The Trials of Jesus (Mark #50)

Grab your Bibles and turn to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 14. We are going to start in verse 43 and continue in our series called Follow the Servant.

We have called it that for a reason. For about sixteen weeks we have worked through Mark, and the whole premise is that Jesus came as a suffering servant. He came not to be served but to serve the world. And the world is going to walk in opposition to the way Jesus calls his followers to walk.

You have seen that imagery all the way through: people in the world walk one direction, and Jesus says, if you are going to follow me, I want you to walk differently, look differently, think differently.

Now we are coming to the end, and the intensity is picking up.

Where We Left Off

Last week we were in Gethsemane, watching Jesus pour his guts out to God. The divine side of him fully says, Father, not my will but yours. He looks to God, God tells him what to do, and he does it. That never changed.

But his human side suffered. His human side did not want it. He said, God, if there is a way you can take this from me, please do it. And at the end of the day he said, not my will but yours.

Which should be our response too. In the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, our response should be the same: God, not my will but yours.

So the intensity is rising. It is nighttime. And we are about to walk into a series of make-or-break moments.

The Question Nobody Asks

Here is something we usually skip. In our reading we get to Gethsemane, where Jesus is praying his guts out, and then we jump to Golgotha, the place of the skull, where he is crucified.

But have you ever asked: what actually got Jesus killed? What were the specific things that led to his murder?

That gets answered in this passage. Because the time between Gethsemane and Golgotha happens at night, and it is full of make-or-break moments.

A make-or-break moment for Judas. For the religious leaders. For the secular government. For Peter, one of his closest disciples. And for Barabbas, the criminal.

The Betrayal (verses 43–46)

“And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I will kiss is the man. Seize him and lead him away under guard.’ And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, ‘Rabbi!’ And he kissed him. And they laid hands on him and seized him.”

Judas is one of Jesus’ followers who is going to turn on his own rabbi, betraying him for thirty pieces of silver. And he gives this arresting party — essentially a first-century SWAT team — a signal: the one I kiss on the cheek is the one you want.

Why did he have to do that? Because some of these people still did not know what Jesus looked like. They had heard of him, but they needed to put a face with the name. So Judas uses a kiss on the cheek — a perfectly normal greeting in that culture — as an act of betrayal.

And now it gets physical. They are literally taking Jesus by force, intending to put him on trial and find some reason to justify what is already in their hearts: this man deserves death. He is turning the kingdom upside down. He is turning our religious establishment upside down.

Peter and the Ear

They start grabbing Jesus and his followers. And Peter — the guy who acts first and thinks later, speaks first and processes later — reacts.

Some of you know people like that. I am that way. I usually identify with Peter: the thought comes out before I have processed it.

Verse 47 says one of those standing by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. From the other Gospels we know that was Peter.

Imagine being that servant. What a night. First your associates wake you up to go arrest a man you know nothing about. Then some guy announces he will identify the target with a kiss. And then one of his friends pulls out a sword and takes your ear off.

And it is off. On the ground. Your head is an open, bloody wound.

We also learn from Luke’s Gospel that Jesus picks that ear up, puts it back on the man’s head, and heals him.

What are you thinking if you are that guy? I was asleep. I got dragged out into the cold. My ear got cut off. And now it is back on.

Do you think he stepped back as they hauled Jesus away and the disciples scattered, and thought, something is different about that man — people do not just reattach ears?

What does he even tell his family when he gets home? That has to be a make-or-break moment for him.

Everybody Runs

Judas does his part, and before the night is over, Jesus will have zero followers left. He will walk his road to the cross with nobody beside him. Verse 50 says they all fled.

And then you get two of the strangest verses in the Gospel:

“And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.”

A linen cloth is essentially the man’s sleepwear. He is in his undergarment because he was in bed, and he came out because of the commotion. They grab him, and he pulls away so hard that his clothing tears off and he runs.

You read that and think, that is in my Bible?

But it has less to do with nakedness than with running. He is willing to accept the shame and humiliation of fleeing naked rather than be caught up in what is happening here.

It tells us that fear is setting in. These disciples had walked with Jesus in relative safety — the worst they faced was a heckler or two among the Pharisees and scribes. Now it is costing them their lives. And they are running.

Why the Religious Leaders Wanted Him Dead

Verse 53 begins a strange cycle of nighttime proceedings.

I completely nerded out on this in preparation — I could show you a chart of the timing, who was present at each stage, which parts were Jewish and which were Roman, and why there are roughly six separate hearings overnight. But this is not the time to nerd out. This is the time to see the text for what it is.

In this moment, religious people have a problem with Jesus. They want him dead, and they will do whatever it takes to manufacture the charge.

They know exactly who he is. They know his power. They know his claims. They know what he has rightly said about himself in all the previous chapters.

And they still reject him. Why?

Because religious systems always reject Jesus when they do not like what he asks of them.

When Jesus pushes on your religious models and your systems and says, we are not going to do it that way — it is not about what you do, it is about who I am — religious people do not like that.

And I have been there. It is the impulse to say, God, look at my life. I told the truth more than I lied today. I did more good than bad. So you love me more. We all do that.

They are tired of what Jesus is asking of them. So they begin an informal trial.

Actually, two of them. One with the Jewish ruling body, because they need a sentence. And one with the Roman authorities, because they are the only ones who can carry out capital punishment. The ruling council could not do that.

The Search for Testimony

“And they led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together… Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none.”

This is the who’s who of the religious establishment. Passover is underway; roughly three million people are crammed into a city built for one million. Everything is buzzing. And these leaders — about seventy men who governed the religious life of the Jewish people at that time — are where Jesus has been taken.

They are hunting for charges that justify death, and they cannot find any.

Why is this happening in the middle of the night? Because they are afraid. They know that if they do this in public, other kinds of testimony might surface.

Deuteronomy was clear that two or three witnesses had to agree for a charge to stand. If I claim a man stole my cow, I need two people who both say he stole my cow. If one says he stole my cow and the other says he stole my chicken, we have a problem — the testimonies do not match. They had to be exact and mutually confirming.

And the text says they could not find any of that.

So what do they do? Verse 56: “For many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree.”

Bore false witness means they lied. You can almost picture it — everyone in the middle of the night trying to outdo each other, so angry and so filled with hatred that they will say anything. I heard him say this. I heard him say that. I saw him do this in Galilee. I saw him do that in Bethany. And none of it lines up.

What a Daytime Trial Might Have Looked Like

Let me take a brief and enjoyable rabbit trail. What if this had happened during the day, when the public could testify?

What if the man from the tombs had come forward? I have something to say about Jesus. I used to live in a cemetery. I cut myself with rocks. I was possessed by a legion of demons. My neighbors bound me in chains, and I was so strong in that state that I broke them and ran around naked among the graves. Then Jesus came. He removed those demons. He took me from darkness into light. And now I stand here, clothed and in my right mind. I do not cut myself anymore. My neighbors let me back into town.

Some of you can identify with that. Some of you have been where that man was. And if he can be transformed like that, there is grace for you.

Or what if the paralyzed man had walked up? I have something to say about Jesus. I spent my whole life on a mat because I could not walk. I was born that way. And my friends loved me enough to carry me to a house where this man was teaching — loved me enough to vandalize somebody’s roof by digging a hole in it and lowering me down in front of him. Jesus said my sins were forgiven, and I did not even know what that meant. And then, to prove it, he told me to get up, take my mat, and walk. And gentlemen, I walked here today. Look at my legs.

How powerful would that have been? And could you have found two or three people to corroborate it? Yes, I saw that man walk. I knew the man from the tombs, and he is completely normal now.

Instead, all they have is lies stacked on lies.

Jesus Stays Silent

There is a leadership vacuum here, and the high priest tries to fill it. Verse 60: he stands up and asks, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?”

And verse 61: “But he remained silent and made no answer.”

Why?

Partly because sometimes the accusations against your life are so far-fetched and so out of bounds that you do not need to dignify them. You let the words come out of their mouths, and everyone can hear how ridiculous they sound.

But he is also fulfilling Scripture. Isaiah 53:7 says: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

Remember what John called him: Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

How providential that the Son of God, known as the Lamb of God, comes on the day of Passover, is literally led to his slaughter, and keeps his mouth shut — fulfilling a prophecy written centuries earlier.

That is the kind of God we serve, who can weave those details together.

The Question That Ends the Secret

So what does a leader do when he is not getting the verdict he wants and has a room full of peers demanding a death sentence? He asks a pointed question.

“Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

That can sound like religious language, so let me boil it down. He is asking: Are you the one we have been waiting for? Are you the Savior? Are you the Messiah?

And how long had they been waiting? Since Genesis 3:15 — since Adam and Eve fell and sin and death entered the world, and God promised that one would come from her line who would crush the serpent. The snake thinks he wins, but this one is coming, and sin and death will be finished.

But as centuries pass, you start to lose hope. And these people had. So in their own circles they began to reshape their expectation of the Savior.

The Messiah they wanted was one who would rule over the people of God politically — a Jewish king who would drive Rome out so they could be a happy people under their own leader, doing their own thing.

And Jesus came as nothing like that.

Now, up to this point in Mark, Jesus has been remarkably guarded. He performs miracles and says, do not tell anyone. He heals people and says, not yet. You almost want to say, what are you hiding? You are Jesus — tell everybody.

He was being strategic. Scholars sometimes call it the messianic secret. He knew exactly when he would be targeted, and he had a plan the whole time, laser-focused on the cross.

And now the gloves come off. Verse 62: “And Jesus said, ‘I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’”

He takes them to their own texts — Psalm 110 and Daniel 7 — and applies those messianic titles to himself. Yes, I am the one you are looking for. And I am going to sit with God and reign, and one day you will see me coming as the Son of Man.

When Jesus Is Not What You Expected

It makes religious people furious when Jesus is not what they expected. And it will make you angry too, if you are consumed with what you want Jesus to be for you, and he asks something different.

My kids do this. When it is dinnertime, they race to be first to the table. And I will put my forearm out on my oldest and say, get to the back — the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Let your little brothers go. Or we are heading into a restaurant and he is racing to put his order in, and a woman is coming, and I say, hold the door, she goes first.

And his natural instinct is to reject that. No. I want what I want.

That is what the religious leaders are doing. I want what I want, Jesus. I want you to be what my religious system needs you to be. Do not ask me to give away my life. Do not ask me to shift my focus to help those in need, to go to the least and the last. Just help me be holy.

They had it partly right. You could look at parts of their lives and say, those are good people living rightly. But at the core they were missing it. And in their make-or-break moment, they reject him. They know who he is, and they choose their system, their rules, and their history over the living King standing in front of them.

It Turns Violent

The high priest tears his garments: “What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemn him as deserving death.

They got what they wanted. He has blasphemed the system, so he deserves death. They simply cannot carry it out themselves.

And things get physical. They begin to spit on him, cover his face, and strike him. These men who teach so much piety in public, who wax eloquent about their rules and their systems, are spitting on a man and punching him in the face in the middle of the night, taunting him: Prophesy!

Can you see the pride and arrogance in it?

And they do not even realize that as they shout prophesy, they are fulfilling prophecy — because Isaiah said he would be beaten for us, that by his stripes we are healed, that he would carry our transgressions. They are enacting their own Scriptures and cannot see past their rage.

Peter’s Make-or-Break Moment

The last remaining hope is Peter. Verse 54 has him following at a distance, watching.

Give him some credit — he is the last one standing, even if there is a comfortable buffer between him and being identified with Jesus. He is still there. He is not the man who ran home naked.

Then a servant girl says she has seen him, that he is one of them. I do not know what you are talking about. Others press in: You are one of them. You are from Galilee. Stop. I am not with him.

Three times he says he does not know Jesus — fulfilling exactly what Jesus told him the night before: before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.

And the rooster crows a second time. Which tells you one thing: it is morning.

I live out in the country, and I have a wonderful neighbor. He is eighty and lives in a single-wide trailer roughly two inches from my house. All that land used to be his, and when he sold it, he simply asked the buyers if he could live in his trailer until he dies and they could have the property. And they said yes. So he is right there, puttering around all day, fixing things and sharpening his mower blade.

But this year he got on a kick. You know how you get on a kick — crafting, or whatever it is. He got on a chicken kick. He set up a heat lamp in his trailer, got some fertilized eggs, and hatched chickens in there.

You think one or two — that is cute, my boys would love that. This man has about twenty-five chickens.

And with chickens you get one of two options. The males crow. Four o’clock. Every single morning. Four o’clock. I want to get rid of that bird and never tell him. The hens I like — they will lay eggs and we all eat and it is wonderful.

But it is morning. That thing is going off. And when Peter hears the second crow, he breaks down and weeps. In that moment he realizes: I denied him too. I fled too. I ran away too.

A Pastoral Word

Let me encourage you here, because some of you are sitting in exactly Peter’s position.

Maybe people have seen you at church, or seen the Bible in your room, or seen you at a campus ministry — and then they saw you in a different setting and asked, you’re a Christian, right? And you said, I do not know what you are talking about. I do not do that.

If you are feeling right now that you have denied Jesus, that you have forsaken your relationship with him for the approval of other people, can I just encourage you: God is not done with you. Because he was not done with Peter.

It is going to take the resurrection for Peter to fully get it. He goes back to what he knows — fishing on the Sea of Galilee. And in just a few chapters, the risen Jesus shows up, and Peter jumps out of the boat and swims to shore to reach his rabbi.

And then God works in him so profoundly that by the book of Acts, when the church is born, this man becomes the leader of the church in Jerusalem, preaching powerfully, laying out arguments, lifting up the name of Jesus.

And you think: that Peter? The one who denied him three times?

Yes. Because God is not done with you. He is not done with me. If we trust Jesus for who he fully is, be encouraged that he will do a good work in you. And what people think of you and your relationship with Jesus should never outweigh the value you have in Christ.

The Roman Trial

In chapter 15 you get the Roman proceeding. They bring him early in the morning, wanting this finished before Passover fully begins.

Think about what is happening in the city: lamb after lamb after lamb being sacrificed, blood running through the valley, people believing their sins are atoned for. And they have no idea that the Lamb of God is about to hang on a cross, his blood spilled for all mankind.

They deliver him to Pilate, the governor of the region, whose job is to keep everyone quiet and Caesar exalted. He is there because it is Passover and three million people are packed into the capital, and he does not want unrest.

Pilate asks: “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Notice how that differs from the earlier question. The religious leaders asked, are you the Christ, the Messiah? They did not ask about kingship.

Now the charge has been swapped — because Rome does not care about blasphemy, but Rome very much cares about anyone claiming to be king. By framing it that way, they have turned Jesus into a political insurrectionist.

Can you see the tragedy? They are willing to contradict everything they claim to believe — that God alone is King — in order to get this man killed.

And Jesus answers, “You have said so.” If you look at the force of that phrase, he is essentially saying: those are not my words, those are yours. He does not affirm the charge; he redirects it, because it is not true in the way they mean it.

The chief priests pile on more accusations, and Jesus makes no further answer. And Pilate is amazed — because he is beginning to believe this man is innocent, and he can see that these accusers are driven by envy.

Why does Jesus stay silent when this is the moment to defend himself? Because he knows what he must do. He knows that by three o’clock he will be dead on a cross. He has laser focus. He will not refute the claims, because this is why he came. This was the plan.

Two Prisoners

“Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who in the insurrection had committed murder, there was a man called Barabbas.”

There was a customary tradition that at Passover the governor would earn goodwill with the crowd by releasing a prisoner — granting clemency to someone who deserved death, so people would say, what a compassionate governor.

Barabbas is described as an insurrectionist who committed murder. The penalty for murder was death. Here is a man who led an uprising and killed someone — likely a Roman official or soldier — and is now sitting in a cell awaiting execution.

What is he thinking? I am going to die. I have seen how Rome kills people, and it is horrific. I deserve this. It is settled in his mind.

And then he is brought out in front of the crowd.

Pilate asks, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” — because he perceived it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

But the chief priests start working the crowd. Say Barabbas. Tell him to crucify Jesus. Release Barabbas.

And the crowd cries out. Pilate asks what he should do with the man they call King of the Jews, and they shout, Crucify him! He asks what evil this man has done, and they only shout louder.

So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, releases Barabbas, has Jesus scourged, and delivers him to be crucified.

Which Jesus Do You Want?

Do you know what the name Barabbas means? Bar-abba — son of the father.

And did Jesus ever refer to himself as the Son of the Father? He did.

In some manuscripts, this man’s full name is given as Jesus who is called Barabbas. Jesus was a common name in that era.

Which means it is entirely possible that Pilate stood before that crowd with two men. One guilty of murder and rightly condemned to death. One completely innocent. And he could look at the crowd and ask:

Which Jesus do you want?

And they wanted the guilty one.

Do you know who the first person in history was to understand that Jesus took his place? Barabbas.

Barabbas was the first man to know, in the most literal sense: I deserve death, and that man is going to die in my place.

Friends, if you can understand that, you can understand the gospel. That someone died in your place — a death that was genuinely necessary. Romans is right when it says all of us have sinned and deserve death because of the lives we lead. And to know that Jesus died that death for all of us is profound.

So I leave you with the same question Pilate put to that crowd.

In your make-or-break moment: which Jesus do you want?

Do you want to be like Judas, selling Jesus out for something cheap — a cheap thrill, thirty pieces of silver?

Are you going to be the religious person who knows exactly who Jesus is, who has watched his life, and concludes: he asks too much of me, and I do not like it, so I will get rid of him?

Maybe you are in the secular camp, wondering what the big deal is with this Jesus. Watch what happens to the centurion shortly, and to the man who lost his ear — they are starting to see things differently.

Or maybe you are like Peter, thinking: I denied him. Why would he want anything to do with me? He will welcome you back. There is grace in this place.

So the question stands. Which Jesus do you want?

Let Us Pray

Father, these are deep and moving things to consider. In these make-or-break moments, we need to trust in something bigger than ourselves.

We are grateful that you sent your Son. We are grateful that from the dawn of time the plan was for him to come, to live a perfect life, to be rejected by men, and to die on a cross — a death made necessary by the sin we committed.

And yet hope is coming, when he will rise from the grave and prove he has conquering power over sin and death. Because he did that, we have hope that sin does not have to be our master, that selfish ambition does not have to be our goal, and that we can live for something bigger than ourselves.

So I pray that in this room, and in my own heart, we would respond accordingly to who Jesus is — that we would hold a high view of him, and realize deeply and profoundly in our souls that Jesus paid it all. Paid it all for us.

God, that is good news. And we celebrate it here, in the name of Christ. Amen.