We were looking at the closing verses of chap. 26 when the meeting closed last week—the denial of Peter.
Reverting to these we may notice the great difference between the position of Peter and Judas Iscariot. Peter had faith; he loved the Lord. In the case of Judas Iscariot it was a planned thing—all arranged what he should do. But there was nothing planned in Peter's case. It would be, as we read, “a man overtaken in a fault.” Not long after in Acts 5 summary judgment falls on a planned thing. Ananias and Sapphira had agreed together, and the Holy Spirit uses Peter, who himself had lied, now perfectly restored, to exercise this discipline in God's assembly. It was “sin unto death.” They were not necessarily lost souls. Very dreadful as this was in the instance of Peter, and recorded as a warning to us, there was nothing deliberate about it.
They recognized his dialect. We ought to be careful not to begin with sin. One thing leads to another. You get the case of David “saying in his heart, I shall one day perish at the hand of Saul,” and then we have seven distinct downward steps, until God brings him up by burning Ziklag.
Fishermen, as a rule, are given to swearing a great deal, and very likely it was an old habit that Peter had been rescued from. Well, the cock crew, according to the word of the Lord. The whole thing was the result of lack of prayer and watching. Had he watched and prayed, he would have got strength for the temptation.
It was a mercy the cock crew. It was a mercy he remembered the word of Jesus. I have no doubt you get right through here the difference between Peter and Judas. The sorrow of the world worketh death. You see this in Judas. Peter, on the other hand, was a real penitent. He had godly sorrow.
Now commencing our chapter, I suppose a large number was there in the morning. It was not a question of trying Him; they were determined to put Him to death. Only think of the blessed Lord being bound! They had bound him previously, but apparently had loosed that bond; and now they bind Him again. When they bound Samson, how easily he broke the thongs! How much easier for our blessed Lord to do so! But no, the hour was come, and He was going to the cross to secure eternal salvation for you and me.
Judas saw this, and it does appear as if it was a surprise to him. “Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders” (ver. 3). A little further on we see how it shows their low estimate of the blessed Savior that they should covenant with Judas for thirty pieces of silver—the price of a slave!
“I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.” What a testimony that is! Here is a man who had been in the Lord's company, three and a half years in that inner circle of intimacy, yet he had to bear testimony to His perfect innocence. There is a confession of sinning, but it is not the confession of one who feels the sin before God, of one who is really repentant. It is remorse and despair, and some have said this was a greater sin than really betraying the Lord. We get cases like that, in the word, with no blessing following—Pharaoh, Saul—but how different with David! In his case there was the confession of a really repentant man. Though we do not get the expression in Peter, we see real repentance, as with David. The latter knew he required nothing short of the multitude of God's tender mercies to meet his horrid crime. He was a wonderful man of faith beyond his dispensation, and he laid hold of God's tender mercies. There was nothing in the law to meet his case. “Thou requirest not sacrifice, else would I bring it.”
“What is that to us? See thou to that” (ver.4). What a testimony to their degraded condition! It was no question with them if He were innocent or not. They had Him in their hands, and were determined not to let Him go.
Verse 5. There are two words translated “temple,” and the one used here is the inner temple where only the priests could go. In J. X. D's translation there is a note “the house itself.” It was not the court for the people; there is a word which takes in all the buildings, but this one is used only of the inner shrine, where Judas had no right to be—only the priests. “And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.” What a prey to Satan! It is a combination, no doubt, of remorse and despair. He felt his crime was beyond the reach of God's mercy; and many a soul is wrecked on that rock. The “fearful” are the very first of those mentioned as having their part in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:88But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. (Revelation 21:8)).
How those who had shown themselves so conscienceless are very religious! “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood” (ver. 6). They little thought how was being fulfilled the word of God in their punctiliousness.
“To bury strangers in” —I suppose the “strangers” would be Jews who came to the feasts and died while there, as we get elsewhere “devout Jews from all parts under heaven.” So now if they died, there was a cemetery for them. “The field of blood” I have not a doubt this name belongs to their land, “Aceldama.” In Zech. 11:1313And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. (Zechariah 11:13), it is “I took” and J. N. D. so translates it here. But it is curious that this 9th verse says “Jeremiah,” and all sorts of ways have been resorted to, to get over the difficulty. Jeremiah (18) does not speak of the potter's home, and Matthew does not say “that which was written,” but “that which was spoken” by Jeremiah. Zechariah wrote it afterward, but Jeremiah may have said it first. The word of God is not wrong; those who think they find a blemish in it are wrong. There are some whose bent of mind is to try to pick out blemishes in the word of God. There is a well-known case in which two clever men agreed to use their ability to expose it; but their study of it for that purpose resulted in their conversion.
Verse 11. Here we see the One appointed by God to be “the Judge of quick and dead,” standing before an earthly judge! What a picture! No doubt this Roman was sitting with pomp and pride on the judgment seat, and the blessed Lord was standing. How wonderful that He should have so deigned!
“And the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest.” Here is His good confession before Pilate. Before the high priest He confesses that He is “the Son of God.” Before Pilate that He is “the King of the Jews.”
How much depended upon that answer! “Son of God.” Of course, “thou sayest” is an affirmative. And then these wretched, misguided men accuse Him (ver. 12), but the Lord does not answer Pilate again. He had given one testimony. He never made a mistake. He never spoke when He ought to be silent, or was silent when He ought to speak. We often are. It was quite consistent with perfect love when He was angry. We are to “be angry and sin not.” The Lord's silence makes Pilate marvel greatly.
“Now at the feast” (ver. 15). This feast commemorated their release from Egyptian bondage. It was a favor granted them that at that particular feast they could release one prisoner. Barabbas was a terrible character. “Bar” means “son"; “Abbas,” —father. Barabbas— “the son of a father.” “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” And here was the Son of God! It was a solemn moment for that nation when they had before them the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, and this wicked man, the son of his father—the Blessed One, the Originator of life; and a murderer, the destroyer of life, “who for sedition and murder was cast into prison.” It is the choice of the human heart—your heart and mine. As Bonar wrote—
“And in that din of voices rude
I recognize my own.”
That is what we ought to see—the Christ of God the Son of the living God, and Barabbas, the son of his father. Pilate “knew that for envy they had delivered up” Jesus. He could see beneath the surface, and it put him in a solemn position. As far as his determination was concerned, he was “determined to let Him go.” But he had to make a choice between the world and Christ—between Caesar and Christ. That decided him, although he knew he was doing wrong. He would do the wrong thing rather than not be the friend of Caesar. And those who reject the gospel are brought to that position, not once or twice.
Barabbas was a “notable prisoner,” and there were three to be crucified, and the notable prisoner to be in the middle, and that place was given to the Lord.
Ver. 19. This made it, no doubt, more solemn to Pilate, and added to his responsibility that he should receive this message from his wife. And the poor fickle multitude, who could one day shout “Hosanna,” and another ask for “Barabbas and destroy Jesus.” Is it not solemn? How truly the mind of the flesh is enmity against God!
Ver. 20. Solemn choice! and then after they lad again said, “Barabbas,” Pilate asks once more “What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ,” and they all say “Let him be crucified.” Let us think what this means. A Roman citizen could not be crucified. Paul, we know, could not be. Peter was. They could not bind a Roman citizen without giving him a trial. It frightened hem at Philippi, and they were glad to get rid of Paul and Silas whom they had beaten, when they knew they were Romans. Crucifixion was a mode of death reserved by the Romans for the worst class of criminals. God's hand was in Pilate's wife's dream to increase Pilate's responsibility. But they were determined, for they cried out the more, saying, “Let him be crucified.”
They had not proved anything against Him. Everything is being brought to a point here—man's evil rising higher and higher, till it culminated in His death, but “in the thing wherein they acted proudly, He was above them.” “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound"; and the circumstances that brought out, as nothing else could, the love of God, brought out also the highest wickedness of man. “Ye denied the Holy and Just One, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead.” Pilate was an ambitious man, and they knew his weak spot when they said, “If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend.” The powers that be are ordained of God, and government had been committed to the Gentile, being taken from the hand of Israel, but the glory did not go with the sword. The two were united in Israel. The city of Rome now occupied the place of Babylon, and the power was delegated to Pilate, the representative of Rome in Palestine. All through this you see the different ones acting their part, but behind all events there is God, and nothing is behind Him; so “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” —man doing his part, but God was behind it all—a very solemn consideration, and it ought to solemnize our minds while reading this. But in all this there is no atoning suffering. It was what the Lord Jesus suffered from the hands of God that was atoning. Man was not allowed to see the effect on His Person of those infinite sufferings when He drank that cup to the very dregs. It was the glory of His Person that enabled Him to do it. If the whole human race could have drunk it, they could still never have seen the bottom if it.
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