Every Last Word

Mark: Have you ever felt that you were unfairly treated, maybe accused of something you didn't do? Maybe your words have been twisted or misrepresented. If so, you're not alone. Christ was tried in a court facing charges that were just not true. Today, we'll listen to Dr. Philip Ryken discuss these unfair charges and Jesus' response to them.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today's message is on the trial of Jesus before His crucifixion. It's part of our study in the Gospel of Luke.

Mark: Phil, why couldn't Jesus die a less painful or excruciating death to save us from our sins? Why did it need to occur in the horrible way that it did?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: I think one of the main reasons for that, Mark, is the prophecy of the Old Testament that the Messiah would be cursed by God. In the Old Testament, the punishment that showed a curse was crucifixion, to be nailed to a tree. When Jesus was dying for our sins, He wasn't just dying a death; He was dying this kind of a death, a death in which He bore God's curse against our sin. That death is crucifixion.

Mark: Did Jesus ever really come out and say that indeed He is God? There's a lot of mentions of Him being the Son of Man, but did He ever really say He was the Son of God?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Yes, Jesus did call Himself the Son of God, and therefore it's true He is both the Son of God and the Son of Man. If that's true, if it's true that Jesus really is God the Son, it means that He deserves all of the worship and service and obedience that God Himself deserves. One of my prayers for today's message, Mark, is that as people listen to the Gospel of Luke and learn more about the sufferings of Christ, that they will be drawn to worship and serve Him.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Phil. Let's turn now in our Bibles to Luke chapter 22, verses 63 through 71, as we listen to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22. We'll consider this week the last verses of that chapter from verse 63 on. More than a decade ago now, I was a student at the University of Oxford, and in my time there, there was a very outspoken critic of the whole faculty of theology. It was his frank opinion that we should have no such faculty at a modern university, that the entire enterprise of studying theology was intellectually illegitimate. The name of this man was and is Richard Dawkins, and he has now written a best-selling book called *The God Delusion*, which is really a diatribe against anyone who has faith in God.

Professor Dawkins knows about as much about theology as I do about biology, but that has not stopped him from writing on the subject. In his most recent book, he says that to believe in any deity is to commit intellectual high treason. But to believe in the God of the Bible is even worse because this God, Dawkins says, is a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty, homophobic, racist, genocidal—well, you get the idea. It continues in that vein. Even secular critics have recognized that *The God Delusion* is shoddy, intolerant, amateurish, nasty, and theologically illiterate.

But what is perhaps more shocking, even than the tone of the book despite all of its positive publicity, is that little, if anything, new is said in any of the book's main arguments. Once again, we are told that religion is a hypothesis that cannot meet the demands of scientific investigation, as if science were the only way to know. And once again, a man sits in judgment over God, deluded, I would say, by his own sense of intellectual sovereignty.

People did the same thing on the night that Jesus was betrayed. They were sitting, whether they realized it or not, in judgment over God. For on that night and in the following morning, Jesus went through a series of legal trials, both civil and ecclesiastical, in which He was accused and judged and ultimately condemned to die. We have been considering in Luke chapter 22 the first set of those trials. There were really two main sets of trials: a Jewish set and then a Roman set.

Here in chapter 22, we've been considering the Jewish trials. You'll see in verse 66 that when day came, the assembly of the elders of the people gathered together, both chief priests and scribes, and they led Him away to their council. Now, by this point, Jesus, if we compare the various Gospels and piece together the evidence, it's clear that Jesus had already been through two trials, or what perhaps we would call today pre-trial hearings. And yet, neither of those other legal proceedings—the one before Annas and then the one before Caiaphas—had any binding authority because, according to Jewish law, the High Council in Jerusalem could not try a case during the nighttime, but only during the day.

That's the significance, you'll recognize, of the opening of verse 66: "when day came, the assembly gathered." This time it was the whole assembly: the chief priests and the scribes, the Sanhedrin it was called, the 70 elders plus the High Priest who had leadership authority over the people of God. Since it was the highest court of law among the Israelites, this was the last court where Jesus would be tried before being handed over to the Romans. As we will see later in the Gospel, they alone have the power to execute the death penalty.

No one should think, even for a moment, that these nighttime trials or this first daytime trial were conducted with any real concern for justice. Oh, it's true these men were very careful to wait until daytime to begin the formal trial, and yet later that same day they would call for the execution of Jesus, and that was just as much against their legal principles as a trial by nighttime was. They were not permitted to have a death penalty on the same day that a death sentence was passed. You see, there is no real concern here for justice.

As further proof, just consider what is said in verses 63 to 65 about all of the abuse that Jesus suffered. Luke tells us that the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking Him as they beat Him. They also blindfolded Him and kept asking Him, "Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?" And they said many other things against Him, blaspheming Him. Here, I think you'll agree, was an outrageous case of police brutality.

The prisoner was totally at the mercy of the temple guards, and I think they sensed that they could get away with doing anything they wanted because surely here was a man who was going to be condemned anyway. And so they shamefully abused Him, partly physically and also verbally, not just beating Him with their fists but also subjecting Him to personal insults. These men had heard that Jesus was some kind of prophet, or that people thought He was, or that He claimed to be. So in a kind of perverse game of blind man's bluff, they tie something around His eyes. And then, as they continue to hit Him, first on one side and then the other, they're challenging Him to prophesy. "Who was it, Jesus? Tell us, who hit you that time?"

Ironically, these torments were the fulfillment of prophecy. Because these very men who were mocking Jesus were themselves fulfilling various prophecies about the sufferings of the Christ. Jesus Himself had made some of these prophecies. We saw them back in chapter 18. He said He would be mocked and shamefully treated, and He said that these very abuses would fulfill the words of the ancient prophets. And so they did.

We read, for example, in the prophet Isaiah that the suffering Christ would be stricken, smitten, and afflicted. Isaiah was speaking not simply of the cross, but also what happened before that when Jesus was tied up and tortured. And we should never forget that Jesus did these things for us, that these were the things that He suffered for our salvation. Every wounding blow and every taunting word became a demonstration of His love for lost sinners.

It's not just that Jesus died for us on the cross; it's also that He suffered for us on His way to the cross. This too is what Isaiah was prophesying when he said, "with His stripes we are healed." Now, of course, as far as our atonement is concerned, as far as the forgiveness of our sins is concerned, it was only necessary for Jesus to die. But I think in order for Him to do the full work of our salvation, it was necessary for Him to die in this way, in the way that was prophesied, that He would die alone, abandoned, abused.

Just as He fulfilled all righteousness, so He fulfilled all suffering. So that in His grace, He would be able to care for His suffering people, having Himself first become our suffering servant. And now Jesus is able to sympathize with us. More than that, He is able to empathize with us in our suffering because He too has suffered shameful cruelty at the hands of sinful men. Here is a Savior who knows what it is like to wonder when and where the next painful blow will strike.

Here is a Savior who knows what it is like to hear people laughing at Him for trusting in God. We should never think that we have a Savior who cannot or does not understand our pain. Jesus endured the worst things that anyone can experience, and He endured them with great patience and faithfulness out of love for you. And now in His grace, He is able to come in whatever time of painful trial you go through, even the very worst of earthly abuse, and He is able to say, "My child, I understand that kind of suffering, and I have grace for you and comfort and healing for you, and it's all because of the things that I myself have suffered on your behalf."

Now, it would be a grotesque injustice for any innocent man to suffer the kind of abuse that Jesus went through, but what He suffered was in a way an infinite injustice because of who He was. Luke gives us a clue of this, doesn't he, at the end of verse 65? He tells us that the men abusing Jesus were blaspheming Him. That's a significant choice of words because blasphemy is a very particular kind of slander. To blaspheme is to speak against God.

As we shall see, blasphemy is really the accusation that the Jewish council later made against Jesus. But here, Luke uses the word not to describe what Jesus was doing but what these other men were doing. Luke is pointing us to the true identity of Jesus Christ. Who is the person in this trial who is for God, and who is really against Him? Who is really the blasphemer? Is it Jesus or is it the person who opposes Jesus? That is the question really at the heart of this trial.

Luke answers that question really by showing us three of the titles that were used either by Jesus or about Jesus during the course of this trial. You see one title in verse 67: it's the title Christ. Verse 69 gives the title Son of Man, and verse 70 gives the title Son of God. You see, Luke has been trying all the way through his Gospel to make it clear who Jesus is. He wants us to see that clearly, and it's as if now, as we draw very close to the crucifixion, Luke is slowing the story down and showing us very carefully and particularly who Jesus is so that we know who it is who dies on the cross when it comes to that point in the great story of salvation.

Let's consider each of these titles for Jesus. The first one is Christ. "If you are the Christ," they say to Him in verse 67, "tell us." Christ is not the last name of Jesus; it is a formal title for His sacred office. It's another word for Messiah, meaning the Anointed One. If you look through the Scriptures, you see that this Messiah, or the Christ, is the Savior that God has always promised to send. It's a title that has kingly overtones, which may explain why this council asked Him the question.

Everyone knew that the Christ would come from the royal house of David. Many people in Israel were thinking of His kingship primarily in political terms. I mean, in those days, they were hoping for a Savior who would overthrow the Romans. And you see, if the council could get Jesus to admit that He was the Messiah, well, they could claim perhaps that Jesus wanted to overthrow the government, and that might very well be of interest to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.

And so I think their question here has a kind of malevolent motivation. These men aren't interested in the ancient promises of God; they're interested in getting Jesus killed. They want Him to claim a kingship that may get Him condemned. And so they ask Him this question, or put a sort of challenge to Him: "If you are the Christ." Well, what do you think of that statement? "If you are the Christ."

I mean, of course Jesus is the Christ. Luke has been showing this all the way through the Gospel. You go back to the very beginning to the words that were announced to Mary by the angel Gabriel: "The Lord God," this is Luke chapter 1 verse 31, "The Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David." You see, it's a way of pointing to His anointed kingship, to the fact that He is the Messiah, the son of David.

The Christmas angels said the same thing to the shepherds out in the fields: "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." Later, Luke tells us that when the baby Jesus was taken to the temple, there was the man Simeon there, and that man was waiting to see the Lord's Christ. And that's who he saw when he saw Jesus. There are no "ifs" about it; Jesus is the Christ.

Nevertheless, these members of the council put the question to Jesus: "If you are the Christ, tell us." I suppose that if this question had really been sincere, Jesus would have answered it. And yet He responds instead by saying, "If I tell you, you will not believe. And if I ask you, you will not answer." Now what is Jesus really saying here? I think the first part of that is easy enough to understand. He knew that if He told these men that He was the Christ, they wouldn't believe Him.

He had already performed many wonders for them, the miraculous signs of the Messiah. And if they did not believe those works, well, how would they believe His words? The problem was not that they didn't have enough evidence. That's never really the problem, is it? God has revealed His wisdom and His power and His beauty in the whole creation. Everything from the littlest snowflake to the farthest nebula, the glory of Jesus Christ is revealed in one way or another on every page of the Gospel.

I think even Richard Dawkins could get over his atheist delusion if only he would see what is really there. I think the problem is not a lack of evidence but a failure to accept the evidence given. I wonder, would Jesus need to tell you the same thing that He said to these men? "If I tell you, you will not believe. I've already told you; the evidence is already there. If you do not believe that, I have nothing further to say to you. You need to believe what has already been said." That's what Jesus is saying to these men.

I think the next part of His statement is a little harder to understand. He said, "If I ask you, you will not answer." Which makes us wonder, what was Jesus thinking about asking these men? I think the answer is the most important question in the world: "Do you believe that I am the Christ?" That's the thing that Jesus would put to these men. Here is how some of the commentators have paraphrased His statement: "If I advance any arguments to prove that I am the Messiah, you would not answer me." Or here is another paraphrase: "If I inquire of you what kind of Messiah is promised in Scripture and ask you whether the signs of the Messiah appear sufficiently in me, you will not give me an honest answer."

I think that is probably the case. In fact, I know it is because Jesus said it was. But you could also see it from what has already been happening in the Gospels. These men were already in the habit of not answering when Jesus asked them a fair question. It happened when Jesus spoke to them about the baptism of John and asked them for some kind of fair explanation of that. They had nothing to say; they wouldn't answer Him. It happened again when Jesus spoke to them about David's son and David's Lord, and they wouldn't answer him this time either.

Their minds were made up. They had decided that they would take His life and whether He said that He was the Messiah or not. You see, you still have an opportunity if your mind is not made up about Jesus to answer the same question a different way. Really, as you read the Gospel, as you hear the preaching of God's word, Jesus is asking you through my words whether you believe that He is the Christ. Do you believe the promise of the Christmas angels or not? Do you believe the very words of Jesus here in the Gospel? The same man who was betrayed by Judas and tried by the Sanhedrin and condemned by Pilate before being crucified at Calvary. Do you believe that He is the Savior God promised to send? Is He the Christ?

Well, there is more to know about this man than simply that title because Jesus, although He would not say whether He was the Christ, did give them one of His other titles. Notice what it is in verse 69: "From now on," He said, "the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God." Jesus the Christ is also the Son of Man. Now, this was far and away His favorite title for Himself. He uses it dozens of times in the Gospels, more than any other expression.

To give just one notable example, if you were to turn back to Luke 9, you would see Jesus prophesying His crucifixion and His resurrection and saying, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected and killed and on the third day raised." And now here Jesus was telling the very men who did reject Him that He was, in fact, that Son of Man. Now, there's a general sense in which any person really is a son of man, that is to say, an offspring of humanity.

But this title has a special meaning that comes from the Old Testament, in the prophecies of Daniel. Daniel saw a vision of the Son of Man coming in heavenly glory and divine judgment. He tells us that he saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a Son of Man. And He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion; His kingdom is one that shall not be destroyed. That's the vision that Daniel saw.

You'll notice that although that title Son of Man is associated with humanity, the glory of that vision communicates something of deity. When the prophet saw the Son of Man, he saw a being of mighty power, of awesome splendor, with God-like dominion over the nations. And here at His trial before the Sanhedrin, Jesus is claiming that title for Himself. He is saying, "I am the Son of Man with all of the divine connotations of that title." Here is a term of humanity pointing to deity, and Jesus is using it because it expresses so well His own incarnation as the God-man.

Jesus uses the title the same way that Daniel used it. He's giving a prophecy here of the final judgment. He's talking about sitting on the right hand of God, that place of divine authority. And there He will exercise His rule over the nations, His judgment over the universe. And He will do this very soon. Notice what Jesus says: "from now on." It says in verse 69. He's virtually implying that His elevation has almost already begun, and He's absolutely certain of it. Even as He goes to the cross, He's confident that His Father will raise Him from the dead.

And all of these things did happen because in a matter of days from this prophecy, Jesus rose from the grave. In a matter of weeks, He ascended to heaven to that place of dominion and authority. And in a little while, whether it is days or weeks or years, He will come again in glorious judgment to rule the nations. And what a reversal that is of the situation described for us here in Luke 22. Here we have a promise in what Jesus says: that He will judge the men who once sat in judgment over Him.

How ironic that is. At the very time He is being judged, He is also claiming the right to be the judge. And the time will come, therefore, when everyone who makes a judgment about Jesus will be judged by Him. Oh, this is the right order of things. We do not judge God; He judges us. And many people get this backwards. They start to investigate religion. They assume that the real question is what they think about God. That's an important question, I won't deny that, but even more important is what God thinks about us.

I think we see the problem of that attitude in the explanation one well-known youth leader recently gave in an evangelical publication as to why he could not accept the orthodox Christian teaching about the sovereignty of God or about the necessity of confessing Jesus Christ as the only Savior and Lord. "I refuse to believe any of that," he said. "If those things are true, God might as well send me to hell. Please don't get me wrong. I'm well aware that I don't get to decide who God is, but what I do get to decide is to whom I pledge my allegiance. After all, I have standards for my God, the first of which is this: I will not worship any God who is not at least as compassionate as I am."

Now, what is shocking in those statements is not simply the rejection of cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, but also the idea that God is the one who has to meet our standards. Now, this is the proud posture of our fallen nature, that we demand at times the right to sit in judgment over God, over who He is, over what He has done. But here is Jesus in the Gospels and He says, "I am the Son of Man. And if I am the Son of Man, then one day I will sit in judgment over everything."

And we should consider well, therefore, whether we ourselves are ready for the day of that judgment. Let me ask you: Have you accepted God's perspective on your sin and on His way of salvation? You see, that is the important thing. Have you entrusted your body and your soul to Jesus, the Son of Man, who is also the Christ? Well, I think the religious leaders who conducted this trial knew pretty well what Jesus was claiming here. They knew the Old Testament. They knew the prophecies of Daniel. And when Jesus started speaking about the Son of Man, they recognized the audacity of that claim. They saw it in some way as a claim to divine authority and power.

But to make sure that Jesus had said what they thought He really had said, they double-checked by asking Him this question: "Are you the Son of God, then?" Verse 70, "Are you the Son of God?" Now, there are still some people, including some Bible scholars, who deny that Jesus ever did claim to be God. But the religious leaders who got Jesus killed were well aware that that is what He had claimed. In fact, that's one of the reasons they were so angry with Him. They were sure He couldn't be God, and therefore any kind of claim to this kind of divine authority had to be blasphemy, which in those days was a capital offense under Jewish law. And so they asked Him again if He was the Son of God.

Now, if you've studied the Gospel of Luke, you know that's an easy one too. Is Jesus the Son of God? Yes, He's the Son of God. It's been clear from the very beginning of the Gospel, when Gabriel first announced His birth to the Virgin Mary and said that He would be called the Son of the Most High. And in case you're not clear about that, the Most High happens to be God. It was confirmed at Jesus' baptism, when the Father spoke from heaven and said, "This is my beloved Son." He said the same thing at the Transfiguration. You see, Jesus Christ is the Son of God as well as the Son of Man.

And Jesus declared this at His trial in the words you see at the end of verse 70: "You say that I am." This was not an evasion, as it may seem to us in our manner of speaking. It is really an affirmation. It's a manner of speech that gives assent without necessarily indicating total agreement with everything that people mean when they ask the question. Here's how Leon Morris paraphrases Jesus' response here. He says, "I would not put it like that, but since you have, I cannot deny it."

See, what Jesus meant by being the Son of God may not have been exactly what these men were saying when they referred to the Son of God. I mean, He understood His supreme, unique, divine, eternal Sonship in a way His enemies would never understand. But He could hardly deny the truth of what they were saying because He is the Son of God. He was the Son of God. He will always be the Son of God. And so He said, "You say that I am."

And of course, at this point, for all practical purposes, the trial was over because when the scribes and the chief priests heard Jesus say that, make this claim to be the Son of God, they immediately said, "What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from His own lips." And of course they were saying these words in judgment. They had been up all night trying to find some charge against Jesus that would stick against Him in a court of law. And finally, they had managed to get Him to incriminate Himself. At least in their opinion, He claimed to be the Son of God. And so He had spoken blasphemy. Or so they thought.

Oh, if only these men could have asked their question in a different way and answered it in the right way. Because then they would have been saved. Consider carefully what they said. Look again at it in the Scriptures. Luke has put it here very deliberately. He wants to make sure that we hear what these men said at this trial. "What further testimony do we need?" You see, Luke is hoping that we will catch the irony in this statement. He is hoping that we will answer the question the right way instead of the wrong way. "What further testimony do we need? We ourselves have heard it from His own lips."

Well, what further testimony do you need? Because right here in the Gospel, we have heard the words of Jesus Himself. He claims to be the Savior that God always promised to send. He prophesies that He will come one day in judgment with glory over the nations. He says that He is the very Son of the very God, the one and only Son of the everlasting Father. You have heard it from His lips. What further testimony do you need? I pray that you will receive the given testimony and believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of Man and the Son of God.

Our Father in heaven, we give you praise that we have the testimony of Jesus about Himself, and that it is so clearly given. We pray that having given this testimony, You would also give us the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, who alone is able to help us believe these things unto salvation. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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