EPISODE · Jun 4, 2023
Seeking Jesus for the Wrong Reason
from Trinity Church Tamworth · host John Paterson
SEEKING JESUS FOR THE WRONG REASON Trinity John 11:45-57 4.6.23 A majestic scene, a brilliant book, someone’s heroic story or a child’s achievement can make your heart soar. That very day, a medical diagnosis, betrayal by a friend or a television news report can bring that same heart crashing to the ground. For some there is more sour than sweet, or sweet than sour, but there is some light and dark for us all. It is the same mix we see here in John chapter 11. For three Sundays, we have seen so much that is sweet: the strange love of Jesus that keeps him away from his dying friend Lazarus, because he wants to bless people with more than one more healing the passionate personal insight into the heart of Jesus as he loves and weeps, longs for and is indignant the mighty power of Jesus that means by his loud voice, a 4-day dead man comes back to life again. Even with the tears and the mourning along the way, the overwhelming picture of Jesus is wonderfully sweet. But there is sour as well. While some people who have come from Jerusalem to Bethany and seen all this embrace Jesus, others hotfoot it back to the heavies in Jerusalem, knowing this must all be stopped in its tracks. We read in verse 47 that they call a meeting of supreme court, the Sanhedrin, to decide what must be done with Jesus. They are worried. People are talking. People are siding with Jesus. He is no longer the nobody from the backblocks who can be safely ignored. If things keep going like this, “everyone will believe in him” (v48a). If they don’t stop the landslide there will be big trouble. The 70 members of the Sanhedrin, and the high priest, have more power than any other Jews. But they don’t really run the show. Rome does. And Rome tolerates them, so long as they keep Caesar happy. If they can’t hold things together, “the Romans will come and take away both our place (temple) and our nation” (v48b). So, Jesus must go. Because he did not raise Lazarus from the dead? Because he did. Because what he says is not true – who cares? These men are nationalists and political pragmatists, who must hold their positions no matter what. “So, from that day on they made plans to put him to death” (v53) Are they concerned for truth? Or God? Or committed to the welfare of the people? Or to being Jewish? And self-survival, and to the gravy train that keeps them all so well fed. They are determined, and so wanted posters for Jesus, go up everywhere, and people are put under pressure to dob him in. If someone knows where he is and does not report him, do you think they are going to be allowed into church next sabbath day? It is no longer safe in Jerusalem, or even in Bethany just 2 or 3 kilometres down the road. So, Jesus goes bush, we read in verse 54. The Jewish big men are seeking Jesus now with some desperation. Because he is God? Because he speaks truth? No, they are seeking Jesus all over the place, but all for the wrong reasons. We have now gone from the sweetness of what happened in the Bethany cemetery to an ugly murder plot. From the clear faith of Mary and Martha to the contrived evil of these pragmatic, determined, self-seeking, self-preoccupied religious men. Do you think they are alone? That we do not still have people who hold power, wanting to hang onto power and position at all cost? In churches? In parliaments? In board rooms and trade unions? Do you think we do not have people who say, “If God only appeared here, or raised a dead man, then I’d believe?” No, they wouldn’t. Unbelief is so deep in our hearts that all the evidence in the world won’t convince us while ever we hold to idols we have made. Do you think we do not still have people who look for Jesus for all the wrong reasons? And then walk away from him when he doesn’t say or do what they want him to? In the real world, day, and night, sweet and sour are always side by side. One of the things that all prime ministers and premiers battle, is to stop leaks from the discussions in cabinet rooms where policies are set, and arguments made. We are not supposed to know what is said in there. Someone in the Sanhedrin cabinet room has leaked. And John has the scoop on the conversations there. And he tells us what was said in that private gathering. Why? I think he does it because he wants us to do two things as we live through the sweet and sour mix of life … 1. LOOK PAST THE DARKNESS ON THE SURFACE The high priest, the 71st member of the Sanhedrin, knew exactly what should be done with Jesus if their positions are ever to be safe. Verse 50 “It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” This is real pragmatism. It is better to arrange the murder of an innocent man than to lose Jewishness. If we kill him, the Romans will not kill us. One man dies: many live. John writes: “He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.” (vv51,52) Caiaphas doesn’t know how true his words are. He is saying more than he could ever have realised. Without knowing it, he is predicting exactly what God had said was to happen, but not in the way that he imagined. Caiaphas is making a political statement about the nation. But he is echoing God’s plan to save not a nation, but people from within the nation, and others outside of it, making them one in a new international, multi-ethnic family of God. He is angling for a political or national rescue. One man in exchange for the many: “We kill him, so they (the Romans) do not kill us.” God is saying “Yes, one man in exchange for the many. “I will condemn and kill him, so I do not have to condemn and kill you.” Isaiah 53:10 says, “It was the will of YAHWEH to crush him; he has put him to grief”. So, are Caiaphas and co are not guilty for killing Jesus? Of course they are. But behind their evil deed, is the will of God, that Jesus should die for the people in the fullest possible sense. John wants us to look past what we see and hear on the surface and to see the bigger, more wonderful plan of God. Looking on the surface has never been enough when it comes to what really matters. Caiaphas is operating at this level. And he doesn’t get it that through his words and deeds, God is doing something at a far more wonderful and all-embracing level. Who would have thought it? Who would have thought that Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery, and he becomes the one man who saves the whole world from death in famine? Who would have thought that Jerusalem’s murder of Stephen would mean that the believers are forced out, and take the gospel with them to the nations? Who would have thought that Paul’s imprisonment in Rome means that the gospel seeps into Caesar’s palace? Who would have thought that the murder of Jim Elliot and four fellow missionaries in Ecuador in 1956 means a great upsurge of new missionaries? Who would have thought that political hatred and murder of the Lord Jesus means life for the whole world? Do the haters, pragmatists and evil men know they are serving the good purposes of God? Of course not. But they are. So, in the darkness, look past the darkness, which is so real, look past it to the God who works through it and in it and by it. 2. DON’T LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD UNTIL FULLTIME As the wanted posters go up and the temple police are searching Jerusalem looking for Jesus, it looks like the sour powers of darkness have the upper hand. It still looks like the darkness is winning. Islam makes inroads; the Chinese Communist Party closes hundreds of churches every week; so many Western churches walk away from Jesus to be more acceptable in the culture. But that is the story along the way, not at the end. Who are all these people that John says Jesus will gather? Some of them are inside Israel, like John, Nicodemus, Paul, and thousands more. But there are other “children of God”, outside of Israel, “scattered abroad”. It is God’s plan to gather them as well, to be all together. This sounds like John 10 when Jesus spoke about his sheep. “I have other sheep which are not of this fold (Israel), I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice, so there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (10:16) Who will he bring? His sheep. Those God calls here “the children of God”. Those out there who at this point have never even heard about Jesus. But in the Father’s electing, predestinating love, they are already marked out as his own. Will he save them? Yes. Will they hear his gospel? There is no doubt about it. Will they believe? Absolutely they will. Nothing in the history of the world has ever been more certain in this world than that every child of God, redeemed by Jesus, WILL be gathered. God the Father isn’t going to leave that to chance … he isn’t going to kill his Son and then leave that up to us to see if anyone believes or not. Just an invitation hanging in the balance in the hope that someone somewhere might believe. No, “all that the Father gives me WILL come to me” (Jn 6:37). The book of Revelation is in part a vision of what things will look like when the fulltime siren sounds. Who will be gathered around Jesus in the new heaven and the new earth? The full and complete number of the elect – pictured as a large, and a complete symbolic number – 144,000. Not 143,999 … they will all be there: every one of them. And nothing in heaven or in hell or in heaven will prevent them from being there and gathered. But the fulltime siren hasn’t sounded. It’s always sweet and sour until it does. But there is no doubt about what the scoreboard will show at the end: Who has been brought in? All the elect. Are any of the children of God missing? Score: zero. It’s not as though God has done what he has despite what Caiaphas and those like him have done. It will be that God has done it through Caiaphas and others like him. Not apart from their pragmatic, conniving and intimidating actions. But through them. I have tried hard to be honest about sin and about the dark. It is ugly, and so often very, very painful. Don’t draw any conclusions until it is full time, and don’t lose heart, dear friends when the black is pitch black and the sour sets your teeth on edge. When you stand at the end with all the loved, chosen died for and redeemed children of God, you’ll get it. The sin of evil men will then make sense. Christ’s bruises then will make sense. Your bruises will then make sense. So right now: 1. Look past the darkness on the surface. 2. Don’t look at the scoreboard until fulltime.
What this episode covers
SEEKING JESUS FOR THE WRONG REASON Trinity John 11:45-57 4.6.23 A majestic scene, a brilliant book, someone’s heroic story or a child’s achievement can make your heart soar. That very day, a medical diagnosis, betrayal by a friend or a television news report can bring that same heart crashing to the ground. For some there is more sour than sweet, or sweet than sour, but there is some light and dark for us all. It is the same mix we see here in John chapter 11. For three Sundays, we have seen so much that is sweet: the strange love of Jesus that keeps him away from his dying friend Lazarus, because he wants to bless people with more than one more healing the passionate personal insight into the heart of Jesus as he loves and weeps, longs for and is indignant the mighty power of Jesus that means by his loud voice, a 4-day dead man comes back to life again. Even with the tears and the mourning along the way, the overwhelming picture of Jesus is wonderfully sweet. But there is sour as well. While some people who have come from Jerusalem to Bethany and seen all this embrace Jesus, others hotfoot it back to the heavies in Jerusalem, knowing this must all be stopped in its tracks. We read in verse 47 that they call a meeting of supreme court, the Sanhedrin, to decide what must be done with Jesus. They are worried. People are talking. People are siding with Jesus. He is no longer the nobody from the backblocks who can be safely ignored. If things keep going like this, “everyone will believe in him” (v48a). If they don’t stop the landslide there will be big trouble. The 70 members of the Sanhedrin, and the high priest, have more power than any other Jews. But they don’t really run the show. Rome does. And Rome tolerates them, so long as they keep Caesar happy. If they can’t hold things together, “the Romans will come and take away both our place (temple) and our nation” (v48b). So, Jesus must go. Because he did not raise Lazarus from the dead? Because he did. Because what he says is not true – who cares? These men are nationalists and political pragmatists, who must hold their positions no matter what. “So, from that day on they made plans to put him to death” (v53) Are they concerned for truth? Or God? Or committed to the welfare of the people? Or to being Jewish? And self-survival, and to the gravy train that keeps them all so well fed. They are determined, and so wanted posters for Jesus, go up everywhere, and people are put under pressure to dob him in. If someone knows where he is and does not report him, do you think they are going to be allowed into church next sabbath day? It is no longer safe in Jerusalem, or even in Bethany just 2 or 3 kilometres down the road. So, Jesus goes bush, we read in verse 54. The Jewish big men are seeking Jesus now with some desperation. Because he is God? Because he speaks truth? No, they are seeking Jesus all over the place, but all for the wrong reasons. We have now gone from the sweetness of what happened in the Bethany cemetery to an ugly murder plot. From the clear faith of Mary and Martha to the contrived evil of these pragmatic, determined, self-seeking, self-preoccupied religious men. Do you think they are alone? That we do not still have people who hold power, wanting to hang onto power and position at all cost? In churches? In parliaments? In board rooms and trade unions? Do you think we do not have people who say, “If God only appeared here, or raised a dead man, then I’d believe?” No, they wouldn’t. Unbelief is so deep in our hearts that all the evidence in the world won’t convince us while ever we hold to idols we have made. Do you think we do not still have people who look for Jesus for all the wrong reasons? And then walk away from him when he doesn’t say or do what they want him to? In the real world, day, and night, sweet and sour are always side by side. One of the things that all prime ministers and premiers battle, is to stop leaks from the discussions in cabinet rooms where policies are set, and arguments made. We are not supposed to know what is said in there. Someone in the Sanhedrin cabinet room has leaked. And John has the scoop on the conversations there. And he tells us what was said in that private gathering. Why? I think he does it because he wants us to do two things as we live through the sweet and sour mix of life … 1. LOOK PAST THE DARKNESS ON THE SURFACE The high priest, the 71st member of the Sanhedrin, knew exactly what should be done with Jesus if their positions are ever to be safe. Verse 50 “It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” This is real pragmatism. It is better to arrange the murder of an innocent man than to lose Jewishness. If we kill him, the Romans will not kill us. One man dies: many live. John writes: “He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.” (vv51,52) Caiaphas doesn’t know how true his words are. He is saying more than he could ever have realised. Without knowing it, he is predicting exactly what God had said was to happen, but not in the way that he imagined. Caiaphas is making a political statement about the nation. But he is echoing God’s plan to save not a nation, but people from within the nation, and others outside of it, making them one in a new international, multi-ethnic family of God. He is angling for a political or national rescue. One man in exchange for the many: “We kill him, so they (the Romans) do not kill us.” God is saying “Yes, one man in exchange for the many. “I will condemn and kill him, so I do not have to condemn and kill you.” Isaiah 53:10 says, “It was the will of YAHWEH to crush him; he has put him to grief”. So, are Caiaphas and co are not guilty for killing Jesus? Of course they are. But behind their evil deed, is the will of God, that Jesus should die for the people in the fullest possible sense. John wants us to look past what we see and hear on the surface and to see the bigger, more wonderful plan of God. Looking on the surface has never been enough when it comes to what really matters. Caiaphas is operating at this level. And he doesn’t get it that through his words and deeds, God is doing something at a far more wonderful and all-embracing level. Who would have thought it? Who would have thought that Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery, and he becomes the one man who saves the whole world from death in famine? Who would have thought that Jerusalem’s murder of Stephen would mean that the believers are forced out, and take the gospel with them to the nations? Who would have thought that Paul’s imprisonment in Rome means that the gospel seeps into Caesar’s palace? Who would have thought that the murder of Jim Elliot and four fellow missionaries in Ecuador in 1956 means a great upsurge of new missionaries? Who would have thought that political hatred and murder of the Lord Jesus means life for the whole world? Do the haters, pragmatists and evil men know they are serving the good purposes of God? Of course not. But they are. So, in the darkness, look past the darkness, which is so real, look past it to the God who works through it and in it and by it. 2. DON’T LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD UNTIL FULLTIME As the wanted posters go up and the temple police are searching Jerusalem looking for Jesus, it looks like the sour powers of darkness have the upper hand. It still looks like the darkness is winning. Islam makes inroads; the Chinese Communist Party closes hundreds of churches every week; so many Western churches walk away from Jesus to be more acceptable in the culture. But that is the story along the way, not at the end. Who are all these people that John says Jesus will gather? Some of them are inside Israel, like John, Nicodemus, Paul, and thousands more. But there are other “children of God”, outside of Israel, “scattered abroad”. It is God’s plan to gather them as well, to be all together. This sounds like John 10 when Jesus spoke about his sheep. “I have other sheep which are not of this fold (Israel), I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice, so there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (10:16) Who will he bring? His sheep. Those God calls here “the children of God”. Those out there who at this point have never even heard about Jesus. But in the Father’s electing, predestinating love, they are already marked out as his own. Will he save them? Yes. Will they hear his gospel? There is no doubt about it. Will they believe? Absolutely they will. Nothing in the history of the world has ever been more certain in this world than that every child of God, redeemed by Jesus, WILL be gathered. God the Father isn’t going to leave that to chance … he isn’t going to kill his Son and then leave that up to us to see if anyone believes or not. Just an invitation hanging in the balance in the hope that someone somewhere might believe. No, “all that the Father gives me WILL come to me” (Jn 6:37). The book of Revelation is in part a vision of what things will look like when the fulltime siren sounds. Who will be gathered around Jesus in the new heaven and the new earth? The full and complete number of the elect – pictured as a large, and a complete symbolic number – 144,000. Not 143,999 … they will all be there: every one of them. And nothing in heaven or in hell or in heaven will prevent them from being there and gathered. But the fulltime siren hasn’t sounded. It’s always sweet and sour until it does. But there is no doubt about what the scoreboard will show at the end: Who has been brought in? All the elect. Are any of the children of God missing? Score: zero. It’s not as though God has done what he has despite what Caiaphas and those like him have done. It will be that God has done it through Caiaphas and others like him. Not apart from their pragmatic, conniving and intimidating actions. But through them. I have tried hard to be honest about sin and about the dark. It is ugly, and so often very, very painful. Don’t draw any conclusions until it is full time, and don’t lose heart, dear friends when the black is pitch black and the sour sets your teeth on edge. When you stand at the end with all the loved, chosen died for and redeemed children of God, you’ll get it. The sin of evil men will then make sense. Christ’s bruises then will make sense. Your bruises will then make sense. So right now: 1. Look past the darkness on the surface. 2. Don’t look at the scoreboard until fulltime.
NOW PLAYING
Seeking Jesus for the Wrong Reason
No transcript for this episode yet
Similar Episodes
Mar 3, 2026 ·44m
Feb 21, 2026 ·30m
Dec 17, 2025 ·30m
Dec 11, 2025 ·26m
Dec 11, 2025 ·29m
Dec 11, 2025 ·33m