Come Out of Hiding - Part 1

Matthew 27:1-68

For most of His life, Jesus hid in plain sight. Oh, people knew who He was. He was even a bit famous. Many had already decided they hated Him. But Jesus often told those He healed to keep it quiet. And when some folks wanted to kill Him before it was time, Jesus just slipped through them without being noticed.

Jesus was a very garden variety Jewish man of the first century. He wasn?t tall like King Saul, or particularly good looking like David (though you could probably see the resemblance as His mom was related to David). He was just an ordinary guy saying and doing extraordinary things.

But on Palm Sunday that all changed. It wasn?t called Palm Sunday then, of course. It was the week of the Passover?a yearly celebration when people came from all over to a big feast in Jerusalem as the Jews remembered God saving them from slavery in Egypt through the killing of all of the firstborn that were not protected by the blood of a spotless lamb placed on their doorposts?a lamb they also had eaten together as family groups.

What happened on that day, and the days following was the most significant series of events to transpire yet in human history. Yet if you had been there it would have seemed very different.

(Matthew 21:1-11)

Why was this day particularly special? Had you been a student of prophecy you would have had this date in your day planner for a very long time.

Why? Because this was the day God said His Messiah would appear on the scene. Messiah was to be a ruler that would bring Israel back into prominence. He was to be much more, but they didn?t know that then. The Jews looked longingly for Messiah, and had they paid close attention, they would have had the prophecy given to a man named Daniel underlined in their Bibles. God told Daniel the future of His people in one of the most audacious and detailed prophecies ever given:

Daniel 9:24 ?Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city?to bring the rebellion to an end, to put a stop to sin, to wipe away injustice, to bring in verlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place. 25 Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince will be seven weeks and 62 weeks. It will be rebuilt with a plaza and a moat, but in difficult times. 26 After those 62 weeks the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the coming prince will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come with a flood, and until the end there will be war;

desolations are decreed.?

This prophecy was given while Daniel was in Babylon. It centered on two events for our purposes ? point A and point B. Point A was a ?decree? to rebuild Jerusalem. At the time the city was in ruins. During the Jews? exile in Babylon, a Persian king by the name of Artaxerxes took a meeting with the guy who made sure his wine wasn?t poisoned: Nehemiah, a Jew. Nehemiah had been praying and felt pressed to ask Artaxerxes to give him permission to rebuild Jerusalem. In verse 8 of chapter 2, the king granted that request. That day was March 14, 444 BC.

Point B then would be the arrival of ?Messiah the Prince?. This event would take place after 69 weeks?which we understand to be weeks of years. Sir Robert Anderson did a great deal of research into dates to help determine what 490 years (62 + 7 weeks of years) from March 14, 444 BC would be. 173,880 days puts the date at April 6, 32 AD. Did something happen on that day? Oh, nothing much. Palestine was preparing for the Passover feast a week away and lots of pilgrims headed into Jerusalem.

One of them was a carpenter from Galilee named Joshua. No longer anonymous, this Jesus came out into the open that day, riding on a donkey, while the throngs poured out praise and placed their cloaks and palm branches on the road (in homage to a king).

No other person did this on this day. It was the one opening on God?s prophetic calendar. So if Jesus was Yahweh?s Messiah, then what was He doing there? Was He indeed going to take over as king? No. It didn?t happen. Instead He came as a little understood role of Messiah the Rescuer.That?s perhaps why the Jews became quickly disillusioned with Jesus.

Jesus became a target that day ? first of praise, then of hatred.

He became a target for all the hatred of men and the devil and his angels, and a target for the wrath of God against all that hate and all of the evil man has ever done. He did this so we could stand behind Him and be safe.

Let?s skip forward now to the next Thursday (some think it was Friday). Matthew 27:38-61 details what happened, that Jesus was handed over to the Romans who ceded to the demands of the Jewish religious leaders to have Him crucified.

(Matthew 27:38-61)

What happened on that cross?

There are two important things I want to focus on. The first was Jesus? crying out in verse 46. When Jesus said ?My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?? it is a quotation from the crucifixion Psalm, Psalm 22?an amazingly detailed representation of the crucifixion. Jesus had never been separated from the Father, ever. But in order to do what the Messiah came to do?rescue us from evil?the Father had to turn His back and ?abandon? Jesus.

What took place at that time was the wrath of God, the reaction of pure good against evil, was poured full strength onto the Son. Imagine everything thought, word, and action ever done that is outside of the character of God. The consequences for even one act is death?times that by every human soul that has ever lived?and you just begin to get an idea of what Jesus endured.

Paul explains it this way: (2 Corinthians 5:21) He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

God made Jesus to blame for all the bad things we?ve ever thought, done, or said.

The second thing is found in John 19:30. At the end of His time on the cross Jesus uttered three words: ?It is finished.? The Greek word can be translated ?complete, execute, conclude, or discharge (as in a debt)?. These words signified that Jesus? work of winning our salvation was complete, that He had fully executed the Father?s rescue plan for humanity, that the payment was concluded and that God had discharged our debt to him?the debt of evil in the presence of a pure God.

The immediate evidence of that is found back in Matthew in 27:51 where it says the curtain in the temple that represented the separation of man and God, of profane and holy, was torn in two from top to bottom.

The further evidence we will see next time.

Here?s a question: if you don?t know Jesus, are you hiding from Him, or out in the open? Just to let you know, this is a ?live fire? exercise. There are real bullets out there when it comes to the destiny of your soul. We may feel we don?t need God and are in just open rebellion against Him. Meeting God outside of the Jesus heat shield is like matter meeting anti-matter. In a fission reactor, atomic nuclei are split apart to release massive amounts of energy. But even then only about .01% of the potential energy is released. When matter and anti-matter meet, however, 100% of the energy is released. Evil meeting pure good is like that, but it isn?t good that?s destroyed in the process.

In this part of the story you want to be hiding. When God comes calling to settle His accounts we don?t want to be anywhere around.

In fact, we want to hide?and do, in Christ.

Romans 6:5-6 For we know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin\'s dominion over the body may be abolished, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin

Colossians 3:3-4 For you have died, and your life is hidden with the Messiah in God. 4 When the Messiah, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

We like to think we can hide behind our basic goodness, or that we followed some dogma or went to church or gave lots of money to God or weren?t as bad as the really bad people?or any number of excuses.

I remember as a 1^st grader I was being picked on in the school yard and I picked up a blade of grass and squinted my eye so all I could see was the grass and I thought to myself ?I?m hiding and you can?t see me.? That?s what our feeble human efforts at covering our own evil are like to God.

Hebrews 4:13 No creature is hidden from Him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.

Hebrews 9:27 ? it is appointed for people to die once?and after this, judgment?

?that accounting.

Here?s the thing: if you don?t let Him pay for your sins you will have to pay for them yourself.

I don?t know about you, but I just don?t have enough goodness in me to do that, especially since Jesus let us know that feeling hatred towards someone is the same thing as murdering them!

But Jesus offers Himself as that shield, and in the process actually changes who we are?we become His goodness. We?ll find out more about that next time!