Matthew 26:47-67 March 2009

ARRESTED AND TRIED

The Religious leaders had tried everything they could to get rid of Jesus because He had become so popular that they saw Him as a threat to their positions of power and wealth. They tried to disprove His miracles but couldn’t, they tried to blacken His character but they could find not fault in Him, they had tried to discredit His teaching but nothing He taught contradicted the OT. Now the only option left to them was to physically remove Him and in this passage we read of the cowardly and underhand way they went about getting rid of Jesus.

THE ARREST 47-56

The cowardly crowd

You may remember that this Passover was in progress and Jerusalem was overflowing with people who supported Jesus, so these religious leaders waited until the dead of night gathered their henchmen and went to arrest Him.

They knew they had no grounds on which to arrest Jesus and they were afraid of doing it in daylight because most of the people would have opposed them. So they did their dirty work under the cover of darkness. Judas, who had betrayed Jesus, led them to Jesus and pointed Him out by going up to Him and kissing Him on the cheek.

The deserting disciples

As the men were grabbing hold of Jesus Peter pulled out a small sword from his cloak and swung it at the head of High Priest’s servant. He missed his head and cut off his ear.

It was a very noble attempt by Peter to protect Jesus but it wasn’t the way Jesus taught or lived and Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back, those who use the sword on others will die by the sword.”

Jesus was saying here:

1. We are not to use force or violence in the cause of Christ. We believers are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

A Christian using force or violence in the cause of Christ goes right against the teaching and example of Jesus.

That is why the Crusades were so wrong and every religious conflict using the name of Christ is so wrong.

2. Some people have thought Jesus was saying here, “If you live by the sword you will most likely end up being killed by the sword.” In other words, “If you treat others violently, they will be violent towards you.” But He is not saying that. What Jesus is saying is simply this, “If you murder someone else, you will be executed. If you use the sword on someone else, you will be executed with the sword.”

Here Jesus is simply re-iterating what God said in the OT. Genesis 9:5-6 “I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person’s life. And anyone who murders a fellow human being must die. If anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. For God made human beings in his own image.”

Paul says something similar in Romans 13:4

The governing authorities are God’s servants to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for they do not bear the sword for nothing. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Immediately people say, “Didn’t Jesus teach us to forgive and to turn the other cheek?” Yes He did, but that applies to taking personal revenge into your own hands and it is addressed to the followers of Jesus. He wasn’t giving that teaching to the governing authorities to use in their dealings with criminals.

Jesus taught that if someone offends or assaults you as a believer, don’t retaliate – don’t seek personal revenge. Respond with love and forgiveness. But if that person has broken the law then they still have to face the consequences of their actions from the governing authorities.

And if someone deliberately and premeditatedly takes the life of another, God requires the governing authorities, not the friends and family of the victim, to take the life of the murderer.

That is what the Bible teaches, Jesus endorsed it here and so did Paul. Sadly the UN human rights bill is opposed to capital punishment saying it is an infringement of the rights of a person to life. What about the victim?

When the punishment for premeditated murder is less than death it sends a signal to people that murder is not all that serious and that human life is not all that sacred.

That’s my view from scripture and you are most welcome to disagree.

Ill. When Lee Kwan Yu, became the Prime Minister of Singapore he took a strong stand against drugs, violence and antisocial behaviour introducing capital punishment for which he was highly criticised. But he turned that country from a poor unstable port city into a prosperous, wealthy, clean, safe [the safest country in the world], nation. Incidentally, the countries that criticised him for upholding capital punishment have shocking growing violent crime rates that they cannot control.

Then Jesus said to Peter, “If I wanted to use force to protect myself I would call upon my Father and He would dispatch more than 75,000 angels to protect me.”

75,000 angels could do a lot of damage. In 2 Kings 19, one angel killed 185,000 Assyrians.

And Jesus said that these things had to happen to fulfil the scriptures. The OT prophecies said that Jesus had to go through this terrible ordeal in order to open the way for us to be forgiven and united with God.

After Jesus had finished speaking to the mob, the disciples deserted him and fled. These men who promised never to disown Him now deserted Him in His greatest hour of need.

The serene Saviour

Look at how Jesus behaved in this passage.

When Judas betrayed Him with a kiss, there was no animosity. In fact He called Judas, “Friend.” Even while Judas was handing Him over to His enemies, Jesus was still offering him the hand of friendship.

When Peter cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant, Luke tells us that Jesus healed him. Here was Jesus practising what He preached.

Surely this is the proof of a genuine servant of God; do they practice what they preach. This is always a challenge to me whenever I preach – do I seek to put this into practice in my life. In fact it’s amazing how often I will preach on a subject on a Sunday and face that very subject in practice during the week.

Here was Jesus loving His enemies and doing good to those who were determined to kill Him.

But He also confronted them with their cowardly behaviour. “You could have arrested me when I was in the Temple, but you didn’t, because you had grounds for arresting me and you were afraid of the people. But now you come under the cover of darkness to do your dirty work.”

Some of us have got the idea that turning the other cheek and forgiving people is letting them get away with wrong behaviour.

We can turn the other cheek and forgive, but if they are doing wrong we need gently but firmly tell them that what they are doing is wrong.

And as Christians we find that hard to do because we don’t want to offend or we think that we are not being loving, but this is what the Bible calls speaking the truth in love.

Ill. Paul and Silas were wrongfully beaten in Philippi, but they refused to leave the prison until the authorities admitted that they had done wrong. It wasn’t a matter of getting their own back or giving the authorities a hard time. They needed to be confronted with the wrongness of their behaviour.

When you read this passage, although it seems that the enemies of Jesus are the victors, it is Jesus who outshines them all with His loving, calm, serene attitude and behaviour.

THE TRIAL v57-67

We now move to Jesus trial, a trial that was totally illegal and I’ll tell you why.

According to Jewish law, judicial trials had to be open to the public, this trial was not. They had to be held in a court of law this one was held in a private home. They had to be held during the day, this one was held at night. The accused had a right to legal defence, Jesus had none. There needed to be at least two witnesses, there weren’t any here. They could prosecute only try a suspect, Jesus was tried and prosecuted. No one could be executed on the same day as the trial, Jesus was. No trial could be held on a feast day, this one was. No one could be sentenced by testifying against themselves, Jesus was.

The Jewish leaders broke all their laws when they arrested and tried Jesus. The whole thing was a set up to get rid of Him as quickly as they could.

They knew that if they held a public trial they would have nothing to pin on Jesus, they would have no public support and they would never get rid of Him, so they carried out the trial in this secretive illegal way.

The religious leaders couldn’t find any legitimate reason to try Jesus so some of their number made up lies, but even these didn’t stick. The best they could come up with was that two men said that Jesus claimed to be able to destroy and rebuild the temple in 3 days, but even this was not a criminal offence.

Finally the High Priest asked Jesus, “Tell us the truth under oath are you the Messiah, the Son of God?”

And Jesus replied, “I am and in the future you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God’s right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Jesus was speaking about what Daniel had seen in his vision in Daniel 7:13-14 “As my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Eternal God and was led into his presence. He was given authority, honour, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him. His rule is eternal—it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed.”

The person Daniel spoke about had been described and predicted by the OT prophets and if these religious leaders had examined their scriptures they would have discovered that Jesus fit the descriptions and the predictions perfectly.

But they weren’t interested in finding out the truth, their only concerns were to safeguard their positions of power and authority and they were prepared to do anything even if it meant killing the true Messiah, the Son of God.

You may think that this sounds extreme, but when people get into positions of power and feel threatened, things like truth, morality, justice, compassion mean nothing to them. They will lie, cheat, kill and do everything in their power to destroy every threat and retain their positions.

Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Robert Magabe.

If these religious leaders had examined their OT scriptures and placed them against the life and teaching of Jesus they would have to conclude that He was the only person who could fulfil the descriptions and predictions of the prophets.

He was truly who He said He was, “The Messiah, the Son of God.”

Ill. Sam Rotman a well know concert pianist in the US was brought up in an orthodox Jewish family and he had it drummed into him that Jesus was definitely not the Messiah. He also felt that Jesus was to blame for many of the problems the Jews had suffered over their long and troubled history. While he was studying at University some Christian students started talking to him about Jesus and so Sam decided to find out for Himself. He bought a New Testament and read and re‑read it, comparing it with Old Testament passages. He said, “What I discovered about Jesus shocked me. He made such huge claims about Himself.” But as Sam continued to examine the evidence he came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ could only be who He claimed to be. The Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Sam became a follower of Jesus and was disowned by his Jewish family, but he said, “Coming to know Jesus Christ, the Messiah is the greatest event that has ever happened to me. Music is not the most important thing in my life, but Jesus Christ is.

Most of the people in our culture who criticise and reject Jesus have never taken the time to examine the evidence to see if what He said is true. Like these religious leaders – they are not really interested in the truth, they just rubbish the whole thing without investigating the evidence.

But I am absolutely convinced that when people are genuinely searching for the truth and examine the evidence recorded in the New Testament they will make that life changing discovery that Jesus could only be who He claimed to be – the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, the only One through whom we can know forgiveness and reconciliation with God.

Ill. Maher El-Gohary was raised in a Muslim family in Egypt. He was told that the Old and the New Testament had been changed and corrupted and that only the Koran was the pure truth of God. This aroused Maher’s curiosity and so he got hold of a New Testament and decided to examine the evidence for himself. He became so convinced that the Gospels were true that he became a follower of Jesus and for the last 30 years has been a practising Christian. Maher has suffered terrible persecution from relatives and neighbours including having his property burnt down. Last year he approached the Egyptian authorities and asked if he could replace the word Muslim on his identification card with Christian. The government refused as they will not endorse anyone defecting from Islam. Maher, like some other Muslims took a very courageous step in obtaining a New Testament and examining the evidence for himself.

Not so long ago in Saudi Arabia where the Bible is banned, a leading Muslim official was given a Bible and after reading it said, “The authorities in our country cannot keep the truth contained in this book from us forever.”

The Muslim leaders, like the Catholic clergy before Vatican 2 are afraid that if the New Testament got into the hands of their people it would devastate their power and control. They see the New Testament as a threat and have forbidden their people to read it because they know if they did, they might discover the truth.

If only the religious leaders in Jesus day would have examined the evidence both in their scriptures and in the life and teaching of Jesus with a desire to know the truth.

The interesting thing is that they scrutinised His life and listened carefully to His teaching but they never saw the truth, because they weren’t looking for the truth, they weren’t interested in the truth, they just wanted to discredit Jesus and bring Him down.

They were so entrenched in their false beliefs that when they saw and heard the truth through Jesus, they just became more determined to resist it. If they accepted what was obviously the truth, it would cost them dearly and they weren’t prepared to pay the price. That is the bottom line why most people will not accept the truth about Jesus. They don’t want things to change.

Ill. I remember having a conversation with a leader in the Jehovah’s Witnesses once and we were talking about Jesus being God. He was adamant that the New Testament teaches that Jesus was not God. So I got out my Greek New Testament and pointed out the scriptures that clearly state Jesus is God. This man wouldn’t even look at the evidence, he just pooh-poohed the whole thing and walked away.

When Jesus told the high priest that he was the Messiah, the Son of God the high priest tore his robe and accused Jesus of blasphemy because in Leviticus 21:10 the high priest was expected to tear his robe whenever God was dishonoured. But it was just a show – an act. He was really over the moon because now he had something to pin on Jesus, now he had an excuse to get rid of Him.

At that point the men who were supposed to be the spiritual leaders of Israel, God’s holy servants became like a pack of wild cats spitting, punching and slapping Jesus around, mocking him and making fun of Him.

In closing I just want to return to the point I made before.

The religious leaders did not see the truth because they didn’t really want to know the truth, they were afraid that if they accepted the truth things would have to change and they didn’t want anything to change.

How many of us read or hear the Word of God preached with the same attitude – we are not really interested in knowing the truth because we are afraid that if we accept the truth that God wants to show us things would have to change and we have no intention of changing our attitudes, behaviour, lifestyles.

My prayer is that we would all have the courage to come to God’s Word either in private or in the church setting with a desire to know the truth, accept the truth and adjust our attitudes, behaviour and lifestyles to the truth.