The Man Who Wouldn’t Decide

This transcript has been automatically generated

Luke chapter 23, as we’re going through the Passion of Luke during this Lent on Sunday mornings. And I have been allotted the passage that was read to us in the second lesson, though I’m cheating really and having a bit more of chapter 23, the part about Pilate.

It was in AD 26 that the Emperor Tiberius, sitting at his desk one morning, found himself faced with the difficulty of finding another procurator for Judea. It was the hottest diplomatic seat in the imperial realm. Ambitious and promising diplomats hoped fervently that they would manage to avoid it. For it would certainly wreck their careers, they thought, if they were plunged in too soon.

At the end of biting his way through a couple of pencils, I’ve no doubt, the Emperor chose an upper-class Roman equestrian called Pontius Pilatus. And in accordance with the recent reversal of imperial policy ratified by the Senate in AD 21, his wife was allowed to go with him. This was a job requiring a man with many gifts. He was not only governor of the whole province politically, He was also commander-in-chief of the occupation forces which numbered some 20,000 at Caesarea as well as a garrison in Jerusalem. Fortunately, if his name is anything to go by, people think that he may have had an army background and have been to the equivalent of Sandhurst in Rome before, so he was well equipped for it.

Of this man Pontius Pilate, whom we’re going to study this morning in Luke 23, we have a good deal of information. Archaeology, for example, though rather late in the day, has told us something about him. For the first stone slab to be dug up in Caesarea with his name on it is dated— was dug up in 1961, which is a bit late in the day, but they’re hard at work finding more. As it happens, they haven’t yet deciphered that one. But if archaeology is late, history has a great deal.

Tacitus, the pagan historian, Josephus, the Jewish historian, Eusebius, the Christian historian, all have something to say about Pontius Pilate. He seems to have been, I suppose in modern colloquial parlance, a tough egg. His first act when he arrived in Jerusalem was to antagonise all the Jewish scruples by setting up Roman standards in Jerusalem which bore the image of the various Roman empires on them. That lasted 6 days. During that time, hundreds of Jews, especially the leaders, threatened hunger strikes and death, such as we experience today in terrorist circles.

And after 6 days, he took them down. Being a stubborn man, instead of that, he presented to himself some golden shields without any images, but simply with his name on them and the name of the emperor that had sent him. And the result of that was another stupendous row, and they were withdrawn. And laid up in the Roman temple in Caesarea at the advice of the emperor who had to be brought into it.

Later on he sought to convey a good cold water supply 25 miles to Jerusalem via an aqueduct. Tens of thousands of Jews this time turned up in demonstrations rather like those where Yeshua— and the result of that almost certainly is recorded in Luke chapter 13 verse 1 where we read, there were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices because it was at festival time when the city was full of people sacrificing that the final showdown came about and in that showdown Pilate slaughtered a good many Jews.

In the end after the death of Christ, a year or two later, he slaughtered some Samaritans who’d gathered for fanatical purposes on Mount Gerizim because some false prophet, again rather like the kind of people we meet today in Oxford Street, had told them that Moses was going to come back and find some sacred vessels that had been buried there. By this time Pilate had very little patience left. He sent a platoon of soldiers, massacred a few people, and as a result was reported to the Emperor and was sent home in disgrace. Though no one is certain, it seems very likely that as a result of that case he had to commit suicide.

So as you can see, this was an unhappy end to a career. Anybody who was sent as the ambassador and commander-in-chief to Judea didn’t expect to have an easy time, and it wasn’t likely to be a success with a man like this, of whom Philo has nothing good to say. He says he was rigid, harsh, he had a spiteful disposition, and was an exceedingly wrathful man. Oh, whether that’s true or not, he certainly was a strong character. But we’re not going to look anymore at what archaeology and history say, we’re going to look this morning at what Scripture says.

And as you know, in Holy Scripture we can be sure that the writers believe that when they tell the storey it has lessons not just for then and there but for here and now and that they are speaking to all generations because we can see ourselves pictured in a man like this.

What kind of a man was he really as we look at the Scripture record? I’m, I looked at my Bible dictionary and I was told that in reality Pilate was a weak man. But I believe myself from reading the storey that that’s a very poor misreading. I don’t think he was weak at all. I don’t think a weak man would have done all the things that history records him as doing.

No, I don’t think that’s the right explanation at all. I think he was a man, and this is really the main thrust of what I want to say this morning, and I think it’s an important truth about men. I think he was a man who was determined not to get involved once again in a petty religious dispute. He’d already been bitten once, twice, 3 times. He’s now pretty shy of these Jewish problems, and he wished to keep right out of it.

I think his motto was now, don’t get mixed up in these things that are simply the affair of the Sanhedrin and and the high priest.

Pilate stands for me, as I read Holy Scripture, as a man who refused to make a decision and in so doing actually made a decision, or rather, and that’s far worse, allowed circumstances and other people to make the decision for him. He did everything he could, as we shall see in a minute, to wash his hands of the whole matter. But for 2,000 years whenever Christians stand up in churches throughout the world they have uttered what is the verdict of history: suffered under Pontius Pilate. Rather an ugly thing, isn’t it, to have your name mentioned in church every Sunday for 2,000 years and more like that.

Now this is the kind of sermon this morning which is impossible to preach in the kind of church that I went to last Sunday morning. Where they want you to give them a biblical message but there are no Bibles in the pews, the kind of sermon where it’s essential for you to follow the way I’m going. And so I’m going to ask you to take up your Bible that is near you and to look with me as I try to prove to you from the storey of Pilate the way in which he tried to avoid all possible involvement in this particular case. We’ll start with Luke, then we’ll look at John, then we’ll look at Matthew, for they all have the storey to tell. Incidentally, I’m not going to bother with chronology, but I have been careful to see that we don’t duplicate if possible, and I have discovered at least 10, and I believe I could discover up to 15, at least 10 things that Pilate did to try to avoid doing anything.

Do you know that kind of person? There’s a member of my family who can do endless things to avoid taking any trouble. Ever, you know, if you’re sitting down in a chair, And Pontius Pilate was rather like this. He did at least 10 things to avoid doing anything.

Verse 4 of Luke 23: Pilate said to the chief priests, I find no crime in this man. In other words, he said, I’m not going to do anything, there’s nothing wrong. But they were urgent. He stirs up the people. Verse 6 and 7 give him a heaven-sent opportunity as he sees it.

He discovers that Herod is in Jerusalem for some reason, and so he thinks, well, this is a wonderful way of getting this off my plate, and he sends Jesus over to Herod that morning, only to find that he comes straight back again because Herod is unable to get any answer out of him. And so that fails, although it drew him and Herod together, as these things psychologically do.

In verse 13 to 16 of the account in Luke, you’ll find another solution that he tried, and it’s probable that he tried the solution twice of scourging him. Pilate called the rulers together and said, you brought this man to me as one perverting the people. I’ve examined him. I don’t find him guilty of your charges. Neither did Herod.

Since he has done nothing to deserve death, I will chastise him and release him. A chastisement of that kind, of course, is a particularly gruesome thing. Flesh would, uh, be torn off a person’s body, blood would flow, and a person was said to be a pitiful sight after a Roman scourging. And this was put forward by Pilate as a possible alternative to having to release him to death. Let’s get out of it that way, surely the crowd will be appeased by that.

So far then, 3, 3 things that he’s trying to do to avoid having to make a decision. Now go over to John 18, and John tells the storey more fully than any others, obviously feeling that it’s got a great deal of significance.

Probably the storey of Barabbas is told more fully in Matthew, but we’ll keep in John 18 in order not to go backwards and forwards too much. John chapter 18, verse 39. Now the full storey of Barabbas seems to be that again Pilate saw a heaven-sent opportunity to solve his problem because there was this custom that somebody should be released. He discovered to his delight that a notorious robber and gangster and terrorist was in prison and so he thought up this excellent plan of offering to the crowd one or the other, obviously believing that there would be no possibility the crowd wanting Barabbas back in their midst and again this misfired as you’ll see in verse 18, chapter 18 verse 39, 40. Then chapter 19 verse 4: Pilate went out again and said to them, see, I am bringing him to you that you may know that I find no crime.

And Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe and Pilate said to the crowd, behold the man, he’s probably been scourged by now, he looks a pitiful sight. But the chief priests and officers are bloodthirsty and unsatisfied and cry out, crucify him, crucify him! Pilate therefore, verse 6, tries another tack. Take him yourselves, this is not my business. The Roman authorities don’t want to have anything to do with this.

You crucify him, I find no crime in him. And the Jews again, knowing that they can’t do that, refused to do it, verse 7.

Then in verse 12, Pilate sought to release him. Whether this was diplomatic pressure or whatever it was, clearly there was a long time in which he sought to get hold of one or two people and bargain with them. But then he heard a cry, verse 12, if you release this man, you’re not Caesar’s friend. And then verse 14: It was the day of the preparation and he said to the Jews, behold your king, hoping again, I suppose, that pity would do the trick. They cried out, away with him, crucify him!

And Pilate pleads with them, shall I crucify your king?

Now turn back to Matthew for one or two more examples, Matthew 27.

As far as I know, I haven’t duplicated any of these, and some of them undoubtedly were duplicated, the diplomatic pressure, the scourging almost certainly. But in Matthew 27, Pilate again appeals to the crowd, which was a very foolish thing to do. In verse 22, then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ? They all said, crucify. Why, what evil has he done?

Then they shouted all the more, let him be crucified. And then the last thing, so Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, a riot was beginning. He took water and, you know, it’s a very dramatic thing, isn’t it? He calls for a servant with a bowl of water and a towel and he washes his hands in front of the crowd and he says to them in a loud voice, look, you crowd, you wretched lot, I’m innocent of this man’s blood. See it to your— see to it yourselves.

It’s your business, not mine. I’m having nothing to do with this.

Now surely that is very revealing, isn’t it? Here is a man who, when he sees this case coming to him after breakfast, obviously hastily drummed up, hearing yet one more of these appalling rows that get to the emperor’s ears, is determined to have nothing to do with it. And in the end, it has come down into our English language that he washes his hands of the whole matter.

And I much fear that this is an attitude that is all too common in our day. That’s why I’ve taken this for our morning sermon. You see, we condemn Pilate as being weak, though I don’t really think he was weak, and we do much the same as him. And let me say 3 things as I try to gather up the message of Pontius Pilate to us that were true of him and I think in a measure indeed very rarely sometimes, are true of us.

First, as I understand the storey, Pilate is a man who wished to avoid the responsibility of decision. I guess as he wiped away his coffee that morning, realised from his secretary what was ahead of him, he felt rather like those words, oh, that I had wings and could fly away. He just wanted to escape. If only he could take a day off and put this whole thing behind him. It was the very last thing he wanted to have to face.

And I think that there are many people today who want to escape the whole business of religion. Life is just so full, they want to escape the issue of Jesus Christ. They don’t want to go back to church and find Jesus Christ standing before them again.

When I look back to my days, uh, taking a youth fellowship and often speaking to young people, I remember how often the chestnut used to come up in question time What about those people who have never heard?

And I often used to find myself saying, well, of course the real problem is not with those who have never heard but with those who have. And how many of those who have heard would wish that they really hadn’t heard because that hearing faces them with a responsibility. Back to John chapter 19 verse 11, there’s a very telling little verse here.

Where Jesus says to him, you would have no power over me unless I had been given to you from above. Therefore he who delivered me to you has the greater sin. You see, Jesus there recognises that the Jewish people had the greater sin. They had the greater responsibility. Nevertheless Pilate had some responsibility.

Now we may turn that the other way around with those who’ve never heard. Those who have never heard the gospel, well obviously they have some responsibility because they live in a world where it is quite evident that God exists. But God is fair. God is not going to condemn those who had no chance of hearing. Now the greater responsibility in this case lies with those who have heard.

None of us are in the position of those who have never heard. None of us are heathen living in the middle of a continent that has never been evangelised. Now on the contrary, all of us sitting in church this morning have heard about Jesus Christ. I don’t bother to turn this up but I was very struck at our staff prayers on Monday morning. We’ve been going through Matthew 10 and 11 and on Monday afternoon we were looking at the sending out of the 12 and I think the verse that has stayed in my mind all the week was verse 14 of Matthew 10 where the disciples are told what to do if they go into a village and preach the gospel and cast out demons and the villagers say, we don’t want anything to do with you.

They’re told verse 14: If anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town, for it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah for that than for that little village on the day of judgement.

Now the more I have thought of that this week, the more frightened I am. Here is a little tiny village nestling in the hills of Judea. Jesus has never been there with his marvellous words and his mighty ways as we were singing about in John Newman’s hymn. But one afternoon 12 disciples come in, they’re not very impressive crowd, they’ve had very little training. As we know they’re going to fail the Lord Jesus very often and they go into various bits of lodging in twos and in the morning they preach and they don’t preach very well because they’re only just starting and they cast out some demons And the village elders say, we don’t want this lot, and they cast them out.

And Jesus says that that is the message of God for that village and now all they can wait for is judgement because they have had their chance.

I feel like saying to Jesus, is that really a big enough, good enough chance for you to say that? Apparently it is.

Now you see, if you judge yourself by the same standard as Jesus judged the people in Galilee and Judea, many of whom only heard a preacher on one day and were expected by Jesus Christ to make a decision on the basis of that, and you have heard about Jesus all your life and yet you think there is still plenty of time, well clearly this message has something for you. Pilate had heard, It’s actually quite touching what he had heard. If you have your Bible open at John 18, you will find it in that paragraph at the beginning of verse 33. I won’t go into the whole of that conversation, but it seems that they did have actually quite a long conversation. You wouldn’t get that impression from Matthew and Luke, but John is at pains to tell you that they did, and they talked about 2 things.

They talked about Christ’s sovereignty, verse 36, My kingship is not of this world and so on. And they talked about the truth, verse 37: For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.

Again, I find that very striking. Jesus is standing, I don’t know whether this is privately, I would think probably Pilate took him on one side and they had a conversation together and our Lord and Saviour has 5 or 10 minutes in which to talk to this great governor, this Roman governor and how different the talk is from our, what I might call, hit-and-run evangelism of today. You know, the kind of propaganda evangelism that is so often the pattern today when we simply rush at people and tell them what a marvellous thing it’ll be for them if they become Christians, the kind of Guinness is good for you Christian evangelism. If you become a Christian everything will go right.

Terribly little of that in the gospel, isn’t it? You know, there’s none of this cheapness. The gospel doesn’t come down to our level and offer itself on cheap terms. With this vital few minutes in which he may talk to Pilate, with the destiny of Pilate at stake and Christ’s destiny at stake, Christ talks to him about the 2 greatest themes in the Bible: the sovereignty of God and the truth of God. And he talks to him about this sovereignty, this power that belongs to his kingdom.

It’s his kingdom, my kingdom. He says this kingdom is not of this world and is far more important than the kingdoms of this world. It is a power that ultimately will triumph. Obviously it’s very important for us to know where the power is, isn’t it? I often think as I walk around these Iranian banks in this last fortnight, there are 2 or 3 in the city, must be quite a difficult thing to be the manager of an Iranian bank, mustn’t it?

I mean, one day you’ve got one person in power and the next person you’ve got another person in power. One day you’ve got a governor of the Bank of Iran who’s been massacred, and the next day you’ve got a new one. You have to be jolly careful if you want to go ahead in your career that you keep in with a whole lot of different people. Now there are so many of us like that, aren’t there, keeping in with the powers that be. And Jesus speaks to Pilate of the power that really is, the power that is to be.

And he talks to him about the truth. And the answer of Pilate, I think probably, is rather a sad one, that very famous answer that Bacon talks about in verse 38. Pilate said, what is truth? It’s difficult now to recover exactly the frame of mind and the tone of voice, isn’t it? But I think probably that Professor Plummer has got it right in these words: It is the half-pitying, half-impatient question of a practical man of the world whose experience of life has convinced him that truth is a dream of enthusiasts and that a kingdom in which truth is to be supreme is as visionary as that of the Stoics.

Yes, I think it’s the probable attitude of the practical man. Well, what does it matter anyhow? No one really knows what truth is.

But for a moment Pilate did hear the very word of God and therefore he had a responsibility. And at some time in your life you have heard the word of God and therefore you stand there on the same ground and you have a responsibility. Pilate wanted to get out of his and if you’re like me, very often we find ourselves wanting to get out of ours. Spiritual responsibilities.

Secondly, I think Pilate was a man who would have liked to have made the right decision. Go back with me for a moment only once more to Matthew 27. I sincerely believe that Pilate wanted to let Jesus off.

Let me give you 3 quick reasons. Verse 18 of Matthew 27: He knew that it was out of envy that they delivered him up. So he knew perfectly well the motive. Then verse 19: While he was sitting on the judgement seat, his wife sent a message. Can’t you see the bit of paper being passed from the servants quickly to him?

As he’s sitting, he opens it. A message from his wife. He recognises the handwriting. I’ve just had the most terrible dream. Probably he left her in bed, you see, that morning.

Had a message, get up quickly. Very dramatic. I’ve had a terrible dream. Leave this man alone, he’s righteous.

Verse 23, uh, he knew Jesus had done no evil and again and again he says like here, why, what evil has he done? Do you remember Jonathan saying last Sunday night, those of you who were with us, that when the argument is weak people shout louder? Here it is, isn’t it, in verse 23. They shouted all the more.

Now here are 3 reasons, aren’t there, why Pilate would very much like to have made the decision to let him off. He knew their jealousy. Professor Brian Griffiths of the City Business School was talking to me this week. He’d been on television, and he’d been in the television studio the week before last when certain, um, people had been talking to Billy Graham on a television line to New York, I think it was. And he said it was quite frightening to go into that room and realise that everyone in the interviewing team obviously hated Billy Graham.

Why’d they hate him? Well, there were one or two church leaders there. Perhaps it’s because they represented churches that are so monumentally failures compared with Billy Graham’s fairly obvious success, whatever we may think of him.

You see, when you see people who obviously hate it, you know very well whether you’re in a television studio or not that the person isn’t going to get a fair deal. Pilate knew that about Jesus.

There’s many a man who would like to follow the inclinations of his wife and family, but he lives in a man’s world of business, and therefore he daren’t align himself with them. I was at lunch this last week on Wednesday with the Master Mariners. That’s a real man’s world, a livery lunch like that. And as I looked around, and as we had the speeches afterwards, which included a fair ration of blue storeys, as you would expect, of course, in sea company, sea dogs company.

I thought to myself as I looked around, what a decent crowd of men these are, and yet of course there would be no room for Jesus here.

He would be an embarrassment in a meeting like that. Thoroughly decent people, but there’s no room for Christ. Many a man knows like that about his own business and social acquaintances in the city, and so he doesn’t align himself with his wife.

Family. And the crowd— well, of course, Pilate wasn’t— can’t have been an experienced diplomat without knowing that the crowd is nearly always wrong.

Surely we know that very well. I often think when I sometimes read modern communist propaganda about the voice of the people and so on, what a chance the voice of the people would get if the communists were in charge in this country. They’d soon be silenced, wouldn’t they? You can imagine all the people who get up and shout for more wages, what would happen with them if the Communists were in charge. So no more of that nonsense.

Now you see, Pontius Pilate is well aware of the envy of the leaders. He’s well aware that his wife is speaking the truth. He’s well aware of the fact that the crowd has got it wrong. Everything— conscience, the dream, his own examination— everything tells him what he ought to do. He very much wants to make that decision.

Ronald Wilcox came this morning with some things that he wanted me to sign. Supposing I came to you today at the coffee time, I said, I’ve got something for you to sign here. I want you to sign away your rights to have anything to do with Jesus Christ, ever to go to heaven, ever to know anything of God’s people, ever to be smitten in your conscience again by the Holy Spirit. Would you sign all those things away? He said, of course not.

Oh well, then I turn over my piece of paper and I say, um, will you sign yourself up therefore as a disciple of Jesus Christ today? Oh, you say, well, I’m actually a bit busy, my pen’s run out. You see, you’re in the same position as Pontius Pilate. We don’t want to say no, but we don’t want to say yes. We don’t want to make a decision.

And last of all, and then I must finish, Pontius Pilate is a man who cannot take the right decision without a risk. Back finally to John 18.

Look at verse 38. It’s very interesting how John gathers the evidence together in the 4th Gospel as though he feels it isn’t sufficiently underlined in the first 3. In the first, in verse 38 of John 18, you find the phrase, I find no crime in him. Go to chapter 19 verse 4: I find no crime in him. Go to chapter 19 verse 6: I find no crime in him.

Do you see it? 3 times.

But then look at verse 12: Upon this Pilate sought to release him and the Jews said, if you release this man you’re not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar. When Pilate heard these words, he realised the risk.

He could not take the right decision without a risk that it would get back to Caesar and that would be the end of his career. And so I want to finish by saying that the decision to follow Jesus Christ, the decision wholeheartedly to surrender to this King, the decision to accept that Jesus is the truth and therefore give myself to that truth, always involves a risk. Always. There’s no way in which the preacher can get rid of it. Of course, the risk is different at our various ages.

When we’re teenagers, the risk is that we might lose our friends at school, the most popular people perhaps. When we’re young and unmarried, the risk is that we might miss a partner in life if we’re too keen as Christians. When we’re a professional man and possibly a success or going to be a success, well, there’s the risk again that it might stand in the way of our advancement. If we’re breaking God’s law at the moment as the means of getting happiness, and many people are, then obviously to follow Jesus Christ risks losing your happiness. Doesn’t really matter where you stand today, if you follow Jesus Christ there is an undoubted risk.

It’s impossible to follow him without it.

And when I was thinking about this as I came into church this morning, I realised I’d got my 3 points in the wrong order. I should have started with my second point and said that Pilate is a man who would very much like to have made the right decision, because that’s you, isn’t it? If you’ve not made this decision yet, you’d very much like to. Then I should have gone to my third point: you can’t take this right decision without a risk, and you realise that this morning as you listen to me.

Then I should have had my first point, because I think really this is the summary of it all. He was a man who wanted to take the right decision, realised there was a risk, and therefore wished to avoid taking a decision altogether. He washed his hands because he didn’t want to say no and he didn’t want to say yes.

Suffered under Pontius Pilate. I hope you won’t make the mistake he made in refusing to make a decision that very day, and he only had to lunchtime. He let history, or rather he let other people around him, make the decision for him, and that’s always a foolish thing to do. Don’t let circumstances or other people or procrastination make your decision for you. You have longer to make up your mind than he did, but don’t fail to come down on one side or the other.

Let’s pray.

Lord, the more we look at Pontius Pilate, the more sympathy with him we have.

We realise in a sense what a horrid dilemma he faced.

We see the desperate way in which he tried to shift it all away from his conscience.

We feel sorry for him until the light of your truth shines in our hearts, and we pray that we may be wise to learn from him and that as your Son, Lord Jesus Christ, Christ stands before us, we may make our decision for him, whatever the risk may be. We ask it for his name’s sake. Amen.