The first act of aggression by which one man attacked another
with intent to kill was motivated by religious intolerance. Cain
could not stand to see Abel in better harmony with God than
himself, and the result was murder. This attitude of intolerance is
found all through the Old Testament. Israel could tolerate false
gods, but could not tolerate the prophets of the true God, and so
they killed them. We come to the New Testament and see that one of
the biggest factors in the crucifixion of Christ was the religious
intolerance of the Jewish leaders. This intolerance was focused on
the church also. In spite of Gamaliel’s warning that they might be
fighting against God, they went on persecuting Christians, and they
did all they could to stop Paul. As Paul write to the Thessalonians
he is glad that they have stood firm in the midst of persecution. Paul
then seems to release some of his feelings toward the Jews, an in so
doing he opens for us an interesting study in religious intolerance
and righteous indignation.
I. RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE.
The Jews became exceedingly narrow minded, and they failed
to realize that God had chosen them to be servants in the world.
They had the idea that they were chosen to be privileged characters,
and that God only loved them and had no concern for the rest of the
world. The prophets, of course, made it clear that God had a
universal love, but the people paid no attention to the prophets.
Having this attitude caused them to fail in being God’s servant in
reaching the rest of mankind. When Christ came as a suffering
servant rather than a conquering king they killed him. Their
bigotry made the idea of being servants to the Gentiles very
distasteful. They were intolerant of any religious teaching that did
not conform with their own misconceptions.
Paul would be the last man to encourage anti-Semitism, but he
gives us here a list of facts that we cannot ignore. First of all the
Jews killed the Lord Jesus as he says in verse 15. The Catholic
Church has been debating whether or not to make this fact less
forceful. Some want to make it clear that all men killed the Lord
Jesus, and in fact this is true. Jesus died for all of our sins, and it
was the sins of all people’s that put Him on the cross. Historic
accuracy, however, demands that we recognize that the anger,
intolerance and prejudice that nailed Him there was of the Jews.
The Romans were only involved incidently because of the
circumstances of that day. There was no malicious forethought on
the part of any but the Jewish leaders.
To despise Jews, as many have done through the ages, and to
hate them for this is totally non-biblical. Jesus forgave them on the
cross, and Paul in Romans says that he could wish himself accursed
if it would mean the salvation of the Jews. We do not have to deny
or distort the facts to love the Jews, and to feel love toward them, as
all other men without Christ. To try and deny that the Jews killed
Jesus is not biblical, and it serves no useful purpose. Since it has no
bearing on how we treat them or anyone else today, it is just a fact,
and not the basis for any attitude or action.
H. G. Enelow in the book A Jewish View Of Jesus tries to
reverse the whole account as it is biblically stated. He writes, “The
Jewish trial described in the Gospel’s is so full of irregularities and
improbabilities that we may well assume that it represents a later
assumption rather than an actual fact.” He goes on, “On the other
hand, it seems most probable that Jesus was seized by the Roman
government and tried and executed by the orders of Pilate.” He gets
the Jews off all together, but honesty demands that we accept the
record as it is, and that we see the bigotry and religious intolerance
of the Jews that lead them to kill their prophets and their own
Messiah.
Paul says they also drove us out. The Jews hated Paul after his
conversion, and it was basically because they could not tolerate the
truth. If Paul had become a quiet Christian he probably would not
have had any trouble, but he became zealous for the truth. In Acts
9:22-24 we read, “But Paul increased the more in strength, and
confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is
very Christ. An after that many days were fulfilled, the Jews took
council to kill him...and they watched the gates day and night to kill
him.” From that time on the Jews were out to get Paul.
This is how far wrong people can go who are most sure they are
right. Everybody but us is wrong. Unfortunately, such ridiculous
religious intolerance has not been monopolized by the Jews. John
Wesley wrote, “The thing which I was greatly afraid of all this time,
and which I resolved to us every possible method of preventing, was
a narrowness of spirit, a party zeal....that most miserable bigotry
which makes many so unready to believe that there is any work of
God but among themselves.”
F. B. Speakman said there are two kinds of people: Those who
bring happiness wherever they go, and those who bring happiness
whenever they go, and the bigot fits the latter category. Paul in
verse 16 says they did want the Gentiles to be saved. Such
narrowness is almost inconceivable. Jonathan Swift has put it into
poetry.
We are God’s chosen few
All others will be damned;
There is no place in heaven for you,
We can’t have heaven crammed.
Such was the extent to which religious intolerance carried the Jews.
Now let’s consider the other factor in these verses.
II. RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION.
Paul could not tolerate such intolerance. It is the Gentiles who
are persecuting the Thessalonians, but Paul, who has suffered so
much from the Jews, only mentions the Gentiles, but goes into detail
as to the bigotry of the Jews, and the wrath that is theirs has a
result. The words of Ralph Korngold in a different setting would fit
well in the mouth of Paul at this point. “On this subject, I do not
wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a
man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm. Tell him to
moderating rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher. Tell the
mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it
has fallen-but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the
present.”
There is a point where we cease to be tolerant and become
intolerant. A. W. Tozer writes about Jesus and says, “The most
intolerant man that ever walked this earth was Jesus Christ our
Lord. He wouldn’t tolerate the devil, He wouldn’t tolerate sin. He
wouldn’t tolerate unbelief. He wouldn’t tolerate Pharisees with
their hypocrisy. He wouldn’t tolerate the Saducees and scribes with
their learned pride. He tolerated harlots and babies and publicans
and sinners and bums and beatniks and scrubs off the street corner,
but He wouldn’t tolerate religious prissies and religious hypocrites.”
Paul was fed up with the attitude of the Jews, and he says God is
fed up as well, and in righteous indignation wrath has fallen upon
them. Paul was practicing what he urged others to do, and that was
to be angry and sin not. In other words, there is a legitimate place
for anger. The Christian cannot tolerate evil indefinitely. We must
be intolerant toward intolerance. The danger, of course, is in being
angry and becoming as wicked as those with whom you are angry.
The hatreds that caused persecution of others are of Satan. Paul
was indignant, but he never fought back with physical force. His
attitude was like that of the man in the poem:
An when religious sects ran mad,
He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a man’s belief is bad,
It will not be improved by burning.
Paul knew that judgment was not the task of the church. The
purpose of the church was to win men, and that is why he practiced
and preached love and gentleness. But now his subject has changed.
He is talking about judgment and the wrath of God, and the means
to accomplish this purpose are completely different. Jesus never
used force to save men. He is the Good Shepherd, and He leads the
lost back to the fold. But when we see Him in the role of judgment,
we see the whip in His hand, and He is driving men out of the
temple. It is important to remember that Jesus used force to drive
men out of the temple, but never to drive them in. Judgment by its
very nature cannot be done gently.
What Paul is saying in verse 16 is that the killing of Christ by
the Jews was not what brought the wrath of God upon them. It was
the fact that after He had risen, and the church was carrying the
Gospel of good news to all the world, that they still opposed it and
tried to stop it. Paul says that this build up the measure of their sins.
This was the last straw, and God could no longer tolerate their
intolerance. The Berkeley Verison has it, “But divine indignation
has at last overtaken them.” The Amplified Version has it, “But
God’s wrath has come upon them at last-completely and forever.”
There is a point beyond which the tolerance and longsuffering
of God cannot go. They killed the prophets and His Son, and yet He
gave them a chance to repent, and many did at Pentecost. But for
those who went on to oppose God’s final plan in history, which was
the plan to carry the Gospel into all the world, the wrath of God fell
finally and completely, and the old Israel was cut off.
Only a few years after Paul wrote this the nation of Israel was
uttering defeated and Jerusalem was totally destroyed. What Jesus
had predicted came to pass, and not one stone of the temple was left
on another. There has arisen a system of theology that demands
that the Jews face a great tribulation after the church has been
raptured, but both Paul and Jesus made it clear that they have
already suffered God’s wrath to the uttermost. When the Jews cried
out before Pilate, “Let His blood be upon us and our children,” God
granted that request to the very people who made it. Listen to Jesus
denounce the Jewish leaders for killing God’s prophets and Apostles
in Luke 11:50-51: “That the blood of all the prophets, which was
shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this
generation: From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias,
which perished between the alter and the temple, verily I say unto
you, it shall be required of this generation.”
When women wept as Jesus was led to the cross He said in Luke
23:28 “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves, and for your children.” Why? It was because the wrath
of God coming upon them to the uttermost. Rabbi Samuel
Moraccanus said back in the 11th century, “I would fain learn from
thee, out of the testimonies of the law, and the prophets, and other
Scriptures, why the Jews are thus smitten in this captivity wherein
we are, which may be properly termed the perpetual anger of God,
because it hath no end. For it is now above a thousand years since
we were carried captive by Titus, and yet our fathers, who
worshiped idols, killed the prophets, and cast the law behind their
back, were only punished with a 70 years captivity, and then
brought home again; but now there is no end of our calamities, nor
do the prophets promise any.”
From 70 A. D. on the Jews have been cut off as the people of
God, and God’s righteous indignation has come upon them in wrath
and judgment. Why? Why does even a righteous, lovely,
longsuffering God act in wrath? It is because of intolerance and
bigotry. What a warning for the church, for Paul says in Romans
that as the Jews were cut off so can the Gentile church be cut off
because it is only grafted in. We cannot face a wicked world and not
be indignant at its wickedness. We cannot tolerate religious
intolerance, but we must fight it with love and the sword of the
Spirit, but let us beware of becoming bigoted and intolerant of
others lest we too be found to be fighting God.
