Master Plan Week 1 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medicurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Brought an incredible word.

Show him some love.

Help me thank him.

Strong, strong message.

We are starting a brand new series called Master Plan, and over the next several weeks, bringing us to Easter and beyond Easter, we are going to be looking at the bigger picture of the Easter narrative.

Often we think of the story of Jesus kind of in its little component parts.

We think about the life of Jesus and then him heading to Jerusalem, the triumphal entry, the Last Supper, his arrest, the trials, the flogging, the crucifixion, the resurrection.

We see it in all of its component parts, but often we don't see how all of those parts fit together.

And when we do that, it can create some confusion for us.

This has caused some issues all throughout the centuries.

People look in Scripture and they see Jesus, who is God and human flesh, being beaten and mocked, and ultimately sentenced to death.

And it's a little bit confusing.

We read in John 19, it says, Then Pilate, who was the Roman governor of the area, took Jesus and had him flogged.

And the soldiers also twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and clothed him in a purple robe.

And they kept coming up to him and saying, Hail, King of the Jews, and were slapping him in his face.

If you read in the other gospels, this wasn't like a light beating to kind of teach him a lesson.

They beat Jesus to within an inch of his life.

The beating was done with a specific kind of whip called a cat of nine tails.

It has nine leather braided straps that hang off the end, and they would often affix pieces of bone or shards of metal into the whip so they would actually sink into the flesh and pull out chunks of flesh at a time.

It was such a brutal form of torture that it was known, it was common knowledge, that forty lashes would kill a man.

And they sentenced Jesus to 40 minus one.

Thirty-nine times he was whipped.

And this just isn't how most people assume a deity, God Himself, would be treated.

In verse 6, when the chief priests and the temple servants saw him, they shouted, Crucify, crucify him.

Pilate responded, Take him and crucify him yourselves, since I find no grounds for charging him.

Many skeptics have called this some sort of cosmic child abuse that God would be treated this way.

It also just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

Jesus displayed power over everything during his time on earth.

He commanded the forces of nature itself, the wind and the waves obeyed him.

He had changed things at the molecular level.

He turned water into wine.

He had all knowledge and all wisdom, complete spiritual authority.

His intellect was unmatched.

At this point, he had even called the dead back to life.

And so the idea that some like half-wit religious leaders could actually catch him and actually defeat him in a court of law, that they had the power to bring him in and have him beaten like this and ultimately to kill him, it just doesn't seem to make sense.

When you look at this moment in scripture, Jesus standing trial, being beaten, sentenced to death.

It's like, how did he get here?

There's another reason that we get uncomfortable with this idea of a savior who gets himself killed.

I think it's deeper, maybe even subconscious.

It implies that none of us are immune from the suffering of life.

And furthermore, that the path to the powerful and purposeful life of significance that we all desire to live, that it might actually require us taking on suffering.

And so, how do we make sense of this part of Jesus' story?

The all-powerful, all-wise, all-knowing, all-seeing God who lived the perfect life, amassed huge fame during his ministry, only to get himself killed.

To make sense of it all, I believe we need to know the master plan.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we're coming just seeking you, seeking your truth.

Not wanting to just take things in isolation, but to understand the full context, all of what you were trying to accomplish at Easter.

And I believe by doing so that those of us who already believe in you, we will be encouraged and inspired in our faith.

And for those who are here in the room or streaming online who don't yet know you, God, that maybe today would be the day that you would grip their heart and they would come to a saving faith of Jesus.

We love you.

We pray these things in your name.

And if you're ready to learn more of the master plan, say amen.

Amen.

I'm gonna take a little bit of a tangent to tell you what I'm trying to do in this series.

Four years ago, when we started MetaCurch, I knew virtually nothing about construction or architecture or any of the trades involved that go into actually putting something together and building something, just like the building that we're standing in now.

And we were meeting, for those of you who are newer, we were meeting in a bar not far from here, the 151 saloon, and we outgrew it pretty quickly and started looking for somewhere new.

And one of the buildings we spent a lot of time on, it needed to be completely rebuilt from the ground up.

And so it was like a trial by fire, man.

I was hands-on with all of these projects, and I had to learn so much about what went in to actually going from the idea of building to actually getting into construction.

And I stayed hands-on because I learned a lot and it was a lot of fun.

And my favorite part is we'd have these big round table meetings, and it would be me and some of the pastors here, and the general contractor, and the architects, and then the leads from all of the different trades, and we'd get around this huge conference table and we would look at the blueprints.

Now, here's how ignorant I was about how all of this works.

Number one, I thought blueprints were blue, right?

Apparently they're not anymore.

I also thought there was a blueprint.

Like there was one page, a big page, and it was just one of them.

And everyone would come and they could look at that one page and then know what they needed to do.

And what I learned very quickly at these roundtable meetings is there's not just one page, there's dozens of pages, or if it's a big enough project, maybe even hundreds of pages, and what they call the master set of plans.

I brought an example of master plans with me today.

These are the actual plans from the relatively small scope remodel that we did at the end of last year.

Some of you guys remember this.

We put a big wall up here in the back of the room, we put doors there, we put new storefront doors, we redid the lobby, we moved the bubble wall, we completely renovated our Medikids area, we created a hallway to upstairs.

It was a pretty small scope, but it made a big difference in what we were doing.

And this set of plans has dozens and dozens of pages, and each page corresponds to a specific part of the construction plan that that trade needs to know all of the details of so that all of the different parts will come together and end up in exactly what you're hoping to build.

And so let me show you some examples uh inside these sets of drawings.

Like this first page that is stuck, this page is pretty obviously you can see the auditorium.

Like that's the room that we're in right now.

And this is helping to understand exactly what we're gonna do with the HVAC system that brings the heating and cooling in, because we had to really reconfigure it because of how we were shaping the rooms.

And for those of you in the room, you can look up and see these big trunk lines that are going all throughout the room, and they're shown here on the page.

That's one of the pages that kind of makes a lot of sense, but there's other pages like for the mechanic and electrical and plumbing trades, that if you were to look at this in isolation, you would have no idea what in the world is going on here.

And how does this have anything to do with the rooms that we're trying to build and remodel?

This is about how to move the lights around and change the can lighting and how to brace it and how to drop the ceiling tiles in there.

And what happens with these kinds of pages is if you just look at them in isolation, you would be lost.

There's no way that you could really understand the bigger picture of the project, and yet, if these pages weren't in there, then at the end of the project, you would have serious problems.

And all of it is building towards more like the last page that we can throw up, which shows more of the full scope of the work.

And I go on this tangent because God really impressed on me that this is often how we're treating the Easter story.

We're taking this big set of master plans, God's master plan for the redemption and rescue of all of humanity.

And we're just turning to one of the pages and going, I just don't see how it fits, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

And why would God be allowed to be treated like this?

And why would it happen that way?

And what I want to do in this series is I want to zoom out and start seeing how it all fits together and why it is all necessary.

And we're gonna start today by focusing in on that moment, the moment where Jesus has been through hell and he's now been beaten to within an inch of his life, he's about to be crucified.

And I think there's some important questions we have to answer.

And the first one is how did Jesus get here?

How did he get to that point, standing in front of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who oversees all of Jerusalem?

Pilate who desperately wants to let this guy go, and Jesus is almost not giving him the option, which leads to the second question, and the one that I want to deal with first.

Could it have been avoided?

Could it have gone a different way?

Was Jesus just helplessly going through this, arrested against his will, tried against his will, punished against his will, sent to execution against his will?

Could Jesus have avoided all of this?

And to give you kind of the spoiler up front, even just a surface level reading of the gospel account makes it very obvious that if he wanted to, technically and practically, Jesus could have not only avoided the cross, he could have done it with ease.

In Matthew chapter 16, it says, From then on, Jesus began to point out to his disciples that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

And in Jerusalem, he would suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes.

And in Jerusalem he would be killed.

And in Jerusalem, he would rise again on the third day.

And when the time for Passover came, Jesus loaded up his disciples and he headed out for Jerusalem.

It's like all he had to do was go literally anywhere but Jerusalem, and he could have avoided this.

He he could have just called in sick, he could have put the wrong address into Google Maps, like he'd any excuse to go anywhere else, and this could have been avoided.

And yet Jesus got his disciples, and you know, over a million people a lot of times would descend on Jerusalem for the Passover.

And he came into town, and once he was in the city, one of his twelve disciples kept dipping out everywhere they went.

Judas Iscariot was going to make plans with the enemies of Jesus, the religious leaders, in order to betray him and help them arrest Jesus, ultimately to kill him.

And Jesus, who is all-knowing, knew what Judas was doing and allowed him to do it anyway.

And not only did he know what Judas was doing and allow him to go make his plans, Judas still got the invite to the Last Supper.

Not only did he get the invite to the Last Supper, when he showed up, Jesus washed Judas's feet.

And when the meal started, we read in John chapter 13, when Jesus had said this, he was troubled in his spirit, and he testified, Truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.

John 13 · chapter mention

And the disciples started looking at one another, uncertain which one he was speaking about.

And Jesus replied, He's the one I give a piece of bread to after I have dipped it.

And when he had dipped the bread, he gave it to Judas, Simon Iscariot's son, Judas Iscariot.

And after Judas ate the piece of bread, Satan entered him, and Jesus told him, What you're doing, do quickly.

Now there were 12 disciples.

This was Jesus' inner circle.

These were his closest friends, the men who had walked with him for three years.

And the other eleven disciples were ride or die.

They would go to the wall for Jesus.

And all Jesus had to do at this point to avoid the cross and all that was coming his way is he just had to let the disciples know what the plan was.

Look, guys, here's what Judas is up to.

This fool's gone south.

He's gonna get out of here.

He's got to deal with the Pharisees, he's gonna betray me.

If Jesus says the word, Judas does not get out of the upper room alive.

It's WWE Cage Match 11 verses 1.

I don't like his odds.

Not only does Jesus let him go, he says, do what you're doing and do it quickly.

Like you better get out of here before anybody figures this out.

Go do what you're gonna do and get on with it.

It could have been avoided every step of the way, and you start getting the sneaking suspicion that not only is Jesus okay with what's going on, but he's taking actual steps to make it happen.

The rest of the disciples in Jesus leave the upper room, and if you're Jesus, what you probably need to do is get out of town or at least find a pretty decent hiding spot because you know what Judas is about, you know what he's up to.

And this verse, just so you know, this is the verse that this whole series came out of because we all read the Gospel of John, and remember we encourage you every day to read it slow and take some notes and see what the Holy Spirit.

I've read John 18 many, many, many, many times, and I never saw this.

Let me show you.

After Jesus had said these things, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron Valley where there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it.

And Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place because Jesus often met there with his disciples.

Often met there with his disciples.

Jesus, who is literally perfect at everything, either has one small flaw that he happens to be the worst hide and seeker of all time, or he's doing this on purpose.

When I read those two verses, that's like almost as far as I got in John 18, because the whole scene started playing out of my head.

And just so you know, this isn't in scripture, this is just what I imagined.

Judas leaves the upper room and goes and finds the Pharisees.

There's a million extra people in Jerusalem.

And so finding Jesus is now like finding a needle in a haystack.

And the Pharisees are like, bro, you got your 30 pieces of silver.

It's time for you to do your work.

How are we gonna find this fool in this huge city that has a huge influx of people?

And I imagine Judas, like, okay, this is a stupid idea.

He'd never be there.

He would never go to the place that we always go.

That's like our spot.

He's definitely not gonna be there.

Can you imagine the shock when Judas showed up and Jesus was in the one place he shouldn't be?

This is like if you're trying to hide from your kids and you just sit on the couch in the living room.

They are going to find you.

Like, this is like if my wife is trying to hide from me and goes to TJ Maxx, it's the first place I'm looking.

He shows up to the one place he is guaranteed to get caught.

It's obvious Jesus wanted to be found.

It's obvious that there was actually a master plan in place.

But the disciples didn't get it, they didn't understand.

Watch what happens when Jesus gets arrested.

In Matthew 26, Jesus asked Judas' friend, Why have you come?

And then they came up and took hold of Jesus and arrested him.

And at that moment, one of those with Jesus reached out his hand and drew his sword, and he struck the high priest's servant and cut off his ear.

And Jesus told him, Put your sword back in its place, because all who take up the sword will perish by the sword.

And then, if that's not enough, he drops this bombshell.

Or do you think I cannot call on my father and he will provide me here and now with more than twelve legions of angels?

Could Jesus have avoided this?

Not only could he have allowed his boys to start swinging swords and actually defend him and fight them off, but he could have in an instant called on 60,000 of heaven's greatest warriors game over right away.

From this moment on, Jesus goes to trial.

One trial after the next, and he's shipped around, and everyone's trying to find a way to kill him.

And when you read the whole story of Jesus' life, what you see is these same leaders are always trying to trap him.

They're always trying to catch him, they're trying to get him to say the wrong thing or say the right thing in the wrong way.

And every time they try to trap Jesus, he straight embarrasses them.

He's the smartest human who's ever walked on the earth, and he stands trial and never defends himself.

He stands trial and never tries to get free.

As a matter of fact, it's like every single word is meticulously designed to inflame the passions of those who want to kill him.

And his last stop is with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

And in this moment, Jesus erases any doubt that we may have about whether or not this could have been avoided.

And he erases any doubt that we may have about who is actually in control.

In John 19, it says that Pilate went back into the headquarters and asked Jesus, Where are you from?

But Jesus did not give him an answer.

And so Pilate said to him, Do you refuse to speak to me?

Don't you know that I have the authority to release you and I have the authority to crucify you?

And Jesus answered, You would have no authority over me at all if it hadn't been given to you from above.

In other words, you're the big man, you're the governor of the area, you snap your fingers and your will is done.

You say jump, and the entire region says how high.

But you need to understand in this moment, right now, whatever semblance of control that you think you have over this situation, you only have because it has been given to you by God.

Oh, and by the way, God is standing in front of you in human flesh.

When we look not just at the individual moments, not when we get lost in the diagrams and all of the details, but when we see the bigger picture, it becomes so obvious that yes, this could have been avoided.

Jesus orchestrated every single moment of this, which means he could have hypothetically changed any moment of it.

But it also becomes obvious that Jesus was executing on a master plan, that he came to earth to put into effect, that he lived his life to see to completion, and that he would not deviate from.

And so it begs the question of intent.

Like, it could have been avoided, but why?

Why let it happen?

And why did it have to happen like this?

In other words, our first question is how did Jesus get here?

What's the motive behind it?

And when you zoom out, it becomes readily apparent that the cross that so many look at with such confusion, that so many look at as some form of cosmic child abuse, they feel like it sheds a negative light on God.

That that cross was never a detour.

That the entire time for Jesus, the cross was the destination.

The cross was never a detour.

For Jesus, the cross was always the destination.

He was keenly aware of what was coming, fully aware of the depths of suffering he would endure.

And from day one, Jesus set out to pay the price of the sins of the world by dying on a cross.

Even the disciples didn't get it.

We just read in Matthew 16, before they ever even came into Jerusalem, he told them straight up, I gotta go to Jerusalem.

I'm gonna suffer, they're gonna kill me, and I'm gonna rise again.

And they don't get it.

Every single action in the Eastern narrative taken by his disciples, every reaction by the disciples, it proves again and again they don't understand what is going on.

They had heard Jesus say it and just wrote it off.

What would Jesus dying accomplish?

They must have thought.

Had done.

And truly they began to understand it.

One of the early apostles, the Apostle Paul, he explained it this way in a letter that he wrote to a church he had started in Colossae.

In Colossians 2, it says, And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, Jesus made you alive with him and forgave us all of our trespasses.

And you need to know this.

Like almost any time the New Testament talks about you being dead, it is not talking about physical death.

It does not mean your heart's not beating and your mind isn't firing.

When it talks about death, it is talking about spiritual separation from your heavenly Father, from the source of purpose for your life, and from the security of hope of what comes on the other side of this life.

In the next verse, it says, Jesus erased the certificate of death with all its obligations that was against us and opposed to us.

And he erased it by taking it away and nailing it to the cross.

And the metaphor that Paul is using is that you are separated from God because of your sin.

All of the ways that you have gone astray from God's design and desires for your life.

And your sin has stacked up every wrongdoing, every transgression, every mistake.

It is stacked up over the course of your life into an insurmountable debt.

And we all have a sin debt that we cannot pay.

And the only thing that it will cost us is our very lives.

In Romans, it says that the wages of our sin, what we've earned from our sin, is death.

Colossians says, when you were dead, as good as dead, spiritually dead, eternally dead, you were made alive by what Jesus did on the cross.

And Jesus transferred your debt unto his ledger, your sin onto his life.

And he stretched his arm and was nailed to a cross and spilled his blood, and the blood of Jesus Christ paid your debt in full.

In Hebrews chapter 10, it says, every priest stands day after day, day after day, ministering and offering the same sacrifices, time after time, day after day, same sacrifices, over and over and over.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

And here's the problem those sacrifices which can never fully and finally take away our sins.

But this man Jesus, after offering how many?

One sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.

For by one offering, he has perfected forever those who are sanctified.

And to cover your sin, you had to take an animal, usually a spotless lamb, and you had to go to the temple over and over and over again.

Because guess what?

Just about the same time that you spilt that lamb's blood, you were gonna walk out of the temple, stub your toe, and sin all over again, over and over and over again.

And it can only cover you temporarily.

And people think of the Old Testament priests as like not the warriors, they weren't the archers, they weren't the army guys, these fragile guys.

These were swole guys, man.

They were in there picking up live animals, butchering them up day after day from dawn until dusk to try desperately to cover the sins of the people.

And Jesus came and did once and for all what all the lambs of all time could not accomplish.

One sacrifice that covered all of our sins, past, present, and future, forever and ever.

Amen.

And remember how Jesus was announced.

His first time in public.

In John chapter 1, it says the next day, John the Baptist saw Jesus coming towards him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John 1 · chapter mention

And everyone knew what that meant.

The way the Lamb covers sin is by the spilling of his blood.

This is just the beginning of seeing the master plan.

And we can't miss this.

Because some of us see the Easter story in retrospect, and we already understand this.

My sermon wasn't new to you.

Jesus did it all.

He did it all on purpose.

He had complete control over it.

He executed it to a T.

And so we can think that Jesus just skipped his way through it.

Like, yeah, I know what's coming next.

They're gonna arrest me, no big deal.

I'm gonna be on trial, it's fine, no sweat.

I'm gonna get beat within an inch of my life, gotta do what I gotta do.

Jesus knew what was coming.

Jesus understood the suffering, not just of dying, but the suffering of taking upon his shoulders the sin of the world.

See, we have to zoom out and see the bigger picture.

In Matthew 26, it says, Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he told the disciples, Sit here while I go over there and pray.

And taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled.

And he said to his friends, I'm deeply grieved.

I am so grieved, I'm so filled with anguish, like to the point of death.

It feels like I am dying, just contemplating what is coming.

And he says to his friends, Remain here, stay awake with me.

And going a little farther, Jesus fell face down and he prayed, My Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

If there's any other way, yet, not my will, but yours.

You need to see the full picture because without the full picture, you won't get the full grasp of Jesus' great love for you.

Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem when he knew they were waiting to kill him?

Why did he let Judas leave the room?

Why did he go to the one place where he knew for sure he would be found?

Why didn't he let his friends fight for his life?

Why not call down heaven's armies to defend him?

Why not defend himself in trial?

Why stay silent in front of Pilate, who is desperate to let him go?

In Romans 5, it says, For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

A thought that blew the apostle Paul's mind.

In verse 7, he says, For rarely will someone even die for a just person.

Like maybe, perhaps for a good person, someone might die, but let's keep it real.

A lot of times we won't sacrifice the smallest things for the people that we love the absolute most on earth.

Sometimes we will allow ourselves to live in relational hell just because we can't lose an argument.

Like we will barely sacrifice anything.

Most of us aren't even gonna die for a godly good, just person, but God proves his own love for us.

He doesn't sit on high and just prophesy about it.

He comes to earth and he proves his love for us.

And that while we were still sinners and still rebels against the king, and still living as our own gods, and still full of our own pride, while we were still going astray from his design and desire for our life, God proves his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

If you're a believer in Jesus, then maybe all today is for you is a reminder in the hectic nature of your life and your busy schedule where you can become consumed with the things of the world and consumed with political troubles and consumed with relational drama, is a reminder that the God of the universe loved you enough to step down into our brokenness, and every single step he took was a step towards the cross that you deserve and I deserved, but he took for us.

Maybe it's a reminder that the path to the life that you're called to live, a life that ultimately shows the world, the love of our God, will require us purposefully taking on sacrifice and maybe even suffering for the benefit of those around us.

If you are not a believer in Jesus, I hope today you will consider what if this is true?

What if there is hope for life after this life?

What if there is a God who loves you so much that the story of Easter isn't a man unjustly arrested, beaten against his will, crucified, out of control?

It is a story of a savior who was in control the whole time, who executed the master plan to a T and did it all for you.

As we close, I want to ask you, right where you're at, to just close your eyes, to bow your head.

There's nothing magic about that.

It just creates some space for you, it creates some space for the people around you.

And I want to give you some time to just consider.

Consider the path that Jesus took to the cross.

Imagine him setting his face towards Jerusalem and never looking back.

And what would it mean if you could actually believe that he did that for you?

Imagine him knowing that one of his closest friends was getting ready to betray him.

And allowing him to leave the room, the first domino to fall, and the grand plan to arrest and kill Jesus.

As you imagine Judas leaving the room, what does it mean that Jesus let him leave for you?

That he went to the one place he knew he would be found, and he did that for you, that he didn't allow his friends to fight back, and he held back the armies of heaven, and he did it for you.

He stood defenseless in trial.

He stood silent before Pilate, and his silence was for you.

That you deserved.

And the gospel is this that you are separated from your heavenly father because of your sin.

And yet Jesus came and paid the price of that sin.

He erased that debt.

And all you have to do to have his righteousness credited to your account, all you must do to be covered by his blood, all you have to do to be back in relationship and be guaranteed eternal life is to put your faith in Jesus, to believe in who he is, and to believe in what he's done.

And if you're here or you're online right now and you have never had a moment of putting your faith in Jesus, I want to invite you to do that right now.

I'm gonna verbalize a very simple prayer to acknowledge your faith.

You can repeat it with me out loud, or you can say it even in your mind where God can certainly hear your thoughts.

If you're ready to make that decision, pray something like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God.

I believe you came to earth.

I believe you died for my sins, and I believe you rose again.

I thank you for a new life.

I thank you for eternal security.

And today I commit my life to you.

Let me pray for us.

Jesus, I believe that salvation has come to this room.

I believe it's possible that it has come to some who are even watching online right now.

And we celebrate with you and with all of heaven for life's made new, for eternity secured, and we thank you for what you did and that you did it all for us.

And we are not enough without you.

You are the source of our purpose, you're the source of our life, you're the source of our significance.

And I pray that we would be a movement who takes serious believing in you and following after you.

We love you and we worship you.

It's all in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast, you can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different videos are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.