Please turn in God's Word to the Gospel of Mark. Chapter 14, verse 53, we'll read to verse 65. Listen now to God's holy inerrant and life-giving word. Mark writes in verse 53, and they led Jesus to the high priest and all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together and Peter had followed him at a distance right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire. Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none. For many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree. And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands. Yet even about this their testimony did not agree. 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 remained silent and made no answer. Again, the high priest asked him, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest tore his garments and said, what further witnesses do we need? 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, saying to him, prophesy. And the guards received him with blows. Grass withers, the flowers fall, and the word of our God abides forever. Father, we thank you for your word. And as we turn now to the trial and cross of our Lord, help us to realize that all that he suffered, he did for us. Give us ears to hear. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we left Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he'd been betrayed by Judas, and he was taken now to the Jewish trial. And I'm just struck by verse 53, and they led Jesus to the high priest. Of course, Jesus is the high priest. He is the judge. And of course, Caiaphas is doing his job, but his job above all is to be a picture of Christ, that is the earthly high priest, and to proclaim him. And what a dreadful, what a statement it is about the state of old covenant religion, of Judaism in his time. that the high priest would lord it over the true high priest. With what love the Lord endured this. Of course, Jesus is the true judge and now he stands judgment. Well, first we see Jesus among the false and everything is wrong. The fact that they're holding it at night is wrong. This is the Sanhedrin. So this would have been in the court of the women. It's the high council of the Jews. They had great authority, although they could not put to death ever since the Roman occupation that was reserved to the Roman governor, but they're going to make a charge and they're going to convict him on a capital crime. And they, but it's a sham from the beginning, it's secret. Why is it secret? Well, because they can't stand the light of day. And look at verse 55. Now the chief priests and the whole council, that's the Sanhedrin, were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death. That is not the purpose of a trial. to seek a rationale to condemn someone. The purpose of the trial is to ascertain the truth and to ascertain what is just and right. But they're driven, and of course it's their unbelief, it's their hardness of heart that's driving them to this sham. And they have false witnesses that come in against Jesus. And their testimony could not even agree. And so any neutral observer would go, this is gross. And, of course, these are largely Pharisees who pride themselves on the strictness of their obedience to the Word of God, and they're flagrantly violating it. And there is Jesus in their midst. By the way, it's hard to get people to lie together. It's hard enough to figure out true eyewitnesses and get a similar report. But when you've got people lying, it's very hard to get them to agree in the details and to coordinate all that. But they brought in, and it's not like they didn't know they were false witnesses. They did know that they were false witnesses. Now, of course, the person they're trying to condemn is Jesus. There is nothing that can be said against him. And so they're cooking things up. Now, they also misunderstand his teaching. Look at verse 58. We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands. And in three days I will build another not made with hands. Now the insinuation is it's anti-Jewish, it's anti people of God. He's not supposed to be against the temple. Of course, Jesus had already cleansed the temple. He had prophesied the destruction of the temple. Some of the other gospels will point out that this was a particular charge. But they needed to realize, though, that it was actually going to happen. And, of course, Jesus, when he says, I will build another and raise it up, he's talking about his own life. And, of course, this will be prefigured in his own death. Uh, the temple not made with hands will be his resurrected body and then the church in him. But even about that testimony, they could not, uh, agree what a sham trial. Now it is remarkable as we step back and go, how could they, how could they not have known? I mean, Caiaphas was going to ask him, are you the Messiah? This is at the end of the gospel, not the beginning of the gospel. And this is after Mark and Matthew and Luke and John have far more, all this evidence proving that he has fulfilled the prophecies. It's shown that he has actually worked the power of God in healing the sick and even raising the dead. He has preached the word of God in truth. And of course, it could be checked against the Old Testament. There's every proof has already given. How could they not know? I think, well, for one thing, how easy it is for us to practice, particularly at the church level, a religion that becomes divorced from the Word of God. This is one reason why we must teach and preach the Word of God. When we start following other agendas, their big agenda, of course, was anti-Romanism. and the victory of Israel over the pagan powers. They had the Roman soldiers in town. They were not teaching the word of God, how essential it is that we teach the word of God. You go, well, I've already been taught it. No, no, it's like, why do I need to read my Bible every day? I've already learned it. Well, actually you haven't, but also you need to be brought to life every day. We need the influence, the power of the word of God. And they were not under, and these were scholars in the Bible. but they had ceased to be under the Word of God. They'd ceased, as Jesus will say, to be like children, believing and wanting to be taught of God. And so they had departed from the Word of God for their other agendas, though they were experts in it. What a warning that is. You know, the particular thing, what was it about Jesus they didn't like? Well, the biggest thing was Jesus' message was salvation for sinners. If you go back through the Gospels, also in Matthew's Gospel especially, what outraged them all along was that he fellowshiped with sinners. They wanted the Messiah to come and declare them just without the cross. They wanted their works approved. There's actually been scholars in recent years saying Old Testament, not the Old Testament, but the Judaism of Jesus' time was not legalism. It was manifestly legalistic. And the thing they wanted above all else was to be vindicated and to be praised. You think of the, in Luke 18, the parable of the tax collector and the sinner. And the tax collector walks into the temple and of course the sinner the tax collector and the Pharisee. And the tax collector, this great sinner, he won't even stand. He's kneeling and he's beating his breast. Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. He's just humbled before God and the Pharisee begins. He prays, Lord, I thank you. Well, that's good, he's giving God credit that I am not like these low lives. So Lord, I thank you for how righteous I am. And as John's gospel likes to emphasize, the true light came into the world. And so, and they had virtue. They were like candles. And then the sun comes up and you can't see the candle anymore. And they were not willing to repent. You know, one thing that should be true of us all along is it should never be a scandal among us to learn that we've sinned or for others to find out that we're sinners. Obviously we should be trying really hard not to be committing gross sins that will really mess up our lives. But if someone says, you know, we are sinners, that's like one of our fundamental doctrines. You think of the Apostle Paul, Christ came to save sinners among whom I am the foremost. Those who are close to God own their sin. And the thing that kept them from being close to God was they claimed their own righteousness according to the law, but it was actually apart from the law. And you know what they did? They made their own little rules and they could keep their own little rules and keeping their own little rules. This happens all the time today. So we have our own man-made rules, we keep those and we declare that we fulfill the law. Where we have manifestly not fulfilled the law. I hope that in our worship services, the confession of sin and the prayer that we do, I hope it never gets old. Because it's so essential to our spirituality. Why is that there in the worship service? Well, it's not just because it's true, it is true. But it's essential to the spirituality of our whole religion that we come, because we are sinners needing grace. They would not seek grace. They would not humble themselves. They were filled with pride. Beware of spiritual pride. This is the fruit of spiritual pride. The high priest, the scholars of the Bible, the Messiah comes and all they can do is to kill him because he's in the front of their pride. C.S. Lewis called pride the anti-God state of mind. And so we should always be aware. I think what did Lewis say one time, Lewis was not always right, but when he was good, he was good. He says, we know we are far from God, especially when our thoughts are of how better we are of other people. And our whole religion is we need a savior. And our only hope is that Jesus would come. They had hardened their hearts. And this is actually satanic. This is the grand fulfillment of the Satan enterprise. and the very holders of religion. By the way, the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians indicates it will be this way at the end. There will be a great apostasy in the formal church. I don't know what, you know, I don't know how it's gonna play out, but the And what they want is to place themselves, actually Satan, in the place of Christ and to kill him and then kill and hurt his people. So it is now for the Lord. Well, this is part of the Lord's suffering, of course. There is the Holy One, the One born of the Virgin Mary, the very Son of God, and He stands in the Sanhedrin. And it's not irony, it's tragedy. It is wrong. And they're bringing in false witnesses to accuse Him that He deserves to die. And there he stands, he endures it quietly. He's fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah. Like the sheep before his shearers, he did not open his mouth. One reason he didn't speak was there were no charges to defend himself against. Even at this point, no credible charges were brought against him. and yet they are determined to kill him. And no doubt, a lot of it was grief. You think of Jesus earlier saying, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you under my wings like a hen with her chicks, but you were not willing. These were the people he loved. He endured this sham of justice against him. And if someone tells you, the world's basically good. Here's a good passage to go to. It's not that there's something particularly wrong with these people. This is what the world does. Light has come into the world, but men hated the light because they loved the darkness because their deeds were evil. This is what our world does to its Lord. But he drank this cup for us. This was part of his sufferings. Well, something remarkable happens. Caiaphas, the high priest, gets exasperated and he turns to Jesus and he just, let's just cut to the chase. It's a remarkable question. Are you the Messiah? Are you the Christ? Are you the Messiah, the son of the blessed? By the way, there's this knowledge that the Messiah would be the son of God. Lots of Old Testament data. There are Bible scholars that are saying to Jesus Christ, are you the Messiah? Give it to us straight. And Jesus says, ego I am. Of course those are the words that Moses heard from the burning bush and when it comes to speak he speaks. He speaks as God. He speaks truth as truth boldly. This is our champion in the midst of the wolves and the wolves they can cut his flesh. They cannot defeat him. What a great champion we have. When you think when you're in a situation that there's no way out, realize who you have saving you. And he is not afraid, and he is not intimidated, and he is not daunted. I am, he claims. If someone says to you, Jesus never says that he's the son of God, go to this passage. Jesus never said he was the Messiah. I am. Are you the Messiah? Are you the Son of the Blessed? I am. And of course that's the name of God. His self-existing glory. And yet Jesus did not say it. with a display of glory. You know, that's His second coming. The second coming is His display of glory. He demands faith. Jesus said the words, He said them as truth. I am, I am the Messiah. Ego eimi, I am that I am. I am the true and living God, the covenant Lord who is your Savior. But he did it in such a way that it required faith. Faith in his word is what saves us. And then he quotes from Daniel 7. Let's not stop there. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. That is a reference to the prophecy of Daniel chapter seven. Let me turn to that briefly. Daniel said, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man and he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him and to him was given dominion and glory. So it's Christ in his second coming after he has come down to die. He's now is revealing all of his divine glory and he's taking up his eternal glory and authority. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away. His kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed. That is what he's saying about his second coming. And he says, I am he and you will see that happen. By the way, Son of Man, you'll often hear it said, Son of God is about His deity, Son of Man is about His humanity. That's actually quite untrue. Son of Man refers to those particular prophecies. It's the divine Savior who became man in order to take up his seat in heaven. So it's not simply, oh, it's his humanity. No, it's the divine Savior who took on humanity, suffered death in order to ascend and take up all authority. Now, there's something of a threat in this, is there not? And it's just the truth, because Jesus is declaring, I have declared myself to you, and if you will not receive me, you are nonetheless going to believe. So he says to them, you are going to see the thing you will not accept. You see me now in humility. You know, Jesus came first to deal with sin. Second, he returns to lead his people to salvation, as the book of Hebrews says. They wanted to skip the, He came to save us from our sins. They didn't want a crucified Messiah. They did not want who taught our need for the Lamb of God and the blood to be shed. All they wanted was the glory. He says, oh, you're going to see the glory. But it will not be in salvation. They will be the ones who receive His justice on that day. I am and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power." Well, Jesus proclaims the truth of them coming with the clouds of heaven. You know, that event hasn't taken place yet. And it's not just the unbelievers in the Sanhedrin. By the way, they weren't all unbelievers. Nicodemus probably was there. He probably hasn't yet been converted. I hold the Nicodemus pretty clear. He's converted after Jesus dies. So some of these are going to be saved. And we're told after Acts 2 that many of the priestly party, probably a fair more of the Sanhedrin, It came to salvation. And here we are in a world with this attitude towards him and towards us. Jesus did not launch a culture war against them. Now, I gotta be careful because we have to be, we're American citizens, we wanna be Christian citizens, we care about evil things as citizens work on them. But the work of the church is to proclaim Jesus. in His first coming and second coming, in His saving work. And we are to be in the midst of the world. That second thing He's talked about has not yet happened. It's going to happen. Every eye will see Him. Every tongue will confess. Every knee will bow. Not all in salvation. Our calling is to proclaim Him. We think of the suffering of the church today. We had a prayer day for the persecuted church. What's happening in the world today is a manifestation of this. That the people of Christ, indelt by a spirit, amongst people who aren't, the world's not fair. If we think, you know, they'll give us a fair hearing, we are deluding our, they are not. The media in America is not gonna give a fair hearing. You know, when we're heading into Christmas, and that means the PBS specials, it's not gonna be the evangelical scholars, it's gonna be a one-sided archeological display saying that Jesus Jesus never exists or whatever. They're not trying to be fair. Ah, but we have the word of truth. It is true. This Savior is at the right hand of the Father. He's sending the Holy Spirit. We proclaim Christ. And until he comes again, we keep doing what he did here. Well, he spoke these words of truth. And it will never be able to said to the Jewish people, and not just them, but it's just what's going on here. What a thing it was. John's Gospel shows the people of Jerusalem saying, let his blood be on our head. Here is Jesus declaring himself formally to the counsel of the Jewish people and they received him not. They conducted a sham trial to crucify him. And then imagine, look what they do now. By the way, literally imagine you're watching a televised court. This wasn't televised, it wasn't public, but it's official. This isn't some, you know, three guys in the back rule of a tavern. This is the high court of the Jewish people. And look what they then start doing. They spit on him. Imagine watching a trial where the prosecutor comes over and spits on the man, where the judge comes down and punches him in the face. And they put a cloth, a garment, and they began beating him and mocking him, prophesying, and the guards received him with blows. You see the fangs come out. the evil of it and it's true for all the sophisticated unbelief and agnosticism and secularism behind it is Satan and there are fangs and they will come out and they came out against Jesus it was nakedly shown and it's evil This is the work of Satan against God and that is the case with unbelief for all the sophisticated veneer. This is why, I mean, just take our college campuses today where in so many cases there's not even the slightest facade of fairness. I mean, some of our campuses you can beat the Christians and it's justified. Well, this is what we see in the trial. Well, Peter uses this situation in 1 Peter 2. And the assumption is that what happened to Jesus is unique. But as we are in him, this sort of thing will happen to us, maybe in more innocuous ways. But in our families, there will be ridicule, there'll be social rejection. In the workplace, in society. And here's what Peter says, starting in 1 Peter 2.21. To this you have been called. We have been called to this because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. If you were not to revile, we're to proclaim Christ, we're to pursue the salvation, we're to pray, we were like Stephen. Father, forgive them. That's what we're to do as he was being put to death. He did not threaten, he continued trusting himself. To him it judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that he might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. You know, every one of us in unbelief have treated Jesus this way, and now that we are His people, we're to follow His example. If you find yourself being lied about, slandered, ridiculed, sometimes the right answer is really not to speak. Sometimes even the attempt to defend ourselves, it's a hard thing to do, to learn not to defend yourself. And most of us have a hard time with that. But sometimes it's the right thing to do, and just commit ourselves to God. But above all, what we want to do is to speak the gospel message. Jesus is the Savior. He is the truth. He is coming again to bring his people into heaven and to judge the wicked. We want to proclaim that message knowing he entrusted himself to God. We entrust ourselves to God. He will save people. You see, our goal is not to win. It's to save. And that's going to change everything. And of course our flesh gets in the way. We want to win. We want to save. And the way we save is a positive proclamation of the gospel. Every debate, every argument, every trial, what we want is to get to God. the gospel message. I remember talking to John MacArthur. He had just been on TV some years ago. My wife and I had happened to watch it. I'll close with this. And this is when Gavin Newsom, then the mayor of San Francisco, had first made, this was so seven or eight years ago, maybe 10, 12 years ago, I guess. The years are adding up on me. The mayor of San Francisco was the first one to declare homosexual marriages. And President Bush was president, so it was a while ago. And John McArthur was on Larry King Live. Remember Larry King Live that night? And he got a call. Actually, I saw him on the show. And they had him with a homosexual activist who was just reviling him. And it was just really ugly. And Larry King was trying to be fair, but this guy was really being ugly. And I was impressed that John MacArthur kept proclaiming that here's what the Bible teaches about these things. Here's what marriage is. Oh, you think you're so righteous? No, actually, I think we're sinners, but Jesus. See, the same book, he kept saying this, the same book that teaches God's way of life and truth and what's right and wrong. It also tells you that Jesus died for your sins. And look, I'm a sinner just like anybody there. We're not saying that. We're saying Jesus is the way, the truth, and life. Like a week later, I was at a conference with John MacArthur. And it's the only time I've ever met him, by the way. Liked him a lot. And I said, he did such a great job. I just want to praise you." He goes, well, it's fascinating because I got a call from the White House about three o'clock in the afternoon that day saying, our polls tell us that if you will make this argument, 42% of voters will respond with that. And if you'll make this argument, then 36% and it's a, now this argument doesn't work well, so we're just giving you our polling data. And MacArthur said to the White House, Oh, you're mistaken. They said, well, you're going on to speak about gay marriage. He goes, no, they've asked me to speak. with gay marriage as a topic, I have come to say that the Bible is the word of God and Jesus is the savior of sinners. So the whole data is of no value to me because I actually haven't come to talk about gay marriage or about whatever. I've come to declare the light of truth that's in the word of God and the blood of Jesus saving sinners. Well, the next hour was another guy who clearly, I won't give you his name, another famous guy of that generation, another conservative who clearly had taken the data from the Bush administration. They're just being politicians, I don't blame them. And his arguments, and it was totally ineffective. It was just an argument of data and all that, and he had MacArthur on it in the first half, the Bible is the truth of God, Jesus is the Savior-Sinner, the next evangelical preacher, you know, doctors say that 42% of people who engage in homosexuality get these diseases and whatnot. And I thought, how much more effective it was when whatever the topic was, The Christian came forward to say the Bible's the Word of God and Jesus is the Savior of sinners. Isn't that what Jesus is doing in the Sanhedrin in a different way? He is revealing himself as are you the Messiah? I am and you will see him coming with glory. What a model for us. It takes that humility and we're gonna be reviled. It means we're going to lose a lot. You think of people in Chinese courts right now with their churches being bulldozed. They're going to be sent to work camps. They're going to loot. No, no, they're going to win. because A, he is going to come back and he's going to save us, and B, people are saved through those witnesses, even in those places, even in our places, by declaring the Bible as the word of God and Jesus as the savior of sinners, why some of our captors themselves will be converted. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. That is our message. Father, I pray your blessing on this. We think of our Lord. And Father, we have ourselves so sinned against Him, and I myself was an unbeliever for a long time, and I heaped my scorn on Jesus. And yet, Lord, You saved me, You saved all of us, Your people. Thank You that You love us so much that the Son of God did not just walk out and say, none of this, nor did He refuse the cross. but He took it, He was like a sheep before the shearers. In fact, He was the Lamb, the Lamb of God who took away our sins. Give us a sense of His wonder, Lord, and then let Him be not only our Savior, first our Savior, but then our example. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.