The Miracle You Never Saw Coming | Is That In The Bible?: The Chosen | Pastor Levi Lusko

Here in pilot's mansion. Is thisbody? Yeah. How good are you to life? Strength out of weakness. Is that in the Bible? Week three teaching. Take one. Soft sticks. As we begin this conversation, I want you to think of an answer to prayer you didn't receive. A time when you trusted God to do something and he didn't do it. a situation where you were disappointed.

CS Lewis calls this the problem of pain. What are we to make of these instances where we had faith like a mustard seed to see a mountain move but it didn't budge? That is what we are going to talk about today. The title of this message is the miracle you never saw coming.

Hello to those of you at Fresh Life Church, partner churches on the open network, those watching online, chosen fans. My name is Levi Leusco and we have come to the set of the chosen to ask the question, is that in the Bible? And I want to show you a clip from season 3, episode 2, entitled Two by Two.

Master Little James, may I have a moment? Of course. I um forgive me. I'm uh not always confident to speak. Slow to speak. It's a very good quality. I wanted to ask you a question, please. So you are sending us out with the ability to heal the sickened lane.

Yes, that that is what you said. Yes. So you're telling me that I have the ability to heal. Forgive me. I just find that difficult to imagine with my condition which you haven't healed. Do you want to be healed? Yes, of course. If if that's possible. I think you've seen enough to know it's possible.

Then why haven't you? Because I trust you. What? Little James, precious little James, I need you to listen to me very carefully because what I'm going to say defines your whole life to this point and will define the rest of your life. Do you understand? In the father's will, I could heal you right now and you'd have a good story to tell.

Yes. Yes. That you do miracles. And that's a good story. But there are already dozens who can tell that story. And there will be hundreds more, even thousands. But think of the story that you have, especially in this journey to come. if I don't heal you. To know how to proclaim that you still praise God in spite of this.

To know how to focus on all that matters so much more than the body. To show people that you can be patient with your suffering here on earth because you know you'll spend eternity with no suffering. Not everyone can understand that. How many people do you think the father and I trust this with?

Not many. But the others, they're so much more. So much more what? I don't know. Stronger, better at this. James, I love you, but I don't want to hear that ever again. I know how easy it is to say the song of David that I fearfully and wonderfully made, but it doesn't make this any easier.

And in this group, it doesn't make me feel like any less of a burden. A burden. ((music playing)) First of all, it is far easier to deal with your slow walking than it is to deal with Simon's temper. Trust me. Are you fast? Do you look impressive when you walk?

Maybe not. But these are things the father doesn't care about. You are going to do more for me than most people ever dream. So many people need healing in order to believe in me. Or they need healing because their hearts are so sick. That doesn't apply to you.

And many are healed or not healed because the father in heaven has a plan for them which may be a mystery. And we remember what Job said, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." When you pass from this earth and you meet your father in heaven, where Isaiah promises you will leap like a deer, your reward will be great.

((music playing)) So hold on a little longer. And when you discover yourself finding true strength because of your weakness, and when you do great things in my name, in spite of this, the impact will last for generations. Do you understand? ((music playing)) Thank you, B. A man like you healing others. Oh, what a sight.

I can't wait to hear your stories when you return. But shalom, my son. Shalom. And James, remember, you will be healed. It's only a matter of time. Shallow, my son. Shallow. ((music playing)) Wow. powerful is that in the Bible? Well, the answer is mostly no, but also yes. This conversation between Jesus and his apostle disciple little James is in fact nowhere in the scripture and yet it is thoroughly biblical.

Genesis to Revelation, the theme of power out of pain and strength, out of weakness is all over the place. Now, Jesus did have a disciple named James too. Actually, we know that the James in this scene is the James mentioned in Luke 6:15 where it says when Jesus was picking out his apostles after spending time in prayer, he chose James, the son of Alphus.

We also think it's the same James referenced in Mark 15:40 where his mom is identified as being one of the women looking on at the cross where it says there were also women looking on from afar among whom were Mary Magdalene. Mary the mother of James the less and of Joseph and Salame.

Now, there's some debate, but many think this is James's mom being singled out here, who is the mom of James the less. He's given this nickname to distinguish him from James, the son of Zebedee, one of the two sons of thunder. And so, you have the big more prominent featured James, who's one of the inner circle, Peter, James, and John, who got to see things other disciples didn't get to see.

And then you have James the less, which the word for less can be translated as young or little. So little James is actually quite faithful to the text. Was he handicapped or in some way disabled? Well, that's not in the Bible, but it is beautiful and important awareness of ADA, awareness of life with disability.

In my own life, my eyes have been open to that. I was on a run recently, a tour of runs actually. And at one of the runs, I had the great honor of running with a wheelchairbound runner, and we ran together, and she just was euphoric with joy as the wind whipped through her hair.

I got to talk to her about her favorite part of running. She's done the Boston Marathon and other famous runs and she just talked about the mental side of running and the freedom of running and it was it was humbling and it was it was uh like I said eye opening especially as we were running to discover certain places the wheelchair couldn't fit because of power lines or because of uh people who had parked their cars or trash cans that were left.

It helped me to see life through her eyes. And that's I think one of the powerful things about this scene that helps us to see life through the eyes of someone who has a physical setback or ailment. Not in the Bible, but something I believe God wants all of us to care deeply about as we think about the last and the least of these, the often overlooked.

Now, in this scene, Jesus is sending out the disciples to go out two by two. I love the backup. I love the together in one accord mentality of having each other's back. And that is something that very much did happen. James Celeste did get sent out on a trip.

We don't know who his buddy was per se, but Matthew 10:1 says that when he Jesus had called his 12 disciples to him, he gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. So James would have been sent out with this crew.

In this scene, the tension is powerful because of the notion which is creative liberty. This is going in the fabrication bin. This is storytelling. This is art. This is not scripture. But nonetheless, take the idea of someone being called to participate in a healing that they themselves hadn't experienced.

God working through me, but he hadn't worked for me. Which causes a big question to emerge. What does it mean to have the power of God flowing through you, but to still keep your limp? Can God be glorified by a trial that for whatever reason he allows to remain?

Now, again, this may or may not have been James the Les's reality, but there is an apostle of Jesus who dealt with that exact conundrum. Paul the Apostle who had a famous thorn in the flesh. Now theologians differ on what the thorn was. Some say it was some physical ailment perhaps his bad eyes.

We know to the church at Galatia he talked about how he had to write with enormous letters because of his eye problem. He did not see well. Some think it was just the ongoing persecution. how he constantly chronically had persecution to deal with or perhaps some other spiritual affliction because we do know that the enemy uh came at him multiple different times in multiple different ways.

Whatever the thorn was, he talks about it in 2 Corinthians 12 7. This is a passage that immediately came to my mind as I watched this powerful scene. He says, "Unless I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure."

Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would depart from me. And he said to me, "This is Jesus, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches, in needs, and persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Paul is someone who watched God's power flow through him mightily. And yet he here talks about an area of his life that despite his prayers remains unhealed.

He is living out what Jesus and little James were talking about in the scene. The greater story of being trusted with a trial. Now all of us to some extent will experience this as we look forward to the promise of new bodies in the resurrection. The leaping like a deer that Jesus tells little James about quoting from the prophet Isaiah.

We have that promise of our own personal Easter Sunday that is coming for all of us. But we also between now and then are going to deal with our own good Fridays, our own days of pain, our own days of loss of whatever form. And in between is the age that we sort of live in today, Saturday, the space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Saturday is a time of promises that have been made and yet not fulfilled. Where Jesus body essentially lay there. it would come out but hadn't yet. And because Saturday is so difficult and can be so easy to lose heart, what I want to do is give you from scripture three things we need to know in order to survive Saturday.

The first, jot it down, is this pain is a problem. It is. All of us have no choice but to experience difficulty, loss, grief, u saying goodbye to people we love, having tragic things happen and finding out about it. Some of it comes as a result of living on earth where there's brokenness because of the fall.

And the father Matthew 5 says he causes his son to rise on the evil and on the good. Rain falls on the just and the unjust. So some of it is going to come our way uh just because of being alive. Other pain we face will be as a result of our following Jesus. 2 Timothy 3:12 says, "Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution."

You can't get out of it following Jesus. The enemy hates Jesus. He said, "He hates me. He's going to hate you. We're going to deal with some of that blowback called persecution. We're going to have to navigate it." So pain, hear me, is a problem. Number two, pain has a problem.

And pain's problem, well, his name is Jesus, and he's going to work all things together for good for those who love him and are the called according to his purposes. Pain has a short shelf life. Seems like evil is running roughshot and unchecked, but pain is not going to last forever.

Instead, what God wants to do through it is going to last forever. 2 Corinthians 4:1 17 puts it this way. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

God is going to work to cause every hard, every evil, every brutal thing to in the end accomplish what he wants to do through it so that his will is done and not the enemies. Like Joseph said, "You meant this for evil. God meant it for good that many lives might be saved."

Here's a big theological idea. The New Testament says, "If we're born again, we're in Christ positionally." And if we are in Christ, for it to get to us, it has to go through him first. As a reminder of all of this, we're standing in Pilate's mansion, his office, a symbol of his regal authority.

And you think about how in John's gospel, Jesus stood before Pilate. And Pilate said, "Are you talking to me? I I have the power to kill you. I have the power to let you free." And Jesus said, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you by my father."

He had such confidence that it only got to him, this difficulty because God allowed it. As a child of God, we can have that confidence. If it got to us and we're in Christ, it went through him. And he has a reason for allowing it, for saying yes when he could have said no.

Now, what could those reasons be? What could those benefits be? Well, it could be for humility. Clarity about what really matters. Awareness of God's nearness as he's near to those who have a broken heart. development, preparation for what's to come, the identification and elimination of idols in the heart we've hung on to, increased gratitude over life's small blessings, or a wakeup call to how fleeting and precious and brief life really is.

These are the reasons in the sermon on the mount, Jesus said, "Blessed are you when you're poor in spirit. Blessed are you when you mourn. Blessed are you when you're reviled." None of us want to go through these things, but God works through them. CS Lewis said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.

Pain is God's megaphone." Think of it to rouse a deaf world. These are the benefits of difficult seasons like the one in the show. James Dles is written to have wrestled with. I love what Isaiah the prophet said, Isaiah 45:3. He said, "I will give you," this is God speaking, "the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places."

So pain is a problem. Pain has a problem. Third, and finally, pain is not your problem. Pain is not your problem. What do what do I mean by that? Well, 1 Corinthians 6:20 says, "For you were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's.

You are not your own anymore because as Jesus bled and died for you and rose from the dead, he did so to buy you back unto God. So, you are not your own. You don't belong to you. And that means your pain doesn't belong to you. This is good news.

One of the benefits of renting is the ability to call the landlord and tell him about the problem with the leaky roof that he needs to fix. It's his roof. It's his problem. It's his responsibility. In this life, you can shrug your shoulders and say, "God, this pain, it's your pain.

It's up to you to do something with it." So, what is the miracle you never saw coming? I believe it's the one that happens inside you when God doesn't do for you what you ask him to. It's not the one that you wish for when you have the faith to see the mountain move and it stands still.

But know this, sometimes the mountain that needs moving the most is inside you. That I believe is a part of why often times God doesn't answer our prayers like we wish he would. In our family's journey, we've experienced the time where we asked for God to do something and he didn't do it.

We know all too well how painful, how dark, how scary that is. Back in 2012, our five-year-old daughter Lena had an asthma attack just a few days before Christmas. And it got scary when she stopped breathing and we did CPR and called 911. And in some somehow in these moments, her heart stopped beating.

We prayed desperately. I remember praying, God, you you made the sun stand still. You rose your son from the grave, Gyrus's daughter. You called her out. I I pray you you'd cause her to move. I pray you'd send her life back into her. With faith to move a mountain, we prayed.

And God chose to not answer our prayer in the way that we asked for it. In moments like that, it's easy to get disillusioned. That's what the devil wants. For us to get discouraged and to get hardened, to get angry at God. Why weren't you there for me, God?

I believed a mountain could be moved and it didn't. I believe in those moments if we could hear him, he is saying it's about to. Only this isn't going to be the mountain of me taking a trial away. It's going to be the mountain moving, of me sustaining you in a trial that in my sovereignty I've chosen to allow to remain.

You see, in God's providence, he can redeem what in his sovereignty he could have prevented. Paul prayed three times, "Take it away. Take it away. Take it away." God said, "Nope, it's going to stay because Paul, I see things in you that will never be activated without that thorn.

That thorn is going to be a stake that anchors you to me, causes you to be weak, and when you're weak, I'm strong." How did my family make it through? People ask us that all the time. The answer is, I have no idea. Peace passes understanding, so I don't know.

God bypassed my mind and sustained me in what I would never have imagined I could have continued to praise him, to raise my hands up and and honor him in the midst of. No, friends, it's not as appealing, but sustaining grace is every bit as miraculous as the signs and wonders that we crave.

No, I I never would have chosen this, and neither would you have with what you've had to face. But I am so thankful. And if God ever withholds something you want, it's because he wants to do for you and through you and and and around you something you don't even have the faith to ask for.

What I'm saying and what the episode powerfully conveys is that some of the greatest things you ever watch God do might come through unanswered prayers. There's a reason for every rejection and an assignment inside every denial. Yes, it's an opportunity to get offended, to get mad at God, but it's also an opportunity to grow, to trust him.

If the Lord, Charles Spurgeon said, does not pay in silver, he will pay in gold. And if he does not pay in gold, he will pay in diamonds. So, Sunday is coming. One day the lame will leap like a deer. The tongue of the dumb will be made to sing.

Every wrong will be made right. There is a day coming where there is no more death, no more sorrow, no more thorns. But between now and then, his grace is sufficient for you. His strength is made perfect in weakness. My wife and I, our family, we cling to the promise of the resurrection.

We know God did and does and will heal our little girl, Linea, that she is with him in heaven. And that means she's a part of our future and not just our past. That means that every day as we continue to grow and age and time goes on, we're not getting further from her.

We're getting closer to her because we're moving in the right direction. and orienting yourselves around those promises. Not just looking at the brutality of Good Friday, but looking at the promise and what's coming on Easter Sunday. This can help us to make it through Saturday. So, as we close, I want you to consider what pain you are carrying that Jesus is calling you to trust him with.

Can you sit in that tension of the already but not yet? Of the announced but not inaugurated kingdom. Can we believe that the the the the day of leaping like a deer is coming? So between now and then, even disabled, even separated, can we still trust him anyway?

For to quote the episode, remember you will be healed. It's only a matter of time. And so, Father, I do ask for my brothers and sisters sitting in that space of separation of promises made but not yet fulfilled. I pray in whatever way you need to come into their life, come into their situation that you would.

You are the God who sees. You are our healer. You are our healing. You are our life in the length of our days. And so we trust you. We don't know why you do for one but not for another. We don't know why at times you move in power and other times you choose to to hold your hand.

But we trust that you know and you do all things well. So even with tears running down our cheeks, even with sorrow from the grave and dust under our fingernails, we choose to believe you anyway in Jesus name. ((music playing))