The Last Week of Jesus's LifeSample

Wednesday, April 1, 33 AD

But more than his political message and political associations, it is Jesus’s seemingly political actions that turn the water from hot to boiling.

The first action that courts his eventual execution is his disruptive behavior at the autumnal Feast of Tabernacles in John 7. Halfway through the festival, he starts teaching in the temple, publicly taunting the religious establishment. When Annas and Caiaphas send officers to arrest him, Jesus talks his way out of arrest. On the last and busiest day of the festival, he stands up and makes a public scene, shouting at the top of his lungs. Thinking he’s a demon-possessed Samaritan, they try to stone him before he gets away.

The second action is a pesky rumor that the Galilean rabbi raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. No doubt the friend was in on the conspiracy, and he got his sister Mary to wrap him up like a mummy while Martha packed enough food in the burial cave to last for four days. But the rumor has spread like wildfire, clearly part of the rabbi’s plan to delude the mob into thinking he really is God in the flesh.

Then there is Jesus’s third action: His anti-triumphal entry. The temple elite knows exactly what this is. It’s Jesus’s attempt to re-enact the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9 (NIV): “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” But there can only be one king in Israel: Rome for now, Annas at the right moment.

Jesus’s fourth and final action is the hijacking of the temple marketplace that grinds Annas & Co. to a halt. Mark 11:18 says his symbolic destruction of the temple is the catalyst for his arrest. John confirms this by placing the event near the beginning of his gospel as a foreboding flash-forward (John 2:13–22). Jesus himself is certain that this act of economic sabotage is what will incite the chief priests to kill him (Mark 10:33).

How can we be certain that disrupting the economy of Annas is the catalytic event? Because Mark uses a literary device called an inclusio to highlight it, sandwiching the table-overturning scene (Mark 11:15–19) within a story about the destruction of a fruitless fig tree (Mark 11:12–14 and Mark 11:20–21). Fig trees are a common symbol of Israel in Scripture (Jeremiah 8:13; Joel 1:7; Hosea 9:10, 16), and the meaning is obvious: The religionists run a decrepit institution that bears no fruit. It’s time to purge the House of Annas from the House of God.

What is the “evidence” the religionists take to their Roman overlords? A presumed political message, known political associations, and openly aggressive political actions. If they have to sum it up in a sentence, they will say, “He claims to be the king of the Jews.”

In other words, Annas and the Jewish religionists don’t get Jesus killed for saying he is God. Sure, Caiaphas goes through the motions of tearing his clothes and pretending he cares about defending God’s honor, but Caiaphas and his family are so far out of touch with God that they can’t see God’s Son standing before their eyes.

It is often said that “the Jews killed Jesus.” No, they didn’t. A small group of hyper-violent religionists misrepresented Judaism, took God’s name in vain, and had Jesus murdered by the Romans for political power and personal profit. The text says so (John 11:48, 50).

Aristocrat Annas wasn’t a God-loving leader like Moses, Isaiah, or Elijah; he was a power-loving, money-grubbing, secular political elitist who had no qualms about murder. He and his barbarous gang of temple infiltrators do not represent true Judaism. They literally could not be any further from the truth of heaven.

Unfortunately, the errant belief that God-honoring Jews killed Jesus has caused untold anti-Semitism over the past two millennia, with Catholics torturing and murdering Jews for nearly ten centuries. But what has Jesus been saying about Annas and the temple elites the whole time? Fake Jews! Jesus is the greatest Jew of all time, calling out bad Jewry.

Anti-Jew Annas and his machinating minions have all the political evidence they need. Plus, there’s an inside man who’s willing to betray Jesus for a price. The House of Annas has no problem sharing a small slice of their festival takings—just thirty pieces of silver, a mere handful of Tyrian shekels from the temple treasury—if Judas Iscariot can find an opportunity for them to arrest the rabbi quietly. Judas knows just the time and place.

It’s time to sell out a fellow Jew to the Romans.