Pilate's Fickleness

I love you, my Lord, for giving to me your great salvation, setting me free from sin and death and the kingdom of Satan's destruction. There's power in the blood to cleanse all my sin. I know I'm forgiven.

I'm reigning in life. I'm living by faith. I'm now united with Christ.

I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord. And I live in my heart. He's been raised from the dead.

I confess with my mouth that Jesus is my Lord. And now I have life. Setting me free from sin and death and the kingdom of Satan's destruction.

There's power in the blood to cleanse all my sin. I know I'm forgiven. I'm reigning in life.

I'm living by faith. I'm now united with Christ. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord.

And I live in my heart. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord.

And now I have life. Now I have life. By the Spirit of God.

And everybody together. I love you, my Lord, for giving to me your great salvation. I'm setting you free from sin and death and the kingdom of Satan's destruction.

There's power in the blood to cleanse all my sin. I know I'm forgiven. I'm reigning in life.

I'm living by faith. I'm now united with Christ. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord.

Jesus is Lord. And I live in my heart. Facing grace from the dead.

I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord. And now I have life.

Now I have life. By the Spirit of God. I think we'll... I think we'll... Join me as we love.

Join me as we love. And he'll join me to you. Lift up holy hearts to him.

And sing of what he's done. Come on up, your hearts to Him, and praise, glory to you, glory, glory to you. And it shall ring with the sound of praise, and the light shall light with the lamp of His covenant.

There shall be, and His glory shall live, in the Kingdom of His love. Please be seated. John's Gospel in chapter 19, the first couple of verses.

John 19, 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 struck Him in the face.

Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, Look, I am bring 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. I've always had and still maintain quite a sense of pride in the British judicial system.

I have no reason to suppose that it is not the best system and the fairest in the world. Now the Romans were not primitive people. Actually in their day they brought in one of the most sophisticated empires that the world had known.

And there was a phrase that you sometimes used to hear in the bazaars and in magistrates' courts in the various countries that composed the empire. It was the little expression Pax Romana. That's Latin for the peace of Rome.

And the Romans by and large were very fair people. Their law was reasonable. Now here I have a problem.

You see if you read intelligently the passage that I just brought to your attention, if you were following, here you see Pax Romana, Lex Romana. The law of Rome at its worst, unusually so. For you read that a good man, a man that reckoned to be innocent by his judge, is flogged.

And ultimately even worse things are done to his person. Now how do you square that? The judge's name, well he's well known to everyone. He is rehearsed, at least his name is mentioned every time the Apostles' Creed is repeated.

Pontius Pilate. Seven times. No more, no less.

If you check through the Gospels and my arithmetic here is right, seven times he declares Jesus to be absolutely innocent. Then tell me, Pilate, if he is as innocent as you say, if having received the telegram from your wife which tells you have nothing to do with this just man, then why do you have him flogged? You see it's a problem. Lex Romana, the law of Rome, was decent in its application.

Do you know, my friend, and I embrace every age category in the tab tonight, alas, there is that of Pilate which we might see in you. Perhaps not at this moment, some of you who have moved from the Pilate period of your life, but it was there. And in a congregation of this size I am inclined to suggest that it's present with us amongst a fair number of people.

The Pilate characteristic that comes out in this particular passage is that of fickleness and expediency. That's a big word, the latter one. It means almost the same as fickleness.

It suggests that you do certain things in order to get yourself off the hook. Now here is Pilate. He knows that Jesus is innocent, but he has him flogged.

Why does he have him flogged? Well the reason is this, you see, once more, we're not in a private situation here in the New Testament, it's public. In front of Pilate are the Jews. They are the ones who are claiming the blood of the Lord Jesus.

They're wanting his death. And if you go quite carefully to the fourth verse of this chapter, you will begin to understand the reason why Pilate is guilty of the charge of expediency and fickleness. He allows Jesus to be flogged so that when that blood-stained, bedraggled figure is brought in front of the people, placarded in front of them, they might have such pity on him that they will let Pilate off the hook and no longer demand the death of Jesus.

Look, I'm bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him. Look at him. Look at his condition.

Can you really still demand that he be put to death? You see, the intention of Pilate was right, but the way that he went about it was so wrong. The way that some of you perhaps go about this business of making response to Jesus Christ is similar to that. You see, Pilate is known in history as a man who took water, washed his hands, and threw the droplets of water on the crowd as though he could pass on his responsibility to others.

Now, I care not whether you're 13 or 30 or 80 years of age. If you're in that situation as far as Jesus Christ is concerned, you are not making a commitment to him as your Lord and Saviour, not that you're opposed to him, not that you think he's anything else but a just and innocent man. But if you find yourself in that neutral position, then you identify with Pilate.

What will you do with Jesus? Neutral you cannot be. Someday your heart will be asking, What will he do with me? During the period that Pilate hands Jesus over to his men, what happens? You see, in capsule, that is locked up within these two or three verses, you have an anticipation of the great horrors that Jesus is to experience, more elongated, more prolonged, when he will be crucified. The first thing is, Jesus is flogged.

The Romans, when they flogged a man, they knew how to do it. The first time I was in India, I went to a place called Murimnabad. It's north of Calcutta.

It's not on the tourist beat, most of the places I go to are never seen by tourists. They're squalid and often very poor. And I remember the first time, it was almost my virgin experience of India, going down a dusty high street with little stalls on either side.

And one of the dogs which frequent the villages and the towns of India, who live on the outskirts and will sometimes make a sortie into the area, he came down that dusty road and he went under the table of one of the storekeepers, one of the people who were minding goods on sale. It happened to be the man selling bananas. And he got a banana skin that someone had dropped and he started to eat it.

I can still see the Indian stall keeper reach for a bamboo rod which was about 15 feet high and just whip it down on that dog. Do you know, sometimes at night, I still hear the yelp of that dog as a stick came down on his hind legs. The injustice of it.

And they did that to the Lord Jesus. They flogged him. Why? Well, you see, the Bible says that by his stripes we are healed.

He will suffer what you should have received as the due penalty of your sin. The soldiers, moreover, twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. The significance of this, it seems to me, needs to be spelled out.

For a casual reading of the New Testament, and how often we're guilty of such, does not reveal its secrets. You see, our world did not always give room for thorns and briars. If you read carefully Genesis 3, you will discover that as a result of the rebellion of man, the world was cursed, Mother Earth.

And the Bible goes on to say the earth will now bring up thorns and briars. The thorn is the symbol that nature has of the curse that is on the world. Now, why did Jesus come into the world? He came to take the penalties of God upon himself.

He came to undo with the last Adam what was perpetrated by the first Adam and all who cling to his loins. And it's therefore right and appropriate that Jesus Christ the last Adam shall have thrust on his head the crown of thorns, symbol of the curse of God upon our world. By his stripes we are healed.

Through the cursing of Christ we are forgiven. And then they clothed him in a purple robe. Matthew's Gospel will tell you that the robe was actually scarlet.

And it reminds me of a little comment in the book of Isaiah. That's one of the prophets in the Old Testament, a dusty book for many people, but it's worth blowing the dust from off the pages and reading because there's good stuff in Isaiah. And Isaiah sometimes speaks for God, as is the right of a prophet and preacher.

Come then, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as a scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. You see, the problem with you, my young friend, and my older friend too, and the problem that dogged me was this.

We are not what God wished us to be. There is that within our nature which is offensive in his eyes. All your best deeds, the things that you strived for, the better part of your nature, all that compared with the purity of God, all your righteousnesses, they're as filthy rags.

And so what does Jesus do? He takes the scarlet robe of your sins from off you, and it's placed upon him. And those clumsy, mocking Roman soldiers, though they know it not, are typifying in their very actions the sins of men and women, and the atoning work of our Lord Jesus. They took Jesus and flogged him.

They twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe. And they went up to him again and again and said, Hail, King of the Jews.

Sin reigned in the world until the Lord Jesus Christ did to sin what was necessary in annulling its power and its consequences. And here is the mockery that Roman soldiers accord to the King of kings, our Lord Jesus Christ. They refuse to give him regal honor.

They mock him in a scandalous fashion. And why? So that you, my brothers and sisters, might become kings unto our God. The mockery, the scorn that you should have known for the way that you lived your life, it's taken, deflected, rammed home in him so that he bears the penalty of the consequences of your disobedience.

And then, finally, they struck him in the face. Personally, I would ban boxing. The reason being that it is a sport which, if you please, brutalizes men.

It is a sport where the face particularly is damaged. You can generally tell the professional boxer, even after he has retired, his nose, his eyes, they indicate the nature of his sport. When our Lord Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration and the presence of God was so intense, what happened to his face? It was illuminated, right? When Moses was on Sinai having an audience with God, when he descended down the mountain and came amongst ordinary people, they couldn't look upon Moses because of the intensity of the glory of God which was reflected in his face.

And these Roman soldiers, they pummel the face of our Lord Jesus to the extent that Isaiah, who predicted the whole scene, says, his visage, that's the old-fashioned word for face, his visage was marred more than any other man. And when they're through, those soldiers who flogged him, ran the crown of thorns on his head, clothed him in purple, mocked him as king, pushed their fists in his faces. When they were through, they brought him back to Pilate and Pilate brought him in front of the priests and the people.

And Pilate said, Ek Chomai, behold the man. Now respond. Do you still want him crucified or will you let him go? Make your own decision.

The Pax Romana and the Lex Romana was never more brought into disrepute than during the travesty of the trials of Jesus and his ultimate execution. But the focal point for our attention as I conclude this brief address tonight is the response that you and I must make to the brutalizing of the body of Jesus Christ, to the mockery that he endured, and ultimately to his death on the cross. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.

He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in. Is that your response? Now hear me for the last minute. Hear me.

Forget the fellow next to you, the girl next to you, the older person next to you, you, you alone, just the individual, just the preacher's voice, which might well be the voice of God at this moment for you and you on your own. Are you doing a pilot? You neither get him. You'd like to get him off the hook.

You'd like to get yourself off the hook. But you see, he doesn't allow for neutrality. He said, you're either for me or you're against me.

My death graces you with salvation or your rejection of my pardon directs you to hell. There are no other options. There's the alternative.

Him, commitment, heaven. Him, rejection, hell. It's as blunt as that.

May your response be this evening. Lord Jesus, take my life. I give it you and thank you for bearing all the ignominy and shame and pain that should have been mine.

And as I take this bread and wine, perhaps for the first time in a meaningful way, let me express my love and my devotion to you. Come, you pilots. Surrender your will to the sovereign will of God and make your peace with him.

Let's sing. A beautiful hymn from the 18th century. How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ears.

Let's stand. Let's sing.