John 19:1–11

0:00 You ever walked into a situation and just completely misjudged it? You would swear up and down, looking at the circumstances, that one thing is happening. Maybe you even go into it like a bull in a china shop with your assumption about what's going on, and you take action, and then it turns out that you were utterly and completely wrong about what was going on. Somebody was telling me yesterday about a member of our church who was surprised yesterday with a surprise birthday party.

0:32 I'm not going to mention who you were because you know who you are, and you probably didn't even know I knew about this, but I do. I'm your pastor. I know a lot of things, and I know about your surprise birthday party. The reason the birthday party was funny, though, is because from what I understand from the story, the person whose birthday it was and who was supposed to be surprised wasn't actually surprised by it because she and her friends, this is a little detail that apparently nobody planning the party thought of, were all connected on an app called Find My Friends. And the person whose birthday it was noticed that as she was on her way home, all of her friends' little dots had converged on her house. Now, I don't know what she thought when she saw that. I don't know if she thought, hey, It's my birthday.

1:20 This is probably a surprise birthday party that nobody ever told me. If I had seen that, though, on my phone, on Find My Friends, I would have been terrified. Because I would have thought, this is some kind of an intervention. Something has gone terribly wrong, and all my friends are there to call me out about something. And I would have gone in terrified, and everybody would have said surprise, and I would have utterly misjudged the situation. That kind of thing, misjudging the situation, is exactly what happens over and over again in the text that we're going to be looking at today, which is John chapter 19.

1:55 So if you've got a Bible, turn over to John chapter 19. If you're using a red pew Bible like this one, you'll be able to find that passage on page 905. That's where we're going to be for the entire time this morning. You will be very much helped if you're new to 3rd Avenue. This is true of anybody, but I'm saying this to you if you're new. You'll be helped by having a Bible in front of you, opening it up, because we're going to be looking at some very specific phrases in the Bible, as we do every week. This is what we do. We open up the Bible, we look at a passage of Scripture very, very carefully, we point out details, we talk about what it means, and then we apply it to our lives.

2:29 And so that's what we're going to be doing this morning as we look at John 19. We're actually continuing a study that we've been in for several weeks now, this fall, and we've come finally to the climax of the book of John. The moments that this entire story, all the way back, starting in John 1, that it has all been leading up to. If you remember over the last few chapters, really, I'd say probably since the end of chapter 8 or so, Jesus' conflict with the rulers of his nation, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the chief priests, the Sanhedrin, it's all sort of the same thing with various categories inside it.

3:05 His conflict with these rulers of the nation has been building and building and building through every chapter until now it's basically reached a crescendo which is ultimately going to wind up with Jesus being nailed to a Roman cross and killed as a traitor to the Roman Empire. Over the last few weeks we've been watching as Jesus endured just a complete farce of a trial at the hands of the Jewish leaders and now they've brought him to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate to try to secure his execution. See the reason they had to do that, the reason they couldn't just take Jesus out and killing themselves, is because the Jews at this time, back 2,000 years ago, were a conquered people.

3:43 The Romans had conquered them and taken over their territory. They had installed this governor, Pontius Pilate, over the province now called of Judea. And so they could sometimes get away with a sort of mob violence execution. But that's not what the Jews wanted for Jesus. They didn't want to just pull off some mob violence, stone him, wink at it, try to explain it away to the Roman authorities as a mistake. What they wanted was for Rome to exercise the authority to judicially execute Jesus, because they wanted him to die in the most public, official, and decisive way possible. And what's more, they particularly liked for Jesus the manner of execution that the Romans were wont to use, crucifixion, because not only was it the most brutal and humiliating form of execution ever invented by man it was also the one most likely to make the Jewish people the Jewish crowds finally turn away from Jesus in disgust I mean after all that was it was written in their law cursed is anybody who hangs on a tree so basically they

4:47 wanted Pilate to declare Jesus guilty and then hang him on a tree so that the Jewish people would see him as cursed. But as we looked at last week, Pilate, when they finally arrive at his praetorium in what seems like a huge surprise to the Jewish leaders, decided for some reason not to play along. He didn't go along with just signing Jesus's death warrant and putting him on the cross. So instead of doing that, he insisted not only on opening a formal trial with that question what charges do you bring against this man but at the end of that trial after the questioning you can look back at 1838 for this he comes out to the Jews and delivers this formal verdict of not guilty and those words that he says are not just conversational it's I find no reason in him in other words I find no reason for a charge I find no reason for for a verdict of guilty that's what that means now when he delivered that verdict I find no

5:47 charge. I find no reason for a charge. I find no reason in him. I find no cause to declare him guilty. Pilate probably thought that the matter was going to be over at that point. He probably thought that the Jewish leaders were just going to go, oh, okay, well, if that's your verdict on it, Pontius Pilate, O governor, O procurator, then we'll go along with it, and we will leave Jesus alone. But they didn't do that. They rejected the verdict, and that then put Pilate into a terrible bind and the reason it put him into a bind was because as the emperor's representative Pilate's first and main job was not just to suss out the justice and the right in one case or another it was to keep the peace in Judea and if declaring Jesus to be not guilty was going to result in a riot in Jerusalem led by the Jewish leaders then Pilate couldn't do that because Rome would come down on him like a ton of bricks.

6:45 So when it began clear that the Jewish leaders weren't going to accept his not guilty verdict, that they might even start a riot in the city if he let Jesus go, he starts to flail around a bit to try to find a way out of this situation. He's looking for a way that'll placate the Jewish leaders and not force him to embarrass himself by actually crucifying a man whom he has just declared to be innocent, right? I mean, that's Rome's justice. We can't do that. You can't come out into the courtyard of the praetorium declare the man to be innocent, and then five minutes later get scared and say, crucify him. It wouldn't reflect well on you as procurator.

7:17 So Pilate starts to flail around trying to get out of this situation. His first attempt that we talked about last week, and you can see there at the end of chapter 18, is that he tries to invoke this custom wherein the governor would grant a pardon to one political prisoner every year during the Passover feast. And so he offers that to the Pharisees as an option. It's an offer to get out of the situation. He says, look, guys, you can just ask me, according to this custom, to pardon Jesus. And then I get off the hook because I don't have to crucify him because I've already declared him to be innocent.

7:51 And you get to go out to your people and explain how merciful and compassionate you are that you're letting Jesus off the hook. That was the offer he made to them. But, of course, they didn't take it, and they insisted instead that this other man, a robber, more probably a revolutionary, Barabbas, be released instead. But then Pilate gets another idea, to try to convince the Jews to let Jesus go. And that's where we pick up the story today. Look at chapter 19, verse 1. Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him.

8:29 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him saying, Hail, King of the Jews, and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, Behold the man. When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.

9:01 The Jews answered him, we have a law. And according to that law, he ought to die because he has made himself the son of God. When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, you will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you? Jesus answered him, you would have no authority over me at all, unless it had been given you from above.

9:34 And therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. Now we're going to talk about the details of this passage, but I just want to stop and appreciate for a minute that this is without a doubt one of the most famous passages in the entire Bible. And the reason it is, is because it records one of the most significant short periods of time in the entire history of the world. I mean, if you think about it, these 11 verses, the whole sort of series of events that takes place in them, including what must have been a fairly long flogging, probably takes less than an hour.

10:08 And yet it set the whole trajectory of events on a downhill slide that's not going to stop until Jesus' dead body is taken off the cross and put into a stone tomb. And then that event, in turn, is going to change the world in the course of history forever. I mean, it's stunning, really, if you think about it. I mean, think about it just for a second from Pilate's point of view. I mean, he woke up that morning, the procurator of Judea. He's got a few cases to hear in the morning. And he basically thinks, he knows about this Jesus thing in advance because he sent his soldiers to help arrest him. But he basically thinks he's going to deal with a kind of insignificant dispute between some local leaders and a particular thorn in their side.

10:46 And he winds up staring in the face the most important and powerful person in the history of the universe. And then look down there, look through that paragraph at all the phrases that have just reverberated down through the centuries. You've got the crown of thorns, the purple robe, the declaration, behold the man, which in Latin is eke homo. You've probably heard that before. The shouts of crucify him, crucify him. And then this majestic statement by Jesus that you would have no authority over me at all if it had not been given to you from above. I think if you made a list of, say, the 50 most famous phrases in all the history of the world, of culture, I think most of these little phrases, crown of thorns, purple, I think all of those things would make that list.

11:29 And yet, here they all are, all piled into this one little paragraph. So it's clear we're staring at a moment of enormous significance right here. But it's not just the significance of it, and it's not just the famous phrases in it that I find interesting. What I find interesting about this, though, and I think John wants you to see this, is that throughout this paragraph, literally everyone who is involved with Jesus, from start to finish, every single one of them seems quite certain that they know who they are dealing with in Jesus.

12:08 And they are all completely wrong about it. You notice that? I mean, look down through there and just look at it real quick. In verses 1 to 5, Pilate and the soldiers obviously think there that they are dealing with a fake king. A pretender at best and more likely just a clown. That's what they think. In 6 to 7, the Jewish leaders think that they're dealing with an obvious blasphemer who has obviously falsely called himself the son of God. That's what they think. And then in 8 through 11, Pilate obviously thinks he's dealing with this just kind of common criminal over whom he has absolute unbreakable authority.

12:47 That's what they think. Every single one of them has total confidence that they know who they're dealing with in Jesus, and yet every single one of them was wrong. They misjudged the situation entirely. That's the irony that runs underneath this paragraph, and I think it's also the main idea. These people thought they knew who they were dealing with, but they were wrong. So don't make that same mistake. These people thought they knew who they were dealing with in Jesus, but they were wrong. So don't make that same mistake.

13:19 What I want to do over the next few minutes is look at each of those sections today, see what each of them reveals about who Jesus really is. So point number one refers to verses 1 to 5, the suffering Messiah. Number two, referring to verses 6 and 7, the Son of God. And then referring to verses 8 through 11, the prince of the kings of the earth. My hope and prayer this morning as we study this is that unlike Pilate and unlike the Jewish leaders, you'll actually look through the situation to see Jesus for who he really is and that you'll believe in him and trust him and find salvation, as John says, in his name.

13:56 So point number one, verses 1 to 5, the suffering Messiah. If you look at 19.1, at first glance, that's just a stunning verse. And the reason it's stunning is because it comes on the heels of 1838 where Pilate comes out to the Jewish leaders and renders this sort of official Roman verdict that Jesus is not guilty. Now, when Pilate does that, when he comes out and says that, by all rights, that basically should have been it. I mean, Roman justice had spoken, the verdict was given, Pilate basically should have taken Jesus' bonds off and released him with maybe even a detachment of soldiers to get him safely home if he thought he needed protection.

14:31 So it just seems jarring in 19.1 that in the wake of a not guilty verdict, this verse at the beginning of chapter 19 would say just willy-nilly that Pilate then had Jesus flogged. How does he do that? I mean, is it just a miscarriage of justice? Is it just a complete farce of Roman justice? Well, it's really not that simple. I think we'd like to say that because so much of what has happened so far has in fact been a farce and a miscarriage of justice. But this one's not that simple.

15:01 See, Pilate had acquitted Jesus of the capital charge brought against him by the Jews. But he still had authority to level some lesser charges against Jesus. And that's apparently what's happening here. Just to give you a little background on it, the Romans basically had three levels of what they called flogging. They called all three of these levels flogging. It was a kind of whipping or a beating. But they had three different levels of it. The lowest, sort of least severe level was known as the fustigatio, which, if you translate it from Latin, just means the clubbing.

15:34 So probably it was, that's probably not a literal term, like it didn't mean the soldiers used clubs only every time, they probably used whips, but it was a less severe beating, and it was meted out for lesser offenses. So if you were a troublemaker in the city, if you were a thief, if you were a disturber of the peace, if you just irritated the governor of Rome, you could get the fustigatio, the clubbing. And it was the least severe one. People didn't die from that one. The second level, more severe, was the flagellatio, which means the whipping. It was a far more brutal beating reserved for more serious criminals.

16:06 That was the second level. And then there was the worst flogging of all, the verberatium, which just meant the beating. And it was reserved for those who were about to be crucified. It was the most bloody of all. It was done with whips into which chips of bone and metal had been embedded so that the flesh of the person who was being flogged would be stripped into ribbons on his back, even exposing bones and even entrails. So from pulling together what we know from the four Gospels, they all kind of tell the story from different perspectives, but you can put them together and sort of get the story.

16:39 It seems that Jesus was actually subjected to two of those levels of flogging in the span of a couple of hours. I mean, obviously, he got this awful, dreaded verbaratium, the beating, right before he was crucified. But it appears he got this lowest level of flogging, probably. The fustigatio, the clubbing here. But still, why? Why does Pilate do that? I mean, he doesn't seem irritated at Jesus through this whole thing.

17:12 He doesn't seem like he would want to level charges against Jesus. He seems irritated, if anything, with the Pharisees themselves. So why does Pilate do this? I mean, why subject Jesus to this torture now after he'd been declared innocent and he hasn't done anything really to irritate Pilate? Well, it's like we said before. The Jews weren't accepting the verdict. And they weren't taking Pilate's offer to give him clemency either. And Pilate couldn't risk releasing Jesus and potentially causing a riot. But he also doesn't want to crucify a guy that he's already declared to be innocent.

17:44 So this is just one last-ditch attempt to get the Jews to let up on their demands that Jesus be crucified. He has him flogged. He dresses him up in these props that are meant to mock his claims to being a king, and then he trots him out in front of the Jews, and look what he says in verses four and five. Pilate went out again and said to them, See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and Pilate said to them, Eke Omo, behold, The man.

18:23 You see what he's doing there? You see what's going on there? He's trying to get the Jews to see how ridiculous they look in being afraid of this man. He's trying to convince them that they look ridiculous for trying to tell Pilate that this pathetic creature right here is somehow a threat to Rome's authority. So that behold the man there, that ekehomo, isn't some grand pronouncement, right? It's not, ekehomo, look at the man.

18:54 It's, look at that thing. Look at him. He's pathetic, and you guys are scared of him. He's not a king. He's not any more king than the worst peasant down in the sewers of Jerusalem. This is not a king, but you guys are afraid of him. You think this is a threat to Rome's authority. That's what you're afraid of? That's what you're so threatened by? He's trying to get him to say, you're right, we don't need this man to die. It'll make us look ridiculous.

19:27 You've got to admit, it was a dramatic, effective scene that Pilate created here. I mean, you notice he waits for the dramatic moment, eke homo, and then Jesus comes out. This flogged, bruised, beaten man, bleeding from the thorns that the soldiers had pressed down into his brow, draped with one of the soldiers purple, or maybe it was crimson capes. And Pilate walks him out and says, look at this man.

20:00 Okay, well, look at him. Look at him. What do you see there? I mean, everybody there at the time, from the Jewish leaders to the soldiers to Pilate himself, thought they were looking at a joke. They thought they were looking at a petty criminal, a nobody who had become this kind of broken pawn now in a power struggle between the Jewish leaders and their Roman masters. That's what they thought. But friend, John wants you to see something utterly different in this picture of Jesus coming out flogged and beaten and whipped and with a crown of thorns pressed into his brow and a crimson cape draped over his shoulders.

20:37 He wants you to see a reality in all of that royal imagery, mockery though it was. He wants you to hear a truth in the declaration that the soldiers give as they slap him on the face. Hail, King of the Jews. He wants you to be able to look past the mockery and really, truly behold the man. I love what one old pastor said about this. He said his enemies, Jesus' enemies, might deride his pretensions and express their mockery of his claim by presenting him with a crown of thorns, a reed, and a purple robe, and then nailing him to the cross.

21:14 But in the eyes of unfallen intelligences, in the eyes of angels, he was a king. A higher power presided over that derisive ceremony and converted it into a real coronation. That crown of thorns was indeed the diadem of empire. That purple robe was the badge of royalty. That fragile reed was the symbol of unbounded power. And that cross, the throne of dominion which shall never end. Amen. do you see the point do you see what john's wanting you to see by trotting out all this royal imagery around jesus as he bleeds he's wanting you to see that jesus's suffering and death was far from a proof against his kingship it was the proof in fact of his kingship it showed his suffering and his death showed more clearly than anything except his resurrection three days later, that he was in fact the long-awaited Messiah of Israel. Now why is that? Why does

22:14 Jesus' suffering and death prove that he is in fact the Messiah of Israel? It's because if you read the Old Testament, that's what kingship in Israel meant. It meant to suffer and die in the place of your people as their substitute. The whole Old Testament teaches that. It teaches it from all the way back with God's covenant to David through Psalm 22 through Isaiah 53 and on into Zechariah 13. If you're the king of Israel, you suffer and die in the place of your people as their substitute. That was the great Old Testament hope and promise.

22:51 And if you study the Old Testament, you know that this is the case. The whole epic story of the Old Testament is hurtling toward this moment. And there are at least three different, there are probably a dozen, but there are at least three gigantic prophetic lines that are weaving in and out of one another and come to rest right here on jesus's crowned head see the first one was that the jews always expected a divine son of man to come and conquer the world to divide the world between the righteous and the wicked and to save the righteous and judge the wicked they expected the son of man the divine one the god man to come and do that in the world second they expected a king a messiah who would come and establish god's people and they expected a suffering servant of god who would suffer in his people's place.

23:35 But what you realize is that as those three prophetic themes weave in and out, they turn out by the end of the Old Testament to be the same person. The divine Son of Man and the Messiah King and the suffering servant are all the same person. And the salvation that the King would bring and the judgment that the Son of Man would bring are both affected by the suffering servant's death on the cross.

24:07 You see this? You see this? See, the deepest crashing irony of Jesus standing there dressed in a crown of thorns and a crimson robe, it's not just the mockery of kingship. That's not it. That's not the deepest crashing irony. That's an irony, right? That's an irony that the Roman soldiers are trying to pull on you. This man's claiming to be a king. We're going to dress him up as a king, but it's going to be a farce of a king. That's a layer of irony that they're trying to pull on you. But the deepest crashing irony is that in the irony that they're trying to pull, there actually is no irony.

24:44 What you see is what you get. The king of Israel will be a king who is baptized in blood as he dies in the place of his people. The Romans didn't understand that. The Jews should have. Friend, you see the point of all of this? The point of all of this is that Jesus, as Jesus was standing there in that crown and in that robe, he was offering himself to the world as the Messiah that he was always meant to be.

25:16 The Messiah who would stand in the place of sinners just like you and me and die for them. Have his blood shed so that our blood would not have to be shed. Die so that we would not have to die. one with himself. I cannot die. My soul is purchased by his blood. Now friends, some of you need to behold the man this morning. Some of you need to see him for who he is.

25:49 The king of Israel and the suffering servant who now holds his hand out to every single one of us and says, come and take mercy from my hand and I will save you from your sins. For you, if you're a Christian, what does this mean? What does it mean if you're a Christian? What does it mean to behold the man? If for a non-Christian, behold the man means to see him as he is and then trust in him and believe in him, what does it mean for you as a Christian? Well, above all, I think it means to worship him for who he is.

26:23 To see him for who he really is and what he's really done. to remember what he did for you and to remember that above all, above everything else that he is to you, he is your king and your savior and your substitute who died in your place to save you from a death that you deserved. That's what it means to behold the man. Because I think it's so easy to forget that. To get wrapped up in the world and to sort of baptize it in religious terms and basically think of Jesus as kind of the executive director of our circumstances or the middle manager of our parenting.

26:56 Or the regional distributor of nice things. And forget who he is above all, the suffering servant, the pierced king, the crucified redeemer. Christian, never, ever, ever forget who Jesus is above and over and beyond all. Never forget the crown. Never forget the robe. Never forget the nails and the spear. In all you do in every day of your life, eke homo, behold the man. Point two. This story also reveals him not only as the crucified redeemer, not only as the crucified Messiah, but as the son of God.

27:36 You can see that starting there in verse six. So Pilate's little ploy doesn't work. Remember what he was doing, right? He was trying to get the Jews to see how ridiculous it was for them to be all worked up about this guy and let him go. That's what he's trying to do. But it doesn't even begin to work. So he trots Jesus out to try to convince the Pharisees that Jesus is no threat, they should back off but they're not having it at all so in verse 6 John says that they start to cry out what they really want to happen to Jesus crucify him crucify him to put it shortly they want him dead and they want him dead in the most public and humiliating and official way possible now just by the way if you look at 6 you can see that the chief priests and the officers are said according to John to cry out which is just kind of interesting and important because those words cried out are the main way not the exclusive way but they're the main way that John is going to describe what the Jews are doing throughout the whole rest of the story of the trial so in the earlier part of the trial it had been answered or said or something like that now

28:39 it's they screamed they screamed they screamed see the whole thing is descending into kind of mob violence at this point and John wants you to see that anyway but by this time Pilate seems equally done with them and so he snaps at them they're in the middle of chapter 19 verse 6 Pilate said to them after they're crying out crucify him crucify him Pilate said to them take him yourselves and crucify him for I find no guilt in him now he's not actually giving authority to the Jews to crucify Jesus there that's not an official command to them to go crucify Jesus he's mocking them he's mocking them go ahead you take him and crucify him you're the ones who brought him here and ask me to pronounce a verdict and a sentence on him, but you're not listening to my verdict on the matter. You won't accept it, so take him and do it yourselves. Of course, he knows they can't. They don't have authority to do that, so when Pilate says that, it's just more exasperation than anything, and it's a needling of the Jews and telling them, you don't have any authority

29:39 in this matter. I do, and yet you keep questioning me. So now it's the Jews who all of a sudden are in a scrape because not only does Pilate clearly want to release Jesus he's tried like three things now to get Jesus off the hook not only does he want to release Jesus obviously but he's irritated at them so the Jews try one last tack which is believe it or not to finally be honest with Pilate they finally tell him the truth look at verse 7 the Jews answered him we have a law and according to that law, he ought to die because he has made himself the son of God. So there it is. Finally, they're being honest. See, that had been the Jews' complaint against Jesus from the very beginning.

30:25 I mean, going all the way back even to like chapter 5 of this book, their complaint against Jesus was that he was calling himself the son of God and thereby making himself equal with God. That was their complaint. So they wanted him dead. But ever since they'd arrived at the praetorium to make their case to Pilate, they hadn't been making that blasphemy case. They hadn't been making a theological case. They'd been making a political case. Pilate, you need to condemn this guy because he's a threat to Rome. But that wasn't a real complaint. This right here is the real deal.

31:03 Their complaint wasn't political, it was ultimately religious. So finally they put it to Pilate straight. Let's look a little more closely for just a second at what they're actually saying here. And for one thing, just look at the actual charge. He has made himself, that is he's made himself out to be the Son of God. He's made himself out to be the Son of God. Now you ask yourself, is that true? Is that charge true, that Jesus has made himself out to be the Son of God?

31:36 What do you think? Well, yeah, absolutely that's true. I mean, there hasn't been any doubt about it since the very first words of the book, right? Jesus has done this over and over again. He has claimed to be the Son of God. He's claimed to be equal to God. They just refused from the very beginning even to consider whether or not that might be true. They just wanted him dead, but he'd done it. He made the claim over and over again. He called God my father in this unique sense that nobody else could say.

32:09 He didn't flinch at Peter's confession that you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And then when Caiaphas, the high priest, had put his finger in his face and asked him straight up, are you the Messiah, the son of God? Jesus had looked him right back in the eye and said, I am. And you're going to see the son of man, the Daniel, son of man, Caiaphas knew that. you're going to see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Majesty on high and coming with the clouds of heaven, essentially to judge you, is what he meant. He didn't straight up. I am the Son of God.

32:41 But was that a crime? Was that blasphemy for him to say that? Well, no. Not necessarily. Not immediately. And there's no doubt this was an incredible claim. It was a claim to being the divine Messiah of Israel. It was the claim to being the end of all those threads of prophecy and saying, I'm the guy that they all come to their conclusion in.

33:13 It was a massive claim, but it wasn't necessarily blasphemy. Why not? Because it could be true. All the Jews expected it to be true one day. They all expected somebody to come and make those claims and for it to be true, and the job of the Sanhedrin, the readers of the law, the interpreters of the law, their very job was not just to willy-nilly, thoughtlessly condemn anybody who made the claim, it was to investigate the claim. Check it out. See if it's true.

33:47 That was their job. Now, most of the time, that was easy, right? I mean, most of the time, these guys would stumble in, right? swear to be the Messiah, and the Sanhedrin can say pretty easily, uh, no, you're not. You're just a crazy person, and they could turn him out pretty quickly, but not now, because here you've got Jesus, who is without a doubt the most captivating teacher in the history of the nation of Israel, a man who is known to heal people from disease, from lifelong illnesses and disabilities with a word or with a touch and who had even raised Lazarus from the dead in the sight of some of these Pharisees claiming to be the Messiah and backing it up with scripture. So you know what they should have done? You know what they should have done? They should have considered whether Jesus might be in fact the son of God, not just rejected him out of hand.

34:48 And you know what? If you're a Christian, I think that's what you have a responsibility to do too. Not just reject him out of hand, but investigate the matter. Ask yourself what you see when you look at Jesus, when you see what he did, and when you hear what he said. And I wonder if, like the Pharisees, you're given to snap judgments. Oh, he said he's the son of God. well, that can't possibly be true because it's never been true of any other human being before.

35:24 I just wonder, what if you look just a little more deeply? What if you wiped away some of your presuppositions, just set them aside, and really looked at Jesus' claims? Can you really reject them outright and out of hand? I don't think you can. Not and remain intellectually honest. You know, some people say that Christianity is just a matter of blind belief. It's just faith, right? Maybe there's some reason to it, but basically there are these massive gaps in the reason.

35:57 There are massive gaps in the case for Jesus, and faith just kind of has to fill in those gaps, right? So you just believe things that, you know, don't make entire sense, but you just make it work because faith. Friends, that's not what faith is. Faith doesn't fill in the gaps that reason leaves. That's not what it does. It does something entirely different. When it comes to Christianity, though, the thing is that reason doesn't leave any gaps when you really start to think about it.

36:29 When you really start to think about it, when you really start to look at it, it turns out that the best explanation for what happened on that particular Sunday 2,000 years ago is that, yep, in fact, Jesus did get up from the dead. Reason can get you there. Historical work can get you there. You know where faith comes in? Faith comes in after reason has done its work. Reason does the work and says, yep, Jesus rose from the dead. I'm pretty sure of that. I'm as sure of that as I am that Caesar crossed the Rubicon or that George Washington was the first president of the United States. As close as history can get to certainty, I've got that about the resurrection of Jesus.

37:04 That's reason's job. And then faith comes in and says, and now I see the significance of that and I'm trusting him to save me from my sins. Faith is trust. Faith is reliance. Faith is leaning on something that is reliable. And friends, Jesus is reliable. Put your faith and your trust in him and be saved. Look, if you're not a Christian, you're sitting in the middle of a room full of hundreds and hundreds of people who really, really are convinced that Jesus got up from the dead and is in fact the Son of God.

37:40 We don't just believe that. We don't just hope that that's true. We don't just wish that it's true. We're convinced of it by reason. And now we're trusting in it. Friend, if you haven't done that work, if you've just been assuming that Christianity is kind of a mess and faith has to fill in the gaps, you're wrong about that, and you need to investigate the matter. Is he or is he not the Son of God? Did he or did he not get up from the dead? That's the question you need to answer.

38:13 Here's point number three. Jesus shows himself here to be the prince of the kings of the earth, the one who is sovereign over all. So verse 8, I think, when Pilate heard this statement about Jesus claiming to be the Son of God, he was even more afraid. It's fascinating, I think, because I think there are just layer upon layer of questions to ask about this verse and to notice about this verse. I mean, for one thing, I think it's really clear in verse 8 that Pilate has all of a sudden realized that he's dealing with more than just a silly local dispute here.

38:54 He suddenly realizes that, oh my goodness, this is more than what I thought I had my teeth in. I have bitten off more than I can chew. See, he tried to put an end to the whole thing by pointing out how much a mere man Jesus was. Ekehomo, behold that creature. And now it explodes on his consciousness that he might actually be dealing with somebody who is far more than just a man.

39:28 I mean, for another thing, notice here that Pilate doesn't just dismiss Jesus as a crazy person who's claiming to be God. Do you notice that? I mean, it would have been the most natural thing in the world for the Roman procurator, this hard-bitten, armor-clad, politically savvy Roman governor, to hear some Jewish peasant claiming to be God and just go, get out of my sight. Would have been the most natural thing in the world, but he doesn't do that. He doesn't laugh it off.

39:59 He doesn't wave it away. Because in just the few minutes that he has spent with Jesus, this hard-bitten, barmer-clad, politically savvy, former Roman soldier, governor of the Roman Empire, has seen something in Jesus. I mean, what was it? What did he see in Jesus? Was it some kind of majesty? Was it dignity? Was it courage? Was it grace under fire? What was it? He saw something in Jesus that made such an impression on him that when he hears that Jesus is claiming to be the son of God, that claim does not strike Pilate as ridiculous.

40:33 It strikes fear into his heart. Maybe it's true, is what he's thinking. Maybe it's true. So he goes back in. He asks Jesus this question that was haunting him. Where are you from? I don't think he barks that question at him. I think he whispers it. Where are you from?

41:06 Because he's not wanting there just a geographic answer. He's not wanting an answer like, I'm from Nazareth or I'm from Bethlehem. That's not his question. Pilate wants to know where Jesus comes from. Who are you? What are you? What is all of this about? but jesus has already given him the answer right up in chapter 18 in the first questioning my kingdom is not of this world i'm not from this world so he's silent he doesn't answer it again which enrages pilot verse 10 so pilot said to him you will not speak to me do you not know that i have authority to release you and authority to crucify you and then jesus gives this absolutely majestic answer in verse 11 jesus answered him you would have no authority over me at all unless

42:09 it had been given you from above therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin now i want to stop on that because those verses have confused christians for centuries and the reason that it's confused Christians is because the way we normally read it and the way it reads at face value in English makes it illogical. Let me explain what I mean. If you read those sentences at face value in English, it seems to say you would not have authority over me at all unless that authority had been given to you from above. You would have no authority over me unless that authority had been given to you from above. Okay, that's clear enough, right? And that's launched a thousand sermons about the authority of human governments and how they fall under the

43:12 authority of God, all of which are sermons that are better preached from Romans 13, because that makes that point, and this doesn't. Now, here's where it gets logically funny. If that's what it means, if it means, Pilate, you would have no authority if that authority weren't given to you, then what does the second sentence mean? Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. Now, just parenthesis, he who handed me over to you is all the Jewish leaders.

43:45 I know it's in the singular, so people have said maybe it's Judas, maybe it's Caiaphas, but it's proverbial, right? It's like any other thing. He who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, even though there's a bunch of us that have done that, right? That's a proverbial thing. He who jumps in the pool will get wet, even if it's a whole bunch of teenagers that jump in the pool, right? They all got wet, but proverbially it's true, he who jumps in the pool is going to get wet. Same thing here. He who delivers me over to you is the one with the greater sin. that's a parenthesis but what does that mean what does it mean logically if the jews sin is greater for the reason that god gave pilot his authority and is sovereign over it and that somehow makes pilot's sin less great then what does that mean does that mean that god did not give the jews their authority? That their authority over him did not somehow come from above? That they are exercising their authority out from under the sovereignty of God independently of his kingship

44:47 and therefore they're more guilty? Is that what that means? Well, it can't be that. It doesn't make sense because God's sovereign over everything. He does, according to Romans 13, give Pilate his authority. He also gives Caiaphas his authority. He also works things out so that Judas would have the authority that he had, whatever that was, to betray Jesus. He's sovereign over everything. So it can't be that, Pilate, you're less guilty because God is sovereign over you. These guys are more guilty because God is not sovereign over them. It can't be that. So what is it? Well, the solution, here it is, simpler than you think. The it there, in that sentence, you would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above that it is not referring to the authority it's referring to something else it's not the authority for those of you who are greek scholars that's going to be like four of you it can't be referring to the authority because of the rules of greek you'll have to trust me on that but if you for the three of you that want to know

45:50 authority is feminine and the it is neuter so it doesn't work okay that's that's the reason the it cannot be referring to the authority. It's got to be referring to something else. And what it refers to is this whole stinking situation. This whole thing. You would have no authority over me if this whole thing hadn't been given to you from above. This whole sequence of events starting with Judas's betrayal of me. In other words, Pilate, look, God has orchestrated this whole series of events to drop it in your lap. And now you got to deal with it. But you, Pilate, are a secondary player. You didn't start this whole thing. You didn't set this whole stinking thing in motion.

46:37 That wasn't you. So the greater sin, that special guilt of instigation, that greater guilt of starting this whole thing in the first place belongs to them, to the Jewish leaders. Their sin is greater because they started it. And yours is slightly less because it just landed in your lap. That's what it means. Notice a couple things here. Notice here that Jesus says that the Jews have the greater sin, not the only sin.

47:11 He says that the Jews have the greater sin, not the only sin. Which means that Pilate's sin here is great. Why? Well, because despite his own reason, despite his own verdict that Jesus is innocent, he's going to turn him over to be crucified. Despite the fact that he knows that Jesus doesn't deserve to be crucified, despite the fact that he even now has something gnawing at his heart that tells him that Jesus is something more than just a man, in just a few minutes, he's going to wash his hands of the whole thing, turn away, and cast Jesus aside. That is a great sin.

47:45 If you know who Jesus is, if your heart is gnawing at you because you know who he is, then to turn away from him and cast him aside is a great sin. And you need to hear that. But, but, it's not as great as the Jews' sin. Why? Why is Pilate's sin not as great? Well, it's because the Jews, of all people, should have known better. And they studied the scriptures, they knew Psalm 22, they knew 2 Samuel 7, they knew Isaiah 53, they knew Zechariah 13, they knew it was the very destiny of the Messiah to suffer and die in the place of the people.

48:27 They knew that the crown that the Messiah would wear was not going to at first be a crown of gold, but rather a crown of death. They knew that, and they rejected him anyway. Listen, this is important, and then we're done. The greater sin, the greater sin is by those who sit year after year studying the scriptures, hearing the sermons, singing the songs, and whose hearts yet remain hard.

49:00 That's the greater sin. Friend, maybe you're a regular churchgoer. Maybe you got your Sunday school pen. I remember my grandma had one that started here and went all the way down to her ankles. Because they'd tack another one on every time she didn't miss Sunday school for a year. The thing was long. She was a wonderful Christian woman. But friend, you can have that pin. Whether it's an actual pin or just, you know, the trophy that you put in your own head. And yet your heart be hard.

49:31 You can listen to a thousand sermons. And yet your heart be hard. You can put your hands up in the air and tilt your head back and close your eyes and sing before the throne of God above and yet your heart be hard. Friend, don't let that be you. Don't walk out of this place with a hard heart. Because the question to you, the question to you will be, didn't you hear it? Didn't you hear it every single week?

50:03 And yet your heart is hard. so many ways so many ways to misjudge the situation with Jesus aren't there you can imagine him to be something he's not you can put him in a position that is lower than the position that he's actually in worst of all you can turn away from him as something that's not worth your time and attention don't misjudge the situation look jesus full in the face and really truly behold the man let's pray our lord jesus we honor you and we praise you today as the son of god and the son of man the suffering servant who gave yourself in your people's place so that we might not have to die for our sins. Lord, we thank you that you died as a substitute for every single person in the

51:03 history of the world who would ever believe in you, trust in you for salvation, and repent of their sins. You save everyone who does that. And then, Lord, united to you by faith, we rise from the dead right along with you, first spiritually, but ultimately physically, to live in a new heavens and a new earth that you're going to create. Our Lord, all of these are great promises, and we pray that you would light them on fire in the deep recesses of our souls. Help us to love you more as we behold you for who you are. We pray all of this in your name and always to your honor and glory.

51:36 Amen.