Light Shines in Darkness: Trials One and Two, Matthew 26:57; John 18:12-14

We will be in Matthew chapter 26 and back again, and we will also spend a little time in John chapter 18. What we are beginning to examine today and for the next few weeks are the trials and denials of Peter. He will go through six trials and then during the same time there are the denials of Peter. They are interwoven, and we will be looking at them this morning. Because the first trial is described only in the Gospel of John, we must understand the backdrop for that trial within the structure and argument of John.

John presents Jesus as the as the light of the world, the light who came into the world to shine in darkness. I emphasized that a little bit as we went through what happened at the garden of Gethsemane. It's nighttime; it is pitch black. You have the 600+ coming maybe 800 or 1000 people in the crowd, coming to arrest Jesus. The text emphasizes they had torches and lamps with them as they come to arrest the light of the world. There is this interplay there that is very subtle in the text between light and darkness. But when we get to John we are going to see something else that is brought out in the text as we see Jesus the light of the world coming into the darkness, the darkness of the religious leaders and their trials, the darkness of the Roman leaders and their trials and what they will do for Him. What we see here is His light penetrating the darkness, exposing the darkness, and condemning the darkness.

When we look at the synoptic Gospels and the account in John one of the things that we see is that there seems to be a lot of difference between these accounts, and that is because each writer is focusing on some different aspects of those trials. No author represents all of them. There are actually six trials that take place. Among scholars there is debate as to whether or not these are six full-blown trials. Some want to say they are hearings, others want to say that there are really two trials—there is the religious trial and there is the criminal trial—but nevertheless they divide those into six portions, three each.

I like to use the term trial. I recognize there is a difference between our system of jurisprudence and what we think of as a trial and what other cultures think of as a trial. So don't confuse them. I think it is adequate to say they are six distinct trials.

One of the things that is brought out by many students of both Jewish history, as well as what takes place in these trials and also a knowledge of legal issues at the time in Rome and in Israel, is that these trials violate the laws of the Romans, and they profoundly violate the laws of the Jews.

The first three are basically the religious trials. The first trial is mentioned and described in John 18:12-14, and that is a trial before Annas, who is no longer the active legal high priest but he is the power behind the high priest throughout all this time, because he is either, as in the case with Caiaphas, the father-in-law, or he is the father of subsequent high priest. Then He will be sent from Annas to Caiaphas, which is not a long distance because they both lived in the same building. It was the house of the high priest, one lived in one wing and one lived in the other, so it was just going from one side of the house to the other. Then there was a third trial before the Sanhedrin. The trial by Annas is John 18:12-14; before Caiaphas. Matthew 26:57-68; before the Sanhedrin is described in Matthew 27:1-2.

Then they go from the Jewish trials, the religious trials, to the criminal trials, the trials before the Roman authorities. There is a trial before Pilate described in John 18:28-38, who doesn't want to have anything to do with it. This needs to be settled by Herod, so he sends Jean Jesus to Herod in Luke 23:6-12, and Herod sends him back to back to Pilate. That is described in John 18:39-19:6. As we go through this I don't want to just focus on what Matthew says, I want to look at the whole scope of what takes place here, and what transpires.

Remember Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane by a mixed multitude. There were Jewish religious leaders, the chief priests and the elders, Pharisees and Sadducees. There were Roman soldiers, Roman officers that were there, all of them coming together, Jew and Gentile, conspiring against the Son of God. And that crowd, that mixed multitude, represents the world, represents all of us. Jew and Gentile are responsible for the death of Jesus. There has been this horrible canard down through the centuries that the Jews were Christ killers, especially in the middle ages. This flourished into the horrible poisonous flower of anti-Semitism, and that shaped much of the relationship between Jews and Gentiles up until really the 19th century.

And then you really had the rise or the flourishing of what became known as British restorationism. There were not just Brits but there were many in Europe who believed that that the Jews were still God's chosen people, even though they had rejected Jesus as Messiah, and that God still had a future plan for their lives. And they played a critical role along with Jews. Most of the time neither side knew what the other was doing and eventually bringing the Jewish people back to their national homeland.

But this poisonous fruit of anti-Semitism has negatively shaped so much of the relationship between Christians and Jews so that there is deep suspicion in the Jewish community toward Christians. Often Jews do not understand Christians, and frankly not a whole lot better than most Christians understand Judaism. But a lot of that goes back to this misidentification of who is responsible for the death of Jesus. It is Jew and Gentile that is responsible for his for His death.

So the first thing we need to understand as we look at these passages is that there are the six trials. The second thing we need to observe is that this is a tremendously dramatic scenario. It is profound; it is intense; the emotions are running high. There is a little bit of anxiety, perhaps panic, on the part of the Jewish leaders because remember they didn't want Jesus arrested until after the feast days when the multitudes would not get upset, and they wanted to do it somewhat quietly, and all of a sudden because of Jesus revealed to Judas that He knew what He was up to and what the plot was, that Judas went to the chief priests and says it's either now or maybe He will escape again. And so at the last minute they had to throw everything together, and that's reflected a little bit in these trials. It's just sort of in this impromptu last minute we gotta do it now or never. And as a result of that, there were numerous illegalities that took place that night, the early dawn, and the next day.

What we need to also understand as we look at this is that each one of these Gospel writers has a different perspective based on the reason they are writing their Gospel. Matthew is presenting Jesus as the Messiah, as the Son of Man who is coming to offer His kingdom to Israel. The kingdom is rejected and postponed, and now the King, the Son of Man, of very Jewish messianic title, has been rejected by the Jews as Messiah, and He will now be crucified.

But in that crucifixion week He fulfills the suffering servant prophecy of Isaiah chapter 53, to die for the sins of His people, to provide righteousness for them. That is in Matthew.

In John, in the first trial, as well as in the last trial or the fourth trial and the six trial, we see Jesus presented as the Son of God, to display and reveal the glory of the Son of God as the incarnate Son of God.

In John 1:14, which is part of the intro the prologue to John, John says the word became flash, and dwelt among us. So we have the incarnation there, the eternal LOGOS who was God: "In the beginning was the word [the LOGOS], and the Word was with God and the word [the LOGOS] was God", an indisputable statement of the full deity of Jesus Christ. Then the incarnation is revealed in John 1:14, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth".

A lot of times when we think about the glory of God we think back to the Old Testament. We think of that brilliant pillar of fire that stood over the tabernacle that we often refer to as the Shekinah glory, the glory of the dwelling presence of God. We think of Moses going up on the mountain and he is with God, and when he comes down he has to put on a veil because his face just reflects this brilliant light that he has been exposed to while he is been in the presence of God. And so we think of the glory of God. That is something that is that is heavenly something from a different dimension, something that is profound, that is illuminating, that is brilliant. But the glory that John talks about is an everyday glory, that when Jesus was on the earth the glory He manifested wasn't that kind of glory. The glory that He manifested was the essence of God, and often in the Scriptures that term, the glory of God, is a way of talking about the essence of God.

For example, in Romans 3:23 it says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". What glory of God means there is the essence of God. We have fallen short of His of his standard. So when we look at this "and we beheld Jesus' glory" we are beholding his character. He is displaying for us the character of God in how He interacted with human beings. It is that glory or essence of the Father that is emphasized. Two qualities are emphasized here: grace and truth.

We are told a few verses later in John 1:18 that no one has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father has declared Him, or revealed Him. The word in the Greek is a word you've heard the English counterpart to, it's the word EXEGAO, from where we get our word exegesis. It displays out the glory of God. But how does it do it? It does in the everyday actions of Jesus Christ's life on the earth. In fact, in the next chapter in John chapter two we have the first sign that is given in the Gospel of John. "These signs are written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God", and here we have the first sign, which is the turning of the water into wine at the wedding in Cana. And at the conclusion of that event, we don't see Jesus showing the effulgence of His divine glory in some brilliant flash of light there. In fact, nobody really knew who He was. They were dumbfounded that this water got turned into the best wine they had ever had. And at the conclusion John says, "This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee and manifested His glory". It was His grace towards those who were at that wedding feast, in providing supplying for them more wine after they had run out.

And the disciples believed in Him. Now that's not saying that before this they were unbelievers and now they are believers. Through John this statement is made about the disciples again and again. It sort of reinforces what the original position was, and their understanding of who He is as Messiah, grows and grows through the Gospel.

But we also see a couple of other themes that are part of John's presentation of Jesus. This is the third thing that I want to emphasize in this introduction. We see this presentation of Jesus as the light that comes into the world of darkness. And John presents Jesus again and again is the light of the world. In John 1:19 he says, referring to Jesus, that "that was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world". So He is a light that illuminates every man coming into the world, but when He entered into the world, specifically the world of Israel at that time, He was rejected. He came to His own. The light came and they rejected Him and they did not receive Him. And this is very much a part of John's presentation of Jesus throughout his Gospel of John, that His own did not receive Him. And when we come to the trials it is emphasizing that His own, the leadership of His own, did not receive Him. Annas it is rejecting Him. Caiaphas as we already know has rejected Him. Annas has rejected Him and the Sanhedrin will come together and reject Him. But we know that there were some who received Him, and this is what John says in John 1:12. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, and to those who believe in His name".

In the third chapter of John, as we come to our favorite verse John 3:16, that "God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life". John then follows that up by saying, "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved". See the first advent wasn't the basis for the condemnation of the world, because the next verse in verse 18 goes on to say that they are already condemn, they are born condemned, they been condemned since Adam sinned. And in John 3:18 we read, "He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe in Him has been condemned already". He was born condemn "because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God".

The only solution to condemnation is belief, trusting in Christ as the Messiah who died on the cross for our sins. And at the instant that we believe, it's not believe and be good, it's not believe and improve your life, it's not believe and impress everybody with your giving, it's not believe and serve God; not that you shouldn't do all those things, they just have nothing to do with salvation. It is believe only in Jesus as your Savior, and that's what John says. Over 95 times in the Gospel of John he just uses that verb believe, believe, believe. It's never qualified. He doesn't say truly believe, genuinely believe, actually believe; it is just believe. And he never adds anything else to it. The solution is to believe.

We are condemned because we come into the world condemned, not because Jesus came in the world to condemn us at the first advent. But there is another sense in which there is a condemnation from Jesus. It is more in the sense of a conviction of sin and who we are, and that's what John brings out the very next verse. He says, "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil …" The religious leaders: the chief priests, the elders, the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees, Pharisees, for the most part. There were some who believed but they were a minority. "… hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed."

This is what we see in these trials, both the Jewish trials and the Roman trials. Jesus the light of the world stands before these human authorities that are supposed to judge Him, but in fact it is their deeds that are being brought to light in His light and are being exposed, and their condemnation is being revealed. Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God. He is guiltless; He is perfect; He is absolute righteousness. In fact, in 1 Peter 3:18, He is called the just or the righteous one who dies in the place of the unjust or the unrighteous ones. This is a theme that is being brought out by John. Jesus is standing there before these unjust judges, and even though they are judging Him in one sense, His very presence is a conviction to them, and there is a spiritual dimension to that that is being brought out by these various writers, but especially John.

A fourth thing that I want us to think about is in terms of the presentation in Matthew, another aspect of this dramatic presentation. If you're looking in Matthew 26:57 we are told that those who laid hold of Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest where the scribes and the elders were assembled. But if you look at the next verse it says, "But Peter was following Him at a distance as far as the courtyard of the high priest, and entered in, and sat down with the officers to see the outcome."

Those two verses basically set the stage. Think about going to a play, or maybe watching something on TV where you get a split screen so that you can see action that's contemporaneous, action going on in one place on this side action taking place on somewhere else on this side. That's what Matthew introduces here. One verse focuses us on Jesus going to trial; the other verse focuses on Peter on his way to denial. That's the structure here.

I want to focus on at least the first two trials and then we will come back and talk through the issues related to Peter's denials. On the one side were looking at Peter. He's outside the temple ground, he has disguised himself, and he is hoping against hope that he's going to gain some sight of his Lord and what are they doing with Him. He is as curious as he can be and wants to make sure everything's okay. But he doesn't want anybody to know who he is, and he certainly doesn't want to get arrested and condemned as well.

And on the other side were looking at our Lord. Think about this. He is demonstrating great courage. He is silent, He is not cowed, and He is not arrogant. He is standing straight firm, with a clear conscience. He's not standing arrogantly but He is not showing some kind of servile humility either. He is in fact in absolute control of the situation, even though He is under arrest and He is in the presence of these men who are going to condemn Him and take His life on the basis of trumped up charges, He is completely in control.

When we look at the Matthew account, Matthew doesn't tell us about the first trial. Matthew just gives us an introduction in verse 57 to Jesus being taken away to Caiaphas. He totally skips His going to Annas. He is led a way to Caiaphas the high priest where the scribes and elders are assembled. In the next verse he tells us what happens with Peter, and we come back in verse 59 and he begins to tell what happens in the trial with the chief priests, the elders and all the Council, which is the Sanhedrin. In verse 57 were told that the scribes and elders were assembled. That's the word SUNAGO in the Greek, which is the verb counterpart or cognate to the noun synagogue. It just means an assembly.

Verse 59 uses the word council. That is the word for Sanhedrin. That's a formal meeting of the Sanhedrin. What they are going to do is come together and seek a charge against Him, and to bring this charge against Him. This ultimately will be provided by Jesus who makes His messianic claim in verse 64, where He says after He is asked if he had is the Christ the Son of God, He says, "You have said it." He admits it. "… nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.”

We will look at this in an little more detail later, but He uses the title Son of Man, which comes out of Daniel seven, which is clearly a title of deity. It is one of the favorite titles that Matthew uses for Jesus in his Gospel, emphasizing that He is the messianic King who will come to establish His kingdom, based on Daniel seven.

But Jesus also then says He is the one who will be sitting at the right hand of the power. That's a circumlocution for the name of God that is a reference to Psalm 110, a messianic Psalm. So He clearly affirms the statement of who He is and that at the future, He says, you will be see me coming on the clouds of heaven.

Now we will come back to the second trial if we have time this morning. If not, I'll do it next time. We go to John chapter 18 John and we will look at what transpires in this first trial as the light of the world stands in the presence of the darkness of Annas and the high priesthood of Israel at that particular time.

We are told in John 18:12 following the arrest of Jesus that that the attachment of troops is added for clarification. The Greek word is the word that refers to a Roman cohort of troops. The captain that is mentioned there is the Greek word CHILIARCHOS, which referred to a tribune or a commander of the thousand troops. That just reinforces the fact that this is a large group of people. They have arrested Jesus, they have bound Him, we are told here, and then they lead Him away. It could be translated, "they brought Him to Annas first, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year".

Now who is Annas? I think it's really helpful for us to grasp the spiritual dynamics here, because Annas is almost the face of religious evil. He is worse than that. He is like a combination of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Godfather in the Godfather series. He is both and he is a criminal of the worst order. He is involved in all kinds of nefarious enterprises involving bribery and embezzlement and intimidation; all these things. And he's the head of this clan that controls the religious enterprise of Israel.

It is the worst of the worst that's taking place here. According to the Mosaic law, the high priest is appointed for life, and he is appointed by Quirinius when he became the procurator in Syria in AD 6, and then he was deposed later by his replacement, Valerius Gradius in AD 15 because he had become too powerful. He is removed and then they go through a period of a couple of years where three different high priests are appointed by Gradius and they don't last more than a year. There is one after this, it was very unstable, and then the fourth one that's appointed is Joseph Caiaphas who is Annas's son-in-law.

What's interesting is he continues to be high priest until 36. So he is there for approximately 18 or 19 years after such instability, and that shows something about Caiaphas, that he's able to work with the and ingratiate himself into those Romans who were in power. In fact, he even outlasted a Pontius pilot by several months. So that gives us in an insight into them.

Annas is a real powerbroker. He's pretty old by this time and he had five sons, each of whom were the high priests. He had a grandson who would become the high priest and one son in law, so they just had a lock on this power base in the priesthood. They ran an extremely corrupt illegal operation. They controlled all the booze. Jesus comes in to cast out the moneychangers. They are running and that whole operation, and are making a 200 per cent profit. It was just a scam where they are taking advantage of everybody who comes into the temple to worship. He is selling those concessions.

Jesus, of course, really challenges Annas head on each time He overturns the tables and drives the moneychangers out of the temple. That's a direct challenge to the family. That's a direct challenge to Annas, and so Annas has no love for Jesus. He hates Jesus; he wants to do away with Jesus. He has probably been trying to get a Caiaphas to hurry up and do something for some time. He's not looked on very favorably by later generations. Rabbis a couple of hundred years wrote in the Talmud, "Woe to the house of Annas. Woe to the serpents hiss". That's not a real positive view of Annas. "They are high priests, their sons are keepers of the treasure, their sons are guardians of the Temple and his servants beat the people with staves". How's that for a epitaph on your monument?

Well, Jesus is first brought to Annas in this trial, a sort of an arraignment perhaps. And Annas is trying to find something to cause Him to be guilty of. Now just a little bit about Caiaphas.

He is somebody who's able to really work with the Romans and authority. He is sort of the picture of the politician who's able to work both sides of the table, and he's like some of our politicians. No matter what happens they are in favor of it. And he's able to keep himself in power for a very long time now. What is also interesting is what goes on. You've got Caiaphas, and then Caiaphas exceeded by another of Annas's sons and then another of Annas's sons up through the 40s, so that every major martyr in the early church is put to death under the authority of an Annas descendent family member. They hated Christianity. In fact, they had such a lock on things that if you look at what's going on in the 30s with their hatred of Christianity they had a special hitman to go out and arrest and execute Christians. That was Saul of Tarsus.

That's the timeframe, and then of course Saul is confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus and that's around 37 or 38 so that's just a year after Caiaphas, but still under a high priest who was Annas's son. Caiaphas we know was alive. I think about close to 20 years or so ago they discovered the tomb of the family, and they discovered this ornate ossuary. That's a bone box for Caiaphas, and Caiaphas, John tells us in verse 14 was the one who advised the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people. John recorded that statement back in John chapter 12, and as a prophecy that Caiaphas is thinking of is that the Romans are going to want an accountability, and if we given somebody then maybe they'll bill back off. Maybe if we can give them Jesus then that will cause them to relax the pressure on the Jewish people. Little does he what the real meaning of that is going to be that Jesus will die for the people.

So Annas is going to interview Him, and John 18:19 says that he asked Jesus about His disciples, and about His doctrine. He wants to find something that he can accuse Jesus of and something that will bring about His condemnation, so he asked about His disciples who they are. Jesus is not going to give up any information about His disciples or what is what is taking place. He, in fact, he protects them. And then Jesus answers the second question about his doctrine, and really Jesus is very sophisticated in the way that He is handling this. He's basically throwing it back on them: You brought me to trial. You should have the information you need to have the evidence against me.

John 18:20 ^NASB Jesus answered him, “I have spoken openly to the world; I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together; and I spoke nothing in secret.

He is turning this back on them because according to the Jewish law they weren't supposed to condemn somebody on the basis of what they said, they were supposed to produce two or three witnesses that would can provide evidence that would condemn them. So this is another way in which they are violating their own law. So Jesus is throwing it back at them: You are condemning me, you provide the witnesses, you provide the evidence.

John 18:21 “Why do you question Me? Question those who have heard what I spoke to them; they know what I said.”

John 18:22 When He had said this, one of the officers standing nearby struck Jesus, saying, “Is that the way You answer the high priest?”

Now we know that it's not just Him and Annas. John's theme is what? Jesus comes into the world, as the light of the world to confront everybody with the issue of His identity—one on one. So initially he presents it as if it just Jesus and Annas, because he recognizes it is every individual's decision as to how they're going to respond to Jesus. So it's not until this point that we know that there is someone else or there's an officer there who just reaches over and slaps Jesus in the face, which is also a violation of the law. The condemned person is not supposed to be beaten.

John 18:23 ^NASB Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify of the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike Me?”

He is sticking with the law, whereas the others are violating the law. We see that happening a lot today. Civilized people are a people who live by the law.

That is the end of that scenario, and what happens is that Jesus is sent from there to Caiaphas. Where Matthew picks up is the second trial which is with Caiaphas.

The point is Jesus challenges each of us because He is the light of the world. What is our response to Him. If you're a believer then your response is are you going to grow spiritually and let Jesus continue to be the light of your life. If you're an unbeliever, the issue is, are you going to respond to the gospel and trust in Jesus as the Savior of the world to save you from your sins?

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