John 11:45-57

Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us.

As we start off the week still in, Gospel of John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

Finishing that up today, starting here with verse 45.

Just a recap of last weeks.

If you haven't had a chance to see those yet,

we've been working our way through the Lazarus story.

Jesus has at this point called Lazarus out of the tomb.

So resurrection has happened.

Jesus has demonstrated, his power, his, connection to God.

Lots of those things in the story in and again,

if you've not been with us, those are all available.

You can go check it out.

But we pick up today sort of in the aftermath or what happens next.

A little bit of a longer reading, but, well, let me go through it quickly,

and then we'll come back and talk it through.

Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen

what Jesus did, believed in him.

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council,

and they said, what are we to do?

This man is performing many signs.

If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him,

and the Romans will come down and destroy both our holy place and our nation.

But one of them,

Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year, said to them,

you know nothing at all.

You do not understand that it is better for you to have one

man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.

He didn't say this on his own, but being the high priest that year,

he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation and not for the nation

only, but to gather the one to gather into one the dispersed children of God.

So from that day they planned to put him to death.

Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews,

but went from there to a town called Ephraim

in the region near the wilderness, and he remained there with the disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many of them went up from the country

to Jerusalem before the Passover to justify themselves.

They were looking for Jesus and asking one another as they stood in the temple.

What do you think?

Surely he will not come to the festival, Willy.

Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew

where Jesus was should let them know, so they might arrest him.

So I think we see this,

occasionally in John.

I think we've seen this before. Michael.

In the aftermath of a story, Jesus then tells us kind of

what it means or the implications of it and the implications of it

here, as we've seen consistently, are that some believe.

And on the other hand, it again ratchets up

the tension with the leaders.

Interestingly enough, rather than simply

being offended at Jesus or with the idea that they're losing power,

we get some kind of behind the scenes story here about worry about the Romans

and Caiaphas having this idea that Jesus is going to die

to bring the people together.

There is,

there is a little bit of a positive

spin here that is not typical, I would think, in the gospel,

and I would say later on is not even typical in the Gospel of John.

But this kind of listening in conversation provides

an interesting aspect to the story, though I think the takeaway

is that it again cements the resolve of the Jewish leaders

that they fully commit to a path which will see Jesus put to death.

I think another pattern that we're seeing happen here is a thing

that has been really common in some of these other miracle stories,

when we see the balance between those who believe

the amount of time that John spends on that,

and then the amount of time spent on those who disbelieve.

And just note here, verse 45, we have one

sentence here, basically many

who do believe and they believe in

who Jesus is based upon the miracle that happens in the resurrection.

But then note how substantial the section of the disbelief is.

And I do think that this is a theme in John that we've already seen,

that this has happened before, where John really just basically says,

and some believe Jesus and then moves on to the debate,

I think especially of the blind man and the healing of the blind man.

There's a whole story connected to that man.

And the question of,

you know, who's the one who made you see and what kind of seeing is it?

Is it just physical seeing or is it spiritual seeing?

And then there's all this conflict with the religious leaders.

You just suffice it to say that John, very much does give a lot of time

to some of the antagonism that Jesus encounters throughout his ministry.

And I think that this plays importantly within the major themes of of John.

Clint, because Jesus is the ultimate testimony

to God's creative power, to God's redemptive desire for the world.

And yet when Jesus stands in front of the people, John wants it to be made clear.

Some believe, but it's almost as just.

John shakes his fingers.

But let me tell you all about those people who don't believe.

Right?

And I think that's such an important story arc for John,

because ultimately, all of this is laying the foundation

for that ultimate question why did Jesus die?

And not just why did Jesus die a human death?

Why did Jesus, get sought out?

Why was he given a criminal's death?

What made Jesus so caustic

as to make him a target of the very Jews who are waiting and watching for a messiah

and and John knows the more and more that you talked about how Jesus

is the ultimate revelation of God, the harder and harder

it is to understand, well, then why do people keep rejecting him?

Why does he end up dead if he is showing these miraculous signs?

And and more and more, we see that there are all of these reasons

behind the scenes.

And I think that's what makes this text maybe somewhat unique, is we see in it

some of the inner logic, that kind of conscience conversation

happening in the back of the mind.

Well, maybe it's better for this guy to die

to quell the crowds, even if the more and more

who believe in him, the more and more likely

it is that the Romans get spooked and they come down hard on us. So.

So maybe the best course of action is you lose one for the sake of the whole.

Maybe maintaining the status quo is the best thing to do.

And that is the kind of justification which I think is beginning to build,

not just a foundation, but start to build up some of the higher

edifice of John's proclamation of the gospel,

that this is where human brokenness gets sideways to revelation,

that when we think that the proper negation of what is

is more important than what God is doing in the now, though, that's

where we find ourselves on the wrong side of this revelation story.

And I do think there's a

a subtle shift in that, Michael, because

in the other stories,

think about the man born blind.

The Pharisees question that narrative, you know, were you blind?

Did they hear it?

It's very subtle, but it seems like

they no longer ask those questions.

Their questions are, what do we do?

Too many people are believing them.

He's doing these many signs.

It is almost as if they acknowledge

that Jesus is actually doing these things.

But now their fear turns to, well,

what's going to happen if everybody believes him?

They don't any longer, at least in this context,

seem to be questioning if Jesus is able.

But what will the repercussions be?

Well, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come.

They'll get angry.

They'll come down on us and destroy things. And.

And then you have Caiaphas,

the high priest, who says, yeah, don't you know it would be more expedient.

It would be better for us

if we just get rid of him and and make it good for everyone else.

And so there's a sort of managerial kind of,

It's it's too strong to call it a charge,

but I think John here is

showing us what we've been led

to in nearly every story.

This isn't about truth.

This isn't about God's actual plan.

It isn't about God's actual work.

This is about preservation of power.

This is about doing what's good for us.

And the conclusion is,

from that day on, they plan to put him to death.

Now, if you've been with us through John, you know that Jesus,

as it's portrayed as he's portrayed in John, is not afraid.

But nevertheless, Jesus, it says,

no longer walked about openly.

That in the Gospel of John has more to do with it

being Jesus time than Jesus being worried.

Jesus is not worried in this gospel about anything.

However, he does withdraw.

And this also, I think in some ways Michael marks a turning point

in the gospel itself because we will now

get a lot more internal

and small group conversations and less of the big outward stories

as as we funnel in on Jesus preparing for the cross.

In other gospels, we have turning points like this,

where it says that Jesus turns his face to Jerusalem.

And I think there's a similar kind of movement happening here in this gospel

where Jesus has now

essentially had his fate determined.

And make no mistake about it, the the,

the miracle that does it is the miracle of resurrection

that is messing with things

at a level in an order that is unacceptable to earthly power,

and specifically to call this out religious earthly power.

Because in John, Clint, I think there's a really honest

kind of engagement with the reality

that the Jews and specifically what John means by that,

I think most of the time the religious leaders of the Jews,

they find earthly power, they find earthly stability

inside their spiritual, religious belief and practices.

And it's used as a way of propping up and holding that

that earthly power with the tools and resources,

the law and the the execution of that law amongst the people.

And you know, this remains, by the way, a critique of Christianity today,

that that Christians have used our religious belief to be a kind of,

maybe best a prop and in other cases,

maybe a prison to sort of keep people hemmed in.

And I think ultimately, John is revealing the worst part of that

within these religious leaders worldview, their perspective.

They look at this as a situation in which one man

is drawing a kind of attention that that really subverts

the order that the religious elite hold, that this is what it means to be a Jew.

This is how one practices that this is what's in field and what's out of field.

And when God takes on flesh, when Jesus walks the earth,

when the light comes into the darkness, that by definition destroys

all of those boundaries that would have been assumed or expected beforehand.

And the result is that it undercuts these earthly powers and,

and, and sort of the stable making ness of those powers

and creates a really tumultuous moment.

And I think what's fascinating about this turn, then, is

we see that John not only says that Jesus no longer is walking openly among them,

but we also get the set up for the next and most important part of the story,

which is that now Passover of the Jews is near.

So this is a moment in which you're going to have

a huge migration of Jews to the center of worship in Jerusalem.

You're going to have that build up of the crowds.

You're going you're going to have the the story itself.

Now lead us to a pinnacle moment.

And it's fascinating that we have now

in the questions of John, which, you know, are so important.

What do you think?

Surely he's not going to come to the festival, is he?

And you've been with us in John long enough to know

a question like that was never going to be left

hanging without some amazing answer coming in the story.

It's just Jesus continues

to really not just rile up.

I think Jesus is seen as a an existential threat

to the order of ways that things were, even if those things weren't good

and everyone looked forward to them being turned over,

they were accepted as the reality of what was and when.

One has the power of restoring a dead man

to life, one has now, shown the kind of power

that has the ability to upend all of those other things.

And at this point now, Jesus is going to be essentially living into that question.

Well, he's not gutsy enough to come for Passover.

He's not going to come with the religious leaders making this decision.

He he's not going to keep going forward.

And of course, in the Gospel of John, Jesus is going to do as Jesus will do.

And we just simply as a reader, we sort of have a camera right behind him,

and we follow him as he makes his way towards his ultimate revelation.

Yeah, I think the tension here is ratcheting up.

Part of that is that

we're very close to Jesus entering Jerusalem, as you mentioned, Michael.

Also, we're not quite done with the Lazarus story yet

because the Jewish awareness of the problem of Lazarus

is going to lead them to try to to deal with that situation as well.

And we really, as we as

we up the tension in the story, we now,

yeah, I mean, it's not

quite past the point of no return, but at this point,

from the high priest down, the clear consensus is

this man needs to be eliminated,

that the course of action that these religious leaders

plot and plan on is to exterminate, to get rid of Jesus.

And so it we're, you know,

a little better than halfway through the book by chapters and

that's that reality is now going to hang over.

There's been tension, but now there's intention.

They intend to kill Jesus.

They've they've tried. They've wanted to before.

Now this is fully their plan.

And I think that does color the rest of the story.

You've got to correct me if I'm wrong of my memory here,

but we have had heats of passion where Jesus has done things

and in the moment people have sought to kill him.

I don't remember

another time where the order was, you need to find him and turn him over.

Certainly not.

Not from the top down.

I mean, not involving the council and the high priest.

And, you know, this, I think, does represent a structural commitment, a kind of,

codification or a

galvanizing of now

all of those involved in

the power structure of Judaism want Jesus dead.

And I do think that's a that's a new step in the story.

We realize that the way that this book works is it plods along in some ways.

Sometimes it's these revelation moments, and then you see,

I think almost like seismic waves that kind of come out of it.

You see those sort of

come in in different layers, and I don't want to believe this.

I certainly don't want to make this,

feel like a just a sort of reprisal over and over.

But I do think there's a way in which this is moving.

It maybe is moving slowly, but like the tide coming

in, the waves are moving up further and further and further up the beach.

And so what we have to remember here is that John is showing us

that when the Son of God takes on flesh,

that not only will some miss it, but

some will be turned to the reverse, to be angered,

to be plotting, to put Jesus on literally the hitlist.

And and there's many reasons for it.

And a wise reader, I think Clint sees in that not just an invitation

to understand the plight of the Jews in this situation

happening there, but I think maybe there's some wisdom in here for us as well.

Devotional.

Just individually, we might look at that and say, you know, if we encounter

Jesus, we may have this idea that would be a beautiful thing.

I'd love to spend time with him,

but but no doubt the biblical account is that Jesus brings comfort.

But Jesus also subverts, and each one of us would, in our own way,

find that to be very slippery ground, because Jesus is going to also convict.

And the reality is, in the face of that conviction,

this story is, is in another wave,

one step further reaching towards its climax.

I think as a storyteller, John has consistently had a pattern

in which he tells us what Jesus did, what happened, and then he tells us

the back story of what happened because of what Jesus did.

And within that backstory, within that, what next?

There's always that two fold path, right?

Some believed we've read it in the aftermath of every story.

Some believed, some believed, many believed, then many believed,

others believed.

And the other path is some denied.

Some got angry now, some committed to kill Jesus.

And that's

that's the pattern

that John understands uses to understand the gospel.

That's what Jesus does.

Jesus does amazing things because he's Jesus.

And then the reaction to Jesus is belief or non-belief, belief or jealousy, belief

or anger, belief or hatred and we that that's

so well woven into this.

And again, yes, it gets repetitive,

but it is so deeply embedded in what John thinks the gospel means

that I don't think you can separate it from the storytelling.

I think that's well summarized. I'm not going to try to do more.

I'll only say that the Bible does have moments of scandal.

It has moments of things that are shocking.

And I think the story to come tomorrow is one of those stories.

So I certainly hope that you'll join us as we continue on in this book.

There's a lot more to come.

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And we look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Thanks, everybody.