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The Hinge of Eternity

Philippians 2:1-11

The Second Wednesday

 February 16, 2005

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

So tonight we begin our journey to the cross with Jesus by meditating on Day One – the first day of His last seven days on earth. So, tonight we are at Friday before Holy Week. But already I have to correct something I said. These were NOT Jesus’ last days on earth at all. Not by a long shot. Seven days from this point He will be put to death. But the whole point of that is so that three days later He will be raised back to life on Easter morning in what we call the Resurrection. And then He will walk the earth again for another forty days, appearing to more than five hundred people to show that He really HAS overcome death. And that is not the last of His presence on earth because He promised that where two or three are gathered in His name, He actually WILL be in their midst – not just in their memories, not just as an idea – but actually in our midst. He is here, people. Think about that. Last but certainly not least He has also promised to return exactly the way He left in what we call the Second Coming – to establish heaven on earth.

So, tonight we are focusing on Friday before Holy Week, the first of His last seven days before the crucifixion. I want to talk about where He was, what He did, what He said. There’s only one problem: we really do not know exactly where He was or what He did, or what He said on the seventh day before His crucifixion. The Bible just does not tell us. It tells us what He was up to SIX days before the crucifixion, but not on the Friday one week before. For this day it’s all guesswork.

We know a number of things He did and said right before Day Six, but we really do not know whether those things occurred seven days earlier or eight days earlier or twenty days earlier.

But even if we do not know exactly where He was on this day or what lessons He taught or what miracles He may have done on this particular day, we DO know something else. We know that this day was the point of no return - He was making the last leg of His journey toward Jerusalem because the Bible does tell us that the next day He walked into a suburb right outside Jerusalem called Bethany.

This particular day, Friday, was His very last opportunity to abort His mission of getting himself arrested, tortured, humiliated, and slowly executed. He knew where He was going and He knew exactly what was going to happen. At least three times He had told His apostles what He was going to walk into. They had tried to talk Him out of it – and that got Peter the greatest tongue lashing that Jesus ever gave anybody.

Today, He is one day out from the city of His execution. He has already deliberately eluded or avoided His enemies more than once before. And now He is walking straight into their arms – their arms of spears and knives and chains and whips. But He is not there yet. There is still time for Him to veer off.

We can only imagine what those traveling with Him must have been thinking. Everyone with Him was begging Him not to do this. He did not have to do this. But what was HE thinking? Twenty-four hours later He will answer that question when He says,

"Now My heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour,” (John 12:27-28)

It is clear that Jesus felt all the anxiety that anyone would who is walking to the gallows. This day is THE day which determined what Jesus was all about. He did NOT have to do this … unless He wanted to give every single sole in all humanity the chance to be saved from their own sins for all eternity. The way Max Lucado puts, it, the door of all eternity hinged on this day.

THIS is love. THIS is grace. THIS is Jesus, our Lord and Savior,

 

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

He humbled himself and became obedient to death —

even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place

and gave Him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:6-11)

 

And it all hinged on this day – the point of no return.