The King of the Jews (Matthew 27:11-26)

After sermons focused on Peter and Judas the last two weeks, this week we will be reading through Jesus' trial before Pilate. This passage included the urging of the crowd to release Barabbas, the hardened criminal, in Jesus' place. J.C. Ryle wrote, "There are few things so little believed and realized as the corruption of human nature. Men fancy that if they saw a perfect person they would love and admire him; they flatter themselves that it is the inconsistency of professing Christians which they dislike and not their religion: they forget that when a really perfect man was on earth, in the person of the Son of God, He was hated and put to death. That single fact goes far to prove the truth of an old saying, that 'unconverted men would kill God, if they could get at Him.'"