Final Hours #4 - 5 People
Message Description
Dr. Terry Thomas continues the message series "Final Hours" teaching on the final hours of Jesus's life from the New Testament book of Matthew. Jesus's conversations with five special people are recorded for our understanding of the personhood of God today.
Message Transcript
Hey. It's good to be here today. Good to see everybody and everybody in the Strip District and in Butler. I hope you're having a great time. And here, as well as here in Wexford and those of you in the balcony, wherever that is. Okay. So good to be here with you all. And I think we have some interesting stuff to think about today.
These five different sorts of encounters that Jesus had towards the end of his life here. Matter of fact, all of these encounters are encounters that Jesus had on the last day of his life. And this is a very sobering message in a way, because of all the things that happen during this time. And I got to tell you myself when I read through it, you know, to prepare, I realized there was a lot of information here about other people, about these other sorts of five people and groups that Jesus interacted with.
And I thought to myself, there's a lot of information about people, not Jesus at this very important time. And I wondered kind of why it was there. And so, I thought a little bit about it. I have two good reasons I want to share with you. One is, I think that what we want to make sure that we don't do is we think that somehow this is just some kind of nice story, you know, about Jesus that somebody made up and it seems to make sense and it kind of flows. It's interesting and so forth. But it's just a story.
Okay. No. These things are rooted in historical facts. You know, when Luke talks about the writing of his gospel in the very beginning of it, he says, you know, I took to be careful to go around and collect all the information, all the data, and all the accounts of what he said. And I talked to eyewitnesses, and I talked to people who knew people who were there. I got it all straight and he says the reason was, I want you to be certain about the things that you believe. This isn't just some story. These are historical facts.
And so many of these things I think are in the text here today. One of the reasons being is that it leads to the authenticity of the text that we're talking about, though we can believe that this is historically accurate. You know, and you may say, well, who cares what is historically accurate of a conversation that you had or that Jesus had with somebody. Yeah, well, you know, you want to make sure that it's historically accurate, what happens on Sunday. That's what you want to make sure of. That it's not just a story. Because if somebody made that up, like Paul says, in First Corinthians 15, if it's just a story, if Jesus wasn't resurrected, wasn't history, then everything we do here is in vain. So, I think that's the one reason. I think the one reason is some of these things are in here to help us to sort of get into its context, you know what I mean? It puts us in the context. And I hope you can feel that context as I try to describe these differing encounters that Jesus had, because I think that helps draw you into the way you might have felt had you been there.
Okay. Here's the second reason why. The second reason why is because there's something else going on here that you can't see in a certain sense without a deeper look. And in order to help get that deeper look, here's the way I'm going to do it. I'm going to cheat. Right? I like to cheat. But that's beside the point. I'm going to cheat, and I'm going to jump ahead. We're on really Friday, the day of Jesus' death in our story here, our encounter of Jesus' story. And I'm going to jump ahead to Sunday after the resurrection. And I want to read you a passage, and I think you'll see the point of it as we move along here.
This is from the book of Luke. Not Matthew. I know that's a violation of what we're doing already, but that's okay. The Book of Luke, the 24th chapter, tells a story about a couple who were disciples. They were serious believers, and they had been up in Jerusalem over the weekend, and they were headed back to their home. Their home was in a little town called Emmaus, which was really close. And as they were walking back, talking about things, all of a sudden it says, Jesus started to walk along with them, but he kept them from recognizing him. And He asked them, this is Jesus, He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still; their faces downcast. That's the way our faith should be when you hear some of these stories you're about to hear. Their faces were downcast. One of them named Cleopas asked him, are you the only visitor in Jerusalem that doesn't know the things that have happened here these days, which is kind of a stupid thing to say to Jesus on Resurrection Sunday because he was the only one who knew what was going on.
He says, Jesus is playing stupid, He says, what things? And they say, well, about Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God. And all the people and the chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death. And they crucified him. But we'd hoped that he would be the one who's going to redeem Israel. And what's more, it's the third day since all this took place.
In addition, some of our women were amazed as they went to the tomb early this morning, but they didn't find a body. They came and told us that they'd seen a vision of an angel who said that he was alive. And then some of the companions went to the tomb, and they found it just as the women said. But they did not see him.
Jesus said to them, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into His glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
Well, what happens in the rest of the story is they wandered, they finally get to Emmaus, and they get to this guy's house. And one of my favorite lines in the entire Bible says, Jesus acted as if he was going to continue on. So, in other words, when they got to the people's house, it was like, well, I got nowhere to go. I guess I'll just be going down the road here. He was trying to get invited to dinner, and finally, they were like no, stop and eat with us. And so, he goes in, and they have dinner. It says that Jesus prayed for the dinner, and he broke the bread. And it was after the breaking of the bread that they were able to realize who he really was, and then he disappeared.
Do you know what they said to each other after that? Didn't our hearts burn within us when he opened up the scriptures to us on the road? That's the kind of encounter you want to have with God. You want to hear him say something to you. You want to see his Word come alive. Be real, totally contextualized, not only in its own historical context but in the context of your life story. Your heart burns within you as these things open up. So, this is the question I had when they had the little Bible study on the road. What did Jesus show them? It doesn't tell you in this passage. It says, beginning with Moses, then all the prophets, he showed them how these things had to happen to the Christ, himself.
What did he show them? I'm betting he showed them this passage right here. And by the way, this passage, interestingly enough, is a passage from the book of Isaiah from chapter 53 and you know, that chapter 53 of the Book of Isaiah was written 700 years before that night. The night we're talking about on Friday, not to the day, but, you know, 700 years approximately. Isaiah wrote this. This is what he says.
“Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance
that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people, he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
If you can try to keep that passage in mind, as you hear this encounter, these encounters that Jesus has, I think maybe your heart will begin to burn within you, and you'll begin to see exactly what God was doing at this time and why we hear these things.
Well, anyway, it had been Thursday night, we talked about this already. They had the Last Supper. They'd gone to four different places. They ended up eventually at the Garden of Gethsemane on the northeast side of Jerusalem. And, you know, here's what happens. The praying is not going well for the disciples. It's late at night, apparently. I don't know. It might have been 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning by this time on Friday. This was the last day Jesus was alive, and Jesus is pleading with the father if he can take this cup away for him. But then he says this, but not my will, but your will be done. I'm going to die. I'm willing to do the thing that I came for but it's going to be hard. I see it coming, and it's going to be rough.
Meanwhile, the people he thought he’d get support from, they're all snoozing. He wakes them up. He asks them to stay awake, but they can't stay awake, and they fall back asleep again. And so, as he's praying, the Garden of Gethsemane is a little higher place than in the city of Jerusalem. And there's a gate down below south where a few people came up that way and you could see them coming. And it was late at night, and Jesus probably looked down and he saw a gang of people coming up the hill. They had torches and so forth, and he thought what in the world? He thought this was it. So, what happens is Jesus goes out, and he stands out in front waiting for this crowd to come. It turns out, they're people from the Roman guards and also the temple guards that have come with clubs, swords, torches, and so forth, and they've come to arrest Jesus.
Now, what had happened previous to this, the first encounter that Jesus has is with a guy named Judas. Judas had been at dinner. He'd been at the Thursday night dinner, and he'd heard some stuff. And so, and at that time, Jesus pointed out to him that, Judas, you're the one who's going to end up betraying me. One of my own disciples, the closest guys I have of the 12 here, you're going to betray me. You’re going to turn me in. And Judas, he saw the handwriting on the wall, so to speak. And he left early. He was the one disciple who left the party early. And guess where he went? He went over to the temple. He told the chief priests and so forth there. He said, listen for 30 bucks, I'll point out who Jesus is when you send a crew over to arrest him. I know you want to arrest him. This would be a nice time to do it. I know where he is. It's late at night. There are never very many people with him. You could get a better surprise. As a matter of fact, I know it's dark up there, and so what I'll do is when I go up with the guys, I'll go over and give him a kiss.
How ironic. You know, a sign of affection as you betray somebody. Sounds like the godfather here, you know. And so, what happens is, the priest says perfect. This is just in line with our plan. So, Judas comes out of the crowd as Jesus comes out of the garden after he's been praying and as he goes towards Jesus, he gives him that kiss. And when he gives him the kiss, he's identified him that he's the one.
But still, the crowd's standing there to arrest them. And Jesus says to them this. He says to them, “Who are you looking for?” And they say, “We're looking for Jesus of Nazareth.” And, you know what Jesus says in response to that, he goes, “I am.” Interestingly enough, if you read the book of John, it’s not in the book of Matthew, but if you read the book of John when they say they're looking for Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus responds, I am. He uses the very name of God for the book of Genesis, the “I am” name. And you know what it says in John? It says, when he said it, the crowd drew back and fell to the ground. That would make you think twice about arresting him, wouldn’t it? But it didn’t. They got back up. They are just doing their job. They got back up, they went down, and they arrested Jesus. They tied him up, they took him to Caiaphas's for trial in the middle of the night.
Meanwhile, Judas is feeling a little weird about it. You know, it wasn't over, especially after Jesus says “I am” and people fall down. You might think to yourself, oh, I might have been wrong about who this guy was. He might be somebody else. And so, in his remorse of having done that, he goes back to the temple, and he says, priest listen, I sinned. I betrayed an innocent man. I don't want the money. He throws the money back into the temple. He says, listen, I was wrong in doing that. And what happens? The chief priests say, well, it's your responsibility. He's left out to dry. Judas understands what he has done. He's turned his back on the I am. He's betrayed him that he knows we'll send him to his death.
Judas was not necessarily a great guy. Okay? He was a piece of work. He was very concerned about money. As a matter of fact, he was sort of the money guy of the 12 disciples whenever they had cash and so forth, when they had to distribute the money, they gave it to him. He was sort of like the bank that took care of the disciples. And he was very concerned. He liked money. He liked to be in that position because, in some cultures, money has power. And he liked that. He liked the idea of being able to have power and control. As a matter of fact, he would do and say things that would help him to get more money.
Just the night before some crazy woman came in with a bottle of perfume that cost a year's salary and poured it over Jesus’ head. And who said something? Judas. He said, "What are you doing? What a waste.” And here's what he's thinking in his own mind, particularly to put it on a guy's head who's trying to make the Sanhedrin, the leaders of the Jews angry, angry enough to kill him. Why would you do that? This is a waste. Who knows when Judas in his own mind finally said, "I've had enough.” Maybe it was a little later when Jesus told them he was the one who was going to betray him. And he thought to himself, you bet your life I am. We'll see if I can make some money from this and make a run for it.
Here's the thing. Sometimes you do something and you think it seems like the right thing to do, like it's the thing going to lead you in the right direction, and after it's done things are even worse than they were before they ever happened. And so, Judas decides he's had all he can handle. And so that very night he goes out and hangs himself and kills himself. Now, nobody kills himself if they don't have any reason to live. But the point was this. Do you know what he thought? There's no way I can get out from under this. I've not only ruined the lives of all these people that I've hung out with for the last several years and wasted my own time doing it, but this one, who might be somebody I don't know, I turned him in. I betrayed him. He's going to be killed. That blood's on me, too. And where am I going to go? I realize this was the wrong thing. I was throwing the money back, and then I realized it was too late.
And here's what happened. Judas all of a sudden realized nothing can overcome what I've done. Nothing can make it right. I can't be forgiven. I'm lost. It's the end. And so, he kills himself about it after he leaves. He goes to kill himself. The priests at the temple, pick up the coins that are in the temple, and they say, oh, we can't put those coins in the treasury again because that's blood money. So, we'll go out and we'll buy a field someplace where foreigners, people not like us, but we can bury some foreigners who happen to die while they're in Jerusalem or buy some dirt someplace and throw them in there. Wait a minute. Couldn't put the blood money back in the Treasury because it was blood money? Where did the money come from? The blood money came from the temple itself to give to them. But, you know, this is the way you can get so self-righteous about certain things and say well we have to do the right thing. We just paid somebody to betray somebody to us. And so, Judas is the first encounter.
The second encounter has to do with a guy named Peter. Peter stayed at the dinner, you know, and while he was at the dinner, Peter heard from Jesus that before the rooster crowed the next morning, he would deny him three times. And Peter was like, no way. Absolutely no way. Because you know what, Peter, he was so confident in his faith so to speak. He was so confident about how strong he was, how he could bear anything just by the power of his will. That's all you need. He didn't need anything else other than his own determination. His own fortitude. By the way, every time Jesus would come up and tell the disciples earlier than this that here's what was going to happen, he was going to go up to Jerusalem, be handed over by the chief priests, and be tried, and then he'd be executed, Peter would say, no, we will not let that happen. That is not going to happen because I'm the man. You know, I'm going to make sure I'll use my power. I'll use what I got available to me to stop this. But basically, what he's trying to do, though, he's trying to stop the actual will of God moving forward.
Just as a little aside, don't ever try to stop the will of God. That's not going to end well for you. And so, here's what happens. That night when Jesus goes out from the prayer, from the garden, Judas comes forth and kisses him, and they come to arrest him. And after they get up off the ground, they wander over towards Jesus to tie him up to take him. Peter's next to him, you know, right by his side. And he pulls out a sword. And this is his plan. He is going to kill the guy who tries to take Jesus. By the way, it says that he cut off his ear. Okay. And then afterward Jesus healed it. But he says he cut off his ear. But you know what? I think he wanted to cut off his head. And I think probably what happened was the guy probably moved so he just got the glancing blow on the ear cut off. But he wanted to kill. And when he did it, Jesus said to him put the sword away. Don't your people live by the sword, die by the sword. That's not how my kingdom is going to go forward, not by force.
Peter was like what? Do you think people are just going to sort of surrender themselves to you somehow without a fight? You don't think we're going to have to kill some people here? We're going to have to go to war. I thought this was like a kind of political takeover. I thought we were going to toss out these nasty Romans and so forth. I thought you were the Messiah, that sort of geopolitical messiah who was going to reinstate the Kingdom of David. I want to be the first one in line to take the first strike. I'm that kind of guy. I'm a doer. I've got skills. But Jesus stops him, and he says, no, that's not what it's about. And so, Peter retreats. They tie up Jesus and they take him up to Caiaphas’s place.
By the way, all the rest of the disciples made a run for it when Jesus was arrested. Jesus told them a little earlier, he had repeated another prophecy, not by Isaiah, but by somebody else. He said this. He said, you know, when they strike the shepherd, the sheep will scatter. That's exactly what happened. When they tied up the shepherd, the sheep scattered. But not Peter, because, you know, he's he was solid. He wasn’t going to turn. So, what happens? He follows Jesus up with the crowd, up to Caiaphas’s place, as he stands there trying to see what's going to happen.
Sure enough, a woman comes up to him and says you’re one of those guys that was with this. And he says, no, no, no, no, not me. And all of a sudden, you know, there's another person that says you're actually one of the disciples. He says no, I don’t know him. And finally, somebody else comes and says, you know, I heard you talking. You got a Galilean accent and you know, Jesus is from Galilee and so forth. You're one of Jesus's people. You're with him. And he swears at him this time and says absolutely not. No. Then all of a sudden, the rooster crows and he remembers what Jesus had told him.
Could it be that Jesus knew more about what was going on than He did? Could it be that it was about something Jesus had to do, not about something Peter had to do? Maybe it was about surrendering to what God's will is and what He has in mind to have happened, rather than trying to force your will on a particular situation.
You know, I had a friend when I was growing up and he lived in the community next to us, and we used to hang out with him all the time. One time around Halloween, we went over to his house and we were going to take him out and go mess around in the woods. We got over there, and we saw there was a big pile of leaves in the front yard. And as we walked up the steps, I said to my friend, hey, listen, I'll bury you in the big pile of leaves. We’ll get Casey out here, and I'll say, “What is that in the leaves?” And when he goes over to the pile of leaves, you jump out and scare him! And he's like, okay. So, I buried him in the leaves.
I went up, knocked on the door, and Casey's dad came to the door. I say, “Hey, is Casey here?” He goes, “No, he'll be back in just a little bit.” And I thought to myself, well, I already got him buried in the leaves over there. So, I said to his dad, there’s something weird in that pile of leaves over there. His dad goes over to the front yard and my friend expects our friend to be there. The dad goes over, and he starts kicking in the pile of leaves, and my friend grabs his leg and starts to bite his leg. Until he realizes, “Oh, hi, Mr. Kendal. How you doing?” Every time after that, when Casey was going to go out with us, they'd be at dinner. His dad said, “What are you going to do?” He says, “Oh, I'm going out with Norm and Terry. His dad would say, “Don't you have any other friends?”
You know, people think they can make friends, make them. It's not the way things work. You can't make anything happen in a way. And if you try to make it happen, you got an inflated view of yourself just in case you missed this. Again, God is the creator and controller of the universe. The way to figure out how to live is to try to figure out how to live within the context of His will. Peter all of a sudden got a vivid thing. He realized Jesus said he would betray him three times before the rooster crowed. The rooster crowed, and he just did it three times. Do you know what it says Peter did? He went outside, and he wept bitterly. He wept bitterly. Nothing had happened to him much other than he realized how stupid and goofy he was by thinking somehow his life was in his own hands.
Judas’s attempt to have his life in his own hands ruined him and took him to suicide. Peter, on the other hand, do you know what he did? He realized I have to surrender to the will of God and thank goodness for what Jesus has taught me, that God's gracious. Judas thought, there's no way you can overcome the brokenness in my life. There's no way that somebody can make me right and heal my wounds by what they suffer. But Peter also realized there was a way in which that could happen.
Well, the next person that we come in contact with is actually a guy named Caiaphas. And this is the place where the trial that night was taking place. Now, here's the deal. We're in the middle of the night. It’s maybe 4:00 in the morning. And Caiaphas has been planning this thing, okay? He's the chief priest. He's the head priest of the temple for that year and for all the people. By the way, he had a thing in for Jesus. He did not want Jesus to succeed.
Back in John 11, if you ever want to read that one some time, Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. And Lazarus had been dead for three days. He smelled and everything. And Jesus comes in and he says, I am the resurrection of the life. He who believes in me, even though he's dead, yet shall live. The power of who he really was, the living God right there. People didn't get it exactly, but they knew something was happening. And when he came forth, you know what it says? It says many believed that he was the messiah, and Caiaphas did not like that.
Caiaphas was there. He saw it. And instead of rejoicing in the miracle and honoring as being the person who can do these things, you know what he did? He turned around and said, this guy is going to get us in trouble. There's going to be religious conflict in the country. And the Romans are going to crack down on us. And the privilege we have right now and the power positions that we were in are going to be jeopardized. And so we got to do something. You know what? Let's make a plan to kill him. On a day the “I am” reveals himself, reveals himself to be the loving God who could bring life out of death. The religious guy says we got to kill him. And a little bit of irony, if you read the passage, he says this to the other people he's talking about, isn't it better that one guy die instead of the whole nation perish?
Well, that was exactly the plan of God. But he didn't know it. That wasn't his plan. His plan was to maintain his position of power. So, what happens is he makes the deal with Judas. I think he reached out to Jews earlier. Jews did to him some way. They made the plan beforehand because after all, he went to the temple and they paid him to do it. He told them, when you're done, bring them up to my place. That's where we're going to have the trial. He had gathered the Sanhedrin, the group of leaders, to be able to have a trial there. He didn't have enough people exactly to be able to have the trial, but it was enough of a start. Here’s what the passage in Matthew says. And he goes up there and basically what he does is he brought false witnesses in to try to get them to testify against Jesus so that they could convict him of something that would be worthy of them being able to give him the death penalty.
But they screwed it up. The false witnesses had conflicting testimonies and other people said, oh, that's not that bad. And finally, here's what happens. He's so frustrated. Every time a new accusation comes against Jesus, you know what Jesus says? Nothing. He didn't open his mouth. He allowed himself to be unjustly charged over and over and over again. Never opened his mouth. And then finally, here's what happens. Finally, in a fit of frustration, the high priest says, Jesus, I command you on an oath from God to answer this question. Are you the Christ, the son of God? And you know what? This is the question Jesus had been waiting to get a chance to answer. And He said, yes. That's all Caiaphas needed. He ripped his clothes. He said, blasphemy, he called himself God. In our just system of laws, he deserves the death penalty. I got what I needed. The death penalty against Jesus. We can get rid of him. We can maintain the status quo. We can keep on going. Because Jesus is one of those guys, when he gets into your life, unless you get rid of him, he messes it all up. He asks you to change. You do different things and you have a new perspective. So, he's happy about it.
By the way, after Jesus responded yes, you know what he said as well, he quoted a passage from Daniel seven where he said, one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days, meaning God. And as he came, He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; and he was invited to have a kingdom that would be a never-ending kingdom, and he sat down beside God in the right hand. Oh, that was just icing on the cake for Caiaphas. He's just poured it on now, these massive passages, you know, in the ones where he recognizes himself as being the Son of God. So fantastic. We don't need any more evidence.
So, he's got him convicted, but he hasn't got enough people there. So, what happens is he calls the early morning sunrise meeting of the quorum of the Sanhedrin to make sure that he can get this officially done. Because if you're a righteous person, you have to do things right. If you're going to get rid of Jesus and condemn him, you got to have some good reason and make sure it's all proper and so forth so you can sort of let yourself off the hook. You did the right thing. You maintain the way things need to be. So, when a quorum gets there, he tells them what he's done and they have to vote yes. Okay. Execute him. There's only one problem. The Jews don't have the right to execute anybody in a Roman province. Only the Romans had the ability to execute somebody. And so, you know what they have got to do? They're going to take him over to Pilot.
Now, they take him over early in the morning to Pilot, and Pilot is already waiting for him. Gee, I wonder how that happened or who set that up. When Jesus goes in before Pilot, he says to them, well, what's the charge against him? Before they get a chance to say, well, he claims to be Jesus of Nazareth, he goes Herod is the governor over there and he gets to see these things first. Here's what Pilot tries to do. He tries to sort of blow them off, and he takes and sends him over to somebody else to get a sentence. But, you know, Herod’s not going to fall for that. He's not going to make the mistake. So, he sends him back to Pilot. He asks him a few things about the charges that have been brought against him and Pilot turns around and says this guy is innocent here.
These charges are lame. That’s your stuff. You deal with it. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. And then he comes back into Jesus and he says to him, I do have one question. Did you say that you are the king of the Jews? I wonder where he got that? Who told him that he said he was the king of the Jews? By the way, the Messiah could become the king of the Jews. You couldn't get the death penalty for claiming that you're the Messiah for Jews. You get the death penalty from claiming that you were God. Blasphemy. But the other one, the one Caiaphas asked the question, are you the Christ, the Messiah? The Son of the living God?
He did the double question so he could have the Jewish one convict him and then they would have been able to have the Roman one be able to convict him too because he said he was the king of the Jews and hence that was treason against the Roman Empire. And you know what? Again, Jesus was waiting for that question. And although he kept his mouth shut and all those things, his mouth was closed for all the other accusations that Pilot talked about. Finally, when he said are you the king of the Jews, Jesus said it is as you say I am.
Then what happens is that immediately after, Pilot still doesn't want to do it. He goes back and he says, listen, I got this thing where when you get a holiday like Passover coming up, you try to appease the people by doing a nice thing for them. And what I do is I let a prisoner go every Passover, and I got a couple of prisoners here that I could let go. What if I let this Jesus of Nazareth guy go? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. Crucify him. Give him the death penalty. And he goes, listen, I got another guy in here, Barabbas. By the way, you know what Barabbas’s first name was? Jesus. Do you want Jesus, Barabbas or do you want Jesus of Nazareth? I'll give you one of them. One of them gets out, the other one has to die.
And the crowd starts to yell, give us Barabbas, give us Barabbas, give us Barabbas. And so, he gives them Barabbas. And he says, what about this Jesus of Nazareth? The chief priests and the crowd began to yell as loud as the people did on Palm Sunday that he was the lord. Crucify him. Crucify him. Pilot goes over and publicly washes his hands, and he says, well it’s your responsibility now. And he sends him over to be flogged.
The last group that we talk about is the crowd. Jesus has met with Judas. He talked with Peter. He's dealt with Caiaphas. He's been with the Pilot. And now he's with the crowd. The beginning of the thing being with the crowd is sending over for the first part of what the execution process was. It began with flogging. Jesus has already been beaten up by the crowd. When he was up at Caiaphas's house it told us this. When they said he was guilty, they spit on him, everybody spit on him, his face was covered with people having spit on him. They began to smack him and hit him. They hit him with clubs. They hit him with their hands.
Now, after he's been convicted by the Romans to death, he was sent over for the first phase of the execution, the flogging. They had a special way of doing it. When you were going to crucify somebody, they used a thing called a flagrum. It was a whip. There was a piece of wood at the bottom of it. Then at the top of it, there were these six leather straps. And at the end of each one of the six leather straps was a little metal dumbbell. And in the side of the dumbbell, were pieces of leather with sewn pieces of metal, shards of metal and sharp bone.
So, what happened was they stripped him down and then they would beat him with this little whip. Romans knew how to kill people. That was the point of this. The point of this was to get you so weak that when you went on the cross, and it wouldn't take long before you would die. They would hit you and as soon as they hit you the first time, the little dumbbells would bring the blood up to the top of your skin. The next time they hit you, maybe it would give a poke in there. Then pretty soon the skin starts to rip off and strips fall off all over your body. You begin to get whipped and you're being beaten unbelievably. People reported that sometimes people died from the flogging. They didn't get crucified because what happened was, they hit them so badly that their muscles and their skin would break. And finally, their intestines fall on the ground. They just bleed out and die right there. Jesus was beaten mercilessly with this.
And when it was all over, if that wasn't bad enough, you know what they did? They got him up and they put a robe on him. It was probably the robe of one of the soldiers. It was purple or something like that. Then they took some thorns from a plant. They formed it into a crown and put it on his head. They gave him a staff and they took him out in front of the crowd who was yelling, crucify him, crucify him. And they got down on the ground and mocked him by saying King of the Jews. Then they started smacking him again. Hit him in the face and spit at him. They put a blindfold on him for a while, smacked him and said, hey, you're a prophet, tell me who hit you. The naked Jesus then gets a chance to carry his own beam down to where he's going to be crucified.
So, there you have it. There you have it. Five Encounters. Isaiah 53, “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.”
I think Jesus may have shared that with those guys on the road to Emmaus, and all of a sudden, they realized why what had happened had happened. That had been predicted 700 years before that night. And it was a dark, dark night. The unbelievable love of God and graciousness that allows himself to be tortured in that way for us should change us. We should feel a little fire in our hearts to hear this kind of stuff about how gracious God is, and the punishment that He took on our behalf.
In this story right now, we're still on Friday. This Friday, the cross is coming up, but Sunday is coming. Let's pray, Lord, thanks for this day. Thanks for a chance to consider these things. We thank you for your Word, all of it. The way in which you have allowed us to see that you are a God who is in control. And Lord, we surrender to your love and your graciousness. Make us into the kind of people you want us to be. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for His kingdom's sake, amen.
