Luke 22:54-71

The Message

A Rooster Crowed

^54-56 Arresting Jesus, they marched him off and took him into the house of the Chief Priest. Peter followed, but at a safe distance. In the middle of the courtyard some people had started a fire and were sitting around it, trying to keep warm. One of the serving maids sitting at the fire noticed him, then took a second look and said, “This man was with him!”

⁵⁷ He denied it, “Woman, I don’t even know him.”

⁵⁸ A short time later, someone else noticed him and said, “You’re one of them.”

But Peter denied it: “Man, I am not.”

⁵⁹ About an hour later, someone else spoke up, really adamant: “He’s got to have been with him! He’s got ‘Galilean’ written all over him.”

^60-62 Peter said, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” At that very moment, the last word hardly off his lips, a rooster crowed. Just then, the Master turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered what the Master had said to him: “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” He went out and cried and cried and cried.

Slapping Him Around

^63-65 The men in charge of Jesus began poking fun at him, slapping him around. They put a blindfold on him and taunted, “Who hit you that time?” They were having a grand time with him.

^66-67 When it was morning, the religious leaders of the people and the high priests and scholars all got together and brought him before their High Council. They said, “Are you the Messiah?”

^67-69 He answered, “If I said yes, you wouldn’t believe me. If I asked what you meant by your question, you wouldn’t answer me. So here’s what I have to say: From here on the Son of Man takes his place at God’s right hand, the place of power.”

⁷⁰ They all said, “So you admit your claim to be the Son of God?”

“You’re the ones who keep saying it,” he said.

⁷¹ But they had made up their minds, “Why do we need any more evidence? We’ve all heard him as good as say it himself.”