SERMON: Plotting Murder: Idolatry & Dark Intentions (John 11:47–57)
Plotting
Murder: Idolatry & Dark Intentions (John 11:47–57)
Series: “John: Life in Christ’s Name” Text: John 11:47–57
By: Shaun Marksbury Date: December
31, 2023
Venue: Living Water Baptist Church Occasion: AM Service
I.
Introduction
There’s a video of an atheist which is making its rounds. This individual considers some of the biggest evils in the world, and he then highlights how he believes Scripture mis-prioritizes them. For instance, he thought it strange that idolatry would rank higher than so many of the other evils in existence.
Many people do not think
of idolatry as just the worship of statues or competing deities. Idolatry is, in fact, the root of all the
evil we do! It’s not money, as
you may have heard, though the love of money is a form of idolatry. Consider this: Usually, even an atheist will
acknowledge that Jesus is a good man and that His death was unwarranted. Meanwhile, the religious leaders in our text
today want to protect their own positions, so they justify murder and plan to use
their power to engage in obvious evil. They
do this because of idolatry, worshipping self and lacking any true fear of God.
It's this way with all
our sin. Whether we lie, cheat, steal,
kill, or destroy, it all comes back to an exalted sense of self-desire and need
for fulfillment. We might even claim to
be Christians while we do it, but the truth is that, in those moments, we are
worshipping and serving someone other than God.
This self-worship is as idolatrous as it is to offer up rice to an idol
in a Hindu temple. Idolatry underlies
all sin, all evil, and the only cure is repentance before the Lord and true
worship of Him.
Idolatry leads to
evil, such as that of contemplating murder.
And this passage demonstrates that as it records the development of a
murder plot. We’ll note three aspects of
their plan: the drive, the determination, and the deficiency. Let’s consider the first of these.
II.
The Drive of their Plan (vv. 47–50)
Therefore the chief priests and the
Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man
is performing many signs. If we let Him
go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take
away both our place and our nation.” But
one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know
nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that
one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish.”
The news of Jesus
raising Lazarus from the dead prompted the Pharisees to contact the chief
priests. This would include the high
priest as well as others in the high priest’s family, an influential clan in
Jerusalem. Since Lazarus was of a
prominent family near Jerusalem, and his death was well established, there
would be no denying this miracle, and an emergency meeting was in order.
So, as the Legacy
Standard Bible (LSB) says here, they “gathered the
Sanhedrin together.” The
Sanhedrin was the Jewish ruling body in the land, having all powers to judge
and execute judgments, within the confines placed on it by Rome. As the MacArthur Study Bible notes
here, “In Jesus’ day, the 70 members of the Sanhedrin were dominated by the
chief priests, and virtually all the priests were Sadducees. The Pharisees constituted an influential
minority. While the Pharisees and
Sadducees were often in conflict, their mutual hatred of Jesus united them into
action.”[1] This
is the religious gathering deciding how to respond to Jesus’s latest miracle.
There is one
question on their mind. It’s been
rendered a couple of ways in your translations.
It may be an honest question, like in the King James Version (KJV):
“What shall we do?” In the New
International Version (NIV), it’s rendered as more of a rhetorical
question: “What are we accomplishing?”
That’s more like what we have here: “What are we doing?” In any case, it seems that they begin with
the premise that they are not doing anything worthwhile.
Jesus seems to be “winning.” They say, “For this man is performing many
signs” (refusing to say His name, only “this man”). Yet, in their contempt, they accidentally
admit to the truth — Jesus is performing miracles. Remember, even the Pharisee Nicodemus did
when he came to Jesus, saying, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a
teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him”
(John 3:2). The people came to similar
conclusions; they ask, “When the Christ comes, He will not perform more signs
than those which this man has, will He?” (7:31). The evidence is there, but sadly, they choose
to ignore it.
Thus, they depict
Jesus as engaging in a campaign of gaining influence through public
opinion. In v. 48, they say, “If we let
Him go on like this, all men will
believe in Him.” For them, that’s bad
news, because they are trying to keep public opinion on their side! It’s simply amazing that they are unmoved in
their own opinion of Jesus with the raising of Lazarus, but that shows us how
hatred for Jesus can harden a person in unbelief.
As they consider
how many people are starting to think Jesus is the Messiah, they are afraid of
what Jesus will do with that acknowledgment.
As one teacher notes, “This is a curious muddle for the rulers knew that
Jesus did not claim to be a political Messiah and would not be a rival to
Caesar.”[2] Yet,
they reason, what if He turned His attention to revolution like many of the
people wanted? The Romans are the
ones who truly control the region, and they may deploy military force at the
mere mention of a Messiah, political or otherwise. After all, Pilate “demonstrated his capacity
for ruthlessness (Luke 13:1).”[3] So,
the Sanhedrin continues to say, “the Romans will come and take away both our
place and our nation.”
Underlying their
motivations, then, are more emotions than simply hatred for Jesus. They seem to want to maintain the status quo
with Rome. They did not trust that the
Lord would go and fight for them. Joshua
23:3–7 says,
And
you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations because
of you, for the Lord your God is He who has been fighting for you. See, I have apportioned to you these nations
which remain as an inheritance for your tribes, with all the nations which I
have cut off, from the Jordan even to the Great Sea toward the setting of the
sun. The Lord your God, He will thrust
them out from before you and drive them from before you; and you will possess
their land, just as the Lord your God promised you. Be very firm, then, to keep and do all that is
written in the book of the law of Moses, so that you may not turn aside from it
to the right hand or to the left, so that you will not associate with these
nations, these which remain among you, or mention the name of their gods, or
make anyone swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to
them.
They didn’t trust
that the Lord could lead them out of bondage as He had in times past. They also rejected the Lord’s King He
installed in Zion (cf. Psa. 2:6), who could shatter the nations. Ironically, then, they also engaged in
idolatry, worshipping a Lord of their own making, and would find no forgiveness
of sins in Him unless they repent.
They were
idolators. They feared first the loss of
“our place,” emphasis on the “our.” This
could mean Jerusalem (where they ruled) or the temple (the focus of their
authority). They feared this even above
their patriotic concerns for losing their country (but they use the possessive
of it, as well). They feared Rome for
the same reason they hated Jesus — they valued their influence and power above
all else, the true gods they served.
So, the drive to
their plan was an idolatrous desire to maintain control, and none had a deeper
drive than the high priestly clan of that day.
With that, we turn to Caiaphas, “who was high priest that year” (v.
49). As we’ve already noted, the whole
family wielded control, such as Annas, his father-in-law (cf. John 18:13). However, Annas had run afoul of the Roman
government, and it demanded he be deposed of his position. Thus, Caiaphas was appointed high priest by
the Roman prefect, Valerius Gratus, in AD 18.[4] John
points out that Caiaphas was high priest “that year” because the system no
longer reflected God’s order (appointments for life) and because this would be
the year of Jesus’s murder — under Caiaphas’s leadership.
Caiaphas was not
the friendliest individual, either, as Josephus notes.[5] He interrupts,
“You know nothing at all.” In the
original language, this reads more like, “Y’all do not know nothing,” (which is
considered poor English). Yet, the double
negative in Greek emphasizes the point, and it comes with an emphatic pronoun
there. This is to say that Caiaphas
opens with a rude, sweeping condemnation of the Sanhedrin.
It’s his drive for
power that leads him to such disgust, and to his next statement. In his mind, they haven’t given enough
thought to the only, “logical” course of action. They need to commit to planning the death of
Jesus.
So, he continues, “nor
do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the
people, and that the whole nation not perish.”
He says that murder is the expedient or “better” course of action (LSB). If you are unclear as to how a religious
leader could arrive at such an abominable conclusion, simply remember the
expression, “The end justifies the means.”[6] He
ignores Scripture, which says, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns
the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 17:15). Yet, this faulty reasoning further evidences
of his underlying idolatry and spiritual decline.
The high priest
proposed one man die on the behalf of the people and the nation. The term simply translated
“for” can mean “in behalf of” or “instead of,” making it language of
substitution. Caiaphas says Jesus will
be a sacrifice, like many hundreds and thousands of the sacrifices they make,
and He will be one to keep the nation from perishing. This is a dark plan driven by dark desires.
Yet, there’s great
irony here. Jesus Christ did come to be
a sacrifice for people! Moreover, His
sacrifice keeps people from the second death.
John purposefully points this out in the next verses:
III.
The Determination of their Plan (vv. 51–53)
Now he did not say this on his own
initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going
to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might
also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered
abroad. So from that day on they planned
together to kill Him.
John notes that Caiaphas
did not understand that God granted these words. As Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many plans are in a
man’s heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand.” As Caiaphas and the others are talking about
sacrificing Jesus to save them politically, the Lord was working
sinlessly through their machinations to accomplish His divine purposes of
making Christ a sacrifice for sin.
Now, God is not
causing them to sin, and they will be accountable for their choices. However, the Lord is allowing them, in their
hard-hearted ways, to fulfill His greater plans. They had the natural, sinful drive, but the
Lord was the true determination behind their plan.
How do we know
that? As v. 51 says, “Now he did not say
this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied.” Because Caiaphas was in this position,
dishonoring to it as he was, he received divine prophecy and didn’t even know
it. He spoke a word he determined to
blaspheme Jesus, but God determined the word to proclaim the work of Christ.
It's certainly
ironic that the high priest, in using language of substitution and sacrifice,
would not see the prophecy for what it was.
Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be the suffering servant, noting
in Isaiah 53:8, “By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His
generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for
the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?” What a question
that is, for the whole Sanhedrin here seems ignorant of the connection.
Jesus would die for
the nation. This is, again, language of
substitution. Paul picks this up in 2
Corinthians 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness
of God in Him.” Similarly, Peter says in
1 Peter 2:24, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we
might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” This is substitution.
Substitution is for
specific people. Note that the text says
here Jesus died for the nation. Not only
that, but suggested here is that He dies for all the children of God. Understand that Jesus doesn’t die for
faceless, nameless masses, giving them only a possibility of salvation. Jesus didn’t die to save Caiaphas or anyone
else who rejects Him. Rather, we have
seen in this Gospel Jesus say He dies for His sheep (John 10:11), for His
friends (15:13). He is a substitution
for believers.
And note that these
believers don’t just come from Israel. This
would include the Gentiles. As Jesus
said in John 10:16, “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must
bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.” This is what John means when he talks about
the world being saved by Jesus in John 3:16 or 1 John 2:2 — he’s expanding upon
the nation of Israel to include all God’s people from every nation, Jew and
Gentile.
Not everyone is a
child of God. Yet, anyone, Jew or
Gentile, can become one through Jesus Christ alone. As John notes in the first chapter, “He came
to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave
the right to become children of God, even
to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will
of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:11–13). Once a person receives Christ, he or she
becomes a child of God by virtue of being in Christ; no one is born God’s
child, can work their way into it, or wish themselves into it outside of Jesus
Christ.
Unfortunately for
the Sanhedrin, these men prove that they are not children of God. They hear the words from Caiaphas’s mouth,
and they have the option to see the prophecy behind them or the sinful drive
behind them. They reject the Word of the
Lord and determine to do evil toward Jesus, “from that day on.”
Being determined,
they are left only with the plotting of the murder. In Mark 14:1–2, we read, “Now the Passover
and Unleavened Bread were two days away; and the chief priests and the scribes
were seeking how to seize Him by stealth and kill Him; for they were saying, ‘Not during the festival, otherwise
there might be a riot of the people.’ ”
In Matthew 26:4, we read that “they plotted together to seize Jesus by
stealth and kill Him.” This is
premeditated murder.
Yet, note how weak
their plans are. They know that Jesus is
winning public opinion, and that they will need to capture Him in secret. This exposes a serious deficiency in their
plan, which brings us to the last point.
IV.
The Deficiency of their Plan (vv. 54–57)
Therefore Jesus no longer continued to
walk publicly among the Jews, but went away from there to the country near the
wilderness, into a city called Ephraim; and there He stayed with the
disciples. Now the Passover of the Jews
was near, and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover
to purify themselves. So they were
seeking for Jesus, and were saying to one another as they stood in the temple,
“What do you think; that He will not come to the feast at all?” Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had
given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he was to report it, so that
they might seize Him.
Jesus somehow knew
of their plot, just as in John 7:1. So,
He again withdraws to a more secluded area.
We’re not 100% certain where this is.
One possibility is the city of Ephron (see 2 Chr. 13:19), which was near
Bethel, roughly 12 miles north of Jerusalem.[7] That
would provide plenty of distance between Jesus and the Sanhedrin. One might argue that this isn’t far, even on
foot, if the Sanhedrin was so intent on murdering Him, but this was enough to
thwart their immediate murder of Him.
Why is distance
needed at all? The same Jesus who
supernaturally knows the intentions of man and can raise the dead is not now
cowering for His own life (and if He were, He certainly would have gone
further.). Rather, He has a specific
timetable to complete, so He won’t make it easy for the Sanhedrin to capture
Him before His time. He has a bit more
work to do, though those who reject Him won’t benefit from it.
Instead, He stays
with His disciples. We don’t know what
they talked about, but He chooses to spend His remaining days with them, apart
from His enemies. He spends time with His
friends.
Yet, would He stay
away forever? We read in the next verses
the leadup to the next chapter. The
Passover grows near, with many Jews coming early to Jerusalem for ritual
purification. This may have been
anywhere from 85,000 to 125,000 pilgrims during traveling during these days.[8] The
Jews who come, v. 56, wonder if Jesus will come again for this Passover.
The question exists
because of what we read in v. 57. It
says that “the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone
knew where He was, he was to report it, so that they might seize Him.” The Sanhedrin knows that Jesus will have a
lot of supporters, especially after the raising of Lazarus. Yet, the strength of the plot to kill Jesus
rests on their hopes that these same people will turn Jesus over to them.
Of course, the next
chapter records Jesus entering into Jerusalem triumphantly, on the back of a
donkey. The entire scenario would be
comical if their intentions were not so dark and sinful. These tyrannical governing authorities have no
power if the people don’t give it to them.
So, how will the
Sanhedrin become successful? We’ll
consider that more next time, but we know that one of the disciples was
planning to betray Jesus. Yet, even this
is not a surprise to our Lord, who will only allow Judas to betray Him at the
proper moment.
V.
Conclusion
I hope you
understand that, at the root of all your sins, whether they be great or small
in impact to others, is idolatry. Yet,
there is forgiveness available. If you
are a believer, you are one for whom Christ died. He took all your sins upon Himself, paying
the penalty in your place. If you are
not a believer, don’t repeat the mistake of those who hate Jesus and reject Him
— call upon Him and be saved. Then, in
the mystery of God, you’ll find that the Lord was working to gather you into
the fold this whole time. Praise God for
His providence and grace, which comes in spite of our sin and selves!
[1] John MacArthur Jr., Ed., The MacArthur Study Bible, electronic ed., (Nashville, TN: Word
Pub., 1997), 1607.
[2] A. T. Robertson, Word
Pictures in the New Testament, (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1933), Jn
11:48.
[3] John F. MacArthur Jr., John 1–11, MacArthur New Testament Commentary, (Chicago: Moody
Press, 2006), 483.
[4] MacArthur, The
MacArthur Study Bible, 1608.
[5] Gerald L. Borchert, John 1–11, The New American Commentary, (Nashville: Broadman &
Holman Publishers, 1996), 25A: “Josephus notes that the Sadducean leaders were
boorish in the way they treated others (War
2.166). But we must remember that
Josephus tended to favor the Pharisees in his evaluations.”
[6] Ibid., 25A:365.
[7] MacArthur, The
MacArthur Study Bible, 1608.
[8] Ronald L. Trail, An
Exegetical Summary of John 10–21, Exegetical Summaries, (Dallas, TX: SIL
International, 2018), 105.