John 18:36-37 † A Conversation Between Kings

John 18:36–37 ESV

36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

INTRODUCTION

Good morning, Tapestry Church. Today, I will introduce a new series of messages about the Kingdom of God. We are only days away from electing a new President in our country. As we look around the landscape, we all recognize that things don't feel peaceful and exciting in our small corner of history. And though it is no excuse, the truth is that the chaos is not just an American phenomenon. Across the globe, we see warfare, conflict, oppression, and hardship. There are two real temptations before us: (1) We can let the chaos dominate our every thought, or (2) we can pretend the chaos isn't real. Christians are tempted toward being either hyper-political or anti-political. In this series of sermons, we will see that neither of these options is the Christian answer. Instead, God has called us to understand his rule and power through the lens of what Scripture Calls "the Kingdom of God." I hope that we will see that understanding God's Kingdom frees us from both hyper hope in the empires of the world or retreat from being the kind neighbors and citizens that God's word calls us to be in the here and now. I will call today's sermon “A Conversation Between Kings.” We will look at John 18:36-37, in which Jesus is on trial before the Roman governor, Pilate. From this conversation, I will take a 30,000-foot view of some of the foundations for understanding the kingdom. We will answer three questions: (1) Who is the king? (2) Where are the borders? And (3) How can I get in? Let's read the passage and pray together.

WHO IS THE KING?

It is important to understand Jesus' words here on a couple of levels of context. First, the immediate context is that he is about to be crucified. He is on trial--except that he isn't actually a criminal. He has been taken captive by the Jewish leaders who want him out of the picture. They believe that Jesus' message and movement will create conflict with their own comfort and influence, so they need to get rid of him. The problem--besides the fact that Jesus is innocent--is that they don't have the authority to put him to death. They need approval from their Roman overseers to make it happen. So they take Jesus before Pilate. Who was Pilate? I want to read to you from a Bible dictionary for a moment to help us understand the context.

“Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea remembered in history as a notorious anti-Semite and in Christian creeds as the magistrate under whom Jesus Christ “suffered” (1 Tim 6:13)…. Pilate came to power about a.d. 26, close to the time when two of his contemporaries, Sejanus in Rome and Flaccus in Egypt, were pursuing policies apparently aimed at the destruction of the Jewish people. Pilate’s policies were much the same.…He brutally suppressed protest by planting armed soldiers, disguised as civilians, among the Jewish crowds.…In view of his record it is surprising that Pilate allowed himself to be pressured by a group of Jewish religious authorities into allowing Jesus to be executed. A possible explanation is that he already felt his position in the empire to be in jeopardy (note the threat implicit in John 19:12).” Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 1297-98.

Pilate’s identity and actions are a part of the surface-level context: Jesus is on trial before Pilate, and the Jewish leaders need Pilate to believe that Jesus is a revolutionary who wants to overthrow Rome.

The second level of context that is important to understand is that of the Old Testament. We could spend an hour this morning looking at passages and promises in the Old Testament that point forward to this moment in history. Any student of the Scriptures in Jesus' day (and ours) should be able to remember that God's promised kingdom would come through a promised King. The Old Testament context is essential for our topic because the most basic fact of understanding God's Kingdom is understanding Jesus' identity as king. In the passage, Pilate seemingly wants to understand who Jesus is. He has apparently been told that Jesus claims to be a king, and he doesn’t have the same Old Testament context that the Jewish leaders did, so he interrogates Jesus. Jesus tells Pilate that he is, in fact, a king. Don't miss this! Some people say that Jesus was only a good teacher or an exceptional and wise person. If Jesus is just a wise man, it softens his authority. But Jesus doesn't just claim to be a teacher or prophet. He repeatedly identifies himself as the king and ruler, as described in the Old Testament. In this passage we have two leaders conversing, but one leader is radically different in who he claims to be and the authority he claims to have. In all of the unrest you are experiencing, you need to ask yourself if you believe that Jesus is the king he claimed to be. It might feel like a clique to say, “It doesn't matter who the president is as long as Jesus is the king.” But I want to ask over the next few weeks: if we really believed Jesus is King, how should we actually live in this nation? What should change in us if we truly grasp that Jesus is who the Bible says that he is?

WHERE ARE THE BORDERS?

Jesus claims to be a king, but he also tells Pilate that he isn't a King like any other. He defines his kingdom as “not of this world.” (See verse 36.) The Jewish leaders seem to want to convince Pilate that Jesus is a threat to his domain, but Jesus reassures him that he isn't a worldly revolutionary. Jesus taught his followers to conquer not with a sword but with love and peace. The irony is that Jesus has an army that no worldly power could touch. The Old Testament describes God as the “Lord of hosts” and throughout Israel’s history, God has set up and torn down empires. As King Jesus stands before Pilate and refuses to fight back, he teaches us something foundational about the kingdom. First, notice that his kingdom is not from the world. The source of Jesus' rule and reign, in some sense, is borderless. Because God is the creator of all things, his rule and reign contain all things. So, if Jesus has a kingdom and is the Lord of hosts, why doesn't he save himself in this moment? Could it be that he wants us to see that God's Kingdom operates in a different way than the Kingdoms of the world? Jesus conquers his enemy and lays his claim to authority by running toward the cross and not away from it. I want us to begin to see this as a point of emphasis as we work through this sermon series: we should not expect to grow and build God's Kingdom through worldly ways. Jesus conquers through self-sacrificing love and not by the sword. This is the way of the kingdom. What would it look like in your life to really grasp that you're called to organize yourself according to the way of the kingdom and not the world? What would it mean to see the borders and reality of Jesus' control and live toward its full exposure? Though there is a lot to be said historically about the early, what we do know is that Jesus' empire has outlasted Rome's. Jesus' earliest followers were kingdom-focused despite the hostility they faced around them, both from Jews and Gentiles. Listen to this quote:

“There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.” Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, 652.

HOW CAN I ENTER?

The last question I think is foundational as we move forward is, “How can I enter the Kingdom?” In verse 37, Jesus tells Pilate why he, the king of glory, came into the borders of the Roman Empire and human history. If you read John's gospel, you might notice that there are only a few mentions of the kingdom of God compared to the times mentioned in the other gospels. The other prominent place that Jesus talks about the Kingdom in John is in chapter 3, where he teaches Nicodemus about being born again. Jesus taught his followers they needed a new heart and ears to hear and respond to his kingdom message. One of the great foundations to understanding Jesus' Kingdom and how it impacts our lives even here and now is to understand that Jesus' Kingdom has brought the truth to a world and people who are deceived by lies. Listen to how C.S. Lewis described the fall of humanity and see how it connects to Jesus coming to bear witness to the truth:

“They wanted, as we say, to 'call their souls their own'. But that means to live a lie, for our souls are not, in fact, our own. They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, 'This is our business, not yours.' But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives.” C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 75.

The lie that we all have bought is that we can build our own Kingdom and be sovereign over some corner of creation. We see it in the narrative of Jesus’ passion. The Jewish leaders are being completely dishonest in their pursuit of getting rid of Jesus. They overlook the truth to get what they think will get them what they want. They want to kill God so that they can say “This is our business, not yours.” Pilate does the same. He admits that he finds Jesus innocent but then hands him over to be killed to earn up some political favor. I want to point this out because it is relevant to where we are in our culture and how we need to respond. Jesus' kingdom is the kingdom of truth; to enter, you must embrace him as the Truth. That means humbly submitting to his Kingdom way above your own.

The truth of the kingdom challenges those of us who put our hope in earthly power. If we, like the Jewish leaders or Pilate, overlook the truth of God's kingdom to secure comfort, we've missed Jesus' message that hope comes from surrendering to God through knowing the King. The truth also challenges those of us who are indifferent or apathetic. If we overlook the fact that the truth calls us to action and carelessly turn a blind eye to the world, we have missed the truth of living God’s way. Jesus was truth and love in action. When we embrace what it means to enter his kingdom through faith in his message and work in the gospel, it should reshape how we view the world around us. Have you entered the Kingdom?

CONCLUSION

I tried to lay some building blocks for the next few weeks today. One of the most important ideas we will move toward is this: Jesus' Kingdom transcends our current circumstances and political situation. To think that the kingdom can only thrive under certain leaders or political systems is to fail to understand God's Kingdom and rule both in Scripture and in the history of the church. Jesus is in charge, and he has given us a commission: go and build the kingdom through preaching the good news and living out your kingdom path. I want to challenge you, especially now: consider how Jesus' Kingdom is shaping your life. Let's pray. Amen.