The Old Testament records several statements by God about the place of the descendants of Abraham in the world. Perhaps the quote that best tells us what God expected is found in Exodus 19:5-6: “If therefore you will hear my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my peculiar possession above all people: for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a priestly kingdom, and a holy nation…”
The message seems clear. If the Israelites would listen to God and do His will, they would be His chosen ones who would have the mission to be priests to all peoples. The Israelites were given the awesome responsibility to lead humanity to holiness and to God Himself.
God made this statement when the world was mired in paganism and various forms of Satanism. Only a certain segment of the Israelites had a rudimentary comprehension of the nature of God. He expected the Israelites to continue to develop their understanding by listening to Him and His prophets. Doing so they would become the teachers and religious leaders of all other peoples. The goal was to bring humanity step by step away from its diabolic post-fall past.
The Israelites’ mission was thus paramount: to prepare the Kingdom of God on earth by making believers of its inhabitants.
The Israelites needed help, of course, because they too already had experienced excursions into paganism, notably during their exile in Egypt. Other deviations into paganism were to come. Our compassionate God stood by the Israelites, though. He gave them the Ten Commandments and a body of rules to overcome temptation. God preferred, however, that the Israelites live by faith and not to rely on laws and rules. The prophets repeated this desire, Jesus expressed the same thought throughout his ministry, and St. Paul elaborated on it in his letters.
Despite God’s generous efforts, the spiritual leaders of the Israelites were recalcitrant in absorbing and implementing the mission given to them. They detoured into legalisms. They accepted God’s gift of divine commandments and then incredibly became legalists, lawyers, who lived by the rules devoid of the compassion and love that God is. This detour grew more and more serious until the Pharisees at the time of Christ had developed a whole catalog of man-made rules that took precedence over God’s intentions and word. The Lord was to comment bitterly and often on this priority of rules ahead of piety.
The Israelites under the leadership of the Pharisees failed to be the priests to the rest of the world. Instead the Pharisees led them into an attitude of exclusiveness. The Israelites (who evolved into the members of the tribe of Judah) saw themselves as the holy ones and scorned everyone else. Instead of setting an example to others to help them to understand God, the Judaic leaders saw themselves as the God-chosen ones and saw non-Judaic peoples as unclean and to be avoided, even shunned.
Thus, God’s mission to the children of Abraham was perverted into its very opposite. Instead of priests to the world, the Pharisees and their descendants made themselves into an legalistic arrogant elite who deplored those to whom they were supposed to be ministering. In short, they became racial and theological supremacists.
God had repeatedly urged the Israelites to remain separated to maintain their holy purity. He pushed in this direction not just for the sake of purity. He wanted them to be pure so that they could be more effective priests. God intended for purity to lead to the development of authoritative and powerful leaders who could set an example that humanity would not miss. The Israelites led by the Pharisees, however, separated themselves and lost sight of the reason for the separation. They became only purists in the formality of the law. They even took upon themselves ‘to improve upon’ the rules that God had provided,. They developed a whole body of laws, rules, and oral traditions that contradicted God's desires and had little to do with His intentions.
Jesus’ incarnation was undoubtedly prompted by the Israelites’ perversion of their God-given mission. Jesus came to try to save them from disaster. He wanted to show them once again what their mission really entailed. God had invested centuries of work in His chosen people and now Jesus came to make a last ditch effort to save them and return them to God’s favor.
Jesus' statements indicate that He knew that the Pharisees had already evolved so far from God’s will that trying to save them was hopeless during His ministry. Jesus therefore went over the Pharisee’s heads directly to the Israelites (Judaics) to offer them the opportunity to piously respond.
Jesus continually set an example for how the Pharisees should act, but He also simultaneously began developing an alternate pathway to the Kingdom of God. He set about to form the nucleus of His future church that would have to take over the mission betrayed by the Pharisees. Jesus spent three intense years teaching his disciples and followers what they would have to know to carry out this new task.
The four Gospels of the New Testament record what Jesus taught in these three years. That teaching has at least two levels of meaning. His words and example contain a universal meaning in faith and devotion to God that was designed to aid His followers over the centuries in building His church. But, also, those words and example were meant to show the Pharisees what they were doing wrong. Jesus’ entire ministry was in a way directed to the Pharisees and their followers to try to get through their hard heads and hearts to show them how a priestly nation ought to act.
In his final words in Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus spelled out what a priestly people ought to do, “Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you…” This entreaty set the church into being.
The Pharisees did not fail to see Jesus’ purpose. They understood clearly that everything Jesus said and did challenged their privileged position and (erroneous) ideas. The Pharisees refused to see who Jesus was and to learn from Him. They tried without success to tempt, corrupt and refute Jesus. Unable to disprove or assimilate Him, they decided that their only course of action was to get rid of Him. And so they turned Jesus over to the Romans where they denounced Him to enable the crucifixion.
When the Pharisees arranged the killing of the Son of God, they definitively set themselves on a path of supreme diabolic evil. Jesus, of course, foresaw their destiny. A review of what Jesus said about them can help us learn today what He foresaw long ago about the Talmud and its Judaic believers. Subsequent chapters will examine this topic.
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