Their Voices Began To Prevail

So this morning, we're going to be studying Jesus' second trial, if we can call it a trial, where he stands before Pilate. In the end of our text, I want to sort of give you the punchline, and then we'll work back through the story of how we got there. In the end of our text, Pilate is under a bunch of pressure to condemn Jesus. This is the constant drumbeat of the text. The people want Jesus killed. Pilate doesn't want to kill him. But in the end, Pilate... It comes to the pressure, and he hands Jesus over to the crowd so that they can kill him. This morning, we're going to be focusing our time on the interactions between Pilate and the crowd, specifically how Pilate knew what was going on, but he didn't fulfill his responsibilities as governor. I want us to look at that and open that up a little bit, and then I want us to see why that happened. What was at work in Pilate? What was the pressure like that he was feeling? And the point of studying this is that you and I feel pressure.

to do wicked things, even things we know are wrong. And what I want by the end of this morning is for us to be resolved in our heart and in our minds to not do what Pilate did, which is in the end, go against what we know to be true and betray Jesus. Our passage this morning is Luke chapter 23, verses 13 through 25. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Pilate summoned the chief priests and the rulers and the people. And he said to them, You have brought this man to me as one who incites the people to rebellion. And behold, having examined him before you, I have found no guilt in this man regarding the charges which you make against him. No, nor has Herod, for he sent him back to us. And behold, nothing deserving death has been done by him. Therefore I will punish him and release him. Now he was obliged to release to them at the feast one prisoner.

But they cried out all together, saying, Away with this man and release for us Barabbas. He was one who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection made in the city and for murder. Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again. But they kept calling out, saying, Crucify, crucify him. And he said to them the third time, Why, what evil has this man done? I have found in him no good. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now last week, we studied Jesus' first trial before Pilate and then Herod. When Jesus stood before Pilate the first time, Pilate hears the testimony that the Pharisees have put together. That he's a fomentor of rebellion. That he's breeding sedition. He's trying to lead the Jews into a rebellion against the Romans. That he's been saying, don't pay taxes to the Romans. And that he set himself up as a king.

over and against Caesar. This is what they accused Jesus of before Pilate. And Pilate asks him, are these things true? And Jesus says, it is as you say. And then Pilate, when you would think, would say, off with your head, you're guilty. He says, I find no guilt in this man. Pilate hears the testimony and he determines, he can see that the things being said about Jesus are simply not true. And Pilate, realizing that the things are not true of Jesus, and yet also recognizing that the crowds are getting stirred up and that they want blood. When he finds out that Jesus is from Galilee, he finds himself an out. He says, oh, well, we're going to send him to Herod, who's the ruler over that area, over Galilee, and we're going to let Herod rule. And so he defers the judgment. He punts, if you will. He doesn't want to condemn Jesus, so he sends him off.

And so then you see Jesus standing before Herod. And Herod wants to, he's interested in Jesus and he just wants to see a miracle. He wants to see something cool, something amazing. I've been hearing about all this stuff. Do something interesting. And Jesus refuses. Jesus refuses even to answer him. And so Herod treats Jesus with contempt. He mocks him, dresses him in a fine purple robe, and then sends him back to Pilate. And if you were here last week, we realized that both Pilate and Herod knew that Jesus wasn't guilty. They knew that he hadn't done anything deserving death. So Pilate punts to Herod. Herod listens. He mistreats Jesus, but in the end doesn't condemn him and sends him back to Pilate. That's the point at which we pick up this morning. And we know from last week that Pilate doesn't want to rule in this case. He doesn't want to condemn Jesus because he knows that Jesus is innocent. In the end, he does give in to the pressure and he condemns Jesus after making a show of his personal innocence.

And so I want us to see from the very beginning that Pilate failed. Pilate failed. There's no way that we can construe what Pilate did as good or appropriate or something we ought to replicate. Now the temptation, what I hope is that as we open this up, you're going to see that the temptations that Pilate faced are common to us. Have we not all felt pressured to trim the edges of what we think ought to be done to appease someone? Of course we have. And this is what Pilate does. He acted against what he knew to be true, what he knew to be right, what he knew to be necessary. And so I want to spend some time talking about what it means to have the courage of your convictions. This is an old saying, the man ought to have the courage of his convictions. And what it means simply is that what we know to be true, these are your convictions, what you know to be true,

You ought to have the courage to act on it. And in our day, these two things have been removed from one another. In our day, we can believe or promote that something is true, but no one expects us to act on it. We're just supposed to believe it. And as long as we believe it, we've done our work. And I want you to know that that's a failure. In my work as a pastor, sometimes I run into a couple of different types of people. Sometimes you run into people that aren't interested in growing or learning. Now, they wouldn't say that, but you do run into them. You talk to them and they're kind of like, you know, if you've been in a classroom, you had classmates like that. They're there, but they're not really interested in learning. They're going to do the bare minimum. And there are also people...

who want to learn and learn and learn and learn and learn. They want knowledge. They read. They study. They're always learning, learning, learning. But I find sometimes with that group of people that there's a failure in it. And the failure is they don't ever do what they've learned. They just keep learning and learning and learning and practicing and growing and studying, but they never do what they ought to do. They just think that all the work is contained in learning this stuff and not doing this stuff. And what I want you to know is that We ought to do what we believe is true. We ought to act in accordance with it. We ought to speak in accordance with it. Pilate says at the beginning, You brought this man to me as one who incites the people to rebellion, and behold, I have examined him before you. I have found no guilt in this man regarding the charges that you make against him. No, nor has Herod, for he sent him back to us. Behold, nothing deserving death has been done by him.

And this is Pilate's declaration. This is him saying, this is what, I'm the ruler. He's the judge in this matter. He can exonerate, he can free, or he can condemn. And this is his judgment. And Herod agrees with him. Jesus has not done anything wrong. This is what he believes. But Pilate has a problem. And the problem is that the crowds don't care whether Jesus is innocent or not. The Pharisees don't care. And what I want you to see is that when the truth no longer matters, There's no way to execute justice anymore. There's no way to execute justice if truth is inconsequential. And so the truth ought to matter to us as Christians. What's true when we're faced with a difficult situation, as many of us have been, what am I supposed to do? You've got your heart inside of you going, well, if you do that, you're going to get in trouble. No one's going to like that. They're not going to talk to you. They're going to get angry.

And on the other hand, you're like, well, if I do this other thing, then maybe they'll like me or maybe there'll be peace or maybe they'll stop putting pressure on me. And your heart's doing all this stuff, all these cartwheels trying to avoid the conflict. And in the midst of all of that, we have to stop for a minute, call time out and say, okay, wait a minute. Before I start talking about what I'm going to do, I need to figure out what's true in this situation, what's actually going on. Because I can't determine what I ought to do until I know what is true.

And so Pilate, in this circumstance, he knows what's true. He knows Jesus is innocent. And so I ask you, what should Pilate have done? And we all can say, well, he should have freed Jesus. And I say, you're right. You're absolutely right. That's what he should have done. There's no other answer that's appropriate, right? There's not like more right and less right. This is the only answer that is correct. His responsibility was to free Jesus. He had the authority to condemn. He had the authority to free. He knew Jesus was innocent, and therefore his responsibility was to act in accordance with what he knew to be true. He could only free Jesus. But what Pilate does is he takes the truth and puts it up for grabs. He says, well, this is no longer my guiding principle. This is no longer what I will stick to. I've got other things I need to consider along with the truth, like this crowd that's getting more and more upset.

And so in the face of this pressure, Pilate does what any one of us would be tempted to do. What he wants to say is, well, he just folds. But he doesn't just fold, actually. What does Pilate do? What he does is he tries to free himself of his responsibility first. It's not recorded in our passage. He tries to make a distinction between himself personally and what's going on. In Matthew, it records that Pilate at some point, when he realizes he's not getting anywhere with the crowds and that a riot's starting, he takes water and he washes his hands, which is symbolic of him saying, I'm clean. I don't have this man's blood guilt on me. I'm not the one who's going to kill him. You want to kill him, not me. So I'm free of it. Now, can Pilate do that? Is that right? No.

Because what Pilate did, and this is a word you want to know, some of you have heard of it, is Pilate abdicated. He had a responsibility because he had been given authority and he abdicated. Now what does abdicate mean? It means he refused to exercise the authority that he was delegated. That's what it means to abdicate. When you're given responsibility or authority to do something and you refuse to do it, You cannot do it with impunity. You cannot say, I refuse to do my job and I will not be held accountable for my refusal. That's abdication. That's what Pilate's doing. There's no way in the world that that's right or appropriate. And isn't that what we all want to do when we feel a bunch of pressure is go, well, how can I save my own skin? How can I keep myself out of the fray? As I said, what Pilate should have done was declare Jesus innocent and then protect Jesus.

Against the crowds. Doing whatever was necessary to put down the rebellion, the actual rebellion. There's quite a bit of irony in this passage, if you read it. You've got Jesus being accused of being an insurrectionist. Leading the Jews away from and against the Romans. And yet, Jesus isn't the one starting a riot. And then later when they say, we want someone freed, who do they want freed? They want an insurrectionist. They want a man who started a rebellion and who's guilty of murder. And so put very simply, what Jesus needed to do was exercise, and I'm sorry, not Jesus, Jesus, Pilate. What Pilate needed to do was exercise the authority that had been delegated to him, even though it was a very difficult situation, hard personally. In the intervening time between Jesus standing before Pilate the first time and him standing before Pilate the second time, Pilate's wife has a dream.

And she sends a note to Pilate in the middle of this because she sees what's going on. She sees the pressure that he's in. And she sends him a note and says, I've been tormented all night because of him. You need to have nothing to do with that righteous man. And she's saying to him, don't be a part. Don't you be a part of it. And his response is to wash his hands, to say, no, that's not me. I'm not going to do it. And so Pilate abdicated his responsibility. And I want you to see that abdication is always, always aimed at self-preservation. That's always why people do it. They have responsibility and they can't handle the weight of it. They don't want to bear it. They don't know how to bear it. And so they decide, I won't. I'll save myself. I will deliver myself from the responsibilities that I have by abdicating. Is that not what a man does when he divorces his wife and leaves his family?

He's doing it to deliver himself from his responsibility and his work. He's going to save himself. And this is what Pilate is doing. Abdication is always about saving yourself, delivering yourself, protecting yourself, which is contrary to the essence of leadership. A leader's job is not to protect their influence. A leader's job is not to keep themselves safe. A leader's job is not to maintain a good reputation. A leader's job is to care for and to protect and provide for those under his care. And that's what Jesus was at this point to Pilate. He was his prisoner. He was submitted to Pilate's judgment. And Pilate had a responsibility to exercise justice on behalf of Jesus. So Pilate should have exercised the courage of his convictions, and he should have acted justly. Let me put it to you in a little bit of a different way.

Can we say that we believe in something that we are unwilling to act on? Can we call it a conviction? I don't think we can rightly call it a conviction if there's never a place in our minds where we might actually do something with what we say we believe. Pilate's responsibility was very clear in this case. And he failed. He abdicated. Now, what I'd like to do is go into... the specifics of Pilate's betrayal. I've talked generally now about what abdication is, what the category of his failure was. Now I want to go into what the specifics were and what it actually looked like. Because he didn't just roll over immediately. Our whole text is this back and forth between he and the crowds. And what his abdication looked like was that he negotiated, he tried to negotiate his authority.

He tried to reason with those that were under his authority, the Jews, and he lost. So we've seen what Pilate should have done. He should have protected Jesus. What did he do instead? Well, like I said, he didn't immediately hand Jesus over. He didn't declare Jesus innocent and bring an end to the situation. Instead, he started to reason and negotiate. Now, his first pass at this was when he brought up Jesus' innocence. And he called on Herod's judgment as well. Nine out of ten dentists say, okay, this is an appeal to authority. And what is the purpose of that sort of a statement? It's to get you to recognize the authority and to submit yourself to it, right? Four out of five pediatricians agree. And you're like, oh, well, I mean, if the people who've studied this all agree about it, well, then I suppose I ought to submit myself to it and go along. That's the type of argument that he's making. I've examined him.

I found him innocent. Herod did too. You guys ought to be content with that. You ought to stop with your pressure. Because we did our job. We didn't find him having done anything worthy of death. We did what you asked. Now honor our decision. Well, the crowd doesn't. They simply say no. They double down. Now when reasoning didn't work, appealing to his authority didn't work, And you have to realize there's a difference between appealing to authority and exercising authority. They're not the same thing. So when reasoning didn't work, appealing to his authority didn't work, Pilate tried to negotiate with him. And this is where the issue of Barabbas comes in here, this prisoner. And Luke doesn't record all of the details of what's gone on here, but this is a negotiation. They've gotten together, it's the Passover, and they have a custom that the Romans will release one of the prisoners back to the Jews.

It's our habit each year at the Passover. And so Pilate offers to punish Jesus and then to release him. This is a negotiation. I've declared that he's innocent. I've found him innocent, but what I'll do is I'll punish him. And anyone with half a brain would say, for what? What is it you're going to punish him for? What did he do? I'll punish him, but then I'll release him. This is a negotiation going back and forth. He's calling on this habit or this custom that they have. And he's saying, maybe we can fit Jesus into this. I'll punish him and you'll get some of what you want. But then I'll release him and I'll get some of what I want. Because I don't want to condemn him to death. But they cried out all together, saying, away with this man and release for us Barabbas. And so the Jews wanted Barabbas freed and Jesus condemned. They reject his negotiation. They say, No. A little bit of intransigence here if you were here a couple of weeks ago, right? Unwilling to bend. They're going to get what they want. Not going to be satisfied or pacified with anything less. So Pilate's losing. He's trying to exercise his authority without having to actually draw a line in the sand and say, no, we aren't going to do it. So then Luke writes, Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again.

But they kept calling out saying, crucify, crucify him. And he said to them a third time, why, what evil has he done? I found in him no guilt demanding death. Therefore, I will punish and release him. And he's like, he's at this point, he's pretty much begging. He sold away all of his authority. He has absolutely refused to do his job. And yet he expects that his subjects are going to be obedient, that they're going to do what he wants them to do. Without him ever actually exercising his authority. They just wear it on him and wear it on him and wear it on him. And instead of him saying no, he makes them on equal terms and says, well, let's talk about it. And then the text tells us that their voices began to prevail. Pilate's losing the negotiation. Pilate's authority is diminishing and diminishing and diminishing. And it's at this point that Pilate washes his hands of the situation and he declares himself innocent.

In Matthew 27, he says, I'm innocent of this man's blood. See to that yourselves. Now, see to that yourselves has been said recently in the gospel. Do you know when the last time it was said? Exact same construction. It's what the Pharisees said to Judas when he went to return the money. He said, he comes in and he's felt remorse and he wants to give the money back. I've betrayed innocent blood, is what Judas says. And they say, what can we have to do with that? He throws the money on the floor to try to repay it, to try to make it right. And they say to him, the resolution to your remorse, see to that yourself. And you have to understand, they're telling him. They know well and good what he's going to go do. And they tell him, go do it, even though they know it's sinful. And what should they have said to him? I mean, if there was a shred of, what, moral goodness?

care for their fellow man, and they knew what he was going to go do, what should they have said to him? Don't do that. But they say to him, see to that yourselves. And so this see to that yourselves is like, it's an authority saying, we know what you're doing is wicked, and we won't be party to it, but go ahead and do it. So Judas goes and kills himself. The Jews come and kill Jesus. See to that yourselves. I'll have nothing to do with The responsibility of what's about to happen. Not my job. And so the longer Pilate reasoned with them, the more entrenched they became. Another way of saying it is the more that he abdicated, the harder they pressed him. He kept thinking that he would get out of this situation by giving up more and more of his authority. That if he'd just bend a little more, just make the deal a little sweeter, he'd get what he wanted, he'd get the relief. But it didn't work. Finally, Pilate's pronounced sentence.

that their demand be granted. And he released the man that they were asking for, who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder. But he delivered Jesus to their will. Now you realize he did two things here, not just one. He gave up with regard to Jesus. He gave up the fight entirely. He could have said, no, I'm not going to give you Barabbas. He could have said, I'll give you Barabbas, but not Jesus. You realize he could have continued the fight. He still at this late date could have exercised some authority. fulfilled some part of his responsibility, but he didn't. He gave in to all of their demands. Give us the wicked man set free and kill the innocent man. And he did both of them. Now, some of us, you look at this and you say, how could he do such a thing? And some of us look at it and go, why do I do things like that all the time? Simply put, Pilate didn't exercise the authority that was given to him. He just chose not to. He was afraid. He wanted peace.

And to the extent that you're a leader, wherever you're a leader, if you give away your authority, you will never have peace. You will never have peace. It's a lie from hell. Somebody's going to exercise authority. Somebody's going to call the shots. Somebody's going to make decisions. And someone's going to see to it that what they say comes to pass. Whether that's in your workplace or that's in your home with your kids or that's in your marriage or that's wherever, somebody's going to get their way. And so it makes sense then that if someone is going to get their way, that person ought to be the responsible party, the one who's going to have to give an account for how things went. Does that make sense to you? Think in your workplace for a minute. Who ought to get their way, the boss or the employee? The boss.

The boss ought to get his way because his name's on the shirt. He ought to be the one to get to make the decisions. And when employees decide, nuh-uh, I should get to make the decisions because I know better than you, the boss has a choice. And a wise boss will say, no, this is my responsibility. And if it goes poorly, I'll be the one who has to deal with the fallout. And so if it goes poorly, I want it to go poorly based on my decision, not yours. Some of you know that I don't like riding in cars with people. I really don't like when other people drive. And my reasoning is very simple, and it's just like this. If we're going to die in a car accident, I want it to be my fault, not yours. I don't want to be sitting there in the passenger seat while you do something foolish behind the wheel, and I can't do anything about it. So I always prefer to drive. I want to be the responsible party in the car.

And if you've had me sit in your passenger seat, I've probably driven you nuts. Certainly that's the case for Vanessa. And so I want you to understand this principle. The one who is responsible ought to be the one, or by responsible, I mean the one who's going to have to give an account for how things turn out. They ought to be the one to make the decision. And what you'll find is they don't want to, any more than Pilate did, that you don't want to. You don't want to say no, and it's not going to be that way. Think of it this way. This is all very well and good and it's all theoretical. Let's just take the home as an example. Who's the boss in the house? Dad is. Who's the boss in the house when dad's gone? Do the kids think that's the case? Do your kids think that's the case? He needs to be trained. They don't come out of the womb that way. Right. Yeah, our kids all have this idea that they get to call the shots. Right? They're the crowds.

And here's the thing. I don't mean to discourage any of you mothers, but here's the truth. If you negotiate with your kids, you will never have peace with them, and they will never do what you say. You simply have to tell them what to do. And when they don't do it, they have to face consequences for it. That's it. That's it. And no one's going to feel sorry for you that it's hard. Not because it's not hard. It is really hard. And you have my sympathy. There are days I stay home. And I see what Vanessa does on a daily basis, hour by hour with the kids, and it's a ton. And I understand why she wants to pull her hair out and just be like, can I just go to a quiet place for a little while, just where there aren't mouths and hands and fingerprints and dirt? And I understand it. But what good is using my house as an example? What good would I do to Vanessa if I said, you poor thing, it's so hard. You shouldn't have to expect the kids to obey.

All I'm doing is taking the rebellion that exists in all of my kids and just saying, we're just going to seal that in with 10 coats of polyurethane. We just want that to be a normal part of our life. We just want the kids to be a grump and to be disobedient. I don't want that. Vanessa doesn't want that. None of you want that of your own kids. So in that example, mom has to exercise the authority. And she can't feel bad about it. And she can't succumb to the pressure like Pilot did. Because if she does, all hell's going to break loose in the house.

You know, when Pilate says, he started to see that he was accomplishing nothing, and he washes his hands of it. Do you mothers ever want to wash your hands of the problems? Okay. How about you husbands? Same scenario. You come home. Kids are crawling up the walls. Wife's frazzled. You want to wash your hands of it? Want to. Huh? Oh, yeah, it's a temptation. It's a constant temptation. And so when we look at Pilate and we look at what he did, I don't want us to have sympathy for him in a way that says, well, we understand and there's really no other option. There actually is a right thing to do. He doesn't do it. But I do want us to actually understand the temptation that he faces and realize we face it every single day to not do what is required of us because we don't want the pressure. We don't want the conflict. We don't want to say no. If Pilate says no, he's going to have a riot on his hands. People are going to get killed.

That's how serious it is with what's going on right now. It's not, well, if you would please reconsider killing him, we'd appreciate it. It's not like that. I want to make it clear to you that wherever you're an authority, wherever authority has been delegated to you, you can't refuse to exercise it. And you also have to realize that the people that you exercise authority over aren't always going to like it. The crowd would not have appreciated pilots drawing a line in the sand and saying, No way. Not going to happen. They would have rioted. And so we can't say, oh, well, but it's going to cause more problems if I say no. I say, okay, so let me put it to you this way. Which is a bigger problem? The riot or Jesus being killed? Oh, well, when you put it that way, I think the riot wasn't as big of a deal as Jesus being killed unjustly.

And I say, okay, so take that principle and apply it to your own life. And don't carve out room for you to stand and say, well, in my situation, negotiation is the way to go. You'll create bigger problems. Now, if you're like me and you're listening to me talk, you're going, but you're like, when are you ever going to qualify the authority? When are you ever going to tell them that they can't really actually exercise their authority? They can't really actually tell people no because they'll abuse it. And what I want to say to you is they'll stand before God. and give an account for their abuse. They won't get away with it. And to the extent that you have authority delegated to you by God, you need to bear in mind that you're going to stand before God and give an account of it. Pilate stood before God when he died and gave an account for killing his son, when he could have saved him. And he stood before God and gave an account of his wicked dealings. And so will every other authority.

And so when you look for vindication and you look for protection and you look for safety, you have to take some comfort in the fact that God will vindicate and will deliver and will make right what is wrong. And you say, well, but what about in this life? What if that doesn't happen until then? And I say, do you think that your way is better than God's way? Because that's really what's going on here. Do you think it's better that someone who hasn't been delegated authority be the one that exercises it? I remember hearing a story one time about deacons in Africa. Some friends were on a missions trip over there a long, long time ago. And the deacons of the church were dealing with a man who habitually beat his wife. And what were they supposed to do about it? What should their counsel be? Well, what they did was they went over to the man's house and they told him, if you ever touch your wife again, we're going to beat the tar out of you. This is what the church did.

They went over and said, you will not do this anymore, ever. And you know what happened? Does anyone want to guess what happened? He didn't do it again. So what did those deacons do? They exercised their authority. They looked after the needs of the people in their church. They cared for that woman. You think, well, they can't do that. They should have had counseling. And I say, they did. They had one session, and it was fixed. Exercising authority is always dangerous. There's always the chance that it'll be abused, and that is no reason to rebel against the authorities that God has set up. Not if you're one who's under that authority, not if you're one who's supposed to exercise it. There is no excuse where you say, well, in this situation, I ought not to do that. It's always gnarly. It's often nasty. It regularly gets worse before it gets better.

So don't believe Satan's lie that abdication is the way to go. That being well-liked and well-respected and smooth-tongued and never having conflict where you actually have to say no is faithfulness because it's not. Exercising authority is nasty hard work. It's glorious work when you see God use it. How thankful was that wife that somebody stepped in and put a line in the sand and said no. So that's the first application. Abdication will never lead you to peace. It's not faithful. The second application is more of an encouragement or an instruction. Get the work done quickly. When you've got nasty work, get it done quickly. Part of the reason that the crowds got to the point of a riot is because Pilate didn't the first time say, he's innocent. He let the opportunity go by. The Pharisees were talking. They were pressure. They were yelling. They're crucifying. Kill him. He's terrible.

And Pilate should have nipped it in the bud and said, no, he's not. You're done. We're done. And if you touch him, it'll be your head. And he wouldn't have had a riot. But because he waited and he waited and he waited, he ended up with a riot. So do the nasty work first. Don't be nasty about it, but do the hard work first. Say no, no way, no how, uh-uh. Now that we've got that clear, That boundary is set. Now we can move on. Now we can work through the rest of the situation so long as you understand what the decision is. This is Pilate's failure. He didn't do that. I don't want that to be your failure. You're going to face opportunity to do it later today and tomorrow. And I don't want you to do what Pilate did. I want you to be gracious and I want you to be tender and I want you to be kind and gentle with those who are under your care as those who are going to give an account for the way that you care for them.

But I want you to do your job. Do your job. Trust God and lead if that's what he's given to you to do. Let's pray.