When the Earth Shakes
Tomorrow night, Monday, is Cleaning Night, and we have a lot of mopping and washing walls and wiping cabinets to do, and if we get a lot of people there it won’t take too long. You’ll see later when we finish our service there this morning.
Tuesday night is Moving Night, and we need guys with trucks and trailers or SUV’s to show up at 6:00, and we want to move everything in this building to that building. And again, if we get a good number of guys, it will go quickly.
If you haven’t been able to help yet, this is your time. And if you have participated before, we’re right at the end, and we all need to pull together to get the final work done so we can open up our new building and invite more of our friends, neighbors and family members to get closer to God and enjoy faith community with us.
Next Sunday is going to be a big day remembering the Resurrection of Jesus and enjoying an Easter egg hunt for the kids and all the things that we traditionally take part in at Easter.
But today is 7 days before Easter. On this day almost 2000 years ago, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a colt or a donkey that had never been ridden before. And the people lined the road, cheering for Jesus and proclaiming Him to be Ruler who would take power in the holy city and overthrow Roman rule for the Jewish people.
On Thursday night that week, Jesus ate the traditional Passover meal with his disciples. This was a time to remember how God had delivered His people from their enslavement in Egypt. We talked about that last week.
And after the Passover remembrance, Jesus began a new tradition. We call it the Lord’s Supper or Communion. Jesus said that His disciples were to break bread and eat it, because His body would be broken for them. They were to take a cup of the fruit of the vine and drink it, because His blood would be shed for them.
And that very night, Jesus was arrested by the Jewish religious leaders and the Roman army. They feared the influence He had with the people and what Jesus intended to do. And though the Roman governor over Judea, Pontius Pilate, said of Jesus, "I find no fault in this man," still the crowds fired up by the jealous religious leaders and teachers demanded that He be crucified.
So on Friday the Roman soldiers whipped Jesus and spit on Him and struck Him on the head again and again with a staff. They twisted together a crown of thorns and mashed it into the flesh above His skull. They marched Jesus to a hill called Golgotha – which means the Place of the Skull, and there they nailed His hands and feet to a cross and crucified Him.
While people jeered Jesus and mocked Him, Jesus responded by saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Now let’s look at Matthew’s Gospel, and see what God inspired Him to record about what happened next:
45
At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock.
46
At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli,
lema sabachthani?" which means "My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?"
47
Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought He was calling for the prophet Elijah.
48
One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, holding it up to Him on a reed stick so He could drink.
49
But the rest said, "Wait! Let’s see whether Elijah comes to save Him."
50
Then Jesus shouted out again, and He released His spirit.
51
At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook and rocks split apart.
54
The Roman officer
and the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened. They said, "This Man truly was the Son of God!" – Matthew 27:45-51, 54
So the last three weeks, we’ve been thinking about earthquakes – the shaking of the ground that we’ve been experiencing here in Arkansas and the big one that occurred near Sendai, Japan on Friday, March 11
th
.
And we’ve said that God tells us in His Word that earthquakes and other natural disasters teach us some important things. They help us understand that the whole world is negatively impacted by sin. The Scriptures that creation groans under the weight of sin and that all the cosmos is in decay because people have walked away from God.
Jesus says that earthquakes are like birth pains. As the years go by, they will increase in frequency and intensity to signal the coming of the kingdom of God.
And many passages of Scripture say that when this age is over and God is ready for the eternal age to begin, He will signal the destruction of this world with an earthquake that is bigger and more destructive than any ever before. The earth will shake with such a force that all the mountains will fall and every island will sink beneath the sea.
As terrible as that sounds, the promise and the reassurance of Scripture is that those who trust in Jesus as Savior and follow Him as Lord have received from Him a kingdom that cannot be shaken. If you belong to Jesus, you can know that you will stand when everything begins to fall. You will live because Jesus died for you!
That passage that we read from Matthew tells us that at the ninth hour - three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, Jesus committed His Spirit to His Father’s care. He looked out at those who had nailed Him to the cross, He looked over the worst sinners of recorded history, and He looked forward in time to even you and me and said, "Father, forgive them."
And God did.
And the earth shook.
It shook to let us know that this was the work of God from beginning to end. It shook to show God’s judgment of all the sin of the world. It shook to testify of the reality that Jesus was the Son of God. And it shook in order to tear the veil of the temple in two from top to bottom.
The veil was a curtain that separated the general area of the temple from the Holy of Holies. The curtain was about 60-feet high and four inches thick. The Roman historian Josephus has recorded that when a new curtain was needed, its strength was tested until horses tied to each side could not pull the veil apart.
But God shook the ground and He tore the veil and He announced that no longer would anyone be excluded from coming to Him.
You see no one could enter the Holy of Holies, except for the Jewish High Priest, and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrifices for the sin of the people.
Tradition says that when the High Priest went into that part of the Temple once a year, they tied a rope to him in case he died in there. That way they could pull his dead body out, because no one could go in to get him.
No one could come that close to God and live. But that was then.
This is now.
Now there is nothing standing in your way if you want to get to God. Jesus has provided the way. He is the Way.
Now there is nothing that stops you from living as God intended. If you trust in Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit to lead, guide and empower you every day.
There is nothing that can keep you from experiencing God’s blessing. Your past can’t hold you down and no person can hold you back.
Folks, for a lot of people in our world today, they feel like they’re living out that old Jerry Lee Lewis tune. "A whole lotta shakins’ goin’ on."
And you may be struggling with a relationship or uncertain about your health or worried about your finances. And those are real concerns in this world.
But you don’t just live in this world. The kingdom that cannot be shaken is coming, and as a believer it already exists in you.
You just need to accept and understand that the barriers that you have always thought stood between you and all of God’s goodness have been torn in two.
Jesus is saying, "You follow Me, and you’ll experience abundant life." That’s for now and that’s forever.
Next week we’re going to celebrate Easter – the resurrection of Jesus which proves that in and through Christ, you and I can rise above our sin and every obstacle and challenge, as well.
But as we make a journey today across the parking lot to close our service in our new building, I want us to celebrate right now, too.
What do you have to celebrate today? There is nothing separating you from God and His plan. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. No matter what shakes in your world, you know "it’s all good."
