Gerald (0:05)

Good Friday to all of you and just wanted to take a second and welcome all the Vince viewers. We really do appreciate you guys staying around for us on this special Good Friday episode. We are actually going to get into the story of Easter. Talk about the crucifixion, talk about the Resurrection. But really what I want to do is tell you a lot of details that maybe you don't hear in church. Things that I think are really just the fingerprint of God that show you places where you can dig, where you can grab a bit more understanding and really start to see the texture behind the story. So it isn't just a story that you're hearing. So stick around. This is Good Morning Mug Club. All right, look, we have gotten it all wrong. Good Friday is not a day of mourning. It is a day of celebration. Now, I understand if you are somebody who grew up in the church, you've probably heard this story a million times over. If you're not welcome. Thanks for hanging out with us on Good Friday to hear a little bit more about this story. I have to start with people in the audience, maybe who are you wouldn't classify yourself as somebody who's spiritual or a believer. It is the most important decision you can make in life for one of two ways. Either it's true and it changes everything about how you live your life, or it's not true and it's a complete waste of time and you don't want to end up falling into that trap. Either way, it's important to look into this issue of who Jesus is, who God is, what the story of Easter is, and decide for yourself what you believe. I have a point of view, and I hope you follow along with that point of view. But I understand people are coming from a lot of different places. So hang out with me for just a little bit and we will get into the details. But I grew up in church like a lot of people did, just going to church because my parents did. And I spent every Easter hearing about how Jesus sacrificed his life to reconcile me to God. And I'll be Honest, as a 6, 7, 10 year old kid, I didn't even understand really what all of that meant other than Jesus was good and he sacrificed himself. And I knew the stories. It was a tough story to hear, right? Because as anybody who has seen the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson before he went crazy or during, I don't really know which one, but either way, it is absolutely brutal. But I was eternally grateful that the story was being told. With that being said, though there are a lot of details that I never really heard in church. Now, I want to make sure that I'm clear at the outset. I am not going to be one of those like History Channel shows where I promise that we're going to find the mummy at the bottom of some ancient thing that nobody's ever discovered and we don't actually find a mummy. What I want to tell you, though, is that there are a lot of really interesting details that churches either don't know about, don't have time to cover or cover, but maybe you've missed them. So probably in one of those three buckets. And really what they do is they show the fingerprint of God on the greatest story that has ever been told. This is the story of Jesus, death, burial and resurrection. And this is why we celebrate Easter. Gerald apologizes Apologetics it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that. But nevertheless, they're never going to correct that. For years I grew up in the church studying the Bible, and I loosely would call studying the Bible, making sure that I read a little bit of it here and there. I would go to Sunday school, I would irregularly attend church. And when I was 26 years old, I moved from Ohio back down to Texas and I found a church that really interested me. I really wanted to get back into church and really connect with God in a way that I felt like I hadn't done many times throughout my kind of early 20s, late teens. And an opportunity came up to go to a friend's church. And it turned out to be a life changing moment for me. Not because of the church necessarily, though they played a big role in this, but because of what the church introduced me to. I started discovering a love, a passion for studying scripture, for digging deeper than just doing a devotional, though those are fantastic, don't get me wrong. It just, it became something bigger for me and I knew that God wanted me to do more. I knew that this was an area of my life that I wanted to pursue. I wanted to pursue my relationship with God. I wanted to pursue an understanding of scripture, and I wanted to do it in a practical way. And I wanted to put it all into practice. And I signed up for a ministry school that was offered by the church that I was going to. And during that time I met somebody who had insomnia. And it's only relevant because this guy, I mean, think of insomnia sounds like the worst possible punishment for somebody ever if it was devised as a punishment, not letting somebody sleep, but he Just had insomnia and, you know, through no fault of his own, and would end up studying scripture and doing all kinds of things with the extra hours. And he came across a teacher who was called Chuck Missler. And Chuck did in depth Bible studies where he would go line by line through Scripture. For example, I think his Genesis study is something on the order of 30 hours long. And it's fantastic. I immediately fell in love with it because it would go verse by verse and it would talk to you about different things would happen in Scripture and tie it to other places in scripture, whether it was something that was a fulfilled prophecy or just a story that had a connection. And I just remember being fascinated because I had no idea that all of these little details in Scripture connected to all of the other places when Chuck would show us those things. So my goal today is basically to help you see some of those connections and encourage you to go and do some of this study for. For yourselves. So one quick analogy. There's several things that I could tell you, one of which would be that, and look this up, God gave an entire people hemorrhoids as a punishment for stealing the Ark of the Covenant. That's pretty hilarious. If you're God and you've got a Rolodex of punishments, you know, you're looking through, you're like, nope, done that. Locust. Done that. Frogs. It's a little dated. Hemorrhoids. Haven't done hemorrhoids. Let's see how this one goes. I think that's kind of funny. I think that shows that God has a sense of humor even though he's getting a message across. Or perhaps the idea that during the Exodus, there was a giant cross in the middle of the desert that only God could really see because we didn't really have the power of flight. Maybe, I guess if you stood on a mountain nearby, you could see it. But if you look at how the Israelites were supposed to camp around the kind of the tabernacle that they took with them, you will essentially see if you put some mathematical equation together of, I don't know, every person is one square foot. And look at the number of people and where they were told to camp, you'll see that it makes a giant cross. Those kinds of things were things that I never really knew about. And they're not doctrinal positions necessarily, but they're just little interesting details that give the Bible more texture. So I wanted to start out with one of those and go into a little bit more depth. And that is the story of the serpent on a pole. One thing I want you to keep in mind as we go through this is that to the Jewish mind, pattern is prophecy. Right? In our kind of Western mind, we think of prophecy as, you know, you make some kind of a prophetic claim and then there's some fulfillment to that claim. Like it's going to rain tomorrow and then it rains tomorrow. Well, for the Jews, you start establishing a pattern. And when you see something that fits that pattern, that is prophecy. Right? Pattern is prophecy. It's a different way of thinking. And I think what you'll see is that sometimes we miss those patterns, prophecies in scripture because we don't see the pattern for what it really is. So in numbers 21 7, 9, I'll just read it for you and then I'll tell you kind of what I think about this. It says, then the people came to Moses and cried out, we have sinned. Remember that word, we've sinned. Not that they've done something wrong. They specifically said sinned. We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes. It's also a pretty wicked punishment that God sent like a bunch of snakes to bite people. That's got to be terrifying. So Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord told him, make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it. So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed. Okay, so these people, let me go back to what their sin was. We spoke out against you or the Lord and against you. Okay, so they spoke out against them. That's their sin. If you're somebody looking at this story going, okay, what's the night like? The bad movie lines game we play sometimes. What's the next line from God? I guarantee you you're not choosing the option where God says, go and make a snake out of brass and put it on a pole and put it on a heel and everybody who looks upon it is going to be healed. So why did God do this? It doesn't make any sense unless he's trying to continue a pattern for them to be able to see. So all they had to do was look at the snake on a pole and they would be healed of their sin. So let's take a look at the elements here. You've got a snake. Where do we know the snake from? In scripture, that was basically the curse of Satan was made a snake, right? So Satan equals a snake equals sin. Okay, so now let's clearly we have sin. Let's do it like that. And then you can look at the pole. Why, why put the snake upon a pole? Doesn't seem to be much reason for that. But let's just kind of surmise, maybe it looks something like, you know, a straight up pole. And then you kind of hung this snake on it like this. Right? Now you start to see, okay, maybe, maybe that has some similarity to the cross. How it looked isn't quite as important as what it symbolized though, right? So we've already said that the snake symbolizes sin. So if you put sin on a pole, on a heel, those who have sinned can look upon it and be healed. If that's not a picture of what Jesus Christ did during the crucifixion, during the Easter celebration that we know it, I don't know what is. And it's really interesting because all you had to do was look upon it. There was no other work needing to be done. You just had to look upon this, this saving figure and you were saved. So when we call Jesus sin on the cross, he literally was made sin, and we'll get back to that in just a minute. But he became sin for us, was on a cross, and all we have to do is look on him and we'll be saved. So that's an interesting story, out of numbers, that not a lot of people will have heard the comparison, but it is part of the pattern. So again, I hope you do more digging, dive into that story a little bit more if you want to. But before we go any further, because this is our Friday show, we're going to do just a little bit of a free portion here, which we've done. We are going to go ahead and go to Rumble Premium here in just a second. If you're not a Rumble Premium member, make sure you click that button right there and sign up. It's $99 annually or $9.99 per month. And you get Russell Brand, you get Mr. Guns in gear, you get Dr. Disrespect, you get us a full hour more of this show, Tim Pool, and you get an ad free experience. Thank you for your support for that. But please sign up for that today. It's a great time to do it and you'll get to see more content like this. But we write back, don't go anywhere. All right, now that we are in the confines of this Rumble Premium audience. Thank you again, guys, for your support. I want to go through a story that obviously I'm very hopeful that many of you have heard over and over and over again throughout your life. And if you spent any time in or around the church, around people who celebrate Easter and who believe in Christ and believe in God, then I think you have. Unfortunately, all too often we find that familiarity breeds contempt. And in this case, that contempt basically manifests in that we start to lose sight of the awesomeness of what Jesus did for us on the cross. I remember watching the movie the Passion of the Christ when Mel Gibson put that out and thinking, I'm going to cry. I have to cry, right? Because I'm a Christian and I believe in God. And I understand that what Jesus did on the cross was a heartbreaking thing. But I didn't cry. And I felt a little weird. Of course, I felt sad at what I was seeing because it was a depiction of what Christ went through, the suffering that he went through for us. But for some reason, I don't know why, it just didn't connect with me the same way that it connected with other of my friends who said that they were bawling uncontrollably. And maybe that says something about me, I don't know. But I know that there are things like this in Scripture that become kind of commonplace for us. For example, if I said, can anybody tell me what John 3:16 says? This is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, Bible verses in Scripture. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever shall believe in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Right. But when you hear that, you've said it so many times, you've memorized it, it kind of becomes like a car alarm in some ways, not completely, but it just loses its impact sometimes. And so I'm hoping that what we do is give the story a little bit more depth, because I think when you get that depth, these stories become more real to you. They're not just words on a page. They're things that actually happened. There are so many things that are going on behind the scenes that sometimes we miss. And so that's my goal today. I hope that's what happens. One thing I do want to say, and this is again, something I lifted from Chuck Missler. So Chuck in Heaven, thank you very much for that. Not saying we can communicate directly with him. So I don't want any hate mail from that one, but Acts 17:11 is something that I constantly think about when I do lessons like this. And it's what I look for in teachers whenever I go and do some study on my own. Basically what it is, is I want you to receive the teaching with an open heart. But then I want you to go search scripture and see if it's true. Or as Chuck said, don't believe what Chuck says. Go look at what scripture says. Fine, don't believe what Gerald says. Go check scripture and see if it's true. All right, so the story is a world changing event that really should shape everything about our lives if you believe that it's true. So let's start from the beginning. Beginning. Don't worry, this isn't going to be a six hour lesson on this stuff. But I just want to lay the groundwork that according to the Bible, man is sinful and without hope. No real need for explanation there. Just look around you, watch the news, see what's going on in the world. And you'll see that left to our own devices that we are not naturally going to tend towards doing good selfless works. Of course there are examples where people do that, but for the most part we have a very broken world that is around us, especially right now. You can look around and see on the news every single day, war. Unfortunately, if you check your X feed, you can see all kinds of stuff that you don't want to see about human depravity and just terribleness the likes of which you never thought you would see. We broke this world and we've blown it over and over and over again and rejected God. But God. And I want to pause on that because those are two amazing words when put together. Save us. God chose to have mercy on us while we were still sinners. That's incredible. We didn't do anything to deserve it. We didn't have anything that promoted God's desire to do it, in addition to all that he already had for us, all the love that he had for us. But while we were sinners, God chose to have mercy on us. Thank God that that actually happened. All we have to do, believe in His Son, Jesus, that He was sent for us, that he died for our sins, that he was a perfect sacrifice and he rose again on the third day to reconcile us to the Father, to basically make sure that we did not have a broken relationship anymore with the Father. A number of people when I've talked to them who are maybe not believers or casual believers, have a little bit of a hard time with that. Like why would God want any of his children to go and be separated from him? And the answer is, he doesn't. God doesn't take any pleasure in the death of the wicked. He wants all to come to repentance and not to be lost. And so when he, outside of time, set history in motion, he knew that this time would come where man would be separated by sin from him. But he also knew he had a way to fix that. And it was a very simple way. It's by design that it's simple, though, guys, because we need simple. We try and take simple and dress it up with routine and rigor and some kind of, you know, structure to make it more difficult because I need to earn my salvation. God doesn't see it that way. It's a very simple equation. So the simplest form of the Gospel that I have seen is written in first Paul. I'm sorry, but written by Paul in first Corinthians 15, 3 and 4. And it says, and I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the scripture said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the scripture said. But why did Jesus have to die for us to be reconciled to God? I'm going to give you some broad strokes here, but if you have never read the Easter story or really know a whole lot about it, I would encourage you right now to just pause where we are, go and read Matthew 26, starting in verse 17 through, you know, the end of Matthew is a good place to go. But that starts basically at the Last Supper and kind of kicks off a series of events that we would call kind of, you know, Holy Week, Passover, essentially, for Christians as well, and also kind of Easter, all encompassed into that, and it'll give you a more full understanding. So, yeah, go. Go and check that out. Make sure that you read through the end of Matthew. That is going to be a good kind of summary of this. But let's. Let's start this conversation off from. From a different place, and then we'll get there very quickly. Like I said before, pattern is prophecy in the Jewish mind. So beginning in the Garden of Eden, we saw that sin can only be covered by the shedding of blood when God slew the animals to make coverings for Adam and Eve. If you guys remember that story, Adam and Eve were hiding from God after they ate of the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and they covered themselves with fig Leaves because they knew they were naked. And they had this conversation with God after hiding. And he's asking them, like, who told you that you were naked? And then God went and made clothing for them basically by slaying some animals. And so that's one of the. Really the first time that we see, okay, covering sin takes the slaying of animals. It takes blood essentially to cover this sin. Okay, then we have it reaffirmed with the Passover and the spotless lamb. And going into that story is very interesting about when they had to bring the lamb in. It had to be a spotless lamb. They couldn't break any bones, they had to consume it all. And then using the blood of the lamb to put over the doorpost. It's just this really interesting scenario where it just kind of repeats this pattern. The shedding of blood to cover sins, to provide salvation, to provide this protection against the rightful punishment of sin against. And then it was highlighted in Hebrews 9 where Paul tells us about the law of Moses and states, for without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. And this isn't a surprise. We have it in the sacrificial system as well throughout the ages where it wasn't really forgiveness of sin that you were getting. It was basically pushing your debt off another year. Right? It wasn't completely reconciling it and having no debt whatsoever. It was saying, we're basically paying off our debt and refinancing for another year by the sacrificial system that we have. And so to reconcile us to the Father, there had to be a perfect sacrifice to literally cover our sins. So that when God looks down upon me as sinner, big sinner, he only sees the blood of his Son, Jesus Christ. Thank goodness. And Hebrews 9, if you want a little bit more on this, does a great job of going into further detail and kind of laying this out for you. And again, Hebrews is written to the Jewish population who would have had a framework of understanding. And Paul is trying to communicate to them what Christianity is that Christ is the Messiah. He is the fulfillment of everything that they have been looking for. And like I said, Hebrews 9 does a great job of laying that out. But I'm not just saying that. I think based on my understanding of Scripture or based on anybody else's in here. We've even got Sam in the office. And based on his understanding of Scripture, Jesus literally became sin in 2nd Corinthians 5, 21. This wouldn't be in. In the Old Testament. So Sam may Not have seen this one. But that's okay. That's okay. We'll talk to him about it. It says, for he made him, who knew no sin to be sin for us. So second Corinthians 5. 21. He literally made him to be sin. And Chuck Missler is somebody, like I said earlier, who does a great job of kind of telling these stories. He does the verse by verse studies, like I said, but he also does topical studies. So if you're ever interested in just going and hearing what he says about Easter, it's a great presentation. He's got videos. You can go on YouTube and look for his content. I don't know if it's on Rumble. It should be, but as of right now, I don't think it is. But he does a great job of kind of laying this out for people. So you can understand that this isn't just a story where we say that Jesus paid the price for sin. He literally became sin. The reason that I'm harping on that is because in just a minute, that's going to mean a whole lot more to you, if you haven't heard this story than maybe it does right now. It's a lot, but it's a lot more in just a second. So let's pick the story up. At the Last Supper, we all know the. The scene. Jesus is celebrating with his disciples. They're going through and taking the bread and the blood, the wine, essentially. And Jesus tells his disciples that he's going to be betrayed. Now, Jesus has been telling them over and over. If you've ever watched the Chosen, by the way, it does a good job of highlighting this over and over. Jesus is trying to tell and trying to convey to his disciples that he is going to be betrayed, put to death. This entire thing is going to come unraveled in their eyes, right? It's going to be a really bad day from their perspective. But he's like, hey, don't worry. This is the whole reason that I came here. But they're not really getting it. But now he literally says, somebody at the table is going to betray me. And they all are questioning and saying, lord, is it me? And then he basically says, it's Judas. It's this guy right here. And he's dipping his and dipping his bread. Now, can you imagine sitting next to who you believe to be God? And there's a lot of argument that Judas was trying to force Jesus's hand into kind of bringing about the earthly kingdom of heaven, or he was just a complete sinner and was actually trying to thwart the plans of God. Whichever view you hold, I understand why people say both of those. But can you imagine staring into the face of Jesus and seeing the miracles that he's done, and he's like, you're the guy that's a really bad place to be. Now Judas has a problem, though, because Judas has to act. He's been exposed as a betrayer. Now the plan that he's been putting in place has to happen now. And the plan he's been putting in place is to betray Christ and turn him over to the temple authorities, because they've been after him for a very long time, trying to catch him in his words in any way that they can. So who do you think, just by that one statement, who do you think is in charge of the timing of all of this? Who's in charge of this situation? It's Jesus. Jesus is forcing Judas hand. And we know that the Romans, they don't want any uprisings in any of the territories that they are in. That is what you get judged on if you're the person in charge of a territory. Is how peaceful is it? Are they paying the taxes they should have been paying? Well, the Jews knew that. And they knew that if there was any kind of an uprising, they were going to be the ones held responsible and they would lose some of their religious freedom potentially, or maybe even their lives. And a new leader would be brought in to see if they could manage the people a little bit better. And so they didn't want to arrest Jesus on a feast day because they knew the crowd would get angry and that would potentially lead to a riot. Where do I get that? Matthew 26:3 5. At that same time, the leading priests and elders were meeting at the residence of Caiaphas, the high priest, plotting how to capture Jesus secretly and kill him. But not during the Passover celebration. They agreed. Or the people may riot. So why were they there on the biggest feast of the year? Well, approximately 1 million people would have been in Jerusalem for this feast. They wouldn't have wanted to go and take Jesus during this time. Because not only is that a time when there's a large crowd in the city, it's the largest of all of the feasts for Passover, that entire kind of Holy week. Essentially there's multiple feasts, by the way. It's not. There's multiple Sabbaths, I should say, during this week. And we'll get to why that's important in just a minute. But they would be taking a huge risk by taking Jesus during this time. And they're also going to be breaking their own laws to arrest Jesus. I have a complete list. Well, I shouldn't say complete. I have a list of that that will be pretty shocking to you, but it's not an extensive list. There are books written about all of the laws and rules that the Jews broke. And when I say Jews, by the way, just to make sure, some of these anti Semites that are out there, like, that's right, the Jews. No, that's not what I'm saying. The Jewish leadership of the day, Just like when we talk about China being bad, it's the leadership, the ccp. So the Jews broke their law. The leadership broke their own laws to arrest Jesus. One of the ways they did that is arresting him at night. Weren't supposed to be any trials at night or anything adjudicated contracts being done at night either, but they did it. Why? Because Jesus is completely in control. This is not a tragedy, this is an achievement. And it's the greatest achievement of all mankind. So next we see Jesus leave and go to the garden of Gethsemane. And this again is a famous story where Jesus goes with some of his disciples and he has disciples kind of stop and stagger a little bit, and then he goes a little bit further and he prays, comes back to them, finds him sleeping. We've all heard that story. One thing I want to focus on though, is that in the garden, Jesus is sweating blood. Literal drops of blood are coming out as he's sweating. And he's praying because of the intense pressure that he is under. And that's actually a medical condition. So this isn't just some kind of piece of additional information that we're given to try to highlight that this is a tense situation. This is actually a physical condition that is going on with Jesus because of the amount of stress that he's under. Now you might want to ask yourself why. And initially I thought it was pretty simple. Again, I've seen the Passion of the Christ. I've heard the depictions of what actually happens when you're receiving lashes and having a crown of thorns put in your head and having your hands and your feet nailed and all of the things, all of the physical punishment of crucifixion. It is one of the most excruciating, and that's where that word comes from actually is through the process of crucifixion. It's the most excruciating way to die that I can think of. And most people die after A long period of time of several days through asphyxiation because they can't hold their body up anymore. But I don't think it was the physical punishment, or at least not only the physical punishment that was causing that kind of intense reaction from Jesus. I think he understood what was about to happen that had so much more significance. So if you're a Christian, you believe that there's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and those three are one, right? That's the kind of the three flames analogy, if you want a good way of depicting it. You have three candles, you put it together, it has one flame, but you can pull them apart. Don't worry about getting too much into the Trinity right now. That's a lesson for another time. But just understand. Jesus also said, I and the Father are one. He had been one with the Father. He had been in communion perfectly with the Father forever, for all of eternity. And I think what was driving this sweating of blood and this intense pressure was that he was preparing to be separated from God for the very first time ever. And he was going to become sin. So not only separated from God, but God would not even be able to look upon him, because God cannot be associated with sin. And so this makes his words on the cross in Matthew 27:46 even more impactful when he said, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Consequently, that's also the only time that Jesus ever referred to God without calling him my Father. It's a very interesting thing because Jesus was now in our place. Jesus was now sin. He's worse than in our place. We aren't just sinful. He is literally sin. And Jesus even asked in the garden if the cup could be taken away, essentially saying, God, if there's any other way, if there's any other way of making this happen, please, let's do that, because this is a daunting task. But he added a caveat in Matthew 26:39, O my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. Thank goodness for that last part. Because there was no other way otherwise. God didn't answer Jesus prayer. And because there was no other way, I am grateful beyond anything that I can even imagine that Christ did not back out. He could have called down legions of angels to protect himself. Even he said that. That's not what the program is here, though. That's not the plan right now. The plan is to go and to save humanity for anybody who would believe. Thankfully, that's what he did. One of the things we need to do in our lives a little bit better every single day I know I'm guilty of it, is say, God, your will be done, not mine. I tend to operate a lot on my will, on what I want to happen. But thank God there is a good example for us in Christ saying, God, your will be done, not mine. So just after this, Jesus sees a crowd of Roman soldiers and temple guards coming toward him to arrest him. Again, this is at night. Listen to the exchange in the garden of Gethsemane. According to John In John 18:4, 8, Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that would come upon him. Just stop right there. Knowing all things that would come upon. He knows every single detail of what's going to happen here. And that's not a surprise to us believers. But just think through it practically. You know exactly who's going to betray you from the day you call them as a disciple, Judas, you know what's going to happen to some of the people around you, family members maybe, that don't necessarily understand who you are initially. You know that you're going to be rejected by people after being praised by people just days before on the triumphal entry. You know that people are going to spit on you after praising you for the healing that you brought to them. Maybe not the same person, but the crowds, you know all of these things at the exact same time. I don't understand how to hold those two pieces of information in my mind and still have compassion for the people that I'm about to go die for. But Jesus did it. So going back to that, I'll just start again from the top. So Jesus in John 18:4,8, Jesus, therefore knowing all things that would come upon him, went forward and said to them, whom are you seeking? They answered him, jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them, I am He. And Judas, who betrayed him, also stood with them. Now when he said to them, I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground. I thought it was funny because Jesus is simply saying, it's me. And they draw back and fall down to the ground. Jesus power is incredible. The command that he has of the situation is total and complete. He goes on to make sure that they get it. He doesn't let this backing off and falling down distract from the purpose. He actually presses them again. Again Jesus is in charge in verse seven. Then he asked them again, whom are you seeking? And they said, jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He. Come on, guys, get with the program, right? I've already told you who I am. The last time I said it, you went backwards and fell down. Can you please just stay on your feet and do your job? I'm adding a little bit there because, you know, it seems like that's something he might think. And then he says, therefore, if you seek me, let these go their way. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Roman soldiers or not, but they typically don't take orders from people they're arresting very well. Jesus is in complete control here, saying, yeah, that's me. Let these guys go. I think we lose some of that in the translations. We don't understand that Jesus is in such control. I didn't even put this in here. But Peter is kind of a ready, fire, aim kind of guy. Based on scripture, he's got foot and mouth disease. As Chuck Missler says, he always opens his mouth and puts his foot in it. And he struck one of the servants ears and cut it off. And had not Jesus healed that guy's ear, that was probably going to be a death sentence for Peter. Jesus completely in charge of the entire situation. Crowd's not in charge. Jesus is orchestrating the entire thing. Next up in our story, Jesus is taken to the house of Caiaphas, the high priest, where the chief priests and the elders are assembled. And remember, it's nighttime again. And that's illegal. According to their own rules, Jesus stays silent as many false witnesses are brought before him and the leaders accuse him. And that's one of the prophecies about Jesus I believe in the Psalms and Isaiah. Those two parts have a lot of really interesting pieces of the story that you can find that determine just basically describe the crucifixion or describe some of the time periods leading up to it. But finding none of these witnesses to come that could even convince the leaders, they finally had to get to two false witnesses that accused Jesus of saying that he could destroy the actual temple, the building of God and rebuild it in three days. We now know he was talking about the temple of his body and come back to life in three days. But they didn't know that at the time. And after this point the high priest arose and he asked Jesus to answer to the charges. And Jesus said nothing. But then something weird happens and we miss this because this is a legal matter that actually happens and Jesus is actually required by law to respond. And this is when he does finally respond in Matthew 26:62, 66 where Jesus is put under oath by the high priest. It says then the high priest stood up and said To Jesus. Well, aren't you going to answer these charges after all those people? Like I said, the false charges had been brought against him. And finally, the two final people. That's the. This is. At the conclusion of that, what do you have to say for yourself? But Jesus remains silent. And then the high priest said to him, I demand in the name of the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God. Okay, he's actually putting him under oath there. And Jesus is legally now obligated to answer this question. We don't really get that. We just see that Jesus answered this time and he didn't answer last time. There's a reason, though. Jesus is following the rules of his own rigged trial, and they're not right. Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God. I hope that people pay attention to what Jesus says next. And it's going to lead into some very, very strange things happening. Six different trials, rules being broken all over the place, pronouncements of innocence multiple times, and still it leads to his death. So picking up in verse 64, Jesus replied, you have said it. You said it, buddy. Essentially is what he's saying to him there. And in the future you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God's right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven. So Jesus didn't just say, yes, he said, you said it. And guess what? One day you're going to see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God's right hand. He basically twisted the knife a little bit on the yes. Jesus wasn't playing around at this point. He was making it abundantly clear, I am the Messiah. You're gonna see it one day. Might not be today, though. The high priest in verse 65 then tore his clothing to show his horror and said, blasphemy. Why do we need other witnesses? You've all heard his blasphemy. What is your verdict? Guilty. They shouted. He deserves to die. Okay, there are a number of people out there who claim that Jesus never actually said that he was God, that he never compared himself to God or said that he was the Son of God. That's clearly not true. I don't know if you hear that or if anybody's even still saying that as much as they used to. This puts it all to rest. He did it, and he did it at his own trial. And this is really what they were putting him to death for. But then the Jewish leadership begins to break their own laws. So let me Go through a list of the laws that they broke in just so far in the story. And one of those. I'll just start with this. Right at the end of that verse there, it says that the high priest tore his clothes. When the high priest is adjudicating a trial like this, he's supposed to have on a ceremonial robe and he's not supposed to tear that. So that's one breaking of the law right there. Judges participating in the arrest of the accused, that's against the law. Having Jesus trial at night, that's against the law. The arrest was through an informer or a traitor against the law binding Jesus in John 18. Or they said they bound him and brought him before the people before he's been convicted without any resistance, given or anticipated. That's against the law. Providing false witnesses, that's against the law. Using self incrimination as the basis for an indictment, which we just talked about, that's against the law. Jesus's testimony couldn't be. He couldn't. That couldn't be the reason for his indictment. Him saying it, pronouncing the guilty verdict on the same day as the trial, that is against the law. You could pronounce an innocence. You could basically say that this person is innocent and can go free. But supposed to have the trial on one day, the judgment on the next day. The judge set Jesus up. That's also against the law, obviously. Right? This is a kangaroo court. They know the outcome of this trial. They are just trying to make it look as good as they possibly can to get there. Also, the trial took place at Caiaphas home instead of the council chamber. That's against the law. The list goes on and on and on and on on things that were done improperly. The Jews broke their law to try to get somebody that they said was breaking their law again. Jewish leadership. So there were six trials that actually happened. I don't know that I knew all this. I kind of. It's hard to follow the story sometimes, understand why we go from one to the other and then back to the other again. But there's the first trial before annas in John 18, 12, 14 and then before Caiaphas in Matthew 26:57 68, then before the Sanhedrin in Matthew 27:1 and 2. But here's a bit of a problem. And this is another thing that I think is a very interesting point. A rim, as some of the Jewish scholars will say. There's something deeper going on here. The Jews don't have capital punishment authority at this time, because when the Romans come in and take over somebody, there are certain things they don't allow them to do. One of those things is essentially to be able to have power over life and death. So in 6 or 7 AD the ability to adjudicate capital cases was taken away officially by the Romans. When that happened, the priests covered their heads in sackcloth and ashes and bemoaned going through the streets saying, woe unto us, for the scepter has departed from Judah and the Messiah has not come. That's in the Babylonian Talmud, Chapter 4, Folio 37. They literally thought that the word of God had been broken. And the word of God that they thought had been broken was Genesis 49, 10. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes for them. That was Shiloh. Read Shiloh as Messiah, and the scepter read that power. It's kind of a symbol of authority for them that was broken at that point. So it's not us saying this is something that they would have thought. This is something that we have in the Babylonian Talmud. We have a record of them thinking that. But little did they know that there was a young boy growing up in Galilee that was that Messiah. So let's go to the next part, because this is where they have to get the authority to put Jesus to death or really have somebody carry it out for them. So you have Roman trials, and first one being before Pilate, John 18:28,38, and then before Herod, because there's. There seems to be a little bit of a thing where Pilate realizes he might be able to push this trial off on somebody else. So he sends Jesus over to Herod. In Luke 23:6 12, you get a little bit more of that story. And then back before pilate in John 18:39 through 1916. It's really interesting, too, to hear about the trials before Pilate, because Pilate comes out and announces in John 18:38 that Jesus is innocent. He says, this guy hasn't done anything wrong. What are you guys doing? And then the crowd insists. So Jesus goes in and has him flogged. Okay, I've put some punishment on him. You guys get out of here. Like, take Jesus. But they insisted that Jesus be put to death. And instead of taking Jesus being released to them, they called for a convicted murderer, Barabbas, to be released to them. Now, probably heard about that before, because that's part of the story that is very familiar to many, many Christians. And we Talk about it every Easter that Barabbas was released. Barabbas is us. He's guilty. We're guilty of sin. Right? For all have fallen short of the glory of God. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Okay, we're all sinners. We're Barabbas, but we're set free because somebody else is taking our place. Jesus. Barabbas is the. He's the quintessential us. He's the first us there was in this story where Jesus is going to take our place. Again, the symbolism is throughout the entire scripture, all the way through, every single time. Now, there's another really interesting thing that happens right after this. Okay? So they take him away, and then you've heard a lot of the details of the crucifixion. I'm not going to get into that because it's. Again, it's one of those things. It's. It's. It's. It's terribly sad, especially when you pull some of the stuff out of Isaiah and some out of the Psalms. It's. It's terrible what they did. But really what I want to focus on is some of the highlights of why this is happening and some of the interesting things that happen that you might not know know. Are you familiar with what an acrostic is? An acrostic is when you take, like, the first letters of words to make a word, right? Maybe you can use that for a code or something like that. Like, you know, back in sixth grade when we're trying to call our teacher stupid. I know it's not the best thing in the world to say, I got in trouble for doing it, but you can do it in acrostic. You can write something out so that the teacher can't see it and see that you're being mean. Well, when Pontius Pilate wrote the name of Jesus, this plaque to be put on the cross where Jesus was going to be hanging, he wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. And it's funny, because if you ever miss an opportunity to see a little bit deeper into the story, don't worry, the Jewish leadership is going to come to your rescue. Because anytime they freak out, that's a place where you need to look a little bit deeper. They freak out and say, no, no, no, no, no. Don't write Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, only that he said he was the King of the Jews. And Pilate essentially says, what I have written will always be written. Now, whether he knew or not, whether he was a believer or not. There's a lot of speculation on if he became a believer later on. Mostly the Coptic church kind of propagates that. Who knows? But anyway, his acrostic that spelled. That was spelled out on there was yodh hey vav hey. Which is the unpronounceable name of God. So either he did it to dig the Jews, right, Or he knew who Jesus really was at some point. I think it's more likely that he was trying to get a bit of a dig in at the Jews and he had some kind of an idea that this may be more than just a regular man. And another interesting little tidbit. And again, the fact that the name is Yahweh, the unpronounceable name of God, isn't necessarily something you build doctrine off of, but it's a key little insight that you miss if you just read through the Scriptures and you don't do a study where it looks at some of these things. And there are so many men and women who throughout history have kind of brought these little tidbits up. So we're in debt to them. And so it's our job to kind of go out and tell people as well. Hey, there's all of these little details in scripture that are really fascinating. So the crucifixion also took place, as is somewhat debated on the spot, that Abraham offered up Isaac. Again, this was a kind of a foreshadowing of sacrificing your son. That story of Abraham offering Isaac doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a story in and of itself because you've got Abraham offering up Isaac, who is probably not a young boy, probably more like, you know, a little bit older. Definitely somebody who wasn't like, you know, super, super young that where he wouldn't understand what was going on. And then God providing a sacrifice at the last minute, kind of this test of Abraham. It makes a lot more sense if it's Abraham offering his son, Isaac not having to do it, but Jesus being offered, and God having to do it, right? So basically, Abraham didn't have to, but God knew later on down the road his son would be offered. So it kind of makes sense as a pattern. But going back to the crucifixion, Christ uttered the words at the end of that crucifixion, it is finished. And it was. It was definitely finished. The sacrifice had been made. The perfect sacrifice. Here's the problem, though. If the story had ended there, we would be in huge trouble. Here's why. First Corinthians 15:14. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is also empty. Without the Resurrection, we are among all men to be pitied because we're believing in something that is not real, something that is not true. Because Christ said that he would be raised. He made that claim. That's the victory over sin and death. And just to make sure that you understand, there are a lot of different theories out there about what happened to Jesus body. Is it possible that some of his friends came and stole his body away because they had this prophecy of him rising in three days. They were aware of this, they were worried about it. That's why they wanted to make the tomb secure. So they had Roman guards put there. The Roman guards would have been under penalty of death for falling asleep on watch. They had a big problem. There's no way anybody got there and did anything to that body that the Roman guards would not have been aware of. They also sealed the tomb so that if it had been opened, it would have been very clear that that seal had been broken. There's a lot of theories about what happened, but none really make any sense or deal with some of the issues that we would have seen. Had these Roman guards just been falling asleep that night, they would have been in big, big trouble. So there's no real credible evidence that anything other than the resurrection actually did happen. Based on the stories that we have, and also the type of death is an interesting thing that Scripture tells us in the Old Testament type of death that Jesus would die, you know, hundred years, 200 years, sorry, hundreds of years prior to when it actually happened. It was described in Isaiah 53:5, but he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. Isaiah 52:14 also says, but many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured, he seemed hardly human. And from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man. These are all kind of well accepted descriptions of in the Old Testament of the crucifixion and the impact that it would have had on Jesus form. And it's a heartbreaking graphic depiction of the suffering that Jesus went through, that he wasn't even recognizable as a man. And it helps us to understand why certain people had problems. I believe Mary in the garden didn't really recognize if it was Jesus or not when she was talking with him. And on the road to Emmaus, a couple of his followers walked with him from a while and got a Bible study essentially on their way down and didn't recognize it was him until the breaking of the bread. And there's some kind of conjecture that when he broke the bread, you saw the piercings in his wrist and they knew who it was immediately. And then Jesus was gone. But the disfigurement that he suffered from having his beard ripped out and being beaten, having the crown of thorns, was so bad that even his close friends that had been with him frequently didn't recognize him. And that's all contained in Isaiah. Another interesting point is that Jesus fulfilled prophecy from the Old Testament about the Messiah. And I know we all know that, but there's some debate about how many. And it doesn't really come down to did he fulfill every prophecy, according to Christians in the Old Testament, about the Messiah. It's more about, well, what's prophecy and what's not. So Jesus fulfilled at least 300 prophecies from the Old Testament about the Messiah and when he would come and how he would come and what he would do. And there are as many as 574 if you count certain other things as prophecy as well that he fulfilled, basically leaving very little room for anybody to have another opinion about him other than he is indeed the Messiah. So just a couple of quick final points. I don't know that you necessarily are going to have to worry too much about this, but it's interesting in case you come across this. Was the. Was it really today, Friday that he was crucified, or was it some other day? Ultimately, it's like to me, celebrating a birthday. We celebrate Jesus birthday on December 25th here in the United States. Was he born on December 25th? Almost certainly not. Just based on the sequence of events, it was most likely sometime in the late fall. But it doesn't really matter. We're celebrating the birthday. We're choosing to commemorate that. It's not terribly important which day we're talking about, but there is some evidence that is pretty compelling that the crucifixion didn't happen on a Friday. Here's three things. One, Jesus specified that there would be three days and three nights between the crucifixion and the resurrection. In Matthew 12:40, Jesus traveled from Jericho to Bethany six days before Passover in John 12:1. And that would require more than a Sabbath day's journey if the Passover was on a Friday. Kind of hard to do that. There were also two Sabbaths between Passover and Sunday morning. According to Matthew 28:1, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, one of the seven High Sabbaths of each year. Given these problems, it doesn't really look like Friday is the correct day of the week, though. Really doesn't change anything for us as Christians. But I just wanted you to be aware that if you dig into Scripture, you can answer some of these questions, you can get a little bit more insight and see that there might be some evidence that kind of helps line this out a little bit more for you. And as I said, when I started talking about the Good Friday episode, talking about Easter, talking about some of these things that are in Scripture, my goal is to give you just enough tidbits of information that make you go and do further research, that make you open your Bible, that make you sit down and pray to God. Lord, guide my reading. Let this not just be something that I read, a story that I put into my mind, but let it be something that impacts my heart. Let the words that are on this page, this playbook that you've given swatting away the microphone, let the words on this page be life. To me, that's a different thing than just getting through a reading, because that's what it's supposed to do for us. It is supposed to be life for us. So my question to you is, what are you going to do with it? Don't build doctrine off of all these interesting, sometimes really interesting, sometimes maybe a little less interesting points. But let it be a sign of where you need to dig. Let it be something that makes you say, gosh, there's so much more going on here than I ever imagined. Let it be something that makes you think, my goodness, I need to under if I'm missing this, If I didn't know about the hemorrhoid judgment, which again, maybe that's funny to you, maybe not. Maybe you've had hemorrhoids and you're like, oh, that's really mean. I don't know. There could have been a lot worse things happen for stealing the Ark of the Covenant. Okay. I'm just saying that God chose to do something interesting there. Why did he have people be cleansed of leprosy by going and dipping themselves seven times? Why did he have the army march around Jericho seven times silently, or six times silently, and on the seventh time making a loud noise and different number of like, why did he do all of these things? Because God isn't doing anything by chance. He's not doing anything haphazardly. It's all part of a plan. And it is a plan designed through every single word. And story to point us to Jesus Christ. The question is how? Why is he doing it? Dig into it, grab whoever's study you can and start putting the pieces together. Because I guarantee you, friends, when you go on that journey, when you start looking at the Bible as more than just a story, it changes your life. You become amazed at the God that we serve. You become absolutely 100% in love with a God that would sacrifice his own son to make sure that you had the opportunity, not that you had to do it, but that you at least had a chance. That's what Jesus did for us. He sacrificed himself for us. And that's why as Christians, we can say Happy Easter. He is risen. Gerald apologizes apologetics it doesn't mean that.