Jesus' Trial, Peter's Denial
John 18:12‑27
We come in our studies to the eighteenth chapter of John, to a very familiar and most important and wonderful passage. We have seen in the years now, a couple of years that we have been studying the gospel of John, that John always wants to present to us the glories of Jesus Christ., He always wants to magnify His deity. He is not nearly so concerned about the human Jesus as he is about Jesus God, a very God. And no less than that does he do in our passage today, as always he does in his gospel.
Now, we're going to look at verses 12 to 27 and we can coverthat many verses, you can rest easy, because it's historical narrative. And it takes us through the flow of two dramas happening at the same time, both with tremendous significance on their own and they're mingled by John and the Holy Spirit here in this passage. And these two dramas teach us the two basic truths to all of Christian doctrine: the glory of Christ and the sinfulness of man. Now those are the two basics to Christianity. Christianity is built on the fact that Christ is glorious, God is holy and man is sinful. That's what it's all about. Everything moves from that foundation up.
But, these two basics of the tremendous majesty of Jesus Christ and the depth of sin in the life of men are contrasted graphically by presenting Jesus Christ in His trial and Peter in his denial.
Now, as I said, Jesus has concluded His time with the eleven in the upper room. From chapter 13 through chapter 17 He had spent time promising them wonderful blessings in the new age to come, praying to the Father that the Father would care forthem in the time that Jesus went to the cross, and continually from then on. And now the hour has come to move toward Calvary. And so, Jesus leaves the upper room with the little group of eleven, goes out the gate, perhaps Stephen's Gate, down the little slope of Kidron, cross the little winter torrent, up the other side, as we saw last week, into the Mount of Olives to a place called the Garden of Gethsemane. And in this garden, Jesus spends time in prayer, agonizing over the anticipation of sin bearing and separation from God.
Having concluded His time of prayer, John tells us Jesus confronts Judas leading the multitude mixed of Gentile and Jew coming to the garden to capture Jesus. The Jews had long waited for an opportune moment to capture Him. They couldn't do it in public because He was too much of a public figure and the people esteemed Him too highly and they waited for that secret moment when they could get Him when He wasn't aware and when the people weren't aware. And indeed the moment has arrived and Jesus, to make it easy for them, moves to a place in the dark of night where they will have no trouble taking Him, there will be no people around but His own disciples and a place that He knows Judas knows He will go to. So it simplifies Judas' job, Judas being aware that Jesus retired night by night in that very garden.
And so, Jesus sets it up because it is time for Him to die. And now the whole force moves to get Jesus and they come led by Judas and armed to the teeth. Now we saw last we that as this army confronts Jesus, Jesus takes the occasion to display His majesty and His glory and His power. Never being the victim but always being the victor ‑‑ and particularly so in John's special emphasis presentation. We see in that record right there in the Garden of Gethsemane the tremendous display of the power and the glory of Jesus Christ. In what could have been a very debasing and very humbling and degrading situation Jesus shines forth in glory. There can be no really ... there can be no worse situation than be co ... than be captured like a common criminal, condemned to die And executed and yet in all of this Jesus shines in tremendous majesty. And here they come to Jesus to capture Him as a common criminal and Judas places that putrid kiss on His cheek to betray Him, and even in that, from that kind of degrading, humiliating scene Jesus is exalted in His deity.
You say, "How?" Well, you remember what happened; He turned their well‑planned maneuver into a triumph of His own power. The first thing He did was He said -‑ who are you looking for? And they said Jesus of Nazareth. And He said ‑- I am. And they all fell over. Likely there were at least a thousand of them ... somewhere between six hundred and a thousand, and they fell down. The word of His power flattened them on the ground.
Later on in the same scene He had exacted from their own mouth two times that they had come only for Jesus of Nazareth so they would admit by their own tongue that they had no right to His disciples. And then He said, "Let them go." And they had admitted twice by their own mouth that their orders were only for Jesus and thus in power He had controlled the situation and secured the release of His disciples ... always in control ... never the victim, always the victor. And so He built a little shelter for His disciples and naturally Peter jumped out of the shelter and went out and was going to start fighting, grabbed his little dagger, his little machaira as the Greek word indicates and cut off an ear, not aiming for an ear but that's the best he could get at that particular interval. And so, Jesus stepped out of that and He just created an ear on the spot for Malchus.
And so, in the garden scene, Jesus had displayed tremendous glory, He had displayed His deity, first of all, in His power ... then in His control and then in His ability to create. He had given them a display of deity. And instead of becoming a victim in the garden He looks like a victor and indeed He is. And He made sure that you know and that I know and that everybody for all time knows that no man took His life from Him, He laid it down ... what? ... of Himself. Matthew added that Jesus said, "Thinkest thou not that I cannot beseech My Father and He shall give Me more than twelve legions of angels, but how then shall the Scripture be fulfilled?" Jesus could have asked God and received 12 legions of angels. Now that's enough to get you out of any problem. In the Old Testament one angel had handled 185 thousand of Sennacherib's forces. You can imagine what 12 legions of angels would be able to handle.
So, Jesus had manifested His majesty in the garden. And He had left for all time the impression upon all men who read the Word of God that Hewas never a victim, He was always a victor. And the sad and pathetic and almost unbelievable response after the display of glory and the display of majesty and the display of divine power is recorded for us in verse 12, and you'll look at that and we'll being our look at these verses.
Just an introduction here, "Then the band," the cohort, the Roman soldiers, "and the captain," the chiliarch, ruler over a thousand, "and officers," temple police, "of the Jews took Jesus," and the word "took" is the word for the official arrest," and bound Him." So this massive force takes Jesus and binds Him. Almost as if He hadn't even done anything miraculous to try to show them who He was, almost as if nothing had ever happened, as if their minds all of a sudden were blanked out as to what they had just experienced in the display of majesty that they had seen. And so they took Him and bound Him. The body of the Son of God was bound that our souls might be loosed from the cords of sin and Satan. It will give you a little insight into sin, won't it? And the blindness of sin ... that it cannot see the miraculous character and deity of Jesus Christ right in front of it.
Now, starting from there, in the following passage through verse 27 there are two dramas taking place. Not one but two. They are separate dramas, separate scenes in separate locations and only at the end of our message this morning will we see how they meet and they don't meet in John's gospel, they meet in Luke 22 and we'll get to that. But you have one drama going over here and one here. Jesus' trial and Peter's denial ... and they are inter- Woven through this passage. Jesus' trial to Peter's denial, meanwhile back at the trial, meanwhile back at the denial. It just jumps back and forth. And it shows us those two basic foundational truths of Christianity: the glory of Christ and the sinfulness of man. Even Peter who was certainly above other men in the fact that he believed, yet is a great illustration of the sinfulness of sin.
Now, I want you to notice that in John's record by the Holy Spirit they are interwoven accounts. It would have been very simple for the Holy Spirit to just put the trial in one spot, at least this portion of it before Annas, put Peter's denial together in one spot and have them separate so you can just take them each individually, but no. The Spirit of God weaves them together.
Now, as you study in commentaries and various books you find that most have the tendency to put them together and they sort of say ‑- Well, we don't know why they're separated but for simplicity's sake we'll put them together, but it's better to leave them the way they are because that's the way the Holy Spirit wanted them to be or He wouldn't have put them that way. And so, what we're going to study this morning, and really see some exciting things, are these two different dramas going on at the same time and how they finally resolve together in a closing climax that is powerful. Jesus' trial and Peter's denial.
Now, I asked myself, as I always do, why the Holy Spirit wanted to make sure these two things were taken together and intermingled. Perhaps we could say to emphasize those two truths ‑‑ the glory of Christ and the sinfulness of man. Perhaps to emphasize that Christ's atoning death was so necessary by showing not only the sinfulness of the unregenerate but even the sinfulness in the life of a believer who doesn't appear a whole lot better than anybody else at this point.
Another suggestion might be that the reason these two are intermingled is to give us a very lasting and a very vivid contrast between the loving faithfulness of Jesus and the loveless faithlessness of Peter. Certainly there's a distinction between the kind of love that Jesus shows which cares for His disciples right on through the trial, who always in the front of His mind are those disciples, who loves them and is faithful to them to the end, and Peter who is faithless, denying and so forth. And so, perhaps there's the point that it contrasts the love of Christ for us and its divine nature with the love of us for Him which leaves a lot to be desired.
But the clearest reason of all, the one that I think is most significant because of the gospel of John, is that the contrast is left here in order that we might exalt Christ. How are you going to exalt somebody in an arrest, in an indictment or an arraignment and in a mock trial in which He's spit on and punched around and pushed and abused and mocked? How are you ever going to exalt anybody in a scene like that? The only way you can do it is by contrast, right? So no matter how humiliated Jesus is, down this low there is always Peter down on the bottom. So by comparison, Jesus Christ is again exalted. So the Holy Spirit shows us somebody who was much lower than Jesus, who became much more humiliated and much more degraded than Jesus.And that somebody is Peter. So he exalts Christ by comparison to Peter and he makes sure that he weaves the two together so you keep being aware of the beauties of Jesus in comparison with the ... with the terrible degrading attitude of Peter who should have known better. And Peter was no run‑of‑the‑mill Joe, I mean; Peter was ... he was a pretty hot commodity. He belonged to Jesus Christ. He knew better. He was probably the greatest of the disciples in terms of natural abilities and force of personality. He was quite an individual. And yet he's the one that looks so low and thus by comparison, he being higher than other men, is still lower than Jesus. And after reading this particular passage you come out with those two things, you come out with the beauty and the dignity of Jesus and the depths of sin of Peter and so Jesus is exalted.
All right, let's look at act one ‑‑ Jesus' trial ‑‑ Act One. Verse 12 to 14, as I say, it's a historical narrative so we'll just move through it and find some interesting things. Verse 12: "Then the band and the captain and the officers of the Jews took Jesus and bound Him." Now, this is an interesting multitude that's doing this and a good illustration of kind of the world picture of sin and rejection of Christ. Because within this multitude you have Gentiles and Jews, heathen and religious, soldiers and servants, priests and Pharisees, a whole lot of different types and though they may not all have all things in common, they all have one thing in common and that is they are totally stone blind to the incomparable qualities of the Son of God. They do not see it at all. They are insensible, they are unmoved, they come to parrot and carry out their orders, totally untouched by the tremendous display of the power of Jesus Christ that they've just seen. And they are graphic illustrators of the terrible sinfulness of the natural man who even in the face of a display of miracles does not believe. And that shows you the grip of sin. It's not hard to understand the unbelief and hardness of heart which we see today when we understand what was going on in Jesus' day.
If you read a little further in your Bible you'll find that even in the Kingdom, when Jesus Christ sits on the throne in Jerusalem and rules the earth and is there in physical presence, doing the marvelous things that only He can do, there will be a revolution world‑wide of people who have rejected Him who will move to fight against Him. The depth and the sinfulness of sin.
The Apostle Paul says: "The god of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them."
Now, you'll notice in verse 12 they bind Him. There were probably several reasons for this. Number one, it was common practice with the captive to bind him just to secure him. Secondly, in Matthew 26:48 Judas had made the statement, ‑‑ when you get Him, quote, "Hold Him fast." And so they were taking the advice of Judas. But beyond that there is certainly a very beautiful fulfillment of typical prophecy. Now I've told you before that there are two types of prophecy. There is verbally predictive prophecy which is where a statement is made that will be fulfilled. And there is typically predictive prophecy in which a certain act or a certain person or a certain thing typifies a fulfillment. For example, a prophet may say Jesus will be born in Bethlehem. That's verbal prediction. On the other hand, a sacrifice laid on an altar is a picture of Jesus Christ, that is a type, so that is typical prediction. Both are accurate. Both are important. And so, as Jesus is bound here we could conclude that He is, in a sense, fulfilling typical prophecy because in the Old Testament, according to Psalm 118:27, the Bible says: "Bind the sacrifice with cords unto the horns of the altar." When the sacrifice was given it was bound. Do you remember in Genesis chapter 22:9, Isaac, who has to be for us a picture of Jesus Christ, is taken and before he is to be sacrificed is bound? So, Jesus by being bound fulfills the Old Testament type, bound in preparation for a sin offering.
Now, verse 13: After He was bound ... and here we get into the nitty‑gritty of the trial, "and led Him away to Annas first, for he was the father‑in‑law of Caiaphas who was the high priest that same year." Now there you meet two real crumbs ‑‑ Annas and Caiaphas. They are despicable individuals. They would definitely fit into the Bible's rouges' gallery. They are the lowest of the low. But they're very important to the scene.
Now Annas, we must look at Annas first, because the Bible says they led Him away to Annas first and there was a reason for that. This is the first phase of Jesus' trial. Let me give you a little quick note on His trial. Jesus had two trials ‑‑ a religious trial and a civil trial. His religious trial had to do with Israel; His civil trial had to do with Rome. And nothing, could be done in terms of Jesus' execution without Rome. Israel could decide that He should die but Rome had to execute Him 'cause they had no right to take a life since they were under Roman bondage. So first of all, there is then a religious trial. That religious trial has three parts: the arraignment, or the initial indictment before Annas which took place immediately after the garden, it was followed by a meeting with Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin who had gotten together in the middle of the night, which was, of course, illegal but was part of the plot, the whole trial was illegal, it never was intended to be legal it was all a mockery just to get it over with. The second part then, in the middle of the night with Caiaphas, and then to try to validate what they had done they had a regrouping in the morning after daybreak to try to make it legal ... of the same group, Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin. So they had three phases: Annas, Caiaphas in the middle of the night with the Sanhedrin and then in the morning again.
After that, He went to the civil trial which also had three phases. First before Pilate and Pilate didn't know what to do so he sent Jesus over to Herod who was the tetrarch of Galilee who happened to be down in Jerusalem at the time and Herod didn't know what to do with Him either so he sent Him back to Pilate. So there you have the three phases of the civil trial.
Now, to begin this whole mock trial which didn't have any evidence from beginning to end and didn't mean anything, it was all a part of the plot, He is taken to Annas first of all. Now according to the Word of God and especially according to verse 19 in this passage, we know that Annas is called the high priest. Now the question that always arises is how come Annas is called the high priest and so is Caiaphas? Can you have two high priests? Technically, according to God's design, no. But by this time Israel had deteriorated into so many problems that they had problems of this nature. There was not only one or two high priests there may have been others who rightfully had the right to be called high priests. But Annas was the power behind everything.
Now, let me tell you what I mean. It is possible and likely that Annas legitimately had the right to be high priest. He could well have been in the Aaronic line. If that is true then he did have the right to be high priest. And in fact he was high priest from the year 6 to 15 A.D., during the childhood years of Jesus. But around the year 15 he had been pressured by the Romans to bail out of being high priest because they wanted it to become a puppet office and Annas was a powerful guy. And I suppose historically they felt somewhat threatened or insecure with Annas in there running the show permanently until he died. Because in the Old Testament, you see, a man was high priest for life. And so technically Annas was still high priest and could legitimately be called high priest ... for he was high priest all his life, if in fact as we believe he was of the Aaronic line. But in order to kind of work together with Rome, Rome had felt they needed to put a puppet in as high priest and so they would appoint high priests. Technically they weren't legitimate.
Now, to show you what kind of a guy Annas was, he was so powerful that when they took Annas out of office, the next six, seven guys they put in, five of them were his sons, one was his grandson and this one was his son‑in‑law. So he may not have been high priest technically, but he was high priest for real. He was running the show. Now in order to be high priest you just had to get down on the ground and kiss Rome's hem and come up with a lot of money. You bought the office. It was a matter of intrigue, a matter of corruption, of contention and bribery. And Annas was so loaded with money that he just kept buying out the high priest office and consequently was always in control.
Now this kind of sets the stage for Annas being involved here and Caiaphas would be just a puppet for Annas. Evidently Annas was the biggest briber because he had the most money and it's very interesting to learn how he earned his money. Annas was in charge of the temple concessions. Now when Annas got bounced around 15, he took over running the concessions in the temple and Annas was an operator. He was really the biggest cog in the ecclesiastical machine of Judaism. He ran the show. He was immensely rich and consequently could buy his way into all these offices and he remained the power behind the scene.
Now about this particular situation of temple concessions ... You say, "What do they have concessions in the temple for anyway? That belongs at the football game." Well, they weren't those kind of concessions, hot dogs, and popcorn concessions. They were ... they were concessions having to do with the sale of animals for sacrifices. When people came to make their sacrifices, they came into the outer court called "The Court of the Gentiles," and there were all these concession booths set up for the exchange of money because they would have to pay a temple tax, put money in those trumpet‑shaped things that were on the walls where they dropped their collection. And if they brought in foreign currency, of course, they had to exchange it. Also, they came in there to make sacrifices.