 He
loved them as well, you know—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the
religious authorities and teachers of the law. Many attacked
Him. They challenged Him, mocked Him, lied about Him, plotted
against Him, and did all they could to destroy Him. And in our
2,000-years-later-hindsight, how we hate them for it. But not Jesus.
In the heat of the battle, with the spit dripping down His face and
their laughter ringing in His ears, with the clothes being torn from
His back and the whip slicing across His flesh,
oh, how He loved
them in the midst of it.
 It's an astounding
truth—so astounding, some would
deny it. But He is "no respecter of persons"; and He
came to "seek and save what was lost," not push them
away. And in that, as mind-bending as it may seem, the cry of
His heart was exactly the same to the religious leaders—the men He
knew would rejoice in the streets at the smell of His blood mixing
with sand—as to anyone else: "Come to Me ... and you will
find rest for your souls."
When we think of Jesus coming to seek and save
"the lost," we tend to envision drug addicts, prostitutes,
convicts, and the like. But on a closer look, who could
possibly be more lost than one who assumes, by virtue of his own
righteousness, his own education, perhaps his own superior lifestyle,
that he doesn't need to be found?
And so these men, appointed, entrusted, by Father
God to bless and shepherd His children, adorn themselves from head to
toe in flamboyant displays of presumed holiness, strutting among the
people like heaven's own peacocks, sitting proudly in the front-row
seats of first-century Israel, pontificating and dissertating on what
they thought was the law with such jot-and-tittle precision that they
missed "The Law" completely, though they longed, probably
more than anyone else, to look into His eyes and lay their crowns at
His feet.
It is a great mystery. If anyone should have
recognized that Jesus was Messiah, it was these very men. You
see, they studied the Scriptures like no one else. They knew the
messianic prophecies of old like no one else. They could quote it all
backward and forward, inside out and upside down. "See,
your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey."
So there He was riding a donkey, the people hailing Him as king—and
they missed it. There He was, sleeves rolled up, sporting nothing
of human flash—and they missed it. There He was in the
dirt with the poor and needy—and they missed it.
There He was exploding with the Spirit of God—opening the eyes of the blind, lifting the dead from their
graves, begging them with tears and confrontation to turn from their
petty displays, to dive to their knees and from the bottom of their
hearts crave authentic righteousness, kingdom
faithfulness, and praise that comes from God, not men. For with all of His true and evident
magnificence—magnificence of the heart—Jesus just wasn't who they
wanted Him to be. They wanted pageantry and splendor,
worldly riches, earthly thrones, politics, rules, regulations.
Despite who they thought Messiah would be, what stood in front of them
was who Messiah was. What stood in front of them
was simple love—feeding a hungry person, healing a broken life,
resurrecting a tortured spirit.
What stood in front of them was Jesus.
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