Power and the glory forever. Amen.
If you would please turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 11, beginning at verse 45. John writes, ‘Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, ‘What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone 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 understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.’ He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation. And not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death. Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness to a town called Ephraim. And there he stayed with the disciples.
From the Gospel of John, we turn back to the prophet Isaiah, chapter 52, beginning at verse 13. Isaiah writes, ‘Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted as many were astonished at you.’ His appearance was so marred beyond human resemblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind. So shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him. For that which has not been told them, they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand.
Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that has led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring, and he shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered among the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Almighty God, you speak to us. You tell us what you’re going to do and then you do it. Help us to see your work. Help us to believe and trust in the effectiveness of your word and your work upon our lives for our salvation, for our faith, for your love of us. Help us to be those who are accounted righteous. Help us to be repentant and faithful people knowing that it is our sins that Jesus was stricken for and that it is his righteousness that we are now clothed with by faith alone. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
So the evangelist will next shift our perspective away from considering Jesus the person to prophecies about Jesus within the context of their impending historical fulfillment. After Jesus’s friend Lazarus had been raised from the dead after four days sealed inside of his tomb, John explains that many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him. And some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
I mean, these Jews already most likely had a belief in a future resurrection of the dead. And so, after witnessing this miraculous occurrence, after seeing this sign performed, many of them began to believe in Jesus. They may have been believing in him as a prophet, but now they were beginning to believe in him as the Messiah. And they may even have begun to believe in him as the Son of God. But some others of them went and informed the Pharisees and the Jewish leadership about what had just happened.
Perhaps it was only one or two people. Maybe it was half of them or maybe it was even most of them. But however many they were, they went to these religious leaders with bad intent. They went to the Pharisees not so that they could believe in Jesus but so that they could use this against Jesus. They went to the Pharisees because their hearts were hardened by sin and their eyes were blind to the truth by the machinations of the devil.
And so after being informed about this miracle of resurrection, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council. And although these leaders had already met to discuss Jesus several times before, this moment is really the formal beginning of their conspiracy against Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God. Yet, we cannot really appreciate just how large this conspiracy was in comparison to other infamous murders or their attempts without first doing some math.
I mean, John F. Kennedy was most probably assassinated and killed by one single man acting alone. There were ten people convicted as having participated in the plot and assassination of Abraham Lincoln. And there was an indeterminate but very large number of persons who were aware of and actively participating in the failed Operation Valkyrie, a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler that failed on July 20th, 1944. But the conspiracy against Jesus was not crafted by some small cabal of men gathered together in a smoke-filled room with drawn curtains, doors locked and guarded. It was many men and it was semi-public.
John describes three important and easily identifiable groups of Jewish persons participating in this conspiracy. You have the chief priests, the Pharisees, and the council. But who were these groups really? The chief priests are a very distinctive but nebulous category and they are the most important influence in the plot. To understand who these chief priests really were, we need to recollect some details from the prior 1500 years of Jewish religious history.
The New Testament category of chief priests concerns the role and person of the high priest. Moses’s brother Aaron was the first Israelite high priest, with his four sons serving alongside him as lesser priests. After Nadab and Abihu were killed by the Lord’s judgment against them, the third son Eleazar became Aaron’s heir and successor to the high priesthood. And then Phinehas, Eleazar’s son, when he killed an Israelite idolator of Baal Peor, cemented his lineage as that to the high priest and eventually he served in that role through most of the judges period because this duty belonged to them for life.
After the reign of King David, Solomon established Zadok, a descendant of Aaron through the line of Phinehas, as high priest. And afterwards and after the exile, Zadok’s descendants continued to serve in this role until the difficulties Judea had with the Greeks and the Seleucids. After the revolution begun by the sons of Mattathias, Simon Thasi assumed and then united the hereditary roles of ethnarch, king, and priest, assuming them for himself somewhere around 140 BC and established their Hasmonean kingdom with a dynasty of king priests.
But after Jerusalem was captured by the forces of Herod the Great and Mark Anthony and Herod became king of Judea, this role of high priest transitioned into a purely political role appointed by the king. And the men whom Herod chose to appoint were certain men to be so that they were from no eminent families but barely of those who were priests according to Josephus. This practice continued for the next 107 years with 28 high priests being appointed and deposed according to political whims and social expediency. During most of Jesus’s lifetime, this appointment was assigned to several different members of the house of Annas.
The Syrian governor Quirinius appointed Annas as high priest in 6 AD, a role that he held until the reign of Tiberius Caesar began in 14 AD when he was deposed by Valerius Gratus, who was the Roman procurator of Judea immediately before Pontius Pilate. During his 11-year tenure, Gratus appointed four high priests, including the son Eleazar and son-in-law, Joseph Caiaphas, the son and son-in-law of Annas. After the rule of Pilate ended, Caiaphas was similarly deposed and replaced by his wife’s brother, Jonathan.
So in total, the house of Annas held seven appointments to the high priesthood in six men: Annas, Eleazar, Caiaphas, Jonathan, Theophilus, and Ananias II. So it is reasonable for us to conclude that the chief priests mentioned by John were all members of this political priestly family of Annas. And it’s also relevant to note that they were inclined to the views of the Sadducees because ultimately politics was their true religion.
Now the council was a deliberative body called the Sanhedrin. It consisted of 70 elders and it rendered judgment and made decisions about all matters concerning Jewish religion. Its origin is traced through to Exodus 24 when Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel went up on the mountain and they saw the God of Israel. They beheld God and ate and drank, as well as the advice that Jethro gave to Moses, saying, ‘Look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy, and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. Let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves.’
Now, scripture records only the names of three of these 70 men serving on the council during the time of Jesus’s death and resurrection. We have Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and Gamaliel, two of whom were men that supported Christ, quiet, and one who opposed his teachings publicly. But when the other gospel writers mention the council as the whole council, they are meaning it in the sense of a representative sense where certain decisions and actions are made and once they’re made, they represent the will of the body regardless of whether or not there was any internal disagreement.
Then lastly, we have the Pharisees. Despite how they are often portrayed in the gospels, they were not some monolithic power block. They were actually a small and strict sect of the Jews, more like a denomination really, and they were uniquely identifiable by their doctrine and practice. But while they were small numerically, they were exceptionally influential among the general populace, and that social support gave them a great deal of political influence.
Now, unlike our modern denominations, the Pharisees were not organized together formally. They were rather adherents that were found in every sphere and strata of life. So their influence was present more in certain members of the Sanhedrin rather than being a distinct and separate group of individuals. I mean, there is no known named leader of the Pharisees. So even if this conspiracy was limited to just the family of Annas and just the principal movers and shakers of the Sanhedrin, we should still be able to assume that there was around 10 or 20 people or more.
Again, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, ‘What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away our place and our nation.’ The logic of their argument betrays their true concern, and that concern was not for the spiritual condition of Israel. They acknowledged the plain fact that Jesus was performing many signs. They affirmed the truth of his miracles. They did not consider Jesus to be a fraud or a false prophet. They recognized the truth of what he was doing even while they refused to accept the truth about what it meant.
They understood what the logical and natural consequence of Jesus, of what Jesus’s many signs should be: that everyone will believe in him. Everyone should rightly be beginning to believe in Jesus first as a prophet of God, and then as the Messiah of God. But then if the Jewish people would begin believing in Jesus as the Messiah, then they might become politically motivated and be willing to rise up and reassert local control. They might be willing to fight for Jewish independence from Rome.
And they might be inclined to declare Jesus king of the Jews, a position he was legitimately entitled to, unlike the Idumean dynasty of Herod or the now extinct Hasmonean dynasty. Because Jesus belonged to the tribe of Judah and he could trace his lineage to King David. And as Jacob had said, the scepter will never depart from Judah.
If the Jewish people revolted, then the Romans would be certain to respond with overwhelming force because Judea held strategic value to the empire, namely its location as the land junction connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa. And if the Romans responded in force, these Jewish leaders expected that they would take away both our place and our nation.
Now the Greek term translated here as ‘place’ is ‘topos,’ and it’s used in reference specifically to a location, a location as in their land or their territory. But the Greek term translated as ‘nation’ here is ‘ethnos,’ and that’s most often used in reference to different people groups.
So what they were truly fearing that they confessed was the loss of their territory and the deportation of their people. They feared a repetition of the Assyrian deportation of the northern kingdom, and they feared a repetition of the Babylonian deportation and exile. But lastly, the final implication for them was that if such a deportation occurred, then they would personally lose all of their wealth, their social status, their power, and influence.
So following this logic, it becomes understandable about why they would feel so threatened by Jesus and his ministry. And since they acted on this logic, it’s clear that these conspirators were unregenerate and worldly sinners despite all of their many public expressions of piety.
Then one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.’ Caiaphas, the appointed high priest, the top ecclesiastical person in first-century Judaism, spoke with the highest authority, declaring that it is better for you that one man should die for the people.
He used the language of sacrifice, specifically a substitutionary sacrifice, not that the whole nation should perish. He used the language of appeasement, of atonement. This kind of language demonstrates that the high priest considered, in advance of the act, that the planned death and murder of Jesus of Nazareth would be as a sacrifice for the benefit of the whole Jewish people, for all God’s chosen elect.
And then John plainly explains the fuller reality of the situation to us. Caiaphas did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
We see scripture interpreting scripture. And so under the influence, the wisdom, guidance, and guarding of the Holy Spirit, John authoritatively recorded the words by Caiaphas as prophecy. And while we would reasonably wonder or question how John knew about this prophecy or know its particulars, we don’t need to assume that it came through supernatural means since word of it most likely spread to men like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and many or most of the whole council, even including those who weren’t there.
Because there had to be widespread agreement with Caiaphas’s view in order for this conspiracy to move forward. There had to be agreement and the apathy that gets demonstrated through expressed neutrality. So we may reasonably expect that John and the other disciples learned of this prophecy after the fact through the memory of council members who would have eventually come to faith in Christ.
But this prophecy by Caiaphas was not uniquely his. This prophecy was echoing the prophetic words of Isaiah regarding the Lord’s suffering servant where he wrote, ‘For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him.’
I mean, although Jesus was actually somebody from somewhere during the first century, Jesus of Nazareth was a nobody from nowhere. There was nothing inherently attractive about him. There was nothing that should have naturally drawn people to him. It was his ministry, his miracles, and the irresistible call of the Holy Spirit that drew and still draws people to Jesus today.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. These Jewish leaders rejected Jesus and his teachings. He was rejected and driven away from his hometown. For John himself had testified that Jesus had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.
And despite having the wondrous power to heal people who were sick, Jesus chose instead to suffer human sorrow and grief when his friend Lazarus got sick and died before commanding the dead man to live again. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. People turned away from him in shame, such as those who left Bethany and reported to the priests in the council with bad intention and those who chose to not speak out or stand up for what is right and true because of their fear of people who became complicit in the conspiracy against Jesus through their silence and inaction.
Then just as now, silence is often interpreted as consent. All of these elements had so far been fulfilled in Jesus’s life. And now just one final part of this prophecy remained needing to be fulfilled. Surely he’s borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed.
This part was made certain through the words of Caiaphas declaring that Jesus’s death would be a sacrifice of propitiation to turn aside wrath foreseen. But Caiaphas was wrong about whose wrath would be getting turned aside. He was ignorant concerning the fullness of the atonement that Jesus would achieve for God’s people. Caiaphas lacked the necessary faith given by God’s grace alone to be expected to benefit from the salvation and forgiveness of sin that Jesus would purchase with his death in this time.
Now the church has always understood Jesus’s death on the cross to be an atoning sacrifice. But we often do a poor job explaining why or how we have reached that interpretive conclusion. And while the idea of Christ making such a sacrifice is central to the message of the anonymous letter to the Hebrews, it is virtually absent from the letters of Paul. Most of Paul’s references to sacrifice concern living lives of Christian obedience as living sacrifices pleasing and acceptable to God, a sentiment that is echoed by Peter as well.
But Paul, however, does directly connect the death of Christ to one particular old covenant sacrifice, that of the Passover lamb. But the Passover sacrifice was not an atonement for sin. It was a propitiation, a turning aside of God’s wrath against the Egyptians and turning God’s favor towards the Israelites. But the Passover, the old covenant, was not a sacrifice of expiation or a removal of sin and sin’s guilt.
Jesus died. He was executed and murdered during the feast of unleavened bread after having celebrated the feast of Passover with his disciples. The lamb had already been sacrificed. And during that meal, he reestablished or reconsecrated Passover as the Lord’s supper under the new covenant. And during this reconsecration, Jesus amended the traditional liturgy as Luke describes, and he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’ Jesus’s broken body and poured out blood united the expiation of sin with his propitiation against God’s wrath. While eating them is a memorial and a celebration of our spiritual union into Christ and our receipt of their benefit. As all the rights and rituals of the old covenant were foreshadowings of Christ, so the spiritual effect of Passover and the Day of Atonement rights are reasonably united in and through the one singular sacrifice of the singular Christ upon the cross that they were always pointing towards.
The prophecy of Caiaphas did not make the death of Jesus a sacrifice of atonement, but through his words, he affirmed it in advance alongside Isaiah, who wrote, ‘Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide a portion with him, a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.’
So offered as a substitutionary sacrifice by Israel’s high priest on behalf of God’s chosen people, Jesus carried our sins to the cross. He poured out his soul interceding for us. That’s propitiation, so that we would be accounted righteous, justified by expiation, and accounting that we receive only by faith and trust in Christ alone. Because it’s his righteousness that we’re justified by. It’s only through our God-given faith in him who died that we have hope and promise of life eternal fellowship and friendship with God.
And finally, from that day on, they made plans to put him to death. And Jesus no longer walked openly among the Jews but went from there to the region near the wilderness to a town called Ephraim. And there he stayed with the disciples. The course of the Jews was settled. They agreed that Jesus needed to die. They agreed that it would be the only way to prevent the destruction of their nation, their way of life, and their people.
They were in agreement, and they were wrong about so much. They were blind to their wickedness by their own self-righteousness, and they were blind to how their sinfulness would be used for the salvation of Israel by God. Meanwhile, Jesus once again left the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. We’re told that he went to a town called Ephraim, located somewhere near the Judean wilderness. And although it is uncertain where precisely this town was, its proximity to the wilderness supports a location somewhere north of Jerusalem in the vicinity of Jericho, the desert, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan River Valley.
Jesus remaining in such a location at this time is actually in harmony with Luke chapters 18 and 19 when Jesus healed a blind beggar outside of Jericho and ate with Zacchaeus the tax collector in Jericho as he was making his final journey up to Jerusalem for the Passover.
So really, what does all this mean for us? Now, having this behind-the-scenes look into the conspiracy against Jesus reminds and encourages us in a few different elements of our faith. First, it reminds us that God truly does, can, and will turn even the worst of things to the good some way and somehow. Believing this, knowing this, by having this example strengthens our ability and willingness to trust God, his providence, and his plan even when we do not have the hows or the whys explained for us.
John gives us evidence to remind us that God is in control even when his control seems to be in the background. Second, this prophecy shows us how redemptive history is connected as one single continuous thread, past, present, and future. Third, it explains some of why we believe what we believe about the finished work of Christ. Fourth, John’s explanation that Jesus would die for the nation and not for the nation only but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad refutes the lies told by some that the full inclusion of Gentiles within the people of God was a later invention of Paul.
It refutes one of the greatest lies of dispensational eschatology that God’s Israel and the church are not one united people, that God has one plan of salvation for the Jews and another one for the church. John plainly tells us that Jesus gathers into one the children of God who are scattered abroad, drawing all of us from every nation, tribe, tongue, culture, and family in the world.
And then when we see that lie exposed, that whole system collapses because the only hope for anyone’s salvation depends entirely upon Christ himself and the mercy of God’s adoption and not our works. Fifth, by interpreting the life and ministry of Jesus in light of Isaiah’s servant, we remember that salvation is entirely and solely the work of God. The entirety of our contribution is the sin that made our need for saving necessary. ‘All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’
Once we understand that we can never assume that we chose Christ or that we have or can do anything to earn, deserve, or merit saving, we can only praise and thank God for his mercy and grace, for his covenant with Christ to redeem us from our sin and adopt us as his chosen and beloved people.
Christ has saved us by his grace. Now it remains to us to respond in faith with our works. Sixth and lastly, although the Gospel of John is different from the other three synoptic gospels in its tone and content by the writer’s intention, it still has synergies with the others. The three and the one do not contradict one another, but instead they work together by the power of the Holy Spirit to better present a clear narrative whole and teach us everything that we need to know and believe about who Jesus is, what he has done for us, and how we may trust in him for life.
This internal written consistency between the gospels and with the letters of Paul and with the prophets and the law of Moses is further evidence of the singular author and subject of scripture: the Logos, who is theos, andros, Jesus Christ, God the Son and the Son of God.
So many writers writing across so many centuries, writing for so many different contemporary audiences, could not have generated the authoritative and inherent text of scripture unless there was always and only one single mind directing it the whole time. So remember, the story of the Bible is the story of Jesus from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. The story of the Bible is Jesus’s story told for us and for our good benefit of faith.
So trust God’s word. Trust his promises and trust in his fulfillment of them. Trust Jesus Christ. He alone is the just justifier, the righteous servant of God who has atoned for your sin and for my sin, gaining the Lord’s forgiveness for us, his beloved children of adoption, his brothers and sisters. Amen.