Jesus' Insurrection

-I know it’s an older story but how many of y’all have seen the movie or read the novel, The Caine Mutiny?

-If you haven’t seen it, it is a great flick. You need to see it.

-It stars the late, great Humphrey Bogart

-I think it is one of his best performances and they would have cleaned up on the Academy Awards, having been nominated for seven different awards, had it not been for the outstanding performance of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront – “I could have been a contender . . .”

-I know it is a Navy movie and as much as it makes my skin crawl to use a Navy movie in my Easter sermon, it is a good illustration

-If you recall, the movie is set on the minesweeper the USS Caine commanded by Commander DeVriess.

-He is not much of a disciplinarian so his crew isn’t much too look at but they are combat-ready.

-Command of the ship is turned over to Lieutenant Commander Queeg played by Bogart.

-He begins to crack the whip on the crew and they start to fall in line but they resent Queeg.

-They begin to despise him after he makes some major errors while in command of the ship but then blames his mistakes on others.

-Under the pressure of command, Queeg begins to crack. A quart of strawberries comes up missing from the officer’s mess and Queeg goes to absurd lengths to find the person who stole them.

-If you remember, when episodes of neurosis overtook him, he would pull the small metal balls out of his pocket and begin to tumble them in his hand

-The communications officer, Lieutenant Keefer plants the thought in the executive officer, Lieutenant Maryk’s head, that Queeg is psychotic and could be relieved of command.

-During a typhoon, Maryk suggests that they steer into the waves and take on ballast. Queeg freezed under the pressure and Maryk relieves him, supported by a young ensign Willie Keith

-When they return to port, Maryk is court martialed for Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order and Discipline, a lesser, catch-all charge than mutiny

-Maryk eventually is aquitted, Keith is never charged but even with that cat out of the bag, the trial and what happens afterward are definitely worth watching {PAUSE}

- This is a little like what is happening in our text for today, what happened that first Easter and it is really the overarching Biblical story

-Really, we need to go back to the beginning to get the full story

-In Genesis chapter 1, we get the beginning

-The first four words tell us a ton

-What are they?

-“In the beginning God”

-God was in the beginning

-He has always been but just like a couple that gets married eventually wants to share their love with someone else so they decide to have children

-Likewise, God decided to create.

-He used His astounding creativity to create everything that exists and crowned His creation with the creation of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve

-He put them in the most perfect home in all the world

-He provided everything they needed and gave them one command – not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

-Unfortunately for them and for us, Satan enticed Adam and Eve to think they could do better, that they deserved to be gods, to mutiny against God

-God held a quick court martial and sentenced Adam and Eve to death

-Not only are they to die but everyone who will be born after them

-And if that weren’t enough, their perfect home will be taken from them and ALL of creation is messed up and confused to top it all off

-But God’s court martial is a little different than ours

-He actually gives some good news

-He promises a savior that will undo the mess that they’ve made by their mutiny {PAUSE}

-Unfortunately, Satan has power to continue to mess with God’s creation and tries to continue to grab power

-Even though God continues to love and care for His creation, Satan’s evil and mankind’s desire to control their own destiny thwart much of God’s goodness

-God reached out to a bunch of nobodies, the Israelites, in the Middle East and showed His love to them and tried to again plant them in a special place where He could watch over and protect them

-However, Satan’s choke hold on creation and mankind is strong and virtually impossible to break

-So God had to act and act quickly or everyone might go down with the ship

-About two thousand years ago, God sent His very own Son, Jesus Christ in human flesh to do what none of us could, live a perfect life, keeping all of God’s commandments