The Soul or the Sword?

[0:00] Our scripture reading this morning is from the book of Mark, chapter 15. We've been in the book of Mark for close to a year now, and we are in the final hours of Jesus' life now.

[0:18] I think we'll be in Mark for maybe two more weeks after this. And we're going to read Mark 15.

[0:29] It says to verse 20, but we're just going to read to verse 15. Mark 15. And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.

[0:55] And Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? And he answered him, You have said so. And the chief priests accused him of many things.

[1:06] And Pilate again asked him, Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you. But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.

[1:16] Now at the feast, he, that is Pilate, used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas.

[1:32] And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them saying, Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews? For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

[1:48] But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, Then what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews?

[2:02] And they cried out again, Crucify him. And Pilate said to them, Why? What evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, Crucify him.

[2:15] So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas. And having scourged Jesus, He delivered him to be crucified. Amen.

[2:28] This is God's word. Well, two weeks ago, which is the last time we were looking at Jesus, two weeks ago we were with Jesus when he was on trial with the Jewish leaders, which was a different trial.

[2:41] And the conclusion of that trial was that Jesus was guilty. He was guilty of the crime of blasphemy. And because of that, all the Jewish leaders, their conclusion was that this man needed to be put to death.

[2:54] But there were two roadblocks in making that happen. The first roadblock was that in first century Judea, only the Roman government who occupied this region had the authority to put a man to death for a crime.

[3:08] So if you wanted a man to be put to death, you had to convince the Romans that he was evil enough to deserve execution. That was the first roadblock. The second roadblock was, as bad as the Jews must have thought blasphemy was, that crime would have meant nothing to the Romans.

[3:27] The Roman world was saturated with competing claims of divinity. So it was not unusual at all to hear of some man from the middle of nowhere claiming to be God or claiming to be a God.

[3:41] That meant nothing to them. What the Romans did care about, however, was a revolutionary from the middle of nowhere who would have stood as a challenge to their authority.

[3:52] That is the kind of thing that they would have been concerned about. And that's why when the Jewish leaders bring Jesus to the Romans, they don't tell them this man is guilty of blasphemy.

[4:04] What they do is they say, this man says that he is a king. And you can tell that's what they've done because of verse 2, where Pilate asks Jesus, are you the king of the Jews?

[4:17] Luke actually tells us even more. And they present Jesus as a traitor, as a rebel, as a treasonous man. So the king of the Jews is a political claim, the political accusation.

[4:30] And Pilate, when he says, are you the king of the Jews? The question that he's really trying to get to the heart of is, are you a threat to the Roman Empire? Is your intention to challenge our authority?

[4:43] And the answer is no. At least not in the way that Pilate imagined. But the answer is also yes, right? But not in the way that Pilate could understand.

[4:56] Because as one writer put it like this, Jesus is a revolutionary kind of revolutionary. Because he sees the world different from everyone else in the scene of this trial.

[5:09] And if you and I want to follow Jesus, we have to understand how Jesus sees the world. And we have to learn to see the world, the way that Jesus saw the world, for instance, like he did in this trial.

[5:21] And this morning, that involves two things that we're going to look at. And the first thing it involves is seeing the weakness of the sword. And then secondly, it involves seeing the significance of the soul.

[5:32] The weakness of the sword and the significance of the soul. First, the weakness of the sword. You know, the sword is synonymous with power, right? But in Pilate, in the person of Pilate, you also see the weakness of the sword.

[5:46] A couple of months ago, someone stopped me after the service. And they had a question about the Apostles' Creed. They said, I understand most of this, but what I don't understand is, who is this Pontius Pilate?

[5:58] They were still getting familiar with some of the main points of Christianity. And it's a good question. It's a great question. But if you were living in first century Jerusalem, that is not a question that you would have asked, because everyone knew who Pontius Pilate was.

[6:14] Pontius Pilate, for about 11 years, he was the governor of the region that Jesus is living in. It's a Roman region. You know, this is occupied territory. The Romans are occupying foreign land.

[6:27] And anyone who would have known the name Pontius Pilate would have associated that name with power and with authority, because this was a man who had the entire Roman Empire at his back to use as he saw fit in this region.

[6:43] And it's also a man, as you can see in this scene, who has the power to execute a man or to set a man free with just a word. Pilate wielded the power of the sword in Jerusalem in a way that literally no other man could.

[7:00] He was true power. And yet the picture that Mark gives you is that as powerful as Pilate was, he was also a man who was surprisingly weak.

[7:12] He was a weak man. And you see that in the way that he deals with Jesus. From the very beginning, you can see he is skeptical of these charges against Jesus. In verse 10, you see why it says, Pilate perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered Jesus up.

[7:29] And so I think one way to think about this whole scene with Pilate and Jesus is that Pilate, he keeps looking for an off ramp, a way to deescalate this so that Jesus can go free.

[7:40] And it's not because he believes in Jesus and it's not because he's theologically curious. It's because, you know, reasonably, he doesn't want to kill an innocent man if he doesn't have to.

[7:51] And he sees the opportunity first and the opportunity at Passover. He knows that there's this tradition of allowing one prisoner to go free.

[8:06] And so at first he offers the crowds, let them go free. He also offers Jesus a chance to get off by speaking for himself. Tell me, are you the king of the Jews? Tell me that you're not and I'll let you go. And he doesn't, you know, even at the end of all that, he could have just said, I'm going to release this man simply because he's innocent.

[8:27] That would have been the right thing to do, the judicial thing to do, right? But he doesn't do that. And we know why from verse 15. It says, So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas.

[8:40] And having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. Pilate had the sword, but he was afraid of the crowds. He was so afraid of them that he did something he did not want to do.

[8:54] And he embraced what he knew was a lie in order to send this man to the cross. And it's a striking example of the weakness of the sword.

[9:05] Because everyone would have looked at Pilate and would have said, you know, that's power. You know, if I had that kind of power, I could be truly free to do what I want to do.

[9:16] And I could live at peace. But when you look at Pilate, you don't see a man who's free. You see a man who is covered with fear, covered with cowardice, because he's so desperate to hold on to the power that he has.

[9:27] And, you know, to make a broader point here, I think this is part of the illusion of all earthly power, whether it's the sword or whether it's wealth or whether it's influence. The illusion of all these kinds of earthly power, what I'm calling the sword, is that if you put your trust in them, if you put your whole trust in them, and you imagine that these are the things that you need to make you truly satisfied and to give you true peace, these things will always, always, always let you down because they can never protect you like you hope that they will.

[10:00] They can never provide the truest protection. That's why, you know, when we read our call to worship this morning, it was Psalm 146 where the psalmist says, do not put your trust in princes because they cannot save you.

[10:13] And the point is not that the sword is irrelevant. The point is that if you want real protection, if you want the kind of protection that can truly last, you don't go to the sword, you go to God.

[10:26] You go to the one who is truly powerful. Now, one of my favorite, one of my favorite passages from scripture, which I find so odd and so beautiful is Deuteronomy 17 where it's just a law.

[10:39] It's where Moses, where God tells Moses what a king of Israel should look like. And he gives three requirements for a king of Israel, three things that the king must avoid.

[10:50] He says, any true king of Israel must avoid three things, too many horses, too much gold, and too many wives. And, you know, we can understand the wives part, right?

[11:02] We're not for polygamy. But it's actually deeper than that. The point is, and theologians point this out, is that those are the three things, those are the three ways in the ancient world that you would gather power.

[11:16] If you want to be powerful in the ancient world, you can either have a lot of horses, which is synonymous with military power. You can have a lot of gold, which is synonymous with economic power.

[11:27] Or you can have a lot of wives, which is synonymous with diplomatic power. Because that's what Solomon was doing, is he was marrying all these wives, partly in order to form relations with these other foreign countries to make himself diplomatically powerful.

[11:44] And that's the way of the world. The way of the world says, if you want to be safe, don't worry about God. Worry about your military might. And we've got a lot of military men here, so I'm not denigrating the military.

[11:56] I'm just saying, that's not where the final power is. The final power is in the hands of God. But this whole scene, every single person in this scene is devoted to the ways of this world's power.

[12:10] The ways of the powers of this world. And it's not just Pilate. Every single person in this scene, except for Jesus, is vying for power. And they're sacrificing things to get to it.

[12:21] You've got Pilate. You've also got the Jewish leaders who are trying to hold on to power by using the sword to execute Jesus. You've got this strange man named Barabbas.

[12:32] And all that we know about Barabbas is that he is a man of the sword. He is, Barabbas is the classic revolutionary. He's the man who says, if I have to murder to start a revolution, it will be worth it for the ends.

[12:46] And you know, the fact, the fact that the Jewish leaders choose Barabbas, they convince the crowds to choose Barabbas over Jesus, is really a picture of the human heart.

[12:58] Because, you know, given the choice between the bloody revolution of Barabbas and whatever Jesus has to offer, what is it? He heals a few people. He brings sight to the blind.

[13:09] He touches people's souls. the heart of man will always say, give me the violent revolutionary. That's change that I can believe in. And Barabbas, you know, if you think about it, Barabbas was the kind of Messiah that the Jews hoped for.

[13:25] The one who would come in on a shining horse with his sword and who would execute Pontius Pilate, not speak to him and not be silent in front of him. And the problem with that kind of view of the world, the problem with that kind of seeking of revolutionary power is not that it's a Messiah that's too strong.

[13:44] It's that a Messiah that doesn't, that's not strong enough. All of these people in this passage, they see power and they see salvation in political terms.

[13:56] If you want real salvation, you've got to fight it for it in politics. And again, it's not saying that politics isn't important, but the temptation is to see politics and to see military might as the thing that will give us our greatest salvation.

[14:13] You know, it's one thing to say politics is important. It's another thing to say this is what is most important. That's idolatry. That's when you put something in the place of what only God can fill.

[14:24] And the reason why politics is not enough, the reason why politics can never give us the deepest desires of our heart is because, think about it, the greatest military hero or the greatest politician cannot fix the deepest problems of our heart.

[14:40] And in the same way, the worst military leader and the worst politician, they cannot corrupt what is most central to who we are, which is our souls.

[14:53] Only a revolution that touches the heart can bring the kind of change that Jesus was looking for. And that's why Jesus, he doesn't say the sword is evil, he just doesn't reach for the sword.

[15:07] He's ambiguous about the sword because he's trying to bring about a different kind of revolution. And it's the difference between giving someone a drug that can mask the symptoms of what's going wrong and giving someone a drug that can actually fix what's the underlying symptoms.

[15:23] That's the difference between what a Barabbas was offering and what Jesus was offering in this passage. And, you know, a Christian is someone who looks at the world and sees all the evil in it.

[15:37] And they say, there's a lot of ways that we can address the evils of this world. But if we really want to get at what is most wrong with this world, we've got to learn how to take a scalpel to the heart.

[15:50] How can we do that? And that's something that Barabbas did not offer. That's something that Jesus offered. That's why he came. Because Jesus can see the significance of the soul. That's why Jesus is silent in this moment.

[16:02] You know, a lot of people would look at Jesus before Pilate and they would say, this is the picture of weakness. Look at this man. He has no power. He stands there bloodied in front of Pilate and he doesn't even, he doesn't even have the courage to speak a word.

[16:18] What weakness? But then, if you're going to say that, you have to say, weakness compared to who? Compared to Pilate who does what he doesn't want to do because he's so afraid of the crowd?

[16:29] Or weakness compared to the Jewish leaders who are themselves so afraid of Jesus that they think they have to execute him to silence him? Or weakness compared to the crowds who move at the whim of their leaders?

[16:41] Every single person in this passage is weak except for Jesus. He's the only one who is doing exactly what he wants to do. And he's not influenced by anyone else in the room.

[16:53] He's not, he's the only person in this passage who is not governed by fear or by the influence of someone else. Jesus is where he has chosen to be when he is standing in front of Pontius Pilate.

[17:06] And he's there because he knows that if he stays where he is, if he goes to the cross, he is going to accomplish a kind of victory that a sword could never accomplish, that a politician could never accomplish.

[17:20] And, you know, I think it's fitting, not necessary, but it's fitting that just before Jesus goes to the cross, he goes to the cross in the place of a man called Barabbas, a man of the sword who has placed all his hope in the power of what the sword can do to transform this world.

[17:45] Because those are the kinds of people that Jesus came to redeem. People who, all they can see is this world. And they can't see the kind of offer that Jesus Christ has, the kind of power that God has in himself in a way that we can't see to transform this world.

[18:02] And what Jesus does at the cross and in his resurrection is he offers people like Barabbas a better way to say, you know, Barabbas, if you really want change, if you really want to see this world transformed, if you want to see the Roman Empire turned upside down, put down the sword and look at Jesus Christ and see how he can transform, not from the soul, from the very heart of who we are.

[18:29] To be a Christian means to believe that Christ died for you. He was your substitute just like he was Barabbas' substitute. He died for you while you were a rebel, while I was a rebel, while we were traitors.

[18:43] He died for us. And to be a Christian means to believe, to see that, to believe that that is true and to hope in that as the most transforming power that you could ever find in this world.

[18:58] And when you grasp that kind of revolution, you see the weakness of the sword compared to what Jesus can do.

[19:10] Now, let me close with this. I think there's a sometimes right criticism that can be made against Christians, which is, and you've heard this before, sometimes Christians can be so, so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good.

[19:30] So focused on the soul that we give up on, we give up on, on politics, we give up on anything to do with this life and we say, as long as I have Jesus, I don't need to do anything else in this world.

[19:44] That's what, you know, Karl Marx, he called Christianity the opium of the masses and he was saying, this is just a drug that you give people to make them feel good so that they won't cause revolt and they won't do bad things.

[19:56] And I just want to read a passage from C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis responded to that criticism of Christianity and he says it's not true. He says it's not true because the Christian who most clearly sees what Jesus has done historically has also been the Christian who has done the most in this life for this world.

[20:17] So here's what C.S. Lewis has to say. He says, a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not, as some modern people think, a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things that a Christian is meant to do.

[20:35] It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought the most of the next.

[20:50] The apostles themselves who set foot on the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all of them left their mark on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven.

[21:11] And it is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one. You see what C.S. Lewis is saying is if you really want to see change in this world, if you want to see this world transformed, the way to do it is to look at Jesus, to see his salvation, and then to let that be what empowers you to go out into the world and to see this world transformed so that our societies become more and more a society that looks like the love and the mercy and the truth and the justice of Jesus Christ.

[21:49] Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you this morning for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We praise you that you've given us governments that protect us.

[22:03] You've given us, you've given these governments the power of the sword. You've given us ways that we can protect ourselves, and yet you've also given us something deeper, something truer, something more lasting, which is the hope of Jesus Christ that a sword could never take away.

[22:18] Help us to hope in that this morning. In your son's name we pray. Amen.