Synoptics 334 to 340

Well, we'll just, we'll let the folks who come in later just be shocked and surprised that we've been at it for five minutes.

Let's see what kind of progress we can make. We are back in our synoptic study for the first time in who knows how long.

It's no wonder it's taken us a decade. But we are so close to the end.

I mean, we're in section 334 and there are only 367 sections.

And that's John 21 actually. It's only 365 as far as what we'll be covering.

So we only have basically 30 sections left to go. So when we're this close, it's time to press on and accomplish what we need to accomplish.

Section 334 is Jesus being delivered to Pilate. When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.

And they bound him and led him away and delivered him to Pilate, the governor, pretty much all the way across the synoptics.

And then John includes, then they led Jesus in the house of Caiaphas to the praetorium.

It was early. They themselves had not entered the praetorium. So they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover. By the way, we've covered this in the past, but just a note for your notes.

Notice that John speaks of them eating the Passover. It is very common for the allegation to be made that John presents a different chronology, that he's willing to change the facts of history to make

Jesus' death coincide with the offering of the

Paschal sacrifice, the lamb, to make a theological point. The problem is that that is based upon ignoring the fact that Passover was not a single day, but was a multi -day feast and celebration.

And what you have in John 18 is an indication that they did not go in because there was still more of the

Passover to be celebrated, not that the Passover had not already been eaten with the disciples and had already begun in the preceding night.

Just keep that in mind. We went over it in class. I don't remember when, but it's probably somewhere on Sermon Audio, somewhere.

And if not, I know that I've done an entire presentation on it a couple of times in public in response to Bart Ehrman.

So you can get the fuller story there if you are interested in looking that up.

Then we have, only in Matthew, the story of the death of Judas as far as the

Gospels is concerned. Section 335, when Judas' betrayer, this is

Matthew 27, 3 -10, when Judas' betrayer saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying,

I have sinned in betraying innocent blood. They said, what is that to us? See to it yourself. And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed and he went and hanged himself.

But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said it is not lawful to put them into the treasury since they are blood monies.

They took counsel and bought with them the potter's field to bury strangers in. Therefore, that field has been called the field of blood to this day.

Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, And they took the 30 pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field as the

Lord directed me. Now, you're probably aware that there is another story of this given very briefly in Acts chapter 1.

In speaking of Judas, Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness and falling headlong, he burst open the middle and all his bowels gushed out.

It became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language,

Akildama, that is, the field of blood. And then there is another

Old Testament passage cited, May his camp become desolate and let there be no one to dwell in it, and let another take his office.

So this was in reference to the choosing of a 12th disciple after Judas's death by lot.

Now, I've always wondered about that in Acts chapter 1, and I personally am of the opinion that there's nothing said in Acts chapter 1 about the

Lord guiding any of this, or giving any divine direction as to this taking place.

It just seems like there was a desire, a need to have 12 disciples, and so they picked the 12th disciple, who we never hear of again.

Then again, we don't hear of the majority of the disciples after that point in time, so I suppose that's not necessarily a strong argument.

But I'm personally of the opinion that Paul was the 12th disciple, and that this was human action and an understandable human desire to have, you know, they were called the 12, even after Judas died, they were still called the 12 in a couple of places.

So that's just my personal feeling on that. But as to the death of Judas, of course, the big question is the means of his death, and this issue of the field of blood, akul dama, as we have in Matthew 27 .8,

therefore that field has been called the field of blood to this day. So both accounts have similarities.

Judas dies, a field is purchased with the purchase price that had been given to him to betray the

Lord, and that even many years later, however many years elapsed between this and the writing of Matthew's gospel, this field is called akul dama in Aramaic, that is the field of blood to this day.

Now the question, though, is why does there seem to be a difference in the death of Judas?

Well, both indicate that there is a death that takes place.

Matthew would indicate that the field is purchased and that it's called the field of blood because of the blood money that was used to pay for it specifically.

It's possible that Matthew did not desire to give specific gory details as Luke did.

I don't know, Luke's a medical doctor, at least we think he was. Maybe he wasn't as gored out by what happens when a body falls.

It is very strange to know that you could just simply fall and explode.

You know, right now the American national pastime is taking place and there are huge 300 pound men violently landing on top of other huge 300 pound men and generally that does not result in explosions of bodies and expulsion of bowels.

And so it has been suggested, and many people say, that's just trying to find an excuse, but why would a body falling, what conditions do produce a situation where you would have something like that happen?

Actually, I think if you put the two stories together, it actually makes sense. A body that has hung, if it, after a certain period of time, is violently cast upon the ground, let's just say that the bodily integrity is no longer there and the result that is described can take place.

So it would seem that, once again, if you allow the two to speak, they are somewhat euphemistically and maybe not in a way that's meant to be as graphic as we are accustomed to given

CGI and everything else today, but it would seem that you have

Judas hanging himself and then there is a less than tidy result to his hanging himself.

I mean, if he hung himself in such a place where he was not out in public display and the hills around Jerusalem have ravines and things like that, which would be the easiest way to hang yourself anyways, by the way, find a tree that hangs out into a ravine and do it that way, you could be there a while.

And when you're cut down, if you're not cut down carefully or if there's no way to do it because it's too far, you know, no one can't steady the body, the results could be disastrous or unpleasant, shall we say.

So it seems that, once again, what you have is two different strands of the tradition, the oral tradition, that are giving us two different aspects of what took place and we can sort of read between the lines as to what the reality of the situation was.

But it's interesting that what is normally missed, because of an odd desire to know about the specific means of Judas' death, is the historical value of the issue of the field.

I mean, think about it. If you were trying to make this stuff up, if you had a bunch of people sitting around going,

I want to start a new religion amongst the Jews and Romans, well, first of all, the whole thing about a crucified

Messiah would be really insane, but, you know, what are we going to come up with? And you're probably aware,

I've mentioned to you before, the fact that there have been fascinating studies recently that have lent tremendous historical weight to the gospel narratives.

The use of patronomy, the Joseph of Arimathea.

Notice the use of a name and then a father's name or place of origin.

This was necessary because of the very limited number of names that were in use in that culture.

How do we know that? Well, for the first time in history, we now have a database because of Israeli building regulations.

You go, what? If you want to build an apartment complex anywhere around Jerusalem, or almost anywhere in Israel, you're going to end up digging into archaeological sites because people have been there for so long.

And you keep, you know, they've been burying folks for a long time, and so we've found lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of tombs.

And you can't just cordon them off and say, oh, tomb there, can't do anything with it. They just build around it, and they will remove, you remember a few years ago,

I, in what, 17 days, wrote that entire book on the Talpiot tomb thing that the guy that did

Avatar and Titanic, James Cameron, is that his name? That he was pushing, you know, all this stuff.

They have put together a huge database based upon these bone boxes called ossuaries where names would be scribbled on the side.

And you start getting, eventually, a large enough database that you can start extrapolating what kind of names were present in this society.

And so Mary was incredibly common. Incredibly common.

I forget the exact numbers, it's in my book someplace, but if you just stopped in the middle of a busy street in Jerusalem and said,

Mary! Something like about 47 % of the women would freeze in their tracks and look at you.

I mean, that's a lot of people. There had to be a way of identifying.

Yeah, it's sort of like going to Saudi Arabia and going, Mohammed! It's like, oh, ah.

It's a similar situation, I guess. And the specific names in the

Gospels and how they track with what we found in the graves and then the fact that they always add, you know, somebody of Caesarea and so on and so forth.

They add the place names, father name place names to it. Someone who had never been there, not lived there, did not know the geography, someone as little as 300 miles away could never have written those things.

Could never have gotten it accurately because they didn't do that in other places. So they would have had to have known the area.

They would have had to have lived in the area to even know if they're trying to make it up to include this kind of stuff.

So it's fascinating that that information has come out.

And so this is just another aspect of the historical information that validates the historical nature of the

Gospels that it wasn't a bunch of people sitting around Rome going, let's make up a new religion and we'll write these different Gospels and make it look like they're written by different people at different times and so on and so forth.

It doesn't work because what you have is two different strands of tradition, one in Acts, which would be

Luke, one here in Matthew, that record for us and make an assertion that would be so easily disproven if it wasn't true.

And if it wasn't called the field of blood because everybody knew that the money used to purchase it had been blood money for the betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth, what if there was a field called the field of blood but it didn't have anything to do with that?

It didn't have anything to do with Judas, didn't have anything to do with the betrayal, all the rest of that stuff. It had something to do with something completely different.

But then you put it in two different documents and expect the Jews to be impressed by this when they go, well that's not the case, that's untrue.

Why put stuff in there that could be so easily disproven unless the reality is no one's even going to think about trying to disprove it because everybody knows about the field of blood.

It's just a given. And so it's interesting that we get focused upon what we don't know which is all the details surrounding

Judas' death and just go running past what is actually a rather fascinating historical fact that points us to the historical reality of these texts over against the criticism that's constantly made of them.

And this is the very stuff that I listened to a debate that took place this week with some atheists over in California.

This is the kind of stuff that they just don't even think about. They're doing the normal carpet bombing contradictions in the

Bible thing but it's obvious that they never even give second thought to any of this kind of stuff at all.

And unfortunately most of my Muslim friends don't either when they're making the same kinds of accusations. All right, so section 336, the trial before Pilate.

Now you'll notice that John becomes relevant to our parallels now. And in fact, section 336 is primarily recorded by John The questioning by Pilate is relatively brief in the synoptics and is much fuller in the

Gospel of John. And then if you look at 337 only

Luke records for us a brief movement of Jesus over to Herod.

The other Gospels and John do not record any encounter between Jesus and Herod at all.

Possibly because Jesus doesn't say a word Herod's loony and that's about It is fascinating though verse 11 of Luke 23

Fascinating little I mean I think that's why Luke has it. Luke's the historian

Luke sees connections and patterns that obviously Matthew, Mark and even

John did not consider to be relevant to his narrative, to their narratives.

But Luke includes that little information that these evil men with very different personalities and very different purposes as to how they acted in regards to crucifixion of Christ end up becoming friends from that day forward.

Which is interesting again in light of Acts chapter 4 Remember the church prays and says what

Pilate, Herod, the Romans and the Jews did. Your hand predestined to occur.

Interesting that Luke would give us that information. But back in 336, John chapter 18

Now remember previously in John chapter 18 Where did it go?

It's verse 9 but I'm not seeing where it's recorded 2 through 12 Here it is.

No it's John 19 That's still to come. So Pilate went out.

This is section 336 So Pilate went out to them and said What accusation do you bring against this man?

They answered him that this man were not an evildoer which by the way isn't much of an answer when you think about it.

Pilate said to them Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law The Jews said to him it is not lawful for us to put any man to death

This was to fill the word which Jesus had spoken to show by what death he was to die. What word was that? If I be lifted up I will draw men unto myself

I realize that in a lot of churches if I be lifted up means lifted up in praise and proclamation and so on and so forth.

No, it means on a cross That was what it meant and the only people who could crucify were the

Romans, not the Jews So this was to fill the word which Jesus had spoken to show by what death he was to die.

Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus answered, Do you say this of your own accord or does it say it to you about me?

Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered,

My kingship is not of this world If my kingship were of this world my soldiers would fight and I might not be handed over to the

Jews. My kingship is not from the world Pilate said to him, So you are a king?

Jesus answered, You say that I am a king For this I was born and for this I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice Pilate said to him, What is truth?

After he had said this he went out to the Jews again and told them, I find no crime in him.

Now, only John records the conversation with Pilate.

You have the discussion of kingship and things like that in the other gospels.

You might think there is a contradiction in Mark 15. The chief priests accuse him of many things and Pilate again asked him

Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you? But Jesus made no further answer so that Pilate wondered.

This is after Jesus said, You have said so. Notice the difference in the context. That is in regards to when the

Jews are present to make accusation. John records for us the private conversation between Jesus and Pilate himself.

How would John have known about this? There is this thing called the Resurrection that probably would give us that opportunity for Jesus to explain these particular events.

Another note to put into your notes, though we are missing the great taker of the notes today.

There is a feng shui imbalance in the room because Big George isn't in the

Big George seat. I almost feel like we are just wasting our time here because there is no recording being made.

Though there is a recording being made, just not a written recording being made and hence making the notebook longer and longer.

We will have to ask him to bring all the notebooks from the start of the synoptic study to the end.

We will have to see how many there were. Anyway, that caused me to completely lose the point of track

I was about to make here. That's okay. Anyway, you have a further piece of information that is provided.

Of course, when

Pilate in Luke 23 says,

I find no crime in this man. Oh, the Note Bene. That's what it was. Quick note.

What you have beginning at verse 31 of John chapter 18 through verse 38 when

Pilate says to him what is truth. I know I showed it up on the wall over there only a matter of months ago when we did the

New Testament reliability series. But you may recall the currently primarily agreed upon earliest fragment of the

New Testament manuscript tradition is called P52, Rylands 457.

And P52 is a small credit card fragment of papyrus that contains a portion on the one side of John 8, 31 to 32.

On the backside, John 8, 37 to 38. And I showed it to you.

I made the text flow around it so you could see what it would have looked like. And it is of this section.

So it is sort of interesting to note that at least presently, and this could change in light of the

Egyptian funerary mask stuff. But don't know why that hasn't been published.

It's at least a year late now. Really more like two years late, which is making everyone start to wonder just a little bit.

But if, as has been claimed, there are first century fragments of Mark in this collection, then it would no longer be the oldest manuscript find of the

New Testament. But it will always be one of the oldest. And it's right here from John chapter 18 is where we have that particular little fragment from P52.

So you might want to note that. And then both

John and Luke, after he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, I find no crime in him.

That parallels Luke 23 .4. I find no crime in this man. And so there is a reporting to the people that Pilate finds no crime in these things.

You then have a, well, we will hold off until 340.

Yeah, 340, we'll hold off on that. Section 337, again, as I mentioned, a unique section with Jesus before Herod.

We won't go through it. Simply noting that it's only found in Luke and that, again, that interesting note at the end.

And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day. Before this, they had been at enmity with each other.

Then we already looked at 338, which was 336.

That's why we can actually make some real pace here, because some of these are repetitious. Then we have a very interesting segment.

We'll look at Matthew's version of it. Now, the fief, the governor was accustomed to release to the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted.

And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered,

Pilate said to them, Whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?

For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting in the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him,

I have nothing to do with the righteous man, for I have suffered much over him today in a dream. Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the people to ask for Barabbas and destroy

Jesus. The governor again said to them, Which of the two do you want me to release for you? And they said, Barabbas.

Pilate said to them, Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ? They all said, Let him be crucified. And he said,

Why, what evil has he done? But they shout out all the more, Let him be crucified. And we'll hold off till 340 for John's interesting addition of the politics of the day as part of the pressure that's placed upon Pilate.

Now, all the Gospels record this.

Interestingly enough, Mark only briefly mentions Barabbas.

Just twice, very briefly. Mark gives a little bit shorter version of it. But even

John, John 1840, they cried again, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.

One of the arguments that has been made, and again, as you know, all the reasons this has taken us so long is,

I want you to be able to take university courses or anything like that and hopefully not be blindsided by things when you take such courses.

One of the common arguments that is made is that there are two problems with this particular story.

Problem number one is we don't have any other historical source that mentions this customer tradition of releasing a robber at the time of the feast.

Well, if you're familiar with how history works, if you demanded multiple sources for every fact of history, there would be no facts of history, especially ancient history.

Obviously, the closer you get to the modern period, the more data you have to work with. But when you're talking about back then,

I mean, if you needed to have multiple sources to document the existence of certain individuals, the vast majority of mankind passed its existence on this planet without leaving any evidence as to the individuals who lived.

So you would have to conclude that the vast majority of people who built all the bridges and cities and everything else actually weren't there because there's no record of them.

Secondly, it is not at all unusual in Roman history to do things like this because the

Romans chose not to do what like the Assyrians did, where when they conquered a country, they would do mass exportations and deportations and importations.

In other words, you tried to break up the people groups by causing them to become all mixed together in hopes that they would then assimilate into the larger empire rather than hold on to their individualistic looks.

They didn't do that. And so the idea of appeasing a population by releasing to them someone that was popular amongst them certainly had precedent, even if we don't have evidence outside of the

New Testament that's taking place. We don't have evidence outside of the New Testament for the vast majority of events in that part of the world in the first century.

We only have very, about the only other thing we've got is Josephus and a few other small things that shine a little light over here and shine a little light over there.

But as far as the overall thing, we don't get a lot of that.

And here you have four sources. Now, of course, liberals like to say this is actually just two sources because Matthew and Luke are using marks.

That's just one source. And then John's out doing his own thing. But John's in the middle of this too.

John likewise records the exact same thing with the exact same name. So there's the first thing is the argument, well, this is the only evidence we have for that.

Well, it's far better documented than a lot of things we know of in history at that point. That's going to come back up in Matthew 27, 51, by the way, in regards to the resurrection of some dead folks around Jerusalem.

We'll talk about that later on. The other issue is the name of this fellow,

Barabbas. Now, for us, this just sort of sounds, okay, his name's Barabbas. But Bar means son, and Abba, you know, is father.

So it's son of the father. That's a pretty unusual name, son of the father.

And so people said, well, obviously what's going on here. Remember when I debated

John Dominic Croson years ago, and for about six months, you learned far more about John Dominic Croson than you ever really wanted to know, and that kind of thing.

They'll look at something like this and say, you know, this is so clearly, you know, son of the father.

That's who Jesus is. So this is just a counterpoint to Jesus that the people choose rather than Jesus, and it's an illustration of their rejection of, their acceptance of one son of the father in place of another son of the father, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, I don't know about you, but it doesn't strike me as overly shocking that someone, well, he's called a lystase,

I think is the term. I don't have the Greek in front of me right now, but an insurrectionist, someone who is involved in seeking to, violently seeking to overthrow

Roman rule, doesn't shock me that he might use a pseudonym.

Maybe even one that wouldn't be overly common in the day. Wouldn't be the first guy that wanted to try to hide his identity.

You know, I don't watch it very often anymore, but if you want to, I think you can watch

Cops 24 hours a day. I think. I think it's possible, isn't it?

I think so, yeah. We'll ask, can you watch Cops 24 hours a day? Oh, sure you can.

It's on one of those channels. There's this one channel where it's just, you know, you go through the guide, and it says Cops, Cops, Cops, Cops, Cops.

You know, as far as you want to go, it just says Cops, you know. You don't even want to think about it.

It's sort of a nightmare. Yeah, okay, all right. Yeah. I mean, that's been on for how many decades now?

There's no... Yeah, you could definitely watch Cops 24 -7. You really could. I'm not saying you could survive it.

I'm just saying that the possibility exists of seeking to make the attempt. How's that? That's how it is.

Yes, okay. I've watched a few episodes over the years.

It's frequently humorous. What you see, and sometimes scary.

No two ways about it. But I seem to recall a few times where they pulled people over, and the people they pulled over were not 100 % honest with the officers.

I bet you that's never happened to you, huh? No, no, no. And in fact, they actually gave them the wrong name.

They did, they did. Now, maybe that's just a modern thing. Maybe that's just never happened in history.

But personally, I get the feeling that what we've got here is not, again, one of those places where the wild -eyed liberals sit back and go, oh, it's just so obvious.

This is just a religious story being made. It's the son of the father. He's an insurrectionist.

And evidently, he wasn't a popular one with the people. That's the whole reason that Pilate puts him forward.

He figures, it sounds like maybe some innocent people got caught up in his activities.

And hence, he wasn't a popular dude. And so, he puts that name out there in the hopes, in light of what happened with his wife, in the hopes that, well, this guy, he doesn't have any on -the -ground support here at all.

So, this will give me my way out here. There will be enough people to ask for Jesus.

I'll be able to release Jesus. And so, my wife will be happy. And I don't find any guilt in him. And this is how

I'll work it out. Well, the chief priests are running around putting pressure on everybody. Call out for Barabbas.

And this is what they do. So, it strikes me that what you actually have is not an argument against the historicity of the narrative, but an argument for the historicity of the narrative if you just watch cops.

So, that's that. That may be, you know, John Donald Carson probably did not have access to cops while in the monastery in Ireland when he was studying the

Gospels. And then, that's why he assumed that everybody would just go by their given name, produce their

ID immediately. This is me. I have 74 warrants. You know, just, that's how it happens all the time, right?

Yep. I'm awful glad to have you here today to help me provide my historical background to the text.

It's very, very helpful. All right. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Oh, I suppose.

Oh, well, I'm sure his name was Barabbas. I'm just, it just, I wouldn't want to try to prove the idea that he chose that particular, because it does sound like a pseudonym.

It doesn't sound like, I mean, who would give their kid that name? As far as I can,

I think I'm correct in saying this. I could be wrong. But as far as I know, there's no evidence to use this name at any other time other than this.

That's why people go, see, this is made up. Well, yeah, it is made up, but why would it be made up?

They say it's made up so as to create the history and create the story.

I say it's made up because you're trying to stay alive in the Romans. And does that meet, does that then create the irony of son of a father?

Yeah, it does create the irony, but I really doubt that Barabbas had that in mind. You could say, yeah, but God's in charge.

Yeah, well, God's in charge of everything. Yeah, and that does create that interesting irony. But I'm most concerned with the historical reality that, or at least the reality we have to face, and that is that most everyone walking into a room of higher learning today is going to be told that this is clear evidence that this is not historical material.

And I think there's a good reason for arguing that it most definitely is. Okay, section 340, we're actually going to, man,

I don't know if we can put three, how far did we go today? This is record for us.

We're flying, we're flying. Behold the man. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe upon him.

This is Matthew's version. And plaiting a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying,

Hail, King of the Jews. They spat upon him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him.

You have the same thing in Mark. Luke does not record this, but John does give us an interesting element.

The soldiers plaited a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, Hail, King of the

Jews, and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them,

See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no crime in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.

Pilate said unto them, Behold the man. When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, Crucify him, crucify him.

Pilate said to him, Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no crime in him. The Jews answered, We have a law, and by that law he ought to die.

Why? Because he made himself the Son of God. When Pilate heard these words, he was the more afraid.

He entered the praetorium again and said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave no answer. You know, when you've already said to Jesus, What is truth?

Don't expect further discussions. Don't expect further discussions. When you can be so cavalier as to respond to the very incarnate

Son of God with, What is truth? You don't expect to be able to restart that conversation.

There is a time when God's patience ends. When Pilate heard these things, Okay. Pilate therefore said to him,

You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you? Jesus answered him, You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.

Therefore he who delivered me to you has the greater power. You will not release him.

Not if you release him. And you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar.

When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat at a place called the Pavement and in Hebrew, Gabbatha.

Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. Then the Jews beheld your king.

They cried out, Away with him. Away with him. Crucify him. Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered,

We have no king but Caesar. Probably too much for the next two minutes.

But, let's at least touch upon the political aspect of it real quickly and then we'll probably have to pick up a little bit more of this section next time.

So we'll continue with 340 next time. There is a tremendous, not irony, but sadness,

I guess, in these words in regards to the blatant, obvious action of the

Jews in forcing Pilate's hand. He is in a context where there have been rebellions before.

He is under command from Rome. They may have known that he was under command from Rome to maintain peace, to suppress any rebellion.

Jerusalem's population at this time is far larger than any other time of the year because of all the pilgrims for the

Passover feast. And so, they play the ultimate card in this game that they are playing.

It's ultimate because they are likewise putting themselves in a tremendously difficult position in the face of the zealots and the many people amongst

Israel who detest the Roman presence and who do not view

Caesar as king. But they know the only way, now that Pilate has come to them again and clearly does not want to act in a capital way against Jesus, the only way to force his hand is to question his allegiance to Caesar and to make the allegation that he is fomenting rebellion and is making it possible for someone to rise up and to make a claim to kingship against Caesar.

And this then is the mechanism that they utilize. And it is all they had left.

But it was also almost suicidal in the sense of what the result would be in regards to their own people.

But this is how far they were willing to go. And so this is the final straw, this is the final play, and it succeeds.

It succeeds. But we know it succeeds under the hand of God because Acts chapter 4 tells us they did all these things as God's purpose and will had predestined them to take place.

So, alright, we'll pick up at that point. I hope I remember to pick up at that point. Some of you taking notes, remember that I need to pick up at that point because we didn't cover 19 .8,

I believe it is. We have a law, and by that law I died because he made himself out to be the Son of God. We need to talk about that as well.

Alright? Let's close the prayer. Father, once again we thank you for the time we have had to wrestle with your scriptures, to consider these things.

We ask that you would help us to understand, to remember, and to be ready to give an answer when the opportunity is given to us.

Be with us now as we go into worship. May what is done be honoring and glorifying in your sight. We pray in Christ's name.