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GOD KILLERS

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GOD KILLERS

“For this reason they tried all the more to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” John 5:18 (NIV).

Did these religious leaders also look forward to the coming of the Messiah? Judging by their attitude to Jesus, I think not. Jesus’ disciples certainly anticipated His coming even though their idea of what He would do completely missed the mark. They thought He was coming to deliver them from Roman domination and set up His kingdom in Israel to revive David’s rule.

It does not seem like the Pharisees had even that hope. They were in cahoots with the Romans and had altogether too cushy a life to want it to be disturbed by anyone claiming to be God’s Messiah. The idea that He was actually the Son of God outraged them and sowed murderous thoughts in their minds. This man had to be silenced before He made too many waves among the Romans and among the people.

“Jesus gave them this answer: ‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does. Yes, and He will show Him even greater works than these so that you will be amazed…'” John 5:19-20 (NIV).

We can be very grateful for the altercations Jesus had with the Pharisees because we learn more about Him and His relationship with the Father from these than we do from any other source in the gospels. He speaks here of an intimacy and a unity with the Father that gives us a glimpse into the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity. Later on during another argument with His opponents He said, ‘I and the Father are one.’

There are sects that deny the Trinity because they do not understand the nature of the Trinity. Jesus was not claiming to be a god. He was hinting at the heart of the Trinity – three persons who are one in nature and essence and in perfect unity with one another. There are false religions that deny that God had a Son because they do not understand the nature of His sonship either.

As the Father’s representative on earth, Jesus perfectly mirrored the Father in His nature and perfectly revealed the Father in His work. His religious opponents could not get their head around the compassion Jesus showed to people, especially those whom religion despised and ostracized because they did not measure up to their standards according to the god they had created and worshipped.

Their god put people into categories like “sinners” and “prostitutes” and “lepers” and “tax-collectors”. They did not mix with people like that because they were “holy” in their own eyes, not separate from sin but separated from the ones they despised and categorized as “sinners”.

Instead of being drawn to Jesus because of His mercy, they were repulsed by Him because He showed up their wicked hearts and they were not prepared to change. They loved their status and the power it gave them to manipulate people too much to recognize who He really was.

This was the nature and depth of their sin compared with the “sinners” they so despised. It touched the core of who they really were and triggered a hatred for the God they were supposed to be representing. They targeted Jesus for extermination. This is what the Bible defines as “envy”. Envy is not another word for jealousy. It goes much deeper than that. Envy hates the goodness in another person so much that it is willing to kill to get rid of that goodness.

“For he (Pilate) knew that it was for envy that they handed Jesus over to them,” Matthew 27:18 (NIV).

This envy began to chew at them when the compassion of Jesus showed up their callous indifference to the suffering of others and exposed the false religion they paraded as godliness which alienated them from the very people of which they were supposed to be a part.

We are constantly being called on to take a stand. Are we part of those who put people into categories or are we just members of the human race who need the grace and compassion of Jesus to forgive and make us whole?

Acknowledgement

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.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – DESTINATION JERUSALEM!

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DESTINATION JERUSALEM!

32 They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again, he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. 33 “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” Mark 10:32-34

Once again, Jesus attempted to orientate His disciples to the idea that a cruel and violent death awaited Him in Jerusalem. He was still in Galilee but, although Mark does not mention it, the Passover was drawing near. It was time to head south for the most important annual festival of the year. The disciples had no problem with that. They joined Jesus in all His faithful observance of the Jewish festivals but what they could not grasp was that, this time, He was about to become the Passover Lamb.

No matter how many times He brought up the subject, it was as though they had selective hearing. Two things were fixed in their thinking; one, that Messiah was a king and that He would set up His kingdom in Israel; two, that He would drive out the Roman oppressors and re-establish the Davidic throne in Jerusalem. Dying did not fit into their scheme of things. It’s no wonder, then, that they imagined themselves to be cabinet ministers in this new Israeli government. The issue for them was, “Who would be Prime Minister?” In the very next paragraph, James and John try to secure the positions for themselves.

All of their reactions, their deafness to Jesus’ warnings about His coming death, their squabbles over positions, and their insensitivity to the spiritual nature of the kingdom, revealed that they were locked into a concept of the kingdom of God that ignored sin and the true nature of the two kingdoms at work in the world. They watched Jesus at work and admired His power over nature and over the demonic realm but they did not connect Him with a dimension of which they were to be a part, a kingdom which would transcend geographical boundaries and reconnect them with the Father who rules over all the kingdoms of men.

This kingdom is governed by a constitution based on the nature of God and expressed in obedience to only one law – the law of love. It is God-centred and self-forgetful and allows no place for any kind of imperfection. It is open to all who give Jesus the right to rule over their hearts.

It would take the memory of a limp and very-dead Jesus hanging on a Roman execution stake, the mind-blowing experience of a very-alive Jesus standing among them, eating fish and showing them His wounds, and the powerful intervention of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost to write the truth of all that the prophets had spoken on their hearts. Only the reality of God’s kingdom once again breaking into their world would finally to set them on the path to understanding its true power and glory and give them a place in it.

THE GOSPEL 0F MARK – THEY DID NOT UNDERSTAND

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THEY DID NOT UNDERSTAND 

30 They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, 31 because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” 32 But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it. Mark 9:30-32

This seems to have been quite a long interlude in the region of Caesarea Philippi. Isn’t it likely that the high mountain Mark was referring to was Mount Hermon since Caesarea Philippi lay at the base of Mt Hermon? The nine disciples were in the same vicinity for a whole week, waiting for Jesus and His disciples to return, surrounded by all the evidence of godless idolatry and depraved behaviour. It is difficult to imagine what went on in the minds of these twelve men in this atmosphere.

Jesus was completely unfazed by His experience. As always, these kinds of experiences only served to strengthen His awareness of the kingdom in which He lived and which He represented. He used every opportunity He could to condition the minds of His disciples to His impending death as a very necessary part of His purpose for coming “from the other side” so that they would also learn to live in the awareness of the kingdom of God.

At this point, His disciples were still held captive by their “this-worldly” perceptions of the kingdom of God, to the idea that Jesus was going to restore a David-type kingdom in Israel. After all, were not many of the Old Testament prophecies about Messiah related to His being the son of David? Although the two streams of thought were clear in the Old Testament, both king and suffering servant, it was the king-concept that was uppermost in their minds. They could not embrace His death as an atoning sacrifice for sin and the concept of the kingdom as a spiritual domain open to all who would receive His sacrifice as a once-for-all act to reconcile them to God.

Their failure to make this paradigm shift shut their minds to all His efforts to prepare them for the apparent disaster that loomed ahead. It was almost as though there was a part of their brains that was deaf and dead to His words. They could not make the connection between their sacrificial system of offering animal sacrifices to atone for sin and Jesus, the Lamb of God, being the one offering for all time to take away the sins of the world. It would take revelation truth from the Holy Spirit to make this connection.

Strange as it may seem, despite the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers today, there are still many who do not understand the relevance of the suffering and death of Jesus in their own lives. They may wear the symbol of His death as a piece of jewelry around their necks but they do not carry the cross daily and follow Him. Their connection to Jesus is no more than a free pass to heaven, not an indissoluble union with Him in His death  and resurrection.