Thematic Bible: Court


Thematic Bible











Now the high priests and the whole council were trying to get false testimony against Jesus, to have Him put to death; but they could not, although many false witnesses came forward to testify. At last two men came forward and said, "This man said, 'I can tear down the temple of God, and build it again in three days.'" read more.
Then the high priest arose and said to Him, "Have you no answer to make? What do you say to the evidence that they bring against you?"

For he knew that they had turned Him over to the court out of envy. Now while he was on the bench, his wife sent him this word, "Do not have anything to do with that righteous man, for I have this morning suffered excruciating pain in a dream caused by Him." But the high priests and the elders lined up the crowds to ask for Barabbas, and to have Jesus put to death. read more.
Still the governor answered, "Which of the two do you want me to set free for you?" And they said, "Barabbas." Pilate asked them, "What then shall I do with Jesus. the so-called Christ?" They all answered, "Have Him crucified!" He asked, "Why, what has He done that is wrong?" But they kept on shouting louder and louder, "Have Him crucified!" So Pilate, since he saw that he was making no headway with them, but that a riot was about to break out instead, took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, and said, "I am not responsible for this man's death; you must see to it yourselves." And all the people answered, "His blood be on us and on our children!" Then he set Barabbas free for them, but had Jesus flogged and turned over to be crucified.

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They took Jesus away to the high priest, and all the high priests, elders, and scribes met there. Verse ConceptsOld Age, Attitudes ToAssembling LeadersOpposition To Christ From ScribesThe Chief Priests Convened

The high priests and the whole council were trying to get evidence against Jesus to put Him to death, but they could find none, for although many men gave false testimony against Him, their testimonies did not agree. Some took the witness stand and gave this false testimony against Him: read more.
"We ourselves have heard Him say, 'I will tear down this temple built by men's hands, and in three days I will build another, made without hands.'" But even in this matter their testimony did not agree. Then the high priest arose in the midst and asked Jesus, "Have you no answer to make? What about this testimony they are giving against you?" But He kept silent and made no answer at all. So the high priest again questioned Him in these words, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus said, "Yes, I am, and you will all see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Almighty and coming in the clouds of the sky!" Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "What more evidence do we need now? Did you hear His own blasphemy? What do you think now?" And they all condemned Him as deserving to die. And some of them started to spit on Him and to blindfold Him and to hit Him with their fists, and say to Him, "Now play the prophet!" Even the attendants took charge of Him with slaps at Him.


But they ordered the prisoners to step outside the council, and they conferred together and repeated, "What shall we do with these men? For it is evident to everybody living in Jerusalem that an unmistakable wonder-work has been done by them; and we cannot deny it. But to keep it from spreading farther among the people, let us severely threaten them not to say anything at all to anyone else about this person." read more.
So they called them in and ordered them not to speak or teach at all about the name of Jesus.

So they instigated men to say, "We have heard him speaking abusive words against Moses and God." By this means they excited the people, the elders, and the scribes, and so they rushed upon him, seized him, and brought him before the council. Then they put up false witnesses who said, "This man never stops saying things against this holy place and against the law, read more.
for we have heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth will tear this place down, and change the customs which Moses handed down to us."

At the same time he was hoping to get money from Paul, and so he kept on sending for him and talking with him. But at the close of two whole years Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus, and as he wanted to gratify the Jews, Felix left Paul still in prison.

Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men. The God of our forefathers raised Jesus to life after you had hanged Him on a cross and killed Him. God has exalted to His right hand this very One as our Leader and Saviour, in order to give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. read more.
We and the Holy Spirit that God has given to those who practice obedience to Him are witnesses to these things."

So they called them in and ordered them not to speak or teach at all about the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, "You must decide whether it is right in the sight of God to obey you instead of Him, for we cannot keep from telling what we have seen and heard."


And the high priests kept piling up accusations against Him. Then again Pilate asked Him, "Have you no answer to make? Just see how many charges they are making against you!" But Jesus made no further answer at all, so that Pilate was astonished.

Then Peter, because he was filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Leaders and elders of the people, if it is for a good deed to a helpless man, or to learn how he was cured, that we are today being tried, you and all the people of Israel must know that it is by the authority of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead -- yes, I repeat it, it is by His authority that this man stands here before you well. read more.
He is the stone that was thrown away by you builders, which has become the cornerstone. There is no salvation by anyone else, for no one else in all the wide world has been appointed among men as our only medium by which to be saved."

The high priest asked, "Are these statements true?" He answered: "Listen, brothers and fathers. The glorious God appeared to our forefather Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia before he ever made his home in Haran, and said to him, 'Leave your country and your kinsmen and come to Whatever country I may show you.' read more.
So he left the country of the Chaldeans and for a time made his home in Haran. Then after the death of his father, God had him move to this country in which you now live. He gave him no property in it, not even a foot of land, and yet He promised to give it to him and his descendants after him, as a permanent possession, although he had no child at that time. This is what God promised: 'His descendants will be strangers living in a foreign land, and its people will enslave and oppress them for four hundred years.' But God further promised: 'I will pass sentence on the nation that enslaves them, and after that they will leave that country and worship me on this very spot.' And with Abraham He made the sacred compact of circumcision, and he became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. And the patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him and delivered him from all his troubles, and allowed him to win favor and to show wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and so he appointed Joseph governor of Egypt and of his whole household. Then a famine spread all over Egypt and Canaan, and with it great suffering, and our forefathers could not find the simplest food. But Jacob heard that there was food in Egypt and sent our forefathers on their first visit down there. On their second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and thus Joseph's race was revealed to Pharaoh. Then Joseph sent and invited his father Jacob and all his kinsmen, seventy-five in all; and Jacob came down to Egypt. There he and our forefathers died and were carried back to Shechem and laid in the tomb which Abraham had bought with a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. As the time approached for realizing the promise which God had made to Abraham, the people multiplied and became more numerous in Egypt, until another king, who knew nothing about Joseph, ascended the throne. By taking a cunning advantage of our race he oppressed our forefathers by forcing them to expose their infants so that they should not live. At this time Moses was born. He was a divinely beautiful child. For three months he was cared for in his father's house. When he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. Thus Moses was educated in all the culture of the Egyptians, and was a mighty man in speech and action. As he was rounding out his fortieth year, it occurred to him to visit his brothers, the descendants of Israel. Because he saw one of them being mistreated, he defended and avenged the man who was suffering ill-treatment by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God through his instrumentality was going to deliver them, but they did not. The next day he showed himself to two of them engaged in a fight, and he tried to get them to make friends, saying, 'You are brothers, why should you harm each other?' But the man who was harming his brother pushed him aside, saying, 'Who made you our ruler and referee? Do you want to kill me as you did the Egyptian yesterday?' At this statement Moses fled, and went and lived in the land of Midian, and became the father of two sons. When forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the desert of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight, and when he went up to look at it, the voice of the Lord said to him, 'I am the God of your forefathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' Moses was so terrified that he did not dare to look at the bush. Then the Lord said to him, 'Take your shoes off your feet, for the place where you are standing is sacred ground. Because I have seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and heard their groans, I have come down to deliver them. So come! I will send you back to Egypt as my messenger.' That very Moses whom they refused, saying, 'Who made you our ruler and referee?' was the man whom God sent to be both their ruler and deliverer, by the help of the angel who had appeared to him in the bush. It was he who brought them out of Egypt by performing wonders and signs there and at the Red Sea -- as he did also in the desert for forty years. It was this Moses who said to the descendants of Israel, 'God will raise up a prophet for you from among you, just as He did me.' This is the one who in the congregation in the desert went between the angel, who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and our forefathers, who also received, to be handed down to you, utterances that still live. But our forefathers would not listen to him, but pushed him aside, and in their hearts they hankered after Egypt; and they said to Aaron, 'Make us gods to march in front of us, for as for this Moses, who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him!' In those days they even made a calf, and offered sacrifice to their idol, and held a celebration over the works of their own hands. So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the starry host, as it is written in the Book of the Prophets: 'Did you really offer me victims and sacrifices those forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? No, you offered me the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Rompha, the images you had made to worship! So I will now remove you beyond Babylon.' "In the desert our forefathers had the tent of the testimony, like the model Moses had seen, as God who spoke to him ordered him to make it. This tent our forefathers brought in and passed on when under Joshua they dispossessed the nations which God drove out before them, and it remained until the time of David. He found favor with God and begged to design a dwelling for the God of Jacob, but it was Solomon who came to build a house for Him. But the Most High does not live in buildings built by human hands. As the prophet says: '"Heaven is my throne, and earth a footstool for my feet. What house can you build for me?" says the Lord; "Or what place is there in which I can rest? Was it not my hand that made them all?"' "You people, stubborn in will, heathenish in hearts and ears, you are always resisting the Holy Spirit, as your forefathers did, too. Which of the prophets did your forefathers fail to persecute? They killed the prophets who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have betrayed and murdered Him, you who received the law by order of the angels, and yet you did not obey it!" As they continued to listen to this address, they were becoming infuriated and began to grind their teeth at him. But since he was full of the Holy Spirit, he looked right into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at God's right hand. So he said, "Look! I see heaven open, and the Son of Man standing at God's right hand."

Paul fixed his eyes upon the council and said, "Brothers, with a clear conscience I have done my duty to God up to this very day." At this the high priest Ananias ordered the people standing near him to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, "You white-washed wall, God will strike you! Do you sit as a judge to try me in accordance with the law and yet in violation of the law you order them to strike me?" read more.
The people standing near him said, "Do you mean to insult God's high priest?" Paul answered, "I did not know, brothers, that he was high priest, for the Scripture says, 'You must not speak evil against any ruler of your people.'" Because Paul knew that part of them were Sadducees and part of them Pharisees, he began to cry out in the council chamber, "Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a Pharisee's son, and now I am on trial for the hope of the resurrection of the dead." When he said that, an angry dispute arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the crowded court was divided.







If you get forgiveness for people's sins, they are forgiven them; if you let people's sins fasten upon them, they will remain fastened upon them." Verse ConceptsUnforgivenessApostles, Commission OfGod Not ForgivingGod Will ForgiveForgivenessforgiving othersGod's ForgivenessForgiveness Kjvforgiving



"Again, if your brother wrongs you, go and while alone with him show him the wrong. If he listens to you, you have won back your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take along with you one or two others, so as to have every word confirmed by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, report it to the church. And if he refuses to listen to the church, treat him as a heathen and as a tax-collector. read more.
I solemnly say to you, whatever you forbid on earth must be already forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth must be already permitted in heaven.












Paul fixed his eyes upon the council and said, "Brothers, with a clear conscience I have done my duty to God up to this very day." At this the high priest Ananias ordered the people standing near him to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, "You white-washed wall, God will strike you! Do you sit as a judge to try me in accordance with the law and yet in violation of the law you order them to strike me?" read more.
The people standing near him said, "Do you mean to insult God's high priest?" Paul answered, "I did not know, brothers, that he was high priest, for the Scripture says, 'You must not speak evil against any ruler of your people.'"