“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isa. 53:6)
When Jesus Christ confronted the religious leaders in Jerusalem, as recorded in the four gospels, at that time the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes were in possession of the worldly political seat of power. They had the power to influence the opinion of the populace against Jesus, to throw out of the synagogue anyone who professed belief in Jesus, to slander His person, to marginalize His teachings, and eventually have Jesus crucified by the Romans as a political and societal enemy of the state (Jn. 19:12).
A small, exclusive club of spiritually blind and worldly self-centered men was in political control in Jerusalem during the ministry of Jesus.
Yet during this entire period, God is able to engineer and accomplish all of His plans and designs for the salvation of mankind, which He meticulously laid-out ahead of time in the Old Testament messianic prophecies and “types” of Christ…hundreds of years earlier.
This is an important observation as we approach the last days. God worked His complete agenda for mankind’s salvation within and through the political plans and schemes of evil men during the same time period these men thought they had the upper hand and were in control of events.
This gives us a foreglimpse of the scenario that may repeat itself again in the upcoming end-times.
An argument can be made that it is the violently lethal differences of opinion that form the basis for the martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth as the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for our sins. It is the heat of the conflict created within God’s resolution of the difference between right and wrong, and truth and error, which surprisingly generates the outcome of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross as the foundation of our salvation.
That God is creatively brilliant enough to mint a heavenly coin of salvation, having the exposure of error and falsehood on one side of the coin, and love-filled redemption from sin through the atonement of Christ on the cross…and resurrection from the dead…on the other side of the coin, is remarkable beyond all human reckoning. This plainly tells us that God can move through real-life events and circumstances having the darkest outward appearance of adversity and opposition, to accomplish His plans with creative imagination and foresight to rival the best of modern fictional suspense novelists.
The religious leaders in Jerusalem had the political power, but God had control of all of the events, situations, and circumstances to achieve the outcome He wanted.
This is one of the most important revelations in the Bible, which is understood and acknowledged on a surface level in all of Christendom, yet is seldom explored very deeply. Whoever can supernaturally shape events controls everything.
There is only one divine, all-powerful God in all of existence. This is one of the things Jesus is trying to tell us about our choices, and the direction of our lives, in The Sermon on the Mount. This is one of the foundations of faith in Jesus Christ. This is why Christians walking in the Spirit surrender all to Jesus. This is why people of faith in the Bible, in the midst of their calling, give up control of events to God.
God is so intelligent and resourceful that He can even take the evil actions of worldly people and turn them into good outcomes.
The action of crucifying the Son of God cannot get any more darkly evil, yet God turned it into the greatest blessing for good for all eternity.
If the worst that evil can do, unjustly condemning and executing Jesus the Son of God, ends up actually providing the means for the best outcome in human history…the salvation and deliverance of mankind from sin…then evil does not stand a chance when people choose God. God is so intelligent and resourceful that He can take the very ammunition that evil shoots at spiritual righteousness, and turn it back around upon itself.
Although the human side of Jesus did not look forward joyfully toward the physical agony of the cross, Jesus was not afraid of evil. Jesus knew that God the Father would take the deadly attack of evil upon Himself, as symbolized in the cross, turning this around into eternal salvation for mankind.
When we are safely “in Christ” through faith, and because “all things work together for good for them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28), we do not have to be afraid of the appearance of evil coming against us in the situations and circumstances of life.
This includes the upcoming end-times.
The point here is to illustrate that it was the event of the cross of Christ, spread-out in time over many finely detailed circumstances, which not only divided spiritual light from darkness, but at the same time demonstrated God’s complete mastery over the affairs of men. It did not matter that the religious leaders in Jerusalem had the political and social power. God’s use of situations and circumstances is on a level that is way above the temporal political powers on earth.
The Cross in the Christian Life 