In the sermon 'Behold the Man of Sorrows' by Scott Brown, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is examined as a pivotal moment in Christian theology. The sermon delves into John 19:1-16, portraying Jesus as the 'Man of Sorrows' who experienced every human grief and temptation yet remained sinless, ultimately suffering for humanity's sins. Pilate's role is highlighted, as he repeatedly finds no fault in Jesus, yet succumbs to political pressure and delivers Him to be crucified. The sermon introduces the doctrine of concurrence, explaining that God works through human actions for His purposes, even the evil deeds leading to Jesus' crucifixion. It further discusses the concept of greater and lesser sins, emphasizing that not all sins are equal, and highlights Jesus' life as a continuous crucifixion, reflecting on His humility and suffering from birth to death. Ultimately, the sermon encourages believers to look to Jesus for comfort and resolution of their sorrows, underscoring the substitutionary atonement and sovereignty of God.

Please open your Bibles to John 19 verses 1 through 16 will be the reading John 19 verses 1 through 16. So then, Pilate took Jesus and scourged him, and the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe. Then they said, Hail, King of the Jews! And they struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, Behold, I am bringing him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in him.

Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns, the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, Behold the man. Therefore, When the chief priests and officers saw him, they cried out saying, crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, you take him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.

Therefore when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid, and went again into the Praetorium and said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. Then Pilate said to him, Are you not speaking to me? Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you and the power to release you? Jesus answered, You could have no power at all against me unless it had been given you from above.

Therefore the one who delivered me to you has the greater sin. From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out saying, if you let this man go you are not Caesar's friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabatha. Now it was the preparation day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour, and he said to the Jews, Behold your king.

But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to them Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered we have no king but Caesar Then he delivered him He delivered him to them to be crucified Then they took Jesus and led him away Father You've placed us before these startling words, this persecution of the most perfect man who ever lived. And Lord, we pray that you would teach us your ways through this, that you would enlighten our eyes, correct our wrong thinking, and cause us to behold your Son in all of His glory in these moments. Amen.

Well, we've arrived at the center of the Bible. It all looks forward to this and everything after this looks back to it, to the suffering and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So as we come to this section we meet Jesus as the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And in Christian theology the man of sorrows experienced every sorrow known to man. He was tempted in every way we are, yet without sin, and yet he suffered for our giving in to our temptations, very specific temptations.

In Jesus' sufferings, He exposed the reason for all of our sorrows. It's the sorrow-inducing power of sin. We have tremendous problem with sorrows. Every person in the world has to grapple with their own sorrows. We live in a world of sorrow and people do different things to pile sorrow upon sorrow in their lives.

And they do different things to relieve that sorrow that their sin has piled up in their life. And there, but there are solutions that people gravitate to. The most common way we deal with our sorrows is to flatter ourselves to ease the pain or we blame others or we create reasons to respect ourselves in our accomplishments or we create diversionary happinesses which are just replacement idols of pleasure or hobbies or travels or some activity to make us feel good about what we're doing. We might wallow in our sorrows, we might take drugs, we might escape, we might binge watch movies, We might do a number of things, but none of these things help. So the question is, how do you make sense of your sorrows and your sins?

How do you make sense of your suffering? How do you know what to do in a time of suffering and where is your consolation even as you contemplate your sins? And this passage of scripture helps us to see that. In short, look to Christ. Behold the man of sorrows who carried all of our sorrows.

What you find is that in the sufferings of Jesus Christ, there's enough medicine really to show you who you are and to make an end of all of your sorrows. So we have such a marvelous opportunity to look to the man of sorrows. It's such a wonderful thing to consider this doctrine. Jesus has said, I lay my life down for the sheep. And that's the big question.

What do you think of Jesus Christ? Well, he's displayed here in the most unusual way. Now there are, just in terms of the big picture of this passage, there are major doctrines that we'll run across. You'll see them as we cascade our way through the text, but the heart of the matter is the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ and his sufferings born for us. You have one of the most remarkable disclosures of the sovereignty of God and in some of its details, some of its nuances.

And you have a declaration of the sinfulness of sin, and you'll be able to identify these as we go through this passage of scripture. But Paul declares how important this is in 1 Corinthians 2 when he said, For I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. You know, whatever confusion you have about anything going on in the world, let the confusion end with the most important thing in the world, Christ crucified. Now, if you've got an outline in front of you, You'll see that it's maybe the simplest outline you've ever seen for me And I have divided this text into two sections the first 15 verses shamed the shaming of Jesus Christ and then in verse 16 the final verse of our text led away the leading of Jesus Christ away to his crucifixion. So all of these things I think help us to understand much about ourselves, what to do with our sorrows, and how to really to think about the most important thing in the world on any given day, any given day, really any given moment.

This man of sorrows has enough balm for you no matter what you're going through in this world. So let's begin with the shaming of Jesus Christ. Well, he was despised and rejected of men as Isaiah prophesies. In these verses in his rejection in this particular kind of suffering, we see our own sins exposed. Here's another way to say it.

We see our self-righteous self-image shattered. The sufferings of Jesus Christ expose our sin and they shatter our self-congratulatory self-image. And to illustrate this, I'm gonna quote and paraphrase from a book by John Wall. He was an English Puritan. He wrote a book called None but Christ.

He was a pastor in London. Interestingly enough, in this time of what is said to be a plague, when he was 58 years old, he experienced the resurgence of the bubonic plague in London in 1664. And then he died at age 78, right at the end of the second wave of this plague in 1665 and 1666. He died in 1666. This plague was the very worst since the bubonic since the very first terrifying wave 300 years before in 1351.

But in one of the chapters of his book entitled a brief view of the sufferings of Christ before he suffered on the cross he states this all of his life was a crucifixion. From the cradle to the grave, from his birth to his burial, His whole life was a crucifixion. That's John Wall. He suffered his whole life long. He bore our shame.

And this entire section that we have before us illustrates that. Now, in John Wall's book in chapter 3, he lists actually a dozen ways that Christ suffered, how he was crucified his whole life long. And I think there are dozens of ways that he was crucified his whole life long. I'll just give you some of the examples from the book. He was crucified first in his conception, in that he was conceived in the seed of a virgin.

He was lodged in her narrow womb, whom the heavens could not contain. He says he was crucified in his birth. He was born of a woman, the creator, born of the creature. He says He was born in a stable being crucified in that way, wrapped in swaddling clothes. He says he was crucified by being a suckling child.

He says this is a strange crucifixion. The great God to become a babe, and the eternal word, not to be able to speak a word, the lion of the tribe of Judah who when he roars makes all the beasts tremble to cry like a child that sucks. He says, you shall find the babes swaddled in cloths, much like we cover our wounds and the beggars sores with, not with fine linen or silk cloths, but pour like beggars' rags. He says, but there's more. If a babe in clothes, he was in a stable where horses and beasts were fed.

The great God who inhabits eternity, whom the heavens cannot contain, is in a stable. His robes were rags, they teach us his humility, he says. Christ was clothed with rags that we might be clothed with robes of glory. Wall says he was crucified in his circumcision as a type of defilement and his purity, cutting off your serpufluous lusts. He was crucified in his temptations.

He was drawn by the devil to worship him. He was crucified his whole life. 30 years he was crucified, living of no reputation. He made himself of no reputation. He was despised, we esteemed him not.

He was just a carpenter's son, working in his father's trade. He was crucified in his agony in the garden as he sweat drops of blood. This was done in cold weather. They had no fire to warn them except those who abandoned him. He was crucified in his apprehension when he was betrayed by Judas, who sold our Savior for 30 pieces of silver, yet bought us with his dearest blood.

He was crucified in his arraignment before the bar with Pilate, the section of scripture we're in now, an earthly judge that we might not be arraigned as malefactors before God on the day of judgment. Again, he was crucified in that he was spat upon. Isaiah 50 verse 6 he quotes, I hid not my face from shame and spitting. He was crucified in his mockings, blindfolding him, asking him questions, making sport of him, striking him. He was crucified in his scourging, being a shameful punishment fit for dogs and slaves.

It's a strange sight to see a king scourged, especially by his vassals. Lastly, Christ was crucified in his condemnation, in that they condemned him to death, first acknowledging him innocent, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just man, and then condemning the innocent. He stood in our stead who were guilty and to teach us that we are all by nature condemned men before the Lord till we get our pardon by Christ and that by Him we shall escape the sentence of eternal condemnation for there is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus His whole life was a crucifixion From the cradle to the grave and now in the moment we're in in this passage. We're just getting one slice He's already been really figuratively crucified by three religious trials. And then he's in the midst now of these three civil trials.

So first in verse 1, so then Pilate took Jesus. Pilate took Jesus and scorched him. He was scorched, but Pilate was a wicked man. Agrippa stated that Pilate was an inflexible and obstinate man. And tradition tells us that he was finally banished from his post there in Jerusalem and committed suicide in France.

He wanted to see Jesus go free and he appeals over and over. He makes some of the most remarkable statements in the Bible. What is truth? Behold the man, behold the king. What should I do with Jesus?

What I have written, I have written. Statements etched in the minds of all Christians. Pilate believed that Jesus was innocent, yet he had him flogged and he was a pragmatist, he was an opportunist, and he didn't mind fitting into those of whom it was said of those toward Jesus he was despised and rejected of men we hid our faces from him he finally did that so here they're scourging him they tear off They tear off the clothes from his back and they tie his hands. They tie the hands of the man who reached out and healed so many. And by scourging Jesus, it's most likely that Pilate was trying to pacify the Jews.

It's as if he wanted to do something that would satisfy them. In Luke 23.16, Pilate is recorded as saying, I will therefore chastise him and release him. That's what he wanted. He wanted to give him a beating and then let him go, see him let go by the Jews because he didn't believe he was he was guilty. And of course the Romans conducted three kinds of scourging.

The first kind was a little bit like a whipping. It was very painful, but it wasn't so devastating. The second kind, the second level, was more painful. But the third kind was extremely severe with a leather thong and pieces of metal and bone and they scourged him viciously. The Jews had a limit of 39 lashes, the Romans had no limit.

And in their scourgings, often the bones and the entrails of the one being scourge would be Laid bare they did it because they wanted people to die quicker on the cross and not have to spend so much time waiting Now it's possible there are two scourgings the lighter and the heavier this might have been a lighter this might have been the heavier But the point is this that Christ was crucified in our place. We deserve to be scourged. And God is telling us what kind of people we really are before a holy God. The sufferings of Jesus Christ ought to be a self-image adjustment to us, to help us to realize the depth of our sin. And then the crown of thorns came next in verse 2, And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on his head.

It was a sign of shame. They quite likely took branches from a date palm tree and they had long 12-inch thorns on them. And the crown mocked him, made him bleed, made him look ridiculous and belittled every good thing he ever did. And he wore a crown that we deserved. The depths of our sin to justify ourselves, they really do lead us looking ridiculous and bleeding, and they really belittle every good thing we've ever done.

That was the intent of the crown of thorns. Then they put a purple robe on him, he was given a worn out shabby, unflattering robe, mocking him. He took on that robe that we deserve to wear so that we would wear a robe of righteousness. Krumacher, one of the commentators, makes I think a very remarkable statement. He says, let no one deceive himself beneath the robe of mockery.

He still conceals the thunder and the lightning and consuming fire. If he permitted it, he would issue from his thorny crown and devour his adversaries. Amazing. In one of the other gospels we learn at the same time they put a reed in his hands to mock him like he was holding a scepter. What will you do with your sorrows?

Here Jesus Christ demonstrates he bears all of your sorrows. And then they mocked him, verse three, and they mocked him saying, hail, king of the Jews. They shamed Jesus to try to discredit him as if to say, you say you're a king, you are nothing. You know, we sing that song, behold the Father's love for us. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.

Then he was beaten, verse three, and they struck him with their hands. Instead of praise, they struck him. And he got what we deserve, the plague of sins, self-righteousness, and self-congratulation is worse than we know or think. We live our whole lives trying to prove how impressive we are. And the light of the gospel shows us that we're not very impressive and the Lord Jesus Christ in his sufferings declares that.

In Matthew 7 we learn about those people who have been trying to be impressive and Jesus comes to them and he says he says to them that he never knew them and they say Lord did we not cast out demons in your name didn't we do in many wonders in your name and he says I never knew you well they were very impressive I mean they did remarkable things very gifted amazing people. But the cross of Christ tells us that we're not so impressive. And then Pilate in verse four, he declares his opinion, as he does several times. He says, I find no fault in him. Seven times this is recorded in the Gospels.

He did believe Jesus was innocent. And then the shaming continues in the presentation of Jesus. You know, because the whole life of Jesus was a crucifixion. And it would not end until the final damning breathing of his last, which he controlled. But what we need to always understand is in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is enough medicine to heal every wound and then Pilate introduces Jesus in verse 5 he's then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns looking not like a king at all.

And at this point he's bloodied. And you know what is Pilate doing here? He says, Behold the man. And I think Pilate is most likely saying, why are you afraid of him? He's just a man, he's terrified you.

Now we do learn later on that Pilate was afraid all the way along in this interchange. But most likely Pilate thought the Jews would be impressed by the flogging. They would get off his back and he could release Jesus. That did not happen. The crowd knows what Pilate is up to.

They do not buy it. And so in verse 6, the crowd cries out, crucify him, crucify him. And in doing that, they are just fulfilling the prophecy from Jesus own lips that he would be crucified and then Pilate responds at the end of verse 6 look at it there he says you take him and crucify him I find no fault in him." Now Pilate what is he doing? I mean he seems like he's baiting them. He seems like he's trying to incite the Jews to break Roman law.

That would be nice for him frankly. Go ahead do what you will do defy the law. But then the Jews appealed to Pilate in the next verse in verse seven. They answered him we have a law according to our law he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God." And that phrase struck Pilate to the heart. Pilate was afraid.

In verse eight, we can see his fear. Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid. He was afraid all along and now he's even more afraid. And so Pilate went again into the Praetorium and said to Jesus, where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer.

Where are you from? He wasn't asking a geographical question. He wasn't asking whether he was from Galilee. He knew he was a Galilean. He knew exactly where he was from geographically.

But he was afraid. Jesus had said earlier, my kingdom is not of this world and the Romans were very superstitious pilot was very superstitious and Fears rising in his heart. I believe because of his Superstition and Jesus doesn't answer him Where are you from from? He's asking what sphere, what other worldly place are you from? The Romans believed that the gods could come down and do business, bad business most of the time with people on the earth and they would do you harm and most likely Pilate was afraid of Jesus who had done so many miracles was one of the gods visiting him and he's afraid.

He's acting out of his fear. And then Pilate does what many men do when they're actually afraid. They act like big shots And he says in verses 20 and 21, I have the power to crucify you. Why are you, you're not answering me? I can crucify you.

He is throwing him his weight around, I have power to release you, he says in verse 10, and then Jesus answers him, you have no power at all against me unless it had been given you from above. So Jesus is declaring his absolute sovereign authority over the moment. Now, I'm gonna introduce if your children, particularly a new doctrine, maybe a new word to you, concurrence. This is the doctrine of concurrence. C-O-N-C-U-R-R-E-N-C-E, the doctrine of Concurrence.

The doctrine of concurrence reveals that God works through the evil actions of men for His own purpose. God simultaneously acts in the natural forces of the weather as well as the deeds of men. Man never works independently. God is always superintending. That's the doctrine of concurrence.

That's David's talked to or Asaph talked about this in Psalm 76 verse 10. He said the wrath of man will praise you. Count on it. Don't ever be afraid of the wrath of man. It will always get turned around to praise God.

The doctrine of concurrence teaches that God and man always act in the midst of the same situation. They have different motives. God's will will be done. Men and women take actions at the exact same time that God is taking actions and God causes everything as Paul said to work together for good, for the called, according to his purpose. And everyone in the world is under this constraint.

Some are clueless to it. Oh, we saw a remarkable demonstration of that just this last week when apparently this, the coronavirus plague numbers were dropping in New York and in the and the governor of New York Andrew Cuomo said God did not stop this virus we did it was not faith in God we did it Our behavior stopped the spread of the virus. Not so much. The doctrine of concurrence, the superintending power of God in the midst of all activity of the earth is the principle that's here. Now in our current situation, whether it's a pandemic or not, Here's what we do know.

God does it work through the actions of our government, through the conclusions of the scientific community, and through the rebellions of man. The foolishness of man, the rebellion of man, the boasting of the civil magistrates are all under the authority of God. This is the doctrine of concurrence. That's why At the end of all the calamity that Joseph experienced, he said, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. You can say that about everything that happens in the world.

In Acts chapter 2, 23, Peter's explaining what is happening in this very passage in John 19. He says that Jesus being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, okay, You have taken by lawless hands and have crucified and put to death Jesus Christ. That doctrine of concurrence is communicated so clearly in Acts chapter 2 verse 23. It's also communicated again in Acts chapter 4 verses 27 and 28. The disciples were being persecuted by the Jews.

They were just let out of prison. They were praying a prayer with one accord, and they prayed a prayer acknowledging the concurrence of God. They acknowledge God's total authority. Here's how they said it in verse 27, chapter 4 of the Book of Acts. Of the book of Acts, for truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles, and all the people were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done.

They gathered to do their stuff and God determined it. So this is the doctrine of concurrence. You know, this is why it's so important that we understand what Isaiah said, do not fear man whose breath is in his nostrils, because God is superintending. Christ was delivered by the predetermined foreknowledge of God, yet you crucified him." There are many places that we could go. The bottom line is do not fear.

God is in control. Jesus is laying down his life for a sheep. It looks like the darkest moment. Reading through this this week, it was actually very crushing to think of what people were doing and saying to the one who healed the sick and raised the dead, the wisest man who ever lived. So defiled, so dishonorable, beyond imagination.

But Jesus' whole life was a crucifixion, so that your whole life would not end in final crucifixion and everlasting darkness. And you can always be assured that there's enough medicine in the sufferings of Jesus Christ to expose your sin and to console you of His mercy. And then Jesus is teaching Pilate about sin as well. Look at verse 11. This is a very helpful kind of stopping point on the whole doctrine of sin.

The doctrine of sin is called by theologians, homarteology, it comes from the Greek word for sin. Verse 11, Jesus says something to Pilate right in this moment after declaring his authority. He says, therefore the one who delivered me to you has the greater sin." What? Pilate is going to deliver him to be crucified and Jesus is saying it's the other guys that have a greater sin? Wait, are there greater sins?

Who are those people? What was Caiaphas? It was the religious, those who did the religious trials are the ones who have the greatest sin. That's exactly what he's saying. It is the greater, megas, megas sin in Greek.

All sins are not created equal. And the Bible teaches us in many places that there are greater and lesser sins and greater and lesser punishments. We have even actually in this town The pastors of one of the largest churches in our area Stood in front of his church one Sunday and said, you know, there's really no difference between homosexuality and dishonoring your father and mother And that was his entire point. All sins are the same. Well, they're not the same and Jesus here Really reflects that now I'll send you to do some kind of outside study.

The Westminster Larger Catechism, question 150 makes this very clear. And one, and also the question 151. And I'll just paraphrase the answer to 151. What are those aggravations that make some sins more heinous than others? That's the question.

I'll just paraphrase it. How long is a sin practiced? How much knowledge does a person have? What office do they hold and are other people affected by following their example? Is it damaging to weak brethren?

Is it against superiors? Is it against saints? Is it against moral laws? Is it against the worship of God? So you'll find in the Bible, it's very clear that there are greater and lesser sins.

And Jesus is telling Pilate that the Jews have a greater sin. And I'm just going to expect because they knew more of God and his law and they had it for a long time and they had the Lord of glory before them making his glory known in very very explicit ways for three years. So Jesus has spoken about this in other places. In Matthew chapter 23 verse 23, He says to the Pharisees, you've neglected the weightier matters of the law. In other words, there are weightier matters of the law, and there are lighter matters of the law.

He says you've neglected justice and mercy and faithfulness. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks of those who break even one of the least of these commandments in Matthew 5 19. In Numbers 15 30 there are offenses that are done with a high hand, those are more severe and those unintentional sins. Sexual offenses are listed as a gradient. Some are more heinous than others with more difficult punishments in Leviticus chapter 20.

Some forms of idolatry are more grave than others. When the children of Israel made the golden calf, Moses says, you have sinned a great sin. So some sins require greater punishments. You see this in the laws of restitution in Exodus 22 and Leviticus 24 and Leviticus 5. Some sins have different effects than others.

In 1st Corinthians 6, 18, sexual sins are against the body and they're more serious. We should never take any sin lightly, but and of course we have the Lord's Supper to continue to teach us not to take our sins lightly But to examine ourselves in the light of the cross of Jesus Christ But Jesus suffered for all of our sins the weighty and the less weighty and Then the Jews they're not done with Pilate or Jesus. And in verse 12, they try to manipulate Pilate. Again, they've been manipulating him all along and it's working. From then on Pilate sought to release him but the Jews cried out saying if you let this man go you're not Caesar's friend.

Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar. So Pilate has mounted another attempt to release Jesus and the Jews bring their most powerful and their most manipulative argument on Pilate's head. They know he's a superstitious man pleaser. They know he's in trouble with Caesar. He's already been rebuked for his treatment of things and they're hitting him where it hurts.

And so they say if you let this man go you're not Caesar's friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar. Now an accusation like this, getting back to Rome, would be pretty damaging to his reputation before the Roman authorities. And so Pilate is caught he's caught between Jesus and the Jews and Caesar. Now it's interesting I understand the term friend of Caesar became a formal title in Roman protocol.

You were either a friend of Caesar or not a friend of Caesar and you were categorized that way. This is going to come up again in verse 15. We'll get there in a minute. They say we have no king but Caesar. I'll elaborate on that a little bit more.

Jesus answers this. He says you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above." Again, Jesus is letting Pilate know that he controls all civil authorities. All civil authorities are under his control. They had no power over Jesus. Paul tells us in Romans 13 that the civil authorities are God's servants.

They are God's deacons. They do His will. Jesus' whole life was a willing crucifixion and he who has established the authority of Pilate and Caesar and the religious authorities is telling them you do not have any authority unless I give it to you. He is, Jesus Christ is endorsing his power over all authorities. He gives them their power.

He gives them their rulings. And then Pilate delivers Jesus to the judgment. He takes him to the pavement. In verse 13, When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out, sat down in the judgment seat in a place that's called the pavement, but in Hebrew, gabatha. And then John makes this comment, now it was the preparation day of the Passover and about the six hour.

They're supposed to be preparing for the Passover. They're supposed to be cooking their food and making all preparations so the Sabbath is a free day. He brings Jesus to the pavement. Archaeologists believe they've discovered this very pavement stone under the temple court. Interestingly enough, I read in one place where they believe this paint, the the one that they believe is the pavement, had markings, scrawlings of a Roman game, a little bit like tic-tac-toe on it.

This is Friday, it's preparation day, and it's Passover. John, I think, marks this out carefully, precisely, intentionally, that it was the time of Passover. Jesus is our Passover. Jesus is the Lamb without blemish who shed his blood, prefigured in the Passover in the book of Exodus. So there have been six trials and then a crucifixion and They've all fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies.

And they fulfilled the words of John the Baptist, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And John says it's the sixth hour, So what does that mean? It's 9 a.m. On Friday, Good Friday. The crucifixion is going to take place on the ninth hour at 3 p.m.

So over those six hours, from nine in the morning until 3 p.m., Jesus will be taken to his final crucifixion as the Lamb of God. Interestingly, the Jews engaged Jesus in six hours of slanderous trials, three Jewish trials, three civil trials, trials by the Jews, trials by the Gentiles. It's significant. Christ died for all sinners. He died for Jews, Gentiles, and everybody else in between.

And then finally Pilate capitulates in verses 14 and 15. He did what he didn't want to do, but he did it For his own purposes and he said to the Jews behold your king But they cried out away with him away with him crucify him Pilate said to them Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. Now, when the Jews said, we have no king but Caesar, they were lying. It was just a tool against Pilate.

They hated Caesar's rule. They were hypocrites to the core. They were never friends of Caesar. They were a constant thorn in the flesh of Caesar. And they were rebelling against Caesar often in their little kingdom.

And Pilate's overreacting to their protests and their rebellions against Caesar was what got pilot in trouble with Caesar more than once. So to manipulate pilot they act like they themselves are friends of Caesar, and they're not friends of Caesar, and they've never been friends of Caesar. They're just trying to pull strings, like they've been doing all along with Pilate, trying to find the way to get him to do what they want to do. And then Pilate's final choice between the Jews and Caesar and Jesus is catalogued in verse 16. Then he delivered him to them to be crucified.

Then they took Jesus and led him away. He made his decision. So Jesus was led away. Do you Notice the language? And they led him away.

The good shepherd who leads his flock is being led to his crucifixion. The irony is astounding all throughout this narrative. Jesus was often led away. He was led away into his temptation and now he's being led away to his crucifixion. They led him away, fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy in Isaiah 53, 7.

He was a lamb led to slaughter. And so what happened to Pilate? Historians say that not long after this pilot would be recalled from his post. On his way to Rome, Tiberius Caesar died and the charges were dropped, but he was banished and went to France and he committed suicide. He went into oblivion while the one he condemned went to glory.

He committed murder to try to protect himself, But as he found out, Caesar was no help, Rome was no help. You know, when you put your trust in ungodliness, there's no protection. The evil authorities will always spit you out. The world, the flesh, and the devil always turn on you. And so in craving the friendship with Caesar, he was discarded.

And in doing so, he lost not only his reputation, not only his habitation, but he lost his life. Now the world doesn't remember Pilate but the church remembers Pilate. Recorded in the Apostles Creed, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. Pilate goes down in history for who he really was. But the big question of this text, I think, is what will we do with Jesus Christ.

Both Pilate and the Jews rejected the Messiah. The hope of Israel was pushed aside. They rejected the King of Kings and the gift of Jesus was lost on them. Jesus came to lay down his life for his sheep. And so the warning is, do you receive Jesus as King?

Is he your King? Is he your Lord? The writer of Hebrew says how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? That's exactly what they did. Who is He?

Who is Jesus Christ to you? That's the big question. Jesus Christ the righteous died for the unrighteous. The just suffered for the unjust that he might bring us to God. Jesus suffers to revoke the sentence of death.

Revoke the sentence of death. Jesus suffers to overturn suffering and darkness and everlasting condemnation and hell itself. That's what the sufferings of Christ speak to. His suffering makes an end of suffering from sin, his death destroys death, his humiliation humbles men and brings them to his feet and his brokenness makes the brokenhearted sing. So what will you do with your sorrows from sin?

Everyone bears them. Jesus bore them in his own suffering. And so Jesus whole life was a crucifixion so that your whole life would not end in a damning crucifixion. And so be assured in all of these sufferings a whole life of suffering, a whole life of crucifixion. There's enough medicine in the sufferings of the man of sorrows to heal every wound.

His whole life was a crucifixion so that your life would not. Behold the man of sorrows acquainted with grief so that he might save his children for suffering. What a blessing. Lord we thank you for revealing to us these events that took place in history so that our future would be secured in heaven. Father, we recognize all the ways that we are so self-congratulatory, that we flatter ourselves, we distract ourselves.

But you have exposed all of our sins and revealed what we all deserve. And you've declared that you are the one who has laid down his life for his friends. Oh Lord make it so clear to us that we are your friends. Amen.