This morning I happened upon this commentary about the underlying heart motives that caused the people to choose Barrabus over Jesus. The bloodlust for their nation, prosperity, and political power led to their rejection of their Messiah, and reading this commentary made me think about our own rejection of the gospel. In times of prayer I have felt the Lord's passion and desire to correct our idolatry and misdirected allegiances to cause us to return to our first love.
Why? Because the sacrificial love of God is the only revelation that leads to our salvation-and this is our highest calling. How can we prepare to love our enemies when we are fighting them? Of course we can get out and vote, that is not what I am saying. We all know that anything, anything at all can be an idol, even our "ministries" can become the love of our lives. Satan is cunning, sly, and infinitely subtle.
Can our own nation and sense of nationalism become as important as our love for Christ and His gospel? Of course it can, and it has. So we went too far and allowed ourselves to be swayed more by the opinions and beliefs of others than by the Lord's leading, and repentance is open for all of us. The cure for our lukewarm, compromised hearts is confession. God is so like a spurned lover, and all spurned lovers deeply desire confession. I hear it every day in my office, the cry of a betrayed heart to her betrayer.. just admit that you did it!
God's heart beat for our devoted love burns off of the pages of Jeremiah. Just confess it. Admit you spurned me and turned aside to lies, but they would not, and the church by and large still will not. We would rather stiffen our necks in pride than humble ourselves to see where we may have gone astray. We are much too impressed with our spirituality to admit we may have been wrong. When was the last time you heard a pastor or leader admit that they were wrong? It's so rare! God help us. How is it that the one who was innocent could humble himself to be accused, smitten, and rejected while we, the guilty ones, always want to justify ourselves-for this correction is coming. He loves us too much to leave us this way miserable wretches that we are!
Rabbi Schneider received a dream from the Lord in which he was preaching, but as he was preaching the people were standing, hands over hearts, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Upset that the Lord may be showing him something wrong in his ministry, he was stunned to learn that God was showing him that the people were more interested in their nation than in Him!
I am so sad to say that I have been in many prayer meetings where the only cries of salvation and blessing were lifted up for the Republicans, or for those protecting our borders. Not a peep was made for the refugee children; it was politically incorrect to pray for them. That is not the spirit of God!
I recently was "righteously angry" or so I thought, about things happening in our nation. I was disgusted and horrified and had been angry for over a year. I just could not understand how people could be so dense and align themselves with evil! As I prayed about it and laid my heart before God, he said these words to me: "You are operating in a spirit of strife. The spirit of division and strife is always cloaked in a righteous cause." When I related this to an astute friend she said, "Jesus didn't serve a righteous cause." No, He served His Father by laying down His life, which is the only righteous cause that truly exists. He ask us to do the same to glorify the Father.
It was not because He claimed to be the Messiah that they gave Him up to Pilate, but because He would not meet their notions of what the Messiah should be and do. If He had called them to arms, not a man of them would have betrayed Him to Pilate, but all, or the more daring of them, would have rallied to His standard. Their hate was the measure of their deep disappointment with His course. If instead of showing love and meekness, He had blown up the coals of religious hatred; if instead of going about doing good, He had mustered the men of lawless Galilee for a revolt, would these fawning hypocrites have dragged him to Pilate on the charge of forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and of claiming to be a King? Why, there was not one of them but would have been glad to murder every tax-gatherer in Palestine, not one of them but bore inextinguishable in his inmost heart the faith in 'one Christ a King.' And if that meek and silent martyr had only lifted His finger, He might have had legions of His accusers at His back, ready to sweep Pilate and his soldiers out of Jerusalem. They saw Christ's goodness and holiness. It did not attract them. They wanted a Messiah who would bring them outward freedom by the use of outward weapons, and so they all shouted 'Not this man but Barabbas!' The whole history of the nation was condensed in that one cry -- their untamable obstinacy, their blindness to the light of God, their fierce grasp of the promises which they did not understand, their hard worldliness, their cruel patriotism, their unquenchable hatred of their oppressors, which was only equalled by their unquenchable hatred of those who showed them the only true way for deliverance.
And this strange paradox is not confined to these Jews. It is repeated wherever Christ is presented to men. We are told that all men naturally admire goodness, and so on. Men mostly know it when they see it, but I doubt whether they all either admire or like it. People generally had rather have something more outward and tangible. It is not spiritualising this incident, but only referring it to the principle of which it is an illustration, to ask you to see in it the fatal choice of multitudes. Christ is set before us all, and His beauty is partially seen but is dimmed by externals. Men's desires are fixed on gross sensuous delights, or on success in business, or on intellectual eminence, or on some of the thousand other visible and temporal objects that outshine, to vulgar eyes, the less dazzling lustre of the things unseen. They appreciate these, and make heroes of the men who have won them. These are their ideals, but of Jesus they have little care.
And is it not true that all such competitors of His, when they lead men to prefer them to Him, are 'murderers,' in a sadder sense than Barabbas was? Do they not slay the souls of their admirers? Is it not but too ghastly a reality that all who thus choose them draw down ruin on themselves and 'love death'?
This fatal paradox is being repeated every day in the lives of thousands. The crowds who yelled, 'Not this man but Barabbas!' were less guilty and less mad than those who to-day cry, 'Not Jesus but worldly wealth, or fleeting bodily delights, or gratified ambition!'
-Exerpt from Alexander MacLaren:
'The Prince of Life' (biblehub.com)
Reading these words I can't help but think of dear Smith Wigglesworth who one week before his death broke down sobbing to a friend that the people knew his name more than Jesus. It broke his heart that he was being lifted up for fear that his Lord was standing in his famous shadow. Oh that we would share his heart!
Comments