 I'll begin reading at verse 1, Mark chapter 15. I'll read to verse 5, and we'll get into our study. Immediately in the morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus, led him away, delivered him to Pilate. Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews? He answered and said to him, it is as you say. And the chief priests accused him of many things, but he answered nothing. Pilate asked him again, saying, do you answer nothing? See how many things they testify against you. But Jesus still answered nothing. So that Pilate marveled. Now let me give you a review to give you information that brings us up to this portion in Mark chapter 15. We know that Jesus had spent his last night with his men observing the Passover. And during the sufferer, we saw that he had spent a great amount of time teaching them. He knew it was his last night with them, so he was pouring into them one last time. And so as we looked at those portions of scripture, he taught them a deep lesson on serving one another and he demonstrated the importance of that by washing their feet and teaching them aspects of servanthood. He spoke of his approaching betrayal by one of his own men. And then he gave the most exhaustive teaching that he gives on the work of the Holy Spirit. Once again, Jesus commanded them to love one another and then he made it very clear that he would be abandoned by all of his men. Now this shook them up, so he told them, let not your heart be troubled and encourage them. He said, I'm gonna come again, I'll receive you unto myself. Now when Judas had left to conclude his betrayal, that's when Jesus instituted what we call communion. He finished his teaching, then he and the men went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Well in the garden, Judas came with the contingent of men and he betrayed him. Peter resisted valiantly, but Jesus allowed himself to be taken. He was first brought to the former high priest, a man by the name of Annas. And when he would not respond to his questions, he was then taken to the reigning high priest, Caiaphas. Now Caiaphas had sought false witness to make false accusations against him. And then he violated the law by asking a question that led to self-incrimination. He asked in verse 61, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? Well Jesus said that he was and this is all they needed to hear in chapter 14 here in Mark verse 64. We read, you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think? And they all condemned him to be deserving of death. You have heard the blasphemy. I mentioned to you that the act of blasphemy is a sin that actually resulted in the death penalty. In the Old Testament book of Leviticus in chapter 24 verse 16, it says, anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them, whether foreigner or native born when they blaspheme the name they are to be put to death. Now at this time, some of them spat on him. Others began to strike him and they mocked him. In Matthew 26, 67 and 68, Matthew writes, they spit in his face and struck him. Others slapped him and said, prophesy to us, Christ, who hit you? Now as this is all taking place, the apostle Peter is there in the courtyard. You see, his love for Christ gave him the courage to follow him even though he did so at a distance. Well after being discovered, he denied Jesus. He denied knowing him three times and that's exactly what Jesus said he would do. Now when he denied him the third time, we read how that Jesus turned and Jesus looked at him and remembering what Christ had said, well Mark tells us that he went out and he wept bitterly. And so that brings us to this particular portion of scripture and so here in verse one, it says immediately in the morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council and they bounded Jesus, led him away and delivered him to Pilate. So immediately in the morning, they waited until daybreak, they reconvened what is called the Sanhedrin or the council and this is the second and more formal meeting of this council. You see, rabbinic law stated that trials resulting in the death penalty must be conducted during the day. So they were gathering together to endorse the judgment that had already been made. They now have two charges. We'll look at these, two charges. One was religious and the other was secular. Now as we've seen, the religious charge was one of blasphemy. In a moment, we're gonna see the second charge. We're gonna be looking at that in detail. The second charge was secular. It was a charge of sedition. And so what they did here in verse one is they bound Christ, they led him away and they delivered him to scripture says to Pilate who was the Roman governor at that time, ruling in that area in Judea. Now, again, one is a religious charge, the other is secular. So they bind him and they deliver him to Pilate. That's exactly what Christ had said that would happen to him. He had told his men this in Matthew 20 verses 18 and 19. He said, behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn him to death. Deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify the third day he will rise again. So Jesus is there before the secular authority, the Roman government, the one who represents the Roman government, a man by the name of Pontius Pilate. And so Pilate sees him and begins to question him. Verse two, Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews? He answered and said to him, it is as you say. And so that question is being asked. Are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus is responding. To get further information, let's turn now to John chapter 18. I wanna fill it in by looking at some of the verses there with you. We'll look at verse 28 and I'm gonna read to verse 38 and we'll look at this and build on this study through that. So in John chapter 18, at verse 28, they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium. And it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. Pilate went out to them and said, what accusation do you bring against this man? They answered and said to him, if you were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered him up to you. Pilate said to them, you take him and judge him according to your law. And therefore the Jews said to him, it's not lawful for us to put anyone to death. That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled which he spoke signifying by what death he would die. Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus answered him, are you speaking for yourself about this? Or did others tell you this concerning me? Pilate answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and chief priests have delivered you to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here. Pilate therefore said to him, are you a king then? And Jesus answered, you say rightly that I'm a king. For this cause I was born. For this cause I've come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth, here's my voice. Pilate said to him, what is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, I find no fault in him at all. Now it says here in verse 28, that they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium. The Praetorium is also spoken of as the hall of judgment. They didn't want to enter into the court of a Gentile. They didn't want to enter into that because they were afraid that they were going to be ritually defiled. Somebody wrote, the Jews considered the touch of a Gentile as defilement and would not enter the Praetorium for fear of becoming unclean, which would have obligated them to separate themselves from all religious requirements until evening. That's found in Leviticus chapter 15. So they don't want to walk in to an area that may be contaminated by the Gentile presence. And so they stay outside. Now what's interesting to me is this is what would be called hypocrisy. It reveals their spiritual blindness. You see, they thought that they had eyes to see, but in fact, they were spiritually blind. In John 9.39 through 41, it reads, Jesus declared for judgment, I've come into this world so that the blind may see and those who see may become blind. Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and they asked him, are we blind too? And Jesus said, if you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin. But now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains. The more you know, the more you owe. You say, you can see therefore, I'm gonna judge you on that standard. You're saying you can see, but in fact, you're really blind. You see, what's going on is these blind people wanted to put Jesus Christ to death. They broke God's law to secure a death penalty, but they didn't want to be defiled by entering into a court of a Gentile. And so that's why in John 18.29 following, it says that Pilate then went out to them and said, what accusation do you bring against this man? And they answered and said, if we weren't an evildoer, we wouldn't have delivered him up to you. Pilate then said again, he said, you take him in judgment according to your law. Therefore the Jews said to him, it's not lawful for us to put anyone to death. They wouldn't come to Pilate, so Pilate went to them. And Pilate's attempting to get them to clarify their charge against Christ. It appears that Pilate wasn't convinced that Jesus had committed any crime, so he asked them what crime as he committed. So their answer was a dodge. If you were not an evildoer, we wouldn't bring him here. So that's why in response in verse 31, he said, then you take him and judge him according to your law. Now when he said that in verse 31, notice with me, it reads that they said it is not lawful for us to put anyone to death, which exposes their heart. They're looking for an execution and they're not gonna settle for anything less. You see, they didn't have the right to put somebody to death according to their law. When they came under Roman rule, they lost the authority of execution. And so to satisfy as a man, they formulated a legal, a secular charge. That's what we'll look at. And the charge that they leveled against Christ was sedition. Now sedition is defined as conduct or language that incites rebellion against the government. Luke tells us this in Luke 23, 1 and 2, when he said, the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him saying, we have found this man subverting our nation. He opposed his payment of taxes to Caesar, claims to be Christ, the king. That was their charge, that he was actually rebelling against Roman rule. That is a very serious charge. It's one that the Roman government could not ignore. Pilate, it seems, could see through this. It's obviously false. He would have heard of this if it were true. It would have come to his ears if there was a man saying that he was going to overthrow the Roman government. He hadn't heard that. But this is the way that the prophecy related to how Messiah would die would be fulfilled. You see, the Messiah was to be crucified. In John 12, 32, and 33, Jesus said this. He said, ask for me, if I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. He said this to signify what kind of death he was about to die. In Matthew 26, verse two, it says, you know that after two days is the Passover, the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. So crucifixion was going to fulfill the prophecy concerning the manner of death of Messiah. In Psalm 22, 16 and 17, it says, dogs have surrounded me. The assembly of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me. And this is a picture of a prisoner who has been crucified. Well, when he's speaking in this way, verse 33 tells us that Pilate entered the Praetorium again. And he wanted to speak to Christ. He wanted to determine if Jesus was a political king or a messianic king. That's gonna help him decide if he should continue the trial or not. He needs to know the difference. And so when he's beginning to ask him those questions in verse 33, Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, said to him, are you the king of the Jews? Verse 34, Jesus answered him. Now this is where I always kind of like get interested in this conversation because Jesus said, are you speaking for yourself about this? Or did others tell you this concerning me? Is this personal? Is this something that you're curious about? Do you desire to have personal information of me? Or have you been fed information concerning me? And that's why Pilate answers verse 35 and says, am I a Jew? Your own nation, chief precinal, they're the ones who have delivered you to me. What makes you think I'm interested? What makes you think this is an issue I would care about? I'm a governor, I'm not a priest. What does that matter to me? And so Jesus answered in verse 36 and he says, my kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom were of this world. My servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews, but now my kingdom is not from here. And so my kingdom is spiritual in nature. If I were a military king, I would have a military who would defend me. But my kingdom is essentially different than worldly kingdoms. My kingdom is spiritual in nature. It's what Paul said in Romans 14, 17 when he said, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. So now it begins to develop. This conversation is going further. So Pilate in verse 37 said to him, are you a king then? Jesus answers, you say rightly that I'm a king. For this cause I was born. For this cause I've come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth, here's my voice. Are you a king? Mark 15 verse two says, Jesus said in answering him, it's as you say, but he goes on in verse 37 here to say, everyone who is of the truth, here's my voice. It is my truth that I influence the minds and govern my subjects. In John 10, 27, my sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. Are you a king? Yes, but my subjects follow me as they follow my voice. The sheep hear my voice and they follow me. One of the ways for us as believers, as Christians, to kind of gauge our walk with the Lord and where we stand. One of the ways that we do that is by asking ourselves a simple question. How much do I long for the word of God? How much do I desire to know of him? How great is my desire in that area? If you don't have a hunger, good chance you don't know the Lord. When Marie gave birth to our babies, when I'd come home, she'd say, well, baby's not feeling well today and I'd say, why? How do you know that? They can't talk. She said, they don't wanna eat. They don't wanna nurse. And she said, that's one of the signs. When a baby's not feeling well and they should be hungry and they're not, they're sick, that's how you can gauge your own walk with God. Are you hungry for the things of the Lord? Are you hungry for the word? Are you hungry? Do you have personal time with God? I was speaking to a man yesterday, had a chance to visit with him. He's a businessman. He has a good business. He's doing very well financially and we're talking. And he said this to me and it blessed my heart to hear him. He said, you know, I'm getting to the point where I realized that my life is getting to its end. He said, and people could say of me, if they speak of me, they could say of me that I've been a good businessman. And as far as I can see, he has, he has several businesses. He, Amazon is one of his businesses. He has 62 trucks under his authority. He's very, very, very well off. But he's talking to me and as he's visiting with me, he's telling me, you know, when I die, he said, people could say of me that I was a good businessman. And he said, I am. He says, but would they say of me that I was a good Christian? He said, that's what I'm concerned about. And so he said, I'd like you to help me. I want to become a better Christian. And I smiled at him and I said, no. No, I said, well, of course, whatever can I do, whatever I can do to help you. How hungry are you for the Lord? How hungry are you for the word of God? Do you long for his word? Do you desire to know more? That's important. Do a little soul searching because there's quite a number of people, if they're honest with themselves, would say, you know, no, I'm really not that hungry. I went out one time on a kind of a business lunch with a fella years ago now, and we went to one of these places that you can have all that, you get all that you can eat. It's one of the smorgasbord kind of thing, right? And so he was talking to me and he got up and refilled his plate full meal three times. Three times he got up, walked, got up, walked three times. And then in conversation, he said, you know, my spiritual needs are very small. And I'm thinking, yeah, but your physical needs, man, how many times you're gonna go and rob this place? So how hungry are you for the Lord? How hungry are you for the word of God? And that's a very good and very important thing to actually consider. Everyone who's of the truth, here's my voice. The sheep hear the voice of the shepherd and they follow him. And so Jesus is speaking concerning that to this man, Pilate, and he is saying, it is by truth that I influence the minds and I govern my subjects. And so when he says that, he says, everyone who is of the truth, here's my voice in verse 37, verse 38, Pilate said to him, what is truth? What is truth? I have heard so many philosophies over a lifetime of government service. Your teachings, well, they're just one of the many that I've heard. Do you think that you're the first person to spout off some philosophy? I've heard so many, I've been in so many places. I'm a Roman, Romans had borrowed their pantheon of gods from the Greeks. So I'm, you know, if I were a religious person as a Roman, I'd be an idolater. I would be believing the various things that have come through Greek philosophy. I've been to the Middle East. He could say, I've been here for some time. I've heard what you have to say. I've heard what the Jewish philosophers have to say. The rabbis and I'm familiar with all of this. All you're saying to me is something I've heard from others. What is so important about what you have to say? And by the way, you wanna talk about truth? Well, what is it? What is truth? Are you coming to the government to find truth? Are you offering truth to the government? What's true 2,000 years ago is true today. Do I expect a governor, president, senator, congressperson? Do I expect them to give me truth or to be hungry for it? If I do, I'm very naive. Because sometimes we put so much hope in those who are governing us and we have so much hope that they're gonna do it in a righteous way. But they're not related to God at all. They have no fellowship with God at all. They don't believe the Bible at all. They don't honor our respect, my faith at all. Because they're not here to dispense faith, they'll say. They are here to simply to rule and to judge according to secular law. That's what's taking place here. I can't trust that one day we as a nation will elect a man, a woman for that matter, who is gonna rule with righteousness. One of the things we all know, if you're old enough, you'll know this. If you're young and still-believed in a naive way, then let me disappoint you for a moment. We're all sinners. And no matter how good that person feels he is, or perhaps as good as they are, power has a tendency of corrupting. And compromises and lies and bargains, we see that take place. I don't have a trust in government. I have a trust in Christ. That's where my trust is supposed to be. And it's not that I'm naive, by the way. I'm old enough to know these kinds of things through experience. One thing that you've probably heard if you haven't, you might find this interesting. I found it interesting. You know, I'm old enough to remember when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I can tell you where I was when I got the news. I was in junior high school at Lakeside Junior High in Norwalk. I was walking through the hall. And an announcement came through the loudspeakers. President John F. Kennedy has been shot in Dallas. I can tell you where I was walking through the hallway. Lakeside Junior High School. And it was terrible. And things began to happen. This is just one illustration. Things began to happen. How did Jack Ruby ever get to Lee Harvey Oswald? How could a man with a weapon, with security, get past them, see? And I'm 13 and I'm thinking, how'd that happen? Recently perhaps you heard this. If not, you might want to look it up. It's been openly stated that the CIA was involved in the assassination. And there are thousands of documents that lead to that. They were ordered, the documents were ordered unsealed and presented to the public. But they haven't really done that in like 20 years. So I'm not naive enough to believe that everything that comes from a president or a senator or a congressperson's mouth is true. I see them even if they're Christians as being embroiled in the opportunities and temptations to compromise every day, every day. And we hear these things from politicians. Oh, I love minorities. I love the minorities. There's such hatred for minorities. We love minorities. And then a plain load of minorities go to Martha's Vineyard and suddenly, we don't love minorities anymore. You see it all the time. Anybody who doesn't see that is closing your eyes. It's just true. There are so many lies that we are fed. So I can't put my trust in man. I have to put my trust in the one who doesn't lie. And that's my God. So what I do is I vote my conscience, but I don't expect revival to come because of a president. I expect revival to come because the church revives and wakes up and is hungry for Jesus and begins to share their faith. That's how it works. And so you have truth itself. Remember Jesus said of himself, I am the way, the truth and the life. Jesus Christ is truth in human form, standing in front of a Roman governor and the governor is asking truth itself, what is truth? When truth is speaking, the governor is not listening. He's not listening. I'm not interested. I've heard philosophies. I've heard so many different things. You think I'm a Jew? You think I care about these things? I don't. Well in these verses, we see some things about Pontius Pilate. We see that he at first, he refuses personal responsibility concerning Jesus Christ. Look again at verse 29 when he said, what actualization do you bring against this man? And they answered and said to him, if you were not an evil doer, we wouldn't have delivered him up to you. Pilate said to them, you take him and judge him according to your law. So he's trying to refuse personal responsibility. You see people in the end are held responsible concerning how they view the Lord Jesus Christ. How do you see him? A second thing we see about him in verses 33 and 34 is he's seeking a way out of any entanglement with Jesus Christ. And that's why it says in verse 33, he asked the question, are you the king of the Jews? And then Jesus puts it on him, are you speaking for yourself about this? Or did others tell you this concerning me? And that's why he said, am I a Jew? So he's seeking a way out of any entanglement. But the bottom line is once you have encountered him, you're accountable for your own response. In John 12, 48, he who rejects me and does not receive my words has that which judges him. And the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day, the more you know, the more you owe. And then third in verses 37 and 38, he rejected Jesus' invitation to investigate his claims, that's why Jesus said, I bear witness to the truth, everyone who's of the truth hears my voice. That's an invitation for him to listen closely, but he closed his heart. He didn't want to investigate what he had to say. Now at this point, verse 38, Pilate said to him, what is truth? And when he said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, I find no fault in him at all. Find no fault in him at all. I can't make a claim against him. I can't make a claim against him because I can't judge him. I don't see anything wrong with what he's doing. Now the thing that I find interesting, and I'll step back for just a moment and return to this and then move on, what is truth? And in our day, there's a lot of questions concerning that. There are people that don't believe that such a thing is truth. They don't believe that there's a truth that is above all truth. They speak of their truth as their own truth as if what they believe is true in the sense of being equally true with what is actually true. And I could go in that for a while and talk about that because what we have is subjective feelings, but very few people are objectively looking for truth. What does it actually say? And I'll bend my knee to that if it's accurate. I was talking to somebody, a young college student, very brilliant, received scholarships to Harvard, Stanford. I mean, we're talking about a very brilliant mind just recently. And as I was speaking to them, they were speaking to me about India and we got an interesting conversation. And I said, well, you know, I've spent 28 days in India in ministry. And oh, really? I said, yeah. I said I went on a trip for 16 days and went on another trip for 12 days. I've had an opportunity to travel to the north or the south and east and the west in India. And I've spent some time there and we're sharing about that because I've done that and I've spoken to Indian pastors and ministered to them and things of that nature. And I said, you know, what's interesting because people look at religion as all being the same. It's just what you feel like, believing they think all religions are equal. And as we're conversing, I said, I said, you know, I was on a plane. And I was returning from out of state. We did some ministry out of state. I said, I was on a plane and I happened to sit next to two people. They were coming to Ontario and it was a man and his wife. The wife was seated next to me and the man was close to the window. I was there by the aisle seat and all on the aisle seat and I, and so they asked me real friendly. They asked me, you know, what do you do for a living? It's always a great opportunity to share. And so I said, well, I'm a pastor here in the area. Oh, really? And the woman says to me, and I was telling this young college student this, I said, so the woman looks to me and she says, oh, I love the Hindu religion. I said, really? And she says, yes. I said, well, have you ever been to India? Oh, no, I've only seen it on TV. I said, I have. I have. I said, and I'll give you a little more of the information. I said, you're arrived to Bombay. They have double-pained windows to try and keep the smell of the stench out of the airport. You leave the airport and you are overwhelmed with humidity and just the smell of decay. I said, this is in Bombay. In Bombay, when the monsoon season comes, the water floods all the basements and there are more rats than people on the streets during monsoon. Did you know that? Well, I said, let me tell you some more. So I said, we went to a temple just to see the temple, see what they do. It was a temple that was dedicated to a rat god. The people will come in and they bring the grain and they put it on an altar and you step into this place and there are rats over the entire altar eating the offering that is given to them by the people. I said, now you need to know that rats eat enough grain per year to fill boxcars, train boxcars that would be from Los Angeles to New York. That's how much grain is consumed by rats but you have a starving population. I said, when I walked in to this temple, there was a little child begging for food and the pilgrims would not give the child food, they went to offer the rats the grain. The little girl that I saw had a broken arm because she was sold into slavery by her parents because her parents had no money and the pimp broke her arm to disfigure it so it would create more sympathy on the part of the tourists to give more. If you're driving your car and you hit a cow, you better get out of town because they worship the cow and yet there's so many starving people, they're worshiping cows that could feed a whole lot of people if McDonald's was allowed. I said, the place is filled with sorrow, grief, poverty and filth where people put tents and enclosures on traffic islands and that's a place they live where somebody will take a rock and break it into gravel and do that for 10 hours, breaking rocks, putting them into the side, making piles of gravel, I saw this, I said, and you know what that woman makes? 50 cents a day for breaking rocks into gravel, 10 hours. I said, this is a place that has been destroyed by its religion and you're telling me that Hinduism is beautiful? How can you say that a religion that has enslaved a billion lives in this kind of poverty with a caste system that they have the people who are the untouchables who cannot be cared for why because those people, according to their religion, deserve the life they're living. They have no things like we have. We take for granted the Red Cross and all of the things to care for other people. Where did we get that? We got that from our Christian teachings that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's Christianity. It's a foundation of our faith and our country. But you think that Hinduism is beautiful? How can you believe that a religion that has impoverished and destroyed so many people? How can you say that that's beautiful? She didn't talk to me anymore, but it's true. Absolute truth. And I was sharing this with this young college student because I wanted that student to see there is such a thing as truth. And that truth is Jesus Christ who sets the captive free. I wanted them to see that. Not all religions are equal. So as this takes place, getting back to it, Pilate says, I find no fault in him at all. So turning back and closing in in Mark 15, turning back to Mark 15, beginning at verse three, the chief priest accused him of many things, but he answered nothing. Pilate asked him again, saying, do you answer nothing? See how many things they testify against you, but Jesus still answered nothing. So that Pilate marveled. So the chief priests are accusing him, but Pilate had found nothing and they would not let him go. So they continue accusing, but he continues answering not a word. So in verse four, Pilate asked, don't you hear how many things they're testifying against you, but he remained silent. He didn't defend himself. This fulfills Isaiah 53, verse seven, written over seven centuries before. Speaking of Messiah, where it says he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he didn't open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter as a sheep before it shears his silent. He did not open his mouth. And that's unlike anything Pilate had ever seen. And that's why verse five tells us Pilate marveled. That word marveled means to hold someone in admiration. You see a person who said nothing in his own defense is unheard of. Our natural response is to protest our own innocence strongly. These are serious charges. He could be put to death for them, but he didn't resist. He didn't offer a defense. It amazed Pilate. Now Pilate didn't need any problems. He was in a bad position himself. He'd been governing Judea for five years and he had misjudged the Jews before and gotten himself in some very bad places. For example, he deliberately offended them by having his soldiers carry Roman banners with an image of Caesar. The Jews considered these images blasphemous, asked for their removal. When he refused to remove them, he herded a delegation of Jews into an amphitheater threatened to behead them, but they bared their necks. They threw themselves on the ground. They defied him. He removed the barriers, the banners rather. Second, he took money forcefully from the temple treasury to build a water channel and the Jews rioted. So Pilate brutally slaughtered many of the protesters. And then finally, he had had special shields made for the guard at the fortress with images of Tiberius Caesar engraved on the shields. And this time, Jewish leaders protested directly to Caesar and Caesar ordered him to remove the shields immediately. Pilate didn't need any more problems with the Jewish people. But Jesus wasn't cooperating and it caused him anxiety. Ultimately, we're gonna see how he solves this. He just washes his hands from the problem. So he asked the people. He's gonna ask the people, what do you want me to do with this one who is called King of the Jews? And they're gonna demand one thing, crucify him. What do you do with goodness when you encounter it and it convicts you? Crucify it. Get rid of it. Cancel it. I don't wanna be convicted. I don't wanna hear these things. I'm really a good person at heart. There's so many people who honestly believe themselves to be good and let's face it, if we were just judging on human standards, there's some very fine people, very nice people, very good people, there's no doubt about that. There's some great people according to human standards but God doesn't judge on human standards. Bible makes it very clear that sin separates you from God and that all have sin and fall short of the glory of God. There's none righteous, no, not one. There was only one person who ever was good. There's only one person in history who was good. And that's Jesus Christ and they killed him. What does the world do when it encounters good? It tries to silence it. It tries to kill it. We see that all the time. COVID hits, bars, tattoo parlors open. Open. Churches closed. What do we do with truth? We try to silence it. We try to shove it down. What do you do with goodness? You try to kill it. You want that mouth shut because it's the same things you don't like. Jesus made it very clear who he was, very clear. And he said at the end, what would you have me to do with this man called Jesus? And they all with one voice. And we'll see this, said, crucify him. Pilate wanted to wash his hands from this. I find no fault in him at all. Later on we'll see that his wife even said, have nothing to do with this man. I have suffered many things in a dream this night because of him. What did they do? The Jewish authorities wanted this one called Christ Messiah to be silenced. And we're gonna be seeing that as we continue on through these chapters to see what you do to truth. Now what is it that we do with truth? We have received it. It is set us free because Jesus said that you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. Pilate didn't want to know truth. But we did. And that's why we came to know Jesus Christ. Who is the truth? Who is that way? Who is the life? Jesus Christ, who is our savior? Who took upon himself our sin, becoming the sin. Totality of sin took it upon himself that he might take what he didn't have which is my sin and give me something I didn't have which is his righteousness. So that's quite an exchange. I would say because truth sets you free and gives you the righteousness of God himself so that one day we will see him face to face capable of doing so because we believe that truth and we were set free. And I say hallelujah to that. Thank you Jesus for your goodness to us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Father we ask that