The King of the Jews

28 Moments with the Son of God

Ben Pugh

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625644978
  9781498269254
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630872410
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

This book is for anyone who yearns to enter more fully into the world Jesus inhabited, not as an intellectual exercise, but as an aid to authentic personal devotion. The King of the Jews ponders five defining moments from the ministry of Jesus and lingers at a series of events that, historically, must have unfolded rapidly. Within twenty-four hours of his arrest, Jesus was dead, yet these events are so momentous that they repay careful meditation: first upon the night of trials, and then the seven sayings from the cross, and finally, the ten thrilling post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Each meditation adds up to a whole message that presents the King who came to take his throne and who does finally take it. But he takes it not by force, but by facing down evil through the agony of the cross, and now invites the hurting to share in his triumph.

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The Six Trials

Christ’s first year of ministry that we have glimpsed in earlier chapters was the high water mark of his fame and popularity. Soon, John the Baptist would be beheaded and in that death was a sign of Christ’s own pending death in Jerusalem and from that time onwards he repeatedly warned his disciples that his destiny was to be taken by lawless men, be beaten, mocked and crucified, but that this fate would result in him being in some way a “ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He also intensified what we would call his succession plan. He sent out the Twelve on their own mission around Galilee and later tried the same thing with seventy. Much to his relief, both missions were a resounding success.

And so he comes to Jerusalem for the last time. For now, he is acclaimed with loud shouts as he rides a donkey through the gates. With a heavy heart he rides into that city laden with history—and full of blood, the blood of the prophets. It was the graveyard of every messenger ever sent to it. And now, one more time there would be one more Messenger proclaiming to it the way of peace. His sorrow was not for himself as he contemplated the inevitable outcome but for the people of that great city who would soon bear the cost of their rejection of God’s message and Messenger.

In no time at all, Judas betrayed him and he was arrested late at night in the place he loved, a garden on the Mount of Olives.

Before Annas

And so begins the night without sleep, of gnawing hunger, and of wave after wave of bullying as the noble king of all bows to his subjects as they brutalize him. There are six trials in all, each one illegal in some way or other and each one adding up to a case so weak that, in the end, he is condemned out of his own mouth, out of something about the nature of his being that he is forced to admit.

The first trial on that cool, starry Spring night was before Annas, the aged, outgoing high priest. His villa was on the way to the house of the reigning high priest Caiaphas, which was the next stop after this. Annas was the one who profited from the money-changing and animal-selling businesses that thrived in the temple courts, whose tables Jesus had kicked over, for the second time in his ministry, only a few days earlier. It was the dead of night when no such trials should have been taking place. There were no witnesses and there was no evidence. Annas calmly asked the bound Jesus about his teaching, about how many disciples he had, anything, in fact, that was so straightforward and reasonable as to lure Jesus into lowering his guard. Then, there would be a question thrown in very suddenly to catch him out. At least that was the plan. The Master’s brazen reply: “You should know what I teach, it’s common knowledge, I taught openly. Why don’t you ask the people who heard me?” was a shock. Annas’ assistant responded with protective instinct for his hoary master’s honor, slapping Jesus across the face. This provoked Jesus to ask for the thing that was pointedly lacking: evidence that he might actually be guilty of anything.

This slap is an act on the part of the powerful that says, “How dare you be confident?” We might like to think that our world in the West is free of such abominable brutishness. It is the behavior we portray in costume drama: the historic patriarch exploding with rage at his daughter who has grown up too fast and refuses to marry the suitor chosen for her. She brazenly stands up for herself. But these forces are very much with us. Those forces were unleashed at the 2013 Oscars. Janice Turner, in her column for The Times described the presenter’s song about all the Oscar-winning actresses that have uncovered their breasts on screen as an, “elaborate and calculated insult.”1 How dare these actresses receive due recognition for decades of acting achievement? Let’s reduce all that success to nothing more than mammary glands. It can be compared to the strike of Annas’ servant, and the dismay from the blow was visible on the faces of many of the actresses as their names were reeled off in song in front of family, colleagues and 1 billion viewers.

Satan himself is described as the accuser. He hates the head held high, loathes the shame-free life and hits out at human achievement. Maybe you have felt his blows. Defy him today.

Text: John 18:13, 19–24

Application: Revelation 12:10–12

Prayer: Father, in the name of your Son, thank you that I, like He, can be confident in the face of intimidating people, words or circumstances. Even my own conscience may accuse me, but I take my stand with the unashamed and hold my head high in the righteousness of Christ. Amen

1. Turner, “A Casting Couch Only Works in a Locked Room,” 25.

Before Caiaphas

Think of the phrase, “Guantanamo Bay” and you think of people arrested and detained without charge, of people being forced to wear bright orange boiler suits and being subjected to interminable abuse that supposedly stops just short of torture according to Geneva Convention definitions. A newborn son back home is a six year-old school boy by the time his innocent father is released. Years are wasted as interrogators try to extract information that confirms a teetering pile of prejudice and supposition that they call “intelligence.” I am speaking of an Algerian restaurateur who, in 2002, was arrested because he went to Afghanistan to cook road-side meals for fleeing Afghan refugees. In 2007 he is finally told, “You’re free to go,” and is sent back home without explanation and without apology.2 The account of his experience, called The General has now come out as a book. Clearly we are, and always have been, a lot better at prejudice and hate than we are at justice. Guantanamo Bay simply reminds us that injustice can be at its most brutal when lurking behind the hypocritical veneers of Western powers.

Turn back the clock two thousand years. It is about 4am, and Sanhedrin members are being woken up and are gradually starting to assemble at the house of Caiaphas, the reigning High Priest. Annas, knowing this, decides he is finished with Jesus and sends him there. There is a more or less private interview with Caiaphas, though with a growing number of priests and lawyers assembling. The first glow of daylight this chilly morning is still another hour away and not until dawn would it be legal to hold a full trial before the whole Sanhedrin. Jesus at this stage is still without charge and is being held for no sound reason. Caiaphas begins his interrogation in a way that echoes that of Annas but with rather more of a note of urgency borne of self-interest. Caiaphas, after all, is the one that had arranged the arrest and, with the great and the good of Jerusalem now gathering, he must elicit from reliable witnesses the reasons for waking everyone up. He is already playing fast and loose with the law in planning for a trial to take place on the same day that evidence is taken, now he is going to try to hurry some good-enough-sounding evidence through the system. It is Guantanamo-style hypocrisy: following something vaguely like due process but with a heart full of disdain. The most likely charge to stick would be blasphemy, based on Leviticus 24:16, but the best the witnesses could come up with were two inconsistent reports about Jesus recommending that the temple be destroyed and offering the promise that he would rebuild it in three days.

The Scriptures, however, at least in the way the ruling Sadducees interpreted them...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• One: Five Defining Moments
• Two: The Six Trials
• Three: Seven Sayings
• Four: The Ten Appearances
• Select Bibliography