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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get started with today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. The Jews cried out saying, if you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar. Now, these guys hate Caesar. They hate him with a passion. They hate the Roman government.
But all of a sudden, they get suddenly patriotic. Suddenly they're all worried about Caesar and being buddies with Caesar. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. That saying really bothered him.
And you need to know why. Shall we say Pilate was on thin ice with the emperor in Rome? That was Tiberius Caesar.
Let me tell you why. Pontius Pilate had been the governor of Judea for five years so far at this point. He had made mistakes. He had made three very bad mistakes, but this isn't baseball, so he's not out yet.
But he's on thin ice. Strike number one came when Pontius Pilate was first placed in that position and he came into Jerusalem with the banners, the ensigns of the Roman army. Those were those tall vertical poles and on top of the poles, on top of the banner, on top of the standard was a little bust of Caesar because Caesar was worshiped as deity. So on top of those little poles is this little bust of Caesar on all the soldiers poles had them. Well, you know, in Judaism, it's against Jewish law to have an image of any kind, of any kind, anything of in heaven or on earth.
Second Commandment says, I want no images. They took it very seriously because there's images in Jerusalem. They rebelled. How'd they rebel? They went to Caesarea by the sea, which is where Pilate's headquarters were, and said, we demand you take those little busts away, those poles out.
No images in Jerusalem. Pilate responded by hurting them all in the amphitheater in Caesarea and said, now my soldiers are going to come by and cut your heads off unless you stop your protest. What happened next, Pilate was not ready for. The Jewish leaders fell to the ground, pulled their shirts down, and bared their neck to the Roman sword and said, please, cut here along this line.
We would rather die than break our law. Well, at that point, Pilate knew he lost. He had never seen people willing to die for such a law, so he recanted. He thought this would be a mess. He pulled back and he pulled those ensigns out. That got all the way to Rome. Second mistake, Pontius Pilate wanted to build an aqueduct to bring more water into Jerusalem because the sacrifices in the temple required a lot of water to wash away the blood, and they just needed more water in that city.
It was a growing city. Well, he didn't have the money in the coffers of Rome to pay for it, so by force he invaded the temple and took from the temple treasury money to pay for the aqueduct. People protested. Pilate sent soldiers in among the protesting crowd with swords and clubs hidden in their robe, and at the certain signal he told his soldiers dressed like regular people to kill them.
So several were murdered and the crowd was dispersed. That got back to Rome. Third mistake, he brought tribute shields with an embossed image of Tiberius Caesar to the Antonia fortress.
These were just decorative shields and they were only placed inside the Antonia fortress where soldiers could see them, not the Jewish public, but they found out about it and they protested and they complained and appealed to Caesar in Rome. Caesar himself said, you take those shields out. So he's on thin ice. So you can understand now the threat when they say, whoever does this is not Caesar's friend. Uh-oh, he knew what that meant.
It was a veiled threat or not so veiled. We're gonna tell on you. We're gonna tell mom on you or daddy on you. Daddy Caesar's gonna find out about this. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat in the judgment in that place that is called the Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now it was the preparation day of the Passover and it was about the sixth hour and he said to the Jews, behold your king. But they cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said, shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered.
Now this is gonna seal it. The chief priest who hated Caesar answered, we have no king but Caesar. Again, suddenly they wax patriotic. Suddenly they love Caesar. And in rejecting Jesus as their king and saying we want Caesar as our king, you know what will happen in just a few years from now? At Caesar's orders, their king, Caesar, will order Titus in 70 AD to destroy the temple, destroy the city, and slaughter 1.5 million Jews. You really want Caesar as your king?
Because that's what your king is gonna do to you. I do want to make note of something in this verse that you might just pass over, but I think it will help you in understanding the chronology of the New Testament and especially this crucifixion. It says in verse 14, it was the preparation day of the Passover. It was Friday. And it was about the sixth hour. Now John is using Roman time, the reckoning of time by Rome, and according to Rome, the Romans began their day at midnight. So it was 6 a.m.
The sixth hour was six in the morning. The preparation day was the day that the lambs would be in the afternoon for a two-hour period slaughtered in the temple, and it was that day that the Jews would eat the Passover in Jerusalem. They're gonna go home and take that lamb that are slaughtered, and they're gonna have a meal, the Passover meal. That's the preparation day. And we read in the previous chapter that when they brought Jesus before Pontius Pilate, they didn't want to go into Pontius Pilate's headquarters, lest they become, remember the word, defiled, so that they could eat the Passover.
They hadn't eaten it yet. That's gonna come later on that night, the day of preparation. The lambs are gonna be slain.
They're gonna take one home. They're gonna eat the Passover that night. So now we have a bit of a problem because Jesus and His disciples the night before have eaten the Passover. So people will read this and they go, see there's a problem in the Bible, another one. There's this discrepancy.
They're all over the place and here's one. And that's because they don't know their history and so they just want to chalk it up to being a discrepancy or a contradiction. It's not a contradiction at all.
And let me explain to you why. In Galilee, the Galileans, the northerners, began their day, they looked at the day from sunrise to sunrise. In Jerusalem down south in Judea, the more Orthodox Jews reckoned time from sunset to sunset. Which means Galileans, this is according to Josephus, the Jewish historian, and the Jewish writings in the Mishnah and a couple of other sources, the Galileans, because of their reckoning of the day, would eat the Passover on one night and the next night the Judeans would eat it. Clears it up, doesn't it?
Makes sense. That also helped in Jerusalem with the volume problem. Remember Josephus said 30 years after this Passover, 256,000 lambs were slaughtered in the temple.
That's hard to do in two hours. That's the period, that's the window they have to kill the lambs, two hours. So if you can divide that up for all the northerners that come to Jerusalem to celebrate it by doing it in one shift on, in this case, Thursday and the next shift on Friday, you've mitigated the crowd problem and you've solved the time problems for the Galileans and the Judeans. So Jesus being Galilean with his disciples had already in the upper room celebrated Passover, the Jews now down south must still eat the Passover.
It's their preparation day. So that means while Jesus is on the cross, the lambs in the temple are being slaughtered at Passover. Very significant, Jesus died on Passover. While the lambs were being slain, the lamb was being slain on Golgotha.
So I thought that was important to get the chronology. So they shout out, we have no king but Caesar. Then, because of that statement, then he delivered him to them to be crucified. Luke offers us a sentence that is not in the Gospel of John. It tells us what is going on in the mind and heart of Pilate.
It says, the voices of the people and the chief priests prevailed and he said, crucify him. Moved by the crowd, crowd pressure has made people do more stupid things. Peer pressure. Everybody's doing it, man.
You ought to do it. So the voices of the people prevail. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we get back to Skip's teaching, some people think that Jesus was nothing more than a prophet or a good teacher.
These misconceptions existed 2,000 years ago and Jesus is still misunderstood today. Discover who Jesus really is with Skip Heitzig's riveting nine-part series, Who Is This Jesus?, which examines Christ's humanity and deity to equip you to confidently answer questions about Jesus. This resource, along with Skip's Life Change booklet designed to help new Christians embrace their transformed life in Christ, is our thanks for your gift of at least $50 today to help share biblical teaching with more people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig. Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copies when you give at least $50 today to reach people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Let's continue with today's teaching with Pastor Skip. He knew Jesus was innocent. He kept saying, he's not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. Finally he gives up because they say we have no king but Caesar and you're really going to tick Caesar off and we're going to tell him. So he delivered him to them to be crucified and so they took Jesus and led him away and he bearing his cross went out to a place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha. Golgotha is Hebrew. The Greek name would have been cranium. If you've taken biology or medical studies you know that the skulls of or the bones of the skull are called the cranium and that's from the Greek cranium, the skull bone, that's the skull.
So Golgotha is Hebrew, cranium one is the Greek, the Latin equivalent of those two words is calvarium, calvarium, place of the skull. So Calvary of Albuquerque, Calvary is named after the place where Jesus died, the place of the skull. That is because if you were to stand on the Damascus Gate, let's just for a minute say that I could transport you all right now to the ramparts on top of the Damascus Gate.
I would point to the north, remember from the city of David I pointed to the north to the Temple Mount and then to the peak so now I'm standing with you toward the north at the Damascus Gate and I'm showing you the rock that continues and you would see it if you looked at it today it looks like a skull in that hill, very plainly visible. Now there's nothing in the Bible that says Jesus was crucified on a hill even though the song says on a hill far away and we have all these songs and cards and paintings of Jesus dying on a hill. Most probably Jesus died in front of that skull hill at ground level, at street level, off the main road toward Damascus because the Romans were into showing the population their gruesome punishments. They wanted people to see this is what we do if you mess with us and they crucified people on main roads. There are many stories of thousands of crosses lining the roadways in the Middle East so the travelers would see crucified person after crucified person so that people would realize you know I don't think I'm gonna ever say anything bad about Rome. So Jesus was probably placed in an open flat area on the other side of the gate of Damascus, main entrance to the city and he was crucified there. If you go there today you have to get on the Damascus Gate to look down to see the skull in the ancient times you could just at the road level look right up and see. Today it's hidden and it's hidden by a bus station. An Arab bus station is there on top of the hill is an Arab cemetery a Muslim cemetery and so that is just you go there and it's busy and smelly and noisy but if you get back behind there you find this you can see it plainly place of a skull and then next to this is a tomb called the Garden Tomb and it's where we take our groups every time we go. We take them to the place of the skull then we have communion right there at the tomb called the Garden Tomb and so Jesus was taken to this place of execution where they crucified him and two others with him. One on either side and Jesus in the center.
Now that's significant. The person in the center was always regarded as the worst. If there were five people or seven people the one in the middle or the ones in the middle were considered the worst. If you got three people on crosses the one in the middle to put him in the middle is the place of disgrace. But Isaiah the prophet said he was numbered with the transgressors. They really did deserve crucifixion.
On the cross one of them will say you know we are getting what we deserve but this man is not deserving of death. So Jesus is placed in that center position the position of disgrace and now Pilate wrote a title and he put it there on the cross and the writing was Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews. The Romans did not invent crucifixion.
They did however perfect it. It was invented years before them by the Persians. It was a form of death intended to lift a person off the ground and we are told that the reason Pilate got involved is because if the Jews had their way they would kill by stoning right? The Jewish form the Levitical form is to throw a person down on the ground and stone the person on the ground. So they went to Pilate that it might be fulfilled what kind of death he would die we are told. He's not going to be killed by being thrown to the ground but being lifted up off the ground on a cross.
The Persians believed the earth was sacred they were into Mother Earth. They worshiped their environment they worshiped the earth they worshiped the ground and so they thought to kill a person on the ground is to defile him if a person is worthy of capital punishment we will lift that person off the ground and they will die on a post a pole a tree a stake a vertical stake sometimes just a single pole at other times there was a cross beam called a potibulum and that is the kind of cross Jesus died on. A potibulum was the cross beam as I mentioned it weighed between 75 and 100 pounds when we're told that Jesus carried the cross toward Golgotha he only carried that part.
It's heavy enough 75 to 100 pounds is a load on your shoulders especially after you have sweat great drops of blood after a crown of thorns is placed on your head after you have been beaten to a pulp by Roman lictors now to have that potibulum put on is what Jesus carried. The saying was Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews. Notice what happens many of the Jews read this title for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and it was written in Hebrew in Greek and Latin. Why three languages? Because Jerusalem the Middle East for that matter but Jerusalem especially was very multilingual multicultural you had Jews Hebrews and the language of religion is Hebrew so it is written in Hebrew the language of religion. Greek was the language of the world was the lingua franca of the world ever since Alexander the Great took over Greek culture spread everywhere. Greek was the language of education and culture so you have the language of religion you have the language of culture and education. Latin was the Roman language it was the language of law and order three different languages. The idea is here is Jesus he's for everyone he's for all people all ethnic backgrounds all linguistic backgrounds people of all the world he's the savior of all in three languages that was placed. Therefore the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate do not write the king of the Jews but he said I am the king of the Jews. Now these guys have gall they're pretty bold they're kind of dick now they're being Pilate's editor. Hey let me edit that sentence for you don't write he said that and Pilate basically says too late what I have written he answered what I have written I have written. Most people who were crucified stayed on a cross for days. I say the Romans perfected it back in 1968 they discovered the only archaeological evidence that we have of crucifixion from the time of Jesus but it shows the skeletal remains of a man on a cross and they show him with his legs bent and off to one side with a little piece of wood so that he could sit on it and be placed in a position where he would have to pull up on the spikes in order to catch a breath but it changes a little bit of the artist depiction of showing Jesus standing there on a cross when actually the way it was done and that's the archaeological evidence the only piece that we have the only description that we have is it was in a seated position it was intentionally done to delay death so maximum torture could take place for days until the person died usually of asphyxiation. On that piece of evidence that I told you about that archaeological dig they show that the spikes the nails were large tapered spikes that went through the wrist all of this area was called in ancient times this is the hand so a lot of people you know go yeah the Bible says it went through his hand so it has to be here if it was here it would tear very easily there's not enough to hold but here you have a little bit of a hook you have two bones called the radius and the ulna and tightly wrapped with tendons they form a hook and a person can easily hang his weight and pull up on those spikes in order to take and let air out and so a person was beaten to weaken that person so that death wouldn't take so long and in this case the soldiers are going to go out and try to break the legs of those they will do it to those two on the side but not to Jesus because they're going to discover that Jesus died earlier than they expected he was already dead he lasted on the cross only six hours now that's horrible that's long the sins of the world were placed on him but in terms of the history of antiquity and crucifixion six hours was short and it says the soldiers marveled that Jesus was already dead why was he already dead well unfortunately we don't have enough time to answer that question but we will next time thanks for listening to connect with Skip heitzig we hope you've been strengthened in your walk with jesus by today's program before we let you go we want to remind you about this month's resources that will help you confidently answer questions about who jesus is and understand the new life you have as a believer in him pastor skiff's nine message series who is this jesus and his life change booklet are our thanks for your support of connect with Skip heitzig today request your copies when you give 50 or more call 800-922-1888 that's 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash offer and did you know that you can get a weekly devotional and other resources from pastor Skip sent right to your email inbox simply visit connectwithskip.com and sign up for emails from Skip come back next time for more verse by verse teaching of god's word here on connect with Skip heitzig connect with Skip heitzig is a presentation of connection communications connecting you to god's never changing truth in ever changing times.
