Two Trials

So if we were to summarize what’s happened so far, that first reading of Mark 14, Judas betrayed Jesus at a Passover. Judas valued some financial gain over the life of his friend, the king of the Jews, the miracle worker and prophetic truth speaker who called Him friend. This was all done during the Passover festival. And then later in Mark 14, Jesus celebrates a new Passover meal with His disciples and He invites them to pray with Him in the garden of Gethsemane, the place of the betrayal. And as the smoke is rising and I can smell it, I’m thinking about the light of the world being extinguished right now. Jesus gives His followers a new Passover meal saying, I am the bread. I am the wine. Take this and remember Me. Yet His followers are unable to wait in prayer with Him in the garden. And as Jesus is agonizing over what He knows is about to happen, they sleep. And there in the garden, the place of prayer and agony, waiting and dreading Judas. Judas leads the chief priests, the temple guards and the others to betray the friend of sinners into the hands of religious defenders. And that brings us to Mark 15. A night that begins in this false court proceeding that would go all through the darkness. Mark 15, where the Jewish leaders take Jesus to a Roman governor named Pilate and thus begins two trials.

Who do you think was being tried that morning? I’d say it’s Pilate and the crowd. We’ll walk through this and you’ll see what I mean. See, Jesus is in complete control this entire time. If He’s God, then surely He understands what’s happening, right? If He’s God, then He’s able to stop everything. If He’s God, then He could just say a word or just snap and it would be done. But instead of answering His accusers, Jesus is quiet. He’s in complete control of the moment and of Himself. The Jewish leaders had already also made up their mind long ago. They’re not the ones on trial. There’s nothing to figure out about them. So if Jesus isn’t on trial and the leaders aren’t on trial, then who is it? It’d be Pilate and the crowd. You look at the trial of Pilate where this man named Pilate is talking with Jesus. And just like what Wes just read, when Jesus is brought before Pilate, the priests are accusing Jesus of so many things. And He says, aren’t you going to answer them? Look how many things they’re accusing you of. You have the ability to speak right now. You can acquit yourself. You can finish this whole situation. What are you doing? Yet Jesus is quiet. He didn’t answer and Pilate was amazed. Pilate knew this all began because the priests were envious, not because Christ was in the wrong. Pilate knew that this all started just because of a couple jealous guys. And those guys’ jealousy even led to whipping up and stirring up the crowds so that it’s not just a couple jealous men at this point. It’s a whole room, a whole crowd, a whole plaza of people all calling, crucify Him, crucify Him. Pilate could see, verse 14, that Jesus is innocent. He says, why? Why crucify Him? What has He done wrong? All the more they shouted, crucify Him. Pilate sees these things and still he delivers Christ up to death.

Why? See, Pilate needed a little political coverage. Pilate is the Roman governor of the area of Judah. He’s not from there. He’s not a been here. He’s a come here and he was placed there by the government. See, he was there and he always wanted to make his higher ups like him. So he would ruffle up the feathers of the locals. He would squash a rebellion here. He would take out some Jewish people there. And the thing is, Pilate, in his efforts to climb the work ladder, in his efforts to impress his Roman higher ups, he actually kept offending the Jews and offending his bosses. This is lost to us 2,000 years later. But if you go back, you see how Pilate multiple times was told by his bosses, hey, you got to stop it. Spreading an empire is one thing, but what you’re doing is totally different, man. You got to calm this down. So he’s already walking on eggshells with his bosses, and it’s getting to the point where other Roman governors in the area aren’t liking him either. If you read one of the other gospel accounts, you see where Pilate says, I’m just going to send Jesus over to somebody else, the governor of Galilee. Let him deal With the hometown mess up. Let Him deal with Jesus. Jesus is from Galilee, right? Why am I taking care of this? And the guy over in Galilee says, no, he’s fine. You have to deal with this, Pilate. I’m not dealing with this. So Pilate’s messing up with the locals. He’s messing up with his boss. He’s messing up with the coworkers. He needed some political coverage. So what else was he going to do? He could see that this was an innocent man. He could see that this all began the wrong way. And yet he said, I’ve got some personal gain at stake. I’ve got a job I want to keep. I’ve got some clout I want to protect. I’m going to deliver this man to be crucified.

Pilate has the opportunity to free Jesus. He has the opportunity to stop this whole sham. And he doesn’t. He has tried and found guilty. And as he has tried, the crowd has tried to. You see, there would have been a lot of people in Jerusalem. They were celebrating the Passover. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. But what that means is there’s a lot of spiritual tourists in town. A lot of folks come into the holy city to be able to celebrate one of their most climactic holidays together. They would have been there. They would have been religiously and socially stirred up already. Which means they’re a crowd ready to be whipped up into something.

This is a group of people that is used to Pilate freeing a prisoner as a celebration of this Jewish holiday. This is a group of people that was welcoming in Jesus with palm branches shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna, as their king entered on a donkey. Well, we celebrated last Sunday with the children coming in and the choir singing amen. It’s the same group of people that were excited about the coming of the king whipped up against them. They let themselves get whipped up, though. One day they are calling Christ the king. The next day they’re saying, crucify that man. The one that they saw do miracles. The one they heard teach with authority. The one that they were physically embraced by. The one that they saw break down social barriers and say, man, He loves us. The crowds betrayed Jesus because they simply followed envious leaders. They are tried and they’re found guilty.

These two trials in Mark 15, it reads me to. Makes me think about how I am not totally faithful to my Lord and Savior also. But there’s grace for us. And that’s going to be a resurrection Sunday sort of a thing. For now, we’re remembering the fact that Christ, though, was crucified. And all this happened at Passover. So what’s the deal with that? Why does that matter? Why does the Bible keep telling us it’s the week of Passover? We see, we have to go back to the second book of the Bible to understand that. Way back in the story of Exodus. You see, God’s people called Israel, they are enslaved in Egypt. They’re in a situation they can’t change. Suffering at the hands of an enemy. They can’t defeat longings of freedom they can’t provide themselves. They are trapped. And God promises to free them from slavery, but it would come through death.

Every family would need to offer a sacrifice and paint its blood on the doorpost of their home. Families that do this would be spared, but families that don’t will lose their firstborn, which means death will come to every home in Egypt. Death will come either through the willing sacrifice of an animal or the vindication of God on the disobedient. And He puts it out there. He says, I am going to free you. I am going to exit you. I’m going to exodus you out of Egypt. I’m going to take you into the promised land, but you have to do it my way. So God appoints a night for this sacrifice to happen, which would be the night of their escape. And He tells them, after you sacrifice that lamb, after you paint its blood on your doorpost, after you follow through with the steps, observe a Passover meal. Now this would have been a different sort of meal. It would have been one that they could eat quickly. It would have been fast food. It would have been something that they could just whip up real quick. They could eat it and they could go because they need to be ready on a moment’s notice to be able to get out of Dodge. So God tells them what to eat. And He says, eat this meal while the angel of death passes over the entire land of Egypt. And God uses that to free them from slavery. Ever since then, the Israelites have celebrated the night that God frees them through death. Sacrifice is the way of salvation. They eat that same meal as those families did 2000 years before them. Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, came to earth to give His life as a ransom for many. He came to be that perfect sacrifice for us, to free us from slavery to sin, to defeat an unconquerable enemy, and to deliver us from the domain of darkness and bring us into the kingdom of light.

He comes to Jerusalem the week of the Passover festival because He knows, “I’m a king, but I’m also a lamb. And I am the true lamb that will be sacrificed by a heavenly Father so that all who trust in the blood of Jesus on them will come into the home and have eternal life and not suffer the consequences of disobedience. I am the lamb.”

That’s why Christ doesn’t defend Himself to the chief priests because He came for this. That’s why Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate because He came for this. That’s why Jesus doesn’t silence the crowds with a miracle or a show of force because He came for this. That’s why Jesus didn’t fight back in the garden when the guards came to arrest Him because He came for this. That’s why Jesus hand-selected Judas to be a disciple knowing He’d be betrayed for silver because He came for this. That’s why Jesus let Himself be mocked, flogged, and handed over to be crucified because He came for this. He is the Passover lamb that was slain so that we could be freed and saved.

We don’t deserve it. We actually betray Him every day. We fail to love Him with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of our strength. And as the modern hymn, “How Deep the Father’s Love,” attests, it was my sin that held Him there until it was accomplished.

You and I are no different than Pilate or the crowds, no different than the priests or the guards, no different than any of those folks because the heart of sin is just as alive in us as it was in them. Every day we waver in our commitment to totally trust and love and walk with Jesus. We need a lamb to be sacrificed. We need to be covered by the blood of the perfect one. We need to be forgiven and freed. And on the cross, that’s what Christ endured for us.

Pray with me. Jesus, Lamb of God, claim for me, claim for us. Blood and tears, how can it be? There’s a God who weeps. There’s a God who bleeds. Oh, that You would leave heaven to come for us. As the hymn says, from heaven He came and sought her. You came to seek us. You came to seek Your bride, Your church. You came for us. Jesus, I’m sorry for my sin. I’m sorry for the ways I daily fail You and betray You. Jesus, thank You for being betrayed for us. How incredible You are.