Kingdoms Collide

Amen.

Well, good morning, church.

How are we?

Good.

My name is Jordan.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my privilege to open up God's word with you this morning as we continue in our sermon series of John, working through the narrative story this morning of a man named Pontius Pilate.

And Jesus, if you've been around the church for any length of time, you're probably familiar with the text of what's going on.

Pilate holds a pretty significant part in the narrative of God.

The title of my sermon this morning is Kingdoms Collide.

The thread between the Old Testament and the New Testament about the kingdom of God is something that's really one of the main themes and central thrusts throughout all of Scripture, from the Old Testament to New.

This has been a central theme of Jesus' teaching up to this point as we've worked through the Gospel of John, as Jesus has declared his coming kingdom.

And this morning we're going to learn that Jesus was born to establish a new type of kingdom, a spiritual kingdom, an everlasting kingdom.

Speaking of kingdoms, a while back there was a viral thing through social media, I think it began on TikTok, that was wives asking their husbands how often they think about the Roman Empire.

Do you guys remember that?

Some people remember that.

How often, honey, do you think about the Roman Empire?

There's something as a man in particular that is particularly fascinating about the Roman Empire.

I think it's partly because the movie Gladiator is top-down one of the best five movies of all time.

And we can debate that later.

Gladiator II might not live up to the hype because Gladiator 1 is that good.

So that's part of the reason.

But I think mainly the Roman Empire is so fascinating and so much even relevant to this day is because of the impact that that kingdom, that reign has centuries later, thousands of years later to this day.

Things that they established, some building techniques, some ways of thought is still relevant even to today.

The Roman Empire at its peak encompassed 1.9 million square miles, 1.9 million square miles across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

And there were estimated 90 million inhabitants underneath the control of this empire.

So it was a pretty big deal.

That empire, which was formerly known as the Roman Republic, had reigned for approximately a thousand years.

They were the powerhouse military reigning society for a thousand years of the ancient world.

The empire was known supremely for its military power.

Its military power, it had a bunch of wealth due to its strength.

It had advanced engineering techniques that are still being used to this day.

And furthermore, its brutality towards all who opposed their way of thought and life.

And our text this morning in John chapter 18 takes place smackdab in the middle of that thousand-year reign.

John 18 · chapter mention

And we are introduced to a Roman governor of Judea, a prefect, a man named Marcus Pontius Pilate.

Marcus Pontius Pilate.

See, Marcus Pontius Pilate was appointed as governor during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius in 26 A.D.

And Pilate holds great significance not only to this day but to the early church.

We're a confessional church.

We recite often the Apostles' Creed.

And Pilate is named, is by name mentioned in there that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate.

This is the Pilate that we are going to be talking about this morning.

As a whole, we know very little about him, but we know that his appointment as the procurator, the governor of this region of Judea came because he married into it.

He married the emperor's granddaughter, a woman named Claudia.

And so we have this man who really didn't go up as a centurion, as a guard, as nothing, but he gets into this position of power through marriage.

And he is placed to rule this region of Judea.

And as governor of Judea, Pilate was the face of the Roman Empire to the Jews that we find our text this morning.

By historians, Pilate was described as an ambitious opportunist who often got himself in way over his head during his tenure of reign.

He was brutal, he was wicked, he was what was described as politically inept, and he had a deep hatred and antisemitism towards the Jewish people.

Marcus Pontius Pilate was born in southern Italy, and like I said, his appointment came through marriage.

See, it's interesting that as we learn later on in the Gospel of Luke, that it was Claudia, his wife, that tried to convince Pilate to not convict Jesus.

She had received a dream, a vision, and she was restless, and she tried to go to Pilate to not convict Jesus as guilty.

She knew it was wrong.

But Pilate, being weak in his leadership and wanting to preserve himself, neglected the voice of his wife, and we know what happens.

Pilate's governance was marked by political mistake after political mistake.

So the normal place of his reign would have been in a town of Caesarea, which was a coast town some 70 miles away from Jerusalem, where we find our text today.

And it got off, his reign got off to a bad start, a rocky start on day one.

So he came in on day one, and instead of uh serving the people and uh governing the people with uh some uh humility and self-control, he began a fight from day one.

So he had his centurions carry banners and flags of the emperor.

Uh he came into the temples and started messing with their worship sacrifices.

He began meddling uh with their uh the blood of their sacrifices.

He was mixing Gentile blood with the blood of their sacrifices in a way to just dishonor them and to slight the Jewish people.

He changed uh the face of the coinage to have the emperor on it, just to kind of get Adam.

And so he's this pestering, weak uh leader, and the Jews had had enough.

And so within a short time of him being in reign, they began to give it back to him and they began to heckle him day in and day out.

They went to his home and they began to heckle him, to pester him, to stop all of the nuances that he's doing to make their life and their worship of God miserable.

And so they began to do this day in and day out, and it began to frustrate Pilate.

And so what Pilate did is he ordered all of them to come to the amphitheater in Caesarea.

And so he ordered hundreds of Jews to come there, and he was going to address them about how they were to move forward in this relationship underneath his governance.

And as the Jews piled in, he surrounded the amphitheater with soldiers, with swords, and he threatened their lives.

He threatened to take their heads if they would not stop what they were doing to him.

And the Jews did not back down.

They called his bluff, and he did not behead them because they knew if he would, he would have lost his position of power and authority.

He would have lost his governance from Rome for wrongfully beheading all of these people.

And so from day one, week one, he had lost all power amongst his governance.

And really that's where we find ourselves throughout this text, these questions and this exchange that's going between between the Jews and Pilate.

I hope that sets the maybe the backstory, the tone for the climate of hatred, of uh nuances, of pestering and heckling that was going on to the text that we have today.

See, this list of things that Pilate was doing goes on and on.

And as a result, this left Pilate himself not only in hot water with the leaders in Rome, because word had gotten back of how shaky his governance had started, but with the emperor himself.

The emperor himself was frustrated with Pilate.

So he faced extreme opposition from Rome and from the Jewish people he was governing.

And with this understanding and backstory, let us turn to our text as we examine this trial of Jesus.

So the text is broken up really in the first four verses and then the last six verses.

So let's work through 28 through 32.

We see Jesus before Pilate.

So Pilate went outside to them and said, What accusation do you bring against this man?

And they answered him, If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.

Pilate said to them, Take him yourself and judge him by your own law.

The Jews said to him, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.

And this was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show what kind of death he was going to die.

And so let's recap where we are at in this story.

See, Jesus was arrested in the garden.

He was taken to Annas House.

He was the patriarchal high priest, the father of Caiaphas.

And from there, Jesus went to Caiaphas, the reigning high priest, with the chief priests and the whole council, where they were seeking to get a verdict of a crime that Jesus would have committed, that would have had capital punishment, that they could put him to death.

And what John's gospel doesn't tell us, but we learn in Matthew, is that the Sanhedrin, which is the Jewish elites, the really Supreme Court of that day, had held a phony trial in the middle of the night, from the time they came from Caiaphas's house to Pilate's headquarters.

They held this phony trial, which was against their rules, in which they came up with a verdict of blasphemy.

Blasphemy that he was saying he was the son of man, and that would be a threat to the Roman Empire because the Son of Man was the Messiah, the coming king.

And so they hold this phony trial, and following it, they reconvene early in the morning to hold another trial to be able to abide by their rules and abide by their laws, because they want to make sure they're dotting their I's and crossing their T's.

They quickly rush Jesus off after this early morning trial to Pilate's headquarters, where we read in 28 that they led him to the house of Pilate, to the governor's headquarters.

See, Pilate's headquarters typically would have been in that town of Caesarea, some 70 miles away, but because this was Passover week, it was custom for the governors to come to Jerusalem due to the influx of people that would be coming.

So if any situation got out of hand, they would have been on site to be able to handle this great event in Jerusalem.

And we kind of have to ask ourselves, why did the Jews take Jesus to Pilate if they wanted him killed?

We see later on in Acts that they had no problem stoning Stephen, right?

They had no problem putting him to death, even though they're seeking for this for Jesus.

See, having been judged by the Sanhedrin, they had already convicted him guilty, but there remained a large problem.

See, Rome, the governing rule, had removed the right for capital punishment, had removed the right for the Jews to actually take someone's life.

And they restricted it to their barbaric way of crucifixion.

And so, although God's law in Genesis 9:6 prescribed and allowed the Jews to take a man's life, they sought out Rome to take Jesus' life so that their hands would be clean.

Genesis 9:6

And so the Jewish leaders present Jesus to Pilate to obtain this guilty verdict.

And we read that Pilate goes outside to meet them.

Pilate met them outside of his headquarters, and the Jews didn't go in.

Why?

Because they didn't want to be defiled, right?

They had this extra book of rules called the Mishnah.

And what the Mishnah read is that if they were to enter the house of a Gentile, they would have to go through ceremonial cleansing before they would be able to partake of the Passover feast that was just around the corner.

And so the Jews trying to be clean did not enter the governor's headquarters.

It's astonishing to me that the elaborate lengths that the Jews went to avoid this ceremonial uncleanliness to be able to partake in this Passover feast all the while as they are plotting to murder the true Passover lamb that was right in their midst, Jesus.

And so the Jews answer this question What accusations do you bring against Jesus?

That Pilate gives in verse 30.

They answered Pilate, If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.

See, the Jews were now quoting Roman law.

They knew, they were voicing what they wanted.

They wanted Jesus put to death, but they weren't permitted to do so.

And so Pilate, in true form and fashion, knowing fully well what they had desired, decides to play games, to be a thorn in their side.

See, ultimately, Pilate wanted them to convince him.

They wanted to put the onus on them to convince him that Jesus was indeed guilty of a capital crime.

And we see the Sanhedrin kind of struggled with formulating this in a way that appeased Pilate.

The Jews said to him, It is not lawful for us to speak anything, uh, to put anyone to death.

This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show what kind of death he was going to die.

See, not only did Pilate know full well that Jews couldn't kill Jesus, he was mocking them.

He was pushing the Jews to try to persuade them.

See, just hours prior, Caiaphas, the high priest with the Sanhedrin, had made up their mind into the manner in which Jesus would be put to death, that he would be lifted up, which is a foreshadowing of the cross, the way that the Romans would kill someone.

See, the Jews would kill someone by stoning, they would put them down, but the Son of Man would be lifted up.

See, the Jews were after what we read in Deuteronomy 21 through 23.

They're after a death that would prove that Jesus was cursed by God.

Deuteronomy 21, 23 says, A hanged man is cursed by God.

See, the Jews wanted Jesus to be lifted up.

But we read in verse 32 that this was to fulfill the words that Jesus had spoken.

That Jesus had spoken.

See, Jesus was in complete control of the situation.

Jesus not only was in control of the situation, but the manner in which he was going to die.

See, this crucifixion of which they sought was to fulfill the words that Jesus spoke.

He spoke it multiple times.

He spoke it earlier in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

He says in John chapter 3, and as the Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

John 3 · chapter mention

See, it never entered Caiaphas's mind that he here would be fulfilling the promises of God, the prophecy that had been foretold.

And in this moment, not only was Jesus in complete control, we see that Jesus, this King of kings, is not the one on trial at all.

No, he's the one who is holding the trial.

See, Jesus, although shackled and bound, although physically tired from this phony trial and the mockery throughout the night by the Sinhedron, although his clothing was stained from the bloody sweat that poured out moments earlier in Galgotha, this Jesus, this righteous judge, was holding court in Pilate's courtroom.

And the unknowing defendant is actually his accusers, the religious elite and the powers of that world embodied in Pilate.

See, Jesus, this Jesus is the all-powerful, eternally transcendent King of the universe.

Jesus willingly turned himself over to the authorities without a fight.

He even made whole the man's ear, Malchus, who Peter had cut off by the sword.

He was in complete control of every aspect of this account.

And he is now trying his accusers.

So Jesus now turns his attention onto Pilate.

Jesus turns his attention onto Pilate.

We read in verse 33 through 39.

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, Are you king of the Jews?

And Jesus answers, Do you say this on your own accord?

Or did others say it to you about me?

Pilate answered, Am I a Jew?

Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me.

What have you done?

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 this world.

And then Pilate said to him, So you are a king.

And Jesus answered, You say that I'm a king, and for this purpose I was born, and this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.

See, Pilate begins this interrogation of Jesus with this question Are you?

Are you king?

Are you king of the Jews?

We can imagine how pitiful Jesus must have looked in this moment.

How pitiful, how sad the blood-stained clothes that he's worn, the weariness he was sweating through his pores, blood, sweat, and tears as he cried in the garden.

And this emphatic are you is is this you is emphatic.

Pilate is coming after you, you of all people.

You say that you're king?

And we have Pilate, this ruler of Rome, sitting on his judgment seat, questioning the righteous judge, the eternal son of God.

And Jesus replies in verse 34.

Do you say this of your own accord?

Or did others say it to you about me?

Jesus is exposing Pilate in this moment.

What about you, Pilate?

Who do you say that I am?

Is it too far-fetched to believe that Jesus would not be going after Pilate's heart even in this moment?

See, God didn't send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Here we have Jesus exposing this wicked man's heart in order that he might be saved.

See, Jesus asked Pilate to search his own heart and in doing so flips the script on Pilate.

And Pilate now is officially on trial.

Pilate tries to turn things back to Jesus in verse 35.

Am I a Jew?

Your own nation and chief priests have delivered you over to me.

What have you done?

Are you king of the Jews?

What have you done?

Here's your chance to prove your innocence, Jesus.

And Jesus simply replies, My kingdom is not of this world.

He says it twice.

My kingdom is not of this world.

See, Jesus doesn't answer Pilate's question with a simple yes or no.

Are you king?

He doesn't say yes, he doesn't say no.

He simply replies with this utterly transcendent reality that his kingdom is not of this world.

See, Jesus isn't saying that he doesn't have a kingdom.

Jesus isn't saying that his kingdom doesn't have power and reign and rule and that it's anything else to do with the world, but that his power.

And origin and bounds transcend this world.

Jesus says, His kingdom is not of this world.

And he goes on to say, For this purpose I was born to be king, to bear witness to the truth.

See, Pilate is now frustrated.

And like many times before, he is in over his head.

And he ends the interrogation.

He ends the way that Jesus has flipped the script on him with this frustrated question that the entire world is still asking to this day, how relevant this question is.

What is truth?

What is truth?

See, the truth is Jesus was born to establish a new kind of kingdom.

And that's our main idea.

That Jesus' kingdom transcends this world.

Jesus' kingdom transcends this world.

See, the world needed a spiritual savior, but was caught up and honestly preferred looking for it in this world and everything else but in Jesus.

See, his kingdom was not like the kingdoms of the earth.

What theologians have coined the term the upside counting kingdom, the upside-down kingdom, where Pilate sought to keep honor and power, Jesus freely gave up his own glory.

See, the Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve.

And as Pilate sat on his judgment seat, robed with worldly power and the Roman guard at his side, the other, Jesus, this true king, laid down his army.

He was despised and rejected.

See, there is a kingdom where the least are most valued and the humble will be the most powerful.

We see this all throughout John's gospel.

All of the parables and the miracles pointing to this transcendence that Jesus alone is offering.

But over and over, the people continually choose the material things of this world, things that they can taste and see and feel.

As he feeds the five thousands, the people ask for more.

They ask for the bread that God poured down from Moses, when the bread of life, from which they could eat and never be hungry again was right in their midst.

And when they drink, they ask for more.

When Jesus says, Come to me and you will never thirst again.

I have living waters that truly will satisfy you.

And the list goes on and on.

And church, often we are not different at all.

See, this is our story that often we trust in false kingdoms, false saviors.

We trust in false kingdoms ultimately because at our core our hearts long for lesser kings.

Sound familiar here with their after?

Was a lesser king in the midst of the king of kings in their sight.

See, this is a real struggle for us as finite beings.

An eternal spiritual reality is something that we have to struggle to maintain because we live here and now.

We are easily satisfied by lesser levers, lesser pursuits, lesser powers that are fleeting and vain, and they will vanish and be gone.

We must train and fix our minds by sitting underneath God's word to know that He alone will satisfy us.

He alone is eternally transcended.

And I see us believing this false kingdom in two main ways.

We have the false kingdom of worldly pleasure.

The false kingdom of worldly pleasure.

See, understanding the context of Pilate's situation, Pilate was ultimately about self-preservation.

He wanted all the things that he had.

He had power, he had wealth, he had position, he had prestige, he had safety, right?

And he didn't want to give it up.

And so with this great pressure from both the empire and the Jews, he gives in to convict this man, to keep, to hold on to whatever he had.

See, our days are numbered, church.

Like flowers that fades and grass that withers all things of this world will pass away.

Really, this when we pursue worldly pleasures, it's nothing more than a self-medicating, prettying up of ourselves, all the while neglecting this chasm, this eternal bleed, internal bleed that is going on inside.

We just pretty it up and we just kind of limp ourselves along to be able to continue going and going.

We neglect what's going on inside at our heart.

See, Jesus was a threat to worldly pleasures because he had tasted and seen true fellowship with the Father.

The eternal Son of God, which had fellowship with the Father, left that fellowship and came in the form of a man.

And he longed for the day when he would be back into a right, present relationship, face to face with the Father.

Psalm 16, 11 says, For at your right hand are pleasures forevermore, is fullness of joy.

So, church, we need to fight to maintain this eternal perspective that all the kingdoms of this world will fade, but only Christ and his eternally transcendent kingdom can satisfy us.

False kingdom one is worldly pleasure.

False kingdom two is worldly power.

Worldly powers.

We see this in the Sanhedrin, right?

Their pride.

They are trying to hold on to their power.

Jesus was a threat to that.

We oftentimes do this too in safety, right?

We we try to put in all these safeguards around our lives, whether it be our health, whether it be our homes, whether it be our jobs, we try to control and manipulate situations that we have no control of.

Marathon runners dying of heart attacks.

Homes being burnt down after they're just built.

We have no control.

We see political powers that we put our trust in.

We see religious powers that we put our trust in.

And Jesus' kingdom is eternally transcendent of them all.

See, all authority, all authority on heaven and earth had been given to him.

Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall.

The Roman Empire will one day fade away.

Psalms chapter 2 says it like this: Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

Psalms 2 · chapter mention

The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed.

And he who sits in the heavens, the Lord laughs.

He holds them in derision.

These phony kingdoms will fade.

He is eternally transcendent of them all.

What's amazing about Pilate is in all this self-preservation and seeking of peace, six years after he convicted Jesus to death, he convicted another person, an innocent man, to death.

And the Sanhedrin were so frustrated by this conviction that they reported him to the Roman Empire.

And Pilate was ordered to stand trial before the Emperor of Rome, where he was convicted guilty and ordered to take his own life.

That's how Pilate's story ends.

Taking his own life for murdering an innocent man.

What poetic nature that is.

See, the kingdoms of this world, the worldly pleasures and powers that we pursue will all be brought to ruins.

And for those in Christ, this is incredibly good news.

Because the truth is Jesus is the true king.

See, the Jews sought a king that would conquer their greatest enemy, and they mistakenly believed that it was the power and oppression of Rome.

But Jesus conquered their real enemy: sin, death, and hell.

See, Jesus the judge exposes our sin.

He bears witness to the truth that you and I need a savior that is not in and of ourself.

And he lived a perfect life, and he died a death that we deserve.

And he did the impossible.

He rose again on the third day in the power of the Spirit.

How easy it is for us to forget this, how deep and grave our situation is apart from Christ, that the Son of God had to come and take on flesh to live the life that we could never live, and to die the death that would never satisfy the righteous requirements of the law.

See, Jesus exposes our situation, and we need only look to the cross to see how grave it was.

Jesus emptied himself to establish an everlasting spiritual kingdom where we can die to self and live for Christ.

See, the sovereign will and purposes of our king cannot be thwarted.

They are fixed, they are sure, as Jesus set his gaze on the cross.

What a contrast we have in this narrative.

We see the clashing of these two kingdoms with two very, very different kings.

We see Jesus' kingdom that transcends this world.

Through every moment, he is in complete control from the sentencing to the way that he goes to die.

No one takes my life, Jesus said.

He freely lays it down so that we might be reconciled to him.

See, Jesus brings about into being with him the spiritual kingdom that's crown jewel.

Crown jewel is eternal life and fellowship with the Father.

And this church is good news for us.

It is on no strength or merit of our own, it is simply on the work of Jesus.

So our gospel vision, if we were to live this out, if we truly were moved to a place of affection, of thanksgiving for his transcendent grace and mercy, what would it look like?

I would submit that we are commanded as ambassadors of the king to bear witness to the truth of this kingdom, the truth of the kingdom.

See, the purposes of Christ are carried forward through the mission and work of the church to go and make disciples.

This is the great commission, right?

Go make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And he doesn't leave us alone, but behold, he is with us always.

And so I submit to you this question: are you doing it?

Are you doing it?

What in your life needs to change to be ambassadors of this kingdom?

See, Jesus came to bear witness to this truth, and we are to carry forward.

We are the agents, we are the ministers of reconciliation that he saw fit in his wisdom and sovereignty to use to reach the ends of the earth.

And we are told that the work is plentiful and the laborers are few, that there is a harvest to be had.

And so I submit, are you doing it?

And if not, why?

Ephesians 6 says, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

We must be a people that are pushing back the kingdom of darkness with the kingdom of light.

Amen.

Amen.