John 19:12-16: Who Will Be Your King?

        The time was drawing near. Pilate knew Jesus was innocent, and his last conversation with him made the Roman governor even more anxious to release his prisoner. But it was for naught. Jesus’ innocence was unquestionable, his enemies’ motives were undeniable, and Pilate’s inability to set him free was inevitable. Our text today records Pilate’s final appeal and the incredible declaration by the Jewish chief priests that sent Jesus to the cross.

We should not overlook the emphasis the Gospel writers place on Pilate’s knowledge of the Lord’s innocence. As we have labored to demonstrate in our last two lessons, this is not because Pilate was a virtuous man. The point is not that he really wanted to do what was right or that in his heart he was truly committed to justice. John emphasizes Pilate’s knowledge of Jesus’ innocence to demonstrate that he did not die for his own sins. He died for ours. He died to purchase the Church with his own blood. He laid down his life for his sheep. The injustice of this judicial proceeding was an act of divine justice in securing the pardon and salvation of all who would ever believe.

The Jews wanted Jesus to die because he claimed to be the Son of God, but in the end, he would die for sedition. The chief priests alleged that Jesus undermined submission to the Roman authorities. He claimed to be a king in direct opposition to the Emperor’s claims. To release him would be to tacitly acknowledge his messianic claim and to enable an independence movement which would attempt to place a descendant of David on a restored throne in Jerusalem.

Pilate knew Jesus was innocent, but he was more concerned about keeping his own life than causing Jesus to lose his. If Rome learned that Pilate released a would-be ruler, the governor would not keep his head for long. It was unfortunate, but that’s the way the game was played. Pilate would not lose any sleep over it, but in the end, he would lose his soul.

Christ and Caesar

When the Jewish leaders saw that Pilate was determined to release Jesus, they began to threaten the magistrate. “If you let this Man go, you are not Caesar’s friend!” It was not subtle. If Pilate did not crucify Jesus, he could expect the religious leaders in Jerusalem to write Tiberius. They insisted the issue was a simple binary. If Pilate showed mercy to Jesus, he could not be considered loyal to Caesar. If he was loyal to Caesar, then he had to condemn Jesus to die. The antithesis between Rome and Israel’s Messiah was absolute.

Of course, in one sense, it is true: there is an antithesis between loyalty to Christ and loyalty to this world. “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad” (Matt. 12:30). “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1Jn. 2:15). You have to make a choice. You cannot synthesize loyalty to the Emperor and loyalty to the Messiah. You cannot name Jesus as king of your spiritual life and Tiberius as king of your secular life. Devotion to Christ as King is absolute. He is the King of all Kings and Lord of all Lords. Jesus does not serve beneath or alongside any earthly monarch.

But in another sense, the sense in which the chief priests are trying to frame the issue, what they are saying is completely wrong. Jesus’ kingdom is not an explicit threat to Rome, not the way they are making it out to be. Oh the kingdom of heaven would eventually topple Rome, to be sure, just as it will outlast and overcome all other kingdoms of men in this world. But Jesus was not the kind of Messiah so many of the Jewish people were waiting for. He was not trying to be another Macabbean general. He did not aspire to sit on Herod or Tiberius’s throne. Such a goal would be far too small! Jesus came to open the way to heaven itself, to redeem his Church, and to save the world. Nothing to be gained in Jerusalem or Rome could ever compare with that.

We said there is an antithesis, and you cannot straddle the fence and serve two masters. But loyalty to Christ does not require one to explicitly undermine or revolt against Rome. There were saints in Caesar’s household in Paul’s day (cf. Php. 4:22). Cornelius was both a centurion and a worshipper of God who became a Christian. There is no reason to think he left Rome’s military service after he was baptized into Christ. Christians are strangers and exiles in the present world, and our citizenship is in heaven, not recorded in Washington D.C. or the state record banks. But while we are in exile away from our homeland, like the Jews in Babylon, we are commanded to build houses, plant gardens, have children, and pray for the peace of the city where the Lord has called us to sojourn (cf. Jer. 29).

One day Jesus would subjugate Caesar, and he will subjugate the President and Legislature and Supreme Court of the United States. The Prime Ministers of China, North Korea, and Russia will bow down and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and they are not. But it will be God who does that, not God’s people. It will be through the influence of truth, the preaching of the gospel, and the return of Christ in glory that this is accomplished. It will not be because believers take up arms. It will not be because Christians agitate and work to overthrow governments. Christians have a powerful weapon in their ability and access to pray, but Scripture teaches us to use this for good and not only to call for fire on the enemies of the Church.

Caesar could not have a better advantage than to be a friend of Jesus Christ. Pilate would never have more loyal and faithful subjects than the disciples of Jesus. It is because we are loyal to the Lord Jesus that we can, in his Name and for his glory, serve well those magistrates and rulers God has placed in authority over us. We know their authority is limited. We know their time has already been determined. We know they can do nothing except what Christ allows them to do. So we serve faithfully, humbly, cheerfully, giving Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.

The King of Israel

Once again we see the irony in John’s narrative. Pilate brings Jesus out and announces: “Behold, your King!” And it is true. Here is the King of Israel, the Son of David, the Son of God. But the chief priests will have none of it. They decry him. They despise him. “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate, perhaps exasperated by their stubbornness, taunts in reply: “Shall I crucify your King?” Every time I read the next line, it’s as though the narrative stops. Time freezes. The world stands still. “We have no king but Caesar!” And it is true. The word of Yahweh spoken to the prophet Samuel has finally reached its ultimate fulfillment: “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them” (1Sam. 8:7).

Israel had always had a king, and the prophetic regulations given in Deuteronomy 17 about their future monarch did not change that arrangement in the least. After Gideon’s great victory over the Midianites, the people of Israel begged him to become their ruler. But Gideon replied: “I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you; the LORD shall rule over you” (Jdg. 8:23). The Bible is very clear that God was not pleased by Israel’s insistence upon and desire for a king to be like the other nations. He gave them a king, yes, but he punished them for their carnal motives.

Eventually God gave them a king of his choosing, David the son of Jesse. But the Davidic monarchs were not to rule like other kings. Israel was to be a representative monarchical theocracy. That means the kings of Israel were vassal kings, not emperors. They were there to do Yahweh’s bidding, not their own. They were representatives, not of the people, but of God, and their duty was to administer the rule and justice of the kingdom of God. This is why they were to make their own copy of the Book of the Law and keep it with them all the time and read from it every day “that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren” (Deut. 17:18-20).

But this is not the king the Jews wanted. Not in Samuel’s day. Not in Jesus’ day. The chief priests angrily declared, “We have no king but Caesar!” And they spoke the truth. Jesus was not their King. I know what you’re thinking: Jesus is everyone’s King. Yes, in that sense. He is the King of all kings and Lord of all lords. Yes, one day each of these priests will bow down and confess that Jesus is Christ and Lord. But their declaration of loyalty to the Roman Emperor was a true confession of the kingdom to which they belonged. They were not truly part of the covenanted kingdom over which the Son of David reigns. They wanted no part in a representative theocracy over which Yahweh would rule according to his wisdom, rather than theirs. They would rather have a king like all the nations. They would rather belong to a real kingdom, one that has power in this world! And they do. They belonged to that kingdom. And that kingdom, like everything else in this world, would soon pass away, and they would share in its fate.

Conclusion: Who Will Be Your King?

We do have to make a choice after all. We can serve Jesus and still live in this world. We do not have to behave like this world’s enemy in order to prove our allegiance to Jesus. But in the end, if we are loyal to Jesus, this world will view us as an enemy anyway. That’s what they did to Jesus, and that’s what they will do to Jesus’ friends. How ridiculous to see the chief priests so violently outraged, seeking to kill the greatest threat they perceive: the Prince of Peace! But that is the insanity we can expect to meet in this world if we live meekly, quietly, but unapologetically as those who belong to another.

When Joshua gave his retirement speech, he challenged the people to choose.

Now therefore, fear the LORD, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the LORD! And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. (Jos. 24:14-15)

This challenge was similar to the one Moses gave them as he prepared to ascend Mt. Nebo and die. Choose: life or death, blessing or cursing, Yahweh or the gods of this world, Christ or Caesar. It is a choice we make all the time when we honor Christ’s rule or when we prefer instead the freedom we imagine Caesar will provide. But inevitably we will discover that Caesar cannot give freedom at all; his service is slavery, misery, and death. And the rule of Christ that we chafed at, that we sought to cast off? Jesus says:

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. (Matt. 11:28-30)

Jesus did not die because he was a sinner; he died because we are. He did not die because he posed any real danger to the government; he died because they were a danger to him. He did not die because the Jews and Romans did know who he was; he died because they knew exactly who he was--the Son of David, the King of Israel--and they adamantly refused to allow him to rule over them. And because he died, he won. Because he died, we are saved. Because he died, their reign has been overthrown. Because he died, everything they feared might happen, actually has and will. The kingdoms of this world belong to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Rev. 11:15). --JME

Rambling Reflections on an Everyday Bible

You may not be a reader--and if this is the case, allow me to express my condolences and encourage you to believe there is still time to learn to love it--but if you are a Christian, there is one book above all others that you will love and to which you must return again and again. My life, thinking, character, vocabulary, and values have been shaped by Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, Defoe, Latham, Dickens, Homer, and Heinlein, but the book that has made and remade me more than any other, beyond any comparison, is the Holy Bible.

I never understood how a person’s primary reading and study Bible could be twenty years old and still look almost new. I have some old Bibles, and some of them I still use in various ways. But my everyday Bibles wear out fairly quickly. They go with me all the time. Maybe I am careless, and yes, if I purchased more expensive Bibles, they might last a little longer. But it’s not as though I am buying cheap Bibles or purposefully abusing them. They simply get worn out. They are supposed to. They spend every day in my hands, pocket, or bag. I have Bibles that are in practically new condition. They are the ones that rarely come off the shelf and are never read, only consulted.

I have a pair of dress shoes that I have owned for twenty years. I wear them every Sunday, and only on Sundays unless I officiate a wedding or funeral during the week. I would never dream of putting them on otherwise. They are stiff, uncomfortable, and after wearing them a while, my back begins to hurt. They are very good shoes, depending on your definition of good. They’ve lasted more than twenty years, and I will probably still be wearing them twenty years from now unless I wear out first. Kirstie may even be able to bury me in them! (If so, I’m taking them off as soon as the resurrection occurs.) Can you guess how many pairs of everyday shoes I have worn out in the last twenty years? I rarely replace my everyday shoes until they have holes in them and the soles are completely worn through. And if I had to choose between my worn out daily shoes and my dress shoes, I am wearing the everyday shoes with holes in the soles every time.

This is not to shame you if you have taken better care of your everyday Bible than I have, but it is to suggest that an everyday Bible is meant to be worn out: worn out from use, from reading, study, prayer, and wrestling with the text. I don’t purposefully abuse my everyday Bibles, but I also do not try to maintain their original, pristine condition. I don’t want my daily Bible to be stiff, with pages still stuck together and the gold edges unmarred. My daily Bibles are usually dog-eared, coffee-stained, and somewhat floppy. The pages are smudged with pen, highlighter, and oil from my hands. The binding is now supple, eventually a little too loose. I want my daily Bible to be good enough quality--preferably sewn, not glued--that it won’t fall apart in the first year, but not so expensive that I am afraid of wearing it out or letting it develop signs of use and abuse.

Brothers and sisters, enjoy wearing out your daily Bible. It should be a constant companion and comfort and fit you like a good pair of everyday shoes. --JME

Mountains Dripping with Wine

This is an excerpt from a sermon on Joel 3:18-21 (May 17, 2020--ROPC-AZ)

And it will come to pass in that day
That the mountains shall drip with new wine,
The hills shall flow with milk,
And all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water;
A fountain shall flow from the house of the LordAnd water the Valley of Acacias.

--Joel 3:18 (NKJV)

“My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learned in the nursery. I generally learned it from a nurse--that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them, other things are fantastic. Compared with them, religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me, at least, it was not earth that criticized elfland, but elfland that criticized the earth.”

--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Whitaker House, 2013), 48-49

Most of us are grown-ups and, therefore, too mature to take the language in v.18 too seriously. Mountains don’t drip with new wine. Wine comes from grapes, and not without a lot of cultivation and work by the vinedresser! Hills don’t flow with milk, and we are all scientifically astute enough to know that milk isn’t really good for us anyway. The text obviously means that this is a place of abundant blessing, nothing more. And we are exactly right, and also completely wrong.

I am not going to dogmatically assert what the new heavens and earth will be like. How could I? The Bible does not allow me to do so. Yes, the language of mountains and hills here is symbolic of abundant blessings and joy, and no, I am certain human language and concepts are limiting factors in this revelation. How can God describe to us what is, from our vantage point, indescribable? You cannot imagine colors you have never seen or shapes you have never known. How are we going to understand what the New Creation in its consummate expression is like? The Lord is using language and figures that are familiar to us, words and ideas we can understand, to help us imagine, albeit analogically, that this really is a wonderful place God has in store for us.

I will, however, offer a mild objection to the dismissive way we treat such language and symbolism which appears so frequently in the Bible’s poetry and prophecy. It’s because we “know better” than to take these images literally that we seem at times not to take them seriously, and yet they may be much closer to the reality than we have truly considered. I don’t imagine the streets of heaven are literally paved with gold, but I do wonder whether gold in our world does not resemble in some way whatever those streets are made of. Maybe the faces of the four living creatures around God’s throne don’t look exactly like a lion, calf, man, and eagle, but is it impossible to believe that maybe lions, calves, eagles, and men somehow resemble the faces of those creatures?

What if the stories are true, not in a woodenly literal manner, but also not in a merely mythological way? Why do we have so many fantastic stories of spirits and demons, of magic and miracles, of heroes and dragons? What is it that the human race remembers and anticipates across many civilizations, cultures, languages, and generations? Pagan mythology is distorted in many ways, and I am not suggesting ancient myths and fairy tales stand on par with Scripture. Scripture is the real, the true, the standard, and every other story is only a reflection, an echo, a distortion, a memory of the real story God wrote in history and on every heart. But I am suggesting it is not a coincidence these stories connect in so many ways, poetic and otherwise, with the recurring features, themes, and promises of the word of God. It is because ultimately there is one story, and every story that men have ever told has in some way been an attempt to realize or retell it.

We are too wise to believe in fairy tales, too mature to read them. We have studied science in school, so we know how things really work. This would be the same science class where we learned that this planet and all life on it evolved through a process of undirected mutation, that there is no God, or at least, no need to believe in one, and that faith may be well and good but science deals with facts and enables to us know what is true. We may have rejected the atheistic naturalism we were exposed to in those classes, but we adopted more of its worldview than we might realize or care to admit. We are too wise to believe that mountains could ever drip wine, and maybe in the new heavens and earth they won’t. But what if they did? Is that really so impossible to believe? Is it more difficult to believe that they do than that God could become a man, die on a cross for sin, and then rise again on the third day? How can we believe the story of Jesus is true and not believe everything else the Bible says is plausible? Doesn’t the resurrection of Christ make all of it fair game? Are we really supposed to sit in judgment of the story, or are we to read and hear it with delight, waiting and hoping for the day when what the stories described can finally be seen?

Even if the mountains don’t drip wine, whatever we find to be true will actually be better. We are living right now in the shadowlands. We don’t know exactly what it will be like when we arrive in our new country, but we have heard the stories, and not just in Bible class. We’ve been hearing them all our lives. Every encounter with truth, beauty, and goodness in the present age was only a signpost, pointing us further down the road, suggesting that something even better certainly lies ahead. We could analyze the figures, track down their literary and historical origins, and debate the various interpretive options for wine from the mountains and hills full of milk. But that would miss the point, and it would take all of the fun out of these passages. God didn’t place this here for you to dissect like a frog. He placed it here to excite and comfort you, to give you a taste of the joy that is to come.

There will be no lack of joy and abundance in the new heavens and earth. If even the mountains drip with wine, can you imagine there being any lack of bread? Wine and milk are not necessary for existence--we could survive on bread and water--but they are key features of a life filled with an abundance of joy. There will be no drought, no dryness, no desert conditions in that place where God’s glory dwells. A fountain shall flow from the house of Yahweh, and it will water all that land so that the valley is always damp and green and fertile. --JME

Puzzle Building and Practical Piety

I enjoy doing puzzles, but I rarely made time for them until the Corona virus shut everything down. I spent most Sunday afternoons at an assisted living facility for the last six years, but since I am not allowed to enter right now, our family has been doing puzzles on Sunday afternoons. We have completed 15 or 16 so far and are gradually covering the walls of our stairway with the finished products once they are glued. We turn on Christian music, make a pot of coffee, retrieve a package of Oreos from the pantry, and sit around the table singing praise and trying to fit the pieces together.

I am convinced certain activities are important for Christians to do because they so strongly connect analogically with our faith. Everyone should grow a garden or plant flowers, everyone should take care of some kind of livestock--or have a dog the size of a small horse--and everyone should take long walks or runs if only for a while because these activities relate so well to our lives as believers. They help us see aspects of our walk with Christ in ways we might not otherwise. You don’t always have to be a gardener, husbandman or walker, but a little practice and experience will teach you a lot that will be useful for many years.

I’m beginning to wonder if every Christian ought to build puzzles for the same reason. None of the prophets or apostles said we should, so maybe not. Can you imagine the prophet Elijah doing a puzzle? I’m sure Ezekiel had the patience to do so, and a few dozen puzzles might have been a welcome distraction while laying on his side and besieging Jerusalem for more than a year. But it seems obvious there are benefits to reconstructing an image from many separate pieces. I don’t mean the cognitive benefits--working puzzles is like exercise for your brain. I mean the spiritual and pedagogical benefits.

When we began building puzzles during the lockdown, one of my children, who shall remain nameless, sat down for 3.132 minutes, fiddled with a few pieces, and then announced she didn’t have the patience to work puzzles. That is kind of the idea. I don’t like sitting still either, but it’s a skill we have to learn. To slow down, look, think, and patiently work knowing you won’t be done for a long time. You can build a puzzle by yourself, plenty of people do, but what’s the fun in that? You can do an “easy” puzzle, one with relatively few pieces and whose image has so much variation that every piece’s place is obvious. That can be fun, once in a while, but what’s the point? The activity should stretch and challenge us if we want to profit from it. Not every puzzle has to be hard, and few should seem impossible, but we only grow by working against resistance, whether that resistance comes from a kettlebell, a Scripture memory habit, or putting together a puzzle.

Of course, some may say it’s a pointless exercise. Why invest many hours only to hang a picture on the wall? You could have simply bought the picture and been done! But the exercise is far from pointless. We are not utilitarians, and of all people in the world, Christians should be most sensitive to the value of restoration and renewal through thoughtful ritual and repetition. The finished puzzle is a signpost of hours spent together, memories made, and stillness learned.

Some of you may hate building puzzles, and if so… thanks for reading this far. But in my book, that is even more reason to cultivate a puzzle habit, even if only for a while. When I was a younger man, I had no use for puzzles. They were made for small children and old people. It was the same restlessness that sees little point in visiting nursing homes to greet people who won’t remember you came or listening attentively to an older person share the same stories for the 193rd time. Why be diligent in cutting the grass since you have to do it again next week anyway? It is a restlessness that causes us to think about how to respond rather than really listening to someone else speak, that makes us frantic to fix problems now and unable to wait or tolerate delays with a good attitude. It is the same immaturity that makes us self-assured in our understanding and solutions to problems. Regarding the latter, I cannot describe how humbling it is to find the final edge piece only after searching every individual piece by hand four times, or discovering that the piece you knew had to fit there will only fit if you turn it another direction, or finishing a puzzle except for two pieces and suddenly realizing that somewhere in that mass of grass you must have forced a few pieces where they didn’t belong.

Puzzle building is pain and aggravation, struggle and frustration, and it turns out these are good for our sanctification.

By the way, the child that didn’t have the patience for puzzles has become one of our best builders. It’s amazing how quickly a person can learn and grow with a little application of self-discipline. It’s a lesson not only for becoming a better puzzle-builder, but for learning to be a more faithful and productive servant of God. --JME