Several times in this study through the gospel of John, I have pointed out when his narrative omits events that you find in the synoptic gospels. He skips months of the ministry of Jesus only to, suddenly, stop and focus on a given moment. This is about to happen. Chapters 13 through 17 are focused on the few hours of the last night of Jesus’ ministry… a time devoted entirely to His disciples. Chapter 12, where we are now, is then John’s summary of the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry to His people.
From the synoptic gospels, you can tell that after Palm Sunday Jesus spent many hours the next few days in the Temple courts. It was His last intensive attempt to get through to the masses… openly arguing with the religious leaders and using parables with unmistakable end-time imagery to warn the people of the eternal consequences of their choices.
John skips all that. I think it is because, to him, it all had been said already. Three years of witnessing the ministry of the Messiah ought to have been enough. Three years of wonders, three years of lovingkindness, three years of warnings… If you hadn’t made up your mind by then, it meant one thing: you actually had made up your mind… to reject Him.
A study in self-delusion
Everything in this chapter has a feeling of being a fait accompli. It all starts with a final mention of Lazarus, Mary’s and Martha’s brother. After John tells us of the dinner in Jesus’ honor, he says:
John 12:9 Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and they came not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead.
It sounds good, doesn’t it? Surely such a miracle of bringing back to life one who had been dead four days could not be ignored. Note that this is not like the raising of the widow’s son at Nain because that obviously happened the day of the son’s death. And it is not like the resurrection miracles performed by Elijah or Elisha because, again, the children they brought back to life had only been dead a few hours.
You see, the Jews of that time believed that the soul of a person stayed near the body for three days. After that, the soul was gone to Sheol. Therefore, Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead implied that He had authority to despoil Sheol itself. If He could bring Lazarus back, who could He not bring back? If He had that power, and the prophet Daniel clearly talked about a coming resurrection…
Daniel 12:1-2 …and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Then, didn’t this miracle prove Jesus could be the fulfiller of that prophecy? Imagine being there, seeing Lazarus… Would that have changed your mind, would you have chosen to believe in Jesus?
Yet… Fait accompli: Whatever they had decided already, it was already decided. Why? Because it is very hard to change our minds once we tell ourselves we have made a choice. We are stubborn because we are proud. To change our minds implies to admit that up to this point we were wrong. That is the way we are.
But no matter how stubborn we are, no matter how hard we work at keeping those blinders (of our own making) over our eyes, we still have a mind, we still have a conscience. And those operate according to reason. That is the way we are made. Which means that if a decision we are sticking to is inherently illogical, even irrational, somewhere deep inside we know it. And that contradiction nags at us. It is almost a paradox: We have succeeded at silencing the external voice of evidence only to find an internal voice breaking through and challenging the basis (and the motives) of our decision. How do we make that voice shut up? There are only two choices: Accept the evidence or…
…get rid of it…
So, as ridiculous as it sounds, if this man Lazarus being alive is the undeniable proof that we are wrong about Jesus, then there is only one thing to do: get rid of him.
John 12:10-11 But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death; because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus.
The next day is what has come to be known as Palm Sunday. And we get from John’s narrative a detail that we don’t see in the other gospels: part of the reason that that crowd following Jesus to Jerusalem kept growing and growing was because the people who had witnessed the raising of Lazarus were there, telling everybody.
John 12:12-13 On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.
John 12:14-16 And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt. These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him.
John 12:17-19 The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle.
We know most of the Pharisees had already made up their minds. But here is a huge crowd of the very people whose spiritual lives they are supposed to be caring for, and they are following Jesus. Should that make them think again?
It is never safe to assume that the crowd, the mob, knows what it is doing. It is a fact that most people are notoriously easy to influence, especially if you know what to tell them, if you promise them what you know they want to hear. But it is also true that Solomon said that there is wisdom in the counsel of many. This is why our Justice system upholds our right to be judged by a group of our peers.
A crowd is good when it becomes a forum for listening to everybody in that crowd. Because while one person may be fooled by a lie tailored to them, that lie may not fool me. And if we listen to each other, our mutual capabilities to reason can prevail.
This is why I underlined that phrase in John 12:19. There were eyewitnesses in this crowd: people who had seen the miracle of Lazarus. And they were here, not spouting slogans or promoting ideologies but testifying to the truth, to the evidence.
How are the Pharisees going to respond to this evidence?
John 12:19 The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold, the world is gone after him.
Fait accompli: Nothing has changed. Nothing has to change, even in the face of evidence…
…if that evidence requires faith.
The leaders of the Pharisees had already decided that Jesus’ success would lead to another revolution among the people, a revolution that the Romans would crush with characteristic brutality. We already saw this in chapter 11, where the council of the Pharisees feared the Romans would go as far as destroying their Temple (their place) and therefore scattering their nation again.
So, they were faced with two options, each with its own evidence: They knew (from experience) how the Romans would respond to someone claiming to be the Messiah (King of Israel). But at the same time, they had this man who, though refusing to proclaim directly that he was the Messiah, displayed every sign expected of the Messiah – and the people understood it to be so. Accepting the second would precipitate the first.
How do you make that choice? On which evidence do you hang your future?
I hope that you see what is going on here. Choosing to believe the second, meant to them willingly choosing the destruction of Israel… Or did it? Well, yes, unless Jesus really was the Messiah they were expecting. In which case he would have been anointed by God to defeat their enemies. Under that scenario there would be nothing to fear from the Romans… Right?
And now, this puts in a new light all those times that they asked Jesus for a sign from Heaven; all the times that they questioned him trying to get him to say that He was the Messiah. We just saw this in Chapter 10…
John 10:23-25 And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch. Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me.
Jesus refused to say it because He wasn’t that kind of Messiah. He did not come to save one nation against their human enemy. He came to save the whole world against the ultimate enemy.
Isaiah 49:6 And He said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be My salvation unto the end of the earth.
Jesus refused to say it because words are cheap. And the previous self-proclaimed Messiahs, in their recent memory, had spoken those easy words to no avail: they were destroyed by the Romans.
So, Jesus would not give them that kind of human evidence. Instead, He gave them evidence infinitely more weighty than anything He could have said: The works of the Father.
But to accept that evidence requires faith.
Is that fair? Is it fair to require faith to accept this evidence? Why can’t God make the evidence plain to our human senses, like everything else in our world?
The answer is obvious: This world is not what God cares about; it isn’t the world He made us for. He made us for His Kingdom and therefore, accordingly, He gave us the ability to reason in that Kingdom. That is why we have spirit like He is Spirit.
Now, that argument may not make much sense to people who grew up thinking that this world is all there is. BUT that is not who Jesus was talking to.
This is Israel, the children of Abraham. And the only reason they inherited the Promise of Abraham was because Abraham himself learned how to accept evidence by faith. Everyone in that crowd knew the story: God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. And God had declared that the promise would be inherited through his son Isaac. But then God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on mount Moriah.
And there, Abraham was faced with exactly the same dilemma: Isaac was the child of the Promise, without him there would be no future. But God, the same God that gave him that Promise, now required him to kill Isaac. Accepting the second would destroy the first.
How do you make that choice? On which evidence do you hang your future? Isaac is here now! You can touch him, you can hug him. The Promise has been received… How could God possibly mean to wipe it out? Yet… up to that point in Abraham’s life God has never failed him. True, what He asks now makes no sense. So, how do you choose?
They all knew the answer.
Only by faith…
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews testifies to it.
Hebrews 11:17-19 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead…
Abraham’s decision, based on faith, was not blind. It was fully reasoned out. But such reasoning could only make sense to one who believed that there is another Kingdom infinitely greater than this world.
Fait accompli: The Pharisees did not change their minds. What they had decided, that they were going to stick to… because to do otherwise required faith. And as Jesus said in chapter 10 (after refusing to give them the easy way out), they had already chosen to reject faith:
John 10:26-28 But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish…
Beware of decisions cast in stone
A consequence of living in a fallen world is that we are bombarded from every possible direction with conjectures, opinions, and even outright lies… all presented to us in the guise of evidence… presented to us that way to earn our allegiance to the powers of this world.
It is not unexpected that we would accept some of those, maybe many of those. It is natural because, like I said, we are thinking beings. Most of us regularly apply our ability to reason and therefore we are not afraid of making choices.
But the question that I want you to consider today is this: When was the last time you checked the validity of those past decisions? This is a reasonable question. Many of the arguments that are presented to us in this world, to sway us to one side or another, are, by design, incomplete.
Think about it: When was the last time that someone, trying to sway you to their position, gave you a true accounting of the strengths and weaknesses of their opponent’s arguments. If they say anything at all, it is usually a distorted summary or a “strawman” version of the opponent’s argument that they proceed immediately to topple.
Therefore, we owe it to ourselves to regularly recheck our decisions: Reanalyze the “facts” given to us, read the opposition’s argument, and weigh them both honestly. Maybe we missed something the first time. Maybe we chose in haste. Maybe we made a choice driven by emotions of the moment.
This is all the more important for decisions of faith. As I pointed out above, in the story of Abraham, his decision to obey God was not based on blind faith. On the contrary it was reasoned faith: Based on the proven faithfulness of God that Abraham had experienced time and time again since that first time he had received that Promise, he was able to deduce something new, unexpected, impossible by the rules of this world, but possible to the God who created the universe. Abraham deduced that God could and would resurrect Isaac.
Have we challenged our worldview lately? Or are we coasting along on decisions of the past? In this section of chapter 12 of John’s gospel we have seen two sure signs that our worldview has become stale:
(1) When we see evidence that contradicts our worldview, and instead of considering that evidence, we blot it out.
(2) When we run into an apparent paradox, a situation where two options – each well supported by its evidence – stand in opposition to each other, and we ignore the possibility that there might be no paradox at all if we looked at that conflict from the viewpoint of the Kingdom of God.
Have we challenged our faith lately? The God who gave us the ability to reason is not going to be offended if we ask to review all the evidence again and ask Him the hard questions. In fact, He expects us to do it.
