Wonder Week: Friday - Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

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.

Hey MetaCurch, I want to welcome you back to our Wonder Week series.

Uh, we are looking at the seven days leading up to Easter, and every day we're seeing a different way that Jesus was preparing us to fully understand what Easter is really all about.

This is also the fourth time that we have been gathering, not in our venues, but in our homes.

And at this point, um, I don't know how you're feeling about it.

It might be feeling like this is somewhat of the new normal.

And uh we're very resilient as humans.

We're able to adapt and really adjust to things generally pretty quickly.

And I just want you to know we're still taking things one week at a time, and uh, and we do know that someday we're gonna get back to the old normal, which is two venues and six services and seeing each other face to face and all of those great things.

And man, I've just, I mean, been obviously thinking about this and praying about this so much.

And here's what I know: if this time of great inconvenience, uh, of even hardship maybe or sadness of not getting to gather with each other, if this is the thing that causes the church, not just metachurch, but like the church, the movement of Jesus, to shake out of some of our preconceived notions of what church is.

If this is able to even just slightly help people to start realizing that the church is not a building, that the church is the people, that the priority is the movement, that it's not just meeting together, but it's moving together.

If we accomplish that, then all of this time and inconvenience and digital services and lack of meeting in our venues, I really believe it will all be worth it.

And I hope that you will join me in praying to that end.

As you guys know, we are nearing the end of this series, which means that we are coming right upon Easter next week, where we will be concluding our look at Wonder Week, and we've been striving to build in some dimension to a story that is often told so quickly, and a story that we all know so well.

And sometimes we know a story so well that it actually begins to lose its power or lose its significance.

It can happen in our relationships.

It's like the first date, you're just, man, it's like you've got butterflies the whole time and you're blushing the whole time, and you're just like really in the moment, you're intentional about everything, like you don't want to say the wrong thing or screw anything up or look like an idiot, and then it's like by by the fifth year of marriage, you're just like, you know, kind of letting things go, and and like you hardly like each other anymore.

It's like we just we get used to things, and and the miracle of marriage can become mundane so quickly, and I'm just afraid that when it comes to the Easter story, that the miracle that it is can become mundane because of how many times we've told it.

And it's like every time we tell it, we take away a little bit of its of its power, and man, we're on such an important day.

Friday of Wonder Week.

The day that we now look back and we call good Friday, and the irony that we call good the day that our Savior died, and only Jesus.

Only Jesus could take death and turn it into destination.

Only Jesus could take the cross and turn it into the creation of a movement that would change the world.

It's Friday.

And to understand the scene, we really have to understand the context.

And we've been talking throughout Wonder Week about this Roman occupation of the Jewish people and the political unrest.

And on day one, Palm Sunday, we saw Jesus as king, and the people wanted him to be king of Israel, to like lead the rebellion against Roman and end Roman occupation to get their land and their lives and their freedom back.

A lot has changed since day one.

On day six, Jesus is the most wanted man.

And we now have this backdrop of an intense political drama.

Maybe some of you back in the day watched uh that show, I think it's called West Wing, right?

Maybe you were into that.

Maybe you're into the political drama, and you don't really need like a fiction show.

You can just like switch back and forth between the news channel.

You get all the political drama that you want in your life right now.

This was a political drama.

On Thursday of Wonder Week, we saw last week that Jesus was betrayed.

He was in Gethsemane and he was connecting with God and wrestling through his flesh, through his humanity.

And of course, Jesus always gets it right.

He's all human, but all God.

And then Judas comes and betrays him with a kiss.

Jesus is arrested.

As night melts into early morning and the darkness of the morning, he's tried, but he's tried illegally, and of course he's found guilty of blasphemy, equating himself with God.

From there, the Jewish people need Roman help.

And isn't it interesting that when we get desperate enough, we will go to the source of our persecution to actually find the relief that we need.

They need Rome.

They can try him, they can find him guilty, but they need Rome to kill him.

And so they start cycling through the Roman authorities, and Jesus gets tossed around in front of this leader and in front of that leader, and finally he lands at a man named Pontius Pilate.

Pilate is in charge of the whole area.

He is a Roman leader.

He works directly for Caesar.

It's his job to keep the peace, and it's a very difficult area, Jerusalem, where they just hate Rome and they want to end Roman occupation.

In fact, Pilate really doesn't like the Jewish leaders in the area because they've already gone to Rome and complained on his behalf multiple times.

And so he's just wrestling through this.

And now Pilate has this guy, Jesus, standing in front of him.

The Roman people were very superstitious.

They still believed in a pantheon of gods and that these fake mythological gods would sometimes come down to earth and like actually cause trouble, and they actually had some power.

And if that wasn't bad enough, this superstitious leader's wife, Pilate's wife, she had this terrible nightmare.

She told Pilate, We should stay away from this Jesus guy.

I have a bad feeling about it.

I have a bad feeling.

Something bad's gonna happen.

Pilate brings him in and he interviews him and he gives him the fifth degree and he's pouring over all the facts and he comes to the conclusion that he's innocent.

We pick up the story in John's Gospel, chapter 19, right at the beginning of verse 1.

It says, Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.

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

And the soldiers kept coming up to Jesus and saying, Hail the King of the Jews.

They were slapping him in his face.

It's very, very odd because chapter 18 ends with Pilate finding Jesus innocent.

He factually, in his mind, decides that Jesus has not actually committed a crime.

He's not actually a dangerous guy.

And Pilate has all the power.

He is judge, jury, and executioner over that area, and anything he says goes.

It's odd to find a man innocent and then still have him beaten.

The backdrop is political.

And he doesn't believe he's guilty, and he's a little superstitious, and he's hearing these things about you know a messiah and a king and a god, and now his wife is having nightmares about it, and he doesn't want to screw this up.

And he also has a political position to hold, and he's he's got to get this right because if they cause too many problems with Rome, then he might actually lose his position.

A lot is on the line.

So he believes he's innocent, but he uses his power to have Jesus beaten anyway.

It's a political move.

He hopes to appease the crowd.

Now there's some confusion because most people who know the Easter story know that Jesus is beaten.

And we hear the story of the cat of nine tails and the whip that was covered in these leather strips that had bone and glass and shards of metal inside of them that would that would tear into the skin and rip chunks of flesh out.

We we learn in scripture about Jesus being beaten actually beyond recognition.

That's a lot for a guy you think is innocent.

And as we're adding dimension to the story, there's a good probability that this flogging was not that moment.

We can look back in Roman history and we know around this time there were actually three different kinds of beatings that they would give, and the worst was the cat of ninetales and these leather whips with all these shards in it, and that was for one purpose, and that purpose was execution.

And many times they were doing this so that the actual crucifixion would go quicker.

Sometimes people would actually die on the whipping post right there, and so then they would just hang their lifeless bodies on the cross, raise them up in the city square for everyone to be warned that you don't mess with Rome.

That was the most extreme.

There was one in the middle where they would they would beat these people with uh with leather straps, but they had nothing inside of them.

So they would lacerate the body, but they were in no danger of killing you.

And this was for really extreme offenses, but that weren't quite worthy of death.

There was a third kind of beating, and it was uh it was the subtlest.

I mean, don't get me wrong, like it would suck really bad, but it was it was a far stretch from the other two, and this was being beaten with rods, and it was for the purpose of making an example.

In the Roman judicial system, it was it was kind of actually like a slap on the wrist.

And many scholars believe that this is what Jesus received.

This was the first beating, beating with rods with humiliation.

They would have stripped him, if not all the way nude, at least partly nude, and they put a purple robe on him, and they they put a crown on him that would look like the crown of Caesar's, except instead of being made out of actual floral, it would be made out of crowns.

It was a moment of mocking and humiliation.

It was a political move.

Pilate was a great politician.

His idea was he could at least make an example out of Jesus, and if he did, then maybe that would appease the Jewish leaders.

And Pilate could not have been more wrong.

In verse 4, Pilate went outside again and he said to them, Look, I'm bringing him out to you to let you know I still find no grounds for charging him.

And then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns, wearing the purple robe.

And Pilate said to them, Here is the man.

Almost mocking them, like, look how hypothetic Jesus would have been beaten and swollen and bruised and bleeding, dressed in a complete mockery of a king.

Here's the man.

He's harmless, guys.

I like I get it.

I know you don't love him, but look at him.

I don't find any charge for doing any more than this.

Like, this was probably too much, and we definitely don't need to do more.

And in most circumstances, the Jewish leaders would have given way, the political drama would have been over, the prisoner would have been set free.

But this was different.

This was Jesus.

And the enemies of Jesus would stop at nothing to see him killed.

In verse 6, when the chief priests and the temple servants saw him, they shouted, Crucify, crucify, the only thing that would suffice, crucify, and Pilate responded, you know what?

Take him, crucify him yourself.

I find no grounds for charging him.

This is another move, another great political move, because Pilate knew they needed him.

The Jewish people couldn't crucify someone themselves.

Number one, that was a Roman form of execution.

Number one, these religious leaders, if they follow through, if they actually take Jesus, who still has public support and nail him to a cross themselves, they have now completely disrupted their entire religion.

They have destroyed the foundation of Judaism itself.

He knows they can't do it.

It's one political move versus the next.

You want them, kill them yourself.

But they weren't done.

They had another trick up their sleeve in verse 7.

We have a law, the Jews replied.

And according to that law, this guy ought to die because he made himself the son of God.

This is a patently, patently false statement.

Jesus never claimed to make himself the son of God, to make himself deity.

Jesus said, I can't make myself something I already am.

Before I was born, I was God.

Before Abraham, I am.

Before the foundations of the world, I was there.

From all eternity, from the very beginning, Jesus was, He was God, is God forever.

They don't care.

They are now moving in from facts to manipulation.

They're going to do whatever it takes.

And this interesting moment happens with Pilate.

They said, We have this law.

He made himself the Son of God.

In verse 8, when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever.

To understand Pilate, you have to understand the superstition.

You have to understand the pantheon of God's.

You have to understand his wife's nightmare.

This is a guy who really is afraid that he might be dealing with a God, some kind of deity, someone with power outside of himself.

And we see how it causes him to react.

In verse 10, in verse 9, he went back into the headquarters and asked Jesus, Where are you from?

But Jesus did not give him an answer.

And you see how it shifts.

At the beginning, he's saying, Who are you?

Who are you?

He needs to know who he is.

They're saying you're a king.

They're saying you're a rebel.

They're saying that you're inciting violence.

Who are you?

And now it has changed.

Where are you from?

Pilate is scared.

And Jesus gives no answer.

Now this causes Pilate great irritation.

And I get it.

Like, let's give Pilate a little bit of credit because there's few things as infuriating as you asking someone a question and them just completely ignoring you, not answering your question at all.

Pilate breaks.

In verse 10, Pilate said to him, Do you really refuse to speak to me?

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

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

Do you not understand who I am, the power I have?

I speak directly to Caesar.

I am the judge, jury, and executioner.

Do you not know who I am?

And if you really want to sniff out insecurity, look no further than people who always have to put forward their credentials.

You know, as parents, uh, the moment that we're having to tell our kids out loud that we're the parent is usually the moment that our kids are actually running the house.

Don't you forget, I am the parent of this house as the kid is setting the agenda and running everyone wild and making everything crazy and making you pray more than you've ever prayed in your life for school to just please come back so you can get these kids out of your house.

Like that is the moment that you are at your most insecure, and Pilate is scared.

And there's so much writing on this.

And the situation is not going how he thought it would go.

You know, at this moment of Pilate looking at Jesus, who we know is God, who created Pilate, created the world, has all power and all wisdom, and making a claim of authority, it just is a stark reminder to me of how we so often get caught up in living our lives.

We're in a generation that grew up on movies.

We grew up on movies, and the last several generations have, and we've grown up on television shows, and and you know, before that, people grew up on plays, and even earlier than that, people grew up on novels.

And what all of these things have in common is they all have a storyline, and there's an author or for a screenplay, we call it a writer, and there's there's a plot, and there's people editing it, and there's a producer who's packaging it all together.

There's a director who's giving the direction to make sure that every single thing in the movie, everything in the show, every part of the script all lines out perfectly, and we've grown so much in this environment, and we're so used to story being told through these different mediums that all of a sudden we've grown up a generation who sees our lives as if it is supposed to be a movie.

And in this movie, check this out not only are we the star of the show, we are also the writer.

We're the author, we're the captains of our own destinies, we're the producer, we're packaging it together, we're making sure that everything goes according to plan.

We're the director.

We will give the direction of where things are supposed to go and how they're supposed to go, and how things are supposed to flow, and how we get from one scene to the next.

And every once in a while we come into these moments where life isn't quite going the way that the story of our life went in the script that we wrote in our head, and it's like we argue, and we've all been in arguments where we actually know we're wrong.

It's like for a fact I'm wrong, but we keep arguing.

Because in the story of our life that we wrote in our head, we don't lose the argument.

So now it's not about being right or wrong.

Now it's about just winning.

Just as long as life keeps going, I'm the director, I'll push the action forward how I see fit.

And and maybe in the script of our life we got married.

Like that's part of it, but in our marriage, we were like happy.

In our marriage, we didn't fight so much.

In our marriage, we got our way and weren't challenged on the ways we think about things and do things.

And so it's easier to divorce because divorce is an easier option than being in a marriage that didn't go according to the script that you wrote in your head.

And life gets painful, and there's not supposed to be pain in the movie of my life that I'm the star and the author and the director and the producer of.

And so it's a better option to find some kind of addiction to numb it.

And maybe I didn't really imagine myself an alcoholic in the story I was gonna write from my life, but it's better to be an alcoholic than to be in pain.

And all of it is to push forward the idea that we have of how our life is supposed to function.

I have the authority, I make the calls, I'm the director, I'll write the script and I'll push it through.

I was thinking about this message, and uh his name is Pontius Pilate, and I was thinking about how we've modeled our lives and our realities off these TV shows, and maybe you're familiar with the term pilot, P-I-L-O-T.

And a pilot is the first show of a series.

And so when someone tries to make a television show, uh you may not know this, but they don't make the whole show.

They don't make 20 episodes, they make one, and they call it the pilot, and it's gotta be perfect because the pilot is what they will shop to all the major networks, and the pilot has to be good enough for NBC or ABC or CBS or Fox.

Someone's gotta pick that pilot up, and if they pick it up, you get to make the whole show.

The writing's gotta be perfect.

The character development, the story arc, the director, there's so much pressure on the pilot.

There's so much pressure on the pilot.

You've got to get it right.

Man, if all this money and all this effort and all this time, if this position that I'm in, if this chance at stardom, if it's gonna go through, there's so much pressure on the pilot.

There's so much pressure on pilot.

And Jesus is standing in front of him, and the Jewish leaders are outside, and the Jewish leaders are already complaining to Rome, and he's already in danger of losing his position, and if he loses his position, he becomes irrelevant.

And if he loses his position, he's no longer in direct line to Caesar.

If he loses his position, he loses his possessions, he loses his wealth, he loses his influence, he loses it all.

There's all kinds of pressure on Pilate.

He's got to get this right.

Whatever political maneuvering he has to do, whatever he has to figure out, he has to get it right.

Jesus is throwing a wrench in his plans.

He's never had a prisoner that anyone cared as much about as this Jesus guy.

It's like I can't even find anything he did wrong, and they're just hell-bent on crucifying this guy.

How do I get this right?

How do I keep from inciting a riot that's gonna lose me my job?

How do I make the right decision and not condemn an innocent man to death?

There's so much pressure on Pilate.

In verse 11, Jesus responds to Pilate's claim of authority.

In verse 11, we see so clearly that Jesus is God.

You would have no authority over me at all.

Jesus answered him.

Jesus, who has stood in silence through every single one of his trials, Jesus now speaks.

You would have no authority over me at all if it had not been given to you from above.

The implications are clear.

Pilate, you're worried that I might be the son of God?

You're right.

And if this did not come from my father, and the father and I are one before Abraham was, I am, I am God from all eternity.

If I don't say that it is so, it is not so.

And it becomes clear.

Pilate, you have your little kingdom.

You can let me go, you can crucify me, but none of it happens if I don't say so.

And on Friday of Wonder Week, we learn an important truth.

It's all led here.

Jesus as King, Jesus as prophet, Jesus as rabbi, Jesus as victim, Jesus as human.

Now Jesus who is God.

We see it all that no one could put Jesus on a cross.

Jesus is going to offer himself as sacrifice.

You would have no authority over me at all.

And I want you to see the difference in how the moment reacts to Pilate's illusion of authority and how the moment reacts to Jesus' actual authority.

In verse 12, from that moment on, Pilate kept trying and trying and trying to release him.

Every political maneuver he could figure out, he kept trying and trying and trying.

Pilate is afraid, but the Jews shouted, if you release this man, they've got one more card up their sleeve.

They've got one more political move.

If you release this man, you, Pilate, are not Caesar's friend.

Anyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.

And this is such a brilliant move.

Because what Pilate sees is a man who's harmless.

What Pilate sees is a man who, you know, they call it blasphemy.

Maybe he thinks he's God.

I don't really know.

I'm superstitious anyway.

It doesn't really affect me.

I don't care about blasphemy.

Pilate's not Jewish.

It's kind of, it's kind of unrelated to him.

But the one thing Pilate could not look past is that Jesus has claimed to be king.

And in Rome, where Caesar ruled with an iron fist, anyone, anyone claiming to be king must be put to death.

And with his final move, first the Jews said he claims to be God.

That's the problem.

You know what the problem is, he claims to be God, and the Jewish law says he has to die.

Pilate says, I don't care.

They switch.

No, no, no.

He also claims to be king.

And if he claims to be king and you don't do something about it, it means you don't think Caesar is king.

It's a brilliant move.

It's a brilliant move done by people who will do whatever it takes to see Jesus killed.

In verse 13, when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside.

He sat down on the judge's seat in a place called the stone pavement.

And it was the preparation day for the Passover.

It was about noon.

And he told the Jews, here is your king.

And every word of this verse matters.

Every word of it.

Preparation day for the Passover is the day that people go and they pick out the most perfect lamb from their herd in order to sacrifice it symbolically of the salvation that they received in Egypt.

And on preparation day, as they cry out, crucify him, they have no idea that they are setting the stage for the perfect Lamb of God to be sacrificed for salvation from our sins.

And Pilate knows this is an important day.

And so he takes his time and he slows down.

He knows people have to get home, they got to follow all the procedures, they got to get uh all of the leaven out of their house, they gotta find the lamb slaughtered, all these things.

It takes time.

It's already noon soon, darkness will be creeping in.

He knows they've got to put the blood on the doorpost.

They have this whole thing, it's always he's slowing down.

Here's your king.

And they shouted, take him away, crucify him.

And Pilate said to them, mocking them, Should I crucify your king?

It's brilliant.

Pilate has what they need, only he can kill Jesus.

They have what Pilate needs, only they can absolve him of any claim that he represented another king but Caesar.

They come to a political truce.

The drama's over.

He calls them the king of the Jews.

And in one of the most shocking statements of scripture, the chief priest answered, We have no king but Caesar.

And the last verse, Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified.

We have no king but Caesar.

And in the Jewish life, only God is the one true king of all kings, and the chief priest, not a guy in the back of the room, not one of the Roman soldiers, the chief priest, the leaders of Judaism.

They destroyed the very foundation that God had built for them to be his chosen people by saying, We have no other king but the Caesar in Rome who himself claims to be God.

In one moment, Jesus shows his authority to not just offer himself as a sacrifice, but to truly demonstrate the heart of the enemies of God.

It was Friday of Wonder Week, and Jesus was taken to his second beating of the day, a beating so severe that scripture says that he was hardly recognizable as a man.

And at that point, when he was right on death's door, they would strap the beam that he would be nailed to across his back for him to walk the long, painful journey up the hill called Golgotha.

He was nailed, his hands and his feet.

He was raised high above the crowd.

Slowly his lungs filled with his own body's liquids.

He took his last breath.

He said, It is finished.

Not what they had done to him, but what he had done for us.

And every step of the way, he is using the mouths of his enemies to speak the truths about him.

And Pilate brings him up and says, Here is this man, not just this man, the son of man, that the man, the word who became flesh, Jesus incarnate.

The chief priest said, We have a law, he has claimed he's the son of God, and the enemies speak the truths of who he is.

And as Pilate delivers him to his death, he says, Here he is your king.

You know, all of us have an idea of how we want our lives to go.

And if we're not careful, we will fall into the trap of thinking that we are not just the stars of the show, but we are the writers of the scripts, we are the producers packaging it all together, controlling everything we need to control.

We're the directors, and we're telling everyone where they should go and where they should be, and how we should make our version of life come together.

And maybe some of you are good at it, and maybe you're really good at controlling people, that's called manipulation, and maybe you're really good at getting your way, and maybe you've built a great name for yourself, and maybe at this point you have some positions to protect, and some possessions to protect, and some pride to protect, and all of the things that put so much pressure on Pilate, and maybe there's great pressure in your life.

Maybe you feel the need to make it all go according to your plan, because if your plan falls apart, you don't have a backup plan.

This is the story of your life, you're writing it, directing it, producing in it.

And you've got to be the star.

On Friday of Wonder Week, we see that Jesus is God.

And that if we continue to live with the illusion that we have some authority over how this life is supposed to function, we will miss out on the life that we were actually created for.

You were made for a significant, purposeful, impactful life.

But it starts by recognizing that I am not the star of the show.

And the moment that we see through the story of Wonder Week that it is all about Jesus, that it's always been about Jesus, that whatever level of authority we feel like we have has only been given to us by God.

And if we allow ourselves to be players in his story, if we allow him to be the narrator, if we allow him to be the director, if we look to his word in order to see how life is supposed to be produced, then maybe life won't go the way you thought it was supposed to go.

Maybe it's not the movie that you've written in your head, but it will be a life of more significance and more power, of more purpose.

It'll be a life where you experience peace and joy and harmony and relationship like it was supposed to be, and marriage the way God created it, and parenting in a sense of power, raising the next generation, and life and wealth the way that we were supposed to enjoy it, and careers, all of it comes together.

You can continue living out your story.

And I promise the story will change.

There'll be revisions in the script, and by the end, you'll be further away, not only from the story you wanted to live, but from the story you were created to live.

It's day six.

Easter is almost here.

And on day six, we decide who's in charge of the story.

Would you guys pray with me?

God, we love you.

And uh we thank you for this passage.

We thank you that we can see the pressure on Pilate.

And maybe we're feeling that in our own life.

We've got to make it happen.

We gotta have all the right moves, we gotta play all the right cards in all the right games.

If we don't, God, our movie might fall apart.

And I pray, God, that if our life is not being lived according to your plan and by your spirit, then I pray that very thing happens, God, that our lives, our stories, our scripts would fall apart and that we would find the life that you have called us to live.

We thank you for Jesus.

Jesus, we thank you that you are God.

You're in control, you've never not been in control.

Even when things are at their worst, even when the night is at its darkest, God, you know and you see us and you have us and you've given us the power to get through it.

We love you.

Help us to put you in charge.

We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Guys, we're so, so glad that you guys joined us again for this stream.

Man, again, we hope that you will share this.

There are people who need some hope, who need some challenge, uh, who need some distractions away from just Netflixing this time away.

We're uh we're so grateful for you.

We're so grateful for those who have continued to invest in this movement, continue to help us push this forward and not just survive, but thrive and be the movement during this critical time.

We're gonna keep things going.

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Be looking for those updates about what we have going on for Easter.

I love you guys so much.

You guys go out and be the movement.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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