Who's Really on Trial?, Part 2

Bring up the name of Jesus in a public setting and you'll be quick to discover the broad spectrum of personal opinions.

Few are undecided and many have very strong views. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll wants us to meet the real Jesus, the one who's described in the timeless Word of God. In an authoritative first-hand account recorded in Matthew chapter 26, it's difficult to have anything but deep respect for the One who gave His life for us.

Chuck titled his message, Who's Really on Trial? and we begin with prayer. Thank you, Father, for your faithful forgiveness, for your compassionate understanding, for meeting us where we are, for realizing that we are but human flesh, and we are given to failure and flaws. When we see it lived out in the life of a man like Peter, we see ourselves and we realize by your grace, every one of us is able to go on and only by that grace. Thank you for that. Thank you for Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us. Thank you for His willingness to suffer unjustly and to deal with this punishment that was inflicted on Him though it was not deserved, for His death on our behalf that made it possible for us to know you, for Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God through Him.

Thank you for that. For this season of the year when we are first brought before you with thankful hearts and then filled with gratitude for your son's death on our behalf. Thank you for bringing Him to us as a babe born in the manger, for the reminder every year as we come to this scene and relive it, that we realize your great love for us in giving us your son that we might know you personally. Now we pray, our Father, as we give today that we will do so by faith knowing that you will use these offerings for your greater glory and for your purposes. May they minister in a special way in places where we will never go, in lives that we will never meet, so that your work will continue on here and beyond these walls and around this world. We commit the offering to you as well as these words in prayer in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Everyone said, amen. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck titled, Who's Really on Trial? By the death of Christ and our believing in Jesus, God graciously imputes to us His own righteousness in place of our unrighteousness. He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. So the trade-off is magnificent when you look at it vertically. Without that vertical perspective, it's all a tragedy.

It's all heartbreakingly cruel. But the moment of salvation, God grants the believing sinner his righteousness because of what Christ did on our behalf. He was, as the baptizer put it, the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world.

And by doing that, we are not then forced to pay for our own sins because Christ has done that on our behalf. And now we go from that good news back to the awful horizontal scene of the dark part of the story as we look at two men on trial, actually. One is Jesus, whose trial is public, albeit all of them are illegal. The other one on trial is Peter. Remember the words of Jesus to Peter, before the rooster crows this very night, you will have denied me three times. And Peter, with great dogmatism, says, though all these others may desert you, I will never desert you. And he spoke too soon because within a matter of a very short period of time, as we will see in this study, he denies him exactly as Jesus said he would.

Not once, not twice, but three times. Let's pick up the trial at verse 57 here in Matthew 26. Turn in your Bibles there and we will look at both men on trial. One of them is hiding away. That's Peter.

The other is in public. And that's Jesus. Verse 57.

The people who had him arrested led him to the home of Caiaphas, the high priest, where the teachers of religious law and the elders had gathered. Now, if I figure correctly, and I've worked on it tediously, this is about three o'clock in the morning. Think about it. Three o'clock in the morning. And there's a trial being held in the home of Caiaphas. The Jewish Code states the members of the court may not alertly and intelligently hear the testimony against the accused during darkness. Period. Clearly stated that there was to be no trial at night. Last time I checked, three o'clock in the morning.

It's dark. I like the way Matthew eases into Peter's setting. We read in verse 58. Meanwhile, Peter followed at a distance and came to the high priest's courtyard. He went in and sat with the guards and waited to see how it would all end. Now, you and I are looking at this 2,000 years later.

OK? We are, we are, therefore, rather objective observers. As this unfolds, all kinds of things are happening in people's minds, including Peter's. Peter has fled in the darkness out of the Garden of Gethsemane, along with all the other disciples, not wanting to be known as one of the followers of Jesus for fear of his own life. And he has sort of blanked out of his mind, we can do that easily when we panic, the prediction of Jesus that before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. So Peter is simply sitting in the courtyard at a distance, watching to see what's going to happen.

He does not want to be identified. John adds that there was a fire, and no doubt you were able to see the faces from the flickering of the fire in this early morning hour, the only way they were able to identify him, as he's hiding over here in the shadows. But he's over here, Jesus is on trial there. Look at how the trial unfolds.

So Matthew brings us back inside. Verse 59, inside, the leading priests in the entire high council, that's the supreme council, the supreme court of the Jews, were trying to find witnesses who would lie about Jesus, so they could put him to death. They found false witnesses and realized there's no way that's going to ever hold up. Finally, there were two men who came and testified, we heard him say I'm able to destroy this temple and rebuild it in three days.

They didn't get the symbolism of that. Jesus referring to his own body that would die and ultimately be raised from the dead. They took it as the literal temple that would be raised in three days, and he was going to destroy their great temple about which they were so proud. And so the high priest, verse 62, hears that, stands up, and says to Jesus, aren't you going to answer the charges? What do you have to say for yourself? Jesus remained silent. The high priest said to him, I demand in the name of the living God. Here's a man who's been looking for liars who will testify in this trial, and now demanding in the name of the living God that Jesus speak. And he says, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus' response is as much as saying, you have just said so.

When he says, you have said it. In the future, you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God's right hand, coming in the clouds of heaven. At that point, the high priest tore his garments. He throws a fit and shows his horror and screams blasphemy. By the way, as we'll see next time, that's a charge that would never hold up in a Roman court.

The Romans were people of many gods. There wasn't such a thing as blasphemy in a Roman court. The verdict there would have to be treason, which is what they changed it to when he stood before Pilate. But in a Jewish court, the ultimate verdict against a person on trial is blasphemy. And that's what they charge him with. Why do we need other witnesses? You've heard this blasphemy.

What's your verdict? And they scream guilty, as if they are puppets ready to do exactly as told. And then we read, they began to spit in Jesus' face and beat him with their fists. Some slapped him jeering, prophesy to us, you Messiah who hit you that time. Philip Keller has written a fine book years ago titled Rabboni.

The word for rabbi. And in the book Rabboni, he gives us vignettes along the way from his resources of the scene as it may have unfolded. Listen to Keller's words regarding the torture. To celebrate, they decided to indulge in a ghastly game of terrible torture. Here were men who were supposed to protect the interests of their people, subjecting an innocent person to appalling abuse. They turned Jesus over to the street ruffians for some horrible amusement. There's nothing so cruel as the bestial behavior of unregenerate men who play with hapless victims in their clutch.

It is a common practice with prisoners, and we scarcely dare to look on. The roughnecks blindfold the master. They pummeled his weary body. They spat in his face until their foul-smelling saliva ran down over his flushed cheeks. They jeered at him, challenging him to prophesy who had last struck him a stinging blow.

They slashed and smashed his face until it was purple and swollen with great welts. He, the Christ, was in a bear garden with beasts, writes Philip Keller. Meanwhile, Peter is at a distance. Probably doesn't see this going on, but he's curious about what's happening. We pick up his story in verse 69. Peter is sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant girl came over and said to him, you were one of those with Jesus the Galilean. Now, how would she know that? Remember, for over three years, Peter has been in a group following Jesus, a group of disciples.

Furthermore, he's been the leader of the group, quite likely, more often than not, out front. Maybe she had heard him as he spoke. She obviously had seen him, and he had made an impression on her as she saw him. And when she sees his face, she declares, you were one of them. You followed with those disciples.

You're a follower of his. Here's the first of three denials. Verse 70, Peter denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about, he said.

This is why I added earlier, there's this ability to blank out of our minds statements that have been made earlier. I think Peter is, if you will, fighting for his life. And in this moment of panic, having been found out, he has forgotten the words of Jesus regarding the denials. So he does what you do when you're covering your own tail. I don't know the man.

I don't know what you're talking about. She lets it go, but verse 71 tells us a little later, out by the gate. Notice the change of location. Before he's in the courtyard, but now he's moved out by the gate. Another servant girl notices him, probably had also seen him when he had been walking among the disciples. And she said to those standing around, this man was with Jesus of Nazareth. And now Peter swears he's not one of them. He says with an oath, I don't even know the man that you're referring to.

And a little later, some of the other bystanders came over to Peter and said, you must be one of them. We can tell by your Galilean accent. We find that curious because we are not Jewish. Most of us are not.

And we're not from Israel, so we're not familiar with that. But we're, most of us are from this country. And we know that even in our country, there are accents. I'm often standing down front, meeting people, following the service, and people from all over the country, in fact, often outside our country, come by to greet and to say hello and to spend a few moments talking.

And, you know, it doesn't take a scholar to pick up an accent. And I will often say, what part of the South are you from? And they will laugh and say, well, I'm from actually South Carolina. How could you tell? And it's a dead giveaway.

It reminds me of the phone call I got when I was in California from a man I'd never met before and picked up the phone. I said, this is Chuck. He said, hey, you probably can't tell it, but I'm from Texas. I said, actually, I can tell. Believe it. I can tell.

I said, did you go to school? And yeah, I went to hard pain. H.A.R.D. pain.

Went to hard pain. Oh, really? Yeah.

What did you major in? Speech? You know, I could tell you're from Texas. It stands out. People from New York, you could tell. From Jersey, you could tell.

And they're always surprised. You could tell they're from Jersey or one other part of maybe New England. You can you can spot it.

When you're from Israel, the land and you're around those from Galilee, you know right away it has that accent. And he can't hide it. In fact, he's not even you're not aware that you speak with an accent.

When you have one and he realizes they've got him. It's true. I'm Galilean. But now he's got to get out of this mess. So please observe what he does. Your Bible says he swore a curse on me if I'm lying. I want to be careful here, unless you think out came a lot of profanity in this statement. What he uses is a word that is so severe. It's a term used of pronouncing death on oneself at the hand of God.

If he should be lying. In other words, may I be damned before Almighty God if I am not telling the truth. That kind of swear. That kind of oath.

And that's about as extreme as you could get. In his third denial, the first denial is verse 70, the second 72, and the third is in verse 74. And notice no one argues with him now. No more pointing of fingers at Peter. Probably he wasn't. No one would say that that followed a person like him. At least it doesn't seem that he would.

People watch us. Had a man after the first morning service come by and tell me of his 17 years he spent in prison. And he said, I will I will never forget. I, I am a believer in Christ.

I was a believer when I was behind bars those 17 years. And he said, I want to tell you, people aren't interested in a sermon. They aren't interested in your testimony or a lot of your words. They're interested in your life.

They're watching your life. So I learned that finally and then ultimately I learned in while I was behind bars that it isn't about me. So that's probably the most important lesson I could have learned. Peter hasn't learned that.

Not yet. He will. In fact, he later writes two letters to people who were going through dreadful times of pain in their lives.

But that's later. Right now, he is neck deep, backslidden. Walking in the flesh. Total denial.

And nobody else questions him. By the way, you may not realize it, but three things happened at this point simultaneously. To see them, you've got to go to Luke chapter 22. Turn over there, will you? Luke 22.

Yeah, there it is. Luke 22. We're picking up the same story as seen through Luke's pen. Someone, I'm in verse 59 of Luke 22.

This must be one of them because he's a Galilean. And Peter said, man, I don't know what you're talking about. Here's the first of three things that occurred. Immediately while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. While that oath was coming out of his mouth, the rooster crows. If he didn't remember the words of Jesus, he certainly remembered the comment about the rooster.

He must have stung to hear that sound in the distance. Can you imagine the guilt, the shame that must have overcome Peter? Deep down, Peter knew he'd failed his friend, Jesus. You're listening to a message delivered by pastor and Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll.

He titled his message, Who's Really on Trial? Please keep listening to Insight for Living because there's much more we need to learn about the final week in Jesus' life. To learn more about this ministry, please visit us online at insightworld.org. Just before our time is entirely gone for today, I'm pleased to tell you Chuck Swindoll writes a daily devotional sent by email.

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