Month: October 2024

October 13, 27 A.D.  –  The “trial” of the adulterous woman —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #57

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , , ,

Week 35 ———  The Woman Caught in Adultery
John 8:1-11

John 7:53-8:11     [[They went each to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning, he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now, in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”  This they said, to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”   And once more, he bent down and wrote on the ground.   But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.   Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”   She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”]]

This story likely happened during the Feast of Tabernacles as Jesus would not have hung around Jerusalem after his required attendance at the feast (as John noted in 7:1).  At the end of the feast, he sends out the 70 two-by-two on a mission for 2 months.  During that time (as with the previous time the 12 were sent out), we have no detailed information on Jesus’ actions or whereabouts.  So, for the next two months, we will take the time to cover some of Jesus’ teachings and then pick up the timeline of Jesus’ ministry when the 70 return in mid-December.   

(Some Bibles have this passage bracketed with a note that the story is not included in some earlier manuscripts.  For a brief discussion of the textual criticism and when this story occurred, see the footnote.)1

Now, before we can discuss this passage, we need to understand the context.  First of all, did the Jews of Jesus’ day stone people who committed adultery?  So, let’s discuss “Law and Order” in the Bible.  While no one would want to sit and read a catalog of laws (currently, the US Code is 54 volumes and 60,000 pages), people love to watch dramas about law and order.  The television series of that name began 34 years ago, and now there are seven series and over 1000 episodes.  

“Law and Order” has about 8 million viewers every episode.  Now, I bet the number of people who sit down and read the 54-volume US code is zero. Every year, about the beginning of February, I hear people doing the read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan moan and complain because they got to Leviticus.    It’s a long list of laws (or measurements for building a tabernacle).  But if you step back and view the Bible as a whole, the laws are interspersed with stories of people in that situation.  The Bible is not a law book.  It is a narrative.  So you get examples of laws, and then you get a section of stories about how people don’t follow the laws.  

People like stories. According to TV ratings, people like drama, and our passage today is a dramatic story from the Bible. So, let’s examine the law in the scriptures and how it was prosecuted.

Back to our question: did the Jews of Jesus’ day stone people who committed adultery?  Well, you might say that’s an easy question.  It is in the Bible twice (Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22).  

Leviticus 20:10   “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

But the question was, “Did the Jews of Jesus’ day actually stone people who committed adultery?”   Just because the law is on the books does not mean it is enforced.  We certainly have laws on books that are never prosecuted.

If you are judging their culture of 3000 years ago by our US cultural standards, the death penalty seems like a harsh sentence.   (In the Bible, death was the prescribed punishment for homicide, striking one’s parents, kidnapping, cursing one’s parents, witchcraft and divination, bestiality, worshiping other gods, violating the Sabbath, blasphemy, child sacrifice, adultery, incest, among others.)  Does that seem like a harsh system to you?  The famous Biblical phrase often stated as harsh is “Eye for Eye, Tooth for Tooth.”  That is also found twice in the Bible (Exodus 21:22-25 and Leviticus 24:19-20).

Exodus 21:22-25   “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.  But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

The idea of “eye for eye” is to restrict punishment and retribution.   It is meant to prevent retaliation from escalating.  You poked me in the eye, so I will kill you.  You caused the death of my lamb, so I have the right to kill your whole herd or kill your daughter.  We see this in the constant conflict in the Middle East.  One nation attacks, and you expect the other nation to respond with a similar measured response.  “Eye for eye” was seen as the opposite of harsh in the day it was written, when many cultures had extremely severe punishments for any crimes.

There is a term for severe, cruel, or harsh punishments:  Draconian.  It is named after Draco, a lawyer of ancient Athens, around 621 BC.   It is synonymous with barbaric, ruthless, cruel, and authoritarian punishments. In an attempt to standardize punishments, Draco established a system where all crimes, no matter how small, were punishable by death.  If you steal an apple, your sentence is the death penalty.  If you fail to pay taxes, you get the death penalty.   There are still places in the world that we might say have Draconian punishments.  Since we are speaking about adultery, 11 countries can still impose the death penalty for adultery:  Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.  

But back to Israel in Jesus’ day. Did the Jews of Jesus’ day stone people who committed adultery?  The answer is no.  The death penalty was only very rarely used by the Jewish court in the hundreds of years before Jesus.  The Mishna records rabbis discussing the death penalty, and they note that a Sanhedrin (their supreme court) that executes one person in 70 years is barbaric.2   It was highly unusual for a Jewish court to sentence someone to death in Israel in the 200 years before Jesus.  And in Jesus’ day, it was even more rare.  

However, the Roman Government freely used the death penalty for non-citizens.  Now, when Rome took over Israel, the Jews could have a trial and sentence someone but then had to submit to Rome’s authority to carry out the death penalty.   By 30 AD, just a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion, the Sanhedrin completely abolished the death penalty.    That gives us even more understanding of how unusual it was for the Jewish court to sentence Jesus to death for blasphemy.  It was just never done.  His was an extremely rare exception.  (Note that Stephen’s stoning happened with no trial.  It was an act of mob violence, albeit under the approval of a prominent rabbi, Paul.)

With all this background context, let’s look at the scripture.

John 8:4-6    “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now, in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”  This they said, to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.

So Jesus is sitting down, teaching in the Temple courtyard, and people are gathered around him.  The scribes and Pharisees come marching in with a woman in tow, putting her in the middle of the listening crowd.  John tells us this is a test.  This is certainly not a trial. Only the council of the Sanhedrin can put this woman on trial.  They ask Jesus’ opinion before those listening to him, hoping to catch him saying something they can arrest him for.

If Jesus says, “She should be stoned,”  then people will turn against him.   Again, capital punishment by the Jews is unheard of at this point.  They would, like us, view this as incredibly harsh.  The crowd will turn on Jesus, just like if you posted the same thing on Facebook today. If Jesus says she should not be stoned, then they will say, “See, he does not follow the law.”  They think they have him trapped.

John 8:6-7  “Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”  This comment is misunderstood because we don’t know the first two-thirds of the Bible, which gives instructions for how to stone someone.

Deuteronomy 17:7   The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

The person who witnessed the event and testified against the accused was supposed to throw the first stone.  This was a way to show the seriousness of giving true testimony.  If you falsely testified and threw the first stone, then you would be guilty of murder.  (And two witnesses were necessary for a crime with a severe punishment as this.)  Jesus says, “Well if you feel like she should be stoned, follow the scripture.  Whichever one of you can throw the stone without sinning, go ahead.”  If you are the witness and will not sin with false testimony, go ahead.   

Now, I know you have seen a video of the men one at a time dropping their rocks.  That is so contextually wrong.  They weren’t carrying rocks with them, and they certainly wouldn’t stone her without a trial by the Sanhedrin, and certainly not in the temple courtyard.  But one by one, they left. (Isn’t it interesting that the older ones go first?)

Jesus is writing in the dirt of the temple. I have heard several people postulate what Jesus was writing. We don’t know, but my best guess is that Jesus’s finger is writing the same thing the finger of God wrote in the Bible before.  

Exodus 31:18 “And He gave unto Moses, when He had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two tablets of testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God”. 

 I imagine Jesus writing the Ten Commandments on the ground of the Temple.  He gets to number 9:  “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  They can’t testify because they didn’t see it themselves.  The witnesses are not present (by the way, neither is the man caught with her), so no decision can be reached, and they realize they have failed to trap Jesus again.  They all leave, and Jesus is left alone with the woman.

And the one without sin, the only one who could righteously judge her, does not condemn her.  But he disapproves of her actions.  He tells her, “Go and sin no more.”  Jesus knows that she made a choice that led to death, but he gives her another chance at life. That’s what God does over and over again in the Bible, Old Testament, and New Testament. Again, it all goes back to the first three chapters of Genesis. 

Genesis 2:17 …but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Adam and Eve made a choice that led to death.   But he doesn’t kill them that day.  They chose death, but God gave them another chance at life.  Don’t tell me the Old Testament is not full of God’s grace.  God would have been right to kill them then and there.  But there is something greater at work than the law.  God is full of grace and mercy.  There were consequences; they were kicked out of the garden and God’s continual presence.  But despite their rebellion, God gives them grace and offers them another chance to choose life.  

The same thing is happening with our woman here.  They present him with a case they strictly see as “law and order.”  Jesus does not ignore the law but shows a more excellent principle at work here.  God’s mercy and grace are more important than the law and (praise Jesus) greater than our sin. The possibility of capital punishment in Leviticus is there to show the seriousness of the sin.  

Like the forbidden fruit,  If you choose rebellion against God, you choose a path that leads to death.  But Jesus does what God always does.  He does not condone sin.  In fact, he commands the woman not to make that choice again.  But he shows that there is something greater than the principle of law and order: the principle of grace and mercy.  The law demands death, but was that God’s plan?  It certainly wasn’t his original plan.  He created a world where death didn’t exist.  But death comes because the world is fallen.  

And that is the way Jesus interprets Scripture.  In the sermon on the mount, Jesus takes several Old Testament laws and then asks us to see the wisdom behind them.  “You have heard that it was said do not murder.  But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment;“  “You have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Jesus is looking for the wisdom behind the law.  What does God really want?  Not murdering is great, but God really wants us to treat each other with love and not hate and disdain.  Not committing adultery is good, but what God really wants is for us to view people with respect and not as objects of lust.  

In the time of the prophet Micah, the people of Israel thought they could do whatever they wanted and then appease God with offerings.  Micah said it didn’t work that way.

Micah 6:6-8    “With what shall I come before Yehovah, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?  Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?  Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”  He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah asks them, “What does God really want? ” God’s desire is not your religious participation and sacrifices and offerings. What God wants is for you to treat other people justly, show mercy and love, and follow His path, being in a good relationship with Him.  The details of the law don’t matter if you can’t do those three things.

The Pharisees and Scribes didn’t care one bit about the woman they were bringing before Jesus.  They were treating her like an object, not a person.  To them, she was just a tool to help them defeat Jesus.  

Let’s look at one more example of how Jesus interpreted the Old Testament law:

Matthew 19:3-6   And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”   He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?   So they are no longer two but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”  

The Pharisees asked Jesus a much-debated question of the day.  There were two camps: one said the law allowed for divorce for any cause, and the other said only for reasons of sexual immorality.  Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24.  You want to know what God thinks about divorce?  It should not exist.  “Let not man separate.”  In the world God created, there would be no divorce; there would be no sexual immorality.   Neither of those were intended to be part of God’s world.  

So the Pharisees ask a follow-up question:

Matthew 19:7-9 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”   He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.   And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

“Because of your hardness of heart.”   Because you just couldn’t be the kind of people God wanted you to be.  Because you choose death instead of life.  “From the beginning, it was not so.”  God gave you an accommodation because you are sinful, but that was not God’s plan.  Jesus is saying that the laws are not God’s best.  They are God’s attempt to start in the place you are and move you toward where you should be.  They are not his ideal.

When Jesus goes to scripture to answer a question about divorce, He doesn’t go back to Deuteronomy; He goes to Genesis.  If you want to know what God really wants, God’s ideal, you must go to when God saw everything was good (Genesis 1-2).  If you want to know God’s marriage ideal, don’t go to Genesis 3.  You know the story: They eat the fruit, they hide because they think God is going to kill them, God curses the serpent, God curses the ground that man must now painfully work, and God tells the woman: 

Genesis 3:16  “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”You and your husband will have different needs and desires that cause conflict, and He will dominate you.”

You and your husband will have different needs and desires that cause conflict, and He will dominate you.  Put that verse in context!  That is not God’s ideal.  That is God’s punishment.   That is God’s compromise situation in a sinful world.   Do you see how picking and using a scripture out of context can be so dangerous?  

You can pick out an Old Testament law and say it’s ok to kill people for committing adultery.  Even the rabbis in Jesus’ day knew that was not what God intended.  They never used that maximum punishment and ended up abolishing it.   You can pick out a law about divorce from 3000 years ago and say, Look, this is what God said to do!  Just write out a certificate, and you’re done.  But Jesus says no!  Those rules are for when you were in complete rebellion and sin.  That is not God’s ideal.  You can pick out a scripture from Genesis 3 about marriage, but that is for people in sin.  God’s ideal is in Genesis 2.

The Bible is not a law book or a systematic theology book. It is a story, and stories develop over time. This is why some people look at the Old Testament and the New Testament and say, “My how God has changed.”  But God doesn’t change. God is working His plan to bring His people back to the ideal he had in the garden. And he works with us as he finds us.  

This is why we can wear clothes made of two different kinds of fabric and why some of you can eat shrimp. We need to study the laws to seek the wisdom behind them, as Jesus did. It’s not just murder… it is about how we see other people. It is not the details of laws but the idea of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

Say there is a man trying his best to be who God wants him to be.  He wants to follow God.  But he fails. He wants to abandon sin; he wants to do good.  But he fails. That man is me.  That person is you.  That man is David in the Bible, a man after God’s own heart who committed adultery and murder.  That man, David, deserved death.  We all have chosen the path of death.  That is why Paul says:

Romans 3:20,23-24  Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

To the woman in our story today, Jesus chose not condemnation, not law and order, but mercy and grace.  Like Adam and Eve, like King David, like you and me, He gave her another chance to go and sin no more.  Jesus sees us today, and we may stand condemned by others for things we do, but Jesus looks and says to us, “I don’t condemn you, go and from now on, sin no more.”   Paul summed it up:

Romans 8:1  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So, yes, study and meditate on the law.  Understand God’s heart and wisdom behind the law so that we may be the people he wants us to be.  But not people who focus on the law, but people who treat other people right, people who love mercy, who choose to be in a relationship over being right, People who walk in God’s path, in proper relation to God.

1.  We don’t have original manuscripts of any book of the Bible.  There are many early versions with minor differences.  Textual criticism seeks to determine which versions are the most reliable.   John 7:53 – 8:11 is not in the earliest manuscripts we currently have.  However, it is found in many reliable manuscripts.  Augustine said that “Some men of slight faith” and others “hostile to true faith” removed the passage for fear that it would encourage adultery.  (Elowsky, J. C. (Ed.). (2006). John 1–10 (p. 272). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.)  There are phrases and some words found in the story that are not used elsewhere in John’s Gospel  (“Scribes,” “Mount of Olives,” “Scribes and Pharisees,” “he sat down and taught them”) that make it sound more like one of the stories in the synoptic Gospels.  The primary reason scholars give for the story not fitting in John is that it doesn’t fit the storyline.  It breaks the flow of the text or adds another day to the Feast of Tabernacles.   I agree that its placement in the narrative is troublesome.

As Michael Rood noted in The Chronological Gospels (page 231), in several ancient texts, this section of John 7 immediately follows John 7:36. Jesus is staying on the Mount of Olives and teaching in the temple during the day.  This would seem to be during the Feast of Tabernacles.  After the feast, Jesus sends out disciples in 35 groups of two, and with all the disciples on mission, we have no specific information about Jesus’ actions or whereabouts.  He likely left Jerusalem as the required feast had ended, and the pressure from the Pharisees and Sadducees was increasing.  The ESV, and many other versions, translate the particle ‘de’ as ‘but’ and make a nice sentence with the previous verse (7:53), making it easier to read in English.  The Greek reads, “Jesus ‘de’ (and or but or moreover, or now) went to the Mount of Olives.”  In his commentary of John in The New International Commentary of the New Testament, Leon Morris says, “The story was attached to some other narrative, but we can only guess.”  

I believe the story happened, was left out (could Augustine be correct?), and reinserted in the wrong location.  It is a passage worth studying because it explains how Jesus understands the scriptures and contains the gospel in practice.  All have sinned, all deserve death, only God can judge, God gives grace to all who have chosen death, God instructs us to live lives worthy of the grace we have been given – Go and sin no more. 

2.  Sanhedrin 41a.

October 13, 27 A.D.  –  Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #56

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , , , , ,

Week 35 ———  Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles
Luke 9:51-62    John 7:1-52

This is week 35 in our 70-week walk through the ministry of Jesus.  The Day of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement have passed.  On this day in 27 AD, October 13, on the final day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus stands up in the temple area and says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”  You know this scripture.  But do you know the context for that verse?  I want you to understand it like the people in Jesus’ day understood it. 

John 7:1-9   After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him.   Now, the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand.   So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing.  For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.”  For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.   You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.”  After saying this, he remained in Galilee.

We are now at the halfway point of Jesus’ 70-week ministry, and things continue to heat up.  He has had several confrontations with the Pharisees and Sadducees, and they are seeking to kill him.  So going to Jerusalem or the surrounding province of Judea, where they have firm control, seems like a bad idea.  But it is time for the Feast of Booths (the Feast of Tabernacles), or in Hebrew, Sukkot. This is one of the three appointed times for which attendance in Jerusalem is mandatory. God commanded it way back in Leviticus. 

Jesus’ brothers come to him and ask him to join them in departing for the feast.  People making the 3-4 day trip down to Jerusalem usually traveled together in families for the feast.  There was safety in numbers.  You know the story of the robbers on the road and the good Samaritan.  Jesus’ brothers were watching his ministry. They saw that many had left Jesus after the feeding of the 5000, and they knew that performing miracles in front of thousands of people at the feast might bring his followers back.  John adds,   For not even his brothers believed in him.  Notice how the Bible uses the phrase: “Believed in him.”  These were Jesus’ brothers. They knew Jesus did miracles and wanted others to know, too.  They may have felt he was the Messiah.  But he was not their Messiah.  They had a relationship with Jesus as brothers, but he was not their deliverer, their Lord.  Only one relationship with Jesus matters.  Jesus can be your friend; he can be your brother.  But if he is not your Lord, then he is not your savior.

Spoiler alert:  his brothers will believe in him later.
After his resurrection, we know Jesus’ brother, James, became a leader in the church and wrote the Book of James.  He comes to have this relation with Jesus and in James 1:2 calls him “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.”  Another of Jesus’s brothers wrote the book of Jude, and he begins his epistle, “Jude, a servant of Jesus the Messiah…”  That is the only relationship that matters.  Jude is the servant of his Lord, Jesus.

Jesus tells his brothers:  You go ahead without me; I’m staying here.  “My time has not yet come.”  You see this phrase or “my hour has not yet come” often in the book of John.  It is essential to understand the Biblical concept of ‘The Fullness of Time. ‘    Paul speaks of it in Ephesians:

Ephesians 1:7-10  In Him we have redemption through his blood … making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

God’s plan for the world is on a timetable.  What Jesus did on the cross and what will happen in the Last Days are all according to the fullness of time.

The most commonly used Greek words in the NT for ‘time’ are chronos and kairos. Chronos is what we usually think about when we think about time. It is clock and calendar time. This is the time of your watch and your day planner.  Kairos is the particular time when God has arranged circumstances to be ripe for action. It is the time of the decision that anointed time when God brings you to a fork in the road. It is ‘the opportune time’.  Some versions of the Bible even translate ‘kairos’ to ‘opportunity.’ 

Do you know where the word ‘opportune’ comes from?  Years ago, people living in seaside towns based their lives on the tides. The rise and fall of the tides determined when ships would depart and arrive and thus ruled all commerce and transportation. Ships would come to the entrance of the harbor to enter the port but had to wait until the tide would rise enough to make the harbor deep enough to enter into the harbor.  That moment was called ‘ob portu’.  ‘Ob’ in Latin means ‘toward,’ and ‘portu‘ means ‘port’ or ‘harbor.’  So they had to wait until the ob portu time. Thus, our phrase ‘opportune time.’

Kairos is where chronos meets God’s opportune moment.  Let me use it in a sentence:

Galatians 6:10   So then, as we have opportunity [kairos,] let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

As we have opportunity…  We should be like the ship waiting at the harbor’s edge, ready to enter when the opportune moment arrives.  This is how we should go through this world, sitting on ready, waiting to do good to someone as soon as the opportunity arises.

Jesus was very aware of kairos.  He knew God’s plan had its own timetable.  In John 2, when his mother asks him to solve the lack of wine at the wedding, Jesus tells her, “My hour has not come”  (John 2:4).  Twice, people came to arrest him, including on this occasion at the feast of Tabernacles in John 7, but they could not  “Because his hour had not come.”  Jesus is on a schedule.  It is not his mother’s schedule, nor his brother’s.  It is the Father’s timetable.  God set up appointed times in the beginning.  He will keep his schedule.  

God will arrange events so that they only happen at the opportune moment.  When the week before Passover arrives, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  (John 12:23)   On the night he will be betrayed and arrested, Jesus prays in the garden, “The hour has come; glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you.”  (John 17:1).  God is making very sure that Jesus will die on the cross at the exact time as the Passover lambs are being slain.  God wants us to understand what is happening, so He is painting a picture in history that we can’t miss.  (Assuming we study the scripture as He asked us to.)

God has a timetable for history.  He will make sure things happen on his schedule.   We have discussed the appointed times God set up on the calendar when Israel left Egypt and headed toward the promised land.  God appointed seven times on the calendar: four spring feasts and three appointed times in the fall.

The spring appointed times are Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Pentecost. We have seen how God fulfills these appointed times on the same exact day that he set up over a thousand years before.  Jesus dies on Passover and is resurrected on the day of Firstfruits.  The Holy Spirit comes on Pentecost.  All of these things happened at the same time the Jews had been celebrating for over a thousand years. It is not a coincidence.   God is making history happen on His timetable.  I think the future fulfillment of the fall feasts will also occur on the day God has determined.

In the past few weeks, we discussed the Day of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement.  The Day of Trumpets announces the first day of the festival month. It lets people know that the Day of Atonement is coming, so there are ten days of confession and repentance in preparation for the Day of Atonement when the high priest will enter the holy of holies and make atonement for sin.  We talked of how these appointed times will be fulfilled in the future.  One day, the final trumpet will sound.  There will be a final day of judgment, and Jesus, our High Priest, will be the atonement for our sins before the Father.  We don’t know the day or the hour1, but I bet the final trumpet sounds on the Day of Trumpets.  That brings us to the final appointed time of the year, The Feast of Tabernacles.

Jesus’ brothers ask him to travel to this feast with them, but Jesus tells them to go ahead without him. Remember, God’s law commands all Jewish males to travel to Jerusalem for this feast.  Is Jesus going to break one of God’s laws by failing to go to the feast?  Obviously, the answer is no.  Jesus will be without sin; he will not break one of God’s commandments.  So Jesus sent his family ahead, and he did not travel with the large group of pilgrims headed to Jerusalem.

John 7:10  But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private.

If Jesus goes with the crowd from Galilee, he will be immediately recognized by everyone, and it will be quite the parade when he arrives in Jerusalem.  He will make this journey precisely this way next Spring on the pilgrimage to Passover.  But this is not the time yet.  Jesus can wait a day to leave but still arrive at the same time as his brothers because he takes the straight route through Samaria instead of the longer route east of the Jordan River that avoids Samaritan territory. 

The Feast of Tabernacles was commanded in Leviticus 23 and received by Moses on Mt Sinai.

Leviticus 23:39-40   “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of Yehovah seven days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest.  And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before Yehovah your God seven days.

So, it is a whole week of celebration beginning on the 15th of the month. The first day is a day of rest.  Then, there is an eighth day, which is called “The Last Great Day,” which is also a day of rest. It is a time of rejoicing.  What is rejoicing with fruit and tree branches?  Now I understand rejoicing with fruit; that’s part of a feast.  But rejoicing with tree branches?  Let’s read a little further in Leviticus:

Leviticus 23:41-43    You shall celebrate it as a feast to Yehovah for seven days in the year. … You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths so that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am Yehovah your God.”

It is a harvest festival where they dwell in ‘booths.’  Here is a picture of a ‘booth’ or ‘tabernacle’ that I saw in a farmer’s field in Egypt.  It is a temporary structure built for the harvest time.  As the farmers would spend days (and perhaps nights) in their fields to harvest, these temporary structures were constructed to provide a break from the sun or minimal shelter at night.  After escaping Egypt, the Israelites dwelled in similar temporary shelters during their time in the wilderness.  And to remember that time, the Jews today still stay in temporary shelters during this week.

The ‘booth’ (Hebrew ‘sukkah’) is supposed to be a temporary shelter.   It is not that sturdy and offers little protection from the elements.   The sky should be visible through the roof.  This is to remind them that they should not depend on their own resources for protection but depend on God for their defense.  There is a message there for us:  We tend to feel protected in our homes, with cameras and security systems, and perhaps weapons to defend ourselves.  We need to remind ourselves that God is our refuge and our strength.  The Psalmist said:

Psalm 20:7  ”Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

For our protection, we don’t trust in our weapons or walls but in God, who knows us, sees us, and watches over us.

But this Sukkot, many people were looking for Jesus, and everyone had an opinion of him.

John 7:10-13   The leaders of the Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, “Where is he?”   And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, “He is a good man,” others said, “No, he is leading the people astray.”   Yet for fear of the Jewish leaders, no one spoke openly of him.

But everyone was scared to speak of him.  Everyone knew the religious leaders were looking to kill him.

And Jesus shows up at the feast in Jerusalem and teaches in the temple area.  And the temple guards were told to arrest him. But they did not.

John 7:25-27   Some of the people of Jerusalem, therefore, said, “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill?   And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?   But we know where this man comes from, and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.”

Jesus showed up at the feast in Jerusalem and taught in the temple area. The temple guards were told to arrest him, but they did not.

John 7:25-26   Some of the people of Jerusalem therefore said, “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill?   And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?”

The last day of the feast of Tabernacles (the eighth day) was called ‘The Last Great Day,’ in Hebrew, ‘Hosannah Rabhah.’  Rabhah means ‘great,’ and Hosannah means ‘save us’ or ‘deliver us.’    So this is the day to ask God for deliverance.  Deliverance from hunger now and the future deliverance of the Messiah.  First, since this was a harvest festival after all the crops were in, there was a time of thanksgiving and then prayer for rain.  Following harvest, the ground needed to be plowed and broken up.   But with no heavy equipment, it was essential to have the fall rains to soften the ground so it could be tilled.  There was a ceremony where a priest would go to the Siloam pool to draw water and come and pour some around the altar as an offering.  As he did this, the people waved palm branches (praising God with the branches of trees) and shouted out these two verses:

Isaiah 12:3   With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. 
Isaiah 44:3   For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

These were prayers for deliverance today and for the deliverance of the Messiah to come.  So picture it.  Thousands of people are gathered in the temple.  The priest comes to offer water on the altar as a thanksgiving offering for the harvest and for the coming rain that will soften the ground and the future hope of the spirit that will be poured out on the people. It is a grand celebration.  Everyone is singing the Hallel Psalms and waving palm branches.  This is the setting for John 7:37.

John 7:37-39  On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”   Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Jesus is saying, “I am the Great Hosannah.  I am your salvation. I am the source of living water. And I will give the holy spirit to those who believe in me.  That Messiah you are praying for right now — I am here.”  Now you know why Jesus said what he said. Jesus is the source of living water. Just as he offered it to the Samaritan women at Jacob’s well, he offers it today.  

We talked about the future fulfillment of the seven appointed times. Again, the four spring feasts were all fulfilled by Jesus about 2000 years ago with his death, resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The fall appointed times have yet to be fulfilled.  

One day, the final trumpet will sound, fulfilling the Day of Trumpets and announcing the Last days.  There will be a final day of judgment, and Jesus, our High Priest, will be the atonement for our sins before the Father, fulfilling the Day of Atonement.  And the Feast of Tabernacles, a harvest festival, will be fulfilled when God gathers all his family in for a time of rest, praise, and thanksgiving in His tabernacle – a harvest of souls.  One day we will enter into our final rest.  It will be a grand celebration for those who believe in Him.

1.  The Day of Trumpets is the one appointed time that no one can know the day or the hour until it happens.  According to scripture, it begins when the new moon is sighted from Jerusalem for the seventh month of the year.  If the moon is obscured, then it will be the day following.  When the moon is sighted and verified, then the trumpets are blown, and the fires are lit to spread the word (see TAY #52  https://swallownocamels.com/2024/09/24/september-21-27-a-d-yom-teruah-the-year-of-the-lords-favor-52/ )

September 28, 27 A.D.  –  Who is Jesus to You? —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #55

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Week 33 ———  An Important Question in an Unusual Place
Matthew 16:13-20      Mark 8:27-9:1    Luke 9:18-27

Matthew 16:13-20   Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”   And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”   He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”   Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”   And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.   And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.   I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

The day of trumpets passed for Jesus in 27 AD, and they are in the ten days of Awe.  It is a time of reflecting on their lives over the past year.  A time of repentance before the Day of Atonement.  The one day of the year that the High Priest enters the Holy of Holy and makes atonement for the nation’s sins.  Today in 2024, we had the Day of Trumpets last Wednesday, and we are in the days of Awe before the Day of Atonement this year, which begins at sunset on Friday.  

In this most holy time of the year, in the days of repentance, Jesus takes his disciples to a most unusual place.  It is one of the most pagan sites in the world, a place where idol worship began in Israel in 900 BC and where idol worship was rampant in his day.  And they are there because it is time to consider who they will follow.    Jesus asks them, who am I to you?   Am I just your teacher, or am I your Messiah?  Am I your high priest who will make the ultimate sacrifice for your sins?

Jesus heads north again, this time to what was once the furthest reaches of Israel, where the tribe of Dan settled.  In Old Testament times, the northeastern area of Israel became a center for Baal worship. In the nearby city of Dan, Israelite king Jeroboam built a high place that angered God and eventually led the Israelites to worship false gods.  When the Greeks conquered the land, it was called Panius, and the worship of the baals was replaced with worship of Greek fertility gods, specifically Pan (the city named for his honor). It became the religious center for Pan worship.  The Hebrews translated that to Banius.

Years later, when the Romans conquered the territory, Herod Philip rebuilt the city and named it in honor of Caesar and after himself. But Caesarea Philippi continued to focus on the worship of Greek gods. On the cliff above the city, local people built shrines and temples to Pan.  

It must have been quite a sight in those days. The Banius River (one of the tributaries to the Jordan) originated from a cave carved out of a sheer cliff face. Water gushed from the mouth of the cave until an earthquake in 1202 relocated the outflow to a lower flat section, from which it flows today.  A great temple was built for Pan near the cave’s mouth, and many niches were carved in the face of the cliff for idols.

Here is what it looks like today: you can see the large cave opening and where the river would flow out.  You can see the remains of the temples of false gods that stood in Jesus’ day.

Here is an artist’s conception of what it looked like in Jesus’ day.

If you want to know the interesting story of who the false god Pan was and how the ancient portrayals of Pan became how we picture “the devil” with horns, pointed ears, and part goat, and if you want to know how we got the name Lucifer mistakenly inserted into the Bible around 300 AD, you’ll have to read my blog entry later this week.

But this was a substantial pagan center of worship.  Some say that people in that day felt the mouth of the cave was the “gates of hell” and that all the fertility gods used it as a passage to the underworld.  (I can’t find any direct sources for this.)   It is this place that Jesus chooses to go to ask this most important question.

On the way there, Jesus asks, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”   ‘Son of Man’ is Jesus’s most common title to refer to himself.  In Hebrew, ‘son of man’ can have two meanings.  It can just be the son of Adam, a human, a descendant of Adam, as Luke records in his genealogy of Jesus.  Or it could be a reference to the Son of Man figure in the book of Daniel.

Daniel 7:13-14   “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.  And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

So, this “son of man” comes before God to be crowned as king.  (Not coming on the clouds as in a second coming.)   

Look at the encounter Jesus has with the High Priest at his trial before some of the Sanhedrin.

Matthew 26:62-64  And the high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?”  But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said so.

Jesus wasn’t the first to claim to be the Messiah.  Josephus said there were at least a dozen before Jesus.  You could claim to be the Messiah, and the Jewish leaders would sit back and watch to see what happened.  And “son of God” can refer to an earthly king (as in David).   It was not considered blasphemy to make this claim.  But Jesus doesn’t stop there.

Matthew 26:64-66   But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”   Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy.  What is your judgment?” They answered, “He deserves death.” 

Jesus has claimed to be the Son of Man from Daniel 7.  This claim to deity would be considered blasphemous because they did not recognize his deity.

But Jesus is not asking, ‘Who am I?’ but, ‘Who do people say I am?’

Am I just a man, the son of Adam (son of man), or am I Daniel’s “Son of Man” who comes on the clouds?

Some say John the Baptist…
Why would they think Jesus was John the Baptist?  Indeed, we know Herod Antipas believed that Jesus was the reincarnation of John the Baptist, whom he beheaded.  

Matthew 14:1   At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.”

Some say, Elijah…
Why would they say that?  It is well known that before the Great Day of the Lord came, Elijah would come.  And in Jesus’ day, and still today, at every Passover seder every year in every Jewish household, they set the table with an empty chair for Elijah.  At a certain point in the meal, they ask a child present to open the door and look outside to see if Elijah is coming.  They are looking forward to the great day.

Malachi 4:5  “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.

But Jesus has already told the disciples that John the Baptist was the one who came in the spirit of Elijah…

Matthew 11:13-14  “All the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come.”

Jeremiah or one of the prophets…

This concept is not seen in Scripture but was noted in the folklore of the day.

Interestingly, among these opinions of who people think Jesus is, “Messiah” is not one of them.

Not after the feeding of the 5000.  Remember, after the miraculous feeding, they wanted to force Jesus to be king, but he refused.  They wanted a Messiah with an earthly kingdom who would defeat the Romans, make them independent again (and feed them free bread.)  But that was not the Messiah Jesus was to be.  (This was one of the temptations in the wilderness.)  They wanted a different Jesus.  So many left him after that.   No longer would the crowds see Jesus as a potential Messiah.

“But who do you say that I am?”

This is the critical question.  It is not “Who is Jesus?”   Because no matter what you believe, Jesus is who he is.  Despite millions who may not recognize it yet, Jesus is the Son of God who came to deliver us.  And one day, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord of all.   The important question is:  “Who is Jesus to you?”  If you don’t have a relationship with Jesus as your Lord, if he is not the one who tells you what to do (and you are obedient), if you haven’t pledged your life to him, then Jesus is not your Messiah; he is just a Messiah.  He is not your deliverer; he is a deliverer.  

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

Notice that Jesus calls Peter “Simon Bar-Jonah” here? You get only the Hebrew name Simon, son of Jonah. He doesn’t use the nickname he gave him the first time Jesus met him.

John 1:42 He [Andrew] brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Petros). 

It is a fairly common nickname today.  Just ask Sylvester Stallone (“Rocky”) or Dwayne Johnson (“The Rock”).   Jesus calling Peter ‘the rock’ probably brought snickers from other disciples, for Simon was often not rock-like until the future.  But that is the way Biblical names frequently work.  Names usually reflect a character trait or destiny yet to be revealed.

Abram is renamed Abraham, father of many when he is 99, a year before Isaac is born.  Jesus’ name means “Yehovah saves” to tell of his future actions.  But here, Jesus uses his original Hebrew name.  Shimon is from the Hebrew ‘shema’ to hear, so the name Simon means  “the one who hears.”  Then Jesus says, “Flesh and blood have not revealed it to you.”  God gave this understanding to Simon Peter.  It was a divine gift.  Over and over in the gospels, we see people who can’t understand the things of God.  God will give the gift of understanding to those who seek him and are willing to accept gifts from him.  If you only get your knowledge about God and the things of God from a person, you are missing it.  You must study God’s words in Scripture and pray for understanding.  People may mislead you.  There are many wolves in sheep’s clothing out there.  God will never mislead you.  So Jesus is really saying, “Blessed are you, Simon, the one who hears because you have heard it from above.”

When Peter said, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,” what did he mean?  Did he understand what ‘Messiah’ meant, or did he accept the common belief of the time – that the Messiah would be a military/political/religious leader who would free the Jews from Roman rule and reinstate the powerful reign of David?  Check out verse 22.  Obviously, Peter didn’t understand all of what this meant.

Jesus continues:
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

There is a lot to unpack here because so many have taken this verse and made it mean what they wanted it to mean.  The Catholic Church has used this verse to say that Peter is the Rock on which the church was built, and he has the authority to govern and make theological decisions.  I can’t agree with this interpretation.  First, I don’t believe Jesus calls Peter the rock on which the church is built.  If you look at the Greek, the two words for rock in that verse are different.  Jesus says to Peter, “You are Petros.”  A petros is a small rock, a pebble.  Then Jesus says, “And on this petra, I will build…”  A petra is a massive stone formation.  (Think of the city of Petra, carved into a solid rock cliff face.)  Let’s see how the Bible uses the word ‘petra.’  

Matthew 7:24   “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock (petra).

You build on a solid foundation on the bedrock.  No one builds anything on a pebble (petros).  

So what is this bedrock that will be built upon?   Jesus’ disciples, familiar with the Old Testament, would know the answer.  (So would we if we read the Old Testament.)  Here  is a verse you likely know:

Psalm 19:14    Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight,  O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.  

If you memorized this in the King James version (as I did), God is “my strength and my redeemer.”  That is not a bad translation because the idea of strength is what the psalmist was going for with ‘rock.’    Let’s look at some other verses:

Deuteronomy 32:4    “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all, his ways are justice.  A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.
1 Samuel 2:2    “There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God.
2 Samuel 22:32    “For who is God, but the LORD?  And who is a rock, except our God?
2 Samuel 22:47    “The LORD lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation,
Psalm 62:2 He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.
Psalm 78:35 They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their redeemer.
1 Corinthians 3:11  For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Peter was not the rock to build on.  He was but a stone (petros) built on the bedrock (petra) of the Father built on the cornerstone of Jesus, with all the prophets and apostles being part of the foundation.

“…and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

So upon this rock I will build what?  In your English version, it says, “church.”  But Jesus would not have said ‘church’ for many reasons.  First, he didn’t speak English.  ‘Church’ is from the German ‘Kirika’, which comes from the Greek ‘kyriakon’, an adjective that means “of the Lord.” This Greek word was used for houses of Christian worship since around 330 A.D.  (Before Constantine, there were no Christian houses of worship legally.  The first “followers of the Way” met in synagogues (for almost all were Jewish).  Later, as the synagogue congregation got tired of the talk of Jesus, they were forced to worship in homes.)  But ‘kyriakon’ is not the Greek word we find here.

“…and on this petra, I will build my ekklesia…”

An ekklesia is an assembly or gathering.  It had no religious connotation at the time Jesus used it.  In the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint that Paul often quoted from), ekklesia was used for various assemblies.  (The group gathered at Sinai was called an ‘ekklesia’ (Deuteronomy 9:10), and Psalm 26:5 speaks of an “assembly (ekklesia) of evildoers.”)  There was a Greek word for a religious assembly — ‘synagogue’- a word for any religious assembly that, upon adoption into Latin, became used explicitly for Jewish religious assemblies.  

Our English translations are not consistent with how they translate these Greek words.  

‘Ekklesia’ occurs 114 times in the New Testament.  It is always translated as “church” except in these instances:

Acts 7:38 This is the one [Moses] who was in the congregation (ekklesia) in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us.

Acts 19:32  Now some cried out one thing, some another, for the assembly (ekklesia) was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together. [This was a town hall meeting in Ephesus.]

Heb. 2:12 [quoting Psalm 22:22]  “saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation (ekklesia) I will sing your praise.”

There is a clear effort in our English translations to use “church” for ekklesia when it is only Jesus’ follower’s meeting.  ‘Synagogue’ is in the New Testament 56 times and is translated (or not translated) as ‘synagogue’ except on one occasion:

James 2:2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly (synagogue), and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in…

Apparently, our English translators didn’t want people to think that James was writing his letter to a synagogue, even though we know that is where the believers were meeting.  (Again, we see this forced separation from anything Jewish.)

I don’t believe it was Jesus’s intention to build a church as we think of it.  What did Jesus say his primary mission was? He came to regather the lost sheep of Israel.  He was not here to make a new organization.  He is assembling a called-out community of people who recognize the living God and see Jesus as the Messiah.  Jesus’ movement is not a synagogue, nor is it a church.  It is the recovery of God’s reign and rule in the hearts and actions of men and women. as it was established at Sinai. After all, it is His assembly, the same assembly called to hear the word of God at the base of the mountain.  He is calling all to join his Kingdom.  

We get so tied up in how best to build a church.  Hundreds of books exist on the best way to build a church.  But I don’t think Jesus wanted us to build churches.  He wants us to build up the Kingdom of God.  We think too small, building our own little kingdoms, recruiting and proselytizing members.  We think the Great Commission is all about church planting, but Jesus’ Great Commission is all about making disciples.  Jesus is most concerned with pouring life into other lives so that others will experience God’s presence in their midst first-hand. This is what we should be doing.

But ‘Church’ is big business.  People love to build empires, People love to build buildings, People love to build organizations.   When we were in Egypt, our teacher showed us the magnificent temples and pyramids the pharaohs built.  Egypt was all about building huge buildings.  And he said…”The Kingdoms of this world build buildings. Our God builds people.  

Matthew 16:19-20  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

There is so much to unpack in these verses but I’m going to be brief.  If you go to a church or museum and see statues of the apostles, it is always easy to pick out Peter.  He is the one holding a bunch of keys. (It is also from this verse we get the idea of Peter being the gatekeeper of Heaven.)   I agree with John Piper, who said the key to heaven is the knowledge of the true identity of Jesus.  That is what this whole passage is about.  Piper said, “When any faithful Christian who speaks the words with the bedrock of Jesus’s identity at the center — when you speak those words faithfully, you are using the keys of the kingdom to open the kingdom in people’s lives.”  Knowing Jesus as your Messiah is the key.

Binding and loosing are rabbinic idioms that say what is allowed and what is not.  (

think of binding an animal to a hitching post.  If you bind it there, it is restricted.  If you loose it, it is free to roam around.)  What does it mean to observe the Sabbath?  Who decides what is permitted or allowed?  The Pharisees had taken that authority and run with it (and never stopped running.)  What could you carry, how far could you walk, etc.  But Jesus said they did this poorly.

Matthew 23:4  They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

But someone has to interpret the law.  So Jesus is passing that authority on to these disciples. It is not to Peter only, because the ‘you’ in verse 19 is plural, “I am giving y’all the keys to the kingdom….”  (Jesus restates the binding and loosing in Matthew 18:18 with the plural ‘you.’)

Jesus went on a several-day journey to the northernmost reaches of the promised land.  It was a place none of the disciples had ever been.  It was the place where things went wrong in Israel.  It was where 900 years before Jesus, King Jeroboam built altars to idols, the baals, and fertility gods, and told the people of Israel — this is your God who brought you out of Egypt. This place, where in Jesus’ day, thousands came to worship a fertility god they called Pan.  A place some called the ‘Gates of Hell.’  And Jesus brings his disciples there to ask them this question:  “Who do you say that I am?”  Because if you really understand who I am and if you follow me, you will be part of a community of believers that the Gates of Hell can not stand against.  In Jesus’ day, gates were defensive structures built to withstand the enemy.  Jesus said if you accept me as your Messiah and as your Lord (meaning you follow my orders), then you will storm the Gates of Hell.  It is not a defense against hell but an offense against it.  And there are people in your community, some of your neighbors, who are bound for hell, and we need to stop hiding in church buildings and go on the offensive.

Jesus brought them here because they have to make a choice.  When they came into this promised land, Joshua called them all together and said you have to choose

Joshua 24:14   “Now therefore fear Yehovah and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve Yehovah.  And if it is bad in your eyes to serve Yehovah, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.  But as for me and my house, we will serve Yehovah.”

Years after Joshua, 10 of the 12 tribes chose to follow the idols.  Right here in this place.  In Jesus’ day, people still chose to worship Pan there and said he was the god who would make their land fertile so they could be rich.  Jesus says am I a prophet?  Am I just your teacher?  Am I just a Messiah, or am I your Messiah?  And now, you and I have to choose, and we choose every day.  I don’t have to take you to a pagan place of idols.  You walk among idols every day.   We walk among people who worship the idols of this world and say they will make them rich, healthy, and successful.  What are we building?  Are we building our own little kingdoms and buildings?  Or are we building people for the kingdom of God?  Are we making disciples?  Who is Jesus to you?

September 24, 27 A.D.  –  Thousands turn to Jesus, Because of One Man —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #54

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

Week 32 ———  Another Miraculous Feeding
Matthew 15:32-38      Mark 8:1-9

Jesus feeds the 5000(+), and the following day, they want him to feed them again.  But he challenges them to think deeper and tells them he is the Bread of Life.  They are disappointed in Jesus and unable to understand his teaching about eternal life because they are only concerned about earthly things.  Many of his disciples quit following Jesus.  Then, on the Day of Trumpets, Jesus has a confrontation with the authorities from Jerusalem about purity.  Then Jesus goes north to Gentile territory and at first refuses to heal a Gentile woman’s child.  She challenges Jesus that Gentiles should at least get the scraps from the Messiah’s table, and Jesus commends her for her faith. We often underestimate the importance of this encounter.  Jesus traveled 16 miles north, talked to this woman, and healed her child; then, the next day, they traveled 20 miles south to put the discussion with this woman into action on a larger scale.  (If you haven’t read #53, stop now and read that one first.)

Jesus doesn’t return to Capernaum but travels further east to the east side of the Sea of Galilee, to the Decapolis, which is Gentile territory.

Jesus and the disciples have been here before.  It was where they landed in the boat after the stormy night when Jesus calmed the seas.  They encountered the demoniac, and Jesus sent the demons into the pigs that hurled themselves into the sea.  After losing about 2000 pigs, the people did not favor Jesus staying around.  So they insisted he leave.  The former demoniac asked to go with Jesus, but Jesus said:

Mark 5:19-20   “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”  And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

Now, I like the ESV translation, but they missed it here.  “Go home to your friends…”  This man didn’t have any friends.  He was the scary, strong man who lived in the graveyard and busted out of chains when they tried to restrain him.   That Greek says, “Go home to yours.”    The NIV gets it right: “Go home to your people.”

Jesus is saying: “Don’t come with me; I’m going back to the Jewish side of the lake; you go witness to your people, the Gentiles.”

The last time he was in the Decapolis, just a little over a month ago, Jesus was there only a few hours and was kicked out of the country.   Wait until you see what happens this time…

Matthew 15:29-31   Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee. And he went up on the mountain and sat down there.  And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them, so that the crowd wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel.1

This time, he is welcomed by huge crowds who stay with him for three days of teaching.  The Gentile crowds come to Jesus for healing, and Jesus starts healing them without hesitation.  This is possible because of what happened before.  God had a plan.  God led Jesus to this area to cast the demons from this man who would be his witness.  God led Jesus to Syria and then brought this desperate mother to him.  God’s plan worked because that man who was formally demon-possessed was willing to be a witness and because this woman would not consider letting Jesus go without healing her daughter and because she insisted that Jesus was the Messiah of this Gentile also.  She spoke for more than her daughter; she spoke for all the non-Jewish people in the world.   God used these two individuals to bring about his centuries-old plan.  All these people are being healed because two people were obedient to the task God gave them.  They are the unsung heroes of this story.

So here they are, healing and teaching a huge crowd of Gentiles.  And look what happens next:

Matthew 15:32-34   Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.”   And the disciples said to him, “Where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd?”   And Jesus said to them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven, and a few small fish.”  

This story should sound familiar.  It was just a week ago he fed the 5000.  But this is different.  These are Gentiles 

This is the big difference:  In the last miracle of feeding the 5000, the disciples had compassion for the crowd. This time, both Matthew and Mark make a point of saying it was Jesus who had compassion on the crowd after three days.  Why the difference?  Could the disciples not have the same level of compassion because these people were Gentiles?  Remember that these Jewish disciples had been taught by their religious leaders that eating with Gentiles was forbidden.  It brought on all kinds of uncleanness. It was much like the lunch counters in Birmingham in 1960, when African Americans were not allowed.  There were just some things you didn’t do.

Just two days ago, Jesus confronted the Pharisees about their traditions.  “You don’t wash your hands the right way, Jesus;  everyone knows that.”  You don’t eat with Gentiles, Jesus.  They are unclean.  There are just some things you don’t do.”

If these disciples are going to fulfill Jesus’ command at the end of Matthew’s gospel to “Go into all the world,” then they are going to have to drop their racist viewpoints. Are they there yet? Unfortunately, not.  

Peter still holds on to the false traditions he learned as a child.  It takes a miraculous vision of a sheet in the 10th chapter of Acts and a devout Roman Soldier to convince Peter that Gentiles can accept Jesus as their lord.   People were still preaching that you had to become Jewish to be saved.  So, a church council is convened to answer the question in Acts 15: can Gentiles be saved without becoming Jews?  Gentiles are finally completely welcomed in.  

Don’t miss how these stories fit together.   The events in Jesus’ ministry are not random.   Four weeks ago, we discussed how Jesus cast the demons out of this man.  It is a great story but only the prequel to the greater story.  This was the scary, crazy, strong man who lived in the graveyard and broke chains.   Jesus heals him, and he wants to go with Jesus, but Jesus says, no, tell people what God has done for you— he spent four weeks telling what Jesus did for him, and thousands of people came to Jesus.  This story of the persistent mother seems so odd at first glance — God used her as the catalyst to drive the plan to take his kingdom to all the nations in the world.   

God had a plan to reach the whole world.  But God wants to partner with us to accomplish it.  Isn’t this how prayer works?   There are things Jesus won’t do until his disciples come in bold and persistent faith- asking him to be who they know he is.  This woman knew Jesus loved all people; she knew the time was coming for the Gentiles to share in the kingdom.  She merely asked Jesus to be who she knew he was.  Jesus, you are compassionate.  Have compassion for my daughter.

God doesn’t need people to do any work, but God chooses to use people to do his work.   He chooses to partner with us to bring about his kingdom.  And some healings don’t occur because we don’t come before his throne like this woman came to Jesus. She would not give up!  Is this how you pray?   There are people who suffer pain, hunger, depression, and many other things because we refuse to partner with God to take care of them.  We pray the Lord’s Prayer and ask God to do his will on earth, just like it is always perfectly done in heaven.   But some of God’s will is not done on earth as it is in heaven because we are not bold and courageous in approaching God with our requests like this Syrian woman and because we are not willing to follow his will like this Gentile man who had been possessed.    

We Christians have a problem.  We read the Bible, and we say: 
One day, there will be no more sickness or pain.
One day, children will not go hungry
One day, there will be no depression or loneliness.
One day, there will be no homelessness.
One day, there will be no more broken marriages or broken relationships,
One day, God will fix all that

And while we are so focused on that one day, I think God is shouting, “Why not today?”  Why can’t this happen now in your community? Why can’t God’s will be done today?  That is the message of the Syrian mother.  Yes, one day, Jesus will tell his disciples to go to the Gentiles, but why not today?  Why can you not be the Messiah for me and my daughter today?   And I think Jesus was waiting for that one person to ask for his ministry to reach out past the Jews.  So he left the next morning, walked 20 miles, and started healing thousands of Gentiles.

Do you think God wants children to be abused or to go hungry?  Do you think God wants that person who lives near you to be depressed or lonely?  Does God want people to sleep in the cold?  No!  Look at the lessons we have seen in the stories of the past few weeks:

From the disciples at the feeding:   Look at the people around you.  Be compassionate.  Oh, the disciples notice they are hungry.  Then Jesus says, “You feed them.  I will enable you to do it, but you need to do it.” From the mother in Syria:  Be bold and courageous in your requests to Jesus. Ask Jesus to be who you know he is.  From the former demoniac:  It is not enough to sit in the boat (or church) with Jesus.  We need to go back to our people and tell them what Jesus has done for us.  And from all three together, no one in any country or situation is beyond the grace of God.  The Kingdom of God is for all people.

But I can’t let this end without bringing this story home today.  The story of the Syrian woman happened in the area ruled by Tyre and Sidon, what is now the country of Lebanon.  Lebanon is a primarily Muslim country that is home to Hezbollah, an Iran-funded terrorist group.  Hezbollah has been shelling northern Israel for almost a year since the Oct 6 attack from Gaza, forcing over 50,000 from their homes.  Israel has been retaliating with some directed missile attacks.  In the past few weeks, Israel began an intense campaign to stop these terrorists.  There were the exploding pagers and devices and now intense missile attacks.  Hezbollah, like most terrorist groups, hides among the innocent civilians in the country.  Their headquarters was in the basement of a residential building.  So Israel’s attempt to stop the terrorists has resulted in much harm to civilians, in the very area Jesus was in our story and up to Tyre and beyond.

My friend, Chris Todd, lives in Tyre.  Chris was a chicken farmer in Marshall County, Alabama, but he is now a missionary there.  He works with several Christian churches in this primarily Muslim country and serves the Syrian refugees that flooded into Lebanon in Syria’s recent war.  The bombing was initially south of Tyre, and four families were sheltering in his apartment there.  Some in these families converted from the Muslim faith and are now workers in his trauma center and the church there. In the past week, there has been heavy bombardment in Tyre and his neighborhood and at the ministry center.  Since this area is no longer safe, they are seeking shelter further north.   

Jesus went to this area, and one mother begged for his help.  Jesus used her plea to teach his disciples that his kingdom was not just for the Jews but for the whole world.   My friend, Chris, is fulfilling Jesus’ call in the very place where this story happened.  But they are in crisis, and he needs help.  I want to ask you to prayerfully consider donating to help provide shelter to these Christian brothers and sisters who are fleeing the bombing.2

God is waiting for us to join him in working miracles in our community. 

  1. Matthew lets you know this is a Gentile territory by saying, “They glorified the God of Israel.”  Had it been a Jewish crowd, he would have said, “They glorified God.”
  2. Donations can be given through Chris’s Ministry, Words of Isa. Words of Isa, PO Box 1398, Albertville, AL 35950. (Checks payable to “Words of Isa”.) Venmo: @wordsofisa You can also donate easily online through Paypal: http://paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/1879050

September 22, 27 A.D.  –  The Woman Who Would Not Give Up —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #53

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , , , , , , , , ,

Week 32 ———  The Woman Who Would Not Give Up
Matthew 15:22-28      Mark 7:24-30

Several weeks ago, Jesus fed the largest crowd recorded in his ministry (5000 men plus women and children). Last week, he taught on the Bread of Life and spoke for the first time to a crowd plainly of eternal life resurrection on the last day because that evening began the Day of Trumpets. I told you then that we were at a turning point in his ministry.

His popularity was at its highest after the feeding of the 5000.  It was so popular that John tells us the people wanted to force him to be king.  And Jesus is king, but not the kind of king they think.  So he withdrew (John 6:14-15).  The next day, the crowd finds him again.  They want him to repeat the bread miracle.  But Jesus tells him he is the Bread of Life.  They cannot understand what he is saying because their mind is stuck on earthly things.  And that brings us to one of the saddest verses in the Bible:

John 6:66  After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

But God granted understanding to Simon Peter:

John 6:66-69  So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”   Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” 

That evening, the new moon is visible, and it is the Day of Trumpets, which is a required day of rest.  (So both Saturday and Sunday were Sabbath rests that week.)  A group of Pharisees from Jerusalem had been waiting for Jesus to return to Capernaum.  On the Day of Trumpets, they confront Jesus because he and his disciples don’t wash their hands the way the Rabbis had instructed them to keep ritually pure.  (Note that this was not a law from scripture, but something the rabbis added and Jesus found unnecessary.)  It would be like you visiting a church one Sunday, and one of the church elders comes to you and fusses at you because you didn’t wear a jacket and tie.  “Everyone here wears a suit to church.  Next time you come, dress correctly.”    Jesus was all about rules, but only God’s rules.  He had no trouble ignoring their traditions that seemed more important to them than God’s rules.  And this was not a friendly discussion but a confrontation.  The disciples realized that contradicting these authorities could be a problem, and they asked Jesus:

Matthew 15:12  Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?”

Jesus answered by telling the disciples that the Pharisees were ‘blind guides’ and challenging their whole concept of purity.  

The following day, Jesus and the disciples traveled north out of Galilee, out of Jewish territory, into Syria, the region controlled by the two large cities, Tyre and Sidon. These were very wealthy coastal cities, profiting from their position in the spice trade.  They controlled the region of Syria north of Galilee, and it was not Jewish.1

Now, the people in Syria had already heard about Jesus.  As Matthew noted just before the sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 4:24-25   So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them.

 So, some of the people from Syria had already come south to Galilee, blended in with the crowds around Jesus, and found healing. But now, Jesus goes there.

Matthew 15:21-28   And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.”   But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.”  He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”   But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Jesus enters the southernmost part of this region, and his disciples are likely thinking he is leaving to have some time away from the crowds and the religious leaders who are becoming increasingly antagonistic to him. But Jesus has a hidden agenda.  He doesn’t seek out anyone, but a woman whose child was possessed by a demon hears that Jesus is in the area, so she comes to ask for healing for her child.  The fact that she is not Jewish is much emphasized in the Scriptures.  Matthew (writing to a Jewish audience) describes her as a “Canaanite woman,” using a term that recalls the Old Testament history of Canaanites being the enemy whose worship of idols was a persistent threat to the proper worship of the Israelites.  That the Messiah of Israel would bring healing to a Canaanite, of all people, would be a shocking statement to Matthew’s readers that Jesus’ ministry is for all people.  Matthew furthers the shock value of the story, recording that the pagan woman then addresses Jesus as the “Son of David,” a Jewish messianic title.  

This is an odd Bible story. You probably won’t get it in Vacation Bible School, so we must examine it more closely.

Mark adds the detail that Jesus is trying to escape notice from the people. 

Mark 7:24   And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.   And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. 

He is not there to minister.  He doesn’t seek out anyone, but a woman whose child was possessed by a demon hears that Jesus is in the area, so she comes to ask for healing for her child.  Both Mark and Matthew emphasize the fact that she is not Jewish.  Mark says, “Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth” (Mark 7:26).   Matthew (writing to a Jewish audience) describes her as a “Canaanite woman,” using a term that recalls the Old Testament history of Canaanites being the enemy whose worship of idols was a persistent threat to the proper worship of the Israelites.  This was a derogatory term.  That the Messiah of Israel would bring healing to a Canaanite, of all people, would be a shocking statement to Matthew’s readers.  Matthew furthers the shock value of the story, recording that the pagan woman then addresses Jesus as the “Son of David,” a Jewish messianic title.

She “comes out” of her village to seek out Jesus, leaving her daughter at home.  She begs for mercy.  How would you expect Jesus to respond to this woman desperate for healing for her daughter?   Jesus does not even respond to her at all.  But she is persistent, and she will not be turned aside.  Eventually, the disciples ask Jesus to send her away “for she is crying out after us.”  They begged Jesus to heal her daughter so she would leave.  But Jesus responds:

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

We have heard Jesus use that phrase before, when he was sending out the 12.

Matthew 10:5-7   These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

So Jesus ignored this woman’s request for help because she is a Gentile?  He has healed some Gentiles before.  What is going on?  Still, she doesn’t give up.2

But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”
And then Jesus replies:  “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Whoa, Jesus.  That sounds bad, even in our culture, where we love dogs and some treat them like children.  But in the Jewish world of Jesus’ day, dogs are not pets. They are scavengers, a nuisance, unclean animals. It is definitely a derogatory reference.   The disciples were not surprised at all when Jesus said this.  They probably were thinking the same thing.  What is Jesus doing?

But this woman won’t let that comment slow her down. She is a mother with a sick child.  She will not be dismissed so easily.  “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”  She embraces the derogatory comment and continues to make her case.  Somehow, this Gentile woman has got it into her head that Jesus is her Messiah also.

After his death and resurrection, Jesus told the disciples to go into all the world.  His ministry will be for all, not just the Jews.  But this woman begs Jesus to take that future hope for the Gentiles to be part of God’s kingdom and make it happen now.  

And suddenly, everything changes.  

Jesus turned and said, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” Her daughter was healed instantly.

Jesus has a crucial lesson to teach these disciples.  But this lesson is so contrary to their thinking that he knows he will have to take extreme measures to teach it.  He has emphasized several times that his mission was first to the Jews, which is just what was foretold in Scripture. Jesus is being faithful to the story of the Bible.

Once, there was only one nation in the world, but they rebelled against God, building a tower they hoped would rise to heaven.  So, God divides them into many nations.  And God chooses one man from all the nations to be the way he will restore the world.  This man, Abraham, will be the “father of many nations,” and his family will be the means of redemption for all.  His people are rescued from slavery in Egypt,

After deliverance from Egypt, God tells the children of Israel they are to be a kingdom of priests to carry his message through the world.  But they fail to follow God and be that kingdom of priests. So God chooses a king to lead the people in justice, mercy, and obedience, but David fails also.  Then God promises that one day, a king will come from the house of David who will succeed in keeping God’s covenant and be the leader that will bring all nations together under God.  And that king is Jesus.

Isaiah had predicted a time when all nations would come to the house of the God of Jacob.

Isaiah 2:2-4   It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

“I ain’t gonna study war no more.” the old spiritual song says.  Why? Because all the nations will one day be united under Jesus.  There will be no more war.  But this is all in the future.  First, Jesus must come and reach out to the lost sheep of Israel.  He plans to take his gospel to the rest of the world, but all in due order.  Jesus has to fulfill a covenant promise to Abraham.  How many disciples are there?  How many tribes of Israel were there?  Jesus is rebuilding the house of Israel so that they will finally become the kingdom of priests. Are these 12 ready to fulfill that mission?  Unfortunately, not yet. 

Like us, the disciples are slow learners.  Something drilled into you from your childhood is difficult to shake off.  Many of my generation grew up in families where racism was the norm.  Some of my friends have struggled to shake off those old prejudices and hate.  Changing your mind often takes a real-life experience with someone who surprises you by not meeting your negative expectations.  When people found out we were adopting a biracial girl, some people thought we were crazy.  But they watched this girl grow up, and they grew to love her.  Those same people who were so against our adoption would now fight anyone who made a racial statement around our girl.  

Racism is removed through relationships.

We have seen that in our churches who minister to our homeless community.  As part of our program, we encourage churches to sit at the dinner table and have discussions with our ‘neighbors without homes.’  This helps in two ways.  Our church members discover that our ‘neighbors without homes’ are real people with real problems.  They lose many of their prejudices and become more interested in helping.  Secondly, our neighbors, many of whom have had poor encounters with churches, meet church people who care about them.  Conversations around a table go a long way to remove their memories of bad experiences with people who see them as worthless.

Prejudice is overcome through experience.

So, what happened in Syria with this woman is a critical step in God’s plan.  I think God set Jesus up.  God sent Jesus and the disciples walking about 16 miles to this region in Syria, and Mark tells us Jesus doesn’t want to be seen.  But God makes sure this woman with a sick child finds out Jesus is there.  God is using her as the catalyst to begin Jesus’ ministry to the Gentiles.  They walk 16 miles from home, encounter this persistent mother, and the next morning, get up and start walking 20 miles back south.  Something profound has happened.  Look at where Jesus goes.  This time, he doesn’t return to his home base in Capernaum but goes further west to the Decapolis, an area of the Gentiles.   Here, Jesus will test his disciples to see if they learned anything from his interaction with the Gentile woman the previous day.

Jesus and the disciples have been here before.  It was where they landed in the boat after the stormy night when Jesus calmed the seas.  They encountered the demoniac, and Jesus sent the demons into the pigs that hurled themselves into the sea.  After losing about 2000 pigs, the people did not favor Jesus staying around.  So they insisted he leave.  The former demoniac asked to go with Jesus, but Jesus said:

Mark 5:19-20   “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”  And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

Now, I like the ESV translation, but they missed it here.  “Go home to your friends…”  This man didn’t have any friends.  He was the scary, strong man who lived in the graveyard and busted out of chains when they tried to restrain him.   That Greek literally says, “Go home to yours.”    The NIV gets it right: “Go home to your people.”

Jesus is saying: “Don’t come with me; I’m going back to the Jewish side of the lake; you go witness to your people, the Gentiles.”

The last time he was in the Decapolis, just a little over a month ago, Jesus was there only a few hours and was kicked out of the country.   Wait until you see what happens this time…

Peter will not understand this concept of the expansion of the Kingdom to the Gentiles until Acts 10, and it will take a vision of a sheet from heaven and a devout Roman soldier to convince him.  The tradition that God was for the Jews alone ran very deep in the psyche of all the Jews.  Jesus will take extreme measures with this woman to begin the lesson.  He demonstrates their own racism in how he initially treats her.  Sometimes, we can see things in others we cannot see in ourselves.

Jesus is being very intentional. He began his ministry only to the Jews but, as predicted in the scriptures, will eventually expand his kingdom to everyone. In Matthew 28, he tells the disciple, “Go into all the world…”   And we are at a turning point.  He makes this journey into Syria and will go to the Decapolis, another primary Gentile territory, and then up to Caesarea Philippi all in the next week.  He will test the disciples to see if they have learned the lesson to have compassion for the nations.  (And they will fail.)

Like us, the disciples are slow learners.  Something drilled into you from your childhood is difficult to shake off.  Many of my generation grew up in families where racism was the norm.  Some of my friends have struggled to shake off those old prejudices and hate.  Changing your mind often takes a real-life experience with someone who surprises you by not meeting your negative expectations.  We have seen that in our churches who minister to our homeless community.  As part of our program, we encourage churches to sit at the dinner table and have honest discussions with our ‘neighbors without homes.’  This helps in two ways.  Our church members discover that our ‘neighbors without homes’ are real people with real problems.  They lose many of their prejudices and become more interested in helping.  Secondly, our neighbors meet church people who care about them.  Conversations around a table go a long way to remove their memories of bad experiences with people who see them as worthless.

Jesus has already shocked his followers by offering to go to the centurion’s home after the sermon on the mount, by touching a leper, and by ministering to a Samaritan woman.  But he is now going to push them further.  Let’s see what he does next.

  1. It is interesting to note some similarities between the visit of the prophet Elijah to this same region.  Elijah encounters a widow in Zarephath (felt to be modern-day Sarafand, a city between Tyre and Sidon.)  This is another woman whose child is healed.  It is amid a famine in the land, and God multiplied her oil and flour so that the little she had never ran out, just as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes. 
  2. Don’t miss how the Bible displays this woman’s initiative in a positive light.  This is atypical of narratives about women in this day.  And this is not the only gospel story that does this.  (See also the initiative of the women with the 12 years of bleeding and the woman in the parable Jesus tells in Luke 18 of the woman who would not stop pleading with the unrighteous judge for justice.