Not only did they understand the teaching, but they feared the teacher. Oh, they wouldn’t have said that. They were not afraid Jesus might rise from dead. Instead, they feared that Jesus’ disciples might come and steal the body and claim Jesus had risen from the dead. But deep down underneath, who was it they really feared? Was it the disciples? That insignificant band of cowardly men who didn’t even have the courage to stand by their Lord at the time of the arrest and the trial and who scattered at the crucifixion, who were nowhere around and couldn’t be found? Was it really that weak, insignificant band they feared? Or did they really fear the Master?
I think everything about the trial, and all the details of that last week in Jerusalem, showed that they really feared Him. The use of Judas in the trial is an indication of that. Why did they have to use Judas after all? Two answers are usually given to that question.
The first answer is that they had to use Judas because they didn’t know where Christ was hiding and Judas was necessary to bring them to His hiding place.
The second answer is that they used Judas so that they could arrest Christ secretly for fear of the people. Those seem good until you examine them in a little greater detail. How about this matter of Christ being in hiding? The difficulty with that explanation is that Christ wasn’t in hiding. Oh, it’s true earlier in the ministry there had been periods where He withdrew Himself in order not to precipitate arrest and a trial because He was in charge of these events and was timing them to coincide with the great feast of Israel in order that His death might be interpreted by the death of the Passover lambs. Earlier He had hidden, but at this stage in His ministry He wasn’t in hiding. He had come up from Jericho to Bethany openly on the Friday before the Passover and there had raised Lazarus from the dead in the midst of a great crowd and they all stood around the grave. The next day was the Sabbath and we’re told that men and women came from the areas round about to see Him and to talk with Lazarus who had been raised.
On the next day, what we now know as Palm Sunday, He entered into Jerusalem with great display and crowds went with Him as they were going up to the feast. He could hardly have done things more openly and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, He went back and forth in and out of the city. He cleansed the temple openly. There wasn’t any difficulty in knowing where Christ was. They wished He had been in hiding during that particular week!
As for the second reason, some people say, “Well the matter is this, he was popular and they wanted to arrest Him when people weren’t there to cause trouble.” There is some substance to that. Obviously He was popular at least in a superficial way. Obviously they were afraid of the people. They didn’t want an uprising. The leaders confessed as much. They said, “If there’s trouble the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But that’s hardly an adequate explanation for the use of Judas. All they had to do was lie in wait for him somewhere on the road to Bethany where He went back and forth every day of Passover week. Or for that matter they could have gone to Bethany and arrested Him there. Why would they pay Judas money to point out Christ’s whereabouts?
In Frank Morrison’s book Who Moved the Stone? he suggests what I believe to be the right answer and it is something like this. They had tried to arrest Christ earlier. There are many incidences of that. On one occasion they sent the temple guards, telling them, “Arrest Him and bring Him back to us.!” And the temple guards went, they heard Christ’s teaching, and they came back without Him.
The leaders said, “Where is He? Why haven’t you brought Him?” They gave an answer that is just incredible for soldiers. They said, “No man ever spake like this man.” They had sent the guards but the guards were overpowered simply by Christ’s words.
Or again, they tried to take Him on another occasion about which John tells us and he says that Jesus simply escaped out of their hands and He hid Himself. Another time they tried to do that and Jesus passed through the midst of them and went on His way. See, they tried to arrest Him and they had failed. Coupled with that there was the problem of His miracles. They didn’t deny His miracles later in His ministry. At the beginning they did. They said, “The man’s a charlatan. These things are fake.” Later on they said, “They’re not fake. It’s obvious that He’s really doing these things, but He’s doing them by the power of the devil.”
