SPEAKER_00: I'm going to share with you today a message of the crucifixion, the resurrection through the lens of the gospel writer Mark.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the stuff I'm going to share with you today, it just really inspired me about six months ago.
SPEAKER_00: I was doing some study on the individual gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to kind of understand them a little bit better.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to understand what was their motive.
SPEAKER_00: So we know they had a collective motive.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to present Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: But they had individual motives that were a little bit different in that they were highly motivated by their audience, the people that they were trying to reach.
SPEAKER_00: And so you're going to see, just like you and I might tailor our communication a little bit, depending on who we're talking to.
SPEAKER_00: You might have a friend or family members that are kind of different, and so you might choose different words, you might say things differently, knowing that it'll land one way or the other based on who you're talking to.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's not like the gospel writers are distorting the story or changing it, but what they're doing is tailoring it to aim at their audience.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you look at Mark, Mark's audience that he's aiming at were Romans.
SPEAKER_00: And these are Roman Christians, these are both Jew and Gentiles, but these are people who are steeped in, who are deeply ingrained in them, the idea of Hellenism.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greco-Roman world, first century, Hellenism ruled.
SPEAKER_00: And Hellenism had four core values, or what we might call pillars of Hellenism.
SPEAKER_00: And once you understand that, you'll start to see things in the book of Mark where Mark is doing what people do in with good etiquette, good uh people skills, is you start with what you have in common.
SPEAKER_00: If you sit down across somebody, you don't start with what we don't agree on.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'd like to talk about what we don't have in common, right?
SPEAKER_00: You start with what you do have in common.
SPEAKER_00: That common ground starts a connection.
SPEAKER_00: At some point you may veer away and talk about things where uh you think differently, but he starts with the common ground.
SPEAKER_00: So the four pillars of Hellenism, the first one was health care.
SPEAKER_00: And so they understood more about the human body than anybody ever had.
SPEAKER_00: They uh were focused on hospitals and not only um how to how to treat the human body, how to treat illnesses, so it extended lives and it made for better quality of life.
SPEAKER_00: That was a big part of what they did.
SPEAKER_00: The second um uh part of their culture was uh education.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they had great universities, they improved the educational system tremendously.
SPEAKER_00: The third was entertainment.
SPEAKER_00: And when you think about entertainment, okay, our in our world, whether it's TV shows or movies or that sort of content, it does shape culture.
SPEAKER_00: And so the theater was used to shape uh the culture of the empire.
SPEAKER_00: And then the fourth was competition and athletics, things like the arena, the Coliseum, the Circus Maximus was were designed to create a tribal mentality, and it actually works.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's something you think about in our world.
SPEAKER_00: We value sports highly, and uh it's quite a thing, you know, to have that embedded in your psyche from a young age.
SPEAKER_00: Uh when I was a little kid, I mean, that some of my first memories were watching sports, and I remember uh playing T-ball as a kid, and uh when I was a kid, the T-ball league I was in, they named your team after whatever organization sponsored you.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so so we weren't the the the Reds or the Red Sox or anything, we were Sarah's Kitchen.
SPEAKER_00: That's real.
SPEAKER_00: You can ask my mom.
SPEAKER_00: We were Sarah's kitchen, and I was Sarah's kitchen till I die.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was loyal, man.
SPEAKER_00: And if you weren't with Sarah's Kitchen, you were against Sarah's Kitchen.
SPEAKER_00: I never met Sarah, I've never been to her kitchen, but I'll tell you, she was on my jersey, and so I was ready to fight to the death.
SPEAKER_00: And and honestly, growing up as a kid, man, not only did I I'm from Northeast Ohio, so I kind of support all the Cleveland teams.
SPEAKER_00: It was it was not only loving my team, but it was hating the other team.
SPEAKER_00: I hated the Steelers.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm a Buckeye fan, and I and I just I don't even say Isigan.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even say it.
SPEAKER_00: It's just that state up north.
SPEAKER_00: And and it I'm just here to tell you, you know, I'd like to think, you know, that the Lord's done a work in my life, but I still feel it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when I'm at the gym and I see somebody pull up next to me in maison blue, I want to drop a dumbbell on their foot.
SPEAKER_00: You know, but I'm a man of God, so I can't really do that.
SPEAKER_00: So I just have to imagine it, you know, and in my imagination, I drop a dumbbell on their foot, and then instead of saying I'm sorry, I just say oh and walk away.
SPEAKER_00: But you think about that, right?
SPEAKER_00: If from a childhood you learn to compete, you learn to fight, you learn us and them, and if you're not us, you're them.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's pretty beneficial to an empire that's trying to expand their borders.
SPEAKER_00: That if I can get you to fight your neighbor, or we can have a crosstown rival where we fight in the parking lot after the game, or whatever it is, if I can get you thinking like that, then how much more can I get you to expand our borders and to do whatever I'm asking you to do?
SPEAKER_00: And so you got to kind of be aware of that, you gotta be conscious of that.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, that's the world that Mark is writing to.
SPEAKER_00: And so you'll see, like when he's presenting Jesus, he does, he meets them at their value.
SPEAKER_00: So he presents Jesus as a healer, healthcare.
SPEAKER_00: He he presents Jesus as a great teacher, education.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about Jesus' miracles, he gathered huge crowds and they were amazed, it says.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, for people that have been to the theater and had a huge crowd, and everybody walked away like in awe.
SPEAKER_00: And then he presents Jesus as this great champion.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is where he goes from meeting them at their core value to now starting to shape their theology.
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes the things that are deeply ingrained in us, they may feel right to us, they certainly feel real to us, but it may not be exactly what God intended.
SPEAKER_00: So now you have Mark starting to show them their passions and then to present them with options.
SPEAKER_00: Today, what I want to do is I want to I want to wrestle through three things.
SPEAKER_00: The first one is something we all should know.
SPEAKER_00: The second is something we all should question.
SPEAKER_00: And the third is something we all should feel.
SPEAKER_00: Something we all should know, something we all should question, and then something we all should feel.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I came across a great piece of research from a guy by the name of Thomas Schmidt, and what he did was he went in and um he he pulled actually the itinerary of the coronation of Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: Um this has been preserved in history.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the one he used was the coronation of Nero, which would have been about 21 years after the crucifixion of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But but they didn't do unique, it wasn't like we're gonna do a different coronation.
SPEAKER_00: It would be like our inauguration.
SPEAKER_00: There's depending whoever the president is, there they have step one, step two, step three, they all do the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And so they would do the same thing at the coronation.
SPEAKER_00: And so what he did was he was able to take and put side by side to show how Mark puts the crucifixion of Jesus next to the coronation of Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: Um what I want to do is I'm gonna walk you through, and it'll be on the center screen here, but we're gonna walk through the real quick the nine steps of coronating a Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: The first was the Praetorian Guard gathers.
SPEAKER_00: All right, the praetorium was where the governor lived, and it was the headquarters for the Praetorian Guard.
SPEAKER_00: And so the full Praetorian Guard would have been six hundred soldiers.
SPEAKER_00: So on the day of Caesar's coronation, six hundred soldiers gather.
SPEAKER_00: Um second step, the emperor dressed in royal robes, they put a wreath, uh, crown wreath on his head and give him a scepter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, three, the the third step, the new Caesar is led through a processional.
SPEAKER_00: So think of a regal parade with people lining the streets and celebrating this new leader.
SPEAKER_00: Uh number four, Caesar carries an instrument of death followed by a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: So in Nero's case, he carried a sword and behind him was a bull.
SPEAKER_00: They marched a bull behind him because we're going to make a sacrifice to the gods uh later on.
SPEAKER_00: Number five, they arrive at Capitoline Hill.
SPEAKER_00: So Rome is the city of seven hills.
SPEAKER_00: And the biggest hill, the highest hill, is Capitoline Hill.
SPEAKER_00: It's also known as Head Hill, because when Rome was uh developed and discovered, there was a skull on that hill, so they call it Head Hill or Capitoline Hill.
SPEAKER_00: And on the highest hill, they built a temple to Zeus.
SPEAKER_00: So when they arrived at Capitoline Hill, okay, they offer Caesar wine mixed with myrrh, which was the most expensive wine, and it was the kingly wine, and instead of taking it, he refuses it as a statement of I'm Caesar, doggone it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need anything, I don't need your wine.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, I'm in need of nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And then uh number seven or six, sorry, then this sacrifice is killed.
SPEAKER_00: So they slaughter the bull or they kill the sacrifice, and then they have this moment where they parade out a group of prisoners.
SPEAKER_00: And the prisoners stand before Caesar, and Caesar goes down the line of prisoners in front of all these people.
SPEAKER_00: You've got all this pomp and circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: He goes down the line to the prisoners, and one by one he either pardons them or he condemns them.
SPEAKER_00: Thumbs up, thumbs down, goes down the line at his will.
SPEAKER_00: It might be on a whim, it might be arbitrary, or he may have some information.
SPEAKER_00: Bottom line is the power of life and death is in the hand of Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: What we have to understand about the mindset of an empire, we've talked about this a lot.
SPEAKER_00: It's driven by the power of fear, which then triggers the thirst for power or the love for power, right?
SPEAKER_00: Why do people want power?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it could be that you just are power hungry, or it could be that you don't want your fears to come true.
SPEAKER_00: If I'm big and powerful, and if I'm wealthy, and if I've got huge connections and I'm in a high place, that means that you can't hurt me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm independent.
SPEAKER_00: I have a sense of security and safety.
SPEAKER_00: If my security's threatened, I'll reach for my power.
SPEAKER_00: I'll use my power however I need to.
SPEAKER_00: And so what you have is an empire where they are coronating a Caesar and they're trying to show him as the ultimate powerful being.
SPEAKER_00: Thumbs up, thumbs down, the power of life and death in the hands of Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: Uh number seven, he ascends the steps of the temple with the high priest on his right and the uh commander of the military on his left.
SPEAKER_00: So I say high priest, the Roman Empire had 24 sanctioned religions that were legal.
SPEAKER_00: Everything else was illegal.
SPEAKER_00: So of those 24 sanctioned religions, you had a leader, but then you had a high priest.
SPEAKER_00: So he's standing there, one that's over all 24 sanctioned religions.
SPEAKER_00: So I have the gods and the religion on my right hand, and on my left hand, I have the commander of my military and all the war daddies that are behind him.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine this: you're at the top of Zeus's temple, you're in the highest hill, you're standing up there with the gods in this hand and the military in this hand.
SPEAKER_00: This is like the most majestic thing they could come up with.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's he's standing up there, and then eight, these Caesar is declared Lord and God, as everyone sings his praises.
SPEAKER_00: Hail Caesar, Lord and God, hail Caesar, Lord and God.
SPEAKER_00: And then step nine, the final step is everyone waits for a sign from the heavens.
SPEAKER_00: History records that Nero, when he was coronated, uh there was an eclipse on that same day, which was probably uh intentional on their part.
SPEAKER_00: As astronomers probably communicated that with them, hey, we can do this, and this will be the climactic moment where everybody goes, Look, man, Zeus has stamped this guy.
SPEAKER_00: All right, Zeus did this as a statement from the heavens that this is our guy.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the process of coronating a Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Thomas Schmidt uh, when I read this from him, it just blew my mind.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, okay, look at this now.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go Mark chapter 15.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have your Bible, it'll be on the side screens.
SPEAKER_00: Mark 15, we're gonna go chapter verse 16 through 33 straight through.
SPEAKER_00: We're not look, we're not gonna get cute with the text.
SPEAKER_00: We're just going to read what Mark wrote, and we're going to read it and just run right down this list.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Uh step one, the Praetorian guard gathers.
SPEAKER_00: Mark 15, 16.
SPEAKER_00: The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace, that is, the Praetorium, and called together the whole company of soldiers.
SPEAKER_00: Step two, the emperor is dressed in royal robes, a wreath as a crown, and a scepter.
SPEAKER_00: Mark 15, 17.
SPEAKER_00: They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him, and they began to call out to him, Hail, King of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him.
SPEAKER_00: Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him.
SPEAKER_00: So very clearly, what's going on here is they're doing a mock coronation.
SPEAKER_00: What is Jesus guilty of?
SPEAKER_00: What is he being accused of?
SPEAKER_00: What are the charges?
SPEAKER_00: Well, to the Sanhedrin or the Jewish religious leaders, he was charged with uh blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: That he's claiming to be the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: But they knew that Rome didn't care about that.
SPEAKER_00: What's going to get Rome uh fired up is sedition.
SPEAKER_00: So he's claimed to be the king of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: And so that claim, uh the idea of sedition or that you're you're organizing a rebellion or a riot was ultimately the charges that they brought against him.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're going, okay, you're king of the Jews, we're going to coronate you.
SPEAKER_00: And we're so what we're going to do is torture you on every level.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to mock you publicly.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of our greatest fears is that we would be shamed or mocked or be embarrassed in front of the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to do that, and then we're going to physically torture you, and we're going to create a spectacle.
SPEAKER_00: So, with all your following, if anybody decides to pick up your baton and run with it, they're going to have to know that this will also happen to them.
SPEAKER_00: So the whole thing is designed as a mock coronation.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, step three, they the the new Caesar is led through a processional.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what for Caesar was a grand parade, for Jesus was a death march.
SPEAKER_00: It says in verse 20, when they uh when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put on clothes on him.
SPEAKER_00: Uh then they led him out to crucify him.
SPEAKER_00: Step four, Caesar carries an instrument of death followed by a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21 a certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.
SPEAKER_00: So uh like Caesar carries a sword and has a sacrifice behind him, Jesus is carrying the instrument of death, which is the cross, and he himself is a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And so you see that now because his body is giving out, Simon now is carrying the instrument of death, and Jesus is following behind like a lamb to the slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: He's like like he is the sacrifice following the instrument of death.
SPEAKER_00: Um Step five, they arrive at Capitoline Hill.
SPEAKER_00: Mark 15, 22 says they brought Jesus to the place called Galgatha, which means the place of the skull or head hill, and they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it.
SPEAKER_00: Step six, the sacrifice is killed.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24, they crucified him.
SPEAKER_00: Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get.
SPEAKER_00: It was nine in the morning when they crucified him.
SPEAKER_00: The written notice of the charge against him read, The King of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Step seven, he ascends the steps of the temple of the high priest on his right, and the military commander on his left.
SPEAKER_00: Mark 15, 27, they crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left.
SPEAKER_00: And then step eight, Caesar is acclaimed Lord and God as everyone sings his praises.
SPEAKER_00: Look what happens to Jesus, verse 29.
SPEAKER_00: Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, So, you're going to destroy the temple and build it in three days.
SPEAKER_00: Hmm, come down from the cross and save yourself.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves.
SPEAKER_00: He saved others, they said, but he can't save himself.
SPEAKER_00: Let this Messiah, the king of Israel, come down from the cross that we may see and believe.
SPEAKER_00: Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
SPEAKER_00: And then the last step, step nine, everyone waits for a sign from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And Mark 15, 33 says, at noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much going on beneath the surface.
SPEAKER_00: If you and I had been there, and I don't know, there's something about what we just did, I kind of feel it.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I can see it.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine being there, and everything to the naked eye is just open and shut proof that the kingdom of God is weak, that Jesus has been defeated, that he's been mocked, it's it would discourage you to follow.
SPEAKER_00: It would ultimately say, hey, it was a good run, but I guess it ends here.
SPEAKER_00: We know everybody was believing that because they all went in, even his own loyal, most loyal followers went into hiding because they said sometimes you just got to admit defeat.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is, if you look beneath the surface, what you see are a few things.
SPEAKER_00: The first is you see the power of fear in action.
SPEAKER_00: What looked like this violent act, what looked like this flex of power by the Romans was really, if you could see beneath the surface, was just a bunch of scared leaders.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've lived enough life at this point to know that not everybody who's puffing up is actually confident.
SPEAKER_00: I think we've learned enough in this life to know that not everybody who flexes and everybody who talks about how much money they have, and not everybody who name drops, and not not everybody who's violent, and not everybody who powers up is as confident as they seem.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, what often looks like great power on the surface, if you could see underneath it, you would just see fear.
unknown: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: There's fear.
SPEAKER_00: And that fear provokes a need for power, a grasping for power, a need for control.
SPEAKER_00: And so that that's what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: In both the coronation of Caesar, this need to show power on this level, the power of life and death, a Caesar that's in need of nothing, that's declared to be deity, a imperial cult.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, all of that was masking a fear that some other nation, some other group's gonna come in and take what we have and we're gonna lose it.
SPEAKER_00: And so they they had to try to show off.
SPEAKER_00: And what you'd also see, if you could see beneath the surface, is that the person who looked the weakest, the most defeated, was actually the one who possessed the most power.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus could have flattened that place.
SPEAKER_00: He could have called down angels from heaven, he could have, he could have called on his own people to fight, but he went in the ultimate act of submission to God's will, he went as a lamb to the slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: So, what do we need to know?
SPEAKER_00: There's something we need to know, there's something we need to question, there's something we need to feel.
SPEAKER_00: What do we need to know?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what we need to know is that the mock coronation that was designed to shame Jesus actually instead revealed his true character as a sacrificial king.
SPEAKER_00: The newsflash, Easter newsflash, the mock coronation failed miserably.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: They intended to do this to prove that Jesus was weak.
SPEAKER_00: They intended to do this to shame him, but what it actually did was it revealed his true nature and his character as sacrificial love and sacrificial king.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus did that really in two ways.
SPEAKER_00: The first way is that uh at the cross, Jesus exposes the power of fear.
SPEAKER_00: He exposes it.
SPEAKER_00: It says in uh Colossians 2.15, having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so how does Jesus expose uh the the power of fear and the love of power?
SPEAKER_00: He does it on the cross by the fact that when you look at that picture, you should see this.
SPEAKER_00: The most innocent person to ever live.
SPEAKER_00: The only sinless one.
SPEAKER_00: No one that's ever, no one else that I to my knowledge, nobody that's ever lived, uh has lived without sin.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know you had a good month.
SPEAKER_00: But none of us would claim to be sinless, right?
SPEAKER_00: But but you look at Jesus, the ultimate sinless.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't do any of the stuff they said that he did.
SPEAKER_00: What did he do in his life but show up uh and seek and save that which was lost?
SPEAKER_00: To show up to heal people on every level, to help people understand who God really is.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have in this picture, it's as vivid as it can be, the most innocent, innocent, sinless person being tortured, shamed, ridiculed, and executed in that way, in the worst possible way.
SPEAKER_00: The best possible person being treated in the worst possible way.
SPEAKER_00: And in so doing, he exposes by letting it happen to him, he's exposing the power of fear.
SPEAKER_00: That if you're driven by the power of fear that turns into a lust for power, you are capable of doing tremendous injustice to an innocent person who simply arouses your fear or threatens your power.
SPEAKER_00: If my life is motivated and driven by the power of fear, my fear is driving me, and it's causing me to reach for control and to thirst for power, then it will anybody that threatens that, and anybody that arouses that is dead meat.
SPEAKER_00: And so he shows it publicly.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing he does after exposing the power of fear is he establishes the power of love.
SPEAKER_00: That the whole act of the cross was a demonstration of his love.
SPEAKER_00: That he came to earth in human form.
SPEAKER_00: He died for us.
SPEAKER_00: He died as us on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so he exposes fear.
SPEAKER_00: We got to know this.
SPEAKER_00: We have to know that the mock coronation failed miserably.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't shame Jesus at all.
SPEAKER_00: It revealed his character.
SPEAKER_00: And it exposed the power of fear and it established the power of love.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what do we need to question?
SPEAKER_00: We know what we need to know.
SPEAKER_00: What do we need to question?
SPEAKER_00: What we need to question is what I think Mark is trying to get us to question.
SPEAKER_00: And it's who is your king?
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: Through connecting the crucifixion to the coronation, and the way that he draws it out, he's putting two kings in front of you and asking you to really search, to really dig deep.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what's kind of a little historical nuance.
SPEAKER_00: So you have Jesus crucified in A.D.
SPEAKER_00: 33.
SPEAKER_00: You have Nero, okay, uh coronated in A.D.
SPEAKER_00: 54.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So Mark writes the book of Mark either during the reign of Nero or shortly after.
SPEAKER_00: So the dating of the book is somewhere in the 50s to late 60s, is maybe as late, some have it as late as 70.
SPEAKER_00: So Nero ruled from 54 to 68.
SPEAKER_00: So when you, if we're really wanting to get in the head in the seat of the audience that Mark is writing to, these Roman Christians, he's writing and he's putting up, he's putting up two leaders.
SPEAKER_00: He's putting up Nero in a sense, and he's putting up Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But Nero is more than just Nero, it's it's it's it's a mindset.
SPEAKER_00: It's a type, it's it's it's a type of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And he puts these two kings in front of you, and of course, in their world, the most powerful person was Nero.
SPEAKER_00: That's the one you're afraid of.
SPEAKER_00: He he rules with fear and he provokes fear.
SPEAKER_00: He has the power of life and death.
SPEAKER_00: And so what he's doing, Mark is putting these two leaders and he's saying, Who is your king?
SPEAKER_00: And the reason this is important is more than just do you have the right theological answer?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not about getting the right answer, it's about what's the real answer.
SPEAKER_00: Like, like if I gave you a Christian Jesus test, true and false or multiple choice, you'd probably ace it because you'd be like Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is Jesus, and you get a hundred.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: The question isn't, can you answer the question correctly?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is what's the real answer?
SPEAKER_00: Because who your king is will not will determine how you show up and how you behave.
SPEAKER_00: In in the Roman uh empire, they called Caesar the poter familias, the father of the family.
SPEAKER_00: And so the way that Caesar showed up as a leader is how they showed up as parents, is how they showed up in their businesses, it's how they showed up as citizens.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is an important question.
SPEAKER_00: Uh in the book of Philippians, chapter 2, uh, the apostle Paul is is giving us application of the cross, application of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He says, in your relationships with one another, notice this.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, here's how what Jesus did on the cross by exposing the power of fear and establishing the power of love, he said, here's how this should play out in your life.
SPEAKER_00: He says, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in the very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in the appearance as a man.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to them, this would have been, it would have been emotionally evocative because they would have been reading this, comparing Jesus, who is the ultimate authority, the ultimate empowered king, who came down to the level of a servant, compared to their model of Caesar as emperor, who would never do anything that would appear to be a servant, would never do anything that would bring himself down.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's going, he's he's going, Who is your king?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Being founded, he humbled himself, uh becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that's above every name.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so we know what we need to know, which is that the mock coronation backfired, it failed tremendously, it glorified Jesus, and he exposed the power of fear, and he established the power of love.
SPEAKER_00: We know we need a question, we need to be honest and go, who is my king?
SPEAKER_00: Probably the best diagnostic for that is to be honest enough to pray and to trust God and ask him to reveal to you are you being driven in this life by your fear or by your love?
SPEAKER_00: Are you being driven by your fear?
SPEAKER_00: If you're being motivated, driven by the power of fear that's causing you to become a more of a control freak than you've ever been, grabbing for more control because I wake up afraid and I'm and I'm driven by my fear, then you are falling into Caesar's mentality.
SPEAKER_00: But when I'm ultimately Jesus is my king, I operate by agape love.
SPEAKER_00: I operate with the power of love.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the question we're supposed to wrestle with.
SPEAKER_00: The third is what are we supposed to feel?
SPEAKER_00: Um I heard a story recently by a theologian by the name of Greg Boyd, and it was just an incredible story.
SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he was talking about some friends of his who they run a foster home.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that they approach every kid is they believe that every kid that shows up, they they believe these are good, good kids who have been through some bad things.
SPEAKER_00: And because they've been through some bad things, they probably they picked up some bad habits and they have some dysfunctional behaviors, but they believe that the kids are good, they've just been they've been through some bad, but they also believe that the love of Jesus, the power of the love of Jesus, can heal anything.
SPEAKER_00: And it's our job to demonstrate that and to give them that.
SPEAKER_00: And so they have this little girl who shows up in their foster home, she's 10 years old.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they go to wake her up for school their first day, and when they walk into the room, the the smell is overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: She said the worst terrible smell, and they realize that she has smeared feces on the wall.
SPEAKER_00: And so they wake her up and they're like, hey, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: You know, what what why did you do that?
SPEAKER_00: And she shuts down.
SPEAKER_00: She won't tell them.
SPEAKER_00: And so they say, Well, listen, um we we think you're actually a great girl, and we love you, and then we know you just got here and you don't believe that yet, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: And we realize you don't want to tell us, but we believe that there's got to be a good reason that you did this.
SPEAKER_00: And um, whenever you're ready to tell us, we'd love to talk to you about it.
SPEAKER_00: But until then, we're gonna clean this up, all right?
SPEAKER_00: And and because we can't have this bacteria affecting you, you can get sick from this, so we're gonna clean it up.
SPEAKER_00: So they come the next day and she'd done the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And so they said, Okay, uh, we see this is now a habit that you have.
SPEAKER_00: And so they said, Tell you what, um, if you're you're still not ready to talk about it, uh, we're gonna be cleaning this up every day.
SPEAKER_00: So it would be nice.
SPEAKER_00: Would you just smear it right here?
SPEAKER_00: Like in this spot, okay, just contain it like to this spot because we are gonna clean it every single day.
SPEAKER_00: We will not let this get on you.
SPEAKER_00: And so they do this over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: And over time, they earned her trust.
SPEAKER_00: Over time, she believed that they loved her.
SPEAKER_00: And so she said, You know, I'm ready to tell you what why I do this.
SPEAKER_00: I said, What's up?
SPEAKER_00: She said, Well, when I was eight, my father was molesting me.
SPEAKER_00: And when he did that, I was overwhelmed, and I just, you know, emptied my bowels, I defecated.
SPEAKER_00: And when I did that, he freaked out, he got angry and he ran out of the room.
SPEAKER_00: He was disgusted.
SPEAKER_00: And she thought, okay, next time he did that, she did the same thing, and he did the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And so then she thought, you know what, maybe if I just start smearing on the wall, as soon as he said, he won't even come in.
SPEAKER_00: And it was her way of keeping him off of her.
SPEAKER_00: So, what to you and I, and to these people running this home, is the most disgusting, detestable smell to this young girl was the smell of safety, the smell of security.
SPEAKER_00: And so when she told them that, they said, That is so smart.
SPEAKER_00: That is so smart.
SPEAKER_00: We knew you were smart, we didn't know you were this smart.
SPEAKER_00: You proved us right.
SPEAKER_00: We knew you were good, we knew it made sense.
SPEAKER_00: And so, now listen, we're gonna keep cleaning this up, but you gotta understand, nobody's gonna do that to you here.
SPEAKER_00: You're safe here, you're loved here.
SPEAKER_00: We're not we're not doing that here.
SPEAKER_00: So, whenever you're ready to stop doing that, you can.
SPEAKER_00: And she didn't stop right away, she kept doing it for a little while.
SPEAKER_00: But there came a day where they cleaned up that particular mess on that particular wall for the last time.
SPEAKER_00: When I heard that story, I thought that might be one of the greatest demonstrations of the power of love overcoming the power of fear.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 4.18, perfect love casts out fear.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 4.19, he loved us first.
SPEAKER_00: When I heard that story, number one, I felt two things.
SPEAKER_00: I thought about putting myself the best I could in that girl's shoes.
SPEAKER_00: I thought, man, imagine being 10 and it's you against the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's you against the world.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody's safe.
SPEAKER_00: No place is safe.
SPEAKER_00: You test every environment, you'll do anything, even if it's to isolate yourself, but in that isolation, that fear, you're totally lonely.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know that.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have walked through maybe what we just talked about, or maybe a different version, but you know loneliness.
SPEAKER_00: You know me against the world, you know that.
SPEAKER_00: You've been there.
SPEAKER_00: And for this girl to come to a place where she for the first time felt the love that she's supposed to feel.
SPEAKER_00: So I felt great about that.
SPEAKER_00: But then I felt personally convicted because I thought, what would I have done?
SPEAKER_00: Would I have been that patient?
SPEAKER_00: Because you can think of a different approach.
SPEAKER_00: A different approach would be to go in to smell that thing, to see that thing, and to look at that girl and say, that's disgusting.
SPEAKER_00: It'll never happen again.
SPEAKER_00: It stops today.
SPEAKER_00: And frankly, it's probably the fastest way to get a behavioral change.
SPEAKER_00: You see, both the power of fear and the power of love, both of them can change behavior.
SPEAKER_00: But only one of them can heal a broken heart.
SPEAKER_00: One of them tends to be faster than the other, but the other will change and transform your whole life around love.
SPEAKER_00: Greater love has no one than this that he laid down his life for his friend, but it's even better than that.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 5 8, God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were sinners, while we were smearing, while we were broken, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_00: So, what do we need to know?
SPEAKER_00: We need to know that what was intended to shame Jesus actually revealed the best part of who he is, this true character in his nature, he's a sacrificial, loving king.
SPEAKER_00: What do we need to question?
SPEAKER_00: We need to question who our king is.
SPEAKER_00: Are we driven by fear or are we driven by the power of love?
SPEAKER_00: And what we need to feel today, when we look at the cross, is to feel the most vivid, powerful demonstration of love.
SPEAKER_00: You should feel love today.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you should see when you see the cross.
SPEAKER_00: For that girl, it took continuous acts of goodness to her to prove love.
SPEAKER_00: And for us today, as we sing about the cross, when we think about the cross, when we imagine the cross, we think about what Jesus did not only in AD 33, but what he's still doing today.
SPEAKER_00: And that demonstration on the cross is the ultimate act of love.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what you should feel.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the mighty cross.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for your wonderful grace and your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you, God, that what was observed by the naked eye, what appeared to be defeat and weakness, was actually you in your greatness.
SPEAKER_00: And so today, Lord, as we take a moment to sing together and to lift up your name and to remember what you did, may we remember and consider what you still do.
SPEAKER_00: May we see, Lord, an unmistakable vision of unconditional love in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody said amen.