For centuries Israel had been praying for a fulfillment of God’s promise, a king to sit on David’s throne for all eternity. For generations they had been a marginalized people under the oppressive rule of one empire after another, and they had gone through a number of “would-be messiahs” who promised to save them only to be killed in the end. Would God ever send a Savior?
Now the savior stands before the Roman authorities accused of treason. His own people declare that he is a threat to Ceasar. “We have no king,” they say, “but the emperor.”
How did we fall so far? We went from a people who would do anything to be set free from Roman rule to a people who would ultimately reject God’s own Son in favor of the Roman Emperor who the world calls the son of God.
We shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Perhaps we are more alike than we care to admit…