Sunday, September 18, 2022 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Luke, chapter 23, and we're going to look at Christ on trial here in the first 25 verses.

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Now let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for the opportunity to read your word, to rejoice in your truth, to be encouraged to trust our

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Savior all the more. I pray that you would help us in these graces and help us to praise your name.

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In Christ's name we pray, amen. All right, so Luke chapter 23, beginning in verse 1.

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Then the whole multitude of them arose and led him to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying,

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We found this fellow perverting the nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, saying that he himself is

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Christ a king. Then Pilate asked him, saying,

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Are you king of the Jews? He answered him and said, It is as you say.

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So Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowd, I find no fault in this man.

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But they were the more fierce, saying, He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all

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Judea, beginning from Galilee to this place. When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked if the man were a

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Galilean. And as soon as he knew that he belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time.

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Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad, for he had desired for a long time to see him, because he had heard many things about him, and he hoped to see some miracle done by him.

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Then he questioned him with many words, but he answered him nothing. And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.

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Then Herod, with his men of war, treated him with contempt and mocked him, arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him back to Pilate.

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That very day Pilate and Herod became friends with each other, for previously they had been at enmity with each other.

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Then Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests, the rulers, and the people, said to them, you have brought this man to me as one who misleads the people.

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And indeed, having examined him in your presence, I have found no fault in this man concerning those things of which you accuse him.

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No, neither did Herod, for I sent you, for I sent you back to him, and indeed nothing deserving of death has been done by him.

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I will therefore chastise him and release him, for it was necessary for him to release one of them at the feast.

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And they all cried out at once, saying, away with this man, and release to us

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Barabbas, who have been thrown into prison for a certain rebellion made in the city and for murder.

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Pilate, therefore, wishing to release Jesus again, called out to them, but they shouted, saying, crucify him, crucify him.

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Then he said to them a third time, why, what evil has he done? I have found,

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I have found no reason for death in him. I will therefore chastise him and let him go.

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But they were insistent, demanding with loud voices that he be crucified. And the voices of these men and of the chief priests prevailed.

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So, Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they requested, and he released to them the one they requested, who for rebellion and murder had been thrown into prison, but he delivered

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Jesus to their will." So, in this story of Christ on trial, we see

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Christ and his accusers. We need to consider what it is that they're saying, how it is that they try to charge

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Jesus with wrongdoing, how they make their approach. We should also note a great deal of emphasis on the relationship between Christ and the authorities, and the dynamics that go on there.

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Pilate and Herod and Jesus. And ultimately, we need to hone in on Christ and his answer at his trial.

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How did he respond personally? What was his, what was his reply?

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What did he say, what did he not say, and why? So, we begin with Christ's accusers.

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Christ and his accusers. The first thing we see are these accusations.

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Now, I don't, I don't find them compelling. This, these, these accusations seem a little biased.

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They seem a little sensational. And having read the Gospel of Luke, we should remember what it is that Jesus actually said, and then what they're claiming he said.

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What he actually did, and what they're claiming he did. Let's look at those accusations again in verse 2.

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Notice those in verse 2, the accusations that they're making there in verse 2, and also, also in verse 5.

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Verses 2 and 5. Now, you see that there.

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What are the false accusations they make? Yeah, tax evasion.

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He is forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar. So, not only, you know, if you can get away with it, skip it.

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He's not saying even that. He's, they're saying, they're saying that he has been teaching open rebellion against the governing authorities.

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Y 'all better not pay taxes to Caesar. That's what they're accusing him of saying. Now, these, the whole multitude of them.

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Who is this, who is this multitude of them? Well, we read the previous passage, we have the elders of the people, the chief priests and scribes, you know, some of their servants and so on.

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And, okay, this is the multitude that arrested him in the, in the Garden of Gethsemane, who had him in the, in the house of the, the chief priest and had a, had a council where they quickly condemned him and so on.

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So, this, this is the crew that brings Jesus to Pilate and accuses him to Pilate saying, he's forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar.

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Okay, what else, what other false accusations do we have? Yeah, so he is stirring up the people.

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Yeah, he's from Judea to Galilee, all over the place. He's a troublemaker. Okay, interesting.

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He's stirring up the people. He's an agitator. Now, one more, one more accusation that they make.

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Yeah, so he's a, he's trying to be a rival, right? He's thinking about how these false accusations, how they work.

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First of all, what reason did they give already in their own council, in their own

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Sanhedrin trial, for what reason have they condemned him to death?

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What is their charges, what are their charges against Christ that they've already outlined in their own group?

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Blasphemy, that you're saying that you are the Christ, the Son of God, and so you deserve to die because of blasphemy.

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But, when they go to Pilate, is this what they see to Pilate? No, they don't bring that up.

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Pilate's not going to find that very compelling, right? As a

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Roman who is, who worships many different gods and has thrown incense at more gods than we can count, he doesn't care about claims to deity.

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Who cares? It's not compelling to him, these laws that they believe that Jesus of Nazareth has, has broken and deserves to die, so they don't even bring it up.

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So, they begin to make accusations that will have some play with Pilate. Now, consider these three accusations.

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He is forbidden people to pay taxes, he's claiming that he's a king, and he's stirring up the people from north to south.

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Now, why would that be compelling to Pilate, a Roman pro -council?

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Hmm? Rebellion. He's definitely charged with keeping the peace.

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And, of course, the soldiers are being funded by the taxpayers, okay? And, if a, if this group of people that are being kept under Rome's thumb by an occupying force, if they stop paying taxes, start claiming that somebody else is king, and they start getting stirred up, then they're going to have another insurrection on their hands, and Pilate himself will have failed to keep the peace, and he's not only going to lose his job, he's going to lose his head.

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So, what they're accusing Christ of becomes incredibly important to Pilate.

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They wanted, they wanted to be very important to Pilate. So, they're, they're, that's why they're making these accusations.

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Now, these are false accusations, and let's consider why. This first one, where they say, he is forbidden to pay taxes to Caesar.

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No, don't pay taxes to Caesar. Do you remember that there was a story about paying taxes to Caesar?

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What are the details of that story? What, what happened? Yeah, so, now, who, who was asking that?

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Was that a question that a widow came up with and said, oh, rabbi, should I pay my taxes?

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Was it a widow who asked that question? Who was it? It was this group.

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They're the ones who came up with it. They're like, ah, we're going to get him in trouble with authorities by asking him this convoluted, impossible to answer question.

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He'll either go pro -Roman, and then we'll stir up the people against him, or he'll go anti -Roman, and then we'll have the

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Romans arrest him. You know, either way, we're going to win. He's going to lose. All right, good teacher, rabbi, oh, wise one.

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Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Go. And Jesus responds, is there, does anybody have a denarius?

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Yeah, show me the coin. Whose image is on there? What, what, what, what inscription is on there? That's Caesar, right?

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It's got his name on it, so it belongs to him. So, render to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, and render to God the things that belong to God.

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And they're like, right? Failed. Mission failed. They didn't catch him.

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That's how he handled that. He didn't say, don't pay taxes to Caesar. He said, pay the appropriate taxes to Caesar and recognize what belongs to God.

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That's what he said, and so now they are lying, because they're the ones who came up with this.

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They're the ones who got defeated, and they are lying, all of them, saying that he is forbidden to pay taxes to Caesar.

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Now, there was a moment they could have possibly twisted his words to construe that, but it's just not true.

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He also said he is saying he is a king. Now, did

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Jesus ever hint at the idea that he was a king?

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You bet. What did he go preaching from city to city, from town to town, village village, the good news of the kingdom, right?

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The gospel of the kingdom. However, when it came to the nature of that kingdom, as they began to say, you know, when's it gonna show up?

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He said, you're not going to see it like over here, over there, or here's the boundary, here's the border, here's the political line, there's the kingdom over there, but not over here.

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He said, no, that's not how it's going to be. The kingdom is already amongst you in your midst.

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The kind of kingdom that he brought was not of the world, it was in the world, but not of the world, something he would tell

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Pilate in the Gospel of John. So, he is indeed a king, and he doesn't deny it when

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Pilate asks, he said, you said it yourself, but in claiming to be a king, he was not claiming a type of kingdom that was going to go to war with Rome, or for that matter, war with any other nation.

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He was talking about a kingdom long promised from the Old Testament prophets, a kind of kingdom that was different than the kingdoms of this world, wherein the

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Persians beat up the Babylonians, and then the Greeks beat up the Persians, and then the Romans beat up everybody.

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The four different kingdoms of the earth, in the shape of a man with both feet clearly on the ground.

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No, no, his kingdom was totally different. A stone uncut by human hands, hurtling down from heaven, having an impact that that fills the whole world, a totally different type of kingdom.

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So, yes, indeed, he was claiming to be king, but not the kind of king that stirs up a bunch of people to go to battle against another nation.

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So, in this case, once again, with the taxes, hey, there was this moment we talked about taxes, but then they lied about it.

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Hey, there's this thing about kingdom and king, but now they're lying about it. They're perverting it, they're twisting it, they're taking what was good and substantive about what

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Christ had said, they take it, and then they pervert it and twist it. And then the last false accusation that we looked at was that he is stirring up the people, teaching throughout all

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Judea, beginning from Galilee to this place. He's stirring everybody up. Now, when

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Jesus taught, when Jesus did things, did a ruckus break out every once in a while? Yeah.

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And many times there was a ruckus, they tried to kill Jesus, and he just left.

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They weren't able to do anything about it. There's multitudes pressing, crowding, thronging him.

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Yeah, that things were really exciting when Jesus came to town. So, once again, is he stirring up an insurrection?

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Is he trying to get an army? What happened when he fed the 5 ,000, the loaves and the fishes?

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And they said, wow, you're better than Moses. Hey, let's make you king. What did he do?

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He left. He left. He went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

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They hunted him down, said, we'd like some more of that free bread, thank you very much. And Jesus is like, no.

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And he would not allow them to make him king. He was not, he was not building an insurrection.

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So, once again, they're lying. And the accusations that they make do not succeed.

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Think about what they're doing, though. They're taking something that was true, and they take it, and they twist it, and pervert it into something to make accusation.

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They're not starting from scratch, right? These lies aren't like, you know, out of nothing. They're taking things that are already there, perverting it, and twisting it.

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Now, who does that sound like? Sounds like the devil. Sounds like Satan.

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Sounds like they're just who Jesus said they were. Sons of the devil, right?

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Yes. Wicked and perverse, twisted, evil generation.

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That's right. They, you know, Satan came to steal, kill, and destroy.

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How does he do that? By twisting the life -giving Word of God. To take that, and to twist it, and pervert it.

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And that's what they're doing. They're taking the words of Christ, the deeds of Christ. They're taking the person and work of the

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Word in flesh, and they're twisting everything about him and trying to destroy him.

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So this is their, these are their false accusations. What other stories do we have in the

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Bible where a servant of God, maybe a king, a prophet, or a priest, a patriarch, somebody, they get lied about.

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People lie about them, false accusations, right?

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Yeah, try to blame him. Speaking of Ahab and Jezebel, they hired a couple people to make some lies about one

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Naboth, right?

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Joseph got falsely accused. Jeremiah got lied about.

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Yeah, you think about these lies. They had an impact, but ultimately, were they successful? No.

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That's the thing. They had, lies have an impact, deception has an impact, but it never wins out.

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It never wins out. That's why we shouldn't be discouraged about lies and deceptions, because eventually they all fail.

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They have an impact, yes, and it's not good, it is sin, it is bad. However, ultimately, they all fail.

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It all falls apart. Now, Jesus certainly attracts a lot of false, false accusations, because they're trying to, you know,

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Satan hates the image of God. So we have anything that destroys the image of God, killing life, murdering, destroying infants, you know, abortion, you know, everything from Chemosh and Molech in the

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Old Testament days to abortion today. He hates the image of God, so he just, he wages war against the family, against the picture of the image of God, and husband and wife and children.

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He is, he is hostile and hates everything regarding family. The more separated and divided a family is, the more he likes it.

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And here is the, the image of the invisible God, Jesus Christ himself. Yeah, gonna attract a lot of hatred and false accusations from the enemy.

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Well, these accusations don't work very well. Pilate hears them, and he says, nah, it doesn't really compute.

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You know, he talks to Jesus, and he's like, okay, they say these things, you know, he's like, you know,

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I've met lunatic insurgents before. He doesn't fit the profile, right?

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This just does not compute. They're, they're saying these things about him, but boy, he doesn't fit that mold.

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He's a, he's calm, he's at peace, he's not foaming at the mouth at me, accusing me of all sorts of crazy things.

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This just doesn't really fit. And so Pilate is not convinced by the, by the lying.

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You know, he says, I find no fault in this man. You guys are saying this, but I, I don't see it. You know, you've brought this man to me as one who misleads the people, he says in verse 14.

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He says, but, but I found no fault in him concerning the things with which you accuse him. It's like, guys, these charges aren't holding up.

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You know, I've investigated him, I sent him to Herod, he got investigated over there. It's like, this isn't holding up.

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So, what do they do next? Christ's accusers, after false accusations don't work, right?

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They didn't, they didn't actually believe in their own accusations anyway. They knew they wouldn't be lies. They knew they were lies, they didn't believe in them anyway.

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So, after the false accusations fail, they shift out of first gear into second gear, and now what do they do?

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Well, they, yes, that's part of it, but the forcible agitation is where they move next. So, notice first round of lies don't work, verse 5, but they were the more fierce, right?

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You don't believe us, we'll start yelling, right? You won't accept what

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I'm saying, then I'll get really angry, because that will, that will definitely prove that it's true and real.

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And then, so that, so that didn't work, verse 5 didn't work.

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After Pilate says, yeah, I don't believe you, I'll just, I'll punish him and then let him go. Once they hear that Pilate's gonna release him, verse 18, and they all cried out at once, saying, away with this man and release to us

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Barabbas, right? Not only are we gonna get angry and loud, but now we're gonna start chanting, right?

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Because by being angry and loud and chanting over and over again what we want, that definitely proves that we're right, okay?

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So, the chant starts with, away with this man, release to us Barabbas, they start yelling for that, and Pilate's like, what's wrong with you?

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He's an innocent man. Verse 21, but they shouted saying, crucify him, crucify him, right?

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And he's like, why? What did he do? Just let me let him go. Verse 23, but they were more insistent, demanding with loud voices that he be crucified, so finally

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Pilate gives in. Finally Pilate gives in. What was it that they accused

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Jesus of doing? Stirring up the people, rebelling against the clear word of the authority, and what are they doing?

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Isn't that funny? In a very sad, ironic way. That which they accused

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Jesus of, they themselves did. Now, that is not a unique phenomenon to their time or our time, that's how the devil works, okay?

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That's just proof of, this is proof of the way deceit works, that's just proof of the way that evil works.

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So they just, they just keep agitating, ramping it up until finally they get what they want.

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So yes, they took him to the governing authority, they were fine with him being put on trial by Herod, they put him on trial themselves in their own counsel, and so they have the trappings of legal, they have the legal trappings, they have the the semblance of a justice system, but that's, that's just the sugar that makes the medicine go down.

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They're out to kill him, this is their opportunity, and they don't care what it takes, they're going to see it through, okay?

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And if anybody comes later, they say, well we went through the system, you know, it was ruled on by Pilate, you know, after screaming at him, you know, do what we want or else, right?

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What they accused Jesus of, you know, if, you know, you need to take care of this man and kill him, because if you don't, he's going to raise up an insurrection and the peace will be broken.

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He didn't believe that about Jesus, but then they threatened him with that very thing themselves, right?

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You don't give us our way, the peace will be broken, there's going to be an insurrection. So, we see the pattern.

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James, James says that the wrath of man does not achieve what? The righteousness of God.

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In other words, justice, justice as defined by God, what is right, is not achieved by particularly what?

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The wrath of man. Why is that?

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Now, the wrath of God, now that's different. Wrath of God brings about righteousness, the wrath of God achieves justice, doesn't it?

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But God's in control, God's in control. When you see people that are full of wrath, foaming at the mouth and out of control, is the end of their efforts going to be righteousness and justice as God defines it?

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No. And that's been shown most clearly at this most critical point when

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Christ was put on trial. Next time we're going to look at Christ and his relationship to the authorities, because as they deal with Christ and sometimes in a kind of confused manner and ambivalent manner, we're going to see a pattern that ends up repeating itself in the relationship between Christ's followers and the authorities, as we see throughout the book of Acts.

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So, that'll be practical and instructive for us. Well, we're going to go close our time here tonight and let's do so by singing the