THE TEXT
John 19:17-19:42
So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. 2 And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe. 3 Then they said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck Him with their hands.
4 Pilate then went out again, and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in Him.”
5 Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, “Behold the Man!”
6 Therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!”
Pilate said to them, “You take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him.”
7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.”
8 Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid, 9 and went again into the Praetorium, and said to Jesus, “Where are You from?” But Jesus gave him no answer.
10 Then Pilate said to Him, “Are You not speaking to me? Do You not know that I have power to crucify You, and power to release You?”
11 Jesus answered, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin…” (John 19 NKJV).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. !e same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” ( John 1:1–3).
Before turning to an exposition of the text, allow me to remind you of the arena where this text needs to be applied. This is what might be called an occasional sermon. The Canadian Parliament recently passed a law, a law called C4, that in effect outlawed any presentation of the saving gospel of Christ to those in the grip of certain sexual perversions. This legislation was plainly aimed at Christians, but whether it was or not, it just as plainly includes Christians.
In response to this move, a number of Canadian pastors have chosen this Sunday to preach on the forbidden topic, in violation of their new law, and in simple obedience to the law of God. For those who need the reminder, the law of God always outranks the legal whims of men.
Although the law does not affect us here in the States, the spirit of it most certainly does, and so a number of American pastors are also preaching on this same topic, on the same day, in solidarity with our Canadian brothers. This is not an instance of meddling in someone else’s business, like taking a passing dog by the ears (Prov. 26:17)—twenty states in the U.S. have already banned conversion therapy, about which more in a moment.
For reasons that will be made evident shortly, this is an issue that concerns absolutely everyone here. It is even more relevant to your children and grandchildren.
With that said, let us turn to a summary of our text.
In the first chapter of Genesis, we are told that God said something. We there read, “God said, ‘let there be light, and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). And of course, what God said was the Word. This Word of God was with God, and the Word of God was God (v. 1). He did not come after God temporally in any sense; He was in the beginning with God (v. 2). Everything that is created came into existence through this Word (v. 3). Apart from Him, nothing created has any possible existence apart from Him (v. 3). God the Father was the architect of all things, and we are told that God the Father in His speaking was the creator and maker of all things, through the executive of His Word, and so it was that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep.
This world is therefore a spoken world. This world came into existence through that Word that was spoken. He is the Word, and we are all His words. Whatever belongs to the created order, this Word created it (Col. 1:16-17). Through this Word God made all the worlds (Heb. 1:2). And this spoken world only remains in existence because God continues to speak it; we are sustained by the Word of His power (Heb. 1:3).
The Word of His power. All created things are sustained by the Word of His power. Remember that. And what is that power? He is the Almighty. He is omnipotent. He is the everlasting God. The Word is therefore the Word of the Father’s infinite and almighty power. Christ, the Word of His power.
Now what is our circumstance? What is our situation? What is the location of the particular corner we have painted ourselves into?
This new Canadian law outlaws what they are calling “conversion therapy.” And the way they defined this objectionable behavior outlaws any attempt whatever to persuade a person with perverted sexual desires to repent of those desires. Now it has come to pass that anyone guilty of violating this law is subject to imprisonment for “a term of not more than five years.”
According to this law, conversion therapy refers to any “practice, treatment or service” that is designed to “change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual,” or to “repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour”—not to mention seeking to change any number of other things that very likely need changing.
But to no one’s surprise, the law does not prohibit conversion efforts running in the opposite direction. It does not prohibit . . . “a practice, treatment or service that relates to a person’s gender transition.” It is therefore illegal now to help someone climb the slope of sexual virtue in Canada, but it is by no means illegal to help them tumble down it, and into the crevices of vice.
Now the preamble of this wretched and misbegotten law declares, ex cathedra, that conversion therapy causes “harm” to those subjected to it, that conversion therapy causes “harm” to society because it is “based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression,” including the idea that “heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions.”
That’s a mouthful. That’s a word salad, right there, and it is about as wrong-headed as a cathedral filled with unregenerate bishops could possibly be.
In effect, they are telling us that for us to repeat the holy standards established by Almighty God causes harm because it perpetuates myths and stereotypes that run contrary to what these dogmatists think should be applauded by all. And if you refuse to go along with this nonsense, it is five years in the big house for you. Someone saw that you weren’t applauding, and started to ask pointed questions.
This law is important, so their argument goes, in order to “protect the human dignity and equality of all Canadians.”
How are we to respond? What are we to think of all this?
Before we turn to examine it in detail, let us get the defiance part out of the way. We do not believe in some kind of hetero-normativity, grounded in human tradition, but rather in theo-normativity, grounded in the absolute law of God. And on the basis of that law, we here declare in the name of Jehovah that the image of God was established by the Creator Himself, imprinted on our race in a fundamental binary. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). This was His image, established by Him at the very beginning, marred by us in the rebellion and Fall, and which is now being restored in us through the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Consequently, we consider this Canadian law to be just one more antichrist in a long line of them, and we reject it as just one more antichrist.
We reject the spirit of this law, and with high confidence in God, we issue the strongest possible defiance to this law. Together with that defiance, we believe it is our duty to issue the strongest possible warnings to those politicians and bureaucrats who are fomenting this nonsense. “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?” (Psalm 94:20).
All of our current cultural conflicts—most certainly including this one—boil down to this. This is a battle for editorial control of the dictionary. And by “dictionary,” I mean the sum total of all our dictionaries. Our aspiring tyrannical mandatorians want to be granted the authority to be allowed to define all words, and they want their definitions to stand uncontested. They want to seize the authority to jail any who use language in forbidden ways. Other definitions, regardless of their source, are backhanded as “myths”—and not only myths, but forbidden myths.
They have determined that it is high time for them to rise up, and challenge the Editor-in-chief, the one who gave us the ability to speak in the first place, and consequently the one who is the Lord over all our old dictionaries. As the giver of speech, He is the giver of dictionaries. He is Lord of all the pronouns. He is the Lord of coherent speech, and we see in this, their incoherent speech, that He is the Lord of wrath also.
We need to understand this effort of theirs as a new Babel; this is a linguistic ziggurat. They intend to defend themselves against what Jehovah did to them the last time—that is, confusing their tongues—by seizing control of all language beforehand. If they are the editors of all the dictionaries, and if they can thereby control our speech, then plainly they have seized what they have lusted after for centuries. They were building a great tower of stones the last time, and God interrupted them by confusing their languages. So this time, as they vainly imagine, they have seized that weapon for themselves, and they will outwit Him, and they will build their new great tower out of definitional elasticity.
But who is it that they have decided to challenge in His position as the Editor of all dictionaries? Who are they taking on? His very name is the Word.
They have decided that they are going to challenge the God of all dictionaries, the God of all language, the one who fashioned Adam as a speaking creature. God gave the gift of speech, the gift of words, to the dust of the ground. They are going to wrestle—for all or nothing—for exhaustive authority over words, and they are going to throw out this challenge to the Word. They are doing this on the lip of the Abyss, on the edge of ultimate madness, on the threshold of the Void, and they are demonstrating to us how the madness is already starting to set in.
They have challenged the Almighty to a battle of words. They have challenged the Font of Speech itself to a duel of words. So if there is one thing that Christians should not be in the light of all this, it is anything like “worried.”
This is like a five-year-old attacking Neptune with a water pistol. It is like trying to set the sun on fire with a box of wooden matches. It is like throwing a snowball at all the glaciers of Greenland. This is the supreme folly. It is demented. It is the latter half of the banquet at Belbury. There is no reason for anxiety, Christian, because our adversaries have staked out their position plainly. They have said blotcher bulldoo, and they have warned us sternly that it is the law.
Now the Lord of all is sovereign over all things, obviously, but it has been His good pleasure to mediate His authority in the world through His church. He has made us kings and priests on the earth (Rev. 1:6; Rev. 5:10). “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23).
This means that the answer to this particular frenzy on the part of our ruling elites is an answer that is going to proceed from the church. And when the church speaks, she does so from her pulpits with an open Bible laid out on those pulpits. And what do we say? The prince of darkness grim, We tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure; One little word shall fell him. That word above all earthly powers No thanks to them abideth; The Spirit and the gifts are ours Through Him who with us sideth. —Luther, A Mighty Fortress Mark that. “No thanks to them abideth.” But that Word abides nonetheless. It abides despite their scorn and pretended sophistication. It abides despite their threats of five-year sentences. It abides despite their abandonment of common law, common grace, and common sense. It abides despite their inversion of all fixed categories (Is. 5:20). The Word abides.
In 1943, when Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt were discussing the shape of the post-war world, the story is told that someone suggested that the pope might have something to contribute to their discussion. And Stalin is reputed to have said, “The Pope, how many divisions has he?”
In this confrontation of ours—and it is a confrontation—the worldings turn to us and they ask us what resources we might have? They have armies and navies, parliaments and conferences, international corporations and nuclear weapons, control of the monetary system, a hammerlock on the media, and many thousands of kept and fully-house trained scientists. So they turn to us with a sneer. How many divisions do we have?
And our answer is simple. We have words, and water, and bread, and wine. And underneath all of it we have the Spirit of Jehovah.
Now the reason that all of this is happening is because our ruling class is unregenerate. They do not know God, and that is why their decisions and determinations and law are shrouded in this peculiar kind of darkness. They dwell in darkness, and they hate the light, and why?—because their deeds are evil (John 3:19).
But what kind of power does darkness have when light is spoken to it? What happens whenever God says “let there be light”? And what happens when God says—as He will say—“let there be light” again?
When God said “let there be light” to the darkness of nullity and non-existence, there was immediately light. But He has the same kind of authority when He speaks to a different sort of darkness—the darkness of this sin and rebellion. And when He speaks light to that kind of darkness, the same thing will happen. Light happens, and the light does not come to be by coincidence. No, the light appears because it is obedient.
They will of course want to stop any word that has this kind of power, any word that has this kind of authority. And they will try to stop it by locking up preachers. Let them. Binding preachers is a whole lot easier than tying up their message.
It does not matter whether our ruling elites have scheduled a great reformation and revival. It does not matter that they have not written down anything like that on their calendars. What matters is whether it is on God’s calendar—and all the prophets, from Samuel on, declare that it is in fact on God’s calendar.
So it does not matter to us that the darkness has not planned for an eruption of light. They have nothing to do with what is going to happen. They have no authority, and less sense. They thought the little dwarf star of the church was about to flicker and go out, little realizing that it was actually God’s appointed place for the next supernova.
And so here is the outlawed light. This is the message that they don’t want you to hear.
Jesus is Lord. Caesar is not Lord. Jesus is the Creator of all things, and it is His will that all little girls grow up to be women. It is His will that all little boys grow up to be men. His is His purpose, intention, and design that the love between Christ and the Church be embodied and modeled by a man and a woman coming together in a fruitful union.
This is His will, and we are commanded to listen to His will because He is the one who rose from the dead. The cabal of crooked politicians in His day conspired to have Him railroaded in a joke trial in the middle of the night, condemned to death, and hanged on a gibbet. While He was hanging there, the diseased politicians of His day came to the foot of the cross in order to taunt Him. Come down, they said, and then we will believe.
But it was not His purpose to come down. He was going to go down, down to the grave, and from that place He was going to come up. We do not follow the one who came down from the cross. We follow the one who came up from the grave. Do you not see?
And as the one who came up from the dead, He is now established on His throne as the Lord of all things. In the first place, He is now the Lord of crooked politicians, and He will dispense with them as He pleases. God has established Him in His great office, as the Son of God, by His resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4). Christ is established as the judge of the whole earth, which includes all these pitiful lordlings, and God established Him in that role by raising Him from the dead (Acts 17:31). The Word tells us that the Lord Jesus will judge the world in righteousness. He will judge the world in righteousness, and not in demented folly.
He is the Lord of the crooked and the Lord of the straight, and He knows how to make the crooked straight. He is the Lord of kings and congresses. He is the Lord of princes and parliaments. He is the Lord of boys and girls, men and women. He is the Lord of marriage. He is the Lord of darkness and the Lord of light. He is the Lord of the secular carnival fun house of mirrors. He is the Lord of love and the Lord of hate. He is the light, and He is love. He is the Lord of oceans and Lord of the dry land. He is the Lord of holiness, and the day is coming when holiness to the Lord is inscribed on the smallest things, down to the bells of the horses (Zech. 14:20).
You may be a member of parliament who supported and voted for this monstrosity. You may be a faceless functionary in some bureaucracy gearing up to enforce it. You may be an intelligence analyst who thinks that your grasp of data rivals the omniscience of God. You may be a Canadian pastor who is trying to figure out how to compromise on this without looking like you are compromising. You may be a soft evangelical think-leader who is trying to figure out how to configure all of this as somehow “not a gospel issue,” and as yet another lamentable exercise in conspiracy thinking by conservative Christians. It actually doesn’t really matter who you are.
It doesn’t really matter who you are because if Christ summons you with His inexorable and efficacious word, then you will come. You can come to Christ from anywhere. If He turns to you, looks straight at you, and summons you with the Spirit of God, the very finger of God, with which He points at you, what will you say? And if He then says, “Come, follow me,” then that is what you will in fact do. He is the Word, and He has spoken. He has said, “Follow me.”
And I, as a minister of His Word, am speaking in His name and on His behalf. Not only am I authorized to do so, I am under obligation to do so. You are now summoned. Christ was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead, and so you are now summoned. “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17)
And when you come to the light, you will leave the darkness behind.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.
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When Jesus had spoken these words, He went out with His disciples over the Brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which He and His disciples entered. And Judas, who betrayed Him, also knew the place; for Jesus often met there with His disciples. Then Judas, having received a detachment of troops, and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, came there with lanterns, torches, and weapons. Jesus therefore, knowing all things that would come upon Him, went forward and said to them, “Whom are you seeking?”
They answered Him, “Jesus of Nazareth.”
Jesus said to them, “I am He.” And Judas, who betrayed Him, also stood with them. Now when He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground.
Then He asked them again, “Whom are you seeking?”
And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.”
Jesus answered, “I have told you that I am He. Therefore, if you seek Me, let these go their way,” that the saying might be fulfilled which He spoke, “Of those whom You gave Me I have lost none.”
Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus.
So Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into the sheath. Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?”
Then the detachment of troops and the captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound Him. And they led Him away to Annas first, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year. Now it was Caiaphas who advised the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.
And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door outside. Then the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to her who kept the door, and brought Peter in. Then the servant girl who kept the door said to Peter, “You are not also one of this Man’s disciples, are you?”
He said, “I am not.”
Now the servants and officers who had made a fire of coals stood there, for it was cold, and they warmed themselves. And Peter stood with them and warmed himself.
The high priest then asked Jesus about His disciples and His doctrine.
Jesus answered him, “I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing. Why do you ask Me? Ask those who have heard Me what I said to them. Indeed they know what I said.”
And when He had said these things, one of the officers who stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, “Do You answer the high priest like that?”
Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why do you strike Me?”
Then Annas sent Him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.
Now Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. Therefore they said to him, “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?”
He denied it and said, “I am not!”
One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, said, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?” Peter then denied again; and immediately a rooster crowed (John 18:1–27).
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Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7 Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. 8 For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.
9 “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. 10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. 12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.
20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17).