False Dawns

Proverbs 13 v12: Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

I have just finished reading a book entitled The History of the Jews, it’s quite big book as it spans from Abram to the establishment of the state of Israel in the late 1940’s. One of the points the author makes early on is that outside of the Old Testament, Apocrypha and certain Jewish historians there is very little written history when compared with what we have for other civilisations of antiquity. The reason for this being the fact that because of the stateless nature of the Jews up until the 1940’s, added to the fact that because of persecution and being driven from various countries most history was learned orally with only the scriptures being written down. For me though the thing that comes through in this book is the fact that there have been many false messiahs in Jewish history, both before and after Jesus.

This led me to consider the fact that when we look at the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, was he seen by some as just another false messiah who was going to bring the people again into a bloody conflict with the occupying force? When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday the people cried the word ‘Hosanna’ which means ‘Lord save us.’ These people were under the heel of an occupying and brutal gentile force that had no time for their culture founded upon one God and no others, they wanted rid of all that was Roman, that I believe is what they were crying for. So, when Jesus now goes into the temple and over-turns the tables of those trading there and then preaching that belief in Him alone was the only way to God, this looked nothing at all like a deliverance from the Romans.

So, I ask was this one of the reasons in the minds of the masses that stood before Pilate was that they already seen too many false dawns and too many false messiahs. After all the alternative to Jesus was Barabbas and he had led a rebellion against the Roman occupation, at least they were getting a man of action and not one of words. Let me get this straight from the outset, I am not taking the line that the Jews were the murderers of Jesus. For me this idea turns my stomach, the nation of Israel and the Jewish people are God’s precious and chosen people, He still loves them and calls to them. I however think that each one of us when presented with that choice at that point in history would have done the same. There had been so many other rebellions, and this would continue to be the case until the Romans left. Each insurrection was put down by the Romans to a great cost of life to the Jews.

The thing was that this seed of doubt was in the minds of so many people at that time, even John the Baptist sent his disciples came to Jesus to ask that very question:

Luke 7 18-22: John’s disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them, he sent them to the Lord to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’

When the men came to Jesus, they said, ‘John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”’

At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, illnesses, and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, ‘Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 

So, I ask was the thought in the minds of that crowd ‘Barabbas has learned his lesson if we follow this other man it will only lead to another massacre of our people.’ This on my part is completely hypothetical. However, I and every one of us can understand what it is like to have that sole glimmer of hope snuffed out. Just a few months ago how many of us in the UK finally thought that football was coming home as England made it to the final of the European Championship, only to go out on penalties – again!

The thing is that despite the fact that His own people didn’t receive Him as Messiah, He still arrived as scripture tells us ‘At the appointed time.’ If though we go back in scripture, we are told in Ecclesiastes 3 v1: ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heaven.’ In fact, we had this very passage at my fathers-in-law funeral, he was a very wise and indeed great man. As a farmer he gave me an invaluable piece of advice when I first began growing my own vegetables ‘It’s better to plant out of season than out of condition, boy.’

I know that this seems at first to fly in the face of the words of Ecclesiastes, or in my case at the time the instructions on the packet of seeds I had in my hand! He knew that putting seed into ground that was too wet or too dry would not produce much of a harvest if anything at all.

Jesus came at exactly the right time, the nation of Israel was at its lowest point, as I said occupied by a foreign power and the nation burdened further by the rules and regulations that were not of God but of a spiritual elite that were desperately clinging to the little power they had. Already by this time the Jews were scattered throughout the Roman Empire and had established synagogues and communities in various places which in turn gave the apostles a place where to bring the new message that the Messiah had in fact come. Little did those ungodly powers realise that God Himself had arranged them to be the unwitting and unsuspecting means by which the Gospel was going to be spread throughout the then known world.

For me personally there have been times in my life when I was not in the right place or condition to receive certain things. It was terrible to be turned down for a certain job or even dumped by some girl or other. Despite having invested so much time and effort in those things I seemed to experience false dawn after false dawn. I can tell you one thing is that it hurt, and you feel as though you might never recover from that pain. You ask, ‘Why God?’  Yet when I take a step back and look at it from what in some cases is a few decades that job would have been the wrong thing for me, that girl was not the right one for me, despite my thoughts to the contrary at the time. However, when the time was right those things did come to pass, the right job came along and after years of waiting after moving I tried out a local church for the first time a young woman sat next to me, it transpired it was her first time there too. Just over a year later that young woman Penny and I were married. I just had to keep on persevering, every day just putting one foot in front of the other and keep trusting God’s plan for my life.

As I said earlier Jesus the Messiah came into this world exactly when God in His sovereignty ordained it and fulfilled everything that God had planned. He arrived when as I said when the conditions were exactly right and when He returns to judge this earth the conditions will be just right.

I just want to leave you with this question: Will we be in the right condition with God to be on the right side of that judgement?