Alright, now if you will take
your Bibles, turn to John chapter 19. Let me read for you just a few
verses of Scripture beginning with verse 13. John chapter 19,
verse 13. When Pilate therefore heard that
saying, that saying that they told him, that if he was to approve
Christ as a king, then they were going to go tell Caesar because
he wouldn't be Caesar's friend. In other words, they were intimidating
him to pass judgment on this man as a pretended king. And when he heard, when Pilate
heard that, and I'll show you that more clearly when we get
into the study, but when Pilate heard that, That's when he decided
to come out and say what he saith. When he heard that saying, he
brought Jesus forth and sat down in the judgment seat in a place
that's called the pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of
the Passover in about the sixth hour. And he saith unto the Jews,
Behold your king. But they cried out, away with
him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, shall
I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, we
have no king but Caesar. Then delivered he him therefore
unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led him
away. He bearing his cross went forth
into the place called the place of the skull. which is called
in the Hebrew, Galgotha, where they crucified Him and two other
with Him on either side, one, and Jesus in the midst. We've been looking at the trial
of Jesus of Nazareth, who's declared of God in this
book, in the Bible. I've got no other evidence. If
a man refuses to use this Bible as the basis of the discussion,
then I've got nothing else to say. There's no point in me standing,
talking with him any longer. I base everything that I believe
and everything that I preach and teach on this book. And this
book declares Jesus of Nazareth to be the long-awaited Christ,
the long-prophesied Christ. And I want to stress this to
you and to myself as we study these things that we've got no
other basis, no other foundation than the witness of these four
men, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the Old Testament prophets. We've got no other basis, no
other foundation. Everything that God has to say
to us, beginning with the book of Acts, And all the way through
the book of Revelations is based on the witness of these four
men and what they preached and what
they witnessed and what all those Old Testament prophets prophesied. Got no other basis. That's it.
That's it. Everything else in this book
is declared from this. And if this man, Jesus of Nazareth,
If he did not come into this world through the womb of a virgin
as they foretold that he would, if he did not live a sinless
life, obey that law in every jot and tittle, die on a cross,
bore our sins in his own body on the tree, if he did not die
on the cross as a substitute for sinners, The Lord hath laid
on Him the iniquity of us all, is what Isaiah said. And then
rise from the grave on the third day, and ascend into heaven to
appear in the presence of God for us. Then we're yet in our
sins. That's the only hope we have. You and I are yet in our sins,
and not only that, we're false witnesses of God. Because we're
saying that Jesus is the Christ. We're saying that salvation's
all together in him, so that makes us false witnesses of God.
And we're gathered here this morning to practice idolatry,
because we're worshiping one who pretended to be God who was
not. That's just how serious the issues
are. In order for what we're studying
here today, I want to stress this to you, to have any impact
on us Two or three things are going to have to take place.
I stand up here and teach you the mechanics of it, which I
intend to do both in the Sunday school class and in the main
service. There's mechanics involved in this thing. There's doctrines
involved in this thing. But these things have to happen.
First of all, God's going to have to shut us up to His Word. He's going to have to shut us
up. We're going to have to quit speculating and talking about
what we think. Who cares what you think? You
think God cares what you think? You think God really is walking
around up there like this saying, well, I never thought about that?
Huh? He said, who's been my counselor?
Who counseled me? Where were you when I laid the
foundation of the world? You see what stupidity it is
for you to stand by? Who art thou, old man, that brings
an accusation against me and questions what I do? Ain't that
what he said in Romans chapter 9? lays these foolish charges
at my feet. You don't know which ends up."
And yet we criticize God. We're going to have to come to
that place where God reveals to us what we are and shuts us
up to this book and say, we don't know. We don't understand. Show
us. Tell us. And then receive the
witness of God. Now, ain't that what Paul said?
He said, let God be true and every man a liar. Had you come
to that place? No, we still won't say, well,
it just seems to me. I'm putting it in a ridiculous
light because it is ridiculous. It's ridiculous for a man to
question God. And we'd all be a lot better.
We're going to have to come to that place. God's going to have to
shut us up to His Word. And it's absolutely futile to
try to teach anybody anything until you're made by the Spirit
of God to bow to His Word. It says if they speak not according
to this Word, it's because there's no light in them. And the second
thing that has to take place is that God's going to have to
send you a teacher to teach you. And then He's going to have to
make you teachable. The teacher can't teach somebody until they
become teachable. I've got teachers in here this
morning, and you know how futile it is when a child comes in who's
set his mind not to be taught. You can't teach him. You can't
teach him. He'll sit and look out the window.
He'll stare at the ceiling. Do what you will until that boy's
heart is made teachable. You can't teach him anything.
And I've met a hundred so-called self-taught men, and none of
them fully understand the gospel. And none of them are submissive
to the authority of God. And none of them will support
the ministry. And none of them want to be identified
with the people who stand and preach these things, these self-taught
men. He said they should all be taught
of God. That's what he said. So it'd
do us well to get in this book and find out how God teaches
sinners. And then take our place as one that needs to be taught. And then the third thing that's
going to have to take place is God is going to have to convince
us of our sin. Convince us of our sin. The reason
why Jesus Christ came into this world by the seed of some seed
other than man. The reason why this progress
had to be interrupted and He had to be born of the Holy Spirit. That holy thing, they said, which
is in thee. It's not of man. It's of God. It's of God. The reason why that
is is because all we like sheep have gone astray. We're all together
sinful. There's none righteous. The chain
has to be broken. Has to be broken. There has to
be an intervention of God. And the reason why it became
a servant under the law and made subjects to its commands is because
nobody else could or would. Who's going to keep the law?
You going to keep it? And then the reason why he stands
guilty here, being judged by evil men and by wicked hands
taken and nailed to a cross, is to satisfy God's justice against
sin. That's why he's here. That's
what this trial's all about. But we enter into this trial
and we don't understand it because we don't understand what's going
on. This is the sinner's substitute. This is the representative for
the sinner, and he stands before God as the sinner. That judgment,
that trial, those cruel mockings, all that suffering that he suffered,
that humiliation, all of those things is in your stead. And it becomes of no value to
us until we see ourselves the sinner. He said, this is a faithful
saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners of whom I am chief. The Lord himself
said, I came not to save the righteous, but to call sinners
to repentance. And I'm convinced the reason
why men and women are so confused and so frustrated is because
they will not bow to the testimony of this book, to the testimony
of God's preacher. concerning their sin. The trial of Christ has to do
with the judgment of God against sin and sinners. The trial is
not about feeling sorry for Jesus. That's not what it's about. Our
Lord stopped with the cross on His back and faced those weeping
women. And He said, don't weep for me.
Weep for yourselves. Weep for your children. Don't
weep for me. I ain't carrying this cross for you to feel sorry
for me. This cross is the only hope you
have. If you want to weep about something, weep about your own
sin. Weep about yourself. It's already been established
that we can't do it. As I said, we ought to be shut
up this book. This book says there's none righteous.
That ought to just end it, shouldn't it? Huh? There ought not ever
be another discussion about our righteousness. There's none righteous. We just put a period after that
because God did. There's none righteous. There's none that understandeth.
I know what that means. Do you? There's none that understandeth.
There's none that seeketh after God. He said there's none good,
no not one. All together become unprofitable. He said destruction and misery
is in their ways and there is no fear of God before their eyes. Now you want to see this as it's
manifested, go to the cross. Look at this trial. Here is a
man named Pilate and he's standing here knowing what these Jews
are doing. He understood. He was no fool.
He knew exactly why they were doing this. He knew this man
wasn't guilty of what they charged him with. This man didn't want
to be king of Rome. He said, if my kingdom was of
this world, then would my servants fight? Don't you know in his
frustration he told Christ that I can set you free or I can put
you on that cross? He said, you couldn't do anything
to me except my father allowed you to do it. He didn't want to be king of
Rome. But that's the accusation these
Jews wanted him to believe. None righteous. No fear of God
before their eyes. If I am to understand something
about His trial and death on the cross, I must take my place
as a sinner. I must find myself in these men
judging that man. I've got to take my place. I've
got to find my seat. Can you find no identification
between yourself and these men? I can identify with everybody
there. The Lord could justify anybody in this room this morning
by taking you and taking Pilate out, or Barabbas, or the unpenitent
thief, or anybody in this whole, these Jews that's crying crucify
them, He could take anybody in this room, take that person out
and put you in and you'd fit. And you'd cry the same thing. That's sin. That's what sin is.
But it's hidden. It's mysterious. It's a mystery. The mystery of iniquity, he calls
it. And it's mysterious because God
overrules it to work His will. And He restrains men from being
as evil as they could be. And those He restrains, men mistake
that for righteousness. They mistake that restraint.
I remember Brother Mahan saying one Sunday morning, if God hadn't
restrained them, they wouldn't have nailed him on a cross. They'd
have put him in a pot and boiled him and ate him. And he's exactly
right. He restrained those men even
to the cost. To the man or woman whose hope
does not fully depend on the outcome of this man, his trial
and his death at the best, is but just an inspiration. That's
all it's going to be. It's just an inspiring story
to the man who believes he has in himself some potential of
unwakened righteousness. The trial and death of Christ
is, at best, just an example, just a martyr's example, just
a goal to shoot for. This is what I'd like to be.
To anyone who still clings to some hope in the flesh, his trial
and death is no more than a step in the right direction. It's just a down payment on what
needs to be paid. Just a partial payment. But to
the sinner, this is all his hope. This is all his hope. Every man saved or lost, finds
his place at the cross. And in this cross is exposed
for us all that we are. You just have to look at it,
everything we are. I don't care what your position
is, whether you're a king or a beggar, everybody's represented
there. until we can find ourselves in
this ungodly crowd and see ourselves in their motives, thoughts, and
deeds, I fear we don't yet understand sin. We just don't know what
it says. We don't know what it means. The awful truth about
sin is that it will, in the name of righteousness, that's what's
going on here, in the name of righteousness, in the name of
religion, in the name of heaven, it will take a perfect man, an
unblameable man, an innocent man, the Son of God, the very
Son of God, by God's own witness, overpowering, overbearing witness
of God. And He'll take him out and nail
him on a cross and laugh at him and mock him while he dies. That's
sin. That's what's in you and it's
what's in me. That's sin. Talk about man's potential all
you want to. All men are represented in the
death of Christ and all men join hands in the deed. Every last
one of them. The Gentile heathen, the religious
man, the monarchs of the earth. Herod and Pilate couldn't stand
each other until they got together over Christ and His death. They
become friends. And I have found this out to
be true. The fact of His death is universally accepted. The
guilt of His death is universally denied. Man don't want it. I stole that watermelon. But
I don't see how you can blame his death on me. I wasn't even
there. You wasn't even there when he worked out that righteousness
either, but you don't mind laying claim on that. You can't have one imputed without
the other. He's the hub around which the
whole of the Christian life revolves, and this is where he's convinced
of sin, This is where he's convinced of righteousness, and this is
where he's convinced of judgment. Sin in its nature, its subtlety,
its vileness, and righteousness in its sufficiency, and in its
incorruption, and in its glory, and judgment, in its perfection,
and in its satisfaction, and in its awful appeasement. What does God require to be appeased? Now watch this, John 19, verse
16, Then delivered he, that is Pilate, him, Christ, unto them,
unto them to be crucified, not stoned as a false prophet, not
reprimanded for going astray, but crucified as a common criminal. And they took him, and they led
him away. Now Mark chapter 15 and verse 10, if you're taking
notes, it says this, that Pilate knew that the chief priests delivered
him for envy. He knew that. Tells you very
plainly. In verse 15 of Mark chapter 15,
it said that they were willing, that he was willing to content
the people. And so he released Barabbas in
the stead of Christ. And then in Luke chapter 23 and
verse 25 he says, he was delivered to their will. Christ. I'm talking about Pilate. Delivered
him to their will. He knew exactly what they wanted
to do. And for his own gain, he gave
him up. He gave him up. That's the end
of every natural man. Every natural man whose eyes
are not opened by the grace of God, who does not see the glory
of God in Christ and understand the truth of God declared in
His Son, this is going to be your end. Sooner or later, by
everything that you do, it's going to be manifested, a turning
over of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what you're going to do.
You're going to trade Him for this and trade Him for that and trade
Him for the next. And then in verse 17, and bearing
his cross, he went forth into the place of the skull, which
is in the Hebrew, Golgotha. Now those that died here had
no consideration, none whatsoever. Their bones were left on the
cross to be picked clean by the buzzards and the beasts. And
then when they were taken down, half eaten or wholly eaten, they
were taken down and buried in shallow graves on the road that
led to the hill. And then by erosion or just the
digging of new graves, a lot of men died on those crosses
under that Roman roof. And by erosion or just the constant
digging, those old bones were broken up and brought up on the
surface, and that place was called the Place of the Skull because
there were bones and skulls all around as you walked up that
place. He carried that cross through a virtual valley of nothing
but dry bones. That's all it was there. An awful
place. The men that went there to be
hanged and nailed on the cross had no consideration. They were
of very low estimates. They were thieves and liars and
murderers. And those people that died there
were not remembered. They were just thrown in the
ground. They were like the children of Israel when they, for the
tenth time, had stepped over the line with the Lord, and he
said, as I live, sayeth the Lord, not one of you is going to enter
into the promised land, but your carcasses are going to fall to
the earth, and you're going to back out into the wilderness,
and you're going to spend the rest of your life wandering around,
and when you die, we're not going to bury you. Your carcass is
just going to lay on the dirt. That's Golgotha. Why say all these things? Because
this is the depth. That's what I want you to see.
That's what I'm trying to emphasize. This is the depth of his condescension
to save sinners. To save a sinner, he has to go
where the sinner is. He has to stand in his stead.
He has to stand in his place before God. He has to be judged
as that sinner needed to be judged and is judged. His judgment rests
on him. The Lord hath laid on Him the
iniquity of us all. Can you close your eyes and smell
Golgotha? Can you just try to picture what
it was? What a stink in the nostrils
of man was this place, this Golgotha. I mean, we just see a roadkill
out here on the road and you pass it and you're half a mile
down the road and you're doing this inside the This was right
out in the open. You see those old bones sticking
out of the sand? Can you hear the weeping and
weeping? This is the end of sin. It's what it is. This is the place of judgment
and condemnation. In John 19, 18, he said, there
at Golgotha, they crucified him and two others with him, on either
side one in Jesus in the midst. Now, there's three things I want
you to see here concerning these three crosses. In the midst,
all men on these three crosses are represented. I want you to
see that. In the midst is the Savior representing
all those given Him by the Father. He's the woman's seed. He's the
seed of Abraham, the seed of David. On the left side is the
unbelieving heathen, guilty of sedition and murder. He's a thief
and a robber. And on the right side, all those
who with heavenly eyes and gracious intervention of God can see Him
for who He is and call on His name. Everybody, every man represented
on these three crosses. The second thing I want you to
see is that all who were represented are dying on these crosses. Every
one of them. Every one of them. Physical death
is the end of all men. And summing up the life of faith
of those old patriarchs, it said these all died, died in faith. Christ must go to the cross and
suffer and die because those who came to redeem are sinners
whose sin demands holy justice. and satisfaction. The difference between the man
dying on the left and the man dying on the right is the man
dying in the middle. That's the difference. That's
the only difference. That's the only difference. They
were both thieves. They were both murderers. They
were both called malefactors. Not one was never lifted higher
than the other. They both took the sentiments
of those Jewish priests and soldiers that were mocking and crying
and said they cast the same in his teeth. Both of these guys. And all of a sudden, one shut
up. Huh? Why'd he shut up? Because that man down in the
middle bought the right for the Holy Spirit of God to arrest
Him and gave Him eyes to see who
He was dying for. That's exactly right. All men
represented in these three crosses. His cross become this man's doorway
into everlasting glory. His cross become a blessing rather
than a curse. His cross become acceptable rather
than a reproach. And His cross become His confession
to all that saw Him and all that were able to hear His words.
Hanging on that cross. We got a cross. We bear a cross. And then thirdly, I want you
to see a distinction declared here. What separated these two
sinners was the crucified Christ. That's the only division worthy of distinction in this
world. Now, we let all kinds of things
cause divisions and distinctions, but there's only one distinction
and division declared. As I said in the beginning, all
men represented on these three crosses. What gave distinction between
the man on the left and the man on the right was the man in the
middle. It's the grace of God. That's it. Period. End of story. If you've got something else
in your life that separates you from somebody, you better throw
it out the back door. We've got one hope, the grace
of God, and it's all that grace is in Christ. All in Him. Paul said, by the grace of God.
If ever there lived a man who could claim some kind of self-esteem,
some kind of self-education, some kind of self-glory, it would
have been the Apostle Paul. He said, I am what I am by the
grace of God. Period. Every man for whom Christ become
a surety, every man given Him in covenant love, every man for
whom He came and lived and died is going to be brought to faith
in Christ. He proved it on the cross. Period.