The Final Verdict

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My wife has been telling me for quite some time that she wants a storm door on the house. And being the romantic that I am, I finally agreed and gave her what she wanted. But I’ve installed one myself before, and with the wind here, it’s a bad idea.

So I did something I never do and said, let’s pay somebody to have it done. And I’m not going to name the store because it’s a store I like, but this has just been a nightmare trying to get this done. and it’s taken multiple trips to it multiple phone calls okay I hate using the phone taken multiple trips to the store where the lady on the phone has said well the easiest thing would be to just go on into your your local store and talk to them about it okay spoken like someone who doesn’t live 20 minutes outside of town okay that’s easy um but I’ve had to make multiple phone calls because they’ve called me and when I call them back oh no we’re not in charge of that.

Well, then why did you call me? Oh, we’re not in charge of that. Go into the store.

Okay, fine. So go to the store and go to the desk where they handle such things as storm doors. And they say, oh, no, we’re not in charge of that.

You’ve got to go to customer service. Okay. I’m glad I brought the Holy Spirit with me today.

So I go to customer service. Had a lady tell me, we don’t do that. You need to talk to somebody in the back.

And I snapped for me and said, the people in the back told me to come talk to you. So get one of the people from the back up here and we can all just talk to each other and sort this out. And I thought we got it sorted out.

They sent somebody out to the house. Oh, we’re not in charge of this part. You need to go.

They’ll call you. So they call and say, well, you need to pay. We’ve already paid.

So I call again and they send me to the store in town again. Oh, you’ve already paid. I am.

It’s taken every drop of sanctification I have, not to lose it on these people. And finally, Friday, I’m asking, is anybody in charge here? Is anybody in charge of hanging my storm door?

Did we get scammed and pay somebody that doesn’t even work here? What happened? But I hate situations like that where it’s just chaos, and you’re saying, who is in charge?

Who calls the shots? Do you ever have situations like that in life where you feel like, is anybody in charge here? Is anybody doing anything?

I watch the news and look at the direction of our communities. I look at the direction of our country. And sometimes I wonder, is anybody actually in charge here?

We feel that way all the time. Is anybody actually in charge? Now, the good news is somebody is actually in charge, even when it looks like they’re not.

And this morning, I want us to, as we continue our study of the book of Mark, I want us to look at a time where the people who were supposed to be in charge, the people that everybody thought were in charge, really weren’t. As we go into the trial of Jesus, the final trial of Jesus, the moment where they’re about to pass sentence on Jesus, by all outward appearances, it looks like the Sanhedrin is in charge, Pilate is in charge, everybody’s in charge. As we read the story though, we discover that none of them are actually in charge.

So I’m going to ask you to turn with me to Mark chapter 15. We have finally made it to chapter 15 after all this time. So we are nearly done with the book of Mark.

And if you want to know what are we doing next, not something as long as the book of Mark. We’ll do something shorter before we start something longer again. Mark chapter 15.

If you don’t have your Bibles or can’t find Mark 15, it’ll be on the screen for you here. But once you find it, if you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. Mark chapter 15.

we’re going to look at the first 15 verses this morning. And really there are two trials, two different hearings that are melded into one in Mark’s story, and there’s one that happens in the middle here that’s recorded in Luke. So really there are three different hearings that take place in the midst of these 15 verses.

And if you picked up one of the grids at one of the doors on your way in, they show you how those details in the Gospels line up. If we’re out and you didn’t get one, let me know and I can get you one after the service. But Mark 15, starting in verse 1, it says, Immediately in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and they bound Jesus, led him away, and delivered him to Pilate.

Then Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? He answered and said to him, It is as you say. And the chief priests accused him of many things, but he answered nothing.

Then Pilate asked him again, saying, Do you answer nothing? See how many things they testify against you. But Jesus still answered nothing, so that Pilate marveled.

Now at the feast he was accustomed to releasing one prisoner to them, whomever they requested. And there was one named Barabbas who was chained with his fellow rebels. They had committed murder in the rebellion.

Then the multitude, crying aloud, began to ask him to do just as he always had done for them. But Pilate answered them, saying, Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? For he knew that the chief priests had handed him over because of envy.

But the chief priests stirred up the crowd so that he should rather release Barabbas to them. Pilate answered and said to them again, What do you want me to do with him whom you call the king of the Jews? So they cried out again, Crucify him.

When Pilate said to them, Why? What evil has he done? Or then Pilate said to them, Why?

What evil has he done? But they cried out all the more, Crucify him. So Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them, and he delivered Jesus after he had scourged him to be crucified.

And you may be seated. So I want us to look through this story and see what’s happening here. Because this is the moment where, to those who hate Jesus, it feels like the moment of maximum power.

They’ve finally got Jesus where they want him. They’ve finally got him in this seemingly powerless position where they’re in control and he’s about to die, and they think they’ve won. But as we look through this, we see how utterly powerless they are through this whole ordeal. And it starts when the Sanhedrin holds an additional hearing in the morning, because the hearings that we’ve looked at already that the Sanhedrin has done were done at night.

And there were more than 20 places during those trials where they violated their own laws. It was an illegal trial. Everything about it was illegal. None of the evidence was admissible. They broke their own rules of procedure.

Everything they did was wrong, including trying him at night. They couldn’t do that. And yet they were so caught up in their hatred for Jesus that they decided they were just going to push ahead and do it anyway.

And then somebody seems to have come to his senses in the midst of this and says, you know, we can’t take him out in public before Pilate and before the crowd and say we’ve condemned him when the crowd’s going to wonder, wait, when did this take place? They’re going to know we did this at night. So they had to get together in the morning and redo it.

Seems to have been a much shorter hearing, but one where they got together and questioned him again and said, oh, he’s a blasphemer. There, you’ve got it. It was sort of a rubber stamp.

Let’s put a veneer of legitimacy on what we’ve done. And then we’re going to take him, we’re going to bind him. They bound him up like a common criminal and they took him to see Pilate.

It does not take Pilate long to see through these charges. Now, I think we need to have a little bit of a nuanced view of Pilate. Now, I’m not defending Pilate here, but we tend to see Pilate as just the devil, right?

And like with so many other historical figures, there’s good and there’s bad, right? I give you that example all the time on Wednesday nights. Benjamin will ask me as we listen to history podcasts, were they good or bad?

Was Andrew Jackson a good president or a bad president? And I say, yes. Was Pilate good or was Pilate bad?

Yes. Pilate, to his credit, seems to see through the charges. Pilate, to his credit, seems to want nothing to do with this.

Now, Pilate, to his shame, does what he knows to be wrong anyway. So we can’t give Pilate too much credit. But it doesn’t take Pilate very long to see through the phoniness of these charges.

You look at verses 1 and 2, they brought him to Pilate. Pilate asked him, are you the king of the Jews? And it says, he answered and said to him, it is as you say.

Now Mark is the shortest of the Gospels. Mark was very likely the earliest of the Gospels that was written. It’s a summary of what happened.

And then Mark and Luke go in and fill in some more details that, I’m sorry, Matthew and Luke fill in some details that Mark moved past very quickly. And then John says, wait, there are some stories that need to be told that weren’t told. Let me fill in those gaps.

So Mark skips over a big part of the conversation here that some of the other Gospels record where there’s this moment between Jesus and Pilate where Pilate says, why are you here? They’ve brought you in. They’ve accused you of being the king of the Jews.

Are you the king of the Jews? Because this could mean a couple of different things. If he means the king of the Jews in a political sense, if Jesus thinks he’s that, then that becomes a problem for Rome real fast. If he’s just talking Messiah, spiritual leader, that kind of thing, Pilate could not care less.

Pilate doesn’t want to deal with that. That’s an internal matter for the Jews to fight about. He doesn’t care.

Wants to be out of that quickly. So he pulls Jesus aside and says, are you the king of the Jews? And they talk back and forth, and finally Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world.

And Pilate says, so you are a king then. But he already recognizes Jesus is talking about the spiritual side of things. So he’s rapidly losing interest. And that’s where Jesus says, it is as you say.

And there’s this point where Pilate says, Jesus says, I am the truth. Anyone who hears the truth hears me. And Pilate says, what is truth?

And it’s as though Pilate’s coming to the end of this conversation and saying, okay, I don’t care about this. This is not something I need to wade into. It’s like when my kids come to me and he looked at me, well, she looked at me first. And I look at both of them and say, I don’t care.

I love you, but I don’t care. Take out the I love you part. that’s Pilate’s attitude here.

I don’t care about any of this. He even asks Jesus, why have they brought you to me? You must have done something wrong that they brought you to me.

And that’s Pilate saying, I know that these charges are not the real reason for what’s going on here, so why don’t you tell me why you’re here? Why have they brought you here? Pilate very quickly realizes that these charges of sedition, which by the way, if you notice, do you remember what they condemned him for in the two trials in the Sanhedrin?

Blasphemy. They condemned him for blasphemy, which by the way, his admission in front of the Sanhedrin did not even meet their legal definition of blasphemy. But they condemned him for blasphemy.

They bring him to the Romans and watch the charge. Oh, he’s leading people in an insurrection against Caesar. Wait a minute, I thought this was a blasphemy charge, but they knew the Romans wouldn’t care about that, and so they bring him with the king issue.

He says he’s the king of the Jews. That’s not even what they condemned him for. At this point, the Sanhedrin that seems to be calling the shots is just flailing wildly, trying to throw anything at the wall that they can to try to see what sticks.

They’re just throwing out accusations to see. They’re screaming blindly, trying to make something up that they can use about Jesus. Pilate recognizes this whole thing is phony.

And when he comes out from this time of questioning that I think it’s John that records in detail. Pilate comes out and says, I find no capital crime here. There’s nothing here.

Nothing here that I need to get involved with anyway. He tells the Sanhedrin at one point, go take him and judge him according to your law. This has nothing to do with me.

So when he does that, when he says this man is innocent of anything I can charge him with, this man has committed no capital crime, then it says in verse 3, and the chief priests accused him of many things, but he answered nothing. The other gospels corroborate this and say they just began shouting and screaming accusations. Again, I compare this to my children in the whole, he said, she said, and we’re dealing with one issue.

Did you hit your sister? Well, she blah, blah, blah. Okay.

It sounds like it was an accident. Well, he said this and he said that and he did that. And it just becomes a screaming of any accusation at that point that’ll get them in trouble.

And they all do it except the one who can’t talk yet. And she’ll get there. I’m sure I did it as a kid.

That’s what they’re doing. They’re screaming out these accusations. Anything that they can make stick, anything that they can use against Jesus, anything that is going to get the Romans’ attention and make them say, oh, now let’s kill him.

Pilate can’t keep a lid on this. Pilate, the man who’s supposed to be in charge of all this, he’s trying desperately to keep a lid on the chaos and he’s failing. The Sanhedrin is trying to bend Pilate to their will and they are failing at this point.

Everyone is in chaos except one person. Who’s calm in the midst of this chaos? Jesus.

The chief priest, verse 3, accused him of many things, but he answered nothing. Then Pilate asked him again, saying, do you answer nothing? See how many things they testify against you?

Pilate can’t believe that somebody would be this composed and this calm with the things they’re screaming about him down there. And Pilate says, you’re not going to defend yourself? You’re not going to say anything?

And Jesus still says nothing to that. And it says Pilate marveled. I think sometimes with that word marveled, we get a supernatural idea of it must mean this, it must mean that.

Pilate recognized something about Jesus. I’m not sure that’s the case. I think Pilate is amazed that somebody had that much composure to stand there calm and in control of himself with all of that going on.

So Pilate recognizes that this is a bad situation. He doesn’t want to be a part of it. It’s quickly spiraling out of control, but he doesn’t step up and try to do the right thing.

Instead, he tries to scheme and compromise his way out of the situation. He’s a politician. Let me just find an exit here.

As a matter of fact, in between verses 5 and 6, I think is where the account goes from Luke chapter 23 where he sends Jesus to be tried before Herod. He hears in the midst of all this that Jesus is actually from Galilee. Herod is the Roman ruler of Galilee and just happens to be in town for the Passover.

He says, I could let Herod deal with this. He’s one of Herod’s subjects. So he sends Jesus off to Herod.

Same thing happens there. They begin to accuse Jesus in front of Herod. Jesus refuses to say anything.

Herod was all excited because he wanted a show. He’d heard about this miracle worker. He’d always wanted to meet Jesus, and he wanted Jesus to perform like a circus act.

And Jesus refused to do magic tricks. Jesus refused even to answer his questions. And so Jesus then is sent back to Pilate, who now is in a panic.

And we see over the next few verses, there’s this discussion, this back and forth about maybe I can release him for the Passover. I think Pilate recognized, hey, don’t I normally release somebody for the Passover? I can do that.

And then in Mark, we see where they begin asking him, yes, do that. Release somebody. Release somebody like you always do.

Because I think Pilate assumes it’s going to be Jesus. He recognizes that Jesus has been falsely accused by the Sanhedrin, at least of any kind of capital crime. He thinks maybe cooler heads will prevail.

That always happens, doesn’t it, by the way? Cooler heads always prevail. People always look at the legal process with calm, cool heads, right?

No, they don’t. That’s why people are always arguing and fussing and fighting over stuff they see on court TV when they weren’t there to hear all the evidence, trial by media, that sort of thing. There wasn’t media there necessarily, but cooler heads did not prevail.

Pilate thought they were going to, okay, the crowd will call for me to release Jesus, it’ll be fine. But the members of the Sanhedrin were out amongst the crowd. They had a lot of respect of the people, and they began convincing the people to call for Barabbas to be released.

Now, one of the Gospels says that Barabbas was a thief. One of them says that he committed murder during an insurrection against Rome, or he killed somebody in this insurrection. And I’ve heard skeptics say, well, there’s a contradiction.

No, you can be both, right? You can steal stuff and kill people. They’re not mutually exclusive.

No murderer ever said, no, I’ll kill you, but I’m not going to take your stuff. I mean, there’s a moral principle here, right? He can be both.

As a matter of fact, the word that’s translated thief may just mean criminal in general. And I don’t know that they always executed or crucified thieves. And it could be, this is just speculation, but it could be that the two men on the cross on either side of Jesus, they might have been part of this insurrection with Barabbas. To the point where I saw one commentator this week suggest that Barabbas was the man originally meant for that middle cross.

I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know that it makes a difference, but it’s interesting to think about. But Pilate thinks he can get Jesus released and the crowd is not having it.

The Sanhedrin has convinced them that Jesus is terrible. And so Pilate says, okay, fine, I have to release Barabbas. What do you want me to do with Jesus?

I don’t know if maybe he’s thinking we can release two this year and not one next year. I don’t know. He’s desperately looking.

As you read through the other Gospels in concert with this one, he’s desperately looking for some way out here. To the point that he even says, you know, he’s innocent, but if it makes you happy, I’ll make sure he’s beaten anyway, and then release him. What kind of monster?

What kind of monster does that? I know he’s innocent, but let’s punish him anyway. So I don’t want to give you the impression that I think Pilate’s a good guy.

Pilate is a coward. Pilate is a deeply unrighteous man. But he thinks, I can scheme my way.

instead of just doing the right thing and standing up to the crowds and saying, this man is innocent, I’m releasing him, and if you don’t like it, talk to Caesar’s legions. Could have done that. Would have been a little bit of unrest, but the Romans had shown they could handle that.

But Pilate’s trying to save his own skin, because he might lose his job if there’s too big of an uprising. So he says, maybe I can scheme my way out of it. Maybe I can compromise with the crowd.

Maybe I can do the wrong thing just enough that this all works out for everybody. The crowd is still not having it. They shout, crucify him.

And then at that point, Pilate is not only content to beat an innocent man, but he agrees to crucify an innocent man. When it comes to the point where the crowds begin to accuse him of disloyalty to Caesar. And at that point, Pilate says, you know, they’re beginning to hint at the same charge about me that they’ve been making about him.

So let’s just put a stop to this right now. And somebody’s life is a small price to pay for me to be protected, is Pilate’s view. And so even though it’s almost reluctantly, we see in verse 15, he goes ahead and condemns Jesus to die.

He knows it’s wrong. He knows Jesus is innocent. If he had his ideal scenario, he probably wouldn’t do it.

But Pilate takes the wrong, easy, cowardly way out and says, okay, crucify him. And has Jesus beaten again? He says, I’ve studied these together, the way the gospels fit together.

I believe there were two different beatings that took place. And he sends Jesus out to be beaten and to be crucified. The man who was supposed to be in charge, let others tell him what to do.

Let others lead him around by the nose. The man who was supposed to be there to dispense justice in Judea, committed one of the greatest acts of injustice that’s ever been perpetrated. The Sanhedrin, which was supposed to defend the Jewish law, which was supposed to use its power to teach the people of Israel, to lead the people of Israel to do the right thing according to God’s law, broke every law they had to to get what they wanted.

Everyone here that is supposed to do a job, that is supposed to be in charge, that is supposed to stand up for right, we see in this story, they’re just flailing around in the dark, trying to figure out some way to get what they want, and failing. And in the midst of this, we see one person, we see one figure standing there alone, calm, still, and quiet, unless he decides to answer because it’s going to suit his purpose. From an outward perspective, it looks like Pilate and the Sanhedrin are in the driver’s seat.

It looks like they are calling the shots, but they’re just a mess. Ultimately, it’s Jesus that is in control, not only of himself, but of the situation. These authorities, Mark makes it clear, these authorities are not in control.

The members of the Sanhedrin are behaving erratically. They’re starting to riot. When somebody acts that way, they’ve lost the argument.

I’ve seen videos recently of people standing at city council meetings and just screaming. I’m going to use the next two minutes of my time to scream. Yet you’ve run out of arguments.

You’re out of control. The Sanhedrin was acting that way. They were out of control.

Pilate is repeatedly thwarted in all of his attempts just to stay out of the matter. Who’s in control here? It’s not either of them.

It’s Jesus. Despite all appearances, Jesus is the one in control because this is what he had come to do. And even when his closest followers did everything they could to try to make it stop, Peter went and tried to hack a guy’s ear off and just missed because he ducked and he tried to hack a man’s head off and got his ear because he ducked.

Jesus’ own followers had tried to stop this from happening, but Jesus had been saying for weeks. He’d been hinting at it for years, but he’d been saying outwardly for quite some time, I’m going to Jerusalem. Hey, disciples, I’ve been telling you this for years and you’re still not getting it, so let me be very clear.

I’m going to Jerusalem to get myself killed and then rise again. And every time they said, I don’t think this is a good idea, Jesus was determined that, okay, you cannot think it’s a good idea. We’re still going.

This is what he had come here for. This was his plan. And even as they’re acting out what they think they want, even as they’re scheming, even as they’re screaming, trying to get what they want, all they’re doing is playing into the plan that Jesus had put in place.

Because our salvation, our salvation depended on him going to that cross. If Jesus had just come to earth and lived a good, sinless life and had just taught us how to be good, moral people, then we would be good, moral people destined to spend eternity separated from God in hell. Because just being good and doing moral things outwardly, it doesn’t change the sin that is in our hearts.

It does not erase the sin that is in our hearts, which is what separates us from God. And because we have a holy God, a righteous God, sin has to be paid for. Sin has to be punished.

And the only sacrifice that could pay for all of our sin was for the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, to come and be nailed to that cross and to shed His blood and to die. And when He did that, He paid for our sins in full. This was His plan.

This was not an accident of history. This was His plan. And no matter how much they thought they were in control, He was really in control, using them as the pawns on the chessboard, working out his plan so that he could suffer so that we could be saved.

Because this was the only way. The only way for our salvation was for him to go to the cross. And it’s a shame that there are so many people in our world who think that Christianity is just a list of rules.

It’s just a message about do better and try harder. When really the message of Christianity is that Jesus had to pay for our sins because there wasn’t hard enough we could try. There wasn’t good enough that we could do to erase the wrong that we’ve done.

It had to be paid for. Our sin had to be punished. And if you’re new to church, if you’re new to Christianity, and you’re not entirely sure what sin is, it’s anything that we do that disappoints God.

It can be our actions, it can be our words, our thoughts, even our attitudes. That’s where I struggle, just to be quite honest. I’m not going to go knock over liquor stores and steal cars and things like that, but I struggle with sinful attitudes, especially when I’m being bounced around from place to place at the store. But anything we do that disappoints God is sin.

Anything we do that displeases God is sin. And we’re all guilty. And it all incurs a penalty.

But Jesus Christ loved us enough that he came and paid for all of it so that we could be restored to fellowship with the Father, so that we could have eternal life. He’s in control. He was in control every moment of this.

And he did not use his control to call down legions of angels, to spare him from the cross. He did not use his control to kill Pilate, to bring all of this to an end. This was the plan.

He stayed in control even when it didn’t look like it, to work out this plan to go to the cross for our forgiveness. This morning, if you need that forgiveness that he offers, it’s very simple. There aren’t boxes to check off or hoops to jump through.

It doesn’t come by, that forgiveness doesn’t come by church attendance, doesn’t come through religious rituals. We have that forgiveness because Jesus paid for it. If we’ll simply believe what he said.

If we’ll simply believe that he paid for it and that he rose again to prove it. This morning, if you understand that you’ve sinned against God and there is that penalty that you’re faced with and you understand that you need his forgiveness, you just have to believe that Jesus paid for your sin in full and he rose again to prove it and then ask God for that forgiveness. What about cleaning up my life?

What about repentance? Repentance and cleaning up your life are not the same thing. But if we had to clean up our lives before we could come to God, then the cross was a mistake.

We can’t clean up our lives, but we come to Christ for forgiveness, and then He begins to clean up our lives. He begins to change us from the inside out. Well, what if I’m not ready?

Not ready to accept this gift that God has offered you? Not ready to accept the greatest thing that anyone’s ever done for you is to die on your behalf so your sins could be forgiven? What if I’m nervous about walking down front?

You don’t have to walk down front. That’s not part of the plan of salvation. Now, in just a moment, we’re going to stand and take a moment to sing as we wind down the service.

And if you have questions or you’d like to talk with somebody, you’re more than welcome to come forward. But you can also ask God for his forgiveness because of what Jesus Christ did right where you are. Or if you still have questions and you’re afraid to walk in front of people, I’ll be out in the Welcome Center just to your right when we’re done.

I’d love to talk with you and try to answer your questions. But this is what Jesus came to do, was to be condemned and to die so that you could be forgiven. And if you’ve never experienced that forgiveness before today, I beg you to trust Him and ask for that forgiveness while there’s still time.