“Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, “What shall we do? For this Man works many signs. If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.””
John 11:47-48 NKJV
Rightly or wrongly, the Pharisees brought stability to the Jewish nation of Israel and they were genuinely concerned that if they lost their authority to do that, then the Romans would once again come in to suppress what the occupying forces perceived as an uprising or rebellion. But there was also a personal fear amongst them if they lost their religious place in their society because they were a proud and arrogant bunch. What would happen to them if the people shifted their allegiance to Jesus way from them? Not all Pharisees were bad of course (remember Nicodemus?) but the majority seemed to be locked into rigid religious behaviour, riddled with pride and arrogance. Jesus had little good to say about the Pharisees. He said, “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27-28).
We worship a God who desires the best for His creation and for us human beings. He loves us all, regardless of how we see or relate to Him. A person who denies the existence of God is loved just as much as one who embraces Him wholeheartedly. In fact, “ … God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). But God also created mankind with free will, enabling people to make choices. So how people respond to God is up to them. Jesus demonstrated the love of God every moment that He was here on Planet Earth. He healed the sick and fed large numbers of people. As we have seen He even raised a dead man from the grave. But the main thrust of Jesus’ ministry was to bring joy and glory to God by granting eternal life to all those who chose to believe in Him.
But even today, God takes a personal interest in His children. The invitation to believe in Jesus is still there, waiting for people to respond. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees were locked into a religious system based on their interpretation of the Law of Moses, a belief system that had no room for change. They thought that Jesus’ offer of eternal life was irrelevant for them because they were convinced that they would inherit eternal life anyway through their obedience to the Law. So they could not see any solution to their dilemma over Jesus. The Jewish people were abandoning them in droves and following Jesus, who they therefore considered to be in danger of being seen as a revolutionary by the Romans, particularly if that was how they presented Him, with devastating consequences. But they lacked understanding about Jesus’ mission because they refused to accept that He was the Son of God, their long-awaited Messiah. Jesus said, “ … for I have come to save the world and not to judge it” (John 12:47b). Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost”. Jesus was no revolutionary seeking to overthrow the Roman occupation. That was to come soon enough through a zealot-driven Jewish rebellion in AD70, just a few years later.
What do we pilgrims do today, when God brings a revival, a new move of God, to our spiritual shores? I was fortunate enough to be in a church that experienced the move of the Holy Spirit that started in Toronto in the 1990’s. But it wasn’t welcomed by every church fellowship, and many looked on from the outside, despising the excesses and in the process missing out on a tremendous blessing of God. God is always willing to bless His people, as we can see from many revivals that have taken place over the years. We must always seek God for His will and purposes for us. We must always ask Him what He wants to do through us every day. He delights in answering that question.
The Psalmist who wrote Psalm 85 said, “Won’t you revive us again, so your people can rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6). We pilgrims have the opportunity of being revived every day, as we read in John 7:37b-38, “ … Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart’”.
The answer to the Pharisees’ dilemma was staring them right in their faces, but they chose to reject, rather than accept, Jesus. They could not accept a new move of God. But we must always be on the look out for what God is doing in our day, in case He is doing something new. God said to the Jewish people, “For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland” (Isaiah 43:19). So we pilgrims must look up, always attentive to our Heavenly Father’s next move.
Dear Father God. We don’t want to miss what You are doing in our time here on Planet Earth. Please give us ears to hear and eyes to see Your wonderful ways. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 