Ep. 5: The Trial of Jesus | The Crucifixion of Jesus

After he was arrested, Jesus was taken to trial. This wasn't what we think of as a trial with a defense lawyer and an impartial jury. No, this one was rigged from the beginning. Far from fair, the outcome had already been decided before Jesus ever showed up in the room. My friend Allie is going to unpack it for us right now. So Jesus gets arrested, and they arrest him at night. And as he is arrested, they take him under cover of darkness to the house of the high priest named Caiaphas. And Caiaphas has the rest of the religious leaders gathered in his home for a trial. And Jesus is bound and pushed up in front of these leaders and he is accused. Now, they had already determined the outcome. They were going to convict him of something. And there was nothing about this trial that was just. They paraded in witness after witness, looking for things to accuse him of. Most of their stories didn't hold water until a couple of guys come forward who remember Jesus threatening the temple, saying something about the temple being destroyed. And so they repeat Jesus's words about the temple. And the irony begins because those words about destroying the temple and raising it again in three days, that's actually what's going to go down here. Jesus meant the temple of his body, and he was about to be destroyed and rise again in three days. But of course, they didn't know that.

These witnesses, these false witnesses that accuse him, that are seeking to convict him, they actually speak the truth of what's about to go down. And the irony doesn't stop there. The next piece of irony is that Jesus, the one accused, is the only one who tells the truth. He, almost in like an act of frustration, the high priest sort of blurts out, tell us whether you are the Christ. Are you the son of God? And Jesus owns it clearly and fully right here and right now. And as he tells him, yes, I am the Christ, the son of God, his very words, they call a lie, are the only truth spoken during this sham of a trial. The truth is called lie. The lie is called truth. And the irony continues because as Jesus answers them, he says, soon you will see me, the son of man, coming on the clouds. Now, this is a picture of judgment. Jesus is the real judge, and he's sitting under the judgment of others right now. And he says, but that's not the end. One day you'll know. One day you will see me come as your judge right here as you sit as mine. Everything about this trial reminds me right now of living here and living now. The pain of living in our country over the last year or two is I can't tell what's true. I can't figure out the truth from the lies sometimes. And Jesus understood this exact dynamic. He understands when we feel the tension of living in a place where good is called bad and bad is called good and truth is

called lie and lie is called truth, that's exactly what was going on in this trial. So the real irony, the final act of irony was God's because through this falsehood, through this ridiculous trial, God accomplishes his mercy and his justice once and for all. He goes straight through the lies. He goes straight through the sin. He goes straight through the falsehood, and he accomplishes the greatest act of redemption ever done on the face of the earth, and he doesn't ever seem to mind that this is all going down. Jesus stays completely calm. How could he do that? It's because he knew that God's mission is never thwarted by man. Nothing that these guys could do, nothing that these guys could say, nothing that was going to go down in this trial was ever going to stop the mission of God. So Jesus speaks the truth. He allows himself to be bound, and he gets led away. And the last piece of irony is that the religious leaders seeking to kill him, condemn him, convict him, they can't even do what they came to do. Jesus has to go on. They have no authority to even kill him. So they bind him and they drag him to pilot the Roman governor, which is who he's going to see next. You