Easter Baptism 2016
Transcript
Well, good morning. Happy Easter. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 27 this morning. We're going to spend a little bit of time there.
That's on page 540 if your Bible looks like this. Grab one of the blue and white Bibles on the row. If you don't own a Bible, this is our gift to you. Take it home with you. So I found, it seems to me that when it comes to people's viewpoints of Christianity, what Christianity is, what it's about, specifically people who maybe haven't, aren't Christians.
Like if you just went down the street and just kind of took a poll, I think you kind of get two major viewpoints about what the Bible is, what it's about, what Christianity is about. And usually it seems like people fall into two camps. So on one side you have, the Bible is a book of rules, mostly. Like mostly is a book of morals. It's, you read this, it's going to teach you how to live. It's God's roadmap to life.
It's how to make good decisions. It's God's plan for us, what he wants us to do, how we ought to behave. That Jesus was a great moral teacher. And that he came to show us how to follow the rules. How to behave. How to be very moral.
And that's kind of one side. And so people would say maybe that if you just follow the rules, all of life would be better. Which is pretty much true for all sets of rules, all belief systems. If you just kind of followed what they said, most of the time it's like that people would get along better. That's what people say. That's what Christianity is.
It's a set of rules that if we follow, we'll get along better. And if you follow them really well, maybe God will love you or maybe God will be pleased with you. Maybe God will bless you. Or maybe when you die you can stand before him and you get to go to heaven because you've been a good person. That's one of the major popular beliefs about Christianity. The other side is kind of a no.
The Bible is primarily about love. It's about how we treat one another. How we love one another. It's not about God's rules. It's about love. That God loves us.
He loves us so much that God forgives us. And Jesus came to show us how to love. And if you just follow the rules, then you'll end up being really hypocritical or you'll be really proud. Or you'll be one of those religious old ladies that's just mean to everybody. But you just need to learn how to love.
And that's what Jesus was all about. The problem with both of those, though, is that the one thing that most people know about Christianity is that Jesus... You say, okay, he was a great moral teacher or, you know, he taught us how to love. So he loved and he followed the rules. And because of that, because he was so loving and so rule-following, they brutally murdered him. Right?
Because that's how it works at school. Like the girl that always follows the rules and is nice to everyone, everybody hates her and she gets expelled. Like that's... Right? No. That's not how that works.
So what we know, the primary thing about Christianity is that Jesus went to a cross. And the problem with both of these viewpoints, if the Bible is primarily about us following rules or if the Bible is primarily about us being loving, neither one of those accurately, intelligently explains the cross. If you're just supposed to follow rules, why did Jesus die? If it's about your behavior, why did Jesus die? And if you're just supposed to be loving and if God is just loving, like he's just out there floating in a field of warm fuzzies. And when he thinks about you, he giggles in his heart.
If that's the case, if that's God, if he's just some love force out there in the universe, then what is the cross? How does that make any sense whatsoever? The problem with both of these viewpoints is that they're really incomplete. They don't make sense of what the Bible actually holds up as primary. What the Bible says, no, no, this is the main thing you need to focus on is a cross, is that Jesus died. And so let's go to Matthew chapter 27 and try to figure out why that would be primary and how that helps us understand what the Bible really is about and what the point actually is.
So we're going to read through Matthew chapter 27, we're just going to talk a little bit about what we see here, what we're told here, what these eyewitnesses relate to us here. And then we're going to jump to 1 Corinthians to try to help explain it. So what we're doing right now is we're just going to look at it and then we're going to jump over and say, okay, if that's the main thing, then what does it mean? Why is it the main thing? Why does it matter? 27, we're going to start in verse 57.
When it was evening, there came a rich man. This is the evening that Jesus was crucified. Jesus is still on the cross. There came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. That meant he followed him. He went to Pilate, that's the Roman governor, and asked for the body of Jesus.
Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So it, Jesus is dead. He's a thing at this point. He's a corpse. Pilate ordered it to be given to him, Jesus' body. And Joseph took the body, the dead body of Jesus, wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock.
And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, that's Jesus' mother, were there sitting opposite the tomb. So they saw where the dead Jesus was placed. The next day, that is the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate. So those are the people who killed him.
And they say, Sir, we remember how this imposter said while he was still alive that after three days I will rise. Therefore, order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people he has risen from the dead, and the last fraud will be worse than the first. So Pilate said to them, You have a guard of soldiers. Go make it as secure as you can. So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.
Okay, so they kill Jesus, and then they go to Pilate and they say, Hey, thanks for killing Jesus. But Jesus, when he walked around, used to tell people that he wasn't going to stay dead. And so we need to put some guards around his body. So they won't steal him, hide him, bury him somewhere else and go, He's alive! That's actually really smart. That was a good plan.
Like, let's seal the tomb. So they put a seal on the tomb, and they put guards to guard the tomb so nobody could come steal the body. They're not afraid Jesus is going to try to get out. They just are afraid somebody's going to try to come take him. Chapter 28. Now, after the Sabbath, so the Sabbath is the Saturday, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, that's Sunday.
That's why we celebrate Easter on Sunday. That's today. Good morning. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. So these are the two people who saw where Jesus was buried.
And behold, there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. This guy was hard to look at. Aggressively shiny, maybe is a way to put that. His clothing was as white as snow.
And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. Okay, I don't think it means they died. I think it means they probably just like passed out. Because there was an earthquake and then a lightning guy pushes the stone away and then just sits on it and like looks at you. And your job is to not let that happen. At this point though, I think they look at him and they're like, there's this moment of, should we fight this guy?
And then immediately there's this moment of, no, that ain't happening. And then I think they look at each other and they're like, tin like you sleep. Just, just late. We just, we just going to lay down. Fight over. I probably just passed out.
Like, boom, earthquake, stone, guy, eye contact, lightning, close, and boom, out. So, they at least deserve a demotion. They have done their job poorly. But the angel said to the women. So, women didn't get terrified. I mean, they're scared in some, some form or fashion, but not, they didn't pass out.
Do not be afraid. Thank you. That's the first thing. If you see an angel, that's the first thing you want them to say. You meet an angel and he doesn't start with, do not be afraid. You should be afraid.
Do not be afraid for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here for he has risen. As he said, yeah. Woo. Look, if we're going to, like, you either got to woo or just don't do it. Like, we missed our chance.
We can't go back. We can't go back. I know most of us are white, but you got to, we got to up it up a little bit. I know we don't usually, woo. I know we don't usually, we'll, we'll work later. We'll get to baptize people.
We'll get to holler some more. Do not be afraid for I know that you seek Jesus who has crucified. He is not here for he has risen. As he said, come, see the place where he lay. So, he says, you can come in the tomb. You can see that it's empty.
Jesus told you he was going to rise and he did. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. So, they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples.
And behold, Jesus met them and said greetings. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me. So, if you, Jesus told people he was God and he told people that he was going to be murdered. And then he told people that he was going to rise again.
And then he was murdered and then he rose again. And that's why they grab his feet and worshipped him. Because he said he was God and that this was going to happen. And once he actually, it happened and he came back to life, then it was like, oh, you must actually be God. Like, what you said must actually be true. So, they fall down and worshipped him.
And Christianity says it's not just about God's love and Jesus being loving. It's not just about rules and Jesus being a good moral teacher. The point of Christianity is that Jesus went to a cross, that he died and that he rose again. That's the point. That the tomb is empty. That's what we celebrate.
This is the major holiday for Christians. Easter. The tomb is empty. Now, the question is, why is that the point? I mean, it sounds nice. It proves he was God, I guess, that Jesus died.
He rose again. He's not in the tomb anymore. But why do we celebrate that? Why is that the point? So, let's jump to 1 Corinthians. It's going to be to the right.
And it should be on the screen. It'll be page 624. If your Bible looks like this. If your Bible doesn't look like this, it's to the right. It's going to say 1 Corinthians at the top. 624, chapter 15.
This is Paul helping us understand why the cross, why the empty tomb is primary. Why we would actually want to celebrate that. 17, verse 17. And if Christ, that's Jesus. If Christ has not been raised, did not come back from the dead, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then all those who have fallen asleep, he means those who have died in Christ, believing in Christ, is what he's saying there, have perished.
They're just dead. And if in Christ we have hope only in this life or in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. So what Paul says is if Christ didn't rise from the dead, if what we celebrate on Easter isn't true, then people should feel sorry for us. And we're everything we believe is a lie, is a waste, is dumb and useless. That's what Paul's saying. He's saying that the cross, the empty tomb, are so vital to Christianity that if you take them out, just what, he taught us to love, just he taught us to follow rules, it's a waste of time.
We should be pitied. People should feel sorry for us because without the empty tomb we have nothing. So here's what he says. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. So he's the first one who would die and rise from the grave and be brought back to God.
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. So this will take just a second to explain what he's saying there. What he's saying is that through Adam, so way back in history, Adam and Eve, famous duo, worse than Bonnie and Clyde, caused more problems for everybody. Adam and Eve. So he says back in the day, Adam and Eve were created in a relationship with God.
They were designed to exist in a loving, harmonious relationship. And Adam sins. And when Adam sins, when Adam rebels, he brings death into the world. That death didn't exist, but death now reigns from Adam to us. Like death has taken over because we're all sinful. And we're born sinful.
We all innately rebel against God. This becomes like obvious to us in different ways. Like some of you, maybe you work law enforcement. Maybe you work social services. Like some of us get to see sinfulness and depravity and brokenness in the world on a daily basis. Others of us are a little bit more separated from it.
But there's sometimes in life it just becomes clear. So when we started planning this church, we started this church up and we were starting to do some kid city stuff. We were going to work with children. One of the things we had to put in our children's handbook for your sweet little baby angels was what to do when one child bites another child. Did y'all know that? We come from a race of biters.
Look around the room. Some of these people sitting next to you all dressed up looking nice today had to be taught forcefully and repeatedly not to bite other humans. Had to be taught. Had to be trained. Like this isn't an appropriate way. Like if you're in a business meeting and it goes poorly, you can't jump up from your desk and be like, ah!
Like you can't do it. And people have seen too much zombie shows at this point. It would freak everybody out. You can't bite people. Like you have to teach children to share. And even as we grow older and we know I should share, I should be kind, I should be gracious.
We still don't want to. It's still really hard. Like I mostly just want other people to share. The time I see this most is when my sweet little wife reaches her grubby hand across the table and takes something off of my plate. And in that moment, something deep and flaming wells up inside of me. And I really have to think, dude, that's your wife.
She can have everything on your plate she wants. But there's part of me that's like... Especially when I'm like, do you want some of this? And she's like, no, I'm not hungry. And then I make it. And then she's like, can I have half of that?
And I'm like, I don't want to fight you. But there's in me like I have to actually go back to like preschool and go, share? You should share. Sharing is good. And be like, mm-hmm. Smile at her.
You want some more? Say no. Say no. Please say no. Say no. No, I'm good.
Okay, but you can have as much as you want. That's good though if you ain't going to eat it. Like... I know sharing is good. It has never actually felt good to me. I just know that it's good because I've been taught that.
Like there's... We know we're supposed to be generous. We know we're supposed to be kind. We know we're supposed to be gracious. And then we know we're supposed to forgive. And then we actually have something to forgive somebody of?
Mm-mm. Mm-mm. I could forgive a lot of things but not this thing. We know we're supposed to be generous. But then somebody says, hey, can I borrow some money?
Mm-mm. I'm pretty strapped right now. Like we just... We... Since Adam, all of us are busted. And here's the point.
Here's the reason why. God made the world good. We live in a world created by a gracious, loving God. So we understand that we ought to be gracious and loving and generous and kind. But we walk around in bodies that have been busted up by Adam.
And our sin overwhelms us. And the truth is, the more we try to be not sinful, the harder it gets. So that's what Paul's going to say as we keep moving through here. We're going to jump down to... Jump over a page if you're in this Bible. We're going to look at 57 as kind of Paul wraps this up.
Verse 54, sorry. As Paul wraps this up. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and mortal puts on immortality, then we shall come to pass the saying that is written. So he's quoting this old saying, saying this is what happens through the resurrection. This is what happens through what Jesus accomplished for us. Death is swallowed up in victory.
Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. And the power of sin is the law. So here's what he's saying.
Sin, death is a problem for us because sin leads us to death. And then when we're sinful and we die and we stand before God, we have nothing to offer him. Except for our rebellion and our guilt and our shame, we have nothing to bring to him. That our sin goes before God and he looks at our life and he doesn't say, you're welcome. He says, you've rebelled against me. You've broken the law.
We're in trouble. That's why death is so terrible because sin goes with us. And the law only makes sin stronger. It only shows how much more we fail. My dad and my mom, when I was growing up, they both worked. And I've got two brothers and we were all kind of, you know, little at the same time and just a couple of years apart each.
And when my dad would go to work and my mom would be at home watching us, and sometimes we had people watch us while they both worked. But when my dad would go to work and my mom would be home watching us, my dad would always come home and he'd say, you know, just some of the laundry wasn't done. Maybe dinner wasn't cooked. Maybe one of us looked like a hot mess, was just wearing underwear and had ketchup spattered all over us for some reason. Like he just, every time he would come home and the house wasn't clean and he just got the feeling like, you know, he would look at my mom and be like, you can do this.
Like you can get everything done. It's possible. Like he just assumed she was just not really trying that hard. And so he said a couple of times that when she would go to work and he was watching us by ourselves, he just decided, I'm going to get it done. I'm going to do everything. I'm going to cook.
I'm going to do all the laundry. Kids are going to look right when she gets home. House is going to be nice. And he said every time it was like a race against the clock and she would walk in the door. One of us wouldn't have pants on. Something would be on fire.
Laundry wouldn't be done. Like he just, he was like, y'all wouldn't stop like puking and bleeding and getting stuff messed up. There was just no way. There was no way to get it done. Like he just couldn't. And the truth was he was a really good mom until he tried.
And then he was pretty terrible at it. And for most of us, we think, the reason the power of sin is in the law is that most of us think, no, I'm a pretty nice person. I'm pretty kind. I'm pretty good. God's got to kind of love me. Like I've got good intentions.
And the truth is once we actually start seeing what the law is, what it takes to be perfect before God, and we actually try to do it, it becomes massively difficult. Us trying to behave and be good only shows how far away from it we are. Every single person in this room has nothing to offer God that makes you redeemable. We have all sinned. We have all fallen short. We all deserve death and hell and punishment.
That's the place we stand before a holy God. Each of us is headed towards death, hell, and destruction, except Jesus went to the cross. Except for Jesus went to the cross and died for our sin. He took our sin. You see, Jesus hadn't sinned. He didn't deserve death.
He hadn't rebelled. He didn't deserve to be punished or crushed. But he was. And that's why when Christians say he died for our sins, what they mean is he didn't die for his own. He died for ours. And because he didn't deserve to die, he actually broke death and rose again from the grave.
Because he hadn't earned death. He just took ours for us. So God dies to pay for our sin and then rises again so that all of us who place faith in him can have life. And that's the point of this. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory?
Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. Do you know why we sing to Jesus? Why we holler? Why in a minute when people are getting baptized, we're going to clap and yell and be excited?
It's because Jesus has won the victory for us. When I went to college and I played college football, my freshman year I was redshirted, so I just went to practice. I didn't do anything. And we almost won a championship my freshman year. We really should have. It was a game that kind of went south, but we were there.
We were one game away. We would have won the championship. If we had, I would have been given a ring. And I would have worn it on Sundays and tapped it on the... No, I'm just kidding. But I would have been given a championship ring.
And I would have been a champion. And what would I have done? Not a dang thing. Except for go to practice. Like I wouldn't have done anything, but I would have been victorious. I would have been a champion through other people on my behalf.
You know how when you go to watch a game that you just are a fan of, and they win? You know what you say when it's over? We won. And sometimes when they lose, you go, yeah, they lost. Because you're smart. But when they win, you say, we won.
Why? Because they won on behalf of their city. They won on behalf of their fans. That's why when it's... The chips are down, and they're losing at halftime, and they come back out, and they rally, and they finally score. You jump up, lose your mind, kick something over, like break your television, because you're so excited that they won.
The reason Christians sing, the reason we gather together in the morning and celebrate, the reason we're going to lose our mind in a minute when people get baptized is because Jesus has won the victory for us. The empty tomb stands as the forever scoreboard that sin does not claim us, sin does not hold us, death has no hold over us any longer. We can have life through Jesus. That's the empty tomb. That's the cross. People say, why would you pick something so bloody and terrible to celebrate?
Why would Christians wear crosses? That's when we were down 40 to nothing at halftime. It's fun to see that now. It's fun to see the moment in history when it looked so bleak, so wrong, so broken, that humanity had gathered together to murder God. And we can celebrate now because it was in that moment that Jesus died for our sin and there's, it's not, he wasn't always on the cross. He was buried in the tomb and he didn't stay in the tomb and he's risen to a throne and we get to celebrate forever that the cross and the empty tomb prove to us that death has no claim over us once we've placed our faith in Jesus.
That our sin and our brokenness no longer holds us. That we have life forever in the one who's given us victory. Who's conquered death on our behalf. So in a minute, five people are gonna be on a screen and they're gonna tell you why they believe in Jesus and then they're gonna get baptized and we're gonna scream and yell and clap because we're celebrating that victory has been given to us through Jesus. That he was good, that he paid our penalty and that we have life forever in him. Through the victory that's been won on our behalf.
Let's pray. God, we thank you that we have victory. We thank you that the tomb is empty and that seals forever our hope in you. That when we place our faith in you, that when we repent of our sin, that we come to you and say, I have nothing to offer but you died for me. I have nothing to bring to the table but you loved me so much that you died for me. That you lived righteously on my behalf.
That you paid for our sin and that you set us free and we praise you for the tomb and we praise you for the people that are getting baptized today to proclaim that. In Jesus' name, amen. Here's what's about to happen. Christians celebrate baptism because it's a symbol that when Jesus was buried, our sin, our shame, our guilt, our brokenness was buried with him. That when he died, death died with him. That all the things that had a hold and a claim over us are gone.
And so we baptize somebody and we say basically they're buried with Jesus. And that when Jesus rose from the grave, he gave life to them because they placed their faith in him. That's what baptism is. It's a celebration that Jesus has won the victory on our behalf.
Mar 27
Self-Exaltation
Transcript
Well, how are we doing this morning? My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in our third week of our Scandal series. Grab a Bible and let's go to Matthew chapter 27. Here's what we're going to look at today.
Basically what we've been doing is we've been approaching Easter, which is next week where the church celebrates the death, burial and the resurrection of Jesus. That on Easter Sunday, Jesus did not stay dead, but that he rose to life again. And we're going to get together and celebrate that next week. But as we've been approaching that, what we've been doing is taking some time to kind of look at really what the gospel writers focus on. So Jesus was about 30 years old when he started his ministry.
Only two of the four gospels even mention anything prior to this moment. Two of them just jump straight in at when he's 30. All of them give more weight to the last week of his life than any other thing in his life. Because Jesus came specifically, purposefully to die on our behalf. His goal was to go to the cross. And so we have been taking some time to look at those passages leading up to Jesus going to the cross and study and look at the people around him and how they treated him and then how we can kind of see ourselves in them.
So we spent some time looking at Judas. We looked at the trial of Jesus last week. And today we're going to look at Matthew chapter 27. I'm going to pray and then we'll get kind of going this morning. God, I pray that you would give us wisdom as we study your word, that your Holy Spirit would work in us to teach us, to train us, and to help us see how much we prefer ourselves, how much we promote ourselves, and how absolutely devastating that is so that we might be set free by you today. We love you.
We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. I played college football, kind of. I was on the team. I had cleats and a helmet and they let me use a locker. I was required to show up to practice.
I didn't do a whole lot else, you know, quote unquote playing. But our coach for the first year, he was a really good, let me say this first, he was a really good coach. He also was borderline psychotic. But that helped him be a good coach, I think. But one of the things he used to say a lot was, if you were doing something like you didn't show up to practice, or you just kind of took a play off, or anything, he would go.
His hands, like his pinkies kind of pointed this way. I don't know why I never asked him, because you didn't ask him questions like that. And he always had one eye kind of more closed than the other. But if you did something that was obvious, like you weren't trying, or you didn't show up to practice, or you skipped a workout, he'd go, exposed, exposed, you don't want to play. Like he would just say that this moment exposed who you were, what you were going for. Like it showed how much you actually cared about the team.
And so what we're going to look at as we read this passage today, is Matthew's going to highlight for us how all these people around Jesus respond to the crucifixion. And it actually exposes their heart. It exposes what they really care about. It exposes how they really feel, how they really think, kind of who they are. Kind of like, you know how every once in a while you're like, you may have been hanging out with a friend. And there's just this moment when they've been your friend a while, you've been around them, but you're in a new situation.
And you're suddenly like, oh, my friend's kind of a racist. And I did not know. Or you're in a new situation. Maybe you're at, have you ever been with friends and you, they're nice people. Nice people. Friendly people.
That's why they're your friend. Because of their friendliness. And you're at a restaurant and it takes them 45 minutes to get your food. They got it wrong once. They bring it out cold. And your friends just start melting down.
Have you ever been in this situation? Maybe you're this person. Stop it. You're the person I'm talking about. Where they're just like, can you even believe? Excuse me.
Excuse me. Do the thing. I've done this before. You just grab any waiter that comes by or any waitress. It's like a busboy. And you're just like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, sweet tea.
Right? Like you just get over and you're like, wow, my friend. Like go with someone to the DMV one day. Like you'll just get to learn things. You'll get to expose. And that's what we're seeing in this passage is that as Matthew kind of walks us out for us and shows all these people around Jesus, what we see is that their hearts are exposed in the way they respond.
And honestly, our hearts are exposed to. And so let's let's let's hop in. Let's look at this. We're going to start in verse 24. So we left off last week where the Jewish Sanhedrin, the rulers, scribes, elders, condemned Jesus to death.
And then we're going to pick up kind of where they they've taken him now to pilot the governor. And he's kind of questioned Jesus and said he doesn't really deserve to die. And we're going to pick up there. So so when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but that rather a riot was beginning. So he has said this on page 541.
If your Bible looks like this, he said, basically, we should let Jesus go. But he was gaining nothing. And a riot was beginning. He took water. He washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I'm innocent of this man's blood. See to it yourselves.
And all the people answered his blood be on us and our children. Then he released for them Barabbas and having scourged Jesus, which just means beaten brutally with whips, cat of nine tails, rods like it was. It was a devastating thing. He delivered him to be crucified. And crucifixion was the most devastating form of capital punishment that the Romans had invented and had perfected. And other people had invented it, but they had perfected it.
And it was their preferred method because it was gruesome, public, agonizing, time consuming, shameful. And it was their preferred method of capital punishment. Led him away to be crucified. And as they went out, oh, sorry, delivered him to be crucified, verse 27. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters.
So these are the people who are going to crucify Jesus. They take him into the governor's headquarters. They gather the whole battalion before him. They strip him and put a scarlet robe on him. So this is a red or purple robe that they put on him because that's what kings wore.
And that was the charge against him, that he said he was the king of the Jews. And so the Romans who are occupying this territory and rule over the Jews are now gathering him to make fun of him, to mock him. They stripped him, put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns. So they're saying, okay, if you're a king, you need a crown. So they get thorns.
They twist it together. They put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand the way a king would have a staff and kneel before him. And kneeling before him, they mocked him saying, hail, king of the Jews. And they spit on him. They took the reed and struck him on the head.
And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of his robe, put his own clothes on him, and led him away to crucify him. So they've already scourged him. They've already beaten him. And then they gather everybody together just to make fun of him. We're going to murder him. But before we do that, let's mock him.
Let's ridicule him. Because look, it's the king of the Jews. As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall. But when he tasted it, he would not drink it.
And when they had crucified him, so now they've nailed him to the cross and they've sunk the post into the ground. He's held up above everybody out of the ground. They divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head, they put the charge against him, which read, this is Jesus, king of the Jews. This was in a public place.
And they're saying, this is what happens to would-be kings. Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you're the son of God, come down from the cross. So people who just passed by this in a public place begin to mock Jesus.
So also, verse 41, the chief priests with the scribes and the elders mocked him, saying, he saved others. He cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel. Let him come down now from the cross and we'll believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now if he desires him.
For he said, I am the son of God. And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. So it's very interesting the way Matthew recounts the story, the way he tells it to us. He kind of glosses over being scourged and being crucified. He mentions it, but it's one verse. And then he says he was crucified.
Part of that, I believe, was that his audience knew what scourging and crucifixion were. He didn't have to go into great detail. They knew exactly what that was. But he focuses so heavily on, look at Jesus, the true king of Israel, the true king of all eternity, of all creation, the actual son of God being mocked by everybody, except for Simon of Cyrene, who has a bit part in this. We just know he carried the cross. But he highlights that the Romans mock him.
People who just pass by mock him. The other criminals on the cross mock him. And the religious leaders mock him. Like just over and over again. When they had derided him, they were reviling him. They were wagging their heads at him.
They were mocking him. When they had mocked him, like he just highlights this over and over and over again. And he's showing us, he's exposing the heart of the people around Jesus. This is interesting to me. That what we actually can learn and see from this. So here's the thing.
In order to mock somebody, and not mock, like we use the word mock now, like you're going to have mock trial, or it's going to be like SNL mock somebody, and what we mean is just they kind of made fun of, or they jokingly satire. That's not what this is. This is contempt. This is derision, reviling, hatred, bubbling out of them as they mock him. The way we mock people, the only way you can mock somebody is if you believe, in some form or fashion, that you're better than them, that they're beneath you. We don't mock people we respect.
Or maybe even in that moment, we don't respect what they're doing or how they've acted, so we mock them. But basically, they had to believe. They had to be working to put Jesus down and exalt themselves. That's what mocking is. It's this derision, this contempt, this belief that I am superior so I can look down on you. And here's what we see in this moment across the board with all these individuals.
Their desire, their heart that's being exposed is to elevate themselves, is to build themselves up, make themselves look better by putting Jesus down, by holding him in contempt, by pointing out his failures. That's what they're going for. That's where mocking comes from. That's where contempt, derision, reviling come from. And this desire to promote ourselves, to be about ourselves, to highlight our good qualities and to point out the failures of others, it's a basic human issue. It's in all of us.
Started with Adam and Eve. So let's go back. Let's have a history lesson, Adam and Eve. So you heard about them, your first parents, the first people on earth. Maybe you've seen a picture of them naked, like Adam and Eve. You know what I'm talking about?
Okay, Adam and Eve, what we know is that in the garden, when God first created humanity, he made them in perfection, designed to relate to him. And they fail. But how? How did they fail? What did they do wrong? Well, God told them there's one tree you can't eat of, and then a serpent comes along, which later we find out is Satan, basically says, if you eat of this tree, you'll be like God.
God, the very first sin in humanity was to bring God low and elevate ourselves. The very first sin committed was this desire to promote ourselves. Oh, I can be better. I can be higher. I can be exalted. And God can be brought low.
So, before that moment, Adam and Eve didn't think about themselves a whole lot. I mean, I think they would have thought about themselves enough to not, like, catch themselves on fire. But mostly, they didn't think about themselves. They weren't focused on themselves. They were free. Because focusing on yourself is not freedom.
And here's how, here's our first hint at this. They walked around naked. They weren't thinking about themselves a whole lot. As soon as they sin, shame comes in, guilt comes in, separation from one another comes in, separation from God comes in, and a massive amount of self-awareness comes in, and they realize they're naked. Many of you have heard of or have had a dream, some of you are a recurring dream, you probably should see somebody, that you show up to school or work and you're naked. You're suddenly in class, you're giving a presentation, you're crushing it.
Your PowerPoint is on point, powerfully. And then you realize, oh no, I'm naked. And it's terrible, it's terrifying. You know why you've never actually done that in real life? Because you're way too self-aware to show up in class naked. The reason that happens in a dream is you just appeared there with no self-awareness whatsoever.
And then your brain was like, hey, what would be terrible? Let's make him naked. This is hilarious. Like, I don't know. And if any of you have actually ever shown up somewhere naked, talk to me afterwards because I really want to hear that story. And I'm willing to bet there were substances involved.
You should repent. You're welcome here. We all get to grow together in following Jesus. But here's the thing. The reason that's never actually happened is because we're too self-aware. Adam and Eve didn't realize they were naked until this happened.
And then this massive amount of self-focused desire to exalt themselves, desire to bring other people down, enters in. And it's a massive human problem. Nobody taught you how to be selfish. If you have children, nobody taught your children how to be selfish. They picked that one up on their own. This is why children have to be taught to be conscientious, to consider others.
That's what Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street, they're trying to teach children to not just take things from each other. That's why many of your children, the first word they learned and used often was mine. This is in us to look out for ourselves, to build ourselves up, to exalt ourselves. It's inborn in us. I see this so clearly in myself a couple of different places.
One is if I'm somewhere and a group of people that I know start laughing, or even if I don't know, there's this moment in my brain where I'm like, you're laughing at me. Because of course, they're all thinking about me as much as I think about me. I notice this when I look at a picture that has a group of people in it, and I'm in it, I look at my face first. I don't know about y'all, but I found that every picture that contains me is a more special picture than other pictures. You get your yearbook? Ha ha!
Page 37. See me in the background? Look at this, that's my face. I'm eating a sandwich. Like, this is what we do. The way you know this is when you take a group picture and you look at the pictures, you'll say, oh, this is a good picture.
And then the other person who's in the picture will say, I'm blinking. And you'll think, I didn't look at your face. I looked at mine. I should hide my narcissism by looking at everyone's face before I say this is a good picture. But all you did was look to see if you were in it and how you looked.
That's the qualifications for a good picture. And 2012, the word of the year was selfie. Now this came out of the fact that we don't have film anymore, because nobody was doing this when you had film on a regular basis. But since we don't have film, and we like ourselves being in pictures more than all other pictures, we do this over and over again. And you'll see people go on vacation. And it'll be Grand Canyon, Eiffel Tower, Diddy World.
And it's like you went around the country taking a picture of your own face. What? I have a friend, and every once in a while he'll post on Instagram or something, and it'll say, having a great time hanging out with my friends. And you click on it, assuming wrongly that it'd be a picture of his friends. It's his face having the great time, I guess. And to show that this isn't just other people's problems, and not just my selfish problem, we actually went on Instagram and Facebook accounts and Twitter accounts, and we have some selfies to show that this is a church-wide problem.
And we're just going to look through about 15, 20 selfies right now. Okay, no, but that would have been great. And many of you thought, is one of mine going to be up there? Because it's really hard to not think about yourself. It's massively difficult. Because we have this desire to elevate ourselves and to exalt ourselves.
The other place that this shows up in me is anytime I do something selflessly, anytime I actively work to do something selfless, to serve somebody, in the moment or the moment I'm done, I think something along the lines of, man, I'm selfless. How much of a servant am I? Sometimes I'll think, I wonder if anybody saw me being selfless. Because immediately I want to make it about myself. If I'm really good, I'll go through this process. Oh, wow, that was really prideful.
I should repent. I should not be doing selfless Acts to be about myself. And then I'll think, I wonder if anybody notices their pride like I notice my pride. And it's terrible, because there's a version of me that follows me around going, and wanting me to promote me all the time. And it's in all of us. We want to parade our good qualities in front of people.
And we want to point out how we're successful and how we're good. And we want to look out for ourselves, for our own comfort, our own security, our own joy, our own life. Our plans are, here's how I'm going to enjoy life the most. Some of that makes sense. You're with you more than anybody else. You've got to think about yourself some, but some of that is desperately sick and wicked and consumes us and drives our decision making and drives how we walk through life and drives how we treat people.
And it's a massive problem. And we see it in all of these people in the story, except for Simon, who was busy carrying a cross. And we can assume maybe he had no desire to mock Jesus. But, criminals, who were in the same fate as Jesus. People we would probably look at and say, no, they're pretty scum of the earth people. Like, just in general, if we were mapping people out on a scale, prisoners, who are dying, capital punishment people, they're mocking and deriding Jesus.
People who should probably have understood what he was going through. Move up a little bit on the scale, you've got random people walking by. Who knew about Jesus because he was famous. And their desire was, see, see what fame gets you, see what trying to promote yourself gets you, see how glorious he is now. They don't, they're not connected to the situation. They're just walking by.
Let's just assume they're all fairly average people. Then you've got Roman soldiers. They're probably somewhere in the middle as well. Blue collar guys just doing their job. But they take time out of their job to specifically mock Jesus.
To specifically lower him so they can elevate themselves. So they can elevate Rome. So they can elevate their jobs. So they can feel better about who they are. And then you've got the Jewish religious leaders. Caught up in the exact same heart level problem.
Self-promotion. Self-glorification. Self-exaltation. So when you think about, okay, I thought Christianity, I thought people following God was to humble yourself before God. Why do I meet so many Christians? Why do I meet so many religious people who are massively prideful and arrogant and judgmental?
Because it's really easy to make religion, Bible memorization, knowing all the rules and the morals, about yourself. Look at how much God loves me more than those people because of how much I know about him and his word. And I know his rules and I don't fail. And it's so easy to take religion and make it way more about yourself than about God. We see this so clearly, this way to promote ourselves and to tear others down in political ads. I'm so thankful the primaries over in South Carolina because the day before the Republican primary, I was watching television and there was a commercial break and I watched nine, started counting after the fourth one, nine political ads in a row.
And it made me not want to vote for anybody. But I watched nine in a row and all of those are either one of two things. The ways we can promote ourselves are either elevate ourselves or tear somebody else down. The way to make myself seem good is either to tell you how great I am, tear other people down. So every ad was one of the two.
It was either, look at this man. And it was like, I mean, anthem, epic music in the background. Like, like he was going to like pull out a sword and just attack America's enemies. Probably some ad has someone doing that. Look at this man. He does all the things you love.
He doesn't do the things you hate. He loves puppies and kittens and hates terrorists and murderers. And it's like, oh yeah, great. I hate those presidents that love murderers. This guy's going to be legit. Or, it was the other type which was, look at this man.
And then it had like, turn, turn, turn. It was like way too zoomed in on people's faces. Just like an eyeball for a long time. Just like creeping you out. And it was like, he hates kittens. And he's going to raise or lower taxes or do that thing with the economy that you hate.
We hate it too. He's terrible. And then at the end the other guy would be like, I approve this message. And, that was it. Nine in a row. And honestly, I've done studies.
The ones where you tear somebody else down and work better. Some of you have found that in life. You got through middle school and high school that way. Because if I can point out how dumb you are. See, if I just tell you I'm smart, that says nothing about the rest of the people in the room. And pride has nothing to do with how smart I am or how much money I have.
It has to do with how smart I am compared to other people. I need to be smarter. I need to be wealthier. Good looking-ier. Otherwise, if we all have the same amount of money, how am I going to get excited about that? So there's something about being able to hold somebody in contempt or mock them or put them down that absolutely accomplishes both at the same time.
Look at how dumb they are. And if I notice how dumb they are, that makes me smart. Look at how terrible they are at this. Look at how awful they are at that. And so as Christians, maybe you're a Christian and you're saying, okay, how do we point out sin? Because the Bible tells us to point out sin without using that to build ourselves up.
Without religiously trying to make ourselves great. the way we do that is the way that we point out sin in our own lives. The way I know I can actually do this, point out sin and still care about somebody and not do it in a way that makes me feel great is when you sin the same way I do. If you're given to overaggression, you've struggled your life with sexual sin, if you are prideful, I'm like, hey, there's grace for that. Because I struggle with all of that too. And isn't Jesus good when we're overly aggressive that he forgives us? If you sin in a way different from me, scum, you're garbage, this is terrible.
How could you ever do that? How could anyone ever be a person like that? You see, immediately, we know that we can love people the way we love ourselves because Jesus tells us to and approach their sin by saying it's wrong but still caring about them. And we can also immediately step in and try to put somebody else down to elevate ourselves. And this is a heart level problem where what we want is our joy, our comfort, our glory, our praise, our honor. We want us all over the place.
And that may show up differently. Some of you maybe want to be praised by everyone in this room. Some of you maybe just have a select few. You're kind of shy but you want all the people around you to know you're great. I don't know, but all of us have a desire to elevate ourselves, to make much of ourselves and to glorify ourselves. So, why is this such a problem?
Three quick reasons. One is it makes God our opponent. It makes God our enemy. Several places in the Bible it says that God opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble. So that when we elevate ourselves we actually are trying to take God's position which is his glory, his name, his fame.
He's the only one who deserves exaltation and we exalt ourselves. We're actually becoming opponents of God. James says it, Peter says it, and they're quoting Proverbs that actually says the scornful will be met with scorn. So God opposes the proud, the mockers, but he gives grace to those who are humble. I don't know if y'all know this, I'm going to help you out real quick. If you line up on the field of battle, God's on the other side, swap teams.
Simple life, that's a life hack for you, that's a tip. If God is your opponent, swap teams, you're going to lose, this isn't going to go well and whenever we elevate ourselves that's what happens, we make God our enemy. The second one is this, it robs you of joy. The God being your enemy part is going to show up later when you meet him. It's going to be more fulfilled when you stand before him and see that he is the ruling reigning king and your exaltation is bankrupt and terrible. It robs you of joy to only think about yourself, to only try to exalt yourself because life doesn't work like that.
If you show me a person who only cares about themselves, I can show you a very miserable person. This can happen here on Sundays. People show up and they're like, you know what people say things like? They didn't talk to me. Nobody talked to me. I stood there for 10 minutes and no one said a word to me.
Time out. Who did you talk to, bro? What you did was you walked in the room and said, me! And then everybody failed. Of course. Because they all thought it was about them.
People hang out with groups and they're like, this group just isn't filling me up anymore. I'm just not getting out of it. And it just makes you miserable. Every time I go to my house and hang out with my wife and my son and my mode of operation is, this should be about me. It robs me of joy. It makes me miserable.
Self-glorification, self-exaltation robs you of joy. Thirdly, and this is really for Christians. So if you're not a Christian, the first two are your problem. The third one is problem for Christians. It disables your ability to follow Jesus. Undercuts it, absolutely.
Because there's so many things Jesus calls us to that we just can't do if we're trying to glorify ourselves. Love your neighbor like you love yourself. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me. Live your life on his mission for his glory, for his name.
None of those things can happen if it's all about you. Serve. Serve the church. Pour yourself out for others. Can't do it. Okay.
This self-centered, self-exaltation makes God our opponent, robs us of joy, and if we're Christians, totally disables our ability to actually follow, actually submit, actually... So what do we do? How do we respond? Well, we're going to read this passage again starting in verse 32. I want to help us see the answer to this. So the Romans have already mocked him.
They stripped him. They led him out to be crucified. We'll start at 31. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. And as they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, that compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall.
But when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. When they sat down, they kept watch over him there. And over his head, they put the charge against him, which read, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left.
And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. So also the chief priests with the scribes and the elders mocked him, saying, He saved others. He cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel.
Let him come down from the cross and will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now. If he desires him, for he said, I am the Son of God. And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. There is one person throughout this entire story that does not seem at all to be pursuing his own glory.
That is, the King of the Jews, the Son of God, the ruling reigning King of eternity, submits and humiliates himself on our behalf to the point of going to a cross. In order for us to kill this selfishness, this self-centeredness, this desire for self-exaltation, the first thing we have to see is the result of our self-exaltation, which is the Son of God nailed to a cross. If, if Jesus could have shown up, if there was one person on earth throughout the history of earth who could say, God, look at my morality. God, look at how nice I am. God, look at how generous I've been. God, look at how open-minded and gracious I've been.
God, look at how I followed your rules. God, look at how I memorized your word. God, look at how loving I've been and how sacrificial I've been. If there was one person who could stand before God and say, see, see, don't I deserve to be exalted? And God would say, yes, yes, you deserve to be exalted. If that person existed, Jesus doesn't go to the cross.
If that person existed throughout human history, Jesus doesn't go to the cross. Jesus shows up and teaches us how to be like that person. Jesus shows up and says, it's possible for you, just follow these rules. Jesus just teaches. But all of the gospel writers give more focus to the cross than to any of Jesus' teaching because we needed to be taught to help us see our sin.
But we needed Jesus to die to set us free from it. The end result of your self-exaltation is the brutal, heinous murder of the Son of God. That is what it accomplished. The end result of your self-exaltation, your self-glory, your self-love is bankruptcy. You have nothing to present to God that makes Him say, good point, well done, nothing. The end result of our self-exaltation is the brutal, heinous murder of the Son of God.
We need to see that clearly. Secondly, we need to see the result of God's humiliation. In the garden, Adam and Eve chose to exalt themselves and humiliate God and on the cross, Jesus chooses to humiliate Himself. He almost, in a way, completes what Adam and Eve were trying to accomplish. Adam and Eve chose themselves and on the cross, Jesus chose us, chose to rescue and redeem a people for Himself when He could have just sat back on His glorious, almighty throne and crushed us. No, He chooses to come and humble Himself, to humiliate Himself, to not fight back when He's mocked and ridiculed, not fight back when He's nailed to a cross when He could have.
He wasn't caught up in events beyond His control. He was absolutely in control the entire time and laid His life down on our behalf. The humiliation of Jesus is actually what allows us to be free from the exaltation of ourselves. It's actually in the midst, God's ordained desire to humiliate Jesus, for Jesus to humble Himself is where Jesus actually gets a name above every name, where He's most glorified, most exalted because we see that we, who have nothing to exalt in, seek to exalt ourselves all the time. Nothing to glory in, seek to glory in ourselves all the time and Jesus, who owns worship, owns glory, owns majesty, it belongs to Him, lays it all down on our behalf.
We've got to see the end result of our exaltation. We've got to see the end result of God's humiliation, which is salvation for us, which is freedom for us, which is joy for us, which is life for us. Jesus died so that we don't have to pay for our own exaltation. That we, who are terribly small, can stop standing before the everlasting King of the universe and saying, I'm the most important. We who are worms and have piled up a little pile of dirt that makes us more glorious than the other worms can stop looking at the glorious reigning King of the universe and saying, aren't I special? Jesus became a worm, not a man.
So, what Psalm says, He's a worm and not a man to set us free, to humiliate Himself so that we can be given life. Thirdly, we have to fix our eyes on Jesus. We have to keep our focus there because we'll so easily forget. Our hearts are so, we'll so easily drift. We need to remind ourselves continuously what Jesus has accomplished for us or we'll drift back into thinking we're great and special and glorious and deserving of honor and praise. For some reason, it seems to me that Christians believe that they'll magically remember this all the time, that they'll magically just continually grow in their love for Jesus when you don't magically love anything like that.
Now, the Holy Spirit helps us. He gives us the ability to love, so I'll give you that. When Anna and I, that's my wife, when we kind of go through stages where maybe we don't like each other as much as we used to as we're married and she found out I'm kind of a jerk because she lives with me and I sometimes act like our house should revolve around me and she thinks it should revolve around her and we kind of butt heads over that. So, in those moments, I don't think, ah, you know what, we haven't really been connecting, we really haven't been having conversations, we really haven't been enjoying each other.
Hmm, I'll wait and see how it turns out. No. If you're dating somebody, if you're married to somebody, it takes work. You have to plan things. You have to, if you're dating somebody, you have to like make money and keep it in your wallet so that you can pull it out later to buy a sandwich. Like, you've got to do things to go on dates, to be around each other.
You have to schedule things. If you have children, you have to call a person on the phone and ask questions like, if you watch my children, will you harm them? And they'll say things like, no, and you'll be like, because you're smart, are you sure? And they'll be like, yes, I'm sure. And then you'll be like, sounds good to me. You can come watch my children and then you'll pay them so that you can leave the house and stare at each other's faces and hold hands and remember why you love each other in the first place.
If you work out and you enjoy it, you still got to lace up your shoes. You still got to pay for a gym membership. You still got to wake up in the morning and get over there. You still got to go after work. All of these things, even though we have hobbies that we enjoy, you still got to buy some equipment. You still got to set some time aside.
And then Christians step into this world that exists like this and all other areas and go, I'm going to magically love Jesus. You read your Bible? Nope. You hang out with the church? Don't need to. Why not?
Magic. We got to fix our eyes on Jesus. It takes work. You got to open your Bible because that's where we meet Jesus. That's where He shows up. That's where we read passages like this and you remember that you want to glorify yourself.
But Jesus humiliated Himself and in His humiliation, He deserves all the glory. You hang out with His church? You have to actually believe this stuff because it says to bear with one another, to forgive one another. Let me tell you something. The time I have to believe the gospel the most is when I have to forgive an actual person of a real wrong. If it's excusable, that's easy.
I have to believe the gospel when you did something inexcusable because Jesus in the gospel forgave the inexcusable in me. When I have to open my wallet and hand you some of my money so that you can pay some bills and I have to open my wallet and hand you some of my money so that you can... When I have to receive money from you to pay my bills, I have to believe the gospel. We have to be around His church. We have to be around His people and we have to be on His mission. You need to be reading the Bible and praying.
You need to be around the church. You need to be on His mission to help you fix your eyes on Jesus. When I quit hanging out with people that don't know Jesus, I forget how much everybody needs Jesus. I just forget. And you're like, hey bro, don't you preach like every week? Almost every week.
And I forget. I forget. Because I haven't fixed my eyes on Jesus in a while. We have to work to see the cross. To set us free. Hebrews says, fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and founder of our faith who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God so that we don't grow weary or lose heart.
We have to fix our eyes on Jesus to remember how much our exaltation will get us to remember what His humiliation actually got us. And then we're free. Free from thinking everything's about us. Free to actually have joy in life and serve people and not continually try to work to promote ourselves. Free from our pump. Matt's going to come back up here.
We're going to sing and here's what we're going to do. If you're a Christian in the room, we're going to take communion. And communion is where Christians celebrate the cross. It's where we take the bread that represents the body of Christ that was broken for us. It's where we take the wine or the juice that represents the blood of Christ that was poured out for us and we partake in it once again. Just as we did when we placed faith in Jesus, we partake in His death.
We celebrate His death on our behalf that it's about Him and that through Him and only through Him can we actually have life and joy. If you're in this room, this is a problem تم deal with Him with the work that if you do anything after in size, we apply it to Him to allow Him to arbeiten. That's why hating the bread that the grime bladeruption is to change in such instances before Him Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
The Supreme Court of Self
Transcript
Well, good morning. Grab your Bibles, go to Matthew chapter 26. That's where we'll be this morning. We're in our second week of our scandal series where we're looking at some of the things that happened to Jesus leading up to him going to the cross. So we're coming up on Easter and on Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, that he was crucified, dead and buried and that he rose again to life.
And so we're celebrating that as we come up. And what we're doing is we're just spending some time looking at the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus and how people treated Jesus. And then we're kind of as we look at that, seeing how we can see ourselves a little bit in that, even though maybe we don't want to. And what we're going to see today is actually one of the more appalling pictures, when we actually realize what's taking place, one of the more appalling pictures that we ever will see in Scripture. One of the most horrific events that ever took place in the history of humankind.
And so we're just going to spend some time looking at that today. I'm going to pray and then we're going to hop in. God, I pray that you would open up our hearts to hear your word, to submit to you, to understand more fully what you have accomplished for us and how much you absolutely love us through Jesus. And so we love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. So Matthew chapter 26, we're going to be, it'll be on page 540 if your Bible is one of the blue and white ones on the row.
If you don't own a Bible, this is our gift to you. Take it with you. If you want a nicer Bible, wait until someone's not looking. Maybe grab their leather one. Do what you got to do. We're going to be starting in page 57.
Page 57, sorry. Verse 57. Page 540. It says, here's what we're picking up before we jump in. Sorry. Here's what we're picking up.
Last week we looked at where Judas betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. And so what we're going to be looking at today is they have come to get Jesus in the garden. It was nighttime. Judas leads a group of armed, basically says a cohort, which was like a large group of the soldiers who were part of the temple. So the Jewish temple had their own temple guard, so he leads them to arrest Jesus out in the woods.
He has to kind of help them see which one is Jesus. They would not have had like wanted posters of Jesus up. They would not have seen Jesus very often. He came around Jerusalem a couple of times. Some people may have seen him more often, but it wouldn't have been you necessarily just immediately recognized who he was when he was walking around. So it's dark.
Judas has to be the one to say, this is the one you want. This is actually Jesus. Help him identify him in the dark. He walks up, kisses him. Jesus says, you're going to betray me with a kiss. They arrest Jesus.
Jesus says, you came out here in the woods to get me at night. I've been walking around with you daily in the temple. And he's just kind of pointing out how secretive they're being about this, how much of an underhanded thing they're doing. And then they take him to a trial where the Jewish leaders have already gathered prepared to indict and convict Jesus. So that's what we're going to pick up.
Then those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the scribes and the elders had gathered. All right. So let me give you a picture of who this is. Caiaphas, the high priest and the scribes and the elders. In Judaism, they had the temple. And everything in their relationship to God kind of revolved around temple worship.
And in the temple, they had areas where Gentiles could be, non-Jewish born people could be. Then they had areas where you had to be Jewish. Then you had to be a priest. And then you had to eventually went all the way up to the Holy of Holies, which is where the presence of God was around the Ark of the Covenant. And only one person was allowed to enter into the Holy of Holies and only once a year. And only after he was wearing the appropriate clothes and had had the appropriate sacrifices done on his behalf.
And that was Caiaphas, the high priest. He is the person in Judaism who is supposed to be the absolute closest to God to the point that he actually enters into his presence once a year into the Holy of Holies. And the Holy of Holies was such a big deal that they had to tie a rope around themselves before they went in. Because if they hadn't done the sacrifices right, if they weren't wearing the right stuff, or even if they just their heart wasn't right. They had like a bad attitude when they went in. There was a chance God would just kill them.
So that's an intense moment if you're the high priest. You're like, okay, one time of year is a great honor, but let's go ahead and tie that rope around me. The reason they tied a rope was, if he goes in and God kills him, I ain't going in after him. They're like, in a way, I think he's dead, go get him. You lost your mind, you want paper, rock, scissors for this thing. This ain't happening.
And so they tied a rope to him so that after a while it's like, look, you've been in there too long. We're going to give it a tug. If you don't tug back, we're going to drag you on out. And then we're going to have, I guess, draw straws to see who has to be the next high priest. Like, we've got to figure this out because it didn't go well for you. So this is him, though.
Caiaphas the high priest is a big deal. And then it says the elders and the scribes are the people. So this is, in Judaism, in this time of history, in Israel at this time, we don't really have an equivalent for who this group of people is. It is kind of like if the Pope and the Supreme Court and the people you look to for just general practical life wisdom. So Dave Ramsey and Dr.
Phil, Dr. Martin Luther King in there. Like, that's who this group is. This is Stephen Hawking. Like, it's the people you look to for tell me how the world works in Judaism. This is the group, Caiaphas and the elders.
And they're going to have a trial in the middle of the night, early morning, of Jesus. But these were the people that you respected and you revered and you listened to and you cited in your term paper. Like, this was the little, Caiaphas says this. And it was like, oh, good point then. Like, that's how, this is a big deal. They have many leather-bound books.
Sorry. Then those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas and the high priest, where the scribes and the elders had gathered. And Peter was following him in a distance. Peter's one of his disciples. As far as the courtyard of the high priest. And going inside, he sat with the guards to see the end.
Now, the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death. But they found none. One, though many false witnesses came forward, at last two came forward and said, this man said, I'm able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days. Okay. Picture this for just a minute. They've captured Jesus in the middle of the night.
They brought him to the high priest's palace. It's a palace. It's nice. It's going to be kind of dark, though. It's, you know, they've got torches lit. They know, we know there's a fire outside.
One of the other gospels tells us is Peter's sitting around a fire. So they've got a fire lit. They've got some of the council. I don't know if it's the entire Sanhedrin was called for this. But some of them, at least enough to hold a trial, prepared, gathered, prepared, seeking for a way to kill Jesus.
Now, with the Sanhedrin, we know that some of them, some of the elders actually liked Jesus, were sympathetic to him, had built some form of a relationship with him. We learned that through some of the other stories. But they were a very small minority. There's another group that actually genuinely would be seeking what God wanted them to do. In a wholehearted but incorrect way, would be seeking what was God's will. And then there were some of those that were really just defending their position, just defending their corner of, their little corner of glory that they've kind of mapped out for themselves, the amount of people that loved them and revered them, because so many people had started to love Jesus and revere him and listen to him.
And Jesus, on a consistent basis, called the scribes and the Pharisees and the elders of the people. He just called them out on their made-up junk, really. And so they're actually just seeking the killing. But they've got to make the trial look legit. And so they have people giving testimony. And they've got to have two witnesses give the same testimony.
And that testimony has to be enough for them to kill Jesus. So they've got people that they've coming in to give false testimony, but they still can't even, under some cross-examination, make that make any sense or be enough to kill Jesus. And finally, these two guys say, Jesus said he'll destroy the temple. Now, I don't know enough to know whether or not that was a capital offense, like whether or not just saying you were going to destroy the temple meant they were going to kill you. I'm sure it made people not like you that much. But we get to this moment where these two people say, this man said, this is verse 61, I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.
62, And the high priest stood up. So Caiaphas stands and says, Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you? So it seems to me, now maybe Caiaphas said this in a really calm way. Maybe he stood up and said, Have you no answer to make? It seems to me, though, this trial's dragged on for a while.
Jesus has responded to none of the accusations. He's just stood there, which is baffling. He's making no defense whatsoever. People would accuse him of false accusations. Jesus would listen to him, and then he probably would just turn and look at the council. And they're expecting him to defend himself, but he's not.
So finally, I think out of frustration, Caiaphas stands up and says, Aren't you going to say anything? Aren't you going to try to defend yourself? And then Caiaphas kind of takes over at this point and says this. But Jesus remained silent, and the high priest said to him, I adjure you by the living God. Adjure means like compel. This is kind of like a swear on the Bible kind of moment.
I adjure you by the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. So the Christ was the Messiah, the promised one who was going to come. So these elders and the high priest had spent their life studying the Torah and studying the prophets and studying the writings. And they were looking for the Messiah to come. And so then they've got Jesus here who's posing as or pretending to be the Messiah because he definitely doesn't fall into the category of what they were looking for.
And they say, Tell us if you're the Messiah. I adjure you by the living God. Now don't miss this. Do you see the lunacy of what just happened? He looks at the living God and says, I adjure you by the living God. By your Father, by you, who in eternity past have existed trinitarily with one another in the Holy Spirit.
I adjure you by your Father, by you by the Holy Spirit. I adjure you by you who thousands of years ago bent down and out of the mud and the dirt molded a man and blew life into him. Spoke life into existence. Spoke the cosmos and the universe into existence. I adjure you by you who led the Israelites out of Egypt. Who gave the law to Moses.
Who through your Holy Spirit led them to write all the writings I've studied. Who promised over and over again that you would come. I adjure you by you. Now, if we're Peter and we're looking at this situation, it's frightening. We see Jesus who we love. A carpenter, a builder, construction worker for most of his life who's been doing miraculous things and has had some power and has had some teaching for the past couple of years.
We see him standing before the Supreme Court. The people that everyone holds as the leaders. We see him standing before them, powerless. Remaining silent in this situation. Wondering why he doesn't defend himself and knowing that we have no way to hell. We see him before Caiaphas.
One of the most powerful people in this moment, in this area. It's frightening. But if we could just for a second see what the angels could see, what we would see is actually terrifying. Because we'd see pompous, frail, short lifespan, weak, little, arrogant, dirt people who God formed from dirt and when they die will return to dirt and that God says their life before him is but wisps of smoke. They're like the flower on grass that's here and withers before him. And then we would see the ruling, reigning king of the universe in splendor and glory.
And it would be terrifying to be able to actually see what was taking place here where men, men propose to judge God. To condemn him. To question him. They believe they have some level of superiority over him. If we could see what the angels saw, it would, it's so idiotic as to almost be comical if it wasn't so absolutely terrifying that men would think that they could judge God if we could see what was really happening here. And so here's what, here's what Jesus says in this moment where Caiaphas stands up and says, the guy who's supposed to be closest to God stands up and says, I adjure you by God.
Are you the Christ? Are you the Messiah? Are you the one who was promised throughout all these texts? Are you the one who was to come? Are you the son of God? Are you the most important human who's ever going to walk on the face of the planet?
Is that you? 64. Jesus said to him, you have said so. This is the same response he gave to Judas which basically means you called it, you guessed it, you said it. You would have understood to be in the affirmative even if it's a little bit cryptic. But then he follows it up.
You have said so, but I tell you from now on you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest tore his robes and said, he has uttered blasphemy. What further witness do you need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment? And they answered, that's the whole counsel, he deserves death.
Then they spit in his face and struck him and some slapped him. Okay, so here's what just happened. Caiaphas finally, after there's no testimony, that comes up that automatically proves that Jesus needs to be destroyed, they haven't found enough people to say terrible things about Jesus, it's not going well, Caiaphas stands up and says, I adjure you by the living God, are you the Christ, are you the son of God? And Jesus responds, you have said so, but I tell you, from now on you'll see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Jesus answers him honestly and actually gives him some very helpful information, which we're going to talk about in just a second.
But he answers him honestly and Caiaphas grabs his clothes and just tears his robes and says, you've heard him! You've heard him utter blasphemy! What is your answer? And the entire Sanhedrin says, he deserves death. There's no other option here. This man just claimed to be God.
He just claimed to be the Messiah and obviously he's not. He deserves to be destroyed. It's over in an instant. They grab Jesus, they spit on him and they start hitting him and slapping him. Other gospels tell us they cover his head with a bag so that he can't tell where the blows are coming from. So they hit him and then they say, prophesy, tell us who struck you.
And here's what Jesus said to Caiaphas that caused that. Jesus answered him honestly. He said, Caiaphas, I'm in your courtroom right now. It's not always going to be the case. Caiaphas, there's going to be a moment, Caiaphas, when you see me seated at the right hand of power. There's going to be a moment, Caiaphas, when you meet me in glory.
There's going to be a moment when you know that I'm the ruling, reigning king of the universe, Caiaphas. And there's going to be a moment where I ride in after cracking the sky open on the clouds of heaven to crush my enemies before me and to bring my people home. home. Let me tell you something, Caiaphas. I won't be silent and humble forever. I only go to a cross once. That's what Jesus says to Caiaphas in that moment.
And Caiaphas has an answer he'll accept from Jesus, but it's not that one. And so they condemn him. Now we're going to pause this story for a second. And we're going to back up a little bit. You see, this is the first courtroom we're going to look at today. But we're about to move to another one.
It's lunacy when you see this, that men proposed to judge God and believed that they could. We're going to zoom out and actually look at us today and look at our culture and see where we do this. Where culturally we join in in this idiotic idea that we can bring God in front of us, that we can sit in the judge's seat and that we can question him and release him, question him and condemn him. I want to talk to us a little bit about how we do this culturally. We, every time you hear sentences like, I can't believe in a God who would send people to hell. I just can't believe in a God who would judge and condemn people based on what they, like I just can't believe in a God that would do that.
So I, I just can't. If there is a God, if there is a God, he's a God of love. If there is a God, he's a God of forgiveness and grace. If he exists, this is what he's like. But I can't believe in a God that would say this about gender.
I can't believe in a God that would say, I mean, half the stuff we just talked about in theology of sex. I can't believe there's a God who would say that. That would step in and say, you can't be with this person if you love him. I just can't believe in that. And if there is a God, here's what he's okay with. If there is a God, here's what he's like.
Every time we do that, we've climbed into the judge's bench, we've brought God in front of us and said, let me ask you some questions and let me tell you what you get to be like. Let me tell you what the answers can be and if these aren't satisfactory, you're dismissed. Let me help us out there a little bit. I used to work at Sears and there was a lady who worked there before I got there and she had a list and I think it was about 50 items deep on what her future husband was going to be like. Like these were the qualities and characteristics that he was going to have and it was detailed. I know they told me some of them.
The one that stands out in my mind that I remember most was that he was going to have a hairy chest. Like you would think, put something like honesty on there. No, she was straight up like he's going to be above six feet tall, he's going to have a hairy chest, this is what kind of skin he's going to have. Like it was just, and I hate to break it to y'all, she hadn't met him at the time of when I learned this. Maybe she's found this guy. But she made a list and said this is what my future husband will be like and I don't think it went well for her in dating.
But here's the problem with lists like that. Men actually exist and they have their own character and attributes. She doesn't just get to make it up. Now she can go look for them but they're either there or they're not. There's either a guy who actually exists in this central part of Virginia that's like that. Maybe she was using the internet to help and she said, hey I'm looking, you know, I like Long Walks on the Beach and this is my favorite movie and I'm looking for a guy who, and maybe there's a guy who's like, wow you just described me and I'm not creeped out.
But he either has to exist or not exist. If she goes on a date with a guy and let's say she finds out he doesn't meet one of the qualifications, like he doesn't have a hairy chest. Okay, I don't know how she found that out. Let's pick a different one. She finds out that he doesn't like the movie Back to the Future. Alright, let's go with that one.
She finds out that he doesn't like the movie Back to the Future and so she's like, okay I can't date this guy. She has the option of saying, okay we're not going to date. If you saw her after a weekend where she had a date and you said, have the date go and she said, he didn't meet the qualifications, therefore he does not exist. You might need to call the cops. I think she murdered him. He doesn't seek to exist because he doesn't fit your qualifications.
You cannot date him. When we say, this is what God is like and if he's not like this he doesn't exist, you realize that's nonsense. If God exists, he has actual character qualifications, attributes, like he's a real entity. You can say, if God is like this, I will not worship him and you have that prerogative. I'm going to urge you to reconsider but you can say that. You can't say, if there is a God, he's a God of love.
You can't, like, not in a way that actually lets you do the choosing. That's not how entities work. Like, if he exists, he has attributes and characteristics so you can't just decide he's like this or he doesn't exist. So, let me just help us out here for just a second. If you say, I can't believe in a God who Judges and condemns people, it can't be the judging and condemning that you have a problem with because you just did that to God. You're okay with judging and condemning.
You just did that to God. It has to be the standard that he uses. Has to be. Because you're okay with judgment and condemnation. So, it has to be the standard that he uses. So, I want to ask you a question.
You've now stated that my standard is superior to God's. I want to ask you where you got your standard. So, when we say things like, when I say, as a Christian, things like, women should not be treated as property, I believe that God created the world and that he has a standard that rules over the world whether you like it or not. And so, when I say women shouldn't be treated as property, I'm basing that off of a higher authority. When our culture who doesn't believe in God and says that everything came about by random chance stands up and says you shouldn't treat women like cattle, based off of what?
It's not the majority of thought process throughout history. You can say it's the majority of Western culture and I agree with it. I'm glad Western culture believes that. I think it's good. But I believe it because the Bible says it and because I believe there's an authority over the world.
If we were to go to another country where they had a majority that believed the exact opposite which is women or property, the best we could do is try to prove to them that they aren't based off of maybe some statistics of how it's good if they don't just gather water and make babies, how life is better if you don't beat them all the time. But we can't step in and actually with any amount of real authority say you're wrong other than to say our society is better than yours. When we say that you shouldn't as a nation just roll in and murder other weaker nations but we also believe that the world was bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, eats, murders, kills, takes over, smaller, slower, dumber, all the time and that's how we progress that it was good when the Egyptians took over and then it was good when the Assyrians took over and then it was good and fine when the Persians took over because they're advancing society. It was good when Greece came because they brought all this other good stuff and it was good when Rome came and then it was good when, like, if we argue that that's how we had progress into history, then at some point it breaks down when we say but you shouldn't do it now.
If there's a tribe that's completely backwards and you have more money and more guns you can't just roll up and take their land. I agree with you but all based off of I think there's a higher authority not just what we believe. So if you're willing to admit that your standards come from your time in history and your western culture, fine. I don't see how historically infused standards would trump God's standards if there actually is a God who exists outside of time who's big enough for you to be mad at but not big enough to actually be smarter than you. The only other thing I want to point out to you is when we say things like if there is a God he's a God of love if there is a God he's a God of forgiveness the only place that idea came from is here.
That idea comes straight out of the pages of scripture. The tools you are using to judge and condemn God came from him you will not find them in any other world religion. You won't find that in pagan religions you won't find that in Islam. God's a personal God he doesn't want to know you personally he exists as a person and he's not very loving he's pretty condemning and judging and you've got to earn it. Buddhism doesn't have a personal God they believe in peace and love but not a God that loves you when we say things like if there is a God he loves me personally and he cares about me and he wants good for me that idea came from here. doesn't come from dualism doesn't come from Hinduism the only place you've gotten that idea is when the God of love revealed himself to humanity.
That idea is when the God of love revealed himself to humanity. I'd love to talk with you more about this if you have questions concerns push back want to argue with me I'd love to do that I don't want to argue but you can argue I'll listen here's the last thing there if God exists and he only exists the way you have mapped him out
I would be inclined to believe that he doesn't exist I told you I had a wife he said what does she like and I said she only likes the things I like she loves eating Taco Bell at midnight we never argue because she always absolutely agrees with me you would be inclined to think that she was as real as Manti Teo's girlfriend like I'm
Pretty sure you made her up bro because she that doesn't that's not how things work so if you have a God and he only agrees with you and your political philosophy and your cultural perspective I'd be inclined to think he was imaginary and I just want you to consider some of those things
Now most of us in the room I would say the majority of us in the room are here because we are Christians and believe in Jesus and you're like thanks for that long stuff about nothing but I don't agree with any of that don't think any of that I'm here maybe don't
Like everything he says but I believe he's real and says things I don't like that's me I don't like everything he says but I believe he's real and that he's going to say things I don't like because he's not an American he's God so he's going to disagree with me
That's fine I know I need to submit to him but here's where we as Christians most often climb into the judge's seat we treat God's word like it was handed down from an inferior court so the way the law works in our culture is there's
A court they make a ruling you can appeal that it goes to a higher court a superior court it goes up and up and up until it makes it to the supreme court and most Christians are going to exist when they do this
When they take judgment over God when they bring Christ in and set him in the judgment seat for us to be able to question him we're going to do it from the position of a superior
Court here's what we're going to say we're going to say things like yeah okay but that only says that in the Old Testament we're going to say things
Like yeah but that was written a long time ago and we don't really know exactly what they meant with that one oh well that was written
In a different culture yeah Bible says that I'm supposed to lead my family as a man but my wife is way better at it than I am so
We're going to do that or opposite yes I realize absolutely Bible says as a wife I'm supposed to submit to the leadership of my husband but the
Problem is my husband is a moron and so that one doesn't really apply to us I've tried that and it just doesn't work
I give this person of this I know the Bible says we shouldn't live together before we got married I know the Bible says
This about sex I know the Bible says this about this type of relationship I know the Bible says this about but it doesn't
Really prove it to me it just says it we're in love the Bible doesn't really say in the New Testament how much we're
Supposed to give just that we ought to be generous now I'm not talking about genuinely questioning and seeking and coming to God as
He is on the judge's bench and asking for clarification and help and growing and getting things wrong through ignorance I'm talking about the
Times that we bring the Bible in we bring God in we set him before us we look at what he says and we
Say yeah court dismissed we have as Christians the audacity to think that this submits to us that Jesus can stand before me I
Can question him and I can say well I just don't like that one so I'm not going to do it not I don't
Like that one so I'm going to struggle and I need your grace Jesus and I need your help and I going to I
Have a hard time not that that's perfectly Christian but I don't like that one you didn't really explain it well enough I'm not
Going to do it Jesus wants us to know the same thing he wanted Caiaphas to know you see Jesus was being honest with
Caiaphas he actually answered his question Caiaphas just wasn't willing to hear it there's going to be a final courtroom there's going to be a moment
Where all of us throughout all of time and history are going to be brought before the king are going to walk into the throne room before
The judge are going to see Jesus seated at the right hand of power there's going to be a moment when you lock eyes with your maker
The Bible is very clear about that there's going to be a moment for all of us when all of this melts away and we
Face reality for the first time true eternal spiritual reality and here's what we need to see today before you enter into that courtroom
Take a look at this one take a look at the courtroom we see in Matthew 26 before you see Jesus as the true
Reigning high priest of all millennia see him in front of this small one who's defending his own little corner of glory and see Jesus humbled
And condemned before you enter into the throne room where we will be humbled and condemned or we will be humbled and saved you
See for every person in history the moment that we see Jesus for the first time is either going to be the most glorious
Joyous overwhelming exalting moment in our lives that we cannot stand it or stand under it or it is going to be the most terrifying
Soul crushing moment that has ever happened Paul says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
At some point it's no longer an option it's compulsory and you'll either come in that moment and you'll see your sin melt away
As Jesus took it for you on the cross and you'll know that condemnation does not fall on you because it already fell on
Jesus he already went to this courtroom this low pitiful man-made courtroom to die on our behalf and all your sin and all your shame and all your guilt
Will melt away and you'll stand before the king and you will bow your knee and you will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
Or you will come in under a sentence of condemnation your knees will bow and you will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord either
As a captive released or as a new prisoner of war Jesus Christ will be seated at the right hand of power he will crack the sky
Open and ride in on the clouds of heaven and before that moment happens we have the chance to see Jesus humbled and on
A cross dying to take our sin dying to make us his dying to set us free being condemned so that we Matt's going to
Come back up we're going to sing there is a final courtroom there will be a final judgment there will be a final sentence
Passed and if you have already seen Christ in this courtroom and already seen him to the cross and already placed your faith in
Him then that final courtroom will be a reunion with your king with the glorious eternal creator God of all history where you will
Be brought into his family and his home based not on your merit but his based not what you've accomplished but what he's accomplished
On your behalf or it'll be the moment when our pitiful man made arrogance and glory burns like chaff before the great glorious king
Of eternity it'll either be the moment when you are so engulfed by overwhelming love that your heart would not be able to stand
It were it not for his grace on you where you will be entering into an eternity before the God and king who humbled
Himself on your behalf to rescue and redeem you and make you his that you struggled your entire life to follow after in the
Midst of difficulty and it'll go away because Jesus was already condemned for you Jesus already took the penalty for you he already stands
Before God for you on your behalf as a high priest not a weak small one defending his own glory but a glorious one
Who laid his glory down so that we might actually have some later with him or you'll stand before the real true judge of
Your soul with nothing to base your defense on except for your own effort and work and it will fall short there's a final courtroom please
Please see this one first please see what we just read in Matthew 26 where Jesus stood and had a sentence of condemnation passed over him who did not
Deserve it did not earn it could have stopped it but had men manhandle him and slap him and spit on him so that you don't have to be destroyed please see that one
First we're all going to see the second one please see this one first so that we might be brought up together with the great king of the universe and set finally forever free God God God we ask for your help we thank you that
Through your holy spirit and through your cross you give it that you were condemned that you were put on trial that you were judged that you were crushed so that we don't have to be so that when we stand before you in faith the sentence of condemnation
Is already passed over us onto you not through our work but through yours God I pray for the souls of the city for every person that we meet that will stand before you as the great high king and high judge throughout all eternity I pray for the souls in this
Room who aren't ready for that day God for those of us who've trusted in you help us to continually submit to you as our king and our judge give us the grace to follow even though it's terribly difficult because we know that all the real difficulty has already been accomplished by you
God I pray that for those who sit in caiaphas's chair right now that they would hear what you told caiaphas that he was unwilling to hear this is the last time you judge me but there's a day when I'll judge you but I'm willing to take the penalty for you God we ask for your grace
Amen
30 Pieces of Silver
Transcript
All right, well, it's good to see you all this morning. My name's Matt. I'm one of the pastors here. And if it's your first time hanging out with us, let me be the first to welcome you. We are absolutely glad that you're here. Last Sunday, we finished up a seven-week series where we kind of engaged with what our culture has to say about gender, about marriage, about sexuality, about masculinity, femininity.
And then we went to the Bible so that we as Christians can learn how to follow Jesus well in terms of having a theology of sex. And I will say this for me personally. I think it's one of the most helpful series we've ever done. And I heard tons of feedback coming back out of our groups, just discussions, really submitting our lives to Jesus. And it was great. And now, today we're starting a three-week series because we've got three weeks leading up to Easter and celebrating our baptism party.
And for us, as we're approaching Easter, we're going to spend the majority of our time talking about Jesus. Surprise! But you didn't see that coming. We looked at Jesus' interactions. We're going to look at things that he said and things that he did. But we're going to go about it a little bit differently this year.
And here's why. The reason the cross is so beautiful, so compelling, is that on it, Jesus died for terrible sinners just like us. That the reason the cross is beautiful is because on it, Jesus died for sinners. That his death pays for our sin and he rose from the grave so that we might have life in him. That's why the cross is beautiful. And so what we're going to do is take three weeks to look at Jesus' specific interactions with some sinners that would kind of fall into this category.
Here's what we're going to try to do. That as we see their sin, as we see their denial, their rejection of Jesus, what we're going to see is that it actually is going to hit a little bit closer to home than we might care to admit. That if we're actually honest with ourselves, more often than not, we're like the people who mistreat Jesus than we are like Jesus himself. So that by looking at these interactions, by looking at these people that Jesus has conversations with, that their actions absolutely impact his own life. What we're going to see is that we're going to align with them. That we're going to see some of our own sinfulness, our own brokenness in them.
And as we see that, as we look at that sin and kind of come face to face with it, the hope would be by the time we get to Easter, we've actually got something to celebrate. We're more excited because we understand the cross of Christ so much more because on it, Jesus died to save sinners. That by the time we get to Easter, we can't help but shout and stand and sing the good news as people are going to be baptized and we're going to lose our minds and we're going to eat a whole bunch of fried chicken. Amen? Amen? I mean, that's worth, it's good news.
It's good news worth celebrating. And so we're going to take these three weeks specifically and try to look at our own sinfulness in light of some of Jesus' interactions with people on his way to the cross. And so to kick off the series today, we're going to be looking at a guy by the name of Judas Iscariot, who is one of the most negatively portrayed people in the Bible. And maybe you've never hung out with a church before. You may not know really anything about Jesus, but you have probably, in some form or fashion, heard about Judas and what Judas does to him. Judas betrays his friend Jesus.
He sells his friend Jesus out so that if you're, you could watch a movie or you're reading a book. Anytime someone commits treason or sells somebody out or is a snitch, you may hear them turn the phrase, man, such a Judas. What a Judas. And the reason being is because that seems so unthinkable that Judas would betray the Son of God after all that he had seen. But we're not so unlike Judas ourselves.
And though we may sometimes treat Jesus the same way that Judas did, we don't have to share his same fate. That though we may treat Jesus the same way that Judas did, we've actually been given another option. And so as we actually look at his story, his interaction with Jesus, my hope is that we would see our sin more clearly and that the cross would actually become more compelling. And so I'm going to pray for us and we'll kind of jump into the text and see what God has to say to us this morning. Let's pray together.
God, we don't have the ability to comprehend your word and I don't have the ability to clearly articulate your word outside of the move and work of your Holy Spirit. And so God, I ask that this morning as we, as we open your word, God, that you would be faithful. God, that you would help us see our own sinfulness, our own brokenness, and you would help us see Jesus for who he truly is. The savior of the world, the one who dies for our sins so that we might have life in him. I pray that would be abundantly clear this morning as you speak to us. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, so grab a Bible. You can grab one of the Bibles on the chairs and go to Matthew chapter 26. That's going to be on page 539 in the blue and white Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, please just take that one with you. When we're done today, we want everyone to have a Bible, to be reading it, to be growing. And in fact, if you're looking for something to read, I would encourage you that in the coming weeks, in the three weeks or so leading up to Easter, to actually jump into Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and read from about where I'm going to begin summarizing because you'll get a picture of the last week of Jesus' life as recorded by four people.
I think that would be a great way for us all to just kind of prepare for Easter. But here's the background. Here's what we're getting into. Jesus has just come to Jerusalem with his disciples to celebrate the Passover. And the Passover is just one of the big Jewish festivals, one of the big celebrations that they had every year. And Jesus and his disciples had come to Jerusalem for the Passover before, but this time is markedly different.
Jesus' fame and renown had spread. He had been doing ministry for years now, for three years, and people had heard about his miracles and they had heard about his teachings. They knew who he was. And as soon as he starts coming into the city, the word begins to spread. People come out to where Jesus and his disciples are coming in, and they take their coats and they lay him on the ground, and they take palm branches and they wave him in the air, and they're shouting things like, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Blessed is the Son of David. Blessed is the Lord. And what all of these people are celebrating is that they believe that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah that the Old Testament is talking about. They're celebrating him. He's the long-awaited rescuer, the redeemer, the one who's going to come and save them. And they can't help but celebrate it.
But what we're going to see is that not everyone shares the same sentiment when it comes to Jesus. And so where we're jumping in, we're jumping in to chapter 26. This is a couple of days later. Things have settled down just a little bit, and we're going to find Jesus talking with his disciples. So we'll pick it up there.
Chapter 26, verse 1. When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, you know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. Okay, so it says that Jesus had just finished talking. He just finished saying these things. Jesus was talking with his disciples about what will the signs of the end of time be? What will be the signs of the end of the age?
And he kind of leaves that idea, and he comes back to the present, and he says, the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. And Son of Man is just a phrase that he used for himself on a regular basis. He says the Son of Man is going to be delivered up to be crucified. And this isn't the first time that he's told this to his disciples. The Gospel accounts tell us that he's been telling them this all along the way. But you've got to imagine.
Just imagine with me. Every time Jesus says that, that we're going to Jerusalem, and I'm going to be killed and crucified, you've got to imagine the disciples are kind of like, sure you will, Jesus. Yeah, right. Not really, though, right? This is one of those parable things, right, where we just don't understand, but you're telling us that this is actually. And the reason that was so difficult is that they had just watched the city erupt in celebration as Jesus and his disciples came in.
And now in a couple of days, he's going to be nailed to a cross. The most painful and torturous of Roman deaths reserved for the worst of criminals. And they just couldn't see it. But there's actually more at play. There's more at work here than meets the eye. And our passage kind of continues to show us that.
Pick it back up, verse 3. Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people. Okay, so time out. At the same time that Jesus is meeting with his disciples, talking to them, the religious leaders of the people have kind of convened a meeting together to figure out, what are we going to do about this whole Jesus situation? The Jesus thing has gotten out of control.
There are people standing in the streets within earshot of the temple complex saying that this guy is the Messiah. And these religious leaders have come together and said, the only thing that we can do is arrest him and he's got to be killed. And immediately we start asking questions because we're going, hey, time out, time out. All right, so there are people who believe that Jesus is the Messiah. And these people are the religious leaders of the people. Why in the world are they trying to kill Jesus?
That's a question that immediately comes up. And the truth is that this animosity between the religious leaders and Jesus didn't happen overnight. This has been going on for near three years now. The religious leaders have been in significant conflict with Jesus, warring with him over what faithfulness to God actually looked like. That Jesus showed up on the scene and he stepped into their territory and he began to challenge them on what they believed, what they were teaching the people, how they were leading, what their hearts were centered on. And as Jesus shared, he had the miracles to back up everything that he was saying because the religious leaders were tasked with teaching the people how to follow God.
And these guys had got focused on their own things. They were absolutely focused on outward appearance, the outward signs. They would go to the Old Testament law and they would take the law and then they would create rules that would keep them from breaking the law. But so that they didn't break those rules, they would make more rules on top of those rules so that they didn't even get close to breaking the law. And needless to say, Jesus showed up and didn't play by their rules. Jesus showed up and wanted to show people what does it actually mean to follow God?
What is the heart of God actually about? And so they would have conflict and debates about the things that Jesus did. They would get mad at Jesus for healing people on the Sabbath because they considered that somehow work and they were missing God's active work in the midst of them to bring about healing for people. They were missing it. They always wondered why Jesus would hang out with sinners and with tax collectors and the people that were ostracized from society because they believed that those people made you unclean. But what they didn't realize is that God was in their midst coming.
Jesus was coming to make people clean. The people who were supposed to be closest to the heart of God were convened in a room together trying to figure out how to kill God. Don't miss that. Don't brush past that. These guys knew the Old Testament backwards and forwards and some of them had even memorized it. But they were so concerned with their own power, with their own authority, their own way of doing things that they absolutely missed what was right in front of them.
And now they're huddled in a room ready to kill God. And so the story kind of continues on going into verse 6 where Jesus and his disciples go out to a certain area to share a meal with some friends. But we're actually going to kind of skip over that part of the story because I want us to follow the progression of events that has just kind of started with this meeting. We're going to follow that thread of people who don't see Jesus for who he actually was. And so we're going to kind of skip down over those verses and we'll pick it back up in verse 14. Verse 14 says this, Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?
And they paid him 30 pieces of silver. And from that moment on, he sought an opportunity to betray him. Okay, so we're used to this. For the majority of us in the room, you may be familiar with this story. But don't let your familiarity with the story take away from how shocking and how terrible this actually is.
Judas was one of the twelve, meaning Jesus' closest followers. And he just went to the people who were trying to figure out how to kill him about how he might turn them in. How he might betray Jesus to them. And I want you to just think for a second about Judas and all that Judas had seen, all that he experienced. We know that from early on in the Gospels, Jesus went up on a mountain to pray and when he came back down from praying, he handpicked twelve guys that he wanted to follow him throughout his entire ministry to serve alongside of him, to love alongside of him, to do ministry beside him and learn from him.
There was James and John and there was Andrew and there was Peter and then there was Judas. Jesus looked into the eyes of Judas and said, You. I choose you. Follow me. And he did. He followed Jesus.
He ended up with Jesus on a mountain where they were surrounded by thousands of people. Thousands of people who were hungry and the only thing that they had were two fish and five loaves of bread. Not near enough even to really feed one or two people. But Jesus took those elements and he blessed it and he handed it to the disciples and he said, Go pass this out. Go pass this out. And so Judas walked her out.
Judas walked around handing out food and handing out food and handing out food and handing out food until every one of those people were fed. Jesus had done the miraculous. He had fed thousands of people and then he said, Okay, go back with a basket and collect all the leftovers. And so Judas had to do that too. We know that Judas was in a room with Jesus and a whole bunch of other people and the house that they were in, the tiles, they started pulling the tiles out of the ceiling and these friends who were desperate lowered down their friend who was crippled into the room just hoping, desperate for Jesus to do something.
And at a word, the man was healed and he picked up his mat and he walked out. This was the real deal. This wasn't a gimmick. There were religious legal storm came down on them from the mountains on the Sea of Galilee threatening to capsize the ship. And Jesus walks up on the bow and rebukes the wind and the waves and everything ceases and the sea goes back to being calm. Even nature bent to his words.
He had watched as Jesus walked up to the front of a tomb in it, a man who had been dead. It was Jesus' friend Lazarus. He'd been dead for four days and Jesus said, Roll the stone away. Lazarus come out and a man who had been dead for four days had been brought back to life. It was amazing. Just think about all that Judas had seen.
And now here we find him walking into the palace of the chief priest ready to sell him out for 30 pieces of silver. And we know that at the time 30 pieces of silver was equal to about five weeks wages. Judas basically sold out the son of God for an all expenses paid trip to Disney World. 30 pieces of silver. And you start wondering, did Judas just miss it? After bearing witness to all that Jesus had said and done to betray him like this?
Did he really not understand who Jesus was? Story continues. Verse 17. Now on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying, Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover? He said, Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, The teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.
And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and they prepared the Passover. Okay, so the Passover was a week-long celebration, but there was also an aspect of it that was a meal. And so Jesus is going to be sharing this meal with his disciples. Verse 20. When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve. And as they were eating, he said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me.
And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, Is it I, Lord? He answered, He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. 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. Judas, who would betray him, answered, Is it I, Rabbi? He said to him, You have said so.
What happened here? This seemingly comes out of nowhere. There's no big story of conflict. It should be shocking to us when you get to this part of the story, you're going, this just doesn't add up. And so we find Jesus with his disciples in a room sharing this meal and I want you to take just a second. Jesus was fully God and fully man.
And so sometimes we forget that Jesus felt emotions. So I just want you to remember and think about what Jesus was feeling. Jesus knew of his impending death that was coming. He knew that somebody was about to betray him. and now he's here with his friends, the guys that have really been with him through thick and thin for the last three years. And he looks at him and he says, One of you is going to betray me. You see, the disciples knew that the religious leaders didn't like Jesus.
They knew that they were in danger any time they came to Jerusalem. and they know that Jesus has the ability to predict the future and so they just go ahead and begin to suspect themselves. They begin looking at Jesus and saying, I'm not the one who does that, am I? Is it I? Is it I? And then you get to Judas. Judas looks into the same eyes that three years earlier had called him to follow him and he says, Is it I, teacher?
And Jesus says, You have said so. Jesus basically looks at him and says, You guessed it. And you get to the end of that passage and you're still just left with this question, Why would Judas so easily betray Jesus? Did he just completely miss it? Did he just really not realize who Jesus was? Did he just really, did he really not believe?
Maybe Judas was like a lot of people at this time and they thought that the Messiah, when the Messiah came, he was going to be this conquering warrior king who was going to come in and lead a charge, lead a rebellion and kick the Romans out of their territory and reset up Israel's kingdom. There were a lot of people at the time that thought that's what the Messiah was going to do but this guy's talking about he's going to die? Well certainly he can't be that kind of king. Maybe it was that Jesus was profitable for Judas. We know that in their ministry people would give them money to support them.
They were away from their homes for long periods of time and we know that Judas was the person who was actually in charge of the money bag and so over time maybe Judas just slipped himself a few over time. Maybe Jesus was just profitable for him. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was the prominence. Maybe it was just the sense of importance he got by being one of the twelve. Maybe it was the sense of adventure of getting to just go along with Jesus on this.
And while we don't know exactly why scripture doesn't tell us exactly why there's a couple of things at play that we can see in Judas' motivations a couple of realities that we can see in his actions and they're really similar but I want to parse them out for us. The first one is this number one Judas never ceased to be the king of his life. Judas never ceased to be the king of his life. That though Jesus had looked at Judas three years ago and said come follow me come be a part of what I'm doing lay down your own life your own wants your own desires and come follow me. Judas walked behind him physically and had completely missed out on the spiritual reality.
That instead of walking alongside with Jesus and helping others Judas was really just helping himself instead of serving people with Jesus Judas was just serving himself. Judas had never ceased to be the most important person in his life. Jesus was never king because Judas never stepped off the throne and it goes hand in hand with the second reality which is this Jesus was just a means to an end. That since Judas never ceased to be the king of his life Jesus was only a means to an end. Which means that Jesus was good only as long as he was directly benefiting Judas. And as soon as Judas had other opportunities he swapped out Jesus.
The reason he was willing to trade Jesus for 30 pieces of silver was because Jesus wasn't priceless to him. He had limits on Jesus' worth. I mean you got to remember he was the one who handled the money and he's calculating the whole time and if it had seemed that staying with Jesus would have been more beneficial would have been more lucrative he would have done it. And as soon as Jesus no longer benefited him he was off to bigger and better things that he could just swap Jesus out for something else. And this should be terrifying to all of us. That Judas could walk side by side with Jesus God in the flesh and completely miss out on what was right in front of him.
That he could be so consumed by his own passions, his own desires, his own ways that he would sell out the son of God for chump change. That somehow something became more valuable, more important to him than Jesus did. So the truth is for those of us in the room who would say we're Christians, Jesus has come to us and he said follow me and we responded to that call and we said okay I'll follow you. I'll follow you Jesus. But following Jesus isn't always easy.
There are tough times, there are times where we're going to face suffering and the truth is as we begin to look at the life of Jesus and then look at the life of Judas what we're beginning to see is we're actually a whole lot more like Judas than we care to admit. When we really let it begin to hit home we like Judas are willing to swap Jesus out for other things to use Jesus just as a means to an end. Even though we've said Jesus you're my king not all areas of our lives have actually been submitted to his rule and his reign. Let me show you how this shows up a little bit. So for those of us in the room who've said we're Christians we're trying to figure out what that means as a church and so we gather together on Sunday and we exist together as family in our community groups.
That you as a Christian you're trying to read your Bible and you're trying to pray. You're trying to look for opportunities to build with the people that God has placed you around. And then when life gets tough and things get hard and something seemingly better comes along we'll stand right beside Judas and we'll swap Jesus out for something else. Maybe it's something better that comes along. Maybe it's that we really were using Jesus as a means to an end. And we start looking at our life and we start going he's not doing it the way I want him to.
Jesus sure you're my king but you're not doing what I want you to do. We'll say things like this. Jesus how could you let me lose my job? You're supposed to take care of me. Jesus how could you let my girlfriend cheat on me? She's supposed to be a Christian.
Why weren't you protecting me? We say things like God I trusted God and he didn't come through. Which is basically saying I only trust in God as long as he does what I think is good and valuable and important. You see that? That he's not actually king. He's not actually king when we say that.
That I'm in only as long as my relationships are getting better. I'm in only as long as I'm still getting a promotion. I'm in only as long as my children are learning how to behave. I'm in only as long as it's about me. That's what Judas was saying. And the problem with that is that Christianity is not about us.
It's about Jesus. And what we've just revealed is that in these areas, in these moments, we actually weren't following Jesus because of our devotion to him. Our words and our thoughts portray that Jesus really was just a means to an end. That we liked Jesus and would follow Jesus only so far as he would do what we wanted him to do. That instead of serving Jesus as God, we want Jesus to serve us as God because we're the most important person in the equation. That we can say all we want to Jesus, you're my king.
But until he has rule and reign of every aspect of our lives, that's the thing that we're willing to swap him out for. That's the thing where we're using Jesus only as a means to an end because we've got limits on where Jesus gets to have rule and have reign. And it's obvious in Judas' life. And here's what the Bible is going to say about that kind of as a whole. From Genesis to the Ten Commandments in Exodus to Jeremiah to the words of Jesus himself all the way to Paul in Romans, the Bible is going to say that humanity's biggest problem is that we were created to worship God. God.
But instead of worshiping God, we've swapped him out and decided to worship something else instead. We've decided to worship and pursue lesser gods. That we moved God out of his rightful place and something else in our lives has become more important, holds more sway, holds more motivation for how we do things. And the Bible is going to call this idolatry. The Bible is going to take the stance that all sin is idolatry that we've swapped God out for something else. And Chet put this scripture on the screen and talked about it last week and I'm just going to summarize it for us.
Here's what Paul says in Romans chapter 1. He says, although they knew God, although they knew God, although Judas knew Jesus, although we know God, it says they did not honor or worship him as God. It says although they knew God, they didn't honor or worship him as God, but instead worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. The Bible is going to take the stance that anytime anything begins to hold ultimate sway and weight in our lives, we have stepped into the realm of idolatry. The Bible says our biggest problem is that something else has become primary. Something else has become the most important thing.
And here's why that's so scary. Here's why it's so tricky and deceptive. It's not just the bad stuff that the Bible calls sin that can get there. We can actually take good things and put them in the place of God and we've got a problem. That something that's good, that is inherently good by itself, something that's a good thing can become a God thing and we're in trouble. And we've fallen away from God's original design, which means we have followed in to the sin that is every sin since the beginning, which we've swapped God out for other things.
And it's not just the bad stuff, it's the good stuff too. For those of you who have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, for those of you who are married, maybe it's your husband and spouse, let me show you how this shows up. Because it's hard to see. When a person, when your spouse or significant other has the ability to, when things are going good with them, your mood's up here. You're excited, you're happy, you feel like you're loved and blessed and that when things aren't going well with them, you kind of trickle down to the bottom and you're depressed and you're not feeling good. And your emotions, your whole well-being rises and falls with a person.
You have based your life on that person. They've become ultimate. It's in a relationship with Jesus. When Jesus is primary, that you're not swayed by your emotions because your identity comes from him, not from another person. You can begin to look at how do you spend your time? What's the thing that has the biggest grip on my time?
What influences my decisions? If the answer is not Jesus, watch out. It may be that that is something that we've set up as an idol. And again, it can be good things. And this shows up all over the place. Spouses do it with each other.
Parents, we do this with our children. We'll do this with our children who we're called to love and to protect and care for. But when all of life begins to revolve around them and around their schedule, they've become ultimate. They've become primary. And we've ceased worshiping and trusting Jesus. And we've put our trust in something else.
Athletes do this with their sports. Students, students, you do this with your majors and your job path. With your career path, you go, nothing, nothing else matters. I mean, I'm in school right now. I don't have time. I don't have time to hang out with a community group.
I don't have time to read my Bible. I've got to study. I've got to see it. Something that is not bad, that is actually inherently good when turned into a God thing becomes sin and ultimately will destroy us. With our bosses, with our work, with our dreams, with our desires, anytime they actually become ultimate, what we've done is we've walked into the priest's palace with Judas and said, what can I have for him? We're just negotiating for something different.
Judas wanted 30 pieces of silver. Maybe we just want our marriage to be good. Maybe we just want to get the job that we want to get so that we can make the money. And the Bible says that that's idolatry. So the truth is we're actually a whole lot more like Judas than we care to admit.
And Judas, we know that this night Judas leaves and the disciples leave eventually too and they go to a garden of Gethsemane but Judas leads the temple guards to the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is arrested. And then through that night and into the next day, Jesus is mocked. He's beaten. He's spit upon. He's given a sham trial. He's whipped.
And then eventually he's nailed to a cross where he would bleed out and die. And we've got this tendency to look at the situation and go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm not like Judas. I didn't betray the Son of God. I didn't have the Son of God murdered.
Oh, yeah. Why did Jesus have to go to the cross? Sin. Who did Jesus die for? Sinners. Sinners just like me and you.
Even for those of us who have submitted our life to Jesus and say, I want to follow him. There are these pockets. There are these areas in our lives that we just haven't quite submitted to Jesus yet. Where we haven't allowed him to be king. Where we have a propensity to take good things and turn them into God things. That when it's not going our way, we'll just move Jesus to the side and pursue something else.
But here's the good news for us this morning. Here's the good news of the gospel. That though we may sometimes treat Jesus the way that Judas did, our fate does not have to be the same. That though we may reject him and deny him and swap him out for other stuff, Jesus has actually offered us another option. So I want us to jump back into the text, jump back into it.
Verse 26, because Jesus continues talking with his disciples after Judas leaves. And what he's actually giving us is a picture of what he's going to do. So let's pick it back up. Verse 26. Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat. This is my body.
And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. Okay, what we said earlier was that they were gathering to share the Passover meal together, but we really didn't talk at all about what Passover was and what they were actually celebrating. What they're celebrating is a tie back into Israelite history all the way back to the time in the book that's recorded in the book of Exodus where the Israelites were in slavery to the nation of Egypt.
But Exodus tells us that God heard the cries of his people and he goes to Moses and he said, Moses, I want you, I've heard the cries of my people. I want you to go and lead my people out. I'm going to rescue them. I'm going to pull them out of slavery. So Moses goes to Pharaoh and he asked for him to let the people go and he doesn't do it.
His heart is hardened. And so God sends terrible plagues, terrible plagues to show his glory and to ultimately motivate Pharaoh to let the people go. And he doesn't. He doesn't relent until the tenth plague, which would be the worst. The tenth plague was that God was going to send the angel of death, which is just an angel that causes death to go through all the land of Egypt and kill all the firstborn sons. That was the tenth plague.
But God says to Moses, Moses, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take a lamb, a spotless lamb without blemish or defect. And I want you to sacrifice it. And I want you to take the blood of that lamb and I want you to put it on the sides of the doors and over the top of the door. And when the angel of death comes through, I will see the blood of the lamb and I will pass over and your firstborn sons will be spared. Be inside your home with your sandals on, your bags packed, eating unleavened bread, because tomorrow you're coming out of Egypt.
I'm going to rescue my people. And so that night the angel of death comes through and any door that had blood on it, the angel of death passed over and there were many, all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians died and there was weeping and wailing. And the next day Pharaoh looked at Moses and Israelites and he said, get out. God had come and he had rescued his people and we know that he led them through the Red Sea and they spent time in the wilderness, but eventually they would make it to the promised land. Passover was a celebration that God instituted for his people to remind them of the deliverance that he had provided.
In the Passover, a lamb had to be sacrificed so that the firstborn sons could go free. Are you seeing it now? That the entire Old Testament was talking about this and the celebration of the Passover was ultimately finding its fulfillment in Jesus. Jesus is the lamb and the son who would be sacrificed so that we could all go free. The Passover finds its fulfillment in Jesus. And that's the good news.
That's the good news. That's why our fate doesn't have to be the same as as Judas is because we can trust in the lamb that would be slain. That Jesus would come and his body would be broken and his blood would be shed so that our sins could be forgiven. The cross is beautiful because on it Jesus died for terrible sinners and he just calls us to repent. And so he sits here with his disciples and he said, here's the bread that provides nourishment and sustenance and life. It represents my body.
My body that is broken for you. My body has to be broken for you. And then he takes the cup. He said this cup, this wine that was to represent the blood of the lamb that was placed over the doorpost. No, no, no. This now represents my blood that would be shed for the forgiveness of your sins.
That the forgiveness of your sins would be accomplished through his death. I'm going to be the Passover lamb. I'm going to be the one that swaps places for you. Swaps places for you even though you have a tendency to swap me out for other things. And that's the good news of the gospel. And that's why this morning as we think about this, as we see our own sin in relation to Judas, there's good news for us that our fate doesn't actually have to be the same.
That Jesus' body was broken and his blood was shed for all the times we swap him out for lesser things. Where we take a boyfriend and they become ultimate. We take a job and it becomes ultimate. And it takes the place of God. Jesus died for that. So that as we celebrate communion, which is what this is, this is the Lord's Supper.
And we know that in Scripture the church is commanded to take communion as a reminder of the sacrifice of Jesus. So that every time we as a church take communion, we're remembering our sin. That Jesus' body was broken for it. That his blood was shed for it. That he swapped places out for us. This is something that we do on a regular basis as a church.
And we're going to start doing it more. Because it's wonderful. It's wonderful to sit and to actually be reminded of our sinfulness and that Jesus' body and his blood, it was broken and shed for us, for our sin. The Bible just calls to us to repent. That's the invitation to the table. Was that Jesus was broken for you.
You just need to repent and place your faith in him. In fact, every time we take communion, it's our chance to confess in two ways. We confess our sin and we confess our Savior. We confess that I'm a broken sinner, but he was broken for me. We confess that I'm covered in shame, but now I'm covered by his blood. We confess that I've swapped him out for so many things, but Jesus swapped himself out for us.
And so we celebrate the good news of the gospel as we take communion. And we're actually going to do that this morning. We're going to celebrate communion together. And communion is for Christians. So in the room, if you have placed your faith in Jesus, you've already been invited to the table and you've accepted the invitation.
The Bible does call us as Christians that as we approach taking the bread and the juice, that we would remember, that we would examine ourselves, that we would look inward, that all of us have areas where we have a tendency to swap Jesus out or to not let him be king. And the Bible's called us to repent, to repent and then take of the bread and the juice. Maybe you've been hanging out with our church for a while and you've been thinking about who Jesus is. You've been hanging out with a community group and you've been wrestling with, is this true? That you've begun to actually look inside yourself and you realize, I am sinful.
I am broken. I am in need of a savior. Today would be a beautiful day for you to place your faith in Jesus and accept the invitation to the table. And if that's you, if you're going, I know this is me. I know I need a savior. We're going to take some time to pray here in just a minute.
Repent. Repent. Repent. Confess your sin to God. Confess your brokenness, your neediness, that you need a savior. And then ask him to be your savior.
Place your faith and your trust in him. And then go to the back of the room and take communion for the first time. And then tell somebody and then probably go to the baptism class, which would be fantastic. But there may be some of us in the room who are still just, we're skeptical. We don't quite understand who Jesus is. We're still wrestling with this.
And here's what I would challenge you to do kind of during this time as other people are praying. I want you to ask yourself the question, are the things that I'm chasing in my life, are the things that I'm basing my life on actually filling me up? Actually, actually giving me joy, actually giving my life, actually giving me life. And just consider, just consider what, what giving your life to Jesus might actually look like. So Bianca is going to come back up and, and here's what's going to happen.
Bianca is going to sing a song over us. She's going to sing a song called the power of the cross. And the words are actually going to be on the screen because I want you to see the beauty of what she's singing about. Here's what I want all of us to do. I want all of us to just take some time and pray. I want us to confess and to repent of all the things that we allow to get in the way of our total devotion and allegiance to Jesus.
I want us to spend some time repenting and confessing. And when you've had a chance to do that, then I want you to go to the back of the room and I want you to take the bread and I want you to dip it in the juice and remember, remember what Jesus did for you so that your sins could be forgiven. So we're going to take some time and we're going to pray. And when you're ready, when you're ready to go to the back of the room, you can do that. You can take the bread and the juice and remember what Jesus has done for you. And then I invite you to come back to your seat after you've done that.
We're going to, we're going to sing. We're going to praise the lamb that was slain for us because the good news of the gospel is true that Jesus died for sinners. God, I ask that you would help us to, to clearly see our sin. God, that we would see our brokenness and our neediness in it. And it wouldn't drive us to put up a wall, but it would drive us to repent. To repent of all the things that we've, we've swapped you out for, that we've put in your place.
Cheap substitutes for a mighty God, for a loving God. God, would you convict? Holy Spirit, would you move throughout this room? Would you lead us to a place where we would repent and accept the invitation to the table? Our invitation that was purchased by Jesus shed blood in his broken body. So as Bianca sings, I just want us all to sit and to pray, to ask the Holy Spirit to show us where we need to repent.
And then when you've had an opportunity to do that, I invite you to the back of the room to take communion. And you can return to your seat and sing praises to the lamb. Amen. Amen.