“The House of Israel”
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own devising. The greater their distance from God, the more rigorous
they were in the observance of these forms.
With all these minute and burdensome exactions it was a practical
impossibility for the people to keep the law. The great principles
of righteousness set forth in the Decalogue, and the glorious truths
shadowed in the symbolic service, were alike obscured, buried under
a mass of human tradition and enactment. Those who were really
desirous of serving God, and who tried to observe the whole law as
enjoined by the priests and rulers, groaned under a heavy burden.
As a nation, the people of Israel, while desiring the advent of
the Messiah, were so far separated from God in heart and life that
they could have no true conception of the character or mission of the
promised Redeemer. Instead of desiring redemption from sin, and the
glory and peace of holiness, their hearts were fixed upon deliverance
from their national foes, and restoration to worldly power. They looked
for Messiah to come as a conqueror, to break every yoke, and exalt
Israel to dominion over all nations. Thus Satan had succeeded in
preparing the hearts of the people to reject the Saviour when He should
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appear. Their own pride of heart, and their false conceptions of His
character and mission, would prevent them from honestly weighing
the evidences of His Messiahship.
For more than a thousand years the Jewish people had waited the
coming of the promised Saviour. Their brightest hopes had rested upon
this event. For a thousand years, in song and prophecy, in temple rite
and household prayer, His name had been enshrined; and yet when He
came, they did not recognize Him as the Messiah for whom they had
so long waited. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him
not.”
John 1:11
. To their world-loving hearts the Beloved of heaven
was “as a root out of a dry ground.” In their eyes He had “no form nor
comeliness;” they discerned in Him no beauty that they should desire
Him.
Isaiah 53:2
.
The whole life of Jesus of Nazareth among the Jewish people was
a reproof to their selfishness, as revealed in their unwillingness to
recognize the just claims of the Owner of the vineyard over which
they had been placed as husbandmen. They hated His example of
truthfulness and piety; and when the final test came, the test which
meant obedience unto eternal life or disobedience unto eternal death,