Title: This Is Your Spiritual Worship
Text: Exodus 20:3–6
Originally delivered on 26 April 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

The narrative of the plagues is, perhaps, one of the most compelling supernatural sequences in Scripture. Countless scholars and historians have attempted to explain these events through natural, albeit rare phenomena, leaving one to conclude that Egypt underwent the worst string of natural disasters in recorded history. It’s better, then, to understand the plagues as “judgments” carried out by a divine sovereign, since that is what God reckons them to be (Exod. 6:6; 7:3–4). Even better than that, though, might be to view the “ten plagues” as “eleven signs” or revelations of the divine, since each one uniquely and strikingly unveils the nature and character of God. While much of our attention naturally focuses on the frogs, the flies, and the water turning into blood, and rightly so, we mustn’t hurry past the prelude to all those signs of judgment, which is what the scene with the staffs turning into serpents is (Exod. 7:8–13).

1. Heavenly Combat in Pharaoh’s Court

This moment, to be sure, concerns something much deeper and much more trenchant than merely an encounter between the king of Egypt and his runaway prince. It isn’t even primarily about the kingdom of Egypt versus the enslaved nation of Israel. Rather, this scene in the courtroom of Pharaoh is a stage upon which the Lord Almighty reveals his power over all things, even those who are in league with the Evil One. “This is heavenly combat,” John D. Currid asserts, “that is, a war between the God of the Hebrews and the deities of Egypt.”1 Much like the tragedy in the Garden (Gen. 3) and the temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4), this occasion puts in stark relief the eternal conflict between God himself and the prince of the power of the air, the devil. Deeper than any political, ethical, or moral conflict is the spiritual war that is being waged all around us, the primordial struggle between the Creator and “that ancient serpent” (Rev. 12:9), who roams this world like a lion (1 Pet. 5:8), deceiving and [enslaving] the souls of humankind.

That serpent is Satan, the one who engulfs men’s and women’s lives, ensnaring them with lust, greed, power, pride, and all that feeds the appetite of the self. His is a “gospel” of self-absorption, self-interest, and self-salvation. He desires nothing more than to warp what God has created beyond recognition by turning everything inward. This he accomplishes through the subtle and seductive art of imitation. The devil is no creator; he is the ultimate con-artist, though. He takes what God has made and twists it, turning holiness into self-righteousness, freedom into licentiousness, love into lust, wisdom into pride, and worship into self-obsessed emotion. While he cannot and will not deny God’s existence or openly contradict his words, since he knows he can’t win that battle, he strives to distort God’s goodness. His mission remains blinding the minds of the unbelievers by keeping them from seeing the light of the gospel (2 Cor. 4:4).

2. The Counterfeit Kingdom

Satan’s strategy has always been to parody the Light of the World by offering his own dim glow of hollowed-out truth, a tactic that can be traced from Eden to Egypt to first-century Jerusalem. In many ways, what transpires in front of Pharaoh is the Old Testament version of what occurs in the Gospel of John, where Jesus lifts the veil to expose to whom the Pharisees belong. Even though the religious aristocracy claimed firm allegiance to Abraham and Moses, Jesus insisted that their spiritual father was none other than “the father of lies” himself, the devil (John 8:44). They might’ve had scrolls of the Torah under their arms and in their heads, but by resisting and rejecting Jesus, they were effectively rejecting God himself (John 8:42–43, 47).

Even if Pharaoh and his goons weren’t fully aware of it, by resisting Moses and Aaron, they were in league with Satan, marching in step with his malignant schemes. By refusing to let God’s people go, he was complying with the kingdom of darkness and yielding to the will of the Evil One, which helps us understand what was at stake when Moses and his brother entered Pharaoh’s throne room for the second time. It wasn’t merely the freedom of a nation unjustly enslaved by a vindictive tyrant; it was the will and word of Yahweh versus the wiles of the devil. After all, the Lord had promised his people that they’d dwell in a Land of Promise, free from the overreach of despots. So, would God live up to his word? Would his people be free after all? Or would the king of Egypt keep them under his thumb? Would God’s word prove true? Or would it be just another myth? A tale lost among the sands of time?

Of course, even though it looked perilous from Moses and Aaron’s perspective, as it often does for us, Yahweh was in complete control throughout this entire ordeal. Nothing took him by surprise, neither Moses’s weakness, Israel’s faithlessness, nor Pharaoh’s defiance. This is a seminal moment, therefore, demonstrating God’s absolute authority over all things and his irrefutable ability to keep his word.

3. Satirizing Egypt’s Power

After re-commissioning Moses and Aaron to go before Pharaoh, again, the Lord offers his servants a little insight on what they can expect, letting them know that Pharaoh was going to demand a “miracle” (מוֹפֵת) as evidence of their authority (Exod. 7:8–9). This request does not mean that Egypt’s kind was open to being convinced. Rather, it seems he was looking to expose Moses and Aaron as “charlatans” traipsing around under the guise of religious ambition when they were nothing more than political idealists. However, God was well aware of the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart, to the point where he knew what protest he would offer and how his servants might confront it — namely, by satirizing one of Egypt’s most revered symbols of royalty, authority, and spirituality.

Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Prove yourselves by working a miracle,’ then you shall say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent.’” So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. (Exod. 7:8–10)

It’s no accident that the Lord turns Moses’s staff, which he shares with Aaron, into a snake. Egyptian society was inundated with countless false deities, but the serpent was among the most highly regarded of them all. The crown of Pharaoh was bedecked with a serpent, symbolizing both divine power and protection. By donning a snake-crested crown, they were essentially claiming ultimate supremacy. Imagine how frustrated and gobsmacked everyone must’ve been when two Hebrew nobodies walked in and mocked the very image of what it meant to be Egyptian. Yahweh, through Moses and Aaron, was directly assaulting the emblem of Pharaoh’s identity, might, and authority. And, as you might imagine, Pharaoh didn’t take too kindly to his power being so openly opposed and blatantly called into question, demanding his “wise men and sorcerers” do the same thing (Exod. 7:11).

There is a long history of Egyptian magicians figuring into the biblical story (cf. Gen. 41:8). These “sorcerers,” though, were exactly who you think they were: diviners, astrologers, users of witchcraft, and those who dabble in the occult. Pharaoh’s closest advisors were a school of so-called “wise men” who had already flung the door wide open for Satan’s influence. It wasn’t all that surprising, then, that he called on them to mimic Aaron’s dazzling display. But this is where scholars and commentators alike get so hung up on “how” these Egyptian magicians might’ve pulled this off. How were they able to do as Aaron just did and turn each of their staffs into snakes? Was this just some parlor trick? Or did they really perform some magic? Was this sleight of hand or the work of Satan? For my own part, I am firmly in the camp that sees this as the devil at work. But, frankly, it doesn’t matter all that much to the story, since the focus of this scene isn’t “how” these sorcerers did what they did, but what happens next: “For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs” (Exod. 7:12).

4. The Staff That Swallowed Serpents

As shocking as it might’ve been for Aaron and Moses to see their “wonder” (מוֹפֵת) replicated by the Egyptians, it was exponentially more shocking for Pharaoh’s wise men to see each of their staffs engulfed by the staff shared by two Hebrew spokesmen. The point wouldn’t have been lost on any onlooker. Whatever perceived power the serpent and those who belonged to the serpent possessed, the God of the Hebrews was more powerful still, serving as a divine rebuttal to Pharaoh’s earlier dismissal (Exod. 5:2). “Pharaoh’s power was great,” Michael P. V. Barrett says, “but God’s was infinitely greater.”2 The God with whom Pharaoh was contending was none other than the I Am, the one who can snatch away humanity’s perceived power in the blink of an eye. When he was done with them, no one would have an excuse not to bow before the God of Israel. This is the prevailing motif behind the ensuing plagues, as God shows the watching world that there is no other God but him (Exod. 7:17; 9:14; 10:2).

Accordingly, by having Aaron’s staff-turned-serpent consume Pharaoh’s staffs-turned-serpents, God offers an object lesson of what is declared through the rest of Scripture:

‏To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him. (Deut. 4:35)

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. (Deut. 32:39)

For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. (Ps. 86:10)

I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God. (Isa. 45:5)

I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. (Isa. 46:9)

No authority, on earth below or heaven above, can oppose the authority of Yahweh. Ours is a God who is rivaled by none and is supreme over all. Every power, potentate, and demon falls in subjection to him.

Furthermore, this moment is akin to God’s words being acted out; it’s a prophecy that’s dramatically put into motion. As Michael P. V. Barrett notes, “God’s power over literal snakes was a sign testifying to His power over Satan, the serpent whose head was destined to be crushed.”3 “This ‘sign,’” Arthur W. Pink concurs, “foreshadowed the end of the great conflict.”4 In the courtroom of Pharaoh, we’re shown a glimpse of the ultimate triumph of heaven over sin, death, and darkness, as Aaron’s staff swallowing up the sorcerers’ staffs prefigures the ultimate promise of the gospel, which assures us of the ancient serpent’s defeat (Gen. 3:15). Through the promise of the bruised heel and the crushed serpent, every filthy consequence of the serpent’s lies are swallowed up in the victory God gives us through the person of his Son (1 Cor. 15:54–57). After all, Christ is the one who “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” on the cross (Col. 2:15).

5. The Gospel That Swallows Death

What Moses and Aaron acted out in Pharaoh’s court has already been accomplished for us on a hill called Calvary. But in a way, it’s a scene that’s rehearsed nearly every time the church assembles. Standing in front of congregations, whose hearts and minds are brimming with news that makes it appear as though evil has the upper hand, preachers are equipped with something far more powerful than the sign of the staff turning into a serpent. They are armed with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17). The only weapon strong enough to stymie the serpent and his seducing lies is “the word of [our] testimony” (Rev. 12:11), which, now and forever, resounds with the good news that death has lost its sting, sin has been defeated, and Satan’s head has been crushed because Christ walked out of the grave. Therefore, although that ancient serpent might still whisper his doubts into our hearts, the Spirit continually wields the Word that silences him.

I think the best piece of advice for anyone enduring an especially pointed moment or even season of temptation comes from the pen of that feisty German reformer, Martin Luther. In a 1531 letter addressed to his friend and colleague, Jerome Weller, whose faith was buckling under the pressure of severe spiritual trial, Luther gives us a glimpse of his storied pastoral wisdom and winsomeness. Jerome, who served as a tutor for Luther’s children from 1527 to 1535, was said to have struggled with an array of physical, spiritual, and psychological hardships, all of which made faith, especially the victorious kind, seem more than tenuous. The constant barrage of temptation and doubt made Jerome susceptible to spiritual despair.

Luther’s words find his pupil in a vexing crater, seemingly hemmed in by the adversary who walks about as a lion on the prowl. To sinners and sufferers in such a predicament, where should they turn? Where does their help come from? As Luther asserts, one’s help doesn’t come from the Decalogue. Running to the law, as good and necessary as the law is, won’t offer much in the way of relief. The law’s not bad, but it can’t save you. For that, one must be told the word of the gospel afresh, which gestures to the Crucified and Risen One, in whose person and work the weary are relieved and the adversary felled. Luther puts it like this:

Excellent Jerome, you ought to rejoice in this temptation of the devil because it is a certain sign that God is propitious and merciful to you. You say that the temptation is heavier than you can bear, and that you fear that it will so break and beat you down as to drive you to despair and blasphemy. I know this wile of the devil. If he cannot break a person with his first attack, he tries by persevering to wear him out and weaken him until the person falls and confesses himself beaten. Whenever this temptation comes to you, avoid entering upon a disputation with the devil and do not allow yourself to dwell on those deadly thoughts, for to do so is nothing short of yielding to the devil and letting him have his way. Try as hard as you can to despise those thoughts which are induced by the devil. In this sort of temptation and struggle, contempt is the best and easiest method of winning over the devil. Laugh your adversary to scorn and ask who it is with whom you are talking. By all means, flee solitude, for the devil watches and lies in wait for you most of all when you are alone. This devil is conquered by mocking and despising him, not by resisting and arguing with him . . . When the devil attacks and torments us, we must completely set aside the whole Decalogue. When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: “I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there I shall be also.”

Yours,
Martin Luther1

Temptation and trial aren’t matters of “if” — only when. There will be snares that trip you up. There will be obstacles that cause you to stumble. No one’s life of faith proceeds unencumbered by failure. Perhaps the biggest lie we could tell about the life of faith and that of a Christian is that faith enrolls one on an ever-ascending escalator of spiritual performance. The curve of faith, if you will, is pointedly diagonal, away from that dreaded Y axis. That’s far from the truth precisely because that’s far from anyone’s experience. To put the life of faith on a graph would result in a jagged, vacillating line that ascends and dips and sometimes even falls below that Y axis. This is just what it means to live simul iustus et peccator, “simultaneously justified and sinner.”

But to such paradoxical sinner-saints, the word that remains our hope and stay is he who is the Word become flesh. In all those peaks and valleys that lie ahead, for all the conflicts that the evil one brings your way, the best and most cheerful news resounds in our ears. That fearsome lion has been defanged. The very sins with which he desires to taunt and torment you are no more. They’ve already been dealt with by Christ. All your impending battles have already been fought and won by the true and better Adam, in whom we are made alive (1 Cor. 15:22; Heb. 2:17–18). Thus, when temptation assails, you are free to laugh in your tempter’s face, for “one little word shall him.” The one who sits in the heavens and laughs at the plots of princes and devils invites us to laugh along with him (Ps. 2:4).

Friends, yours is the victory through Christ alone. When Satan’s wiles seem to be getting the better of you, preach Christ to him and yourself. Better yet, have a laugh, because the verdict is already in, and you’ve more than conquered through him who loved you, even unto death (Rom. 8:37).

Grace and peace to you.

Title: What the Law Reveals and Why It Matters
Text: Exodus 20:1–26
Originally delivered on 19 April 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

Text: Exodus 16:1–36

Originally delivered on 12 April 2026 at Colonial Hills Baptist Church, Taylors, SC

For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

A trademark of Jesus’s earthly ministry was his frequent use of parables as he traveled and taught the masses. Chapter 13 of Matthew’s Gospel offers perhaps the best glimpse at this method, as the Lord deploys no less than six parables in rapid succession. But amid all those stories of seeds, sowers, weeds, and hidden treasure, we are also treated to his rationale for speaking truth parabolically, veiling and unveiling the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven simultaneously (Matt 13:10–17). What’s important to remember is that Jesus’s parables are less about moralizing his hearers and more about revealing himself to them. The through-line, though, always gravitates toward the fulfillment of God’s words (Matt 13:34–35), as God’s Son shows the world who he is.

1. The Parable That Puzzles Us

An element that sets Jesus’s parables apart is the difficulty they often present when it comes to understanding and interpreting them. Even though they aren’t riddles, Jesus still left his audience scratching their heads on more than one occasion. Of all the parables he told, the one that has left his followers perennially baffled is the so-called “Parable of the Unjust Steward” (Luke 16:1–8). Nearly every commentary you might consult will readily admit the oddities and complexities that pervade this text of Scripture. Indeed, there is hardly any consensus to be found for making sense of this story and its details. What are we supposed to do with such a shady character as this “dishonest manager”? Is he an anti-hero or a biblical Robin Hood? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Is this story only about money, or is it about something else? And how does this story fit in the context of the rest of the Bible?

These are just some of the questions that might surface after reading this story, with most of the strain stemming from Jesus’s words in verse 8, where he says that the boss of the crooked accountant ended up commending him even after he fleeced him for a second time. If not for that detail, Jesus’s story would read very simply and conclude very definitively, highlighting the honest use of wealth. The boss’s applause is a complete reversal of expectations. What’s more, an honest understanding of this parable is only discerned when it is kept intact with the previous entries. Jesus’s brief phrase in the opening verse of Chapter 16 — “He also said” (Luke 16:1) — serves to bridge the ensuing parable with those more famous ones from Chapter 15, all of which occurred during the same teaching moment. In other words, the Parable of the Unjust Steward cannot be divorced from the Parables of Lost Things Being Found.

2. Lost Things and Fraudulent Ledgers

This is where the chapter divisions and section headings in our Bibles can sometimes trip us up. Those markings, while helpful and useful in certain settings, are sometimes counterproductive, especially when they encourage us to treat the feast of Scripture as nothing more than finger food. God’s Word is not a loosely compiled collection of stories. Rather, it’s a divinely preserved and composed book of revelation. This is just to say that there’s a reason Luke composed his Gospel in the way that he did; there’s a reason it differs from Matthew’s or Mark’s. Even though they include some of the same stories and events, they were each inspired by Christ’s Spirit to showcase the nature and heart of Christ from a slightly different perspective. It wasn’t merely blind chance that led Luke to follow up the stories of lost coins, lost sheep, and lost sons with the tale of a crafty financial manager.

As strange as it may seem, these stories are meant to go together, like the pieces to a panoramic puzzle. The big question, of course, is how. How do these stories relate to one another? How does a trilogy of parables that convey such sheer grace connect to a parable about the proper use of money? How do we make sense of all this? And what portrait are they supposed to reveal?

3. Crooked Accounting

Jesus begins his tale with a rich man, whom we’ll call Mr. King, whose general manager or accountant, whom we’ll refer to as Dan, has been accused of “wasting” his money. Of note is the term “wasting,” which means to scatter or disperse — the same term Jesus uses to describe the prodigal son’s financial management practices (Luke 15:13). The long and short of it is that Dan has been embezzling Mr. King’s money, right under his very nose. Mr. King is livid when he’s made aware of this, promptly summoning Dan to turn in his books (Luke 16:1–2). He’s a crooked accountant who has made a habit of cooking his boss’s books for his own gain. But now his game is up, and his stewardship is about to be taken away. Faced with this piercing disgrace and embarrassment, Dan has a moment of introspection to discern what his next move should be:

The manager said to himself, “What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.” (Luke 16:3–4)

At least he’s self-aware enough to know that he couldn’t cut it as a manual laborer, nor would his pride let him become a beggar. With those options off the table, a light bulb goes off in his head. Dan concocts a scheme to surround himself with friends so that he isn’t hung out to dry when he is fired. He hurriedly arranges meetings with some of Mr. King’s highest-paying clients and starts doctoring the books again (Luke 16:5–7). Bob, who originally borrowed one hundred measures of oil from Mr. King, the approximate equivalent of three years’ wages, gets his bill cut in half, while Larry, who originally was on the hook for one hundred measures of wheat, roughly eight years’ worth of wages, gets a discount of twenty percent. These two are, of course, just two samples of Dan’s larger scheme to offer relief to some of Mr. King’s biggest borrowers, who were surely delighted to have their bills reduced.

Dan’s plan is obvious, as it would seem he has made good friends in Bob and Larry, who would support him once he is out of work. But what do you think Mr. King is going to do once he finds out that his crooked accountant has cooked the books once again? Hell hath no fury that can compare to the looming wrathful display, right? Even though one would assume this to be the case, in one of the most subversive moments in all of Scripture, Jesus tells his earnest audience that “the master [a.k.a. Mr. King] commended the dishonest manager [Dan] for his shrewdness” (Luke 16:8). Instead of living up to our expectations of justice, the crooked accountant is praised for his cleverness. What in the world do we do with this?

4. Honor Among Thieves

Some scholars and commentators have attempted to make Dan the accountant somewhat of an endearing character by saying the portion he took away from the bills was his own commission. This, however, is an interpretation that exists only in the minds of the interpreters; it’s not in the text. A more reasonable theory suggests that Dan’s scheme involved removing any potential profit Mr. King might have gained from these clients, putting him in a bind. With Mr. King gaining incredible favor by lessening their bills, reversing that might recoup his profit but shatter his reputation. Mr. King’s commendation of Dan, then, becomes one of “honor among thieves.” “Well played,” he might’ve said. This makes the most sense, especially in light of the Lord’s further comments, where he contrasts the “sons of this world” with the “sons of light” (Luke 16:8–9).

Unbelievers are often “more shrewd” or more clever with what they have been given than those who believe, that is, the “sons of light.” This leads him to say that his disciples would do well to “make friends” by employing a similar measure of cleverness or wisdom. Of course, Jesus isn’t endorsing the unethical business practices of this accountant. Rather, he’s condemning the stingy stewardship of the religious debutants in the audience (Luke 15:2).

5. Faithfulness and the True Riches

The traditional application from this parable tells us to make good use of whatever unrighteous wealth we have to our name, so that when this life “fails” and we come to the end of all things, we will be “received” by the friends we have made along the way. “Traditionally,” David Mathewson explains, “Luke 16:1–13 has been understood as portraying a steward who cheats his master but who is commended for his wisdom, a quality to be imitated by Christ’s disciples in their use of material possessions in light of the coming kingdom.”1 Put another way, those who belong to the kingdom of heaven should steward their money well in the here and now, and then they’ll be greeted in the eternal dwellings by those who have been rescued by it. “If God has given us wealth,” H. A. Ironside comments, “we should use it to His glory in spreading His gospel, and in relieving distressed and suffering humanity.”2 In other words, if even a crooked accountant knows how to plan for the future, how much more should Jesus’s followers live wisely in light of eternity? Mathewson goes on to say:

Jesus uses the parable to inculcate in his disciples the need to be equally wise (not dishonest) in their use of material possessions in light of the coming kingdom . . . The master’s praise reflects God’s praise of his followers, the cleverness of the steward emphasizes the need for prudence in Jesus’ disciples, and the debtors’ welcome of the steward reflects the future heavenly reception awaiting God’s followers.3

This interpretation fits well with Jesus’s words in the next section, where his apparent commendation of wealth is tempered just a bit, before any of his disciples get the wrong idea of what he means by “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth” (Luke 16:9–12). They can — and should — use what financial blessings they have to “make friends,” to make disciples, but that doesn’t mean money should get an inordinate priority in their hearts. It cannot be paramount. It can’t be god we serve (Luke 16:13). Money is a terrible master, cultivating and fostering all manner of evil. But, even still, that doesn’t mean money itself is evil. It all comes down to faithfulness. Are you living faithfully with what you’ve been given? Are you stewarding well what has been entrusted to you? If you can’t even be trusted to steward the “unrighteous wealth” that is here on Earth, what makes you think you can steward the eternal riches of grace?

6. Stewardship and the Scandal of Grace

It’s this theme of “stewardship” or management, though, that allows us to properly distill this text. After all, a moral lesson about the proper use of money, as true as it is, is still a jarring sequel to the Lord’s trio of parables about grace. What’s the connective tissue between a story about a lost sheep and a story about the right way to budget your personal finances? In other words, while the traditional way this parable is interpreted is not wrong, there’s a deeper truth here for us. This story isn’t really about a crooked accountant, nor is it merely about financial planning. Rather, like the rest of Scripture, this story is about Jesus. The Author of the Parable of the Unjust Steward is none other than the one the Pharisees called “mad” and insane; the one they called a “glutton and a drunkard” (Luke 7:34; John 10:20; Matt. 11:19).

To the religious aristocracy, Jesus was a rogue agent, a grifter of divine truth, and a trouble-maker to be marked and avoided. They couldn’t deny what he was doing or the impact he was making, but they also utterly despised everything he said and did (Luke 15:1–2). From their perspective, Jesus of Nazareth was wasting the treasures of God’s kingdom on sinners by rearranging the law, breaking the Sabbath, and recklessly forgiving folks who didn’t deserve it. In other words, in the eyes of the scribes and the Pharisees, Jesus was a crooked accountant.

7. The True Steward of Heaven’s Grace

The twist, of course, is that Jesus is no rogue. He is the true and faithful Steward of the Father’s grace (John 17:4–8), the one who comes and does what we could never do by ourselves or for ourselves. Through this parable, therefore, Jesus deploys the story of a rogue accountant to uncover the stingy and sinister stewardship of the Pharisees. Although they had been entrusted with the truth of God and the heavenly kingdom, they had devolved into “lovers of money” more than anything else (Luke 16:14), treating God’s grace, which he intended to be dispensed prodigally, like Scrooge’s stacks of coins. Thus, for a clique of tight-fisted religious types who prided themselves on piety and prestige, Jesus relays a story that ruffles their feathers, that demonstrates what grace looks like to a bunch of stuffy and stingy penny-pinchers. “It is not about how we should respond,” William R. G. Loader trenchantly notes, “but about Jesus and what he is doing.”4 Loader continues:

It is his response to those who accosted him as treacherously selling short the holy Law of his Master and as falsely claiming to represent the Master, by declaring reduction of debts to debtors, release of sins to sinners. Jesus responds to such accusations by telling the story of the rogue praised by his master. The ironical twist of the story is that Jesus is no rogue at all as he declares divine grace and that he will receive his Master’s approval . . . The parable of the unjust steward is an example of Jesus’ use of a story to shock people and so break open their awareness for new insight. Accused of unauthorised and scandalous behaviour, in offering God’s grace freely outside the prescribed pattern of the Law to sinners and no-goods, Jesus provokes his hearers with the story of a rogue who, despite all, received his master’s approbation.5

What looked like crooked accounting in Jesus’s lavish welcome and extension of forgiveness to the poor and destitute was, in fact, the unfolding of the very economy of heaven. He’s the one who bears the loss and sweeps away our debts — not fraudulently, nor by cooking the books, but by faithfully living and dying in our place. In so doing, the Father commends him by raising him from the dead. The gospel of God is a message all about the roguishness of grace, which, as Loader beautifully concludes, “confounds the arithmetic of the righteous.”6 Such grace shocks us still, offending our sense of fairness and shredding the ledgers we painstakingly maintain by gesturing to heaven’s true and better Steward, who spent all of himself to cancel your debt forever.

In this episode, I’m joined by pastor, author, and professor Michael Cooper to talk about preaching, theological retrieval, and the rich history of Baptist homiletics. Through the lens of the post-Reformation Baptist preacher, Benjamin Keach, Michael and I examine how the preaching event isn’t merely a person giving a talk, but a divine act wherein God speaks through human abassadors.

Michael serves as the pastor of Grace Community Church in Mabank, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Kailie, and their two daughters. Michael holds a PhD from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also serves as an Adjunct Professor. You can follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Resources:
The Word of This Salvation in the Mouths of Christ’s Ministers: Retrieving a Theology of Preaching as Reflected in the Sermons and Writings of Benjamin Keach (1640–1704), Michael R. Cooper, Jr.
The Art of Prophesying and the Calling of the Ministry, William Perkins
“The Great Ordinance: Retrieving a Theology of Preaching from Benjamin Keach,” Michael R. Cooper, Jr.
Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment, Bradley Gray

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Credits:
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Title: Men of Faith, Part 3: The Anatomy of Faith
Text: Habakkuk 3:1–19
Originally delivered on 11 April 2026 for the CHBC Men’s Retreat at the Bonclarken Conference Center, Flat Rock, NC
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Title: Men of Faith, Part 2: Faith Isn’t Blind
Text: Habakkuk 2:5–20
Originally delivered on 11 April 2026 for the CHBC Men’s Retreat at the Bonclarken Conference Center, Flat Rock, NC
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Title: Men of Faith, Part 1: When God Feels Silent
Text: Habakkuk 1:1—2:4
Originally delivered on 10 April 2026 for the CHBC Men’s Retreat at the Bonclarken Conference Center, Flat Rock, NC
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I was once called into a meeting with a pastor and his deacons to give an answer for a post I made on social media, in which I suggested something to the effect that I don’t consider myself a Baptist, just a person who loves Jesus and wants to follow him. I don’t have the time to find it on The Wayback Machine, but it was almost certainly worded worse than that, and it was almost certainly posted to Tumblr (which is telling) — and considering I was serving as a lay youth pastor at a Baptist church at the time, it might’ve been a little problematic. This regrettable instance of youthful naïvete is the sort of thing you say when you’re young, impulsive, and still figuring out what you believe, which was me to a T in those days. Needless to say, I’m a happy Baptist minister nowadays, and I have a lot more appreciation for what that means, too.

Not too long after that meeting, my wife and I ended up leaving that church. I don’t harbor any animosity toward anyone involved, though, especially since looking at how it all unfolded in the rearview mirror lets me understand it better, as often happens with hindsight. The instinct of those church leaders to lead an inquiry and protect, if need be, the church body that was placed under their charge is one with which I’m very sympathetic now. In other words, while I don’t necessarily think I was wrong about the initial issue, I was definitely young and dumb.

I’m older now and slightly less dumb, but what I’ve become convinced of is that many of the labels and fences we as church leaders erect to safeguard those we love and are called to lead, however well-intentioned, can just as easily become walls that keep more than just doctrinal error out of our homes or auditoriums. They can ostracize people, too, suppressing sympathy and stiff-arming mercy. This isn’t a demeanor I’m at all interested in fostering. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve come to hold a lot of things loosely, save for Jesus Christ. He’s the only thing to which I’ll unapologetically hold fast.

Since I’ve probably sufficiently buried the lede already, I was recently reminded of the profundity of “Jesus plus nothing” during a small, ecumenical effort to serve our community by providing a meal to those who likely hadn’t had a made-from-scratch one in a while. This event wasn’t a flashy affair. There were no streamers or banners or clever marketing campaigns. It was just a couple of dozen people from several different local churches or ministries collaborating to do something rather simple: feed people in need. I couldn’t tell you how many folks we ended up feeding; all I know is that we barely had any ham left. Individuals from all different backgrounds and all walks of life were welcomed and waited on. It wasn’t much, but I know Jesus was there.

I share this story, not because I’m looking for applause or a pat on the back for the grand display of altruism and service I was able to contribute to, but because this is the kind of ministry that ought to be normative within the big “C” Church. The kind where the fences that normally keep us sequestered are gladly vaulted to demonstrate God’s love for the least of these. After all, it’s not every day that a team of Lutherans, Baptists, Southern Baptists, and non-denominationalists set aside their traditions to link arms for the good of their neighbors.

Having grown up in a particular stream of Christian subculture, one that wasn’t too fond of crossing the denominational aisle, I’m aware of the rarity of this phenomenon. At the risk of sounding too much like the Philippians 3 version of the apostle Paul, I was raised as an Independent Baptist in the buckle of the Bible Belt — Greenville, South Carolina — home to an institution that may or may not have founded Christianity in the South. I jest, but only slightly, because depending on whom you interact with, you may be led to believe that that’s true. I won’t bore you with chronicling all the examples of the denominational tribalism that often sprang out of the aforementioned institution, mainly because that’d be well beyond the purview of this post. If you know, then you already know. Also, this is supposed to be an upbeat post.

I’ve often joked with friends and/or acquaintances that the Venn Diagram of my theological persuasions and interests would have lots of circles representing lots of different traditions, each of which would overlap a small yet significant center: Jesus and the story of redemption that culminates in him. The point isn’t that I’m narrow-minded, though some may accuse me of such, especially when it comes to dialogues about Christopher Nolan’s filmography or LeBron James’s G.O.A.T. status or the scourge on coffee that is the K-cup industry. Rather, the point is that I’ve grown to love finding commonality in those and with those who aren’t necessarily within my stream of Christianity. I hold all things loosely, save for Jesus.

This is what I was reminded of during that ministry event, at which there was no such thing as fences keeping us over here and them over there. There were just people who loved Jesus serving a meal to men and women who hadn’t had a hot meal in who knows how long. There were brothers and sisters from other church families sitting with moms, plating food, and laughing with new faces as though they’d known each other forever. I’m not trying to be cliché or schmaltzy. I just know that no one stopped the meal to compare doctrinal statements. No one stayed behind their fence like Tim Taylor’s sage neighbor. We just served and loved, and for a few hours, I was struck by what it means to be the Body of Christ.

I recently pulled a 1910 edition of Brooks by the Traveller’s Way off the shelf, which is a compendium of short messages or devotionals written by John Henry Jowett, a British clergyman whose ministry spanned the latter half of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century. In one meditation, Jowett touches on what it looks like when we stay behind those fences — namely, sympathy becomes confined, and life itself becomes crippled:

It is a sure sign of dwarfed and crippled life when religious interests are self-contained and exclusive, when we cannot see the beauties in another mode of worship, nor find a single foothold for kinship and communion. But our sectarian fences are so emphatic and pronounced that it is difficult for our sympathies to get beyond them.1

To be sure, I’m not advocating for a label-less orthodox experience. Fellowshipping, worshiping, and assembling with those with whom you share convictions is a good, right, and blessed thing. But for as beneficial as those labels and fences may be in certain contexts, when taken to their extremes or lionized as cherished commodities, mercy, love, and sympathy become stifled, bordering on absent. And, as Jowett says, “Absence of sympathy means absence of vision, lack of space, life confined to one’s own courtyard.”2 The more we circle the wagons, the more limited our lives become. We become bigger and the world around us smaller, and grace more forced.

The antidote to such crippling self-imprisonment is the gracious mind of God as seen in the person of Jesus, which, among other things, imbues us with a deferential, self-sacrificial love that frees us to get out from behind that fence. “When self is seen in large associations,” Jowett concludes, “then self assumes accurate proportions, and self-conceit subsides into a healthy self-esteem.”3 The “ecumenical spirit,” which is so often regarded as the boogeyman of certain pockets of Christianity, might just be a consequence of the gospel itself. It’s what happens when we earnestly pursue a life where we decrease, and Jesus increases in importance.

Paul’s words at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 3 come to mind. The old yet familiar “I’m of Paul, I’m of Cephas, I’m of Apollos” spirit doesn’t really have anything to do with “the faith once delivered to the saints,” especially when you’re handing a plate full of food to someone who’s hungry. And maybe that’s the point. Not that those labels and fences don’t matter or don’t have a purpose, but that they fall into place beneath the One who draws all men and women to himself through his own willingness to love them to the point of dying for them. It’s in those moments when we’re made to see what we’re here for — namely, sharing in the love that refuses to stay confined.

Title: Easter Scars
Text: John 20:19–29
Originally delivered on 5 April 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
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Title: The Ironic Necessity of Good Friday
Text: John 18:28–32
Originally delivered on 3 April 2026 for Good Friday at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
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It goes without saying that the church is an institution or organism that is founded on the shared conviction that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead after having been crucified just outside the gates of Jerusalem. This confession is, essentially, what it means to be Christian, which is the argument Paul makes throughout 1 Corinthians 15. The ekklēsia gathers because its constituents believe the tomb where Jesus was laid is actually empty. And although tradition says to set aside time every year to commemorate this event during Easter, in reality, every assembly of the church is an imprimatur that the resurrection is true. If this isn’t the case, then “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19).

1. If Easter Isn’t True, Nothing Is

What makes Paul’s logic so astonishing is that he readily admits the lunacy of the church if Easter is a lie. If Jesus didn’t, in fact, stroll out of the grave on Sunday, then the church’s faith is absolutely “futile,” worthless, and empty (1 Cor. 15:17). Christianity, then, is little more than a cult, rallying around a trumped-up superstition of its Founder’s ability to come back from the dead. Funnily enough, this is precisely how Christ’s disciples were regarded early on, as those who followed his teachings were lumped together as those of “The Way,” which was a pejorative term for the church (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14).

Members of The Way weren’t taken very seriously. After all, you belonged to a religious sect of superstitious fanatics who constantly carried on about how a Teacher from Galilee was actually the Son of God. Such prejudice is brought into the foreground throughout the trial of Stephen, where a religious gentry fabricates charges and extorts witnesses to secure a guilty verdict (Acts 6:11–14). Similarly, even though many modern philosophers would affirm the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, the notion of his resurrection still remains something of “an idle tale” (Luke 24:9–11), perhaps because of what it’d mean if Easter were true.

2. Stephen’s Sermon and the Sanhedrin’s Rage

Stephen’s testimony serves as a sweeping overview of the history of the people of Israel (Acts 7:2–53). From Abraham to Joseph to Moses to the giving of the Ten Commandments, he briefly surveys some of the key moments in Israelite lore in a masterful sermon that traces God’s story of grace throughout the ages. What makes this discourse so intriguing is its audience. “The council” referred to is none other than the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court of authority in those days, presiding over legal, political, and religious matters under Rome’s oversight. In other words, they were quite familiar with the content of Stephen’s message.

Being forced to listen to a deacon blather on about the A-B-C’s of Jewish history would’ve been nothing short of insulting to a group of so-called “religious elites.” What’s more, though, these were the same decision-makers who put Stephen’s Lord to death just a few years prior. This council was comprised of the same bunch who conspired to rid themselves of any shred of evidence that pointed back to Jesus — a point that makes Stephen’s last few remarks a legitimate mic drop:

“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. (Acts 7:51–57)

On top of insulting their intelligence and calling them a bunch of stiff-necked heathens, Stephen takes it one step further by invoking Jesus’s designation, “the Son of Man,” a title that was teeming with significance for every devout Jew, but especially this council. Why? Because it was this very title that Jesus invoked that pushed them over the edge (Mark 14:55–64; cf. Matt. 26:64; Luke 22:69). Standing before a board of elders who held his life in their hands (or so they thought), Jesus pulled the curtain back on his true identity as the Messiah, the Christ of God. In so doing, a din of blasphemy deafened the room, so much so that the Sanhedrin had Jesus flogged and crucified.

Stephen, similarly, testifies before the same council, who also held his life in their hands, that the one they crucified for blasphemy was, in fact, telling the truth (Acts 7:52). “I see the heavens opened,” he confesses, as the nobles grind their teeth at him, “and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). What the Sanhedrin thought they successfully covered up hadn’t worked after all, since according to the first victim of The Way, the Son of Man was very much alive. Even after rejecting Judas’s blood money and depositing a hefty sum of hush money in the accounts of those who were supposed to guard the tomb, they were powerless to stop the good news of Jesus’s resurrection from spreading.

Perhaps this is because the Lord’s rising from the dead was no mere rumor that could be swiftly stifled. No amount of bribes or halfheartedly concocted stories could ever make this truth go away. This is the truth that changes the world, and still does today, so much so that Stephen boldly declares, “Even now, I see him, the one you rejected and murdered. The Son of Man has risen, and even now, he rules from heaven’s throne!”

And just as it did with Jesus, this is what pushes the council over the edge (Acts 7:57–58), as they resort to stopping their ears like a bunch of toddlers and stampeding Stephen like a herd of wildebeasts. They rush him and stone him, leaving his emaciated corpse to rot in the Jewish sun. But this sudden moment of violence wasn’t just because Stephen was opening the proverbial closet where all their skeletons were hidden, nor was it just because he was blowing the lid off a secret they thought was good and buried. Rather, it was because this testimony meant that all the authority in heaven and earth belonged to the one they crucified.

3. The Son of Man Still Reigns

“The Son of Man” is an Old Testament epithet that appears most prominently in Daniel’s prophecy (Dan. 7:13–14). With Jesus of Nazareth assuming this role and title, he, likewise, espouses the everlasting dominion and glorious kingdom that go along with it. And, of course, Jesus didn’t just claim this — he proved it to be true by walking out of the grave. Not even death itself can rob Christ of his authority (Acts 2:24; Matt. 28:18).

This is what continues to ruffle everyone’s feathers, even now. After all, if he’s the Authority, that means we aren’t. And nothing gets folks riled up quite like telling them that they are not the ones in charge. This is a sentiment that incites teeth grinding and runs counter to the mantra of modernity, which insists that we are the masters of our fate. Despite its prevalence, that maxim is categorically false. We are the masters of nothing. Everything we are and have is a gift. We don’t even have authority over ourselves (1 Cor. 6:19–20). But as we bow in humility and faith to the authority of the Risen One, that’s when we become what he intended us to be.

4. The Posture of the Risen Christ

There are myriad reasons why Stephen’s courtroom vision continues to enthrall us, not the least of which is Jesus’s posture. “But he,” we are told, “full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:55–56). It’s no accident that St. Luke includes the detail that Jesus was standing. And the reason this is so important is that the primary biblical image of the ascended Lord sees him sitting:

• “You will see,” Jesus declares, “the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power” (Mark 14:62).

• “After making purification for sins, he [Jesus] sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3).

• “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:12).

So, which is it? Is he seated or is he standing? What does this mean? And does it matter? The answer is yes, Jesus is both sitting down and standing “at the right hand of God.” He sits because the work to cancel all your sins is done. He sits because it’s finished. Unlike the priests of old, who never sat because their work was never over, the Great High Priest of our faith takes a seat since nothing more needs doing for you to be forgiven. Jesus paid it all and did it all for you on the cross.

At the same time, though, he stands because we are in desperate need of representation. We need someone to stand for us, to stand in our place and on our behalf. This is who Jesus is for us: he’s our advocate. In the courtroom of heaven, the risen Lord stands, intercedes, and pleads for the likes of you and me — a role he embraces for the rest of time (Heb. 7:25; Rom. 8:34). Far from being a court-appointed attorney who begrudgingly takes your case, Jesus stands before the bar and delights to speak on your behalf, silencing every accusation by showing the whole gallery of heaven his hands and side.

Therefore, not if, but when we sin, Easter’s good news tells us that we have “an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1; cf. Zech. 3:1-5). Our advocate is none other than the Lamb of God “standing as though it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6), forever gesturing to the wounds that cover all our sins.

To believe in the resurrection also means to believe that we can’t save ourselves. Much like submitting to authority, human beings don’t like being told they can’t do something, especially when it comes to where they’ll spend eternity. But what at first sounds like bad news — “you can’t save yourself” — is actually the best news ever, because salvation is Christ’s work from start to finish. He’s the one who saved you, and he’s the one who keeps you saved. The resurrection is God’s stamp of approval that redemption has been accomplished, that it really is finished. Not by you or me, but by the Crucified One who is also the Risen One, who stands forever in your place.

5. Seen and Unseen Testimony

The vision of Stephen is one of the most astounding events in the early days of the New Testament church, not only because it precedes his death, but also because it confirms every word that the church preached. Both because of eye-witness testimony and because of the testimony of the Holy Spirit, the church was born out of the confession that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day (1 Cor. 15:3–4). Paul recalls that the number of those who saw the resurrected Lord was over five hundred, many of whom were still alive when he authored his first epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:6). Put differently, the early days of the church were shaped by the words of those who were there (1 John 1:1).

But what about when all those eyewitnesses weren’t around anymore? What then? How could the church be sure that its gospel is true if those who were there are dead and gone? Well, because the gospel of Jesus was never just about eyewitness testimony. As Jesus himself tells Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Still, how can future generations of believers be so sure that the resurrection was true? Praying for “visions” is the wrong answer. This isn’t to say that God cannot or does not still work through visions — I have no doubt that he can — but that certainly isn’t the norm, nor was that even happening all the time in the apostolic era. No, the church needs something more constant than that, which is precisely what the church has in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the key to understanding the scene of Stephen’s execution. After all, it was because of the Holy Spirit that Stephen was chosen to be a deacon in the first place (Acts 6:5). It was because of the Holy Spirit that Stephen spoke with such grace and certainty (Acts 6:10). It was because of the Holy Spirit that the Sanhedrin was so flummoxed by his words (Acts 7:51). And it was because of the Holy Spirit that he was given a glimpse into heaven (Acts 7:55). Although we don’t know much about Stephen, apart from what’s recorded by Luke, we do know that he was “full of the Holy Spirit,” and that’s all that matters.

6. Christ Still Speaks

This corresponds to what Jesus promised his followers shortly before he was crucified. “When the Helper comes,” says the Lord, “whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth . . . he will bear witness about me” (John 15:26). Accordingly, believing in the resurrection isn’t a matter of “You just had to be there.” Rather, it is and always will be a matter of Christ’s Spirit bearing witness in our hearts and souls to the fact of Christ’s resurrection, which is what the Spirit does through the Word. In so doing, the Spirit opens up the heavens and presses the truth of the Word ever deeper into us. This is why the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) and why we can be sure that Easter is true, even though we weren’t there.

Thus, in a way, what Stephen saw that afternoon is what happens every Sunday whenever God’s Word is opened and preached. The sight of heaven opening wasn’t just for Stephen’s sake, because the heavens are still open since God opened them. It’s not an accident that the term “opened” also appears twice in Luke’s account of Jesus’s resurrection (Acts 7:56; cf. Luke 24:31, 45). God in Christ tore open the heavens and came down to rescue you (Ps. 18:9). And through God’s Word and Spirit, God continues to make himself, along with the power that raises the dead, known to us.

Amid all the corrupt proceedings that result in Jesus’s death, what with the Sanhedrin’s willingness to bend, if not break, several of their own protocols, rushing and tilting the hearings toward a predetermined end, there is a scene that mustn’t be overlooked. From the trumped-up witnesses to the fact that Jesus is cajoled into incriminating himself to the obvious bias of Caiaphas, the high priest (Matt. 26:64–68), the whole thing was an obvious sham from the beginning. We reach peak irony, though, in John’s Gospel, where he tells us that they — the Sanhedrin gentry — “led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor’s headquarters, so that they would not be defiled” (John 18:28).

1. Delusions of Piety

After the right amount of shenanigans to get him to commit blasphemy, at least as they judge it, Jesus is escorted to Pilate’s house in the wee hours of the morning. But due to their own sense of self-importance and ritualism, the religious aristocrats who put Jesus of Nazareth under arrest don’t dare cross the threshold of Pilate’s house. Why? Well, because they didn’t want to risk defiling themselves on the eve of the Passover feast.

• Like a surgeon before an operation, devout Jews would consecrate themselves before the feast got underway.

• This was part of the preparation process that occupied those days leading up to the Pascal meal.

• Communing or fraternizing with a Gentile was a surefire way to corrupt oneself, leaving one ceremonially impure.

It’s downright laughable that the Sanhedrin are so beholden to their rituals and so blinded by their self-righteousness that they think they can stay clean even as they hatch a plan to murder a rabble-rousing Rabbi from Galilee. “Thus they seek cleansing before God while plotting and scheming the destruction of God’s beloved Son,” as Bruce Milne incisively comments.1 This, among other things, is perhaps the clearest example of misplaced piety. As if “mere ritual” still counts or is still effective to cleanse their souls and make them holy.

2. When Mere Ritual Fails, and Guilt Is Exposed

This scene has many consequences, but chief among them is the ridiculousness of ritual or mere religion as a vehicle for salvation. Every one of those council members could follow the Passover regimen to a T, and they’d still be guilty. No matter how thoroughly they washed themselves, they’d still have blood on their hands, which is exactly the point Peter and Stephen make later on (Acts 2:23; 3:13–15; 7:51–52). Religion can’t achieve redemption, nor can rituals save your soul. It’s as Yahweh says through his prophet Jeremiah, “Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me” (Jer. 2:22).

It’s striking to imagine all those self-important religious delegates standing on Pilate’s front porch, demanding he come outside so they can have a confab with him. To his credit, Pilate does just that, weathering the early morning inconvenience and allowing the Sanhedrin’s plan to play out (John 18:29). After he inquires what Jesus’s crime was, the council responds very unconvincingly. “If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you,” they chide (John 18:30), which, to me, sounds like, “He’s bad, just trust us.” But Pilate’s eventual reply tells us everything we need to know about him. “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law,” he tells them (John 18:31).

As a Roman prefect or governor, Pilate had little to no interest in upholding the laws of Judaism, which is why his first impulse was to dismissively tell them to go away and handle it themselves. But ever the cold, calculating, and opportunistic politician — one who was known for antagonizing the Jews on occasion — Pilate perceives the Sanhedrin’s endgame (a death sentence) and takes the opportunity to rub their noses in the fact that they are still Roman subjects. After all, capital punishment was outside the purview of the Judean council, which meant they needed his “John Hanock” to make this verdict legit. You can almost see the Cheshire smile awash on Pilate’s face as he forces those desperate councilmen to admit to the “elephant in the room,” i.e., that they wanted Jesus dead.

Moreover, this moment also tells us what the Sanhedrin was actually after. They wanted to get rid of Jesus, but they wanted more than that. After all, this is the same council that had no problem stoning Stephen to death just a few years later (Acts 7:58). Those “scribes and Pharisees” who sat on that council weren’t just out for blood. They were out for humiliation, shame, and the absolute embarrassment of anyone and everyone associated with Jesus of Nazareth. They wanted a “legal” trial (if you can call this that), one that’d put a curse on whatever pathetic following the Lord Jesus had accumulated up to that point. It’s sheer malevolence, vitriol, and hatred, exposing the absolute depths of human depravity.

3. A Plot That Served God’s Purposes

I have to imagine that none of those delegates imagined they had the capacity for conspiracy and murder before this moment. And yet, here they are, feeling quite justified as they subject a carpenter’s son, whom many believed was the Messiah, to the most appalling and horrific way to die ever conceived. “No death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion,” historian Tom Holland notes.2 Every bit of shame, ridicule, and agony that accompanied a crucifixion was aggravated by the fact that anyone who was subjected to such an end was the epitome of cursed (Gal. 3:13; Deut. 21:23). And who’d want to affiliate with someone who was accursed?

But the point is that Jesus knew what was going on; he knew what the Sanhedrin was up to, and he let it happen anyway. He watched as it all unfolded. He looked on in silence as they deluded themselves into thinking that they would be on the right side of history. Jesus let those dastardly delegates do their worst, knowing full well that what they wished to see is precisely what the world needed. “The authorities,” Bruce Milne comments, “are determined that Jesus should die by crucifixion, i.e., under the curse of God, and they will have their way. In the wonder of God’s grace, however, their wish coincides precisely with our need.”3 As John himself tells us, “This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die” (John 18:32).

Accordingly, both by John’s and Jesus’s own assessment (John 12:27–33), these events were unfolding “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” to parrot what Peter would later say (Acts 2:23). This is important to keep in mind, especially since the events leading up to Jesus’s crucifixion could’ve seemed so circumstantial, as if they were just happening. But both before his death and after his resurrection, the cross is seen as a categorical necessity (cf. Acts 3:18; 17:3; 26:22–23).

4. The Cross’s Inevitability

The Lord Jesus understood how all of this was going to end for him. He wasn’t caught off guard when the most religious body of the day conspired to get rid of him, nor was he surprised by the plot to have him crucified, nor was he astonished when the masses cheered for his crucifixion, with all the enthusiasm of a rowdy Philadelphia Eagles crowd. From the moment he was born, Christ knew that his life would end with his body nailed to a tree. The cross was always in the cards. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus tells a perplexed Nicodemus by candlelight, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15).

The keyword, of course, is “must,” which means “necessary.” It was a right, proper divine inevitability that this should happen (Luke 24:7, 26, 46). Put differently, what seemed so dour and so unfortunate wasn’t an accident by any stretch of the imagination. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit foreknew that humanity’s rebellion would lead to this. Thus, in the depths of his wisdom and grace, the Triune God allowed these events to unfold so he could become the cursed one for us who are cursed. As St. Paul declares, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13).

The gospel points us to the one on the cross, the guiltless one being bathed in our guilt, the sinless one becoming our sin, and the holy one dying in agony and shame, and tells us, “There is your Savior.” “He who lived as the Holy One dies as the condemned one,” Bruce Milne declares. “He who breathed as the guiltless expires as the guilty.”4

5. Only a Crucified Messiah Will Do

And the point is that this is what your sin demanded — nothing less than this would accomplish salvation. You can’t clean yourself up or remove your own guilt. You can’t be holy enough or good enough, nor do you have the capacity to make yourself right with God. No amount of ritual will work. It’s not powerful enough to redeem you. Only the steep stoop of God’s Son in the flesh, willingly surrendering himself to death, will do. “A crucified Messiah, a Messiah under curse,” Milne continues, “is the only Messiah who can meet our need and reconcile us to the Father.”5 Our only hope is that which the Lord Jesus did, when he “gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4).

The Christ of God authored our redemption by exposing himself to the grief and affliction of the cross, where he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, and was crushed for our iniquities so that by his wounds, we might be healed (Isa. 53:4–5). Jesus wasn’t the victim of circumstance. As the rest of the verse in Galatians says, “the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself . . . according to the will of our God and Father” (Gal. 1:4, emphasis mine). Or as the prophet Isaiah put it: “It was the will of the Lord to crush him . . . out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied” (Isa. 53:10–11).

The Sanhedrin might’ve thought they were winning, fist-pumping as their plan came together, as the devil surely did, when God’s Son was put to death. But the only one who triumphed that day we now call “Good Friday” was the one who was heaving and dying for the sins of the world. As G. Campbell Morgan concludes:

It was only by His Cross; by His whelming in death; by His immersion in immeasurable and unutterable anguish and sorrow; that He could take hold of the poison which had spoiled humanity, and negate it, make it not to be, cancel it, destroy it, and so liberate the fire and remake humanity . . . All things are ours to enjoy because He went to His Cross. It is by way of the tree that the leaves of healing come. It is by way of the Cross that the crown is placed upon our brows.6

Every nail, every taunt, and every agonizing breath was the will of God being carried out for the sake of his people — for you, as you are, even with all your failures, guilt, regrets, and baggage. To every weather-beaten sinner, Good Friday has good news for you: you can’t carry all that sin by yourself, nor forgive yourself, let alone clean yourself up. You can’t, but Christ can, and he did, when he went willingly to the cross with you in mind. There’s nothing left for you to prove or earn, because the Crucified God has already done it all. So look to him and cling to him, trust that all that was necessary for your salvation has already been finished.

A feature of modern evangelical marketing that I’m sure you’ve come across at some point is the familiar adage, “Religion says ‘Do,’ grace says ‘Done,’” or something like that. The distinction between “do” and “done” is concise enough and catchy enough to serve as something of a slogan to promote the Christian message. Even though it might feel like a piece of modern novelty, this distinction is much older than you might expect. Although I’m not positive where it originated, I was quite pleased to come across it in a mid-1800s treatise by Scottish theologian and clergyman John Cumming, entitled Christ Our Passover. “Faith,” he says, “is not doing something that is not done, but receiving something already done. The old legal system was, Do, Do, Do, till you reach the requisite amount, and then claim the deserved reward; but the evangelical system is, Believe, Believe, Believe, and thou shalt be saved.”1

You might recall that I interacted with Cumming’s book a few months back, especially his seminal treatment of the first Passover and the ways in which it preaches the gospel of Christ to us. I’ve since finished that book, and I’m pleased to say that the rest of his efforts constitute a splendid apologetic of Christ’s atoning death and the necessity to proclaim that work as the means and method of the church’s salvation. “It is the mark of a true Church that it sets forth Christ and him crucified,” Cumming asserts. He goes on to say that “wherever there is a true Church, it will preach Christ, and this alone will make Christians.”2 I understand that “penal substitutionary atonement” (PSA) hasn’t always been viewed favorably in recent times. I’ve even been put on blast on this very platform for insinuating its biblical precedence. To be frank, though, I don’t pay much attention to those who wish to drill holes in the PSA view, not because I’m a curmudgeon (most of the time), but because one has to excise huge swaths of Scripture to make such a case.

By this, I don’t mean to suggest that PSA is the “only” perspective or version of what went down at the cross. I’m not an atonement theory sectarian; I’m more of a pluralist, you might say. From PSA to Christus Victor to moral governmental, each system for understanding Christ’s work on the cross holds weight, biblically, historically, and theologically. The issue, of course, is always how much weight each view can hold. This is, perhaps, where I’m slightly more rigid, in the sense that I would concur that PSA holds significantly more biblical, historical, and theological weight than all the other theories. This isn’t meant to invalidate them; just prioritize them. With that in mind, Cumming’s words in Christ Our Passover are better received, since the bulk of his project reads as a plea for churches and church leaders to find renewed and unashamed joy in preaching and sharing Jesus’s vicarious death and resurrection for sinners. Cumming puts it this way:

Jesus endured all that we deserved, and paid all that we owed; and that by virtue of the first we are emancipated from the curse of a broken law, and by virtue of the second we are entitled to the reward of a law that we were not able to obey.3

Here, he puts a fine point on his outlook of Christ’s atonement, following what the New Testament conveys regarding Christ’s work in the epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Hebrews. It’s this work of the Son of God that serves as the church’s primary message, the food on which it feeds and invites other beggarly sinners to partake. There’s nothing more satiating to sinner-saints than the announcement of what Christ has done as their Priest and Representative. Cumming continues:

Jesus became the Great representative Sinner of Christendom, the representative of lost and stray humanity; he took our place, he stood in our shoes, he was arrayed in our responsibilities, and, as humanity gathered up and headed in one, he became the subject of the judgments that all humanity had provoked, and he suffered, the just in the room of the unjust, to bring us to God.4

All of this, of course, brings me to consider yet again the all-important doctrine of imputation, which is intimately related to the substitutionary atonement perspective. I will resist the urge to digress on this point, especially since I did that already in my article for Themelios, “From Logizomai to Luther: The Great Exchange and the Development of the Imputed Righteousness.” But I can’t get over just how crucial understanding imputation is for Christian living. As far as formative doctrines go, I’d say discerning the biblical merits of Christ being made sin for the likes of us so that “we might become the righteousness of God” is up near the top of the list (2 Cor. 5:21). Gone are the pressures to make it on your own. In their stead, there is only relief — the relief of knowing that your identity is rock-solid and steady because of him. The exhaustion of check-list-spirituality and overbearing piety has evaporated. All that’s left is what the Son has done while standing and dying and rising again in our place. Here’s how Cumming expresses it:

Imputed sin was the cause of Christ’s agony; imputed righteousness is the ground of our everlasting joy. The sin that was on Jesus was external to him; the righteousness that is on us is external to us. When Jesus died upon the cross, there was nothing in him worthy of death; when you and I, reader, shall be admitted into glory, there will be found nothing in us worthy of eternal life. He died with sin on him, not in him; we shall be glorified with righteousness upon us, not in us; and just as God smote him because of our sin upon him, God will glorify us because of his righteousness upon us. His was death-deserving sin imputed to him, ours is heaven-deserving righteousness imputed to us. When he suffered for sin, all the shame was ours; when we shall be glorified for righteousness, all the glory will be his. Sin upon him brought him to the cross, righteousness upon us will lift us to heaven and everlasting happiness. God looked at Jesus, and saw my tainted fleece, whilst he shut his eyes to the innocent Lamb that was under it; so God will look at us, and shut his eyes to the stray sheep, and look only at the spotless and glorious righteousness that is upon us. What a perfect and complete prescription is the Gospel of the Son of God!5

We, the hell-deserving, have heaven-deserving righteousness placed on us like a thermal blanket on a hyperthermia victim. This is no stray holdover of Protestant dogma. This is the biblical motif from Genesis to Revelation. It’s what gives our Christian lives verve and assurance. It’s what clarifies our calling as disciples of God. As we go and preach and make other disciples in Jesus’s name, we do so knowing that the work that releases them from judgment has been finished. Their sins have been imputed to Another. It’s done. There is nothing more to do. Τετέλεσται.

Grace and peace to you, my friends.

Title: Hands to the Plow
Text: 2 Timothy 2:6–7
Originally delivered on 31 March 2026 at the Volunteer Appreciation Banquet for Good News Club, Inc., Northumberland, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

Title: Hosanna, But Not Like That
Text: John 12:12–36
Originally delivered on 29 March 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, a day that marks the beginning of Holy Week, and a day that often sees sanctuaries bedecked with palm branches, commemorating the crowds who waved them and placed them on the ground as the Lord Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. As quaint as that image may seem, I fear we’ve sanitized what Jesus was doing that day, which, for the most part, is excusable since not even his own disciples understood what it all meant until after their Lord’s death and resurrection (John 12:16). Up till this moment, though, Jesus has eschewed mass acclaim at every turn, withdrawing from the crowd after healing a man near the pool of Bethesda (John 5:13) and, most notably, withdrawing from the crowd after the feeding of the five thousand since he perceived that they were about to force him to be their king (John 6:15).

And yet, that pattern of withdrawing and toning down the hysteria of the masses that often followed him is entirely reversed upon his entry into Jerusalem. Instead of dampening the frenzy, he seems to lean into it (John 12:12–15). While everything he did during his time on Earth was a fulfillment of prophecy, Jesus’s penchant for prophetic realization reaches a fever pitch here. After all, these events unfold no less than five days before the Passover, the highest and holiest of all the Jewish feasts. Jerusalem is abuzz with folks from all over Judea making the trip to celebrate this most significant festival in the City of God. According to some ancient histories, approximately two to three million people would descend on Jerusalem during those days, as friends and neighbors would gather and hastily get everything in order before the big day.

(When I picture “large crowds” in my head, this is what I imagine it was like. This was in Lima, Peru, in July of last year, when we happened to be visiting during Peru’s month-long Fiestas Patrias, leading up to their Independence Day on July 28. I’ve never seen so many people or such vibrant colors in my life!)

Not everyone was there for purely religious reasons, though. Passover had become fraught with political connotations, stemming from the Maccabean Revolt in the second century BCE. This was a zealous Jewish uprising that occurred after the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, desecrated the Jewish Temple and banned all Jewish religious practices. He even went so far as to build an altar to Zeus there and had pigs sacrificed on it. This was enough to incite a revolution from Jewish patriots, with Judas Maccabeus leading the way, eventually winning Judah’s freedom, rededicating the Temple, and reinstating the Passover in the process.

1. Great Expectations

It was around this time that the Passover festivities became infused with themes of political liberation, especially once Jerusalem fell to Roman control in the first century. In the ensuing decades, as Jews descended on Jerusalem for the week-long festival, Rome would deploy extra legionnaires to put a damper on any thought of revolution before it ever got started. As you might imagine, Passover was a time when tension filled the air. It was a politically and religiously supercharged week, as Roman garrisons readied themselves for any whisper of unrest and Jewish faithful longingly longed for the arrival of their Messiah-King.

Accordingly, the long-foretold Messiah had himself become a cocktail of the hopes and dreams of the Israelites themselves. The words of the prophets fused with the fervor of recent history — the Maccabees — to form a figure who, supposedly, would bring God’s chosen people out of tyranny for good. They desired a king who would come in God’s name to save and deliver them from their oppressors, akin to how they had been delivered from the hand of Pharaoh so many centuries ago. And yet, with all that energy and excitement so thick you could cut it with a knife, Jesus chooses to ride into Jerusalem “on a donkey’s colt” (John 12:15), exactly as the prophet Zechariah had said (Zech. 9:9).

2. Hosanna Hysteria

It didn’t take long for word to spread that Jesus of Nazareth was headed into town, resulting in a large crowd intercepting him along the way and giving him the royal treatment, as folks threw their cloaks on the path in front of him (John 12:12; Matt. 21:7–8). Soon, everyone started a chant from one of the Hallel Psalms, which were traditionally sung during Passover: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel” (John 12:13; Ps. 118:25–26). As the Jerusalem causeway became distended with more and more people, the cries of “Hosanna” or “Save us” grew louder, as the masses eagerly welcomed the arrival of the one who would do as Judas Maccabeus had done, only better, culminating in the restoration of Israel’s glorious kingdom, or so they thought.

But it wasn’t just the fact that Jesus was riding on a donkey that stirred everyone up like this. The so-called “triumphal entry” was also a frenzied, chaotic affair because of what preceded it by a few weeks — namely, the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11). Hanging over everything that unfolds as Jesus enters Jerusalem is this miracle that everyone everywhere is talking about, so much so that the day before Jesus entered town, a large crowd discovered where he was staying — at Mary and Martha’s home — and assailed the cottage, mainly to see if all the rumors about Lazarus were true (John 12:9). This, of course, only made the Pharisees even more apopletic than they already were (John 12:10–11, 19).

The commotion following Jesus of Nazareth intensified as the day wore on, as no one could get Lazarus’s resurrection, nor Jesus’s procession, out of their heads. They couldn’t stop talking about it (John 12:17–18). The miracle plus the mule-helmed motorcade sent everyone into a tizzy, to the point that even a fringe group of Greeks were curious about him (John 12:21–22). One needn’t be an expert to sense that something was different or that something was about to go down. There was a feeling in the air, and Jesus leaned into that feeling, too, with an ensuing announcement that subverts everyone’s expectations:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. (John 12:23–26)

3. The King Who Dies

Although he was Israel’s King and he was there to bring about their deliverance, and he had come to be glorified, all of those things would only be true and would only be realized if he died first.

It’s not hard to imagine the confusion, angst, and utter dismay that washed over everyone’s faces as they tried to make sense of Jesus’s words. Everyone was energized and filled with enthusiasm at the thought that the Messiah had finally arrived, only for Jesus to throw a wetter than wet blanket on the whole shebang with all his talk about dying, losing, and hating one’s life. Needless to say, this wasn’t the speech everyone expected to hear. But, of course, that’s because he wasn’t the Messiah everyone expected either.

Jesus hadn’t come to check all the boxes of what they believed the Messiah should be or do. He wasn’t there to fulfill all their presuppositions or live up to their projections of what makes someone the Messiah of holy writ. He was there to do the will of his Father, which is what that “hour” was all about (John 12:23, 27). This, to be sure, had nothing to do with the big hand and little hand on a clock, and everything to do with the Godhead’s plan of redemption that was put into motion before the “foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). Now was “the proper time” (1 Tim. 2:6) — the “fullness of time had come” (Gal. 4:4) for what the Son of God had taken on flesh to do. And it’s almost exactly the opposite of what they wanted him to do.

4. When Heaven Speaks

As if this moment wasn’t already layered with enough intrigue, a voice booms “from heaven” (John 12:28–30), just as it had at Jesus’s baptism and transfiguration (Matt. 3:13–17; Matt. 17:1–5). It’s the voice of God the Father giving his divine endorsement for all that God the Son was about to accomplish — namely, judge the world, conquer the devil, and draw sinners to himself all in one fell swoop (John 12:31–32). This is precisely what Jesus achieves when he is “lifted up,” which is a euphemism for the cross (John 12:33).

From his twilight conversation with Nicodemus to his dialogue with the Pharisees (John 3:14–15; John 8:28; cf. Isa. 52:13), the Lord Jesus had always been aware that the cross was looming over every step he took. He, the Word who was with God and was God, had become incarnate and entered his creation to be exalted, not on a throne, but on a cross. To be crowned, not with a diadem made of silver or gold, but one made with thorns.

The crowd is obviously puzzled by all this. They just can’t wrap their minds around what a crucified Messiah would look like. “How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up?” they perplexingly ask (John 12:34). They couldn’t picture it, let alone get behind it. A crucified Messiah was a contradiction in terms, especially if your hopes were centered on an earthly kingdom. It’s no surprise, then, that this crowd that’s been singing Jesus’s praises is the same crowd that ended up crying for his crucifixion by week’s end. Why? Because he wasn’t the Messiah they were looking for or hoping for. They wanted Judas Maccabeus or, at the very least, Barabbas, who was a known insurrectionist and revolutionary (Mark 15:7) — not this donkey-riding Rabbi from backwoods Galilee.

5. Flipping the Script

What makes the triumphal entry so profound is that it sees Jesus kill two birds with one stone. That is, he’s simultaneously fulfilling prophecy and undercutting everyone’s expectations. If your new leader or ruler strolled into town on the back of a donkey or mule, it’d be very apparent what kind of leader you were getting. Donkeys symbolized peace and humility, a fitting animal to carry the one who described himself as meek and lowly. But, of course, this wasn’t the image anyone had in mind when it came to the Messiah. They wanted a champion riding on the back of a warhorse, the paragon of dominion and might.

But Jesus had no warhorse to carry him, nor any army following him, let alone any plans to lead a coup of the Roman embassy. Put differently, Jesus was purposefully demilitarizing what they thought the Messiah would be and what he had come to do. He wasn’t there to be their political revolutionary, nor was he there to tear down political power structures. Jesus was there for something better, something deeper, and something truer. “In his death,” Bruce Milne attests, “he must take the place of those to whom he has come to bring life. He must die their death in order to free them from death forever.”1 He was there to save the world from sin and death by becoming sin and surrendering to death, for your sake and for mine. He was there to pay sin’s wage by dying so that he could offer those who are dying eternal life. He was there to kick the devil in the teeth by totally undoing his power by leaving death defeated (Heb. 2:14).

And not only did the crowd that day not see that, but they also didn’t want to see it. “Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him,” John reports, in one of the saddest verses ever recorded (John 12:37). After all that he told them and showed them, they still didn’t believe. But before we rush to ridicule those in the crowd that day, I dare say that many American churchgoers would have a similar reaction.

6. A Cross-Shaped Kingdom

We who live in the land of the free and home of the brave would rather see Jesus brandishing the colors of a particular party to take the world by force, starting with Pennsylvania Avenue. Let’s bedeck tanks and aircraft carriers with crosses as we bring in the kingdom, right? That isn’t how God’s kingdom works, nor is that how his kingdom is established. As Jesus eventually says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would’ve been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36). This, G. Campbell Morgan says, “does not mean that His Kingdom is not to be set up in this world, but that the Kingdom of the King can never come according to worldly ideals, by worldly methods, or result in the glamour and glory which is entirely and absolutely of the world.”2

The materialization of the kingdom of heaven on earth isn’t dependent on any earthly material. It comes by way of death and resurrection. Like the tree that sprouts and bears fruit from a seed that dies, so, too, does the kingdom of heaven begin with the Living Seed, who is Christ, dying for us. And the citizens of that kingdom aren’t those who rise up to lead revolutions or defeat every earthly power. Rather, they’re the ones who put all their hope and faith in a Messiah who was crucified and risen again for them.

7. Behold Your Crucified King

And this is why the story of Holy Week, and Easter in particular, still scandalizes us — namely, because it compels us to see Jesus on the cross in all his glory. Only nothing about what we see looks like glory. It looks like shame, embarrassment, loss, and defeat. The kingdom appears to be in utter shambles as its supposed King bleeds and dies a criminal’s death. And yet amid all that blood and meekness is where God is found. This unnerves us because we’d rather find him elsewhere. On a throne, perhaps? Or maybe in a white house? I’m reminded of those words Johnny Cash sang, along with the band U2, in the song “The Wanderer”:

I stopped outside a church house
Where the citizens like to sit
They say, “They want the kingdom”
But they don’t want God in it

I fear Mr. Cash was more prescient than even he knew. We want the kingdom, but we don’t want God, especially a crucified God. Perhaps it’s because we want the benefits of the kingdom — peace, justice, etc. — without submitting to the King, especially a King who is crucified, a “stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,” and a little bit of both to Americans (1 Cor. 1:23). The King who rode into the city on Palm Sunday is the same King who was ushered outside the city to be put on a cross on Good Friday.

To every sinner and saint, who, like the Greeks who ran up to Philip saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” the gospel directs our gaze to the one who’s dying and says, “Here he is, the one who saves.” See your Savior, not on a stallion, but on a mule; not on a throne, but on a cross; not in a palace, but in a tomb. “Jesus is King,” Bruce Milne writes. “His kingship is of a unique order. To express it Jesus must disappoint the nationalistic aspirations of his fellow Jews. But King he is . . . He moves majestically forward in procession to his throne, a throne constructed by his enemies, the throne of the cross!”3 There he is, the Crucified One, standing at the center of it all to draw all people to himself, just as he’s drawing you even now.

In this episode, I’m delighted to welcome pastor, actor, and comedian Tommy Woodard to the show to talk about how faith and comedy overlap, and the role humor plays in the Christian life. Far from being a religion of stoic robots, Christians ought to be known for their laughter. Together, Tommy and I talk about comedy as a vehicle for grace and authenticity, and processing sorrow and loss, and ultimately why the church should laugh more.

Tommy is the lead pastor of New Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, where he lives with his wife and children. Besides pastoring, Tommy is also the founder of the 231 Collective, which was formerly The Skit Guys, where he endeavors to create sacred, excellent, joy-filled stories designed to make people laugh, think, and see God’s love in new ways. He’s also produced and acted in several faith-based projects, including Family Camp and The Forge. You can follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Resources:
231 Worship
God’s Chisel Remastered, The Skit Guys
The Skit Guys Archive, YouTube
“Should We Be Laughing Right Now?,” article by yours truly
“Laughing with Moses All the Way to the Promised Land,” article by yours truly
Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment, Bradley Gray

Sponsor:
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Credits:
Intro music: It Just Makes Me Happy
Composer: DJ Quads, soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads
License: Creative Commons (BY-NC 3.0), creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
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