A Pirate Christian's Guide to the Old Testament: Part 1

Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseboro. I am your servant in Jesus Christ. This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God.

Now, one of the things we do here is we do the comparative work, but if you've ever been left kind of scratching your head going, what do I do? How do I properly understand the Bible? Go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below.

Don't forget to like the video, and of course ring the bell so you can be notified when we update the channel. Today we're gonna be launching into a series of videos that are pure teaching. We won't be doing any real comparative work, but what we're gonna be doing, I'm gonna call this a Pirate Christian's Guide to Understanding the Old Testament, because there's a lot of confusion about how to understand the Bible out there, and so this will be a basic series on how to understand the Bible and let the scriptures teach you what the scriptures are about.

There is a particular way that the Bible teaches us to look at the Old Testament, and that's laid out for us in the New. But let's kind of start by looking at the typical way in which somebody usually looks at the Old Testament.

I found this on Lindsay Davis's social media, and this is kind of typical way in which the Bible is presented, especially when you get into like the Old Testament. So Adam and Eve is how to avoid making bad decisions, Noah, how to follow instructions from God, Abraham, how not to sacrifice your son, Joseph, how to forgive mean people, Moses, how to lead a group of whiny people, Samson, how to avoid losing your superpowers, and you kind of get the idea.

David, how to be brave. This is a story for boys. Esther, how to be brave, the version for girls. The Psalms are just memory verses. Daniel, how to do civil disobedience, and Jonah, how to be obedient, otherwise a fish will swallow.

You kind of get the idea. And then of course Jesus is like examples of how to be super-de-duper extra obedient, and then the rest of the Bible is just memory verses. Yeah, in other words, when you consider how people present the Old Testament and the Bible itself, it always focuses in on the application and the thing you've got to do, and in this approach to the Scriptures, the Bible is reduced to Aesop's fables.

That's pretty much how it goes down, and it really doesn't matter if the stories actually took place in history. The point is drawing out the moral that is being presented there. But let me start off with this text, and this text is found in the Gospel of John chapter 5, and Jesus says something quite fascinating here.

Now, recognize that when Jesus said this, up to this point, the only place you could go for the written Word of God is what we have today in the Old Testament, the Tanakh, and the Tanakh is comprised of three groups of writings.

The first is the Torah, the second are the histories, and then after that are the writings of the prophets, so those are generally three categories of the Old Testament. And important to note that the Tanakh does not include what has now become known as the Apocrypha, and Jesus never quotes from the Apocrypha and calls it the Word of God.

So keep that in mind, but let's take a look as Jesus is having a conversation with some Pharisaical Jews, and let's listen in as he's talking about those things that are bearing witness to Him. I'll start at verse 30 of John chapter 5.

Jesus says, "...I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true.

There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true.". So he's here talking about the Father. And what is the way in which the Father bears witness about Christ?

We'll pay attention to the details. He says, "...you sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved.

He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John, for the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, they bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.

And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.".

So he's saying that they do not have the word of God, the Father, abiding in them. And listen to what he says next, "...you search the Scriptures...". And here, you know, you can translate, you can translate that as a diligent searching.

"...you diligently search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me. And yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.". So here, Jesus says something fascinating.

The Old Testament Scriptures, they bear witness about Jesus, and they don't have the word of the Father abiding in them, because they do not believe in the one whom the Father has sent. And so you can see here that the Scriptures bear witness about Christ, and yet they refuse to come to him.

This was kind of begs the question, in what way is Jesus saying that the Scriptures, the Old Testament, bear witness about him? Now, I would say that this is a multifaceted answer. One of the things you could look at is the prophecies specifically pertaining to the details about Christ, regarding the fact that he would be born in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, that his hands and his feet would be pierced, that he would die, that God would raise him from the dead, and some of the very specific details about his life, that not a bone would be broken, very amazing prophecies regarding Christ.

And that is one of the ways in which the Scriptures bear witness about him. But there's far more to it than that. The Scriptures Christ is pointing out are about him. Now, let me take a look at another text.

I'm, you know, gonna do this one from memory, see if I can pull this up on the...yeah, here it is. Luke chapter 24. We're gonna take a look at the day of the resurrection of Christ. So this is the first Easter Sunday, and the tomb is empty, the reports have gotten back to the Apostles that the tomb is empty, and here we read this account of a resurrection appearance to two of Jesus's followers, and here it says that it says this, Luke 24 13.

So that very day, the same day as the resurrection of Christ, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.

While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?

And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days? And he said to them, What things?

And they said to him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty indeed in word before God, and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him.

But we had hoped that he is the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all of this, it is now the third day since these things have happened. Moreover, some of the women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.

Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. And he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

And you're going to note here, all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Messiah, the Christ, should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And then beginning with Moses and all of the prophets, he interpreted them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.

And so you'll note here that Jesus, although their eyes are miraculously held so that they can't recognize him as Jesus, that he gives them a little bit of a rebuke, and he says, you're slow of heart.

And you're slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, and was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And so Christ here gives us a little bit of a rebuke to these disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Why aren't you getting what the prophets wrote? You wouldn't be scratching your heads about the resurrection of Christ if you knew your Bible. And again, at this point, the only Bible available is the written Word of God.

So they drew near to the village to which they were going, and he acted as if they were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, Stay with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is now far spent.

So he went in to stay with them, and when he was at table with them, he took the bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them, and their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.

They said to each other, Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures? He opened to us the Scriptures, and who did Jesus say the Scriptures were about?

Him. They were about him. Now, a little bit of a note here. They're gonna go back and they're going to tell everybody, Listen, we've seen the Lord, he's risen indeed, and explain to them what had happened.

But you're gonna note then on the road to Emmaus, Jesus gives these disciples a Bible study and a case study on rightly understanding the biblical text, and Jesus here is saying that it's all about him.

He rebuked the Pharisees, you diligently search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have life, yet they are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you might have life.

So something is going on here. Now, I grew up in evangelicalism and a very legalistic Nazarene Church, which turned every biblical story into some kind of a moral application that I needed to follow the example of so-and-so so that I could please God.

And so it was common for me to hear sermons and Bible studies basically taking all of the text and making it about me and the thing I need to do. Now granted, there are passages of Scripture that explain to me what I am supposed to be doing.

These are law texts, and oftentimes when I read them I find that I am not measuring up to them. But that being the case, though, we're gonna note then that Jesus is making it clear, kind of by way of analogy, that the center of gravity of the Bible is about him.

He is the center mass of the Scriptures, not me, not you, and that everything really orbits around him. That's the point that he's making. And I, coming out of the Nazarene Church, had a very difficult time coming to grips with this reality, but one of the things I definitely believed was that the Bible is God's Word.

I most certainly believe this. And one of the things I made a habit of when my children were small was that we would have as a practice that when we were finished eating dinner as a family, I know that seems like a foreign concept of people, but it's quite an important thing that we would eat dinner together as a family at the table, television off, and this is the day before there were iPhones and iPads and things like this, and so I would even say the expectation was we would eat dinner together, no screens were on, you know, including the television and other things, and after eating together a meal, our family practice was that I would open up the Bible then and read the biblical stories and texts to my children, and we worked our way through literally the entire scripture several times as a family over the course of the time that they were young.

And I remember very vividly that when my youngest daughter, Faith, was five years old, we were working our way through the book of Daniel, and we came to the story, the famous story, of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and Nebuchadnezzar's golden image.

And in reading this out this particular time to my family when my daughter was five, my daughter alerted me to something, you know, quite innocently that I had not really considered, and that is just how much the scriptures are about Christ.

Let me give you an example. I'm gonna read out the story to you, and I'll even throw in some of the regarding how I read it to my daughter when she was five, and we'll see what's going on in this text, and we'll look at one more account in the book of Daniel so I can kind of make the point.

The Bible is about Christ. So here is the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and King Nebuchadnezzar and his golden image. King Nebuchadnezzar, he made an image of gold whose height was 60 cubits, its breadth six cubits.

He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

Now a little bit of a note here. The historical context is quite important, and at this time we find that the Jews had been exiled from Israel because of their impenitent idolatry, and they're continuing to break the covenant that they had made as a people with God, the Mosaic Covenant, and so they had fallen into idolatry.

God had sent his prophets one after another after another, calling them to repent, assuring them of his mercy, grace, and forgiveness that he would have towards them if they would put away their idols, repent of worshiping Baal, Asherah, and Molech, and the starry host of heaven, and all these other pagan deities that they were worshiping, but they wouldn't listen.

And so God finally exacted on them the the curses portion of the Mosaic Covenant and exiled them for 70 years out of the land of Israel, and in that course of 70 years they were basically taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar, and in his attack and siege of Judah, 90 of the Jews were killed in that campaign, and the 10 that remnant that survived, they were taken out of Israel and brought to Babylon.

So this is where the the Jews find themselves in this particular story. Nebuchadnezzar is at this time not a believer in the one true God, although chapters 1 and 2, God is working mightily through Belshazzar, who is Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, already getting the attention of Nebuchadnezzar to let him know that Yahweh is the true God.

But we're still to the point where the light hasn't quite gone on, you know, gone on for Nebuchadnezzar yet, so he has set up this golden image to himself and has basically made it clear, you are to worship this image, and we'll see how the story continues.

So then the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces, they gathered for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, and a herald proclaimed aloud. Now when I was reading this to my children when my daughter was five, I sometimes would add funny voices because it did help keep their attention a little bit.

So I kind of envisioned this herald as kind of being a nerdy, kind of whiney kind of guy. And so the herald proclaimed, you are commanded, O people's nations and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar has set up.

And of course, whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning, fiery furnace. Yeah, you can do that when you're teaching kids. So therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the people's nations and languages fell down and worshipped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

Therefore, at that time, certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the Jews. They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar, O King, live forever. You, O King, have made a decree that every man who hears the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the bagpipe, and every kind of music shall fall down and worship the golden image, and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning, fiery furnace.

There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O King, they pay no attention to you. They do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

Then Nebuchadnezzar, in furious rage, commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up?

Now, if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, the lyre, the trigon, the harp, the bagpipe, and every kind of music to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good.

But if not, if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning, fiery furnace. And who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands? Now at this point, as I was reading the story to my children, my five-year-old daughter Faith, she was gripped by the story, going, Dad, is he really gonna throw them into the fiery furnace?

If he does that, they're going to die. So I asked her, Do you want me to keep reading? Uh-huh, I do. Well, I'll keep reading. Let's find out what happens. So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.

If this be so, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

So then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated, and he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and cast them into the burning, fiery furnace.

Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning, fiery furnace. Now at this point, my five-year-old daughter, Faith, went, oh daddy, are they going to die?

To which I said, do you want me to keep reading? Uh-huh, I do. Now because the king's order was urgent, and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they fell bound into the burning, fiery furnace.

Dad, did they die? Do you want me to keep reading? Uh-huh. So then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished, and he rose in haste, and he declared to his counselors, did we not cast three men bound into the fire?

They answered and said to the king, true, oh king. He answered and said, but I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.

Now at this point, as soon as I read this out, my five-year-old daughter shot up from her chair at the dinner table, did something like an end zone dance, and she was just her hands in the air, and she said, daddy, Jesus came and saved them.

Now when she said that, it was like she punched me in the gut. Several reasons why, but I looked at her and I said, yes dear, Jesus came and he saved them. Of course, my head at this point is reeling because my daughter was able to pick this out, and why had I not seen it before?

There's Jesus right there who saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace. He was right there in the text. How had I missed it? So then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace, and he declared, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out and come here.

Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire, and the satraps, and the prefects, and the governors, and the king's counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men.

The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him, and set aside the king's command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except for their own God.

Therefore I make a decree, any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other God who is able to rescue in this way.

Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon. So that night after reading this account to my family, noting that my daughter pointed out that Jesus was right there in the text, after the kids went to bed and after my wife went to bed, I pulled out the Bible again and I reread the story.

And it was as if Jesus was standing right there in the midst of the fiery furnace, looking at me, staring at me through the text, going, hi! Bet you didn't expect to see me here, did you? Because there he was.

Which kind of begs the question, what was he doing there? And then I realized, you know, there's something to be said about this, because there are tie-ins with this text and the book of Revelation. But not only that, there's kind of tie-ins if you were to think of it this way.

Jesus saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from a fiery furnace. In the New Testament, one of the texts that Jesus used to describe the fires of hell, he uses that same imagery. He uses that same language.

He describes it as a burning furnace. And so there's a way in which we can say, you know what? The same Jesus who saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refused to worship any other God except for the one true God, this same Jesus who saved them also saves me, saves you from the fiery furnace of hell.

And that is most certainly true. But it began at this point to start to change how I understood the biblical texts. Concurrent with this was already the admonition, you know, that I read out from you, that I had heard that the Scriptures are about Jesus, that the road to Emmaus, Jesus opening the Scriptures, all the texts concerning himself.

And so I would argue that if you don't see Jesus in the biblical texts, especially the Old Testament texts, maybe just maybe you're not quite reading them right. Now, of course, this begs the question, what are you saying?

Are you really saying these texts are about him? Yeah, they are. They are most definitely about him. And the thing is, is that the New Testament teaches us how that works. It uses language regarding the Old Testament accounts, it uses the language of type and shadow.

Now I'll get into more detail about that in an upcoming installment of A Pirate Christian's Guide to Understanding the Old Testament. But suffice it to say that when you read the biblical texts in the Old Testament, in one way or another you can connect them back to Jesus.

Now let me do this real quick, and I'll rely on my editor to help with the cut, because it's gonna take me a second to hunt this down, but have any of you ever seen a photo mosaic? Yeah, a photo mosaic.

A photo mosaic is a fascinating thing. I remember these things started coming out about ten years ago, where you've got an image of something, but you can tell that it's a mosaic put together, and that when you look close at the tiles that make up the photo, those tiles themselves are little photos themselves that kind of pull this out.

I think it was Disney who kind of put the photo mosaic technique together, you know, Mickey Mouse and things like that, and pictures then from the different movie celluloids that you can then make the photo mosaic.

I think a good way of looking at the Old Testament is that each of the stories themselves connect back to Christ in kind of the way that an individual photo within a photo mosaic connect back to Christ.

So let me show you what I mean by this. Earlier today, I created a photo mosaic over at picturemosaics .com, and I found a bunch of churchy artwork, and so you'll note here that in the mix, you know, we've got some of the Old Testament stories represented.

Now there's New Testament stories represented as well, but you'll note that each and every one of these tiles is a depiction of something biblical. Day of Judgment, here we've got the menorah and the table of the showbread, and things like that.

And so a good way to think about it is that each of the Old Testament stories in and of themselves are historical, they truly happened, the miracles that happened truly took place, and in one way or another they have a connection back to Jesus.

So the idea then is that, you know, they don't cover everything about Christ, but there's ways in which it connects back to Jesus so that when you zoom out, what happens is that the picture that they create is of Christ.

That's the idea behind how to rightly understand how the types and shadows then work in the Old Testament. I think you get the idea, it's like a photo mosaic. So let me give you then the account then that I wanted to say, I say we're going to cover two things from the book of Daniel.

Let's take a look at the story of Daniel and the lion's den, and you can see that in this historical account of what happened to Daniel himself, that there are callbacks to the details in the life of Christ, specifically Jesus when he's on trial before Pilate, his death, and then his resurrection, and then there's a hint at the judgment for those who crucified him.

But yeah, you're sitting there going, really? Jesus is in the story of Daniel and the lion's den? It's like big time. So here's the account of Daniel and the lion's den, Daniel chapter 6, it pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty satraps to be throughout the whole kingdom, and over them three high officials of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give an account, so that the king might suffer no loss.

Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials, the satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Now you're gonna note here, Jesus himself is King of kings and Lord of lords, and God the Father is the one who planned before the foundations of the earth to set Jesus on the throne of David, and set him over the whole kingdom.

So you can kind of see some typology between God the Father and God the Son here being played out in the story of Daniel. And so that's the fun thing, is that when you put the photo mosaic in its proper place, you know it's calling back to Christ, and that when you step back, you know, you can see that this has something to do with Jesus, and this is how types and shadows work then.

So then the high officials and the satraps, they sought to find a ground of complaint for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful and no error or fault was found in him.

Now note here, Daniel is not sinless, not by any stretch of the imagination, but in the types and shadows in this account here, Daniel is a little bit of...in fact, he's a stand-in for Jesus. So in this case, as a stand-in for Christ in the types and shadows, his faithfulness, the fact that there was no fault or error in him is being highlighted, and that finds its true fulfillment in Christ, who is the sinless, spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And so you can say, Daniel here is really pulling out and he's behaving like Christ, who was without fault and who was without error, and we can talk about the fact that Jesus truly never sinned. Daniel did, but here in the story you can kind of get the idea.

So these men, they said, we shall not find any ground for complaint against Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God. So then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him, O king Darius, live forever.

And all the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects, the satraps, the counselors, the governors, are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction that whoever makes petition to any God or man for 30 days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions, which means certain death, by the way.

Now, I mean, what is it with these Babylonians? You know, fiery furnace, den of lions, they have very exquisite ways of killing people. Anyway, O king shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the injunction.

Sign the document so that it cannot be changed according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked. Therefore, king Darius signed the document and the injunction, and when Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber, opened toward Jerusalem.

He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. Then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God, and then they came near and said before the king concerning the injunction, O king, did you not sign an injunction that anyone who makes petition to any God or man within 30 days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions?

The king answered and said, the thing stands fast according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked. Then they answered and said before the king, Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.

Then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed and set his mind to deliver Daniel, and he labored till the sun went down to rescue him. Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and the Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed.

And so you can see here that Darius is doing his best to try to save Daniel. And this has an interesting parallel then here. And so, let me, in fact, let me go back into the Gospel of John, and let me go into John chapter 18.

And Jesus is on trial, and so they bring him, they bring Jesus to Pilate. And this is a fascinating text because you can kind of see that Darius and Pilate are kind of running parallel with each other.

So here's what it says, John chapter 18, 28. They led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover.

So Pilate went outside and said to them, what accusation do you bring against this man? And they answered, if this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you. So Pilate said to him, take him yourselves, judge him by your own law.

So the Jews said to him, it's not lawful for us to put anyone to death. This was to fulfill the word spoken that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus answered, do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me? Pilate answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?

Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from the world.

So then Pilate said to him, so you are a king. Jesus answered, you say that I am a king, and for this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate said to him, what is truth? And after he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, I find no guilt in him, but you have a custom that I should release to you one man for you at the Passover.

So do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. So let me go to John 19 now. John 19, hang on a second here. Of course I do a typo while typing always.

All right, 19, there we go. So then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him, and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head, arrayed him in a purple robe, and they came to him saying, Hail, king of the Jews, and struck him with their hands.

Pilate went out again and said to them, see I'm bringing him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and Pilate said to them, behold the man.

And when the chief priests and officers saw him, they cried out, crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him. The Jews answered him, we have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.

And when Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid. He entered the headquarters again and said to Jesus, where are you from? Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, you will not speak to me.

Do you not know that I have authority to release you, an authority to crucify you? And Jesus answered him, you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above. Therefore he who has delivered me over to you has the greater sin.