Series: John

John 19 - David Stockton

John chapter 19. It’s going to be interesting. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I hope you had so much joy and felt great about the world and your family and your relationship with the Lord, and turkey and pie and all of that. Because today we’re really going to talk a lot about sin and humanity’s propensity to it. And the great evil that’s in humanity’s hearts. So gear up. It’s going to be jolly. It’s not Christmas yet. It’s time to talk about sin.

What we have, basically, is we have a lot of problems in our world. Last week we talked about truth, we talked bout lies, we talked about deception. It’s not just words. It’s not just confusion that it creates, but as we know, lies and and deception, when they really begin to take root in someone’s heart, can lead to all kinds of horrible atrocities, including stealing, killing, destroying, abuse. Lots of different things that have caused a lot of pain in this world.

So the question for people who aren’t Christians, and for people who are Christians, as well, is why is there all this evil in the world? Why is there all this pain? One of the things people think is, is it because God is powerless? That, actually, God can’t really do anything about it? That’s one consideration. Another one is, well, maybe God is mean. Maybe he is mean or doesn’t care about all of those things. Maybe he’s just kind of hands off. Leave us to our own devices. That’s another option.

But then another option to consider is maybe it’s because mankind really does have evil inside their hearts. That’s not a fun thing to think about because it means you and I. But the Bible is pretty clear about that. We’re going to get to see, basically, John the apostle answering that very question, as we read the story that he experienced in real life, in real time two thousand years ago.

John was writing so that we would believe that Jesus is the Creator God who created the world and came to rescue it from sin and death. He wrote his evangelistic letter about thirty years after the other three gospels, the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. So he’s writing with a completely different perspective. Those three books have already been in circulation. He’s read them. He knows what they’re about. So he’s adding something to it. He doesn’t necessarily use the same stories. He uses some other stories and he uses his own version of those stories.

John wants to make sure no one misses that Jesus was fully God and fully human at the same time. John’s not playing around. He really believes that these stories about Jesus can change a person’s life, as well as change their destiny after your life runs out. He talks about being born again. He talks about drinking living water. He talks about resurrection life. He’s emphatic about those things.

We’ve seen in the book of John Jesus rise to popularity to where, at one point, he basically had five thousand men come out to him and say, “Hey, we’re ready to do whatever you want to do. Let’s march on Jerusalem. Let’s take out Herod. Whatever you want to do.”

And from that point on, he kind of plateaued in popularity and then as quickly begin to decline in popularity. Then, last week we left off with Pilate, who was the Roman authority in Jerusalem at that time, presenting to all of the Jews that used to want to make Jesus king, but now aren’t so sure, and he’s presenting to them Barabbas, “the son of the father,” a guy who was known to lead a rebellion and to do some damage to people and things. And then you’ve got Jesus who’s claiming to be the Son of the Father, actually the Son of God, and Pilate’s presenting them to the people, and the people are saying, “We want Barabbas. We don’t want Jesus.”

So that’s where we’re at. We get to see the confusion and deception that has taken root in the human heart when they’re face to face with their Maker. They’re saying, “We don’t want him. He’s too true. He’s too real. We want the counterfeit.”

Then in John 19, it says this:

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.

Basically had his back ripped and torn to shreds, hoping that he might confess something.

2 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3 and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.
4 Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” 5 When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
6 As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”
7 The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
8 When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, 9 and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. 10 “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”
13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). 14 It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
15 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.
16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.
So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
19 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: jesus of nazareth, the king of the jews. 20 Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 21 The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”
22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
23 When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
24 “Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.”
This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said,
“They divided my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment.”
So this is what the soldiers did.
25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
28 Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. 30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
31 Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. 32 The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. 33 But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. 35 The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. 36 These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken,” 37 and, as another scripture says, “They will look on the one they have pierced.”
38 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. 41 At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. 42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

So this is John’s eyewitness account. He was there in person. He is the disciple that Jesus loved. He’s the one who actually witnessed the spear going into Jesus’ side and blood and water flowing out. He’s telling us all of these details about this moment so that we really would believe that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, the Creator of the world, and also the Rescuer of the world.

And he goes person by person. He begins to talk about the different people there. We know Judas, who had betrayed Jesus over to the Pharisees, who then took him before Pilate.

We now know Pilate has been wrestling with this in chapter 18 and 19. He’s wrestling with the reality of who Jesus is and what to do with Jesus. He’s very conflicted. He can’t find anything wrong with him. He’s trying to set him free. Yet, ultimately he decides to hand him over to their wishes.

And then you’ve got these soldiers who are putting crowns of thorns on Jesus and putting this robe on him and slapping him and mocking him, who shipped his back, tore it to shreds, trying to get him to confess something. Then, there as he’s hanging on the cross, they’re not really paying attention to what’s going on. Instead they’re trying to just figure out how to get his clothes.

Then you’ve got Mary, Jesus’ mom, and his aunt, and another Mary, and another Mary. A lot of Marys. And John’s there with them. And they’re watching all of this take place. Hearing about it two thousand years later, they’re sitting there and they’re watching Jesus as blood is dripping from his hands and his feet, knowing that his back is ripped to shreds and is up on that tree. And the only way that he can take a breath is to actually pull himself up to get his chest high enough to take a breath. Because crucifixion was actually something that caused suffocation. Asphixiation is the way people died. That’s why they would break the legs, so they couldn’t push up anymore to take a breath.

And Jesus’ mom is standing there watching this happen to her son, who she knows is a lot more than just her son. Virgin birth. All the times talking with him. All the things that he’s done. And she’s watching him be crucified. Her heart’s broken in many different ways. One because her son’s being killed. But two because she really hoped that he would be able to save his people from the pain of sin and death. She really believed he might have been stronger than the wickedness of humanity. But she’s watching the breath leave him. With one of those painful breaths, he actually speaks out words and says, “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mom,” as he tries to ask John if he would take care of her. And John does that.

Then you have these other couple of characters. After Jesus is now dead, he’s breathed his last, he’s said, “It is finished.” You have Joseph of Arimathea, who risks a lot, who’s a disciple, yet very afraid, and he goes and asks Pilate if he can take care of the body of Jesus.

And Nicodemus finds out about this and he joins in, because he also wants to take care of the body of Jesus, as he’s been watching Jesus, as he’s been trying to figure out who Jesus is. And they go and put Jesus’ body in a tomb. They honor Jesus’ body, they care for it in a secretive way.

When I think about what John is trying to get across here in this chapter, I think about these different people he’s introduced. We see Judas who actually knew the truth about Jesus. If anybody knew the truth about Jesus, it would be Judas. He was there with him for three years, seeing all the things that Jesus did and hearing all the things that Jesus said. Yet Judas, having a front row seat to the Creator of the universe, knew the truth, but loved money more. He knew the truth. He was face to face with the truth. But there was something in his heart that caused him to be willing to betray Jesus over to the Jews who he knew wanted to kill him, even though he knew the truth. He suppressed the truth because he wanted something else more than the truth.

Then you have Pilate. Pilate basically is saying, “I find no fault in this person.” The interactions with Pilate, based on what John is telling us has kind of got Pilate going, “I don’t know if I want to miss with this guy.” And we know from another of the gospels that Pilate’s wife actually said, “Have nothing to do with this man. Don’t mess around. I just had a dream.” And there’s all this stuff coming to Pilate to where he now knows the truth about who this person is, or at least knows there is a lot more going on than what he understands, and yet he loved his position more. The sin in his heart caused him to suppress the truth that could have set him free. Ultimately he surrendered and said, “I don’t really want to risk my position.” And he handed Jesus over.

Then the soldiers. Their response when they were face to face with truth, is they just ignored it. They just cared about themselves.

And then we have these two at the end, who had been compelled to believe that Jesus was the truth. One became a disciple, but secretly. And though they were believing in Jesus, they continued to kind of stand back and be afraid.

And so, the story in the scriptures, the story with evidence in human history is that the God of the universe, the Maker and Creator of everything, as John said in the very beginning, “He came into the world, and the world did not receive him.” The sin in the hearts of humanity was so grotesque, so evil, so despicable, so deceived, that we, when face to face with the God, the Maker and Lover of our souls, we shouted, “Crucify him. Crucify him. We don’t want anything to do with him.”

Whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, this is what is still alive in each one of us. The reason that there is all of the pain in the world is because evil has entered into the heart of mankind. Whether the evil shows up as something super grostesque as a crucifixion or just loving your position a little bit more than the truth, or loving money more than the truth. It’s hard for us to weigh out and say one’s bad, one’s not as bad. But it’s all sin. And it all leads to the same thing.

In the Bible there are four different words in Hebrew for sin, for basically doing wrong:

Khaw-taw is missing the mark. It’s basically this is what you’re supposed to do and you end up going that way or falling short.

Pesha is transgression, which is a breaking of trust.

Avon is iniquity, which is basically just crookedness. Instead of going in a straight line, you’re going in a crooked line and you’re calling the crooked straight.

Sin is missing the mark and worse. One of the things I was doing the other day, I just got this pellet gun and so we’ve been shooting this pellet gun at these cans. It’s a really powerful pellet gun and we were shooting at these cans and none of us are that good. It’s me and my kids and my nephews and stuff. So we’re shooting at these cans. We’ve got these cans all lined up and we’re trying to make sure the site is right. If the site’s not right you can’t shoot straight. The site’s lined up and we’re still not good at hitting the cans. Even if we were good at hitting the cans, we could line that site up and we could hit the can every time. That would be not missing the mark. That’s righteousness. But what sin is, basically, there’s different layers to this in the word in Hebrew. It’s not only just missing the mark to where your aim is off. You are missing the mark because you’re aiming the wrong way. But it also has this idea of your site is off. So even if you in yourself tried to aim it the right way, your site is off, so you still wouldn’t be able to hit it. It’s the next layer, right? So I’m off. My site is off. This is the condition of the human heart apart from Jesus. I’m off. The site is off.

But then it gets even worse. Because what happens is, when I’m off long enough, then I start to blame the site. And then if the site’s off long enough, then what happens is I just start to adjust and, this is going to get a little sad here. It didn’t actually happen, but if this did happen, we have these little pigmy goat now. They’re awesome. We have two of them. And we were shooting these cans and then all of a sudden these goats came around the back side of where we were shooting. And so we stopped shooting because we’re not totally horrible. We’ve got Jesus, you know? But the way the Bible tries to help us understand sin is, I’m off. My site is off. Then all of a sudden I start to hit other things and saying that that is what I’m really supposed to hit. That is the true mark of what I’m going after. As if shooting the goat is what you’re supposed to do.

So you see, there are these different layers of sin. There are different depths of depravity that are inside all of us. This is what it is like apart from Christ, whether you acknowledge it or not. You might say, “Well, I’m not that bad.” That’s fine. Maybe you’re holding all of that inside some sort of manageable to where it doesn’t look that bad. But we know that sin is rampant in our society.

What the Bible says is it’s a diagnosis of the human heart, that when Adam sinned and then we’re born of the seed of Adam, we’re born with our hearts being off. We can’t even get the aim right. And we actually have our sites off, so even if we did one time get our aim right, we would still miss. But we’ve also twisted things to now say, “Whatever I hit, I will now justify as the thing I was supposed to hit.” It’s a great deception.

Not only is that the reality of what’s going on inside our own bodies missing the mark because we’re off, missing the mark because our sites are off, missing the mark because we start to justify whatever we do hit as the right thing, but our world is full of deceptive ideas that love to play to our disordered desires, and then they’re normalized and celebrated in a sinful society.

So it’s not just a problem from within, but our whole society is saturated in this same deception, where the devil and the world and the flesh, there are all these deceptive ideas being thrown around. These deceptive ideas sound good to our disordered desires. And then, instead of those things being checked by our society, instead they are celebrated and encouraged, saying, “Yeah. You should do that. You deserve that. Yeah, that won’t be a bad thing. Everybody’s doing it.” And the deception gets a whole other level deep. And a whole other level of disgust.

This guy, Ray Pritchard, says this:

“First sin deceives us by promising what it can never deliver. Second, sin deceives us by convincing us what happens to others will never happen to us. Third, sin deceives us by creating in us a desire for that which we know can only hurt us.”

We think that we’re getting away with little sins all the time, but what we’re not realizing is those little sins are actually changing our heart a little each time, a little each time. And, again, how do I know this? Not just because the Bible says so. Because you can look at the sociological ramifications and statistics in our society. There is something deeply, deeply wrong.

No one gets married and says, “I’m probably going to get divorced.” But little by little by little by little that becomes the only way out.

No one as a little kid gets up and says, “I’m excited about killing someone some day.” But little by little by little by little they find themselves murdering someone.

No one grows up and says, “I’m going to abuse my children some day.” But little by little by little by little the deception takes root. The deception grows and next thing we know, we have humanity shouting, “Crucify him. Crucify him. Crucify him” to their only real hope.

We have a very serious problem and to say that sin is not a big deal, to say that sin is not rampant in our world, to just kind of minimize it, is to minimize the cross, but it’s also to minimize the problem.

So first of all, how do we escape the deception of sin? I mean, the Bible says that the devil shows up as an angel of light. How are you supposed to know it’s the devil when it’s an angel of light? There’s pleasure in sin, the Bible says. The Bible’s not foolish about it. There is pleasure in sin. How is it supposed to be wrong when there’s pleasure in it? But that pleasure, there’s pleasure in sin for a season but then comes destruction. It’s very deceptive. It’s very challenging.

So how can we escape deception and sin? First of all, the cross. Jesus died on the cross to set us free from sin. His death on the cross breaks the power of sin. It gives us the chance of being able to get free from the bondage of sin. His blood can wash us and cleanse us.

The second thing: Jesus died on the cross so we could be forgiven of our sin. Even though sometimes we get the power of sin broken over us as believers who receive the cross, we sometimes fall into the same deceptions. But then Jesus gives us forgiveness. So the cross really is the answer. The cross is the most important thing. If you have not really come to terms with the cross, if you have not received the work that Jesus has done for you on the cross, you are still in bondage to sin, you are not free from it and your sins are not forgiven.

But when you say, “Jesus, I’m sorry for my sin. I need you as my Savior,” you are now free from the power of sin over your life and you are now forgiven for every sin that you have done, you are doing, or you will do. That’s what the cross can do. That’s what the cross is all about. That’s why the cross is such good news. Because Jesus didn’t stay in that tomb. He rose again and he wants to give us new life.

But then, as we’re walking in this newness from the cross, as we’ve stepped from death to life, as we’ve stepped from darkness to light because of receiving what Jesus did on the cross, there are four things I just want to bring up real quick as we close that will help us with our battle with deception, with our battle with sin.

First of all, the first thing we can do is rest assured. I loved what we sang today, But I’ll rest in the promises of God. Matthew 24:24 says this:

For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.

So here, what Jesus is saying is there is going to be so much deception, so much powerful deception that will rise in the world, false Christs, false prophets that will come, that they’re going to be very deceptive, but they will not be able to deceive the elect. Who are the elect? The elect are those who have received what Jesus did on the cross and have been filled with his Spirit as they’re going forward in life.

So there’s a promise that Jesus is like, “You’re not alone in this. I’m going to hold you. I’m going to make sure that you will not be deceived. I’m going to be whispering in your ear. I’m going to be showing the deception for what it was. I’m going to be guiding you, if you’ll receive me.”

The second thing we can do is remain in the truth. 2 Thessalonians 2:9 says this:

the coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

So here he says we need to love the truth. We need to believe the truth. As Jesus said in John 15, we need to remain in the truth. How do you do that? You just spend every day taking in the word of God, both in silence as you listen to what his voice might be speaking to you, but also in the scriptures that have been given to us. You just allow that stuff to wash over you, wash over your mind, cleanse you, be stronger than the voices outside. You remain in the truth.

The third thing, we can encourage one another. This is interesting that this is important in our dealing with deception. Absolutely.

13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

We’ve got to encourage one another. We’ve got to get into each other’s lives. So that one of us begins to swerve off, “What are you doing over there, man? Come back over here. Why you shooting at those goats? Come on man, it’s the cans. We’re going for the cans. Let me adjust your site a little bit. It looks like you’re shooting off a little bit.”

That’s what church is supposed to be. That’s what life groups are for. Take advantage of this opportunity. That’s what friendships are. You’ve got to reach out. You say, “It’s hard.” Who cares? Get over the obstacles. Press in. Press through. If they’re being a jerk, tell me. I’ll go yell at them.

We’ve got to get into each other’s lives. Especially as our world, even right now, is so much more distanced. It is harder. Yes. I understand that. But it’s all the more important. Otherwise we’re going to find ourselves, and this is so creepy,” you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Your heart will be hardened little by little until all of a sudden you don’t even realize what you’re doing. You don’t even realize what you’re doing. That’s what’s so dangerous about sin.

The fourth thing, we need to rejoice when we feel conviction. What? Yes. Yes. Because conviction is a sign that the Spirit lives inside you. That the filtering has begun. We talked about it a few weeks ago.

In 2 Corinthians 7:9, Paul says:

9 yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.

So it’s kind of fostering that sensitivity. It’s being so in tune with, “Oh, Lord. That’s not right. Something’s not right in what they’re saying. Something’s not right in what I’m saying. Something’s not right about this place that I’m in.”

There’s a sensitivity that is fostered. You can rejoice whenever that happens instead of hating that. Instead of fighting against that, rejoice when you feel that conviction and go with it. Respond to it. Be quick to respond to it.

Pilate was getting that conviction. He was having that thing, “Something’s not right about all of this.” But at the end of the day he said, “Oh, well.” And he handed Jesus over to be crucified.

And for us, as we continue to navigate our crazy time, I really want us to be people that are aware of the dangers and the deception of sin. Don’t think you’re above it. Don’t think you’re past it. But then, also be so aware of the power of the cross, that it can actually set us free. We are no longer in bondage. That’s what happens. Eventually, as you continue to go in sin, you become in bondage to it. It owns you. It’s on your back. What Jesus did on the cross is he allowed his blood to flow and so he breaks the power of sin over us. So that we can actually go a different way. But then he also gives us the forgiveness that we need to wash us clean as we make mistakes going forward.

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