The lesson this morning will
be taken from Luke chapter 22. Luke chapter 22, verses 54 through
the end of the chapter. I kind of hesitated with my title
this morning. I don't know really how to title
this lesson. One man that I read titled His
Majesty on Trial. And that's a very good title. But I title mine, The Trial of
Christ. Christ must be put on trial. That's what the prophets spoke
about. So let's read these verses together.
Luke chapter 22, beginning with verse 54. Then took they him, and brought
him into the high priest's house. And Peter followed afar off.
And when they kindled a fire in the midst of the hall and
were set down together, Peter sat down among them, that is,
that lynch mob that come to take him to the priest's house. But
a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly
looked upon him and said, This man was also with him. And he denied him, saying, Woman,
I know him not. And after a little while another
saw him and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man,
I am not. And about the space of one hour
after another competently affirmed Saying of a truth, this fellow
also was with him, for he is a Galilean. And Peter said, Man,
I know not what thou sayest. And immediately why he spake,
the cock crowed. And the Lord turned and looked
upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word
of the Lord, how he had said unto him before the cock crowed,
Thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. And the men that held Jesus mocked
him and smote him. And when they had blindfolded
him, they struck him on the face and asked him, saying, Prophesy,
who is it that smote thee? And many other things blasphemously
spake they against him. And as soon as it was day, the
elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes
came together and led him into their council, saying, Art thou
the Christ? Tell us. And he said unto them,
If I tell you, you will not believe. And if I also ask you, you will
not answer me, nor let me go. Hereafter shall the Son of Man
sit on the right hand of the power of God. Then said they
all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye
say that I am. And they said, What need we any
further witness? For we ourselves have heard of
his own mouth. Now in the dead of night, early,
early, early in the morning, A multitude of men and women
came and followed Judas, who knew where the Lord would be,
knew that he'd be in prayer, knew that he'd be on the Mount
of Olives, that he knew exactly where he'd be, he knew that there'd
be no multitude around him, so those who came didn't have to
fear the multitude, and he would secretly betray him. And so they came to lay hold
of this man, Jesus of Nazareth. John wrote that they sent out
a group of men on one occasion, and they returned empty-handed.
They sent out a group of men, and they said, go get him, go
fetch him, bring him back here to our council. And they went
out, and they come back, and he said, well, where's Jesus? We don't have him. Well, why
not? They said, never a man spake
like this man. Huh? And they come back empty-handed. But this was their hour. That's
what Christ said in the verses above, verse 53. This is your
hour. God's given you this hour. He's
given you permission to do what you could never do before. Couldn't
lay hands on Him because His hour was not yet come. Now this
is your hour. This is your hour. And this is
the power of darkness playing out its part by God's permission
who enabled these men to actually do what they tried to do before
and couldn't. His hour was not yet come. I
believe there were women in that mob or else how would the maiden
have known who Peter was and knew that he was present when
they went to get him? I don't know who all was in that
mob. There was Roman soldiers for sure. The high priest wasn't
with them, but his servant was because Peter cut off his ear. And never, in my opinion, has
depravity been exposed as it was in the suffering of Christ
and this trial and his crucifixion. If you want to know what's in
the heart of man, read that. Read that. Brother Don said this,
like wild beasts or enraged savages, they brought our Lord to the
high priest's house and there treated him with a cruelty beyond
what even the worst of lawbreakers were made to bear. When they
arrested a murderer, a rapist, whatever, they didn't treat them
like they treated him. They'd brought them in, they'd
lock them in prison, they'd leave them there and bring them to
trial and then take them out and crucify them. But they didn't
treat them before the trial like they treated Christ. They didn't
mock them. They didn't do any of these things.
Well, why was it that they did that? Because they hated him.
Why did they hate him? It says they hated him without
a cause. They had no reason. They couldn't
give you a reason. If they could have given a reason,
they would have. They never did give a reason.
They hated him without a cause. And his tormentors had no pity
on him. He had no man there to vindicate
his character or plead his case. No one. No one. What a trump. What these men saw and yet, believe
not, speaks volumes about man's depravity and ignorance. Our
Lord uttered the words, I am, when they come together. Whom seek ye? Jesus of Nazareth.
He said, I am. What happened? That whole lynch
mob fell backwards on the ground. They saw that. They experienced
that. They saw Peter wield that sword
and cut the servant of the high priest's ear off. He wasn't aiming
for his ear. He was going to cut his head
off. But he missed and cut his ear
off. And the Lord reached down and took that ear, put it right
back on where it was, and restored that man. They saw that. Wouldn't
that have some impression on you, wouldn't you think? Here's
an ear laying on the ground. He picks it up and puts it back.
Now, there ain't even a scar. Man's ears back work perfect. This whole mob with staves and
swords and knives and clubs and they come out there and with
a word they all fall down to the ground. Wouldn't that have
some impression on you? And this one they hated so much,
had no pity on, said to them, here's another example of God's
power, another miracle. He said, if you seek me, let
these go. And they did. They did. And that's just what they saw
that night, no telling how many things they saw in the
years that our Lord ministered to men. Some were present when
he called Lazarus out of the tomb. You remember immediately
after they called Lazarus out of the tomb, they had a high
council meeting. And this is the high council
gathered here. They had a meeting of the high council and they
said, what are we going to do? If he continues to do this, everybody's
going to follow him. Everybody's going to believe
on him. Again, I say this is depravity
exposed as nowhere else. So much so that our Lord called
it the power of darkness. This is your hour and the power
of darkness. The power of darkness can see
things that moves us because we have eyes to see, but it didn't
move them. God's been saving people Thousands
of years he'd been saving men. This world sees it, but it has
no impression on now. He split seas. He caused the
sun to stand still. On and on and on you can go with
the miraculous things that no one but God could do. He caused
the Jordan River at flood stage to stand still. Can you imagine such a thing?
And yet it has no saving effect on men. And churches today, especially
Pentecostal churches, they're looking for miracles and signs
and wonders and all this kind of thing because they think that
will have an impression on men and God will save them. It never
has. It never has. This is depravity exposed as
it is nowhere else. So much so that he calls it the
power of darkness. And in the midst of it all, he's
described, now all this is going on. I can't even imagine, and
I'm not going to go into all the details, but they blindfolded
him. Can you imagine? This is omniscience. This is God. He sees all, no
matter how many blindfolds you get. Did he know who smote him? Yeah, he did. He did. And the truth of that will come
out in judgment. You want to know who smoked me? You did. You did. He sees all. And yet
he's blindfolded. This is omnipotent God. He's
God over all, blessed forever. This man, Christ Jesus, is God. Omnipotent. Created the world
with a word. And they held him captive. Can
you imagine? And in the midst of all this,
he's described as humbling himself. He humbled himself and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Humble obedience. Obedience under
the most severe circumstances. Isaiah said he was oppressed
And he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. That is,
no complaint, no fear. He was brought as a lamb to the
slaughter and as a sheep before his shearers was done, so he
opened not his mouth. He knew the will of his father
and humbly submitted to it. And oh, how they mocked and tortured
the Son of God, our Savior. And it says, and many other things
that are not written here, many other things, blasphemously spake
they against him. Think of the restraint of our
Savior. Now I'm a man, a sinful man,
and you can mock me, and you can do certain things, but if
you violate my airspace, me and you gonna tangle. I've just got so much restraint.
I have limits, and when I pass that limit, we're going to lock
horns. But he didn't. And he suffered. He suffered. You could mock me, and it'd be
true. It'd be true. But they mocked him, and it wasn't
true. This was the Son of God. And
here's these sinful men who had no idea who was standing before
them, and they're mocking him. Can you imagine the restraint
of our Savior? Think of the determination to
overcome such a thing. He was God, and yet man. And
God can't suffer, but man can, and man did. And then think of
the love that constrained him. Think of the mercy and grace
being manifested in that hour. And all of this before daylight. The high council had not yet
met. They brought him to the priest's house. Have you ever
thought about why they brought him to the high priest's house?
Most of this mob was Roman soldiers. Why would a Roman soldier bring
this man Jesus of Nazareth to the priest's house. Why wouldn't
he take him down to Pilate or take him down to the judgment
hall? Why did he bring him to the priest's
house? Read Leviticus chapter 1 and you'll see. The sin offering
had to be brought to the priest. Now, Jesus is fulfilling that
ceremonial law of the lamb being brought to the priest. And this
is it. This is what he's doing. They
had to bring him. They didn't know what they was doing. They
didn't sit around and flip a coin and say, well, where are we going
to take him? No, this is God's providence.
You're going to take him to the priest's house. We'll take him
down there. They brought him there to fulfill
the typical ceremony of the sin offering, and they brought him
there that Christ might die for our sins according to the Scripture. Scripture says, thus it was written
and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and rise from the dead
because of the Scriptures. Christ our Passover, our sin
offering, had to be bound and led away as all the other sacrifices
for sin were bound and led away to the priest to fulfill the
life. And I see something in this that
transcends the outward. rises above the wickedness and
cruelty and baseness of these evil men. I see the hand of God
in the midst of all this accomplishing what we could never do, our salvation. He's accomplishing this before
all, before an evil world, He's accomplishing this. I see a representative man condescending
to take our place before the judgment seat of God, receiving
what we deserve, bearing what should have been our debt and
what was our debt. I do not see a weakness here.
I see strength beyond measure. Don't you? Oh, I see this man,
Jesus, upholding all things by the word of His power. That's
what Scripture says. And in the various accounts,
it says they bound Him. They took Him. They led Him. They laid hold on Him. Can you
imagine? Omnipotence held captive. Our Lord voluntarily went into
captivity that he might leave captivity captive and set his
people free and give them gifts. His suffering was never meant
to make us feel sorry for him. People did. The women did. They wept. And he said, don't
weep for me. Weep for yourselves. Weep for
your children. His suffering was a righteous
suffering. Peter said, for Christ also has
once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might
bring us to God. Can I see that everything that
led up to and including the cross was brought to pass according
to God's hand and God's counsel? When it says God's hand, he's
talking about his might, his power. When he talks about his
counsel, he's talking about his purpose. And in Acts chapter
4, he said, everybody there did exactly that. What God's hand
and God's counsel determined before to be done. Immediately
following Peter's confession that Jesus was the Christ, he
said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. You remember
his confession over there in Matthew. Well, immediately following
that in Matthew 16, 21, it says, from that time forth, began Jesus to show unto his
disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many
things. He told them that he had to go
there and he told them why. He had to suffer many things
of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and
be raised again the third day. What else do I see here? I see
myself. And I see myself with bifocal
lenses. I see myself. He bore our sins
in his own body on the tree. I see myself. I see myself mocking
him and smiting him and rejecting him and treating him as an imposter. I did that most of my life. Caught up in the moment, I see
myself with Peter denying the vote of glory. I see myself with
the crowd rebelling against his authority. I see myself, my sin,
and my actions all displayed for all to see. But I also see myself in the
Son of Man, my substitute and my redeemer. And this is hope
for the hopeless. There I am, bearing the wrath
of God, bearing the judgment of God, bearing the awful providence
that follows sin. I see it right there, I see myself.
Salvation is altogether accomplished in Christ and there's no hope
apart from Him, there's no grace apart from Him, no mercy, no
love, no forgiveness, no righteousness, no justification, no power with
God, no peace with God. What do I see? I see myself like
Peter, learning the truth about myself and weeping bitterly. I see at the same time a love
that cannot be destroyed and a hatred that knows no limit. There was a day in which I saw
my sin as just a few transgressions. I did this, I did that, I could
name them. I could bow my head in prayer
and name those things that I called sin. I thought that's what breached
whatever peace I might have with God was those things that I did. I saw it in a few acts of rebellion. Nothing worthy of death or eternal
judgment but things that needed attention. But the truth about
the sinner is he hates God. That's his problem. He hates
God. Well, you say, I don't hate God. No, you don't hate your
God. They didn't either. But they
hated the God he preached. They hated that God. Men don't hate their conception
of God. They don't even hate this world's
traditional ideas about God. They hate the God of the Bible,
the true and living God, the God of election. You don't think
people hate that God? Preach it to them. Witness it
to them. You'll find out. The God of predestination. I had an elder in the church
I was going to, and I was trying to look into these things. I
just discovered that they were in the Bible. And I was asking
questions about it. Oh, he said, The secret things
belong unto the Lord. And I said, well, why is it in
this book if it's secret? Don't you reckon somebody should
have told Paul about that before he wrote it down? He doesn't
just mention it once, mentions it several times. Tells you exactly
what it is and what it means. Oh, the God of predestination,
the God of imputed righteousness. None righteous, no not one. Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness. The God of all grace. The omnipotent God. The God who
declares the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things
that are not yet done saying my counsel shall stand and I'll
do all my pleasure. They hate that God. They got a whole list. They'll
pull it out and give it to you. A whole list of what abouts.
There's no what about with God. I don't even have to understand
what God says, I just need to believe it. There's a lot of
things about God I don't understand. Everything men did on that awful
day, they did of themselves, it was their idea, it was their
scheme, it was their will, yet by the hand infinitely above
anything they could imagine, God worked. You know, he tells
us way back yonder in the book of Proverbs, he said, the heart
of the king, what king? Any king! Every king! The heart
of the king is in the hand of the Lord, just like those rivers
of waters that we pass. He turneth it withersoever he
will. Huh? We go down to First Old
Red River and crappie fish sometimes. That's where the river used to
be. It ain't now. Huh? It's quite a ways from there,
isn't it? How come? God turned his hand. How come this king goes that
way? God turned his hand. See, men hate that God. They
hate that God. Isaiah 53 says, And keep in mind
what I just said. These men, they come up with
these things in their own mind, what they were going to do, how
they were going to do it. Here they are. Now listen to
what Isaiah said, long before Christ ever come and suffered
these things. He was smitten of God and afflicted. But that was a man that slapped
him. Yeah, it was God. That's what it says. He was smitten
of God. and afflicted. The Lord laid
on him the iniquity of us all. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him. He hath put him to grief. And
oh, how natural man hates a sovereign God, one who rules and reigns
even over his wicked heart and mind. There was mercy that day, but
it was sovereign mercy. There was grace that day, but
it was sovereign grace. There was love that day, but
that love was particular. And oh, how natural man hates
a God that is God. What do you see when you read
these verses? Do you see a poor, frustrated reformer doing the
best he can and coming up short? That's how religion portrays
him. Do you see God doing all he can do and leaving the rest
up to man? That's how religion portrays
him. What do you see? May the Lord give us all better
eyes than that. I see God working in Christ,
accomplishing our salvation. That's what I see. When daylight came, they led
him into the council. And when they did, they asked
him this question, Are thou the Christ? Are you the Christ? Is he? This whole book is about the
Christ. To him give all the prophets witness. Through this man is
preached unto you the forgiveness of sin. Now here's the question, is Jesus
of Nazareth the Christ? Now here is the answer to all
those who think they deserve to hear it. These men demanded
of him, read it over in John chapter 10, they demanded, art
thou the Christ? How long dost thou make us to
wait? Art thou the Christ? Tell us
plainly. He said, I told you, plainly. And here's the answer to all
those who think they deserve to hear it, to all those who
demand it, to all those who think they have a right to know. Verse 67. He said, if I tell
you, you will not believe. You will not believe. He'd already
told them. On how many occasions did he
tell them? And listen to this, verse 68,
and if I also ask you, you will not answer me nor let me go.
That is, if I enter into a discourse on the subject, if I sit and
debate the issue, if I enter into a discourse on the subject
and require an answer to those things proving me to be the Messiah,
or even to know your objection to these things, you will not
answer me and you will not let me go. In a short time, he said, the
Son of Man is going to sit on the right hand of the power of
God. This one you're about to judge,
this one you're about to put to death, this one that you're
going to hire false witnesses to lie against. This one that
you're mocking and slapping and all of these things. In a short
time, I'm going to take my seat at the right hand of the power
of God. Oh, is Jesus of Nazareth the
son of God? If he's not, he is an imposter. The biggest shame ever been put
over all men, if he's not. And here's what they said. Are
you the son of God, Ben? Is that what you're telling us,
you're the son of God? He said, that's what you said.
That's what you said. And they said, what need we any
further witness? We ourselves have heard of his
own mouth. Let me ask you something. I ask myself, what do I say? What do I say about this thing? Well, I say with the apostles,
Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief. In spite of my sin, in spite
of my depravity, and despite all the weaknesses that's in
a man, I do believe. I do believe. my unbelief. I see the Son of Man dying in
my room instead, ascending up into glory and taking His seat
at the right hand of the power of God, having power over all
flesh, that He might give eternal life to as many as the Father
has given to Him. O great God in heaven, help us
to believe on your Son. Can you see Him accomplishing
your salvation in this? This is not, he's not doing this
for folks to feel sorry for him. Don't feel sorry for me, feel
sorry for yourself. Wait for yourself, wait for your
children. Oh great God, give me eyes to see and a heart to
understand. Thank you.