Jesus' Trial And Peter's Denial

Jesus' Trial and Peters Denial

John 18:12-27

In this passage we have read today John does an interesting thing that you may have never noticed just reading over this before . He goes from talking about the trial of Jesus to Peters denial and then switches back to the trial of Jesus. I believe that he does this for a purpose. The reason John wrote the book was to show the Glory of God in Christ so that we might believe. And here you have Jesus going from one trial to the next and right in the middle of it John wants us to see why- it was for the sinfulness of man that Jesus was dying.

You have two fundamental truths found here- the glory of Christ and the sinfulness of man

so John exalts Jesus in contrast to Peter

This week we have been bombarded in the news with everything we have ever wanted to know or not know about Mel Gibson. In 2004 Gibson produced the move the Passion of Christ which many theologians felt was an accurate portray of the crucification of Christ yet as we have found out this week Gibson is still a man, and because of that has a fallen nature. Christ alone stands in glory, not John or Matthew or even Peter

The night of his arrest, which we looked at last week Jesus ends up going through a religious trial and a civil trial

each trial had three phases so he ends up going through six trials

To understand what was taking place here it is necessary to know that the political scene looked like in Jesus' day.

-Rome was in control, but Rome had no interest in the Jews religion so they allowed the Jewish religious leaders to keep that control but they were more or less just puppets on a string and the position of High priest was one that could go to the highest bidder.

The Jewish religious leaders were suppose to take care of religious matters, but they had no power to put a person to death, only Rome could do that. In order for the Jews to put Jesus to death they had to come up with a civil charge

Biblical there was to be only one high priest and they were to serve for life, but things were such a mess that the law was not being followed during this time in history

The first person they took Jesus to was Annas, there was a reason for this.

They knew that Annas hated Jesus.

Annas was powerful and rich, that's how he bought the office. The high priest had the job of inspecting the sacrifices that were brought into the temple and Annas had a monopoly on this. The Old testament required that a sacrifice be without spot or blemish. He would find a flaw with their sacrifice and then the people would have to buy one from the merchants that had set up in the temple. Also when you came to pay your temple tax and had to change your money the moneychangers took your money and gave you about 1/5 of what it was worth

The common man who wanted to follow the law and obey God found himself in quite a predicament and the money was flowing right to Annas who not only allowed sacrifices to be sold in the outer court but made profit from it

Now you can understand what took place when Jesus cleaned out the temple

Mat 21:12 ¶ And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

Mat 21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

History tells us that during one passover some ¼ million sacrifices were brought to the temple. History also tells us that the Jews hated Annas and referred to the temple as Anna's bizarre

But this night they needed Annas and they knew he hated Jesus and they knew he was powerful, so powerful as a matter of fact that he had already put his son in law in power as high priest also and the next seven high priest were all related to Annas

Then they took Jesus to Caiaphas to be tried who was the acting high priest at the time

Caiaphas already it in for Jesus When the religious leaders got worried that Rome would take away they power because of the miracles that Jesus was performing they had a meeting in which Caiaphas determined that Jesus had to die

Jhn 11:48 If we let him thus alone, all [men] will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.