The King's Voice

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Welcome

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Introduction

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Scripture
John 18:33–38 NASB95
Therefore Pilate entered again into the Praetorium, and summoned Jesus and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?” Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, “I find no guilt in Him.
Prayer
People interpret this in different ways but I believe when Jesus asks a question it is not so he can try and determine what people mean. He knows every thought, word, and deed. It seems to me that he asks questions to make a statement or for the sake of the person he is talking to. Or it could be for those that are listening. Maybe here he is allowing Pilot to think through his original question and come up with the answer. Think about it Pilot’s concern would be whether Jesus was guilty of sedition against the roman government. In a sense he’s saying, “Pilot, you cannot be serious here. Have you seen me recruiting an army and forming a rebellion or is this just hearsay based on the accusations of the Jews?”
That is an easy question to answer. We must look no further than a parallel passage found in Luke 23:22
Luke 23:2 NASB95
And they began to accuse Him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.”
The reason that Jesus is being interrogated by Pilot is obviously because the enemies of Jesus have created a false narrative in order to eliminate Him once and for all. They want to kill Jesus and the only way to do that is to lie about him. Which brings us to principle number one, God’s enemies tell lies.
I. God’s opponents tell lies – John 18:33-34, Luke 23:2
a. Accused of misleading nation
b. Accused of forbidding to pay taxes
c. Accused of claiming to be king (a threat to Roman authority)
Is there any truth to these accusations? Of course not! Regarding taxes Jesus said to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s. And if he was trying to overthrow the current empire and setup His own kingdom then he was an utter failure. However, if he came to testify to the truth, to set the captives free, to seek and save the lost, to defeat the works of the devil… if he came to do all that then he was absolutely victorious. And we know that he did and that he was.
God’s opponents still tell lies about us today. We are accused of being Islamophobic, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, sexist, racist bigots. These are all false accusations meant to demonize us and turn others against us. Same strategy they used against Jesus. Exact same playbook. Bigot is an interesting label considering their rage against those that hold different views. Actor Chris Pratt is a recent example [doesn’t take a hard stand for Christ like Kirk Cameron but does mention prayer and church and the trolls still come out and attack him for those things]. Many of his fellow Avenger actors held a Bidon fundraiser, Pratt, who goes to church and claims to be a Christian did not attend the fundraiser. The left came out, just foaming at the mouth, in great fury attacking Chris Pratt, not for admittingly voting for Trump, but because he MIGHT have voted for trump. These are the same people that label Christians as intolerant bigots and they are taking intolerance to a whole new level. Now you are attacked, not just for what you say and do, but what you might have said and done. If you are on Twitter sometime take a look at the response to posts by Answers in Genesis, one of the great Christian ministries of our times, and you will see the vicious attacks and lies spread by the opponents of God. I will warn you though it is not for the faint at heart.
John the Baptist did not come eating and drinking and they said he had a demon. Jesus came eating and drinking and they called him a glutton, a winebibber, and a friend of sinners. God’s opponents will come up with false accusations and labels no matter what. How do we handle these lies? How did Jesus handle them? At one-point Jesus told them, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Basically, he did not waste his time arguing with opponents, he just kept showing love and mercy to those that we broken and open to the saving power of the gospel message. We are to do good works to glorify our Father in Heaven and go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. We are to stay focused.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The first point is God’s opponents tell lies. The next principle is God’s kingdom is not of this world.
II. God’s kingdom is not of this world - John 18:35-36, John 6:15, Matthew 26:53
a. The Jews wanted to make Jesus and earthly king
b. The followers of Jesus or even angels would have fought
c. Jesus did not lose spiritual and eternal focus
Are you the King of the Jews?
Pilate’s idea? Have you seen me try to overthrow the government or are you going by hearsay?
Not my circus, not my monkeys?
John 18:35–36 NASB95
Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”
Pilot, who is probably used to being in control of the conversation, seems a little agitated. He asks rhetorically, “Am I a Jew?” and reminds Jesus that it was his people that brought him here. He asks, “What have you done?” Let me break this down for you because I have the gift of reading between the lines. He is points emphatically toward the Jews and says, “Not my circus, not my monkeys! I don’t even want to be involved with this petty Jewish squabble. I had already settled down to Netflix eating popcorn in my pajamas with Mrs. Pilot. What have you done to work these people up in such a frenzy?”
Jesus, still in complete control, is ready to answer the original question. He clearly implies that He is a king but clarifies that His kingdom is not of this world. If it was then his servants would fight.
John 6:15 NASB95
So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.
Jesus certainly could have setup an earthly kingdom. Remember that his followers wanted to make him an earthly king (John 6:15). They thought that is what the Messiah was coming to do. They looked around at all the government oppression, the persecution, the lack of freedom and they thought it was mostly a political problem. I can imagine the struggle Jesus had to decide what to do at that point. “Hmm, so I could have a temporal kingdom and rule a rebellious people in this little region of the earth, or I die for the sins of the world, defeat death once and for all, save humanity from the wrath to come, provide eternal life, sit at the right hand of the Father and sometime come back as conquering King ruling over the whole earth as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That’s a tough decision, let me sleep on it and get back with you.” Think about how puny man’s plans are when compared to God’s plans. When they were going to try take Jesus by force and make Him king, He withdrew to the mountain to be by himself. He wanted no part of their puny little plan. He had something greater to accomplish.
Matthew 26:53 NASB95
“Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?
In fact, not only could He have had an army to fight for him. His Father would have given Him 12 legions of angels (Matthew 26:53) (could be around 72,000 and we know what a couple of them did to Sodom and Gomorra). However, Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. It is spiritual. It turns out that this was not a political problem after all. The oppression, pain and suffering was a side effect of a deeper spiritual problem. In my field of work in Information Technology, there is something called root cause analysis. There might be a help desk ticket come in about corrupted data. Now we could correct the data, close the ticket and go about our day. But what will likely happen is that data corruption problem shows up the next day, the next week, and so on. Why is that? Well, a root cause analysis reveals that the data corruption is not the real problem. It is simply a side effect. We have to find and fix the cause if we don’t want to constantly be “putting out fires”. Let me use an analogy that most everyone can relate to a little easier. Imagine we have a suspended ceiling back in the church fellowship hall. And imagine that we begin seeing brown splotches in some of the tiles after a hard rain. Obviously, there is a problem. We call a board meeting and after much discussion we decide the solution is to replace the bad tiles. Someone says we have already done that numerous times so for problem areas we need to remove the tile and add a 5-gallon bucket. Now we have a solution, and a campaign begins to replace ceiling tiles and add buckets. It is then brought to the next business meeting for a vote. Everyone agrees this is the solution but who will empty the buckets when they are full? After another round of discussions, they decide volunteers will be placed on a rotation to empty the buckets when they are full, and they will place a sign-up sheet in the foyer. Months go by and there are even more tiles with brown splotches and the floor is littered with overflowing buckets. Why is that? Well the problem isn’t really the splotches on the tiles or the buckets of water, right? It’s simply side effects. The root cause is a leaking roof. Now our board, being the intelligent group they are, would have recognized this and brought the solution of fixing the leaky roof to the church body. And our church, being informed and reasonable people would have agreed that the leaky roof must be fixed soon.
The point is this… America has a leaky roof. Blue splotches on a map are side effects. The heart of the problem is the human heart. We look around at this nation and we see the education system has been taken over by secular humanists, the media is full of fake news and immorality, and the government is corrupt. Ultimately though, it’s not a political problem, it’s a spiritual problem that takes a spiritual solution. That solution is the life changing message of the Gospel and to testify to the truth.
III. God’s people testify to the truth- John 18:37-38
a. Jesus came to this world to testify to the truth
b. Followers of Jesus are of the truth
c. Followers of Jesus hear His words
Jesus tells Pilot that yes, He is king and he was born to tell the truth. What an amazing opportunity for Pilot to ask Jesus more about the truth. But instead he basically says that absolute truth doesn’t exist. Like so many others especially when it comes to politics truth is traded for expediency.
How Ironic that he asks what Truth is while it was right in front of him. Jesus is the way the truth and the life. Those that are of the truth will hear Jesus’ voice. Pilot was apparently did not fall into that category.
CONCLUSION
Bill Bright said that only 2% of Christians actively share their faith.
That means that there we have 2% patching the leaky roof. Probably another 18% emptying buckets and replacing ceiling tiles. What are the other 80% doing? I don’t know. I can tell you I need to be testifying to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Do you want to make America great, do you want to make the world a better place. Then give the heart transforming, life changing message of the Gospel.
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