Shine - John 18:1-40

Join us as guest speaker Nathanael Coffman brings us through John 18:1-40, challenging us with the question, "Are we replacing the truth for lies?"

Transcript

All right. Hello everybody. How are we doing tonight? I couldn't get the mic to stay on my ear, so I got it here, so hopefully it's good. You ought to tell me if it's not. But yeah, as they said, my name is Nathaniel. I really appreciate such a warm welcome. This is super fun for me to be here, to preach in this new place, to catch up with some of you guys, especially to see the fact that most of you that I knew when I was here are really old now. You're like the old ancient, weathered wisdom-filled ones, right? Decrepit along campus or whatever. But it's exciting to meet some of you guys new as well, and I'd love to meet more of you after the service, and so come up and say hi to me. But I've been really blessed by the whole CCF staff and the crew here. You guys are in great hands. They're very, very, very awesome to be able to bring me in here, and I feel very blessed, and I'm excited to jump into God's Word with you guys today. And so, so let's, with that, let's, let's jump in. If you have your Bibles, you can turn in John. We're going to be in John chapter 18, and before we get it on the screen, don't put it on the screen yet, whoever's doing that. But John 146 is a verse I want to start with. Does anybody, can anybody quote that verse for me? Be brave. Quote it. Okay, how many of you knew it, but you were too afraid to say it? A lot of you, right? It's a very important verse. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So what three things, we can put it up on the screen now if you want, but what three things does Jesus claim about Himself in this one verse? Three very important things, right? First, He claims that He is the way to the Father. He claims that He is the truth, right? Like the literal embodiment of truth, and then that He is the source of life. And then, of course, that nobody can come to the Father except through Him. And what I find interesting about this one statement is that as we approach John chapter 18 tonight, and kind of a connection here to this verse is that, you know, Jesus is claiming to be the answer for everything that humanity has always searched for. Humanity has always searched for life, right? A better life, a lengthening of life, a more stable life, right? Or, and, of course, a life after death. What is there after death? Humanity has always sought for transcendence, seeking transcendence, whether it's to God, Yahweh, God, or through some other false religion, or believing in aliens, or new age spirituality where you find your own inner truth, right? We're searching for transcendence. We want something, we have that inner desire, that inner need. And then truth, we seek truth, even if we don't like it, and we want to pervert it, we're looking for truth. And all of us kind of claim to have it or claim to look for it, even if we're very, you know, dishonest people, right? You know, we're all searching for truth in every area of life. And you guys are even coming to a college and you're paying probably good money for professors to teach you truth about different disciplines of life, right? And hopefully you can use that to do big things, right? But Jesus is claiming to be the way to transcendence, He's claiming to be the source of life, and He's claiming to be the embodiment of truth. You guys have all been going through the book of John for two semesters, is that right? The whole year, which is awesome. I applaud you guys. It is the best gospel account. I think we can have favorites, right? And you can come and debate me on this later if you want. You just can't tell me that the lost gospel of Thomas is the best one because middle-aged forgeries don't count. But John is the best gospel. It's awesome. There's so many things in it, right? But chapter 18 is kind of like a hard switch. And it's not that you're unaware if you're a careful reader, or of course if you know the story, right, which probably most of us do. But as you're reading through the gospel of John, you're studying through, chapter 18 is like a hard switch. It's like a transition point. We go from Jesus teaching the disciples in the high priestly prayer. And then chapter 19 and 20, Jesus is dead, right? And chapter 18 is smack dab in the middle. It's everything. It's in the middle. And as we approach this passage, what I want to do is I want to first examine the question of why did we kill Jesus? Right? Like if Jesus is the way the truth in the life, if he is the embodiment of goodness itself, why did humanity seek to kill him? Why did humanity kill him? Shane Jay Wood, he's a professor at Ozark Christian College and he wrote a book called "Between Two Trees." It's a good book if you're interested in it. And he asked this question and he does a really good job kind of just walking through this idea, but the thing that always sticks with me is he gives an illustration of, you know, when somebody is sleeping, right? When you guys are sleeping, your college students, you're tired all the time, right? When you're sleeping and somebody flips on the light, what do you feel? Probably anger, unless you're just one of those happy morning people, right? But you're mad, right? I'm mad for sure. And you want the light to do what? To go back off, right? Because you're comfortable, you're sleeping, right? The light is assaulting you, right? And Jesus is a light into a dark world, right? And so he gives this example and I find it very compelling that, you know, in the exchange of trying to turn off the lights, which Mariah is doing maybe right now, or just adjusting them in this exchange of this illustration, right? If you're turning off the light, it's a willful exchange or we could use an alarm clock too. You know, you're trying to get up for class, right? And you hit snooze and then you hit snooze again. And again, and finally you rip it out of the, you know, the wall and you chuck it across the room, right? You've made a willful exchange to say, I'm not going to wake up even though I know I should, and instead I'm going to keep sleeping because it's comfortable, right? Like, unless you're just a sleep walker, I do that too, but that's a willful exchange, right? There's an acknowledgement that it's time to wake up and a willful exchange to say, no, I'm not going to do it, right? And Paul talks a lot about this in Romans chapter one. And if you're doing this slide, you can just pull them up kind of as I referenced some, but it's not a big deal. However you do it, Romans talks a lot about this idea of a willful exchange in Romans chapter one. It's not a fun passage, but he talks about how we have exchanged the glory of God for a lie. He talks about how we have given, exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of created things. He talks about men and women exchanging natural relations for unnatural relations. He talks about in verse 25, which is the one that always sticks with me. He says, because they exchanged the truth about God for the lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. It's a willful exchange when we deny the way the truth and the life Jesus Christ. In our passage tonight in John chapter 18, we're going to see a series of willing exchanges, a series of willing exchanges, as Pilate stands before the God who created the universe and says, what is truth? What is truth? We're going to see some willful exchanges of the truth of God for a lie. And we're going to examine these. So as we jump in, we're going to read their first section of text, it's going to be chapter 18 verses 1 through 11. Verse 1, When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Brook Kidron where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees went there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to him, said to them, whom do you seek? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them, I am. Judas, who betrayed him with standing with them. When Jesus said to them, I am, they drew back and fell to the ground. So he asked them again, whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth, he answered, I told you that I am. So if you seek me, let these men go. This was to fulfill the word that was spoken. For those whom you have gave me, I have not lost one. Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest servant and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malkus. So Jesus said to Peter, put your sword into its sheath, shall not drink the cup that the Father has given me. So it's our first section. And here we see Jesus is betrayed, right? Jesus and the disciples, besides Judas, of course, are in the garden and the garden of Gethsemane. And John's telling of the story omits the part where Jesus goes off to pray. And then he comes back and Peter's sleeping three different times, right? But he omits that because John just kind of gets right to the point. He cuts right to the chase. He gets right to the part where Judas comes with a whole cohort, which is a technical military term, which could have been up to hundreds of armed soldiers. But it could have just been a reference too. But either way, John points out that these men that came to arrest Jesus were armed and dangerous. They had torches and not pitchforks. But that's the idea in my mind. Torches and lanterns and weapons, right? They potentially expected a violent resistance, which they got a little bit of. But probably unexpectedly to them, Jesus walks up to them and says, "Who are you searching for?" They say, "Jesus of Nazareth." And he says, "I am." Why is that important? "I am." That's how God introduced Himself to Moses at the burning bush. Ego, Eme. Jesus says, "I am." He invokes the name of the Father. He says, "I am." And they fall back. Like, what's that all about? We don't have time to dive into it. But then it repeats, right? They come back up again and they're like, "Jesus of Nazareth." He's like, "I am." And they're like, "Oh, right. It'd be funny in a movie or something." But that's what's happening, right? And in this moment of distraction, then Peter pulls out a sword and he goes to take this dude's head off, right? Now some scholars, right? He cuts the ear. Some scholars say, "Well, he was trying to main him so that he couldn't serve in the temple anymore. I don't buy it, right?" After seeing Donald Trump shot in the ear, right? Like, we all understand how close you are to death if your ear gets shot or cut off, right? Peter was aiming for the throat. He was going for the kill, right? And so poor Peter, then, of course, is rebuked for it and he's told to put his sword away. And John also, in his account, he doesn't insert the healing of the man's ear, but we get that in Matthew's gospel. So, Jesus then heals the man's ear, which how do you then arrest a guy after he puts your ear back on? But anyways, you know, he heals the man's ear, right? And then in Matthew's account, we also see that, you know, he tells us that the disciples fled into the darkness after this. Like, they were scared, right? They ran. And so there's a lot going on here in this passage. And if you read all of the different gospels, you get like the full picture of it, because they're all just given the details that they kind of think are important. But there's a lot going on here. And I want to focus for tonight. I want to focus on Judas. So, in John's account, he just states that Judas is the one that betrayed him, right? Now, if you guys remember, John is the gospel or is the disciple whom Jesus loved. How did Judas betray Jesus? How did he identify him? Remember, with a kiss, right? And with an intimate thing, right? Like a bro hug, a bro handshake, right? He betrayed him with a kiss. Now, John omits this potentially because it was such a hard thing, such a hard thing to witness that betrayal. And he loved Jesus so much. It might have just been hard for him to write it down. But regardless, we know that Judas is the one that betrays Jesus. He comes up, he betrays him with a kiss. And he also betrays him for something. What does he betray him for? 30 pieces of something, right? 30 pieces of silver. Now, scholars also debate on how much that was, right? It could have been a couple months' wages, it could have been like a couple years' wages. The thing is, we don't know how big the silver was, right? We don't know what kind of coin it was. But either way, Judas thought it was worth it, right? It made sense to him. And so, Judas betrays him for 30 pieces of silver. But here's my question. Is it safe to say that Judas knew Jesus enough and knew enough about Jesus to know that he was who he said he was? Is it safe to say that Judas had seen the miracles that Jesus did, had seen the way he talked, had seen the way he lived, both in private and in public enough to know that he was the way the truth in the life, right? Is it safe to say that Judas walking around with him for three plus years, or probably just three years, that he knew enough about Jesus to not be confused, right? I'd say so. And you know, I often envy those who got to walk around with Jesus during his ministry. I kind of think to myself, man, it'd be so easy to believe in Jesus if I could have seen him do those miracles, right? But that wasn't the case with Judas, right? He exchanged the truth of Jesus for a lie. He exchanged the truth of Jesus for a lie that material wealth might make him happy, for a lie that money would make his problems go away. I, when I was writing the sermon, I had to go back and find an article that I read some time ago, and it was, it was about lottery winners. You guys, I don't know if you're familiar, lottery winners have a demise that awaits them as soon as the money hits their bank account. It was a collection of stories of all these people whose lives were totally ruined, even though they'd just won millions and millions of dollars. And, and some of these stories are so heinous, I wouldn't even want to talk about them, so I'm not going to, but, but all the things that they've did and people did to them and, and, and, and, and, and all this crazy stuff, but I just wanted to read what a couple of them said. So, Andrew Whitaker, he won $315 million. He was like six years later sobbing through tears, talking to reporters, and he said, I wish I would have torn up that ticket. And he had a horrible, horrible six years. Billy Harrell Jr., he won $30 million, and he said later, winning the lottery is the worst thing that ever happened to me. That's weird. William Post, who won $16 million, later told reporters that he was happier when he was broke. And every single one of these people in this article has like a huge laundry list of horrible things that either they did, or people did to them, and, and quite frankly, a lot of them had an end very similar to Judas' after he betrayed Jesus. Now, I understand that this is hyperbole to some degree, right? Like odds are pretty good that none of us are going to win the lottery. And hopefully we'd be smart with the money, right? But, but, but the question is, the point is, do we exchange the truth of Jesus for the lie that money will solve our problems, that money will bring us happiness, that material gain is the most important thing in this life. That's our question. And maybe it's more insidious because it's not as obvious as the horrible stories you read on the internet. Maybe it's not as obvious as betraying actual Jesus, right, in front of you. But, you know, Jesus talked a lot about money. In Matthew chapter 624, he says, "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one, and it spies the other. You cannot serve God and money." Ecclesiastes then points out the foolishness of this lie by saying, "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money." Isn't that interesting? Nor, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity. You know, I think sometimes the way that we pursue money over the truth of Christ is sometimes in such small ways, or it's done so progressively over time, that we, that it's insidious and we don't always recognize it. But I think there's a major temptation in our culture, and you probably all know, whether it's your friends, parents, or your parents, or your uncle, your grandparents, whatever, you know people who probably prioritize their financial finances, their career, financial security, at the sake of everything else. And it probably started out really good, right? They wanted to provide for their families. That's a good thing. The Bible talks a lot about work. We're supposed to work hard, right? But then as they became more and more engulfed in this idea of the American dream, or financial security, or climbing the corporate ladder, they started to let other responsibilities slide in their lives. Maybe they did it at the sake of their marriage. Maybe they pursued these things at the sake of instilling faith and vision and virtue into their children. Maybe they pursued these things over being generous and they lacked generosity. Maybe the idea of having two nice cars in a house that's too big and working 80 hours a week isn't actually worth it. And it's probably not, if we're not giving the first fruits of our labor to God, just so that we can put a little extra in the retirement fund. We could go on and on, right? But I think you guys get the picture. Our culture and our way of life almost demands that we put money at the top. Whether it's because we want to be rich or we want to be secure or we're scared of this or that and we got to prepare for it, right? But we often make an eye to a lot of money. Hebrews 13.5 is a really interesting verse. It says, "Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. For he has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'" Now, I used to never understand how the two parts went together. "Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have." That makes sense, right? How is it connected to this? For he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." The second part is implying that what the contentment should be in. And that's Jesus. Jesus has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." And so what the writer of Hebrews is doing here is he is showing that the love of money puts us in a dangerous position to where our contentment with Jesus himself is threatened. And the reason I bring this up is because that's exactly what happened to Judas, is it not? Judas was not content with walking, talking, living, preaching the gospel with Jesus himself on this earth. He was not content because he had a love of money. He exchanged the truth of Jesus, the presence of Jesus for the love of money. And if one of Jesus' very own disciples could do this, what makes us think that we might be immune? So do we exchange truth to sell out for material well? Let's jump into our next section here and we're going to read then slightly out of order. So we're going to read verses 12 and 14 and then we'll jump ahead to 19. It says, "So the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound him. First they led him to Anas who was the father in law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year. It was Caiaphas who advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man should die for the people." So now I'll skip just to kind of keep the stories together, skip to verse 19. The high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Jesus answered him, "I have spoken openly to the world. I have always taught in the synagogues and in the temple where all Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret, why do you ask me?" Ask those who have heard me what I said to them. They know what I said. When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand saying, "Is that how you answer the high priest?" Jesus answered him, "If what I said is wrong bear witness about the wrong, but if what I said is right, why do you strike me?" Anas then sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest. Now it's going to be kind of a quick point here, but I don't want to skip it. So here we see Jesus led to not the high priest Caiaphas yet, but he's first led to Anas. You're like, "Well, why is he led to the high priest like Father-in-law? Isn't that random? Well, it's not random at all." You know those conspiracy theories about how there's like one family that's controlling the entire world or controlling all of American politics for a hundred years? Well, Anas, like that was true in the first century. So Anas was the high priest. Then he had five sons who were high priest, you know, almost consecutively. And then Caiaphas, who was his son-in-law, was a high priest, and then he even had a grandson who was the high priest. So we're talking about like the actual puppet master of Israel, right? That's why they didn't bring to the high priest first. They brought him to Anas first under the cover of night. This was secret, right? This was a conspiracy. This was them bringing Jesus under the cover of night into an illegal trial and they brought him to the guy who really pulls the strings first and then they send him to the official route first or after that, right? Like that's what's going on here. And so Jesus is in the control of the, in the hands of an abusive and out of control regime. But what I want to focus on here is one little verse that we might be tempted to skip over. Verse 14 says it was Caiaphas and he's the one who actually is the high priest at this moment. It was Caiaphas who had advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man would die for the people. So Caiaphas has advising that it's better for one man to die for the people. What does that mean? What he means is that they were afraid that Jesus would start a revolt or an insurrection, right? And if that happened, which it had happened in the past for Israel, Rome would send in their soldiers and let me tell you, they weren't nice about it. They would kill everyone. It was a bloodbath. It happened many times throughout Israel's history when they were under Rome's control. So Caiaphas is saying, "Well, hey, we don't want all the people to get killed, so let's let one guy die instead," right? It's a matter of practicality. But what's interesting is that there's no exchange here of whether what Jesus is saying is actually true. There's no real exchange here in his trial of whether he actually did something wrong, whether he's actually guilty of a crime. And what's interesting is that it's side-stepping this idea of this idea of, you know, for the sake of practicality. It's side-stepping the actual question of truth at the altar of practicality, or so-called practicality. And that's where I'd like to ask our second question, do we exchange truth for the sake of practicality? I think, unfortunately, we do it all the time, right? Like we might say, "Oh, it's just not practical for me and my significant other to live in separate houses until we get married," right? Like we're going to get married anyways, just practical, right? Or it's really just not practical in our modern day and age to expect people to not get abortions in America, right? It's just not practical, right? Or it's not practical in a society like ours, you know, to accept scripture as God's word and actually live by it because it's ancient. It's an ancient book, right? It's not practical. It's not practical to expect husbands to love their wives sacrificially, and for wives to respect their husbands, we're in the modern era, right? It's just not practical. It's not practical to get through S&T without cheating a little bit on some tests. Some of you guys are like, "I know. I know it's not." You see, in each of these types of scenarios, we have exchanged the truth for a lie. We've sidestepped the question of what is right, of what is true, of what is the good thing to do, of what Jesus would do, right? We sidestepped it to worship at the altar of so-called practicality. And so that's our question. Do we exchange the truth of Jesus for the sake of practicality, for pragmatism, expediency, for politics, right? Moving on into our next section, we're going to focus on Peter. Peter's probably the most well-known part of this story, right? Peter's a pretty relatable guy, and I've got to hold myself back a little bit because two weeks ago, I preached on Luke's version of this account, and it focuses a lot more on Peter. So I preached a whole sermon about Peter. So I'm holding myself back, I'm going to keep it to sync, because I can only preach for so long before you guys kick me out. But Peter's denial, right, is one of the most maybe well-known stories in the Gospels, right? And so let's read Luke's account again, or not again, for the first time. So starting in verse 15, it says, "Simon Peter followed Jesus and so did another disciple. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. But Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple who was known to the high priest went out and spoke to the servant girl who kept watching the door and brought Peter in. The servant girl at the door said to Peter, "You also are not one of the man's disciples, are you?" And he said, "I am not." Now the servants and the officers had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself. Now we jump ahead to verse 25, just to continue this story. Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself, and so they said to him, "You also are not one of his disciples, are you?" He denied it and said, "I am not." One of those servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, convenient, asked, "Did I not see you in the garden with him?" Peter again denied it, and that once the rooster crows. So Peter, after the whole ordeal in the garden, he runs, but then he musters up the courage to come back and follow Jesus. But now he's under cover, because he just tried to kill a guy for goodness' sake. And there were a lot of witnesses there to see it. And also Jesus put the ear back on, so that's embarrassing to say the least. But Jesus comes back, and for those of you who know the story, Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times, and three times before the rooster crowed. And so Peter comes in, he's coming up to the fire, and at first a servant girl recognizes him, and he probably just automatic response, like, "No, I'm not one of them. He's under cover." And then it seems like later, like a group of them are kind of discussing, and they're like, "Hey, weren't you with Jesus?" And he's like, "No, no, I'm not." And I got to think he must have been a recognizable dude, right? Like maybe he's just a big burly fisherman, and he just kind of looked out of place. I don't know, but somehow they're like, they're dialed in on Peter. And so then finally, you know, low and behold, not just any rando, but a relative of the guy who he tried to kill is like, "Nah, I think I saw you in the garden like a few hours ago, right?" So he was there, too. So he calls Peter out and Peter denies it again, and then the rooster crows. Bomber for Peter, right? In Luke's account, it says that Peter went away and he wept bitterly. Wept bitterly. It's a dark moment for Peter, probably the darkest moment of his life. And there's a lot that we can say about Peter's denial, but we want to keep it succinct. At its core, Peter denied Jesus for the sake of self-preservation. At its core, he denied Jesus for the sake of self-preservation. You don't want to get caught, right? One time when I was in college, I did something stupid. Well, not one time. This is an instance of a time that I did something stupid in college. I busted a huge hole in the wall in our dorms. Not repeat this, otherwise Sam will never get me back. A huge, huge hole, and I was barely able to cover it with a full-size American flag. God bless America. And I put it there, but as you can imagine, you know, like rumors spread. People talk, right? And so the versions of Sam and Jay and the RA's that I had at my college, you know, they started asking questions. And let me tell you what, in a scenario like that, you see real quick, who's loyal to you and who's going to start, you know, fessing out for sake of self-preservation. Now I'm not going to say it's good to lie, but I'm just saying, you know, it was very obvious who was loyal and who was not, right? But the question is, how often are we willing to exchange truth for the sake of self-preservation? In the story where they snitched on me, they were telling the truth. In real life, how often are we willing to exchange truth for the sake of self-preservation? Quite frankly, I think that this is one of the most pertinent problems in our society. Probably one of the biggest idols in our culture is the idea of self-preservation, the idea of kind of like comfort and safety, right? And you know, let's think about it this way. How many of us, or how many people around us, you know, we're willing to abandon Christian community as prescribed in scripture because somebody or someone or we might get sick. And we just, we didn't, we just abandoned it all together. A lot of places, right? For a long time in some areas, it's very sad, but how many of us, you know, are unwilling to stand upon the sexual ethics of the Bible for fear of being canceled? How many of us? How many of us are unable to even mention our faith in the workplace or in school because we're scared of being judged, right? It's self-preservation. How many of us are unwilling to confess sin in our lives because of the consequences that may follow? It's self-preservation. So the question is, do we in big or in small ways exchange the truth of God, the truth of Jesus Christ, the truth that we find in His word for the sake of self-preservation? You know, Peter is often portrayed as kind of the big bumbling loudmouth that gets himself to into trouble. And when he's in trouble, I think, you know, it's unfortunate because when we read stories in the Bible, we tend to read ourselves into the character of the hero. And in so doing, I think we often miss how much we have in common with Peter. Probably a lot of us would have done the same thing. Let's move on to our last point. We're going to look at Pilate. Verse 28 through 40, kind of our biggest section here, but we're going to read it all at once. Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters so that they would not be defiled but could eat Passover. Catch that, they don't care if Jesus defiled and can't eat Passover, but they do. They care about it for themselves. So Pilate went outside to them and said, "What accusation do you bring against this man?" They answered him, "If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him to you." That sounds sound. Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law." And the Jews said to him, "It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death." This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and Jesus said to him, "Are you?" And said to Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you say this of your own accord or did others say it about me?" Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew?" Your own nation and chief of priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting." That I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not of this world. And then Pilate said to him, "So you are a king." Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose, I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." And Pilate said to him, "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 one man for you at Passover." So do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, "Not this man, but Barabbas." And now Barabbas was a robber. So before we talk about Pilate, we have a free subpoint because my sermon can only have four points. So it's a subpoint. Four point five is our point. Do we exchange the truth for something objectively evil? You know, you look at the final verses there, they can choose. Do they want Jesus or do they want Barabbas? They willfully exchange Jesus for Barabbas, right? Every time that we willfully choose sin over what is true, what is good, we choose Barabbas over Jesus, and we exchange the truth for a lie. All right, quickest subpoint is over. Now we're going to talk about Pilate. Pilate, we actually know a lot about from extrabiblical sources, Josephus and others. And Pilate's a pretty interesting dude. What we know about him is interesting, and I think it helps build this scene for us. So Pilate was not a competent governor, and we know this for a couple reasons. The only reason he was a governor for Rome in the region of Israel was because he was good friends with the guy who then became the emperor after somebody was assassinated. And so, you know, kind of as I like, well, you get to govern this, and you get to govern that. Well, Pilate got Israel, and he was incompetent in a number of ways of governing them, and really what Rome wanted was they just wanted there to not be problems, like that's really what they wanted. But Herod did a lot of things that caused big problems, caused riots where the Romans had to come in and kill a bunch of people. I mean his bad stuff. Namely one that Pilate did was he stole all the money from the temple treasury, and he used it to fund his pet construction project. All the civil engineers just woke up. What? Construction. But it caused a riot. It caused a riot, and people were mad, and people got killed, right? And so Pilate is interested in keeping the peace, right, by whatever means. But we can also see from, you know, in this section here that, from his kind of overall dismissive attitude, that he's also just interested in getting out, getting on with his daily plan to lead your activities, which he would have likely had on a Sabbath, because the Jews ain't doing much on the Sabbath, right? And so, you know, we see these two things about Pilate. And in our story, we see them, you know, the Jews, they bring Jesus to Pilate, and you know, Pilate says, "Well, what has he done?" And they reply in verse 30, and they say, they say, "If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you." It's like, okay, where's the evidence, right? They're just implying that Jesus has done something wrong, right? And so Pilate tries to dismiss them, he's like, "Yeah, yeah, go judge him however you want, I don't care." And then it's revealed why they need Pilate's help. Their intention is to kill Jesus, and they can't legally do that. They need Rome to put their stamp of approval on the death penalty. That's why they're there for Pilate. They don't want to just beat him up. They don't want to throw him in jail. They want to kill him, okay? That's why Pilate's involved. So Pilate concedes to help, and he brings Jesus in for questioning. They have some back and forth, and I want to zoom in on verses 37 and 38. After some back and forth, says then Pilate said to him, "So you are a king," and Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this purpose, I was born, and for this purpose, I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice," and Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" Ironically, one of the oldest fragments of scripture that we have from early, early second century is a small section that contains this passage where Pilate says, "What is truth?" And in a day and age where we have the validity of scripture and its transfer, and how can we trust it in a day and age where that's a big question, isn't ironic that Pilate says, "What is truth?" And that's one of the oldest manuscripts that we have to prove that the Bible is true or help truth prove that the Bible is true. But back in our story, you know, Jesus, he says, "I come to bear witness to the truth." Everyone who's of the truth listens to my voice, and Pilate flippantly replies, "What is truth?" And he goes on in chapter 19 to eventually oversee the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And I'll tell you what his truth was. I'll tell you what Pilate's truth was. His truth was keeping his butt out of the fire. His truth was not wanting another ride on his hands, because if he had another one of those, Rome might just kill him and replace him, right? That was his truth. He wanted to just keep the peace, and if he would probably do anything to do it, and if that meant staring Jesus in the face, the creator of the universe and saying, "What is truth?" flippantly, he did it, right? And in my opinion, this has to be one of the most incredible interactions in all of scripture, and I'll tell you why. And I got to start out with kind of a personal story here. So about two years ago, I had a cancerous tumor removed. And, you know, after all the tests and scans, the doctors determined that at that point it had not spread, and that's a really good thing, right? So what they do after that is they put you on what they call active surveillance. And so every six months, you go back in, you do a CT scan, you do your blood work, you have all the PTSD of that all over again, right? And then you wait for the results, right? And you hope that it shows that it hasn't spread. Well, about almost exactly a month ago, Hannah and I's lives kind of flipped upside down. My CT scan came back with what the doctors now think is probably a slow growing cancer in one of my lymph nodes. And so, you know, the whole past month has really been very consumed with doctors appointments and tests of various types. And this is where I'm getting to the applicable part. The scariest appointment and the worst appointment that we ever went to was the first appointment with an oncologist, it's cancer doctor, right? So they're going to talk to you about the horrible things that they have to do to get rid of cancer, right? And we're sitting in his office and my blood pressure is high. And I know because they they test you before the doctor comes in, right? My blood pressure is high. My heart rate is up. We're not just figuratively sitting on the edge of our seats when he's talking to us. We're literally sitting on the edge of our seats and we're trying to take notes and we're trying to ask questions. And it's hard to describe, but you just have this anxiety of like, what is he going to say next? And you just hope that it's something good. You hope that something good comes out, but at the end of the day, you just want him to spit it out and you wanted to tell you the absolute truth of what he thinks is happening. Right? That's not the type of doctor that you want to lie to you. You want the truth. And what I find so interesting here is that I just can't stop thinking about the fact that pilot was sitting there with the great physician, the healer, the one who sustains everything about our lives. He's sitting there with the great physician with sin like a cancer inside of every bone of his body. And Jesus tells him, as the doctor, he says, everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. And pilot lounges back in his chair. He's not on the edge of his seat. Pops a grape in his mouth or whatever Romans do. And he says, what is truth? What is truth? My friends, do we hang on every word of Jesus as if it were a matter of life and death? Are we on the edge of our seats when we open this book? Do we take the truth of Christ as seriously as we take a doctor's advice when it could be a matter of life and death? Or do we ignore it? Do we choose a different truth like Barabbas? Do we philosophize it away? Do we choose whatever benefits us? Do we take our truth? You see, pilot, he didn't want the truth. He will fully exchange the truth for a lie. Guys, you may not be Judas. You may not deny Jesus three times. You may not advocate for a murder like Barabbas. You may not stare Jesus in the face and brush him off as a mere annoyance. In fact, probably none of us will ever do those things. But I ask you tonight, have you exchanged the truth for a lie? Have you exchanged the truth of God's Word, the truth of Jesus Christ? Have you exchanged it for a lie? Or have we sat on the edge of our seat waiting for every word that God speaks as if our lives depended on it? Do we open this book with the reverence that we would if this was a secret book that had the cure to all cancers in the world? Do we open it like it's that serious? Like it's the prescription to life that saves us? Do we open it like that? Do we open this book and look at it with bated bread? Do we wait upon the Word of God as our very source of life itself? Do we cry out like the psalmist? As he says, "A dear pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God." Do we need God like we need water? Do we need Him like we need bread, the bread of life? Do we need Him more than we need anything else in this life? Or have we neutered and silenced the truth and exchanged it for a lie? Have we chose material wealth, sexual fulfillment, social status, pragmatism, philosophy? Have we exchanged the truth of Jesus Christ in His Word for anything else? Have we exchanged it by ripping the alarm clock out? It's uncomfortable and chuck it it away. I'm going to keep sleeping there by murdering Jesus in our own hearts. My friends, I'm saying we we we because I'm guilty of these things. I'm guilty of every one of these exchanges and more. And the reality is that these questions are uncomfortable to answer. They're very uncomfortable to answer because we all have exchanged the truth for a lie. We all fall into one of these categories in one way or another, but the most important question is it's not which lies we've exchanged for. It's not which lies we've bought into. It's not which sins we've committed. It's not how many sins we've committed. The most important question is will we repent? Will we repent and worship the Creator instead of the creature? Will we put our faith in the greatest man who ever lived, God incarnate Jesus Christ, the one who walked willingly to the cross, the one who exchanged his blood willingly for our freedom? Will we put our faith in Jesus the way the truth and the life, and will we follow him loyally unto death? That's the question. Let's pray. Family Father, we come to you now and we we thank you for your word. God, we thank you for the many gospel accounts. We thank you for giving us a proper picture of what you went through for our sake. God, I pray that we would not exchange your truth, your word, your goodness, your righteousness, your justice for any lie that could possibly be created by the powers of darkness in this world. And God, I also pray that as we may think of all of the sins that we've committed, all of the times that we've ignored Jesus, all the times that we've turned the light back off when we should have left it on, I pray that we would remember that the question that is important is not how many sins we've committed or which lies we've believed or which lies we've exchanged for, but the question is will we follow you? That's the whole point of the gospel, that's the whole point of John writing this down. So Lord, we thank you, we thank you for Jesus, we thank you for his sacrifice and we love you and then.