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If I were a non-Christian, here is one of the main objections I would have about Christians:
Christians consistently resist the God they claim to trust.
We resist forgiveness
We stay in relationships we know — an everyone around us knows — are not Godly.
We do business deals that are less than ethical.
Your heart, conscious, Jesus allllll tells you what’s right, but you resist the God you claim to trust.
There is a word which can be used to describe this: Hypocrisy.
The next two weeks we are going to consider two guys, in the last days of Jesus life, who found themselves at odds with Jesus over a specific agenda they had for their life that was at odds with an agenda that Jesus had.
These stories of these 2 guys and their endeavor to resist God actually illustrate the futility of attempting to resist God.
And you may know the same: your story of attempting to resist God is also a story in futility.
We consistently resist the God we claim to trust.
Bad Guy of Easter #1: Joseph Caiaphas, High Priest (18-36)
Most powerful in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day.
He was the connection point between the Jews and Rome.
He was the connection point between Pilate and the Jews.
He was a part of the family which controlled the Temple for 40 years
Father-in-law was a high pries (Annas) and five of his brothers-in-law were High Priests.
The family was loaded with power.
The family was incredibly wealthy: Jews all paid Temple Tax — not just Jews is Jerusalem… Jews everywhere paid the Temple Tax to the Temple in Jerusalem.
So much money was flowing into the Temple from nearby Roman provinces that many of the provinces tried to pass laws making it illegal for the Jews to give so much money to the Temple --- millions and millions of dollars.
And Caiaphas and his family of high priests had great power, influence, and wealth.
For 40 years things were rolling along just fine for Caiaphas and his family… UNTIL… a carpenter turned rabbi stepped onto the pages of history.
Jesus enters the Scene and disrupts the 40 year roll.
Jesus Josephson, Jewish Rabbi (30-33)
Christ is a title, not a last name.
Messiah.
Caiaphas had FOUR (4) problems with Jesus:
The first problem when Jesus showed up was: the crowds.
Then and now, people taught all kinds of things — some solid, some crazy.
Everywhere Jesus went, the crowds were enormous.
Jesus feeds 5,000 —
Crowds could produce insurrections… crowds could lead to civil wars… crowds could create all kinds of unrest, so both the Romans and the Jews were very mindful of the size of the crowds following Jesus.
Caiaphas only had crowds on festival days… otherwise he never had a crowd.
The second problem was Jesus spoke with such authority.
The third problem was Jesus being highly critical of the leaders of the Jewish religious establishment, which included Caiaphas.
Jesus rant in
Jesus is saying to Caiaphas friends and family — “You all are going to hell.”
The fourth problem — and this was the final straw — The tension between Jesus and Caiaphas built and built and the final straw.
was not something Jesus said; it was something Jesus did.
The final straw: Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
When this happened, the crowds grew all the more and his authority grew all the more.
Their strategy failed to that point: Caiaphas and the religious leaders to this point had tried to discredit him in all kinds of settings and ways.
Here is how things unfold after the raising of Lazarus from the dead.
Three groups that did not get along theologically, politically, or did they carry the same function.
Would be like the president, all of congress, and the supreme court getting together and saying: we gotta agree on what to do next because this is quickly getting away from us.
And here is the moment of tension that we all know so well… Jesus just raised a dead man to life — body bound, door sealed, and raised him to life.
They knew… they knew… but they resisted.
It’s the Lord… maybe not all of them would or could see it, but I believe many of them could and did… you can hear it in their comment “Everyone is going to believe in him if we let him keep going like this...”
You see, like us, they could have followed the Lord right then and there, but they resisted Him because they had something else that was valuable to them that they were invested in… power, influence, and wealth.
The cost was just too high.
They knew… but the cost… the price was too high.
“If we don
You are saved — it is by grace, through faith.
Coming to know him is a free gift of God… AND it is costly.
Following Jesus will cost you somewhere between something and everything.
The cost could be:
Sunday mornings
Serving on Sunday mornings
Single people/Teens — dating — you saying I should only date Christians?
Money — tithing and giving
And there is the tension — we resist the God we claim to trust.
These guys are overlooking: Jesus raised a man from the dead!!!
And they are worried about what they are going to lose and what it’s going to cost them.
Enter… Caiaphas.
He has listened to the pinheads long enough.
John 11:
Then John… and old man when writing his gospel, inserts a narrators comment
john 11:
John grinning is celebrating and recalling how, when they resisted Jesus, it actually caused his influence to expand.
Either way we go, our lives will be illustrations of how the gospel of Jesus moves forward.
We will say, “Yes, even though it costs me...”
Or we will say, “No, because it costs me...”
Either way, your life and mine are illustrations of the futility bound up in resisting God.
So, if they are going to kill him, Caiaphas has to convince Rome that Jesus was a threat to the Roman Empire… Rome would not execute him just because he was alleged to break a Jewish law.
Rome ignored those aspects of Jewish law.
They had to get Jesus found guilty on a charge of sedition.
Jesus claimed to be a King… that was all Caiaphas needed… and Caiaphas pegged Jesus with the charge of sedition.
Jesus was crucified… under the sign “King of the Jews”… and everything was back to even keel… for about 2 days.
On the first day of the week, one of the attendants came and knocked on Caiaphas’ door and said, “Sir, the body of the young Rabbi who has been crucified is missing...”
Over the next few days and weeks, hundreds of people saw Jesus resurrected… his followers emerged from hiding to make the proclamation that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead:
You crucified him
God raised him
We have seen him
Say you are sorry.
Now the crowds are assembling, not around the person of Jesus, but around the name of Jesus.
Now the authority of his teaching is God forward, not from the mouth and heart of Jesus, but by the Spirit of Jesus.
Caiaphas and his family and friends came to realize that they did more to serve Jesus and his Kingdom’s purposes by taking his life than they ever could have dreamed.
Caiaphas and his family and friends came to realize that they did more to serve Jesus and his Kingdom’s purposes by taking his life than they ever could have dreamed.
Not many years later (36-38 AD), Caiaphas lost his place as High Priest.
And not many years after that, the Jews lost their Temple.
There is a little Caiaphas in all of us.
“Preserve at ALL cost.”
“God, either help me or get out of my way.”
Whatever you have replaced God with in your life, is already diminishing in value and significance.
Your greatest regrets were/are an attempt to preserve something or someone that isn’t even a part of your life anymore.
This is exactly what Caiaphas did… and it’s what we do.
We are all bad boys of Easter.
Little gods always disappoint… and they always disappear.
The pressure you feel to preserve the little gods will ultimately drive you to self destructive behaviors.
And before long, your self destructive are attempts at prop-ing your little god up.
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