John 18:33-38
Well, this morning we are going
to explore a passage from the Gospel of John, Chapter 18. So
I would invite you to turn there with me if you have your Bibles,
and if you don’t have your Bibles, that passage is printed for you
on page 904 of your Pew Bibles. It’s on page 904, and we’ll be
looking at John, Chapter 18, verses 33 through 38. A moment ago, we affirmed our
faith from the Apostles’ Creed, and there are four people mentioned
there, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and Pontius Pilate,
of all people. And we’re going to see a passage
here where Jesus is before Pontius Pilate, who was the governor
of the Roman province of Judea. And Pilate is seeking to get
at the bottom of accusations that are being made against Jesus.
The Jews are seeking in this passage to have Jesus put to
death. And Pilate is questioning Jesus
to see if there is any legal basis to their claims. See if
there’s any reason why Jesus should be crucified. And there’s
a lot to explore in this passage. But the fundamental question
that Pilate wants to get at here is whether or not Jesus is in any respect a political
threat to him or to the Roman government. Pilate doesn’t really
care about the categories that the Jews are thinking through,
the charges that the Jews are bringing against Jesus for blasphemy. The Jews wanted him killed for
blasphemy, but that is not something that Pilate really cared about.
That wasn’t something that was of great concern to him because
the Roman government was a secular authority. It was an authority
that didn’t recognize or really care about the internal disputes
going on in the Jewish community. So to go to Pilate with the charge
of blasphemy, to charge Jesus with this, and to have expected
Pilate to have put Jesus to death for that was a hopeless endeavor. It would have been akin to something
like a Christian church finding a pastor who was preaching heresy
and trying to drag them into the local district court and
have them charged for that. It is not illegal in our secular
culture to preach heresy and it’s not a crime and the court
wouldn’t even hear the case. But what Pilate is concerned
to know about is whether or not Jesus is the King of the Jews
in the sense that he is seeking to form a political coup and
to lead some form of an insurrection against the Romans and particularly
against Pilate himself. And I’m gonna read this whole
passage here in just a moment from John chapter 18, verses
33 through 38. But we’re gonna zone in this morning on a particular
part of the passage where Jesus replies to the question Pilate
brings before him. He asks him, are you the king
of the Jews? And what Jesus is gonna say in
response is that his kingdom is not of this world. His kingdom is not of this world. And the fact that Jesus’ kingdom
is an otherworldly kingdom has tremendous implications for how
we go about living in this kingdom, which is the kingdom of this
world. In fact, to suggest that Jesus
is a king and to recognize and honor him as kings, as Christians
are called to do, means that the Christian life is fundamentally
political. But it’s not political necessarily
in the way you may think. We belong to a kingdom. And our
fundamental allegiance is to a king. but it is to the King
of Kings and to the Lord of Lords. And this is important for Christians,
particularly Christians living in the United States in this
particular cultural moment because we are in a period of tremendous
confusion as to what the role of the Christian is in relationship
to the government and in relationship to our culture. And there is
a colossal lack of consensus as to what that looks like. to
what it means to live as a political being of two kingdoms, of the
kingdom of this world and a kingdom of another world. And I almost
fell off the stair. So I’m gonna stay put a little
bit better for the rest of this sermon. So the question before
us is this. How should we, as American Christians,
understand ourselves as dual citizens? How do we understand
ourselves as dual citizens, as citizens of the United States
and as citizens of the kingdom of God? That’s the question that
we want to explore this morning. And so with that long-winded
introduction out of the way, let’s take a moment to read God’s
word from John 18, beginning in verse 33. So Pilate entered his headquarters
again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the
Jews? Jesus answered, do you say this
on your own accord or did others say it to you about me? Jesus
answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief
priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, my kingdom is
not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world,
my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered
over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from the world. Then Pilate
said to him, so you are a king. Jesus answered, you say that
I am a king. For this purpose I was born and
for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness
to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth
listens to my voice. Pilate said to him, what is truth? Amen. This is God’s holy, inspired,
and inerrant word. May he write its eternal truth
on all of our hearts. So how do we live as citizens
of both a secular nation and as citizens of the kingdom of
God? What should the Christian’s relationship
be to the secular authority, the civil government? Christians
around the world have had to grapple with this question for
centuries. And in this passage, you see
Pilate asking him a question, asking Jesus an important question,
that arouses these questions in us. Jesus is asked this question
by Pilate, are you the king of the Jews? And how Jesus answers
this question is profoundly important because if he just simply answers
yes I am without any qualification, that could create a whole lot
of confusion about who Jesus is and what he’s come to do.
And you know how these people in Seattle created this this
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, right? They call it CHAZ. It was this sovereign autonomous
zone that lasted, what, two or three weeks? And was eventually
brought down. But basically, they were trying
to become their own little sovereign autonomous nation. And if Jesus
would have simply answered that he was indeed the King of the
Jews, Pilate could have understandably come to think that Jesus was
attempting to do something similar to what the folks in Seattle
were doing, seeking to carve out a Jewish nation in the midst
of Roman rule. Or even worse, it could have
led Pilate to believe that Jesus was setting himself up as some
kind of political rival, that he was seeking to remove him
and to remove the Romans so that the Jewish nation could be governed
by Jewish law with a Jewish king, just as it had been many years
ago. And quite frankly, that is what
the Jews wanted Jesus to be. They wanted him to be a political
military king who would fight off the Romans and boot them
out of the territory so that they wouldn’t suffer any longer
under the oppression of unjust laws that were at odds with who
they believed God to be and who they believed themselves to be
in God. And they wanted a king and a
kingdom who would be working in line with what it was that
they valued and what it was that was in line with their faith.
They wanted a Jewish nation. They wanted a Jewish law. They
wanted a Jewish king. And if Jesus had the power to
heal the sick and to raise the dead and give sight to the blind
and to feed 5,000, then they believe that he certainly had
the power to boot out these Romans and reign and rule in the land. Now, there are innumerable Christians
living in our culture today, whether they consider themselves
to be political conservatives or political progressives, who
still in our time, and perhaps even in this church, there are
people who at least in some manner understand Jesus that way. In other words, they see Jesus
maybe subconsciously, but they see Jesus as a means to their
own political ends. For instance, there’s almost
a twist on the prosperity gospel that many of us are inclined
towards. No matter how much we may repudiate
it, I mean, what is the prosperity gospel? The prosperity gospel
is using God as a means to health, wealth, ease, comfort, and prosperity. He’s not the chief end of life. He’s just the means to the end.
And some of us see God that way with regard to our engagement
with government, with politics. Instead of seeing God as a means
to health and wealth and prosperity, we use God as a means to the
end of gaining a political voice or gaining political power or
social influence so that our culture does not any further
slouch towards Gomorrah. And it’s become commonplace in
the church, whether the church is politically conservative or
politically liberal, to succumb to the belief that the kingdom
of God is flourishing in our nation to the degree that certain
political outcomes are met. In other words, it is so easy
to fuse our identity in Christ with our identity as an American,
or with a particular political agenda, so much so that there
ends up being no meaningful friction between our politics and our
theology. Think about it. What are the
great problems facing our nation? Is it the result of Nancy Pelosi,
Chuck Schumer, the Democrats, the left? Or is it because of
the right, Donald Trump, the Breitbart people, Republicans? Does it make your blood just
boil? that Colin Kaepernick wants to
take a knee at the National Anthem and that other athletes are doing
the same thing. Do those things make you so angry
that you feel like you need to voice them to other people, that
you actually feel it in your body, that you may post about
your anger about these things on social media and you become
more angry about those things than you are about your bitterness
towards people who are sitting next to you in the pew on Sunday
morning that may hold to a slightly different position than you on
those issues? Are you gripped by By what could
happen if we lose what we believe to be some of the tangible evidences
of God’s blessing in our country? Does that make you angry? Do
you fear suffering, humiliation, or rejection, or an uncertain
future? if Christians for some reason
begin to increasingly lose their seat at the table of political
power and influence? Is that what makes you most angry
or does it make you more angry that the American evangelical
church has far too often sacrificed its prophetic voice and exchanged
it for political influence? Are you more concerned about
how unbelievers are conducting themselves in this particular
cultural moment, or are you more concerned about an American evangelical
church who is far too often capitulated to the therapeutic gospel, to
moralism, to false teaching? If the wrong things are making
you angry, maybe it’s because the gospel that you believe is
when a political prosperity infused with just enough biblical truth
to assuage your political palate. And that’s why so much of what’s
happening in the world of government and politics grips you and angers
you and matters to you so much because whether you’re conscious
of it or not, we so often believe that the success of God’s purposes
in this world at this moment is manifested politically and
is displayed through the policies that either flow out of Washington
or Raleigh. or even out of our own local
city hall. And friends, if that is the gospel that you believe,
it is a partial gospel at best and a false gospel at worse. The Bible calls it idolatry.
And maybe you think, well, that’s a little over the top. Maybe that’s a little bit extreme.
But think about it. Why does what happens in the
world of politics bother you so much? Why do you have such
strong feelings about the President of the United States. Whether
you’re like Jerry Falwell Jr. who thinks that, who said just
a couple of weeks ago that Donald Trump is the greatest president
we’ve ever had in the United States, maybe with the exception
of George Washington. Or you take the other side and
you think that he is the most deplorable human being that has
ever set foot in the District of Columbia. There are people
on all sides of that aisle in the church. Why do you have such
strong feelings about the political responses to the racial tension
in this country, to issues that have come to be known as social
justice, to your feelings about Confederate statues, to the handling
of the coronavirus? Why do the decisions of those
who govern make us so angry and matter so much to us? I would suggest to you that one
of the most fundamental reasons why is because you and I so easily
equate with what’s happening politically with what’s happening
with the kingdom of God, with whether or not the country is
flourishing politically as we determined it should flourish,
with the flourishing of the kingdom of God, whether we’re aware of
it or not. In other words, there’s a sense in which we believe that
the health of the church, the spread of the gospel, the glory
of God, the hope for the future, all of these things are generally
enabled on the basis of what is happening in government. And
if that is where you are, I want you to consider a few things
in light of the history of the church. Think about, for instance,
what happens right after the resurrection. You get into the
book of Acts, and you get into this 40-day period between the
resurrection and the time in which Jesus ascends into heaven. And three verses into the book
of Acts, Acts chapter one, verse three, this is what we discover.
We discover that Jesus presented himself alive to them, to the
people, and after suffering by many proofs, appearing to them
during 40 days and speaking to them about what? the kingdom
of God. He speaks to them about the kingdom
of God and he is then raised into heaven and the Holy Spirit
comes down at Pentecost and descends upon people and fills them and
the disciples go out and preach about the kingdom of God, and
what happens? New churches are started, and
people who’ve never heard the gospel become saved. They repent
and believe, and whole households are baptized, and all of these
things are happening despite the fact they’re happening in
a political context that is completely at odds with all things pertaining
to Jesus. And then you take the first three
centuries of the church, You think you live in an oppressive
government now? Take that! Christians were killed
for simply believing and following after Jesus. There are folks
that thought Christians were cannibals for doing what we’re
about to do here in just a few moments, coming to take the body
and the blood of Jesus Christ at the Lord’s table. They were
lied about, they were maligned, they were oppressed, they were
killed in ways that I wouldn’t even mention in front of children. And yet what happens? Under all
of that intense persecution by the government, People come to
know Jesus. The gospel is preached. People
are saved. New churches are started. The
gospel extends to places where they had never heard any good
news. They were barbarians in the most
authentic sense of the word. That’s what they were. Your ancestors,
2,000 years ago, were probably just the most uncivilized barbaric
people that you would ever be able to imagine. It’s unreal
what the gospel did. And then you move forward 300
or so years later to 300 AD and the Roman Emperor Theodosius
declares Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman
Empire. So now the government is sympathetic
to Christianity. The red carpet is rolled out,
and what happens? Well, the gospel still flourishes,
and there’s definitely corruptions in the church during this time,
but churches grow, and new churches start, and people who’ve never
heard the gospel become saved, they repent and believe. Now
let’s fast forward many, many centuries. We just had the 4th
of July yesterday, so let’s think about that, the founding of America.
The government, those folks, those founding fathers, some
of them may have been believers, some of them may not have been
believers, depends on who you talk to about these things, but
we’re not gonna get into all that. The point is is that there’s
no established state religion. We have the First Amendment,
the freedom. to worship, the freedom of religion,
and through many ebbs and flows throughout the course of the
history of our nation, what has happened? People have come to
know Christ, and new churches have been started, and missionaries
have been sent out. And then what do you think about
China? Let’s go to China, to maybe 70 years ago. In the 1930s
and 40s, when the communists took over China, people thought
that the church was going to be stamped out there. There were
missionaries like Hudson Taylor who went to China. and God so
profoundly used him and used other missionaries to bring the
gospel into China and to create this explosion of people coming
to know Jesus. But the communists took over
and they were bound and determined to stamp out the church, to eliminate
it from the face of the earth. And China becomes almost this
closed country for many, many years, but then, we’re able to
eventually kind of peek under the hood and look into seeing
what’s going on in China as the country begins to open up. And
what do we discover? That in the midst of a profoundly
oppressive government, people were still coming to Christ.
The new churches were being started underground. People were coming
to know him. The gospel was being spread in
the midst of a profoundly oppressive government. Think about what’s happening
today in Iran, where people are coming to Christ in droves. Afghanistan, Nepal, India, these
are countries where the gospel is spreading and people are coming
to know Christ at tremendously fast rates. Countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa and East Asia, these are not countries that are particularly
sympathetic to the things of Jesus Christ. And yet, people
are coming to know him. New churches are being started.
Missionaries are going there. Missionaries are coming from
there. It’s an incredible thing to see, and it is not happening
because the government is sympathetic to Christianity, but despite
the fact that it’s totally antagonistic to it. And then you get to our
country, we still, for now, have the First Amendment, and we still
have the freedom to worship, and we’re doing so right now.
But there’s a relatively slow growth of Christianity in our
country. And the growth that is happening
isn’t mainly coming from people that look like you and me, but
it’s coming in our African American communities, and our Latino communities,
and in our Asian communities, and in our immigrant communities,
and yet the gospel’s still flourishing. And why does this happen? But
why is it that there’s oftentimes so little correlation between
the happenings in the civil government and the flourishing of the kingdom
of God? The answer to that question is because Jesus’ kingdom is
not of this world. His kingdom is not of this world. The kingdom of God, by way of
definition, can be found, can be discovered wherever Jesus
is recognized and honored as king. That’s what your most profound
political activity as a believer is, to recognize and honor Jesus
as King. And when that is happening, when
that is happening individually and collectively, then the kingdom
of God that is from another world is revealed in this world. When we recognize Him as having
ultimate authority, ultimate power, ultimate wisdom and holiness
and justice and goodness and truth and love, it’s there that
you’ll find his kingdom. When men and women and boys and
girls begin to honor him with their lips and their lives, that’s
where God’s kingdom is put on full display to a dark and decaying
world. In other words, God’s kingdom
is not worldly and not tied to who governs us or what laws are
passed. It is a spiritual kingdom being
governed by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus
Christ alone. The power of the kingdom of God
is not dependent upon who occupies the oval office, or who lives
in the governor’s mansion, or which party controls Congress,
or the North Carolina General Assembly, but it is built upon
the Holy Spirit’s working out of His purposes in the hearts
of His people as they go out and live faithfully present in
whatever callings that the Lord has placed upon them. The advancement
of the kingdom does not happen through worldly powers, through
worldly weapons, through worldly mechanisms, but it is advanced
by the power of the Holy Spirit. The weapons of the kingdom are
not vicious verbal sparring, or public policy, or military
might, and we discover that in this passage because Jesus says
that if his kingdom were of this world, his servants would have
been fighting with all of the political, social, verbal, and
physical might that they could muster. They would have been using the
same weapons of the kingdom of this world, but Jesus says his
kingdom is not of this world, which means that the fundamental
weapon of God’s kingdom is the sword of the Spirit, the word
of God being read and sung and prayed and preached and tasted
and seen in the sacraments and applied to our hearts through
the Holy Spirit. This other worldly kingdom breaks
through into this world and is made visibly present as Christians
go out and live for His glory. It becomes visible when believers
stand for what is good and what is right and what is true and
beautiful. as revealed in the scriptures.
And then they don’t go out in despair when evil and injustice
appear to win the day because we understand that the battle
has been won, the war has been won. Jesus has conquered, Jesus
has lived, he has died, he has risen and he will come again
and every injustice will be made right. He will wipe every single
tear from our eyes. See, this kingdom of God is made
visible when Christians engage with their governments through
voting, through advocacy, maybe even through holding office in
ways that are shaped and framed by the word of God. Now, you
don’t stand on neutral ground when you go to the voting booth.
You stand there as a disciple of Jesus. How you engage politically
is a discipleship issue, but there is a vast difference between
placing your hope in who is elected and what happens in the kingdom
of this world, and then allowing your position you have as a citizen
of the kingdom of God to saturate your life as you live as a citizen
of the kingdom of this world. Just hear me on this one. Whatever it is that makes you
the angriest or that brings you the most joy in life is probably
where your hope lies. Whatever makes you the angriest
or whatever it is that brings you the most joy exposes where
your hope lies. And if you are angrier at what
happens in Raleigh or Washington than you are with the corruptions
of the church, then your hope is probably in the kingdom of
this world. And if you are more thrilled with certain candidates
winning elections and others being defeated than you are with
the faithfulness of the church, or the missional impulse of the
church, or people coming to know him and to grow in the grace
and knowledge of him, then it’s likely that your hope is in the
kingdom of this world. To set your mind on earthly things
like the quest for political power, material prosperity, social
acceptance, whatever it is, that is the pursuit of a destructive
end. Because our citizenship is in
heaven and we do well to set our thoughts and affections there.
what happens in the kingdom of this world matters a lot. And
how we conduct ourselves as citizens of the kingdom of this world
matters because it’s the context in which we display that we are
actually ultimately citizens of the kingdom of God and that
our identity is in Christ. This is the arena, the kingdom
of this world, where we live out our calling. To love the
Lord with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength and
to love our neighbors as ourselves. But the kingdom of this world
is not where our hope ultimately lies. And as such, our affections
for the things of it ought to be tempered by the fact that
we are aliens and strangers here. Our ultimate citizenship is in
heaven and the citizens of the kingdom of God. Who holds positions
of political power and what laws are passed are matters of great
importance. And I don’t want to undermine
that at all. But they are not the matters
of greatest importance. Seeking God’s kingdom first and
his righteousness is the matter of great importance. And as citizens
of the kingdom of God, let us make that our quest. Our quest to seek him, to live
for his glory, to live for the good of our neighbor, and to
set our affections on things above. Amen, let’s pray together. Our Father, this is a challenging
word for many of us. There is so much wrong in the
world, and so much that can lead us to falsely believe that you
are not in control of it. And so we ask that you would
make us repentant for believing lies, that are so subtle that tell
us that our hope is in who governs. And instead, remember that we
have a king whose kingdom cannot be threatened and cannot be moved.
We pray you would work this out in us for the sake of your glory,
the sake of our joy. In Jesus’ name, amen.