Chapter 4 – The Third Rejection of the King (Part 5 of 6)

The Sin That Cannot Be Forgiven 

In addition to this profound and horrible episode in the history of the nation Israel with the illegal arrest and trial of Jesus, Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin accused Jesus of committing blasphemy. How so? Jesus claimed to be God, which was a sin to be sure, if it was false. However, the ironic truth and twist in this entire scenario is that Jesus was telling the truth. 

Jesus came to reestablish God’s Kingship, whether Israel wanted to be a part of it or not. He prophesied. He quoted prophecies from the Old Testament. He performed miracles. He preached the good news to the poor. He declared what the Kingdom of Heaven was like. He even displayed power over creation, like when he calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, provided food for thousands from just a handful of items, healed sick people no one else could cure, and raised people from the dead. Yet, despite all these displays of His deity, the Pharisees, teachers of the law, chief priests, and elders all ascribed his power to none other than Beelzebul (i.e., Satan), calling him demon-possessed. 

In Matthew 12:22-37 and Mark 3:20-30, Jesus explains just how imbecilic they sound by stating a house divided against itself cannot stand. Neither can a city, a nation, or a family, for that matter. Not even in the heavenly realms! Therefore, Jesus says, “And if I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason, they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:27-28; LSB). 

Jesus gave them a choice. Either, He was driving out demons by the power of Satan, or He was driving out demons by the power of the Spirit of God.

And if Jesus was using Satan’s power, He wants to know whose power the religious leaders had been using all this time because their implication was simple: Only God and Satan can drive out demons. If Jesus was using Satan’s power, then apparently, so were they, or otherwise, they would be claiming to be the Messiah, which they were not. However, if Jesus was indeed using the power of God, then His words were true. He was the Son of God, the Messiah, and God’s kingdom was at hand. Therefore, the religious leaders’ “sons” were the answer to the question, and thereby “judges” as to the truth. 

What a contrast! The sons of the religious leaders were apparently using Satan’s power to cast out demons (otherwise they would have had to claim to be the Messiah), while God’s Son was using the power of God (and He was claiming to be the Messiah).

Two Ironic Twists 

At this juncture, the religious leaders were in an old-fashioned pickle, theologically speaking. Not to mention the fact that Satan would have to be a moron to drive out his own demons. Why would he do that? He wanted to possess as many people as possible and drag them away from God. Exorcizing demons out of people would have the opposite effect, and we all know Satan is not a moron. He is a wily, ravenous, conniving snake (Ephesians 6:11; 1 Peter 5:8; Revelation 12:9). He’s good at what he does, and he’d never chance someone believing Jesus was driving out demons by the power of God by giving Jesus the power to do so. This would be extremely counterproductive to his evil schemes. 

However, if Jesus was using the power of God’s Holy Spirit to drive out demons, then it was evidence that He was who He said He was, and God was literally in the flesh, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecies of 9:1-7 and 61:1-2 before their very eyes. By saying Jesus’s ministry was “powered by Satan,” the religious leaders of Israel were in effect saying the prophecies of Isaiah—particularly the one from chapter 61 that Jesus quoted as having been fulfilled by Him coming to Earth (See Luke 4:21)—were satanic in nature. Jesus said He came to preach the good news to the poor, and inherent within that mission, Jesus performed miracles to validate His claims. The religious leaders saw those validations as authorized by Beelzebul. That was the true blasphemy being spoken in this trial scene, and that’s the first ironic twist in this scene. In Satan’s kingdom of men, people call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20-21). There is a way that seems right to such men, but it only leads to death (Proverbs 14:12). The religious leaders’ twisted view of reality ran contrary to the Kingdom of Heaven…even when God Almighty was standing right in front of them. It was definitely the blind leading the blind (Matthew 15:14).

The second ironic twist concerns the sin of blasphemy itself. According to Jesus, God is willing to forgive every blasphemy except one. You may have heard it put this way: “God forgives every sin, except one - the unpardonable sin.” He evens forgives blasphemy spoken against the Son of Man. However, Jesus said the only sin that cannot be forgiven is “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 12:32; Mark 3:29). And that included the age in which Jesus spoke and the age to come, He said. 

There’s been a great deal of confusion about what “the unpardonable sin” is exactly. However, we have an excellent example of it right here before us. 

Jesus was asked if He was the Messiah. He claimed that He was. He said they would see Him—the Son of Man—seated at the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven (Matthew 26:64). 

When Caiaphas heard these words, he stood up, tore his robes, and proclaimed that Jesus had committed blasphemy by claiming to be the Son of God. The truth was, Caiaphas—and all the religious leaders with him—were the ones who had committed blasphemy, not Jesus. And, their blasphemous act classified was the “unpardonable” kind. 

How so, you ask?

They had denied the work of the Holy Spirit.

The evidence was before them—literally, face-to-face—with them. They had seen Jesus’s miracles. He had performed thousands of them. They had heard His sermons. They had heard Him tell parables. They had talked with witnesses who had been the beneficiaries of His healing ministry. There was a mountain of evidence, pointing to the fact that Jesus actually was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The long-awaited Messiah had come. God was standing there, in front of them, face-to-face, but they didn’t believe it. Instead, they rejected Him. Again. They said He was not the Messiah, thus He was not The Way. They proclaimed Him to be a deceiver instead of The Truth. They said He worked under the auspices of Satan, the progenitor of eternal death, instead of being The Life. In essence, they had rejected and concluded that Jesus was not God and that His words were not true. The opposite was allegedly the truth, according to their reasoning. 

When a person does this, what else can be done for him or her? It’s like a person who is handed the cure for their disease, but they see it as evil and throw it away. Oh, they try other remedies that don’t work and go to other doctors who cannot heal, but that one tried and true cure? They reject it as ineffective and thus useless. They have reasoned together in their human arrogance and determined the cure to be false. 

Or this same person does not take the cure because he or she does not believe an illness exists. So, they reject the cure for themselves because they are “healthy.” 

In either instance—a sick person rejecting the cure because they view it as ineffective and useless, or a sick person not believing he or she is sick—the person will die in their disease. Nothing else can be done. No matter how much the Holy Spirit tries to woo and convince, His redemptive work is rejected. 

This is where the Pharisees, teachers of the law, chief priests, and elders had arrived. In their eyes, Jesus was not the cure for their disease because they didn’t think they were sick (Matthew 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31). In their minds, Jesus was the sick one by claiming to be the Son of God.

Therefore, they committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and in this horrific scene, Rejection #3 was complete. 

In 1 Samuel 8, the elders of Israel had rejected God as King, but to their credit, at least they just requested a new king to lead them. All they wanted was to make a switch. 

In the Second Rejection, things became more serious. Someone attempted to kill the One born King of the Jews in Matthew 2. The religious leaders of Israel didn’t initiate it (King Herod did), but they didn’t try to stop it either. Instead, they were indifferent and complicit all at the same time. 

However, in this Third Rejection of the King, in Matthew 26, the knives came out. The vitriol was real. It had been brewing for three years, and finally, they’d had enough. The vote was in, and even the crowds had spoken. They decided to have a convicted murderer and insurrectionist released from prison rather than allow “the one called King of the Jews” to go free. Instead, they cried out with one voice,

“Away with Him! Away with Him! Crucify Him!” (Matthew 27:20-23; Mark 15:12-13; Luke 23:18-21; John 19:12-16). 

The chief priests’ response to Pilate is the last nail in their coffin, if you will. Pilate asked plainly, “Shall I crucify your king?” To which the chief priests replied, “We have no king but Caesar” (emphasis added, John 19:15-16; LSB). 

Did you hear what they said? They pledged their allegiance to Caesar over God. Caesar was their king now. The same Caesar they hated for all the taxation and oppression was now their king? Does that even make sense? And remember, Caesar claimed to be deity, which they despised! 

So, ask yourself, “Who was committing blasphemy now?” 

As a result, God would never be King of Israel ever again. The days of a nation Israel were over. In a mere forty or so years later, in 70 A.D., another Caesar (who they lauded as their king forty years earlier) would come to Jerusalem and lay siege to it in an effort to end the Jewish war that had started in 66 A.D. The Temple would eventually fall to the Romans, and all that exists until this day is a tower and a wall, where Jews go to wail in remembrance. 

Satan gladly accepted the religious leaders’ coronation, for ultimately, they had made Satan king of the Jews by fully immersing themselves in the kingdom of men. In glee, Satan watched Jesus’s dreadful march up the Via Delarosa. He knew his time was limited, but he’d never tell the religious leaders.   

The ultimate act of blasphemy against the work of the Holy Spirit—the third and final rejection of God as King—cheered on by God’s chosen people. 

This was the irony of all theological ironies, for sure.

  

Thought for the Week 

It’s a sad state of affairs at this juncture of Israel’s history. God wanted them to be His chosen people. He wanted them to be His witnesses to all the other nations. He wanted to use them to reach the rest of the world with His message of salvation in the Old Testament times. 

In case you missed it, God had a message of salvation for Gentiles long before Jesus came on the scene. Remember Jonah? He preached to Nineveh, and the entire city repented, much to Jonah’s chagrin, I might add (Jonah 3). In 1 Kings 19-20, God had Elijah go back to Damascus and anoint some kings and announce his successor. This was the same region where he had just battled the prophets of Baal and Ashtoreth and subsequently fled because Jezebel was murdering every prophet of God she could find. Naaman left the presence of Elisha praising God and claiming the God of Israel to be the only true God (2 Kings 5). God even taught Nebuchadnezzar a lesson and received praise in return from the king of Babylon (Daniel 4). The Old Testament is filled with stories of how God rescued lost Gentiles, like Ruth, a Moabitess. 

However, Israel didn’t want to be part of that arrangement. They did not wish to be set apart, sacred, qadosh (i.e., holy). They wanted to be like the nations around them. 

How do we fit into God’s redemptive plan? I mean, those of us who are believers…do we wish to be like the others around us and not be bothered with the things of the Kingdom of Heaven? Or do we wish to be sacred and set apart for the work of being used by God in His redemptive plan for those around us? 

Only you and God know the answer to that question. And believe Me, He knows. Just like He did with Israel, sending prophet after prophet to warn them of the coming wrath, yet promising a remnant because of His covenant with Abraham. He knew they would eventually reject Him face-to-face three times, and each rejection would grow more and more indignant. For those who repented, they found redemption through His grace and mercy. For those who did not, weeping and gnashing of teeth await them. There are two roads: narrow and broad. There is “hot” or “cold.” Lukewarmness is not allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven Revelation 3:14-15). 

So, what is your answer? Remember, He already knows.

 

NEXT WEEK:

We conclude this chapter with one last twist. 

Pictures courtesy of  Pixabay and the following photographers/artists:

Truth by Gerd Altmann 

Crucifixion by lbrownstone

Wailing Wall by stinne24

Narrow Road by Tama66

Wide Road by Schwoaze

Chapter 4 - The Third Rejection of the King (Part 4 of 6)

 The Arrest and Trial of Jesus

 Just like a spy movie in the theaters, as Jesus nears Jerusalem, getting ready for His triumphal entry, the chief priests had been conniving behind the scenes. As we have learned in the last couple of weeks, they had already made up their minds. Jesus needed to die so Rome would not come with force and punish Israel (John 11). As Caiaphas said, better for one man to die than the rest of them. So like so many political trials, this particular judge and jury wanted a specific verdict. They just needed some facts and evidence to make that decision “legal.” Justice in reverse, for sure.

We learn in Matthew 26:14-16 (LSB), that Judas Iscariot went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me to deliver Him to you?” This question implies previous contact. How would Judas know to go to the chief priests and ask such a question if he had not already been approached with the concept of betraying Jesus in the first place? This is not a question the religious leaders would have broadcast to the masses, like an old, Wild West “Wanted” poster handed out all over town. As a matter of fact, the chief priests were concerned a public arrest would cause a riot (Matthew 26:3-5), so they had to finagle things, even use an insider who could somehow alert them as to Jesus’s whereabouts in order to capture Him at the most opportune and discreet time possible.

We all know the story. Jesus tells his disciples during the Lord’s Supper that one of them is going to betray Him. They all deny it, but Jesus states that the one who eats after Him will be the one. In John’s account, Jesus offered the bread to Judas. At that moment, Judas could have declined, but he took it, and the text tells us, “And after the piece of bread, Satan then entered into him” (John 13:27; LSB). Then, in verse 30, Judas got up and left to carry out the hellish deed.

Later that evening, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas leads a large mob, armed with swords and clubs—hand-picked by the chief priests, teachers of the law, the Pharisees, and the elders (Matthew 26:47)—to arrest Jesus quietly in the middle of the night. Because Jesus had eleven other men with Him, it is understandable that the chief priests and teachers of the law felt they had to have Jesus and his band of men outnumbered so they would not attempt an all-out rebellion.

Our Lord and His disciples were outnumbered and outside the city gate. They were vulnerable, and Judas knew exactly where to find them.

It wasn’t enough to simply point and say, “There’s your man.” Judas walked up and betrayed Jesus with, of all things, a kiss. Think about that for a second. Judas kissed the face of “God in the flesh,” which was usually intended to be an act of respect, devotion, and honor, by the way, in that culture. Judas, however, knowingly did so as an act of betrayal, disrespect, and dishonor.

And Judas was possessed by Satan while doing so.

This scene became a perfect picture of God’s chosen people, in their utter depravity and deceitfulness, being led away from God by Satan himself, standing in front of the literal and figurative face of God. Not to worship Him. Not to honor Him. Not to be in awe of Him. Instead, it was to betray Him. Betray His faithfulness. Betray His love. Betray His grace. Betray His mercy.

When Jesus was seized by the guards, according to John 18:10, Peter steps forward, draws his sword, and takes a swing at the servant of the high priest, Malchus. Peter, not a skilled soldier, wasn’t being cute by cutting off the Malchus’s right ear.

Zorro, Peter was not.

Surely, Peter was going for the man’s head in utter rage with a heavy sword that probably felt awkward in the fisherman’s hands. Malchus, seeing the blade coming, ducked, not getting completely out of the way, obviously.

Did Jesus encourage the rest of His disciples to join Peter? Was He launching the rebellion against Rome they all had been anticipating since Jesus walked out of the Jordan River at His baptism?

No.

Instead, Jesus rebukes Peter, telling him to put his sword away, for those who live by the sword die by it too. He then reminds His disciples that if He wanted to, He had twelve legions of angels at His disposal, which was plenty of might to quell the mob and their measly weapons. If one angel could wipe out 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night (see 2 Kings 19:35), imagine what an army of at least twelve-thousand angels could do?

However, if Jesus did so, He stated in Matthew 26:54 (LSB), “How will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?”

Jesus follows up Peter’s act of savagery with a miracle of compassion by reaching out and restoring Malchus’s ear to its original, healthy state.

Jesus then turns to the mob in verses 55-56 and asks them why they came with swords and clubs anyway? He’d taught in the temple courts. They could have arrested Him then. However, He goes on to inform that even these actions fulfill Scripture.

You would think the miraculous healing of Malchus, coupled with all the thousands of miracles Jesus had performed over the course of three years, would have caused the mob to pause and rethink their mission. Jesus’s disciples, too, for that matter.

At this moment, unfortunately, Jesus’s disciples do not bow in worship. They do not kneel, genuflect, or anything. They fled, instead, abandoning Him in His time of need. Which brings us to one important point to make. Jesus’s disciples obviously were not important in this overall scheme of the chief priests, because the mob didn’t chase after them. This leads us to conclude that the chief priests and teachers of the law apparently believed that if they could kill Jesus, His little “cult” would die with Him.

The End Justifies the Means

Jesus is formerly taken into custody and escorted to the first of six trials. He had three religious trials before the Jews and three political trials before Pilate (twice) and Herod.

For the first trial. He was taken to house of Annas, a former high priest and father-in-law of Caiaphas (John 18:12-13). There, Annas questions Jesus about His disciples and His teachings, to which Jesus replies, “I have spoken openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues or in the temple, where all the Jews come together; and I spoke nothing in secret. Why do you question me? Question those who have heard what I spoke to them; behold, they know what I said” (vv. 19-21; LSB). All Jesus did was question the legality of the proceedings.

When Jesus said those words, one of the nearby officials struck Jesus in the face and said, “Is that the way you answer the high priest” (LSB)? Jesus said, “If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness to the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike me” (vv. 22-23)? In other words, “If you are so confident I misspoke, put your accusations on record. If not, then you are abusing a prisoner, which violates the Torah” (cf. Exodus 23:2).

With no evidence to use against Jesus, Annas sent Him to see Caiaphas (John 18:24) while the Sanhedrin looked for any evidence against Him. But Matthew and Mark both state they could not find any, although they produced many false witnesses (Matthew 26:57-59; Mark 14:55-59). Mark even goes do far to say the false witnesses’ testimony didn’t even agree. Of course, that is how lies operate, so we are not surprised.

Finally, two of the false witnesses come forward. They claimed that Jesus said He was able to destroy the temple in Jerusalem and rebuild it in three days (vv. 60-61). Mark puts it this way in 14:58 (LSB): “We ourselves heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this sanctuary made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands.’”

Like all false witness testimony revolving around the words of the accused, it’s all in the way you interpret those words, or in this case, try to make the accused sound by putting words in his mouth. False testimony also likes to pull statements out of context, thus making them say something they didn’t. This testimony was false because what Jesus said was entirely different from the bogus witnesses’ testimony.

The Real Words of the Actual Event

In John 2:13-25, Jesus goes into the temple courts and clears the temple with a whip. He’s upset that they had turned His Father’s house into a place of dishonest business dealings. At that moment, Jesus was attacking the entire Jewish system, set up by the chief priests—principally Annas. A system which took advantage of fellow Jews who had traveled to Jerusalem, in this particular case, for the Feast of Passover.

The context must be understood in order to fully understand Jesus’s words.

The entire Levitical priestly system in Jerusalem had become corrupt. By this time in Israel’s history, if you were a Jewish worshipper who had traveled to Jerusalem for a feast, you were required to bring with you an offering, based on your economic status. If you didn’t have an offering to bring or could not bring one for whatever reason, you could purchase an offering in the temple courts at an exorbitant rate, of course.

Keep in mind that your dove or lamb or whatever your offering happened to be had to be “without blemish.” When you entered the temple courts, if you brought your own, your offering was inspected by the temple priests to see if it met their questionable Levitical standards. In most cases, the offering was deemed to have a blemish, so the worshippers would have to purchase another offering from the priests that had already been “certified.”

How convenient.

In addition to this, the temple treasury did not accept foreign currency. Most travelers would arrive with the coins of Rome. These were not accepted. They bore the image of Caesar, which was considered idolatry because the Caesars considered themselves deity.

Therefore, if you were a Jewish sojourner, arriving at the temple with your Roman coinage, the priests would demand that you exchange it for Hebrew currency. Of course, there was an exchange rate, much like we have today, and within that exchange rate, the priests exacted a fee which resulted in the worshipper not receiving his full amount. Therefore, not only did you get gouged when you purchased your “approved” offering at an inflated price, but then you lost even more money when you exchanged your foreign currency for the temple shekels. And we must note here that it was okay for the temple priests and their people to accept, handle, and deal in Roman currency during this entire process.

How convenient.

Now do you understand Jesus’s frustration? The place where His chosen people were to come to worship God had been turned in a crooked market run by none other than the Levitical priesthood, who took advantage of the very people these priests were supposed to help.¹

The priests knew what Jesus was doing. They must have recalled the text in Ezekiel 43:1-12, where the Son of Man was given directions on how to reestablish the temple and set it right again by expelling all who had prostituted themselves by worshipping idols. The reason why it seems clear they recalled such Old Testament passages is because of their request. They ask Jesus for a miraculous sign in order for Him to display His authority to do what He did. In other words, they knew Jesus wasn’t sent by the “Roman health department” or Rome’s version of the IRS. You don’t request the health inspector or the tax man to do something miraculous to prove their authority. They are just humans doing human jobs. However, if the person clearing the temple was doing so as the Son of Man, then you’d want to know if He was legitimately the Son of Man. And just so you don’t miss it, Just a few verses before this event, Jesus refers to Himself as just that, “the Son of Man” (John 1:51), thus aligning Himself with the passages in the Old Testament, like Ezekiel 43, proving He is the Son of Man.

In response to their request, Jesus tells them, “Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). He would be crucified, buried, and resurrected. A miracle, for sure. However, the chief priests and teachers of the law were blinded by their corruption, their hard hearts, and their total allegiance to Satan, thus they totally missed the promise of a miracle. They thought He was talking about rebuilding the temple in which they currently stood (John 2:20).

Back to the Trials

Therefore, getting back to the trial in Matthew 26, these false witnesses, based on their so-called evidence and first-hand, eyewitness accounts, misspoke. They testified that Jesus was going to tear down the temple in Jerusalem and rebuild another one, similar to the current one, but different. And do so in three literal days. An absurd notion.

At this point, Caiaphas, the high priest, stood and said to Jesus, “Do you not answer? What are these men testifying against you” (v. 62; LSB)? However, Jesus remained silent.

Then, Caiaphas says something very interesting in verse 63 (LSB): “I put You under oath by the living God, that you tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God.” First, he asks Jesus, in essence, to speak the truth under an oath to Himself, the living God. He then asks Jesus if He is the Messiah, the Son of God. In other words, Caiaphas understood what Jesus meant when He said He was able to tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days. Only one person could do all of that: God. Not only is that true, but to make the logical and theological leap between the what Jesus actually said in John 2 (of which I am convinced Caiaphas knew) and Jesus claiming to be the Messiah shows that Caiaphas knew exactly what Jesus meant. How else would Caiaphas know to link “destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days” to “Tell us if you are the Christ,” unless he completely understood what Jesus was truly claiming?

Under oath, to Himself, I might add (“the living God”), Jesus tells Caiaphas, and ultimately to all who are listening, that He is the Messiah, and that “hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (v. 64; LSB). Jesus spoke the truth, and He did so under oath to the living God. And here again is the “Son of Man” reference, being made by Jesus, just like in the early part of His ministry and quoted in John 1:51. The bookends are now complete. The Son of Man has come to destroy the temple of stone and rebuild it into a living stone (1 Peter 2:4-13), wherein Jesus is the cornerstone laid in Zion (Isaiah 28:16). From the beginning to the end, whether it be the three years of His earthly ministry or for all eternity, He is the Word, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ, God in the flesh, the God of the universe, the God over all Creation, and the King of kings and Lord of lords.

However, Caiaphas didn’t see it that way. He tore his robes, which was an act of shock and surprise, even dismay at what was considered horrible or unbelievable news.

What was Caiaphas so upset about? “He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? Behold, you have now heard the blasphemy. What do you think” (vv. 65-66; LSB)?

The entire lot agreed in verse 66. He deserved death!

The Sanhedrin then proceeded to spit on Jesus. They struck Him with their fists. They slapped Him and then said mockingly, “Prophesy to us, O Christ. Who is the one who hit you” (v. 68)?

The sinful ideology of Israel’s forefathers in 1 Samuel 8 had now infiltrated the entire Jewish community, fully corrupting the leadership. Satan completely owned them. God was standing face-to-face with Caiaphas and all the members of the Sanhedrin—the ruling, religious leaders of God’s chosen people. They were meeting illegally in Caiaphas’s house, as it is stated that Peter had to wait outside Caiaphas’s courtyard, which would have been in front of the chief priest’s expensive home (poor people didn’t have courtyards; see Matthew 26:58). This “trial” at Caiaphas’s house was after they had taken Jesus to see Annas at his house (John 18:13), which was also highly illegal. It also must be understood that they were conducting these trials during the Feast of Passover, another illegality. Trials were supposed to be held in the temple, not during religious festivals, and there were very specific rules and regulations about how to conduct them so the accused received a fair trial (Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 16:18-20; 17:2-7; 19:15-21).²

God was in the flesh, right in front of them, and they didn’t recognize Him. They didn’t recognize His words either. They had so degraded the Torah with their own interpretations and traditions, their own political affiliations, and their own instinct for survival amongst an oppressive empire, that when Jesus spoke plainly—and did so with authority and not as the teachers of the law (Matthew 7:28)—they couldn’t truly hear His words. Their eyes were blind. Their ears could not hear (Isaiah 6:9-10; Matthew 13:11-17). They wanted to be like the other nations around them, and sadly, they had completely succeeded.

 

Thought for the Week:

It is truly a shame how the nation Israel slid from the top of Mt. Sinai and into the Abyss of Hell. Judas became a poster child for her deceit. The chief priests and scribes had become the fulfillment of the elder’s wishes in 1 Samuel 8.

Yet, when we look out across the landscape of Christianity today, things are looking eerily similar. It seems more and more “believers” are running from the Church. Poll after poll marks how bigger, more mainline denominations are seeing their numbers dwindle as they fight over social issues and the believability of the Scriptures. God is being replaced with our own “kings,” so we can be like the other nations around us. We preach messages and tickle itchy ears. We dabble in politics to manipulate the masses for the secular good (although we often try to spiritualize it). We spend more time worrying about the state of our country than the state of the souls around us. Our church leaders exchange the monies of worshippers for expensive houses and lavish lifestyles. And worshippers come to worship God with hearts of stone instead of hearts of flesh.

And heaven forbid someone should stand up for the Truth and preach Jesus as The Way, the Truth, and the Life, and how nobody gets to the Father except through Jesus. He will be labeled a “hatemonger,” along with every other name in the book. His words will be twisted to say what they did not say, and he will be placed on trial in the courtroom of public opinion. He will be guilty, regardless of the truth, and they will spew vile curses from their lips. The crowds will attempt to shout Him down and clamor for his removal from his church, his ministry, or whatever, as a means of silencing him. He will be Twitterized, Facebooked, Snapchatted, and TikTokked to death.

However, take heart. This path looks very similar to the one Jesus trod, does it not? And Jesus also said that if you live a Beatitude life, persecution can be expected (Matthew 5:3-12).

And rewards await those who are faithful and obedient to the end.

 

NEXT WEEK:

We will look at the sin that cannot be forgiven. 

 

Endnotes

 

1. Matthew, Mark, and Luke write that Jesus did this again later in His ministry when he entered Jerusalem during His last week on earth (Matthew 21:12-17; Mark 11:12-19; Luke 19:45-48), thus causing many Bible detractors to claim the Bible is in error. “Was it one temple cleansing or two? they ask. They see it as an error on the part of the gospel writers. However, when you begin to see how God uses events to establish His Kingship, things become much clearer. There were two separate temple cleansing accounts. One near the beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry, and one near the end. Bookmarks, if you will, denoting the Son of Man’s work of reestablishing the temple as God’s Most Holy Place as is spelled out in Ezekiel 43:1-12. However, with Jesus’s words in John 2, it is clear Ezekiel and Jesus are talking about a different arrangement moving forward, and the reason why this must take place—i.e., God dwelling in the hearts and spirits of men as opposed to physical temples build by the hands of men—is because of the corruption and utter sinfulness of the present system. God calls it “prostitution” in Ezekiel 43:7. The chief priests and teachers of the law had prostituted themselves ultimately to Satan by rejecting God, as we have established thus far in this blog series.   

It must be noted that there are differences in the two cleansings as well. In John’s, he mentioned oxen and sheep while the other gospel writers do not. He says Jesus made a whip out of cords, which was something not mentioned in the other accounts. He told the priests selling doves to get them out of the temple. The disciples remember Psalm 69:9 (LSB), which says, “For zeal for your house has consumed me.” However, John does not include Jesus’s quotations of the passages in Isaiah 56:7 (LSB, emphasis added): “For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples,” (insinuating more people than just the Jews), nor does he include Jeremiah 7:11, calling it a “robbers’ den.” 

From the beginning of Jesus’s ministry until the very end, Jesus was all about setting things right and reestablishing God’s Kingship, which meant right worship of God must take place in a clean, holy, sacred, set apart, qadosh temple. One not made of hands or stone, but one made of flesh. 

 

2. There are many things we could say about the illegality of Jesus’s trials, but the discussion would not be pertinent to this portion of our blog series.

 

Pictures courtesy of the following artists and websites:

"gavel" by Quince Creative (Pixabay)

"coins ancient Rome" by papazachariasa (Pixabay)

"The Way" by Tim Wildsmith (Unsplash)

Chapter 4 – The Third Rejection of the King (Part 3 of 6)

The Kingdom of Heaven vs. The Kingdom of Men

God gave the world two choices when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   This choice harkens back to His message in the beginning. Adam and Eve had the same choice to make. Obey God and not eat of the tree, or do so, thus disobey and reap the consequences of that decision. Throughout history, the choice has always been the same. You can live in the Kingdom God rules, or you can live in the kingdom men rule. 

Throughout his gospel account, Matthew has painstakingly noted the re-establishment of God as King as the basis and focal point of his entire story. It started with Jesus’s genealogy (Matthew 1:1-17), denoting Him as having the right to rule as a Son of Abraham and in the royal line of David. He was thus the Son of Man referenced by the prophet Daniel. He then was shown to be the Son of God with His miraculous birth in Matthew 1:18-25. In Matthew 2, He was anointed as the One born King of the Jews when the Magi came to honor Him, and more importantly, worship Him. Only deity was worshipped, even in pagan cultures. 

In Matthew 3 and 4, His ministry is authenticated by John the Baptist and proven to be superior by His overcoming Satan’s temptations in the desert. 

In Matthew 5-7, Jesus gave His “Manifesto of the Kingdom.” If you want to know how this new Kingdom of Heaven operates, versus how the kingdom of men operates, this is the hub of all its teachings. 

In Matthew 8-9, Jesus validates His ministry with many miracles and healings while calling His disciples. 

In Matthew 10-11, His disciples are trained and His ministry’s message becomes focused on the differences between the two kingdoms: The Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of men. It is at the end of chapter 11 where Jesus defines the difference. The kingdom of men is filled with rules and regulations that cannot be kept, even by those who created them, namely, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, and the high priests. The Oral Law became the litmus test on Jewish spirituality, even over and above the Old Testament, as we noted last week. It became a heavy burden on the backs of the nation Israel. The poor, although devout in many cases, suffered trying to keep all the commands of the religious elite. Jesus’s kingdom, on the other hand, is far different: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (LSB). That is a stark contrast to the way Jews had to come before God, according to the Jewish religious leaders. Their laws were anything but light. The leaders were anything but gentle and humble in heart. There was no rest to be had in their system. One always worried about breaking the Oral Law and being labeled a sinner. And if that occurred, the cost of doing religious business in the Temple—buying Temple-approved sacrifices and paying exorbitant exchange rates from Roman money to Hebrew shekels—made sacrificial worship overbearing.   

From this point on in Matthew’s Gospel account, starting in chapter 12, one incident after another, pitting the Kingdom of Heaven against the kingdom of men, is demonstrated either in parables, with miracles, in confrontations with unbelievers (e.g., Matthew 13:53-58), or in direct confrontations with the religious leaders themselves. Sometimes, Jesus even has to rebuke His disciples, because they struggled with the concepts being taught by Jesus about this new Kingdom (e.g., Matthew 16:13-28; 17:19-20; 19:13-15; 20:20-28).

The Feast of the Passover 

To culminate this entire Gospel account, depicting Jesus as King of the Kingdom of Heaven vs. those who follow the “king” of the kingdom of men, Matthew 21 tells the story of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. It’s Palm Sunday, the beginning of the most sacred week of the Jewish year, ending in the Passover Feast. This would be the last week Jesus would walk the earth in pre-resurrection form. 

Jesus’s procession into Jerusalem, starting in verse 8, is a lowly one. The King comes riding on a donkey, not royal horses. He’s not being carried by slaves or servants in some royal caravan, covered by tapestries to shade Him from the sun and heat. He’s not surrounded by an army. Instead, His message, both in words and actions, was one of humility. He came down the Mount of Olives, from the east side of the city, hailing from a peasant village called Nazareth, from where nothing good allegedly comes (John 1:46). And yet, the crowd, which must have been sizable, shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!” (LSB). Although they were a large crowd, they were still peasants and considered rabble by the religious elite. Therefore, the entire group would have been viewed by the Pharisees and teachers of the law as a bunch of “hayseeds from Hickville,” acting like hayseeds always do: without discretion, without order, and without any concern for religious rules or proper righteousness. 

While this procession was happening on the east side of Jerusalem, another procession was occurring, entering the city from the west.¹ The Roman governor, who at that time would have been none other than Pontius Pilate, entered Jerusalem, riding one of Rome’s finest horses, followed by a Roman centurion and the company he commanded. It was a show of authority. A demonstration of might. The extra forces accompanied the governor and were expected to aide those already stationed in the Fortress Antonia. 

Pilate and his accompanying military procession rode up from Caesarea Maritima, a relatively new city near the coast of the Mediterranean, some sixty miles away. From the time it was built, Caesarea Maritima became the place Roman governors over the regions of Idumea, Judea, and Syria resided. They considered it more relaxing and more hospitable than Jerusalem. And besides, it was a Roman city, not a Jewish one, so that made it better all by itself. 

It must also be understood that Pilate, like his predecessors, did not perform this parade of sorts in some kind of “tip of the hat” to the Jews, as if they approved or even appreciated the Jewish commitment to their heritage. The Roman governors made this trek three times a year; every time an annual feast was required of the Jews. And no other feast was more important than Passover, the feast that commemorated Israel’s liberation from Egypt, no less. Thus, in “ceremonial” language of their own, Rome wanted to make sure Israel understood that Rome was not Egypt, and Moses was no longer alive. 

As a Jew living in that time, whether you worked there every day or were in town because of the feast week pilgrimage, it must have been quite the scene. As has been stated:

Imagine the imperial procession’s arrival in the city. A visual panoply of imperial power: cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold. Sounds: the marching of feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums. The swirling of dust. The eyes of the silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.² 

Interestingly, as Jesus’s procession establishes a theology concerning who He is, so too, did the Roman imperial procession. In Roman religion, the emperor was viewed as deity, namely, the Son of God.

Although Julius Caesar believed himself to be deity, it was Augustus Caesar who believed his father was the god Apollo. He believed he, too, was born of a miraculous conception as Apollo impregnated his mother, Atia. Inscriptions found in Roman artifacts called Augustus “son of god,” “lord,” and even “savior.” He was even said to be one who would bring “peace on earth.” However, he only ruled until 14 A.D., but the belief of the emperor being all those things was carried on through his successors, including Tiberius, who was in power at the time of Jesus’s earthly ministry. Therefore, you can see the two “theologies” clashing as the two kingdoms prepare for war. 

However, the quote from Zechariah 9—the first portion referenced in Matthew 21:4-5—depicts not war, but a King who will humbly come to put an end to war:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Make a loud shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your king is coming to you; He is righteous and endowed with salvation,

Lowly and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a pack animal.

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim

And the horse from Jerusalem;

And the bow of war will be cut off.

And He will speak peace to the nations;

And His reign will be from sea to sea

And from the River to the ends of the earth (Zechariah 9:9-10; LSB). 

You would expect nothing less from the One we call The Prince of Peace. 

Spiritual Scheduling

Jesus’s procession countered Rome’s procession and was obviously set up by God to occur at the very same moment. As with most of Jesus’s life, the mission had a timetable, and each step along the way had to keep the divine appointments. Thousands of years of Israeli history and multiple prophetic utterances by the Old Testament prophets were coming to fruition. As Jesus’s time on Earth drew to a close and reached the climax, specific occurrences accelerated. Scheduling such things, to happen in the correct sequence, was crucial, and only God could manage such a monumental feat. 

This is why I reject what some commentators refer to as “Jesus’s Protest.” They liken His planning of the disciples going to retrieve the donkeys in Matthew 21:1-3 as the first major step in some kind of planned demonstration for the implementation of an “activist event.” To do so twists and cheapens the entire message being conveyed by His Triumphal Entry into something it was never intended to convey. Jesus never righted any social injustices at the hands of the Romans. He even taught the disciples to pay their taxes and live the kind of lives others—including the Romans—could praise God for (Matthew 5:16). He never called for revolution, enlisting the help of groups like the zealots. On the contrary, He ordered Peter to put his sword down when he tried to lop off the head of the slave of the high priest, Malchus, but only got his ear (John 18:10). Then, hours later, when He is before Pilate, Jesus informs Pilate in John 18:36 that His Kingdom is not of this world, for if it was, He would start a revolution, asking His servants to fight for Him. And no doubt, a few angels as well.

It must be clear that Jesus never lobbied for political reform, to try and turn Rome into something more palatable for the common, working folks. The Triumphal Entry was all about establishing Jesus’s right to rule as King over the Kingdom of Heaven, which was not of this world. This is so important to remember.   

In the kingdom of men—which was embodied more in the imperialistic empire of Rome than any other empire—power and violence, politics and human glory were viewed as honorable, so much so, that they despised the concept of humility as a people. Therefore, to advance in the kingdom of men, one can lie, cheat, and steal, if it means climbing the ladder of success. One can invoke violence, if it means getting his or her own way. One can use politics to manipulate and deceive, if it means that person and his cohorts will benefit. And all of this is done for personal glory and honor as more power is garnered along the way. Oh, they may say it is for “Rome,” but we all know who it really is for.³ 

In the Kingdom of Heaven, which was embodied by Jesus and His followers, power came in a different form. Violence would be reserved for the righteous judgments of God Almighty. Politics would vanish because there would only be one King, one set of rules, one dominion. And human glory would become poverty of spirit as it started the sojourner down the path to a righteousness that surpasses that of the Pharisees (Matthew 5:3; 20).  

Throughout the rest of the Passover Week, each and every confrontational event became a picture of the two kingdoms at war. And it’s sad that it came to this point. But this is what the elders of Israel asked for way back in 1 Samuel 8. They wanted to be “like all the other nations around them.” And like the other nations, they instituted their own version of a “domination system” (see Footnote #3). They had their political oppression, just like God said they would through the prophet Samuel. The oppression of the kings of Judah and Israel would become brutal at times. Even more so when they had to submit to the likes of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. They also developed their religious intimidation through the Oral Law. It made the average Jew poorer while the religious elite became wealthy. And sadly, for the poor, the political elite and religious elite made the economic exploitation doubly cruel. 

This was why Jesus came to bring good news to the oppressed (Isaiah 61:1). It’s why He bound up the brokenhearted. It’s why He proclaimed the release of captives from the prison of sin. It’s why He came to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. For all of these people, God will bring His vengeance against the organizers of the domination systems of this kingdom of men. And now, listen to the rest of what God promised through His prophet, Isaiah, in 61:2-11 (LSB): 

To comfort all who mourn,

To grant those who mourn in Zion,

Giving them a headdress instead of ashes,

The oil of rejoicing instead of mourning,

The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting.

So they will be called oaks of righteousness,

The planting of Yahweh, that He may show forth His beautiful glory.

Then they will rebuild the ancient waste places;

They will raise up the former desolations;

And they will make new the ruined cities,

The desolations from generation to generation.

Strangers will stand and pasture your flocks,

And foreigners will be your farmers and your vinedressers.

But you will be called the priests of Yahweh;

You will be spoken of as ministers of our God.

You will eat the wealth of nations,

And in their glories you will boast.

Instead of your shame you will have a double portion,

And instead of dishonor they will shout for joy over their portion.

Therefore they will possess a double portion in their land;

Everlasting gladness will be theirs.

For I, Yahweh, love justice,

I hate robbery in the burnt offering;

And in truth I will give them their recompense

And cut an everlasting covenant with them.

Then their seed will be known among the nations,

And their offspring in the midst of the peoples.

All who see them will recognize them

Because they are the seed whom Yahweh has blessed.

I will rejoice greatly in Yahweh;

My soul will rejoice in my God,

For He has clothed me with garments of salvation,

He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness,

As a bridegroom decks himself with a headdress,

And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its branches,

And as a garden causes the things sown in it to branch out,

So Lord Yahweh will cause righteousness and praise

To branch out before all the nations. 

And all God’s people said, “Amen.”     

Thought for the Week: 

Have we, the church of the twenty-first century, developed our own domination system? Do our churches (and the individual worshippers) resemble the kingdom of men or the Kingdom of Heaven?   

Do we vow to elect people to public office, who, in turn, politically oppress others? Do we work with and protect those who use kinds of political oppression within the church, say on a church staff or a denominational headquarters? Political oppression can come in many forms, so it’s hard to list all the different types here. However, some examples could be: Are we more concerned with building the kingdom of America so we can protect our precious freedom? Are we more concerned with building “a better tomorrow, whatever that means?” Are we more concerned about having a world filled with peace and not war? Are we more concerned with having lavish places of worship? Are we more concerned about keeping people in positions of power in a church because of the negative press we may receive if they get exposed? Or are we concerned with living faithfully in and building the Kingdom of Heaven?

Do we take part in a system that economically exploits others without giving it a second thought? Do we wittingly exploit others in the business world? Telling ourselves, “It’s not personal. It’s just business.” Do we support those who exploit others within the church, asking them to give and give while padding a certain luxurious lifestyle? Are we more concerned with filling pews and offering plates than helping others find the Bread of Life and be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Do we try to intimidate others religiously, either in an individual manner or in a larger, more corporate way, by piling one rule on top of another until the leaders of the church look like the Pharisees He condemned? Are you more concerned about someone keeping denominational regulations more than keeping God’s teachings and instructions? Does the church leadership live their lives like the Pharisees, asking congregants to do things they never do themselves (cf. Matthew 23:4)? Does the church leadership like to be noticed by men, love the places of honor at social functions, and seek admiration in public places (Matthew 23:5-7)? Or is the church leadership more concerned about turning the church body into members of the Kingdom of Heaven? 

When you truly study the Kingdom of Heaven, you begin to see life through the eyes of the Almighty. And when you do, there is a great deal of soul-searching that comes with it. Jesus’s teachings, the King’s Manifesto, relates more to His realm than ours. However, as He taught us, His principles of Kingdom living have application here on Earth. But just know this: when you begin to implement them in your personal life, you will run across obstacles you never saw before because you were blind to them. Some are obvious from the very beginning. Some are made known to you later as God opens your eyes more and more. But as He does so, you see yourself being drawn deeper into His Kingdom and away from the kingdom of men. The things of the kingdom of men become more and more foreign and increasingly undesirable. The things of His Kingdom become more desirable and more fulfilling. You see your peace and joy increase. Your despair and depression decrease. Why? Because you are becoming a slave to Christ. And He said His yoke was easy. His burden was light…as opposed to the domination system of the kingdom of men. 

 

NEXT WEEK:

We look at Jesus’s arrest and trial.

  

Endnotes

1. The majority of the information in this chapter has been derived from The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan (Harper/SanFrancicso; New York, NY, 2006), pp. 1-30). Although Borg and Crossan give a very good, detailed, historical account of the Triumphal Entry (and that’s why I use it here), based on Mark’s account mainly, this author does not ascribe their overall theology (nor recommend the book), which comes out from time to time in their book. They tend to take the spiritual side of the equation out of the picture and lean too heavily on a philosophical, human explanation. An example of this is in the preface, where they note that Mark’s Gospel account was written around 70 A.D. Therefore, they say, because it was written almost forty years after the life of Jesus, “it is not ‘straightforward history,’ but like all the gospels, a combination of history remembered and history interpreted. It is the history of Jesus ‘updated’ for the time in which Mark’s community lived.” My question for these two professors is, where does the Holy Spirit’s role in aiding the writers of Scripture come into the picture, like what Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16-17? One wonders. Also, to make such assertions opens the door for God’s Word to be “updated” for future communities, which is actually happening, even in our own time. To say, in such a matter-of-fact manner, that this practice was acceptable to Mark and the other writers of the New Testament is blasphemous in its own way. In this line of thinking, God’s Word is incomplete and will always need to be “updated.” That is heresy, if you believe God’s Word needs improvement and expansion because of how we see things today.

  

2. Ibid., p. 3.

 

3. Borg and Crossan note that such empires use what they call a “domination system,” which is comprised of three parts: political oppression, economic exploitation, and religious intimidation. It does not take a Phi Beta Kappa to see how this “system” has been used through history as a means by which the kingdom of men have ruled their respective regions. However, it needs to be said here that the kingdom of men follows the ways of Satan. Those three components of a “domination system” come from the pit of hell. All these things we described (power, violence, politics, human glory) are applauded in the kingdom of men because that is how Satan operates. He will continue to applaud and promote those who do his bidding, using them as he sees fit until they no longer serve any purpose. This ultimately comes to its proverbial, purposeful end in Revelation 17:16, where the beast with ten horns no longer tolerates the worship of the prostitute, Babylon the Great—which symbolizes the kingdom of men for all ages, by the way—and kills her, demanding that everyone worship him. This was Satan’s plan all along, but it could not be allowed to happen until God said it could (v. 17).

 

  Pictures courtesy of  Pixabay and the following photographers/artists:

Palm Sunday - by Jeff Jacobs

Statue of Caesar  - by 15299

Remember - by Andrew Martin

Amen/praise - by Barbara Jackson