There's Nothing of Insignificance

Sunday, 9th March 2008

I have heard Ps Prince mention in several of his sermons that "there are no insignificant details in the Bible; everything is included there for a purpose". He gave the example of the genealogy of Noah as found in Gen 5. Hidden in that genealogy is a message foretelling the passion of Jesus Christ that will bring mankind rest. I have blogged about that here.

Well, there is another detail found in Mark 14:63 that is extremely significant, which I will come to shortly after I give some background information on it.

In the Old Testament, God had established that the descendents of Levi be dedicated to Him in exchange of the firstborn of the other tribes. In particular, one of the descendents of Levi was a guy named Aaron (who was Moses' elder brother), and Aaron was appointed the very first high priest.

At any one time, there was only supposed to be one high priest. When the high priest passed on, his eldest son (or eldest nephew in the event that he had no sons) would succeed him. Yet we read that during the time of Herod, there were in fact two high priests -- Annas and Caiaphas. That alone was a travesty of what God had ordained.

But let's come back to the incident recorded in Mark 14:63. Here we find that Caiaphas tore his robes when he accused Jesus of blasphemy, in response to Jesus saying that the Son of Man would sitting in the right hand of power and coming in glory.

In fact, this scene was portrayed very vividly in the movie The Passion of the Christ (a screenshot of which is shown on the right).

We read in Lev 10:6 that the priests were not supposed to tear their clothes. When Caiaphas did so, he did not realise that his act effectively put an end to the Aaronic priesthood, paving the way for Jesus to become our High Priest in the order of Melchizedek, a priesthood that is eternal.

Speaking of which, many other things that happened during the passion of our Lord was of great significance, and I may start a series of meditations on that, since Good Friday is in a few weeks' time.

For example, when Jesus sweat drops of blood that fell on the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane, His blood redeemed us from the curse that was declared upon the ground in another garden -- the garden of Eden -- when Adam was told that he had to toil and sweat and labour for his living.

Another example: when Jesus was whipped by the Roman soldiers with the cat-o-nine-tails that ripped flesh out of his body, causing it to be full of stripes, it was to redeem us from the curse of sickness and disease.