In his sermon, 'The Son of Man's Faithful Testimony,' Peter Allison examines the trial of Jesus as depicted in Luke 22, emphasizing the numerous injustices Jesus faced. He details how Jesus was arrested and tried illegally, with proceedings taking place at night, lacking proper legal process, and resulting in a wrongful conviction. Allison highlights the role of God's sovereignty, explaining that despite human injustice, God's purpose was fulfilled in the salvation of humanity. He draws parallels between historical and modern instances of legal injustice, urging Christians to recognize God's presence even in times of suffering. Jesus is portrayed as the 'faithful witness' who remained true to God's word, confronting falsehood without compromise. The sermon concludes by affirming the significance of Jesus' suffering and sacrifice in fulfilling God's plan for redemption and justice.

Please turn in your copy of God's Word to Luke chapter 22. I'd like to begin reading at verse 63. Now the men who held Jesus mocked him and beat him, and having blindfolded him, they struck him on the face and asked him saying, Prophesy, who is the one who struck you? And many other things they blasphemously spoke against him. As soon as it was day, the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, came together and led him into their counsel, saying, If you are the Christ, tell us.

But he said to them, If I tell you, you will by no means believe, and if I also ask you, you will by no means answer me or let me go. Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God." Then they all said, Are you then the Son of God? So he said to them, you rightly say that I am. And they say, what further testimony do we need? For we have heard it ourselves from His own mouth.

May the Lord turn our feet toward His testimonies as we contemplate our ways. Heavenly Father, as we continue to worship You this morning, we ask now that You would open our eyes, that You would give to us the understanding of matters that are only spiritually discerned. We ask that you would feed us with the bread of heaven and that you would sanctify us by your word this morning, setting us apart to be your vessels. And I ask that you would sanctify my lips to proclaim the gospel of the grace of God. In Jesus name, Amen.

Well, in preparation for this morning, I was surprised at the number of lawyers that have written books about Jesus' trial, seeking in many cases to justify the proceedings but on further thought I realized it shouldn't be unsurprising or shouldn't be surprising to us that unbelievers would try to show that Christ was justly condemned for breaking Roman law, because that would disprove Christianity. If that was the case, then Christ would be justly condemned for sin and justly executed, in which case he could not be our sin bearer and pay the penalty of God's wrath against us. It would disprove Christianity. But of course, that's a futile attempt. In 2000, Harvard Divinity School asked Alan Dershowitz, who's a well-known Harvard law professor that you're probably familiar with because he's often in the news, they asked him to serve as Jesus' defense in a moot court proceeding before a professor of divinity playing the part of Pontius Pilate and another professor from the divinity school playing the part of the prosecution.

And then there was an advisory jury composed of all the students from the school, presumably Harvard Divinity School. Now Alan Dershowitz is a famed legal expert, having served in some capacity in a number of very high profile cases. And he's won 13 of the 15 murder or attempted murder cases that he's handled as an appellate lawyer. And he thought in this trial that he'd done very well, a very excellent job in proving Jesus' innocence. Not that he thought there was an actual historical trial, but he was just engaging in this trial as an exercise in his lawyer skills.

He thought he'd done a really excellent job. But the trial resulted in a hung jury. And so being a law professor, he wanted to interview the students as to why they had not been persuaded by his excellent defense and Jesus' obvious innocence. And he found that they all had this, all the ones that voted, that he interviewed that voted as they did to not convict, said that as believing Christians they had to vote for Jesus to be convicted otherwise humanity could not have been saved and the Christian religion would not have existed. Well, these students had a decidedly, obviously, unbiblical view of God's sovereignty.

It's never an excuse for doing wrong or doing injustice. Many times it's true Jesus did things or scripture record things being done that it might be fulfilled which was written or spoken through the prophets. But in all of those cases, Jesus never, ever did something wrong or unjust. So this example illustrates how even well-meaning people, even professing Christians nonetheless can pervert justice. But one near universal mark of tyranny and bondage is an unfair trial, or the existence of unfair trials, a culture where the judges are corrupt and the prosecutors ignore the law and condemn the innocent and justify the wicked.

The horror stories of unjust judges and unjust trials are prolific in our nation. Sidney Powell, as a Texas appellate lawyer of some note, has written a whole book about corrupt judges and prosecutors at the federal level. It's called License to Lie. And in there she details a number of her own personal experiences in in federal and Courts in some cases state courts where she experienced gross miscarriage of justice. Many of them, her defense of innocent Enron employees and other companies that were connected with that, where the judges, some that even she knew, ignored the law and ignored obvious evidence and made rulings that were a gross miscarriage of justice.

I'm familiar with a couple of these cases right here in Conroe, just down the road, a few blocks away from where we sit right now at the courthouse. One was the murder trial of a student at Conroe High School. And it's detailed in a New York Times best-selling book called White Lives. And it deals with the grossly, grossly unjust prosecution of a black Conroe man for a murder that he clearly Couldn't have done And when we moved here into town some of the people involved many of the people involved in that trial were still holding office in in our county. There was another trial that I and some of my family were personally involved in as a witness and a personal friend, an acquaintance of the defendant.

And I saw in that many gross miscarriages of justice. Many were blatant, such as threatening of official witnesses, the summary firing of a staff lawyer for his frank assessment, a staff meaning a government staff lawyer, a state level, for his frank assessment of the case as, In his words, dirty judge, dirty prosecutor, dirty everybody. But most of the abuses that I saw and the injustices were very subtle. Like the judge failing to provide critical documents that were in evidence in the trial. Failing to provide them to the jury when they asked for them or concealing the law from the jury and only partially explaining the law and ignoring many other aspects of the law that had been well litigated in the past and had attorney general letters, opinion letters about the law.

These aspects were concealed from the jury or just blatantly denied, twisting their interpretation of the law as it was explained to the jury and so on. But the relevance of all this is that injustice when the life or the liberty of the defendant is at stake, is one of the most soul-crushing experiences that anybody could have. When it's your life and it's your liberty, and justice is miscarried, and you do not get justice, but rather are condemned. Maybe it involves the loss of property. Maybe it involves that it's unjustly been taken, or the loss of your freedom to be locked away for 20 years unjustly for a crime that you didn't commit.

It easily ruins people, socially, financially. It destroys people's lives. It breaks up their marriages. And it can leave people even with a will, no longer having a will to live. They just give up.

It's that soul crushing. Even Christians can be left very bitter. Professing Christians can be left very bitter and angry and distrustful of authority. It is a very, very effective tool of tyranny. And the injustice of Jesus' trial is something I think we often overlook in the face of the excruciating pain of the cross when we think of the suffering of Christ that He bore in our place when He bore the unmitigated wrath of God.

But just as we've seen the suffering of His soul in the Garden of Gethsemane as he bore the abandonment of his father, this also, this grossly unjust trial, is a part of his humiliation and his suffering. Remember, he is A human. He has a human nature just like we do. He got tired. He got hungry.

He needed to sleep. In his human nature, he needed strength. Remember, by an angel. As he faced the abandonment of the Father, the breaking of the fellowship that he knew is the second person of the Trinity. This also, this trial, this unjust, grossly unjust trial is a part of his suffering.

We know from if we were to put all of these Gospel accounts together, Luke doesn't give us all the details that some of the other gospel writers give. But if we put the full account together from all the writers, we know that Jesus was first brought to Annas, the high priest, and then he was brought to Caiaphas also the high priest Caiaphas was the one who was the high priest Anas was the high priest who wasn't actively serving he was a Caiaphas is related to him he's his son-in-law but he was taken then to Caiaphas where he was interrogated to trump up charges against him. That's kind of like when the police go up to somebody and ask them questions, and then proceed to arrest them on the basis of their own words, and charge them on the basis of their own words. I saw a video of that just this week from England. A woman was standing.

A woman dressed very graciously and beautifully was simply standing on the sidewalk in front of an abortion clinic. She wasn't speaking out loud in any way, just standing. The police came up to her and said, are you praying? Because it's against the law to pray. And when she said, well, I'm not praying out loud, just praying in my heart, silently, they proceeded to arrest her.

Well, That's sort of what was happening with Jesus' trial. He was drug in the middle of the night before Annas and Caiaphas and interrogated in order to find a basis with which to charge him. And once they decided what they could charge him on, then when morning came, or just before morning came, they convened the full Sanhedrin. So this is apparently only a part of the Sanhedrin. And Luke says, as soon as it was day, then the elders of the people, the chief priests, and the scribes came together and led them into their council.

So this is the full Sanhedrin now. It's going to rubber stamp what had been determined by the powers behind the scenes in the middle of the night. They convened, they rubber-stamped what the leadership decided, and then they took his case to Pilate. And Pilate heard him. It was a trial there, and then he passed, tried to pass Jesus off to Herod, who also conducted his own little mini trial and examination.

When he was tired of it and didn't get the satisfaction he wanted, then he sent Jesus back to Pilate. So that's actually, if we count the two different appearances before Pilate, that's actually six trials that Jesus endured that night, several of which were illegitimate. And I'd like to just briefly run through all the ways in which Jesus' trial that night was unjust and illegal. First, Jesus was illegally arrested. Judas was bribed in verse 3 of this chapter, Judas was bribed by the scribes and priests to betray Jesus away from the crowds of his supporters.

The people that arrested Jesus were from the chief priests and scribes and elders. They are the very people who wanted to kill Jesus and they bribed Judas to betray him. That's like a policeman getting upset at someone and getting even by paying a policeman or say a judge getting upset by someone and then bribing a policeman under the table to arrest the person and bring them into his court. I know of a judge in Ohio that did something very similar. He was behind a car that was going too slowly and he was inconvenient, so he took down the license plate and he sent them a letter ordering them into his courtroom.

Something that he was severely reprimanded for and rightly removed later from office. Secondly, Jesus was examined by Annas and Caiaphas in an illegal night proceeding. The Sanhedrin was forbidden from convening between the time of the evening and the morning sacrifice. In his book, Jesus Before the Sanhedrin, Mr. Lemmon states that no session, including a preliminary examination of the court, could take place before the offering of the morning sacrifice.

But they also couldn't be examined in secret proceedings. Trials must be public. You can't examine people secretly. That's a sign of tyrants. That's an abuse of authority.

That's an injustice. Thirdly, his indictment was illegal. Alfred Edersheim says the Sanhedrin did not and could not originate charges. It only investigated those brought before it. See, they did have authority to hear charges of blasphemy, but they weren't authorized to pass sentence.

Matthew tells us that after Jesus was arrested, Then the court sought false testimony against him, but they couldn't find any witnesses to agree. See, at that point, he should have been released. There was no evidence, there were no witnesses against him. The Sanhedrin didn't have any charges to investigate. They were trying to originate the charges themselves.

That's not just. That was illegal. Fourthly, the Sanhedrin, in the third trial, the Sanhedrin held a trial before sunrise. Trials are to be held during daylight. One rabbi explained it that the reason why the trial of a capital offense could not be held at night is because the examination of Such a charge is like the diagnosing of a wound.

In either case, a more thorough and searching examination can be made by daylight. Convicting someone of a crime punishable by death was serious business. And it required being at one's best mental condition. You're not at your best mental condition in the middle of the night. Plus, it's also the night is when deeds of darkness are done in secret away from people.

And so no just trial would ever be held in the middle of a night. It's not just. It's not fair. It's not fair to the defendant. It's not when people are able to exercise their best judgment.

And as jurors, that's what we should be doing. The Sanhedrin also illegally convened to try a capital offense on a day before the annual Sabbath. Another rabbi says that no court of justice in Israel was permitted to hold sessions on the Sabbath or on any of the seven biblical holy days. In the case of capital crime, No trial could be commenced on Friday or the day previous to any holy day because it was not lawful to adjourn such cases longer than overnight or to continue them on a Sabbath or holy day. Because also Capital offenses required voting twice to condemn on separate days.

And that couldn't happen if the next day was a holy day. So that was illegal. Jesus was illegally condemned by the Sanhedrin. See, the Sanhedrin had no power to pass a death sentence. Genesis 49 is Jacob's prophecy on his deathbed.

And he said of Judah, Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's children will bow down before you. Judah is a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, you have gone up.

He bows down, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion who shall rouse him. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the people." See, the Jewish leaders recognized that a scepter had departed from Judah with the Babylonian captivity. There was no descendant of David ruling over their kingdom with the Babylonian captivity and the Zedekiah. But they still retained judicial power. They had, the Sanhedrin had the power of passing death sentences until 23 years before the trial of Christ.

So they lost that. They lost the law, the scepter had departed from Judah and As of 23 years before this trial, they had lost their judicial power as well. They had no power to pass a death sentence because that's what Jacob had prophesied, that the Messiah would come when the scepter would not depart and the judicial power would not depart until the Messiah came. The trial was also illegal because it only lasted one day. You could conduct a trial that resulted in a not guilty verdict in one day, but you couldn't do a trial that resulted in a guilty verdict.

As we mentioned earlier, There needed to be time for another day to allow witnesses to come forward, to answer any of the charges that were brought in the trial. So it's illegal to hold a trial and convict in one day. Second and Eighthly, Jesus was illegally convicted by his own testimony. Jesus was indicted on one charge. Remember, they were looking for witnesses and they couldn't find any because they were all disagreeing but at last they found some witnesses who at least agreed and what they agreed on was that he said something he said destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it so that was the if there was an indictment is illegal but that was the illegal indictment but jesus was silent And when he was compelled to answer, the high priest put him under oath.

The high priest arose and said to him, Do you answer nothing? What is it that these men testify against you? But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest answered and said to him, I put you under oath by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. And that's when Jesus said, you said it.

He didn't say yes or no, and we'll look at that in a minute. He said, you said that. And they used his own words, forced testimony to convict him. That's illegal. It's illegal in our country to do that.

It doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It doesn't mean people aren't trying to be tricked and coerced into giving testimony by which they are then convicted. There was no, Another injustice in this trial was that there was no defense allowed. There were no witnesses. No witnesses were brought in to testify in Jesus' defense.

They weren't allowed. As soon as Jesus confirmed the words, the trial was concluded by the high priest saying we have no further need of witnesses. A just trial would seek and listen to witnesses who had other evidence. Another injustice in this trial is that the Sanhedrin had not been properly notified and wasn't properly present. Those who were known supporters such as Joseph of Arimathea apparently weren't invited.

Luke tells us in the next chapter there was a man named Joseph, a council member and a good and a just man, and he had not consented to the Sanhedrin's decision. Indeed, he was from Arimathea, city of the Jews, who himself was waiting for the Kingdom of God. He had not consented to this trial. Probably wasn't even told about it. Jesus' sentence was illegally pronounced in a place forbidden by the law.

After being seized by this mob, this cohort, Jesus was eventually brought to the high priest's house to be tried, yet the Jewish law expressly forbids an individual from being tried anywhere but in court. No death sentence can be passed outside of that particular room. Death sentence can only be pronounced as long as the Sanhedrin holds its sessions in the appointed place. You see, one tactic of tyrants is to change the location of meetings so that people that are needed can't show up or to hinder people from being able to get to the meetings of the court. And that's why in our country it's unlawful to arrest a legislature who is on his way to the legislature.

Because that's a tactic of tyrants to keep people from being able to show up. And another one is to hold the trial in a different place so people can't find it. Or to vote in different places so people can't find it. Same idea. This happened here with Jesus' trial.

Another gross injustice is that most members of the Sanhedrin were disqualified from legally trying Jesus. All these men, Caiaphas, Matthias, Ishmael, Simon, John, Alexander, Ananias, all these people had received bribes. They bought their offices and they were appointed by those who should not have been on the court. To be somebody who has received bribes or bought your office disqualifies them from being able to sit on this trial. And another injustice was that the initial charge of blasphemy, which is what they initially indicted Jesus under, was then switched to sedition when the Sanhedrin came before Pilate.

See, if the Sanhedrin had come before Pilate with a charge of blasphemy against Jesus, that's what they decided he needed to die for. Pilate would have probably told him, he goes, I don't want to be bothered by the details of your law and who blasphemed who. And he might have just dismissed it out of hand, like the Roman rulers that were dealing with Paul initially tried to do. And so the Sanhedrin changed the charge that they brought to Pilate to sedition, Treason against the Roman government. That would force Pilate to listen to the case.

Then if he didn't listen to it, he could be accused of not being willing to hear a charge against treason, which might implicate Him. So they created charges of treason against Christ. And that way they brought Him before Pontius Pilate. And then also In their minds, it would be Rome that was executing Jesus if they found Him guilty, which they were going to push for and could put all sorts of unjust pressure upon the judge to decide the case in their way. You remember Pilate tried to dismiss the case three different times, saying this man is innocent.

And yet, they brought extreme... The chief priests stirred up the crowds and brought extreme political pressure on Pilate to render a guilty verdict, which he finally did. That's another injustice. But in doing this, you see the Jews were scheming that in their minds, the Romans and not they could then be held responsible for putting Jesus to death. And they could say, well, it wasn't us.

It was Rome that did it. But you see, in the midst of all this injustice, Jesus is the faithful witness. He's the faithful witness. He testified to the words of Scripture. He believed the Word of God.

Daniel 7 is a passage to which Jesus referred to. He said, hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God. And He said elsewhere that you will see to them, He said, you will see the Son of Man. Hereafter you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds. What was he referring to?

Jesus was testifying to the Word of God. He told in Matthew 26, Jesus said, Matthew records Jesus telling them, Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Luke just says, hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven." Luke just says, Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God. Well, Daniel said in his vision, He said, I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. Then he was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples and nations and languages should serve Him, and His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed." Jesus was a faithful witness.

He believed the scriptures the word of God and he testified to them. He didn't compromise the truth of the Word of God. He didn't modify it or say it in a way that would be acceptable to them. He didn't compromise as he stood before Pilate, as he stood before the scribes and the Pharisees and the chief priests. He testified in the face of adversity to the truth that was most rejected at that point.

I think it was Martin Luther or somebody that talked about the fact that you can say all the true things that you want to say. You can say all manner of true statements. But if you don't say the one truth that is the truth that's being contested, then you haven't spoken truthfully. There are many things that Jesus could have said, that testified, that the Pharisees and the chief priests would agree about. But he would not have been a faithful witness if he left out this point about which they were so enraged that he was the Messiah.

The Jews understood that when he identified himself as the son of man spoken in Daniel that he was identifying himself as the Messiah. Jesus also, though, testified. Truthfully. And dealt with the. The unjust questions.

Truthfully and dealt with the unjust questions of the Pharisees and of Pilate. He testified in a way that they would not misunderstand what he was saying. Many a times he was silent because the questions that he was being asked had unjust assumptions behind them. And it's a question, The famous question of this sort is the question of, when have you stopped beating your wife question? How do you answer that?

If you answer yes, have you stopped beating, you answer yes, then it assumes that you were doing that. If you answer no, it assumes that you're still doing it. You see, the question's an unjust question because it assumes something that may not be true. Hopefully it's not true. That's an example of an unjust question.

It has a wrong assumption built into the questions that renders a yes or no answer not truthful. Neither yes nor no would answer the question properly in a way that would be understood by the hearers. And so Jesus, when he'd asked these unjust questions by the Pharisees, you see the Pharisees thought of the Messiah as this king who was gonna displace the Romans, who was going to rise up like the Maccabeans and throw the Romans out, Romans that the Jews had invited in in the first place to rescue them from another invader. And so their understanding of Jesus as the Messiah was this political savior. In fact, some of them had two messiahs because there were obviously passages in the Old Testament that spoke of a suffering savior.

And so they had they had two messiahs, some of them. But they but this is what they understood as Messiah. So when they're asking Jesus, are you the Messiah? Tell us, are you the son of God? Jesus doesn't give them a yes or no answer.

He says, you said it. That's what you've said. Not I. Because he was not willing to testify to the truth in a way that would be misunderstood by those who were listening. And so he answered truthfully and faithfully to all of the word of God, and he did so in a way that they could not misunderstand or misconstrue what he was saying.

He was silent, even when they ordered him to speak, he was silent. So God has a purpose in all the evil that he ordains. This trial, Peter said, it was done by the wicked hands of the priests and the scribes and the Pharisees, But it was also done by God's decree, by God's divine appointment. And so God has a purpose in all the evil that he ordains. And God's purpose in this case is to accomplish the salvation of his people from their sins.

And that involved Jesus being subjected to a very gross and unjust trial at the hands of wicked rulers. Christ's suffering in this case comes through human agency. Christ's suffering, the wrath of God, his abandonment by God in the garden, was there in his suffering in his soul by God's abandoning of him and separating himself from him. But now, in addition to facing the unmitigated wrath of God in his soul, he is now experiencing the injustice at the hands of men. Romans and Jews who mocked Christ's deity.

And they struck him on the face and they said, prophesy, who's the one that struck you? They were mocking Christ, Christ being the Son of God. God's people are often most severely afflicted when the church or those who claim to be the church join with unbelievers in persecuting Christians. But God has a purpose in this, not only for good, for in accomplishing the salvation of his people, but also for those who are under his wrath and condemnation, ordained to perdition. Jude speaks about those who are ordained to perdition.

And God has a purpose in ordaining this evil as well, in that of ripening them for judgment. Remember, God did not give the land of Canaan to Abraham in his day. God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham, but he did not give him the land of Canaan at that time. He didn't give that land, he didn't fulfill that promise for another four generations. And this is why in Genesis 15, 16, God said that the Amorites were not ready for judgment yet.

But in the fourth generation, they meaning Abraham's descendants will return here to the land of Canaan, which they did under Moses and Joshua, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. And so God, in allowing this great evil and great injustice not only accomplishes our salvation but he also accomplishes his own glory in the condemnation of the wicked in the ripening of them for judgment and in bringing them to do this so that he will be glorified in his wrath. Psalm 76 says even the wrath of men will praise you and with the remainder of wrath you will gird yourself. God has a purpose in all that he ordained. He had a purpose in ordaining this injustice that Jesus endured, and he has a purpose in his delay in bringing to fruition this kingdom and in defeating all of his enemies.

Psalm 110 speaks about Christ reigning in the midst of his enemies. God has a purpose in allowing the wicked to continue, in allowing this progressive victory of Christ our Messiah. He has a purpose in allowing it for his own glory. And when we suffer injustice, we need to remember that, one, there is no injustice that we will ever suffer that can be as great as the injustice that Christ suffered. There is no injustice that we can suffer at the hands of believers even, that can compare to the injustice that Christ has suffered for us.

But we can also remember that in the time of His delay, In the time when we seem to see His enemies gaining the upper hand. That God even in this is working His purpose for his own glory and for the salvation of his people. And so that he is glorified both in his grace to those for whom Christ died and in his wrath on those who He didn't. God is not mocked. He will be found justified in everything that he brings to pass.

Let us pray. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for Christ's sacrifice, for his suffering that he endured At the hands of wicked rulers. So that he might be our high priest who could sympathize with us in our weaknesses. For he also has endured every temptation that we ever will, yet without sin. We praise you, Father, for our great Savior.

We love you, Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for this bearing of great injustice. That the justice of God might be satisfied for our sin. And that we may be fit to dwell with you for all eternity. And that we might know you, not just as our creator and our lawgiver and judge, but as our Redeemer and friend, as our Father.

We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.