Summary:
If the Lord ate the Passover (Mr.14:16) before getting to Pilate (15:1), how could “the preparation of the Passover” come after He stood before Pilate (John 19:14)? Passover was so close to the feast of unleavened bread they were sometimes lumped together (Lu.22:1). But if the Lord was before Pilate “about the sixth hour” (Jo.19:14), how could they have crucified Him in “the third hour” (Mark 15:25)? Mark was talking about the time of day, John meant it was the sixth hour of the preparation. It is crucial to know these answers if you want to defend the Bible to critics.
To say they preferred someone like Caesar to Christ as their king was bad, but we do the same when we decide to live in sin. There’s a reason Paul says sin shouldn’t “reign” over us (Rom.6:12). Only kings reign, so when we choose to live in sin, we are saying, “We have no king but sin.” There’s a reason Paul says we shouldn’t let sin “have dominion” over us (Rom. 6:14). Only kings have dominion (Dn.11:3).
There’s a reason Paul says to let the peace of God “rule” in our hearts (Col.3:15). When we wrong Him, He doesn’t let it disturb His peace, He forbears and forgives, and asks us to let His peace rule our hearts when someone wrongs us. Only a king rules (Ezra 4:20). So when you let vengeance rule your heart instead, you are saying, “I have no king but vengeance.” You are always going to fall into sin, but you shouldn’t let it reign as a king in your life.
Since saying those words, Israel hasn’t had a king of their own since, and won’t till the Lord comes (Ezek. 21:26,27).
John leaves out Pilate’s hand-washing (Mt.27:22-26). This action is a figure of speech, even in our own day, meaning you wish to absolve yourself of responsibility of some-thing. Many of our expressions come from the Bible, but Pilate drew this from earlier in the Bible. When it wasn’t known who killed a man, the elders of the closest city were responsible to sacrifice a heifer to pay for his blood (Deut. 21:1-4) to satisfy God’s justice and make them innocent of that blood, enabling them to wash their hands of it (5-9). But as usual, God’s truth got perverted by the world. Just washing his hands didn’t exonerate Pilate, who knew the Lord was innocent and should have released Him.
But if Pilate didn’t want the blame for His death, the Jews were willing to accept it (Mt.27:22-25). Of course, they sang a different tune after the Lord’s resurrection (Acts 5:28). But we do the same thing when we are tempted to sin and know we’ll reap what we sow, but we still say “Bring it on.” When it comes time to reap, though, we’re all, “You’re trying to make me reap what I sowed!”
John omits how they made Simon carry His cross behind Him (Lu.23:26). He was chosen at random and “com-pelled” to carry it (Mt.27:31,32). Normally men are identified as “son of,” but he was called “father of Rufus” (Mr.15:21) because Rufus later got saved (Ro.16:13).
Simon was a type of Tribulation Jews who will have to take up their cross and follow Him (Mt.10:38), the specific cross (Mark 10:21) of being willing to die for others as the Lord did (Mark 8:31-34; Lu.9:22,23) by being willing to give them food and clothing when the beast issues his mark, even if they will die without those provisions (IJo.3:16). This is why, in speaking of taking up your cross, the Lord often added that they had to be willing to lose their lives (Lu.9:23-25) by selling whatever they had to give the money to help others (Mark 10:17-21). In carrying the end of the Lord’s cross, Simon symbolized those who had to take up their cross to “follow” Him.
The sin offering was supposed to be killed on the altar and the body burned outside the camp, and the Lord should have been sacrificed on the altar (Ps.118:26,27) with His body later burned outside the camp. Instead, He was killed on “the place of a skull” (Jo.17), outside Jerusalem, where the fire of God’s wrath fell and made Him a burnt offering, on a cross, the death of a criminal. This was a reproach, so Trib Jews will have to go forth to Him “without the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb.13:11-13). He died as an evil-doer and Trib Jews will have to bear that reproach(Lu.6:22)
