Life Matters - March 8, 2023
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15)
Multiple times the Jews, who in their minds at least, were living by the Law of Moses, condemned Jesus for not keeping the Law that had become their identity instead of the God from whom it was received. The sanitation laws, the ceremonial laws, and the moral laws were all important to them, but the washings and ceremonies, especially, were being presented and held in esteem as an identity that set them apart, actually above, their Gentile neighbors. The hearts and minds of the Jewish leaders were increasingly hardened and set against this young Jew as he showed little to no interest in the national pride of Israel, as He rebuked them for their hardness. Their seething reached the fever-pitch of a mob by the time they “captured” Him in the garden of Gethsemane with the aid of Judas Iscariot and had Him standing trial at the Judgment Hall. “Crucify him! Crucify him,” they cried out as they chose to release Barabbas, who was a robber, instead of Jesus, who was without sin. And so He was lifted up, as a serpent, one to be despised as a poisonous snake, one who bit people so they died. In so doing, in crucifying Jesus, as if He were the problem as the snakes were a problem in Numbers 21, they lifted up the son of man, who is also the Son of God, to be looked upon as prophecied by God through Zechariah the prophet in Zec. 12:10 ... “and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced” and in Isaiah 53:3, “he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” And again in verses 7-8; “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.”
While Jesus had powerful enemies, He also had many friends among the Jews. He kept the Law perfectly, so perfectly that His enemies had to call upon witnesses who were willing to falsely accuse Him before the council at the Judgment Hall. His love of the down-trodden, the sick, the suffering, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the dead and the dying was so well-known that multitudes followed Him, multitudes were blessed, and multitudes loved Him. They loved Him so much that the Jewish leaders thought it best to “capture” Him at night because they feared the people. But once He was “captured” then the people feared the rulers. So much so that when the vehement outcries of “Crucify Him! Crucify Him,” reverberated at the Judgment Hall there was no one left to speak up for this man who was being treated like the snake that He wasn’t. What was the problem? Why did these rulers hate Jesus? Why did they despise Him so deeply and so vehemently? Was it not because He consistently kept them accountable to the Truth? Truth that did not feel good. Truth that did not fit the program. Truth that Jesus kept speaking and they kept resisting, a tension that finally came to the climax of Matthew 23 where Jesus charged them with being fools, blind, hypocrites who “shut up the kingdom of heaven against men.” (Matthew 23:13) Though we are not called to be such judges of our fellow-wayfarers, still, when we speak the Truth in love the Holy Spirit of God bearing witness to the Truth may penetrate the heart and mind of a listener who is in a state of resistance and thus we may find ourselves being lifted up as an evil one, a snake. The sneaky tendrils of persecution are connected to a heady hatred for Truth. But ... the darker the lies, the brighter the Truth. Stay awake for it.
Life Matters!