John 11:46

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

From Background Notes [BN] for August 18^th & 19^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

What follows in John’s Gospel (11:47-54) is an official decision to put Jesus to death, and that threat is repeated in 12:10-11 where Lazarus is added to the agenda! Imagine that! The man Jesus raised from the dead is targeted for execution also. Thus, irony saturates the narrative: the one who raised Lazarus from the dead now faces his own death. Resurrection Road…

… moves onward beyond Bethany, and journeys through the shadow of the cross where Jesus will soon die: Life in the shadow of death; death in the shadow of life. Led by the High Priest and the powerful priestly families along with the Pharisee-scribes, the Sanhedrin convened to preserve their control over Jewish life. How Rome would respond to these recent events troubled them most. Why? Because the Empire relied on the power of intimidation to maintain itself, and the highest form of intimidation was capital execution. But Jesus had changed that locus of power by raising up Lazarus. If Jesus and his movement could raise the dead, then the Empire could not use the fear of death to keep people in line. What the Jerusalem leadership feared was loss of control, not loss of city or Temple. The key phrase here is “take away from us” (11:48). A highly tenuous bond linked Jerusalem and Rome, since the High Priest and his peers ruled by Roman consent and could not even put on their vestments without permission from the procurator, Pilate.  [BN, 6]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm