“For I have come to you in my Father’s name, and you have rejected me. Yet if others come in their own name, you gladly welcome them. No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honour each other, but you don’t care about the honour that comes from the one who alone is God.”
John 5:43-44 NLT
Jesus came to this world with the highest mandate ever – God’s backing. Anyone with such authority has, by implication, all the resources of the Backer behind them. A diplomat sent overseas enjoys the respect and protection of the nation hosting them, because they are the representatives of the nation that sent them. So, in His conversation with the Jewish leaders, Jesus pointed out to them that He came in the name of His Father in Heaven, but rather than welcome Him and treat Him as they should and as the very Son of God deserves, they rejected Him. With all of God’s power behind Him, Jesus could have eliminated them at a stroke, but He continued to allow them to exercise their own free will, as God has ordained ever since the Creation and Fall.
The attitude of the Jewish leaders was the same as most of their countrymen at that time. Just because God, or His representatives, and their ways and sayings, didn’t fit in with their human expectations, then they felt they must reject such people, or so they thought. But Jesus went on to say that, instead of honouring Him, the very Son of God, they welcomed people without a God-given mandate, people who came with nothing more than their own personal authority. And, worse, the Jewish leaders honoured such people.
When we honour someone, we acknowledge their value to society or to science, or some other worthy cause. And the same applies to how we treat God, only infinitely more so. Only He is worthy of all the glory, all the praise and all the accolades we can think of. So what was the Jewish leaders’ problem, that they failed to honour Jesus, the Son of God? Perhaps Jesus was telling them that by honouring the wrong people, they were placing a blockage in their ability to honour God Himself. One problem is that the leaders rejected Jesus because He didn’t conform to their Jewish ideology, even though it was founded originally on the Law of Moses. Over the centuries, the intent of the Law had been replaced by a set of rules and customs, so when Jesus came along, breathing the fresh air of the Spirit over the Holy Land, He was rejected. He preached a counter-cultural message about the Kingdom of God. But we read what He said in Matthew 5:17-20. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. … For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven“. The Jews had reached a stage where the intent of the Law had been replaced by a doctrine based on an outward display of conformance. But Jesus blew all that away. He preached a message stating that the only way to keep the Law was through believing in Him.
I’m writing this at the start of the Holy Week, and have been reminded once again about all that Jesus did for us, so that we can stand before God, sins forgiven and righteousness assured. The Jewish leaders knew all about the Law. But they lacked the ability to believe in Him because their hearts were hard and calloused, and they were unable to see God’s Son when He was standing before them. But they weren’t alone, and even today many shut their eyes, preventing them seeing Him, because they are bound up in lives of sin. In 1 Samuel 17:45 David said to Goliath, ” … You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied“. In whose name do we pilgrims go out to fight our battles against the sin and evil around us? There is only one Name, the Name above all names.
The Name of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, the Son of God, is all-powerful. Philippians 2:9-11, “Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honour and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father“. That is the power of the Name of Jesus. So, like David, we can go out and face and slay the giants before us. They may have all the weapons in the world but none of them are as powerful as the Name of Jesus. So, fellow pilgrim, what giants are we facing today? Problems or circumstances that seem insurmountable? An illness? Redundancy? Financial problems? Rather than face the giant, do we hide in a corner, hoping against hope, that the problem will go away? Or do we face into whatever is before us, commanding a solution in the Name of Jesus?
Dear Lord Jesus. We know that in Your Name, demons have to flee. We pray that whatever is before will bow the knee to You, the Name above all names. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 