Our passage of scripture this morning, actually two passages, the first John 19, verses 17 through 22, and the second Revelation 17, 12 through 14. And so first John 19, 17 through 22, and he bearing his cross went out to a place a place called the Place of the Skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified him and two others with him, one on either side and Jesus in the center. Now Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross, and the writing was Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Then many of the Jews read this title, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and it was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Therefore, the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, do not write the king of the Jews, but he said, I am the king of the Jews. Pilate answered, what I have written, I have written. John 19, 17 through 22. And then the second passage, Revelation 17, verses 12 through 14. The 10 horns which you saw are 10 kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. These are of one mind and they will give their power and authority to the beast. These will make war with the lamb and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful. More than any other book, the Bible is one you can read and reread all your life, And no matter how much you read it, I believe you can still find new things in it. Often when I meet somebody and I don't know what kind of Christian they are, I ask them this question. I ask them, do you read the Bible? And True Christians will always say, yes, I read the Bible. And they might even say something like, I read it every day, all these things. And then some people will say, yes, I have read the Bible. And those people seem to think, well, I've read it once, so I know what it says. I don't need to read it again. I don't think those people are really true Christians. Now I can't judge anybody. Maybe they are, they just haven't got to that place yet. But I believe you can read and reread scripture over and over again and still find new things in it. And this is one of those passages for me that I've read a lot. And not only have I read it, but I've preached on it more than once, because not only have I preached the Gospel of John twice here at, first at First Presbyterian, now at Word of Life, but I've led a study at River Commons, and I've taught, I believe, through the Book of John at other churches. And not only that, but during holidays, These passages about the cross, they come up on Good Friday and things like that, so that you deal with them more than once. And yet, during this week, more towards the end of the week, I saw something in this passage I'd never seen before. Never noticed it. It's there, it's been bright and shining, but I didn't. And that's part of what I'll preach today. But first, what I want to talk about is Point number one, Pilate wrote above the cross the title, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, John 19, 19. Why did Pilate write this? What was his motivation? Well, Pilate's likely motivation for writing this was to get a dig in at the Jews. He was angry with them. They had gotten him up early in the morning. According to John 18, 27 and 29, or through 29, a rooster had been crowing. That's how you know it's early. In John 8, 28, it plainly says it was early morning. Pilate's wife, a second reason that he might be angry with them. Pilate's wife did not want him to judge Jesus. In Matthew 19, 27, actually should be 27, 19. In Matthew 27, 19, it is written, 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 his wife didn't want him to have anything to do with Jesus. And she called him a just man, even though she probably hadn't met him at all. She knew because of the dream and she was afraid. And then Pilate wanted to release him. John 19.12a says, from then on, Pilate sought to release him, which means he was trying to release Jesus. But John 19.12b tells us what ultimately happened. the Jews' threats to tattle to Caesar seemed to force Pilate's hand. It says in 1912b, but the Jews cried out saying, if you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar. But now to save face and to show probably that he has some authority still over the Jews, Maybe also to do one right thing because he's seen goodness in Jesus. Maybe if I give him the benefit of the doubt to do one right thing, he includes this title over the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. He had given the Jews a choice because it was near the Passover. They could have chosen Jesus, but they chose Barabbas. He had beaten Jesus, probably close to death with not him himself beating him, but the Roman soldiers hitting him in the face. He had humiliated Jesus and he thought maybe this beating would appease their anger. And yet finally he allows Jesus to be crucified. But in order to do one thing right, he puts King of the Jews as a title above the cross, and he does it in three languages, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. And doing this, he made sure everybody would read that Jesus is the King of the Jews. Like many politicians who take a weak stand against evil, he had let the whole tidal wave of blood-red sin flow powerfully past him, and that Jesus was crucified. but he does not flinch regarding the title. He does one thing you could say that was right. Pilate had sinned against his conscience. He sinned against his better judgment. Matthew Henry puts it like this. He says, a mighty struggle Pilate had with him between his convictions and his corruptions. but at length his convictions yielded and his corruptions prevailed, the fear of man having a greater power over him than the fear of God." That's said very well there. The only thing I might correct was it wasn't just his convictions against his corruptions, it was his convictions and his corruptions with the added corruptions of all the peer pressure from the Jews who were trying to get him to go a certain way, yelling, crucify him, crucify him. And yet while he gave in to the Jews on almost everything, one little thing he did right, And that was this title, the King of the Jews. And why, you might ask, is it right? It's right because it is true. And that's the second point I have for you this morning. The title above the cross was true. Jesus was, and he is, the King of the Jews, and he's also King of kings and Lord of lords. He is the Lord and King of everything. He is the one who will rule forever, for eternity. We see some of this in the second passage I've used as a text, Revelation 17, 12 through 14. These verses say, the 10 horns which you saw are 10 kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they will receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast." Meaning the end time beast is gonna have 10 kings kind of ruling with him, 10 different governments that will rule. And it says for one hour, it doesn't necessarily mean one literal hour, but for a very short time, they rule the world. And then it says, these will make war with the lamb and the Lamb will overcome them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with him are called, chosen, and faithful. The beast, that end-time beast, is a one-world, godless government. It's the 666 stuff that you read in Revelation 13. 10 kings will rule with this government. According to Revelation 17, 12, for one hour, meaning not literally one hour, but they ruled very temporarily, their rule is very short, and they are unified and at war against the Lamb, who is Jesus. in the book of John, and John is the author of both books. If you don't know that, he's the author of the gospel of John, and it's the same John who's the author of the book of Revelation. And in the gospel of John, it says, John 1 29, the next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now in John 1 29, The Greek word used there for lamb is amnos. Amnos or it can be arnos. Those are two versions, Greek versions of pretty much the same word and they both mean lamb. Just like lamb and sheep both mean the same thing. Amnos and arnos both mean lamb. Arnos is one of those words that I pretty much had memorized because it sounds so much like my name, Arnold. It can be pronounced Arnos even, which is even closer. But in the book of Revelation, when Jesus is called the Lamb, for one example, the verses I read, these will make war with the Lamb and the Lamb will overcome them. It is a different word that John uses in the book of Revelation. And that one is Arneon, which I've even remembered more because my nickname for Arnold is Arnie. So it's Arneon. And Arneon is a diminutive of Arnane, which is all there. All these words are connected, but this word means little lamb. and a very small lamb, a baby lamb. And every time you read when Jesus is called the lamb in The book of Revelation, it's always a little lamb. It's always an Arneon, not a Arnos, not a grown-up lamb. And what's the difference? Why does John, in one book, because it's the same author, the same human author, call Jesus an adult lamb, and the other book in Revelation, a little lamb, and I believe In the gospel of John, he's emphasizing Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. Behold, the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. And Jesus is that even in the book of Revelation, he's still the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But in the book of Revelation, I believe the emphasis is on how little he is, how seemingly helpless he is, how seemingly vulnerable he is. A lamb, even an adult lamb, is vulnerable to a lion or a bear that would attack it. We don't think of lambs as the kind of animal, you know, you have a football team called the Rams, R-A-M, But I think you'll never have a football team called the Lambs, especially not the little lambs because it describes weakness. And here Jesus is described that way. And I believe he is because that's how an ungodly world sees him. At Revelation, you have this conflict going throughout most of the book, where an ungodly world, 666, is crushing seemingly everything. They are killing Christians, but the little lamb that seems to be crushed is victorious in the end. Napoleon Bonaparte, near his death. This is just one quote. of many where he is acknowledging the greatness of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires, but on what did we rest the creation of our genius upon force? They were beasts. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love, and at this hour, millions of men would die for him. He's realizing this is after he's been defeated, after he's in prison, he's acknowledging Christ. He's saying, Christ is great, Christ rules forever. I tried to set up a kingdom, but my kingdom was through strategy and force, and I was defeated. And he says the same, he saw it happens to all these ungodly leaders. But Christ is continuing to rule in Napoleon's time, and he continues to rule today. Most ungodly leaders, even today, laugh at Christ-like service and self-sacrifice and love. Napoleon, near the end of his life, seems to have respected Jesus. And when we read from Psalm 2, it says, kiss the sun, your kings, kiss the sun, honor the sun. And that's what John, I believe, is doing when he has us notice this title, Jesus is the King of the Jews. Pilate, it's his little acknowledgement of Jesus, King of the Jews. Maybe just to get a dig in, we don't know Pilate's heart. Maybe somehow he saw some truth in it. I hope he did. Number three, Jesus deserves this title because of humility and self-sacrifice. As his church, we should follow him in this. Philippians 2, 5 through 11, and then 12 and 13, talk about this. Philippians 2 says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of man, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. You could put King in there probably, to the glory of God the Father. And so we're told, let this mind be in you. Have the same humble mind that Jesus had. If you read verses one through four in that chapter, you'd see it saying the same thing. And then the later verses, in verses 12 and 13, in verse 12, we're called to obey. Christ. And in verse 15, we are said, if we do this, if we are obedient, if we're humble, we will shine as lights in the world. His self-sacrifice is exalted. It's cheered in heaven. You today people will make fun of the cross or they'll call it child abuse because God the Father is supposedly abusing the son because they think their sins didn't require that kind of thing. But in Revelation it says, and they sang a new song. Notice they're singing. You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood. about, notice that's about redemption, and it's by his blood. This lamb slain, the little baby lamb is mentioned in earlier in that passage, and it's a slain lamb. And it says, out of every tribe, tongue, and people, and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on the earth. Then later it says, verse 11, then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the land who was slain. Here they're saying the same thing again, worthy is the land who was slain they had already said that but here's tens and tens of thousands of people and in heaven this is the case. Here on earth people cheer when somebody hits a home run or when somebody scores a touchdown and those are the things we admire when men do it but in heaven the things that are cheered by crowds, not just a little group like us, in heaven, the crowds will cheer what Christ did on the cross. And it even goes on to say, every creature was in the heaven and earth and under the earth and in the sea. And you could picture the fish just praising Jesus, the little octopus praising Jesus, every creature. And this is where the hallelujah chorus came from, these passages. And to the lamb, which is the little lamb, blessings and honor and glory and power forever. This is the cheering of a great crowd and we see Jesus is King, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. An ungodly world puts him on the cross. There is a title above the cross, though this is King of the Jews. I don't know why Pilate put that there, whether his motive was just to get a dig in at the Jews, or whether part of his motive was good. He wanted to honor God. He wanted to honor Jesus in some way. But the title, whatever Pilate meant it for, God put it in the scripture because it is true, he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now, point number four, this is the part that was new for me, something that I hadn't noticed before. Maybe some of you have noticed this, but John is the only one who refers to what Pilate wrote on the cross as a title. It says in John 19, 19, now Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And this is right because it's true. It's a title because Jesus is the King of Kings. He is the true King. He was the King of the Jews and he's still that King. Now, this is different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. All three of them say they don't use the word title. Matthew refers to what Pilate did and wrote as an accusation. In Matthew 27, 37, it says, and they put up over his head the accusation Written against him, this is Jesus, King of the Jews. Now Matthew calls it an accusation. And what does that tell us? Well, some people will say, well, see, there's the Bible contradicting itself. That's stupidity. It's not contradicting. It's just telling us a different aspect of what Christ was doing on the cross. It's an accusation because the Jews were telling, saying he was false. He was not really the king. He was a threat to Caesar because he's trying to set up another kingdom. And what we see in the idea of this accusation being brought against Jesus is we see the great hatred, not only of the Jews towards Jesus, but to all the ungodly towards God. In the cross of Christ, there's the great hatred of man is shown towards God in that God's image is distorted already before Jesus is even on the cross by all our sin and all that we do wrong. And that hatred comes through in this idea that calling him the king when he really is the king is some kind of accusation against him. It's not an accusation, but it was to them. And that's what Matthew was pointing out. And then lastly, Mark and Luke refer to this writing as an epitaph or an inscription. And the word there as such is a focus on Jesus's death. When it's called an epitaph or an inscription, it's like what you see on a gravestone. and it's saying he was, he was the King of the Jews. It's a message about not just who Christ is, but we see him memorialized as what he did for us. In his death on the cross is shown to be as the King of the Jews, And we can take this, next week we'll be celebrating the Lord's Supper. We can take this to heart that Jesus died as the king, the true king, according to John. He died with accusations against him, according to Matthew, and he died for us. His death is what's the focus of our life. Mark and Luke, his death that Jesus tells us, as long as you celebrate this supper, remember what he did. And so we see this as, what's God trying to tell us through these different gospels? Well, one, in John, it's the title. It tells us truly who Christ is. In Matthew, we see how much men hated Jesus. And in You could say in Mark and Luke, we see how much God loved us, that he sent his son to die on the cross for us, that we might have salvation for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him, Even when sin would be saved in Genesis, one of the things we've been noticing on Wednesdays as we've studied the book of Genesis is how sinful some of the men and women who got saved were. Even some of those who were in the line of Christ, they were very, very sinful people, but God forgave them. He blessed them and brought them around. And we are the same. We are sinful in and of ourselves. We need the salvation he gives us. And that's why he died on the cross. And we see that in Mark and Luke. Also, Paul brings this out. When in 1 Corinthians 1.18, he says, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are saved, it is the power of God. We see Jesus's strength as a king and as a sovereign on the cross when his death saves us from sin. It saves us from hell. It gives us eternal life. Other kings have power to kill. Jesus, as the King of kings and Lord of lords, has power to forgive and to make alive. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for Jesus and his cross. We thank you even for what Pilate wrote above the cross. We thank you that in the gospel of John, it's called a title because your son, our Lord Jesus is truly King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is our King and not just King of the Jews, but it was true, he was King of the true Jews. Those who truly believed in him like Peter and John and others. And Father, we thank you for that. We thank you also for what is communicated in those other gospels. Father, we don't like it, but what we see in Matthew that all they could do was accuse him, all they could do was hate him. And King of the Jews was considered a mark against him. Father, we see human hatred for God in that and for you. And we pray that we might speak to that as we can. And then Father, we thank you for the love of God for your love that we see, as it's shown in Mark and Luke, and that Jesus died for us, that title above the cross is not called a title by them, but an epitaph and an inscription, like on a gravestone. And Father, we thank you that he died for us, for our salvation, and that we can have life, not because we're good or because we do good, but because Christ did perfect and he died for us. Father, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.