Behold, your King!

Matthew 27:27-31 Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. ²⁸ They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, ²⁹ and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. ³⁰ They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. ³¹ After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

In June, 39-year-old James Edward Russell escaped from the Washington State Penitentiary. He remained at large for an entire day. He might have stayed at large longer if he hadn’t picked a cabin at random, knocked on the door, and asked for permission to use the phone.

It was the wrong cabin.

Out of all the cabins in the State of Washington Mr. Russell might have selected, he picked one that was being rented by an off-duty guard – a guard who worked at the very penitentiary from which Mr. Russell had escaped the day before.

This all goes to prove that there is a difference in cabins, cabin occupants and people to whom you can ask for help. There are many people who believe that there is no difference in religions, faiths or belief systems. They assume that all deities are the same and every religion has the same power to save.

But like Mr. Russell quickly discovered, everything is not all the same. Just like there is a difference in cabin occupants, so there is a between religions, faiths and the Savior. There are some religions – like some cabin doors – which will lead you into the eternal prison and punishment of hell. On the other hand, there is only one door that is occupied by the Savior … one door that leads to forgiveness, freedom and heaven.

That’s what Peter meant when He professed, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

But many people, perhaps most of the world’s population, are confused about this Jesus Christ who claimed to be God, King and Savior. What kind of King is this Jesus, anyhow? He commands the angelic host to do His bidding, yet the Roman soldiers spit on Him and hit Him in the mouth. He is pictured in the Scriptures as the King seated on His throne, wearing a golden crown and a white robe (Revelation 1:13-15). Yet the soldiers stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head and put a staff in His hand. The saints, angels, four living creatures and all of creation give glory, honor and praise to Jesus, yet the soldiers mocked Him exclaiming, “Hail, king of the Jews!”

He is the Creator, yet He suffered for His own creation. He is God, yet He died. He is the Lord who has everything placed under His feet (1 Corinthians 15:27), yet He had nails pounded into those hands and feet. Pontius Pilate taunted the Jews proclaiming, “Behold, your king!” and then led Jesus off to the cross. We lifted high the cross as we proudly sang and confessed today, “Behold, your King!”

The unbelieving world wonders, “What are we to make of this Jesus Christ?” (But that would be like a fly deciding what to make of an elephant.) Christian author, C.S. Lewis pointed out that the real question should be, “What is he to make of us?” Lewis made the observation that “if Jesus is false, he is of no importance. If he’s true, he is of infinite importance. The one thing he can never be is moderately important.”

Many in our world like to pooh-pooh Jesus by saying He is just one of many great men. That He was only a great moral teacher. That He was some kind of principled philosopher. But C.S. Lewis gives this take on Jesus, “You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit on him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.”

What does he mean by that? Once you say Jesus is not everything Christianity makes Him out to be, you are obligated to provide an alternative explanation to the phenomenon that He is. It’s not so easy. Once you say He is not the Lord of heaven and earth, then you are compelled to support one of the following premises: He was both a great moral teacher and a disgusting liar for claiming to be God; He was both a praiseworthy philosopher and a raving lunatic for thinking He had a kingdom not of this world; He was an honorable instructor and He died for His cause to be this world’s Savior. It doesn’t really work, does it?

Could Jesus be a great moral teacher if He asked obedient millions to lay down their lives for something He knew to be false? Could Jesus change the world with the beauty of His character and ethic and still be a religious huckster of this magnitude? Could a spiritual shyster take his lie all the way to a tortured death?

Then, was Jesus deluded in claiming to be God? If Jesus claimed to be God, then He must have been a megalomaniac or a psychotic, yet those people are never marked by humility, grace and brilliance of thought like Jesus was. Nor do they achieve the beautiful cohesiveness in life that millions wish to emulate. Nor do others bloom and thrive in relationship with such people. Yet nobody wants to make the claim that this Jesus was a shady or an unstable character. Instead, they try to dismiss Him as being merely a great moral teacher.

But it just doesn’t add up. Either Jesus was a liar, or He was a lunatic … or He was who He said He was – the Lord.

Nobody else but God in human flesh could change the world so profoundly. Consider how the disciples were cowards hiding in a locked room and then 50 days later they were professing Christ to thousands of people. Would they come out of hiding for a dead man? Consider how thousands of Jewish people abandoned their Sabbath Day restrictions, mandatory circumcision, animal sacrifice and separation from Gentiles. Would they do this for only a political messiah? Consider how early Christians were chained and put in prison, stoned, sawed in two, put to death by the sword, lived in deserts and mountains and worshiped in caves and catacombs Hebrews 11:36-38). Would they do all this for a teacher of morality?

The Bible is either all true or it’s a great big crock. There’s no middle ground. That’s what Jesus meant when He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He didn’t say whatever you believe about Him is fine. He didn’t say there were many paths to God. He didn’t say that if you were good enough, you’d get to heaven on your own.

No, He made it pretty clear where He stands. He is the truth – not one of many interesting truths. He is the way – He alone gives you righteousness with God. He is the life – He’s the only human being who lay down in a grave and got up on His own accord. Life comes only through Him. That’s why Jesus said of Himself, “It’s me or nothing.”

Philip Schaff, a historian of the Christian Church, concluded: “A character so original, so complete, so uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so high above all human greatness, can neither be a fraud nor a fiction. … It would take more than a Jesus to invent Jesus.” That is to say, there’s no one like the Lord Christ. He is unparalled, unduplicatable, uncococtable.

So, the world wants to dismiss this Jesus. But what do we do with Him? We claim Jesus as our King, but do we really make Him our King? If we believe Jesus is King, how come He remains only moderately important to us? We sing and confess, “Behold, your King!” but do we really end up belittling our King?”

All of us from children to adults, from students to teachers, from visitors to pastor must confess that God has set forth a way of life for us in His beloved Son. Yet we are slow to learn of Him. We fail to follow Him. We are reluctant to bear His cross. We do not conform our life to His. We ignore His direction, disobey His commandments, and flaunt our Christian freedom.

God, the Lord of the Church, gives us a beautiful church, the freedom in our nation, plus countless opportunities to worship His Son as our Redeemer and King. Yet we must confess the poverty of our worship, our neglect of Christian fellowship, and our carelessness in the use of the Means of Grace. We confess our hesitating witness for Christ, our evasion of responsibility in His service and the imperfect stewardship of our gifts. 

God’s beloved Son laid down His life for sinful humanity who did nothing but hate, mock and spit on Him. Yet we beg for forgiveness that so little of Christ’s love has reached others through us, that we have been thoughtless in our judgments, hasty in our condemnations and grudging in our forgiveness.

Jesus once asked the disciples, “Who do you say I am?” They must have been asking themselves that same question after Jesus was arrested, beaten, flogged and crucified. “Who is this Jesus, anyhow?”

When you really study God’s Scriptures, there is only one option left. If Jesus is uninventable, then He must be everything He claimed to be, everything true Christians believe. And thank God, because we need Jesus to be more than a man, more than a teacher, more than a philosopher of morality. We need Him to be God in the flesh, the Savior of the world, and the Redeemer of mankind.

Christian author, Josh McDowell posted a fascinating question in one of his books. He asked if God chose to become a man, what would He be like? Ever think of that? If God chose to become a man, what would He be like? It’s a very good question. I mean, how could God with skin on let us know it was really Him?

Well, He could prophecy His coming centuries in advance and include the most minute details so that His arrival would be unmistakable. If God became a man, He would be certain to have an utterly unique birth as His entrance into human history, complete with a virgin, angels and wise men. You could expect an outbreak of miracles like sign-posts pointing to Him, including raising the dead and dispossessing demons. You could suspect that His words would be the greatest ever spoken – with lasting, universal influence – and He, the mightiest factor in human history, would make sure those words would reach to the ends of the earth and of time. You could suppose that this perfect, sinless God-Man would take on the burden of living the perfect life for us by His baptism in the Jordan, absorbing the poison of our sin and death into the perfect, sinless body of His.

You could imagine that the One who is the Lord of all life, the One who cannot die, the immortal God would be laid low in death. You could speculate that the eternal Word from the Father, the cosmic King, who breathed life into Adam and formed the body of Eve, would then have His body torn apart with flogging, and breathe His last in humiliation, shame and pain. You could rationalize that the Father would pour out His wrath on His beloved Son.

You could trust that He who can dig the Grand Canyon with His pinkie, thought you were worth His death on Roman timber. You could believe that the King of kings would leave His kingdom in order to suffer and die for His fallen creation. You could believe that the Lord of lords would die so all would be made alive, and would allow His enemies to believe they had defeated Him so that He could put all His enemies under His feet. You could believe that there was no other was out of human predicament, no other way we could escape the eternal hellfire we deserve than for God to act in such a dramatic and decisive way. You could believe that though we fail to treat Him as our King, He still forgives us, loves us and accepts us as citizens of His heavenly Kingdom.

Does any of this sound familiar? This is Jesus Christ. And it can only be Jesus Christ.

Behold, behold your King! Amen.

Last Sunday of End Time at Epiphany on November 20, 2011