John 11:47-53 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man does many miracles.… 1. The resurrection of Lazarus had raised a wave of popular excitement. Any stir was dangerous, especially at Passover time, when Jerusalem would be filled with men ready to take fire from any spark. So a hasty meeting of the council was summoned to discuss the situation and to concert measures for repressing the nascent enthusiasm. Like all weak men, they feel that "something must be done." Their fear is not patriotism or religion, but self-interest. They are at a loss what to do. 2. But there is one man who knows his own mind, and no restraint of conscience or delicacy keeps him from speaking it out. Impatient at their vacillation, he brushes it all aside with, "Ye know nothing at all." The one point for us is our own interests. This Man must die. Never mind His miracles, teaching, character. He is a perpetual danger to our prerogatives. And so he clashes his advice down into the middle of their waverings, like a piece of iron into yielding water, and the strong man is master of the situation, and the resolve is taken (ver. 53). 3. But John regards this advice as prophecy. Caiaphas spoke wiser things than he knew. The Divine Spirit breathed in strange fashion and moulded his savage utterance into an expression of the deepest thought about Christ's death. Consider — I. THE UNSCRUPULOUS PRIEST AND HIS SAVAGE ADVICE. 1. He was set by his office to tend the sacred flame of Messianic hope, with pure hands and heart to offer sacrifice for sin, and to witness for the truth. And see what he is! A crafty schemer, blind to Christ's character and teaching, unspiritual, rude, cruel. What a lesson this speech and the character disclosed by it read to all who have a professional connection with religion. Priests of all churches have always been tempted to look upon religion as existing somehow for their personal advantage. And so "the Church is in danger" means "my position is threatened;" and heretics must be got rid of because their teaching is inconvenient, and new truth is fought against because officials do not see how it harmonizes with their preeminence. 2. All who professionally handle sacred things are tempted to look upon truth as their stock-in-trade, and to fight against innovations that appear to threaten the teacher's position. 3. But the lessons are for all. This selfish consideration of our own interests — (1) Will blind us to the most radiant beauty of truth; aye, to Christ Himself. Fishes which live in the water of caverns lose their eight, and men who live in the dark holes of their own selfish natures lose their spiritual sight. When you put on regard for yourselves as they do blinkers on horses you lose the power of comprehensive vision, and only see straight forward upon the line marked out by self interests. Lord Nelson at Copenhagen put his telescope up to his blind eye at the signal of recall, and this is what selfishness does with hundreds who do not know it. There are none so blind as those who won't see; and there are none who won't see so certainly as those who have a suspicion that if they do they will have to change their tack. (2) May bring a man down to any kind and degree of wrong-doing. Caiaphas was brought down by it from supreme judge to assassin. If you begin with "it is expedient" as the canon of your conduct you get on an inclined plane that tilts at a very sharp angle, and is sufficiently greased, and ends away in darkness and death, and it is only a question of time how far, fast, deep and irrevocable will be your descent. (3) Has in it an awful power of so twisting and searing a man's conscience as that he comes to view the evil and never knows there is any wrong in it. Caiaphas had no conception that he was doing anything but obeying the dictate of self-preservation. The crime of the actual crucifixion was diminished because done unconsciously; but the crime of the process by which they came to be unconscious — how that was increased and deepened! 4. The only antagonist to this selfishness is to yield ourselves to the love of God in Christ, and to say, "I live, yet not I," etc. II. THE UNCONSCIOUS PROPHET AND HIS GREAT PREDICTION. 1. The Evangelist conceives that the high priest, being the head of the theocratic community, was naturally the medium of a Divine oracle. In that fateful year the great "High Priest forever" stood for a moment by the side of the earthly high priest — the Substance by the shadow — and by this offering of Himself deprived priesthood and sacrifice of all their validity. Caiaphas was in reality the last of the high priests, and those that succeeded him for less than half a century were but like ghosts. Solemn and strange that Aaron's long line ended in such a man! 2. Being high priest he prophesied. And there was nothing strange in a bad man's prophesying. Balaam did; so did Pilate when he wrote the inscription, and the Pharisees when they said, "He saved others." 3. The prophecy suggests — (1) The two-fold aspect of Christ's death. From the human standpoint it was murder by forms of law for political ends. From the Divine point of view it is God's great sacrifice for the sin of the world. The greatest crime is the greatest blessing. Man's sin works out the Divine purpose, even as the coral insects blindly building up the reef that keeps back the waters, or, as the sea in its wild impotent rage, seeking to overwhelm the land, only throws upon the beach a barrier that confines its waves and curbs their fury. (2) The two-fold consequences of that death upon the nation itself. (a) The thing which Caiaphas had tried to prevent was brought about by the deed itself. Christ's death was the destruction, and not the salvation, of the nation. (b) And yet it was true that He died for that people, for Caiaphas as truly as for John. You must either build upon Christ, the Foundation Stone, or be crushed into powder under Him. 4. The two-fold sphere in which that death works its effect. When John wrote the narrower national system had been shivered, and from out of the dust and ruin had emerged the firmer reality of a Church as wide as the world. (1) The scattered children of God were to be united round the Cross. The only bond that unites men is their common relation to Christ. That is deeper than all the bonds of nation, blood, race, society, etc. (2) Christ's death brings men into the family of God. "To as many as received Him," etc. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. |
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