Sermon manuscript:
Pontius Pilate is often viewed in a positive light,
especially in comparison to the Jewish leaders. The Jewish leaders were blood
thirsty. They were going to get their crucifixion one way or another. Pilate is
much cooler in all his interactions. He tries to get Jesus released. Thus he
can appear to be better and kinder to Jesus than the Jewish authorities. I,
however, do not think that Pilate is better than the Jewish authorities. If I
were to judge, I would say that he is worse.
In my opinion, there is hardly anything worse than
despising. To despise means that you simply can’t be bothered enough to get
worked up. The matter is so unimportant that there is no reason to care. It
seems to me that Pilate despises Jesus. He thinks Jesus is nuts. He thinks Jesus
is wasting his life. The types of things that were important to Pilate were
roads, armies, money, and the welfare of the empire. He was the Roman governor.
He was an important man with important things to do. He’s annoyed that these
Jews are making him decide about something that he doesn’t even begin to care
about.
You can see this in his interactions with Jesus and with the
Jews. Let me bring to your attention again something that we heard last week.
Jesus was in an exchange with Pilate over whether he is the king of the Jews.
Jesus says, “I am, as you say, a king. For this reason I was born, and for
this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who
belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Why was Jesus born? Why did he
come into the world? It was to testify to the truth. How could Jesus more
strongly amplify the importance of the truth? I don’t know what other words he
could have used. But then Pilate sneeringly responds, “What is truth?”
Pilate might have just as well rolled his eyes. He might as
well have said, “What a waste of my time. I have better things to do.” To me
this has to be about the worst reaction a person could possibly have.
I think it is far more respectful to listen to Jesus and get
angry at him like the Jewish authorities were angry at him, than to sweep him
aside the way that Pilate did. Jesus either is the best thing that has ever
happened to this world or he is among the worst things that have ever happened.
To believe that he is indifferent is to refuse to listen to what he says. Jesus
says that he is the truth. If he is the truth, then blessed are those who
believe in him. If he is not the truth, then he is a charlatan, a misleader, a
distraction, a truly evil and parasitic force that has been unnecessarily
holding back the human race.
It seems to me that it is better to be a disciple of Jesus
or an enemy of Jesus. Those who sit on the fence cannot be bothered to
investigate whether Jesus is the Son of God. Although they see themselves as
neutral, there is no neutrality when it comes to Jesus. He himself says, “Whoever
is not with me is against me; whoever does not gather with me, scatters.”
This puts all those people, including Pontius Pilate, who want to be more or
less polite concerning Jesus, but do not want to believe in him, against him.
This is how it has to be if Jesus is, in fact, the truth. Jesus
being the truth involves the biggest and most important questions of life. If
Jesus is the truth, then our greatest problem as human beings is sin. Our greatest
problem is not that we haven’t accumulated enough money, know-how, or will
power. Our greatest problem is that we are rebels against God and his
commandments. The greatest of God’s commandments is that we should love him
with our whole being, and that we should love our neighbor as we love
ourselves. But we are revolutionaries. We don’t submit to him. We only want to
do what we want to do.
Furthermore, contrary to what is popularly believed, we are
corrupt and rotten. Everything we touch decays. Nothing we build can last. The
great pyramids of Egypt might be about the best we’ve ever done, but even they
are wearing down, year after year. Every generation that gets born is sinful.
We’ve never been able to get rid of meanness, of lust, of greed. The strong
oppress the weak. Everyone only seeks his or her own advantage. Everyone lies.
Our souls have leprosy. We’re rotten all the way down to the core.
But if Jesus is the truth, then this changes everything. If
Jesus is the truth, then the very reason why he was born, the very reason why
he came into this world, was to set us free from our slavery to sin, our
slavery to death and rottenness, and our slavery from the devil and all the
other powerful forces who do not want us to be free to love and being like God.
Jesus came to die on the cross and rise from the dead to make a new beginning.
The new beginning is brought about by wiping the slate
clean. Jesus brings about atonement, forgiveness, the justification of all
people by his one great sacrifice on the cross. Paul says in Romans chapter 3:
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and all are justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Again
Paul says, “God shows his own love for us in this: While we were still
sinners, Christ died for us.”
The great truth that is above all other truths is that God
has made a new beginning in Jesus. By death and by resurrection, the human race
is to be brought into something different. We are to be given a new heart and a
new spirit. Instead of ignoring God, we are to know him. Jesus says, “This
is eternal life: that we should know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
he has sent.” The best and most important thing in life is not that we
should be healthy, wealthy, and wise. The best and most important thing is that
we should know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom God has sent.
The glory of Jesus is like the sun. At night you can see the
moon and the stars. These glories of the night are like all the many and
otherwise glorious truths that we can know and discover about life. These are
beautiful in their own right. They should not be despised. But when the sun
rises, the glory of the sun is such that these things that otherwise have glory
end up having no glory at all. The truth of Jesus outstrips all other truth.
Those who are in Jesus are new creations.
I suppose a person can love the sun or hate the sun. A
person can love the day or a person can love the night. What a person cannot do
is make the sun into just another star. Jesus cannot be just one more truth
alongside other truths. If someone wants to make Jesus into just another truth
alongside other truths, like one star alongside other stars, then that person
is not actually dealing with Jesus. They are not taking Jesus seriously. If a
person listens to Jesus, it is clear that he himself says that he necessarily
changes everything. It’s like going from night to day. To pretend that he is
just one isolated part of our lives is to say that he is a liar, even if we are
able to maintain the appearance of politeness and reasonability.
There is no more fundamental and important question than
this one: “What do you think of Jesus?” You can love him or you can hate him. To
be indifferent to him is the worst. It is to despise him utterly, because his
own words won’t allow anyone who listens to him to be neutral toward him.
Either he changes everything or he is a charlatan who is wasting people’s
valuable time and resources.
It is frightful to think of how much Jesus is despised, even
by those who see themselves as Christians. Pilate was annoyed that he had to
deal with this ridiculous matter because he had better things he could be doing
with this time. Isn’t it frightful to consider how we act toward Jesus? We do
not think of him as the one who changes everything. We do not treat him as the
sun, whose glory blots out the glory of everything else.
We must therefore take in hand the truth. God’s salvation is
not of those who are righteous, but of those who are sinners. I can’t
understand why God should put up with human beings, when even those who want to
be good end up doing so poorly. But the truth is that God wants to save
sinners. He isn’t waiting around for our permission or our cooperation. He just
went and did it by the atonement, by the redemption, that is in Jesus Christ.
God would have sinful human beings enter into the glorious sunshine of eternal
life that outstrips everything else. I cannot understand this, why God should
want to do such a thing, but it’s his truth not mine. This is the truth whether
you like it or not.
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