ENCOUNTERS // Jesus Encounters the Powers

We're going to start today in John chapter eighteen.

It's a little bit longer passage, and and uh I think I'd like to actually have us all stand for this, even though it's a longer passage.

Uh the the context here is that Jesus is standing before Pilate.

So let's just let's just stand.

We're exploring the ways of Jesus, and uh let's just get into it uh as we stand and picture Jesus in in this scene.

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus answered, Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?

Pilate answered, Am I a Jew?

Your nation, and the chief priests had delivered you over to me.

What have you done?

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from this world.

Then Pilate said to him, So you are a king.

Jesus answered, You say that I am a king, for this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

Pilate said to him, What is truth?

After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, I find no guilt in him, but you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover, so do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?

And they cried out again, Not this man but Barabbas.

Now Barabbas was a robber.

Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him, and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns, and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe, and they came up to him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews, and struck him with their hands.

Pilate went out again and said to them, See, I'm bringing him out to you, that you may know that I find no guilt in him.

So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.

Pilate said to them, Behold the man.

When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, Crucify him, crucify him.

Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and crucify him.

I find no guilt in him.

The Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God.

When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.

He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, Where are you from?

But Jesus gave him no answer.

So Pilate said to him, You will not speak to me?

Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?

Jesus answered him, You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.

Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

You can sit down and I will pray.

Lord God, thank you for uh this text that you've preserved for us for thousands of years that we could examine today.

What a blessing that we're all here to receive from you what you have for us from this passage.

I ask God that you would silence the voice of the enemy as I speak, as we listen.

I pray, God, that you would eliminate distraction and the uh the thoughts of the flesh, and that your voice, Spirit, would be loud and clear.

We tune our ears to what you have to say.

I pray, God, that you would uh filter through my words and and help each person here to hear what they need to hear and not hear what they don't need to hear.

In the mighty powerful name of Jesus, I pray.

Amen.

So I remember the first time that that I encountered someone who wielded power with intent to hurt me.

I was about eight years old, I guess.

This is what we figured out.

And I had some allowance money and wanted to hop on my relatively new bike and cruise over to 7-Eleven to buy some candy, because what else is an eight-year-old gonna do with their money besides buy some candy?

And I'm excited and I'm heading over there, ready to make my purchase, and this boy gets in my path and and gets in my path and stops me.

I couldn't continue.

And I remember not being very fond of the fact that he stood eight inches taller than me and stood over the tire of the bike so that I couldn't go anywhere.

And I was confused when he told me I should give him my money.

After he asked me what I was doing, I told him, and he said, You should give me your money.

And I was confused, and then he slapped me hard and demanded that I give him my money.

So I gave it to him.

It's not like I could say no at that point.

And he walked off and left me just standing there empty-handed, in shock, feeling that hot, stinging burn on my face.

And that was the first time that, well, that I remember anyway, but I definitely remember it, that I was in such a helpless situation.

Once the the money was gone, it was gone.

I told my parents who came out and and and looked, but he was he was out of there.

And I was just utterly powerless.

It was a terrible feeling.

The the feeling of just being there.

There's no answer, there's no resolve to that feeling in my heart.

I was I was shocked because this came out of nowhere.

It was not in my paradigm as a as a boy to think that someone could do that to you.

And I did not like that feeling.

So I don't know if if any of you have been robbed or hit.

I don't know your stories, but I do know that everyone in this room has come face to face with similar feelings of powerlessness.

Sadly, um, like all of us, I had that wasn't the last experience.

I went through life and had other scary experiences.

And I discovered pretty early that I much preferred an empowered attitude of, you're not gonna hurt me.

And it's it's not just physical situations either.

There are times maybe that you've been ridiculed for not knowing something, you don't know that.

Or you've faced something more subtle, maybe passive-aggressive manipulation.

Maybe you're reminded of your past, your position, your stature, your lack of education, maybe your excessive education.

You name it.

It might be tensions with a with a spouse or with your child, uh, maybe even self-talk.

Maybe you're coming up against messages that you're speaking to yourself.

Well, for me, by high school, uh I by that time I walked with the presence of and enjoyed a reputation that preceded me of, you know, no one messes with Jesse.

Um it probably helped that this was the era, I'm gonna date myself a little bit.

This was the era of the original karate kid movie.

So I was a bit inspired by that.

Um, but I confess I wasn't actually any tougher.

I I don't know how I got the reputation of don't mess with Jesse, because it's not like I'd proven myself.

But in my mind, I wasn't any less scared.

It didn't actually solve the real issue.

No matter how strong you get, no matter how capable you are, no how matter how much knowledge you accumulate or how much protection you put around you, there are still times in life when you come up against a person, a thing, a circumstance that you just can't outmatch.

And there have been times in my life that even with my strategy of toughness and you can't hurt me, that I've been put in my place.

I've been humbled, I've been hurt, I've been wronged, I've been misunderstood.

And sometimes I replay those scenes over in my mind, maybe you guys do this too.

Oh, if only I had done this, if only I had said that, and you toss and turn, laying awake at night, thinking, oh, the next time this conversation starts, you imagine it starting, and you think, this is what I'm gonna say, this is what I'm gonna do, this is how I'll stand, this is my tone.

Another example that I thought of more recently is um kind of a funny example, is during the election cycle.

Not that the election cycle was funny, but on the way to church on 79th Avenue, coming in, we noticed along the fence, um, ironically, it was on the left, but there was this giant Trump Vance banner.

Okay, it's political season.

We continue to church.

That's fine.

Next week, we came and noticed right across the street.

The only two properties on that street that are right across the street from each other, exactly lined up with the Trump Vance banner, a Biden Harris banner.

And it struck my funny, not so funny, funny bone.

And I immediately launched into a uh laughter with the kids, and they were like, what, dad, what's so funny?

And then I gave them a full, of course, as a teacher likes to do, gave them a full history lesson on the Hatfield and McCoys.

This uh generational rivalry that uh that just kept going and going and going.

And that's the way of the world, isn't it?

I just need a bigger banner.

We're in this this tit for tat, this endless, they did this to me, so I'm gonna get back at them.

You can't better me.

And by the way, even if you do, I'm gonna recollect, I'm gonna re-fortify, I will rise from the ashes, I will come back to fight, and eventually I'll win.

I'll build a bigger army, I'll get a better missile, I'll collect more of them, I will dominate, I'll secure this, break that, hurt you in this way, strengthen myself in that way.

And if you think about it, there's no end to that cycle.

It's what we have going on in in Israel and Palestine right now.

Nobody can remember who started it.

All they can remember is the last time some atrocity was committed that needs a response.

It's a cycle of sin and death, and it just never ends.

It's insatiable.

There's no resolution.

And it's it's not just the big things like nations and kings, it shows up in our in our daily lives.

I cannot let them get away with treating me like that.

They're gonna speak with hidden messages, I'll speak with hidden messages.

Oh, the boss gonna deny me some time off?

Guess who's working slow this week?

My parents don't understand me, so I'll just act like I don't see them and not make eye contact.

My kids disrespect me and they won't look at me, I'll yell at them.

Sometimes it looks like shrinking back.

So instead of a, oh, I'll do this, sometimes it looks like this.

We we have a dog, it's Abby's dog, actually, Trixie.

Um, she is the polar opposite of an alpha dog.

If you even look at her, she submits.

She will literally fall over on her side, and if you can kind of coax her to coming back up to standing and pet her and reassure her of love, she just quakes the whole time you're petting her.

And she's saying to you, and every with every signal she can possibly muster, I'm not a threat to you, I won't hurt you.

Please don't hurt me.

When encountering power, we experience two urges.

Actually, I think I'll give you three.

I've talked about two, the urge to assert power when threatened.

If I overpower them, they can't win and won't hurt me.

Or the urge to shrink back, to get small, to disappear.

If I do speak up, I'll be misunderstood, rejected, or worse, so I'll just say silent and they won't hurt me.

A third one might be the urge to run, to just get away from the source of pain.

If they can't find me, they can't hurt me.

Some of us fight, some of us fold, and some of us flee.

But what was the way of Jesus?

Think back to our passage.

We picture Jesus standing there before Pilate, who claims with pretty good basis that he had the authority to crucify him.

He reminds Jesus of his rank.

And when Jesus is being silent and not answering him, he makes sure he knows who he's standing before.

And then there's Jesus, the Son of God, the literal creator of the universe, standing before this tiny, puny little human.

And rather than big dogging Pilate, he has this even, steady presence, remembering where true authority comes from.

And rather than shrinking down or running away, which is honestly probably what I would have done.

I mean, we talk about toughness, and you're not going to hurt me, but in that situation, he says the word crucify, and I'm like, I think I'm gonna sneak out this way.

Two centurions there, I think I could probably go around them and get out of there and head for the border.

But Jesus just stands.

Unfazed, unbothered, Pilate literally could say the word, and Jesus would be nailed to a cross.

And Jesus just simply states the truth that Pilate would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.

And some translations say you had no would have no power over me.

Uh so far I've been speaking of power and authority a bit interchangeably, and I'd like, I think it would help if we kind of parse those words out a little bit, if you'll let me take a minute to just sort of delineate between power and authority.

Power comes from the Greek word dunamis, and it means strength, power, ability.

I I think muscle and might.

It can also mean miracle, and it's the word from which we get our English word dynamite.

Yeah, dynamite.

So in some systems like military, economic systems, uh raw power can be used to establish authority.

Uh, for example, a coup, a military coup.

But I'll point out that's always temporary.

It only lasts until a stronger power or more might or more strength comes along.

Authority, on the other hand, uh the Greek word excusa, uh, we don't get any word from that.

Um, but it means legal entitlement to power, it's jurisdiction and right.

It can mean delegated power.

It refers to legal or rightful power, and it's often delegated.

Authority ultimately is granted by God.

It is sometimes translated power, but when you see that you think power to act.

In other words, the right or legal place to exert power.

Whereas power, dynamite, um power is the picture of power being the dynamite.

Authority would be the one who holds the match to light diffuse.

So what Jesus is saying here to Pilate is that authority is delegated from the true and original author of authority.

And he didn't say this with attitude, by the way.

He didn't say, and you, Bud, are talking to his son.

It wasn't an ego trip.

And it was so um non-egotistical that Pilate might have even thought Jesus was referring to Pilate's boss, Tiberius.

That's what I think Pilate didn't really react to that statement the way you would think he would if Jesus was really calling out, you know, I'm the Son of God and he has the power.

Of course, the implication was there, but Jesus knew what Jesus meant.

He knew who his father was.

He could have pulled rank on Pilate, but he didn't need to.

You see, when you know where your authority comes from, you don't have to prove it.

Even as the scene unfolds and people mock Jesus, the the passage in Luke says they vehemently accused him, they ridiculed him, they violently beat him and sneered.

He saved others.

He can't save himself.

If he's the Son of God, the Messiah, let him let him save himself.

And Jesus is still there, peaceful, present through it all.

He was not compelled to argue or prove.

He held the match to a thousand angels worth of dynamite.

And they're mocking him that he didn't have any power.

But yet, like a lamb led to slaughter, he opened not his mouth.

He did not puff up his chest, he did not cower back, he didn't run away.

He received it willingly and powerfully.

And it's not, by the way, that he didn't speak at all.

Just listen to some of his statements.

I opened a red letter Bible just in these chapters in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and just went through.

There's not that much red in these two chapters.

Here's some examples.

I am he.

And they drew back and fell to the ground, by the way, when he said that.

You have said so.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Today you will be with me in paradise.

Jesus calm in the in the face of death.

It wasn't weakness, but it it was clarity.

It wasn't a denial of pain either.

It was honesty.

He didn't shy away from reality.

Listen to some of these statements.

Father, why have you forsaken me?

John, mom, take care of each other.

I am thirsty.

He was unwaveringly faithful unto his death.

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

It is finished.

Simple, clear, powerful words.

Faithful unto death.

That is not the way of the world.

Voluntarily and non-fearfully walking to your own death?

So we know that's what he did.

Um what does this have to do with our lives and power and how can that relate to uh facing someone who's eight inches taller than you who wants to slap you and steal your money?

What does it mean for my own struggle to win, my own struggle to avoid pain, my own struggle?

Striving to control my environment for my own comfort.

Well, I'm gonna tell you.

It's this is so cool.

Um, Jesus pulled off what I'll call, and and scripture shows, and I affirm, was the ultimate power move.

This was a coup of authority that not even the enemy could come back from.

You see, in the world's view, there's always another level.

You Iran was just obliterated some of their facilities.

They're already talking about that some of the factions who that it's just pouring fuel on the fire of revenge.

They're eventually going to come back.

There's always another level you can escalate to.

And it just keeps going and going and going.

But it does not ever solve the problem that is in your heart.

The fear of being overpowered, the feeling that I had as a child having that innocence taken away from me.

It wasn't the money, it wasn't the slap.

Guys, I had, listen, I had a part of Eden taken from me.

And every day we experience that.

Despite endless efforts to resolve the problem, to come to some solution to reconcile the pain we see around us with the promises in Scripture, we strive and we can't find the solution.

There's always someone stronger, there's always someone smarter, there's always a new problem.

But what Jesus did ends this cycle of power and defeat so definitively, in fact, that the Bible tells us that had the rulers and the powers, the principalities, the demonic forces at play and the political leaders at play, had they known, they would not have crucified it.

They would not have done it.

It was such a fantastic coup and such a surprise.

Listen to what it says in 1 Corinthians 2, starting in verse 6.

Yet among the mature we do not impart wisdom, although it is we sorry, we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory, that none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Think about that.

Why was that?

Jesus' path to the cross was so shocking and so upside down that when it happened, even his loyal followers who'd been following him for three years scattered and denied him and hid.

In their mind, I imagine on Saturday morning, they're thinking, Well, I guess I've been duped.

I guess I'm a chump.

I thought he was gonna come marching into Jerusalem and do this kingdom thing, and he's in the tomb.

He's dead.

It's over.

I guess he's not who he says he was.

The world's just upside down.

But then, but then, come on.

You guys know what happens.

He comes back out of the tomb, stone rolled away, people looking around for him, he comes back from the dead.

Yeah, you can be excited about that.

He came back from the dead, and you see, there's no one-upping that.

How can you kill someone past being dead?

When they're dead, they're dead.

That's it.

Now, sure, you can you can make it a little bit more painful, but that's it.

There's no one-upmanship.

Romans 6 9 puts it like this we know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.

Death no longer has dominion over him.

There can be no escalation to that.

There's no way to outrank it.

Ultimate power move.

He didn't play into that cycle, he just pierced right through it.

Nobody else can do that.

Satan can't do that, the demonic powers can't do that, your boss at work can't do that.

No one can resurrect themselves from the dead.

Because no one is righteous.

The reason Jesus was risen from the dead is that he was without sin.

It's not so with us.

We're all with sin, and if we die in our sins, we we can't recover from that.

Power without a true backing of authority can only go so far.

It can only escalate so far.

And when we're facing power, we have to remember that the worst it can do is kill us.

The farthest it can go is to kill us.

Sure, that the death can be made more slow, more painful, more torturous, but let's be honest.

Crucifixion was designed to be the ultimate of that, the worst possible death.

And here, Jesus on the cross, a symbol of weakness and defeat, the worst end, became the ultimate demonstration of God's power and authority.

Jesus exhibited a power here which the Bible calls resurrection power.

Yeah.

It's a power which makes all other goals, pursuits, dreams, accomplishments seem like garbage in comparison.

This is how Paul described it in Philippians 3 after listing off a bunch of his accomplishments and then thinking and then comparing and saying, you know what, it's just like a pile of stinky, smelly garbage in a landfill.

Compared to, verse 10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection.

And the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death.

Resurrection power.

Come on.

You guys can celebrate about some resurrection power.

Yeah, we can get warm tingleys about resurrection power in our life and not being one-uped.

Jesus says, Do your worst.

What is your worst?

What is your worst?

He allows the enemy to do its worst.

The full, you know what, enemy?

You want to just go nuclear?

Go nuclear.

What do you got for me?

And then he rises from the dead, pulling off an upset, a coup that no one could have predicted.

And this ends it for us.

This ends the cycle for us.

If we appropriate this, Jesus demonstrated a power that could only be shown by someone who had the actual authority to wield that power.

And post-resurrection in Matthew 28, he says, compare this to Pilate.

What he said to Pilate, what he said about himself is, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

It's with that authority that Jesus makes an offer to us.

He says, You too can have resurrection power in your life if you submit and acknowledge his authority as God and Savior.

Oh man.

The more you think about this, the better it gets.

So I don't know what your strategy is.

I don't know if you're a fighter or a folder or a fleer, but I can tell you this passage gives us hope of a better way, a better strategy for encountering things we come up against in our lives.

We can be like Jesus and encounter the powers of the world the way that Jesus did.

Walking, just picture this, walking in a non-anxious presence.

Just standing in the presence, knowing that if God is for me, who can be against me?

Who can bring any claim against God's elect?

So I do recognize in reflecting on this that there is a bit of surrender involved when we do that.

We actually have to give up our right to take control.

Because whatever strategy you've developed and been practicing, when it comes to a situation, um you have to actually give up your right to take control.

I had a particular situation I'm not going to get into the details of for time, but um about two months ago where I had to surrender something that was about a year-long conflict uh that came at significant cost to me and my family.

And there were lots of angles and and ways and paths that I could have done to come up against this.

And I felt the Lord just asking me to let it go.

And man, that was a hard pill to swallow.

That was really hard.

I took some long prayer walks, just making sure that I was hearing the Lord correctly, that He actually wanted me to let that go.

Because I could hear all kinds of reasons why I needed to pursue it for the benefit of my family.

But the Lord asked me to let it go, and uh it's uh I've had to re-affirm that a few times since then, but it has been so freeing.

But we do have to um give up because uh some control.

Because whether we whether we get stronger or whether we uh cower or whether we run, these are all control mechanisms to escalate to to regain control of the situation.

Um those of you who are tough, that's easy for you to see.

Those of you who who tend to be uh maybe more submissive or more running.