I love it when it feels like half the church just thinks, "Oh, he's about to preach; let's go! " Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank You for today.
We do have a special prayer request to You that our hearts are heavy with. We pray that Sherry's daughter would be found, and found quickly, and found well. We pray for Your hand of peace and comfort to be over her and Stuart as they continue to trust this whole situation to You, and to Your plan and Your sovereignty.
Lord, I thank You for all the many things that we have to be thankful for; the things that we often, as Americans, take for granted, and that is living in a time of peace. Our basic necessities—food, shelter, clothing—are all being met, and if we're having trouble with them, we can get hooked up with an organization or have them given. You have been very good to us here.
Lord, we first and foremost want to thank You for our salvation, as we'll get into in a few minutes, just how much You suffered for us to obey the Father's will and to pay for our salvation. Lord, may we never take that for granted; may we never belittle it, but be extremely grateful each and every day for all that You went through for us. I pray that Your Spirit would go forth, work through these words, make changes in our hearts, and that we'd walk out of here a little bit different than when we walked in.
I pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. There are some executives of kings that not only change their life, or lack thereof, at that point, but human history as well.
For instance, King Charles I of England, upon succeeding his father James I, became known for being a tyrant. He dissolved Parliament on several occasions when it best suited him and made decisions for the entire country on his own during those periods. This tyrannical rule even led to the great English Civil War in the mid-1600s, between those loyal to him and those loyal to Parliament.
When the side of Parliament won, Charles I was charged with treason and thrown into prison. He was executed by beheading on January 30th, 1649. Seeking to prevent the type of concentrated power that resulted in Charles I's tyrannical reign, Parliament officially abolished the right and power of the monarchy only one week after Charles I's execution.
While this dissolution of the monarchy was only temporary, it did lead to the 1689 Bill of Rights, which established the power of Parliament over the king. We've all perhaps heard of the French King Louis XVI helping to fund the war efforts of the American Revolution during the late 1700s, which led to the French government being on the brink of financial collapse. This, among other unpopular decisions, contributed to the rising movement of the French people, creating a revolution of their own in 1789.
The storming of the Bastille led to Louis XVI reluctantly accepting his new role as a constitutional monarch. However, following several more bad decisions and counterrevolution dealings—many of which were influenced by his wife, Marie Antoinette—the whole royal family was thrown into prison by the new Legislative Assembly and tried for treason. Also in January, on January 21st, 1793, King Louis XVI was executed by guillotine, and his wife was executed nine months later, thus effectively ending the French monarchy and permanently establishing rule by the people in France.
While all these leaders and kings were executed, leading to changes in the courses of human history, the King was executed in the most horrifying way possible. Starting with the torture that had already begun and is now continuing in the trials he's endured so far, what this torture will culminate in at the cross is the turning point in all of human and theological history. We ended last week with Pontius Pilate desperately trying to save his own skin by making one last attempt to escape actually having to condemn a man he knew to be innocent according to Roman law.
This one last attempt was the use of an established custom between him, as the Roman governor over the land he ruled, and the Jewish people he ruled over. That custom was that during the Jewish Passover feast, when Messianic fervor and nationalism were at an all-time high and an uprising was always a threat—the very last thing the Romans wanted—Pilate would free someone that they had been holding in prison. That person would have their crimes acquitted and be allowed to go free.
Seeing his golden opportunity to use this custom to free Jesus of Nazareth, Pilate brought that offer up to the crowd. Before too long, however, while he was distracted, the religious leaders had riled the crowd up into a frenzy to demand a known insurrectionist named Barabbas be freed instead. Now, being forced to give in to the crowd's new demand out of nowhere rather than encouraging a riot, Pilate, not believing what he was hearing, then asked the crowd, "Well, what do you want to do with the man who I just watched five days before this being blanketed by you people and declaring him to be your Messianic King?
What do you want me to do with him? " To his shock, the crowd demanded that that man be executed, but not just executed, but executed in the most torturous way by crucifixion. Still dragging his feet on outright condemning an innocent man to Roman crucifixion, however, Pilate tried one last attempt at freeing Jesus while still trying to appease the Jewish leaders that Pilate needed to help him keep the peace.
The order in Jerusalem and the surrounding region of Judea, this one very last attempt, is overwhelmingly barbaric. But Pilate is overwhelmingly desperate at this point. This cruel and barbaric last attempt is what we'll be looking at this morning.
As has been noted, Luke says that Pilate explains these intentions outright—what his motivation is. He said to them the third time, "Why? What has this man done wrong?
I have found in his case no grounds for a sentence of death. Therefore, what I'm going to do is I'm going to punish him, and then I will release him. " That's his motivation behind what's going to happen next.
A while ago, we talked about how Jesus went through six trials before being nailed to the cross—three religious trials and three secular civil trials. The first religious trial was before Annas, the high priest, and before Caiaphas, but the one that everyone knew still possessed the real power behind those who succeeded him. The second religious trial was before Caiaphas while the rest of the Sanhedrin was being woken up and gathered together at Caiaphas's palace.
The third religious trial was the entire Sanhedrin. The first civil trial was before Pilate, the first time when Jesus revealed the gospel message in a nutshell, and Pilate scoffed in return, saying, "What is truth? " The second civil trial was before Herod Antipas, which, like the religious trials, could hardly be called a legitimate trial.
The third civil trial, once again before Pilate, is what we're starting this morning—the last of Jesus's six trials. As has been pointed out, John 19:1, the beginning part of that verse, and Matthew 27:27 describe what happens next. So if you brought your Bible with you, please turn to John chapter 19; it's in the New Testament.
If you didn't bring a Bible with you, that's okay; there should be one located in the pew in front of you. Please also turn to John chapter 19, beginning part of verse 1, or look this up on your favorite Bible app on your smartphone. Pilate then took Jesus—that's the first part.
Pilate then took Jesus. We'll get into what happens next. Then Matthew 27:27 describes the same event: "Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort to him.
" So, let's put this together. Apparently, Jesus has been standing next to Pilate this whole time. This whole time that Pilate has attempted to use what's been referred to as Pilate's Passover pardon—like that alliteration—Jesus has been standing there.
The whole time that those in the crowd more sympathetic to him start asking Pilate for his release, he's been standing there while Pilate was getting distracted by the message from his wife. Jesus could see the religious leaders looking at him as they were convincing the crowd gathered there that they would rather see Jesus dead—looking at Jesus and probably pointing at Jesus as they were riling the crowd up against him. Jesus was standing there the whole time that the crowd then shouted that they wanted Barabbas released instead, and he's been standing there as the crowd is becoming more and more unified and then shouts as one that they want him crucified instead.
After that, Pilate then orders the soldiers under his direct command to bring Jesus back into the praetorium. It's under Pilate's command that the whole Roman cohort be gathered around Jesus, and it's under Pilate's command that what follows takes place. Before we get into that, though, let's talk about who these soldiers were that happened to be there.
One scholar notes that, at this time in history, Roman soldiers were divided up into two major categories: auxiliary soldiers and what were called legionnaires. Auxiliary soldiers were soldiers in Rome's military who were not Roman citizens and whose service in those positions would earn them their Roman citizenship. The soldiers of Herod Antipas, who were the ones who assisted in that raucous mockery of Jesus and putting on the white robe on him, were most likely auxiliary soldiers.
Legionnaires, on the other hand, were already Roman citizens—usually hailed from Rome or Italy itself—and, as such, served out of duty to the Roman Empire and their own heritage. They were usually better equipped and better trained; thus, because of that, along with their blood loyalty to Rome, legionnaires were the only soldiers allowed to be assigned to the Roman governor's direct service and orders. Those specific legionnaires were based at the praetorium itself rather than those based at the Antonia Fortress.
As such, all those based at the praetorium were the ones who gathered around Jesus under Pilate's direct orders. Lastly, as Romans by descent, native to Italy, legionnaires were known to look down on everyone else—including auxiliary soldiers and especially the criminals in their custody. In other words, what these legionnaires next do to Jesus is something they have no problem with whatsoever and, in a cruel twist, most likely enjoy doing.
What do they do, under Pilate's direct orders? The second part of verse 1 states, "and scourged him. " Three words.
As has been pointed out, none of the four gospel writers get into any detail of what scourging was—Roman scourging—most likely because they knew their original readers didn't need any further detail. They were well aware; everyone already knew what it was; everyone already knew how gruesome it was and perhaps didn't need further literary description of it. But for us, it is extremely helpful for us to know this again so we can understand all that our King went through in fulfillment of prophecy and the torture that included the cross of our salvation.
According to scholars, until modern times, whipping was a common form of punishment for crimes, and there were two different forms of scourging or whipping. The first and more common kind. .
. The kind of punishment that the Jewish people used in this time period entailed using a whip made of several ends of leather. A criminal was whipped for as many times as his crime required, and while it was extremely painful, the leather ends of the whip only produced bloody stripes across the criminal's back.
In fact, Deuteronomy 25 laid out the stipulations that needed to be followed so that the whipping did not get out of hand. This is what the law required: "Then it shall be, if the wicked person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall then make him lie down and have him beaten in his presence with a number of lashes according to his wrongful act. He may have him beaten 40 times, but not more, so that he does not have him beaten with many more lashes than these and that your brother does not become contemptible in your eyes.
" The Mosaic law ensured that this was only to be used as a form of punishment for a crime, in order for the one who had committed the crime to learn to not do it again and as a means to prevent others from doing it. The criminal was made to lie down so that only his back received the lashes and no other part of his body, and the full maximum of the punishment was to end at 40 lashes. This law was also meant to maintain the dignity of the person being punished.
You see there, "so your brother does not become contemptible in your eyes. " It was meant to preserve the dignity of the person being punished as a fellow human being, also created in the image of God. That was the more common Jewish way of whipping.
The Romans did not care about any of that. Jesus was not scourged or flogged according to the first, more common Jewish way that the Jewish law prescribed while still maintaining human dignity. Jesus was scourged according to the second Roman way, which did not care at all about a human's dignity.
In fact, its very nature was, according to one scholar, designed to strip away a person's humanity along with their flesh. Roman flogging was the most dehumanizing, excruciating, and barbaric form of criminal punishment short of crucifixion. I need to warn you that the following description is very graphic, but again, we need to know this to understand what Jesus did for us and to know the disgusting ugliness of the sin he died to put to death in our lives.
According to scholars on the Roman practice of flogging, contrary to the Mosaic law, there was no maximum limit to the number of lashes; however, it was commonly known in the Roman world that someone would usually die if it came anywhere near 40 lashes. Roman scourging was usually only reserved for those who had already been condemned to crucifixion because it was so deadly and often resulted in death simply from that. In fact, for those who were scourged, measures needed to be taken just to keep that person alive enough to then be crucified.
Roman scourging was so unbearable that it was actually outlawed for Roman citizens hundreds of years before this. Those condemned to a Roman scourging were usually stripped naked— a degrading act in and of itself. Contrary to the more common punishment of whipping, those undergoing Roman scourging were not made to lie on their stomachs—ensuring only their backs were whipped—but had their hands tied to a post.
Thus, Jesus, being stripped naked in front of the jeering Roman soldiers and having his hands tied to a post in the praetorium, had every single ounce of his body exposed to the Roman flagrum. A Roman flagrum consisted of multiple leather strands, usually nine, which is where the nickname "cat-of-nine-tails" came from. Embedded into these leather strands were metal balls, usually made out of lead or brass, along with shards of bone, metal, glass, or even nails.
Since the victim was tied to a scourging post, the leather straps, including those embedded materials, would wrap around the victim's body, with every inch of his body exposed to the flagrum. The embedded metal balls and shards served two distinct purposes: the metal balls would tenderize and bruise a person's body, causing copious amounts of pain; the shards, on the other hand, were meant to tear a person's flesh away from their bones. Only a few lashes with the flagrum resulted in large lacerations, pouring large amounts of blood and exposing the bones, now having skin and muscle freshly ripped off of them.
Several more lashes exposed internal organs such as the kidneys, liver, stomach, and intestines and turned the victim into a pulverized pulp of blood and gore, his body so destroyed that he was not recognizable as even being human anymore. As R-rated as the depiction of Jesus's scourging is in the movie "The Passion of the Christ," it even stops short, if you can believe it, of the full horror of what Jesus would have felt and looked like by the end of this scourging. While Jesus was most likely out of eyesight of the crowd in the courtyard of the praetorium, he was most likely well within earshot of that crowd.
They probably knew what was coming next for Jesus as soon as they saw him being led back into the praetorium. With each blood-curdling scream of pain from Jesus as his body was being shredded into hamburger, and each raucous cry of laughter from the cohort of soldiers stationed there at the praetorium, we can imagine the crowd responding with loud cheers of celebration. As has been noted, Jesus's body truly had been broken, as he had prophesied just hours earlier and established at the Lord's Supper.
We must always keep that image in mind. Of Jesus being scourged from head to toe with each and every time we partake of the broken bread of communion. As has been pointed out, this is also in direct fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecies of the Messiah: "I gave my back to those who strike me, and the chastening for our well-being fell upon him; by his scourging we are healed.
" All of that is wrapped up in one half a verse that simply says, "Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him. " Jesus's torture at the hands of Pilate and the Praetorian legionnaire soldiers didn't end there, however. Verses 2 through 3 state, "And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and put a purple robe on him.
And they began to come up to him and say, 'Hail, King of the Jews! ' and to give him slaps in the face. " Once the soldiers determined that if they scourged Jesus any more times, he would die right then and there at their feet, they untied him from the scourging post.
These soldiers had most likely known about, and perhaps watched themselves, Jesus riding into Jerusalem just five days before. So, similar to Pilate's disrespectful references to Jesus, the soldiers next mocked Jesus for what he was known for. All of what they did next were cruel mimicries of a king in further torture of Jesus.
Firstly, as all kings wore crowns, the soldiers made one for Jesus, but as all of these were also meant to be torturous, the crown they made was one made out of thorns. Anyone here who has tried to prune rose bushes before knows it’s not uncomplicated. You need to wear gloves, and even then be extremely careful, and you still end up with some scratches on your hands and arms from the thorns.
Several conservative Bible scholars explain that the goal of the soldiers was humiliation and not so much excruciating pain, and as such, the thorns were probably not very big since that wasn't the point. After all, Jesus had just endured a horrific Roman scourging. The haphazard crown, wrapped together quickly by a crafty soldier, was one likely made out of a plant similar to the one shown.
Regardless of how big the thorns were, look at those: if they were like the size of these, they would still inflict quite a bit of pain, especially on the highly sensitive and nerve-filled scalp of a person. Next, the soldiers put an article of clothing on Jesus that mimicked him being a king. John records that this was a purple robe, while Matthew writes that it was a scarlet robe, similar in color, especially when faded, as Jesus had continued to bleed profusely into it.
As has been noted, both were meant to convey royalty. Now, where would these soldiers have gotten a royal robe meant for a king? Well, this was probably actually more of a scarlet soldier's tunic which any of the soldiers there would have had, as their intention was only to mock Jesus and mimic what a king might wear.
Similar to a child playing dress-up, this didn't need to be an actual king's robe but something meant to mimic a king's robe. And as any king would have, Matthew tells us that the soldiers then forced Jesus to hold a reed or a thin stick, as has been noted, as a mock scepter. As one scholar points out, we have to remember that Jesus's body is physically going through the symptoms of shock right now, having been so unspeakably tortured.
They untied his hands from the scourging post, and then he was probably sat up in a chair for him to recover before he was brought back out with Pilate for his official decision. And this whole time that Jesus is sitting in this chair with the crown of thorns on his head, wearing a red tunic that was clinging to the gaping gashes all over his body and creating ongoing seething pain, the soldiers are bowing down before him and saying, "Hail, King of the Jews," smacking him in the face over and over again, ripping out his beard, spitting not only at him but disgustingly on him, and to top it all off, grabbing the stick out of his hand and beating him on the top of his head with it, driving the thorns further into his scalp. One scholar points out that this whole experience of Jesus subjected to the whims of the soldiers in the Praetorian is a fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy of Psalm 22:11-13: "Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.
They open wide their mouth at me, as a ravening and roaring lion. " The bulls of Bashan was a reference to the Roman soldiers, as the reference to Bashan was referencing the gigantic, powerful, and pagan people of King Og in Deuteronomy 3. The soldiers truly have surrounded and encircled the Messiah, opening their mouths in raucous laughter as he is being shredded apart by their scourging and mocking him as king, destroying his body to almost the point of death, like a ravening and roaring lion.
As has been noted, combined with the beat-down from the early morning hours before this, along with a full-body scourging, the ripping out of his beard, and all the punches to his face—bruised, torn up, and covered in a layer of blood—Jesus would have undoubtedly been unrecognizable to anyone who knew him. Unrecognizable even as a human being. This would be a direct fulfillment of Isaiah 50:6: "I gave my cheeks to those who pull out my beard; I did not hide my face from insults and spit," and Isaiah 52:14: "So his appearance was marred beyond that of a man, and his form beyond the sons of mankind.
" Roman scourging would accomplish that. Finally, after the soldiers had had their fill of entertaining themselves by mocking Jesus following his scourging, Pilate determined that Jesus had been through enough to secure his last major attempt to get Jesus released. Remember that this was his whole motivation behind all of this; this is his last major attempt to get Jesus released and to please the Jewish officials.
Pilate brings Jesus back out to his judgment seat at the entrance to this outdoor courtyard where the crowd was. Verses 4-5: Pilate came out again and said to them, "Behold, I am bringing him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in him. " Jesus then came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, again being unrecognizable as even a human being.
Pilate then said to them, "Behold the man. " And that’s what this major last-ditch effort by Pilate I’ve been referencing all this message was. As has been noted, Pilate wholeheartedly believes that if he has Jesus indescribably tortured by scourging and mockery and brings him back out to the crowd, surely that crowd, along with the Jewish official offal included in that crowd, might even have an ounce of sympathy towards this being that doesn't even look human anymore and respond with, "Ah, okay, we're good," and Pilate can release him, just short of having to follow through with actually crucifying him.
That was Pilate's entire motivation in having Jesus scourged and mocked the way that he did. He’s still trying to save his own skin and still trying to get released a man he knows is innocent in the eyes of Roman law. Pilate outright lays out why he just did what he did in bringing Jesus back out to them, that he firmly and fully believes that Jesus is innocent.
Pilate follows that up by bringing Jesus out for show and tell. Again, his hope is that by bringing Jesus out and showing just how grotesquely gruesome Jesus's scourging was, the crowd, along with the religious leaders who are supposed to be Jewish and are supposed to be following their merciful God, will see him and be satisfied with Jesus's punishment and relent from their screams of crucifying him. So Pilate declares, "Here he is!
Behold the man you've brought to me. Drnk it all in, folks! Isn't this enough to satisfy your relentless thirst for blood?
Isn't this enough? " As much as Pilate has been shocked already by the crowd's insistence, Pilate’s in for one more shock: No, it's not enough. Verse 6: So when the chief priests and the officers saw him—they saw him, they saw what he looked like—they cried out, saying, "Crucify!
Crucify! " Still, it wasn't enough. The Jewish priests and officials, that is, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and high priest Caiaphas, who made up the Sanhedrin that brought Jesus to Pilate in the first place, continue to scream, "Crucify him!
Crucify him! " All of that excruciating torment was not enough. They will not rest until Jesus is dead.
Next week, we’ll get into part two of this third secular and civil trial, which is overall number six in total, and the last one before Jesus is condemned down the road to Golgotha. For now, we must see and understand all that Jesus went through for us, and we haven't even gotten to the crucifixion yet. His body was broken in substitution for us because of the evil and disgusting ugliness of our sin.
Contrary to popular belief today, yes, God does still care about our sin; yes, God still judges sin; and yes, everyone who rejects salvation in Jesus will be sent to eternal torment in hell. We can see the beginning of the payment for how repulsive our sin really is. How can you see and understand Jesus's graphic scourging and crucifixion and still take your sin lightly and still think it's not that big of a deal?
How can you see and understand all that Jesus endured and still reject that he went through all of this for you to pay for your sin in order to put it to death in your life? If you’ve never repented of the sin that drove Jesus to undergo this horrifyingly obscene scourging and crucifixion to pay for your sins, surrender to him as the Savior from that sin and the true King of your life. Do so right now!
You have no clue when you will die; then it will be too late, and you will be judged for never repenting of your sin and surrendering to Jesus as King, and you will be sentenced to eternal torture yourself in hell. If you have repented of your sin and have personally taken Jesus as both your Savior and King over the rest of your life, is there sin in your life that you are knowingly refusing to get right with God? If there is, mere human, why are you toying away?
Why are you toying around with Almighty God's grace? You know what we’re actually doing when we continue to indulge in sin or live in a way that God's Word clearly condemns? What we're actually doing, in reality, is mockingly placing a crown of thorns and a royally colored garment on Jesus as we spit on him and mockingly cry out, "Hail King of the Jews!
" It's the exact same mockery we make of our Savior and King’s torture and sacrifice when we continue to live in the sin that Jesus was brutally scourged and crucified to put to death in our lives. Repent of that sin and get it right with God today! Brothers and sisters, what shall we say then?
Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Far from it! How shall we, who died to sin, still live in it?
For if we have become united with him. . .
In the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this: that our old self was crucified with Him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For the one who has died is freed from sin. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, this was a rough passage to get through. We haven't even gotten to the worst of it yet. Lord, we needed to know it; we needed to see it; we needed to understand it.
You went through all of this to put to death the sin in our lives. Lord, if there is anybody here who has not yet repented of that sin, not yet taken You as Savior from that sin, and surrendered their whole lives to You as King, I pray that they would do so right now. Those of us who have repented and taken You as Savior and King, if there is sin that we are knowingly holding on to in our lives and refusing to take steps to get right with You, I pray that we would do that right now.
We would get that right with You, and we would start taking steps in our lives to turn away from that. You went through all of this to show us the disgustingness of what our sin really is and all that You went through to take our place in payment of that sin. May we never hold on to it, but may we constantly be looking at what still needs to be crucified, what still needs to be put to death in our lives, and handing that over to You, and experiencing and witnessing the transformation of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, making us more and more into the image of Your Son.
I pray all these things in the power of King Jesus's name. Amen.
