Hillary Clinton achieved a great measure of notoriety during the Benghazi Hearings for her response to questioning regarding what really happened during the massacre, by asking her accusers, “What difference does it make?” Some would say that this statement of seeming indifference at the loss of the US Ambassador’s life and three embassy personnel’s lives was a key factor in her recent loss in the election.
And while that incident has very little to do with today’s message, as I studied the text this last week, and considered the importance of the truth of Christ upon our lives, I found myself hearing that shrill question repeated in the back of my mind. What difference does it make? Is the truth really that important? That is the subject we have been looking at for the last couple of weeks as we have studied the arrest and now the trial of Jesus. The subject has been the contrast of truth versus apostasy. Remaining stedfast in the truth, versus caving in to natural wisdom or human preferences which subvert the truth.
And for the last couple of weeks we have looked at various responses of the church when the truth engaged with the hostility of the world. The disciples initial response when Jesus was arrested was the fight or flight syndrome. Most of them fled into the darkness, Peter tried to fight. Both responses were natural, but both were the wrong response. The truth as evidenced by Christ’s response is stedfast, it is grounded in the word of God.
Then last week we looked more closely at the denial of Peter, his attempt to fight in his own cunning and strength resulted in eventually blaspheming and denying the Lord. That action is what is called apostasy in ecclesiastical terminology. And we looked at four steps by which the church - not the world, but the church - can turn from the truth to apostasy as evidenced by Peter. They were reliance upon your own wisdom and strength, a distancing of oneself from God, a desire for friendship and acceptance by the world, which finally culminates in blasphemy and denial of the Lord. And we often see this apostasy mirrored today in the church.
Now this week, as we follow the events recorded by John, we see another view of apostasy, the apostasy of the unsaved, or the apostasy of the world. Christ manifested the truth of God to the world, but the world turned away from truth, deliberately choosing apostasy. Truth is what was on trial then, and it is what is on trial in our modern culture as well. And we who love the truth find ourselves on trial as well. As Jesus in vs.37 says, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” You are either of the truth, or you are in opposition to the truth. And I believe the world who is antagonistic to the truth has echoed the question made by Hillary, “What difference does it make?” Truth is under attack. Apostasy is championed, in both the religious and political realms of this world.
Even a cursory look at the problems headlining our society today reveals the dilemma of our modern culture, which is summed up in Isaiah 59:14 which says, “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the street, and uprightness cannot enter.” Today truth has stumbled in the street. Apostasy seems to hold sway in the world and it threatens to overwhelm the church. The world loves darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil, they hate righteousness, and they love wickedness.
But while we can expect such a sentiment from the world who is in rebellion against God, it is even more disconcerting that the same question is asked by the church at large, if not directly, then indirectly. Is truth worth standing for? Does the truth really matter? Is the truth worth dying for? Is the truth worth separating over? Or do we just throw up our hands as Pilate did and say, “What is truth?”
I would submit to you that the truth is all that there is. It is the most important thing. Not conformity to religion, not conformity to the status quo, not conformity to political correctness. Jesus said, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” So truth is important.
Even the founders of our country understood that our heritage as Americans depended upon the truth. The Constitution begins, “We hold these truths to be self evident…” They acknowledged that truth was derived from our Creator. But I’m afraid that though they made a good start, they stopped far short of the truth. True life and freedom can only come when we believe and accept the gospel which is the truth of God given by Christ Jesus. As Jesus said, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
So as the church, we must believe all the truth, and nothing but the truth. It’s so important that as a church truth must be paramount in our focus. We cannot allow false teaching to creep in. Because like leaven, a little leaven leavens the whole lump, a little falsehood dilutes the truth so that it loses it’s power to set you free. A little lie serves to keep you in bondage.
The truths or doctrines of our faith are like railroad ties, underlying the steel rails of the track. If you start removing some of the ties, soon the rails are no longer able to keep the train on track, and you end up with a train wreck. But the world doesn’t see truth like that. They see it as a restriction on their freedom. They hate it because it makes them feel guilty. They want independence from God, even though such freedom leads to destruction. So they want to overthrow the truth, and are hostile to the truth. The world is at enmity with God.
In our text today we see this attempt by the world to subvert the truth concerning Jesus Christ. Truth is on trial, as I said previously. And the world is characterized by two entities in this passage; religion and politics. Those are the two elements of the world we are looking at today in this story. Religion and politics. First let’s consider religion. Not the church(the true believers) but religion.Religion is man’s attempts to reach God. Christianity is God reaching down to man through Jesus Christ.
So in this passage, religion is identified with Annas, the father in law of the high priest, who was Caiaphas. John doesn’t tell us much about Jesus’s trial with Caiaphas, but other gospels fill in those blanks. However, as I said in previous messages, John isn’t interested in a chronological biography here, he is giving us his gospel. And so the message I believe he wants to get across to us is not necessarily every detail of Christ’s trial, but the overarching view or goal of the religious bureaucracy, which was their animosity and hatred of the truth of Christ.
John focuses on Annas, because he is the real manipulator behind the Jewish religious facade. Caiaphas, who is the high priest that year is his son in law. But Annas, who had once been the high priest himself, is the godfather so to speak. Annas is the one who is in charge of all the concessions which were in the temple; the money changers and the sellers of doves and sacrifices. All of that was known as the bazaars of Annas. He was the godfather of what Jesus referred to as a “den of thieves” when He made a scourge of cords and cleaned out the temple.
And remember, Jesus did that twice. At the beginning of His ministry and then after His last triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus cleaned out the temple. And that operation had exposed and called out the corruption of the religious system of the Jewish temple and the priesthood which was complicit. See, what they did was they fleeced people who came into the temple to present their sacrifice. Annas had inspectors there who inspected the animal or birds that the person had brought to be sacrificed. And of course, the law required that such had to be without spot or blemish. So when the inspector would look it over, he would find fault and say that it had some sort of defect and could not be sacrificed. So then the only real option was for the person to buy one of the “perfect” specimens that the bazaars offered, which of course cost much more money than what you could buy the same for elsewhere. And to make it even more odious, these theives had another aspect to their racket that included money changing. They said you couldn’t buy the sacrificial animal with Roman money, because it had Caesar’s image on it, and that amounted to idolatry. So you had to exchange your money for Jewish money, which again cost you a hefty commission. So they had quite a racket going on, enough to make the Mafia jealous.
Caiaphas, being the High Priest, was complicit in this scheme of course. It was a family business, after all. They were made extremely wealthy by it. But the High Priest was by this time a political appointment. The Romans recognized the degree of control and authority of religion in Israel, and so they had taken over the appointment of the High Priesthood in order to make sure that whoever was in that position followed their wishes and worked with them. And Caiaphas and his father in law Annas had managed to ingratiate themselves to the Roman authorities through graft and behind the scenes deal making. So that’s who these guys were. They were using religion for personal advantage. Truth had stumbled in the streets, because there was no righteousness in the leadership. They cared more about political correctness, about keeping the powers that be happy, and about garnering wealth than they did about truth. In fact, Caiaphas was the one who had said in vs14, “It is expedient for one to die on behalf of the people.” Unbeknownst to him, God was prophesying through him that Christ would die for the sins of the poeple. But from his perspective, what he was really saying, was it was expedient to sacrifice truth, to murder Jesus, for the sake of their religious enterprise.
So Annas, starting in vs.19, begins a mock trial of Jesus in the middle of the night. It was totally illegal and improper. There were no witnesses there to bring charges against Him. And as you look at his line of questioning, you notice that he doesn’t accuse Christ, but that He wants to get the Lord to say something which they can use to incriminate Him. They ask Him about His disciples and about His teaching.
It’s almost as if they are more concerned about how many people Jesus has in His church, and how many services they are holding, than whether or not Jesus is speaking the truth or not. So Jesus answers him saying, “I have spoken openly to the world; I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together; and I spoke nothing in secret. Why do you question Me? Question those who have heard what I spoke to them; they know what I said.”
Here is what is happening; the ruling party of the Jews have already issued a verdict upon Jesus. He is to be killed, to be crucified. They have already determined that He has to be done away with. They have no charges in regards to Him teaching anything that isn’t true, or scriptural, but their issue is that He challenges their authority and their ability to exert financial gain from their religion. So there is a conflict between their religious traditions and Christ’s teaching of truth of God and their only solution is to silence Christ by killing Him.
Listen, there are similar conflicts going on in the church today. There are traditions, practices, that have been passed down from generations and are considered essential to church health and wealth. And if you don’t conform to the country club mentality, then you are ostracized and even sometimes attacked. You are put on trial by the religious community because you don’t conform to the church paradigm which is practiced by most churches. Truth is sacrificed for the sake of continuity, for the sake of conformity, for the sake of prosperity. And when you don’t adhere to that template because you don’t see that specified in God’s blueprint for the church then you are subject to hostility and denunciation.
And as we see in the case of the High Priest’s appointment, there is a similar situation in the church today over leadership that is not according to the calling of God. I read a blog the other day from a pastor, lamenting the number of pastors he knew that had recently quit the ministry. They talked about things like burnout, and lack of appreciation, or conflicts with membership or committees. I don’t deny that pastors can get burned out, or that they can suffer from loneliness or depression just like any other person does. I am sometimes a victim of such things myself from time to time. But what I think is perhaps the root of the problem is that there are a lot of pastors today that have been called by churches, but not necessarily called by God. They may have been appointed by a seminary, but not appointed by Christ. If a pastor has a clear call of God to preach the gospel, and pastor the flock of Christ that Christ has given him, then I think that such a man will not likely quit the ministry due to feeling under appreciated. I think far too many men are called according to a popularity contest held by the church’s pastor search committee, and in order to maintain that approval rating, they have to conform to what the people want them to do, rather than their first priority as to what God would have them do. And that lack of a divine call upon their lives is equivalent to what Jesus referred to as a hireling, and not a true shepherd, who abandons his sheep when trouble comes.
I will say this as well, when the church starts to dismiss certain truths of scripture in favor of cultural preferences, then you should expect a continued decline into apostasy to follow shortly afterwards. For instance, when churches opt to disregard the clear teaching of the Bible in regards to women in ministry because it is no longer fashionable, then it should come as no surprise when those same denominations eventually move to include homosexuals into the clergy. One need only look at the predominate Presbyterian and Episcopal denominations to see how one denial of truth soon leads to another and so on until it is completely corrupted. A little leaven soon leavens the whole lump.
Well, the response to Jesus’s rebuke of the High Priest earned Him a slap in the mouth. Vs22,
When He had said this, one of the officers standing nearby struck Jesus, saying, “Is that the way You answer the high priest?” Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify of the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike Me?”
Jesus comes back to the truth. If I’m telling the truth, why do you strike Me? The reason is that they hated the truth. They didn’t want to hear the truth. And I believe that is still the prevailing sentiment today in organized religion. People don’t want to hear the truth, if it opposes what they want to believe. We have seen that lately in the political arena as well, haven’t we? The riots the other day at Berkley University. They don’t care about the truth. So they strike out, they riot, they break things and cause damage in order to prevent or intimidate people from speaking the truth. And as Jesus indicated, they break laws in order to try to convince others that they are unlawful.
We have seen such attacks even here in this church. We speak the truth, and eventually someone gets their pet principles stepped on, but rather than seriously seek to know the truth, they go out of their way to attack the pastor, and demean him to as many people in the community as they can. Such is the nature of apostasy. But Jesus is the example of how we are to react to it.
There is one other aspect of the apostasy of religion that is illustrated here in vs 28, “Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.” What this indicates is a commitment to ceremony at the expense of truth. The hypocrisy of these Jews is really astounding. They don't want to be defiled, and so they will not enter into the hall of judgment because the hall of judgment is in the hands of Gentiles. God hadn’t told them to do this, this was their tradition. So in their minds, to enter into the hall of judgment will bring about the possibility of defilement. It’s ironic that they are so scrupulous about the little details of tradition, but totally unconcerned about the vast sin of the murder of the Son of God.
Now, what makes it even more significant is that John says they didn't enter into the hall of
judgment that they might not be defiled, so they might eat the Passover. Now, isn't this amazing? Think of the irony of it. Who is the Passover lamb? Well Paul says in
1 Corinthians 5: 7 that Jesus Christ is the Passover lamb. He says, "Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” So they continue in their sin of murder, but publicly adhere to ceremonial cleanliness, in order that they might eat the Passover, while putting to death the Passover Lamb.
And as a modern application of that, let us be careful in the church if we accommodate sin, in order to not offend the world, so that we might practice our religion. Remember that Christ suffered and died for those sins. And when we wink at sin, we embolden the practice of those sins, and cheapen the grace of God through licentiousness, disregarding the fact that God crushed Jesus to pay the penalty for those sins so that we might be set free from them.
The second aspect of the apostasy of the world that is illustrated here is the political realm. Pilate is a prime example of the political aspect of the world. Let me give you a little background on Pilate. First of all, he married well. He married Claudia, who was the daughter of Tiberius, the grand daughter of Caesar Augustus. As a result of that marriage, he was appointed prefect of Judea, or what we might call the governor.
Pilate was a politician, trying to please the Emperor of Rome on the one hand, and to placate the Jews on the other. Yet Josephus and other historians tell us that he repeatedly irritated the Jews, and had more than once been rebuked by Rome for his treatment of the Jews. So perhaps that is an indication of why Pilate seems to try to accommodate the Jews desire to crucify Christ, even though he found no fault in Him. Even his wife urged him not to have anything to do with crucifying the Lord. He was trying to please people, even if it meant he would have to sentence to death an innocent man.
I’ve come up with my own definition of the word politics. Politics is the art of compromise. It means one will jettison truth in order to reach a consensus. Politics is in opposition to the truth. Now in Pilates case, you get the feeling that he wasn’t happy being political, but he felt he had no other alternative. Look at the predicament he found himself in.
Vs.29, “Therefore Pilate went out to them and said, ‘What accusation do you bring against this Man?’ They answered and said to him, ‘If this Man were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered Him to you.’ So Pilate said to them, ‘Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your law.” The Jews said to him, “We are not permitted to put anyone to death,’ to fulfill the word of Jesus which He spoke, signifying by what kind of death He was about to die.”
The predicament is this; Pilate is summoned to court to condemn Jesus, whom I believe it would have been next to impossible for him not to have heard of to some extent, and the judgment, crucifixion has already been determined, and yet there is no charge that they prove is worthy of death. The religious leaders have put Pilate in a box. They know Pilate has been in trouble with Rome over his treatment of the Jews in the past, and he cannot afford another incident. So in order to appease the Jewish rulers, he must condemn Jesus to death. But in his heart he knows that Jesus is not guilty of death.
I think a lot of people in the world find themselves in a similar position today in regards to Christianity or the church. They recognize something about it which seems true and right, but the acclaim of the culture is that they condemn Christianity. And at that point they have to make a decision; to please the world, or to please God. Since they haven’t yet chosen to believe in God unto salvation, it is very unlikely that they will do so under duress. They make the same mistake that Pilate did. They try to escape making a decision at all.
vs.31, “So Pilate said to them, ‘Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your law.’ The Jews said to him, ‘We are not permitted to put anyone to death.’ But the world will not let you off the hook so easily. The world requires allegiance to it’s doctrine, just as God demands allegiance to His doctrine. In the words of Bob Dylan, “you got to serve somebody.” You have to make a choice.
So Pilate asks Jesus directly, “Are You the King of the Jews?” That was a start towards the truth. But let’s see if Pilate is seriously seeking the truth, or if he is just seeking a way out. Jesus answers him curiously; ““Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?”
Jesus doesn’t need to ask Pilate questions, as He knows the thoughts and intents of the heart of man. But what He is doing is asking a question to prompt Pilate to ask himself the right question. So Jesus says, Do you say this yourself, or did others tell you that about Me? Are you repeating what you have heard, or are you seriously inquiring to know if I am King of the Jews?
Note Pilate’s response; Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?” So he at once removes himself from the equation, putting Christianity aside as a nationalistic thing, something that has nothing to do with himself as a Roman. And yet he cannot sweep this question of what to do about Jesus aside. It is a question that everyman and woman must answer at some point in their lives. Is He King of Kings, and Lord of Lords? And if I say He is, then I must bow to Him and worship Him. If I say He is not, then I will suffer the eternal consequence of my decision.
Jesus then answers in a way that does nothing to absolve Pilate of guilt. But rather includes everyone regardless of his nationality. “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.”
Note that Jesus does declare that He is King, but not just of the Jews, but of a realm which is outside of the geography of nations and kingdoms of this world. It is a spiritual kingdom as opposed to an earthly kingdom.
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.” Here is the purpose of Christ’s coming to earth as declared by Jesus Himself; to testify to the truth. And here is the means of salvation; everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. Hearing indicates more than listening however. It indicates receiving, believing, and obeying the truth of Christ with all your heart and soul.
Folks we need to understand this. Jesus testified to the truth of God. God is life and they that believe in the truth of God receives that life. The very life of God; spiritual and eternal. The truth has been given to you and now the choice of receiving it is up to you. Jesus is the way of life, the truth of life, and the source of life, even everlasting life. But you have to receive Him and by extension His truth, and walk in it.
But the politician Pilate was still trying to duck the question. And so are many in the world today. The world echoes the disillusioned cry of Pilate; “what is truth?” Truth was staring him in the face, and he would not receive it. Oh, I believe Pilate saw it, just as clearly as Annas and Caiaphas saw the Passover Lamb standing in front of them. But like them, Pilate cannot afford to receive it. He loved too much the favor of this world to become an outcast with Christ.
Pilate thought he could please the world and still please God. He said to Christ what is truth, thus hopefully excusing himself from receiving the truth, and then he goes out to the crowd and says I find no fault in Him. He doesn’t want to make a decision either way. But either you accept Christ as your Lord and King, or you condemn Him along with the world. Undecided is not an option in the Kingdom of God. You are either for Him or against Him. You either believe Him, or you reject Him. Pilate would ultimately find this to be true, and though he would wash his hands for eternity, he would never wash away the blood of Christ upon his hands.
Listen, don’t die with Christ’s blood on your hands. Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost said in Acts 2:23, “this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” It was your sins and mine that put Jesus to death. And only by repentance and faith in Him can we be forgiven of it, and given a second life.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Believe the truth today and be saved. Hold onto to the truth today and be set free. Walk in the truth and have life more abundantly. Today you have seen the truth of Christ. What will your response be? Will it be the response of religion? Continuing to practice expediency at the cost of truth? Will it be the response of political correctness, at the expense of truth? I pray you hold fast to the truth, no matter what the world or religion or political persuasion says.
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