I'd like to direct your attention this morning to Mark chapter 14, verses 12 to 21. And I also want to dismiss kids who are sixth grade and younger and adults who are working with them. This is our once a month ministry for kids during the sermon. Parents, if you'd prefer to keep your kids in here, they're totally welcome to do that. But this is a time of gospel teaching and singing that's geared for their age group. So go ahead and head on over to the ed building, kids and adults working with them. And again we'll be looking this morning at Mark chapter 14 verses 12 to 21. What we'll do is I'll read the text, I'll pray for God's blessing, and then move on from there. This is the Word of the Lord. The hymn here is Jesus as we're in the Gospels. So starting in verse 12. And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover? And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, go into the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you, follow him. And wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, where is my guest room? Where I may eat the Passover with my disciples. And he will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready there, prepare for us. And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them. And they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening, he came with the 12. And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me. They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, is it I? He said to them, it is one of the 12, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born." This is the Word of the Lord. Let's pray. God, we confess, just as you tell us, that your Word has the power to give life to our hearts. It has the power to shatter stony hearts. It has the power to show us who you are and to renew us in the likeness of Christ. It has the power even to birth new life in Christ and to give the gift of faith to its hearers. And yet we know there's danger that we might hear your word externally with our ears, but it not penetrate our souls and do anything. And so we pray with utter dependence on you that your spirit would make your word fruitful in our lives. Give me faithful and clear proclamation of the message that you're communicating in this text and give us all humility before you. Give us all insight and alertness so that we might receive what you have to tell us and that all of your purposes that you mean for us to inform to encourage, to convict, to purify, to prepare us both to live for you in this life and to inherit glory with Jesus in the age to come. Accomplish all of these purposes and more and be glorified in your son Jesus and in us his body through our time in your word. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Whenever you're reading a well-written play or novel or maybe an epic poem, You'll find the author paying attention to detail. Anyone can summarize action in a dry and flat manner. That's how you and I usually tell stories. This happened, and then that happened, and then that other thing happened. We tend to tell stories like engineers who are optimizing for efficiency, and we tend to lack the vividness that draws hearers or readers in to a compelling story. But when you're writing or telling a story, and if you're creative enough to do it, you have the power to craft every detail to fit your purpose. Whether that purpose, again, is to engage the reader, or to develop a character, or to portray something about how the world works. That's the power you have as the storyteller. Now, this illustration touches our text this morning on two levels. First of all, we're reading a narrative that was crafted by a human author, Mark. And we affirm the historical truthfulness of everything the biblical authors wrote. And yet they still made choices about what they would include. what they would exclude, what they would highlight, and how they would present events. There's a lot of editorial discretion that goes into writing these books. And the Gospels are remarkable, subtle works of literature. So we might look at today's text and scratch our heads a little bit. We've been moving along in the story of Jesus. If you've been with us, you've intermittently been in Mark hearing. Yeah, he's been in Jerusalem. He's experienced conflict with various groups of religious leaders, even as he's issued his own judgment against Israel's broken and unfaithful religious system. And we know that the story is moving forward toward its climax in the passion narrative. we're drawing ever closer to the cross and deeper into the long shadow that it casts over all these events. And so if that's the case, why does Mark stop and give us this detailed story about how Jesus and his disciples choose their Passover location, and then how he tells them about the coming betrayal. Looking ahead just a little bit, if you look down at verses 22 to 25, You can see the passages where Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper there in the upper room. And it's not hard to imagine the relevance of that text. Lord willing, that's where we'll be next week. But why these oddly specific details in between? Is Mark just telling us a bunch of events simply because they happened? That's another way of telling a story badly. Some of us may know storytellers like that. There's no editing at all. Everything that comes to mind gets included right there in the narrative. This is stream of consciousness with all these extraneous details. Is that what Mark is doing? If it's true that all of scripture is inspired by God and profitable for our faith in godliness, we should assume that there's something intentional, something deeper going on here. But beyond that first level of the gospel, the human author, the illustration of a playwright or an author touches our texts in another way, on God's authorship of the events that we read about. So the first question asks, why would Mark, a presumably good writer, burden his story with apparently unimportant details like this, how they found their Passover location? But the second question asks, why would God, who inspired Mark to write what he did, even have caused these events to happen this way? And we'll find that both authors have wise purposes in orchestrating and telling us these events. You and I tend to neglect God in our accounting for why everyday mundane things happen. Some Christians have a saying, you might say this, you might hear this among other Christians saying, it was a God thing. It was a God thing. What does that mean when people say that? It was an extraordinary intervention. It was an event that occurs with a serendipity that non-believers would call a coincidence, but Christians know better. We're saying God did something here. And while that's totally right, We often fail to realize that all the little details of ordinary life are God things too. And even when we do recognize God's hand, maybe in a big life event, we don't always take it the right way. When disaster or trouble strikes, we can wrestle with seeing the goodness of God's ways. So here's the main idea of what we're gonna see regarding this story in Mark and regarding our lives. Here's the main idea. Every plot detail follows God's redeeming script. Every plot detail follows God's redeeming script. And we'll look at two examples that demonstrate this truth. One of them will be mundane, the other will be momentous. Okay, so two examples that demonstrate that every plot detail follows God's redeeming script. Now, in both the mundane and the momentous examples, we're going to see both a specific lesson about Jesus and a general lesson about God's ways in the world. So first, let's look at a mundane example, verses 12 to 17. A mundane example. Now the last time we were in Mark, we saw a contrast in verses one to 11, between two responses to Jesus. On the one hand, a woman came, unnamed, when Jesus was at a meal with others, and she poured out fragrant ointment on his head, as she poured out her heart in worship, anticipating his coming sacrificial death. On the other hand, one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, volunteered himself to betray Jesus to the chief priests and scribes, the very people who were seeking a way to bring him down. Now, we as readers sitting over the story, we know about Judas' plot. The narrator has let us in on that, but it's veiled from other characters in the story. And that brings us to today's events. Verse 12 tells us that it was the first day of the unleavened bread when the Passover lamb was sacrificed. Now if we follow the details of the passion narratives in all the gospels, we learn that this was Thursday of the holy week. Thursday night was approaching. And the feast of unleavened bread and the Passover were two distinct events in Israel's religious calendar, but they were right on top of each other and so people spoke of them as one thing. And in verse 12, the disciples set the scene by asking Jesus where to set up for this Passover observance. They ask him, where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover? And then in verses 13 to 15, he sends two of them out with a detailed set of predictions about what they will find when they enter Jerusalem. which will guide them to the suitable place. So he sent two of his disciples and said to them, go into the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, the teacher says, where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready. They are prepared for us. Then in verse 16, we're told, in summary fashion, that it happens according to the plan. Everything Jesus just said would happen, happens. Verse 16, they set out, they went to the city and found it just as he had told them, so they went ahead and did what he said. They prepared for the Passover. And then verse 17 is kind of a transition verse, just moving Jesus and the rest of the 12 into the Passover hall, where they begin their meal, and that sets the stage for the second half of our text, beginning in verse 18. So again, why these minor details? Here's what's happening. In this account, Jesus makes a detailed set of predictions that come true. Then in verses 18 to 21, he'll make another prediction. And because here in the mundane and ordinary case of where they're going to have the Passover, Jesus makes successful detailed predictions What this flags for us is that his more important and more momentous prediction in verses 18 to 21, that is sure to happen also. And all of this prediction fulfillment pattern of both sides of our text, what they both demonstrate is that every detail in the story is intentional. Now we'll explore the relevance of that intentionality as we look at the second half in verses 18 to 21. It was normal for pilgrims to Jerusalem to hire out a room to observe the Passover. That's what Jesus and his disciples do here. But other details of this story are unusual. And it's clear that Jesus was not just guessing, taking random stabs at what his disciples might find. Like someone might say, well, make the first left when you enter the city and go to the third house on the right and approach the first person you talk to and try to find a room. Anybody could say something like that. Rather he displays special knowledge of the details. There will be a man carrying a water jar, which by the way was typically a task carried out by women. That man will take him to a house with a ready upper room, a large upper room that's ready and available. And the master of that house will seem to understand what they mean when they say the teacher is looking for a place to eat the Passover. This is not the first time Jesus has done something like this. Back in chapter 11 verses one to seven, just on the cusp of entering Jerusalem for the first time, Jesus gave a similar set of predictions and instructions to an advanced party of two of his disciples. Now some interpreters have seen this level of detailed prediction and assume that Jesus must have made a secret plan in advance with the master of the house. Nothing could be done in the open because, as other Gospels tell us, by this point Jesus was a wanted man in Jerusalem. And under normal circumstances, a clandestine plan would be the simplest explanation. but I have two issues with that reading. First is that it's hard to imagine Jesus having an opportunity to hatch this kind of detailed plan with somebody else without any of the disciples being aware of it. The gospel all along has portrayed them as a very tight-knit group around Jesus. That's one issue with that idea of a secret plan. The second issue, which I think is more important, is that if this were a little cloak and dagger operation between Jesus and the master of the house, so what? We're back to that original question. Why would Mark include this account? How would this advance the story about Jesus, showing us that he's a good planner or a savvy operator? Rather, I believe Jesus is demonstrating supernatural knowledge. He's showing himself omniscient, meaning he has the divine attribute of total knowledge. He has all knowledge. And other places in Mark have portrayed Jesus as having this God-like access to non-natural knowledge. Way back in chapter two, verse eight, he perceived in his spirit that his opponents were questioning him in their hearts. And so he responded to that. But it might be even more than mere knowledge Jesus is exercising, but he's also orchestrating the details. And again, for Jesus to possess divine almighty power would not be without precedent in Mark. Do you remember back in chapter four when he's in the boat with his disciples and he calmed the storm with mere words? And in doing so, alluding to Psalm 107 and other texts that show, as well as you see in the disciples' response, Jesus is doing what only God can do. in speaking and having authority over the storm, over nature, exercising sovereign control over nature. And back in Mark four, when this happened, the disciples were in fear, they were in awe, they knew, is this God, what's going on? Once again, then Mark is showing us that Jesus is both true man and true God, possesses every divine attribute without measure, including all knowledge and all power. So what this mundane example shows us about Jesus is that he's omniscient and omnipotent. In him, the eternal son, the uncreated idea of the divine mind which upholds the universe, the wisdom by which all things came into being, took on the clothing of humanity. That's the specific lesson about Jesus, but what's the general lesson about God's ways in the world? It's this, every small detail follows God's decree. Every small detail follows God's decree. Again, we tend to think of the world as a fabric where normal ordinary things are happening because of natural causes. And against that backdrop, the Lord will sometimes intervene with out of the ordinary God things. No, the Bible says. The men carrying water pitchers, the timing of walking routes, furnished rooms on this floor and not that. All these details too are compositions of the divine author. And earlier in his ministry, Jesus has already taught that God has detailed knowledge and control over our lives. In Luke 12, verses six to seven, he instructed his followers that God keeps track of every little sparrow and every hair on our heads, not one of them falls outside of his knowledge and control. And using a similar illustration in Matthew 6, 26, Jesus tells us that the heavenly father feeds every little sparrow in the air. His hand of providence underlies and governs even natural processes like seeds and worms being available on the ground and the little birdies going down and foraging for them. It's not God or nature, it's God upholding and controlling nature. The hairs that fall from our heads, some of us, I regret to inform you more quickly than others, They're all falling out for some natural reason. There's a biological explanation, but at the same time, underlying those processes in nature, there's a divine hand of providence exerting total and detailed control. So friends, this mundane example teaches us that we trust and worship a Jesus who represents true God and true man in one ineffable person. Neither nature, humanity, or deity is diminished or changed by their mysterious union. And this example also teaches us that God writes the script. It belongs to divine omnipotence, almighty power, to govern every detail in this world's story. So how do we know if something is a God thing? Yes. Everything is. Having seen this mundane example in verses 12 to 17, let's now turn to verses 18 to 21 and see a momentous example. A momentous example, verses 18 to 21. And in this example too, there's both a specific lesson about Jesus and a general lesson about God's works in the world. So, after setting the scene in the upper room for the Passover, Mark tells us an important event that takes place during that dinner. Verse 18, Jesus predicts that one of the men there with him, one of his intimate disciples sharing table fellowship with him in that moment, will deliver him over to death. It says in verse 18, and as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me. Now Jesus had already predicted back in Mark 9 31 and 10 33 that he'll be delivered over to death using the same Greek word that's here translated betray. And most simply the word means give over. In those earlier cases he said that his enemies would give over, the ESV, deliver him to death. Here the context is a trusted companion giving him over, and so a good word for that is betrayal. It's a special kind of giving over. So the ESV translation of betray is not a bad translation at all, but it's important for us to understand that he's continuing those former predictions with a new surprising detail. It won't be the enemies from outside only, it'll be one of us that delivers me over to death. In verse 19, the disciples are shocked and troubled, as we might imagine. They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, is it I? And the grammar of that question, it's a kind of question that expects a negative answer. It's like saying, you don't mean me, do you Jesus? I've often wondered how this scene played out. It's hard to imagine how Judas's identity remains secret. And other Gospels give us different details of the scene, such as in John, where you have Jesus giving a secret signal to the beloved disciple that it is Judas. But it's clear that, at least in a public sense, openly, the collective understanding of the room, they don't find out that it's Judas. His identity remains a secret. And now, if they were all asking Jesus, is it me, and it got to Judas, it seems impossible that his identity could remain a secret. If he didn't ask, it would look obvious. Everyone else asks but Judas. Or Jesus, we know he wouldn't lie. But just following Mark's sequence here, it seems to me that Jesus doesn't answer any of the disciples. So they're all asking him one by one. Is it not me? Is it 19? In verse 21, he just doubles down on the same prediction. It's one of you, even one of my intimate companions who's sharing this holiday feast with me. Now this Thursday, when you're seated around the Thanksgiving table with your friends or family, take a minute to look around and imagine one of them betraying you over to death, putting you into the hands of false accusers for a public execution. It's a shocking revelation. It's a scandal. Now again, I'll draw your attention to the pattern of prediction and fulfillment. Remember, Jesus said, look for the water jar guy, and voila, it happened. Here we are, having the Passover. Now he says, one of you will betray me. What does this prediction fulfillment pattern communicate to us? Intentionality and divine purpose. The script writer is foreshadowing, and by no means for the first time if you've been with us through Mark, but he's foreshadowing the coming climax of Jesus's betrayal and death. Now if you're on the ball, and if you're married, and if you're about to make a large financial transaction, you might give your spouse a heads up about what's coming. Hey dear, you're gonna see a big charge hit the account soon. That's for the tree trimming service I just paid for, or the new flat screen TV we just bought, or whatever. Just heads up, you're going to see a huge charge hit the account. Or sometimes you're not on the ball and your spouse asks you, what is this thing in the account? Why do we do that? I want you to know that even though the superficial conditions might seem alarming, I have the situation under control. I have things well in hand. And that's what Jesus is telling the disciples here. The coming events will perplex and they will distress, but I have the situation well in hand. And many people over the years have viewed Jesus's death as an unfortunate miscarriage of justice, a merely human tragedy. How could the world have so mistreated such a pure, loving, high-minded teacher as Jesus? Well, yes, the cross was a profound miscarriage of justice, but it was not an unfortunate accident. That's why this whole story is here. Jesus predicted the upper room to show us that his prediction of betrayal will come true. And he predicts his betrayal to show us that they're not about to ambush him and victimize him and steal his life away from him. He's going to lay it down. He's going to give it up. He's descending to the low place, that deepest posture of humility, not as a conquered and powerless nice guy, but as a servant. With his agency fully intact, with resolve. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. and to give his life as a ransom for many. That verse back in 1045, that was the high point of Mark's gospel, and it's the one verse that interprets every word we encounter throughout these pages. He came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Christian, Jesus wants you to know today that he meant to be betrayed. He meant for Judas to rat him out. He meant to encounter those soldiers that we'll see in the Garden of Gethsemane later in this chapter. He meant to be falsely accused and found guilty and scourged and beaten and nailed to the cross and left there to die. He did it to redeem. He did it to restore you and me. He did it to pay for our sins, fellow believers. And non-believer, he did it for you too if you'll trust him to be your savior. What we're about to see as we walk through this passion narrative is not a surprised and powerless Jesus being overwhelmed by opponents. Rather as he says in John 10, 17 to 18, for this reason, the father loves me because I laid down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my father. This is a specific lesson we're meant to see about Jesus. Well then what's a fitting response from our hearts? Joyful thanksgiving toward Jesus. Wholehearted affection to the one who laid down his soul in death to shepherd our souls to life. But then in verse 21, Jesus goes on to extend a general lesson about God's ways of working in the world. After again repeating his prediction in verse 20, he goes on and says, for the Son of Man goes as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born. And you might be wondering, where is it written that the Son of Man would go? And what it means there is go to death, go away to death. And you won't find any Old Testament text predicting the death of the Son of Man in those terms. But as we've already seen in Mark, Jesus combines different strands of messianic expectation into a seamless whole. So the Son of Man in Daniel 7. The messianic, the Davidic Messiah, the Christ. And Isaiah's suffering servant. These are all Christ figures in the Old Testament. And Jesus is fully comfortable ascribing any of these to himself and fluidly moving between them. Jesus' sufferings are written in many ways throughout the Old Testament. We might think immediately of the classic text, the suffering servant of Isaiah chapter 53. And Jesus might be thinking about all sorts of texts like this in general, but I think he's making a specific reference to Psalm 41, which we read earlier in the service. Because when Jesus says in verses 18 to 20 that one of those eating with him will betray him, he's alluding to Psalm 41 verse nine. You may have caught this when we read this Psalm out loud. Let me read verses five through 10 of that Psalm again. My enemies say of me in malice, when will he die and his name perish? And when no one comes to see me, he utters, and when one comes to see me, he utters empty words while his heart gathers iniquity. When he goes out, he tells it abroad. All who hate me whisper together about me. They imagine the worst for me. They say a deadly thing is poured out on him. He will not rise again from where he lies. Listen to this. Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. But you, O Lord, be gracious to me and raise me up that I may repay them. The Psalm 41 was written by David. We're hearing about David's own historical betrayals, which themselves foreshadow the coming betrayal of the greater David, Jesus. And Jesus alludes to these scriptural predictions. In doing so, he's alerting us to a kind of necessity about his betrayal and death. It was written. It was foretold. Even prior to that, and more importantly than that, it was foreordained. This was always the divine plan. The God who, as we just heard, controls our waning hairline also controls the big disasters of history, the most heinous evils. From the littlest to the biggest events, Paul tells us in Ephesians 1.11 that God works all things according to the counsel of His will. God is saying, I wrote that in the script too. That is a crucial plot point. That is an essential element in the story that I'm telling in history. And yet, what about Judas? Is he a dumb pawn? Is he devoid of any moral agency or responsibility? Does the necessity of the divine purpose and the sovereignty of God render his choices and actions meaningless? On the one hand, Jesus says, it is written, it's the divine plan. And then he turns right around in the middle of verse 21 and says, but regarding him, woe to him. What is a woe? It's an ascription of misery and cursing. You may hear me say sometimes that whenever we encounter one of the Bible's blessed is the so-and-so, sayings that are called macarisms, these statements are a description of a happy state of being. It's like saying this kind of person has it good. This is the good life. And a woe is the direct opposite. Oh, how sad and miserable is the state of such a person. Why? Because on the human level, betraying Jesus to death as an insider, as a trusted friend, is a horrific injustice. Maybe the worst that can be imagined. In fact, it's so heinous and wicked that Jesus closes verse 21 by alluding to a kind of punishment and misery that outweighs all the goodness of being that Judas would ever know in this earthly life. when he says, it would have been better for that man if he had not been born. Every second of breath and life gifted by his creator, every refreshing cup of cold water, every delicious and satisfying meal, every ray of sun, every drop of rain, every moment of laughter with a friend, including Jesus, all of that, put that all on one side of the ledger, on the other side, put the unutterable weight of cursing and misery that awaits this traitor. Jesus is not stating here the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell but he has already made that clear earlier in Mark and he's alluding to it here. Age upon age of torment. Separated from the God who is himself the good of every blessing. The light of every ray. The beauty of all that's fair. The wellspring of the joy of living. Jesus is pushing against our oversimplistic formulations about what causes the events that happen in the world. How could evil, we all wonder this, how could evil be a part of God's plan? And we seek intellectual and emotional relief by perhaps softening God's role in evil and saying, we'll say God allows evil. God foreknows evil. Yes. That's true. God foreknows it. God allows it. But to be fully biblical, we have to turn it up. We have to crank that dial another level. God ordains it. God causes it. God decrees it. The implications overwhelm us. The Holy God, the one who is Habakkuk 1.13 tells us is too pure to look upon evil. ordains it, plans it, causes it, wills it in a certain sense? Yes. That's what the Bible compels us to say. He doesn't do evil. He doesn't delight in evil. He hates it with the holy heat of 10,000 suns, far more than you and I ever could. But it's still a part of the plot that he, the all wise author, writes into the story. Another false step is when we pit human responsibility against divine sovereignty and explaining why evil happens. If man is truly responsible, if man has enough agency to choose and to be held accountable for evil, which clearly is the case for Judas, surely God must leave some of it, even the tiniest shred, undetermined, right? Leaving it ultimately to the choice of man, right? Wrong. Everything happens according to his decree. The story is written in eternity past every detail, and yet Judas will be righteously held to account because Judas made real choices. And so do you, and so do I. Though other stories, many other stories in the Bible teach this point, none other does it quite like the story of Jesus's cross. That God's sovereign control over evil does not reduce human culpability. And on the other hand, human will and human choosing, while genuine, does not remove a shred of divine control and determination. We don't choose between these alternatives. We have to own them both and admit the mystery of their parallel existence. Somehow, in a way that's far beyond us, these are both true. On the one hand, there's great comfort to be found in God's sovereign control over even the tiniest detail of our world. Nothing is random. Nothing in Jesus's life, nothing in your life is without redeeming purpose. Nothing exceeds what's necessary. Often evil seems just so excessive. And it is to us, in a certain way it is absolutely excessive. But we don't see now what we will one day see, that it was all for a good divine purpose. On the other hand, there's great sobriety and fear to be gleaned from the Bible's portrayal of Judas. Look at Judas and see the insidious power of evil. Look at what an abominable evil was allowed to invade even the inner circle of Jesus' companions. All of Jesus' followers in every age ought to tremble at the deceitful power of sin. When we play around with sin, we're teasing cobras. We're flirting with the nuclear launch button. We have no idea. We cannot overestimate the danger of sin. Ultimately, we're to fear God and find rest and security in him. We're not supposed to live in paranoia over sin. But rest assured of this, sin is far more dangerous than you think. And as sad as this is, Judas's case should also instruct the church in every time and place that apostates and traitors could arise from us as well. even among those we trusted deeply, even those with whom we shared the most intimate fellowship, or those who seem such fruitful instruments in the Lord's hands. Now, we're not supposed to live in constant suspicion, jaded and distrusting toward our brethren in Christ, but we are supposed to be ready for the sad and inevitable shocker that will come around every now and then. Again, both in our own hearts and in the fellowship of God's people were to never underestimate the power and deceit and destructive potential of sin. Instead, we're to flee from it. We're to hate it. We're to strive against it by the power of the Holy Spirit. And as Hebrews 3 tells us, we're to warn and encourage and exhort each other every day as God's people to avoid its siren song and to keep on going heavenward with our eyes fixed on Jesus. But even with that sobriety and with that alertness about sin, our trust lies in the Lord who wrote the end from the beginning. That's where the accent of this text falls. And on every text that teaches about God's sovereignty over the world, it calls us to trust and fear the one who is in control. Remember the text I alluded to earlier, Luke 12, about the sparrows and the hairs on our heads? Let me read verses four through seven of Luke 12. Jesus says to his disciples, I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do, but I will warn you whom to fear. Fear him who after he is killed has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows. God alone is to be feared, and in the fear of the Lord, there is cause for great security and great joy. Because of the Lord's utter control and knowledge of every detail, we fear him and we trust him over everything else. And what inheritance belongs to those who fear the Lord? The redemption that we just heard about, Jesus himself winning with his death as a servant. The eternal covenant friendship of God we read about in Psalm 25, 14. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant. This morning we've seen that every plot detail follows God's redeeming script. Not just the plot details of Mark, but the plot details of the whole story that God is telling with the world. From Jesus' wicked betrayal at the hands of Judas, to seemingly meaningless movements of water pitchers and sparrows, to the grand sweep of history, to every little detail of your life and mine. Let's pray. Our God, we praise you, the sovereign one, even while we confess the mystery that we can't penetrate with our feeble, creaturely minds, how it is that you orchestrate history, how it is that you, with your sovereign control over all things, Yet with your holy and pure hatred of evil, can you use it for good? And we admit that we often, when we're in the thick of life, we're in the fog of war, we can't understand the things assailing us, the seemingly random pains and trials. It can be so hard for us to see how could this be good? How could this fit? We confess now, we lay ourselves in trust before your sovereignty and we just say, you're God, we praise you, we trust you. And we thank you that Jesus, who was in complete control, gave his life as a sacrifice for us. We had no ability to redeem ourselves. We had no ability to find our way back to you, but Jesus laid down his life as a servant so that we might be reconciled, we might be redeemed. We thank you that He intentionally did this for our good. And we pray all this in His name, amen.