Tag Archives: King of the Jews

Bullies Of The Worst Kind!

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BULLIES OF THE WORST KIND!

The written notice of the charge against Him read, ‘The king of the Jews.’ They crucified two rebels with Him, one on His right and one on His left. Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself.’ In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked Him among themselves. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but He can’t save Himself. Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.’ Those crucified with Him also heaped insults on Him. (Mark 15: 26-32)

Why hit a man when he is down? These bullies had to rub it in when they had Jesus pinned down so that there was no escape. One day they would eat their words when the truth was exposed. Imagine their shock if Jesus did summon a legion of angels to rescue Him from their hands. Would they really have believed then? I don’t think so. They had every opportunity to believe in Him when He was among them but they refused.

Let’s examine their accusations and their taunts. The first came from the passers-by. They had no interest in Jesus except for what the religious leaders had said about Him. At the outset of His ministry, according to John, He had ripped into the merchants and money changers in the temple for turning the Court of the Gentiles, the only place in the temple where non-Jews were permitted to pray, into a corrupt market.

With the blessing of the chief priests and the religious rulers, opportunists had taken over the Court of the Gentiles to ply their trade under the guise of providing a service for the worshippers who came from out of town. Under the surface they were ripping the people off with their little business and, no doubt supplying the authorities with a cut of the profits.

The religious authorities were livid when Jesus upset their business by causing pandemonium among the birds and animals, and overturning the tables of those dealing in forex. They demanded an explanation for His behaviour. “Who gave you authority to do this?”

“Destroy this temple,” He retorted, “and in three days I will raise it up again.” It was an invitation to kill Him, but they didn’t get it. “Do you want to know where I get my authority?” He asked in effect. “Put me to death, and I’ll show you by coming back to life.”

False witnesses at His trial tried to pin His words on Him as a reason to condemn Him to death. No one could threaten to destroy God’s temple and get away with it. But, unfortunately for them, they couldn’t agree on His exact words and their testimony did not hold water. They accused Him of threatening to destroy the physical temple made of stone. Only a madman would make a threat like that,but the accusation stuck and was bandied about in Jerusalem until the words He was supposed to have spoken were on everyone’s lips.

He looked so vulnerable and powerless hanging there, skewered onto two pieces of wood like a kebab. It’s no wonder the uncomprehending and unfeeling passers-by could taunt Him without giving it another thought. They were just mindlessly mouthing their leaders’ words. To Jesus, what they had to say did not even merit a reply. He ignored them. All they were doing was exposing the foolishness and ignorance of their own hearts.

What about the spiritual leaders who were gazing at their handiwork? It was not enough that they had succeeded in getting Him executed. They had to be there to sign Him off to their great satisfaction. They had to add their bit to the insults of the rabble just to make sure that everyone around could witness the exposure of their own hearts as well.

“Save yourself and come down from the cross.” They thought that they were responsible for putting Him there because of their power. They were claiming, in effect, to have absolute power over Him. If He were the Son of God as He had claimed, why didn’t He show it by overriding their puny human control?

Never in a million years did they understand that He was there by His own will because He had submitted Himself to the Father as an obedient son. Had He not declared, in the Garden of Gethsemane, ‘Not my will but yours be done’? This was the culmination of a plan set up by the triune God before creation. If they had really known their Scriptures as they claimed, they would have recognised Him as the one of whom Isaiah spoke.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer . .  (Isa. 54: 10).

Why should He save Himself and come down from the cross when it was all going to plan? The Jews refused to believe that He was their Messiah because the cross was foolishness to them, but in effect, it was through the very thing they despised, death on a Roman execution stake, that provided forgiveness and new life, if they only believed Him. But not even His resurrection convinced them that He was their Messiah. How tragic to be right but in the end to be so wrong!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

They Didn’t Care

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THEY DIDN’T CARE

Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, made their plans. So they bound Jesus, led Him away and handed Him over to Pilate. ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ asked Pilate. ‘You have said so,’ Jesus replied. The chief priests accused Him of many things. So again Pilate asked Him, ‘Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.’ But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed. (Mark 15: 1-5)

From the beginning, this trial was a farce. The religious leaders had broken every rule in the book. O yes, they were careful to keep their own rules to make them look good, but God’s instructions?  They ignored them because it was not convenient to obey, and they didn’t care.

What would the Jews think up to accuse Jesus before Pilate? An ominous statement – they made their plans! What plans did they have to make? Jesus was either a lawbreaker or He wasn’t. He was either guilty of a crime, or He wasn’t. But, to them He was an enemy, not because He did anything outside of the law, but because He had offended them with His righteous life and His exposure of their hypocrisy and ungodly lives. How true were His words:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. (John 3: 19-20)

The Jewish religious leaders hated Jesus because His life mirrored the nature of God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness. (Ex. 34: 6)

They were proud of their “righteous” lives as long as no one checked their motives or looked inside to see the rottenness of their hearts. Every act of compassion and mercy which Jesus did in response to people’s need, was an expression of the Father whom Jesus came to reveal. They hated Him for it because it drew attention to the phoniness of their own hard and callous hearts. And they didn’t care.  

And so, true to their real natures, they schemed to get rid of Jesus, guilty or not, so that they could continue as before without Him breathing down their necks. Unfortunately for them, life would never be the same again. Jesus had taken the time and trouble to tell them the truth. Once they had heard it from His lips and refused to believe Him, their guilt was plied on them; guilt because they had not accurately reflected the teachings of Torah in their own lives, and because they had oppressed the people by their endless and meaningless “interpretations” of Torah which suited them because keeping them made them look good.

In order to get their way, they didn’t care about doing the right thing or upholding the justice system of Torah. In spite of their claim to be “Abraham’s children”, they schemed and plotted to take Jesus’ life to get Him out of their hair. From their perspective, He was guilty of blasphemy because He claimed to be the Son of God. This was their accusation against Him, but how were they going to prove Him guilty?

Their witnesses were undoubtedly liars because they could not get their testimony to agree. They accused Him of threatening to destroy Herod’s temple and rebuild it in three days. What kind of accusation was that? Did they really believe that He would make a wild statement like that? The only way they could get a conviction was to ask Him outright whether He was the Son of God or not since He was obliged to answer. But that’s just where they deviated from Torah, as we noted yesterday. But they didn’t care. As long as they had it from His mouth, it was enough to convict Him.

But they had to have a valid indictment to put before Pilate. Blasphemy was an internal matter. Pilate would throw it out as of no consequence to Roman. Treason! That would make Pilate sit up and take notice! So their scheme was to change the charge to treason. That would not be difficult seeing that He had blatantly ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey the Sunday before, an action they interpreted as the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecy in Zechariah 9.

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. (Zech. 9: 9)

However, they did not see it as the fulfilment of a Messianic prophecy but as the action of an imposter. They refused to put all the evidence together and come up with the truth. They thought that Pilate would fall for that one because they would present Jesus as a threat to Rome. And they didn’t care that it was a trumped-up charge, devoid of evidence, as long as they could make it stick.

Everything changes when people don’t care! No rules apply; there are no boundaries, law and order collapse and society disintegrates into chaos.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

Pilate’s Resolve

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PILATE’S RESOLVE 

“Carrying His own cross, He went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). There they crucified Him, and with Him two others — one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

“Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write, “The King of the Jews,” but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews. Pilate answered, ‘What I have written, I have written.'” John 19:17-22 NIV.

One short, bald statement! That’s all John had to say about the crucifixion of his Lord. Perhaps as he reminisced about that day, now an old man with many years of suffering under his own belt, he still felt the pain of the memory of the awful sight of his beloved Master suspended between heaven and earth on a Roman torture stake.

The other gospel writers had told the story. It was enough that he record the fact in as few words as possible. He chose rather to write of the Master’s love which shone forth in those terrible hours of suffering.

John also gave us a glimpse of an incident that salvaged some of Pilate’s resolve at a time like this. Pilate had given in to the howling mob when he should have stood firm. He had condemned an innocent man to death, shrugging off his responsibility by allowing men full of prejudice and hatred to pass sentence because he didn’t have the courage to stand up against them.

Yet he was convinced that Jesus was who He claimed to be, King of the Jews. In some mysterious way, Jesus was a king, but He was no threat to Caesar. Pilate knew nothing about spiritual things, but he sensed that Jesus was from and represented another dimension he could not understand. He had tried to defend Him and insisted on His innocence but the religious boffins, who should have known better, had prevailed.

Pilate had one more opportunity to press home his conviction, by stating in writing for the whole world to read — in Aramaic, Latin and Greek — his belief in Jesus as the King of the Jews. What he understood by that we do not know. We could coldly and callously ask, “Did Pilate go to hell?” without considering the intention of his heart. We could condemn him for not being true to his conviction. But in this one thing he refused to be moved.

The Jewish leaders thought they had Pilate in the bag. They had won in the battle over Jesus’ conviction. Now they were incensed at Pilate’s final dig at them. Did he write the sign to get back at them; to show the utter ludicrousness of the charge against Jesus or to bear witness to his conviction that Jesus was indeed King of the Jews? We will never know but we can at least admire Pilate for his stand against them at this point.

Of course it was too late to save Jesus. The religious leaders had their way but it left a bad taste in their mouths to think that Pilate had got the better of them here and made a bold statement for the world to read that Jesus was the King of the Jews. Whatever it meant to those who read it as they passed by, it was for Pilate a statement of the truth and of his own conviction.

How did this brief encounter with Jesus affect Pilate in the years that followed? We do not know. Perhaps he often mused on those terrifying moments when he was forced to make a choice and he had chosen to crucify the king. No amount of excusing himself by putting the blame on the religious leaders would ease his conscience. He had passed sentence by default and he must carry the guilt of that decision to the grave and yet…

Peter’s words never rang in Pilate’s ears but God knew what He was doing. “This man was handed over to you (the Jews) by God’s set plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross. But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him.” Acts 2:23-24 NIV.

What did Pilate think about that? Did he ever yearn for another encounter with Jesus just to put right what he had done? Only God knows!

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.”  

 

King Of The Jews

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KING OF THE JEWS

“Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked Him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ ‘Is that your own idea,’ Jesus asked, ‘or did others talk to you about me?’

“‘Am I a Jew? ‘Pilate replied. ‘Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?’

“Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of the world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.'” John 18:33-36 NIV.

One has to feel some pity for Pilate. At the crack of dawn, when the poor man had hardly wiped the sleep from his eyes, an irate mob of Jews, led by their religious leaders, turned up on his doorstep but refused to go inside because of some religious scruple of their own making. They were demanding the execution of a prisoner he knew nothing about.

When he asked about the prisoner’s crime, His accusers retort with the lame excuse that they would not have brought Him had He not been guilty! How was Pilate to interpret that? Were they trying to make him look like a fool so that they could dodge the question?

It was left to Pilate and Jesus to determine His crime. Pilate must have had some notion that Jesus claimed to be the king of the Jews. Now it was no longer blasphemy but treason and that was serious enough a charge to deserve the death penalty if it were proven true.

Pilate asked Jesus outright, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ He certainly didn’t look very regal at that moment. There was blood congealed on His face from the thorny crown that had bitten into His flesh. His seamless robe was dirty and dishevelled. There were bald and bloodied patches on His cheeks where the soldiers had pulled out His beard. He was pale and gaunt from lack of food and sleep.

He didn’t act like a king either. Where was His retinue of attendants? Where were His loyal subjects? He was neither loudly protesting His innocence not demanding justice for a man in His position. He had no secret army waiting in ambush to attack the Romans and defend Him. He stood before Pilate in respectful silence, waiting for him to decide what to do with Him.

Pilate and Jesus engaged in an unusually polite exchange for a Roman governor and a prisoner. Pilate must have been intrigued by this accused man who did not behave like all the others. There was a calm dignity about Jesus, in spite of His precarious position, that caused Pilate to treat Him far more gently than he would the run-of-the-mill prisoner.

Since Jesus would not state the charge which was supposed to have been brought by His accusers, Pilate tried to find out from Him what He had done to deserve this treatment. Jesus’ response was mystifying. ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’  Was this man crazy? What was He talking about? He looked perfectly sane. Was He hallucinating from pain and shock?

No, Jesus was not crazy or hallucinating. As always, He viewed His life from the perspective of His purpose for coming to earth. Whether Pilate understood or not was irrelevant. He was making no claim to Caesar’s rule over Israel. He was establishing His right to rule over the hearts of the men and women He had created for Himself.

It was not what He had done that was the issue but who He was, and it was not Pilate’s responsibility to decide but to acknowledge that He was who He was and to submit to Him as King of the Jews.

Son of God…King of the Jews…from the human point of view He was guilty of both charges but, from the divine perspective, He not only claimed but proved Himself to be who He said He was. The problem was that His accusers refused to examine the evidence. He was a threat to their cushy lives and that was more important than the truth. Unlike Jesus, they refused to view the whole of life including the part that extended beyond the grave. Jesus was offering them mercy for the past and grace for the present and future but they turned it down flat!

What about you?