The king has requested that you be nice, that you forgive people, that you give people freedom to make mistakes, that you do these things. Is He your slave or is He your Lord? See Pilate entered into this discussion and this is so cool. I'll close this session out with this. Look at the Book of John, Chapter 19. He'll be able to pull it up on the screen, but if you want to flip there you can. You might want to take notes in your Bible. John 19:19 through 22, it says this: And Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened it to the cross and it read Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, and many of the Jews read this sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city. The sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek and the chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, do not write the king of the Jews, but that this man claimed to be the king of the Jews. Pilate said now what I've written I've written. Now here's my question. To Pilate who was the king of the Jews? Caesar. Caesar was the king of the Jews, so for a man to say He was the king of the Jews, when he writes over the cross here is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, was he being serious or sarcastic? Sarcastic.
You would think that the Jews would have wanted to enter into the sarcasm. Why? Because yeah, you said You were the king of the Jews yet look at You on the cross. It was Rome's way of saying if anyone proclaims themself king other than Caesar this is their fate. Pilate wasn't even being religious with it - so why are the Jews so upset? Well here's what would have happened in those days. Let me just show you the four words first. Here's Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. That takes four words to say, here they are. [unclear 00.48.37] Okay, it says it was written in Aramaic, Greek and Latin. [unclear 00.48.45] Now that's a lot to write in a piece of paper over a cross right, so what typically would happen is when someone put a message on the cross they would write it out in the most common language of the day. The most common language of that day would have been Greek because it was the Roman Empire, so he would have written it out in Greek and then in the other languages they simply used an acrostic okay. So if they used an acrostic on these four words what would it be? Y, H, V, H.
So over the cross Pilate writes this: here is Yahweh. Here is Yahweh. Do you see why the Jews got so mad now? Here is Yud, He, Vav, He. Here is Jehovah. Here is Jehovah. So interesting the name of God, so interesting. Did I talk about this last night, the name of God and the pictures on it and - okay. My meetings are crossing in my head. Every Hebrew letter is a picture, so every Hebrew word is a comic strip. First of all the letters Yahweh, they don't go together phonetically. You can't say them, so when Moses said what's Your name God? I want to know Your name. See in Egyptian culture if you knew your God's name you could control him, so God knew that so Moses said what's Your name? In other words Moses is saying how can I control You? Yahweh says My name is Yud, He, Vav, He, which phonetically doesn't - it'd be like me going my name is [Shishmenovshevhaminuman. 00.50.41] [Laughter] It's like what, that doesn't even make any - what, excuse me? Shishmenovshevhaminuman - I just turned Swedish - so anyway, so it just sort of wait a minute, hold on, that doesn't - come back at me again? No, Yud, He, Vav, He - Yud, He, Vav, He? Can you spell that? Yeah, Yud, He, Vav, He.
So the rabbis said well what is this name of God? What they came up with was that if you listen to it it's not how it goes together, it's how you sound it. Yud, He, Vav, He. They said the name of God was actually Breath, Yud, He, Vav, He. A later writer said the name of God holds life together. Isn't that true? What's the last thing you do before you die? You take your last breath, so when you quit saying the name of God you quit living. What's the first thing you do when you're born? You breathe. You have to say the name of God, so in order to sustain your life you have to continuously say the name of God over and over and over again. Isn't it interesting that if you met at a coffee shop with an atheist tomorrow, the very breath it would take him to say he doesn't believe in God he would be actually using the name of the one he doesn't believe in to sustain his own life? And yet God is kind enough to let him do it. How nice is God.