Crucified by Christians (Part 2): Resurrection Comes Through Yielding

(Continued from Part 1)

The Lord Jesus Christ was against, totally against, being crucified. He was utterly opposed to it. Don’t ever think any other way. You’ll lose something if you think any other way. He didn’t want it. He was afraid of it and on the verge of rejecting it. I’m not going to say He dug in, but I’m going to tell you this. He had a strong opinion about it, and He had a will concerning it. His opinion was: let’s not do it. And His will was: let’s not do it. Let’s not have me crucified. Therefore, He gave you permission not to want it or like it. You have that permission. It’s been granted to you by the Son of God. You’re not supposed to look pretty when dealing with that, but He yielded to it. He did what I began this message with. He accepted it, utterly, totally, absolutely, 100% completely as being from His Father. He acknowledged that the crucifixion was planned for Him before the foundation of the world, and He yielded.

Now, brother, you’ve got some dealing to do in your life. You’ve got to go get your Gethsemane, and you’ve got to come up to the same conclusion, and you’ve got to yield and go back through it all and say, “That was You, Father. It’s okay. That was you, Father. It’s okay. I was crucified.” Have you been crucified? Have you? Somewhere, you’ve got to yield. Do you know why Jesus Christ was crucified? And if this doesn’t rock your boat, you got a pretty steady boat. Do you know why Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, who has lived in eternity past with the Father, was crucified by the will of the Father? Do you know why? Does anybody want to make a guess? I’m sorry. What did you say? It’s a mystery. I’m not making this part of salvation.

I will tell you why He did it. He did it because the Father willed that Jesus Christ be crucified, because Jesus Christ needed it. Gene, do you have a verse to back that up? Yes, I have a verse to back that up. He was crucified that He might have something He did not have. He was crucified that He might learn obedience. That was something He did not have, and He needed it. I don’t have the words for it. When all things are in yieldedness, when all things are wrapped in yieldedness, everything you yield to, not many believers have ever had the privilege of walking there. Whatever it is or however bad it gets, you are in a state of yieldedness. Nothing can hit you, and nothing can hurt you, and you don’t need glory days. The good days and the bad days are the same because we yielded. That’s it.

There was one thing in the Lord’s life that wasn’t yielded. He didn’t want to be crucified…  and He yielded to crucifixion. When He yielded to crucifixion, there wasn’t anything bigger than that. And when you have yielded to the worst thing that ever happened, and there’s nothing any bigger. May the spirit of the living God help you and call you to understand what I just said.  There was purpose, and there was duty, the day you got crucified. Can you understand that and go back to Gethsemane now? And agree to the choreography. Agree with the people who are standing out there, the ones who got cast in the drama. Agree to your friends having forsaken you. Agree to the blood and the gore. Agree to the mallet, the nail, and the wood. Agree to the infamy. Agree to the loss of your reputation for the rest of your life. Agree to the lies and the rumors that will not die. Agree to Ananias and to Caiaphas and agree to the worst and darkest and ugliest moments of all of it, and say, “Lord, I yield. It was from your hand, and it was for something I needed, and in your eyes it was good.”

Now I have one more point. I’ll put it negatively, then put it positively. If you don’t do that, you’re never going to rise from the dead. I’ll say it again. If you don’t yield to what they did to you, if you don’t accept it and make it part of your history and make it something beautiful, you are never going to walk in resurrection. It is not yours to have. It will never be yours, and I am not a negative speaker. I am trying to get your attention. There is no such thing as resurrection without crucifixion, and until it becomes a crucifixion, it is nothing but a vicious, angry, fleshly encounter. A vicious, angry, fleshly encounter. It’s just two goats hitting their heads against one another. It’s just something. But Gene, it was so unfair. Then it’s not a crucifixion.

Brother, until it empties out of your mind and your heart and your spirit and your soul, and you lay it all down, and you take that ugliest thought that just gnaws at you, and you confess that you failed and you did a little lying and anger and twisting and you weren’t exactly the most beautiful thing there ever was. Lord, I confess that. I don’t like that because I didn’t ever want…I never wanted the crucifixion. It’s got to become a crucifixion, or there will be no resurrection.

Now, that’s not all. Here’s something even worse, and I’m trying to get your attention. If you don’t make it through that crucifixion, you’re not going to make it through the next one. You see, this is how big this one was. Well, that’s how big the next one is. It’s going to be a hair bigger because… do you understand what it means to be pressed out of measure? If you can get past this crucifixion, then you’re going to have to get pressed out of that measure. That’s not good news, is it? Let me make this really clear. If it is not a crucifixion in your life, if it’s not cleaned up and dealt with, the next one won’t be a crucifixion either. It will just be some more ugly, vicious Christians who don’t have any decency about them, mistreating me and doing things…you don’t know what they did… I’ll never count on Christians. I don’t care if I ever see another Christian again. I’m walking out of here; I’m never coming back. I was given a lemon, and I’m going to suck on it for the rest of the world.

I say it lightly, but I say it in truth. The next morning, you won’t even think “crucifixion”. You’ll only think the ugliest things you can. And you, dear friend, will be in the grips of bitterness. You will live as a bitter old man or woman. The tragedy of getting crucified is that there’s always the possibility of another one. But brother, there will be another one, and it won’t have crucifixion anywhere on it. There will just be ugly dripping from it. Now, I’m going to pause before I bring this to an end. Have I made myself clear? I don’t mean, “Have I made myself clear?”, but I mean, are you clear?

Let me try to explain a little bit more. You know what you want? You want to pick the donkey that’s there. You wish to choose the hill. You want to decide the size of the nails. You want to decide what’s going to be said about you and what’s not going to be said about you. And you are prepared to go through that crucifixion. Well, a crucifixion is not a crucifixion unless it is things that are beyond your ability to stand. If you cannot handle this one dripping in unfairness and in things unjustifiable, then you surely will be no more prepared, and even less prepared, and more vulnerable for the next. Hey saint, you don’t get to write the script. You don’t get to be the director and producer. This thing is a tragedy, and you don’t get to. Well, Gene, am I really going to have another one? I think that if you can get through the first one, there’s an excellent chance you’ll have another one. What an honor.

Now, there can be resurrection. And what brings about resurrection? Making sure that one was a crucifixion. Do you know what resurrection is? Resurrection is that which is beyond that which is destroyed. Resurrection is that which is beyond that which is dead. You know what resurrection is? There is only one definition for resurrection. First, it is the demarcation at which point anything before it no longer exists, and after it, all things belong to a creation that has and is no part of that which came before. It is a totally new realm. That which was before the resurrection does not exist. It is the beginning of the birth of a new creation.