Okay, so we're going to be looking at John chapter 18 and chapter 19 tonight.
And as you know, we're going through this series, Encounters with Jesus.
And we've looked at Zacchaeus, Nicodemus, the two daughters, Legion, and last time we
looked at Lazarus, and there's a common thread in all of those stories, which is
that there's a happy ending. And so it's almost like every encounter with
Jesus that we've had before, the story is look how good, look what good things can
come when people come face to face with Jesus. And unfortunately that common
thread ends tonight because this is the story of Jesus's interaction with Pilate.
And as you know, that interaction does not end well and Pilate is maybe the last
lengthy conversation that Jesus has with someone and it ends with Pilate
sending Jesus to the cross to be crucified. And so we're going to look at
this interaction of Pilate and Jesus and we're going to look at it in the Gospel
of John because that's the longest account that we have, so you get the most
texture for what happens between Jesus and Pilate. And I'm going to read this
passage. This is from chapter 18 verses 33 and we're going to read all the way to
chapter 19 verse 16. And there's two different moments where Jesus talks
with Pilate here and then there's kind of an interlude where other really
significant things happen. And I'm going to read the whole thing for context, but
just know that as we come to this passage what has just happened is Jesus has
been arrested. The Jews have taken him to Pilate and just before this passage
they have asked Pilate to put Jesus to death and then this is where we pick up
the story. So chapter 18 verse 33. So Pilate entered his headquarters again
and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus answered, do
you say this of your own accord or did others say it to you about me? And Pilate
answered, am I a Jew, your own nation, and the chief priests have delivered you
over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this
world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that
I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.
Then Pilate said to him, so you are a king. Jesus answered, you say that I am a
king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the
world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to
my voice. Pilate said to him, what is truth? After he had said this he went
back outside to the Jews and told them I find no guilt in him, but you have a
custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to
release to you the king of the Jews? They cried out again, not this man but
Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him 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 so 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,
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. 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. Therefore he
who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. From then on Pilate sought
to release him but the Jews cried out, if you release this man you are not Caesar's
friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. So when Pilate heard
these words he brought Jesus out, sat down on the judgment seat at a place
called the stone pavement and in Aramaic, Gabbatha. Now it was the day of
preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews,
behold your king. They cried out away with him, away with him, crucify him.
Pilate said to them, shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, we
have no king but Caesar. So they delivered him over to them to be crucified.
This is God's word. So that's Pilate's interaction with Jesus and we've spent
20 centuries trying to figure out who Pilate was. Was he a coward or a thief
or a monster? And really the only thing that we can truly agree on, and even
whether you're a Christian or not, is that what Pilate did in this scene was
wrong because three times in this scene Pilate looks at the crowds and says, I
find no guilt in this man. And even so he still decides to send Jesus to the cross.
So he knows he's doing wrong and he does it anyway. And when we read this story
and when you read it in the context of the whole crucifixion, this is a tragedy,
right? And more than anything, this is a tragedy about our Lord Jesus. You know,
we look at this and we lament because we say they crucified our Lord. But there's
another tragedy here as well, which is that this is a tragedy for Pilate.
Pilate is a man whose world in its own way falls apart in this scene. And that's
what I want to talk about tonight because this is about Jesus's interaction
with Pilate. And I want to look at why Pilate's story is a tragedy and I want
to offer two reasons tonight. First, that he couldn't see the truth and second,
that he didn't know the truth's power. So just let me just review the facts of
the early case because this is a trial after all, right? And it's helpful to
know what exactly is going on and it's easy to get lost in this. But when the
Jews bring Jesus to Pilate, their accusation against him and the reason
that Pilate puts him on trial is this question, is he really a king? Because if
Jesus really says that he is a king, then that means that he's a threat to the
Roman Empire. And that is why Pilate would have caused to crucify him. That
would be a legitimate case against Jesus. And so what happens is right when Pilate
gets Jesus, that's his first question, is are you a king? Are you the king of the
Jews? And Jesus' answer is, he says, do you say this of your own accord? But then
he goes on to say, Jesus goes on to say, my kingdom is not of this world. If it
were of this world, my servants would have been fighting. And this is a really
interesting answer because on the one hand, if Jesus is affirming the fact
that he's a king, because he has a kingdom. But he's also telling Pilate, you have no
reason to fear me in the sense of I'm not starting a, not a resurrection, but a
revolution. Yeah. So he's saying, yes, I'm a king, but I'm not guilty in the sense
that you would accuse me, which is I'm not trying to overthrow Caesar. So he
says yes and no. And then he goes on to explain, he says, you say that I'm a king.
For this purpose, I was born him. For this purpose, I've come into the world to
bear witness to the truth. And then he says, everyone who is of the truth
listens to my voice. And then Pilate gives one of his famous sayings, and he has
so many famous sayings. Doesn't he? I wash my hands of this. But here he says,
what is truth? And most people agree that the fact that he immediately goes
somewhere else shows that he's not waiting around to find out what Jesus
has answered to that question is. And that what Pilate is doing here is he's
being sarcastic, or he's being disdainful, because Jesus has just said, if, what
did he say? Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. So he's, it's almost
like Pilate is saying, he feels offended. Like, I'm not of the truth because I don't
listen to your voice. And I found this quote by an old Anglican minister named
JC Ryle that I thought was really powerful. And he talks about what it means,
what is Pilate saying when he says what is truth? And this is the way that JC Ryle
described it. He says, these words, these sarcastic and cynical words sound like
the language of one who has heard from his earliest youth so many barren
speculations about truth, quote unquote, among Roman and Greek philosophers that
now he doubts its very existence. So even though Pilate is being sarcastic and
maybe disdainful, most people agree that underneath that, what you see is this
man who, he's not a relativist, he's not saying all truth is good and so we
should pursue all truth. He's a man who's saying, we can't know the truth. He's
given up on the search for truth. He's a cynic. And what he's making here is not
a philosophical point. He's saying, why would you come to me speaking about
truth? Who can even know what truth is anymore? And you might call him a
pragmatist. And he certainly tries to be pragmatic throughout the rest of the
story, but what he's not definitively is a seeker. And I think when we asked
that, when I said here at the beginning, the tragedy of Pilate is that he couldn't
see the truth. I think one reason why Pilate couldn't see the truth is that
he was not looking for the truth. So here's a man who had given up, not just
about Christianity, but who had given up on the possibility of finding a true
truth in this world. And that's a tragedy when you get to a point in your
life and you say, you know, you've heard so many people claiming truth in this
world and you finally get so cynical about it all that you say, I'm not even
gonna look anymore. And one of the takeaways that I find from this passage
is what we hope as we talk about sharing the gospel with our neighbors, what we
hope is that our neighbors will be seeking the truth. And so that one thing
that we can pray for the people that we know and love who don't know the gospel
is that even if they don't know the gospel, that they would come to a place
in their lives where they want to know truth and they're seeking for answers
to the reason life is the way that it is. And if they get to that place, then we
can welcome them and we can say, if you're looking for the truth, we have a
few suggestions. But as it is, Pilate is in a tragic state where he's not even
looking for truth anymore. And because of that, he can't see the truth that's
standing right in front of him. And you know, there's that famous line and we
say it here quite a bit, Matthew 11, 28 to 30. Jesus says, come to me, all who are
weary and burdened and I will give you rest. And what we have is this confidence
that we can tell people, if you're looking for the truth, Jesus is there
ready to meet you to tell you what that truth is and offer it to you. So what we
have is hope. So that's what truth is for Pilate, is that which cannot be known
and that which I will not search for. But it also raises another question which I
think is really interesting about this passage, which is, what is Jesus' view of
truth here? And when you read the Gospel of John, what you find is John is
if I can use the word, he's obsessed with truth. Like the word truth or true
happens in the New Testament around 160 times and more than half of those times
is in the Gospel of John. So it's really significant what's happening in this
passage because John has been talking in his whole gospel about what is truth.
And what you find is that John, when John talks about truth and when John
describes Jesus talking about truth, truth has two different meanings that
overlap. Truth can mean on the one hand that which
accords with facts. So I could say, you know, myrtle is wearing a blue sweater
and what I have said is truth. So I have truth in one sense. But John oftentimes
talks about a different kind of truth that contains that, but it's even so much
more because when John talks about truth, what he means is the ultimate
divine reality. So to put it another way, whenever Jesus talks about truth in the
Gospel of John, he's not just talking about what is factual. He's saying there
is a reality out there that we have to understand to understand the Gospel. And
that's why in verse 18, chapter 18 verse 37, Jesus can say here, you say that I'm
a king for this purpose I was born and for this purpose I've come into the
world to bear witness to the truth. And then he says, everyone who is of the
truth listens to my voice. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. If
the truth there was just a set of factual statements, that wouldn't make a lot of
sense. Like everyone who is of a set of factual statements listens to my voice.
What Jesus is saying is truth is the divine reality. And it's almost the same
this when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus and he was talking about the need to be
born again to see the kingdom. Being of the truth is almost synonymous with
being born in the kingdom. You have access where you can see a reality that
you didn't know existed before, but that is the truest reality that there is. And
there's all kinds of actual facts that are involved with that. Like there is a
God that he has sent his son to teach us about himself, that his son is the king
of the kingdom and that it is the truest divine reality. And let me just make
this a little practical. I don't want to lose you here. The question about truth
here is do you see it? And it's a question that's not just for a pilot and
we're not just standing here to mock Pontius Pilate, but I think most of us
here are committed to saying that we have found truth in Jesus Christ. And that
means it's not just a question of do we accept the facts of the gospel. It's do
we see that in our reality? There was a minister named Francis Schaefer who is a
famous apologist and he told a story one time where he was flying over the
Atlantic in a propeller plane with two propellers on the right, two on the left,
and he was sitting next to the window on the right wing and both of the
propellers just stopped and the plane started to go down and they were bracing
for impact. And I guess it was happening slow enough that they were reporting it
on the national news in America as the plane was going down. And what Francis
Schaefer did in that moment was he just started to pray and he said, God please
help us through this. And he later found out that his family was praying as well.
And he says that he could see the water. That's how close they got to the water.
And then the propellers started to spin and they got lift again. And when the
plane landed he said he went and talked to the pilot and the pilot said, you know,
it's anomalous that those things stopped, but it's impossible that they started
spinning again. And Francis Schaefer looked at him and he said, I think I know
what happened. You know, he said I was praying to God that those propellers would
start spinning again, that we would be saved, and the propeller started spinning
again. And he said that the pilot looked at him like he was a fool and just, you
know, had just had a blank stare and just walked away that it just made no sense to
him whatsoever. But what Francis was saying was that's the difference between
someone who can only see the material world and someone who appreciates that
there is something more to this life than what we can see with our eyes. And so
one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is, do I live like all there
is, is a material world? Or for one example, you know, when I bow my head and
pray, do I believe that can actually affect the world around us? And pilot
could not imagine a world like that, but Jesus could. And that's what we have in
Jesus is the truth, not just a set of facts, but a new way of understanding our
reality. Okay, so part of pilot's problem is he couldn't see the truth, even when
it was standing right in front of him. And the second problem is this, and I'll
be brief, that he didn't know truth's power. And to understand this theme in the
scene, you have to understand a little bit of some of the ways that John
describes truth. And I want to read one verse that I'll read it and you'll know
the verse. But there's a there's a time when Jesus looks at the Jews who began
to follow him. And he says this about truth. He said this is in John 831. So
Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you abide my word, you are truly
my disciples, and you will know the truth. And what the truth will set you
free. So what Jesus is saying is once you come to grasp the truth, what you have
is not just a set of facts, but something that can actually free you from a
slavery that we all live in, which the which he goes on to describe in that
passage as slavery to sin. And this is a really interesting way of thinking about
this scene with pilot, because what Jesus is saying is if you have the truth, you
have found freedom. And if you don't have the truth, you are living as a slave to
sin. And yet what is happening in this passage is Jesus here is a prisoner and
pilot is the free man judging Jesus. And yet as the passage moves on, the roles
reverse. And what it looks more like is Jesus is the one who's actually in
control here, even though he's going to the cross. And pilot is the one who looks
desperate and who makes decisions that probably at the beginning of this night
he could not have imagined. And there's a few ways that pilot situation dissolves
here. One is in verse seven where pilot says Jesus is innocent. I don't want to
crucify him or he doesn't deserve to be crucified. And the Jews say, and this is
not all Jews, but the Jews who are there to accuse him, the Jews say we have a law.
And according to that law, he ought to die because he's made himself the Son of
God. And that's an interesting thing that they said there because that's not the
accusation they came in with. But when he finds him innocent of the first
accusation, he said they say, well, you know, he also calls himself the Son of
God. And pilot's response is it says when pilot heard this, he was even more
afraid. And most commentators say the reason he was afraid is because he
realized the Jews were not going to let this one go. And that even if he found him
innocent of one crime, they wanted that man dead that day. So pilot becomes
afraid because he realizes this situation is not in his control. And he goes
back to Jesus. And then from pilot's perspective, things get even worse
because the prisoner is not responding to his questions. And he says to
Jesus, where are you from? And Jesus doesn't answer. And most commentators
think the reason he doesn't answer is because pilot has stepped into a
territory that is not his domain. You know, it was fair for him to ask, are you a
king? Are you a threat to the Roman Empire? But now he's asking questions that
he has, Jesus has no obligation to answer. And then Jesus says this. So pilot
says, in frustration, I assume, pilot says, you will not speak to me. Do you not
know that I have the authority to release you and the authority to
crucify you? So he turns to the fear tactic. And Jesus says, you would have no
authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above. And the way
that one commentator describes that moment of what Jesus says there is, in
this moment, Jesus lays bare the actual situation of the moment, which is to say
Jesus is saying to pilot, you think you're in complete control, but you're not.
And the irony is the man in the scene who is in chains is the one who actually
understands what's going on here. And pilot is the one that's afraid. And so
what you have here is this portrait of two different men. One is afraid and he
knows that he's losing his grasp. The other one, Jesus, has just been tortured
by the Romans and he knows that he's facing a cross. And yet even so, you
might be able to say he's afraid of facing the wrath of God in one sense, but
he is not afraid of Pontius Pilate. And the reason is, which he explains in this
passage, he is aware that there's more going on here than what you can see with
your eyes. And Jesus walks throughout his whole ministry knowing that even in the
worst of circumstances, his Heavenly Father is with him. And I don't know if you
remember two weeks ago when we looked at the story of Lazarus, there's that
beautiful line where Jesus looks up at heaven and he prays to God. And you remember
what he says? He says, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you
always hear me. So Jesus is never afraid of the man that's in front of him,
partly because he always walks in this freedom of knowing that his Heavenly
Father is always with him. And yet Pilate is terrified and insecure and out of
fear he's driven to do something that he hates. And you see this in the last
section. It says Pilate sought to release in verse 12 from the very end, from then
on Pilate sought to release him. And the Jews, what did they say? If you release
this man, you are not Caesar's friend. So they're threatening Pilate like we will,
this is blackmail. If you don't send this man to the cross, we're gonna report you
to Caesar for being unfaithful to the crown. And because of that Pilate sends,
knowingly sends an innocent man to the cross, something that he, it says he did
not want to do. So in order to keep some level of security in his own life, Pilate
becomes the very things that he hates. So to take that back to what that verse
that I quoted at the beginning where Jesus says, you will know the truth and
the truth will set you free. In this passage, Jesus had, I mean I don't want to,
I don't want to be flippant because this was an excruciating moment for him. But
he had this anchor in his soul that saw what truth was and that God was there
and that this was all a part of God's sovereign plan. And that kept him from
being afraid of someone like Pilate. Pilate had none of that. And because of
that he was a slave to the situation. And we have to remember that what we have in
the truth here is not just knowledge. We don't put a sign outside of St. Columbus
saying come here because we have all the answers. We have, we have the right
textbook. What we believe as Christians is that when you come face to face with
what truth actually is, it changes you and that you can find freedom and that
you don't have to live your life. Even when we face trials, we still can find
freedom from being chained to the sin of this world. So the tragedy of Pilate
was that because he could not see the truth, he missed out on the power of
truth. And in this short scene he becomes the very thing that he hates. And I'll
just close with this. Jesus in this passage speaks about bearing witness to
the truth. But of course, John, Jesus gets way more audacious than that. And in
John 14 he says, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. And this is a
sad passage and it doesn't end well, at least in this moment. But we can look at
Pilate and we can say to ourselves and to the world, it doesn't have to end this
way for us because what Jesus offers us is hope. And Jesus says in this passage,
I came to bear witness to the truth. And that means that the truth is not
something hidden and far away and inaccessible, but it is something that
if we cry out to God for, he will give us because he's not stingy. And if we can
find that truth, and if our neighbors can find that truth, the promise that we
have is that we will be set free. So let me pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for
your word. We thank you for the hope that we find in Jesus. And we pray that the
people that we know and love in this city would not turn away from Jesus. And we
pray that you would give our neighbors and you would give us hearts that want to
seek for the truth. And that those that we love, even if they don't know the
truth, that they would find you as they seek for the answers to the reasons that
life is the way it is. And we pray that you would even help us to ask the right
questions to our friends and our neighbors so that we would challenge them
and that we would help them to see that they don't have to give up on the search
for truth, but that we can find it in you. And we ask all this in your son's name.
Amen.