John Chapter 19:16-22

Pilot was trying to let him go. Pilot had declared him innocent.

Why is this important? Because what Pilot thought is going to hit close to home. What Pilot believed did not impact his actions. I mean, it's plain to see from these scriptures that he thought he was innocent, but it never impacted his decisions. The life lesson here, Pilot's actions never lined up with his beliefs.

Pilot's actions never lined up with his beliefs. Many of us here today say we believe in Jesus. We say that this is God's Word given to us.

But do our lives line up with that? Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David Magee. David is the senior pastor of the Bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. In the story of Jesus' trial, Pilot believed that Jesus was innocent. Perhaps Pilot even believed that Jesus was righteous. He may have even believed that Jesus was the Son of God.

But Pilot never acted on any of those beliefs. Today, Pastor David explains why it's important to act on our beliefs as we continue in the Gospel of John chapter 19. Now, here's David Magee with his teaching, The Cross. We are in kind of the high holy ground, if you will, of the Gospels. In John 19 and last week we looked at the exchange with Pilot and Jesus, and we recognized that some people in that place declared that Caesar was their king and not Jesus. We talked about how that we need to make a decision who our king is.

Obviously, Jesus is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, but the question for us personally is, is he your king and is he your Lord? So we're going to pick it up at verse 16. Then he delivered him to them, talking about Jesus, to be crucified.

So they took Jesus and led him away. Now, the amazing thing here, or one of the things that stands out, is that the Roman Republic, which stood and operated for about a thousand years, was known for its justice. There was only brief periods of corruption throughout their history. In the midst of them being known for justice, the injustice of all this, how much of an aberration or how different this was compared to the way they usually handled themselves with justice, and they actually prided themselves on that, that there was a system in place, a republic, not a democracy. Sometimes people refer to the United States as a democracy.

It's not really a democracy, it's a republic, but that's not really neither here nor there. But they took care to make sure they did right things with how different this is. Because Pilate declares him innocent and scourges him, declares him innocent and has him crucified. And what's interesting is when you start to really look, I mean, he should have been turned loose. Pilate declared him innocent and then engaged in all these things.

Why? Because it was prophesied. That's what Jesus was here to do. Jesus was in control.

Understand that. Jesus is not the victim here. He's in control.

The whole timetable is his. He put Pilate in power that he might have him crucified. Jesus picked Judas that he might betray him.

Jesus put Caiaphas and Annas in power, knowing they would be the people that would plot and conspire against him. Jesus grew the very tree on which he was crucified. We're told in the word, all things are created by him and through him. Looking at the crucifixion, you know, to God the Father, it was the payment for our sins. To the Son of God, it was the sacrifice for our sins. To us who believe it was the substitute for our sins. To Satan, it was his best victory and yet by far his worst defeat. To the world, the cross is foolishness. They just don't get it to this day. They didn't get it in that day and they don't get it now.

We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment. Verse 17 says, and he, talking about Jesus bearing his cross, went out to a place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha. Now in the Hebrew, it was Golgotha.

In the Latin, it's Calvaria, where we get our word for Calvary. Verse 18, where they crucified him, Golgotha. Golgotha, where they crucified him and two others with him, one on either side and Jesus in the center. Now where is this place?

Well the reality is we don't really know. When you go to Israel, they term places traditional with a little smile and then they call historical sites. Traditional sites, to break it down, really this is probably not where this happened. Historical sites are where it probably happened. Now a lot of the traditional sites, you need to understand, came about because Constantine's mother went over there, this is going to sound weird, with a divining rod going, yep, this is the place, yep, this is the place.

And so, oh, this is the place that happened. Some of the places are just historically inaccurate. I believe, and this is my opinion, I believe that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of those inaccurate places. There's another place that's outside the city walls that has come to be known as Gordon's Calvary, because that was a man who discovered it about 150 years ago that I think is a much better place. The reason is is that there's some discussion whether the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was inside the gates at the time or outside the gates. It's very important that the location be outside the gates. Also, Gordon's Calvary is kind of interesting.

It's 777 meters above sea level. And it's on the mountain ridge that the Temple Mount is also on, which is the place where Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac. And we understand, if you've been here for very long, Genesis chapter 22 is a very prophetic chapter. Now, it was supposed to be outside the camp because in Exodus 29, 14, we're told, but the flesh of the bull with its skin and its awful, you shall burn with fire outside the camp. It is a sin offering. So sin offerings were supposed to be burned outside the camp. Hebrews 13, 12 and 13 says, therefore, Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp bearing his reproach.

So I think it's Gordon's Calvary. The reality is it doesn't matter. It's not that important because I've been there and guess what? Jesus is not there.

His bones are not in the tomb. He has risen. So this last verse mentions reproach. Reproach means to charge or blame for something wrong. You know, we need to be careful.

And I love Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel Coast to make his analogy with this. He said, you know, too often the church shows up on the scene of an accident acting like a policeman trying to figure out who's to blame. Who's at fault here? Got to charge somebody, handcuff them. When we're supposed to be, the ambulance that comes and says, oh, man, you're bleeding. Let me help you.

The EMT, the emergency medical technicians. That's what the church is supposed to be. Now, we are to be reproach. Understand, we are to be falsely charged sometimes. Jesus said, look, you're going to have tribulation.

You're going to have problems. And anybody that's ever done anything for God understands this because the moment you step out is the moment you become a target. And the more you step out, the more vulnerable you are as a target.

Understand that. Second Corinthians chapter 12 verse 10, Paul's speaking here and he says, therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and needs and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. The life lesson here is when we are approached, reproach for spiritual reasons, we identify even more with Jesus.

We identify even more with Jesus. Look, guys, I talk about serving. Don't be surprised when you step out to serve God. If there's not some opposition, if there's not some difficulty in that, why? Because you're stepping out to serve the Lord.

This church as a body is stepping out to serve the Lord. Understand fully what that means. It's not that we're just declaring war on the enemy.

That would be significant enough. No, what we're saying to the enemy is that, you know what? Yes, we are declaring war on you. As a matter of fact, there's people serving you now that we want to go in and grab and take out of the kingdom of darkness, bring them into the kingdom of light and teach them how to fight against you as well. Now, don't expect him to be okay with that. And the only way you can skip this part of Christianity is to not serve.

And still you might not skip it. See, the only way somebody will not criticize you of making mistakes in ministry and in your Christian walk is to not do anything. And brother, sister, if you don't do anything, you're making the biggest mistake of all. And how often we start to serve and we get a little opposition and the Lord wants to grow us and us die to ourselves so that we can live for him, and we turn tail and we run. Well, I didn't know it was going to be this hard.

I didn't know it was going to be this difficult. Peter, 1 Peter 4.14 says, if you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the spirit of glory and of God rest upon you. On their part, he is blasphemed, but on your part, he is glorified. So when you're reproached, you're blessed. If you have a difficulty in the family because of your spiritual hunger for God, you're blessed. If it happens at work, you're blessed.

Now, let me tell you what I'm not talking about because sometimes people get confused about it. I am not talking about you being rude to people and them responding to your rudeness and you calling it persecution because that's happened. If you stand up in a restaurant on the table, foam at the mouth and start to tell everybody that they're going to hell, don't be surprised if somebody says, get down off the table, you're going to have to leave now. And don't call that persecution. That is, I've got a term for it.

I'll share it with you. That's being a jerk for Jesus. Don't be a jerk for Jesus because you don't see Jesus being a jerk to people, do you?

Well, no is the answer. He was certainly harsh to the religious authorities who had gotten into this traditional thing and neglected the reality of the relationship. And part of the significance of them doing that was what? They were being jerks for God. I'm going to beat these people up because they don't know what they're doing is wrong. So I'm going to communicate to them over and over and over. You know, occasionally rarely as a pastor, I sit with somebody and I have to clarify and correct them in something that they have no idea that they're wrong about, especially if they're young in the Lord. But I do that with a meekness and hopefully with a gentleness. Reality is Christians have probably driven more people away from the cross than any other thing.

And how sad that is. We'll be right back with more from David McGee on Cross the Bridge. Right now, here's a word from associate pastor D.A.

Brown. Hey, we want to take just a couple minutes to pray for some cities in our listening audience, specifically Polson and Whitefish, Montana, and also Franklin, Norfolk and Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, and Battle Mountain and Carson City, Nevada. Lord, thank you for the people tuning in right now listening in these cities. Lord, we pray that they would be encouraged, that you would fill them up with faith to say yes to you, and Lord, that they would trust you with all that you want to do. God, we pray for the churches in the area that you give the pastors wisdom. Lord, that you fill the churches up and that people would grow and thrive and begin to serve you. And Lord, we pray for those in government positions.

Lord, the mayor, the police chief, those on the town council, everyone with authority. Lord, we pray for unity. We pray for wisdom, discernment, and peace.

God, we pray that you bless these cities and that many people would put their trust in you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you, brother. And now, I want to introduce you to David McGee.

And now, let's get back to David McGee as he continues teaching verse by verse. Now, as we look at these things, again, we see Jesus being crucified, and the tendency is to go, ah, Jesus was crucified. You know, I feel bad. You know what? You should feel bad, and it should tear at your heart. But you know what?

That's a far cry from what's really needed. What is supposed to happen is you look at this and go, if he did this, what am I supposed to do? If he did this, what does he want me to do?

Since he was willing to do all this for me, what should I now do for him? Now, let me share something else, because here's an area we get confused on. The cross, in our day and culture, has been sanitized.

Here's what I mean by that. Crucifixion, a cross, was the cruelest form of punishment that was in existence in the world at that time. It was cruel. It was horrible. It took hours for somebody to die.

We'll go into that a little more next week. It took hours for somebody to die. It was a horrible thing. It was a horrible thing to happen.

It was a horrible thing to watch. And it was so horrible that Rome said, we will never do this to any of our citizens. If somebody is a Roman citizen, we will behead them as a form of execution, but never crucifixion.

Do we understand that? Do you understand that people who were guilty of murder were executed on the cross? That it was a place of criminal execution? You know, the modern-day equivalent would be like a hangman's noose or an electric chair. Think about that.

That's the modern-day equivalent. And we have so sanitized it, what I'm getting ready to say, somebody go, oh. But what if, follow me with this, what if you had a little electric chair that you hung around your neck? And people say, why are you wearing that? Oh, that's where my Savior died.

And people go, what? Yes, He was crucified. He was executed in this electric chair. That's the reality of it. And when it talks about the cross being a place of foolishness, that's what it's speaking about. It was the modern-day equivalent of an electric chair.

That sure changed a lot of our songs, wouldn't it? There's room at the chair for you. There's power in the chair.

That would be phew. Now, you know, I don't do that just a joke. I'm trying to make a picture so you understand that the cross was a place. Crucifixion was a death of shame and guilt and punishment.

And I think we forget that as we wear gold crosses. We don't consider it was a bloody, torturous death that Jesus went through. Verse 19. Now, Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross, and the writing was Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Then many of the Jews read this title for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. And therefore, the chief priest 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, again, we see these chief priests pretty freaked out.

And again, whenever you see this, whenever you're reading through the Bible, and especially in the gospels, and you read something, and then you see the religious leaders, or you see the Pharisees, or somebody getting all freaked out and excited, stop, pause, and ask yourself, why are they so freaked out? Well, here, I mean, the obvious one is the title alone, that Pilate wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, not he said, I was the King of the Jews. Now, usually, what they did is they wrote the crime of the person, that they were guilty of rebellion, or they were guilty of whatever, sedition, or whatever. They wrote that crime on the side. There was no crime that he could write for Jesus. And so, the fact that he even wrote this is significant, but he wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

Now, what's interesting, and I understand something, and follow me for a second, rabbis were heavy into symbolism. I mean, they did things when they were copying down the scriptures, they counted the letters as they copied down the scriptures. And if it was one letter off, they didn't look to see where that one letter was off.

They peeled the whole piece of paper, they threw the whole thing away. And they had this very in-depth system of doing it. They would count the letters on the page, they would count the letters on the line, they would count the letters going down, the letters going across. And if all that was right, then it was a verified copy of the word. So, they were heavy into what's called acronyms, you know, taking the first letter of each word to form something, a symbol, a picture, significance. Now, the reason this gets interesting is because when you write out in Hebrew what this says, you come up with this, Yeshua HaNazari Vamalek HaYahudim. What's the significance of that? Well, look at the first letters of each word.

You have YHVH. Well, why is that significant? That's referred to as the Tetragrammaton, meaning four letters in Greek.

Why is that important? It's the name of God, Yahweh, in the Hebrew scriptures. That is the name of the Lord, YHVH. And these rabbis being into acronyms and symbolisms would have seen that sign and thought, oh my gosh, take the sign down.

This is an incredible book. There's stuff in here. You know, the joy of digging in scriptures and finding things like this is a lifetime of pleasure, the name of God.

And so they were freaked out not only in the title, but when they looked at the acronyms, they thought, no, no, no, no, no, no. What's Pilate's response? It's a little interesting. Verse 22, Pilate answered, said, what I have written, I have written. Finally, Pilate finds a spine. He takes his stance on the wrong thing about the sign.

He should have taken it moments earlier. You know, as parents, that's an important lesson. You know, pick your battles, pick your battles. You know what I found is if you battle everything, you're just going to be battling all the time. Pick your battles with your kids and those sorts of things. You know, Pilate picked his battle.

It was, I think, perhaps the wrong battle, but here's the thing. Let's look at this. John 1839, John chapter 1839. You know, Pilate is speaking to him. He says, but you have a custom that I should release someone to you at the Passover.

Do you therefore want me to release to you the King of the Jews? So he's trying to release him there in chapter 19, four of John. Pilate then went out again and said to them, behold, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no fault in him. In verse five, then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe and Pilate said to them, behold the man. In verse 14 of chapter 19. Now it was preparation day and it was Passover and about the sixth hour he said to the Jews, behold your king. Verse 15, but they cried out away with him, away with him, crucifying. Pilate said to them, shall I crucify your king?

The chief priest answered and said, we have no king but Caesar. Pilate was trying to let him go. Pilate had declared him innocent.

Why is this important? Because what Pilate thought is going to hit close to home, what Pilate believed did not impact his actions. I mean, it's plain to see from these scriptures that he thought he was innocent, but it never impacted his decisions. The life lesson here, Pilate's actions never lined up with his beliefs.

Pilate's actions never lined up with his beliefs. Many of us here today say we believe in Jesus. We say that this is God's word given to us, but do our lives line up with that? Now I'm not talking about you occasionally stumble or you occasionally fall or you occasionally fail. We all do that. Let's be honest.

Let's be real. But is your life one of desiring to apply the truths of God's word? Because if you say that you believe Jesus and you say you're following Jesus, it should.

It should. There's many people this morning still in bed who think they should be in church this morning, but they're not going. There's plenty of people that think they should share their faith with other people, but they won't. There's plenty of people that think they should ask Jesus to forgive them of their sins, and they may never do it.

Why? Because their actions aren't lining up with their beliefs. And see, guys, this is what we need to be careful when we examine our lives. I'm not talking about in some legalistic way. Understand the grace of God is there for you, but understand God has laid out in his word that we're to follow him. And he gives us direction on how to do it. And you're in a church that will not only encourage you in doing that, but show you how to do that. Why?

So your beliefs can line up with your actions, and your actions can line up with your beliefs so that you won't end up like a Judas, so that you won't end up like a Pilate. I want more for you than that. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Now God wants you to pray this prayer so much that he died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. Jesus said he would not turn anybody away who comes to him.

And he came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness, those who were sick, not the righteous. So congratulations, friend. You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can visit crossthebridge.com to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ.

Or you can write to Cross the Bridge at P.O. Box 12-515, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 27117, and share how God is working in your life. You know, the Bible tells us that the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. But it does cost for us to come and bring that message to you and to others in your neighborhood through radio, through the internet, and through the mobile technologies that God has gifted us to be able to use. So if you'd like to support this ministry, please go to crossthebridge.com, click on the donate button, and ask God how much he would have you give either on a one-time basis or a continuing basis each month to help ensure that the teaching of God's Word continues to go out through Cross the Bridge. Thank you so much. at crossthebridge.com. Thanks again for listening and join us next time as David McGee continues teaching verse by verse in the Gospel of John.