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Due to the large amount of sermons and topics that appear on this site I feel it is necessary to post this disclaimer on all sermons posted. These sermons are original to the author and the leading of the Holy Spirit. While ideas and illustrations are often gleaned from many sources including those at Sermoncentral.com, any similarities and wording, including sermon titles, that may appear to be the same as any other sermon are purely coincidental. In instances where other minister’s wording is used, due recognition will be given. These sermons are not copyrighted and may be used or preached freely. May God richly bless you as you read these sermons. It is my sincere desire that all who read them may be enriched. All scriptures quoted in these sermons are copied and/or quoted from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Pastor James May
A WOMAN WITH A DREAM
Matthew 27:12-26, "And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marveled greatly. Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would. And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas. Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus, which is called Christ? For he knew that for envy they had delivered him. When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, what shall I do then with Jesus, which is called Christ? They all say unto him, let him be crucified. And the governor said, why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, let him be crucified. When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children. Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified."
We often hear messages preached concerning the trial and condemnation of Jesus Christ to die upon the Roman cross. We often hear of the cries of the crowd to crucify him, of their choice to release Barabbas, a known murderer, instead of our innocent Lord; and of the choice of Pilate, the Roman Governor, to appease the Jews in order to keep the peace and stop a potentially dangerous riot that would hurt his political position.
But one small, seemingly insignificant part of this story is often overlooked. You will rarely hear anyone mention the fact that Pilate’s wife tried to stop Pilate from condemning Jesus to death.
Pilate was, no doubt, a self-willed and strong-minded individual. No one could reach the pinnacle of Roman power and position that he held without being a very strong and ruthless man who was willing to do whatever it took to climb the ladder of success. He had fought long and hard to get where he was and he was unwilling to take any chances with losing it now.
We must keep in mind that Pilate was being torn by powers that were much greater than just he alone. On one hand there was his determination to keep the peace, but there was the power and influence of Satan working in his heart and mind also. This whole scenario with Christ had been conceived in the heart of Satan to destroy the Son of God and he would use Pilate to fulfill that desire to see Jesus dead just as much as he had used the religious leaders and the Jews to have hatred for their Messiah. On the other hand there was the desire within Pilate, down in the deepest recesses of his heart, to do what was just and right for this innocent victim.
Pilate could easily see through what was going on here. He had questioned Jesus and found no fault worthy of punishment within him. Jesus had lived a perfect life before all men. No sin, no treachery, no treason, no enmity, nor any other character flaw or fault was there to find.
Galatians 5:22-23 says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."
All throughout Jesus’ life these fruit of the Spirit were manifest in their fullest capacity. He had perfect love, without prejudice or favoritism. He was a man of peace; after all he was the Prince of Peace. He was longsuffering for never once did we hear him reject one of this disciples even though they had asked the same questions over and again and still did not understand who he was.
Who can be set forth as an example of a more gentle person that our Good Shepherd? He was not only filled with faith but was the creator of faith and never once did he ever have to say, Father I believe, help my unbelief.
His meekness and temperance were without question and like the scripture says, since he lived in this manner all the time, without fail, how could he have committed any act that was unlawful for there is no law against these things.
I can only pray that I could begin to be like Jesus. No matter how much I try to love all men equally I find that my attitude toward them is always affected by their attitude toward me. Now matter how peaceful I try to live, peace is so elusive and I find myself in the midst of turmoil. I attempt to be longsuffering but there are some people who just seem to get on your last nerve so quickly and longsuffering gives way to lashing out as a matter of self-preservation. I’m as gentle as a lamb, as long as everything is going right, but look out, the lion lies just below the surface ready to pounce and devour anyone who crosses me or disagrees with me. Needless to say there are times of doubt and fear. I won’t even talk about my shortcomings when it comes to meekness and having a temper.
I believe that Pilate sensed and knew all of these things about Jesus. He also knew of the miracles and the teaching that Jesus was doing and that the religious leaders of the Jews were extremely jealous and felt threatened by Jesus’ powerful presentation of the Law and teachings of the scripture.
But Pilate still had to contend with the anger of the Jews and try to keep the peace, even if it meant condemning an innocent man to death.
Pilate was in the position of power. He was the one who had to make the ultimate choice of what to do with Jesus. In terms of modern vernacular, “the Buck stopped with him.” Should he cave in to the wishes of the Jews or should he call out his Roman guard to have them silenced and release an innocent man. We can easily make that choice now. We look at him and shout, hey Pilate; this is a “no brainer”. Release Jesus. But Pilate was set to appease the Jews no matter what it took so God intervened to try to get his attention.
Pilate’s wife came to him to warn him to let Jesus go and for once he should have listened to his wife.
From most accounts that I have studied, her name was Claudia Procula. Whether she was a Jewess or not is not known for certain. We do know that another Roman governor named Felix had a Jewish wife. It is quite possible that she had heard or seen Jesus teaching and performing miracles and that she respected him greatly. It is also just as possible that she was just a religious person who wasn’t familiar with Jesus at all but was sensitive to the things of the spiritual realm. She may have been a complete heathen who worshipped all of the gods of the Romans but she still knew that what Pilate was going to do was an injustice and would be frowned upon by the gods. In any case, she was troubled by a dream concerning Jesus.
Just what she dreamed is unknown but it is obvious that she was very concerned by what was about to happen.
Being religious or superstitious, whichever the case, it may have been that she was afraid of what repercussions would come upon her family after the death of Jesus. Would his many followers and disciples rise up in revolt and kill her whole family or bring war to this nearly peaceful province. Would her husband and her children suffer for this? Would all of the trouble end with Caesar throwing Pilate out of office or murdering them all?
Perhaps in her dream she had received a real warning or a revelation of who Jesus was and was fearful of facing the wrath of the God of Israel.
Whatever the dream was it was very real to her and brought a sense of dread and fear so she went to Pilate to beg him to leave Jesus alone.
Could Pilate have let Jesus go free? Of course he could have. Pilate freeing Christ would not have thwarted the plan of salvation that God the Father had laid out in advance. There were other Roman authorities that could have carried out the sentence.
But he wouldn’t listen to his wife any more than the majority of men will today, after all what does a woman know of such things? Why should I listen to her? She knows little of what is going on behind the scene.
She knew more of what was going on than Pilate did. Her woman’s intuition was in high gear. It is a known fact that women have an uncanny ability to “feel”, or “sense”, what is going on, long before it becomes public knowledge. Pilate, like most men, acted out of pure logic and reason, while his wife, like most women, was thinking more with her heart and her emotions than with logic. All of the logic in the world could not make this murder of an innocent man right. Neither could all the emotional appeals turn Pilate from making his logical choice to maintain peace.
You have to give Pilate some credit. He did make a good attempt at helping Jesus to be free. He just didn’t understand the power and working of both Satan’s demons and the will of God in this matter at all. Even though he made the wrong choices and would suffer the consequences, it never fails me that, even though he was a Governor sent by Rome and backed up several cohorts of soldiers, he was still a small pawn in the battle over the souls of mankind.
He offered Barabbas as a substitute to be released since this was a common practice at this festival season. His thought was, “how could they choose a known theif, robber and murderer over an innocent man just because of jealousy? Surely they will choose Jesus over Barabbas.” But his plan backfired! Now, not only was the crowd still screaming for Jesus to be crucified but he had also released one of the worst criminals in the province to go and kill again.
So Pilate gave in to the screaming crowd. He brought Jesus into the prison and ordered the hardened Roman soldiers to scourge him.
Scourging, practiced by the Romans, was a cruel punishment that usually preceded crucifixion. The only ones exempted from scourging were women, Roman senators and soldiers except in cases of desertion. Normally there were between one and six trained Roman officers called Lictors who were responsible for dispensing the blows to the victims. The Lictors chosen to administer the scourging had previously received special medical training. They knew how to strike with the whip so as to open bruises, which had already formed. The instrument used for scourging is a short whip called a flagrum or flagellum to which was attached several braided leather thongs of variable lengths. Knots were tied in the ends of each thong, and sheep bone or iron pellets were inserted into the knots at the end of each thong.
The person to be scourged is stripped of all clothing and tied to a post. Roman soldiers repeatedly strike the victim over his entire body from neck to ankles with their full force causing deep bruises and cuts. Lacerations from repeated blows cut into the underlying muscles and rip the overlaying skin of the back to a point where it hangs in ribbons of bleeding flesh. The capillaries and veins were often torn causing intense bleeding and at times leaving the entrails exposed. Even once the victim fainted, if the Lictors could feel a pulse and detect sufficient respiration, the beating would continue. Once the centurion in charge determined that the prisoner was near death, the beating was halted.
According to Jewish law the prisoner was to receiver no more than forty lashes. The Pharisees, always making sure that the law was strictly kept, insisted that only thirty-nine lashes be given in case an error occurred during counting. The Roman law did not have any set limit on the number of blows that could be administered.
The object of the scourging was to weaken the victim to a state of collapse and bring them as near to death as possible without killing them. Many did not survive this punishment and it was given the name "half death." The extent of blood loss may well have determined how long the victim would survive on the cross.
Remember what Isaiah 53:3-5 has to say, "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."
In his own body he bore the beating that we deserved. In his body he felt the pain and agony of all our sickness and weakness. In his body he felt the sting of death as it began to overtake him in Pilate’s hall. But death was not to come yet, there was more suffering to endure before the victory was won.
After the scourging Jesus was released to be crucified, while Pilate stood washing his hands of the blood of this innocent man.
Let me say that Pilate’s gesture of washing his hands was supposed to show the world that it was not his choice to have Jesus executed, but just washing the hands, or claiming that it wasn’t his fault didn’t make it true.
Pilate was the governor. He had the power to condemn or release and then enforce his will. Certainly he was a tool of Satan to murder the Messiah but that doesn’t make him innocent in any fashion. He was just as guilty as the Jews for condemning Christ to the Cross.
After reading several accounts of what finally happened to Pilate I really don’t have a clear answer as to what happened to him after this trial. There are several historical versions and a number of legends.
1)Some say that he spent the rest of his days trying to wash the blood off of his hands because he was so tormented by demons that he lost his mind.
2)Another says that he was brought up on false charges, similar to the trial of Jesus, and was taken as a prisoner back to Tiberias Caesar for trial but before he could get there Caesar died and Pilate was cast into a prison in Vienna where he committed suicide.
3)Another says that he was in fact taken to Rome where he was executed because the Emporer was sick and had sent for the Jewish healer to come and heal him but Pilate had crucified him before the messengers could stop it. Pilate’s body was sunk into the river and there arose a great troubling of the water due to the presence of evil spirits so he was brought up and cast into a pit where those same spirits still bubble to the surface constantly.
4)Another says that he actually became a Christian. I hope that his is true for God can forgive even the man who condemned him to death.
The fact remains that if Pilate would only have listened to the woman with a dream, how much different would his life have been?
But God did not see fit to force Pilate to release his Son, Jesus Christ. It was in God’s plan for all of this to happen. Regardless of what Pilate did, Jesus was destined to die on the cross for our sin. God used man to bring about man’s own salvation by allowing man to kill his own Son. What a loving God we serve!
But what about Pilate’s wife; what can we say about her?
We know that she is the only Roman woman spoken of in the gospels, and that she is, most likely, the only Roman woman of high rank whose heart had been touched by Jesus. We know that she was Pilate’s wife and lived with him faithfully and loved him. We know that she had to have been a woman with a sensitive spirit, full of spiritual feelings that would slip into her dreams.
Most scholars say that she knew Jesus well enough to make her own judgment about Him, and finally, that she came to a moral decision to support him. In one act of courage she did just that because she was convinced that Jesus was a Just Man.
Pilate’s wife had that same moral courage that Esther had in the Old Testament. She put her life at stake and sent a message to her husband to leave Jesus alone. She was a woman between a rock and hard place. Somehow Jesus had affected her so deeply she put her life on the line for Him, and yet she had a mate who had no thought for what was right, only for what made him look good.
This story of this one woman with a dream will forever be one shining ray of light in the darkest hour and a part of the story of the cross.
Like Pilate’s wife, there are a lot of women who carry their faith alone even in their own home . Sometimes their husband ridicules them, laughs at them, rejects their faith and does not care to understand but they continue on, living according to their own convictions. Some are tormented every time they go to church. Some are forced to do things that they hate to do. Some are even threatened with beatings but they continue on in serving the Lord.
These are women with a dream. Not only these, but every one that serves the Lord and continues to bring their children to God’s house and to life them up in prayer.
One woman with a dream could have accomplished so much if only someone had listened. Because Pilate refused to hear her heart, Jesus would die on the cross and the Jews would forever bear the burden of murdering their own Messiah.
One woman with a dream could have made a difference but no one was willing to listen. But don’t ever forget that Jesus is listening. He knows your heart and he is the one who gives you that dream.
Keep on reaching out to right the injustices of our land. God has given you the gift of influence so don’t be afraid to use it to teach your children about Jesus. Husbands, fathers and men, you aren’t excused either. God expects us all to do our part to tell others about his Son who died for their sin.
