3/8/07 The In Between Part

For the past 24 years of my life,

once a year,

every year I have preached an Easter sermon about the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And for nearly every one of those 24 years

on the Sunday before Easter

I have talked about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem

on Palm Sunday.

Both of those topics are well worth 24 years of preaching and far more.

But as I began my preparation this past week for our time together today

I realized that there is a bit of a problem

with the way these two events line up one week apart.

And the problem is that it is so easy

for us to skip over the week in between.

It’s so easy for us to jump from one celebration to the next

without allowing ourselves to see honestly

the events that connected these two.

For my own part, I know why it’s so easy to do what I have done.

It’s lots more fun.

Well, maybe fun isn’t exactly the right word,

but it’s sure a whole lot easier.

I like happy endings.

If I know a movie doesn’t have a happy ending

I won’t watch it.

There’s enough real pain and sorrow and tragedy in life

without volunteering for more.

And when it comes to the celebration of Easter

mostly I like the view from the empty tomb.

I like seeing my Lord when the victory is complete.

I like looking at the lives of His people

at that point at which they first discover the truth,

that He is risen,

that He’s back in town,

that the victory is won,

and the King is alive indeed.

I like that.

The truth is,

I need that.

I need to know that in God’s economy

good always ultimately wins.

I need to know that no right choice ever goes unnoticed,

that no act of righteousness ever goes unseen by God.

I need to know that

because, in the world in which we live,

those right choices are sometimes very, very hard to make.

In fact, I really like the power with which our God

communicates His faithfulness

in responding to every right choice we ever make.

I like that parable Jesus told

about the master who entrusted a little of his wealth

into the care of several of his servants for a brief period of time.

There was one fellow who was given five talents of gold.

That’s not me.

I’ve know that for years.

I’m not a five talent sort of fellow.

I’ve met some of them, known some of them,

and the truth is I wouldn’t want to be them.

It complicates life way too much.

But then there was another fellow who got two talents.

That’s about where I am.

And the fellow took what he’d been given

and did the best he knew how to do with it.

And when his Master came back

the servant certainly hadn’t turned it into a mighty fortune,

but he had reproduced what he’d been given.

And then comes the really, really good part.

It’s those words spoken to him by his Master.

MAT 25:23 "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful slave; you were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'

I like that!

I like everything about it.

I like knowing that the Master always comes back.

And I like knowing that the hard part,

the part where there sometimes isn’t much joy,

the part where it’s mostly a whole lot of work,

I like knowing that that part doesn’t last forever.

It comes to an end.

And I even like the phrase “faithful with a few things”.

I like it

because that’s where we all live.

Most of us live our lives in obscurity,

unnoticed by the world around us.

We have just a few people whose lives we really touch,

just a tiny bit of authority,

just a very small bit of resources.

And if we tune into the world around us

we will be told over and over and over again

that, because we touch only a few,

and have stewardship over just a tiny amount,

it means that what we do with it doesn’t really matter,

and in fact who we are and how we handle our lives

doesn’t matter much at all.

But that’s not the way it works in the REAL world,

in the eternal world,

in the economic system of God.

He never ever asks “how many?”,

or “how much?”.

He simply asks what we’ve done

with whatever He’s chosen to trust into our hands.

What have we done

with the lives He’s entrusted into our care?

Did you know that God never compares?

He never compares you to your brother, or your sister.

He never compares you to anyone.

And He never ever grades on the curve.

The eternal value He places upon you

is in no way related to where you fit into human society

or into the flow of history.

It’s based upon your absolute uniqueness as His special creation.

Do you love the people in your life based upon their IQ’s?

Do you love the ones with higher IQ’s more,

and the others less?

Do you love them on the basis of their musical abilities

or their creative talents?

Do you love your children on the basis of the report cards they bring home?

If so, then something has gone tragically wrong in your approach to parenting.

It doesn’t work that way, does it?

In fact it works exactly the opposite.

When you love a person

then, because you love them, you find yourself loving the things they do,

the things they say,

all those little things about them that no one else even notices.

“Sometimes in the evening when you do not see

I study the small things you do constantly.

I memorize moments that I’m fondest of.

My cup overflows with love.”

And here is the truly amazing thing -

that’s how our God values us.

His eyes are ever on us,

His thoughts are ever toward us,

and His delight in our uniqueness has no limits.

PSA 139:13-18 You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.

How precious also are Your thoughts toward me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.

Coming to grips with that,

understanding that our God delights in us at that level

is not an easy thing for any of us to get a hold of.

But when we do,

if we do

it alters our life profoundly forever.

But that isn’t really what I wanted to talk about this morning

because there is another side to this whole thing.

There is another side to us,

another part of our lives

that we think surely must destroy or neutralize everything I’ve just said.

And the best way I can illustrate what I want us to see this morning

is to take us on a very quick journey

through some of the events that took place

between Palm Sunday and the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

I mentioned a few minutes ago

that emotionally it’s very easy for us to skip those six days in between

because what we see in them

is so filled with so much of what we try to blind ourselves to in life.

They are days filled with evil,

days filled with greed,

days filled with hatred and betrayal and failure and denial and despair.

Following that remarkable entrance into Jerusalem,

the next significant event recorded for us

is Jesus’ return to the Temple.

And what happened there

set the tone for so much that would follow.

Three years earlier, when He was still nearly unknown to the nation,

He’d gone to the temple and openly attacked the corruption He found there,

driving the dishonest money changers from the grounds.

But as soon as He left

everything returned to normal

and the greed and corruption continued.

And now, once again He attacked those who were using the name of God to get rich.

But this time He did it

because He wanted to drive those in power

into the fulfillment of their appointed roles.

And so Luke tells us,

LUK 19:47 ...the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him...

There followed numerous open debates between Jesus and Jewish leadership,

each time with the Jews trying to discredit Him.

The attacks were ugly,

and open,

and kept increasing the tension.

Following one such debate Jesus concluded by saying,

LUK 20:17-18 ... 'The stone which the builders rejected, This became the chief corner stone' Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust."

It’s a fascinating statement,

Jesus describing Himself as a stone rejected by the builders of the nation,

a stone that God then used as the chief cornerstone

upon which all of His work within the human race would be built.

But it’s that second statement that fascinates me the most.

It is a statement in which Jesus offers us

the only two options in our relationship with Him.

We can choose to cast ourselves, our lives upon Him,

but if we do He tells us that in the process we will be broken to pieces.

Or we can choose to resist Him,

to fight against Him,

to view Him as our great enemy.

And in the end this cornerstone of the human race will fall on us

and scatter us like dust.

The difference, of course,

is that pieces can be put back together,

and put back together in the right way,

but dust cannot.

Well, the tension,

the hatred,

the debates,

and the warfare between Jesus and those who held power continued to escalate and intensify.

They knew they did not dare try to arrest Him publicly

because LUK 19:48 ...all the people were hanging on to every word He said.

So they devised a new plan.

They found one in the inner circle who could be bought,

one who was trusted without reservation,

a man who had been one of the chosen 12 from the very beginning.

They paid him well

and arranged for him to notify them

when Jesus could be arrested when the crowds were not around.

Now that part of the darkness of that week we understand well.

And to a certain degree we have made peace with it.

There are evil men and women in the world,

a great many of them,

people whose hatred for Jesus Christ is obvious,

people who never miss a chance to attack Him,

or discredit Him,

or put Him to open shame.

There were such people then,

there are such people now.

And it is a form of evil we can handle

because it is outside of us, apart from us, our enemy as well,

like looking at Hitler

and hating what we see

while knowing that we could never, would never have done the things he did.

But the evil of that week does not stop there.

And the failure of the human race

does not end outside the camp.

And no account of that week in between is complete

without an honest look at the disciples of Jesus,

the faithful ones,

and especially at our good friend, Peter.

The week had not gone at all well from the disciples’ perspective.

What should have been a triumphal entry followed by a triumphal take-over

followed by the coronation of Jesus as the new King of Israel

had gone from good to poor to terrible to hideous.

And Jesus was the one who’d messed it all up.

He kept saying things

and doing things that infuriated the very people whose support He needed.

In the end, when the small band of faithfuls gathered for the Passover feast,

it was a rather sad, pathetic little gathering.

And Jesus’ opening words to them at that dinner didn’t help.

LUK 22:15 -16And He said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God."

He talked like a man on death row.

Ever been there?

Ever watched in painful anger and irritation

as your Savior did it all wrong in your life?

Ever seen Him not do the things He could so easily have done for you,

and seen Him do things in your life

that seemed to rip from your grasp

the very things you knew you most needed for life,

for happiness?

Welcome to the week in between.

We all know how Peter responded.

There were a few hours in which he tried to fix the mess Jesus had made

through his own fleshly efforts.

There was that pathetic attempt to stop Jesus’ arrest

through his drawing out his sword and flailing away.

I know I’ve been there -

frantically trying to fix through my own efforts

what I was so sure my God had messed up in my life.

Oh, we don’t ever openly say it was God who messed it up,

but it’s what we feel.

If only He would have shown us long ago

the things that we see so clearly now.

If only He would have done what He didn’t do

or prevented what He allowed to happen.

But He didn’t,

and so often my response is just like Peters’s -

I try to fix it on my own.

And my efforts are always just as effective as Peter’s with that sword.

In the end

I make a hard situation even worse.

And then, after Peter’s flesh had exhausted itself,

then it gets darker still.

LUK 22:54-62 Having arrested Him, they led Him away and brought Him to the house of the high priest; but Peter was following at a distance. After they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter was sitting among them. And a servant-girl, seeing him as he sat in the firelight and looking intently at him, said, "This man was with Him too." But he denied it, saying, "Woman, I do not know Him." A little later, another saw him and said, "You are one of them too!" But Peter said, "Man, I am not!" After about an hour had passed, another man began to insist, saying, "Certainly this man also was with Him, for he is a Galilean too." But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you are talking about." Immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had told him, "Before a rooster crows today, you will deny Me three times." And he went out and wept bitterly.

There were reasons, of course, lots of reasons,

just like we always have reasons.

But in the end there it is - when it mattered most

Peter turned his back on his King.

It gets worse - the darkness of that week in between.

The pathetic mockery of a trial

ended with Jesus being sentenced to death.

And politicians who could have prevented it

skillfully stepped back into the shadows

and let the execution continue.

And in the end, just five days after that victorious entrance into Jerusalem

Jesus hung nailed to a wooden cross

on the garbage dump just outside the city.

And all of His so-called faithful followers hid in the shadows,

or ran for their lives,

and all of His enemies celebrated,

and the earth itself shuddered in agony,

and shrouded itself in darkness.

Welcome to the in between part.

And why in the world would I take our precious time together this morning

to talk about the in between part?

For two reasons.

First, because there is always an in between part in our lives as well,

a time of darkness,

a time of failure,

a time when we deny the truth,

a time when evil -

either the evil within us

or the evil around us consumes our lives.

They are the times

when we discover things about ourselves

that we wish we’d never known,

things we very much wish were not true.

They are the times

when the thought of a real, living, caring, all-powerful God

who claims to love us with an everlasting love

seems like the idiotic babbling of religious fools

who haven’t got a clue about the true nature of real life.

They are the times

when pain, and guilt, and fear, and shame

scream within us

and the voice of our God is utterly silent to our ears.

And I have turned our attention this morning

to the in between parts

first of all because there are such parts to each of our lives.

And second, I bring them up

because it is our nature to believe

that those times are beyond the grace of our God,

that they really have nothing whatsoever to do with Him,

and that they ultimately determine who we are

and what we can expect and deserve from our Creator.

And I’m here this morning to tell you

that, if you believe that, then you have believed

the most destructive and powerful lie you could ever believe.

When I was putting words into the mind of my imagined Peter in The Fisherman,

when he reached that point in his life following the crucifixion and before the resurrection,

I had him say this.

“The love of God is poured out within us in so many different ways. At the time, walking the streets of Jerusalem that evening, unseeing and now almost unfeeling because of the numbing narcotic of ceaseless pain, the concept of the love of God was to my mind the ultimate absurdity. If ever I thought I had needed the miraculous intervention of a loving God in my own life, it was in that garden as I fought for the release of my King. If ever I knew with absolute and unquestioned certainty that our world desperately, urgently needed the miraculous intervention of a loving God, it was as I stood below that cross, watching Jesus die. And yet, there I was, having just witnessed what I would later come to recognize as the two greatest expressions of the love of God I would ever know yet possessing at the time not a glimmer of that love.”

And if you are, right now, in the in between time in your own life,

if all you can see is darkness,

and you too feel as if evil controls your destiny,

listen very, very carefully to what I say in these closing minutes.

God’s redemptive plan for each of our lives

is not based on the hope that we will do it right,

it is built upon the certainty that we will do it wrong.

You see, that is why we need a Savior.

And here is the truly amazing thing -

not only did all of that evil and corruption and failure and denial

during the days between Palm Sunday and Easter morning NOT prevent the resurrection,

but in fact it was all carefully used by God

as the means through which He was able to bring His salvation to the human race.

Not only did all of that evil not destroy God’s purpose,

but it was used by Him as the means through which His greatest good,

His greatest victory of all was brought into being.

And if you will take the in between part in your own life,

if you will take that evil that you were so certain would destroy your life forever

and bring it to Him

He can and He will reshape it into incredible good in your life.

It’s what He does.

Do you know what God did with the hatred of the Jews for Jesus?

Do you know what He did with Peter’s denial, after denial, after denial?

Do you know what He did with a corrupt government and spineless politicians?

Do you know what He did with forces of evil so vicious,

so thick that they literally covered the earth with darkness for a time?

He created Easter morning.

Through the death of His own Son

He created for the entire human race

the ultimate expression of His own love -

the perfect and complete sacrifice for all of our sins forever.

And He reshaped the greatest evil of all time

into the greatest good of all time.

And He both can and will do exactly the same thing in your own life.

That’s what Easter is all about.

You see, that empty tomb wasn’t just Jesus’ victory over evil.

It was God’s promise of the same absolute and eternal victory over evil

for all who come to Him.