Jesus as judged by his enemies : a study of the criticisms and attacks made on Jesus by his enemies

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PAGE . The Judgment of the Enemy... 7 . A False Worshiper............ 15 . “Can Any Good Thing Come Oiiot Nazareth? yn oo Whence Hath This Man These CLEP GDA AEG GED Sa CRU OT 29 . Is Not This the Carpenter?.... 36 . How Knoweth This Man Letters? 44 Pa New Leaching 51 Pecranve hinge! dere 57 . Eating and Drinking with Publicans and sinnets! 5.0.60 6.0.0. 65 . Jesus as a Pevuteaces ND Sarre! 71 MAN teraAve CHATPe sy. lacs oe kt 79 . A Trampler on Tradition...... 87 . The Demand for a Sign........ 94. . Whither Will This Man Go?... 101 . An Incomparable Speaker...... 108 . Have Any of the Rulers Believed SE EITEV EV Mee ee ce Sg 119 . A Witness to Himself.......... 126 meUvNO ATE PHOU? oe ey ialeee ek. 133

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I The Judgment Of The Enemy

AN ancient song of Israel declared, of the surrounding heathen, that “‘Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.” It is a strong case that can be surrendered to the judgment of enemies, and such was the case of Israel as they boldly submitted their God to comparison with the gods of the heathen and left the decision to the heathen themselves.

Jesus Christ triumphantly stands the same test. He had his enemies in his earthly life, and they had many things to say about him and | against him. More than three score of these sayings are scattered through the Gospels. They form a remarkable body of een that is of the greatest value.

It is proposed in this series of studies to examine a number of these sayings and see what light they throw on the person and power of the Lord Jesus Christ. We begin with an evaluation of the judgment of the enemy, including under this term the opponents of Christ in his day and of Christianity in our day and also our personal opponents. 7

1. The enemy is a man with his full human rights. We are usually disposed to regard him as a wholly hostile and untrustworthy person, so blinded in his judgment by prejudice and partisanship, hatred and malice, that any testimony he may offer is at once to be rejected and spurned. Such judgment, however, is itself prejudiced and unfair.

It should be laid down as a preliminary principle that our opponent on any occasion is a man of like passions with ourselves. Friend and foe, however widely and bitterly they may be separated, have much in common, and the finding of this common ground is the first step toward their understanding one another and possible reconciliation. They may both be honest and sincere, and yet each be missing the point of view of the other and thus be “clashing like ignorant armies in the night.” It is important, therefore, that they approach each other in the spirit of simple human confidence and respect and hold that they are both trying to reach the truth.

This attitude may in itself clear up the situation and put both sides in more pleasant and promising relations. The enemy has a right to state his case and to receive fair treatment.

The “scribes and Pharisees,’ who were the typical and persistent enemies of Jesus, were

JUDGMENT OF THE ENEMY 9 often sincerely religious, and Jesus always treated them fairly and often kindly, though sometimes severely. His patient and tender treatment of doubt was one of the most remarkable and beautiful features of his ministry. Even when he was reviled he reviled not again, and under the falsest and most malicious charges and slanders he opened not his mouth.

We need to exercise the same spirit toward those who are, or seem to us to be, in opposition to Christ or to ourselves. We are often incliried to impute to them only bad motives and eall them hard names. But they are men even as we are and may be as honest in their views as we are in ours.

It will help us as well as them and may enable us to get together for us all to stand on the broad ground of our common humanity and respect one another’s rights and views. Bludgeons and bitter blows, whether material or verbal, will not help us to settle questions with those that differ from us. We have a right to our convictions, but they have the same right to theirs, and we should leave wide room for them to differ from us.

II. The enemy may have some truth on his ‘side that we have missed on our side. Every human mind is partial and imperfect in its working and results, and therefore while we see our side, another side is hidden from us which may lie open to the vision of our opponent. Instead, therefore, of wholly opposing his position, we should endeavor to reach his point of view and see what he sees in the hope that we may thereby gain some new light and broader vision.

In every great controversy, whether scientific, political, or religious, both sides have contributed something to the final outcome. It is almost never the case that all the truth and right are on one side and all the error and wrong on the other. Orthodox and heterodox, conservative and liberal, believer and unbeliever, often unconsciously work together toward some middle point or higher view and common end.

We should therefore be on our guard against undiscriminatingly opposing the enemy, lest we be found opposing the truth itself. An apparent enemy may be a friend in disguise, doing the cause we think he opposes a valuable service. We shudder yet at the name of Voltaire as an arch enemy of Christianity, but possibly he did a good work in opposing the kind of Christianity that confronted him.

Many of the supposed foes of Christianity are really clearing away from it abuses and poisonous excrescences that have grown up around it. They are not the opponents of Christ so much as of his mistaken or false followers.

JUDGMENT OF THE ENEMY 11

We often may not fully know even our best friend until we hear what his enemies have to say about him; their prying fingers may have found some crack or crevice in his character that we have missed; or we may not know how pure and true he is until he stands in the searching light of their hostility or is subjected to the acid test of their hatred.

His enemies, even the bitterest, got some glimpses of Jesus that his own disciples failed to catch; and many of their judgments are among the most penetrating and splendid testimonies to him. Unconsciously they put upon his brow some of his brightest crowns. The Gospels would be rifled of some of their finest treasures if these sayings were blotted from their pages.

His enemies being judges, Jesus Christ was not as other men but looms above them sublimely as the greatest and most mysterious Figure of the world. And ever since his day some of the grandest eulogies upon him have been uttered by unbelievers. We may well be thankful for the testimony of the enemy.

III. The enemy may be a powerful factor in establishing and spreading the gospel. Hostile attacks lead believers to investigate and confirm and propagate the truth.,

The enemies of Jesus often established more surely the facts in his life. His trial before the

Sanhedrin, prejudiced and unfair and malignant as it was, brought out his character and purpose and spirit as almost nothing else in his life did: in that gloom he shone as a white star. The precaution the Jews took to prevent any fraud in connection with his resurrection is one of the bulwarks of that fact to this day. The persecutions of the Christians in the Roman Empire were a powerful cause for the spread of Christianity, so that it became a proverb that ““The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Fire and sword could not stop the Reformation: they only spread it.

The attacks of unbelievers upon Christianity to-day are still often a potent means for its establishment: they lead believers to study into its origin and history more deeply and to apply it more widely and thoroughly. The scholars who are supposed to be attacking and destroying the Bible have repeatedly turned out to be its ablest defenders and truest friends. Christianity would not be where it is to-day had it not been for the work of its real or supposed enemies. They have helped to make it as the storm makes the oak.

IV. The enemy may become a friend. The line between friend and foe is not a fixed gulf across wh’ch no one can pass, but interchanges between the two sides are constantly taking

JUDGMENT OF THE ENEMY 13 place, especially from foes to friends. The enemy may come to see that he misunderstands Christ and may turn to him in sympathy and faith. Some of the Pharisees became followers of Christ, and the bitterest and most powerful of all, Paul, became his greatest apostle. All the friends of Christ were once his enemies, and his progress through the world is accomplished by winning his enemies to his side.

The Emperor Constantine began by trying to .

crush Christ, and ended by raising his cross above his own eagles. Many a man has set out to criticize and oppose Christianity and ended by embracing it; many a soul has entered a religious meeting to scoff and remained to pray.

Our objective, then, in our approach to the enemy should not be to defeat him, to prove that we are right and he is wrong, but to win him as a convert. This principle should govern our relations to those outside the official bounds of Christianity at home, and is applicable and fruitful on the foreign missionary field.

So the enemy may be of great value to Christianity. He is a man with his rights, to be treated with toleration and respect, with some truth in his view which we should strive to gain, often an indirect agent in establishing and spreading religion, and not a foe to hate but a possible friend to win.

In the blazing focus of the criticism and hostility of his enemies Jesus Christ stands illuminated and tested, and nowhere else does his character shine out in purer worth and more splendid beauty.

Chapter II A False Worshiper

Tue enemies of Jesus appeared early. Before he had crept out of his cradle, and was still a helpless infant in his mother’s arms, they made a desperate effort to destroy him. His mother, presenting her Babe for consecration in the Temple, heard the ominous prophecy, “Behold, this child is set . . . for a sign which is spoken against.”

His first enemy was a mighty monster of iniquity. Herod the Great was king in Jerusalem when the Wise Men from the East appeared in the city inquiring for the newborn King of the Jews. The suspicious king instantly scented danger in the announcement, and the same good news that brought joy to shepherds and Wise Men sent trouble up into the palace and threw its royal occupant into a panic of fear.

Something had to be done to remove this possible rival, and the wily despot concocted a cunning plan to crush the infant in its very cradle. He sent for the Wise Men and with a pious air said to them, “Go and search out exactly concerning the young child; and when 15 ye have found him, bring me word, that I also may come and worship him.” Professed worship was upon his lips, but murder was in his heart.

When he found that the Wise Men had slipped away without giving him the desired information and that his plot was thus thwarted, he sent soldiers down to Bethlehem and thrust a sword through every cradle in which was a male child under two years of age. A great cry of anguish swept out over the hill town at this monstrous act of wholesale murder. Yet even this far-flung net of destruction failed to catch its intended victim, for the holy Child had escaped.

I. Herod was right in his premonition of the significance of this birth and the importance of this Child. It is true that he only caught at the name, “King of the Jews,” as the announcement of a possible rival, but he was on the right track in suspecting danger to his throne, and the danger was far deeper and wider than he knew.

The birth of that Babe marked a new epoch in the world’s history; the clock of the calendar of the centuries then struck a new hour. Jesus represented and embodied principles that were destined in time to undermine and overthrow every throne of despotism. He was the first great Democrat, and he came to teach and inaugurate the brotherhood of man and give the

A FALSE WORSHIPER 17 people their rights. As he has walked down through the ages despotic thrones have toppled over and representative government has sprung up. ‘The Herods have been stripped of their arbitrary power and have been growing fewer in number, as Christendom broadens over the world.

And yet Jesus did not directly attack Herod or say a word against Cesar. He brought no sword to rip up the existing order of the world. On the contrary, he paid taxes to the Roman government and was loyal to it. Nevertheless, he quietly introduced principles of human equality and popular rights, brotherhood and peace, that silently but surely undermined Ceesar’s throne and in time has reconstructed the political fabric of the world. So the first enemy of Jesus was right in his interpretation of the significance of his advent into the world, though he was dreadfully wrong in his method of meeting it.

II. Herod stands for those who misunderstand the purpose and blindly if not wickedly oppose the progress of Jesus in the world. We are not rid of despotism when we have substituted an elective president for a hereditary king.

Old evils have a way of coming back under new names, and abuse of power and corruption may spring up in a republic as well as in an empire. The “machine” and the “boss” may be as arbitrary and oppressive, corrupt and wicked, as any Herod of old. Capital and greed may crowd in upon the rights of the people and defraud them as unjustly and ruinously as the robber barons of medieval times. These corrupt political combinations and leaders and special interests are as truly enemies of the principles of Jesus Christ as was any persecuting Cesar.

There are businesses also, such as the liquor traffic, that are as afraid of Jesus Christ as was Herod in his consternation. They know that his church is against them, and though they may make a pretense of paying it outward respect, and may even ostentatiously contribute to its support, yet secretly they fear it and use every means in their power to thwart its work and purpose. There are men and interests so tyrannical and selfish that they stop not short of murder and would even slay Christ to gain their ends; at least, they are trampling upon and trying to destroy his principles and spirit that they may remove him from their selfish and wicked path.

III. Herod stands as the forerunner and representative of all false worshipers of Christ. “That I also may come and worship him” was the hypocritical plea under which he masked his

A FALSE WORSHIPER 19 murderous purpose. He feigned loyalty to the King he would have assassinated. He bent his knee, but held a dagger in his hand. A kiss was upon his lips, but treachery in his heart.

A long line of successors have followed Herod into the presence of Jesus, outwardly declaring that they also are come to worship him, but secretly working as enemies of his cause. Kings and other high personages have posed as ‘“‘defenders of the faith,” who have disgraced it in their lives. Some scholars in their investigation of the Bible and of religion have shown a spirit of prepossession and unfriendliness that has done damage to the cause they were supposed to support. Even ministers have stood in the pulpit and disseminated doubt and practically destroyed the very gospel they pretended to preach.

And what a multitude of supposed worshipers have sat in the pews of the Christian Church and yet dishonored Christ. Some have deliberately used the church as a cloak of respectability and a means to success. Time was when the very name of Christ was a danger, and his cross pierced those who were brave to bear it: then hypocrites shunned it, and the church consisted of sifted and tried souls. But now Christianity has become respectable and popular; its cross is carved in ebony or set in gold as a fashionable ornament, and church membership is a card of introduction into the best society or a certificate of character inviting confidence in business.

As a consequence the sanctuary may be thronged with worshipers some of whom are as palpable hypocrites as Herod. They sit reverently and conform to all the outward rites of the church, but inwardly they may be full of all manner of uncleanness and their lives are a living disproof of their profession. The most powerful enemies of Christ to-day are not those outside, but those inside, the church. The unworthy lives of his professed followers are the greatest weakness and hindrance of his kingdom. Every unfaithful Christian so far belongs to Herod’s party and is thrusting his sword through the cradle of Christ or crucifying him afresh.

IV. Yet Herod with all his cunning plot and despotic power could not touch a hair of the head of the newborn King. As easily could he have struck down Cesar from his throne or crushed the great globe of the earth flat as he could have harmed that Babe. God stood within that shadow of hatred “keeping watch above his own.”

Thus the first enemy of Jesus was thwarted in his unholy plot and purpose, and this was prophetic of the failure and folly of all those that seek to destroy this Child. The cross could

A FALSE WORSHIPER 21 not crush him, death could not extinguish his spirit, the Roman Empire with all its persecuting power could not stop him, but silently and irresistibly he has stepped through the centuries, instilling his spirit and establishing his kingdom. And so will he continue his march of mercy and might until he hath put all enemies under his feet and is crowned Lord of all.

Chapter III “can Any Good Thing Come Out Of Nazareth?”

Tus was the disparaging reply that Nathanael made to Philip when he announced, “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law... did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael was a pious man, “an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile,” but his first attitude toward Jesus was that of opposition, growing out of prejudice against the town from which he came, and therefore he must be included for a moment among the enemies of Jesus, though he presently became his loyal friend and disciple.

Nathanael’s prejudice against Nazareth may have been due to the fact that he himself was from the rival town of Cana, or it may have been his simple incredulity that so great a character as the promised Messiah could come from so small and obscure a place. Prejudice against Jesus on account of his humble origin was not confined to Nathanael, but existed in Nazareth itself and was intense and bitter up in Jerusalem, where ‘‘the chief priests and Pharisees” trium- 22

GOOD THING OUT OF NAZARETH? 23 phantly refuted and rebuked Nicodemus by the challenge (John 7. 52), ‘‘Search, and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.”

I. Thus the first hostile judgment that fell upon Jesus was that of prejudice against his origin. An obscure hill town up in a provincial district was no fit place for a prophet to come from. The village was not even mentioned in the Old Testament, and would all the glowing visions of the prophets and great hopes of the nation find their fulfillment in so obscure and despised a place? Would not Jerusalem, as it sat on its historic hill, crowned with its marble Temple, with its blazing gold roof, in which thronging worshipers witnessed the magnificent ritual of gorgeously robed priests, and perfumed incense bore prayers to heaven, be the worthy recipient of so great an honor? But that the Messiah should appear up among the hill towns and fishing villages of Galilee—who could believe it? The proud priests and Pharisees, deeply insulted at the suggestion, scornfully resented it, and Nathanael himself, a pious citizen of Galilee, could not at first credit it.

The Jews of Jerusalem were much given to priding themselves on their birth and city and holding themselves superior to the common herd of men. “We have Abraham to our father,’’ was their haughty claim, and they disdainfully looked down upon and despised those who were not of their ancestral aristocracy. And so they were in an ill mood to receive a provincial prophet and at once branded him as an impossibility, if not an impostor.

This principle of judgment is everywhere prevalent and powerful in the world. Notorious is the rivalry of towns and cities and countries by which the citizens of one arrogate to themselves superior eminence and dignity over another.

Especially does the metropolis look down upon the provinces, the city upon the town and village, and even the village upon the country. Men think to measure themselves by the magnitude of the city to which they belong, and a resident of New York or Chicago swells up into large self-esteem in his relations with the rural dweller. It is hard for us to think that anybody of importance can come from a rival city or a country town. Weare the people, and anyone that aspires to be somebody must be one of us.

The aristocracy of birth and blood works in the same way, and the aristocracy of wealth, especially of the newly rich, often breeds a coarser and more vulgar spirit of assumed superiority and contempt for the common crowd.

And so men are often judged by the place they come from, or their ancestral connections, or their bank account, or the clothes they wear,

GOOD THING OUT OF NAZARETH? 25 and those who are rising from the common level to conspicuous heights at first meet with rejection and may be dismissed with a sneer.

II. But these artificial distinctions and barriers cannot long withstand genuine worth and power and are often quickly swept away. Nature will not submit to such standards and makes short work with them. God is against them.

John the Baptist, himself an insurgent against social and religious conventionalities as he preached out in the wilderness in a rough coat bound around him with a leather strap, poured contempt upon them as he told the proud priests and Pharisees, boasting of their Abrahamic de- . scent, that God could raise up better men out of stones and dirt.

And how often has this been almost literally done as men have come up out of the lowest strata of society and have occupied the seats of the mighty! Out of the primal elements of humanity have emerged men of superior and even supreme worth and power, as out of the. molten heart of the globe volcanoes pour forth irresistible floods of lava and pile up great mountains.

Nearly all the molders of human thought and makers of history have originated close to the ground and have sprung from its soil. ‘The most noted birthplace in Scotland is that of Burns: it is a humble stone cottage with a thatched roof and a stable in one end of it. The most celebrated birthplace in England is that of Shakespeare, and again it is a plain cottage in a country village. Lincoln was born in a log hut in the wilds of Kentucky, Mohammed was the son of a camel driver, and Confucius of a soldier. It would seem that when Nature wants to mold a great man she goes back to the soil and mixes him out of virgin clay untainted by degenerate heredity.

The aristocracies of birth and wealth furnish few of the prophets and leaders of the race. The city is mostly ruled by the rural regions. Boys with fresh blood and virile grit come up from the country to the city and take possession of it: soon they are transacting its business and living in its palaces. Democracy has a way of asserting itself and shows its contempt for privilege and precedent. The sneers of the upper classes are answered by voices from the great deep, and men of real worth and power triumphantly come to their own.

III. Jesus himself was the supreme exemplar of this truth. He came, not from proud Jerusalem, but from humble and despised Nazareth. Nathanael thought he was therefore an impossible Messiah, and the priests and Pharisees were sure no prophet could come from such an

GOOD THING OUT OF NAZARETH? 27 origin, but “‘he could not be hid.” His inherent worth, his human and divine power, asserted itself with the might of omnipotence.

All Jewish contempt and opposition and the whole weight of the Roman Empire could not keep him down. He rose to his true rank and power with the irresistibleness of the cosmic force that pushes up mountains and _ holds planets in their orbits. Artificial dignities and boastful claims were swept from his path like straws before the wind. He walked up to Jerusalem and stirred the whole city with his presence. Priests and Pharisees and Roman governors and soldiers could avail nothing against him. He walked through the Roman Empire and lifted it off its hinges. He has come down through the centuries, and thrones and despotisms and false distinctions of birth and blood and wealth and fashion have been trampled under his feet.

His gospel means an end to class privileges and artificial aristocracies, and a democracy of human souls. He has answered the sneer at his humble origin by making all such sneers despicable and lifting all human life to the level of brotherhood.

IV. Philip gave a beautiful answer to Nathanael’s prejudice: ““Come and see.” He did not argue with him and try to convince him of his error: this would probably only have driven Nathanael deeper into it. He would then have defended it, and all his antagonism to Nazareth as a rival town or an unworthy place for the Messiah to come from would have been aroused. But he could not well decline this simple reasonable invitation to come and see for himself. This instantly disarmed his prejudice and put him in a candid and receptive mood.

The result was most gratifying to both Philip and Nathanael. The skeptic became converted, all his prejudices melted away in the presence of Jesus like mist in the morning sun, and Nathanael became a fast friend and faithful disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is generally the wisest way of dealing with the criticisms and opposition of the enemies of Christ. Argument is not the best weapon with which to meet their attacks. It stirs up controversy, deepens prejudices and enmities, and often onlyconvinees both sides of their own convictions.

Personal experience of Christ will dissolve doubts of and disarm opposition to him. “Come and see”’ is still our best answer to his enemies. If we can lead them into his presence, his gracious personality, his “sweet reasonableness and light;’’ his forgiving power and peace will win them from being enemies and transform them into friends.

Chapter IV Whence Hath This Man These Things?

JESUS preached twice in the synagogue of Nazareth and on both occasions was received with sneers and rejected with unbelief and scorn. His enemies were of his own town and even of his own household, and this must have been one of the bitterest drops in his cup of disappointment and trial. In the most literal sense “he came unto his own, and his own received him not.”

It might be thought a heavy score in the account against him that he was rejected by the people of the very town in which he had been brought up, with whom he had lived as neighbors and companions for thirty years and who therefore knew him best. Jesus himself felt the point and the poignancy of this charge, and explained it on the proverbial principle that ‘No prophet is acceptable in his own country.”

I. A year or two before these events, Jesus had closed his carpenter shop and gone south into Judza, whence marvelous stories had floated back on the tide of returning pilgrims of his wonderful works in cleansing the Temple and 29 performing miracles and appearing as the Messiah. His arrival would set all tongues gossiping and create a tremendous sensation in the sleepy old town. His preaching in the village synagogue at first fulfilled expectations as all wondered at the gracious words that fell from his lips.

But presently wonder became tinged with envy and suspicion and then turned into enmity and burst in an explosion of wrath. ‘‘Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him.”

This was the catalogue of charges they drew up against him. ‘They emphasized his lowly birth and noted with statistical particularity each member of his humble family. Comparing his profession of Messiahship with his pedigree, they said the two did not match. A carpenter’s son could never be a prophet. Because they knew him so well they thought he could never amount to much. He was simply one of them’ selves, and how could he be the Messiah?