about restoration and healing and God using them to help other people. And then I want to tell you very, very candidly that we are very serious about using the money and the resources that God gives very carefully and very wisely. But I also want to bring to your attention that it actually takes money for airtime and these teams that create these resources and all the things that happen behind Living on the Edge. There's a group of people with costs involved that allow you to hear me or be in a small group or get teaching. And here's who I'm talking to.

If you have been helped, encouraged, I mean literally blessed by Living on the Edge, and you happen to be one of those people that has never given financially to the ministry, I just want to just pause and say, would you consider partnering with us to help us help other people? And maybe it's a one-time gift. Maybe it's a small amount that you want to do monthly. I don't know. Here's the deal. Would you just be willing to say, Lord, do you want me to do this? And for some of you, you can't. That's fine.

But just ask that honest question. And if God leads you to give, I will tell you we'll use it wisely, we'll invest it in ministry, and we're going to help a lot of people. So thanks for prayerfully considering to do whatever God chose you to do. Thanks, Chip.

Well, if you're already a financial partner, thank you. With your help, Living on the Edge is ministering to more people than ever. But if you're benefiting from Chip's teaching and haven't taken that step yet, consider joining the team today. To send a gift or to become a monthly partner, visit livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. Again, that's 888-333-6003 or go to livingontheedge.org.

App listeners, tap donate. Well, here again is Chip. As we wrap up today's program, I want to revisit the very specific applications that I gave you here out of John chapter 11. The first one is that love trusts God's purposes even when you feel disappointed.

Mary and Martha are just dumbfounded that if you love my brother, you would have been here. We learn from the story that Jesus had a higher and a better purpose. I just want to remind you that when God doesn't make sense, please, when you can't see, as someone said, His hands at work, you can trust His heart. His purposes are good.

He's working. His timing and purposes may be higher and better. The second application is that love trusts God's word even when it seems impossible. I mean, can you imagine, Martha, you know, open the grave? You know, that's the very words of Jesus.

And I mean, roll back the stone. And she's thinking, Lord, this doesn't seem right. This doesn't seem good. And yet what you see is they obey. And as a result of the obedience, they saw a resurrection. I think there's times where God says, love our mate or give financially in a generous way to help someone in need or forgive someone that you feel like it's so unfair.

It seems impossible. And yet that's where the resurrection, that's where the power is. And then third, love trusts Jesus with the outcomes even when you do exactly what's right and you just get ripped for it. I mean, I think sometimes we think when I obey God, then blessing's going to follow. I was just with a man recently who took a huge step of faith. And he said, I just assumed life would be smooth because I am really obeying God and loving him like never before. And what a sacrifice. And I reminded him that he's in the midst of a spiritual battle and war.

So all I want you to get is John 11. Read it over and over and over and know that God is for you. He loves you.

Trust him even when it doesn't make sense. That's so good, Chip. Thanks. And if you want to go back and study those points Chip just reviewed, go to livingontheedge.org and download his message notes.

Now, this is a great tool available for every program. It has Chip's outline, all of the scripture he references, and a few key fill-ins to help you remember what you're learning. Find him by visiting livingontheedge.org under the broadcasts tab, tap listeners, tap fill-in notes. For Chip and the entire team here, this is Dave Druey thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge, and I hope you'll join us next time.