John 18, starting in verse 37, this is where Jesus has been thrust forward into the court of a ruler named Pilate. And Pilate is the man that has the power to condemn Jesus to a death on a cross. He also has the power to free him and to set him free to go about what he would have done. And Pilate knows this, but Jesus says something else to him. He tells him that Pilate only has this power because it has been given to him from above.

And they have a question about the kingdom of Jesus because he's starting to realize that that's the main discussion, is if Jesus is, in fact a king or not. And so here in these verses, Pilate says to Jesus, verse 37, John 1837. So you are a king. Jesus replied, excuse me? Jesus replied, you've said that I am a king.

It was for this reason that I was born, and for this reason that I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. Pilate asked, what is truth? When he had said this, Pilate went back out to the jewish leaders and announced, I find no basis for an accusation against him, but it is your custom that I release one prisoner for you at the passover. So do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?

They shouted back, no, not this man, but Barabbas. Now, Barabbas was a robber or a revolutionary. Depending on the translation you might be reading, the core of this message is that Jesus is king. Overall, Jesus is the king over everything and everyone. And as it turns out, this week, there was a bit of an uproar just over that phrase, Christ is king.

If you get into watching, kind of, let's say, non traditional media at all, you might have found some sources on, like, Twitter and other platforms that talked about a debate of sorts that was going on online by conservative talk show host Candace Owens and a jewish rabbi named Shmuley something or another. I don't know him. I'm not familiar with him. But apparently he and some others took offense at Candace Owens, who is professed to be a Christian, using the phrase Christ is king. The odd thing is they claimed that it was an anti semitic term.

And I thought, well, that's odd. Well, then people are arguing christians, in fact, saying, well, the way she used it was anti semitic. It was used. Look, I don't know. I didn't actually hear what she said or read what she said or any of this.

I just found it ironic as I'm preparing, this message centered around the words about Christ being a king, that that was controversial today or this week or past two weeks. And it was controversial 2000 years ago, apparently. Then it was a bit offensive too. You see, the priests, the chief priests were up in arms and they wanted to kill Jesus over him claiming to be a king. The messiah, Pilate, had put a sign up.

When he does condemn Jesus to be crucified, he puts a sign on the cross over him that says, this is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Now, he might have been mocking him in a way, saying, jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. And they were upset about it on probably two levels. One, because they literally were trying to have him killed because of saying that. And two, what an embarrassment for their king to be crucified.

And not only that, but the guy from little old Nazareth, you know, nobody respected that. And so they didn't like it. It was an offensive sign to them. The roman world that the apostle Paul went and preached to also did not like him going around proclaiming that Christ is king. But there's one bigger thing that's going on here, and Pilate seems to have an issue with it.

He says to Jesus, what is truth? Now, I don't know if he was mocking him, as if saying, like, anyone can know truth. Like, who are you to tell me what truth is? Or perhaps he was genuinely curious. Perhaps this guy has been swayed by so many opinions, so many people trying to tell him what they believed or what they thought or what their interpretation of the times were that they had, have so flooded his mind with so many different competing thoughts or narratives or ideologies that Pilate is genuinely lost in a sea of it.

And he's saying, what is truth? How can you, a man, as he viewed Jesus, how can you, a mere man, tell me what truth is? Jesus didn't claim to be speaking words of truth. He didn't claim to be talking about truth. He claimed to be truth in the flesh.

What Jesus was saying was he himself is truth. And that those who are interested in the truth listen to him. It's interesting that the wife of Pilate had approached him. When we read the different gospel accounts of this period in the trial of Christ, we see that she was coming up to Pilate saying, I've had a terrible dream about this very man. Don't have anything to do with his death.

Pilate didn't listen to her. He listened to the voices of the crowd. He listened to the strong voices of the rulers. And he even tried to have a poor level of leadership, a chicken way out of this, he says, well, I usually try to release somebody to you. We have a custom, don't we?

We have this agreement, you and I. You people and me, we work together a little bit at this time of year, at the Passover festival, I usually release a prisoner to you guys as a show of goodwill and good faith. Of course, he would murder many of them throughout the year. But on this one day, he released one person to show that he was an equitable guy. Right?

Isn't it funny how politicians always try to show us some little bit? They'll vote for some package in Congress that pretty much sells out the next three generations, but they'll give something to our local, state or community that. Some type of funding that helps build a park or something. So we should be happy for that, right? They do these things and we buy into it, just like the people in Jesus day were buying into it.

They said, you know what? We don't want Jesus released to us. Release this other guy, Barabbas. Now, there's, in other places in the scripture we read that he actually was, we were told the first name of this guy, and some translations of the Bible actually leave it out. But the first name of Barabbas, which, by the way, bar means son of someone.

And Abbas, think of the word abba. Father. His name literally means son of the Father. This rabble rouser, this rebel, this perhaps a revolutionary against Rome. His name means son of the father.

And his first name was also Jesus. He says to them, do you want me to release Jesus, the son of the father? Or what's unwritten that we know from our vantage point is Jesus, son of the Father, Jesus, the son of God. Which one do you want released to you? Pilate, not understanding what truth is, goes out, tries to set Jesus free, but not really.

He had the authority to do it, but he refused to rest on that authority. They'll go on to whip Jesus, beat a crown of thorns into his head, abuse him and mock him and crucify him. He was put in a rich man's tomb and then rose again on the third day and the stone was rolled open for us to be able to bear witness to that. You see, in our world, we're as lost in a sea of lies at times as Pilate is. This is that part in the message where I say, where does this intersect our lives?

You could be going through all the same. Pastor Nick, that's a great perspective on that day of what's going on. But I live here in this year, in 2024, where are we at? There's so many narratives and lies and theories and stories going on all around us. This week, you saw any bit of news, you saw that there's a tragedy where a container ship crashed into a bridge.

It wasn't long before the world was critical. Conspiratorial gossip, whatever it was, we just were all over the place trying to figure out how this happened. I mean, there might be logical, you know, make sense here storylines, and there might be a lot behind it. I don't even know. I can't.

How can I know what the truth is in all of this? Was there something nefarious going on? Was there something negligent going on? Or was it simply an accident? How can I know?

I live here, hundreds and hundreds of miles away. I wasn't there. I don't know anything about ships or bridges or any of it like I've seen them. That's about it. So I can't possibly know what is the truth in that.

And if that's just one, I won't say simple thing, but one thing that happened in the world that I can't possibly know when it comes to something big, like Jesus being the son of God, the savior of the world, who died on the cross for your sins and mine, if we're confronted with, how can I know if that's true or not? We, a lot of times are like pilate, aren't we? If we're honest, we say, really? What's truth? Okay, great.

I can accept Jesus died for me. How does that change my life today? We can look at that and say, that's wonderful, Pastor Nick. I mean, I can agree that Jesus is the son of God. I can agree that he died and rose again.

And I can agree that somehow that was for me. But how does that affect my daily life? How does that change how I live each and every day? Well, I'll tell you this. There's not much data on what happened.

There's not much historical information on what happened with Pilate in the years after this. There's some evidence that seems to suggest that he was recalled to Rome because he was. Well, he wasn't a great ruler overall. He didn't really have too many people that liked him. And it was suggested that he was recalled to Rome to face the emperor, who maybe fortunately for Pilate's case, died shortly before he could, like, present himself to him.

So, you know, he's maybe off the hook at this point. And from there, the trail. The trail kind of, you know, dries cold. It gets dried up. We don't know where he went.

The trail goes cold. The coptic and ethiopian orthodox churches believe, or they have a tradition, that his wife believed in Jesus as Messiah and that she convinced him, or by her influence, that Pilate became a believer in Christ and that they lived out their lives that way. But there's really scant historical evidence of that. That's more tradition in their church tradition. But there's really no writings that really suggest that until a few hundred years later.

If anything. In fact, most of the historical evidence we find suggests that Pilate ended his own life a few years after Jesus had been with him.

Jesus is saying to Pilate, when he's there in front of him, stand before you as truth itself. In other words, you can trust me, you can rely on me, no matter how controversial it is, oddly enough, to say this phrase, Jesus is king, how does that affect our lives today? It affects everything that we do. Because if Jesus is our king, our allegiance is to him before it's to anyone or anything else. If Jesus is king, it means we have a benevolent ruler, a benevolent son of God who can relate to us.

He's lived life as we live. Jesus, it says in scripture, experienced all things just as any other man or woman has. And in all those things, he was found holy and righteous. It means that because he died, we also can die to ourselves. Jesus said, if you want to be a disciple who follows after me, you have to die daily.

We have to do that, folks. We have to submit our lives to him, give ourselves over to dying each and every day and then being raised to new life in him. The truth of the empty tomb is that we have a hope for every trial that we encounter. It means that our prayers are answered. An empty tomb means that we have a living savior.

And a living savior means that we have a friend and an advocate that is on our side. So today you have a choice to live as a child of God and a servant of the king. The relationship that can start now if you don't have that relationship with Christ or if you've been there but it's kind of grown cold, you have the opportunity to renew that faith and that trust in him. Today also, we're having baptisms. I think that's the biggest thing about that.

And I'll tell you, there's one little girl that's really excited, and I think the boy that is too, but one of them is jumping right now and the other one's waving. And so I'm not going to hold you guys off any longer. There's some other kids that are around. Do you guys want to come sit in the front row? All you kids, do you want to?

Guys, come on up here. We're going to have Elaine lead us in a song while we prepare for baptism. You guys, come on up. You guys can sit right?