Download the transcript as a Word file to receive access to the full outline and complete sermon.

• Even though we all must face a Gethsemane experience in order to fulfill the call of God on our lives, we will never have to face it alone—he is with us all the way, even in our weakest moments.

• Mark 14:43-44
• The arrest of Jesus illustrates how little the religious leaders understood his teachings.
• Luke 22:48-53
• Jesus knew that in the next 12 hours or so, all hell would break loose on earth—in the most literal sense of the phrase.
• Mark 14:50-52
• All of Jesus’ followers abandoned him at this point, and he was left alone.

• Mark 14:53
• According the laws established in the Mishna (the Jewish book of procedural law) there are a number of illegalities that occur in Jesus’ trial before the council.
• Illustration: May references a court decision in New York to illustrate how powerful people with an agenda will often bend the rules of law or reason to accomplish their purposes.
• Illustration: May quotes Eduard Schweizer: “Whoever is conscious of his own negligence in obedience, of his own failure to love, of the lethargy of his own heart in the midst of the demands of everyday life, cannot escape from his responsibility before God for Jesus’ death by fixing the blame upon some other person.”
• Mark 14:55-59
• The witnesses twisted something Jesus had said earlier to trap him.
• Mark 14:60-64
• Jesus’ claim to be divine makes him a liar, a lunatic, or Lord.
• Mark 14:65
• Illustration: To illustrate the cowardly bravado with which the soldiers mocked Jesus, May tells the story of a six-year-old boy who taunted a lion behind bars at a zoo.

• Mark 15:1
• John 18:28-32
• Luke 23:2
• By saying that he had told people not to pay taxes—an outright lie—and by saying that he claimed to be a “king,” they were accusing him of crimes against the sovereign power of Rome; Pilate would have to these crimes seriously.
• Pilate seemed quite eager to acquit Jesus, but don’t get the impression that Pilate was a helpless pawn in the hands of the religious leaders.
• Luke 23:6-12
• Mark 15:6-15
• Matthew 27:24
• Pilate had no right to wash his hands of his responsibility to govern the people.
• John 18:1-3
• John 19:4-15
• Pilate did not escape guilt for the crucifixion of Christ.
• John 19:16

• The trial of Jesus was a travesty of justice, according to both Jewish and Roman law.
• Big Idea: Jesus faced man’s injustice so that we won’t have to face God’s justice.
• Psalm 103:10,12