Sermon Tone Analysis

Have you ever been treated badly by someone, even feel like you were pushed around by the person?

Did you just stand around and take it or did you fight back?

It is very difficult to just stand around and be abused by someone and to bite your tongue when you are being wronged.

You want to defend yourself especially if you know you are innocent.

Well this morning we will look at a man who was innocent and as he is being abused He stayed silent.

We will see that the crime done here was not done by the one abused but I know for my own sake I am grateful that He did stay silent.This morning we will look at the Punishment of The Innocent.

We will see this in Luke 22:63-65.

As you turn there let me just recap what has happened.

Jesus and His disciples went up to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus spent about three hours in fervent prayer agonizing over His coming death.

In actuality this is were Jesus' suffering began it was in the Garden.

Once His time with the Father was over Jesus was arrested under the cover of night, it was clandestine, done in secret because the religious leaders of the day feared the backlash of the people because many believed Jesus to be the Messiah.

So they arrest Him at night and Jesus went peacefully.

There was no resistance.

They led Him to the house of the high priest and while Jesus was going through an illegal trial we found Peter, the spokesman for the disciples, was in the courtyard of the high priest.

Peter, the one who confessed that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God, now mingles and puts himself in with the world and we found because of his distance from Jesus and placing himself with Jesus' accusers, now instead of confessing his allegiance to his Lord and Master, he denies Him three times.

Peter realizes his Lord knows what he has done and Peter runs off weeping bitterly in repentance.

Leave His Lord truly alone.

We pick up now in Luke 22:63-65,

Luke doesn't present for us all that had happened up to this point.

In actuality while Peter was going through his testing Jesus was actually on trial.

The thing is this trial was illegal they weren't to have trials at night but the way they religious leaders went around this whole preceding was to actually pass sentence during the day.

So this actual event happened before the sentence was legitimately passed.

Punished Unjustly

Jesus was taken into custody by these men who had no proof He had done anything wrong.

As He is in custody He goes through what we would call today Police brutality.

Look at what His captors do, verse 63 we find that they mock Him and beating Him and it doesn't take a Bible scholar to figure out the beating means they were hitting Him with their fists.

Now they had no real cause for this to be done.

They had no real evidence it is as though these men just had some anger issues they had to unleash on someone and here was Jesus and here they go.

The author of Proverbs writes this about the unjust.

Notice what this proverb says, the righteous man finds the unjust man to be wicked and the unjust man or the wicked man finds the upright or righteous man to be depraved.

They are opposites and they will fight against one another.

These men who are holding Jesus captive who are punishing Him find Him to be detestable and for what reason.

What did Jesus do.

He taught God's Word to people, healed the sick, forgave sins.

Wow all things that are deserving of death, right.

Well this is why Jesus is on trial, this is why He is being mocked and beaten.

It is not because He is breaking any Laws or rules but because He is fulfilling them.

This is true punishment.

This is punishment Jesus didn't deserve.

Jesus had not broken any Laws, He didn't break any Roman Laws and He didn't break any Jewish Laws either.

In fact He came to fulfill the Law of God.

Jesus said this Himself in Matthew 5

Jesus is the true fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.

The Law and the Prophets pointed to Jesus and those who held Him captive missed this while they were punishing Him.

They missed out on the fact that when they were beating Him the were sticking the face of God in the flesh and they missed out on the fact that when they were mocking Him they were mocking God Himself.

The punishment Jesus recieved was brought on by wickedness it was the world being hostile to God.

Just as it says in Romans

The mind of these men here in Luke is set on the flesh, they weren't out to please God because what they are doing is contrary to what God desires and what God pleases.

They are unjustly punishing an Innocent Man.

Even though they are unjustly punishing an Innocent man don't think think for a moment Jesus wasn't in control of the entire situation.

Jesus was Punished Willingly

Punished Willingly

Look with me again at this passage in Luke.

These men mocked and beat Jesus and then as we look at verse 64 we see that they blindfolded Him for the purpose of mocking His divine power.

I just want to point out a little bit of irony here, these men who are blinded by the world now blindfold the Omniscient God.

One who looks into the hearts of man, the One who has answered the religious leaders murmurs and thoughts before a word was spoke by them now these men are blindfolding Jesus.

They want Him to perform His supernatural abilities which they aren't even believing.

Still through these Jesus can obviously proof who He is and He has the power with just His word to do so but He stays silent.

Jesus in taking this abuse proves something more powerful then those men are giving Him credit for.

He is proving that He is submissive to the Father.

He is willingly being punished.

Here is another irony, these men are asking Jesus to prophecy who hit Him well Jesus has already prophesied this event would happen.

Here is Jesus being rejected by the elders and chief priests and the scribes.

Later Jesus reiterates this when He tells His disciples in Luke 17;

So Jesus must suffer, He knew He would and He did it willingly.

This had to happen Jesus had to be obedient to God the Father.

First Isaiah pointed to this in Isaiah 50;

This is Isaiah pointing to the fact that Jesus would undergo this exact event.

It was a prophecy Isaiah had made and here it is coming true.

This was an act of Jesus being obedient to God the Father and the author of Hebrews gives us more insight into this also.

The author of Hebrews explains this.

Jesus had to be obedient to the point of death, He had to endure this punishment.

Could He have fought no, in actuality He couldn't have because this was God's will.

Did He have the power to stop this, yes, because He is God.

Sometimes just because you have the power or the ability to do something doesn't necessarily mean you have to fight, it is more beneficial to do the will of God then to do what we think is right and within our power.

The thing is Jesus didn't go through this punishment just because He wanted to show us His ability to withstand a beating by these men.

He went through it for a greater purpose, He took the punishment in our place.

Punished in our Place

Jesus is standing in as a representative of all mankind.

We deserve to be punished for our sins.

In fact we can all place ourselves in the sandals of these men who are standing there beating Jesus ruthlessly.

We are born wicked and we are just as responsible for Jesus being mistreated as those standing there preforming the abuse.

We are all sinners.

Jesus is innocent and as harsh as it seems to read this it is because of us that Jesus is going through it.

He is being punished for our sake, it is to benefit us.

Paul paints this picture very well in Romans 5:12-21.

Jesus had to endure this, He had to endure the brutality of man's sinfulness all of the brutality all so that He could take our place.

He had to endure the ridicule and the physical abuse and He did this all silently for you and for me.

What a glorious and gracious God we have.

Jesus is the Living Word who silent so that He can bring about Life.