Hope Blog

▶ 0:58:08

Matt admitted up front that he was attempting an unusual combination — our
great warrior God who readies himself for battle, and the widow and the orphan, the people
most often unseen. Elodia had opened the service on the same note: God sees the lonely, the
ostracized, the powerless. By the end it was clear the two halves were never two topics.

One more word on the Great Commission

▶ 0:59:10

Having finished John and then spent two Sundays on the Great Commission, Matt snuck in one
more note, because it sets up everything that follows. The Commission is not a deadline
project handed to the church on delegated authority to complete on Christ’s behalf while he
steps away. It is his own project. He is the seeker and the saver of the lost, he was given
all authority in heaven and on earth, and he still has it. The passages that stress God being
with us carry a particular sense: God is accomplishing the great act, and he lets us
help — which is a source of dignity and honor. One of the things he asks of us is baptism,
and a Baptism Sunday is coming this summer, water slide and all: we are baptized because Jesus
asked us to be, because he was, and because it confesses that we follow him and belong to him.

1. Whose armor is it?

▶ 1:01:26

We have human opponents, Matt said, but our actual enemies are not human — they are
spiritual beings with dark intent, aimed primarily against God, the last of them being death.
“That’s hard to remember when someone’s yelling at you or bothering you a lot. That person is
not your enemy.” Then the gear itself: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness,
shoes of readiness from the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the
sword of the Spirit, and prayer at all times
(Ephesians 6:14–18).
Spiritual weapons for spiritual problems, and serious ones.

▶ 1:04:39

Then the turn that carried the message. Isaiah 59 is prophetic literature about God seeing
injustice and finding nobody doing anything about it.

“Where have we seen that before?” Matt asked. The breastplate of righteousness. The helmet
of salvation. “That’s heavy metal. Come on.” Paul was not jazzing up the end of Ephesians so
the imagery would land on throw pillows; as a well-trained first-century Jew who knew the Old
Testament far better than we do, he was quoting. When we battle Ephesians 6 style, we are
wearing God’s stuff.

2. The same gear, on his anointed

▶ 1:07:03

The pattern repeats. Isaiah 11 promises a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a king from David’s
line on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests — and it tells you how he judges before it tells you
how he is dressed.

▶ 1:09:25

David sings the same thing in Psalm 18:31–35:
the God who equipped him with strength, trained his hands for war so his arms could bend a bow
of bronze — “that’s a flex” — and gave him the shield of his salvation. So: in Isaiah 59 God
fights like a mighty warrior; in Isaiah 11 the Messiah fights in the Spirit and power of God,
wearing God’s gear; in Psalm 18 the anointed king is girded the same way. Which raises the
question the rest of the message answers. What sort of battle is this?

3. What our warrior God fights for

▶ 1:11:26

Isaiah already told us: judgment for the wicked, justice for the meek. And the specifics
are relentless.

Matt’s image for what this makes of Ephesians 6: it is not armor God handed over and walked
away from, it is “a child wearing his dad’s samurai stuff.” Mimicry. We are in God’s fight,
wearing God’s things.

▶ 1:12:36

Deuteronomy 10:17–18
stacks the titles — God of gods, Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, the awesome God — and
Matt loved the hype. “This is not Prince Ali, fabulous he, gold camels, watch me flex a bunch
of stupid stuff. Our great God, when he’s talking about his might and power, this is how he
flexes: I don’t take bribes. I defend the fatherless. I protect the widow. I love the
sojourner.”

▶ 1:14:01

Then Isaiah 1:13–17,
where God says your new moons and appointed feasts have become a burden he is weary of bearing,
and he will hide his eyes from your many prayers, because your hands are full of blood. The
remedy is not more religion: learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice
to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. Matt filled in why these two keep appearing
together — a father and a husband held a literal, legal, protective role, and without them a
household was open to exploitation. God hates that.
Zechariah 7:9–10
says it again; so does
Psalm 146:7–9.

4. Beyond ethics — this is worship

▶ 1:16:17

James, Matt noted, is plainly using religious as a compliment, whatever the
twentieth century did to the word. And here is the main point of the morning: the church does
not defend the poor, the widow, the orphan and the sojourner in order to be ethical. Remember
whose armor we are wearing. This is imitation of our great Father, which makes it worship — the
same logic as the Great Commission, done not without him but with him, and not in the major
role but the minor one, following along behind.

5. A battle scene at Nain

▶ 1:18:33

In Luke 4:17–21
Jesus takes the scroll of Isaiah and reads that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to proclaim
good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, sight to the blind — and then sits down. He is
the promised one of Isaiah 11, wearing the belt of righteousness, fighting God’s own war.
Luke 7 shows what that looks like in the field.

▶ 1:19:50

A dead man is being carried out of the town gate — the only son of his mother, and she a
widow. Matt sat in the tragedy rather than rushing it: her husband, whose God-given role was to
protect the household, had died, and what comfort remained was a son who could stand for her
legally and be there for her. Now he is dead too, and she is dependent on her community.

The crowd’s verdict was that a great prophet had arisen and God had visited his people —
and they were right on both counts, Matt said, not only because of the miracle but because
this is exactly the kind of thing God does. The town had come out prepared to fight for her.
They simply could not fight the way Jesus could.

▶ 1:22:04

Which is why Paul gives the church instructions rather than sentiment.
1 Timothy 5:3–5
tells families with the means to care for their own — not as a put-down, Matt was careful to
say, but because God loves that kind of thing — and reserves the church’s protection for the
widow who is “left all alone.” The woman at Nain with no backup at all: that is who needs the
church family.

6. Plastic swords

▶ 1:23:56

“I don’t think spiritual warfare is just about barking at the devil,” Matt said. It is
prayers for deliverance, yes — lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil — “but you know
what else it’s all about? Wearing God’s gear and getting involved in the stuff he cares
about.” He pointed to how Mandy frames Hope’s foster and adopt ministry at their family events:
they are not pursuing morality or social justice or whatever you want to call it. Jesus is
Lord, he is the focus, and these things are offered to his honor. “We are not merely nice folks
chapel.”

And there is no scoreboard. There is no critical mass of good deeds that triggers Christ’s
return. Our hope is in him — the seeker and saver of the lost, the transformer of broken people,
the builder of families who places the lonely in homes and rebuilds the ancient ruins. “We kind
of get our plastic sword out and follow him into battle.”

Care for the widow and the orphan offered that way is a thanks offering — a peace offering, a
joyful act of worship, doing the kind of thing he is all about.

What happened next

▶ 1:26:56

Matt was a sentence from praying when Peter asked for the microphone — “Look, this is Hope
Chapel. You can’t get this anywhere else.” Peter told of a season when his business and his
health were both under pressure, and of sensing the Lord say not to let it go: fight for
these guys, and see them delivered. He fought, asking God for wisdom and for kindness
toward the clients he was fighting for, and the accounts held; then new ones came. His addition
to the message was worth the interruption: taking care of the oppressed is not only our offering
to God, it is God’s invitation into intimacy, because that is where he already is. He said Hope
has a prophetic destiny in this — a church that celebrates the people the world would overlook,
because a body loving those people reflects the heart of God. He closed by praying for the lion
who roars on behalf of the weak to unite the room’s hearts to fear God’s name, and had the
congregation roar with him.

▶ 1:20:28

Matt picked up where he had left off the week before, on practical obedience,
and narrowed to the one part of the Great Commission most people flinch at: evangelism. Not
because it is the whole of disciple-making, but because it is the biggest hurdle, and because
our thinking about it is usually a little off.

Why obedience feels like a loss

▶ 1:21:00

Christianity is not meant to enter our heads, stay there, and die on a shelf. What stops
it, in Matt’s reading, is a self-preservation impulse that defends our way of life, our
habits, even our addictions. Letting go of any of it can feel like a death. What helps is
grace, love for him, and knowing him well enough to know he is trustworthy — remembering the
times you felt transferred
out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved Son. We do give things up.
In exchange: life for death, peace, the honor of serving him, the joy of his presence.

Back to the Commission — and the question underneath it

▶ 1:24:08

“I am with you” is a recurring line in Scripture, and when God says it he means he is going
to accomplish the project. He is the active party; being with him is what we do. But this week
the question was not how — it was why. Why is it better to be a disciple than
not? Eternal life is a large part of the answer, but not all of it. Even if you knew someone
would come to faith on their deathbed regardless, the Spirit would still move you to speak,
because the dominion of darkness is insufferable right now and the kingdom is on offer right
now.

▶ 1:26:27

That is the ultimate goal, and it is for later and for right now. Which means the goal is
not productivity. It is intimacy.

God is competent

▶ 1:27:56

Matt had fun with the idea of angels watching us fixate on becoming servants like them —
are we a joke to you? We already are the thing you’re anxious about becoming. He has
uncountably many servants already. He was never short-handed.

Then the harder point. John
6:44–45 and John
6:65: no one comes to Jesus unless the Father draws him, unless it is granted him.
“It appears to me that God is competent,” Matt said — “not just an important ingredient in
this process, but the main ingredient.”

▶ 1:29:21

And yet somebody is needed, which is Paul’s whole argument:

Which retires a familiar slogan. “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use
words” — Matt’s response was flat: for every man, woman and child it is necessary to use words,
at least at some point. We are humans; we communicate in human language. The gospel being
articulated matters enormously to God.

Who is the sender?

▶ 1:29:56

This was the point he wanted to land, and he knew some preachers would dislike it. The
worry is that unless you burden people with obligation, they won’t move. Matt’s answer: that
isn’t even true. Living under the weight of that burden is not motivating — people ignore it,
or they embrace it and burn out.

Yes, churches and agencies send people; that happens practically. But the grace to send is
the Lord’s, and it is his harvest. If you are afraid of botching an evangelism attempt,
remember he can send more waves, he can send someone to clean up after you, and he can send
himself — as with the accounts of Muslims around the world dreaming of Jesus. He is perfectly
capable of getting off his throne.

▶ 1:31:56

He sounds involved. He sounds motivated. Could he hypothetically handle the whole project
himself? John
16:8 — when the Helper comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and
righteousness and judgment. That is a considerable load-bearing capacity. And the church’s
nourishment already rests on Jesus: Paul tells husbands that no one ever hated his own flesh
but nourishes and cherishes it,
just as
Christ does the church. We are members of his body. He does not act hatefully toward us.
So we obey him not as butlers but as children and friends.

So who actually benefits?

▶ 1:34:41

Matt ran four stories through one question. The widow puts two copper coins in the treasury
and Jesus says she gave more than anyone
(Mark
12:41–44). Who benefited? Not the treasury — God is not served by human hands as if he
needed anything, and he was not waiting at the temple to see what came in. She got the honor
and dignity of serving God with her whole self, and she is spoken of all over the world
today.

Mary anoints Jesus’ feet
(John
12:1–8) — not because the disciples needed it done, since some of them were annoyed by it.
Mary got the dignity and joy of pouring out something expensive and something of herself.
Zacchaeus climbs the tree, and Jesus talks him into repenting
(Luke
19:1–10). The people he had overtaxed had likely long since written it off as the cost of
living under Rome. Zacchaeus found life; the kingdom came into his house.

▶ 1:37:56

And Naaman, the Syrian commander who finally took a slave girl’s advice and dipped in the
Jordan
(2
Kings 5:1–14). The Syrian army could have hired someone else; the nation was not
desperate for the fix. The man himself benefited from an act of obedience that started out
embarrassing. Obedience brings glory and wholeness and beauty into our lives — and it is
something we get to do with him.

Tijuana, and the man with the blue eyes

▶ 1:40:02

Spring break 2007, Tijuana, on a team from his church at the time. Matt had been praying
hard — not to share the gospel more, he admits, but to finally lead someone to Christ, to seal
the deal. That afternoon a Mexican man with striking blue eyes asked what they were doing;
Matt, interpreting for his team, explained the evening conference and the prayer they were
offering.

▶ 1:41:45

Five or six hours later, in a square with several hundred people, the man found him again
and brought someone: this guy wants to know Jesus. Matt thought he was being messed
with. They prayed. The man came back with a younger man. Then a boy. Then two at once.

The man was a native Spanish speaker bringing Spanish speakers to a foreigner who could
have been skipped entirely. Matt’s read: the Lord lets us serve him relationally. Which is not
a small thing to be handed.

The obstacle is fear, and fear is an enemy

▶ 1:44:59

He was specific about his own. A semester of praying for classmates at UT by name and never
once speaking to them — so on the last day he handed over a note that said, in effect, sorry I
wasn’t brave enough to talk to you about Jesus, but I pray for you, and here is what I love
about him. A longtime friend he never had the guts to talk to, until he asked her whether it
bothered her that he didn’t try to convert her; she said no, and he said, doesn’t it though —
can I talk to you about Jesus? A goth student in the algebra class he taught for three years,
and a book left tilted on the corner of the desk until the kid asked to borrow it.

“I’m afraid they’ll be mean to me or not like me anymore. That’s basically it. It’s not an
impressive fear. It’s just regular fear.”

▶ 1:47:58

He keeps a journal so he doesn’t garble these stories later, and the entry right after
Tijuana reads: September 26, 2007 — felt like God told me to tell this rough-looking guy the
gospel. I did. He walked off immediately. Fixate on production and that is a failure. Fixate on
relationship with God and learning to obey, and it is a success.

Matt was honest about the root: he wants to be honored by people, and being disliked feels
like dishonor. But wanting honor is not the sin.
John 5:44
asks how you can believe while receiving glory from one another and not seeking the glory that
comes from the only God. The change is not to stop wanting it — it is to change whose it is.

Four good reasons, and two bad ones

▶ 1:50:13

The true reasons to make disciples: he said to; it is a way to show loyalty to him, and
loyalty under fire means more; it is genuinely better for the people who come in, because
living in the kingdom now beats living in the dominion of darkness now; and it is hard, which
forces us to confront our own immaturities, fears and doubts. To anyone nagged by other
Christians into doing it perfectly or not at all, he offered a two-step remedy: don’t be rude,
then go ahead and do a poor job.

The dumb reasons, delivered deadpan: God needs you so badly that he is failing without you,
and between us he is a little annoyed at how slow you’ve been. And — since all authority has
apparently been handed downstream to us — other people are entirely in your hands while God
watches passive-aggressively.

What Hope Chapel would get out of it

▶ 1:53:25

Matt wants Hope Chapel to be deliberately evangelistic — and then said the part that sounds
wrong out loud: not primarily for Austin’s sake, and certainly not because God needs Hope
Chapel. He thinks Hope Chapel would benefit most. His own aim is to obey because God is his
father, and to say yes quickly; second best is to get there eventually; third is to say no
outright and then work around and obey anyway. The longer he sits on the bench, the harder the
yes becomes, and fear stays coiled in the shadows growing.

He does not consider evangelism his gifting, or his second gifting. He does it anyway —
because it is something to do with Jesus, because a bored faith turns on itself and starts
drama, and because it is a chance to cut a head off that fear.

▶ 1:57:42

It only sounds strange, he said, if you were raised to believe the only way to move people
is to tell them God is struggling and lay a heavy thing on them. The truth is liberating
instead. He closed by praying for relational depth with the Father as the prize — and he would
not trade that night in downtown Tijuana for any number of nights he stayed in.

▶ 1:01:32

Having finished the Gospel according to John, Matt jumped back into it — “not
completely chaotic but a little odd,” as he put it — because one verse had unfinished business
in it. He first recapped the previous week: John wrote so that we would have faith, know Jesus,
and have life in him, and if you find yourself hungry for more of the resurrection power of
Christ than you are currently seeing, that appetite was given to you on purpose. His practical
challenge had been to find the area where obedience is missing. “I wanted to see people
healed,” he said, “and I realized I wasn’t praying for any sick people.” He and a friend
started driving to the ER and sitting in the waiting room to see who they could pray for. Same
with evangelism: he wanted converts and was not sharing the gospel. The point was to stretch
into a place where God has to move — because “Jesus is not boring. I don’t think there’s a
single thing boring about Jesus.”

1. As the Father sent me

▶ 1:04:59

Everything hangs on the first half of that sentence. Evangelism and the Great Commission are
core topics — like the character of God itself, if your view of them is bent, it bends
everything downstream. So: how did the Father send Jesus?

▶ 1:07:31

Matt ran the bad answers out loud. Was it a hazing ritual — you get crowned Lord of lords,
but first we rough you up, and then Jesus passes it down out of bitterness because he had to go
through it too? Was Jesus an errand boy, you go, I’ll stay? Was he the Father’s rubber
glove for touching a humanity God cannot stand to be near? All absurd, and worth saying out
loud precisely because versions of them sit unexamined in a lot of Christians.

▶ 1:09:38

What Jesus saw the Father doing was healing people, setting people free, casting out demons,
raising the dead — which is why Jesus did those things. The Father was in it.

2. Sent with a focus, not a quota

▶ 1:11:32

The other half of “as the Father sent me” is that Jesus was aimed at something. He did not
come to bank a critical mass of good deeds. In
Luke 4:40–43
he leaves a town that still wants him, with sick people still in it. If the goal were sheer
volume of healing, he would have stayed until the town was empty of illness and then moved on.

▶ 1:12:40

Nor was the goal to go global on the obvious terms. In the middle of the Jerusalem
procession, Greeks show up asking for him — which, Matt observed with some relish, looks like
the franchising opportunity of the age. Break out of Galilee and Judea. Get the Greek speakers.
Get the Platonists. Philip tells Andrew, Andrew and Philip tell Jesus, and the answer is not
what the pitch deserved:

His focus was on falling and dying and bearing much fruit. So when he sends us, we should
expect the same shape: not random good deeds, but a purpose — and a sender who is active in it.

3. The one command in Matthew 28

▶ 1:14:47

Three observations, in order. First, “all that I have commanded you” is not confined to the
red letters. Jesus spoke plainly to the small group that was with him constantly and in
parables to the crowds — and that same group received Paul into their fellowship, and they and
their students wrote the New Testament. Read the whole thing.

▶ 1:16:32

Second, Jesus keeps his authority. There is a common assumption that he receives all
authority, delegates it to us, ascends, and says finish the job — “a funny assumption
that he held on to this authority for about a minute.” He does not say “therefore I give it to
you.” He says “therefore go.”

Third, “go” is not the load-bearing word. Herod tells the wise men
“Go and search
diligently for the child” — the idea is search, not mileage. Jesus tells the
Pharisees “Go and
learn what this means: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” — how far would you have to walk
to learn that? So “go and make disciples” means make disciples. It can be at the ends
of the earth, which in the technical sense is where Austin already is, or it can be here. Some
are called far, some are called to stay. The distance was never the assignment.

4. What “I am with you” has always meant

▶ 1:20:29

The Commission ends with a promise we tend to shrink to comfort — nice for lonely days, and
it is true on lonely days. But trace the phrase and something bigger shows up. To Isaac in the
famine: “Sojourn in this land and I will be with you” —
Genesis 26:2–3,
where the very next lines spell it out: I will bless you, I will give these lands, I will
establish the oath. That is what being with him meant.

▶ 1:21:47

To Moses it is the entire answer to an unanswerable objection:
“Who am I that I
should go to Pharaoh?” — “But I will be with you.” Without that, Matt said, Moses is just a
crazy old man throwing a stick on the ground and touching the Nile while nothing happens. Moses
obeys in small ways — little messages, little prophetic acts — and God does the gigantic
things.

▶ 1:23:41

To Joshua, taking over a war: “Be strong and courageous… it is the Lord
your God who goes with you; he will not leave you or forsake you”
(Deuteronomy
31:6–8). Joshua leads them in; God gives them possession. And to Israel in exile, the
presence is intimate and close and unmistakably operational:

5. Gideon, and the arithmetic of one percent

▶ 1:26:04

Judges is the era with no king, where God raises up a judge to restore order and everyone
else does what is right in their own eyes — moralism, Matt called it, where people try to do
right by their own opinion of it. Gideon is hiding in a winepress to thresh wheat when the
angel greets him: “The
Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” We remember the valor
line. The first thing said was the other one.

▶ 1:27:50

Then a sending: “Go
in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?” A
go, followed by the actual instruction. Save Israel is the project; how far Gideon
walks is not.

▶ 1:29:07

And then God starts subtracting. Thirty-two thousand men gather against the dominant
military power in the region, and the word comes down that there are too many.

Twenty-two thousand go home afraid. Ten thousand remain, which still sounds workable. Then
the water test cuts it to three hundred
(Judges 7:3–7).
Matt did the math out loud — three percent of ten thousand, roughly one percent of the original
muster — and imagined being in that formation, hearing from the chain of command that you have
too many soldiers. “I’m not afraid, I didn’t want to go home, and I drink really weird. Now
I’m thinking: what’s the plan? This is a diplomatic thing, right?”

The plan was the first thing God ever said to him. I am with you. Not a card — a
statement of who was going to fight. “This is the Bible three hundred, where they’re holding
torches and shouting and watching the Lord do the battle.”

6. Which is exactly the church’s position

▶ 1:32:41

Read an article about the state of the church and wonder whether we have what it takes, and
Matt will save you the suspense: we don’t. He takes that as a reason to expect revival rather
than dread — because nobody would be able to file it under competence. If Christians were
famous for obeying the first time, for leaders who never fell out of grace and books that
always balanced, you would look at a move of God and think, well, obviously. Discouragement
comes from surveying the wrong thing: how many men on my left, how many on my right, do we have
the weapons.

▶ 1:35:09

What follows is the liberating part. If he does the heavy lifting, obedience stops being a
performance you can botch. “When he asks me to do something, I don’t have to lose my mind with
stress — am I going to do it right, do I have enough people, did I pray hard enough this
morning. I could just do it. And I could confidently do a bad job.” Then, aware of how that
would travel: “Just do your bad job. Take that out of context — who’s tweeting this morning?”

The scriptural warrant for that is stranger than a joke:

Paul is content with preaching done for spite. That only makes sense if the mission is
focused rather than a tally of sincerity. Matt admitted he can relate to the spite more easily
than to the missionary biographies: “I don’t want to do that, but I could see myself doing
that.”

7. His project, his bank account

▶ 1:38:17

So, the answer to the question the message opened with. The Father sent Jesus present,
active and focused. Jesus sends us the same way. He is not dispatching errand boys and girls
to do what he is unwilling to do, and this is not a cosmic hazing ritual. We are weaker and
more incompetent than we realize — which sounds frightening until you notice who is fighting.

“The bride of Christ was totally his idea,” Matt said. “He’s going to win what he wants to
win. He’s going to reach whom he wants to reach. We get to participate. We don’t have to
shoulder the burden of the world, because we’re not Jesus — that role has already been
filled.”

▶ 1:40:29

He closed back in the ranks of the three hundred: you could die in that skirmish and God
still wins; you could hide in a bush and God still wins. Which makes charging the sane choice,
because the alternative is hearing about the victory secondhand. And there is no scenario where
you stand before him in glory and discover that something he wanted to do in someone else’s
life simply failed because you were his last and only option. One thing we can do, if we want
to see more of the resurrection power of Christ, is walk in obedience — not to keep the plan
from collapsing, but to see the victory up close. Matt prayed that we would let go of the panic
of failure and fear, and sense his presence in everything we do for him and with him.

▶ 1:06:39

This was the last message in Hope’s series through the Gospel of John, and Matt took the last two chapters in one sitting — the death, the burial, the empty tomb, Thomas, and John’s own statement of why he bothered to write any of it down.

The death was the point

▶ 1:07:21

A common assumption is that after some finite quantity of pain Jesus had paid enough, and “it is finished” marks the moment the ledger balanced. Matt pushed back hard on that. If it were true, the death becomes a strange unnecessary appendage — “he didn’t cross some finish line and then decide, well, I guess I may as well die, I’m already here.” Yes, by his stripes we are healed; but the stripes and the blows and the piercing all run in one direction, poured out all the way to death.

Bones unbroken, a side pierced

▶ 1:10:30

The soldiers broke the legs of the other two, found Jesus already dead, and instead put a spear in his side — blood and water (John 19:31–37). John stops the narrative to swear he saw it. Both details fulfill scripture: not one of his bones broken, which is not one stray verse but part of how the Passover lamb is prepared — fitting for the week, and more fitting for what he was doing.

Matt admitted Zechariah is hard reading — mystical, and grammatically knotted right here. God is the speaker; the one pierced is also him; the sentence only resolves in Christ.

Joseph, Nicodemus, and a race against sundown

▶ 1:11:10

Burial was family work, so for Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to carry it on the family’s behalf was a genuine honor — and a public one, which tells you Joseph was a known and trusted disciple and that Nicodemus had finally cast his lot in. Seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes, and a new tomb in a garden close at hand, because the Jewish day turns at sundown and the Sabbath was coming. Expedient, Matt said — and maybe more than expedient.

The tomb, and a folded cloth

▶ 1:14:05

Mary comes while it is still dark, finds the stone moved, and runs. Peter and John run back — and John, writing his own account, cannot resist recording that he got there first. “I wonder if Peter in the Lord’s presence will ever have a moment to turn aside and say, John, why did you have to tell everybody that.” Inside, the linen cloths lie there and the face cloth is folded in a place by itself. Matt declined to explain it: a distinction is plainly being drawn between the head and the body, but what it means he could not say.

This is the first belief in the resurrection itself — not that Jesus was special, or blessed like Lazarus, but that a supernatural event had fulfilled God’s word.

He said her name

▶ 1:17:46

Mary stays, weeping, sees two angels, then turns and takes the risen Christ for the gardener (John 20:11–16). No explanation, no prayer for her eyes to be opened, no secret handshake — “he says her name, and she knew right away.” Matt let that sit: how do you put words to that kind of intimacy, being called by name by the resurrected Lord? “That’s actually why you’re here. He’s still doing that.” And once you have heard it, you want it for your friends, your family, your neighbors.

Why a garden

▶ 1:19:15

This was the long middle of the message, and the part worth rereading. In a garden mankind was made from the ground; in this garden the Son of Man is buried. To make Eve, God put Adam to sleep and took a bride from his side (Genesis 2:21–22); the Son is put to sleep on a cross so that from his pierced side blood and water flow and purchase a bride.

From a tree came disobedience and punishment; in another garden called Gethsemane the trend reverses — “not my will, but yours, be done” — and Christ embraces death on a cross that both Paul and Luke call a tree.

Note what they were exiled from. Not God’s presence — he is free to roam around the cabin, and you see him doing it with whomever he likes a few chapters later. They were shut out from the tree of life, and immortality was denied. That access is restored: the tree of life stands in the New Jerusalem, and the life it gives comes through a broken body — the bread from heaven that, unlike the manna, does not leave you dead.

The list keeps going. A serpent tempted in the first garden and won; here his head is crushed, and crushed under our feet too. Adam and Eve sinned and grasped for covering; Jesus was stripped, took our shame, and rose without need of grave clothes. The ground was cursed to yield thorns; he wore them into his skin. Adam was soil with breath in him; in his last hours Jesus breathed on the disciples. And where the first pair heard God in the garden and hid in fear, the word now is do not be afraid — go tell my brothers, and later, I am with you always.

Peace be with you — and Thomas

▶ 1:25:21

Behind locked doors Jesus stands among them and says “Peace be with you” — Matt has always wondered whether there was a small part of him that wanted the jump scare. Then he shows his hands and side, says it again, breathes on them and sends them (John 20:19–23). This is not John’s alternate telling of Acts 2 or of the Great Commission; both happened, and John is simply reporting a different evening.

Thomas, absent, wants his fingers in the nail marks. Strong words, maybe a touch gross, Matt said — but he is in luck. Eight days later Jesus comes back through a locked door and offers exactly that, and Thomas answers:

No berating, no curse for wanting evidence. And what Thomas said was not a devout Jewish exclamation vented at the ceiling — he called Jesus his Lord and his God, and Jesus accepted it.

Why John wrote it down

▶ 1:29:08

John says plainly that many other signs are unrecorded, and that these were written so that you may believe and have life in his name. Not an FYI. Matt stacked Paul on top of it: buried with him in baptism so that we too might walk in newness of life, raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God. It is good to know facts, like the times tables. This is not filed there.

The mortal frame is not upgraded. The power is his, in us.

If you believe but don’t see it

▶ 1:33:06

Here Matt turned pastoral and personal, and flagged it as such — take it with a grain of salt. Some in the room believe and still wonder whether the resurrection power of Christ is actually in their lives. Two preliminary things: you cannot run the counterfactual, because there is no parallel universe where you get to see your life without Christ; and doubts brought to Jesus are safe, since he met Thomas mercifully.

Then the diagnosis he called repentance from “intellectual Christianity.” Nothing wrong with studying the scriptures like a total dork — the problem is keeping Jesus in a compartment where he has no access to the control panel. The idea of Jesus is great, but he doesn’t get to touch the remote.

His own turn came the same way. He was a believer, baptized, had seen real change, and was hungry to see God’s power conquering evil — and felt the Lord talk sense into him, gently but firmly: if you want to see people healed, you could pray for the sick. His own analogy: sitting at home wishing you could see a live basketball game. They do happen in living rooms, if you have enough children — but they also happen out there, and you could go.

Where to start

▶ 1:40:31

He usually stops at “ask the Holy Spirit where you can obey,” partly because that is where God gives wisdom without reproach and partly because you are adults. But he went further, on limbs he named as shaky. Read the scriptures until the Spirit prompts you. If there is estrangement or unforgiveness in your heart, Jesus could have a field day with that — hard, and the resurrection power of Christ is sufficient for it. If you only ever watch on the stream, join a church; it needn’t be this one, and he offered to send recommendations. If you are in bondage to a habit, take up the old-school practice of confession to a brother or sister and actively seek grace to repent. And for Matt personally: deliberate, on-purpose evangelism is exhilarating, and it is what he reaches for when his own faith goes flat.

None of it is a threat. Jesus said his food was to do the will of the one who sent him, and his yoke is easy and his burden is light — walking toward fellowship instead of passive observation, toward forgiveness instead of estrangement, is the lighter road, not the heavier one. If you are looking around at the Christians near you and wondering why they are not feeding the deep longing in your heart: those are sheep. There is a Shepherd, and sometimes he says come, and the path is hard.

Matt closed by reframing the risk as company rather than performance. Every fumbled attempt still counts, because “I’m on a project with my Father and my friend, my best friend.” Then he prayed what the whole message had been asking for: that the resurrection power of Christ would be made manifest, that we would see God’s glory triumphing over darkness, and — like the disciples — that God would help our unbelief.

▶ 1:17:03

This was a communion Sunday, and the worship had already been circling one
word — behold him. Matt picked up the Gospel according to John near its end, read
through the crucifixion, and then said he was going to say “a whole host of very basic
things.” The basic things turned out to be the load-bearing ones.

1. The crowd, the governor, and the sign nobody would take down

▶ 1:18:51

In Greek the chant rhymes — short, punchy, easy to imagine echoing off stone. “We have no
king but Caesar” fits the charge that Jesus was an insurrectionist and fits nothing else,
least of all their demand for Barabbas, least of all at Passover, the feast where the nation
celebrates God delivering them from an oppressive power. Pilate was in Jerusalem precisely
because that week made him nervous. The Zealots needed no organization or name tags; they
were banded together by hatred of the occupation. For all Pilate knew, Jesus was a catalyst.
So was Barabbas.

Matt was careful not to let this become a story about a governor and a mob teaming up. Pilate
had marched Rome’s standards into the city and threatened instant death to the delegation that
complained; Luke records him
mingling the blood of Galileans with their sacrifices. This was contentious between all
parties. Envy on one side, contempt on the other.

▶ 1:20:59

Then the inscription: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, in Aramaic, Latin
and Greek, posted where the whole city walked past. The chief priests wanted it reworded.
“What I have written I have written.” Matt admitted he has no idea what was in Pilate’s
mind — annoyance, superstition, his wife’s dream, indifference. What he does know is who was
orchestrating it. Jesus had been threatened with stoning and with a cliff, and the Father kept
delivering him because it was not yet his hour. When the hour came, he laid his life down.
Clearly labeled, in three languages.

▶ 1:22:00

He crucified between two evildoers because
Isaiah 53:9
said his grave would be with the wicked though he had done no violence. The soldiers split
four ways what they could tear and gambled for what they could not:

That line is
Psalm 22:16–18,
where David is encircled by dogs and a company of evildoers, counting his own bones while they
stare and gloat. “This wasn’t just foretold,” Matt said. “This was premeditated. This was
planned ahead of time. Jesus isn’t meeting an untimely end. This was his whole design.”

2. A family made by his word, from the cross

▶ 1:25:25

“Woman” is not the slight it sounds like in modern American English — no disrespect
linguistically or culturally. The remarkable thing is that a man suffocating on a stake is
arranging care for someone else. Pain normally shrinks the world to the size of the person in
it. Here it does the opposite, and Matt read that as the strength of God on display.

And the word did not stop working when the hour ended. The family of God is established by
Jesus speaking it into being — his own answer to
who
is my mother and my brothers was whoever does the will of God, and the will of God is that
you believe in his Son. Look around the room: you were handed to one another.

▶ 1:27:13

3. So why did he have to die?

▶ 1:27:58

Here the message turned, and the rest of it hung on a rhetorical question: even a casual
observer knows this story is a big deal — but why? What does a death have to do with
Christianity?

Matt named the two answers he ran into as a teenager researching apologetics. First, the
utility argument he associated with William James: Christians make good citizens, so you may
as well be one. Second, and far more common, Jesus as the great example. People take
“By
this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” and
twist it until Christianity is loving people — a better way to live, with Jesus as the
demonstration. The conclusion writes itself: a good Christian is a good person, and a good
person is an honorary Christian.

▶ 1:30:32

His objection was not that it is too demanding but that it is redundant and cruel. God has
already given precepts, laws and prophets; he has given every person a conscience that pricks.
Adding a perfect life to the front of the room only exaggerates the pricking. Plato quotes
Socrates on how disrespectful kids are these days. The Mesopotamians could not live up to
Hammurabi’s code and knew it. Pick any pagan philosopher or poet and you will find a standard
its own author is failing.

And we cheat the measurement anyway. “The standard isn’t, are you better than any random guy
you find in a bus,” Matt said. “I’m probably better than average.” The standard is the glory of
God.

▶ 1:33:22

Then the confession, on himself. In high school he went to his older brother Eric — always
the better-read one — to ask whether Barnes & Noble sold a book of just the sayings of
Jesus. He was going to meditate on it and become a better man. Eric pointed out he owned a
Bible and could read the red letters. Matt knew that. He wanted it in its own binding, to be
read the way you would read a book of aphorisms. That was the plan for his life.

Necessary. Not the icing on a very good cake.

4. The gospel is a list of events

▶ 1:36:09

Matt set up 1 Corinthians 15 by lingering deliberately on Paul’s preamble — the gospel you
received, in which you stand, by which you are being saved — to make the room feel how much
weight is about to land, and then asked what people expect to find there. Great news, we can
finally pull it off if we all band together. Great news, here is a do-over; try harder.

Every item is something that happened, with a significance attached: he died for our
sins, he was raised according to God’s plan, he appeared — to five hundred at
once, most of them still alive to be asked. Paul is not composing; he is handing on what he
received.

▶ 1:39:18

Which is why the core of Christianity cannot be “what would Jesus do.” Not only can you not
copy most of Jesus’ life, you were never invited to. Matt pitched a sketch for the church’s
hypothetical channel of dumb skits — a man who takes WWJD too far. Pastor, how do I become
a Jewish Messiah? How do I die a substitutionary death? Can I rule over and nourish the church
with my flesh? Absolutely not. Get out.

We do not self-correct from death to life. He is
the
propitiation for our sins — an act that makes things right with God on God’s own terms —
and not for ours only but for the sins of the world. Jesus is not a new guru appended to a long
list. We follow him in obedience, but we follow him to the cross:

5. You cannot swap the bag of sand for the idol

▶ 1:44:09

The image Matt reached for was Indiana Jones easing the golden head off the pedestal and
slipping the sandbag into its place. You cannot swap out what Jesus did for what
would Jesus do. A Christianity built on a changed life, with the death and
resurrection bolted on as an accessory, ends up holding neither. A Christianity that holds the
core will also produce the changed life. Both or neither.

▶ 1:46:00

He pressed on what he kept calling Christian humanism by asking what it has to say to two
people. To the genuinely upstanding man it has nothing to offer — no reason he needs anything.
To the man who cut you off in traffic and has a bad attitude at work, it has a verdict and no
help. “Do better” is the rally cry of dead religion, and it sounds good because it feels good.
Neither person is served, because neither is the point. The point is a transfer out of the
kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son. As Steve likes to say, the church is not
called Nice Folks Chapel.

“It’s hard for me as a servant of Christ to judge how much Jesus has already done in your
life,” Matt said. “He died for us and incorporated us into his body. And that’s still true even
if you mess up and you’ve failed and you need to go back to him again and again and again.”

6. Obedience is the freedom, not the price of it

▶ 1:51:52

Matt named the negotiation most of us attempt: I will follow you, and these particular
desires stay in their own corner, and as long as they keep the minority share we have a deal.
If that is the arrangement, Jesus will be a gigantic problem in your life, and he does not go
away. If what you actually want is liberty, then he is a problem for the kingdom of darkness
instead, and to you he is a liberator. That is why
the
yoke is easy and the burden light — he is exchanging our death for his life. He does not
want you reformed. He wants you dead with him, so you can share his resurrection.

▶ 1:53:05

He closed on the courtroom. You do not unlock salvation as a boss level once you have done a
certain amount of Jesusing; the chains were broken
while
you were still a sinner. So when you stand there, your defense is not the highlight reel of
your own improvement — God, did you see that?

And then, characteristically, he put himself in the same seat as the room: “I need reminding
of that. I assume you need reminding of that.” The prayer was
“we
believe you, but help us in our unbelief.”