Seven Trumpets [part four] ...

We continue our examination of the seven trumpets from part three of this series.  One woe is past, two are yet to come.  The sounding of the sixth trumpet is to correspond to the second woe poured out upon the earth.  The first woe that emerged from the darkness was so thick it inspired a desire for death, rather than to endure the poison of the scorpion locust army that tormented those men who had not the seal of God in their foreheads for a period of 5 months (or 150 years, if we apply the day for a year interpretation).  A darkness so terrible as to inspire a wish for death that would not come, should be enough to give us pause.  Have we embraced the poisoned doctrines of secular atheism that would deny us our meaning and our worth?  Or have we embraced the poisoned doctrines of self-created salvation that would offer us the lie of perfection within our own grasp by simple choice and will, absent the need for a savior?  Indeed the fifth trumpet sounding was to wake us from these woes, but the sixth trumpet is ready to sound, what is the message it carries?

John continues his revelation of Jesus Christ in the ninth chapter and verse 13 writing … “And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, [verse 14] Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.”  The reference to an altar that is “before God” implies another similarity between the original worship system defined for the Israelites who wandered the desert and the heavenly archetype it represents.  Similarly, while the need for the altar and continued sacrifice is no more, having met its fulfillment in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as our Lamb of God, it remains a reminder of what was done in order that you and I might be freed from our slavery to self.  It stands as a memorial to what it took, what Love was willing to pay, to see your value realized, to see your meaning realized, to see your freedom realized. 

The message given from the altar is to the sixth angel to go and loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.  The idea conveyed that something, or some event had up till now been restrained that is about to be loosed and allowed to work its course.  Often the forces of evil are restrained by God, and kept in check.  If this were not the case, evil would overwhelm the world and kill everything in its path.  Evil has no mercy.  Evil has no restraint.  Evil has no sense of enough; it has only a hunger for more.  When once, the slavery of serving self is embraced, its end cannot be found in any other path but death.  It is why our Savior is needed to alter this course, and see us find life, instead of the highway to death our choices would otherwise result in.  The wages of sin being death is not the result of a judging God, but rather the consequence of a hunger that will only deepen until death offers it a final release.

John continues in verse 15 … “And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. [verse 16] And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.”  The first element to the work of the four angels bound in the river Euphrates who were now loosed was that of the time of their work.  The preparation they had made, or the time they were allotted, was an hour, a day, a month and a year.  The second element uniquely identified to this woe is the number of horsemen being an army of 200 million.  The original scorpion locust army had no such designation in numbers, only thought of as swarms that appear without end.  While the central point of origin is here identified in the region of the river Euphrates, also associated with this woe, is a specific amount of time, and a specific amount of participants.  Also identified here was the goal, to slay the third part of men.  Yet another result being associated with the “thirds” as outlined in the earlier trumpets sounding.

John continues in verse 17 … “And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. [verse 18] By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. [verse 19] For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.”  Very similar to the original scorpion locust army these were horsemen.  They had similar characteristics but to these were added the issue of smoke and fire out of the mouths of these horsemen.  Gunfire is the most apt application for this symbolism were we to look for a more literal association.  But as with the original scorpion locust army, the power to hurt men was still in their tails, in the poison of the doctrines of their mouths, the doctrines of serpents with heads, that cause pain.  And their result was the death of the third part of men they had prepared to kill.  Great is this woe.

John now records the effects of what has been unleashed as he continues in verse 20 … “And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: [verse 21] Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.”  In the days of Israel of old, God would remove His protective hand from them when they used His blessings on themselves, believing they could worship whatever gods they wanted, and perform any acts of selfishness that brought them pleasure, while still claiming to be God’s people by right of birth.  It was when Israel strayed so far, indulging self, and self-passions, that they rationalized it was acceptable to throw the unwanted offspring of adultery with temple prostitutes into the fires of Moloch, or Baal, that it was time for an intervention by our God.  Likewise in the times of this trumpet the forces of the four angels bound in the Euphrates are unleashed upon the earth in order that the evil choices and doctrines embraced by those who claim to serve God might be revealed for the folly they are.  The intent of these interventions was to cause us to see the results of our choices and our embrace of selfishness.

Summarized in these two verses are again a call to love God, and worship Him only, our Creator.  Also is contained the basis of loving each other.  Sound familiar?  When Christ summarized the Ten Commandment law He referred to both of these principles in order.  Love God first, for without this no other love is possible.  After having chosen to love God, we can then begin to learn what it truly means to love each other.  Here in verse 20, is a reference to our love of the real God, having gone astray to instead loving “the works of our hands”.  Whether those works are made manifest in idols of gold or wood, or stone; or whether they emerge as large corporations, or large homes, or large personal accomplishments – what remains the same is our tendency and natural desire to worship what we do, and who we are.  This common thread unites secular atheism, with the Catholicism of the dark ages, with the practices of Islam – the tendency to rely upon self, our actions, and our will, to see us saved from evil.  But again John records the calling out of our loss of the love of the true God.  And he again records the results of what happens when this love is lost.  We begin to think killing is ok, or good.  We begin to think we can substitute sorcery for the power of God.  We begin to think fornication is good, and theft is only natural.  Our conscience towards other men is dulled, by our desire to see self praised and worshiped ahead of any God or any idea of God.

To carry the seal of God, is to know loving Him first, and through gentle submission to Him, find ourselves learning to love like He does.  God does not love and show love to Himself.  Instead He shows it to us, freely, and without restraint, as we allow Him to do so.  The darkness that the four angels unleash continues the woe begun in the sounding of the fifth angel’s trumpet.  That warning went unheeded and now the stakes are raised.  Instead of mere torment, the third part of men find the destruction their actions and beliefs have led to.  Instead of embracing the repentance this woe was designed to illicit, men only deepen in the darkness they have embraced.  They add to their crimes, an embrace of dark supernatural influences in the form of sorceries.  It appears this final warning is to go unheeded as well. 

If we look to interpret this sixth trumpet from a spiritual context in a message to the church we might find several interpretations.  First, it might be found in the rise of the kingdom of Babylon which is predicted to occur right before the second coming of our Lord.  Babylon, and the darkness of self service, combined with a denial of any God, is surely on the rise.  Atheistic leanings invade the church as many believers begin to doubt the miracles outlined in scripture which give example to the power and supremacy of our God.  Creation is doubted, and evolution is theorized instead.  Noah’s ark is considered fable and allegory.  Virgin birth is denied.  Before you know it, the Bible is reduced to story-telling of morals designed to scare or guilt its readers into submission.  And many within Christianity embrace some level of this poison from the scorpion into what they believe, never seeing the pain it will bring, and the results is will bear. 

A second interpretation from a spiritual context might be found in the Time of Crisis that begins in the 1800’s and extends to the final second coming of Christ.  Our faith has long suffered the effects of looking at self to find salvation from evil.  We have perverted texts that discuss the evidence of our transformation from submission to Christ as witnessed in what we do when we are in harmony with Him; as instead pre-requisites we are able to perform by our own sheer will.  We put the deeds ahead of the reason and motives for the deeds.  We claim faith without works is dead, as if works could illicit and inspire faith, instead of the other way around.  The devil has introduced this sophistry to confuse and bewilder, and ultimately depress the believer with the truthful realization he is “not good enough”, and “nor will he ever be”.  Our own actions and will power is simply not enough to see us rid from sin.  We fail repeatedly, until the tempter inspires us to give up, and give in.  But we fail, not because it is impossible, but because it is impossible for us doing it the way we do – of our own strength.  It was never intended to be so.  It is ONLY through submission that we find His perfection worked within us.  It is ONLY through submission that we are brought into harmony with His laws, and learn to love like He does.  The work of our perfection belongs to Him, not to us.  The poison of looking to self for salvation, has stunted the growth of the gospel, and our own Christian experience.  We have no victories to claim, and live like our contemporaries, because we do not allow ourselves to be transformed by His power.  We do not allow Him to change what we want, fearing to lose those things we desire.  We fear His true transformation of who we are, as if we would lose something that actually matters when it does not. 

This poisoned understanding of salvation, that we can do it for ourselves, or in a “partnership” with God, where we do all we can first, and then allow God to make up the difference; it is these poisoned ideas that keep us in a perpetual state of pain, guilt, and grief.  It does not present the freedom and liberation of the gospel to the world.  Instead it presents a picture of self-loathing and judgmentalism of others that offers no appeal, no lure, instead only alienates those who need His love the most.  We are no different than those we are attempting to witness to, because we have not abandoned self any more than they have.  We still want what they want, and do what they do.  We are not truly transformed by Christ into the new creation He intends us to be, because we refuse to rely upon Him to do so.  We look to do this work for ourselves and the poison of the scorpion remains within us.  Our crisis is self-created.  We could end it, with a simple recognition that submission to Christ brings real change, real reform, and a real freedom to love we have yet to truly experience.

To see this trumpet in a more political context could be found in the rise of the Ottoman Empire.  The first element of the prophecy, namely that of timing, (391 years applying the day for a year principle) corresponds to history from 1449 to 1840, or from 1453 to 1844 depending on which events one uses to measure it.  Much like its predecessor, the doctrines of Islam are the motivating influence behind the wars and the conquests that ensue.  And the opposition that fights against this expansion also fights from a misguided sense of spiritual motivation.  In either case the edict of toleration seems to mark the end of this period of work of the powers that emerged from the Euphrates region and swept across one third of the world.  Earlier studies of this trumpet marked the time down to the very day, which offers further evidence that perhaps this method of interpretation has merit.

To see this trumpet sounding in a more modernistic method is to presume another regional war is coming (or has been taking place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Israel) for some period of time now.  Another Middle Eastern war is not out of the question as recent history has demonstrated.  Kuwait was only recently a victim of this.  Terrorism which while state-less, has its tentacles in nearly every Middle Eastern country could also be seen as factor towards a more modernistic interpretation.  Obviously to see this fulfilled in our day, a 391 day period would be more literal.  And the number of 200 million participants seems to sound more like populations affected, than the literal size of the military effort that might be undertaken in that region.  But who knows, how a future event of that size might transpire?

Again, the most salient and important question to ask regarding any potential interpretation of this trumpet sounding is, how do we see the redemption mission of Jesus Christ met in what is relayed?  From a spiritual context, whether as a warning against the rise of the Kingdom of Babylon, or as a rebuke to folly in the Time of Crisis that ends His second coming, it seems the trumpet is sounding to call us to repentance.  If we are to heed the warning call, we must return to loving God, instead of the idolatry of loving the works of our hands.  We must return to loving others, forsaking the sorceries that vie for our attention, forsaking the ideas that killing others in the name of any religion is anything more than fallacy, forsaking the theft that would indulge our self-service; and instead we should embrace the idea of truly loving others like He loves them.   To find His seal in our foreheads will require our submission to Him in order that He might bring us into harmony with His law, and His character.  We must abandon who we are, and seek for Him to re-make us, into who He would have us to be.

From a political context, the rise of the Ottoman Empire has had its day, another in the sequence of our empires.  Rome is gone.  The Muslim alternative remains only another part of the mix of clay and iron in the feet of the statue.  Our God calls us to find our salvation in our Savior.  We are not to look at the magnificent works of art of the great Cathedrals of our faith, and transfer our worship to the images of what they were made to represent.  Great works of art may be admired for their craftsmanship and artistry, but not as substitutes for what they represent.  God is not found in Cathedrals or Mosques, but in the human heart where He belongs, but only as we allow Him a position there.  If we are to be saved, we must be willing TO BE Saved.  One does not save themselves, they are saved by something greater than themselves.  This message is consistent in the sixth trumpet whether looking spiritually, politically, or even with a modern lens.

To find the sounding of the seventh trumpet we would have to jump ahead in scripture past 2 significant other prophecies.  So part five that will conclude this series will be delayed while the other 2 significant prophecies are examined for what they tell us in the meantime.  But there is one more trumpet left to sound …

 

Messages to the Church Revealed (Smyrna) ...

John continues relaying the messages revealed to him for the church of Jesus in chapter 2 of Revelations and verse 8 … “And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;”.  Again the author is identified as Christ.  This time the revelation is centered around our concept of time.  Christ says of Himself, that He is “the first and the last”.  In this Christ reminds us that He pre-dates our existence, and will last beyond it.  In this sense, time is not measured in earthly consecutive days and hours, but in the vastness of eternity.  This perspective on the reality of our God, should inspire us to think and believe that our earthly lives are NOT the end game God has in mind for us.  There is an existence outside of how we measure time here that is of far more importance.  That existence is not bound by the limitations of this one, and is only possible through the mechanism of Jesus Christ.

Next Christ again describes Himself as one who “was dead and is alive”.  Death itself could not hold our creator in its grasp, nor will it have any power over those who the Creator extends the gift of salvation to.  Should we lose our mortal lives, there is hope beyond our sleep.  There will be an awakening like Christ was awakened and through His power, we will live again, in an existence where time has no meaning and decay is a thing of our long distant past.  But our resurrection has more meaning than just from our physical condition of death, it also has relevance in our spiritual existence.  When we embrace sin, we embrace the pain and death that comes with sin.  They are inseparable.   But the power of Christ and His redemptive love, can resurrect us from our current spiritual condition of death, and show us what it means to truly live, now and after.  We need not wait for the final resurrection to be raised unto life today.  We can experience what it truly means to love others, as Christ loves them, and in so doing, know the bliss and perfection of the gift He offers in the here and now.  This resurrection is possible ahead of our physical graves, and carries immediacy and relevance to us today.

John continues in verse 9 … “I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”  Jesus begins His message to Smyrna to once again remind them that He is engaged and aware of what is happening in that church.  He knows what works His Spirit has inspired among the believers there and what the results of that outpouring has been.  He praises the patience and forbearance in tribulation.  He notes the perceived poverty, but reveals that the lack of earthly wealth has not diminished in any way the treasure of wealth that has been laid up in heaven.  It was common practice in the early church that upon joining, a member would sell everything they owned, and donate the entire amount to the church, to be shared with anyone who had need.  This was way beyond the concept of tithing.  It was literally a 100% commitment to God, with nothing held back for ourselves.  But the end result of course, was a complete lack of personal finances, position, or earthly wealth.  Here Christ endorses this practice and reminds us that our sharing of our means is aligned with heaven and is more important than any hoarding of our means.

Then Christ addresses the topic of blasphemy.  He does not state that the false claim of these blasphemers is that they claim to be God, but rather they claim to be Jews, when in fact they are of the synagogue of Satan.  While Christ Himself setup the original religion and practices the Jewish people followed since the days of Creation (the Sabbath), Adam (sacrifice), Abraham (dedication and circumcision), Moses (the Law on the tables of stone), Solomon (the construction of the Temple), Nehemiah (the restoration of the Temple).  Christ had also come as the Messiah, and was the fulfillment of all the prophecies that pointed forward to His work of our redemption.  Upon rejecting Him, what was once His own religion; rejected now its own God.  To claim that salvation exists outside of Christ, or to claim that control and self-actions can lead to salvation, is to blaspheme the reality of our God.  It is Satan who values control.  It is Satan who tells us we need no one but ourselves to live as we choose and be the authors of our own ideas of salvation.  It is Satan who tempts us to see the forms and practices of our religion supplant the Christ of our religion.  His synagogue is not some dark place where believers wear red robes and do blood rituals.  Instead they masquerade as fine Christian chapels and mega churches with believers dressed in full business attire, but whose hearts have never been submitted to anything outside of themselves.  Those who claim to be Jews but are not, follow every idea and variation that keeps Christ out of the center stage of our salvation and instead “self” located there.  When we trust to our own strength, whether in “partnership” with God, or completely because of our own actions, we deny the reality of the need of our Messiah, and join with those who are labeled of the synagogue of Satan.

John proceeds in verse 10 … “Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”  The message to Smyrna is not a happy one.  There is no message of peace and prosperity, of earthly wealth and ease, of blessings and happiness in this world to the church of Smyrna or to us.  There is after all, a war raging all around us, one of Good and of Evil.  This war will inflict casualties, and evil is aimed fully at hurting God, by hurting the thing He cares most about … us.  The devil will throw us into prison.  In those days, the prisons were no clean, cable-TV, three meal a day institutions.  They were dark, dank, disease ridden dungeons, where food was a luxury and isolation could be the norm.  The devil intends both then and now, to offer us the contrast of earthly poverty and suffering for the sake of our belief in Christ, as compared to the wealth and ease of trusting to ourselves.  If the members of the Smyrna church would but deny their Lord, they could live long happy lives of self-indulgence and ease.  But if not, they would be made to suffer, and be tested in courts of law and outside of any justice, for the beliefs they clung to.  The message says they would have tribulation for ten days.  Perhaps this was literal and meaningful to them at the time they received this message.  Or perhaps this would be interpreted as prophetic, meaning they would have 10 years of tribulation.  Perhaps both. 

But what was most interesting about this message, was the hope offered with it.  Christ begins by saying “Fear none of those things”.  He begins by telling His faithful followers, that Satan has no real power over any of them.  Prison is not something we should fear or worry about.  In fact, death itself is not something we should fear or worry about.  After all He has just said, He Himself was dead and is now alive.  There was a reason He began His message with that greeting.  For if we continue to submit our will and our lives and our very existence unto Christ, He will grant us a “crown” of life.  Crowns symbolize royalty and kingship.  They are rare.  They are not intended for everyone in general.  But in this, everyone who clings to Christ and values His ideas of our existence over what we can see and experience in the here and now, will in fact be considered His royalty.  A status which we do NOT deserve; we are NOT kings and queens, yet He values us this much.  He has served us, as if we were.  He has done for us what is normally only done for kings and queens, yet He did it for us when we were but slaves to our sin and our selfishness.  He freed us from being slaves.  And now He elevates us to being considered royalty, a royalty that is not based in receiving praise but in serving others.  We are to be made kings and queens of service, as He is the God of service and love to others.  It is barely within our comprehension to be so treated by the God of the universe, who had to die in order that we might truly live.  This promise, and these ideas reflect the level to which God loves us and His church.

John relays the conclusion of this message as he pens in verse 11 … “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”  Again the message is joined by words from the Holy Spirit of Christ.  It is intended for we who believe, for it is we who have an ear.  Again what must be overcome is self, the desire to rely on control, or the forms of religion instead of the Messiah of our religion, the blasphemy of thinking there is salvation outside of the gift of Christ.  And how will these ideas be overcome?  Only as we submit our will, our desires, and our very lives to the will of Christ.  When we do this, we are promised that the hurt of the second death will not come our way.  We will not know the sleep of eternal non-existence that comes at the final destruction of all that is evil.  Instead we will know the crown of life that He has given to us despite what we had earned.  We will know the gift of life He has given us though we deserve the second sleep that remains upon those who refused His gift and denied His salvation, preferring to trust to themselves and their own ideas about salvation.

The message to the church at Smyrna reminds us that bliss in this world is not on the menu.  Our gospel is not one based in the ideas of happiness, wealth, and fulfillment in this world, but in the next one.  Our treasure is not found in our monetary acquisition, but in its full distribution to those in need.  These ideas are at complete war with most of American society and social values.  Indeed the early Christian church followed an extreme version of communism, not capitalism.  They prized giving away everything they owned, not hoarding it.  They were truly persecuted for their stubborn belief in His gift of our salvation, not merely suffering “perceived” slights or dispersions.  They were cast into prisons and killed for what they believed, not just ridiculed for having faith.  The message for Smyrna reminds us of the reality of the war that continues to rage between Satan who is bent on our destruction, and God who is bent on our redemption.  And it offers us hope, that while we submit ourselves fully to Christ, there is life worth living.  It begins here, and but it is intended for an existence that well beyond anything we will know in this world of pain, sin and self-obsession.

And the messages would continue …

 

 

To Kill The King (witness number twenty two) ...

The plot thickens.  The resurrection of Lazarus was definitive public proof of who Jesus was.  He was the true Son of God.  No one else could raise the dead back to life, not man, not even Satan; this was something only God could do.  And it was something the people were simply not going to ignore; the Messiah had come.  They did not understand why He had not declared Himself King.  They did not understand why the Romans seemed oblivious to His arrival since they were surely soon to be driven out of Israel.  But one thing was certain, only God could raise the dead back to life.  From a purely military perspective this would make their new army invincible.  Their soldiers could fight fearlessly and if they lost, Jesus would simply reattach the dismembered pieces and bring them back to life again to keep on fighting.  The Romans, and no other power on earth, could resist that kind of army.  And the Pharisees could see it; they were losing the hearts and minds of the people entirely to the new Messiah.  So their desperation was raised, and in the last few verses of John’s Gospel account in chapter eleven they issue a public edict that if anyone knew where Christ was, they were to tell them, so that He could be taken.

Knowing the Passover was near they reasoned among themselves that Christ would probably be coming to it.  After all, Jesus had attended prior feasts.  He taught in the temple on Sabbath when He was there.  He healed on it too, but that was the source of all this righteous anger in the first place, if you asked them.  Jesus in fact, had done nothing to deny the validity of the Jewish faith, or destroy its system of worship, or deny its law.  But how Jesus amplified the law, and focused on the motives of the heart rather than the actions of public display, was a stark contrast between the intent of the law, and the perversion of it.  The Pharisees sought to use the law and the scriptures to hold power over the people.  Christ sought to use the law to free the people from the chains and bondage of evil and serving self.  Christ sought to teach the people that harmony with the law begins and ends with loving others, and can only be achieved through a transformation of character – a resurrection from the death of evil, to the life of loving others through Himself and His transformative power.  Christ was not interested in a hierarchical system that preserved power for the few.  Instead He was keenly interested in a one on one relationship with every hurting soul, to make them free from the pain they embraced.  While the Pharisees were obsessed with Politics and Power, Christ was passionate about redemption and reformation within us, not around us.  Christ was a true revelation of what the Jewish faith was supposed to be about, not what it had become.  And so those whose highest ambition was to rule, had reached the inescapable conclusion, they must kill the one who cared nothing for ruling, but would completely destroy their power.

In chapter twelve, John begins by marking the time – six days before the Passover, which would be the last Passover for Christ in this world.  Then John gives us the precious location of Christ, He had traveled back to Bethany to be with His newly risen friend and his sisters who were so loved by Christ.  And in verse 2, a special meal is prepared for Jesus and his disciples.  It was not His famed “last” supper, but it was probably the last supper He would have occasion to enjoy before the intensity of the burden He must bear for us would occupy His every thought.  This was a special dinner with friends and adopted family.  John notes, that Martha would serve at this meal, and Lazarus would sit at the table with them all.  Perhaps Martha understood best of all who were there that night that serving is the highest honor one can enjoy.  Perhaps the faith of Martha who was the only one of them to open the door to an immediate resurrection of her brother before it happened, and the only one to declare openly and assuredly that Christ was the Messiah before He raised her brother – understood it the best.  A life with Christ who transforms us, is a life of service to all.  Lazarus would enjoy His company.  Mary would make her finest gesture of love to Him.  But Martha would quietly serve and in so doing would understand better than everyone else there, what life was to be about, and where joy comes from.

Then in verse 3, John describes the act of Mary on her Lord, the best and only offering she could think to make.  Verse 3 states … “Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.”  She could have used a towel to wipe her Lord, Lazarus was wealthy and there would be no shortage of proper towels for that purpose.  She could have been less extravagant in selecting the ointment to use on His feet.  It would have been less noticeable and less costly.  But that would not due.  A life savings of money would hardly be enough to express her love to Christ.  He wore no finery, or gems, so she could not buy him some object to keep.  And though this gesture would only last a short while, it was something she believed He would accept.  The source of her funding for this gift was likely not the best.  It is possible being caught in the act of adultery some time ago was a pattern by which she was paid for her services.  It is one possible explanation for how a woman would gain access to a year’s worth of earnings at a single point in time.  It is also possible this was her share of the family inheritance, or perhaps what remained from the process of burying her now risen brother.  We are not told, how she came across this gift, only that she did.  Mary was overcome by grief to think that love would allow her brother to die.  But now she knew why, and she now knew, that nothing could interrupt the love Christ had for her, or her brother, not even death.  She had hope now, no matter what would come to be.  And so her gesture must be comprised of the best of all she would ever have. And even then it could not equal what He had done for her.

But to one who cares less for love, than for self, this act must be due criticism.  Enter Judas.  John rarely records the interactions of the other disciples with Christ throughout his Gospel.  He usually only records what they say when it is critical to the story.  In this instance, Judas asks the question why this ointment was not sold and given to the poor?  This does appear to be the model for the early Christian church.  New converts would sell everything they owned and give the money to the church for distribution as there was need.  So while this question may appear as though it was motived by a better ideal, John is quick to point out that was not why Judas asked.  John lets us know, that Judas was also a thief, and he stole from the bag for the poor that he kept on him at all times.  An interesting question might be, what did he spend the money on?  Whatever it was, appeared not to quench his greed.  This is the fundamental problem with serving self – self never reaches contentment, it always wants more.  No matter how much money we feed our greed, our greed can envision more.  Self is a perpetual unhappy customer, because all the joy in serving it, is temporary at best, empty at worst.  Whereas the joy of serving others can be never-ending, to make another happy is perhaps our highest honor and opportunity.  Mary would pour out her love to Christ with everything she had, holding nothing back for herself.  Judas would endlessly take from the bag for the poor, and never find enough in there to make him contented with what he had already taken.  The contrast again was stark.

But Jesus knew both the heart of Mary, as well as the one in Judas.  So Jesus defends Mary and her act of complete selflessness and charity.  In verse 7 He says … “Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. [verse 8] For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.”  Here Jesus appears to reveal that Mary perhaps understood better the true mission of Messiah was one of sacrificing His own life for ours.  He accepts Mary’s gift not from a sense of greed, but from an understanding that she is offering the best of anything she will ever have.  Then He offers a solemn reminder to His disciples, His time with them is growing short and He will not always be with them.  To Judas, His phrase … “the poor always ye have with you” … was to subtly remind him that he would always have an opportunity to give to others, particularly those in need.  The giving was not about changing the lives of the recipients, it was about changing the heart of the giver.  This was the lesson underway with Mary, and unfortunately a lesson Judas would seem to never learn.  It may have been that in this subtle rebuke, the heart of Judas was offended, and he realized that this humble Man would never take the power everyone wanted Him to have.  He may have seen that His death was more inevitable, than any power Judas may gain if He ascended to the throne of Israel.  Who knows; all that is sure, is that John’s commentary was hindsight for all of them.  Had John or any other of the disciples known that Judas was stealing from the poor, the crime would not have gone unmentioned.  Only his suicide would come to reveal these facts.

Meanwhile, verse 9 reveals that many people had gotten the news that Jesus was with Lazarus in Bethany.  This gave an occasion for them to travel there, because they would not only see Jesus, but they would be able to speak with Lazarus and meet the only man who had ever come back from the sleep of death.  This irrefutable proof of His divinity had to be addressed from the Pharisees point of view.  Nothing they could say about it could crush it.  It required action.  The best plot they could come up with was to kill Lazarus once again.  If Lazarus was back in his grave, perhaps people would believe he had never left it.  Dead is dead after all.  It is perhaps this revelation of John regarding the fate the Pharisees intended for Lazarus, the prompted Jesus to keep secret some of his earlier miracles recorded in the other gospel accounts of His ministry.  Jesus had brought a young girl back from death as well, but told her and her parents to keep it secret.  Perhaps Jesus knew, that the Pharisees would not have thought twice about re-killing her as well.  Living, walking proof had to be dealt with.  The logic of course is ridiculous.  If Christ raised Lazarus once, what was to prevent Him from doing it again.  But then evil rarely makes sense in its plots against love.  There is a reason why it is referred to as the “mystery” of iniquity – because it hardly ever makes sense to choose it, yet we do.  How does one kill the source of life anyway?  Perhaps this is why Jesus said He had to lay down His own life, that no man could take it from Him.  John records in verse 11, that because of Lazarus, many Jews, even those in leadership “went away” and believed on Jesus.  Even the threat of being put out of the Temple was losing its grasp.

John begins in verse 12 saying … “On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, [verse 13] Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.”  Battle over, priests had lost.  Nothing was going to keep the people from openly declaring in favor of the coming of the true Messiah.  It was to be His coronation day, today, whether He wanted it or not.  The priests had lost the PR war, and the actions of the masses of the people proved it.  They went to greet the proposed King of Israel in the traditional manner dating all the way back to King David.  The joy of Israel was unbridled and unrestrained.  All they could imagine was that this would be the last day of Roman occupation, the last day of servitude, and the first day of the ascendency of Israel to the preeminence among the nations.  The joy therefore was great, but the understanding misguided.

How like us.  We come to Christ and find great joy in the belief that from now on, all our prayers will be answered in the affirmative.  We never stop to think that our hearts have not been changed enough yet to “want” the right things.  So we treat Christ more like Santa Clause, than like our Savior.  When the answers to our prayers do not come in the way we wanted, we go away sorely disappointed.  Just like the people who would leave to greet Him with palm branches expecting to return with a new King, and instead would return only with the memory of that day.  Our disappointment comes because we want things that are not in harmony with the will of God.  We see through self-centered eyes, and with the limited scope of human vision that cannot see past the grave.  God sees what is best for us, now, and for the eternal life He wants to give us, which is really the only one that truly matters.  If we saw things through the eyes of God, we would gladly accept His answers, and realize what we ask for is not always in our best interests.  How different would the lives of those aspiring servants of Christ been, if He had granted their requests to overthrow Rome, but did nothing to overthrow the evil in their hearts.  Israel would have amounted to only another dictatorship ruling by fear and the sword, and the greed of men.  Instead Christ did nothing to change the political status of those servants, choosing rather to offer them freedom from within, that no power on earth could ever take away, and a life of service that would be the only one worth living.  It does not matter if Rome is in charge on the outside, if Christ is in charge on the inside.

Verses 14 through 18 outline the fulfillment of prophecy, in Christ riding in to Jerusalem triumphant, and on a young colt of an ass.  The people were drawn there in great numbers, singing, praising God, and expressing great joy.  The resurrection of Lazarus was the crowing miracle of achievement in His ministry, it was the confirmation the common people and leaders alike could only attribute to being divine.  And in verse 19, the Pharisees state the facts … they have lost the war of hearts and minds of the people.  The people flock to Christ no matter what threats they can conjure.  Against this revelation of truth, they could have responded by giving in, yielding, and joining the crowds in acknowledging Christ as divine.  They too could not dispute the resurrection of Lazarus.  The facts were plain.  But when a choice is made, to refuse to believe, facts do nothing to persuade.  The Pharisees knew the truth, and refused to accept it.  And so the only path laid out to them was one of death.  They thought to kill Christ and be done with it.  But in truth, they were signing away the only hope for redemption that would be offered to them.  It was their own death warrants they were issuing.  To refuse Christ, to refuse truth, to refuse redemption, was to embrace not only the first death, but the eternal one as well.  This is where the pursuit of self, and of power, will ALWAYS lead – to the death of the pursuer.  This is why the wages of sin is death, because death is the only welcome release from the pain of sin.  And the choice to refuse to believe, in spite of what they knew, left them no other path to follow.

We face an equal danger.  There are those Christian who treat the holding on to a cherished sin, or pleasure of self, as if this choice bears no fruit and carries no consequences.  We hold back from Christ that thing which we do not want Him to change.  And so our sin remains, and our pain remains with it.  Instead of being willing to lay all on the alter, we keep some cherished pleasure hidden away.  But like a cancer it grows and grows, until it reaches a point where we begin to question whether we want God more than we want that thing we have been holding on to.  Our sin begins to cloud our judgment until we begin to think there is no moral conflict at all with it.  We can have BOTH God and our favorite sin.  We rationalize that we do not need to change anymore.  And like the Pharisees of old, we plant seeds in ourselves that reap a harvest of pain on a pathway to death.  Refusing to accept redemption can lead to no other outcome.  Redemption is designed to spare us from ALL pain.  Redemption and recreation teaches us to want different things, and let go of the things that are hurting us.  But we must be willing to be re-created completely, not just in part.  We must learn to trust God with ALL of us, not just the parts we think need tuning up.  And when we do, we find relief from the pain, and a pathway of life, not a highway towards death.  Let us never refuse to accept what we know to be true … and perhaps we can avoid finding ourselves in a plot to kill The King.