Numbers
21:4-9 / John 8:21-30
Jesus warns the Pharisees: “Where
I am going, you cannot come.”
When Jesus said,
“Where I am going you cannot come,” the
Pharisees wondered if he was planning to take his own life. Rabbis held that
people who took their life went to the deepest part of the nether world. This
shows how terribly the Pharisees had misread Jesus and how far from the truth
they were. What Jesus actually meant was that he was returning to his Father in
heaven. Spiritual blindness is a terrible sin. It implies a deliberate closing of
one’s eyes to the truth. This seems to have been the situation of the
Pharisees. This is why Jesus told the Pharisees, “You will die in your sins.”