A Diagnosis of the Christ-Rejecters

The religious leaders were not God-pleasers, they were not man-pleasers either. They were self-pleasers and they knew that if Jesus was arrested by the Romans, the people's hopes in Him would be crushed and they would get rid of Him and secure their ongoing prominence. In April of 2008, two Taliban insurgents disguised as cops came to a roadside police station near Kandahar, Afghanistan. The guards at the station relaxed, thinking the men were fellow police officers. By the time the guards realized they'd been tricked, the Taliban soldiers had opened fire. Well, like those police officers who faced enemies disguised as friends, there are churches today being attacked by spiritual enemies disguised as Christians.

How do you recognize and deal with these people? What can you learn from Jesus' example? Consider that today on Grace to You as John MacArthur gives you practical biblical methods for spotting error. It's part of his study, How to Talk to a Heretic. Now here's John with the lesson. On this Wednesday, Jesus spent the day in the temple surrounded by masses of people who had flowed into Jerusalem because it was Passover time.

And when Jesus came into the city, they in a euphoria of hope wanted Him to be the Messiah they had long waited for and so they gave Him a triumphal entry and they were still hanging on everything He did and every word He said by Wednesday in the temple. He is teaching these great crowds. But in every crowd, the religious leaders are present and there are repeated confrontations between Jesus and these religious leaders. The crowd just wants to hear Him teach. They want Him to say the things they're longing to hear. The religious leaders want to trap Him in His words. The people know He's a miracle worker. They know He raised Lazarus from the dead. They want Him to be the long-awaited Messiah and at this time on Wednesday they're still hopeful that He will indeed be that Messiah. The tide has not turned against Him. But the leaders have hated Him for a long time. They have hated Him for years. They want Him dead and they want Him dead fast and they will get what they want by Friday.

Same crowd that cried Hosanna on Monday will cry crucify Him on Friday. The shift is massive, one hundred and eighty degrees. And the religious leaders are essentially the architects of this shift.

They're brilliant. How can you turn the tide among hundreds of thousands of people in a few days from hailing someone as a would-be Messiah to wanting His blood as a criminal and an imposter? Theirs is a kind of malevolent genius. And every day they want Him dead more than they did the day before. And every hour they want Him dead more than they did the hour before. And everything He says only escalates their animosity.

Every confrontation they have with Him only steals their objective and their purpose. By the time we come to our text, which begins in verse 19, they are at a feverish level of desperation. Jesus is popular, wildly popular. He has the attention of the masses and He's telling them things that are destructive of these religious leaders. And the people know it. Look at verse 19, the scribes and the chief priests tried to lay hands on Him that very hour and they feared the people for they...that is the people...understood that He...Jesus...spoke this parable against them, the religious leaders.

They were getting it. Jesus was not just teaching them theology, He was exposing the falseness of these religious leaders to the people. They were the ones who killed the prophets in the past that had always been led by the false leaders. They are the ones who will lead the execution of the Son of God, as well. Stakes were really high.

The people were pro-Jesus and becoming increasingly anti-Pharisee, anti-Sagesi, anti-Herodian, the complex of sects that made up the powerful and influential religious leaders. They have to put it to a stop. They have to turn the crowd the other way.

That is not an easy job. If they had their way, they would stone Him on the spot in the good old-fashioned Jewish way, find a ledge, throw Him over and crush Him under stones. They can't do that. Caesar has removed their right to exercise capital punishment. Caesar has the power to take life. The Jews do not.

They can't do that. They've got to come up with a way to get rid of Jesus, preserve their own position and to turn the crowd 180 degrees the other direction. And in this text, we see their malevolent genius at work. Now there are a lot of ways that you could break this text down to understand it, but I think what perhaps is most direct is to look at it as a complex of sins and call it a diagnosis of the Christ rejecters. Do a little bit of spiritual pathology, looking into those specific sins that characterize their efforts. Let's begin with the sin of hatred in verse 19.

That was the dominant reality. They hated Jesus. Verse 19, and the scribes and the chief priests tried to lay hands on Him that very hour.

If they had their way, they would have taken Him right there, right then on the spot. Mentions the scribes and the Pharisees, the scribes, you know, were the scholars, the lawyers of the Law, the theologians. The chief priests were those who were the most prominent priests. There were also, according to Matthew, and Matthew records the same incident, Matthew 22, Mark records it, Mark 12, so you have three different accounts of this which all mesh wonderfully and I'll make reference to some of the others as we go through it. Matthew 22, 15 says that it included the Pharisees. So you have the chief priests, you have the scribes, and you have the Pharisees.

By now, the hatred of the chief priests, the scribes and the Pharisees is very well established. Matthew tells us there was another group there, and Mark does as well, called the Herodians. The Herodians are another sect.

They are a political party of pro-Herod Jews. Herodians were pure politicians who wanted to be attached to the reigning power and knew to do that you have to play the game with Rome. The Pharisees were willing to do that a little bit, not to the degree that the Herodians were. But amazingly, the Pharisees and the Herodians can get together to get rid of Jesus. And this isn't anything new in Mark chapter 3, verse 6, way back long before this, way back at the start of Jesus' Galilean ministry, it says the Pharisees went out and immediately began to take counsel with the Herodians against Jesus as to how they might destroy Him.

So they have been in alliance or collusion to get rid of Jesus literally for years. So you have everybody in on this thing...scribes, Pharisees, priests, Herodians. Some of the priests no doubt would have been Sadducees as well. Sadducees were the religious liberals, Pharisees were the religious fanatics and fundamentalists.

Herodians were the politically motivated. They were all together along with the theologians called scribes. All of them had the same common end...get rid of Jesus.

So here is Judaism's brain trust of that day. And Matthew tells us they were plotting together this is a high-level multilateral meeting, a meeting of all the minds on one common end, getting rid of Jesus. And they really wanted to lay hands on Him that very hour. They didn't want to wait one more hour. They wanted to take Him and kill Him but they couldn't.

Why? They feared the people for they understood that He spoke this parable against them. If they did anything that looked like what Jesus said they were going to do, they would then create a self-fulfilling prophecy and bring the wrath of the people down on their own heads.

They had to play this one very carefully. They had to find a way, just think of it, to turn this massive populace from positive attitudes toward Jesus to negative attitudes toward Jesus, from wanting Him to be their King to wanting Him dead. How were they going to do that? It was only one way. There was only one power of execution in the land and that was Rome. In the end, Rome had to kill Him.

But they didn't need to have Him dead to have the people turn against Him. All they needed to do was have Rome arrest Him. They were anti-Rome, all of them really. They played whatever game they needed to play with Rome to keep their power, but they bitterly hated all things Roman and they knew the populace despised all things Roman. But they needed Rome's help, not just to execute Jesus, but they needed Rome to arrest Him and they needed it quickly.

How were they going to do that? Rome was hypersensitive about one crime, insurrection...insurrection. They prided themselves on Pax Romana, keeping the Roman peace. They prided themselves on quelling rebellions.

They prided themselves on executing insurrectionists and rebels. They needed to trap Jesus in an insurrectionist statement and then the Herodians would report Him because they had all the lines of communication to the Romans who would swiftly execute this rebel as they did other such rebels. So the Pharisees and the scribes and the chief priests and the Herodians all get together. They have this planning meeting to come up with a strategy to make this happen. All they needed to do was get the Romans to arrest Him and that would turn the people against Him.

Why? Because the people believed that the Old Testament promised the Messiah would come and set up a kingdom, right? And they weren't wrong about it. That the Messiah would come and establish His throne in Jerusalem, in Israel, deliver Israel from all Gentile domination and then Israel would be the primary nation over the whole world. That when the Messiah came, He would establish a kingdom that would break the back of all Gentile pagan blasphemous idolatrous tyranny. Anybody who wanted to be a Messiah, anybody who wanted to be accepted as a Messiah would have to be anti-Gentile, anti-Rome. And if they could get Jesus to appear anti-Rome, Rome would step in fast. And as soon as this would be Messiah showed that Rome had the power over Him and not He having the power over Rome, the tide would turn cause He couldn't be the Messiah.

How are they going to make it happen? How are they going to turn Jesus into what appears to be a dangerous revolutionary? The Romans already knew He had power over masses of people.

They could see it before their very eyes. And Pilate was in Jerusalem at this time, though he wasn't always there, his abode was in another place. He was there because it was Passover and the city was swelled with all these pilgrims and he was there to make sure he kept things in control. They had to have Jesus arrested by the Romans and that would prove finally that He was not the Messiah. So how were they going to get Rome to arrest Him? They had to do it that way. And then back to verse 20, end of the verse, they could deliver Him to the rule and the authority of the governor.

That was the whole objective. So what you've got here is a kind of impotent rage. They hate Him so much. Their hatred is at the fever pitch.

They want Him dead, but they must protect their own positions because they fear the people. This describes their hatred and a second sin, their pride, their pride. In that statement in verse 19, they feared the people because the people understood that He was telling them a parable about them, that they were the ones He said were killers of the Son of God. They feared the people.

What do you mean they feared the people? They feared that they would lose the people's esteem, trust. You see, popularity, acceptance, elevation, honor, respect came to them from the people. They fed on it. In fact, it was essential to feeding their self-righteous egos. They loved to draw attention to themselves. They loved to wear certain clothes and act in certain ways and carry on certain behaviors that drew people's attention to them and made them seem pious and holy and elevated and superior. They sought the chief seats at the banquets, Jesus said in Matthew 23.

They wanted people to call them father, teacher, master. They needed the people like all false religious leaders do. All their power, all their honor, all their esteem, all their position, all their prominence came from the people. And the people right now were still feeling the buzz of the triumphal entry that Jesus might be the Messiah. Matthew 21, 46 says, these leaders feared the multitude because the multitude believed Jesus was a prophet.

At least He was a prophet. And so they were afraid to go against the crowd because they needed the crowd. By the way, the words of the New Testament, the words of our Lord Himself in Matthew 23 tell us that these leaders had no love for the people...no love for the people. In fact, they used the people and they abused the people. They heaped upon them heavy burdens, legalistic burdens and wouldn't lift a finger to help them carry those burdens. Jesus said they put upon them a yoke that no person could bear. They ruled by fear and intimidation, the way all false religious leaders rule and work. They put people under fear that if they don't obey them and do what they say, they'll go to hell.

They'll miss the Kingdom of God. They didn't do anything for the people. They turned them into sons of hell. They made them worse by their false doctrine. And they had nothing but contempt for the people. They despised them, fought them lower than they, never invited them to their homes or their luncheons or their dinners or their banquets, had no contact with them.

They were not God-pleasers but they were not man-pleasers either. They were self-pleasers who fed their proud souls on the accolades of those that they intimidated and abused. And they knew that if Jesus was arrested by the Romans, the people's hopes in Him would be crushed and they would get rid of Him and secure their ongoing prominence. So they're full of hate and they're full of pride. And they have to find another way because they can't just lay hands on Him, which is a term that means seize Him and take Him away either to kill Him or to the Romans to have Him killed until they have a reason. And if they did that with no apparent reason before the people, the people would turn on them.

So they have to turn the attitude of the people. That leads them to a third sin in this complex of sins, hypocrisy. They have to play their game, the game at which they were so adept, the game of hypocrisy. All false religious leaders are hypocrites then and now and always and they are masters at their disguise. So verse 20 says, they watched Him, surveillance, they watched Him.

What are they looking for? They sent spies who pretended to be righteous in order that they might catch Him in some statement so as to deliver Him up to the rule and authority of the governor. The end of the whole plan was to get Him to pilot the Roman governor who represented Caesar, whose job it was to make sure there was no trouble in Israel, who would deal with any rebel or insurrectionist.

They had to get Him to the governor. In order to get Him to the governor, they had to catch Him in some statement that would cause the Romans to want to arrest Him and kill Him. In order to catch Him in that kind of statement, they had to find Him in the right moment and so they watched Him and they sent spies masquerading as honest truth seekers. By the way, Matthew says the spies were disciples of the Pharisees along with the Herodians because the Herodians had the direct access to the Romans.

They were largely in cahoots tightly. So the idea was, we'll catch Him in something and the Herodians will rush to the Romans and since the Herodians don't have religious issues at the top of their list, but political ones, it will be much more believable if the story is told by the Herodians. That little phrase, pretended to be righteous, was a standard then for false religion and it always is...pretended to be righteous. What they actually wanted was to trap Him, catch Him in some statement that would cause Him to be arrested and taken to the Roman authorities and executed as a rebellion leader, a rebel. Now they didn't think Jesus was the Messiah.

They were completely confident He was not the Messiah. They thought He was just a guy trying to make people think He was the Messiah and in order to keep up the game, He would be forced to take the popular view that we have to overthrow Rome. So all they have to do is put Him in a position where He has to say that. And once the Romans arrest Him and He shows that Rome has the power over Him, He doesn't have the power over Rome, the people will turn in a minute.

It will be over and the Romans will kill Him. So they're looking for their moment. Well it could be you've tuned in the last few days and you're thinking, well I don't recognize this Jesus that you're talking about. He's aggressive. He's purposely provocative. He's confrontational. That's not the Jesus I've heard about.

So what about that, John? Do you think we're blowing out of proportion these incidents with the Jewish leaders? Would it be fair to say that confrontation was really common in Jesus' ministry? Yeah, you could basically say that the Gospels, the four Gospels, start out with the birth narratives and John the Baptist in the end with the Passion Week.

And in the middle, there are basically two things going on. There is His ministry to the people, which was healing and casting out demons and speaking the truth. And right alongside of that was His constant conflict with the Jewish leaders.

And there's no way to avoid that. You would literally have to take out the middle part of every Gospel, the middle of Matthew, the middle of Mark, and the middle of Luke, and the middle of John, because that's what was happening. He was speaking to the people, and the leaders resented what He was saying.

And He was also criticizing the leaders to the people, and that led to confrontation between Himself and the leaders. No, you couldn't possibly go through a Gospel and avoid this. You'd have to miss the middle section of a Gospel, chapter after chapter after chapter. So when we're talking about how Jesus confronted a heretic, false leaders, we're talking about what essentially went on for the three years of His ministry and finally culminated in the leaders reaching a point where they hated Him so much that they got the Romans to execute Him. It was the confrontation that led to His crucifixion from a human standpoint. So that's essential in understanding Jesus' ministry and how He confronted those who taught error.

I would just remind you again of something we've been letting you in on. We have a brand new book that I've written called Jesus Unleashed. This is the Jesus that people don't hear about very often. Yes, He was merciful. Yes, He was gracious.

Yes, He was sympathetic to our weakness. But yes, He was passionate, unwavering, and fierce in confronting those who taught lies and error and attacked God. The book Jesus Unleashed highlights the boldness and power of Jesus, and it'll help you to be bold and powerful when you proclaim the Gospel. 150 pages, hardcover, available from Grace to You.

Yes, and this could be an especially helpful book for fathers or church leaders, people who are responsible for protecting others from doctrinal error. To order a copy of Jesus Unleashed, contact us today. Our toll-free number, 855-GRACE, and our website, gty.org.

Again, the title to ask for, Jesus Unleashed. This book will show you how our Lord's approach to false doctrine applies to the current age of compromise. To order your copy, call 855-GRACE, or go to gty.org. And let me highlight one more resource that will help you understand Scripture and the person of Christ more and more every day. I'm talking about our free app, simply called the Study Bible. It gives you the text of Scripture in the New American Standard, King James, and English Standard versions, along with instant access to thousands of free study aids. That includes blog articles, devotionals, and more than 3500 of John MacArthur's sermons. To download the app, again, it's called the Study Bible, visit our website, gty.org. That's our website. One more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to watch Grace to You television this Sunday. Check your local listings for Channel and Times, and also be here tomorrow when John helps equip you to confront error, particularly when it's coming from your own church. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.