Author: David Chupp

December 24, 27 A.D.  –  One Thing is Necessary —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #64

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

For the past year, we have been tracing the gospel story of Jesus week by week as it happened 1997 years ago. It is midwinter in 27 AD, the 45th week of Jesus’ 70-week ministry. Our passage for today comes from Luke 10,

Luke 10:38-42   Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.   And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.   But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”   But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

This is a familiar story, Martha is busy preparing and serving food while Mary sits with the others, talking to Jesus.  You’ve probably heard several sermons about this passage.   But do you know the context of this passage?  Do you know the setting?  It is important.

The Gospel of John tells us Jesus is in Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of Hanukkah. Hanukkah celebrates the deliverance of the Jews in 165 BC.  Just over 150 years before Jesus’ birth, the Jews were under the rule of the Seleucid Empire, which had tried to eliminate Jewish culture and insisted they worship the emperor and Zeus.  They burned their Bible scrolls; they refused to let them go to their synagogues or even say God’s name out loud.  They tortured and killed tens of thousands of Jews. But the Jews refused to bow down to idols and revolted.  Against unbelievable odds, the Jews prevailed and restored true worship.  Every year, they celebrate their deliverance from this evil kingdom, much like we celebrate July 4th.  So Jesus is in Jerusalem to celebrate the 8-day holiday of Hanukkah.  During the day, Jesus taught in the Temple courtyard using the themes of Hanukkah.  He explained how he is the Good Shepherd and the Light of the World.  In the evenings, since he has no home, he stays with friends in the nearby town of Bethany.

So this passage is very timely for us.  It is a scene we will all recreate in the next 24 hours.  Friends and family have gathered in the winter for a big holiday dinner. So welcome to Hanukkah dinner at the house of Lazarus.

Holiday dinners are special.  Like our holiday dinners, the meals on Jewish holidays are often elaborate.  A Jewish friend of mine joked that almost all Jewish celebrations, whether Passover, Purim, or Hanukkah, follow the same 3-part description.  “These people tried to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth.  God delivered us.  Let’s eat!”  You probably have certain food traditions for your Christmas Eve or Christmas meals.  At Hanukkah, the classic food today is potato latkes (fried potato cakes) and fried doughnuts (typically jelly filled.)   Lots of fried food, in keeping with the Hanukkah theme of the miracle of the oil.  The first night of Hanukkah is tomorrow night, by the way.  Light a candle, fry some potatoes and doughnuts, and take a moment to thank God for rescuing our Jewish ancestors and Jesus’ great-great-great-great grandparents from another holocaust.

Holiday dinners can be stressful.  You want everything just right.  After all, the holiday only comes once a year, and getting the whole family together seems harder and harder.   Just imagine how stressful it would be to host a holiday dinner and find out Jesus is on the guest list.  Now you have some idea what Martha felt in this story in Luke.  Martha wants everything to be perfect.  She wants to be the perfect hostess with the perfect meal in the perfect home.

I am reminded of the story of the family who had invited the new pastor over for dinner.  Of course, they wanted to make a good impression and wanted everything to be just right.  So they work hard to clean the house and prepare the perfect meal.  But everything goes wrong.  The plumbing backs up, and the house smells awful. The vacuum cleaner explodes, sending dust all over everything.  In their rush to clean that up, the rolls burn to a crisp.  Then the doorbell rings.  They finally sit down for dinner with the pastor, and the mother asks little Johnny to say the blessing.  He looks panicked like he has never prayed before.  She quickly says, “Just pray like you have heard Daddy and Mommy pray.”  So little Johnny closes his eyes, bows his head, and says, “Dear Lord, why in Heaven did we ever invite these people over for dinner?”

Martha’s sister Mary is sitting listening to Jesus teach and enjoying the fellowship of Jesus and the disciples while Martha does a lot of work.  However, Mary is not chided for her laziness; in fact, Jesus says Mary has chosen the good portion.  What is the good portion Mary chose?   What was Mary doing that Jesus said was more important than helping Martha?

Martha is anxious and troubled over many things, but one thing is necessary.  What were the many things that caused Martha distress? The passage tells us that Martha was distracted by “much serving.”  Now, don’t get the idea that the Bible speaks against hospitality.  On the contrary, hospitality in the Bible is a form of righteousness. If anything, we underestimate the importance of hospitality in scripture.  Martha is serving; she is doing a good thing,   But she is distracted.   The Greek word we translate as ‘distracted’ comes from two root words that literally mean ‘pulled’ ‘in every direction.’  Have you ever felt that way in the holidays? Martha is anxious and troubled, pulled in many directions, but one thing is necessary.

What is the one thing?   Mary is sitting down with her family and friends, listening to Jesus’ teaching.  Picture the story in your mind.  She is at the table, in her home, with friends and family, talking about scripture and the teaching of God.  She is fulfilling what Jesus said was the greatest commandment, Deuteronomy 6:4 and following — the Schema.

Shema Israel, Adonai elohenu, Adonai echad,    Ve’ahavta et Adonai eloeikah,
b’khol levavkah,     uve’khol naphshekah,     uve’khol m’odekah.

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.   You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

I’m afraid we remember the first sentence of that passage but not the rest.  Jesus only quoted the first verse to the rich young ruler because he knew that any Jewish child could quote the whole passage.  We know that this is the first scripture Jesus and any other Jewish child would memorize, the scripture Jesus and every other Jew would have quoted at least twice every day in prayer to His Father.

But we stop with the first verse and ignore the rest.  “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.”  We should memorize them and take them to heart.  “You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”  I am afraid we have become distracted by many things and neglected this one thing that is necessary.  I fear the conversation of God is not frequently heard in our homes, at our tables, or in the education of our children.

But Martha was pulled in many directions, handling all the details of the perfect meal and doing many things but not the “one thing.”  She didn’t notice that the important thing was not what was on the table but who was around the table. The “one thing” is following the greatest commandment and spending time with Jesus, discussing His word in your home with your family and friends, teaching it to your children.  

Have you noticed who is not mentioned in this story?  It is Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus.   John 11:5 says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.”  We know something about this dinner that  Martha didn’t know.  In just over 2 months, Lazarus will be dead.  In just over 4 months, Jesus will be crucified.  If Martha had known this, would it have changed how she behaved that day?  You never know if this is your last holiday dinner with a friend or family member.  

The holidays are here.  We will all recreate this scene in our homes in the coming days.  Will we find time to do the one thing Jesus said was the best portion?  The first and greatest commandment — the one thing.  Love God with all that is within you and gather people in your home to teach the Word; discuss them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  Oh, Martha, you are doing many good things, but one thing is necessary.

Today we celebrate that over 2000 years ago, Jesus left the splendor of Heaven to be born into a poor family in a borrowed cave.  He came to show us how to live, and he came to show us how to die, giving up his very life for our salvation.   Our love for God should be so central to who we are that our conversations in our homes are centered on the word of God. As we gather in our homes in the next few days and the days to come, let’s ensure we don’t leave out the one thing. 

December 12, 27 A.D.  –  The Light of the World—   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #63

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , ,

Week 43 ——— The Light of the World
John 10:1–23 

The days are getting shorter.  Have you noticed it?  There is less daylight every day.   Today, there will be 4.5 fewer hours of sunlight than in June. Does anyone like that?  It could be worse.  The further north you live, the less daylight there is.  This has to do with the tilt of the Earth’s axis and its position relative to the sun.  This photo traces the sun’s path during the day from a very northern latitude, Greenwich, England.  

In mid-summer, the sun takes this highest arc.  On the winter solstice, it takes the lower path.  During the three years we lived in Boston, we really missed the hours of sunlight we have here.  They lose 6 hours of daylight in winter.  I didn’t understand how much this affected us until we moved there, and it seemed like the sunshine abandoned us for months of gray skies with no light.   Seasonal affective disorder is a real medical diagnosis.  As the hours of sunlight decrease, your brain chemistry changes.  You produce more melatonin and less serotonin.  Most people have at least some chemically induced depression.  We need the light.  The first thing God created was light.

I don’t know how people in northern Alaska survive.  The last day they saw any sunlight was November 18th.  They will not see the sun again until January 22.  It is no wonder people in Arctic communities have higher rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide.  Too much darkness is a very bad thing.  If you hate the shorter days, I have some good news for you.  It will soon get better.  There is an end to the shortening of our days this week.  After Saturday, December 21, the days begin to have more and more light.

Some days are darker than others; some days, this world seems filled with darkness.  As we continue to follow Jesus in his 70-week ministry, he is in the temple teaching during the celebration of Hanukkah.  To understand what Jesus is teaching, we need to know the context of Hanukkah.  So, we need to talk about a very dark time in history.

We go back to 336 BC.  Alexander the III of Macedonia succeeded his father on the throne at the young age of 20.  He went on to conquer most of the world before his death at 32.  When Alexander died, his kingdom was divided among four of his generals, who then fought each other for control.  The Selucids and the Ptolomys governed the largest two territories.  The Seleucid Empire stretched as far east as India.  Israel was between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires and was fought over for more than a hundred years before it came under the control of the Seleucid ruler, Antiochus IV, in 175 BC.

He was a brutal dictator who insisted on being called ‘Antiochus Epiphanes.’   Epiphanes is the Greek word for ‘god manifest’ or ‘god in the flesh.’  This evil emperor claimed to be a god in the flesh.  He tried to exterminate the Jewish religion.  He made it illegal to pronounce God’s name, Yehovah. Thus began the Jewish practice of not saying God’s name aloud. He outlawed Sabbath worship and circumcision.   He burned the scriptures.  He placed a statue of Zeus in the Jewish temple (that looked remarkably like himself) and sacrificed pigs on the altar.  Josephus, a historian in Jesus’ day, describes the punishment for those Jews who refused to worship Antiochus and continued to practice their faith:

“…they were whipped with rods, and their bodies torn to pieces, and were crucified, while they were still alive, and breathed. . . . And if there were any sacred book, or the law found, it was destroyed: and those with whom they were found miserably perished also.”1

Can you imagine if your country was conquered and ruled by such a dictator who made your religion illegal and killed or tortured anyone who worshipped?  These were very dark days for the Jews.  Tens of thousands of Jews were killed.  

But a rebellion arose led by a priest and his son Judah, nicknamed ‘Maccabee’ (the hammer).  Against almost unbelievable odds, the Jewish people drove back the army of the Seleucids and freed the country.  You can read all about this in the books of 1st and 2nd Maccabees.  You won’t find them in your Bible, as they are part of the Apocrypha.  They are ancient books that are not the words of God, not scripture, but have helpful historical information.  

The Jews drove the Seleucids out, but their temple was a mess.  The statue of Antiochus had to be removed, and the altar and the Menorah in the holy place were profaned with the blood of the pig sacrifices.  They had to be replaced and rededicated to God before worship could resume.  The Menorah, the golden candle stand in the holy place that burns constantly, representing the presence of God, was relit, and the altar was rebuilt.  They had missed the 8-day feast of Tabernacles that fall as it had been outlawed, so they celebrated it in the winter.  They then decided to keep this 8-day festival to celebrate their deliverance from the oppressive rule of the Antiochus and the Selucids.  They called this festival ‘Hanukkah’ and celebrated it as the festival of dedication.  They also called it the ‘Festival of Lights,’ as Josephus noted, because the light of God had penetrated the dark days they had under the oppressive rules of the Selucids.

 The relighting of the menorah in the temple was celebrated as people lit candles in their homes.  Later, a legend developed of how there was only enough sacred oil to burn in the lamp for a single day, but it took 7 days to purify more oil, and the single day’s worth of oil lasted 8 days.  Each night of the 8-day Hanukkah festival today, a candle is lit on a 9-branch candle stand.  Hanukkah celebrates the victory of the Jews over their oppressors, the dedication of the people who faced death by refusing to worship idols, the rededication of the temple, and the victory of light over darkness.  It is the festival of lights.

And it comes in winter, the time of year when darkness seems to prevail.  That brings us to another time when the forces of darkness are gaining ground.   It is this very week, mid-December, 1997 years ago.  It is the winter of 27 AD, and Jesus is preaching and teaching in Jerusalem.  But the religious leaders of the day, the elite, those who are wealthy and powerful, are seeking to kill Jesus; the forces of darkness are attempting to extinguish the Light of the World.

The image of light is very important in John’s gospel.  This is how it begins:

John 1:1-9   In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.  He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.  The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 

Early in his ministry, Jesus meets with a Pharisee at night and tries to explain.  Jesus tells Nicodemus, the Pharisee:

John 3:19  And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 

The Bible consistently emphasizes God’s truth as the light shining in the darkness. In his prophecy of the coming Messiah, the suffering servant of Isaiah, we read:

Isaiah 49:6   For He has said:
“It is too little that you should be My servant
In that I raise up the tribes of Jacob
And restore the survivors of Israel:
I will also make you a light of nations,
That My salvation may reach the ends of the earth.”

If only the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day had understood this.  It would be too small of a mission for the Messiah to bring deliverance only to Israel, so he will also be a light in the darkness for all the nations, to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

The Gospel of John tells us that it is this celebration, this Festival of Lights, that brings Jesus to Jerusalem despite the danger of contact with the religious elite that is conspiring to kill him.  

John 10:22-23  At that time, the Festival of Hanukkah took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.

During this festival, Jesus chooses to teach using the themes of Hanukkah, just as many pastors will preach this season using the themes of Christmas.  Everything in John 8:12 to 10:39 and Luke 10:38-42 happens during the Festival of Hanukkah.  The passage begins:

John 8:12   Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

This is when people are lighting candles in their homes each night.  As they light the candles, they remember how, after the defeat of the enemy in 165 BC, they had the relighting of the Temple menorah, which represented the return of worship and God’s presence. Jesus claims to be the Light of the world that Isaiah predicted, the Messiah that would bring the light of God’s presence to all the world.  He is the light, God’s presence among them.  As they remember back to the evil ruler Antiochus, who tried to convince them that he was God in the flesh, Jesus now tells them that he is the true God incarnate, God in the flesh.  But he has come not to punish them or destroy them; he has come to bring salvation.

Jesus spends chapters 8 and 9 trying to tell them that he is the Messiah, came from his Father’s throne, and was the light that Isaiah prophesied would come into the world. But the religious leaders could not see it, so in John 10:24 they ask,  

“How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

John 9:39-41 Jesus said, “For justice, I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.

He had been telling them plainly,  but they were blind.  And they claimed to be the religious elite, the only ones who understood the scriptures.

My friend Becca lost her vision several years ago.  She lives in total darkness.  Can you imagine that?  ……..There is no light in her day, only darkness,  24/7.

Now, during Hanukkah, Jesus, in this passage in John 9, gives sight to a man who was blind from birth.  Before he heals the man, he says:      

John 9:5  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 

I don’t think we understand the importance of this miracle of healing a man born blind.  It is a clear statement that he is the coming Messiah.  

John 9:34   Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.

People who had once seen and lost their vision had it restored, but never had anyone born blind been healed and given vision.  None of the prophets, no miracle workers, had ever done this.  That was something only the Messiah would be able to do.  That was something only the Messiah would be able to do.  This would prove Jesus was the Messiah.  And he did it right before them, and still, they refused to believe it.   Read John 9.  The Pharisees are really torn up about this.  They questioned the man, who was blind, several times.   They called the man’s parents in to be asked,  “Are you sure this is your son who was blind?” They keep interviewing the man.  They still refuse to believe and throw the man out.

This man who knew nothing but constant darkness meets the Light of the World, and light enters his world for the first time during this festival of Lights.  And Jesus claims to be the Messiah, the light of the world.  But there are many who can’t see.  

What did Jesus tell Nicodemus?

John 3:19  And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 

We today live in a world that seems to get darker and darker.  We see the enemy seem to get bolder and bolder in promoting sin.  What was completely unacceptable in public just years ago is now accepted as normal.  Look at how the world has changed.  What would have been unthinkable to have on public television 20 years ago is now not just visible but actively promoted as good. Society’s values and morals are eroding at a quickening pace. 

And while we know the date that the days here will stop getting shorter and start getting longer (the winter solstice, December 21), we don’t know when our solstice of worldly darkness will come. How much darker will it become?  When will the day come when the darkness of this world stops getting worse?   

You may be at a time in your life when darkness seems to prevail.  Some times are darker than others.  This may have been a difficult year or season for you.   I know it has for my family.  Some of you have walked through some dark valleys this past year.  You have faced the death of a loved one, chronic illness with continual pain or loss of energy.   For some this has been a dark, dark time.    You may want to cry out to God as the Psalmist did…

Psalm 13:1    How long, Yehovah? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
  How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

This is the psalmist being honest with God. We should pray to God with such honesty and emotion. If you are upset, frustrated, or disappointed, pray it. God can handle your honesty. Only after we are honest with God can He help us work through our emotions, as He does with this psalmist.vvHow does the psalm end?

Psalm 13:5    But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to Yehovah,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

God does intervene for the psalmist, and He will for you.  No matter how dark the days are, how bad the prognosis is, or how hopeless the situation is, for those who put their trust in Yehovah, there will come a time when your heart will again rejoice.  There is coming a day when God will bring deliverance again.

Another psalm says it well.  

Psalm 30:5  Weeping my last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.  

In the third week of Advent, we light the candle of Joy and think of the joy that comes to the world with the coming of Jesus.  No matter how dark the night, the morning will come.  When Jesus died on the cross, the world went dark. But joy came on that Sunday morning as he was resurrected.  No matter how dark the world seems, God has a plan to bring joy.  No matter how dark the valley that you are walking through, God has a plan to restore your joy.  I do not know how long the darkness will last. But I know God has promised you joy in the morning. 

Remember what Jesus said before he healed the blind man.  

John 9:5  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 

“As long as I am in the world…” What about when Jesus departed the world? What did he tell his disciples?

Mathew. 5:14   “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.  Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.   In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

We carry the light in this dark world.  It is up to us to be the light.  How are we that light?  People see our good works and give glory to the Father.   The way we live each day should be a light in the darkness for those around us.  In a dark world, our actions should be a light.  In a time when politeness has vanished, we should shine with courtesy.  In a time when people all think only of themselves, our generosity should be a beacon pointing to our generous father.  In a day when many people are depressed, our joy, despite our circumstances, should reveal our faith.  In a world where many are forgotten, the way we reach out to the poor, neglected, or lonely should be a light.   Paul said to the Ephesians:

Ephesians 5:8   For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.   Walk as children of light.   

It is our job to shine light into this dark world. And I think back to that time long ago when Yehovah took his friend, Abraham, out to see the stars.  

Genesis 15:5-6  And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.”  Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”   And he believed Yehovah, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

On a clear night without light pollution, astronomers tell us we can see about 6000 stars.  If you count two stars a second, that’s 5 hours of counting.  God’s point is that there are more stars than you can count.  And that is just the stars that Abraham could see.   Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has over 100 billion stars, and there are over 100 billion galaxies.  Abraham could see that if he had access to our best equipment now.  So that is over 3.1 billion, billion years to count what we can see now (that’s 3 with 18 zeros after it).

God told Abraham — so shall your offspring be.     And Paul told us, 

Galatians 3:29    If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

That is why the songwriter Rich Mullins said,  “When I think of Abraham, how one star he saw had been lit for me…”1  This comes to my mind every time I look up at the stars.  God said, “Abraham, I know you are old and think you are past the age to have children, but look at what I will do… I will give you a family of faith you can’t number.”  And one of those stars had my name on it.  And one was lit for you.

So it is our responsibility to shine like stars.

Philippians 2:14   Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.”   Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.

In a dark world, we are the light of Christ.  Why do we light advent candles?   We light the candles for the same reason the Menorah was lit in the temple.  We light our candles to remind us that God’s presence, his light, has come to conquer the darkness.  Next week, many of us will meet on the eve of Christmas and light the Christ candle.  The following evening, our Jewish friends will light the central candle on their Hanukkah menorahs.  They call it the Shamash – the servant candle that lights all the others.  Isaiah’s suffering servant has come into the world, the light of the world.  He has given us light in the darkness; now, we carry that light to the world.

This week, I ask you to shine like stars.  Why does Paul say don’t grumble or argue?  You grumble when you focus on the darkness, and then you become part of the darkness.  Like the psalmist, rejoice that God ended darkness through Jesus, the light of the world.  Show your joy!  Smile! Sing to the Lord!  Do good deeds!  Be a light shining in this dark world so that our Father in heaven may be glorified and people will want to come to the light.

  1. Flavius, Josephus.  Antiquities of the Jews (XII.5.4).
  2. Mullins, Rich.  From “Sometimes by Step” in the album, “The World as Best as I Remember it” 1991.

December 1, 27 A.D.  –  The Hope of Christmas- Justice —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #61

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

Week 42 ——— The Hope of Christmas- Justice
Matthew 12:14-41

Jesus’ disciples will return from their two-month mission next week, and we will resume our chronological study. As this is the first week of Advent, and the theme is the hope of the coming Messiah and prophecies, let me begin with an Isaiah prophecy.

Isaiah 42:1-4
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,  my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.

This is one of Isaiah’s servant poems, predicting the coming Messiah, who will come as a suffering servant. Matthew quotes it in chapter 12 of his gospel. Today, we will examine the setting of this passage in Matthew and then see Jesus give his own prophecy.

In Matthew, this is quoted after Jesus heals the man with the withered hand.  Remember, the Pharisees were upset because Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath.  This poor man had been reduced to being a beggar since he could not work, and Jesus healed him, giving him his life back.  Rather than see the joy of the miracle, the Pharisees could only see fault in Jesus for breaking their laws they added to God’s law.  

Matthew 12:14  But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

They did not care at all for the man who was healed.  These intensely religious men. who saw themselves as keepers of the faith determined that it was their responsibility to murder this Jesus because he was threatening their religious system.  Rather than confront them now, Jesus withdraws and tells people not to talk about him publicly.  It was not the time for this confrontation.  That time will come soon.  Then Matthew quotes Isaiah.

Matthew 12:18-21  
“Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased.
I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.
He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory; and in his name the Gentiles will hope.”

Look at the first two sentences.  What does this remind you of?   When was Jesus chosen and the words spoken, “my beloved whom my soul is well pleased”?  When did the Spirit descend on Jesus like a dove?  At his baptism.  And what will this servant of the Most High do?    Proclaim Justice to the Gentiles.  Though Jesus made it clear his mission was first to the Jews, he spent a lot of time doing something that no other Rabbi in his day would ever in a million years consider doing – ministering to the Gentiles.  Jesus went to the Decapolis; he went to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and he went to the Samaritans, whom the Jews considered part of the Gentiles.

This was God’s plan from the beginning.  The Jews were to be the nation of priests who would take the message of the love and mercy of God to all the world.  But they kept God all to themselves, and instead of promoting the kingdom of God, they promoted their own little kingdom with their own rules.   Gentiles didn’t fit in their little kingdom.   The Pharisees had told the people Gentiles were unclean, so they should not eat or talk with them.   So God sent Jesus to the world to be the Jew who would finally fulfill the plan to spread the kingdom of God to everyone.  And Jesus came and spent most of his time with the people that the religious leaders of the day considered unclean – both Jew and Gentile.  And how did Isaiah prophesy that the Messiah would do this?   He will proclaim Justice.

Isaiah uses the Hebrew word ‘mishpat’ for ‘justice.’  This Hebrew word can be translated as either ‘justice’ or ‘judgment.’  So it could be said in Isaiah, “He will bring forth judgment to the nations.”    Which is it?  It makes a big difference.  For thousands of years, the Rabbis taught it should be read:  “He will bring forth judgment to the nations.”  Oh, is it about time those other nations got judged.  They need to be judged.  They are not righteous like us.   

But does that reading fit the context of Isaiah’s prophecy?  Look at the last line of Isaiah’s poem quoted in Matthew:  “And in his name, the Gentiles will hope.”   This ‘justice’ that the servant will bring to the nations (the Gentiles) does not inspire fear but hope!  You don’t hope for judgment; you hope for justice.  This is not about God punishing the nations but about God bringing his system of justice to the nation.  This is not bad news but good news for the nations.

We see ‘justice’ as part of a legal system, but in the Bible, justice (mishpat) is the way of righteousness.  It is the way we live, the way we treat each other, the way we respect and love each other.  It is the way God designed us to live.  It is a life of righteousness.  It is the abundant life Jesus came to give us.  This scripture is about God restoring the world to how he created it.  No one is mean or offensive; all are treated fairly, and there is no discrimination.  Justice is the way of love.  This is heaven on earth.  This is God’s justice, not a legal system, but life in the garden.  And this is the story of the Bible, God restoring the world to living as he intended.   When everyone follows the rules of the king, then life in the Kingdom is good.  

This is what Jesus came to bring.   This is our hope.  Hope that this broken world can be made whole again.  Heaven on earth.

However, the Pharisees had already classified Jesus as a threat to their power structure and way of life.   They have already decided to kill him.   If he is the Messiah, then he is the Messiah they don’t want.  You see, they are doing just fine right now.  They have great jobs, are the most respected people in the country, and are wealthy.  They don’t need some Messiah coming in and messing up their world.  But that is precisely what the Messiah came to do.  It’s good news to the poor, to the oppressed, to the captives, and the blind.  But not good news to the Pharisees.  What do you do when Jesus is not the Messiah you expected him to be?    You can reject him, or you can change your expectations.

Back to Matthew 12.  Jesus healed the man with the withered hand, and then Matthew quotes this passage in Isaiah.  Then Jesus heals a man who was blind and mute, and the Pharisees claim he is casting out demons using the power of demons.  Everyone knows the Pharisees are out to get him and are speaking evil against him.  But the Pharisees come to Jesus and say  

“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” 

Oh, you say you’re the Messiah.  We are not so sure.  We need you to prove it.  All this healing and preaching you have done — that is not enough.  Just do one more thing.  Give us a sign.

And Jesus answers: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign.”  If calling them evil adulterers seems harsh, then perhaps you have forgotten that these are the guys everyone knows want to kill him.

Let’s put ourselves in Jesus’ sandals.  How many of you woke up in the morning knowing someone was trying to kill you?  Well, imagine there are some powerful, influential people in your state, and they are hatching plans to kill you, and everyone knows it, and then you run into them at church, and they smile and say, “Hi, how are you today?”

These are people that Jesus knows want him dead, and they have the power to do it, and they come to him in public and say, ‘Hey teacher….we’ve heard you preach, can you show us a sign?’  So Jesus responds: An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign,

You could read this verse out of context, and you might get the idea that it is evil to ask for a sign (context matters).  It is the people who are plotting to kill an innocent man who happens to be the Messiah who are evil.

Why does Jesus call them Adulterers?  The Old Testament pictures those who worship idols as committing adultery.  Those who forsook their promise to Yehovah and went off to worship idols were called adulterers.  Jesus says they are worshipping idols.   Now, this is important.  Have you ever read this passage and asked yourself, “What idol are the Pharisees worshipping?”  They aren’t bowing down to some golden calf or wooden statue they made with their own hands.  But Jesus says the Pharisees are rejecting Him and following an idol of their own making.  

Jesus wasn’t behaving the way they thought the Messiah should act.  Over hundreds of years, they had developed this concept of the Messiah that would come and pat them on the back for being so good.   ”Hey, Pharisees, good job!  Wow, I am impressed.  Now excuse me while I go bring some much-deserved judgment on all these other people.”  This was the way they read the Scriptures.  This was their tradition. Over hundreds of years, their tradition had remade God in their own image, and that was their idol.  

The Pharisees thought they were worshipping the god of the Bible, but they had remade the god of the Bible into the god they wanted Him to be.  The god they worshipped cared more about laws than people.  The god they worshipped wanted good rituals more than goodness of heart.  The god they worshipped cared more about tithing spices than caring for the poor.  They used the right scripture but worshipped the wrong god!  If you worship the wrong god, a god that doesn’t exist — that is idolatry.  How could this have happened?  

Jesus tells them in Matthew 22:29.  They didn’t understand the scriptures.  They read them from the lens of their tradition.  They made them say what they wanted them to say and ignored the parts that didn’t fit their agenda.  

Do you see how dangerous this is?   They think they are worshipping the true God; they read the Bible.  But Jesus says they are idolaters.  The Pharisees’ image of the Messiah was built on hundreds of years of tradition by the best religious minds. And they studied the sayings of their fathers of religion, discussed them, and rigorously practiced them. But they were so wrong.  As church leaders, they led all the people down the wrong road.  Jesus tells them they are in error because they haven’t studied the scriptures.   And these are the experts on the scripture!   If our picture of God is built on tradition and the hundreds of years of theological teaching and not on our personal study of the scriptures, then we may be the blind guides, those who are evil and adulterous.  This is why Paul said reading the Bible for yourself is so important.  

Does this same thing happen today?  Is there anyone out there who follows a tradition of religion just because it works well for them or because it fits their agenda?  Of course, there is.  There are thousands of people promoting religious systems that they think are worshipping Yehovah, the God of the Bible, but they are just worshipping an idol of their own making.  And like the Pharisees, they are leading people astray.  People flock to a religious system that works well for them, makes economic sense for them, and gives them their god’s approval.  “Hey, you are doing great; now let me go judge those other guys.”

How can this happen?  How can it continue to happen?  Because people don’t really understand the scriptures.  They just listen to someone tickle their ears with a message that fits what they want to hear, and they never go home and study the Scriptures for themselves.  

What if Jesus is not who you think he is?

You are trying to follow Jesus, but the way that Jesus works in your life is not how you want him to.  You don’t like how Jesus is behaving in your life.  You have a friend with cancer, and you pray earnestly for God to heal them – and he doesn’t.  And you don’t get that job, or your health fails you.  And we think God’s #1 priority is to heal all our family and friends and work things out. (Doesn’t he work it all out for our good?  Isn’t that what it says in Romans 8.28?) 

If you worship a God who is more interested in your bank account balance than the beggar on the street, then you aren’t worshiping the God of the Bible.  If you worship a god who is more interested in your happiness than your holiness, then you are worshipping an idol.  If you worship a god who will make sure you never suffer or have hard times, then you aren’t worshipping the god Jesus worshipped in the garden before he was tortured and crucified.

Back to our passage:
Matthew 12:39-40  But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.   For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Jesus says, “You want a sign… You really don’t want one.  And you don’t get a sign, no, wait a minute, I’ll give you a sign all right.  Here is your sign:  As Jonah was 3 days and 3 nights in a great fish, so will the Son of Man be 3 days and 3 nights in the ground.”

So Jesus gives them a sign, a prophecy. He uses the familiar story of the prophet Jonah, which is a very interesting choice. Let’s review that story and how it relates to what is happening in Matthew.

God calls Jonah to go preach destruction (judgment) on Nineveh (Assyria).  So what does Jonah do?  He goes in the other direction.  He hops on a boat headed as far away from Nineveh as possible.  Why was Jonah so determined not to go preach to the Assyrians?  We skip ahead to the end of the story and read:

Jonah 4:2   And he prayed to Yehovah and said, “Yehovah, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”

He didn’t want the Assyrians to have God’s grace. Jonah, God’s representative on earth, the religious leader and prophet, refused to think the Assyrians deserved God’s mercy and grace.  He wanted to see them suffer.  He wanted God to rain down judgment on them.

Look back at the context in Matthew.  The Pharisees got upset at Jesus because he was healing people—the man with the withered hand, the man who was blind and couldn’t speak.  The bottom line is they are like Jonah.  They were more interested in maintaining their power structure and didn’t think the man with the withered hand nor the blind, mute man deserved God’s grace and mercy.  They were lowlifes, the dregs of society.  They didn’t even keep the purity laws; they didn’t contribute money to their coffers.  They were not worthy of God’s grace; they deserved his judgment (not his justice.)

So, back to the story of Jonah.  You know it.  The boat Jonah boards ends up in a vicious storm, and Jonah is finally thrown overboard.   So Jonah is going to die in the ocean.  He sinks down, but God provides a great fish.  Jonah prays in the belly of the fish, quoting a psalm of grace   — see the irony.  This Jonah, who didn’t want grace and forgiveness for the people of Nineveh, is all about grace for himself.

God again says to go to Nineveh, and Jonah decides it is probably best.  He then preaches what we would call not the best sermon.  Imagine if your preacher stood up on Sunday morning, walked up to the pulpit, and said,  “40 days and this city will be destroyed.”  Then he just walked off.  No explanation.  No Invitation Hymn.  There is no call for repentance. ‘Wow, Jonah, how much time did you spend in sermon preparation last week?   This message is five whole words in Hebrew.  But then, to everyone’s amazement, Nineveh repents.  Proof that you don’t need a good preacher, even the jerk of a prophet, Jonah can be a conduit for God’s Word.  God works despite us sometimes.

Ninevah repents, and how does Jonah respond?  He is angry. “I knew it.”  God didn’t behave the way Jonah wanted him to act. He wanted God to come and give them judgment, but God gave them grace (justice).  If you want to read about two characters who are miserable failures at following God, read about Jonah and Sampson and then try to wrap your head around the idea that despite their horrible disobedience and selfishness, God keeps forgiving them and giving them another chance. And God uses these losers in a mighty way.   

But Jesus isn’t comparing himself to Jonah; he is just keying in on one section: the odd ‘death’ Jonah experiences and God’s grace in delivering him from death. This is the Bible school story of the fish—three days and three nights immortalized in crayon pictures forever.

It is easy to see that Jesus is not comparing himself to Jonah.  Who in his day are the religious leaders who can’t find mercy for the people?  Who thinks they are so much better than others and that the others do not deserve God’s grace?  It is the Pharisees.   But the key is the sign.  

They want Jesus to give them a sign.  These people, who everyone knows, want to kill him.  So Jesus gives them a sign, alright.

Matthew 12:40   For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

For people who see what is going on, Jesus says, “Look, let’s not play games. We all know you are plotting to kill me.  So here is your sign, but it is not the one you want.  Congratulations, I’m going to let you kill me.  But you will do the absolute worst job of killing someone in the history of killing people.  You want to do away with me permanently, but you do the most temporary killing ever.  You will only kill me for three days, and then I will be unkilled.   I will be alive again.  I will defeat the death you deal me and, in doing so, defeat death for everyone.  So there.

(3 days and 3 nights… that is pretty specific.  We’ll come back to that in April.)

And then Jesus tells them:

Matthew 12:41  The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.  

I don’t have to condemn you, Pharisees.  Everyone else will condemn you. The people of Nineveh who repented will rise at judgment and condemn you.  They better understood God’s mercy and grace from a selfish jerk of a prophet Jonah’s five-word sermon than you do, and you had the scriptures, the prophets, and God himself walking among you.  You had God among you, but you were so wrapped up in your vision of how you think God should behave that you hated God when he was right in your face, and you killed him.  I came to you, but you wanted a different god.

What will the people of Nineveh say about us?  We have more than the Pharisees had.  We all have multiple personal copies of the scriptures and the Holy Spirit within us.  If we ignore our study of the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit, the people of Nineveh will rise at judgment and condemn us.

Let’s be honest with ourselves.  There has been a time in our lives when Jesus didn’t do what we wanted him to do.  The problem he didn’t fix, the friend or family member he didn’t heal, the trouble that comes.  And it ticks us off when he doesn’t behave like we want him to.  And we want him to do that one thing, just to let my friend live or heal my family member— do this one sign for me, Jesus— but in our frustration over this, we neglect the sign Jesus has already given.  So Jesus says, hey, the sign of Jonah.  Remember, I let these guys torture and kill me- and I did it because I love you.  And I want you to have forgiveness and have a right relationship with God.  And I died, and after 3 days and 3 nights, I came back to life.  And I did that for you.  And yet you want more.  So what we are saying when we want Jesus to do that one other thing, to prove his love for us, is that what he did on the cross just wasn’t enough.  

You may have signed up for a version of Christianity where Jesus solves all your problems, where Jesus fixes your bank account, where you never suffer, and where you are never sick.  That is not the religion of Jesus.  That is a different god of your own making.

That is not the hope that the prophets predicted. 

The hope that we celebrate on this first Sunday of Advent is the hope of justice.  Of a righteous way of living. Of an abundant life ruled by the prince of peace.  A hope for justice for the poor and the forgotten, a hope for mercy and grace for everyone. A hope of life lived as God intended it from the beginning in the Garden.   This is the hope of the world — that Jesus is bringing justice to victory.  This is the hope of Christmas.

November 28, 27 A.D.  –  Good Samaritan, Bad Questions —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #60

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

Week 41 ——— Good Samaritan, Bad Questions
Luke 10:25-37 

Jesus’ disciples will be on their two-month mission for a few more weeks. So, we continue to examine some of his teachings. Today, we discuss his most well-known parable, The Good Samaritan.

We talked about parables back in August when we discussed the parable of the four soils.  To review, remember, that was a parable about parables.  As you read the gospels, one-third of Jesus’s teaching is in parables. “Why parables, Jesus? Why don’t you just say what you mean?”

A parable is an ordinary life story told to make a point or teach a lesson.  One definition says a parable is “an allusive narrative which is told for an ulterior motive.  The well-known situation in the story disarms the listener, who is then hit with the lesson.  Soren Kierkegaard (a Danish theologian) said it this way: Parables are a form of indirect communication intended to deceive the hearer into the truth.

It is a way to tell a truth to someone who otherwise might not listen.  We see this in the parable of Nathan in 2 Samuel 12.  David has committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband.  But David is king and accountable to no one but God.  So Nathan tells David the story of a poor man with only one lamb.  Then, a wealthy man with many herds of sheep takes the poor man’s lamb from him, leaving him with nothing.  The king then becomes angry and says this wealthy man deserves to die. Nathan responds, “You are that man!”  Nathan told a story with an ulterior motive, and it worked.

So when you read a parable, you have to be on the lookout for what truth Jesus’ is trying to convey that someone may not want to hear.  And usually, there is a reason Jesus tells a parable.  There is a background story.   So, let’s start with the background story for the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Luke 10:25-29   And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”   He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”   And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”   And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

It is a lawyer who comes to Jesus.  This is an expert not in civil law but in Scripture, in the Mosiac Law.  They are typically priests who are not currently functioning in the temple.   He asks Jesus a question, 

“Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

How would you answer that question?   Here is the standard answer I get:

  1. Confess that you are a sinner
  2. Repent of your sins.
  3. Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior

Don’t forget that this is not how Jesus answered the question. Jesus frequently answers with a question (actually, two questions). 

What is written in the Law, and how do you follow it?

  1. What is in the law?  (He is asking the expert in the law.)
  2. How do you read it?     How do you understand it?    There is a difference between reading and understanding.  My son, Andrew, has a degree in Math and a PhD in Economics.  Now, I can read papers he has written, but understanding them is another thing.  But there is an even more significant difference here.  In Hebrew, understanding is not just a mental process.  To understand is to do.

And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Now, we have heard this answer before.  In the week Jesus will be crucified, scribes come and ask Jesus what the greatest commandment is, and Jesus gives this answer.   He is quoting Deuteronomy 6:4  and Leviticus 19:18.

And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

And Jesus says, “Great answer!”  So it seems the lawyer and Jesus agree, but then we get to verse 29.

Luke 10:29   But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 

Why does he need to justify himself?  Didn’t they just agree with each other?   As we read, we see they are not on the same page.  The lawyer has the correct answer, but he has the wrong question.  Why are they not in agreement?  The answer is in the tense of the Greek verb, to do.  The Lawyer asks, ‘What shall I do?’  That verb tense suggests a single limited action — What one thing can I do once and be done?

Amy Jill Levine, in her book Short Stories by Jesus: “The lawyer is thinking of something to check off his to-do list: recite a prayer, offer a sacrifice, drop off a box of macaroni for a food drive, put a 20 in the collection plate. If he is efficient, he can inherit eternal life before lunch.”1

The lawyer asks, “What one thing can I do right now to ensure I have eternal life?

The lawyer’s question seeks a “one and done” answer.  It is a bad question, so Jesus changed it for him.  Jesus says, “Do this, and you will live.”  That “do” Jesus uses is a different tense in Greek.  Whereas the Lawyer’s question is what is the one thing I can do, Jesus’s comment is, ‘Keep doing these things.’  Continually do these things.  Jesus’ imperative “do” focuses not on a single action but on a continuing relationship.

Whereas the lawyer asked about “eternal life,” Jesus reframes what is at stake by urging, “Do this and live.”   The lawyer wants to make sure he will be there in Jesus’ kingdom to come.  But Jesus says if you keep doing those two commandments, you will experience the fullness of life starting right now.  Abundant life with Jesus is forever, but it is not just the length of life but the quality of life you live.  

So, there is a big difference in what the lawyer and Jesus are saying.

We make the same mistake.  Again, if someone goes to any seminary campus and stops a preacher student on the sidewalk and asks,  What is the one thing I can do today to have eternal life?  He gets the answer: Confess your sins and Repent.  Accept Jesus as your lord and savior.  Get baptized.  Check the box. You are done.  You have punched your ticket.  You have your “Get out of Hell Free” card.  

But Jesus tells him there is no one-and-done answer.  The key to living an abundant life is living the way God wants us to live.  It is continually following God step by step. It is about a relationship.

The lawyer realizes that Jesus changed his question on two crucial points.   So, his follow-up question is an attempt to clarify.  “Who is my neighbor?”  But if you ask, “Who is my neighbor?” you ask, “Who is not my neighbor?”  If you ask, “Who am I supposed to love?” you are also asking, “Who do I not have to love? Who is undeserving of my love?  Who can I mark off my list?”

So when Jesus hears that the expert doesn’t understand, he says, “I’m going to need to tell a story.”

Luke 10:30-37  Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.   Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.   So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.   But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.   He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’   Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”  He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

First, see how Jesus described the man who falls victim to the robbers.  He is “A man” (generic, no identifier).  There were two ways to identify someone in Jesus’ day:  by how they dressed and by their speech (their language  or accent.)  In the story, Jesus removes both.  So this could be anybody in need.  It could be a Jew, it could be a Roman. There is no way to tell.  There is no way to see if this man fits into a category of people that you would consider helping.  And this is very important.

Then, a priest and a Levite pass by. Priests and Levites were both groups of people descended from Levi. Priests made the sacrifices in the temple at the altar and the incense altar. Levites also worked in the temple, but they were guards, craftsmen, singers, or performed some other supporting function.

They pass by on “the other side.”  Now, Jesus’ audience knew something you don’t know.  They knew the path from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is a journey you don’t take alone, as thieves and bandits hide on the trail.   You have heard it called the ‘Jericho Road,’ but it is nothing like a road.  I have seen it.  It is a path, and there is no “other side.”  They probably snickered when Jesus said, “the other side.”  

Why were the priest and the Levite not willing to help? I have heard people talk about their worries about uncleanness, but this was not a problem with uncleanness. A statute in the Mishna says, “A priest may contract uncleanness because of a neglected corpse.”

The Talmud states,  “As long as there are no other people to look after the burial of a corpse, the duty is incumbent on the first Jew that passes by, without exception, to perform the burial” (Nazir 43b; Jerusalem Talmud, Nazir 56a). Judaism still takes this mandate seriously. That is why Jews stood vigil at Ground Zero until every corpse was recovered. Burying the dead is one of the most important commandments in Judaism, for it is one of the few acts that cannot be repaid by the person who benefits from it.

Similarly, there is the law of Pikuach Nefesh —  saving a life.  You can break almost any command in the Scripture to save a life (laws of ritual purity, Sabbath rest rules, or food rules.)  Saving a life overrules most other commandments.  They can’t tell if he is dead or alive, but either way, God’s law commands them to help him.  But they pass by, struggling to climb over rocks off the trail to avoid helping him.

Let me reference another story from Amy Jill Levine’s book Short Stories by Jesus. This book is an excellent resource for understanding Jesus’ parables.

The best explanation she said she had heard for the refusal of the priest and the Levite to come to the aid of the man in the ditch comes from Martin Luther King Jr.  The last sermon he preached on the Sunday before he was assassinated was about the Good Samaritan.  “I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible these men were afraid. . . . And so the first question that the priest [and] the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ . . . But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” In that sermon, King announced that he was going to Memphis to support the sanitation workers who were being treated as less than human by the city of Memphis.  King said, “I can not ask, “What will happen to me if I go to Memphis?’  I have to ask, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” King then went to Memphis, where on Wednesday, he gave his “I Have a Dream speech,” and the following day, he was assassinated. There are bandits on the road.  But our decisions in this life must not be made out of fear, but out of love.2

Jesus continues, “But a Samaritan….”  Suddenly, his listeners are shocked!  It was like saying a dirty word.

We discussed the Samaritans when we talked about Jesus meeting the woman at the well in Samaria.  Simply put, the Samaritans were the people from the Northern Kingdom of Israel who were rejected by the Jews in Judea.  They were not allowed to participate in rebuilding the temple, so they built their own temple on Mt Gerazim.  There were conflicts between the Samaritans and the Jews to the point that in Jesus’ day, they were bitter enemies.  Jesus chooses an enemy to be the hero of his story.  And this makes his point. Neighbor means all, even enemies.

Luke 10:35-37  Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”  He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say the word ‘Samaritan’ (a curse word).  He did not have a category for a ‘good’ Samaritan. It would be like a modern-day Israelite saying ‘the good Hamas member’ or you saying ‘the good Taliban’ or ‘the good Nazi.’ Jesus’ point is, ‘If we can’t love those we disagree with, then we don’t have a clue what it means to follow me.’

This brings us back to another of Jesus’ messages from the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:43-45   “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’   But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 

We have discussed several of these “you have heard it said” statements in the past two weeks. Jesus takes an Old Testament teaching and explains God’s wisdom and heart behind it. While it is natural to hate your enemy, Jesus asks us to be like our heavenly Father, who loves all, regardless of their attitude toward him or his laws.

And Jesus concludes with the lawyer, “You go, and do likewise.”  This is the same tense of “do” Jesus used before.  You go and continually do what this Samaritan did.  Day after day, keep doing this, following the path God laid before you.  Again, it is not a one-and-done but a lifetime of being the kind of person God wants us to be.

Jesus didn’t make up this story out of thin air.  Last week, we discussed how Jesus’ story about making an offering when you are fighting with a brother came from Genesis 4, the Bible story of Cain and Abel.  This parable of the Good Samaritan is also straight out of the Old Testament.  Jesus knew the Scriptures.  He knew they contained the wisdom of the Father.  So, he retells these stories in parable form.  Let’s look at the Old Testament real-life story of loving your enemy that inspired the parable of the good Samaritan.

First, the background:
Solomon died in 931 BC, and the kingdom was divided into the northern section, called “Israel,” and the southern section, called “Judah.” Jerusalem is the capital of the south, and Samaria is the capital of the north. At times, they were allies; at times, they were enemies. In 2 Chronicles 28, they were enemies.

2 Chronicles 28:1-4   Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of Yehovah, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yehovah drove out before the people of Israel.  And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

In other words, this king of Judah, Ahaz, was evil.

2 Chronicles 28:5-7   Therefore Yehovah his God gave him into the hand of the king of Syria, who defeated him and took captive a great number of his people and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force.  For Pekah the son of Remaliah [king of Syria] killed 120,000 from Judah in one day, all of them men of valor, because they had forsaken Yehovah, the God of their fathers.  

Because the king of Judah was so wicked, God let the Syrian army attack and took many of them as slaves back to Syria. After Syria wipes out Judah, while they are defenseless, Pekah, the king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, decides it is a good time to attack Judah also.  They killed over 120 thousand in one day and took 200 thousand captive to become slaves.

2 Chronicles 28:8-11   The men of Israel took captive 200,000 of their relatives, women, sons, and daughters. They also took much spoil from them and brought the spoil to Samaria.   But a prophet of Yehovah was there, whose name was Oded, and he went out to meet the army that came to Samaria and said to them, “Behold, because Yehovah, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven.   And now you intend to subjugate the people of Judah and Jerusalem, male and female, as your slaves. Have you not sins of your own against Yehovah your God?   Now hear me, and send back the captives from your relatives whom you have taken, for the fierce wrath of Yehovah is upon you.”

The prophet Oded calls out the men of the Northern kingdom for their cruelty against their brothers from the South.   The prophet said God is about to pour his wrath on you for the way you treated your neighbors to the South.  So look at how they reacted:

2 Chronicles 28:15 And the men who have been mentioned by name rose and took the captives, and with the spoil they clothed all who were naked among them. They clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them, and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys, they brought them to their kinsfolk at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria.

Look at the story’s details and notice they are the exact details of Jesus’s story. The Samaritan clothed the man who was naked. The Samaritan anointed him with oil and wine as a healing balm. The good Samaritan puts the man on his own donkey. He took him to Jericho. The people in 2 Chronicles were from Samaria, what will be the territory of the Samaritans.  This has all happened before.  Jesus takes an event from the Old Testament Scripture, an unusual story where the people at war choose to love their enemies.  Jesus sees the wisdom of God in this story and then uses it to teach a lesson from the law to the expert in the law. 

So the Lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” But Jesus turned his question around again.  His parable doesn’t answer the question of what people fall into the neighbor category because Jesus says there is no category.  All people are neighbors.  All people are worthy of your love and help.  Even enemies should be shown love and care.

.The critical question in this passage is not, “Who is my neighbor?” but “Am I a neighbor?”   Am I treating everyone I pass by as worthy of love and care?  That person on the side of the road who needs help, do I look at them and consider whether they are worthy of you stopping to help them?  Do I categorize people as worthy or unworthy of my help?  It is not about who they are but about who I am.  Am I like my heavenly father who shows love to all?  

  1. Levine, Amy-Jill. Short Stories by Jesus (p. 84). HarperOne. Kindle Edition. 
  2. Ibid, (p. 102). 

27 A.D.  –  Don’t Be Offendable —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #59

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

Week 40 ———  Don’t Be Offendable
Matthew 5:21-26

Last week, we talked about murder and anger and how, in God’s view, they are very much alike because both come from the same place in the heart. We looked at these verses:   

Matthew 5:21-26  “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’  But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

My men’s Bible study group discussed this, and some very interesting questions were raised. My friend Ken suggested a book that opened my eyes to this subject: Unoffendable by Brant Hansen. So, I want to dive deeper into this discussion.

If you read the footnote in the previous entry (TAY #58), you would know that a few versions of the Bible include the phrase “everyone who is angry with his brother without cause…”.  “Without cause”  was added over 200 years after the gospel was originally written.  The earliest manuscripts do not have that phrase, so most modern versions of Matthew do not contain it (other than the King James or New King James Version.)  It is easy to understand why someone hand-copying the Bible decided to add this phrase. 

‘Of course, some anger is good,’ someone thought.  So, someone around 200 AD decided to help us by telling us what he thought Jesus meant to say.  So he added “without cause,” perhaps in the margin of the text.  Then, the next guy copying the Bible assumes the previous copyist accidentally left it out, so he writes it in the verse just like it was always there.   (You can prove several instances of similar additions to the text from just such a process.)

After all, it is okay to be angry when you have a good cause, right?  And righteous anger is not bad, in fact, it is essential that we get angry at some things, isn’t it?  Christians are supposed to have righteous indignation, aren’t they?  I have heard these statements all my life.  But are they true?

What do you think? We could vote on it.  Who says righteous anger is a good thing?  All for, all opposed.   Wait a minute!  That is serpent thinking.  We don’t get to vote on right and wrong.  It is not our job to discern good and evil. That kind of thinking will get you kicked out of the garden.  God is the only judge.  Only God can decide.

In our scripture passage, Jesus took murder and said what’s behind the murder — it is anger. What is behind the anger?    Why do we get angry?  Because we were offended.  Someone did something or said something that offended us.  Aren’t Christians supposed to be offended by some things?

So look through the Bible — Do you see ‘righteous indignation’ or ‘righteous anger’?  Is there a command to be offended?

Well, you say, we have an excellent example of righteous anger by Jesus when he threw the money changers out of the temple.  Was Jesus right to be angry then?   If so, then righteous anger is a good thing.  Or is it?  Yes, Jesus was right to be angry, but there is a big difference.  Jesus has the right to judge because he is God.  Let me let you in on a little secret.  You are not God, and you have no right to judge anyone.  You aren’t supposed to eat the fruit of that tree.

Looking closely in the Bible, you will find many examples of righteous anger.   But all of them are God getting angry.  Because God is the only one who can express righteous anger because he is the only righteous judge.   That’s why we like righteous anger so much — we enjoy being right and pretending we are righteous, taking the moral high ground.

There are plenty of examples of Bible characters acting out of anger in the Bible, but they are examples of what not to do.  Samson often acted out of anger, but Samson’s whole story is an example of how not to act and how God can use people who are moral failures.1   David got furious with Nabal because he didn’t pay David what was due.  David was ready to send 400 men with swords to kill him.  But that story is not in the Bible as an example of how to act.  God doesn’t want you to imitate David in his anger, nor does he want you to imitate David when he committed adultery or when he killed Uriah.  Righteous anger is only for God.   The Bible is clear that for everyone who is not God, all anger is sin.  That is why you will find anger in the various lists of sins in the Bible.

Let’s look at Paul’s what not to do list:

Colossians 3:5,8,9    Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you:  sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry….now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.  Do not lie to one another…

In case you have wondered, there is also no such thing as ‘righteous slander,’ ‘righteous sexual immorality,’ or ‘righteous idolatry.’  But we have created this category of ‘righteous indignation’ or ‘righteous anger’ because we want it to exist despite it not being in the Bible.

So, how do you respond when someone offends you, and you feel the urge to become angry?

First, how does the world tell you to respond?  How does the world tell you to handle your anger?  “Count to 10”, that’s what I was told.  I’m not sure it handled my anger, but it’s more like I delayed it.  Perhaps for some people, taking the time to count to ten helps deal with their anger, but for others, it is like the last 10 seconds on the countdown timer on a bomb.  It is undoubtedly going to explode when the ten count is up.  Other suggestions are to “meditate,” “center yourself,” go scream somewhere, or hit a pillow or punching bag.  Of course, in our capitalistic country, someone has figured out how to profit from anger reactions.  I was not aware of “Rage Rooms.”  These businesses are springing up everywhere.  The closest one to me is about an hour away.  (I could count to ten many times driving that far.)   You pay to enter a room with multiple glass objects or electronics and a baseball bat to break them.  The one near me is called “Smash and Dash.”  They supply windshields to break, and you can do “Group Rages.”  They also offer ax throwing (hopefully not in the group rage.)  They do birthday parties and there is currently a post-election special going on if you are angry about that.  

So what does the Bible say to do when someone offends you?  How do you respond to evil acts against you?  Right after Paul’s “what-not-to-do-list” in Colossians, he has a to-do list.

Colossians 3:12-17   Put on then, as god’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 

Paul says, “Put on then…”  The Greek uses the word for getting dressed. Paul tells us to wear these clothes.  This is the way you get dressed in the morning if you are God’s people: with compassionate hearts (looking for the needs of others above your own), kindness (goodness, treating others well), humility (modesty, not thinking you are the most important), meekness  (willingness to submit to God’s rule over your life), and patience (the ability to endure difficult people and situations without giving into anger or giving up hope.  If you are starting the day like this, and these are the characteristics you wear, then it will be hard for someone to offend you.

Back to Paul’s discussion:

Colossians 3:12-17   Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,   bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another…

Okay, here we go. Paul says if you have an honest complaint against someone, they did you wrong, insulted you, cheated you, cut you off in traffic, or lied to you. These are all things that could result in you taking offense and becoming angry.

So what do you do, Paul?

“…bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Paul’s answer to the question of how to respond when someone does something that might offend you is to forgive them—forgiving each other.  You have probably recently prayed that prayer Jesus taught us to pray.  “Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  We pray, “God, please forgive me the same way you see me forgive others.”  Jesus didn’t tell us to pray: “Father, get angry with us as we get angry with those who trespass against us.”  

Here is the concept we see through the Bible that I somehow missed applying to my life because I had heard all my life that anger can be good.  When you are wronged, when people are rude or careless –  you have two choices.  You can be offended, or you can forgive.    But Paul doesn’t hedge at all.  You must forgive.  Not if they apologize, or if they make it right, or if you feel like it.  You must.  When I mess up, I know how I want God to react to me.  I want forgiveness from God.  But I have not always held myself to that same standard.  I thought it was ok to be offended.  It is not.  

Now, the whole passage, because it is so good:

Colossians 3:12-17   Put on then, as god’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,   bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.   And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.   And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.   Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.   And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This is abundant life.  This is the way of love.  This is how God wants us to live.  And look, if you choose to respond with forgiveness rather than be offended, you get peace.  Being offended is not peaceful.  Being offended is stressful.  That is not how God wants us to live.  

We live in a fallen world.  People are going to do you wrong.  Jesus said don’t murder them; don’t even get angry with them.  And Paul is saying, if the Holy Spirit abides in you, don’t even be offended by them.  You choose to be offended.  You don’t have to be offended.  Put on those clothes of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Then, when someone acts against you, don’t choose to be offended; don’t choose to be angry; choose to forgive them.

Hansen points out in Unoffendable we live in a world today where being offended has almost become a national pastime.  We have invented new and easy ways to be constantly offended.  We have 24-hour news.  They will give you a constant running flow of things to offend you.   How about social media?  It won’t take more than a few seconds of scrolling on Facebook to be offended by something.  Christians should be the least offendable people in the world.  Instead, I am afraid we have become known as the easiest people to find offense.   

But instead of going through the day finding things to be offended about, try deciding at the beginning of the day not to be offendable.  Decide today you are going to put on those Colossians 3 clothes.  Then, no matter what someone does, I will react with forgiveness.  But what if someone really deserves it?  What if someone mistreats us or wants to harm us?  Isn’t anger right then?  Amazingly, Jesus says no!  Those are the very people and situations that Jesus specifically tells us to forgive.  Forgiving means surrendering your claim to be offended, angry, or resentful.

Forgiveness is hard,  but the Bible says to forgive.  So the question people asked in Jesus day was, “Well, how many times do I have to forgive someone?    The rabbis debated this and mostly agreed on the following (found in the Mishna).

“If a man commits an offense once they forgive him, a second time they forgive him, a third time they forgive him, the fourth time they do not forgive him.”2 

“He who begs forgiveness from his neighbor must not do so more than three times.”3

In Jesus’ day, this was the accepted norm: You should forgive someone three times. The disciples grew up learning this rule. But Peter heard Jesus talk over and over about forgiveness that seemed to be above the three-strike rule he learned as a child. So Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive someone. And Peter (likely trying to impress Jesus) suggested way more than three… seven times! 

Matthew 18:21-22   Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?  As many as seven times?”  Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Jesus answers 77.  And this is not a math exercise.  75…76… almost there…  (That would be like me counting to 10 – not dealing with it but postponing it.)   Jesus didn’t choose that number randomly.  He wants you to recall something in Scripture.  “Seventy-seven” is only in the Scripture one other time.  And Jesus wants you to remember the other story….

In Genesis, five generations down from Cain (the murderer) is a man named Lamech.

Genesis 4:23-24   Lamech said to his wives: 
“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;  you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:  I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.  If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold,  then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.”

Lamech is the biblical poster child for revenge and retaliation.   He certainly did not abide by the “eye for eye” idea.  You hit me, I’ll kill you.   I revenge to the extreme.  Jesus’ point is to forgive to the extreme, like Lamech revenged to the extreme.  Jesus said our forgiveness should be way our of proportion to someone’s actions against us.  Jesus’ followers should be known for their extravagant forgiveness.

Follow Jesus’ example.  Everyone wants to follow Jesus’ example of throwing out the moneychangers in the temple.  Sorry, you can’t follow that one.  You aren’t God.  You don’t have the role of judge.  That is way above all of our pay grades.

Follow Jesus’ response to the offensive people of the day.  Jesus surrounded himself with people that the world considered offensive, but Jesus was not offended by anyone.  The Pharisees were all offended by the woman caught in the act of adultery; Jesus was not offended.  He said, “I don’t condemn you.” The man possessed by a demon starts shouting out in synagogue.  Jesus is not offended by him, and he heals him of his possession.

The most offensive people in the Jewish world in Jesus’ day were Roman soldiers.  Jesus shows him compassion and heals his son.  The lepers that everyone found ultimately offensive – Jesus touched and healed them. 

One day, a pharisee named Simon asked Jesus to dinner.  A woman comes in, a known prostitute, and anoints Jesus’ feet.  The Pharisees were shocked and offended.  

Luke 7:39  Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.”

Jesus knew, but he did not take offense. Because Simon jumped straight to offense rather than forgiveness, Jesus needed to teach him something—something Simon may not want to hear. And we know that when Jesus wants to teach something to someone who doesn’t want to hear it, he tells a parable.

Luke 7:41-47  “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. Now, which of them will love him more?”   Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.”   Then, turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.   You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.   Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

Let me follow Jesus’ example and end in a story that Hansen tells in Unoffendable. 

Tony Campolo writes about her in his book The Kingdom of God Is a Party. He was in a diner in Honolulu, very late one night—three thirty in the morning, actually—when he couldn’t sleep from jet lag. It was just him, his donut and coffee, and the guy behind the counter, when suddenly, a group of prostitutes came in. They sat down on either side of Tony, and they were very crude and very loud. He was about to leave. But then he overheard one of them saying tomorrow was her birthday, her thirty-ninth. Another woman made fun of her for bringing it up. “What do you want, Agnes, a party? You want a cake? You want us to sing ‘Happy Birthday’?” Agnes said no, she didn’t. She’d never had a party, or a birthday cake, so why start now? When I heard that, I made a decision. I sat and waited until the women had left. Then I called over the fat guy behind the counter, and I asked him, “Do they come in here every night?” “Yeah!” he answered. “The one right next to me, does she come here every night?” “Yeah!” he said. “That’s Agnes. Yeah, she comes in here every night. Why d’ya wanta know?” “Because I heard her say that tomorrow is her birthday,” I told him. “What do you say you and I do something about that? What do you think about us throwing a birthday party for her—right here—tomorrow night?”1 The guy behind the counter—his name was Harry—loved the idea, and so did his wife, who did the cooking in back. In fact, he wanted to make the birthday cake.

Tony told him he’d be there earlier the next morning, in time to decorate. And he decorated, complete with crepe paper streamers and a sign that read, “Happy Birthday, Agnes!” Apparently, word of the party got out, because the place was filled with prostitutes before Agnes’s arrival. When she came in at three thirty with a friend, the whole place erupted, “Happy birthday!” She was stunned. Mouth agape. “Flabbergasted,” Tony writes. Her friend had to steady her. And when they began to sing, she began to cry. Harry lit the candles, and as she blew out the cake, she was in tears. She didn’t want to cut it. Instead, she asked if she could keep it a little while. She wondered if that would be okay. Harry said she could. Then she said, “I want to take the cake home, okay? I’ll be right back, honest!” She left. Everyone was stunned silent. Tony said he didn’t know what else to do, so he broke the silence with, “What do you say we pray?” Looking back on it now, it seems more than strange for a sociologist to be leading a prayer meeting with a bunch of prostitutes in a diner in Honolulu at 3:30 in the morning. But then it just felt like the right thing to do. I prayed for Agnes. I prayed for her salvation. I prayed that her life would be changed and that God would be good to her. When I finished, Harry leaned over the counter and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he said, “Hey! You never told me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?” In one of those moments when just the right words came, I answered, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.” Harry waited a moment and then almost sneered as he answered, “No you don’t. There’s no church like that. If there was, I’d join it. I’d join a church like that!” You know what? I have a new rule: I won’t join a church that doesn’t do that. Because that’s the Jesus I recognize, the One who mends the brokenhearted and is never, ever scandalized by sinners  

  1.   A great book on how Sampson is a Bible example of how not to act is Brad Grey’s Make Your Mark.
  2. Second-Century Rabbi Jose ben Jehuda.
  3. Third-Century Rabbi Jose ben Hanina.

27 A.D.  –  Don’t Be Angry —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #58

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

Week 37 ———  Don’t Be Angry
Matthew 5:21-26

Jesus sent out 70 disciples on a two-month mission. He is teaching and healing, but because all the disciples are away, we don’t have any scripture that tells us exactly what he is doing. So, we are taking this opportunity to review some of his previous teaching.

Last week, we talked about the woman caught in adultery, and I introduced the idea of how Jesus reads the Old Testament, looking for the wisdom behind the law.  God has an ideal, but that was back in the garden where everything was as God created it – good.  And God will bring his world back to that state where everything is good one day.  But for now, we live in a world where God’s will is not done as it is in heaven, so there is much evil in this world.  God chose this man, Abraham, to be the father of a people who would do God’s will and be a kingdom of priests to take the message of God’s will to all the world.    To do this, He gave them instructions to live by – The Jews call them Torah, a Hebrew word that means ‘teaching’ or ‘instruction,’ but our Bibles usually translate it as ‘law.’  Because God is good and wants us to be good, these instructions to us reveal God’s character.

We saw last week Jesus said that some of the laws were really not God’s ideal, not exactly what God wanted, but were concessions due to our rebellion.  We looked at a story in Matthew 19, where the Pharisees were confused because the Scripture said in Genesis that God never intended for divorce to exist, and later, God gave instructions for divorce.  It seemed the Bible was contradicting itself. 

They asked Jesus why the Old Testament allowed people to divorce if God never wanted that to happen.  Jesus answered, ‘Because of your hardness of heart.  That’s not the way it was in the beginning.’  In the beginning, God’s plan was for everyone to get along and treat each other appropriately.  So, in this world God built where there was no sin, marriages would never end in divorce because no one would ever treat their spouse poorly, and no one would ever be unfaithful to their partner.  There would be no need for divorce. But instead of living in the sinless world God built, we live in a fallen world where sometimes people would need to get a divorce because their partner was so deep in sin that they were not safe in the relationship.  So God made allowances for that fact and allowed divorce because sometimes there are no options.  Now, we have friends where one spouse was unfaithful, and the other could have sought a divorce, but they both decided to seek reconciliation.  And that is a beautiful thing. That is God’s heart.  However, both partners have to be willing to work through it.  And in this fallen world, that doesn’t happen often.

Some people say divorce is never the right thing to do.  No matter what.  Even if the wife is being abused.  Even if one of them has completely abandoned their vows.  They point to a verse and say, “See right here, the Bible says so.”  Many people misuse the Bible.  You have to read the Bible as a unified book. It is a story of God and people.  You can’t pick out one passage and use it however you want.  

Matthew 5:17-19   “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.   For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 

Jesus made it very clear that he was not doing away with the law.  The instructions aren’t going anywhere.  You might want to take a break, step outside for a second, and ensure the earth and sky are still here.  If they are, the Torah is still in place.  These instructions are still in place until God accomplishes everything in His mission to restore the world when Jesus returns.  

Jesus said he was here to “fulfill” the Torah and the Prophets.  Some may tell you that ‘fulfill’ means bring to an end, but that contradicts what Jesus just said.  I think Jesus said he would explain the instructions fully so that we would not view the laws as a checklist of things we must do but as a revelation of God’s character that we should imitate.

Matthew 5:20   “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Wait!  Weren’t the Pharisees righteous? Didn’t they keep the law meticulously?  There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Biblical concept of righteousness.   I want you to think for a moment and come up with a definition of righteousness.  Go ahead, I’ll wait…..

Okay, perhaps your definition is like this dictionary definition:  “The quality of being morally right or justifiable.”  That may be Webster’s definition, but it is not the Biblical definition (though it is part of it). Biblically, righteousness means living in the right relationship with God, other people, and all creation. We must understand righteousness as a relational concept, not a legal one. It is about relationships, not about being right.

*Of course, part of being in a good relationship with God is following God’s rules.  It is difficult for children to have a good relationship with their parents if they never obey them.  But the goal is the relationship, not being right.  Let me illustrate that with an example.  My wife went to a conference once where the lecturer said after his first year of marriage,  he looked back and realized he had won every argument.  But in doing so, he almost lost his marriage.  His constant need to be right created such tension that it jeopardized the relationship.

It was the Pharisees who placed such emphasis on keeping every little detail of the law. Their goal was to keep the law, and they were so focused on the law that they forgot about the relationship.  Jesus says to them:

Matthew 23:23   “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.  These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.

“Justice, mercy faithfulness” — does that remind you of that verse from Micah we looked at last week?   Righteousness is not about being right but about being in a relationship.  With this in mind, let’s look at how Jesus looks for the wisdom behind one of the ten commandments: Do not murder.

Matthew 5:21-24   “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ’You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’   But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.   So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

This is the first of six examples of God’s instructions that Jesus gave, explaining the wisdom behind the law. Six times in Matthew 5, he took a very familiar Old Testament command and said, “You have heard it said….” Then he teaches them God’s wisdom behind those commands, saying, “But I say unto you.”  Again, Jesus is not changing the law or doing away with it; he is bringing it to its fullest expression of what the law means.

Jesus says he is looking for the wisdom of God that was the reason for the law.  He wants to fulfill them – express them fully, to explain the heart of God behind the law.  So, he takes some examples of God’s instructions and demonstrates the wisdom of God behind the law.  Six times in Matthew 5, he takes a very familiar Old Testament command and says, You have heard it said….” then he teaches them God’s wisdom behind those commands. “But I say unto you.”  Again, Jesus is not changing the law or doing away with the law; he is bringing it to its fullest expression of what the law means.

So, don’t murder.  That shouldn’t be too hard to follow.  What is the wisdom behind not murdering?  What gets someone to the point that they would consider taking someone’s life?   We only destroy what we do not value.  If something is worthless, we toss it in the trash.  You don’t throw things that you value in the garbage can.  To come to the point of wanting to kill someone, you must think they have no value.  Murder is the ultimate expression of saying someone has no value.  God values all of his creation. 

Matthew 10:29-31   Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.   But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.  Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. 

If we can only grasp this concept.  God loves us. The God who created the universe knows us and values us more than you value your children.  God values all of us.  God values the person who drives slow in the left lane, the one who cuts you off on the road, the one who is rude to you in the store, the person who messes up your order, the people who vote for the other person, the people fighting in wars – the ones on both sides.  God values us all. 

God wants us to value everyone also.  Now, we don’t have to love everyone equally.  God loves everyone, but there is a special love, a covenantal love, that God loves those who have joined with him in a commitment or covenant.  The love between a man and his wife differs from how he loves others.  But God values all life. And he wants us to value all life.

Jesus looks at the commandment to not murder not as a civil law but as a revelation of the character of God.  Skip Moen said it this way:

“We don’t kill someone else because God is the author of life.  God holds life sacred and is the only judge of human behavior. Murder is an act of treason against God. Murder says, “I am god over this person’s life.” 1

Murder says, “I am the judge who decides who can live or die.” 

It all goes back to the garden.  God said eat of all the trees but one. don’t eat of the tree of “the knowledge of good and evil.” (I like to call it “the tree of who gets to decide what is good and evil.”)   So enjoy God’s good world, but the authority of deciding for yourself what is good and evil instead of depending on God to the be judge, don’t take that, it will result in death.

Genesis 3:4  But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 

They wanted to be their own boss and judge for themselves what was right and wrong.  They wanted to take God’s position as judge.  This is the sin of Genesis 3.

So we get ‘do not murder,’ but then Jesus says anger is the same thing as murder.  How is anger the same as murder?  What is behind the anger?  My anger says, “My way is more important than yours.” My anger says, “I deserve better than you have treated me.” My anger says, “You and I are not the same. I am valued more than you.  I have the right to judge you.  I am god over you.”  (We are still eating the fruit of that tree.)  Anger comes from the same place murder comes from.2 

You might say, “Well, anger is not bad because the Bible tells us God got angry.”  Yes. He did.  And it is alright for God to get angry.  Because God is God. He is not doing wrong by acting as the judge because he is the judge.  Is it that bad?  Look at what Jesus said: the punishment for murder was: “You will be liable to judgment.”  And the sentence for anger:  “liable to judgment.” This is because God looks at the heart, and both crimes come from the same place in the heart.  Now, how about insulting someone?  Your version may say “Raca.”  That is an Aramaic word that means “an empty person.”  A more modern equivalent would be to say someone is  “good for nothing”  (empty of worth, no value).  Then Jesus brings up saying, “You fool.”  That is the Greek word “moros” from which we get our English word ‘moron’  (someone of very low intelligence).  All of these have in common the devaluation of another.  It is the same judging.  Now, of course, you are going to get angry at times because we live in a world full of sin.  But you get angry, and then you get over it.  Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath… Don’t give place to the devil.

Jesus continued in Matthew 5:23-24:

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

This is an ancient story that Jesus has taken from Scripture. Can anyone think of a story in the Bible about brothers who were feuding and an offering being made? Jesus has Genesis in mind because this story is told in Genesis 4.

Genesis 4:3  In the course of time, Cain brought to Yehovah an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And Yehovah had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. 

Why wasn’t Cain’s offering accepted?  I’ve heard people say it was because he brought part of his harvest and not animals, but there are many grain offerings in the Bible, so that is not it.  What does God say next?

Genesis 4:6-7  Yehovah said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?   If you do well, (the right thing) will you not be accepted?   And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.  Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”

(By the way, the wording for sin’s relationship with Cain, “Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it,” is the same as God’s punishment of Adam and Eve after the forbidden fruit episode in Genesis 3.  “But your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you.”Don’t let anyone tell you that this verse is how marriages work.  This is about a fallen world.  God’s ideal is a chapter back.)

Gen. 4:8   Cain spoke to Abel his brother.  And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 

These weren’t their first words. Anger has been brewing in Cain for a while.  It would be hard to imagine that Cain and Abel had a perfect relationship before this incident.  Does a man kill his brother over the first difficulty between them?  Quite clearly, God expects us to initiate reconciliation with others.  Then God will look favorably upon our offerings.  Why was Cain’s offering not accepted?  He was not righteous; he was not in good relations with his brother.

So, don’t bother with your offering if you have done anything against someone and have not tried to make peace with them.  God won’t accept it.  God loves peacemakers.  There are stories after stories of this in the Old Testament.  Read the first chapter of Isaiah for one.

We are responsible for seeking reconciliation, but you are not responsible for ensuring it. If you make a sincere attempt and they do not reconcile, you are off the hook.

Paul talks about this in Romans.

Romans 12:14-18   Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.  Never be wise in your own sight.   Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.   If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

“As far as it depends on you.”  You are not going to have perfect relations with everyone.  Jesus wronged no one, but many (by their choice) weren’t in good relationship with him.  Yet his mission here was to reconcile people to God who had wronged God.  That is the heart of God.  On the cross, Jesus prays for the people who are currently torturing him.  “Father, forgive them.”  And Jesus forgives us because he wants that relationship with us.  He will forgive us for everything if we confess and repent.  That is who God wants us to be: people who are slow to anger and quick to forgive.  Our ministry is a ministry of reconciliation.

Your goal this week is to consider your relationships. Before you return to church on Sunday, is there anyone you need to approach to reconcile?  

  1.   Moen, Skip. From “The Cult of Self-Esteem” at skipmoen.com.
  2. A few versions (The King James Version and the New King James Version most notably) add a phrase: “ But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment…”  This phrase is not in any of the earliest manuscripts and only appeared sometime after 250 AD.  That is why every modern translation (except the two above) does not include it.

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

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

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