Sunday 02 • 23 • 20

We are taking a slow walk with Jesus to the cross. Now, if you have been to a Catholic church or you grew up Catholic, you may be familiar with the stations of the cross. A lot of Catholic churches will have these 14 stations, pictures of the last twenty four hours of Jesus as he walks, makes his way toward death. And there's something actually very biblical about that focus in a church. We Protestant churches—if Baptists and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and Episcopalians and such—we don't have anything like that. But I think maybe we should.

Because if you read Scripture, if you read the Gospels, these read kind of odd if they are just biographies of Jesus. If you've ever looked at the Gospels, especially John's Gospel, you'll notice how odd they are if you just read them like a biography. You would expect there to be equal emphasis on all parts of Jesus' life and instead, this is what you get: a little tiny bit about his birth, almost nothing about his childhood and teen years and early adulthood. Then there's a sort of flyover of that and then it slows down when he hits about 30 and we get a lot of detail about his ministry but then it slows way down to a crawl for the last week. It almost seems like John's gospel, for example, is like a little introduction to the last week of Jesus's life. It's that much of a focus.

The Gospels seem to be saying to us, look right here. This is the most important thing: the cross. So we're spending time moving slowly, following Jesus' steps to the cross. Last week, Russell took us through the arrest of Jesus in the garden. And today, we're going to look at the most famous debacle of justice in human history—Jesus' trial is the first part of that.

The Trial of Jesus

So we're going to read together. If you would look in your bulletin or look on the wall behind me, we're going to read Matthew chapter 26, verses 57 through 75. Would you read with me out loud?

Then those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the scribes and the elders had gathered. And Peter was following him at a distance, as far as the courtyard of the high priest. And going inside, he sat down with the guards to see the end.

Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death, but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last, two came forward and said, "This man said, 'I am able to destroy the temple and to rebuild it in three days.'"

And the priest stood up and said, "Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?" But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, "I adjure you by the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God."

Jesus said to him, "You have said so, but I tell you, from now on, you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven."

Then the high priest tore his robes and said, "He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard this blasphemy. What is your judgment?" They answered, "He deserves death."

Then they spit in his face and struck him, and some slapped him, saying, "Christ, who is it that struck you?"

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him and said, "You also were with Jesus the Galilean." But he denied it before all of them, saying, "I do not know what you mean." And when he went out to the entrance, another servant girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, "This man was with Jesus of Nazareth." And again, he denied it with an oath, "I do not know the man."

And after a while, the bystanders came up and said to Peter, "For your accent betrays you." Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, "I do not know the man." Jesus said, "Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times." And he went out and wept. — Matthew 26:57-75

Is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

You know, just this past month, the film Just Mercy was released starring Michael B. Jordan as the real life lawyer, Brian Stevenson. This is the story—the real life story—of Brian Stevenson. Stevenson graduated from Harvard Law School and headed to Alabama to defend those who were underrepresented and also many people who had been accused of crimes they did not commit and were on death row. The film centers around one of the first cases, that of Walter McMillan, a man accused of the murder of an 18 year old white woman. McMillan is black, and he was sentenced to die in 1987 for this murder. He was on death row for years and years. And the movie follows Stevenson's fight against a corrupt judicial system in Alabama and against the antagonism of the community around this. It's a powerful, powerful film. Do yourself a favor and go watch this one. But I read the book years before of the same title.

And what really hit me about this film is that it's the same story. But there's something about watching someone face death for injustice, for a crime they didn't commit. The emotional impact of watching this film, watching someone stand and be beaten down by a system where they're facing death—and wrongfully so—it's really powerful.

You know, there's something about that which reminds me of this passage this morning. We're going to look at the first of the unjust trials against Jesus. Jesus is on death row in this passage, and he's facing a kangaroo court. The religious leaders of his day—and this is the first of actually six parts of this trial, which we'll take over the next weeks—but it's kangaroo court justice. Everything seems to be upside down. Here is the way, the truth, and the life being accused of lying. Here's one of his best friends who should be offering testimony in his defense, and he's running away. Here are false testimonies twisting his words. Everything just seems flipped upside down.

So here's my big idea for this morning that we're going to look at: Think about what happens when you put a tea bag into hot water. You put a tea bag in hot water, and what's on the inside of the bag infuses everything around it. Or think about what happens if you take a sponge soaked with water and you squeeze it—everything that's on the inside comes out, right? Everything comes pouring out.

This morning we're going to look at three groups—the Sanhedrin, Peter, and Jesus—and how when they're in hot water, in this very intense scene, when the pressure is applied, what comes out of them? And we're then going to ask the question: What comes out of us?

The Sanhedrin's Response

Let's look at each of these. First, the Sanhedrin—verses 57 through 64. The religious leaders had a big problem with Jesus, one that had only grown in intensity over time, particularly in these past few days before this scene.

The Israelite people, the Jewish people, were taken with Jesus. Jesus had performed many public miracles. His fame had grown over time. He had lots of public debates with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and had shown himself to be very wise, one who spoke with words of authority. The religious leaders were not happy about having not just Jesus around, but Lazarus as well—because the word on the street was that Jesus had raised this man from the dead. Think about Lazarus. His very presence was like a walking billboard that Jesus was legit in every part of his ministry.

All of this continues to build to this final Passover week, and it probably would have been fine had Jesus not done this one thing. Jesus goes into the temple and flips over the tables of the money changers.

It's Passover week, and Jewish rites required you to bring a lamb to be sacrificed for Passover for each family. If you brought a lamb, it had to be inspected to make sure it was pure and appropriate. The easiest thing to do is buy one right there to be sacrificed for sale—though there's an upcharge. The other challenge is that if you came with foreign currency, Roman currency, it had to be changed into temple currency. That happened in the courtyard outside the temple, and the money changers had set up shop there.

Jesus flips over the tables, but here's the problem: the spiritual leaders, the religious powers, the high priests, and those serving in the temple were getting a nice cut of those funds. They were getting fat wallets from that practice. So Jesus flipping the tables over creates this huge PR incident. Combine that with Jesus riding into Jerusalem to crowds shouting his name, saying "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna to the Son of David"—proclaiming him in messianic tones. This is coming to a head.

This is where the religious leaders find themselves. The water is heating up. The pressure is mounting. And what comes out of them that we see in this passage? Hatred. Violence. Put Jesus to death.

We know from John's gospel that Caiaphas, the high priest, and his father-in-law, Anas—Anas was the former high priest.

He was actually the first of his whole family—I think there were five high priests that came from this family line, including Caiaphas. So this family was in power. Let's use mafia tones: they're controlling things in the temple, and they plotted for the death of Jesus. In fact, it was Caiaphas who said:

It is expedient that one person, one man die for the people.

Now, this may be odd to you if you're hearing the story and you think religious people don't like Jesus. Why would religious people want to kill Jesus? And that's actually a really good question, and one we should take back into context. See, many times we use the word "religious" as a synonym for spiritual or a person of faith. But I want to use this in a more technical way right here, and I want to use it as a contrast with the gospel that Jesus offers.

Religion vs. Gospel

In this sense, being religious is what I do to prove to myself and to other people that I am a good person, a righteous person. Have you ever heard of virtue signaling? This is a phrase that's very much surrounding our use of social media. Virtue signaling is where you rant on social media, you agree with some rant, or you go off on some rant that makes you look good in front of other people, even though your personal life may not bear out any evidence that you actually care about that issue. You're not really invested in it anyway financially or with your time. You understand what virtue signaling is? You're doing something to show off to others how righteous and good you are, and other people will approve of you and they hit like. Right? You get that little dopamine hit from that.

In this sense, religion can be described as virtue signaling. Virtue signaling to God, virtue signaling to other people. I do good things. I am a good person. A religious person—technical term here—is a person who does good things to get something. Maybe from somebody else, maybe that like on social media: "Yes, you're awesome. I see that picture of you serving in that homeless shelter." Or you taking up that cause. But maybe it can also be applied to our relationship with God. There is a way that this virtue signaling could be getting something from God—like God to bless me, God to approve of me, God to be in my debt.

It doesn't even have to be religious things that you're doing, right? It could be just good things like recycling. I'm a recycler. You're serving the PTA. Those are good things. You're part of your neighborhood watch program. You do good things, right? You're one of those people. Raleigh is filled with those people. This is actually a city that's filled with lots of good people who love to do good things in front of others, right? You don't even have to call yourself a Christian. But there is a religiousness about this place. There's a lot of virtue signaling.

By contrast, the gospel shows me it's about receiving what God did for me, not what I do for him to get something from him. The gospel is God's grace for screw-ups and for failures. This is the scandal of Jesus, right? The religious type say the good are in. The good people are in. That's who we like on social media. The bad are out. Those people we go off on. The gospel says no. Actually, the screw-ups are in. The failures are in. The ones who know I am at the bottom of the barrel. I'm at the bottom of the heap.

Jesus seemed to make this a recurring theme of his ministry. He kept saying things like, "I've come for the sick, not the healthy. I don't come to call those who think they're righteous but those who know they are sinners."

Religion says, "I'm a good person. God owes me." The gospel says, "God owes me nothing, and if I find him merciful and gracious, that is just his goodness."

Don't you think that's like history back then? It comes out when life doesn't work. I was talking to somebody I know really, really well—known them my whole life. This person is like, if I'm Pop Warner level goodness, she's Olympic gold. I mean, a lifetime of pouring herself out. I'm going to be careful with her details, but like a lifetime—if I could share with you all the things, the way she has made her life all work around other people, pouring herself out tirelessly over thirty years on behalf of people who are undeserving—just unbelievable. And recently, over the course of the last six months, all of that has come to a dead end. She has hit a major roadblock. All the things she's done, they've begun to backfire and fall apart. And she doesn't know who she is now. She is really struggling.

What's come out that surprised me is anger. I mean, on a level I've never seen before—anger from this person. This sense that "I've done all these things. I've held up my part of the bargain and where is God?" And pushing me like, "Where is God? I need you to answer this for me."

Now, why? Because she's a religious person. And religion, when it gets squeezed, when it gets in hot water, when it's shown like "this isn't doing it, this isn't actually worth it, it's not working"—what comes out is anger. This is why so many good people have left the church or are disappointed with God or done with God. He's failed them. I mean, they were good. They did all the things and where is God? He's failed them.

This is not what we think of as religion. We think of religion as what we're doing right now—a bunch of people in a room talking about God together. But this is actually how religion works.

The Sanhedrin's Unjust Trial

The Gospels bring us to the ruling court of the Jews at this time. They're called the Sanhedrin. Now, their charter came from Deuteronomy chapter 18 where God says, "This is the way you're going to protect righteousness. You're going to make sure that your system for how you handle judicial cases is just every time. There's no partiality. There's no stepping outside of that."

This is God's command that laid the groundwork for the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem was made up half of Pharisees, half of Sadducees—an odd number, so they would never have a tie vote. And they had very strict rules. The purpose was to uphold justice. But what we see in this passage is anything but that.

Isn't the purpose of a trial, I think, last time I checked, to find out the truth? Well, these witnesses are showing up trying to conjure up something that's untrue. But this trial is not at all to find out truth. It is to find a way to get Jesus killed, to execute Him. And there are at least five violations—I could actually go as far as 15, but I'm just going to do five because we're doing a sermon, not a Sunday school class.

You can see really easily in this passage violations of their own justice system. Things like this: A judicial meeting of the Sanhedrin was to take place during daylight hours. When does this one take place? At nighttime. The trial could not be held at a private residence. Where is this one held? A private residence—the private residence of Caiaphas, the high priest. He's not even a member of the Sanhedrin.

According to the laws of the Pharisees, rabbis said that a trial should have a day intervening between the conviction and the sentencing. But they're just going straight on. They're just going straight on, right?

False witnesses in capital trials, according to the Book of Deuteronomy, should be stoned to death. Like, you do not perjure yourself in a trial. But as Matthew tells it here, they're trying to come up with some twist of phrase to make something stick.

Finally, rabbinic law forbade someone to incriminate themselves. And that's exactly what's happening here. The high priest, verse 62, is trying to do this with Jesus.

The high priest stood up and said to him, "Do you make no answer? What is it that these men are testifying against you?" — Matthew 26:62

He's trying to make Him testify against Himself.

Why all this injustice? Why all this injustice? Because religious people are deeply angry with God. Because deep down, religious people are deeply angry and frustrated.

And look, if you find yourself here this morning and you are deeply frustrated and angry with God, I want to ask you to think about this. Let me illustrate with a story. I haven't told this story in about six years, so I'm due.

This is from Charles Spurgeon. He said: Once upon a time, there was a gardener in this kingdom and he was a great farmer. He grew this amazing carrot. He came to the king and brought this carrot and said, "Oh King, this is the best carrot I have ever grown. And I think it's probably the best carrot I ever will grow. And I want to give it to you."

And the king is just pleased with this gift. He turns to the gardener and says, "I have a plot of land down from the castle. You grow good carrots. Why don't you grow more carrots? Just have it. Go farm it."

One of the noblemen in the court overhears this whole conversation. He's like, "Wow, if that's what you get for a carrot." So he comes the next day and brings in a handsome black stallion. He brings this to the king and presents it, saying, "My Lord, I breed horses and this is the best horse I think I've ever bred and the best one I ever will breed. And I just want you to have it."

And he waits. Right? And the king says, "Thank you."

And obviously, this man looks puzzled and angry and frustrated.

The king discerned his heart and said, let me explain this to you. That gardener was giving me a carrot. You were giving yourself a horse. See, do you get the point? This is what religion is. It's not serving God because you love Him. But you're serving Him to get something from Him.

If you find yourself done with Christianity, if you find yourself bitter at God, search your heart. I mean, one of the questions I want you to ask is, is it possible that you've actually never known him? That you've done all the things for you. You've given yourself a horse. It's never been about the carrot. And that you in fact are far from him and alienated from him and maybe even violently angry with him. Just like the Sanhedrin, just like these people threatened by Jesus, threatened by the things that God has been, the ways he's been good to others like the man with the carrot but he's held back on you.

Think especially of your family members. I think this is the easiest thing to do in family. Because there's always somebody worse than you in your family, right? Has God passed you by and given good gifts to those who are beneath you? See, is this you? This is how you know. When the hot water comes or when the pressure in your life just squeezes. And what's on the inside comes out. And you find yourself in a place of real hardship and you're like, man, I still worship the Lord because He is good every day. And His grace is overwhelming in my life? Or really? This is what I get?

Listen to that voice. Anger because you don't have control of your life and your God.

Peter's Denial

Second, I want to look at Peter. This is verses 69 through 75. All four Gospels weave together in this beautiful way, this trial with the story of Peter's denial of Jesus. After the arrest in the garden, Peter follows Jesus at a distance and he's trying to see what's going to happen. They go to the house of Caiaphas and every house had a giant courtyard in the middle. So Peter enters through the gate in the courtyard from the outside road and he follows.

But watch where he is in the story. He loves Jesus. He has spent three years following Jesus. Peter is probably the larger-than-life character in the Gospels, which is why so many people love him because you see a sense of personality about Peter. And yet, where is Peter in this scene? Notice where he is. He's following, but he is trying to remain in the shadows. He's trying to remain away from scrutiny, away from being recognized.

This is where Peter gets squeezed. Over the course of the proceedings, they're inside the house. There's no windows or glass. There's no way Peter can see in to what's happening. There's a group of them out in the courtyard. Over the course of these proceedings, twice, two women ask him, they identify him like, aren't you one of his? And Peter gets upset about this. He puts them off. The third time he gets salty. The third bystander identifies him by his accent, and Peter began to invoke a curse on him and swear. Like, I don't know him. He's adamant and angry.

And why is that? It's very easy to see. He's afraid. He's afraid of what's going to happen. Where the Sanhedrin saw Jesus as a threat, here's what Peter sees. Following Jesus is costly. Jesus is costly. When the pressure comes, when the water gets hot, Peter's like, distance. I want some distance.

Following Jesus is costly. It is. Jesus told his disciples, in Christianity, there are always two crosses. We're walking with Jesus to His cross in this series. But Jesus had promised there is another cross. If you're going to be a disciple, if you're going to follow me, there's not just a cross for me, Jesus, there's a cross for you, disciple.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Whoever would save his life would lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What will profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul? — Matthew 16

You know this. In this country, it is highly unlikely that somebody is ever going to be in physical danger for your faith, like Peter finds himself here. Peter is afraid of physical violence coming to him. I mean, Jesus in front of is in front of what is effectively a lynch mob. Right? Peter's like, I'm scared. We understand that.

But increasingly, to identify yourself with Jesus in this country does cost you, and it will cost you especially if you're going to be a disciple who says, I'm actually going to believe and follow this book and not just change parts of it, right? If you're going to be a Bible believing follower of Jesus, this is going to cost you. You will be ridiculed. People will make fun of you. You will lose business. You will lose reputation. There will be neighbors who don't want to have anything to do with you. Amen. That is becoming more and more the case and I talk to people all the time who are like, I'm having a really hard time coming out as a Christian. Coming out of the closet as a Christian and I understand that because there's such a cost to this.

And you feel it, don't you? I mean, you feel it in social media. You feel it in what people talk about and the way they joke. You feel it in just little things that are dropped here and there that make you know, not welcome. No, thank you. Don't want that around here. But here's the thing, you cannot follow Jesus from a distance.

Distance vs. Identification

You know, brothers and sisters, notice what the stance is here in scripture. It's not following, it's distancing. Peter is denying. He's betraying Jesus. Right? You can't follow Jesus from a distance. Jesus has no correspondence course. There's no distance education in the kingdom of God. Right? It's with Him, close, identified with Him. If you are not willing to identify yourself as a follower, you need to ask this question. Am I really just a fanboy or a fan girl of Jesus? Am I really just a fan? Like, sure, I like him. He's great. I've got a couple of his albums. Right? But I'm not with him. Not in this kind of sense.

See, when you're feeling this pressure, right, you're feeling the squeeze. You're feeling the hot water. See what happens. What's on the inside comes out. What comes out? Do you want a safe Christian life? Do you want a discipleship that doesn't involve any discipleship? Or Christianity that doesn't involve a cross? The reality is more and more, we have to own that. That is what it's going to mean to follow Him. And that's it's okay that that's uncomfortable.

What Comes Out of Jesus

And finally, there's one more person we need to look at in this passage. In all of this injustice, think about this, in all this injustice, in all this abandonment, in all this oppression, what comes out of your savior? Let's look at Jesus here. Jesus is on death row. Jesus is facing what he knows is going to be the case. He will die. This trial is not going to go well. He will be executed. And what comes out of him? And I want you to see these few things. First, what comes out of Jesus?

Jesus, here he is, the high priest above all high priests. This is the holy one of God. This is the one who is eternally begotten of the father, always in the presence of God, come in human form to this earth. The high priest above all high priests is being questioned and lied against by this human high priest who should have been the first person to say, that's Him. Worship Him. Right? Like, He's standing there. And what do we see come out of Him? What we see come out is holiness. He doesn't lash out. He doesn't retaliate. He doesn't get angry.

Now why is this good news for you? Why is this good news? Because we have a high priest. This is what Hebrews tells us. We have a high priest who is able to sympathize with us in our weakness. He knows what it's like to be unjustly accused, to be misunderstood, to be able to mind. I mean, don't you know some of these things personally? Yes. Have some of these things happened in your life? Betrayed? Yes. Hurt? Right? Like, Jesus our high priest knows every bit of what that's like. He knows what it's like.

You know, do you remember the Promise Keepers movement of the 1980s, 1990s? It was a sweaty movement. It was a gathering of Christian men in stadiums across the country to worship Jesus and express their love for him together. I drove a bus from Philadelphia to one of those where the clutch didn't work great. It was terrible, right? But the thing I always had about Promise Keepers was this movement, the eighties and nineties about gathering people to worship, gathering to worship Jesus and I always had a problem with the name, Promise Keepers. I mean, who's a promise keeper in here? Anybody? I find a lot of promise breakers. And I always felt like it should be the Promise Breakers movement because what we have in Jesus, right? Is a high priest who comes to people like Peter and like me and like you. In our failures, in our sin, in all the ways that we abandon him, in all the ways that we mess up, and he's able to sympathize with us in our weakness. That's what comes out of Jesus in this trial.

Second thing we see here, Jesus the prophet. Remember what they were saying to him as they're mocking him?

They're striking him and they're saying, "Prophesy, Jesus. Hey, tell us who hit you. Give us the names." Now the irony of this is that Jesus had prophesied every event of this trial. Three times in Matthew's gospel. Three times He tells His disciples, "This is exactly what's going to happen. Chief priests, trial, execution, death." Three times He predicts that. Then He predicts, "Here's Peter. You're going to disown me three times." Right? Like Jesus has foretold every aspect of this, and they're saying "Prophesy?" Because you surely aren't a good prophet. You don't know what you're doing.

See what's revealed in this. Again, Jesus in the hot water. Jesus with the pressure. Like, what comes out of Him in this moment is truth. Comes out as truth. Jesus is the true prophet. Not only does He tell the truth about what's happening, He tells the truth to us. And this is where I want to apply this to you this morning.

Like when I'm talking about being a person who's angry with God, when I'm talking about being a person who's a religious person, I want to just ask you: Is Jesus poking at you? Is he in areas of your life where he comes to tell you the truth? You know, there's like this inner voice. It's not audible. It's not like shouting. But there's inner sense of like, "I think that's my Lord telling me that something is off." See, when he speaks truth to you, do you listen? Will you listen to what He has to say? Will you hear the voice, that poke of the spirit? He's like saying, "Something's off." He speaks the truth.

Jesus the Lamb

Third thing we see here is this. In verses 57 through 63, so we've said Jesus the priest, Jesus the prophet. Now this is Jesus is the Lamb. When we see Jesus at the beginning of the trial, He's strangely silent. He's quiet the whole time. And I think Jesus' silence here both gives witness to the fact that immorality of this trial—like everything about this is unjust. And you guys know it who are doing this right now. He's just silent. But it's further emphasis on his personal submission to the will of the Father.

Like Isaiah had said that Jesus, he was oppressed, he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. Like a sheep before its shearers is silent. He opens not his mouth. — Isaiah 53

Doesn't say a word. See, again, Jesus is in the boiling water here. His life is being squeezed and what comes out of him is silent submission to the