John 11:45-57
45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”
49 Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
51 He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. 53 So from that day on they plotted to take his life.
54 Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the people of Judea. Instead he withdrew to a region near the wilderness, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.
55 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. 56 They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple courts they asked one another, “What do you think? Isn’t he coming to the festival at all?” 57 But the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who found out where Jesus was should report it so that they might arrest him. [1]
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Today’s passage led me to think about how sad it is when hardened hearts keep people from seeing the truth. In this case it’s the Sanhedrin. But it still happens today.
Did you catch the sad irony in this passage? The raising of Lazarus is one of the greatest of Jesus’ miracles. And yet it becomes the catalyst for the Sanhedrin to decide that Jesus must be killed. So hardened had their hearts become that they were interpreting all of his actions as evidence of his need of how bad He was.
Caiaphas himself had prophesied that Jesus would die for the people and thereby make them one. But in the hardness of his heart, he couldn’t see this in a redemptive sense, but only in the sense that by killing Jesus, the Romans wouldn’t destroy them for being troublesome. Very sad.
So my prayer today is for the people I know who do not yet confess Jesus as Savior and Lord. I pray for eyes to be open and hearts to be changed. I pray that the grace shown me would fill their lives, and that the peace I have come to know would be theirs.
What is the Word leading you to pray about today?
[1] The New International Version. 2011 (Jn 11:45–57). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.