Enemies of Jesus Christ: Are We Friends?
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
For those of you who may not know me that well or haven’t experienced me this way, I am an extremely competitive person. When it comes to certain games, I am ruthless. In fact, as a teenager and young adult, my mom and I would play games every Sunday afternoon. There were games that were completely off limits and other games that we would only play so often because without fail, I would always win. I don’t mean just a simple win, I mean I would obliterate any competition my mom had thought she might have. A couple games that were banned in my house were Monopoly and Chess. If you ask my mom to play either of those games to this day, she would probably and immediately say “No”. Now, I don’t want to make it sound like I cheated or was ruthless on purpose, I just had those games down to a science, knew what pieces to move and where or what properties were the most important to have and given the chance would take advantage of particular properties. I think at this point, Stephanie might agree with my mom and might add checkers to the list of banned games in our household.
Checkers, being a game of strategy and a little bit of luck but more about the strategy, is a game in which you advance pieces across a checkerboard. The goal, obviously, is to remove all of your opponents pieces and to get across the board to be “kinged”. The strategic part of the game is to block a way for your opponent to capture your pieces. Like Chess, it is one of those games that plays really well into a mind that sees patterns and is logical…essentially, my mind. The reason you want your opponent to king you is because as a kingly piece, you can move forward, backward, well essentially, without limit. It is the ultimate goal…you want the freedom to do and move wherever. Not unlike life, we desire to be King or Queen of the world. The downfall though is that Checkers is just a game and it does not really apply to life but we try don’t we?
When we are ruthless in life, we often create enemies and those enemies will do many things to try to hold us back or down...
Enemies of Christ
Enemies of Christ
Our story for today, introduces us to another enemy of Christ. This morning, we find ourselves in the Gospel of John, standing before Pontius Pilate as judge and jury after the Jewish leaders had already condemned Christ. Now, as enemies go, Pilate really was not that bad. Before you start throwing some rotten tomatoes at me, let me explain what I mean.
There is something about Pilate that I have not really considered before…he was trying to show compassion and love to Jesus, but the Jewish leaders would not allow him to do so…this is why I say that he is not that bad as far as Christ’s enemies go. Sure, he condemns Christ to die, mocks Christ with the sign that he places over Jesus’ head on the cross, and sends him to be flogged. Don’t mistake me here, Pontius Pilate is a ruthless man when it comes to punishment but there is something about Jesus that it just seems to me that Pilate was trying to get him released without being punished.
Look at what Pilate says...
Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” “But we have no right to execute anyone,” they objected.
Basically, Pilate is saying that the Jews are the ones who want Jesus dead, so they should do it themselves…then he says,
“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
Again, in my mind, I am hearing Pilate trying to figure out what it was that Jesus had done to deserve death and no one seems to be giving him a solid answer…then there is this...
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.
Here he plainly says, there is no reason for me to put this man to death…and then there is this final statement...
But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?”
When you look at these 4 short phrases, I am seeing a man who really did not want to put someone to death who had not committed a crime deserving of that punishment. Now, this also says to me that Pilate was not as ruthless as we often make him out to be. He really wants to get to the truth of the matter. He had no idea who Jesus was nor what the implications of what he was about to do would hold for the future of humanity. He just simply could not find a reason why this man of Nazareth, a carpenter’s son, needed to die as the Jewish leaders were so adamant must happen.
The interesting part of all of this to me is that Jesus does not, not once, ever lie about who he was. He may not have been forthright but his answers were always the truth about who he was and what he was there to do. Last week I eluded to the fact that we, in today’s world, have a much easier time telling lies than we do testifying to the truth of what is and what is to come. We like to sugarcoat things all the time. Here’s the thing that I have learned very recently…when we are brutally honest with folks, we often create enemies out of those who support us the most. And boy did Jesus create enemies...
The Jewish leaders as enemies of Jesus Christ
The Jewish leaders as enemies of Jesus Christ
Think about it…the people who should have known all there was to know about Jesus, hated him because he told the truth about who they were and what they were doing. He created enemies out of these people, so much so that they wanted him dead even though they really had no reason for him to die. If you look at what the religious leaders said and how they answered Pilate, you can easily see that, like someone who is trying to avoid telling the absolute truth, they danced around the answer rather than just coming right out to speak the truth...
“If he were not a criminal,” they replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.”
They just merely state that he is a criminal when Pilate asks them out right what Jesus had done to deserve Pilate’s punishment...
They shouted back, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising.
So after Pilate asks Jesus whether or not he was a king and whether or not there was any justification for what the Jews were charging, Pilate offers to trade Jesus for someone who had killed others and participated in an uprising against the Jews and the Roman government. To which the crowd says, “Nope, don’t want Jesus. We want Barabbas released because he is easier to deal with than the one who called us hypocrites, liars, and thieves.”
Jesus’ truth is what enraged these people. It wasn’t the miracles that he performed or the fact that he was God’s son, it was the fact that Jesus called a spade a spade. He called them out in their dishonesty and faulty beliefs. He called them out and brought into the light all the things that the Priests were teaching people not to do and then going behind their backs and doing, kind of a do as I say not as I do mentality.
They had no real reason for hating him
They had no real reason for hating him
They had no reason to hate Jesus. And if you think about the people in your life that have come up against you…did they really have a reason for hating you other than maybe you pointed out the truth about their behavior?
Jesus Christ came to teach us the way to live in this world but not be of this world. Because he told the truth about how people were behaving in his time, and ours today for that matter, he was despised. But here’s the thing…Jesus, I think, knew exactly what his words were going to do and the results of what his words would have on the world. I also think that what he does as a result is a lifelong lesson for all of us to take into our hearts, especially during Lent and especially in a world that is so out of control...
Jesus Christ did not retaliate but prayed for his enemies
Jesus Christ did not retaliate but prayed for his enemies
On the cross, Jesus prayed for his enemies. But even before that, Jesus prayed for all of his disciples and for us. Jesus desired for people to be better. Jesus desired for us to live out the legacy of what he came to do. Like the pieces in checkers that eventually become a king, we need to be looking for ways to overcome our opponents, those who lie about who we are, what we represent, and what we stand for. We need to be working toward deeper relationships, justice and peace, freedom, reaching out our hands to hold people up and away from pain and rejection, and most importantly, if we say we believe that Jesus came to save us from our sins, then we need to believe that his teaching meant something and that we have been given the chance to carry it into the world...
Jesus Christ can change an enemy into a friend
Jesus Christ can change an enemy into a friend
The only way anyone is going to join us in our fellowship and our work is if we walk the walk of the talk we talk…let us join together and start making changes in this world, if not us then who will do this work?
Prayer: Let us pray…Gracious holy and loving God, in a world filled with hate and lies, help us to rise up above all those who would block us and keep us from our goal. Strengthen us for the work and tell us where you desire for us to go and give us the courage to do the work you have called us to do, Amen.