What Water Cannot Wash Away

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called

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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

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I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. And it is a joy to be gathered together this morning, is it not?

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It is. I get up here every week and spend a little time explaining where we're going to be going in the

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Word every Sunday because I want to start with hearing from God. I've had a couple of people who have visited here in the past and they've kind of identified like I get up,

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I give my introduction and I sat down and they said, well, I guess that was the message. What just happened? Like that was just like five minutes.

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Like what's going on? No, I'm going to give an introduction to it because I think quite often in my upbringing, I was raised to think that we sang songs to prepare our hearts to hear from God.

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But the reality of history, the reality of the way that God works is that he reaches out first.

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He reaches out to us first with a revelation of himself that ignites our worship.

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And it's only that we can worship him in spirit and in truth that we actually know the truth. And so I like to start with the

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Word, start with where we're going in the Word, and let him tell us something first, read it, take it in, and then respond in worship.

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And so that's why I kind of started this from the very beginning of kind of giving an introduction. I've entitled this message this morning,

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What Water Cannot Wash Away, because we have all accumulated a debt of guilt that water cannot wash away.

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And we've tried probably a variety of things, probably not so much water to wash away our spiritual blight and our spiritual sickness, but we have all tried various things.

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That's my hunch anyways, is that almost all of us in this room have tried to solve our sin problem on our own at some point.

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We're going to see a dude this morning try to solve a sin problem on his own. We're going to see this morning the innocent, meek, kind -hearted, authoritative son of God standing trial before the tragic, opportunistic, unjust, weak -willed, save -his -own -skin

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Roman governor named Pontius Pilate. We already saw the circus trial of Jesus before the

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Jewish authorities a few weeks ago, and now we see that the Romans can do no better when it comes to an attempt at justice.

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But it's at least mildly ironic, I see some irony as we kind of think about this text, it's mildly ironic that at least this pagan has a good sense to try to distance himself from the guilt of this act of condemning a clearly innocent man.

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He at least tries to atone for the guilt. Where the religious leaders, the Jewish leaders, lean into the guilt and lean into that and heap it upon themselves, at least this

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Roman governor knows that this pronouncement of sentence on an innocent man will stain him with innocent blood.

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But water can never wash away guilt. We cannot scrub hard enough.

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Pontius Pilate does not have a brush that is coarse enough, nor can he linger over the basin long enough.

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Scrubbing with all of his might, with all of his soap, with all of his days, Pilate can never be cleansed from this guilt by his own effort.

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And neither can we. So I think you can imagine the way that this passage might come into our own lives at least at one level, you can see where it's going.

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There's only one solvent for the deadly guilt of sin. Only one way for our hands to be made clean, and our hearts and our minds to be made clean.

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Only the blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, can cleanse us.

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Pilate is a tragic figure. But he is tragic not primarily because he had to make a tough call.

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He did have to make a tough call, but that's not the primary tragedy. He is tragic because he sided against justice.

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He sided against the very innocent Son of God. Pilate will choose in our text to condemn an innocent man, to save himself the trouble of a potential riot in the streets of Jerusalem.

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The contrast between Jesus, silent here in the text before his accusers, silent before the religious leaders, and that contrast between him and the disgustingly violent mobs and Pontius Pilate himself is meant to jar us in this scene that I'm about to read.

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Jesus here is silent, and in silence he calms, in the silent calm rather, he fulfills

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Isaiah 53 verse 7 that says this. So what we're reading is a fulfillment of prophecy.

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Isaiah 53 verse 7 says, he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

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When we're in the frenzy and craziness of life, we can look to the calm serenity of our Lord. He went into the garden of Gethsemane with a troubled heart, and after giving himself over to the will of the heavenly

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Father, he now is an image of peace and resignation, while injustices, sins, betrayals, denials, mobs, and shouts of crucifixion swirl, he won't even open his mouth.

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You see, church, the guilt is ours, but the saving work is his. So let's open our

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Bibles or your devices or your apps so that you can see that these things that I'm saying are coming from the text,

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Matthew 27 verses 11 through verse 27. So we're in chapter 27 of Matthew, but it's verses 11 through 27 that we're going to read.

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And again, I like to remind us every week that this is God's holy word. To give it our attention, to give it our focus, is a good thing for us to do in the gathering of God's people, starting in verse 11 of chapter 27 of the

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Gospel of Matthew. Now, Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, are you the king of the

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Jews? Jesus said, you have said so. But when he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer.

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Then Pilate said to him, do you not hear how many things they testify against you? But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.

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Now, at the feast, the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted.

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And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, whom do you want me to release for you,

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Barabbas, or Jesus, who was called Christ? For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.

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Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.

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Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, which of the two do you want me to release for you?

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And they said, Barabbas. Pilate said to them, then what shall I do with Jesus, who is called the

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Christ? They all said, let him be crucified. And he said, why? What evil has he done?

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But they shouted all the more, let him be crucified. So when

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Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hand before the crowd saying,

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I am innocent of this man's blood, see to it yourself. And all the people answered, his blood be on us and on our children.

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Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.

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Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him.

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Let's pray. Father, as we march through the gospel of Matthew, taking step by step, slow steps it feels like, long laborious steps toward the cross, toward the crucifixion, detail after detail, trial after trial, darkness after darkness,

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I pray that you would ignite within us a gladness for the love that you have poured out on us, as we see step by step, our

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Lord Jesus Christ, your son, following your plan to a T, and doing so out of love for us.

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Love for sinful people. Love for people who would have readily spit in his face, would have mocked him, would have been in those crowds shouting, crucify, were it not for your grace, were it not for your mercy, were it not for your love, were it not for your call on our lives.

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So Father, as those who are redeemed and being sanctified and being made more and more in the image of your son,

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I pray that you would light our worship this morning with fire, with flame, with excitement, with enthusiasm, with gladness, that we would worship you in spirit and in truth.

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The truth that we are not worthy, but in Christ we are made your righteousness.

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What an amazing, amazing, amazing exchange. Our sin for his righteousness,

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I pray that that would have a way in our hearts that lights us up, that makes us joyful, that makes us glad, that makes us exuberant.

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Even here as we're tired of winter and spring can't come soon enough and there's all kinds of stresses and pressures on lives,

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Father, I pray that this one solitary truth would impact us deeply and change the way that we view things.

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Accept our songs before you as worship this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Thanks a lot to the band for leading us in worship. I'm really grateful for Dave and the musicians that do what

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I could never do and what you would never want me to do, so I am very thankful that we've got ...

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Yeah, that's appropriate. I mean, praise God, but yeah, thanks to them too.

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I encourage you to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open to Matthew chapter 27, verses 11 through 27.

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Again, if you came in after I read that, then that's the text for this morning, Matthew 27, 11 through 27, and if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donut holes, while supplies last, you're not going to distract me if you need to do that or if you need to use the restroom, go out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side.

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Jumping into this text, I imagine that Pontius Pilate had absolutely no clue that we would be talking about him today.

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I wonder if his ears are ringing. He was a mediocre governor assigned to a province out on the eastern frontier of the

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Roman Empire where Judea was the Roman Empire's wild, wild east.

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It was a dangerous place. To govern this place took a very balanced hand, and many did not succeed at it.

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According to historians, some governors failed by having a hand that was too light and getting

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Romans killed, and in the process of getting Romans killed, having their governorship removed from them, but according to historians,

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Pilate himself, this very Pilate that we're reading about and talking about today, will eventually lose his governorship over Judea for going too strong against a riot that happens in the city of Samaria.

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He had a lackluster career, and he bears one of the most recognizable names worldwide because of the fact that his name appears in the

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Apostles' Creed that is quoted in churches, many churches quote it every single Sunday all around the globe, and it is likely that his name is the most commonly said, this is what most scholars believe, that his name is the most commonly said

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Roman name in all of human history. The most commonly said

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Roman name in all of human history is this kind of podunk -like lackluster governor, and it's only because of his connection with our

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Lord. And notorious would be a better descriptor than popular for Pilate.

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We know, of course, the part that he plays, and many of you could have said the part that he plays before we ever came to church this morning.

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In verse 11, we know, of course, that Jesus was brought before Pilate for judgment, and the governor asked the

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Lord a simple but very vital question. Are you the king of the Jews? This is a fundamental question that stems from the purported accusations against him by the religious leaders who have brought

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Jesus now for formal trial. They've had a little bit of a puppet trial, found him guilty of blasphemy, and now a capital offense by the

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Jews, but they have no authority under the Roman occupiers to put somebody to death legally, and so they want to do this all judiciously and legally, especially on a festival weekend rather than starting a riot, so they go to the

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Romans for it. John, the gospel writer, records more of the conversation where we have a little bit of interplay about what is truth and things like that, but Matthew in his recording wants to get right down to it and to the core of the conversation, and so his is a little bit more limited in what he shares, and of course, we can harmonize the gospel accounts and replicate this conversation fairly well by harmonizing

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and I'll mention that throughout this message that there are some harmonizations that are necessary, but when you harmonize them, you get a better ...

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Like if a police officer shows up at a scene, and there was a car accident, how many of you know that it's better if there's four eyewitnesses than just one, right?

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You get a better perspective. You get various angles and thoughts about it, and that's what the gospel writers are, and Jesus is going to answer here according to the gospel of Matthew.

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For the third time, he's going to answer the question with the same phrase that's translated in English, you have said so.

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You have said so. It sounds a little bit like a kind of a ... Not as strong an answer as we would like, and I mentioned a few weeks ago that this

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Greek phrase was studied pretty extensively by a guy named Daryl Bach, a New Testament scholar,

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Greek scholar, specializes in Old Testament, I mean New Testament Greek, but that old ancient language, and he said this would be better translated into English as, that's one way to say it.

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Now when you say to somebody, that's one way to say it, you're affirming that what they said is true, are you not? That's one way to say it, but you're also saying it needs a little more explanation.

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I'd like to, yeah, that's one way to say it, but let me flesh that out a little bit. Let me talk to you about it a little bit.

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The phrase is always used for a nuanced, affirmative response. Are you the king of the

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Jews? Yes, but let me explain. Yes, but let me explain. In other words, Jesus says, yes, the way you said it needs a little clarification, and the kingdom of Jesus is not, what he goes on to explain in the other gospels and not here is, he goes on to explain it is not a, his kingdom is not a geopolitical manifestation.

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The kingdom he came to bring crosses all borders. It encompasses all nationalities, yes, he's king of the

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Jews, but not just. His kingdom embraces all ethnicities, his kingdom will not raise an army, and his kingdom will be established by the blood of sacrifice, not by the blood of the battlefield.

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Yes, he is king of the Jews, and so much more.

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In the midst of this interaction with Pilate, the chief priests and elders of the Jews pile on accusations.

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That's what we see in verses 12 through 14. It states that they're bringing multiple accusations instead of bringing the sole accusation that they found him already guilty of, of blasphemy.

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Now why aren't they coming to the Roman procurator, the Roman governor, and saying, this guy's a blasphemer? Well, because I imagine that Pontius Pilate has very little religious interest in these things.

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I imagine that they've convinced the Jews to put him to death for blasphemy, but instead of making that the issue to the

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Romans, who likely had little concern for Jewish religious law at all, they have sought to bring to Pilate any accusation that might stick.

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They're back to just mudslinging, just trying to find something that will stick in the

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Romans' minds to put him to death. According to the other Gospels, they actually fill out some of these accusations a little bit so that we get at least three accusations from other, again, harmonizing this entire scenario with the other

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Gospels. We get things like insubordination against the emperor. He has spoken against Caesar.

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Things like that. Stirring up riots and dissent. This man is dangerous to your rule, Pilate, because if you let him run, he's going to eventually bring up an uprising, and there's going to be an insurrection in your district, and it's not going to go well for you.

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Third thing, he calls himself a king. He calls himself a king. I think on the part of the religious leaders, they just want him removed, and anything that sounds like it might result in violence would do.

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Anything that might spark in Pilate's mind, this guy is dangerous, violently dangerous, is enough for them.

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You want to get a Roman procurator, a Roman governor's attention? Threaten violence.

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Threaten violence, because again, like I said, it's a balancing act in his role to keep the people appeased with either not too heavy a hand or with a heavy enough hand.

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It's clear that Jesus had a conversation with Pilate as we harmonize those four Gospels, but now when the

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Jews begin to accuse him, when the Jewish leaders begin in front of Pontius Pilate, they're at the pavement, Pilate is seated in judgment, and they begin to accuse

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Jesus, that's when Jesus shuts up. He has a conversation with this pagan

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Roman ruler, but not with the religious leaders among the Jews.

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In verse 12, it says definitively, he gave no answer. Verse 14, he gave no answer, not even to a single charge.

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They're heaping things up, slinging mud at him, and he is just there, silent. Pilate was, by the way, greatly amazed by the silence of Jesus, and I think there's good reason.

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I think there's good reason for Pilate's surprise here. There's probably a variety of different reasons, but in an ancient court, you didn't get to plead the fifth.

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You weren't presumed innocent. Not giving an answer was tantamount to accepting guilt, not tantamount to admitting guilt, just accepting it.

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Everybody knew that if you didn't make a defense, then you were going to be found guilty. That's it.

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The expectation was that only a guilty person would remain silent. But the accusations against Jesus here seem so flimsy and ludicrous to Pilate, and so easy to knock holes through, that he's shocked, and a little bit scandalized that Jesus isn't just blowing these false accusations over.

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And it's obvious that Pilate can see through the text of Matthew, he can clearly see through the envious motivations on the part of the chief priest.

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They're jealous of his popularity, and Pilate sees it. Like this Roman is attentive enough to the things going on in his city that he goes, he goes, these guys are just bringing

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Jesus to me because they're jealous of him. There's envy in their hearts. And so he is shocked, obviously, by the silence of Jesus.

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Now, I bet that Pilate was, and this is a little bit of speculation on my part, but I think you can forgive me for it as you kind of think it through, too.

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I would imagine that Pilate was used to dramatic and stirring attempts at self -defense. I would imagine that most people who ever came to his pavement, came to his court, came to him seated on the dais, gave emphatic defenses of themselves, even when guilty, right?

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And so to have somebody stand there in silence with death threats and accusations of things that are guilty of capital crimes, and here what do we see of our

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Lord? We see Jesus plays the part of the lamb prophesied in Isaiah that would be led to slaughter.

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In verse 15, we see Pilate starting to try to outflank the religious leaders. He's trying to get around behind him and kind of have his way with the religious leaders there, and he has some hopes of playing off the crowds against the religious leaders here in this circumstance.

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After all, you've got to remember what these crowds are. The crowds were welcoming Jesus in with shouts of joy just a few days earlier.

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Hosanna, putting down palm branches and fulfilling prophecies of the Lamb of God and the

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Savior coming into his city, riding on a colt. And Pilate would not be ignorant of these things, and so he seeks to use a tradition of releasing a prisoner of the crowd's choosing during a

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Passover feast. There's some kind of a tradition that whether it was started with Pilate or started with some other governor, there's been a tradition that they would release a prisoner during that time of the crowd's choosing.

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This is a tradition, by the way, that's well documented in the ancient world where a king or a ruler would free a prisoner at celebrations to seek to build goodwill with the people, their choice.

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Who do you want released? And let him go. If you look ahead real quick to verse 20, you find that the chief priests have primed the pump to request the release of Barabbas for this festival.

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Now, that implies that Barabbas was already a known figure, and I've often thought, isn't it strange that Pontius Pilate actually puts these two forward?

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Well, do you want Judas or Jesus, or do you want Barabbas? Which one do you want released to you? But it's likely that Barabbas' name came from the crowd.

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They're probably the ones who initiated the discussion about releasing Barabbas.

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It might be hard to imagine why the crowds would follow along with this injustice. Why in the world would they scream for the release of Barabbas over Jesus?

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How many of you are there just going, if I was seeing Barabbas and I was seeing Jesus, I'd probably choose Jesus? How many of you would just say that?

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Boy, you picture in your mind, you'd be like, let that guy go. But we might be confused in part because we don't relate to the religious stigma attached to the charges of blasphemy.

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All the Jews in that crowd knew what Jesus was accused of, and they knew what that meant to the religious leaders.

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Anybody shouting for the release of Jesus in this crowd was throwing in their vote on the side of an accused blasphemer.

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How many of you think that puts you in a dangerous spot? Do you recognize what that does for you? That lets everybody in the religious establishment, your religious leaders know that you side with this very grave and serious capital offense sin called blasphemy.

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Do you want to be an associate with that guy? You want to show yourself a friend of him? Well maybe you blaspheme too.

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Can you imagine that thought? Well maybe I'm going to be tried for blasphemy just by guilty by association kind of stuff.

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It was clearly a capital offense to blaspheme, and they're driving for it here to put yourself in the camp of Jesus is dangerous in this crowd.

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Further what you need to understand is something about Barabbas. Barabbas was an anti -Roman bandit.

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The word is translated either thief or bandit. In one translation it's a different Greek word, insurrectionist.

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When those things are combined we get a different view of Barabbas than what you see in movies like The Passion of the

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Christ or any renditions of this in churches where there's a play and one guy gets to play the wild guy, the crazy guy, the ludicrous guy, the guy with the wonky eye, right?

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You know the one that I'm talking about? How many of you have seen The Passion of the Christ? He's like, while they're trying to take the shackles off and stuff.

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You know what I'm talking about, right? He's like a wild man, right? No, it was religiously and politically expedient in this crowd to call for the release of Barabbas.

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You were associating with your countrymen by voting for Barabbas. You were saying, I love

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Jews more than Romans. You were standing by your people to vote

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Barabbas. Not only that, you were distancing yourself from the sin of blasphemy. Can you understand a little bit of how the

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Jewish heart in that context or just the religious heart might go, I affiliate with my people,

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I want to stand with my people, and I want to stand against sin. The choices, the choice of that crowd, it's understandable what they were doing.

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When the question is posed in verse 17 by Pilate, who should I release, Barabbas or Jesus?

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It shouldn't surprise us all that much that the crowd called for Barabbas. Now a point about who

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Barabbas is, again, we paint him in Easter plays as a wild man with crazy eyes and wild hair and a bit of a rogue, probably had scars all over his face and stuff.

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He was just more likely a man of significant religious principle who hated the

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Roman occupation and was glad to get his hands a little dirty trying to take back what belonged to his countrymen.

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At least three of the four commentaries that I read used a name that you're going to be familiar with to describe

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Barabbas' role in his society. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, insurrectionist, thief, pro -Jew, catching bands, ambushing the stage coach on the way into Jerusalem and stealing the gold from the

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Romans and giving it back to the temple. That's Barabbas. What he looked like is up for grabs, right?

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We don't have pictures, unfortunately. You don't have a picture, do you? We don't know what he looked like.

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Of course not. Maybe he did look crazy. Maybe he did have a wonky eye. Maybe he did have scars on his face. I don't know, but the fact of the matter is we paint him like this crazy guy, so it makes it all the more radical that people would have chose him over Jesus.

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It's like, well, that's not what's there. The culture, the cultural drive. What you need to understand is the impulse of everybody in that crowd that was, oh,

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I Jewish boy or girl was to vote Barabbas. That made sense.

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It was politically expedient. It was religiously expedient. It's interesting to note that with the timing of all of this,

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I think it's just interesting. It's a little tidbit, a little nugget on the side. Mark tells us that there were other bandits from Team Barabbas that were being held in prison at this time, too.

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So it wasn't just Barabbas in prison, but it was a couple of his merry men were there with him. Since the word bandit and thief are the same, and all of this trial is happening synonymously with Barabbas, they didn't hold people in jail long.

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You just got to your sentence. So it doesn't take any imagination to wonder if the two thieves on either side of Jesus may well have been fellow banditos with Barabbas.

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The point isn't that important one way or the other, but it's interesting to note that Jesus very well may have been crucified on the cross that would have been

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Barabbas'. Pilate understands the motivation of the religious leaders.

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He knows they want Jesus removed out of envy, but I think he underestimates their control over the crowds.

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In verse 19, we find an interesting aside that interrupts the court proceedings. In the middle of court, he gets a text from his wife.

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I mean, can you imagine? Like buzz, buzz, buzz in his pocket, and he's like, looks at it.

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Maybe he had the Apple Watch, so he was able to look down, glance at it. I don't know. She knew

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I was in court this morning. Are you serious? Like, this better be important. You know, can you imagine?

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Texting me in the middle of an important trial, but there up on the dais, he receives an important message from his wife.

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It's a message from his wife, and she has been a victim of a nightmare surrounding

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Jesus. The dream itself isn't shared. We don't know. She says she suffered in this dream.

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We don't know what form that took or anything, and how many of you can't have a hard time making sense of your dreams anyways? Any of you just, like, remember your dreams regularly, and they're weird, like some of you?

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And then some of us, like, they just, you know, in the morning, it's like, I had this dream. I don't even remember it. I say that to Linda all the time.

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I had a dream. No, I don't remember. It just went away, right, as I was saying it. The dream itself isn't shared, but she's at least been given the impression in this dream of confidence that this man is both innocent and is bad news for hubby.

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This is an innocent man, pilot, and this is bad news for you.

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You need to personally distance yourself, or they're going to be talking about you in Matawan in 2023. Like, they're going to be talking about you down through the centuries.

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Like, she's a wise wife. How often, if you followed your wife's advice, dudes, would it go better for you, right?

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Like, yes, good. Ben is like, me, me, me. Good job. Yeah. His wife is sitting right next to him, just to clarify, so.

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And those of you that didn't raise your hand, uh -oh, uh -oh this afternoon. Um, no.

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She encourages her husband to have nothing to do with, quote -unquote, that righteous man.

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She says, don't have anything to do with him. Get away from this. Don't touch that trial.

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Oh, the trial's already started, honey. What do I do now? I find it interesting that the religious scholars cannot see.

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This is interesting to me. The religious scholars, the Jewish ruling religious leaders, the

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Sanhedrin president, the chief priests, the scribes, the guys who are experts in the

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Old Testament law, and they cannot see that the Son of God is in their midst. Or refuse to see, maybe is the better way to say, that the

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Son of God is in their midst. But here in a moment of revelation through a dream, the proconsul's wife can identify him as innocent.

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What does this say about the way that the identity of Jesus is most commonly discerned?

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When Peter declared that Jesus said, who do you say that I am? And Peter's response, thou art the

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Christ, the Son of the living God. What does Jesus respond to Peter? Flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you, but rather my

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Father who is in heaven revealed this to you. You didn't figure that out on your own, Peter. That was a revelation.

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God gave that to you. When eyes are open to the identity of Jesus as Lord and King, as the one who came as our sinless, innocent

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Savior, that is a miraculous revelation from God. That's where we come to understand him as Lord and as Savior and as God in flesh.

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It is through an act of God, a miraculous act of God. All of you sitting here are an example of a miracle of God's revelation to you of who he is.

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When eyes are open to the identity of Jesus as the Lord and the King, that's miraculous. Without that revelation, by the way, we would all, to a person in this room, be there shouting crucify.

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Without that revelation, we run to save our own skin. Without that revelation, we keep washing our own hands to remove a guilt that stains for eternity.

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We keep trying to wash, and keep trying to wash, and keep trying to wash with no effect. The governor calls for a vote here in the text.

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I don't know if this was one of those ... I imagine it, because of the way that I was raised and the context

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I've lived in, I imagine it be one of those the louder one wins, you know what I mean?

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Okay, make some noise if you want to free Barabbas. Make some noise over here. Make some noise if you want to free

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Jesus, and say no. I don't know how that all looked, but however the vote takes place, it's determined that Barabbas is the clear winner.

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He's the clear vote. Pilate is now in a conundrum, of course, a major conundrum.

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He knows Jesus is innocent. He knows what the crowds want. He knows that Jesus has only been brought to him by envy, and maybe even most threateningly, he knows what his wife wants.

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How many of you can define a no -win situation when you see one? But also, how many of you know deep injustice when you see it?

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Pilate has before him a noble path. He has before him a clear path of justice.

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He has before him a right decision. But in verse 22,

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Pilate bats Jesus back to the crowds, asking what they want done to him.

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And here we find the first use of the word crucify in our text. The only way a crowd can communicate that, by the way, is through shouting.

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The crowd wants violence. The crowd wants hype. The crowd wants action.

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And this crowd wants blood. Pilate kicks back, realizing that this is escalating quickly.

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What has he done? Why crucifixion? Why such a stern form of capital punishment?

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Why put him to death? But the crowd drowns out Pilate's questions with increasingly fervent shouts for crucifixion.

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And again, let me remind you that there's a significant social pressure on this Jewish mob to distance themselves from the capital offense of blasphemy.

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There's a significant pressure to side away from Jesus. As a matter of fact, to side with Jesus is to put yourself in the sights of these religious leaders.

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So the crowds get whipped up into a frenzy, and Pilate sees he's not going to make any ground here.

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Nothing is advancing. Nothing is going to move forward. And as a matter of fact, he's seeing the seeds of a riot. People are starting to mosh pit the thing, and it's starting to get wild down there on the pavement.

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And he's up on his seat. So he has a basin brought in, and he washes his hands with mere water, stating one of the most asinine comments recorded in human history.

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This is just dumb. This is idiotic. I am innocent of this man's blood.

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See to it yourself. You see, why I say that's asinine is Jesus will not be crucified without the direct approval of Pilate.

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That's not happening. The Jews aren't going to crucify him. His soldiers, under his command, will wield the hammer that nails the spikes into his hands and feet.

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They will pierce him. They will scourge him within an inch of his life. It will be his soldiers holding the whip.

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They will shed his blood, and they will be the ones who confirm that their work is done with a

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Roman spear thrust in the side of our Lord. Innocent Pilate?

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If by innocent he means guilty, then I'll accept his statement. Is that what he means? No, of course not.

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And yet there's something that happens in the crowd as a result of this that was kind of part of his intent. In his attempt to clear himself, the crowds fully understand one thing to be true.

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Pilate doesn't want Jesus condemned, but is acquiescing to their wishes. And they are ready to take up the guilt themselves to make sure that this actually happens.

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They accept responsibility for the shedding of his blood on themselves and on their children.

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These people accept what they don't fully understand. And how often is sin just like that for us?

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We don't see the guilt on the front end, right, when the temptation strikes. Sin looks interesting.

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It looks fulfilling. It looks novel. What do the crowds have to gain in this?

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It seems hard to discern their motivations in this moment. But do mobs ever have good sense?

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And maybe that's the point. Mobs, crowds, and getting humanity together, like the whole

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Tower of Babel thing, spread them out so they can't work together, right? We get together, frequently the display is the worst of our hearts, right?

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On our own, we commit sins with limited ramifications. But united, we can really get stuff done.

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United, we can get really bad stuff done, like the crucifixion of the Son of God. The timing of the events of verse 26 are a little bit unclear, but clarified by harmonizing the other gospel accounts.

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In verse 26, we see three of the four verbs that he predicted would happen to him just a couple of days before this in Matthew chapter 20.

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So back in Matthew chapter 20, he said, we're going to head to Jerusalem, guys, and I'm going to be delivered up, and I'm going to be scourged, and I'm going to be mocked, and I'm going to be crucified.

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In our text, delivered up, scourged, crucified, mocking is coming in verse 29 of next week.

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So much has been said about the Roman scourging that I don't imagine it to be very helpful to dive too deeply into describing this

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Roman savagery. If you've seen The Passion of the Christ, then you have an image in your mind that is already there.

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But note that the gospel writers have little interest in graphic details of either the scourging or the act of crucifixion.

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The particular word for scourging, or sometimes translated flogging, depends on your translation, is a unique and narrow Greek word that comes from the implement used to perform the whipping.

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It's particularly terrible. In this event, His blood has begun to be poured out for us.

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Many died after Roman flogging from loss of blood or even from infection. So what appears to be one little word nestled in verse 26 carries so much, church, so much of His love for you and me, and they scourged

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Him. He's begun to endure the punishment that we all deserved, and He has entered the sacred space of suffering for you and me, for His people.

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By His stripes, we are healed. The only remedy for our sins is found through this sacrifice.

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He's delivered over to Pilate's soldiers to be crucified, and they take Him before the whole battalion to prepare Him for crucifixion.

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And I went over into the beginning of the next paragraph in chapter 27 for a reason, because the only one with the authority to deliver

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Him over to the soldiers of the governor is the governor. That water has done nothing to wash away the guilt of Pilate the weak,

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Pilate the feeble, Pilate the traitor to the only innocent man to ever walk this earth.

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The greatest judicial injustice ever committed, Pilate the one who saves his own skin in a way we can all sympathize with, right?

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How many of you feel like he was in a tough spot? Raise your hand. You see, we find him tragic because we see so much of ourselves in him.

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We understand and relate well with his motives. We know what it's like to be called to compromise for our own personal agendas and personal reasons, so we feel sad for him.

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But as much as we feel sad for him and his tough choice betrays our coziness with sin, our coziness with compromise, we shouldn't feel bad for him.

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He was a brutal monster who put up an innocent man for slaughter. How could we feel sad for him unless we relate to him, unless we understand his motives and we feel it in our own hearts?

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Now, there's a question that's plagued the church down through the ages. It's a question that's asked and has been asked in generation after generation.

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Books have been written about it. Who is responsible for the death of Christ? How many of you have encountered this question? Have you encountered this question?

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Raise your hand if you've encountered that question. You've come up against it. Who's responsible for the death of Christ? And I've never understood the modern or historical impulse to answer that question.

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It really hasn't been a question that's been on my heart or mind. The gospels are written in a way that seems to abundantly and intentionally share the blame around.

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Think about it, Judas betrayed, the disciples abandoned, the mixed mob arrested, the

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Jewish leadership, both Sadducees and Pharisees, tried unfairly and found him guilty.

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The Roman governor, injustice, Herod, the Jewish puppet king, only looking for a miracle.

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Of course, he's not recorded for us in the Gospel of Matthew, but in others. The crowds shouting crucify and asking for the guilt to be on them.

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The Roman soldiers who carry out the act all come together in a moment of surprising, intense unity.

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You get these people in a room and they could barely agree on the color of the sky. I'm not sure they could come to land on that. But they certainly agree on this one thing,

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Jesus has to go. He's too controversial, he's too authoritative, he's too in the way of all of our various agendas.

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One thing we hold in common, Jesus is in our way. Now I would suggest to you that we all bear a part of the responsibility because we would do nothing different.

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At best, and I'm giving us some grace here, at best we might, some of us here might, just might at best have been among those who deserted him.

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The best case scenario is that if you had lived in those times, you might have been like Thaddeus running into the night or Nathaniel or some of the other unnamed disciples that just kind of split

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Splitsville from him and leave him on his own. But most of us would have actually been hostile toward him and that's the truth.

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None of us, point being none of us, not a single one among us would have been there to rescue him.

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And so let's consider how to apply this mess to our lives this next week.

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The first thing I want us to look at, the first thing I want us to do is to fix our eyes on Jesus.

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Consider the calm of Jesus. Jesus was established in his

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Father's will through prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and he is now navigating his final hours and he's navigating these hours on purpose and on mission.

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He is the sacrificial lamb of God. He will pay the price for the sins of his people. Now I would suggest to you, of course, we know his position is quite extreme, about to receive the wrath of the

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Father against all of our sins, about to be crucified in just a few hours. And yet I would argue in this case from the greater to the smaller and say it has no less impact on our lives because of the great pain he's about to endure.

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I don't think it's at all trivial to state that if Jesus being fully human was able to trust his

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Father with these hours, then we should be able to trust him and draw some solace from him in our darkest hours.

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When the darkness descends and sleep and rest seem to flee, in the early hours of the morning of stress and strain and pain and tears, it all seems lost in a swirling chaos of storms of life and loss, seek out

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Jesus and place your eyes on him. There he stands.

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Do you see him? Before his accusers, there he stands in serene control.

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Let him be your comfort, whatever storms you face. Consider the calm of Jesus.

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The second is to consider the weakness of the crowds. We do not know exactly what it was that motivated the crowds.

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I've given some suggestions, but I would suggest that at least some element of their response to this trial of Jesus was fear of the religious leaders.

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Do you agree with me on that? They're afraid. There's some fear in there. But they stand, do they not, as a democracy gone bad?

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The crowds voted that day. Majority won the day. Despite our trust in majority rule, we all know the majority can be wrong.

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Amen? Can the majority be wrong? Of course. We've often been in that majority that was wrong.

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We live in a culture that's heading down strange and dark roads, right? Is that true or am I making that up?

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Heading down some strange roads. And we may very well, church, hear me carefully. I'm saying this relatively routinely in these messages.

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But we may very well be called to be the only voice in the crowd shouting, don't crucify, free

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Jesus. Would you stand with Him? Would you stand on His side?

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As His followers, we are called out from the masses to speak truth in a loving way. Truth in love.

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And the call on our lives must be a boldness to stand on the truth, capital T truth,

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God's Word. It seems likely that the church is going to have to take a strong and unpopular stand on truth.

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And I picture it happening. I don't think it's unreasonable to say it's going to happen in my lifetime. So let's plan to be strong in the

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Lord and strong in His Word when that mob gathers to seek to draw us to join in with their shouts against our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let's be people of truth and people of love for our

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Lord who died for us. Consider the weakness of the crowds. Will we be strong on that day?

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Will you be a person of God's Word on that day? That's not going to happen by accident. That's not going to happen by showing up on Sunday morning and listening to my messages and leaving.

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That's going to happen by being a student of God's Word, by knowing the truth, by knowing the hills that we must, must, must die on.

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And also it means not picking dumb hills too. Do you know what I'm talking about? Because without knowing the

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Word of God, we will die on all kinds of stupid hills, like political parties or a particular vote on something.

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We will pick dumb places to stand without God's Word guiding us.

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Consider the weakness of the crowds. How much did they really understand and how much had they looked like Nicodemus, whose eyes were open?

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One of these religious ruling leaders or Joseph of Arimathea, who obviously saw through all of the masses and the majority shouting for the crucifixion of Christ and were there going, there's something different about this guy.

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The centurion at the foot of the cross, who was there superintending the crucifixion of our

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Lord, bows at the foot of the cross and says, surely this was the

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Son of God. Consider thirdly, the error of Pilate.

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Oh, church, I fear that there may be some in this room that have bought into the error of Pilate.

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It's so common in churches. It's so common in the type of upbringing in which I was raised that was very law -based, with all great intentions, trying to lead people to walk in a certain way, trying to define what is and isn't close to Jesus, so no alcohol, no drinking, no cards, no fill in the blanks.

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Anybody raised in that kind of context? And so then the error that seeps in is the error of Pilate.

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Wash a lot and don't stop washing. Cleanse your own hands.

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Cleanse your own life. Fix your own problems. Are we not Americans who solve problems? Isn't that the

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American way? Fix it. And then if all else fails, then lean on God, right?

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Then pray. He washed his hands declaring himself innocent, and no one will be made innocent by their own efforts.

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Instead, we know that the only way we will be made innocent is through trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

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It is his blood that we remember when we take the cup of juice here in a moment. We take it each week to recall the method of our salvation.

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He died for us and shed his blood for us. And it is his broken body that we remember when we take the cracker, to remember his body broken in our place.

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Either you're still seeking to wash your own hands of guilt, or you accept the cleansing work of Jesus Christ for you.

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Now there's no middle ground. It's one or the other. Either you're trying to fix it yourself, you're trying to fix whatever problem it might be, and you know you got problems.

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Why don't you do me a favor? Raise your hand if you know you got problems. Well, that's all of us, so you know you got problems, so the question is, who's solving it?

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You, and a basin, and some water? You and a checklist?

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You and, I'm going to read the Bible through this year, then God's going to love me, then

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I'm going to really impress him. No, these things we do out of a relationship of love because he's loved us, so yeah, do

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I encourage you to read through the Bible this year? Yeah, or faster if you can. But only because you love him.

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If it's just a checklist for you, maybe you ought to skip it for a little while. Oh, pastor said that? Yeah. But come and talk with me.

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Come and talk with Dave. Come and talk with somebody about how you can get a right relationship with God. By the way, sometimes, just to be clear, sometimes you start as a checklist and God meets you in that, and then it's like, whoa, he's real, and then you start doing it out of delight and joy.

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But the error of Pilate is to keep washing and keep washing and keep washing. We know that it's only through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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Either you are still seeking to wash your own hands of guilt or you accept the cleansing work of Jesus Christ for you. So if you've asked

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Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, then I encourage you during this next song to come to these tables and let's remember his sacrifice for us to cleanse us from our guilt.

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Let's not be found next to Pilate washing and washing and washing to seek a false remedy to our guilt before the

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Holy God. Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you have given us what soap could never solve, what no amount of water, what no amount of effort, what no amount of scrubbing could ever solve for us.

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And I confess to you that I have spent seasons of my life and times of just trying to grab back all of that crud and try to clean it up to no effect.

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But it's only in leaning on Christ and his sacrifice for me that I'm made whole, that I'm made healthy and well, that I'm able to move out into my life with joy and with gladness.

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And I pray that for everybody in this room. I recognize that we're all at various levels, and some people here, maybe this is the first time that they've thought about it this way, and they've thought that Christianity was just scrubbing up their lives and fixing it.

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And I'll do better this next week. Father, for anybody who's in that position, I pray that you might give them a boldness to come and talk with me or Dave or Dave Wilson, the elder on duty, or somebody that they would feel comfortable enough and bold enough to come and talk with us about how they can have a relationship of wholeness, of completeness, of forgiveness.

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For it is by his wounds and by his shed blood and by his broken body that we are healed.