About 5 AM. Jesus said, "Yes, I am." The High Priest did not recognize the suffering Messiah in front of him–Jesus had declared Himself to be God's Lamb.
The High Priest tore his clothes, a sign of ritual sorrow, and called for a death sentence on the grounds of blasphemy. The condemnation was unanimous.
Some of the people there immediately began to mock Him, spit on Him, blindfold and hit Him. “Prophesy who hit you!,” they jeered.
At about the same time Peter was in the outer part of the palace, denying for the third time that he even knew Jesus. When Peter realized what he had done, he went out to weep bitterly, but the Lamb stayed silent.
The cock had crowed, so it was nearly dawn. The day of the Lamb was half done.
| About 6:30 AM, Pilate's judgment hall |
About 6:30 AM, Pilate's judgment hall. The chief priests, elders, scribes and council, and the whole mob left the High Priest's palace at daybreak and delivered Jesus bound to Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator (a kind of governor), to have Him executed.
(One person had dropped out of the mob, probably back at the palace: Judas Iscariot, seized with remorse, threw the blood money down in the Temple and went off to kill himself.)
(Matt. 27:1-26, Mark 15:1-14, Luke 23:1-25, John 18:28-19:1)
Pilate wanted nothing to do with Jesus, and asked the Jews to judge Jesus in their own courts.
They replied that He deserved to be executed, and only the Romans had authority to carry that out. Then the crowd shouted against this Galilean troublemaker, that He had made Himself a King.
Jesus a Galilean!--Pilate seized the opportunity to step out of this early morning crisis: Since Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, was in Jerusalem then, send the Galilean to Herod!
| About 7:00 AM, Herod's quarters in Jerusalem |
About 7:00 AM, Herod's quarters in Jerusalem. Jesus was taken before Herod. Herod was really delighted, since he was consumed with curiosity to see a miracle from the "miracle-maker." He peppered Jesus with questions, lots of questions.
Jesus did not answer him. Herod quickly saw Jesus was not going to satisfy his curiosity at all. What’s more, the chief priests and scribes had come over to visit Herod, too, and they stood fiercely accusing Jesus.
So Herod’s mood quickly swung to mockery. He and the soldiers of his personal guard mocked Jesus. To ridicule His claim to be a King, they put an expensive robe around His shoulders and sent Him back to Pilate.
(Herod, not a Jew but a Gentile Edomite, correctly supposed that mocking a Jewish rabbi like this would probably draw a smile from his Roman superior, Pilate. It must have, because Herod and Pilate moved from mutual hostility to friendship that day, cemented by their mutual despising for the Lamb.) (Luke 23:8-12)
About 7:40 AM, at Pilate's judgment hall. They brought Jesus back to Pilate. The chief priests and scribes then launched their many accusations against Jesus. He didn’t reply a word. Pilate marveled. This fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy: “Like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so he did not open his mouth.” (Matt. 27:11-26, Mark 15:1-15)
Pilate’s first two tries at avoiding the issue had not worked, so he took Jesus aside and asked Him whether He was a King. Jesus answered Pilate directly with two statements: that He was a King whose Kingdom is not of this world, and that He had come to witness to the truth.
That was about as understandable a description of Who He was as could be given to a Gentile like Pilate.
Pilate the cynic replied, “What is truth?” He didn’t wait for an answer.
Pilate went back outside, and summoned the Jewish leaders again. “Neither Herod nor I found Jesus deserving to die, he said, so why don’t I have Him flogged and let Him go?”
This was a feast day, the first day of Passover, when the Romans had an annual custom of a prisoner release. Pilate offered Jesus as the prisoner to be released.
The crowd around the judgement hall would have none of it, and urged on by the chief priests and scribes, began to shout for a notable trouble-maker and murderer, Bar-Abbas, to be released instead.
Pilate persisted again on this, his third try to avoid handling the issue of Jesus.
The crowd, still led by the chief priests and elders, kept shouting: “Take Bar-Abbas; put Jesus to death on a cross!”
Just at this point, Pilate's wife sent a message to him, urging him not to do anything against this righteous man Jesus--she had just had a terrible dream to warn her.
The crowd had pushed, and Pilate released Bar-Abbas. Now Pilate asked what he should do with Jesus. Only one answer from the crowd: Crucify Him!
At that point Pilate ceremoniously washed his hands in front of them all–to deny his responsibility for condemning Jesus.
Then Pilate tried for the fourth time to head off the issue by handing Jesus over to some of his Roman troops.
| About 8:15 AM, the Praetorium |
About 8:15 AM, the Praetorium. The Roman soldiers took Jesus inside the Praetorium (their garrison) to work Him over in private. They flogged Him, shoved a crown of thorns onto His head. Blood flowed. They put a purple robe on Him and put a reed as a mock scepter in His hand, then hit Him over the head with the reed. They punched Him in the head and spat on Him as they mocked, bowing the knee to Him. “King of the Jews!,” they jeered.
| About 8:30 AM, Pilate's judgment hall |
About 8:30 AM, Pilate’s judgment hall. Pilate spoke to the crowd outside once more to see if his humiliation of Jesus would buy them off from shouting for crucifixion. Then he had Jesus brought out to the crowd’s view, beaten up, with purple robe and crown of thorns.
The chief priests and their allies shouted their reply, “Crucify Him, because he made himself the Son of God.”
Real fear gripped Pilate then. “Made himself the Son of God,” they said–and there was his own wife’s warning dream, and the fearless silence of the man standing before him. He went back inside where they had taken Jesus, and asked Him,
“Where do you come from?” Jesus the Lamb said nothing.
“I can have you put to death,” Pilate said.
Then the Lamb spoke, “You could have no power except it were given you from above, so he who betrayed me to you has the greater sin.”
Pilate was agitated and went out to the crowd again. He tried a fifth time to get off the hook; they shouted that he would be no friend of Caesar if he let Jesus go. Both the mob and Pilate understood politics, after all.
| About 8:40 AM, at the Pavement (Gabbatha) |
About 8:40 AM, at the Pavement (Gabbatha.) Hearing that, Pilate brought Jesus outside to the outdoor judgment seat there. The sun was well up in the sky, as bright as noonday, so the crowd could get a good look at how he had been beaten, mocked and tormented. Pilate shouted to the Jews, “This is your king!”
But they replied, “We have no king but Caesar.”
Pilate made up his mind. He feared his Jewish subjects and their anger more than he valued the Lamb’s innocent life.
The Lamb would die.
| About 8:50 AM, on the way to crucifixion |
About 8:50 AM, on the way to crucifixion. A large crowd followed the soldiers and Jesus. Jesus, though he was exhausted and beaten, warned the many women who were weeping for Him, prophesying to them that terrible days were ahead for Jerusalem. He was already looking past the death just ahead. He was still shepherding the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
| 9 AM, at Golgotha (Calvary: "Skull Place," in English) |
9 AM, at Golgotha (Calvary: “Skull Place,” in English.) Jesus was crucified between two thieves, hung on a wooden cross to the death. The Romans pierced His hands and feet to do it. A prophecy fulfilled from the Psalms: “They pierced my hands and my feet.” (Psalm 22:16) They offered Him a drink of wine mixed with myrrh; He refused.
As He hung there, Jesus prayed for His executioners, “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”
Passers-by mocked Him, “If you’re the Son of God, come down off that cross.
Chief priests, scribes and elders on the scene mocked, too, railing against His claim to be Son of God and King of Israel.
The four Roman soldiers mocked Him, and offered him a drink of vinegar laced with bitter gall. That fulfilled another prophecy in the Psalms: “They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” (Psalm 69:21)
Pilate mocked from afar, leaving a sign tacked high on the cross, on which he had written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”
Even the crucified thieves, facing their own deaths in the hours ahead, they mocked Him.
Meanwhile, the four Roman soldiers divided up Jesus’ clothes; He wouldn’t be needing them. But they cast lots over Jesus’ coat, because it was woven without a seam. Another detail, another prophecy fulfilled from the Psalms:
“They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my clothes.” (Psalm 22:18; John 19:24)
Then, as one thief kept mocking Jesus, the other thief had a change of heart. Rebuking his fellow thief, he asked King Jesus to remember him when Jesus came into His Kingdom. Eyes of faith, at last, in an unexpected place! (Luke 23:39-43)
Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Noon, all over the land. Darkness came over the whole land.
Sometime during those three dark hours, He looked down on His mother Mary and John His disciple, standing near the cross with others of His friends. Ignoring His own condition, He arranged for His mother by putting her in John’s care.
About 3 PM, at Golgotha. The Lamb shouted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” using the words of Psalm 22:1. He cried again, “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit,” and yet once more shouted, “It is finished!,” and died.
The Lamb had been sacrificed. It was finished.
| About 3 PM, at the Temple in Jerusalem |
3 PM, at the Temple in Jerusalem. The veil between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies was split open from top to bottom.
There was an earthquake and great rocks were split. Bodies of many godly people were raised from the dead. (Matthew 27:51-53)
| A little after 3 PM, at Golgotha |
A little after 3 PM, at Golgotha. The Roman centurion in charge and others with him saw all this, and were terrified, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54)
One thing the Romans marked was how Jesus shouted as he died. The Romans knew all about crucifixion. They knew that the victim’s body weight, hanging from a cross, would little by little crush the lungs and suffocate the victim. Men dying by crucifixion died, not with a shout, but a whisper.
The people who had stood at a distance watching, including many of the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee to help Him, now dispersed. (Mark 15:30)
| About 4 PM, Pilate's judgment hall |
About 4 PM, Pilate’s judgment hall. Some of the Jesus’ persecutors again approached Pilate. Break the legs of the three crucified men, they asked. That way they would hang limp and die faster, and not still be on the crosses on the Sabbath, some 26 hours away.
Pilate assented, so the Roman soldiers broke one thief’s legs, then the other’s...but Jesus was already dead, so not a bone was broken. Another fulfillment, because God commanded through Moses that not one of the Passover lamb’s bones should be broken. (Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12; John 19:33-35)
| About 5:30 PM, Pilate's judgment hall |
About 5:30 PM, Pilate’s judgment hall. As the day waned, Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man and counselor who became a secret disciple of Jesus, boldly asks Pilate’s permission to bury Jesus’ body. Pilate was so amazed to hear Jesus was already dead that he summoned the centurion from the crucifixion squad. When the centurion confirmed the death, Pilate granted their request. They could have the body.
Pilate marveled, for he understood crucifixion. Death was generally measured in days, not hours. Dead in six hours! (Mark 15:44)
| About 6 PM in a garden near Golgotha |
About 6 PM in a garden near Golgotha. Joseph bought clean linen cloth, then took the body down. Nicodemus the Pharisee, another secret believer, joined Joseph, bringing a large quantity of burial spices, myrrh and aloes. Together, they wrapped His body in the cloth with the spices. They put Jesus in Joseph’s own new tomb, hewn out of rock. Buried in a rich man’s tomb–fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy: “His grave was assigned to be with wicked men, yet with a rich man in his death.” (Isaiah 53)
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, two of Jesus’ followers, watched as Joseph rolled a large stone to cover its doorway.
The sun set on the Day of the Lamb. It began with a Passover lamb, and ended with the Passover Lamb. It was finished.
Resurrection lay three nights and a sunrise away. The new day beginning was called the day of pre-Sabbath preparation, the next day was the Sabbath, and the third day was the first day of the week. (Mark 15:42)
Jesus’ sacrificed body lay dead during daylight hours of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and the nighttime hours of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday–three days and three nights in the earth. As He Himself had foretold. (Matthew 12:40)
By Phil Chamberlain
© 2008 The New Testament Missionary Fellowship
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