2025 A.D.:  Thorns...often used to point to Jesus?

 

 

 

 

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 Sheep really do get trapped in the thorns sometimes.  And who will find them...the Shepherd or some passing wolf?  Once they are stuck they just have to wait and see.  Is this a sheep, or a metaphor for a nonbeliever or a backslid Christian who would like to do more for Jesus, but there's just so much on their plate and much of it is pleasant and easy and familiar and much of service to Jesus is difficult and trying and frought with uncertainty and setbacks and challenges, and it doesn't pay much money usually, etc..  And somehow you just never get around to breaking free and serving Jesus.  And then, one day, your opportunities are gone.  No more chances.    

 

     

 

     The thorn is a special sort of adaptation.  It is not very useful against other plants but is certainly a capable defense against most animals.  It's one of those features...there are many others...that illustrate that plant designs often have a built in awareness of animals and, if you think about it, an awareness of the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities of an animal's design.  With what brain did the plant figure all of this out?  Does it show that the one who designed the plant also designed the animal, and that their arrival was contemporary with each other?  Can a plant know about animal paws?  Can a plant know that its thorns snag on the hair of most animals?  Yet the thorn does exist and is a great deterrent because of animal flesh and paws and feet and coats of hair.  A thorn in the foot hurts, and might make you limp and be so slow that you can't hunt well.  To an animal, thorns and thorny plants are trouble and pain.  We avoid thorns!  We avoid thorny plants.  They are common though, and so no matter where the Bible is read, most readers who come across scripture describing thorns or thorny plants will have an immediate grasp of the difficulties thorns pose.

     

     As imagery, thorns represent pain and hardship and opposition, among other things.

 

     Adam and Jesus have some commonalities...and scripture means for us to see this.  It goes so far as to call Jesus 'th Last Adam'.  Adam was the first to have a bride...his wife Eve.  But Jesus has a bride also.  Humanity is His intended bride, and the church actually is His bride...His ever growing bride.  Adam ate the forbidden fruit because of Eve, who gullibly ate it after the Serpent tempted her to do so, and they both became rebellious sinners against God.  Jesus took sin upon Himself because mankind (His bride) was fatally infected with sin.  Adam received thorns as part of his punishment.  Jesus received a crown of thorns (a crown of trouble and pains) because He joined mankind in wearing human flesh and being vulnerable to being tempted.  He was able to avoid the temptations though He controlled His passions and appetites.  But in the end, He did not only take sin upon Himself, but He became sin for us.  His crown of thorns was cruel to bear, just as Adam's battle with thorns was harsh and cruel, and Eve could increased Adam's family only with pain and difficulty.  This is true of the Church (Jesus' bride) when it comes to increasing the Christian family also...it is not easy to evangelize, not an easy matter to convince sinners to give up their ways and seek Jesus.  There is much misery to go with the joy.  Listen to the 'First Punishment', from Genesis chapter 3.  It would become a prophetic template for many later punishments : 

 

     

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

²⁰ Adam^[c] named his wife Eve,^[d] because she would become the mother of all the living.

²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. ²² And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” ²³ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴ After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side^[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

End quote.

 

     Adam's punishment (was the Holy Father foretelling us here about the often painfully slow and opposed growth of Jesus' church here?) is told that He will feed upon what he wrests and manages to glean from the soil.  Men come from the soil.  Men are made of dust anyway.  Bringing Christians to fruition is like planting the same grain (the Words of Jesus from the New Testament) on many different types of soil, (many types of men and women) Jesus told us.  Once again, in part:   

“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field."  End quote. 

     Adam is being told how difficult his life has now become because of the sin he took on for the sake of His bride.  Things will never go easily from now on.  What does food do when you eat it?  It becomes part of your body.  What does a Christian do, once they become a Christian?  They become part of the 'body of Christ'. 

     On the cross, where He became sin with us and for us (cursed is everyone who is hung upon a tree) He had a 'crown of thorns'.  He was recognized as the King of Humanity, but it was no choice assignment, and His crown was of thorns, woven and wound together by those Romans who bedeviled Him that fateful day.  But the crown of thorns which added to His agonies was soon to be worn (symbolically speaking) by His followers, His church members throughout the world.  Both those who went out to the far ends of the world, and those who stayed home to nurture and grow the local churches...both were bedeviled pretty constantly.  The harder they pressed in towards obedience and zeal for Jesus, the more they were bedeviled.  And it is the same today.  The ones who try fiercely face fierce resistance.  If a Christian tries very hard, really puts his or her shoulder into it, they are a threat to the Devils forces and an annoyance to Christians who look upon the Christian that is trying much harder than they are.  The conscience of the lazy Christian grieves him, and his mind begins to come up with ways to make excuses for his laziness; this usually results in lazy Christians bad-mouthing the Christian who works harder than they do in one way or another.  They want to ascribe the other believer's hard work to a bad motive or a personality deficiency, usually, from what I've observed.  I have been both a pretty hard working Christian and also a lazy one.  I don't think I can say I've ever been all I could be for Jesus for even a short time. 

     The Christians who ignore the great commission (those who ignore Jesus' command to go out to all parts of the world, near and far, and teach what Jesus taught) can be basically ignored by the Devil and his army, other than tempting them enough to get them dirtied up.  But they are not really out there adding to the ranks of those saved by the Lord, so they warrant far less attention.  Those Christians are more interested in the world and what it has to offer, these Christians who don't try very much.  And the weary problems of the world will overwhelm them to a great degree, doing much to quench their spiritual light to the world.  Perhaps the 'thorns', the worldly cares and concerns that they have, will choke them off entirely.  Here is Jesus' parable from Matthew 13 about the different types of soil that His grain is seeded upon (the different types of people who hear His potentially life-saving Word):   

 

 

13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. ² Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. ³ Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. ⁴ As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. ⁵ Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. ⁶ But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. ⁷ Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. ⁸ Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. ⁹ Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

¹⁰ The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

¹¹ He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. ¹² Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. ¹³ This is why I speak to them in parables:

¹⁴ In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

¹⁶ But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. ¹⁷ For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

¹⁸ “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: ¹⁹ When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. ²⁰ The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. ²¹ But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. ²² The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. ²³ But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

The Parable of the Weeds

²⁴ Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. ²⁵ But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. ²⁶ When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

²⁷ “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

²⁸ “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

²⁹ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

 

End quote

 

     Did you notice verse 22 about the seed and the effect that thorns have upon it?

 

²² The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.

 

     End quote.

 

     For the 'seed spreader' in the parable, the thorn is the enemy of their work.  For Adam, the thorn was the enemy of his farming work.  For Jesus, the crown of thorns He wore was a 'thorn in the flesh' as the Apostle Paul would later say about his own fleshly medical torment, which was apparently some sort of physical eye problem.

 

     Abraham was once tested by God.  Abraham had waited very long for a son from his actual wife Sarah.  Then it happened...she had Isaac.  And it's safe to say, to guess, that Sarah's life was almost intertwined with her long awaited only child Isaac.  Losing Isaac might have almost killed her.  But in a startling move, God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.  And Abraham obediently accepted the shocking assignment.  He took Isaac on a trip, with some servants to a mountain, Mount Moriah tradition says, in today's Jerusalem.  When they got near after three days, Abraham and Isaac proceeded alone.  Isaac even carried the wood that would be used to burn the sacrifice which, unknown to Isaac, would be Isaac!  So in this manner Isaac was like Jesus...a treasured son carrying the wood he would be sacrificed upon to the place where he would be sacrificed.  At some point Isaac was told about what must happen, and he apparently just obeyed his father and allowed himself to be bound up with rope, and he climbed or was lifted onto the rock alter Abraham had constructed.  Abraham grabbed the knife, but before he killed his son, God stopped him.  God explained that He had been testing Abraham's level of trust and obedience.  Abraham then lifted up his eyes and saw that nearby in a bush (was it a thorn bush?) a ram was caught up...stuck...and could not escape.  So, Abraham went and got the ram and sacrificed it instead.  It is interesting that in Jesus' ministry days he was trying to tell His fellow Jews the good news of the Gospel so that they could be saved.  But they were very caught up in the cares of the world and couldn't easily give up their worldly pursuits to follow Jesus...to give up the things of this world and just follow Jesus.  In fact, they meant to kill Jesus on the cross using the Romans as their henchmen...and they tried...but God would not have it be so.  Jesus was raised from the dead and death could not keep Him, resembling how Isaac was rescued in just the nick of time.  And just as the worldly Jews were destroyed by the Romans who breached and burned up Jerusalem in A.D. 70, forty years after the crucifixion of Jesus, so also Isaac was not killed, not sacrificed as expected, but a male sheep, stuck in the bushes, took Isaac's place.  Stuck in the bushes?  Stuck in the thorns?  Stuck in the cares of the world?  I have often wondered if the ram stuck in the bushes represented a Jewish people who became ensnared in the cares of the world so deeply that it caused them to lose their life.  Because there was a sacrifice...the sacrifice of God's Son Jesus...that could have made everything go well for the Jews of old.  But they basically didn't want to change their lives so much as Jesus was asking them to do.  And so, they were used as a sacrifice of sorts.  When the Romans sacked Jerusalem there may have been up to hundreds of thousands of Jewish deaths.  Ironically, they were the descendants of Abraham and Isaac, these Jewish people of the 70 A.D. time frame.  They should have been receiving Jesus as their Messiah, but nearly all of them did not.  They preferred the world and its passing passions and prizes (which their eyes could see) to Jesus' offered path to Heaven (which is only seen after a lifetime of faith and waiting.)  And nearly all of them died or became slaves because of their unbelief.

 

     Thorns are interesting...and perhaps very Biblical!  And perhaps even prophetic!