From the Pulpit

Music is powerful but, for Christians, music that celebrates and venerates our Lord and Saviour is especially so. Consider these well-worn and majestic words: “All hail the pow’r of Jesus’ name! / Let angels prostrate fall; / bring forth the royal diadem, / and crown him Lord of all!” Or how about these more recently-penned lines: “You’re the Word of God the Father / from before the world began; / every star and every planet / has been fashioned by your hand. / All creation holds together / by the power of your voice; / let the skies declare your glory; / let the land and seas rejoice.”  

Wonderful! Lyrics like these excite in God’s children a love for God’s Son—who he is, and what he did, does, and will do—and moves them to adoration, reflection, appreciation, conviction, and dedication. Now, if that’s true of hymns written by people, what about one written and preserved for us by God himself?

One of the burdens of every generation is to teach the next generation good manners. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, and baby-sitters all join forces to help children learn to be polite, to do things like use a napkin at the table, hold doors open for others, and say ‘excuse me’ when appropriate. But perhaps the most foundational and obvious example of good manners is children learning to say ‘please’ when asking for something and ‘thank you’ when receiving it. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’—two relatively small gestures that can make a big difference.

Our heavenly Father wants us, his spiritual children, to develop good manners as we grow-up in Christ. As we mature, by his power, God desires us to develop habits of communication with him that are proper, worshipful, and edifying. In fact, learning to say ‘please’ when asking for something and ‘thank you’ when receiving it may be at the top of his list.

In July 1961, Vince Lombardi, coach of the Green Bay Packers, stood before thirty-eight professional football players ready to start a new season. Six months previous, they had lost the championship game in the final minutes and had been sitting in that memory ever since. These athletes were ready to adjust what needed adjusting to make sure this year was different and were waiting for their coach to give them direction. Instead, Lombardi looked out over the second-best team in the world, held up a football, and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” And with that statement, the coach expressed his intention to take that team back to the fundamentals of the game.

In a similar way, sometimes the church needs to go back to the fundamentals of her existence, her mission, and her purpose. It’s an important discipline to regularly sit under God’s word and hear it declare authoritatively but simply, “Brothers and sisters, this is a church.”

From Paul's letter to the Romans, Dr. Rennie encourages us how to rightly identify our spiritual giftedness and how to use that giftedness for the building up of the body of Christ.

Oftentimes an end is also a beginning. The end of summer signals the beginning of autumn. The end of childhood means the beginning of adulthood. When life as a single person comes to an end that typically means life as a spouse is beginning. Trusting Christ for everlasting life marks the end of separation from God and the beginning of the process of becoming like him. Oftentimes an end is also a beginning.

Such is the case with Matthew’s gospel. The evangelist didn’t write this book to simply entertain or preserve history. Rather, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he wrote it to move his readers to action, to thrust them into the trenches, and to send them into the world on fire with an assignment. As Matthew’s account comes to an end, his readers are shown how it’s just the beginning of something amazing—a great commission to be undertaken, in spite of great imperfection, fuelled by the power of great provision.

It is customary for a good sermon to begin with an introduction of sorts, an attempt to orient the hearer to the text or topic about to be studied. However, there are some passages of Scripture that simply require no introduction. These are sections of God’s word so momentous, so profound, so dramatic, and so captivating that they demand attention with little outside help.

Such is the case with Matthew’s inspired account of the crucifixion of the King. It is as climactic as it is devastating, as beautiful as it is brutal, and as sombre as it is necessary. And this passage highlights for believers of all eras and ages that which was endured by Jesus, that which was shown by what was endured by Jesus, and that which is demanded by what was shown.

A “kangaroo court” is a trivial-sounding idiom that, in reality, describes something far less playful than its title may suggest. According to one source, this expression refers to “an unauthorized mock court or legal proceeding in which some or all of the due process rights [of the accused] are ignored and the outcome appears to be predetermined.” In other words, a kangaroo court is a sham trial, it is judicial theatre, and it is malevolent injustice.

There could scarcely be a better description of what the Lord Jesus experienced in the hours leading up to his crucifixion. Though his opponents had already decided both his guilt and sentence, the people of Israel—led by their religious leaders—put their Messiah on a trial, a trial more concerned with a desired conviction and execution than with legality and truth.

Yet, there’s deep irony to Matthew’s account of this charade in that it’s the accusers who end up exposing themselves as criminal and it’s the accused, Jesus, who is proved blameless.

Young pastors are often advised, “preach to suffering people and you’ll never lack an audience.” Why? Because everyoneis well-acquainted with the subject. We all suffer, facing times of uncertainty and vulnerability, pain and inconvenience, fear and heartbreak, mistreatment and loneliness. Indeed, each of us have endured, are enduring, and will endure hardship.

But how can we endure well? That’s the question Matthew 26:30–56 is going to help us answer. As Matthew provides readers with a front-row seat to the agony of Jesus and his anticipation of the cross, we can find guidance toward faithful endurance. If we want to be a people that bear the inevitable and inescapable hardships and uncertainties of life in a Christ-honouring way we must be a people that, recognizing our frailty and fallenness, actively draw near God’s power and promises.

Chapter 26 marks a dramatic shift in Matthew’s gospel. In it is a transition from a teaching on things to come to a retelling of things that are, from predictions of Jesus’s future return to predictions of Jesus’s soon departure, from powerful scenes of victory and vindication to pathetic scenes of vulnerability and apparent defeat. Whereas the disciples had been promised that the Son of Man will come in glory and be eternally enthroned (25:31), now they’re being promised that the Son of Man is going to be tortured and executed (26:2).

Indeed, Matthew 26 and 27 describe what is often called the passion of Christ—the unjust events and brutal sufferings that pave our Lord’s road to the cross. It’s horrific … and wonderful. On one hand, there’s ugly corruption—hatred and hard-heartedness, blindness and betrayal. But, on the other hand, there’s beautiful provision—sovereign and sacrificial, precious and powerful. We must remember both.

One can learn a great deal from reading the letters written by soldiers to their families during World War I and World War II. Scanning these preserved messages can grow in us a compassion for those who suffer, provide insights into the horrors of battle, and inspire gratitude for the many men and women who have given their lives for the safety and security of others. And all of this and more can be gleaned in spite of the fact that the letters were not written to us and that they describe particular conflicts we ourselves have not had to endure.

In many ways, Jesus’s teaching recorded for us in Matthew 24 and 25 functions similarly. The discourse itself is not directed at the church and it describes a terrible time of global tribulation that the church will not have to endure. (Thank God!) Yet, just like wartime communique, the church is still able to extract from these prophetic chapters—with the help of the Holy Spirit—much needed lessons and reminders.