Alliance Christian Church
February 8 2026

      • 2 Corinthians 9:7GS-NETBIBLE

      • Psalm 46NIV2011

  • Forever
  • I love you, Lord
  • Beloved
  • This is My Commandment

  • No Friend of Caesar

    INTRODUCTION
    TRANSITION
    We’re on week 13 of what was supposed to be a seven week series.
    Honestly, if I could have done this series all over again, I probably would have made it even longer.
    I would have loved to do a year in the book of John. Because every time I would dig in for a sermon there would just be tons and tons of stuff that I had to cut out.
    You’ve probably noticed there are lot’s of parts of John that we haven’t even been able to cover.
    But I want to encourage you in knowing that you can never study the Bible too much.
    You can read it a 100 different times and every time you’re going to find something new. That’s one of the things I love about this book.
    There’s never a time in which you’ve “finished” the Bible. There’s always more.
    But today, what I want to do, is I want to look at one of the conversations that Jesus has with a roman Governor by the name of Pontius Pilate.
    We’re going to approach this slightly differently than we normally would other text. My goal for you this morning is to understand Jesus from the lens of Pontius Pilate. We’re going to get to know who he was, what motivated him to make the decision to have Jesus handed over.
    We’re going to learn about his background, how he ended up here in the first place.
    And I want you all to do your best to see this story through PIlates eyes. Because I think there’s a lot we can learn from. That.
    We’re going to go through a lot of history, I’m going to be mentioning a lot of names. I’m going to do my best to put those names up on the screen while we’re talking about it, so that you have a chance to jot it down in your notes.
    And the first person you’re going to need to know in order to understand Pontius PIlate is actually someone you all have hopefully heard of before.
    Herod the Great
    King of All Israel and Judea
    Matthew 2:1
    Split the kingdom in 3 upon his death
    Importantly, you need to understand that Herod, and his sons after his death who each received a 3rd of the kingdom, were what is called “client kings” for rome.
    A client king is a really nice way of saying “puppet King”
    One of the things that rome did was that in the provinces farter away from Italy, rather than sending a roman to control the region, they installed a puppet king to help administer for them.
    From a logistics point of view, this makes a lot of sense.
    It’s a long way away, it’s really hard to govern people from a long distance.
    These far away provinces like Judea have way different cultures. Speak a different language.
    And so it made sense for rome to put someone kind of local, but who would be loyal to rome’s interests to do the local governing.
    And their job was basically collect taxes, and don’t let the people riot.
    That was it. If you could manage those two things, collect taxes, and no riots. Rome was perfectly happy to just leave you alone.
    One of Herdod’s son’s you don’t need to remember this, but one of his sons name Archeleus inherited Judea. This is the southern region that contains the city of Jerusalem.
    Archeleus was a dumpster fire of a king. He lasted only about a year until the Jewish people in Jerusalem petitioned Rome and said, you either need to get this guy out of here. The Jewish people requested the Romans to send someone to govern them directly.
    Just to put this in perspective, the Jewish people hated the Romans. So for it to be so bad that they would have rather had direct roman rule, that just shows you how bad Archeleus was.
    And so the Jews sent to rome and basically were like, either get archeleus out of here or we are going riot.
    And rome caved.
    The region of Judea fell under the rule of a roman Governor instead of a client king.
    —
    Now here’s where I want you to think of this from a Roman perspective.
    You’re a young roman man, trying to work his way up the ladder in politics. You’re in the military, because in roman politics, your political career and your military career went hand in hand.
    And you’re looking around at all the places you might get stationed. You’re hoping.
    Man I’d love to govern gaul - modern day france.
    That’s good to have on your resume. Julius caesar himself governed there. It’s presegious, it’s close to rome.
    Man I’d love to govern Spain. Olives groves and vinyeards, and silver mines.
    You know where you don’t want to get stationed? Judea.
    —-
    Tiberius
    Second Emperor
    Luke 3:1
    Reclusive and Paranoid
    Tiberius, or Tiberius Caesar, became emperor in 14 AD.
    Put that in the time line, Jesus was a rather young man, hadn’t started his ministry yet.
    Tiberius had two major personality flaws.
    1. Paranoid.
    Probably rightly so. If you’re the most powerful man in the world, you are always one poisoned meal away from death.
    2. He was reclusive.
    He really didn’t like the job of being emperor if I’m being completely honest.
    He did it, because he was heir to the throne. He didn’t like being in front of people, he didn’t like governeing, he didn’t like doing the work of being the most powerful man in the world.
    And shortly into his reign, he basically handed over all of the day to day work to other people, and went and moved to his own private island to be left alone.
    And like, if they really needed a decision made, they would send someone, and he would say “yes invade these people” No don’t raise taxes on these people.
    But other than that Tiberius was really hands off. He didn’t want to do any of the boring administrative stuff. He wanted the life of luxury, and his own private island. But he didn’t actually want to govern per se.
    One of the people he handed administrative power to was a guy named Sejanus
    Sejanus
    Appointed Pontius Pilate
    Power Hungry
    Pontius Pilate
    Equestrian Class
    Located in Caesarea Maritima
    Offended the Jewish People
    Standards incident
    Upon first taking office
    Aqueduct incident
    Took money from temple
    Sejanus executed in 31 AD
    Paint a picture of Pilate

    John 18:28-32

    Takeaway:
    Standing up for Truth
    Recognizing Where your Authority Comes from
    Deciding where your Allegiances Lie.
  • Oh, How He Loves You and Me
  • Egypt
  • They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love
Alliance Christian Church
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9707657196
https://www.alliancechristian.church
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