We’re reading Mark 15, one through 15. This is God’s holy word. And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.
And Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews? And he answered him, you have said so. And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you? But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.
Now at the feast, he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them, saying, Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews? For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him released for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, Then what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him! And Pilate said to them, Why, what evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, crucify him. So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible word. May it please the Lord to take his word, transform it in our lives into service for himself. Thanks be to God. Dear Heavenly Father, give our minds that clarity and focus that we need this morning. Help us to understand more of what Christ did for us. Help us to conform our lives to what he has done and in gratitude for what he has done. And help us, Lord, always to carry that message of Christ crucified wherever we go. We pray now especially your presence with us today. Do, Lord, pray for Kathleen as she’s away, and pray that you’ll help her to be a blessing where she’s helping. And help Chris, Lord, and thank you for what he’s done already. And now we look forward to what you have to say to us, in Jesus’ name, amen. What evil has he done? Jesus’ illegal trial before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin resulted in the Lord’s being condemned to death, essentially for blasphemy, although it says they leveled many charges against him.
But under Roman rule, only the foreign occupiers, that is the Romans, could carry out capital punishment. The high priests and his rigged jury wanted to have no trouble from the Romans on this occasion. And so they sent Jesus over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. declaring that the Romans must crucify Jesus as a seditionist.
In other words, they weren’t going to crucify him because the Jews said he was a blasphemer. Of course, that was totally wrong, but they weren’t going to use that as a reason. But if they said, no, he wants to overthrow Caesar, then, well, that was a different story. After all, Jesus had been called the King of the Jews, and there was not supposed to be any king but Caesar. In fact, that’s what they said to him, not in Mark’s gospel, but in another recording, they said, we have no king but Caesar. So that was their… ploy, their presented reason that the Romans should crucify him.
Well, we pick up today then with Jesus being examined by the governor, by Pontius Pilate. Now we have four points this morning. We’ll talk about what it means to be king of the Jews. Then we have the silence of the lamb. Notice it’s singular, not the lambs, but the silence of the lamb. The fate of the man who deserves crucifixion. That’s our third point. And finally, the governor who abandoned his sense of justice. The King of the Jews.
I remember having traveled a lot in my earlier years, that everywhere that the British had been, the coinage always had a picture on it. It was a picture of the Queen. I guess they’re making coins now with Charles’s impression on it, but I think the Queen was a nicer looking person. Jesus admits to being the king of the Jews. His impression was not on any of their coins. It still had Caesar’s impression on it.
But he did admit to being king of the Jews. Are you the king of the Jews? And let me make it colloquial here. Jesus said to him, you got that right. He said, yeah, you have said, and it is so. But notice that Jesus never admitted to any of the other charges against him. Well, he did this, he did that, he did the other thing, he remained silent. Never admitted to anything, but he did admit to being the king of the Jews.
Well, that being so, who made Jesus the king of the Jews? Did they have a great election and he won? Or was he so bold as to have King of the Jews on some sort of sign that he pinned on his breast or something? Were there others who went around saying, King of the Jews, King of the Jews?
Not that we know of, but we do know that God the Father. of course, placed him in the royal line. He could trace his human lineage from Mother Mary and stepfather Joseph all the way back to the very beginning of the kings of Israel, beginning with Saul and then going on forward. He was in that line of David particularly. You remember when Jesus was born, his father and mother had to go to Bethlehem because they were of the family of David.
So he was in the kingly line and God put him right there, but even that alone didn’t make him the king because the Lord said, this is my beloved son. If God is king, And most Israelites would have said, well, yes, in the end, God is king. And if Jesus is his beloved son, then he’s king, too, because they didn’t pass it from one to the other. It is all one triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So he was a king by the pronouncement of God the Father.
He is the king of the Jews, but is he the king of the Jews only? Is he only a king in Israel? Or is there a wider realm? Well, Scripture tells us that He has another wonderful title that’s all-inclusive. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So that means that in every nation and people where there’s a king or some sort of magisterial power, Jesus stands above them. Jesus is the King of everybody. He’s the Lord of all. King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Now you see a great king, and this is from a human perspective, but a great king lives and dies for his people. Now there have been many kings, of course, who only lived and died for themselves. But a great king, a truly great king, loves His people, and He lives and dies for His people.
Maybe it will be in battle. Maybe He’s a great warrior, leader. David was of that kind. He shares their troubles and crises. If the economy goes down, then he shares it with them. If the economy goes up, then he shares the prosperity with them. If he gains a victory, he celebrates with his people.
And he works to give his people glory, that is to make them profoundly wonderful people, and to give them peace. Jesus said, my peace I give you. Of course he was talking to the disciples in a very small group, but we can certainly apply it here. A great king will give his people peace. He’ll try to keep the wars away. He’ll try to make things stable, but if he has to go and drive those enemies back, then what he can present them at last with is peace. Peace. Again, the Lord said, my peace I give unto you.
Well, we look at Jesus again here, and Jesus is on a track to do all this, to defeat all the enemies, to carry his people through all kind of troubles and tribulations, to gain a final victory, and at last to bring them to glory and give them everlasting peace.
Isn’t that the kind of king that you would like to have? Isn’t that the kind of king that really Pilate, even the Roman Emperor Tiberius, whoever it was at that particular time, didn’t he want really to have peace and not to be worried. You know, they always say the crown rests uneasy on the head of the king because he’s afraid somebody will take it away from him. But here’s a king who can give you everything that you hope for, everything that you want. He is a great king.
Old Nathaniel, when he met Jesus, and Jesus said, I saw you there praying under the tree. And he said to Jesus, You are the king. of Israel, the king of everybody, as we have said, the king of the Jews. Well, we find this king of the Jews facing this little governor, if you will, a man of slight power, but yet with a power of some sort in the situation. He is the one now who is examining the Lord Jesus Christ.
In that movie called The Silence of the Lambs, which has nothing to do with religion, as near as I can tell, it was an idea that this one person, the girl who was involved there, was concerned about innocent people suffering. She would like for innocent people, those were the lambs, the innocent people, not to have to suffer. But Jesus came, you see, to take away the suffering.
He came truly to be their deliverer, and he himself would remain silent. Like a sheep before a shearer’s is done, so he opened not his mouth. That’s from Isaiah 53. So again, Jesus does not respond to Pilate when he says, don’t you care that they’re making all these charges against you? No, he’s saying, I am the silent lamb. that’s going to pay for their sins on the cross and rise again for their everlasting justification and life.
Now, were he taking this opportunity to be a teacher, And you’ll probably recognize that this is not really the time to say, gather around, I’m going to teach you. But were he teaching at this point, he could have explained a lot more about why he had to die, what the scriptures had predicted, and now how God had sent him for his people to be their true king and savior.
He could have taken a lot of time to do that, but he didn’t have much time. So he just remains silent before Pilate at this point. But even though he can’t be a teacher, we can put before you, he can put before you, something that’s very simple. A simple explanation.
Why did he come? Well, He came to die, yes. He came to rise again from the dead. He came to ascend into heaven and be at the right hand of the Father and to return again someday. Just those four things kind of sum up why He came. This Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world died and rose again and ascended and is coming again someday.
That’s where we can really be thankful. We don’t have to worry about the silence of Jesus before Pilate. Because the Word of God screams it out at us from every angle. This is your Savior. This is what He came to do. And if you trust Him, all this will come to you as well. When you die, you’ll rise again. He will take you to heaven. And He’ll seat you close to Him in heaven forever and ever. And He’s coming again just to do that very thing.
Now his silence, you see, makes things stay on point here. He doesn’t want to start thinking about something else. What about when he healed the sick? Or what about when he did this or that or the other thing? Just keep focused. Why is he being arrested? Why is he going through this? Keep that focus. Because nothing really matters. Nothing is worth pursuing except that there’s a Savior come into the world. And you don’t want to miss Him. You don’t want to misjudge Him. You don’t want to let Him slip away from you. Jesus says, I’m here for you. Look to Me and be saved. In the Old Testament, God said, look unto Me all the ends of the earth and be saved. And that’s exactly what Jesus is standing for here as He is with Pilate. Look unto Me and be saved.
Now the priests and Pilate himself and all these authorities, they expect answers. Pilate says, do you have no answer for all these people? But here’s the thing, Christ is the answer. Christ is the answer. You’ve seen that in literature, you’ve heard preachers maybe say, Christ is the answer. What does that mean? It means that you have the answer to your needs. Whatever’s troubling you, whatever is bothering the depths of your being, Christ is the answer to that. If you go to Him, you’ll find the solution for that. I think that’s really what Christ is trying to get across to Pilate and to anybody who may be looking on at this point.
You see, Jesus knows everything. You don’t have to explain to Him. He won’t stop you if you want to explain what’s bothering you and so forth. But Jesus knows everything. All knowledge is His. But what about Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived? A greater than Solomon is here. Jesus knows everything and He knows what everything means. He knows how it all fits together.
What are scientists and even philosophers and people who are trying to figure out the human condition, what are they doing? They’re trying to figure out, how does it all work? They say that Einstein was trying to find that one thing that would explain everything. The best of my knowledge, he never found Jesus, but if he had, he would have had the answer. What explains everything?
God, in the person of his son, who came into the world to save sinners. You see, His knowledge and our knowledge of Him is what matters. And I hope this morning you have that knowledge of Him. Do you know Him? This is what the Apostle Paul said, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings be conformed unto His death. He said, that’s the answer that I have found. That’s the answer that you and I need as well.
Well, we want to take a few minutes here and talk about the fate of the man who deserves crucifixion. Well, who deserved crucifixion? It wasn’t Jesus. He didn’t deserve crucifixion. You know what Pilate said? He said, I put on my judge’s hat, as much of the law as I know, as much about the Jews as I know, This man has done nothing wrong. That’s our title today. What evil has he done? Pilate said, I can’t find anything wrong here. Now, Pilate wasn’t perfect, of course. Pilate was going to say something like, just let me scourge him. Let me give him a beating and let him go, and that ought to satisfy you.
And they said, no, no, no. We want you to crucify him. There’s a man that you’ve probably heard of in history. His name was Joseph Mengele. He was the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, and people tried to catch him. He was a sly fellow. He couldn’t be found. He went to South America. He moved his residence from one country to another country. He finally died of a stroke. somewhere in Paraguay, evidently. But my point is that if any man deserved to be tried and executed for the things that he did, it was Joseph Mingle. He did terrible things as a medical doctor and the doctor in these concentration camps. But looking at our passage today, there’s another man that deserved to be tried and executed.
His name was Barabbas. Barabbas the murderer, the real seditionist, the real terrorist, if you will, nevertheless had some admirers. All those people wouldn’t have shouted, oh, give us Barabbas, give us Barabbas, if he hadn’t had some connection to maybe ridding the country of the Romans and having the Jews to have their own independent kingdom and so forth. And yet, He was a murderer. That’s what the Bible says. He was guilty of murder.
Terrorists make people afraid. And it’s not a sure thing. that the people would really want to have a murderer released. You know, if there was somebody in Westminster, you know, we’ll call him the strangler or something like that. You’ve read about this in other cities and places. There was somebody in Westminster who’s going around strangling people.
And the police said, well, we’ve decided to let him go. And unfortunately, that’s the case a lot of the time these days. But you would say, no, no, no, no, keep him locked up or execute him. We don’t want him in our society, among our people anymore. And you would think these people would have said Barabbas, not Barabbas.
Maybe they would have thought of another person, another name, but it’s very clear he says he was a murderer. His murder was connected to the insurrection. So he was a seditionist. He was a person who tried to overthrow Rome. And of course, that’s what they accused Jesus of trying to do, which was not true. But the terrorists made everybody afraid. And yet, there must have been some people that had second thoughts.
Well, who are we gonna ask for? Pilate said, shall I release the king of the Jews? Of course, he was mocking and being not serious at that point. But he said, I’ll release the king of the Jews and so forth. No, give us Barabbas, give us Barabbas. which shows how hard and unyielding to the Lord were the hearts of a great many of these people. But you know what?
Another thing that’s interesting here, they were talking about Barabbas and they were talking about Jesus, but there’s Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate was a murderer. He killed lots of people that he felt were troublemakers and people who were making life difficult for the Romans and even threatening the life of whoever was the Roman emperor at that time. But Pilate was a murderer and it describes later on that he had people killed and mixed their blood with the wine and all these. He was an evil man. So you’ve got three people here who are on trial in a sense. There’s no real trial going on. But you have Jesus who’s innocent. You have Barabbas, who’s guilty as there can be, and you have Pontius Pilate, who’s the guilty judge, who’s judging him.
Well, Pilate, of course, didn’t want to say, I’m going to offer myself for execution. No, he wasn’t going to say anything like that, but he did give in to the crowd and say, we’ll let Jesus take this punishment. Pilate feared riots. He was afraid the whole Jewish community would rise up and he would get blamed for it.
And so he turned Jesus over to the executioners. He knows Jesus is an innocent man. He knows Jesus is an otherworldly man. There’s something about Jesus that is not like any other man that he’s familiar with. but he can’t get himself to give in. He was cold-hearted, and so were the Jewish people, the leaders. They were cold-hearted and jealous. It says, out of envy, Pilate knew out of envy they had brought Jesus before him.
Well, Barabbas did get off. He was set free. Now there have been movies about Barabbas and how he came to trust the Lord and all, and I hope that’s true. There’s one movie where the actor who’s playing Barabbas says, He died in my place! Well, he did. If he believed in Him. That is, if he was truly a person committed to the Lord. Well, this is all we can say there. We have to move on then to the governor who abandoned his sense of justice. So we’re back to Pilate again here.
The Romans as a whole, the Roman civilization, had developed an admirable justice system. A lot of our modern judicial structure based on the Greeks and the Romans, they did contribute something to justice. Now, did they get it right? Were they always consistent? Of course not. as Pilate proves, but the Romans had an admirable justice system that carried men’s anxieties and calmed them down. When you have justice, when crooks and criminals are killed and put in jail and so forth, society settles down.
It’s a calming thing. It’s a blessing. And even though we can’t say, well, our society is fully based on the Bible, it is a lot of it, but the fact that we have Roman law and things that keep our society on the level plane, as it were, this is a blessing from God. And we can thank Him for that.
But it didn’t always work out for the best, and that’s what we’re going to see in Pilate, where he should have said, I’m standing firmly on Rome’s view of justice. He didn’t do that. He asked the uncomfortable questions, though. He said, why, what evil has he done? And I think that’s just a summary of the fact that he questioned. Tell me what he did. Did he rob anybody? Did he kill anybody? actually tear down anything? Although people were saying that he was going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Well we won’t get into that now, but you understand he was just being illustrative there.
But the fact is that Jesus didn’t have any accusations that were true. There was nothing concerning the Lord Jesus Christ that you could put forth in court and say He did this. All the Jews had witnesses. Well, I thought I heard Him say this and maybe that. They never had anything that would stand up in court, certainly not in Roman court. Pilate says, what do you want me to do? He didn’t commit any crimes. He began to ask these uncomfortable questions, and the only conclusion was, This is an innocent man. This is innocent blood if he is killed.
Now the fact is, you see, that Jesus is justice. You can look around, this is the Roman stuff again, but you can look around and see statues of justice. Justice has this measure, this weighing machine. and here’s this and here’s that. You’re supposed to have equal justice. This crime deserves this thing. There’s statues like this all over the place. Justice.
But Jesus is justice. How so? Well, first of all, justice says He’s innocent. Second of all, because He’s the King and in control of all things, He decides what’s right and what’s wrong. Jesus is justice. You’re not going to find justice really apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Any Roman or other point that you try to find, but it’s just going to tell you that what the Bible says is really the accurate way to decide justice. Now, of course, the Roman emperors, they said, no, we’re justice, we tell you what’s right. But Jesus is the King. Don’t misunderstand that. He is justice. He’s the King who settles everything correctly and He removes injustice. If you could say, what kind of leader do you want? We want a leader who who fixes everything that’s wrong and who establishes justice that you can live by.
That’s Jesus. The Jews abandoned biblical justice. If they had followed the Bible, they would never have crucified Jesus. This is what Paul said. He said, you’ve crucified the Lord of glory. Do you realize what a terrible injustice that was? You crucified the Lord of glory.
Jesus is justice. The fact is that by abandoning the Bible, then the Jews were able to get rid of Jesus. That’s always true for everybody. When you abandon the Bible, then there’s no more justice. Well, you have people who are unable then to praise righteousness. What do you want from your leaders? We want leaders that praise righteousness. How do they know what’s righteous? They read the Bible. And if they don’t read the Bible, then they’re inclined to corruption.
Pilate, and I said the Jews were unjust, but Pilate becomes unjust when? When he says, I better give in or the crowd will riot. I better give in or the, The situation here in Jerusalem will be such that the emperor will send somebody and take me away and put me in prison somewhere. Pilate becomes unjust. He buckles under the pressure.
What was the purpose of the Roman law and the Roman rule? Not to buckle under pressure. To stick with it. To have Roman civilization. To have Roman rule. And that’s where Pilate came from, but he said, wait a minute, wait a minute. I can’t let this happen. And so he turned Jesus over to the Roman soldiers who abused him and crucified him. Don’t be like Pilate. Stick with not Roman justice, but biblical justice with what the Bible says. Let that be the rule of your life and stand beside that no matter what. And don’t buckle. Pilate buckled. because he couldn’t stand firm. How can we avoid buckling?
Because the Holy Spirit that the Lord gives us will strengthen us. The Lord himself will stand beside us and hold us by the hand. The Lord will keep us. And even if we fall like Jesus did to the unjust, to injustice all around us, the Lord will see us through that and take us to be with him where justice prevails and no sin takes place.
May God help us not to be like Pilate, not to be like these Jews who cried out for Jesus to be crucified, but to say, Lord, you are the king. You are the Master. You are justice. You are my Savior. You’re the only thing that really is worth pursuing. God help me. Let’s pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we pray to be more committed to our Savior and what He stands for than to what the world stands for and the world’s inconsistencies. Help us to love our Lord and never to yield before Him. In Jesus’ name, Amen.