Matt Chandler - Suffered Under Pontius Pilate; Was Crucified, Dead and Buried

If you have your Bibles, please go ahead and grab them. If you don’t have a Bible with you, there should be a hardback black one somewhere around you, either under your seat or behind you. Go ahead and grab that; if you don’t own one, that’s our gift to you. If you have the Bible, let’s turn to John chapter 18. We’re going to read quite a bit of text together today as a family of faith. So, take your time to get there. If you’re not a Christian, we have a page number on the screen for you, so you can turn and look at that now.

The death of Jesus Christ for the sins of mankind stands as one of the most perplexing and beautiful events in the history of humankind. I say perplexing because, like me, you may have grown up hearing about the death of Jesus but couldn’t quite reconcile what the death of a Jew 2,000 years ago has to do with you and your life. You may view it more like the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, where you can’t tell a lie, and feel a bit confused about what the death of a Jew in 2,000-year-ago Palestine means for you. You just don’t understand, and that’s what I mean by perplexing.

However, it is also easily the most beautiful thing, I believe, in human history. It’s beautiful because what we see happening in the death of Jesus Christ is God reconciling us to Himself and creating a people—the Covenant Community of Faith—that is both universal and local. So, we’re going to dive back into the Apostles' Creed. This is week five of our series on the Creed. We’ve stood and read the Creed together over the last five weeks, and we’ll continue to do that today. I want to remind you that when we stand and read the Creed together publicly, out loud, where we can see each other saying these things, we are tying ourselves into thousands of years of history. We are affirming what Christians have believed for a long, long time, and simultaneously, we are rejecting popular narratives and demonstrating where our allegiance lies.

So, we are rejecting the isms of our day and saying, «This is what I believe; this is where I stand.» Each week, I have tried to introduce new isms that we reject as Christians. Today, when we stand and recite the Apostles' Creed together, we reject intellectualism. We are not rejecting intellect; the Bible instructs us to be a thinking people and to love the Lord our God with all our minds. We are not a herd of morons, right? We are to have great intellect, but we reject intellectualism—the idea that mankind, through mere thought, can solve what’s wrong with man. We categorically reject the notion that if we could just think the right things, we would be able to fix everything that is broken. We have thousands of years of history to prove that it’s not true; the smartest human beings alive have not been able to fix the mess we’re in.

Furthermore, we also reject legalism. In saying the Creed, we reject not only intellectualism but also materialism, nationalism, individualism, and, of course, legalism. We reject the concept that there is a list of behaviors you must perform to make yourself right before God, where checking off the right boxes of moral behavioral modification will somehow tilt the scales in your favor. We categorically reject that as Christians and assert: no, we believe in the Triune God of the Bible.

With that said, would you stand with me as we read the Apostles' Creed together? If you’re not a Christian or simply don’t want to stand, that’s perfectly fine as well. But we’re going to read this together as a family.

«I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended to hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended to heaven and sits on the right hand of the Father Almighty, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.»

You may be seated. The phrase we are focusing on in our time together today is «suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and buried.» This phrase in the Creed deals with the facts of the death of Jesus. He suffered under Pontius Pilate—this cannot be argued historically; this occurred. This is a fact surrounding the death of Jesus Christ. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, and the means by which He was killed is crucifixion. He physically died; He didn’t swoon—He died—and He was buried in a rich man’s tomb. All of that can easily, outside of Christian sources, be shown to be historically accurate…