Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 22:63-23:25
[ Inaudible ] So take your bulletin out, there is an outline, I'll do my best to make sure we get all these blanks filled in, you know we don't have a screen. I like to use a screen because we live in a visual culture and I think it reinforces learning, I think it reinforces understanding. But I was reminded this morning of my preaching class in seminary which is really one of the worst classes you have to take because you have to preach in front of a bunch of other students and that's not a very forgiving audience. But in that class the professor Dr. Vogel, one of the things we talked about using technology and using different things as you preach, he said look, I don't have a problem with you using technology but if you can't preach without it, you can't preach with it. Meaning, it's not the point, it's not central and the word is central. So there's a Bible in front of you, in the seat in front of you if you don't have one, ask that you would take it out and find Luke 22, again you can follow along on the outline, we'll work through that. But our passage is Luke 22 and then a little bit into Luke 23 as well. So about 400 years before Jesus was born, there was a guy named Plato, lived in ancient Greece, maybe you've heard of him, he was a philosopher and he was a smart guy, an intelligent guy and he wrote a book called The Republic and The Republic is a book about human government. And one of the things he says in the book is really kind of interesting, remember this is 400 years before Jesus was born. He says if, this is a hypothetical in his mind, if the perfectly righteous, perfectly just man were to be born into this world, if that were to happen, this is what he thinks would happen, Plato, if the perfectly just man were to come into the world, he would be scorched, racked and bound, they would burn his eyes out and after suffering every kind of evil they would impale him, literally they would crucify him. He's off on some of the details, but he understood something very, very important and something very, very true. When sinful human beings are confronted with perfect justice and perfect righteousness and perfect holiness, it's unsettling for us. And that's one of the things you see at play when you read through the Gospels and you read about Jesus, the perfectly just, perfectly righteous one, is he's going around teaching and as he's healing and as he's doing these various things, people are unsettled, especially the religious establishment. They're threatened. They don't know how to handle Jesus. They don't have a category for Jesus. Every time they think they've wrapped their arms around him, he sort of sneaks through. And we come to the end of the story, it's been building, it's been building, it's been building in Luke. These men have finally laid their hands on Jesus. They've used Judas to arrest him at night in the garden. And now they're about to put him on trial. And you know how the story ends, we're going to talk about next week, they're going to crucify. But this morning, we're going to look at these trials, at least as Luke records the trials. And there's six of them, and these are on your outline. If you want to follow along and fill in these names, six trials, and I think when you understand the flow of what Jesus went through it, it helps you to make sense of what we're about to read in Luke. Trial number one was before a man named Anis. A-N-N-A-S, Anis. Anis was the previous high priest. At one point in time, he was the leading religious figure in Israel. The Romans got tired of him, for one reason or another, they deposed him, but being the high priest was sort of like being president in the United States. Even when you're not the president anymore, people call you president. So he's still the high priest in name. Used to hold this position, now he's just high priest in name, and historians tell us that he was replaced by a son-in-law Caiaphas, and Caiaphas was just kind of a puppet high priest. The guy really pulling the strings was Anis, which is interesting because when they arrest Jesus, they don't take him straight to Caiaphas, they start with Anis. They start with the guy behind the scenes who really has the power, who's really making the decisions. So that's the first trial before Anis. The second trial is before Caiaphas, C-A-I-A-P-H-A-S, Caiaphas. Both of these first trials happened at night, and that's going to be an important detail. We'll come back to in a minute. So trial number one before Anis, trial number two before Caiaphas, trial number three before the Sanhedrin. Spell it just like it sounds. S-A-N-H-E-D-R-I-N, the Sanhedrin. So here's the thing. In ancient Israel, any town that had 120 persons in it, 120 Jewish persons was eligible to have their own Sanhedrin, their own court basically. Sometimes the Sanhedrin in these towns was made up of three men, sometimes it was made up of seven men. The great Sanhedrin, or to use our lingo, the Supreme Court was in Jerusalem. 70 men sat on the Sanhedrin. The high priest presided over the Sanhedrin to be number 71. This was the highest religious authority in Israel. And even though the Romans were still in charge, just to sort of be at peace with their subjects, they let the Jews keep their great Sanhedrin. They let them make some very important decisions and some weighty decisions. And we'll see that some things they took out of their hands, the death penalty. But they could make a lot of important decisions and they had a lot of power. So you have the Sanhedrin. Number four, you have Pilate. So now we're moving out of these Jewish trials that come first into his Roman trials. Pilate for the first time. Luke gives us a few details here. Most of the conversation you can find in John, and I've given you the verses. You can look those up and read about what they talked about in their first conversation. So he goes to Pilate for the first time. The fifth trial is before Herod Antipas. We're gonna talk about him in a minute. Luke is the only gospel author to record this trial before Herod. Herod's court was a kangaroo court. Had no real authority. It's just a joke. And as you'll see, he treated it like it was a joke. This is the guy, by the way, just so you can get all your Herod's lined up, 'cause there's a lot of guys named Herod in the Bible. First Herod we meet is a guy named Herod the Great. He tries to kill baby Jesus and battle him unsuccessfully. He has a son named Herod Antipas. We're gonna talk about him. This is the guy we're talking about later. And down the road in the book of Acts, there's a third Herod, but this is Herod number two, Herod Antipas. The last trial is back before Pilate. So he goes from Anas to Caiaphas to the samehedrin, to Pilate, to Herod, back to Pilate again. Matthew and John add a few details that we don't see here in Luke. They add the detail that Pilate's wife had a dream, the night before all of this happened, warning her to leave Jesus alone. He was innocent. They shouldn't have anything to do with him. They record the detail in this conversation where the Jews try to manipulate Pilate into a corner, threatening that they're gonna tattle tale to Rome in essence. But these are the six trials, and this is the way it went down. And when we go through these stories, and we read what Luke has to say about it, it's gonna take us right up to the edge of the crucifixion. So you got those filled in, look in your Bible, and let's read the text. Luke chapter 22, beginning in verse 63, and we're gonna read through 23 verse 25. So you follow along as we read about these trials. Luke 22, 63, the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him prophesy. Who is it that struck you? And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him. When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people gathered together, both chief priests and scribes, they let him away to their counsel, and they said, "If you are the Christ, tell us." But he said to them, "If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I ask you, you will not answer, but from now on, the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God." So they all said, "Are you the Son of God then?" He said to them, "You say that I am." Then they said, "What further testimony do we need? We've heard it from his own lips." The whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate. They began to accuse him saying, "We found this man misleading our nation, forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ, the king." And Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" And he answered, "You have said so." Then Pilate said to the chief priests and to the crowds, "I find no guilt in this man." But they were urgent saying, "He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea from Galilee, even to this place." When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him over to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad for he had long desired to see him because he had heard about him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by him. So he questioned him at some length, but he made no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by vehemently accusing him, and Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him. Then, arraying him and splendid clothing, he sent him back to Pilate. And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, for before this day they had been in enmity with each other. Pilate then called together the chief priests and the rulers of the people, and he said to them, "You brought me this man as one who was misleading the people. And after examining him before you behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, nothing deserving death has been done by him. I will therefore punish and release him, but they all cried out together, away with this man and release to us, Barabbas, a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder. Pilate addressed them once more desiring to release Jesus, but they kept shouting, crucify him, crucify him. A third time he said to them, "Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. I will therefore punish and release him, but they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified and their voices prevailed." So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, for whom they asked, but he delivered Jesus over to their will. Let's pray. Father, as we read about these events leading up to the death of Jesus, we're reminded of the gravity of what took place. We're reminded of the horror. We're reminded of the wickedness. And Father, I pray this morning that you would help us by the power of your spirit to see ourselves the way we need to see ourselves. And even though we look at these people and we think of them as so much different than us that we would see that they're exactly like us. And also pray that you would help us to see Jesus clearly for who he is and what he's accomplishing on our behalf as we read these verses. Open our eyes, open our hearts. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. So this is a dark passage. It's dark like the passage last week. It's dark in the sense that some of this passage, about half of it is actually taking place under the cover of darkness in the very, very early morning hours. It's also dark, more importantly in the sense that it reveals the darkness of sin and the ugliness of sin. And at first glance, as I mentioned, as I just prayed, it may seem like, you know, Anas, Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate, the Sanhedrin, could never do what these guys did. It's so wicked, it's so black, it's so hard-hearted. But I hope that as we go through this passage and talk about each of these guys that Luke mentions, I hope that God will open your eyes to see that they're not all that different than you and me. The circumstances are wicked, but it is possible in it, and it should happen this morning, that you see yourself in these characters and that when you see yourself in the blackness of your own heart, you see the light of the glory of Jesus Christ more clearly. So we're just gonna work through and talk about some of these groups in the passage. First of all, the Jewish authorities. This is on your outline. They were guilty of gross injustice in the arrest and the trial and the conviction of Jesus. Jewish authorities, guilty of gross injustice and all that takes place here. You know, one of the interesting things is that archeologists and historians have gone back and they have information, records, books, documents from the great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. It's interesting because we know how they operated, we know how things proceeded in a legal sense. We know what some of their rules were. We know what some of the stipulations for certain types of cases were. In particular, we know all the rules that they had spelled out for capital murder cases or capital cases where they wanted to execute somebody for their crime. And when you read through this story, some of the details just pass over us, but over and over and over again, these guys are breaking their own rules. And let me just give you a few examples. There was a rule, the great Sanhedrin. You could not use a criminal to arrest another criminal. That was written down in their law books. You couldn't use one crooked person to lay your hands on another crooked person. Well, they just did that, right? They took Judas, a man who accepted a blood money bribe and they use him to arrest Jesus secretly at night. Police brutality. You may think that's a modern issue, but it has always been an issue. And they had rules spelled out about what the police, what the temple guards could do and couldn't do. And when you look at verse 63, 64 and 65, look at them. They're holding Jesus, they're mocking him, they beat him. They blindfolded him and they tell him prophesy, who punched you that time? And they said many other things against him. All of that illegal, according to their own laws. The fact that this happened at night, illegal. They had spelled out in their laws for the great Sanhedrin. If you're gonna arrest somebody and you're gonna try them for a capital offense, it has to be done during the daytime. They arrest him at night, he goes before Anna's at night, he goes before Caiaphas at night. And did you notice the detail down in verse 66? It says when day came, the assembly of the elders gathered together. That's when the Sanhedrin came together. They knew we can't hold court at night. There's no point even coming together. Wait till the sun comes up. Now that didn't stop them, two trials during the night before the sun comes up. The fact that they held this trial in homes, the home of Anna's and then the home of Caiaphas, illegal. That may not seem like a big deal to us, but it was a big deal to them. The only place that you could hold trials, official trials in Jerusalem was the temple precinct. This would be like somebody today being arrested. Imagine yourself arrested and instead of booking you down at the courthouse, they just take you over to the judge's personal residence. And they march you in the living room and they have a trial. You would say, you can't do this, it's illegal. You can't have a trial in the home of a judge, but that's exactly what they did, twice. The fact that they did it on a religious festival, illegal. Their own law said, if it's a Sabbath, if it's a religious festival, no trials can be held. This is the Passover. This is the biggest celebration of the whole year. This would be like you getting arrested on Christmas Eve and they take you to the judge's home on Christmas day. And they put you on trial in his living room, totally breaking their own laws. There's also a rule spelled out in their own laws that said after you convict somebody of a capital crime, if you're going to put them to death, you have to wait 24 hours. And they explain the reasoning in their own law. They say, this is a chance for every one of those 70 men in the Sanhedrin to go home and sleep on it. Think about it. You're about to take a man's life. They reasoned, you shouldn't just do that and then impulsively carry it out. You should make the decision, then all of you have to go home and sleep on it. And if any one of them would have turned around the next day after 24 hours and said no, the whole thing would have been off. They don't do that, they do it immediately. Their law said that you had to bring formal charges to hold somebody. That may seem like a modern invention, but they had that rule. The Jews did in Jerusalem. You had to bring formal charges against the person that you're accusing. They don't do that anywhere here. In the Jewish trials, they talk about blasphemy. They try to back Jesus into some theological corner. But then when they go to Pilate, what do they say? Not anything about blasphemy. They describe it over in chapter 23. He's misleading our nation. He says that we can't give tribute to Caesar. Is that what Jesus said? No. He says that he's the Christ, the king. What they're saying to Pilate is we all know that there's only one king and it's Caesar. And this guy says he's a rival king. There's no formal charges. They're just saying before the Jews, what will get him in trouble? Before Pilate, what will get him in trouble? There's a rule in ancient Israel, another one that they violated about self-incrimination. Basically, you couldn't do it. They wouldn't have called it pleading the fifth, but that's what we call it, and that was the principle. When you get put on trial, you didn't have to testify against yourself. And these guys start off when you read through the gospels, they start off bringing all these different witnesses, but they don't agree, they can't get on the same page. So finally, the high priest just cuts to the chase and he looks straight at Jesus and he starts to question him. They put Jesus under an oath. And we read that and we say, well, what's the big deal? It was illegal. You couldn't put the accused under oath like that. You couldn't force him to incriminate himself, but they did. There was also a rule, this one is interesting to me. If you were a member of the Sanhedrin, you were one of these 70 guys. If one of your sworn enemies was brought before the courts, hearing the deliberations, making the decision. These guys have been planning to murder Jesus for over a year. Nobody's recusing themselves from this trial. Over and over and over and over again, they break their own rules so that they can do to Jesus what they want to do him. Here's the principle, and this is where it may come back to be more applicable in our lives. These men had standards, but they willingly set them aside. They had laws, they had morality. This was right, this was wrong, this was just, this was unjust. They knew all of these things. Every step along the way, they knew we're violating, we're breaking, we're setting aside our own laws, and they gladly did it. You guys are church-going people. You're so faithful, you come on the bad time change Sunday. You know what's right, you know what's wrong. You have a pretty good idea of what God's word says about your life. You know the things in your life that aren't lining up the way God would have them to line up. And what do we do? We come up with reasons and excuses for why it's okay to take the standards that God has given us, standards that we've put into place in our own life, and we just willingly set them aside. You say, these guys are crazy, breaking all those laws to kill Jesus. I can't imagine doing something like that. Well, we do the same thing in principle every day. We take the things that we know are right and we just try to forget about them. We try to explain away our disobedience. The irony is, if you look down in Luke 22, verse 69, one of the few things Jesus says, says from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God. Says that to the Sanhedrin, right? They have Jesus on trial, and Jesus says, "You wanna know something funny?" One of these days, I'm gonna be seated at the right hand of God, which is a position of authority and power, and you're not going to be in judgment over me, but I'm going to be in judgment over you, and they're outraged, they're infuriated. Let's talk about Herod, just moving through the passage. Herod Antipas was guilty of squandering remarkable religious opportunities. He squandered remarkable religious opportunities. His story is told in Luke 23, verse six, down to about verse 12. If you know the story of Herod Antipas, you almost feel bad for the guy. Nobody respected him, nobody. First off, his dad was known as Herod the Great. How do you follow that? Your dad's great, and you're just Herod. He wasn't quite as big of a deal as his dad was. He didn't build, quite as build of buildings, as big of buildings as his father did. The Romans looked at him, and they knew he's just, he's a pawn that we're going to use for our own purposes. The Jews looked at him and said, "He's just a puppet." The Romans used for their own purposes. No one respected him. He did have some measure of power, because we read in the Gospels that he places under arrest a man named John. We know him as John the Baptist. They didn't call him that in those days. They just called him John. John was following Herod around. John knew, like everyone else did, that Herod Antipas had stolen his brother's wife while he was on vacation. Took her back to his own home in Galilee, and pretended that he was his wife. And John used to follow Herod around in public places and say, "You're an adulterer, "that your brother's wife, everyone knows you're a sinner." Herod could really care less, but his new wife, his brother's real wife, didn't like it. So they put him in prison. You can read in the Gospel of Mark chapter six, an interesting detail that says that Herod kept John in prison, and one of the reasons he kept him in prison is because he liked to listen to him preach. Kind of funny, right? Just a man living in all-out sin, but he was fascinated by John the Baptist. He just couldn't get the guy out of his head, and he would call for him, and he would listen to him, and just picture him scratching his head. I don't get it, you're a crazy man, but I like listening to you. Go back to prison, I'm gonna listen to you tomorrow. Sendin' him back and forth, listenin' to him preach. And then one day you read, he up and cuts the guy's head off, and serves it up on a plate. And he does it because he's at a keg party, in effect. And he's lusting after his step-daughter, who's dancing, and he makes this big promise to his new wife, who's really his brother's wife. I'll give you whatever you want, this is the greatest party ever, what do you want? And she takes her opportunity, and she says, "I want John's head on a plate, "and I want it right now." So right there in the middle of that party, they go get John out of prison, and they chop his head off, and they put it on a plate, and they bring it to the party. That would be disturbing, right? The Bible doesn't use the word paranoia, but what it describes on the other side of that event is paranoia. Herod Antipas never gets that image of John's head on a plate out of his head. He starts to hear all these rumors about a guy named Jesus of Nazareth. And you know what the first thing he thinks is? It's John back from the dead. He's comin' for me. He's gonna hunt me down. He's gonna get even. He was convinced that Jesus of Nazareth and all these powerful things he's doing is John the Baptist come back from the dead. And maybe, who knows, cut him a little slack. Maybe he kinda hoped it was John come back from the dead. He liked to listen to the guy. Maybe he thought I can get one more sermon in. Maybe I can see some of these things that he's doing, some of these tricks. So then they bring Jesus in front of him. It's the first time they've met. Luke says he had been eager to meet Jesus. Now you know why. He was thinking in the back of his head, maybe this is the guy whose head I lopped off and some miracle happened and he's back to life. That would be great. And he's heard about all the things Jesus is doing, the miracles, the signs, the wonders, and he wants to see it. Like there's a part of this guy that almost wants to believe. Show me a sign. Show me a miracle. Do something. And what does Jesus do when they bring him to this kangaroo court? Nothing. Zero. You see the blackness of verse 11 where it says Herod and his soldiers treated him with contempt and they mocked him. Everything we know about Herod Antipas tells us he had a problem with alcohol. So he's probably having another keg party. He's probably not in his right mind. Here comes this guy, he's been dying to meet. He won't comply with what he wants him to do. He just stands there like a stiff in the middle of this crazy party. And so he just sends him away. He takes an amazing opportunity for the second time in his life and he just squanders it away. He looks John the Baptist in the eyeballs and he listens to him preach. He looks at Jesus of Nazareth, right in the eyes, close enough to reach out and touching and all he can do is laugh at him. The opportunities that stood in front of this man are amazing to hear the two greatest preachers who ever lived and he just squanders it away. Here's the issue, at least the issue as Luke describes it in Luke chapter 23. He saw Jesus as an amusement rather than an authority. He looks to Jesus for amusement instead of recognizing Jesus as an authority. Without getting on too big of a soapbox, I'll just say this, if there's anything I could change in Christianity in the United States, it would be that right there. That we would stop looking to Jesus in church and all of it as some sort of amusement, some sort of entertainment, some sort of novelty show because there's nothing better going on Sunday mornings most places and that we would recognize Jesus as an authority. So that was the issue in Herod's life. Let's talk about Pilate very quickly. Pilate was guilty of ordering the beating in the execution of an innocent man, pretty black and white. Look at verse four in chapter 23. He says, "I find no guilt in him." Look down at verse 14. He says, "I find this man guilty. "I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges." Verse 15, "Nothing deserving death has been done by him." Verse 22, "What evil has he done? "Four times in one chapter." He says, "This guy hasn't done anything wrong. "He hasn't done anything that you said he's done. "He's innocent. "And yet eventually we're gonna read at the end of our passage. "He delivers Jesus over to their will." Part of the problem for Pilate is he got backed into a corner because of some stupid decisions he'd made in the past. These aren't described in the Bible, but they sort of help you understand his predicament. One of the stupid decisions he made, this was sort of strike one. When he moved in as governor of Judea, he went to the temple precincts. The Romans sort of just let the Jews do their own thing at the temple. They just kind of stayed hands off 'cause they knew it was a hot issue. Herod, I mean, Pilate walks into town and he says, "Immediately on day one, "I'm posting the image of the emperor in his emblem "right on the front of your temple." Well, that was idolatrous for the Jews. They revolted. It was this big problem. And in the end, the authorities in Rome said, "Hey, Pilate, don't be such an idiot, just take it down." Strike one. Strike two, Pilate went into the temple one day and he took all the offering boxes and he walked out with them and he used the money in the offering boxes to build a new pipeline into Jerusalem. Remember the widow we read about a couple of weeks ago who brings her two coins, the leptas? She puts them in. That's the money. He takes that kind of money from the temple, given as an offering and he uses it to build a pipe. And the Jews just lost it. They were outraged. That was sacred money. That was holy money. And so here's what Pilate did. He took a bad situation and he made it worse. He said, "Okay, we're gonna have a meeting about it. "Meet me here, such and such day, such and such time." So the people show up. They think they're gonna have their voice heard. Pilate takes all of his armed guards. He has them hiding daggers and swords in their cloak. He disperses them throughout the crowd. He stands up, he gives the order. They pull their swords out and they start slitting throats. Rome heard about it and said, "You probably could have handled that better." Strike two, Pilate. They didn't understand the three strikes throughout terminology, but he was on thin ice. They were looking at Pilate saying, "Is this man competent to lead as governor or not?" It's looking like he's not. And if he slips up again, he's gone. So now they bring Jesus. Luke doesn't tell us the details about how they look at Pilate and they say, if you don't back us on this, you're no friend of Caesar. They're basically saying, we're gonna tell Caesar and we know you're already in trouble. What Luke does say is that their voices just get louder and louder and they won't drop it and they won't leave it alone. Four times Pilate says, I don't think he's done anything wrong. I don't think he's done anything wrong. I don't think he's done anything wrong. I don't think he's done anything wrong. Killing, crucifying. Pilate looks at the situation and says, "This mob's about to turn into a riot." And if Rome hears about another riot, I'm probably in the unemployment line. So the wheels start turning in his head and he says to himself, well, I'm not gonna be the one to do it. You do it. I'm not gonna order it. I'm just gonna let it happen. And there's a difference in Pilate's mind that really is no difference. Pilate's mind, this is the principle at work here. He thinks that a sin of omission is better than a sin of commission. I'm not gonna commit the actual murder. I'm just gonna let it happen. I'm not gonna stand in your way. And he pat's himself on the back in this instance and he's saying, well, I didn't do it. They did it. They're guilty. They're responsible. It's not on me. You have this interesting dilemma by the time you get done with Pilate over in verse 25 saying that he delivers Jesus over to their will. And here's the dilemma. As you read through this story, who do you blame? Do you blame Judas? Do you blame the mob, the temple police who go out and arrest Jesus in the garden? Do you blame Anas or maybe Caiaphas? Maybe you lump Anas and Caiaphas in with the Sanhedrin and you blame the Sanhedrin. Or maybe you say, no, the Jews didn't really have the authority we're gonna blame Pilate or maybe you blame Herod. Who do you blame? I'll tell you a quick story. When I was in fifth grade, our church went every year to children's camp. And I'd gone a couple years already. We went to a place called Cedar Canyon outside of Amarillo about 30, 40 minutes. We'll go to this children's camp every year. For those of you who don't know, my mom was the children's director at our church. She was Terry Everett at our church. And so we were involved in everything. She planned the camp. She was there at the camp. My dad was the Chuck Everett. Basically, I need somebody to fill in. So you fill in here. Need a fifth grade Sunday school teacher this year. You're teaching fifth grade. Need a third grade Sunday school teacher. You're teaching third grade. And so he was there at the camp. And we'll go to this camp, and it's the year I was in fifth grade. And at the camp, there's about 100 of us from our church that went to this camp. And there's a group of about seven or eight guys, fifth grade guys, that I had grown up with from being in the nursery at the church that we went to. We grew up all the way together. Some of us, most of us lived even in the same neighborhood, so we're very, very close. And I'm not gonna name names out of that group. I'm just gonna say that one of our group who will remain nameless put in his backpack, a decent sized collection of fireworks. (audience laughs) And they made it to camp. You got a bunch of fifth grade guys at camp with a bunch of fireworks. So the wheels are turning all week, and oh, it's funny you brought these. And at some point, somebody who, I'm not gonna throw anybody under the bus, but somebody comes up with this idea, what if we took a smoke bomb, and we went over to the girl's cabin, and we knocked on the door, and when they opened the door, we throw it in, and then we closed the door and hold them in there. Fifth grade boys thought that was a good idea. So we get the smoke bomb, we get fire, we get our courage up, we're our foolishness up, whatever you wanna call it. We go over there, knock on the door, open it up, light it, throw it in, close the door, and we just, you know, I don't know what we thought would happen next. Certainly none of us thought that the smoke bomb would burn a giant hole in the carpet, catch the carpet on fire. Certainly none of us reasoned through the possibility that the smoke might stain the walls of the cabin. Ooh, would've think of something like that. But we knew pretty quick we were gonna get caught, 'cause girls run out the backside screaming and they go get the sponsors, and so real quick, the seven or eight of us have a powwow, and we say we need a plan, quick. What are we gonna say? We are stone cold busted, what are we gonna say? And here's the plan we came up with. We said, let's spread the blame around. Nobody takes all the blame for this. We're just gonna spread it around. You're gonna say that you brought 'em. You brought 'em, that's on you. But that's all you gotta take, nothing else. You're just in trouble for bringing it. You brought the lighter. No one else had a lighter, that's on you. You had the idea. You take credit for the idea. That's all you have to own up to. Just tell 'em it was your idea, and then you did nothing else. That's all, you're just being trouble for a little bit. And you're gonna be the guy that was holding it. All you did is hold it, and then it just kind of jumped out of your hand as soon as it landed. You were holding it. And you're the guy that's gonna light it. The guy that held it, he didn't light it. We're gonna spread that out. And the guy that lit it wasn't the guy that brought the lighter. We're diffusing this thing. Everybody's gonna take a little bit. And then lastly, you're the guy that held the door closed. We didn't have that idea. You just took that upon yourself. You held the door closed, so we get called before the authorities. And that was our defense. Just one by one. Well, I brought it. Well, it was my idea. Well, I was the one who lit it. And we go through this pathetic little thing, trying to spread this blame around. And here's what I can tell you. If you're ever in a situation like that. Spreading the blame around like that did not work in fifth grade. (audience laughs) And it doesn't work in Luke 22 and 23 either. It's no good. You don't get to sit here, even though I've shared with you some of the ways that they broke the law. Even though I've shared with you some of the things that Herod did foolishly. Even though I've told you that Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent, it's no good to just sort of try to spread it around as thin as you can and say, well, Judas, he's responsible just for this and the Sanhedrin, they're just responsible for this, and Herod for this, and Pilate for this. Did you notice something that's not in Luke 22 and 23? Never in that passage does Jesus point fingers at these guys and say, you're breaking the law that's unjust, this isn't fair, this isn't right. He just sort of lets them go through their monkey, crazy, goofy process. He doesn't blame any of these guys. It's of no value to try to spread the blame around here. Here's the reality, this is the last thing on your outline. Ultimately, you and I are guilty before God. Our rebellion is the reason the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. We are guilty before God, and our rebellion is the reason Jesus came and these things happened. It's of no value to sit here and say, well, you're on the hook for this, and you're on the hook for that, and you're guilty for this, and we're holding you responsible for that, 'cause at the end of the day, it's more about us than these guys. You remember a few weeks ago, we talked about Jesus and this plan to seek and save the lost, and I keep bringing this up 'cause it's important. We talked about the fact that this was a plan hatched before the foundation of the world. This is not plan B, this is not calling an audible. This is not Peyton Manning saying, "Omaha at the last second." This is the plan from before the foundation of the world to seek and to save sinners. And so Jesus goes through all this injustice, all this foolishness, all this ridiculous mockery of justice and of the legal system, and he's not pointing the finger at anybody, except you and me. That's why he came to seek and to save the lost. He died at the hands of lawless wicked men so that he could die for lawless wicked men. That was the mission. And you see the outcome of what he came to accomplish, just briefly in picture form at the end of what Luke describes to us. He tells us that the crowd calls for a man named Barabbas. Literally, Barabbas means son of the father. His parents were not very creative when they named him. That's what they settled on, son of the father. The father's son. And what you see is that the innocent, righteous, just man that Plato theorized about is treated shamefully, is persecuted, and is put to death. And the result of that happening is what? A guilty man goes free, the son of the father. You understand, that's what happened when Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. He took your punishment, he took your penalty, he took your sin, he took the wrath of God that should have fallen on you so that you could go free and be a son of the father. Let me pray for you. Father, I pray that we would never not be amazed at the story of Jesus and his death. The fact that he went knowingly to his death, he went willingly to his death. Your word says he went joyfully to his death. He drank the cup of your wrath that had our name on it. He didn't open his mouth when he was treated unjustly or unfairly, when he was mocked, when he was beaten. He just accomplished the one thing that he came to accomplish. And that is dying our death and taking our penalty and giving us life. Father, I pray that as we look at the sin that led to it, the human sin and the events that led up to his death that we would see that we're no different than the men in this story. We are no different. We know right and wrong and we explain it away and we deliberately choose to do the opposite. We come to Jesus for entertainment instead of as an authority. We have amazing spiritual opportunity in this country and we just waste it. Father, we rationalize sin thinking that it's not something we did, it's just something we didn't do as if that's better. And Father, I pray that you would convict us this morning, remind us of our need for Jesus to come and to seek us and save us. Every last one of us, none of us can earn our way with you. Our only hope is Jesus Christ. And we pray this morning for the people in the room who have been trying to earn it and trying to pay for it, trying to be good enough. And we pray that you would show them this morning that they're not and they won't ever be. Help them to understand that Jesus came to seek them, to save them. He came to die their death so that they could live. Father, you are worthy of all of our worship and all of our praise. And so as we lift our voices together, we pray that you would receive our worship and we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.