Recently a group of Ebola workers traveled the remote village of Womey in Guinea, Africa in the hope of saving lives there by educating its people on how to help prevent the spread of the virus. The volunteers were seen using a disinfectant spray which somehow became rumored to be the cause of the disease itself. The lie was believed and a mob rushed the workers with knives and machetes. Nine were killed, the bodies all but one thrown in a latrine. A news report says, “The killers murdered, in cold blood, the very people that came to save them.”
There is no feeling among humans more powerful than fear. It blinds the mind and cripples the conscience. It was an irrational fear that led the Jewish leaders to join forces with the Romans to kill Jesus, the Messiah. Fear moved them to kill the very man who came to save them, not by educating them, but by the very death he died.
"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18).
"The difference between truth and fiction," said Mark Twain, "is that fiction has to make sense."
Is there anything more absurd than the idea that God would humble Himself by becoming a man, or that the Creator would be rejected and killed by His own creation, or that He would then be raised from the dead? It's all too fantastic for fiction but just absurd enough to be true.
"Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe" (John 20:27).
Illustration Exchange
“Crowns have always been the sign of authority and Kingship. Charlemagne … wore an octagonal crown. Each of the eight sides was a plaque of gold, and each plaque was studded with emeralds, sapphires, and pearls. The cost was the price of a king’s ransom.
Richard the Lion Heart had a crown so heavy that two earls had to stand, one on either side, to hold his head. The crown that Queen Elizabeth wears is worth over $20 million. Edward II once owned nine crowns, something of a record. Put them all together, from all of Europe and from the archives of the East, all of them are but trinkets compared to Christ’s crown.
Revelation 19 says he had many diadems crowns. He wears a crown of righteousness. He wears a crown of glory. He wears a crown of life. He wears a crown of peace and power. Among those crowns, one outshines the rest. It was not formed by the skilled fingers of a silversmith, nor created by the genius of a craftsman. It was put together hurriedly by the rough hands of Roman soldiers. It was not placed upon its wearer’s head in pomp and ceremony, but in the hollow mockery of ridicule and blasphemy. It is a crown of thorns.”
James S. Hewett is the former pastor of the Saratoga Presbyterian Church and is the editor and publisher of mulitple Bible illustration resources. He has an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary and an MA in Literature from CA State University.
The author adds, "The amazing thing is that it belonged to me. I deserved to wear that crown. I deserved to feel the thrust of the thorns. I deserved to feel the warm trickle of blood upon my barrow. I deserved the pain. He took my crown of thorns—but without compensation. He offers to me instead His crown of life, the crown that fadeth not away.”