Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, again we thank You for today. Today is special for a couple of reasons.
Number one, it is the Lord's Day. This is the day on which You prophesied and chose to have Your Son rise from the dead. This is the day that even in the days since the early church, Your people have gathered together to worship You and thank You for our salvation, won by the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior.
And it's special for us because we are commemorating all of those who served our country, all of those who sacrificed willingly, gave up time and parts of their lives to serve us and to protect us. Lord, I pray that You would bless them for their service. I thank You for Your Word.
Your Word is our bedrock foundation; it never shakes, it never falters, it never changes, it never flip-flops. It is always the same. The truth remains the same no matter what time or culture we live in.
We can always anchor our souls to its truth. So, Lord, I pray that You would bless our time together, that Your Word would go forth and not return to You void and make a little bit of a difference in our lives. And I pray all these things in Jesus' name.
Amen. The following are taken verbatim since I thought they were so well written from the get-go from a Reader's Digest article published a few months ago entitled, and you'll like this, "Meet the 38 Dumbest Criminals of All Time. " You probably know where I'm going with this.
As two men waited in line at the coffee shop to pay their bill, a third cut in front of them. He threw a drink at the clerk and demanded all the money from the till. Temporarily surprised, the men quickly recovered and handcuffed the crook.
Apparently, in his rush, the criminal didn't notice they were police officers in full uniform. In Mesa, Arizona, a home break-in was foiled when the burglar jumped through the bedroom window and got trapped in a clothes hamper. Cops took it from there.
A woman in Somerset, Massachusetts, was arrested for breaking and entering, but she was quickly caught thanks to her ankle bracelet—the one fitted with a GPS system that she had gotten from the police for being on probation from an earlier breaking and entering case. And lastly, police in Oening, New York, were called to a mini-mart where they found Blake Leak, 23, trying to break in. They chased Leak through the streets until both cops took a tumble.
Seizing the opportunity, Leak sought refuge on the grounds of a large building. The building was the Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison, where he was promptly nabbed by a guard. In all of these stories, these guys were clearly guilty; there was no way around it, and they got caught red-handed.
However, as we'll dig into today, this is no laughing matter. According to Roman law and protocol, Pilate does not find any law that Jesus has broken, much less one that would deserve the death penalty. You would think the story would end there, right?
But as we all know, it doesn't. Why not? And how does it connect to us today?
We ended last week with Pilate following Roman trial protocol, albeit not being able to mask his blatant anti-Semitism towards the Jewish people and the Jewish officials in general, and the Jewish Nazarenes standing before him specifically. As one scholar notes, for all of him being a piece of work personally, Pilate does follow Roman legal protocol and is not swayed by the obvious personal jealousy of the Jewish leaders who had hauled Jesus up to the Praetorium early that morning. We continue to see Pilate following protocol with how he questions Jesus.
It was customary for the Roman governor of a region to hold trial over a defendant by himself and without a jury, with a practice known as Cognito Extra Orum in Latin. And like we talked about last week, Pilate is not interested in anything remotely Jewish about what the Jewish leaders brought up to him in regards to Jesus, nor Jesus's explanation of who He truly was as the Jewish Messianic King of a kingdom not of this world. Pilate was only concerned with any kind of insurrectionist threat that Jesus posed to the Roman Empire and to him and his position personally.
As such, when Jesus presents the Gospel to Pilate, a pagan Gentile, as we talked about last week, Pilate instead scoffs at it and sarcastically responds with, "What is truth? " After Pilate's first trial of Jesus—Jesus's first civil and Roman trial, but His third one overall—we can see where Pilate's thinking is. We get that in John 18, second part of verse 38.
So if you brought your Bible with you today, please turn to John 18:38. If you didn't bring a Bible, that's okay; there should be one located in the pew in front of you. Please also turn to this verse or look this up on your favorite Bible app on your smartphone.
Again, second half of verse 38: "And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, 'I find no guilt in him. '" And we're going to come back to this verse at the end of this message, but we're going to fill in some things that happened before this. Before this, Pilate has been questioning Jesus this whole time, and the religious leaders have been scheming.
They most likely know they have no case that would satisfy the Roman legal demands for the death penalty. So what do they do? They resort, as people often do, to mob mentality and go start finding those who, as has been pointed out, have already.
. . Swell Jerusalem for Passover in the outer Courtyard of the Pratorum.
Here's, uh, the model of that again as well; here's, uh, the Pratorum, and here's the courtyard that these people are gathering in here. Just like John, Luke, the gospel writer, Luke comes right out and tells us what Pilate is thinking at this point. Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, "I find no grounds for charges in the case of this man.
" Even though Pilate is cruel, he's also intelligent; it's how he was appointed to his position from being a military commander previously. From his conversation with the Nazarene, he perhaps didn't understand what that Nazarene was talking about, but he could clearly deduce that he posed no threat to either the Roman Empire or to him personally. How could a man who is obviously beat into a bloody pulp by his own people threaten to lead an uprising from those very same people?
It just didn't make any sense. At this point, Pilate is also very aware that his previous brutal responses to other Jewish uprisings have put him on tenuous terms with Emperor Tiberius, so he's extra cautious as to how he'll come across to his superiors with what he does with this man, who is only suspected of being an insurrectionist with no real proof in a Roman court of law that he actually was. The Jewish leaders are desperate, however, knowing that this is their one and only shot to get Jesus executed.
Having already gotten this far, they are not going to go away quietly, and they are not going to go away easily. So they respond to Pilate's answer with, "He is stirring up the people, teaching all over Judea, starting from Galilee as far as this place. " Again, the leaders were trying to pin the Roman-friendly accusation of Jesus causing instability and the threat of riots because of it.
Now, something in that response, as you read these words here, something in this response makes Pilate's ears prick up. Remember, Pilate really does not want to have to deal with this—we've seen that all throughout this whole process. That's why he initially throws Jesus back at the Jewish leaders, telling them to try him according to their petty law, knowing that they wouldn't be able to exact the death penalty anyway.
Add to that that Pilate now knows there's nothing Roman-wise to charge this Nazarene with. But as has been noted, he can already see this unfolding in front of him; he can already sense the unrest of the people. He was charged with keeping rule in peace.
So as soon as he hears the location, Galilee—now when Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. "Wait a second! You just said he was preaching in Galilee.
Is he indeed a Galilean? " And when he learned that he belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod since he also was in Jerusalem at this time. Remember, sit more up front now, okay?
Remember when Herod the Great, who was the Jewish puppet king under Caesar Augustus ruling this whole area at the time that Jesus was born, died? His kingdom was divided up primarily among four of his heirs: Herod Archelaus, who ruled over this region of Samaria and Judea; Herod Antipas, who ruled over Galilee; Philip, who ruled over Iturea; and one of his daughters, who ruled over this teeny weeny sliver of land right here. When she died, that was absorbed into Archelaus's jurisdiction.
Herod Archelaus was deposed in 6 A. D. because of his incompetence in ruling, and since the Romans were not going to make the same mistake twice, they appointed a Roman governor to directly rule over the area of Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.
Eventually, that Roman governor position was passed on to Pontius Pilate. But at the same time Pilate governed Samaria and Judea, Herod Antipas continued ruling this region of Galilee up here. Herod Antipas and Philip, who ruled over Iturea, they still ruled as puppet kings over the regions of Galilee and Iturea, respectively.
If you remember, when we covered Pilate's background a little bit more extensively a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how Pilate even had a hostile relationship with Herod Antipas, who ruled over the neighboring region of Galilee. As has been noted here, was Pilate's dilemma, okay? You with me?
He knew Jesus to be innocent according to Roman law, but he knew his position was to keep order over his province. He needed the Jewish leaders, especially the Sadducees and especially the high priest Caiaphas, to help him keep that order. But who are the ones stirring up the trouble now?
It was the very same Sadducees and Caiaphas who are the ones stirring up the crowds in Jerusalem for Passover and threatening Pilate's rule and even life if he could not and did not keep that order. Do you see Pilate's desperate dilemma here? As such, as has been noted, Pilate was desperately, desperately looking for a way out of all of it, and so Pilate bypassed his hostile relationship with the neighboring king Antipas and sent Jesus off to him.
After all, as scholars point out, Antipas was the one who had already had John the Baptist beheaded previously, and therefore Pilate knew that he wouldn't be friendly to the man John the Baptist claimed he was only the front runner for. If Antipas condemned Jesus, then Pilate would be absolved of any responsibility for Jesus's death, appeased the Jewish leaders in his jurisdiction, be done with the whole matter, and move on—position and life still intact. It was perfect!
It was perfect for Pilate; he could kill two birds with one stone and shift. All the blame to someone he didn't really like in the first place anyway. In addition, because it was Passover, Antipas was also in Jerusalem at that point.
As Luke explains for us, it was Pilate's perfect solution to an impossible problem he was suddenly caught in the middle of. Like we talked about a lot more a couple of weeks ago, Pilate's Jerusalem praetorium was most likely Herod the Great's old palace fortress here, on the western edge of the upper city, the highest part of Jerusalem, where all the rich, famous, wealthy, and influential lived. Where would Antipas stay when he would visit Jerusalem from his residence up in Galilee?
Most scholars believe it was here, called the Haonan Palace, about halfway in between Herod the Great's old palace fortress and Pilate's current praetorium and the temple. This Hasmonean palace here, we've all heard of the Jewish Festival of Dedication, or Lights, or Hanukkah, which will be coming up this year beginning, as it just so happens, the evening of Christmas Day. This year we know from John 10 that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah as well, and as the light of the world, fulfilled and used it to declare his equality with God the Father and therefore his deity.
Hanukkah is the celebration of the Jewish Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire and against the edict to all the Jewish people living in Judea that if they didn't worship the Greek gods, they would be wiped off the face of the earth. As followers of Jesus, we can praise God for preserving his people during that time period to make way for the Jewish Messiah to eventually be born. Long story short, the Maccabees were basically the same people as the Hasmoneans.
Everybody still with me? Okay. Following the Maccabean revolt and the reestablishment of an autonomous Jewish state, the Hasmoneans ruled as kings over Judea for about 80 years, from 140 BC to 63 BC.
They are the ones who built this palace in Jerusalem from which they ruled for those 80 years, again from 140 BC to 63 BC. When the Romans then conquered the entire area, including Judea, Samaria, and Galilee in 63 BC, they installed Herod the Great as their puppet king to rule over that whole Roman-conquered region. Herod the Great sought to make himself a legitimate king in the eyes of his Jewish constituents, and so he married a Hasmonean princess.
Herod the Great was extremely paranoid, as we may or may not know, hence why he had all the male babies in Bethlehem killed when the Magi notified him the Messiah had been born there. Before that evil edict, though, Herod had his two sons by way of that Hasmonean princess killed and then eventually the princess herself. Fun guy, right?
Anyway, as I said, it was during the 80-year rule by the Hasmoneans that this palace in Jerusalem was built. Archaeologists believe it looks something like this model currently housed at the Israel Museum, where the model of Pilate's praetorium we've been using lately is also housed. Herod the Great may have lived here in Jerusalem before he built his massive palace fortress, which Pilate now lived in whenever he would visit Jerusalem.
But it would only make sense that when Antipas would visit Jerusalem as one of Herod's heirs, he would stay in the palace of his former stepmother. So when Jesus is sent by Pilate to Antipas, this is most likely what the palace looked like that he stood in. That's why I went through all of that, so we can picture the place that Jesus stood in.
Now, standing before Herod Antipas, as has been noted, just like his father, Herod Antipas was partially Jewish but lived for all intents and purposes exactly like a pagan. Therefore, his way of thinking was entirely Greco-Roman and not Jewish. Antipas was also very childish; we may know somebody like this in our family.
Even though he apparently was still a slightly better ruler than his brother Aretas, as has been pointed out, when we get to Jesus's trial before Antipas, this isn't the first time we see Herod Antipas acting like an immature child. The whole reason why John the Baptist was thrown into prison was that he called out Antipas for marrying his half brother's wife, Herodias. Long story short, Antipas's half brother was married to Herodias, but Antipas, attracted to Herodias, divorced his own wife in order to marry Herodias.
The Mosaic law prohibited a man from marrying his own blood relative or his brother's wife unless his brother was dead and had no children. But not only was Herodias technically Antipas's niece, since her father and he share the same blood father, Antipas's half brother, the former husband of Herodias, was still very much alive at that point, and they had a daughter together named Salome. Talk about messed-up families, right?
This was the whole reason why John the Baptist called out Antipas for this immoral behavior and was subsequently thrown into prison for it. Salome, daughter of Herodias by her previous marriage to Antipas's half brother and therefore Antipas's stepdaughter, you guys have made all these connections in your mind, okay? You're still with me?
Okay. She is one and the same as the young woman who publicly dances for a drunk Antipas, who immaturely promises in an oath her up to half his kingdom. In response, when a spiteful Herodias, still angry about John the Baptist's accusations, tells her daughter to demand John's head on a platter, Antipas, caught up in his foolish oath, is forced to have John beheaded.
But then Antipas starts hearing about Jesus and, thinking John the Baptist was the only prophet out there roaming the Galilean wilderness, he's thoroughly confused. Okay, now who's this guy? Read at that time, Herod the tetrarch, Antipas, heard the news about Jesus and said to his servants, "This is John the Baptist; he himself has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.
That is the only explanation an immature and unspiritual Antipas can come up with when he starts hearing about Jesus. " Then Antipas keeps hearing more and more about Jesus, and like a child, starts building up this wild expectation of him in his mind. As we'll read in a second, Antipas has wanted to meet this miracle worker himself so much and has been building that magician up in his mind over the years that when he finds out that he finally gets a chance to meet this Nazarene, he can't contain his excitement—much like a kid who knows he's getting a gift he's wanted forever for his birthday—and that day finally arrives.
All of this paints a picture of who Antipas was: a man who acted childishly immature and, as an immoral pagan, directly informs our understanding of the man Jesus next stands trial before. When Luke writes, "Now Herod was overjoyed when he saw Jesus, for he had wanted to see him for a long time because he had been hearing about him and was hoping to see some sign performed by him," it has been pointed out that pagan Antipas only viewed Jesus as we might view a highly touted magician or sleight-of-hand artist who's so good, they're performing in Vegas for the big bucks. As such, even though this was technically what was supposed to be a legal trial—since the Roman governor over Judea was certainly treating it that way—this could hardly be called a trial.
Upon hearing that the famed miracle-performing Nazarene was coming to his front door, Antipas was overjoyed—again like a little kid on Christmas Day, expecting to get a good show out of it. However, Luke writes that Antipas got absolutely nothing out of it. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus offered him no answer at all.
As has been noted, Jesus knew exactly what was going on; if this was purely for entertainment purposes, he refuses to dignify any of Antipas's questions with a response. Once again, as has been noted, this was Jesus showing himself in complete control of everything happening to him. He was the one who got himself nailed to that cross.
Not getting anything out of Jesus, much less a halfway decent magic show out of the whole ordeal, Antipas resorts to immaturity. This should be no surprise to us. Now, the chief priests and the scribes stood there vehemently charging him, and Herod, together with his soldiers, treated him with contempt and mocked him, dressing him in a brightly shining robe, and sent him back to Pilate.
Thus, Herod and Pilate became friends with one another. Hey, it's a happy ending; they all lived happily ever after that very day, for previously they had been enemies toward each other. As has been pointed out, the fact that the religious leaders even followed Jesus to Antipas in Jerusalem and to this Haonan Palace was huge since Antipas lived like an absolute pagan.
The religious leaders had to humiliate themselves to even come near him. Similar to last week, this again had to have taken place in a way that the religious leaders didn't disqualify themselves from eating the Passover meal later that day. Remember, that was one of the rules they were actually trying to follow, but they wanted above all else to see Jesus dead, so they brought their accusation with them to Antipas.
As has been noted, we get further depiction of Antipas as a childish ruler who, not actually being able to go toe-to-toe with the Creator of the universe, gets caught up in the heat of the religious leaders—the accusations they were bringing—and, not being able to make any actual legal ruling on the case, Antipas could only resort to immature jokes, raucous laughter, and just as much contempt, if not more, than Pilate had toward Jesus. Luke describes that the robe that was mockingly put on Jesus was a brightly shining one. One scholar points out that this description was one of a brilliantly white, pure, and undefiled robe.
Back in this time period, a white robe was not worn by the king; he wore purple or red. It was not worn by the king; it was worn by an heir or one next in line, but not King yet. The meaning behind putting the white robe on Jesus was to mock Jesus for being a pretend king who only believed himself to be legitimate when no one else did.
Instead of taking Jesus seriously as the true king, Antipas treated the whole thing as a joke. Now, keep in mind that Jesus is sent back to Pilate still wearing this pure, brilliantly white robe of innocence, even as it was put on him in joking mockery. That shared contempt toward Jesus brought two evil men, who again had previously nothing but hostility toward one another, together in hostility toward Jesus.
Evil begets more evil, resulting in the mockery of the Son of God and friendly terms between two men whose decisions were being ruled by Satan. As has been noted, not being able to make any actual ruling on the case, having been thoroughly irritated that the greatest showman didn't live up anywhere to his expectations of him, and having been sufficiently amused by his own entertainment of mocking the Nazarene himself, instead, Herod Antipas sent Jesus back to Pilate since it was Pilate's case and Pilate's jurisdiction to begin with. And Pilate is now thinking, “Thanks for nothing, Antipas.
” And now Pilate can't run away from it anymore, but still, he fears. His Roman superiors, more than anybody else, already knowing how they felt about his previous brutality towards his constituents. And so now, Pilate summoned to himself the chief priests, the rulers, and the people, and he said to them, “You brought this man to me on the ground that he is inciting the people to revolt, and behold, after examining him before you, I have found no basis at all in the case of this man for the charges which you are bringing against him.
No, nor has Herod, for he sent him back to us, and behold, nothing deserving death has been done by him. Therefore, I will punish him and release him. ” All of that following Herod Antipas's trial, which didn't yield any sort of guilty verdict, and then being sent back to Pilate, who already knew that Jesus was innocent of the charges of insurrection that the Jewish leaders had brought against him, is what is summarized in John 18:38b, which we'll read again: “And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, ‘I find no guilt in him.
’” Now Pilate is going to try one more tactic; he's got one more trick up his sleeve, which we'll talk about next week—the tactic of using an established custom to give the Jewish leaders in the crowd they’ve incited in the exterior or courtyard of the Praetorium an offer they can’t refuse. Instead, for now, don't be disheartened by those in influence or power, family members, or friends when they can't and won't understand biblical faith in Jesus for salvation and can only respond with childish mockery and laughter in our faces. Don’t be disheartened, brothers and sisters; those who don’t understand, as we all know, mock what they don’t understand.
That does not mean at all that you’re wrong. In fact, what it does is confirm that you have the truth. As Paul writes to the Corinthian Church, “For the word of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” something to laugh at, something to make fun of; “but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
” For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of those who have understanding I will confound. ” “Where is the wise person? Where is the Scribe?
Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world, through its wisdom, did not come to know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
For indeed, Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness. But to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, for the foolishness of God is wiser than mankind, and the weakness of God—again, hyperbolic language—there is no weakness of God, but if there was, the weakness of God is stronger than mankind. ” As you’ve heard me reference time and time again, God purposely created His Plan of Salvation and the understanding of His word to only come through the opening of spiritual eyes through His Holy Spirit to those He’s chosen since before the foundations of the world were laid.
So when the so-called smartest people of the world say there is no God, all that is proving what we just read here. It can’t be stumbled upon; it can’t be found through scientific discovery, human philosophy, psychology, or spiritual enlightenment. It can only be found through the opposite of all of that, and that’s through the Holy Spirit leading you to repentance of your personal sin and taking for yourself that the sinless God-man paid the price for your sin on your behalf, rising again on the third day.
Only then will your understanding be opened by the Holy Spirit to understand the rest of God's word and how God wants us to view this world and everything going on in it. Those who refuse to see their sin for what it really is before the most holy God, and therefore those who refuse to repent of it, and those who reject Jesus as both Savior and King over the rest of their lives will never understand any of it; they will understand none of it. Again, all those who can’t understand can do is mock.
They laughed at and mocked Noah; they laughed at and mocked the prophets who told them they would be destroyed by Assyria and Babylon; they laughed at and mocked the royal Messianic Deliverer, Son of God. They will laugh at and mock us in these last days of Noah, as Jesus says, all the way up to His rapture of us as His church and their swift Great Tribulation destruction. They laughed in the face of the King of the universe, who will judge them in perfect justice and righteousness someday.
The Holy Spirit confirms in us that we have the truth and that we’re true children of God, as Romans 8 declares for us: seek to win others to see that truth, live out the truth in righteousness, and hold on to the promises of that truth no matter how many are laughing at us. That doesn’t change anything; that doesn’t change and will never change what the truth is. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank You for taking all of these details and events, looking at it as one in the different gospels, and putting it all together of what happened in between Pilate scoffing and sarcastically saying, “What is truth? ” to him. Standing before the Jewish leaders and saying, "I find no guilt in him," this experience and in this event of the Son of God standing before a childish, immature, earthly king, being mocked at, laughed at, humiliated, and then sent back to Pilate.
Lord, we thank you that what it shows to us is an example that evil people, people who did not understand why you were there, all they could do was mock, laugh at, and insult. And so, when we're laughed at, mocked, and insulted for our faith in the truth, our faith in you as our salvation, that doesn't mean anything; that doesn't change anything. The only person they're truly mocking and laughing at is you.
It has nothing to do with us; it has everything to do with you. One day, you will judge in perfect righteousness and justice. Then you're coming back for us.
Someday, we are your children; you have given us the truth. Let us find our spiritual rest in that. I pray all these things in Jesus' name.
Amen. Please stand with me as we close out our time.
