The Journey from Disgrace to Divine Honor

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I think everybody, even Russell, knows who I am.

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I'm on staff here as the Arts Outreach Pastor.

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And today I'm going to be sharing about the Crown of Thorns.

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And I had a, just to let you know how my day is going,

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I had a, I had a prop.

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I had a prop ready for today.

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And I didn't get to it in all the Sunday morning.

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And so it's, it's in my office.

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Do you mind? Do you remember the code to my?

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It's in a box on the dresser thing.

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It's in a box.

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It's in a box.

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And bring it, but don't get it out yet.

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You can open it, but don't, don't.

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We'll pass it around in a little bit.

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Is it okay if we're a little informal?

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Okay, praise the Lord.

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You guys, I appreciate your patience with me.

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I'm not, I'm not normally a teacher in this style,

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but I've so much enjoyed the study part of it

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that it takes to be ready for today.

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And if I go on a tangent, somebody would just flag me down,

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just say, "You're on a, you're off the rails, Will."

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Just flag me down because I am, thank you.

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I do have a buddy in the room who's going to flag me down

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if I, if I get off the rails.

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But I just want to warn you,

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this may not be somebody else's take on the crown of thorns.

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This may not be what you've heard.

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You might've heard this a thousand times.

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Humor me, please.

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Because I really enjoyed this.

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Some of this I had not quite connected the dots for.

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Okay.

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And it's like last week, Pastor Jonathan told me afterward,

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he said, "I just should tell everybody,

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all of this is for me,

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and you get to just take the journey with me."

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So that's, that's, yeah, I'll say that.

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All of this is for me,

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and you can just take the journey with me.

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It's probably not going to be as dramatic

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as you might think for somebody who has a history

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in so much dramatical theater.

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I think dramatical is the technical term.

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So like the narrative of a film with nonlinear storytelling,

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I want to start at the end and then back it up a little bit,

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and then we'll go all the way back to the beginning.

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I'll set up a few things

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and I'll try to pay them off at the end.

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But disclaimer, oh, thank you.

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Before you clap, disclaimer, like most films,

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I'll likely come up short.

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[laughs]

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Yes, yes, thank you.

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So let's read this together.

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You'll notice that the title is on the backside.

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This is what happens when you allow your 13-year-old

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to put the three-hole punch in your paperwork.

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So it's three-hole punched on the wrong side,

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but start on the side with the scripture

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and let's read it together, okay?

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I might call on you to take over reading at any point.

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This is great, thank you.

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Yeah, I was going to have like one of those,

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we have these fake Greek podiums.

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You know, they're like fluted columns.

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I was going to have it all set up.

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Don't even worry about that.

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Merlin, it's so good to see your face, buddy.

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Oh, I'm so glad you're here.

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Hey, Diane.

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Let's read this together, John 19, 1 through 15.

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"Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.

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The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns

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and put it on his head.

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They clothed him in a purple robe

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and went up to him again and again, saying,

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'Hail, King of the Jews!'

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And they slapped him in the face.

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Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there,

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'Look, I am bringing him out to you

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to let you know that I find no basis

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for a charge against him.'

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When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns

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and the purple robe,

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Pilate said to them, 'Here is the man.'

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As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him,

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they shouted, 'Crucify! Crucify!'

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But Pilate answered, 'You take him and crucify him.

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As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.'

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The Jewish leaders insisted, 'We have a law,

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and according to that law he must die

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because he claimed to be the Son of God.'

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When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid,

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and he went back inside the palace.

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'Where do you come from?' he asked Jesus,

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but Jesus gave him no answer.

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'Do you refuse to speak to me?' Pilate said.

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'Don't you realize I have power

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either to free you or to crucify you?'

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Jesus answered, 'You would have no power over me

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if it were not given to you from above.

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Therefore, the one who handed me over to you

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is guilty of a greater sin.'

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From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free,

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but the Jewish leaders kept shouting,

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'If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar.

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Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.'

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When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out

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and sat down on the judge's seat at a place known

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as the Stone Pavement, which in Aramaic is Gabbatha.

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It was the day of preparation of the Passover.

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It was about noon.

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'Here is your king,' Pilate said to the Jews,

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but they shouted, 'Take him away, take him away,

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crucify him.'

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'Shall I crucify your king?' Pilate asked.

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'We have no king but Caesar,' the chief priests answered."

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Normally in here we don't ask everybody to read.

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We like to read the Scripture.

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Sometimes we read it once or we take turns reading,

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but there's something about hearing,

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even if it's a this-size group,

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there's something about hearing the crowd say,

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"Take him away, crucify him."

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Because we like to read in the Passion story

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just as last week before this crucifixion

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about this triumphant entry,

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and we picture ourselves in the crowd saying,

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"Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes

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in the name of the Lord," and raising our voice

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and just this triumphant feeling.

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And so often we forget to put ourselves in that crowd

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that says, "Crucify him," and turns on him.

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And we are one of those. We do that.

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Let's focus on Jesus in this moment.

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And then, what about now?

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Who is Jesus now?

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So focus your mind on Jesus in this moment.

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He is beaten.

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He is mocked.

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He is tired.

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Help me out. He's bleeding.

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He's been flogged. Cat of nine tails.

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This is the very heavy part of our faith

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that our Savior would go through this.

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So let's move forward.

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This is El Greco's Jesus carrying the cross.

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And this is a Caravaggio that I did not know.

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I've never seen it in person.

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And the way that he depicts Jesus not being recognized

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was he depicts Him having shaved His beard.

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And then when He blesses the food,

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He realizes Jesus and He disappears.

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Suddenly He is no longer with them.

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I don't know if "disappears" is the word that's used in Scripture.

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You know, at some point after His death,

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He was in paradise, right?

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What does paradise mean? Is that heaven?

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Yes, I think so, but don't ask me to teach on that.

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Is it a different paradise than was after He resurrected?

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Don't ask me to explain it.

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I really like that I don't know, but you know what I believe?

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I believe what Jesus said, which is,

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"Today you'll be with Me in paradise."

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So whatever that means, I believe that happened.

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And we know that He took the keys of death, hell, and the grave

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from the enemy at some point before the resurrection.

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And then He resurrected and He showed Himself

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many, many times to hundreds of followers.

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And then He ascended, and when He did,

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He told the disciples, "Go and make disciples,"

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which is what we're doing here,

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where we get together and we learn from each other.

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And iron sharpens iron, and we challenge each other,

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because each of us have our own perspective with our faith.

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And I can't challenge you the way somebody else in this room would challenge you.

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But somebody else can't be will, right? It's important.

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Where each of us an important piece of this discipleship.

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When I find myself in a small group

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and I'm sharing wisdom of a faith of walking this journey

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for over two decades, and I'm with somebody who has been walking this journey for a couple of years,

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I think about how important it is to me that I have Pastor Wayne and Pastor Ronnie

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and different ones that have walked this journey of pastoring and service,

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edifying the body and growing them up into spiritual maturity.

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I have that discipleship, and it works.

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And it's messy sometimes, but it's important to the faith.

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What Jesus started with the disciples is spread like a wildfire.

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It changed the world within just a few hundred years.

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And then we are who we are because of that moment.

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And so we should continue that.

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My question I have for you for number one is who is Jesus now?

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I say he is. When Jesus ascended, we know from Scripture that he's sitting at the right hand of the Father

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interceding on our behalf, right?

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So help me. I want this to be back and forth.

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Call out who is Jesus.

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One word or a sentence. Anything.

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Savior. Intercessor.

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Healer. Comforter.

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Victor. I missed some.

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My hearing is, yes, Messiah.

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A very simple question can have a very complicated answer.

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I might suggest that if we broke this down,

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and we had like homework sessions, and all of us went home and worked up

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some sort of essay about who is Jesus, and we put them all together,

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we would all have a true correct answer,

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but we would all have enough to put together, and we would still somehow come up short.

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Right?

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The intricate beauty of God, who is God, but God incarnate, becoming man,

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becoming as much man as God, and as much God as man,

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it's... what did I say last time? It's above my pay grade.

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He's certainly the second person in our triune God.

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He is the Son of God, the second person in the Trinity,

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God who became man. He's the Savior of mankind, having paid the price for our sin,

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redeeming us for eternity. He conquered death and resurrection,

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and He now sits at the right hand of the Father, interceding on our behalf.

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He is our King.

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I find it interesting, an infinite and eternal triune God,

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who exists outside of the boundaries of space and time.

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No, we're not going to go there. We don't have time.

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But, who exists outside the boundaries of space and time,

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who chooses to commune with and speak to us His creation.

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We who are bound by space and time, with limited amounts of understanding,

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in His grace, He speaks anyway.

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And God uses things that we have some level of understanding about,

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to give us insights and glimpses of eternal things,

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so that dumb humans, like myself,

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can have some level of understanding about God and His kingdom.

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I say that tongue in cheek, but compared to the infinite knowledge of our Lord,

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we only understand by His grace.

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And when the Holy Spirit reveals to us that this is truth,

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then we can hold to that.

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I'll talk about that further.

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Now, some of the stories in the Old Testament Scriptures...

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I want to be careful with how I say this, okay?

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Some of the stories in the Old Testament Scriptures should be read like parables,

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using metaphor, symbolism, imagery for examples,

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so that it speaks to us in ways that we can understand.

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I'm not suggesting that the stories didn't take place.

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I will say that whether or not you believe that some of those stories are parables,

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allegories, or literal history,

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it does not negate the fact that they are truth,

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and they are for you, and they are for me.

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Now, I like learning about cognitive bias.

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And I actually... we'll get there.

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Cognitive bias. This is the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon.

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The Bader-Meinhof gang was a murderous, bank robbing gang

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that was not good at what they liked to do, so they got caught.

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And it didn't work out great for them,

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and they're not very well known, and people haven't heard of them.

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Not many people have heard of them.

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And a scientist in the 90s was reading an old article from a decade before

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about the Bader-Meinhof gang, and then over the next two days,

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he heard about the Bader-Meinhof gang in two other forms of media.

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And he had never heard them before.

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We're talking about a very high-level, intelligent person.

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And he thought, "This happens all the time."

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What about the times when you have never seen a particular color of a car,

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and you go by that color, and you drive it off the lot,

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and over the next two weeks you're going to see three of them?

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Okay. All right. That's called frequency illusion.

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This was coined by a scientist. Anyway.

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I'm sorry, I got lost.

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Have you ever learned about something for the first time in an article

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only to soon hear about that same thing on the radio or on a podcast?

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It is a cognitive and psychological illusion.

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It actually does not exist.

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What it is, is cognitive bias.

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It is selective attention.

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Something you didn't notice before.

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You started to notice when you became aware of it.

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That color vehicle was always on the road, you just didn't see it.

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Confirmation bias means that you will look for anything

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that will connect or confirm the assumptions that you already hold.

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I'm getting somewhere with this, so bear with me.

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Recency illusion, which is fun to think about.

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Recency illusion is when someone notices something recently,

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or learns about something recently,

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and they carry that illusion, and we sometimes do this as human beings,

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we carry the illusion that it originated recently as well.

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Okay?

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We as believers carry cognitive bias.

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When you believe that Jesus is Lord,

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you are a believer and you carry that within you.

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I believe this is a good thing.

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It's also good to know that you're carrying that bias,

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so that you don't judge someone that doesn't hold that truth.

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Okay?

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It's good to ask questions about your faith.

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It's good to hold up questions to the light like a prism to the sun,

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and watch the colors change, and see how it reacts.

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All of us, many of us in this room, probably not a few,

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but many of us in this room have heard Pastor Wayne teach

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about having an open hand with your faith.

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And that doesn't mean don't have core values.

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Have your core values, it's super important.

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But give the Holy Spirit room for you to grow and mature.

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This week, a friend of mine shared with me about a disagreement

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between a scientist and a public figure.

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And the scientist had accused the other famous figure

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of being an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect,

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which is another cognitive bias.

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Now this cognitive bias in which people with limited competence

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in a particular domain overestimate their abilities,

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which causes an incorrect assessment or false results.

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Now, the best way I heard it explained was,

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someone knowing just enough about a subject

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to be confident that they are right.

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But not enough about that subject to realize where they are wrong.

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It's also fascinating that the opposite effect happens

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when you have experts in a field that underestimate their skills

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or put themselves down.

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I believe that I have been guilty of both of those,

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both sides of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

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Now, the reason why I say that,

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I don't ever want to put myself in a place where I'm overconfident

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to the point where I might be mistaken.

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So when I present things in a manner that says,

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"Hey, I could be wrong on this.

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This is just from my heart.

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Give me grace on that."

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I think it's really good for me to have that heart posture in this setting

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because in this room we have young believers

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who could probably learn a lot from me.

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We have believers who have walked with Jesus for many decades.

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And then we have wise elders who have decades of teaching experience

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that I don't carry, but everyone can learn from asking questions.

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We can all glean from each other.

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Someone defined the word "parable" for me.

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Story works.

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Diane?

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Oh, sorry. Parable.

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We're defining the word "parable."

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Morality tale.

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A story that teaches a lesson,

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perhaps a spiritual lesson.

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That's good.

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In His earthly ministry, Jesus taught in parables.

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And He often used what people knew and could see and picture.

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Think about that for a minute.

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He gave insight to the kingdom by telling the story of a sower

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in a field, among other parables.

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He explained faith using a tiny mustard seed and a giant mountain.

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He taught about eternity using a wedding feast.

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These are things that they knew about.

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He taught about how to love others with the story of a good Samaritan

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who binds up the wounds of a man who hated him.

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We have a tendency to put ourselves in stories as the hero.

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Just know that when Jesus told that parable,

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we are not the good Samaritan.

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We are not.

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When you place yourself in the story, don't put yourself in as the good Samaritan.

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You are the broken and the beaten one who is passed along the side of the road

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by three people that you should connect with,

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that have a similar faith as you,

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that might be a pastor, that might be a priest.

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And then the person who saves us is someone we hate,

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someone we mistreat, someone we have exiled,

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and someone we have banished for being different than we are.

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Matthew 13, 13, "This is why I speak to them in parables.

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Though seeing, they do not see. Though hearing, they do not hear or understand."

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Perhaps a case could be made that these scriptures,

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these, what is it, 66 books,

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this love letter from God,

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I know so much of it is cautionary,

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but this love letter from God, from our all-knowing God,

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it's written in a way that even I can learn from it,

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that even I can hear what God is saying at different times.

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Pastor Wayne told me this week about a--

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I won't say who, but reading a young pastor 15, 20 years ago,

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and Wayne's internal response was,

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"This is good, but he'll have a more mature understanding of this in a few decades."

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Yeah, I took it easy. I took it easy on your quote.

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And so now he has read some of this pastor's writing,

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and the man has matured in his understanding and his teaching of the faith.

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The beauty of this is number four, and I don't know if I gave you the others.

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I'm at number four, y'all. We can go back if we need to, okay?

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"I cannot now see what I will see in the years of study to come."

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This is will. This is will, okay?

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"I cannot now see what I will see in the years of study to come.

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Therefore, I must remain diligent in the search for what God is saying to me through His Word."

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Let's--forgive me for trying to use lingo.

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Let's now take the way back machine to the moments before our Savior was crucified.

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The crown of thorns was to be a joke.

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It was an act of irony. It was sarcasm.

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The purpose of the crown was mockery.

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Wait a minute. Keep that in mind.

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Let's take the way back machine even farther than that.

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What are the chances that God has been using imagery that we can understand on some level

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throughout the Scriptures?

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If you have your Bibles, turn to Genesis 3.

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I believe this is starting in verse 17.

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We'll start--the Lord first addresses, if I remember correctly, the serpent.

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And then the Lord addresses the woman, and this is what He says to Adam.

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He says, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you,

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you must not eat it.

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Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

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It will produce thorns and thistles for you.

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And you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat food.

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You will eat your--by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground

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since from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you will return."

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Here's the object lesson this week. It'll be will opening a box.

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Often when studying something in Scripture, it's good to find the first mention of a concept.

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The first mention of thorns and thistles is right here in this passage.

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The first mention shows and declares that thorns and thistles are a consequence of sin.

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That when Adam and Eve and even their ancestors gardened from then on, they had to remove thorns from the garden

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or deal with them. They were forced to feel the prick, and those pricks reminded them of the sin that brought them away from the garden.

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These thorns and thistles are not real. They're a prop. But they're also painful, I just figured out.

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I'm going to let you, if you want to hold this, I'm sure it would have been more rudimentary.

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And this is, I know, fascinating intellectually, just watching me remove the plastic.

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But the thought, the thought that I know, I'm sorry.

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You think they were laughing while they were doing this? They got to take it out of this.

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You know, even though it's a prop, it actually does look real. I think it might be actual thorns that's been...

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Take a look at that. You mind passing that around?

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I don't know that I had quite connected the dots between the thistles of the garden and the crown of thorns.

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I am not an outdoorsman. I am not an outdoorsman. I might be what could be called an indoorsman,

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which my spell check is telling me is not a word, but I'll make it up. From henceforth, I am an indoorsman.

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I detest thorns, but I do try to live in some level of harmony with the natural world that God created.

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Thorns I could do without.

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In our nonlinear narrative, let's jump ahead to Paul's second letter to the Corinthians chapter 12.

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Therefore, in order to keep me from being conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh,

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a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me,

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but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

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Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me."

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That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions,

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in difficulties, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

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Number five, if Paul, after all these years of ministry and spiritual growth,

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and even praying earnestly that it go away, still felt the prick of the thorn of sin in his life,

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then certainly I can expect to feel that prick along this life.

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The crown of thorns was placed on Jesus's head not to exalt him, but to mock him.

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So let's talk about crowns for a minute.

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Sure, thank you.

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We can set it right here by this mountain of keys in my pocket.

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Put it right here.

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Donate that to the props department.

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The word crown is sometimes referred to as the top of the head.

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Think about it. Historically the most vulnerable place of the body,

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but also is the highest place of the body.

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But when you think about how vulnerable the crown is, Jack fell down and broke his crown.

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Then Jill came tumbling after. We learn it as children.

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Most of the time a crown is referring to an object that sits on that area of the head.

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They sit on that place for a reason. It is the highest place on a person.

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It is the place of honor.

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There are formal crowns and informal crowns.

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In scripture the concept of crown originates from the word cap,

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which is what much of the planet would call a turban.

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This is keeping the heat off your head.

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There's also a more formal metallic crown that was decorated with jewels.

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Its placement on one's head indicated that one was set apart for a particular task or calling.

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Such crowns were used for the high priest, for the kings of Israel.

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The crown indicated the consecrated role of its wearer.

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Consecrated, that which is set apart for holy acts of service since it could be profaned.

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In the case of the king, it also reflected his exalted position.

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Besides the concept of consecration and exaltation,

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a second term for crown in the Old Testament indicated the presence of honor.

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In some cases it pictured the reception of honor because of one's special position

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or entering into a position. Such as wives who were crowned with honor to show their new status of marriage.

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Before and during Jesus' day, the Romans would bestow a civic crown on one who saved the life of a citizen.

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And it was made of the leaves of oak. The pretty part.

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I read this quote this week by Dr. John Beck and I can't vouch for him.

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I have no idea. I don't know. Who knows?

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But he said, "When I encounter the idea of thorns on Jesus' head,

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I'm transported all the way back to Genesis 3,

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and I'm reminded the consequences of sin linger around thorns."

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These thorns are a reminder of and a representation of sin in this world.

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Jesus, he didn't carry it on his shoulders. He carried it on his head, on the crown of his head.

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The intent was to dishonor our Lord, to injure him at his most physically vulnerable place,

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to mock him with a fake and dishonorable crown, to try to show the world that he was nothing.

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The irony is this crown did set him apart and consecrate our Lord for this holy act of service to mankind.

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As we think of our Savior suffering for our sake, he chose this crown,

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this crown of honor as he entered into this special position and the status of our crucified King.

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Remember what I said before about how the Romans would bestow a civic crown of oak leaves for saving the life of a citizen?

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Imagine the honor of saving the lives of mankind.

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For this he wore a crown of thorns, humbling himself to death on the cross,

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only to be exalted by God the Father, becoming our King and offering redemption to anyone who so will.

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The beauty of this image to me is what the enemy meant for evil. He turned it for our good.

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Any other comments or questions? Yeah, Jan?

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Yeah, very powerful. And sometimes we think sin, think of it as the metaphor for sin.

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We think, oh, just, okay, it's just that, it's just that small sin and we don't realize when we succumb to the temptation,

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because the Lord always gives us a way out.

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But when we find ourselves in sin, it tears at us spiritually.

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It's so much stronger than we give it credit for.

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And Rich Mullins wrote a song a long time ago called "We are not as strong as we think we are."

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We need the Lord. He is made perfect in our weaknesses.

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Anybody else? All right, well, I'm 10 minutes ahead of time.

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I love you guys. This is where I am. This is just, I'm not bringing you, this is not theological.

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It is theological, but this is not like, I don't have a PhD and anything.

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I'm not backing, okay, I shouldn't back up. Thank you, number eight.

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Linger.

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Some level of understanding about to give us insights and glimpses of eternal things maybe.

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I think it's the eternal.

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Any other questions about the paperwork? I can go through them real quick.

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Number two. I didn't put the numbers in my notes until I got to number four.

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Sorry, sorry everybody. Yes.

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At some point, I guess I have a very simple question.

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An infinite and eternal triune God who exists without the boundaries of time and space,

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who chooses to commune with us, to commune with and speak to us His creation.

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We who are bound, we who are bound by time and space with limited amounts of understanding,

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and in His grace, He speaks anyway.

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That one's will too.

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Thank you all.

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Please.

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You said morality.

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Inside the church, believers, believers.

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When we take stuff from scripture, that is scriptural for us.

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That's the end of the conversation.

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In the church, it doesn't exist outside the church. It's not right or wrong. That's the way we see it.

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The parables are not scriptural.

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The parables are a part of a lyrical narrative device to make a point or prove a point.

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It's sort of like analyses, but they're not analyses.

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It's a way of saying something to make something else believable.

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The reason I'm saying that is going back to what you were talking about earlier about asking questions

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and being willing to learn and be a contributor to the prime minister.

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We need to stop thinking that the Bible is just meant for believers to have Bible.

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But then breath.

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Careful think this.

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An atheist that writes a brilliant screenplay for a motion picture that makes a significant dollar

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and changes the price of the doctor's real life. Maybe a parabolic screenplay.

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He may not even know how to spell Jesus.

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That's not the point.

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The point is the use of the parable is to accomplish something which is why it exists.

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So we narrow it down and go, well, if it's a parable, it doesn't have something to do with Jesus.

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No, it only has something to do with Jesus, but Jesus does mean parable.

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It was hard for me to understand.

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That's good.

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Oh, wow.

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You got to dig.

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That's good. You got to dig.

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And sometimes it's the third or fourth dig in the same area.

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Or at least it is for me.

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Am I too transparent here? Sorry.

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Oh goodness.

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Well, let's pray. God, thank you so much for your grace.

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Thank you for speaking to us. Thank you for having a plan from the very beginning.

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Thank you for your choice to redeem us.

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Thank you for your choice to commune with us, to want time with us.

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And God, we're grateful for that.

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We don't hold it lightly and we love you and praise you and have your way in this building,

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on this campus, with this fellowship today in Jesus' name. Amen.