SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/29/2017
11:41 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-2 “Pilate’s Proposals”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John
18:39-19:7)
Message of the
verse: “39 “But you have a custom
that I release someone for you at the Passover; do you wish then that I release
for you the King of the Jews?" 40 So they cried out again, saying,
"Not this Man, but Barabbas." Now Barabbas was a robber. 1 Pilate
then took Jesus and scourged Him. 2 And
the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put
a purple robe on Him; 3 and they began to come up to Him and say, "Hail,
King of the Jews!" and to give Him slaps in the face. 4 Pilate came out
again and said to them, "Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you
may know that I find no guilt in Him." 5 Jesus then came out, wearing the
crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, "Behold, the
Man!" 6 So when the chief priests
and the officers saw Him, they cried out saying, "Crucify, crucify!"
Pilate said to them, "Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no
guilt in Him." 7 The Jews answered him, "We have a law, and by that
law He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son of God."”
As we begin this SD I have to say that is a heavy burden
on me to continue to look at what our Lord went through in order to care for
the sin issue that I, along with everyone else born of woman have.
We ended our last SD talking about how helpless that
Jesus must have looked like standing bound and tied up in front of Pilate, for
we noted that this probably changed the minds of many who believed that He was
their Messiah. It was during this time,
as seen in Matthew 27:19 “While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife
sent him a message, saying, "Have nothing to do with that righteous Man;
for last night I suffered greatly in a dream because of Him,’ Pilate was
distracted with this message from his wife that the chief priests to begin to
manipulate the crowd to begin to ask for the life of Barabbas. The chief priests were persistent in trying
to get their way to have Jesus crucified, but as we know now they were actually
playing into the hands of the plans that God had planned from eternity past,
and as we use our new word juxtapose, they would be accountable for what they
were doing.
Barabbas was a robber, a common thief as the other gospel
writers tell us. John MacArthur writes “The
specific insurrection he was involved in is unknown, but such uprisings,
precursors of the wholesale revolt of A. D. 66-70, were common at that
time. Ironically, the same Jewish
leaders who had demanded that Pilate condemn Jesus as an insurrectionist now
demanded the release of the notorious insurrectionist Barabbas.”
As Pilate was fast running out of options on how he could
release Jesus he asks “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” Their answer was to crucify Him “Pilate said to
them, "Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?" They
all said, "Crucify Him!’ (Matt. 27:22).”
Now in order to appease the Jews Pilate then had Jesus scourged, and in
many cases when a person was to be crucified the Romans would scourge them and
also in many cases they would not survive the beatings as the Romans loved to
do these kinds of things to people. Talk
about you cruel and unreasonable punishment they enjoyed it.
John MacArthur writes that “Scourging was a hideously
cruel form of punishment. The victim was
stripped, bound to a post, and beaten by several torturers in turn. Jewish law set the maximum number of blows as
forty (Deut. 25:3), and in practice the Jews gave a maximum of thirty-nine (to
avoid accidently exceeding forty blows; cf. 2 Cor. 11:24). The Romans, however were not bound by any
such restrictions. The punishment would
continue until the torturers were exhausted, the commanding officer decided to
stop it, or, as was often the case, the victim died. The whip consisted of a short wooden handle
to which several leather thongs, each with jagged pieces of bone or metal
attached to the end, were fastened. As a
result, the body could be so torn and lacerated that the muscles, bones, veins,
or even internal organs were exposed. So
horrible was this punishment that Roman citizens were exempt from it (Acts
22:25). The scourging He endured left
Jesus too weak to carry the crosspiece of His cross all the way to the execution
site (Matt. 27:32). Pilate hoped that
this brutalizing of Jesus short of death would satisfy the bloodthirsty mob.”
I think it best to stop here as we will pick this up in
our next SD.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: It should have
been me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to think of this whenever the Lord’s
table is served at our church.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Malice” (1 Corinthians
14:20).
Today’s Bible
question: “In Revelations 19:11-16, when
Christ comes to earth, what two things will He do.”
Answer in our next SD.
4/29/2017 12:19 PM
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