0334. Ye Denied the Holy One

Ye Denied the Holy One

"But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you" (Act_3:14).

It seems unspeakably sad that men should deny the One Whom God glorifies and yet it has always been so.

1. Jesus Christ was denied in His birth. The Bible says, "There was no room for Him in the inn."

2. Jesus Christ was denied in His own village, where He had been brought up. It was at Nazareth that they led Him to the brow of the hill and sought to cast Him down.

3. Jesus Christ was denied at His own Father’s house. They turned the Temple over to money changers and to the sellers of doves.

4. Jesus was denied by His own people. At His birth, there was no room for Him in the inn, at the last there was no room for Him on the earth. They crucified Him and cried, "Away with Him, let Him be crucified." "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not."

When He was but a Babe, they gave Him nothing but straw for His head, when He was ready to die, they gave Him a crown of thorns. How the words of Peter must have gone home to the hearts of the men who crucified the Lord! Even as Joseph’s brethren remembered their treatment of their brother and how they hardened their hearts against him; so must these men have remembered their sin as Peter said, "Ye denied the Holy One and Just." They saw themselves leading Christ before Annas and Caiaphas. They remembered how they dragged Him before Pilate and Herod and back to Pilate again. They remembered how they cried, "His blood be on us and on our children:" how they led Him away to crucify Him. In all of this, they had denied the Holy One and Just.

They had hated Christ without a cause; they had summoned witnesses against Him unjustly. The One in Whom there was no sin and of Whom Pilate said, "I find no fault in Him" they had condemned. The One Who was holy and just, they had hated. Besides this, they had desired a murderer in His stead. They had refused Christ and received Barabbas.

They had killed the Prince of Life, the only One Who had power to save; and yet God, in great mercy, had turned their madness into a channel for His grace, and by virtue of the death of the One they hanged upon a tree, He offered them life forevermore.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR