Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Chris:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Bible Guys. It is good to be here today. My name is Chris. And I’m Jeff. And we together are Chris and Jeff. Yeah.

Jeff:
So man, this is going to be a good episode today because we’re getting into more of the last days of Jesus as we’re heading towards this Easter week. And yeah, it’s really amazing.

Chris:
Yeah. And it sort of worked out that it’s right at Easter, right? Did we plan that?

Jeff:
Sort of.

Chris:
Sort of, yeah. It was a lucky, not a lucky, but a happy. Fortuitous. Fortuitous. Serendipitous. There you go. Yes. There we go. Well, hey, today we have a segment called Mailbags.

Jeff:
I love these. Ready?

Chris:
Yeah. Let’s see if we can do this. Ready? Mailbags.

Jeff:
No, no, no. Ready? Oh, I don’t know that. Mailbags. I don’t know what you’re trying to do. Harmonize. Harmonize. Mailbags. Mailbags. Mailbags.

Chris:
Mailbags. Alright, forget it. Well, we tried it. We tried it. Yeah, I’m sorry. You didn’t want to jump in. No. Hey, this episode of Mailbag says this. Cliff K. wrote in. Thank you, Cliff K. And he said, tell about a time in your past when something was very dangerous or scary that happened to you. And you look back at that moment now and think, I should have died or been seriously injured, but I didn’t even have a scratch on me. Well, that is a very specific story there, Cliff.

Jeff:
Yeah, I was going to say, I don’t think that applies to me.

Chris:
Yeah. Cause you always get hurt.

Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m always hurt.

Chris:
Yeah. So tell, tell everybody how many things you’ve gotten hurt.

Jeff:
So I’ve never broken a bone doing dumb things. So when it says something very dangerous or scary that happened to you, I happened to me. That’s what happened. So I’ve had over 20 sets of stitches. Not 20 stitches. I’ve had to go get stitches 20 times. I’ve dislocated both my shoulders, my left shoulder twice, both my elbows, six of my ten fingers, Uh, my left hip, both my knees, we just go on. Yeah. So, uh, most of the time when I do something dangerous, I also get hurt. I don’t know that I have very many times where I should have died and didn’t.

Chris:
Right. Right.

Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How about you though?

Chris:
Well, I, I, one story, I have 10 of these stories, honest to goodness. Um, because I, I don’t know how I come, you know, out unscathed on a couple of these scenarios, but I think of one that’s pretty funny. Um, when I was in college, I was working for my wife’s, uh, father, who was my girlfriend at the time. And, uh, he had sent me over to, uh, to work at this rich guy’s house. It was the same rich guy that had the Lamborghini I was telling you about.

Jeff:
Oh yeah, I remember that one.

Chris:
Did I tell that story on here? Yes. This is the same guy. And he had a two-story barn where the Lamborghini and the Porsche were in, and he wanted me to stain the whole thing. So it turns out, I didn’t know much about anything, so I stained it all wrong. They had to get a professional to come in and do it. Like, cause, cause instead of just doing it slot by slot, I did it like with the ladder, I did like one section. Then I did the other section. I kept on moving the ladder and you can see the lines, which I didn’t know at the time. Right. Cause I’m not a stainers anyway. So I, so I did all three, you know, sides of the barn. And then the front side of the barn was over a bright, bright, bright pearl white driveway. And so, and by the way, I had the dark brown stain. So I got a ladder and I didn’t have any drop cloth. How dumb am I? But I’m like, I’m like 18 at the time. So I climb all the way up the ladder. I hung the can on the little hook and I dipped it and I’d start staining. And all of a sudden one little drop would fall down, boop, it would hit the white driveway. I have to climb all the way down. I get the little turpentine, a glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug. And I’d go all the way back up and I’d try really hard not to do a drip and then, boop, another drip. I’d go all the way back down, the whole thing, right? And I was too dumb to say, hey, I really need a drop cloth here. But I was like, no, I can do it. So anyway, I saw a wasp nest, right? So I spray it. You know, then I run and then I come back and I’m thinking, hey, it’s, you know, everything’s dead. So I come up to a stain it right where the wasp nest is. And there’s like a lone survivor wasp who crawls just over the wasp nest and falls like on my neck.

Jeff:
Right.

Chris:
So he’s like dead, but he’s falling on my neck. Well, I’m, I’m on like two story. I’m two stories high. Like I’m at the peak of the barn. You understand how high that is? Right. Okay. I fall off onto cement. I should have died. Yeah. Right. So what ends up happening is I start freaking out. And I fall down, and on the way down, I somehow hit the ladder, and I land, bam, on the cement. And I’m telling you, after this incident, I get up, I was fine. I don’t know how I was fine. The angels must have just caught me. But listen, I land on the ground.

Jeff:
That’s how your whole life’s been. The angels just catch you and bring you to the ground.

Chris:
So I land on the ground, two stories on a cement thing, and then I’m hitting the ladder on the way down. So the can of stain is sloshing over, slosh, blah, slosh, blah, right? It’s just everywhere, right? Then all of a sudden the can falls. And I’m laying down on the ground. I’m pretty hurt, right? And then the can hits my ankle, lands directly on my ankle. And it goes glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, gl So I have to get up and I didn’t know what to do. And it’s like literally just dark brown stain over this pearl white driveway. And then I just grabbed the turpentine with my teeth, right? Just glug it all over the thing. And then I grabbed a push broom and I’m just trying to scrub it. And it’s just, I mean, it’s just not coming.

Jeff:
It’s not working.

Chris:
It’s not working. Then I grab a hose and there wasn’t a nozzle. I’m doing the thumb thing and I’m trying to do everything. And I spray it off into the grass. And then finally I get, I get it down to like a bleak gray. And then the owner of this billionaire guy, she, she comes running out and she’s like, what happened? And I’m covered in stain. I told her I fell two stories. I probably need to go to the hospital and I’m showing her everything. And she looks at me and she goes, couldn’t you have sprayed it on the left side where the dirt is? You had to spray it where the grass was.

Jeff:
Oh no, you killed all the grass.

Chris:
And that’s what she was mad about. Never asked me if I was okay. Right. And then that was my last day working there. As you can imagine. That’s great. And rightfully so.

Jeff:
Oh, that’s great.

Chris:
Good story. But you didn’t get hurt. I didn’t go to the hospital because I felt fine. Wow. I mean, I felt like I do now. I was like, oh, I’m a little sore.

Jeff:
Did you land on your head? I don’t even remember. I’m joking. I was joking. That was supposed to be a joke.

Chris:
One, two, five. Yeah. Good job, Chris. Yeah. I get the threes and fours knocked out of me. So yeah, dude, it was, it was amazing.

Jeff:
Well, there you go. I hope that’s enough, Cliff. Yeah. Well, I mean, he says he has 10 of those, but I think I’d like to move on if it’s okay.

Chris:
Yeah. Well, that was a long story.

Jeff:
That’s amazing, man. Yeah. Thanks.

Chris:
Okay. Well, we’re going to dive into Matthew 27.

Jeff:
So this is Matthew 27, Mark 1, and Luke 22. And this may be… No, Mark 15. I’m sorry. What’d I say? You said Mark 1. I’m sorry. Mark 15. And Luke 22. This might be one of the more difficult 20-minute segments we’ve ever had to do. Because we’re reading Matthew 27, 1 and 2, Mark 15, 1, and Luke 22, 66 through 71. So here we go. Here we go. Council of Religious Leaders condemns Jesus. Boy, we didn’t see that coming. Matthew 27, very early in the morning, the leading priests and the elders of the people met again to lay plans for putting Jesus to death. Then they bound him, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. In Mark 15, it says very early in the morning, the leading priests, the elders, and the teachers of religious law, the entire high council met to discuss their next step. They bound Jesus, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. And then in Luke chapter 22 verse 66, it says, at daybreak, all the elders of the people assembled, including the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. Jesus was led before this high council, and they said, tell us, are you the Messiah? And he replied, if I tell you, you won’t believe me. And if I ask you a question, you won’t answer. But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated in the place of power at God’s right hand. They all shouted, so you are claiming to be the Son of God. And he replied, you say that I am. Why do we need other witnesses? They said. We ourselves heard him say it.

Chris:
That sounds like Fridays.

Jeff:
Yeah, very similar. Or Thursdays, rather. Right. Previously it was the trial before the trial. Right. Right. And these were all illegal trials. But so there was the trial with Annis, Annis trying to make sure, Hey, this is a, it’s worth bringing it to the Sanhedrin. Then he gives it to Caiaphas and Caiaphas pushes further. Caiaphas gets to the same thing. Are you saying that you’re the Messiah? And then finally, uh, after Caiaphas’s house, now they bring him to the, what’s called the high council here. It would be the Sanhedrin. So yeah, which would be like the Jewish Supreme Court at that time.

Chris:
Right. And so Luke 22 says, you know, obviously a lot more information than the other passages here in Matthew 27 and Mark 15, because there’s a conversation, and tell us, are you the Messiah? Which again, he had already admitted in front of Caiaphas, right? Right. But if I tell you, you won’t believe me. And if I ask a question, you won’t answer. But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated in the place of power. at God’s right hand. I love how Jesus points out that, of their unbelief basically, right? If I tell you, you won’t believe me. If I ask you a question, you won’t answer. It is amazing how Jesus points out their unbelief. They don’t accept it. There are times in the scripture where Jesus tells the disciples things very plainly, and yet they don’t question it. They don’t push back on it. There’s no evidence of them saying, well, wait a minute, we better be aware of this because Jesus said we weren’t going to be aware of it. So I think there’s a lesson in there. And the lesson is, is that so many times when we think we’re right, or we think we know something, You know, have you ever heard the expression, you don’t know what you don’t know? Yes. And I think sometimes that’s probably true. We hang on to our opinions and we have our opinions about who God is and who God isn’t. We have our opinions about what God won’t do and what he should do. and we get angry, we hang on to those. And I can only imagine God in heaven sitting down and, you know, not judging us, but I guess righteously judging us and saying, gosh, he just doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Right. And, you know, you hear things and you don’t believe it, you know, you’re unwilling to accept it. And it really does just, you know, encourage us to be open to the fact that, hey, you could be wrong. We could be wrong sometimes. You know, no matter how confident we are when it comes to God, you know, we have to really be open to hearing, you know, that maybe you know, the things we think are, you know, obviously evidence in scripture, right? I’m not saying question the scripture. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, sometimes we form opinions about God and, um, you know, that’s it. People get angry with God for 30, 40 years. Sure.

Jeff:
Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. Yeah. Cause they, they, God says, my ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. But sometimes we, we get angry because we expect him to do what we decided was important. Right. And we just forget our place in his place.

Chris:
as if God needs to behave according to how we think. Right. That’s just arrogance or foolishness, right? So that’s what I’m really trying to say.

Jeff:
So God will never be contrary to his own words. No, never. Right. But there are times we can misunderstand his words.

Chris:
Yes. That’s a great way to say that.

Jeff:
Well, thank you.

Chris:
That’s what I was meaning. I’m earning my keep today. Well, you did that last week too. I rambled on and then you said a sentence and I’m like, that’s what I meant to say.

Jeff:
Well, I had the benefit of you rambling on and I’m trying to distill it down to the simplest things. Right, you’re the Holy Spirit.

Chris:
I just say a bunch of words.

Jeff:
So, so here’s what’s happening. There’s this preliminary hearing before Annis that, you know, that we’d already talked about a couple of days ago. And, and by the way, one of the reasons why we love the life application study Bible is because the notes are great. And then even within the notes, sometimes there’s little sidebars that are just so great. There’s one about how Jesus trial was illegal. Maybe you want to talk about that, but this one is just kind of giving the six stages of Jesus trial. And right now we’ve covered three of them. And then Mark chapter 15, one and Matthew 27, one or two tell us that they eventually, now they’re taking him to Pilate. So this is the beginning of the fourth one, but there’s this preliminary hearing before Annas, right? Because the office of high priest was for life. Annas was still the official high priest is what, what they’re reminding us of in the eyes of all the Jews. And so even though the Romans had appointed another, Annas was still carried so much weight because in the Jewish mindset, he’s always a high priest now. So sure, now we have two high priests. Annas is the top high priest. Caiaphas is the one that has the government influence right now, right? That’s how they saw it. So Annas, this is why they would have accepted it. Then he goes before Caiaphas and this was conducted at night. It was in secrecy, which was against the law according to their own Jewish law at the time. And then it had all kinds of, of things that mocked justice. And we can talk about that in a minute, but then Those two lead to what we just read today, right? The Anas one and the Caiaphas one, those are at nighttime. Now we’re coming to daybreak. And at this point then, just after daybreak, there’s 70 members of the high council and they met to rubber stamp their approval of the previous hearings to make them appear legal. So the other two were illegal. So now Caiaphas needs to bring in the other 70. of the High Council, and they’re basically rubber stamping it, going, yeah, we did everything legit. It’s almost like backdating a check. Right. Right. That’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to make everything legit. And then it says, uh, the purpose of this trial was not to determine justice, but to justify their own preconceptions of Jesus guilt. They don’t determine he’s guilty. Now they find a way here by asking him, are you really the Messiah? He says, you say, I am. They hear him say, I am, I’m going to sit next to the father. Okay. That’s, that’s exactly what we’re looking for. But they couldn’t execute Jesus. The Romans had removed that, right? And so, uh, all they could do is go to pilot and recommend that Jesus be executed.

Chris:
Right. And so we’re about to move into the Roman authority portion.

Jeff:
Right. Right. Because that’s that’s how it ends is they led him away and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. Right.

Chris:
Yeah. So there is another chart here, as you mentioned, about how Jesus’s trial was illegal. It says the religious legal. That’s what I tried to say. Okay. It sounded legal.

Jeff:
Illegal. Illegal.

Chris:
The religious leaders were not interested in giving Jesus a fair trial. In their minds, Jesus had to die. This blind obsession led them to pervert the justice that they were appointed to protect. These are some examples of the actions taken by the religious leaders that were illegal according to their own laws. Number one, even before the trial began, it was determined that Jesus must die. We read that already. Mark 14, John 11. There was no innocent until proven guilty approach. Number two, false witnesses were sought to testify against Jesus. Remember we talked about that last week in Matthew 26. Usually the religious leaders went through an elaborate system of screening witnesses to ensure justice, not in this case. They fabricated false ones. Number three, no defense for Jesus was sought or even allowed in Luke chapter 22. So Jesus was not given a chance to defend or anybody else defending him.

Jeff:
Which is shockingly irregular because the Romans expected that you would have a defense. And so did the Jewish law, right? So both sides and these guys just, we’re going to go find a fake accusers, but we’re not going to allow you any attorney to protect you or anybody else to step up in your defense to defend you.

Chris:
And then number four, the trial was conducted at night, as we just mentioned, which was illegal according to the religious leader’s own laws. And then number five, the high priest put Jesus under oath, but then incriminated him for what he said in Matthew 26. And then number six, cases involving such serious charges were to be tried only in the high council’s regular meeting place, not in the high priest’s home. which of course we just already mentioned. So yeah, so holy cow. So everything about it was crooked, but they just had to do this. And keep in mind as well, the Sabbath is coming up. And so in their timeline, right? So if the Sabbath comes up, they cannot crucify somebody on the Sabbath according to their own laws. right, which means they’ve got to push this trial through so it happens on Friday before Friday would be on our calendar like a Friday night. Right. So Sabbath, and by the way, this is worth mentioning, the Jewish calendar is different than ours in that it goes from sundown to sundown. Right. So it goes, you know, roughly six-ish at night or something like that, all the way till, you know, six the next time. So their Sabbath would have started Friday sundown and then would have ended Saturday sundown.

Jeff:
Based on Genesis chapter one, the creation story, where it says evening and morning were the first day, evening and morning were the second day. So because of that, the Jewish people managed time from evening to morning, not morning to evening like we do.

Chris:
Yeah. Well, we do it at midnight, which is sort of six hours later. Right. Right. So it’s really not even like,

Jeff:
But we say one in the morning, two in the morning.

Chris:
But one in the morning is still dark, which means we’re sort of like splitting the difference. That’s right. Yeah, we split it. But anyway, the point is, is that Um, so like for instance, we’re about to see, uh, you know, the, the events where, which, uh, it gives us times, it gives us times, like it says about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out and all these different kinds of things. Uh, you know, that would be, um, you know, three in the afternoon.

Jeff:
So the difficulty that these guys are facing, and so you’re going to find what they bring to pilot the accusation is different than what they decided to convict him on here.

Chris:
Did I say that wrong? I think I said it wrong. Isn’t it sunrise to sunrise? That’s what it is.

Jeff:
What’s that? How we do time?

Chris:
No, no, no. Jewish calendar. Sunrise to sunrise.

Jeff:
No, sundown to sundown.

Chris:
Is it sundown to sundown? Okay. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.

Jeff:
So the difficulty that the Jewish leaders have here is that essentially they had determined, predetermined, they were going to try to convict him on blasphemy, right? The problem is the Romans don’t care about blasphemy at all. It’s not a capital punishment. It is to the Jewish leaders. Right? It’s the worst thing. They would stone you to death if they had a chance for anything that appeared to be or hinted of blasphemy. So in this case, in order to turn the Jewish people against Jesus, they needed to convict him of blasphemy and then convince the people that he had spoken against God. That was the only way. The people didn’t care about what Jesus thought about Rome. The people cared about what Jesus said about God. And so that was really, really important. And so in this trial, that’s what they do. But you’ll see in the next day or two, when they go to Pilate, their argument for why Jesus needed to die was he’s claiming to be the King of the Jews. Which is a totally different thing. Right.

Chris:
Because they’re saying, hey, there’s a threat to you.

Jeff:
Right. But where they’re, the stretch that they’re making there is the fact that Jesus had said, I’ll be sitting at the right hand of my father. Right. So I’ll be sitting on the throne platform that my father sits on is what he’s saying. And so that’s how they pivot and go. So the Romans are like, Whoa, Hey, we don’t want any more Kings. What are you talking about? Right. That’s that. So, so that’s, what’s going to happen here pretty soon, but they find themselves in a really, really, really difficult position where they have to swing the attitude of the people And so apparently they were very convincing because we know eventually that people begin to yell, crucify him. The same people who were yelling Hosanna just a couple of days ago now are going to be yelling, crucify him. Something changed. And you know, in a lot of nations, even today, charges of blasphemy will cause a riot. Right? And that’s what they were counting on now is we need to, they were afraid of arresting Jesus in the temple when he was so articulate and he was so mysterious and the people were so drawn to him. Uh, they didn’t want to arrest him there cause that would cause a bad kind of riot for them. But instead what they wanted to do was to be able to convict Jesus of some kind of heresy of blasphemy. Then, uh, the, that’s why the Sanhedrin together, all 70 of them collude for this. And then they pivot and get the people to go, oh my goodness, he’s a heretic, blasphemy, crucify him, right? Because it was so embedded in them that you couldn’t do that. And so they needed Jesus to get these words out. But the Romans, again, don’t care about any of those things. So the Pharisees are very slick. We’ve got to change. We’ve got to find a way to convict Jesus, change the attitude of the people. convince Pilate to kill Jesus all before Passover starts. Right. Right. All before the Sabbath starts. And that’s a really, that’s why they’re moving so quickly. They’re moving through the night, they’re doing all these things. And, you know, it just kind of points out again, I think the devil thought he was sprinting to a victory at this point. Right? And that’s what I think the devil does a lot of times is he begins to stack on top of us. So he gets us to just deviate just a little bit from what we know is right. Next thing you know, opportunity, opportunity, opportunity, temptation, temptation, temptation. And suddenly you get into a situation where you go, how did I ever get here? It’s like a one in a million chance that I would end up doing this thing. Well, the devil was coordinating it all along. He’s a pretty good coordinator. And so we have to really be, this is why Peter tells us be careful, right? Because our, our enemy is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for whom he may devour, right? He’s always probing the edges, always trying to find a way to manipulate a situation to ruin your life. And so I think that’s what you see here with these guys.

Chris:
Well, hey, that is our time, and that’s great, and that’s a good place to end, so we will pick up the story next time on The Bible Guys.