Why Jesus Had to Die

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

As most of you know, I am a bit different. My family will whole-heartedly agree with that statement.

We have been known to do odd things for entertainment. Once, while living in Atlanta, we drove to Birmingham, AL for a hamburger. We have been known to drive to Cool Springs Park on Route 50 just to see if the cow is still on the roof. And last winter, we made the decision to go tubing with the youth group five minutes before we left. I know it doesn’t make sense, but that’s who we are. We don’t often make sense. But we have fun and learn a lot.

And so, when I look at scripture, I often look for the odd parts of the scripture – the parts that don’t make sense if you take just a moment. Like, for example, the transition in our Gospel reading today.

The time of the reading is early in the last week before the Crucifixion. Jesus has entered into town to a joyful celebration and begins to head to the Temple. The town is filled with Jews who are in town for the week-long Passover festival, one of the most important holidays of the Jewish calendar.

Suddenly, some Greeks who were in town to worship start talking to Phillip. Now, we have to understand that this was highly unusual. There weren’t many Greeks who worshipped at the Jewish temple – Greeks were well known to have their own gods and goddesses. It would be like one of you stopping at the 7/11 on the way to church, and a busload of Chinese tourists asking you if they can come to your church and worship with you – and it turns out that they are all Christians! How unusual would that be here in central West Virginia?

Well, Phillip is a good Greek name, so Phillip probably understood Greek, and so he brings the tourists to Andrew, and the two of them decide together to bring these Greeks to Jesus. So far, so good. But then Jesus does one of those things which is completely in character, but is very odd for anyone else.

You know, most people would meet with the Greeks and you’d expect to see some back and forth between Jesus and the Greeks. But that doesn’t happen in this case. Instead, Jesus suddenly goes into a riff about His upcoming death!

23 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

27 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

30 Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.32 And I, when I am lifted up[g] from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.
But why did Jesus have to die?

If you think about it, if Jesus chose to remain, He could still be sitting in Jerusalem, ruling the world with a division of 50,000 angels as well as His divine powers. Why did Jesus have to die and go through the whole death and Resurrection thing?

Jesus’ words here help us to understand why He didn’t take the easy way out and blast His opponents, setting Himself up as undisputed ruler of the world in that day and time.

24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

The first point is that the mere presence of Jesus alive was now a barrier to the spreading of His Words. Let me explain what I mean.

When Saundra and I attended Cornerstone Bible Church in Lilburn, GA, the senior teaching pastor was Dr Doug McIntosh. Doug was – and is – a great teacher. Doug’s sermons have depth and wisdom. They are the sort of sermons that you can listen to week-after-week and always learn something new and transformative in your life. You grew in Christ and wanted to serve the Lord. And so the church prospered, and many missionaries and ministers came from that church. But some people never left the church. They even drove an hour to come back to the church after they moved because of Dr Doug.

Now, if a mere man can be so attractive and addictive in his teaching – I’d like you to imagine walking with Jesus Christ. If Jesus had not left, his disciples would be clustered around Him today, hanging on His every word. There would not be Christian communities in every part of the world. Instead, there would be just one Christian community – within earshot of Jesus Himself.

You see, when Jesus died, just like a kernel of wheat planted, there grew up a plant with many seeds known as disciples. Then many of those disciples also planted communities where they traveled and new groups of disciples sprung up. Christianity spread faster than dandelions across the globe. But it would not have spread if Jesus had not died.

Jesus said: 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Was He talking to us or to Himself? It doesn’t matter, for He also said, “26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.”

If we fall in love with this life, it is a sure ticket to death, for it we fall in love with this life, we are not in love with God, but with a created thing. We are to love the Creator, not the created things. However, if we deeply desire the Creator, then we will grow to hate the created things because they are nothing when compared to the beauty of the Creator. Only the perfection, the intricacy, the delicate details of the Creator will, in the long run satisfy us. Eventually, if we desire the Creator, we will be sick of the things of this world as an eight-year-old who has worked his first day in a candy shop with permission to sample anything in the shop.

My wife is a great cook, and has learned the places on the Internet to find recipes and techniques which allow her to make almost anything. It really has spoiled me, for she adapts the recipes to our family’s tastes, and so it means that restaurant food doesn’t taste nearly as good as it once did when I was a single engineer living in Johnson City, TN.

As we study God and see the things God does, the beauty of God and God’s actions make even God’s creations on this earth look poorly done as the effects of the Fall work on everything. Yes, I can see how loving God will lead to hating the world.

After asking God to glorify His Name – and God responding, Jesus continues:

31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.

It appears that Jesus’ death was directly involved in driving out “the prince of this world, “ who we know by the name of Satan. From the time of Adam, Satan has ruled the earth. From the time of Eve, people have listened and believed Satan’s lies. From the time of the Fall, God has allowed Satan to rule the world as God planned God’s conquest.

God, at any time, could have directly assaulted the earth with an angel army and directly defeated Satan. But, as we know, war means suffering and death. Those are the food of Satan, they are the meat and bread that he eats, those are the very things that Satan loves.

When we attack our enemies through direct action, we have bought into certain lies that Satan has spread.

First, we believe that we can obtain a victory. Yet anyone who has killed another person, or injured them, even by accident, knows the damage that happens to your soul. Those men who came back from the first World War were damaged by the constant fear of death as the shells exploded over their trenches night-after-night. But those who came back from more recent wars were damaged as much or more by their visions of killing men and women, sometimes children, who were shooting at them. They were placed in a position of “kill or be killed” and had to make a decision. But it was a no win decision, and Satan knew that before he set up the situation. He manipulated those men and women into a situation where they would be damaged, no matter what they did. And now, we pick up the pieces by helping men and women recognize that God will forgive them, for they had no good choice.

The same happens to those who injure others in accidents – or even injure animals. About ten years ago, we had a cute little dog named Betty who liked to chase mice and voles in the fields around our home. Unfortunately, Betty chase a vole out into the highway and a woman hit Betty with her car. The woman was completely devastated, for she had terrible difficulty forgiving herself.

So God would not assault the earth through direct action and bring the planet and the people to loyalty through war, for that would harm his loyal followers as well as those God’s army defeated. Besides, God gave us free will and considers that free will to be more important for us than all the damage caused by wars and famines and torture throughout all the ages. And so, God decided upon a much more subtle plan.

God decided first to teach us what was right and what was wrong. God gave Moses the Law, a list of the Ten Commandments and over 600 detailed commands about what was right – and what was wrong. Part of it was to remind us of God’s character and power. Part of it was to show us how to live with each other. And over the centuries some people did a pretty good job of following the Law and others did a pretty poor job of following the Law. But the Law was only given to the descendents of Jacob – the House of Israel.

The Law led us to know what was right – and what was wrong. And we found that none of us could follow the law perfectly. In fact, by the time Jesus arrived, we’d gotten pretty good at living to the letter of the Law, mainly by re-interpreting the Law to mean whatever was convenient for us. Just like anyone, a ruler should not steal? Call it a tax, then. Someone brings his best lamb for sacrifice and you want to make some money as a priest? Insist that the lamb is not good enough and require him to buy a different lamb from your brother-in-law. Like to spend time with the ladies? Insist that adultery is only something that happens when a married woman spends time with a married man – if a married man spends time with an unmarried woman, say it isn’t adultery. These things happened!

So God then sent Jesus to planet earth, to teach a better way, to move people beyond the letter of the Law into the basic concepts that we are to love God and love each other, and do those things which accomplish those intents. And while He was telling us this, Jesus showed us this also by spending the bulk of His ministry with the people who were not loved, the people who were different, the people who were too poor to pay for friendship.

And then…gently at first, and then louder and louder… Jesus claimed to be God.

And people were forced to make a decision. Was Jesus God or not?

Many decided that He could not be God and stopped following Jesus from that point. The crowds were still large, but they weren’t continually growing. Many people could not grasp the idea that God was walking with them. But the core disciples – and in particular, about a 120 other men and women – decided to stick with Him. They believed.

But then, Jesus announced He had to die.

It had been predicted in the scriptures, it was scattered all through the Psalms and Isaiah and Jeremiah. Psalm 53 was particularly clear about it – join us on Good Friday and we’ll read it.

Yes, it was all over scripture that the Messiah, the Savior, the Christ had to die. But why?

In the Law, there were many sacrifices established as penalties for breaking the Law. For this crime against God’s Law, you sacrificed a pair of doves. For that crime against God’s Law, you sacrificed a quart of flour. For another crime, you sacrificed a sheep or a goat, and for another crime, you sacrificed a perfect young bull. In a time of farmers and herders, when cash money was rare and not found in the household of the average person, these sacrifices of valuable food and livestock were truly sacrifices that meant something.

And then, once a year, the high priest of Israel on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement at the harvest festival – on that day the high priest of Israel would take the best bull that the priests could find, the most valuable creature in the land, and the high priest would kill the bull and catch his blood in a special basin. Then, fully purified, his prayers said – and his last will and testament written – the high priest would walk into the Holy Sanctuary where the other priests would tie a rope around his leg, and then the high priest would walk into the innermost Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant sat in its gleaning splendor holding the tablets upon which was the Law itself, the tablets that Moses brought back from the mountain, the rod of Aaron, some manna, and there on the top of the Ark was the Mercy Seat where the presence of God was, and there on that special spot, the high priest, trembling in fear lest he had done anything wrong, the high priest would pour the precious blood of that precious bull as an offering to God so that God would forgive all the other crimes that the people of Israel had committed against God over the last year and had not sacrificed for. The bull covered everything that was left. It was a propitiation, a special sacrifice to please God.

And then, if he was still alive, the high priest left the Holy of Holies, and did not return for another year. The rope around his leg, you see, was in case he made a mistake and was stricken dead by God. But if he left safely, all was right between the people of Israel, and God.

And this was the situation when Jesus came to town that week, and the Greeks came to Phillip and then to Andrew.

But Jesus and God understood two additional things.

First, they understood that in about 40 years, the Temple would be destroyed by the Romans. The sacrifices would stop, the Atonement could not be made, the bull could not pay for the sins of the people of Israel thereafter. Something new had to be arranged.

Second, they understood that there were many people in the world who were not of the House of Israel. There were many people who were not Jews in the world, and the Law had been given just to the Jews. How should all the non-Jewish people of the world be right with God? How should people like the Greeks, like you and like me pay for our sins. If we could not sacrifice at the Temple, what possible way could we get right with God?

And so, long before time existed, it was decided that there should be a Christ that walked upon the earth, and it was decided that that Christ should suffer and die, and it was decided that the Christ – who was the Word of God and was God – should replace the bull as the grand atoning sacrifice of all time.

You see, the value of the Son of God is far more than the value of all the animals upon the earth, far more than the value of all the jewels and gold and silver in the earth, and even more than the value of the earth itself. And thus, the sacrifice of the Son of God was the only thing valuable enough to pay for all the crimes against God that all the people of the world have committed or will commit. This is what we mean by “Jesus paid the price”.

Imagine, if you will, that one day you discover that the Highway patrol has been working with the NSA, and has satellite data that shows all the times you’ve traveled over the speed limit, and sends you a bill which itemizes each time you passed the speed limit, going back to the day you got your driver’s license and adding penalty and interest. How many of us could pay the bill?

Furthermore, imagine that hidden cameras and hidden microphones have tracked every single time you muttered under your breath a threat such as “I’m going to kill that child!” or said something like, “I wish I had that car”, and you received in the mail a sentence for threatening others, for contemplating theft, and for any other crime you’ve merely thought about committing, no matter how small or petty, or how jokingly you meant the comment, even the time when you were angry at your bully neighbor when you were 5 years old and told your mother, “I want him to die”. How many years would you need to spend in prison?

Since God is the perfect policeman, and has all the evidence, there is no dancing around – God knows all about you. You are in big trouble, and you cannot pay the bill, you cannot do the time for all the crime you’ve committed in your mind.

Jesus had to pay the bill for you, Jesus had to do the time, and Jesus had to pay for your mental murders – and mine, too.

But God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit love you, so Jesus chose to die. And when He died upon that cross, the penalties for all the crimes against God and others were paid for, once and for all. That bill for all those speeding tickets? Paid in full. That list of back-to-back sentences without parole? Paroled and expunged from you record. Everything you’ve been accused of? Charges dropped. Debt paid. All is forgiven. Remember our first reading from Jeremiah? “Declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

And all you have to do is say and believe, “Thank you, Jesus! I believe that You were capable of paying the price.”

That is why Jesus had to die. A sacrifice was needed and we were each bankrupt, so Jesus stepped in and paid our fines.

Finally, though, let’s talk about what set Him off – the arrival of the Greeks. I suppose the best way to illustrate this is to go back to that busload of Chinese Christian tourists. Remember them? When you met them at the 7/11 this morning, they didn’t just ask to be taken to your church – they said they were looking for Quiet Dell Church because they had heard of it and wanted to learn how we did church that was so much better than the other churches. You’d be thinking – our fame has spread even to China? Well, maybe someday….

When those Greeks arrived, they were notable because they were not Jews. Everyone else who came to speak with Jesus was a local – a Pharisee, a temple priest, the local people, even the Roman guards. But now, people from out-of-town – even out of the country – were asking to talk to Jesus.

Jesus knew, you see, that His mission wasn’t just to the Jews. Although He personally was to speak, as He said, “to the lost sheep of Israel”, His disciples were to carry His Words and connect Him to the rest of the world. So Jesus understood that the time had come at last for Him to be lifted up just like that bronze snake that Moses made in the wilderness so all could be healed, that the time had come for the Son of God to suffer and die, the time had come for the prophecies to be fulfilled as Jesus became high “priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” (Melchizedek was the high priest of God in Salem - the town that later became Jerusalem - at the time of Abraham, far before Moses brought down the Law and the Levitical and Aaronic priesthood was established. See Genesis 14.)

Jesus then turned His face toward the cross. Not willingly – but obediently. For there was no other way.

On that Good Friday outside of Jerusalem, Jesus truly became the Christ, the Savior, the Messiah, the High Priest forever of God, and the ultimate atoning sacrifice as the Son of God was killed like a sacrificial lamb for the sins which we have each committed. It was the only way for God to bring us back to God, for in any other way, God’s wonderful integrity, God’s wonderful goodness, God’s perfect holiness would have been violated. And so, like a lamb to the slaughter, Jesus went.

And when His life-giving blood left Him, Death died. Now, we just wait around for everyone to get the news. The game is won – the ball is held, the clock is running out. Jesus won, for He said that those who believe in Him will have eternal life, and we know that this is true because before the weekend was over, Jesus – the One who had been sacrificed – was walking around, strolling several miles, eating fish, talking and teaching again to His friends, and His body was alive again.

Death was dead – a mere annoyance to those who believe, less of a problem than a kidney stone, a tale to frighten naughty children, but nothing for mature, believing adults to be worried about. “O Death, where is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?”

Today, we give thanks to Jesus. Today, we give thanks to God. Today, we come to the altar and say, “Thanks be to God for all He has done for me”. Feel free to come forward and kneel or stand at the altar rail to tell God what His Son has done for you. Show your gratitude. Perhaps you need to ask something of God – come forward and ask it. Perhaps you have a friend or relative who needs to hear about God’s Son. Come forward and pray for your friend or neighbor. Come to the altar, look upon the Son of God, and be healed.

Why People Won’t Believe

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

As we go through our daily lives, we encounter many people. Some of those people we encounter are like the Irishman I met in Rome, Italy. He was a butcher and was from Dublin. He was in the hotel bar – I’d stopped in to get an orange juice, for I was feeling a cold or flu coming on, and Barry the Irish Butcher was there, and he was NOT drinking orange juice. When he found out I was a minister, his question for me was “Do you believe in Him!” pointing to the crucifix around his neck. It was clear that Barry believed, and he wanted to be certain that I believed also.

Then again, we meet other people in our lives. There was a woman Saundra and I knew when we lived in one place, who had some faith and went to church a couple of times a year. A few years later, Saundra got a call from her. It seems that she had gotten pregnant when she was in college and had an abortion. Now, fifteen years later, she was pregnant with the husband she loved, and the impact of what she had done so many years earlier came back to her. She called Saundra, because she could not bear the guilt of what she had done, and she knew that Saundra could advise her on what to do, so she came and visited us for a week while Saundra walked her through how faith in God includes understanding that God will forgive any sin if you are truly repentant – and our friend was truly repentant. She left with a renewed and stronger commitment to her life – and to God.

And then you meet the people who will not believe, like the man I once worked with who beat testicular cancer himself – his words, not mine. He considered a belief in God to be a sign of weakness – and a restriction upon his wild life-style, which consisted of finding a new woman each night we were on the road, spending the night with her, and using all sorts of chemicals to feel good. After six months on the job, I took over his job when he was fired, and years later I heard that his cancer had come back with a vengeance.

Why won’t some people believe in the God of heaven and His Son Jesus Christ? This is what is important. But we often ask the wrong question – we phrase it this way: Why won’t some people come to church?

You see, the reason people won’t come to church is because they are not Christians. It is as simple as that. They don’t come to church because they are not Christians. They do not believe in Jesus the Christ. They do not believe that Jesus is truly God’s Son, part of God in a complex way.

Now saying that these people are not Christians can be offensive to some people, and I realize this. And there are a few people out there who are truly Christians and won’t come to church. But 95% of the time, the root reason people don’t come to church is because they are not Christians. That may be offensive, but there are times when it is important to tell the difference between dogs and cats, and this is one of those times. It is IMPORTANT! For you see, John wrote that Jesus said, talking about Himself: (John 3:18) Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

In our world, we have many people who “believe in God”. But that is not Christianity. The belief in God is the mark of being a “Theist”, a believer in the existence of a god. All Christians are theists, but not all theists are Christians. In fact, far less than half of the theists in the world are Christians. There is a serious difference between believing in a vague god, and believing that Jesus Christ is actually God in a complex way. For most people who “believe in God” believe in one of two different gods.

The first is the kindly grandfather god who will give you whatever you need when you pray to him and who will never do anything which would cause you harm. This is the kindly god that rescues you when you are in trouble and might give you presents. Yet, this is the same god who might also punish you for doing bad things. In the mind of the believers, there is this all powerful human figure that is running the show, and who either loves them or picks on them. But this god is not whom Christians worship.

The other extreme is the vague, distant force that is way up there in the heavens, at a distance that never steps into our lives unless we are in desperate circumstances. There is no real personality to this god, and this distant god mostly ignores us. This is the god that we want to keep its distance from us except when we need to turn it into the kindly grandfather god. This is the god we want to stay somewhere up in the sky away from us, and not get too close to us. But this god is not the God of Christianity, either.

In Christianity, we believe explicitly in a three-in-one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three personalities, one substance. And we believe that the Son, who is the Word and Wisdom of God, came to earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a person who was 100% God and 100% human. God walked upon the earth as Jesus Christ. And it is this person that we call the Christ, the Savior, the Messiah. It is this person that experienced hatred and worship, harsh beatings with whips and a gentle anointing with perfume, a death and a Resurrection.

And it is this person, Jesus Christ, who is carefully ignored by most of the people in America who don’t come to church. It is this person who is, at best, considered to be a good man, a good ethical teacher, perhaps even one who speaks on behalf of God - by those who do not know Him.

You can tell if someone is not a Christian by a simple test. Ask the person if they are a Christian. If they answer something like, “I am. I was born again in 1989 – or received Christ in 1995” or responds with an answer that uses the word “Christ” in it or mentions “Jesus” - then you can be pretty sure your friend is a Christian.

However, if you friend responds with “Yes, I believe in God” or something similar and does not mention the words “Christ” or “Jesus”, then you have met a theist who is not a Christian. He or she may claim to be a Christian – but they have missed a key point – the divine nature of Jesus Christ. And if you ask a few more questions, you will see that this is true.

A few years ago, I taught an adult Sunday School class in a large, fast-growing church. I quickly discovered that about half of the people in the class, some of whom had been attending church for decades, believed that Jesus was simply a wise man who taught good moral lessons. They pushed back at me when I taught that Jesus was indeed God in the flesh, as the leaders of Christianity decided almost two thousand years ago. I guess the people in this class hadn't received the memo!

Do you not see, there is no reason to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ over the teachings of Buddha, of Plato, of Aristotle, of Doctor Phil, or your favorite politician if Jesus Christ is simply a wise man? If Jesus was just another wise man, then today I might believe in Jesus and next year follow Buddha. In a decade I’ll listen to the tapes of Depak Chopra, and then the teachings of Oprah Winfrey. God knows that if you only listen to Jesus because you see Him as just another wise teacher, you will not follow Him through eternity, but will instead develop your own philosophy, your own teachings, your own sayings, and become your own god on day.

And, in addition, since Jesus claimed repeatedly to be God, and was executed for the crime of claiming to be God, who should we follow if Jesus is not God? For why should we listen to a nutcase who claimed to be God and wasn’t? So the question becomes….Was Jesus God or not? The answer to this question is core to our salvation, for it is how God decides whether you will be loyal through the ages … or not.

God saw that this question would come up. This is one reason why Jesus had to suffer and die, as predicted in the Old Testament and by Christ Himself before His death. His death paid the sacrifice price for all of our sins; His Resurrection was how God called attention to the words of Christ, confirmed that Jesus was indeed divine, and said to us, as God had said earlier to Peter, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him!”

Yet many people will not believe. As Christian pollster George Barna says, they prefer to believe in a mildly therapeutic theism. It is therapeutic because it makes people feel good to think that there is a god. It is theism because they believe in a god.

Yet, according to John, Jesus said, “ 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. “

Consider, if you will, that the Church shines forth that light of Christ.

In today’s society, most people like to claim that the character of God is a matter of opinion. They like this idea and are comfortable with it, because it actually allows them to define and manage the character of the god they worship. They are completely in control of their god. And when you talk with them, you will find that their god is rather vague and non-specific.

You see, most people who are theists like to keep their god vague, because a vague god doesn’t have any requirements Most people who are theists like to manage their god’s character well, because a managed god is like a child’s doll who only says the things we want to hear.

Most people who are theists like to stay away from church, because the Word of God is read in church and that Word can be uncomfortable and require a change of behavior to accommodate the living God. You see, the living God isn’t tame and can’t be managed. The living God will not be anyone’s doll. The Word of God shines a light on all those evil deeds, and that is very uncomfortable for most people.

The theists who walk around us and claim to be Christians are much like those people who drive around, occasionally looking up at the electric wires overhead, ignoring the power that flows through those wires, the power that can destroy lives and towns. The people are confident that that electricity is completely under control. But those who have worked with 480 volts, with higher voltages than that, understand that electricity is a wild and dangerous thing, barely under control, and is not to be taken lightly. God is the same and even more – God is never under control, and never can safely be ignored.

And so we find that the real reason people don’t come to church is because they aren’t Christians. Those who aren’t Christians don’t believe in the God-nature of Jesus Christ, because it would mean that they would have to change their actions, their beliefs, and their morals to fit in line with a God who actually has the power to lift them up or destroy them, who created the Universe and can destroy cities, who has most definite ideas of what is right – and what is wrong. They ignore God at their peril.

Now, there are a few Christians who stay home because they are ill or infirm. But what of the man or woman who says, “I can worship at home as well as in church – and there aren’t nearly as many hypocrites at home!”

I have truly met a few Christians like this, who stayed at home and read their Bible and did good works to the people around them. But not many. When pressed, most people who say they worship at home will admit that they almost never read their Bible, and instead just got upset at someone in some church who said something to them they didn’t like. They understand that God can be worshipped everywhere, but yet they have given tremendous power to other people to keep them from deeply worshipping God, experiencing God with others, working together with others to channel the powers of God to do good in their community. They are like a single candle burning by itself, sputtering and ready to flicker out, while a strong church body is like a blowtorch of the Spirit, igniting everything around it and cutting through the hardened steel of the world.

“But Pastor, I come to church almost every week! What does this have to do with me?”

John wrote that Jesus said: 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

As Barry the Irish Butcher said: “Do you believe in Him?” Do you believe in the God-nature of God’s son? If you do, you have eternal life. If you don’t you are condemned.

My friends, once in a while it is my duty to call your attention to the friends, neighbors, and family around you and point out that those who do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God are condemned by God. Eternal life hangs in the balance for our friends, our neighbors, and our family.

Around us, every day, there are people who are dying and will spend eternity apart from God. It is the greatest epidemic in the history of the world – more people experiencing death and misery thereafter than any Ebola outbreak, than any swine flu outbreak, than any epidemic of the Black death. People are dying in their separation from God simply because they think that Jesus was just another wise teacher and no one has told them anything differently. Should this get us upset! Yes!

Last week we saw that Jesus flipped over tables and chased people with a whip because they had merely put a barrier to people coming to God. How much more passionate is He about those who never speak of Him to others? Where is your passion for God?

Tell me – how will the people around us find out about the love of Christ unless we tell them? Shall we trust that they will turn on Trinity Broadcasting and listen to TD Jakes in Dallas or Charles Stanley in Atlanta or Joseph Prince from Singapore? Shall we just assume that one night they’ll listen to a Billy Graham re-run?

Or perhaps, just perhaps, we discover that we believe in the truth of the Gospel so much that one evening over dinner in our home, our friend, our neighbor, our family member hears that we believe that Jesus Christ is actually the Son of God, and we tell them five stories that explain “why” from our own life.

You see, people don’t believe in Jesus Christ because no one they trust, no one they respect, no one who loves them has told them the whole story.

And perhaps you don’t know the story very well. Perhaps you don’t understand how things happened. Perhaps you are like the man Andy met recently, who never understood the Bible because he had an old King James Bible and it was hard to read. This man was in prison, was put in solitary confinement, and someone gave him a new, modern translation. He read the Gospels in the new translation and it was so simple, so straight-forward, so easy that he came to Christ in his jail cell and, now released, is moving into ministry to bring others to Christ.

Get yourself a modern translation and read the Gospels, particularly Mark and John. You might find you will then spend the week reading the rest of the New Testament.

And then, you can begin to tell people what you’ve learned to the people who trust you, who respect you, who know you love them. Who are those people? Who do you love who has not yet accepted that Jesus is God Himself, walking upon this earth, and so His words are the very Words of God?

I have sometimes asked this of a person to start the conversation – “Do you know the real difference between Christianity and other religions such as Islam or Buddhism? Neither Mohammed, nor Buddha claimed to be God. But Jesus Christ claimed to be God. Repeatedly. The Gospel of John is very clear about that. Time after time Jesus uses the phrase “I AM”, which was short for “I am that I am”, the name that God gave Moses when God appeared in the burning bush. And the people around Jesus pick up stones to stone Him for claiming to be God. They understood His claim and eventually Jesus was executed for this crime. His Resurrection was God’s proof that Jesus was exactly who He said He was. And so the difference between Christianity and other religions is that Jesus was God speaking on this earth – and so Jesus’ words are the Word of God. If you don’t believe me, read the Gospel of John.”

To paraphrase C.S.Lewis, Jesus was either God or a liar or a nutcase. Don’t give me any of this idea that He was just a wise teacher, for He did not intend to leave us that option. Read the Gospels – particularly the Gospel of John – and decide: Was Jesus a liar, a nutcase, or the Lord of all creation?

And when you decide He is Lord, as Barry the Irish Butcher knew, as our pregnant friend knew, as over a billion other people agree: all will be well with your Soul.

How Faith Works

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:23-31; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38

When I was a young boy, I often watched Westerns on television. Of course, given my age, I had a distorted view of the Westerns, since I was born a few years too late for the golden age of the Westerns on television. My Westerns were Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and those two oddball Westerns – the Wild, Wild West, and F-Troop.

If you’ve ever watched a Western, you know that there were certain stereotypes you could count on – the good guys wore white hats, the bad guys wore black hats, there was a strong leading man who was a great shot, six-shot revolvers held 22 bullets, and the Native American Indians were unpredictable. You also knew that in the last ten minutes of the show or movie, the hero or heroes will get pinned down in a firefight, surrounded by Indians or outlaws, when suddenly you’d hear a bugle sound the charge and the undefeatable United States Cavalry would charge to the rescue.

You could always count on the Cavalry to arrive just when things were getting bad. In fact, you had a tremendous faith in the goodness and the integrity of the young Cavalry commander, who always managed to show up with a company of men on horseback with rifles and carbines blazing. The Cavalry were going to be there – you could count on it. In fact, if the Cavalry did not rescue the good guys, we considered it to be a strange episode. We had such faith in the Cavalry.

And we even see this in more modern movies. At the end of Saving Private Ryan, the tanks show up just in time to rescue the good guys. And much the same thing happens in our crime dramas – twenty uniformed cops show up just in time to rescue the detectives. It is something embedded deep into our consciousness that says this is the way things are supposed to be. A great and powerful force rescues us from our certain death – and we have great faith in that force, whether it be the Cavalry, the tanks, the boys-in-blue – or in God.

Abraham was told by God that he would become the father of a nation. In fact, God changed his name from Abram, which means “exalted father”, to Abraham, which means “father of many”. His wife’s name was changed from Sarai, which means “my princess” – almost a pet name that emphasizes Abraham’s love for Sarai, to Sarah, which means simply “princess” or “noblewoman”, a more substantial title which emphasizes her position in the nation of people descended from her. It is from these two people that both Jews and Arabs claim descent.

God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram[b]; your name will be Abraham,[c] for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.

How joyful! To a man who had no children, this was a wonderful promise. There was only one problem with this picture. Abraham was 99 years old at the time, and Sarah was nearly the same age. And yet, they are to have children?

We look back in time and we know the end of the story. We know that Abraham did have two sons, and from his grandson Jacob came the twelve tribes of Israel, which about 500 years later numbered around 600,000 people.

Yet, Abraham did not know the end of the story. Yet, as Paul says when writing his letter to the Romans, “18 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him…”

It has been said that faith is another word for “relationship”. Abraham had a relationship with God by this time. He trusted God – and he knew that God had the power to do what God promised. So if God said that at the end of Abraham’s life he would have children, then Abraham trusted that he would have children, just as we trusted that the Cavalry would arrive in time to rescue the good guys in those Westerns.

Faith, you see, requires trust. It requires that the One in which we have faith can safely be trusted. And in order to trust someone, we must see in them an integrity where we know that the promises they make are promises they will attempt to fulfill. In other words, the One in which we have faith must have a deep integrity, demonstrated to us over time.

God has that integrity. We see that integrity in many different ways. First, we see that our Universe still exists. God created the Universe and maintains it. If God were to stop maintaining the Universe, it would collapse and disappear in less than a second.

The Deists were a group of men from the late 1700’s who believed that God created the Universe and then walked away, letting it function like a giant machine, but not paying any further attention to it. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson may have been Deists. But the Deists were wrong. Our modern science of quantum mechanics has shown us that something amazing happens at the atomic level, that a negatively charged electron circles a positively charged nucleus in each atom.

Yet, according to everything we know, those electrons should spiral into the nucleus in less than second, and all the atoms in the Universe should collapse. And yet this hasn’t happened. And so the physicists simply tell us that the electrons don’t spiral in and instead circle the nucleus, but, speaking as a physicist, we really don’t know why. We know how those electrons behave, but they don’t behave the way they ought to behave. And so quantum mechanics describes how they behave, but can’t explain why.

But speaking as a theologian, the answer is simple. God actively maintains the Universe and keeps it functioning. Why? Perhaps because God cares for us? Every second that we exist is further proof of the integrity of God, God’s essential goodness, God’s essential honesty.

A child gets bored of a pet and might let it starve. But a man or woman with integrity knows that when you take on a pet, you have made a life-long commitment to that pet, promising to feed it and protect it and – when the end comes – help it to die without suffering.

God has integrity. God keeps the promises God makes.

There is another aspect to this faith. For most people, while we may have trust in the honesty of a person, we may question their power to keep their promises. For example, last week, a UPS truck caught fire in Anmore and the contents of the truck were destroyed – all of the packages. UPS has excellent honesty – but that fire kept those packages from being delivered. UPS did not have the power to prevent that fire.

Yet God has the power to deliver on God’s promises. Any promise God makes will be kept. And so, we can have faith in God.

But how and why does faith in God make a difference in this Universe? To understand, we must go back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall. You will recall that God put a tree in the Garden and said to Adam: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

In the Garden, the direct cause of Eve eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were the words of the serpent.

He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

The issue, you see was trust. It was Eve’s lack of trust – her lack of faith – in the goodness of God that led her to fall for the serpent’s words.

Eve did like we all do – we decided to trust in the created things of this world and the words of those creatures rather than have faith in what God had said. It even happened to Peter, and Peter tried to make it happen to Jesus:

31 He [Jesus] then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Following human concerns – following the ways of the world that we’ve been taught as we grew up by our friends, our classmates, our teachers, our television, our movies, our books, and even in many cases by our parents – is can lead us to trouble. Jesus was so upset about Peter being caught up in the ways of the world that Jesus even called Peter “Satan”, the name of the devil.

When we face the world and look toward it and trust in what it teaches us, we can do no better than the rest of the world. And in much of the world, we see the effects of the world’s teaching – war, violence, hunger, disease, poverty, depression, hopelessness, and sadness. Why do these things happen in the world?

It is mainly because most people substitute fear for faith in God. Fear frightens us. When we are frightened, we do stupid things. We don’t look at the long view and instead we take the short view. Our fear leads us to become angry because we can’t control our future – or hand it over to a loving God who can control that future. And when we become angry, we gradually begin to hate. When we hate, we do things that injure others, and this leads to suffering – more and more suffering. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.

But when we truly have faith in what God’s promises are, God also knows then that God can trust us. And for some reason, as we increase in our faith, we see God’s actions more clearly. And as we see God’s actions more clearly, our faith in God grows stronger and stronger. And the cycle continues and we become more confident. When we face God, we do godly things.

For ultimately, our faith in God is like our faith that the Cavalry will arrive just in the nick of time. When we deeply believe that God will show up in time, we lose our fear. Faith destroys fear. And thus the cycle is broken. Our growing trust and friendship in God is our faith and this removes our fear. And with faith instead of fear, we have patience. With patience comes planning and wisdom and the doing of good things.

Let me give you an example of two families.

Fred and Harriett have two kids. One day, Harriet discovers that her neighbor has a bare pantry – no food in the house. Harriet thinks about giving her some food or money to buy her food, but then the teachings of the world sink into her. Harriet thinks: “If my friend is out of food, that means that I could one day be out of food. I need to keep all the money I can so I will never be out of food.” Perhaps Harriet finds out that other people around are running short of money to buy food. Now Harriet begins to think “What if I am robbed by someone who is desperate for food?” and she begins to stay in her house, locking all the doors and worrying about her neighbors. She won’t let her kids play with the neighbors. When she sees a neighbor standing in front of the house, she rudely yells “Go away” to him, and soon the neighbors all think of her as a mean, nasty woman. Very soon they talk and she has no friends. Neither do their kids.

On the other hand, George and Mary also have kids. When Mary finds out that her neighbor has no food, she thinks about giving her some food or money to buy her food, but Mary has a strong faith in God. So Mary trusts that if John and Mary were to run out of food, God would provide for them. Mary gives her neighbor some food, and gives to her other neighbors. Gradually, Mary becomes known as a wonderful woman who loves everyone. Her kids learn from her and become well-liked around the neighborhood as well. Everyone treats them well. And one day, when George’s business gets in trouble, the neighbors take up a collection and bring them enough to handle the business problems. You might want to watch the movies “It’s a Wonderful Life” to see what faith in action does.

Faith in God as our ultimate Cavalry and faith in God’s promises can completely change our world. There is a tremendous difference between two men when one feels that everything is up to him and the other understands that God loves him and won’t let him fall. Our faith in God has changed us – and then we can change the world. It is the faith itself that changes the world – not any direct action of God. It is just our recognition of the integrity and goodness and power that is Who God is. You might say, it is simply God’s glory that changes the world.

And this is borne out by an episode that happens to Jesus. There is a woman who has been sick and bleeding for several years. She hears of Jesus and thinks, “If I can only touch Jesus’ clothes, He will make me well.” One day, Jesus comes to her town and in a crowd she manages to touch his cloak. Jesus instantly stops and says, “Who touched me?” The woman comes forward, frightened, because women did not touch men in that society who were not their husband. They talk a moment, and Jesus says, “You faith has healed you.” He doesn’t say, “My power has healed you.” No, Jesus says to the woman; “ Your faith has healed you.”

And we see this today. Doctors and nurses know of what is called the “Placebo effect”. In medicine, a placebo is a pill made out of simply suger and a coating. It has no real medicine in it. Yet, in many tests of many different medicines, the placebo cures people. The actual cure comes from their faith in the medicine’s ability to cure.

I have a challenge for any atheists in the audience today. Begin to act as though God will fulfill the promises God has made. Run an experiment – find out if the Cavalry comes. And you’ll find something out – as long as you are skeptical, God will not appear. But as soon as you truly adopt an open mind, you’ll begin to see some interesting things happen. And when you begin to believe – you may hear a bugle call in the distance when you truly need it.

Faith in God works because God wants to be able to work on your heart throughout eternity. If you trust God, God can work with you. If you don’t – you are in rebellion and cannot be worked with except through coercion and force. And God will not force you to believe. God is too good, too holy, --too polite to force you.

But if you recognize that you don’t control the Cavalry, then God will arrive and begin to build that trusting relationship with you. And when you understand the sacrifice that Jesus made for you so that you and God could have a close relationship, you will understand God’s goodness.

Around 30 AD, a man named Jesus of Nazareth began to preach in northern Israel and around Jerusalem. His message was that God wanted a close relationship with all people – not just the priests, not just the good people, but all people, including the very lowest, struggling, most desperate members of society – those who could not afford the Temple sacrifices, those who could not afford to dress properly, those who could not own farms and nice homes and be married to the king’s daughter or son.

Repeatedly, this man Jesus claimed to be God Himself walking upon this earth. And every time He did this, the crowds became upset at Him for His so-called blaspheme. Yet He was reported to heal people and do other miraculous things that implied a supernatural power was at work.

Finally, in priest-run Jerusalem he challenged the powers that be and was arrested, tried, and executed for the crime of claiming to be God. This was on a Friday. He was hastily put into a tomb before sundown according to Jewish custom of the time.

On Sunday morning, women who were visiting His burial tomb to clean and properly bury the body were astonished to find that He was no longer there. They ran to tell others. That day, Jesus walked up to several groups of followers and talked with them and even ate with them. Over the next 40 days, He showed up at least eleven times in different locations and circumstances. In one case there were over 500 witnesses present. He taught his followers and then the eyewitnesses claim He ascended to Heaven.

Miraculous events continued to occur with His followers, so often that about 200 years later, Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. Today over 2 Billion people claim to be Christian.

The death of Jesus was to pay for all the sacrifices that needed paid for all the crimes against God that were committed over the centuries by billions of people, including you …and me. God Himself in a complicated way – we say Jesus was the Son of God, but it is a rather complicated thing – God Himself was of infinite value and the only thing valuable enough to pay the bill.

The Resurrection of Jesus was for a rather simple reason. It was God’s way of calling attention to Jesus. Yes, we agree that people don’t just come back from the dead. Yes, we agree that this was something unique in history. Yes, we agree that this has never been seen before – or after. There is only one true Son of God. And God wanted us to listen to what Jesus said.

Jesus said that those people who believe in Him – who have faith in Him – will have eternal life. If this is false, it is the greatest lie in the history of the world. If it is true – it is the most important thing that has ever been said. Take some time to examine this in detail. Take some time to read and study the claims of Jesus. Take some time to determine if we here – and such other people as Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. – are crazy for having faith in Jesus or not. Does the Cavalry exist or not, ready to ride into your life?

It is interesting that the hill upon which Jesus was executed has an old, old name. The hill was called in Aramaic Golgotha, the place of the skull. In Greek, this became Kraniou Topos and then in Latin, Calvarae Locus, the place of the skull. And thus, in many older hymns and Bibles, the place where Jesus was crucified is known as Mount Calvary.

Have faith. Your faith alone has the power to change the world. But your faith, combined with the Calvary that lies behind it, is undefeatable. Have faith.