Pastor Muri's message from Sunday morning (part 1)

So, you've taken the cue from what I've just said and you're already turning to John chapter 18, or maybe your Bibles are, by now, trained to fall open to the Gospel of John.

 

As we begin to think about this text, let me just ask you, let me just.... Let's tee off a current event and let me ask you this:

 

Do you believe or do you think that the State of Texas played fast and loose with the Constitutional rights guaranteed to United States citizens when they entered that fundamentalist LDS compound in Eldorado, Texas and seized by force 462 children on the presumptive evidence or on the presumption, the supposition that possibly some of those children were being forced into childhood marriages.

 

There's a raging debate going on right now about whether the Constitution was set aside, whether the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens were impinged by that act. And the reason there is this raging debate is because we as Americans -- and I'm not here to state my opinion on that -- it really doesn't matter this morning -- but the reason there's this raging debate all of the sudden is because Americans view due process as a precious bit of our heritage. And we see even the possibility that there might be some constitutional rights being impinged, we get rather sensitive about that.

 

If you are one of those people that tends to get sensitive when injustice seems to be part of the program, if that's you, then I would suggest -- in fact, I would affirm that your sensitivity meter is just going to go absolute crazy reading John 18 and 19.

 

If you are one who responds with sensitivity in the face of injustice, the meter's just going to be banging the right-hand side continually as you read through John chapters 18 and 19.

 

But I want to just settle you down here for a moment. We have tried -- I've tried to make a case for the fact that, in the particular era in which this history is being played out -- in the first century, there probably wasn't a system of jurisprudence that was more carefully crafted, more just in all of its framing, more biased toward acquittal than the Hebrew system, the Jewish system.

 

And on top of that there was a Roman system. We were in the classical Roman law era in which there was the foundations of the current judicial system of much of western Europe and eastern Europe and much of our judicial system was being framed and fashioned and these tenants of jurisprudence that we hold to be dear were being very much built into the Roman system at the time that Jesus was put on trial.

 

The legal system was perfect for a fair trial. Fair trial, there was not. The Jews and the Romans both set aside their institutions in order to accomplish what they did in that particular setting. What they did to Jesus was grossly unfair.

 

Now, let me just make this statement: Of course it was unfair! Of course they had to set aside all the laws of jurisprudence. Of course they had to turn on its head an entire legal system that was biased toward acquittal. Of course they had to do that. How else do men sentence God to die? How are you going to put Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to death if the judicial system requires justice? It had to be unfair.

 

So let’s not go rooting around in the text with our jurisprudential magnifying glasses looking for pieces of [end of track 1, 4:59] injustice. We’re gonna find plenty. Full-length books have been written on the violations of justice, the judicial travesties in these two chapters. Full-length books have been written on it. We don’t need to go there and study that again.

 

There’s a more noble scene that is emerging from these chapters. If we just find ourselves with our magnifying glasses looking for violations of law in these chapters, we’re gonna miss the bigger point, we’re gonna miss the important theme of these chapters. It all comes clear in the text that we’re gonna be looking at this morning.

 

Let me just read from John chapter 18, beginning in verse 28. Follow along with me. Think with me about what’s being written here by John, what’s being recorded by John.

 

Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters.

 

This is the Praetorium. The Praetorium was the place where the Roman military governor had his residence. If it was out in the field in a military configuration, it was the center tent. It was protected by all of the other soldiers that were gathered there on a battle field. If it was in the country of Israel, the main Praetorium was the palace of Herod in Caesarea. But in a land ruled by a military governor, which is what Pontius Pilate was. Appointed in A.D. 26 by Tiberias Caesar to maintain the pax romana, the peace of Rome in this very volatile part of the world, inhabited by the Jews, when there was a festival season like Passover, the Roman governor had to be present with soldiers in Jerusalem because during these times, the Romans were on high alert. I mean, it was ... homeland security-wise this was red. This was red status. The red flashing lights as you came into Jerusalem indicating high alert. During these festival seasons, you get a whole bunch of extra Jewish people gathered together in the city of Jerusalem during these times under a Roman administration, and you’ve got ... all the pieces are there for trouble.

 

So they were there, they were tense, they were ready.

 

So the Jews, mainly the chief priests and the Pharisees, etc., the Jews led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters and

 

It was early morning.

 

Right in there, at least six A.M.

 

They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover.

 

Is there a bit of irony in that? Here is these pompous Jewish leaders, devious about keeping all the ceremonial laws, unwilling to enter into a building inhabited by a gentile for fear that they might encounter some leaven or that they might be in a building inhabited by a gentile who was unclean and thus they would be rendered ceremonially unclean and not be able to participate in the ongoing feast of unleavened bread in which they were now ... which they were, at this point, observing.

 

So let’s stand outside the precinct or outside the building inhabited by this gentile potentate and let’s engage him, let’s use his services, but let’s not enter in, because in the very process of trying to kill the Messiah, the Son of God, we want to keep ourselves clean, morally pure before God. The irony is all over that one.

 

So Pilate accommodated them. He had his servants take his portable bema seat and move it out onto the porch and there he met them outside his headquarters so that they could maintain their ceremonial purity while they carried on this trial.

 

So Pilate went outside to them and said, What accusation do you bring against this man?

 

Now in terms of the trial, you gotta understand, the Jews have already had their trial. [end of track 2, 5:00] And they’ve already made this pre-arranged agreement with Pilate, which they did, typically, when they wanted him to put his stamp of Roman approval on their already-made decisions. They had this thing all worked out. Pilate was aware of the charges. He was not... This was not a genuine question: “So what charges are you bringing?”

 

Of course, they had already had their conversation. Jesus was on the legal docket for that morning. Pilate was already out there with his bema seat, ready to do judgment on Jesus. And, in fact, the chief priests had already come to Pilate and said, “We need your soldiers to help us make this arrest.” And they had to justify the use of Roman soldiers in order to make an arrest.

 

So all this was already known to Pilate. The Jews expected that Pilate would just endorse their decision and get on with the crucifixion. “What accusation do you bring against this man?”

 

Pilate, for some reason, messes up the plan. He messes with their heads. And I don’t know why Pilate does this. It could be many different reasons, one of which is he’s just kind of an irascible, surly, mean-spirited character and he loves to see the Jews squirm because he hated them.

 

What accusation do you bring against this man? They answered him, If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.

 

Can you imagine the prosecution making a statement like that to the judge? “Well, sir, if he wasn’t evil, we wouldn’t have brought him here.” Come on! You gotta give me more than that. How do you convict a man of a capital crime with that kind of a statement?

 

Well, they’re off their game. They’ve been taken by surprise and they’ve gotta re-frame their argument. They’ve got a charge of blasphemy that is gonna hold no weight whatsoever in a Roman court. So they’ve gotta suddenly translate this thing into something that’s gonna impress Pilate.

 

They answered him, If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you. 31 Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.

 

Pilate knew that they wanted. He knew this man was not guilty of a capital offense. He knew they were simply jealous. And so he puts it back into their court, so to speak. But,

 

The Jews said to him, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.

 

Now, wait a minute. The Jews put people to death occasionally. Acts chapter 13. They happened to take care of Stephen all right without going through due process. Stephen didn’t get his day in a Roman court. It was maybe mob action. It might have been the spontaneous decision of a few Sanhedrinists right there that kind of went along and stirred up the mob and got it done and Rome was used to just kind of turning a blind eye to those kinds of things as long as it wasn’t too disruptive to the peace.

 

But in this case, it wasn’t going to work because it was during a feast season and the Romans were on high alert. They weren’t going to let this kind of thing happen on their watch and

 

This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

 

Jesus, completely sovereign, making all things happen according to the predetermined plan, counsel and foreknowledge of God, had already told His disciples, He had already made it very clear in John chapter 12, verses 32 and 33, that He was going to be lifted up. And when He said, “lifted up” in John 3 and in John 12, He spoke that to clarify what manner of death He was to die. He was going to be crucified. He was going to be crucified. It was going to be a blood atonement, effected through crucifixion. Jesus had already stated that. If the Jews put Him to death, it would be by stoning.

 

It was an abomination for the Jews to hang somebody, especially to hang them alive. They would hang a dead corpse in order to put it out there for the world to see, but they never hung a living person. It was a shameful thing. It was against their rules. Crucifixion was an abomination the Jews. But it was routine practice for the Romans. And so it was destined to happen [end of track 3, 5:00] in a Roman court. And so, verse 33:

 

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, Are you the King of the Jews?

 

Now, this is where I want you to focus your attention. I went through those previous verses just to kind of set the stage, just to put it in kind of a historical setting for you, but now, the thing that I want you to really focus on this morning is this conversation between Pilate and Jesus on the inside of the Praetorium. How John got the transcript and was able to give us this conversation, I don’t know. This is a private conversation between Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, and Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords. And it happened inside the Praetorium. And this is the centerpiece of revelation. There’s powerful stuff going on in this conversation. Listen to it:

 

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? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?

 

Pilate puts little stock in the Jews’ charge.

 

What have you done?

 

He asks Jesus. And

 

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.

 

“You know what happened in the garden when I was arrested. Your soldiers were there. One of my disciples actually tried to pick a fight. And I stopped it.”

 

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.

 

That is a strong affirmative of his statement.

 

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?

 

All right. Let’s go back and think through that conversation.

 

Pilate says to Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

 

All three of the other Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke, simply have Jesus responding in that affirmative, “It is as you say.” And on goes the narrative. But John fills out the conversation for us and its very important conversation. Why is it so important that we get beyond the idea that Jesus is simply the king of the Jews?

 

Because, if Jesus’ claims are to be believed, if Jesus’ claims are to be taken seriously, if we’re gonna stop and think through these claims, if men and women around the world are gonna put their faith and their trust in Jesus Christ, then the essence of His kingdom must be clarified. It’s gotta be more than just a provincial, little empire in the middle of the fertile crescent in A.D. 30.

 

Jesus is not merely, as He was accused by the Jews, a pretender to the throne of a minor Roman province in A.D. 30. What He’s about to say is going to change all of the perceptions.

 

Think about it this way. If this room that we’re sitting in here is the world and this little circle that I’m standing in right here is Judea. It’s just a very small, provincial, little province, I guess we could say, in the middle of the fertile crescent. Yes, you know, things kind of revolved around it and it was important, it was strategic. But in the Roman empire, which was basically the populated world at that time, it was just one little province ruled over by a second-rate governor named Pilate.

 

And if Jesus Christ is just the king of the Jews, then what relevance would that have for you? What relevance does that have for me? If Jesus is a Jewish king in A.D. 30, who cares? What difference does that make to us? And what difference does that make to Pilate, who happens to be connected to, an affiliate of the Roman empire, which is the room?

 

So this conversation [end of track 4, 4:58] puts it in its true light for us. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

 

He didn’t say, “My kingdom is not in this world.” He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

 

Any maybe Pilate was saying, at that point, the very same thing that many people say today when they hear Jesus saying, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

 

“Well, [whew] then it has nothing to do with me. It’s irrelevant to me. It’s irrelevant to my life, to my choices, to my values, to my morality and to even my mortality. It really doesn’t make any difference.”

 

And if we’re thinking again in terms of homeland security threat levels, then it went from red all the way down to green. Because this is just -- Jesus is just the object of some petty jealousy on the part of some religious leaders. It really -- it's their little issue. And it’s their little issue in this particular time in history and history will march on and Jesus will be buried under multiple levels of irrelevance and, after all, it’s just -- it doesn’t matter all that much.

 

But, Pilate asks the question, “So you are a king then, huh? You actually are a king?”

 

And it’s very likely that in Pilate’s mind he’s asking the question much like we would ask the question of some delusional or psychotic person who’s claiming to be a king from an alien planet, and just kind of humor him a little bit and say, “Tell me a little bit more about your kingdom.” Okay?

 

If you were having coffee at Caribou and you struck up a conversation with some rather eccentric-looking gentleman who’s sitting at the next table and in your conversation you find out that this guy actually believes he’s a king and he comes from another planet somewhere out there in the universe and that, you know, he’s talking very eloquently and very specifically about this realm that he comes from and you’re just -- you may not be smiling outside, but you’re definitely smiling inside and you’re thinking, “Okay, let me just humor this guy and see what I can get from him. Maybe I could write an article about this.”

 

And that may well be the way Pilate was thinking at this point when he says, “So you are king, huh? Well tell me about your kingdom.”

 

Pilate knew about kingdoms. It had been his life-long ambition to have power and he did it through marriage, he did it through posturing, he did it through manipulation, he did it through intrigue, he did it through all kinds of methods. He got himself into a position of power. But he’s not Tiberias Caesar. He’s just Pilate, the Roman procurator. But he understands kings and he understands realms and Jesus said, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I came into the world.”

 

Whoa! Now wait a minute. Stop and think about this from Pilate’s perspective.

 

Jesus is claiming to be a king. He says His kingdom is not of this world. It doesn’t have its source, its Genesis, its roots -- it's not anchored, it doesn’t come out of the soil of this world. It has its origins and its source elsewhere, but He’s here. So what it appears is we’ve got this alien king who is for some reason visiting our planet, a planet ruled over by Rome. We understand Roman administration. We don’t understand alien kings. But he’s here.

 

And then Jesus goes on to say, “Yes, I’m a king. That’s why I’m here.”

 

“Well, wait a minute. What do you mean by that?”

 

“That’s why I was born. That’s why I became a man. That’s why I entered into the world.”

 

Those two phrases basically are phrases which define incarnation. The incarnational ministry of Jesus is God coming in the flesh, invading planet earth, to become a part of this place for redemptive purposes.

 

Pilate’s gotta be scratching his head at this point and saying, “Why is a king whose jurisdiction is really no threat to a Roman empire because it’s not of this world? But what’s he doing hanging around in this world? And now he says, ‘I was born for the very reason of being a king.’ What does that mean?”

 

And then Jesus goes on to say, “I came into the world to bear witness to the truth.” [end of track 5, 5:00]

 

And now He has exploded the boundaries of this jurisdiction. It’s no longer Palestine, 30 A.D. It’s the world. It’s the universe. And it’s during all times. Because now we’re not just talking about a kingdom that is characterized by some alien planet or some piece of real estate on planet earth. And it’s not just first century. It’s all the centuries. It’s truth.

 

It’s truth, which has no physical boundaries. It’s truth, which has no time boundaries. It’s truth, which most people don’t really know a whole lot about, except that it seems to be the purview and the jurisdiction of God who is truth, and that’s what Jesus claimed to be in John chapter 14 when He told His disciples, “I am the way. I am the truth. And I am the life. I am the truth. Truth is consistent. It’s the content of my message.”

 

Truth. Jesus Christ came into this world as truth, to bear witness to truth. That truth happens to be who He is. It’s personified in Him. It is the disclosure of all that God is for mankind.

 

Hold John 18 and let me just read John’s prologue to you. Can we spend the time to read about 18 verses of God’s word this morning? Would that be a judicious use of our time? Or would it be better just to listen to me ramble on? Duh! Let’s listen to God.

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

 

And you know that the word logos means Jesus Christ here.

 

In the beginning was the Word [Jesus Christ], and the Word [Jesus Christ] was with God, and the Word [Jesus Christ] was God.

 

He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him [Jesus Christ] was life, and the life was the light of men.

 

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

The light is shining in the Praetorium in Jerusalem right now. The light is radiating off the face, the visage of this darkened soul name Pontius Pilate. He’s not getting it. He thinks he’s going to be able to put his hand over this light and snuff it out. He thinks he has the power to dispose of this man called Jesus, who is light. But John, in his prologue, who’s looking at the whole history and looking at the whole theology of the incarnation said, “Impossible!”

 

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

 

Another John. John the Baptist.

 

He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

 

That’s Jesus.

 

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own,

 

The Jews. [track 6, 3:28]

 

and his own people did not receive him.

 

That’s why He’s in the Praetorium.

 

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

 

15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.) 16 And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side,he has made him known.

 

After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, I find no guilt in him.