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The Romans Killed Jesus. So Why Does the Bible Blame Us? · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Relish, pleasing or zestful flavor, a quantity just sufficient to flavor,
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  to be pleased or gratified by, enjoy.
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  We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
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  Welcome everyone to another episode of Relish. My name is Alex Zerman and this
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  is Don Patterson, Pastor Don Patterson.
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  Yes. In some circles, yes. Right.
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  Doing all right. Yeah. It's September. It's like, oh, harvest?
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  Yeah. I mean, if you're listening to this, I'm not sure exactly what the date
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  will be, but for us, it's a rainy morning.
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  It's kind of a foggy morning, but I hope that when I get to listen to this for
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  myself, that we'll be in the field harvesting and, and, uh, the chaff will be flying and.
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  Yeah. Yeah. So. You don't go road blind, do you? Where you get same row,
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  same row forever and ever.
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  No, no. Well, I usually, I try to get my stepdad in there in the combine to do that.
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  Um, there's less things to break in there, you know? There you go.
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  Although he has burned one down, but that could have also been my fault.
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  So I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We'll see.
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  That's another discussion. Another time, maybe. Exactly. But yeah,
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  we're, we're excited for harvest and that's kind of a big thing about our community, isn't it?
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  It is. And I, I, I grew up at a different harvest because our harvest was always
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  in June, the big harvest. Yep.
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  And, uh, I just have great memories of harvest and communities getting together
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  and, and, uh, it was long enough ago. We didn't all have a combine.
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  And so we communicate, did some things with my uncles.
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  My uncles had combines. We didn't have a combine.
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  And so big dinners at noon. Oh, yeah. Everybody around the table and then lunches
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  in the afternoon in the field.
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  Yeah. Grandma coming out in her 1960 Ford Fairlane with her blue basket and
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  her blue basket always, lunch basket always had good stuff in it.
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  Oh, yeah. Grandmas always have good stuff. Grandmas always have good stuff. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
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  Uh, well, everyone, like I said, thanks for joining us. We got,
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  I think a great topic today.
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  Uh, it was brought up recently to me and, and the topic is just like who killed
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  Jesus and on its face, simple enough, but I'll tell you what,
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  I think we're going to very easily make this a full episode.
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  It could be. Sort of like murder you wrote. Right.
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  You know, yeah, that's a good analogy, really. That's a good call because there's
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  a lot of these stories, you know, like, you know, murder mystery stories.
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  Those are very popular podcasts where they're going into all the nitty gritty
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  details to really paint a story about what's happening.
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  And if you if we do this the right way, we're going to get into this deep and
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  see, you know, like who is actually responsible and how we're supposed to respond to that.
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  So, yeah, because in the midst of it, the question seems simple,
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  but there's a lot of skirting and responsibility even at the trial.
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  Yeah. Because there's a lot of moving back and forth. And so Jesus is arrested.
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  He goes before the Sanhedrin, which would be the Jewish lawmakers.
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  They would be connected to the temple. They consist of two groups,
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  the Pharisees and Sadducees. and.
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  Surely nobody else has political groups in your church.
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  Yeah. Nope. Okay. But this would be like having liberals and conservatives in
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  the same church. Right. Fighting. Yeah.
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  What's interesting is they're agreed on Jesus. Yeah. That this guy is a threat. Yep.
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  And if you go back in John, I think it's chapter 11, Caiaphas comes up with
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  this plan and says, well, it's better for one to die than for the nation.
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  And so it's prophetic in that role. I mean, maybe he knew what he was going
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  to do. Yeah, don't miss that.
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  But it's actually prophetic. And what's interesting, when you get to that passage in John, yeah.
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  He prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, that Jesus would die
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  for the Jewish nation and not only for the nation, but also for the scattered
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  children of God to bring them together and to make them one.
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  Now, when you think about it from Caiaphas, I mean, we know he's against Jesus. Yeah.
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  But for this prophecy, you know, this is a true prophecy.
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  Because Jesus did die for the Jews. Yeah.
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  And for the scattered Jews and for the nations to bring them together. Isn't that weird?
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  Yeah. So it comes from the side that was seeking to take Jesus' life,
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  but it's a true prophecy. Oh, yeah.
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  How can you be so right and so wrong? Uh-huh. Exactly. How can you be so right and so wrong?
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  And so we have the Jews plotting against.
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  Interesting, the fact that the Jews didn't want to take responsibility.
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  And so then they include Rome and take him to Pontius Pilate and says,
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  you need to kill this guy because he's done bad things. And how did Pilate respond to them?
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  I can't find anything wrong. He says, I can't find anything wrong with this man. No.
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  So then what did he try to do? He brought them? He tried to get Jesus off. Yeah.
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  And in doing so, brought out a serious murderous criminal. Right, Barabbas.
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  I mean, the baddest of the baddest. Yeah.
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  And even the Jews should have been put on edge having Barabbas.
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  Let loose can we is dangerous can we can we just double click on that really
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  quick double click because.
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  This i dove into this a while ago this crowd that is now here in in this example
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  of barabbas being released like it wasn't that many days before where they were
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  leading him in hosanna here he comes they were on jesus's side,
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  exactly five days and now four
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  days yeah four days via some kind of transformation, some sort of, um.
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  Um, influence upon them. Now they've completely changed. Yeah.
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  Of course we don't see that in our era, do we? That crowd speak would ever change
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  the attitude of the crowd towards an individual or an issue.
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  I mean, crowd speak can start to be sort of dangerous stuff,
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  especially depending on who the crowd's listening to.
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  Right. And so in this situation, we've got Pontius Pilate on one side,
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  And that's a new figure because when he comes in to town from Bethsaida to Jerusalem,
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  they're all excited about what could be.
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  And so the possibility that this is the Messiah is really exciting.
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  And then Jesus spends his time in the temple, well, not really positive because
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  he overturns the tables of the money changers.
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  And he says, this is a house of prayer instead of what's going on.
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  He challenges Matthew 23.
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  Look at the challenges, seven challenges. Whoa, huge.
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  Pharisees and teachers of the law, seven of them, and it calls them whitewashed
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  tombs, full of dead men's wounds.
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  So it really wasn't a popular thing that Jesus was doing. And so you have to wonder, did Jesus,
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  intentionally turn the people in those four days, you know become a popular
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  among the populace or was it done by the Pharisees and Sadducees,
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  and all of a sudden changing the crowd speak,
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  when Jesus was on trial in front of Pontius Pilate because in that period of time you know they say.
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  The crowd speak changes. And so he, what Pilate tries to do then is says,
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  well, you know, this is church stuff. You take care of church stuff.
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  It doesn't have to do with us Romans. Yeah.
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  And no, no. He's broke the law. Take him and judge him by your own law.
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  And they say, but we have no right to execute anyone. Yeah. The Jews objected.
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  And this happened so that the words of Jesus might be spoken,
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  indicating the kind of death he would die.
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  Because it happened that when they were condemned by the Sanhedrin, they could be stoned.
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  And the thing about stoning that worked good for them, I guess worked good for
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  them, is the fact nobody takes responsibility.
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  Oh, was it my stone that killed him?
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  Yeah. We all stoned him at the same time.
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  Right. And so they could defer judgment. They just didn't have to take responsibility at all.
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  And I think this all boils down to who's taking responsibility because the Jews
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  want the Romans to do this so they can take responsibility and the Jews don't have to. Right.
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  Oh my goodness. If it comes down 15 years down the road, this was the Messiah
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  and they actually killed him. Oh yeah.
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  Or, or even, you know, other Roman citizens, maybe people who are not a part
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  of the faith see that, oh, this, these Jews killed one of their own and he didn't
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  really even do anything wrong. Right.
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  That wouldn't look good either. Messy bunch. Yeah. And some also do your dirty work. Yeah.
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  And we see in the trials that come up in the book of Acts, some of the same
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  stuff going on. Oh, yeah.
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  Because it's always a group coming in or a remnant of somebody that's raising Ned.
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  Yeah. It seems like the Sanhedrin is pretty well taken care of as a group in
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  chapter five when Gamaliel says, well, you know what?
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  If this is of God, you're not going to stop it anyway. And if it's of men,
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  it'll die on its own. Yeah.
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  So reasonable. So you don't, yeah. So reasonable. Yeah. Yeah.
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  So we call that the Gamaliel principle. Right.
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  And so this is, uh, this is crowd speak.
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  So, right. So, so, so Pilate, he sees Jesus as kind of, yeah,
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  not guilty of anything, but he authorizes it anyways. Right. Yeah.
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  And I think it says something about Pilate. Okay. Uh, if, if it seems like pilot
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  is easily swayed and, uh.
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  He moves in another direction and says, okay, well, how about I release somebody
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  that's important to you?
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  And you can choose between this Jesus, who actually hasn't done anything wrong, and this,
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  Barnabas, Barabbas, who is a killer and he's a zealot, and we've got him on
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  those counts already. Who, who do you want?
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  And they say Barabbas. Right. And I think pilot in his head thing is in his head was saying, uh,
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  Can they really do that? Yeah. This guy who's done nothing wrong. Right.
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  And Barabbas who's done gobs wrong. That even the Jews should be upset that
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  he's alive. That was kind of his last ditch effort. Exactly.
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  To try to get them to understand, you don't want Jesus killed.
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  He was still under the assumption that they would see that it's wrong to kill
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  this person who hasn't done anything wrong.
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  And he goes, this would surely. So once they say they want him,
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  like he's, I mean, honestly, what? what's he going to do at that point?
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  Like he had to just be like, I mean, how often do people recognize what is right,
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  but still sacrifice it just to, you know, protect whatever position they have? Ah, yes. Yeah.
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  Pilot didn't protect his position. No, he didn't. We know from history he wasn't
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  there. In fact, he was there so short a time. Yeah.
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  That it wasn't documented until the, I think the sixties, the 1960s. Yeah.
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  When, uh, They found that archaeology actually came up with some inscription
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  that said he was actually there.
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  And so it was dismissed for a long time, a hundred years probably of textual
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  criticism because, well, we can't find anything archaeological or historical
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  that says Pilate was even governor. Right.
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  During that time. So Bible must be wrong. Right. Found it right. Yep. Again.
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  And it's interesting how archaeology is finding the Bible more right than wrong
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  yeah it's true so here's another little piece of this then.
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  We're still just trying to figure out you know who killed Jesus let's go back
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  even before they're in the crowd's hand before they're in Pilate's hands because
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  Jesus even comments on this about how,
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  the guilt or the sin being the greatest for the person who handed him over,
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  Oh, Judas. So is it Judas' fault? Is it Judas' fault?
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  It can be. I mean. I mean, sure, he had something to do with it because he turned him over.
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  The flip side of it, he also had a tremendous amount of guilt.
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  Yeah. To the point that he couldn't handle it. Yeah.
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  And threw the silver back at the guys and then did himself in. Mm-hmm.
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  So Judas, yeah, he's the one that did it. Or maybe there's the people that paid him.
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  So same responsibility there too, I guess. Yeah.
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  Yeah. I mean, I think when you go back to it and you give this answer,
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  like the real boil down thing, it's like, well, it was Rome.
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  Rome killed Jesus, technically.
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  Maybe from social pressures. Rome put in the spikes. Yeah.
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  Rome carried it out. Who bought the spikes? Well, yeah, the taxpayers paid for
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  the spikes. That's pretty good.
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  And the guys actually swinging the hammers, did they kill Jesus?
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  Well, they were doing their job. Right. They were doing what they were told to do.
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  There is another aspect to this, and that's the fact that it was already known.
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  Just looking at that, John 10, 18. John 10, 18. Well, you got me off guard there. Good job.
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  When you can get Don off guard, that's good.
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  You're going the same direction I was too. This reason the father loves me is
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  that I lay down my life only to take it up again.
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  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord and I have authority
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  to lay it down and authority to take it up again.
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  This command I received from my father.
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  So Jesus knows the outcome, but he's laying his life down.
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  The question is, who took it?
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  And yes, Jesus lays his life down. We know what's interesting is if you go into Psalm 22.
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  It describes aspects of the crucifixion, of the anointed one,
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  even before crucifixion was invented. Right.
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  I mean, how can you describe something you don't know nothing about unless there's
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  some other drive behind it, like the Holy Spirit dictating those words?
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  So Psalm 22 is one of those evidences in the Old Testament that this is going
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  to happen, and it's going to happen this way. Yeah. Isaiah 53.
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  It describes this man being tormented.
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  Right. And the lashes that he gets. The exact way he dies. The exact way.
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  And if you look at the other accounts of crucifixion, which there aren't a ton.
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  Right. But the ones we do see, and even the ones that we read about in the Bible,
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  the way crucifixions were done, is like, this was very unusual, the way that Jesus died.
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  So these references, prophecy. Prophecies.
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  And the fact that it happened so quickly. Exactly. Usually a crucifixion was a two or three day event.
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  And Jesus gave up his ghost in three hours time. Right.
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  Which is really short. And I think it's God's grace that that happened. Yeah.
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  I mean, yeah.
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  So then who killed Jesus?
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  Who bears the responsibility that he went to the cross, that he died this death
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  that paid a price that he didn't owe?
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  I think I did. You did. I think I did. Because that blood is what saved me. Yeah.
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  Yeah. You see that with someone. I hate to it. Something that is confusing to
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  people is that when we say, I killed Christ.
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  Can we expand upon that? Why do we say that when we clearly know it was the
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  Romans, it was that crowd, it was the Jews of the pressure at the time?
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  But his death was because of my sin. Right.
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  My sin made the situation that that offering needed to be made to God.
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  My sin created that.
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  And so anybody who's a believer who understands the blood of Jesus Christ and
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  that sacrificial act that he did upon the cross where he laid down his life
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  for our sake understands that, yeah, we're responsible.
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  If you want to zoom in on all these things, that's, that's the problem here is that we're,
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  if you're not a Christian or if you're not understanding this correctly,
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  you're saying one of those, the Jews, it was the Romans, it was,
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  but, but Christianity, Christianity, this theology makes it a humanity issue. Right.
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  It was our fallenness that caused this to happen.
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  We are not different. We are no better than the people back in those days. Nope.
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  You know, there's times when I look and I read about things and I'm like,
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  I really sympathize with, you know, what Judas did.
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  I don't think that I'm completely outside of the realm of that taking place
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  in my life. Well, and we might want to talk about how do we betray Christ? Oh, yeah.
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  I mean, our actions, our words, how do they betray the Savior who died for us? Right.
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  I mean, that could be a whole subject in itself. Yeah. Uh, because we have to
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  take merit, I mean, take, uh, responsibility for that.
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  What we do that actually gets in the way of how Christ would be perceived. Right.
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  Because we're, we're representations of him. Yeah.
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  On earth and the actions that we do that are counter to who he is,
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  we need to take responsibility for those as well because they,
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  they distract from Jesus. Right.
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  And the flip side of that is the church.
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  In most historical situations has been able to rise above the culture in which
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  they live because of this Christ and the understanding of his.
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  Sacrifice on the cross to free us from sin.
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  And so if I get free of sin, I want to make sure, hey, but I'd like to make
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  sure you're free of sin, too, and the bondages that are a part of that.
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  And so then we share that message. That becomes good news. Good news.
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  Oh, yeah. Spall. There you go.
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  Then we can be evangelists, right? Right. Sharing the good news. I agree. Yeah.
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  Saying, you know, I killed, I was the one who crucified Christ.
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  I mean, there's so much good that can come out of just adopting that framework
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  for your, who you are, for your identity. You know, there's humility.
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  There's acceptance into that community.
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  There's, you know, you're taking responsibility for your actions.
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  You're repenting. you know you're recognizing these things you're not denying all that stuff right,
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  and from there it's just it's just awesome it is,
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  and and we might want to go back to construct of why blood why did jesus have
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  to die why does the sacrifice have to be and you can go to to hebrews 9 and
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  hebrews 10 and start to get us,
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  a visual of the importance of sacrifice oh yeah yeah to to the temple to God, and why blood?
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  And I often had the question, so why blood? I mean, why couldn't have been honey
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  or something else that didn't require death?
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  And you go back to Genesis 3 and realize that God Himself—.
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  Found skins, took skins for Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness,
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  to cover their sin in that sense.
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  And God was the first to sacrifice.
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  God was the first to sacrifice.
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  He took, can you imagine the heart of God to take some of his creation to protect
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  another part of his creation, even though he was the creator of both? Right.
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  And so the writer of Hebrews comes to the point that you can't have sin covered
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  without sacrifice. Yeah.
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  And I think that paints that beautiful picture of we don't have to live in the shame of saying,
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  I killed Christ because this is the way God wanted it to not make us feel bad,
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  but to bring us closer to him.
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  Exactly. And that's where the advantage comes from the individual who understand
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  or has read the whole Bible and can see Jesus through its pages from front to back.
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  It's amazing. God's had a plan.
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  He knows us better than we know ourselves. And so this, this Christ event that
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  happened and still happens in the hearts of people who receive him,
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  uh, is, is a holy thing that, uh,
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  God had ordained from the beginning.
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  Isn't that wild? It's wild. Good stuff. It is good stuff.
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  And I think we'll wrap it there. Will you? Yeah, yeah. If we miss something
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  about it, if you've got more interesting points that we forgot there,
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  throw them in the chat and stuff like that. Start a conversation somewhere. Yeah. We love it.
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  We can get off base once in a while. Oh, yeah. And off track once in a while. Yeah, I love you.
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  Approach me in public too and be like, you know, I know it's a weird thing that
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  dawns on. And I also enjoy that. That's fun. It doesn't happen.
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  Oh, the weird thing that Don said.
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  Yeah. Okay. Love seeing you guys
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  in public too. So, hey. Is it always the weird thing that Don said? No.
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  No, but those are always exciting. Oh, those are exciting ones.
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  Okay. I understand that. Yeah.
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  All right, everyone. Hey, thanks for joining us. And we'll see you guys next
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  week. Lord willing. Bye.
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  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
• 23:40
  ministry by sharing it with others.
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  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
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  and his calling to us in our daily lives.
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  Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.