Pastor Muri's message from Sunday (part 3)

He could care less about the Jews. He hated the Jews. There was no love between Pilate and the Jews. They hated each other. There was a mutual hate that flowed uninterrupted and undiminished, both ways. He didn’t love the Jews; he hated the Jews; but he feared the Jews. Because he knew that if they created a scene in Palestine and if they sent word back to Caesar that “your little potentate here in Judah is brooking a resistance and a competition to the throne. There is a king over here who declares himself king and the people call him king and he’s calling himself a king and he’s doing nothing about it....” There’s been enough messages going between Palestine and Rome already that Pilate is already on a marked list as far as Caesar -- Tiberias Caesar is concerned, and it takes probably only one or two more points, or demerits, and Pilate’s out.

 

He has power. He has prestige. He has wealth. He has privilege. He has everything that he has coveted all of his life. Is he going to cast that aside for the sake of just judicial integrity and releasing this prisoner, who means little to him other than He’s a harmless Jew, who I’m rather drawn to, but I’m not going to sacrifice my position? He tried desperately to avoid making a decision about Jesus Christ. He tried to get himself off the horns of this dilemma. In fact, at the beginning of this chapter where we see him having Jesus flogged, and the soldiers publicly scourging and mocking Jesus. And I think this was probably an orchestrated event by Pilate for the sake of rousing some sympathy in the hearts and minds of these Jews so that they would just say, “Okay, enough is enough. He’s gotten His punishment. Let’s move on.”

 

But that didn’t work. He sent him to Herod when he found out that Herod was in town and that Jesus was part of his jurisdiction, he immediately sent him to Herod, hoping Herod would make a decision. But Herod didn’t make a decision. He came back to his court.

 

He tried to get the crowd to release Jesus by offering them a choice between Him and the worst criminal -- a murderer and true seditious person, who was sitting in person at that time -- Barrabas. So he offered them a choice, hoping they would choose Jesus instead of Barrabas. He should have known the Jews better than that. They chose Barrabas.

 

And finally, he tried to absolve himself of guilt by publicly washing his hands of this case in front of the people and saying, “Don’t hold me guilty for this.” And they willingly took the blame. But that did not absolve Pilate of his culpability.

 

How in the world does a man who is utterly convinced of another man’s innocence hand Him over to be crucified by a mob? Fear. Cowardice.

 

But, okay, what’s the point? What’s the value of examining the cowardice of a Roman governor who’s been dead for 2,000 years? In other words, so what? What’s all this about? Why are we trying to get inside the head of Pilate? Pilate means nothing to us. Pilate’s dead. Pilate’s not in jurisdiction. There aren’t even any Romans in control any more. Why are we talking about Pilate? What difference does it make?

 

I want to ask you. Do we possibly see ourselves mirrored in this man’s cowardice, in his cowardly response to Jesus? Are we sometimes in our own minds convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior, the sovereign Lord of the universe, who deserves our full allegiance and our unquestioned obedience? And yet, because of our personal ambition and because of our desire for peer approval and because of our lust and yearning for sensual indulgence, because these things and more turn us into moral cowards, so that we, like Pilate, in the words of the writer of Hebrews, chapter 6 [verse 6], are willing to

 

crucify ... the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. [end of track 5, 5:00]

 

The chain of guilt doesn’t stop with Pilate. He delivered Jesus up because of fear. It’s true that Pilate was on the horns of a dilemma, but who put him there anyway?

 

Jesus used the singular when he said:

 

he who delivered me ... to you has the greater [shame].

 

And I think, probably, since it was the Jews, it was the Sanhedrin, it was the chief priests and the Pharisees who brought Him bound to Pilate for judgment, I think probably Jesus is referring to Caiaphas, who is the one man who bears the fullest responsibility in this thing. But it wasn’t Pilate alone who turned Him over to be crucified. It was the Roman soldiers. It wasn’t Caiaphas alone who turned Him over to Pilate -- Jesus over to Pilate. It was the Sanhedrin, it was the priests, the chief priests and the Pharisees. It was the whole Sanhedrin. It was the Jews, as they are referred to. Mark 15 and verse 1:

 

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 [paradidomi] over to Pilate.

 

Matthew 27, verse 18:

 

For he knew [Pilate knew] that it was out of envy that they [the Jews] had delivered him up [paradidomi].

 

Again, the Pharisees hated Jesus. They hated Him because He had stolen the affections and the loyalty and the respect of the people, which they had owned. And the chief priests hated Jesus because He had exposed their hypocrisy and uncovered the wickedness of their perversions of worship in the temple. To both of them, Jesus was something of a maverick. He was acclaimed by the people as a rabbi. But he didn’t graduate from their schools. He didn’t come up through their ranks. He didn’t honor their methods and their traditions. And He had the nerve to hang out with poor, miserable, wicked people, sinners even. And He had the nerve and the audacity to heal people on the Sabbath of all things. And He didn’t stop there. He publicly denounced their hypocrisy, calling them blind leaders of the blind and whitened sepulchers, appearing nice on the outside, but inside full of dead men’s bones and all kinds of stinking wretchedness.

 

They hated Him with such a blind rage that they were incapable of seeing His holy nature and His gracious character. They simply had to have Him gone because they envied Him.

 

If Pilate delivered Jesus up for fear, the Jews, the chief priests and the Pharisees and Caiaphas delivered Him up for envy.

 

But again, the Pharisees, as a religious sect, are gone. They’re no longer. There isn’t a “Pharisees Office” in Plymouth. Where do you go to interview a Pharisee. If you’re a newspaper reporter for the Star Tribune and you want to interview a Pharisee for the religion section of the newspaper, where are you gonna go find a Pharisee? And where are the scribes and where are the chief priests? They’re no longer manipulating our worship.

 

So what’s the point of talking about the Jews in a sense of the chief priests and the Pharisees and the scribes. Isn’t this much ado about nothing? No.

 

Again, if you look at that motivating principle of envy, which lives and lurks within every one of our souls in a certain measure, nurtured by our pride -- the very pride that gives birth to every form of Christ-denying evil in us. Do we not sometimes see Jesus as an intrusion into our privately held and carefully constructed lifestyles? We’re at the center of our lives, and we really want no rivals.

 

We build comfort [end of track 6, 4:56] and He calls for sacrifice. Such nerve!

 

We promote self-esteem and He demands self-denial. We insist on sensual pleasures and He demands moral purity. We feed our arrogance and He calls for pride-crushing humility. We insist on safety and He requires that we deny ourselves every single day, take up our cross and follow Him.

 

The Pharisees and the priests wanted it their way. And to Jesus, if they could have said what they felt in their hearts, really, they would have said, “Just go away and leave us along. Life was good before you showed up.”

 

And do we not sometimes join them on the chorus?

 

But you know? They didn’t act alone either. There was Judas, who had delivered Jesus over to the chief priests for his own reasons. Matthew chapter 20 and verse 18:

 

See, we are going up to Jerusalem.

 

Jesus said to His disciples.

 

And the Son of Man will be delivered [paradidomi] over to the chief priests and [the] scribes, and they will condemn him to death

 

Who was going to do that? John 18 and verse 5:

 

They answered him,

 

The arresting officers in the garden, answered Him, when Jesus asked, “Who are you looking for?”

 

They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. [And] Jesus said to them, I am he.

 

And here it is:

 

Judas, who betrayed him [paradidomi], was standing with them.

 

Now Judas’ guilt in this whole thing has been debated for years. Was Judas the mere victim of Providence? I mean, God had a plan to execute His Son. Isaiah chapter 53 [verse 10]:

 

It pleased [God, it pleased the Father] the LORD to [crush] him

 

It was all pre-planned. There was a plan of redemption that was set in motion in eternity past. There had to be an execution. There had to be a betrayer. The betrayer was predicted in the Old Testament. So, I mean, how do you assign guilt to Judas? God needed a tool.

 

God needed a tool and God found a willing tool in Judas, who acted out of his own evil, wicked desires. Was he the mere victim of providence? Was he a zealot looking to force Jesus’ hand so that the kingdom could be established? Or was he a man seized with greed who bargained away the life of Jesus for a little bag of silver?

 

Well, John, in his Gospel, seems biased toward the third, that Judas was motivated by greed. If you go back to John chapter 12 and this incident where Jesus is in Bethany and Mary took this pound of expensive ointment made of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair and the house was filled with the fragrance of this very costly perfume.

 

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him [paradidomi]), said, 5 Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor? 6 He said this, not because he cared [for] the poor, but because he was a thief, ... having charge of the moneybag [and] he used to help himself to what was put [in] it.

 

He was a greedy man. And his greed is spoken of in the context of his betrayal and the motivation for it, no doubt.

 

The rhetoric of Judas still echoes among us. When Judas said to the chief priests, “What will you give me? And I will hand Him over to you. What’s the price?”

 

Jesus had warned His followers early on, in Matthew chapter 6, He had told them, “You can’t serve two masters. You’re either going to love the one and hate the other. You’re going to cling to one and despise the other. You can’t serve God and money.”

 

Judas made a choice. He chose money. [end of track 7, 5:00]