JOHN 11:47-53 tells of the moment when the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus' day publicly decided to kill Jesus. This happened right after they heard the report that Jesus had resurrected Lazarus of Bethany.
For a while now, I have specifically blamed the corrupt, hardhearted religious leaders of that day for the consequent rejection of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah who fulfilled the prophecies of the Jewish prophets. The Jews of these later ages rely on the leaders of that day who were on the scene to rightly judge whether Jesus was or wasn't the promised Messiah. Hard hearts were portrayed in this JOHN 12 passage. When they heard Jesus had resurrected Lazarus, the Jewish religious leaders of that day didn't say this must CERTAINLY be a sign from God. Their response didn't even have God anywhere in it, at least as it was reported to us. I can see where the strong, corrupt leader, Caiaphus, might have run the meeting and no other wanted to speak in opposition to him. But there was NOTHING about God! HARDHEARTED! Please don't let that be your life and your choices. (We want to always think of God and His desires and plans for us.)
For a while, I've decided that Jesus had a reason for naming a man Lazarus in his parable of LUKE 16. (Did He use any proper name in any other story?) Jesus was asking us to connect those two Lazarus stories together.
In the LUKE 16 parable, Abraham says "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."
So that parable ends with Abraham refusing to send someone back from the dead to warn beloved relatives of God's judgement. But with Jesus' DELIBERATE resurrection of Lazarus (even delaying his going to Lazarus until after Lazarus died) expressed God's divine, greater-than-Abraham love in that He would go farther to try to reach the hard hearted Jewish leaders.
I planned this post to be about the hard heartedness of those specific religious leaders. I hope I showed that. But let me mention again what I consider to be Jesus' main point in telling the RICH MAN AND LAZARUS AFTER DEATH story.
Jesus, I think, was responding to the Jews who were expressing to Him that they were children of Abraham and therefore they had an automatic "in" with God(?) Was Jesus trying to show them that they were idolizing Abraham and that Abraham was an imperfect human , not divine.
Love divine, all loves excelling!
Thank you , Jesus!
