Jesus Condemned to Death — Part One

I invite you to turn with me to the Gospel of Mark and to chapter 14, and we’ll begin reading at verse 53. It’s page 851, if that is of help to you, if you’re using one of the church Bibles and perhaps you’re unfamiliar just how to get there quickly. Page 851 and Mark 14, beginning at verse 53:

“And they led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together. And Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire. Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none. For many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree. And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, ‘We heard him say, “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.”’ Yet even about this their testimony did not agree. And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, ‘Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?’ But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ 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.’ And the high priest tore his garments and said, ‘What further [witness] do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?’ And they all condemned him as deserving death. And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him, saying to him, ‘Prophesy!’ And the guards received him with blows.”

Amen.

Our gracious God, we come to verses that are familiar to many of us, and we pray for the help of the Holy Spirit, that you will make the Book live to us, Lord, that you will “show us yourself within your Word, that you will show us ourselves and show us our Savior,[1] as we turn to the Bible together. And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, from one perspective, the situation regarding Jesus and his mission is going from bad to worse. We might even say that from the perspective of the narrative, Jesus and his disciples have pretty well had their day in the sun.

If we were to anachronistically imagine the accompaniments that are so often part and parcel of twenty-first-century life invading the events recorded for us here by Mark—I’m thinking expressly about television journalism—then we might imagine a scene where, as this chapter 14 of Mark has unfolded for us, on the periphery of things we have been introduced to the quietly spoken journalist, who is expressing to the viewing audience the fact that they have been following for some time the mission of this amazing evangelist and preacher and healer Jesus of Nazareth, but apparently, it has all gone dreadfully wrong.

And the journalist’s low tones would announce the fact that most recently, he had been found in the garden of Gethsemane completely troubled, distressed, and overwhelmed, and in that context, his own disciples, instead of rallying to his aid, had apparently just fallen sound asleep. One of them had in turn betrayed him with a kiss. He had then been arrested, and it was now that he found himself in the custody of those who had taken him to the house of the high priest. He’s betrayed. He’s arrested. He’s distressed. He’s deserted by his friends. And as I say, from one perspective, it looks as though the thing is coming to a crashing halt.

However, when you stand back from it within the framework of not simply the Gospel of Mark but also the unfolding story of the Bible, which is what we’ve been telling one another it is important for us to do, we realize that from a theological perspective, Jesus has set his face steadfastly towards Jerusalem. None of the events that have transpired and which we have been most recently considering have taken him by surprise. They may have unsettled his disciples. He has definitely been overwhelmed by the prospect of the physicality and the reality of all that he faces. But he’s been telling them for some time that the Son of Man must go up to Jerusalem and suffer and die at the hands of cruel men.[2]

And so, as you read these verses this morning, it is important to understand that Jesus is not a helpless victim, that Jesus is not here held in the grip of forces over which he has no authority, but rather, his words and his actions make it clear that he is in charge of these events—that he knows exactly what is taking place and he knows exactly what is going to happen to him. And we might go as far as to say that the things that he has said and done since he arrived in Jerusalem have actually precipitated the crisis which he now faces. In other words, he is responsible for the circumstances in which he now finds himself.

Now, you may want to think that out a little bit. Let me explain what I mean by that so you don’t go wrong.

If you go back a couple of pages in your Bible, if you have your Bible open, to chapter 11, consider the impact of the way in which he arrived in Jerusalem. You remember that when we studied the passage that we most often refer to as the triumphal entry of Jesus,[3] when we studied that, we pointed out that Jesus did not ride in on a donkey because he was tired, but he rode in on a donkey purposefully. And the acclamation of some within the crowd put two and two together and said, “Maybe this is exactly what the prophet was saying when he wrote, ‘See, your king comes to you riding on a colt, on the foal of a colt.’”[4] And Jesus was actually purposefully making a statement by his arrival in Jerusalem in a way that he had never done up until this point.

Jesus’ words and his actions make it clear that he is in charge of these events. He is responsible for the circumstances in which he now finds himself.

He has then gone on to cleanse the temple. The religious authorities did not like his entry. They wanted the people to be quiet, and in point of fact, they couldn’t silence the crowd. When he cleansed the temple, they were infuriated: “Who does he think he is? And did you hear what he said? ‘My Father’s house is to be a house of prayer.’[5] Is he actually suggesting that he’s the Son of God? It can’t possibly be. What an upstart! How ridiculous!”

And then, of course, they were infuriated when he told—and it’s recorded for us at the beginning of chapter 12—the parable of the tenants. And you’ll need to reread that for yourselves; we don’t have time to go back through it. But they got the point, and they got it very clearly. You can see that in verse 12. Once he finishes the parable, it says, “They were seeking to arrest him,” but they “feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them.” And, of course, he had told the parable against them, and they got the point. “Oh,” you would want to say to Jesus, “Jesus, if you keep this up, you’re definitely going to get arrested. If you keep this up, do you know what’s going to happen to you?” And the answer from Jesus would have been, “Yes, I know exactly what’s going to happen to me.”

Now, do you see this paradox, then? Looked at from the position of the narrative, it looks as though the whole thing is coming to a grinding halt. Viewed from the perspective of theology, we realize that it is moving towards its great and final denouement.

The Confrontation

Now, let’s gather our thoughts today (and it will be today; I just started this morning, I said, “Let’s gather our thoughts this morning,” but it’s now become “today”)—under a number of headings. The first of these is just the word confrontation. Confrontation. Because that is really what we have recorded for us in the section that we read: the confrontation that takes place between Jesus and the highest ruling council of the Jews. This would be a group of some seventy people or so made up of the chief priests and the elders and the scribes. This ruling council of the Jews we know as the Sanhedrin.

In strict terms, what we have in this section is not a trial. Those of you who spend your life in the world of the courts will be interested to think this out, I hope. What we really have is a preliminary hearing. It is a preliminary hearing with the express purpose of formulating a charge that will be able to be brought to the Roman authorities. The Jewish leaders understood that the story of blasphemy in itself would not mean very much to the Romans. They’re going to have to be able to present to the Roman authorities something that justifies their desire for the death of Jesus of Nazareth. And that we will see as the story unfolds.

So here you have this group of individuals. It’s actually not really a confrontation; confrontation isn’t a strong enough word. It’s a conspiracy; that would be a better word. Because their motives are evil; their actions are unlawful. And it is a conspiracy that goes back a long way in the making. It’s not something that has just jumped up from somewhere. No, in actual fact, they have been opposed to Jesus for a very long time. Their animosity has been building.

And so you see there, in verse 55, that Mark says—and this really takes us to the heart of the conspiracy or confrontation—“The chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death.” So, they already have the verdict, which is guilty. They already have the sentence, which is to be death. The only thing they’re missing is what the charge is going to be. It’s an interesting way to go about things, isn’t it? They’ve already decided he should die, they’ve already decided he’s guilty, and all they need to do now is find a way to make this clear so that they will be able to accomplish their agenda.

So, in other words, you don’t have a group of people here trying to discover if Jesus is really the person he claimed to be. No, you just have a group of individuals who had decided that he isn’t, and they must now seek to marshal the evidence in such a way as to make that perfectly clear.

Now, that’s not an uncommon perspective. You don’t have to be a member of the first-century ruling council of the Jews to come up with that perspective, do you? I meet it all the time, and you may, too, and in fact, you may actually feel that way—that whatever interest you have in religion or spirituality, you’ve already reached the determination that Jesus is not the person that he claimed to be. And so you’re interested in Jesus insofar as you can have a Jesus of your own making, but not the Jesus that we’re introduced to in the Bible. You might even be so skillful as to try to distinguish between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. You may be so smart as to suggest that what we know of the Jesus of history is absolutely nothing, and the only thing we really know about is the Jesus of faith; the Jesus of faith was manufactured in the first and second century by people who wanted to present him in his best light. It sounds very clever, but actually, when you think it out, it’s not as smart as it seems.

No, I say to you again that in the same way that people say that they don’t believe in God—I accept that they say they don’t believe in God, but in many cases, the reason they don’t believe in God is because they don’t want to believe in God, because they know that if they do believe in God, then they probably are accountable to him, and they don’t like the idea of anybody looking into their affairs, especially peeping over their shoulder and seeing into their bank account and into their measurable, jealous, dirty thoughts. So the best thing to do is just say, “I don’t believe in God. He’s out.” Or if I do believe in God, then I believe in a god of my making and my choosing, a god who exists to give me what I want, but not a god who, once again, interferes in my life.

You see, there’s such a difference between genuine and honest inquiry—between actually seeking out the facts, between analyzing things and going at it from a logical and, in this case, a legal perspective in a way that genuinely seeks to solicit the information that will allow us to decide, “What are we dealing with here in Jesus of Nazareth?”—and one as is presented here by this ruling council, which has already determined that he’s guilty, already determined he must die, and, as I say, all they’re looking for is the charge.

I wonder how they went about getting these witnesses. Did they put a sign in the temple precincts? “Witnesses wanted for a preliminary hearing concerning Jesus of Nazareth. Easy money!” Did the people come along and say, “How much do you get for being a witness?” They say, “Well, we gave one guy thirty pieces of silver, and, you know, so we’re pretty free with the cash.” I don’t know how they did it. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they used that.

You see, treachery has been part of things from the very beginning. Chapter 14 begins, “It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him.” So, at least we’ve got clarity, don’t we? “What are you trying to do with Jesus?” “I’m trying to kill him. We’re just trying to put closure to this. We’ve been working on it for some time. We’ve been opposed to him from the very beginning.”

Some of them would say, “I was there way back,” in chapter 2 as it’s recorded, “when he healed the paralytic. What an annoying night that was. I remember he said to the fellow, he said, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven you.’”[6] And speaking now as a Pharisee, the Pharisee says, “And I was the one who blurted out, ‘Who do you think you are? Only God can forgive sins.’[7] Of course,” he says, “it never once occurred to me that he might actually be the Son of God. In fact, I determined that he wasn’t. And I disliked that, and I was annoyed about it, and my friends were too.

“And he just got worse. Then he started hanging around with the wrong group of people. He had started off with some nice, relatively respectable fellows as his band, some fellows that had their own family business and respectable things like that from the fishing trade and so on. But then he went beyond that. Then he got a tax collector, and you know how much we hate those guys. They’re a bad group. And he even went to a party at their house. A group of us went along just to see what was going on, and it was as bad as we expected.

“It was annoying when he came out and said to us, ‘Well, what are you boys doing here?’ And we said, ‘Well, we’re just checking to see what’s going on. We’re really quite alarmed that you’re eating with tax collectors and with sinners.’ And he said to us, ‘Why would you be alarmed about that? Don’t you realize that it’s sick people that go to the doctor? Healthy people don’t need a doctor.’ He says, ‘I didn’t come to call a group together like you, a religious group. I came to call sinners to repentance.’[8] Boy, we hated that as well.

“And when the man with the withered hand in the synagogue was healed by him on the Sabbath of all things, then we knew there was no way back. And we actually went out…” This is Mark 3:6. I’m speaking parenthetically, but this is actually all in the Bible: “[And] the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”[9] “How to destroy him.”

Now, unless we have our Bibles and unless we’re thinking, unless we’re reading, we will not get this narrative. We will not understand this perspective. We will not realize that the reaction of men and women, the malevolent reaction of men and women, to Jesus of Nazareth, has a long, long heritage to it; that by nature, men and women are opposed to the story of Jesus of Nazareth, because it is offensive to our pride—because it is offensive to our pride intellectually. Because it’s asking us to believe that this person who lived so long ago is actually the Savior of the world. And we’ve gone to school. We’ve been in anthropology class. We’ve studied history. We’re “scientific” now. And we by nature find ourselves saying, “You can’t possibly ask me to believe this! It is offensive to me intellectually.”

And it is offensive to us morally. Because Jesus pronounces on our morality. He says we’re out of line with the perfection of God’s will. He says that we violate God’s command. He says that we are helpless and hopeless and unable to fix ourselves. And that’s offensive to contemporary men and women: “We haven’t spent the last twenty-five years reenergizing the self-help industry to come along and bow before a Galilean carpenter buried in a Palestinian tomb some two thousand years ago. You can’t possibly be serious!” Well, is this serious? Do you see what it says? Don’t listen to me. Read your Bible. I’m not making this stuff up.

Here in the high priest’s household, you reach the climactic point of this confrontation. Here is the point, if you like, to which all of this has been leading and from which all of the events that will now transpire, all of them, flow. This is the actual thing that kicks in the rest of the thing that leads to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so, what they’re doing is they’re putting together their witnesses. It’s a kind of comic-tragic picture, I think. It would be humorous if it weren’t so sad and so bad. Many false witnesses—many false witnesses—bore testimony against him, “but their testimony did not agree.” So, one fellow would stand up and say x and then say, “Okay?” And then somebody’d stand up and say y. And then somebody would say, “Well, that doesn’t make any sense.” And so the high priest would have to say, “Yeah, that’s true. Okay. Let’s try another two.” So we get another couple up. There’s a succession of people. If you led them end to end, they couldn’t reach a conclusion. It’s absolutely hopeless. And in 57 we’re told that “some stood up and bore false witness against him,” expressly taking the statement that he’d made concerning the temple in Jerusalem, twisting it upside down, and lying about what he had said. But, you’ll notice there in verse 59, “even [in] this their testimony did not agree.” Says Cole, “It [is] harder to agree on a consistent lie than [it is] to tell the … truth”[10]—harder to cobble together a lie that can be told with consistency than just to actually tell the truth. It’s true.

Don’t you wonder—I wonder—if there weren’t also some witnesses that showed up that would be, if you like, embarrassing witnesses? Not embarrassing, now, because their testimony was dishonest but embarrassing because their testimony was honest.

This is conjecture on my part, but I imagine the lady showing up and saying, “Well, I’m here to witness.”

And they said, “Okay, go ahead, dear. What’s your name?”

Said, “Well, it doesn’t matter about my name. I don’t want to give my name. But I’m a widow, and I come from a town called Nain, and I’m here to testify to the fact that Jesus Christ raised my son from the dead.”[11]

“Yeah, okay, well, that’s not the kind of thing we’re looking for, so if you could just… Thank you, widow from Nain, but do we have anyone else? Do we have anyone else?”

The guy comes in: “Yes, yes! My name is Bartimaeus, and I want to testify to the fact that I was blind, but Jesus restored my sight.”[12]

The high priest is going, “This is going from bad to worse.”

And a whole succession of them:

“I was the paralytic!”[13]

“Get out. Your name, sir?”

“My name is Legion, for we were many. I lived in a graveyard. I was naked. I cut myself. I was involved in the physical abuse of my body. And Jesus is the only one who fixed me. He set me free.”[14]

“We don’t want to hear that kind of stuff. Get out. That’s not what we’re looking for.”

What were they looking for? They didn’t want honest testimony. And if your perspective is to deny the reality of who Jesus is, you don’t want honest testimony either. When somebody actually says, “There is a power that cancels sin. There is a power that sets people free, that liberates captives, that refuses to allow demonic possession to control the soul, that cures people and helps them in the most extreme circumstances of their lives, whether they be teenagers in the midst of all of that chaos or further on down the line”—the people who are so opposed to the gospel do not want to even give credence to the idea that there could be honest testimony. No.

So the high priest, he jumps in. It’s obviously time for him to exercise some leadership. His first two questions (you will see them there in verse 60: “Have you no answer to make?”—question one; “What is it that these men testify against you?”—question two)—his first two questions remain unanswered, as have the charges that have been brought against Jesus. There’s no reason for him, in legal terms, to answer these charges. The witnesses did not agree. Therefore, he was not obliged to answer.

His silence—the silence of Jesus—is purposeful. We might quote the country song by Paul Overstreet concerning Jesus here: “You say it best when you say nothing at all.”[15] He says nothing.

Now, Mark is not simply recording that he says nothing. He’s recording the fact that he says nothing. I haven’t worked this out, but it occurred to me that there is a reason to go and look and see how many times it says of Jesus in the Gospels that he refused to say something. I can think of only one, classically, and that is when he finally ends up before Herod. ’Cause you remember, when he comes before Herod, we’re told that Herod “was very glad” to see Jesus—in fact, that “he had long desired to see him,” and that “he questioned [Jesus] at some length.” And then it says, “But he [gave him] no answer.”[16] “But he [gave him] no answer.” So here you have a man who was interested in seeing Jesus. He had been hoping for a chance for some time. He’d heard about him. He had multiple questions for him. And when he plied him with the questions, Jesus never even replied to him.

God in his mercy may cater to your intellectual integrity, but he will not pander to your intellectual arrogance.

And what’s that about? Well, it at least teaches us that for Jesus, not every opportunity was an evangelistic opportunity—that Jesus knows the heart of a man; he knows the difference between idle curiosity and a genuine search. Jesus had all the time in the world for those who were least, last, and left out, who were longing, who were clear, who knew their need. He had very little time for religious hypocrisy. He had very little time for the arrogance of those who opposed him.

I say to you again, you know: if you are a seeker, God in his mercy may cater to your intellectual integrity, but he will not pander to your intellectual arrogance. He does not disclose himself to the proud. He “gives grace to the humble.”[17] See, we’re back at the same place. Jesus says, “Unless you become as a little child, you will in no way enter my kingdom.”[18] Not childish; childlike. Trusting, believing, loving.

But the high priest sits in the position of apparent authority, and now he confronts him. And he has no answer for him. Well, those of us who know our Bibles will immediately be saying, “Aha! Here’s another moment in which this idea of fulfillment comes again.” We get these little insights along the way. We saw it in our last study. Jesus said, “Let the Scriptures be fulfilled.” And if you know your Bible, then you will say, “Well, is this not the picture that is given to us in the Servant Songs of Isaiah, when the prophet Isaiah writes of the one who will come and will fulfill this role?” And in Isaiah 53, classically, he says of this individual,

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
 [but] he [didn’t open] his mouth;
like a lamb [he was] led to the slaughter,
 and [as] a sheep … before its shearers is [dumb],
 so he opened not his mouth.[19]

That’s what’s happening here. Jesus goes as the Lamb of God to bear the wrath of God, poured out upon him in order that those who are caught up in Christ may be “ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,”[20] as we sang in our opening praise. That what is happening here Jesus has explained to his disciples, although they’ve been unable to grasp it: “This is the cup of my blood. This is the new covenant in my blood.[21] I’m going to drink the cup of God’s wrath in order that you might drink the cup of God’s blessing. I am going to bear God’s punishment upon sin in order that I might provide forgiveness for those who will come to me in repentance and in believing faith.”

Well, the high priest said to him, “Listen, let’s just cut to the chase here: Are you the Christ? Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?” or “the Son of the Blessed One?” In Luke, it actually says that the high priest said, “I adjure you by the name of God, are you?”[22] In other words, “I’m putting you on oath, Jesus, here. This testimony has been a shambles, if you like, but let me just get to the heart of the matter. This is the fundamental question that is before us. You are the one who has cleared out the temple. You are the one who has ridden on the donkey. You are the one who has said these things. I’m going to ask you right now, before God: Are you the Christ? Are you the Son of the Blessed?” And that brings us to our second point, which is Christ’s declaration—to which we will come this evening.

Gracious God, look upon us in your mercy, for some of us are proud and resistant; some of us are sad and helpless. You made us. You made us in order that we might glorify you by loving you and obeying your will. And we pray that this morning, as we think of the words that we’ve been considering—the trumped-up charges against Jesus, the treachery and hypocrisy that was showered upon him—and when we realize that in a mysterious and marvelous way, the actions of man, for which man was entirely responsible, were fulfilling the purposes of God, over which man has no control, help us to understand the extent of your love, Father; a love that is prepared to seek us out even when we resist you, deny you, run from you; a love that extends to your willingness to send your only Son to bear the punishment we deserve in order that we might know a forgiveness that is undeserved, to die in order that we might live, to be bound in order that we might be set free. What a mystery!

Close the gap, Lord, between our heads and our hearts. Grant that things that we have come to believe intellectually we may rest in, experientially, trustingly, in a childlike way. Accomplish your purposes for your glory, we pray. In Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] R. Hudson Pope, “Make the Book Live to Me.”

[2] See Mark 8:31; 9:12; Luke 24:7.

[3] See Mark 11:1–11.

[4] Zechariah 9:9 (paraphrased).

[5] Mark 11:17 (paraphrased). See also Matthew 21:13; Luke 19:46.

[6] Mark 2:5 (paraphrased).

[7] Mark 2:7 (paraphrased).

[8] See Mark 2:15–17; Matthew 9:10–13; Luke 5:29–32.

[9] Mark 3:6 (ESV).

[10] Alan Cole, The Gospel According to St. Mark: An Introduction and Commentary, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 226.

[11] See Luke 7:11–17.

[12] See Mark 10:46–52.

[13] See Mark 2:1–12.

[14] See Mark 5:1–20.

[15] Donald Alan Schlitz and Paul Overstreet, “When You Say Nothing at All” (1988).

[16] Luke 23:8–9 (ESV).

[17] James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5 (ESV).

[18] Matthew 18:3 (paraphrased).

[19] Isaiah 53:7 (ESV).

[20] Henry Francis Lyte, “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven” (1834).

[21] Luke 22:20 (paraphrased).

[22] Matthew 26:63 (paraphrased). See also Luke 22:66–70.