Behold the Man! Behold Your King!
Download MP3I invite you to open your bibles to John chapter 18. John chapter 18. But before we open up God's word together, I wanna talk about something unrelated to the sermon, but something that is a conviction of our church. I like to use the word conviction instead of values. Values seems kind of stagnant.
Joel Brooks:This is something that moves us forward in what we believe. And one of our convictions as a church that I think is really important as we grow is a conviction of hospitality. For those of you who are somewhat new to the church and you've come over to our house for dinner, you've heard me talk about this that hospitality is something that is extremely important to our church. Now, most Christians I would say all, but I know some Christians who aren't this. Most Christians are kind.
Joel Brooks:Alright? We have this general kindness to us. Also, most Southerners are kind. What I want to encourage us as God's people to do is to move past kindness in general to becoming a hospitable people. And what this means is if you're at the gym and you've got kind of the friends that you know there, just familiar faces who you are kind to, I would like you to take the next step further and become hospitable.
Joel Brooks:Maybe invite these people to your home for dinner. Invite them to go grab a drink after afterwards. The coworkers who you're kind to, I would like to encourage you to take the next step and now become hospitable too. To invite them into your home or to go get coffee or whatever your space is, invite them into that living space. It's a way of welcoming the stranger in.
Joel Brooks:This really is a reflection of the gospel. And and one of the reasons I just wanted to go ahead and remind us as a church that this is something that we hold on to is because come this Advent season, we are, as a church, gonna make a big push for all of us to do Advent gatherings. We started that last year and that is during the Advent season, we invite people into our homes, those who are unchurched, for a time where we sing some carols, we have a devotional, we have a time of fellowship, and we got to see such fruit from that last year with us just kind of putting a toe in. And this year, I would like us to just go all out in our pursuit of our unreached or our unchurched neighbors and coworkers. So we'll be making a big push for Advent gatherings, but I don't want that to be the first time you invite these people into your home.
Joel Brooks:I would love for that to be a natural extension of us reaching out to people. So I want to encourage before we even look at scripture this morning, challenge you this week to move past just a general kindness to becoming a hospitable people, and I believe that this reflects the gospel. Alright. This morning, our text is John chapter 18. We'll begin reading in verse 38 where we left off last week.
Joel Brooks:Pilate said to Jesus, what is truth? After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, I find no guilt in him, but you have a custom that I should release 1 man for you at Passover. So do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? They cried out again, not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.
Joel Brooks:Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him saying, 'Hail, king of the Jews!' And they struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, see, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, behold the man.
Joel Brooks:Then the chief priests and the officers saw him, and they cried out, crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him. The Jews answered him, we have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God. When Pilate heard these heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, where are you from?
Joel Brooks:But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, you will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and I have authority to crucify you? Jesus answered him, you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who has delivered me over to you has the greater sin.
Joel Brooks:From then on, Pilate sought to release him, But the Jews cried out, If you release this man, you are not a friend of Caesar's. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the stone pavement, and in Aramaic, Gabatha. Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover. It was about the 6th hour.
Joel Brooks:He said to the Jews, behold your king. They cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, we have no king but Caesar. So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.
Joel Brooks:This is the word of the lord. Pray with me. Our father we ask in this moment you would send your spirit to open up dull ears and hardened hearts, resistant wills so that we might both hear from you and obey you, that we might be transformed to become like your son Jesus. I pray that in this moment my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus, amen.
Joel Brooks:So last week we we began to look at the trial of Jesus. I use that word loosely because it's really a sham of a trial. Hurry together, done at night. No defense witnesses are called, but it's a trial nevertheless. And as Busby pointed out last week, Jesus isn't the only one on trial.
Joel Brooks:John's writing this in such a way to show that we're on trial, that the people there are on trial, that Pilate's on trial. And so the question to all of us is, what will our verdict about Jesus be? Who do we find him to be, and how will this change us? So let's pick up where we left off last week. Jesus has been brought before Pilate and Pilate seems to be growing convinced of Jesus's innocence.
Joel Brooks:So he goes back to the Jewish crowd and he says, that he doesn't personally find any guilt in this man Jesus. And then he mentions a custom that they've had. You know, I can release to you any prisoner you want. We do it this time of year. So would you like for me to release to you Barabbas or would you like for me to release to you Jesus?
Joel Brooks:Now it's interesting, all four Gospels record this story about Barabbas, this unusual story about Barabbas. It's important to every gospel writer. And I don't know I don't know about you, but the mental I have of Barabbas is this really kind of rough looking guy, you know, big kind of out of control beard. He he's a he's a robber. Other gospel writers describe him as a murderer as well.
Joel Brooks:And I think how could somebody, how could anybody choose to release Barabbas, a man like that, over gentle Jesus? How? Yet they do. And there's a likelihood that I would have as well. I might have wanted a person like Barabbas.
Joel Brooks:Barabbas here, he's described as a robber. Some of your bibles might have a little footnote there that says, or an insurrectionist. In other gospels, he's described as a murderer and a famous insurrectionist, one who was part of the rebellion against Rome. In other words, this guy was a terrorist against Rome. He was a freedom fighter for the Jews.
Joel Brooks:And so he didn't rob and kill any Jews, he was robbing and killing Romans. That's that's who Barabbas is. So when the people are given the choice to choose between Barabbas and Jesus, it really isn't over just 2 different people, it's over 2 completely different ways of trying to go about freedom. How do we go about trying to liberate ourselves from oppression? Do we choose somebody like Barabbas who will fight for us, who will grab power for us, or do we choose somebody like this meek and lowly Jesus?
Joel Brooks:Are we liberated by humbling ourselves and surrendering our wills to Jesus, or do we need to try to seize power and Lord over our enemies? That that's really the choice that's going on here. That that was their choice and that is our choice. It's a choice we actually face probably a 1000 times a day in all of our little decisions. How will we go about living life?
Joel Brooks:Is it a constant grab for power, constantly trying to one up another using whatever means necessary, fighting for our own sovereignty, Or is it surrendering to Jesus? Now of course, the problem, with with picking somebody like Barabbas is that no matter how much power you you gain, it's never gonna be enough. I don't care how great your insurrectionist is. I don't care if it's William Wallace or George Washington, people who will fight for your freedom. There there can be some small victories there, but they can't deliver you from the ultimate enemies of sin and death.
Joel Brooks:No matter how powerful your insurrectionists are, they will always leave you wanting. Only God can liberate you from these enemies, and this is what he is doing through his son Jesus Christ here. Now the reason this that this story of Barabbas is told in all 4 gospels is not only that we could see the 2 very different ways that we could go about trying to liberate ourselves, but it's also that we can see how freedom can come to even somebody like us. We often use the language how Jesus died in our place, but there's only one person in history who can say Jesus physically took my place on the cross, and that's Barabbas. Jesus physically took his place and Barabbas is being put forth here as a picture of what substitutionary atonement looks like.
Joel Brooks:We deserve to die, yet Jesus took our place. I often wonder what what Barabbas might have even been thinking as this was leading up if he could hear the crowds crying out because the only things he would have heard was his name, Barabbas, Barabbas. And the next thing he would have heard was, crucify him, crucify him. And then he's brought out. What a shock when he sees Jesus taking his place.
Joel Brooks:That's what substitutionary atonement looks like. The people, they they choose Barabbas and then Pilate takes Jesus away, sends him away to be flogged. And what we what we see next is honestly just kinda hard. It's hard to read. It's hard to read the humiliation of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Look at chapter 19 verse 1, then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him saying, hail, King of the Jews!' And struck him with their hands. These Roman soldiers despised the Jewish people. They despised having been soldiers commissioned to serve the Roman Empire in this remote area in Palestine where they're surrounded by these religious nuts who they wanted nothing to do with. And so Jesus is brought before them and they see in Jesus a representative of all these people, the people who they hate and despise, and all of their pent up anger is unleashed on this one man.
Joel Brooks:They dress him up as a king mockingly, a clown king. They weave a crown of thorns, and they they press it in on his head. They find some kind of purple cloth or purple robe, and they drape it around him. We know from the other gospels that they actually got a rod or a reed and they put it in his hand as a as a makeshift scepter, and they mockingly bow down before him. Oh king of the Jews, king of the Jews.
Joel Brooks:The other gospel writers say that they would take away his scepter, his rod, and they would repeatedly beat him with it over and over in between their mocking worship. Over and over again, they would spit in his face. They would they would punch him. But this is even more than just torture, this is even more than abuse. They're they want to mock and humiliate him to the uttermost.
Joel Brooks:And you've just got to ask the question, why? Why do they want to treat Jesus so poorly? And every gospel writer shows us when you're reading through the gospels, every one of them, you get to the scene, it slows down. It's almost like if it's a film, you start seeing things in slow motion because the writers want you to see not just the torture of Jesus, but how the people go about mocking him and humiliating him. If the Jews just wanted him dead, they would have stoned him, but they want him crucified because they want him humiliated.
Joel Brooks:Now I've asked a number of unbelievers over the years, what do you think about Jesus? I'd love to hear just your thoughts about Jesus, and I've heard some really interesting answers, but I've never heard any person say a negative word about Jesus. I've never had anybody throw Jesus under the bus. They actually say really good things about him. Like, I think Jesus was a a great religious leader.
Joel Brooks:I think he was a he was a pacifist. He was a very moral person, a a gifted teacher. I think Jesus helped a lot of people and and they'll go on and on. There's never a negative thing, which makes you wonder, so why was he mocked and killed? Why?
Joel Brooks:Jesus wasn't killed for being a pacifist. He wasn't killed because he loved people too much. They're they're not repeatedly hitting him in the head saying, hey. That's because this is for your Sermon on the Mount. This is because you told us to love others as we love ourselves.
Joel Brooks:They're not spitting in his face because he came up with the golden rule. None of those reasons there. And it's not just the soldiers who are mocking him, everybody's joining in in the mocking of Jesus. You actually see when he is hanging from the cross, the people hanging on, the person on his right and the person on his left are mocking Jesus. Even the criminals being crucified mocked him.
Joel Brooks:So from the highest powers to the lowest people, they all in unison want to see Jesus humiliated. Why? It's because he taught forgiveness, because he said things like blessed are the poor. It's because of who he claimed to be. It all boils down to who he claimed to be.
Joel Brooks:And Jesus claimed to be the son of God. He claimed to be lord over all. And nothing brings out The hostility of the human heart is when you claim authority over someone. You cry out, no nobody rules over me. No way.
Joel Brooks:Who do you think you are? To prove this point, I dare you I challenge you to a little, social experiment. So after this service is over, you know, Post Office Pies is is just a block away. So I want you to walk out to post office Pies like many of you have done many times, but I'd like you to maybe hold up this sign right here that just says this right here. Alright?
Joel Brooks:I want you just to hold this up. And when you get to the intersection, I just want you to pause for about 2 minutes and hold this up. Now likely, you have walked over there countless times and no one has ever ever yelled at you, what do you think will happen if you stand there and you hold this? Why? Why?
Joel Brooks:Nobody tells me what to do. I I never even thought about doing that until you told me not to. But now I'm gonna unleash on you. That's the depravity in every human heart. And then we come across somebody like Jesus who claims ultimate authority, authority over your every breath.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is mocked because of his claims. He claimed to be the messiah, the king. He claimed to be the son of God, and it was for this reason that everybody hated him. I shared this illustration a couple of years ago, but it bears repeating. The author Anne Rice, she she wrote Interview with a Vampire among other famous works.
Joel Brooks:And when she was doing research for one of her books, she needed to research the life of Jesus. Now she was certainly not a believer by any means. She flowed in a lot of liberal circles. She was kind of an atheist, and, she needed to research Jesus because she didn't understand anything about him. She only knew that, he was kind of made fun of a little bit or scoffed at by some of her liberal scholar friends.
Joel Brooks:Christianity is just a hoax. So she wanted to see for herself and as she dug in to the life of Jesus, she found herself believing in the Son of God and the resurrection. She wrote this, the skeptical arguments that insisted that the gospel writers were suspect or that they were written too late to actually be eyewitnesses. All those arguments lacked coherence and were full of conjecture. Some of the books I read were nothing more than assumptions piled upon assumptions.
Joel Brooks:Absurd conclusions were reached on little or no data at all. This whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified and had nothing to do with Christianity's founding, which came much later, that whole picture which had floated around in the liberal circles I had frequented for 30 years, that case was never made. But not only was that case not made, I found something even more surprising. I discovered that these scholars, so many of them that devoted their life to New Testament scholarship, actually disliked Jesus. Some pitied him as a helpless failure.
Joel Brooks:Others sneered at him and showed outright contempt. Now, I had never come across this in any other field of research I had studied. For example, the people who go into Elizabethan studies are out to prove that Elizabeth was an idiot. People in Elizabethan studies do not make snickering remarks about her or spend their careers trying to pick her apart, pick apart her historical reputation. Now occasionally, scholars will study a villain in history, but even then they tend to argue for the importance of his or her place in history.
Joel Brooks:But in general, scholars don't spend their lives in the company of historic figures who they openly despise, but these New Testament scholars detest and despise Jesus Christ. Interesting. They despise him because of his claims. Because of his claims, nobody tells me what to do. And so they mock him.
Joel Brooks:If Jesus is who he says he is, well then there's nothing else for us to do except to bow down before him and live a life in complete obedience to him. But if he isn't who he says he is, then let's join in the chorus of crucify. Any person who is given the serious thought is going to realize that there aren't any other options for us. C. S.
Joel Brooks:Lewis, he famously wrote this, said, I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus, which is this, now I'm ready to accept Jesus as a good moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That's the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level of a man who says he is a poached egg or else a madman or something worse. You can either shut him up for a fool, you can spit in his face and say he has a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him lord.
Joel Brooks:But let no one come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher because he has not left that open to us. He never intended to. And this is what we have been seeing throughout the gospel of John. This is why people hate Jesus. This is why he is still mocked.
Joel Brooks:He is not gonna ever allow you to just treat him as normal. Either fall down at his feet and call him lord or join in the course calling crucify him. And if whatever view you have out there of Jesus doesn't put you in one of those camps, it's because you haven't taken his claim seriously. Well, after Jesus is repeatedly beaten and mocked, Pilate then presents him to the people. Look at verse 5, so Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.
Joel Brooks:Pilate said to them, behold the man. Behold the man. Behold the man. It's nearly impossible to to read this. If you're familiar with Old Testament scriptures, it's nearly impossible to to not immediately have Isaiah 52 come to mind, which Isaiah was prophesying about the messiah, and he starts off that chapter by saying behold him, but then he describes his appearance, and he says his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance, and his form was beyond that of the children of mankind.
Joel Brooks:Jesus was beaten up to the point where not only was he not recognizable as Jesus, he was beaten to the point where he was not recognizable as human. His body so bloody, his face so swollen, him dressed up like a clown king, you wouldn't recognize him as a man. Yet he is not just a man, he is the man. Behold the man. He is the representative of the entire human race standing before you.
Joel Brooks:He represents you. He represents me. Do you do you know what the two crimes were that Jesus was accused of officially accused of? The two crimes, blasphemy and treason. Those were the two crimes, why why he why he is at this point here, blasphemy and treason.
Joel Brooks:Blasphemy because he said he was God, he was God's son. Treason because he was a king, therefore a threat to Caesar. These were also the two crimes of Adam and Eve, blasphemy and treason. When Adam and Eve took the fruit and they ate it, it says that they wanted they wanted to be like god. They wanted to make their own rules, to be their own sovereign Lord.
Joel Brooks:Nobody tells them what to do. And of course, it's treason because it's being done against their creator King. The charges of blasphemy and treason made against Jesus are actually the charges that could be made against us as well, because the root sin under every sin is that we want to be our own god. We want to rule ourselves. We want a kingdom in which we can rule and we can be king.
Joel Brooks:So so humans as a race, don't think of us as just kind of lost sheep or some kind of wayward prodigal sons and daughters. No. You are traitorous rebels fighting against God. That is the picture of humanity and yet here we see Jesus taking our punishment for us, Jesus being punished for the crimes that every person in here has committed, behold the man. Let's skip down to verse 12.
Joel Brooks:There's a lot here, but I want to go down to where Pilate makes his official decision. From then on, Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, if you release this man, then you are no you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the stone pavement. In Arabic, Gabbatha.
Joel Brooks:Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover. It was the 6th hour. He said to the Jews, behold your king. They cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king?
Joel Brooks:The chief priest answered, We have no king but Caesar. So Pilate, he has brought out to the terrace outside the palace here the seat, the the judgment seat. So when Pilate sits on this seat, he now makes an official decision, official judgment by Rome. And in this case, he's the judge of the world. And what will their verdict be on who Jesus is?
Joel Brooks:Now, I want you to notice how meticulous John is at locating the time and the place of this event. He tells us that the seed is brought out to the stone payment, to a place called Gobatha, the time of day. Well, it was during the Passover, during the time of preparation. It was the 6th hour. He is really fixing us in on this one place, this one time here because it's a momentous occasion.
Joel Brooks:This is a huge event that is happening here in which judgment is being given against the son of god. This this isn't just Jesus being lynched by a mob. This is a actual judgment from the human race over this man Jesus. And Jesus faces the charges that all of us will someday face. Jesus comes to this place of judgment as our representative to face our charges, to stand in our place.
Joel Brooks:Pilate says to the Jews, he says, behold your king, to which they respond, crucify him. Crucify him. We have no king but Caesar. And when you hear this, your heart should break because it broke the heart of God. We have no king but Caesar.
Joel Brooks:This is the pattern the Israelites have had all throughout the bible. This is them being delivered from Egypt, going to the promised land and they're like, we would rather go back to Egypt. We would rather be slaves under pharaoh than to go to this promised land. This is the Israelites living in exile in Babylon. And then God says, go back to Jerusalem and rebuild it.
Joel Brooks:And they say, we don't wanna go back to the holy city. We'd rather just stay here in oppression in Babylon. They're rejecting nothing short of all the messianic promises given to Israel. We have no king but Caesar. Throughout this great gospel, John has repeatedly been asking us to behold Jesus.
Joel Brooks:The gospel opens up in chapter 1, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Behold Him. And now we're told to behold the man, to behold the king. We're we're being invited here to to behold God. You wanna know what God looks like?
Joel Brooks:Look at Jesus here, dressed up as a mock king, being beaten beyond human recognition. This is what God looks like. I love the gospel of Mark, it makes this so clear as you're reading through. Over and over again, Jesus' a question of Jesus' identity is brought up. So Jesus can heal people.
Joel Brooks:People walk away going, who is this man? Jesus can calm a hurricane, people walk away going, who has the power to do this? Jesus can forgive people and they're like, who has the right to forgive people? Over and over again, Jesus, he has these mighty displays of power and no one in the gospel of Mark ever gets it. They always walk away going, who is this guy?
Joel Brooks:And then you get to the end of Mark's gospel. And you see Jesus beaten, broken, bleeding on the cross, and a Roman centurion of all people looks at Him and says, surely this was the Son of God. You wanna know who God is? You behold the man and you behold the king here, The one who was beaten and broken for you. Behold the beaten, mocked, despised representative of the entire human race.
Joel Brooks:Behold the man who stands accused of your crimes though he is innocent. Behold the king wearing a crown of thorns, thorns representative of the the curse on their human race. Behold the king who who liberates you from sin and death. Behold him. Be be drawn to his beauty.
Joel Brooks:To to behold someone means to to to just stop and just look. See him as beautiful. Pray with me. Lord, in this moment we do stop and we behold the mystery of you, God, held up in a bruised and broken and bleeding Jesus. Thank you that he is our representative.
Joel Brooks:Thank you that he is our king. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
