Bible Bum Raps

Call me a champion for the underdog.  I find myself taking that position in a lot of situations so it should be no wonder that I admire these people in Scripture as well.  So today starts a new tag - the same as this title.

I have believed for a long time that old St. Nick (Nicodemous - the teacher of the teachers in Jesus day) truly did understand who Jesus was and believe on Him as the Messiah.  It's one of those things that I didn't broadcast as traditional Christian thinking is to rag on St. Nick as an unbeliever.  Truth is,  John 3 doesn't tell what his response to that amazing conversation with Jesus was.  Maybe he worshiped, maybe he had to go home and think about it.  Maybe they continued talking over a latte.  Of course I'm being facetious, but you get the point.

So it was most refreshing to learn that I was not alone.  Kyle Idleman, author of Not A Fan,  gives better explanation of Nick's conversion than I care to attempt. Highly recommended reading.

John 19:39  is an interesting passage:  And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.

Jesus is dead.  His body had been torn to bits even before the Romans put nails in his hands and feet.  An emergency room staff would have spent several hours disinfecting and suturing the wounds from the barbaric lashes he received had they got him before the crucifixion.  No doubt they would have started antibiotics by iv and put him in icu.  Hundreds of years before it had been prophesied. 

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.  He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.  Isaiah 53: 5-8

Nick was one of "them", at least one from their social economic circle, one of the ones who would have lost their power and authority had Jesus taken his rightful place as the ruler of Israel.  Nick had  tried to talk sense into them.  He saw their hatred for this man who claimed to be the Son of God. And he knew the scriptures and saw the prophesies being fulfilled. It was probably not a surprise to him when Jesus actually died.

So he did what he could.  He treated the bloodied, torn, dead and limp body of the Son of God with the greatest honor and respect possible . . . by using 100 pounds of ointment on Him for burial.  A King's burial.  This was unheard of for a common man, but Nick knew this was not a common man that had been tortured and executed. He knew that the Messiah would not, could not, remain dead.  Other prophesies still had to be fulfilled!  And whether the Messiah would return in the same body or another form, Nick seized the opportunity for his last act of worship recorded in scripture by lavishing resources, perhaps more than Mary's box of spikenard,  on his God.