Preach The Word and Finish The Race (2 Timothy 4.1-8)

Introduction

Well, good morning everybody. I hope, whatever circumstance you find yourselves in, that you are experiencing the Lord's presence with you. God has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Jesus said, I will be with you always to the end of the age. Promises to hold on to.

We've come to the end of this series on 2 Timothy; and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. 

If you’ve followed the series so far, what do you think God has said to you most clearly over the last few weeks? 

• Is it ‘fan into flame the spiritual gift that God has given you’? 
• Is it ‘be unashamed of the gospel and unafraid to tell others about Jesus’? 
• Is it ‘give the Bible greater prominence and priority in your life because it is breathed by God’? 
• Is it ‘be clear about truth in a world that says “the only truth is what seems true to me”’?
• Is it ‘be strong in the grace that is in Christ’?

As we have seen, this is the last letter Paul wrote as he faced death. And it's to a younger leader called Timothy to pass on a baton, hoping (and in fact trusting) that he will not drop it, but grip it tight, and run his lap with all his energy before he in turn must hand it on to the next generation. 

But though this is a personal letter, it's not a private one. Paul is consciously writing, not just to an individual, but to the whole church in every era. 

And we know this because, in very last verse of the letter, Paul says, “The Lord be with your spirit.” The word “you” there is singular. But then he says, “Grace be with you.” And there (in the original manuscript) the word “you” is plural, so the NIV translates it “you all.”

This is God's voice speaking to all of us.

Let’s read chapter 4, verses 1-5.

“In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: ² preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage – with great patience and careful instruction. ³ For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather round them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ⁴ They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. ⁵ But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

Well, Timothy, we have seen, has many good qualities. He takes a genuine interest in others, he has a caring heart. Timothy will not let you down. He's reliable. He’ll tell you, “I’ll be there at two o’ clock - and at two o’clock, without fail, there he is waiting. Paul says elsewhere as he talks about his apostolic team, “I have no one else like Timothy.” 

But he does not have a strong personality at all. He seems to need a lot of encouragement. And protection. Paul has to tell the Corinthians, “When Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear while he is with you.” He’s young, inexperienced, frequently ill, very sensitive and a bit introverted perhaps. 

We sometimes imagine that God only really calls dynamic characters. Self-confident extroverts with heroic personalities. But that’s not the way in the Bible at all. 

When God says to Moses, “I’m sending you,” Moses says, “But I’m no leader; I’m useless up front, I get my words tangled up and I st- st- st- stutter. Could you maybe send someone else?” 

When God says to Gideon, “I’m calling you,” Gideon says, “But I’m nobody. My father is a nobody. I come from an insignificant family and I’m the least impressive of the lot.” 

When God says to Jeremiah, “I’m appointing you,” Jeremiah says, “But I’m obviously much too young, Lord. I’ve got no experience, no one will take me seriously.” 

But each time God does not take “no” for an answer. He appoints and then he empowers. 

Don’t ever say, “Oh, I don’t think I’m the sort of person God would want to use.” We need to understand that if God calls me, it’s because of his grace, not my giftedness, and he will supply what I need to prevail.

1. Preach the Word

I’ve got two points coming out of these 8 verses and here they are: 1) preach the word and 2) finish the race. 

Verse 2 says “Preach the word...” Preach the word. Not a word. Not any old words. The word. 

Preach God’s eternal, inspired, indestructible, omnipotent, forever dependable, unimprovable, heart-transforming, life-imparting word. 

You might say “Well, I’m not a preacher, this doesn’t really apply to me.” Fair enough. But these verses tell you what kind of qualities you should want to see in a preacher and what kind of leader you should follow.

The great 20^th Century preacher W. E. Sangster once interviewed a candidate for the Methodist ministry. It was a shy and retiring young man who evidently did not have a lot of self-confidence. He said, “Oh, I'm not the sort of man who'd set the Thames on fire.” Sangster looked at him and said, “My dear young man, I'm not interested to know if you can set the Thames on fire, what I want to know is this: if I throw you in the river will it sizzle?” 

Some sermons I’ve heard in my time you could throw the preacher in the Thames, and they're so cold, so frigid, they'd actually lower the temperature of the river!

I thank God for leaders here who love God’s word. Who feel the weight of this solemn charge to preach it. Who believe it passionately. Who take seriously the thought that God will judge with greater strictness those who preach and teach, so they work diligently and prayerfully at this ministry. 

But the value of God's word is contested in our time. There are three types of people who are uncomfortable with this charge to preach it.

Firstly, and perhaps most common in evangelical circles, is quite subtle; a kind of casual replacing of God’s word for whatever the latest fashion is. 

A few years ago, a well-known speaker at a popular Christian summer conference took to the stage and said, “I’m not going to open my Bible tonight, I’m just going to share my heart.” My heart sank. I thought, Seriously? I’ve come a long way for this. I don’t really want to hear your heart while I look longingly at the closed Bible on your chair. I wanted to say, “Open your Bible or shut your mouth! 

Obviously, being English, I didn’t stand up and make a scene in front of thousands of people. I just sat there annoyed - and bored - for an hour. But God’s people don’t gather in their thousands and endure a week of camping purgatory just for human wisdom, or precious thoughts or personal anecdotes. 

Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” We want every word that comes from the mouth of God. So Paul says to Timothy, “preach that.”

The second kind of person who doesn’t like this charge to preach the word is found in more liberal circles, where there is a selective approach to the total truthfulness of Scripture. 

Bryan Chappell, of Covenant Theological Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri, was once challenged by a student who complained that the Bible is outdated and full of errors. 

So Chappell took some scissors from a drawer and he said to his student, “Here, take these and cut out from your Bible everything you don’t think should be in it. But you should understand that by the time you are done picking and choosing what should be included, and what should be left out, the only wisdom you will have left is your own.”

No, as we saw a few weeks ago, ALL scripture is God-breathed.

And the third attitude pervades society. The dominant mood in our postmodern world is to reject clear, authoritative beliefs about anything. Many people are sceptical when we say that we can be sure about truth. 

They prefer a flexible world where you can’t be certain about anything and each person has to find the way for themselves. But the Christian worldview says, God has spoken and his word is true. 

So preach the word. Then v2 says “Be prepared in season and out of season.” In season and out of season means when it’s convenient and when it’s not, in promising situations and unfavourable ones, when people are responsive and when they seem closed. Always be ready.

The former Olympic decathlete Daley Thompson was once asked what his favourite day was. He said, “Christmas Day.” The interviewer said, “Ah, one day in the year you can allow yourself some mince pies and a glass of wine!” 

He said, “No. That’s not why I like Christmas Day. On December 25^th I train harder than any other day while all my rivals are taking a day off. It gives me a competitive advantage. That’s why it’s my favourite day.”

“Be prepared in season and out of season, correct, rebuke, encourage…”

Of course, we would all rather be encouraged than corrected and rebuked but “All scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

The natural state of the human heart is to be in rebellion against God. So it’s understandable that this book, which tells me what God doesn’t like as well as what he likes, will sometimes offend me. Preachers have to say is as it is.

A woman once went up to the great evangelist George Whitefield and complained to him, “Every time I’ve heard you preach, all you say is, ye must be born again. Why don’t you ever say anything else?” Whitefield looked at her and said, “because, madam, ye must be born again!”

And it says this: (v3-4) that a time is coming when preaching will be unpopular. We are in those days now actually. It says, “People will shut their ears to sound teaching.” They will call for a message that merely recycles the norms and values of the prevailing culture. 

Every preacher battles the temptation to skate over uncomfortable truths in a passage when the body language of the congregation is disapproving and negative. 

Jesus was once approached by his disciples who said to him, “Do you know that people were offended by what you just said?” Jesus replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.” 

In other words, religious tradition and pious wisdom that’s not in line with the Word of God will come to nothing.” 

That won’t cut it. Preach… the word. 

As I said earlier, you may not be called to be a Bible teacher. But you are called to be discerning about who you let shape your thinking and values. Either you stand up for what you believe, or you become part of what somebody else believes.

2. Finish the Race

Second and last point - and more briefly; finish the race. Verse 6:

The time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day…”

A well-attested tradition records that Paul was beheaded around 64 AD about 3 miles outside Rome’s city limits.

I love to picture the scene in heaven, moments afterwards. Just as Paul’s arriving, high fiveing a few old friends, the crowds part and there’s Jesus in all his triumphant glory. “Paul!” he says. “You made it! You fought the good fight. You finished the race. You kept the faith. Here's your crown!” 

It’s what he’s going to say to you one day, if you keep battling, stay in the race and cross the line. Fight the good fight. Finish the race. Keep the faith. 

At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, at the 19-kilometre point of the marathon, one of the runners John Akhwari dramatically fell to the ground, dislocating his knee and shoulder. The heat and lack of air at altitude were so brutal that 18 of the world’s most elite long-distance runners failed to finish at all. But John Akhwari kept running for 23 more kilometres, in searing pain and cramped up because he had never trained at altitude. 

He finished last (of those who actually completed the course), over an hour after the winner, after the medal ceremony, and in fact after the sun had set. The stadium was all but empty when he finally entered it. But as he limped crossed the finish line there was an emotional and appreciative cheer from the small crowd still there. 

They interviewed him and asked him why he bothered to keep running. He said, “My country [Tanzania] did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race; they sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race.” 

That’s your mission and mine. 

Some people wish they had a more exciting testimony of how they came to faith. But it doesn’t matter how you started the race of faith as much as the fact that you keep running till it’s done, keep the faith. 

Are you still running the race? Are you going to finish it and win the crown or will you drop out and lose everything?

Ending

If you’re a Christian you look at life - and death - differently.

There’s a church leader down in Bournemouth called Tim Matthews whose grandfather fought in the D-Day landings in World War II. He got a finger shut off and so many terrible things, but survived to tell the tale. He used to tell his grandson war stories including one about arriving in a French village, driving his truck in a convoy to resupply the front lines.

They were told that the village had most probably in mind by the retreating German army and had not yet been cleared. There was no viable alternative route and the front lines had to be re-supplied immediately, so the convoy had to take its chances and drive through the village.

The commanding officer approached Tim’s grandad in the cab of his truck and said “Albert, you’re a Christian, aren’t you?” Albert replied that he was. So the commanding officer said, “well, since you know where you’re going when you die, you can drive an empty truck through the village and the rest of the convoy will follow your tyre tracks. If you get blown up, we all know we have to take a different route!” Albert said a prayer, set off, utterly at peace, and drove straight through the village without incident.

And what if you’ve not yet become a follower of Jesus Christ? Maybe you’ve been thinking about it for ages.Why don’t you give your heart to Christ today?

You might say to me, “But I’m very happy in life, I’ve got everything I want. Why do I need Jesus? Everything’s just fine.” 

But that’s talking as though our life on this earth goes on forever. Chances are we’ll live a bit longer than our parents did, but none of us can keep the sand running indefinitely. Last time I checked the death rate was the same as it’s always been; 100%!

Then we get to see that nothing we owned was ever really ours. Everything we have now and call ours is just on loan. And it all has to be returned when we leave this world for the next one. Jesus said, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet lose their soul?”

You may have shut him out of your life for years. Is today the day when that changes? The Bible says “draw near to God and he'll draw near to you.” You may have drifted far away from God. Come back to Christ today. He’s waiting. It’s not too late. 

I remember the evangelist Billy Graham was interviewed on BBC Radio once and the presenter said, “Billy Graham, 

• you’ve travelled the globe, 
• you’ve preached to millions, 
• you’ve seen countless conversions to Christ, 
• you’ve appeared on Gallup’s Most Admired People in the World for thirty-two consecutive years, 
• more than any other individual in the world, 
• you’ve spoken personally with world statesmen, 
• you’ve led prayers at the inauguration of several American Presidents… 

when you finally get to those pearly gates, what do you think will be your finest achievement?” 

And without a moment of hesitation, Graham said, “Just to have got there, just to have made it.” Billy died three years ago; he was still running; he completed the course and is now with the Lord. Those who persevere to the end will be saved. 

Finish the race, keep the faith. 

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 28 February 2021

His Glory - Our Delight

Introduction

It is a great honour for me to be invited share with you today on the theme of God’s Glory, Our Delight. What a great title. 

Ever since the mid-1990s, when I read a book by the Baptist pastor and writer John Piper called Desiring God, I have been convinced that these two things – the awe-inspiring glory of God and the overflowing delight of his people are like the earth and the moon; though thoroughly distinct, they influence and relate to each other.

Piper’s big thought in that book was that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

God is not glorified when we are disappointed and unhappy in him. Nobody is attracted to our God by gloomy and cheerless Christians grumbling and complaining about their lot.

But when Christian hearts are set on fire with love for God, when we marvel at the wonders of grace, when we abound with inexpressible joy, people see how great God is and it magnifies him as supremely valuable. His glory really is our delight. 

Before I get into what I want to share with you, I think it is worth stopping briefly to ponder the question, “what is glory”?

How do you think you might define “glory” in your own words?

In my country, the United Kingdom, we often use that word in sports headlines. For example, England seek World Cup glory. “Glory” in this sense means winning a football (or soccer) tournament.

But every Englishman knows that the players representing their country will return home soon after the quarter finals via a disastrous and humiliating penalty shoot-out. That glory is illusive.

Or the word “glory” can mean “the original condition of an object.” For example, “the old steam train has now been restored to its former glory.” This just means an old heap of rust is now all shiny again. But everyone knows it will once again degrade and wear out over time. That glory is momentary. 

We also use the word in nature. I sometimes hear the expression “the glory of the English countryside…” And yes, it is pretty, but those who live here know well that for much of the year you have to experience it battling to stay warm to the sound of relentless rain lashing down on your overworked umbrella. That glory is diluted – literally. 

I would say that everywhere we use the word “glory” we devalue it except when we talk about God. 

So when the Bible speaks of “the glory of God in the face of Christ” it’s much more than elite sports, or renovated machines or pretty hills and dales and lakes.

The Glory of God in the Face of Christ

Every now and then, our planet spins through a zone in space with a high concentration of small rocks called meteors. Astronomers know that the next time this will be observable in the Northern Hemisphere is August 12-13; it’s called the Perseid meteor shower.

When you look up at the sky at night and see meteors burning up at tremendous speed in the upper atmosphere it’s briefly quite entertaining. A fraction of a second… and it’s gone.

That’s what the glory of the very greatest men and women who have ever lived are like; a shooting star. All too brief, all too dim.

Let me give you an example.

In the Louvre Museum in Paris there is a painting by Charles Le Brun called Alexander Entering Babylon (see below). It depicts the Greek warrior Alexander the Great riding into this newly conquered great city to a hero’s welcome. He stands, majestic, in a chariot of ivory and gold, pulled by two elephants captured from Babylon’s army. Alexander, crowned with laurel leaves, points authoritatively with his left hand, and holds a golden sceptre in his right.

Trumpeters go ahead of him announcing his arrival. Beside him, three men carry a large golden vase, the spoils of war. Everything about this painting exalts this man as impressive, magnificent and glorious.

Alexander is known as "the Great" because of his supreme success as a military commander. He never lost a single battle, even though his armies were typically outnumbered. Military academies throughout the world still teach his military tactics today. 

It is said that Alexander would send heralds into conquered cities before him proclaiming, “I, Alexander, have conquered the world. Now I will conquer the stars.” Legend says that he wept on entering India at age 29, realising he had no more worlds to conquer. 

But he died at the age of 32, almost certainly of malaria. All that human glory and majesty taken down in just a few days by a humble mosquito…

Even the genuine greats of human history, even the most admirable of men and women who have ever lived, even cultural icons who have left their mark, even the great and the good buried in national shrines, are only briefly remarkable but gone in a flash and ultimately insignificant. No more than shooting stars. 

By comparison, the sheer greatness and grandeur of the glory of God in Christ is like… the sun. 870,000 miles in diameter, it rages at 15 million degrees Celsius at the centre, and ejects plasma (extremely hot charged particles) at a speed of 280 miles per second.

You have to be warned to not look at it directly. And just as the sun’s light can blind you, so God’s glory is brilliant beyond our capacity to bear it.

“No one may see my face and live”, says God in Exodus 33. For generation after generation, and into all eternity, the intense radiance of God’s glory never fades, never dims, never weakens.

In 2 Corinthians 4.6 the Apostle Paul talks about, “God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.”

It’s in Jesus that the glory of God comes into most vivid focus.

Towards the end of Jesus’ public ministry, Matthew, Mark and Luke all record an awesomely stunning event. Even by the exalted and breathtaking standards of the works of power Jesus did in the gospels this is an encounter from another realm.

Here’s what happens: Jesus takes three key leaders Peter, James and John up a mountain. As they go up, my guess is that they’re thinking, “This is going to be cool. Can’t wait to get a view from up there. We’ll see for miles and miles. We’ll take in a great panorama of pretty much the whole of northern Israel.”

But what happens up there blows their minds. Jesus becomes transfigured before their eyes. One moment they’re looking at him, just like you’re looking at your computer screen, and the next moment the appearance of his face changes, and his clothes become overpoweringly bright. It must have been spectacular to behold.

Jesus’ whole appearance changes before their eyes. He looks as if he is ablaze; his clothes are like lightning.

And this near-blinding light shines not on Jesus but through him. It says the light is dazzling white. You can’t make anything brighter. It is overwhelmingly intense. It is strange and otherworldly. It is stunningly impressive.

Then Moses and Elijah, two signs-and-wonders prophets, appear. They all enter a cloud of the glory of God. There is an audible voice from heaven.

And then it all comes to an end and they find Jesus alone, his appearance just as it had been before. Whoa…!

You’d think something like that would make a lasting impression on those who were there - and it did. Two of them, Peter and John, wrote about it decades later.

Some 30 years after the event, Peter (in 2 Peter 1) describes in vivid detail what he saw. “We were eye-witnesses of his majesty” he says. “He received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased’.”

Then John, about 50 years after the event, is still talking about it in the opening chapter of his Gospel: “The true light that gives light to everyone [came] into the world” he says. “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

We were eyewitnesses. We were there. We saw it with our own eyes.

God’s Glory in John’s Gospel

Towards the end of last year, I was reading through John’s Gospel, taking it very slowly, soaking it in, reading it deeply and I was really struck by the words “glory” and “glorify” in this Gospel.

It’s there in the verse I quoted just now from chapter 1. “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

At the wedding in chapter 2, where Jesus performs his first miracle, turning water into wine, John says, “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

In fact, the words “glory” or “glorify” occur 27 times in John’s Gospel, more than in any other New Testament book, and more than the other three Gospels and Acts put together, so this is a very significant theme for John.

As you read through John’s Gospel, it becomes clearer and clearer that the focus of God’s glory, revealed in Christ, is not the miracles, not even the raising of Lazarus, as they hardly mention glory at all.

It’s not the transfiguration either. John doesn’t even include a description of it in his Gospel. 

The focus of Christ’s glory in John’s Gospel is supremely in his passion and death. That’s where you see God’s glory at its brightest and most manifest. 

In John chapter 12, during Jesus’ last major public address, less than a week before he dies, Jesus says, “The hour has [now] come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

In the following chapter, at the last supper, Judas leaves the room to betray him for a bag of coins and hand him over to his enemies. In the very next verse it says this: “When [Judas] was gone, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him.’”

Closely connected with the theme of glory in John’s Gospel is the phrase “lifted up”, meaning “exalted” or “sovereign.”

About 750 years before Christ, the prophet Isaiah briefly saw the glory of God, and the manifestation of his holiness. The experience nearly killed him. The foundations of the place he was in shook at the sound of the angel voices, the room was filled with smoke and Isaiah cried out in terror; “That’s it! I have looked God in the face! I’m finished!” 

Isaiah says, “I saw the Lord high and lifted up [there’s that phrase again] seated on a throne” and he heard these words, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory. 

When you see the Lord high and lifted up, if you’re not prepared for it, it is a fearsome thing and you feel the almost unbearable weight of his glory.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus talks about being “lifted up” four times and each time it’s a play on words. He certainly means exalted and magnified and glorified as in Isaiah 6. But he also means being literally lifted up on a cross. “The Son of Man must be lifted up” he says. “And when I am lifted up from the earth,” he says, “I will draw all people to myself.”

What is it about the passion of the Christ that makes it the source of our delight, of our joy?

Never forget that Jesus’ death was a brutally violent judicial murder. If you had been there to see it, it would traumatise you. It was beyond appalling. You would witness distressing and horrifying, unforgettable scenes that would haunt you for years.

Let’s begin with his agonies in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Gospels tell us that Jesus was greatly disturbed and distressed. He said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Knowing what was to come, he begged his Father in prayer to take the cup of his wrath away from his lips.

A few years ago, I came across a diary entry by a Christian from Texas called Tim White, whose young son experienced great suffering in his early years. This is what it said: 

“In the first 15 years of his life, our son Ryan had over 30 surgeries. When he was about eight years old, he was in the hospital for another surgery. The medical staff had already given him the ‘barney juice’ a purple liquid with something like morphine in it.

“The medical staff began to roll his surgical bed to the operating room. As usual, we accompanied him to the two big doors that led to the place of surgery. That is where we stopped, and told him all would be OK for the last time before surgery.

“This day, as we got to the doors and they opened, he sat up in the bed, looked at me in the eyes and pleaded, ‘Dad, don’t let them take me!’

At that moment my heart was broken. I would have done anything to take him off that bed except for the fact that he had to have the surgery. That knowledge didn’t ease the pain in my heart at all. I just stood trembling as the doors closed, and he disappeared. That is when I broke down in tears.

“Shortly after, when I was asking God how such a good love could hurt so much, I realised that he had gone through the same thing. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed: ‘Father, if there is any other way, let this cup pass from me.’ Translated into the language of a child, ‘Daddy, don’t let them take me.’ 

“I allowed the surgeons to take my son for his own good. God allowed the crucifiers to take his Son for our good. That is how much God loves us. It has been said that something is worth what someone else is willing to pay. Christ’s willingness to give his life shows the value he placed on me.”

The story of the passion goes on. People may well ask what is there to delight in about this:

• A good man is betrayed by a friend
• He is deserted by all his followers
• One, whose life he had once saved from drowning, denies three times ever knowing him
• His trial is a scandalous denial of justice
• An angry mob bays for his blood
• He is mocked and parodied, spat at and beaten up
• His execution is slow, exhausting and unbearably painful
• He calls out in anguish that everybody has left him

Such suffering. Such distress. We had to invent a new word to describe the pain Jesus endured: From two Latin words: ex meaning “out of” and cruciatus meaning “the cross.” Jesus’ sufferings were excruciating.

The British church leader and pioneer Terry Virgo in his book, No Well-Worn Paths speaks about his visit to China where he met a believer called Allen Yuan. Yuan had been imprisoned by the Communists because of his faith in Christ.

He was 44 years old when he was locked up. His wife had to raise their six children (aged from six to seventeen) all alone without him and also care for an elderly mother. 

People constantly urged his wife to remarry, saying he must have been killed by now. She had several marriage proposals. But she refused each time, saying she would never remarry unless she had concrete proof her husband was dead.

Yuan was in jail for 21 years and throughout that whole time he never once saw his family, or had news if them, or they of him. In that time, he had no Christian fellowship, or even saw a Bible. Conditions were very harsh in prison. At times, the temperature dropped to -29°C (minus 20 Fahrenheit) but miraculously he never once got ill.

He missed his wife terribly. Life was hard for her too obviously. He missed his children growing up to adulthood. They both suffered terribly. When Yuan was finally released, he was by then in his mid-sixties.  

But whenever people would speak to him about the high price he had paid for following Jesus, this dear, humble man would smile, beaming with joy and simply say, “Nothing compared to the cross.”

With the other three Gospels, John faithfully records Jesus’ arrest and trial in the night between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. 

By the standards of any decent legal system, Jesus’ trial was a complete sham. It was rotten. It was rigged. It was actually engineered to deliver the desired miscarriage of justice.

There are twelve different reasons why Jesus’ case should have been thrown out, and I’m not talking about the standards of modern Human Rights conventions. Even according to the first century Jewish legal system, Jesus’ trial should have been thrown out as null, void and invalid.

Here they are, 12 reasons why Jesus’ trial was unlawful…

1. All four Gospels are clear that Jesus was arrested without a single charge being made against him. Illegal.

2. The arrest was set up by his judges, the chief priests, who thus became the counsel for the prosecution. Illegal. They should have been relieved of their duties for conflict of interest. 

3. The trial took place on private property, in the high priest’s home, not in the public law court. Illegal. 

4. The trial had to held in daylight hours but it took place at night. Illegal. 

5. The trial began without the accused formally being accused or charged of any offence. Illegal. 

6. The prosecution witnesses brought no consistent evidence, so the case should have been dismissed. 

7. Those whose statements disagreed were not charged with perverting the course of justice as they should have been for giving false evidence in court. 

8. Jesus was not released without charge when his accusers were shown to be unreliable witnesses.

9. The judge failed to call a single testimony for the defence, only for the prosecution, thus failing in his duty of impartiality.

10. The judge made no cross-examination of Jesus' claim to be the Messiah, pointedly ignoring it.

11. Jesus was physically attacked and harmed while in custody, thus punished before a verdict was pronounced.

12. The sentence of execution was rushed through on the same morning, allowing no opportunity for a legal appeal.

No accusation stuck. Testimonies against him didn’t agree. No two witnesses were consistent. Not a shred of evidence for any crime was produced. Nothing remotely incriminating was uncovered in cross-examination.

Pilate would have been delighted to have been able to find Jesus guilty of something - anything; it would have kept the rabble quiet. He would have passed sentence and been done with it. But the closer Pilate examined the case, the more persuaded he became that Jesus was being framed.

Never was a defendant so manifestly innocent. And never was the outcome of a court case so cruelly inevitable. The most beautiful life ever lived – it was so unfair!

Do you ever feel the world has treated you unfairly? Remember that Jesus was tested in every way as we are, yet was without sin. He didn’t retaliate, he didn’t lash out, he didn’t even insist on his rights. He certainly didn’t become hateful and bitter. 

But his glory is our delight. Because when we place our faith in Jesus his total innocence is given to us in place of our legal guilt which is taken away.

When God looks at you and me on the Day of Judgement, when all the books are opened; when the full catalogue of every wrong thing you and I have ever thought, and said, and done is opened up before us, the pages will all be blank. 

Whenever Satan says, “Just look at your sin!” God says, “No, just look at my Son!” Christ’s impeccable moral blamelessness is all yours, all mine, through faith. That’s why his glory is our delight. 

On 30 August 1991 in the Shinjuku stadium in Tokyo, Japan, an American athlete named Mike Powell pulled off a sporting achievement that no one had managed for 33 years. And, almost 30 years on, no one has matched it since. I wonder if you know what it was? Any guesses?

If you said “he broke the world record for the men’s long jump” you are right. The distance he jumped was 8.95 metres (that’s 29 feet, 4¼ inches). Measure that out after this podcast and marvel at the length of that jump. 

That’s without the hop and the skip. That’s a different event. This is just the jump!

Now, how achievable would it be for anyone watching or listening to this today to break that record? Would anyone like to have a go? Do I have any takers? I don’t think I do.

The gap between the point where Powell set off and the point just beyond where he landed is just completely unbridgeable, even (so far) for the very best elite athletes on earth. No one in human history has ever jumped further. 

If we were to pick the fittest, most athletic, person watching or listening to this (I know you’re probably thinking “that must be me!”) and if we were to give that person intense training and put them on a special diet and design a super streamlined kit and engineer some new high-tech shoes, we still know that they would never, ever be airborne that long and jump that distance. 

It’s just not possible. So let me ask you a question. How far do you think the distance is between what you know secretly about your heart and the intense and glorious brightness of God’s infinite moral perfections?

How far do you think it is between your sinfulness and God’s righteousness? And what could you ever do to close the gap?

Our delight is in the fact that, at the cross, Jesus decisively and permanently closed that gap, though we never could. It’s as if he jumped it in our place and then handed us the gold medal.

There are over 40 verses in the New Testament that specifically state that Jesus’ death was “for us”, “in the place of us”, “as a substitute for us”.

Time is short, so here are just seven of them: 

• This is my body, this is my blood given for you (Luke 22.20)
• While we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5.8)
• God made him who had no sin to become sin for us (2 Corinthians 5.21)
• Christ became a curse for us (Galatians 3.13)
• Christ who loved us and gave himself up for us (Ephesians 5.2)
• By the grace of God he might taste death for us (Hebrews 2.9)
• Christ suffered for us (1 Peter 3.18)

All that is ours as a free gift, if we trust in Jesus Christ. It’s for everyone, no exceptions, everyone who comes to him and asks. 

As the great 19^th Century Baptist preacher C. H. Spurgeon once put it, “Among the lost souls of hell, there is not one who can say, ‘I went to Jesus and he refused me.’”

In British sign language the name ‘Jesus’ is represented by pointing to both hands. I wonder if those who devised the sign were thinking of the hands that were always open to bless?

Did they have in mind the hands that touched lepers and outcasts, the hands that grabbed a sinking Peter from certain drowning, the hands that healed the blind and crippled, the hands that lifted a lifeless teenage girl from her deathbed?

I think we’re getting closer if we think of the hands that broke bread and said to remember his sufferings. But most likely of all, it references the hands that were pierced for our transgressions. 

Ending

To end, I was listening to a podcast on the lordship of Christ recently and the speaker (Simon Ponsonby) was listing the great empires of world history.

The ottoman empire lasted 700 years. The Roman empire stood for 500 years. The first Ming dynasty in China endured 280 years.

The British Empire, on which the sun never set because it spanned every time zone, lasted 250 years. The Soviet Union with its satellite states in eastern Europe survived barely 70 years.

Hitler promised a thousand-year Reich only to “crumble in infamy” as the speaker said after just 12 years.

But, leaving aside the shooting star glories of nations and empires for one moment, I leave you with this thought to savour for your joy and delight:

Christ’s kingdom, when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, will endure eternally. He will reign forever more. His dominion is from everlasting to everlasting. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

His Glory – Our Delight.

 

Talk for Gospel Spice, 18 February 2021