In His Own Words -- Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – Jesus and the Prophets

Cultural Christians, and most other despisers of the biblical Jesus, approve of the Sermon on the Mount. After all, it contains their favorite verse, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Of course, they fail to notice that later in the same chapter, Jesus tells us how to judge false prophets. Never mind that. Isn’t the essential message of the Sermon on the Mount, “Be nice to everybody, and they will be nice to you?”

Well, in a word, NO! The Sermon on the Mount tells us how to live a life of radical discipleship as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. And who is the king of that kingdom? It is Jesus. Consider what He says about Himself in the opening paragraph of the sermon.

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:10-12).

Look carefully at what Jesus is saying. Persecution for the sake of righteousness is not persecution for being a nice, law-abiding citizen. It is equivalent to persecution for the sake of Jesus. Furthermore, the disciples of Jesus are like the prophets of old who were persecuted for delivering the message of Yahweh.[1]

The disciples of Jesus who proclaim His message are like the prophets who proclaimed the word of the Lord. The prophets were hated for God’s sake. The disciples are hated for Jesus’ sake. These parallels are strengthened in subsequent sayings of Jesus.

Jesus Sends Prophets

Near the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus said to the Pharisees who had rejected Him,

Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.... Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her (Matthew 23: 34-35, 37a)!

The whole Old Testament clearly teaches that neither angels nor great men send the prophets. God, and God alone, has that prerogative. Yet Jesus sends prophets.

To the rebellious Jews of Jeremiah’s day, Yahweh said, “Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all My servants the prophets, daily rising early and sending them” (Jeremiah 7:25-26). “Listen to the words of My servants the prophets, whom I have been sending to you again and again, but you have not listened” (Jeremiah 26:4-5). “Also I have sent to you all My servants the prophets, sending them again and again” (Jeremiah 35:15).

God was patient and persistent. He did not send Israel one messenger. He sent them many prophets throughout their long, rebellious history. Likewise, Jesus predicted that He would be sending “prophets and wise men and scribes” who would encounter determined, implacable rejection. Moreover, Jesus places His prophetic messengers on the same plane as the prophets of old who warned to rebellious Jerusalem.

Under His Wings

Earlier in this chapter I quoted only the first part of Matthew 23:37. Here is the whole of it.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.

Here, Jesus claims that He is the One who sent the Old Testament prophets in an effort to gather the “children” of Jerusalem under His wings. (In biblical terminology, the “children” of a city are its inhabitants.)

To come under the wings of Yahweh is to find refuge and protection in Him. Boaz blessed the foreigner Ruth because she had left her father’s house and her father’s gods, saying “May the Lord reward your work, and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge” (Ruth 2:12). When David fled from Saul, he prayed, “My soul takes refuge in You; and in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge until destruction passes by” (Psalm 57:1). Similar expressions occur in Psalm 17:8; 36:7; and 91:4).

Jesus did not simply invite the Old Testament Jewish people to take shelter under His wings. Hundreds of years before He was born on earth, He actively sought to gather them under His wings. He said, “How often I wanted to gather your children.” This is another work of God. What the Lord sought to do through His prophets, He will effectively do when He gathers the dispersed refugees of Israel at the end of the age.

“If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lordyour God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back” (Deuteronomy 30:4). “For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you” (Isaiah 54:7). Similar expressions are common throughout the Old Testament.

Prophets and angels do not gather the people of God to themselves, but Jesus uses prophets and preachers to seek and to gather His lost ones under His wings to protect them from the wrath to come.

When I was a child one of the stories that fascinated me was the parable of The Little Red Hen by Mrs. Floyd McCague. One day a mother hen sensed the danger of a rapidly approaching prairie fire. She clucked to her little chicks to come and find shelter under her wings. After the fire had swept through the barnyard, the farmer returned. There he found the charred body of the little red hen, but when he pushed her over with his foot, her little chicks scurried out from under her blackened wings. One little chick, however, had refused to listen to his mother’s call, and he was found burned and dead a few feet away from her. The lesson to my childish heart was clear. Listen to the call of Jesus. He is seeking to gather His little ones to protect them from the coming fire of judgment.

Hated for Jesus’ Sake

In the sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that His disciples would be hated for His sake. This is a common theme in the teaching of Jesus.

Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved (Matthew 10:21-22).
Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name (Matthew 24:9).
Remember the word that I said to you, “A slave is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me (John 15:20).

Recently, David S. Buckel, a nationally known attorney, burned himself alive as a protest against the widespread use of fossil fuels. The Old Testament, never encouraged people to commit suicide for some cause that is dear to them. That idea is entirely foreign to the biblical way of thinking and speaking. They did, however, suffer for the sake of God.

For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (Psalm 44:22).
Because for Your sake I have borne reproach; dishonor has covered my face. I have become estranged from my brothers and an alien to my mother's sons. For zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me (Psalm 69:7-9).
You who know, O Lord, remember me, take notice of me, and take vengeance for me on my persecutors. Do not, in view of Your patience, take me away; know that for Your sake I endure reproach (Jeremiah 15:15).

The disciples and prophets of Jesus suffer for the His sake just as godly prophets of old suffered for speaking in the name of Yahweh. Jesus commands us to suffer in His name and for His sake. No angel, or no mere man, has the authority to command us to suffer for his sake, but Jesus does. Before He was born, Jesus sent the prophets of the Old Covenant to preach to Israel and to suffer. (Don’t miss the astounding boldness of this claim!) Under the New Covenant, He sent first-century prophets, and He continues to send “wise men and scribes” to suffer in His name. He has the right to do this because He is God.

He has the right to command you and me to speak in His name and to suffer for His sake because He is God. Will you speak boldly and yet gently in the name of Christ? Are you willing to be sent by Him into your workplace, your neighborhood, or around the world?

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[1] Yahweh is the most likely pronunciation of the Old Testament name for God. This name occurs over 6,000 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, and never in the Greek New Testament. English translations normally represent it by Lord or God, all in capitals. The traditional transliteration, Jehovah, is based on a misunderstanding of the Hebrew vowel points.

Jesus' Death Was Not a Defeat

Several years ago, a Muslim man told me that according to his religion, Jesus did not die on the cross. He said that Jesus was a righteous prophet, and that God would never allow such a good man to suffer so horribly.

That is a natural way of looking at the world. We instinctively think that nice things should happen to good people, and unpleasant things should happen to bad people. Of course, this sin-damaged world does not work that way. I deal with the larger problem of evil in my book, The Beauty of God for a Broken World. In this column, I want to address the more limited question implied by the challenge above: Was the death of Jesus compatible with God’s moral government of the world?

1) God didn’t allow Jesus to be captured and killed. God planned it. The apostle Peter said that Jesus, who was “delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23).

2) The greatest suffering of Jesus was not His physical agony, but the wrath of God poured out on Him for our sins. “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.... The Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief” (Isaiah 53:5, 10).

3) Jesus was not captured and killed against His will. He said, “I lay down My life for the sheep.... I lay down my life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:15, 17-18).

4) Jesus was not just a man picked by God for this fate. He was God who took on our human nature in order to save us. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14).

5) By His death and resurrection, Jesus accomplished two great works: First, He paid the debt of sin for all who trust in Him. Second, He trounced the devil and all his demons. “He cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them” (Colossians 2:14-15). Jesus’ death was not a defeat. It was the first move in a grand victory.

6) Therefore, the crucifixion of Jesus was not an example of God deserting a good man to a horrible fate. It was God’s way of taking on Himself the punishment we deserve so that He was able to uphold His own moral law and yet save those who deserved to die. The cross demonstrated God’s “righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 6:26).

The death of Christ on the cross was not a failure of God’s moral government. Praise God! It was the upholding of that government along with incredible mercy and love. As we approach Good Friday and Easter, I urge you to enter by faith into a saving relationship with the crucified, risen Lord Jesus.

[This post first appeared with one minor difference in the Allentown Morning Call on March 9^th, 2013 In that post I did not identify the religion of the man who objected to the death of Christ.]