The writer gives us a quick Jewish history lesson, a
foreshortened one to be sure. Abraham and
his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob are singled out and then he skips forward
past Joseph to Moses. Abraham is where
it all begins, this man’s faith and faithfulness in testing is the fount from
which all else flows. Isaac and Jacob
continue the covenant and then Moses gets special praise, “He made him equal in
glory to the holy ones.” The Jewish belief
is that the giving of the law was accompanied by angels (see Galatians 3.19)
and that God spoke face to face with Moses was to give him glory commensurate
with these “holy ones.” Moses had a most
special relationship with God, unlike anyone else at the time or
otherwise. Why does the writer believe
that God chose Moses for this relationship.
“For his faithfulness and meekness he consecrated him, choosing him out of
all humankind.” Meekness isn’t a
characteristic we normally associate with Moses or our leaders is it? It might
be profitable for us to spend some time studying that concept biblically if we
are to have a similar relationship with the Lord and if we are to properly evaluate
leaders.
Jesus makes two prophecies here: that there will be a colt that has never been
ridden in the village of either Bethpage or Bethany, and that the owner will
ask a question when they untie it. The first was truly prophecy, the second was
dependent on the first but if the first was true, the second was
predictable. Did the owner know who “the
Lord” referred to? He must have thought
it an extraordinary honor if he did. It seems
likely that the owner would have known, as Jesus and these men, the disciples,
were very recently here and did the greatest miracle prior to the resurrection
here in this village, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. As Jesus approaches Jerusalem all would have
known this was self-conscious fulfillment of another prophecy, the prophecy of
Zechariah 9.9, “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having
salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a
donkey.” The greeting they give Jesus is
the greeting of Messiah, everyone thought the time had come. Well, except for those Pharisees who refer to
Him as Teacher in asking Him to rebuke His disciples. Are they blind?
What is Paul talking about when he writes of being taken up
to the third heaven? Well, if we look at
the apocryphal book of 2 Enoch, which was never included in the official Jewish
canon of Scripture but which was read by many, we see the idea of seven levels
of heaven and the third in particular. The
third level is described as a garden tended and kept by 300 angels for the
righteous “who endure all manner of offense from those that exasperate their
souls, who avert their eyes from iniquity, and make righteous judgment, and
give bread to the hungering, and cover the naked with clothing, and raise up
the fallen, and help injured orphans, and who walk without fault before the
face of the Lord, and serve him alone.” Because
of this vision, Paul says, he received a thorn in the flesh to keep him
humble. All three of our lessons today
speak of humility as a value and yet the world we live in has little value for
true humility. Paul says that the
purpose of humility is that the Lord alone be exalted. We aren’t called to walk in our own power but
in His.
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