Count your blessings (pt 3)

In Ephesians 1v11-13 Paul repeats the spiritual blessings the Ephesians enjoy – chosen, predestined, part of God’s cosmic eternal plan.  Living for God’s glory because of our hope.  Included not because they deserve it but because of God’s grace through faith in the gospel that saves.

But there’s another spiritual blessing.  When they believed they were marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.  Cattle and slaves were branded with a mark signifying who their owner was.  If they wandered off or ran away everyone would know who they belonged to.  God seals his people too, not with a hot brand but with the gift of the Holy Spirit – God himself dwelling in us.

The Holy Spirit is a like an invisible UV mark on his people, like the ones you used to use the pen to see on old bank notes, it’s visible in the spiritual realms, but visible here only as we see it’s impact in growing Christlikeness.

But the Holy Spirit in his people is also more than just a marker.  He’s a guarantee, “a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.”  The Holy Spirit is God himself come to live in us – just think about that sentence – isn’t that mindblowing!  What an amazing blessing!  He makes knowing God and listening to and being taught by Jesus an everyday reality.  He works to change us bit by bit as he convicts us of sin and opens our eyes to God’s word, and softens our hearts and trains our conscience.  He makes relationship with God real, and helps us know Jesus with us even to the end of the age.  

And he’s just the deposit.  He promises so much more – one day we’ll know God and see him face to face.  One day we’ll live for eternity in his presence, so glorious there will be no need for the sun.  One day we’ll see Jesus, the lamb, not for a moment, not in a vision or dream, but for real and forever.

The Spirit makes relationship with Father and Son real and that’s an amazing blessing.  And he promises us that so much more is to come so that we hunger for more and live for that day not just settle for now.       

How blessed do we feel?  Do you see again, afresh, everything that is ours in Christ.  We have every spiritual blessing in Christ.  Totally undeserved by lavished on us because of God’s glorious grace.  We’re chosen, redeemed, included in God’s family and his purposes and plans to unite everything under Christ, and you’re sealed by the Spirit who makes Jesus with us real and guarantees future glory.  And none of it can be taken away because Christ has won it all and we’re in him by faith.

So what?  Join with Paul, join with the Ephesians, praise God.  Remember your spiritual blessings – these are ours even when material blessings fade, when we suffer, when we grieve.  And they are safe because they’re in the heavenly realms, and they are ours together as God’s people.  We need to speak to one another of them, study them together, sing of them often.

Count your blessings (pt 2)

So we’re chosen and predestinated by grace in Christ. But that’s not all God’s people are also redeemed and part of God’s cosmic plan

Redemption is a Bible word from the slave market not the supermarket.  It’s not the image of a coupon that gets you 25p off but of paying the full ransom price to free a slave.

It’s a word with a bible history.  It takes us back to the Exodus and God liberating Israel from captivity in Egypt and paying; both the ransom price to buy his children back from Pharoah and from judgement for sin through the blood of the Passover lamb.

But for the Ephesians, and us, the redemption price, the ransom paid, was Jesus blood and Paul makes clear in Ephesians 1v7.  That’s the next huge spiritual blessing – disciples of Jesus are redeemed from slavery to sin, liberated from kidnap by, and service of, Satan, and freed from judgment for our sin because Jesus redeems us with his blood.

That means we’re forgiven for our sins – all of them – according to God’s grace.  Let that sink in.  Apply that to yourself for a minute.  Think of the most toe-curlingly embarrassing sin you’ve ever committed.  If I, or the person next to you, knew you’d die from shame.  If you’re in Christ Jesus has paid for it.  He’s redeemed you from it, you’re forgiven.  It’s not counted to your account because it was counted to his and he’s been judged for it, so you can never be. It has been drained of all it’s power and consequences and shame..

Think of the sins that beset you.  The temptations that shout at you, telling you you must do this, you have to give in, you must obey it’s desire.  Jesus has redeemed you from their power.

Think back to Israel and the Exodus.  Imagine for a minute one of the freed Israelites meets a former Egyptian slave master and that slave master tells him to start making bricks.  What should the Israelite do?  Not make bricks, but tell the slave master to get lost because he’s not his boss anymore.  He’s free and not under his rule.

Jesus redeems not just from the consequences of sin but from the mastery of sin.  We don’t have to listen to sins voice anymore.  The Ephesians, we, have been bought at a price, ransomed, we no longer have to obey sin.  Maybe that’s a key idea for you to grasp this week.  When sin shouts loudly and your first instinct is to obey, remember you’re not a slave to sin anymore.  Sin isn’t your master, Jesus is.

But’s there’s much more in this blessing for us to grasp.  We’re not just freed from slavery to sin and judgment because of sin.  But in Ephesians 1v8-9 Paul reminds the Ephesians that God with all wisdom and understanding makes known to his people the mystery of his will.  History is not a who dunnit where we don’t know whose done what.  History isn’t a thriller with a final twist that will turn everything upside down and maybe catch us out.

In the gospel God has revealed where history is headed, his purpose, his desire, “to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment – to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”  God reveals himself in his Son and makes his purposes plain to his people.  All of history is heading unstoppably to the day when Jesus returns and everything is united under his rule and reign.  It’s a blessing to know the future is certain.

For this church living among all the spiritual and occult forces worshipped and let lose in Ephesus this tells them they don’t need to fear.  Jesus is over all, he rules and reigns, and one day he’ll bring every spiritual force into submission and they’ll bow to him.  They’d glimpsed that in the casting out of demons and miracles and so on, but that was a tiny foretaste of what’s to come.  So don’t fear it!  Don’t feel second rate!

No matter what spirituality those around us are in to we don’t need to fear it, because we know the one before whom they will bow, and one day everything will be made right when Jesus returns and rules.

And God has made that known to us so we don’t fear.  So that we know the spiritual blessing of hope and certainty and confidence in the future.  Nothing and no-one will stop this coming true.  And God has chosen us and predestined his people for that joyous moment.  We may not know everything that will happen between now and then, but we know that it all works somehow to fulfil God’s eternal purpose and desire of uniting all things under Christ.

Even when we don’t feel blessed now, even as we struggle and suffer that future is undimmed,  we still have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and so we are to praise God and live for it.

Do you see your spiritual blessings?  Do you see it’s certainty?  We don’t need to be intimidated by the world or spiritualism or occultism or any-ism because history is headed to unity under Christ.  We don’t need to be shaken, or tossed up and down by circumstances because this is certain and God has chosen us for it in Christ by grace.

Count your blessings (pt 1)

So far in Ephesians 1 Paul has made a staggering claim about the off the scale spiritual blessings every believer enjoy as those who are in Christ. But what are they? That’s what he moves on to next, though I think he starts off somewhere where we may wish he didn’t: Praise God you are chosen

Have you ever been given a gift you didn’t understand and so misused?  There’s a video on YouTube of a daughter asking her dad how he’s getting on with the iPad they gave them, how he’s finding the apps.  All the time he’s chopping vegetables on what looks like a chopping board.  As he asks what apps, he scrapes the chopping board into a pan and we see it’s the iPad, before rinsing it under the tap and putting it in the dishwasher whilst his daughter stands staring at him agog.

We’re like that with the bibles teaching on God choosing his people.  We fail to see this as a gift.  Instead we treat predestination as theological rubiks cube, a problem try to unravel, or as an unpalatable food to isolate on the edge of our plate.  Or as something vaguely distasteful we don’t want to look at.

But, Paul says, it’s one of the great spiritual blessings that’s ours in Christ.  (4)God chooses his people, he predestines them to be adopted to sonship in Jesus.  Not because we’re any better than anyone else, or because of some untapped potential to glorify him in us, but “to the praise of glorious grace…”  God delights in choosing the weak things, the foolish things, the lowly things, the despised things – that’s us! But he chooses us.

And that is a spiritual blessing.  It’s a source of joy for us.  We’re chosen to be made holy and blameless in Jesus.  We’re adopted into God’s family with all the privileges that entails of access to God, an eternal inheritance and so on.  And we didn’t earn it.  We didn’t deserve it, so we can’t forfeit it.  It was freely given to us by grace by Jesus lavished on us.

God chose you for salvation – that’s a blessing not a burden.  It’s a gift of grace not something we can take pride in. It’s also a gift of grace not a conundrum or a problem.

I know some of you will be thinking but that’s not fair.  How is that right?  Let me ask you some questions: Is God just?  Is God good?  Is God trustworthy?  Yes. Yes. Yes.  Then, just like Abram did, trust that the God of all the earth will do right.  

Is God wiser than you?  Does God know the end of history from it’s beginning?  Does God see every heart and every motive and every thought?  Is God’s judgment better than yours?  Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So trust God’s judgment not your own.

Do you deserve to be saved?  Did you earn it?  Or in any way contribute to it?  No. No. No. It is all of grace.  No-one deserves to be saved. No-one is good enough or nice enough, or sinless. Salvation is all of grace and is always totally undeserved and it is offered to all freely.

So let this blessing be a comfort to you – God has chosen you.

God’s grand vision for his people (pt 2)

How blessed do you feel on a scale of 1 (totally unblessed) – 10 (utterly blessed)?  Take a second, think about it.  What’s your answer?  Not the one you know you should say because you’re a Christian, but your actual answer.  What is it?  4, 6, 9?

Now let me tweak the question because I think we tend to work out our answer by adding up our bank balance, our health, how our family are doing, how we feel about work, and so on and assigning it a number and aggregating the score (without away goals counting double).  So here’s the tweak; On a scale of 1-0 how blessed are you spiritually?

Because in Ephesians 1v3 that’s what Paul is praising God for.  And Paul says it’s not a 10 it’s an 11.  You’re blessed spiritually so much that it is off the scale.  “Praise be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

Let me show you why it’s an 11.  Because the Almighty sovereign God the giver of every good gift, who created everything, gives us every spiritual blessing.  There’s no spiritual blessing you could possibly think of that God has not imagined and blessed us with.  Just think of God’s creativity in creation – God is endlessly brilliantly imaginative isn’t he?  He created the blue whale and the krill, the Horse Head Nebula and your appendix.  And God is just as explosively mind blowing creative and generous in creating spiritual blessings which he showers on us.

Secondly where are we blessed?  “in the heavenly realms”.  The heavenly realms will keep on appearing in Ephesians because Paul wants them to see that the spirituality and occult around about them isn’t outside of God’s control, but he is totally sovereign over it.  The heavenly realms means spiritual reality, the place where God rules and reigns with other spiritual forces that if we glimpsed them would terrify us, but which bow to him, and can only ever obey his will.  That’s where we have every spiritual blessing, it’s safe because God keeps it there.

Do you ever lose stuff?  Forget where you’ve put your phone or your keys, or lose a jumper?  Do you ever buy something only to be disappointed and wish you hadn’t traded your hard-earned cash for it?  Have you ever had something stolen?  Or had something you love break or rust or just wear out?  Yes.  That can never happen to our spiritual blessings because we don’t have them in our pocket, or under the mattress, or wherever you put stuff to keep it safe before you forget where that is.  They’re safe in the heavenly realms, all of them, every spiritual blessing the almighty endlessly inventive and creative God has created for you.

And we can’t forfeit them.  Because we didn’t earn them in the first place.  It’s not like a quiz show where if you get the next question wrong you’re back to zero.  Look at where we are blessed, “in Christ.”  They are Christ’s blessings that he deserves and we are credited with them because we are in Christ by faith.  That’s another big idea in this letter that we need to grasp.

We can never be offered more spiritual blessings anywhere else.  We can never lose our spiritual blessings, no one can ever take them from us because we’re in Christ and he has finished his work and is sat down at the right hand of the Father.  How blessed are we spiritually on a scale of 1-10?  11.

God’s Grand vision for his people

Do you ever feel a bit disappointed with church?  Sometimes, maybe often, it just doesn’t seem very significant does it?  It’s easy to look at church and then at the area where we are and see how small we are.  It’s great to be filling this room but even if we do that’s less than 1% of the population of the area.  And at work, in your street, in the playground, in the staff room you feel alone in your faith.  You love church, you love those who come, but you just wish it was doing a bit more, having more of an impact, was a bit bigger, a bit better, a bit more significant.

Paul is writing to a church to help them see the glorious reality of church.  He’s helping them see the church with gospel goggles so they see past the misprint in the song words, the stumble from the preacher, and the slightly awkward conversations over coffee.

Ephesus was a city built on power and wealth.  It was a city insatiably hungry for glory.  A city steeped in the spiritual and the supernatural.  Obsessed with the mystical and the magical.

And the church in Ephesus started in blaze of power and glory, as the early believers were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues and prophesied, and then God through Paul did extraordinary miracles; healing the sick and driving out demons.  A church was born and people showed their repentance in burning a fortune of magic and occult scrolls.  That brought hostility; there was a riot because this new faith with its power and glory was causing so much change that others thought it threatened the very culture of Ephesus.

That’s exciting isn’t it!  That’s powerful!  But that’s some time ago.  Now things have settled down in Ephesus.  Now there’s just a low level grumbling hostility to the gospel, and the question is what is God doing now in the ordinary and everyday of following Jesus together as a church?

Ephesians takes the blinkers off our eyes so we see more than just the physical of church, more than just the chairs needing to be stacked, the person singing offkey just to our right, and the coffee and cake that need serving.  Paul is helping these believers, and us, see the glory of church behind the ordinary and the everyday of church.  The scale and wonder of our salvation, the joy of being aware of and included in God’s larger cosmic purposes for the whole of creation, and what he’s doing through the ordinary and everyday of church.

In an age that prizes celebrity, power, wealth, influence and anything that sparkles of glitters, Paul wants the church to see a more weighty, more tangible, eternal glory which God is working through the church.  In a society that searches for the supernatural and the spiritual Paul wants the church to know God is at work by his Spirit doing the supernatural among them as they gather together around Jesus.

We also need reminding of the cosmic nature of church.  To see God’s bigger purposes as we gather.  We need reminding this is what really matters for eternity.  This is where reality is shaped and we learn about the God who in his triunity reigns over all sovereignly.  There is a far greater glory in the ordinary and everyday of church gathered in Christ than we dare dream or imagine.

Paul begins by praising God for what he has done for this church, not just this church but every church, before he prays for them.

Be clear on the evidence and eyewitnesses of Jesus

The events Matthew records in chapter 27 aren’t normal are they?  They aren’t today and they weren’t back then.  The early believers and early churches weren’t gullible, they didn’t believe easily, they believe based on the evidence of eyewitnesses who verified Jesus death, burial and resurrection and there significance.

Matthew continues his account but in doing so introduces us to lots of eyewitnesses to these events.  The first is the Centurion and those with him.  They witnessed everything(54).  They’re guarding Jesus so hear his word, hear what others call him, experience the earthquake and in their fear recognise “Surely he was the Son of God!”.  That’s the right conclusion to reach if you see these things.

But they aren’t alone.  Many women who were disciples of Jesus and supported him and his ministry were there watching from a distance.  Matthew names some of them; Mary Magdalene, Mary the mum of James and Joseph, and John and James mum.  He identified them because they were eyewitnesses, people who could be asked about what they saw, and testify to Matthew’s account being true.  Who watched those events and believe they prove Jesus is the Messiah.

Then there’s Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple, who asks Pilate for Jesus body and wraps it in clean cloths and places Jesus body in his own tomb and rolls a stone over the tomb.  Here’s someone who is a witness to events, and the location of the tomb, who these early believers can speak to.  But who is also an example of brave discipleship at cost to himself, who counts Jesus worth the risk of losing his political power and religious respect, even everything he had worked so hard in life to earn.  Again the two Mary’s witness everything, they know which tomb, and where it is.

And not all the witnesses are disciples of Jesus. In an act of irony the opponents of Jesus act to guard and verify the truth of the resurrection.  The religious leaders are worried the disciples might steal Jesus body and claim Jesus rose again just as he said(63).  They don’t believe he will but worry about the disciples pulling off the greatest hoax in history.  “This last deception will be worse than the first.”  

So Pilate gives them permission to make it secure by sealing it and posting sentries to guard it and ensure the disciples can’t steal the body.

To believe Jesus died and rose again has never been easy, it isn’t normal.  But it’s not like believing a fairy tale.  It’s based on evidence.  Based on eyewitness accounts of those who sacrificed and lost things because they believed this was true and stood for it.  It’s based on scripture fulfilled again and again and again in the events of Jesus death.  Even the ladies watching from a distance and where Joseph entombs Jesus fulfil prophecy.

Do you believe Jesus died?  Do you see it’s significance?  Then celebrate it.  This is the greatest news there has ever been.  The greatest victory.  The wages of sin are death, and death is now defeated because Jesus has received the wages of sin.  He dies, physically and spiritually so that those who believe in him might have life, real life lived welcomed by the Father, secure in the Son’s love and growing in understanding it’s scope and what it achieves, and filled with the Spirit so we enjoy that everyday reality of being God’s children and God being with us.

It’s a news our world with it’s terror of death, fear of failure, cancel culture, hopelessness, body image struggles, loneliness, and sense of longing needs.  We don’t share it by grumping that others don’t celebrate what they don’t see the significance of.  We share it by joyfully singing and celebrating all that Jesus achieves at the cross.

How do you see these events?  How do they fill you with joy?  With song?  With hope?  See them again and let them.

Celebrate the cross as the crux of history

We have awe amnesia.  We get so familiar with amazing things that we lose our sense of wonder at them.  We do it with our bodies.   We’re quick to feel it when they don’t work or begin to creak and age but we take for granted that they work in a million and one amazing ways every day.  We forget the wonder of who others are; those God has formed who in some amazing and profound way are made in his image.  

We do it with creation as we drive past grass and flower and plants and animals all provided for and growing and co-existing in ways that are held in an astounding balance.  We do it as we drive or walk under stars but fail to look up and see distant light that has taken years, and centuries and sometimes even millennia to reach us because God’s creation is just so vast.

And we do it with Easter.  We can miss or lose any concept of how vast the impact and scale of the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday really are.  But Matthew emphasizes the sheer scale of what God; Father, Son and Spirit are doing and achieving and transforming in a number of ways.

Jesus death transforms relationship with God(50-51).  As Jesus cries out in a loud voice and gives up his spirit Matthew stresses that “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”  We read that and rush past.  But if you were a Jew hearing the news about the temple of the curtain tearing in two you would have gasped out loud.  You wouldn’t have been thinking the priests better get their sowing kit out, you’d have been traumatised and terrified.

That huge, heavy curtain hung between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place in the temple.  It was both a barrier to keep people out of God’s presence, and a shield to save sinful people from coming face to face with a holy God and being consumed.  It was a permanent reminder that God hates sin and is too pure to look on iniquity.  That sinful people cannot stand in God’s presence and survive.  Only one person once a year could enter and even then only after an elaborate process of making sacrifices for sins and fearfully.

That curtain was like the shielding on a nuclear reactor, or the blast doors that provide protection from explosions or fire.

That curtain, that barrier, that shield, is torn in two from top to bottom.  Imagine the confusion and concern for those in Jerusalem, what does it mean?  Are we in danger?  Will God consume us?  How can we relate to God?

Matthew wants his readers to grasp Jesus’ death changes everything.  The curtain is torn. Sin no longer separates from God for those who trust Jesus because he has paid for sin and the way to God is open.  Jesus is the once for all sacrifice that completes and fulfils all the temple pointed to, it’s no longer necessary and everything is different.

You can imagine friends and family asking the early disciples why they don’t make sacrifices at the temple anymore?  Because Jesus death has changed everything.  Jesus has dealt with sin once for all, there’s no more atonement necessary.  There’s no barrier between them and God, they live life in his presence, right with him, knowing him, enjoying him.

We need to grasp that too!  There’s no barrier between us and God.  Sin that used to separate us from God is taken away and nailed to the cross.  We’re always and forever free to come into God’s presence.  Yes, we will sin, but we can come to him and confess it.  We don’t have to do penance, or make it up to God, or make sacrifices, striving to fix or be good enough.  We can come to God by trusting Jesus made atonement for us, he tore down the barrier, paid for the sin that separated us from God.

We need to apply that in all sorts of ways.  Sometimes we struggle to pray because we feel the heavy weight of guilt and shame over past sin, but the torn curtain says atonement has been made.  Bring it to God because Jesus has paid for it already.

Sometimes we can default into works mode – I need to do something to make it up to God – we need to call that out for the dangerous lie it is, we only ever need to come to God in Jesus, good works flow from recognising and growing in an understanding of his grace not from trying to earn it.

Easter changes everything for ever, because it fulfils and completes the old way of relating to God and opens up a new way in Jesus and gives us access to God by grace through faith.  The curtain is still torn and we can enter by grace.

Jesus death has cosmic consequences for creation(51).  At the moment Jesus dies and the curtain is torn there’s an earthquake, so strong that the rocks split and tombs break open.  Creation itself responds to the death of its creator.  We saw in v45 creation cloaking itself in darkness as the light of the world is extinguished.  Now the earth shakes as if in convulsions of grief and horror at what’s happening.

Creation knows and witnesses to, the significance of these events.  Creation has been waiting longing to be released from its slavery to sin.  Longing for the day when the King will come and end sins rule and bring about the kingdom and it is finally free to praise God in all its reflected glory.  And creation recognises these events as that happening.  It groans, but it’s groaning in hope for new birth, and recognises it as coming a step closer with Jesus death.

Sin’s rule is defeated.  Creation will be freed from its slavery to sin.

As God’s people, disciples of Jesus, we pick up Adam’s call to guard and garden creation.  That’s why work has value – because we’re helping the world see God’s glory in a cleaned floor, a working car, a child grasping the beauty and intricacy of the world, a life protected and so on.  But we do guard and garden God’s good creation knowing it’s sick with sin.  It’s beautiful and it’s broken.  It bring moments of great joy and others of immense frustration.  And so we care for creation because God calls us to; we guard it, we garden it, so God’s glory is seen, but knowing it will one day be reborn as we will.  And Jesus death is good news of all of creation being transformed.

Jesus death means death is defeated(52-53).  The earthquake may crack open the tombs.  But lots of earthquakes have done that throughout history.  But Jesus death and what follows has a far greater significance.  The tombs aren’t just broken open and corpses exposed.  No “The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.  They came out of the tombs after Jesus resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.”  Jesus death changes death itself.  Jesus dies and tombs crack open like Easter eggs, and after Jesus resurrection the dead come to life.  But not all of them.  Who in particular?  “many holy people”.  That doesn’t mean particularly good people, it’s those who lived and died set apart because they believed in and looked for God’s promised Messiah.

These are the firstfruits of Jesus death and resurrection.  Just like first apple or peach or pear or plum, you see on the tree tells you there’ll be more along just like it.  So Jesus resurrection, and these resurrections, testify to deaths defeated, and there being resurrection coming for all from the dead in Jesus.

Jesus defeats death and that means death isn’t the end.  It changes everything for everyone but in different ways.  In a society that believes life is it and after death there’s nothing, Easter gives us better news to tell.  There is life after death, death isn’t the end, Jesus is the resurrection and the life.  Death no longer needs to terrify.

That resurrection is to bodily life, it’s not reincarnation, you won’t come back to now as a sparrow or a slug or a sea sponge. Death is defeated and resurrection is a reality.  That tells us our bodies matter – they are not disposable, they’re not interchangeable.  They’re God given and will carry on into eternity but perfected and made new.

Jesus death and resurrection conquer death for everyone.  But as Jesus warned his disciples whilst all will rise, some will rise to judgment and condemnation because they won’t accept Jesus.  While death may not terrify, we do need to hold on to this truth, all will rise, all will stand before God, and all will face judgment.  Whilst this is a joyful hope for those who trust Jesus, it is a horrifying reality for those who won’t, and that ought to motivate us to pray, to live out the gospel in generosity and grace to share the gospel, proclaiming Jesus.

The death of Jesus has cosmic consequences – we can know God in Jesus, creation itself will be transformed and renewed, and death is defeated and there will be a day when resurrection comes and life with God for those who trust Jesus in a new creation.

That has to change the way we relate to God.  It has to transform the way we think of creation.  It has to transform the way we think of our bodies, death, and life eternal.  It has to give urgency to our living out the gospel and speaking the gospel to the world around us.

These are cosmic truths.  This isn’t just true for you and me.  It’s not just true for those who believe.  This is true.  Jesus death changes everything for everyone for all of time.

The world doesn’t need more grumpy Christians moaning about Easter

How important is Easter to you?  What difference does Easter make to the way you live?  

Easter isn’t important to society, apart from as an opportunity to enjoy a 4 day weekend and indulge in eating lots of chocolate.  And do you know what, we ought not to be grumpy and complain about that.  If people don’t trust Jesus then it’s just a long bank holiday weekend with added calories and chocolate intake.  Just an excuse to celebrate spring and the coming of the lighter days and nights, and spend money fattening others up.  

Don’t be offended by that, don’t grump about it, that isn’t a great witness to the gospel, and the world doesn’t need more grumpy grumbling Christians, instead let it move you to pray for them because they don’t know.  They’re without hope, pray that someone tells them the good news and their eyes are opened to the hope and joy of Easter.

But how important do we see Easter as being for us?  What does Easter change and who does it change it for?  I wonder how you answer that question and what that answer leads you to do with Easter?

Matthew is in no doubt that Easter is THE event of history.  More significant than the signing of the Magna Carta, or the reformation, or the flood, or any other event.  Everything in his gospel has been leading to Calvary where Jesus, the King of God’s kingdom, takes hold of the cup of the Father’s wrath in his nail scared hands and drains it to its dregs not for the good and deserving, but for a world that is lost, that at best ignores God and at worse tries everything to erase him.

How significant are these events?  Are they just significant for you, for the church?  Or do they hold an unrealised significance for everyone for all of time, or maybe even something bigger?  How excited are you by them?  How joy filled?

The world doesn’t need grumpy Christians grumbling about a world that appropriates festivals it just doesn’t understand.  It needs joy filled Christians who grasp what Easter means, the hope it brings, it’s cosmic significance and the importance of that for everyone.

To fit in or follow Jesus

That’s the question you and I, and every disciple throughout history, have faced every day.  Do we fit in or do we follow Jesus? It’s the question Pilate and the crowd pose to us in Matthew 27

Technically Pilate’s the judge here.  But Matthew shows us that he’s far from in control.  He knows(18) that Jesus has only been handed over because the religious leaders are envious.  He knows Jesus is innocent of the charges against him.  That there’s no evidence to convict him.  His wife sends him a message about her dream and warns him to do have nothing to do with this innocent man(19).

But Pilate doesn’t want to take a stand.  To fit in or do what’s right?  That’s the question he faces.  He tries to engineer a way to release Jesus without facing that dilemma and deciding by offering to release Jesus or Barabbas(16-17).  But as the crowd, persuaded by the religious leaders cry out for Barabbas to be released(21) Pilate asks what he should do with Jesus rather than make a judgment, and they cry out “Crucify him!”  Pilate is thrust back into that moment of decision.  It’s inescapable.  Fit in or release Jesus?  Fit in or do what’s right?  Political power or justice?  Afraid of the people, afraid of losing his power and influence and position Pilate gives in to the people and no matter how much he tries to wash his hands of it the blood sticks.

But Matthew doesn’t just focus on Pilate.  No one is innocent in this condemning of the innocent Christ.  No one is innocent in the death of God’s Messiah.  The religious leaders and the crowd and the soldiers and Pilate are all guilty of killing Jesus. 

All of humanity is represented in rejecting God’s Son.  In condemning the innocent in place of the guilty.  As everyone around him fails and chooses to fit in – the dispersing disciples, perjuring Peter, and popularity seeking Pilate – Jesus alone stands firm, he alone doesn’t try to fit in, God’s Son, the Messiah, the Suffering Servant who must go to the cross to atone for his people’s sins.

Where do you see yourself in this scene?  We’re not dispassionate distant observers.  We’re either in the jostle and fervour of the crowd rejecting Jesus and crying out crucify.  Or we’re Pilate sitting in judgment on Jesus but unwilling to make a decision because we want to fit in.  Or we’re the religious leaders who hate Jesus and want him done away with so we’re not confronted with how far short we fall.  Or we’re Barabbas rightly condemned for our guilt and awaiting judgment.  Which are you?

Do you see this morning who Jesus is?  He is the King of the Jews, God’s Messiah, the Suffering servant.  The innocent one condemned in our place not just Barabbas’.  Going to the cross to drink the cup of the Father’s wrath against our sin so we can be set free.  And offering us that forgiveness and freedom if we repent, trust and follow him, live daily seeking his Kingdom.

To fit in or follow Jesus?  That’s the question we face.  The disciples face it and flee.  Peter faces it and denies.  The world sees Jesus as a threat and his followers as a threat.  Just like the disciples we face the choice to fit in or follow Jesus every day.  At home, at work, with family, with friends, with neighbours.  And increasingly following Jesus makes us the bad guys not the good guys.  Will we believe and live with Jesus as the Christ and King of our lives or fit in?

If you’re feeling guilty this morning look again at Jesus, condemned not just in Barabbas’ place but in ours.  Paying for our sin and failure.  Not so we feel free to repeat that failure and fit in, stuck in a perpetual ground hog day of failing and fitting in followed by guilty repentance followed inevitably by failure and fitting in.  But so that we see him stand for us, feel that weighty cost of our sin, and are moved to mourn our sin, amazed by his love and drawn to love him and stand for the one who loves us more than society ever will, and welcomes and secures our future more than fitting in ever could.

Is Jesus a threat?  Are we a threat?  Yes.  But not in the way the world thinks.  But in the wonderfully good news we have to share – sin is more horrific than we’ve feared at our darkest moment, it’s consequences more eternal than we ever dreamed.  But in Christ we are more loved than we could possibly ever imagine and he has stood in our place and offered to atone for us if we repent and trust him.  And that message, that news has the power to change the world one life at a time.  To bring about a revolution of peace, grace and truth that can transform individuals and families and communities and towns and nations as it sets us free from sin and guilt and fear of death to know God’s King and seek first his kingdom.

Is Christianity a threat to society?

Is Christianity a threat to society?  Yes?  No?  Maybe?  What if we personalise that question; are you – if you’re following Jesus – a threat to society?  Yes, or no, and why?

I wonder if you asked that question to your friends, family, neighbours and colleagues this week what they’d say?

The early church Matthew writes to was very much viewed as a threat.  To believe Jesus was the Christ and live out that belief was viewed as dangerous, rebellious, and subversive.  It was to challenge the norms, not live by them.  It meant you viewed morality, marriage, sex, money, power, poverty, justice, family, men, women, children and society differently to everyone else.  To be a Christian was to live differently, to be dangerous.

In the ex-Christian west are we viewed as a threat as Christians?  Not if we’re anaemic limp Jesus naming but not really following church goers.  But if we actually live out our discipleship, if we live as if Jesus is the Christ, seeking his Kingdom first , following him and his word, then yes we are a threat.  That’s why we’re under pressure to keep our faith private, to not bring it to work, or talk about Jesus in public.  To keep the cross out of Easter and the Christ out of Christmas.  It’s why certain Biblical views about marriage are viewed as toxic relics of a bygone era which Christians surely no longer believe.  It’s why the clash between be true to yourself and be true to Christ is so extreme at the moment.  It’s why some of us have experienced rejection by family or friends when our faith means we can’t affirm what they do, and they equate not affirming with hating.

Are we a danger to society?  Should we be?  And how can we live like that?  They are all question we face and all questions every believer throughout time has faced, including those Matthew writes to.

Is Christ a threat to society?

That’s the big question in this section, the religious leaders have decided he’s a threat to them and so they’ve condemned him to death(26v66).  But they have no power to put anyone to death, so now they have to convince Pilate that Jesus is a threat to his, and Roman, rule.  (11)So the charge changes as they bring him before the governor, whilst the religious leaders accused and condemned him for blasphemy, they know Pilate doesn’t care about that.  That won’t be enough to see Jesus condemned.  So they accuse Jesus of claiming to be the King of the Jews.  So that’s what Pilate asks him “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Is Jesus a threat to Roman rule?  Has he come to turn Jerusalem upside down?  Is he leading rebellion that threatens society?  That’s the crux of the matter.

Jesus replies again “You have said so.”  It’s an enigmatic reply that is designed to make the questioner think.  Pilate has all sorts of ideas and fears about what a king of the Jews has come to do – Jesus isn’t that kind of king of the Jews.  He is the King of the Jews but not a political revolutionary.  And that answer invites Pilate to think about what he means.

As the trial progresses the religious leaders hurl accusations against Jesus(12) and again Jesus is silent, he makes no reply, not even to a single charge(14).  And Pilate’s amazed, this is no ordinary accused.  He doesn’t dignify their accusations with an answer, he doesn’t rant and rail against the injustice of it all and Pilate is amazed, whilst we, along with Matthew’s readers, read it and hear the silence of the suffering servant, the silence of the Lamb who comes to take away the sin of the world.

Is Jesus a threat to society?  That’s the question Pilate must answer.  If he is then he must die.  If he’s not then he’s innocent and must be released.  What will Pilate decide?

Is Jesus a threat to society?  I wonder how you’d answer that?  Jesus’ kingship threatened society but not in the way society thinks.  Within 30 years of Jesus death and resurrection the Roman world would be turned upside down by Jesus followers.  As they followed Jesus, loved him, and obeyed his word, and loved one another deeply, as social barriers were overcome, old division broken down, the poor and weak cared for, the outsiders welcomed, women taught and discipled, everyone treated as valuable and made in the image of God, and the gospel proclaimed to Jew and Gentile the Jesus revolution was radically changing everything.

In 30 years the crucified and risen and ascended Jesus turned the world upside down but not in the way Pilate feared.

Jesus is a threat to society.  But not to it’s political power structure in terms of a power grab or hostile takeover.  It was a revolution of the heart that produced radically different lives that loved and served and led people to Jesus.  It taught radically different values.  Jesus followers were radically generous with their money and wealth and radically reserved in their attitudes to sex being between a man and woman and only within a marriage where both valued and respected and loved one another as equals.  They were radically transformed in their attitudes to work as employees and employers and to government both as governed and governor.  They were radically transformed in their love for the poor and the widow and the fatherless and the outcasts.  And that love in action, the gospel with legs and arms, turned the world upside down from the bottom up.

Is Jesus a threat to society today?  Are we as Jesus followers a threat to society as we seek Jesus kingdom first, as we live by his words?  Yes.  But not as it thinks, and we need to help our family and friends see that, to pose the “You have said so” question.  To show them we’re different but not because of hate but because of a love that will not compromise and will love them enough to say hard things not obnoxiously, not hidden behind a keyboard, but lovingly and in relationships that prove our love for them even when we disagree.  That loves and serves and values everyone for who they are and holds out to them the gospel they need.  

Jesus is the King of the Jews, his Kingdom has come, it will change everything, but not in the way they fear and Jesus challenges their preconceptions and fears.