{"id":1837,"date":"2012-03-03T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T06:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/?p=1837"},"modified":"2012-02-27T11:43:46","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T10:43:46","slug":"lent-devotions-2012-saturday-3rd-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/2012\/03\/03\/lent-devotions-2012-saturday-3rd-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent Devotions 2012: Saturday 3rd March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>\u201cPilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, &#8216;Are you the king of the Jews?&#8217;\u201d John 18:33<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pilate at this point went back inside the praetorium to question Jesus (it is not clear whether Jesus himself had been brought inside prior to this). He asked Jesus, \u201cAre You the King of the Jews?\u201d It is difficult to discern Pilate\u2019s attitude at this point. Imagine yourself saying that sentence. Try saying it over and over but at each time change the inflexion on each word. As you do so, the sentence can show us its many meanings. Try \u201cAre You the King of the Jews?\u201d with resultant feeling of unbelief. \u201cAre You the King of the Jews?\u201d gives the feeling of incredulity and sarcasm, but \u201cAre You the King of the Jews?\u201d seems to be suggesting that the Roman governor was impressed by Jesus\u2019 regal disposition and dignity. \u201cAre You the King of the Jews?\u201d seems to be implying that His royalty is not in question but asking whether He is just restricted to dominion over the Jews.<\/p>\n<p>As we go further in the chapter we find that Pilate probably thought Jesus to be harmless (hence innocent) in his Roman eyes. However, in today\u2019s world, how do we discharge our duties when in positions of power? Do we mislead people by asking the right question in the wrong way? Do we just avoid pursuing the truth because we feel it is not our position to pry? Sometimes, we have to burst into other people\u2019s business to make sure greater wrongs are not perpetrated. How many children would be alive today if someone had just decided to ask that difficult question or gone into that house to make sure they were alright?<\/p>\n<p>As Edmund Burke said \u201cAll that is needed for the forces of evil to succeed is for enough good men to remain silent\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lord Jesus, inspire us by Your courage to be bold in Your service, however difficult that may be. Amen.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cPilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, &#8216;Are you the king of the Jews?&#8217;\u201d John 18:33 Pilate at this point went back inside the praetorium to question Jesus (it is not clear whether Jesus himself had been brought inside prior to this). He asked Jesus, \u201cAre You the King of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent-devotions-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1838,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions\/1838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}