Calvary Road Baptist Church
“POWERFUL MEN IMAGINING THEY WERE IN CHARGE”
John 18.12-14
I would roughly estimate that since my call to the Gospel ministry in 1975, I have stood in front of people and delivered approximately 9,000 sermons, according to the records I keep to ensure I do not inadvertently preach the same sermons to the same audience. Of those 9,000 occasions I have preached from God’s Word, roughly 2,500 of those sermons have focused on the person of Jesus Christ, the work of Jesus Christ, or His relation to the Godhead or the human race. I love to preach about the Savior.
This message from God’s Word might be the first time I have prepared and delivered a sermon from Scripture dealing with individuals who interacted with the Lord Jesus Christ but without specifically mentioning or focusing on the Savior. You will understand why as I proceed.
I begin by following a pattern repeated several times throughout God’s Word. Genesis chapter 1 starts with God’s creation of the universe and all in it over six days, with God resting on the seventh day. Notice, however, that in Genesis chapters one and two, God begins with the entire universe and narrows the focus down rapidly to an individual man and woman.
In Genesis chapters 4, 5, and six, we are once more exposed to the broad expanse of humanity, with the biblical narrative narrowing down to a single man, Noah, and his family. In Genesis chapters 10 through 12, we see the pattern repeated once more, God dealing in judgment with the entirety of the human race beginning in chapter 10 and narrowing the focus to Abram in chapter 12, his name later changed to Abraham.
God made a promise to Abraham known as the Abrahamic Covenant[1] and then expanded the details of that covenant with three subsequent unconditional promises: the Palestinian Covenant,[2] the Davidic Covenant,[3] and the New Covenant.[4] The fulfillment of each of those covenants depended only on the faithfulness of God to keep His Word. The pattern of the covenant follows “I will” pronouncements.
However, to deliver to the human race one who could fulfill each of those unconditional promises, God grew the family of Abraham into the nation of Israel in Egyptian bondage, redeemed them from four centuries of slavery, and brought them into the Promised Land. Along the way, God gave the children of Israel the Law of Moses and the Mosaic Covenant. This covenant was conditional and required the Israelites’ obedience to secure God's blessings. The pattern of the covenant follows “If you will, I will” pronouncements.
But the Israelites did not obey God. They disobeyed God, violated the Law of Moses, and were punished severely. After King Saul, King David, and King Solomon, the nation divided, with the northern kingdom of Israel dominated by ten tribes and the southern kingdom of Judah dominated by the tribe of Judah, including the tribe of Benjamin. The Assyrians eventually overwhelmed the kingdom of Israel. The Babylonians eventually conquered the kingdom of Judah.
Roughly six centuries after the Babylonian captivity began and after the Roman occupation of the Promised Land, the eternal Son of the living God was born to the Virgin Mary in the village of Bethlehem. He spent most of His childhood growing up in Nazareth. He left home around 30 to begin His public ministry, which was inaugurated when He was baptized in the Jordan River by His cousin John, the son of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth.
For 3½ years, the Lord Jesus Christ was a mostly itinerant preacher, headquartered in the town of Capernaum, and gathered and trained disciples as He preached, taught, performed signs and wonders and healings, as well as raising the dead. Most of His earthly ministry was spent in three regions, the northern region of Galilee, the southern region of Judea, where Jerusalem was located, and Perea, just east of the Jordan River.
Early in His ministry, He took His apostles through Samaria and dealt with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in John chapter 4. On one occasion, He ventured to the extreme north edge of Galilee, where He encountered the Syrophenician woman.[5] On another occasion, He ventured to Caesarea Philippi to make a proclamation about the Church of Jesus Christ he had founded.[6] However, though He was the Savior of all mankind, He never ventured beyond the borders of the Promised Land.
The Savior’s final journey began in the region known as Perea, where He foretold His death and resurrection.[7] Crossing the Jordan River and passing through Jericho, He gave sight to blind Bartimaeus and His friend on His way to Jerusalem.[8] I believe it was then that the Savior was publicly proclaimed to be the Son of David for the first time, with the healing and proclamation quickly spreading through the pilgrims as they made their way to Jerusalem for the Passover.
The trek from Jericho to Jerusalem likely took place on a Friday, with the Lord and His men stopping just short of Jerusalem in the village of Bethany before sundown. It is thought the Lord and His men spent the Sabbath day in Bethany with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, with His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Sunday, riding a never before ridden donkey colt in fulfillment of prophecy and so recognized by the multitudes, raising the ire of the religious leaders.[9]
The week in Jerusalem leading up to the Passover was filled with tension, with the Jewish religious leaders desperately trying to outwit the Savior in their confrontations with Him in the hopes they might turn the people against Him, to no avail. Yet the people favored Him. But since He had raised Lazarus from the dead, the religious establishment had determined He must die.[10]
It was what to them was a golden opportunity presenting itself when one of Christ’s apostles, Judas Iscariot, having been offended by the Lord’s rebuke of him at a feast two evenings before, left the Upper Room on Thursday evening after the Passover meal and the Lord’s Supper to finalize his betrayal of the Savior to the chief priests for thirty pieces of silver.[11] Crucial to the realization of their plan to put the Lord Jesus to death, a betrayer was all they needed to arrange for Temple guards to accompany the high priest’s man, Malchus, to make use of Judas Iscariot to locate and identify Him to those who did not know what He looked like since He was pretty ordinary in appearance.[12]
Since capital punishment was beyond the power granted to them by the occupying Romans, they also requested of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Roman soldiers to accompany them to both quell any disturbance that might erupt and to include the Roman authorities in their scheme. Thus, in the middle of the night, with Judas Iscariot likely taking them first to the Upper Room and finding it recently abandoned, they climbed the steep footpath up the side of the Mount of Olives to the shoulder where the Garden of Gethsemane was located.
It was here they came upon the Lord Jesus Christ, who had concluded His prayer season and awaited their arrival.[13] They also went backward and fell to the ground when He identified Himself.[14] Finally, Simon Peter cut off the ear of Malchus, and the Lord Jesus immediately healed the wound.[15]
We now come to that portion of the narrative that informs us about the men who had come to Gethsemane to seize the Lord Jesus Christ or arrange His arrest and who would ultimately consign Him to the Roman governor, Pilate. We know the Savior was there. We know Judas Iscariot was there. We know Malchus was there. We know the faithful eleven remaining apostles were there, with the Savior.
But what about the others? I want to focus your attention on John 18.12-14, where we find mentioned men who seemed to wield authority, men who seemed to be in charge, men who imagined themselves to be determiners of actions:
12 Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him,
13 And led him away to Annas first; for he was father in law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year.
14 Now Caiaphas was he, which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.
Reflect with me on five categories of men and individuals. To look at them would lead you to conclude they are men who commanded respect, men who commanded attention, men who made decisions of various kinds, and men who possessed an aura of confidence and authority. Some of them wore uniforms and weapons. They were dangerous and deadly men. Several wore fine clothing that was custom tailored for their exclusive use. Though they carried no weapons, they, too, were dangerous and deadly men.
Consider the groups and individuals in turn:
First, THE BAND
The details I will share are already known to some of you, those who attend our Church’s midweek Bible study, where I seek to carefully consider passages related to The Life And Lessons Of The Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 12 begins with the words, “Then the band.” This refers to the company of Roman soldiers dispatched by Pontius Pilate to assist in whatever way was needed to maintain order and preserve the Roman version of the peace once Jesus of Nazareth was taken into custody and transported to the places they planned for Him to go.
Of interest to us is the word translated “band,” the Greek word speῖra. This is the word for what we identify as a Roman cohort, the tenth part of a Roman legion, usually consisting of 600 men.[16]
Imagine the most feared military professionals in the entire world. They were well-conditioned, mentally fit, ruthless in battle, merciless in the enforcement of the Roman will, and utterly confident of their ability to prevail, especially when dealing with amateurs.
These were the ultimate enforcers, on hand to make sure nothing of note or concern to the Roman governor would happen in their presence without swift and brutal action to suppress it. Were these men knowledgeable? They were confident they knew enough. And, no doubt, they were aware of this man, Jesus of Nazareth.
Since they were stationed in Caesarea Maritima on the coast of the Mediterranean, Pontius Pilate’s home base, do you imagine they had not heard of the miracle worker from Galilee? Is there any doubt that the centurion’s servant was healed by this Nazarene, Matthew 8.5-13 and Luke 7.2-10? And what about the Syrophenician woman’s demon-possessed daughter?[17]
Those 500-600 Roman soldiers had a greater awareness of who they were dealing with than most people imagined. Coupled with their professional training and the requisite self-confidence that typically accompanies soldiers in uniform carrying deadly weapons, those men imagined they were a force to be reckoned with and that those opposed to them ought to fear them.
Little did they reckon that someone who could cast out demons and heal the sick was instead someone to be feared than someone to fear them. Recall that they went backward and fell to the ground, not Him. It was He who approached them in the dark, not the other way around. Yet they had not the eyes to see, the ears to hear, or the wisdom to evaluate who they were dealing with.
Next, THE CAPTAIN
This is the senior officer in charge of that detachment of Roman soldiers. No doubt, there were centurions present but unmentioned. But this officer outranked the centurions. Translated into our English word captain, the Greek word is chilίarcos, the commander of a Roman cohort, and frequently translated as tribune. The word would be roughly equivalent to the rank of major or colonel in modern militaries.[18]
It is difficult to imagine the authority Imperial Rome granted officers of this rank. These officers were routinely recipients of intelligence-gathering activities from spies, informants, collaborators, and publicans, and they had the power of life and death over the soldiers under their commands. Thus, whatever the status a Roman soldier might wield in an occupied region such as Galilee and Judea, a tribune wielded vastly more authority. Perhaps you have heard of the word decimate. But are you aware of the word’s origin? To decimate means to kill of one in ten, chosen by lots, from a rebellious city or a mutinous army was a punishment sometimes used by the Romans.[19] Imagine a tribune being dissatisfied with the performance of his cohort and ordering a decimation. He randomly hands out six hundred straws to his six hundred men, with sixty straws being shorter than the rest. The others then killed the men who drew the short straws.
Do you think such a man would fall prey to the pride of position? He wields life and death authority over the cohort he commands and the population of civilians in a conquered country occupied by his soldiers. Add to that the intelligence briefings such a senior officer was privy to. You must acknowledge that whatever the Roman soldiers might have learned by word of mouth about Jesus of Nazareth, the tribune had even more information.
The centurion might have been known to him or could have been one of his subordinates. He would have heard of the centurion’s servant being healed by Christ. He would also have known of the feeding of the 5,000 and the defection of one of their publicans to Christ’s service, the apostle known to us as Matthew.[20]
Whatever truth the Roman soldiers had access to, the tribune had far more truth about the Savior at his disposal. He also had superior resources to investigate the truth claims about Christ, His teachings, His miracles, raising people from the dead, His credibility and integrity, the testimony of at least one Roman centurion, and two members of the Jewish Sanhedrin (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea).
Yet he imagined his position that night in the Garden of Gethsemane to be a position of strength, insight and information, and power and authority. How wrong he was. How he will tremble before the Great White Throne and the One, he ordered his soldiers to bind and mistreat.
Third, OFFICERS OF THE JEWS
The Jewish Temple guards are unmentioned but implied by the presence of the officers who commanded them. The officers would not have been in the company of hundreds of Roman soldiers at the Garden of Gethsemane without Temple guards under their command.
And who were these men? The officers of the Jews were the men who wielded oversight over the men who guarded the Temple and its environs. They were, in effect, senior officers in what was effectively the Temple area police force, tasked with the responsibility to not only maintain order in and around the Temple courtyard, but also wielding the authority to take the lives of anyone who desecrated the Temple. Thus, if a Gentile in the court of Gentiles was caught entering the court of women he could be summarily executed.
Even if the officers of the Jews could not recognize the Lord Jesus on sight, they certainly knew of Him and the fear the chief priests had of Him. There was that Feast of Tabernacles mentioned in John 7.37-38, where the Lord Jesus Christ cried out,
“If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”
And when asked why the Lord had not been detained, one of the officers said (perhaps even one of the officers there that night said), “Never man spake like this man.”
Different than the Roman soldiers and different than the Roman tribune, these Temple guard officers knew the Lord Jesus Christ had a valid claim to be recognized as the Jewish Messiah. They knew He had raised Lazarus from the dead after four days. And they knew He fulfilled the Zecharias prophecy when He rode into the city on the donkey colt.
Yet they imagined themselves to be in charge. They wielded authority. When they spoke, people listened. They were the officers who presided over the Temple guards. They exercised responsibility for Jewish conduct, and women come to worship the God of Israel. However, someday they will stand naked before the One who was the reality who the Temple typified. What will they say then? Who will listen to them then? What will they be thinking then?
Fourth, ANNAS
This is the first to be named by the Apostle John in this narrative portion. Annas was not in the Garden of Gethsemane that night when the Savior was apprehended. It is unlikely that Annas would have been able to negotiate the steep path to the garden that night, as old and feeble as he was.
But Annas was the man Malchus would direct the Temple officers to order their men to take the Lord Jesus Christ to see, along with the grand show of Roman military might to impress and awe any onlookers. He was the former high priest, and the current high priest was his son-in-law.
Because of his priority in the rounds, the Lord Jesus Christ was taken following His arrest, my personal opinion was that, in effect, Annas made the final decision and gave the go-ahead, if you will, that Jesus of Nazareth had to die. So it was his job, as he saw it, to protect the priesthood and the Jewish religious way of life. He imagined himself to be the caretaker of the Jewish religious establishment in Jerusalem.
He had been a shaker and mover in the religious life of the Jewish people for many years and was gradually handing the baton of power and influence to his son-in-law Caiaphas, the current high priest. And it was Annas that started the illegal and unjust trials of Jesus off wrongly when he
“asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine.”
That was a clear violation of the Mosaic Law and intended to lure the Lord Jesus into self-incrimination.
When the Lord proved uncooperative and too shrewd for Annas to deal with, He was taken to Caiaphas’ home. But the question remains. Why did Annas think he could serve God’s purposes by violating God’s Law? How do you uphold the tradition of the elders and the fence you have built around the Law of Moses by violating the Law of Moses? You cannot protect the law by violating the law.
This old man imagined that his knowledge of the Bible and his experience in the priesthood qualified him to make his own rules as he went and to conveniently profit from his arrangements with the Romans and the vendors surrounding the Temple grounds that took advantage of Jewish worshippers. He was oblivious to the reality that the Man standing before him that night was the fulfillment of the Law and the prophets.
All of his power, all of his prestige, all of his sophistication, all of his vast wealth and influence, all of his bloodline and lineage will count for nothing come Judgment Day.
Fifth, And Finally, CAIAPHAS
The current high priest and son-in-law of old Annas, Caiaphas, presided over two of Christ’s trials before He was delivered to the Roman governor. If you were here for our Bible studies on Wednesday nights, you will likely recall that the first of Caiaphas’ trials was conducted before a carefully selected group of easily manipulated men, and in the middle of the night when trials were expressly forbidden under Mosaic Law. But Caiaphas no more cared about such niceties as Annas had earlier in the evening. He wasn’t at the Garden of Gethsemane, either. But he was waiting for the soldiers and guards to bring the Lord Jesus from Annas’ house, and had no doubt been briefed by a runner sent ahead. Caiaphas was an even more despicable man than Annas was. Equally malevolent with his disregard for the sanctity of the Mosaic Law, Caiaphas had arrived at the decision that Jesus must die for the nation, John 11.51. To bring that verdict to pass, Caiaphas convened his pretrial trial in his home at night and deftly manipulated his guests into a fever pitch using false witnesses and his imposing personality. The result? The Lord was cursed, spat upon, and struck, with complete disregard for the rules of evidence and the rights of an accused under the Law of Moses.
That done to taint the jury comprised of the Jewish Sanhedrin, at least those members he could influence who were invited, he convened another trial in his home, this time after the sun’s rising. This was the supposedly legitimate consideration of Christ’s guilt by the Sanhedrin and supposedly following the Law of Moses. However, the daytime trial in Caiaphas’ home was conducted before a Sanhedrin he had already convinced of the Lord’s guilt, aligning them with his already formulated conviction that Jesus must die for the nation. So much for judicial neutrality and the notion that one is innocent until proven guilty.
Can you not detect the arrogance of this man Caiaphas? Who did he think he was to decide who was to live and who was to die to preserve his nation? And by what right did he openly and flagrantly manipulate a group of old religious leaders to prejudice them against not only someone not proven guilty of any crime or blasphemy but the sinless Savior of sinful men’s souls?
Dare you to imagine God will go easy on the man who was supposed to be representing God to the Jewish people as their high priest and supposed to be administering the observance of the Law of Moses, but by rights exalting the One he was indicting! What single thing had the Savior done wrong?
The 500-600 Roman soldiers who were at the Garden of Gethsemane imagined that, within the confines of their awareness and interest, they were somewhat powerful and imagining that they were, to some degree, in charge. Compared to most Gentiles, those Roman soldiers seemed to have many of the trappings of power and influence over others. But they were entirely mistaken. They were sinfully wrong.
Then there is the Roman tribune who commanded them. Whatever power they imagined having, he would have imagined vastly more power. Whatever discretion they imagined they possessed concerning other people’s lives, the tribune imagined that he had considerably more. After all, he could order a decimation. In our modern world, only Vladimir Putin, Xi Jing Ping, or Kim Jung Un have that kind of authority. Yet, he was entirely mistaken. He was sinfully wrong.
The same goes for the officers of the Jews, the former high priest Annas, and the current high priest Caiaphas. After all, those men had the light of the Hebrew Scriptures to evaluate the Lord Jesus Christ’s words and deeds. Yet they persisted in imagining they, in their way and their realm, were in charge.
How is it, then, that a group of wicked men, who seemed to have various levels of power, influence, authority, and self-determination, ended up accomplishing God’s plan for the ages by bringing to pass the purpose of Christ’s coming to earth, which was to die on the cross for sins?
Jesus Christ was born of a virgin named Mary. He lived a sinless life, died a sacrificial death, was buried in a never before used rich man’s tomb, and rose from the dead three days later. He then ascended to God’s right hand on high, where He is presently enthroned until His return in power and great glory.
Despite their perceptions about themselves and their relations with other human beings, including someone standing before them bound, they explicitly fulfilled God’s prescribed plan. Only, as lost men defiantly ignored God's will for their lives, they ended up suffering the eternal torment of the damned for their rejection of Christ.
One man stands out in the Bible’s parade of individuals from the Garden of Gethsemane to the cross of Calvary. He was a thief, enduring his deserved crucifixion when he recognized what was unfolding before his eyes as he hung between heaven and earth.
I imagine the Bible truths taught to him as a little boy were brought to his mind by the Spirit of God, and he recognized himself as a close-at-hand observer of Isaiah 53, with the Messiah of Israel hanging on the cross next to his.
Moments before, he had been ridiculing the Savior. But now that he recognized the truth before him, he repented of his sins and said, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”[21]
At this point, the Savior said to him, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise,” Luke 23.43. That man awaits us in heaven.
How much like those I spoke of are each of us on the wrong side of the Gospel—seeing life as only a bunch of visual clues and facts while ignoring the more essential realities that cannot be seen?
Had any of those Roman soldiers, or the tribune, or the officers of the Jews, or Annas, or Caiaphas, taken note of the facts in evidence for them to consider (from the centurion’s healed servant to the Canaanite woman’s formerly demon-possessed daughter, to the no longer hungry 5,000, to the now back from the dead Lazarus), they, too, could have responded as the thief on the cross responded.
And so can you, my friend. You imagine you are in control of your circumstances. You fantasize about your liberties. But you are as blind as those men were that night. And you are no freer than the thieves who were nailed to their crosses.
All you can do is look to Christ. All you can do is lay hold of Him by faith. Insofar as we know, the men mentioned in our text never lived out their lives and went to Hell where they are now. But that helpless man, who recognized he had no options to imagine, could and did believe in Jesus to save his eternal and undying soul.
Won’t you do what he did?
__________
[1] Genesis 12.1-3
[2] Deuteronomy 30.1-10
[3] 2 Samuel 7.12; Psalm 89.3-4; Jeremiah 33.22, 25-26
[4] Jeremiah 31.31-34; Isaiah 61.8-9; Ezekiel 37.21-28
[5] Matthew 15.21-28; Mark 7.24-30
[6] Matthew 16.13-19
[7] Matthew 20.17-28; Mark 10.32-45; Luke 18.31-34
[8] Matthew 20.29-34; Mark 10.46-52; Luke 18.35-43
[9] Zechariah 9.9; Matthew 21.1-11, 14-17; Mark 11.1-11; Luke 19.29-44; John 12.12-19
[10] John 11.43-53
[11] Matthew 26.14-16; Mark 14.10-11; Luke 22.3-6;
[12] Isaiah 53.2
[13] John 18.1-4
[14] John 18.5-6
[15] Matthew 26.51; Mark 14.47; Luke 22.49-51; John 18.7-11
[16] Bauer, Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), page 936, and Yann Le Bohec, The Imperial Roman Army, (New York: Hippocrene Books, English translation 1994), page 24, 26-27, 42, 46.
[17] Matthew 15.21-28
[18] Bauer, page 1084, and Le Boherc, pages 20, 22, 27, 38-39, 45, 56, 60, 112, 198
[19] https://www.etymonline.com/word/decimate
[20] Matthew 9.9; Mark 2.14; Luke 5.27
[21] Luke 23.42
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Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church