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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

The Man Who Stopped the Sun from Shining

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

♪♪ This is the story of the only man in history who stopped the sun from shining.

It's also the story of the greatest miscarriage of justice known to humankind.

But first, let's bring it a little closer to home.

In June of 2024, Sandra Hemme was released from a prison in Missouri after serving 43 years for murder, a crime she did not commit, becoming the longest known wrongly incarcerated woman in U.S.

Reports say certain individuals were highly motivated to look away from where the evidence pointed and look instead in other directions.

Hemme spent almost half a century locked up for no reason at all.

Questions have persisted for decades about the deaths of former President John F.

The moment Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV, People everywhere suspected there was a whole lot more to the story than the official story.

King's family don't believe James Earl Ray fired the bullet that took the life of the civil rights leader.

Maybe we'll never know what really happened.

Justice isn't always as blind as we'd like to think.

But the man who stopped the sun from shining?

There is no question about who he was and absolutely no doubt about his guilt.

The greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of the world took place on what Christians now call Easter weekend, 2, 000 years ago.

The Son of God was born as a baby in Bethlehem in Israel, raised in Nazareth, and in 27 AD began a very public ministry.

After getting offside with Jewish religious leaders, he was crucified, nailed to a cross.

But during Jesus' awful journey to the cross, there was 1 man who could have intervened to stop history's greatest miscarriage of justice, prevent an incomprehensible abuse of power, and turn back a bloodthirsty mob.

He's the only man who ever lived who could have kept the sun shining in the sky.

We don't know much about his background, but in the Easter story Pontius Pilate looms large.

He was the governor of Judea, which is roughly Israel and part of Jordan today.

By the time Jesus was born, Judea was part of the Roman province of Syria and as the governor of Judea, Pilate reported to the Roman Emperor.

He had jurisdiction over military matters and was authorized to impose the death penalty.

The Sanhedrin, made up of 70 influential Jewish men, had some influence in civil and political matters, but with the Romans in control, they had the greatest impact in the religious sphere.

And on the night Jesus was arrested, Everything came together to create the perfect storm.

The Jewish leaders overstepped their boundaries, and the man appointed by the Roman Empire to maintain peace and order failed in his duty.

As we look at Pilate's role in the Easter story, we see that God gave him opportunity after opportunity to do something historic, to do the right thing.

Now, I'm not suggesting Jesus' death on the cross might have been avoided, it was prophesied that he would be crucified.

But Pilate's name could have gone down in history for all the right reasons, if he'd only acted with integrity.

Pilate could have been a Daniel who purposed in his heart that he would honor God no matter the personal cost.

He could have been like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who knew God could save them from the fiery furnace, but told the king that even if God did not, they still weren't going to violate their conscience.

In fact, conscience is a major part of Pilate's story.

Conviction came to him again and again as God spoke to his heart.

As we do, we're going to learn something important enough to be the difference between being saved and being lost.

We'll start in Matthew chapter 27 and verse 1.

And the Bible says, When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put Him to death.

And when they had bound Him, they led Him away and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor.

After tolerating Jesus' ministry for 3 and a half years, Jewish leaders had had enough of Him.

This young teacher didn't respect their customs.

He was a threat to their authority, and he attracted people by the thousands.

He was showing people what faith in God really looked like, and he did so by portraying God as loving, by showing empathy and kindness, by investing in people, by offering hope and touching even the hardest hearts.

But the Jewish authorities decided he had to go.

Was it because he raised people from the dead and brought them back to life?

Was it because he restored people's sight or gave them back the use of their limbs?

And because the purity of his life was a rebuke to their obvious corruption, they thought the best thing they could do to a man who raised the dead and healed lepers and cancelled funerals was put him to death.

But because they didn't have the authority to execute someone, they brought him to Pilate, urging Pilate to do what they could not.

Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying, Are you the king of the Jews?

It's clear Pilate wasn't moved by the accusations brought against Jesus.

Jesus had never given Pilate any trouble.

He'd never led an insurrection or gotten in the way of the Roman armies.

He was a religious teacher who couldn't even be accused of profiting from his ministry.

When Pilate asked Jesus about the accusations made against him, Jesus stayed silent and Pilate marveled greatly.

You'd Expect someone in that situation to protest their innocence, to give their side of the story.

He would have been asking himself what kind of man this was.

It was clear that Jesus cared about more than saving his own life.

He knew he was destined for the cross, but his commitment to saving you was stronger than his commitment to saving himself.

He was no stranger to killing innocent people.

In Luke 13 there is a reference to a time he had a number of Galileans killed while they were offering sacrifices.

And according to the historian Josephus, when Jews protested Pilate taking money from the temple treasury to pay for the building of an aqueduct, he put down the rebellion by massacring numbers of people.

Pilate ended up losing his job over a massacre of Samaritan worshippers on Mount Gerizim a few years after the death of Jesus.

But here, Pilate was looking for a way out of condemning an innocent man.

There was something different about Jesus, and Pilate didn't want Jesus to be put to death.

Now at the feast, the governor was accustomed to releasing to the multitude 1 prisoner whom they wished.

And at that time, they had a notorious prisoner called Barabbas.

Mark adds an important detail, and there was 1 named Barabbas who was chained with his fellow rebels.

They had committed murder in the rebellion.

He doesn't want to condemn an innocent man to die, so he presented the people with 2 choices.

The obvious choice was a man who may well have healed some of the very people baying for his blood.

Pilate would contrast the humble, kind, gracious Jesus with a murderer.

Surely there was only 1 possible outcome.

Except that Pilate wasn't familiar with the old adage about lawyers during cross-examination.

Never ask a question you don't know the answer to.

He assumed that the people in that crowd possessed some measure of humanity, some shred of decency, some sensitivity to life and death and reason and common sense.

Therefore when they had gathered together, Pilate said to them, Whom do you want me to release to you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?

Now notice this, For He knew that they had handed him over because of envy.

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The Man Who Stopped the Sun from Shining

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