Four Checks From God

Have you ever tried something hard, and you

might even start off thinking, "Well, this isn't that bad, and

then all of a sudden, it's it's bad, and it takes work, and you

might even quit when you've only got like 10% left to go, and

that's the part we want to talk about today, and that is-it's

one thing to follow Christ; it's another thing to surrender to

Christ. Yeah.

Hey, welcome to Feeding My Faith. I'm Dave

Jackson, and today we're talking about surrender, and that you

know you get a picture of a a white flag, things like that.

But there's one thing I want to point out here, and this is in

Matthew 26, starts on verse 22, says, "When the evening came,

Jesus was reclining at the table with the 12, and while they were

eating, he said, 'Truly I tell you. Now, if we just take a

little tangent, Jesus says that a lot. Truly, I tell you, better

known is I'm telling you the truth. Truly, I tell you, one of

you will betray me. And it says they were very sad, and began to

say to him one after the other, "Surely you don't mean me, Lord.

Surely you you don't mean me. You surely you don't mean me.

Surely you just over and over. Surely you don't mean me, Lord.

Probably offended. Jesus replied, "The one who has dipped

his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man

will go just as it is written about Him. But woe to that man

who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he

had not been born. Then Judas, the one who would betray him,

said, "Surely you don't mean Me, Rabbi. Different word. And so

Judas was in the room with Jesus, but he had ceased to live

as a surrendered disciple. He shared the table. He heard the

words. Think about all the things he had seen, and yet he

was pursuing his own plan rather than yielding to Christ. What an

ego to go! Oh, you're doing it wrong. You're supposed to be

doing it this way. We don't know really what was going on with

Judas. It might have been a case where he just thought, well, you

know, I all these years I've been waiting for the Messiah is

going to come in. We're all going to take a bunch of swords.

We're going to throw out Rome. We're going to he's going to sit

on the throne. I don't know, but he he wasn't down for whatever

Christ was putting out there. And if you think about it, a

disciple is not defined by proximity to Jesus, or religious

activity, or really the language they use, but by the ongoing

surrender of their will to God's will, that's a disciple. And

Judas, he was there at the table, but spiritually committed

to another agenda, and the tragedy was not that he did not

know enough about Jesus. It was that he would not yield himself

to Jesus. In fact, he was kind of thinking, you know, my way,

where Jesus prays, "Lord, your will be done. Judas is

protecting his plan. Jesus surrenders his will, and so the

issue-it isn't really information. The issue is

surrender. So Judas calls Jesus Rabbi, you know, teacher, and he

could listen to Jesus, and he could learn from Jesus, and he

could even hang with Jesus without letting Jesus rule him.

And what we refuse to surrender in private will eventually shape

what we do in public. And this is obvious with Judas. There

were cracks. The writing, as they say, was on the wall. And

in John 12, when Mary poured that really expensive perfume on

Jesus's feet, who objected? Judas. It says in John 12, but

one of his disciples, Judas. Is Iscariot, who was later to

betray him, objected. Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money

given to the poor? It's worth a year's wages. He did not say

this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a

thief. As a keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to

what was put into it, so John is saying, "Look, Judas was an

embezzler. That's why he was upset, not because it could have

gone to the poor. And so Judas had been carrying the money bag,

but at this point, the money bag really started carrying Judas,

and if you look at the whole 30 pieces of silver, there is a

verse in Exodus 21, verse 32. If if an ox kills a slave, you

would pay them 30 pieces of silver. So they placed the price

of the Son of God, and they used an old slave price. That's

crazy.

And so in Matthew 26, it says here, then one of the 12, Judas

Iscariot, went to the chief priest and asked, "What are you

willing to give me? Let's just stop right there. Who is that

all about? What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over

to you? So they counted out 30 pieces of silver, and from then

on, Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over. So

in that negotiation, it's like, what, what have you done for me

lately? Right, it's all about me. And when we refuse again to

surrender in private, whatever we we're just not going to let

go of. That's eventually going to shape what we do in public,

and we can admire Christ's teaching, and then we kind of

withhold those parts of our lives that we just don't want

Him to govern, and that could be a whole bunch of things. It

could be a relationship. It could be one of those private

habits. We'll just leave that there. Financial control,

bitterness, unforgiveness. Boy, there's a lot of people that

just won't forgive. Maybe it's your ambition. Maybe it's your

reputation. You ever worried about your reputation if people

know I like Jesus? Your schedule, boy, that's a big one.

That's my schedule. It's my time. Maybe it's you have these.

Maybe you have a plan that you've already decided. Like

this is how this is going to go down, and so you've got these

preferred outcomes, and you're you think you're in control, not

ready to willing, you know, you're not willing to give those

up, and so if we look at this, Mary when she's dumping this on

Jesus's feet, she surrendered what was valuable. I mean, her

gift was costly, and it was public, and it was wholehearted.

And also, if you read that story, Jesus was very

appreciative of that. Judas clung to what he wanted. What

will you give me? Jesus surrendered what was the

hardest. He didn't pretend that this was going to be a walk in

the park. You know, he's like, ah, this whole you know thing,

piece of cake. I got it. No. He explained, "Oh, this cup was not

easy. Please take it. I don't want it. And then he prayed

honestly, and then chose the Father's will. He was obedient.

He surrendered, and so we can surrender what is in our hands

if Christ did it. Now here are some some stories of people that

surrendered and was like, "All right, I'm going to put this in

your hands. And so one, not a very he's not perfect by any

means, Mel Gibson. If you've never watched it, The Passion of

the Christ. It is not for the light-hearted. I have a problem

with blood and hospitals in general. And if I'm going to

watch that movie, it takes me about three. I need like three

intermissions because I will start to pass out. It's it's

gruesome, but I didn't know this. Mel began production on

his film without securing outside funding or distribution,

which means he might have finished this movie and had no

place to show it. You're like, oh, okay. Well, in 2002, he

explained why he could not get backing from any Hollywood

studios. He said, "This film is about something that nobody

wants to touch. It's shot in two dead languages. That's another

thing about that movie. Get ready to read some subtitles.

And Gibson and his company, Icon Productions, provided the film's

sole backing spending-you want to guess-$30 million on

production costs, 30 million to 30 million, and then an

estimated 15 million on marketing. So we're looking at

$45 million, and he's not quite sure if there's going to be any

place to show this movie when he gets done. He finally gets it

done, then they get it to show it to some people, and of course

it's America, and there are all sorts of early accusations about

anti-Semitism, and because of that, it became difficult for

Mel to find an American distribution company. Because

you know, in the story of the crucifixion of Jesus, Jewish

people don't come across really good in that. So he spent $45

million. Now he eventually found a way to get it into theaters,

and the film grossed $612 million worldwide against a $30

million budget.

Let's call that 45 if we count the marketing, and it became the

fifth highest-grossing film of 2004 internationally at the end

of its kind of theatrical run, it is the highest-grossing

Christian film of all time, if we adjust for inflation, as well

as the highest-grossing independent film of all time and

the fifth highest-grossing biographical film. It was the

highest-grossing R-rated film in the U.S. at 370 million, that

was a record which remained unbroken for 20 years, and it

received multiple awards and nominations, including three

nominations at the 77th Academy Awards in 2005 for best makeup,

best cinematography, and best original score. Now, what's

interesting? There are two sequels coming: the Resurrection

of the Christ, Part One and Part Two, and those are due to be

released in 2027 and 2028 with a new cast. My guess is he's not

going to have any issue finding distribution for that one. And

you might say, "Yeah, but it's Mel Gibson. He probably had 100

million. Well, okay, 45 million is still a lot of money. A lot

of money when you're not sure if you're going to be able to find

a place to show it. And I binge watch The Chosen on Amazon

Prime. If you haven't watched it, you should. It's a great

show, and the actor that plays Jesus is Jonathan. I guess it's

pronounced Romy, and he's a guy that's been following Christ his

whole life, and he's going. That then the chosen then led me to

another documentary called Jonathan and Jesus, and so

Jonathan goes all over the world talking to people about Jesus,

and one of them is Alice Cooper. If you didn't know this, if you

were around in the 70s and maybe early 80s, Jonathan, Jonathan,

Alice Cooper was a rock guy. He was very. It was almost like a

magic show put to music. He would cut off his head. He'd

hang himself. All sorts of fun things. And Alice Cooper had

started following Jesus, and he was like, "I I need to make this

public. And he talked to his manager, who basically said,

"Yeah, if you do that, your career is going to be over. And

Alice put his career on the line, and he went public, and

his career had a resurgent. Yeah, he not seen that kind of

sell out of concerts and everything like that in many

years. Alice said I was beaten, and he says I couldn't talk my

way out of surrendering to Christ. Just something I had to

do. Now Jonathan, the guy that played Jesus in The Chosen, his

testimony was amazing. So this is kind of long, but I'm gonna

kind of recap it here. He said, "I woke up." On a Saturday

morning in 2018, and he says I was 100 bucks overdrafted. I

don't know if you've ever bounced a check. It is not a

good place to be. He said I had $20 in my pocket, so I was like

negative 80 bucks. And he said, "Oh, and I was terribly in debt,

and I had enough food to last the day, and I hadn't worked in

a few weeks. He says I couldn't get arrested for one of the six

or seven different jobs I had been juggling, trying to keep

myself afloat. And he says I was just out of options. He said I

was out of luck. I felt like I was out of grace, and so I did

what anybody who has faith in God does in my position. So

he gets on his knees, and he says, "I just

cried out to God, and I was upset with God. And like he was

like, "How did you let me get to this point? You know, he says,

like I've done everything I thought I was supposed to do,

and you haven't shown me any other roads. And he said, so I

just started quoting scripture because we always say God

doesn't lie, and the Bible's not a lie. He said, so I know. You

know what, Lord, you said, "Come to me, all who are weary and

heavy laden, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my

burden is light. So here is mine. I surrender, man. I

surrender.

And he says, "I feel like the key was saying it out loud, and

hearing it out loud, he said it was like my own sorrowful little

psalm. And he goes, and that morning, I left. I came back to

my apartment later that afternoon, and there were four

checks in the mail. And he said I was completely dumbfounded.

And he said, "I was like looking at God, like there's no, there's

no way, there's just no way. He said, "So I went in to his

apartment. He said, "I actually set up my phone on my bed, and I

sat next to it. He goes, "I just recorded it, just to kind of

document it for posterity, and you know to make sure I wasn't

dreaming, you know just for the heck of it. And he thought,

well, I'm going to go ahead and open them. So, first check, 50

bucks, as he kind of thought. He was like, "Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, God. Then the next check, $200, and then a third

one, another 50 bucks. He's up to $300 already. Wow! One more

check. He opens the envelope. He pulls out the piece of paper.

It's a check for $800, he said. "I woke up that morning

overdrawn $80, and now I have 1100 bucks. He goes, and then a

week later, I got another check that was equal to the first four

checks, and then three months later, my buddy Dallas called

for the chosen. He says I'd played Jesus for him in a couple

short films, a couple different times, for over the last four

years, and he asked me, "Hey, are you ready to put the sandals

back on? And I said, "Yes, please. And so many times we

want redemption, but we don't want the desert, and I get that.

But Jonathan can portray the man of sorrow so much better now

than somebody who hadn't, right? Without it going flat. One more

quick story. Sylvester Stallone was offered $360,000 for the

script of the first Rocky film. There's actually a movie coming

out about this. Now, at the time, he was almost homeless. I

believe he had sold his dog. He was broke. There's a difference

between poor and broke. He was broke, and he turned it down,

and instead ended up receiving 35,000 as an acting part. Why

would you do that? Because Stallone believe he he just was

100% believed in the script enough to turn down hundreds of

1000s of dollars because he was believing in the script. We

believe in a Lord that defeated death. Why can't we stand up for

that? Don't ask what's in it for me. Ask for God to show you His

plan, so you can follow it. And we need to ask ourselves to have

God expose every place where we have chosen our way over God's,

and to just admit, look, God, we don't want to sit near you, and

we don't want to speak about you. We don't want to just learn

about you. We surrender to your lordship. Help us to say, not my

will, but yours be done. So think about it today, before you

go to the next episode in your podcast player. Is there

something that you're holding on to? And sometimes I think it's

kind of funny that we hold on to things because we don't want to

bother God, we don't want to bother God with it. Like, hey, I

got it, I got it. You know, you go do your God stuff. I'll take

care of it. It's not what He wants. He's happy to help.

There's a part in the Bible where Jesus is talking to the

disciples and even says, "You haven't asked for anything yet,

and he's like, "Look, I'm the Messiah, and you haven't asked

for anything yet. So don't hold on to those things. They kind of

weigh you down, and just see what God can do for you. If you

know somebody who's holding on to things that maybe they

shouldn't. Maybe go to your phone, click that share button,

send them over to feedingmyfaith.com. If you found

some spiritual value in this episode, you can always go over

to FeedingMyFaith.com/support help me pay the bills around

here. That's always appreciated. I'm Dave Jackson. Thanks so much

for tuning in. We'll see again real soon with another episode

of Feeding My Faith.

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