Parkers Lake Baptist Church

April 13, 2008, AM Service

Pastor Craig Muri

What a great way to express our love for God. It happens quite often in the course of our lives that we unwittingly find ourselves in the presence of greatness, not even knowing that we are in the presence of greatness. People who are eminent in ways that we don't even understand. People that have genious that may not even yet be recognized by the people around them. It probably even happens here at Parkers Lake Baptist Church. That one went over your heads, I guess. I thought that was hilarious. Not really.

We from time to time in history have found that to be true as well. One of my favorite historians is Victor David Sampson. Anybody read Victor David Sampson? He wrote a book several years ago--actually 2001 I think it was published--The Soul of Battle, in which he traced three very significant military generals. And one of them was General George Patton in World War II. And his thesis was if the Allied leadership would have recognized who and what they had in General George Patton--if they would have given him the permission and the authority to do what he planned to do, World Ward II would have ended much earlier and with much less casualty and collateral damage to Europe. Now, there's a lot of people... You can argue history after the fact and you can say if this would have happened, this would have resulted, but, really, nobody actually knows. And so there's a lot of back-and-forth and there's continuing and ongoing discussion about George Patton--old blood-and-guts Patton, who was rather course, rather profane, rather flamboyant, rather unpredictable, but rather a genious, by those who really study warfare. He wasn't recognized. He wasn't given the permisison to do what he could have maybe done and history may look different if he had been. But you know what? General Pattons come and General Pattons go and sometimes they're recognized and they're sometimes they're not and life goes on and history unfolds.

But there was a moment in history when true greatness came into this world and men and women, almost wholesale, failed to recognize that greatness. And the tragedy is that as generation succeeds generation, men and women continue, even with the wealth of information that we have after the fact, the entire New Testament scriptures which illicit, it clarifies for us the Old Testament scriptures--all of which together are a collective record of the greatness of Jesus, the Christ.

And yet we don't recognize that greatness. I shared with you before what I consider to be one of the great and grand understatments of Scripture and that is John chapter one verse 11. "He came to His own and His own received Him not."

They did not receive Him. Far worse than that, they rejected Him. Far worse than that, they treated Him with contempt. Far worse than that, they dished out disdain. Far worse than that, they crucified Him.

Theologically, the Jews that we're looking at in John chapters 18 and 19. We're in John 18 and 19 as we continue our progress through the Gospel of John. And we're into that narrative now where Jesus is arrested. He's tried by the Jews. He's tried by the Romans. But all of it is manipulated by the Jews. It is their agenda that's being pursued. The Roman magistrates--the Roman leadership--are unwitting participants in something that is really being fueled by Jewish antipathy, hatred.

And as we loook at John chapter 18 and 19, we continually are confronted with the fact that this thing is being driven by the Jews. Now the phrase, "The Jews," is interpreted variously in the Gospels, even by John. But in this particular section in John 18 and 19, "The Jews" refers to those who cling to the minutiae of the Law. They uphold the minor and the very, very fine points of the Law. But they fail to grasp that that law they cherish, the law they worship, points in every way to the Messiah-ship, the deity, the ministry, the mission of Jesus Christ, who in their hands and in their faces, one they despised and desired to kill. If they had understood the law that they taught. If they had understood the law that it was their ministry and their sole responsibility to disseminate and clarify. If they had understood the law themselves, they would have had but one recourse--not to kill, but to worship.

And in every era, in every generation since then, when men and women understand the message of this book, when we understand through the Word of God, illuminated by the Spirit of God, when we understand the message and meaning of this book, we worship Jesus Christ. We understand that there is greatness in the person of Jesus Christ. We've sung, we've magnified the greatness of Jesus Christ in our worship this morning. That is the natural outflow, that is the natural response, to an understanding of the Gospel.

But there are many in our world who continue to reject, to curse, to treat with disdain and contempt that very One that we have come together to magnify, to exalt and to worship this morning. And many of us spent much of our lives doing the very same thing until we were confronted with the truth and the Holy Spirit enabled us to understand our horrible failure of grasping the truth of who Jesus Christ is. He came to His own and His own did not receive Him. But to all those who did receive Him, who believed on His name, to them He gave the privilege, the power, the authority, the right to become children of God. What a glorious, glorious truth!

Now, in order to understand John chapter 18, in order to understand what's happening with the Jews, in order to understand the absolute intentionality of what they are doing, in order to understand the depths of their antipathy, the depths of their hatred, the depths of their zeal against Jesus Christ, you have to understand something about Jewish law. You have to understand something about the system under which Jesus was being tried, both the Jewish and the Roman components of that law.

In the history of law, the period of history, the period of time in which Jesus is being tried, by the Jews and then by the Romans, is a classical--is the era often referred to as the classical Roman law. This is the time at which Roman law, which has become the centerpiece of western European law--really eastern European law--all of European law. And really foundational to our law in the West as well here in America. It was during this period of time that Roman law was actually developing toward its highest perfection. It became the standard. It was then, and was since then, the highest standard of jurisprudence. It became foundational to much of modern law.

[9:30]

But Roman law, even at its most pristine form, Roman law, even in its most fair and just expression, could not hold a candle to the Jewish law at the time of Jesus Christ in its absolute bias toward acquittal.

What we don't understand about Jewish law in the times of Jesus, but we can get a glimpse of if we go back and study the Talmud. The Jewish law was based on the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, the books of Moses, the Mosaic law--it was based on the Talmud, or the Torah, but also the Talmud which was the commentary on that law--the oral traditions, the oral law. And the oral law had a component to it, which was the basic law part, the Mishna, but then also the Demorah, which was the volumes and volumes and volumes of commentary on that basic law. And if you take from that mammoth collection of statements about Jewish law, if you just take that part that has to do with capital offenses, which is what we're looking at in John chapters 18 and 19--if you just look at that part of it--there's some very interesting facts that emerge, some very interesting truths about Jewish law that come into our understanding of this part of history.

[11:09]

One: These cases had to be tried by the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was that group of 70 leaders in Israel, plus the head of the Sanhedrin. And so it was 71 individuals. Probably had its origin in Exodus chapter 11 when Moses appointed 70 elders to lead--to help him lead and God took of the annointing of Moses and put it in a shared form on those 70 elders. And so Moses plus the 70 was 71. It's that group of individuals that Jesus referred to in the days before the cross when He told His disciples, "I must--the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and be tried by the chief priests and the elders and the scribes and be crucified and rise again the third day." The chief priests, the elders and the scribes, in equal numbers, 23 chief priests, 23 elders, 23 scribes made up the Sanhderin, plus 2 officials at the top of the pile.

[12:24]

So these were the ones, who were the enemies, the antagonists, of Jesus Christ. Jesus knows that He is going to be tried by the Sanhedrin. But in order for there to be a capital sentence passed, it had to be tried by the Sanhedrin. Keep that in mind.