The Gospel of John

The Council and the Decision

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 38- 70

Genre:

Track: 038

Dictation Name: RR197V40

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to give praises unto Thy name oh Most High, to show forth Thy loving kindness in the morning and Thy faithfulness every night. Delight Thyself also in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that Thou art He who alone can give us the desires of our hearts, who can answer our prayers, who can relieve our wants and our distress. Draw near to us and grant that we may be near to Thee. Speak to us each the word that we need and grant that the word, Thy word, may abide in our hearts until it has accomplished Thy holy purpose. Bless us in Thy service, make us faithful and joyful therein and in all things grant us Thy peace. This we ask of Thee in the name of Christ, our savior. Amen.

Our scripture is John 11:47-57. Our subject: The Council and the Decision. John 11:47-57.

“ Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.

48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,

50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

51 And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;

52 And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.

53 Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.

54 Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples.

55 And the Jews' passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.

56 Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?

57 Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him.”

We are told in verse forty seven that the council meeting of the chief priests and the Pharisees was held. This means that it was led by the controlling Sadduceen party, they were in power and were cooperative with Rome. The temple and its presiding priests were Sadducees but at this point these two parties, Pharisees and Sadducees who normally would have nothing to do with each other were working together against Christ. The question raised was ‘what do we?’ we are faced with a great crisis and we cannot sit back and await its outcome, we must act. Now it was not a question of who Jesus is, He is a threat to their power and must be dealt with as such. The summation was this, if we let Him alone all men will believe on Him and the Romans will come and take away our place and nation. A man who can raise a man dead and buried four days will have all men believe on Him. Without mentioning Lazarus the leaders were referring to his resurrection as an open obvious fact. They never questioned it. The consequence they feared or said they feared was that the Romans would come and take over Judea and displace the Jews. This was a remote possibility, very remote. True, the people would try to make Jesus their Messiah but this already had been tried and failed. IT had been rejected by our Lord. What the religious leaders were actually fearful of was that Jesus would destroy their power and somehow replace them. Since they were the tools of Roman power the Sadducees at this point assumed openly the leadership in opposing Jesus. When men are evil as the leaders were they were ready to make any alliance with evil whether it was Rome, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, against righteousness.

Throughout history we’ve seen this again and again. We’ve seen it in the long, long subsidy of Turkey by the western powers and at present in the Balkans, the fact that it is the Muslim’s most vicious group that the European powers and the United States have aligned themselves with. When men are evil and in power they ally themselves to evil. In that particular year the Roman appointee as high priest was Caiaphas. Since the office gave great power and wealth to the office holder Rome allowed no man to hold the office more than briefly. Remember that both at the beginning and end of his ministry our Lord went into the temple to drive out the money changers. The money changers would exchange whatever currency you had for a temple currency on the grounds that that alone was holy enough for God to receive. In the process of the exchange the temple made a great deal of money, it would be like selling dollars for fifty cents. They also made money in selling the temple sacrificial animals because they insisted that all the animals were approved by them. So a high priest just in terms of his cut on the take would end up one year in office a multimillionaire. So the Romans were limiting the term of office to a year, they were replacing each new high priest with someone approved by them and in that particular year the Roman appointee as high priest was Caiaphas.

His statement in verses forty nine and fifty was addressed not to doubters as to what the course of action should be but to the squeamish, those who wanted Jesus dead but balked at judicial murder. The issue said Caiaphas is this, who should live, this man or us in our power over the nation? Someone is going to die, either Jesus or us and our rule over the nation. Your choice. No moral question is raised. The issue is seen as one of power and control. When faced with this choice there was no hesitation on their part and let me say there would be no hesitation today given the same choice in Washington, London, Moscow or Rome, Paris, Lisbon or in Germany or any other country. They from that day forth took council together for to put him to death we are told. They were now self-consciously planning His death, the death of one who had revealed Himself to be God’s Son and the Messiah. John adds, ironically, that Caiaphas spoke unknowingly as a prophet, the death of Jesus would indeed save the true nation, the kingdom of God, and His elect from every tribe, tongue and nation, all would be gathered together in membership in His kingdom. Jesus left the area for a remote place, Ephraim, apparently north east of Jerusalem. Doctor Cornelius Van TIl often called attention to epistemological self-consciousness which means roughly knowing ourselves and what we know, what we are. It is the self-conscious recognition of our moral and religious ground and nature. It means that we do not delude ourselves about being fine and noble people, we know what we are.

Men are prone to giving themselves noble motives and reasons when they sin and to credit themselves with good intentions in everything they do. To be epistemologically self-conscious is to be fully aware of what we are and our often specious reasoning about it. Most men fight against epistemological self-consciousness and indulge instead in self-justification. They try to make even their sin into a form of nobility on their part. In prisons as I’ve said before strict caste systems exist. Commonly child molesters are at the bottom, everyone looks down on them. But even the child molesters have their rationales and self-justifications, it was not their fault they blame the child. The council under Caiaphas made a decision and a choice. They offered a rational, this man or us and the nations. All the same their decision was clearly an evil one, they knew better than the disciples that Jesus had declared that on the third day after his crucifixion He would rise from the dead. They therefore asked of Pilate for roman guards at the tomb, they had paid better attention to Jesus’ words than had His disciples but they also trusted that roman soldiers would be able to deal with one risen from the dead. They had more faith in Rome then in God. The festival of Passover was nearing and as the pilgrims began to enter Jerusalem their great subject of interest was Jesus. They asked one another what think ye, that he will not come to the feast? Their attitude was clearly not hostility, it was curiosity, they wanted to be the bystanders and audience to history’s key event.

They no doubted wanted the blessed results of it but no personal risk therein. They were a devout and religious people but their desire was to be uninvolved. We know that a fairly considerable number of them did become Christians but we also know that perhaps most of them were convinced that Jesus was the Christ but they did not want to be involved. They wanted the results of the Messiah’s rule but none of the responsibility for standing for Him. Meanwhile the chief priests and the Pharisees, that is both the major power groups in the nation had, verse fifty seven tells us, given a commandment. That if any man knew where He, Jesus were he should show it that they might take Him. Their long animosity one to another now gave way to an alliance against Jesus. The Sadducees and the Pharisees alike wanted Jesus crucified. To understand the enormity of their evil remember their words, what do we? What shall we do? This man doeth many miracles. They knew He worked miracles, they knew that He had raised Lazarus from the dead as well as [unknown] and the widow of Nun’s son. They knew that Jesus was right in stating that His miracles were God’s work in and through Him. They were therefore not only rejecting Jesus they were rejecting God. Their choice was the nation and their own power rather than God and Jesus Christ. Here again we see epistemological self-consciousness like all sinners only more so. They were without excuse. They knew what they were doing, they had recognized Jesus far more clearly than His own disciples had.

They had sentenced Jesus to death because He was God’s Messiah and not theirs. They wanted a Messiah in their own image who would do what they wanted and this man was God’s Messiah and therefore He had to die. Let us pray.

We thank Thee our Father that Thou who art Lord of Heaven and Earth art mindful of us, Thou has sent Thine only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us by His atoning sacrifice and death. Make us mindful always how rich we are in Him that we have been made heirs of all things, that we have eternal life, that we have an unending destiny of service and of joy. Make us therefore to know that He so much as for us did do will do yet more and care for us. Teach us to cast our every care upon Thee, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes we have to remember that for the first few centuries most of the church was Jewish and even into the high middle ages a good deal of the leadership was also Jewish. In other words, there continued a tradition of leadership on the part of the Jewish converts of rigorous knowledge of the whole scripture and rigorous application. As a result sometimes a great deal of attention in the church between the church and the Jews was because of anger on the part of the converted Jews against their fellow Jews. In fact there is reason to believe that the grand inquisitor in Spain was Jewish in origin. So sometimes family fights are the worst, this does not absolve the Christians who also took part in such things but the picture we have when we know the facts is that the input of Jewish converts has been a key one in the history of the faith. In fact for reformed and evangelical leaders the best study of the life of Jesus is the two volume study by a British professor, a Jewish convert, Alfred Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, a great work. One of the things we need to recognize is that John in writing this gospel does single out the religious leaders because he in effect says they made themselves the Jewish people. They spoke for all the Jews, alright let them take the blame then. But there’s no question that he himself was closely related to people in high power in the temple. We’ll come to that later on but John is trying to call attention to the full religious dimension of the conflict and how the highest awareness of the nature of our Lord was on the part of the religious leaders. They knew what they were rejecting, they knew what they were working against and whom they killed.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. We give thanks unto Thee that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. That He having given His life for us will now find it a simple thing to care for us. So give us grace day by day to come to the throne of grace in Christ’s name and commit our every want, our need, our care, our hope into Thine omnipotent hands. . And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.