Yesterday I, Pastor Todd, spoke on John 12. The title and emphasis of the message was “Fear Factor in John 12.” As Cara spoke last week about life and resurrection as the truth God has for all who will believe, this week, we examined the human experience. Everyone experiences fear. Sometimes it’s the crippling fear that keeps us from doing the right thing. Other times we can press through it. In the end, how we handle our integrity in the face of adverse consequences reveals our character. Today, I’d like to briefly summarize part of yesterday’s message. For the full audio, listen on our podcast here.
Pharisees’ Fear (Bethany)
John 12 starts us at the beginning of Jesus heading to Jerusalem for the final time. He knows what is awaiting him. His mission has been pointing to his own death since the beginning. He and his disciples stopped off at Bethany to visit his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. It would be the final time he visited with them before his arrest. Bethany was a 2 mile walk to Jerusalem. His hour was coming and he knew it, yet he stayed the course. Most of us won’t be faced with the psychological pressure of facing our own death by the hands of others. No doubt, feelings of apprehension, fear, anxiety, and many others would flood our system. These likely flooded Jesus’ system, yet he continued. Jesus knew his mission. He knew his Father. He knew the end results of the price.
Another group had much less to lose. Their lives weren’t in danger, only their power over people. Yet they reacted to Jesus’ influence over the Jews out of a deep seated fear. Fear is a powerful motivator. The Pharisees were highly motivated to do something about Jesus. In their eyes, Jesus wasn’t just an inconvenient rabbi that challenged them. They saw him as a threat to their entire base of power, namely holding people in their grip through religious manipulation. But their influence was through underhanded dealings under the guise of righteous motives. And Jesus outed them for it. Their power was tenuous at best. Jesus’ power, by comparison, was undeniably from a supernatural source. What’s worse, he used it to spread righteousness and truth about the God of the Jews. By doing so, he began to expose the dark underbelly of the Jewish religious system. They felt threatened.
Their reaction to Jesus’ power and influence came straight from the fear that they would be removed from their power and authority were he to continue. So they conspired to have him killed. And not just Jesus, they also conspired to kill Lazarus, a man who was brought back from the dead. They didn’t want any remnants of Jesus’ work. They were conspiring for a total, underhanded defeat of the man they feared would take their power away from the people.
Fear is a powerful motivator, and they had ample motivation.
Rulers’ Fears (Jerusalem)
Here is another group driven by fear. We’re not sure if these were community leaders or political leaders in Jerusalem. John mentions them and says they believed in Jesus, but were afraid that the Pharisees would expel them from the synagogue. They wanted to keep their prestige among the Jews, so feared the disgrace of being banned from religious gatherings. John even explains that they preferred the respect of men rather than of God.
Where the Pharisees’ fear motivated them to wicked actions–killing innocent people for their own preservation, these leaders’ fear motivated them to inaction. The one group of people who could have stood up to the Pharisees and interrupted their murderous plans didn’t. They were afraid of the Pharisees’ hold on the people and their manipulations. They feared. That fear lead them to inaction.
Effect of Fear
The Gospel is all about relationship. It is about overturning the sinful nature instituted to mankind through Adam and Eve, which effectively fractured relationships, turning them into struggles for dominance and submission. It also fractured humanity’s relationship to God, causing false perceptions of his character, skewing our view of His love for us, and even attributing him as the source of evil.
Fear is a natural by-product of our fallen nature. We are now more about self-preservation, sink or swim, and fighting to get ahead so no one else will. It is the complete and total opposite of God’s original design of perfectly right relationship between us and Him and each other. By fear, we fight to get away from all authority structure. By fear we live in a state of insecurity, especially when someone with different opinions and sources of authority come into our sphere of influence.
Fear is rooted in insecurity. When we fear, there is something inside of us that is afraid. We fear losing our position of authority or influence. We fear people will think less of us. We fear experiencing shame. All this fear then leads to a withholding of intimacy in relationships. This then drives our actions. In the end, innocent people get hurt because of our acting out of fear.
In order for Jesus to die for our sins, God didn’t have to arrange a group of people bent on killing. All he had to do was let their fears play out naturally. The Pharisees and Leaders already had the raw material to ensure Jesus was killed. They just needed a catalyst that ignited their fears. And in the end, an innocent man died. Much to our benefit, his death leads to our redemption and restored relationships, so long as we don’t give into fear.
Bible Verses Addressing Fear
—Prov 10:9 “He who walks in integrity walks securely…”
—Prov. 11:3 “The integrity of the upright will guide them,”
—2 Timothy 1:7: (NIV) For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.
—1 Jn. 4:18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
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