FRIDAY: THE CRUCIFIXION

Well, grab your message notes. They look like this. Seven Days is the name of the series we've been in for seven weeks now. This is on the final week in the life of Jesus Christ. We started with the events of Sunday in that week. Palm Sunday was almost two months ago now here at Twin Lakes Church because we talked about other people in what surely seemed to them like a political demonstration welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem as what they perceived as their new warrior king Messiah.

And then Monday, Jesus confounds all expectations. He goes right up to the temple mount and he overturns the money changers tables and drives out those selling animals and harshly criticizes the temple elite that controlled that whole enterprise and calls them a den of thieves, not winning any friends among those people. Tuesday, he goes back with even harsher critique. Wednesday, he is anointed as the next Messiah by a woman and Judas, one of his disciples has had enough and decides to join the conspiracy against Jesus.

Thursday, Jesus has some more profound teaching for his disciples. He has one last meal together with him and tells him that his coming sacrifice is gonna totally replace the whole temple sacrificial system. And so this has been astounding momentum, astounding teaching, amazing revelations from Jesus. The momentum has just been building to something very exciting. And then early Friday morning, he is abducted and arrested. And by that afternoon, he is dead.

Now, imagine you've been enjoying this week as somebody who came into Jerusalem for the Passover and this rabbi from the north up in Galilee, man, he's been attracting bigger and bigger crowds. And you're headed into town on Passover and you cannot wait to hear what he has next for you because sundown is approaching and that's when the Jewish Sabbath begins. And you just know that it's been building to something great. You can't wait to hear his latest stories, his latest dig at that corrupt temple leadership that everybody despises.

And as you're walking into town, you notice it's unusually dark for this time in the afternoon and then emerging from the gloom, three crosses just outside the city gate. And you think those Romans, they've been at it again, crucifying people they call criminals. Well, you tell yourself as you approach more closely, they probably were criminals. And in fact, you recognize a couple of them as thieves in the marketplace. And you think to yourself, well, you know, the Romans have their harsh methods, but those people probably deserved it.

And as you come closer, that figure in the middle that's hanging there lifeless, he looks like, no, it can't be. That's impossible. But it is. What? It's Jesus. And he's dead. Why? How did that happen? Why did they kill him? And as you look closer, you notice, above every head as is Roman custom is the crime that they were convicted of. And above Jesus' head, there's a sign written in three languages. You're from out of town and you read the Latin, Rex Eudorum, the king of the Jews.

You know, I grew up in church, and around this time of year, something always, always confused me. Why exactly did Jesus die? Now, I knew theologically why Jesus died, but why did they kill him? You know, he was so nice. It's not against a lot to be nice to children. It's not against a lot to teach about flowers and love. That's not why Jesus was killed. Jesus was killed because he made one thing very, very, very, very clear over and over and over and over. He claimed to be king.

And I think the danger of growing up in American Christianity is that we can almost minimize Jesus and minimize Christianity to I just accept Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal Lord and Savior, so my sins are forgiven and I go to heaven when I die. And I believe that is true. That's beautifully true and it's eternally true, but that is not why Jesus was killed. Jesus was killed because he said things that were treated by the powers that be as absolutely treacherous.

He was not killed for something that just changes your afterlife. It changes your daily life. If you truly, truly, truly understand this concept, it could revolutionize your spiritual life, completely change the way you look at your Christianity. In fact, it may challenge your Christianity to the point where you don't really know if you really wanna re-up for this because what he had to say was much more challenging to your point of view right now than we usually give him credit for.

Let me kind of explain what I'm talking about here. It all started three years earlier with Jesus' very first message, Mark 1:15, when he announced the time promised by God is come at last. The, what say these three words out loud with me? Kingdom of God is near. Now, kingdom of God, that, kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, that proved to be Jesus Christ basically his famous favorite phrase. Jesus Christ, watch this, in the Gospels, he talks about the kingdom of God 100 times.

By comparison, he talks about salvation 10 times, church three times, Taylor Swift zero times. This is what, this is what Jesus Christ is obsessed with, focused on, kingdom, kingdom, kingdom, kingdom, kingdom, all the time. He's talking about the kingdom. Now, as we said in this series, when the people first hear this, they're thinking kingdom, allah, the Roman Empire. They're thinking soldiers and banners and fortresses and military victories, and Jesus knows this is what they're thinking, so he almost immediately begins to correct this idea.

He tells a lot of stories that start with this phrase, this is what the kingdom of God is like, to contrast it with what the kingdoms of the world are like. For example, he says in Mark 4, a man scatters seed on the ground. And night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he doesn't even know how. In other words, unlike the swords and shields and soldiers and strategies of earthly kingdoms, his kingdom is like seeds, small, small, and silent, and slow, and even secret.

You don't even see it, it's underground, until suddenly there's a super bloom, it's everywhere, and you are not even sure how it happened. And you know what, there's nothing that soldiers with all their fortresses and shields can do to stop seeds just blowing through the air. That's what the kingdom of God is like. Now, a lot of scholars believe that Jesus, when he talks about seeds, is referring back to Isaiah 61:11, where it says, "The sovereign Lord will show his righteousness to all nations," and that word means ethnicities everywhere, as a garden causes seeds to grow. Plants of praise will spring up all over the world.

Can I show you how I experienced that this last Sunday? While you were here, I got to preach at a church in Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus. It was an Arab Christian church, I spoke through an Arabic translator, and let me just show you what I just kind of like captured on my iPhone that morning. It was marvelous, our Arab Christian brothers and sisters worshiping. Now, these people are a minority within a minority within a minority, they are Arab, Israeli, Christians. They're kind of oppressed and ostracized from every side, but I was reminded again, what we have is not some Western faith.

We share a global, cross-cultural, international faith. Despite 2,000 years of opposition, Jesus' kingdom has spread like seeds all over the world, and there's nothing that the kingdoms of this world could do to stop it. Plants of praise are springing up everywhere. Does that inspire everybody, anybody here this morning? Can I hear an amen? Fantastic! And Jesus keeps clarifying what his kingdom is like. He says things like this, let the little children come to me and don't hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Little ones like Athena, right? Not the pompous and the prideful and the powerful, but the weak and the powerless and the simple.

He keeps clarifying it. On this way to Jerusalem for this final week, he says, whoever wants to become great among you in my kingdom must be your servant, even the son of man. That's the Hebrew scripture's word for Messiah, King of Israel, did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. You know, it struck me this week, every single time Jesus defines the kingdom of God, he talks about what it's like. Here's what the kingdom of God is like. Here's what it looks like, feels like, acts like.

Now, think about this. How different is that from the way leaders of the kingdoms of this world define their movements? They talk about strategies and tactics and battle plans and five-year plans and goals and aims, and Jesus hardly ever, ever, ever talks about any of those things. He said, this is what it's like. It's kind of like a seed. It's like a child. It's like a servant. Deliberately and repeatedly contrasting the kingdoms of this world, which are all about swords and domination and power, getting power and keeping power with the kingdom of God, which is not about swords, but about seeds, and not about domination, but about humility, and not about power, but about giving away power, serving, even serving your enemies.

So over three to three and a half years, Jesus has been relentlessly setting up this contrast, and then suddenly, dramatically, on Friday of Holy Week, these two kingdoms, these two ways of thinking, these two ways of acting, these two ways of being suddenly, boom, collide with, you could say, the ultimate icons of these two kingdoms. Facing each other. And in the moments I have remaining, what I want to do is show you a few verses from the Gospel of Mark that show this collision. And then in the discussion questions on page three of your notes, you're gonna be guided through all of these verses. I really encourage you to read them this week, maybe take a question a day to prepare yourself for Good Friday and Easter.

So when we last left Jesus, he's left the upper room, he's been praying overnight in the Garden of Gethsemane very early on Friday morning. Mark 14:43 is where we pick up the story. Just as Jesus was speaking, Judas, one of the 12 appeared with him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, the weapons of the kingdoms of this world. Here comes the collision. They had been sent by the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. This was the temple board of directors, the elite. It's very, very important, especially in the Gospel of Mark. He makes it clear every single time he talks about the people who conspired to put Jesus to death, he makes it very clear it's this small corrupt group.

It is not the Jews as we've been talking about in this series. That is an anti-Semitic, unhistorical, unbiblical slander. The Jews, the crowds of Jews, man, they love Jesus. They were shocked by his execution. In the middle of the night, this corrupt, what one historian has called the temple mafia sends their thugs with Judas. And we talk about Jesus' arrest, that's really, I don't think that's the right word to use. I think the word to use is not arrest, but abduction.

So then, skipping to verse 47, one of those standing near, standing near Jesus, one of his disciples drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. You know he wasn't aiming for his ear, right? He wanted to just cut off his head. You know, he wanted to incite some violence and protect Jesus. And we find out in the Gospel of John that this person who drew his sword is who? Any guesses? It's Peter, which kind of figures, right? Peter, who for three years has heard Jesus talk about what the kingdom of God is like.

For three years, he's heard Jesus say, you gotta bless those who curse you. You gotta turn the other chic. Non-retaliation in terms of any kind of violence. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. But the first instant somebody tries to attack Jesus, Peter goes for the hilt of his sword. Like forgets everything that Jesus has said. And isn't Peter just like you and me, right? You know who Eugene Peterson is? Eugene Peterson, famous pastor, he's the guy who did the paraphrase of the message, translation of the Bible, kind of lately became famous as Bono, the lead singer of U2's favorite pastor. I mean, he is a spiritual guy. He is deep, but he writes about a funny incident from his childhood.

He grew up in a very devout Christian home, but when he was in the first grade, a second grade bully named Garrison Johns picked on him. And this is what Eugene writes about it. I had been prepared by my Christian parents for the wider world of neighborhood and school by memorizing bless those who persecute you and turn the other cheek. But Garrison Johns most afternoons after school would catch me and beat me up. And then somehow he found out I was a Christian and taunted me with Jesus sissy. I arrived home most days bruised and humiliated. My mother told me this had always been the way of Christians in the world and I had better get used to it. And then she told me I was supposed to pray for him.

Well, one day I was with seven or eight friends when Garrison caught up with us in the afternoon and started jabbing me on the side and that's when it happened, something snapped. For a moment, the Bible verses disappeared from my consciousness and I grabbed Garrison. And to my surprise and his, I was far stronger than he was. I wrestled him to the ground, sat on his chest, pinned his arms down with my knees and he was helpless. He was too good to be true. I hit him in the face with my fists. It felt good. So I hit him again and blood spurted from his nose, a lovely crimson in the white snow. This is Eugene Peterson, the message Bible guy writing this, right?

I said to Garrison, "Say uncle." He wouldn't say it. So I hit him again, more blood. And then my Christian training reasserted itself. So I said, "Say I believe in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and savior." He wouldn't say it. So I hit him again, say I believe in Jesus as my Lord and savior. And he said it. And that was how Garrison Johns became my first Christian convert. I can be just like that, right? I feel like crowds coming up after my Jesus. I'm being attacked for being a Christian. Where's my sword? Exactly like Eugene, exactly like Peter.

In fact, listen carefully to me as your pastor. Honestly, I cannot think of a more timely message than this right now, because in this cultural moment in America, you and I, because of the 24/7 news cycle and social media, are constantly, if we wish to be, being exposed to ways in which Christians and Christian values and Christianity is being attacked. And you can feel like you're on the defensive. And Christian pastors and Christian talk show hosts and Christian authors are encouraging and challenging and provoking you to draw your sword in response and to fight the world with the weapons of this world and to send angry emails and to hate those people and to worry, one pastor calls it Christian attack culture.

And what I'm seeing is not only are Christians being so riled up by this that they're attacking people in the world. I was talking to somebody yesterday who works for a school district, not the Santa Cruz School District, but another one. And he said the superintendent told him the other day, those Christians are the worst. Never get encouraging emails from them and it's only just constant anger and criticism. They're responding to attacks with the weapons of this world. And now I see Christians even turning on each other. People are, they think slightly off. And so it's just like, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.

And it's to Peter and to Judas and to Eugene Peterson and to all of us that Jesus says, stop. Am I leading a rebellion, said Jesus, that you come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Now you might be thinking, well, Jesus was leading a rebellion in a way, a real revolution, but the word he uses here means a guerrilla movement using violence. In other words, he's saying, if you come out after me with swords because you think I'm gonna retaliate with a sword, then you do not understand me at all because I am leading a revolution, but not that kind.

See, look back at the chart on page one to quote Tim Keller. What happens in the kingdoms of this world is that the revolutions basically just keep the same things on the list. Swords and domination and power, the revolutions just put new people in charge of the soldiers. But Jesus came to really start the world's first real revolution. What was revolutionary about it was, instead of just some new person in charge of the same values, the whole way of looking at the world, the whole way of using power, the whole way of making a difference on this planet was completely, it was a different way of ordering reality.

But Judas doesn't get it, and Peter doesn't even get it, and the crowd doesn't get it, and so often today, his followers don't get it. Jesus' kingdom does not operate like the kingdoms of this world. Amen? But his enemies, of course they don't get it either. They just hear him say, "King, king, king, king, king, king," all the time. So he's abducted, and he's put on trial, but you can't really call these things trials. They're hastily called conferences. The board wants him out, and so they're like, "He's gotta go. He's threatening to us," but they don't wanna just stone him because they're worried the crowd is gonna turn against them, and so they think, "Let's get the Romans involved. Everybody hates them anyway."

And so he's brought before the key local representative, the icon of the kingdoms of this world, Pontius Pilate. He's the local Roman governor. The world had never seen anything like the Roman Empire. Talk about the kingdoms of this world. It had an army numbering in the hundreds of thousands. It had the best generals, the best weapons, the most wealth. It was the icon of swords and domination and power. Pilate has all this backing him up when he faces one lone Jewish man who's been abandoned by a hall of his followers who stands for these things, and he looks at him and he says, "Are you the king of the Jews?"

And in the Greek, the emphasis is on the you. I can see Pilate saying this with a smirk. What? Are you the king of the Jews? You gotta be kidding me, right? But Jesus says, "Yes, it is as you say." But still, Pilate smells something fishy. He gets something. He gets that it's the temple elite and just want Jesus gone, and so he appeals to the whole crowd. Well, do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews, knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him?

In other words, he gets the way they operate 'cause it's exactly the way he operates. Somebody's a threat to you, you get rid of him. But he's thinking, "Well, you know, I don't know if the whole crowd is in favor of this, but the crowd's been seated by thugs from the chief priests. They stir up the crowd." And so Pilate hands over Jesus to his soldiers. And I want you to see something that will put Jesus' sacrifice in real perspective for you. Mark 15:16 says, "The soldiers took Jesus into the courtyard of the governor's headquarters, called the Praetorium, and they called out," I never noticed this until this week, "the entire regiment."

Do you know how many people were typically in a Roman regiment? 600. This wasn't like six or seven guys, you know, pulling on Jesus' beard like you see in the movies. This is hundreds of Roman soldiers taking out their hatred against the Jews on Jesus. And watch what they do. They've heard him say, "King, king, king, kingdom, kingdom." And so the soldiers put a purple robe on him, twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. It began to call out to him, "Hail!" Now Roman soldiers, how do they usually finish that sentence? "Hail, Caesar!"

And in fact, this whole thing is a mockery of what Caesar would wear at state occasions. This is Julius Caesar, a statue of him. This is a laurel leaf crown, a purple robe of state, and a staff. The purple robe, the crown of thorns, the staff. This was a mockery of Caesar. "Hail, Jew king!" Again and again, they struck him on the head with his staff and they spit on him an entire regiment. Falling on their knees, they paid mock, homaged him, and when they tired of mocking him, they took off the purple robe, put his own clothes back on, and then they led him out to crucify him.

Now Friday night, we're going to be reading the verses that deal with the next six hours. For now, let's skip ahead to verse 26. This is where we started this morning, the written notice of the charge against him, the King of the Jews. From first to last, they knew it was all about his claim to be king. And when Jesus dies, watch what happens. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last and the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. What's that about? This was the thick veil that separated the Holy of Holies in the temple where God's presence was from the whole rest of the planet.

And when that curtain is torn in two from top to bottom, from God to us, God is saying, "Now everyone is welcome into my throne room, into my royal and holy presence." And look who the first person is to walk into God's presence. God's throne. When the centurion, the representative of the kingdoms of this world at the cross, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died. Don't let that phrase escape you. This guy was in charge of supervising executions. He'd seen more people die than you and I could ever even imagine and he'd never ever seen anything like this.

When he saw how he died, he'd seen him brutally mocked as we just saw, tortured. And then hanging on the cross saying, "Father, forgive them?" He says, "I wanna serve a king like that." This man says, "Surely this man, this man was the Son of God." And these days we apply a Christian meaning to this phrase. That's not what this meant to the Romans. On every coin in Jesus' day, there was a picture of Tiberius Caesar and around his image were the words, "Tiberius Caesar, Son of the God, Augustus." Ask any Roman who's the Son of God, they would have said Caesar, all our money says so.

But this man looks at Jesus and says, "No, the Son of God, the King of Kings, the Emperor, isn't the guy whose image is all my money, not the man on the throne, it's the man on the cross." And so a representative of the kingdoms of this world becomes the first person to say, "I wanna follow that man." And he steps into the kingdom of God. You see from beginning to end in the Gospel of Mark, it constantly is posing two questions with all this emphasis. First of all, who is my King? Is Jesus, you know, we talk about Savior, but I think that word has lost a little bit of its pungency. Is he your King?

Do you take direction from Jesus? Not just on what to believe, but how to behave. Is he really your King? And what is my kingdom? What kingdom am I an ambassador of? In the way I move and act and talk to people and respond to people, even people attacking me, do I respond with the values of the kingdoms of this world, swords and domination and power? Or do I respond with the humility and service of the kingdom of God? And when you're letting people influence you, you know, don't just ask, does this person claim to be a Christian? Ask yourself, does this person exhibit the values of Jesus's kingdom? Which kingdom do you serve?

Let me close with a true story. In 1865, a pastor in London named Bill, who let's be honest, looks a little bit like an elderly Grateful Dead fan in Santa Cruz, California. I recognize Bill. But when Bill was younger, he decided to move his church in London to a tent that he set up in a graveyard, in a very sketchy neighborhood, populated by prostitutes and other criminals. He and his wife Catherine were the first two pastors, and their mission statement was soup, soap, and salvation.

Because they fed the hungry and they rehabilitated alcoholics all while preaching the gospel. Then they came to the states and stood with black people here. Both in the UK and the US, organized gangs, attacked them. They never, ever, ever fought back. They never became partisan politically. But they preached the gospel and they helped people, and an astonishing revival broke out against all races across all social classes. Get this, in just four years, their church baptized over a quarter of a million people. Talk about revival.

And the name they chose for their church was deliberately tied to the idea that Jesus came to start a different kind of kingdom with a different kind of army using different kinds of weapons. Any guesses as to what they call themselves? The Salvation Army. Man, I love that image. You know, when the pandemic started, I told our staff, "I feel like God's directing us at TLC, it is something like that." And that's why we've turned up the volume on that here. That's why we turned our whole campus into an evacuation shelter for CZU fire victims.

It's why, you may not know this, but we've been providing 250 meals a week to people still living in shelters because of the Pajaro floods. It's why this week we sent disaster relief funds to Sister Church in Mississippi, in a town destroyed by tornadoes. Why? Because that is the kind of kingdom and army and weapons Jesus calls us to use. And you might think, you might think, "But a mob armed with swords and clubs is attacking us, and if we do not fight back against the world trying to destroy Christian values, then we will lose." But you see, yes, we do need to fight back.

But these are the weapons with which we fight, not the weapons of the kingdoms of this world. Listen, every day of your life, you're gonna be challenged to answer these two questions. And so you may be thinking, "But, but, but, but, but." If we don't take up the weapons of this world, then we're gonna lose. Well, it sure looked like Jesus lost on Friday. But the uncanny thing about Jesus is he sure has a knack for plot twists, as you will see next weekend. Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

Heavenly Father, thank you so much that we're called to something completely different. And God, I pray that when we interact with people at every level, people we're buying from, people who cut us off on the freeway, people who treat us unkindly and kindly, people that work, people in our family, that when we act, people will say, they are not like the kingdoms of this world. They are like people who believe in the power of seeds and the attitude of children and the posture of a servant. They are not like us.

And that by that difference, we will draw people to you, the King of kings and the Lord of lords and the kingdom of God that you came to start. God, we wanna re-up for that army. We wanna re-enlist for that purpose. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Hey, let's all stand together.