Clough John Lesson 64

Trials – John 18:28-19:16

We come to a very fitting passage in the Gospel of John for our communion Sunday; John 18, as we proceed and follow the Lord Jesus Christ up until the death on the cross. In John 18-19 the Apostle gives us his unique way of describing the death of Christ and I hope we’ve prepared you for this as we’ve approached the cross in the Gospel of John by from time to time reminding you of John’s technique of writing. Remember the man who God used to write this Gospel, by the time he wrote it, was an older man, much older than all the other Gospel writers. Mark wrote as a young man; Mark was a boy who acted as basically the secretary of the Apostle Peter and so what we call the Gospel of Mark the Holy Spirit generated out of probably a set of lecture notes, a set by a young man, Mark. Matthew was an older man, middle-aged probably, a bureaucrat in the Roman system of government. Luke, we know he was a physician, a doctor, and probably again middle-aged. But John, by the time he wrote this, was an old man and therefore the Holy Spirit had many years to work with this man and to kind of gel his concepts of Christ, to mold them exactly the right way so the Holy Spirit would give the inerrant Word through John.

We have said time and time again in this Gospel that John has a very interesting technique of surprising you. John writes very simply; when you first learn Greek in seminary the first thing you do is read the Gospel of John; everybody wants to get to the Gospel of John. It’s kid of like “Jack and Jill went up the hill” kind of, in the Greek, every easy. But then after you’ve translated a passage and you’ve gone through the vocabulary which is extremely easy, all of a sudden you become aware, hey John, you meant a little bit more than that. And you begin to look more and then he meant more than that too and John, we’ve found is found of these triple and double sayings; things that are true at four different levels at one time. John loves to surprise us this way and when we come to this arrest and trial of Christ John doesn’t disappoint us. He again deploys this fascinating technique of presenting Christ.

Again I remind you why the Holy Spirit used John, who in turn used this particular technique because the theme in John’s Gospel is to present the glory of Jesus Christ in a subtle way. John insists, contrary to the other Gospel writers, when He wants us to look at Christ He wants to look at just everyday mundane things and He says if you look at the mundane things in Christ’s life there you will see His glory, whereas the other Gospel writers they want us to see His tremendous appearances on the Mount of Transfiguration, when, so to speak, He took the shade of His humanity off and suddenly let us see the naked raw deity shine forth. John isn’t like that at all. The closest he really comes to that is the passage we’ve just finished in John 18, when they come to arrest Him, and we computed that some 500 to 1000 men came across from the east gate of Jerusalem, across the valley of the Kidron, on up the western slope of the Mount of Olives to arrest Him. They gathered around Christ as He came out of the tree line, protecting the disciples who were back in the grove, Christ walked out and He met them, and He said “Who do you want?” And they said we want Jesus.

And then He said, again using John’s very subtle way, as He said ego eimi, I AM. That could be taken as a very simple statement, I am the one whom you came to see. But it meant a lot more because we know, and have been forewarned in previous passages that whenever Jesus talks that way He’s not just saying “I am He.” What He’s saying is: I AM Jehovah, because ego eimi is the word “I AM.” You see the Tetragrammaton, the Hebrew four-lettered word so sacred that the orthodox Jew never pronounces this. In fact, it has no vowel points on it because its pronunciation was lost in history. That’s the sacred name, called Jehovah in our English translations, but nobody really knows how it’s pronounced. The best pronunciation is Yahweh. It comes from the Hebrew verb “I AM,” from the burning bush in Exodus 3 and 4. And so Christ said this and you have the spectacle, and John is great at painting spectacles, it’s an artist, a Christian artist could saturate their lives with the Gospel of John, what a picture he could paint because here you have 500 to 1000 men armed with all sorts of weapons with the lone Jewish carpenter standing outside the tree line, saying “Who do you want?” And you have Peter with his sword who is going to defend the Lord God omnipotent with one mighty blow, using the overhand slice that he had seen the Roman soldiers do, and misses and takes out an ear, that’s all. He was intending to split his skull is what he was intending to do. And with this awkward human attempt to defend Christ, what does Christ do? Two words and 500 men trip over themselves and fall all over the ground.

So you see the magnificent picture the Apostle John presents; it’s those pictures and now when we come tonight we’re going to see again he continues this theme of deliberately presenting the light and the darkness, the greatness and the loneliness, the loftiness of human leaders and apparently the lowliness of Christ. Another theme that you want to watch as we go through the text tonight is John’s favorite theme of assuring us that however bad this disaster looked on the surface, the Lord Jesus Christ is still ultimately in control. Remember how calmly Jesus walked out of that tree line and He told the Roman, probably a Full Bird Colonel that came out with the cohort, He said just leave them alone, they’re My disciples, they won’t bother you, it’s Me you’re after, take Me. And all of that calmness, He was totally in charge of the situation.

Now there’s a spiritual lesson and application to the believer. What John is telling you here is that the nearest that the plan of God ever came to being upset, the nearest the plan of God ever came to not working was that moment when Jesus Christ was arrested and would shortly go to the cross. That was the closest the plan of God ever came of not working, but even in that situation, the worst catastrophe, when Satan arrayed every political religious pressure he could bring to bear upon the sinless Son of God, in that situation, He came through with flying colors, always in command of the situation. And therefore we can get assurance, the object of our faith today is in a lot more secure position than He was here and if He was at this point in total control of the situation, then how much more is the Lord Jesus Christ in total control of the situation tonight.

Let’s look at John 18:28 because this is where we left off last time. Peter had denied Him three times and now we come to verse 28: “Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover. [29] Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? [30] They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee. [31] Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye Him, and judge Him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death: [32] That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which He spoke, signifying what death He should die.”

Now the place where Pilate exercised his judgment is a matter of debate in history. We’ll look at the place, at least two opinions of this place to give you a little flavor for where this all happened. Last week we showed you what it looked like on the Mount of Olives, here’s a map of the city of Jerusalem; [he shows slides] the Kidron valley extends up through here and that ridgeline of the Mount of Olives extending to the east of the city of Jerusalem. Here’s the temple cite and just to the northwest of that temple was the barracks of this Roman cohort, which as we’ve said is equivalent to a regiment, that maintained order in the city of Jerusalem. Dr. Avi-Yonah has done extensive digs throughout the city of Jerusalem and has built a scale model depicting these places, and this is the most accurate scale model we have; it’s updated as new digs are done. You want to keep the scene in mind of John’s Gospel and what you want to see as you look at the slide is visualize the stark contrast between the one lone Jewish carpenter and the magnificence of Rome.

Just look at the power and the grand view of the display; John the Apostle implies that you ought to know this because he’s going to make certain remarks in his text about it. Here is the temple, you’re looking southwest; there’s the temple area and there’s the center that Jesus Christ said He was going to destroy in three days; literally He didn’t mean that, He meant His body but they thought He meant that. To the northwest you see four towers; those four towers are the Antonias barracks of the regiment of Roman soldiers. That is the place where the Full Bird Colonel had his command, who came out to arrest Christ on the Mount of Olives which would be to the left of this slide. Here’s the way it looked from inside the temple; notice the parapets from the top; there’s where the Roman guards watched; they watched all through the city of Jerusalem. We’ll show other pictures taken at other places in the city and from this one area they could survey every sector of the city; they could watch for upcoming riots, they could make their arrests. In fact it was down here in this area where Paul the Apostle was later arrested in the book of Acts and some alert soldiers up in this tower spotted him; they told their CO and he dispatched a group of soldiers out to save Paul from the arrest. But again as you look at the slide look at the over-arching grandeur of Rome. There is Rome; it’s higher than the Jews; there is Rome, the almighty state. Here’s the great archway. Most Christian tradition says that Christ was led through those two gates; He was arrested and He was taken into the fortress of Antonias and from there He was interviewed by Pilate. It was here, in the palace, the Praetorian, that this trial took place.

Here are the steps that they must have gone up; it was these steps that John, if this is the cite, it would be these steps that the people refused to go up because they might defile themselves and therefore Pilate had to come down off of this area and talk to Jesus Christ down in the lower part of the slide. Here is the fortress of Antonias as it is today, at least the pavement area but the thing you want to look at is the various ridges that line this pavement; those ridges were cut there by Roman soldiers who, through craps, this is the floor of their barracks and they used to play with dice and all sorts of games and they cut them into the pavement; it was on this pavement somewhere that Jesus Christ was interrogated. Though there is another theory that says that Jesus Christ was interrogated in another place in the city, called the Praetorian, which would be Herod’s temple. This is the theory of Nair in his book, Pontius Pilate. He argues that this tower, which was a special palace of Herod, it was there that Pilate interrogated Jesus, but the purpose of showing you this isn’t to revive the debate but to simply show you how the horizon of the city was dominated by the Antonias barracks on the one hand and Herod’s temple on the other. This is the eastern edge of the city as it existed in Christ’s day and we are now south of Herod’s palace and he has a special walled in area to keep himself away from the rest of the city. In the foreground you see the wealthy homes; it was in one of those wealthy homes that tradition says that Christ gave the last Passover supper which we celebrate as communion.

But notice again how the Antonia barracks dominates the city’s skyline of ancient Jerusalem. Keep those pictures in mind as we go to the text and we see this magnificent exchange between the representative of the king of God and Pilate, representative of the kingdom of man, and watch for all of John’s beautiful contrast that he likes to challenge us with.

So Pilate, in John 18:29, comes out to the people; notice he comes out to them. Throughout all this narrative the Roman authorities are presented in a good light; they are not presented in a bad light. There’s going to be some things go on here you’re going to wonder about. But basically the apostles are presenting Rome as an instrument used by Satan to destroy Christ; but they themselves are not sinning any more than any other man in the process. In verse 29, Pilate asked, “What accusation bring ye against this man?” Now of course Pilate had heard of the accusation but he needed an accuser and there was only one problem at this point in the whole episode; the accuser has just hung himself. Judas Iscariot is dead, they can’t produce a living accuser and so Pilate knows this and this is why they come up with this very coy reply in verse 30, notice how oblique it is; Pilate has asked them for the formal accusation against Christ and what do they tell Him. “They answered and said unto him, Well, if he wasn’t a malefactor, we wouldn’t have delivered him up to you.” That didn’t answer Pilate’s question; that was just blowing smoke, that was avoiding the issue.

And so Pilate goes on, and Pilate said well then, “You take ye Him, and judge Him according to your law.” This is a purely internal Jewish matter because Pilate had thought up to verse 31, he had thought that the Jews were bringing Christ on some sort of a trial but then as always men with anti-Scriptural motives sooner or later betray themselves and the last part of verse 31 is John’s report of these men and their real intent of bringing Jesus to trial. “The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death” Now isn’t that interesting? They hadn’t brought Jesus, after all, for a trial, they had already had the trial, they just wanted in their minds to have someone do the dirty work for them, somebody to knock Him off; it was just a technique of ingratiating themselves with Rome so that Rome might have the dirt on their hands; notice, for example, the notice at the end of verse 28, they didn’t want to walk up the hall lest their feet would get contaminated by the steps. See how careful they are over the trivial, the legalistic trivia and here it happens to be the God-man Savior that they are accusing.

And at this point, you would think at the end of verse 31, with this seesaw battle going on between the Jews, no, we don’t want to kill Him, let Pilate kill Him, and Pilate says no, I’m not killing Him, you guys do it. Jesus, the ping-pong ball, batted between the two spheres of authority. And it looks chaotic but John can’t let us read this without pointing out something as he always does. John 18:32, “That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which He spoke,” we saw him do this once before. I mentioned this in John 18:9 where he cites Jesus’ statements by the same formula that he uses to cite Old Testament Scripture with; that’s very significant. When he cites this he says “that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled,” and that’s a formula that equates the saying of Jesus with the Scripture itself, and shows therefore John accepts Jesus’ words on an equal authority with the Torah, the Old Testament Scriptures. And then notice what else he says about this prophecy, “signifying what death He should die.” Why is that stuck in there, what do you mean, what kind of death? The prophecy doesn’t say “signifying that He should die,” it says the “kind of death that He should die.”

Now at this verse we have the culmination of a grand theme that the Apostle has been weaving in and out of the text and we kind of lost sight of it because we’ve gone verse by verse, chapter by chapter over these months and we’ve lost track of one little theme that he’s been weaving in here. So I’m going to take you back to some of these verses, pick up that theme, and show you what he means by this statement.

You see, there were two methods of death; one was the Jewish method. The Jewish method was stoning; as we have shown in the Acts series that does not mean pebbles; that means a one or two hundred pound rock slammed on your chest so your heart will squash and after that then they knock off your hands, legs and so on with sharp rocks to severe and to bruise and to crush. That was the kind of Jewish death; death by stoning. Now the other death possible was Roman technique and that was crucifixion; crucifixion was introduced into the Palestine area by the armies of Rome. That’s why Psalm 22 is prophetic, it was written a thousand years before and said they have pierced My hands and My feet. That was not Jewish technique of killing so thus we know Psalm 22 was prophetic. But here’s what John gets at in verse 32; he’s saying that the seesaw battle between the Jewish authorities and the Roman authorities must end with the Romans killing Jesus. Why? Because Christ must be crucified; He must not be stoned. It must be the Roman death, not the Jewish death that Christ endures. And so in spite of the chaos and the seesaw and the deals that are made between the leaders, John says look at this; the sovereign plan of God working through the men, working through the deals, Christ will certainly be crucified, He will never be stoned.

Let’s see why this is so important; turn back to John 3:14, just before the famous John 3:16. It was early in Jesus’ career that Jesus revealed to the people the method by which He would die. It says in verse 14, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” That’s not stoning; stoning is crushing down, not lifting up. Turn to John 12:32; in another place Jesus very, very clearly predicted how He would die and because He predicted this it’s important to the Apostle John that we understand that His predictions came true and so in John 12:32 Jesus said, “If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto Me. [33] This He said…” now verse 33 is an apostolic comment on Christ’s comment; Christ spoke verse 32, but verse 33 is put in there by the Apostle John to say see, see what He’s saying, “This He said, signifying by what death He should die.” So John says it’s very important that Jesus, finally, when all the deals are made, that He wind up in the hands of the Romans, not the Jews.

But then along with the theme of this prophetic death by Roman means, John has also been touching us here and there in the text with another theme; the theme of the threat to the fulfillment of God’s Word. The fulfillment of God’s Word isn’t this nice magnificent process that just kind of coasts to a breaking halt. That’s not the way prophecy in Scripture is fulfilled; it’s always fulfilled in the middle of chaos, so you’ve got to hold your breath to see if it comes out right, and sure enough John has done this. We’ll go backwards through John; turn to John 10:31, notice what had happened here. [“Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him.”] Jesus had given one of His inflammatory discourses; the people got mad and the Jews took up stones, again, to stone Him. Jesus was in imminent danger of being stoned to death and not crucified to death. Turn back to John 8:59, you’ll notice every one of these John mentions the word “stone,” see, he has this all fixed up in his mind how he’s presenting this. “Then they took up stones to cast at Him, but Jesus hid Himself….” See the word “stone,” the Jewish manner of death. In John 7:1, “After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He would not walk in Judea, because the Jews were constantly,” imperfect tense, “constantly seeking to kill Him.” And then in John 5:16, the legalistic controversy, “And therefore the Jews did persecute Jesus, and sought to slay Him, because he had done these things on the Shabbat,” the Sabbath day. So you see those two themes, the threat that oh-oh, Jesus might finally die by stoning and if He does His word can’t be Scripture, His word can’t be the inerrant Word of God so it’s got to happen that if Jesus is God that He be killed by the cross.

Now we return to John 18; that’s why that verse is in there, “That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled,” you see He did it right after verse 31. In verse 31 Pilate is trying to get rid of Jesus and dump Him back on the Jews, but the moment he tries to do this he can’t, he’s thwarted. And John says I want to show you some more about Pilate and how he thought, and why he was a thwarted man but right now as I start the story, John will tell us, I want you to see that whatever Pilate does He’s stuck with Jesus; he is stuck! He is the representative of the Roman authority and he has to crucify Christ because prophecy says that if Christ dies it must be by Roman means.

John 18:33, here, after verse 32, you have Pilate gradually growing in frustration throughout this entire narrative, trying to get rid of Christ, and get His blood off his hands and he can’t do it. “Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again,” that may have been that Fortress of Antonia that you saw on the slides or it may have been Herod’s palace, that’s what the debate is, you can’t tell from the language, he “entered into the Praetorian and called Jesus, [and said unto him,]” and here is one of John’s subtleties. In the Greek it doesn’t read, “Are You the King of the Jews?” It’s sarcastic, it says You, YOU are King of the Jews?” It’s a picture of the arrogant government official, in his hands are all power, and he looks down his nose in condescension and gives this Jewish man, this lone Jewish man, “You? You are King of the Jews?” Pilate asks.

John 18:34, “Jesus answered him,” and this sounds like Jesus is being smart again but He’s not, Jesus said, “Are you saying this thing of yourself, or did others tell it to you?” Now the reason Christ asks this is because He asked a similar question earlier. Christ, throughout His literally turn the other cheek. That’s what’s wrong with people that take the Sermon on the Mount literally in that sense. It’s wrong because Christ doesn’t follow the Sermon on the Mount when He’s in a trap; He defends Himself. And throughout this passage He insists that the trial be legal and wherever the trial isn’t legal He points it out so that those of us who look back in time can says, it was an illegal trial. And at this point He’s asking Pilate the question: Are you asking Me whether I am king as a Roman, or are you asking Me whether I am king because the Sanhedrin put you up to it? Because if you’re asking me whether I am king as a threat to Rome My answer is going to be no; but if you’re asking Me whether I am King in the Jewish sense of the word, My answer is going to be yes. So I can’t answer your question Pilate, until you clarify the question. That’s why He asks what He does.

And then Pilate, again you see the picture of this man, he’s a pragmatist, as many men in government are in this situation; not all, but many are; they have to be to survive. So he’s a pragmatist, he could care less for the issue and with a lot of impatience, [35] “Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You unto me: what have You done?” By this time you sense the man really doesn’t want anything to do with the whole thing.

And then in John 18:36 Jesus launches out into a little amazing statement defining His kingdom. “Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this age, or “this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My soldiers,” the word “servants” is too weak, the Greek word is more of a soldier, “then would My soldiers be fighting, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence.” Now that is a loaded statement. First of all, do you notice, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and John has very carefully developed this all through the previous chapters and he’s concentrated the world…, what is the world to John? Now just a physical existence but it’s the world system; it is in the eyes of prophecy the four great kingdoms: the kingdom of Babylon; the kingdom of Medo-Persia, the kingdom of Greece and the kingdom of Rome, as all four of those contributions gel together into the kingdom of man. So we’ve outlined this contribution, the Babylonians have historically given man deficit financing, banking, modern banking practices date back to the Babylonian Empire. The Medo-Persian Empire gave man the connection between the Orient and the Occident, the east and the west and the one-world culture. The Greeks, everyone knows, gave man autonomous thought, that man will, by himself, without revelation, attain truth and Rome gave man organization and bureaucracy and to some degree law. And Rome has continued to do this, Machiavelli and others who have written, has it ever dawned on you that Machiavelli, the author of modern diplomatic procedures, that Dante, the author of one-worldism, both were Italians and both are descendants of the fourth kingdom. The ideas of Rome still permeate western culture. That is what John means by the world, he’s not saying that Jesus is developing a spiritual kingdom here, something that’s not going to be physical.

In verse 36, My kingdom is not of this whole economic, political setup, that’s what Jesus is saying; He’s saying to Pilate, Pilate, you’ve got Me all wrong; I sit down here as a lone Jewish carpenter you think and you’re just thinking that this is some trivial case to be disposed of and you’re asking Me whether I’m going to be king within the general historical system that operates now in history. He says, Pilate, I’m here to tell you that My kingdom is more basic than history itself. In other words, Jesus cuts through underneath the whole presupposition framework of society itself; that’s what he means. And then He says if My kingdom were to be integrated into the present world system, then My servants would fight. Now the question immediately arises, what did Jesus mean by His “servants.” Well, fortunately we have other Gospels to amplify the text, we don’t have time to do this but in Matthew 26:53 the Lord Jesus Christ stated who those soldiers were. When asked He said do you now know that I could call twelve legions of angels to My side and they would fight for Me. The twelve legions, that itself is significant. Jesus was well schooled on the Roman military setup. The legion was the equivalent to our modern division; it was staffed with anywhere from 4,200 men to 5,500 men; the famous Roman military historian, Flavius Vegetius Renatus says in his book concerning the Romans that they never deployed more than two divisions in any battle for they never found an enemy that could stop two divisions.

And so when Christ from the cross as a condemned criminal says, I could call My Father, I could summon twelve legions, He is obviously, in their terms, saying I have super military power. I have greater power than Rome itself; for twelve legions of angels would be 60,000 plus, more than one for every Roman soldier. So that’s why Jesus says you don’t disturb Me, Pilate, it’s just that this isn’t the time for the fight. And then he says, notice in verse 36, He lets Pilate know very well, Pilate, I know your mind and I know you’re a pragmatist and I know ultimately you’re going to cave in like all pragmatists do under pressure. And He says that the Jews would not have Me; notice He doesn’t say a thing about Rome in verse 36; He knows very clearly that He is eventually going to wind up in the hands of the Jews in the sense that the Jewish sentence will be passed upon Him.

John 18:37, so “Pilate said unto him, well then, Are you a king? Jesus said, You have said that I am a king,” that’s the way it reads in the King James and that is the literal translation but it can be shown that it’s more like what we said, “you said it!” Now when you say that to somebody, you know, it’s literally true, you said it but the way we say it is “you said it bud,” so this is what He means here to Pilate. “Are you a king? You said I am.” Yes I am, it’s a strong affirmative, you bet I am! “To this end I have been born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth hears My voice.” Now it’s very touching that in verse 37 Jesus is witnessing to Pontius Pilate; He is giving Pontius Pilate a chance at personal salvation. In the middle of a trial, Pilate thinks Jesus is on trial and yet John includes this statement to show no-no, Pilate’s on trial because you remember John’s theme? Men are tested and condemned or accepted by the Father on the basis of what they do with the Son. And so Jesus presents the challenge that sounds very neat, and it is, but it’s very loaded; Pilate, if you were of the truth you would understand what I’m saying. That is a gospel invitation at that point; it’s Jesus way of witnessing to Pilate.

And then the answer Pilate gives, one of the classic answers, in fact one of the stereotypes of Gentile culture, what’s true? And there’s no statement that he stood by ever to hear the answer. This is the closest that Pilate ever came to hearing the truth, but Pilate is a pragmatist and pragmatists are men who could care less over truth; their only concern is getting out of the immediate situation so we can live for tomorrow, and then when tomorrow rolls around we’ll think of something that will get us over the next hurdle, the next 24 hours. Pragmatists run most of today’s government and most of today’s businesses. Pragmatists, the woods are full of them and you’ll see the downfall of the pragmatic philosophy very shortly in this confrontation between Jesus and Pilate.

John 18:38, “Pilate said to Him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again, [unto the Jews, and saith unto them,]” see, he keeps going out of that hall because he’s got to go out and talk to the Jews, and in verse 38, the first of three declarations of His innocence, “I find in Him no fault at all.” This is a theme that John puts in John 19:4, and 6; he insists that not only is Jesus in final and total and absolute control but he insists that Jesus is also absolutely innocent, as was shown by the Roman authorities. Verse 39, Pilate begins a little ploy that he tries; he’s a desperate man at this point; not quite as desperate as he’s going to be but he’s trying to use sarcasm. After studying this text I’ve kind of concluded that Pilate is laughing at the Jews at first; he just can’t believe they’re so picayune that they have such a grudge, they carry a grudge to such monumental ends. And so he begins to use sarcasm and his ploy is this: can I humor them all to make that mob see what silly thing they’re doing to this innocent man. So he begins to barb the mob. So He says in verse 39, “But you have a custom,” don’t you, “that I should release unto you one at the Passover: don’t you want to release the King of the Jews, [will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews]?” Now you see, he got that from just going into the palace talking with Christ; he didn’t get that in the trial, he got that from Jesus. What he’s saying is this guy, gee, He’s not real, this guy is so demented He’s calling Himself King of the Jews; would you like your King, we’ll bring Him out for you, put on a show. It’s that kind of an attitude.

John 18:40, [“Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.”] They said no, away with Him, Barabbas, literally is the way it’s the Aramaic, and this is ironic too, but you know what Barabbas means? Bar is the Aramaic word for son, and Abba is father, the most vacuous, innocuous name you could think, I’m the son of a father. But also John has irony in verse 40 because as Barabbas is going to be released Christ will take his place, and notice that John denotes Barabbas’ character, he was a robber. And what is that? Substitutionary death; now of course John is going to enlarge that Christ died for the sins of all men, that all of us are under God’s judgment and Christ took it, but right here he’s warming up to his theme by simply saying isn’t it interesting that when Christ goes to the cross He’s surrounded by two criminals. Apparently Barabbas was the ring leader, and so when those three men are crucified on Golgotha, Christ must die on the cross of the ringleader of the group, Barabbas being released.

And so in John 19:1, “Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged Him. [2] And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe, [3] And they kept saying, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote Him with their hands.” Now what is the object of this? Scholars who have studied this that know Roman military discipline say this is an amazing passage, where Roman military discipline broke down. We obviously know as Christians satanic agitation; but what happened here was that Pilate was still trying the ploy of trying to present Jesus so ridiculously that the people would say hey, this guy can’t be for real, this guy can’t be for making these… the guy is maybe a candidate for a funny farm but he’s really not some big hairy threat to Rome. So he lets the soldiers play with Him, and these soldiers were tough. They were men who killed people face to face, hand to hand combat. They didn’t have, as we had in Vietnam, “rules of engagement,” the only rule of engagement the Roman soldier was machaira: out of sheath, into body, and this was how they conquered the world. So those were the kind of men, they were tough men.

I want you to see that in verse 2, again John brings in these little details because to John they’re important. The soldiers built up a crown of thorns, see it meant to be ridiculed, but now think of your theology; what is thorn a picture of throughout the Scripture? The effect of the curse. Now John says, isn’t it ironic that when those soldiers went to look for something in the fortress of Antonia, what did they find but some brambles and some briars, of all the things. And what does that picture, that Christ wears upon Him? The results of sin. See the irony to this, John is a sensitive man who spotted all these things that happened; it happened so fast that it took him years to sort out these details; saying what significance that was, that these soldiers picked out thorns; they could have picked out ropes, they could have picked out chains, they could have made a crown out of anything in that fortress, but why thorns? Because thorns in the sovereignty of God would picture what Christ was bearing. He would bear the curse upon Himself. And then “they put on Him a purple robe,” or scarlet robe. Do you know what that was? That was the Full Bird Colonel uniform, that was what he wore, the high ranking military officers. So the guys went up, these were soldiers, probably enlisted type, they said hey Colonel, how about giving us an extra uniform down here, we need it. So they dressed Jesus up in this Colonel’s uniform; just a picture of absolute ridiculousness.

And then in John 19:3 where they say, “Hail, King of the Jews!” that is a phrase that they used to hail Caesar with. And it’s their salute, they’re saluting him, “Hail, hail, hail Caesar,” and in stead of Caesar He’s Melek Yisrael, the king of the Jews. And then they kept on and the word “smite” means punch and it’s in the imperfect tense; it means they kept on doing it for some time. In other words, when Christ got out of here He was a physical wreck; no bones had been broken, evidently they didn’t hit Him hard enough in the face to break teeth but they pretty well reduced Him to a pulp. We know, for example, the word “scourge” in verse 1, the Roman whips were not just whips, they took pieces of metal and glass in them so when you hit somebody and you pull the whip back you pull of their flesh and this is what went on when they worked Christ over. So here is where He was physically worked over, violence in the court room, by the way, and then Pilate presents Him.

John 19:4, “Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring Him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in Him.” I just beat Him up but I don’t find any fault in Him. See the irony, the juxtaposition in the Apostles writing; it even gets better. Verse 5, “Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate said unto them, Behold the man!” One of the most famous addresses in history, echo homo in Latin, “behold, the man.” Now here is a triple layered statement from John. Jesus said it but John records it. From Pilate’s view, “Behold, the man” was sheer sarcasm, “Behold, the man you Jews,” you think this guy’s a big hairy threat to your state, look at Him, crawling around in a [can’t understand word] like a little kid in a play, and look what we did, we worked Him over; the guy’s bleeding; look, he’s a big threat isn’t he. “Behold, the man!” From the Roman point of view that was meant to be sarcastic, to demean Christ and push Him down. To the Jew it was an insult, “the man,” “The Man,” the Jew that represent us in a Roman court; that’s insulting. But then John has a third [can’t understand word]. “Behold, the man!” is the ideal man. You see, Christ is being presented before the world; this is the way the world treats the ideal man, they dress Him up in mockery and put a crown of thorns on Him; that’s our sin nature’s gone wild. That’s the picture John wants us to see, yeah, look at “The Man,” look at what God wanted man to be and when God brought a Man like that that He wanted into the world, what happened to Him? That’s what happened to Him, presented in all of His glory by Pilate.

John 19:6, “When the chief priests therefore and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, Crucify Him, crucify Him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye Him, and crucify Him: for I find no fault in Him.” Now isn’t that a remarkable statement; look at that again at the end of verse 6; what would you think about that if a judge said go ahead and execute him, I find nothing wrong with him. Isn’t that a remarkable statement for a judge in a courtroom to make. And again see how the two themes vie for competition. He must be crucified to fulfill the Word of God and yet in spite of it all He’s innocent. And John even reports the fact that when the sentence of execution was pronounced in the same sentence He was pronounced as innocent. He’s innocent so kill Him, a remarkable statement.

So then the Jews protest again in John 19:7, “The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.” Showing their hatred of Jesus’ divine claim. And showing, by the way, verse 7 shows, against those who like the Watchtower Society and others who insist that Jesus never claimed to be God; now if Jesus never claimed to be God isn’t it a strange thing that here in this trial, when He was sentenced all He had to do was say oh no, no-no, I didn’t claim to be that. But He doesn’t. Now why is that? He is being crucified according to verse 7, for one reason, because He was making divine claims. We would ask the Watchtower Society and other Arians, why didn’t Christ straighten the claim out.

John 19:8, “When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid,” more afraid; now isn’t that interesting, again irony. Here the Apostle John gives us another great theme; here Pilate in all of his magnificence, the Fortress of Antonias, the Roman soldiers around, everybody ridiculing this little Jewish man, and then the Jewish man says something and Pilate gets afraid. Well, we know from the Gospel narratives that just prior to this, Matthew 27:19, just prior to this Pilate’s wife came to him and warned him, she’d had a dream, she said Pilate, don’t sentence this man. By the way, that’s the classic picture of the woman as a helper to her husband. Pilate’s wife was almost like Abigail was to David; Abigail was successful, Pilate’s wife wasn’t, because you see Abigail went to a man who had standards, and she could appeal to the standards in a man’s soul and the man would respond to that woman. Pilate’s wife came to her husband and tried to turn her husband away but she had no standards in her husband’s soul to turn him away. Pilate was a pragmatist and pragmatists always fold under the greatest pressure. And so Pilate began to be afraid; Pilate, in verse 8, it is said by John, not only to declare Jesus innocent but to have the very nagging feeling that more is at hand than just the innocence of a Jewish carpenter. This man is something more besides a carpenter.

That’s why in verse 9 there’s this immediate reaction, and from here you have a little private conversation that John reports, as he’s so fond of doing. He says, “He went again into the judgment hall, and said unto Jesus, Where are you from?” That’s a question by a worried man; it gnaws at Pilate’s soul that hey, see, he was asking about truth a moment ago, maybe I’d better go check this out again, and isn’t this an interesting spectacle; here you have Christ beat up, bleeding, flesh torn off His back by the whip, dressed up in a ridiculous uniform with a crown of thorns patiently standing, or perhaps kneeling, and here Pilate is, going in and out, in and out, in and out, he’s supposed to be the picture of Roman power and stability and almighty strength, and look what he’s doing; this is at least the third or fourth time he’s had to go in the door. So he goes in again, he wants to check Him out, “Where are you from,” he says in verse 9, “But Jesus gave him no answer.” That is the only answer that can be given to a pragmatist because Pilate had just said I’m not interested in truth and Jesus’ response is if you’re not interested in truth I will not be interested in giving you any more answers to your questions.

John 19:10, “Then saith Pilate unto Him, You speak not unto me? know you not that I have authority [power] to crucify You, and have power to release You?” So verse 10 shows the other part of the Gentile soul, the arrogance of power that the state has jurisdiction over every area of life. As I said in the family training, we live in the United States that has a weakened statism because of our Christianity, but even in our country we have this statism implicit in our law structure. For example, the principle of eminent domain is that the State has final say over the disposition of property. In the Old Testament that was not so. In the Naboth vineyard incident it was the private family that had ultimate say and the state couldn’t even give just compensation for property; they could make an appeal and if the family didn’t want to sell, regardless of the price, the family never sold. But in our country, as with all western countries we have eminent domain that gives the court final authority over your home and your property. You do not finally own and dispose of the soil under your feet, and thus the principle of eminent domain simply is a theological principle that we observe in the Law that is a testimony that we’re all slaves; Gentile slaves, we still are. Well here, Pilate takes this to a grand conclusion, “I have authority over You,” see again think of the juxtaposition, all almighty Rome, Caesar represented here in Pilate has authority over the Son of God? He has the authority to change history?

So Jesus responds that way, with a most clever response in verse 11, “Jesus answered, You could have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above,” and there He substantiates that it’s His Father’s Word that is the final authority, not Caesar and not the state and not Rome, “therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.” That’s talking about the Sanhedrin, it’s talking about the fact that they have given Pilate to be their tool. But then, this is a double meaning again, “He that delivered Me to thee” is also Satan because Satan has operated behind the Sanhedrin.

John 19:12, “And from thenceforth” now Pilate gets desperate, and in verse 12 through the end of the passage, the next few verses, you find Pilate frantic; the word “seek” in verse 12 in the imperfect tense in the Greek, [“Pilate sought to release Him”], it means he kept on trying to do this, he tried every gimmick he could to get rid of Christ off his hands: “but the Jews cried out, saying,” and with the end of verse 12 you have the collapse of a pragmatic politician, “If thou let this man go, you art not Caesar’s friend: whosoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar.

[13] When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the bema [judgment] seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. [14] And it was the preparation of the Passover, and about the sixth hour,” notice John in verse 14 gives us the exact time, a momentous moment in history, the sixth hour, it was 6:00 a.m. Roman time that the sentence was pronounced, and Pilate, collapsing under the pressure of this political appeal, then pronounced the statement, “and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!” Sarcasm!

But we have to stop a moment, does John just mean sarcasm? If you’ve been with us you’ve noticed how the story developed and I think you all could basically answer the question, have you ever noticed the word “King” being used before in John’s Gospel? Have you noticed how frequently tonight we’ve noticed this word “King.” Notice the word “King” in John 18:37, notice the word “King” in verse 39; notice the word King here; notice it in verse 14, 15, why the emphasis on the King, the King, the King, the King? The early church fathers, in the first 300 years of our history studied this passage and they had a saying that they used to tell one another. The reason the King shows up here is even a deeper level of truth. All the grandeur of Rome, Pilate looking down at Jesus, Jesus just almost a pitiable lump of torn beaten human flesh looking back up at Him, that picture and yet Jesus is constantly called King, King, King, King. And so the fathers had a saying; Jesus had a throne then, and the reason He was called King was because as Pilate was collapsing under pragmatism Jesus was just about to ascent to His throne and their saying was the Jesus ruled from the tree.

Turn to John 12:31-32 where He anticipated this theme; here is the subtlety of Jesus reign as the apostle presents it. Pilate wasn’t ruling at that time in history, Christ was ruling. “Now is the judgment of this world,” said Jesus, “now shall the prince of this world be cast out. [32] And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” Who’s ruling? Pilate or Jesus, really? Who is it that does away with the prince of this world? Christ! Who is it that attracts men to Himself? Christ! The reason, therefore, King occurs with increasing frequency as we get to the cross is that John sees Christ reigning as King from the cross. The cross is His throne.

And so the passage concludes, John 19:15, “But they cried out, Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King?” And now in verse 15 they make a blasphemous statement, “The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. [16] Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led Him away.” And Dr. Alfred Edersheim, the Hebrew Christian of Oxford University in the 19^th century said this: “With this cry Judaism was, in the person of its representative, guilty of denial of God, of blasphemy, of apostasy. Judaism committed suicide and ever since has its dead body been carried in show from land to land, from century to century, until He come a second time, who is the Resurrection and the Life.”

Now before we conclude this section of text we want to illuminate one little thing that John didn’t mention here but since we’re on this passage it’s good as Christians we understand the significance of something that happened, another little subtlety that happened very fast during those minutes and hours at the trial. The very famous statement is made, Pilate washing his hands. Turn to Matthew 27:24, this was another ploy of Pilate; Pilate was a shrewd man and as we have seen in the case of the Roman centurions, the Roman officials were carefully briefed on the customs of the people they ruled. I’m convinced from reading the New Testament that the Romans had a fantastic military education system where they’d brief their officers on the culture of these various lands. Roman men are very, very acute to customs, native customs.

Matthew 27:24, that’s the famous place, “When Pilate saw that he could nor prevail, but rather a riot [tumult] was made, he took water, and he washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person. See to it.” Now look at the next statement, [25] “Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.” Now what Pilate did then was not something Romanesque; that was not a Gentile thing that He did; it was Jewish. Turn back to Deuteronomy 21:6, the criminal law code of ancient Israel. Pilate knew this and this was what he was trying to tell the people, as he got the bowl of water out in front of the mob and he publicly washed his hands, he said certainly this ought to communicate to Jewish minds.

Deuteronomy 21:6, the story of unsolved homicide. What would happen in a town if there was someone killed, to use a contemporary illustration, let’s say someone killed between here and Slaton, if we were under Old Testament Law and the person killed, the crime was never solved, you had a murder, the question would then arise as to which city council, Slaton City Council or Lubbock City Council, would be responsible for the cleansing of the land. So both city councils would get together and they’d mark off how far out of the city boundary of Lubbock this person was murdered, and then they’d measure up to Slaton, and they’d find out how far the body was from the Slaton city limits, and depending on which city was the closest, the entire city council would have to go out to that location and purge the land of the murder. This, by the way, shows you that murder defiles the land in God’s sight, whether you solve the crime or not, it’s defilement in God’s sight. So the city government would have to come out as responsible agents, not because of the crime, but to solve the crime and make atonement before God. And they would have to have the heifer killed, and then in Deuteronomy 21:6, “And the elders of that city [council] which are next [unto the slain]” that is the city next to the crime, “shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley.”

In other words, the act of washing the hands would be an act of atoning the soil for the unsolved crime. There was an act that would have been very familiar to those Jews who are attending the trial that day and when Pilate, therefore, washed his hands he was saying that the government officials, as far as I am concerned, I want nothing of this; don’t you understand what you’re doing, this is defies your land, this is going to call for a washing and a purging and that’s what’s so… like almost a Greek tragedy, the gloom that sets into history as those people riot back and say “His blood be on us and on our children.” They said more than they meant to say and that’s why you will see later on in our treatment on Sunday nights, that’s why when Christ died He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He wasn’t asking forgiveness for everybody in the human race there, at that point. What Christ was doing as He died on the cross, He said, “Father, forgive them,” because they don’t understand what they have done in this crucifixion, this whole trial situation. And for that reason the nation Israel had forty extra years to consider the person of Jesus Christ. We know the story from Acts; they didn’t.

And so in the year 66 AD the Romans came against the city; they obliterated the city. And then as the troops charged down into the main temple area that you saw on the slide, where the trial was, the very place where these people said “His blood be upon us and our children,” Josephus, the Jew who defected from the Jewish side and went over to the Roman side, recounts those last moments in 70 AD. “Titus was a general who was a commander, he brought his soldiers into the city, he asked the people for an ultimatum, surrender! The people answered Titus, they could not accept of it because they had sworn never to do so; they desired that they might have leave to go through the wall that had been made about them, for their wives and children, or that they would go into the desert and leave the city to Titus. At this General Titus had great indignation, that when they were in the case of men already taken captive they should pretend to make their own terms with him as if they had been conquerors. So he ordered this proclamation to be made to them, that they should no more come after him as deserters nor hope for any further security for that he would henceforth spare nobody but he would fight them with his whole army, that they must save themselves as well they could, for from henceforth he would treat them according to the laws of war. So he gave orders to the soldiers, burn, plunder the city, who did indeed plunder it that day. And on the next day they set fire to the repository of the archives,” by the way, there’s where all the genealogies went up in smoke and that’s why to this day we can’t track many of the biblical genealogies, “to the council house and to the place called [can’t understand word] at which time the fire proceeded as far as the palace of Queen Helena, which was in the middle of Akra, the lanes also were burnt, as were also those houses that were full of the dead bodies of such as were destroyed.”

And so on the very pavement where those people said “His blood be upon us and our children,” in 40 years that came literally true; those people died. Over a million people died in the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD; the people were reduced to such abject poverty by the tremendous reign that Titus executed against the city that the people were reduced to such utter extremities that they began to eat the rats in the streets for food, and none of the rodents were left, and they began to eat the shoes and the clothes and then finally the tragedy got to the point where women would carve up their own babies and begin to eat them. And then on top of that other women and other men would come down, running out of desperation of the pains of hunger and they’d reach into the mouth of people who were eating their own children and pull the food out to eat it themselves. That’s what happened to a people who said, “His blood be upon us and our children.” And that’s why Christ, knowing that would happen, gave them forty extra years by the statement, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Father, we thank You…..