Revision as of 21:16, 24 October 2018

Objectives

Introduction

Main Proposition

Main Body

Setting the Stage

The Irony of Poor Decisions (V. 28)

• Notice all the points of Irony.
  • Pilate is in Jerusalem in order to quell any riots that might take place at the time of the first.
    • Normally, the Roman governor resided in Caesarea in the palace Herod the great had constructed. However, Pilate, like the governors before him, made it a habit of staying in Jerusalem at the headquarters of the Roman military detachment in order to control the people during their feasts.
  • The Jews present the one who they should have looked for freedom from to the ones from whom they sought that freedom.
    • The Jews sought political freedom from the Romans. Jesus offered spiritual freedom from sin. In an ironic turn of events the Jews submitted to the authority they hated in order to destroy the authority the claimed to love.
  • The Jews are careful to avoid ceremonial defilement while committing an act of rebellion against God Himself.
    • Jews's considered it unclean to enter a Gentile's house and so they ere unwilling to enter the house where Pilate resided. However, Jews were allowed to go into the courtyard or under the colonnades. The Jews were careful, even meticulous in their efforts to sanctify themselves for their passover feast while at the same time, planning murder.

• Irony is part of being human. When I read verse 28 I am struck by the irony of poor decisions. Yet are we any different, we may not be meticulously maintaining ceremonial purity while committing murder, but that does not mean we don't make the same ironic errors.
• Romans 7:15-18 teaches us that
  • For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
  • Paul's non-christian contemporaries knew of this conflict, Ovid, a Roman poet, stated "I see the better things, and I approve them, but I follow the worse." Jewish rabbis had gone so far to state that every person had two different natures and even named them Yetser hatbox and Tetser Hara. ^[1]
• The conflict between our sin nature and God's will are dizzying.

• Pilate was worried about a rebellion that would turn the province upside down, instead he plays a role in a movement that would turn the world upside down.
• The Jews were worried about defilement that would interrupt their passover, instead they played a role in murder that would bring redemption.

What has Jesus done? (V. 29-32)

What is Truth? (V. 33-38a)

What will you do with Jesus? (V. 38b-40)

1. ↑ Barclay, William, ed. The Daily Study Bible Series: The Letter to the Romans. Edinburgh, 1969, pg 101.