Readings:
Isaiah 3-4
Proverbs 2
John 19:1-16

Isaiah 3-4

Isaiah pronounces a judgment on Judah for her sins and gives all kinds of examples of how the entire nation will be turned upside down with the young being made princes and infants ruled, the youth will be insolent to the elderly and the honorable will have to pay respect to the dishonorable.

Judah joined Israel in turning God’s order for creation upside down, and now it’s being done to them in return. Parents are supposed to sacrifice on behalf of their children, both in literal sacrifices that they were responsible to make for their families to God, and figuratively by feeding your child before yourself when food is scarce for example. But instead they’ve been sacrificing their children to the Canaanite gods for their own benefit, they burn their children for a good harvest or for rain. This is backwards and evil.

They also have created gods with their own hands, gods of clay and wood, iron and bronze, and they honor these gods in place of the True God that created them. They elevate the creation above the creator. For all these things they will be judged.

John 19:1-16

Pilate has Jesus beaten as a way to appease the crowds, but like most attempts at appeasement it doesn’t work. They cry out for blood and Pilate declares that Jesus is innocent yet again, but the crowd will have none of it. They say he deserves to die because he said he was the son of God. This though is them admitting that they want him killed not because he broke some Roman law that they really have no interest in, but because he violated their religious tenants.

Pilate should’ve immediately released him, now knowing that he had broken no law of Rome, but their charge of him being the son of God shook him. He approached Jesus and asked where he came from, but he doesn’t mean the town of his birth, he is asking Jesus exactly who he is. Jesus refuses to answer. Pilate presses and says he has the power to have him put to death, but Jesus counters that he actually has zero power over him and he’s just going along with this because it’s his desire to do so.

Pilate tries again to release him, now being more afraid to kill (what he probably believes to be) a demigod than to have an angry mob outside his home. But the leaders pivot back to Pilate’s worst fear, and that is falling out of favor with his patrons and being recalled and possibly executed in Rome. He gives in to the pressure and hands over a man he knows is innocent to suffer a brutal execution.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Isaiah 5
Proverbs 3
John 19:17-42