Louie Giglio - The Day God Ran
I want to talk a little bit today about some of the greatest running moments in history. Are there any runners in the house? We’re such a fit church at Passion City Church! I know you’re still in that «I’m coming out of COVID» zone. One of these days, when I do, I’m going to get back in shape. Is anybody in that zone? When this is over, I’m going to start getting back in shape. There is a runner who didn’t want to admit it, but his friends pointed out, «Are you a runner? Does that mean that you’re a runner?» Someone was pointing your way… No? You’re looking confused? Okay, I’ll just leave that and let you all work it out afterward.
Has anyone run a marathon in here? Okay, a few people. These are the serious runners! Oh, I see Bryson over there. 26.2 miles! People do this; they choose to do this. Most of us don’t like driving 26.2 miles, but some people choose to do this. There was an experiment a few years ago that blew my mind: can a human being run a marathon in under two hours? Now, some of you who said you’d run a marathon were like, «Yeah, I did mine, but it was six hours and 18 minutes,» or «I did it over three days,» you know, different times. But can a human being run a marathon in under two hours?
So they set up a marathon race in Vienna, Austria, and this legendary marathoner—the greatest marathon runner alive right now—a Kenyan named Eliud Kipchoge, set out to run a sub-two-hour marathon, and he did it! He finished the marathon in one hour, 59 minutes, and 40 seconds, meaning he ran four minutes and 35 seconds per mile for 26.2 miles. But it didn’t count because it wasn’t an open race; it was a specifically designed race just for Kipchoge. There were hundreds of thousands of people on the course. It all looked legitimate and official, but they designed it to be an extremely flat course with very few twists and turns. They hired a group of elite runners to surround him for the entire race—they broke the headwind so he could run in their draft. He didn’t even have to drift over to the drink table at the eight-mile mark to grab a cup of water. Someone came alongside on a motorcycle and handed him his nourishment throughout the race.
With an amazing team and the sophistication of a computer, which had re-engineered the time to break the two-hour mark, his elite running crew knew they needed to keep their feet on the green line the entire time. Nonetheless, he did it, and he ran the sub-two-hour marathon, even though it didn’t count. But I don’t want you to feel sorry for Mr. Kipchoge because he is a boss and he currently holds the world record in the marathon with an oh-so-slow time of two hours, one minute, and 39 seconds. He holds the current world marathon record. I would have clapped right there, but apparently, we’re feeling more conviction than we need to right now!
So, not too many marathoners. Has anyone ever run a mile? Okay, now we’re all getting involved! In 1954, a big event happened in running, and we’re talking about big running events today. That moment happened in Oxford, England, when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mark in the mile. This was something that people thought a human being would never do, and finally, Roger Bannister did it—just barely. He ran the mile in three minutes and 59.4 seconds. He only held that record for a moment, but I was curious—who holds that record now? So I did a little research and found out that a Moroccan runner, Hicham El Guerrouj, holds the mile record, and he’s held this record since 1999 at three minutes, 43.13 seconds. I thought, well, we’re talking about great running events, so I want to keep going.
I looked up the Easter morning 1,000-meter race that happened in 30 A.D. in the city of Jerusalem. When the news of the empty tomb reached back to the disciples, who were still holed up in doubt on that Saturday, a race broke out toward the garden, and we read about it in John chapter 20. Because the news we’re talking about today is good enough to send people running. Today is not about hands in your pockets, standing around the water cooler, or saying, «Oh, that’s a great idea"—kind of news. Today is for those who grew up in a church where someone occasionally took a lap. Is there anyone here from that kind of background? This is that kind of news.
I’m not suggesting that you need to take a lap; we’re still in COVID protocol and people don’t want you wheezing and coughing around their area, but this is that kind of news. Easter is the kind of day that sets people in motion. It’s the kind of day that gets people excited; it’s the kind of news that makes you want to run! And on that very first day, people started running. John 20 says, «Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.» So what are the next words? «She came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved"—that’s John, who’s writing this, giving himself a pat on the back. She said, «They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him.»
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. But notice how they started for the tomb. They didn’t say, «Wow, when I finish breakfast, I think I’ll check that out,» or, «You know, when it gets a little bit warmer, I think we should go,» or «I don’t know; what do you think? Do you want to go or not?» Immediately, it says they both were running. They entered the Easter morning 1,000-meter race, which is about how far it is from where the disciples would have been holed up to the place where Jesus was sealed in a tomb. They’re not running on a track; they’re not running down a road with people breaking the headwind. They’re running through the streets and the alleys of Jerusalem, taking turns and twists—down this road, around that little cart, and through this little alleyway—they’re running!
John wants us to know how the race played out. He doesn’t just want us to know that there are marathon winners and mile winners; he wants us to know who won this day. And so he explains it this way: «Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.» He bent over, looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived in second place and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.
You’ve got two guys in a sprint to an empty tomb, but do you know what’s amazing about it? When they got there, Jesus was already alive, and the work was already done! They ran as fast as they could, but when they got there, God had already moved first. The back-and-forth tug of war had John at the end kicking in the afterburners, maybe taking a shortcut through another alley that Simon Peter didn’t know about. He arrives first, saying, «I win the race,» while Simon Peter came in second. But the big story is, it doesn’t matter which one of them got there first. When they got there, the angel who had moved the stone was sitting there, smiling and waiting for them to arrive, and Jesus was just walking around in the garden, already conquering death, hell, and the grave.
The story of Easter isn’t about how fast you need to run to get to the tomb; the story is that whenever you get there, God’s already going to be there ahead of you, and He is going to have finished all of the work before you arrive. Because today’s not about a marathon record; it’s not about a mile record; it’s not about who won the Easter morning 1,000-meter race. Today is about the reality that God Almighty Himself is the first mover in your story! I am so glad that we did not come to church today to preach a message of what we all need to do to get to God, but our message today is that God is the first mover in your story.
In other words, before you even knew you needed an empty tomb, the stone was rolled away. And before you ever thought to yourself, «This isn’t working, and I need a Savior,» God had already done the most remarkable running that has ever been done. Jesus told us about it in Luke chapter 15. As He’s unfolding the greatest stories—no one will ever write stories that eclipse these three stories, that Jesus cobbles together: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. If I said «prodigal son,» all of us church folks would know it. But if I said «prodigal son,» even if you came as a guest of a friend today, you would know it. This son said to his dad, «I know I’ve got an inheritance coming, but I want it right now,» and he gets his share and bolts, saying, «for a far country.»
We don’t know exactly what went down there; we get the older brother’s take on the story. But I don’t know—maybe he just lived too fast, spent the money too carelessly. But we do know he went broke. We know his friends bailed on him, and we know that he lost it all. At some point in the story, he realized, «What I’m doing here is not working.» It says in verse 20 of Luke 15 that the boy decided to make a change. Remember, you can do that today! And I don’t know; maybe somebody has done that today. Some people are making that decision today, and that’s pretty phenomenal!
It says in verse 20, «He—the son—got up and went to his father.» Now, we have a lot of ways we have interpreted this, and I’ve probably preached this text hundreds of times in my lifetime. I was preaching it that night that that first college student girl got up and walked that long arena in Oxford, Mississippi. We’ve always preached, «You know, the son, he got it! He repented. He got up and he turned around… That’s the word repentance,» and he went home. But I’ve been digging into this text a lot lately, and when I dug into the text, I realized his speech was, «Father, I’ve sinned against heaven, and I’ve sinned against you.» Those words weren’t his words; those words were Pharaoh’s words, quoted in the Old Testament when he said to Moses, «I’ve sinned, Pharaoh, against heaven and against you. Please take this plague away.»
But it wasn’t that Pharaoh was repenting; it was that he was trying to work out a deal where he could alleviate the situation. So the son, most likely, was thinking, «I’ve got to repay my dad, and I’m not making a penny here. In fact, I’m so far down I’m eating what the pigs are eating. The only way I can see to repay my dad is getting a job as one of my dad’s hired servants because, actually, my dad is a very fair and generous man, and they get paid a very fair and generous wage. If I can just get on with them, I’ll work my way to save up enough to pay back my dad.»
That’s probably what the boy was thinking. He had his speech ready, and here he comes. But check out what happens: «While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.» He ran! Okay, now we’re talking about running events! He ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. First, I’m stunned by the fact that when he saw him a long way off, he wasn’t filled with contempt for his son; rather, he was filled with compassion. And when God sees you today, wherever you are in your state of life, He doesn’t have contempt for you; He has compassion for you!
It doesn’t mean that consequences aren’t real. It doesn’t mean that God’s happy about the choices that you’ve made. It just means that He sees how miserable you are. He knows how much it hurts; He knows how devastating the consequences have been. And He’s looking at you, going, «Man, everything is a mess, and my heart bleeds for you. I have compassion on your situation right now, such that it is going to prompt me to start running toward you.»
We know in this first parable that one of the hundred sheep gets stuck in a briar, right? So the odds aren’t that terrible; it’s just one out of a hundred. But we know Jesus is the good shepherd, so He moves to find the sheep. In the second case, we know a lady had ten coins but lost one in the house; the odds are higher! Now we’re talking about one out of ten, so she turns the furniture over! We know that’s God Almighty searching the house until He finds what is lost. But now we’ve got a father with two sons, so the stakes are moving up. Not one out of a hundred, not one out of ten; now it’s one out of two.
This father represents our Heavenly Father, God Almighty, who created the cosmos. And now we understand that God is running. This is the craziest thing Jesus could have said because when you look through the eyes and the lens of someone living in the Middle Eastern Palestinian world in the time of Jesus, no patriarch in the position of this father would ever run in public. You say, «Well, why not? What’s the big deal?» Because to run in public, he would pull his robe up and tuck it into his belt, and to do that, he would expose his legs, and that was disrespectful in this culture; this would never happen. It would disgrace the father and embarrass the entire village.
But this father said, «I couldn’t care less what the village thinks today! They’re going to see my ankles, my shins, my knees, and some of my thighs today because I’m running toward my boy! I see him a long way off, and I’m coming down the road. I’m going to be the father who runs!» So we now have in view the greatest running event in the history of humanity. You think, «Well, that’s so great that the father ran,» but that might be because you see the dad living at the end of a long lane, right? Is that kind of the way you saw it? It’s a long driveway that comes down to the house with the porch, and dad’s on the porch. There’s a gate to the driveway way down there, and when the sun kind of comes through the gate, the dad gets up off the porch and runs down the driveway, right?
That’d be a very Western way to see this story. But in the days of Jesus, people lived in community, so there’s a village involved, and there’s a community reputation at stake. And as I dug deeper and deeper into this text, I discovered there’s something in play here called «kezza.» Jesus doesn’t explicitly mention it in the story, but it would be in the background of the mind of a listener seeing this through Palestinian eyes. Dr. Kenneth Bailey, a New Testament scholar who has written extensively on viewing the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus through the eyes of people who lived in the culture in which He lived, writes about how, in the Talmud—the Jewish law dating all the way back to the days of Moses—there was a ceremony called «kezza.»
That ceremony would happen if a Jewish boy married someone that the family didn’t approve of or if a Jewish boy lost his inheritance to a Gentile. Were that to happen, and the boy decided at any point that he wanted to return back home, he would have to come to the village and face the kezza ceremony at the gates of the village. The ceremony would be led by the elders of the village, and the father of the boy was not allowed to attend. The reason is that, in this culture, a father’s blessing trumped community decisions. So, the father was required to remain in the house. The mother could come and plead for the mercy of her boy, but not the dad. The elders of the city would hear the boy’s story, decide his fate, and if they decided kezza was coming— a word that means «cut off"—they would throw a clay pot at the foot of the son, smash it on the ground, and say to him, «You are now kezza; you are cut off from our community and our village forever.»
This son knew that he not only had to face his dad; before that, he had to face kezza. His only shot at kezza was a plan to work enough for his dad to get enough money to pay back the debt. He knew he was never getting back in the house, but he thought, «I’ll work as hard as I can to pay back the debt if you’ll let me back in the village.» Knowing that the father was watching the road, the boy had decided to come back. News had traveled up the grapevine, and the dad had gotten word, «Your kid is coming home.» We don’t know how long the journey took; he was in a far country—two weeks, one week, eight days—the dad was watching the road. Why? Because the dad had to get to his boy before the boy got to the gates of the village!
When he saw him a long way off, he tucked up his robe and started to sprint! He said, «I don’t care what anybody thinks about me today; I just want my boy to know what I think about him today.» And he finds him down the road, throws his arms around his son, kisses him, shouts, and proclaims, «This is my boy! He was dead, but he is alive! Put the best robe on his back, put a ring on his finger, put shoes on his feet! This is my son; he was lost but now he’s found! He was dead but now he is alive!»
And on the road in that moment, reconciliation happened, and it trumped kezza. So that when they returned together and came to the gates of the village, the boy already had the robe of his father’s family, he had the ring of his dad’s authority, he had the shoes that elevated him in the culture of the day, and he had his dad’s arm around his shoulder! They just walked right through the city gates and right past kezza and right to the house, and they had a party for that boy that night! He didn’t get kezza; he got God’s great dance floor.
Now you might think, «This whole gospel is too easy; that’s not what’s going to happen to my kid if he decides to come home! There’ll be some payback in our family; we’ve got a black sheep right now.» I’ve got some work to do! This is not God saying there are no consequences; this is God announcing something called grace. And when you fast forward to Good Friday, you now see and understand when Jesus hung on the cross, He got kezza! He literally got cut off so much that he said, «My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?»
God Almighty smashed the pot of our sins at the foot of the cross of His Son and said, «You’re cut off!» So that all of us in this place today could get the open arms of the Father in an embrace and welcome home! He got kezza, and we got grace! And that father said, «Kill the fatted calf!» If you’re not a rancher and buy your meat at Publix, that doesn’t add up for you. But in the culture of Jesus' day, when you’re anticipating a great celebration, you started fattening up one of the cows, preparing it because you were having a party! Hello? God is the first mover in your story!
So that on the day that you decide you want to come home, on the day that you decide you need forgiveness, on the day that you recognize that you need a Savior, you’re not going to catch God off guard! He’s not going to throw an impromptu party; He’s not going to see what they’ve got in the cupboard and see if they can get something put together real quick. He’s going to say, «I already anticipated your return! This father, when he saw the boy, was like, 'I knew my boy was coming back. I expected my boy would come home. I’ve been praying that my boy would see the light, and I’ve been fattening up a calf the whole time! '»
As soon as I knew he was coming over the hill, I already had a calf ready for the celebration! Therefore, when we read in Revelation 13 that Christ was slain before the foundation of the world, we understand that when you got ready to see God who was already looking at you, He said, «Don’t you worry; I’ve been fattening up my Son for the entire history of eternity so that He could be the sacrifice slain for you! That on the day that you turned toward home, your sin was already atoned for, and you are already forgiven right now! The price has been paid right now; everything has been done right now! A party can be thrown in this moment!»
He got kezza; you get welcome home! And I’ll tell you in the simplest way I can why that’s good news: because you were created by God, and your life will terminate at your Creator. The scripture says it doesn’t matter what the culture has told you; the scripture is telling you today, «It is appointed for man once to die and then the judgment.»
You might think, «When I die, I’m going to the pearly gates.» Oh? Where did you hear that? I’ve been looking for it! We all have a pearly gates joke story in our repertoire: a Georgia fan and a Georgia Tech fan arrived at the pearly gates together and Peter… But now, at the end of your life, you are going to appear at the judgment seat of God, and you are going to give an account for your life.
And if you’re thinking it’s going to be some kind of Pharaoh speech, like you’re thinking you’re going to quote Pharaoh when you get there, «I know I’ve sinned against heaven and I’ve sinned against you, and did a lot of bad things, and didn’t get it all right.» I know I didn’t always listen when you were trying to help me. I know I didn’t always do it your way, and I know sometimes I made a few mistakes here and there, but blah blah blah—do you think that’s what’s going to work when you arrive at the judgment seat of Christ?
He’s holy, and that’s why He had to run when you were a long way off and get to you before you got to the gates! So that when you got to the gates, you had His robe on your back, God’s ring on your finger, the shoes of the gospel of peace on your feet, and His arm around your shoulder! So that you could walk into the gates of the eternal village of God, already covered by the father’s blessing because the father’s blessing trumps kezza every single time!
Praise be to God for His incredible grace today! Wow! Oh, what a Savior! Isn’t He wonderful? So I just invite you; we’re going to bow our heads together, close our eyes, and this is just going to give you that moment of privacy. If there’s anyone in this house today that says, «I am finished with doing it my way,» and today my eyes are wide open; my vision is 20/20. He sees you, and He doesn’t have contempt for you; rather, His heart is filled with compassion.
You say, «But I wrecked it all!» He knows; that’s why He has compassion on you. He sees all the wreckage. So if you want to be saved today, just tell Him, «Dear God, I’m asking you to save my life today. Thank you, Jesus, that you got cut off in death for me so that I could get forgiveness and be welcomed home.» Just tell Him, «I need it; I ask for it; I confess to you that I’m a sinner, and I thank you that you’re a God of grace. I believe it, and I receive it. In Jesus' name.»