The Powerless Scoffers

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Transcript:

Turn with me this morning to John chapter 12. John chapter 12. I started looking again this week, as I always do, if you haven’t heard yet, next week is Easter.

And I start looking at the Easter season, the things that happened leading up to that in Scripture, Palm Sunday, which today is, how Jesus entered into Jerusalem triumphantly on the back of a donkey and started looking at the stories surrounding that. And last night, I had come up with another message, but last night as I was studying on this subject, I came across a verse I’d never noticed before. I love when that happens, especially when it’s a verse that’s in a familiar passage of scripture, something I’ve read dozens of times, but have always skipped over a particular verse.

And it drew my attention back to this passage. And so I want to look this morning at the difficulty that the world has had trying to stop Jesus. They were trying to stop Jesus and his message in his own day.

That was the whole premise as far as they were concerned behind the crucifixion. The Jews wanted to stop him and his message. They were threatened by this idea that he was the Messiah or spoke for God.

They thought he was a blasphemer and wanted to put him to death. Well, they in his day were trying to stop his message. People all down through the centuries for 2,000 years have tried to stop Jesus’ message, and they’ve been powerless to do so.

But even in his day, I noticed for the first time last night, they even recognized how powerless they were. And that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning. You know, Karl Marx, not somebody I quote all the time because, quite frankly, I’m disgusted by just about everything he believed.

But Karl Marx, when he was writing the Communist Manifesto, when he was formulating his ideas, said that religion was the opiate of the people. And what he meant by that was he thought religion was just a fable. Christianity in particular, Marxists were opposed to, communists have been opposed to, said that it was something that convinced people to be happy in their unhappy condition.

And so they wanted to overthrow Christianity. They said it was just a fable. And for over 100 years now, communist governments around the world have tried to stamp out Christianity.

You know what they found after the fall of the Iron Curtain? They found churches had flourished underground in Russia, in Ukraine, in places that for 70 years had been ruled by communists who tried to persecute Christianity out of existence, and they were not able to do it. They were not able to erase the name of Christ. In North Korea today, you can be put to death just for owning a page of the Bible.

and officially there are no Christians in North Korea. And yet we get reports year after year that there are dozens if not hundreds of Christians underground. They throw them in concentration camps and they continue to spread the gospel and plant churches in the concentration camps.

We have among our own founding fathers men who talked about Christianity and the cause of Christ and the gospel as though it was a fairy tale that was to be wiped out. And if you’re wondering which founding father, it was Thomas Paine, whose writings really set off the American Revolution. Voltaire, who was one of the men who inspired our founding fathers too, said that after he died in a hundred years, there would not be a Bible to be found on the earth.

He said that Christianity was so ridiculous, the idea of Christ’s teachings were so ridiculous, that a hundred years after he died, there would be no Bibles left. The people would just throw them out. That was not true, obviously, because here we are more than a hundred years after Voltaire’s death.

I prefer what another Frenchman, Napoleon Bonaparte, said, I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world, there is no possible term of comparison. There have been a lot of great people who’ve lived, who’ve done a lot of great things.

And Napoleon got it right, at least here, when he said between them and Jesus Christ, there’s no possible term of comparison. He said Alexander, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius upon force?

And he said, Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love, and at this hour, millions of people would die for him. I think he got it more correct out of, the most correct out of any of the people that we’ve talked about this morning. For centuries, people have tried to stamp out Christianity, have tried to stamp out the Bible, have tried to stamp out the name of Jesus Christ, and they’ve been unsuccessful in doing so.

They should have realized what the Pharisees realized early on in John chapter 12, that you can’t. You cannot beat the Son of God. You cannot, you’re powerless to stop Jesus Christ. So we’re going to look at John chapter 12, starting in verse 9 this morning, and it covers a few stories of things that happened right around the time of Palm Sunday, that first Palm Sunday when Jesus rode triumphantly into the city of Jerusalem.

It says in verse 9, much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there, and they came not only for Jesus’ sake, they came not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also whom he had raised from the dead. So this is right after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. And the people came out to see Jesus, and they came out to see Lazarus because the news of this miracle Jesus had done of raising Lazarus from the dead had spread to the surrounding areas.

There’s a good reason for that because that doesn’t happen all the time. But the chief priests, in verse 10, but the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death, because that by reason of him, many of the Jews went away and believed on Jesus. Here’s an idea.

This guy was dead, and then Jesus raised him from the dead, and he went and told people that Jesus raised him from the dead, and so people are believing on Jesus, so let’s just make him dead again, and that’ll put a stop to it. Folks, if they’d killed him, Jesus could have raised him from the dead again. And, you know, the story was already out.

Them killing him wouldn’t change the fact that he had been dead once before and was alive again and people had seen him. That wasn’t really going to kill the story, but these were desperate men. And so they said, well, let’s just kill Lazarus too.

Because of what Jesus had done, people were flocking to him. It says in verse 12, On the next day, much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went forth to meet him and cried, Hosanna, blessed is the king of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. And so there were people, Jerusalem was full of people.

That kind of facilitated the spread of the miracles and the message of Jesus, that people were gathered from all over the known world into Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They’d all come together, and it coincided with Jesus raising this man from the dead. And Jesus comes into the city in fulfillment of prophecy, by the way.

I preached on this shortly after going to Arkansas, about 12 weeks of messages on the signs of Jesus’ first coming, how we can know for a fact that Jesus was the Messiah who was promised by the Old Testament, and went through the 12 of the prophecies. This was one of them. It wasn’t just by accident.

Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, and the people greet him with palm branches and cries of Hosanna. That was something that the prophet Zechariah had talked, I believe it was Zechariah, had talked about centuries before. And these people didn’t just spontaneously show up.

I mean, in their minds, they might have. I don’t think anybody but Jesus said, hey, we’re gonna go fulfill prophecy today. But Jesus rides into town and the people show up and they don’t realize that they are fulfilling prophecies that that pointed to the fact that this man is the Messiah.

He’s the one that God sent to deliver Israel from their sins. And so he rides into town and the people are ready to crown him king. They’re ready to sweep him into power.

And they’re crying out, Hosanna, blessed is the king of Israel. Now that’s treasonous. the Jews already had a king over them.

The Romans had installed Herod as their king, and yet they’re crying out that Jesus is the king of Israel. That’s pretty bold. I mean, the penalty for treason has not changed in all these years.

It’s death today, and it was death then. And yet they’re standing out in the middle of the street corners, and so overcome are they in their admiration for Jesus that they’re crying out and calling him the king of Israel. And on top of that, saying, Blessed is the king of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.

They’re admitting, they are admitting that Jesus Christ was sent by God. They’re admitting that he’s the promised Messiah. Verse 14, and Jesus, when he had found a young donkey, sat thereon, as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Sion, behold, thy king cometh sitting on a donkey’s colt.

It may have been Isaiah, not Zechariah, who wrote that. These things understood not his disciples at the first, but when Jesus was glorified, Then remembered they that these things were written of him and that they had done these things unto him. And it puzzles me too.

And maybe I’m too hard on the disciples because I might have been the same way if I wasn’t looking back on the story. But in the other three gospel accounts, he tells them, go find a donkey. Go work it out such and such way because we are going to fulfill prophecy.

And it says here in John, they still didn’t understand what was going on until after Jesus had died, until after Jesus had risen again, maybe even until after his ascension, because it says when Jesus was glorified, then they looked back on it and understood, oh my goodness, that’s what the prophets were talking about. And the people, therefore, that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave and raised him from the dead, bear record. Okay, so even though Lazarus, even if the people had killed Lazarus, even if the Pharisees had killed Lazarus, it says here that there were people who saw him alive again and bore record.

And all these people were there praising Jesus that day. For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard he had done this miracle. The Pharisees therefore said among them, and this is part of it, this may have been for some people, because Jesus was always fairly good at attracting a crowd.

And Wednesday night I was at Southgate and Brother Doug said it very well talking about another story that, not to be disrespectful at all, but they showed up for the Jesus show. And I would say that’s exactly what happened a lot of times. They showed up for the Jesus show because they thought he’s going to feed us.

I mean, the feeding of the 5,000 and it’s still true today. People will show up almost anywhere for free food. They came out for the free food and they came out because he’s going to heal some people.

He’s going to do some incredible things and he’s going to say things that we’ve never heard for it was new, it was novel, and they would show up for the Jesus show. But for people really to start calling him the Messiah and wanting to crown him king, I think raising Lazarus from the dead may have been the final straw for some of these people and said, you know what, maybe he is exactly, you know, we’ve been following him out of curiosity’s sake, but maybe he really is who he claims to be. And so, and for this cause, it says in verse 18, the people also met him for they had heard that he had done this miracle.

Verse 19, and this is the one that I have missed all these years in reading over this passage that was so fascinating to me last night. Verse 19 says, the Pharisees therefore said among themselves, perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold, the world has gone after him.

They looked around amongst themselves to each other and said, you are completely powerless. We, do you realize how completely powerless we are to stop this man? We’ve tried and tried and tried three years to discredit him.

We’ve tried to stop him. We’ve tried to catch him in breaking the law. And we’ve been powerless basically in everything that we’ve tried to put a stop to this man and everything that he’s doing that has completely upset our entire way of life.

And we have failed. We have failed. Behold, the world is gone after him.

Everybody is following him. We’ve talked in the last few weeks about some of the, not on purpose, I wasn’t doing a series or anything on Jesus and the Pharisees, but it’s come up that, you know, the Pharisees accused him of working for the devil or of being possessed by the devil or called him a sorcerer or tried to catch him and say, well, you’re breaking the law. Well, what do you think about this?

Because they’re trying to set these legal traps so they could say, he’s a lawbreaker. He’s a blasphemer. Throw him in prison or have him killed or something like that.

Every trap they ever set for Jesus Christ, they failed. And these were, these were not stupid men. These were some of the most learned men of their time.

These were clever men. I would have fallen for more than half the traps, at least. These were clever men, and Jesus managed to outmaneuver them at every turn. They had failed, and they said, Despite our best efforts, the people are following him.

We have failed. And I submit to you that was true for them then. That was even truer than they realized, because they’re going to throw at him one last-ditch effort to stop him, and even that’s going to be a failure.

It’s been true of everyone who has tried over the last 2,000 years to discredit him and silence his message. They have failed. And it’s true today of those who would try to discredit the name of Christ and try to silence his message.

They’ve failed. Now in our society, people have managed to discredit Christians. And some of that, some of that we deserve because of the way we’ve presented ourselves to people.

But folks, they can say what they want about Christians, but they can’t discredit Jesus Christ, and they can’t stop his message from going forward. Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing. Behold, the world has gone after him.

And as if to prove the point in verse 20, as if to prove the Pharisees point, it says, and there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast. And there’s discussion, there’s debate over who these Greeks were because of the way they use the words here. It could have been Jews from a Greek background. It could have been Greeks who kind of like, or Gentiles, like some of the men mentioned in the book of Acts, who were not Jews, but feared God, feared the one true God, and eventually converted and followed Jesus.

Regardless, there were some Greek people. There were some people who were not from there in Jerusalem. Apparently, Jesus’ fame at this point had spread even to the Greeks because of this resurrection of Lazarus.

And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast at the Passover that they’re preparing for. The same came before Philip, which was a Bethsaida of Galilee and desired him saying, sir, we would see Jesus. So the Greeks were there.

They’d heard about what Jesus did. So now, I mean, it’s completely the can of worms, can open, worms everywhere. I mean, the Pharisees had no hope of stopping the story because it’s not just the Jews in Jerusalem and Galilee who are talking about it.

Even the Greeks know who Jesus is at this point. And they come to Philip and they pull him aside and say, we want to see Jesus too. We want to hear from Jesus too.

And Philip comes and tells Andrew. And again, Andrew and Philip tell Jesus. So they came together and said, you know, we need to go tell Jesus that these people want to see him.

Verse 23 says, and we never, you know, Jesus doesn’t tell them no. We don’t hear him saying, yeah, send them on down either. But he answers and he begins to, and it may be that he’s talking to the Greeks and to his disciples. Jesus answered them saying, the hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.

Verily, verily, think about that. We know how the story ends. We know the rest of the story.

That here on this Palm Sunday, he’s had this triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The people are ready to sweep him into power. They’re ready to die for him if need be.

Less than a week later, the same crowds are going to be crying out, crucify him. And folks, Jesus is not confused about this point. Let us not forget that, yes, he has limited himself in some forms as God in human flesh, but he is still God in human flesh, okay?

He was not confused at this point about what he had come there to do. Jesus knew. I mean, Jesus said way back in Luke 19, I’ve come to seek and to save that which was lost. throughout his ministry.

That was where he was headed, was to the cross. And he knew this because he told them so many times that he was there to die. And it seems so strange that he would, knowing this, he would say, the hour has come that I’m about to be glorified.

It almost, until you read a little further, it almost sounds as though Jesus is confused about what’s going to happen and thinks that he’s about to be swept into power. But we have the benefit of looking back at this where they might not have understood. He says in verse 24, verily, verily, I say unto you, in other words, I tell you the truth, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

So he’s talking to the disciples and says, the hour has come that I’m going to be glorified. And he says, unless a corn of wheat, unless a seed pod falls to the ground and dies, it just sits there alone and doesn’t do much. But once it falls to the ground and dies, once it’s crushed, once it’s humiliated in that way, it brings forth much fruit.

And we see here, Jesus is not under any misapprehension. Jesus completely understands what’s about to happen. Jesus knows he’s about to go to the cross, and yet it’s not a defeat for him.

It’s what he came to do. And this is true. I was thinking about this passage this week.

My dad was harvesting sunflower seeds. Last year, he planted a semi-circle or U-shape of sunflowers for my kids to play in, made Benjamin a sunflower for it. And he saved a lot of the pods in these big plastic tubs over the winter so that he wouldn’t have to buy sunflower seeds because, you know, they’re so expensive.

But he saved them anyway. Saved these pods, and the pods just sat there all winter in these tubs and didn’t do much. The seed was intact.

The seed was perfectly intact, but didn’t do much. But last week he went out with the kids and started pulling the seeds off of these pods. I say pods, they’re the head that’s left from the flower.

He starts pulling the seeds off of there and he’s getting them ready to plant. Well, it’s going to be a traumatic experience for the seed, just like any plant, when it goes into the ground because it’s going to be put there in the dirt. It’s going to get dirty.

It’s going to get wet. That seed hole is going to start to rot through, and it’s going to be heated up by the warmth of the sun and the ground. And when you combine the efforts of the dirt and the water and the sunlight, that seed pod is going to disintegrate.

The hull, the husk around it is going to disintegrate, and that seed itself in the form that it’s in now is going to die. But then a little sunflower shoot is going to come out of it, and there’s going to be whole new life that comes out of that. That’s what he’s talking about here.

It’s going to be a traumatic experience for the corn of wheat that falls to the ground. The hull is going to be broken. It’s going to be damaged, but new life comes out of that broken hull.

Folks, Jesus was about to go through an intense time of suffering that would have looked to his enemies, would have looked to the outside world as a humiliating defeat. His hull, his husk, if we can call it that, his earthly body was going to be broken, was going to be destroyed. Isaiah describes it in such vivid terms in the Old Testament before it happened and says that he would be beaten beyond recognition, ladies and gentlemen.

And any one of us, I mean, even his own disciples, whom he told time after time, this is what’s going to happen and I’m going to rise again, still didn’t get it. And to them, it looked like a humiliating defeat, such that they ran and hid themselves. And yet Jesus looks and says, despite the humiliation and the suffering and the trauma, that this earthly shell is going to go through, new life will blossom out of it and fruit will be born.

He was going to rise out of the broken shell as we’re going to talk about tonight in the study on the resurrection. He was going to rise out and he was going to bear much fruit as a result because his resurrection also purchased our resurrection. His suffering purchased our forgiveness and much fruit was going to be born by this.

It was not going to be the humiliating defeat that those who watched thought it was going to be. And so I want to stop there as far as the part of the passage that we’re looking at and talk about this concept of the Pharisees coming to realize how powerless they had been to prevail over Jesus Christ. They had tried everything to defeat him, and verse 19, they realized, we have failed. We have failed.

And by the end of the week, they were going to try, as I’ve already alluded to, They were going to try one last ditch effort to get rid of him once and for all. And you know, I’m sure they thought, I’m sure they thought that they had ended him. When they finally convinced this crowd that had followed him to turn on him, when they convinced the Roman authorities to put him to death, when he was killed and even his 11 remaining closest followers, folks, one of his disciples, one of his inner circle would betray him, would sell him for 30 pieces of silver.

The other 11 would run and hide. If we want to be really detailed about it, you know, we can give some credit to the women. It was a few women who were the only ones who really stayed faithful until the end.

They were dedicated. Folks, they could have been arrested themselves for going that first Sunday morning to prepare the body for being his followers. But just about everybody abandoned him.

His enemies thought that they had defeated him. His followers thought he had been defeated, most of them. You know what?

I’m sure Satan himself was even delighted. at what happened. We put an end to this man who’s caused so much trouble, but then they realized even this last ditch effort couldn’t stop him.

And ladies and gentlemen, as I’ve said already this morning, just as the Pharisees were powerless to put a stop to Jesus Christ and his message, so has been every person over the last 2,000 years who’s tried. And it’s easy for us to get discouraged in times like ours where our faith is maligned, where people look at us and they’ll call us all sorts of names where they will attack the faith and say it doesn’t make sense. It’s fairy tales, which I could go into years of lessons on the historical evidence for why the Bible is true, but we don’t have time for that this morning.

But they’ll attack it as fairy tales and say we believe lies, and folks, it’s easy to get discouraged and think, well, the world is just, it’s closing in on us. But folks, now is no time to be defeated as Christians because try as they might. You know, they might defeat me personally.

They might defeat you. At some point, we’re gonna die and go on to be with Jesus and the world may never remember us or personally the stand we took for Jesus Christ. But we need to make no mistake. They cannot stop him or his message.

The cause of Christ goes forward. Three things this morning that they were powerless to stop and have been powerless to stop and will continue to be powerless to stop. The first thing that I see in this passage when he talks about we’ve failed.

The Pharisees say we’ve failed to stamp him out. First of all, the scoffers, all those who doubted, all those who mocked, the scoffers were powerless to stop Jesus’ fame. They were powerless to stop Jesus’ fame.

They were powerless in that day because no matter what they tried to do, they tried to marginalize his teachings. And when Jesus was teaching such radical, such crazy things like love your neighbor as yourself, I mean, that’s awful, isn’t it? We ought to put a stop to that.

When he was teaching such radical things, they said, we’ve got to stop this. And they would try to trick him. They would try to pose legal questions to convince the people that he was just a false teacher.

When he did miracles, they’d say, okay, we don’t dispute that the miracles have happened. We talked about it a few weeks ago. We want a sign in heaven because we think the signs, the miracles you’re doing here on earth just prove that you work for the devil.

So they tried to throw every awful accusation they could at him. They tried to discredit him, tried to undermine his teachings, and they couldn’t do it. Today, his miracles still defy explanation.

I had to study a lesson a few months ago for school. I’ve been working on a Bible degree the last year or so. I had to do a study for school on whether miracles are even possible.

And yes, they’re possible. But people come up with all these explanations for the miracles in the Bible and say, well, this is how it happened. And there may be some truth to it.

They talk about the ridge under the Red Sea, that if the wind blows just right, it can blow the waters back, and a dry ridge can be exposed under the water. And they say, well, that could be where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. You know what, that makes a lot of sense to me.

I believe that’s entirely possible that that’s how it happened. But the implication there is, well, that wasn’t a miracle, because it could happen by natural means. It can happen if the wind is strong enough, but we’ve never actually seen it happen, And you’re going to tell me the one time in recorded history it happened just happened to be when Moses stood there and stretched out his fraud and the Israelites went across.

And it just happened that it closed up in time for Pharaoh’s entire army to be drowned? Really? I’m sorry, really?

In cases like that, I’m more skeptical than the non-believer. We might be able to explain how the miraculous things happen by natural means, but that still doesn’t account for why they happened when they did and the way they did. Folks, Jesus healed people.

Jesus performed miracles. And there’s no earthly explanation really for what happened or why it happened, when and how it did. There’s no explanation.

His miracles still defy explanation today. I’m just glad that’s not me. His teachings still capture the imagination today.

There are people who devote. I mean, I’m one of them. There are people, there are millions of people who devote their lives to studying the things that Jesus taught.

The name of Jesus, I won’t say that everybody who claims to be a Christian is really a follower of Jesus Christ. But folks, the name of Christ is one of the most famous names in all of the world today. They have not been able to stop Jesus’ fame. His reputation has spread globally.

You can go to almost any country in the world and people, they may not follow him, they may not believe in him, but they know who he is and what he taught and what he did. You can go to the pagan cities of Europe. And yes, I say that on purpose.

You can go to the pagan cities of Europe and they know who Jesus Christ is. You can go to the jungles of Borneo and they know who Jesus Christ is. They may not believe in him.

I mean, they may not accept his teachings, but they know who he is and what he did and what he taught. And ladies and gentlemen, people here in this country know who he is and what he did. That’s pretty impressive.

That’s pretty impressive for a carpenter from a small town in Nazareth that nobody had ever heard of, 2,000 years ago, who never wrote a book, never commanded an army, and never held political office. I’d say that’s pretty incredible, wouldn’t you? Even in his day, no matter what they did, they said, let’s kill Lazarus.

But you know what? The cat was already out of the bag. The people from outside Jerusalem, people from outside Bethany where it happened, had already heard what Jesus did.

In 2,000 years, they’ve been powerless to stop the spread of Jesus’ fame. And you know what? They can malign the name of Christ. They can attack the name of Christ. They can try to discredit us.

But folks, this world can last for a thousand more years and people will still know who Jesus Christ is and what he did. I won’t say everybody will believe on him. But all the governments, all the non-believers, all the media in the world won’t be able to stop people from hearing about Jesus Christ. You know what?

I tell you, if they can’t stop him in North Korea, they can’t stop him anywhere. You couldn’t pay me enough money to spend a day in North Korea, as repressive as it is, and they’ve not managed to stamp out the name of Christ even there. Second of all, the scoffers were powerless to stop Jesus’ audience.

They were powerless to stop Jesus’ audience. We look at this, and they tried everything. There’s this whisper campaign that we see throughout the Gospels that I’ve already mentioned this morning.

Oh, you know, he does miracles by the power of the devil. Oh, he teaches people to break the law. I mean, all sorts of things that good, observant Jews should have looked at and gone, I don’t want anything to do with him.

And yet, they didn’t just talk about Jesus. I mean, we’ve mentioned they weren’t able to stop his fame. The people didn’t just talk about Jesus.

They went to him. They flocked to him. Well, that’s good.

I should write that down. They didn’t just talk about him. They flocked to him.

The people went to where Jesus is. They said, we want to see this man for ourselves. We want to hear this man for ourselves.

The Greeks, these Greek people who’d come up to worship at Passover, heard about Jesus, may not at that time before they came to Jerusalem for the Passover, may not at that time have known who Jesus was before that, but they heard a