Are You Willing - Part 2

Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way and said unto them, Behold we go up to Jerusalem the son of man shall be betrayed and the chief priests and the scribes and they shall condemn him to death and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify him. Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children. Who were they? James and John. They were worshipping him and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She said unto him, Grant that these my two sons may save the one on the right hand and the other on the left in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask? And she asked a big thing. In the other gospel it says that they asked, that John and his brother asked. Here it says his mother asked. I guess there's a collusion in this. They'd agreed together to try and give Jesus. They believed he was going to have a kingdom and they wanted to sit on the right hand and the left hand when he came into his kingdom. But notice they came worshipping him. And yet in their worship there was begging. It wasn't pure. They had an ulterior motive. They were trying to bargain with him. Jesus answering said, Ye know not what ye ask? Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? Now we said there in Luke, go back a minute there into chapter, was it 12? Again verse 49. I am come that sent fire on earth. What was that fire? Why didn't he, what hindered him from giving them the fire at that moment? A baptism. Of what? Sorrow. A baptism of anguish. A baptism we call Gethsemane. You see there's no place in the whole wide world where you can put the upper room before the cross. The cross comes before the upper room. We try and turn that around. As I said sometimes, very often now we're asking people to tarry in the upper room who've never knelt at the cross. They get a false experience. And it evaporates. We shun the cross. I have a baptism to be baptized with. But I want you to receive a fire that will change that degraded will of yours. It will endue you with power. It will give you energy. It will give you life. He says, I want to do that, but I am straitened. I wish it could be accomplished, but it cannot be done yet. So then we go back again to that other chapter again. In Matthew chapter 20. Remember if we'd gone a bit further back in that previous chapter, a man listened to him long enough. Then he says, why don't you ask my brother to settle the estate? Settle a family dispute. You know there are people who think God is only around to help us. We've got a great utility God to be. You pray and he does this. You pray and he does that. You pray and he sends you money. You pray and he gets you out of a jam. He's not somebody who worships in speechless adoration. He's a utility God. And these boys on TV are exploiting that to the nth degree. I'm going to read this again. Chapter 20 and verse 20. Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshipping him and desiring a certain thing of him. What is that you would like me to do? Let one sit on thy right hand and one on thy left hand, when thou comest into thy kingdom. Jesus answered, you know what he asked. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They said unto him, we are able. So that he did. He took them at his word. I want my son to enter the kingdom sitting on the right hand, sitting on the left. There's only one way into the kingdom, that's death. In the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12 and verse 2, it says Herod. And that Herod was Herod the gripper of the first. He was the grandson of Herod the great. Remember Herod the great tried to liquidate Jesus when he was a babe. See, before he could walk or talk, the world was afraid of Jesus. When they heard he was born, Herod was troubled. Why? Herod's got a standing army. Herod has a palace. Herod has everything he wants. You mean to say that little thing there sucking his mother's breast, that the king is terrified of him? Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Except one or two old people. Older people have more wisdom, as you can see. You know, I think so often of that. We talk so much about Hannah in the Old Testament. We don't talk so much about Anna in the New Testament. She's a hundred years of age, and she's going day by day to pray. And Simeon's an old man. Just a bunch of old folk going, and they will not die until God has sent that precious child that he promised 750 years before. Magnificent. You know what she's like. Are you able to take... Yeah, we can drink the cup. All right, lady. I wonder if she was living when her son was brutally put to death. Again, Acts 12 and 2 says that Herod killed James, the brother of John. It was Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great, a terrible butcher. A man who could be linked up with Pharaoh that liquidated all the babies in Egypt. Well, no, in Israel. An ancient Hitler. I'm trying to write a book. I'm not doing too well with it. On the judgment seat of Christ. I think of the days when all the armies of men had been slaughtered. All the babies had been butchered. The million babies that were dragged out of the mothers' wombs this past year in Christian America and torn up and put down the toilet. Every one of them is going to rise up in judgment one day. Didn't we say the other day about Jeremiah? God says, I knew thee when thou wast in the womb, and I sanctified not thee there. Is he the exception? No, no, no, no. Life belongs to God. And whatever we do with it, we'll be accountable for it. We said that the one thing that sustained, as it does all men who get in there, the one thing that sustained Jeremiah, he had more conflict than any other prophet of old. Immediately he was raised up, he was in conflict, he was conflict when he was dying. What was the secret of his power? I'll tell you the secret of his power. It's very obvious. He states it. He says, thy fire burned within my heart. While I'm...