25-1203wc Transcript

(0:04) Del Tackett’s Engagement Project, Tour 8, The Royal Sacrifice. (0:11) The scriptures are the consummate book of understatement. With devastating economy, (0:17) they can say in half a sentence what would take us lifetimes to grasp and centuries to recover from.

(0:24) One of those understated sentences is John 15, 12. (0:30) This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. (0:36) We call it the Royal Law, yet for most of us it functions more like the Royal Suggestion.

(0:44) Del Tackett in Tour 8 of the Engagement Project refuses to let us walk past it unchanged. (0:52) He begins with a piercing question, why have we ignored the Royal Law? Is it ignorance? (1:00) Have we simply never been taught the height and depth of Christ’s love? Or is it the ancient (1:07) work of lies and counterfeits, the serpent still whispering that God is holding it out on us? (1:14) Or is it plain selfishness, the old man clinging to the throne of his own heart? (1:20) Tackett offers a fourth possibility that lands like a sword between the ribs. (1:27) Maybe we have thought little of how much Christ actually loves us.

To drive home the point, (1:35) he takes us to a dinner party in the home of Simon the Pharisee in Luke chapter 7. (1:42) A notorious woman crashes the gathering, falls at Jesus' feet, and begins weeping (1:47) so hard that her tears wet his travel-worn feet. She wipes them with her hair, kisses them, (1:55) and pours priceless perfume over them. Simon is scandalized.

Jesus, however, is moved. He tells (2:04) a short parable about debtors, one forgiven a small debt, another an astronomical debt, (2:11) and then asks, which of them will love him more? Simon grudgingly answers, (2:17) I suppose the one whom he forgave more. Jesus nods.

You have judged correctly. (2:25) Then, looking at the woman but speaking to Simon, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, (2:31) for she loved much. But he who has forgiven little loves little.

From there, Tackett leads us into (2:39) the garden called Gethsemane, the oil press. The symbolism is not accidental. Jesus tells his (2:47) disciples, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.

The Greek is stronger than most (2:54) translations let on. His soul is encompassed, hemmed in, crushed by sorrow. We naturally assume (3:02) the sorrow is over physical torment.

Mockery, the crown of thorns, the scourging, the spikes, (3:10) the slow suffocation of crucifixion. Those horrors are real, but they are not what’s (3:17) killing them in the garden. Hours later, the real agony erupts.

Hanging between earth and heaven, (3:26) Jesus utters the cry that should never have been possible. (3:31) Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (3:40) For the first and only time in eternity, the Son experiences the horror of separation (3:46) from the Father.

The everlasting community of the Trinity is broken. (3:53) The Father, who loves the Son with infinite, unmediated delight, turns his face away (4:00) because the Son has become sin. Second Corinthians 521.

The wrath that should fall (4:08) on us for eternity falls on him in that moment. But here is where the understatement of Scripture (4:15) detonates into eternity. Because God is not trapped inside time the way we are, (4:22) this moment is not limited to three hours on a Friday afternoon.

(4:27) Packet leans heavily on Revelation 13 8. Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (4:38) in the eternal councils of the Godhead. The sacrifice was already accomplished (4:44) before Adam drew breath. C.S. Lewis’s image is helpful.

Imagine the entire timeline of history (4:53) as a single line drawn on a page. We creatures crawl along the line one moment at a time. (5:00) God stands above the page and sees the entire line all at once.

(5:06) For him, the cross is not a past event. It is eternally present. The scars Thomas touched (5:14) are still visible at the right hand of the majesty on high.

The cry still echoes. (5:22) An old story from the church illustrates the wait. A little boy once asked his Sunday school (5:28) teacher, what does it mean that Jesus was forsaken? The teacher, a man named James, (5:35) tried to explain substitutionary atonement.

The boy listened, then asked, (5:43) but did it hurt Jesus' feelings that his father turned away? James was undone. Years later, (5:51) he wrote, I have never preached the cross the same again. Taka tells another story that breaks (5:58) us open.

After the 1988 earthquake in Armenia, a father ran to his son’s school only to find (6:08) the building flattened. For days he dug through rubble while others gave up and encouraged him (6:14) also repeatedly. Finally, on the third day, he heard his boy’s voice.

The son had kept telling (6:22) trapped classmates, my dad will come. He always does. When the father lifted the last slab, (6:30) the boy shouted, see, I told you.

Tackett pauses, then quietly asks, do we know the father came for (6:39) us? Do we realize the son was willing to be forsaken so that the promise of Deuteronomy 31.6, (6:47) he will never leave you nor forsake you could be irrevocably true for us? Isaiah had seen it (6:56) six centuries earlier. His appearance, Isaiah says, was marred more than any man. He bore our (7:05) griefs and carried our sorrows.

He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, (7:13) Isaiah 52 and chapters 53. The disfigurement was not merely physical. (7:21) It was the disfigurement of love willingly becoming the object of divine wrath.

(7:28) We return then to the woman at Jesus' feet. She loved much because she knew she had been (7:35) forgiven much. The Pharisee loved little because he thought he needed little forgiveness.

(7:43) The difference between a lukewarm Christian and a white hot lover of Jesus is not willpower. (7:51) It is vision. Have we seen the depth of the penalty paid? Have we heard the eternal cry? (8:00) Have we understood the scars that are still there because the love is still there? (8:07) Frederick Lehman’s hymn tries to say it.

Could we with ink the ocean fill? And were the skies (8:16) of parchment made? Were every stock on earth a quill? And every man ascribed by trade, (8:25) to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry. (8:29) Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. (8:45) And Stuart Townend’s modern hymn says, how deep the father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure, (8:54) that he should give his only son to make a wretch his treasure.

Why should I gain from his reward? (9:02) I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, his wounds have paid my ransom. (9:10) If we ever truly see the royal sacrifice, the eternal, Trinitarian, wrath absorbing, (9:19) scar bearing, hell shattering love of Christ, we will never again treat the royal law as optional.

(9:27) Loving one another as he has loved us will cease to be a burdensome command. (9:34) It will be the only sane response left in the universe. (9:40) This is the understated thunder of tour eight.

The cross is not just something Jesus did. (9:48) It is who he eternally is for us. The slain lamb who loved us and gave himself for us forever.