#STRask - Why Did the Sadducees and Pharisees Want to Kill Jesus?

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Questions about why the Sadducees and Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus and why God doesn’t say anything when we pray to him.   Why did the Sadducees and Pharisees want to kill Jesus? Why doesn’t God say anything when we pray to him?

This is Amy Hall, and thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Actually, for the podcast today, Greg, you're the only one joining me on the podcast today. I just realized that. Oh, people are fussing about pronouns. Now we're fussing about prepositions. All right, all right. What do you got? All right.

So this first question, actually, it's two questions together. It comes from Johnny. As I was putting my three-year-old to bed, he asked me, why did this say, Sadducees and Pharisees want to kill Jesus? And then, why doesn't God say anything when we pray to him? Apparently, he's been absorbing more info than I thought. How would you answer these? Well, there are two questions there. And let me just take the second one first, and that is, it presumes what one understands the word answer to be. I think the boy thinks that if we talk to God, would talk back to us. And so the answer will be God saying something in response to the prayer,

yes or no, for example. And that's not the way it works. God doesn't have those kind of conversational relationships with us characteristically. There's no biblical support for that notion. He can't intervene and do whatever he wants, but in terms of as a standard element of prayer, people call this listening prayer, we talk and then God responds. There's no basis in a single verse in 66 books of the Bible for this kind of thing. And it has applicational problems. But in any event, I would just explain to the boy, I'd say, hey, son, well, that's not the way it works with God. It works that way with us in conversation. But when God answers, the answer means whether he does, or he does not do what we ask him to do.

So a lot of times when we say, I have an answered prayer, we're not referring to God's talking to us, and that being the answer, quote, unquote, in that sentence. We're talking about God doing what we ask him to do. Yeah, I had an answer prayer. I pray for this, and this happened kind of thing. And an unanswered prayer, and like some people say, there's no one-answered prayers because either God says yes or no.

You know, that's the answer. inactivity, and God has his own reasons for that, and I think it's to be fair to say to a three-year-old, yeah, God hears our prayers after fashion, and he knows what we pray, and prayer is important, but just like when you ask me to do something for you, son, I don't always do what you ask because it may not be the best thing for you. Dad knows best, God knows best, kind of thing. So that would be the way to explain that aspect. And the other thing about the Pharisees, it's interesting, we get...

Go ahead. So what would you say specifically? So why doesn't he? I mean, you explain he doesn't and how he does answer, but do you have any reason why he wouldn't? Why he wouldn't verbally get back to us? Well, we're back to that why question again. And those are questions we mostly can't answer. Well, why doesn't he?

I don't know why. I can imagine, I mentioned applicational problems a few moments ago, if we expect that this is what God does. And we can't answer the question why. So then we presume that he is talking to us, but we're not listening well. And then we're going to start attributing to God all kinds of things in her head that are not him. And so I think that's part of the applicational problem. and goes back to this general question, does God whisper? And my response is no, biblically speaking, no.

So why wouldn't God do it that way? I don't know. Apart from this applicational concern, I don't know. He could do it any way he wants. And actually, when he does speak in Scripture, there's no confusion about, is that God or not. I think God's trying, you know, to talk to me. Well, God doesn't try. He just gets it done when he sets his will to accomplish some,

task. He does it. It gets done. So I guess I can't. The way I would explain this, and maybe this would be a good lesson for the young boy to learn, is relationship with God is not exactly like relationship with people. I wish more people would understand that because they are trying to they're trying to understand quote-unquote relationship with God, which is, by the way, a fairly recent way of characterizing our interaction with God. Well, we're in a relationship. That started, I think, in the 60s, actually, maybe in the 50s, but it's a more modern way of talking about it.

I have no problem with that. I use the concept of friendship with God in the story of reality, just to use a different word. but I don't have a problem with that. The difficulty is sometimes the word relationship is laden with things that relate to relationships, relationships with human beings that do not apply to God at all. God is not a human. And there are times when our relationship with God is analogous to our relationships with other human beings.

but in those times we can trade a little bit on human relationships to understand a relationship with God, but not everything. And this is where I think Dallas Willard has said this in the past and I respect Dallas, but I think he's mistaken on this, where he says, if you want to know what relationship with God is like, then look at human relationships and then make application to your relationship with God, something to that order. And I think that's the tail wagging the dog. I think what we first have to do is I think this is where one finds support for the idea that we can all have a conversational relationship with God because that's what humans have. And relationship entails that kind of interactive conversation. I can't tell you the number of times that people have raised this issue. I can think of three people now that are major players. I'm not going to mention their names.

But people I've talked to about this, and they've raised the question, well, if God is not having a conversational relationship with God, well, then with us, then what does a relationship with God actually mean? I mean, these guys are significant players, but notice what they've done. They've taken the cue from Dallas. That relationship with God is like a relationship that we have. And I think that in the case of Dallas's advice, I think the tail is wagging the dog. You don't start with human relationship and extrapolate to divine relationship. You start with a biblical characterization of divine relationship with humans. In other words, how does the scripture characterize the interaction that the ordinary average standard Christian or even believer in the Old Testament, godly person in the Old Testament,

What does it mean for them to be interacting in a personal way with God? Certainly prayer is part of that on our side, but there's no returning conversation from God. Pardon me, from his side, biblically is the point of making. So that is not analogous then to a relationship with God. So my point is, let's find out what the Bible, how it characterizes relationships, relationship, friendship with God, what qualities. And when those qualities do parallel human relationships, then we can use that as an analog. But we can't do it the other way around because then we start attributing to relationship with God, things that are not biblically sound. Does that make

sense? Yeah. And I'll just, obviously, the Bible doesn't spell this out. But I will throw out something there, a reason why maybe he doesn't give special messages to every single person. I mean, the opportunities for abuse through that would be huge because anyone can say God said this, and then you've got all these cults bringing up, you've got somebody abusing people by getting them to do what they want. As long as it's more contained and you have like an objective standard that everyone can point to and compare their theology to, you can keep people much more unified and you can keep them much safer than if everyone is claiming that they're receiving special messages from God. Right. There's just a lot of opportunities for abuse.

I agree entirely. When I think of Jehovah's Witnesses, I think of Christian science, I think of LDS, or I think of the new apostolic Reformation, kind of closer within the core of biblical Christianity, but excessive in quite a number of ways, especially in their ecclesiology, their understanding of the church and leadership and stuff like that. But these are all errant in virtue of these special revelations that people get. Now, I know what the response is that many people will say, and they say, well, you always have to check it out with the Bible. Now, there's two elements through that that are important. First of all, somebody's telling you God said something, and it's not, it's in violation of a scriptural teaching.

well, then we don't pay attention to that. I mean, yeah, that kind of goes without saying, I'm with that. So if they tell you what Jesus wasn't God, like these other groups will say, not God in the biblical sense, okay, that's a problem. But here's the other thing that people miss entirely. It's not only you have to check out the content of the message, you have to check out in the scripture whether that motif itself is biblically sound. the motif of everybody, at least in principle, being able to get all these messages from God,

and this is kind of standard, we just pass that stuff around. And my point is it's not. So there's no point in trying to find that. All of these occasions, even in the Book of Acts, with one exception that I can think of, and it's only maybe an exception, and that's on Paul's first missionary journey, all the other times when God speaks, he intervened. in the circumstance. People aren't sitting around waiting for God to tell them what to do. And when God intervenes, there's no mistaking what he's saying. It's not clear. It says that the,

I don't know, where they're sending Paul out there in that first missionary journey, it says they were all ministering to the Lord, and then a prophet, what the Spirit spoke is what it says, and it says set aside Barnabas and Saul for the mission I have for them. Now, I mentioned prophet because the text mentions prophets. There were prophets there. And the most likely reason for them to mention prophets is that this word from the spirit is a prophetic word. I mean, that's kind of almost a no-daw kind of thing. So I guess somebody could say, well, they were seeking guidance.

It doesn't say that. It says they were ministering before the Lord, whatever that means. But I'll just accept that as a maybe there. Maybe they were waiting for God to tell them what to do next. But they did have the Great Commission, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the world. They had all kinds of other information that allowed them to make their decisions, which they did most of the time. But in any event, this applicational problem that you mentioned is a real big problem. problem. But when it comes to checking out with the Bible, you got to check the method out,

not just the content of the communication. That's my point here. Now, there's one other element, right, of this question. So, yeah, so the first question was, why did the Sadducees and the Pharisees want to kill Jesus? Well, we are given only one direct piece of information about that. And in one sense, one could say that, just like anybody else, like Jesus says, the light came into the world and the men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. So the spiritual leadership of Israel at that time, and this is not just unique to that time, it's characteristic of a lot of people in a lot of circumstances. They had a vested interest in the status quo. They were in power. They were enjoying a special status in that society, the highest.

They were looked up to, they were revered. They were called rabbi, and they would strut their religiosity before the crowds. And Jesus had a lot to say about this in the sermon of the Mount and other places. And so this was, this was, they had a lot to lose. by bending the knee the way John the Baptist said they ought to, repent. That means change your mind. You've got to turn around. This ain't right what's going on.

You're getting it all wrong. And when they came to see John the Baptist, John addresses them in a very unique way. He says, who warned you from the wrath that is to come? And of course, John is preaching that. but then he's disparaging of these religious men because he, this is my sense of it, and I'll tell you why in just a second, but he doesn't trust him. Oh, this is just an act. You're doing the religious thing.

Everybody's coming down. Okay, you're going to come down, you're going to be part of the religious crowd, right? Okay, then John says, and this is why I made that statement, he says, bring forth fruits in in keeping, thank you, with your repentance, quote unquote repentance, your professed repentant, bring forth fruits. You know, this is like a James thing. Okay, let's see it happen. Don't just come out here and do this little religious thing.

That's what you guys do so well. So this group had a vested interest. This is one thing we know of not changing the status quo, but we actually get an explicit statement regarding that. And I think it's in, it's around when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Okay, here it is. In conspiracy to kill Jesus, starting in verse 47 of John 11. Now, Jesus has already raised Lazarus.

And it says, well, starting in 45, therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what Jesus had in, This is Mary and Martha Mary. They believed in him. So there's a response of trusted faith and belief in Jesus as a result of this incredible miracle. Lazarus three days dead, and he comes out of the tomb. But, verse 46, some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things what Jesus had done. He raised Lazarus from the dead. They don't fall on their knees and say he's the Messiah, like some did, essentially.

No, they say, this is a problem. And we find out in verse 47 and follower. Therefore, the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council and were saying, what are we doing? For this man is performing many signs, no duh. The word signs there means attesting miracles. In other words, miracles that are demonstrating the truth of what he's claiming about himself. They're acknowledging that.

That's the word they use. Verse 48, if we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. Our place and our nation. They have this high position. So here is an explicit characterization of what that group had at stake. And in fact, when the Romans came in 70 AD and destroyed Jerusalem, the Sadducee cast disappeared because the Sadducee cast was very intimately tied to the temple.

Once the temple was destroyed, there was no need for Sadducees. They were gone. Now, the Pharisee cast, that continued and made alterations and variations, but they continued as rabbis. But here's the reason they had a lot to lose, not just in general, their high status in their community, by surrendering their religiosity by putting faith in their Messiah. But they were also concerned about the Romans coming in and taking away their place of authority and the nice life that they had. There's the rationale.

And I'm going to add something from human nature here. And just to say that nobody likes it when a light shines on their darkness. Nobody likes that unless they're humble. and they're open about their own sin. So a humble person can enjoy somebody who's greater than them. So when they're around somebody who's kinder or greater than they are in some way, they can decide, oh, I want to be like them, and they can love to be around them. They're not intimidated by the greatness before them.

But a proud person wants to tear that other person down. So think about what they were. we're trying to do, if they are trying to say that they have earned their salvation or they've done everything correctly and that they're self-righteous in some way, then when someone comes who really is perfect, that's a threat to that, very basic part of what they believe about themselves. So anyone who's trying to maintain their own perfection is going to have to tear Jesus down because otherwise they're, it's going to be revealed that they're not perfect. So I was trying to find this verse while you were talking, Greg, and I can't find it,

but I think there's a verse where it says something like they love the glory of men rather than the glory of God. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can't find it. But so the approval of men, I think, is it might be approval. But I think that's, it might be in the sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5. So they were all about their own glory, and so they cannot have that threatened. And this is why humility is so key to the Christian life. I mean, think about this is what it says in Philippians 2 when it talks about how we're supposed to be like Jesus, who laid aside his glorious position to come down to us, and we're supposed to think more about others than ourselves. And we need to be humble about our own need for forgiveness. And this is what's necessary if we're going to see Jesus. It's necessary if we're going to

avoid having contempt for other people and having a lack of prayer. Because think about prayer, even prayer is an admission that you need something. And it's also the key to having a love for the loss. It's the key to having gratitude. Humility is so key. And when we lose that, we lose our very ability to see Jesus as he is. God gives, is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Yeah. By the way, it says that a number of times in the text. Such an important lesson. Yeah. Good. Well, thank you, Johnny and your son. We appreciate hearing from you. And we'd love to hear from you. So make

sure you send us your question. You can go to X and just use the hashtag SDRask. Or you can go to our website, and that's at STR.org. And all you have to do there is just find our hashtag SDRSk podcast page, and you'll find a link there. So please send us your questions. We look forward to hearing from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.