Condemned to Death

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Passage Breakdowns, SOAPS Format & Instructions (Weeks 1-12)
Passage Breakdowns, SOAPS Format & Instructions (Weeks 13-26)
Passage Breakdowns, SOAPS Format & Instructions (Weeks 27-34)

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8:40 Service | 10:00 Service | 11:20 Service | Sermon Audio

Good morning Chapel family.

When we started our study in the Gospel of John back in January, the first thing we looked at was something John says toward the end of the book. John 20, verses 30 and 31: 30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. So the purpose of John’s Gospel is to lead people to belief in Christ, which is why it’s relevant for every one of us. For some of you, it’s relevant because you’re not a believer. You’re questioning, you’re doubting, and it’s so good that your mind is open enough to be listening to this message. John wrote this Gospel for you. For some of you it’s relevant because you are a believer, but there’s someone you love who’s not, and you so want them to experience the love of Christ like you have. John wrote this Gospel for you, so you can help guide that family member or that friend toward faith.

But here’s the thing: when someone is considering belief—spiritually searching—they usually assume they’re in control of the process. Right? Like, “I’m not sure about this Jesus thing, but I’m looking into it; I’m checking it out. I’m listening to this podcast; I’m reading this book my friend gave me; I’m trying out this church.” We assume we’re in control. But what if we’re not?
We think we’re pursuing truth; what if truth is actually pursuing us?
We think we’re looking into Jesus; what if Jesus is actually looking into us?
We think we’re choosing him; what if he’s already chosen us?

I’m not suggesting that we have no free will; we do—we have to choose to believe. But if it’s really Jesus we’re dealing with, we’re dealing with a living Being who is actively working in you and around you. And that should change the way we think about the process of believing. So today’s passage is all about someone who thinks he’s in control, but he finds out he’s not.

We left off last week with Jesus being arrested and put on trial before the High Priest. Let’s see what happens next—John 18:28, and we’ll go through John 19:16. This is God’s Word for us today…

28 Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness they did not enter the palace, because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. 29 So Pilate came out to them and asked, “What charges are you bringing against this man?”
30 “If he were not a criminal,” they replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.”
31 Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.”
“But we have no right to execute anyone,” they objected. 32 This took place to fulfill what Jesus had said about the kind of death he was going to die.
33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”
35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
38 “What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him. 39 But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the king of the Jews’?”
40 They shouted back, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising.
19 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3 and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.
4 Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” 5 When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
6 As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”
7 The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. 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?”
11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”
13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). 14 It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
15 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.
16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. This is the Word of the Lord.
Pontius Pilate is mentioned not only in the Gospels; he also shows up in one of the most renowned historical records of the Roman Empire, the Annals of Tacitus, as the official who sentenced Jesus to death. And then back in 1961, archaeologists dug up a stone with an inscription that identifies Pilate as prefect of Judea. So he’s a well-known historical figure, and he’s a fascinating character. He grew up in Seville, Spain. He joined the Roman army as a young man, and then he moved to Rome. He married a woman named Claudia, who happened to be the granddaughter of Caesar Augustus, the Emperor of Rome. So because of that political connection, he was able to rise to the position of prefect, or governor, of Judea. It’s safe to say that Pontius Pilate was a man who was used to being in control. But that was before he met Jesus.
This passage is high drama. The religious leaders can’t go inside the palace, because that would make them ceremonially unclean and unable to observe the Passover. So Pilate is forced to go back and forth between this mob outside, and Jesus, who’s tied up inside. And every time he leaves Jesus and goes back out to face the mob, or leaves the mob to go and face Jesus, the tension builds.
So if the purpose of John’s Gospel is to guide people to belief, and if the process of believing is less under our control than we think, what does this passage teach us about how that process works?
First, in Jesus we find A King Who Exposes Us. And that’s true in three ways.
First, He exposes our avoidance of truth. So Pilate goes out to the crowd of religious leaders and he says, “What charges are you bringing against this man?” They say, “If he weren’t guilty of a crime, we wouldn’t be bringing him to you.” Very evasive answer, because they realize Rome isn’t going to condemn someone to death for violating Jewish religious law. So Pilate says, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” But the mob is determined: “But we don’t have the right to execute anyone—that’s why we’re coming to you.”
See, the religious leaders have already decided that Jesus is guilty of blasphemy, because he claims to be the Son of God. And honestly, they probably could have gotten away with a vigilante stoning of Jesus, like they would do with Stephen a few months later. But they don’t want to settle for that. In Deuteronomy 21 it says anyone who’s hung from a pole is under God’s curse, and they want everyone to view Jesus as cursed. That’s why they’re pushing for Jesus to be publicly crucified, which they don’t have the authority to do. And that’s why they come to Pontius Pilate.

So Pilate, who probably wishes this whole thing would just go away, walks into the palace and calls for the prisoner. And that’s when it starts to get interesting. Because just like we’ve seen in every other encounter Jesus has in the Gospel of John—with Nicodemus, with the woman at the well, with the paralyzed man by the pool—Jesus is trying to reach the heart of the person he’s talking to. Even here, with his life at stake, he seems less interested in defending himself and more interested in the heart of Pilate. So Pilate says to Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” And Jesus says, “Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about me?” In other words, “Do you really want to know who I am, or are you just doing your job?”
Pilate gets kind of offended: “Am I a Jew? It’s your people and your priests who handed you over. So what have you done?” And of course Jesus refuses to answer the question directly. He says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Pilate says, “Ah, so you are a king.” Jesus says, “…the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” And Pilate famously says, “What is truth?” And he doesn’t even stick around for an answer—he walks back outside.
“What is truth?” Those are the words of a man who has built his career and his life kissing up to the right people; forming political alliances; using people to get ahead. In other words, he’s not into what’s true and right; he’s interested in what works. I can imagine him rolling his eyes and saying it with cynical sarcasm: “What is truth?” Most likely, he didn’t even believe there was such a thing as truth. Which is why this is so timely. Because we are living in a culture that increasingly rejects the idea of truth, and says, “You just need to live your truth.” One of my favorite writers, Brett McCracken, wrote this:
“Your truth.” Those two words are so entrenched in our lexicon today that we hardly recognize them for the incoherent nightmare that they are. Among other things, the philosophy of "your truth" destroys families when a dad suddenly decides "his truth" is calling him to a new lover, a new family, or maybe even a new gender. It's a philosophy that can destroy entire societies, because invariably one person's truth will go to battle with another person's truth, and devoid of reason, only power decides the victor.
“Your truth” autonomy invariably leads to loneliness. It erroneously suggests we can live unencumbered and uninfluenced by the various structures that surround us (families, churches, cultures, biology, etc.). But it becomes impossible to form community when everyone is their own island, with no necessary reliance upon larger truths or embeddedness within a bigger story.

One of the reasons that so many 20-somethings are turning to Jesus today is because they are tired of a culture that tells them to come up with their own truth. They have tasted the confusion and loneliness of that kind of life. And in Jesus they see an alternative—not only someone who spoke truth, but who had the boldness to say, “I am the truth.”
Jesus was exposing Pilate’s avoidance of truth. Is he exposing yours? Do you find yourself wanting something solid to stand on, instead of something you make up yourself? Believe in Jesus, and you will no longer have to avoid truth. He is the truth.

Next, He exposes our illusions of power. So Pilate goes back out to the crowd. He’s looking for a reason to let Jesus go, and he comes up with an idea. There’s a custom that every year at Passover, they would release one Jewish prisoner. A gesture of goodwill during the holiday. So he says to the crowd: “You want me to go ahead and release Jesus?” He’s betting that even though the religious leaders want Jesus dead, the majority of Jewish people like him. But he’s wrong. The crowd screams, “No, not him!” And they ask for the release of another prisoner named Barabbas—we’ll talk more about him in a minute.

So Pilate comes up with another idea. He has Jesus flogged. Whipped. Which was a brutal punishment by the Romans. Then the soldiers make a crown out of thorns and press it into his skull, and they put a purple robe on him. And they mock him and slap him in the face until he’s bloody and swollen and bruised. And Pilate brings him back out to the crowds: “Here is the man.” This is a famous painting from 1871 by Antonio Ciseri called “Behold the Man.” Pilate is hoping they’ll have some compassion, and they’ll say, “Okay, that’s enough. Let him go.” No such luck. They scream, “Crucify! Crucify!” And now they can feel Pilate weakening. They say, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”

John 19:8 says 8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. Like it says in Isaiah 53:7 says he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. Jesus is fulfilling the messianic prophecy of Isaiah, and it drives Pilate crazy—verse 10: 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?” This is a man who’s really used to being in power. He’s used to people fearing him and submitting to him. And Jesus is not.

Verse 11: 11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. In other words, “There is so much you don’t understand about power. You do have some power, but only because it’s been granted to you by God. That’s the God that I serve. That’s the God that I call ‘Father.’ And I answer to him—not to you.” This was turning into a rough day for Pontius Pilate.

Can you relate? Some of you have power. You have a significant position of leadership. People notice when you walk into a room, and they listen to what you say. And you can get used to viewing yourself as a person who carries some weight and wields some power. And that can make you very self-reliant. It can make you feel like you’re not one of those weak people who needs God. But sooner or later, you will realize that you don’t have as much power as you think. Something in your life will happen that you can’t control. Your kids, who always listened to you when they were little, are now teenagers, and you’re losing control of them. Or you’ll develop a sickness that you never saw coming. Or somebody you love will be taken from you. Or your job will go away because of AI.

Those are the kinds of “aha” moments that God uses to get our attention and show us we don’t have as much power as we think we do. Those moments make us feel appropriately weak, and if we’re wise, we will reach out and find real power in Jesus.

He exposes our avoidance of truth; he exposes our illusions of power, and then third: He exposes our slavery to popular opinion. John 19:12 says 12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free… Not only because he’s rattled by how not rattled Jesus is. But also because of his wife. John doesn’t include this detail, but look at Matthew 27:19…While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.” Pilate’s conscience is telling him to let Jesus go; his wife is telling him to let Jesus go. He really wants to let Jesus go. The problem is…the crowd.

It is a known fact that in sporting events all over the world, the home team wins more often than the visiting team. It’s objectively true. Why is that? There was recently a Sports Illustrated article that examines the most common theories. Lots of people think the home team wins because they have all those hometown fans on their side. Nope. The evidence shows that teams don’t actually perform any better at home. Some people think it’s because the visiting team had to travel, so they’re tired and they perform worse. Nope. Some people think the home team is more familiar with their own field or court. Nope—no change in performance. So what causes home field advantage? According to the authors of the article, it’s the officials. Referees and umpires don’t like getting booed by the crowd. So when the game gets close, they call fewer fouls or penalties against the home team. They call more strikes against visiting batters. They’re not saying the refs are consciously corrupt; it’s just human nature to want to be approved by the loudest voices around you.

And on that day, the loudest voices around Pontius Pilate were the voices screaming, “Crucify him!”

Back to John 19:12…From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” And that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Pilate knows that if he frees Jesus, the Jewish leaders could report to the Emperor that there was a man claiming to be a King, and Pilate wouldn’t do anything about it. Pilate could lose his position, and maybe his head. The crowd has effectively forced his hand. Pilate sits down on the judge’s seat. The crowd once more demands that Jesus be crucified. And Pilate hands him over.

How about you? Have you realized how much you’re influenced by popular opinion—wanting to be approved by the people around you? Sometimes people say, “When I grew up, I just went along with what my parents said about God. I was just trying to please them. But then I went to college and I learned to think for myself, and I decided I really don’t believe this.” Which could be true. But many times, here’s the reality: you went to college, or you moved away from home, so you’re no longer trying to please your parents; now you’re trying to please your friends. Now you’re trying to fit in with a different group of people. Because public opinion and group acceptance are forces that follow us through life. They can enslave us. And they can keep us from finding God.

Jesus exposes our avoidance of truth, he exposes our illusions of power, and he exposes our slavery to popular opinion. That’s what happened to Pontius Pilate, and he will forever be known as the man who condemned Jesus to death. This is a depressing story, isn’t it? But there is a ray of hope in this story. And we’re going to close with that. Yes, Jesus is a King who exposes us, but he’s also…

A King Who Frees Us. Let’s circle back to that moment when Pilate brings up the custom of releasing one prisoner during Passover. He suggests releasing Jesus, but John 18:40 says 40 They shouted back, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising. Which likely means he was a Jewish resistance fighter—like a guerilla fighter—who was fighting for the independence of Israel. Which means he was probably considered a hero by the Jewish people. He was trying to free Israel! But he’d been captured by the Romans.
It’s not a coincidence that his Aramaic name literally means “son of the father”—bar abbas. Think about it: the son of the father was released, but the real Son of the Father was crucified.
But I want you imagine Barabbas, waiting in his cell. He can probably hear the roar of the crowd outside Pilate’s palace. I wonder if he heard his name being shouted: “Give us Barabbas!” And then he hears, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” What’s going through his mind? He’s seen crucifixions before. He knows it’s the most humiliating and painful way to die. And then he hears the footsteps of the guard; the key in the lock; his palms are sweating; his heart is pounding. And then he hears words that he never dreamed he would hear: “You’re free to go, Barabbas.” What? “You’re free. Get out of here.”

Can you imagine him walking out of the prison, into the sunlight, reuniting with his family, wondering how this happened. And eventually he realizes: Jesus has died in his place. The guilty man was set free, and the innocent One was put to death.

This morning, some of you have seen reflections of yourself in Pontius Pilate, because you realize, “I have a tendency to avoid truth, and I can have illusions of my own power, and I can be a slave to popular opinion,” and that’s good self-awareness.” All of us sometimes resemble Pilate.

But can I tell you some much better news? You are Barabbas! I’m Barabbas! We have broken the law—not of Rome—but of God! We have taken part in a rebellion. And we stand guilty. We’ve sinned, and we stand condemned before God. Death is what we deserve, and that’s what we would receive…if it weren’t for Jesus. Isaiah 53:5 says it like this: But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Just like Barabbas: an innocent man was crushed in your place. And I don’t know where you are in your spiritual search, but let me make this really simple: Jesus loves you. And you might feel like you’ve been pursuing him, but he’s pursuing you. And he’s brought you to this place. And if you confess your guilt and accept the payment he made for you, you will be forgiven and reconciled with your Creator and set free.