Jesus

The life story

of
humanity’s only hope

Chapter 2

People Chosen for a Purpose

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 Chapter 2

For more than a thousand years, the Jewish people had rested their fondest hopes on the coming
of the Messiah - the One Who Would Save. Their songs, the prophecies of the Bible which they
studied, the ceremonies of the temple and their family worship all looked forward to Messiah’s
appearance. So it was ironic that when, He finally came, they didn’t recognize Him. He didn’t
look like they expected Him to look. He wasn’t handsome or powerful. In fact, physically
speaking He was ugly. So He came, and the very people who should have been most ready for
His appearance didn’t want anything to do with Him. (Isaiah 53:2; John 1:11)

God chose Israel as his representative to preserve on earth the knowledge of the Laws of the
Kingdom of Light. He made them the protector and keeper of the prophecies and symbols He
designed to try and explain His plan to save us. His desire was that they would be the source of
information about salvation to the whole world. Every time the Jews were in foreign countries -
in Abraham’s travels abroad, when Joseph was taken as a slave to Egypt, and when Daniel was
taken Babylon - they had the opportunity to show and tell what God is really like.

When God called Abraham He said, “I am going to bless you; . . . so that you can be a blessing to
others. In fact, in you every family on earth will eventually be blessed. (Genesis 12:2,3) Every
one of the prophets repeated that promise. Even when things looked hopeless for Israel - during
those times when their land was wasted by war or when they were in captivity in some far off
foreign land - the promise was still theirs. In fact God predicted that their devastation and
captivity would result in the promise going to the whole world. Micah, the prophet declared,
“The remnants of Jacob will be scattered like the dew all over the place, in every country and
among every people group. They’ll be like rain that falls on the grass of the whole world.”
(Micah 5:7) In order to make His intention clear to the Jews, and to everyone else in the world,
He stated through Isaiah the prophet, “My temple in Jerusalem is not just for the Jews. It is to be
a place of worship for every nation and family and language and people in the whole world.”
(Isaiah 56:7)

Israel chose another route and fixed their hopes, not on what God wanted to do through them, but
on what they could do to make themselves great. From the moment they entered Palestine they
abandoned the laws governing the Kingdom of Light and started living like pagans. It didn’t
matter whether God sent prophets to them or let them suffer invasions by foreign armies - they
were stubborn in their rebellion. Every time they reformed, quickly they turned around and
became worse off then they were before.

If Israel had just been faithful to God, He would have honored them and raised them to a position
of prominence among the nations paralleled by no other. In the process He would have used
them to accomplish his purposes in taking the Good News to the world. If they had just lived as

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citizens of His Kingdom, He would have made them the greatest nation in the history of the
world. Moses predicted it. “Everyone on earth,” he said, “will realize that you are part of God’s
Kingdom and will know that there is no way to oppose you.” Every time anyone hears the Law
of God’s Kingdom will say that you are great and wise because you keep my commandments.”
(Deuteronomy 26:19; 28:10; 4:6) Unfortunately, because of their mule-headed stubbornness,
God could only try to work through them while they went through one humiliating catastrophe
after another. He was able to use even their worst times and situations for His glory.

For instance, when Babylon came down from the north and invaded and conquered Israel, the
Jewish people were removed from their homeland and scattered from one end of the empire to
the other. It didn’t take long for many of them to repent of their rebellion against God and to
make a new commitment to their relationship with Him. From any human point of view, they
were finished as a nation. The temple in Jerusalem, probably the most magnificent building in
the history of the world, lay in ruins. The city of Jerusalem, itself, was flattened. So, they hung
up their musical instruments and mourned. But, as they remembered and recounted all that God
had promised and done for them, the people of Babylon listened and heard about God. God
turned tragedy into blessing and used their worst moment to do the very thing He had hoped they
would do in prosperity.

The pagan forms of worship were a perversion of the worship forms that God had given to man.
When they sacrificed animals to their gods, it was in ways and means that Satan had designed
and inspired that were a counterfeit of the true worship of God. Suddenly, as sincere men and
women heard of the true God and His worship, it dawned on them what had happened and the
real meaning of worship became crystal clear. Introduced to God by sincere, repentant, Jewish
captives - they too reached out and laid hold on God’s promise that He would ransom and heal
them from sin.

That does not mean that it was a pleasant or easy time for the Jewish exiles - even those who
renewed their covenant relationship with God. Many were severely persecuted. Because they
wouldn’t give up their Sabbath worship of God and take part in pagan rituals and celebrations,
many were killed. But even in that. God used them to spread a knowledge of Him and His
Kingdom. As these persecuted and martyred ones were dragged into court or even into the
presence of pagan kings and rulers; as the citizens and slaves of the countries in which they lived
and told the truth about God were exposed to the truth, the light dawned in their minds and
hearts. The very things that Satan’s followers did to crush out the truth about God resulted in
glorifying God - to the place that time after time the greatest pagan kings were led to proclaim
God as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Something else Israel’s Babylon captivity accomplished. It finally cured Israel’s interest in
worshiping idols. They finally made the connection in their hearts that they suffered what they
did at the hands of their enemies because of their disloyalty to God and their choice to remove
themselves from His protection. They became convinced that their prosperity depended on their
obedience to the laws of the Kingdom of Light.

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Satan then perverted that. Soon many were obeying God, not because they loved Him, but
because they wanted the blessings. They obeyed God because they wanted to be great, not
because they cared about Him. Instead of becoming a conduit to take the truth about God to the
whole world, they turned their country and their families and their church into a fortress -
shutting themselves away from the world in order to escape any chance of temptation. It is true
that God had given them instructions through Moses on how they were to relate to non-followers
of God.

These restrictions were placed on them for their protection. But they completely missed the
point. What was intended to prevent them from adopting pagan practices and worship was used
to shut others out - away from a knowledge of God. They isolated themselves from the very ones
they were supposed to be impacting. It got so bad that they imagined that their country and
church was all that mattered to God and became jealous any time it appeared that God loved any
one else and was merciful and gracious to them. Their church and their country, instead of being
a means to an end, became the focus of their lives. Instead of worshiping God they began to
worship the places and forms of worship that God had given them as a means of taking the
gospel to the world. What had been designed as a means to an end became the end itself for
them.

Not that they didn’t seem religious. Whey they returned from their Babylon captivity, the Jews
made certain that everyone got regular religious instruction. They erected churches at every
turn. Everywhere you went you could hear preachers and teachers teaching the laws of the
Kingdom of Light. They established schools that taught not only art and science but which had
required religion classes as well. The problem was that these teachers and preachers mixed
pagan ideas and customs that they had learned while they were captives in with the things that
they taught from the Bible. After a while it became very difficult to distinguish their worship
from that of the pagans that surrounded them.

The further they got from God the harder it got for the Jewish people to understand what their
own worship was designed to teach. Israel’s worship, designed by Jesus Himself to point to all
that He and the rest of the Trinity were doing to save the world, had at one time been full of life
and spiritual beauty. Even though they retained the forms, their worship became dead. Their
church and all of the structure and traditions and services and programs became more important
than finding out who God was and letting Him live in their hearts. In order to exercise control
and power the religious leaders and administrative personnel began to make more and more
rules of their own, and the more the list of rules grew and the more rigid they became, the less
they exhibited love for God and their fellow men. They measured how holy they were by how
often they went to church and what they did while they were there. It didn’t matter that they
were hypocritical and proud - they were going to church on the right day, doing the right things,
were a part of the right people and organization, so they were saved.

After a while all of their rules made it impossible to obey God. Those who truly desired to serve
God were buried under a mountain of rules and restrictions. They couldn’t find any spiritual

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peace because their consciences were assaulted on every side by another set of rules. Since
Satan couldn’t use pagan influence any more to get to God’s people, he used the church. All of
the rules and regulations were a discouragement and engendered contempt for God and His
church. He used the church to accomplish the very thing he had attempted to do in heaven when
he rebelled - to show that God’s requirements weren’t just and couldn’t be obeyed if you wanted
to. “Look,” he proclaimed, “even Israel doesn’t really obey you, because they can’t”

At the time Jesus was born, things were not good in Israel. They had been conquered, once
again by a foreign power - Rome. They had never taken foreign domination easily, and this time
was no exception. As a consequence, there were a lot of internal battles as various factions
jockeyed for positions of leadership. One of the unique things Rome had done with Israel was
to allow them to maintain the outward semblance of a separate government - but nothing could
hide the fact that in reality they were a colony. They constantly chafed under the restrictions
imposed on them by the Roman Empire. For instance, the Jews were not allowed to appoint and
remove from office their highest religious leader - the High Priest. Instead, the office was filled
by Roman appointees - often as the result of intrigue, fraud, bribery, or even occasionally,
murder. As a result, the ret of the priesthood become more and more corrupt - because their
leadership was. Yet they continued to maintain the power they had always enjoyed in Jewish
life - only now that power was generally employed for selfish and mercenary ends. The average
person was heavily taxed not only by Rome, but also by the religious authorities - which
couldn’t help but lead to widespread discontent. Popular uprisings were not unusual. Greed,
violence, a lack of trust, and spiritual apathy were eating the very heart of the nation away.

What was amazing was at the same time they became more and more religious - not spiritual,
but religious. Their hatred of the Romans coupled with their national pride led them to focus on
the forms of their national religion. The priesthood, anxious to maintain their reputation made a
great display of the outward forms and traditions and ceremonies of the church, but the heart of
God’s worship was eaten away by a cancer of pride and self-centeredness. Spiritually, the
nation was dead. The people lived in spiritual darkness, oppressed by their religious leaders and
the Romans, longing for the Messiah - even though they had no idea what He was all about.
And the leadership of the nation spent their time wishing for a Messiah who could free them
from Roman domination. Even though the prophecies were there for all to read, they all missed
the point.

All of the Jewish worship pointed to the coming of Messiah. Every Jew lived for the day of His
coming. Yet they had no idea why, or what He would accomplish. At the time when Jesus was
about to be born, they weren’t looking for someone to save them from their sins - they were part
of the right church were they not - they were looking for someone to save them from Roman
domination. They wanted a conquering Messiah to break Rome’s power and exalt them and
their church to a place of universal dominance. In the process, the overlooked all of those texts
in the Bible that pointed to the fact that the Messiah, the first time He came, would not come as
a political and military leader. His mission to come and live and die to ransom men and women
from the Kingdom of Darkness was totally overlooked. Their national and religious pride so

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obscured their vision that they interpreted all of the prophecies through the lense of their own
ideas and desires.

Thus, their beliefs set them up to reject Jesus when He came.

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