The Descent of Love // Palm Sunday

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Twitter to the Lookout and the All Colorado.

If you have your Bibles with you, you can open up to Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

And typically, just uh just so you guys know, I I like to read from the English Standard Version.

That's what I prefer most of the time.

So that's what we'll be today.

Um, you guys know this is the beginning of what we call Holy Week in a traditional sense in the church.

It's this movement from Palm Sunday, uh, which is today on the historic church calendar all the way through um Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and and we know it's Easter Sunday.

You know, as a church, we don't we don't uh we don't always um uh create events around each each of the days this year.

We're not doing a Good Friday service, some of the partly because our fortune pastor's on sabbatical and we just didn't quite have the team to be able to do it this year.

But I do want to give some language this morning as we kind of start this journey from good uh from Palm Sunday um through into Easter Sunday.

There is an invitation still for all of us to follow Jesus in these kind of final moments before the cross, okay?

And and and Jesus, when we open the scriptures, he he does a lot of prep work with his disciples and his followers.

They didn't always understand what he's saying, but um I want to read a passage where Jesus is starting to introduce this more explicitly with his disciples of where he's headed, and it's not where they think he's headed.

And so I want to read this from Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

Now I do want to invite you, when I'm done reading this passage, I'm gonna end, as we have the last couple weeks, with an acknowledgement that this is the word of the Lord.

And I just want us to get in the habit together.

I think there's a beautiful invitation when we read the scriptures to let gratitude well up on our hearts.

So when I say this is the word of the Lord, we can respond, thanks be to God, okay?

Because how many know the scriptures are not just a blog post, all right?

The scriptures are not an article or an opinion piece.

This is not an op-ed, all right?

This is the word of Jesus, it's the word of the Lord.

And so when we read the scriptures communally together, which Bible says, don't forsake the public reading of scripture.

It's a holy thing to be able to hold open the word of God together.

So when I say this is the word of the Lord, we can respond, thanks be to God.

That sound fair?

So Matthew chapter 16, starting in verse 21.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you.

But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan.

You were a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

Then Jesus told his disciples, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.

Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So one thing that's funny, when I travel, um, and I've had the opportunity more recently to go, I go to New York a few times a year to work with the ministry in New York.

Um, we got to go to North Carolina.

A lot of times people ask me, uh, first of all, they acknowledge that you live, that I live in a much better state than they do.

Okay.

That happens everywhere I go, unless that's why we live in Colorado, right?

And uh, and so they acknowledge my supremacy and my geography.

But then they ask me, what is it like to live in Boulder?

Like, what is that like?

What are people like in Boulder?

And it's a it's a fun one to be able to answer what are people like in Boulder, because there's some strong opinions of what people are like in Boulder.

There's a lot of ways you can go with that, right?

And um but I I've learned, here's where I go, and you can disagree with me, you can have your own description of what it's like to live in Boulder, what people in Boulder are like, but I've learned to narrow it down to one word.

Um, for Boulder specifically.

Now you might live in Frederick or Erie or Longmont.

I get that we're all kind of around, but we have this kind of this gravitational pull towards the flat irons.

There's an there's an effect from Boulder that kind of moves out, right?

So I think we're all kind of a part of this, but I've learned to narrow it down to one word.

And so when people ask me what do people describe Boulder and what motivates people in Boulder, the word I come to is transcendence.

Okay, and let me explain that.

Um, I believe that people who move here move here because a vision for the good life that is about ascending, all right?

And we do that physically through actual mountains.

You move here to climb a mountain, to not just look at them, but to actually get to the top of them, right?

Uh we do that in career-wise, though, too.

I mean, just the burgeoning of the tech community, the burgeoning, burgeoning of major businesses in this area.

People come here, high achieving uh uh high achieving um workforce, come here uh to be the best of the best at what they do, to kind of climb a ladder, so to speak.

We do that uh with spirituality, right?

Boulder is known for the most uh the most religions where spiritual expressions that come out of one geography.

Um we're kind of known for that, this this sense of openness, and there's kind of a desire for what is the pathway to get to the top?

What is the right pathway and what's gonna get me there, right?

Um we can apply that to even health and fitness.

Um it's easier to be healthy and bolder than it is in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Let me just tell you that.

Um it's a it's easier.

Why?

Because everyone, people are health conscious, right?

Which is not a bad thing.

It's like, let's take care of the bodies God has given us.

And yet, um, even you know, even you take that to an extreme, and sometimes health and fitness can become an idol in and of itself.

There can be this desire for um, you know, if if we do it enough, if we if we biohack our way through life, if we can only eat the most pure, concentrated foods, we will maybe achieve some kind of immortality, right?

Nobody quite says it like that, but there's this desire.

Um, you know, how do we maximize our bodies?

Um, people uh, you know, certainly know Colorado for transcendence as it relates to uh to to cannabis, right?

And uh even next Sunday, Easter Sunday, is on 420, all right?

So uh just prepping you for that.

Um there's gonna be a lot of he has risen jokes.

Um but the desire for influence, the desire for, I mean, that so so not just cannabis drugs in general, uh, psychedelics, um, uh plant, people call it plant medicine, um, a desire for how do we unlock the full potential, right?

And so it's in the air, this kind of sense of self-mastery.

Like, how do we master this life?

How do we go up a mountain physically, spiritually, vocationally?

I even heard of a guy, uh I met with a guy this last year down on Boulder who he he actually guides CEOs.

So he kind of blends everything I meant together.

Uh I mentioned together, he he he does spiritual journeys for CEOs to be led through plant medicines, basically mushrooms, to unlock the full potential.

And he takes them on hikes up in the mountains to basically bring together everything as relates to the spiritual, the business, the psychedelic, the creation, all of it together.

How do we bring everything together to kind of get to this peak, this ascension, this whole thing?

And it's something that maybe you've seen that there's there's this there's this way of life that we are encouraged into, whether that's been your experience living here, but I just think the human experience in general in our culture, there's this thing of to get to the good life, we have to keep climbing uh this ladder.

And so sometimes that that means we have to uh to achieve the life that I want, we need to, we need to achieve success, right?

We need to cheat, we need to achieve enough in order to feel like we matter.

We need to get to a place where we have status, right?

That status will define me.

If others admire me, I'll finally feel secure, right?

Uh maybe it's just the accumulation of stuff.

If I get more, if I buy more, I will be satisfied, right?

And so we we keep climbing, we keep ascending this mountain.

If if I can just maintain control over my life, eliminate the things that I'm not in control of, if I can just, if I have enough and I can control everything in my life, I won't get hurt.

And so control is the way to get to the top.

It might just be pleasure.

If if I'm happy and satisfied, then I won't feel the pain that other people feel, right?

Or or or certainly with spirituality, if I if I can nail the perfect life, if I do enough good things, if I can, if I can just keep getting to the top and the deeds of my life become self-evident, then I'll achieve some kind of enlightenment, right?

And there's this thing of just kind of, I'm gonna build my life each step of the way of going to the top and to the top and to the top and to the top, right?

Right?

And so we can do this.

And listen, it's not necessarily like the instinct is bad, because I think the God-given, uh our God-given trajectory is to know what it's like to be seated with Christ in heavenly places.

So there's a part of us that we know that we are made for more than this life.

You are made for more than this world.

And you know that.

It's in your spirit.

Every person intrinsically is made with eternity.

The scripture says we all have eternity on our hearts.

So there's a drive, there is a soul and spirit craving in the heart of every man and woman to know to ascend.

This is actually, I believe, even given by God.

But what's interesting is when we do that in our own way and in our own time, it actually takes us further away from the way that God teaches us how to ascend the hill of the Lord with Him.

And this is this is what Peter is bumping up against with Jesus.

And this is what his disciples are still trying to wrestle down.

So Jesus comes to Peter and his disciples, hey, listen, guys, just I just want to make this very clear that there's coming a time very soon where I'm going to Jerusalem and I'm going to die.

Okay.

They're going to kill me, and I'll be raised up.

But this is going to happen.

And there was something inside of Peter that was so rubbed the wrong way.

He was there was a visceral reaction where it says he actually rebuked Jesus.

He's like, I got something to teach Jesus right now.

There's something, he's not seeing this accurately.

And so, and so Peter thinks, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna help my friend out and show them what the plan is.

The plan is that's not the plan.

Whatever he just said, that's not the plan.

The plan isn't to get killed.

The plan is like things are going well.

We got to keep moving up and to the right.

That's how that's what success looks like here.

Because as you can imagine, with the disciples, they're experiencing a little bit of momentum at this point in time, right?

Jesus is gaining popularity, he's got followers, he's got crowds showing up, he's feeding thousands of people, miracles, signs, and wonders, the whole thing.

And you've got to imagine his disciples are like, man, this is fantastic.

This is so good.

We have so much momentum.

If we just keep going here, we can monetize this thing, right?

We can build a business out of this.

We'll do e-courses, right?

We're gonna do a podcast, we're gonna do the whole thing.

We this is going the right direction.

But Jesus says, Oh, by the way, from here on out, we're not going up, we're going down.

And it was, it almost ripped, it almost like tore apart uh for Peter his imagination of what the spiritual life was supposed to look like, what it looks like to live with God and the coming of the kingdom of God.

And so he responds to Jesus.

He says, No, this is never going to happen to you.

This cannot happen.

This cannot happen.

How can any good come from suffering?

How can any good come from you being killed, laying your life down?

Going down that ladder is not going to lead anywhere good.

But Jesus had to, he had to redefine his own trajectory, but then also not only his own trajectory, but all those who would follow in his footsteps.

He would say, If anybody wants to come after me, you need to take up your cross and follow me.

So there's a unique calling specifically to Jesus that we talk about in this holy week, this journey from Palm Sunday through Good Friday.

There's something unique about Jesus alone, what he does for us, but in a certain way, he also invites all of us to catch a vision for a new way of life that is not just always about going up, it's also about going down.

Are you guys breathing?

Okay.

Just breathe for a second.

If you want to experience life, you need to do as I do.

Okay.

So we have to kind of wrestle with this question as we do every year at this time.

We sing these songs about Jesus dying, which is still so bizarre.

As a Christianity in general, like maybe you're a new believer or you're coming in here, and that's you're still wondering, like, why are we singing all these songs about the guy we're worshiping dying?

That doesn't, that that's not normal, right?

Unless you know what death means, and you unless you know where to place that where why Jesus had to die.

And so Jesus, he had a unique calling from the Father.

And that calling involved him going to the lowest of the low.

And so, you know, that to answer even this question, why did Jesus have to die?

There's a kind of a few angles that we that we can look at.

Number one is to vanquish the enemy.

And the scriptures talk about this, that this reality that we are in a cosmic spiritual war, and Jesus came to overflow, uh, overthrow what he called the ruler of the world and to make his enemies his footstool.

The enemy's mission, you just need to know you have an enemy in your life.

And it's not your political opponent, it's not your next door neighbor who's too loud.

It's not it's it's probably not the person you think it is, but you have an enemy in your life that seeks to still steal, kill, and destroy you.

And he he does that often by seeding a vision for how to achieve life without God.

And so when Jesus came, one of the things that he was doing by going to the cross, he came to destroy the works of the enemy, to disarm the power over death, to liberate those enslaved by fear.

He is stronger, he is the stronger one who overpowers the strong man, bringing life where the thief brought death.

And in triumph, Jesus disarmed the powers, exposing them, and beginning a new reign of freedom and life.

Come on, that's a good amen spot right there.

I'm not gonna do it for you, but you gotta preach to yourself sometimes, all right?

He came, he declared war.

And he absorbed that war into his body.

But he also became a ransom for all people.

Jesus came not to serve, but to serve, not to be served, but to serve, and ultimately to give his life as a ransom for many, not just Israel, but for the whole world.

And though he fulfilled the covenant by setting them free from the sins committed under the first covenant, he gave himself as a ransom for everyone.

In doing so, he redeemed us, buying our freedom with his own life.

This redemption is the very forgiveness of sins.

Our sins are wrongdoing.

That's not just their wrongdoing, it's our wrongdoing.

It's my wrongdoing, our rescue from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son.

And just as the first Passover marked Israel's liberation from slavery in Egypt, Jesus was crucified during Passover to signal a greater deliverance from the deeper bondage of sin and death.

And his cross became the doorway to freedom for all who would follow him.

He is the sacrificial Lamb of God.

And those who are covered under his blood, and you have to read the whole scriptures to kind of understand this concept, but the the covering of his blood means the spirit of death passes over us for all of time.

And he won our deliverance through the laying down of his life.

He became a ransom for all people.

But not just that, not just the covering of sin, but his going to the cross was to demonstrate victory and death.

See, the death of Jesus was necessary as the means by which God, who is life itself, entered into the farthest reaches of destruction created by sin, death itself, so that God could begin renewing creation from that place.

He would not only go to the grave, but go into hell, still the keys of death, and rob it of its power for all of time.

Forgive me if I get a little too into Easter Sunday already.

But going to the farthest, to the lowest of the low, that had to be the case.

Because he had to show us that even going to death itself, there was a way out.

There was a way through death itself.

And so before Jesus ascends, which he will do, he first descends.

He first descends.

And we go through this journey with him the entire time.

From Palm Sunday all the way through Easter Sunday.

So we read that as he comes into Jerusalem, everybody was ready to receive a new king.

They were excited that he was here.

The king has come to town.

The problem is they're hoping he'd ride on a horse.

He didn't.

He came on a cult.

Okay.

Problem number one, because it didn't look as powerful as they had hoped.

But then also they're cheering for him to receive this new king, but he's crying.

We read in the passage of him coming into Jerusalem that he's actually moved to tears.

He actually comes down from the Mount of Olives.

He's literally descending down in Jerusalem.

Then a couple days later, we we read that he's at dinner with his friends.

And he's walking them through, like, hey guys, here's what's about to happen.

And he knew even in that moment, as he's spending these kind of these moments, this kind of a tender moment at dinner with his friends, he he realized there two out of twelve of you are going to leave me.

They're actually all gonna leave him.

This is a at a certain point, all the disciples fled, but one of them was gonna betray him, and one of them was gonna deny him.

And they couldn't imagine that possibility.

But even Jesus had to come into this week going through the loss, the dissension of betrayal of losing a friend who.

Have you ever lost a relationship that mattered to you?

Have you ever been misunderstood?

So Jesus had to let them go without getting defensive, without retaliating, without reacting against them.

He had to let his friends go.

And then he descends again into a garden of Gethsemane.

And in this garden, the scripture says that he was praying so hard that he was actually sweating blood.

That he he was sorrowful even unto death.

The Son of God, the Creator, was sorrowful.

He was full of sorrow.

Because he saw what was coming and he was pleading with the Father.

Is there any way?

Is there any other way?

Is this the plan?

But he had to drink from this cup, and he would end with, God, but not my will, but your will be done.

And then finally his betrayer kissed him.

And on the cheek, he was the recipient, the recipient of that blistering kiss on his cheek, but the one he had poured his life into.

And he was handed over.

And even his disciples were still trying to fight this inevitable reality.

And Jesus says, No, this is what has to happen.

This has to happen.

He's like, I could snap my fingers and legions of angels would deliver me.

But that's not what has to happen.

What has to happen is he had to be delivered over to the hands of the soldiers.

And then from there he would go and he would be accused unjustly.

And he had to stand before men in the temple, and then again in the Roman court, and be told how terrible he was, or how he was actually he was mocked and accused of uh being against the things of God.

And in doing so, he was quiet.

And as he was delivered over to the Roman soldiers and the Romans capitulated to the leaders of the temple, he was then brought into an excruciating time of being flogged and beaten and mocked, his beard being pulled out, crown of thorns being shoved onto his head.

Everything that should not be happening, this is not the up and to the right, this is not climbing the ladder of success for the king and the creator of all.

He was going down, all the way down to where he would hang on a cross.

And there cry out the words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And if that wasn't low enough, he after a period of time would he would surrender his life.

He was put in a cold, empty tomb, and you'd go lower and lower.

He's beneath the ladder at this point in time.

Ladder's nowhere to be seen.

He's put in a tomb.

It's cold, it's dark, it's very eerily silent.

And that's still something we have to contend with.

The fact that Jesus didn't just resurrect a couple like 15 minutes after he died.

You notice that?

He died, and then he stayed dead longer than.

I mean, it was awkward now.

It was, I mean, it was okay, if you're gonna do something, do it now, right?

But he would stay in the tomb on that Saturday.

And it's a day when nothing seemed to happen, but but yet, while it looked like it was cold and silent and dark, God was quietly at work.

Theologians called this the harrowing of hell.

Where even Jesus laying in a tomb, the scripture hints at this in Ephesians 4 9 that he descended into the lower regions, 1 Peter 3, that he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison what he was about to do.

And he somehow stormed the gates of hell, even in his cold, dead body, to demonstrate that he was more powerful than the forces of hell.

And this is what's important for us to know that hell is not just a place that Jesus went to.

He went to hell so that he can remind us that he comes to the hell of our very own hearts, the hearts of humanity.

Here's how one of the church fathers, Macarius the Great, said this in eight, and he lived in um 300 AD.

He says this, but the Lord descends into the souls of those who seek him.

He breaks through the heavy stones that cover the soul, he opens the tombs, he truly raises to life the dead person and leads that captive soul forth out of the dark prison.

He had to go all the way there in order to lead not just himself out, but to lead all of those who would call in his name out, to be victorious over death.

Henry Nowin, spiritual writer Henry Nowen says this there is immense pain in the wide world around us.

There is immense pain in the small world within us, but all pain belongs to Jesus and is transformed by him into glorified wounds that allow us to recognize him as our risen Lord.

He meets us in both the pain of the world and the pain that exists right in the world inside of us.

And so, why did Jesus go so down?

Why did he have to descend and descend and descend to the lowest of the lowest, so that for all the time anyone who'd find themselves in a place of death, in a place of great pain, or maybe in a living hell could call out to him and experience his power here and now and be set free.

And maybe that's you here today.

Maybe you're thinking, God, I don't know.

I I'm not good at ascending the ladder.

You've tried to ascend the ladder, you've tried to do that.

You're trying to do what everybody is telling you to do to take hold of this good life, and and you're realizing I'm not very good at this.

Or maybe you've tried to ascend that ladder and you've been knocked off a few times, and now you're just looking at the ladder like I don't even want the ladder anymore.

The good news here today is that Jesus knows what it is to walk through every manner of suffering on this earth.

And in this final week, we see him walk through accusation, we see him walk through betrayal, we see him walk through being misunderstood and being incredibly abused, traumatized from the inside out.

He goes all the way to death itself, and there he declares that this place has no hold on me.

Which is why 2,000 years later we're still talking about a guy who got up.

That death is not the final word.

So we celebrate the crucified Jesus, not the Americanized Jesus, but the crucified Jesus.

That's who we worship.

Because that means something to us.

If you've ever felt not good enough, if you've ever felt like I can't make sense of the mess of my life, listen, you call onto the name of Jesus, and his name brings life, his name brings power, his name brings grace and freedom so that you can live in the fullness of who you are.

And he calls you a son, he calls you a daughter of the Most High God.

That is who you are.

And you can call on him even today.

You can call on him.

You don't have to be good enough.

You can call on him.

And in fact, when you call on him, he rearranges your life where you don't feel like you have to spend, you organize your life about getting up and to the right all the time.

You can actually follow him in surrendering yourself to his will and his way.

And that's the thing is the Jesus life is not about taking control, it's about surrender.

The Jesus life is not about making it and making a name for yourself.

It's about living for the name that's above all names.

And organizing your life now around instead of I'm going to climb the ladder for me.

No, I'm going to go to the lowest of the low for the sake of the world.

Because that's what Jesus is doing.

So that means that you don't have to just live for your own interests, but you can live for the interests of others because that's what Jesus is doing.

He's going to those who are not good enough.

He's going to the marginalized and to the poor and to those who are suffering, those who are at the brink of death.

He says, That's where I am, that's who I'm ministering to, because I want to show them that I have been there and I know the way through.

And so the good news here, though, is that Jesus' descent was never the end of the story.

It was never, it was part of the story.

It's part of the Jesus way.

But it's not the end.

Come on, it's not the end.

But it was the necessary pathway for resurrection.

Now, Paul would write about this in Philippians, his letter to the Philippians, he would write about this to the church, and he's encouraging them to, just as Christ descended for us to descend.

Okay, I'm gonna read this from a translation called the Passion Translation.

And here's how Paul words this, here's what Paul says Jesus is doing, and then here's what he's here's what he says Jesus is now.

Listen to this.

He existed in the form of God, yet he gave no thought to seizing equality with God as his supreme prize.

Instead, he emptied himself on of his outward glory by reducing himself to the form of a lowly servant.

He became human, he humbled himself and became vulnerable, choosing to be revealed as a man, as a man and was obedient.

He was a perfect perfect example even in his death, a criminal's death by crucifixion.

Because of that obedience, listen to this.

Because of that obedience, God exalted him and multiplied his greatness.

Now, he has now been given the greatest of all names.

The authority of the name of Jesus causes every knee to bow in reverence.

Everything and everyone will one day submit to this name in the heavenly realm, in the earthly realm, and the demonic realm.

And every tongue will proclaim in every language Jesus Christ is Lord Yahweh, bringing glory and honor to God his Father.

Because he is obedient even unto death.

God has exalted him and given him the name above every other name.

The scripture says that Jesus is now seated at the right hand of the Father, and all those who call on his name are seated with him.

We're seated in heavenly places with him, which means that we can walk through the lowest of the low and still be seated in the highest of the high.

Come on.

So this morning, as we're as we kind of reintroduce ourselves to this story, we ask God, would you deliver it to us in a fresh way?

Where it's so easy for these stories to become familiar.

And we just want to invite God to make this fresh again, and we're going to move into a time of receiving communion together.

We're going to honor the body and the blood of Jesus as a church family.

Because this is what Jesus said to do.

He says, When you drink this cup, when you eat this bread, break this bread, do this in remembrance of me.

So when we receive communion, which is the grape juice and the little cracker, what we're doing is we're entering fresh into the life of God, both his death and his life.

And we're receiving that as grace for wherever we find ourselves today.