The Hope of Resurrection (1 Cor 15)
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Transcript
Morning happy Easter you guys we are in First Corinthians this morning we typically uh as we have sermons we open up the text we walk through the text and that's what we're going to be doing this morning in 1 Corinthians chapter 15: 16 through2 uh if you have a blue Bible will be on page 560 and if you don't have a Bible at home please take that that's a that's a gift we want you to have the word of God at home uh the text will also be on the screen.
So my wife and I uh we uh used to watch this show called chopped uh it's a cooking show and it's pretty basic you got four chefs four professionals three rounds you have appetizer and if you have the worst dish guess what happens you get chopped you you guys are getting it all right then you got an entree round next dish last one who's not that good chopped then a dessert and if you win you get a cool $10,000 because it's the Food Network and they got they ain't got kind of budget to give you a lot of money.
But that's the gist of the show and we were watching this one time and this guy was clearly the best I mean his appetizer was on point they the judges they ate it they loved it goes the next round entree crushes it uh gets the dessert round his his opponent uh this uh woman she barely gets in kind of on a technicality she she gets into the dessert round and he decides in 30 minutes he's going to bake a cake and he I mean is just killing it he's an artist he's just he's got the flour it's going he's got the sugar and the eggs and all he's just going.
For it she's over there like sweating like this guy's baking a cake and I'm just I'm putting together I just got to get on the plate I just get get on the plate time goes before the judges they're excited because they've just they've seen how good this guy is all day long they sink their Fork into it they take a bite you know when I I know this personally when you make something that just it just didn't work and I've seen my wife she just she goes yeah did you try something different this time and it's just a kind way of saying what what happened they didn't do that they spit it out they go.
And he's mortified because he's just like what happened and then it bit takes a moment for them to collect themselves to get every crumb out of their mouth and then the one judge goes I I think you grab salt instead of sugar and then they do like the black and white slow-mo camera where he like thinks he's grabbing sugar but right beside it is salt and he just dumps a bunch of salt in it and he's devastated I think the judges are devastated he's had such a good day and he failed it's I mean and he loses.
Because a cake without sugar is not a cake he presented a pile of salty garbage and it left everyone disappointed today we are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ that's what we celebrate that Jesus what we just sang about that Jesus was the tomb was empty and our Christian faith is built upon that reality if there is no resurrection that there there is no Christian faith it is it is a cake without sugar worse it's a cake infected by a salt mine like it's just.
If we don't have the resurrection we don't have Christian faith at all it is a devastating disappointment and that's what we're going to see today in First Corinthians that everything that we hope for in the resurrection that our whole faith is built upon this and without it we will be deeply we would be deeply disappointed so let me read uh the text and then we'll walk through this together verse 16- 20 for if the dead are not raised not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised your faith is feudal and you are still in your sins then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished if in Christ we have hope in this life only we are of all people most to be pied but in fact Christ has been raised from the dead the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep let's pray heavenly father I pray that you'd help us see the power of resurrection and what that means.
For us that we might not leave here this morning unaffected by the truth of your Gospel that it might PE Pierce our hearts and it might lead us to worshiping you delighting in you in faith we ask this in Jesus name amen all right so we typically preach through books of the Bible we've been in Philippians for a few months which means when you're preaching through books of the Bible you're able to kind of know the context of what we've been walking through.
But today's different we're jumping into First Corinthians so let me give a little bit of context for this passage uh Corinthians 1 Corinthians is a letter uh that one of Jesus's followers wrote to a Church uh in a city uh in Greece called Corinth so this is uh inspired Scripture that God used his servant Paul to communicate his truth to this Church in that context and when you read a few verses before this in chapter 15 what you see is is that this Church believes in the resurrection of.
Jesus Christ like he walks through that Jesus died for our sins which is what we celebrated on Good Friday that because of our sin that has to be paid for and Christ went to the cross that Jesus walked out of the Tomb the tomb was empty that there are 500 plus people who witness the resurrected Christ you can see that this Church clearly believes this just as Paul clearly believes this but when you keep reading what you start to see is is that.
While they believe that Jesus did rise from the grave there's some people in this Church that are struggling to believe that there's a future resurrection and that's what's being addressed here and if you read the Scriptures you see that there's a future resurrection that one day uh God is going to Jesus is going to come back and he's going to make all things new that heaven will descend down to earth and he will radically recreate this Earth and when that happens his Church God's people will be bodily resurrected to glorified bodies we will live with.
God forever that's the truth that he's talking about and it seems that some people in this Church are struggling to believe this when he says in verse 16 for if the dead are not raised that's what he's talking about if there is no future Resurrection not even Christ has been raised he ties the two of those together that Christ Resurrection precedes the future resurrection and these are bound together to deny one and to deny the other they are linked together if you have Christ's Resurrection God's people will be Resurrected some of you know this.
Because you've seen this that if you play the song Mr Brightside by The Killers which those who are laughing have seen it if you play that song I will come alive one precedes the other that's going to happen it happened at a wedding a few years ago and it's just kind of keeps happening you play that song and I come alive and I'm going to sing every line of that song and if I'm not there just to be honest there will be another 35-year old white guy who steps in and just chants and sings that song it happens.
Listen I mean everyone's got their era right you Boomers you got Don't Stop Believing you know you got September by Earth Wind and Fire my wife and I for her birthday were at a jazz club for her birthday they played earthwind and fire they played September you saw people just grooving that one precedes the other that's what's Happening Here Resurrection precedes future Resurrection the two are bound together and that's what he's trying to help them see so clearly here.
Verse 17 he continues he says and if Christ has not not been raised your faith is feudal and you are still in your sins then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished so he shows that Resurrection is at the heart of the Gospel that that if Christ doesn't rise from the grave everyone stands condemned everyone stands condemned he's trying to help them see that if you don't have Resurrection you you don't have salvation we have to keep the cross and the resurrection tied together that's what Paul in another letter that he writes another Scripture that he writes to the book of in the Book of Romans chapter 4 he says it will be.
Count un to us who believe in him who rais from the dead Jesus our lord who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification these are tied together that his death covers our Rebellion the blood that that he shed on the cross is for our sins but if he doesn't rise from the grave we're not saved I the picture here is We Stand condemned because of our sin that we are locked in a prison on death row and we stand condemned.
Jesus enters into the courtroom before the judge while we are in prison he says no no no I I'll take his place I'll take her place I'll take her place in the electric chair I'll take his place on the cross that's the picture here so he he takes the punishment for our sin but if the resurrection doesn't happen we we're not free we're not alive and the resurrection is the key that unlocks the prison that allows us to walk free and to take off the prison garments to put on uh his righteousness that's the picture these are tied together we are not saved.
If he does not walk out of the Tomb so he's trying to help them see the importance like this is how important Resurrection is and then we get to verse 19 which is we're going to spend most of our time he says if in Christ we have hope in this life only we are of all people most to be pied I want to take a look at this from a few different angles the first here if there is no Resurrection that's both Christ's Resurrection.
But also the future resurrection that awaits if there is no Resurrection we as Christians are to be the most pied it's us there's a there was a French mathematician philosopher his name was blae Pascal from four centuries ago which we're pretty fertile Church if you're having children and you have looking for baby names Blaze is got to be at the top of your list it's pretty awesome The Blaze Pascal came up with uh a defense of Christian faith because he was a Christian and it is endured.
For centuries still very popular argument today and it's called Pascal's wager and here here's the gist of it he says you should put your faith in Christ and you should live like a Christian if you are right you gain eternity with God in heaven but he says if we're wrong I if God doesn't exist then you know what you lived a good life you're a good person get good morals people thought well of you you lived a nice life so it's a safe beted.
So put your faith in Christ because if you don't put your faith in Jesus and you're wrong you get hell so don't do that put your faith in Jesus and if we're right we get heaven and if you're wrong then you lived a pretty good life that's no harm no foul either way Jesus is a safe bed that is a argument that is endured I'm sure it's a still in chain emails and Facebook posts and YouTube I'm sure Tik tokers are doing it like that is a common thing that gets uh that is still told.
Today here is why why Pascal misses the point when it comes to this passage he misunderstands the Christian Life if he believes that the life that we live in Christ because of the Resurrection hope that we have is this nice quaint life he misses it the Christian life because of the Resurrection is one of radical obedience to Christ if God loves us so much that he came from heaven and he sought us and he conquered death for us and walk out of the grave and invites us into the future hope that awaits Us in the resurrection that changes everything and Paul believed that deeply the the the the man who wrote this letter planted churches.
And preached the Gospel and he was beaten for it flogged tortured spit upon rejected at one point Shipwrecked and eventually beheaded that's not a nice quaint life that's that's not a that's not a nice good moral life where everyone just thinks well that's not it at all if we believe in the resurrection that awaits us because Christ walked out of the Tomb that changes how we live we live in light of that completely it's not this nice good little simple life.
If we're living the life that we're supposed to because of Resurrection hope the rest of the world looks at us and says Ah I think they're better uses of your time I think you should make better life choices because really I mean if Jesus didn't rise from carrying one of's burdens praying for one another caring for one another that's a lot of energy and if Christ didn't walk out of the Tomb and Resurrection hope isn't awaiting me I I'm not doing that I don't want to serve others I don't want to give myself away to other people that's not how I want to spend my time I I want to really take the logic of.
What Paul says to eat drink and be marry for tomorrow we die I mean that that's if if if if Jesus didn't rise from the grave and we just die and then we're done then I've got plenty of other things I'd like to do that's the argument he makes later in chapter 15 he's continuing this argument of Resurrection hope and he makes the argument he says why are we in danger every hour it's like if we're if if Jesus didn't rise from the grave we don't have the hope of future Resurrection.
Then why are we in danger every hour he says I protest Brothers by my pride in you which I have in Christ Jesus our lord I die every day which means he is dying to his own desires for the sake take of being obedient to the call that he has in Christ and he says what do I gain if humanly speaking I fought with beasts at Ephesus the trials that he faced at Ephesus and then he goes if the dead are not raised.
Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die he's like I'm not I'm laying on the lime because of the Resurrection hope and others that need to see that Resurrection hope and if that's not true then then let's just let's just live it up for now so I think Pascal misses it reality we will be completely devastated if there is no future Resurrection because the picture of Resurrection hope the picture of what awaits us of Heaven on Earth is so wonderful.
And so beautiful it's so amazing we Bank all of our hope in that reality some of us have got to break from our minds the idea that heaven is just this disembodied experience where we float in the clouds and there's hyns on hyns on hyns for thousands of years that's we we have to think bigger when we come to the Scriptures on this no Heaven comes to Earth and he makes all things new and it's a picture of Eden restored it's a picture of life with.
God doing the things that God has called us to do with our maker and his presence it's beautiful and it's wonderful and it's glorious and we can't see that so we just we we were missing it how many of us are just so tired of being physically in pain the physical Pains of this life like I I've struggled with chronic back pain for eight years and there's some days where it's okay and some days that are better and then some days that ain't good and in some of those days.
When it's not good I'm just reminded us like praise God I've got a resurrection that's coming praise God this is this shell of a body is not what I'm going to have for eternity whe there one day it be a pain where I don't wake up and my my back doesn't hurt some of y'all feel that one day there's a day aren't you tired of the physical Pains of this life there's a reality coming where you don't have that anymore aren't you tired of the struggles with mental health with depression with anxiety with mental health disorders there's a day coming where you exist in the presence of your.
God and you're not anxious you're not worried you're at peace There Are No More Tears there's only joy there's only eternity of endless joy and peace that awaits you aren't you tired of the struggles of this present life aren't you tired of the work that you put in day in day out and you just don't see the fruit of your work I mean that that's that's the the curse of work this side of the Fall God created work it was supposed to be good.
But in Genesis 3 it says you work and you will get thorns and thisel that is agricultural language for you will work and strive and you will not see a harvest aren't you tired of put in the work you've tried so hard in your career you've tried to do this you've tried this project and it's never works out like you want it to there is a day coming in the new heavens and the new Earth well you will be doing the work that.
God has gifted you to do I don't know what that's going to be but my guess would be it is the way that God has designed you to use your gifts to contribute to this perfect harmony in the new heavens and the new Earth that awaits you and it's beautiful and it will bear fruit it'll be fruitful labor how many of us are tired of broken friendships broken friendships painful family Strife infighting people that just don't they just suck the life out of you and don't give you life how many of us are tired of that there is a day coming.
When you will have perfect fellowship with one another then be family members who belong to Jesus right now you just aren't on speaking terms with but one day you'll hug each other and you'll hold each other and you'll love each other perfectly because there will be no sin there'll be friendships where I mean some of us thinking we some of us are nostalgic for days of old man I loved it when I had these friends in this period of time and I loved that night man that night with our friends and our family was just.
So wonderful and that right there that the best version of what friendship what relationship ship can be in this life is a pale it's a black and white grainy old photo uh version of the HD in color ol I don't know 4K whatever the newest and we we've got like a LCD or the one that it doesn't matter we the nicest picture it's a poor picture of what awaits us you will have perfect friendships with other people aren't you tired of never feeling like you get rest in this life it's like I sleep 12 hours a night on the weekend and I go on vacations I just I don't ever feel caught up I don't.
Ever feel rested and there's a day coming when you will have perfect rest you will enter into rest and you will be restored you will be refreshed in ways that our minds can't possibly begin to understand I could go on and on with example after example after example that shows the hope of Resurrection that awaits Us and how wonderful and how glorious it is so when people pick up Pascal's argument it's just like well you know if we're wrong no harm no foul it's like I don't know what the heck you're talking about no way that that's what I'm going to miss out on all of my hope is there like at this this life.
Is so it this world is so broken and it's so short and it's so fleeting there's how many billionaires and celebrities do you have to hear their stories of just like I just never wasn't enough money and I don't know just I I'm not quite satisfied they're the most successful beautiful rich people in the world and they're miserable by the masses how many of those stories do you have to hear that you cannot we cannot I cannot maximize enough joy out of this life right.
Now I can't do it it's never going to satisfy me so if we're wrong if if we're wrong about the resurrection we we are most to be pied we should be devastated because that reality is far superior and far better than anything this world could possibly touch but I have some good news he did rise from the grave and he says in verse 20 but in fact Christ has been raised from the dead but in fact Christ did walk out of that tomb the resurrected savior sits at the right hand of.
God the father now Christ did rise from the grave the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep and the language of first fruits as agricultural language it's farming it's the first of the Harvest which means that there's a whole bunch of harvest left so Christ the first fruits the first one to rise precedes all of those who have placed their faith in Christ Christ who one day we will rise to and if Jesus did rise from the grave and there is this wonderful Eternal glorious reward that awaits us.
Then the resurrection Changes Everything Changes Everything when you realize that the best life is not the one that we have right now but the one that awaits us then we live for that as opposed to trying to maximize Joy here right now because that's far better if if Elon Musk came to you right now with an ironclad contract and said you will intern me for intern for me for five years and it's hard work but at the end of five years you've got1 billion dollars waiting.
For you every one of us takes that deal every one of us takes that deal it's like yeah it's going to be hard but man that's what awaits me I'm all in and what we have in the resurrection and Eternity is far superior to that it's better it's better and the problem is we just are so convinced of the pleasures of this world we try to ring every ounce of pleasure out of here and now I love what CS Lewis once wrote he said.
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next it is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that we've become so ineffective in this he's like the Christians of old like they their their head was there and they lived in light of that and we are we're not we're forgetting the resurrection that awaits us and the new heavens and the new Earth that awaits us and it all how many many of us all of our best efforts go into purchasing vehicles that will end up in a junkyard one day buying and beautifying homes.
That will be torn down one day how much of our best efforts go to maximizing our lives right here and now the promise of Resurrection changes everything it should radically alter the way that we live but here's the problem some of us are hedging our beds some of us are putting a little bit of Our Hope On Christ and Faith but I I I also got to put a little My Hope here in the things that I can get in this life we're hedging our bets a little bit of Hope in Christ a little bit right here with the life that I've got right here.
Now and maybe Easter is that for you that it's like this is my way to just put a little bit more on Christ and hedge my bed a little bit more here but the but what you're planning to do is walk right out of here change go back to a life where you're just going to put a lot of your more of your hope here in this life and that's never going to satisfied and I here's the deal I think you know that like deep down I think we I think we know that I I think there's a part of us that we've just we've we've tried.
So hard to make this life work we've tried so hard to to build things here to to build a happy life in this uh we we've tried to maximize Joy my question have you ever felt satisfied has it ever been enough I think you know this I think there's part of there's something inside you that longs for something greater I think there's something inside you a restlessness for something greater and you've tried all these things and it never has satisfied I love what CS Lewis has to say about this he says.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy the the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world I want to read that one more time if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world you weren you weren't made for this world he continues he says if none of my Earthly Pleasures satisfi it that does not prove that the universe is a fraud probably Earthly Pleasures were never meant to satisfy it.
But here he this but only to arouse it to suggest the real thing what he just said was is that there are some things in this world in this world that are pleasurable if you have a really good steak and a glass of wine or juice or whatever whatever whatever what the best meal you can imagine it's actually good but it never quite satisfies and the reason is because that that's a foretaste that's a picture of a greater Feast that is coming.
So every Earthly pleasure that is actually good is just meant to arouse the greater Pleasures that await and to put all of our hope there he goes on to close it out he says I must keep alive in myself the desire for my True Country which I shall not fine till after death I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same some of you have been feeling this.
For years you've been feeling this it's like I don't feel home in my body I don't feel home here I don't feel home I I just don't feel like this is all it's supposed to be some of you have given yourself to toys and to Amazon purchases and to Hobbies into makeovers and career changes and friends and spouses and children and gone headlong thinking any of these things are going to satisfy and they're not supposed to because this is not our home those are all pale pictures of a far country that awaits us and that far country is glorious it is wonderful and hope of Resurrection is that.
God would lift up our gaze to not look at this life and to not put hope here but to put our hope in the perfect life that Christ lived to see that our sin was paid for on the cross and trusting in his sacrifice and to believe that Christ walked out of the Grave to secure for us an eternity with him in that far country every ounce of energy and hope that we have has to be there and my hope this morning is that you wouldn't leave and go back to a life where you're trying to find pleasure here.
But you would put all of your hope there but it comes through placing your faith in Christ that far country is greater and my hope and plead this morning is that you'd see it that's the hope of Resurrection that's the hope of what Jesus did when he walked out of the Tomb My Hope Is that you'd see it let me pray heavenly father I pray that you might help us see what your Resurrection did for us that we might stop chasing after lesser things in this life that we might put all of our hope and the life that is to come and that might change the way we live.
Now that might for some people mean right now you need to confront them where they are at and and compel them God I pray that you help them see I pray that you'd help them see that this life is not worth living for that if we put our hope in this life it's never going to be enough and that right now that they would Place their faith in you and they would surrender to you God I pray if there are Christians in this room that are struggling that you'd help the hope of Resurrection come alive and that that might change each of us the way that we live until we reach that far country with.
You we ask this in Jesus name amen we're getting ready to have a baptism baptism is a picture of faith in Christ it is a picture of someone who saw their sin and realized I've messed up and I've sinned against a holy and perfect God and I want to trust in what he did on the cross for me that he's paid for my sin and I believe that he rose from the grave and because of that I get to have a new life in Christ until I reach that far country you're not saved by what happens in these Waters it's a picture of the Salvation that has already happened in someone's life as they enter.
Into the baptism Waters and they're placed under the water it's a picture that they were dead in sin but they're now alive in Christ and they've been washed by Jesus and our brother Evan Bud gets to be baptized here in a moment I want to read his testimony and his words before he enters into the waters.
Easter (1 Peter 1:3-5)
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Easter Sunday
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Transcript
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. and his mom found a took a picture of him and put it on myspace which I'm so glad that my myspace photos did not end up on the internet forever in the form of a meme because those days nah not at all and Brian that's not even his real name his name is Kyle and he took that photo on the right as a joke for a yearbook photo as the yearbook they didn't even let him use it his friends got a hold of it and put it on reddit and boom these guys became for the last decade viral sensations all right they didn't choose to be but this is what they're known for and the internet I don't know if you know this is not a kind place it's not a place where you go for warm and fuzzies it's a very cruel place and scumbag Steve is what he was known for and I'll just show one of the cleaner means I could find for scumbag Steve grandpa gets surgery steals pain meds so I don't know if you caught that he looks like the guy that would steal pain meds from his grandparents that's not very kind that's pretty rude and then we've got bad luck Brian only Facebook friend his mom cyber bullied which means he has one friend on Facebook and it's his mother and she belittles him and makes fun of him all right so that the internet's a cold place right but this is what happens like people get known for things and it sticks with them and these guys are forever cemented as a legacy on the internet as these individuals even though they didn't choose this in the first place I want to talk about somebody who got mean before it was cool today and his name is Thomas so Thomas one of the disciples that's a painting of him we don't know if that's what he looked like there's a few renditions but that's the one I chose for us Thomas was one of the disciples he was an apostle of Jesus when Jesus commissions out his church to go and make disciples Thomas goes and takes the gospel to India he was the first missionary to India he went as far south as Chennai India that's what was one of the most southernmost cities in India and there are churches that exist in India today that trace their history back to Thomas that's incredible there's a gospel movement that's happening in India right now and it's been slowly growing for 2,000 years because Thomas was obedient to the Great Commission and he planted churches all the way in India but guess what if you have any church background that is not how you know Thomas if you have church background at all how do you know Thomas what is he known for it's exactly right doubting Thomas that is how Thomas is known and you know what Chet found a meme this week for Thomas that was on the internet already says hey Thomas do you think Christians will ever appreciate that you are actually a person of great faith I doubt it but it's not fair it's not like the like one moment of faithlessness has cemented his legacy for 2,000 years as the one who doubts right like Simon Peter Simon's original birth his birth name was Simon Jesus gives him the name Peter which means rock which means that his nickname is the rock how cool is that but Peter wasn't always faithful he denied Jesus three times the night that he was arrested and we don't call him denying Simon that's not how that works we call him Peter but poor Thomas is one moment of faithlessness and that is how we remember him as doubting Thomas I want to look at this I want to look at this story that comes from the first Easter today because I think it provides a lot of hope for us I think that Thomas actually is a beautiful picture of the gospel so I'm going to walk through this together and and be encouraged in our faith as we walk through it so let me pray for us and then we will get going I'm thankful for the goodness of the gospel that brings hope that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that eternal life that brings joy that brings eternal life that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy to God that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that brings joy that day, that first Easter morning. So, Mary Magdalene and the other women go to the tomb. The reason they go to the tomb on the first Easter morning is because they're bringing spices.
They're basically perfumed. They're taking care of the body of Christ. They get to the tomb, and it is open, and it is empty. And they go, and they tell the other disciples, and they're a little bit incredulous. They really can't believe what is happening. Two of them sprint towards the tomb.
And this is recorded in John's Gospel, and I think it's funny that he decided to say that he was the faster one. So they're having basically a race there. He's the faster one. He beats them there. Then Peter shows up.
They see the tomb is empty. While this is going on, Mary Magdalene has the first encounter with the resurrected, glorified Christ. And it's beautiful. It's a beautiful story. A little bit later on, two of the followers of Jesus, we don't know who they were, but they are on their, they're on a, going towards the town, Emmaus. And as they're going there, Jesus just walks alongside them.
And they can't tell. Jesus is kind of shielded their ability to see who he is. And they have a whole conversation. They get back. They sit down. They continue.
Jesus points to the Old Testament, says, this is what it spoke of, Christ. And then he reveals himself. And then he just disappears. Which is what kind of happens. Post-resurrection, Jesus appears and disappears in multiple places. Then the disciples are huddled in a room together.
The door is locked. And then Jesus just appears before them. And this is a joyous occasion. Finally, the disciples get to see Christ. He doesn't bring shame upon them for abandoning him, which is what they did when he was arrested. He brings peace.
He brings this joyous moment. That is where we pick up in verse 24 when it says, Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the twin, which, by the way, that was his nickname, the twin, was not with them when Jesus came. Man, what a bummer. Like that he missed out on this unbelievable first encounter with all the disciples. Thomas isn't there. We don't know why he's not there.
He could have gone out to get dinner. We don't know. But that had to be a huge disappointment. Like if I took some people, if I took some friends to a ball game, and I said, guys, I'm going to go, I'm going to get some hot dogs and some drinks. I'll be back. And then I come, I get my arms full, and I'm heading back, and I get back to my seats, and all of a sudden they're buzzing with excitement, and they're giddy.
I'm like, what happened? What did I miss? And they said, listen, you won't believe this. Peyton Manning just came and sat down with us. Like he sat in your seat, and dude, he is funny. He is awesome.
We took pictures together. We exchanged Numbers. We are boys now that would crush me. I'm a huge Peyton Manning fan. I love the Colts. Like that would be awful for me.
I would be so deeply disappointed that I missed out. And that's not, that has even come close to the situation that Thomas is facing. He has missed out on this. And it picks up in verse 25. It says, So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I see in his hands the Mark of the nails, and place my finger into the Mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.
Now, when it says at the very top there, when it says the disciples told him, the phrase told in the original language in the Greek is not just a one-time event of telling. This is a continual retelling. They were telling him over and over, which probably means they were trying to convince him, Thomas, you don't understand. We saw his wounds that were healed. We saw his glorified body. It was glorious, Thomas.
You have to believe us. And it's not like Thomas was a stranger to them. They were friends. They spent three years together, ministering under Christ. Like he trusted them. But he hears this, and he says, No.
No, unless I can see it for myself. Unless I can place my hands in his wounds, I will never believe. And that begins, the nickname that has endured for a long time, of doubting Thomas. Now, it's not a complete portrait of Thomas. Not even in the Gospel of John. You get to John 11, you get to see a story about Thomas that's really cool.
Now, the way that the Gospel of John is written is that the bulk of the Gospel of John takes place in a few weeks. It's mostly the back end of Jesus' ministry leading up to the cross. So this story in John 11 really is just a few weeks before all these events that happened with the death and resurrection. And Jesus tells his disciples, We're going to go back to Judea. That's where Jerusalem is. We're going to go back there, and the disciples say, No.
No, Jesus. It is way too hot there. Like, you will get stoned if you go back. Like, they're trying to convince Jesus, We're not going. And Thomas, in the middle of that, it says in verse 16 of chapter 11, So Thomas called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him. Right?
He says, listen, I don't... If Jesus says we're going, we're going. If we're going to go, then we're going to die with him. That is unbelievable courage in the midst of a lot of uncertainty. And that was just a few weeks before these events here. So, what happened to Thomas?
What happened to Thomas? That not only did he abandon Christ with the other disciples when he was arrested, but we have this story here, where he ends up not believing that he is resurrected. What's going on there? Well, we see it is doubt. I did read some commentaries. I heard some people kind of say, Well, what Thomas is actually doing, it's not really doubt.
And the overwhelming evidence is like, No, he absolutely is doubting here. We don't know the reasons why. We can speculate a little bit. But I want to bet there's some reasons that we also can resonate with as well as the reasons why he is doubting this. As we look at them, I think it makes Thomas very relatable to us as Christians. I think one of the more obvious ones is that this is a little bit of a skeptical doubt.
This is some skepticism that Thomas is facing, that the idea that Jesus rose from the grave, it's hard for him to believe. That could be a possibility. What happens is, is that we look back at the Bible times, and we like to think that because we are like this side of the Enlightenment, so much smarter. We have new understandings of science, and morality, and all kinds of things. This is just something, this is superstitious things that people would believe back then. They weren't really skeptical back then.
Listen, that is ahistorical nonsense. There was absolute skepticism about this. Just because we have the Internet doesn't make us all that much more smarter. In a lot of ways, we're not that much smarter. Like these kind of guys, they could memorize whole books of the Bible. We can barely read an article on the Internet for a minute without getting distracted.
Squirrel! Like, just scroll to something else. Like, they're not stupid. They had skepticism. It took on different forms. Skepticism is really baked into the fallenness of our humanity.
It's what we've always done. Part of this could be Thomas' skepticism and the idea that Jesus was really alive. You know, we see when Paul is on mission, and he's traveling through Athens, Greece, he's meeting with different philosophers and thinkers, and he's trying to convince them of the gospel, convince them of Christ, and they're tracking until he mentions the resurrection. And when he mentions the resurrection, it says they mock him at that idea. It's like, no, that people don't rise from the grave. There might have been some skeptical doubt in here.
Skepticism has always been with us. It's something that if we are honest as Christians, that we face. Thomas certainly did. That's us. Like, we want evidence. We want proof that we can see, that we can touch, that we can measure, that we can taste.
It's right in front of us. That's always been with us. Maybe that's you. Maybe, as you've encountered, the stories about Jesus in the past, this call to faith, even the miraculous events of the Bible. It's just been something that you don't want to, you can't wrap your head around. And if you couldn't see it, you couldn't verify it for yourself.
If you can't measure it, if you can't test it, it's just not something that you want to believe. It's superstitions, and it's not worthy of your life. I think there might be some skepticism bowed up in Thomas. I think also, this could be the result of some hopes that were absolutely crushed when all this happened. That sometimes doubt arises from, crushed hopes. And I think it's possible that would have been what Thomas was feeling.
It's clear from the Gospels that when you read them, that they were expecting Jesus to be a political Messiah. It's clear from the Gospels when you read them that what they were expecting was Jesus to come in and to establish a new rule and reign, a new Jewish state where they would kick out the Roman occupiers, and that Jesus would be this political king and figure. Like when they're shouting Hosanna on Palm Sunday as he's coming in the city, it's this expectation that he's going to deliver this political revolution. And when Jesus finally is crucified and dies, the political movement is over.
Their Messiah was done. And what happened is that Jesus was a little bit of a Messiah of their own making. And that happens with us as well. That sometimes we have a Messiah of our own making. That we have expectations for God and what he should do for us. We're not immune to that.
And when things don't work out the way we want them to, if God doesn't make the things in our life happen the way that we want them to, we get crushed. Like when you don't get the job that you've been shooting for for years. When you don't get the second date or you don't get the spouse that you are seeking. When you don't get the kids that you want. The life of the kids that you want. All the way down to losing loved ones which is incredibly difficult.
Suffering physically and emotionally. Like this life is hard and it is filled with lots of crushed hopes. And when that happens there's part of us, if we're honest, that wants to shake our fist at God because he didn't deliver on what we want in life. And what happens is that leads to doubt. It leads to us doubting God and his goodness and his existence and his love. And sometimes that type of doubt arises out of crushed hopes.
And I would be willing to bet that Thomas probably felt some of that. Taking a lot of hope in the Christ that he thought who he was and then was disappointed. Listen, we feel doubt. There's a lot of different examples of what could have happened in Thomas' heart and what we feel on a regular basis. If you've been following Jesus for a few decades or this is the first time that you've been in a church building in years, we wrestle with doubt. And that is precisely why I love this story.
Because Thomas is relatable. He's an example of who we are. And what I love here, and I think it's not the main point of this text, but it's something that is certainly an encouragement, is that the church becomes a safe place to work out your doubts. That this, our church, is a safe place to work out your doubts. See, what Thomas does here is he doesn't abandon the community of faith when all this happens. Like, he sticks in it.
He stayed with them for a week in his doubt. And I love that as a picture of that's what we should do. We should be honest about the doubts that have arisen in our souls, in our minds, and actually be here and walk with other Christians and walk that out together. Voice it and actually live that out, walk that out and see where it goes in the context of the community of faith. That's what Thomas does. And for a week, he sat in his doubt.
And then Jesus came to him. Fast forward. Verse 26. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again. And Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.
So similar scene. Locked in this room. Together. Jesus shows up. And he doesn't bring discouragement. He doesn't bring the hammer.
He says, Peace be with you. And then he pivots directly towards Thomas. Verse 27. Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands. Put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.
Did you catch that? He references the same thing that Thomas said a week ago. He says, See the wounds. Place your finger here. Place your finger here. Do not disbelieve, but believe.
Believe. You see, Jesus addresses the heart of the matter. There are lots of different reasons for why we might be doubting, but at the core of doubt is disbelief. It's unbelief. And Jesus stands and says, Thomas, do not disbelieve, but believe. Believe it.
Believe that I have risen and what that means. And I love in verse 28 when it says, Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God. Now, we don't know, the text doesn't tell us, if he had to put his hands in or not. We don't know if he had to verify it with his hands or not. But we do see his response here.
My Lord and my God. And this is one of the most profound responses in all of the Gospels. You see, my Lord is a flexible statement. Depending on the context of the Bible, it can mean anything from my Lord, meaning the God of the universe, and sir. It's a pretty wide, flexible range. It can be deference, it can be respect, but it also can be this is my Lord and my God.
But there's no question what Thomas means when he says, my God, because no one else says that in the Gospels. No one. He says, my God, meaning that you are the sovereign God of the universe who created everything out of nothing who sustains our very hearts with your sovereign providence. You are the God of the universe. As I see the Father, I see you. You are God.
And commentators, when they talk about this moment, they say, this right here is the pinnacle moment of the entire Gospel of John. For as we're going to see in a moment, this Gospel is explicitly written with the hope that it would convince us to believe that Jesus is God. That's the hope of the Gospel of John. That's the angle he's going for. Believe it. Believe that he is God, which makes Thomas in this moment, the pinnacle moment, the most relatable figure for us.
It makes us look at Thomas and realize all the things that have happened so far that he abandoned Christ when he was arrested. That he questioned whether he was resurrected. Thomas is us. Because we're the kind of people that also say, God, show me that you love me. Show me that you care. Show me that you are real.
And after a week, God approaches Thomas and says, believe. Do not disbelieve. Believe. And Thomas believes. He believes that this is the Lord God. And the relief that he must have felt as Jesus comes to him, calls him into belief, and he finally sees the risen, resurrected Savior in all of his glory.
The amount of relief and joy that he must have felt in that moment. This story is for us. It's for every one of us that have wrestled through the darkest moments of unbelief, the darkest struggles of trying to still believe that Jesus is God. The story is for us. And then in verse 29 it says, Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
That's us. That's the encouragement that Jesus gives us. He says, Thomas, you have seen, but those who believe, those who believe and place their faith in me as the resurrected Christ as their only hope, they are indeed blessed. That is the encouragement that Jesus gives to us. And then in verse 30 it says, Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. But this gospel is that we might believe.
That the skeptic might bring their doubts before the Lord, encounter him, and their doubts may fade. The one who's crushed by hope may encounter the God who gives eternal hope. Do not disbelieve, but believe. That is the hope of this story, is that we might also believe. But that's hard.
It's hard for us. It's hard to believe that. It's hard for us to, like there are times, I have three kids. They're six, four, and two. And I'm trying to raise them. I have some goals in how I'm raising them of where I want them to go.
And I have a big picture in mind for them, but it's hard for them to understand the big picture sometimes. Like they lose it sometimes and they don't get what they want. Like we do Easter baskets on Saturday morning and yesterday, my youngest, she got candy. And when she, you give her three jelly beans and she's a terrorist. I mean just, just went crazy. And like this happens.
My kids sometimes, they want things and I have to say, no, you can't have this. And every now and then I've just got to stop. And I got to get on their level. And sometimes I get, I get eye to eye. Sometimes I hold their face. I'm like, listen, you got to understand something.
Like I love you. I'm for you. What they don't realize is that I have hopes for them. I want them to one day, my biggest goal for my kids is they would believe in Jesus. Like that's, that's at the top of the list. Everything's way far below it.
But they would believe in Christ. They would be virtuous adults that are kind, that are graceful, that are loving. That they, that they would be able to take care of themselves. Because I'm a pastor and my retirement plan isn't super great. I don't, it's just, any boomerang action when they come back is not going to go well for them. Like I, but I, there are things I have in store for them and there's, I've got to plan the way that I, that my wife and I raised them.
The things we say no to, the things we say yes to, they don't realize that. And every now and then I just kind of get in front of them and say, listen, I love you. I am for you. I have your best interest in mind. You've got to trust me. You've got to trust me as your dad.
That what I, what I'm doing right now is ultimately for your good. And what Easter gets to be for us every year is that kind of reminder. In the midst of doubt, all the things that we may be facing, that God just holds us and says, listen, I love you. You may be wrestling with doubts and frustrations, some anger, confusion. Life is hard. There are lots of things that we face that make life difficult.
We have real doubts, but Easter is the reminder that God loves us, that He has a plan for us. He just points back to the empty tomb. The evidence that the tomb is empty, that Christ has been resurrected, that there is no one that has ever, that ever found this body, that they're never going to find it because Jesus walked out of it for us, that we have life in Him. And it is God's evidence that He loves us and that He is worthy of our trust. And that He can always point back to this, that every year as we pause to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus, that those events are God holding us and saying, don't you see, I love you.
You may be wrestling with skeptical doubt. I could go back and forth on, listen, the Bible is one of the most trustworthy, verified, ancient sources. It's unbelievable how trustworthy it is that these are eyewitness accounts of what happened with the empty tomb. But ultimately, there are lots of reasons you can find for skepticism. And Jesus holds out the scars and says, I am resurrected. Believe.
Do not disbelieve, but believe. You may have lots of crushed hopes that life may not be working out the way that you want it right now. The hope of the gospel is that you would have eternal life in Him. That means that things don't always get better this side of eternity, but what's held out in front of you is eternal life that is filled with endless joy that pales in comparison. The life and the sufferings that we have now pale in comparison to the joy that's found in eternity with Christ. Christ.
That's all made possible by the resurrection. I don't know how you came into this room. I don't know if this is the first church that you've been in in a long time. Maybe you've been outside of community. Maybe you've experienced real loss and real pain. Maybe for you, doubts aren't because of skepticism.
They're not because of any type of crushed hopes. For a lot of people, doubts are just the result of sin. It's saying, I want to live my life on my terms and I don't want God telling me how to live my life. So I'm going to do me. Maybe you're here and this message confronts you and what can happen when you get outside of the body of Christ, when you get outside of the church for a while and you come back into and you hear something like this, what can happen is man, I just, I don't know. Like I can't.
Y'all don't want me around here. I got to clean my life up. Like I got to get some stuff straightened out before I can ever be a part of a church like this. And I don't want you to miss what Jesus says here. He doesn't say behave and have faith. He says believe and have faith.
That ultimately what we're trusting in is not our only hope but what Christ has done for us. That as we celebrate it on Good Friday that Jesus went to the cross where he was nailed to the cross for our sins and our rebellion. And that what happens there and what Chet was walking through Friday night is that as he took our sin that he gives us his perfect record that we don't bring our good works we bring our sin and our burdens and through believing of what he has done for us on the cross and trusting that he walked out of the tomb on our behalf we get this life that is offered. But you got to believe.
Do not disbelieve but believe. That's the command that Jesus gives us. My open prayer for you this morning is that you would be confronted by this message confronted by the command to believe and that you'd be willing to take a step of faith. My hope for you this morning is that this is the first time you've been around church community in quite some time that you'd stick around a little longer that you'd work through some of your doubts with us and that ultimately that you would believe. Jesus holds that out in front of us. He holds it out as he held out his hands before Thomas and he says do not disbelieve.
Believe.
Easter (Matthew 27:55-28:15)
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Apparently, I had it on the whole time I was singing, so if you thought things sounded particularly good today, you're welcome. 1 Corinthians 15, 17 says, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Jesus Christ was crucified. He was dead. He was buried. If he stayed that way.
You're dressed up. You look nice. This is a waste of time. I mean, I think you look good. Take your picture. Grab a cupcake on the way out.
But this is a waste of time. This is futile. You are in your sins. That's the primary thing that Jesus came to do is to rescue sinners. To redeem us from our sin. And if he did not rise, he does not redeem.
He does not save. You have no hope. You are in your sin. But if he does rise, then our faith isn't futile. And we are not in our sin. And we have gathered this morning because he does rise.
He did rise. And we have hope. And we have good hope and certain hope. My family are Carolina fans. South Carolina fans. We grew up.
I grew up. We didn't pay any attention to sports whatsoever. We played sports. We did not watch them. We did not talk about them. I knew no one who played.
I knew no scores. I knew nothing. My friends would talk about them at school. I was like, yeah, I don't know anything to what you're talking about. I was playing linebacker in high school. Somebody said something to me about Urlacher.
I responded, who? And that's a mortal sin for a white linebacker. You're supposed to know who Brian Urlacher is. I had to go Google it later. Probably still on dial-up. I had to look it up, try to find out who this person was we were talking about.
But my younger brother, when he was in middle school, he decided that this was a problem for our family. And that we needed to pick a team to pull for. And so he decided that we should pull for the South Carolina Gamecocks. And he brought us all in on it. And he chose in middle school, and he got excited about it. And he had us join him.
And sometimes, when everything's still and quiet, I find myself imagining what it would have been like if he had picked better. I think it was inevitable. My older brother ended up going there. My wife went to USC. We moved here and started the church. So I think at some point it was meant to be for me to be a South Carolina fan.
But South Carolina fans have hope. Because that's all they have. And it's, we say, well, you know, maybe next year. We'll put a whole season. Well, next year. We'll get it together next year.
Based off of absolutely nothing. One of the things South Carolina fans will do is tell you bad players from this year that will be returning next year. This person will be back. We've got 11 seniors coming back. What does that matter? They didn't do anything this year.
Let's go find some new ones. Do you think our coaches are going to get them better in the offseason? Because I've never seen that happen. We'll do it. We'll do for a whole season. We'll do for a game.
You'll hear South Carolina fans say things like, all right. All we got to do is score. Stop them. Score. Stop them. Get the onside kick.
Score. And we're right back in this thing. And they mean down by three or seven or whatever. And there's no reason. Have you been watching the game to assume that we will a score or be stop them. That's not the type of hope that Christians have.
It's not hopeful, wishful, good thoughts about a potential future based off of nothing. Christians have certain hope in finished work accomplished by Christ on our behalf. When we talk about hope, we don't mean I think it will be good later. We mean he has accomplished this. And therefore we have rock solid, unending, unyielding future hope. And that's why we've gathered this morning.
Grab your Bibles. Go to Matthew chapter 27. We are going to look at the resurrection of Jesus. That the resurrection is real. And because it is real, everything Jesus taught, everything Jesus claimed to be, everything Jesus said he was going to do is vindicated and validated. It has a seal on it of certainty and truth.
So when he says he forgives sins, he means it. When he says that there will be hope in his name and salvation in his name, he means it. When he says he's the son of God and we'll see him in power, he means it. Because it's real. So let's pray and then we'll begin to read this text together.
God, we thank you for the certain hope of the resurrection. We pray that as we read this, you would help it come alive to us. That we might see it. That you might captivate our hearts. And for those in this room who have not placed their faith in you, Lord, we pray that they would leave with a certain hope. And forgiveness of sins.
Future salvation. To reign with you for eternity. In Jesus' name. Amen. Matthew chapter 27 verse 55. There were also many women there looking on from a distance.
So they're watching Jesus be crucified. Who had followed Jesus from Galilee ministering to him. I love that it says that the women were there. They stayed. They didn't run off like the men. And that it specifies that when they followed him, they ministered to him.
And that sounds very true. He asked the men, what are they doing? Like, we're ministering with Jesus. We're here to do some stuff. But they didn't help him.
And the women came and they're like, no, we love Jesus. We're going to serve Jesus. They ministered to Jesus. They've been ministering to him. And among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. When it was evening, this is Jesus is dead.
This was Good Friday. There came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and 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 were there sitting opposite the tomb. So Joseph of Arimathea gets the body, cleans Jesus's body. They lay Jesus's dead body in Joseph's tomb. We're told that it's a new tomb because they would have and it's cut in rocks. So they would have gone in these limestone rocks.
They would have cut out tombs and they would have shelves in there and you would bury your whole family potentially in there. Your whole household would be buried in the same tomb. We're told it's a new tomb. There was only one body in there. It was Jesus's. And they rolled a stone and we're told that this is a big stone.
Rolled a stone in front of the hole cut out in the rock. And this stone would have been basically like a millstone. It had been fairly flat, rounded and sat in a little trench and rolled over the hole. And that was to keep grave robbers out. It was to keep animals out. And so they close the tomb.
And they were told that the Marys know where the tomb is. They've seen it. They saw him buried. That's important. The next day, that is, after the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, Sir, we remember how that imposter said while he was still alive. 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 and the last fraud will be worse than the first. Oh, steal him away and tell the people he has risen from the dead and the last fraud will be worse than the first. So the chief priests go and they say, hey, this guy kept telling people he was going to die and he was going to rise again. So it's possible that his disciples will steal the body and then be like, he rose.
Yeah. And that'll be bad. He's an imposter. And that'll make the last fraud worse than the first. And I want you to know that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, they're right. He's an imposter and a fraud.
He's not a good man. He's not a good moral teacher. He's an imposter and a fraud because he said that he was the son of God. He said that he could forgive sins. He said that his blood was going to be poured out as a sacrifice in a new covenant to forgive sins for all who would believe in him. And he said he was going to rise from the grave.
So if he doesn't. He's an imposter and a fraud. They're vindicated. The chief priests and the Pharisees are right. They should have killed him if he doesn't rise. And I want you all to know that's the chief point of Christianity.
Christianity, everything hangs on this. Does Jesus rise from the grave or not? Every once in a while I'll be talking to somebody and they'll be like, I don't know if I can be a Christian. I just don't. I just don't know if you can get that many animals on a boat. And it's like, let's not start there.
That's not that's not. The disciples aren't like I need to tell you some good news. The boat was real. It is real. But that's not the point to debate over first.
You've got to understand. You've got to look at. Did Jesus rise from the grave? Because if he did, then he's king and he's God and we obey. Then we look at the rest of it.
Every once in a while people say, I don't know if I can be a Christian. There's just some stuff in there I don't agree with. Right. Of course. Bible says we're sinners. He's God.
He's going to say some stuff we don't like, you guys. I'd be like you assumed a married couple had been married for 50 years and you just thought, well, they must agree on everything. No. They just learned they had some other things more important that helped them overcome their disagreements. I'd be like you growing up in your house and be like, I'm not sure they're really my parents because I don't like some of their rules. Check your birth certificate.
Have they raised you since you were little? Look at some old family photos. I'm pretty sure you're their kid. That's a bad test. God doesn't think like me. I'm not sure he's real.
I don't think that's a good test. The question is that Jesus arrived from the grave and if he did, then he's king. We obey. We submit. We know he loves us. We know he's good.
We know he's for our good. And we're willing to, where we disagree, understand that we're wrong, that he saved sinners and that we obey and follow. This is the question. Is he an imposter? Or did he rise? So it says this.
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. So the stone's been rolled over the hole. They go seal it. We don't know exactly how they did this.
They could have done wax seals that actually had like an insignia in them. There's reports that it was seven wax seals. There's others that say that it was a rope. The scriptures don't tell us. They just tell it's sealed. It was a rope that they put against the wall in some clay.
But they put something on there to show this door has not moved. And they set a guard. Now in my head, and I'm thinking maybe this has to do with like growing up in Sunday school, I always picture two men. That doesn't make any sense. It would have been more than two. It would have been a guard.
They would have set a group there because they were going to have to sleep. They were going to have to watch this for a couple of days. It's probably five to ten. Some sort of a detachment with some kind of leader. They set guards around the tomb. Now this wasn't going to be that difficult of a job.
They're mostly a deterrent. They're here to keep people from stealing the body. Maybe they thought it's possible they'll try to fight us and take it. But that would kind of ruin their plan because they can't steal the body and sneak away and claim he rose if all of us have a big fight out here. But they've got guards.
They've sealed the tomb. They're guarding him. Chapter 28. Now, after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day. So the Sabbath was Saturday.
Jesus was crucified on Friday, Sabbath, Saturday, Sunday morning. Toward the dawn of the first day of the week. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. Though they know where it is. There's also guards there and it's sealed. It's pretty clear which tomb was Jesus's.
And behold, there was a great earthquake for the for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. I love that. It wasn't just an earthquake. Like, you know how someone tells you, hey, we had an earthquake earlier. And you're like, really? I did feel like maybe I shook earlier.
But you don't really remember it. This was a great one. This is a serious earthquake. And the angel rolls the stone back and sits on it. Which I just appreciate that that was his attitude. Rolls the stone back and it sits on it.
And it says his appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. He is bright, dazzling. It's not just like sun brightness. It's like lightning brightness. He was, dare I say, striking. Y'all may not be proud of me.
I'm very proud of me. Verse four. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. Yeah. Seems fair. They're here to be a deterrent to fishermen and tax collectors.
Not angels. He shows up. There's an earthquake, which shook him anyway. And then there's an angel who looks like lightning. He's rolled the tomb back. The thing they were supposed to do is keep that door closed.
Job's already over. Like, oh, oops. He's already done what we were supposed to stop people from doing. And he's just sitting on the stone like what? And it says they trembled and became like dead men. They look like cartoon characters or like Don Knotts in anything you ever played in.
They see this angel. They shake. I like to imagine two of them grabbed each other. And then they just fall out. They're supposed to be tough, strong. And they were.
These were soldiers in the Roman army. But they see this angel. It's over. They just nope out. They fall over. Which is fair.
Because that's not really what they were hired to do. I help manage a firework store twice a year. And on our busiest days, we have security guards. And they're there as a deterrent. Keep kids from pocketing our fireworks. Keep drunk people from fighting in our gravel parking lot.
You know, stuff like that. Help people not smoke inside the building. They're there as a deterrent. But if there's an earthquake and a shining lightning angel rips the front of the store off and steps in, I don't think our security guard is going to be like, now it's my moment. This is what they pay me for. I think he's going to be like, now.
And that's fair. I'm going to do it too. You can have all the fireworks you want. I don't know why you're here. That's what they do. They fall out.
Then it says, the angel, this is verse 5. But the angel said to the women, do not be afraid. Which again, if you meet an angel, that's what you want to hear. You notice he doesn't say it to the guards. It's possible it's because they were unconscious. It's possible because he came specifically to make them be afraid.
He says, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen as he said. Jesus Christ rose from the grave just like he said he was going to. He keeps his promises. We can hope in the certainty of the resurrection of Christ that he is not dead and buried any longer, that he is alive. And therefore, when he says that he forgives sinners, he does.
Come, see the place where he lay. Tell them, go look. That's why it matters. There's only one body in there. They go in. There's no bodies.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. So he says, come, look, he's not here anymore.
Go tell his disciples. 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 worshiped him. That is the appropriate response to the risen Christ. Worship.
They come up, they fall down, they grab his feet and they worship. And there's a few things that I think we need to point out here that are helpful. One is, Jesus had feet. Because it was common knowledge to them that ghosts don't. Y'all have seen a picture of Casper. You know it's true.
He's not an apparition. He's not a vision. He is physically, literally there. Also, there is a thing called the swoon theory of the atonement. Or the swoon theory of the crucifixion. That Jesus had his back ripped open by whips.
That he was mocked, spit on, slapped, nailed to a cross. That he was hung on a cross for several hours, stabbed in the side with a spear. And he swooned, which means fainted. And that he didn't actually die. And so they wrapped him up, thought he was dead. They put him in the tomb.
Three days later, he came out because he wasn't dead. There's some problems with that. One is, they did all the things that it takes to kill a person. It's very hard to just pass out from that and not be dead. They also were professional executioners. They knew what they were doing.
They also had people that cared about him, who buried him. Because they were used to having to bury and they knew what a dead person was like. They buried him. But the other thing that I want to point out, if that were true, when they saw him, they would not fall down and worship him. They would have helped him. Even if he could have lasted for three days, wrapped up by himself in the tomb, enough to stay alive, which again, doesn't make any sense.
But if they saw him, he would have looked terrible. They would have run to his aid. But when they see him, he is alive. Gloriously, beautifully, healthy, alive. And they worship him because he has conquered death. And so we worship him.
Verse 10. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me. Okay. We had just been told that they went with fear and great joy. Jesus shows up and says, I'm going to take one of those emotions away.
Do not be afraid. He just leaves them with great joy. That's the result of the resurrection that you are given great joy. Some of you are here this morning. And in your approach to God, you're afraid. Maybe you haven't been in church in a while.
Maybe you felt like it's Easter. I need to get back over there. Maybe you had to work yourself up and psych yourself up. Maybe you stood out in the parking lot and chain smoked three cigarettes before you came in here this morning. Just to get the nerve to come in here and gather with the church. And Jesus says, do not be afraid.
He did not come to die, to be brutally murdered so that you could have a half-hearted, shaky salvation. He did not come and die and rise and conquer the grave so that you might approach him fearfully. He takes punishment on your behalf so that you might have great joy. Do not be afraid. It says, while they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, tell people his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.
And if this comes to the governor's ears, that would be pilot, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. The guards show back up and say, an angel showed up and Jesus left. And they take counsel not to say, hey guys, maybe we were wrong about Jesus. I wonder if anybody raised their hand at the council and was like, have we thought about just like repenting?
Maybe asking him to forgive us? They just are like, let's get enough money together. Let's come up with this lie. They pay them to go lie and say that his body was stolen. They specifically tell them, look, if the governor finds out, which y'all will be very much in trouble for this, we'll cover for you. Now, that lie doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Because the disciples don't benefit much from pretending that Jesus rose from the grave. He was a fraud. He doesn't actually save from sin. If they went and stole his body and then just pretended he rose from the grave, the only thing they get out of it is persecution. They are beaten, murdered for 30 years. They're chased from place to place, put in prison.
And then after 30 years, it gets worse. They're executed. They're tortured. All of them, not just the disciples, but the people who believe their word. They hold to this story. There's a man named Chuck Colson or Charles Colson who was Nixon's hatchet man.
So President Nixon in the Watergate scandal had a lawyer who they called him the hatchet man. Sounds like a nice guy. If you're not familiar with the Watergate scandal, some of you are very familiar. Some of you lived through that. Some of you don't really. You're like, oh, yeah, no, I kind of remember that.
Some of you are like, what? Just know it's so important that from then on, Americans have stuck gate behind everything that has ever happened. Deflate gate. You can go look it up online. There's a fajita gate. There's a very long list of all the things that we just stuck gate behind because of Watergate.
We're like, oh, it's a scandal. Stick gate next to it. But Chuck Colson gets arrested. He was one of the first ones to be arrested. He becomes a Christian in jail or prison. And he says this.
He says, I know the resurrection is a fact. And Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified that they had seen Jesus raised from the dead. Then they proclaim that truth for 40 years, never once denying it.
Everyone was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world and they couldn't keep alive for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep alive for 40 years? Absolutely impossible. Jesus Christ literally, physically rose from the dead.
And we have a literal, physical, certain, eternal hope because of it. First Corinthians 15, 17 says, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Three verses later, he says, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. Faith isn't futile. You're not in your sins. We have a certain hope.
When I was in high school, I took an AP English class. AP classes, you study, you take a test. If you do well enough on the test, you don't have to. You can place out of college stuff. My high school wasn't excellent, but we did have this class, so I took it. Some places, like 30 of these things.
We had this one. I took it. I test well. I placed out of English in college. Do you know what I didn't do after I took that test? Study English ever again.
Didn't have to study it in college. The work was done. It was accomplished. I was free. Well, until seminary when I had to learn how grammar works. But that's not part of the illustration.
The part of the illustration is that Jesus accomplished this for us. We are free. You are not here to take a test. You are not here to be moral enough. You are not here to be one of the good ones. You are not here to learn from all of us how to behave well.
If you are, you have chosen a bad group of people to hang out with. We want you to join a group so that you can all learn to love Jesus more. Not so that you can be a good morals club. We want you to repent of sin. We want you to obey. But the purpose of this is not let's come together and take the test well enough so that God will love us.
It's let's come together and praise Jesus who has already taken and passed and accomplished everything for us. It is finished. He has risen. We have hope. Now, everybody in here is placing hope in something. You're looking at something and saying, if I can just have you, I'll be okay.
If I can just accomplish this, I'll be okay. If I can just make enough money. If I can just have the right relationship. If my marriage can just be good. If I can just get out of this marriage. I'll be happy.
I'll be free. If I can just have children. Then you have children. You're like, well, if they can just behave. And then you're like, if they can just move out. But we pick something to say, if I can just have this, if this will just work.
We say, if I can just make enough money. And then you find out that people on the internet can just decide to buy certain stocks and mess everything up. If I can just have enough money. If I can just control this right. And then there's a man who's just doing his job. And then he realizes he left his garage door open.
So he takes his cargo ship and does a three point turn. And he gets stuck. And the supply chain for the whole world is messed up. These things are not certain. They are not controllable. You're hoping in something that is.
Look, the truth is, and I hate to break it to some of you. We're all Gamecock fans. In something. We've all picked something that we're just wishfully thinking it'll get better one day. That sometime it's going to finally work. And the reality is, even if we get it, how long does it have to last?
Does it have to stay stable? Can you peak and stop? Or does it have to keep getting better over time? Can you sustain it? Some of you have picked something that's always out in front of you. But the reality is, if you ever get it, you'll realize that now you've got to keep it.
You do. Some of you right now are running from your past decisions. Just waiting for your past mistakes to catch up with you. This is uncertain hope. That is to be accomplished by you and kept by you. So I want us to look.
I want you to think about what is it that you keep placing your hope in. That it will fix you. That it will save you. I want us to look at 1 Peter 1, 3, 4, and 5. It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope.
Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That our hope, if you are in Christ, is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Not through your good works. Not through your intelligence. Not through your good behavior in the past or your ability to promise to be better in the future. Not through you.
Praise Jesus not through you. Praise Jesus not through me. It's not even that he gives us a clean slate and says, keep it together. He takes it. And he keeps it. Which is good.
I don't want it back. I can't do it. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Verse 4. To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Kept in heaven for you.
Who? You. Who? By God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. Now look at that.
What else passes that test? Is your money imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept eternally for you? Is it guarded by God's power? Is it ready to be revealed? Is your health and good looks and muscles, are they imperishable? Undefiled, unfading?
Unfading? Are they kept for you eternally? Are they guarded by God's power? Is your marriage? Your relationships? Your children?
Your good morals? Your ability to not be found out? See a lot of us start off on the I'm going to behave really well. And then that turns into I'm going to hide really well. And I'm going to behave really well in the future. But it's not.
It's not imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. It's not guarded by God's power. If your hope isn't in Christ, may I suggest you get a better hope. If your hope isn't sealed. If your hope isn't certain. If your hope doesn't make you free.
If your hope does not remove fear and leave you with joy. May I suggest you get a better hope. And may I tell you that you can find it in Christ and you can find it in Christ right now. That he can save to the uttermost all those who will call on him for salvation. That we come to him in repentance. Meaning that all you bring is the stuff that makes you insufficient to save yourself.
You come with your sin. That's what qualifies you for salvation is that you need it. And you come and you say, Lord, I can't save myself. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not strong enough.
I can't keep it. I can't maintain it. By the grace of God, save me. And he does. He loves us enough to die for our sins. And he rises so that we might have certain hope.
That we come to him in faith. We trust that he does it. We give him praise and glory. That's why we gather. To worship his name because he's the one who redeems. To praise his name because he's the one who saves.
And if your hope isn't this certain. Might I suggest that you place your faith in Jesus. And you get your fear taken away. You get it replaced with great joy. And you have a certain hope. The band's going to come back up.
And we're going to praise Jesus. And Christians in this room, we're going to get loud. And we're going to celebrate. Because it's not up to us. It's not left on our shoulders. And if you have not placed your faith in Christ, you can.
I know that you're qualified. I know that you're qualified because all you need is sin. All you need is shortcoming. All you need is weakness. That you can come to him right now. And I know that he has qualified us through his finished work on the cross.
So all you have to do is say, please forgive me of my sins. Change me. Help me to follow you. And he will. Don't hesitate. We have this tendency to fight this.
Don't fight this. Lay your fear down. Leave with joy. Be redeemed by Christ. Let's pray.
God, we thank you that we have a certain hope through the resurrection of Christ. That we are guarded by your power, not ours. And Lord, for the person in here who's had these moments right now where the Holy Spirit is pulling on them to believe. Pressing on them and saying, let this go. Turn from this. Trust in me.
Lord, may you break them so that they will not fight you any longer. By your grace will you claim them. May they lay their sin down and ask for salvation to the one who loves and freely gives. Forgiveness without regret. Hope that is certain. May you take fear away and leave in its wake great joy accomplished by the finished work of Christ.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Easter
Transcript
Good morning. Happy Easter. Happy Resurrection Sunday. The tomb is open and his body is gone. We get to celebrate and live in that reality. We got to open with some scripture readings that talk about the different accounts of when Jesus was alive, when he came alive, when he was resurrected.
Today we get to look at 1 Peter 1, verses 3-5, which highlights the reality that we live in because of that event. So you can go ahead and flip there. It's going to be on page 588 in your blue Bibles that are around you. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. That is our gift to you. We want you to be able to have a Bible that you can read.
But we're going to be in 1 Peter today. Friday, some of us got to join our sister church, Midtown Downtown, to be a part of a Good Friday service, celebrating that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And then there's this little bit of a cliffhanger between Friday and Sunday. Hope hanging in the balance. What's going to happen next? And like all good stories, it reels us in, anticipating what's going to happen next.
Think back to other stories that do this in Frozen, which I have two little ones at home and one on the way. Frozen is going to be a staple in our household. We watch Frozen at the very end when Anna is like frozen into a block of ice. And there's this moment where you're waiting to see what's going to happen next. Is this it? Is she going to come back?
It's the moment in Harry Potter and the final one where Hagrid is holding Harry Potter's limp body. And you're wondering what is going to happen as it reels you in. It's in the dark night rises when Batman takes the bat helicopter, the bomb out of the city over the ocean and then explodes. And you're wondering what's going to happen. Any genre of story, it does this. It's like a sleepless in Seattle where, is he going to sleep?
Is he, you know, cliffhangers and rom-coms. It's like whatever your brand of story, we love cliffhangers. And I think the reason why we love to be drawn in like that is because we are made in the image of a God who is a master storyteller. That the whole story of the universe, of the world, starts in Genesis. And it's one big story that we live in, that we are a part of. That in Genesis, God creates the world and everything in it from nothing.
And he calls it good. And then he creates in the world a garden called Eden. This is the original OGE heaven. This is the place where he puts Adam and Eve. And it's good. And his relationship with Adam and Eve and humanity is good.
And everything's going well. And then in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sin against God. Satan comes into the garden in the form of a serpent. And causes them to question God's word. And they believe the word of Satan over God. And they sin against God.
Rebelling against Him. And that brings sin into the world. It fractures every aspect of creation, including humanity. And then God comes down. He pronounces what's going to happen now that humanity is broken. Now that they have brought sin into the world.
And he makes a declaration in Genesis 3. He says, one day, he talks to Eve. One day down the line, a seed of Eve. One descendant will come from you. And when he comes, Satan will strike his heel. But ultimately, he will crush the head of the serpent.
And that is the declaration that one day Jesus is going to come. And the rest of the Old Testament is this anticipation. This build up. This tension that's building in the story. As we see the brokenness of humanity on display. We've been in Genesis for like the last nine months.
And there's so much sin and brokenness. And the rest of the Old Testament is just like that. And throughout all the brokenness, there are these declarations. These prophecies that are pointing forward to a Messiah that is going to come. And then in the New Testament, Jesus comes. He comes and he starts to live a life of goodness, of righteousness, of perfection.
And then we got to celebrate last week on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, that Jesus comes into the city. And he comes in the city to die. And on Good Friday, we celebrate that he died in our place on the cross for our sins. And there's this cliffhanger, this tension that's building to see what's going to happen next. We have to join the disciples and the early followers of Jesus, waiting to see what's going to happen. And on Sunday, Jesus rises.
He conquers death. He steps out of the tomb. And nothing is ever going to be the same. History is going to be changed. And 1 Peter 1, these few verses that we're going to be in today highlight that reality that we get to live in. What the resurrection changes for us.
So we're going to be in 1 Peter and we're going to see one clear thing as we walk through it. That what Jesus accomplished for us in the gospel is good news. And it is guaranteed by God. That what Jesus accomplished for us in the gospel is good news. And it's guaranteed by God. So if you are a Christian, as we go through this, this morning, this is the hope we get to celebrate.
The reality that we live in. And if you're not a Christian, we're very glad you're here this morning. But I want to make one thing very clear. We believe this story. We believe this good news. And our hope is that you would believe this too.
Let me pray and then we'll jump in. God, thank you so much that the tomb is empty. That we get to live in the reality of the resurrection. God, I pray that you would open our eyes to see how good that news is. And that it is guaranteed because of what you did. In Jesus' name, amen.
Alright, so 1 Peter, the first few verses. The intro, he says, hi, I'm Peter. I'm writing to you. Alright, grace and peace. And then he jumps in. Verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's got an exclamation point at the end. He is amped. He is excited. He has good news that he's getting ready to celebrate. He wants to stop and praise God.
And I love what verse 3 does. Because he gets really excited. And it reels you in a little bit. Because it makes you want to ask, well, why, Peter? Why are you so excited? Why are you praising God?
It would be like if I came in from a long day at work. And I walk through the door. And my wife sees me. Which, this doesn't normally happen. But if I dropped my bags and just went, woo!
And just got really excited. She'd be thrown off. And she'd say, okay, that's nice. Why? Why did you come in and startle everyone? Why are you so excited?
My daughter does this. She'll come in and she'll come into the room where I'm working. She'll go, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy. And she'll be tugging at me. And I look at her and I say, please, don't bother me. Get out of the room.
I need to work. Close the door on the way out. No. Most of the time. Most of the time I'm like, what is it, baby girl? And she's like, daddy, I love you.
I'm like, oh, girl. She's three. She's got curly hair. She's cute. Also, sometimes she's got something else to say after that that she really wants. But it reels me in.
When someone gets excited, you want to know why. And that's what Peter is doing here. He is reeling us in as he's praising God. So why, Peter? Why are you praising God? And he gets into it.
He says, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Whoa. Okay. That's a lot. And that's just three verses. So what we're going to do is we're going to unpack that because he just said a whole bunch and we're going to see why this is such good news.
So he starts off in that first verse. We'll take it chunk by chunk. He says, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And in that, we see the statement. We see the cause. We see the why behind all of it.
It's at the center. It's the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That is the why. That is the cause behind the hope that Peter is so joyously celebrating because the resurrection changes everything. We celebrated the cross on Good Friday that he covered our sins, but the full work is not complete until he walks out of the tomb. When Jesus rises on Easter Sunday, he makes a way for all of us to partake in the promises of the gospel, the good news.
And it is good news, but we really can't understand how good this news is until we understand and appreciate what it is that Jesus saves us from, what he rescues us from. And to understand that, you've got to go back to the beginning of the verse when he says, according to his great mercy, we need to ask why we need mercy in the first place. And when we do that, we get to see why we need mercy, and that's the bad news part of this story. But until we understand that, we can appreciate how good the good news is. There are two reasons we need, two overarching reasons that we need mercy, and there are reasons of what happened at the fall when Adam and Eve sinned against God.
We need mercy because our relationship with God was broken at the garden. That we lost God. And a second overarching reason is that we lost a place with Him. We lost Eden. We lost heaven. And for those two reasons, we need mercy.
So I want to walk through really quickly some reasons why our relationship is fractured with God and some reasons why we need mercy. The first reason we need mercy is because we were dead in sin. That outside of the hope of the resurrection, that is all of us in that state, dead in sin. Ephesians 2.1 says that you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. That is spiritual deadness, which means we lack the capacity to love God. We lack the capacity to truly love and serve others.
We are spiritually dead. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they brought the spiritual deadness into the world and they pass it on to everyone who came after them. We have spiritual deadness and the problem is that we don't think it's that big of a deal. We underplay how big of a deal that is. We think it's just kind of a flesh wound. One of my earliest memories, one of the earliest comedies I ever got to see, silly comedies, was Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
And I vividly remember the first scene that I just belly laughed at. And it's the scene where King Arthur goes and fights the knight who's standing in his way. And they draw swords and they start clanking swords. And then King Arthur finds an area and he cuts his arm off. And as a seven-year-old, like it's kind of gruesome to watch. But it's obviously silly because he starts bleeding and he's like, no, I'm good.
And he's like, no, you must concede. You must concede. He's like, no. And they keep fighting and they clank swords again. And then he cuts his other arm off and he is armless, bleeding. And he goes, it's just a flesh wound.
It's just a flesh wound. And then it gets more and more absurd as he cuts his leg off. And then he cuts his other leg off. And the guy still wants to fight him. He wants to bite him. And it's actually a pretty absurd picture.
Of us as well. Because we think sin's not a big deal. It is mortal. We have been mortally wounded. It is a very big deal. We are spiritually dead.
We need to treat it with a seriousness to understand our state outside of the hope of the resurrection. We are spiritually dead. The second reason we need mercy is because we are hopeless outside of it. There was no hope in the world until Jesus walked out of the tomb. Hopeless. Hopeless.
Hopeless. Like in any story that you've seen. Hopeless like the end of the last Avengers movie in Infinity Wars when Thanos retires from his genocide. And everyone is just kind of waiting and watching. What in the world is going to happen? I mean this is an utterly hopeless scene.
What is going to happen next? If you like sports. Hopeless like last year when the Cavs went on to take the Warriors on. I know some of y'all are big LeBron fans. He is great. The Warriors were way better.
They had the best backcourt in NBA history. That matchup was absolutely hopeless. We have seen stories of hopelessness. Examples of hopelessness. And none of them even come close to describing our state outside of the hope of the resurrection. And the reason that we are so hopeless is that we have no shot at saving ourselves.
Ephesians 2.8 says, For it's by grace you've been saved through faith. It's not of your own doing. Not a result of works. We have no shot. There's no amount of good works. Good living.
Righteous deeds. There is nothing that you can do to fix our state. We are hopeless outside of the hope of the resurrection. I mean the Bible describes this outside of Christ as enemies. Foolish. Lost.
And it keeps going. That we are hopeless. We are dead. And the third reason we need mercy is because we are guilty. That we are guilty of sin. And the book of Romans in the New Testament says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The Romans 6 says for the wages of sin. What we earn because of our sin is death. Colossians in the New Testament says we have stored up this record of debt that stands against us with its legal demands. Which is death. We stand guilty outside of the hope of the resurrection. And the reason it uses that legal courtroom language is to make us understand we have sinned against a holy and perfect God.
And because of that we are guilty. So we're dead in sin. We're hopeless. We're guilty. I'll give you one more. We are in darkness.
That outside of the resurrection the world is left in darkness. Ephesians says that we are darkened in our minds. That we are children of darkness. If you keep reading 1 Peter you're going to see that we are called out of darkness. That Jesus teaches that humanity dwells in darkness. It is the kind of darkness if you've ever been in a room that you're not familiar with and you cannot find the light.
There's this feeling of fear and angst. And that is what humanity is left in. We are left outside of the hope of the resurrection in a room looking for a light that does not exist. Left in darkness. Now you might be wondering man you just said a whole bunch of bad stuff.
It's Easter. This is supposed to be joyous. And you're kind of saying all this with a smile. It's kind of throwing us off a little bit. The reason why we can say look at all of this that we need a mercy for and we can say it as Christians with a smile. It's because there's an English theologian.
He said it this way. He said it's always darkest before the dawn. It's always darkest before the dawn. You may have heard that in pop culture. It goes back to an English theologian. And the point that he is getting at is it is always darkest before the dawn.
And the world was in darkness and hopelessness before Jesus walks out of the tomb. But on that Easter morning dawn breaks through. Hope and light and love and God's glory come bursting through in a big way when Jesus walks out of the tomb. He makes a way for us. And we get to celebrate that as Christians. We get to celebrate as we read these stories this morning.
When the women show up to the tomb and they see that the tomb is empty. We get a glimmer of hope entering the world. When you read on and you read that Mary Magdalene is frantically searching for Jesus. That she can't find him. And she finds someone she thinks is the gardener and says, Who has taken my Savior? And it's Jesus.
And he says, Mary. And when she hears his name, we get another glimmer of hope and light that has entered the world. We see the disciples who look at the resurrected and risen Savior. And he declares them, peace be with you. We get to see that hope has come. That because of the resurrection, we have a hope in Christ.
So once you understand why we need mercy, it makes the goodness of how good the gospel is. It makes it so good and real. To what he has accomplished for us. So he says, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So now that we understand why we need mercy, we get to see what Peter is getting at.
He says, you need to be born again. Made alive. What he is drawing on is the language that Jesus uses in John 3. When Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says, you're a great teacher. And Jesus says, all right. And he starts to teach him.
And he says, unless you are born again, you will not see the kingdom of God. And then in Nicodemus, he's kind of left struggling. He's like, he tries to figure out the physiological impossibilities of someone going up to their mother's womb again and being born. And he starts trying to flesh that out and it's not working. And Jesus cuts to the middle of that and says, no, no, no. You need to be spiritually reborn.
You need life. You're dead in sin. You need to be spiritually reborn. That is what Peter is getting at. That is what we get to celebrate as Christians. That when you believe in Jesus, he makes you alive.
He brings us to life. So what do you need to do to be born again? Faith. Faith, and as we see in this passage and others, faith that God gives us and causes us to be born again. God is the active one bringing us to life. So what are you going to be born again to?
You get to be born again to a living hope. To a living hope right now. That once you believe in Jesus and you are made alive, you get to partake in a living hope. And that is a restored relationship with God now and for eternity. That you get a living hope right now that you get to partake in. And one of the ways I love seeing folks in our church grab hold of this living hope, and live in this living hope, is in our community groups.
Our community groups are just smaller groups of our church family that journey through life together. That eat meals together. And they walk through good seasons and bad, but applying the gospel in all of it. And I love our community groups because I get to see people grab hold of this living hope. In a few different ways I get to see this. I get to see people that realize that once you are made new, once you believe in Jesus, you are no longer a slave to sin.
That that's why you needed mercy. You're no longer a slave to sin, but you are made free and you belong to Christ. When people in groups, when I start to fully realize this, that I no longer have to obey the flesh. I no longer have to obey sin and the sinful nature that I have. I have freedom because of the resurrection. Another way I get to see this is when people realize they have access to God.
They can, when they start to realize that you can talk to the Creator God. The God who is over all things. You have access to Him in prayer and He listens. The God of the universe listens and desires us to come to Him in prayer. I see it when people find access to God in His Word and they grow closer and find nearness to Him in growing and knowing more of who He is. And I get to see it another way.
We call this gospel fluency. When people in groups start to realize that the gospel, this good news that we're celebrating this morning, applies to every aspect of life. To being a father and a mother. To being a son and a daughter. To being a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, an employer. That it all, the gospel applies to all of it.
And this living hope starts to take over. And we start to, as the Bible says, conform to the image of Christ. That means we're growing to be more like Him. That's the living hope that we get to take hold in. That's what we get to draw from. That's the hope of the resurrection that gives us a living hope.
We get a restored relationship with God, which was lost in Eden. A second big way that we get to see this is not just that we get a restored relationship with God. God is that we get heaven back. And the way that Peter describes this is we get an inheritance. He says, according to His great mercy, He's caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you.
Y'all, that means we get eternity back. The resurrection gives us the opportunity to partake in this undefiled, imperishable inheritance. That we get, as the Bible describes it, heaven. We get heaven again. But I think there's two reasons that we, us in our culture, that we actually don't buy into this.
I think there's two reasons that we don't buy into the idea of heaven. I think the first one is that we think life right now is really good. And that this is the best possible life that you can have. There's so many things that have been written, so many things that have been said about living your best life right now. That this is the best possible existence. And there's a theological term for believing that earth is better than heaven.
Stupid. It is a dumb idea. This life right now, there are good things that we can enjoy. We as Christians have been given good things. I love my wife. I love my kids.
I love a good steak. I love music. These are good gifts that God has given me. But as a Christian, we understand that those things point to the giver. And ultimately, they are a shadow. They are a glimpse of the much better things that await in this inheritance that God has given us in heaven.
That this life right now is not the best possible existence. There is one that awaits us. I think that's the first reason why we don't buy into this. I think there's another reason. I think we have very poor pictures of heaven. We got some bad pictures of what heaven looks like.
Do you think of commercials and movies and TV shows would describe what heaven is like? It's usually this disembodied experience floating in the clouds with wings. And it's boring. It's absolutely, utterly boring. Usually it's pitted against in some movies. Like everything is fun on earth.
And then there's heaven. It's a bad picture. And we need to update our pictures to understand how good this inheritance is. How good heaven is. C.S. Lewis is the author of the Chronicles of Narnia.
He's also written. He's a Christian philosopher that has written a bunch of things. He had a letter once that he wrote describing what heaven was like. And I want to walk through this quote because he does it so poetically. And it's helpful for us to see. He says, The symbols under which heaven is presented to us are a dinner party, a wedding, a city, and a concert.
Those are the pictures that we get in heaven. Not this disembodied experience of just nothingness. No, it is. We get some vivid pictures in the Bible that show us. We get a dinner party. And I want you to think of the best dinner party that you've ever been to.
Not the kind of dinner party where everyone just kind of just mailed it in. And someone brought Little Caesars. And someone brought leftovers. Which happens. It happens sometimes in our groups. We're tired.
But when we really own it. I want you to think of a dinner party where everyone owned their aspect of the meal. They really creatively took time to craft a meal. And then you show up. And it's not just boxed wine. Like someone brought some $18 bottles of wine for people to enjoy.
It's not just Natty Light. It's craft beer. And it's friends. And it's people that you enjoy. And you get to enjoy this meal together. Those dinner parties pale in comparison to the dinner party that is described.
The inheritance in heaven. That we get life together in a way that is completely indescribable now. But we get to fully realize later. He calls it a wedding. Because the New Testament gives pictures of heaven being a wedding. I know that some of you just thought.
Oh, I don't like weddings. weddings. Listen. The reason you don't like weddings is because you haven't been to a good one. I'm not talking about weddings that, you know, the ceremony drags out for two hours. And the guy who preaches does it for like, you know, an hour and some change. And they've got like 18 ways to commemorate their love.
Which I'm not against. Like sand ceremonies are cool. But when you combine it with like 10 different things. Everyone's like, I'm hungry. Let's do this thing.
Seal it. Let's go. And then you get the reception. And it's bland food. And it's just dull. And the host isn't.
I mean, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a ceremony that is succinct. And good. And beautiful. And in celebration of the gospel. And love.
And then you get to the ceremony. Or you get to the reception. And the reception is killer. The food is great. The meat is never dry. One of the things I love at weddings is when someone goes all out and gets endless shrimp cocktail.
I'm not talking about like a martini glass with five. I'm talking about you have. There's like a whole setup. You can go and get endless amounts of shrimp cocktail. And you got to strategize how not to get judged as you go back and forth, back and forth. I'm talking about food that is great.
Cake that is not dry. Music that is great. Whether it's a band or a killer DJ. The hosts are great. The speeches are wonderful. It's a celebration of love.
Those are like the white whale of weddings that show up once every five to ten years. And they are exciting. And they are good. And they pale in comparison to what the Bible calls the final wedding feast. That one day Jesus is going to come back to the earth. He's going to make all things new.
And in heaven there's going to be reunification with Jesus and the church. It's going to be a final wedding feast. And it is going to be a celebration unlike any other that lasts for eternity. We need to update our pictures. He calls it a city. And that city picture comes from the end of the Bible.
One of the final pictures we get of heaven is not heaven in the air. It's heaven coming down to earth. And they call it the New Jerusalem, the city of God. Where God is at the center. And He is giving lights and glory. And His glory is spreading all over the city.
And we get to partake in it. It's a city that is unlike any city here on earth. There's no more hurt. There's no more pain. There's no more suffering. There's no more struggle.
There's eternal rest in God who sits at the center of the city. And even more, we get a picture attached to that. That we won't just have these broken bodies. That we will have a future resurrection. Because Jesus first rose, we get a resurrection. That we get to be with new, eternal, glorified bodies in the city of God.
And if you suffer with any type of chronic pain, any type of sickness, any type of illness. If you've watched family or friends that have died of cancer. That hope is beautiful. That is the hope that we wait for. That one day in the city of God, we will have fully resurrected new and glorified bodies. And the last picture that C.S.
Lewis gives is a concert. That it is going to be a concert. Months ago, I got to go see Mumford & Sons. Which is kind of a British folk band. It's one of my favorite bands. And this is the second time I got to see them.
And I have this ranking of shows, of live shows and concerts in my head. And that one jumped out of top. It was awesome. It was great music. It was well done. There were 10,000 people singing and celebrating.
There was this buzz. There was this feeling. If you're a Christian, you've been in a situation where you've worshipped. And you felt that feeling of God working in you. All the concerts, all the worship that you could ever have here on earth. Pale in comparison to when in heaven we get to worship God.
Eternally. Forever. We need our pictures updated. Because heaven and its inheritance is so much better. He closes out the quote. He says, Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth.
Waiting to come up a flower in the gardener's good time. Up into the real world. The real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, look back upon from there, will be only a drowsy half waking. We are here in the land of dreams. And the picture for us now is that we are underneath the surface.
We are in the soil. And for those of us that are Christians, those of us that believe in the power of the resurrection, we are waiting. But there are others that have not trusted in this hope. And they think this is the best life. This is the best possible experience that you could ever have. And C.S.
Lewis says, It's a drowsy half waking. Because we are longing for the day when we rise. When we come through the surface and we get to experience God forever and eternity. And he says, When you look back on your former life, it will be a drowsy half waking. We get an inheritance. And the reason we get it is because Jesus walked out of the grave.
He conquered death. The resurrection won the war with sin. It seals the victory. And in every victory, there are spoils of victory. And God earned those spoils. And he shares them with his people.
And we get to partake in that spoil. And part of that is the inheritance. That is longly awaiting us. The resurrection gives us a living hope, a restored relationship with God right now. It gives us the hope of eternity and an inheritance with him. And then we see that it is guaranteed by God.
He closes out and he says, Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. When you trust in Jesus and the hope of the resurrection, God guarantees all the benefits. He secures them. That no one is going to rob them from you. You can live in the peace that your inheritance is secure. And one of the, when you think about secure places, one of the most, really the pinnacle examples of security is Fort Knox.
People say, Man, this place is guarded up like Fort Knox. And what they mean is, is that it's the most guarded place in the world because Fort Knox is this secure facility where no one can get in or out. And it's guarded by this military base, the most powerful military fighting force in the world. And that security pales in comparison to how God guards our inheritance. The God who created all things and holds them in his hand says, I've got your inheritance. It's guarded.
So how does that work? Let me explain how that works. God teaches that it's through faith. The faith that God gives us and the mercy that causes us to be made new, that faith secures it. And you might think, but wait a second, what about the seasons where I'm struggling? What about the seasons where I'm in doubt?
What about the seasons where I'm struggling with sin, where I seem to be running away? Are you saying that it's on me to sustain it? It's on me? No. No, because the picture is that God gives us faith. He makes us new.
He is the active one. And this is how he seals it. In Ephesians 1, he says, In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, hear this, we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. That when you believe in Jesus, you are made new, and God comes to dwell in you, and he guards that inheritance. He secures it. The resurrection opens our eyes to the hope that we have in Christ.
God sets up inside of us and lives and reigns and guards this inheritance and will never, ever let his people go. We will carry home. The resurrection guarantees that hope. That what Jesus accomplished for us in the gospel is good news. And it is guaranteed by God. What an amazing thing that we get to celebrate this Easter morning.
All of it. That we were once dead in sin. That we were once hopeless. That we were once in darkness. And then God brings us to life through faith. And he restores what was broken in Eden, what was broken in the fall.
We get God again. We get this living hope. That he secures for us an inheritance. We get heaven again. And he guarantees it. He says, I am going to carry you home.
This is going to happen. That's the power of the resurrection. When Jesus walks out of the tomb, all of this, becomes available to us. And we as Christians, we get to celebrate that hope today. We get to worship. We get to sing.
We get to be glad. Because that hope was won for us that first Easter morning 2,000 years ago. But here's the deal. Some of you have not believed this. For some of you, this is not the hope that you have experienced. And the reality is, is that you are wandering hopeless in the dark.
And I would say that God has brought you here this morning that you might hear this. You can have this. Through faith, you can have this living hope in all of the riches that come with it. That you can have this inheritance that's so beautifully displayed in the gospel. that right now, you are underneath the surface. You are living a half-waking, poor version of what is to come. And our hope is, is that God would open your eyes and you would see that there's a better life.
And that life is found in Christ. And our hope this morning is that you would believe. That you would trust in Jesus. That means believing that He lived the perfect life that you could never live. that He died the death on the cross that we deserve to die because we are guilty of sin. And that when He walked out of the tomb, He made a way for you to have a new life in Christ. The 2 Corinthians says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old is gone and the new has come. And we want that for you. We want you to be made new. That's believing and that's repenting of sin. That's turning from sin and turning to Jesus. That's the hope we want for you.
We want you to respond like the disciples who dropped the life they had and followed Jesus. No more life on your terms, but life on God's. We want this living hope. We want this inheritance for you. And our hope today is that you would respond. That you would believe.
And that you would see the hope that we celebrate. That Jesus accomplished for us. What He accomplishes in the Gospel is good news. Good news that we get to celebrate for eternity because it is guaranteed by God. A band is going to come up and the first way that we're going to celebrate this this morning is we're going to come to the Lord's table. We're going to take communion.
We celebrate communion because on the night that Jesus was betrayed, He took the bread and He broke it. And He said, this is my body that was broken for you. And He took the cup, which is the cup of the new covenant. He said, this is my blood that was shed for you. That often as you eat and drink this, you proclaim my death until I return. And as Christians living on this side of the resurrection, we hang on that last part until He returns.
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.