Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture: John 18:28-19:42

Homily 1: Who is The King of Truth?

(Mocked by the World)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, Pilate wanted to know the truth.

When the Jewish officials brought Jesus to him, he wanted to know what Jesus was being accused of, what he was being charged with, why he was even being involved.

Pilate wanted to know if Jesus was “the King of the Jews.”

He wanted to know what that meant and what this guy must have done.

Pilate had some sense of justice, at least in this situation.

There was nothing Jesus told him, no evidence uncovered that made Pilate believe he should involve himself much in what he saw as a Jewish dispute.

This was their trial, their religion.

The truth Pilate uncovered was not giving him cause to even charge Jesus with a crime, let alone put him to death as the Jews had demanded.

That being said, Pilate was told by this man on trial, that he was a king.

In John 18:36, we heard, “‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ said Jesus.”

The NIV translates verse 37, “Jesus answered, ‘You are right in saying I am a king.

In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.

Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’” Jesus didn’t stand before Pilate with a royal robe and a fancy crown on.

He didn’t have diplomatic credentials or an entourage.

He hadn’t come with chariots or stallions.

He hadn’t been brought over from a palace or headquarters.

He certainly did not look like a king, yet he claimed that title.

So, who is Jesus the King?

The Gospel of John doesn’t give us much of his birth story, but we read in Matthew 2:1-2, “…Wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?

For we…have come to worship him.’”

Around the time of Jesus’ birth, they were looking for the King of the Jews.

God had revealed that to them.

Jumping to Jesus’ ministry and calling his disciples, John 1:49, Nathanael, one of the Twelve, declared “‘Rabbi…you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel!’” God had revealed that to him.

In John 12 verses 13 and 14—in both the shouts of the triumphal entry crowd and the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy, Jesus was identified again as Israel’s king.

Throughout chapters 18 and 19, twelve times we read Jesus being labeled or asked if he was “the king of the Jews.”

To the public, Jesus was a teacher, a miracle-worker, a healer.

That was what he had done and how he had spoken.

Yet he absolutely was the King of the Jews, the King of Israel.

Not only that, but as Jesus testified to Pilate: he’s the king of heaven, ruling over a kingdom that is not constrained to a single town or city, a state or province, a country or region, or even the entire world.

One commentator remarked that Pilate’s task, the scope of his questioning, really just had to figure out how Jesus “might affect the sovereignty of Caesar.”

For believes now, we can say, “Jesus’ kingship totally affects the sovereignty of Caesar.

Caesar is beneath Jesus!

Caesar’s a small pawn compared to the eternal Son of God.” Yet it’s doubtful Pilate comprehended that at this point.

Jesus is king over all creation.

As king, he came to die that he might save sinners who trust in him.

As this king, he came into the world, he came in flesh and blood, to show people that he is the one to believe in.

On Sunday, we heard how the devil, Satan, had gone into Judas prior to his betraying Jesus.

The devil is the father of lies, the deceiver; he is anti-Christ and anti-God.

Yet King Jesus brings truth, truth which points us back to our Creator and his desires for us, truth which gives hope to what the Redeemer will one day fully give.

During his time on earth, King Jesus lived and breathed and offered in his actions mercy and justice for all who believe in him.

His truth is that there is grace, grace that cleanses all our sins and guilt.

As we heard in the final section, the soldiers mocked Jesus in a variety of a ways.

They took the truth, the King of the Universe, and they spit on him, the slapped him, they rejected that which they did not understand or believe.

May God in his grace make clear to each one of us the truth of his Son the Savior.

If we have rejected him or are rejecting him right now, may God keep us from missing this truth of Jesus, the King who suffered.

The hour has come; listen to the King.

Homily 2: The Only King Worthy of Worship is Definitively Rejected By His Own

           Brothers and sisters in Christ, Edwin Blum writes of when Pilate brought Jesus out in John 19:5, “Jesus by that time must have appeared as a pathetic figure, bloody and wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.”

The soldiers hadn’t just thrown a couple punches to give Jesus a bruise or two.

Jesus had suffered at their hands.

He hadn’t looked like a king before, and he certainly wouldn’t have now—he could not have been a pretty sight.

The truth is, with each section we just heard, Jesus grew weaker and weaker, he suffered more and more, and when he was hung up on the cross, this was where he would die.

In the first homily, I focused a lot on Pilate, so I want to draw our attention to the Jews now.

They brought him to Pilate as a criminal, who they wanted put to death.

They were willing to have the revolutionary, the insurrectionist, the rebel, Barabbas—a real and dangerous criminal released for this man who they knew had done nothing wrong.

To the Jewish officials and crowd, they wanted his life, because they viewed him as a blasphemer and a rival to Caesar.

If Pilate was looking for the truth, the Jewish officials had made up their minds against the truth.

Why is that so devastating?

Why does that fill multiple speakers and writers in the New Testament with such sorrow?

Part of it is the reality that a king isn’t just all the royal garb and all the power, but if we go back again to the wise men who came around Jesus’ birth, they came to worship him.

The true King should be worshiped.

Moses had taught that to their forefathers and mothers, back in Deuteronomy 6:13 through 15, “Fear the LORD your God, worship him, and take your oaths in his name…The LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God.

Otherwise, the LORD your God will become angry with you and obliterate you from the face of the earth.”

That’s one of the passages Jesus answered the devil with when the devil tried to tempt him with all the kingdoms of the world and giving him “‘their splendor and all this authority.’”

All Jesus had to do was worship him.

Yet Jesus knew that the LORD God alone is to be worshiped.

Most committed Jews, especially their leaders, would have know that verse and others like it.

They knew the greatest commandments were to love God and love their neighbors.

Yet Jesus was God in the flesh, fully God and fully man, and they rejected him.

They wanted him dead.

They could not love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

All this is not to say that after these events that they couldn’t have been converted.

After they had not believed in him and rejected him, God could have mercifully revealed the truth to them, forgiving their sins, and granting them the promise of eternal life.

God could and may have done that!

But this does show us the weightiness of people’s hatred when they don’t know Jesus.

We heard earlier in John in this series how the world hated Jesus and would hate his disciples, too.

That can be easy to identify among extreme religious groups that hold a loud hostility against anything remotely Christian.

Yet there are many people who want little or nothing to do with Jesus, who we can sometimes see as different, not so bad, not terrible.

But the undeniable, the unchangeable truth of God’s word is that he alone is to be worshiped and served.

He must be worshiped in our lives—that is the action and the duty and the fruit that will come about if we believe Jesus is King, if we believe he is Savior.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be worshiped by a person every minute, hour, day, and year of their lives.

That may mean that he’s worshiped for mere minutes.

No matter how long or short, the way of salvation accepts what the Jews that we’ve been following were rejecting at this point.

Jesus is the true King.

What that means for the believer, according to Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 31 is this, “…He has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be…our eternal king who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who guards us and keep us in the freedom he has won for us.”

What we can’t do for ourselves, what we can’t even fully wrap our minds around, Christ offers us freedom as the King who died and yet who we know also rose again.

The hour has come; believe in the King.

Homily 3: Cleansing

           Jesus was dead.

It was such an obvious, undeniable reality that the soldiers who were ordered to expedite the execution process by breaking the legs of these men who had been crucified skipped over doing that to Jesus.

They weren’t trying to be nice.

They likely had no knowledge of any texts about the Christ’s bones not being broken.

They had joined others in the crowd to mock and humiliate the men on the crosses.

While some stood by full of sorrow and mourning, this was just work for most of them.

Jesus was dead, that’s what mattered.

It mattered to the religious leaders could now celebrate.

They had finally accomplished what they had been trying to do for a while.