"Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus. They bound him and brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be good if one man died for the people" (NIV).

Introduction: Blindness is perhaps one of the most difficult of physical challenges that science and medicine still seek to conquer. The cause of someone to either be born without vision or to lose their vision are many. Sight can be lost due to disease of the cornea, the retina, damage to the optic nerve, brain damage, glaucoma and cataracts. One of the things that makes blindness so hard is that it removes one of our most vital and important senses—our sight. Our vision is more than the ability to avoid an object while walking down the street. Our vision allows us to perceive not only an object in front of us but it communicates emotion as well. What you see has the ability to let you feel. Someone who is no longer able to visualize objects is also challenged to sense what isn’t seen.

While physical blindness is a challenge for these who have no sight, their ability to overcome the loss of sight is amazing. The sense that they have lost is compensated by the ability to feel and hear with greater intensity, often making a person without sight more insightful than a person with sight. There is, though, a blindness that is more threatening than the loss of physical sight. That blindness that is the darkest of all is spiritual blindness.

Spiritual blindness is a condition that is associated with someone who refuses to accept, experience, believe or trust God’s truth as revealed in Jesus Christ. A person who is spiritually blind will be a person who has come to believe that tradition, ritual, routine, regularity, form, and the comfort of religion is the same as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A person afflicted with the disease of spiritual blindness is abnormally resistant to seeing, hearing, feeling or believing that a living, present, awe-filled encounter with the person of Jesus Christ is to be the norm of Christian life. The horror of spiritual blindness is that it can deprive a person who is a Christian of the joy of living daily walking with Jesus. Even worse, it can cause a person who thinks because they are religious that they are Christian. As one author said, "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

This morning I want you to meet the patron saint of spiritual blindness. His name is Caiaphas. Caiaphas was the high priest of the Jews before whom Jesus is brought to be condemned to death. He is, more than any other person, responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. It would be Caiaphas who determined months before that Jesus should die. He would be the one to hire Judas, manipulate Pilate and be the key to the arrest, trial and death of Jesus. He is without question one of the most detestable persons who has ever lived because he was the one who was to be closer to God than anyone else, yet when God in human flesh stood before him he refused to see! "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

In Italian poet Dante’s Inferno, Dante paints a picture of a person’s descent into Hell. Hell is described in levels of descent. On the eighth level of Hell, the level reserved for the hypocrites, there is a series of ten ditches. In the sixth ditch there is a group of people who wear hooded robes made of lead. They march round and round. There is, though, a figure that has been nailed to a cross lying face up on the ground. Those wearing the hoods march over the one on the cross over and over. Who is it? It is Caiaphas. "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

How was Caiaphas so blind to spiritual truth?

1. Caiaphas became a victim of spiritual blindness because he chose influence over principle.

Caiaphas lived his life never truly being his own man. There was always someone he lived for rather than principles he lived by. That is clear in John’s record of the trial of Jesus. John records that after Jesus’ arrest that they "led Him to Annas first; for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year" (John 18:13). The reason that is important is that Annas had not been high priest for over five years, yet when something like this came along it was Annas who was consulted first, not Caiaphas.

Caiaphas was the last of a series of high priests that Annas controlled. After himself being removed by the Romans in 12 AD, Annas put five of his sons up for the office. When none of them turned out to be cooperative he went to his son-in-law Caiaphas. It was Annas who was high priest when Jesus was brought to the Temple at age 12 and now 21 years later Jesus stands before him again.

Caiaphas, the son-in-law, would be high priest from 18 AD to 36 AD. He was known in the records of Jewish historian Josephus as well as Roman historians as someone who was particularly adept at diplomacy, compromise, influence and connections to the wealthy. In fact, he and Pilate would rule together for ten years. They would both, however, be removed within a few months of each other in 36 AD.

What you see in Caiaphas was a person who loved and lived for influence rather than principle and conviction. He was a "bought" man. He was willing to follow anyone as long as he was able to keep the influence of power, position and prestige. He was a person vacant of his own convictions. When at last the Son of God stood before him he allowed the threats to his influence to make up his mind rather than what he saw in Jesus Christ.

Let me ask you, "Are your convictions about Jesus Christ your own?" Has a professor, parent, friend, author, teacher or preacher made up your mind for you? Is someone else telling you what you are to believe about Jesus Christ? Are you a person who is void and vacant of your own convictions about Jesus? Do the claims of Jesus Christ stand before you but you have chosen to believe the opinions of others rather than listening to Him? There are none so blind as those who chose to live by the influence of others rather than own a personal decision about Jesus.

2. Caiaphas was also victimized by spiritual blindness because he failed to recognize the dangers that come with position. (John 11:45-33)

I want you to go back to John 11:45-53. The scene that John portrays is one that is filled with the result of spiritual blindness. Lazarus has been raised from the dead by Jesus. The Pharisees hear of this and get a committee to gather to see what could be done to quiet the excitement about Jesus. The Pharisees were the zealous purists for the law whose focus was on the synagogue. The chief priests were the Sadducees who only cared that the traditions of the Jews were kept sacred and they focused on the Temple in Jerusalem.

When they got together they admitted that Jesus was doing miraculous things. Their concern was that if people got excited about Jesus they could lose it all—their place (the Temple) and the nation itself. Then Caiaphas speaks up and says, "You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish." (49-50)

Caiaphas saw what they couldn’t see. He and they were where they were because of influence and position. There was to be nothing that was going to be allowed to threaten that. The only solution is to use what is expedient to preserve place and position. If that means that a person has to be killed to keep us secure, then that’s just how it will be. Caiaphas’ blindness is even more chilling because this comes in the face of someone’s actual resurrection from the dead. They believed it but wanted to kill the one who did it.

In a bit of irony, even though they thought by killing Jesus they would save themselves, Caiaphas would be removed less than three years after Jesus’ death and then in 70 AD. The Romans would destroy the Temple, not just leveling it but plowing the ground where it once stood. They lost their place and their nation.

What is the word for us who are threatened by spiritual blindness? It’s this: We must always recognize that the claims of Jesus Christ will always stand in judgment of the traditions of organized religion. They will always be in conflict with each other. That was true in the gospels and it is true now. The generations that have followed Jesus have always lived with the tension of the necessity to be confronted with the claims of Jesus Christ. The traditions of any generation run the risk of being so bound by their tradition that they are blind to the living presence of Jesus Christ.

There is a comfort that comes with any tradition but we must always understand the claims of Jesus Christ must always make us uncomfortable with our tradition. There is the challenge to only do what is expedient, what doesn’t threaten place or position rather than follow the words of Jesus. There are none so blind as those who refuse to recognize the dangers that come when we are too comfortable with tradition.

3. Caiaphas was victimized by spiritual blindness because he chose influence over principle, refused to see the dangers of position, but he was also blinded by the result of a twisted prosecution . (Matthew 26:57-68)

John doesn’t mention the conversation that Jesus had with Caiaphas but Matthew does. The trial scene in Matthew’s gospel was the culmination of a series of violations of the Jewish laws protecting an individual’s rights. Trials for capital crimes were to meet in the day. This one was at night. There was to be a full day between the conclusion of the trial and the pronouncement of a verdict. This took only minutes. You were forbidden to execute someone during a feast but that was ignored completely. The cross-examination of a witness would prevent false testimony. That was avoided. You were not permitted to force a person to convict themselves but here Jesus is openly challenged to do that.

Caiaphas had been allowing everything to build toward this moment. It was Jesus who had turned over the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. It was Caiaphas who profited from the exchange. It was Jesus who threatened the cozy relationship with the Romans. It was Caiaphas who thrived on it. Now this one who was a threat to everything stood before him. So Caiaphas asked the question to which the answer he knew would seal the fate of Jesus, "Are you the Christ?"

Jesus’ answer was more than he wanted. Not only was it "yes," but it was that "while you may judge me now I will judge you ultimately." That was too much and Caiaphas led the way to secure his death sentence. If that was not twisted enough, those who were to represent the highest form of righteousness and justice began to beat and mock Jesus themselves.

For Caiaphas, the Light of the world stood before him and he saw nothing. The Word of God spoke to him and he heard nothing. The Lamb of God was beaten before him and he felt nothing. The twisted prosecution of Jesus blinded him to the truth.

Caiaphas may have wished there was a third alternative. He was not willing to dismiss him as a liar and lunatic nor was he willing to confess Him as Lord. There may be some of you who wish for a third alternative. You are not willing to say Jesus is a liar, that he was not who he said he was. Nor are you willing to confess him as the absolute Lord of your life. So we pretend to be what we are not. We let religion, busyness and familiarity with church blind us to the absolute necessity of submission to the rule of Jesus Christ.

Place, prestige, position, power and popularity are all good if you are walking with Jesus Christ. But they are a deadly peril if they blind us to a living relationship to the person of Jesus Christ. There are none so blind as those who cannot see.

Prior to the U.S. involvement in World War II and then during the war itself there were rumors of atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews as well as others. No one thought they were true because they seemed so horrible and outrageous. That all changed when the Allied Forces began to invade Germany.

On April 27, 1945 the 12^th Armored Division approached a labor camp outside of a town near Munich called Landsberg. The labor camp was called Dachau. Stephen Ambrose writes in his book Citizen Soldier of the scene that a Lt. Julius Bernstein witnessed. "When the Americans approached, the SS officer in charge had ordered the remaining 4,000 slave laborers destroyed. The guards had nailed shut the doors and windows of the wooden barracks, hosed down the buildings with gasoline, and se them on fire. The prisoners had been cremated alive. Later, Bernstein helped load civilians from Landsburg into trucks to take them to see the atrocity. ‘Would you believe that no one admitted any knowledge of the camp?’ he later wrote. ‘They told us they thought it was a secret war factory, so they didn’t ask questions. They all defended Hitler, saying, ‘The Fuhrer knew nothing of this!’ They blamed Goering, Goebbels and Himmler, but not their dear Fuhrer.’" Millions of people murdered but no one saw anything. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Today, the claims and person of Jesus Christ stand before each of us. May we be willing to see.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Sunday, March 21, 1999

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org