John 12:9-11…
The Jewish hope for the Messiah was especially heightened during Passover, when the population of Jerusalem multiplied four to six times and people would be camping all around the area. Imagine the excitement when the people who had come learned that Jesus has recently raised a man from the dead. Lazarus was the living proof of His Messianic claims.
As a result, many Jews were leaving the religion of the Pharisees and going after Jesus. As word gets out that Jesus is near, a large crowd heads toward Bethany to meet Him. They also want to see Lazarus. But while Jesus inspires the messianic hopes of some, the chief priests, who had determined earlier that Jesus must die, now decide that Lazarus must die as well. The hatred aimed at Jesus boils over against Lazarus. One sin so quickly and so easily leads to another.
How can people be so blind? For the chief priests, it was because they cared less about the truth than they did their own positions and power, which Jesus threatens. This is what happens when people no longer pursue the will of God, self-denial, and settle for the will of man, self-preservation. When we find ourselves imagining harm to our brothers and sisters and also imagining that we are somehow justified in thinking it, we are in the wrong place.
The hard heart has no real peace. It refuses to be broken and so it must always look for other things to break. It is only when we learn to sacrifice our sacred pride that we pay the price of peace. God must bring us to that place, because the hardest thing in the world is the hardened heart. Only God can break that.
1 comment:
To seek after the will of God is to be in self denial but to seek after the will of man is to be in self preservation.
Thank you for this insight sir.
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