Pilate argued with the crowd, but when their shouts got to be too much, he gave it.  Appeasing the crowd became more important to him than protecting an innocent man.  He was willing to give Jesus over to be crucified to keep the crowds happy instead of standing for what he knew to be right.  For him, it was easier to just give in.

The world constantly challenges us in faith, and the temptation is great to just give in.  Sometimes it would be easier to just listen to the world and let them win.  It would be easier to go along with the immoral nature of society rather than stand up for virtue.  It would be easier to allow the faithful to be persecuted rather than stand up for them and risk our own persecution.  But God doesn’t call us to the easy life.  He calls us to the faithful life.  The world may tempt us to go astray, but we must stand firm in Christ and resist the urge to give in.

Whether we admit it or not, there are times that we fall into performance faith.  We, like Herod, have heard of God doing miraculous things, and we expect God to perform for us.  We pin our faith on Jesus performing right in our lives:  If He blesses us, we believe (or believe more) and if He doesn’t bless us, we reject Him.

Jesus isn’t interested in performing for us so that we will believe.  He doesn’t want our faith to be dependent on what He will do for us.  He wants us to trust Him because He is who He is.  True love isn’t based on what we get in return, it is based on our hearts.  This is how God loves us and how we should love God.

The Jews charged that Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews.  Pilate asked Jesus if He was the king of the Jews, to which he responds, “Yes, it is as you say.”  A charge is made.  A confession is made.  It seems to be an open and shut case.  Yet, Pilate still tells the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.” Why?  Was it because Pilate saw that the charges were trumped up?  Was it because He had a secret faith in Christ?  No, he was merely disinterested.  He just didn’t care about Jesus and didn’t want to be bothered with dealing with Him.

One of the greatest challenges that we face in sharing the good news of Christ isn’t that people will oppose us, it’s that they will be disinterested.  Some people just don’t care about Jesus.  They would rather not think about faith.  How do we share our faith with a disinterested audience?  It’s hard, but not impossible.  We must help them to see the importance of faith in their lives and see the necessity to deal with Jesus.  We must help them to see that they can’t not decide or their decision is made, the decision against Christ.

One of the things that I have discovered over time is that sometimes people don’t care about the answers to their questions.  Not that they don’t want them answered; they just aren’t interested in what the answer is.  They have made up their mind and no matter what the answer is their mind will not change.

While it is important to know the answers to difficult faith questions, we must also realize that many times the people asking the question have already made up their mind about faith.  Answering their questions might not change their attitude about Christianity.  To put it another way, you can’t argue someone into the Kingdom of God.  The only thing that will change people is love.  Some people are only looking for arguments.  Those arguments are a fruitless adventure unless they are entered into in love.

If we want to change people’s minds about God, then we must change their hearts.  The only way to change a heart is through the power of God’s love.

Maybe it was because he wanted to see what happened.  Maybe it was because he was working on a plan to save him. Maybe he just had to know.  For whatever reason, Peter followed Jesus after His arrest.  He was among the crowd when he was pointed out.  He had been discovered!  What would he do?  Deny it.  Deny it all.  He didn’t dare admit it and see a similar fate.  He didn’t try to escape.  He wanted to see what happened, but he wanted to do so in anonymity.

We do the same so often as well.  We want to be around Jesus, but don’t want to be seen.  We want Jesus in our lives, but we don’t want to experience any persecution because of our faith.  We are glad to say we follow Christ when we are among believers, but when we come to situations that make faith uncomfortable we deny our faith.  We hide in the open, wanting to see if Jesus is going to do anything, but unwilling to do anything ourselves.

God wants us to identify ourselves with Him not only when it is convenient to us, but when it is challenging as well.  He wants us to trust that He is in charge and will protect us. He won’t hide from us.  We shouldn’t hide our faith in Him.