Welcome to Day 2181 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

The Gospel of John – 38 – Rush to Judgment – Daily Wisdom

Putnam Church Message – 11/06/2022

The Gospel of John – Part 5: Vindication Of The Word – Rush To Judgment

Today we continue our series on the Good News according to John the Apostle. Last week, we saw Jesus, the truth made flesh, Enduring Injustice with Grace in a message titled “Truth on Trial.”

 Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”

Our scripture for today is John 18:28-19:16. John does not include many details about the six trials which Christ faced. We know there were three before the Jewish officials and three before the Roman officials. We covered the first three last week, and this week will focus on the trials before the Roman officials, as Jesus is turned over for crucifixion by the High Priest and Sanhedrin. The Roman officials know that Jesus is not guilty of any crimes, and certainly of the death penalty, but they cave to the political pressures in a “Rush to Judgment.”

 Jesus Before Pilate

Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness they did not enter the palace, because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and asked, “What charges are you bringing against this man?”

“If he were not a criminal,” they replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.”

Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.”

“But we have no right to execute anyone,” they objected. This took place to fulfill what Jesus had said about the kind of death he was going to die.

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him. But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?”

They shouted back, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising.

Jesus Sentenced to Be Crucified

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.

Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”

As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”

But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”

The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”

When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”

Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.

“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.

 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”

“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.

“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.

Vindication of the Word (John 18:1–21:25)

Rush to Judgment John 18:28–19:16

By the time the first two trials ended, Jesus was bleeding and badly bruised, but no official sentence had been handed down. Remember, the trials took place under cover of night and, therefore, would not have been considered legitimate by anyone the Sanhedrin hoped to impress: neither the common Jews nor their Roman overlords. John’s narrative omits any mention of the third trial before the Sanhedrin, perhaps because his point had been made sufficiently clear. The third Jewish trial was merely for show; it changed nothing.

The third trial began around six o’clock in the morning. The high priest summoned the council to the official place of judgment, a semicircular hall at the east end of the Royal Portico of the temple. While the trial took place right after daybreak, in the proper venue, and before the eyes of the public, the religious leaders still violated their own rules. Their purpose was not to uncover the truth, but to find a charge that would satisfy a very specific set of requirements.

By the end of the third trial, the religious leaders settled on the charge of treason against Rome. Jesus had claimed to be the Christ, whom Jews widely regarded as their hope of expelling their Roman oppressors. The ruling of treason would convince the Roman governor to execute Jesus, while before the Jews discrediting Him as a blasphemer. They were convinced they could please everyone. The empire would be rid of a potential revolutionary; and once Jesus had been executed, the people would reject Him as just another false Messiah. It was an ideal solution that brought together an unlikely coalition of Pharisees (mainly scribes and lay teachers), Sadducees (aristocratic chief priests), and Zealots (underground revolutionaries).

As the religious leaders hauled Jesus from the temple to be condemned before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, the charge against Jesus changed from blasphemy to treason. He would be judged by Roman law rather than the code of the Jews. His trial before Pilate followed a standard four-step process:

• Accusation (18:28–29)
• Interrogation (18:33–35)
• Defense (18:36–38a)
• Verdict (18:38b)

18:28–29

The Roman Governor usually resided 70 miles northwest of Jerusalem in Caesarea, a city built by Herod the Great in honor of Caesar Augustus and designed to resemble Rome. When visiting Jerusalem, Pilate occupied the governor’s official residence, called the Praetorium, which had been the palace of Herod the Great. Since it was the home of a Gentile, Jews were unwilling to enter the Praetorium for fear of becoming ritually defiled. John uses this irony to significant effect. The religious authorities remained ritually pure even as they corruptly handed their victim over to Gentiles for execution.

18:30–32

The Jewish officials and their governor exchange illustrate their hatred for Rome. Their sarcastic reply said, “If this man were not guilty of something serious, we wouldn’t be here, Pilate.” Moreover, they appeared to expect Pilate’s unquestioning cooperation. Romans were not opposed to killing an individual in exchange for civil peace, and Pilate certainly didn’t mind killing Jews. However, he already had two strikes against him due to his close friendship with another high-ranking official, Lucius Sejanus, who was recently executed for planning an overthrow of the emperor, so he cautiously proceeded.

When Pilate challenged the Jewish leaders to prosecute Jesus according to Jewish law, the leaders revealed their problem. Rome generally allowed conquered civilizations to govern themselves, but reserved capital punishment for itself. The Jews wanted Jesus dead but lacked the authority to kill Him.

18:33–38

Once an accusation was made, the defendant was interrogated. This was his opportunity to tell his side of the story. Pilate asked Jesus the pertinent question, presumably because he knew the official charge against Jesus. Pilate had likely witnessed His Triumphal Entry just days earlier (12:13). He wanted to know if Jesus was, in fact, in the process of overthrowing the government in Judea. There was no simple answer to the Governor’s question. Jesus didn’t come to lead the Hebrews in a military or political uprising, yet the coming of God’s kingdom would change everything.

Pilate wanted to know if Jesus was a threat to the rule of Rome. He was, but not in the way Pilate feared. Kingdoms of earth are founded upon power—military might, intellectual prowess, political cunning, financial abundance, and social advantage. The kingdom of heaven is founded upon truth, and the arrival of the Messiah on a lonely Bethlehem night was an invasion. Consequently, each individual must choose which kingdom they will serve: the kingdoms of earth or the kingdom of God, kingdoms founded upon power, or the kingdom founded upon truth.

Jesus reassured Pilate, in effect, “Not to worry, Governor. My followers are not arming for a physical war because My kingdom is founded upon truth, not power.”  Pilate spurned Jesus’ choice for truth over power. “What is truth?” indeed! The Roman world was not much different from ours today. Pilate didn’t rise to power and prominence by championing the cause of truth. Instead, the Romans were relentlessly pragmatic. Truth is the tool of expediency. In their minds, “the victors write history,” and truth is whatever the powerful say it is. But according to Jesus, choosing between truth and expediency is choosing which kingdom to serve.

Jesus presented Pilate with a choice—the same choice He offers us: compromise truth and advance your status in the kingdom of this world, or walk in the light of truth and receive unseen rewards of God’s kingdom.

Pilate could not afford the political no-win scenario presented to him that morning. His good friend Sejanus was recently executed as a traitor, so Pilate would not likely survive another disagreement with Jewish aristocrats. Each time they appealed to Rome, they always gained the upper hand. And the last letter he received from Tiberius made it clear he had better respect Jewish sensibilities or suffer the end of his career … or worse. So now Jesus stood before him, innocent of any crime against Rome yet condemned by a riotous crowd that insisted Jesus was a serious threat to Tiberius.

John does not record the Lord’s fifth trial before Herod Antipas. (Bulletin) According to Luke 23:6–12, Pilate tried to pawn off his problem by sending Jesus to Antipas, son of Herod the Great and the current ruler of Galilee. But Antipas would have none of it. After humiliating Jesus, he returned Jesus to Pilate, wearing one of his royal garments as a joke. Pilate’s gesture had gained him a much-needed friend in Antipas, but Jesus remained his problem to solve.

Eventually, Pilate had to render a verdict. /Having heard the accusation, interrogated the defendant, and heard His defense (John 18:36), Pilate declared, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” (18:38).

18:39–40

Antipas wouldn’t take Jesus off Pilate’s hands, so he needed to resolve the issue another way. A potential solution sat in a cell roughly two thousand feet from the Praetorium: a known terrorist. Rome hated robbers and pirates, who disrupted trade over land and sea. But in Judea, robbery and murder came with a political agenda.

The man’s name was reported to be Barabbas. He was a notorious enemy of the state, a thief and a killer, the kind of man Rome relished the opportunity to kill in the most excruciating manner known: crucifixion.

According to the custom of Pilate’s predecessors, one man could be released from prison during the Passover festival. He thought he could tempt the mob into releasing Jesus by giving them a less attractive option. If the Jews chose to release Barabbas, a genuine enemy of Rome, they risked their friendship with Tiberius. Certainly, they would choose to release the innocent man rather than invite the wrath of Caesar. But Pilate underestimated the religious leaders’ hatred for Jesus.

19:1

Pilate’s scheme didn’t solve his problem; it merely tightened the political vise closing around him. They had called his bluff, and now he would turn a dangerous criminal loose to harass Rome further. Desperate to find a solution and reluctant to release Barabbas, Pilate hoped to satisfy the mob’s bloodlust by sentencing Jesus to “the halfway death.”

John’s simple statement, “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged,” is shockingly plain. Jesus was led to the Roman garrison (the Fortress of Antonia) (Bulletin) adjacent to the temple and given over to an expert in torture called a lictor, who used a whip with long, leather tails called a flagrum. The leather straps could be merely knotted, or, if the lictor wanted to inflict more damage, he could choose a whip with small, metal weights or even bits of sheep bone braided into the straps. “The iron balls would cause deep contusions, and the leather thongs and sheep bones would cut into the skin and subcutaneous tissues. Then as the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.”

According to a forensic pathologist, the scourging typically resulted in “rib fractures and severe lung bruises and lacerations with bleeding into the chest cavity and partial or complete collapse of the lung.” In addition, the lictor was an expert in the art of torture and knew precisely how to beat a man within an inch of his life.

19:2–3

Because a scourging could potentially send the victim into shock in less than five minutes, the soldiers turned the event into a spectacle, taking delight in humiliating the victim. Three or four lashes would be followed by taunting. Then, as the victim recovered, more lashes. This continued until the victim could bear no more without dying.

When the lictor completed his gruesome task, he draped Antipas’s royal cloak over Jesus’ tattered, swollen flesh and sent Him back to Pilate wearing a crown of thorns, in mockery of His alleged kingship.

19:4–7

Pilate hoped that seeing Jesus humiliated and beaten nearly to death would satisfy the angry mob in his courtyard, but they would accept nothing less than a sentence of crucifixion. So Pilate challenged the religious leaders to defy Rome by carrying out the death sentence themselves. But their reply took the Governor off guard. The title “Son of God” was significant to Romans. Caesar Augustus declared himself the son of a god because he was heir to the power and titles of Julius Caesar, who had been declared a god. Moreover, the title “Son of God” casts new light on the Lord’s earlier statement, “My kingdom is not of this world” (18:36).

19:8–11

At this point, Pilate began to panic. Before, he had written off Jesus as a harmless lunatic. His earlier question, “Are You the King of the Jews?” (18:33), was condescending, prompting Jesus’ question in return, “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?” This time, Pilate asked earnestly, “Where do you come from?” (19:9)

Jesus had already answered the question, so there was no need to respond again. When Pilate threatened to exercise power over the Son of God, Jesus clarified His earlier statement about the kingdoms of earth and the kingdom of heaven. The world has changed. The rule of evil, which prizes power over truth, will fall. Its days are numbered. Truth trumps power—if not sooner, then ultimately. No one on earth can exercise power unless God permits it. And each must account for their use of power, whether in defense of truth or in seeking its destruction. Jesus reminded Pilate that his power had been granted from above and that he was subject to divine judgment. This dialog was Jesus’s final plea for Pilate to submit to the kingdom of God /rather than the kingdom of Tiberius (or any other earthly kingdom).

In Jesus’ final statement to Pilate, He pronounced a grave judgment on “the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” The “one” could have been Satan, Judas, Annas, or Caiaphas; each played a crucial role in trying to destroy Jesus. They did not act alone, however. The priests were guilty, as were the members of the Sanhedrin, and the crowd that called for crucifixion. Therefore, I suggest that the “the one” applies to each Hebrew who took part in delivering Jesus over for execution. The Lord’s accusers likely could hear this dialog, so He may have said this as a warning to be personally applied by each individual.

While Pilate ultimately rejected truth to preserve his power, Jesus recognized that he sinned in ignorance. The people who had handed Him over for execution committed the “greater sin” because they did so with every benefit of divine revelation. They prized the Lord’s covenant with Abraham. They memorized the Scriptures. They studied the prophecies. Yet, despite their daily interaction with divine truth, they chose to sin. While Pilate disposed of a political nuisance, the Hebrew leaders plotted to execute their Messiah.

19:12–16

By now, Pilate was frantically searching for a way to release Jesus without losing the favor of the Jewish aristocracy and jeopardizing his advancement in the kingdom of Tiberius. So, finally, he brought Jesus out to them and tried to shame the crowd into backing down. But the mob wielded the ultimate threat: they planned to inform Tiberius that Pilate had supported another king.

Pilate had to choose. Tiberius or Jesus? The kingdoms of earth/ or the kingdom of heaven? Power or truth?

The pressure of the world proved too great for Pilate. As is true of most politicians, public popularity trumped personal integrity. When forced to choose, he elected to trust in power, to serve a kingdom of the world. Without another word, he moved to the official place of judgment called the bema seat. This seat was a raised platform from which official decrees were read, including verdicts and sentences in criminal trials. Pilate decided to appease the Jewish authorities. “Here is your king!” The priest and mob shouted back its choice: “We have no king but Caesar.” And with that, the crowd sided with the kingdoms of the world.

John notes the time as noon on the day of preparation for the Passover. John’s reference to time and day always has theological or symbolic meaning. At noon on the day of preparation, priests in the temple began slaughtering the Passover lambs in keeping with Exodus 12:6. Because they had so many worshipers to serve—as many as 100,000 pilgrims—the priests worked through the afternoon until sundown. John wanted to stress that Jesus had been sentenced at noon and would be hanging on the cross as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the temple.

The six trials of Jesus Christ—all unfair and prejudiced—are now history. Centuries have reduced the bodies of Jesus’ enemies to dust. God only knows about their souls. Nevertheless, their choice remains ours today: Truth /or power? God’s way /or the way of the world? Faith /or works? Grace /or pride? Pilate tried in vain to seek a middle way, a scheme in which he could serve both or neither without having to choose, but there is none. Jesus calls all people to serve His kingdom /rather than the world’s kingdoms. And so we must choose.

Application: John 18:28–19:16

The Road Not Taken

In 1920, Robert Frost intrigued us with the opening lines of his classic poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood…

Unfortunately, our journey through life brings us to forks on the road that are not so wistful or winsome. The choice we face is not between convention and curiosity, but between truth and power, riches on earth or treasure in heaven, earthly success or spiritual purity, short-term comfort or eternal reward. And the urge to preserve our comfort in the here and now can powerfully override our decision to obey God. Let’s face it: His rewards are sometimes intangible and delayed, which makes obedience a matter of faith and trust.

Pontius Pilate stood at a critical juncture—for him, a choice having an eternal impact. He had to decide which kingdom he would serve. To render a “not guilty” verdict and release Jesus would have destroyed his political career and may have invited severe punishment or death from Rome. So, instead of submitting to the kingdom of God, Pilate set truth aside for the sake of power, worldly success, and short-term comfort.

The road we travel forks more than once. Our initial decision to trust in Jesus Christ is the most crucial choice, but it is the first of many. Each day, we must choose which kingdom we will serve. Will you submit to truth or succumb to power?

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Next, we come to that faithful, horrible day prophesied by John the Baptizer in John 1:29, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Christ is the Lamb of God sacrificed for us in a message titled “Death on a Cross.” Please read John 19:17-37 in preparation for that message.

Thank you for joining me on this Wisdom-Trek today. If you found this podcast insightful, subscribe, then encourage your friends and family to join us and come along tomorrow for another day of Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.

Remember, as we seek wisdom, we are better equipped to navigate life’s challenges and make choices that lead to a fulfilling and righteous life. Until next time, may your trek be filled with the wisdom and guidance of the Almighty. as I serve you through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Everyday! See you next time for more wisdom from God’s Word!