For Jesus Or Antichrist

Transcript

Good morning, Trinity Church. If this is your first time with us, my name is Andrew, and I’m one of the staff pastors with Trinity. It is my pleasure to be with you this morning. If you would open up your Bibles to the words written by Mark and inspired by the Holy Spirit, Mark 15, starting in verse 1. I will read this text, and then we’ll go ahead and pray. This is God’s Word to you.

And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led Him away and delivered Him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked Him, are You the King of the Jews?

— Mark 15

(ESV)

And He answered him, you have said so. And the chief priests accused Him of many things. And Pilate again asked Him,

have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you. But Jesus made no further answer. So that Pilate was amazed. Now, at the feast, He used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as He usually did for them. And He answered them saying, do you want Me to release for you the King of the Jews?

— Mark 15

(ESV)

For He perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered Him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, then what shall I do with a man you call the King of the Jews?

And they cried out again, crucify Him! And Pilate said to them, why? What evil has He done? And they shouted all the more, crucify Him! So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas. And having scourged Jesus, He delivered Him to be crucified

— Mark 15

(ESV)

. This is the Word of the Lord. Please pray with me. King Jesus, I pray as we come to Your Word, that we would hear it afresh today. That we wouldn’t just hear this truth afresh today, but we’d hear the truth of Your good news afresh today. That You’d renew our hearts and our minds for a love for You, for a love for each other, a love for Your church, and a love for Portland. I pray as we see some attitudes that in some respects are represented here in our own city, that A, You would use this truth, not that we would feel better than others

for those of us who know You, but that You would call sinners to repentance and they would see the grace and the mercy You offer them, and that You are in fact the truth. That You would inspire us and move in us. That we’d have broken hearts for our neighbors. And that You would help us to just rededicate our lives every day, every moment, to living rooted in Your Gospel, living in response to who You are, and that our life and doctrine would represent that we have known You, that we have loved You, and that we are worshipers of You. So Holy Spirit, we can only do these things if You’d be with us. Take what is of me, and may just the things of me be forgotten, but the things that are of God, Holy Spirit, make these things sing in our hearts. Change us and renew us

The Agnostic Response

in the name of Jesus. And so we do pray these things for Your glory and for our joy in Your name, Jesus Christ, Amen. So in the early 1990s when I was in the 6th grade, Beatlemania hit my life as a 6th grader. I used to stay up and watch PBS on Friday nights. They’d always run British comedies. And I guess a hard day’s night might constitute a British comedy, but that’s at least where they stuck it that day. And anyone who knows anything about British comedies knows that I’m talking about those who don’t. You’re fine, don’t worry about it. But in this film, Ringo Starr, the drummer, is asked, and by the way, I thought it was a documentary when I was a kid, so I didn’t understand why they were running a documentary when they were supposed to be running a comedy. But there they are,

this interviewer’s interviewing Ringo Starr, and she asks him this question, and she says, are you a mod or a rocker? And in the 6th grade in Bellingham in the early 1990s, I had no idea what this question meant, but when he responded, I’m neither, I’m a mocker, I thought this was amazing, and I walked around repeating this in my middle school. Now, the subtext there that I didn’t understand was a battle that happened, a big street fight that happened, in a place called Brighton Beach in England in the 60s, where some cats who rode mopeds and wore parkas and looked like they should hang out on Hawthorne got in a big brawl with some cats who dressed like Elvis and rode motorcycles and looked like they should be hanging out on Hawthorne with the guys who also are hanging out on Hawthorne, and to this day, I’m like, why are you all fighting?

Come on, you’re the same, but anyways, I digress. Now, what I missed there was a nuance, because this was actually a thing that grownups and the people in charge were concerned about in England at this time, and in a sense, in a joking kind of way, he dodges the question. He tries to get off the hook. He was asked a question that didn’t actually demand a response, because he was able to kind of move around it. I would argue when we come to the person of Jesus and see Jesus for who he is, the reality of Jesus demands a response. That we can’t just make a little joke and dodge the question. Now, if you’re in here for the first time, this is your first time hanging out with Christian folk, we don’t just think Jesus is helpful. This isn’t just our version of therapy.

This isn’t just our self-help. We gather as the people of God because we believe Jesus is the truth. Not just that it is helpful, but that we haven’t had an encounter with the God of the universe in the person of Jesus, and he is the one who has made everything. He is the one that has made you. He is the one who has made creation, and he’s actually made you with a purpose, and that was to enjoy him. He’s actually made us all for joy. The issue with humanity is that we’ve tried to find our joy in so many other places, and that’s why we need this thing we call the gospel. And again, if this is the first time you’re hanging out within the context of a local church, this is the centerpiece of any good God-glorifying church, and that’s the gospel, that this God who made everything,

even though we broke it, has come to save us from ourselves. You see, every other system, every other religion, every other thing is a kind of self-help or self-salvation where we do things to get to God, or we do things to be right with God, or we honestly just do things to get out of the life we don’t want to have, to the life that we’ve imagined that we want, our own little sort of version of heaven. Even if that’s just like paying off your house or being fitter or being smarter or living somewhere else or whatever it might be, there’s this thing that we cling to and say, this is the thing that I want out of life, and if I can get that, everything will be great. And of course, the great problem is actually sometimes once you get your hands around that thing,

you realize, nope, still got problems. That’s because we’re sinners, and if we’re Christians, we’re sinners saved by grace. And see, this truth, this reality that, as we’ll see in a moment, that Jesus has come to save sinners like us from death to life demands a response. You can’t just look at Jesus and walk away, because by the way, looking at Jesus and walking away is a response. You’ve made a choice.

Either For or Against

But today, as we look at this text, in a sense, we’re going to see how not to respond to Jesus. We get some profiles of some different individuals who are sort of responding wrongly to Jesus. And what we need to do is be careful here, however, because in many ways, what we could do if we’re not careful as we hear about these people saying crucify him and these antagonistic people, all this different stuff, we could immediately jump to our context and start thinking about how these kinds of people are in our own lives. And there’s a sense in which that’s true. There’s a connection there. There’s a bridge there, but we have to stay in the text to see what Mark is saying first, and then we take it into our context. And what I think we’ll see today from Mark is that we either for Jesus or anti-Christ.

You’ll see what I mean by that as we dip out into 1 John. Now, as we look at this text, in a sense, it is a straightforward text. We’re going to see sort of two movements, the agnostic, that’s Pilate, and the antagonists, that’s the Jews, particularly these Jews who want to crucify Jesus. Now, I almost changed that to not be something that sounded like something Thomas would do with the two A’s, but then I couldn’t think of another letter, and so I just had to mow his lawn. And so that’s how it goes this week. Sorry, Thomas, I’m biting your steez. Okay, so here we are, chapter 15, starting in verse one. And as soon as it was morning, now remember, here’s the context. There’s been sort of this Mickey Mouse trial. They’ve come and captured Jesus at night. He was brought before the Sanhedrin,

which is this sort of ruling. There’s a religious sense to it, but there’s also a political sense to this committee. He’s been brought before committee, and they’ve all decided we have to get rid of this guy. He’s claiming to be the Messiah, and now the Messiah is the king of the Jews, which that should sound familiar from what we just read, right? But it’s not just as simple as having somebody get elected for office. This is the foretold anointed one who would bring about God’s shalom and God’s peace and God’s wholeness and God’s flourishing, one who had a special relationship with the God of the universe. And it’s really when we see things like Psalm 110 and Psalm 2 and Psalm 1, there’s all this stuff going. There’s all this weight behind this messianic figure, and what they’re really doing is say, you are not him, Jesus.

You’re not the fulfillment of everything God has done. But mind you, they did it at night. Again, it’s kind of a ramshackle sort of fake trial. It’s not how things are supposed to be done. If you get called into the courthouse, by the way, at two at night in Portland, Oregon, don’t go, right? That’s not the time to be there. It’s not when they hold court. Same is true here. But it’s the first thing in the morning. So they’re getting down to business. The sun is up, they’re showing up. It’s as soon as they can roll in. As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held consultation with the elders and the scribes at that St. Hedron and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. There’s some irony here, okay? Mark’s loving it and he’s living into it.

So you have these folks who are saying, Jesus, you’re not the king, but he actually is. And then they’re taking him to Pilate, who’s sort of an emissary of Rome and Caesar, who’s in a sense, though he was called Caesar and there’s all these political mechanisms there that we could talk about if we were doing a civics class. But functionally, Caesar’s ruling over the land where God and his Messiah are supposed to rule. And then God’s people are taking God’s Messiah to this fake king and saying, can you crucify him for us? Because, well, we’re supposed to be able to use capital punishment according to the law, but you said we can’t. So can you do it for us, dad? Do you see the irony in here? That Jesus, who’s actually come to set them free and to be their king, is being handed over

to some fake Roman pagan person who does not believe in the God of the Bible, at least not in the sense that these people do. And they’re going to him to ask him to do their dirty work. There’s irony all over this thing. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. Now, something to keep in mind, . We don’t know a ton about Pilate, but he’s not a good man. If we take the historian Philo with any kind of weight at all, this is a bad man. He’s a murderer. In fact, the last thing we hear in history about him is that he sent some people into Samaria and they massacred some Samaritans. And the Samaritans contacted Rome and said, hey, you’ve got to do something about it. And they were actually bringing him to one of the emperors,

but that emperor happened to die on his way to Rome and he just disappears as far as we can tell. We don’t know a lot about him, but he’s kind of a slimy dude and he’s not a good man. So take that in mind as we’re hearing him interact with Jesus here.

And Pilate asked him, and Pilate asked him, that’s Jesus, are you the king of the Jews? And he answered him, you have said so. I would argue this is the real question we’re working with here. Are you the king of the Jews? I think this question is one part political, one part philosophical, one part theological. We see these different things in the other gospels that are helpful to consider as a quick composite of Pilate, for example, in John’s gospel. He asks this great question, he says, what is truth? Which, by the way, postmodern world, you’re not asking new questions, you’re actually just asking the same old and important, I would add, questions. What is truth? That is a great question. But in that same episode in John’s gospel, at some point in time, someone mentions that Jesus is claiming to be the son of God.

And Pilate says, wait, what did you say? Did you say he said he was the son of God? And he gets kind of nervous and almost superstitious because Pilate is a pagan. He’s cool with pluralism, he’s cool with polytheism, he’s cool with the idea that there are, in fact, many gods. And this is not when he gets nervous, they’re thinking, connecting the dots and saying, oh, you’re the God of the Bible, you’re the second member of the Trinity incarnate and I should be nervous here. But what he’s thinking is, oh, wait, you might be a little god or might have a relationship with a little god, and if I mess with you, then maybe that little god will mess with me. So don’t hear him as suddenly becoming a solid Christian theologian. He’s being a pagan. He’s doing what he does. In Matthew, in his account, we hear that Pilate’s wife

has a bad dream about Jesus. And she goes to Pilate and says, get rid of this guy. Like, don’t have anything to do with this guy. I think he’s a righteous man. I’m like, let’s not do this, hubby. I don’t like how this is gonna go. Which is a very interesting thing he notes. And even in Matthew, when it’s all said and done, he washes his hands. That’s where we get the phrase. I’m gonna wash my hands of it. We actually get that out of Pilate literally taking up some water and saying, all right, we’re gonna crucify him, but it’s not my fault. This is on you guys. We’ll crucify him, but this is on you so when that little god comes to talk to me about that thing, I can say, I did it for them. And in fact, if the concern is that Jesus

is connected to the god that they worship, he can say, hey, your people did it, man. Right, he’s covering his bases is what he’s doing. But what’s interesting to me about Mark, and it’s sort of not a surprise as we’ve traveled through these 15 chapters, Mark is punchy and he’s clear, and he just comes down to this one question, this one important question. Are you the king of the Jews? And it’s not unreasonable as we do look at the little pieces we know about Pilate and certainly about the Romans as they’re there. He may have some sense somewhere about what some of this stuff kind of means, but it’s not really clear. But I think he is asking questions that do tap into, so you’re saying you’re that dude that their scriptures talk about, huh? It’s a theological question at that point in time. I think it’s a philosophical question a little bit,

but it’s also a political question. Are you an insurrectionist? Have you come to kick me out because last time I checked, you’re in chains and it’s not going well for you. You don’t look like you have any power at all. And he, that is Jesus, answered him, you have said so. And the chief priests accused him of many things. So they’re going to Pilate and they’re saying, he did this and he did this and he did this. And I am assuming as this is happening, they’re saying things like he claimed to be God, which we saw a couple of paragraphs up in Mark’s gospel. He claimed to be God. He says he’s this Messiah. And mind you, this is subtext. This is what I’m thinking is happening here. I want to be clear, it doesn’t say this, but if they’re laying out for him all the things they’ve been accusing him of,

I have to wonder if Pilate’s not sitting there and being like, oh wait, this is kind of a big deal. And certainly as we pull in from John, he’s getting nervous about the spiritual aspect of Jesus. And I think it’s there, if it’s not here, it’s certainly something the other gospel authors want us to see about what’s happening.

So they’re accusing him in verse four, and Pilate again asked him, have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you. Jesus, this is the place where you grovel for your life. Jesus, this is the place where everybody else in this situation says, please don’t kill me. Please, don’t do it. But Jesus, not a soldier, not sort of what you would think of as a man of honor per se, like a warrior, but this carpenter, this peasant preacher, stands before the guy who literally has all the power. He’s got all of Rome’s power in Judea. He doesn’t say anything. He stands there with courage.

See how many charges they bring against you? But Jesus made no further answer than what I would argue is the fulfillment of Isaiah 53.7, for as shears, they’re silent. So that Pilate was amazed. So when we think about the agnostic, and why I call Pilate the agnostic, we have someone who says, well, I mean, in most street-level terms, yeah, maybe there’s a God, maybe there isn’t. Maybe there’s something to Jesus, maybe there isn’t, is what he’s saying, what he’s doing in part here. In one part, he occupies this kind of ambivalence where he sort of says, well, maybe you’re this Judean God thing relation to this Judean God, whatever is happening there. You know what I mean? It’s a little unclear, in part, because he’s being ambivalent. But there’s an ambivalence to the whole thing, but likewise, there’s also the spiritual aspect to this whole thing, certainly as we see

in these other gospel accounts, that he’s nervous that he’s the son of God, we’re even told he tries to do everything he can to release him, he tries to get rid of him. Maybe I can just, you know, maybe I’ll get some favor with that God if I just kind of move him on out.

The Antagonistic Response

Now, the one thing Pilate doesn’t do, he doesn’t say, wait a second, you’re the Messiah? You’re the one that the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to? Isaiah 53 says, you’ve come to forgive sins. Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34 says that there’s a new covenant coming, and even Isaiah 9 says the Gentiles can get in on this thing. He’s not putting these pieces together and saying, all right, Jesus, I’m in. Which would have, of course, changed the story. But we have a God who’s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and we need to be careful without just thinking about the possibility of things that could have happened here. So I’m not saying that, well, maybe he could have done this. What I’m saying is, that would have been the right response. The right response would have been for Pilate to take his insignia off, denounce Rome,

and worship at the feet of Jesus. That’s what would have been the actual right response here. Now, no one, never actually when you’re reading it, do you ever think, oh, I wonder if he’s gonna do that? Like, it’s not that, it’s not a choose-your-own-adventure book, this is how it rolls out, and this is what’s important. But we just need to know that his response is the wrong response. If you’d go with me to 1 John chapter two, as we think about his ambivalent response, we think, again, kind of then pulling that ambivalent response into our own world, or even where you’re sitting right now. Andy did a nice job, actually, pointing this out. I love how God works in his spirit when something happens in the liturgy that’s not actually part of the plan, but just kind of rolls out. The reality is, is that we live in a time and a place

where a lot of us just like to say, well, I’m a nice person, I mean, I’m cool with Jesus. Like, in the last century, it was really like, well, I don’t think he was God, but he was a great teacher. I really liked him. I think he’s got some good things to offer. He was like Gandhi, and I like Gandhi. Everybody likes Gandhi, right? Have a bumper sticker with Gandhi, let’s do that. I’m a nice person. And in doing ministry and life in the Pacific Northwest, in the last 15 years since I got saved, almost, whatever, however many years, 15 plus years since I got saved, so often when I talk to people about the exclusivity of Christ in these things, they often say, well, you know, I’m not Hitler. I mean, Hitler’s kind of here, and Mother Teresa’s here, and why is it always Hitler and Mother Teresa?

I don’t know. Isn’t comments about Hitler or Mother Teresa, I suppose, but I can denounce Hitler and all of this evil, of course. But they say, you know, so I’m sort of in between these two. I’m in the nice person sandwich, so, and I’m cool with Jesus. I don’t have any problem with Jesus. So even if all this exclusivity, hell, heaven stuff is true, then I think I’m probably gonna be on his good side because I am a nice person.

One, I think that’s actually not being all that honest with ourselves. If you’re honest about the worst 30 seconds of your last week, if you take the worst 30 seconds of your last week and we put it on the old jumbotron up here and ran it and said, how are we doing on the scale between Hitler and Mother Teresa? Right? Now, of course, we’re not going to do that, but we have to be honest and sober about where we’re at. The reality is that we can’t nice ourselves into salvation. We are empty-handed people in need. And the good news of the gospel is there’s a God who helps empty-handed people in need by entering into human history. Because the thing is, is that we’re saved by faith and by grace, not by our own works, but by the works of Jesus. Now, that same Jesus gives us good works to do

in response to that. But those works aren’t the works that we do so he will love us. Those are the works that we do because he has loved us. And when we understand how much he has loved us, how can we not help but love God and love people?

1 John 2, verse 18 says this, “‘Children, it is the last hour.’” So oftentimes we’ll see this in these last days, the last hour. What this doesn’t mean is that John actually thinks that he’s got 60 minutes to go, like on the two minutes to midnight clock or whatever. What he’s saying is that it’s the time between Jesus’ ascension and his return and he’s coming back soon. There’s an urgency to his thinking. And we shouldn’t look at this and say, well, that was nice for him. Friends, there should be an urgency to our thinking, right? Do not wait. Do not say, well, this Jesus stuff sounds nice and maybe I’ll get to that in my 30s or my 40s or my 50s. Today is the day, friends. It is, in fact, the last hour. Children, it is the last hour, as you have heard, that Antichrist is coming.

Now, this means this future coming, malevolent individual associated with Satan, second Thessalonians, man of lawlessness and other places. But then he says this very interesting thing. He says this, “‘You have heard that Antichrist is coming, “‘so now many Antichrists have come. “‘Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. “‘They went out from us.’” Now, he’s specifically talking about people from within the church who leave the church and go preach heresy. “‘For if they had been of us, “‘they would have continued with us, “‘but they went out that it might become plain “‘that they are not of us. “‘But you have been anointed by the Holy One “‘and you all have knowledge.’” He’s so encouraging in this letter, but that’s another sermon for another day. “‘I write to you not because you do not know the truth, “‘but because you know it.’” You know Jesus has died for your sins

and has risen for the dead. Let me encourage you to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep going, church. And because no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but the one that denies that Jesus is the Christ? There is no room for ambivalence. There is no room for agnosticism. This is the Antichrist. He who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. It’s not enough for Pilate to think that Jesus is an interesting individual. It’s not enough for Pilate to even be like, well, I washed my hands and I tried to get him out. I tried to spring him. I did what I was supposed to do. It’s not enough. Likewise, if we take this superstition piece and carefully, carefully put it in our own context,

it’s not enough to say, well, I think Jesus is a way to God. It’s not enough to do the more modern thing. In this century, we’re actually a little more open, at least those of us outside of the church, a little more open to a spiritual Jesus, I would argue, compared to the last century where Jesus was just a good teacher and the miracles weren’t miracles. It was like, you know, a little boy shared his lunch and everyone was like, oh cool, somebody shared their snack pack. We should all be generous. And they took out all the food they were hiding. And you read the scholars who say, this is what happened. You’re like, where do you get that in history? I don’t, that’s just what happened. You’re like, that’s not how scholarship works. Just so you know, I know you’re from Harvard. Not how it works.

I didn’t know they didn’t teach that at Harvard, sorry. But likewise, it’s not enough to say that, you know, maybe you’re gonna participate in the psychedelic renaissance and maybe you’re gonna go to church or maybe you’ll go to the synagogue or maybe you’ll go here. Whatever gets you to the God door is cool, man. Whatever, whatever works for you. Again, that’s helpful, not truthful, which isn’t helpful, by the way. But rather, it’s not enough for Pilate to sort of give the nod that there might be something spiritual to Jesus. There might even be something little d divine about Jesus. There may be something God-like about Jesus. This isn’t enough. When 1 John uses the language antichrist, it implies that you’re either for Jesus or you’re not. There’s no ambivalence, friends. It would be unloving to tell you anything else. And I say this with the love of someone

who wants you to know this God and things to go well for you. And so I say it in love. There is no ambivalence. There is no sort of spiritualizing Jesus. There is no saying He’s just one of the avatars in kind of the New Age movement. It’s not enough to be Baha’i and say, well, Muhammad and Buddha and Jesus are all good with me. Not enough, because that’s not the truth. It’s not many paths up one mountain and Jesus is just one of the paths. These things don’t actually work and are not consistent with the Christian understanding of reality. But there’s really good news. But we’ll get there in just a second. Hopefully we’ve gotten there, but we’ll get there again. How about that? Verse six. Now at the feast, again, we’re talking about Passover, He used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked

and among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection. Okay, so murdering insurrectionist, Barabbas. That’s who we’re gonna talk about here. There was a man named Barabbas. There was a man called Barabbas. It’s a very interesting name, Barabbas. Son of a rabbi, some think is what that actually means there. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them saying, do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews? So let’s take his sort of ambivalent, sort of philosophical theological hat off and let’s put his political, I’m going to mess with you guys hat on. Not a nice man. He gets it. He gets that some in the crowd have thought that Jesus is the king. Some have not, these cats have not. And he’s saying, I’ll show you what we do with your king.

How about you tell me you want to crucify your king? Just so we know who’s in charge around here and it ain’t you. For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest had delivered him up. Their motivational structure was not trying to get down to the truth. Their motivational structure was that Jesus was a risk for them. Jesus was a liability. And if Jesus is Messiah, they’re not in charge anymore.

But the chief priests stirred up the crowd. But the chief priest stood up the crowd to have him, that’s Barabbas in this case, released for them, Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, then what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews? Now, even they get frustrated as we’ll see forthcoming, Pilate writes on top of the cross, king of the Jews. And he writes it in several languages to make sure everyone can see it. And they even go to him and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t write king of the Jews. Write that he said, I was the king of the Jews. And of course, this is where Pilate says, I’ve written what I’ve written. And they’re like, oh, shucks.

So he’s saying, all right, let’s crucify your king then, folks. And they cried out again. So they’re whipping up the crowd into a frenzy. And they’re shouting, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, why? What evil has he done? Now, this is either a mixture of two things or one or another. He may be saying to them, all right, let’s rehash this one more time because I really actually would like to let him go. Or he’s saying, let’s rehash this one more time to make sure you know I’m in charge and you’re not. Or it may actually be a combination of the two.

But they shouted all the more, crucify him. They’re bloodthirsty. So Pilate wishing to satisfy the crowd because there’s presumably a riot. This is getting out of hand. This is gonna go poorly for him one way or another. It’s not gonna go well for Pilate if he has to release his soldiers onto the Jewish crowd who are claiming to be faithful to Rome by doing this thing with Jesus, which we certainly see in other Gospels. If you’re a friend of Caesar’s, you’re gonna crucify this Jesus. So he’s doing an equation here. Which costs the least right now for me? And the crowd’s amping up to satisfy the crowd so he doesn’t have a riot on his hands, . He released for them Barabbas, having scourged, really beat up further, Jesus. He delivered him to be crucified. So we see these profiles. We see this sort of ambivalent individual

and we see these antagonistic individuals. We see these two kinds of folks. And as we move that into our own context, I see that all the time in Portland. I mean, I just drove by a truck just covered in black metal stickers. And you’re like, that is, by the way, that’s a kind of music that doesn’t like Jesus, to put it in most kind terms possible. You’re like, so you spend your life singing songs about how you hate God. Man, that’s not just saying, oh, you guys are silly. I’m gonna go do my own thing. That’s actually saying I’m dedicating to my life, or at least a portion of my life, to this thing I’m actually so adamantly against. And that, to be frank, seems A, really sad to me. But B, also shows us how much this reality of Jesus elicits a response. I’ve known a number of people

who actually upon moving past the phase where they say, well, you know, if I was, I’m not a religious person, but if I was a religious person, I’d be a Buddhist. And they move into that phase and they actually start exploring Buddhism. They’re like, wow, this is whack. I’m not into this at all, right? Those people don’t then start metal bands about how Buddha is stupid. They just don’t. Never heard of it. Never heard of it. They just move on and go do something else. It’s fascinating to me that Jesus elicits such a response that once he’s kind of in our bloodstream, once we’ve had this interaction, we kind of can’t quite set him aside. It’s interesting to me. That’s interesting to me. But I think we can see these three then, typical response that I see. Three of the typical responses I see. We see ambivalence and sort of a superstition

slash pluralism slash new agey thing, and then antagonism. With the ambivalence we have that, well, Jesus is interesting, but it doesn’t actually require anything in my life, right? It’s like when someone sees a documentary with a Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh, they’re like, well, that was interesting and I feel better because I watched it, but no, I’m not going to do anything different about my whole life as a result. And sometimes people like that. They like to sit down and sit with someone who’s kind of loosey-goosey on the Bible and on the gospel and say, Jesus loves you and he’ll care for you and he’s there for you. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything about it and move on with your life. They’re like, oh, I like that, that made me feel good because I’m a nice person.

But as we said, that’s not actually what it is to have a relationship with Jesus and God’s word demands so much more of us because Jesus is so much greater than that. Jesus just didn’t come so you could be a nice person. Jesus came to save you. He came on the rescue mission for humanity in their need and came to move and to redeem and to save and to give life and to give joy. And that’s not something you just get to say, meh. I’d kind of like to check that out, but I actually have a cappuccino appointment at noon and I need to go have, I like cappuccinos a lot, by the way, but I’m going to go have cappuccinos with my friend and maybe I’ll think about Jesus later. No one who has that sincere encounter with Christ says, you know what, I think I’ll think about this

some other time and actually see Jesus in all his grace and mercy. There’s this superstitious part of us, this pluralism stuff, this George Costanza-ishness to us where we don’t believe in God for good things, just bad things. We kind of only think Jesus is there when we really, really need him, maybe. We only pray when we’re about to get a ticket or in a car accident. Jesus isn’t just there for when you’re in that spot. And certainly Jesus is not one to be co-opted and just be sort of how you get to the God door.

And some of you are in here and you’re antagonistic. You actually hate Jesus, maybe. If you’re any of these three people, I just need you to know we love you. Pastors will clear our calendar to spend time with you. There’s nothing we want more for you than to have the healing power of the gospel applied to your life for you to be saved. So we don’t tell you these things to be mean-spirited or unkind. We tell you these things because we want you to live and are really scared for you. That there’s a very scary path awaiting you. And that hell is a very scary reality. And it is real, and it is true, and it is forever. But at the end of the day, that scary reality is not the thing that scares people into the gospel. It’s the good news that Jesus has come to rescue us from.

The Right Response

It is the good news that he’s come to rescue us from that. So if the reality of Jesus demands a response, it’s important to have a clear picture of what that is. Not just say, here’s how not to do it, right? These are how not to do it. Don’t do these things. Well, how do we do it? Go with me to Colossians 1.

My favorite thing to talk about is Jesus. My favorite thing to read about is Jesus. My favorite thing to think about is Jesus. And I think these verses help me do that well. Written by Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit. He, that is Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. That’s everything. That’s everything material, everything immaterial, time, space, yes, yes, yes. And he made it all for his glory. And he made us to enjoy him in that space, to enjoy and glorify him and to have great joy in our own lives. This is the good news of Jesus. This is what he’s doing in creation.

And he is before all things. And in him, all things hold together. The author of Hebrews used the phrase, he holds up the universe by the word of his power. He is in control. He is sovereign. He’s working this thing out in history. And he is the head of the body, the church, that’s us. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead that in everything, he might be preeminent. He is the firstborn from the dead. The reason we celebrated baptism today and the reason we love baptism is a celebration that Jesus died and rose again. And we have died to our sin. And someday we will rise again in the new heavens and new earth. But in a sense, we have also now risen as new creatures. And this is a gift that only Jesus can give. This is not a meditation plan. This is not a self-help program.

This is the God of the universe dying in your place to take the heart of stone that you have and give you a heart of flesh. For in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. God, a very God, and through him to reconcile to himself all things on earth in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. If you are a sinner, be saved and be a friend of God. If you’re in here today and you are in Christ, you’re in Christ. You belong to him. You are loved by him. You’re forgiven by him. And this is really good news.

Verse 21, and you who are once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. Again, if you’re in here today and you don’t know Jesus, we don’t think we’re better than you. We think we’re actually just like you, just saved. We too were going down a bad path and the God of the universe interceded in our lives and rescued us. We were alienated. We are now his friends. If you are alienated, we want you to be his friend. And you who are once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of the flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach. God looks at you and doesn’t see a sinner. He sees a child, his child. That doesn’t mean we don’t sin and we don’t repent, but that means that our standing with God

is right through Christ. And even what empowers me to repent and turn for my sin and turn for all my evil actions and all the wrong things that I’ve ever done and all the right things I’ve ever done for the wrong reasons and all the idols where I take something created and I make it more important in my life than Jesus, all of that, I can turn from those things not so that I will be forgiven, but because I have fundamentally been forgiven. And he forgives. Listen, if indeed, if indeed, so how do we know this is me? If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope that is in the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Living the Response

This is the Jesus that demands a response. This is the reality that demands a response. You can’t hear this truth about Jesus and be like, meh, because meh is the response. To be ambivalent, to be like, oh, that’s nice for you, that is a response. So what do we do with this? We lean into this reality and we grow in the truth. We live our life as a reverberation of this reality. And again, if you’re in here today and you’re not a Christian, I’ll be in the back of the room when we’re done. Myself, Thomas, Ryan, our other pastors, we’ll clear our schedule and spend time with you. We want nothing more than for you to know this God. And by the way, we actually aren’t afraid to sit with you if you’re ticked off about Jesus. Or if there’s stuff in the church that’s hurt you in the past or whatever.

Because the reality is the answer to a bad presentation of Jesus and a bad presentation of his gospel and a bad presentation of authority or a bad presentation of the church, it’s not no Jesus, no authority, no church, no community. It’s not no these things, it’s biblical, wonderful, God-glorifying, biblically aligned Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible, the gospel of the Bible. And yes, the church full of sinners, we fail. We have to say sorry to each other because we’re not Jesus. But a church that actually believes that we give ourselves to help other people follow Jesus and that when we do the wrong thing, we say, hey man, that was out of line. I’m sorry, please forgive me. And then of course we can say, of course I forgive you. Because we can, because we have the power of the gospel. My concern for us friends, for those of us in the room

who are believers in Christ, is that while our creed says Jesus rose from the dead, our lives reflect an ambivalence. That the actions we take, the things we do with our time or our money or our resources or our talents, the shows we watch or the music we listen to, our activities, could be with or without Jesus. Now what I’m not saying here, to be clear, is that you only have to watch VeggieTales and you have to do like Christian rock climbing, like you can’t do regular rock climbing because your rock climbing needs to be saved rock climbing. I don’t know how you save rock climbing, but there it is. What I am saying is our whole life lived through this lens of who Jesus is and our whole life lived in response to him and our joys and everything we’re doing in life being lived in the wake of the reality of him.

And what would have to change in our lives for you to be all fired up about Jesus? There’s a lot to be fired up about here, by the way. And to bring your whole life in line with this. And finally, if you’re in here today and you believe, friends, what are you gonna do to give yourself to help other people follow Jesus? What are you gonna do to tell your non-Christian friends here in Portland about this God who is so mighty and so wonderful? What are you gonna do in the context of our own church to preach the gospel to each other, to tell each other, brother or sister, know that you are loved by God and that the answer to our problems fundamentally starts with the gospel of Jesus, which is not the ABCs of Christianity, but the A to Zs of Christianity. As has been said by a number of people

in a number of ways, and it bears repeating. Because he lived the life I should have lived. He died the death I deserve. And he rose from the dead. He’s ruling and reigning and he will return. Let’s pray. King Jesus, pray for my friends and neighbors who are ambivalent to you, who are agnostic about you, who are antagonistic about you, that you would touch their life by the power of the Spirit, by the power of your word, that you would bring Christian people into their lives and that you’d bring people into our lives you intend to save, Jesus. And I pray for us, Lord, that we would live our lives in the wake of the reality of what you’ve done. We’ve seen today how not to respond to the reality of you, but I pray that you would help us by the Spirit, Jesus, to respond to the reality of you rightly.

Jesus, we love you and pray these things for your glory and for our joy in your name, Jesus Christ, amen.