If your Bibles I’d invite you to turn with me to Matthew, chapter 26, the 57th verse, as we continue our study through the gospel of Matthew. All along in our study of Matthew 26 we have said that this chapter is a prelude to the death of Christ. In our last study we saw the betrayal of Christ by Judas and the desertion of Christ by the other eleven disciples. And today we begin a series of trials that the Lord Jesus faced. This was actually the second of six scenes of trials that Christ would face in the last hours of His life before the crucifixion. I want to remind you of those. There are actually two trials that Jesus underwent. A church trial or an ecclesiastical trial, and then there was a civil trial. The church trial, John tells us in John, chapter 18, actually began earlier…