Hatred of Christ
Notes
Transcript
The other day I bought a thesaurus, but when I got home and opened it, all the pages were blank. I have no word to describe how angry I am.
Good morning
Thank you to everyone who was able to come out yesterday and help around the church. We got a lot done. We still have more to do, so we will be meeting again on Saturday to try and get the list completed. Please come and help if you can.
Continue to pray for the 50th anniversary in two weeks!
Pray for Kyle as he has asked to preach next Sunday!
After service we are going to have our business meeting
Today we are going to be in Mark 14:1-2.
Last week we finished up chapter 13. Jesus finished His Olivet discourse with a parable about a master who left and while he was gone, he gave his servants jobs to do and he told the door keeper to stay awake, because we don’t know when the master is coming home. Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, He is coming back. He tells us that no one knows the day or hour of His return, only God knows. We all have jobs to do and one that every Christian has to do is go and make disciples. We do not want to be found sleeping when Jesus returns. We want to be found doing our Father’s work, then we will hear, “well done, my good and faithful servant”. Jesus has told us the signs to know when His return is near, we are to be on watch for those signs while we are being obedient to His commands. Christianity is not an idle religion. We are called to be active and obedient. The Bible tells us that if we love Him, we will keep His commands. 1 John 5:3 “3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” If we truly love God, we will do what He tells us to do. Jesus is coming back, we need to be ready for that day, we need to have done all that we can in preparation for that day. I’m not ready, I didn’t know, will not be a excuse for being found asleep. There will be know excuse on that day, there will be no decisions on that day. On that day you will either spend eternity in heaven or hell. You need to make that choice today, if you wait, it might be to late.
Today we are going to look at the hatred that the religious leaders had for Jesus and their plot to kill Him. They hated Jesus, but they fear the people more. They had no fear of God only man.
Big Idea
In a world filled with opposition and betrayal, we are called to trust in God’s sovereignty and remain faithful to Jesus, who remains steadfast in His love for us even in the face of death.
Please stand as we read God’s word
1 It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, 2 for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”
They are two days from the most important feast and holiday for the Jewish people. It is similar to our 4th of July. It had to be celebrated in Jerusalem. Imagine if all of the US went to Washington DC to celebrate the 4th of July! It would be madness. The city could not handle than many people. It was similar in Jerusalem. The city would have been over crowded and busting at the seams. Some historians believe that as many as 2 million people would have been in the city at this time. That is a lot of people, even today. The Passover is a celebration and remembrance of freedom. The freedom that God gave them as He led them out of Egypt. They were commanded to remember it every year. It gets its name from the 10th plague that God sent to the Egyptians that finally allowed Pharaoh to release the Jews and let them leave. They were to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood on the door posts and the lintel. This blood was a sign for the death angel to Passover the house and not to kill the first born in that house. Through this 10th plague that God brought on the Egyptians, God’s people were allowed to leave Egypt. This lamb that they sacrificed to keep the death angel from entering their homes was a symbol of The Passover Lamb, the Lamb of God, that would cause God’s judgement to Passover all those who are covered by His blood. That Passover was a foreshadowing of what Jesus was going to do on the cross. Through His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection, whom so ever will receive His sacrifice will not see God’s judgement, it will Passover them. The whole Bible points to what we are going to see soon in Mark, the sacrifice of Jesus and His resurrection. We get to see God’s love, mercy, and grace for us through His son. We have more to celebrate today, than the Israelites did back then. They had a temporary Passover that got them out of Egypt, we have received a permanent Passover that keeps us out of eternity in Hell. Our freedom is permanent, theirs was temporary. Every day that God gives us is a day that we should endeavor to glorify Him for all that He has done for us. Every day should be a celebration of freedom for the true believer!
Next we see that just 2 days from the festive, the time of great joy and happiness, a time of celebration, the chief priests and the scribes are trying to come up with a way to arrest and kill Jesus quietly. A time when they should have been preparing to lead their people in this remembrance of what God did for them, they should have been preparing their hearts and minds to worship God, but instead they filled them with hate! This hatred is not something that just happened. They have hated Him for years. They have been trying to kill him every chance they could.
6 The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
Jesus had just healed a man on the sabbath in a synagogue. That made them mad.
18 And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.
This was the first time that Jesus cleared out the temple. Again this made them mad.
49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. 50 Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” 51 He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. 53 So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.
This was right after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the grave. Many of the Jews who were there saw what He did and believed in Him, but some went to the Pharisee and told them what Jesus had done. This made them nervous. They were worried about the people, that they would stop listening to them and only listen to Jesus. They would lose all their power, the thing they loved most.
They wanted to kill Jesus years before this, but that was not in God’s timing, so He prevented it from happening.
59 So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
Jesus had just said that He was God and that sent the leaders into a fury. They would have killed Him right then, but it wasn’t time, so Jesus hid himself and left. God has a time for all His plans and nothing will happen until He is ready for it to happen. Just like we are all ready for Jesus to return, but it is not the right time.
This is not a new hatred of Jesus. This hatred didn’t happen in the last few days, the religious leaders have hated Jesus for years. They have wanted to kill Him for years. We can see this in the Scripture. We can see also God’s sovereignty in that He did not let Jesus be killed until it was His time.
All things proceed on God’s timetable, and Jesus Christ was sacrificed for us right on time, right when God had ordained it to happen.
Finally, we can see that the religious leader were afraid of the people. They were afraid that if they made the people upset by arresting Jesus, there would be a riot and that would get the Romans involved. The Romans only let the religious leader stay in charge as long as they could keep the people at bay and under control. If a riot broke out, they would run the risk of losing their power and control. This are what they truly cared about. They had no real fear of God, only of losing their power. They loved having power and they loved how the people treated them while they were in power. They walked around in their special robes and had their heads held high, they truly thought they were better than the common people. They lorded their power and status over them. They knew that if they arrested Jesus publicly, it would not be good for them, they needed to do it quietly and out of the publics sight. They were sneaky, deceitful men who would do anything to keep their power, even kill their coveted Messiah, the Son of God.
What they didn’t realize is that they were not truly in control, things were going just as God knew they would. Nothing was happening that God didn’t already know was going to happen. They were actually glorifying God and His son by doing what they were doing. Because of what they did, we have salvation available to us today. Their hatred and murder, brought love and life to the world. God used their evil desires and actions to show just how much He loves us. He used them to sacrifice His Son so that we could have the permanent Passover Lamb. So that we could be made right in our relationship with God. We were dead in our sins, and through the hate and evil of the religious leaders of that time, we are given life and love. God is so good.
We can see that even in the face of betrayal and opposition, Jesus continued to do the work that His Father sent Him to do. He didn’t let how other people felt about Him or how they treated Him stop Him from being obedient to His Father’s will. This should encourage us to stand firm in our faith, even when it feels like everyone is against us, just like Jesus did. Remember that God is in control and He is sovereign over our circumstances. Even when it seems darkest in our lives, we can still taste the goodness of God, we can still feel His love. We as His children can be confident that He loves us and He will provide for us.
If you have not tasted the love and goodness of Jesus Christ, it is available to you today. He died so that who ever would believe could have eternal life.
Today it is not to late to receive His gift. There will be a day that it will be to late. Don’t wait
His love and mercy is so great! We live in a dark world, today you can have His light in you.
You can feel His love and experience true forgiveness.
All you have to do is repent of your sins and believe in Jesus Christ as God’s Son who died to be the forgiveness our your sins.
If you haven’t done that, do it today!
Let’s pray
