Okay just so you know the next few days might be hard to blog. I am headed out to visit family in Palm Springs and while I’m taking my laptop, I don’t know if they’ll have wireless so we will see! Keep up the reading just in case.
Okay so here we go with the animal thing. I would like to point out that Peter’s dream in Acts 10 not only deals with the spiritual issue of gentiles no longer being unclean just because they are gentiles, but it also allows us to enjoy shrimp! Lol Again, many of these dietary laws were most likely very good things for the Israelites. Not only did it promote obedience, there were probably very good health reasons for it as well at the time. Only spiritual impurity keeps us separated from God. The physical impurities we are reading about were more of an object lesson to illustrate the spiritual truth. This will become clearer in chapter 16 when we get there.
Now, that being said, let’s unpack the dietary laws a little. When man was created, he was a vegetarian. We read that in Genesis 1:29-30. Later, after the flood you will remember, Noah’s sons were permitted to eat as long as they didn’t ingest the blood (Gen 9:3-4). Now we see more restrictions put on. You will notice that tame animals that eat plant life are definitely included. Scientifically this is a good idea since they carry fewer diseases. Much of our diseases passed through meat by these animals are because of our practices of feeding them things they would not naturally eat.
There don’t appear to be any specific punishment for violating the dietary laws, but I would assume it meant that you couldn’t participate in the rituals until you’d cleansed yourself. In verse 44 God alludes to this saying “For I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves and you shall be holy, for I am holy…” It was their responsibility to not eat these things. God can call us, insist that we obey or suffer consequences, and give us over to our sin, but we have to be the ones to make the choice to obey. We must choose to cleanse ourselves and be holy as God is holy.
Okay, I know that chapter 12 starts out sounding a little sexist, but I’ve had both a boy and a girl. It did take me longer to recover from the girl and it wasn’t just that I went from one baby to two. I have seen studies that show that because the girl child has the same hormones and needs that the mother does, the pregnancy can cause more stress to the mother’s body if it is a girl. Many say that the recovery is because of the sexist nature of the Israelites but I believe it is because God knows his creation and instead of try to explain concepts that the people of that time could not explain, he gave them regulations to help them thrive. The sin offering was not because it was a sin to procreate, but a cleansing from the whole ordeal.
Okay on to Matthew and Jesus’ “trial”. Chapter 27 is kinda stressful for me. If you have never seen “Passion of The Christ” you should. Just be prepared. The scripture says they plotted to have Jesus put to death and took him to Pontius Pilate. This was because they were restricted from punishing people for the most part. They had to figure out how to get the Roman governor to agree that this man should be put to death. It would never do to go on the charge of blasphemy so they had to figure out what Roman law to stick on Jesus to make Pilate have him killed.
Judas now starts realizing what he’s done. From this section of scripture, it looks like Judas thought that Jesus would escape the religious leaders again like he had before, which means Judas had made some money, no harm done. This is a common concept among non-believers, that the ends justify the means. This is not true according to scripture. Judas tried to pay back the money. The priests illustrate exactly what the problem was with their hearts in this passage. They are unconcerned with killing an innocent person if it suits their needs, but they don’t want to break the law by putting the money in the treasury of the temple. Instead, they bought a field, which many scholars believe is the same one described as being bought by Judas in Acts. The purchase and price would have been public knowledge. This fulfilled the scripture in Jeremiah.
Now we go back to the trial. Jesus was taken to the Roman governor. Pilate had not had an easy rule and was on thin ice with Rome. Pilate asked Jesus a simple question and Jesus answered it plainly and simply. Then the priests began to throw accusations at Jesus but he remained calm and silent. Pilate was amazed at how vehement the priests were and how calm Jesus was. He didn’t get defensive or upset, he just stood. Jesus didn’t answer the accusations, only answered the calm question asked directly to him. Pilate was amazed at this and in verse 23 we see that he understood that Jesus did not claim to be an earthly king which would be the only way the law of the Roman’s would be broken. Pilate was in a bind because he could not afford an uprising in Jerusalem.
It was the time of a feast where it was customary for the governor to release a prisoner. He gave them what he thought was a no brainer to release Jesus. He offered Jesus or one of the worst of the worst. It would be like offering Jesus instead of Charles Manson, Osama Bin Laden or Hitler. Pilate probably thought it was an easy way out. Yet the mob called for Jesus’ blood.
Only Matthew mentioned the dream Pilate’s wife had. Matthew has a lot of passages about dreams, but I’m not sure why. Maybe dreams were very big in the Jewish culture of the time. Matthew is also the only one who mentioned Pilate washing his hands. This was a Jewish gesture that would have made sense to the masses. He was saying that it was all of their faults not just the priests. We like to vilify those who crucified Jesus. Yet, we are them. We crucify him over again every time we deny him in our actions or words.
Finally, Pilate turned Jesus over to be crucified. The soldiers began to ridicule Jesus at this point. He probably looked horrible after having been scourged and up all night, and beaten in the temple. Not the vision we have of a king. So they played with that. The part that always makes me wince is the crown of thorns. I work with plants a lot and I’ve been stabbed by all sorts of things. It hurts. I can’t imagine having a crown of thorns shoved down around my head. The soldiers mocked him and mocked him, but then put him back in order to lead him out to be crucified. We will deal with that tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s reading is Leviticus 13-14 and Matthew 27:32-36.
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