Matthew 26:57-68
Bad Religion

I. Do You Love Religion?
1. Some people love the sense of surety, of security, that religion brings. They love buildings, the routine.
2. It is increasingly popular to say that I dislike “organized religion” but I like “spirituality.”
3. Some people think any form of religion is good. They’re offended if you criticize another religion.
4. It’s not truth, or Jesus, that matters, it’s just whatever works to get people to believe in being good.
5. What if our idea of being good is bad? What if religion is bad for you?
II. The Trial (26:57-62)
1. They put Jesus on trial. It’s not a trial to find out the truth. They have decided what they want to do.
2. They racked their brains trying to find a rationale to do away with Jesus.
3. Exodus 23:7, “Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, . . .”
4. They are not supposed to hold a trial for a capital crime at night, not during a festival time, etc.
5. There is such a thing as bad religion, that holds to the truth, that preserves orthodoxy, but is still bad.
6. They’ve used their knowledge of the Word of God not to submit to it but to evade it.
7. The heart of sin is the refusal to submit to God, the insistence that we’ll do things my way.
8. Pure religion shows itself in visiting orphans and widows, nursing home residents, elderly parents, etc.
9. The bad religious are just as selfish and unfaithful as the world but they show it in different ways.
10. The trial, based on trumped up charges, shows us bad religion. The trial is a sham.
III. The Trap (26:63-65)
1. There’s no shortage of people willing to lie under oath in order to please the powers that be.
2. Did Jesus say, “I will destroy this temple” or, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”?
3. Finally Caiaphas, the high priest, tries a desperate ploy to get Jesus to incriminate Himself.
4. He asks Jesus, “Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God.” Of course, He would not deny Himself.
5. He says, “You have said so.” or, “That’s your way of putting it.” It’s not a denial.
6. Jesus references Daniel 7:13, the vision of the Son of Man receiving an eternal Kingdom.
7. He is implying here that He is the eternal King, who received authority from God to rule; that He is God.
8. A bad religion will not let you believe that Jesus is Lord, that He’s the center, you exists to glorify Him.
9. So, they spring the trap and Jesus says enough to let Himself be caught by it; to let them condemn Him.
10. This whole charade is a blasphemy. They are so steeped in their bad religion they have to feign shock.
11. They have God in the flesh before them and yet they are erupting in unquenchable hate toward Him.
12. These religious people did not want a Messiah who did not accept their religion.
IV. The Treatment (26:66-68)
1. The treatment is when we see God in the hands of angry sinners. They mete out their treatment.
2. They spit in His face. They punch Him. They slap Him. They jeer at Him.
3. Some have taken this passage as a basis to hate Jews. They miss the point entirely.
4. We could very well be among the people punching, slapping, and mocking Jesus.
5. He chose to take this treatment, because we couldn’t contrive any religion to save ourselves.
6. The men here are not examples of the worst of the worst. They are examples of us.
7. We mistreat Him when we’re bored with Him or regard making money as more important than worship.
8. We punch and slap and spit on Him when we make a God who exists for us.
9. Here we see God in the hands of angry sinners. We can only, left to ourselves, hate God.
10. Religion is our attempt to get to God. Christianity is God coming to get us.
11. The best our religion can do is make angry sinners who beat and kill God if they get their hands on Him.
V. Invitation: All of this is what our sins earned. In order for this Holy God to come to get us, He had to deal with the guilt of our sins, the fact that at our best we treat Jesus like this. Our sinfulness had to be punished. Jesus took every punch, every slap, the humiliation of every spit, the mockery, to pay for the guilt of our sins. “O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down, now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Your only crown.”