{"id":10852,"date":"2023-07-22T00:00:44","date_gmt":"2023-07-21T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=10852"},"modified":"2023-07-20T06:13:37","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T22:13:37","slug":"the-test-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2023\/07\/22\/the-test-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"The Test Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark 14:53-54 53<\/sup>And they led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together. 54<\/sup>And Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire.<\/em><\/p>\n

The plot of the whole story of Jesus takes a big step with his arrest and being brought before the high priest Caiaphas (John 18:13-14), the leader of the Sanhedrin from AD 18-36. His long tenure during a time of Roman occupation suggests a crafty politician able to control the crowds and appease Romans in order to stay in power. He viewed Jesus as a threat to this power and needed to get rid of him quickly and quietly. The trial over which he presided was a farce of justice clearly intended to falsely accuse Jesus so he could be killed. The guards took Jesus to Caiaphas’ house, probably because it was now night. Word was sent out to the rest of the Sanhedrin (verse 55) to come on over for an impromptu kangaroo court. Likely everyone was exhausted from a busy day of Passover remembrance, but they came as instructed; many bent on getting rid of Jesus.<\/p>\n

The story of the fleeing naked young man contrasts with the “brave” Simon Peter who also followed the crowd as they led Jesus to the high priest. Verse 54 prepares for the story of Peter’s denial which will be picked up in verse 66. Peter attempts to live out his oath to die with Jesus if necessary (verse 31), but his fear is already evident in that he followed at a\u00a0<\/em>distance. <\/i>He was sitting with the very guards who had arrested Jesus and would later beat him and take him to the Roman officials. Peter was pretending just to be one of the crowd, hanging out at the fire and keeping warm. He was probably making small talk with the soldiers trying to be incognito and blending in with the scene.<\/p>\n

Peter was about to face his own trial and would come out the loser. Had he truly counted the cost of discipleship? The journey of every follower of Jesus is much like Peter’s journey. There must come a point of total commitment to find full victory and power through the Holy Spirit. Peter had some hard lessons to learn about faith and dependence as do we all.<\/p>\n

For older posts, click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark 14:53-54 53And they led Jesus to the high priest. And all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes came together. 54And Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire. The plot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10890,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions\/10890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}