JOHN175 - The Pharisees Have a New Political Enemy #1

0:17 The first presidential election that I remember being old enough to kind of understand and track with was 1992. And I remember George Herbert Walker Bush. He was crazy popular. Dude had north of a 90% approval rating. Bush was a Republican. All the talk was who will the Democrats run as the sacrificial lamb to just go and lose to Bush in 92 so they can regroup and try to get the White House back in 96.

0:46 Everybody assumed that the guy the Democrats were going to run was Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York. And so the Republicans geared up their machine to do opposition research and figure out how to beat Cuomo. Well, at the last minute, Cuomo's like, I'm out, forget it, I'm not gonna run. And then just out of the blue, this little known governor from Arkansas rises up, gets second in a primary in New Hampshire.

1:09 He gets accused of quite a bit of stuff, but he survives the scandals and he ends up getting the nomination and beating Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot in 1992. And this is, of course, the beginning of the Clinton Empire. Well, the thing that was so interesting here for our purposes, as we're turning the page from John 3 into John chapter 4, is the religious establishment of the day had a guy who was on their radar that they were doing opposition research on.

1:38 There was a dude who they thought was a threat, and they'd sent representatives out to meet with him and find out what the deal was. And that perceived threat of the religious establishment in Jerusalem was, of course, John the Baptist. And John the Baptist tells them very plainly, I'm none of the things you think I am.

1:53 In fact, I'm not even going to give you my name, I'll just tell you, I am the voice of one calling out in the desert, make straight the way for the Lord. Clever answer. It's just a quote from the prophet Isaiah. People are flooding out to the countryside to be with John the Baptist, and they've been doing this for a while now, years, as we move from John 3 into John chapter 4.

2:13 And the Pharisees, I can't imagine they liked him very much. I mean, he's basically a layperson. He has no formal training, he has no pedigree. He didn't go to the same schools that they went to. So those fancy institutions with pipes and leather patches on the jacket's elbows, they didn't get to write and imprint onto John the Baptist's brain and message what the official messaging would be.

2:35 He just wasn't part of the in-group. He wasn't part of the controlled opposition. He was a complete wild card. And so they really had to keep an eye on him and do their opposition research. It looks like the Pharisees did the work to make a plan to control and contain and understand the threat that John the Baptist posed.

2:54 But then, out of nowhere, and yes, I also feel uncomfortable that I've backdoored my way into this analogy, Jesus fits into the Bill Clinton spot. Just don't read into that. It's just don't, I'm not trying to say any, just you get it. But to their surprise, this guy comes along who surpasses John the Baptist.

3:11 And John the Baptist not only doesn't run for Messiah, John the Baptist just defers to Jesus and says, Yeah, that's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He must become greater. I must become less. All of a sudden, the Pharisees have squandered all of this effort on their opposition research and figuring out how to defeat this wild card, John the Baptist.

3:30 And now there's an even wilder card who is cropped up. John the Baptist says amazing things, and miraculous things are happening in the lives of people invisibly, but with Jesus, ooh, the rumors circling about him are much more dangerous, much more difficult to do opposition research on. I mean, Jesus feels like he's from elsewhere.

3:54 There's nothing to strike at with him. And there's stories of him doing actual break the laws of time and space miracles in front of lots of people, and he's just getting started. So it's the old switcheroo. They're preparing for one opponent, but all of a sudden, boom, there's a brand new opponent in front of them, and it's Jesus.

4:11 So the religious leaders are scrambling to figure out how to manage this new and even bigger threat. So when we wrapped up John chapter three over the last few days and we're looking at all the spiritual implications of John the Baptist endorsing Jesus and John the Evangelist, writing about how Jesus is from heaven and has truth and all of this stuff, you know, you and I are thinking about it from a church history perspective, even from a personal devotion to Christ perspective.

4:39 But there's another group here that is observing all of this exchange and thinking about the implications of it. And that is the religious political establishment, namely the Pharisees. And this is briefly recorded and alluded to here at the beginning of John chapter four. And this is very important for the way the rest of the book is going to play out because we we know now, after the double prologue, what the theme of the book is.

5:04 Behold, Jesus is God in the flesh. Believe and have life in his name. John says that's what he's going for at the beginning of his book. He says that's what he's going for in the middle of the book. He says that's what he's going for right at the end of the book. There is no doubt what you as the reader are supposed to do here.

5:21 You're not supposed to just coldly observe an interesting religious political situation that shaped the world from a distance and be like, oh, that was interesting. No, you he expects that it will be so compelling that you will respond. And John expects that God Himself, God the Holy Spirit, is going to open eyes and soften hearts to this message.

5:43 That is the theme of the book of John. That's what he's trying to get us to get. But the plot of the book of John is laid out right here in John chapter one. The light has come into the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. That's John 1 5, and then John 1 10. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

6:04 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. So the plot is the tension between the capital T truth bearer and the capital T truth author, Jesus, God in the flesh, stepping into muck and crap bay. It's the tension between him and the darkness, and the forces of evil and obstruction, and that which does not want to be in the light, and that which does not want capital T truth, that which has completely made peace with the muck bay that they're in and trying to get the nicest looking little turd nuggets out of muck bay.

6:41 And that crowd is very uncomfortable with the light and truth of God because it is alien. It's weird. And hey, we might not like the muck, but it's our muck, dang it. So Jesus and the religious leadership are on a collision course. So once again, this little nugget here at the beginning of John chapter 4 that I still haven't read you.

6:59 Sorry, I'm I'm definitely going to before I hang up the phone here. This little nugget at the beginning of John chapter 4 takes us back not to the theme of the book, but to the plot of the book. John 4 1. The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John. Although, in fact, it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.

7:20 That's actually what the text says right there. It's a little aside. Okay, so in the previous passage, a group of people who didn't really pose a threat to Jesus, they were just maybe a little petty and a little insecure, that being John the Baptist's disciples, they notice this shift and they're bothered and they fuss about it a little bit.

7:37 Then their master sets them straight. Okay, no harm, no foul, whatever. But now we turn the page to John chapter four, and an out and out enemy is noticing the same thing that John the Baptist's disciples were noticing earlier. Probably word has circulated to the Pharisees that John the Baptist has endorsed Jesus.

7:55 That's another thing that occurs politically even today. You know, somebody'll drop out of the race, and the question is, ooh, who are they going to endorse? Well, here it was a huge factor in how things were going to work out. And the Pharisees weren't political morons. I mean, they got where they got through a certain talent for this kind of stuff.

8:14 And they know that John the Baptist's endorsement is potent. And the crowds don't lie, there's so many people out there now following Jesus that they're like, all right, obviously this guy is the one we need to be directing our attention to, but he kind of caught us flat-footed. Jesus came out of nowhere.

8:29 There's all this baptizing going on. But then in verse three, someone who's even more politically savvy, even more savvy about the strategies and the machinations and the hearts of other people, that being Jesus himself, all of a sudden now he is making an observation about what's shaping up politically, and he's going to take action in response to that.

8:49 Verse three. When the Lord, when Jesus heard of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. All right, Judea is where Jerusalem is. That's where the hotbed of all of this activity is. Jesus is really within striking distance and convenient access of the religious leadership. Galilee is his home base.

9:10 Remember, right after the wedding at Cana, before Jesus went down for the Passover, he stopped by Capernaum and set up a base of operations there. Well, that's on the north side of the Sea of Galilee. That is a long ways during walking times from Jerusalem and from that political orbit and that whole political scene.

9:29 You know, today it feels like we're all one inch from Washington, D.C. or whatever the capital of your country might be. You know, we're always just soaked in the politics of all of it, like it's right next door. But that's a relatively recent thing in the age of digital media and connectedness. I mean, most people throughout history have lived a long way from where the politics of their people happen.

9:50 And the further away you are, it's like being further away from ground zero from the blast. The further away you are, the less of the radiation gets you. So Jesus just demonstrates common sense here. He clearly hasn't done what he came to do yet. So he just goes back to Galilee. It's not cowardice, it's strategically shrewd.

10:09 And when it's time for him to go to the cross, he sets his face resolutely toward Jerusalem and goes there with courage. But for now, there's a whole bunch of stuff that needs to happen, and it's going to happen better away from the hubbub of Jerusalem and the political things that we see being described quickly here in John 4, 1 through 3.

10:28 And that stuff needs to happen so that there will be enough for people like you and me to behold, believe, and have life in his name. So I'm glad that Jesus had the savvy to notice that the religious political establishment had taken the bullseye off of John the Baptist and frantically repositioned it on Jesus.

10:48 He's like, cool, I'm going to give this a little bit of space because I got things that are real important that I got to go do right now. We're going to talk about a very important meeting that happens on that trip back up north next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.