Favorites? You think Jesus was picking favorites?
No, he was obeying the law. Two or three witnesses.
You're standing at the gate of an ancient city.
The sun is high, dust hangs in the air, and elders
sit in a semicircle of worn stone. There are
no gavels, no courtrooms. No polished benches,
just witnesses and a man whose future hangs on
what people are willing to stay out loud. In
Israel, truth wasn't established by the loudest
voice or the most powerful man. It was established
by agreement. Two or three witnesses confirming
that something had really happened. Justice depended
on testimony. Now, shift scenes for a moment.
The smell of coffee is in the air. Folding chairs
scrape against the fellowship hall floor. The
last casserole dishes from our midweek meal are
being stacked in the kitchen. It's Wednesday
night in a small town church, and our Bibles
are open. Wherever you're listening from, you're
welcome to pull up a chair with us, grab a cup
of coffee, and I'll see you on the other side.
Simple and elegant. God could, but God doesn't.
Right? He could hold those things against us.
He has the ability to suspend his foreknowledge.
Has he forgotten those things? No. He's chosen
not to process them so that our choice can be
free. Now, that's a simplification, but it's
the one I've been kind of working on this project.
Hey, I was going to start. I was going to talk
this week, rather, about a different subject.
But while I was preparing Transfiguration Sunday,
that sermon, Carrie asked me a really interesting
question I thought was great. She said, hey,
I noticed it's not just this time when Jesus
separated Peter, James, and John from the disciples.
There are other times, too. Do they have a meaning,
or was it just that he was? playing favorites
a little, right? There's actually a meaning behind
why. Now, you might say, oh, there's a meaning
behind it because that feels right, but what
is the meaning? Well, you know what? I'm not
going to put you on the spot. I'm going to go
ahead and give you the answer, okay? But there
is a specific reason why Jesus is doing what
he's doing. And when you actually see what he's
doing, you think, huh, really interesting stuff.
So I'm going to talk about that tonight. But
before we begin, we got to start with the law
part of it, capital L law part of it, right?
And Moses and Deuteronomy and the law of the
people that would become the people of Israel.
So we're going to, as we always do, put the imagination
caps on, and we're going to try to see the image.
So I'd like to start tonight in a courtroom.
But not a normal courtroom with the marble walls
and the leather seats. It's a courtroom without
drywall. No polished bench, no fluorescent light
hum. Just elders at the gate of the city, dust
under sandals, sunlight cutting across the face
of a man whose life is on the line. This is Israel's
legal system. And before you picture something
primitive, Understand what Moses is doing here
in the Old Testament because the ancient Near
East ran on the testimony of the powerful. In
other words, whoever had the gold had the last
word. But God, with the people of Israel, he's
building something different. Twelve tribes,
former slaves. with no legal tradition except
do whatever Pharaoh says. And into that vacuum,
God hands them a system designed to protect against
false accusation, to slow down mob violence,
to demand confirmation for condemnation. Before
there is a king, before there is a temple, before
there is a prophet with fire in his bones, before
all of that, there are witnesses. And if God
structures Israel that way, if God builds justice
on two or three voices agreeing on something,
then when God steps into history in the flesh,
you better believe. He will honor his own architecture.
The lawgiver does not bypass his own law. So
imagine now Moses standing at the Jordan River,
east side. And he can see it, the promised land
from here. The land he had spent 45 years walking
towards. The promise that kept a million people
moving through sand and failure and manna that
they had become sick and tired of eating. He
could see it. And he's not going to cross it.
And he knows it. So you're the leader. You're
Moses. What do you do when you won't be there
to adjudicate problems? When the people you love
are about to walk into a world full of power
that doesn't answer to anybody, you build justice
into the bones of the covenant that are so deep
that even a king can't dig them out. You make
the rules so plain that a shepherd can recite
them by heart and a widow could invoke them.
And you trust that the God who gave you these
words will hold them to it after you've been
buried in a grave that no one can find. That's
what you are about to hear, friends. The dying
leader's last gift to a people who don't know
how much they're going to need it. Friends, these
aren't Moses' words. They come to us from Deuteronomy
chapter 19. I'll begin with verse 15. One witness
shall not rise against a man for any iniquity
or sin in any sin that he sins. At the mouth
of two witnesses or at the mouth of three witnesses
shall a matter be established. an unrighteous
witness rises up against any man to testify against
him of wrongdoing, then both the men between
whom the controversy is shall stand before Yahweh,
before the priests and the judges who shall be
in those days. The judges shall make diligent
inquisition. Behold, if the witness is a false
witness, and has testified falsely against his
brother, then you shall do to him as he had thought
to do to his brother. So you shall remove the
evil among you. Those who remain shall hear and
fear and will never again commit any such evil
among you. Your eye shall not pity. Life for
life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Hand for
hand and foot for foot. Thus ends the reading
of the law tonight. And this isn't casual language.
This also isn't bureaucracy formally buried into
some kind of law code that nobody notices. This
is covenant steel. Hammered into the foundation
of a people God was trying to make different
than people around them. God cares so much about
justice, he requires confirmation. Enough about
truth to demand plurality. Enough about the accused
to restrain the crowd. And the eye for an eye
bit. It's not a license for revenge. It's actually
a ceiling, an upper limit to the penalty, if
you will. It's God's restraining escalation before
escalation gets a name. Now hold this, because
when Jesus starts pulling Peter, James, and John
aside, taking them through other doors, through
doors that the other nine will not go through,
It's not favoritism. It's fulfillment. It's God
following his own rules. He assembled witnesses
because the covenant law required it. Walk with
Jesus into the house of Jairus, his dying daughter.
And you can smell it before you hit the threshold
of the house. Oil lamps burning too many at once.
The sharp sweetness of the burial spices already
prepared. Someone's already been to the market.
Someone's already decided how this is going to
end. The mortars are already loud. Flute players
warming up outside Jarius's door. The word has
gone out. The girl is dead. Don't even bother
sending for the teacher anymore. Even Jairus'
hopes had grown thin. You could see it in the
way that his shoulders sagged. And Jesus puts
all of them out, every one of them. And then
he takes five people through that door. Two parents
who know their daughter's face, three disciples
who could testify. And he takes her hand. And
he speaks, and she breathes. And now, resurrection
is not a rumor. It's been established. Now, let's
climb the mountain with him like we did on Sunday
morning. He took with him Peter, John, and James,
and went up onto a mountain to pray, that from
Luke 9 and 28. And his face changes. Moses and
Elijah appears, and a voice from the cloud, verse
35, says, This is my son, my chosen one. Listen
to him. Glory must be established. Three witnesses.
Now, we jump forward to Gethsemane in the dark.
No radiance here. The Kidron Valley is below
us. Jerusalem's torchlight. Liquor's on the ridge
like a city that's already made up its mind.
The olive trees there, they're old, older than
anyone alive. And the press where they crush
the fruit into oil, it's cold. The air smells
like damp stone and something broke open. This
is a place, its press, built for pressure. Mark
14 and 33 says he took with him. Peter, James,
and John, and began to be greatly troubled and
distressed. He took them, his choice to have
his worst moment, witnessed. The one who could
have suffered in private instead brought these
three men and said, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful,
even unto death. Stay here and watch. and they
fell asleep. Three times he came back to find
them with their eyes closed. But he kept returning,
not because they were inadequate, but because
the covenant required human witnesses, and he
was not going to bypass his own architecture.
not even in the olive press at midnight with
the weight of the world bending him towards the
ground. Suffering, too, must be established.
Three doors, the same three men, same covenant
number, same architecture. And it's not by coincidence.
And here's the lie most people carry into those
scenes. We assume, because of the favoritism
thing, we assume that Peter, James, and John
were chosen because they were the best ones.
They weren't. Peter denies Jesus before the rooster
warms up. James and John ask about calling down
fire upon a rude village. And then... argue about
eternal seating charts the very same week. They're
not spiritual all -stars. They are unstable men
under construction. Deuteronomy 19 does not say
flawless witnesses. It says find two or three.
And God establishes his most important matters
through imperfect people. He doesn't wait for
someone to become worthy. He works with someone
present. And some of us believe that our failures
have disqualified our testimonies. That what
you did, what was done to you, put you prematurely
out of the witness stand. And Peter writes, In
his second letter, first chapter, he writes,
years later, after the denial bit, still carrying
the memory of that charcoal fire and feed my
sheep, he says these words, we were eyewitnesses
to his majesty. It's legal language, credentialed
by nothing except I was there. Witnessed it.
I saw it. Truth stands not because the witness
was perfect. Stands because the witness was present
and brave enough to say so. Jesus is not improvising
leadership strategy. He's honoring covenant structure
at the exact moments when the highest claims
about who he is. are demonstrated. The lawgiver
in flesh embodies his own law. Jesus said himself
in John chapter 5 and 31, if I testify about
myself, my witness is invalid. Let's sit with
that for a moment. The Son of God voluntarily
submits to his own evidentiary standard. The
judge refuses to stand as his only and sole witness
because this is the shape of God's sovereign
love that refuses to overpower its way to victory.
And at his trial, Jesus's. When false witnesses
rise against him, the very scenario that Deuteronomy
19 and 16 was built to adjudicate, he doesn't
invoke the provision. The one who could demand
the false testimony rebound on his accusers absorbs
instead. The lawgiver lets his own law convict
him. Life for life takes on a different weight
when it's the lawgiver who is the one whose life
is taken over false testimony. And that, friends,
is what the cross looks like from inside the
courtroom Moses built. The witness principle
isn't just a rule God imposed on Israel. It is
a reflection of who God is. Love does not overpower.
Love testifies. Love confirms. Love establishes.
God did not just give Israel a legal system.
He gave them a window into his very nature. God
still establishes truth through witnesses. The
system did not retire with the apostles. When
he met you in your own garden season, greatly
troubled and not sure he'd make it through, that
wasn't your own personal private therapy. That
was a covenant story. Covenant stories are meant
to stand. But testifying, only establishes something
when it's spoken. You've watched him restore
something that had no business being restored.
You've watched him hold you through grief that
should have broken you. And you've kept quiet
because your story has jagged edges. Because
you're not sure if your testimony counts. Listen,
when you say, He was faithful. And someone across
the room nods, matter established. When you admit,
I almost fell apart and he held me. And someone
else exhales and says, me too. Matter established.
You are not random attendees filling seats in
a pew on Sunday morning. Your covenant witnesses.
And the world does not need louder Christians.
It needs confirmed ones. So, may the God who
acquires two or three witnesses make you brave
enough to be one. May the Christ who honored
the law honor your trembling testimony. The Spirit
confirms truth, give you voice, when silence
would be much easier. And when heaven moves in
your life, don't treat it like a private matter.
May you stand and may you speak, because heaven
already has its witnesses. The only question
is whether you will stand with them. Amen? Amen.
Tonight, we stood for a moment in an ancient
courtroom, dust under our feet, elders at the
gate, and a man's future resting on the voices
of witnesses. Deuteronomy reminds us that truth
in God's covenant community is not built on the
loudest voice, but on confirmed testimony. When
we walked through the Gospels, we saw that same
architecture again. Peter, James, and John standing
in the room when a little girl breathed again.
On a mountain, when Jesus' glory broke through
the veil. In the garden, when sorrow pressed
him to the ground. Imperfect men, but present.
Witnesses. And maybe that's the quiet invitation
for us tonight. that God still establishes matters
through ordinary people willing to say, I was
there and I saw what he did. And if something
from tonight made you pause, if you heard something
you hadn't considered before, or if the story
of scripture opened up in a new way, would you
consider throwing that like in the offering plate
just like we used to do in church? And if you'd
like to keep walking with us all the way to Easter
Sunday, make sure you tithe your subscribe. That
way you'll know when we begin our journey through
Lent together again. And until then, be blessed.