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Maybe it would be a good idea to continue in that chapter if it's all right with the brethren here.
I was suggesting we might continue in that chapter.
Do you agree with that? I had the same thought. It's a long chapter, a very profitable one, and be nice to go on with it if everyone else is happy with that.
What way should we start at?
Yeah.
And whether we do it, should we read the entire chapter again or.
I would suggest maybe down to the 27th verse with that be all right.
John's Gospel chapter 18, beginning at verse 10.
Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and smoked a high priest servant.
And cut off his right ear.
The servant's name was Malchus. But then said to Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath, the cup which my father had given me. Shall I not drink it?
Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus and bound him, and led him away to Anna's first, for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year. Now Caiaphas was he which gave counsel to the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people, and Simon Peter followed Jesus.
And so did another disciple. That disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door without. Then went out that other disciple which was known unto the high priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter. Then set the damsel that kept the door unto Peter.
Ought not thou also one of this man's disciples? He sayeth I am not. And the servants and officers stood there who had made a fire of holes, for it was cold, and they warmed themselves, and Peter stood with them and warm himself. The high priest that asked Jesus of his disciples and of his doctrine, Jesus answered him.
I speak openly to the world, to the world I ever taught in the synagogue and in the temple, whether the Jews always resort. And in secret have I said nothing? Why askest thou me? Ask them which hurt me what I have said unto them? Behold, they know what I said. And when He had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the bomb of his hand.
Seeing answerers, thou the High Priest soul, Jesus answered him. If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil if, But if well wise, mightest thou me? So Agnes has sent him bound. And the Caiaphas, the High Priest, and Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. They sat therefore unto him. Art not thou also one of his disciples? And he denied it.
And said I am not one of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman.
Whose ear? Peter cut off said, did not I see thee in the garden with him? Peter then denied again, and immediately the cock crew.
We have to remember here.
From the vantage point of view and me who are on Christian ground.
That we are dealing with those who had been brought up on Jewish ground.
And that even though the times of the Gentiles had begun with Nebuchadnezzar, and in that sense the Jews had not had a sovereign nation since that time, yet they were still living in a dispensation where it was right for them to pick up the sword and to defend themselves and to defend God's claims. So that in one sense we can understand very fully how that Peter.
00:05:23
Felt free to defend the Lord Jesus and even had the sword right at hand there and ready to do so.
But it was a new thing, no doubt, to see the Son of God. And Peter knew him very clearly and definitely as the Son of God. He had confessed. And thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. To see that one, tell Peter, Peter, put your sword back.
The Father has given me this cup to drink. Prior to this, Peter had reproached the Lord Jesus when he had tried to tell them about what was to take place, how that he must be taken by the Jews and must die and rise again the third day and so on. Peter had reproached the Lord, saying No, no Lord, this, this will never be to you. And the Lord Jesus had had to.
Recognize and identify.
That was Satan in Peter that was trying to take him away and turn him aside from what the Father had given him to do. And so we find here that the Lord reproaches Peter. And although it's not recorded here, we know that He healed that servant's ear in order to show very clearly the character of things that He was introducing. The old dispensation man was responsible and able to defend himself.
The Lord Jesus was introducing a new dispensation where you and I would not in that sense try and straighten out the world, but would rather submit to what it did to us.
And so we can understand on the one hand what Peter did. Yes, it wasn't with the mind of the Lord, but we can understand the tendency there, and the Lord Jesus does not.
Shall we say, give Peter a very hard time about it, except simply to point out that he should put that sword away, because what was going to happen was not merely what men were doing, but it was the will of the Father.
Peter had not.
Stayed awake and watched in the hour of Gethsemane when the Lord took the cup from the Father. And so he was not prepared for this hour. His heart was right, but he was unintelligent as to the mind of the Father. And so he he's off course and he's walking in his own strength.
It's beautiful to see how patient the Lord is with them on those two occasions this night.
Umm, you know, we give a Lord a lot of work, brethren, and Peter's better than most of us.
And his heart was right, but he didn't.
He didn't know the mind of the Lord here, and earlier the Lord had Peter said I prayed for you and he told him to be ready. Now Peter's not ready and so he gives the Lord more work. But why does this? Why is this recorded here? John doesn't write this, I don't think to single out Peter as the offender.
I look at it as the backdrop to show the opposite of what the Lord Jesus was.
The Lord Jesus wasn't defending himself, He was obedient to the Father.
To take that cup of death and drink it and go to the cross.
And so.
These little scenes here.
Stand in contrast to show who the Lord Jesus and what he did.
So it's an encouragement to us. The Lord Jesus perfectly entered into this situation.
He was aware perfectly of the Father's will.
And that the cup was the father was giving him, was his to drink, and he goes along the path of that.
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Peter doesn't understand, and so he goes along with true heartedness.
But in the path of nature, in the path of the thoughts of the natural mind in such a circumstance and with a desire to help the Lord in that circumstance. And so it's a good lesson for us that do we want to walk in according to the mind of God, We need to benefit from the way the Lord Jesus.
Knew the mind of God. Yes, as a divine person He knew it perfectly, but also He had the words of the Father.
The the words that he gave were the words of the Father to him to give and he told the disciples when they wanted to ask for something in the 15th chapter he said you asked the Father and he'll do it for you. But in that expression of what he was saying is.
And you too have the words of the Father. And if we want to walk with God in our lives.
We need to receive His mind and we get it in the Word of God, independence and obedience to it to walk in it.
Sometimes when we want to do something, we say, well, what's the Lord want me to do? Or, and we should. Or other times when we're in a situation and we're not prepared for it and we don't know how to act or we act improperly and realize it later, like Peter realized later he hadn't acted correctly in the circumstance.
You have to remember that the preparation comes before the test.
Preparation comes before the test. The test is to bring out what's there. And so every day of our lives we have opportunity to receive from the Lord so that when He chooses to bring a test to us, or a circumstance where we are to be bearing fruit for Him, we will be prepared as His servants to do so. And if we're not prepared, the Lord still loves us.
And he will often use a failure like he used in Peter's life.
To teach him a lesson so that he would be prepared for the service that was to be given to him in the end of the gospel. Lord doesn't give up on us when we pass a test. He loves us, we're His, and He wants to use us. But if we don't learn it at His feet, we will learn it like Peter does here also, though with the intent that in his love and grace He will still go on with His purpose of using us.
Sometimes we give up on ourselves when the Lord hasn't given up on us.
Well, we've remarked before about the high priest. It's important to realize that the.
Office of the High Priest had in many senses ceased to be.
Something that passed on in the lineage of Aaron as that God had intended it. Sad to say, it had become largely a political office and was often.
Manipulated around with politics and with things like that. And that's why the reference here to Anise, who was father-in-law, to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year, it seems as if this family had.
A hold on the high priesthood, and it didn't much matter which one took the place, but the family was in charge. Very, very sad, because the high priest in the Old Testament was intended to be a representative of God, and the priest in that sense really spoke of the Lord Jesus, who was the mediator between God and man.
And we find here what a sad thing had happened, that men had taken that.
Wonderful place that God had prepared in order to illustrate the position of the Lord Jesus as our great High Priest, and in order to illustrate the one who was, as our hymn sometimes puts it.
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Our both our sacrifice and priest. Both our sacrifice and priest.
And yet here, how far apart they are, how far apart this one who is in the position of high priest from the one who stands before him, the true high priest. And yet it's wonderful how that God uses that man to prophecy. And it mentions it here. It's in the 11Th chapter of this same gospel that this man had actually prophesied and said it's expedient for one man to die for the people.
Now Caiaphas of course, thought that he would make the Lord Jesus a scapegoat for the whole nation.
Let's get rid of this man, otherwise the Romans will come along and think that we've got a king.
Who's going to lead a rebellion? And we'll lose everything, so let them go and it'll save us.
But unwittingly he was giving expression, even as an unbeliever, to the mind of God. Because it was indeed true, wasn't it? The Lord Jesus was going to die for the people. And so God could use the mouthpiece of that man who was a wicked man who had no care for God or for the Lord Jesus, only for his own wicked ends to be a mouthpiece unwittingly for the mind of God concerning His beloved Son.
Might have thought that Peter would have said whoops.
I better stop here because.
I just did something and it really didn't. The Lord had to tell me. No, Peter, that's not the way to do it. And.
Sometimes when the Lord allows something to happen in our lives, I think sometimes it's something, a voice to us that's saying stop.
I want to talk to you. There's something to be learned here, but nature doesn't tend to stop.
And so in verse 15.
Simon Peter followed Jesus.
He's ready to go on with and his hearts.
Good. He loved the Lord, He told the Lord. I'm willing to die with you, Lord.
And he meant it. He didn't realize himself in his own limitations, but at least his desire.
Peters to be respected for the true heartedness of his attachment to the Lord Jesus.
And yet we're going to see that if you follow the Lord according to the energy of nature.
Ultimately, it's not enough.
It just isn't enough. We can't follow the Lord without the power of God by the Spirit working for us and in us. But Peter here hasn't learned that yet. And so he's, he goes on and he'll continue on in this chapter until he's fulfilled what the Lord warned him about concerning himself. But nonetheless, sometimes we also tend to do that.
With a in this measure of right motivation. But we also have to learn that nature can't do it. We can't follow the Lord in the strength of nature. We need God's work by the Spirit to sustain us, to hold us up in the tests that sometimes come in service to the Lord or just plain daily life.
What the Lord Jesus says to Peter here.
Shows exactly that he is in command of the situation.
He lets events now take its course.
Now then, the band and the captain of the officer said take Jesus and found him. I often thought they didn't need to do that. He would have gone along without resistance. Yet they wanted to show that he was now in their power and they were going to take him away.
And which they did.
And they led him into their counsel. Now they thought it was.
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Now up to them.
To do with him what they pleased. And yet we can see all the way through.
That the Lord Jesus knew all the things that were common upon Him.
Well, we find John being brought in here, don't we? And John doesn't name himself when he talks about himself, that other disciple, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and so on. But we find that John is mentioned here.
And we might wonder why Peter failed and John didn't fail in the same way.
Because we know from reading other scriptures that when the band of soldiers came to arrest the Lord Jesus.
That it says all the disciples forsook him and fled. So it wasn't only some of them, but all of them. And we know that Peter's boast.
Had come to nothing.
But that he comes back here.
And John 2 The others, we don't know about whether they ever showed up here. We don't. We're not sure we're not. They're not talked about.
But I suppose the difference between John and Peter is that John didn't pretend to be what he was not.
Peter did. Peter pretended to have a strength in himself that, as Don has mentioned, he didn't have. Peter pretended to be able to stand for the Lord, to go into death with him if necessary, in his own strength. And as we've had before us, the believer can do that only if he has the Lord before him and if he's empowered by the Lord and by the Spirit of God to stand firm. And down through the ages, how many dear believers have stood firm for Christ in the face of.
Tremendous persecution have stood firm in the face of death and faced it, even the most cruel death.
But they couldn't do it in their own strength, and John doesn't pretend to be what he was not. He had run away too, evidently, but he comes back.
And he goes into the palace of the high priest, having.
Made no assurances to the Lord about what he wouldn't or wouldn't do, but simply brings in Peter in order that they might see what happened.
And it's a lesson for you and for me, isn't it? Yes, in our own strength, we're all going to fail. And I appreciate Dough's remark earlier on that all of this only sets in relief the Lord Jesus in his ultimate perfection. You and I find failure in ourselves, every one of us. John failed, Peter failed, Pilate failed, the chief priests failed, the other disciples failed, The people of Israel failed. Didn't matter who they were.
But there was one whose character, if we could use that term reverently, there's one who stands out in absolute perfection here, and all of the failure of the others only sets him in wonderful relief.
We can be thankful the Lord still loves us in our failures, and the Lord is standing by his disciples here.
He didn't say, Well, I'll rather do it alone without you. Now that you've let me down, that's the way I might have behaved.
But he still wanted Peter. He still could use Peter. In fact, he could use them better than ever afterward. And so there was a reason for Peter to go through this.
There's another thing I'd like to comment on here and that is the IT was mentioned earlier about that the Kingdom had been taken from Israel at the time of Nebuchadnezzar several 100 years earlier than this. But since that time God and Gavin Israel a measure of recovery and given him a temple and A and a place to worship in the priesthood. And that had carried on until this day and I believe it was recognized of God still.
At this time. But here you have God putting the test to the priesthood.
It's going to be set aside to the priesthood of Aaron and it's the followers and so on. And so it's it's really what's on trial here, not the Lord Jesus.
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All that this presentation of before Caiaphas and Annas and so on, is they are, they are set up with a perfect man to deal with. What are they going to do with him?
And they condemned themselves by judging him and delivering him, causing him to be delivered over to the Romans to be crucified. And so as we read this chapter and see this, we see how that the Lord Jesus here. It was the test. And of course we know from the book of Hebrews that it's because he was going to introduce the true priesthood after the character of these these men here. But.
Not after their behavior. And so this, this the Lord Jesus presented here before these ones is, is this test being applied. Don spoke earlier about the test of the different ones. It's a proving test. It's, it's to show up what there really is. That's the light that comes in. In this Gospel, John, John presents him the light of the world. When the light comes in, it makes everything manifest. When Jesus is brought on the sin scene, he makes evident manifest.
The character that the hearts and intents of everyone around them. And so the priesthood here is going to be set aside because of what it does here.
Is it so that in secular history it brings out the Anise was a Pharisee and Caiaphas was a Sadducee?
So marriage between the families is really a compromise. It's quite a contrast with Speaking of the Lord Jesus when it says he spake as having authority and not as the scribes and Pharisees.
Here, he's superior to it all, isn't it?
There are a number of ways in which the Lord Jesus fulfills something that had been given originally to Israel, but they had failed in it, and God, by these final expressions and tests of it, puts it aside.
And replaces it with himself, the Lord Jesus, and then there will be no other.
There will not be any to come after him.
Israel as a nation was a true vine.
I shouldn't say true vine. Israel as a nation was a vine to produce fruit for God in the earth.
But as a vine for God in the earth, Israel didn't produce any fruit.
And so the Lord Jesus earlier in this gospel says to them in the 15th chapter.
I am the true vine He replaces in the earth.
Israel in his person and becomes the true vine, and the people of Israel the branches, and then there will be fruit in the earth through him.
But it'll never be replaced with another. It will go on into the millennial earth. They had a king, but the king and the history of the kings in Israel fails. And by this time that what we're reading this afternoon, they had become so unfaithful in that line of things that the Gentiles were ruling over them.
But in the person of the Lord Jesus, the Messiah was the King, and consequently he will be. When he comes back to reign, He will be the King, and there will be none to replace him, but he will continue on to the end. In the case of the High priest, it's the same.
They had the high priest and they had the line of the priest, but we find them come down to this sad end that has been described to us of multiple high priests at once and different high priests for a year and so on.
And the High Priesthood in that line of things is set aside forever.
The Lord Jesus replaces it as our High Priest now, but in Israel in the millennial picture in the Old Testament. I think if traced out, one will see that there is no replacement for the Lord Jesus. There will not be another High priest in Israel, but he is the replacement and He is perfect. And God doesn't need another line, if you will.
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It's just a joy to the heart to see the beauty of the Word of God in tracing out how the Lord Jesus becomes one who so perfectly does the will of God in every respect that God says, as it were. That's good. I don't need another one.
And I don't need to replace him because he can continue before me as long as there's a need for that function and he does so. And so, brethren, we want to enjoy him as God enjoys him. We want to see him as God sees him, as the one that God says, that's my man. And he's my man in every of these important details, including here the question of the high priest.
Glimpses of his priestly care intercession here in the chapter like.
When he says if you seek me, let these go their way. He was caring more for them than he was himself.
And as far as care of them, he heals well, doesn't say it here, but he he did heal the the servant of the high priest here had been cut off by Peter and.
And elsewhere he speaks about Peter. He says I prayed for thee. That was on this night, too. That's the priest we want. That's the priest we need. They'll cares for us.
I've drawn here is excellent. It's remarkable.
He doesn't say anything, but he goes in with those that took the Lord Jesus.
And we read that he was known to the high priest.
And his identity was not questioned at all.
While Peter's identity was questioned.
And we are not told what relationship he had with the high priest.
Yet he being the one whom the Lord Jesus loved, he had the mind of the Lord Jesus.
So he must have had also an excellent report with the people.
Because even the high priest would not object of him coming in, and then he had the authority to let Peter in.
Everybody has a personality.
Everybody in this room has their own personality, and we're born with certain tendencies toward it. Personalities, in some respects, general characteristics of personalities run in families, and we say, oh, that's the characteristic of that family and so on. And it's true.
Peter, and God allows us to see when he gives us much of A history of one of his own. Sometimes that personality reveals itself to us. And Peter was impetuous. He was one of these act now, think later people. And we see him multiple times in his history doing things as it were, on the spur of the moment, impetuously.
And having to learn whatever lesson either. He didn't think very long, he just pulled out the sword and cut his ear off.
When it came to it.
And but the .2 Things I want to bring out out of that is that first of all, all he needed when he had his sword was to pull it out and cut off the servant's ear. You could do that impetuously. But now when it's a matter of inning into the palace, he can't act that way. He comes to a door and he couldn't just impetuously kick the door down and go on in.
He needed help to get through that door. The first one that had to help him was a brother in the faith. John comes to the door and tells the keeper of the door. It's all right, let him in. And so he couldn't act on his own natural inclination. But also it needed the doorkeeper, which was a girl, which in Scripture in that sense wasn't the strength of a sword carrying.
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Person.
But the Lord often allows us.
To face a situation where we can't act in our natural personalities and get through it, but we're faced with the dependence on others in the situation. And even in that situation, sometimes we'll say the feeblest circumstance that we have to depend on, we can't handle. And Peter can't handle it. She asks him a question and he can't answer it rightly.
He lies and.
It's intended, I think, brethren, to teach us that sometimes the Lord will bring us to a point where the feeblest thing we can't handle or we just fail in it. And it wasn't a very big matter really that he was being asked. He was just being asked by the girl. Aren't you one? And no.
Enough, and he lies.
Cut off a servant's ear if you could, But when he's faced with this seemingly much easier situation, you can't handle it. And the Lord often allows us to be in a situation that isn't very big to show us that neither are we, at least in ourselves. And we're not big. But I want to make one other connection with Peter.
You may have a natural disposition, and so may I, but we don't have to live all our lives under the power of it and its weaknesses.
Paul was an insolent, overbearing man when he was saved, but later on in his life, his personality he was as a nurse cherishes her children. Peter was naturally an impetuous man in his personality and it's seen in him. But when you go to his epistles and you read them in that sense, you don't find that character coming out in his epistles. Rather you find the character of one who says.
Brethren, we've got to go on and endure to the end of the road, and the Lord is going to take us to the end of the road and it's going to be salvation.
And so he's taught, and he's able to teach his brethren something that requires not being impetuous, but the long road and the long way. And so it is with us, too. The Lord's intent is not to make us live our lives under the control of our natural dispositions if they're not of Himself, but rather to change us so that we are, in everyday life, conformed to what He wants us to be.
Quite a bit younger, wasn't he, than Peter? And sometimes I think of this that he was.
Diligent at perhaps reasoning with the priests. This is the Messiah.
And they might have been very patient with him, thinking, well, this guy's so young, we can bear with it, you know, and we'll just prove now as we try him that and John will see the lights. But we find him standing up in the book of Acts, don't we? Very boldly. And a great number of the priests believe. And it's really a wonderful thing that the Lord has someone there.
He has disposed the hearts of men in the whole situation.
And it's to John that he commends his mother.
So those personalities that the Lord gives us are not necessarily wrong in themselves. It's to bring our personality to submission to the Lord and to be used in obedience and faith to Him. And then the strong, then it'll be a strong feature. Maybe it's not called impetuousness, but that boldness that he spoke on Day of Pentecost. John probably couldn't have done that. Peter could, and so the Lord used him.
Leader.
And the Lord used that under his control to make him a leader among the disciples.
See here.
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That Peter warned himself with the enemies of the Lord Jesus.
And the fact is that none of us can be warmed.
Or warm ourselves in any character with the enemies of the Lord Jesus. He didn't get warmed at all there.
He had to leave then, and to weep bitterly, as we know, and then that's when he got back to his senses.
Not in this room, but it is cold in the world tonight at the present time and man tries to find something to warm himself and Peter need to be warm too. The point is really accurate mentions is that be sure you warm yourself with the right people and buy the right fire. There is a need for warm but.
There is falsehoods, fires, there's the world's fires by which they try to warm themselves, and then there's the warmth that comes in Christianity in the presence of the Lord Jesus. That is the true place for getting the warmth that we all need.
Application. It isn't really the main point here at all, but just a contrast of two little sets of words. The Lord Jesus said I am, Peter said I am not, and it's good for us brethren to remember He is the I am and we are not.
It's helpful to us if we can keep ourselves in the right place and relationship with himself, and in that sense, that's not exactly the point here. It is not he's doing something wrong here, but there is something right for us in our own hearts to recognize we are attached to the I am, but in another sense, we can say I am not.
Some could say I am nothing in one sense, and another way say I can do all things through. Christ would strengtheneth me.
Perfect.
Young ones that maybe need a little explanation on.
These trials.
There is a Jewish trial here.
Informal trial with Ananias and then it goes to a preliminary trial that is with.
Cephas there and.
Also with the Sanhedrin, the Gospel of John does not have.
That final trial with the Sanhedrin is found in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Also there is a Gentile trial.
A Gentile trial is with Pilot.
On the first stage, they're both in three stages, by the way. The second stage pilot sends them to Herod the king, and the third stage Herod sends him back to Pilate, who releases Barabbas. So we see three stages in the Jewish trial and three stages in the Gentile trial.
And I hope that maybe just that short explanation might clarify in the minds.
Of some of the younger ones that are doing some reading about this.
Well, we find the Lord Jesus reacting.
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In a right way here when he's brought before the high priest.
The high priest starts to ask him, What are you teaching? What are you doing? What are you?
Kind of disciples do you have And so on.
And the Lord Jesus quite properly reminds him that this was out of order.
It's not wrong in that sense to ask the prisoner certain questions, but if they were going to apply the rule of law, here was a man as they thought.
Who had always taught out in the open, who had always spoken clearly and definitely. There had been no secret meetings. There had been no double talk. There had no been. There had been no sabotage behind the scenes or trying to overthrow things. It was all right out in the open. And so the Lord Jesus quite properly reminds them that if they wanted to know what he had said or what he had done, they were hundreds, maybe thousands probably.
Who could well vouch for what the Lord Jesus has said?
But why did the trial go this way? What was going on?
Or was an age-old trick. They knew that if they called right witnesses.
That they had nothing by which to accuse the Lord Jesus, and they knew very well.
That what they wanted to do, they were going to do anyway, no matter what the witnesses said.
In recent years.
I've read several books concerning the Holocaust in Germany.
And it brings tears to your eyes to see the things that were done, the mock trials that were held.
The things that were said that were untrue, the way the whole situation was handled, the lies that were told to other nations, the way things were covered up that were going on under the awful rule of the Nazis.
But I couldn't help thinking as I read some of those books, some of them written by Jews that had survived the Holocaust.
And the bitterness, the anger, the despair and the way they wrote came through very loudly.
I couldn't help but think.
Yes, and that is exactly the way the Son of God was treated.
And we don't point the finger at the Jews. They were responsible. God holds them responsible.
And they will pay the utmost Farthing, as it were, for that awful crime during the Tribulation.
But they were only a sampling of mankind, weren't they? And if God had picked up another nation instead of the Jews and made them His chosen people, you and I have to admit that we wouldn't have turned out any better. And so we're all guilty, because this is the natural heart of man. The natural heart of man that determines what he wants to do and then manipulates with a show of holding court, with a show of trying to do things in a proper way, but yet already having his mind made-up.
And so once again, it puts in relief the perfection of the Son of God.
And on the other hand, the heart of man, the Lord Jesus, submits perfectly to what went on here. But he reminds.
That high priest who was starting to question him.
Ask those call witnesses if you really want to know. Call some of those that heard me. They know what I said. Let them bear witness if they will.
But all he gets is an unrighteous slap on the mouth, supposedly for talking that way to the high priest. Well, what an awful indictment of the heart of man. But what a wonderful display of the heart of God and of the perfection of His beloved Son.
What you say, Bill, reminds me of what it says in Luke when the Lord is being LED up to that.
He says, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
The Lord Jesus could foresee what was going to happen to that nation.
How they would be accused and passed through similar things. The Holocaust is 1 fulfillment of it. It's happened over and over again to that people.
It's the same thing they treated the same way they treated the Lord Jesus right here.
And so God is in his government has allowed them to have to feel those kind of things. So we see it here. It is a mock trial and.
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He is not caught off guard. He doesn't speak out of turn. He's perfect.
He's not.
Has he does not have a secret agenda, never did, and they are the ones that did and he perceives it. They don't catch him off guard here.
They don't get him and take him because of their thing. They're being more astute than him.
Now he's given himself here because the father said this.
Was his path.
Few comments on bills.
Thought that something more might be brought out on the trials and the character of them when God formed the nation of Israel.
The matter of administration was put into the hand of Moses, and in priestly things into the hand of his brother Aaron, and it began that way. Moses father-in-law decided it was too big a job for Moses, and so he said, why don't you get some people to help you?
And then if the matter is difficult and they can't handle it, then bring it to you and so on.
There really wasn't the mind of Jehovah, but he allowed it to go that way and.
So there was in Israel as a nation both a religious area of administration or government, and there was also when they had a king, there was the civil.
Administration of the Cares of the Nation.
But.
When they became so unfaithful.
To the Lord He brought his governmental hand down upon them.
He removes both the high priest and the king.
That in which governmental responsibility was connected. He takes them into Babylon and the Lord, at least in the record of Scripture, I don't believe there is a restoration of the high priestly function specifically that the Lord sets up, nor although there is the high priest here. How they came to be what they were, I don't know. They've taken that place. They've taken Moses seat.
And the Lord said they've taken the seat, recognize it, they never had a king again. And coming down to this time.
And the result of it is manifested here in what we have in this way.
And it's this.
They because of their an unfaithfulness, the Gentile now rules over them.
The Romans have come in and conquered the country and said and set up their own government.
And limited the Jews, even the religious aspect of them. For example, we have here they were not allowed under Roman rule to have a death sentence.
Under the Old Testament economy, there was there were offenses in the nation in which they were to put to death. But the Romans who conquer them say, ah, you can't do that. You can have your own laws and rules up to that point, but if it's a matter of somebody being put to death, you've got to come to us and we'll decide one way or the other. So the Jews here had determined that they wanted him put to death. They didn't have the authority, the right under Roman rule to do it.
So they have to take him to Pilate, who had that authority as representing the Romans.
But not to get into more detail and in view of the time, I want to make out, bring out two points of connection with it. The Lord allows it. I should say God allows it. These trials, false as they were, to come to the point where decisions are made by the people as a whole as well as the authorities and the Jews wrongly said to try to get rid of the Lord Jesus.
We have no king but Caesar. Actually, the sect of Jews called the Herodians had embraced that idea, which they should not have. They should have said we have no king, but they shouldn't have said but Caesar, because Caesar properly was not a Jewish king. However they make the statement We have no king but Caesar. They also make the choice not this man Jesus, but Barabbas.
00:55:13
And the consequences of those two choices have been with the world. Not just the Jew, but the Gentile as well stands under the governmental hand of God to this day, 2000 years later for those two choices.
God still allows the government of the world to be in Caesar's hands.
And he's a lousy king. The world's suffering because.
Caesar doesn't know how to control rightly the world. And the second thing when they say not this man, but Barabbas. Barabbas was a robber, a murderer. He was a revolutionist. And that has characterized the world to this day.
This is a world. There hasn't been a year of my lifetime, nor yours, where there is an active war going on in this world. Why?
Because the world chose Barabbas and God said you want Barabbas, you're going to have them.
Until the true king comes, and then you'll have peace.
And then you'll have righteous rule.
But as long as the world is under the governmental hand of its choice of no king but Caesar and Barabbas, it's going to go on as it is now, with its wars and its rumors of wars. And it's going to affect not only the Jew as it does, but it also affects the gentile. And it will continue to do so.
And number 84?
Verse four Through his name we are forgiven. Oh, how he loves backward shall our foes be driven. Know how he loves best of blessings He'll provide us not, but good shall Erbititus save to glory. He will guide us. Oh how he loves. Number 84 in the back of the book.