Whom Seek Ye’–And Why?

What different emotions the idea of “seek and find” can call forth. There is the eager seeking for one whom we love, the joyous finding with the resultant expressions of love. There is the fearful search by the harsh dictator’s forces, the terror-inspiring knock on the door indicating the finding. The motives for seeking, the carrying out of the purpose to the “found one,” can be as different as the words “evil” and “good.”

Come to the time when the Wise Men were searching for the new-born Jesus in order to worship him. Their search had the right motive: they recognized Jesus as having come from heaven, no ordinary human being but the One to be worshiped. And so when they found him, they fell down on their knees before him.

Then God directed them supernaturally by warning them that someone else who had asked to be shown where this baby was did not have the right motive for his search. God also sent the angel of the Lord to Joseph in a dream, telling Joseph directly, “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him” (Matt. 2:13). Here God, who knows the motives of men’s hearts, makes plain the purpose of Herod’s search.

But what had Herod said to the Wise Men? “Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also” (Matt. 2:8). Herod’s words sounded honest and beautiful. What he really wanted to do, however, was not to worship but to destroy. He wanted to smash any possibility of Jesus’ becoming a leader, to stamp out other people’s worship of this One, to demolish the true search of other people like the Wise Men by wiping out the Person for whom they would search. He wanted to keep man—i.e., himself—in the place of honor.

Come to another time, another place, when again God lets us see what is behind mere spoken words. “And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people.… And they sent unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words” (Mark 12:12, 13). Place with this Matthew 22:15—“Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.” Add to these two statements Luke 20:20—“And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which would feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.” God lets us see what was going on in men’s minds and private conversations, the wicked intent of a “search for Jesus” whose aim was to twist and turn his words into something that would harm him.

Some questions are not honest. Some seekers are looking only for loopholes, for opportunities to twist words and condemn the speaker. What the Pharisees wanted was an undisturbed continuation of their own leadership—at any cost.

Slip back again into history, the central period of all history, as the Lamb of God approaches the moment when he will be once and for all The Sacrifice, The Substitute. Imagine yourself in the garden of Gethsemane, and listen to Jesus as he asks, “Whom seek ye?” (John 18:7). What is the meaning of their answer, “Jesus of Nazareth”? There is a quietness on a lake before the wild lightning streaks the sky and the thunder crashes down and the waves whip up into whitecaps. One sees, feels, senses the quietness as the water goes into flat patches of grey and darker grey. In this moment of quietness in the garden “Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way” (John 18:8). Ah, yes, they have found him! He has made himself known to them. Can they pursue their purpose without recoiling in fear? They do fall backward to the ground, but it doesn’t last long—they hastily get up, brush themselves off, and go about their appointed task.

If you have a vivid imagination, even now, centuries later, you may feel like putting out a hand, shaking one of them, and urgently whispering in his ear, “Stop! Don’t take part in this! Don’t you know this is the Virgin-born Son of God, the promised Messiah? Don’t take part in finding him with this evil motive. Change now, seek him for your own life, find him as your Messiah. O soldier, whatever your background has been, open your eyes before it is too late!” But we aren’t there. They went on with their seizure of him whom they had found, to deliver him up to be spit upon, scourged, placed on a cross to die.

Our own spot in history is the place where our motives will make a difference, and where our warnings and explanations will help to pull someone who is “seeking with the intent to destroy him” out of the wrong search and into the right one. There are people today who seek Jesus in order to prove that he is not who he claims to be, who spend a lifetime seeking to prove that Jesus was just a good man, not God, not the Second Person of the trinity. There are seminaries that train men and women to deny Jesus’ place in the Trinity, to deny the virgin birth, to reduce his resurrection to an airy spiritual happening with no body involved. There are whole churches or groups within churches that use the words “seek” and “find” in speaking of Jesus but who cast away his Word, reducing the Bible to myths and fables whose applications change with the changing winds.

For those who “seek” and “find” in order to destroy, the final result is that they are destroyed. Jesus came to seek and to save lost human beings, and he clearly reveals himself to the lost who truly want to be found. He came to bring life, eternal life; but those who seek in order to destroy him find only death, if they persist. The sad thing in that like Herod, the Pharisees, and all the other false seekers, they influence others into following them.

For each of us the time is very short during which we can use our words, or our influence, or our prayer, to help others find the right motive for their search. Not long after the soldiers in the garden had found Jesus, only a long weekend later, Mary weepingly searched for him. With desolate loneliness and disappointment and fear she was seeking her Lord’s dead body.

Jesus appeared and asked why she was crying. She supposed he was a gardener, and she wanted to know where the body of Jesus was. Then the resurrected Jesus spoke in an accent and tone that she recognized. She had found him. One day we, if we have found him as our Saviour and Lord, will talk to Mary—alive forevermore, in her resurrected body, as we will be in ours.

There is a seeking and finding that result in everlasting life. And there is a seeking and finding that end in everlasting death. There is no middle way.

EDITH SCHAEFFER

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