The Conspiracy to Murder Jesus

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Let's return to Mark's gospel and to the continuation of the Passion Week. Let me just remind you of an incident that occurred sometime before that last week in our Lord's life. It was probably February of that year; likely the year 30 A.D. Jesus had traveled to Bethany in order to raise His dear friend Lazarus from the dead. Now Bethany was just over the Mount of Olives from the city of Jerusalem, about two miles away. In fact, you remember Bethany is where Jesus and His disciples are staying during the Passion Week and travelling each day into the city, but this was a couple of months before in February. All of Lazarus and Mary and Martha's family and friends, this wealthy and influential family (that's obvious from the kind of grave in which Lazarus was buried), they're all there watching. And in that context, Jesus publicly, visibly, spectacularly raised Lazarus from the dead.

You remember how He staged the whole scene? He waited for a couple of days until Lazarus died. He waited until the body very likely had begun to decay, and it was even a concern of Martha's. And then He tells them to move the stone away. He prays publicly, and He says, "Father, I'm saying this not because I have any doubt that You've heard Me, but so that these might know that You've heard Me." And then He commands a dead man to come out of the tomb: "Lazarus, come forth." And he does. Jesus carefully calculated that miracle to supply the entire nation with one final great proof of His claims to be their Messiah. It occurred about six to eight weeks before Passover and right next to Jerusalem.

The dramatic public raising of Lazarus guaranteed that Jesus would soon be dead. In response to that miracle, John tells us that there was a secret meeting, a secret meeting of the Jewish leaders, the Sanhedrin, probably in their usual chambers on the temple grounds. And in that meeting, they made a monumental decision. Keep your finger there in Mark's gospel and look over at John 11. John 11:47. Look at verse 45, start there,

Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what Jesus had done [in raising Lazarus,] believed in Him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things which Jesus had done.

Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man 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." 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 he did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. [Now notice verse 53]. So from that day on they planned together to kill Him." [That's February. That's long before the Passion Week.]

Now, just those six to eight weeks later, two months later, Jesus and His disciples headed to the feast of Passover. They stopped at Bethany, probably late Friday afternoon. Sabbath began at sundown. They probably arrived before sundown, before dark. The rest of the group that Jesus was travelling with from Galilee, who had come for the feast, hurried on the two miles to Jerusalem eager to get the city, eager to get to the places they were staying before the Sabbath began at sunset on Friday.

So, as the crowds that had travelled with Jesus arrived in Jerusalem that Friday afternoon, they brought two very important news items. One, Jesus was definitely coming to the feast; and two, He had stopped at Bethany just over the hill two miles away.

Now that was strategic on Jesus' part because, with the travel restrictions on the Sabbath which began at sundown, He couldn't come to Jerusalem on Saturday. It was too far for a Sabbath day's journey. So that meant that Jesus would have to enter the city on (what day?) Sunday.

And, of course, as you might imagine, this built-up anticipation among the people. That meant that on Sunday morning when Jesus and His disciples entered the city, there would have been a great deal of excitement and anticipation. He's just over in Bethany. He's coming. Even though the leadership has issued a warrant for His arrest; even though they're saying that whoever knows His whereabouts must turn Him in; He's going to be here.

This set the stage for the triumphal entry. Jesus rides into the city of Jerusalem in a way that clearly fulfills the prophecy of Zechariah about the Messiah. He goes into the temple. He publicly heals. He prophesies and wept over the destruction of the city. And He literally cased the temple is the way one of the gospel writers puts it. And that evening, He went with the twelve back to Bethany for the night.

On Monday, Jesus pronounced judgment on how the temple was being used and abused, and He threw out the buyers and sellers and money changers. For the next two days, Monday and Tuesday, Jesus, essentially, has seized control of the temple mount. And for those two days while the massive crowds who'd gathered for Passover were there, undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of people, many of them gathered in the corner of that great temple mount and heard Jesus teach.

Just before Jesus left the temple on Tuesday, you remember, He went in early, there was the withering of the fig tree, He taught at the temple, He had questions from His enemies. But just before Jesus left the temple on Tuesday afternoon, He launched into His most controversial and direct assault on the nation's leaders in His entire ministry. In that sermon (you can read it in Matthew 23) Jesus unleashes seven pronouncements of woe on the leaders of the nation. Just imagine the scene for a moment. My father-in-law, who's now with the Lord, used to say often, "When you read the Bible, read it with a sanctified imagination."

Put yourself back in that scene - hundreds of thousands of Israelites gathered for the feast wandering around that temple mount; the scribes and Pharisees mingling among the crowds; the leaders of the nation shaking hands with the rich and important, and wanting to see and be seen. Jesus gathered there on the corner of Solomon's portico teaching a massive crowd. On one of the busiest days in the entire year when the temple mount would've been filled to overflowing with hundreds of thousands of people; in that setting on that day, Jesus speaks directly to the leaders.

Now remember, He's on their turf. He's in their courtyard, and He says things like this to them: "You are hypocrites, sons of hell, blind guides, fools, whitewashed tombs, inwardly full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. You are murderers of the prophets. You are snakes and vipers, and you will not escape the sentence of hell." This is not how to win friends and influence people. This is not how to endear yourself to the leaders of the nation.

Then Jesus told the parable of the wicked vineyard keepers, and they understood that He was talking about them. They were the ones who'd been given care of the vineyard. They're the ones who abused the servants of the owner, God Himself, and eventually would even kill the owner's son. They understood all of that. And therefore, 12:12 says that as a result, they wanted to arrest Him on the spot, but they were afraid of the crowd. Shortly after that, Jesus leaves the temple for the last time, and He and His disciples climb to the top of the Mount of Olives where He gave, at the end of the day on Tuesday, the Olivet Discourse.

But Matthew records one additional statement Jesus made after the Olivet Discourse apparently as they were headed back to Bethany that earlier evening. Listen to what He said, Matthew 26:1,

When Jesus had finished all these words [that is, the Olivet Discourse], He said to His disciples, "You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be handed over for crucifixion."

Jesus says the Passover's coming in two days, and I will be arrested and delivered over to the Romans for crucifixion. So, Tuesday ends with Jesus making a prophecy about His own death, and He explicitly says that His death must come in two days.

That brings us to Wednesday of the Passion Week. In the gospels, Wednesday is a silent day for Jesus Christ. There is no record of anything Jesus said or did on Wednesday. Instead, the record switches to His enemies and to a secret meeting of the Sanhedrin, another secret meeting - the seventy men plus the high priest who made up Israel's Supreme Court, Congress and executive branch all rolled into one. A representative portion of them, or perhaps all of them, met. Let's look at in Mark 14:1,

Now the Passover and Unleavened Bread were two days away; and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to seize Him by stealth and kill Him; for they were saying, 'Not during the festival, otherwise there might be a riot of the people.'"

Now in that very short paragraph, those two verses, the leaders of Israel form a conspiracy to illegally arrest and murder Jesus of Nazareth. His guilt was determined long before His trials, and His sentence was determined before any evidence was presented. It was in the truest sense a conspiracy, a conspiracy to murder an innocent man. So, let's look at this conspiracy together.

First of all, you'll notice in verse 1 the circumstances of this conspiracy. The gospels that comment on it – Matthew, Mark and Luke – together establish the circumstances surrounding this cabal. First of all, note the timing. We begin to get a sense of the timing of the conspiracy in the Olivet Discourse itself because Matthew 26:2 says at the end of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus said, "After two days the Passover is coming." That confirms that the Olivet Discourse had to have been on Tuesday.

But what about the secret meeting of Israel's leaders? When did that take place? Well Luke tells us just generically. "Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was approaching." Mark; however, is very explicit. Notice what he says in verse 1, "Now the Passover and Unleavened Bread were two days away…."

Now you're familiar with Passover. It was the annual feast which had been inaugurated fourteen hundred years before in the time of Moses. It was celebrated on the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan, corresponding to our late March/April/early May time period. It celebrated the redemption of God's people from the slavery in Egypt and God's protection of them from His own judgment by, remember the blood of the slain animal applied to the doorpost. That was Passover. The Passover lamb was killed on the afternoon of the fourteenth and then was eaten after sundown, which would have been in Jewish reckoning the fifteenth day of the month.

Now Passover was immediately followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It was a seven-day feast which began on the fifteenth of Nisan and ran to the twenty-first of the month. The normal Israelite just merged these feasts together. In his mind, it wasn't the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread; often they would use the terms interchangeably for this eight days. Together, the eight days of Passover and the seven days of Unleavened Bread were simply called the feast of the Passover.

Now the gospel of John makes it clear that Passover that year, the fourteenth, or excuse me, the, the fifteenth of Nisan that year was on Friday. Now Mark 14:1 tells us that the feast was still two days away. The literal translation is "after two days". When you take into account the usual Jewish way of reckoning days, it means, as our translators have translated it here, "two days away." That means that this conspiracy (that's recorded here) had to be on Wednesday.

What about the location? Well, Matthew tells us this: It says, "The chief priests (Matthew 26:3, now the chief priests) and the elders of the people were gathered together in the court of the high priest, named Caiaphas." They were meeting not on the temple grounds, where all the people had gathered for Passover, but instead they gathered for this secret meeting in the courtyard of the high priest himself at his private residence. And we don't know exactly where that was, but we know generally where it was.

Here is a layout of the city of Jerusalem in the first century. You'll notice in the lower left there is a section called the upper city. It was the higher portion of the hill of the city and, then as now, you wanted real estate (if you were more wealthy) that was elevated. And so, that's where the wealthy people lived. That's where Caiaphas lived without question was in that area of the city.

Here is a model of the city, and I'm not sure if you can make out all the details there, but you can at least see the temple mount there on the right. We're looking from the south looking north across the city of Jerusalem. You see the temple mount on the right, and then you see the upper city and those red-roofed homes on the left. It would've been in that area where this secret meeting took place.

This was apparently an informal, unofficial meeting of the real power brokers of ancient Israel. Six to eight weeks before the official session of the Sanhedrin had decided Jesus had to go. Now apparently a smaller, more influential group, undoubtedly angered by Jesus' comments the day before, is deciding how and when He will go.

Now that brings us to the conspirators. Who were they? Look at verse 1. They're called the chief priests and the scribes. The chief priests consisted, that group consisted of the current high priest as well as former high priests and all the male members of those families from which the high priest could be selected. These were the wealthy, influential families of the nation. These were the blue bloods. The two most powerful and important men in that group at that time were men named Caiaphas and Annas. Caiaphas was the current ruling high priest of the nation – not just for that year, but from the years 18 A.D. through 36 A.D. Caiaphas was a powerful, ruthless man. But the only reason Caiaphas was in power, the only reason he had become a power to be reckoned with is because he married into the most powerful family in Israel, the family of a man named Annas.

Annas was Caiaphas' father-in-law, and Annas had already served as high priest from the year 6 to 15 A.D. Then his son-in-law, Caiaphas, would reign as high priest from 18 through 36 A.D. And when the Romans deposed Caiaphas later, five of Annas' sons would be in the position of high priest. This was without question the Rockefellers of their generation. This was the power broker family. And in their courtyard, they hold this cabal. Gathered with Annas and Caiaphas were other male members of their family along with the other men who were part of the aristocratic families of the nation. That's the first group, the chief priests.

But there's a second group of conspirators. They're called the scribes. We've already met these guys. During the time of the Babylonian exile and afterwards, they were simply the experts in the law. They were, theologically speaking, very conservative. They were almost all Pharisees, the ultra-conservatives of the day. But their occupation was to deal with God's law. They were interpreters of the law. They were teachers of the law, and they were judges of the law; that is, explaining how the law should be applied to individual circumstances. These were the teachers, the brokers of the Scripture, not the power brokers in the sense of the high priests and their families, the wealthy influential, but these were influential for a different reason because they were the ones who controlled the theology of the nation.

Matthew adds a third group. He calls them in Matthew 26:3 "the elders of the people." Mark has already introduced us to this group back in chapter 11. He added them to the chief priests and scribes as composing the Sanhedrin. Where does this group "the elders of the people" come from? Well, every family in Israel was patriarchal in its structure, and every family had elders. Every unit has elders that ruled them. In every town the leading families supplied the elders from their family to gather with other influential families. And those select elders of influential families became the elders of that city or that town. From those elders, the best and the brightest, the most prominent of those community elders or those town elders or city elders were selected to serve on the Sanhedrin along with the chief priests and the scribes. The elders here were, in a sense, the lay members of the Sanhedrin, leaders from across the nation in their own towns and communities.

Now those were the groups involved in this conspiracy. Now what's important to note about that is that all of those involved in Israel's leadership, every group in the Sanhedrin, were represented at this meeting. This was not a rogue group setting a direction for the nation that was contrary to the rest of the leadership. Every portion of Israel's leadership was represented at this meeting.

So, what was the plan? Well, notice verse 1, "Now the Passover and the Unleavened Bread were two days away; and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to seize Him by stealth…." The tense of the Greek verb here is very interesting, "they were seeking." There's an implication here of ( I wish I could've been a fly on the wall at this meeting because the implication) is there was a lengthy discussion in which they were considering all kinds of different possible ways to accomplish their objective. They had agreed with Caiaphas' earlier conclusion that Jesus had to die, but the question was how. They decided, notice verse 1, that whatever the plan was, it had to be done (you see those words) "by stealth." That's too nice a word.

Let me give you the leading lexicon's definition of that word "stealth". Here it is, "taking advantage through craft and underhanded methods, deceit, cunning, treachery." The plan, simply put, was to use whatever underhanded methods were necessary to get Jesus. You know, when you think about this, when you think about this sentence alone, their willingness to wrongly condemn a man who has never been convicted of any crime, against whom evidence has not been heard, and to do so using whatever underhanded methods are necessary – that tells you everything you need to know about these men. They were ruthless power brokers, and one man was nothing to them, innocent or otherwise. That's the plan – stealth.

But notice the objective, "they were seeking how to seize Him by stealth and kill Him…." That, by the way, is the focus of the sentence in the Greek text. Listen to the sentence as it reads in the Greek text, and I'm going to slightly change its order, even in Greek, just so you can understand it, "And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how seizing Him in deceit they might kill Him", [how seizing Him in deceit they might kill Him.] "Kill" is the focus of their plan. That was their ultimate objective – to kill Jesus. It is a conspiracy to murder an innocent man. They had already decided two months before that it was politically expedient to do. They had already determined Jesus' guilt long before He was arrested, any evidence had been heard or presented. They simply want Him to die. They are planning a murder by judicial process.

Now that brings us to their decision. Notice verse 2, "For they were saying, 'Not during the festival, otherwise there might be a riot of the people.'" Again, there's, there's little nuances of meaning in that expression "for they were saying". The Greek tense of the verb implies that there was this ongoing discussion. They desperately wanted to arrest Jesus right then after the inflammatory things He had said about them in public on the feast week, on the feast week in front of thousands of people. But they kept coming back to this concern: what if arresting Jesus causes a riot? And this was a very reasonable concern on the part of the leaders.

Again, you have to understand a little bit of the cultural context. According to Deuteronomy 16:5, the Passover could only be celebrated at Jerusalem. If you wanted to celebrate the Passover as an Israelite, you had to go to Jerusalem. So, at Passover, the city of Jerusalem grew from its normal population of about 50,000 people, historians tell us, to over 250,000 people – five times the normal number of inhabitants at the minimum. Josephus (and I think this estimate is over the top) he estimates there were three million people who were in the city or around the city at the time of the Passover. But clearly, there were more than 250,000 and up to half a million people.

In addition, don't forget the kind of holiday this was. Put yourself again (with a little sanctified imagination) back in this scene. Passover was an extremely nationalistic holiday. It was the celebration of God's people being set free from slavery to whom? Egypt, a Gentile nation. In the first century, Israel found herself enslaved to another Gentile nation, Rome. The celebration of Passover made the people of Israel long to be delivered from that slavery. Rome understood this, and at Passover they would bring extra troops into the city to control the possible nationalistic fervor of the people. So, into that political powder keg, public demonstrations and even riots were common at Passover.

Not everyone understood Jesus and His claims. Not everyone understood He was the Messiah, but you remember that even those who didn't become His followers (back in John 6 we looked at it, we saw the parallel in Mark's gospel), they wanted to do what after He fed them bread? Make Him King! "Here's our deliverer! He's going to free us from Rome!" And so, the situation was flammable. In addition, remember that at Passover most of Jesus' followers and disciples were from Galilee. At Passover was one of only three times during the year when the largest base of Jesus' supporters would have been in the city. So, they're very concerned about a riot and rightly so.

You know the irony of that though? Their concern with the judicial murder of Jesus at Passover was not because it might be wrong. It was because it might cause a riot, which might threaten (what?) their power, their position, their place. Undoubtedly as they're having this discussion, the images from Sunday as Jesus rode into the city on the foal of a donkey with great crowds heralding Him are in the back of their minds: "Nope, it can't happen, can't happen now."

The decision had been determined two months before, after the raising of Lazarus. But on Wednesday of the Passion Week in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the conspiracy was hatched. The plan was decided.

They would use whatever means necessary, however wrong, however underhanded, however much filled with treachery to arrest Jesus, and kill Him. But it would have to wait until after the feast, after Friday and the Passover, and after the subsequent seven-day feast of Unleavened Bread. It'll have to wait. Very interesting insight – how do we know this account? Well, remember, some of the Sanhedrin were secret followers of Jesus. Two of them later came out and acknowledged Jesus as Lord and took His body and buried it – Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Perhaps one of them reported this little discussion.

But what does this inspired record of Israel's leaders' conspiracy teach us? What do we learn? You know, I'm fascinated by what we do learn from just a couple of verses like this. Let me give you a couple of ideas to think about. First of all, this passage is a compelling testimony to the power of divine providence to execute God's eternal plan. The leaders of the nation secretly conspired to murder Jesus. But out of personal expediency, they decided to wait to seize Him until after the feast, but it couldn't happen that way. It could not happen that way because in eternity past God had already decided when His Son would die.

And fourteen hundred years before Christ, God had already given an indication of what day it would be. That indication is in Exodus 12 when the Passover deliverance of God's people occurred, when an innocent lamb was slain, and its blood was sprinkled on the doorpost, and as the people of Israel gathered, huddled in their little homes that night in Egypt heard the howling, heard the death surround them as the families grieved the loss of the firstborn, but were safe because the blood of the Passover lamb was applied. The death of an innocent one had shielded their lives from God's judgment. God had decided when His Son would die.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Jesus told His disciples that after two days, He would be delivered up for crucifixion. So, whether Israel's leaders wanted it or not, regardless of what their Wednesday deliberations came out to be, Jesus' death would be on Passover. God's Son would be the perfect fulfillment of the picture of the Passover lamb. So, Israel's leaders - they decided Jesus' death would not happen during the Passover, but God had already decided that it would, and He works in His amazing providence. He adds to the fuel of this leaders' conspiracy the spark of Judas' timely betrayal to ensure that His Son will die when He determined fourteen hundred years before – yes, in eternity past – and that would be on Friday during the time the Passover lambs were slain at the temple. It had to happen like this.

Folks, this is a powerful reminder of God's providence in our own lives. Just as God had a detailed plan for the life of His Son, He has a detailed plan for your life and mine as well. And He is just as involved in carrying out those details as He was in the life of Jesus. You can trust Him. You can trust His providence. He has a plan, and nothing stands in the way of His plan.

"He works all things (Scripture tells us) according to the counsel of (what?) His own will." He uses the sinfulness of these leaders and the sinfulness of Judas, and He directs their sinfulness to ends that they could not have foreseen and didn't intend to make sure that His Son died when He wanted His Son to die. God is every bit as much at work in our lives as that as well.

Secondly, this passage underlines again for us Jesus' love for His own and His willingness to die for them. We've seen this throughout the gospel of Mark, but we see it here. Jesus, Jesus knew what was coming, folks. Right after He finished saying all those things, He said on Tuesday afternoon to the leaders of the nation in the hearing of, in the hearing of thousands of people, He said to His disciples: "Two days, and what has happened here today will lead to My death."

As He and the disciples watched the evening sun set over the Mediterranean that Tuesday afternoon from the Mount of Olives, right after He had so publicly denounced Israel's leaders, He told His disciples it would mean His death in two days' time. But none of that turned Him aside from the reason He came. He was driven to the cross by His love for His own, by His love for you. I love what John says in John 13:1 – "Now before the Feast of the Passover (this would've been on Thursday evening, the next day after the one we've just studied), Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." There's another way to translate that expression "to the end". It can mean (and I think probably does mean) "to the fullest extent", "to the uttermost", "to the greatest degree".

One final lesson that I see here (that I think's so important for us to understand) is Jesus' complete innocence. This record establishes Jesus' innocence. He was innocent on two fronts. First of all, He was innocent before the law. Jesus did nothing deserving of the death penalty that He would get in two days' time. From the secret meeting that happened two months before to the secret meeting that happened on that Wednesday and what was discussed there, it becomes clear that it was not the law that demanded Jesus die. It was an agenda, an agenda fueled by political power and personal expediency.

But there's an even larger point about Jesus' innocence here, and that is this story establishes Jesus' credentials as the innocent One to die in the place of sinners. He was perfectly innocent. He had done nothing deserving of death on the human level and nothing deserving of death on the divine level. He was not deserving to the smallest degree of God's judgment. And He was the only person in human history of whom that could ever be said. So, He was the only One legitimately qualified to be the innocent substitute offering Himself in the place of guilty sinners. Listen to Peter, 1 Peter 1:19 – He was "a lamb unblemished and spotless…." There's that image of the Passover again. He was a perfect, spotless sacrifice. There was nothing in Him deserving of death. In 1 Peter 2:21, Peter says, quoting Isaiah 53, "He committed no sin." Of whom else has that ever been said? He committed no sin.

But my favorite reference, and you know this if you've been in our church any time at all, is 2 Corinthians 5:21 – "God made Christ [listen to this] who knew [what?] no sin [He had never experienced personal sin. He made Christ who knew no sin] to be sin on our behalf [in other words, to take the penalty deserving of our sin; that is, the penalty that our sin deserved – taking it on Himself, offering Himself], so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." And He was qualified because He knew no sin. He was spotless and blameless, undeserving of death and undeserving of God's eternal judgment. It was all a great conspiracy - a conspiracy on the human level, but ultimately, a divine conspiracy as well decided in eternity past among the members of the Trinity. That's His love for us.

Let's pray together.

Father, we are amazed at Your love for us. We are amazed that You would offer the perfect, spotless, innocent One for us - that You would take Him who never experienced personal sin, who was spotless, who never committed sin, who was innocent before the law, before human law, and innocent before Your law, and that You would involve Yourself in using a human conspiracy to carry out a great eternal divine conspiracy: that Your Son, the perfect One, would be offered in the place of sinners who would believe in Him.

O God, we praise You for Your love. We praise You for Your providence in His life and in ours. We worship You as the God who is, by nature, a rescuer.

For it's in our Lord's name we pray. Amen.