Jealous persecution
This week is on John 12:9-11:
These verses pretty much sum up why persecution takes place in a lot of places in the world. The Pharisees were the established church and political system in Roman Palestine. They controlled the culture that surrounded them. It was a huge amount of power and they had held it for generations.
Then Jesus comes on the scene and nothing they can do to badmouth him works. All of their campaigning and posturing and subterfuge comes to nothing. Jesus is still popular. The culture was changing to make the Pharisees irrelevant. The people were following Jesus, and not the Pharisee establishment. People were more interested in Jesus and his miraculous power than they were in the rules and moral oppression of the Pharisee regime.
The Pharisees were frightened and angry. How dare Jesus threaten their empire? What if they found themselves on the outside, subject to the oppressive rule of others? What would happen to their revenue streams, their taxes and tithes, the ability to shape behavior and control the masses? Their only desperate option for clinging to power was to kill Jesus and kill Lazarus.
Take a moment and think of the depravity of that option for a minute. They could be forgiven for imagining that Jesus was playing the same political game as them and wanted the same power and influence as they coveted themselves, but Lazarus? He was an innocent bystander! And yet they were willing to kill them both to hide the evidence that God was greater, all to try to protect their power.
This sort of thing happens all over the world even to this day. Governments and false religions and ideologies are frightened and angry over how poorly they measure up to Jesus. They assume that Christians are just as power-hungry as they are, and react to eliminate the threat. It's depraved and tragic, but these are the actions of deluded people who are addicted to power.
It's interesting to see how long this has been happening. You'd think that two thousand years later we'd be done with persecution, but it's a sin as old as Cain and Abel. As Jesus said, people don't know what it is they're doing when they decide to kill Christians.
When someone persecutes you for being a Christian, be thankful that they can see God's greatness through your life. Pray for the persecutors, because they're drunk on power, and when they sober up and realize what they did, they'll probably feel horrible. Forgive them because they're dumb and jealous and focused on the wrong things.
Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him.
These verses pretty much sum up why persecution takes place in a lot of places in the world. The Pharisees were the established church and political system in Roman Palestine. They controlled the culture that surrounded them. It was a huge amount of power and they had held it for generations.
Then Jesus comes on the scene and nothing they can do to badmouth him works. All of their campaigning and posturing and subterfuge comes to nothing. Jesus is still popular. The culture was changing to make the Pharisees irrelevant. The people were following Jesus, and not the Pharisee establishment. People were more interested in Jesus and his miraculous power than they were in the rules and moral oppression of the Pharisee regime.
The Pharisees were frightened and angry. How dare Jesus threaten their empire? What if they found themselves on the outside, subject to the oppressive rule of others? What would happen to their revenue streams, their taxes and tithes, the ability to shape behavior and control the masses? Their only desperate option for clinging to power was to kill Jesus and kill Lazarus.
Take a moment and think of the depravity of that option for a minute. They could be forgiven for imagining that Jesus was playing the same political game as them and wanted the same power and influence as they coveted themselves, but Lazarus? He was an innocent bystander! And yet they were willing to kill them both to hide the evidence that God was greater, all to try to protect their power.
This sort of thing happens all over the world even to this day. Governments and false religions and ideologies are frightened and angry over how poorly they measure up to Jesus. They assume that Christians are just as power-hungry as they are, and react to eliminate the threat. It's depraved and tragic, but these are the actions of deluded people who are addicted to power.
It's interesting to see how long this has been happening. You'd think that two thousand years later we'd be done with persecution, but it's a sin as old as Cain and Abel. As Jesus said, people don't know what it is they're doing when they decide to kill Christians.
When someone persecutes you for being a Christian, be thankful that they can see God's greatness through your life. Pray for the persecutors, because they're drunk on power, and when they sober up and realize what they did, they'll probably feel horrible. Forgive them because they're dumb and jealous and focused on the wrong things.
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