The Love of Jesus (John 19:1-16)

John 19 1 through 16.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.

The soldiers also twisted together a crown of thorns, put it on his head, and clothed them in a purple robe.

And they kept coming up to him and saying, Hail, King of the Jews, and were slapping his face.

Pilate went outside again and said to them, Look, I'm bringing him out to you to let you know I find no grounds for charging him.

Then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.

Pilate said to them, Here is the man.

When the chief priests and the temple servants saw him, they shouted, Crucify, crucify.

Pilate responded, Take him and crucify him yourselves, since I find no grounds for charging him.

We have a law, the Jews replied to him, and according to that law, we he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God.

When Pilate heard this statement, he was more afraid than ever.

He went back into the headquarters and asked Jesus, Where are you from?

But Jesus did not give him an answer.

So Pilate said to him, Do you refuse to speak to me?

Don't you know that I have the authority to release you and the authority to crucify you?

You would have no authority over me at all, Jesus answered, if it hadn't been given you from above.

This is why the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.

From that moment Pilate kept trying to release him.

But the Jews shouted, If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend.

Anyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.

When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside.

He sat down on the judge's seat in a place called the stone pavement, but in Aramaic, Gabbatha.

It was the preparation day for the Passover, and it was about noon.

Then he took the Jews, or then he told the Jews, Here is your king.

They shouted, Take him away, take him away, crucify him.

Pilate said to them, Should I crucify your king?

We have no king but Caesar, the chief priests answered.

Then he handed him over to be crucified.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for this passage that you have for us as a church here this morning to go through.

Lord, I pray that you would do your perfect work, that you would have your perfect way in each one of us.

That we would come before you just in openness to what it is that you want to do in us.

If we need encouragement, I pray you would encourage us.

If we need conviction, um, I pray that you would bring that as well.

Lord, you would do that perfect will and have your perfect way in and through us this morning, we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated.

So before we jump in, uh, there are two things that I want us to keep in mind as we go through this.

Actually, maybe three.

Um, a theme that we're seeing through this trial and all the way to the end of the book of John is as we just sang, how great is the love of God.

This is how much God loves us.

But specifically for this passage, there's two things that I want us to keep in mind as we sift through this verse here this morning.

First, the importance of us recognizing Jesus as the king of our life.

Realizing that we continually need to choose him as the only authority in our life.

So that's one big theme.

And the second is that we are only allowing Scripture to shape our view of who God is.

Not allowing our own expectations, not allowing the world's expectations to shape our view of God.

Because that's really what the Jews are doing right now.

Their own expectations, and the world's expectations are getting in between them and God.

So look for those things as we continue through these verses.

Now, our text today is obviously, as we just read, a continuation from last week of Jesus' trial.

You know, he's been already been handed over to Pilate.

Pilate is going back and forth and back and forth on what to do with this guy.

He doesn't know what to do with Jesus.

So he offered to release a prisoner to the Jews, a tradition at this point.

And the Jews choose Barabbas, somebody that wanted to overthrow Rome.

They choose this guy instead of Jesus.

And at this point, Pilate is finding no reason to have Jesus killed.

But as Ben mentioned last week, Pilate is just trying to keep his position in the Roman government.

At the same time, he's trying to stop this riot that looks like it's starting to form.

He's trying to appease both Rome and the Jewish leaders at the same time.

And as we saw last week, we're going to see again this week, justice does not seem to be his number one goal.

It doesn't even seem to be a goal at all with him.

He's just trying to appease a bunch of different people.

So following last week's questioning of Pilate to Jesus, he told this crowd of Jews that he found no grounds for charging Jesus.

And we're going to see that a couple more times in this passage here today.

Yet he found no grounds to convict Jesus.

But look at verse 1 of chapter 19.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.

He couldn't find a reason to convict Jesus, but has him flogged anyway.

Where's the justice in that?

You know, it'd be like you being accused of tax fraud, which you did not commit.

You go to court and the judge says, We have no proof of you committing this crime, and we have no grounds of conviction you, of convicting you, but we're gonna send you to jail for six months.

That makes zero sense, doesn't it?

That's pretty much what happened here, but flogging is way worse than jail time.

Flogging could bring a person to within inches of death.

And the whips that the Romans would use, they were called a flagrum or a flagellum.

And basically that was a rod of wood, and at the end there were these strands of leather, multiple strands of leather that would come off, and at the tips there would be either bone or lead for both weight and to rip flesh off of the person's back and sides.

So don't think of a bull whip.

He's not sitting there, you know, with a long single whip.

This is this is a weapon of destruction that they're using on Jesus' back.

And this was his punishment for having no conviction and no wrongdoing.

You know, maybe Pilate was hoping a middle-of-the-road solution here.

I'll punish him, you know, and I'll weaken him and I'll make him all bloody and beat up, but not crucify him, hoping that this would both appease the Jews and he could keep his job at the same time.

So John goes on, verse 2.

The soldiers also twisted together a crown of thorns, put it on his head, and clothed him in a purple robe.

Before we even talk about the pain of what's going on here, I want to first look at the mockery that's happening.

You know, a crown and a royal colored purple robe.

A mockery of the charges that are being brought against Jesus.

The charges are he's claiming to be king of the Jews.

And in this humiliation that they're inflicting upon him, they're also inflicting a lot more pain than just the flogging.

There are so many nerves in the scalp.

So many nerves in the scalp.

There are nerves in the forehead that go down into the face and on the sides that go into the ears, that it's all connected.

There are a lot of blood vessels that cause profuse bleeding in the scalp.

If you ever nicked your scalp, you know it's really hard to get it to stop bleeding.

So imagine the thorns being pushed down into the scalp between the bone and the flesh.

Lots of pain is taking place here with Jesus.

You know, and a little side note, I think the choice that the these Romans that are carrying this out, the choice that they made of using thorns is really interesting.

They had no clue what they were doing, but um, thorns are a part of the curse that we see way back in Genesis.

Genesis 13, uh, 17 through 18, it reads, The ground is cursed because of you, because of Adam's sin.

You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you.

Work was not the curse.

It was the toil in the work that was the curse.

And part of the toil is you would have to deal with thorns.

You would have to deal with them getting in your way and growing in your crops and removing them and getting pricked by them and just all that those things bring.

Um so you can probably see the picture here.

Jesus is taking on the curse upon himself.

And this crown is a symbol of what Jesus is carrying to the cross for us.

And on top of that, he'd already been flogged.

So putting this purple robe on his back is not a favor that they're doing to him.

You know, he would have exposed nerve endings and blood all over his back.

And putting this on him was just one more way that they're torturing him, especially when they had to take it off after some of that blood had dried.

So they're mocking and they're inflicting pain.

And this continues into verse 3.

Look at it with me.

And they kept coming up to him and saying, Hail, king of the Jews, and slapping his face.

Notice those words right there.

They kept mocking and beating him repeatedly.

And the Jewish leaders had already done this, they had already mocked him, they had already spit in his face, they had already beaten him, and they were saying, Prosphesy, prophesy who it was that hit you.

But now it's the Romans' turn.

Like this is the second round of this that he's going through.

And I mention this because in all of this, please see Jesus loves you.

He loves you this much.

He endured all of this for you.

You know, I'll never forget my youth pastor teaching on this, Jesus' trial and crucifixion.

This was way, way back, a long time ago.

But he said, at any time, Jesus could have called to the Father and this huge digital button could have just come floating out of the sky to him.

And everybody would sit there, like, what is this?

We've never seen anything like this.

And Jesus says, Behold, reset.

At any time, he could have just booped, like, you are so not worth this.

But he doesn't.

I mean, he already told Peter that he simply had to ask, and 72,000 angels would come to his rescue.

He's willfully going through this because he loves us this much.

Willing to be mocked, willing to be tortured to death on our behalf.

You know, this is exactly why we should be so disgusted with our own sin.

Because this is the death that we deserve.

And this is what Jesus had to go through so that we don't have to.

If we're uncomfortable with the descriptions that I've been giving so far this morning, uncomfortable with the suffering of Jesus, we should have that same discomfort when we think about our own sin.

Realizing that our sin led exactly to this.

You know, your last white lie that didn't hurt anyone led to this.

We need to realize those are the sins that sent Jesus to the cross just as much as murder and rape and pedophilia.

Sin, all sin is disgusting to God.

God wants us to be uncomfortable with our own sin just as much as we are with the discomfort of hearing all of the things that Jesus is going through as we recount this here in John.

Because sin brings death, it brings pain, it brings destruction.

Sin brings mockery of God.

And Jesus going through his trial and walking to the cross is the death, pain, destruction, and mockery that each one of us deserves.

But Jesus is choosing to go through this for us.

We're seeing the punishment of our sin, and it's uncomfortable, and it's okay to be uncomfortable.

We shouldn't be comfortable with this.

John goes on.

Look at verse 4 with me.

Pilate went outside again and said to them, Look, I'm bringing him out to you to let you know I find no grounds for charging him.

No grounds for charging.

But he had him brutalized anyway.

It's a weird thing to say, isn't it?

As Jesus is brutalized.

Verse 5.

Then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.

Pilate said to them, Here is the man.

When the chief priests and the temple servants saw him, they shouted, Crucify, crucify.

The religious leaders of this time in Israel led the cry for this.

You know, the depths of twisted religiosity here is unbelievable for you know what we're seeing from these guys.

They're so passionately skewed in their beliefs that they want to kill the focal point of their religion.

God Himself.

And as they're screaming, Matthew says the crowd starts to jump into.

They follow the lead of the religious leaders.

All while the Roman can see that Jesus is innocent.

The Roman can see that Jesus should be released, that these charges against him are false.

So Pilate jumps back in.

Look at the second half of verse 6.

Pilate responded, Take him and crucify him yourselves, since I find no grounds for charging him.

You know, we see a bit more detail in Matthew's account here of what happened, so I want that to read that to you.

It says, When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that a riot was starting instead, he took some water, washed his hands in front of the crowd, and said, I am innocent of this man's blood, see to it yourself.

And then look at their response here in verse 7.

We have a law, the Jews replied to him, and according to that law, he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.

Now, do you remember all the times that they, just through the book of John alone, that they have already tried to stone Jesus because they thought he was blaspheming the name of God.

They kept saying that by claiming equality with him.

This was because of a law that they had in Leviticus 24, 16 that says, whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death.

So now they're trying to explain this to Pilate.

But you have to look at their hypocrisy here.

You know, we saw it last week.

They were holding an illegal trial for Jesus at night.

There was no due process, yet they were concerned with defiling themselves by going into Pilate's headquarters because it was a feast week and they didn't want to defile themselves.

They wanted to be able to continue to participate in the feast week.

Now they're trying to get Jesus killed by Romans while breaking their own laws about how to hold a trial.

Legalism does this to people.

Neglecting some laws while adamantly upholding others, you know, that they deem to be more important.

You know, as Ben was saying, an end justifying the means.

They're like, whatever it takes to kill Jesus, we're gonna do it, even if it causes us to break our own laws.

And that's what we see them doing.

So a lot of hypocrisy going on here.

John goes on.

Look at verse 8 with me.

When Pilate heard this statement, he was more afraid than ever, it says.

He feared man, he feared for his job, he feared the approval of the Jews, but to this point, he had only questioned Jesus about being the king of the Jews.

Here he realizes that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.

And it's this statement that made him more afraid than ever.

It's this statement.

You know, this is no longer a random Jew accused of claiming to be a king.

This is a guy claiming to be the son of God.

You know, Pilate, you know, we could probably almost be sure that he's a pagan.

A Roman, um, you know, that would typically be what he would be.

But Roman and Greek mythology have beliefs of God's visiting humans.

And there must have been some belief inside of Pilate that maybe this claim is true.

And that I think is what's causing all this fear inside of him.

You know, surely he had never had anyone like Jesus on trial.

So now he's so torn.

He's in so much turmoil that he just keeps going back and forth.

He doesn't know what to do.

He's just like, ah, so he just bounces back and forth, back and forth.

Look at verse 9.

He went back into the headquarters and asked Jesus, Where are you from?

But Jesus did not give him an answer.

You know, I think he's probably asking, you know, did one of the gods send you?

Where are you from?

That might be a part of this question.

You know, and I always wondered why Jesus didn't answer him here.

And I think it might be because Jesus already gave him a similar answer in chapter 18 when he said, My kingdom is not of this world.

Maybe he didn't answer him because an honest answer to Pilate at this point would be, I'm from eternity past.

How would Pilate handle that one?

Warren Wearsby in his commentary suggests that it's a basic spiritual principle that God does not reveal new truth to us if we fail to act on the truth we already know.

So he's thinking maybe that's going on here.

We don't know exactly why.

All we know is Jesus chooses to stay quiet at this point.

Look at verse 10.

So Pilate said to him, Do you refuse to speak to me?

Don't you know that I have the authority to release you and the authority to crucify you?

You know, so he thought at least.

So Jesus uh he gives Jesus this old, you know, do you know who I am?

Do you know who I am?

You know, but Jesus is not impressed.

He actually corrects him.

Look at verse 11.

You would have no authority over me at all, Jesus answered him, if it hadn't been given you from above.

So Romans 13 says that there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are instituted by God.

Even Pilate, even the Roman government over Israel at this time.

You know, 1 Peter 2.13 speaks of this same idea.

So this answers the question of why would Jesus submit to Pilate?

It's because God put this spineless flip-flopper here in this position for such a time as this.

For his purposes at this time.

But that's what Jesus just told him.

You know, that you wouldn't have the authority if it wasn't for God.

And by the way, I'm God.

You know, so Pilate will use his God-given authority to execute Jesus.

Think about that.

Another proof that Jesus is willfully going to the cross for us.

And Jesus continues, look at the second half of verse 11.

This is why the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.

And this is singular here, what Jesus is saying.

So we're talking about Caiaphas at the This point.

And think about he was the current high priest at this time.

And think about what Caiaphas had done to this point.

All while knowing scripture, probably as well as anybody on the planet, maybe other than Jesus, uh, at this point, being the high priest.

So he's been trying to kill Jesus for a long time.

He's been trying to get him stoned.

He's it's premeditated murder that he's been trying to do to Jesus.

He set up an illegal phony trial at night with false witnesses.

He brought Jesus to Pilate with false accusations.

And he wasn't, uh if he wasn't a part of it, it was at least his associates that cried for Barabbas and then cried for Jesus to be crucified.

That's a lot of corrupt, uh, premeditated sin that's going on with Caiaphas here, and it's been happening for a long time.

And Jesus is not letting Pilate off the hook here, we're not reading it that way, but saying God put you in this place of authority, and this trial was brought to you just now.

This is all fresh and new to Pilate.

The one that handed me over to you has been sinning against me over and over and over, premeditating murder for years against me.

His sin is much greater in quantity.

On top of that, Caiaphas knows scriptures we talked about, yet he's hardened his heart, and now he's condemning Jesus.

Pilate's a pagan and can see that Jesus is innocent.

So when you compare Caiaphas and Pilate, Jesus said, Caiaphas has the greater sin in all of this.

John goes on.

Look at verse 12.

From that moment, Pilate kept trying to release him.

He doesn't want to crucify him.

And you know, it seems that he's afraid of Jesus at this point.

There's some amount of fear that he's having.

He wants nothing to do with this.

He's literally washing his hands in front of this crowd saying, I don't want anything to do with this.

You know, I think Pilate at this point is really starting to see that there is a lot of wrong going on here.

He already said he knew the trial was taking place because of the jealousy of the Jewish leaders.

And obviously, this is like no trial he's ever had before.

He has somebody on trial like he's never had before, and now he just wants out.

But the fear of man is too much for him.

He can't get past the fear of man.

And look at the pressure that's applied to him here in verse 12.

It says, But the Jews shouted, If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend.

Anyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.

They are applying pressure to Pilate's insecurities and fears.

They know what those are, and now they're making their argument pointed right at his insecurities and fears.

Look at verse 13.

When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside.

He sat down on the judge's seat in a place called the stone pavement, but in Aramaic, Gabbatha.

You know, this was an elevated judgment seat where verdicts were handed out or verdicts were given.

And Gabbatha literally means elevated.

And in Matthew, we learn that at this point, on top of his current hesitations, that Pilate's wife has a dream and sends him word.

I want to read that to you.

It says, While he was sitting on the judge's bench, his wife sent word to him, have nothing to do with that righteous man, she calls him.

For today I've suffered terribly in a dream because of him.

One more hesitation, one more insecurity for Pilate here.

Verse 14.

It was the preparation day for the Passover, and it was about noon.

Then he told the Jews, Here is your king.

You know, this single verse has caused so much debate throughout church for hundreds of years, um, in a couple ways, actually, because first, was John using Roman time or Jewish time when he's writing this down?

If it's Roman time, it was 6 a.m.

in the morning when this trial was finished.

If it was Jewish time, it's noon.

That the trial ended.

Again, I don't think John, since we've been talking about from the beginning, I don't think John's biggest concern was writing a timeline in the gospel.

Like he hasn't really held to that as a part of his writing.

Um, so I don't know exactly what John was trying to communicate.

I really think it was probably closer to 6 a.m.

than noon at this point.

But it's been a debate for hundreds of years.

We're not going to solve it here this morning.

Um, the second debate about this verse is the question that comes up is how can this be the preparation day for the Passover when they already ate the Passover meal the night before, the Last Supper that Jesus had with his disciples.

So Passover started at sunset the previous day.

So what we would call Thursday night, because this is Good Friday that all of this is taking place.

And I think, you know, there's a simple explanation, as Ben mentioned last week.

The whole week became known as Passover Week because Passover was during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which was this week-long feast that they would have.

So there is a very good chance that John is meaning that it was preparation day for the Sabbath, being Friday, during Passover week.

Which the Jews did every Friday.

They had their preparation for the next day for the Sabbath for the week.

And it just happened to be the Friday of Passover week, and that's how John's telling it to us.

You know, it's something the people of this day, I think, would read and just understand without thinking twice.

But for us, 2,000 years later, reading this in English, we're like, what's going on here?

You know?

But if uh if you look ahead, look down actually at verse 31 of this chapter, it says, and I think this brings some clarity to how John writes this, it says, Since it was the preparation day, the Jews did not want the bodies to remain on the cross on the Sabbath.

So right there, our very same author ties the preparation day to the Sabbath in the very same chapter.

Uh so I think that's all John's saying.

It's preparation day of the Sabbath.

During Passover week, he's just simply putting a timestamp on when this happened.

And I think that's simply all that it is, and we don't need to debate about it.

But you can believe other things, and that's fine.

We can still be friends.

So Pilate tells the crowd, here is your king, it's preparation day.

And verse 15.

They shouted, Take him away, take him away, crucify him.

Pilate said to them, Should I crucify your king?

Now, I always wonder, and you've heard me ask this question before, how many of the same crowd here was shouting Hosanna just a handful of days earlier, during the triumphal entry?

How many of those have already just flip-flopped in the course of five days?

You know, when God didn't meet their expectations of who they thought God should be, they went from all-out worship to shouting, crucify him in a matter of from Sunday to Friday.

You know, and I think we need to be careful about this too.

You know, we need to make sure that our expectations of God come from Scripture and not from what we think is right based on our expectations of who we think God should be.

And I think this is what has led to so many compromises in the American church.

Well, you know, a loving God would allow this.

A loving God would think this way.

You know, a loving God would allow anyone to get married.

A loving God would want everybody to be financially rich.

You know, a loving God would not allow good people to suffer, would He?

Or a loving God would never allow a follower of Jesus to suffer.

And then all of that leads to all kinds of weird doctrines that stem from that based on our current definition of what a loving God would be.

You know, we cannot place our expectations of what God should be, in our view, on God.

Scripture tells us who God is.

Scripture tells us what his loving commands are.

And it's up to us to understand God through that lens, to understand God through a biblical lens.

You know, the Jews shouting crucify had unbiblical expectations of their Messiah.

They had unbiblical expectations of what he would be and what he would do.

And they crucified God because of their bad expectations.

You know, what's even more disturbing is what these Jewish leaders say next.

Look at the second half of verse 15.

We have no king but Caesar.

The chief priests answered.

Then he handed him over to be crucified.

These chief priests, this crowd of Jews, hated Rome.

They hated Caesar.

They hated that their land was being occupied by them.

They hated the taxes that were imposed on them.

They hated how they had to follow Roman law above the Mosaic law.

They hated that they had to bring Jesus to Pilate instead of just executing him themselves.

But to get their way, they're willing to forsake God and say, We have no king but Caesar.

This goes back a long way.

You see, in the Old Testament, God desired and initially had it set up for him to be the head of the nation of Israel.

He appointed the judges of Israel at that time to be his voice in a lot of ways, to be his human representation on earth.

But they wanted a king.

Israel wanted a king.

They wanted to be like other nations, they wanted to be like their neighbors.

So they kept saying, Give us a king, give us a king.

God relented.

He gave him Samuel, the first king of Israel.

He's this good-looking, tall guy.

He checked all the human boxes of what humans want in a king.

And we do this too.

We talk about, oh, that person looks presidential.

That person doesn't really look presidential.

You know, we've had these conversations before.

God gave them a kingly looking king, checked all the human boxes, and that didn't work out well.

Just read the rest of the Old Testament, and you can see how that did not work out well for the nation of Israel.

So God gives Israel the perfect king in Jesus Christ.

The perfect king with all authority, exercising perfect justice in every way possible, that loved Israel more than his own life.

He was the king that Israel needed more than anything.

And they say, We have no king but Caesar.

Look at the heart condition of what's going on with these guys at this time.

The chief priests pledged allegiance to Caesar over God.

Isn't that scary?

Think about what they did in this very short time.

First, they chose Barabbas over Jesus.

So they chose a political revolutionary against Rome, over a spiritual revolutionary against sin.

Then shortly thereafter, they chose Caesar, you know, an earthly king that they hated and that held them in bondage and occupied their land over a spiritual king that wanted to liberate them from sin, from the bondage of sin that occupies each and every one of us before coming to Christ Jesus.

They kept choosing the opposite of what was best for them.

And we cannot think for a moment that we are any different than they are.

We cannot be trusted on our own.

That's why we need Jesus so badly, each and every one of us.

That's why we need the Holy Spirit living inside of us, living through us.

Otherwise, we will continue to choose the opposite of what's best for us.

The opposite of what God wants for us.

And Jesus as King in our life will always be the absolute best thing for us.

You know, that needs to be, I think, one of the major things that we walk away with here this morning.

We need to allow Jesus to be the only authority in our life, to be the king, that we recognize that he is the king in our life and that we choose that on a daily basis.

I'm not talking about salvation here.

I'm talking about allowing him to lead and guide every single thing that we do.

You know, and the second thing, as I mentioned earlier, it's closely related, is we need to allow scripture to shape our view of who God really is.

Not allowing our expectations of what God should be shape our view of God.

That's how most of Israel ended up rejecting their very own Messiah that they had been waiting hundreds and hundreds of years for.

A skewed view of what God should be like according to their desires.

But this point, you know, goes back to the first.

It goes back to Jesus being the authority.

And that authority is found in God's word.

We need to have a biblical worldview, which simply just means, you know, seeing things through the lens of scripture and not through our culture or how we decide to define love this year.

We change all the time, but God never changes.

And that's why we have to have a biblical worldview of who God is.

And it's not based on our emotions, it's not based on how we feel, it's not based on how we want to define love or see love being, because that's different than 100 years ago, which was different 200 years ago and 300 years.

That changes, but God never changes.

So let's pray for those things right now.

Lord, we pray that you would help us in all of these things.

Lord, we are weak on our own.

We flip-flop just as much as Pilate and just as much as these Jewish leaders.

So we pray, Jesus, that you would be the authority in our life.

That we would desire for you to be the king of our life.

That you would guide us and lead us and direct us in everything.

And that our worldview would be based off of Scripture, not our own expectations of who you should be or what a loving God would be, but based on what Scripture tells us of who you are.

And who you are is a loving, just God.

And so we thank you so much for that.

We thank you that it is your love that uh propelled you through this trial and through the crucifixion all the way to the resurrection.

That you loved us that much that you would stand in our place, that you would walk the road that we deserved, that you would be crucified, the death that we deserved, in our place.

But more importantly, that you would raise three days later, showing that you have defeated death, that you have defeated the grave, that you have defeated sin, that you defeated the curse, and all of those things.

And that we just simply need to say yes to you now.

To place our faith in you, that you have done these things and accept the sacrifice that you made in our place to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us and to wash us so we can be pure and holy in your sight and now boldly come into your throne room of grace.

We thank you so much for all that you have done for us.

Help us to never grow callous to this story we're going through now.

Like Amy said, if if even if it's the hundredth time, Lord, that we would realize afresh and anew what you've done for us.

And as we see this, and we're as we're uncomfortable with the pain and the suffering and everything that you went through, that we would realize that that's our sin.

That we would be that disgusted with our own sin in our life, that our own sin would make us that uncomfortable.

But we thank you, Lord, that you've already forgiven us, that we are washed, that we are cleansed.

But help us to be more like Jesus on a daily basis, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.