Their Ancient Rejection, Is Your Modern Truth | Mysteries in the Gospel of John Season 11

The Pharisees rejected Jesus, and this Pharisee mindset has been passed down by osmosis to every generation of Jews since the Pharisees that had Jesus crucified. Today we're going to be talking about a subject that I know from experience is very fascinating to many of God's people. We're going to be answering the question today, why did Jews not believe in Jesus? Now that answer, the answer to this question is multi-dimensional, but we're going to be focusing specifically today on one of the answers to that question as we're looking into God's Word in the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John. Now in the 11th chapter of John's Gospel, Yeshua raised Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been dead four days. So what we're going to do now is we're going to look at how the religious Jewish leaders responded to Jesus's miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead. The grass withers, beloved ones, and the flowers fade, but the Word of the Lord abides forever. Perhaps to His most outstanding miracle, let's hear now in the Word of God how the religious leaders that were present responded to this. Picking up in verse number 47 of John 11. Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council and were saying, what are we doing? For this man, speaking of Yeshua, is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. So I want to put it in perspective here. We have to understand historically what was going on. The Jews were living in Israel, but Israel was under Roman occupation. So the religious leader said, if we let Jesus go on doing these miracles, everyone's going to believe in him and the Romans will take away our place, the chief priest and the Pharisees were saying, and our nation from us. Here's what was going on. Again, Jewish people were living in Israel, but governmentally they were under the Romans. The Romans allowed them some degree of freedom, but not complete freedom. And the Romans recognized the chief priest and the Pharisees as the guardians of the Jewish people religiously. So the Pharisees were concerned if they continued to let Yeshua do the miracles, that everybody, all the masses of the population, the grassroots Jewish people living in Israel, they would turn away from the leadership of the Pharisees and the religious leaders of the time to follow Jesus instead. And they were concerned that if the Romans saw that it was Jesus that was really the leader of the mass populace, that if the people recognize Jesus as their leader and not the chief priest and Pharisees, then the Romans would recognize Yeshua

as the religious leader of the Jewish people. And the Pharisees would take that privilege away because remember, rather that the Romans, that the Romans would take away the recognition of the chief priest and the Pharisees from being the religious leader of the Jewish people. And instead the Romans would say, no, Jesus is the real leader because everyone's following him, not you guys. And therefore we're going to recognize him. And the chief priest and Pharisees were concerned that if that happened, that they would no longer have any power and that the Roman government would recognize Yeshua and not them as the leader of the Jewish people. I hope that makes sense. And so this was very threatening to the chief priest and Pharisees. They were concerned, once again, hear their own words. If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. So let's think about this. As we continue in the chapter, what we're going to find is that the chief priest and the Pharisees decided as a result of the fear of them losing their place in their nation, they thought to themselves, the only solution, get this now church, is to murder and kill Jesus. So why did Jews not believe in Jesus? because the religious leaders of Yeshua's day so hated Jesus. And why did they hate Jesus? Why did they want to eliminate Jesus? Because they didn't want to lose their power. They didn't want to lose their place from their own words. Jesus is performing many signs. If we let him continue, all the Jews are gonna believe in him. And we're gonna lose our place. The Jews are gonna stop following us and they're gonna follow Yeshua. And when that happens, we're gonna lose our place. And so their answer, their solution was to murder Jesus. And so it was these Pharisees and these religious leaders that were responsible for Jesus being crucified.

And just as jumping ahead a little bit here, when the Romans came in in 70 AD, about 40 years after Yeshua's death and destroyed the temple, which Yeshua prophesied, Yeshua prophesied to his disciples that the temple would be destroyed and that the city would be overrun because Israel didn't recognize the time of their visitation. In other words, Jesus said, the temple will be destroyed because Israel didn't recognize me. I tried to gather them together under my wings, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but Israel would not. Therefore, Jesus said, their house is gonna be left to them desolate and not one stone will be left standing upon another in the temple. And sure enough, to Jesus's words, 40 years after he died, the Romans came in and destroyed the temple. And when the Romans destroyed the temple, the Jewish people were scattered and the Pharisees had to reinvent Judaism because biblical Judaism all centered around temple worship. Biblical Judaism was all centered around the temple, the sacrifices that took place in the temple

according to God's word and the Levitical priesthood that offered up the sacrifices. But when the temple was destroyed, according to Jesus, because Israel didn't recognize him, when the temple was destroyed, there could no longer be sacrifices because the sacrifices could only be offered in the temple. You couldn't just offer a sacrifice anywhere according to the word of God. And without sacrifices in a temple, the priesthood was scattered. So there was nothing left anymore. The three foundations of biblical Judaism, of the Judaism based in the Torah, the temple, sacrifice, and the priesthood was over. So what did the Pharisees do? They had to reinvent Judaism. And so the Pharisees got together at a council in 90 AD called the Council of Yavneh and they replaced the temple worship and the sacrifice with liturgy, with Jewish liturgy and prayers. And so modern day Judaism is not based on biblical Judaism in some measure because it can't be anymore now that there's no temple. And the Pharisees that reinvented Judaism, it's called rabbinic Judaism, again, began in 90 AD. It had an anti-Jesus mindset in it.

And so at this Council of Yavneh, they added a form, a liturgy, a declaration that all heretics needed to be driven out of the culture, they needed to be driven out of the temple, and they needed to be excommunicated. And who were heretics according to the Pharisees? Any Jew that believed in Jesus was considered a heretic. Remember, Jesus said to the Jews before he was crucified, the time has come when they're gonna put you out of the synagogue. So stay with me now, because we're talking about why Jews reject Jesus. Jews reject Jesus because the Pharisees rejected Jesus. And one of the main reasons they rejected him was because they were losing their power because the people began to follow Jesus rather than them. They were threatened by him. So after Yeshua raised Lazarus from the dead, they were so threatened of losing their place in their nation that they decided to kill Jesus. And this Pharisee mindset has been passed on by osmosis to every generation of Jews since the Pharisees that had Jesus crucified. Continuing on, they said, what are we gonna do? If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. But one of them. Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them,

"'You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account "'that it is expedient for you that one man die "'for the people and that the whole nation not perish.'" Now, Caiaphas was prophesying here. He understood the biblical principle that a righteous one can die in the place of the guilty. So Caiaphas was prophesying. He didn't even realize what he was doing, that you don't realize what you're doing, he was saying to the chief priest and Pharisees, because it's expedient that one man die for our nation rather than our whole nation perish. The next verse says, speaking of Caiaphas, now, he did not say this on his own initiative. So when Caiaphas said, "'You don't know anything at all,' to the religious leaders, "'it's expedient that one man die for the nation "'rather than the whole nation perish.'" The next verse says, now, he, speaking of Caiaphas, did not say this on his own initiative. In other words, he wasn't thinking this through, or, you know, this was by the inspiration of the Spirit. He did not say this by his own initiative, but being high priest that year, because of the office that he was standing in, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation. In other words, he didn't have insight, he didn't believe in Jesus, but because his office was so important,

the Holy Spirit came upon him, and he prophesied not by his own initiative, but the power of the Holy Spirit compelled him to say this. He was prophesying that Jesus, according to Isaiah 53, would die for the whole nation of Israel. So continuing on here, and the scripture continues on, and not the nation only, but in order that he, speaking of Yeshua, might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So here's the next verse I really want you to focus on. So from that day on, they planned together to kill him. Isn't it amazing? Yeshua's most outstanding miracle results, not in Israel in general as a whole believing in him, but rather in the Jewish leaders seeking to kill him as a result of the miracle. They kept on saying to Yeshua, give us a sign. Yeshua gives them the greatest sign of all. He raises a man from the dead that had been dead for a day so long that he stunk, and rather than believing, they sought to kill him. From that day on, they planned together to kill him. Therefore, Jesus no longer continued to walk publicly among the Jews, and when the scripture uses the term Jews here, he's not talking about all the Jewish people, beloved. The Jews here in the gospel of John, when John uses the term Jews,

he's not referring to the Jews as a whole because many Jews did believe in him. The apostles were all Jews. His disciples were all Jews. Jesus came to the lost sheep of the children of Israel, but when John, who himself was a Jew, uses the term Jew in John's gospel, he was referring to the religious leadership in Judea. So very specific language here. It's not all Jews. A lot of people take John's use of the word Jew and they get an anti-Semitic mindset. John was not anti-Semitic. John was a Jew, but when John uses the term Jews, he's using it to refer to, once again, the religious leadership in the area of Judea. Therefore, Jesus no longer continued to walk publicly among the Jews. Not all Jews, right? But the Jewish religious leadership. But went away from there into the country near the wilderness into a city called Ephraim, and there he stayed with his disciples. Now, the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up to Jerusalem, out of the country before the Passover to purify themselves. So they were seeking for Jesus, and were saying to one another as they stood in the temple, what do you think?

That he will not come to the feast at all? Now, the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he was to report it so that they might seize him. So there's this big plot, this conspiracy. Now, we're gonna hunt down Yeshua of Nazareth. We're gonna put him to death. We're gonna put an end to this thing so that he can no longer cause him trouble. You know, pastors do that sometimes in their churches. Somebody comes in that's a threat to them. them and so they respond by kicking the person out of the church. And I understand that being a pastor because some people come in and they have an agenda and basically they're going to stir up trouble and it's going to end in the congregation being fragmented and falling apart. So I understand that pastors sometimes have to protect their sheep. But this is the plight of, this is how the human heart works. Someone comes in and threatens you, what do you do? You try to eliminate them. This is all those mafia wars that took place in the 80s. Why did all these mafia wars happen oftentimes? Because a certain mafia family had a big operation for business in a certain part of New York and then if another mafia family came into that area and started doing business, a big mafia war broke out because they were threatened. Conceptually, this is the same thing that happened to Yeshua. He came in and he stirred up these sheep priests and Pharisees because they were threatened. So to get back to my opening question in this episode, why did Jews not believe in Jesus? Listen carefully, my beloved one. I grew up as a Jew. My parents are both Jews.

I'm a Jew from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. I took an ancestral.com test. I'm 100% Ashkenazi Jew. I was bar mitzvahed in a conservative synagogue. I was taught in my home by osmosis. No one ever said it. No one ever said to me, don't believe in Jesus. I just knew that we didn't believe in Jesus. I just knew that Jesus wasn't for Jews. I just knew that Jesus was the God of the Gentiles. It seemed really weird and pagan to me. Why did that happen? Because it was passed down this concept that Jews don't believe in Jesus. Listen, it was passed down to every generation of Jews since the Pharisees of Yeshua's time. Jews just grow up in homes absorbing by osmosis that we're Jews. We don't believe in Jesus. Most have never read through the Bible and examined Jesus' claims. Most have never opened the New Testament. Jews don't reject Jesus because they reject the revelation of the New Testament. Jews reject Jesus because they were brought up in homes and they just absorbed that we're Jews. We don't believe in Jesus. So a lot of Christians think, how could Jews not believe? Look at Isaiah 53 and how he fulfilled it. Most Jewish people don't know Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 isn't even taught in the synagogues. In fact, we have a yearly portion of reading in the synagogues of reading through the Torah and the prophets every year. But you know what? Isaiah 53 was taken out of that cycle because Isaiah 53 so accurately speaks of Jesus, that

he that knew no sin became sin on our behalf, that we'd become the righteous of God. All we like sheep have gone astray, Isaiah said. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all and by his stripes were healed. He took our sin and our iniquity to his own body. But the rabbis took Isaiah 53 out of the weekly, out of the yearly rather, Torah reading so Jews wouldn't recognize, hey, could this be about Jesus? So Jews, beloved, don't know who Jesus is. They're just taught the Jews that don't believe in Jesus without even knowing why they don't even know why. But if they realize that the reason that they're taught not to believe in Jesus is because of the corrupt heart of the Pharisees that wanted to put Jesus to death because they were threatened by him and because they were insecure, then Jewish people would rethink who Jesus is. There's several reasons that Jews don't believe in Jesus, but one of the most foundational, heaviest and primary reasons Jews don't believe in Jesus is because of the insecurity, pride and fear of the Pharisees that's been passed on to every generation of Jews since that time. Jews have a veil over their eyes, just as Paul spoke of in the book of Romans. Beloved, this is why we need to preach Jesus to Israel first. In the book of Numbers chapter six, the Lord gave instructions to Moses the Neron to speak this blessing over his people. And the Lord said, when you speak these words over my people, I will place my name on them and bless them, receive the impartation of the Lord's blessings. Yisra'el yahweh panayv eylecha vi'chuneycha Yisra'el yahweh panayv eylecha ve'asem leh chah shalom The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up by His countenance.

And the Lord give you, beloved one, His peace. God bless you and shalom.