November 23, 2003 John 18:33-37
Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” 34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?” 35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?” 36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.” 37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
As Jesus stood before Caiaphas, the high priest put Jesus on the spot and said, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Being put on oath by the high priest, Jesus had to give a yes or no answer. (Mt 26:63) There was no room for hemming and hawing. So Jesus straight up said, “Yes, it is as you say.” He revealed Himself for who He was - no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. He was the Christ.
Again, in today’s text we find Jesus on trial before Pilate. Once again, Pilate puts him on the spot, and wants to know why the Jews hated him so much. So he asked Jesus straight up, “are you the king of the Jews?” Thankfully, Jesus didn’t just give him a straight up “yes” or “no” answer. Before Jesus said “yes,” He explained to him what kind of a king he actually was and what kind of a kingdom he had. We are living in a world that has a lot to say about Jesus - most of which is false and misleading. These simple verses before Caiaphas really help to clarify who Jesus is and what He came to do. Jesus tells us all about -
The King and the Kingdom
I. Are not of this world
The reason Pilate asked Jesus this question is because the Jews accused Jesus of wanting to lead the Jews against the Roman government. John 19 says that Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” So Pilate wanted to find out from Jesus exactly what kind of a king he was exactly claiming to be. I’m sure that as he looked at Jesus, he didn’t appear to be leading a rebellion. All he was doing was standing there and listening to people accuse him of all kinds of things. It wasn’t like the Jews to be overly concerned about the integrity of the Roman government. So there had to be more to Jesus than they were saying - Pilate wanted to find out what it was, and he asked Jesus as much - “are you the king of the Jews?”.
How did Jesus answer? “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.” Jesus said, “my kingdom is not of this world” - literally kosmos. means “order”. Jesus said that His kingdom didn’t have to do with the way our world is ordered - it isn’t within the sphere of what we live by. You see, there’s a cosmos beyond this cosmos - called the heavenly realms. When Elisha prayed for his servants eyes to be opened - he saw that the hills were full of chariots and horses or fire all around Israel. (2 Kings 6) There was a whole other spiritual dimension that he wasn’t even aware of. That was what Jesus said His kingdom consisted of - another dimension.
This dimension is not physical. It has nothing to do with how big your muscles are or how fat your wallet is. Yet there are times where this dimension has become a part of our dimension. Angels have come in the form of men. They have revealed the Law. They have led men to safety. But they are not limited by the physical - by swords and walls and guns and governments. As Daniel stood before king Belshazzar, the hand of God penetrated every soldier and wall that was built in defense of the king and appeared on the wall. (Daniel 5) With this one hand he was able to change a many from being arrogant and powerful to a blubbering cry baby. Two angels were able to turn sex craving homosexuals into blind and helpless weaklings who couldn’t find a door. (Genesis 19) That was the kingdom Christ was talking about. He rules the angels and controls the demons. He orders another world - another cosmos.
If you look at the history of the Bible, the Church has never been about the physical. The first temple that God built was just a tree in the middle of an open Garden - nothing elaborate. Often God’s own prophets lived without houses and homes, destitute and lacking many physical goods of any sort. Elijah had to live by the Kerith Ravine and be fed by food from the mouths of ravens. (1 Kings 17) The building of the temple was only a temporary arrangement where the people could physically find the representation of God through his priests, sacrifices, and building. But God wasn’t contained in that building. It’s only where He chose to reveal Himself. The whole purpose of having the “Israelite kingdom” was to have the promise of the Savior be fulfilled through a believing nation.
You can also see how this proved true throughout Jesus’ ministry. He was born in a cattle stall - not in a palace. He was the step-son of a carpenter - not a king. He was never personally concerned with the physical things of this world. It seems that they were more of an afterthought - something that he took care of only when he “had” to. Jesus told those who followed him that he had no place to lay his head. He didn’t bother buying a home or gathering collectable items. He didn’t buy himself a pillow top mattress to make sure he could get a good night’s rest. While Jesus was very busy providing others with physical needs like health and food, He never provided Himself with any. As a matter of fact, He was so care-free about his own physical body that his own family thought he had gone crazy. (Mark 3:21) Because of this, he often told his disciples that they needed to be ready to give it all up to follow him. Why? Because Jesus’ kingdom didn’t have to do with swords and governments, armies, houses and riches. It was spiritual, not physical.
The very temptation of life is to look at this cosmos and revolve our lives - even our ministries - around the physical things. Today we are having an Expansion Fund dinner. We’ll talk about different things we could do with the future of our ministry and our building. The temptation is to think that the kingdom of God will revolve around whether we can put an expansion on the front of our building or not. The natural thought is to think that our future will be dependant upon how much money we can save or make. If you look around town you’ll see church after church building and building and building - multi-purpose complexes, huge gymnasiums, and multi-million dollar cathedrals. Ministry is measured by how much someone can build or how many people can get involved. The unfortunate result of this thinking is that when we have meetings, we talk for forty five minutes over whether to buy a MIDI machine or how much insurance costs, and three minutes about a brother in the faith who needs to be sought after. Budget planning brings all of the physical minded people thinking in terms of what can we afford, or how much money we have. It’s all measured by the physical.
What about the way you view life? Is it any better? How often do you get depressed and wonder to ourselves whether God really loves you - because what - you get sick? You lose a job? You aren’t popular? You wonder if God really exists because bad things happen in this world. But you are only looking at it from this world’s point of view. That’s all physical stuff. It has nothing to do with the spiritual. Yet we constantly measure God’s kingdom with a measuring stick that has nothing to do with his cosmos. There once was a man who was hired to figure out how many cubic pounds of pressure a hydrogen gas tank could take before it would explode. So he showed up at the work sight with a ruler and asked the man who hired him, “where’s the tank? I heard it needs to be measured.” The boss said to him, “are you some kind of fool? You can’t measure pressure with a ruler!” We do the same thing when we measure the King and his kingdom by the physical instead of the spiritual. We do the same thing when we measure success by physical instead of spiritual. Yet we constantly plan our lives around the physical - as if we were members of a physical kingdom and Christ was mainly concerned with this cosmos. Like Pilate, we just don’t seem to get it. This Cosmos is not what our Kingdom consists of. That’s why Luther was able to sing, “and take they our wife, goods, fame child and life. Let these all be gone. They yet have nothing one. The kingdom ours remaineth.” If only we would realize what the Cosmos of Christ is all about.
II. Revolve around the truth
It’s interesting then that Christ, this King entered our Cosmos. Why did Jesus, the King of a different Cosmos, enter our Cosmos, if He didn’t plan on taking over Pilate’s physical kingdom? That’s the point Pilate was getting at - wasn’t it? He was really wanting to ask Christ - “are you planning a coup or not? The answer is “yes”, right? Not of the government - but of the world. Why else would He leave His heavenly throne to be born in a cattle stall? Why else would anyone in their right mind choose to go to a cross? Some people claim that Jesus just came to feel our pain, to say a few nice things about God, and then return back to heaven. What a joke! Hebrews 12 says that Jesus, for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Make no doubt about it - Jesus didn’t just enter our world to get a hands-on tour of this world he created. He came to reclaim His Cosmos - to be our King once again. He came to rule over you, me, and every other creature in this world - so each and every one of us would bow our knees to Him and call Him “Lord.” Even Pilate, as dead and foolish as he spiritually was, was able to realize what Jesus was saying. “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
“Yes!”, Jesus said. “I am a king! I’ve come to gather thousands of people together into a great kingdom!” Pilate may have thought - “ah ha!” But then it was as if in Pilate’s eyes Jesus pulled out a plastic sword or a toy gun and said - “here’s my secret weapon!” Jesus said, In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. “That’s your weapon?”, Pilate must have thought - “the truth?” He probably sarcastically said, “no, wait, stop. Don’t pull that out - anything but the truth.” What he actually said was, “what is truth?” At that point he realized that Jesus was no threat to his kingdom. He wasn’t here to fight with armies or swords, He was only fighting with words for “the truth”. Pilate wasn’t worried about that. No, he was only worried about his position as governor. This was just some philosopher in Pilate’s eyes.
Pilate underestimated the power of Jesus’ weapon. It was the truth - Jesus’ confession of what He was - that ultimately put Him to the cross to conquer Satan and sin, death and hell. The truth - God’s Word - even though it seems so weak and harmless - has produced great armies. It tells people, “you aren’t as good as you think you are. You’re a damned sinner - and you’re works aren’t getting you any closer to a holy God! You need a substitute! That substitute is Christ! He lived a perfect life for you! He died an innocent death in your place!” Then the truth gently says, “believe in Christ, that He is the way to heaven - that He is your righteousness - that He is your salvation - and you will be saved. That’s why Christ came into the world - to live and die in your place.” Miraculously, it’s this seemingly powerless truth that has changed lives - turning people from filthy rebels into holy saints. It’s converted homosexuals, murderers, and rebels - turning them into faithful followers. As Paul the persecutor of Christians was on his way to Damascus, Jesus appeared on the road to him. With the simple words, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”, Jesus converted him into the hardest working missionary our Church has ever had. It’s that truth that still converts multitudes of people and gathers them into Christ’s kingdom. It reaches the poor and the rich in all kingdoms and countries. It took us out of the kingdom of this world, and made us see through the eyes of faith that we have angels looking over us. It’s made us see that because of this God and man who lived 2,000 years ago, we will be living 2,000 years from now and forever in heaven. It gets us to see that just as Jesus crossed over into our world and lived in our sin - even taking on our guilt, so we will cross over into His world and live in his holiness - even taking on His righteousness.
The neat thing is that this isn’t just some empty philosophy - some deep philosophical thing that we all just sit around and talk about. The truth is what led Christ to not only speak - but to act. Since He said that He is a God of love and compassion - His love and compassion led Him to come into our world and take care of people and die for people. It led Him to tell people about who He was and why He had come, so that people would repent of their sins and believe in Him for their salvation - becoming a part of His kingdom. The truth is what led Jesus to become the Truth.
Jesus said that the Truth is what sets us free. Knowing the Truth - that God loves us and forgives us in Jesus Christ - is what sets us free from the paralyzing fear of guilt. It’s what enables us to say, “I can serve this holy God, because He forgives me and loves me in Christ!” The truth of God’s Word is what motivates us not just to say, “I love you,” but to act upon it. It crosses over from the spiritual to the physical. It frees us up and enables us to use the physical things that God has given us - our bodies, our possessions, and even our lives - to the spreading of the truth. It’s what enabled Martin Luther to stand before kings and governors at the risk of his own life, and sacrifice his body and time to the spreading of the Gospel. It the truth of salvation in Christ that also makes us willing to sacrifice all that we have for a greater kingdom - the spiritual one. It’s what motivates the Sunday School teachers to take time and effort to teach our children every Sunday. It’s what motivates you to give your best offerings in the plate on Sunday. It’s what makes you want to invite your unchurched neighbor to church. It’s what makes us shape our ministries and activities around one common purpose - spreading the Truth. Even though the kingdom isn’t a physical cosmos, we still use the physical cosmos - our mouths, eyes, ears and abilities - to help bring about the spiritual cosmos through the Truth.
This past week America has commemorated the life and death of JFK - on the fortieth anniversary of his death - by talking a lot about his presidency. If I heard it right, he was very outspoken against organized crime, segregation, and somewhat against the Vietnam War I believe also. With his outspoken views and actions, he became a friend of many, but also an enemy of many more. Along with the embarrassment of the bay of pigs and possibility of being bribed because of his sexual relationships, JFK became the victim of an assassination. When he was assassinated - the nation was in shock - and many of his followers felt that there was no hope for the country - that everything would fall apart. Their “king” was dead - and so were their hopes.
Jesus was not guilty of any bad leadership decisions or immoral actions. He didn’t steal any elections or take anyone’s life. All Jesus did was give people health, hope and the Truth. When Jesus spoke up about the Truth - what it meant to follow God - who He was - and how salvation was attained - through faith in Him - He was hated for it by his own country men. He wasn’t out to get them angry at Him, but simply to proclaim the Truth. For that truth, they put him to death - assassinated Him. But the Jews knew that the Truth also said he would rise from the dead. The truth became true three days later. Unlike JFK, our King now lives. Now, two thousand years later, we are part of a kingdom that doesn’t end - that goes beyond borders and classes - and enters into our very hearts - through the Word of truth. This is our King - Jesus Christ - and this is our Kingdom - having Christ rule in our hearts through the Truth. Amen.
