The Roman Trials, Matthew 27:11-12

Open your Bibles with me this morning to Matthew chapter 27, and if you wish, you can take a marker and stick your stick it over in John 18 because will be moving back and forth, primarily between those two passages. We will look at what Mark and Luke say about these events as well. This is the Roman trials numbers four and five that we are looking at.

I pointed out that there are two broad events that take place that are sometimes classified as just basically two broad trials, others say no, there are six trials, but in either case, it depending on how your understanding of the jurisprudence is at that particular time, we have six different events, six different hearings before different authorities. The first three are religious trials; the second three are civil or criminal trials. The first three occur before the power behind the high priest, Annas, who had been high priest, he was deposed, and the current high priest was his son-in-law, Caiaphas. Then he goes from Annas, described in John 18:12-14, to Caiaphas described in Matthew 26:57-68, and then they will pull together a trial to cover their illegalities. That is described in Matthew 27.

We have covered those and now were starting the civil or criminal trial. This is done under the authority of the Roman prefect who is Pontius Pilate. There are again three stages of three trials, first before pilot, second before Herod Antipas, and then third, coming back to Pilate and the final verdict and condemnation of Jesus. That is the basic set up that is going on here, and we've looked at the first set of trials, the religious trials, and seen that Jesus was handed over to the religious leaders who violated at least 22 different laws that they had established to protect the innocent.

These laws are not codified for another couple of hundred years in the Mishnah but that organization of the Mishnah that occurs by Judah the Prince, when he codifies that, he's not making these things up. Often you will hear people get into a debate over this, and when the accusation is made that these trials were illegal, they'll say, well that's based on something that's written down 200 years later. But what is codified by Judah the Prince had been part of their oral tradition for over 300 years, long before the time of Christ, and so these principles for the most part were already in effect; all of these laws were designed to protect the innocent. The concept that that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty is embedded within the Mosaic Law and that is where we get that idea in American law. This is why we honor the 10 Commandments. There has been a number of challenges to the presence of either sculptures or paintings reflecting the 10 Commandments in various courtrooms, and it's rather hypocritical because if you go to the Supreme Court building in Washington DC. You will see that there are statues that there are paintings and that there is a sculptor on the on the façades of the Supreme Court building itself, that reflect the giving of the Law to Moses.

This is not a theological statement. It is a historical statement that the Mosaic Law as it entered into a Western civilization via Judaism and Christianity, that Judeo-Christian heritage, that that forms the foundation of our understanding of law, and this principle of innocence until being proven guilty.

A number of laws were violated. One of these is that there were to be no trials before the morning sacrifice and they've already had two. That's why the third trial is to give legitimacy to what they had done illegally during the night. Another law that was violated was that there were to be no secret trials, only public trials, and yet the first two trials were hearings done in private under the cover of darkness, which was also a violation of the Law. A third law that was violated was that during the trial, the defense was to have the first word before the prosecutor. So Jesus was to have the first word and what we see is that they began accusing Him and trying to find witnesses that will agree with one another in their accusation of Jesus. That was another law that was violated: there were to be, according to the Mosaic Law, two or three witnesses, and their testimonies had to agree in every detail. And they kept trying to find and bribe witnesses, and they just couldn't agree in every detail. We saw how finally a couple of them got close. So Caiaphas stood up and tore his robe, which was also violation of the Law, in order to feign his absolutely self-righteous arrogance and contempt for Jesus, and then expressed that he had committed blasphemy, which He had not.

Another rule that was broken was that a person could not be condemned solely on the basis of his own words, which was what transpired in that second trial. And then the last one I'm reviewing is that a capital sentence could only be pronounced three days after the guilty verdict. And of course we are seeing that they come together for the third trial and come to the conclusion that Jesus is guilty and worthy of death, and then they immediately take Jesus to Pilate in order to get Him condemned to death. All of this is a violation of the Law.

After they attempted to give a veneer of legality to their decision they took Jesus to Pilate. This is the plot that is mentioned in Matthew 27:1, 2 as well as in Mark 15:1, Luke 23:1 and John 16:28. Mark always starts with this word "immediately". Mark is younger, he's in a hurry all the time; that's one of the characteristics of his writing. He says, "and immediately this happened, "immediately that happened". And so when you read through the Gospel of Mark you could circle all of the "immediatelys" and, by the time you get there with Mark you are kind of huffing and puffing because you're out of breath because you've been running all the way through 14 chapters. He says, "Immediately, early in the morning." This is right at sunrise so they could legitimize this decision. "… the chief priests held a consultation with the elders, and scribes, and the whole counsel." Now not all the Gospels indicate everybody that's there. That comes from Mark's account and tells us of all of the religious leaders were involved in this conspiracy to find Jesus guilty and to crucify Him.

He says, "they bound Jesus and the whole multitude of them lead Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium and delivered him to Pilate, but they themselves did not go into the praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover". So we are told in Matthew 27:1 the basics of this, that covers that that last decision, and their decision to take him to Pilate.

A couple of observations as we look at the comparison of these accounts. When we look at the account of Luke, after Pilate first states that he found no fault in Jesus only Luke tells us about a trial where Jesus is taken to Herod Antipas. That tells us that these other two accounts sort of conflate what happens, and you see an interview with Pilate that takes place with Jesus, and then immediately goes into the story related to the release of Barabbas. That is the Aramaic word. The Hebrew is ben something. For example, Jacob's last son is named Benyamin, son of my right hand. The ben mean son. So when you have that word in Hebrew, ben something always indicates son of. The Aramaic form of that is bar so when you have a Barabbas then his name is son of Abbas. That's how we pronounce it. When you talk about Mahmoud Abbas as the leader of the Palestinians, that's the same name, Abbas. So his name was Barabbas, son of Abbas, and according to various ancient manuscripts that have a textual variant in here his first name was Yeshua. So we will look at that next time: which Jesus are you following? That will make a good Christmas message.

When we compare the text that actually comes in the last trial just before Jesus' condemnation. So the trial of Herod comes between John 18:38 and 39—

39 is where John introduces the Barabbas incident.

As we look at these trials there are a couple of things that we should keep in mind, just in terms of their application or implication for us. First of all, these two broad trials, the religious trial and the civil trial, represent the reaction of most human beings to Jesus. The religious trials represent the reaction of religion to the truth as they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, based on Romans 1:18-21, and in the second set of trials, the civil or criminal trials, we have Pilate asking Jesus that somewhat cynical question, What is truth? The civil trials represent what is often the secular reaction or response to the claims of Jesus.

The second thing to observe is that in the religious trial we see what happens when a person has rejected the truth. Once they are convicted, then they react emotionally. And this is what is happened with the religious leaders. Trust me, they are under conviction of the truth, they know what they are doing is illegal. That's why they convene that third trial after sunup, it is so that they can give it a veneer of legality, and yet they are reacting in anger to the truth.

This is often what happens in a culture that has rejected the truth. We can give lots of examples of that from our own culture as we see more and more atheists and secularists who, under the cover of a continued decrease in Christianity in our culture, they now feel comfortable coming out and making various hostile statements about Christians. This is what goes along with negative volition and a rejection of the gospel. And when people have their façade of righteousness exposed they react in hatred; they react in anger; they react in bitterness, because they know that God exists. That's Romans one. God made the truth, his existence, evident to them because it was evident within them. Every human being knows God exists; every human being knows the truth, but there are those who in negative volition—which comprises most of humanity—are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

So we see a picture of what happens here in that hostile emotional reaction to the gospel. The question for each of us as human beings as we look at these trials is, what is your verdict on Jesus Christ? Was He an evildoer? That is the accusation that the chief priests bring before Pilate, not the accusation of blasphemy, which is what they decided in their trial, but they know that that charge won't carry any weight with the secular criminal judicial system of Rome, so they changed the charge and the charges that he's an evildoer. Was he an evildoer? Was He a misguided religious teacher, or was He innocent of all of the charges that were brought against Him? Or was He who He claimed to be? Was He the Messiah? Was He the Son of Man, the perfect God man who came into the world to die on the cross for our sins?

This is the classic argument that was organized by CS Lewis called, Lord, liar or lunatic? which has been used by many people. It's an excellent systemization of the argument. That is, Jesus doesn't leave us room to conclude that He was a good man because He's either a liar and therefore an evildoer, because He's telling people that He is the only way to God when He said, "I am the way the truth and the life". In John 14:6 He is saying, "I am the truth". He is claiming to be the personification of absolute truth as the incarnation of God. And so He is either telling the truth or He is misleading millions, if not billions, of people into trusting in a lie for their eternal salvation. So He is either a liar or He is a lunatic. But He can't be just simply a good man, so we are left by saying, therefore He must be exactly who He claimed to be, the promised prophesied Messiah who died on the cross for our sins.

And this reminds us of a First Peter 3:18, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the spirit".

As we look at what is going on in Matthew we see the plot, the conspiracy that is explained in Matthew 27:1. "When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put him to death, [2] and when they had bound him they led him away and delivered him to Pontius Pilate, the governor."

I want to add to this the verses from Mark and from Luke. Luke is very short, he doesn't say nearly as much as either Matthew or Mark. Mark says, "Immediately, and the morning the chief priests held a consultation". Now if you're looking at your English version it reads one way in Mark, it reads another way in Matthew, and you would think that you've got two different words there. Yesterday I was a had a conversation with the Tommy Ice. We were talking about something that happened with regard to when he teaches. He goes and speaks and all kinds of different churches, and he said, "But nobody ever asked me the questions they ask at your church. At your church they will always ask: What does Greek say? What is a Hebrew say?"

As I looked at it in the English I thought, well wait a minute. What is the difference there between plotting and having a consultation? Actually, there is no difference, it's exactly the same phraseology in both Matthew and Mark, and it refers to having a group of people coming together to make a decision. They are making a formal counsel. Now why are they plotting? They are plotting because it is obvious that they want a death penalty, but their charge of blasphemy that won't hold any water for a Roman prefect. They cannot convince him that this is a crime worthy of death, so they have to come up with a charge that will hold water before Pilate. Therefore they have this consultation and it involves the whole council, the whole Sanhedrin, including elders, and scribes chief priests, all of them. It seems to be, according to Matthew and Mark, that the chief priests seem to be the chief organizers of this and we are told that there are the chief priests and elders by Matthew, but Mark tells us, it involves the elders scribes and the whole council. So they're all involved.

Luke just makes it simple. He just says the whole multitude, the whole crowd. All of them that were involved in these three trials of Jesus are all plotting and they are going to take Jesus to Pilate. Remember what their charge was. Earlier in Matthew 26-63-66 we see that in the second trial before Caiaphas, Caiaphas became impatient. He hears what Jesus has said and he addresses Jesus directly and says, "Tell us if you are the Christ--that is, the Messiah, the Son of God. And Jesus affirms that. He says, "You're right, that is exactly what I am saying". So Jesus makes it clear that He is claiming to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the Son of Man, and that is what they condemned Him for. This is when Caiaphas tears his robe (verse 65) and screams out: "He has spoken blasphemy." He turns to the Sanhedrin says, "You have heard his blasphemy; you are witnesses of his blasphemy". And it's not blasphemy because blasphemy was taking the name of God in an empty manner, using the name of God in a wrong way. Jesus never utters the name of God, so it's a manufactured charge. And yet they are going to make it that He is deserving of death. They bind him and they take Him to Pilate and this is where there will be the accusation.

Yesterday Tommy told me a story about a group of elementary kids that were given an art assignment to draw the Christmas story. And so various pictures came in of the manger in the Nativity, and one kid had drawn a picture of an airplane with four figures on the airplane. The teacher called them up and said, why do you have an airplane and who are these people? The little boy said, well this is a picture Jesus flight to Egypt. And she said well who are who are the people on the plane? He said, well it's Joseph and Mary and Jesus. She's said, well who's the is the fourth one? He said that is Pontius the pilot.

So they're taking Jesus to Pontius Pilate. We don't know his first name. That was his family name but we don't know his actual name. There's a lot that we don't know about pilot. There are various legends about him. It really is interesting to trace all of the different ways in which Pilate has been viewed down through the centuries. Some view him as evil, others view him as being quite innocent of Jesus' blood, and so we get these different views in history. In the first century the early church understood that he is as culpable for the death of Jesus, and the Romans are as culpable for the crucifixion of Jesus, as the Jewish religious leaders. But by the middle of the second century the image of Pilate gets overhauled and a little historical and theological revisionism comes into play, and Tertullian who gave us the nomenclature for the Trinity, thinks the Pilate is completely innocent. He is the good guy in the whole scenario. The last thing he wants to do is crucify Jesus and so he's really the good guy. And so for a number of centuries Pilate is viewed very positively.

But what that tells us is that the something else was going on and in the mid-second century. You started having the rise of Christian anti-Semitism, and so they are beginning to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus and that all Jews are culpable for the death of Jesus. For example, they take this statement that "his blood be on us and our children" out of context and use it to justify Christian anti-Semitism, which is totally wrong. With the rise of blaming the Jews you're going to take any culpability away from a Pontius Pilate. So there are a lot of things that are our interesting that are going on there.

Pilate comes out to the religious leaders and asks the question: "What accusation do you bring against this man?" The other Gospel accounts have summarized what happens. John gives us a fuller account and shows the legality of what's transpiring in this trial. It is necessary to bring someone into court to first articulate their accusation, so as John records that the first thing that happens is that Pilate comes out of the praetorium.

According to John earlier, the Jewish leaders did not enter into the pratorium and there's a lot of discussion about the praetorium. The praetorium was the seat of the governor, wherever the governor was, and the praetorium actually was in Caesarea by the sea. This is where the Roman prefect had lived and where he had his official residence, and where he conducted business. But during these feast days he would come to Jerusalem. For many years the tradition was that the praetorium was in the location of the fortress Antonio name for Mark Antony, which was on the northwest corner of the temple compound. It was elevated so that the Roman soldiers could watch what was going on in the temple compound, but recent archaeological discoveries have given much greater support to the view that this was not where Pilate would have stayed. He would've stayed in a place where he would've had much greater creature comforts on the western side of the old city of Jerusalem, near what is today the date Citadel of David, and this was where he stayed. It was as part of Herod's palace that was located there and it would have been much more grand surroundings.

That makes a lot of sense because this was the same area where Caiaphas and Annas lived. So they're not taking Jesus from one side of the city to the other side of the city and then back again, traipsing back and forth on the route that is known as the Via Dolorosa or the way of tears. Many pilgrims to Jerusalem follow that route, but historically that has little or no support.

Jesus is taken to the praetorium where Pilate would have had his temporary residence, and the chief priests and religious leaders aren't going to go in. It was prohibited, according to their tradition, for a Jew to go into the home of a Gentile—for just about any reason—because this would render them ceremonially unclean. So they never went into a Gentile's home. This is seen in acts in Acts chapter 10 when Peter goes to the home of Cornelius the centurion. That's why God had to lower the that the sheet with all of the unclean animals and everything because He is telling Peter that the dietary laws and all of this is no longer in effect and it's okay for him to go into the home of the Gentile. This is the background. This is why the religious leaders wouldn't go into the praetorium. They are going to still be celebrating Passover that night according to the Judean calendar of observance, and they do not want to become ceremonially defiled so that they can still have their Passover that night. So Pilate is forced to come out and go back in several times. Tracing that movement between the Gospels is a little bit difficult.

They begin to accuse Him in Luke 23:2, "We found this fellow perverting the nation…" They're accusing him of treason, not blasphemy. "… and of forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar". They're going to accuse Him of tax evasion, that He is disloyal to Caesar, and that He is making Himself out to be a king. They are charges that He is committing treason against Caesar, that He is going to instigate a rebellion, which was a crime that was punishable by death.

In John 18:30 they are said to add to that, "If he were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered him up to you." That statement itself is a fulfillment of prophecy that Jesus made, showing that He is a true prophecy. The word there that is translated "delivered up" is the Greek word PARADIDOMI and it has a range of meanings. Sometimes you'll see it translated "delivered", sometimes "given over", sometimes "betrayed", it depends on the context how it's going to be translated. But Jesus had predicted this. As far back is Matthew 16:21, He had indicated that He would go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes. There He just said He would be killed, but He added that He would be raised on the third day. In Matthew 17:22 He said that He would be betrayed—PARADIDOMI—handed over into the hands of men. In Matthew 20:18,19 He told His disciples that "the Son of Man will be betrayed"—PARADIDOMI—"given over to the chief priests and to the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death," which is what happened in the third trial, "and then deliver him to the Gentiles"—PARADIDOMI again—which is what's happening here, "to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify." We will see that that happens under both Herod Antipas in the fifth trial, and then with Pontius pilot in the sixth trial.

Matthew 26:2 Jesus said after the day after the Olivet discourse, "You know that after two days is the Passover and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified". Once again, PARADIDOMI. That same word was used of Judas Iscariot, and in Matthew 26:15, 16 as he is betraying the Lord, working out his deal for 30 pieces of silver with the Sanhedrin. He says to them in Matthew 26:15, "What are you willing to give me if I 'deliver him' to you?"—PARADIDOMI—"and they counted out him 30 pieces of silver. So from that time he saw an opportunity to 'betray him'—there's PARADIDOMI again. So the statement in John rather is showing that He is fulfilling prophecy that He has made.

We are told of Pilate's response as he goes back and interrogates Jesus, and so we need to understand a little bit about this man Pontius Pilate. There's not a whole lot of information, secular sources give us some insights. There's Philo of Alexandria, who lived at about the same time, and he has some historical writings that confirm the existence of Pontius Pilate. The problem with that is that he is extremely hostile to Pilate so we have to take that into consideration, but he gives us information. Josephus does as well, and there are a few other things. But beyond that we don't know a whole lot about Pontius Pilate.

He was the prefect of Judea, which is a term that is translated into the Greek and comes across as governor, and he is the proper authority to hear the charges against Jesus. Initially, he dismissed the trial after his initial interrogation of Jesus, he recognizes that he has no fault, and he has not done anything worthy of death, but he knows he is in a bind. He is under pressure to keep order in Judea and if he angers the religious leaders and there's a religious riot, then word will get back to Rome and there will be consequent problems. So he decides to pass the buck and he's going to send Jesus to Herod Antipas who is not the ruler over Judea but is the ruler over Galilee.

Herod the great, who was the King of Judea at the time of Jesus birth, lived from 37—according to the lot of traditional chronology he doesn't die until four, but there's a lot of evidence now that is being used to indicate that he doesn't die until two BC, and that that is therefore the date of Jesus rather than four BC, which I think has some really good support. His kingdom is split up and his son, Herod Archelaus, is identified as the ethnarc, a title for a rulership of a smaller area, and he reigns over Judea from four BC to AD six, and the problem with him is that he is just totally incompetent. He is removed from his office and is going to be replaced by these prefects, these Roman governors, who are then going to rule over this area.

So from 6 until 41, which is a period of about 35 or 36 years when you have Herod Agrippa ruling, you have seven different prefects. Then from 44 to 70, the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, you have seven more. Of that first group of seven Pontius Pilate is in power the longest, even though he's presented is being very cruel, and in some ways, incompetent Pilate is politically savvy and he is a prefect longer than anybody else. This tells us a little bit of something about his character.

We know that he existed also because we have in Scripture no evidence. If you go to Israel with me one of the first places we go is Caesarea by the sea, which is where Paul was later imprisoned. That's described in Acts under Felix and Festus, but this was the seat of Pontius Pilate's prefecture and they have discovered a stone that is located there. They have a mockup of it there at Caesarea by the sea, the original is in the Israel Museum, and they're just partially restored. The inscription reads, "Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judea". And then they supplied a couple of words, "erected a building dedicated", and then it says "to", and then they would insert the phrase "the Emperor Tiberius". This gives us historical verification that Pontius Pilate existed.

There were three different types of Roman provinces. There was the senatorial province, which was administered by the Roman Senate. There were Imperial provinces, which were directed by the Roman Emperor or his representatives. And then there were provinces that were formed from client kingdoms. This is the third class that was ruled by these prefects, and the prefects would have come from the class of Romans that were like the Knights of the Empire, and Judea was in this class and Pontius Pilate would've come out of that sort of upper-middle-class of Roman citizens, not the senatorial class of Roman citizens. He is referred to in most translations as a governor, which is based on the Greek word HEGEMON, where we get our hegemony. That's a word that's talking about a collection of states that are organized together, so we might think about the former Soviet bloc as a hegemony. He was the longest reigning of the seven prefects in that first period.

There were also going to be introduced to Herod Agrippa. It's always difficult to keep all the Herod's associated. You have Herod the Great and his three sons, Archelaus Antipas and Philip. Philip is the tetrarch in the far north of Galilee. Archelaus was the ethnarc in Judea, but he's ousted in six AD. Then you have Antipas, the longest ruling and the one who beheaded John the Baptist. He is the Herod that's mentioned throughout all of the Gospels. He was not a ruler in Judea, but he would be there for the feast days and was the tetrarch of the ruler over Galilee and Perea. Perea was the area over what we would call Jordan today. That helps to put those things into proper perspective and proper order.

One of the things we know about Pilate is that he was not a diplomat. He was not diplomatic it all, he didn't understand much about the Jews, and he had committed a number of, shall we say, diplomatic faux pas, one the most serious of which was when he first took power he decided to do something to honor Tiberius. So they made these images of Tiberius, which they affixed to the posts and the guidons of the Roman legions. Then he had his Roman legions march into Jerusalem with these images of Tiberius. That of course violated the second commandment, which was a prohibition against making carved images. It upset all of the Jewish hierarchy. They sent an enormous contingent of leaders to Caesarea to talk to Pilate and after six days Pilate became impatient and sent his armed soldiers in amongst this crowd of Jews with the threat that if they would not go home they would be beheaded.

The Jews immediately responded in mass by pulling down their robes, bearing their necks and leaning over, and saying go ahead, beheaded us. Pilate thought little bit better of this: that he wasn't going to start an insurrection, and so he backed away, but that was just the first of several different incidences.

Luke 13:1, 2 describes another incident where he ordered an attack on a group of Galileans on the Temple Mount, shed their blood and killed many of them, so he's not well loved as a prefect. Eventually, he is removed from power because of an incident at the base of Mount Gerizim where he ordered the deaths of a group of Samaritans who were following one of their prophets, and were attempting to ascend Mount Gerizim to worship at their temple in violation of Roman law. That is when he is deposed. Herod Antipas is eventually going to be dealt a blow by the justice of God. He will be removed in 39, and when he goes back to Rome, hoping that he will curry favor with the Emperor, the Emperor dies. Gaius Caligula becomes emperor, he doesn't care anything about but that himself and he then removes Herod Antipas from power and exiles hymns to Lyons in Gaul, which is modern France. There Antipas and his wife die in abject poverty. They are the ones who were complicit in the death of John the Baptist and Jesus. So God takes care of them.

John 18:29 Therefore Pilate went out to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this Man?” Their accusation is one of treason. He tells them, “Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your law.” The Jews said to him, “We are not permitted to put anyone to death” – so you must make a decision, is basically what they are saying.

John then inserts his statement in verse 32, "to fulfill the word of Jesus which He spoke, signifying by what kind of death He was about to die". At that point Pilate goes back into the praetorium to Jesus and asks, "Are you the king of the Jews?" And during this time there are continued accusations made by the chief priests and the elders, and as long as they are making these accusations Jesus doesn't react, He doesn't try to defend Himself.

When you have people who are brought up on a charge, especially a false charge, their typical response is to react and protest their innocence, and try to bring out evidence. Jesus is just silent, which is a fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 53: that like a lamb before it's shearers cheers in dumb, so Jesus opened not His mouth. Pilate then is trying to engage in Jesus in terms of these charges, and he says, "Do you answer nothing? Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?" But again, Matthew tells us He did not answer a single word.

Now I'm wrestling with how to put this together. Because what happens is that John tells us that there is a conversation with Pilate at this time. I thought about this late in my preparation today: that this may have occurred before the other conversation. This may be the first thing that Pilate does as he comes in, and they have this conversation and then he goes back out. They have their accusation and then he comes in and that is a point when Jesus is not answering anything. But in this conversation, which probably came earlier, Jesus says to Pilate, "Are you speaking for yourself about this?" That is, His claim that He's the king, "or did others tell you this concerning me." And Pilate says, [35] Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?” There's that word PARADIDOMI again.

Jesus responds in terms of the charge of being a king. John 18:36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”

Now this is a favorite verse of those who are amillennial, those who do not believe in a literal messianic earthly reign of Jesus on the earth. They misinterpret this passage because Jesus is just saying at this point, because the kingdom is been postponed, that He is not there to establish His kingdom at this point. And if He were then his servants would fight. He is not saying it's wrong to fight because there will be fighting when Jesus returns at the Second Coming, and He will slay the armies of the Antichrist as well as destroying the false prophet and the Antichrist. He is not saying that His kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. He's not saying his kingdom is an invisible kingdom. He is saying that it is not part of the cosmos, that is, Satan's domain.

Then Pilate asked him, verse 37, "Are you a king then?" Jesus says, "You say rightly that I am a king". So he affirms that. He says, "For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

At this point Pilate says, "What is truth? How can you make a claim to truth?" He just dismisses this whole idea. That is the secular response to the gospel. They are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, and deny it.

What is interesting about this particular verse is that it is a part of a very small fragment of papyrus P. 52. It is kept in the John Rylands Library in Manchester in England, and this is the oldest inscription that we have of the New Testament. It is typically dated by conservatives at approximately 117 AD, which is probably within 30 years of its writing. What's interesting about this is a just this last week is watching when the shows on one of the history channels. They were talking about Jesus and the trials and everything, and they brought this up. They said that this was dated 200. That's important for liberalism, because liberal theology says the Gospels weren't written in the first century by eyewitnesses, they were written a hundred to a hundred and fifty years later, John being the last one, and it was written not in 85 or 90, but it was written in 160. So they've got it postdated

I was looking at this book I recommended after we came back from pre-Trib, a new book out on a biblical archaeology by Randy Price and Wayne house. It's laid out in the order the books of the Bible, and P 52 is very well known here, and they bring out various things related to this. For example, if you study the writing, the way in which the letters are written, that this went out of vogue by 130, and based on other factors that dating this somewhere between 110 and 125 is what you have to do based on the style of writing. So this is a very early witness to the Gospels.

Pilate is being's very skeptical of truth as he is talking to the one who is the truth. But when he gets done he goes out and he recognizes that this man has not done anything. Luke 23:4, Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no guilt in this man.”

This concludes that first that first trial and then we come to the fifth trial, which is the trial of Herod and Antipas. That's something we can cover very quickly. What happens is, as soon as he finds out, according to Luke 23:7-12, the only Scripture that talks about this trial, he hears that Jesus was from Galilee. He says this in Herod's jurisdiction, this isn't my problem; I'm going to toss it to Herod. So he sent him to Herod who was also in Jerusalem at that time. They are right close together. Probably he's staying in the Herodian palace at that point. When Herod saw Jesus he was all excited. He's curious like a lot of people are about Jesus, but they're not really that interested. They just want to have their imagination stimulated or have a nice theological discourse and have a stimulating debate, but they really don't want to learn about Jesus. He just hoping Jesus will perform some miracle. He questions Jesus, but Jesus says nothing, according to Luke 23:9.

Then in the conclusion were told in Luke 23:11 Herod with his men of war treated Him with contempt; they mocked Him. They are the ones who brought the robe out that they put around Jesus, and then they send him back to Pilate. He's passing the buck again and then Luke comments, "That day they both became close friends". You know the saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They see Jesus as a common enemy and so they become friends over this particular incident.

So the question that comes to everyone when we read this as they are attempting to decide who Jesus is. Everyone needs to make that decision because that is the most important decision any of us will ever make. Who is Jesus? He's either the Son of God, the Son of Man who came to die for the sins of the world and you have eternal life by simply believing in Him, or He is the greatest fraud that ever existed. Those are the only options.

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