“But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead’”. Luke 16:31
Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead over in Bethany, located about one mile east of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. Now how does one react to hearing the news that nearby a man has called another man back from the dead?
Well, putting it most simply, with belief or unbelief. All other reactions stem from one of those.
When the Jews of Jerusalem heard it from some eye witnesses who ran immediately to tell them, they convened a council.
Now, that’s never a good sign. If you’ll allow me a slight twist on Nathanael’s question, can any good thing come out of a committee?
The only two items on the agenda: the fact that Jesus was performing many miracles and the fear that His actions will draw the ire of the Romans so that they will destroy the nation and these men will lose their high position.
How many stated agendas for councils and committees through the ages have been rooted in unbelief? Rhetorical question.
Before I go any farther I just want to bring something to your attention from our passage of study and also from the passage in Luke that I quoted a minute ago.
The account in Luke is of the rich man in Hades, looking across the chasm to the poor man, Lazarus in the comfort of Abraham’s bosom. He is begging Abraham to send someone to warn his five brothers so that they do not share his own fate.
What I want you to notice is that both there in Luke and here in our text, the problem is not that they disbelieve in the raising of the dead; the problem is that even faced with the truth of a resurrection they will not exercise saving faith and put their trust in the One able to do it.
Do you see it? In Luke the rich man only wants his brothers warned and Abraham assures him that someone rising from the dead to warn them will not change them. Here, they get the news that Lazarus, four days dead, has been called back to life and instead of expressing disbelief in the fact they say things that confirm to us that they have believed the report but they respond both in fear and in further rejection of the One who did it.
Friends and family, disbelief in God and His Word is deliberate and God is just in holding every person accountable for their response to His revelation.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a well-known fact in the years after it occurred and it has been heralded clearly everywhere Christians have gone since then, and all the clever ways men can devise to deny it or try to explain it away will not get them off the hook for their deliberate disbelief. In the end they will stand before the Judgment seat of the One they have denied and they will not be able then to claim ignorance, nor will the deceptions of their false religions be a defense.
CAIAPHAS
Ok, let’s go to our text and see what’s there for us.
There is not a lot known about the High Priest, Caiaphas. His full name was Joseph Caiaphas and he was son in law to his predecessor, Annas.
In ancient times the office of High Priest was hereditary and once in that office a man served for life. But the Romans had changed that, probably so that no one man could over time gain political power by his high position, and they deposed High Priests when it suited their purposes. So when they deposed Annas, Caiaphas then rose to the Priesthood and according to historians he served in that position from A.D. 18 to 36.
In his commentary William Barclay credits the long tenure of Caiaphas to his ability to cooperate with the Romans and keep them appeased. His conjecture is given weight by what we see here in our text.
Let’s just jump right past his basically calling the other priests a bunch of ignoramuses and go to his argument.
“…it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.”
THE MANY OVER THE ONE
Do you hear the politician in that phrase? It is expedient, not ‘for us’, but ‘for you’. What I’m saying is for your good. It’s all about you. It appeals to their selfish interests and subtly leaves him sounding like a wise father counseling his children to do what is best for them.
It is expedient, advantageous, beneficial opportune, appropriate, that one man should die…
In an age of widespread violence, both played at in movies and television and paraded past our eyes in its reality on the daily news, we’ve become desensitized to a great extent to the tragedy of man’s willingness and ability to physically harm another.
How evil must a man be, how depraved in his very heart, that the suggestion to kill a man so easily rolls off his tongue with no apparent searching of his own inner motive at all?
Here meets this group of men; priests of their nation. Leaders of the Jewish religion.
A man in a nearby village, one of their own, has been brought back from death and even decay and given back to his sisters. But instead of rejoicing and praising God for His power and mercy and goodness the news makes them afraid.
So here they all are, huddled in the gloom of the counsel chambers and the darkness of their own hearts and all they can think of is murder under the pretense of protecting their nation.
In one of the Star Trek motion pictures there is a conversation between Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock about some anticipated trouble and how to handle it.
In that conversation, Spock makes this statement:
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Then Kirk asks, “Or the one?” Spock nods in the affirmative.
Now that is a noble sounding assertion, as long it is being made by the one about to sacrifice himself for a cause that will benefit the many. But all nobility is taken out of it, indeed, it becomes a heinous, monstrous suggestion when it comes off the lips of the powerful intent on sacrificing the weak for the sake of political stability and personal comfort.
These were the very ones who should have had the personal safety of every individual of the Jewish nation at heart. We’re told by John in chapter 12 that they even wanted to kill Lazarus because people were believing in Jesus as a result of what Jesus had done for him.
They should have rejoiced! When they heard they should have made their way to Bethany to confirm what they had heard and seeing Lazarus alive they should have bowed down and worshipped their Messiah. Instead they wanted to throw Him to the Roman wolves.
What good is any society, any civilization, that ensures its existence by stepping on the throat of its helpless instead of helping the helpless?
How long can a nation last that murders its babies, tucks its elderly away to die abandoned in a facility run by professional death-watchers and punishes the poor for the very things the rich flaunt and get away with?
How long can a church survive, not be effective, but just survive, when the collective is willing to sacrifice the weak for the sake of maintaining a good front; an illusion of uprightness before a godless community?
It is not without significance that Paul preceded his exhortation to have a Christ-like attitude in Philippians 2 with this admonition:
“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” Phil 2:3-4
In his essay on morality in the book, “Mere Christianity”, Lewis made a strong argument for the worth of the individual in light of Christianity’s teaching that people are eternal and not simply ceasing to exist when they leave this world.
“If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilization, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment.” MERE CHRISTIANITY, C.S. Lewis, ‘Christian Behavior’, Macmillan Pub., 1943
These guys had obviously not been spending enough time in their own scriptures or else they might have remembered that God brought His people up out of Egypt, delivering them from a strong oppressor, and not one of them was left behind (Ex 12:41).
This same God was able to deliver them from Rome.
They obviously had forgotten how their fathers treated the prophets and how it ended up for them, although Jesus reminded them in no uncertain terms.
“Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and it was your fathers who killed them. 48 “So you are witnesses and approve the deeds of your fathers; because it was they who killed them, and you build their tombs. 49 “For this reason also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute, 50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation.” Lk 11:47-51
No, they weren’t ignorant. No, they weren’t mistaken. They were evil and they huddled in a dark corner to plan how they might deliver the Glory of Israel up for death.
PROPHET WITHOUT A CLUE
Look at verse 51
“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”
Don’t get tripped up by this wording. Caiaphas meant to say what he said. He wasn’t in a trance and the words didn’t just slip out because of some influence outside of himself. They were his words for ‘the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart’ Matthew 12:34, and he meant every word.
As Matthew Henry put it though, ‘Words of prophecy in the mouth are not clear evidence of a principle of grace in the heart’.
All true prophecy is from the Spirit of God but not all prophets have been Godly. Remember Balaam who tried repeatedly to prophecy against Israel at the behest of Balak, king of Moab, but God kept putting His own words in Balaam’s mouth so that try as he might to curse the people he kept blessing them instead. His words came true enough, but God still held him accountable for what was in his heart.
So it was with Caiaphas, and so it will be with you and me, Christian.
This is a solemn warning for us preachers especially.
In any case, the text says that Caiaphas did not say this of his own initiative and we need to think about what John meant by that.
First, remember that this gospel was written approximately 50 years after these events by an aging Apostle who had many years of serving the Lord in the strength and leading of the Spirit on his resume.
It is not because some living eye witness who was interviewed by John said that Caiaphas did not speak on his own, but it was John’s Spirit-taught understanding that all that transpired in these events was God-ordained.
Caiaphas had his own purposes in mind when he said it. But evil as he was, God honored not the man but the office and used His High Priest to single out the final Passover Lamb, who would indeed be sacrificed for the sake of the nation, only with an infinitely greater purpose than preserving an earthly society from the wrath of an occupying force.
This is what Paul was talking about in comparing Adam’s one act of disobedience to Christ’s obedience to the Father in going to the cross.
“For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”
And the writer to the Hebrews said this:
“But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.
10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.”
Yes, Caiaphas, one Man was to die for the people. But as humiliating and ignoble as His sufferings and death would be in the eyes of men, His heart was filled with divine nobility and honor because it was He Himself who determined that the need of the many outweighed any desire He had to let the cup pass from Him.
You, Caiaphas, in all of your scheming and manipulating and murderous plotting could not thwart the divine plan of the ages, but instead unwittingly prophesied of Him who through death would ‘…render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and …deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” Hebrews 2:14b-15
Oh, the irony of this plan of the Trinity, that the one who in his earthly office was a type, issued the order that would lead to the One he typified passing through the very sufferings that would fit Him to be called our great High Priest to whom we now draw near with confidence, since through the things which He suffered He is able to sympathize with us perfectly.
AN OBSERVATION
Or two.
As we noted already, John wrote this gospel very late in the first century. He had been both a witness and a participant in the spread and growth of the church.
He had seen the gospel go out to the Samaritans and then to the regions around the Mediterranean and was more than likely sitting in on the Jerusalem Council when it was decided what to say to the Gentiles concerning their portion in the good news of Jesus Christ.
For that reason he is able to add to his comments here, in verse 52, that it was not for the nation of Israel only that Jesus was to die, “…but that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad”.
That’s his observation. Let me make a couple of my own based on his choice of words.
First, Christians, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit John has asserted that Jesus died so that we who are His might be gathered into one.
Now there are two senses here in which we are gathered together. As His church, which is a spiritual entity, which means that immediately upon being born into His spiritual family we are one with Him and therefore His church through the ages.
The second sense in which He gathers us will be realized on that day when He calls all of His children to meet Him in the air and thus we shall ever be with the Lord.
This is the great and glorious climax of the story that He already knew and had in mind when He determined to lay His life down by His own initiative and by His own initiative take it up again.
The Jews plotted in murderous rage to kill this Jesus of Nazareth. They did it in secret and watched from the corners for an opportunity to do it in the dark because they were afraid of the people. Too bad there was no fear of God before their eyes.
In truth though, they could not have stopped Him. He had a plan to gather into one the children of God scattered around the world and through the years of this present world and, as I have said in the recent past and will say again, God will not be thwarted in what He has purposed to do. What He says has come to pass, if not in history yet in spiritual reality just by virtue of the fact that He has spoken it.
That brings me to my second and final observation.
John said, ‘the children of God who are scattered abroad’.
This line is reminiscent of the Lord’s comforting admonition to Paul in a vision, recorded in Acts 18:9-10 shortly after Paul came to the sin-ridden city of Corinth, that he should stay there and preach the gospel openly without fear of being hurt and saying to Paul, “…for I have many people in this city.”
Humanly speaking there were not yet many people of God in that city, for the gospel had just come there. But God knows who are His, friends. We don’t. We do not know the hearts of men and our charge is to take the good news to all people because we do not know who will respond to His call in faith and who will not.
But God knows; even before they know. He knew even then.
He went to His death on a Roman cross knowing who was His and who was not. And He went there for those unsaved, He went there for those unaware, He went there for those unborn, scattered abroad by both space and time, so that He might gather them together into one.
He went there so that He would later look from His throne and see before Him a “…great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” Rev. 7:9-10
The One for the many.
