Thoroughly Innocent . . . Totally Guilty, Part 1

In the final days of his life.

Jesus was betrayed by a good friend. This breach of trust by Judas was a mere subplot, much grander story certainly added to the irony in the last few days of Jesus life. How could our sinless Savior be treated with such indignity.

Why did Jesus provoke so much higher among religious leaders and politicians today on Insight for living trucks went all advice is to follow along as the dramatic story of Jesus unfold entitled today's message and thoroughly innocent, totally guilty.

If you have a copy of the Scriptures review. Please turn to the first book in the New Testament gospel by Matthew were looking at the first 10 verses in Matthew 27 Working Our Way through the gospel by Matthew and we come today to our 82nd message. Not that that matters except it let you know were getting near the end and our desire is to help you be acquainted with the truth of the Scriptures, and even more importantly, allowing those truths to come in and alter the way you live your life so it is not simply a fact gathering study. It is a life evaluating study where the mirror of the word reveals the truth regarding ourselves we come to Matthew 27 we come to a crucial change in the trials of Jesus. I placed in your worship folder. A chart on each side is a different kind of chart that I will get into explaining when I get into my message.

I just want you to have it handy. Keep it folded and placed it here after we finished our reading so that you can mark your place and hold onto it.

I think you will need it in the days and even years to come. As you seek to keep the events clarified in your mind, as well as the time in which these things occurred the last day Jesus spent on this earth the day of his death. What you find. Matthew 27. You'll notice I'm reading from another version. The new living translation. You may now use that version.

Perhaps if not years will be very similar, but if there's a difference that will explain it. Matthew 27 very early in the morning. The leading priests and the elders of the people met again delay plans for putting Jesus to death. Then they bound him, led him away and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor when Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die. He was filled with remorse, so he took the 30 pieces of silver back to the leading priests and the elders I have sinned, he declared, for I have betrayed an innocent man, what do we care they retorted that's your problem. Then Judas through the silver coins down in the temple and went out and hanged himself leading priests picked up the coins. It wouldn't be right to put this money in the temple treasury. They said since it was payment for murder. After some discussion, they finally decided to buy the potter's field and they made it into a cemetery for foreigners. That is why the field is still called the field of blood. The said note on which to stop the reading, but it does give us the tone of this passage.

Not all settings in the Scriptures are pleasant and easy to imagine.

I always urge those I'm teaching to do your best to put yourself in this original setting as you imagine the scene transpiring listening to Insight for living to study the book of Matthew Chuck Swindoll. Be sure to download is searching the Scriptures by going to Insight world.org/studies another message from Chuck titled thoroughly innocent, totally guilty.

The venerable AW toes or grabbed my attention when I read these words may not the inadequacy of much of our spiritual experience be traced back to our habit of skipping through the corridor of the kingdom. Like children in the marketplace, always chattering about everything but pausing to learn the true value of nothing. Those words were convicting then and they are convicting now skipping through the corridors of the kingdom like children reading this, but not really paying attention to that going for what is fascinating, intriguing, curious to something that stands out is important. All the while missing the deep things of God the things that are tucked away in the folds of the details to happen so easily. For example, in the life of Jesus.

How easy to skip from Gethsemane to Golgotha from the prayer working after the Lord allow the cup to pass from him to. It is finished as he hangs and dies on the cross.

But what about in between the scenes in the garden and death on the cross when I was honest enough to write the church I grew up in skip past the events of holy week in a rush to hear the symbol sounds of Easter said very well visited is likely you have not taken the time in your own study your own reading to probe the depths of what our Savior endured between Gethsemane and Golgotha. If that's true let me acquaint you briefly with what you have missed.

There wasn't one trial. There were 637 Jewish three of them Roman and the pleas of special part in why the trials unfolded as they did a few of those trials weren't illegal. All six were illegal and those who conducted them knew it, and the charge was switched from blasphemy among the Jews to treason or sedition among the Romans. There was a reason for that. You see, the Jews did not put people on the cross.

Romans did in order for there to be capital punishment, the Romans must agree to capital punishment, which required the Jews to take him from their chamber and their counsel called the Sanhedrin and to bring him before the governor named Pilate by the way, the ultimate verdict of guilty was declared but never proven. Never once did the accusers prove Jesus guilty. They found him guilty. They declared him guilty, but it was a prejudicial decision, not a factual one hand, the final judgment, which was done by Pilate, the governor was a reluctant one never believed Jesus was guilty he had nothing to gain or lose in the trial. So as he met with Jesus. He was just another instigator of difficulties among the Jews and how Pilate hated the Jews, so he wasn't there to cooperate with the Jewish leaders. The more he interviewed Jesus, the less convinced he was of his guilt, which caused him to say ultimately I find no full in this man and yet he agreed to put them on the cross.

That too is more than intriguing, or somebody things that you will miss if you skip like children in the marketplace, chattering about what seems significant, and missing the details that add the color and the shading to the story.

For that reason, I prepared the chart I would like for you to look at it for a moment. I don't want to be pedantic about this, but I do want you to understand what you have in your possession never seen charts like this, so I drew one up thinking it would help. First is one that you will read vertically are: a time chart or a chronology of events, I put the events on the left and I put the approximate time is best we could determine on the right. I've moved us from the prayer and agony at Gethsemane all the way down to the death of Jesus on the cross. It was quite a day that began at 1 AM in the garden and ended with Jesus, having died, having given up his spirit. At the ninth hour, as John writes it at 3 PM. The timing of it by the way, in case you're interested we are today, right about the center of that chart. The first interrogation by Pilate, you will see that's where we are. Matthew 27 wanted to, followed by the rest of that trial, 11 to 14 by the way went before 12 Pilate twice in between was Herod who saw Jesus as something of a clown will get to that in our study later not turn the chart over and you'll see the one that we written horizontally. This covers the trials of Jesus from the first to the sixth top to bottom, then your read from left to right the first trial you will read of the officiating authority and if you read down the page will see each trial, who officiated at the trial. Then you find the Scripture were that's located in in God's word. You'll see the charges of the accusation trumped up against it in the little fourth section of the chart, then you'll see why the trials were illegal.

In each case they were you'll see the type of trial whether it was Jewish, and religious or whether it was Roman and civil. And finally, you will see the result where he was found or declared guilty, but never once proven guilty. A repeat in case you wonder where we are in this chart were at trial. Number four we have seen Jesus before Annas the high priest or ex-priest ended Caiaphas and a son-in-law and then the Sanhedrin and then now we bring him as we see from the Scriptures before the governor keep those a charts handy, you'll refer to them from time to time, and I think they will help you III believe them to. I hope it will now enter the Scriptures turn pleas to Matthew 27 very early in the morning as best we can tell it was about 630 in the morning.

Also, an illegal time because no trout was to be held at night.

The elders of the people of the leading priests met again, notice the reason not to determine the outcome but to put Jesus to death.

You see the prejudice immediately. Their purpose in bringing him to Pilate was to point a finger to Pilate and to say, in effect, you make sure you put them all across. We want him dead. When you want us to long lingering in a needless about the details you make sure your mailing to across to put it in raw terms so they bound him and they led him away and they took him to Pilate's the first time we met. Pilate in our journey. So, if you will allow me just a few words in on on his life.

This man is a notorious corrupt character punches Pilate who lives in Caesarea but the sea but is in Jerusalem during Passover because of the crowds and he was there to keep down any possibility of mob violence that's important. By the way, later on will explain why one man writes that he is an addressee might a Roman to the core and absolute wolf for Jewish blood. He had zero interest in cooperating with the Jewish authorities who demanded the guilty verdict will come back to him later on but Pilate is the only one who gave Jesus something of a fair trial because he sought to find whether he was guilty or not, the scene quickly changes so we will change because of Scripture will come back to Pilate next time. Verse 11. Your read Jesus is standing before Pilate, so that for trial continues and will get into that next time. But now we meet a man and we will study him a little more in depth, but we've referred to him on a number of occasions whose name is Judas. Notice how Matthew enters this Judas into the scene, Quinton Judas, who had betrayed him understand when Matthew wrote his story. All of this has transpired.

Of course he could not have written the gospel had still been going on. He's looking back. John looks back farther than anyone else. As we learned earlier in our time together.

But Matthew writes rather soon on the heels only a few years after the events and he is now catching us up on the scene as he brings Judas into the story when he walked alongside Judas he never thought of him as a traitor, nor would you had you been one of the 12.

Had they done photography back in those ancient days and pictures have been taken of the disciples you would've never been able to tell by looking which one was Judas artist attempt to make you will whereby certain facial expressions, but Judas was a master hypocrite. In fact, he did not begin with plans to be a hypocrite that became a part of his lifestyle over the passing of those three, 3 1/2 years.

But here is Judas who has betrayed Jesus. You remember he took the 40 pieces of silver.

He came up to him in the garden and kissed him to identify him for the soldiers we would not have known who Jesus was and Judas was there to point him out many steps aside and we don't know anything more about Judas till now, we don't know where he went with what he did.

Probably stood at a distance may be near Peter in the courtyard, watching the events transpire as his stomach began to churn and he became aware of the terror of his act. I want you to think about Judas before the act of betrayal. He heard all the teachings he witnessed as many miracles as any disciple witness. He was there alongside Jesus, he heard them breathe at night.

He ate alongside him.

He wants the dog a crippled, healed he wants the dead raised to life.

He watched the storm stilled.

He wants the CD called, he saw the second member of the Trinity at work in human flesh. He was aware of all of it, then why in the world would he betray him. Most likely, though, we are never given versus on this. Would you piece them together and you see Jesus, Judas, emerge from place to place most likely Judas was more a political zealot than a religious disciple Judas wanted Jesus to become the king over the Romans.

He lived for the day that Jesus would accept his kingdom make those disciples a part of his kingship and overthrow Rome.

When Jesus turned down the kingdom.

Judas was terribly disillusioned, he began to rethink his role and why he was following Jesus. He began to see Jesus in a different light. If you will. Jesus let him down. He didn't do what he thought he would do Judas kept that in mind and kept waiting for the moment which never came because Jesus came in his first mission to die. He will come in his second return to rain but Judas wants him to rain now and overthrow those Roman swine who were dominating the Jews at the time Jesus did not cooperate with Judas's desiring dream.

And so, in light of that disillusionment. Judas begins to change. Now he comes to the ultimate moment. The result of his betrayal as he witnesses firsthand something he had never thought would happen. I believe the Judas thoughts somehow Jesus would be whisked through the trials removed and relieved and taken away, done away with some other white never thought what he would witness would become a reality which is why we read what we do here is Judas who realized that Jesus had been condemned to die the way it's written is like a light goes on. He sees it for the first time he realizes that he's going to not he has probably seen some of the torturing that is a part of the scourging and the result is he is filled with remorse, not repentance. Remorse he feels shame for what is done, but he is not repenting from his actions. I've left out something very very important.

The night of the Last Supper before Jesus is before Judas leaves to go into the night to carry out his plan to betray them, we read that Satan entered Judas he still there.

We never read where Satan left Judas so we still a Satan inspired and influenced and possessed man, he is evil to the core. But even though that's true. He is confused when he sees what is happening in the result of his betrayal. What expositor puts it in these words as Judas watched Jesus being carried away to Pilate, the full enormity of his treachery finally began to dawn on them as he realized the Jewish leaders did indeed intend to put Jesus to death.

The one last obstacle was the permission of Pilate, which Judas had no reason to believe he would be denied. The site was devastating to Judas more than even his money hungry mind is sorted so in his seared conscience could deal with. He felt remorse as he began to experience the excruciating pain that is unique to profound guilt he feels his pain of remorse. The stream this deep and abiding set of regret.

So he takes the 30 pieces of silver back to the leading pre-city.

He treats them as though they are his brief studies.

As I've said betrayed an innocent man trapped in his own sinfulness. Judas regretted his betrayal, his actions certainly brought them to a place he didn't want to go where there's much more about the story Chuck Swindoll wants to tell us he's teaching for Matthew chapter 27 and Chuck titled this message thoroughly innocent, totally guilty. To learn more about this ministry. Please visit us online@insightworld.org.

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