One evening, while waiting for a bus, a young man was standing with a crowd of people looking in the widow of a taxidermist shop. In the center of the window was a large owl that attracted the attention of all who passed by. The self-appointed expert began to criticize the job done on it. “If I couldn’t do better than that,” he said pompously, “I’d find another business. Just look at it. The head is out of proportion, the pose of the body is unnatural, and the feet are pointed in the wrong direction.” Just then, the owl turned its head and gave the fellow a broad wink. The crowd laughed as the critic slinked away (Bible Illustrator #662, 1/1998.8).
That young man made a fool of himself, and so do most critics, who substitute their own notions about reality for the truth. When people criticize a Rembrandt or even a Picasso, they only prove their own ignorance. They only judge themselves, not the artists.
So how can you avoid making a fool of yourself especially in a day and age when there is so much fake news, which fools so many people. Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to John 18, John 18, where some people came face to face with the Truth and embarrassed themselves.
John 18:1-3 When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons (ESV).
That “band of soldiers,” or detachment, in Jesus’ day usually contained 600 armed men. Judas, no doubt, felt powerful with 600 Roman soldiers behind him, along with several Jewish officers. But that’s what Judas sought—power and prestige. He sought that power in Jesus’ Kingdom, but Jesus was building a different kind of kingdom. So Judas turned against Jesus and betrayed Him for 30 pieces of silver. Then Judas led this army of thugs against Jesus.
John 18:4 Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” (ESV)
Instead of cowering in fear, Jesus steps right up to them.
John 18:5 They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them (ESV).
When Jesus answered, “…I am He,” He used the personal name for God Himself—He literally said, “I AM.”
John 18:6 When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground (ESV).
They were overwhelmed in the presence of Almighty God, Himself.
John 18:7-9 So he asked them again, “Whom do you seek?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go.” This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one” (ESV).
Jesus asks them to let His disciples go, and they do! Who is in charge here? Who is in control? Certainly not the 600 soldiers. Certainly not the Jewish officials. And certainly not Judas. No! Jesus is in charge, having overwhelmed 600 soldiers with the mere mention of His name. Jesus is Lord, the sovereign ruler of the universe, so if you want to avoid making a fool of yourself…
SUBMIT TO JESUS AS YOUR LORD.
Surrender yourself to Him. Yield to His will for your life and avoid falling flat on your face like all those who oppose Him.
In A.D. 180, the aging Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was about to pass the throne onto one of his generals, the General Maximus Decimus Meridius. But before that could happen, the emperor's son, Commodus, killed his father in order to establish himself on the throne. He then ordered the murder of Maximus and his family. Maximus’ wife and son were killed, but Maximus escapes, is later sold into slavery, and becomes a nameless gladiator. That’s the setting for the movie called The Gladiator.
The climax of the story comes late in the movie. After Maximus wins a great battle in the Coliseum, Emperor Commodus wants to meet this unknown gladiator face to face. The crowd watches as the emperor, in full pomp, strides with his soldiers and his son onto the sands of the Coliseum. Take a Look: Show Gladiator—My Name Is Maximus).
The emperor asks the simple question: “What is your name?”
Maximus, streaked with blood and dirt from the battle, takes off his helmet and says: “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, general of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife.”
The crowd erupts with a deafening roar, while the emperor visibly shakes under the weight of the true identity of a man he thought was a mere slave.
Sometime after the emperor flees the Coliseum, he faces defeat and death at the hands of Maximus (Gladiator, Dreamworks, 2000, rated R, written by David Franzoni, directed by Ridley Scott, 1:28:30 to 1:32:00).
That’s what happens to those who oppose Christ, for His name is higher than any earthly name. He is the I AM, the sovereign ruler of the universe, and those who oppose Him end up meeting their demise, sooner or later, just like Commodus and just like Judas just a few days after he betrays Jesus. He ended up hanging himself with regret over what he had done. So don’t oppose Jesus. Submit to Him as your Lord. Yield to His will for your life.
David Jeremiah says, “For about five dollars you can buy a four-inch plastic bobblehead Jesus that bounces on a metal spring and adheres firmly to the dashboard of your car. One advertisement for this product says you can ‘stick him where you need forgiveness’, and he will ‘guide you through the valley of gridlock.’
“In the song ‘Plastic Jesus’ Billy Idol sings, ‘With my plastic Jesus, goodbye and I'll go far, with my plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of my car.’ Paul Newman sang it in the movie Cool Hand Luke. The words begin, ‘Well, I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of my car.’
“To lots of people, Jesus, church, and Christianity are cultural trappings (like the celebration of Christmas) but not life-changing realities. Author Josh McDowell warns that many people today see Jesus ‘like a plastic statue on a car dashboard—smiling, robed, a halo suspended above his head.’ But that superstitious or sentimental view of Jesus is a myth. Jesus… was no plastic saint (David Jeremiah, “A Dashboard Jesus or My Lord Jesus?” DavidJeremiah.org. www.PreachingToday.com).
He is not your good luck charm. He is the sovereign Lord of the universe! So don’t expect Him to bless YOUR plans. Instead, get on board with HIS plans for your life. If you want to avoid making a fool of yourself, submit to Jesus as your Lord. Then…
ADMIT YOUR WEAKNESS BEFORE HIM.
Recognize your desperate need of Christ, and depend on Him, not yourself like Peter did.
In John 13, Peter told Jesus, “I will lay down my life for you.” To which Jesus replied, “The rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times” (John 13:37-38). So when Judas, the Jewish officials, and 600 soldiers come to arrest Jesus…
John 18:10 Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) (ESV)
Peter tries to prove Jesus wrong and demonstrate his courage. But he only demonstrates his clumsiness. Peter tries to cut off Malchus’ head, but he misses and only gets an ear. It’s pure folly—a mere man trying to defend the Almighty God!
Bill McNabb once said, “You defend God like you defend a lion. You get out of his way” (Bill McNabb, “Whittenburg Door,” Christianity Today, Vol. 33, no.15; www.PreachingToday.com).
John 18:11 So Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (ESV)
Jesus basically tells Peter, “Get out of my way. I came to do my Father’s will and die on a cross. I go willingly, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
John 18:12-15 So the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound him. First they led him to Annas, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. It was Caiaphas who had advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man should die for the people. Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest… (ESV)
That “other disciple” was John, the author of this Gospel. Unlike Peter, who boasts about his courage, John humbly refuses to identify himself in his own Gospel.
John 18:16-18 …but Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the servant girl who kept watch at the door, and brought Peter in. The servant girl at the door said to Peter, “You also are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.” Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself (ESV).
What happened to Peter’s bravado? It’s gone as he cowers before a little “servant girl.” Skip down to verse 25.
John 18:25-27 Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, “You also are not one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” Peter again denied it, and at once a rooster crowed (ESV).
Just like Jesus said. Oh, “how the mighty have fallen” (2 Samuel 1:19). Peter the Brave becomes Peter the Shamed, because Peter depended only on himself. Oh, my dear friends, if you want to avoid making a fool of yourself, recognize your desperate need of Christ and depend on Him.
Two Texans were trying to impress each other with the size of their ranches. One asked the other, “What’s the name of your ranch?’
He replied, “The Rocking R, ABC, Flying W Circle C, Bar U, Staple Four, Box D, Rolling M, Rainbow’s End, Silver Spur Ranch.”
The one who asked the question was very impressed and exclaimed, “Whew! That’s some name! How many cattle do you run?”
The rancher answered, “Not many. Very few survive the branding” (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, p.438).
That’s what happens to those who brand themselves as spiritual giants. Very few of them, if any, survive the branding.
Please, if you want to avoid making a fool of yourself, admit your own weakness, recognize your need for Christ and depend on Him.
Steve Magness is a performance coach who has worked with Olympians and professional athletes. He says that “admitting our weaknesses can actually increase our resilience.”
Imagine being dropped in the woods with a friend or two and asked to live off the land to survive. In the U.S. military, this is part of everyone’s training. It’s called SERE: survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. Studies find that up to 96 percent of individuals experience dissociation during the training—the fog of war. Some handle it better than others.
Magness says, “I talked to individuals who went through this crucible, and they reported the same thing. As one soldier put it,
“When there’s a difference between what you project and what you are capable of, it all crumbles under stressful situations. On the other hand, if you’re honest with yourself, and acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses, what you’re capable of and what might scare you, then you can come to terms with what you’re facing and deal with it. It’s not bravado, it’s humble confidence. A little doubt keeps you sharp.
“Research backs this up.” Magnus says, “We want our perception of the difficulty of a challenge and our ability to handle it to be realistic and overlap. When we go in with bravado, it backfires because at the first inkling that we may not be able to succeed, our brain freaks out” (Steve Magness, "Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness," The Next Big Idea Club, 7-29-22; www.Preaching Today.com).
Please, don’t freak out. Just lay aside the bravado and acknowledge your own limitations. If you want to avoid making a fool of yourself, submit to Jesus as your Lord, admit your weakness before Him. Then finally…
EMBRACE THE TRUTH CHRIST OFFERS.
Appreciate Jesus’ testimony about what is really real. Trust His word, which never leads you astray.
That’s what the religious leaders refuse to do, and it makes them look stupid. Go back to verse 19.
John 18:19-21 The high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Jesus answered him, “I have spoken openly to the world. I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard me what I said to them; they know what I said” (ESV).
The high priest tried to get Jesus to incriminate Himself, which was highly illegal even in Bible days. So Jesus very properly asks him to get some witnesses—people who could testify about what they heard Jesus say.
John 18:22 When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” (ESV)
That officer broke the law by striking an un-convicted defendant. Jesus has yet to be tried and convicted. This is just the questioning that takes place before the trial. Yet Jesus is being treated as if already convicted and found guilty.
John 18:23-24 Jesus answered him, “If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong; but if what I said is right, why do you strike me?” Annas then sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest (ESV).
Annas was the former high priest. Now, he sends Jesus to the current high priest for the formal trial. But they’re like a group of clowns trying to convict an innocent man.
Edwin Blum says, “It was easier to evade the truth or to silence the One who spoke the truth than to attempt to answer the truth. Truth has a self-evident power of persuasion and those who oppose it find it difficult to deny. Jesus pressed this point and exposed their hypocrisy” (Edwin A. Blum, Bible Knowledge Commentary).
Skip down to verse 28.
John 18:28 Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor’s headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover (ESV).
What impudence! They’re concerned with maintaining ceremonial purity while plotting murder! By rejecting the truth, they’ve made fools of themselves, and Pilate does the same. He also makes a fool of himself by rejecting the truth.
John 18:29-32 So Pilate went outside to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” They answered him, “If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die (ESV).
Roman law prevented the Jewish leaders from carrying out the death penalty. Only a Roman tribunal could adjudicate capital crimes.
John 18:33-38 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him” (ESV).
After trying Jesus, Pilate pronounces his verdict—“Not guilty.” In fact, two more times in the next chapter, Pilate will declare Jesus “not guilty” (John 19:4, 6). Then, instead of releasing Jesus, Pilate orders His crucifixion. It goes beyond all credibility.
Pilate makes a fool of himself because he rejected the truth. He stands in the presence of Truth Himself, learns about the kingdom Jesus offers, then walks away from it all. He asks the right question—“What is truth?”—but turns away before Jesus can answer. It’s one of the saddest stories in all of Scripture. Pilate rejects the truth, and it destroys his credibility; it makes him look like a fool.
In his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez describes a village suffering from an insomnia plague. As the plague continues, people gradually lose their memory. So Jose, a character in the novel, decides to label everything. “With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan. He went on to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen… banana.”
As their memory continued to fade, Jose decided he needed to be more explicit. He posted a sign on a cow that read: “This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk.” Thus, they were living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words but which would escape… when they forgot the values of the written letters.” Eventually the villagers put a placard at the entrance to town that said, “God exists,” as that knowledge too was slipping (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Harper Perennial Classics, 2006, pp. 46-48; www. PreachingToday.com).
It’s a commentary on our own culture. It’s like we’re experiencing an insomnia plague as people forget simple basic truths. Politicians have forgotten the definition of a woman or a man. College presidents have trouble defining genocide. And people in general puzzle over the difference between right and wrong.
It all started decades ago when our culture rejected the notion of absolute truth. Like Pilate, they walked away from the truth; and now, they have become fools.
The Apostle Paul put it this way in Romans 1: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…” (Romans 1:21-22).
If that doesn’t describe our culture today, I don’t know what does.Through the internet and now A.I., people have access to huge terabytes of information. They claim to be wise, but they walk around in utter confusion.
However, you can avoid that. You can avoid making a fool of yourself if you submit to Jesus as your Lord, admit your weakness before Him, and embrace the truth He offers.
Please, don’t walk away from Jesus like Pilate did. Instead, welcome Him into your life and let Him save you from your foolish ways.
World War II was drawing to a close. The German army was sending children to man the lines in a futile effort to stop the allied invasion into their homeland. It was March 1945. [Dr. Karl H. Schlesier, a German soldier, recalls this time:]
I was… in a battalion of teenage grenadiers fresh out of training [and] was sent into the front line east of the Rhine River after American forces had established a foothold on the east bank.
Our battalion was ordered to plug a hole in the front line. We dug in three companies abreast on a slight rise in front of the little town of Kirchhellen. I was with the 1st Company in the center of the position. My company… numbered about 80 teenagers.
In bitter fighting American troops pushed through on both sides but got stuck in front of my company. About 17 or 18 of us were left…. We huddled in two-man foxholes.
On the morning of March 28, amid smoldering tanks and twisted bodies, there suddenly came an eerie silence.
Schlesier says, “I looked over the hole I shared with a buddy and saw no life but a movement in the busted roof of a farmhouse about 200 yards away,” Feeling sudden panic, Schlesier stood up in his foxhole and fired four rapid shots at nothing in particular.
The eerie silence was broken by a single voice. A lone American soldier had walked… calmly toward the entrenched Germans, saying in a calm and low voice, “Come on out. Come on out.” [Schlesier remembers:]
…The American soldier had two machine guns trained on him… but he just kept on coming… He was not a threat. He just wanted us to give up, Schlesier recalls.
His foxhole happened to be directly in the path of the approaching American soldier, so Schlesier and his buddy were the first to confront him. The German soldiers did as he said. They dropped their weapons and took off their helmets, tossing them back into the foxhole.
The American soldier… told them to put their hands over their heads. Then he turned and walked toward the American lines without looking back as the German soldiers followed. Schlesier was overwhelmed:
He must have been the most reasonable man, the most perceptive, the most understanding, and by far the most brave. We had not expected to live, and he must have seen how idiotic this all was, and he acted on his own to save us, risking his life in the process.
Later in the prisoner-of-war camp, Schlesier says, “We talked about him. If he had not come to get us, we would have died in our foxholes… I owe him my life and have lived it” (Tim Giago, Spokesman-Review, 8-24-00; www.PreachingToday.com).
In the same way, if Jesus had not come, we would have died in our sins. He more than risked His life. He gave His life to save us from our sins. Then He rose again and offers eternal life to any who put their trust in Him.
Please, if you haven’t done it already, trust Christ with your life. Embrace Him as your Lord and Savior. Then follow Him to a new life.
