Where Real Power Comes From and What to Do With It

Where does real power come from? Does it come from being the biggest kid in the class? Or from being the most popular kid in school? Or from being the biggest giver in the church? Does it come from the positions of authority that other people give us? Or does real power come from somewhere else?

We’re going to get the answer to that question tonight. First, we’re going to see Pilate use his power to punish Jesus. Then we’ll see the Jews try to use their power to get Jesus crucified. And we’re going to see that even though this is a power struggle over what will happen in the trial of Jesus, the truth will come out that Pilate and the Jews are the ones who are on trial. Will they use their power to do what’s right? Or will they use their power to do what’s right for themselves? Then I will give you a final word on what we should with the power that God has given us.

Let’s begin with verse one: It says that Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The Romans had three kinds of beatings that they gave people. If you were a free man, you got beat with a rod, if you were in the military, you beat with a stick, and if you were a slave or a Jew, you got whipped with the scourge. The scourge was the worst one to get hit with, because that’s the one that had leather tips with hooks and pieces of bone and metal.

And that’s what Jesus got flogged with. And the Romans didn’t limit the number of lashes to 40 like the Jews did. The governor would have three soldiers whip the prisoner until they got arm weary or until the commanding officer said, "That’s enough.’

According to Roman historians, the soldiers would scourge the prisoner on the back until the ligaments and the bones were sticking out. Then they would flip the prisoner over on his back, and whip him until you could see his intestines.

When I used to read these first few verses of John 19, I would quickly skim over the first few verses so I could hurry up and get to the crucifixion and resurrection stories. But now that I’ve seen ’The Passion of the Christ,’ I’ll never look at these verses in John the same way ever again. I’ll always have that picture in my mind of how Jesus got brutalized by those soldiers. And the incredible thing is that he didn’t have to go through it. He CHOSE to experience this living hell for us! To pay for our sins! John 10:18 says that "I lay down my life of my own accord!" In other words, "It’s my decision to do this!"

The question is ’if Pilate thought that Jesus was an innocent man, then why did he whip Jesus?’ Because in Roman times, you didn’t have to be guilty of a crime to get whipped. If the governor thought that you were disrupting public order in any way, he could whip you just to teach you a lesson. And by giving Jesus a terrible beating, Pilate was hoping that this would satisfy the Jews and that he wouldn’t have to give the death penalty to an innocent man.

And in verses two and three, "the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. And they clothed him in a purple robe, and went up to him and said, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face." It was very common for the Romans to publicly humiliate their prisoners. And it was a way of warning other people that if you get in trouble with the law, this is going to happen to you. We’re going to humiliate you physically and emotionally.

Maybe you’re