The Gospel of John - Outline Part 45 - The Madness of Men

TITLE

John 19:1-16 – The Madness of Men

EXPLANATION

After this Pilate had Jesus flogged.  We will look at this further in the next section, but this was much more horrible than these polite English words make it sound.  It was a horrific physical experience that Jesus went through.  The flogging, followed by the thorns being driven deep into His scalp, would have left Him extraordinarily weak.  It is a wonder Jesus was able to stand before Pilate again at all, let alone speak coherently to him.  Nevertheless, speak the Lord did.  He did not bother to answer Pilate’s further questions, except to correct him on one point.  Jesus pointed out that Pilate had no authority to do anything at all to Him, other than what God had already permitted.

Whether he was irritated by this or not, both before and after that dialogue, Pilate sought to have Jesus released.  He knew he was not guilty of any crime deserving death.  But, the ferocity of the Jews was overwhelming.  They demanded that Jesus be condemned.  They insisted upon His crucifixion.  They submitted themselves to the authority of Caesar, in affect abandoning Yahweh and following after a mere man in their mad frenzied zeal to see the hated rabbi from Galilee murdered.

Finally, seeing no way out of this impossible situation, Pilate submitted to the will of the Jews.  He ordered for Jesus to be crucified.

APPLICATION

The heights of lunacy and depths of depravity that sinful man will pursue in order to see his selfish agenda fulfilled is staggering to behold.  These Jews were completely addicted to the idea of having Jesus killed.  They were blinded by stubborn and wicked hearts as to His deity.  This should have been patently obvious to anyone who had beheld Jesus’s miracles and was familiar with the Hebrew Bible, as these men were.  These Jews stubbornly disconnected themselves from the reality that was right in front of their faces.  There is a word we use to describe someone who cannot or will not see reality as it is.  It is called insanity.

This is the effect of sin.  This is what has driven Satan to fight against God for thousands of years; a fight he cannot possibly think he has any hope of winning.  Yet, fight on he does, in complete defiance of all sense and reason.  So also with the Jews throughout the gospel of John.

Do we see sin for what it is?  It is the enemy of all that is good and right and true.  Do we recognize sin as seeking to destroy us?  I am afraid that often we do not.  Often, we fail to resist sin as we ought.  Sometimes, we Christians are guilty of a form of the same madness that infected these 1^st century Jewish opponents of Jesus.  God forbid that we should behave in this way.