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Sermon Notes: John 18:33-37

Posted onAuthorKen Corder

On The Side of the Truth                     John 18:33-37

On the Side of Truth

33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”  34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”  35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”  36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”  37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.  Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

  1. Examples of becoming lost: 1) Lost in the woods.  Nightfall coming.  Coyotes in the distance. 2) Chicago, one way street
  2. Daniel Boone, when asked if he’d ever been lost. “No, but I was once a mite confused for three days.”
  3. You know, a church can become lost and confused. Because the church is “encultured.”  We move and operate within culture, and that culture inevitably influences us.  That’s okay as long as it influences form and not substance.  Early Church in Jerusalem and Greek world.  Today, a Coptic Church in Egypt will look different than a high Anglican Church in England, which will look different than a Primitive Baptist Church in Appalachia.  But one would hope their core message, their substance, is the same.
  4. The Church becomes lost and confused when we allow the worldview, the message, the memes, of the culture to shape and redefine our core. We are the ones who should be transforming and reshaping culture, not the other way around.  Jesus said, “”Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (John 28:19).
  5. Churches are lost and confused and losing members and their ability to transform and reshape culture, to make disciples, because they have softened their core. They have retreated from fundamental doctrine.  Doctrine is not a dirty word.  We have shied away from proclaiming the Truth that was given to us.  We have been entrusted with the Truth and with proclaiming that Truth.
  6. What is that Truth? Pilate asked this very question of Jesus Christ.  Jesus answered elsewhere, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no man comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
  7. What is the Truth revealed to the Church? Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ crucified, dead, buried and was raised on the third day.  Our Father, the Creator of the universe, revealed this Truth to the Church and entrusted us with proclaiming it, with manifesting it in the world.  When is the last time the words Jesus Christ crucified, dead, buried and raised on the third day were on your lips?  When is the last time you began your day with the intent and purpose of living into the kingdom of God on earth with Jesus Christ as your king?
  8. You see the Church has lost its way, it is a mite confused, when its members become passive nihilists. And in too many churches, that is what we have become, passive nihilists.
  9. What do we mean by that? Little by little, we have let the kingdom of the world with its messages and memes infiltrate our minds and hearts, and over time (we don’t even sense it happening, like the frog in slowly heated water) we begin to accept the core message of the world, which is nihilism.
  10. Back in 1994, a book written by a deceased Russian Orthodox monk was published called Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age. Seraphim Rose was the monk and he described in great detail how nihilism has swept over the West and even infiltrated the Church.
  11. What is nihilism and how did it overtake our culture and put a cloak over Christianity in the West? The late nineteenth century atheist Friedrich Nietzsche defined nihilism as the worldview that holds “that there is no truth….that there is no state of absolute (Rose, 12)”.   Nihilists reject God.  Rejecting God, they deny that there is Truth.  If there is no Truth, there is no morality, if there is no morality, no right and wrong, no ultimate Good and Evil, then there is no meaning or purpose.  There is nothing.  Nihilism means there is nothing.  Nothing matters.  There is no meaning or purpose to life.  When there is no meaning or purpose to life, people are compelled to look for meaning, because we were created for meaning.  So people try to create meaning by chasing their own dreams, desires, forging their own little gods and idols.  And when they cannot find meaning in all of the offerings of the world (money, power, sex, domination, and so on), they fall into despair.  They find that life is unbearable without truth, without an absolute, without a Creator God who is the Truth, who is the Way, who is the Life.  And so life becomes a battleground of selfish, despairing, hopeless, anxious, neurotic, even psychopathic individuals competing, consuming, all alone, bitter and angry.  It all ends in a nihilistic culture of violence and destruction.  People either hurting and killing each other, or hurting and killing themselves.  We see that destructive, violent worldview all around us today in the proliferation of murder-suicides, school shootings, random acts of violence, cruelty toward children and animals.
  12. Now, if you asked the average person on the street, “Are you a nihilist?”, assuming they knew what it means to be a nihilist, would quickly respond, “Of course, I am not a nihilist, but I do believe in goodness or a divine force or an overarching spirit, or, I believe in love.” 90% of Americans believe in God, but only 20% of Americans are in Church on Sunday morning.  But the Truth that is revealed to us is that God is not a force, a energy flow.  God is the Trinue God in three persons who desires to have a relationship with you, to reveal Truth to you.
  13. People have been chasing their pseudo-religions and sects whose deity is a vague, immanent force, the cult of awareness and realizing enlightenment, Zen Buddhism, pagan nature cults, new age, and all that junk, and they have found nothing to safe them, so they fall different into the nihilistic impulse and become destructive and self-destructive. “May the force be with you,” is not a sufficiently deep, theological foundation upon which to build one’s life, marriage, child-rearing, community, society, culture and civilization. One the Triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, perfectly revealed to us in Jesus Christ, can save you.  Your life will only be ordered, joyful and overwhelmed with peace, when Christ is your king.
  14. The foundational premise of the nihilist is that undergirding all experience is nothing. There is only accident and chance.  There is no fundamental truth.  No ethical foundation.  No morality.  No purpose.  So they go about their business as if there is no God, and we get the world we have today.  This worldview is represented by Pilate, who when face to face with Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, can only sarcastically answer, “What is truth?”
  15. The foundational premise of the Christian is that undergirding all experience is God. There is purpose and providence.  There is a deep truth and absolute.  As a result there is right and wrong.  There is a morality that follows Truth.  There is a proper way to order our lives, our relationships, our family life, our community, our nation and our civilization.  Jesus tells Pilate that the reason he was born and came into this world was to testify to the truth.  Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.
  16. As Christians we live and move and have our being in this Living Truth. We are to order our entire lives in the way of the Divine.  Our lives are to be a worshipful gift to the Almighty God.  One of Jesus’ complaints about religious people is found in Matthew 15:8, when he says, ““This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.”  Christ the King will not suffer a Church very long that is populated with passive nihilists.
  17. Christ the King says to Pilate there are two worlds, two kingdoms, and my kingdom is not of this nihilistic world. In the kingdom of God there is order, purpose, hope, salvation, goodness, peace, heaven on earth, there is love.
  18. Christ the King tells us we cannot be passive nihilists. We cannot say we believe in God and in his Holy Truth and then live our lives as the nihilists do, selfishly, narcissistic, resentful, atomized, outside of Christian community, without a prayer life, without desiring to know God more and more, without pouring over this Word.  Otherwise we have become, in effect, passive nihilists, and, if you checked in with your soul, you would find that your time, energy and resources are being pour into the nihilistic world of Pilate, where power, domination, control and wealth are the dominating forces driving your every thought and impulse.  You will find that you are anxious, fearful, resentful and on the cliff of despair.  That is not what Christ desires for his followers.
  19. If Christ is the king and ruler of your heart, he compels you to live in the spirit, praying that each word and action glorifies God and advances his kingdom, whether you are at work, in Kroger, conversing with your child, discussing with your spouse, planning for your future. Christ did not come so that we might adorn our nihilism with empty fish symbols and hollow hymn singing unaccompanied with a life on fire for Christ.   Christ came for no other reason than that you would live in the truth, and by so doing, become a son or daughter of God.  As St. Athanasius said, “The Son of God became the Son of Man, so that sons of men might become sons of God.”
  20. There is glory, joy, peace, loving community, spiritual worship, a confident when we learn to rest in the truth in the Christian faith. We must develop intentional ways for each of us to begin to order our lives in Christ and around His Church.  At the first of the year, I want us to begin to develop intentional ways to order our lives in Christ.  One of the most basic ways of doing this is through the ancient method of discipleship known as small groups.  As a church we need to develop small gatherings in homes of member, family members, and neighbors to grow in Christ, build Christian community and evangelize our friends and neighbors.  I say this now, because I would like you to use the Advent season to pray about this new emphasis on discipleship.  I want you to pray for some specific requests.  Pray that God would raise of leaders to facilitate small groups, not great theologians, but just people who are willing to lead discussions in Christian discipleship.  Pray that God would open hearts of people to open their homes for these discipleship groups.  Pray that God would convict each member and attendee of the church to join a small group and grow in Christ and community.  Pray that God would use these small groups as an opportunity to share Christ, win souls to the Lord and lead new, inspired and fired up Christians to our gathering at New Chapel.

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