Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript
## Reformation Covenant Church | Pastor Dennis Tuuri | 1984-2016

Well, we have today in our text, Lord, we have today in our text a wonderful example of Christ ruling over the kings of the earth. Today’s text is found in John 19:22. By the way, before we get started, if anyone becomes overly hot, my office, which is accessible right here off the sanctuary, there is an air conditioner going in there. So if you have young children that are getting too hot, please feel free to go into that room anytime today. And we’ll try to keep the doors closed and keep it a cool place in there. Okay. Please stand for the reading of God’s Word.

In John chapter 19:22, “Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city. And it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, ‘Do not write the King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am the King of the Jews.’ Pilate answered, ‘What I have written, I have written.’”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the text of your Scripture. We thank you for the Holy Spirit who indwells us, your great gift to us, who takes the Scriptures, writes them upon our heart, and transforms our life with them. Help us, Father, to be transformed today that we might give you praise and worship, not just today in its formal sense, but in every day of the week in all that we do and say. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

I think one of you—maybe John—mentioned last week a text from 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 1-4, when Paul says, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come preaching to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and with much trembling. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”

So Paul endeavored to know nothing amongst them except for Jesus Christ and him crucified. We’ve come to the crucifixion scene in John’s Gospel, and we’re going to go very slowly over it. We did an overview last week to show the big picture of what’s going on, and now we’ll look at the various details so that we might indeed meditate upon Jesus Christ and his crucifixion, that we might know him and that we might understand the significance of that event and its application in our lives.

You know, ultimately it is Jesus Christ and him crucified that is the vehicle of salvation for us. We are not justified by faith by believing in the doctrine of justification by faith. We’re justified by faith by believing in the person, the incarnate second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. And so a consideration of him on the cross and the implications of the events that are given to us in John’s Gospel are intended to strengthen our belief in Christ, our trust in him, and our loving obedience to him.

And so for the three points when we get into the body of the sermon today, we’ll have this promise of the gospel to us that we’re called to believe. And then we’ll have a response from us in relationship to the great promises as they’re articulated in these three or four little verses here, this little section of the crucifixion scene. And we’ll do the same thing for the next four or five sermons in John 19—take these very important details to us and see the implications of them.

Remember that what we’ve seen here is that the crucifixion scene is portrayed in John’s Gospel as an enthronement. We have today a reference again to Pilate and the Jews. And that brings us back to the middle section of this crucifixion scene as we move from the garden and the arrest and the trial before Annas. Then we went to the Praetorium with Pilate questioning Jesus and the Jews alternating back and forth in a series of seven very clearly articulated scenes, the center of which is the scourging. But then at the very center of that is the mock enthronement of Jesus with the crown of thorns and the purple robe and the crying out, “Hail, King of the Jews!”

But what the text is structured to do is to show us that the crucifixion of Christ and his trial indeed is really his enthronement. Remember, it’s really not Christ who is on trial. It’s Pilate. Will he respond to the truth that Jesus tells him? And it’s the Jews. Will they affirm the truth of God in Christ, or will they not?

And so by the end of the day, they’re standing on the stone pavement—literally the end of the day; the end of the scene is actually the middle of the day, high noon—reveals the heart of Pilate, reveals the heart of the Jews, and they cry out, “We have no king but Caesar!” They deny the Israelite theocracy. They deny the covenant because the central affirmation of the covenant is that our God, our King, is Yahweh. And so really they’re the ones on trial. It’s a mock thing from Pilate’s perspective, but the way John has constructed this Gospel narrative is to show the bright light of Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday shining through into the crucifixion scene itself.

Remember that the entire scene begins with his arrest in a garden, and the resurrection that we’ll read about in chapter 20 is in the garden. Indeed, the very narrative of the crucifixion is given to you in the summary outline at the top of your page. The actual crucifixion scene moves us from Golgotha to the garden—there’s a movement here in terms of a place of death and the skull, and the curse of God upon mankind represented perhaps by the skull of Goliath, the skull of Adam. In any event, the skull of the serpent. Jesus crushes the head of the opposition, rolls back the curse. From then on, we then become, by the end of the text, we move from Golgotha to a garden.

You see, that’s what the crucifixion is all about. It’s showing us the enthronement of Christ and the breaking into the old world of the new world that now has been established through Christ’s work on the cross. Jesus said, “Now is the hour of judgment. Now is the ruler of this world thrown out.” And that doesn’t happen on Resurrection Sunday. It doesn’t wait till that event. It happens here at the crucifixion in John’s Gospel.

John’s Gospel portrays a particular set of details to show us the tremendous significance of the victory of Christ demonstrated in the very account of his crucifixion. The moment of his most weakened state on the cross, supposedly, is the state at which he rules from that cross over the affairs of men.

The narrative here in the crucifixion goes from Golgotha to the garden, and it does that by looking at some details. We have two men—nameless men, rebels, comrades of Barabbas at the first. Jesus is in the center position, of course, of the three men on the cross. Details are important, and these two men are mirrored at the end of the text by the two disciples, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, carrying the body of Christ into this garden tomb.

So we have two men on either side of Christ at the beginning of the text and two at the end of the text. We go from Golgotha to garden. We go from a world of rebellion and opposition to Christ, with him being flanked by them, to now the world—demonstrated by the two men at the end of the text—being disciples of Christ. You know, reluctantly, fearfully in different cases, but now their fear is being overcome. Now they explicitly ask for the body of Jesus and they take him to the tomb to be buried. Tremendous movement of the world is taking place at the crucifixion of the Savior.

And then we have Pilate, before and after, and we’ll talk about that in some detail today. And then we have moving into the center of the narrative, we have two soldiers—rather, four of them—fulfilling prophecy, explicitly said to fulfill prophecy, and at the end of the text the soldiers again, fulfilling prophecy in the mirror portion of this narrative.

So what’s happening? Pilate is becoming a Gospel herald. The soldiers are becoming the fulfillment of prophecy. The world is moving from rebellion to becoming disciples. We’re going from Golgotha to the garden. All because of what happens at the center of the narrative—the words of the Lord Jesus Christ—three performative utterances which we’ll get to in a few weeks and look at the detail of them.

Jesus is center stage in the crucifixion scene as portrayed by John, ruling, establishing, giving gifts from the very cross itself. Giving the gifts of restored community—we’ll get to that as he reunites, as he tells his mother, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the beloved disciple John, “This is your mother.” Reestablishing community in the context of faith. And on the mirror side of that, him delivering over his spirit, a preliminary to him breathing upon the disciples in John chapter 20. And then finally, the gift of the Spirit to the church in its fullest sense on the day of Pentecost. But all pictured for us right here as Jesus delivers over his spirit, having finished the work, having loved them to the end. That’s how the upper room discourse began: “Having loved them, he loved them to the end.” And at the end, when it is finished, he delivers over his spirit to his people.

And at the very center, of course, is the taking of sour wine. And the transition is from sour wine to the wine of Cana. Again, he addresses his mother as “Woman,” just as he did at Cana back earlier in John’s Gospel. So the reference to the sour wine and the sour grapes is seen in relationship to Cana. He’s the one who’s going to bring in the wine of the best wine, the new creation wine.

So Jesus Christ is ruling from the cross in our narrative, giving gifts to his people. Tremendous blessings are pictured for us here. Nothing different in today’s little details. As we look to today’s details, we look at specifically now Pilate becoming a Gospel herald. That’s what I’ve retitled the talk to: “Pilate is Gospel Herald.”

We see once more the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the sovereign God ruling from heaven in the midst of his enemies. And so Pilate here is the one who heralds forth the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 96:10 says this: “Say among the nations, the Lord reigns!”

Well, that’s what Pilate does by putting this inscription. Now, it’s not really an inscription. There are three different Greek words used of this particular sign that was put on the cross. And in John’s Gospel alone, it’s referred to in its formal sense, which is a title—it’s a Greek word from which our word “title” is taken. And so with Jesus, it’s not called a writing or an accusation. In John’s Gospel, it’s called a title. You see, very significant. Once more, John carefully composing the capstone of the four Gospels, tells us what this life of Christ is all about.

And when he does this, he proclaims the title of Christ from the cross, not an accusation. So Pilate writes a title, and there is no charge on it. There’s a simple declaration of the actual title or office to which Christ holds. The title says, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” And it says in three languages.

So Pilate here, under the sovereign hand of God—now, he’s probably doing it for sinful reasons, no doubt. You remember the back and forth between Pilate and the Jews. And he’s being driven by fear, and he’s clever—overly clever. He’s trying to get Jesus released and kill Barabbas, the real threat to the Roman Empire. But no, he mishandles it, and the Jews handle him better than he’s handled them. So he’s kind of ticked off, no doubt, by this point in time. He hasn’t accomplished what he wants to do. And there is this growing sense in him that really this man should be released.

So finally, when he puts the man up for death because of his fear—the Jews’s accusation against him to Caesar, a Caesar who is notoriously paranoid and who would have, you know, probably taken this and deposed or killed Pilate himself. Pilate might have ended up not on a cross—that wasn’t done to Roman citizens—but he would have ended up in some kind of big trouble. So his fear of his own life and indecisiveness leads Pilate to do this act.

But this is a kind of an in-your-face to the Jews. This is kind of, you know, okay, here you are: Jesus of Nazareth. And what’s Nazareth? That’s that city up in the north. You know, that’s where the guys aren’t supposed to come from who are going to fulfill biblical prophecy. And so it’s kind of in your face. But God, you see, is working through the hand of Pilate to effect the proclamation of the Gospel. He is God’s Gospel herald. He is the one who is really, under the hand of God, obeying Psalm 96:10: “Say among the nations, the Lord reigns!” Jesus is King. That’s what he says here.

And so Pilate is the Gospel herald, and the Gospel is published in its summary form by Pilate in three languages, preserved for the last 2,000 years. Pilate trumpets forth a summary form of the Gospel of Christ. Pilate joins Caiaphas in John’s Gospel—wicked man, sinful man. And yet, under the sovereign hand of God, Caiaphas prophesies that Jesus will die for the sins of his people. And Pilate here, while wicked, still makes forth the Gospel proclamation that Jesus Christ reigns and reigns in a universal sense, which we’ll see in just a moment.

So Pilate indeed is the Gospel herald here. In Psalm 76, verses 10 and 11, we read, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise you. The remnant of wrath you will put on like a belt.” So the Gospel herald here is the man who really is engaged in sinful wrath against the Jews. And yet surely the wrath of even the wrath of man in rebellion to God becomes then the means of praise for the Lord Jesus Christ. And Pilate is that Gospel herald—sinfully saying things, but nonetheless being used by God to trumpet forth the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What does this mean to us, the fact that Pilate is this Gospel herald? And the first thing in terms of application, a response to this wonderful message—and it’s the same message we’ve seen for many weeks here in John’s Gospel—the sovereignty of God over the most wicked of men. The first application is to rest in the promise of the Gospel. Jesus Christ reigns in the darkest of times.

We need to be comforted and assured from the Gospel text today that no matter which sinful man seems to be ruling, whatever spirit’s happening, the Lord God is sovereignly moving the world along a particular path. Christ reigns from the cross. Christ reigns over the wicked Caiaphas and over the wicked Pilate. They are fulfilling the purposes of God. Even while they think they’re doing it for evil, yet God is intending all of this for good. He’s bringing it to pass for his purposes. That’s important for us.

Again, I made this same point earlier, but young children particularly—you live in a world in which you’re going to see things. You’re going to encounter difficulties. You’re going to see your parents even acting in ways that are shocking to you and sinful. You need to trust in Jesus. You need to remember when you’re in times of trouble and difficulty that Jesus rules, even while he’s being crucified. You need to remember that if your people—if you’re in the context of people who are as wicked as Pilate or as wicked as Caiaphas, or whoever it might be in our day and age—if you find yourself in a situation where godless men are impacting your world, you need to rest in the knowledge and truth of the sovereign God, God of history, who proclaims his Gospel through the most unusual and horrible of sources. The man who actually crucifies Christ and puts him to death. We need to rest in the promise, the blessedness of the Gospel, that Christ reigns even in the darkest of times.

But our response to that also should be a renewed commitment on our part to speak the truth about Jesus. You know, this—the response as we read in the Psalms—that the wrath of God will praise you. Verse 11 goes on to say in that Psalm, “Make your vows to the Lord your God and perform them.” Our response to the truth of God’s sovereignty working through the most difficult of times should be a renewed commitment that even in those most difficult of times to speak the truth about Jesus Christ.

Remember, this is the essence of what a true king is. He’s one who speaks the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the truth produces difficulty. The truth also always brings out opposition. And as Pilate speaks the truth through this inscription, even though not intending to, the Jews in our text respond against it. They don’t like that up there. They want him to change his words. And he says, “What I have written, I have written.”

You have to have a commitment to speak the truth of Christ in the home, the school, the workplace, in our recreational activities, in our social events. Because when you start to witness to the truth of Christ in any realm, you will trigger the ungodly reaction—the reaction of the Jews that the Jews portray for us in the text—that will happen. The white horse of the purity of the preaching of God’s Gospel in the book of Revelation is always followed by the horse who creates division and brings warfare in the world. This is God’s purposes—to make plain to people whether they’re in subjection or not to Christ.

As the high noon of the day of the trial came and dawned at the beginning of Christ’s trial before Pilate, and at high noon the Jews and Pilate are revealed to be who they are. That’s our job. We are light-bringers. We’re to speak to the truth of the Gospel of Christ and his reign in all that we do and say. And this text tells us that.

Now, the Gospel was heralded via a title. So Pilate is this Gospel herald, and this Gospel is heralded via title in this text. Now, we have “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus means Savior. So this is the Savior King. “Jesus Christ” means translated “Savior, anointed one” or King. So we have Jesus of Nazareth. Why Jesus? Because he’s salvation. He’s the salvific King. Why Nazareth? Well, as I said, you know, the Jews didn’t like those—the Judahites, the ones in the south—didn’t like the northern bumpkins. The way that in America you might think of southern bumpkins at some point in our history. So, you know, we got a Nazarene here. And, you know, it’s kind of even more in your face from Pilate’s perspective.

Nazareth was also in the region of Galilee, which was described as “the desire of the nations” or the land of the Gentiles, probably because of Gentile domination. But it brings into our text the idea that the reign of Jesus Christ will be universal and extensive throughout Gentile influences as well.

So Jesus of Nazareth, and then the phrase given to us, the title specifically, is “King of the Jews.” Now “King of the Jews” is given to us here as a description of the Lord Jesus Christ in all four Gospels. This writing is given only in John’s Gospel—the full phrase “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” finds itself here. And so there’s some discussion of why or different translations. Remember, this title is written in three languages, and the different Gospels are written to different groups of people. They will record, under the providence of God, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—for their particular audience—the portion or translation of the text that is specific to them.

So here we get to the culminating, or capstone, Gospel, and we have the full title given for us. So the “King of the Jews.” The “King of the Jews” is Messiah. And remember that while that seems sectarian, it seems like it’s just king of a small group of people, the Old Testament clearly says that when Messiah comes, this will be the time of the great inflow or influx of the Gentiles into the kingdom. And so it has this universal aspect to it.

And as we said a couple of weeks ago, it is a recovery of the Messiahship of Jesus Christ as perceived by Paul—that’s leading to much reformation and revival in the Christian church today. Getting rid of the break or the cleavage between the Old and New Testaments is this doctrine that Jesus is Messiah. We have one Word of God, and that is being heralded forth once again in our day and age very importantly.

Now, this title certainly speaks, in its three languages, to the universal reign of Jesus Christ. So the title is given—it’s given in three languages. It’s given in the three dominant languages of the day. So for one, an implication of that is that Jesus’s universal reign is being heralded forth by Pilate because it’s listed in the three most important languages of the culture.

And what we see here is what we’ll find its completion, of course, again on the day of Pentecost—that the Spirit moves through the Word. That Word is going to be heard now in all the languages of those that have gathered together on Pentecost. And so what we have here on the crucifixion scene in this title is again a little picture of what will happen in its fullness on Pentecost, and the picture, of course, is the Gospel now pervades all cultures. And so that is going to be heralded forth.

But these particular languages that it’s written in, I think, are more important than just a general significance of the universal reign of Christ. There’s something else going on here. You remember that I used an illustration from N.T. Wright’s talk at Calvin College in January? He was on a hill in England, and standing on the top of this hill, you could have one foot in two different counties and bend over and touch a third county. All three county lines—or rather, all three counties came together at this particular hill. So you could be up there and actually have a part of your body in three different counties.

Well, the same thing is what’s happening here. These are the three great languages of the day. And these languages have all been brought together at this place in Israel, under the providence of God, at this place where Jesus is being crucified. What we have is the nation of Israel that is now speaking Aramaic. That’s the language here, not Hebrew. It’s translated into Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

So the whole priestly nation is speaking Aramaic. This is now the language of the official religious group of God. So that’s what’s happening in Israel. But we have Hellenistic culture now as a very much a part of the world in which the early church found its being. The Hellenistic culture survives from Greek culture after the Romans supplant the Greek Empire. The culture of Greece continues and extends into the region. So we have Greek Hellenistic culture, and we have the Latin language, which emphasizes the empire of Rome. This is the official language of the empire and of law.

And all these three great strands of what God is doing in history come together at this point in time in Israel, in Jerusalem, and they come together in a very marked form here in the context of what John records for us. These languages coming together—so the three great empires we could say, the Hebrew Empire, the Greek Empire, and the Roman Empire—are all coalescing now, and this coalescing is reflected in the way the title for Jesus Christ is described to us.

But I think, by way of implication, we can go even broader than that. And now I’m on page B of your outline: “The Declaration of Christ via Title: The Comprehensive Reign of Jesus Christ.”

So it is universal by covering all of the existing empires that were prevalent then in the culture by declaring that Jesus is the King of the Jews—hence we’ll have sway over all the world. The Gentiles will come in. And by declaring this in the known languages of the time, we have the universal reign of Christ.

But the universal reign of Christ that is declared by this Gospel herald, Pilate, is also the comprehensive reign of Christ. What do I mean by that? Well, these three languages were not just three languages from three different groups of people at this stage in history. The Aramaic, reflecting the transition of Hebrew into their particular time, the Aramaic was the language of religion. It was the language of prayer, so to speak, in the context of Israel. So it’s the religion. It’s the religious entity—the church, we could say. The Israelite republic is represented to us in this Aramaic.

Greek language represents culture and the literature of the day. The commerce of the day was conducted in Greek. Greek is the common language now of this particular time in world history. But it’s very much associated with culture, with beauty, with the arts. It’s reflected itself in literature and in commerce. And Latin is the language of empire or law, and to a certain extent it still is in our day and age. One of the reasons why people take Latin today is so that they can read and understand law, because our law code comes forth to us in terms of Latin as well. So Latin was the language of the Roman Empire.

So we have reflected here a theological, social, and political world, reflected through these three particular languages in which the title of Jesus is heralded forth by Pilate. We have the language of prayers, the language of ordinary conversation and culture, and we have the language of battle, one might say, of empire and of politics. And so it’s important to recognize that much is being said to us here in terms of the reign of Jesus Christ over what we might say are three different spheres or activities of men.

Now, part of this reflects the universal sin of the world. Jesus is dying on the cross to certainly deliver his people from false religion, but also because we sin in terms of our culture and commerce, and we sin in terms of our appropriation of law and government. So the universal sin of mankind—our sin is, we believe in total depravity—that affects every portion of our lives, not just our religious rejection of Christ, but our very common life itself. Our entering into commerce is all tinged with sin, and our political life, our governmental life, and our law structures also reflect the Adamic fall.

Now Jesus is going to atone for the sins of these various spheres as he dies on the cross and as he is enthroned by God at his right hand. So it talks about universal sin, but it also talks about universal redemption in each of these areas. Jesus Christ, the Scriptures tell us, is the wisdom of God to the Greeks. He is culture. He is wisdom. He is the power of God to the Jews. And he is the justice of God that fulfills his holy law. And so these three languages remind us of universal sin and universal redemption. And very much—very importantly—they remind us of the basic spheres of our lives and the claims of the Messiahship of Christ over each of those spheres.

Let me read a quote from Barclay in his commentary on this particular text. He says, talking about Hebrew, or Aramaic, Latin, and Greek: “These were the three great languages of the ancient world. They stood for three great nations. In the economy of God, every nation has something to teach the world. And these three stood for three great contributions to the world and to world history. Greece taught the world beauty of form and of thought. Rome taught the world law and good government. The Hebrews taught the world religion and the worship of the true God.

“The consummation of all these things is seen in Jesus. In him was the supreme beauty and the highest thought of God. In him was the law of God and the kingdom of God, and in him was the very image of God. All the world’s seekings and strivings found their consummation in Christ. It was symbolic that the three great languages of the world should call him King.”

These three languages calling Christ King. So I want to talk just for a couple of minutes about these three different spheres. What we find is that this emphasis on the cross finds its way into the mission of Paul as we see reflected in his epistles. Paul has a mission to the Jews—to those that spoke Aramaic. Ultimately, we would say to the church. Paul has a mission to the Hellenistic culture of his day. And Paul has a mission to the Roman Empire.

Paul went to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile. Paul went to the Jewish synagogues, went to the Jewish leaders, and brings to them the knowledge or the proclamation that Jesus Christ is Messiah. And remember, we said that is much of what we have to do today—to speak to the Christian culture of our day—is to reassert the Messiahship of Jesus Christ with all the implications that contains.

Paul also had a mission to the Hellenistic culture. He went to the Areopagus. He went to Mars Hill. He engaged the culture of the Greeks as found in the discussions of philosophy and descriptions of beauty that would surround the meeting at Mars Hill. And Paul has a great desire to go to Rome and to reach the emperor’s household. You see, Paul is moving in terms of these three languages. Paul engages the church culture. He engages the culture of the land, the Hellenistic culture, commerce, philosophy, beauty, and he engages the empire politically as well.

And so these are three spheres in which we find ourselves in like way as Paul—in an increasingly post-Christian age. We have a message to challenge the church of Jesus Christ with—to encourage and exhort them to faithfulness to Messiah. We have a message to our culture, and we have a message in terms of law and government as well.

So I want to talk a little bit about those. Now, what we want to say first of all is that this message results—and I’ve got this on your outline. The first implication of this knowledge—that these three languages represent the comprehensive, not just the universal, but the comprehensive reign of Christ in all spheres of life—our response to that is first to enjoy the Christian culture we have inherited.

Much of what we have in America is a result of the application of the faith in each of these areas to varying degrees. And now we see it being eroded somewhat. But let’s face it, we have much to be thankful for in terms of the culture that we have inherited in this country. We do have religious freedom. We do have, you know, explicitly Christian proclamations of faith as the dominant religion still of this country, if in word, if not now in practice. And we do have a culture that was built fairly explicitly upon that.

Remember, we said that the crown rights of Christ, his kingship, begins with the King’s day, the Lord’s day. And we have a country that for many, many years had blue laws, right? They acknowledge the day of the Lord is a day to stop normal commerce, to give our servants rest, and to have a comprehensive rest go from the beginning of the country to the other shore of the country. So we have that, and we still have remnants of that. We have glimmerings yet of Sunday as a day set apart—more and more just glimmerings. It’s getting further and further behind in the rearview mirror of this culture as we go down the road, but it’s there nonetheless.

And we have the ability as a congregation at Reformation Covenant Church and other congregations that may be represented here to continue to rest this full day and to proclaim the Messiahship of Christ by beginning our week with that kind of proclamation. Our first response to what this heralding forth by Pilate of the Gospel of Christ is—our first response to the comprehensive change in the world that began 2,000 years ago—is to rejoice in that, to rest in the culture we’ve inherited.

You know, the latest issue of Credenda Agenda—I’m sure some of you have seen it—has to me at least a very objectionable picture on the cover, and I thought for a moment briefly went through my head maybe we should hand out this issue downstairs and get, make it available to people with the cover ripped off. I found the cover that objectionable.

But the interesting thing is that by the providence of God, the inside of that cover has a delightful statement of just what I’m talking about here—the need to rejoice and rest in the culture that we’ve inherited from the work of Jesus Christ on the cross 2,000 years ago. This is what the inside cover of the latest Credenda Agenda says:

“This magazine is dedicated as a tribute to the good life. The life that can only be known in a world in subjection to the Trinity. You see, that’s what happened 2,000 years ago as the world was made subject to the Trinity once more. The new world came in and began to work its way through the globe. And that’s what we relax and rest in. That’s the good life that’s been affected by the work of Christ.

“Then they go on to say this: ‘Now that the world is jiggling softly into summer, this involves barbecue sauce, baseball, shirts that smell of charcoal—though not always in that order. Credenda Agenda attempts to revel in these and every other cause for faithful laughter. We find the thoroughly finesse-less slide into second, especially worthy of praise. Tomorrow someone will know the joy of a knee wound attached to the inside of the pants.’” My son Benjamin plays on our softball team, and he had that joy of the knee wound and bleeding through to his pants last Lord’s day. This is one of the delights in which we find ourselves—at this kind of rest in the culture we’ve inherited as a result of Christ’s work.

“Tomorrow someone will know the joy of a knee wound, as I said, attached to the inside of the pants. Have another burger. The BRZs are good, too.”

Now, that may sound funny to some of you on the inside cover of a journal dedicated to theological musings and explorations, but I think it is totally in line with what we’re looking at in John’s Gospel. At the height of the Gospel accounts—the capstone Gospel of John—declares that Jesus Christ is ruling, even through the worst of times. And that this rule has its sway over religion, over culture, and over governments and empires as well. That’s the joy that God has affected through the coming of Christ.

And we would be remiss to just talk about the demands of this text to us if we didn’t take just a moment and reflect on the tremendous promises of this text to us. Remember, the promise of Pilate is that no matter how dark the waters, how dark the day may be tomorrow for you, you can always find joy in knowing that God is superintending the events of evil men.

The response is that we should speak forth the truth of Christ in a godly way. If even the horrible, godless man Pilate is a Gospel herald, how much more so we!

Well, the promise of what I’ve described in terms of these three languages and these three spheres—the comprehensive reign of Christ—is that this is what God has given to us. This is generally speaking the kind of world in which we now live, and we need to relax. We need to rejoice. We need to rest in the finished work of Christ.

You know, people talk about postmillennials bringing in the kingdom of Christ. We don’t bring it in. We rejoice in it, and we delight in it, and we seek its further manifestation, no doubt. But oh, may the summertime be, as Credenda has given to us here, a time of great joy for you and your family this week. Teach your children the demands of the Gospel by all means—we’ll get to that in a minute—but teach them as well the finished victory of Christ and the comprehensive change in the world that happened as a result of that, and the beautiful culture that we have inherited from our forefathers who believed in applying the crown rights of Jesus Christ to all that they do and say.

So, you know, our first response is to rejoice, relax, enjoy the summertime heat, enjoy the softball team, enjoy the various activities you’re going to do. That is a rest and a trust in the promise, the proclamation of the comprehensive Gospel of Christ.

Now, the other side of it, though, is that this proclamation brings a challenge to us as well. And our second response is to engage the pagan culture that is emerging. After all, this Christian culture that was built is now being replaced increasingly by the pagan culture that is emerging. We find ourselves more and more able to identify with Paul in challenging the church to see the messianic rule of Christ, in challenging the Hellenistic culture to tell it that at its base it’s godless and as a result judged by God, and to challenge the empire or the government of our day and age.

Increasingly, our culture looks like the Greek culture or worse. Increasingly, our political structure looks like the Roman Empire or worse. Now we praise God for the Christians that are involved in administration. But as we said before, to spread empire on the basis of a pluralistic view of religion is to spread the same kind of empire that Rome spread. The challenge of Christ is that Julius Caesar is not Lord—that Jesus is Lord.

So we have the same calling today that Paul had in his day and age. Now Paul goes to Mars Hill, and Paul does not give a blanket rejection to Hellenistic culture. You know, the two poles that the Jews fell into—and which Paul manages to escape because of his view of the comprehensive reign of Christ—the two things the Jews fell into in terms of the culture in which they live, the Hellenistic culture that was essentially the culture of the empire, would be a compromise with that culture and a washing away of the distinctives of their calling as God’s people who have Yahweh as King over them. That’s one ditch.

The other ditch was to so retreat from the culture that they end up cloistered in a minority community, and they hang on to marks or distinctives of the culture which Jesus has come to remove—circumcision, food laws, etc. They don’t see those things as calling them to special priestly calling to the nations, but rather as a way to distinguish them from the nations.

Our job is not to flee from culture into a Christian ghetto and then build up a whole set of rules that separate us from that culture in terms of movies and alcohol and dancing and anything else. Our job is not retreat. And the other danger is our job certainly is not to compromise who we are and have our distinctives washed away. God calls us to do something in the middle.

Now, that’s not easy at all times. It’s difficult to judge if we’re compromising. It’s difficult to judge if we’re losing our edge as Christians. But can’t you see the correlation to the conservative Christian movement in America that all they want to do is retreat from the culture, hold on to a whole set of laws—as the ones I’ve mentioned—as a way to make themselves distinctive as a culture apart from the dominant culture in the country, to go off into a cultural ghetto.

And that, just as the Jewish church did, they take things that were really never the law of God to keep us separate at all. You know, no prohibition against dancing in the Scriptures, or the moderate consumption of adult beverages, or seeing movies or reading books that may not be explicitly Christian. And yet those become now a law for this ghetto Christian culture. And we want to break down those walls. I want them to do so carefully. We don’t want to end up with compromise on the other side.

But our job is to engage the culture, to affirm what maybe they got right. That may sound odd to you knowing that this church is Wendellian to the core. There is no brute actuality. But Paul, when he goes to Mars Hill, engages in discourse. He engages in the communication method of the time. Nothing wrong with it. He says, indeed, he affirms some things that they have said that are correct, right? And then he brings criticism and judgment of the things they’ve got wrong and points them, both in the affirmation and in the critique, to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now, that’s our job. Let me give you an example. We talk about postmodernity, and I—you know, it’s a, make your head swim—but for me at least, modernity was the idea that value or goodness was not found in the God of the Scriptures, but rather was found in each individual. I determine what’s good and evil, what’s good and bad. I’m kind of a law to myself. Modernity says there are still values, but the values are now rooted in a standard that’s internal to my self or into human community as opposed to found in the Scriptures and in a God who is both transcendent as well as imminent.

So now postmodernity says well, actually, there are no values at all. There’s neither good nor evil. We can’t understand each other. We can’t understand ourselves, and certainly there’s no absolutes, period. And we rebel against that. We don’t rebel. We properly respond against that. We know that’s not the Christian position. But do we see in postmodernity the judgment of God on modernity? You see, and do we see where they got the message half right?

Their message is that modernity cannot stand the test as a view, or a philosophy, or a worldview. That’s right, you see. And we should affirm the postmodern critique of modernism. You see, at the same time, we should engage postmodernism and say, you know, you’re right in your critique of modernism, but you’re wrong in your rejection of absolute values. And let us point you to the Christ who is both imminent and transcendent, who is the source of all value, whether it’s in religion or in culture or in politics.

That we have a job to engage the culture. We have a job to train up children in the ways of the Lord who will take leadership responsibilities in the culture. What are the implications of the charge to engage in a Christian culture-building exercise—to take the culture of our day, affirm parts of it, critique parts, and bring it all under the submission to the Lord Jesus Christ? What are the implications?

One implication is that our people should be trained for leadership. One implication is the educational requirements of our young people. And we should see a goodly number of our young people going off to college, as we’ll see again this fall, entering into degree programs, taking positions in our culture that are not just putting bread on the table, but rather becoming influence makers and decision makers in the context of businesses, politics, entertainment, whatever it might be.

Now, the other implication of the kind of culture that we wish to build is that a culture is not built simply of those kind of people. You need people who are going to work on cars, who are going to work in factories, who are going to do that kind of labor. It’s a great—let me give you a prayer request of mine. My sermons need to become clearer to certain elements of the culture. We do not want Reformation Covenant Church to become a culture with an intellectual bent and of a bent that says well, you know, we just—the highbrows is the only people we want coming to the sermons. A culture that’s to be reflected in the local church must be comprehensive, okay?

The church is to represent—it’s the beginning place of building a Christian culture. And yes, we want to exhort certain members of the congregation—young members—to higher education and leadership positions, but we also want to affirm that part of the culture are people that are not in leadership but are rather in servant positions and fulfill that job well and good. And so the sermons must reach blue-collar people—is the modern-day expression—as well as white-collar people. Pray for me that I’ll be able to do this somehow in a way better than I’ve done, you know, for the last fifteen years.

If we’re going to build a culture at RCC as a direct application of Christ and of Paul’s work, it is a comprehensive culture that embraces different kinds of people. Now, I mentioned that this culture language Greek was also, all along, the language of commerce. And an immediate application of engaging the culture in which we live is engaging in commercial enterprises and businesses with an explicit intention to glorify God.

I was approached by a member of the church this week—wanted to know, well, what do you think about a mission statement that is explicitly Christian? I think that it’s not a sin to have a mission statement that is not explicitly Christian. And there are times in the history of the culture where the culture is more explicitly Christian, and that is kind of an assumed thing where such mission statements may even be somewhat superfluous. But I think in the kind of culture which we’re living now, explicitly Christian mission statements, when appropriate, when it’s wise in the sense of the owner’s of the business’s estimation, are very good things today. It’s a way to engage the commercial culture, to speak Greek, to have the inscription of Christ in Greek apply to our commerce in an explicitly intentional way to glorify God—by running businesses that are sound and of service, and apply all the different truths that we see reflected in the Christian ethic.

So to engage the culture is one of the responses to this broad, comprehensive proclamation or heralding forth of the crown rights of King Jesus. Commerce, education, music—I’m very pleased that as I understand it, a week from Wednesday at Wamatt Park when we have the event in the park to talk about the persecuted church, that the bands that’ll be represented there will be electric, kind of modern, more rockish, sort of band will be playing, as well as a band that’ll be comprised of more folk instruments in that perspective. You see, that’s an engaging and cultural diversity in the context of the church which we want.

And we want, as reflected in the culture of Christ—and beyond that, it should be seen in these young men’s lives, young women’s lives—to engage the cultural pursuits of music as direct application of this sermon, to engage in cultural pursuits of beauty and of literature or of music in an explicitly Christian fashion. It doesn’t mean always Christian lyrics, but an explicitly Christian way, and to affirm what’s good in popular music or in folk music, but then also to bring your critique of that style of music and have it change who you are. In other words, not to just become compromised with the culture of the musical spheres of which we see in our culture today. Not to retreat from it, however, either, but to engage it in a distinctively Christian fashion.

And I’m glad that is happening. If there is any group of people on the face of the world who should be able to bring musical reformation to a variety of different kinds of musical reflections or styles, it is the church of Jesus Christ because of the emphasis in the community of Christ upon singing praises to him—them as being of the very nature of who we are, saved through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, to sing forth and to make music before him.

So we have a message to the church of Messiah. We have a message to the culture—that they get some things right. God is reflected in a general revelation way throughout all the world, and the pagan gets some things right, but he never gets it all right. And foundationally he has to be challenged with the Word of Christ to bring Christ into the context of the reformation of culture as well.

And then third, we have an interaction with the political spheres of the empire as well, that again is challenging as well as affirming. Paul used his Roman citizenship, right, to go ahead and get transit to various places. He appealed to Roman law. He didn’t full-blown reject it, cast it off as a revolutionary. He took what was right in it and what was useful for the purposes of the kingdom, but then he also challenged Roman law when he wanted to get to Rome to discuss the claims of Jesus Christ in relationship to the household of Caesar.

And again, this is the model for us of the proper application of the title of Jesus Christ being heralded forth in the language Latin of law and government. Our job is not to retreat and demand explicitly Christian forms of legislation or legislators. Our job is to rather affirm what the culture has found right in law, and much of it in our Christian culture, that has the reflection of the past, based explicitly on the Scriptures.

Our job is to affirm some of the correct forms. We’re not to rebel against every human authority. Indeed, just the opposite. We’re to say that the sovereignty of God is working its way out in the context of even the most worst, vilest of rulers—Pilate—in the crucifixion. So our job is to engage the culture. Our job is also to engage the political structures of our day and age.

Let me read a little bit here from an email that was posted on BH from Rich Lusk about the implications of Christ for politics. Now, by politics, Lusk is saying something broader than what we think of. You know, the Enlightenment—that period of time, anti-Christian thought—really is what gave us the modern ideas of left and right, conservative and liberal. And so when we say “engage the power structures of our day and age,” we don’t mean by using the same categories necessarily that were handed to us from the Enlightenment. They’re all wrong. Whether conservative or liberal, a rebel against God is still a rebel against God.

And we have to affirm what’s right in liberalism and conservatism. A desire to show mercy to people, a desire to see wars end, etc., on the part of liberalism. And we have to affirm what’s right about conservatism—justice, the law of God. But we must challenge both groups based upon their prideful lack of submission to Christ. And so they get what they’re trying to do wrong every time. The liberal doesn’t help the poor in society by welfare programs. The conservative doesn’t really accomplish the justice of God when he doesn’t submit his law structure to Jesus Christ.

And increasingly, the conservative movement in our country is one of economic conservatism and moral libertarianism, which is not what the Scriptures talk about at all. So we need to challenge these things.

Now, that there is a political implication to the Gospel is obvious from the title. It’s also obvious from Paul’s interaction with the Roman Empire. And it’s obvious from the very terms used in the Scriptures to speak of the Gospel of Christ. Quoting from Lusk now: “The term Gospel was used by the Caesars to announce an enthronement or the birth of a royal son or a great military victory. If the early Christians claimed this term Gospel as their own, they were implicitly saying Jesus is the world’s true Lord, and Caesar’s pretentious claims are just a parody of the truth.

“The term ecclesia, which is the New Testament term that’s translated church, was used for the Greco-Roman town meeting. But if the Christian assembly is now regarded as an ecclesia—and it is—that means that Christians are implicitly claiming to be the real rulers of the world already. We don’t wait to get into positions of authority. We are now, through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the ecclesia of Oregon City, Vancouver, Portland, and the various cities represented. We rule in a completely different way, to be sure, through prayer and service, but it is ruling nonetheless.

“The church—the term from which we get our word liturgy—was used to describe the public works done for the common good, either by the Caesars for the people or by the people for Caesar. Caesar’s provision of public entertainment was a liturgy. That’s what this Greek word was used [for], that we now use for liturgy. And clearly we see this—now saying that really the true liturgy is the gift of God to his people, his benefit for us, and our responding public service to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

And so we have these implications in Acts 4:1-2. Peter quotes almost word for word a decree of Augustus Caesar but inserts Jesus’s name for his. The world has a new King who has now established a new empire. So Jesus has established his church. He’s established a Christian culture, and he has established his empire. And our job is to seek forth the implications of the work of Christ in each of these areas of our lives.

Now, the third point very briefly made is that I’ve said that this mirror outline helps us to connect things that wouldn’t normally be connected. We’ve talked about the implications of the three-fold language used for the comprehensive reign of Christ—the great rest that gives us in the culture that Christ has inaugurated, his comprehensive reign, and the requirements it brings to us when we go to work tomorrow, to engage in our commerce, when we go to the movies this week, or when we go to an entertainment event—to engage our mind in a way to affirm what’s good but also to challenge what is wrong about these cultural events.

And in a general sense, to seek the rebuilding of culture—not through a retraction or a pulling back from culture, nor a compromise with it, but rather a distinctive Christian evaluation of participation in that culture. But so we’ve seen that part. At the end of this narrative in its mirror portion, down here is Pilate’s giving permission to Joseph of Arimathea for the body, and the structure at the outline at the top of your page. We have Pilate at the beginning and Pilate referenced at the end. And this referencing at the end draws our attention to a man who now enters the narrative for the first time, and this is Joseph of Arimathea.

And here on your outline, I call this “The Gospel Embodied.” Joseph of Arimathea, verse 38: “After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave him permission.”

So we now see the secret disciple becoming public as he goes and publicly requests the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think that what we see here by noting Pilate’s permission is that what we have described for us as one of these two disciples at the end—that mirror the two thieves at the beginning of the narrative—is that this is a man who is not a revolutionary, who is not plotting things to take away the body of Jesus Christ.

But we have here a man who is subject to the governing authorities. Joseph of Arimathea submits to the governing authorities. He, in submission to God’s ruling through Pilate, seeks permission for the body of Christ. We have a movement from these zealots at the top of the narrative to the two disciples at the bottom. We have a movement from ethical rebels at the top on either side of Jesus to submissive subjects at the end.

Joseph of Arimathea is a submissive subject of Pilate. We have a movement from impatience to patience. You see, I’ve drawn out a huge task for the church of Jesus Christ and for us individually—of the implications of the comprehensive reign of Christ in church, culture, and empire. A huge task.

You know, I heard George Grant speak once. He said, “It’s always good to get a sermon or a talk to quote Calvin.” And he then quoted a comment on the culture wars from Calvin Culage, which I thought was pretty funny. I’m going to start with a quote from Calvin. Calvin Culage. Well, as we move to a conclusion here, my quote is also from Calvin, and it’s also from Calvin Culage.

Calvin Culage said, “You can’t do everything at once, but you can do something at once.”

Huge task, but the task is to be played out in the context of delight and rest in the greatest work of Christ as we go into our week. Enjoying the slide into second, enjoying the wonderful blessings that we’ll all experience in various ways this week. The task is accomplished, though, by seeking tremendous change in our culture. But you know, we can’t do everything at once, but you can do something at once.

Joseph of Arimathea, representing a submissive man, represents a patient man. The zealots threw off patience, threw off gradualism, and tried to enact through force the reign of Christ, the reign of Messiah, in the context of their land. So again, with these tremendously similar applications to us—a growingly Christless culture, a messiah-less church, and a kingless empire that is building in the context of our day and age. Some in our day and age who don’t like all of this and want to see things changed go about doing it in a zealot sort of fashion.

September 3rd has been set as the execution date for Paul Hill. Paul Hill was an ordained OPC pastor and then a PCA minister, member at Mickey Schneider’s church in Florida. Many of you know Mickey or heard of Mickey Schneider’s name. It’s where Mickey Schneider’s church is where Jim Jordan has his BH conference typically every summer. Paul Hill was excommunicated from Mickey Schneider’s church years ago for trying to convince people to take up weapons against abortionists. Paul Hill eventually killed, I think, two men at an abortion clinic and so was then found guilty of murder and will be executed on September 3rd.

Now Paul Hill represents the opposite of Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph of Arimathea goes and submissively asks permission from Pilate—the man who crucified Christ, who had him scourged and beaten and killed. But he patiently works with the established authorities in his care for the body of Christ. And the next thing he sought to do as a disciple was to do this thing—to see for the burial of Christ.

Paul Hill, on the other side, has no patience for the movement and the change of culture and politics that the expansion of Christ—the implications of Christ’s Gospel—give us. Paul Hill represents the zealot branch of Christianity. And that’s not what I’m advocating today. I’m advocating an engaging of our culture in the political spheres through the patient submission of what God has given us to do today.

You know, tomorrow, or actually today, there’ll be mothers here who have to change dirty diapers or dads that have to do that. Tomorrow, some of our men will get up and go to boring jobs. Today, you’ll all go home at the end of the night and sleep in the context, if you have a family, of that family, and you’ll kiss each other good night or tell each other greetings tomorrow morning in the name of Christ. You’ll bless each other as you go into the week. These are very small things, but these are the very things that build Christian culture. These are the very things that produce the kind of stability in the culture here at RCC that produces then an implication for governance and rule as well as cultural advance in the context of our day.

You can’t do everything at once, but you can do the next thing that God has given you to do.

Now, when you come forward in response to the preached Word today, do so thinking of some area in which perhaps you need to reassert the reign of Jesus Christ in your life. Perhaps it’s your job. Perhaps it’s the mission statement of the business that you’re running. Perhaps it’s the way you go about taking care of your children. Understanding that this is not an insignificant thing, but rather that the cleaning of a dirty diaper on a child is a very significant thing as we build up a culture of family and of service one to the other.

At the end of the day, remember that it’s Pilate who is the man of the sword, the man of great things, who wants to accomplish wonderful things through big acts of power. Whereas it’s Jesus Christ who reigns through the simple statement and witnessing to the truth. He said that’s what the king is. A king’s subjects follow the truth. They don’t follow the sword. And so the truth is that Jesus came to serve us, and we should serve one another as well.

Let me close from a quote again from Rich Lusk’s article. He says this: “The early Christians had no direct political leverage in the sense that they were highly marginalized socially and culturally—much like we are today in our day and age. And yet they were still able to act as a subversive, transforming presence within the empire, ultimately bringing it to its knees before Jesus.

“They accomplished this astounding political coup simply by being the church—preaching and confessing Jesus is Lord, enrolling in the militia Christi, the militia of Christ, in baptism, regularly manifesting the church as the new and true humanity at the Lord’s table, dying for the life of the world in mercy ministries. The emperor Julian noted that Christians not only cared for their own poor but also for the pagan poor better than the empire did. They did this by showing hospitality, binding and loosing people in church discipline to maintain the integrity of the community, and so forth.

“This is the church’s political agenda: this acting out of who we are as a people on the Lord’s day, and that as we go into the balance of the king’s day today, forms the basis for our assertions of the Messiahship of Christ to the church, forms the basis for the building of a culture as we build our families and knit them together with other people in the community of Christ. And our ruling in the context of the church becomes the basis for our political effect on the empire as well.

“This isn’t theory. This is what is proclaimed by the Gospel herald Pilate. This isn’t theory. This is what Paul preached and taught in the balance of his epistles—the three-fold manifestation of Christ in church, culture, and empire. And this isn’t theory. As Rich Lusk notes, this is exactly what the early church did—was to follow the instructions of that title of Christ, to follow the teachings of Paul. And as a result, they completely transformed the empire.

“It didn’t happen overnight. They couldn’t do everything at once, but as Calvin Culage says, they could do one thing at once immediately in subjection and obedience to Christ. And the end result of single actions of small obedience to Christ is the assertion and the building and manifestation of Christian culture, a Christian church, and a Christian empire.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you that you oversee wicked men to proclaim forth the universal and comprehensive reign of Christ. We pray now that as we come forward to offer ourselves afresh to you, we would do so consecrating again our entertainments, our vocations, our civil activities, our families, Lord God, and our integration into the church as good church people—to submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Lord God, for his comprehensive reign. And we pray that we might manifest that this week. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.