What do y'all make of the relatable bad guy thing? We've had relatable bad guys now. It's been pretty commonplace in mainstream storytelling for 15 or 20 years. When I was little, though, it seems like the bad guys were just bad. And their motives were, I want power, pure power, raw power. And they go on these rants about whatever evil thing they wanted to do. I think Syndrome in The Incredibles was meant to sort of make make fun of this with his monologuing bit about how ridiculous bad guys are to admit that they're bad. Or it could just be that in this age of more moral relativism, that the idea of a relatable bad guy whose motives make more sense is just, you know, it's more appealing. It's what people expect. I mean, Thanos is kind of a big example of that. A lot of people are sympathetic to Thanos and think he kind of had a point in the Marvel shows. You know, on the one hand, I think that relatable bad guys is great. I think the scariest kind of bad guy is the bad guy who thinks they're right and actually has a point. I think a boring bad guy is just, you know, it's old Snidley Whiplash who we've talked about here before, who I guess is just the epitome of the character with the evil black mustache who's just bad because they're bad. When I first started reading the Bible, I guess if you would have asked me who's the big bad of the Bible, I would have said Satan. Because Satan just wants whatever's opposed to what God wants. He's he's just pure evil. But if you'd asked me to explain why, I think that's what I said, well, you know, he's he's proud and he's bad. And that's it. He's the big bad. Okay, if you would have said, Well, who's the other big bad of the Bible? I would have said, Well, it's the Pharisees, it's a group of people. They wanted Jesus dead because well, they're just bad inside, they just don't love what is good. And I thought that for a really long time, and then I don't know how long ago, I guess I did a couple passes through the gospels, and I started realizing I kind of like the Pharisees. Don't get me wrong, they're bad guys, they miss to the point, but I think I might have been on their team, given my predilections and my personality, if I'd been alive at the time of Jesus. Now I know that's awful, and probably some of you are reaching for your phones and computers, your mouses, your devices right now, and you're like, I don't want to listen to a Bible program and make the Bible a part of my daily rhythm with a man who says that he likes the Pharisees and would probably have been one of those if he was alive during the time of Jesus. I'm gonna go find a similar Bible podcast, but with somebody who would have been on Jesus' side back then and with fart jokes. But wait, before you go, two things. One, you're not gonna find a Bible show with more fart jokes. So I don't know what to tell you there. Two, hear me out on this thing. When you actually go and look at the Pharisees, you realize they're not just a boring snidley whiplash who's just evil because they love evil. No, they they thought they were right, they thought they were good, they thought they were protecting the people from the kind of mistakes they'd made in the past. And when you really look at a lot of their positions, my guess is that a large percentage of you would are gonna be like, well, yeah, in a blind taste test, I might have picked them too. How did it go so wrong for them? Okay, why are we talking about the Pharisees today? Well, because they're on screen for the first time here in the Gospel of John. We're we're meeting the big bad, but it's a complicated big bad. We're gonna try to frame up the Pharisees today and probably tomorrow in a way that'll help us see them as a relatable, multidimensional, interesting, compelling bad guy who make a pretty seductive case for why not to put your trust in Jesus and why to put your trust in their approach to things. So we're gonna treat them fairly for the sake of understanding the text and for the sake of treating people fairly. All right, here's what we got. I'm just gonna read you the whole passage if we can get reset on everything. We're in John 1.19. We just finished the prologue, and the religious leadership now has John the Baptist on their radar, as we've been discussing, and they send uh a delegation, maybe multiple delegations, we'll get to that in a minute, out to chat with John the Baptist to be like, you know, what you know, what the heck do we have going on here? All right, John 1.19. Now this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He didn't fail to confess, but confessed freely. I'm not the Christ. They asked him, Well, then who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, No. Finally they said, Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? John replied, in the words of Isaiah the prophet, I am the voice of one calling in the desert. Make straight the way of the Lord. Now some Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, Why then do you baptize if you're not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet? I baptize with water, John replied, but among you stands one you do not know. He's the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. And it says, and this all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. We'll get to that later on. So the Pharisees showed up. Well, okay. So first of all, are we talking about two different groups here? Because back in verse 19 it says, now this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and the Levites to ask him who he was. Well, Pharisees aren't necessarily really priests and Levites. I mean, the Pharisees are kind of a distinct political party. They were a populist movement that was really into the law. They didn't hold all of the political cards at this time. They didn't run the Jewish assembly who would have the authority to send out an official delegation. That assembly was called the Sanhedrin. No, that was run by the majority religious political party at the time. Those were the Sadducees. We'll talk about them as well. But the Pharisees, by this point, they had a very robust history. They'd been a big deal for almost as long as the United States of America has been a thing. So that's quite a good run for a religious political party. And it's possible here that we're to understand this text as a deal where the Jews from Jerusalem, they sent, you know, priests and Levites, like just a bunch of people up there to ask. And the Pharisees are a subset of this group, this entourage that was set up by, I presume, when it says the Jews of Jerusalem, you know, the way I initially read that was the Sanhedrin. But maybe the reason John chose the language, the Jews of Jerusalem, instead of the Sanhedrin here, is because it was a better descriptor of who actually did the sending. Maybe the Sanhedrin sent some priests and Levites, but maybe also the political religious party, the Pharisees, sent some of their own people. What, you guys are sending people up? Well, we're sending people up too. We're gonna get our own report. We don't trust you clowns to come back with a truthful report about what's going on because we're political rivals, and whatever the other political party thought blob says is the wrong opinion. So maybe this is all one delegation and there's some Pharisees in it. Maybe these are two separate rival delegations. But we know this they pipe up here and they felt like their questions weren't being represented. So now they want to weigh in. Now some Pharisees who'd been sent questioned him. Why then do you baptize if you're not the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet? Okay, well, clearly, in their minds, this ritual washing that John was doing that we haven't really unpacked yet, but we're going to talk about a lot later on, they felt like there was a certain type of authority that needed to go along with that. And if John couldn't point to some sort of fulfillment that he represented of previous prophecies, well, then he shouldn't be doing this stuff. So that gives us a little glimpse into how they see the world. Let me just compare this scene at the front end of John to one of my favorite scenes in the life of Jesus on the back end of Matthew. Later on, for those of you who are new to the story, Jesus is gonna resolutely set his face toward Jerusalem. That's how the Gospel of Luke puts it. And he's gonna make his way toward Jerusalem, even though he knows he's walking into the hive of scum and villainy and the headquarters of his enemies, and he's gonna be in a position of political weakness there compared to their position of political power. He's gonna go play on their court and he gets to Jerusalem. He's already told his disciples, I'm gonna get killed by these people. But he goes anyway and he rides in on a donkey. It's kind of like a Roman triumph, like Pompey or Caesar would have when they conquered something. Except in political military terms, Jesus hadn't really conquered anything. He didn't ride in on a war horse. He rode in on a donkey, which is in fulfillment of prophecy with Zechariah 9 and Isaiah 62. He shows up, he rides in on this donkey, and a whole bunch of kids start cheering and celebrating. Everybody's yelling, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. It's really quite the scene. There's all kinds of Old Testament fulfillment. And well, now it's on. It's showdown time. And these same religious leaders from John 1 send out their delegation again. They pick their smartest, cleverest types, the ones who were best in a debate me bro debate, and they send him out to corner Jesus in front of everybody right there by the temple. The first group that comes out and throws a punch at Jesus, it's the Pharisees, and they try to catch him by getting him on loyalty to Caesar and paying taxes. And Jesus demonstrates their own hypocrisy and idolatry and deftly Judo maneuvers their attack back on them. Then it says the same day, this is all in Matthew 22, where this fun scene that I love is happening. Then it says the same day, Matthew 22, 23, the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, they come out and they throw a haymaker at Jesus. Teacher, Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow. And they come up with this ridiculous scenario where this lady just she every time she marries a brother, the brother dies and she ends up being married to like seven different dudes and they all die. And they're like, So when they go to the heaven, who's she gonna be married to? And they think they've got him, but they Jesus deftly avoids their haymaker and counterpunches them as well. And then after that, an expert of the law comes up and tries to get Jesus. And this probably very revered expert in the law, like the super big guy, gun, gun, it's that guy. He's in the fight. He's probably got some super clever approach he's gonna try on Jesus. He tries to get him with a question about the greatest commandment, but then Jesus nails the answer and nobody can really argue with him. Jesus also flips around a question about the authority of Jesus to do these things, and he points back to the authority of John the Baptist, like everybody believes in him. Where do you say his authority comes from? So we're still in the same place three years later, or whatever it is, at the end of Jesus' life, the end of Jesus' ministry, that we are with these religious leaders and these kinds of questions right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. These are the same people with the same playbook from the same thought blobs coming out to try to make a big scene of how smart they are, and they're prodding John the Baptist and very soon here, Jesus with the same kind of questions. John the Baptist handles his business really well. Jesus handles his business really, really, really well. And in the end, I think the humiliation that these intellectual, religious, political elites feel in the face of John the Baptist and Jesus is a big part of why eventually they're like, we just gotta kill him. And the seeds of that discontent are being sown here. So on the one hand, oh, the Pharisees are they're jerks, they're definitely bad guys. They are the bad guys of the text. On the other hand, as we're going to unpack more tomorrow, they're not just idiot bad guys, they're complicated bad guys, they're clever bad guys. They genuinely think they're right, they have a long history, they view themselves as an important, established institution that serves the people, though it is a heavy burden. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.