Close your eyes. Can you see the scene? It is a huge mob of people lining the road into Jerusalem. Outer coats are spread on the ground, huge branches are waving over the procession. At the center of all this is Jesus the Nazarene, riding on a young donkey. What's that they are shouting? "Hosanna to the Son of David!" It is quite the spectacle--Jesus, the servant Messiah is on his way to Jerusalem. Only he knows what fate awaits him in the Holy City. Before that fate is realized, though, Jesus has some final business to conduct and some sharp teaching to administer.
Words of condemnation are not usually put on Jesus' lips. We like to hear Jesus say, "go and sin no more" or "neither do I condemn you". However, Jesus reserves these words of condemnation for the self-righteous of his day; those who believed themselves, by virtue of their social postion, to be better than others. Unfortunately, it was the religious leaders who were targets of Jesus' most stinging words. They seem to have seen their positon as something to be exploited instead of used to draw others closer to God.
Despite the sharp words Jesus uses, I have to believe that Jesus was not so much condemning the religious leaders as condemning their actions and attitudes. It was the fact that they were using their positon for their own benefit that enraged Jesus. Here we see a sharp contrast between earthly priests and the Heavenly Priest--Jesus was all about humbling himself, the religious leaders were all about building themselves up. It was Jesus' criticism of their lifestyle and threat to their authority and power that caused them to reject Jesus. It wasn't that they were bad people-they were blinded to the point of not being able to see the truth being presented to them.
This account raises a question for us to consider: how do we react when we feel God rebuking or criticizing us? How do we react when our toes "get stepped on"? For some, the reaction is one of repulsion--the "I'm going to take my ball and leave" reaction that does not allow for any correction of attitudes or action by God. Others are able to accep the feeling as a lesson and move on. How about you?
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