The Question Jesus Did Not Answer

If you will, please turn over to John 19. There's a statement that Jesus did not make in John 19 that speaks volumes. After his arrest and brought before the Jews and then ultimately delivered by the Jews to the Roman governor pilot, we have that scene where Jesus was there in this formality. The Jews would have handled Christ all on their own had it not been for the fact that they had the Roman occupation and Roman authority over them. And so a final decision regarding his death had to come before the Roman governor, which was a man named Pontius Pilate. And while he was there, he was scourged, and that was where the crown of thorns was put down upon his head, as well as the purple robe. And he was mocked, scourged, and scorned as he was brought before Pilate. And in John 19, we come down to verse 7. The Jews answered him and said, We have a law that according to our law he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God. Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid. The Jews' charge against Christ was that he claimed to be the Son of God, therefore being God. And that was blasphemy, and according to their law, punishable by death. But they couldn't, as I said, do it all on their own authority. They had to have the acquiescence of the Roman authority. But Pilate was afraid.

His fear was not so much because of Jesus, but because of his authority and his position in keeping the peace as a Roman governor, wanting to placate the Jews and keep them mollified.

So his fear had multiple dimensions to it when it says that he was afraid.

It says he went again into the praetorium then, and he said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. No answer. Where are you from?

He didn't want to answer the question. In a sense, he'd already answered the question. If you read the earlier verses of the account here before Pilate's court, Christ had already said more than enough to give an answer to that question. And at this moment, before Pilate, he didn't answer him. But he spoke volumes in that answer.

Had he responded to Pilate, I don't think Pilate would have known what to do.

He would have been more afraid had Christ given him the answer of where he was from. Perhaps Pilate had in his mind just, What part of the country are you from? Something he should have already known and probably already did know. He could have said he was from Galilee, from Nazareth.

But that wasn't the real answer. The real answer to the question, Where are you from? is an answer that makes all the difference.

It makes all the difference in your life and in mine. Knowing where Christ comes from, where he came from, makes all the difference in life if we really stop and analyze it. Because where he came from is where he returned. And it is where he is today.

Where Jesus is, is our destiny. And that destiny defines our life and makes all the difference. Had Jesus given the answer to Pilate and had Pilate understood and accepted the answer, it would have made all the difference for him at that point in time as well.

But Pilate was just like all the others in power at that time, and he didn't. He didn't know who Jesus was. He didn't know where he came from. He didn't know his purpose. Paul would later write in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 8, for had they known, Paul writes, had they known, they would have crucified the Lord. They would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Had they known and understood where he came from and who he really was, they would not have crucified him. But they didn't know. They didn't acknowledge the fact that he was the Son of God, that he was God, and they couldn't face that. And Pilate couldn't either. He knew what was right, in one sense, in this instance, but he feared losing power. He really knew that he wasn't an innocent man.

But if he refused to go along with the Jews, there would have been insurrection. And then Pilate's boss, Caesar, would have reacted because this would have posed a threat to the Roman control within the region. He also feared a popular uprising, that if he didn't agree with the Jewish rulers, their leaders and their political demands, there would have been an uprising. He probably also feared Jesus to a degree because he did not know for sure with whom he was dealing. Was he just a rabbi, gifted, who had a momentary following?

Were all the stories about his miraculous healings really true? There had been enough eyewitnesses and enough come back that he couldn't completely dismiss it as a fakery.

And in fact, Pilate had received a warning from his wife. If you remember the story in Matthew 27 in verse 19, you can turn back to that, Matthew 27. And verse 19, it says, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, Have nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of him. And so here's Pilate, while he is sitting in judgment, he gets a message handed to him from his wife. Have nothing to do with this just man. He's a good man. I've been dreaming about him in the sense that she was troubled and she had some premonitions.

Dreams are a powerful factor. And there are some dreams that have meaning and substance to them. We read about a number of different instances in the Bible of dreams. And this is one where Pilate's wife had received a dream. And so you can see the confliction in Pilate as he's standing there with Jesus before him, knowing that he has Pilate answers to a higher power, Caesar. And he had these Jews in front of him who were creating a scene, potential rebellion and insurrection, and then his wife. And you have to imagine Pilate was thinking, you know, she may know what she's talking about. You know how wives can be.

When they put it just a certain way, you can't just ignore it. And men, there are some things you need to have a certain level of discernment on. There are times, many times, to listen to your wife. She knows what she's talking about. In this case, Mrs. Pilate knew what she was talking about.

And so he was torn between three different directions and fearful more of men than he was of God. He's an interesting case study in himself. We don't read any more about him, at least in the Bible. But you know the rest of the story. He washed his hands of it, and Christ went off to his death. But his lack of an answer speaks volumes. Where are you from? Where do you come from? The answer to that is that Christ came from far more than just the village of Nazareth in the northern part of Galilee in Israel.

He came from a place far away. He came, as we might say, from a distant land, from a distant place. And he was more than just a man. And that knowledge is something that is very important for you and I to think about as we prepare ourselves to take the Passover and get into the days of Unleavened Bread, as we begin to focus our mind upon the sacrifice of Christ. It's good, I think, and I want to take the time in my sermon this morning to focus on the fact that Christ indeed was God, that he was the God of the Old Testament, he was the God of the Bible that we read about, that he had divine origins. Because that is the answer to Pilate's question, where do you come from? Christ had existed, if we use that term to understand whatever it was, he had existed in a pre-incarnate state as what John would later record as the word.

I said that the Proverbs refer to us a concept of wisdom that dwelt before the physical world that was. He was this being that we read about in the Bible. He was the God that appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. He was the God who let Israel out of Egypt. He was the God of the Old Testament. A concept that is very, very difficult for people to grasp and comes as a complete shock to most people as they may believe in God, they believe in Jesus Christ, but they have a vague, mystical misunderstanding about really who Jesus was, and not understanding the fullness of that is to miss a very important part of the message and of its relevance to our life.

You see, the modern view of Jesus is that he was more of a man than anything else. Modern scholars and revisionist historians and theologians have reworked the story so much, and really that goes back even into the early centuries of the church and the story of their attempts to explain who Jesus really was. I always tell the students when I talk about this part of the story and the shift and change from doctrine that the early church, the apostles, the church, they understood who Jesus was. You read in John 1.1 where it says that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. There is no record of debate, questions, musings about Jesus's divinity in the gospel accounts. And in the writings of Paul, the early church clearly understood it. The questions about him being a Messiah and the Son of God came later. When Greek thought and other ideas were blended into the truth and began to fog and cloud the clarity of truth that the scriptures give to us, then they had issues and questions that raged throughout the Christianity and Christian history for centuries and began then to divide people into camps over ideas that was attempted to be reconciled in the false teaching of the Trinity by the time of the fourth century. But that false idea doesn't give truth an answer to the teaching about God and His nature. And the confusion continues to our day. And so many who teach religion and religious studies look at Jesus and the vision that we have of Christ from the New Testament as an inaccurate, incomplete picture that cannot be accepted as truth. And yet if we look at what it says and we look at the story and we look at the history, we really, a clear, unvarnished perspective has to conclude that they mean what they say and say what they mean. Christ was more than just a gifted rabbi or a teacher. The early growth of the church, the explosive growth of the church, puts these ideas to rest. There was no time for Peter and John and the apostles to concoct a resurrection story as to what happened with their master, their leader. They didn't have the time to do that.

These were not even men of that particular bent of mind. They were carpenters themselves and fishermen and tradesmen. They were not intellectuals who were seeking to bend the will of people to their own ideas. You read that they scattered out of fear and then out of almost dissentress until they were brought back together by the resurrected Christ. They had no desire to go out into fount of religion and to make a sacrifice of their lives, even to the point of death for that. Unless, indeed, they believed that Jesus was who he said that he was.

The Son of God resurrected from the dead that he was Christ and Lord, and they equated him and understood that he was God. I'd like to take us through a brief review and study of that topic this morning to help us understand that again, focus on our minds, because it is so important for us to understand the answer to that question that Pilate put to Jesus, where do you come from? Because that makes all the difference, understanding where he came from, because that's where he is, and that is our destiny. That is our purpose in life, to be where Christ is and to be like Christ in that sense. Perhaps the boldest claim that Jesus made about his identity was found in John 8, where he was challenged in long discourse here by the Jews, the Pharisees, who he was and what he was doing.

They accused him of being a demon, having a demon in verse 49. He said in verse 52, if anyone keeps my word, you'll never taste death.

And then in verse 56, he said, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. And by this time, they were just being worked into a frenzy that he was talking about Abraham in the sense that Abraham saw his day and rejoiced in it and was glad in the knowledge of what he was doing right before their eyes. And then in verse 57, the Jews said to him, You're not even 50 years old and you've seen Abraham? Again, just the disconnect. They couldn't get it. Jesus said to them, Most assuredly, I say to you before Abraham was, I am.

Before he was, I am. Now, that sounds a bit confusing the way it is translated into English, but in the language that Christ spoke to them, he was making a claim that immediately they recognized was blasphemy from their teaching because he was claiming to be God. He was claiming to be the God that they knew that had spoken to Moses in the burning bush when he used this terminology that comes down to us translated, I am.

Now, we use that today. At least my mother used to. I don't know if any of you ever did, but my mother would say about somebody or even sometimes even about me if I kind of got uppity running around the house. She'd say, Who do they think they are? The great I am? The great I am? And she was even, you know, just a colloquial phrase off of what Jesus said in terms of him being, you know, God.

People think that, you know, think start acting and talking like they're God, being the great I am. But the Jews understood in the language that is far more than you and I can in the English that he was making a claim and that's why they took up stones in verse 59 to throw at him. They were going to kill him on the spot, but he went out of the temple going through the midst of them and so passed by.

And you read this and you realize that it was almost like they just had a momentary freeze and Christ was able to walk right down the aisle through a group of a dozen or more or whatever that were there that were had stones in their hands and they were momentarily blinded or confused and couldn't act as he walked through the midst of them and left the temple before they could do what they wanted to do.

And they somehow then turned around and wondered where did he go. It was a mass confusion that came over them from a spiritual confusion. But Christ was really identifying himself as the one whom the Jews knew as the God in the Old Testament. In one breath he was saying that he existed before Abraham, that he was the same being as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And that was something they could not register. If you go back to Exodus chapter 3 verses 13 and 14 in Moses' confrontation with God in the burning bush, it is the same language that was sent here in Exodus 3 and in verse 13.

When Moses asked God on this occasion, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you and they say to me, what is his name and what shall I say? God said to Moses, I am who I am. Say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you. Now again, that may not resonate with force to us, but that name, that expression in the original language, did.

And it was a name that they understood as the eternal one. However it's pronounced, Yeshua, Joshua, Yave, all of this, we don't get hung up and should not get hung up on the pronunciation of the name of God. The Jews had a sacred prescription against even mentioning the name of the I Am. And of course, people today can get hung up on the topic as well. I instantly know the type of mentality or person, maybe their philosophical, theological bent, that they're dealing with. If somebody calls me and has questions about the church and what we teach and they start referring to Yeshua.

When I hear someone starting to use the name Yeshua, they won't say Christ. They won't say God. They'll say Yeshua. Then I know that they are putting emphasis upon the name and its pronunciation and how they refer to God. And whether they're sacred names or some other particular following, I understand more a little bit about what we're dealing with.

Again, that's another whole subject in itself, but we don't get hung up and make doctrines out of the pronunciation of the name of God. It's not something that we can even clearly define with precision because of the blowing linguistics and all of that. So it is not a teaching doctrine position that we have that we should adopt that does divide us. But to see that the reaction that the Jews had here and what they understood as we then understood and realized this teaching is really what is the most important.

That they recognized as they had a concept of the God of the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He was the Eternal One, self-existent, which is really what the name brings out in terms of meaning and understanding. They recognize that. This was speaking of the Eternal One, the One who always exists and the One who was, is, and always will be.

It's another way to understand it, that without beginning, without end. And those distinctions they understood could only apply to God, whose existence is eternal and everlasting. This is something that's impossible for us to grasp. You and I cannot grasp the concept of a being who is self-existent without beginning, without end, who was, is, and always will be. We'll say we'll talk about the Eternal, we'll talk about God, we will talk about God's existence and try to understand it from a doctrinal point of view and accept it as a belief.

But as I've said before, human beings, just we can't really fully understand what that reality is. But that's what was implied within the name. As Jesus pronounced it here before them and made this very startling statement, they knew exactly what he meant, and that's why they picked up the stones to kill him because they thought that he was guilty of blasphemy.

And they had in their mind many different scriptures that would take them back to understand this concept. One of them would have been Isaiah chapter 42 and what is said there.

Isaiah chapter 42.

Verse 8.

Where it says, I am the Lord, or the Eternal, that is my name. And my glory I will not give to another, nor my praise, to carve images. And so they, in hearing Jesus say what he did, they would have known as well what this says. And this is a statement made through the prophet Isaiah, that my glory I will not give to another. I am the Lord, that is my name. And of course this is being made in the context of idolatry and the fact that God would not give his glory and his name to any any graven image to any other idol. This is not making a statement that there is only one unitary God to get off into that subject. This cannot be a scripture that you would use in that sense because it's said within the context of idolatry. In chapter 44 and verse 6, a similar statement is made that there is no other God. In Isaiah 44 and verse 6, thus says, The Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last. Beside me there is no God. And again, the context of this chapter is talking about idolatry as you read through it.

God does not give his authority, image, glory to another. There is no other God. There are no other conceptions that can be created by human hands to worship in the way that God is to be worshiped as creator, the self-existent, eternal one. So again, back to the point, to the Jews, there was no mistaking who Jesus claimed to be. He was the one that the nation of Israel understood to be the true God. Christ was claiming to be the I Am. He was the God who the Jews knew as Yave, Yeshua, however you want to pronounce it. And that name to a devout Jew was something they would not pronounce. That was a special name for God that could only refer to the one true God.

So there was no question in their mind that he was saying that he was the Jehovah of the Old Testament, that he would not give his name or his honor or glory to any other. He was that God.

And so it's little wonder that the miracles, the teaching, the deeds that Jesus performed drew people, in some cases, to react by wanting to throw stones at him and accuse him of blasphemy. And is why when they brought him before Pilate, they said that he claims to be the Son of God.

And when Pilate said, where do you come from for Christ to have given the true answer, would he have understood it? Would he have understood it? Likely not. Again, the spiritual deception was there. And Pilate was not versed enough. But he was troubled. And he was fearful for many different reasons. Christ, in many different ways throughout the Scriptures, identified himself as the God of the Old Testament. And again, for all of the modern scholarship and knowledge, the average person on the street just doesn't really grasp this. And when people come to understand it, it becomes a certainly a new truth and a new understanding. And when you really begin to think about it and put it all together, then it is a key to unlock the Bible and God's plan and purpose for understanding. You have to understand this to lead us to further understanding of God's purpose and God's plan.

In John 10, Jesus referred to himself as the Good Shepherd. He said in John 10 and verse 11, he said, I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

As he used this as a metaphor to explain his role and his teaching. But again, they would have fully understood this, his listeners, and did understand it because in Psalm 23, the famous 23rd Psalm, what is the first line? How does the 23rd Psalm open?

The Lord is my shepherd. And Christ equates himself with this right here in John 5, verse 22.

John 5 and verse 22. He says that he is a judge of man and nations. John 5 and verse 22. It says, the Father judges no one but has committed all judgment to the Son.

Then down in verse 27, and has given him authority to execute judgment also because he is the Son of Man. And then back in Joel, chapter 3 and verse 12, it says that the Lord will set to judge all nations. So by Christ saying that he is given judgment, the authority to execute judgment, he brings again into understanding this knowledge about who he is and what he is to accomplish and what he is doing. Christ said in John chapter 8, he said, I am the light of the world. John 8 and verse 12.

I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life.

The light of life. Couple that with Psalm 27 and verse 1, where it says, the Lord is my light.

Psalm 27 verse 1. So again, multiple times Jesus equated himself with descriptions as a shepherd, as a judge, as a light giver. He understood himself and who he was as the Lord of the Old Testament. The one who appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one who made those promises, the one who led Israelites through the sea. He's the first and the last, as other prophecies said as well. And so, when we go back to John chapter 18, we see that when he was arrested, John 18, he made another statement in this regard that blew them away.

John 18, verse 6, when Judas had brought the soldiers, stood among them, and he asked them, who are you seeking?

Verse 6, when he said to them, I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground. Now, you'll notice that the word he is in italics, which means it is added.

And you take that away. It seems like this was added to grammatically correct and fill out the sentence. The reality is he basically said the same thing that he had said in John 8, I am.

He spoke the word, the divine word, that he was that eternal, self-existent being.

When they asked him who he was, he said, I am.

And the force of those that the force of the words caused them to draw back and fall to the ground.

The soldiers and those who were the priests and the Pharisees. Because verse 3 tells us, who the group that was a detachment of troops, officers, chief priests, and Pharisees that came down with lanterns, torches, and weapons. So you could certainly, if the Jewish or if the Roman troops didn't fall down, you could well imagine the priests and the Pharisees did. And perhaps that was one final witness to them of the power of the name spoken by the one who was and said, I am. And we could, you know, you can only well imagine what, you know, was it a physical force that mowed them down or was it just the words itself and the manner? And it was a spiritual matter that caused them to fall to the ground momentarily, lose their balance, and stumble.

You can well imagine that for those scribes and Pharisees, for years to come, they remembered that moment in the garden. And it no doubt smote their conscience. But this was there is there is no no question as to what Jesus taught about himself, what they understood, and what he was accomplishing and with his life. Christ was really say and said on other occasions things that are so very clear because he was asserting that he was the one through whom people would have and could attain eternal life. In John 6, let's go back to John 6, this was a bold, very bold claim. In verse 40, This is the will of him who sent me, that everyone who sees the sun and believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day. He was the one through whom men and women could attain eternal life. And he says that that belief must be in him, but also in the one that has the power to resurrect them at the end. You look over in verse 47, he says, Most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life. And down in verse 54, Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. That's a bold claim to have in his hands the authority over life and death, and the eternal destiny of people. Christ held that people's attitudes toward him would be the determining factor in God's judgment in the time of the judgment. When he would say that those who confess before me that I am the son of man, I will confess before the angels of God on another occasion. But if you deny him, he said, I will deny you before the angels of God.

If Christ didn't feel that he was the divine Son of God, then this would only be looked upon as a very narrow and narrow-minded idea. He was saying that people's salvation depended upon their understanding and confession to Jesus and their belief in who he was, what he taught, and what he did. The conclusion from what we have in these eyewitness accounts is inescapable. Christ understood himself as divine along with the Father possessing the right to judge God, which only God has the right to do. And the disciples understood this as they went forth from this particular point in time as well. Those who personally knew Christ were taught by him, who wrote the New Testament, James, John, and Peter. Then Paul made teachings and statements that were consistent with what Jesus said about himself. And these disciples, you have to understand, had their formative background, the fact that they were monotheistic Jews. They worshipped one God. And yet they came to understand that they saw for themselves and agreed that Jesus was God. And then they went out and gave their lives for that belief.

Again, the idea of a Passover plot to hide the body and claim that it was resurrected was beyond the intention, even, of these men and the women who were there as well, who had followed Jesus during his years in his ministry. This was not a sneaky, sinister, self-serving group of people seeking to found something that was going to go diametrically opposite to their own Jewish background, and certainly that of the Roman authority in their world at that time, for them to give their lives for this belief in itself. Honest scholars admit and realize is a very, very strong and powerful proof of what they heard from Jesus and what they believed when he said what he did about himself. It left no doubt in their minds. And it's why, when we read the accounts in Matthew, for instance, where he opens in his gospel with the story of Christ's birth by a virgin, by Mary. And he comments on that. And Matthew brings in and makes the connection from Isaiah, chapter 7, where it says, Behold, a virgin will conceive.

She will bear a son, a child, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

That's quoted in Matthew 1, verse 23. Matthew is making it clear, and he understood that this child, that born of Mary, is God, Emmanuel, God with us. And then, of course, John, and I've already mentioned in John chapter 1 and verse 1, where he said in verse 1, In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Now, those are two very, very powerful statements from the Gospels, from Matthew, chapter 1, verse 13, and John 1, verse 1, that show what they came to understand and to state very bluntly in believing that God became flesh and dwelt among men was born even of a virgin.

I mean, it's such an impossible story. I mean, why would at least they would have, you know, it couldn't have been the second son, the second child of Mary.

How can a virgin conceive? I mean, you add another layer of incredulity to the story when you do that.

You would think a fisherman from Galilee might have omitted that from the story as they tried to make this up, but it wasn't made up. They had to be true to the Scripture, and they understood it to be such. And they understood that to be what Christ was. There's a quote from a Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, about this whole matter. Lewis was a – C.S. Lewis was a scholar, I believe, at Oxford University, and he was, for most of his life, an atheist until he then adopted Christianity. But he wrestled with these stories, and what he wrote and what he said about Jesus and the statements that Jesus makes and what we read in these accounts still is a profound statement. And let me read it to you. He wrote – Lewis wrote this in his book, Mere Christianity.

He said, I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him or Jesus. He said, I am ready to accept Jesus – as he quotes people who try to grasp Christ, he quotes them by saying, I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is, the one thing we must not say. Lewis goes on.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. In other words, prevailing thought among people as they look at the gospel accounts and they try to reconcile themselves. And Thomas Jefferson, our third president, was like this. They accepted Jesus and his teachings as a great moral teacher, kind of like an ancient gondé. Okay? And Lewis is saying, a man who was a man and said the things that we've already read Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be a lunatic. He would be a charlatan. That's not a moral teacher. Lewis goes on to say, you must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon. Or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about us being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. He didn't. And as we've seen from these statements, that's not what he did.

Christ was God. The God of the Old Testament, the God who thundered the law from the top of Mount Sinai.

Where he came from makes all the difference. And at some point, as we have to imagine it, this word sat down, if you will, and all of this as we try to humanize it in our own terms, doesn't even begin to do it justice, but we have to kind of put it in our terms to grasp. But at some point, the word sat down with the one who was the father, who would be the father, and they came up with a plan. They came up with a plan, and as part of that plan, one, the word would have to give up his divinity, become human, and die, and be resurrected, and come back as divine. At some point, in the vast distance of past time or even before time was, because we read this, I think even was brought out in the sermonette, the scriptures that say before the foundation of the world, the Lamb was ordained. That plan came in true being, and it was only a matter of working it out. And as Galatians tells us, Christ was born in the fullness of time, and he did what he did. The book of Hebrews is a book that really gets very emphatic about Jesus being God. In Hebrews chapter 1, I'll just read a few verses of this, the whole book expounds the story fully, but in Hebrews 1, it says God, verse 1, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.

Christ was the creator. He spoke through that creative force, the word, who being in the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. Then down in chapter 2, in verse 10, it says, for it was fitting for him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, because he was the creator, God, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.

For he who sanctifies, and those who are being sanctified, are all of one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren.

Notice what it says in verse 10. In bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.

Christ came down and he suffered. He suffered with the creation. He felt all of the pains of this physical life. In Hebrews 12, you can just quickly turn a couple of three pages over to chapter 12.

Verse 1 says, Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight in the sin which easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. He endured hostility. He suffered. He went through all of that physically as a human being to fully understand what it is, the fullness of the human experience. Back in Hebrews 2 verse 9, we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor that he by the grace of God might taste death for everyone. And then down in verse 14 of Hebrews 2, he says, And as much then as the children are partaken of flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared in the same that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. So he endured the suffering of this life and every inch of the suffering. We make a great deal and we can, as we try to explain God and God's love over the idea of why does God let people suffer? Why evil? Why suffering? We have a booklet on that. It's a great question. And that's an appropriate question certainly to ask and to, as an entree into explaining certain truths to people. But you know, at this time of year, and really as an anchor to this subject, we should also ask why did God suffer?

Why did God suffer? We wonder why we suffer. And legitimately so, or someone who is a just person will suffer. But at this time of year we should ask the question to verse 9. It says that he was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. That he might taste death for everyone. Why did God suffer? Why was it necessary that God suffer? He had to learn the full experience of the human condition, human life, and he did. That, too, was part of the plan.

He was tempted, yet without sin. He experienced fear. He experienced pain. He experienced joy, love. The full breadth of all the human reactions and the human emotions that you and I go through. And to the end of even death.

Why did God have to do that? Because that was the plan. Because that was the purpose.

And that was what was behind the question and the non-answer to Pilate. Where do you come from?

The answer is he was God. And he became flesh for the purpose of dying for the sins of all of mankind. But Pilate wasn't ready to understand that. Pilate wasn't ready to accept it. As I said, the answer was our destiny. The answer to Pilate's question makes all the difference when we fully grasp it ourselves. In John 17, in this final prayer that Jesus gave before he went out and was arrested, John 17, he prayed to God. He lifted his eyes to heaven in verse 1. John 17, verse 1.

And he said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that your Son also may glorify you.

Direct prayer to the Father. He, again, knew who he was praying to and why. As you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him, and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do. And now, O Father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was. Christ was going back to that glory. He was asking for that.

The glory to which Christ returned has to do more with the quality of life as it does with a duration of time. Understand this glory where he says, glorify me with the glory that I had with you before the world was. Understand it as a quality of life that he perfectly modeled. To enter this quality of life is to now, for you and I, to experience a touch of the splendor, the majesty, the joy, the peace, the holiness, and yes, the holiness in our own life today, that really does characterize the life of God. To strive to be holy people, which means we put away the evil. We put away the sin. That's why we keep the days when love and bread each year to remind us that we are to strive for holiness. And we put away all things that are evil.

This is to come to know God in a very real, intimate, daily manner. It's intellectual knowledge coupled with a more practical knowledge and understanding that we walk each day with him.

They were knit to God in the dearest and nearest aspects of a relationship of life. Where we come to want more in this life than just cheaper chicken or a better vegetable chopper that doesn't break. I mean, you have to... what is it that we really want in our life? Is it this guy's slap that slaps the vegetables and chops the vegetables up with a new and improved slap chopper? Is that what we really want with our life to come to a better can opener?

Cheaper chicken. Is that what we're satisfied with? Or is it something else? Do we settle for the mundane? Do we settle for the everyday?

Or do we pick ourselves up from that, at least pick up our eyes?

And in the midst of our disappointment, in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our trials, recognize what Jesus is saying here.

That we have been called to something far better, something far higher.

And as we keep the holy days throughout the year, beginning with the days of an oven bread, we are walking through principles and spiritual truths that put our minds, thoughts, goals, aspirations onto a far higher level than anything we can imagine for ourselves.

To understand exactly why Christ did what He did, that's where we have to put our minds.

And looking at that statement or that question that was put to Jesus, where do you come from?

It just struck me, as I was thinking about that.

That the answer spoke volumes. The answer from Christ was silence.

He came from eternity. He came from glory, from divinity, from the holiness as the word. As the word. He came down as a human to suffer and to die, that we might have eternal life.

When we look at it from that point of view, we look at our life as something that embodies that.

And as Christ said here to the Father, this is eternal life that they may know you, the one true God. Eternal life and the glory that these verses talk about here is more than just living forever. They really speak to a quality of life that we are to try to live to the best of our ability now, with God's help.

To examine ourselves in the areas where we have fallen short, to accept the grace of God, to pick ourselves up, to move forward.

But to run as Jeremiah did, with the horses rather than with the footmen.

Jeremiah 12, where Jeremiah was morose and despondent, ready to give up. And God kind of slaps him up the side of the head and says, how can you run with the horses if you faint in the valley of the Jordan with the footmen?

We're called to run with the horses.

The choice is whether or not we'll run with the horses or whether we'll faint under the withering glare of the light and the heat of day.

As we prepare ourselves for the Passover, let's focus our mind on the answer that really Jesus did give to Pilate by the example of his suffering and suffering. And he did that with joy.

And let's understand that that answer that he gave has to do with everything. It makes all the difference.

Where he came from is where he returned.

And where he is, is where he returned.

And where he is, is where he returned. And where he came from, is where he returned. And where he returned, is where he returned.

And where he is today. And it is our destiny.