Halftime Talk

There is a part of a basketball game that no spectator gets to see.

No matter how important or how wealthy the tickle holder may be,

no matter how much he has paid for his seat, there is one event that the spectator

will not be invited to observe.

And yet this one event can change the entire outcome of a game.

I've watched games where teams were down as much as 20 points or more that literally

turned around after this part of the basketball game took place.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Well, kind of, but if you've actually looked at your bulletin, see, I caught you.

If you've actually looked at your bulletin, and you would know that this part

of the game is called the halftime talk.

It's called the halftime talk for a very good reason.

It's because the coach talks at halftime. Pretty profound, don't you think?

Yeah, it's pretty remarkable the way they coined this phrase.

But it's considered to be so crucial to the tempo of a game that nearly every team has one.

I did an internet search looking for examples of these talks,

but all I could find was colorful phrases to describe them because nobody wanted

to actually broadcast what was said in those locker rooms at halftime. So here are some things.

So March Madness, halftime talk. At halftime, we've heard them called as spirited,

energized, stern, intense, angry.

A tongue lashing, or paint peeling.

It almost sounds like what I dealt with every time my father came home from a trip, or.

And found out what I had done. Coach Jerry Wainwright of the DePaul Blue Demons

once said that during such a talk, he says, I wasn't real kind.

Usually I yelled to our players. This time I yelled at them.

The objective of a halftime talk, especially if the team is behind,

is to tell the team what they may not want to hear, but things they really need

to hear in order to succeed in the second half.

Now, no team, whether they're up or down, is going to have a coach.

Well, they're not going to have a coach very long.

If he goes into the locker room and says to his players, if they're behind,

he says, you guys are a bunch of worthless idiots.

I don't know what I'm doing here with you guys. Well, he probably wouldn't be

doing anything with them very long, would he?

Usually the halftime talk is where the coach comes in and he talks about their

qualities, how good they are and how capable they are, and here's some things

we need to do to correct it.

Here's what needs to happen in order for us to continue and to win this game.

In the passage from the Gospel of Mark that we are going to read this morning,

we find Jesus telling his disciples some things they don't really want to hear.

Just for the sake of my illustration, I want you to think about the disciples

as being a team, and Jesus is their coach.

So let's read from Mark chapter 14, verses 12 through 31.

Mark 14:12–31

On the first day of the festival of unleavened bread, when it was customary

to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, Where do you want

us to go and make preparation for you to eat the Passover?

So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, Go into the city,

and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him.

Say to the owner of the house he enters, The teacher asks, Where is my guest

room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?

He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready.

Make preparation for us there.

The disciples left, went into the city, and found things just as Jesus had told

them. So they prepared the Passover.

When evening came, Jesus arrived with the twelve. While they were reclining

at the table eating, he said, Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me,

one who is eating with me.

They were saddened, and one by one they said to him, Surely you don't mean me.

It is one of the twelve, he replied, one who dips bread into the bowl with me.

The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him, but woe to that man

who betrays the Son of Man!

It would be better for him if he had not been born.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks,

he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take it, this is my body.

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them,

and they all drank from it.

This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many, he said to them.

Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that

day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.

When they had sung a hymn, they went to the Mount of Olives.

You will all fall away, Jesus told them, for it is written.

I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.

But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.

Peter declared, Even if all fall away, I will not.

Truly, I tell you, Jesus answered, Today, yes, tonight, before the rooster crows

twice, you yourself will disown me three times.

But Peter insisted emphatically, Even if I have to die with you,

I will never disown you. And all the others said the same.

Over the past few days, the disciples of Jesus had been on a roll.

They had been on an excited journey.

Jesus had just come off a successful road trip where he had performed numerous

miracles, healed the hundreds of people, and raised Lazarus from the dead.

Not very many people do that, even then.

And when they entered Jerusalem, where the crowd went wild, They were excited

to see what happened as the people cut down branches from nearby palm trees

and laid them along the road and then shouted out,

Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Everyone is expecting that Jesus will soon proclaim himself to be a king and

uproot the Roman oppression of which they are so bound down at this time.

Then Jesus went into the temple and displayed his power and majesty when he

cleared out the money changers that everybody knew were crooked businessmen

and should have been dealt with years ago.

If a sports broadcaster were to compare this to the basketball game,

he'd say team Jesus had gone into the locker room with a 20-point lead,

and victory was assured.

But Jesus knows that that's not how this game is going to be played out.

Jesus knows this illusion of success will soon disappear, and so will his team.

And he knows that he needs to tell his team things they don't want to hear.

Still, they are the things that he needs to tell them.

His disciples need to hear if they're ever going to overcome the tragedy and

the despair that's going to happen in the next few days.

And so Jesus is brutally honest with his disciples. He tells them,

one of you will betray me.

So can you imagine a coach going into a locker room and saying,

one of you guys has sold us out.

One of you guys has taken a bribe to throw this game so we can't win.

One of you guys is going to betray me.

And we read that in Mark chapter 14, verse 18, and I can imagine everybody on

Mark 14:18

the team is looking around, well, it can't be me because I've never taken a

bribe in my life. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do such a thing.

And then he goes on to say, and all of you will desert me.

Every one of you that doesn't betray me is going to betray me in another way,

in that you are going to leave the team.

You're going to get out there on the court, and you're going to find that tough

things are going to get tough and the score is going to get closer and closer

and closer and you're going to think, boy, this is going to end up in a fiasco.

We're going to lose by multiple tens of points as this game ends.

And so I'm just quitting.

I'm going to enter the transfer portal and I'm going to go to another team before

this game is even over. Forget this stuff. I'm not here anymore.

And that's what Jesus is telling them.

All of you will desert me. Can you imagine what that would sound like in a locker

room, in a basketball game for any of the NCAA teams or any of the other teams

at high school on up to professional,

if a coach were to come in and say these teams,

one of you guys has sold us out and the rest of you are going to quit?

No, not me, Peter says. If the others fall away, forget it.

They can fall away, but I'm not going to. I'm going to stay with you forever.

And then he shared the prophecy about himself from Zechariah 13,

Zechariah 13:7

verse 7, where God declared, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be

scattered. This is unbelievable.

The disciples can't even begin to grasp what happened. Except for Judas,

the rest of the team has been loyal.

They played their hearts out. I've never heard of a coach giving this kind of

halftime talk, but it was true.

It was the truth of what Jesus was speaking to them. One was going to betray

him, and the rest were going to walk off the team.

They were going to desert him.

And yet Jesus tells us all of them that they will fail.

He tells all of them that they will desert him, and worst of all,

he tells them that he is going to die.

Prophecy from Zechariah is declared that the shepherd would be struck,

which literally means he would be slain or killed.

They couldn't understand this. How could Jesus say these things?

What had they done to deserve this?

Have you ever felt that way?

Have you ever felt like you've been slapped down by something that came completely

out of left field and left you wondering what happened?

Yeah, I guess. I did experience that one time when I was a little kid here in Richland Center.

We were watching some people play baseball, and I was sitting on the third baseline,

sitting off of the third baseline, and somebody hit a line drive,

and it smacked me upside the head.

And I heard rushing trains for weeks. So, yeah, sometimes we do get slapped

upside the head. But why did God allow this happen to us?

Why did I, what did I do deserve this calamity in my life, this car accident,

this loss of a spouse, this child who has passed away?

For those of you who have seen the movie, I Can Only Imagine,

detailing Bart Millard's life.

Bart Millard is the lead singer for Mercy Me Band. And if you've seen the movie,

you know that Bart Millard knew how it feels when his mom left home and deserted

him and his father, and his father became an alcoholic.

Divorce and death are like that. The team is broken and defeated.

The family is gone.

There's a great separation that no one can understand, and the ones left behind

wrestle with the pain and agony of wondering if it was something they said or

did that caused their loved one to leave.

And you can begin to search for something that you need to repent for because

you just know that God must be punishing you for something.

What did I do to cause God to do this?

Well, that's how the disciples felt. what had they done to deserve this?

Well, they really hadn't done anything.

It wasn't about them as it isn't about us.

This was about a game plan that had been designed thousands of years before they had been born.

And Jesus basically said to them, listen, follow the game plan.

Now you can hear every coach in the world saying the same thing when he gets

into the halftime conversation with his players.

Somehow, if they've been behind, somehow they've fallen and not kept up the game plan.

And the coach says to them, listen, the game plan will prove itself out. Follow the game plan.

And the disciples are like, well, what is the game plan?

The book of Isaiah declared that this Messiah would be led like a lamb to the

slaughter, cut off from the land of the living.

Assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death,

pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brings us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Doesn't sound like a very positive game plan, does it?

And yet that is the exact game plan for all of this on all of time.

Isaiah described the coming Messiah as being a sacrifice for our sins,

kind of like the Passover land had always been for the Jewish people.

Back in the days where the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt,

the Bible tells us that God brought them out of the land of their captivity with a mighty hand.

God brought 10 plagues upon the Egyptian people to convince the Pharaoh to let his people go.

And the last of those plagues was the death of the firstborn male of every family

in Egypt, including their livestock.

Those who didn't have the blood of the lamb painted on the doorposts and little

lentils of their homes were struck by the angel of death and the firstborn male in their family died.

Was killed. It was in preparation for this last and most terrible of plagues

that God instructed the Israelites on how to conduct their Passover feast and

of the importance of placing the blood of this innocent lamb on their homes.

So God told them this, the blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are.

And when I see the blood, I will pass over you and the plague shall not be on

you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

The blood of an innocent lamb needed to be shed to save them from death.

And now Jesus is with his disciples in the upper room, and they're taking part

in a Passover meal together, and Jesus is talking about the Passover feast as if it's all about him.

You know, come on, Jesus, is this really all about you? Well, yeah.

And it says, while they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks,

and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, take it, this is my body.

Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and offered it to them, and they all drank from it.

He said, this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.

He's telling his disciples that the bread they had eaten many times every year

in the Passover meal, and the cup of wine that they had drank many times as

part of the Passover feast,

the unleavened bread and the cup of juice, it was symbolic of his body and his blood.

It was his body that had been broken to save men from death and his blood that

had been shed to save mankind from the curse of death.

He was the Passover lamb. He was the sacrifice.

But there's In order for the blood of a sacrifice to be offered,

what had to happen to the sacrifice?

It had to die, right? The animal had to die.

And so in this situation, the coach decides he's going to come into the game and win it.

This is where the coach stands up and says, listen, I know you guys,

one of you is going to betray you. One has called for a bribe.

Just don't even come anymore. Just go and do what you're supposed to do.

The rest of you are going to walk away from me, but here's the deal.

I'm going to pay the price and I will win the game.

For about a year now Jesus had been telling his disciples this was going to happen.

Right after Peter told Jesus thou art the Christ the son of the living God Matthew

Matthew 16:21

chapter 16 verse 21 says this from that time on Jesus began to explain to disciples

that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders chief priests,

and teachers of the law, and then they must be killed and on the third day be raised to life again.

Matthew tells us of at least three separate occasions where Jesus specifically

told the disciples this.

But the disciples were never quite willing to accept this idea.

They couldn't understand this. How could this Jesus, who was a miracle worker,

being acclaimed by the thousands, become a sacrificial lamb.

Because to them, this wasn't how the game was supposed to be played.

This was not their understanding of the game plan. Their understanding of the

game plan was this Messiah, this Son of Man, this Jesus was going to be the king.

He was going to win the game for them by conquering the Roman Empire and getting

rid of all of the evil Jewish leaders.

So now here they are at halftime. they're about to face the hardest challenge

they've ever encountered. They're winning the game.

Everything seems to be going great. They're about to see their,

and yet they're about to see their master arrested, beaten, condemned,

and crucified. And so what do they do?

They run away and hide.

And ultimately, they're all going to fail him.

Not just Judas, but every single disciple is going to run away and hide.

They're going to be afraid that the same forces that will arrest and crucified

Jesus will come for them.

They're going to be slam dunked on it. They know, they know that.

It's halftime and they're about

to go back into the part of the game that they're not prepared to handle.

It's halftime and they're about to face forces of darkness that will overwhelm

them and fill them with despair and dread.

It's halftime and it says at this point in the ministry that Jesus sees the

need to give them the halftime talk of their lives.

And now, as I was studying this passage for this sermon, something occurred to me.

The disciples had spent other Passover meals with Jesus, three or more Passover meals with Jesus.

But it is only now, as they are about to face the greatest challenge of their

lives, they challenge that they will ultimately fail.

It's only now that Jesus sees fit to speak to them of the bread being his body

and the cup being his blood. Why do they do it?

And what do they do now? Why hasn't this been a repeated image at every Passover

they've ever celebrated before together?

When I was preparing for this morning, as I looked up front,

I saw this hanging over in the corner, and I thought, how appropriate for this morning's message.

Because this is hope. because this last supper that Jesus has ever had with them is all about hope.

It means to place, it's meant to place images in their minds to help them understand

that the coming crisis will not be an accident.

In just a few hours, they are going to witness the scene as Jesus is arrested,

beaten, and crucified, and they're going to be afraid, and they're going to run away.

And they're going to assume that the game is over and they have lost big time.

And Jesus gave this half-time talk because he wanted his disciples to understand

one thing, and that is this.

The crucifixion was the game.

The crucifixion was the entire reason they had come out onto the floor to begin with.

If Jesus hadn't gone to the cross for our sins, they would have lost, and we would have lost.

And the crucifixion wasn't the loss, the crucifixion was the gain.

We oftentimes look at the crucifixion as that's when Jesus died. Yeah, it is.

But it wasn't loss. It was because he died that he took our sin with him to the grave.

But we didn't lose. Jesus did go to the cross. He died. He was buried.

And on the third day, he rose from the dead.

And the resurrection is the victory. Love has won.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, by this gospel, you are saved.

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried,

and he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Because that is true, it helps us to understand that the purpose of the Last

Supper was to drive home to the disciples the fact that Jesus' death was not in vain.

His crucifixion was not an accident.

Jesus didn't get caught by surprise. This was the game plan.

This is the game plan. There's no other option.

There is no other way to heaven. There is no other salvation unto men except by the blood of Jesus.

And now that brings us to the celebration of communion that we're about to participate with.

The Lord's Supper is intended to have the same effect on us as it had on the disciples of that day.

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul writes, Whenever you eat this bread and drink this

cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until his coming again.

And every time you partake of the cup and the loaf, you are declaring that you

believe Jesus desperately and deliberately and reckless love,

Lee, chose the cross for you.

You are declaring you believe the blood of Jesus was shed to wash away your

sin and that his blood will continue to wash away your sins. Why is that important?

Well, because there are times when we say things we shouldn't say.

Or think things we shouldn't think, or do things we shouldn't do.

For every one of us, there are times when we fail, times when we fall short.

And when we gather at the communion table, we are reminded that the blood of

Jesus has been shed for us, and that blood has washed away every sin we have ever committed.

And Jesus desperately and deliberately and recklessly chose to go to the cross for you and me.

And for that, this is hope.

This is the game, and love has won.

This was extremely important to the early church. In Acts 20,

Acts 20:12

verse 12, Luke tells us that on the first day of the week, we came together to break bread.

They had gathered on the first day of the week to take communion every week.

They broke bread together in their homes every week on the Lord's Day, which was Sunday.

It just so happened that Paul was on the scene, recorded in Acts, and he gave a sermon.

But that wasn't why the Christians had gathered. They weren't there to hear

a great evangelist. That was just the frosting on the cake.

The reason they came together on a regular basis was to gather at the Lord's

table. They didn't come to hear somebody preach.

They came to share in the body and blood of Christ.

Can you imagine that? We're doing what they did.

We're partaking in the Lord's Supper today because we need to.

We need to be reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus.

We need to be reminded that this is deliberate decision on our part.

We need to know that sometimes people betray Jesus.

Hopefully none of us Sometimes people walk away Fall away Hopefully not us But when we do,

Scripture tells us we have an advocate With a father who comes before the father

And says welcome them back These are mine They belong to me.

I want to close this message with an excerpt from John Stott's book, The Cross of Christ.

He said, I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and

stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, his arm folded,

his eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing around his mouth,

a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of this world.

But each time after a while, I have had to look away, and in my imagination,

I have turned instead to see the lonely, twisted,

tortured figure on the cross, nails through his hands and feet, back lacerated.

Imagine this, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks,

mouth dry and intolerably thirsty.

Plunged in God-forsaken darkness.

And then he goes on, this, this is the God for me.

He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world with flesh and blood,

tears and death. He suffered for us.

Our sufferings became more manageable in the light of his suffering.

There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly

stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering,

and Jesus has suffered death for us that we might live.

Love has won. The game plan is true.

Jesus is the victor. let's pray Heavenly Father we thank you we thank you that you are the victory,

help us to live like champions in Jesus name.