Did Jesus Hide from the Jews in Fear?

Tom:

We’re continuing with the gospel of John, we’re in chapter 11, and again, our continual encouragement is that we’re reading through the gospel of John. We would like others, those who listen to us to do likewise, read through the scriptures, search the scriptures daily and check us out. Dave, you’ve been through this, through the Bible, I probably couldn’t even count the number of times, I don’t know you could either but I’ve been through it a number of times and nevertheless, we’re not sitting here as anybody’s spiritual gurus. We’re just simply giving our understanding and encouraging everyone to search the scriptures themselves to see if, not only what we are saying is true but so that they might come to their own confidence in what they are believing by faith.

Dave:

Right, right. We have to let God speak to us through his word, not through someone else, although that is a function of teachers within the church but we are to check the teachers out, we are each accountable to God for our own understanding.

Tom:

Mmhmm. John 11 Verse 54, but Dave, you want to back up just a little bit. Fifty-three says, “Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.”And of course, this has to do with the religious leaders of the Jews and Jesus had just recently raised Lazarus from the dead and you would think everybody would be happy about that.

Dave:

There’s no question that it was a miracle but they are more concerned about their own position and power and they are going to do away with Jesus and Lazarus even. So the next verse then says, Therefore they’ve got a price on his head. Therefore Jesus 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. So, there’s a price on his head and of course that is the reason one day very soon after this Judas is going to go to them and say, Hey, I can tell you how to get this guy, now what are you going to pay me? I kind of have my doubts that they offered him 30 pieces of silver to begin with. Maybe they offered him 5 or 10, I don’t know, but he bid it up and he’s got his retirement fund and he doesn’t know that he has just fulfilled the scriptures. Well, I’m getting ahead of us here.

Tom:

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

Dave:

It’s going to be even more interesting, Tom, in the chapters ahead as we—because although they want to take him, yet he’s going to make his triumphal entry, just give a little—

Tom:

Sure, preview.

Dave:

—synopsis ahead of uh, what we will get into. He’s going to make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and they are going to hail him as the Messiah and the Rabbis are going to decide, Well, we had better not do it the feast day, you know, because the people seem to be on his side. But he had to be on the cross when the Passover lambs were being slain. So it had to be on the feast date. So in spite of their, say backing off, we don’t dare do it now, Jerusalem is full of pilgrims and they are fanatical followers of this Jesus now, I mean, they just hailed him as the Messiah. We’ll do it a bit later. But then Judas comes and says, Hey, I can tell you where he is, in the absence of the multitude he’s not running away and hiding and so forth.We’ll get to that in the future.

Tom:

Dave, these next verses are really stunning in view of the fact of what just took place in Bethany. It says, “Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.” Now they must have really been rejoicing. You know, here he who was dead now raised by Christ, they are enjoying a supper together. But this is the part that I believe is really stunning. Verse 3, Chapter 12, verse 3, “Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.” You know why I think this I stunning, because what Mary had just gone through with her brother, now she takes the initiative to do this. Where did she get this idea, Dave? What–

Dave:

Well Jesus says, She has anointed me to my burial but I don’t know that she understood that.But if we go back just a little bit, Tom, another controversial thing.

Tom:

Okay.

Dave:

When was Jesus crucified? Was it Friday well he said he’d be three days and three nights in the grave–we’ll get into that later, but here we have, “Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany,” Now he’s been over in Ephraim, he’s been a long ways away. Let’s count back six days from a Friday crucifixion, if that’s when the Passover was, that brings you to Saturday.

Tom:

The Sabbath.

Dave:

You don’t make that kind of a journey on the Sabbath. If he was crucified on Thursday, which I believe he was, because he rides into Jerusalem on the 10th of Nisan, when the lambs were taken out of the flock, and then the 14th, the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel will kill this lamb in the evening, that’s Thursday. You count back six days and he comes into Bethany on Friday. Now they have made this feast and he spends the Sabbath resting in Bethany. Then Sunday, that’s the 10th, he rides into Jerusalem, we call it Palm Sunday now, and it all works out very well. The Bible puts these things in there, I think, just to seal it up so clearly that every scripture had to be fulfilled, and he’s got to be three days and three nights in the grave. So it gives us another little indication, when we get to Chapter 13 we get more, telling us that the Passover was not the Last Supper. He ate the Last Supper the day before the Passover. Well, we give people a little something to think about.

Tom:

And think—they get upset about, Dave. Again, what we’re encouraging here, Dave, you spent 60 years or more even as a—before that as a youth studying the scriptures. So this is what you have come up with and we’re encouraging people who maybe have never studied the scriptures before. Again, even though we have some experience on your side within God’s word, there, as you said earlier, they are to do it by faith.

Dave:

Yeah, well, it wouldn’t take sixty years to come up with that, Tom, but I mean, I think it’s quite plain in the scriptures. But anyway, we have this tradition of a Friday crucifixion, Good Friday. I like it when the staff takes Friday afternoon off and I chide them and they say, Oh, no, no, no, we’re celebrating Good Thursday! But we’re doing it on Friday. But that tradition is so strong that you just can’t overcome it, very difficult to overcome tradition. So we’ll see it as we go through the scriptures but this is one indication: Six days before the Passover he came to Bethany. Now you don’t make that kind of a journey on the Sabbath, but six days before a Friday crucifixion would be Saturday, and they make him a supper. Lazarus—well, I think it’s a picture—he’s one of those that sat at the table with him—I think it’s a picture of the eternal feast we’ll have with the Lord. We’ll be in his Father’s house at his table forever and Lazarus, the one who is resurrected, who would otherwise be in the grave, Christ has raised him from the dead and here he is. And Mary–

Tom:

Now look, this is getting to my point, I’m stunned by how this would be upon our heart to do this after just—look, we go through an experience and on the one hand was incredibly traumatic for her, her brother had died and then she moved from, probably, the death of the spare with regard to her brother, the loss that she had to now he’s alive. The last thing you would think she would do would be go now to anoint Jesus for his own burial. What?!

Dave:

Well, whether she understands this or not, I don’t know. But, one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot Simon’s son, the one that would betray him, he says, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief and had the bag and bear what was put therein. Tom, it reminds me, I remember a young man, he had been a professing Christian and then he had turned away from the Lord. I forget what organization it was—it was one of these government organizations for helping the poor, a welfare organization that had been set up some years ago, this would be 20 years ago, I think, and he was in San Francisco area and I remember flying up for a meeting and he met me at the airport and now he was disillusioned. He went into this with a heart full of concern for the poor. Well, he said the guy that’s the head of this thing he’s taking the money himself. There’s such corruption in this charitable organization.Many of the people who say they are concerned about the poor, they’re really not concerned about the poor they are using it for themselves. We see that in Judas here. And then, Jesus says you can always have the poor. It’s another statement, you’re not going to get rid of it.There are a number of reasons for that, we will have to come back and talk about that next week. But he knew Judas’ heart and he knows the heart of each one of us.