“For we have found this man a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.”
~Acts 24:5~

Multiple times throughout the book of Acts you see references to the Pharisees or religious leaders being jealous. It is the jealousy in their hearts that prompts them to act wrongly against the apostles. When crowds were drawn, when people listened, when there were messages being preached against their own protected messages, that’s when it mentions that they were jealous. It almost makes me feel sorry for them.

Like, they had nothing to be threatened by. I feel like it’s important that this jealousy is mentioned because otherwise you might be able to think that they were just being zealous for their old religion. You can kind of understand being protective of that. You can understand them wanting to defend their truth. But somewhere they must have known that they were profiting from this arrangement where they are the truth keepers.

So I think these leaders are an example of how sinful corruption plays out. Good leadership wants freedom for others, not burdens. The yoke Jesus offers is light compared to the burden that the Pharisees offered which was heavy. When we talk about picking up our crosses and following Jesus I wonder if he counted crosses in the definition of yoke. Wouldn’t that be something? That Jesus makes our crosses lighter.