Thoughts on Jesus of Nazareth. The Wrath of the Lamb Poured Out! The Nation of Israel and its leaders reject Jesus as the Messiah and seal their doom when He pronounces Judgment on them. One of one the most tragic and dreadful chapters in all of Scripture is Matthew chapter 23. In that chapter, Jesus scathingly pronounces Eight Woes of divine judgment on the leaders of Jerusalem and the people of Israel in that day for their irredeemable and murderous rejection of Him as Messiah and the Messianic kingdom He graciously and patiently offered them conditioned upon their repentance and faith in Him. In the movie Jesus of Nazareth, Director Franco Zeffirelli, telescopes the ending of John chapter 9 to segue into the somber events of Matthew 23. Of course, due to the time limitations, the movie has to condense the climatic chapter of Matthew 23 into a shorter dramatization--which is quite an effective scene to end the Lords public ministry to Israel on--who for the most part reject Jesus along with most of their leaders to their own detriment and destruction in the end! In the scene before us here, right after Jesus solemnly declares judgment on the Pharisees for their willful blindness of unbelief towards Him in the face of overwhelming evidence He is the Messiah of Israel, they indignantly lash out and commit the most serious of blasphemous offenses. One of the Pharisees, indicted by Jesus, angrily yells out to the Lord, This man works through the devil--he has just committed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit by attributing the miracles of Jesus to the devil-- a thing the Pharisees did earlier in Jesus ministry for which He declared there is no forgiveness for this sin now, or in the world to come (Matthew 12:22-31). The Pharisees blasphemous utterance against Gods True Messiah, Jesus, evinces he is beyond the arm of Gods salvation and is reprobate unto eternal damnation! Another Pharisee standing in the same vicinity yells out against Jesus, Hes false, a cheat, a fanatic mad man! The irreversible rejection of Jesus by the leaders of the Temple and Israel reaches a crescendo of no return! Jesus grievously knows this and now pronounces Gods awful judgment on the whole Christ rejecting lot of them for their incorrigible refusal to repent and receive Him as Messiah King--thus bringing a formal and official end to Jesus three year public ministry to Israel. Now the wrath of the Lamb is exposed--a divine attribute of God--and one Jesus has being God--which runs contrary to the effete lovey-dovey weak and mild mannered Jesus of apostate liberal Christianity today! Now that the Scribes and Pharisees have filled the cup of Gods wrath to the full, the Lord Jesus, full of the fury of the Lord (Jeremiah 6:11), now turns, pointing the finger of Gods infallible judgment at them, and gives the long over due rebuke of their various and assorted evils: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites all! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. You do not go in yourselves, nor do you allow others to enter. In Gods sight, Jesus is saying the religious leaders of Israel were not who they claimed to be--if they were of God, as they proudly boasted, they would have accepted the Messiah Jesus whom God the Father finally sent to redeem Israel and bring in the Messianic kingdom. And herein is the greatest hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees exposed by Jesus. In opposing Jesus they were preventing their followers from being saved, born again, and having entrance into the kingdom of God. The Pharisees and their followers would not go to heaven in the end; and their inveterate unbelief secured their damnation, as Jesus will later say in this scene! Next, our Lord denounces the Pharisees to be blind guides: Blind guides! You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel The Pharisees would literally strain their wine out with a cloth so that an unclean insect like a gnat would not end up in the wine, but they were in effect doing a non-kosher thing like swallowing a camel, when it came to majoring on minor things and omitting and overlooking the greater, more important things God requires of all men--justice, mercy and faith. Here they were guilty of what Jesus says: You bow before the letter of the Law and violate the heart of the Law--justice, mercy, good faith The Scribes and Pharisees gave great outward respect and acknowledgement of the Law but failed to understand and accept its real message--that all (Jew and Gentile) have sinned and come short of the glory of God and need Jesus the Messiah to save sinful mankind from the penalty and wrath of breaking Gods Law. Jesus then goes on to expose their inner moral corruption, while they deceitfully appear pure and righteous on the outside. Hence the reason why the Lord likens them to whitewashed graves with all manner of rot and corruption on the inside: You are like whited sepulchers, all clean and fair without, but within full of dead mens bones and all corruption. Like so many false Christians today, the Pharisees made a great ornate and impressive, religious show on the outside, but really were spiritually dead and morally corrupt on the inside! Following this, Jesus prophesies the total destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans that was fulfilled to the letter in 70 A.D. Because the nation rejected Gods Son, the Spirit of God and His presence would be removed from the Temple now--leaving it spiritual desolate and defiled. Jesus thunders: You see these stones, do you not. I tell you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.Yours is a house of desolation... The destruction of the Temple was so great that even to this day Israeli archaeologists are unsure of where the Holy of Holies stood! The Roman legions did dismantle each and every stone from off each other so that not one stone literally remains today from the Temple structure. A modern traveler to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem can see these very heavy and massive stones from the dismantled Temple piled up on top of each other to this day on the southern side of where the Western Wall stands in Jerusalem-- no doubt serving as mute testimony to the truth and fulfillment of Jesus prophecy in Matthew 24:1! I have seen this my self many times when going to Jerusalem! Jesus ends His pronouncement of judgment by calling the Scribes and Pharisees: Serpents, brood of vipers--how can any of you escape damnation! One of the most terrible sentences of Gods righteous judgment by the Lord Jesus is leveled here. The Scribes and Pharisees are a poisonous breed-- full of unbelief, hatred and murder for the Son of God! Their inescapable damnation to hell is now proclaimed a certain reality by Jesus because He knows their hearts will never turn in repentance and faith towards Him! The fact they will all shortly conspire to kill the Son of God in the most brutal and horrible way only shows this fact all the more! The shocked crowd following the thundering Jesus through the Temple are stunned and dumfounded as you can hear gasps of astonishment from them. The scene reaches a zenith point as Jesus now faces Zerah, the Chief Scribe, the Chief Priests, the Pharisees, and Levites. Jesus then utters a Second Coming Prophecy to the collected leadership standing there, foretelling the nations acceptance of Him when they will finally learn to receive Him for who He truly is. Concerning this, Jesus then declares, You shall not see Me here again, not until you learn to cry, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. For I am My Father are one and the Same. Boldly, and without any hesitation, Jesus identifies Himself to be God Almighty and One in being and divinity with God His Father. He is now withdrawing His physical presence from national Israel until He returns to regathered Israel at the Second Coming when they will receive Him to be both God and Messiah (Zechariah 12:10; Romans 11:23-26). The Leaders and the crowd are horrified by Jesus claim of deity and immediately shout He is a blasphemer worthy of death. Others shout, He should be stoned to death, which is the penalty under the Law of Moses for speaking blasphemy (Leviticus 24:15-16). The Jewish people of Israel missed the time of their Messianic visitation. Had the nation and its religious leaders correctly known Messianic prophecy in their own Hebrew Bible, they would have certainly known the Messiah to come would be God in the flesh (see Isaiah 9:6; Micah 5:2). Jesus immediately leaves the Second Temple to its own destruction. As He is leaving it, the people rushing up behind Jesus to cause Him physical harm, seem to be restrained by an invisible force--the Gospel of John does say several times Jesus passed through the midst of the hostile crowd when they tried to seize and kill Him (John 8:59; 10:39). They could not take Him until it was Gods time for His death on the cross. Whether the movie intentionally captures this or not, the effect is quite impressive! Jesus claim to be God causes a riot once He exits the Temple. The riot creates for Barabbas an opportunity to kill a Roman soldier in the vain attempt to start a revolution to overthrow Rome. He tries to make his way through the chaotic crowd to Jesus, denouncing Him to be a false prophet and traitor to Israel, calling for the crowd to stone Him. The Romans arrest Barabbas and Jesus is visibly shocked and saddened over the judgment of His Father on the nation of Israel for their rejection of His Son. The scene ends with Judas now realizing his presumed plans for Jesus political kingship with the agreement and permission of the Sanhedrin is now forever gone--disillusionment with Jesus sets in and will result in his betrayal of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane later on. Watch this scene here: https://youtube/watch?v=mD--lHALcm0
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 00:00:17 +0000
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