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People Who Should Have Welcomed Him
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stirred up to crush out the truth, the Lord brought His servants face
to face with kings and rulers so that they and their people could
receive light. The greatest monarchs were led to proclaim that the
God whom their Hebrew captives worshiped was supreme.
During the centuries that followed the captivity in Babylon,
the Israelites were cured of worshiping images, and they became
convinced that their prosperity depended on obedience to the law
of God. But for many of the people, the motive was selfish. They
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served God as the way to attain national greatness. They did not
become the light of the world but shut themselves away in order to
escape temptation. God had restricted their association with idol
worshipers to prevent them from adopting heathen practices. But
they had misinterpreted this teaching. They used it to build up a wall
between Israel and other nations. The Jews were actually jealous
that the Lord might show mercy to the Gentiles!
How They Perverted the Sanctuary Service
After their return from Babylon, all over the country the Jews
built synagogues where priests and scribes expounded the law.
Schools claimed to teach the principles of righteousness. But during
the captivity, many of the people had received heathen ideas, and
they brought these ideas into their religious service.
Christ Himself had instituted the ritual service. It was a symbol
of Him, full of vitality and spiritual beauty. But the Jews lost the
spiritual life from their ceremonies and trusted the sacrifices and
ordinances themselves instead of Him to whom they pointed. To
replace what they had lost, the priests and rabbis made many re-
quirements of their own. The more rigid they grew, the less they
showed the love of God.
Those who tried to observe the exacting and burdensome require-
ments of the rabbis could find no rest from a troubled conscience.
In this way, Satan worked to discourage the people, to lower their
ideas of God’s character, and to bring the faith of Israel into con-
tempt. He hoped to establish his claim that no one could obey God’s
requirements. Even Israel, he declared, did not keep the law.