Tag Archives: Caesar

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – CONSIDER YOUR VERDICT

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CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CONSIDER YOUR VERDICT

“Then they all took Jesus to Pilate and began to bring up charges against Him. ‘We found this man undermining our law and order, forbidding taxes to be paid to Caesar, setting Himself up as Messiah-king.’

“Pilate asked Him, ‘Is this true that you’re ‘King of the Jews’?’

“‘These are your words, not mine,’ Jesus replied.

“Pilate told the high priests and accompanying crowd, ‘I find nothing wrong here. He seems harmless enough to me.'” Luke 23:1-4.

Pilate had no idea, when he opened his eyes that morning, that for him it was judgment day. A routine day, a few more Jewish prisoners to sentence; he’d done it all before. It was an unpleasant part of his role as governor and he did it with indifference. Judah had always been a troublesome province and he was quite glad to sentence a few more rabble-rousers to death.

But this man seemed different. He didn’t have the same insolent attitude. His face wore an expression of serenity, an eerie calm that disturbed him. There was none of the bravado that aroused his rage and gave him a feeling of sadistic pleasure to see condemned prisoners walking towards the execution site, backs bent under the heavy load of the crossbeam.

The mob that crowded the courtyard was in ferment. Led by the high priests, they were yelling out the charge, ‘Treason! He calls Himself ‘King of the Jews’! He’s inciting rebellion!’

Pilate looked at Jesus. Flanked by two soldiers, hands tied so tightly behind his back that dried blood stained His wrists and hands, He stood unmoved, looking steadily into his eyes, almost challenging him to consider his own verdict. ‘Pilate, you decide whether I am guilty or not guilty.’

Just as the Jewish leaders were put on trial that day, so was Pilate. He was a man to be most pitied. He had an unpleasant job to do in Jerusalem. It was Passover and the city was filled with volatile Jews from all over Israel. Although the Jewish leaders had not planned it this way to avoid a riot, Jesus had inadvertently fallen into their hands at this inopportune time through the conniving of Judas.

But it was the Father’s time. Jesus had to fulfil the role of Passover lamb, to be sacrificed for the sin of the world at the precise moment when the high priest spilt the blood of the first lamb in Jerusalem.

Pilate still had to face his own responsibility in this drama. He had the final say regarding Jesus’ guilt or innocence. He alone decided whether He lived or died. His honest verdict, even after a perfunctory examination of the prisoner was, ‘Not guilty.’ It was glaringly obvious that the charges against Jesus were trumped up.

“Is it true that you are the King of the Jews?” In answer to Pilate’s question and in true “Jesus” fashion, Jesus turned the question back on Pilate. ‘It’s not my responsibility to tell you. It’s your responsibility to make your own decision. On that rests your own fate.’ Pilate’s verdict was ‘not guilty’, but that was not the end of the story. The deciding factor would be what he would do about it.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – GIVE GOD WHAT IS HIS

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GIVE GOD WHAT IS HIS

“Watching for a chance to get Him, they sent spies who posed as honest enquirers, hoping they could trick Him into saying something that would get Him in trouble with the law. So they asked Him, ‘Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’

“He knew they were laying for Him and said, ‘Show me a coin. Now this engraving, who does it look like and what does it say?’

“‘Caesar,’ they said.

“Jesus said, ‘Then give Caesar what is his and give God what is His.’

Try as they might, they couldn’t trap Him into saying anything incriminating. His answer caught them off guard and left them speechless.” Luke 20:20-26.

Got them again!

Jesus was no push-over. These so-called ‘spiritual’ men had still not learned not to mess with Him. They always came off second best. This time it was about taxes. The Jewish people chafed at their Roman overlords’ taxation on top of the tithes, offerings and temple taxes they had to pay. It was a heavy burden on them and brought many of them into poverty.

But there was a more sinister issue at stake. Jesus was a rabbi with authority which meant that His disciples were obliged to copy everything He said and did. What He said about paying taxes would reveal His heart attitude to the Roman government which He would pass on to His disciples with possible serious results.

If He showed any antagonism towards Rome, He would be suspected of treason. His opponents were trying to catch him off guard so that He would unwittingly incriminate Himself and open Himself to arrest by the Roman soldiers.

But Jesus was too smart to be caught out. His response was not a spur-of-the-moment reaction. He was not only on guard, He was also well-prepared because of His complete understanding of God’s kingdom and how to live in it in the earthly environment. In every situation He faced as an earthling, He viewed His life from God’s perspective and taught His disciples to do the same.

Unlike us, who easily forget God, He lived His life with His Father in the centre. Everything He thought and did came out of His union with the Father. His answer to their question gives us insight into the way we should live in the kingdom of God so that we best represent Him in an ungodly environment.

In His high-priestly prayer, He put in a nutshell what our attitude should be to the world system in which we live. “‘My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.'” John 17:15-16 (NIV).

As long as we live in the world, we are subject to the systems humans have put in place, including submission to earthly government. God expects us to fulfil our obligations as unto Him. However, we have a different disposition from the people of the world, the nature and presence of God infused into us by the Holy Spirit. Not to be ‘of the world’ implies that we bring the disposition of Jesus into the way we live.

He showed us how by the way He honoured and respected all people, treating them with compassion and generosity and revealing the love of the Father by His loving and caring attitude.

To ‘give to Caesar’ implied civil obedience while to ‘give to God’ meant not only submitting to His supreme authority over everything, but also living in such a way that we make ‘up there’ come ‘down here’. We are, first and foremost, representatives of the way God runs things, and that includes loyally submitting to the government in everything that does not clash with God’s kingdom and His ways.

THE BOOK OF ACTS – A HOSTAGE OF HOPE

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A HOSTAGE OF HOPE

“Three days later Paul called the Jewish leaders together for a meeting at his house and said, ‘The Jews in Jerusalem arrested me on a trumped-up charge, and I was taken into custody by the Romans. I assure you that I did absolutely nothing against Jewish laws or Jewish customs. After the Romans investigated the charges and found there was nothing to them, they wanted to set me free but the Jews objected so fiercely that I was forced to appeal to Caesar. I did this not to accuse them of any wrongdoing or to get people in trouble with Rome. We’ve had enough trouble through the years that way. I did it for Israel. I asked you to come and listen to me today to make it clear that I’m on Israel’s side, not against her. I’m a hostage here for hope, not doom.'” Acts 28:17-20 (The Message).

Paul was finally in Rome. What would be his first step on this tightrope he was walking across an uncharted chasm? He was not out to curry favour or to get the Jews on his side. He was above that sort of thing.

It was always his earnest desire to set before them Jesus as the fulfilment of their Scriptures and the Messiah they were expecting. But from town to town, city to city across Europe and Asia he had been rejected because of one thing — the cross. No self-respecting Jew was prepared to accept a crucified Messiah. Not all the proof in the world would convince them that the man Jesus, the humble Galilean, was the Son of God and the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old Testament.

It was Paul’s hope that here in Rome he would be able to communicate this truth to the Jewish leaders by his own mouth before they were contaminated by misinformation from their fellow countrymen. Their eternal destiny was at stake. He wanted to share with them the unadulterated truth that Jesus of Nazareth was sent from God, not to get rid of the Romans and make them rulers of the world, but to get rid of sin and make them kings and priests of God.

Because he was already a dead man as far as his own life was concerned, he did not see his imprisonment as a hopeless situation but as a stepping stone to bringing hope to as many people in Rome as he could influence. It did not matter to him where he was or who was in the company. His circumstances were always an explosion of potential and opportunity.

In his letters Paul tried hard to make his readers understand what had happened to them when they bowed the knee to Jesus. Everything changed. This was not a new religion they were espousing but a new domain they had entered. Their allegiance to their old masters, self, sin and the world, had been broken and they had entered a new realm, the realm of God’s rule. They were under the dominion of a new Master, Jesus. He had rescued them from a life of selfishness and self-destruction and set their feet on a new path — loving service fired by a passionate love for Jesus.

They were dead to all their old slave-drivers and alive to their new Master, motivated by His selfless sacrifice for them, and this message was not confined to the Jews but was for the whole world, regardless of their contempt for the Gentiles. They were no better than the Gentiles in their hypocritical attitude, as Paul pointed out in his letter to the Romans. Since Jew and Gentile were both guilty before God, Paul’s message was equally applicable to the whole world and he was going to deliver that message, come what may.

It was Paul’s hope that, on the threshold of his sojourn in Rome, whatever the outcome, he would be able to win as many of his countrymen to Jesus as he could before the crazy crackpot Caesar, Nero, decided on his fate. Dying was not his problem. He was ready for that. It was the interlude before his death that occupied his attention and he would do everything he could to win his brothers before he left.

Eternity was a long time to enjoy the fruit of his sacrifice!

THE BOOK OF ACTS – INFECTIOUS FAITH

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INFECTIOUS FAITH

“When our time was up, they escorted us out of the city to the docks. Everyone came along — men, women, children. They made a farewell party of the occasion! We all kneeled down together on the beach and prayed. Then, after another round of saying goodbye, we climbed aboard the ship while they drifted back to their homes.

“A short run from Tyre to Ptolemais completed the voyage. We greeted our Christian friends there and stayed with them a day. In the morning, we went on to Caesarea and stayed with Philip the Evangelist, one of the “Seven”. Philip had four virgin daughters who prophesied.” Acts 21:5-9 (The Message).

It amazes me that there were Christian communities in every city and town along Paul’s route to Jerusalem. In the space of some thirty years, the message of Jesus had seeped into every nook and cranny of the Roman Empire, so it seems, and that in the face of serious opposition from both Jews and Romans. What was it in the message and in the circumstances that caused the gospel to take root so firmly in the hostile soil of pagan Rome and Jewish fanaticism?

Because of the Pax Romana, the relative peace that prevailed in the empire, there was freedom of movement between countries and provinces all around the Mediterranean Sea. There was no such thing as passports and visas to hinder free travel between countries. The Roman government kept a tight rein on the people through its army, quelling any signs of rebellion before it spread.

There was one common language spoken throughout the empire. Thanks to the conquest of Alexander the Great and the spread of Greek culture and language, Greek was the lingua franca of the empire, making verbal communication easy wherever the believers went.

Roman roads on the main routes were paved, enabling Paul and his associates to journey in relative ease and safety along the main highways, avoiding danger from gangs of robbers on the way.

Wherever Rome ruled, it created colonies which were microcosms of Rome itself. Through its governors and their subordinates, who were Rome’s ambassadors, everything that Rome stood for was represented in the farthest corners of the empire. This model was the basis for understanding how the church was to function in the world.

Just as Caesar ruled the empire through his ekklesia, a group of chosen men he gathered around him, who had an intimate relationship with him and who carried out his instructions through his representatives, so the church (Jesus’ ekklesia) was a group of people who had an intimate relationship with Him and through whom He implemented His will on earth.

Although these factors made the spread of the gospel easy, they do not give us the reason for the rapid spread of Christianity in a hostile environment. The real power lay in the effect Jesus had on the people who believed in Him. Paganism and idolatry were common everywhere, but false religions did not have the power to transform lives.

Jesus had promised His disciples that He would build His church in a place like Caesarea Philippi, where people engaged in sexual orgies with goats in public as part of the worship of the goat-god, Pan. In that kind of environment, the worst that pagan beliefs could produce, it happened and it was happening everywhere.

Take Ephesus, for example. The power of Jesus had broken and nullified the hold of the goddess, Artemis, over the city. Witchcraft was exposed, occult books burned and a whole industry based on idolatry ruined. The power of the Holy Spirit, working in the lives of those who believed the message of Jesus, so changed lives, transforming selfish and greedy people into loving, caring and generous followers of Jesus that whole communities were changed and the message was carried everywhere wherever the believers went.

THE BOOK OF ACTS – WHAT NOW?

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CHAPTER 1

WHAT NOW?

“Dear Theophilus, in the first volume of this book I wrote on everything that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day He said goodbye to the apostles, the ones He had chosen through the Holy Spirit, and was taken up to heaven. After His death He presented Himself alive in many different settings over a period of forty days. In face-to-face meetings, He talked to them about things concerning the kingdom of God.” Acts 1:1-3 (NIV).

It is fitting that we continue the story of Jesus as Luke did to his friend, Theophilus. We are indebted to him for his meticulous record. Without it we would never know the sequel to the Jesus-story and how the first disciples took on the Roman Empire and, through the promised Holy Spirit, so securely planted the message of the truth about Jesus that it infiltrated the known world of their day and still continues to change lives through their writings.

Luke made sure that Theophilus understood that Jesus spent forty days with His disciples after the resurrection, tying up all the loose ends so that they would know exactly what to preach and teach after He left them. His theme was the kingdom of God.  There was no doubt that He was alive and that He would continue to be fully involved with them as they carried out His instructions and lived out His life in a hostile environment.

Unlike so much of current preaching and teaching which ignores the bigger picture and makes the gospel all about us, He put His life and death into the perspective of God’s realm and rule in the lives of people. It was not about them. It was about Him, His purpose for coming and their on-going mission to proclaim Him to the world.

He would have warned them that their task was a dangerous one. Like Him they would have to face the hostility of the Jewish leaders who had put Him to death as well as the Caesars whose claims demanded the worship and allegiance that was due Him alone.

These arrogant Roman emperors, in particular Caesar Augustus, “believed that he was god incarnate on earth, the prince of peace who had come to restore all of creation…His priests offered sacrifices and incense to rid people of their guilt. One of his popular slogans was “There is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved than that of Caesar.” Another phrase they used was “Caesar is Lord.” Throughout the Roman Empire, the Caesars called on people to worship them as the divine saviours of humankind…” (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan 2005, page 162)

The implications are obvious. Into this world came the “Jesus movement” in a remote corner of the empire that was giving them no end of trouble. These people claimed that their leader was a rabbi, that He had announced the arrival of the kingdom of God, that He had been executed by the Roman authorities for treason, and that His followers claimed that He was alive. Now they were claiming that He, not Caesar, is Lord!

Their opposition would be ruthless ad relentless but the message had to go out. The apostles had to know it, be convinced of it, believe it and proclaim it no matter what the consequences. This was the final mission of Jesus before He returned to the Father. For forty days He instructed them until He was sure that they were ready to take on the world!