Trial 2: Condemned for Being the Messiah, Matthew 26:57-68

Open your Bibles with me to Matthew 26:57. This morning were going to move into the second trial. We are going to look at the second and the third trials, the third trial is basically a rubberstamp of the second trial, and so will cover that rather briefly, nothing of great significance that's going on there. For the next several weeks we are going to be looking at the trials and the denials of Jesus. The denial of Jesus here is Peter's denial of Christ, which takes place between the second and the third trial, but for teaching purposes we will cover the second and third trial this morning and then will talk about that in Peter's denials next week.

This time as we examine how our Lord faced and handle undeserved suffering the false accusations that were brought against Him and the illegal actions that took place by both the religious and government authorities are something that should give us some things to think about as we think about our own response to undeserved suffering, our own response to the governing authorities that may be we may think their illegitimate. They may be demanding things that we think are not right or constitutional, or even legal, and how we handle that individually in our own soul. We are given an example here in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the Gospels we see that Jesus went through six trials. In the literature, sometimes what people want to call them hearings, or as Dr. Fruchtenbaum calls them, just two trials with three different stages in each one, but basically their six different trials when Jesus is brought before six different authorities that arrived at their decisions. They are broken down this way. There are initially three religious trials conducted by the Jewish authorities and they are trying to come up with an indictment against Jesus that would be worthy of death. They have been plotting since his first year of public ministry to put Him to death.

We looked at the first trial before Annas, the former high priest. He is the real power behind the high priesthood. The current high priest is Caiaphas who conducts the second trial. Caiaphas is his son-in-law, and there will be five of his sons in addition who will all be high priest during the next 30 or 40 years. He's got a lock on the power in Judea and he is as corrupt as he can be. He is the godfather of godfathers. He intimidates people, he has embezzling money, there's no crime that takes place that's not really under his control. So we see that mentality that pervades the religious authorities as they are examining the Lord Jesus Christ. He had a personal hatred for the Lord because he controlled all the moneychangers in the temple. When Jesus came in at the beginning of His ministry and again at the end of His ministry and overturned the tables, that was a direct attack on the finances of the high priest.

What we see here is a great example of what Peter talks about: "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust". And here we see the just, the righteous one, standing before the unjust and being judged by the unjust ones. It's a perfect example of how the Lord Jesus Christ was totally relaxed during this time, and as He was in control even as these earthly authorities were in rebellion against Him and seeking to control things, He was the one who was ultimately in control.

As we looked at the arrest of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and then some things last week in the first trial with Annas we saw that there are several laws or rules that have been established for just trials by the Pharisees and the religious authorities at this time. I want to review those, but I want to make a comment. The list, I think it's 22, that have been laid out by Dr. Fruchtenbaum who has done up an excellent job in his four-volume work on the Yeshua, the Life of Messiah from a Jewish Perspective, in laying these out.

When I was in seminary I got an introduction to rabbinical theology and the Mishnah through a couple courses I took under Dr. Alan Ross. Dr. Ross had just returned from Cambridge where he had received his second doctorate, his PhD in rabbinical studies. My term paper for that course was on the ways in which the trials of Jesus violated the Mishnah. This is very controversial. You might read some people of a less than conservative stance and they tend to try to say, "Well we don't really know if these laws were even in effect at the time, and that's because the Mishnah itself was not codified until around AD 200". But what was codified was that which was a part of the oral tradition of the religious leaders of Israel, so this stuff wasn't made up in the first or second century. There might have been a few modifications, we don't know, but for the most part, that which was codified in the Mishnah had been around for a long time.

Another thing that we should observe is that several of the things that are brought out by the Gospel writers are there to in order to show that Jesus was being treated in an unjust manner and in a manner that violated these particular laws and protocols that were in place.

Another thing to point out that is interesting to note is that in all of the previous places where the Gospel writers talk about the chief priests and the elders and the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and identify the different religious groups that had it in for Jesus, the Pharisees are almost always mentioned—scribes were part of the pharisaical group—all the way up through the arrest of Jesus, but they never mention the Pharisees again after the arrest.

I put all that together to say that it's very possible that the Sanhedrin and met—because they only needed a minimum of 23 people there and there were 24 members of the Sanhedrin that were Sadducees. They only need 23. There may not have been any, or only one or two, or very few, Pharisees present at the trials, which would mean the Sadducees, which didn't care about the fact that the Pharisees, could much more easily just ignore any of the pharisaical rules and laws. And the group that did survive after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD was the Pharisees. And they really gave birth to modern rabbinical Judaism. So it is very likely that that these rules were in place but the Sadducees just didn't care.

So you have a violation taking place of the protocols that had been agreed upon, because once people want to rebel against God and reject God it doesn't matter what the laws are. They don't care, it doesn't matter what the rules are. They don't care if there are First Amendment rights. They don't care if people ought to be treated with respect If they are worshipers of God and the truth of God's word then they need to be removed from the society, removed from culture, and not have not have any impact.

There are five rules that have already been violated. These are the first five in Arnold's list of 22.

1. First of all there was to be no arrest by religious authorities that was affected by a bribe. Judas was bribed to betray the Lord.

2. Second rule, no steps of criminal proceedings were to occur after sunset, and so His arrest and the first two trials were conducted in the dark between sunset and sunrise.

3. The third law that's violated is that judges or members of the Sanhedrin were not allowed to participate in an arrest. And when the crowd, the multitude, came with the Roman cohort they also came with members of the Sanhedrin, and so that's a violation of law.

4. Fourth, there would be no trials before the morning sacrifice, and two of these occurred before the morning sacrifice.

5. Fifth, there were not to be any secret trials, only public trials, and so that too is violated.

What is the application? If you think you are a victim of injustice, guess who preceded you. This whole idea that we have in this culture of victimization is just absurd. We are all victims. We are all victims of Adam's sin; we are all victims of sinful people, and so the idea that somehow our parents failed us or our teachers failed us or some body else failed us, is relatively different for everybody, but there's no excuse that we can fall back on. Jesus was treated the worst, and He provides us the example. He did not play the victimization card, and neither should any Christian whatsoever.

That brings us to our start in the second trial in Matthew 26:57. We are told by Matthew, who skips past the trial with Annas, that those who laid hold of Jesus, that is, after the garden of Gethsemane, first they took him to Annas and then to Caiaphas the high priest where the scribes and the elders were assembled.

That verb for assembled is the cognate to the noun for synagogue. It doesn't mean it's a synagogue, but it has that religious connotation to it. We know that at the end of this trial, Jesus will identify Himself very clearly as the Messiah. He identifies Himself as the Son of Man, who will be sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of glory. He just states it very calmly but very forcefully and that is the basis for their indictment. They are going to indict Him and execute Him on the basis of Him being the Son of God. That's the indictment.

Jesus is brought before Caiaphas, the son-in-law of Annas the former high priest. Annas was deposed from power in AD 15. There followed a two to three years when other high priests were appointed—none of them lasted more than a year—and finally Caiaphas was appointed by that is, was appointed by the Valerius Gratus, and he was in power for almost 30 years, from 18 or so until 37, which indicated he had a remarkable ability to schmooze the political leaders and to give them whatever they wanted. He was a master of wheeling and dealing, and political expediency. He was the high priest and basically the puppet of his father-in-law, Annas.

In John 18:14 John reminds us that it was Caiaphas who advised the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people. The statement that is alluded to here by John in John 18 is from John 11:49-51 where Caiaphas is addressing the high priest and says to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people and not that the whole nation should perish."

Now what he's talking about is that this is a political event. Maybe it's good to give the Romans someone and then they will relax their pressure on us. But John says there was a divine power behind this and that he was prophesying without realizing it. John 11:51 ^NASB Now he did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation." That was an unintended prophecy on his part.

So the second trial is going to take place before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, and they're going to meet in the home of the high priest. This was a rather large place because it would accommodate all of these of visitors. The Sanhedrin was usually made up of about 71 in individuals and so they could all come in. They could come in the courtyard. Of course not that many showed up that night, I don't believe. In this home there was one wing that was where Annas, lived his father-in-law, and then Caiaphas and his wife and family were in the other wing.

These first two verses give us orientation to what happens. We are going to follow two streams of action, one inside following Jesus, and one outside following Peter. We are to focus on what happens to Jesus. In the parallel passages in Mark chapter 14:53 and in Luke chapter 22:54 we read about their accounts of this time. Mark says, "They led Jesus away to the high priest". He doesn't name him. "… and with him were assembled all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes". Luke tells us this. "Having arrested Him they led Him and brought Him into the high priest's house, but Peter followed at a distance". And then in Matthew 26:59 we read, "Now the chief priests, the elders and all the counsel …" That is, the Sanhedrin. So this is a formal meeting of the Sanhedrin. "… sought false testimony against Jesus to put him to death".

What happens here is that there is another violation of the law, the Sanhedrin trials were not to be conducted anywhere except in the hall of judgment in the temple compound, so they are not meeting at the legally prescribed location. The hall that is spoken of there was an inner court of the temple, and was known as the [ ]. It was one of five chambers in the temple court that was north of the court of the Israelites, and it was named [ ] either because it was of hewn stone or because it was cut off. So the root of that word has to do with something that is cut. It is either referring to the stone that's cut or it is referring to the fact that it was cut off, or a distinct location from the other chambers, according to the Talmud.

So the Sanhedrin when it came to meet was composed, if everyone was there, of 71 members and it was carefully divided along party lines. Twenty-four seats went to the chief priests, who were all Sadducees. Remember, Sadducees are the liberals. They are the ones who don't really believe in the truth of the Bible. They don't believe in resurrection. They don't believe in the existence of angels, and so they are the theologically liberal wing. The Pharisees were the theologically conservative wing. So 24 seats, went to the Sadducees, 24 seats, went to the elders who are Pharisees, and 22 seats, went to the scribes who were also Pharisees. So that's 46 to 24. The Sadducees were clearly outnumbered, and then one seat went to the high priest who was also a Sadducees.

All they needed in order to pass a judgment in a capital crime was a vote of twenty-three, so they didn't really need to have any Pharisees present at all. All they had to do was have all the Sadducees there and they could easily condemn Jesus to death, or at least recommend the death penalty that would be then taken to the to the Roman authorities.

To become a member of the Sanhedrin, the Midrash states that an elder must not be given a seat in the chamber of hewn stone unless he has been appointed a judge in his own city. So he had to work up the chain of command. He had to start off as basically a rookie and get appointed to a political position in his hometown. After he has been there for a while he could be promoted and given a seat on the Temple Mount, and from there he could be promoted and given a seat in the hell, another governing body, and from there he could be promoted and given a seat in the chamber of hewn stone, sitting with the Sanhedrin. So politics, then as now, played a role in who was actually there and actually present.

Matthew 26:59 ^NASB Now the chief priests and the whole Council kept trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus, so that they might put Him to death.

Not this is almost a laughable situation because there was somewhere, I think, between 25, maybe even 40 but probably a little smaller number around 30, who gathered together and they just hate Jesus. They just despise him; they despise what He has taught; they despise His theology; they hate Him, and they want to murder him. They want him dead and out of the way. They're blaming all their ills on Jesus and so they have brought together this kangaroo court and they're going to manufacture charges against Jesus, and yet there put a little bit off their game. Because what happened was, if you remember going back to Matthew 26:1, the first part there, they didn't want to arrest Him and kill Him during the feast time because they didn't want to upset the multitude. So their idea was let the whole Passover we get by, and then were going arrest and kill Jesus.

But what happened was Jesus exposed Judas at pass at the Passover meal with the disciples. Judas knew that he had to leave, that if they were going to arrest Him they had to do it right then, right now. So he went to the chief priests and he said we have to do it right now. They were thrown off their game. They thought they had another week, so they know they are going to have to do this right then. They probably went to Pilate to get a cohort assigned to them. But then they are running around—We have to have witnesses; we have to find somebody—and they are just off balance.

Jesus is there and we can picture Him as relaxed; He's in control. And one after another, He hears these witnesses come out who are telling the most outlandish things about what they have heard Him say what they seen Him do. They are telling these stories that have no basis in fact, and no two of them can agree with each other. They are just trying to find two that will agree with each other because, according to the law, they have to have two witnesses that can agree with each other. And they are just frustrated. It's becoming ridiculous, it's a farce and they know it. Jesus sees it and He is just very relaxed.

This gives us an example of a relaxed mental attitude. I don't know about you, but one of the things that irritates me at times is injustice. We see a lot of it in our world today. I'm not talking about the kind of "injustice" that the social justice warriors are demonstrating about, but the kind of injustice where you have people who are treated wrongly, to people who treated wrongly in courts, to various other political figures who somebody claims did something and next thing you know, everybody's throwing him under the bus, and there's no legal procedure. There are no corroborating witnesses. There is a total ignoring of the rule that we are innocent until proven guilty. We see this kind of injustice, and I know some of you get probably get irritated at something like that, as I do, which means that we've lost our relaxed mental attitude.

The Lord maintains His relaxed mental attitude and He shows us how we are to handle it: that He is in control, and God is always in control when we are seeing these things happen in the world around us. It may happen at work; it may happen at school; these kinds of things happen throughout our culture and they are more common.

One test you can take for yourself, just quietly between you and the Lord, is what happens when you sit down and you hear or read some news item and you immediately see this injustice and you're just get irritated. So I've written this in my notes this morning, and five minutes later I see this alert on my phone that a group of social justice warriors are going to take a knee at the Houston Texans football game today. And I'm immediately irritated. And the Holy Spirit is saying, okay, you just wrote that, now or get a test you a little bit!

We have to develop a relaxed mental attitude that the Lord is in control even when injustice is taking place. And the greatest injustice in all of human history is what is taking place right here before us, and the Lord is totally relaxed and totally in charge. They are trying trotting out these false witnesses, and of course that violates another law because they are they can't find two witnesses that can agree with each other. It breaks another law that says during the trial, the defense had the first word before the prosecutors could present their accusations. Jesus has not had the first word. He is the defense, the prosecutors are presenting accusations, but they can't agree with each other, and it also gets a little bit comical.

Mark 14:55 ^NASB Now the chief priests and the whole Council kept trying to obtain testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, and they were not finding any.

And then in Matthew 26:60 ^NASB They did not find {any,} even though many false witnesses came forward. But later on two came forward, [61] and said, “This man stated, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and to rebuild it in three days.’”

Mark's account helps us to understand that the conflict and the problem.

Mark 14:58 ^NASB “We heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands.’”

In Mark Mark's account we read the statement, "We heard him say, I will destroy this temple". You see the difference? One statement says, "Jesus said, I'm able to destroy the temple". The other one says, He said, "I will destroy the temple". So they don't agree with each other. They are talking about the same event, but they can't agree as to exactly what He said. Is He able to, or is He going to do it? Neither one of them are right. This is referring to something Jesus said back in John chapter 2 at the beginning of His ministry, and there Jesus said, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up".

Now when He said destroy, it's a second person plural. He's saying y'all destroy this temple. He didn't say anything about what He was going to do to the temple, He is basically saying if y'all destroy the temple I will build it up, I will raise it up in three days. And of course as John goes on to explain in verses 21 and 22 He was talking about the temple of His body and His future resurrection, which the disciples recalled after He rose from the dead.

They can't get these two false witnesses to agree with each other and yet they're trying to get some kind of blasphemy charge brought against Jesus related to the temple. This violates the rule that there had to be two or three witnesses, and their testimony had to agree in every detail. That is based in Deuteronomy chapter 19:15-19 where we read, "One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, the matter shall be established."

By now almost all of you know about these claims. They came out against Judge Roy Moore running for the Senate in Alabama and you should have been amazed and indignant that anybody automatically condemned him, and yet you had all these moderate Republicans who were condemning him within seconds. Yet there's no confirmatory witness. It's all he said, she said. And somebody may say, well you know you have five or six different women who come forward and claimed that he did X, Y or Z but now you have a host of women that he grew up with, some were former girlfriends, those he dated, who are all saying just the other opposite. It's a he said, she said; and the law has to work in the favor of the individual and the innocent.

Where do we get these ideas of the need for two or three witnesses? It comes from our biblical heritage. It comes out of the Mosaic Law that we can't just condemn somebody just because somebody makes a horrible claim about his behavior. Now he may be guilty; he may not be guilty, but we have to operate on the rule of law, which says that you can't condemn somebody unless there are two or three witnesses. Not one witness of five different acts, but two or three witnesses of individual acts. And witnesses, if you have them in certain situations, can even be scientific witnesses—like DNA or something like that—but, of course, none of that exists in this particular case. We always have to give someone the benefit of the doubt based on the law, unless of course there is hard evidence, even if we know they're probably guilty. That's how our system operates—but apparently not anymore, especially in a hospital political environment.

They make these various claims and there is a contradiction between the two witnesses. Did He say I am able, which is his potentiality, or did He say He would destroy the temple? They can't get them to agree and therefore they can't come up with a crime that they could take to a Roman court in order to get the death penalty. At this time the Jews were not allowed to execute anybody on their own. They had to bring up the charges, get the evidence, and then take it to the Roman authorities to get their permission.

But in all of this as we sit back and we can chuckle or laugh at that, what the comedy must've been like trotting out all these witnesses! With all these different false claims and manufactured claims about Jesus one person is not there with a relaxed mental attitude, and that is Caiaphas. As each witness comes forward and fails to corroborate another witness he is getting more and more upset, until finally, after hearing this and he sees that they're close enough. Let's just make it work, even if it violates the law. And so he is going to enter into his own little drama and distract everybody from the legalities and assume that they have said the same thing.

He jumps up and says to Jesus, "Do you answer nothing?" Throughout all of this Jesus is sitting there calmly and quietly and never says anything. He's probably chuckling a little to Himself as He sees the frustration mount. Caiaphas is going to call upon Jesus to say something now. This again is a violation of the laws related to evidence. No accused was to testify against himself. This was to avoid two situations. First, that if a man wanted to have suicide by government he couldn't confess to some crime that was a capital offense, and second, so somebody could not twist his words and pervert justice in the trial.

What we see is that Jesus exercises His civil rights. What is important to see here is that Jesus operates within the law. We have a lot of discussion about what you do when the government is outside the law, and this government is clearly outside the law but Jesus stays within the law, and He is using the law in order to expose what's going on. The end result is going to be the same but He stays totally within the law and keeps silent, and this angers Caiaphas even more, so Caiaphas probably screams at him: I put you under oath. By the living God tell us if you are the Messiah, [CHRISTOS is the Greek translation of Messiah]. I like to keep it in terms of the Jewish term because that really focuses us on the issue. He says, "Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God".

Now we need to stop here just a minute and slow down and understand what's going on. Jesus is indeed the Messiah. He is going to answer in verse 64 and say, "It is, as you said". That comes across a little awkward for us. What does that actually mean? And you may remember a time in recent years when there was sort of a slang that if somebody said something and we agreed with, that we said, "You said it". And what we meant by that was I agree with you. Well this is the idiom of that day, and that's exactly what Jesus says. If we look at the Greek He just says, "You said it". In other words, you're right, and that's what that idiom mean. So He is agreeing that He is the Messiah; that He is the God anointed and appointed deliverer for Israel, who was promised and prophesied since the Garden of Eden.

He is also affirming that He is the Son of God. Now this term Son of God is an important term to understand. We think of the Son of God, as Jesus the second person of the Trinity. Some people may think of Son of God has God has a child. You may see this in some cults. The term Son of God is not talking about who's your daddy? The "Son of God" is an idiom that's talking about what is a person's character. So that if someone is characterized by foolishness and there called the son of a fool. If someone was a prophet they might be called the son of a prophet. If somebody was destructive they were called the son of Belial. If someone is divine, full deity, they are called the Son of God. So that noun at the end of the "Son of" phrase is the characteristic or the attribute that is being emphasized. So when Jesus is the Son of Man, that emphasizes His humanity. When Jesus is called the Son of God, that is emphasizing His full deity.

So Jesus clearly agrees with Caiaphas and says, Matthew 26:64 ^NASB “You have said it {yourself;} 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.”

Now that was a circumlocution. The Jews didn't like to say the name of God, so sometimes they would use other terms to refer to God. In the Mark parallel it's recorded as son of the blessed. The right hand of the blessed one is simply saying the same reference to full deity, to God. So He is claiming to be the Son of Man who they will see sitting at the right hand of power. That is tying together two important passages. It ties together. Daniel 7:14, and it ties together Psalm 110:1, that the Messiah is seated at the right hand of God. He is clearly making a claim to deity, and they understand it, which is why you get this reaction of the high priest who tears his clothes, claiming that this has been blasphemy.

First of all, let's look at the background. What does this term Son of Man mean? This comes from Daniel 7:13, 14. There, Daniel has seen a panorama of the future kingdoms on the earth, and at the end of history there is a scene where the Ancient of Days is seen—that's God the Father—and one like the Son of Man comes to the Father, and He is given the kingdom. That's what's described here, "One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven". That's the same language Jesus uses as He is before Caiaphas. Daniel sees Him coming with the clouds of heaven. "He came to the Ancient of Days and they brought him near before Him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom".

What's the next line? "All peoples, nations and languages shall serve him". That includes the Romans. It's a gotcha moment for Caiaphas, because he can sit and look at this and drive this point home, that that Jesus is claiming He is the Son of Man who is going to rule over the Romans. Isn't that being a traitor? Isn't that something that the Romans would be concerned about? But he is going to focus on His claim to deity and claim that that is blasphemy.

So what happens, very quickly, are several things. First, the high priest tears his garment. Now the high priest was prohibited under most circumstances, from tearing his garments. If his wife died or someone in his family died he was not to show any kind of grief whatsoever. He was to be impartial and not emotional. That's Leviticus 21:10, the one "… who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not uncover his head nor tear his clothes". He is to be an impartial, unemotional, non-emotional leader, and so Caiaphas violates that and he tears his (probably) inner garments, which would signify that blasphemy has taken place. So again, we have a violation of the law; the high priest is forbidden to rent his garments. This of course is a violation of the Mosaic Law as well.

Another thing that happens at this point is that he claims that Jesus has spoken blasphemy. That's a false claim because Jesus has not committed blasphemy. Blasphemy meant that He misused the name of God. In fact, the Talmud, which I know is two or 300 years later, has this to say which reflects the Jewish tradition: "If the accused blasphemes and reviles but is not however guilty of pronouncing the unutterable name of God …" That would be the blasphemy. So if he says all kinds of things but doesn't utter the name of God "… it's enough that he be scourged". In other words, you can say all kinds of blasphemous things about God, but if you don't pronounce his name you're going to be scourged, but you're not going to be executed. Well scourging Jesus isn't going to be enough. They want him executed.

Caiaphas has just jumped on this and immediately ratcheted it up as if Jesus had committed blasphemy, and everybody else is just going to go along with him. This is the height of injustice. Caiaphas then will turn to the other chief priests that are there and say, "What do you think?" He is calling upon a verdict. And they say he is deserving of death. They have got what they think will be evidence that they can take to the Roman authorities, and then they can have Jesus executed.

So again, as they have done this they broken the law related to two or three witnesses. They've also broken the law related to a person condemning himself by his own words, and another law that they violated at this point is that the verdict in a capital trial could not be announced at night. And so they come to this verdict at night. All of this was to avoid any kind of a rush to judgment of furthermore, according to their laws. Another law said that in the case of capital punishment, the trial and the guilty verdict could not be at the same time. They had to be separated by at least 24 hours. So they are violating that law.

And then they are their voting by acclamation and it was according to law to be done by individual vote count where the youngest would vote first and then the elders, so that the young ones would not be influenced by their heroes, their mentors within the Sanhedrin.

Also it says that they all they all agreed, and according to their law a unanimous decision for guilt show that the person was actually innocent, that the only real way they would have a unanimous vote is if there was collusion, and if there was something wrong being done, and so that verdict would be thrown out. So there are a number of these different things that happened.

And then we learn in verse 67 that something else happens. After they announced that verdict they spat in His face. They beat Him. Mark tells us that they blindfolded Him and they struck Him with the palms of their hands. This is the second time the Lord is physically abused and mistreated. The first time was the Roman soldier in John 18, and this now is the second time that He is abused. This also violates the law. Judges were to be humane and kind. A person who was condemned to death was not supposed to be scourged or beaten beforehand. So, this also is a violation. If he was beaten there were penalties that were assigned to that. If someone hit the accused with their fist then they would pay a fine of four denarai. One denarius did Mary us was equal to a days wage, so four denarai was equal to four days wages. If somebody punched you with a closed fist and you were the accused then they would be fine four days wages. If you were more greatly insulted and somebody slapped you with the open palm that was punishable by a fine of 200 denarai, which is the equivalent of 200 days wages. That's almost seven months worth of wages. And then if you spat in someone's face that was even more insulting, and that was a brought a fine of 400 denarai, which was more than a year's wages.

Jesus suffered all of those indignities and they weren't holding any of the men on the Sanhedrin accountable. They are also ridiculing Him and saying, "Prophesy to us Christ, who is the one who struck you."

Of course, this verdict is not legal because it's before the sun came up. So we are going to have a third trial that is described in Matthew 27:1-2. there We read, "When morning came…" They had to wait for the morning sacrifice; they had to wait for dawn. "… all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put him to death", again emphasizing the conspiracy. "… and when they had bound Him they led Him away and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor."

So verse one refers to the fact that they had to come back together after the sun came up. Now they would condemn Him again and announce the sentence, and then they would take Him to Pilate, and that would begin the Roman stage of the trial.

The thing to remember from this is that none of us can claim to be victims of injustice more than Jesus. And yet Jesus who is the perfect Son of God and was not guilty of anything whatsoever is punished unjustly, and He stands before all of His creatures there who condemn him; and yet, He is relaxed and calm because He realizes God is in control. He rests in God. That's what it means to cast your care upon him because He cares for us. So we don't have any excuse to lose our relaxed mental attitude.

Slides