Well, greetings to each one of you this morning. It's been a blessing to be here. I want to welcome each of our visitors and pray that you would be blessed as you spend time with us in the house of God. It is indeed, it is indeed the house of God. It is where God meets with his people corporately. It is a, It is a great thing and in so many ways I was really, really blessed this morning as we gathered. And I had to think of the words of Paul when he said in Galatians in the last book kind of the conclusion of the whole matter in the book of Galatians where he says that, but God forbid that I should boast. except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. I had to think of that scripture this morning in our worship. God forbid that we would come here in the remembrance of the Lord's Supper and toot our own horn. Without some achievement that we might have made, that would be a travesty because indeed, If you are a child of God this morning, it's not because of what you have done. And so I was so blessed with the words of Paul. And you know, I've often had to ponder that verse. where it says, I am crucified to the world and the world is crucified to me. I am happy to say that since I am a believer, even when I sin, I cannot enjoy the world. Do you know what I mean? That there is an agreement now from within you. with the things of God. And even when you fall, and even when you maybe choose to sin, the world is crucified to you. You can't enjoy it anymore because the world has been crucified to you. That's the work of God in the heart. That is a greater work than man can achieve. I'm glad that's true for me, that when I fall, ultimately, when I sin, ultimately, I come back to an agreement with God about the issue. I agree with God that it is indeed true, that I don't want to anymore. And I have to think about Romans 7 where he says that, It is no longer I that sin. It is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. And so I worship the Lord for that, that the world is crucified to me. But then on the flip side, I am also crucified to the world. The world also doesn't agree with me. The world doesn't care for me Just as I don't care for the world So just a few thoughts, I guess that's a little bonus sermon for you this morning If you would turn to the gospel of John the gospel according to John in John chapter 19 I All right, well, we'll pick up in our study in the gospel according to John this morning. We'll be beginning in John 19. And John 19 is, of course, where it all happens. If it were not for the occurrence in John 19, then all of everything else would be in vain because it is actually the narrative in John 19 where the Lord actually is crucified. And it was not enough for him to just be willing to be crucified. It wasn't enough for him just to come and to in all things be righteous and to give us a good example. No, he had to be crucified. He ultimately had to be crucified for the salvation of his people. And so while that will be, that is the narrative in John 19, today we're dealing with the lead up to that, that the suffering that was that was before the cross is also part of his suffering, and that it is indeed not just his cross work, but his lead up to that that is given here. And there are so many details. I was pondering the significance of the details. And it is these details, I think, that make the narrative come alive to us. And it is a historical reality. Think about if it were just three words that, you know, Jesus died on the cross. Now there are details surrounding it, there are things said about it so that we are engaged in it, and even the fact that it was accomplished through the Roman government is very significant, and is that these things are recorded in a civil way, that it's a historical account. And these are all meant to stabilize and strengthen our faith. These narrative details and the facts that surround this greatest event in all of history that you and I are staking our eternity on. Think about that. When you're called to stake your eternity on this, you want to know that it is true. You want to know the realities of these things, because we cannot gamble with our eternity. We cannot afford to do that. we cannot afford to gamble. So I want to read from John 19, beginning in verse one through verse 16, and then the actual crucifixion narrative will be next time. But this is a lead up to it. And this is the testimony, or this is the trial, or the time that Christ spent before Pilate, and it's not the whole account of that, but he is still here before the Roman governor. So let's read John 19 verse 1. So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him, and the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe. Then they said, Hail, King of the Jews! And they struck him with their hands. 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. Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, Behold the man! 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. 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. Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid and went again into the praetorium and said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. 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? 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. From then on, Pilate sought to release him. 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. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the pavement. But in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Gabbatha. Now it was the preparation day of the Passover and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, behold your king. But they cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, we have no king but Caesar. Then he delivered him to them to be crucified. Then they took Jesus and led him away. Well, my title this morning comes from verse five. And verse 5, Pilate says to them, behold the man. I would like to present that to you today that you would consider this passage and behold the man. Because there are other places in the scripture that this word behold is used about Christ. And it is actually in this very gospel, it was the John the Baptist that said, behold the Lamb of God, behold consider this man, this one who is, it's in John 2 I think it is, Now it's actually in John 1. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me. And now today, so interestingly, this man was one sent by God to prepare the way of the Lord. And he said, Behold the Lamb of God. Now we see that even in His last hours before His crucifixion, God is able to use a Roman governor to say, Behold the man! Isn't that amazing? We have the Roman governor bringing Christ out to the mob and say, Look at this man! And maybe it was cynicism, maybe it was sarcasm, maybe it was a cry for... maybe it was a desire for Pilate to draw sympathy from the crowd for this man, for Christ. But we can say that Pilate was being used by God as a call behold the man Consider this man. What is going on with this man? And that's what I want to to look at this morning Is and I want us to even use that as an application For us is how do we behold this man? And at the end of chapter 18, we see in this, that was last time, we seen how that the, there was a custom that Pilate was referring to and said, you know, I normally release someone to you. At the Passover, who do you want me to release? But the mob here condemned him. In verse 40, they all cried again saying, not this man, but Barabbas. Barabbas was released. And we could think of Barabbas as being the people's choice. the people's choice. Now here in Luke 23, I want to bring this in. In Luke 23, the account here It says in Luke 23 verse 22, Then he said to them the third time, Why, what evil has he done? I have found no reason for death in him. I will therefore chastise him and let him go. But they were insistent, demanding with loud voices that he be crucified. And the voices of these men and of the chief priests prevailed. So Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they requested and he released to them the one they requested who for rebellion and murder had been thrown into prison but he delivered Jesus to their will. I want to consider three things from this text in John 19. Three things here. that I want to bring to your attention, and that number one is the weakness of this judge. The weakness of this judge, number two, the wickedness of his tormentors. A, the soldiers, and B, the chief priests and the officers. Number three, I want to point out the willingness of this man to lay down his life for us. So number one, we consider the weakness of this judge. And when we think about the weakness of this judge, what is the application for this point? Is that there are going to be occasions where the people of God are brought before an unjust judge. Someone who is not worthy to hold the position that he is in, who has authority over the people of God, and they're called to submit to that. That is, that we could say might be an application for this point. that Pilate here was a weak judge if you look at this passage it seems clear that Pilate was trying to get out of it but he was between a rock and a hard place he was stuck he was trying to keep the peace with the mob but he couldn't he could not actually find a a verdict or he could not find a point of evidence where Jesus deserved to die under Roman law. And we seen from last time is that the Jewish leaders brought Christ pre-condemned to Pilate so that Pilate could rubber stamp their desire and make it look official because they could not kill him. So he was, and it says that in John 18 there, where Pilate said to them, you take him and judge him according to your law. Therefore the Jews said to him, it's not lawful for us to put anyone to death. See that was before he was tried in Pilate's court. They had already committed that we want to kill him. And so they brought him to Pilate because the Roman law was that the Jewish people were under their dominion, therefore they did not have the right to capital punishment. And the Romans reserved that for themselves. And so they had to bring him to Pilate to kill him. And Pilate couldn't find a sticking point that he could actually kill Jesus lawfully. So the judge of all the earth was brought before an earthly judge, and Pilate, as a gatekeeper of justice, failed miserably. You know, sometimes you see these sorts of injustices go on, and you, you know, we just We ultimately have to as it says in as it says in Peter We ultimately have to commit our soul to him who judges faithfully That's what we're called to do is just simply okay. There will be recompense at some point there will be justice served I might not see it on this in this life But there will be justice served and we commit our soul to him as a faithful creator who will ultimately bring justice to pass. Considering how Pilate probably knew about Jesus' arrest before the Jewish leaders actually brought him to the praetorium, before they brought him to the judgment hall, you would think that Pilate was already in the know because there were Roman soldiers involved with his arrest. So as governor, you would think that Pilate had already prior knowledge. And so when they brought him to them, Pilate, he asked the right question in John 18, 29, what accusation do you bring against this man? What is the indictment that you have against Christ? He asked the right question. But they had already condemned him and were just looking for a rubber stamp. So Pilate finds no fault in him and endeavors to release Jesus through the custom of goodwill toward the Jewish people by releasing him at the Passover. That's what we see. I think Pilate is trying to get out of it. He's trying to say, well, can I just release him? You know, we have a custom. And they said, no, the people chose Barabbas instead. So then we come to our text and Pilate then takes Jesus, whom he had already pronounced innocent." Think about this. He was, in a sense, indicting himself when he went and scourged the Lord. In verse one, so then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him, an innocent man. One he himself had declared to be innocent, but he, it seems to be that it was an endeavor from Pilate's perspective to satisfy the Jewish bloodlust, to pacify them and say, look, I'm wanting to release this man, but I'm willing to, and in other passages it says, I will chastise him and release him. So here we see that he was chastised in verse one. They scourged him. They took a Roman scourge and whipped him in public, I believe. or at least in front of the Roman garrison. They whipped him with probably a short whip with leather thongs on it and embedded in this whip were, according to legend, there were bits of metal and bone tied or plated into the leather thongs. And sometimes the act of scourging was actually fatal because they would tie the victim's hands to a post over his head and it would stretch the muscles of his back taut and then they would proceed to wear themselves out beating him on the back with this scourge. Oftentimes, it would pull and rip pieces of flesh and skin off of the back of the victim. So, the thought is that Pilate was endeavoring to still not, he still had the desire to release Jesus. Because why, if he intended to crucify him, why would he scourge him? I mean, you could just go out and get it over with, you know, crucify him. But interestingly, is the way things worked out, is that both of them happened. He was scourged and crucified. You know, as the old writers, I mean the prophets, spoke about Christ, His back being plowed like, you know, they plowed His back. His back was given to the plowers. And He was, you know, beaten with many stripes. But it seems like, from Pilate's perspective, he was trying to release Him. So we see, we see that Pilate in Matthew 27 18 I think also the mark account is that he knew that they had delivered him because of envy that it was there were there were no genuine charges against Christ but because of envy Christ was brought here before the Roman civil authorities and their governor knew it Why he didn't just throw it out wholesalely is because he was a weak judge. He was trying to accomplish multiple things. He was trying to appease the people while he was trying to uphold justice. It is an impossible position to be in. If you're not committed to justice, then you will ultimately try to appease the people. Or, if you try to appease the people, you will not uphold justice. And so, that's what we see here, is that our Lord was in front of a weak judge. He was in front of a ruler who was, as we will see, had other interests more than the life of Christ. And in verse 4, as we look here, after the scourging, Pilate then went out again in verse 4 and said to them, Remember, these Jews were outside of the judgment hall because they were afraid of defiling themselves. They were outside, so when Pilate went in and out, that's what he was referring to, he would go into the judgment hall to speak to Christ, and then he would go out to speak to the crowd. So Pilate 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. Again stating Jesus' innocence. Why do you think there's such a point made three times by the governor that this man is innocent? That there's no fault of death in him at all? Well that is for our benefit. That is for us historically and it is for the world to know that he was brought before a crooked jury. He was given a crooked trial and there was no fault at all to be found in our Lord. So he goes out and tells them and then Jesus himself comes out in verse 5 wearing the crown of thorns and the robe. When you see what Pilate said, he says, behold the man. Rather than being sympathetic, rather than having elicited anything of good nature and pacifying them, no, these people said, crucify him. It is not enough what you've done, Pilate. It is not enough. We want you to kill him. Crucify him. Crucify him. They reject him again. And Pilate for the third time says, I find no fault in him. You, and the you here is emphatic, it says, you take him and crucify him for I find no fault in him. So the Jews, they ratchet up the accusation here, they say, This man makes himself to be the son of God. He ought to die. We have a law that says so. He ought to die. Well, Pilate is really frightened now. You know, I think it was Matthew Henry made the point that the Romans were a superstitious lot. And they gloried over their triumph over the kings of the countries that they conquered. But they held their gods in awe. They were scared of the gods of the people that they conquered. Pilot here when when the Jews said that he made himself a son of God then pilot was scared because he was a superstitious man and was afraid that there was some means whereby this this man could have some sort of impact on bringing certain events to pass in his life and therefore when pilot heard that saying he was the more afraid and And that's when he went back into the judgment hall and He bluntly asks Christ, he says, where are you from? You know, it is interesting that earlier he had, in John 18, this question about his kingship. Do you have a kingdom? And Jesus immediately said yes, you know, that he is a king. Well, when Pilate asks him here, about where he is from, Jesus remained silent. And what stands out to me here in verse 8 is how afraid and how fearful that Pilate was here in front of this man who had a crown of thorns, he had a purple robe on, that was a mockery of his royalty. He probably had blood running everywhere. He was bloodstained. He was beaten. He was mocked and assaulted, as we'll see. But he was afraid of this man. He was afraid of who he was. He was afraid. And in the Matthew account of this passage, we see that he had received a word from his wife. And I don't know what was going on with that. But in Matthew 27, 19, it says, While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, Have nothing to do with this just man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of him. You had this added pressure of his wife coming in and quoting a dream that, I've been suffering, don't have anything to do with this just man. And so we have this pressure on Pilate. And so he, as I said here, he goes back into the judgment hall, privately asks Jesus, where are you from? And Jesus gave him no answer. The thought that I came across here about the silence of Christ here is that the Jews knew They had the prophetic scriptures that spoke about the coming Messiah. They were the ones who Christ could have had an intelligent conversation with about these things. And we see that Christ had done that multiple times throughout his ministry. Defended his claim to equality with God. But with Pilate, there was no such backdrop of revelation. Pilate had, he was a superstitious man anyway. You could have made all sorts of claims to Pilate and it would not have availed of anything. He was a fearful man who was scared of whatever deity you invoked. And so, He wants to know about where he's from, and Jesus replied, not at all. And then, remember, this point is that Pilate is a weak judge. But notice what he does in verse 10. He says, he seems to be offended that Christ wouldn't speak to him. He said, don't you know I have the power We just, we see here that this is, the irony here is that he holds up his position. I have the authority to either release you or to crucify you. But we see how fearful, how weak he was in light of, he was trying to release this man. He had all the authority to do it. But he would not do it. He would not because he was a weak person who was trying to appease the Jewish mob. And so he falls back on his authority. You see, That's always what has to happen. When you don't have the morality or the courage to stand for what is right, then you fall back on your position and you say, well, I can do whatever I want to do. And that's what we see Pilate doing. That's what we see him doing, going back to his position. And Jesus just says to him, You don't have any power over me at all." Notice that he says it that way. You could have no power at all, not a little bit, not a lot, none at all against me, unless it had been given you from above. And it's a beautiful picture here that God was using Pilate to accomplish the plan that he had set for Christ. Pilate makes his claim to power, but does not have the courage to apply it. Does not have the moral fortitude to do what he knew to be right, to stand up, and he is culpable for that. He will have to answer for that, knowing that what he was doing was wrong. He was a weak judge. We see our Savior being tried by such a man as this. Think about the implications of that in our lives. What is being taught here to us? That our Savior was in this place. We know that for generations this has been true for the church. He was brought before this judge and condemned and crucified under trumped up charges. That's how the church has been suffering for generations and ages. Suffering under trumped up charges. Isn't that a beautiful picture? How that he was preparing the church. How that he was preparing them to be successful. We see it in 1 Peter 4. Where he says, therefore since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind. For he who has suffered in the flesh has seized from sin. We also have it in chapter 2 of 1 Peter. For this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow his steps. What do we see in 1 Corinthians chapter 6? I won't turn to there, but the Apostle Paul is teaching the Corinthians. They say, you go to law a brother against brother. This is utterly a fault in you, he says. Why should you not rather suffer the wrong? Or as the King James says, Why should you not rather be defrauded rather than go to law against your brother and claim your right? This is an example to us here in how Christ, when he was reviled, he reviled not again. And so, Paul says, you should rather be willing to be defrauded than to take your brother to law, than to take your brother to court and demand recompense for some perceived wrong. Maybe it was a wrong, but here we see Christ who was before the law being defrauded of his liberty, being defrauded of his life because of a weak judge. because of a weak judge. Pilate sought to release him. From then on, Pilate sought to release him. He was almost more determined than ever. But notice what it says, "...the Jews cried out, saying, Hey, listen, if you let this man go, you're not going to be Caesar's friend." You see, they were literally threatening the Roman governor. If you don't do what we want you to do, we're going to let the emperor know that your governor in Jerusalem is letting a guy who claims to be a king, he's letting him go free. See what he says there? If you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar. So the point being, that this man, anyone who would claim to be a king, would be in opposition to the emperor. You are not Caesar's friend. See the Jews found his weakest point. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat and did what they wanted him to do. They put the pressure to him. In effect, threatening Pilate, if you let Jesus go, we will make sure Caesar finds out. It was at the point where Pilate's position of authority and power was threatened, then he capitulated. It was when he thought, well maybe, you know, it could well be, this could cost me my position. His office, his position was more important than justice. His office was more important than an innocent life. And Pilate loved his authority more than he loved justice. He had no love for justice. How easy is it for you to fudge on the details? How easy is it for us to fudge? To say, okay, here's right and here's wrong. What does it take for us to obscure, to make it a little bit more obscure and to try not to make it as cut and dried as it ought to be? Do we love justice? Do we love it? Are we willing to pay whatever price for justice? And I'm not speaking about demanding justice in the sense of me getting my right. I'm speaking about do we love when right is done? I want to move on to my second point, that is, the wickedness of his tormentors. And the first one is that I want to look at is the soldiers. These soldiers were just brutes. They were just brutal people. They, in verse 2, after scourging him. I mean, how do you justify grabbing a man off the street in the middle of the night, scourging him uncondemned, publicly, with no verdict? How do you justify that? It is nothing other than intimidation. It is And I want to read a little portion here in Matthew 27. And this is a little more in detail than what John does. Matthew 27 says this way, Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the praetorium and gathered the whole garrison around him. I want to pause just a little bit there. The whole garrison. A cohort of Roman soldiers was a thousand men. Now, that was the official size of it. Sometimes, for practical purposes, it was more like 600 men. But whatever amount it was, it was hundreds of men. They gathered the whole garrison around Jesus. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on his head, and a reed in his right hand, to mock the scepter. They put a reed in his right hand, and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. Then they spat on him, and they took the reed from his hand, and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked Him, they took the robe off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified." You know, a crown of thorns. Isn't it amazing that these thorns, a symbol of the curse and pain of our sin, was put on the head of Christ? I mean, wasn't that what God had said in the garden? Cursed is the ground for your sake. Thorns and thistles will be produced. And we see our Savior wearing the crown, the curse of our sin. The purple robe was a mock. They were mocking him for his perceived royalty, but it wasn't perceived. He wasn't pretending anything. He was a king. He was a king, but they mocked him and gave him this purple robe because of his claim to kingship. These men were brutes. And then we come to the second part here. of the wickedness of his tormentors. And we know that his primary tormentors were the chief priests and the Pharisees, the chief priests and the officers, as it says here. These men were worse than the soldiers. The soldiers were what you seen. They were what you saw. But when you looked at the scribes and the Pharisees, they looked like good men. They looked like upright citizens. But inside they were full of hatred and bitterness. They were the kind of people who got others to do their dirty work for them. That's what was going on here. They hated the Lord. And so they tried to maintain a facade of piousness and holiness and righteousness. Remember, these were the kind of people who wouldn't enter into the judgment hall because they were afraid to be defiled. No, these men were the scum of the religious society they were part of. They hid behind their religion and pulled the strings that crucified the Savior. They wouldn't hit him themselves but they rejoice when somebody else did. And so when Pilate brought him out and said, behold the man, the mocked man, the beaten man, the scourged one, bloody and shamed. When Pilate brought him out to them again, he said, behold the man. It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough for them. They cried out, away with this man. Isn't that what the same people said about Paul? In Acts 22, 22, they said, when he was making his defense, and he said, I'm going to the Gentiles. They said, away with this man from the earth. He's not fit to live. He's not fit to be among us righteous people. That's the same thing that they said about our Lord here. They said, away with him, away with him. kill him now these men these wicked tormentors of our Savior notice that they made their boast in the law in the law of God no less we have a law they said in verse 7 and according to that law and according to our interpretation of this law he needs to die yet they had no charge exactly that they could prove that he was, it was because their position was threatened, because their religion was threatened. And they made their boast in the law. Notice in verse 11, Jesus said to them, Jesus said to Pilate, you could have no power at all against me unless it has been given you from above. Therefore, the one who delivered me to you has the greater sin. These people had the greater sin than Pilate. they were culpable for their sin. They were the ones who were instigating this whole plot. And they were conniving to get Christ killed by the means of Pilate. Now when you think about The third point, the willingness of the Lord to lay his life down. All of these points, the contrasting of these wicked men, the contrasting of this weakness of Pilate, you see the willingness of Christ. He could have called for 12 legions of angels, but he didn't. He could have defended himself before Pilate and tried to say, you know, I am indeed the Son of God, and played on his fears, but he didn't. You know, he was silent, and it was a silence there in verse 10 where, or in, yes, in verse 8, that Jesus did not defend himself at all in verse 9. He was willing to lay down his life that we might live, that we might overcome, that we might have life. He laid down his life for us. He was willing. You know, it is a hard thing for your name to be put down. It is harder for your reputation. It's harder to sacrifice your reputation and your honor, so to speak, and your dignity than it is for maybe to suffer some other thing. It's a dreadful thing. It's a hard thing. But we see all of these things happening to our Savior through the wickedness of man. And then we see, if we come here to the latter part of this passage, Again, we see God speaking through Pilate. He says, behold your king. Behold your king. Maybe again, it was sarcasm. Maybe it was him just rubbing it in. Maybe it was Pilate having his moment with the Jewish people. But he says, Behold your king. But they cried out, Away with him, in verse 15. Away with him. Crucify him. Pilate said to them shall I crucify your king the chief priests answered we have no king, but Caesar isn't that amazing if Christ would have risen up and fought with the sword against Caesar these people would have been on board with him they hated Caesar they hated Rome they hated the occupation and then to invoke You know this idea that we have no king, but Caesar It is Truly, the rejection of Christ and the giving themselves to the King Caesar, it is as Matthew Henry said, they preferred Caesar to Christ. And what you prefer before Christ will be your demise. What you prefer before Christ will be your demise. We have no king but Caesar, and indeed, they haven't had a king since. They haven't had a king since. But he was indeed their king. It seems like God was using Pilate to speak to them. Indeed, a king they would have to answer to. In Psalm 2, I will set my king on my holy hill of Zion. Praise God that we see this beautiful picture. And I just want to close with this thought of the fellowship of his sufferings. We are called to this. Brothers and sisters, we're called to this. We're called to be willing to bear the injustice of this sort of event for the cause and the sake of Christ. We have a greater purpose than to be right. We have a greater purpose than to be vindicated. That will be in glory. We have a greater purpose. And that is to stand for Christ, to stand with Christ. And this fellowship of his sufferings, I wanna just bring a few thoughts from, as in closing here, from Acts 5, verse 40 and 41. And here the disciples were called before the Sanhedrin. And they were told to abstain from preaching in, this was in Acts 5, from preaching in the name of Christ. Gamaliel's advice was, hey listen, if these people are from God, then we can't overthrow it, lest you even be found to fight against God. And the Sanhedrin agreed with Gamaliel, the teacher of the law. They agreed with him in verse 40. And when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, What a beautiful picture of the fruit of the cross. where what Christ had accomplished at the cross was bearing fruit in the lives of his church. And may we know no other thing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. And we will see that he was indeed crucified. Let's pray. Father, as we consider this narrative of count of the suffering of your son, the Lord Jesus, Father we pray that you would bring home to us the realities of these principles. Father that we would Join in with him that we would give ourselves wholeheartedly father to these to these principles of the of the glory of Christ and of the suffering of Christ and of his virtue and of his Agenda and his kingdom father I pray You would give us the faith to see that There will be a future recompense Give us hearts to enter into the work that you might be glorified in our lives. Lord, we just thank you for this work on the cross for us. Then we might not come into judgment. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.