Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Eric Alexander: Two figures dominate the whole of these many verses. One is the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ, brought for trial before the Roman authority, and the other is Pilate, the Roman governor, to whose palace or praetorium, some of the older versions have it, Jesus is at this stage brought. The story is, of course, the story of Jesus brought before Pilate's judgment seat. Jesus is the accused. He is, as it were, standing in the dock, and Pilate is the judge.

But you only really need to read the story in quite a cursory fashion to discover that the most amazing thing about it is that the whole thing is turned upside down. And in fact, it is abundantly obvious that it is Pilate who is being judged, and Jesus who is the judge, before whom Pilate begins before too long to tremble. We discover that early in chapter 19, we are told that Pilate, in verse 8, was even more afraid when he heard this. And you have this amazing picture of the judge with all his Roman regalia and authority, trembling before the person he has been asked to try.

The truth is, of course, we would probably never have heard the name of Pontius Pilate had it not been for this prisoner who was summoned before him. It is highly likely that Pilate would have disappeared into comparative obscurity had it not been for this day in his life. And yet, round the world today, tens of thousands of people have had his name on their lips as they have thundered out as they have professed their faith in Jesus Christ. He suffered under Pontius Pilate. And there is something almost uncanny about that tremendous wave of accusation that goes round the earth every time the creed is spoken and Pilate's name is forever engraved on the statement of belief of Christian people.

And here while Jesus stands in calm majesty, you notice this extraordinary thing: how Pilate is so agitated and rushes in and out of his palace. Just notice how frequently it happens even in the record of what John tells us. In verse 29, for example, because the Jews would not go in, Pilate came out to them and asked, 'What charges are you bringing against this man?' Verse 33: Pilate then went back inside the palace. Then in verse 38: 'What is truth?' Pilate asked. With this, he went out again to the Jews. Chapter 19, verse 1: Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged, and this he clearly did inside. Verse 4: Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, 'Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.'

Then in chapter 19, verse 8: When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid and went back inside the palace. Verse 13: When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out again. It is an amazing picture of a man who is distressed and disturbed and goes in and out of his palace as somebody who is almost haunted. And there is a deep sense in which he was. Pilate is a man greatly troubled. He was in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover to try cases which were brought before him by the Jews. Rome was, as you know, the occupying power in Jerusalem. And of course, this was an hour of great destiny. It is a moment of enormous importance. It is an hour of destiny for the whole world as Jesus is brought before Pilate and is accused, and the question of his crucifixion is now within hours away.

But of course, it was a time of far more personal destiny for Pilate, summarized in the question that he is recorded by Matthew in chapter 27 of Matthew's Gospel as asking, 'What shall I do then with Jesus? What shall I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?' And of course, the truth was that Pilate wanted to do nothing. He wanted to pass the responsibility on to other people. And the reason he is going out and in from his palace and coming out to the people, going back to Jesus, is that he is a fugitive, Pilate. He is wanting to escape. And he has so many lineal descendants in the modern world who are confronted with Jesus and become fugitives from him.

Indeed, the whole of this passage that we read this evening is chock-full of questions. I just want to take four of them this evening. That shows a great mercy on my part for you. But I want to take four of them and to look at the passage in the light of these four questions that are here. Did you notice while we were reading it that there is first of all a question of conscience here? A question of conscience. I wonder if you did notice it right at the beginning in verse 28, because the whole passage is introduced by a most remarkable statement about the problem the Jews were having with their conscience at this particular time.

Here they were hurrying Jesus towards the Roman governor in order to have him judged, but they have suddenly found themselves faced with a problem of conscience. And you notice what it is: The Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now, it was early morning. And to avoid ceremonial uncleanness, the Jews did not enter the palace. That, of course, would have been Gentile territory, and they would have found themselves defiled in some sense if they had gone into the palace. So here they were saying conscientiously, 'We cannot tread on this defiled ground. We are unable to go in there. So we will talk to him from outside.' And they sent somebody in obviously and said, 'Get Pilate to come out because we cannot go in there. Our conscience would not allow us.'

Have you ever seen or read such an extraordinary story? Here are these men with their consciences seared and dead. They are bringing the Son of God on no charge. They are seeking his death. They are rebelling against the living God. And yet, their consciences have been deadened and seared, and yet they have this extraordinary scrupulosity about going into Gentile territory lest they become defiled. The thing would be laughable were it not so tragic. If ever there is an example in Scripture of people straining at a gnat in order to get it out of their tea but swallowing a camel, this is it. It is a most extraordinary example of how people can sear their conscience and have it killed off and silenced for the great moral issues of life, and yet when it comes to some little scrupulosity, they are as careful as anybody could ever be.

Their conscience has been trained to be silent about the great moral issues but acute about trivia. That's an interesting thing, isn't it? They were not the last to be like that. It is one way, actually, of silencing your conscience: make it acute about trivial issues, about things that do not really matter. And so often you can hide the fact that you have seared your conscience and silenced it about the great issues of righteousness and morality. And it is very significant that the Jews were like that in this instance. And it is possible for us to fall into exactly the same trap.

You notice Pilate was having a struggle with his conscience as well. There is a question of conscience here. It did not take him very long to see precisely what was right. Do you notice this? Just look with me at the passage in verse 29: So Pilate came out to them and asked, 'What charges are you bringing against this man?' And he saw through them immediately. They replied, 'If he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.' Now as you know, I go down to the High Court as their chaplain from time to time, and I just when I read that begin to ask, what would happen in the High Court if the judge sat on the bench and he called upon the counsel for the prosecution, 'What charge do you bring against this man?' and counsel for the prosecution said, 'I would not be wasting your time, my Lord, if he was not as guilty as sin'?

That is the kind of thing that you can imagine happening in an American court, if those of you from the United States will excuse me. But it is an amazing thing, and Pilate saw through it immediately. And he comes back to them, do you notice, and says in verse 31, 'Take him yourselves and judge him by your law.' Then verse 38: Pilate went out again to the Jews and said, 'I find no basis for a charge against him.' And then in chapter 19, Pilate comes out in verse 4: 'Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.' In verse 6, Pilate answered halfway through, 'You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.'

Verse 10: 'Do you refuse to speak to me?' Pilate said. 'Don't you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?' He is becoming very uncomfortable. From then on, verse 12, Pilate tried to set Jesus free. And verse 15: But they shouted, 'Take him away! Crucify him!' 'Shall I crucify your king?' Pilate asked. And eventually he handed him over to be crucified. But Pilate's problem was not that he did not know what was right and what was wrong. He had worked it all out. And really what he had to do was to decide between two things. He had to decide between doing what he knew to be right or doing what he knew would be popular.

Now this is not ancient history, is it? Don't you know that that is precisely the question of conscience that you and I are facing all the time? The question of doing what is right or doing what is popular? Oh, you say, well, I am never faced with multitudes like Pilate. No, no, but you have people with whom you are going to be very unpopular if you say no, I will do this instead of that. And Pilate had the great question of doing what was right or doing what would cause him least trouble. And all through life we have that. He not only, of course, wrestled with his conscience when he was dealing with this issue—I think God was speaking in that man's conscience.

You remember how Matthew 27 tells us again about his wife? You know Pilate's wife appears here. Pilate's wife had a dream. She dreamed one night and it seemed as though God was speaking to her and said, 'Tell your husband not to have anything to do with that just man. He must not do what the crowds are crying out that he should do.' And Pilate, I reckon when he heard this, a messenger came to him while he was sitting on his judgment seat, and I reckon Pilate's conscience began really to nag him. You know the Apostle Paul one place says, 'To him who knows to do good and does not do it, it is sin.' You and I have that problem with our conscience frequently.

May I ask you how you are getting on with your conscience? Do you know what it is to say, 'God has spoken to me and leaves me no option but to do what is right in the eyes of God and in my own eyes,' and the alternative is to take the weak road? And Pilate became a weaker man every decision he took that day. And the weak road was to capitulate to popular opinion or selfish advantage. How are you getting on with your conscience? It is a really dangerous thing, my dear friends, to silence it. It is a very dangerous thing to sear it so that it becomes almost insensitive to the point where people say—and I know people have said to me—'You know, my conscience does not bother me about that.' And I say to them, 'Now that really does worry me. Nothing else you have said worries me badly, but that really does worry me. If your conscience is not bothering you about this, that is really serious.'

Second question that arises in this passage is a question of kingship. You notice it occurs all over the place. Verse 33, for example: Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus, and asked him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?' And again in verse 37: 'You are a king then!' Pilate said. Jesus responds in verse 34 with a question of his own when Jesus—when he says to him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?' He says, 'Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about me?' Now the point is that if the question was Pilate's own question—this is why Jesus asks him a question back, he is not having Pilate on—when he asked him, 'Is this your own question or did others tell you about this?' he is really saying, 'If it is your own question, then the kind of kingship you will be thinking of is an earthly kingship. You will be thinking that I am a threat to Caesar.'

'But if others coached you about this—that is if the Jews told you that was the question to ask—then the kind of king they are thinking about is the king who is the Messiah, the King of Glory.' Now Jesus eventually gives him the answer. The answer to the first is no, and the answer to the second is yes. 'You are right,' verse 37 Jesus says, 'in saying that I am a king.' And you will notice that he distinguishes between these two kingships in verse 36: 'My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.' It is not that kind of kingship, in other words.

Now do you notice carefully what Jesus is saying? He does not say, 'My kingdom is not in this world.' That is, he is not saying, 'My kingdom has nothing to do with this world. It is an otherworldly kingdom.' What he is saying is, 'My kingdom does not arise from this world. It does not belong to the world's thinking about kingship. It is not ruled by worldly wisdom or dependent on worldly power.' But that is not to say that the kingdom of Christ has no jurisdiction over the kingdoms of this world. There is a really important principle here. Jesus points it out to Pilate in verses 9 to 11, did you notice?

When Pilate heard this, he went back in because he was even more afraid and said, 'Where do you come from?' he asked Jesus. But Jesus gave him no answer. 'Do you refuse to speak to me?' Pilate says. You notice how Pilate is being really disturbed and he is somewhat deflated too. He says, 'Do you not know who I am? Do you not realize who you are speaking to? I have got power to release you or power to crucify you.' And Jesus said to him, 'You could have no power unless it were given to you by God,' he says. So the kingship of Jesus, you see, is a kingdom that is not of this world, but it is a kingship which is over this world. And we need to remember that. We need to have that in our mind and thinking.

The question of kingship when you are confronting the Lord Jesus Christ is a question of absolute kingship over the whole of life, for he is the King of kings and Lord of lords. But notice what the weapon of his kingdom is. Jesus says, 'If my kingdom were of this world,' chapter 18, verse 36, 'my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews.' Now of course, that is why Jesus stopped Peter using his sword to cut off the high priest's servant's ear, or at least to cut off more of him after he had finished cutting off his ear. You know what I mean. It was because his kingdom was not of this world. His kingdom was from above, from another place, as he says.

Now notice what the weapon of his kingdom is in verse 37. 'You are a king then,' said Pilate. Jesus answered, 'You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.' Now what is the weapon of the kingdom of God? I will tell you: It is truth. Truth is the weapon of the kingdom. Not the powers of nations and armies, but the weapon of the truth. And Jesus says, 'I have come to testify to the truth.' The interesting thing is that he testified to it to Pontius Pilate. Because Paul says to one of his correspondents: Jesus Christ witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate. And the weapon of the kingdom is the weapon of truth.

Do you really believe that the power of truth in the lives of men and women is a greater power than all the armies of the earth? That is why Paul says it is the gospel in which the power of God is to be found. So there is this question of kingship. And of course Pilate refused Jesus' kingly authority. There are two ways of responding to Jesus' claim to be king, and Pilate's is one of them. And another of the same kind is illustrated for us in chapter 19, verse 2. 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.

You see, it is possible to mock Jesus' kingly authority. My dear friends, every time we name his name and then disobey his rule, we mock him as king. Every time we sing his praises and exalt his kingly glory and refuse to submit to it in our personal lives, we put a reed in his hand and a crown of thorns on his head, and we mock him as the king. Now let me ask you how you are getting on with this question of conscience and how you are getting on with this question of Jesus' kingship in your life. And here is the third question: It is a question of truth. You notice it in verse 38. Jesus said to him the weapon of his kingdom was the weapon of truth, and Pilate answers, 'What is truth?' and thereby immortalized at least three words that he spoke.

'What is truth?' said jesting Pilate, Francis Bacon quotes, and would not wait for an answer or stay for an answer. I am not sure if Pilate was jesting or not. I do know that he was dismissing the very concept of truth. And it is very interesting there is a question of truth that clearly Jesus is presenting to Pilate here and that Pilate snatches and then throws away. And we live in a very similar time. It would take a whole evening to talk about it, and I do not have that, but let me just point out to you what happens in the modern world. 'What is truth?' said Pilate, dismissing the idea. You may find today in university and college or in society generally that the attitude to truth is this: Somebody is speaking about the truth of the gospel, and people say, 'Yes.'

No longer do they say, as they did in my generation, 'That is not true. I do not believe it.' The attitude to truth today is not to jest about the truth that you believe and they accept but do not believe. The attitude to truth today is to say, 'Well, now, that is very nice. That is true for you, but it is not true for me. It may well be true for you. That is okay. We still remain good friends. It is not true for me, though.' And what they are really saying is, 'What is truth? What is truth?' And that's why it's so important for us to get a right doctrine of Scripture, my dear Christian friends, to know exactly what Jesus is meaning when he says, 'I am the truth.'

When God says to us, 'All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable,' it is the truth. And it is true because it is true, and not because it is true for you and not true for me. We live in a world of subjectivity where all that matters is that this is true for me. I have experienced it, but it may not be true for you. There is such a thing as objective truth, which is true whether I believe it or have ever heard it or not. And Pilate was on the shakiest of ground when he dismissed the whole issue that Jesus was putting before him. 'Everyone who is on the side of truth listens to me.' 'What is truth?' Pilate asked.

There is a question of conscience. There is a question of kingship. There is a question of truth. And there is finally a question of responsibility in this whole passage. The thing that makes Pilate run all over the place is that he is wanting to escape responsibility, particularly the responsibility of what he is going to do with Jesus. And at the end of the day, you will remember that the way he tried to confirm to himself that he had delivered himself from responsibility—one of the other gospels tells us—he called for a basin and for some water and publicly before the eyes of people he washed his hands. And thereby put another phrase into our vocabulary: 'I have washed my hands of the whole matter,' we say. 'I have no longer got responsibility for it.'

Now whatever else we say about Pilate, the church of Jesus Christ, as it thunders out week by week, 'He suffered under Pontius Pilate,' is declaring that Pontius Pilate, like Eric Alexander and every other person in this place, is responsible for their relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And one day, God is going to make that abundantly obvious to us. So the great issue is, where do I stand with Jesus? How am I getting on with my conscience? How am I relating to the kingship of Christ? How am I relating to the truth? And what have I done with this responsibility? You and I have a real responsibility, my friends, because there is not one of us here this evening who does not know the truth, you see.

The truth about Jesus. And the great issue will be that we may never go through this pathetic fantasy of washing our hands, as it were, and saying, 'I just escaped the responsibility,' because God confronts us with it. May he help us not to sear our conscience, not to resist the King, not to flee from the truth, and not to try to wash our hands of a responsibility that God will hold us to. Let us pray together.

Father, in a very special sense, we acknowledge that we stand before the exalted Kingly Christ this evening afresh. We bow before you to confess that we have so often stood with those who mocked his Kingly authority. We confess that we have silenced our conscience. We acknowledge before you that we have run away from the truth. Help us by your grace that we may come to him this evening and say, 'Lord, make me your captive, and then I shall be free.' We ask it for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Mark Daniels: You are listening to Hear the Word of God with the Reverend Eric Alexander, a minister in the Church of Scotland for over 50 years. To access more Bible teaching from Reverend Alexander, visit herthewordofgod.org, where your generous contribution will help us sustain and grow this ministry. That is herthewordofgod.org. You could choose instead to mail a check to this address: 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Or call 1-800-488-1888. This program is a presentation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I am Mark Daniels. Thank you for listening. Please join us again next time for Eric Alexander and Hear the Word of God.