John 11:47 Commentary and Bible Study

Some see these last verses of John 11 as no more than a linking passage, but this tail-piece, or linking passage, is actually very profound. As you look at them, it becomes evident that you are looking at an analysis of the thinking of the chief priests and the scribes and the Pharisees – how they viewed things; how they formulated a decision; what precise form of words they used to pass their resolution and determination to bring Christ under arrest, to try, and to kill him; what they forecast, what they predicted what would happen as a result. People reject Christ. In those days they turned to ceremonialism; in these days to materialism and scientific humanism, and you try to forecast world events, and what is going to happen in your life, and what life is all about without any consideration of God and the Gospel and Christ. Well, your forecasts are completely wrong. Nothing works when it is based on materialistic thinking, or unbelieving thinking, disrespectful to God and to Christ. And you see this analysed in this passage.These were clever men, these leading Jews. They may not have been the best, but they were the brightest, and yet their predictions were wrong, their determinations, their formulations as to how they should act were wrong. The magnificent thing is that God overrules everyone to his own glory. And where they were mistaken in their actions, God overrules and adjusted their actions to serve his own will and purpose. So the Sanhedrin council, the council of seventy, convenes, and they say, ‘What do we?’ One translation puts it – What shall we do? But that is not what they said. Our King James translation may sound quaint, but it is absolutely accurate here. What are we doing right now? A lot of the attempts to take Christ and to execute him have been unofficial; there had not been any definite policy formulated by the leading council to do this, no firm resolution, no official arrest warrant. There had been one attempt to take him, but not with the sentence behind it. So there is great impatience. ‘For this man’ – they hold him in contempt. And they give themselves away: the hardness of their heart. ‘This man doeth many miracles.’ The word ‘miracles’ is not the word for wonders, it is the word which means marks, literally, or signs, or pointers. When they are in private counsel and they are not obliged to contradict the Lord, they are forced to say, he is doing pointers, signs of Messiah. How hard they must have been. We have never seen signs like these.