Services | Authority and Greater Sin

Bulletin

Hymn # 66 “There Is a Name I Love to Hear”

SCRIPTURE READING – Acts 4:8 - 12
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate

Praise and Worship
“House of the Lord”
“Great Are You Lord”
“Echo Holy”

Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“Authority and Greater Sin”

“Behold the Lamb”
Benediction “The Lord’s Prayer (it is Yours)”



Sermon Notes
John 19:1 Pilate has Jesus scourged
John 19:2 & 3 Roman soldiers abuse Jesus
John 19:4 & 5 Pilate presents Jesus saying he finds no guilt in Him
John 19:6 & 7 Pilate attempts to avoid responsibility, but the chief priests and offiers demand that Jesus be crucified and state that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God
John 19:8 – 11 Jesus refuses to answer Pilate’s questions. Pilate asserts he has authority over Jesus, but Jesus responds he only has authority because it was given by heaven. But Jeus also says those who are delivering Him have greater sin than Pilate
John 19:12 – 15 Pilate still seeks to release Jesus, but the Jews keep the pressure on by saying that if he doesn’t crucify Jesus he is no friend of Ceasar and they have no king but Ceasar

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Scritpures

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Transcript of Service

From the time that Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, the people who arrested him bound him and led him to Annas' house. They were seeking to assert control and authority over Jesus. It's interesting, trying to assert control and authority over the Son of God.

When Jesus fails to immediately answer one of Pilate's questions, Pilate says, "Don't you understand that I have authority over you?" Jesus tells him the authority that he has doesn't come from the Roman government.

But also under this authority there is consequence and responsibility.

Come listen to see what Jesus had talked about, that that authority came from and what the consequences and responsibilities are.

You have your Bibles and you should. Please turn to the Gospel of John, Chapter 19.

Again, the context is that the Roman religious leaders sent out their temple guards and had the Roman cohort go and arrest the Son of God.

They think that they can control him and have him under authority. They bound him and took him to Annas' house. Then he went to Caiaphas' house. John doesn't tell us all the various trials and hearings that Jesus goes through. He just gives us enough to understand and to know that he was an eyewitness.

And so we've come to this point where Pilate has been discussing with Jesus and keeps coming to the conclusion that Jesus is not guilty of anything and that he should be released.

But he's a man who is afraid.

We will say that he's afraid of the crowd.

He's afraid of his position. He's probably afraid of his own head because if he doesn't do what the crowd has him to do, he'll lose his position and probably his head.

And so oftentimes when we try to compromise, we just make matters worse.

And so Pilate is going to attempt to compromise and to placate the crowd. And so in chapter 19 of the Gospel of John it says this, "Pilate then took Jesus and scourged him."

Now those are some very quick words that we can pass over.

And many of you have probably heard that a Roman scourging isn't what other places did. It was a multifaceted whip that had many, like we would call it, cat-of-nine-tails. And it would have various implements embedded in it to make the scourging even more painful and sometimes even deadly in and of itself. And that's why there was a limit to the number of scourged whips that could be used upon a person. And so Pilate has Jesus scourged.

If you've ever seen Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, one of the scenes,

and it's historical fiction, one of the scenes that's most touching to me is when in the movie Jesus is being scourged and he is knocked off the post that he is stationed to.

And instead of being in that position, he stands back up to receive more beatings.

Because that's who our Lord is.

And the soldiers squished together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and put a purple robe upon him. Again they're mocking him, putting a crown on his head, now a crown of thorns. If you've ever grabbed rose bushes without being too careful, it can poke you and hurt you and cause you to bleed. These are a crown of thorns which means that it is painful and causing damage to his head.

And then they put a purple robe upon him which signifies that purple is one of royalty. And so they mock him as if he wasn't royalty.

But he is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And yet they mock him because they don't know who he is. And they began to come up to him and say, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and they gave him slaps in the face.

So it wasn't good enough for them to just simply mock him. It wasn't good enough to scourge him. They had to also slap him on the face.

All these things he continued to suffer, not because he was guilty, but because we were.

And Pilate came out again and said to them, "Behold, I bring him out to you so that you may know I find no guilt in him." Well, if you found no guilt in him, why did you scourge him? Why did you allow the soldiers to place a crown of thorns upon him? Why did you allow them to mock him? Why did you allow them to slap him?

But all these things they did, but again he's seeking to placate the crowd so that he might get out of this situation and not have to condemn Jesus to crucifixion.

And so they thought, he thought this would be enough.

Jesus then came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, "Behold the man."

And he expected a different response. So when the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out saying, "Crucify, crucify." And Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him." Again, Pilate keeps saying, "I find no guilt because there is no guilt in Jesus."

And if Pilate was worth being a government official, he would have released Jesus.

But that wasn't God's plan.

The Jews answered him, "We have a law, and by the law he ought to die because he made himself out to be the Son of God." So here is the real crime that Jesus has been accused of. Before they said he was an insurrectionist and he claimed to be a king and his kingdom and whatever, they're saying, "No, no, he ought to die because he made himself out to be."

But he didn't make himself out to be.

He is and was the Son of God.

Still guiltless.

If he was guilty of blasphemy under the Jewish law, it was the appropriate punishment was stoning to death. But they weren't allowed to do this. Also that is not the way that the Scriptures foretold that the Messiah would die.

Therefore when Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. See he was afraid before, but now he's more afraid.

Because in the Roman religions, there are lots of people who claim to be God. There's lots of people who claim to be sons of God. Even the Roman emperors claim to be God.

So now we have someone who the Jews say, "He ought to die because he claims to be the Son of God." And if he claims to be the Son of God, and he is, then Pilate ought to be afraid.

And he entered into the praetorium again and said to Jesus, "Where are you from?"

But Jesus gave him no answer.

You see Pilate's not interested in the truth. He's already told Jesus, "What is truth?"

He's afraid, ultimately he's going to be more afraid of the crowd than the consequences of his actions.

And so Jesus doesn't give him the comfort and the answer, because if Jesus gave him the answer, he would be even more afraid.

So Pilate said to him, "You do not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you?" You see here Pilate is just like every single other person who's been involved since Jesus' arrest. They think they can control him. They think they have authority over him. They bind him and lead him where they want him to go, but he doesn't have to if he doesn't want to. They have no authority over him.

But Pilate's not unlike many people today.

We seek to have authority and control over God.

You'll hear people say, "Well, my God would never do that."

"Well, I don't know who your God is." Or, and this argument has come through the centuries, "How brutal and terrible would it be for the Father to send his Son to die, therefore the gospel can't be true?"

We're seeking to control God by what you would do, not by what God is and what God does. But we all seek to bound God into our own binding of what we think is right and what we think is wrong.

Since I made a reference to a movie, I'll make a reference to another movie. There was a movie called Rudy.

And Rudy was a young man who wanted to go to Notre Dame. And not only did he want to go to Notre Dame, he wanted to play football at Notre Dame. The problem with Rudy was, he didn't get into Notre Dame initially, and he was too little to play football.

And so during the time that he was doubting everything and wanting to make sense and why was things not happening the way it was, he went to a Catholic priest to seek for counsel and advice, and the priest gave great advice. He says, "There are two incontrovertible facts. There is a God, and I'm not him."

And yet everybody seeks to be God by telling God what he can and cannot do.

But this has been God's plan not since Jesus came to the earth, not since Noah, not even since Adam and Eve. This was God's plan, Godhead's plan, before they ever said, "Let there be light."

But he thinks because of his position, he has authority over Jesus.

Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above."

He just goes, "Your authority doesn't come from Rome.

Your power does not come from Rome. Your decision to grant me my life or my crucifixion does not rest in your hands, but your authority comes from heaven."

Maybe we should think of that the next time things happen in our life.

For this reason, he who has delivered me to you has the greater sin.

He's not referring to Judas, I don't believe. I think he's referring to the Jewish leaders and the crowd who is asking for this. And he's saying, "You have authority, you think, but the authority you've been given has come from heaven."

The greater sin has been for those who have turned me over to you. Because you see, Jesus came to the Jew first.

He came to his own and his own received him not.

As a matter of fact, I suspect that there are a number of people in the crowd who committed the unpardonable sin, who claim that the power that Jesus exercised did not come from God, but from Satan.

That's why he started preaching in parables, because hearing they would not hear and seeing they would not see. And so there are, I'm sure, those in the crowd who not only have greater sin, but unforgivable sin. But he's saying, "Those who are out there, you think you have power, they have the greater sin because they're mine and they should have known who I am."

You're a Roman.

The Word didn't come to you yet.

But you do have sin, and I want you to think of this. It is God's plan, it is God's will that Jesus be crucified.

So when Pilate gives the order, you can say, and rightfully so, he is acting in accordance with God's will.

But that doesn't mean that he is not responsible and accountable for what he did.

Just like Pharaoh was responsible and accountable for his actions, so is Pilate.

And the fact that Jesus tells him, "They have greater sin than you, but you still have sinned." What's actions should have been, "Father, forgive me, I do not know what you're doing.

I am a part of your will, which is sin.

Forgive me."

But we don't see that in Pilate.

We see a man who is afraid.

He's more afraid of the crowd than he is of sin.

But then again, isn't that very much like us? We would much rather hang around with the crowd and sin than be alone and make choices

that are unpopular.

And even might cause us to lose our position or even our life.

You could have said, "Jesus, I know, get somebody else to do this.

You are the Son of God. I find no guilt in you." But he doesn't.

That's what's amazing about grace.

God's grace would have reached even to Pilate, if Pilate would have led him.

As a result of this, Pilate made efforts to release him, but the Jews cried out saying,

"If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar." So now they get to the jucst of it.

Pilate, they're threatening him, "If you don't do this, we're going to send word to Caesar that you're not his friend. You ought to replace Pilate with somebody else who will do what needs to be done."

And the Caesar at the time executed a lot of his governors for not doing what he wanted them to do. And so Pilate had a legitimate fear for his life.

But what is life next to eternity?

So they threatened him.

Therefore when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at the place called the Pavement, but in Hebrew, "Gabbatha."

So he's going to render a verdict that he knows is wrong, that he knows that there's no guilt in Jesus, but the high priest is so bright it is expedient for one man to die that others might live.

Now the reason that there was such a hurry in this whole thing is this, now was the day of preparation for the Passover. I want you to catch this. Now was a day for the preparation of the Passover, which means it was the day before Passover.

All these people keep telling you that Passover must have already been.

We are so locked up in our tradition that we don't read the Word of God.

So what was happening on the preparation day?

They were killing the lambs to celebrate the Passover.

And as Paul will tell us, Jesus is our Passover lamb.

So when he is going to be hanging on that cross, the lambs will be sacrificed as well.

It was about the sixth hour, and he said to the Jews, "Behold your king."

And he's right.

He's their king, and he's our king.

So they cried out, "Away with him! Away with him!

Crucify him!"

And Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your king?"

The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar."

Oh, is this not unlike Israel?

All the way back when the judges were responsible for the rule of Israel, the people wanted a king.

And Samuel took it personal because he thought they were rejecting him.

When God told Samuel, "It's not personal."

They're not rejecting you. They're rejecting him.

They don't want him to be their king.

And now, generation after generation after generation after generation passes, and they're still as hard-hearted as ever.

They don't want God to be their king.

They want Caesar.

Caesar was in it for himself, for his own glory and for his own power, for his own self-aggrandizement,

where God rules and reigns with mercy and justice and love and compassion and forgiveness.

And they don't want that.

They want something else.

Like many people say, I'm not too sure why God would do what God does, but they're two inconvertible facts.

There is a God, and I'm not him.

And I am thankful I am not him because I don't love the way he loves. He told me I should, and I'm trying.

He tells me to trust him, and I'm trying.

But he is faithful forever and ever and ever.

His mercy endures forever.

This one who's going to pay the consequences of my sin and yours, even to this day, offers mercy and forgiveness.

If we would just believe, as a writer of John the Gospel, John himself witnessed, and the reason he said he wrote this book is that we might believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

And just as John, as I call the witness, as most people call the baptizer, said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."

Oh, that Pilate would have understood.

Oh, that the crowd would have understood. Oh, that the Roman soldiers would have understood.

And oh, that you and I would understand just how completely and thoroughly we are cleansed by his blood.

Nothing but the blood.

There is a name I love to hear.

I love to sing its work.

To me, it's music in my ear.

The greatest name on earth, Jesus Yahshua, the Son of the Living God. And all God's people said.