JOHN175 - The Pharisees Have a New Political Enemy #1
John 4:1-3
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Music by Jeff Foote
1 SPEAKER_00: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.