The King of Truth (John 18:28-40)

John 18, starting at verse 28.

Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters.

It was early morning.

They did not enter the headquarters themselves, otherwise they would be defiled and unable to eat the Passover.

So Pilate came after them and said, What charge do you bring against this man?

And they answered him, If this man weren't a criminal, we wouldn't have handed him over to you.

Pilate told him, You take him and judge him according to your law.

It's not legal for us to put anyone to death, the Jews declared.

They said this that Jesus' words might be fulfilled, indicating what kind of death he was going to die.

Then Pilate went back into the headquarters, summoned Jesus, and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus answered, Are you asking this on your own?

Or have others told you about me?

I'm not a Jew, am I?

Pilate replied.

Your own nation and chief priests handed you over to me.

What have you done?

My kingdom is not of this world, said Jesus.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, so that I wouldn't be handed over to the Jews.

But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.

You are a king, then Pilate asked.

You say I am a king, Jesus replied.

I was born for this.

I have come into the world for this, to testify to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

What is truth?

said Pilate.

After he said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, I find no grounds for charging him.

You have a custom that I release one prisoner to you at Passover.

So do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?

And they shouted back, Not this man but Barabbas.

Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.

And Lord, I thank you for today.

I thank you for your word.

I thank you that your word is active and living and powerful.

I ask that you would fill me with your spirit to teach your word accurately, that you would fill the hearers with your spirit to rightly divide and discern what is of you.

And ultimately, Lord, that we would fall more in love with you and grow closer to you.

In your name.

Amen.

Go ahead and have a seat.

All right.

So we are in the midst of the trials of Jesus leading up to his crucifixion and resurrection.

So that's where we are at.

And last week we went through Jesus before the high priest.

And Pastor Chris exposited this really, really well, the whole aspect of Annas and Caiaphas, Caiaphas being the high priest, Annas being the high priest's father, and that being a weird kind of mob mentality with that.

And here we see Jesus being led from Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters.

So let's do a little bit of work just so that we are in the proper context of what on earth is going on.

So Herod the Great, king, Herod the Idemean, if you would prefer, it was the king over all of Judea, Galilee, Samaria, that whole that whatever that weird spot up top that no one likes to talk about, the whole area, up until his death under the Roman Empire.

When he died, it was he was very, very effective at two things, building projects and killing family members.

And so after his death, it was split into four different parts.

And so his kids were ruling called Tetrarchs.

Tetra four, there you go with that.

However, Archolaus, who was over Judea, was such a jerk that even Rome yanked him out of there.

That's a bad sign.

That's why you see when Joseph and Mary are returning from Egypt after they fled there from Herod the Great, and we see that Joseph did not want to go back to Judea because he was afraid because Archelaus was the Herod there, the ruler there.

That's how bad this guy was.

So they yank out a Tetrarch and they put in Roman governors.

So we have three Herods and we have the Roman governors in Judea.

Nobody wants Judea.

That's not a great place to be.

It is full of contention, it is full of issues, and is not a great stepping stone for a career arc.

And so when we are introduced to Pilate here, that's what's going on there.

Why there's a governor there in the first place.

So, Israel under Roman rule, under the governor.

Now, key verse here for this whole thing is gonna be John 18, 37.

When Pilate says, You are a king then, and Jesus says, You say I am a king.

I was born for this, I have come into the world for this, to testify to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

So Jesus is indicating his kingship there, and his whole mission is to testify to the truth, and his servants as those who listen to the truth.

For those of you who are note takers, this is your challenge.

If you go through the Gospel of John and do a word study for truth and how that relates to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is mind-blowing how much that is all cycling into truth.

Why am I saying that?

Because the truth here is colliding with two different narratives.

First, you have the Jewish rulers.

And we won't spend too much time on this, but the Jewish rulers here, I have a slide for that.

Here's their motivation.

First, you see in John 11, 49 through 50, one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, You know nothing at all.

You're not considering that it's to your advantage that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish.

And then in John 12, 19, the Pharisees are saying to one another about Jesus, You see, you've accomplished nothing.

The world has gone after him.

And then we see in Mark 15, a spoiler alert for the passage we're going through here, Pilate answers them, Do you want me to release the king of the Jews for you?

For he knew it was because of envy that the chief priests had handed him over.

So the motivation for the Jewish leaders here is to protect their kingdom, which is their authority under the law, to protect the law, their interpretation of that.

And Jesus is the biggest threat of that, that they have been trying to get rid of him this whole time.

So that is what they are working through.

The Roman Empire is extremely pragmatic.

All that matters for Pilate is to maintain an elevate position by pleasing one's rulers, regardless of right or wrong.

Truth is irrelevant.

What is true will not keep you in your position.

What is true will not keep you from being exiled or replaced.

And so, with that in mind, the greatest offense for Pilate would be for someone to presume to challenge Caesar's authority.

That's a no-no.

You don't do that.

Because not only is that against the Roman Empire, but also we don't like insurrections here.

And so when Pilate is dealt with a potential rival king, that's a big problem.

That's why Jesus is presented as a king, because that is going to threaten Pilate's narrative as well.

So you have the truth, Jesus, colliding with two different kingdoms that they are desperately trying to protect.

And that's what we get to see in play here.

So, having that said, in verse 28, they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters.

It was early morning.

Now, we say early morning, and you go, oh cool, it was 9 a.m.

No.

Somewhere between 3 and 6 a.m.

Early morning.

How many of you are awake between 3 and 6 a.m.?

That is more than I thought, actually.

That's impressive.

Thank you, daylight savings.

Uh still haven't emotionally recovered from that.

So between 3 and 6 a.m., they are bringing Jesus to the governor.

During a high holiday feast.

This is madness.

This is crazy that they are dragging a prisoner to be sentenced and executed in the middle of a festival in the middle of the night.

This is not normal behavior here.

Gets worse.

They didn't enter the headquarters themselves.

Otherwise, they would be defiled and unable to eat the Passover.

Okay.

First of all, you may read that and go, I thought we just had the Passover.

Why do I think we had the Passover?

Because we spent roughly 867 weeks going through John 13 through 17.

And that was the Passover, was it not?

So here's the thing.

We think of the Passover as a meal and it's done.

Passover is a part of the feast of unleavened bread, which is depending on how you do evening versus morning, a seven to eight-day long feast.

It's not just a one and done, okay, we had our land dinner and we're gone.

It is a full-on, weeklong festival.

Here's what's crazy though.

They're taking an innocent man who was just illegally tried in the middle of the night, bringing him before the Roman governors early in the morning, but they're like, we can't go in there because we would be defiled.

We're willing to bring false charges against somebody so that they would be killed, but can't be ceremonially unclean.

Now, that sounds crazy, but is that a Pharisee tendency or a human tendency?

That's kind of the question there with that, is that whenever we get to the point where we have our narrative and our most important truth with that, and we protect it, oftentimes the end will justify the means in order to protect that.

And so that's how you get things like the Crusades throughout history, where you have a goal, and whatever happens to get that goal is fine as long as you get that noble goal done, quote unquote.

And so that's what we see on display here.

And that's what we see when we have that same tendency to get that mindset of the end justifying the means.

And it is crazy because here the Jewish leaders are appealing to the brutal leader of their oppressors in order to get rid of Jesus.

300, okay, it's a 360-day calendar.

So 359 days of the year, they hate Rome.

Rome's oppressing them.

Rome is the problem and the enemy.

But this one day of the year, Rome is their savior as long as it can get rid of Jesus.

So that is the protection of that narrative there.

Incredible irony that they're like, we can't go in there because we might be defiled while we are breaking not only the law, but also our interpretation of the law all at the same time.

And so Pilate comes out.

And again, it is 3 to 6 a.m.

in the morning.

And Pilate's coming out here to hear this case.

He had to take off his Roman jammies, he had to get all dressed up, he's holding his pylate, and he is like, why are we here, guys?

What are we, what's the issue here?

What answer do they give him?

If this man weren't a criminal, we wouldn't have handed him over to you.

So here in the John account, they're not even bringing the charges before him.

They're basically like, look, Pilate, we've already done the uh judgment and the trial.

Trial's done.

We need you to carry out the sentence.

Don't worry about that part.

Just be the executioner for us.

And Pilate's response is well then you take him and judge him according to your law.

I woke up for this! This is what I'm here for.

And their response, it is not legal for us to put anyone to death, the Jews declare.

So they are intent not on justice, not on the carrying out of that.

Their goal is eliminating Jesus in order to protect their position and their authority as it pertains to their kingdom.

Interesting and iron, ironic here that they say that Jesus was a criminal in verse 30, which is an evildoer.

They called the one sinless person in human history an evildoer.

Later, they will seek to set free the evildoer so that they could convict the sinless person.

Spoiler alert.

So that's the gospel.

We'll get to that.

So in verse 32, they said this so that Jesus' words might be fulfilled, indicating what kind of death he was going to die.

What does that mean that it's fulfilling the words?

Well, if we pull up the next slide, we see in John 3.14, Jesus saying, Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.

John 12, 32 to 33.

As for me, if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all peoples to myself.

And he said this to indicate what kind of death he was about to die.

Jesus is foreshadowing his crucifixion through this whole book as what the end result here is prior to resurrection.

So the Jews cannot get rid of this guy.

They seek to seize him, but they can't because his hour had not yet come.

They seek to stone him, but they can't because his hour had not yet come.

They finally arrest him, they think they got him, they're bringing him to Rome to seek execution by crucifixion, which is exactly what Jesus said was going to happen.

So all of their best efforts is playing right into Jesus' hands, into what he has planned.

Which is cool in a certain way, that is comforting.

The evil in our hearts does not subvert the goodness and the will of the Lord, which is awesome.

When he says he's going to do something, that is encouraging.

So here they're seeking for Pilate to execute him.

We're going to see elsewhere in the Gospels that they're falsely accusing Jesus of insurrection.

In Luke 23, 2, they begin to accuse him, saying, We found this man misleading our nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.

And we see how does Jesus respond?

We see in Matthew 27 and Mark 15, he doesn't respond.

He does not answer these false charges.

So they are playing Jesus against Pilate to threaten Pilate's kingdom as a rival threat to Caesar.

And Jesus doesn't even answer the false charges.

So then we're turning from Pilate speaking to the Jews to Pilate speaking to Jesus.

He went back into the headquarters in verse 33.

He summoned Jesus and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews?

Now I'm told that the linguistics of it all, which I am not qualified to speak into, is Are you the King of the Jews?

Right off the bat, like, really?

You're the guy?

You're the guy that we're supposed to be uh working about here.

And Jesus' response here in verse 34, are you asking this on your own, or have others told you about me?

So Pilate goes straight to the issue: are you an insurrectionist?

Are you supposed to be the king of the Jews?

Are you the king?

And he's like, are you asking this on your own?

Or did others tell you about me?

I personally don't think that Jesus is just being a punk here.

You don't sass the Roman Empire.

That's just a general rule.

What I see here is that he's basically saying, is this coming from you?

Who am I being charged by?

Am I being charged by you, the Roman Empire, or am I being charged by others, the Jewish leaders?

Where are my charges coming from here?

And we see Pilate's response here.

Am I a Jew?

I'm not a Jew, am I?

So Pilate responds with what seems like disdain.

For him saying, I'm a little bit above your A grade, Jesus.

You're, I'm not a Jew.

I don't, I'm not gonna call you a king.

Whether you're a king or not, it makes no difference to me.

I'm a part of the Roman Empire.

Who conquered you?

And his response here, your own nation, and the chief priest handed you over to me.

What have you done?

So Pilate is saying here, look, I'm not under your authority.

I'm not under the Jewish authority.

Just tell me what you did.

No, I am not asking if you are a king.

And verse 36 My kingdom is not of this world, said Jesus.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I wouldn't be handed over to the Jews.

But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.

So here is the answer of Jesus.

Because that's the question he has to navigate with Pilate.

If he says, yes, I am a king, he is guilty of insurrection.

If he says, no, I am not a king, he's a liar.

That's whole problematic for the whole sinless sacrifice thing.

What he does say, my kingdom is not of this world.

He doesn't say, yes, I'm the king of the Jews.

He says, my kingdom, not from here.

Which for a couple of different things on that.

Number one, he's saying that my kingdom is not a threat to the Roman Empire as you understand it.

But also, Pilate, I understand that you think that you're a little bit above my pay grade.

My kingdom far supersedes anything that you know or understand.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight.

And I would like to imagine at this moment that Jesus kind of turned and looked at Peter like.

Remember that time you cut the guy's ear off?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no.

He's not of this world.

If a kingdom was, his servants would fight.

If I had a kingdom here, now locally, there would be an insurrection.

He's ultimately saying here that he is not threatening Pilate's physical empire here.

Which is important because not only is that uh really all that Pilate cares about, but it is also indicating his goal is much greater than overthrowing Rome.

Up until this point, some of his followers, all they care about, and all they assume he is here for is to liberate them from the Roman Empire, set himself up as a king, and so, and because they're with him, then they get to be, you know, second in command and all those cool things, and it's set up and everything's happy.

And Jesus is saying here, that is not my goal.

That is not my plan to overthrow Rome.

He has much bigger fish to fry there.

As it is, my kingdom is not from here.

Throwing into this, by the way, the issue with the him being charged of insurrection, there's a whole lot of mess going on in Rome right now.

Uh, Tiberius is a really, really weird Caesar who didn't seem to want to, I don't know, be Caesar.

And so he's invested a lot of his power and authority into one of his prefects, Sejanus, who, funny thing, when you start investing a lot of power and authority into somebody, they tend to think that maybe they should take over.

So there's a lot of drama in Rome right now.

Not a good time for somebody in Judea to start saying that, by the way, I'm a king here.

So, verse 37 Oh, so you are a king?

Pilate asked.

And here's the fundamental difference between Pilate's understanding of kingdom.

And Jesus' authority here.

You say I'm a king, Jesus replied.

I was born for this, I've come into the world for this, to testify to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

Tell me you're a king without telling me you're a king.

That's what he just did here.

He didn't say, Yes, I absolutely, he's like, well, you say I'm a king.

I was born for this, which is very kingly language.

I have come into the world for this, to testify to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

A governor would expect an insurrectionist to say, I was born to rule, to liberate my people, to establish my kingdom, to take back what is rightfully ours, to take back our land from the oppressor.

And Jesus says, I was born to testify to the truth, to bear witness of the truth.

And everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

So not only is he saying, I am the king, but not of this kingdom here.

Rather, to testify to the truth, and my subjects, my followers, are the ones who listen to my voice, who are of the truth.

So his goal is to proclaim the truth.

Why?

Well, because he is.

In John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

He says, I am the truth when speaking to his people.

It's just funny because Pilate starts out saying, Look, I'm not a Jew, I am a Roman.

You are a conquered people, and your own people don't even like you.

And Jesus is flipping it to say, My kingdom is a far greater scope than you realize, far greater purpose than you realize.

Rome is small time compared to Jesus' kingdom.

His goal is not to worship Rome, his goal is to overthrow sin and death, which went all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

That's what's awesome here, is that while he is on trial, and while this governor is asserting himself and his authority over him, Jesus, who's actually willing to speak with him, is going, yeah, my kingdom's a little bit bigger than you realize.

I'm not a threat to you as a governor, I am a threat to the sin that lives inside of you.

Pilate's response here, what is truth?

This goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where we see that a Roman governor has no use for truth.

What purpose is that?

To say, well, this is right.

Well, that's great, but that can still get you executed.

What matters to a Roman governor is his authority, is suppressing revolt and insurrection, is to maintain connection and networking with the people of importance to get out of Judea at all costs into a more important quote-unquote position and to support the Caesar.

For him, Caesar is truth, Rome is truth.

And while Jesus is not directly a threat to that, Jesus is a threat to Pilate's understanding of what is true and what actually matters.

His kingdom and his authority is so much smaller than what Jesus is working on here.

But Pilate is asserting here, it seems, I'm not one of your people, dude.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice, and he's like, I have no use for that.

What is truth?

So, something that's not happening here in John that we see in the Synoptic Gospels.

At this point in time, he's brought to Herod.

So Pilate is not in, this is not in the Gospel of John, but Pilate kicks him over to Herod.

And Jesus won't even talk to Herod.

So Jesus is mistreated at Herod and his people's hands.

And then Herod sends him right back to Pilate.

Nobody wants a piece of this, basically.

But here's the craziness of this: Jesus has been handed from the religious leaders to the governor of Rome to the uh Tetrarch over the area above Judea, Samaria, and handed back to Pilate, back and forth and back and forth.

Nobody wants to actually deal with this problem or actually really be able to pinpoint what the problem is with that.

But the weird thing with that is that before this situation, uh, Herod and Pilate were uh adversaries, and then because of this, they become friends.

That's weird.

But ultimately, he sent right back to Pilate.

And this is where things get really cool.

In verse 38, continuing, after he said this, he went out to the Jews again, and he told him, I find no grounds for charging him.

The religious leaders declare he's guilty without a trial.

They assert that to the governor, and the governor is like, come on, guys, this is not.

He is not guilty, certainly not guilty of death.

You have a custom in verse 39 that I release one prisoner to you at the Passover.

Kind of a weird custom, by the way.

It's like festival remembering the deliverance from Egypt and it's free of prisoner day at the same time.

I guess that's one of those weird, like, but that's not all.

We're gonna throw in a convicted prisoner.

And do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?

And they shouted back, not this man, but Barabbas.

Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.

Okay.

He doesn't find any fault in Jesus.

He really doesn't want to deal with this.

So he thinks he's smart.

There's a way out.

I'm going to tell you, you can get rid of door number one, is this guy who may be a little bit crazy, but otherwise we have no issue here.

Or door number two, who's a revolutionary, a thief, a murderer, and an insurrectionist.

The very things that they were accusing Jesus of falsely.

This should be an easy choice.

Basically, who do you want back on the streets?

Weirdo or criminal who is actually proven to be dangerous to people around him.

Go ahead, pick which one you want.

Pick the pick either one, this one.

And they say, not this man but Barabbas.

Here's where it gets cool to me.

They say Barabbas was a revolutionary.

We see elsewhere he was a thief, an insurrectionist, violent man.

Who is Jesus ultimately crucified between?

Two thieves.

Which is the same word that Barabbas is called in other places.

So does Rome have cross depot that they can go shop at if they need a prisoner?

Obviously they have a supply of that.

But is it possible?

We're going with possible, not a fact, that the cross that Jesus will bear was eventually was originally intended for Paradis.

Is that possible?

Three revolutionaries, three thieves, three insurrectionists.

Pilate doesn't really care who it is who gets on the cross ultimately.

It's not like this is going to be a problem for him.

But that's what's cool here.

Think this through.

The guilty man is set free.

The innocent man takes upon his cross upon himself and dies in his place.

Can you see some dots being connected here?

Please say yes.

So this is what I love about this section, because the Jewish leaders here, despite their best efforts, cannot help themselves from accidentally proclaiming the gospel.

Even in their twisted logic, their narrative, their end justifying the means, they are accidentally against their own best judgment, declaring the glory of the gospel.

What do I mean by that?

Because they are saying, release the guilty man, because the innocent man will die in his place.

That's so cool.

And it's so awesome that despite their best efforts, they're basically, and I could picture Jesus kind of being like, this will make sense later.

But uh they are illustrating the truth of what is happening here.

And that's what's so cool in this passage, because Pilate does not care.

Ultimately, what happens to Jesus does not ultimately matter to him.

He's not really going to lose sleep over that, his wife died, but he won't.

And we don't really all we know about Pilate in history for the most part is this.

He is intricately tied to Jesus throughout his whole, throughout all human history, and that he was the governor.

But the rulers care a whole lot because they need to eliminate Jesus in order to preserve their own little kingdom.

You have the apex of man's sinful heart on display, and through that, you have God's plan working sovereignly through it.

And that's what's so cool.

God did, he works through broken circumstances, through averse things in the most amazing ways.

It's almost like he wants the most messed up tools to illustrate his handiwork, because using perfect tools would almost be too easy for him.

It shows his glory here, because when we look at man's actions here, how ugly they are, how unjust they are, and just how purely evil this scene is.

All humans at work here.

You have Pilate really being indifferent about uh convicting an innocent man, you have the religious leaders actively condemning an innocent man to protect their kingdom.

Where are the disciples?

They're gone.

How ugly this is, how unjust this is, how evil this is.

But when you look at God's actions in here, as he is executing his plan from before the foundation of the world, how beautiful this is.

How merciful this is, how godlike this is.

If we look at it through human eyes, we go, this is the most unfair thing in the world.

And it is.

And yet you look at it through God's eyes and you go, how amazing this is that he could bring about salvation for mankind through the most averse situation at the cost of his own life.

That is amazing.

Ultimately, the truth, who is Jesus, cannot be usurped.

Even when colliding with two false truths that seek to eliminate him.

His plan cannot be usurped in that.

Neither their view of the law nor Pilate's lawlessness can overcome the grace that comes from Jesus.

Isn't that beautiful?

We see in John 1, 16 through 17, indeed, we've all received grace upon grace from his fullness.

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

That's the beauty of this thing, is that the gospel from before the foundation of the world was God's plan at the cost of God's own son.

Why?

Because he loves us.

Isn't that amazing?

God has no obligation to do any of this.

Yet, because of his great mercy, because of his great love, he is willing to go through the height of injustice and lay forth his sinlessness on the cross of a guilty humanity so that we could be set free.

Not just set free, and I don't want to see your face again, but set free and adopted as children.

Isn't that amazing?

This is the God that we serve.

So when we look at this and we look at the wickedness on display, we can look at it through God's eyes and just fall more in love with Him because of the depth of His grace and His love, that He is working through this whole situation to bring about His kingdom, which is victory over sin and death and the devil.

Isn't that beautiful?

So, what does that mean?

What does that mean for us?

For those who are hearing this who have not put their trust in Jesus, God loves you.

He doesn't love a future version of you once you're cleaned up.

He loves you as you are so much that he paid the price for your sins with the blood of his son through Jesus.

And it is through faith in him and belief that that gift can be received.

For those of us who have a relationship with Jesus, number one, the gospel is beautiful.

And that is something that really may that quicken in our hearts as well.

But number two, the darkest circumstances, the most ugly situations, the most injust moments might still be bringing about his glory in ways that we don't see.

And may we not look at it and anticipate a good that we have in mind in the future, but rather may we turn our eyes to the Savior and trust in his goodness to bring about his will in that.

We serve a good God.

It's not that he just uh saved us, paid the tab, and then split.

He still loves us today.

He still uh has good for us today.

Maybe not the good that we have in our limited scope, but his good ultimately.

And so maybe be quickened to further uh lean into him and trust him that even in the most ridiculous, unjust, evil circumstances, he is still working.

And he is still bringing about his glory and our good.

Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you so much for the beauty of your gospel.

I thank you for the truth that you are king, seated on your throne, high and exalted, far above all powers and principalities.

There is nothing that threatens you.

I thank you that you are so full of love that you offered your son to pay the price for our sins, to go through the height of injustice, so that his sinlessness could be imputed to us through faith in him.

I thank you that you are just, that you must punish sin.

And yet, rather than punishing us, the sinners, the breakers of the law, you put it upon your son so that that price would be available to be received by us.

Lord, I ask by your spirit for those who hear this who don't know you that you would quicken their hearts, that your spirit would convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment, that you would, that you would draw and woo to the cross.

For those of us who know you, I ask, Lord, that we would just continue to put our trust in you, not just once a long time ago, but daily, every day, to know that you are working and that you are good, whether in the light or in what seems like darkness.

And we we choose to trust you and to hope in you above all else.

And acknowledge that despite the injustice of the world, despite the bizarre circumstances of life, you are the king.

You have defeated sin and death, and you are returning for us.

Be glorified in your name.

Amen.