Stories from the Bible - Ep 36 Accused, Mocked, Crucified and Buried (Luke 23)

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

In this episode we reflect on the previous stories from Luke 22 - how Jesus is not the passive victim of his enemies, but more like the calm architect who sees the whole plan. We notice how his compassionate love for his disciples shines brighter and brighter as their actions become darker and darker. Then we listen to Luke 23, the heavy story of the crucifixion. The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® http://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved

Beauty, perfection, desire, deception, rebellion, judgment, hope. You're listening to Stories from the Bible. Bible stories told in order, using the words of the Bible, with introductions to give a recap and provide context. At the end of each story, you might want to pause, and take a moment to reflect on what you noticed in the story, things you liked or didn't like. something the story showed you about God or about people. Don't worry if not everything makes sense. Keep listening to each episode and sit with a journey.

I'm stoked to have you on the ride. Hello and welcome to episode 36. Later, we'll be hearing stories from Luke, Chapter 23. But before we get there, what happened in Chapter 22? Well, in this chapter, it might be easy to see Jesus as a passive victim of a dark plot, as someone caught in the gears of a religious machine he couldn't stop. But in reality,

Jesus wasn't a helpless victim forced to suffer against his will by powerful oppressors. He's more like the calm architect who sees the whole plan laid out and knows precisely what he needs to do at each moment. While the shadows of betrayal were. closing in around him, he wasn't looking for a way out. He was busy planning the practical details of a meal. He was preparing to take an ancient rescue story and carve its fulfillment

into the very DNA of his followers. Luke 22 is where the brewing tensions between Jesus and the religious elite finally come to a head. And it all happens, Luke tells us, right at the time of the Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Now, this was an annual festival where Jewish men from all over Israel were, according to the law, meant to travel to Jerusalem. There they would share a special meal, a meal filled with symbolic significance, in order to pass on to future generations

the remembrance of their national rescue from slavery. And remember, The Israelites didn't fight their way out of Egypt. They didn't rescue themselves in a slave rebellion of sorts. No. The rescue was God's accomplishment. God did it through those miraculous plagues that progressively devastated the pride and power of Egypt.

The climax of that rescue came with the final plague that struck down every first born in Egypt. The Israelites would remain safe from this plague only through carefully listening to God's instructions that came via Moses. A male lamb without blemish was to be killed and some of the blood put onto the doorposts, marking the houses of those who had eaten the flesh of the sacrificial lamb. At midnight, when the Lord struck Egypt,

he passed over the houses marked with the blood of the Lord. lamb, and death didn't enter those homes. Now, just pause for a moment, and imagine that we are Israelites back in Egypt. We've just witnessed those first nine plagues. None of those plagues has changed Pharaoh's mind and we are still slaves. The situation looks grim. We're listening so attentively to Moses as he explains what is going to happen next. Moses instructs us about the Lamb and the Passover that will happen that very night. The rescue we have been waiting for is finally about to happen, and it's going to happen very fast and very decisively.

And yet, right in the middle of the intense urgency of those imminent events, Moses starts telling us, even before we've had a chance to get ready for it, that the meal we are about to prepare is about something bigger. It's going to be a memorial feast that is to be remembered and participated in for generations to come. The story of how God rescued us from Egypt is going to form the central core of our identity as God's people. The memory of this night will establish our corporate DNA from this space, point forward. So important is the remembrance of the Passover that anyone who doesn't take it seriously will be cut off from the nation. To be one of God's people is to be someone who has the

remembrance of God's rescue carved into their life. We covered those Exodus stories in more detail in episodes four to seven. Now, return with me to Jerusalem, about 1,500 years later. It's the annual time of the Passover and the leaders of God's people. Well, they're not thinking about their rescue from Egypt. They're not thinking about how to use their expertise to help the people meditate more deeply on God's compassionate love and power.

No, every thought they have is driven by the fear of losing their own power, their own position and their own control. Jesus wields a wisdom and an authority that reveals them to be the proud fools that they really are. If they are to survive, Jesus is a threat that must be eliminated. They would have done it sooner, but Jesus is too popular with the crowds, and they need to find a way around this. Satan, who tempted Jesus in the desert,

and who has been waiting for his opportunity to have Jesus, destroyed, seizes his moment and enters Judas, one of Jesus' closest friends. Judas goes to the Jewish leaders and helps them hatch a plan to arrest Jesus privately without the presence of a crowd. Now, Luke hasn't told us a lot about Judas, but we know that he was motivated by money. And what does that suggest? Well, money is the path to power and and control and security, at least from a human perspective. And perhaps Judas had expected that Jesus would be the Messiah who would elevate him by association into a position where he would have those benefits.

But instead, Jesus has been a bitter disappointment. Perhaps Judas has felt let down by Jesus. perhaps he is now convinced that he has been legitimately hurt and betrayed by his teacher. Perhaps he is consumed by resentment, regret, and even embarrassment for choosing to follow this rabbi who seems bent on his own death and failure. It is more than probable that Judas, instead of carefully attending to Jesus, pondering and trying to make sense of the stunning things, things he says and does, has been feeding off his own thoughts, his own criticisms, his

frustrations and his hurts. He has not allowed the truth to challenge his natural ways of thinking, and so he has remained a slave to deception, open to becoming a direct instrument of the father of lies, the devil himself. Judas has lost hope in his master, and now he changes camp to collude with the powerful in bringing Jesus down. Perhaps here, with the leaders, Judas believes he might still find a shred of the security and significance which Jesus has failed to give him. To Judas, and to all who haven't listened carefully to what Jesus has been saying, the events that are about to happen do indeed make Jesus look like a terrible failure. But if we have paid attention, we see that Jesus is actually living out,

with brutal, shocking integrity and perfect consistency, everything that he has been teaching up to this point. On a deeper level, Jesus is not a passive, helpless victim in the events that follow. He is more like the architect, with everything playing out just as he has said it would. Of course, there are Jesus's explicit words predicting his rejection and death. But even if he had not given those actual prophecies, the trajectory of everything he has taught points towards abandoning oneself into the care of God. He has taught his disciples that the pursuit of money, status, popularity and self-righteous

morality does not bring ultimate happiness or security. If you want to be truly free, let go of those things and become a humble, lowly child who depends completely on God, on his good and perfect provision and protection. I can imagine the crowds early on nodding their heads in admiration and agreement at the profoundly wise words of Jesus, but later, shaking those same heads in disbelief as he puts those very words into practice. Even his disciples, under the immense pressure of the events about to happen, reveal that they haven't actually taken in what Jesus has been teaching.

Despite sincerely believing that they understand Jesus and that their allegiance to Him is absolute, they fall apart at the seams when truly tested. It's revealed that they still hold to the world's definition of safety. They argue about who is the great. greatest. They fall asleep while Jesus is praying in agony. They fearfully resort to violence. Peter, the most confident disciple, on three occasions, shows himself too scared and ashamed to be associated with his beloved teacher. Jesus knows his disciples don't really get it.

But that doesn't stop him loving them and earnestly wanting to be with them. He understands how difficult it is for them. He knows they have reached the limit of their capacity to comprehend what he has been teaching them. He longs for his friends to see and understand more, but he knows this is not possible, not yet. He knows the pain and confusion they are about to face. He knows they are all about to let him down. But he is not frustrated or angry with them. He has prayed for them to endure when their world goes dark.

He does not try to lecture them or load them with more explanations than they can bear. No, he is gentle and humble, and he meets them in the simple affection of a shared meal. His enjoyment of them, and their enjoyment, of him is not dependent on their correct intellectual comprehension of the kingdom of God. As Judas and the leaders are plotting his death, Jesus is not thinking of how to fight or escape or by himself more time as an ordinary revolutionary leader might. No. Jesus is not thinking of himself at all. He is planning

the meal he's been looking forward to for some time. He is thinking about the little, practical details that will enable the disciples to share the Passover together. The Passover looked back to when God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt. That tradition began on the eve of that rescue and became the DNA of the nation. And now, Jesus celebrates this same Passover with his disciples on the eve of the new rescue God is about to accomplish. God is about to save his people from slavery to sin and set them free to live as his very own precious people, people who love him more than anything the world can offer.

Jesus is the true Passover lamb. The land that was sacrificed in Egypt was the shadow that pointed towards this ultimate reality that God had been preparing for millennia. In this Passover meal with his disciples, Jesus establishes the connection. The meal which looked back to the blood of the lamb on the doorposts that shielded the Israelites from death will now look to the body of the tree of the tree. true lamb, whose blood will shield all God's people from eternal death. From this point on, when God's people gather together and eat the bread and drink the wine,

they are both remembering and feeding on the body and blood of Jesus that brought life and continues to bring life. Just as Moses established the Passover meal as the identity of the Jewish nation, Jesus is bringing the Passover meal to its fulfillment. He is making it the meal at the heart of the DNA of God's people from that point forward. Let's hear how the rescue unfolds as Luke continues the story in Chapter 23. Then the whole group of them, that is the entire Council of the Elders, both the chief priests and the experts in the law,

rose up and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, We found this man subverting our nation, forbidding us to pay the tribute tax to Caesar and claiming that he himself is Christ a king. So Pilate asked Jesus, Are you the king of the Jews? He replied,

You say so. Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, I find no basis for an accusation against this man. But they persisted in saying, He incites the people by teaching throughout all Judea. It started in Galilee and ended up here. Now when Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean.

When he learned that he was from Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him over to Herod, who also happened to be in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some miraculous sign. So Herod questioned him at considerable length.

Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the experts in the law were there, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him. Then, dressing him in elegant clothes, Herod sent him back to Pilate. That very day, Herod and Pilate became friends with each other.

For prior to this, they'd been enemies. Then Pilate called together the chief priests, the leaders and the people, and said to them, You brought me this man as one who was misleading the people. When I examined him before you, I did not find this man guilty of anything you accused him of doing. Neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Look, he has done nothing deserving death. I'll therefore have him flogged and release him.

But they all shouted out together, Take this man away, release Barabbas for us. This was a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder. Pilate addressed them once again because he wanted to release Jesus. But they kept on shouting, crucify, crucify him. A third time he said to them, why?

What wrong has he done? I have found him guilty of no crime deserving death. I'll therefore flog him and release him. But they were insistent, demanding with loud shouts that he became. crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, who had been thrown in prison for insurrection and murder. But he handed Jesus over to their will. As they led him away, they seized Simon of Cyrene,

who was coming in from the country. They placed the cross on his back and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, among them women who were mourning and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For this is certain. The days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore children and the breasts that never nursed, then they will begin to say to the mountains fall on us and to the hills cover us. For if such things are done when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry? Two other criminals were also led away to be executed with him.

So when they came to the place that is called the skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. But Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. Then they threw dice to divide his clothes. The people also stood there watching. But the leaders ridiculed him saying, He saved others. Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one.

The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also an inscription over him. This is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals who was hanging there railed at him saying, Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us. But the other rebuked him, saying, Don't you fear God?

Since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we rightly so. For we are getting what we deserve for what we do. did, but this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. And Jesus said to him, I tell you the truth. Today, you will be with me in paradise. It was now about noon.

And darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon because the sun's light failed. The temple curtain was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. And after he said this, he breathed his last. Now, when the centurion saw what had happened, he praised God and said,

Certainly this man was innocent. And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. And all those who knew Jesus stood at a distance, and the women who had followed him from Galilee saw these things. Now there was a man named Joseph, who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man.

He had not consented to their plan and action. He was from the Judean town of Arimathea, and was looking forward to the kingdom of God. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and placed it in a tomb cut out of the rock where no one had yet been buried. It was the day of preparation and the Sabbath was beginning.

The women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee followed and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they returned and prepared aromatic spices and perfumes. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment. Today's chapter ends here. Thanks for joining us for this story. You might like to take a moment to pause and think about what you noticed.

Things you liked, things you didn't like, something it showed you about Jesus. To read this for yourself, it's in the book of Luke, chapter 23. If you can find someone willing to read it and talk about it with you even better. You've been listening to stories from the Bible. I'm Jen, and I look forward to sharing more stories with you.