THE TEXT
John 19:17-19:42
So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. 2 And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe. 3 Then they said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck Him with their hands.
4 Pilate then went out again, and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in Him.”
5 Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, “Behold the Man!”
6 Therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!”
Pilate said to them, “You take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him.”
7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.”
8 Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid, 9 and went again into the Praetorium, and said to Jesus, “Where are You from?” But Jesus gave him no answer.
10 Then Pilate said to Him, “Are You not speaking to me? Do You not know that I have power to crucify You, and power to release You?”
11 Jesus answered, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin…” (John 19 NKJV).
This message on Inescapable Fear could just as easily been entitled as Freedom from Fear. And, without any contradiction, it could also be entitled The Christian Grace of Fear. But all this will take some unpacking.
“And I say unto you my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12: 4-7; cf. Matt. 10:28-31).
Notice how Jesus addresses His disciples here—He calls them His friends (v. 4). His next words are instructions to them to not be afraid of those whose maximum power is that of physical death (v. 4). He then turns to the subject of the one that they should fear—the one who has complete, full, and final authority over hell. Christ emphasizes that they should fear Him—He says it three times in one verse. Fear Him (v. 5). God remembers even the sparrows, sold so cheaply in the market (v. 6). This means that the hairs of your head are all numbered (v. 7). Do not fear, therefore, because you are worth more than many sparrows (v. 7).
Here is the pattern. We are not to fear men. All they can do is kill us. We are to fear God—He is the one who can throw people into hell. But God loves us and cherishes us, and He cares deeply for us. We should therefore not fear the providences of God concerning us. Still less should we fear the pains of hell. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4: 18). We do not fear hell; we defy it. We do not fear hell because we fear the one who can put us there. Because we fear Him, we know that He does not want to do this to us—we are worth more than many sparrows. When He sends His angels, they almost always say, “Fear not.”
Now this is why we have spoken about inescapable fear. If we fear man, we do not fear God. If we fear God, we will not fear man. But we will fear someone. The question, therefore, is not whether we will fear, but rather whom we will fear. This is just another form of “not whether, but which.”
One of the central reasons why modern Christians are so timid is because we have not cultivated a healthy fear of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7). This is foundational. And notice how fear of God is described in the New Testament as a glorious and wonderful thing. Forgive me as I belabor the point.
There are many other passages like this—this is a point that could be multiplied many times over.
In our fear of God, we begin to know; fear and great joy mingle in knowledge of the resurrection; fear receives mercy; fear renders awe and glory; walking in fear means walking in comfort; fear advances personal holiness; fear works out salvation; fear enables us in cultivating the spirit of mutual submission and humility; fear animates appropriate worship. Fear of God is therefore a Christian’s glory.
Because of this profound and all-pervasive fear, we do not fear anything. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim 1:7). “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption” (Rom. 8:15). “And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:15).
This means that if you are troubled with anxieties and fears, then you need to name the problem accurately. The problem is that you do not fear as you ought, and the vacuum has been filled by phantoms. Now I am not talking about normal physiological reactions—shaking when you just escaped from a car wreck, or you have a close call with a grizzly bear.
I am talking about the ongoing fears that cripple your Christian life and your relationships with others. What do I mean? I am referring to fear of slippery roads, loss of reputation, the cancer you might get twenty years out, dying young, marital unhappiness in the future, or any other kind of “what about? or “what if?” followed by some unpleasantness that you cooked up. The fear of God liberates. The fear of the creature paralyzes—because to guard effectively against whatever it is, you have to be omnipotent. And you are not.
WE MAY BOLDLY SAY…
The fear of God is the foundation of all true contentment. All things work together for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). And when we are content, free from grasping and covetousness, what may we then say? God will never ditch us. We are His people.
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” (Heb. 13:5-6).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. !e same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” ( John 1:1–3).
Before turning to an exposition of the text, allow me to remind you of the arena where this text needs to be applied. This is what might be called an occasional sermon. The Canadian Parliament recently passed a law, a law called C4, that in effect outlawed any presentation of the saving gospel of Christ to those in the grip of certain sexual perversions. This legislation was plainly aimed at Christians, but whether it was or not, it just as plainly includes Christians.
In response to this move, a number of Canadian pastors have chosen this Sunday to preach on the forbidden topic, in violation of their new law, and in simple obedience to the law of God. For those who need the reminder, the law of God always outranks the legal whims of men.
Although the law does not affect us here in the States, the spirit of it most certainly does, and so a number of American pastors are also preaching on this same topic, on the same day, in solidarity with our Canadian brothers. This is not an instance of meddling in someone else’s business, like taking a passing dog by the ears (Prov. 26:17)—twenty states in the U.S. have already banned conversion therapy, about which more in a moment.
For reasons that will be made evident shortly, this is an issue that concerns absolutely everyone here. It is even more relevant to your children and grandchildren.
With that said, let us turn to a summary of our text.
In the first chapter of Genesis, we are told that God said something. We there read, “God said, ‘let there be light, and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). And of course, what God said was the Word. This Word of God was with God, and the Word of God was God (v. 1). He did not come after God temporally in any sense; He was in the beginning with God (v. 2). Everything that is created came into existence through this Word (v. 3). Apart from Him, nothing created has any possible existence apart from Him (v. 3). God the Father was the architect of all things, and we are told that God the Father in His speaking was the creator and maker of all things, through the executive of His Word, and so it was that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep.
This world is therefore a spoken world. This world came into existence through that Word that was spoken. He is the Word, and we are all His words. Whatever belongs to the created order, this Word created it (Col. 1:16-17). Through this Word God made all the worlds (Heb. 1:2). And this spoken world only remains in existence because God continues to speak it; we are sustained by the Word of His power (Heb. 1:3).
The Word of His power. All created things are sustained by the Word of His power. Remember that. And what is that power? He is the Almighty. He is omnipotent. He is the everlasting God. The Word is therefore the Word of the Father’s infinite and almighty power. Christ, the Word of His power.
Now what is our circumstance? What is our situation? What is the location of the particular corner we have painted ourselves into?
This new Canadian law outlaws what they are calling “conversion therapy.” And the way they defined this objectionable behavior outlaws any attempt whatever to persuade a person with perverted sexual desires to repent of those desires. Now it has come to pass that anyone guilty of violating this law is subject to imprisonment for “a term of not more than five years.”
According to this law, conversion therapy refers to any “practice, treatment or service” that is designed to “change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual,” or to “repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour”—not to mention seeking to change any number of other things that very likely need changing.
But to no one’s surprise, the law does not prohibit conversion efforts running in the opposite direction. It does not prohibit . . . “a practice, treatment or service that relates to a person’s gender transition.” It is therefore illegal now to help someone climb the slope of sexual virtue in Canada, but it is by no means illegal to help them tumble down it, and into the crevices of vice.
Now the preamble of this wretched and misbegotten law declares, ex cathedra, that conversion therapy causes “harm” to those subjected to it, that conversion therapy causes “harm” to society because it is “based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression,” including the idea that “heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions.”
That’s a mouthful. That’s a word salad, right there, and it is about as wrong-headed as a cathedral filled with unregenerate bishops could possibly be.
In effect, they are telling us that for us to repeat the holy standards established by Almighty God causes harm because it perpetuates myths and stereotypes that run contrary to what these dogmatists think should be applauded by all. And if you refuse to go along with this nonsense, it is five years in the big house for you. Someone saw that you weren’t applauding, and started to ask pointed questions.
This law is important, so their argument goes, in order to “protect the human dignity and equality of all Canadians.”
How are we to respond? What are we to think of all this?
Before we turn to examine it in detail, let us get the defiance part out of the way. We do not believe in some kind of hetero-normativity, grounded in human tradition, but rather in theo-normativity, grounded in the absolute law of God. And on the basis of that law, we here declare in the name of Jehovah that the image of God was established by the Creator Himself, imprinted on our race in a fundamental binary. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). This was His image, established by Him at the very beginning, marred by us in the rebellion and Fall, and which is now being restored in us through the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Consequently, we consider this Canadian law to be just one more antichrist in a long line of them, and we reject it as just one more antichrist.
We reject the spirit of this law, and with high confidence in God, we issue the strongest possible defiance to this law. Together with that defiance, we believe it is our duty to issue the strongest possible warnings to those politicians and bureaucrats who are fomenting this nonsense. “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?” (Psalm 94:20).
All of our current cultural conflicts—most certainly including this one—boil down to this. This is a battle for editorial control of the dictionary. And by “dictionary,” I mean the sum total of all our dictionaries. Our aspiring tyrannical mandatorians want to be granted the authority to be allowed to define all words, and they want their definitions to stand uncontested. They want to seize the authority to jail any who use language in forbidden ways. Other definitions, regardless of their source, are backhanded as “myths”—and not only myths, but forbidden myths.
They have determined that it is high time for them to rise up, and challenge the Editor-in-chief, the one who gave us the ability to speak in the first place, and consequently the one who is the Lord over all our old dictionaries. As the giver of speech, He is the giver of dictionaries. He is Lord of all the pronouns. He is the Lord of coherent speech, and we see in this, their incoherent speech, that He is the Lord of wrath also.
We need to understand this effort of theirs as a new Babel; this is a linguistic ziggurat. They intend to defend themselves against what Jehovah did to them the last time—that is, confusing their tongues—by seizing control of all language beforehand. If they are the editors of all the dictionaries, and if they can thereby control our speech, then plainly they have seized what they have lusted after for centuries. They were building a great tower of stones the last time, and God interrupted them by confusing their languages. So this time, as they vainly imagine, they have seized that weapon for themselves, and they will outwit Him, and they will build their new great tower out of definitional elasticity.
But who is it that they have decided to challenge in His position as the Editor of all dictionaries? Who are they taking on? His very name is the Word.
They have decided that they are going to challenge the God of all dictionaries, the God of all language, the one who fashioned Adam as a speaking creature. God gave the gift of speech, the gift of words, to the dust of the ground. They are going to wrestle—for all or nothing—for exhaustive authority over words, and they are going to throw out this challenge to the Word. They are doing this on the lip of the Abyss, on the edge of ultimate madness, on the threshold of the Void, and they are demonstrating to us how the madness is already starting to set in.
They have challenged the Almighty to a battle of words. They have challenged the Font of Speech itself to a duel of words. So if there is one thing that Christians should not be in the light of all this, it is anything like “worried.”
This is like a five-year-old attacking Neptune with a water pistol. It is like trying to set the sun on fire with a box of wooden matches. It is like throwing a snowball at all the glaciers of Greenland. This is the supreme folly. It is demented. It is the latter half of the banquet at Belbury. There is no reason for anxiety, Christian, because our adversaries have staked out their position plainly. They have said blotcher bulldoo, and they have warned us sternly that it is the law.
Now the Lord of all is sovereign over all things, obviously, but it has been His good pleasure to mediate His authority in the world through His church. He has made us kings and priests on the earth (Rev. 1:6; Rev. 5:10). “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23).
This means that the answer to this particular frenzy on the part of our ruling elites is an answer that is going to proceed from the church. And when the church speaks, she does so from her pulpits with an open Bible laid out on those pulpits. And what do we say? The prince of darkness grim, We tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure; One little word shall fell him. That word above all earthly powers No thanks to them abideth; The Spirit and the gifts are ours Through Him who with us sideth. —Luther, A Mighty Fortress Mark that. “No thanks to them abideth.” But that Word abides nonetheless. It abides despite their scorn and pretended sophistication. It abides despite their threats of five-year sentences. It abides despite their abandonment of common law, common grace, and common sense. It abides despite their inversion of all fixed categories (Is. 5:20). The Word abides.
In 1943, when Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt were discussing the shape of the post-war world, the story is told that someone suggested that the pope might have something to contribute to their discussion. And Stalin is reputed to have said, “The Pope, how many divisions has he?”
In this confrontation of ours—and it is a confrontation—the worldings turn to us and they ask us what resources we might have? They have armies and navies, parliaments and conferences, international corporations and nuclear weapons, control of the monetary system, a hammerlock on the media, and many thousands of kept and fully-house trained scientists. So they turn to us with a sneer. How many divisions do we have?
And our answer is simple. We have words, and water, and bread, and wine. And underneath all of it we have the Spirit of Jehovah.
Now the reason that all of this is happening is because our ruling class is unregenerate. They do not know God, and that is why their decisions and determinations and law are shrouded in this peculiar kind of darkness. They dwell in darkness, and they hate the light, and why?—because their deeds are evil (John 3:19).
But what kind of power does darkness have when light is spoken to it? What happens whenever God says “let there be light”? And what happens when God says—as He will say—“let there be light” again?
When God said “let there be light” to the darkness of nullity and non-existence, there was immediately light. But He has the same kind of authority when He speaks to a different sort of darkness—the darkness of this sin and rebellion. And when He speaks light to that kind of darkness, the same thing will happen. Light happens, and the light does not come to be by coincidence. No, the light appears because it is obedient.
They will of course want to stop any word that has this kind of power, any word that has this kind of authority. And they will try to stop it by locking up preachers. Let them. Binding preachers is a whole lot easier than tying up their message.
It does not matter whether our ruling elites have scheduled a great reformation and revival. It does not matter that they have not written down anything like that on their calendars. What matters is whether it is on God’s calendar—and all the prophets, from Samuel on, declare that it is in fact on God’s calendar.
So it does not matter to us that the darkness has not planned for an eruption of light. They have nothing to do with what is going to happen. They have no authority, and less sense. They thought the little dwarf star of the church was about to flicker and go out, little realizing that it was actually God’s appointed place for the next supernova.
And so here is the outlawed light. This is the message that they don’t want you to hear.
Jesus is Lord. Caesar is not Lord. Jesus is the Creator of all things, and it is His will that all little girls grow up to be women. It is His will that all little boys grow up to be men. His is His purpose, intention, and design that the love between Christ and the Church be embodied and modeled by a man and a woman coming together in a fruitful union.
This is His will, and we are commanded to listen to His will because He is the one who rose from the dead. The cabal of crooked politicians in His day conspired to have Him railroaded in a joke trial in the middle of the night, condemned to death, and hanged on a gibbet. While He was hanging there, the diseased politicians of His day came to the foot of the cross in order to taunt Him. Come down, they said, and then we will believe.
But it was not His purpose to come down. He was going to go down, down to the grave, and from that place He was going to come up. We do not follow the one who came down from the cross. We follow the one who came up from the grave. Do you not see?
And as the one who came up from the dead, He is now established on His throne as the Lord of all things. In the first place, He is now the Lord of crooked politicians, and He will dispense with them as He pleases. God has established Him in His great office, as the Son of God, by His resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4). Christ is established as the judge of the whole earth, which includes all these pitiful lordlings, and God established Him in that role by raising Him from the dead (Acts 17:31). The Word tells us that the Lord Jesus will judge the world in righteousness. He will judge the world in righteousness, and not in demented folly.
He is the Lord of the crooked and the Lord of the straight, and He knows how to make the crooked straight. He is the Lord of kings and congresses. He is the Lord of princes and parliaments. He is the Lord of boys and girls, men and women. He is the Lord of marriage. He is the Lord of darkness and the Lord of light. He is the Lord of the secular carnival fun house of mirrors. He is the Lord of love and the Lord of hate. He is the light, and He is love. He is the Lord of oceans and Lord of the dry land. He is the Lord of holiness, and the day is coming when holiness to the Lord is inscribed on the smallest things, down to the bells of the horses (Zech. 14:20).
You may be a member of parliament who supported and voted for this monstrosity. You may be a faceless functionary in some bureaucracy gearing up to enforce it. You may be an intelligence analyst who thinks that your grasp of data rivals the omniscience of God. You may be a Canadian pastor who is trying to figure out how to compromise on this without looking like you are compromising. You may be a soft evangelical think-leader who is trying to figure out how to configure all of this as somehow “not a gospel issue,” and as yet another lamentable exercise in conspiracy thinking by conservative Christians. It actually doesn’t really matter who you are.
It doesn’t really matter who you are because if Christ summons you with His inexorable and efficacious word, then you will come. You can come to Christ from anywhere. If He turns to you, looks straight at you, and summons you with the Spirit of God, the very finger of God, with which He points at you, what will you say? And if He then says, “Come, follow me,” then that is what you will in fact do. He is the Word, and He has spoken. He has said, “Follow me.”
And I, as a minister of His Word, am speaking in His name and on His behalf. Not only am I authorized to do so, I am under obligation to do so. You are now summoned. Christ was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead, and so you are now summoned. “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17)
And when you come to the light, you will leave the darkness behind.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.
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We live in troubled times, certainly, and a regular response that rank-and-file Christians have to this difficulty is found in the lament, “But what can we do?” This year, our annual state of the church message is going to set before you a very local response to a very global and international panic, not to mention the totalitarian “solutions” that are being presented to us. And as it happens, the Scriptures we will bring to bear are Scriptures that are equally pertinent to our local and national situations both.
This is quite striking, because if we zoom out, we see that things have not been so bad in quite some time. But if we zoom in, looking at our community of believers, things have never been so good. What should we do with this?
“Use hospitality one to another without grudging” (1 Peter 4:9).
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2).
“Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:14–15)
The three texts might be described as social exhortations. They have to do with our life together, with our social interactions, and they warn about the kind of sin that disrupts such fellowship. Peter tells us to be hospitable to one another, and he tells us to do this without grumbling or complaining (1 Pet. 4:9). The reason for warning us about this is that hospitality gives rise to occasions where you want to grumble or complain. They didn’t invite you back, or they didn’t wipe their feet, or they didn’t say thank you. Hebrews 13 tells us to show hospitality because we never know who it is we are being kind to (Heb. 13:2). The most inauspicious guest might be an angel—and when it isn’t an angel, it turns out to have been Christ (Matt. 25:40). And then in Philippians, we are warned against grumbles and disputes (temptations which, again, occur often in a community where hospitality is practiced).
But the reason I selected these three particular exhortations has to do with the larger context. Peter says that we are to be hospitable without grumbling, but what was that larger context? He was preparing his readers for persecution. Their faith was to be tried by fire (1 Pet. 1:7). Christ suffered so that we might follow His example (1 Pet. 2:21). They were going to encounter false accusations (1 Pet. 3:16). All this is the run-up to “be hospitable, and no whining.” In Hebrews, we are told to take strangers in—but again, what is the context? These people had undergone great afflictions (Heb. 10:32), had been reviled (Heb. 10:33), and had had their property confiscated (Heb. 10:34). These are the people who are to take strangers in. In Philippians, it is the same. Be blameless, harmless. No murmuring or disputing. But what had Paul said just a moment before? “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29).
On the day of Pentecost, three thousand souls were added to the church (Acts 2:41). Later, as the gospel gained strength, there were about five thousand more (Acts 4:4). This process continued, and it started to cause problems. “And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration” (Acts 6:1).
The apostles responded in two ways. The first is that they refused to abandon prayer and the ministry of the Word—as that was the driving engine (Acts 6:4). But second, they made a judicious set of ordinations, setting aside godly deacons to address the problem (Acts 6:3).
All of this was good preparation for what was to come (Acts 8:1).
Because of the cultural disarray in many other places, and because God has been so kind to us here, hundreds of people have moved here. Perhaps you have noticed. All the indications are that hundreds more are on the way. What does this mean? First, it means that there will be multiple opportunities to be hospitable without grumbling. Second, it means that it is quite possible that the trouble we see elsewhere is headed our way. We have no guarantees that it won’t happen, and we do have the assurance of these passages that being kind to strangers is a very good way to prepare. What can I do?
Most of you here don’t know most of you here. In a room filled with strangers, what can I do? We have to understand that God does great collective things by means of doing countless tiny things. No one raindrop feels responsible for the ocean, but each one is. This is how God works.
Koinonia fellowship is a great grace of the Holy Spirit, and we certainly have that blessing here. But do not confuse it with other things. It is not the same thing as friendship, for example. Jesus loved His disciples, and He loved them and protected them all (John 17:12). But He also had Peter, James, and John as friends (Matt. 17:1). And among those three, John was His best friend (John 13:23).
At the conclusion of this service, Christ invites you to sit down at His table. This is a glorious kindness. One of the things that it teaches us to do is this—when it comes time for us to set our tables, we should be hungry for opportunities to invite Christ to sit down at our tables. But He travels incognito, remember? You may not recognize Him until He takes the loaf from you, says grace, and breaks the bread (Luke 24:30-31). You might not recognize Him even then. You might not realize any of this until the last day.
When you come to His house, His identity is known and declared. When He comes to yours, He often comes in the disguise of a nuisance.