SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/10/2024 12:00 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Preparation of Hateful Rejection”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
26:3-5
Message of the verses: “3 Then the chief
priests and the elders of the people were gathered together in the court of the
high priest, named Caiaphas; 4 and they plotted together to seize Jesus by
stealth and kill Him. 5 But they were saying, "Not during the festival,
otherwise a riot might occur among the people.’”
I have mentioned that we spent a lot of time looking
at Matthew chapters 24-25 as they are very important chapters in the Word of
God as Jesus was telling His disciples what would be going on during what is
called the Tribulation period, the last seven years of history that will take
place on planet earth similar to what has been going on for the last 7,000
years. Now while this was going on we
can see from these verses that “3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the
people were gathered together in the court of the high priest, named Caiaphas; 4
and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth and kill Him.” The chief priests represented the wealthy and
influential religious nobility and then the elders represented the wealthy and
influential lay nobility. According to
Matthew 26:57 there were also scribes represented when Jesus was taken to Caiaphas’s
house.
I
have mentioned from time to time and have quoted the famous Jewish historian
Josephus who in this case stated the full name of the high priest was Joseph Caiaphas.
This man was a conniving, treacherous, and deceitful man depicted in Scripture
in the one-dimensional role of Jesus antagonist. No matter where we look at this man in the
Scriptures he is always trying to destroy Jesus. The problem is that even though he did not
know that what he was doing if was falling right into the plan that God had for
His Son. However because this is what he
truly wanted to do he will pay for it someday.
Herod was another one who actually hated Jesus in a similar way that
Joseph Caiaphas did. Let us look at John
11:49-50 “49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to
them, "You know nothing at all, 50 nor do you take into account that it is
expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation
not perish.’” Now we will look at verse
51 “51 Now he did not say this on his
own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was
going to die for the nation.”
I will conclude this SD by quoting a paragraph from
John MacArthur’s commentary: “The high
priesthood traditionally was passed on through the Levitical line, but during
the Roman occupation the position generally was sold or bestowed as a political
favor. Because the Jewish people would
not have tolerated a high priest without some Levitical heritage, Caiaphas married
the daughter of Annas, his predecessor in the high priesthood. The two men even served jointly for a period
of time (see Luke 3:2). Caiaphas served
as high priest from A.D. 18-36, an unparalleled tenure. To hold the office for that long required a
close relationship with Rome, and over the period of some hundred years, 28
different men served as high priest.
Caiaphas’s successor lasted only 50 days in office.”
4/10/2024 12:24 PM
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