We begin today at the end. We take up something Jesus says at the end of our text. The Pharisees have watched the events of Palm Sunday very carefully. They have seen the reception Jesus received as he entered Jerusalem. They have observed the royal-treatment given to Jesus. The palm branches being waved, as if a conquering hero is coming to town! They have listened to the crowds as they cheer the arrival of Jesus, using portions of Psalm 118 to welcome Jesus with Messianic overtones. They don’t like it! They don’t like it one bit!

“No way!” This is the standard response when you don’t believe something just happened or will happen. The Bears are lining up for a 40-yard field goal that will beat the Packers on the last play of the game. That’s a pretty routine “make” for the pros. The ball is snapped…and the Packers’ defensive end Dean Lowry gets his hand up and blocks the field goal. Packers win! Packers’ fans yelled, “No way!” Bears fans muttered, “No way!”

It is difficult for us to imagine just how different Jesus would have been in the religious culture of his day. Jerusalem was largely dominated by the chief priests of the Temple. As you moved away from Jerusalem, the synagogues in the towns and villages were dominated by the party of the Pharisees, many of whom were rabbis and experts in the law. And for many of the most influential Pharisees, the world was divided into two camps. You either followed them and all their legal requirements, or you were considered a “sinner.” And people in the class of “sinners” were worthy of disdain and contempt. I suspect their expectation of the Messiah was that he would be a Pharisee-on-steroids. Just like them, only more zealous for the laws, and even more zealous about drawing that line between the “righteous” and “sinners.”

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about some tragic death.  The news is filled with stories of war-casualties and natural disasters and murder and overdose.  There is a human tendency in these moments to speculate.  We wonder why it happened to “those” people.  There is an underlying assumption beneath much of the speculation.  The underlying assumption runs something like this:  “Good things happen to good people; conversely, bad things happen to bad people.”  The logic is then simple, cold, inescapable:  That person met with a bad end so they must have been a bad person. 

We have before us today in our text a study of contrasts.  A sharper contrast can scarcely be imagined.  It is the contrast the Lord God first mentions in the Garden of Eden after the Fall into sin.  He spoke already then of the “seed of the woman” and the “seed of the devil.”  It is the contrast between children of light, and those who walk in darkness.