Bag Men

Luke 22:63 Now the men who held Jesus mocked Him and beat Him. 64 And having blindfolded Him, they struck Him on the face and asked Him, saying, "Prophesy! Who is the one who struck You?" 65 And many other things they blasphemously spoke against Him.

Deut 18:15 "The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear.

It is hard to imagine any Jewish person thinking or acting in a way which they know to be directly contrary to Moses. Yet here we see the Temple guard acting in exactly that way, with the explicit permission and direction of the leadership of the church.

It is a horrible thing to see when church leadership goes bad. Unfortunately, it is the leaders of the church who are least-well depicted in the Gospels. (They are even depicted as relatively worse than the Roman governors, who were despised by the Jews.)

The question is, how could this happen?

Moses had predicted ‘The True Prophet’ would come. Church leadership knew it. The Jewish people knew it. What are we to expect when ‘The True Prophet’ comes? Joy! Worship! Yet, subservience!

Instead we see them place a bag over Jesus’ head and beat the tar out of Him - as the elders of the church look on approvingly. All the while taunting Him that if He really is ‘The True Prophet’ He should be able to say who it is who is hitting Him. Of all the hurtful things Jesus endured before and during His crucifixion, this may have been among the worst. Imagine God, having a purple robe placed upon His shoulders and a crown of thorns placed roughly on His head - thorns deeply implanted - and then taunted about His office as ‘The True Prophet.’

This suggests they knew exactly what they were doing. This was no accident.

Who would do such a thing? Are these inherently evil men? Are these thugs representative of some mob of local gangsters? No, they are the representatives of the church. They are, in fact, the ‘guardians’ of the church. (Indeed, The Church Guard.)

What does it say about the church when there is no longer a fear of God present within the church? I take this as a stark warning of how men seeking power eventually find themselves directly contending with God. And they willingly lead others into that same contention.
- Pastor Bill