The Dream of God
09/10/2006 - The Dream Fulfilled: What Jesus Did
Tomorrow is September 11, 2006, the five year anniversary of the horrific events of 9/11. I'll never forget where I was when I first heard the news that a plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. It was a bright, sunny Tuesday morning and Tim and I were having breakfast at a local restaurant when we noticed that the TV was on and it was really loud. In fact, it was so loud that I was about to ask our server if they could please turn it down when she said, "Haven't you heard the news? There's been an explosion at the World Trade Center!"
Immediately we both got up and looked at the screen and saw an image of a plane slamming into the Trade Center. It was actually a replay of the second plane that crashed into the south tower at 9:03 a.m. And as everyone in that restaurant stood in stunned silence I remember thinking, "This can't be happening." It seemed surreal, almost like a made for TV movie. Part of me was waiting for the commercial break, but the commercial never came. And as the rest of the day unfolded we emerged out of our shock and horror only to realize that it wasn't a movie at all, it was a real tragedy of epic proportions. America had been attacked.
And of course while all that was going on in New York, in Washington D. C. at 9:43 a.m. the Pentagon was hit by a jetliner and then less than a half-hour later a fourth plane, United Flight 93, apparently headed for the White House, crashed into a field eighty miles southeast of Pittsburgh. There has never been a day like September 11th in the history of our nation. Life in America and indeed life in the world has never been the same since. In fact, we talk these days about life before 9/11 and life after 9/11.
9/11 was not part of the dream of God. It was part of his plan, but not part of his dream. It was hell on earth that day. There were 50,000 people working at the World Trade Center when the planes hit. Over 2,800 of them lost their lives. The remains of over 1,700 of them were never found. Over 1,600 people lost a spouse or a partner that day and over 3,000 children lost a parent.
We live in a violent, chaotic world where tragedies like 9/11 threaten the very foundation of our faith in God. Yet again and again the Scriptures reassure us that there is a God who is in control. And he grieves over evil because he is a good God. He shed tears that day because he's a compassionate God. And he has a dream for this world that will one day eliminate tragedies like 9/11 from ever happening again.
And one thing I love about our God is that he is not distant and removed from evil and violence and tragedy. He has experienced it all himself. He has been the victim of abuse and injustice, evil and death. He understands our pain and suffering because he too experienced it. And we're going to see that today as we continue our series called The Dream of God: Bringing Heaven to Earth with a teaching I've called "The Dream Fulfilled: What Jesus Did."
Last week we introduced you to the hero of God's grand story. His name is Joshua in Hebrew, Jesus in Greek. And last Sunday we looked at what Jesus said. At first he seems like a very unlikely hero. He doesn't arrive on stage with a shout, dressed in shining armor, riding on a white horse. There's no great fanfare. Instead, he arrives with a whimper, the cry of a helpless little baby boy born in a feeding trough in a stable in a small Jewish village called Bethlehem.
Yet he is the one that the prophets said would come and fulfill God's dream. He is the one who will crush the serpent's head. He is the seed of Abraham's promise. He is the prophet who would arise just like Moses. He is the descendant who will sit on David's throne and rule forever and ever. He is the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the Branch that will bear much fruit. He is all these things and more.
And yet for most of his life he lives under the radar in relative obscurity working as a carpenter in the family business, going to synagogue and hearing stories about the dream of God and the hope of his kingdom come to this earth.
Then at the age of thirty he lays down his tools and walks into the Jordan River where he's baptized by his cousin, John, and then starts to boldly proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
"Change your way of thinking! God's dream of bringing heaven to this earth is closer than you think," he says. "This dream of God that you thought was dead is very much alive and is available right here, right now to anyone and everyone who wants in." The King is in the house. And so for three years he preaches and teaches and does signs and wonders to show us what God's kingdom is like.
He tells his followers, people like you and me, that we are the light of the world. We are the salt of the earth. We are the ones who can bring heaven to this earth right now by living out God's values. We are to enter into this world with all its pain and suffering, just like Jesus did, and make it a better place. That starts in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our jobs, in our church community.
Tim was telling me this week that the he's been asking the students in Young Life to start paying attention to the things that are wrong with this world at home, at school, in the news. He wants them to begin to notice examples of oppression and injustice and prejudice and racism and hatred and start to think about ways that they as Christ followers can be part of the solution and not part of the problem, how they can be light in the darkness, the salt of the earth. That's a great exercise for all of us.
"Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand." That was Jesus' primary message. But as we said last week, not everybody bought it. In fact, many people were offended by it and some were down right angry about it, angry enough to have Jesus arrested and tried, flogged and crucified on trumped up charges that he was leading a rebellion against Caesar.
And in an amazing interaction with Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, Jesus says in John 18:36-37, My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place. "You are a king, then!" said Pilate. Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."
Jesus confessed to being a king, but not a political king like the king of Rome or Israel or of some other nation of this world. His kingdom transcends this world and is made up of all those through space and time who follow him. Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. What he says is true. And I love that last statement, "Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." The world is so full of lies and half-truths. It's hard sometimes to know whom to believe. But if we listen to Jesus he will not lead us astray. He can always be trusted to tell us the truth.
The interaction Jesus had with Pilate was amazing, but it did not spare his life. Even though Pilate would say, "I find no fault in him," Jesus would be dead within a few hours, crucified on a Roman cross. And once again it looked like evil had triumphed and the dream of God was dead. Another senseless tragedy like 9/11.
You see the prevailing concept of the day was that when Messiah came he would do battle with Israel's enemies, which at that time were the Romans. He would conquer them in a heart beat and then restore, rebuild, and cleanse the Temple in Jerusalem. He would bring Israel's long history to a glorious conclusion, reestablishing the happy days of King David and Solomon and would become God's final representative to Israel, and Israel's final representative to God.
There was no room for a cross in that plan even though throughout the Old Testament the prophets spoke of the Messiah as the suffering servant of Jehovah. The classic passage being Isaiah 53 written 500 years before Jesus and yet it reads like an eyewitness account of the crucifixion. If you have a Bible meet me at Isaiah 53. I want you to see it for yourself.
Isaiah 53:1-12, Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3He was despised and rejected by others, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 5But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. 9He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. 10Yet it was the LORD'S will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. 11After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. 12Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Jesus' death described by Isaiah in vivid detail was all part of God's plan to fulfill the dream and absolutely necessarynot to save Israel from Rome, but to rescue the world from evil and to set everything right once and for all. God's plan was to have evil do its worst possible damage to the servant of God, Jesus himself, in order to exhaust all its power.
As we said, last week, the justice of God had to be satisfied. The world got messed up and somebody had to own it, somebody had to pay for it. And Jesus, who never messed up, said, "I'll be the one to own it. I'll be the one to pay for it." And so the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. On the cross heaven, earth, and hell all intersected when Jesus cried out, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" It was at the moment that I believe Jesus was bearing our sin in his body, the guilt offering that Isaiah calls it in verse 10.
And in light of 9/11 and other horrific events that happen in our lives and in this world I take great comfort in the cross and resonate with the words of British theologian John R. W. Stott when he says,"I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross …. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time, after a while I have to turn away. And in my imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. And our sufferings become more manageable in light of his."
In the crucifixion of Jesus the grand story of God comes full circle. Jesus comes to reverse the effects of the curse that began in the garden. The cross is the event Genesis spoke about when God said the offspring of the woman would one day come and crush the serpent's head while the serpent would strike his heel. Satan's power was crushed on the cross and Jesus got wounded in the process.
Remember it was from a tree that Adam and Eve ate that caused them to break community with God. It's on a tree that Jesus dies to restore our community with God. It was the serpent that brought the temptation to the first man and the first woman. Jesus, the Bible says, becomes the serpent lifted up on a pole.
After their sin Adam and Eve are ashamed of their nakedness and cover themselves with fig leaves. Jesus experiences shame by hanging naked on the cross. The curse brings thorns and thistles, sweat and blood to this world. Jesus wears a crown of thorns and thistles, sweats drops of blood, and becomes the curse for us so that one day we can be set free from its power.
About the cross N.T. Wright says, "Nothing in all the history of paganism comes anywhere near this combination of event, intention, and meaning. Nothing in Judaism had prepared for it, except in puzzling, shadowy prophecy. The death of Jesus of Nazareth as the king of the Jews, the bearer of Israel's destiny, the fulfillment of God's promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunderstanding the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns. Christianity is based on the belief that it was and is the latter."
And so just like we talk about life before 9/11 and life after 9/11 in God's grand story we talk about life before the cross and life after the cross of Christ. The dream can't be fulfilled without it. Of course, the full impact of the cross can't be understood without the resurrection. Three days after his execution Jesus comes back to life, not as a battered, bleeding survivor, but as a living, breathing Savior. Yet at first nobody believes its Jesus. They don't know who he is. Can you blame them? The resurrection of the Savior was on no one's radar screen even though Isaiah 53:11 refers to it when we read, After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life.
I like how Rob Bell puts it when he says, "It's such a letdown to rise from the dead and have your friends not recognize you." And that's what happened to Jesus. John says in his gospel that he appears first to Mary and she thinks he's the gardener. I love that line. It's so loaded with meaning because once again it takes us back to the beginning of the story. Where did God first place Adam and Eve? In the garden. The garden was the scene of the crime for the fatal choice they made to live outside the foul lines. Death first enters the picture in the garden.
And where is death finally conquered? In the garden. Jesus emerges from a garden tomb. There is a new Adam on the scene, and he is reversing the curse of death and he is doing it in a garden. Paradise was lost in the garden and paradise is reclaimed in the garden. Jesus is reclaiming creation. He's entering into it and restoring it and renewing God's plans for this world. The resurrection of Jesus brought more of heaven to this earth than anything else. He came back in a supernatural body, the kind of body that Scripture says someday we will possess. Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up on his dream for this world.
When we gather for worship on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day of the resurrection, we are not only proclaiming that Jesus is alive. We are proclaiming that the dream is alive, the dream of God's kingdom come to this earth, lived out through his followers is here and now through worship and the Word, through our love for each other and our love for the world. A new day has dawned. A new era has begun.
And that's a process that we all have a stake in. Our mission as Christ followers is to get on board with God's mission to bless this world and to help make all things new. Around here we call that making a difference in this world. That's what John was doing in Africa this summer. That's what we did last week with school supplies for Operation Joy. That's what a group will be doing in a few weeks at Habitat for Humanity. That's what Adam and Tasha will be doing as they head to France on Tuesday.
As Wright says, "Every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity, every time justice is done, peace is made, families are healed, temptation is resisted, true freedom is sought and won we join a long history of things which implement Jesus' own resurrection and anticipate the final new creation, acting as signposts of hope, pointing back to the first resurrection and ahead to the second."
The dream could not be fulfilled without the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is more than just a holiday on the calendar called Easter week. The resurrection is God's exclamation point that we can be confident that his dream of renewing the world will come true. Everyone on the side truth listens to me, Jesus said. Are you listening to Jesus? Are you on the side of truth today? Are you helping to turn God's dream into a reality? I hope so.