Gospel of John, 18:24-40

We are in lesson 39, which is verses 24 through 40, roughly, in John chapter 18. And what's going on here is that, and for quite some time now, we'll probably spend most of our time doing this today, There is circumstances of the Lord Jesus before Pilate and what transpires there. And we had just finished up talking about Pilate's view of the truth. And we had worked our way down to verse 40, which is the last verse.

Pilate, in his tap-dancing way, verse 39, But you have a custom that I should release someone to you at the Passover. Do you therefore want me to release to you the king of the Jews? And they all cried, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now, Barabbas was a robber.

What's Pilate's view of the Lord Jesus in terms of his guilt? He thinks he's innocent. Totally innocent. He cannot find anything that would even approach him being guilty of any crime at all. And he's really trying to find a way to release him. And so he thought he'd come up with a brilliant scheme because of this issue in the Passover that one person a year is going to be released to the Jews who was a criminal and he thought well gee for sure they would absolutely take Jesus because Barabbas is a bad guy and he can't find any guilt in Jesus so he thinks boy if I give them this option they're for sure going to take Jesus but they didn't So my question in 14 was, the statement in verse 40, how important a statement is that? Now, you can look at that from a couple of viewpoints.

How important a statement is it for the Jews to make a statement like this? It shows their rejection of their Messiah. The reason I ask this question is because Jews along with Gentiles for two thousand years have always picked the robber rather than the Savior. And so the issue always comes down to who is this man and will you choose him? That's the issue. And so the world, I think you have to understand that the world is dominated by murderers and robbers and liars. And when the choice comes between choosing the son of God and a murderer and a robber and a liar, they'll always choose the liar and the robber. They will not choose God. Is that not the way it's been for 2000 years? Seems to me it's that way. They will choose any man but Jesus. Anybody but Him. In our society today, what's the one group that you can pick on with immunity?

Christians. And why Christians? Because we're from this man Jesus. Believers, like you and I, we sometimes choose ourselves rather than this man. You hear what I'm saying? We as Christians are always concerned about the next program, the next system, the next revival, but we are seldom ever concerned about which man. Christianity is not a system, it's not a religion, it has to do with a man.

Which man? Do you choose this man today? He is the one that's the center and the focus of our lives, not a religion, not a system, not a set of principles and rules. It's a man. And do you choose this man today? That's really what the question is here. Which man will you choose?

And they cried out, give us Barabbas. Give us Barabbas, you know. So, question 15. Describe how all mankind became guilty of Christ's death. The Jews is pretty easy. That's a pretty easy answer. Why the Jews? How come they're guilty? You guys awake today? be responsible as far as they're concerned that they're not really the ones putting him on the cross. Well, if you had to stand before a holy God in the universe and he said, I pronounce you guilty of crucifying my son, what evidence would he have? With the Jews, the evidence would be that they delivered him up. They arrested him and they delivered him up.

How about the Gentiles? Are they guilty? Why? Because they were involved. And what's interesting is that the one Gentile that we're talking about today, our friend Pilate, is such a poster child for men of the world, especially political animals. And he can't make up his mind about anything other than to save his own skin, no matter what it is, even faced with the Son of God. And so he is just as guilty as the Jews. So the whole world, by picking Barabbas, is guilty of the death of Christ. Do you think Jesus in all of this dialogue here was trying to save Pilate?

Yeah. Yeah. He's trying to get to him. For what purpose? So he can get off the hook. Sure. I think he is, too. I think he's after him. And what I find interesting about that is that he this is the man that's going to actually make the pronouncement. You take him and crucify him. Now why? The other question I probably should have asked in conjunction with this. The Lord Jesus being God and knowing what's coming, yet he's standing before his judge and he's really trying to save him. Why would he do such a thing? That's what he came for. What's that? That's what he came for. Yeah.

It doesn't have to do with him having a perspective after his death. It doesn't say anything, does it, about after Christ died, anything about Pilate's position as boss? A little, but not very much. We'll probably talk about it today. What intrigues me is that the death of Christ was an orchestrated event that God the Father and God the Son put together. And these guys are just the players in the event. He came to die. There was no deterring from that. Everybody who was going to be involved in this circumstance had already been put in place.

So the Lord Jesus is never... I mean, if I'm standing before a judge who may or may not send me to die, I'm worried about whether I am going to die or not. He's not worried about that at all. His whole concern... He came to die. He's moving towards the cross purposefully. This is His hour.

So in the middle of that, his focus is on going after the soul of Pilate. Isn't that interesting? When you know where you're going and what you're doing in spite of the circumstances, your focus goes off of you and on the benefit of somebody else. It's intriguing to me that right in the middle of all of this, and I probably shouldn't phrase it this way, but Pilate was the ultimate sleazeball.

The Lord Jesus is after him. He's after his soul. Wow. It's kind of interesting that Jesus knows what his reaction is going to be, but he still witnesses to him. Yeah. He really does. He really does. Okay, Pilate will stay in our focus as we go to lesson 40, chapter 19. We'll get through the first 24 verses. So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him. And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe. And then they said, Hail, King of the Jews. And they struck him with their hands.

We've asked this question before, but I asked it again because I want us to have the right perspective. At the end of the last chapter we saw Jesus before Pilate. Is that the same dynamic at the beginning of chapter 19? And here's what I'm after. We've seen, and we'll see again, the dialogue between Pilate and the Lord Jesus had made such a turn that really what was going on is Pilate was before Christ. It wasn't the other way around.

It was Pilate before Christ. So were you able to observe that? Do you see that in this in thirty nine or in 18 and 19? Do you see that Pilate is really before Christ? It's not the other way. even though Pilate seems to be making decisions about the outcome of why the Lord Jesus is there. Anybody see that? Am I the only one that saw that?

Pilate is a man torn between the innocence of Jesus and the pressure of the Jews. And he always takes the self-preservation route. So the reason Pilate is conflicted is because the Lord Jesus is pressuring him and so are the Jews and so is his own conscience. So what was Pilate trying to accomplish by having Jesus scourged when he had pronounced him innocent? I think he thought that he could play on the Jewish heartstrings by having him roughed up a little bit and then bring him out there and the Jews would look at him and say, oh man, we're making a mistake. How can we condemn such a man? And that's what Pilate's hoping for.

Have you ever been in a circumstance where you know something is true, yet all of the external influences are against what you know is true? Ever been in that circumstance? Maybe I'll describe it a different way. I think so. Then you decide with the public and you're sorry I won't. Well, maybe it's like dealing with your teenage kids. They have a frame of reference that is probably not reality, but in their mind it is. And so you listen and you listen and you listen and you know that this thing can't work the way they're describing it to you.

But there's a lot of pressure to go ahead anyway. I haven't been in court a lot, but I've been there some. And I've watched judges deal with people that they know are guilty, but the system has to let them go. I've seen and I know personally of a man who was guilty that a judge let go. So this guy is really conflicted because he He knows that Jesus is innocent. He is not guilty of insurrection and Pilate doesn't care if he's blasphemous.

What does he care about that? He's a Roman. So he's trying to walk both sides of the street. Plus there's another influence on him that you don't read in John and that is that his wife had come and warned him about a dream she'd had not to mess with this guy. And so he's really conflicted. He wants to get him set free, but he wants to do it in such a way that he doesn't cause a riot amongst the Jews. And the Jews are really raising the temperature as he keeps pronouncing that he's innocent. So Pilate scourged Jesus to the people. What do you hope to accomplish by doing this? I've kind of answered that. Pilate would have stopped right here, wouldn't he? He'd have been done.

In his mind, he actually went too far by scourging Christ because he's innocent. Why would he do it? But he does an interesting thing because he's quite the cynic. In verse 4, Pilate went out again and said to them, Behold, I bring him out to you, and you may know that I find no fault in him. And he keeps referring to Jesus as the King of the Jews. How do you think that sits with the Jews? It doesn't sit very well at all, because what they sent him up there for is exactly that claim. You think he'd moved anybody to compassion for Christ?

It had totally the opposite effect. So, you see the pressure building on Pilate? Everything he tries doesn't work. It backfires on him. Everything he does. So, the other thing that's interesting here is that as Pilate, in his contempt, keeps referring to the Lord Jesus as the King of the Jews, all it does is continue to up the contempt that the Jews have for Jesus. And you have to understand something else too.

Pilate doesn't like the Jews. He hates them. He resents the fact that he was made governor in Palestine. He hates the Jews. And he hates the fact that they are always bugging him, always in his face about something. And here is Jesus and he can't find any reason to crucify him and these Jews are just driving him nuts. What's that? It was his job. But what was Pilate's primary job as governor of Palestine? What's the primary job he had?

Keep the peace. That's right. That's the number one thing. And when you study Acts and you go through all of those cities, where the Jews were raising heck because of what Paul was doing. Every time you see a Roman administrator step in, what's he trying to do? Keep the peace, because the Romans were very strict peace people. They did not want any insurrections in any of the provinces. And if you happen to be the head of the province and there was a riot, you were the guy that was going to answer for it.

So Pilate knows that. And you know what? The Jews know it too. And so they're, you know, raising, raising the bar and really causing pilot a lot of problems. Yeah. Pilot. Yeah. He didn't want to lose his job. And if you're a politician in that time when you lost your job, did they just send you to another town? No, probably not.

In verse 5, then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and Pilate said to them, Behold the man. And therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw him, they cried out, Crucify him, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, You take him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him. Here he is passing the buck. What did the Jews say to him? We have a law, and according to our law, he ought to die, because he made himself to be the Son of God. Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was more afraid. How come? Why would that saying make him more afraid?

He was before Jesus. What's that? He was there facing Jesus. There's just no question about the Lord's demeanor in front of these people. Well, he's standing out in front of the Jews now. And Jesus is standing here and he's got the crowd in front of him.

And the Jews give him this little discussion about, well we have a law that says he ought to die because he claims to be God. Not because Romans were the only ones who could carry out the law. Well that's the underlying focus of why the Jews are saying what they're doing. That this man needs to die according to our law, but you need to be the ones that kill him. I mean, he's putting pressure on them. We have the law you're supposed to administer. That's right. And if you don't, we're going to report back to Rome. Yeah. Joanne.

Well, I was reading that in the Roman Pantheon of Gods that sometimes they believe that God came among men. And so when they said he's the son of God, he was afraid that maybe he had scourged a God. And I think that's part of it, too. Because of his religion, he knew this man, Jesus, was special because of the way he responded to him, and Jesus responded to him.

There's that factor that you don't see here. Therefore, when Pilate heard the saying, he was more afraid, and here it gets interesting, he went again into the praetorium and said to Jesus, where are you from? See, he's really afraid now. Where are you from? But Jesus didn't answer him. How come? By the way, how would you describe Pilate's demeanor at this point?

The Lord just keeps quoting truth to him, and when he is asked the question about where are you from, you know, and what... He's already told him where he was from. Well, he did tell him. He already said to him, hey, you know, I told you my kingdom is not of this world. Joanna.

At this instance, when he didn't answer, was that to fulfill prophecy? I don't think so. I couldn't find anything that said that. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't that the Lord Jesus never protested. How do I say this? He never proclaimed that he shouldn't be crucified in that sense. He didn't raise a stink about it.

So I don't know. That's a thought I didn't have. You could be right about that. His answer would be heaven, you know. And I'm not so sure the fellow had much of a connotation upon what that would mean. judge this man guilty and have him die. He's had this visit from his wife. He's had Jesus scourged. He's had a couple of dialogues with Christ and I think he thinks this is obviously somebody very special. So look at these two and then on the other side you've got the Jews where their tenor is going up and up and up and up and they're not having anything to do with any of his escape policies, so to speak. They want this man crucified. So who's going to win? Who's going to win? Whoever speaks loudest. Whoever speaks loudest. No, that's true.

And why is that going to work with Pilate? force Pilate to answer that question rather than him. And again, I think we've seen before, I think Christ is showing he's in control of this rather than Pilate. So, you know, I think it's, you know, he asked the question and I think he wanted Pilate to answer that question himself rather than him answer it. And again, it just shows that Christ is in control.

It's before the governor and he's not answering him. You don't do that. So, let me jump back a minute, maybe it'll help set up what I'm trying to say. In question 4 I asked, does the demand in verse 6 by the Jews make them guilty of his murder? And verse 4 is, Pilate then went again and said to them, Behold, I bring out to you that you may know that I find no fault in this man.

And I was looking at Acts 3.13. And Peter is saying, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. It's interesting that Peter, our coward who's hiding in the bushes somewhere, stands up in Acts 3 and says to the Jews in Jerusalem, you delivered him up And you denied the Messiah in the presence of Pilate when Pilate was determined to let him go. You're guilty. And Jesus had said to him earlier, who's got the greater sin? Is it the one that delivered me up? Yeah, that's what he says.

So in doing a little profile of our friend Pontius Pilate, he's a Gentile. and he's a wicked man. The Jews are worse than he is when it comes to wickedness. Pilate's unrighteous, but the Jews, conversely, next to him have Caiaphas and Judas Iscariot who have betrayed him and who represent the Jewish nation. I'll put it this way. Annas and Judas Iscariot represent the Jewish nation at this time. Pilate represents the Gentiles.

God sent his son in infinite grace. He did not fail to present adequate proof as to who he was. You think he did? In the study of John, do you think Jesus presented enough proof as to who he is? Give me an example of how he proved who he was. And the one guy that would demonstrate that he did prove who he was, was Nicodemus. Because he said to Jesus, nobody could do what you do if you weren't sent from God.

Do you think the whole Sanhedrin knew that about him? I think they did. So they don't have any excuse. And the Lord Jesus had said to Pilate and the Jews, especially to the Jews, go look at my works and go talk to the people that I talk to. They are my witnesses.

And they have rejected, what's the thing that they have rejected, the Jews? Who Christ is, but what I'm looking for is, what they really have rejected is grace. And what I find interesting about the rejection of grace is that it puts them in a position where they are absolutely blind. Absolutely blind.

And the other thing that happens here that's kind of interesting, when you go through a stressful situation like this, all of the true characters of the people start to come out. Most of us live with a veneer, but you find yourself in a position like this and who you really are begins to show up. the Jews and their fanaticism against God, a guy like Pilate who is just an evil, wicked guy, and also who God is and who Christ is. Their characters begin to show up. Now, question 5.

Why do you think Pilate was so affected by verses 6-8? 6 through 8 is therefore when the chief priests and officers saw him, they cried out, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, you take him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him. And then the Jews answered and said, we have a law according to our law.

He ought to die because he made himself out to be the son of God. And that law comes from Leviticus 24. Whosoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall certainly stone him. the stranger as well as him who is born in the land, when he blasphemes the name of the Lord, he shall be put to death." That's the law that they're telling Pilate that they had convicted him of. So, at this point, what's Pilate's main emotion?

He's been bitter, he's been angry, He's trapped. If he doesn't crucify him in the Jews' riot, then he's in trouble with Rome. And if he does crucify him, maybe he's afraid of being in trouble with the gods. Yeah, I think you're right. I think fear is now controlling him. And I think that's the reason why. So, he's in fear now. And so I'm always struck that there's a counterbalance to fear. You know what it is? If you're fearful, what's the counterbalance? Faith. So this is not a man of faith, right?

He's just fearful. He operates solely based on fear and emotion, the emotion of fear. So now I'm down to why doesn't Jesus answer Pilate's first question. First of all, go ahead. I think the three seven says he was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before his shearers is silent. So he opened not his mouth.

So that fulfills prophecy. I'm not sure that that's what Joanne was saying. I'm not sure that that is what's going on here, because this is just one question he doesn't answer. He answers all the rest of them. See that? Why not this question? What's this question have to do with? Where are you from? You can send him somewhere else. Think about pilot. Now, we've gone through this issue with him or pilot. They were talking about truth, right? And the Lord Jesus in essence says, well, I'm the truth and I'm standing right in front of you. And what was his reaction to that?

Well, what is truth? I don't understand what truth is. Truth is a relative thing. And so I think what's going on here is that he's not going to deal with Pilate if Pilate is just curious. Do you understand what I mean by that? Jesus has already told him where he's from. They've already had this discussion about truth. Is Pilate really interested in the truth? When he says, where are you from, do you think he's really interested in where he's from?

No, he's not. What he's trying to do is save himself, and Jesus has nothing to say to him about that. He has nothing to say to him about that. But the fact that he doesn't answer awakens what in Pilate? Now understand, here's the dialogue. Pilate views himself as the judge. Jesus is in fact the judge. He's the one that's really driving this meeting. Pilate asks him a question he doesn't answer. What's Pilate's reaction to that?

Pride. He's prideful. But he's also fearful. And so he's trying to recapture... He says, wait a minute, I'm an authority here. I'm the one that makes the decisions here. Isn't that what he says? Look, do you not know that I have the power to crucify you and the power to release you? He's hot. He won't answer me. What do you mean you won't answer me? Don't you know who I am?

The Lord's not going to comfort a guy like this. And so his answer shows that he's trying to cover up his fear. That's what I think is happening. And so he does it with a big bravado about who he supposedly is in terms of his authority. It's a loud, a very loud arrogance.

But you know what? If he had the power to release them, how come he hadn't done it by now? If he really did possess the power to release Jesus, why hasn't he done it? Couldn't he have done it? If he is who he says he is? He could have said, alright Jews, I've had enough of you, see ya, Jesus, you're free to go. But he hadn't done that. So who controls who here? That's true. He's perceiving that's what's going to happen. So, how does Jesus deal with Pilate's pride? How does he deal with Pilate's answer? In verse 11. You could have no power at all against me unless it had been given to you from above.

Now, think about who Pilate is. Think about what his wife has told him. Think about the fact that he may suspect that Jesus is one of these gods that has shown up. And the one standing in front of him who's bleeding and has a crown of thorns on his head and a purple robe around him says to him, hey, buster, you could have no power at all against me unless it had been given to you from above. Therefore, the one who's delivered me to you has the greater sin. What an answer. And Pilate said, OK, I get it. You can leave. No. What does this do to him? What effect does it have? Or how does Jesus deal with his pride? He lets Pilate know who's really in charge. And he doesn't do it arrogantly. He doesn't do it aggressively. I think the Lord Jesus pities this guy.

But he said, look, if we're going to talk about truth, let's talk about truth. You don't have any power that wasn't given to you from above. I described it as this. It would be like a father talking to a disobedient child. That's how Jesus is talking to Pilate right here. He's saying, wait a minute, let's look at the facts. It would be like any of you talking to your teenage kids. Stop, let's look at the facts. I know how you feel about it. Let's look at the facts.

The Roman governor had no authority, like we've studied in Romans 12-13. Nobody has any authority on this planet that God didn't give him. Not a single thing. Nobody has the authority unto himself. And the other interesting thing about this is that the authority given by God to Rome and to Pilate and to the Jews, well, how did the Lord Jesus himself as a man deal with that authority that had been dispensed by him to others?

What did he do with it? Yeah. Not only that, but here he is in a circumstance where other men have apparent authority over him. Authority he'd given him. How does he deal with it? He lets him do it. He submits to it. Isn't that interesting? He lets him do it.

He doesn't say, wait a minute, I'm the God of the universe and you don't have any authority without me. You know, you kind of upset me so I'm taking your authority away from you. He said no. He submits to it, even though it's unjust. Even though the authority is placed in a man like Pilate, who is... Has there ever been a character more unworthy than him to have authority? Never. But he submits to it. So, we talked in 9 about who had the greater sway.

By verse 15, The Jews had rejected and called down judgment on themselves. List the offenses. List what their offenses are. What have the Jews done by now in terms of publicly rejecting and calling down judgment on themselves? I wrote down four things. What have they done?

They've rejected him as their king. That's one. They've turned their back on Him as their Messiah, their Savior. And if He is the King, they really can't crucify Him? If He is King, they can't, but they are going to. They've turned their back on Him as their Messiah.

Messiah is the Messiah of Israel, the leader. What I'm saying is that Christ gave up the Spirit, And the other thing, Joanne? They claimed that they were loyal to Rome. That's right. They aligned themselves against him with the Gentiles. They rejected the only one who could possibly be their savior. And so they're about to murder the Son of God and the Son of Man. That's what they're going to do. They're going to be guilty of murder.

Now, just as an aside, And you probably don't know the answer to this, but maybe you do if you studied hard. There were four blood sacrifices slash offerings in the Old Testament which the people of Israel were commanded to bring. Each of the four Gospels presents the work of the cross from one of these four standpoints. Can you name them? This would give you a PhD if you could just name them off the top of your head. Anybody want to try?

The burnt offering is what we see here in John's Gospel. It presented the Lord Jesus as dying to glorify God in the scene where he had been so terribly dishonored. In his cross, God received more glory than ever was lost by Adam's fall and by all the sin that was coming to the world since. If not one human soul was ever saved as a result of the death of Jesus, God's character has been vindicated. So his majesty has been sustained and God has been fully glorified. So what the burnt offering was about was to show the majesty and the glory and the vindication of God against sin.

And that's what John shows, the whole Gospel of John. The peace offering is what you see, the crucifixion of Christ in Luke is the peace offering. It presents Christ as making peace by the blood of his cross. That's the focus that Luke has. Jesus is presented as the sin offering in Mark's gospel, who died not simply for what we have done, but for what we are. Therefore, the sin offering is not merely for the acts that I have done, but because of an evil, corrupt nature which unfits me for fellowship with God." If you study Mark's Gospel, you will see not only that Jesus died for your sins, but you will see that the sin offering took care of the sinner, which Paul later identifies as the identification truths.

In Matthew's Gospel, He's the trespass offering. Christ dies for our sins to atone for our guilt, to make up for the divine majesty for the wrong that we have done. Each gospel portrays a different aspect or shows the different blood sacrifices that were required in the Old Testament. There was the burnt offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering.

Alright, moving ahead. Verse 13-14, like in there, When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in Hebrew it's called Gabbatha. Is that how you say that? Now it was the preparation day of the Passover and about the sixth hour and he said to the Jews, behold your king. Is that a complimentary statement to the Jews?

No. He's just sticking the knife in him and turning it. Behold your king. Did they consider Jesus their king? Absolutely not. They thought he was a blasphemer. So every chance that Pilate gets to present Jesus, how does he present him? Here's the king of the Jews. Behold your king. That kind of language. And they cried out away with him. Crucify him. And Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? He did it again to them. The chief priest answered, Here we go. We have no king but Caesar. Guilty, guilty, guilty. In fact, they hated him. You mean hated Jesus? Caesar. Now, watch how this happens in 16.

Then he delivered him to them to be crucified, so they took Jesus and they led him away. And he, bearing his cross, went out to a place of the skull, which is called Golgotha, where they crucified him and two others with him, one on either side and Jesus in the center. And Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And the writing was, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.

I didn't ask you this question, but why so few verses about the crucifixion of Christ and John? This is all you get. How come? He's concentrating on the divinity of Christ. He's not concentrating on his humanity at all. They took him and they crucified him. That was it. And they crucified him between two other men. And then Pilate sticks this sign up there Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. By the way, we've talked about this before. Is Jesus of Nazareth a complementary term?

It's like saying Courtney from Parker. Well, Courtney from Kiowa. That's different, right? Now Nazareth was considered, don't take offense, But it was the worst place you could be from. The absolute worst place you could be from. If you if we said something in the United States that Mike was from X or what? OK. Or sure. You could say San Francisco. You could say I grew up in Illinois. We would say the south side of Chicago. Mike from the South Side of Chicago, that connotes something about where you're from and the kind of character you were and who you hung around with. Nazareth, Andrew said, is there anything good ever come out of Nazareth?

Yeah, what an awful place. Jesus of Nazareth, scumbag, king of the Jews. In Acts you see this all over the place where Peter says to the Jews every time he evangelizes, you took Jesus of Nazareth and crucified him, and God has exalted him above all men." He uses that term, Jesus of Nazareth, a lot. So here we are.

I was just thinking, if Pilate asked him where he was from earlier, he must have known because he put Jesus in Nazareth. Oh, you mean where, yeah. But was Jesus really from Nazareth? Where was he born? Bethlehem. So he really wasn't from Nazareth. Yeah, I did. He grew up there. So, yeah, I think he knew. There isn't any discussion that shows that Pilate knew that he was from Nazareth unless the Jews told him. Yeah, because he's thinking this this guy might be deity. Where are you from? That's why I asked him the question. You know, are you from wherever? a guy who believed in the Roman gods would think a godly man would be from, or a god would be from. That's why he asked no question, where are you from?

So, why did Pilate stick this sign up there? First of all, every crucified man, there was always a plaque above his cross that said why he was crucified. You know, this guy was crucified because, you know, he was a criminal and here's what he did. That was the tradition.

But Pilate writes, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews, and he sticks it up there. Why did he do it? Why that language, especially the king of the Jews part? One writer that I read said that he thought it was an insult to Jewish aspirations and It certainly is an insult to the Jews. And the Pharisees really do object. Why? They come to him and say, wait a minute. Why don't you change it to say that he claimed to be the king of the Jews? Would that have been okay? It would have fit with their plan that he was crucified because he was a blasphemer.

How does Pilot react to their wanting him to do that? He says, no way. You get what you get. What does that show us about Pilot? Well, it shows that Pilot has just been manipulated into doing something he really didn't want to do. And he gives Christ over to be crucified. And he's not happy about his decision.

But he's, you know, being the weasel that he is, gets one last opportunity to sort of do this to the Jews. And this is it. This is it. Now, what's interesting about this is that the other thing is that it's an insult because if Rome would treat the Jewish king in this manner, and the Jewish leaders concurred with the Romans, what do you think the rest of the Jews thought they were worth?

Not much. We've got one second and we'll finish the last one. Why does Jesus record verse 23 and 24 and has to do with the soldiers dividing up his garments and not tearing up his tunic but keeping it all together? It's simple. It's a fulfillment of prophecy from Psalm 22 18. They parted my garments among them and they cast lots upon my vesture. As we'll see next week, a lot of what happens right here at the end is fulfillment of prophecy. The Lord never left anything undone. Never. All right, let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your word and this opportunity to get a really good look at the Lord Jesus as he is contrasted with another man, Pilate. And we see that even in the suffering of death, the glory of you and your Son is manifested for us to see. Father, we thank you for that. We pray in your Son's name. Amen.