The King is Dead

So, have you ever heard the phrase, what's so good about Good Friday? I kind of like that question. I can remember really quite vividly, maybe as a third grader and long, long before I knew very much about Jesus, that when I heard about Good Friday from one of my Catholic grade school friends, I asked quite specifically, what is Good Friday? As that was a new thing for me. And I thought, oh, cool, this is going to be a Good Friday, apparently, this Friday. Maybe that means cake or games or a swimming pool or something. And I kind of wanted in on that, everybody wants in on a Good Friday. And so that kind of sounded good. And his answer came kind of like, he was very dumbfounded by my question. And he said, I really remember it quite specifically, he said, that's the day Jesus died. You stupid head. Like I was born under a rock. And his inflection was, how do you not know that? Everybody knows that. And I didn't know that. I just didn't, really, that had never come up in my life before. And so since I was so embarrassed, I didn't want to look even more uneducated by asking, well, what's so good about Jesus dying? And it caused me some confusion for a while. So welcome. Welcome to this podcast. We call them Kingdom Offerings. This is the podcast environment of 100 Fold Ministries. My name is Dave Scherrerrer, and I'm the president and founder of 100 Fold Ministries. And on these podcasts, we like to unpack the offerings of scripture that have a special emphasis on the biblical texts that celebrate and advance the gospel of the kingdom. I'm all about the gospel of the kingdom. And we are in a new, somewhat brief series, kind of a four-week series that's set in the ancient times of the first century in Judea, in the city of Jerusalem. We are walking with Jesus in this series through Holy Week. It is arguably Holy Week, the most celebrated week of all the earth. Now, in my life, just this past month, we finished up celebrating Easter, Resurrection Sunday, and that triggered in my mind a bunch of thought on how the gospel of the kingdom is incredibly on display so vividly during Holy Week, the Holy Week of Jesus' last life on earth. You see, the king is on display with all his authority, and in the drama of his death, we might miss it all if we don't pay attention. So in our last podcast, we looked at the triumphant entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem. We now call that Palm Sunday. That's a pretty famous event. You've probably read about this event before. And you can go back one podcast then and check that out. I think it's easy to see king and kingdom on display that day. I mean, after all, they wanted to make him king of Israel on the spot, thousands, tens of thousands clamoring to make Jesus king. So Palm Sunday, I think it's easy, but what about Good Friday? So it doesn't seem to me that in killing Jesus and laying to rest, so to speak, his authority and his royal appointment is particularly kingly on the cross. I mean, they killed him, for goodness sakes. How does the death of Jesus display the gospel of the kingdom? So that's a good question. So let's hang in there for this moment. As I say, it's not a bad question, at least it seems counterintuitive to me, but something for sure is going on behind this Thursday night betrayal of Judas over his friend, Jesus, the midnight beatings by the religious leaders and ultimately the Friday crucifixion by the Romans and something's going on that we can't see so very well. And so perhaps if I open the eyes of my heart to this drama, we can see the invisible spiritual witness that is happening that is of Narnian deeper magic in this story. So let me step over to that subject for a second. Perhaps you are a Narnian fan, and if you are, you'll remember that there is a lion in that story, a lion by the name of Aslan, and he serves as the Christ figure in those stories. And in the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of that series, Aslan, the innocent lion king, has been killed. He was sacrificed on a stone table in place of his friend, Edmund, who actually had been a betrayer and deserved to die. Narnian's sisters, Lucy and Susan, witnessed the execution of Aslan, and they are stricken with grief. It is just so confusing to them. Everything that they knew about Aslan and who he was just seemed to be destroyed. And so they're stricken with grief, but soon a noise stirs them from their sadness, and the girls discover that Aslan is not only alive, but he is restored to vibrancy and he is full of power. He's not dead. And Aslan shares with Lucy and Susan this great secret with them that is actually one of the great paragraphs in all of C.S. Lewis's writings. This is what Aslan shares. What it means is that though the witch knew the deep magic, there is a magic deeper still that she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked back a little further into the stillness and darkness before time began, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's steed, the table would crack and death itself would work backwards. Wow, that's literature. Perhaps you remember in the true life story of Jesus's crucifixion that at the ninth hour on that Friday, that Good Friday, 3 p.m. to us, that the sky grew dark as night over Golgotha, the site of the crucifixion. You see, the king was dying. The light of the world was being extinguished. And the prince of darkness, my guess is, was celebrating. You see, the evil one had been trying to kill Jesus all along. Remember how King Herod was stirred to kill all the children of Bethlehem shortly after Jesus was born. That was a story. And then the devil stirred his Nazareth hometown to try and kill him, threatening to throw him off a precipice to his death. You see, the evil one had been trying to kill him all along. And now finally, a friend's betrayal had set the stage for the religious power brokers to make good on their murderous conspiracy. And the evil one was ecstatic. Satan had finally won a victory. And not just any victory, but the ultimate victory, the death of the Son of God. Satan wins. You know, when you think about it, the death of a king almost always was the formula for defeat on a battlefield. You saw it over and over again in the battles of the Old Testament. That's why oftentimes the king stayed home when the armies went out, because it was just too risky to risk the death of the supreme leader of that army. And so what we remember is, after all, kings die too. But here's the deeper magic. Not this king. You see, there was an ancient truth, a before-time-itself plan, an event that the evil one could not imagine. And that would be that the king would rise again. You know, weirdly, Jesus had said he would. He told the disciples at least three times that the Son of Man would be crucified, but that on the third day he would rise. But the disciples didn't get it. And apparently the evil one couldn't make sense of that either. I mean, who rises from the dead? So the king who had laid down his life for his friends, the innocent king who had laid down his life for his friends, was showing his royalty even from the cross. Remember how the mockers had dressed his beaten body in a purple robe and crowned him with a crown and falsely worshipped him as what in their minds was the pretend king? Actually, it was a bit of an ironic display of God's plan from the beginning. Who saw this disgrace coming to and did not stop it? The Father let the Son experience the fullness of the penalty of humanity. And you know what? Even Roman soldiers and Jewish relators must obey the plan of the king, even on Good Friday. So let's wrap up for the day. For the next few weeks, we're going to continue to unpack here at Kingdom Offerings the gospel of the kingdom as it's unveiled during Holy Week. So Resurrection Sunday and then 40 days later on Ascension Sunday. We'll tackle those two topics and see how the king is revealed. So thanks today for joining us here at 100 Fold Ministries and Kingdom Offerings. I'm glad you're looking deep into the gospel of the king and his kingdom. We'll see you here in a couple of weeks. And this is Dave Scherrerrer, and this is Kingdom Offerings.