Dennis Tuuri

Matthew 28

In the handouts, I’ve structured it the way I’ll present it in a couple of minutes. Matthew 28. Be reading the entire chapter. Please stand for the reading of God’s wonderful proclamation word.

Now, after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it.

His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing is white as snow. And the guard shook for fear of him, and became like dead men. But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen as He said. Come see the place where the Lord lay and go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and indeed he is going before you into Galilee.

There you will see him. Behold, I have told you.” So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice.” So they came and held him by the feet and worshiped him. And then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”

Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, “Tell them, his disciples came at night and stole him away while we slept. And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” So they took the money and did as they were instructed. And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.

Then the 11 disciples went away into Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your most holy word. We thank you for the incredible message of the unusual future that we read in Matthew 28. May your Spirit write these words upon our hearts. Cause us to rejoice in them in our inmost being and go forth from this place to our Galilees as those sent by you. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I had a troubling conversation yesterday over an email with someone regarding the Terry Schiavo case, and I’ll mention that at the end of the sermon, but it made me think that sometimes we Christians are sort of like the Republicans. We do a lot better as the minority group. We’re not comfortable with leading. This text is a text that tells us that the church does indeed lead. It tells us the future after those eight days that change the world. What would come to pass? And it’s an unusual future. And I want to take the great commission in its fuller context. So important, I think, to do that. And I want to set this in the context of what we just celebrated on Friday as well.

So first, lest we forget the importance of God’s Friday, Great Friday, what we call Good Friday. And we mentioned this at the service on Friday. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ is presented in the Gospel of John as the great demonstration of the glory of God, dying for us, giving us life. That death is no accident. It’s no example of God’s being upset with sin. That death is what changed the world.

Now surely we celebrate the resurrection as the great moment of victory. But really the victory is accomplished. Our Savior can say in his dying words, “It is finished. It is finished.” And in one sense—in the sense of the perspective of John’s Gospel, the great capstone of all the Gospels—the death of Jesus Christ finishes what he had come to do. It is the culmination. It is maybe then okay to say if some head of state speak of six days that changed the world, the resurrection is an outworking of what Christ accomplished on the cross.

What did he accomplish on the cross? Well, he accomplished a substitutionary atonement. Kind of a couple of twenty-five cent words there, but a very important truth for biblical Christians. I don’t know if this is the best way to do this, but you know, the substitutionary atonement—a proper biblical understanding of it can be said in contrast to other views of the atonement. Charles Finney did not believe that the atonement of Jesus Christ, the death on the cross accomplished anything. He believed—well, it didn’t really accomplish our salvation. It wasn’t the ground and foundation of it. It was a piece of moral governance by God as governor, not judge. It was a demonstration of how really upset God is with sin. But that’s about it.

You see, but the scriptures tell us far more than that. The scriptures say that when Jesus died on the cross, the penalty for our sins—for the sins of God’s people—he died for us and he affected our atonement. Atonement is a made-up word, you know, it was made up: “atone” “at one.” That’s what it literally was meant to be. At onement is atonement. Our atonement with God is accomplished through Jesus Christ dying on that cross and, as Luther wrote in that beautiful hymn, “in death he swallows up death. Death died on that cross.” This is the great picture of Good Friday that we must not forget even as we move to resurrection Sunday.

Now on your outlines I have a page there of a little picture that your children can understand and hopefully we can. A picture from Leviticus—from the dusty old book of Leviticus with all those dusty old laws of cleansing. Can’t go into it now, but Leviticus, the cleansing section, chapters 11-16, culminating in the Day of Atonement—the picture of God’s Friday. Ultimately, it’s all about the rolling back of the curse. Uncleanness is not sin; it’s the effects of the fall. And cleanliness is the rolling away of those effects. And one of the things that’s talked about is leprosy. And Leviticus 14—a leprous man can be cleansed through a particular ritual. And then it goes on to have the verses that I provided on your outlines—a ritual in which the house is cleansed.

Okay, so we’ve got unity and diversity, the individual and Israel being justified, being cleansed from their sin. And it’s a cool piece of scripture. Okay, it is a wonderful little text. It lays out so easily in this chiastic structure that we’re used to. And when we do that, and even if we don’t do it, I suppose, but if we do it, we can see even more clearly the picture of what’s going on here, instructing us what happened on Good Friday—the substitutionary atonement.

You see how it works pretty well? In the A section, it’s the cleansing of the house, and B, it shall be clean. So the brackets are: this has to do with cleansing. The A sections. And look at the C sections: he shall slaughter one bird, and in the rematching C-section, he shall let the live bird go free. There it is. Another bird shall die for the live bird. Jesus Christ shall die for us. We don’t die. Jesus Christ dies, and I suppose united with him we can say we died in him, but one bird dies and one bird is let free.

So the structure shows us this wonderful movement. Look at the E sections: with the live bird you’ll take them up, and then in the matching E section along with the live bird. So this movement of dead bird to live bird is bracketed here in the middle as well, with the live bird being the emphasis of what’s going on.

The D section: the live bird is dipped in the blood of the slain bird as well as in living water. And then the matching section with the blood of the bird and with the running water. Living water, new birth, moving water, live—you know, running water. And the blood applied from the dead bird, and the live bird represents the cleansing of the house of Israel, the cleansing of the sins of God’s people because they’ve been made a new bird as they’ve come in contact with that running water. Water is this picture of birth and a new birth and a new creation of this living bird because of the death of the other bird.

And then the G sections: he sprinkles the house and he cleanses the house. So the whole purpose of this cleansing ritual is to show that the one will come who will die for the people, and in that death he will create in us a living state, and we will be new living birds in him as it were.

And then at the very center, this ritual—this sprinkling happens seven times. And the center is the eighth section of this 15-part structure, a seven and an eight right at the middle. And we know what that’s all about. We know the seven days of creation and the eighth day. Sabbaths in the Old Testament, we meet on the eighth day. And the altar had to be cleansed for eight days. And the sacrificial animal was ready eight days afterwards, and the priests were sanctified for eight days. It is a new world. This is the beginning of the new world we’re reading about here.

And the lessons from this are clearly pictured. I’ve articulated them here on your outline. Cleansing is linked to atonement and resurrection. The A section is introduction and conclusion to the specifics. The G section surrounds the center, forming another bracket to the entire B to S section. So we have cleansing and cleansing and living. And this is what’s going on. It is the atonement and resurrection that accomplishes the definitive removal of the manifestations of the fall—uncleanness.

Point 3. Atonement and cleansing is through substitutionary death. The death of another bird for the ones that will be living. And all this is pictured as a new creation. Points 4 and 5. The new creation of resurrection as a corporate dimension—this is the whole house of Israel.

Jesus affected on God’s Friday, on Great Friday, a substitutionary, real, and effectual atonement—not some picture, not some lesson about how horrible sin is, that it would cause the Savior to die. No. Jesus Christ died for our sins. He took upon himself the just punishment, every bit of it, for us.

Back to Finney: he says this: “Neither is the atonement nor anything in the mediatorial work of Christ the foundation of our justification in the sense of the source moving or procuring cause.” And I agree with one commentator who said that this is probably the most wicked thing that Charles Finney ever said—to divorce what happened on Great Friday from the cause of our salvation and our atonement, our right standing, our justification with God.

The scriptures are clear. 1 Corinthians 15: Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day. He died for our sins to affect the just punishment for them on behalf of God. Finney disagrees. It is not founded in Christ literally suffering the exact penalty of the law for us sinners, in this sense literally purchasing their justification, eternal salvation. Finney is wrong when he denies that is what happened. Of course it does. The scriptures are quite clear. The scriptures call Finney a liar. And the scriptures give us great comfort in rooting our justification in the historical action of Great Friday—Good Friday, God’s Friday—Jesus Christ making a full, effectual atonement for his people.

You see, Finney was driven this way because he didn’t want to believe in a sovereign God who elected some and not others. You say, “Well, if Jesus died for sins and created justification, then nobody’s going to hell anymore.” Well, the point is that Isaiah tells us quite clearly that Jesus died for his people, for his lambs, and for those lambs, for his people, for the elect of God—not on any basis of anything in us. We’re just like the non-elect. But because God so chose us, then Jesus creates justification for us by his historical act 2,000 years ago.

1 Peter 3:18: We read, “Christ died for sins.” Then he said, “Oh, no, no, no, no. The death of Christ is not retributive for our sins.” 1 Peter goes on to say, “The righteous, the living”—you know, the bird was perfect—”the righteous for the unrighteous.” Then he denies Christ represented anybody on the cross definitively to bring you to God. 1 Peter goes on to say—Finney disagrees, saying the mediatorial work of Christ never procured anything for us. Of course, Peter says, “Oh no. Friday was a great day because it’s what affected our redemption. It’s what affected our justification. It took—in it, Jesus pardons us as sinners by causing Jesus to die for us.”

1 Peter 2:22, 2:24: he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you were healed. Then in 2 Corinthians 5: he made him who knew no sin to be sin—that is, to take upon him our sin punishment on our behalf—so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.

In Isaiah 53, this verse talks about Jesus. Listen to the words: He Jesus was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him. And by his scourging, we are healed.

Lest we forget, in our rivalries of resurrection, mourning the death of Jesus Christ made a full and effectual atonement for us. Jesus Christ died as our substitute, as our substitute. The resurrection is the working out of the well-being of all that Jesus accomplished. The Father looks upon the work of the Savior and says, “Wonderfully done,” and raises him from the dead. And in so doing raises us.

Resurrection morning in Matthew 28 is very important. We want to get to the great commission and talk about that a little bit at the end. But you know, we really mess up if we just take the great commission out of its context. We don’t fully appreciate it. The context is this wonderful resurrection morning, Easter morning—this wonderful day when two Marys. Ah, the twinning goes on again in the Gospels over and over again. Right in the first verse, it tells us that. Well, there’s two Marys. So twinning. There’s a comparison going on.

And what’s the comparison? It’s these helpless, defenseless women, and it’s these big, strong guards of the tomb. That’s the comparison going on here. It’s an unusual future because it’s not carried by those big, strong, powerful men. The future is carried by the weak women. It’s not carried by the men who had been promised glory, money for their lie. It’s carried by the women who are promised nothing more than the joy of knowing Jesus is resurrected.

It’s not carried by the men whose life would be supposedly made secure by the wicked Jews. No, it’s carried by the ones who know that their life has been made secure once for all on Great Friday and now made effectual through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s not carried by the strong men who are engaged in political schemes, intrigue, conspiracies. Yes, conspiracies do exist in the world. But need we fear them? No. Because the future is unusual. It’s not carried by powerful people, smart guys, moneyed people protected by the government. Uh-uh. It’s carried by weak women whose fears have been allayed by the angel.

That’s who it’s carried by. The structure is interesting. It shows us these connections. It shows us the angel and the women there and the men afraid. But the angel doesn’t tell the strong guards not to be afraid. They’re like lying. They’re like dead men. But the angel says, “Do not fear,” to the women. You see, the future is carried by those whose fears are relieved by the heavenly message that Jesus is risen. That’s you and I.

The future is carried by those who then receive in response to this freeing of them from fear a mission from God. The women go on a mission from God. The angel doesn’t just there to bring them a relieving of fear and joy—that’s certainly there. But the angel says, “Go.” He sent ones, the apostles—little “a,” sent on a mission from God. They carry the future. These weak women, they carry it with a message that’s interesting, too.

They carry the message to go to Galilee. Galilee is mentioned three times in the text. And it’s interesting to me what’s going on. Well, we, if we know the Gospels very well, Galilee and Judea have been kind of the back and forth of the whole picture. Jesus begins his ministry up in Galilee, but he in Judea is where he is baptized and does the wilderness stuff. Jesus goes away to Galilee. That’s where all the fishing up there in the north goes on. All the ministry sort of stuff. But he comes back to Judea for his second baptism on the cross. He comes back for that. And then he goes away to Galilee once more to initiate the mission of the men and women who will follow him. They go back to Jerusalem later. That’s where Pentecost happens. That’s where their baptism occurs. And then they’re told on the basis of that to go from Jerusalem to Judea to the uttermost parts of the earth.

We talked last week about the movement of the Holy of Holies to the city in the religious place. And now we have this movement from Jerusalem out to the world. And Galilee—described in the scriptures, the inspired word of God, as the desired of the nations. You see, that’s where Jew and Gentile are mixing up there in the north, and that becomes the place, the focal place of ministry. The Gospel message is bursting the bounds of Israel and Jerusalem. The message will go into all the world. And that’s specifically what’s told them as they meet in Galilee to worship our Savior.

And they’re going to carry the future then not just of Jerusalem or Israel. It’s the future of the world. It’s an unusual future that bursts the bounds of the old wineskins and bursts out to Galilee and from there to the uttermost parts of the earth. And it’s an unusual future carried not by big, hulking, strong, powerful men, but carried by initially here these women.

The contrast is clearly drawn before them. Notice in this as well that the old humanity clings to old glory—not mediated from God, old life and old fallen knowledge, right? They’re promised glory, coins, money. Money is weighty things. It’s supposed to be—it was then, well, we once again here, I suppose. But it’s carried by glory or—it’s—it’s this gift of glory. But it’s glory obtained not through Christ. It’s false glory they’re promised.

And they’re promised false security. They want life and their lives are secured supposedly by this Jewish power base. And of course, we know that’s ridiculous. And the end result of all this is that these men who had brought a truthful report at the beginning of their little section of the account at the end go out with a lie. False knowledge, you see. So we have a world that operates in these things. Everybody wants these three things. Everybody’s motivated by them. It’s what we’re all about. The question is: who carries the future? Those who have the world’s power, glory, and knowledge and might and security? Or those weak women who go out with the glory of forgiven sins, the knowledge of the truth of Jesus Christ, and rejoicing life together with him, which our Savior promises at the end of the great commission?

So beginning and end of the women narrative, they’re contrasted with these strong mighty men. It’s an unusual future. And notice in the central section, the women go, and as they’re obeying Jesus, they meet Jesus while they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. While they’re going about a very simple task—to go tell somebody something, to use their tongues in the newness of their life on Easter morning, to use that member of their body, the tongue, to speak the words of truth, and to give instructions to the disciples to go to Galilee.

A little bit of a code word maybe, too. You know, Galilee was where they knew—if somebody, you know, if—it is kind of proof that they got the message from the heavenly messenger that they’re saying Galilee. Only the 11 knew that. You see, so it’s kind of proof that he is actually risen. But it’s while they go that Jesus appears to them—not while they go off meditating, searching in their hearts for Jesus, but while they go about the simple task of going and telling somebody something.

While we go about, see, it’s an unusual future. It’s while we go about simple work that Jesus comes to us and tells—says, “Rejoice.” And they worship him. They worship him. At the center of this middle narrative, the middle of the three, the women worship him. And in response to that worship, Jesus then tells them, “I mean, you came here today, right, to worship Jesus, to grab a hold of him, to fall at his feet and say, ‘Jesus, we love you. Thank you for Great Friday.’ We came here.”

And Jesus tells us—he tells us—every Lord’s day, “Do not be afraid.” Because fear is the mind killer. Fear is the mission killer. You see, we need to hear that over and over again because it looks so much like the men in the halls of power and the men with media power and money and physical might carry the future. And we’re fearful because of that. But he tells us, just like he told them, “Don’t be afraid.” We come to worship and he assures us not to be afraid, that he carries the unusual future.

And he gives us a mandate, just like he gave them, and a simple one: Go. He says he tells the same heavenly mandate the angels had given to them. Go, tell the brothers to go to—go to Galilee. A simple message, a beautiful little story, a beautiful Easter morning vignette positing two views of what will happen in the future. That if we were to look with the eyes of sight, surely the mighty men carry the future.

But if we look with the eyes of faith, then we know that the future is carried in an unusual fashion by weak women.

Then comes the great commission, and we can say that the time reference at the beginning of that beautiful Easter morning is important—at the end of the Sabbaths as the new day begins. This is when all this stuff happens. The old world is fading away. The new creation has come. The beginning of the future now takes place.

And so this unusual future that’s given to them here is placed in the context of being the future not just of that day but the future of the history of the world. And it’s in that context that then the great commission is given.

Well, the great commission is, you know, a pretty understood text. I suppose we hear it a lot, particularly at this church. On your outlines, you know, I’ve giving you the references again there that it is, after all, the central text or verse for our mission statement as a church. Our mission statement is worshiping the triune God and transforming the fallen world. Sometimes you miss that part—that it’s worship that then becomes transformation. But that happens in the great commission text explicitly. It’s while they worship Jesus in Galilee. It’s in the context of hilltop worship that Jesus gives them the great commission. And the commission is essentially our strategy map as a church.

Our worship should lead to a sense of mission and purpose—where to go. Our worship should lead to creating disciples. Discipleship in this statement of the great commission is a header. And the two ways of making disciples is to baptize them and teach them. Well, that’s what we do in this church. A lot of churches, other churches, they teach them and maybe baptize them because it’s most important what you think.

Well, we say it’s most important again—it’s an unusual future—it’s most important what you do. You see, something done to you externally, to a passive baby, is very important. It’s the beginning of discipleship. You see, and on the basis of that, we teach the new created ones the commandments of Christ. We’re brought out of Egypt and then given the law. We go through Leviticus, the description of the cleansing rituals and the great Day of Atonement, and then they’re given the law as a new creature. You see, that’s what making disciples is—bringing them into the jurisdiction of Christ, his rule and reign in the new world, and then teaching them to obey whatsoever I’ve commanded you to do.

And then the emphasis then is that as we go about doing this on a mission making disciples, we have community guaranteed. Guaranteed community. I don’t care how alone you might feel at times. The Lord Jesus Christ’s promise comes resounding out in this Easter story: “Lo, I am with you always.” I told someone I talked to this week who was worried about friends. You know, friends can become idolatrous like anything else—money, good stuff, idolatrous. Sometimes God breaks down every friendship to resecure our basis of all friendships being the friend who ultimately is the one who sticks closer than a brother, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Jesus promises us community, and this future is what moves the world. The great commission determines the course of history.

Well, I asked the question, as we asked last week: where are we in the text? This is also a point at which Matthew 28 can frequently be misused. Probably I’ve done it myself. Where are we in the text? Are we the disciples or the apostles?

Now, it says disciples, but these are the 11. These are the apostles of the church. These are the minister guides, the ruling elders, teaching elders, deacons—whatever you want to call them. These are the special officers of the church who are receiving the great commission. Our culture—maybe all cultures have been, I don’t know—but our culture is taken up with the desire to do the super thing. DVD Apprentice will like the reference. What does it take to do the super thing? That’s what we want. We want to make our lives matter. We want to do the super thing. We want to do something really important for the kingdom.

So it’s real easy to start thinking that it’s our job individually—and maybe it’s the way I preach—you can go away thinking it’s my job to go out and, you know, change the whole world. Well, it is in a sense, but you see, in the text these guys are pastors. They’re going to become the pastors of the church. It’s appropriate to think in a general sense of the mission, discipleship and community that comes to us.

But the other—probably the primary place that most Christians should see themselves in this text—are those whom the ministers of the church will baptize and disciple and have the joy of Christian unity and community. That’s where we are. We’re the ones who have been discipled. We’re the ones that were reached with the message of the apostles. And that’s a little different.

I thought to myself: what does it mean, Easter morning, to us? And I came—I thought for several weeks about Romans 6: “Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” That’s the Easter message. We’re supposed to walk in newness of life.

In Romans 6, well, what does that mean? Well, Romans 6 goes on to tell us, verse 13: “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” That’s a summary statement from Romans 6. That’s where we’re at in the text. We’re those who have been given newness of life, baptized, and we’re learning how to use all the members of our body for Jesus.

What does it mean—members? Well, it’s used several times, explicitly. We could say generally a member is just every part of your body—your nose, your eyes, your ears, feet, whatever it is. There are some specific usages in the scriptures. In the Gospels, Jesus refers to our eye and our hand. And again, in the Epistles, eye and hand are specific members that are to be thrown away if you can’t use them righteously.

So eye and hand—what we’re looked to, oh, young men, older men: you know, how do you go forth fulfilling your mission using your eye, one of the members of your body, for righteousness and not sinfulness? You know what I’m talking about. The unusual future is brought about by a simple action of making a covenant with your eye not to look upon things you shouldn’t look upon and to use that member for righteousness, not for unrighteousness.

Your hand—do a lot of things with our hands, right? Get up in the morning and brush our teeth. And you know, the newness of life is as simple as that. Presenting our members to righteousness. Somehow we brush our teeth as new creatures in Christ. And the simple act of caring for our body in that way and brushing our teeth is a demonstration of the newness of life.

You know, it’s interesting. Peggy Noonan wrote a pretty good piece on the Schiavo case, and she said, “You know, I understand the motivation of the people that want to see a woman dying and want to lift a car off of a child crushed under it. The adrenaline’s flowing in a lot of people the last two weeks, but she said, “I don’t understand the motivation of people who are so anxious to have the plug pulled and who are so upset with those who don’t want to have the tube pulled.” She said, “It’s almost as if they of death.”

Well, that’s exactly what the Bible says. The old creation—those big burly soldiers in the text—hate life and they love death. And so it shouldn’t surprise us—it shouldn’t surprise us that ultimately they start to then not take care of their own bodies or other people’s bodies. The simple act of caring for your body is acting out the new creation life in Jesus.

Sorry if it’s a little anticlimactic for you, but that’s the sort of unusual future I think the text tells us about—eyes and hands being used for the Savior. Putting our hand to our work tomorrow morning. We work differently. We’re to work not like the old world that’s passing away with lies and false glory and false security. We’re to work in the new life using our hands as we write purchase orders or bids or whatever it is, contracts. We’re using them for Jesus Christ.

If that’s not what the text means, it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t just mean present the important things you do to Jesus. It says present your members, all of them, everything you do as servants to righteousness. And this is Romans 6 says—working out, walking in newness of life. It’s that simple.

Sexual members are referred to—members are not to be joined to a harlot. Very important. The secret members of our bodies are to be used for righteousness’ sake in the context of marriage. But that ain’t enough—in the context of righteousness. We have conjugal relationships with one another in newness of life. You see, the scriptures make that clear.

Our tongue—James says our tongue is a member set on fire from hell. And when we use—that’s the example immediately here. The women are using their feet, those members. They’re using their tongues with a simple message: “Hey, Jesus says, ‘Meet him in Galilee.’” That simple. You see, that’s the unusual future that we have—directed by people doing the simple things of speech, putting our hand to work, where we walk, doing all these things in newness of life.

I know we want to do the super thing. We want to make our lives mean something really important. And you know, and we change that diaper or when we drive the car to work one more day and when we write one more line of code and when we discipline the children one more time for not making their bedrooms, we think that somehow we’ve failed. The “quiet lives of despair,” you know, that supposedly we’re supposed to be finding ourselves in middle life.

And we do if our goal is the super thing. But if we see the unusual future—that the future is not carried by the mighty, the powerful, the rich, the people that were doing the super thing, telling the lie that day that would redound over years to come. The future isn’t inclined toward them. The future is inclined to those who do the simple things, but do every one of them for Jesus Christ, for his kingdom, working out the newness of life that we have.

The simple things—we are identified in the text as those who present our members to righteousness in simple ways being taught as disciples the relationship of Christ’s word to everything. We are not world-conquering men in the text. Our identification is with those weak women who seem not to have whatever they need to turn the future. We are identified as the bride of Jesus Christ. We are identified as those women on Easter morning who went forth carrying the future and dictating it by telling the men who would be powerful, of course, to go to Galilee and receive the great commission and fulfill it.

But it starts—it starts with the simple acts of obedience of presentation of members in honor and reverence and worship of Jesus first, and then in simple obedient mission to him as we move into the week.

Are we part of what is passing away, or are we a participant in this unusual future? The future is inclined to us.

Political action—the Terry Schiavo case. My, how sad. And yet, and yet there is—as Andrew Sandlin said in a recent article—there is silver linings to this thing. I mean, it is absolutely astonishing that the life of a nobody, a weak, completely weakened woman, could so rivet the eyes and hearts of so much of the nation upon her because this culture is still Christian at its core. It cares about life, and that’s the riveting aspect. And as Sandlin points out, we have an evangelical president, head of the Senate, head of the House, delay the whip of the House, all these Christian men trying desperately to save this woman.

Astonishing. Can you imagine that under Nixon or Clinton or all kinds of past presidents? The thing has changed, folks. It’s changed. And you know, I want to point out something else, and I hope I don’t get in trouble with you for this, but I think that we have to be very careful. The new world is in obeying the commandments of Christ. Jesus says that the spousal relationship trumps the previous family relationship. Jesus says that new families—you leave father and mother and you start a new household. And we should not find it so abhorrent that the legal courts of this country, based in Christian perspectives, want to uphold spousal rights.

Now the horrible thing is—and this is interesting too—the horrible thing is that the spouse exercising these rights, who by the way has been subject to a whole host of gossip, slander, following a mob to do violence with words. You don’t know that man. I don’t know that man. We don’t know him. All we hear—what we hear bandied about the internet. Watch it, folks. Do not become part of that culture of death to reputation and relationship.

Now, what we do know is that he still exercised spousal rights while living with another woman. That’s the horror of the thing. Adultery. The culture should not uphold bigamous spousal rights. That’s where the focal point should be. You see, that’s the Gospel-affirming, discipleship-confirming point of this thing. But don’t miss all the blessings in this case. And don’t think that Terry Schiavo would misinterpret her own death.

A Catholic woman, baptized. Our presupposition is she’s a believer in Jesus Christ. She understands martyrdom. Do we? Do we know that sometimes the thing to do is to quietly die when there’s no other option? And in our death, that will produce movement for the future. It’ll produce people after the emotions have gone through saying, “How do we let a man exercise spousal rights when for years he’s been sleeping with another woman?” That’s what it will hopefully lead us to do.

But we want the super thing. You see, we want to somehow, you know, be greater than titans and affect the reversal of this thing. Not looking for the silver linings. You know, I—this conversation I had with this person compared the situation in Florida and said, “Well, it’s clear it’s like the Nazis are in charge in America. Can we be that crazy? Christians to think that—I mean, we are in a culture struggling, no doubt, with legal issues that need to be adopted, need to be addressed and reformed, but there are legal issues being addressed here and legal issues that are based upon the Christian legal system, and we have Christian men who have done everything they could in their power—the governor, the president, congressman, no doubt many of these lawyers who sat and decided this case, the judges were also Christian men doing their best to please Jesus with the members of their tongues as they address this and their hands.

Compare this to Nazi Germany. It’s ridiculous. We have a culture of life in this country. It’s quite clear now. We do have those who are anxious to pull the tube. They’re there. They’re being exposed. We know that those powerful men, Easter Sunday morning, who spread the conspiracy could not be kept secure. And neither will those men who hate life and love death as God’s word tells us the ungodly do.

But make no mistake about it, there are many good things to understand in the context of this scenario. And we should take a calm, deliberative voice in speaking into this the truths of the Gospel—not hoping to do the super thing, but to do the normal small things. You know, political action is the super thing now. Well, you know, we want to get busy down in Salem and make a theocratic government and do the super thing that way.

But what’s the purpose of that? Let me read you the purpose of that. You know, I’m one of those guys who want to change the government. But what’s the purpose of governmental change? Well, in 1 Timothy 2, Paul says: “I exhort first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority.”

Okay. So our action in terms of politics in reference to the president, the governor, Salem—yada. He’s going to tell us the purpose of these prayers. What is it? A super thing? Uh-uh. “So that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” So that we might lead a quiet, peaceful life in all godliness and honesty. Not the super thing—the normal thing, the day-by-day thing.

And I tell you that I feel pretty free in this country to lead a quiet and peaceful life. I know about abortion. I know about the new bills in the legislature and all that stuff. But let me tell you something: on Great Friday and Resurrection Sunday, we had best be so thankful for the quiet and peaceable lives we are able to do. We can use our tongues, our hands, our feet—the members of our body—in the simple small things of life. We can do these things and we can know that determines the course of the future from Matthew 28.

“This is good and acceptable.” The text goes on to say: “in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” How does evangelism occur? Well, it occurs by you going home today and having a nice little Easter get-together with your family or friends, then going up tomorrow morning, getting up tomorrow morning and diapering the baby or doing the homeschool or praying for your husband or kissing your wife goodbye and going to work and being an honest employer and showing up on time, and yes, having some degree of involvement in political affairs at the right time.

But you do your normal life, you see, and that changes the future. And that’s the way the world is converted. When the end comes for the godless, for the powerful men who think they control the future, and the end will come, the world will become increasingly Christianized. That clear in the scriptures. And when the end for them comes, it doesn’t come by some supernatural act of you or me or the church. It comes—1 Timothy says—as a result of leading quiet and peaceable lives, doing your work to the glory of Jesus, and yes, praising him when you talk to your neighbors and friends, and yes, using opportunity to use your tongue to bless and not to curse, and to seek the well-being of those around you through preaching the Gospel of Christ.

But that’s what changes the world. It’s an unusual future, and it’s a future that I think should be a great encouragement to you and me.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for the small things of life. We thank you that we can do today and we will in a couple of minutes here use the members of our body in simple ways and yet in world-changing ways to affect the growing manifestation of the kingdom of our Savior. We thank you, Lord God, for the small things of life that we can walk in newness of life by using the simple members of our body as servants to righteousness. Thank you for these things. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.