The Captive.

"There seems to me to have been twice as much done in some ages in defending the Bible as in expounding it, but if the whole of our strength shall henceforth go to the exposition and spreading of it, we may leave it pretty much to defend itself. I do not know whether you see that lion—it is very distinctly before my eyes; a number of persons advance to attack him, while a host of us would defend the grand old monarch, the British Lion, with all our strength. Many suggestions are made and much advice is offered. This weapon is recommended, and the other. Pardon me if I offer a quiet suggestion. Open the door and let the lion out; he will take care of himself. Why, they are gone! He no sooner goes forth in his strength than his assailants flee. The way to meet infidelity is to spread the Bible. The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible." Charles Spurgeon

I held it captive once, that powerful glorious creature that captivated me.  I ached for many to see it.  I knew if they could behold it in their eyes, hear it's voice, feel it's presence, they would believe.  It paced in it's cage and I tried to drag the whole lot to those who needed to see the Glory of this Magnificent one.  But, it was to heavy, and I was too weak.  Without it's power, I could not.  So then I tried describing the creature, it's nature and what having it, had done for me!  Words fell short.  Those that believed in the power, were fearful and confused.  Those that I couldn't convince, dismissed me as a fool.  In despair I wept at my failure.  Looking to the cage I saw only a small pin kept the power from being released.  The pin was my own pride.  I prevented the freedom of the captive for my own sake, for my own glory.  I knew once the word is released, I would have no control and be at the mercy of it's Spirit.  I had seen it's glory and it captivated me.  I held it captive.  I tried to keep it for myself and dish out portions as I saw fit.  I put Glory in a cage and hid His light under a bowl.  

But now I stand afraid, the pin of pride in my grasp, the hardest shackle to remove.  Though the captive could destroy me at any time, it remains docile and adherent to my will, to my decision to bind it.  Such is the eternal patience of God.  Like Christ before Pilate, the eternal power of the universe bound and surrendered...for our sake.  The disciples wished to stay upon the Mountain when Christ's Glory was revealed, setting up tents and keeping the Glory for themselves.  If I chose to bind, my only identity is my pride until I can release it.  So I am the pin, and as I finally surrender and pull it to release, I find that I myself am released, freed from a cage I didn't know I was in.  When we set the Word free, we release ourselves from the bondage of our own unseen sin.

Inventing the Wheel.

Man offers Grace.
Man makes a wheel.
Man eases the burden,
But his labor, still, he can feel.

God offers Grace.
God alters gravity.
God lifts us out of the pit,
Into his will, out of depravity.

The wheel is a necessary thing, 
It makes lighter the things he carries.
But Jesus has better plans for his Grace,
To make Man new, and give him wings while he tarries.

The Banner of The Kingdom

With the Cross, God emphatically plants his flag on earth, re-claiming it as his very own creation.  The banner that unfurls is Christ himself.  When that banner goes missing it isn't catastrophe, it is victory.  The Risen Christ, announced throughout all of history, means that the King has Come.  

"Thy will be done" means that there is work to be done to repair and restore his fallen kingdom.  The Sermon on the Mount is not just hope for the weary, it is marching orders for those who believe.  It is a proclamation of what it's gonna take to bring about the fullness of this New Creation Kingdom.  Thy will be done means that the things that make sense to our flesh, loud voices and displays of strength and prosperity are not what's going to change the world.  We are not to be whisked away to "Heaven", the Kingdom is coming here to Earth.  And this is our role:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Barabbas

Barabbas, Bar Abbas, Son of the Father,
At great cost I received that name.
Out of the pit and into the light
Rightfully charged, yet stayed from blame.


That rebel, that convict: Barabbas; 
That one, I am he.
I am the convict, 
The one exchanged,
For Christ who died for me.

John 18
After he (Pilate) had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him. 39 But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” 40 They cried out again, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber.

Dimensions.

"If the Temple was the space in which God's sphere and the human sphere met, the Sabbath was the time when God's time and human time coincided.  Sabbath was to time what Temple was to space."  Simply Jesus, N.T. Wright

You ever think about the incarnation as a space/time wormhole between dimensions?  The birth of Christ is God breaking through from his reality to ours.  In doing so a connection was made between the two realities, the two dimensions.  There is a theory of the Multi-verses in which there exists, simultaneously, an infinite number of universes in which every possible reality is being carried out.  If, for the sake of my very bizarre mind experiment, birth is the breaking through from one dimension to another, then all the billions of pregnancies are conceptions of universes unto themselves.  One being arriving from another dimension, seemingly out of nothing.  Each conception and birth though, is contained in a closed system.  Miraculous and wondrous, but perpetuated by materials, sperm and egg, contained within the system itself.  So then, what makes Christ's arrival in this weird little scenario is that his immaculate conception and arrival is from another universe, another reality altogether.  If Jesus was like no other, brought forth, given from another reality and unlike any other, then his arrival and life determines the ultimate reality. It is the singular among an infinite plurality.

This other dimension, this other reality of Heaven exists close to our own.  They overlap each other, yet Heaven remains unseen to us.  When Jesus talks of the arrival of his Kingdom, he is talking about Heaven entering and ultimately changing Earth, bringing about a new creation.  He is the means by which this is done.  The Temple in ancient times, like the Tabernacle was the place which heaven and Earth met.  Perhaps we can think of it as the place in which Heaven and Earth touched, but Heaven had not yet broken through.  The coming of the Christ then was not about acquiring a new leader or new teaching or a new king, it was about the altering of the natural of reality itself.  The place and the time in which Heaven and Earth met was now present in a Being, Jesus.  He was the Temple and by virtue of his perfect life, death and resurrection he has then made a place for himself in every person that bids him to come.  We have the ability to be the Temple, the place where the most Holy God resides, the place where Heaven and Earth meet, for the purpose of perfecting his vision of bringing Heaven to Earth.  The Sabbath is that time, the time in which we meet with God, in which this work is completed, one heart, one being, one reality at a time.

Revelation 21
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Two Kingdoms

In his kingdom, Jesus Christ requires surrender, an allegiance.  However, he does not demand it.  Your loyalty is paid for by his very blood.  You are bought by his sacrifice.  By this, your very salvation, your actions and deeds will declare whom you serve.  

In his kingdom, Satan bargains for your surrender.  He whispers wants in your ear, convincing you of what you deserve.  Your loyalty is paid for by your own blood.  You are bought by a lie.  By this, the loss of your very salvation, your absence from Christ the King, an absence you chose, your actions and deeds will declare whom you serve.

Jesus created all, the very fabric of existence and his Kingdom Come.  Satan rules as a Tenant King, on borrowed time, in an world not meant for him.  As you choose whom you will serve, and we all make this choice whether we are conscious of it or not, your behavior, your condition, your deeds will declare this choice.  

When Christ gets his due glory, we get joy.  But such is the deception of Satan, that when we have chosen his kingdom, we may not acknowledge him all.  When we serve in The Deceiver's kingdom, it is not him who we place upon the throne.  It is ourselves. 

"Hell...that fierce imprisonment of the self."  C.S. Lewis

Friends, Jesus Christ is offering us a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.  There is no offer that is more inclusive. It is available to all, ALL.  Yet we choke on the exclusive aspects of declaring that Jesus is King.  But an unshakable kingdom must be ruled by an all powerful King.  To suggest anything else is to put ourselves upon his throne.  Our eternal punishment for choosing ourselves is that we get our way.  Hell is the absence of God for the glorification of ourselves at the cost of ourselves.

"Save Yourself!"

Luke 23

35 The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

36 The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37 and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

38 There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

This is the scene as Christ and two others are hanging from crosses, crucified.  "If you are the king, then save yourself."  If...Then.  It seems that we never stop throwing these conditional statements at Christ.  All of us, believers and non believers lay out commands or arguments for why we believe or don't believe, trust or fail to trust, rejoice or sorrow.  "If God is good, then I would be happy.  If God was real, then I would see him."  This is a very human thing to do. 

The assumptions we make in these conditional statements are always that we know better.  We are in essence declaring, "If God would do what I say, then everything would be good."  This of course is ridiculous, but we rarely see it that way.  Even if we put it in secular terms, "If I only got my way, then I would be happy."  We think this is true.  We fight with the world to get our way, but we only have to picture some spoiled child in our lives to illustrate that "getting our way" does not mean happiness and certainly it does not produce a perseverance of character.  But it's more than character at stake here, it's salvation.

We act as if our salvation or our relationship with Christ were a constant bargain or negotiation.  Eternal Patience is the only way to conceive of a God that doesn't just wipe us all out.  Mercy is what it is called.  In this scene from John 18, for me one of the most dramatic in the Bible, Pilate engages with Christ.  He asks about Christ's true nature, and receives the truth.  And in a masterful maneuver that humans have used since Adam and Eve encountered the Serpent, Pilate deflects and discounts Christ with the statement, "What is Truth?"

33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

38 “What is truth?” retorted Pilate.

We are always asking the wrong questions.  What if we had asked, "What if he really is who he says he is?  If you are the Christ, Then what does that mean for me?"  In the story from Luke when soldiers ask why Jesus doesn't save himself, even though they are mocking, this seems like a very reasonable question.  But time and time again, through out world history and the history of my own heart, the failure to understand who Jesus is and why he came leaves us seemingly without answers.  

"He is not the Messiah, because he did not save himself."  What an extraordinary misunderstanding of the situation.

In the controversial movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, the story explores "What if" Christ stepped down from the Cross.  Though fundamental Christians rejected this movie/book, sometimes without actually seeing it, it is a story and a question that played a significant role in nudging me towards real faith.  The heresy in the movie is that Christ is portrayed a little too human, a little too doubting and a little too weak.  It is unsettling to see the what if Christ gave way to temptation.  The temptation in this story is the not only stepping down from the Cross, but stepping into a fully human life with sex and marriage and children.  Satan had offered to Jesus that Jesus wasn't the Messiah and that God wanted him to live and be happy.  Years after Defoe's Christ steps down from the Cross and has experienced a "normal' life, he encounters the Apostles going on with the message of Christ, even though Jesus rejected being the Messiah.  In the movie Paul says, even if the message is not the truth, it is a message that the world needs to hear.  

This fictional Paul is not wrong.  But he is not all the way right.  The world needs the message of Jesus Christ.  But that message is based on nothing if he did not die on the cross and rise from the dead.  We don't need religion to help us be better and do better.  We need Christ himself to save us.  Salvation is what is at stake when we consider Christ on the Cross.  We are always asking God to display himself for our own comfort.  Like the soldiers we ask Christ to save himself in order to prove that he is the Son of God.  We seek proof without any idea of the consequences.  Our own comfort in knowing and seeing Christ in the flesh would mean removing the work of the Cross.  Jesus said no to revealing the fullness of his power in order that the world might be saved.  If Jesus had rejected the cross, it wouldn't have been to live a normal life, it would have been to put the world under judgment.  That, my friends, would have meant the end, because without his sacrifice, none of us would be saved.  What deed could anyone do to justify eternity with God?  Jesus said yes to the Cross, for the Joy set before him, our redemption.  And all of this is meaningless if he did not rise from the dead, cleansing the world and ourselves of sin.  With sin accounted for in Christ's perfect life and death, we now have the right to claim Christ, be redeemed and live forever in the presence of God.

We must be careful what we ask of God.  Those who misunderstand Jesus say "Prove yourself!"  They are, and we are, the soldiers shouting "Save yourself!"  If he had, we would not be and salvation would be lost.  But the fact that we are here and able to ask these questions, both misguided and true, points to his Mercy and his Mercy points to his Love.  And Love is the only way to conceive of this Jesus.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.[d]”

43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”