Jesus Before the Sanhedrin

Jesus Before the Sanhedrin

We are, I think, we're pretty much, it's been so long, around section 332, we're looking at the issue of Peter's denial. I know we talked about Malchus and the cutting off of the ear and so on and so forth.

And so I'm pretty certain we had not gotten into Geus before the Sanhedrin, and then the specifics of Peter's denial, and then the death of Judas stuff. So we've got all sorts of hairy stuff to be dealing with here.

So I know we haven't gotten that, so that's where we'll be going. The way that the synoptic handles this is to talk about Jesus before the Sanhedrin first, and then in parentheses say Peter's denial, then section 333 is just Peter's denial.

So a lot of the same material in the two of them. So I suppose it would be appropriate at least to deal with, if I recall correctly, we had just started, because I do seem to recall mentioning the fact that one of the oddities that is frequently raised is that John mentions Annas.

First, that is into Annas, for he was the father-in-law of section 332 of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. And I've actually had people say, well, this proves that John could not have been one of the disciples of Jesus and didn't know much about Judaism, because high priests were not appointed year by year.

Well, yeah, that's true. But what had happened historically was the Romans, recognizing the political power of the high priesthood, had basically taken control of that and would place men in that position accordingly with how well the people were behaving or who they could work with politically speaking, so on and so forth.

And so the biblical mandates in regards to the high priesthood and how that was to be handled had been overridden by politics and the military power of Rome at that particular point in time. And so you had two living high priests who were related to one another.

And obviously, if you were removed by Roman authority, you would still have a residual religious authority with believing Jews and so on and so forth. And so Annas and Caiaphas are both in positions of authority as far as that is concerned.

And so this is why Jesus is brought before these individuals. And John tells us, Simon Peter followed Jesus and so did another disciple. As this disciple was known to the high priest, he entered the court of the high priest along with Jesus.

Now, the assumption of the vast majority of folks is that this is John himself. I think I've mentioned to you another theory that it's not like it's so far-fetched as to be hatched out of liberalism or something like that.

But there is another theory that the John of the Gospel of John is actually a disciple who lives in Jerusalem and is other than the disciple of Jesus, one of the 12 apostles, but is very close. In fact, that the upper room was John's mother's structure.

And hence, he had a lot of direct contact with things like that is one of the theories that you'll run into in commentaries and things like that as well. But the majority have understood the use in John of this other disciple as just being a way of referring to himself.

As this disciple is known to the high priest, but then again, that will sort of actually fit with the because he lived in Jerusalem thing. He entered the court of the high priest along with Jesus while Peter stood outside the door.

So there are two disciples that are present. So the other disciple who was known to the high priest went out and spoke to the maid who kept the door and brought Peter in. The maid who kept the door said to Peter, are you not also one of this man's disciples?

He said, I am not. The servants and officers had made a charcoal fire because it was cold and they were staying warm in themselves. Peter also was with them standing and warming himself. Now, all of this, the primary focus is going to be on what takes place with Peter.

Luke certainly focuses upon that. And we will see the parallels in section 333. Let's sort of skip over that for the moment. Just to look at what happens before Caiaphas. Then we'll come back and deal with the issue of Peter.

False Witnesses Before Caiaphas

So you'll see that the primary parallel in Matthew 26 and in Mark 14. We'll look at Mark first. Now, the chief priest and the whole council sought testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none.

For many bore false witness against him, and their witness did not agree. And sons stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, we heard him say I will destroy this temple that is made with hands.

And three days I will build another not made with hands. Yet not even so did their testimony agree. Now, I suppose we could stop there and just point out the fact that it doesn't seem like the Jewish leadership had a whole lot of time to coordinate things here, given that they wouldn't have known when Judas was going to do what Judas did.

And so when you're trying to rig up a trial, it takes a lot of work, and it takes a lot of coordination of the witnesses. And that evidently was not going overly well. And the witnesses that were brought before him would not agree with what the other was saying.

And so even though you have a rigged jury, so to speak, there is still a concern to make it look like this is legal and this is appropriate for the Sanhedrin to be involved with and so on and so forth.

And it's not going real well. And it is very interesting to note that the allegation found in Mark 14, 58 is given to us specifically all the way back, as I recall, in John chapter 2, when Jesus gives the prophecy, in essence, of the destruction of the temple.

And in three days, he would raise that temple up, and he was speaking of the temple of his body. So it's interesting, given how often John is dismissed as ahistorical and he's just off doing his own thing, that here in Mark, which in the majority viewpoint today, we've discussed this years and years and years ago, but is the earliest of the Gospels.

We don't know what the earliest of the Gospels is. And I think we end up in more difficulty making Mark the earliest and then making Matthew and Luke depend upon him and then playing mind reader as to why there are differences than to just say that they're each drawing from different streams of tradition.

But I'm in the minority there, as you probably are aware. But here you find Mark, allegedly the earliest, reflecting a statement that is recorded for us explicitly in the Gospel of John, in its particular context and so on and so forth.

Now, does that mean that Jesus only once said something about the destruction of the physical temple and the raising of the temple of his body and things? No, that doesn't necessarily follow. As I've said many times before, when you think about how much Jesus said over the years of his ministry, and most would go for three years, some say two years.

There's one guy running around there selling lots of books saying it was only one year. But over that time period, given that so often we're told that Jesus was teaching all day long, if any of you read at the speed that people speak, which is not a fast reading speed, you could read all the Gospels before lunch fairly easily.

So if Jesus is speaking all day long, then in one day he would have spoken more than we have recorded in the Gospels. So you do that for a few years, that's a lot of talking in a lot of different contexts.

And I don't think that he went from one city to another city and just repeated himself verbatim for what he said at the last city. Any good speaker is going to recognize if you're at a seashore, if you're in a fishing village, maybe some fishing stories would communicate.

And if you're out in the land amongst farmers, some farming stories are going to communicate better than fishing stories will, et cetera, et cetera. And so amongst the urban elite versus the people out in the land, if you're a good speaker, you're going to alter the way that you speak in light of the context you're speaking in.

So the point being that the things that Jesus said would have been said multiple times in multiple ways and would have been remembered by different audiences in different ways. I mean, that just makes sense.

And unless, again, we try to use the, well, these are just MP3 recordings standard, which they're not, then we're really not going to have any problem in figuring out what's going on here. But again, even in the testimony concerning the raising up of his body, which they didn't understand, yet not even so did their testimony agree.

Now, why would they even bring that up? Well, it would have been considered some kind of a blasphemy against God and the people of Israel to talk about the destruction of the temple, because the temple could only be destroyed by God's enemies.

And so for Jesus to be talking about destroying the temple, that would make him the enemy of God, et cetera, et cetera. It would have been a way of making accusation against him. So then in verse 60 of Mark 14, and the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, have you no answer to make?

What is it that these men testify against you? But he was silent and made no answer. Again, the high priest asked him, are you the Messiah? I mean, again, there's all sorts of weird stuff on the web for you to avoid.

Well, theologically speaking, almost everything on the web is probably best to avoid. There's a few of us trying to put something good out there, but it is definitely searching for diamonds in the midst of the cow feed.

Right now, especially, there is a lot of this movement, Jewish roots movement, Hebrew roots movement, yada, yada, yada. There's always people to sell books by saying, well, you see, the way to understand this is I have this insight into the Hebrew language and it tells me that this is what Jesus really meant.

And if you're tired of what you've been told your entire life, or you're not satisfied with what you've been told your entire life and you're looking for something new, this can be a convenient way to start your journey off into theological la-la land.

Is some guy, normally with a rather large beard and a bit of an accent, telling you that, well, if you just understood the Jewish background, if you just understood the Hebrew background. And of course, there's always an element of truth in whatever any false teacher says.

Over and over again, we have brought in background information that is brought in from Jewish sources. We need to know who the Sanhedrin was. And you cannot read the Gospels without having some idea of Jewish practice and Jewish thought.

And yeah, the term here in Greek is Mashiach in Hebrew, and it means the Messiah. And there are far too many people in our churches in our land who think that Christ is Jesus' last name. It's not. It's a title, and it means the Messiah, Jesus the Messiah, Yeshua the Messiah.

And there are some people who just get all up in arms, need to say Yeshua, da-da-da-da. Hey, if you want to say Yeshua, that's fine with me. I don't care. But every time I meet one of those folks, it's not that they just want to be able to say Yeshua.

It's that I have to say Yeshua the way they say Yeshua. That's where it gets a little weird. Anyway, but there are true things to be brought in. And I think this is a good one. Whenever you see the word Christ, I think we need to fight the temptation to be good Westerners and turn it into a name and forget what it originally meant, that it was the anointed one.

It was the Messiah. It was the one that refers to the one who was prophesied by the Old Testament prophets, and so on and so forth. There is that very, very deep, intimate connection to the Jewish people there.

All that is good. It's just when you determine that you can use that as the filter to get rid of all sorts of stuff you don't like, like the fact that the gospel goes out to the Gentiles, and the fact that those Jewish holidays and feast days and observances and things like that fulfilled in Christ.

And now we need to keep doing them things. And let's start doing the Feast of Unleavened Bread and all the rest of this kind of stuff. That's when you start getting into some real problems. And so I think it is still important to hear, are you the Messiah, the son of the blessed one?

So there is a specific content to the question. And the questioner is not asking this question of honesty. The questioner has been involved in bringing in these false witnesses. He's, by this point, very frustrated, because it's not going well.

I saw a parallel of this once. Some of you remember when I went on, the last time I was ever on the Bible Ants Man broadcast, when I debated George Bryson on Calvinism. I don't know if any of you have heard that.

And it was a bit of an ambush. It was a setup. Very clearly, George Bryson and Hank Hanegraaff had worked together to be prepared for this particular debate. And it was, on one level, somewhat humorous to watch, as George Bryson refused every cue that Hank handed him to try to make a point.

And it just fell apart. And there was a level of frustration that crept into Hank's voice at that particular point in time. I think that's what's going on here, is the high priest has been trying to make this trial run nice and smooth and easy.

And let's just get this done and get this guy who's been a thorn in our side, and we've been trying to get rid of him for a long time. Let's get this taken care of in the dark of the night. Well, the witnesses just aren't working out.

And so he's not standing up there going, oh, I really want to know. Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One? Now, notice the parallel in Matthew. I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.

Well, Son of the Blessed Son of God, obviously, parallel phraseology. And so often what you will hear, especially from my Muslim friends, and I'm only a matter of weeks out from South Africa and all sorts of debates and interactions with Muslims in lots of different contexts, this trip will put us over 150 debates we've done since that first one over in Southern California that a few of you are old enough to have actually attended.

And I will have to go over this over and over and over again, because almost every Muslim in the English-speaking world has been taught that God has sons by the tons, that there's nothing special about Jesus being the Son of God, that any good, righteous man would be considered a son of God, and that there's nothing special about identifying Jesus as the Son of God.

Well, tell the high priest that, because he asks, are you the Messiah, the Son of God, the Son of the Blessed One? So obviously, he's not asking for an identity question. He's doing what? He's looking for a mechanism of accusation.

So what does Messiah, Son of God, mean given his intention in asking the question? It is something to use to make the accusation of, well, verse 64 of Mark 14, or verse 63 of, I'm sorry, verse 65 of Matthew 26.

Doesn't matter. They both use the exact same term, blasphemy. To answer the question in the affirmative on Jesus's part is going to involve blasphemy. Well, let me put it this way. To answer in the affirmative the way Jesus did is going to bring this charge of blasphemy.

This is really important. Now, if you ever find yourself, well, obviously, if you do find yourself speaking to a Muslim, this will be relevant. But many of you, some of you younger folks, might find yourself in a, well, you'll find yourself in a university classroom.

We have a undercover university professor right down here. We won't mention any names. Just for your own sake and not anyone else's. But you might find yourself out in Tempe somewhere, or if you commit terrible blasphemy, Tucson, or if you just get lost, Flagstaff, just like the cold better than the heat, whatever it might be.

And it doesn't have to be there. It can be at Phoenix College, or Glendale Community College, or Paradise Valley, or whatever. And you're getting the standard secular perspective on Jesus and on the scriptures.

And even the infamous Bart Ehrman, the leading English-speaking critic of New Testament Christianity today, until he wrote his last book, where he has been forced to change his view, interestingly enough, would have told you that, sure, John presents Jesus as God.

Yeah, that's obvious. There's no question about that. But Matthew, Mark, and Luke don't. And Mark, especially, just presents him as a man. And so you have this progression. The earliest one, you have this simple, basic Jesus.

And then Matthew and Luke are working on building him up because they come a couple decades later, say. And by the time you get to John, who's many decades later, now you've got this exalted view of Jesus and the deity of Christ and all the rest of this stuff.

And that's why you can't put this stuff together, because they all believe different things. That's what you're going to get in the vast majority of those classrooms. And from my perspective, this particular section is one of the most effective and strong texts to go to in demonstrating that all of the Gospels present to us the deity of Christ.

They may do so with different methodologies and emphases, but they all present the deity of Christ. And when you can go to Mark, and if any of you have seen the debate that I did at the capital of South Africa.

Yeah, the University of Pretoria, thank you. The University of Pretoria, with Shabir Ali, in 2013. The debate was, did the earliest followers of Jesus, not Paul or something like that later on, but the earliest followers of Jesus, believe that he was God?

And one of the things I did was to run, literally, through the Gospel of Mark and present the deity of Christ from the Gospel of Mark. And it's not all that difficult to do. But finishing with this particular text, because this is really strong.

It's really, really strong. So the high priest asked the question, are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And you will see the Son of Man sit at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

And the high priest tore his garments and said, why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death. And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him and to say to him, prophesy.

And the guards received him with blows. Now, wow. What happened? Well, if you understand the background of Jesus' words, if you understand the text he's quoting from, you'll see exactly what it is he's saying.

He says, I am. Now, if you stop just there, then the people who point out that, well, David's called the Son of God and Israel's called the Son of God and there are sons by the tons. The sons of God rejoiced at the creation and they're angels.

And see, everybody's a son of God. That's what the Muslim wants to say, is that there's nothing unique about Jesus being the Son of God. That term monogamous, only begotten, unique, we don't really think too much on that one.

But if Jesus just stopped there, maybe. But then what does he do? And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Where's he quoting from? It's a conflation of two very, very, very well-known texts.

And if you have your study Bibles out, you probably have already looked at the center column reference or wherever else it might be and might already know what the texts are. I'd be interested if any of you have your Bibles open.

What are the parallels that are provided for those of you who aren't looking? Psalm 110? And what else? Daniel chapter 7. It's a conflation of Psalm 1101, which, by the way, is the most often quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament.

It's quoted over and over again. You find the early church preaching it, quoting it. It was key to their understanding of who Jesus is. Jesus even quotes it himself, of himself. Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand.

So I make my enemies' footstool for my feet. But a lot of us, we know some of the stories in Daniel. The lion's den's really cool. I'm old enough to remember that on flannel board. That was great. It was wonderful.

But Roxy's smiling. But we don't do a lot of reading in it, necessarily. It's got a lot of, sort of like the Book of Revelation, except in the Old Testament. And so a lot of us just go, visions, cool, let's move on.

Except there is, in Daniel 7, this Son of Man. And the Son of Man appears before the Ancient of Days. And the Son of Man is worshipped by his servants. And it's sort of hard to avoid that there in Daniel, even before the Incarnation, you have two divine persons.

The Ancient of Days and the Son of Man, they're both divine. That's in a vision. It's not explained how that's going to work out yet. But it's there. And Jesus conflates the Psalm 1101 text, which is related to the authority of the Messiah, with Daniel chapter 7, where the Son of Man has followers who give him Latruo, which is the highest form of worship in the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

And says, and you will see the Son of Man. You will see the Son of Man, see it the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Now, there was only one way for any Jew of the Second Temple period, possessing the scriptures that they possessed, which was the Old Testament as we possess it today, to understand what Jesus was saying.

All of the sons by the tons stuff goes flying out the window, because Jesus is being very, very, very, very specific with texts that are very, very, very well known to Jewish people. And there's no way to get around what he's claiming for himself.

And that's why the response is not, the high priest doesn't go, what did you say? A high priest doesn't go, so are you suggesting? None of that. No need for any of that. Any Jewish rabbi who says, I am the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One, and you will see the Son of Man, see it the right hand of power and coming with clouds of heaven.

Anybody in that day that said that, what he meant by that, is not up for debate. Now, that doesn't mean, of course, that people don't debate it. Bart Ehrman, for example, has a massive blind spot here.

He thinks the Son of Man is somebody other than Jesus. Somebody, some eschatological guy other than Jesus. But you say, but Jesus identifies himself as the Son of Man over and over again. Yeah, I know that.

But he thinks that's later speculation that's just been put in there. And so he thinks the Son of Man is somebody else, and Jesus is referring to somebody else other than himself. And so he looks at this and goes, I don't know why the high priest got so upset.

I was like, wow, OK, all right. That's why your PhD dissertation was in the development of the Alexandrian text type in a particular early church father and not in theology. But be that as it may, it's so plain and powerful when you know that he's drawing from those two texts and when you know that, remember in GSU, Psalm 110 .1, when he shut the Jews up, when he said, if the Messiah is the Son of David, then how does David call him Lord, and then what does he quote from?

Psalm 110 .1. The Lord said, my Lord, sit at my right hand till I have enemies with many footstools. So the Messiah is actually David's Lord, so he's higher than the Messiah. So he's not just the son of David, a descendant of David, because a descendant's not going to be greater than his forefather, but he's higher than David.

How can that be? And they're like, ugh. And they're silenced. And so he takes that. And then the Son of Man figure from the Book of Daniel, there's all sorts of discussions about him in the intertestamental literature, intertestamental literature being the non-canonical books written after Malachi, up to and contemporaneous with the time of the New Testament.

The Jews didn't stop writing books. So there's all sorts of books that the New Testament writers are familiar with, but did not quote a scripture. Not just, by the way, the apocryphal books, or what are called the deuterocanonical books, or whatever, but there are other books, what's called the Old Testament pseudepigrapha.

And some of them get really weird. Some of them are sort of like the Jewish version of left behind. It's just very interesting. But there are some interesting stuff. But the Jews themselves recognized that the voice of prophecy had ceased speaking in Israel.

That's why there was such strong speculation the Messiah must be near, because it's been 400 years since a prophet has spoken in Israel, which, again, is a very interesting thing to get into as well. I was about the only person in my New Testament backgrounds class, both in college and in seminary, that when we went through this stuff and were reading all this stuff, was awake.

Everybody else was sort of like, do we really need to be doing this? Be a little bit more interested in how to grow your Sunday school, or run a VBS, or something like that. I'm never going to use this.

And I was already involved with apologetics. So I already knew, oh, I'm going to use this. Oh, yeah, this is important stuff, yeah, definitely. But when you're familiar with that literature, you also, by the way, a lot of heretics are extremely familiar with that literature.

And they love using it. They love using it. The big guys on the web right now that are attacking the deity of Christ, they've made themselves experts in this stuff. And they throw this stuff out there.

And since most of us have never read any of this intertestamental literature, we're just left going, well, I can't really talk about that. And that's how they're having their success these days, is utilizing that approach.

But with all that said, at the time that these words are said by Jesus, the understanding of what he meant, by reference to the Son of Man, would be instantaneous on the part of his hearers. There would have been an audible gasp, especially in light of the silence up to this point.

The high priest uses the highest form of religious command, I abjure you by the living God, to tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus' answer there still is, but I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man and see it at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.

It's the same conflation, the same passages. And the response is the same, high priest tears his robes, you've uttered blasphemy. So if you want to try to say that Mark presents a merely human, non-divine Jesus, you've got to explain this.

You've got to explain how this ends up in even what most secular authorities would identify as the earliest stratum of tradition, would be a nice scholarly way of putting it. It's right there. It's very strong.

It's very clear. I hope you will. And you'll notice it is repeated by all three of the Synoptic Gospels. There's been a lot of variation between them up to this point, but all three of them talk about the Son of Man.

And just briefly, though I know you know this, just to remind you just in case, when someone, there are a lot of people who think that when Jesus uses the phrase Son of God, he's referring to his divine side.

And Son of Man, he's talking to his human side. No, not even close. There was a heretic back in the 60s and 70s by the name of Victor Paul Weirwill. He started a movement called the Way International.

It's not called that anymore. It's split up into 1 ,000 little tiny cult groups that are still on a few college campuses around here, there, and everywhere. But he wrote a book that at least the title I appreciated because it was honest.

The title of the book was Jesus Christ Was Not God. He didn't have to guess about it. Or he wasn't trying to sneak into the back door. He put a big old sign over his head, said I am an Aryan heretic. And so it's really easy that way.

One of his main arguments was Jesus said he was the Son of Man more often than he said he was the Son of God. Therefore, he wasn't God. So you just put up the number of Son of Man, put up the number of Son of God, eh, this wins.

Votes taken, it's over with. Great form of exegesis, really honoring the intention of the original writers. But that's completely missing what either phrase would have meant, again, in the days in which these words were spoken.

Son of Man can simply mean a human. There's a question about that. Ezekiel is called Son of Man over and over. It's one of the primary references to Ezekiel. If you're familiar with the prophecy, Son of Man this, Son of Man that, no problem.

But the, not a Son of Man, not the generic use, but the Son of Man, and then quotation from Daniel, makes it very plain how Jesus was referring to himself as the Son of Man. And there is a broad, deep stream of teaching and speculation and understanding in the intertestamental period, in the writings of the Jewish people, again, between Malachi and the New Testament period.

Looking at the Son of Man, who the Son of Man is, what the Son of Man's relationship is to the sea, so on and so forth. There's a lot of discussion of this stuff going on. And even more so, groups outside of mainstream Judaism.

And so you're familiar with the Essenes and the Qumran communicating statements found in various Old Testament prophecies. And until they're fulfilled, it's difficult to see how they would be fulfilled in a very specific fashion.

And so keep in mind then, really the most important thing here, which sometimes people miss because they're wondering, well, how many times did Peter deny Jesus, and blah, blah, blah. Is you're missing one of the clearest testimonies of the deity of Christ in all of the New Testament, from his own lips.

That's why it's useful in talking to Muslims. Because Muslims like to say, Jesus ever said he was God? Worship me? You'll hear that over and over and over and over and over and over again, ad nauseam.

Said, well, you know, he didn't have to use those words, but listen to what he did say. And listen to how the Jews responded. And Jesus doesn't go, no, guys, you misunderstood. Oh, you're just completely misunderstanding me.

I'm just a prophet. No, Jesus doesn't do that. He doesn't correct them. I didn't blaspheme. That's not what I meant. No, that's not what happens. And the strength of the condemnation, it's paralleled in John chapter 19, where you have the statement where the Jews are speaking to Pilate, verse 7 of John chapter 19.

Jews answered him, saying to Pilate, we have a law. And by that law, he ought to die, because he made himself the son of God. He made himself the son of God. Not a son of God, sons by the tons, the son of God.

That's blasphemy. And that deserves the penalty of death. So there is a consistency from Matthew all the way through John. You can't ignore it. Well, you can if you get paid to ignore it. But if you want to be honest, you can't ignore it.

All right? All right, so next time, no matter what we do, we've got to deal with Peter's denials. And how many times did that crazy chicken make a sound? That's the big question. But I honestly think this was far more important than that.

Unfortunately, this is what gets lost in all the talk about that. Let's close with a time of word of prayer. Father, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for its consistency. We thank you for its rootedness in history.

We thank you that we can examine it. And Lord, that we still have freedom to do so. We ask that as we go into worship now, you would open our hearts and our minds. May our worship of you be pleasing in your sight.

We pray in Christ's name.