A great deal of the gospel of John is devoted to the death of Jesus Christ. More of this gospel, the thirteenth through the twenty-first chapter, is spent in those last days and hours than any of the other gospels. Although we talk a great deal about the victory of the Lord and His Lordship, still we must not forget the price that was paid for us, and the way it was paid. We must live through it again and again. For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Hebrews 10:14. The crucial hour was when He faced death, and faced it vicariously for you and for me. The word vicarious means that you stand in another person’s place. It means He had the pains and agony of death for you; He had the penalty of your sins upon Him and He suffered for you.
So they brought Jesus from Caiaphas’s house to the Praetorium. It was the early morning, and they would not enter the Praetorium themselves for fear of defilement, that they might be able to eat the Passover. Accordingly Pilate came out to them … John 18:28, 29. Can you understand how people could be so hung-up in religious observances that they wanted to crucify the Son of God, yet they did not want to go into the Roman Praetorium? They did not want to go into the legal courtroom because they would have defiled themselves and they would not have been able to keep the Passover—with the Passover (Christ) right there! This is hard for us to understand, but it is also difficult for us to understand how religious we can be. In the midst of all of our bondage to religion we can still fail to have a real understanding of the will of God. This is what they were doing.
“What accusation have you to bring against this man?” “If the man were not a criminal,” they replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.” “Take him yourselves,” said Pilate, “and judge him by your Law.” “We have no power,” replied the Jews, “to put any man to death.” They said this that the words might be fulfilled in which Jesus predicted the kind of death He was to die.
Re-entering the Praetorium, therefore, Pilate called Jesus and asked Him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” “Do you say this of yourself, or have others told it you about me?” replied Jesus. “Am I a Jew?” exclaimed Pilate; “it is your own nation and the High Priests who have handed you over to me. What have you done?” “My Kingdom,” replied Jesus, “does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my subjects would have fought to save me from being delivered up to the Jews. But, in fact, my Kingdom has not this origin.” “So then you are a King!” rejoined Pilate. “Yes,” said Jesus, “you say truly that I am a king. For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world—to give testimony to the truth. Every one who is a friend of the truth listens to my voice.”
“What is truth?” said Pilate. So saying, he went out again to the Jews and told them, “I find no crime in him. But you have a custom that I should release one prisoner to you at the Passover. So shall I release to you the King of the Jews?” With a roar of voices they again cried out, saying, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber.
Then Pilate had Jesus taken and scourged. And the soldiers, twisting twigs of thorn into a wreath, put it on His head, and threw round Him a purple cloak. Then they came up to Him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck Him with the palms of their hands.
Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews, “See, I am bringing him out to you to let you clearly understand that I find no crime in Him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the wreath of thorns and the purple cloak. And Pilate said to them, “See, there is the man.” As soon then as the High Priests and the officers saw Him, they shouted, “To the cross! To the cross!” “Take him yourselves and crucify him,” said Pilate; “for I, at any rate, find no crime in him.” “We,” replied the Jews, “have a Law, and in accordance with that Law he ought to die, for having claimed to be the Son of God.”
More alarmed than ever, Pilate no sooner heard these words than he re-entered the Praetorium and began to question Jesus. “What is your origin?” he asked. But Jesus gave him no answer. “Do you refuse to speak even to me?” asked Pilate; “do you not know that I have it in my power either to release you or to crucify you?” “You would have had no power whatever over me,” replied Jesus, “had it not been granted you from above. On that account he who has delivered me up to you is more guilty than you are.”
Upon receiving this answer, Pilate was for releasing Him. But the Jews kept shouting, “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar’s. Every one who sets himself up as king declares himself a rebel against Caesar.” On hearing this, Pilate brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judge’s seat in a place called the Pavement—or, in Hebrew, Gabbatha. It was the day of Preparation for the Passover, about midday. Then he said to the Jews, “There is your king!” This caused a storm of outcries, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” “Am I to crucify your King?” Pilate asked. “We have no king, except Caesar,” answered the High Priests. Then Pilate gave Him up to them to be crucified. John 18:29b–19:16 (Weymouth).
This passage has haunted me because I think we have lived in days similar to this. You cannot beat the hordes of the world. It is as if Jesus stood helpless, and yet you know He was not. I am impressed with the fact that Jesus was deliberately helpless. Only a few hours before He had said, “I could call twelve legions of angels.” There was no question that He could have done this. Why was He so helpless? Because it was the will of the Father that He be thrown into that helpless situation. Even God the Father would withdraw His help from Him until He would cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
The first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the way He died, has to be an absolute antithesis of what the second coming is to be. He is not coming to be crucified this time; He is coming to be admired in His saints and to be glorified in all those who believe. As I read this it brought to mind the cry of people through the centuries who have followed the Lord in a helpless state. Powers of evil have run roughshod over them. But Christ went through this on their behalf and ours. He tells us that if we suffer with Him, as He suffered for us, we will also reign with Him (II Timothy 2:12).
In a sense this walk has been like that. We have gone through a lot of things. It has seemed in days past when we were being oppressed, harassed by many things, that we would pray and cry to the Lord, yet there was no vindication of the people of the Lord. We had deliverance but there was no swift, sudden judgment. There was no distinction between what was of God and what was of Satan. But the time is dawning on us in which the Lord is going to make that distinction. I read this passage in John with my heart open to see that this is the way my Lord died. Now He is seated at the right hand of the Father, “henceforth expecting until His enemies be made the footstool of His feet” (Hebrews 10:13).
Meantime Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins, and Khrushchevs have come and gone. Many things have happened, but do you know what is happening to us now? We are getting ready for a change. Jesus began His ministry with the same spirit with which He ended it. The fourth chapter of Luke says that on the Sabbath day He went into Nazareth to the synagogue and He took the scroll and opened it to Isaiah 61 and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, anointing Me to preach the gospel to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to open the prison to the captives.” He rolled up the scroll, handed it to the president of the synagogue, and said, “This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Jesus had stopped short in His reading because the next line read, “And the day of vengeance of our God.” He had not come for “the day of vengeance of our God.” He had come to give Himself, to love us, to die for us, and to go to the cross: for the mobs to literally riot against Him until He was nailed to a cross.
But now the day of vengeance of our God is about to dawn. When Isaiah prophesied this, it was a package deal, but Isaiah himself probably did not realize that there would be two thousand years difference between the time when Christ would first come to give Himself as the Lamb, and the time He would come as the Lion of the tribe of Judah to rule with a rod of iron with everything in subjection to Him.
What a strange time we are in. It puzzles me sometimes because I don’t know how to react. We stand and prophesy, as the Spirit comes upon us, against Babylon and the powers of evil—how God will begin to bring them down and utterly destroy them. Then someone says, “Talk about the love of God, please; prophesy about the love.” We wait awhile and soon we begin to prophesy about love and grace, for no reason at all that we can see. This is a strange mixture. You people are ready to lay down your lives for each other in real love, and at the same time you are ready to bring down Babylon. You have violence in your heart, and yet, you also have love.
Is this supposed to be? It was not like this in the early church. They loved their enemies and turned the other check. Yet, the Word speaks of the time when the slain of the Lord will be thousands, and of the King that comes on a great white horse with all the armies of heaven following Him. It also tells of two suppers: the marriage supper of the Lamb, and the bride with her beauty and her love coming into it; and the other supper where they call the vultures of the earth to pick out the eyes of the carcasses of captains and kings and dead men. There is stench of the corpses, the slain of the Lord, that are lying dead.
How can we reconcile these two pictures? We cannot even understand what is going on in the churches any more. Chapters 17 and 18 in the book of Revelation talk about Mystery Babylon, the great harlot, mother of harlots; chapter 19 tells of the Bride of Christ robed in pure, white linen, which is the righteous acts of the saints. At this time you cannot tell the harlot from the Bride.
People of God are coming out of Babylon, and Babylon is calling us heretics. The distinction is ready to be made. God has said Babylon will come down; it will be devoured. But the virtuous Bride is going to be retained and kept. Our suffering Savior is coming again and He is coming forth in His many-membered Body.
There is a mingling of the suffering of the cross and the rage of the Lion of the tribe of Judah in you. It is going to be a hard thing for you to adjust to in the natural. You will have to be tuned to it in the spirit: two different realms, two different worlds. Has it disturbed you to realize we have the greatest message of love that the world has ever heard, and at the same time we are preparing to be the instruments for the greatest, bloodiest judgment that God has ever brought on the earth?
Churches miss this completely. They are saying, “Oh God loves you, God loves you, God loves you.” They do not warn the Christians to repent of their Laodicean lukewarmness. God is going to judge that lukewarmness. Don’t say, “Peace, peace; oh, peace and blessing be upon you,” to people whom God is going to trouble. The prophet saw this when he said that the circumcised and the uncircumcised were going to be judged together. God’s judgment is going to begin at the house of the Lord and sweep through the whole world. If the righteous will scarcely be saved, what will come of the ungodly and the sinner?
We must be very careful the way we talk with people. God is setting hope before us, but He is setting judgments in the earth too. It is a big responsibility that we all have and I hope you sense it. You might say, “Well, we could get along a lot better if we’d forget this judgment and get down and have a lot of good Bless-Ins, bless everyone, preach the word and God’s love, and heal everybody.” That would be fine, except you would not be doing the will of God. You would not be doing what God says because God has raised you up to be the army of the Lord.
We must be led by the Spirit of the Lord. What would it be like to be a prophet whom God could use and prophesy through, so that a nation would be blessed? Or, God would say, “Take the word of the Lord and prophesy against this country.” You would prophesy against it and it would come down. You would do it because the Lord told you to do it, not because of your own prejudice. Quite freely you could love or hate. “Lord, You show me who to love. Lord, You show me who to curse. Show me who to bless, show me who is to be judged.”
You might say, “Well, these people over here are good religious people, surely we’re going to bless them.” Those Pharisees? Did Jesus bless the Pharisees? “Well, you’re surely not going to bless these harlots and publicans over here—these hippies and dope addicts, these freaks with their minds blown—you’re not going to bless them? These lame and the halt and blind, you’re not going to spend too much attention on them? Surely you’re going to go back to these good old substantial, solid, religious citizens?” Don’t reason that way! This is one time you had better believe in God’s sovereign choice.
“What about these pharisees?” They are going to be cast out; they were bidden, but they are not worthy for the feast. “Do you mean these lame, and the halt, and the blind are going to get it?” Yes. “It doesn’t seem fair.” Don’t ever say that to God. You are living in a time in which God is going to raise people up. “Why do you say that? I can’t believe that; it never happened before.” It has happened before. People looked at those fishermen and said, “They are ignorant and unlearned men. Why didn’t God pick out one brainy pharisee or scribe and use him?”
For behold your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. I Corinthians 1:26. Why did God choose the base things to confound the things that are? No flesh will glory in His presence (I Corinthians 1:29). We are going to manifest the dying of Jesus Christ. Just like He died, we are going to die too. We are also going to manifest the victory of Jesus Christ and the judgments in the earth for which that death was accomplished.
It is a very strange and wonderful time to be living. I pray that the Lord does not allow us to become vindictive. Remember the story of the man who was bitten by a dog that had rabies? He rushed home, got out a pencil and paper, and began to write furiously. His wife said, “What are you doing?” “Well,” he replied, “I was bitten by a dog with rabies.” Then she said, “What are you doing? making out your last will and testament?” “No,” he said, “I’m making a list of the people whom I’m going to bite first.” He was a little vindictive. Isn’t it strange that we will be called upon to bless, to heal, and to minister to people who have persecuted us? You cannot be vindictive; you are going to have to be a complete channel for the mercies and judgments of God.
The dual nature of this walk is most difficult to understand. God did not raise us up just to bless one another. God also raised us up to be a Remnant such as He has had at other conjunctions of dispensations, which you read about in the Word. At a conjunction of ages, God has always had His men to pronounce judgment: men like Jeremiah or Isaiah, men like Elijah or Elisha. You are raised up to bring the warning voice before judgment comes. You are raised up to be the prophets that prophesy the judgments of the Lord and bring His judgments into action. And yet, you are the Remnant in whom there shall be deliverance; you are that Remnant whom the Lord God shall call and in whom it shall come to pass that “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).
You say, “I can’t understand it,” nor can I, but let’s walk in it! Let’s extend the mercy and grace of God with all longsuffering as we have never dreamed possible. When God speaks we will stand and prophesy it. Without vindictiveness, we will do anything God says to do. We may be harassed and persecuted, but during this time the hand of grace will be extended to God’s people to walk in the name of the Lord.
This message will help you understand a little about the strange, almost opposite roles that we are going to fill. The cry of the prophet Habakkuk in the hours of judgment was, “O Lord, in the midst of wrath, remember mercy.” And so it pleases God to remember mercy in the midst of the wrath that will come in judgments. Some of the greatest times of winning men to God are just before us and some of the greatest upheavals of judgment are also just before us.