Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr19/olbpnt1.zip/PNT.001/V00950

Text File | 1993-04-21 | 22KB | 543 lines

00950
 # Mt 26:40
    \\Findeth them asleep.\\ Peter, James and John, soldiers
 placed on duty in an hour of dreadful peril and bidden to watch.
 Luke says they were sleeping from sorrow.
 # Lu 22:45
 Great sorrow stupefies. Dr. Rush says that criminals usually
 sleep soundly the night before execution.
 (PNT 146)
00951
 # Mt 26:41
    \\Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.\\ Our
 Lord does not direct them to pray to God that no temptation
 might befall them, but that they might not be overcome by the
 temptations in which they must be involved. The need of such
 prayer was shown by Peter's denial.
 (PNT 146)
00952
 # Mt 26:42
    \\He went away again the second time, and prayed.\\ "More
 earnestly," says Luke, who adds the account of the bloody sweat
 # Lu 22:44
 His agony returned on him. The continuance of the trial he
 accepts as God's answer to the petition, "Let this cup pass from
 me." Now he asks only, "Thy will be done."
 (PNT 146)
00953
 # Mt 26:43
    \\He came and found them asleep again.\\ The motive of this
 return we may reverently believe to have been, as before, the
 craving for human sympathy in that hour of awful agony. Our
 Saviour, we must not forget, was human as well as divine.
 (PNT 146)
00954
 # Mt 26:44
    \\He prayed the third time, saying the same words.\\ The fact
 is suggestive as indicating that there is a repetition in prayer
 which indicates not formalism, but intensity of feeling.
 (PNT 146)
00955
 # Mt 26:45
    \\Sleep on now, and take [your] rest.\\ I look upon these
 words as reproachful. The hour when he needed their watchfulness
 and sympathy was past. They had failed to guard in the hour when
 he wished to be alone with God. Now the moment is at hand; the
 soldiers are approaching.
 (PNT 146)
00956
 # Mt 26:46
    \\Rise, let us be going.\\ It was no time for repose. Let
 them rouse, and go with him at once to confront the traitor and
 the band of enemies.
    WAS CHRIST'S PRAYER ANSWERED?--The Epistle to the Hebrews
 says it was.
 # Heb 5:7
 An angel came and strengthened him.
 # Lu 22:43
 There are two ways of answering a prayer for the removal of a
 burden. In one, the burden is taken away, and we remain the
 same; in the other, we are made so strong that the burden is no
 longer a burden to us; as what would crush a child, is but sport
 to a man.
 (PNT 146)
00957
 # Mt 26:47
    \\Judas, one of the twelve, came.\\ Judas knew the place
 where the Lord would go to pass the night.
 # Joh 18:2
 Compare
 # Mr 14:43-50 Lu 22:47-53 Joh 18:3-12
    \\A great multitude.\\ Roman soldiers, the temple guard, "the
 captains of the temple," and possibly some priests and scribes.
 # Joh 18:3,12
    \\With swords.\\ In the hands of the soldiers.
    \\Staffs.\\ Clubs. The rabble with the soldiers carried
 these.
    \\The chief priests and elders.\\ The Sanhedrin.
 (PNT 147)
00958
 # Mt 26:48-49
    \\Gave them a sign.\\ A kiss; a common method of salutation
 among intimate friends. A sign was needful to point Jesus out to
 the soldiers. Such a traitorous kiss was the depth of depravity
 --enmity under the guise of friendship.
 (PNT 147)
00960
 # Mt 26:50
    \\They . . . laid hands on Jesus.\\ And bound him.
 # Joh 18:12
 (PNT 147)
00961
 # Mt 26:51
    \\One . . . drew his sword.\\ Peter.
 # Joh 18:26
    \\Struck a servant of the high priest's.\\ As we learn from
 John, his name was Malchus.
 # Joh 18:10
 The Lord healed his wound.
 # Lu 22:51
 Peter asked, "Shall we smite with the sword?" and without
 waiting for an answer, struck the blow.
 # Lu 22:49,50
 (PNT 147)
00962
 # Mt 26:52
    \\They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.\\ A
 general law. The violent usually die violent deaths.
 (PNT 147)
00963
 # Mt 26:53-54
    \\Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father?\\ The
 Lord needed no human defenders, had it been the Divine purpose
 that he should not die.
    \\More than twelve legions of angels?\\ A Roman legion
 contained from 6,000 men upwards. The idea here is a mighty
 host. He and his eleven disciples are twelve. There is more than
 a legion for each one of them. He could have evaded the enemies
 had he chosen; the angels would have come to his rescue, if he
 had willed it, but he gave himself unto death.
 (PNT 147)
00965
 # Mt 26:55
    \\Are ye come out as against a thief?\\ Not a thief, but a
 robber, a brigand. Among all the indignities heaped upon Jesus
 by his enemies, the only one that he complains of is that he
 should be bound like a robber.
 (PNT 147)
00966
 # Mt 26:56
    \\Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.\\ The eleven
 apostles who a little while before thought they never could
 forsake the Lord. As soon as the Lord was seized they fled into
 the darkness.
 (PNT 147)
00967
 # Mt 26:57
    \\Led [him] away to Caiaphas, the high priest.\\ He was first
 examined by Annas, the former high priest, the father-in-law of
 Caiaphas, probably while the Sanhedrin was assembling in the
 darkness of the night.
 # Joh 18:13
 For the trial of Christ, compare
 # Mr 14:53-64 Lu 22:54-71 Joh 18:13-18
    \\Scribes and elders were assembled.\\ Mark says the "chief
 priests" also. It was a gathering of the Sanhedrin. Those who
 were favourable to Jesus, like Joseph and Nicodemus, were
 probably not called.
 (PNT 148)
00968
 # Mt 26:58
    \\Peter followed him . . . to the high priest's court.\\ The
 enclosed area, open to the sky, around which the palace was
 constructed, was called the court. The building extended all
 around this.
 (PNT 148)
00969
 # Mt 26:59
    \\All the council.\\ The Sanhedrin.
    \\Sought false testimony.\\ No one could be condemned legally
 without at least two witnesses who agreed.
 # De 17:6 19:15
 "One witness," it was said, "was no witness." As there was no
 true testimony to a charge that could be punished with death,
 they sought false witness.
 (PNT 148)
00970
 # Mt 26:60
    \\Found they none.\\ That is, witnesses who would testify to
 a capital offense and agree in their testimony.
    \\At the last came two.\\ These two gave a perverted version
 of what Christ had said concerning his death and the
 resurrection of his own body under the figure of a temple. See
 # Joh 2:19
 But even their testimony disagreed.
 # Mr 14:59
 (PNT 148)
00972
 # Mt 26:62
    \\Answerest thou nothing?\\ Under the false charges Jesus
 maintained an impressive silence. "As a sheep before the
 shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth."
 # Isa 53:7
 (PNT 148)
00973
 # Mt 26:63
    \\I adjure thee,\\ etc. This was the formula for an oath. The
 High Priest, contrary to the principle of law which forbids that
 a prisoner shall be compelled to criminate himself, called on
 Jesus to be a witness against himself. To answer yes, or no, to
 such a question, was to answer under oath.
 (PNT 148)
00974
 # Mt 26:64
    \\Thou hast said.\\ That is, thou hast said the truth in thy
 question. The Lord only breaks the silence to affirm his
 divinity under oath. It insured his death at their hands, for he
 was immediately condemned for the declaration. "At the very
 crisis of his history, when denial would have saved his life, he
 asserts his claim to the Divine Sonship and to a Godlike power.
 (PNT 148-149)
00975
 # Mt 26:65
    \\Then the high priest tore his clothes.\\ A sign of mourning
 or indignation.
 # Ac 14:14
 It was a form that was always used then about to pronounce a
 judgment.
    \\He hath spoken blasphemy.\\ He did, if not Divine; he did
 not, if Divine. Either he spoke the truth, or the wicked
 Caiaphas spoke the truth and Jesus was false. If he spoke
 falsehood, the purest lips that ever formed human words spoke
 falsehood on the eve of death, when he knew that the falsehood
 would send him to death. Such an affirmation, from such a
 prisoner, at such an hour, can only be reconciled with a
 consciousness of divinity.
 (PNT 149)
00976
 # Mt 26:66
    \\He is guilty of death.\\ This is the formal decision of the
 Sanhedrin to condemn the Lord to death for blasphemy. This was
 the second trial, the first examination being informal before
 Annas, and is mentioned only by John.
 # Joh 18:13,24
    There was a third, named only by Luke, at the dawn of day,
 because a decision by the Sanhedrin in the night was illegal.
 # Lu 22:66
    This meeting only confirmed the decision reached in the night
 before three o'clock. It is also referred to in
 # 27:1
 (PNT 149)
00977
 # Mt 26:67
    \\Then did they spit in his face.\\ The maltreatment recorded
 occurred between this meeting and the one called to meet at
 daybreak. Spitting was considered among the Jews an expression
 of the greatest contempt.
 # De 25:9 Nu 12:14
 Even to spit before another was regarded as an offense, and
 treated as such by heathen also.
    \\Buffeted him.\\ Struck him with their fists.
 (PNT 149)
00978
 # Mt 26:68
    \\Prophesy to us, . . . Who is he that smote thee?\\ We learn
 from Mark that his face was covered, as a mark that he was a
 condemned man.
 # Mr 14:65
 The age was a cruel one, and Jewish bigots could not be too
 rough to the condemned prisoner.
 (PNT 149)
00979
 # Mt 26:69
    \\Now Peter sat outside in the court.\\ While the preliminary
 examinations were being held before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin,
 Peter and John entered the court of the palace. This court was
 an open square, enclosed by the palace which was built in a
 quadrangle all around it. From it doors and windows opened into
 the rooms built around it, so that Peter was "without the
 palace," yet in the interior court, where he could see and hear
 through the open door the proceedings in the hall. Oriental
 houses are still built with this interior court.
    \\And a maid came to him, saying.\\ John speaks of her as the
 damsel who "kept the door" of the porch, or passage into the
 court.
 # Joh 18:17
 We are not told why she suspected him. He was at this time in
 the interior court, and is said by Luke to have been standing
 "among them" by the fire that had been kindled in the courtyard
 on account of the chilliness of the night.
 (PNT 149)
00980
 # Mt 26:70
    \\But he denied before [them] all.\\ Denied that he "was with
 Jesus of Galilee"
 # 26:69
 But a few hours before Peter had asserted that though all others
 deserted the Lord he would not, and that he would die with him,
 and when Judas led the band into Gethsemane, Peter, refusing to
 consider the odds, flung himself upon them, valiant as a lion,
 struck and wounded Malchus, and would probably have slain him
 had he not swerved. He was a brave as a hero then--now is timid
 as a deer. The explanation is that his faith had failed when he
 saw his Master apparently helpless in the hands of his enemies.
 See
 # Heb 11:32-35
 (PNT 149)
00981
 # Mt 26:71
    \\When he had gone out into the porch.\\ Alarmed by the
 accusation, he withdrew into the porch, an arched passage that
 led from without into the inner court.
    \\This [man] was also with Jesus of Nazareth.\\ It is another
 maid that follows him and makes the charge. In both cases the
 charges were based on conjecture.
 (PNT 150)
00982
 # Mt 26:72
    \\He denied with an oath, I do not know the man.\\ Peter's
 second denial. He even denied knowing him, and that, too, with
 an oath. He had entered upon the downward road, and each step
 called for a deeper one. So it is always with sin.
 (PNT 150)
00983
 # Mt 26:73
    \\Thou also art [one] of them; for thy speech betrayeth
 \\thee.\\ Matthew says, "After awhile"; Luke says, "About an
 hour after."
 # Lu 22:59
    John says that the third charge was made by a kinsman of
 Malchus, who asserted that he saw Peter in the garden.
 # Joh 18:26
    Mark says that they accused him of having a Galilean brogue.
 # Mr 14:70
 As most of the disciples of Jesus were Galilaeans, this draws
 attention to Peter. Different districts had their dialects, as
 in England, or the United States.
 (PNT 150)
00984
 # Mt 26:74
    \\Began he to curse and to swear.\\ Peter's third denial. He
 not only, with an oath, repeats what he had said in the second,
 but he affirms it with imprecations of divine wrath on himself
 if he spoke not the truth. The gradations of guilt in the
 denials of Peter:
 (1) ambiguous evasion;
 (2) distinct denial with a false oath;
 (3) awful abjuration with solemn imprecations on himself.
    \\Immediately the cock crowed.\\ This was at the opening of
 the fourth or morning watch, at about three o'clock. The cock
 often crows about midnight, or not long after; and again always
 about the third hour after midnight, or three o'clock. This
 shows that the second trial of Jesus took place before the dawn.
 (PNT 150)
00985
 # Mt 26:75
    \\Peter remembered the word of Jesus.\\ It was at this point
 that the Lord turned and looked at Peter (Lu 22:61). The hall
 where Jesus was being tried was probably open toward the court,
 and Jesus may easily have heard all the denials of Peter. Now he
 turns and looks at Peter, and brings to his mind what he had few
 hours before foretold.
    \\He went out, and wept bitterly.\\ The look of Christ broke
 his heart. As the cock crew, his own confident assertions and
 the word of the Lord, "Before the cock crow twice (before the
 second cock crowing) thou shalt thrice deny me" rushed upon him.
 # 26:34 Mr 14:30 Lu 22:34
 He rushed out into the darkness of the night to weep. Judas
 sinned, betrayed and sold the Lord from covetousness. Afterward
 he was sorry, but it was the sorrow of this world that worketh
 death.
 # 2Co 7:10
 It was remorse, not repentance, and he went and hanged himself.
    Peter's repentance was attested
 (1) by the bitterness of his tears;
 (2) by his humble submission to his Lord's subsequent rebuke
     # Joh 21:15-17
 (3) by his subsequent courage in confessing Christ in the face
     of threatening danger
     # Ac 4:8-12,19

    THE ORDER OF EVENTS, after the prayer at Gethsemane, for this
 night were as follows: After the arrest, and its incidents,
 (1) Jesus was taken first to the house of Annas, ex-high priest.
     # Joh 18:13
 (2) Next, to the palace of Caiaphas, Peter and John following.
     # Joh 18:15
 (3) Here was a preliminary examination before Caiaphas.
     # Joh 18:19-24
 (4) The trial before the council illegal, because held at night
     --before three o'clock, the cock-crowing.
     # 26:59-65 Mr 14:55-64
 (5) Peter's three denials during the trial.
     # 26:69-75 Mr 14:66-72
 (6) After the Sanhedrin had pronounced him guilty it suspends
     its session till break of day.
 (7) During this interval Jesus is exposed to the insults of
     his enemies.
     # 26:67-68 Lu 22:63-65
 (8) At the dawn of day the Sanhedrin re-assembles.
     # 27:1 Mr 15:1 Lu 22:66
 (9) After hearing Christ's confession again, he is formally
     condemned to death for blasphemy.
     # Lu 22:66-71
 (10) He is bound and sent to Pilate.
     # Mr 15:1

    ON THE ILLEGAL CONVICTION OF CHRIST, Prof. Greenleaf, a
 distinguished jurist, says: "Throughout the whole course of the
 trial, the rules of the Jewish law of procedure were grossly
 violated, and the accused was deprived of rights belonging even
 to the meanest citizen. He was arrested in the night, bound as a
 malefactor, beaten before his arraignment, and struck in open
 court during the trial. He was tried on a feast-day, and before
 sunrise. He was compelled to criminate himself, and this under
 an oath of solemn judicial adjuration; and he was sentenced on
 the same day of conviction. In all these particulars the law was
 wholly disregarded."
 (PNT 150-151)
00986
 # Mt 27:1
  SUMMARY OF MATTHEW 27
  \\Jesus Crucified\\

  Christ Delivered to Pilate
  Judas Hangs Himself
  Jesus Before Pilate
  Barabbas and Christ
  Pilate's Wife's Intercession
  Pilate Acquits Jesus, but Yields to the Clamour
  Jesus Scourged, Mocked, Taken to Golgotha, Crucified
  Mocked on the Cross
  Reviled by the Thieves
  It Is Finished
  The Veil of the Temple Rent
  The Centurion's Confession
  Pilate Yields the Body of Jesus to Joseph
  Buried in the New Tomb
  The Tomb Sealed and Guarded

    \\When the morning was come.\\ Jesus had already been
 condemned, but another meeting of the Sanhedrin after daylight
 was necessary to give its legal effect, as condemnations to
 death could not be made in the night. That was the object of
 this meeting. For a fuller account of it, see
 # Lu 22:66-71
 For account of Christ before Pilate and the crucifixion, compare
 # Mr 15:1-47 Lu 23:1-56 Joh 18:1-38
 (PNT 151)
00987
 # Mt 27:2
    \\Delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.\\ The first
 mention of the Roman procurator by that name. He was both
 military and civil commander, usually dwelt at Caesarea, but
 came up to Jerusalem at the passover feasts to preserve order.
 The Sanhedrin could not put Jesus to death, as the Roman rulers
 demanded that all cases of capital punishment be referred to
 them.
 (PNT 151)
00988
 # Mt 27:3
    \\Then Judas . . . saw that he was condemned.\\ The annals of
 men record no sadder history than that of Judas, impelled by
 avarice and resentment to betray his Master for money, and only
 to awake to the nature of his awful crime when it was too late.
 The language here suggests that Judas had hoped that the
 betrayed Jesus would deliver himself from his enemies.
    \\Repented.\\ Not, in the Greek, the word used for "repent"
 in
 # Ac 2:38
 and elsewhere, but one that means, rather, "remorse." The first
 \\[metanoeo]\\ means "to change the mind or purpose"; the other
 \\[metamellomai]\\, "to carry a burden of sorrow over the past."
 One promises a change in the future; the other is born of
 despair; Peter repented; Judas regretted.
 (PNT 151)
00989
 # Mt 27:4
    \\I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood.\\ The
 Jewish law demanded that if new testimony was offered after
 condemnation the case should again be heard. Perhaps Judas
 thought his testimony to the innocence of Christ might, under
 the circumstances, be heard.
    \\What [is that] to us?\\ No words could more emphatically
 declare the utter disregard of the Jewish rulers to justice.
 They concerned themselves not in the slightest concerning the
 innocence or guilt of Christ; they cared only to procure his
 death.
 (PNT 151)
00990
 # Mt 27:5
    \\Cast down the pieces of silver in the temple.\\ Where he
 had this interview with the Sanhedrin.
    \\Went and hanged himself.\\ So have done, since, thousands
 of criminals when the blackness of their crime had revealed
 itself to them. How often a man after the committal of a murder
 shoots himself!
 (PNT 151-152)
00991
 # Mt 27:6
    \\It is not lawful to put them into the treasury.\\ These men
 were not too scrupulous to send the innocent to death, to shed
 the blood of the innocent, but were too scrupulous to put blood
 money into the treasury. They could pay blood money, but could
 not take it back.
 (PNT 152)
00992
 # Mt 27:7
    \\The potter's field.\\ A field that had been used for the
 purpose of making pottery until it was worthless for other
 purposes and could be bought cheap. Potters' fields are still
 found in the Kedron Valley south of the city.
    \\To bury strangers in.\\ A burial place for the poor. The
 Jews usually provided their own tombs. Peter says that Judas
 fell down headlong and his bowels gushed out.
 # Ac 1:18
 The common explanation is that he hung himself on a tree
 overlooking the valley of Hinnom, that the rope gave way, and
 that he fell headlong upon the rocks below, a distance of forty
 to sixty feet.
 (PNT 152)
00994
 # Mt 27:9
    \\Then was fulfilled.\\ The prophecy is found in
 # Zec 11:12
 Albert Barnes shows that a change of a single letter in the
 original would transform Zechariah into Jeremiah, and it is
 supposed that some early copyist made the mistake. Another
 explanation is that Jeremiah, in the Jewish arrangement of the
 prophets, stood first, and that his name was given to the whole
 book of prophecy.
 (PNT 152)
00996
 # Mt 27:11
    \\Jesus stood before the governor.\\ In the judgment hall,
 which the Sanhedrin did not enter for fear of defilement.
 # Joh 18:28
 It was probably about seven a.m. that they presented themselves
 to Pilate, hoping that he would order their condemned prisoner
 to death without inquiry, but on his demand for charges they
 accuse Jesus of seeking to make himself King of the Jews. This
 charge causes Pilate to ask:
    \\Art thou the King of the Jews?\\ They had condemned Jesus
 for blasphemy, but now make a political charge, and Pilate's
 question is whether Jesus is claiming a temporal kingdom.
    \\Thou sayest.\\ Jesus was King, not of the Jews only, but
 men, and he admits the charge. He was King, however, in a
 spiritual sense, as he explained to Pilate.
 # Joh 18:36
 (PNT 152)
00997
 # Mt 27:12
    \\He answered nothing.\\ He made no defense, just as he had
 done when before Caiaphas.
 # 26:62-64
 (PNT 152)
00999
 # Mt 27:14
    \\He answered him to not a word.\\ To their charges of
 seeking to establish a worldly kingdom and of stirring up
 sedition he returned not a word. His impressive silence moved
 Pilate deeply.
 (PNT 152)