The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog

We follow the New Testament from the preaching of John the Baptist through the 70 weeks from the baptism of Jesus until the baptism of the disciples with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

April 13, 28 A.D.  –  The Triumphal Entry — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #78

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

Week 61 — The Aroma of Christ
John 12:1-8

As we continue to follow Jesus in his 70-week ministry, He has completed his final circuit of teaching in Galilee, and he is headed with the crowd of pilgrims on his way to Jerusalem.  This week, they would be somewhere here about to cross the river Jordan and head west to Jerusalem.   Next week, we will join Jesus as he enters the town of Jericho on his way toward Jerusalem.  But this week, I want to depart from my chronology and jump ahead a couple of weeks to the day before Jesus enters Jerusalem on what we celebrate as Palm Sunday. In 28 AD, almost 2000 years ago, the day of Jesus’ procession into the city of Jerusalem happened on April 24.   As you know, the date for Passover/Easter can vary as much as 35 days, and can fall as late as April 25.   But today, we will discuss what happened 6 days before Passover on the day before that triumphal entry.  But first, think back to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  Remember when Jesus preached in Nazareth and read from the Isaiah scroll?

Luke 4:16-18  And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.  And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.

What Jesus literally read in the scroll of Isaiah, in Hebrew, was, “The spirit of the Lord Yehovah is upon me because Yehovah has ‘mashach’ me.”    Mashach means ‘anointed.’  The same word in another form is ‘Mashiach’ or ‘Messiah,’ which means ‘the anointed one.’  (The Greek translation of ‘Messiah’ is ‘Christos’ which our English Bibles translate as ‘Christ.’)  These titles for Jesus – Messiah, Christ — all mean “the anointed one.” When you say Jesus Christ, you say Jesus, the anointed one.  And Jesus claims Isaiah’s prophecy.  The Spirit of Yehovah is upon Jesus because Yehovah has anointed Jesus.

In the Old Testament, anointing with oil is a ritual used to signify that an individual was consecrated, designated, and empowered by God. Three groups of people are anointed with special oils: prophets, priests, and kings.  

First, Prophets are anointed.  Elijah is here commanded by God to anoint Elisha as a prophet to take his place.

1 Kings 19:16  “… Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place.”

Elijah’s time as a prophet is over, so he is told to anoint Elisha.  You could view this like a runner handing off the baton to the next runner in a relay race.  It is actually more like a pitcher handing the baseball over to his relief pitcher.  He is being removed from the game because he hasn’t done well.  For now, see that Elisha is anointed for the task of a prophet.  With the anointing, God has called Elisha out and empowered him for the task with the Holy Spirit.

Priests are anointed.  Aaron and his sons are to serve as the first priests of Israel.  To set them aside for the task, they are anointed.

Exodus 28:41  “And you shall put them on Aaron your brother, and on his sons with him, and shall anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.”

And Kings are anointed.   Here, Samuel anoints Saul as King:

1 Samuel 9:27-10:1   As they were going down to the outskirts of the city, Samuel said to Saul, “Tell the servant to pass on before us, and when he has passed on, stop here yourself for a while, that I may make known to you the word of God.”   Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him and said, “Has not the Yehovah anointed you to be prince over his people Israel? And you shall reign over the people of the Yehovah, and you will save them from the hand of their surrounding enemies.

After his anointing, Samuel tells Saul that he will meet a group of prophets and then

1 Samuel 10:6  “Then the Spirit of Yehovah will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.

With the anointing of the king, the Spirit of God comes on Saul, and he is “Turned into another man.”  This is the effect when God anoints someone—they become a new man with new goals, a new focus, and new power.  When God anoints you, your life takes on new meaning; the old you dies, and you become the person God created you to be. 

We see the same when David is anointed by Samuel:

1 Samuel 16:13  “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of Yehovah rushed upon David from that day forward.” 

David was anointed and set aside for God’s task for David to be a king.  And he was empowered by the Holy Spirit to do that job.  This process of anointing runs all through the Bible. And when Jesus reads from Isaiah in Nazareth, he says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.”

So let me ask you a question.  When was Jesus anointed?  When did the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus?   Right, at his baptism.  

Matthew 3:16. “And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.”

There, God sets Jesus aside with the specific task he had been created for.  There, his 70-week ministry begins.  Like Elisha, Aaron, and David, whom God created to fulfill the roles of prophet, priest, and king, there is this moment of anointing when God interrupts and changes their path to become the people God created them to be.  A person empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the work God set up for them to do.

Peter makes this clear in his conversation with Cornelius in Acts 10:

Acts 10:37-38  “…you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.”

In Nazareth, Jesus claimed this anointing by God, being chosen, set aside, and empowered by God to do the ultimate task: to bring salvation to mankind.  But there are two other anointings of Jesus.  Jesus was anointed twice with oil.  Both times by a woman.  The first at the house of a pharisee by a woman of ill repute (Luke 7:36-50) and the second at the house of Simon, the former leper by Mary, sister of Lazarus (Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, and John 12:1-8.). It is this episode I want to look at this morning, as it happens the day before the Palm Sunday triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

John 12:1-8   Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.  So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table.  Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.  But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said,  “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”  He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.  Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.  For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

“Six days before Passover.”  I have to say a bit about the timing here, as it can be very confusing.  For many years, the common belief was that Jesus was crucified on a Friday.   This was because the Bible said that (John 19:31) that Jesus was crucified the day before the Sabbath.

John 19:31   “Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.”

Well, scholars then didn’t know much about Judaism, but they knew the Sabbath was Saturday, so that meant Jesus had to be crucified on a Friday, so his body had to be removed from the cross before the Saturday Sabbath started at sundown.

Except…. there are a few problems here.  First, John says it was the “day of preparation.”   That is the day when all the preparations are made for the Passover meal:  preparing all the special food, killing the lamb in the temple, and roasting it.  But wait, haven’t we all been taught that the Last Supper was a Passover meal?  Yet John makes it clear here and in several other places that the Passover meal is not held until after the crucifixion.  (Don’t just believe what tradition teaches you — read the Scriptures.)

Secondly, John specifically said that this Sabbath was a ‘high day,’ a special Sabbath, and not the regular 7th day Sabbath. You only know this if you study Leviticus, and well, we know people don’t read Leviticus.  In fact, during the 8-day Passover celebration, there are typically 3 Sabbaths. Leviticus 23:6-8 tells us that the day after Passover preparation day, the day after the lambs are killed, is always a Sabbath, no matter what day of the week it falls.  

Leviticus 23:5-8  “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is Yehovah’s Passover.  And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to Yehovah; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.  On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.   But you shall present a food offering to Yehovah for seven days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.”

So, day 1 and day 7 are special Sabbaths. It is this Sabbath that comes the day after Jesus is crucified, so that verse in John doesn’t tell us anything about the day of the week of Jesus’ crucifixion.

The Friday crucifixion also does not fulfill the sign on the prophet Jonah that Jesus mentioned more than once (Matthew 12:40 and 16:4, for example).  The only way Jesus could be in the tomb for the three full days and nights is if he was crucified on a Wednesday and resurrected at the close of the weekly Sabbath and the beginning of the first day of the week (which was the day celebrated as the feast of Firstfruits.)  That would give Jesus Wednesday night and Thursday morning, Thursday night and Friday morning, and then Friday night and Saturday morning.  He could be resurrected anytime after sundown Saturday which is the beginning of the first day of the week (our Sunday.)  

Finally, remember that in this first-century culture, people believed the spirit did not depart from the body until after 3 days and nights — it hung around the body, deciding if it was to depart or return to the body.  That is the reason Jesus delayed going to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead until after that time was over, so no one would deny it was a miracle.  Would Jesus’ resurrection be any different?  If he was placed in the tomb on Friday afternoon and raised on Sunday morning, that is less than 48 hours.  It would not qualify as a miracle for anyone in Jesus’ day.  He had to be in the tomb for at least three days and nights to qualify as an undeniable conquest of death. 

So a Friday crucifixion just doesn’t fit with the scriptures.  Nor does the Last Supper being a Passover dinner.  Again, don’t just believe the tradition you’ve heard.  Go home and read the scriptures.  If you find something you don’t understand, then discuss it with others.  Read the book!

All that being said, the bottom line is that the date doesn’t really matter.  Please don’t let this information about timing be your take-home message from this blog.  This is not the important part.   I have no trouble celebrating Good Friday, even though I know the crucifixion had to happen earlier.  (Good Wednesday just doesn’t have the same ring to it.)  What is important is not when it happened but that it happened.   And there is no doubt in the Scriptures that the resurrection happened on the first day of the week, our Sunday.  Everyone agrees on that and that is the important part.

But back to John 12.  There is a big dinner party for Jesus in Bethany six days before Passover (five days before the crucifixion).  It is at the house of a man named Simon, who had been healed of the disease ‘Lepra.’  And, of course, Lazarus and his sisters are invited.  It is only fitting that the used-to-be leper invites the used-to-be dead guy to the party.  They have a lot in common.  Lazarus had to have been a popular person now.  Don’t tell me you don’t think somebody at that dinner party wasn’t saying, Hey Lazarus, what was it like being dead?  

Then Mary comes in with an ointment and begins to anoint Jesus’ feet.  What is Mary doing?  It was an expected act of hospitality to anoint a guest in your home with a small portion of oil on their forehead.  But Mary is not the host, and she is not anointing his head but his feet.  And she is using a very expensive ointment instead of common oil.  We are told in our passage that the amount she used would be worth a year’s salary.

To Mary, Jesus is not just another person at the dinner table.  She has sat under his teaching.  He has been in her home many times.  She believes him to be more than just another itinerant rabbi or prophet.  Just a few weeks ago, she watched as he brought her brother back from the dead.  To Mary, Jesus is so much more.  He is her Messiah, the promised one, the anointed one.  And so she pays a dear price, a year’s wages, to anoint Jesus as a way of proclaiming him as not just the Messiah but her Messiah, her anointed one.

Imagine, just a few weeks ago, Mary and her sister lovingly anointed their brother’s dead body with fragrant oils in preparation for burial.  But now Lazarus lives, and the difference is her Messiah.  Now, in her presence is this promised Messiah who is anointed by God to become King.   She is aware that his time is short.  Jesus has not been secretive about this.  He is on his way to Jerusalem, where the religious authorities are going to kill him.  How can she best show her love and devotion to this Messiah who has raised her brother to life?  She can give him her best in anointing him as her King, as her prophet, as her priest.  And she feels she is not worthy even to anoint his head, so she anoints his feet.  She wipes them with her hair.   She lowers herself as a servant to show honor to her king.

And John, in his Gospel, as an eyewitness of Mary’s actions, is struck with one detail:

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”

The scent fills the room, an important detail we should not miss. Again, this is not just any oil, but the most expensive ointment of nard made from a plant imported to Israel from far away, likely India. It is a powerful fragrance that fills the room.  Only the very wealthy could afford to use any perfume daily.  Perhaps the wealthiest of the religious elite in Jerusalem could use common fragrances on occasion.  But imported ointments like this were reserved for special occasions for kings.  

Throughout the Bible, instead of being crowned during a coronation, Hebrew kings were anointed with sacred oil perfumed with extremely expensive spices used only on kings and in the temple.   The scent of this extravagant perfume would spread far, like a cloud of holiness.  Anyone with that fragrance would be recognized as anointed for a sacred royal purpose.  As Lois Tverberg notes, “In the ancient Middle East, the majesty of a king was expressed not only by what he wore — his jewelry and robes — but by his royal “aroma.”  Even after a king was first anointed, he would perfume his robes with precious oils for special occasions.”1

Look at part of Psalm 45, which is King David’s wedding psalm.

Psalm 45:7-8   You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness beyond your companions;
  your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia.

The aroma of David’s robes makes it clear to all that he has been anointed by God.

During royal processions, the fragrance of expensive oils would inform the crowds that a king was passing by.  You would note the fragrance of a king even before you could see him.  Look at how Solomon’s procession is described in Song of Solomon:

Song of Solomon 3:6-7   “What is that coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the fragrant powders of a merchant? Behold, it is the litter of Solomon! Around it are sixty mighty men, some of the mighty men of Israel…”

Now let’s look at one more procession of Solomon. His coronation entry into Jerusalem.

1 Kings 1:38–40  “So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon ride on King David’s mule and brought him to Gihon. There Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, “Long live King Solomon!”  And all the people went up after him, playing on pipes, and rejoicing with great joy, so that the earth was split by their noise.”

Solomon was anointed with the oil and fragrance of kings and placed on a donkey and rides into Jerusalem with a procession of people shouting praise of the coming king.  Does this remind you of anything?

It is 6 days before Passover.  And it is not the religious authorities that anoint Jesus. No, they are against him, seeking to kill him.  Instead, it is one of his followers, one of the common people who have seen his miracles and accepted him as their Messiah.  It is a simple woman.  She anoints Jesus, and the following day, he rides a donkey like Solomon on the same path into Jerusalem.  And the crowd is not greeting just any prophet or rabbi.  

They are shouting out “Hosanna!  In Hebrew, that is two words: “Hosha na,” which literally means ‘save, please.’  And they shout, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.”  They all know the scripture. They recognize the story of Solomon’s triumphal entry happening again before their eyes, and now they are proclaiming that the promised Son of David, their Messiah, has come.  And he will bring salvation.  And it all began with the anointing by a simple woman who loved him and had faith in him and gave all she had.  And that fragrance of a king remained with Jesus until his death.  Everywhere he went in that final week, his presence would have been preceded by the aroma of a king.  When the soldiers drove the nail into his feet, they would smell the aroma of a king.

The aroma of Christ still persists in our world today.  The fragrance that Mary anointed Jesus with has faded, but it is renewed by every follower today.  Paul recognized this.  Look at the words he used to describe it:

2 Corinthians 2:14-16  “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.  For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?

That Palm Sunday triumphal procession is a public acknowledgment of faith in the Son of David, the promised Messiah, our anointed one who continues to bring salvation.  It is this proclamation that spreads the knowledge of him everywhere.  We are the aroma of Christ when we lift Him up and share the knowledge of his salvation.  How will you share the knowledge of our Messiah today?  How will you be the aroma of Christ today?  Will you spread the fragrance of the knowledge of him and speak of Him to your friends as you gather in your homes, as you work, as you go on your way? Will you demonstrate your faith in Him by acts of kindness and sacrifice as Mary did to Jesus?   In as much as we do these deeds of kindness to the least of these, we do these things like Mary, directly to Jesus.

We are now the anointed.  We have been set apart by God for a task, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to complete that task. And as the prophet Samuel said, when you are anointed by the Holy Spirit you become a new man.  Just as God anointed Jesus at his baptism with the Holy Spirit, God anoints us with that same spirit.  Paul said it this way:

2 Corinthians 1:21-22  And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

To conclude, go back to what Jesus read from Isaiah in Nazareth:

Luke 4:18-19   The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

The year of the Lord’s favor is what we have been talking about this past year.   That period — just over a year of Jesus’ ministry on earth. That is the year of God’s favor — the time that God gave the greatest gift to us in his Son.  

The Spirit of the Lord is upon us.  We have good news for the poor; we have the message of liberty to those held captive by sin, by regret, by addiction.  We have sight for the blind and freedom for those who are oppressed.  It is our ministry now.  We live in a world full of people who feel they have no purpose, people living lives of regret, people who feel they are only failures, people held captive in a depressing world of emptiness.  Will you accept the anointing of God on your life and become that new person, that Holy Spirit-filled person who will fulfill the task God has prepared for you to do?  Will you be the aroma of Christ to a world in need?

1.  Spangler, Ann; Tverberg, Lois. Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus (2009)  Kindle Edition.

March 20, 27 A.D.  –  Can You Drink the Cup? — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #77

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , ,

Week 57 — Can You Drink the Cup?
Matthew 20:17-23

Jesus is on his final tour of Galilee and will soon be taking the long journey back to Jerusalem with all the other pilgrims headed to the Passover feast.   And our itinerant Rabbi Jesus continues to teach all along the way.

Matthew 20:17-23   And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them,  “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
  Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something.   And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.”   Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”

So James and John come to Jesus with their mother, who has been traveling with Jesus often.  She is specifically mentioned as being with Mary Magdalene and “many women” who were at the crucifixion, “looking on from a distance” (Matthew 27:55-56).   What are they asking Jesus?    They are seeking a prominent place of honor when Jesus comes into his kingdom.  Is that a ridiculous request?  

Jesus had just told the disciples  a few days ago: 

Matthew 19:28.  Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

Jesus had put them in the position of princes in the kingdom, sitting on thrones, so they were asking to be chief of the princes.  But their timing is horrible.   Look back at what Jesus said just before they made their request:

Matthew 20:18-19   And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him…

This is the first time he explicitly mentions being crucified.  It is the Jewish court that will condemn him and hand him over to the Romans to be crucified.  Following what had to be an emotional revelation by Jesus about his impending torture and agonizing death, Matthew says, “Then James and John and his mother ask to have a place of honor in the kingdom.  This is horribly insensitive.  

Jesus: In just a few days, I am going to be tortured and then die the worst death imaginable: crucifixion.”
Then his disciples say,  “OK… well then, can we be in charge when you are gone?

The disciples are having trouble grasping the words they are hearing.  Perhaps it is because, throughout their lives and for hundreds of years in their culture, they have been told that the Messiah will come into power and restore the throne of David to Israel.   They are still hanging on to that traditional understanding of what the Messiah would do.  They can’t really understand Jesus’ words until they let go of the misconceptions they had held for years.  They need to become as little children and drop what they think they already know.  But they hear what they want to hear (‘Oh great! We get to sit on thrones!’) and don’t consider the hard parts.  Some things they will not understand until they face the reality of the crucifixion.

So when they asked to sit on Jesus’ right and left, Jesus answered them,  “You don’t know what you are asking.”  Jesus knew they didn’t understand, but he tried to help them understand. He said, “Are you able to drink the cup that I must drink?”

Now we have to stop. Maybe you, like me, grew up in a church where no one really taught you the actual context of the Old Testament and how the themes of the first two-thirds of the Bible were so important to understanding Jesus’ words. The metaphor of ‘the cup’ is a very important concept in Scripture, and Jesus expects us to have learned this from our study of the Scripture.  

Maybe, like me, you grew up in church and had Sunday School lessons year after year about how strong Sampson was — but no one ever told you that he is in the Bible to be an example of how not to follow God.  Or you heard stories of Noah and all the cute animals on the ark, but no one ever told you how it was a de-creation event and what we should learn from it.   Or you talked about the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus and how the Israelites walked through it but never considered how passing through waters gives you background for your baptism or how the Biblical feasts are fulfilled in Jesus and in our future.  I am afraid we have failed to teach people the importance of studying scripture.   We dilute it into cute stories for children and then never move past that point as adults. 

Jesus assumes we have been obedient and studied the book.  If we haven’t, we can’t possibly understand what he is saying.  If the God of the Universe says, ”Hey David if you want to know more about me, how I suggest you live, and how I can help you, I wrote this book for you.”  And God puts it on my table, and I say, “Well, maybe I’ll find some time to read it later.  I’m in the middle of a Netflix series right now.” or “Sorry, God, I don’t like to read.” God has put a great treasure in our field, and we won’t even go to the trouble to dig it up.

So, there are no cute Bible stories for you today because we need to understand how Jesus used the common Bible metaphor of the cup.  The cup Jesus refers to is the cup of wrath, the cup of judgment.  If we don’t understand that, we can never understand Jesus.

We talked before about how God described himself as being slow to anger.   And we see in the scriptures that God gets most angry with those he has entered into covenant with.  Israel’s covenant with God, and our covenant with God, is described as a marriage, and when we choose to disobey God and follow idols of our own making, it is seen as adultery.  (You get the most angry with the ones you love or are closest to.)  And how is God’s anger revealed in the Old Testament? How does God’s judgment come?  Moses was the first to talk about this in Deuteronomy 31.

Deuteronomy 31:16-18   And Yehovah said to Moses, “Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers. Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land that they are entering, and they will forsake me and break my covenant that I have made with them. Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured. And many evils and troubles will come upon them, so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’  And I will surely hide my face in that day because of all the evil that they have done, because they have turned to other gods.

They broke the covenant by worshipping other gods.  They left God.  So God leaves them, and God hides his face.  Hiding his face means that God removes his protection from them.  Without God’s continual protection, they are forced to reap what they have sown.  An enemy, some foreign nation, comes and conquers them.  That’s how Israel ended up in slavery in Egypt, how they were defeated by armies in the conquest of the promised land, how Assyria defeated the Northern Kingdom, how Babylon defeated the Southern Kingdom, and how Israel was defeated by Rome just 40 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.  God hides his face, and an enemy conquers Israel.

Psalm 75 adds another common Biblical metaphor for God’s anger — the cup of wrath.

Psalms 75:8  For in the hand of Yehovah, there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

Imagine a large cup in God’s hand.   Over the years, it slowly fills up with God’s judgment for the sins of his people, Israel. It may take a century of sins, but when it is full, God will pour it out on Israel, and they will have to drink it all, all of the building judgment against them.  They will stagger and fall as they suffer his judgment, which comes in the form of defeat by foreign nations.

The prophets rise in Israel to reveal the four parts of God’s judgment on Israel for their refusal to repent.  First, they let them know judgment is coming unless they repent – their sins are filling up the cup with judgment and will be poured out on Israel unless they repent.   

Then, they are told God hides his face, and a surrounding nation, an enemy, becomes the instrument of his judgment.  And they often reveal which nation God has chosen to be his instrument of punishment.  Whether Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, or Rome, God hides his face, removes his protection, and the evil conquering nation will come in to devastate Israel. Third, After the cup has been emptied and all judgment poured out, God will restore a remnant of Israel. 

Finally, justice must be dealt to the nations that served as God’s instruments, for they are not without sin.  They arrogantly believed they were so great that they could conquer God’s people, not understanding that they were only serving as a rod in God’s hand and were only victorious because God allowed them to be.  We see this cycle repeat many times in the Scriptures.

We see this in Isaiah.  The first part of Isaiah, chapters 1-39, reveals his prophecy that Israel will suffer God’s judgment through attacks by Assyria and Babylon.  The second part of Isaiah discusses what happens when the cup has been emptied, and the nation that conquered Israel has to receive the cup.  So, in Isaiah 51, we see that the cup has been emptied on Israel.

 Isaiah 51:22-23  Thus says your Lord, Yehovah, your God who pleads the cause of his people: “Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more; and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors, who have said to you, ‘Bow down, that we may pass over’; and you have made your back like the ground and like the street for them to pass over.”

One hundred years later, we see this happen, just as Isaiah had said. The cup was poured out during the time of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Jeremiah 25:15-18   Thus Yehovah, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.  They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them.” So I took the cup from the LORD’S hand, and made all the nations to whom the LORD sent me drink it: Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, its kings and officials, to make them a desolation and a waste, a hissing and a curse…

Then follows a list of nations that will soon drink the cup.  

Jeremiah 25:19-26  Pharaoh king of Egypt….all the kings of the land of Uz and all the kings of the land of the Philistines,…Edom, Moab, and the sons of Ammon; Tyre, Sidon, and the kings of the coastland across the sea;….and all the kingdoms of the world that are on the face of the earth.

And that is what happened in the 6th century BC.   The nation of Babylon conquered every nation described in the Bible.  Then, after the cup has been emptied on all the kingdoms, after God has allowed Babylon to be the rod in his hand, the nation that executes his judgment, then, because Babylon is also a nation of evil, 

Jeremiah 25:26. “…And after them the king of Babylon shall drink.

So we see that Israel fell to Babylon initially around 600 BC, Babylon fell to Persia in 539 BC, and then a remnant of Israel returned home. It happened over and over again. The people abandoned God and worshipped idols. The cup of judgment filled until God turned his face, removing his protection. And the cup was poured out in the form of another nation conquering Israel.

This is why we find Jesus bitterly weeping over the city of Jerusalem.  John the Baptist was a prophet who came with the warning to repent, but they did not.   Jesus came as a prophet with a similar message.  But as with many prophets before them, they were killed by the very people they came to warn.

Matthew 23:37-38     “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  See, your house is left to you desolate.”

God’s protection will be lifted, and the Romans will decide to destroy the city and the Temple completely, killing over 600,000 and enslaving many more.  But something different is happening this time.   Jesus has come. We, like Israel in Jesus’ day, live in a world of sin.  We are all sinners.  So, our sins are slowly filling up a cup of judgment for us.  And that cup must be poured out.  But in the first century, God came to earth, took the cup of judgment in our place, and came with a cup of salvation.

John 3:17-18 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

 God has sent his son into the world to take the judgment for us, to drink the cup of judgment for us.  And I believe if all of Israel had accepted Jesus as God’s son, as their Messiah, then they would not have had the cup of Judgment on them and not been destroyed by Rome.  But they did not believe and thus were condemned.

But Jesus, who knew no sin, took our place on the cross and accepted the cup of judgment for all the world’s sins.  Jesus knows how horrible the cup of suffering will be.  In the garden of Gethsemane, just before he is betrayed and arrested, he prays: 

Matthew 26:39  “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” 

Jesus is in deep distress, knowing he will have the cup of judgment and suffering poured on him.  He is sweating drops of blood.  Twice, he asks God if there is any other way to accomplish the task.  But he is willing to take the cup of suffering if there is no other way.   

Then, when the guards who were meant to arrest him approached him, Simon rose and struck them with his sword.

John 18:10-11  Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)   So Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

The Father has spoken.  Jesus is to drink the cup of judgment in our place.  So when Jesus is tortured and crucified, it is the cup of wrath and judgment being poured out on Jesus.  The cup that had filled over the centuries by the sins of man, by our sins.  The accumulated wrath that should have been poured out on all humanity, for all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.  All of that judgment poured out on Jesus.  

So let me ask you, was God angry at Jesus on the cross?  Did God forsake Jesus?  Did God turn his face from Jesus as he took the cup of wrath for our sins?  The Bible says he did not.  Let me show you. 

Psalm 22 tells the story of the crucifixion, which we can easily see now that we know the details in the gospels.  Jesus calls this Psalm out from the cross.  Remember that there were no chapter numbers until over a thousand years after Jesus.  The way to identify a particular passage in the Bible was by quoting the first line.

Matthew 27:46   My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Psalms 22:1   My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

So, for those at the crucifixion who knew scripture, Jesus turned their minds to Psalm 22 by quoting the first line of the psalm.  Most Jews there had that Psalm memorized, and now they can see the Psalm being acted out before their eyes.  Psalm 22 mentions one who is tortured, scorned, and despised by people.  It says that people mock this man and tell him that if he trusts God, let God deliver him—just as happened to Jesus on the cross. The psalm mentions that people divide his clothes and cast lots for his garment, just as the soldiers did for Jesus’ clothing.

Psalm 22 ends with these words:

Psalm 22:30-31  “…it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.”

In Hebrew, the final word is ‘עָשָֽׂה’ ‘Asah.’  It can be translated as “it is done.” or, as our English New Testaments say, “It is finished.”

John records Jesus’ last words : 

John 19:30   When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Jesus quotes the beginning and end of Psalm 22, and we see in that Psalm a story of the crucifixion—a story of one who was not forsaken but redeemed by the Father. We see it clearly in verse 24:

Psalm 22:24,  “For God has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he had not hidden his face from him but has heard when he cried to him.

God did not turn his face from the afflicted one, Jesus.  Jesus hung on the cross in our place and received the cup of judgment, the cup of suffering for the sins of the world.  But God had no anger for Jesus, only love. 

The man pictured above on the left is Franciszek Gajowniczek -He was a Polish soldier captured by Nazi troops and imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp.  After one prisoner managed to escape, the commander of the prison ordered that in reprisal, ten prisoners would be chosen at random to die.    Gajowniczek was one of the ten randomly chosen to die. But the man pictured on the right above, Raymund Kolbe, a Polish priest who was also a prisoner, volunteered to die in Gajowniczek’s place.   He was killed by lethal injection on August 14, 1941.   Gajowniczek survived the prison and the war and became a lay missionary. Kolbe took another’s punishment voluntarily. This is an act of love.

Jesus was the innocent one who stepped in our place to receive the cup of Judgment.  He was not guilty of the sins that filled the cup.   So, God was not angry with Jesus. In fact, God looked at Jesus on the cross with great love, that Jesus would lay down his life for the world.  

Remember when we talked about Jesus getting angry at Lazarus’ tomb?  What was Jesus angry about?  He was angry about death, and Jesus came to do battle with death and raise Lazarus from the dead.    And at the cross, Yehovah God has come to do battle with death and remove the sting of death and the victory of sin.  So while God, with one hand, pours out the cup of wrath on Jesus and Jesus suffers the judgment that should be on us, God lovingly holds Jesus close with his other hand.  The true message of the cross is not that of an angry God but that of a loving God willing to suffer in our place.

So Jesus asks James and John:

“Are you able to drink the cup that I must drink?”

They said to him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”

Who will be on Jesus’ right and left?

“And with him, they crucified two insurrectionists, one on his right and one on his left.”

With Jesus on his right and left are two guilty of rebellion against Rome.  That is the crime that will eventually cause Rome to destroy Jerusalem.  And they represent us all, for we are all guilty and deserve the cup of suffering and death.   And they represent mankind, for one will accept Jesus as his redeemer.  One will allow Jesus to take the cup of wrath for him.  And the other will not and will have to take the cup of wrath, the punishment for his sins himself.

But those who accept Jesus and his standing in their place do not have to take the cup of judgment.  

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

But as Jesus told James and John, “You will drink my cup.”    You will drink this cup of suffering.  All of the disciples will drink a cup of suffering.  All of them but John will die a martyr’s death.  We learn of James’ death in Acts 12.

Acts 12:1-2   About that time, Herod the King laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.   He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.

His brother, John, history tells us, is thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil by Emperor Domitian.  John miraculously escapes, and the emperor exiles him to the island of Patmos.  And thousands of Christians in the first century drank the cup of suffering, tortured and killed by men.

However, the cup of suffering they drink is unlike the one Jesus consumes.  It is not the cup of God’s judgment against man’s sins, but they will take the cup of man’s wrath against God and his followers.   The suffering they receive will be from man alone.

The Greek word ‘martus,’ from which we get our word ‘martyr,’ is not one who dies but is one who is a witness.  The word is most commonly used in Greek for a witness in a trial.  Hundreds of years later, it came to mean those who died for the faith.  But the root of the word is ‘witness.’

God is not calling many of us now to be martyrs in the modern sense of dying for our faith, but he is calling every one of us to be martyrs in the New Testament sense of being a witness to the faith.  You might indeed be asked to die for your faith one day.  Or, if not you, perhaps your child. And if and when that time comes, I pray we will accept that fate joyfully.  But the bigger question today is not “What will you do if God calls you to die for your faith, but it is “What will you do if God calls you to live every day of your life in faithful service for him, never losing your hope, never lagging in your zeal, being a faithful witness to the end,” would you drink from that cup?

Living for Jesus every day means dying to oneself every day.  Jesus said, 

Luke 9:23, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” 

Jesus felt the words when he said take up your cross daily.  Jesus and his disciples had seen men crucified.  This is not an easy thing to hear.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: 

“Jesus says that every Christian has his cross waiting for him, a cross destined and appointed by God. Each must endure his allotted share of suffering and rejection. But each has a different share: some God deems worthy of the highest form of suffering, and gives them the grace of martyrdom, while others he does not allow to be tempted above that they are able to bear. But it is the one and the same cross in every case. … ”1

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”2

And Jesus asks:  Are you willing to drink from that cup?

Paul, because of his ministry, faced death often.  But he said the only point in his living was

Philippians 3:10   — that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

The King James Version poetically calls this “sharing in the fellowship of his sufferings.”

Are you willing to drink from that cup?

The communion table will soon be before us.  And we do not take it lightly.   Paul says this in 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 11:27   Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.  Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 

When we take the bread and the cup in the Lord’s Supper, we acknowledge the depth of the sacrifice Jesus made for us, standing in our place to take on himself the cup of judgment for our sins.  And we acknowledge our willingness to join in the fellowship of his suffering, to take ourselves the cup of suffering, to come and die.

Jesus asks the question, “Can you drink the cup that I must drink?”  If we take that seriously, it will radically change our lives.  Jesus asks us if we are willing to suffer for him as he suffered for us.  We can not accept the joy of the resurrection in our lives without accepting the sorrow of his suffering and death in our lives also.  Can you say ‘yes’ to Jesus today when he asks if you are willing to take his cup, the cup of suffering, the cup of blessing, the cup of salvation?

  1. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship.
  2. Ibid.

March 20, 27 A.D.  –  The “Other” Good Samaritan — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #76

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

Week 56 — The “Other” Good Samaritan
Luke 17:12-19

After raising Lazarus from the dead, we discussed last week how the Sanhedrin met, and the high priest Caiaphus concluded that Jesus must die.  But Jesus was on God’s schedule, not Caiaphus’.  Caiaphus would rather arrest Jesus and kill him right now.  Passover is coming up, and it is a time when the population of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day would swell from around 125,000 to over 600,000 as pilgrims came from everywhere for this required feast.  From Caiaphus’ perspective, that would be the absolute worst time to do away with Jesus when all of his followers from Galilee are there.  He is trying to avoid the possible riot that would cause Rome to intervene.    He would rather kill Jesus quietly.

But God determined long ago the day and the hour Jesus would die on the cross. The same day and hour as the final Passover lamb was killed.  God wanted to ensure we don’t miss the picture he is painting in history.  Jesus will be killed as a Passover lamb to defeat the enemy of death, just as the blood of the first Passover lamb prevented the death of the firstborn in Egypt.  That is God’s timing.  That is Jesus’ kairos.

Since it is not quite time for Jesus to die,  he has time to make one last tour to teach and preach in Samaria and Galilee.  John 11:54 tells us that after raising Lazarus, due to the increased pressure on Jesus, he withdraws to a small Village, Ephraim, for a few weeks.  Jesus will then head through Samaria and then through Galilee one last time.  There, he will join the people from Galilee on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover.

So, at the time of our scripture this morning, Jesus has spent time in Ephraim and passed through the region of Samaria to arrive at the northernmost part of Samaria.  It is just outside a small village near the border with Galilee where our story this morning takes place.  We have talked previously about the racial conflict between the Samaritans and the Jews.  By Jesus’ day, it was 600 years in the making.  J. Daniel Hays, in his book “From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theory of Race,” said, “The ethnic and cultural boundary between the Jews and the Samaritans was every bit as hostile as the current boundary between Blacks and Whites in the most racist areas of the United States.1. It was as ugly and as frequently violent as the worst times of racial problems in our country.

The first time Jesus passed through Samaria was in May. Most Jews avoided traveling through Samaria altogether, so Jesus shocked his disciples by choosing this route. They would never consider going there. But it is there, on his first journey through Samaria, that Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well. Remember, Jesus asked her for a drink of water.  

John 4:9   The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 

She is shocked that this Jew would even be in Samaria, much less speak to her.  But she is most surprised that he would drink from her vessel.  Can you imagine someone refusing to give water to someone in the heat of the day?  Can you imagine people refusing to drink water from the same vessel as another just because they are a different race?  For those of us in the US who remember the 1960s, it is not hard to imagine.

Jesus traveled through Samaria again in October when they went to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. On this second trip through the region, he sent some disciples ahead of him to arrange a place to stay in a village of Samaria. But the Samaritans there refused to let Jews stay. This, too, is not hard for Americans to imagine.  The disciples were angry at being turned away by the Samaritans, and James and John asked Jesus if they could retaliate:

Luke 9:54  And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”

And how does Jesus react?  

Luke 9:55-56   But he turned and rebuked them.  And they went on to another village.

I wish I knew what Jesus said in his rebuke of them. Did he just give them a look or roll his eyes, or did he launch into a fiery sermon? We don’t know, but we do know that six weeks later, Jesus tells a parable to combat these racist attitudes further.

We all know the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The story is told in answer to the law expert’s two questions, “How can I make sure I get eternal life?” and “Who is my neighbor?”  The story’s surprise is how the Samaritan shows love to people that the current culture says he is supposed to hate. The Samaritan, not the priest or the Levite, is righteous in the story. Jesus tells the law expert if he wants to live life God’s way, he will have to drop any racism and treat those he viewed as enemies as a neighbor to love.  

And now, in Jesus’ last few weeks before his crucifixion, we find him purposely teaching in Samaria for a third time, demonstrating the same lesson.  Jesus is trying to undo 600 years of racial tensions between the Jews and Samaritans.  And later, in the Book of Acts, we discover that the disciples finally understood.   In Acts chapter 8, right after the stoning of Stephen, the persecution of the Christians by Saul and the Jews increased, and Jesus’ followers fled Judea.

Acts 8:4-8   Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.  Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.  And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that he did.  For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed.  So there was much joy in that city.

And here, near the border of Samaria and Galilee, just outside a village, Jesus meets 10 lepers.

Luke 17:12   And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

We have discussed before what your English translations say is leprosy.  Remember that the Greek ‘lepra’ is not the disease we identify as leprosy today.  Lepra was a collection of skin diseases that were not medically harmful but did lead to social isolation due to the Levitical purity laws.  A person with lepra was ritually impure.  They were required to live outside the camp or village.  There was no known medical treatment.

So these 10 stayed together outside this small village on the northern border of Samaria and Galilee.  They call out to Jesus from a distance, asking him to have mercy on them.  Jesus doesn’t tell them they are healed but tells them to go and show themselves to the priests.  If a person with lepra was healed, then under Levitical law, they were not allowed to reenter the city until they completed an 8-day process. First, they had to appear at the gates and ask for a priest to inspect them.  If the priest pronounces them healed, they would make the prescribed sacrifices and, after a 7-day waiting period, Would do a ritual bath, or mikvah, in the chamber of lepers in the temple.  Finally, they would present a sacrifice again at the Nicanor Gate in the Temple.  Again, Jesus does not say they are healed, but by telling them to show themselves to the priests, he is letting them know they will be healed and asking them to act in faith like they are already healed. Though they can see nothing has happened, they do as he said.  

Perhaps they had read their Bible. There was precedent for this.  They knew the story of Naaman.

So go back to 2 Kings chapter 5, 850 years before Jesus, when Israel was at war with Syria.  Namaan was a commander in the army of Syria who had contracted lepra.  There was an Israelite girl who had been captured and was one of his wife’s servants.  She told them of a prophet in Israel, Elisha, who could heal him.  So Naaman loaded up a caravan with 75 pounds of silver, 15 pounds of gold, and a rack of nice clothes.  In today’s valuation, that is $500,000 of precious metals.  This man is willing to travel into enemy territory and pay any amount of money to be cured.  So he makes his way to Samaria, very near where Jesus is in our story today, finds Elisha, and knocks on the door.

2 Kings 5:9-10    So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house.  And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.”

Elisha doesn’t even come to the door himself but sends a messenger to tell Naaman to go wash in the Jordan. How does Naaman react?   Naaman is beside himself.  Doesn’t Elisha know who he is and how wealthy he is?  He is fit to be tied.

2 Kings 5:11-12   But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of Yehovah his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.  Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?  Could I not wash in them and be clean?”  So he turned and went away in a rage.

He was expecting a grand display from the prophet, but all he got was a messenger who told him to jump in the river seven times.  Fortunately, Naaman’s servant persuaded him to try it anyway.  He does, and he is healed.  Then Naaman returns to Elisha’s home to try to persuade him to take some payment, but Elisha refuses.  (Read 2 Kings 5 for the rest of the story.)

This story of Naaman has several similarities to our story of Jesus and the 10 lepers.   They both involve lepers being healed in the same area of Samaria.  In both stories, the healing is not spectacular.  There is no prayer, waving of arms, unique words, or actions.  In both stories, the lepers are not healed instantly, but only when they do as they were told.  So perhaps the ten lepers were aware of this story of Naaman’s healing.

And as they go, they are healed.

Luke 17:15-16   Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.   Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?   Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

One of them, on recognizing that he was healed, like Naaman in 2 Kings, turned around and headed back to the prophet who healed him.  And he, like Naaman, begins praising God.  And then we learn that he, like Naaman, is called a foreigner.   He is a Samaritan.  He, too, is seen by the Jews as the enemy.  

And like Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan, this Samaritan is the one who acted righteously.  He is the other ‘good Samaritan.’  The Greek word Jesus used here for ‘foreigner’ is ‘allogenes.’   ‘Allo’ means ‘different,’ and ‘genes’ means ‘family group.’  That is where our words ‘genes’ and ‘genetics’ come from.  So it means ‘born to another family’ or born with different genetics.  In Jesus’ day, for many, it had the racist cultural connotation of being ‘born to the wrong family.’   That is the attitude that Jesus came to change. 

Though the word’ allogenes’ is not found anywhere else in the Greek New Testament, everyone in Jesus’ day knew it. It was used in the wording of the barrier placed around the Temple that forbade non-Jews from entering the temple area in Jerusalem.

This is a rendering of Herod’s Temple.  A wall about 4.5 feet tall separated the court of the Gentiles from the main temple area. Only Jews were allowed to pass through the openings in that wall.  No Gentiles could enter the actual temple.  There were signs all along the wall, warning that any Gentile passing through would be killed.  Note also the Chamber of Lepers in the temple where the former lepers who passed inspection by the priests would wait 7 days for their mikvah and final offering.

Here is one of the actual warning signs from that dividing wall, which was found intact in 1871 and is now on display in a museum in Istanbul.  Another partial sign is housed in the Israel Museum.

It says, “No foreigner is to enter within this balustrade round the temple and enclosure.  Whoever is caught will be responsible for his ensuing death.”

No foreigner, no allogenes.  This is the word that Jesus uses to describe the Samaritan leper.   Someone born of a different family (than the Jews.)

So you see, this Samaritan could not go with the other 9 to the Temple in Jerusalem to be pronounced clean, for he would not be allowed to enter the area to complete his cleansing.   

This over 4 feet tall dividing wall kept this man and other Samaritans from God.  They could not worship in the place where Yehovah said he would place his name forever because the Priests and Rabbis said they were of the wrong race.  Presumably, he could visit the Samaritan’s temple on Mt Gerazim to see a priest.  But it was not the true temple of God. So he elected instead to show himself to a different priest, Jesus, who would become our high priest.  This is Jesus’ third trip to minister to Samaritans, and he came to break down barriers between people.

And we see this temple barrier wall become a big issue in the Book of Acts.   In Acts chapter 21, some Jews from Asia were in Jerusalem for Pentecost and wanted to attack Paul because he was ministering to ‘foreigners.’ They drag Paul out of the temple and are going to kill him right there, but the Roman troops intervene. They then make some false charges against Paul and manage to have him arrested.  Paul ends up imprisoned for 2 years and then sent to Rome to be judged by Caesar.

 And what was the false charge they brought against Paul that led to all this? They said he brought foreigners past the dividing wall into the temple.  Paul spoke about this wall in his letter to the Ephesians. 

Ephesians 2:11-14   Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh… remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility

Don’t miss that Paul is talking about everyone in this room.  Before Jesus came, we were all allogenes.  We would not have been allowed to enter the Temple.   That was never what God intended.  The Jews were supposed to take God’s message to the nations, but they built a wall to keep everyone else out.  Jesus came to break down these racial barriers, and because of Jesus, anyone can be grafted into God’s family. 

Galatians 3:26-29   For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

We are adopted into His family.  And once again, in our story today, Jesus has shown a Samaritan, one born of the wrong race, is the one who is righteous in Jesus’ eyes.

Luke 17:15-16   Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, npraising God with a loud voice; 16 and ohe fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.   Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?   Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

While the nine were on their way to Jerusalem, rejoicing over the gift, this Samaritan was praising and thanking the giver. He fell down in worship at Jesus’ feet.

There is a difference between being thankful for the gift and giving thanks and praise to the Giver.

How do you feel when you look at the beauty of creation, when you see a fantastic sunset, a waterfall, or majestic mountains like we saw this past fall in Glacier Bay, Alaska?  Many people were on that ship’s deck with us, looking at the beauty of the mountains and glaciers. Many were just admiring the view. But to some, it was much more; they were moved to admire not just the creation but the creator, the one who made the mountains.  Is it the gift of the giver you admire?

How do you enjoy the great things in life?  How do you appreciate a beautiful view, a great meal, or music?  Do you only see the gift and neglect to thank the giver?  How do you appreciate your health? All 10 men were glad they were healed, but only one was moved beyond appreciation of good health to worship the giver of life.   We don’t worship creation; we worship the creator.  We don’t worship the gift; we worship the giver.

Then Jesus says something very interesting to the Samaritan who used to have a skin disease.

Luke 17:19. And he told him, “Get up and go on your way. Your faith has saved you.”

Now, your version may say:

Luke 17:19. And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

Well, which is it?  Was he healed from lepra, or was he also saved from sin?  The word translated as “saved you” or “made you well” is ‘sozo.’

Sozo is found in the New Testament 106 times.  Let’s look at the first two instances:

When the angel tells Joseph what to name Jesus:

Matthew 1:21.  She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

When the disciples are scared they will die in the boat in a storm:

Matthew 8:25.  And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.”

Sozo is the idea of deliverance — from disease, from danger, and from sin.

So, in verse 19, is Jesus talking about physical deliverance from disease or spiritual deliverance from sin and death? Jesus is speaking of spiritual salvation here. As told in verse 14, all 10 have been healed. They all have had physical deliverance from disease. But this Samaritan’s second encounter with Jesus brings more.

This former leper turned back and praised God. He fell on his face before Jesus and thanked him. Like Naaman in the Old Testament, he recognized Yehovah as the source of healing and the one true God.  

Naaman said:
2 Kings 5:11-17  “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel…from now on your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god but Yehovah.`

This Samaritan praised God for his healing.  He acknowledged his unworthiness by falling on his face at Jesus’ feet.  His actions were that of a repentant heart.  He recognizes Jesus as the source of his healing.  He thanks the giver of the gift.  He didn’t need to raise a hand, walk an aisle, or repeat a sinner’s prayer.  He demonstrated all of that in what he said and did.  And he received much more than physical healing; he received a relationship with the Son of God, the Messiah, that day.  But the nine.  They left jumping for joy and grateful for the gift of healing.  But their happiness was only for the gift, not for the giver. 

We can go through life being joyful for the good times, the beauty, the food, health, and the air we breathe.  Or we can see all of these things and return to Jesus, the creator and sustainer of all, bow down and give him thanks.  In Jesus’ day, children were taught to be thankful for everything.  There were over 100 Jewish blessings a day.  “Blessed are you, Yehovah, king of the universe, who gave me breath this morning.  Blessed are you, Lord our God, who gave me eyes to see today.  Blessed is He who has allowed me to live to this day and see His faithfulness displayed in this answered prayer.  Blessed are you, Yehovah, who have given us food to eat.”

One hundred blessings a day is not a lot.  Your heart will beat over 100,000 times a day.  And each one is a gift from God.  The psalmist said, “How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?”(Psalm 116:12).  How can we ever thank God enough for how he sustains us and provides for us every minute of every day?  It is that awareness of how much we have received that changes our focus from what we lack to the great abundance we have. 

The LORD is my shepherd I shall not want.

In Ephesians 5:20, Paul says we should ” give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Television and social media push us into an endless cycle of discontent, constantly reminding us of what we lack. This attitude of gratitude to God for every gift combats the world’s negativity by recognizing the Giver of the gift. It is a demonstration of faith.  

Have you ever considered how thanking God is related to faith?  

Colossians 2:7 “Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”

When we live in the mode of thankfulness, when we feel the 100 blessings a day in our hearts, then we are keeping our eyes on God.  Then we are worshiping our creator, not the creation, the giver, not the gift.  Remember when Peter was walking on the water and took his eyes off Jesus and looked at the storm with the angry waves? He began to sink. Gratitude keeps our eyes focused on the one who calms us in the storm and increases our faith.  

Thanksgiving is the voice of faith.  Notice what Jesus has done here.  Jesus is so good.  He is determined to strike against hundreds of years of racist attitudes by showing that Samaritans are God’s people, too.  He tells us the story of a ‘Good Samaritan,’ and then he has an actual encounter with a ‘Good Samaritan.’   And he uses these two ‘Good Samaritans’ to teach what he said were the two Greatest Commandments.

The story of the Good Samaritan teaches us the second greatest commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  The actions of this former leper, this other Good Samaritan, teach us about the greatest commandment –  Jesus quoted it from 

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Hear, O Israel: Yehovah is our God, Yehovah alone.  You shall love Yehovah, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

Yehovah is God alone; don’t worship anything else. We don’t worship the sun, moon, or stars.  We don’t worship idols.  We don’t worship the beauty of creation, and we don’t worship our health.  We don’t worship the creation; we worship the creator.  Yehovah is God alone.  Like the other Good Samaritan, for every blessing we receive, let us return to Jesus.   Let us bow down before our Creator and thank him constantly for every good gift.

1.  Hays, J. Daniel.  From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theory of Race. p. 63.

March 11, 27 A.D.  –  God’s Timing – Lazarus Part 3 — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #75

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

Week 56 — Jesus, Lazarus, and Kairos
John 11:38-53

From Mary and Martha’s perspective, Jesus arrived four days late.  But as the Karen Peck song from 2000 states:  “Isn’t it great, when he’s four days late, he’s still on time.”1

God is always on time.  Many state that God exists outside of time.  There is much I do not understand about God and time.  For example, ‘Daylight savings time’ — I have no idea how missing an hour of sleep saves daylight.  There are things too difficult for me to grasp.  I do not understand eternity, but I take God at His word when he says he is eternal.  I can not grasp the idea of eternal life, but I know the God who promised it to me, and I am confident in his promises.  I know Peter tells us, 

2 Peter 3:8   But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” 

That concept is hard for me to comprehend.  I read Paul tell Timothy in a letter that 

2 Timothy 1:9-10  [God’s] grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus  

If we want to see how God interacts with time, we must go back to when time began.  On the fourth day of creation, God created the sun, moon, and stars:

Genesis 1:14   And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” 

This verse explains why God created the sun, moon, and stars. They were created for signs, seasons, days and years.   We understand that the sun and moon regulate the days and years.  We have a solar calendar with 24-hour days regulated by the earth’s rotation on its axis and solar years of 365.25 days regulated by the earth’s rotation around the sun; our year is divided into 12 months.   The calendar of the Old Testament also had a solar year and 24-hour days, but it had 12-13 months each year, determined by the moon’s phases.   So, we understand how the heavenly bodies regulate “days and years.”

They are also there for signs.  We see many examples of this in the Bible; for example, the magi from the east say:

 Matthew 2:2   “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”   

The sign was a star God placed in the heavens.

So we understand God placed the heavenly bodies for “signs’ and for “days and years,” but how about “seasons”?  We need to take a closer look at this one because I think that translation is not as descriptive as the Hebrew word used there.  The Hebrew word translated as “seasons” is ‘moedim’ which is the Hebrew word for “appointed times” (the singular is ‘moed’). 

Appointed times are times set aside for communing with God.  The Tabernacle is called the “Tent of Moed” and translated as the “Tent of Meeting.”  It is a holy place in that it is a place for a moed, an appointed time.  It is not a permanent place as the tabernacle moves and is set up at different locations.  What makes it holy is not its location but that it is a place set aside to have a time to commune with God.  

When God called Moses to the burning bush on Mount Sinai, he told him to take off his shoes, for he was on holy ground. That ground, that dirt, was holy at that time because it was a place where time was arranged for Moses to commune with God.

God designated one location as holy forever: the site of the temple in Jerusalem. This is the same place where God supplied a lamb for sacrifice in Isaac’s place and where God said He placed his name forever.  

2 Chronicles 7:14. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.”

But if you study the Bible, you see God is more interested in Holy times than in holy places. 

So let’s look at these moedim, these holy appointed times.  The first he set up at the beginning of the world was the Sabbath.  The seventh day was a day God rested.  It is commanded in the Old Testament as a day of rest from the other 6 days of labor and a time to dwell in God’s presence.  Rabbi Abraham Heschel called the Sabbath “God’s Sanctuary in time.”2

Then, there are the seven appointed times of gathering:  Passover, Firstfruits, Unleavened Bread, The Feast of Weeks, The Day of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles.  They were set apart times to celebrate what God had done for them, like a visual aid to assist in their knowledge of God.   We use the same idea of visual aids with baptism, a visual representation of what God does for us in salvation, and Communion, a special time to celebrate and remember what Jesus did for us on the cross.  When the word ‘moedim’ is used in the Old Testament, it most commonly refers to these seven appointed times.

And then there are also a few other specially appointed times:

Psalm 75:2    At the set time that I appoint; I will judge with equity.

Daniel 11:35  …and some of the wise shall stumble, so that they may be refined, purified, and made white, until the time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time.

Now, let’s look at these Feasts of Moedim in more detail.  These moedim are arranged in 3 seasons: the spring brings the feast of Passover, which includes Passover, Firstfruits, and Unleavened Bread.  These teach us about God’s deliverance.  The next season is a single feast, The Feast of Weeks, which we call Pentecost.  It falls 50 days after Passover and teaches us about God’s power.  The third season in the fall contains The Day of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles.  These teach us how to enter God’s rest.

God is firmly committed to his calendar of appointed times. He arranges the major events of the Bible to happen on the same day so that we can clearly see His plan. God has gone to great trouble to ensure that these events happen on the appointed days.

 For years, the Jews celebrated the deliverance of their people from the tenth plague of death by the blood of the Passover lamb, their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, and their journey to the promised land.  Over a thousand years of Passover feasts pointed to a coming messiah who would be the “lamb of God” slain on that very day of preparation for Passover, whose blood would deliver them from the sentence of death we all walked under.   God arranged events so that Jesus would be crucified on that very same day and at the same time as the Passover lambs were being slain, so he would then be resurrected and presented to the Father on the day the Jews had been celebrating for thousands of years as Firstfruits.  

So this season of feasts teaches us about God’s deliverance, from death and slavery to Egypt – with the Passover lamb, and then 1500 years later deliverance from sin and death through Jesus- our Passover lamb

Fifty days after Passover was the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, celebrating the gift of the harvest of grain and the day when they witnessed God’s awesome power and received the law from God on Mount Sinai.  God came on the mountain in power with a rushing wind and fire. And 50 days after Jesus was crucified, as Jews from around the world had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate this feast, God again showed his incredible power in a rushing wind and in the fire that appeared over not a mountain but over the people.  These people were the first to receive this outpouring from the Holy Spirit, a gift from God to us also so that we may live in His power.  The gift of the Holy Spirit comes on the same day they celebrated the gift of the law on Sinai for years.

God is painting pictures in history for those who have eyes to see. The Bible is one unified story—the story of God’s redemption through Jesus. So, these four feasts that originated in the Old Testament found fulfillment in the days after Jesus came, but the three fall feasts remain.  

God established the fall feasts with the Day of Trumpets to announce a new time coming, which is a new year, and then the Day of Atonement when God judges individuals and the nation and deals with sin, and then the Feast of Tabernacles, a festival of rest.  These fall feasts have yet to be fulfilled, but one day, the last trumpet will sound, announcing a new time coming, The Great Day of the Lord, with God’s ultimate intervention in history — then there will be a great judgment, the final day of atonement, followed by God’s people gathering to rest with Him. 

These are the moedim, the appointed times on God’s calendar, established in the Hebrew Bible, then fulfilled in the New Testament times and our future.

But Moedim is a Hebrew word, and our New Testament comes to us in Greek. So, the most commonly used Greek words for ‘time’ are chronos and kairos. Chronos is what we usually think about when we say ‘time.’  It is A quantitative measure of time, the time on our clocks and calendars. This is the time on your watch and your day planner.  This is where we get our English words chronicle, chronology, and chronic.

Kairos is a qualitative measure of time.  The special time when God has arranged circumstances to be ripe for action.  God’s appointed time, his moed.   It is the time of decision, that anointed time where God brings you to a fork in the road. It is a time of opportunity.

I have had many moments in my life in which I can see that God has moved in the background, arranging people and events to put me in just the right place at just the correct time.  I have told you before of the time God arranged for me to meet a man who had hitchhiked from Louisiana.  He just happened to be the father of a young woman who had delivered a premature baby the previous week that I had cared for.  I had been trying to contact that mother but didn’t have her correct address or number.  So God put this hitchhiker from Louisiana on the curb of a gas station in my path and told me to approach him and give him a ride.  It was a God-arranged meeting time – a kairos moment.

Now, let’s look at how Jesus understands his time.  Jesus was well aware of the short time he had on earth. His ministry was just over a year long, and he died on the cross as a young man around 30 years old. He was aware of how he must accomplish his tasks right on time, and the gospel of John really points this out.

When Jesus is at the wedding in Cana, and his mother asks him to solve the problem of the lack of wine, Jesus asks her, 

John 2:4   What does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.  

When his disciples ask him if he is going to Jerusalem with them for the Feast of Tabernacles, he tells them,

John 7:8   You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.

Jesus does go to the feast, departing later, and while he was in Jerusalem teaching, the authorities wanted to arrest him, but we are told, 

John 7:30   At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.

Jesus is on a timetable.  God chose this time in the timeline of history for Jesus to come, and God has arranged it so that Jesus will die on the cross on a certain day in a certain year.  God established his appointed times when he created the world.  

So when people start trying to accelerate God’s calendar, Jesus has to be careful to stay on God’s schedule.  So you see his hesitation to perform miracles at times.  And you see him sternly warn some people not to tell who healed them.  And then at times, as in John 7:30, when people try to take Jesus too soon, God intervenes and allows Jesus to escape, or Jesus withdraws.  Remember when Jesus fed the 5000, and the crowd was so excited about Jesus that they wanted to make him king right away?  What did Jesus do?  He withdrew and went into hiding a bit.  It was too early then.  There would later be a crowd shouting to make Jesus king, and he will allow it.  But this will be in his final week, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.  But it had to happen on God’s timing.

When Jesus preached in Nazareth, it was a sermon they didn’t want to hear, 

Luke 4:28  When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.

It wasn’t his time to die.  This was not God’s schedule, so God just froze everyone in place while Jesus just walked through the middle of the angry crowd untouched.  

So back in December of AD 27, Jesus was staying with Lazarus and his sisters and going to Jerusalem in the daytime. And the religious authorities wanted to arrest him then after healing the blind man.

John 10:39 Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

Jesus conflict with the religious authorities had reached a boiling point.  This is why Jesus left Jerusalem after Hanukkah and went to teach in Perea.  John tells us:

John 10:40    Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days.

It was not time for him to be arrested and then crucified, this was not God’s timetable.

Only one thing can make Jesus return to Judea before it is time for him to die.  And that is the story we have been discussing for several weeks.  His good friend Lazarus becomes ill and Mary and Martha send a messenger to Jesus.  As we discussed 2 weeks ago, Lazarus died shortly after the messenger was sent.  By the time he travels a day’s journey to find Jesus, Lazarus is already in the grave.  Jesus tarries 2 days and then tells the disciples he is headed back to Judea.  When Jesus tells the disciples he is headed back to Judea, how do the disciples respond?

John 11:8    “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

The disciples think Jesus is walking into a death trap if he returns to Judea.  They don’t yet understand God’s timeline.  But they are willing to follow Jesus there, despite the danger.

John 11:16    Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

But it was not Jesus hour yet.  But it is getting close.

John 11:18-19    Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.

Jesus is about to do an undeniable miracle right in front of the Jewish authorities and a huge crowd of mourners.  This raising of Lazarus will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  And all of this introduction and background brings us to our scripture, the rest of the Lazarus story.

John 11:38-53   Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.
“Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I  knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.  But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs.  If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”
Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all!   You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.  So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

It is now set in motion.  The high priest Caiaphas has concluded Jesus must die.  Caiaphus was appointed High Priest not as God ordained but by the Romans.  The high priesthood had become corrupted and was at this time merely a political appointment and position. It was a position that would give great wealth, so Caiaphas was a man of great wealth, but he was not a righteous man.  Even when Lazarus died and came back to life, he would not be persuaded to believe in Jesus.  Caiaphus had 5 brothers (or brothers-in-law) who would also be high priests, and they were not convinced to follow Jesus even after he returned from the dead.   Wait!  Haven’t we heard this story before?  This is Jesus’ parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Remember this wealthy unrighteous man asked to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his 5 brothers.  He was told they wouldn’t believe him even if Lazarus returned from the dead.   And they did not.  Oh, what you see when you read the Bible and study it closely.

And did you see that in the scripture?  God used Caiaphas to make a prophecy that he really didn’t understand himself.   He decided it was politically expedient to kill Jesus so they would not have an uprising or rebellion that would cause Rome to destroy the Jews and his personal source of wealth and power.   Do you see the irony?  The man who said  “you know nothing at all” did not even understand the words coming out of his own mouth.  God used him despite his corrupt nature.

Since it is not quite time for Jesus to die, Jesus leaves Judea after raising Lazarus .   He has seven weeks left before Passover, his appointed time to die.  So he has time to make one last tour to teach and preach in Samaria and Galilee.

John 11:54 tells us that due to the increased pressure on Jesus, he withdraws to a small Village, Ephraim, for a few weeks.   This town was about 15 miles north-northwest of Jerusalem and just outside Judea in the region of Samaria.  Jesus will then head through Samaria and then through Galilee one last time.   There, he will join the people from Galilee on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover.  And Jesus arrives with this crowd of pilgrims, spending the night at Martha and Mary’s home in Bethany before the next day, when he will ride a donkey into the city on Palm Sunday.  It is just after this Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem that Jesus declares his time, his kairos, has come.  John’s gospel that has told us throughout Jesus’ ministry that “the hour has not yet come” now quotes Jesus saying,

John 12:23   The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
John 12:27-28   “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.  Father, glorify your name!”

This is why Jesus came.  And now the hour has come, Jesus kairos moment.  And a few days later when he sends his disciples into the city to find a place for the last supper, Jesus tells them:

Matthew 26:18  Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My kairos is at hand. 

From Mary and Martha’s standpoint, Jesus was 4 days late.  But he was right on time for that kairos moment, and for every kairos moment of his short life on this world.

God is sovereign in this world.  He is still in charge of time.  And I have seen in my life that God has special moments arranged for me.  You can call them godly coincidences, or divine appointments, but in the words of the gospel writers they are kairos moments.  They are special appointed times that God, the King of the Universe has arranged for me.

I have quoted Ephesians 2:10 at least four times in the past year in sermons.  I want to give a larger context for that verse.

Ephesians 2:4-10  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Paul had no problem with the idea that our salvation comes through grace by faith, not works, and yet we are created to do good works.  In adjoining sentences he says, yes our works do not save us, but we are saved to do works.

Why are we here?

The great philosophies of the world try to answer this question: “Why are we here?”  What is our purpose for existing?  I did not enjoy my philosophy classes in college.  I just didn’t see much point in studying man’s attempt to understand the universe if that attempt didn’t start and end with God and His word.  But I was required to study it, so let me tell you how philosophies answer this question:  The Existentialists say we are born into a world without a pre-determined purpose, and it’s up to us to create our own meaning.  The Stoics say we should focus on living in accordance with nature and finding meaning in virtue, reason, and self-control.  The Nihilists say life is inherently meaningless and that there is no objective purpose or value.  And those are but three of the many empty answers you get from man’s philosophy.

But my God says we are created in Jesus in order to accomplish something – good works.  And not just any works, but works that were set up by God ahead of time.  God created us in a certain way and gave us certain talents and traits.  It was God who arranged for me one day long ago to meet a new friend from a different town.  A lady who would one day in the future need a kidney donation.  And it was God who arranged my body at the moment of my conception to have just the proper genes and antigens to be the 1/1000 donor for this lady.  And it was God who put that desire in my heart.  It was kairos.  A time set by God to do a work that he created me to do.  And I can look at my life and see many other such times.  Each of us is uniquely qualified to do certain good works, works that God set up in advance.  

We should walk through our lives preparing ourselves for those moments, those special God-ordained moments.  That kairos time that God has arranged for you to do a work you were uniquely created to do.  

So, what is your purpose for living today?  I don’t believe many people want to believe, like the Nihilists, that there is no god, that life is meaningless, and there is no purpose in life. But many people live their lives just like that, just like there is no purpose in life, and they are free to do whatever they want because nothing matters.  But God created us for so much more.  He has ordained our steps and designed us for specific tasks at specific moments.  Yes, we have free will.  We can choose to ignore God, to pretend He doesn’t exist, and we can go our own way and never reach the potential that God created especially for us.  The Army used a recruiting slogan, “Be all that you can be.”  Today I am asking you to be all you were created to be.  Don’t miss your kairos.  Today, the lesson you learn, the scripture you study, the task you practice, or the person you meet may be God’s preparation for a future moment of kairos.  Jesus was aware of his purpose long before his time came.  We may not recognize our moment of kairos until we are in the middle of experiencing it or when we look back on it.  

Why don’t you take some time now to talk with your Father.  A moed. An appointed time to meet with God.   God is waiting to hear your “Yes!”  Yes, Father, I want to be the person you created me to be.  I want to follow your plan for my life so that I may be ready to do the work that you created for me to be able to do.  I want you to tell God that you don’t want to miss your kairos moment and that you want to fully reach the potential that God has placed within you.  This is your time; this is your moment to talk with your Father. 

  1. “Four Days Late” by Karen Peck and New River.  From “A Taste of Grace”.  2000.
  2. Heschel, Abraham Joshua.  The Sabbath.  2005.

March 4, 27 A.D.  –  Jesus Wept — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #74

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

Week 55 — Jesus Wept
John 11:17-39

Last week, we saw how a messenger found Jesus in Perea and informed him that his friend Lazarus was ill. We then began our discussion of Lazarus’s resurrection. We discussed how Jesus used this time to teach the second Beatitude: Blessed are they that mourn, for they will be comforted. We also discussed Jesus’ statement that Lazarus’ sickness would not end in death because death is never the end for any of us. Today, we continue the story.

John 11:17-39    On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.  Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.  When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
    “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” 
   Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.  The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.  Do you believe this?”
“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.”   When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.  Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.  When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
“Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
Jesus wept.
Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.
“Take away the stone,” he said.

Jesus wept. 

It is often referred to as the shortest verse in the Bible, and it is in many of our modern translations, but not the shortest in the original Greek, where it has 16 letters.  (The shortest verse in the oldest Greek texts is Luke 20:30, with 12 letters.  Remember that verse divisions were not added to the text until the 1500s.)   Nevertheless, this short verse portrays an important picture.  Please close your eyes briefly and try to picture what it says in this verse.  Whether we realize it or not, we all form these pictures as we read. Jesus wept.   What is Jesus doing in your picture?  Did he break down and collapse to the ground?  Did he weep bitter tears?  Did he wail and moan?  Did he sob?  Did anyone rush to comfort him?  Did he have to wipe the tears from his eyes with the corners of his robe?

Mourning differs from culture to culture.  We have talked before about how the Jewish practice was to hire professional mourners at the time of death.  They would ”lead” the family in their weeping by making sharp, ear-piercing cries of grief and playing the flute.   The prophet Jeremiah spoke of them, saying, 

Jeremiah 9:17-18  “Consider and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for skillful wailing women, that they may come. Let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run with tears, and our eyelids gush with water.” 

We see the professional mourners also in Mark:

Mark 5:38-40   They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.   And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.”   And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was.

You can see the professional mourners at Jairus’s home in The Chosen, Season 3, episode 5.  This was an important part of mourning in Judaism in Jesus’ day.  Professional mourning is still practiced in China and some Asian countries today.

Sometimes, I read a scripture and just want to know more.  Jesus wept.  Did he break down sobbing, did he wail, did he weep bitter tears, or did he just ‘tear up’?  And in this instance, more information is available if you dig deeper.  There are two Greek words for weeping in the New Testament, which differ by large degrees:  klaio, and dakruo. Both of these words, translated as weeping, appeared in our text this morning.

John 11:33-35   When Jesus saw her weeping (klaio), and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping (klaio), he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
“Where have you laid him?” he asked.
 “Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
Jesus wept (dakruo).

The word used to describe Jesus’ emotional display is totally different from the one used to describe Mary and the other Jews who wept with her. “Klaio,” the word used for Mary’s weeping and the weeping of the other Jews, means to lament, wail, or weep with deep emotion.  “Dakruo” – the word used in the verse “Jesus wept” means to ‘shed a tear’ or to ‘tear up’  There is a big difference between these two words that both are translated as weep in our English Bibles.

So, if you pictured Jesus falling to the ground and weeping bitter tears, it is because you don’t speak Greek, and our friendly neighborhood translators didn’t bother to distinguish between these different Greek words.

But just because Jesus doesn’t collapse weeping is not to say that Jesus was not profoundly moved by the moment.  In fact, verse 33, preceding, clearly says Jesus was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.  And then, in the verse following Jesus wept, we see it was clear to everyone there that Jesus was emotionally affected:

John 11:36    Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

It is evident to everyone there that Jesus grieved with everyone else at the tomb.  It was clear to them that he must have loved Lazarus, but he did not weep bitterly like the others.  He is described as “deeply moved,” which likely led us to assume his response in tears was to weep bitterly like the others.  Yet the Greek tells us his response is not extreme.  How do we reconcile our Bible telling us Jesus was deeply moved and yet just shed a tear?  Is it because Jesus is not capable of showing intense emotion?   We will see that he certainly can in just a bit.  But we need to look further at what “deeply moved” means.

Twice in this passage, in verse 33 and verse 38, Jesus is described as “deeply moved.”  “Deeply moved” is translated from one Greek word, ‘embrimaomai,’ which means “intense anger.”  It comes from the Greek word that describes the snorting of war horses before a battle. 

 Since most of us have no experience with angry snorting war horses, here is the picture that comes to my mind.  This is a painting I saw in the Palace of Versailles in France of Napoleon on his war horse.

This is embrimaomai.  A warhorse, snorting mad, going into battle.  This is Jesus, deeply moved; he is angry.

I am somewhat frustrated that I looked through over 60 modern translations and couldn’t find one that translated “deeply moved” with the idea of anger.  Yet many commentaries firmly state that Jesus is angry here. (I finally found it in the German Luther translation (redone in 2017), where it said Jesus “was angry in his spirit and shook.”  It is as if our English translators are afraid to show Jesus as being angry.  Well…they need to get over that — Jesus was angry, shaking mad.  And what is Jesus angry about?  He is warhorse-snorting, fighting angry about death.

It was Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” who first described what she called the five stages of grief over death.  They describe peoples’ common reactions to death in an attempt to normalize those feelings in a time of emotional upheaval.  They were never meant to be sequential, and many people don’t experience all of these feelings.   In her follow-up book in 2004, she tried to clarify that they are not steps that all go through or should go through.  Indeed, they describe many responses we have to death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

But let me tell you, Jesus is at the stage of anger.  Jesus is angry at death because when he created the world, death was not to be a part of it.  Life in the garden was designed to be without death.  Humans were designed to care for the world, walk with God as obedient followers, and have eternal life.  But then Genesis 3 happened.  Man chose to be disobedient, and sin came into the world, and with it, death came into the world.   Jesus looks at sin and death and gets angry because this is not what he intended for his creation. 

Death was not part of God’s plan.  Sin was not part of God’s plan.   But all of us have sinned, and all of us, by sinning, have welcomed death into the world.

 Let me show you how Jesus reacts to death.  Let’s look at Jesus’ stages of grief about death.  

Jesus doesn’t deny death.  He doesn’t get depressed about death.  Oh, he is saddened about the grief of others for sure, but not depressed about death.  And Jesus refuses to bargain with death.   And when Lazarus dies, Jesus doesn’t accept death.  Jesus gets war-horse snorting, angry at the death of Lazarus, and then does battle with death.  Jesus came to the Lazarus’ tomb angry enough to fight a war with death.  And Jesus has victory over death.

These are Jesus’ stages, straight from anger to victory.

Every time in the New Testament, Jesus encounters a corpse, it comes back to life.  He always defeats death.  Death cannot exist in his presence.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  Note that resurrection is not what Jesus does; it is who he is.   He is the resurrection.  So death can not hold him.  

Now, you and I are not Jesus.  We will have emotional responses to death that may fall into any of these categories.  And sometimes, grief takes a very long time to process.  But you don’t have to live forever in these stages.  You don’t have to dwell in them forever because you know Jesus, the resurrection, and the life.  You know the one who has defeated death.  You don’t have to accept death as final because we know death is not the end.

Paul said it this way:
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14   But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.   Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

Because of Jesus, we do not grieve like those without hope.  Everything is different when you realize death it is not the end.  But we all will grieve because knowing the end of the story doesn’t mean you won’t cry at the sad parts.

So Jesus shows intense emotion here, but his emotion is not weeping from grief but intense anger at death.  His tears shed here in sympathy to the grief of his friends are very subdued.

 Contrast that to a time in Jesus’ life, just a few weeks after Lazarus was raised, when he did cry with the intense emotion of klaio, weeping with deep emotion.  And what was the reason that Jesus wept bitterly then?  

It is on the first Palm Sunday, and Jesus is sitting atop a donkey’s colt; people are shouting, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!.” He is riding down the Mount of Olives toward the city.  It is a celebration that is unparalleled in the gospel accounts.  Thousands are waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosannah!”  Amid this celebration, as the crowds descend the Mount of Olives and look across the Kidron valley to see the magnificent walls of Jerusalem and, just beyond them, the Temple, the place where Yehovah said he would place his name forever, Jesus interrupts the celebration.

While the crowd shouting praises, Jesus looks at the city and weeps over it.  And it is not the Greek dakruo, not simply the shedding of a tear, but the agonizing wailing and sobbing of the Greek klaio.

Luke 19:41-42   And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept (klaio) over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

This Jesus, who teared up when grieving the death of a good friend and seeing his friends grieving over Lazarus, is now moved to wail and weep bitter tears over what?  

Jesus knows that the praise and affirmation He is currently experiencing is short-lived.  In just a few days, another crowd will gather to shout out in his presence.  But it will not be shouts of praise but shouts of condemnation.  “Crucify Him!” they will shout to Pilate.  Just a few days after thousands entering Jerusalem proclaim his as their King, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”  there will be another crowd shouting.  Pilate will present this same Jesus and say, “Behold your king!” to which the chief priests will answer, and the very authorities responsible for maintaining true worship will answer, “Crucify him; we have no king but Caesar.”

Jesus cries because, as John said, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.  He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.  (John 1:10-11) 

Rejection always hurts.  But if it is someone you love, someone you have trusted, someone close to you, it always hurts you much more.  Jesus was rejected by the very people he loved so much that he left heaven to come and suffer and die for.

That is what Jesus says as he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday: “Because you did not know the time of your visitation.”  Jesus’ heart is broken, and he weeps, sobbing tears because they rejected him.  Because they refused his offer to repent and enter the kingdom of God.  

Luke 13:34-35   O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  Behold, your house is forsaken. 

Jesus wanted everyone to accept him and his gift of forgiveness, repentance, and salvation, but most rejected him.

And Jesus knows the horrible consequences of their rejection of him.  The result is condemnation.  As Jesus told Nicodemus, “whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”  (John 3:18).  

And not only are the individuals condemned, but the entire city of Jerusalem stands condemned.  Let’s look again at Jesus response on that Palm Sunday, 

Luke 19:41-44   And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept (klaio) over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Jesus knows that it is happening again.
Throughout the Bible, we see the same thing happen repeatedly.  God calls out a covenant people.  He rescues and redeems them. He brings them through the waters. He saves them from their enemies.  He teaches them from the mountain.  He showers love on them.  He asks them to live by the rules of His covenant.  He asks them to have no other Gods.  They must not follow their way but follow him as their king.  And over and over God’s covenant people turn to other Gods and worship idols of their own making: Baal, Astoreth, money, power, prestige, and the greatest idol of all, self.  They crossed the line, and God turned his face from them and let them reap the consequences of their actions.  So they were conquered by foreign countries, be it the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or the Romans.

And Jesus, the prophet, sees it happening again.

And it happens just as he said, for about 40 years after that Palm Sunday, Titus led an army of 50,000 Roman soldiers to encircle Jerusalem.  The siege began at the exact same time of year as Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the time of Passover, when thousands of pilgrims entered the city.  The siege lasted 143 days, cutting off supplies and leading to 4 months of mass starvation and death. 

The historian Josephus writes: 
“All hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devour the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms of women and infants that were dying by famine, and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the elderly; the children also, and the young men wandered about the market places like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead wheresoever their misery seized them.”1

Then, the Romans broke through the walls and, killed over 600,000 Jews and took thousands more captive to be sold into slavery in Egypt or used as sport for the lions in the arenas.  And for the city itself, as Jesus predicted, not one stone would be left on another…

Josephus again:
“The Emperor ordered the entire city and the temple to be razed to the ground, leaving only the loftiest of the towers…and the portion of the wall enclosing the city on the west…all the rest of the wall that surrounded the city was so completely razed to the ground as to leave future visitors to the spot no reason to believe that the city had ever been inhabited.”2

And I have seen those massive stones, some the size of large trucks tumbled down on each other lying where the Romans pushed them down.   I have stood at the remaining western wall, praying with those who gather every day, mourning the devastation of that day, and praying for God’s return to this place where he put His name forever.

What drives Jesus to weep bitter tears?  Not for the death of a righteous man, Lazarus.  Not for death does he weep, for he is the victor over death, but he weeps for the unrepentant and for the result of their failure to repent — destruction.  

For thousands of years, the Jewish people had looked forward to the coming of the Messiah.  Prophets had predicted the glory of that time, the time of the visitation when the Messiah finally appeared.  This was supposed to be the most significant moment in Jewish history. But instead, it brought unimaginable judgment and suffering. And THIS is why Jesus wept over Jerusalem.  

What drives Jesus to weep bitter sobbing tears is not illness or death.  It is a lack of belief and a lack of repentance. It is the necessary judgment of a just God on those who refuse his gift of love, who refuse his gift of repentance, who refuse his gift of forgiveness, and who refuse to live under the covenant God established with them.  Oh, but Jesus knew that God would someday redeem this place. He knew God would return to the place where he had placed his name forever. The heavenly city would descend and be God’s city on earth forever. But on that Palm Sunday, Jesus wept because knowing the end of the story doesn’t mean you won’t cry at the sad parts.

And when God turns his face from Israel in the Old Testament and removes his protection from them, and then they are devastated by enemy nations, we may tend to see this as punishment by God.  But this should not be seen as punishment.  It is more like in a marriage relationship where one partner is abusive or sexually unfaithful.  At some point, the relationship is so broken that the other partner decides the only recourse is separation because the marriage covenant is broken. When Israel continues to be unfaithful to God and refuses to change (repent), then their covenant with God is broken, and there is separation.  God turns his face.  And separation from God is destruction.

What does this mean for us today?

We have been grafted into God’s covenant people through the blood of Jesus.  Like his covenant people of old, we have been rescued and redeemed from our enemy of sin and death.    God has showered his love and blessings on us.  As God’s covenant people, we enjoy this closeness to God.  Let us not forget who we are and what God has done for us. We must not follow after other Gods of greed, power, prestige, or self.

 Let us not break God’s heart by breaking our covenant with him.  

 Let us heed the warnings of the prophets.  Let us heed the warnings of Jesus.  He says at the very end of the sermon on the mount, we have to do more than just listen to his words. We have to follow them — obey them.  If we listen and do not do what he says, we are like the man who built his house on the sand.  We are doomed to destruction.  

Jesus shed a few tears, sympathizing with his friend’s grief over death.  But he wept bitter tears over his people who rejected him.  We will all weep bitterly as we face the loss of our loved ones.  But do we share Jesus’ sadness and grief over those who are turning away from God?  Do we weep for those who have wandered from God?  

James 5:19-20   My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

This is the work of the church.  As long as someone has breath in their lungs, they have an opportunity to repent. For these people, we join with Jesus and weep.   May our hearts be broken with the things that break the heart of God.

  1. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
  2. Ibid.

February 25, 27 A.D.  –  Lazarus is dying — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #73

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

Week 54 — Lazarus is dying
John 11:1-16

It was just 9 weeks ago that Jesus spent a week with his friend Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary.  He stayed with them during the holidays of Hanukkah at their home in Bethany, as he often did, for Bethany is just over a mile from Jerusalem.  During that visit, he again clashed with the religious leaders in Jerusalem who were already seeking to kill him. At one point, they “picked up stones to stone him” (John 10:31).  So Jesus left Judea after Hanukkah and went east to Perea, the territory on the other side of the Jordan, to preach and heal there.  This is the territory of Herod Antipas, and 2 weeks ago, Jesus learned that this Herod was also seeking to kill him and began to move northward, away from Herod’s palace at Macherus, back towards Judea.  He is teaching as he goes.  He has just told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.  It is at this point that Jesus receives the news that his friend Lazarus is very ill.

John 11:1-16   Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)  So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”  Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.   So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,   and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light.  It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”
His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.”   Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

The Gospels repeatedly emphasize Jesus’ love for Lazarus and his sisters, including in verse 5 here. But that makes verse 6 all the more puzzling. 

Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.   So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,   and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

The reason why Jesus didn’t leave immediately to go see about his friend was “that he loved them so much”?  Jesus receives a desperate plea for help and demonstrates his love by waiting 2 days before he leaves.

Let’s look at the timing here.  Lazarus is ill to the point that his sisters feel the need to call their miracle-working friend to come and heal him.  It would take a full day’s journey for a messenger to get the word to Jesus. It was at least 22 miles.  He delays 2 days and then takes a full day to travel to Bethany. Verse 17 tells us, “On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.” Do the math.   Lazarus must have died shortly after Mary and Martha sent the messengers off to tell Jesus of his illness.   Lazarus is already in the grave before the messenger arrives and makes it to Jesus.

This is Israel 2000 years ago.  There was no embalming of bodies as they did in Egypt. Oh, they used spices and perfumes to cover the smell, but they did nothing to stop the decay.  And in such a climate, decomposition of the body began quickly.  Except in unusual occasions, bodies were prepared for burial and placed in the tomb on the same day of death.  Today, in Orthodox Jewish communities, burial is still held within 24 hours of death.  (The rabbis see this as a command from Deuteronomy 21:23.)   So soon after the messenger left, Lazarus died, and they closed his eyes, washed his body, anointed it with perfumes and spices, and wrapped the corpse with strips of cloth.  Then, there would be a procession of family and friends to the family tomb, where the body would be placed on a slab of stone cut out of the cave’s walls.  The tomb was then sealed with rocks or a rolling stone.  Mourning would continue at the home for seven days.  After a year, the tomb would be opened, and the bones collected and placed in a stone box called an ossuary.

So, by the time the messenger arrives to tell Jesus that Lazarus is ill, he has already died and been placed in the tomb. It is too late to prevent his death. Jesus could rush to Bethany immediately and join Mary and Martha in grieving, or he could rush back and stop their mourning by raising Lazarus the next day, but he waits two days before he leaves.  

In the first century, there were no doctors to examine someone and pronounce them dead.  And rarely, someone could appear dead when they were not.  Their heart could be fibrillating, and their breathing so shallow that most people would not detect any signs of life.  There are reports of people being carried to their tombs and rising back to life.  This led to the belief that the spirit hovered over the body for three days, hoping to reenter the body, but then after 3 days, when full decomposition had begun, the spirit departed.

Had Jesus left immediately and revived Lazarus after only a day or two, it would have been impressive but not an undeniable miracle of God.  Jesus wanted there to be no doubt when Lazarus was raised to life that he was dead beyond hope of resuscitation.  Jesus would not let God’s victory over death be cheapened because people had these mistaken thoughts about the spirit hovering.

Jesus frankly tells the disciples that he knows that Lazarus is already dead and says something that seems really odd, “for your sake, I am glad I was not there so that you may believe.”   Jesus says I am so glad I was not there to heal Lazarus before he died.  What must the disciples have been thinking when Jesus said this?  They didn’t know yet that Jesus would raise Lazarus from the dead.  So they see Jesus doesn’t rush off to heal when he hears Lazarus is sick, and then Jesus says, “I am so glad I wasn’t there to prevent Lazarus’ death.” 

I think of the many times in my career as a pediatrician that I raced to the hospital to resuscitate a newborn.  Many was the night I received a phone call and drove way over the speed limit to rush up to the hospital nursery because a baby had been delivered prematurely and needed advanced resuscitation.  Many times, I ran from our office across the hospital campus and up the stairs to the OB ward or nursery to prevent the death of a baby.   Thankfully, most of those trips were successful, but some were not.  And still today, there are some times when I still relive those moments in the early mornings, even now wondering if I could have gotten there sooner or done something more.  In my job, illness and death were the enemy we all dreaded, but they were always near at hand.  

But Jesus says, “I am so glad I was not there to prevent Lazarus’ death.”

What is Jesus saying?

Jesus is living out the second beatitude.   The sermon on the mount begins in Matthew 5 with eight statements of the good life, descriptions of the ones living the good life, the lucky ones, the happy ones.  And they are groups of people who would be least expected to be happy:  the poor, the hungry, the disadvantaged, the powerless.   The second beatitude is:

Matthew 5:4  Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Happy are they that mourn!  How lucky are the mourners, for they will find comfort!  
How odd are the Beatitudes!  How in the world do you expect people mourning the death of a loved one to be the fortunate people?  For they will be comforted.

Some lessons you can’t learn from just hearing them.  Some things can only be learned from experience.  The disciples had listened to his sermon back in July, but they hadn’t lived it yet.  There is a big difference between hearing the words of Jesus and experiencing the words of Jesus.   They knew that Jesus said that those who mourn were the lucky ones, and some of the disciples wrote it down.  But did they understand what Jesus was saying?  Do we understand what Jesus was saying?

Don’t just read the words; live the words.

Can you imagine the joy that Mary and Martha felt when they realized Lazarus was alive again?  Some of you can.  Some of you have had news that came close.  When the follow-up scan says, there is no more sign of cancer when you get news that your family member in the horrible accident that you were told would probably die is now expected to live.  

I remember clearly a certain premature baby.  I spent over an hour resuscitating and ventilating this baby one early morning.  Born at 24 weeks, her prognosis was very poor.  She needed surfactant, a medicine instilled into the lungs of premature babies to allow their stiff lungs to expand.  But that is not available in any rural hospital.  Nor was the high-frequency oscillating ventilator we needed to breathe for her with her premature lungs.  So I breathed for her with a hand-squeezed bag for over an hour because that was the best you have in any rural hospital.  And that morning, the transport team was delayed.  It became harder and harder to breathe for her as her lungs became stiffer and stiffer.   Despite our best efforts, her oxygen was dropping, and then her heart stopped.  We continued to ventilate and do chest compressions for more than 15 minutes, giving all the code blue medications possible to attempt to revive her.  One by one, the nurses and respiratory techs said we needed to stop because she was gone.  But I couldn’t let go.  I couldn’t stop.  And then, unexplainably, her heart started beating, her oxygen came up, and just after that, the transport team arrived with the medicine needed to decrease the stiffness in her lungs.  She survived that night and, after 4 months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, was able to go home.

But that moment when her heart started… There is no possible way I can explain to you the joy that spread in that room.  She had been given up for dead, the room was full of tears, and we were all mourning, but then she came back to life, and let me tell you, worship broke out in that nursery, praising God for the gift of life.  For it was nothing we did.  We had exhausted every intervention available to us.       But God…

Oh, what a moment, when everything changes
Imagine the glory; imagine the praises.1

I don’t have to imagine it, for I have lived it more than once.

There is no rejoicing like the rejoicing of the victory of life over death.  You can read the words of the Bible, and you can study them, but they come truly alive when we see how we have lived them out and then share them with each other.  How wonderful it is for those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

This is the attitude we see in David in Psalm 30.   David was sick to the point of death with no medical treatment available, and he cried out to God, and God healed him, and Psalm 30 is his response.

O Yehovah, my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
O Yehovah, you have brought up my soul from the grave; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to Yehovah, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth, and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Yehovah my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

David thought he was going to die, but God turned his mourning into dancing.  And in our passage today, Jesus knew something that the disciples didn’t realize — Lazarus’ death was only temporary.  Those who now mourn will soon find comfort, and they shall rejoice.

Are you a Second Beatitude believer?  Can you see tragedy, illness, and death as just another opportunity for God to reveal his glory? Can you grasp the incredible brevity of our grief compared to the eternity of our joy?  The key to our passage today is verse 4:

John 11:4  Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

“This sickness will not end in death.”  Don’t miss the point that Jesus makes this statement, knowing that Lazarus is already dead.  It is not a statement about the prognosis of the illness but about the temporal nature of death.   Jesus says, “This sickness will not end in death” because Jesus knows that death is not the end.  Death is never the end.  It was not the end for Lazarus, and it is not the end for you either.   The year after the dash on a headstone is not an ending date but a relocation date.

Let’s look at another Psalm.  This one you know very well, Psalm 23.  

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.  

I know you have this memorized, but look at this carefully.  You walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  The valley of the shadow of death is not a destination, it is not where we go to but where we go through.  Death is not the end.  Then, what is the destination of the journey in the 23rd Psalm?  It is in the last verse:

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

For all the days I live, God’s goodness and mercy follow.  But wait, ‘follow’ is too tame a word for the Hebrew there ‘radaf.’  ‘Radaf’ doesn’t mean ‘follow,’ but ‘pursue,’ chase after with the intent to do something.  ‘Radaf’ is the picture of a lion pursuing its prey.  A lion doesn’t follow; a lion pursues — the lion’s intent is not just to see where it goes, not just to catch it, but to consume it.  ‘Radaf’ is to chase after something with the intent to act on it.  God’s mercy and goodness pursue us every day of our lives; they chase after us like a lion in order to change us, to change our hearts, and to radically alter our circumstances.

And then — and then after all the days of our lives – and then it is not the end — and then I shall dwell in the house of Yehovah forever.

Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of Yehovah forever.

Death is not an end.  We shall dwell in the house of Yehovah forever.  This is the gospel. This is the good news.  Oh, how I would like to make signs that have Jesus’ quote from John 11:4, “This sickness will not end in death” – Jesus.”   I want to put them in every hospital cancer ward, in every ICU, in every hospice room.  Death is not the end.  Jesus has spoken.

And in just a few days, after our passage this morning, those disciples heard Jesus speak, heard him say,  “Lazarus, come out!”  And they saw the glory of God as he defeated death.  Mourning turned to joy, and grieving turned to glory. 

And in just a few months later, they see Jesus alive three days after he dies, and they will again see God glorified as he pronounces the final defeat of death.  Blessed are they that mourn, for they will be comforted.

It is natural to fear dying.  Dying can be a painful process.  But there is no need to fear death.  For it is but another opportunity for God to show his glory as he brings you closer to his side.  As long as we walk on this earth, we walk each day in the shadow of death, the shadow of the dying.  But Jesus says none of these illnesses, none of these cancers, none of these traumas will end in death.  For those we mentioned this morning who are grieving the death of their son, his story does not end in death.  For death is not the end.  We, like Lazarus, will be called out of the grave.  

John 11:25-26  Jesus said to her [Martha], “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” 

And then he asks Martha the most important question anyone will ever ask.  

“Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this?  Are these more than just words on a page to you?  Are you living them out?  If you believe these words, it changes everything.  We need not fear the shadow of death or death itself.  We need not fear cancer, heart problems, accidents, evil, or sin.  Because none of these things will be the end.  All these things we fear in life are simply opportunities for God to show his glory as he defeats illness, sin, and death.  There may be times it seems the enemy is winning, that the disease has the better of you, that sin has a hold on you, but know this:  Sin has no victory, Illness has no victory, and Death has no victory.  

Seven hundred years before Jesus’s birth, the prophet Isaiah saw the day coming when the pursuit of God’s mercy and grace would reach its climax. 

Isaiah 25:7   And Yehovah will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.

Right here, on this mountain in Jerusalem, God will destroy that shroud of death that hangs over all of us.

Isaiah 25: 8 “He will swallow up death forever; and Yehovah Elohim will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for Yehovah has spoken.”

He will remove the reproach, the shame of our sins from us, casting them off the planet. God has spoken; it will come to pass.

And they waited another 700 years for this.  And then Jesus came — and this resurrection of Lazarus in the suburbs of where Isaiah was prophesying was just a small taste of what Jesus would do just a few months later on that very mountain where on the cross and from the tomb like Lazarus the stone would be rolled away, and death would yield to eternal life.

Isaiah 25:9 It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.  This is Yehovah; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

So we say today, this is Yehovah; this is his son Jesus.  We have waited for him to turn mourning into joy.  Now, let us rejoice in His salvation.  Let us say as the apostle Paul said (1 Corinthians 15:54-56), quoting Isaiah, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (Isaiah 25:8)  and quoting Hosea, “Death where is your victory? Grave, where is your sting? (Hosea 13:14).

1 Corinthians 15:56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

I heard an old, old story,
How a Savior came from glory,
How He gave His life on Calvary
To save a wretch like me;
I heard about His groaning,
Of His precious blood’s atoning,
Then I repented of my sins
And won the victory.

O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.2

1.  Lyrics from “He Welcomes the Beggar” by 11th Hour. 2016.  This is the song our church trio sang on the day this message was given.
2. “Victory in Jesus.” Eugene Monroe Bartlett. 1939.

February 18, 27 A.D.  –  The Rich Man and Lazarus #72

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


Week 53 – The Rich Man and Lazarus
Luke 16:1-13

Last week, we discussed the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16 and Jesus’ statement that “You can not serve God and mammon.”  Mammon is anything besides God that you put your trust in, especially wealth and possessions. Today, we will discuss the next parable in Luke 16, in which the primary character is an example of a man who has done just that—put all of his trust in money and not in God.

Luke 16:19   “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.   And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.   The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side.  The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.   And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’   But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.   And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’   And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’   But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’   And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’   He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

There are two scenes in this parable:

There is life now and the life to come.  We must first recognize that the purpose of this parable is not to describe the life to come.  This is not a lecture on the afterlife. This parable is no more a description of what the life to come will look like than our previous parable is a lesson from Jesus for how to be a good land real estate management company.  Jesus is not giving business advice, and he is not giving a lecture on what heaven looks like.  So, we will not spend time discussing a description of the afterlife in this story.  If we were to spend what time we have with this parable debating if this is an accurate picture of the afterlife, then we would miss the entire point of the parable.   It is what you do in this life that matters. Concern yourself with how you live today.  It is what you do in this life that determines your placement in the afterlife.  So we see the two characters in life now and then in the life to come, and they are separated in both scenes.

And in the life to come, there is a “great chasm” between them that “none may cross.”  And the uncrossable canyon is the result of sin.  The only way to cross the chasm is by repenting, accepting Jesus as the King of your life, and living as the king would have you live.  As the wealthy man learned too late, repentance is only possible in this life.  You see, in this life, they were also separated by a wall.  But there was a gate.   There was an opportunity to cross from one side to the other.  But the rich man would not allow Lazarus to enter.   If he had repented of his worship of the idol of wealth and had shared, loving his neighbor as his self, he could have opened the gate to Lazarus.   This would be his repentance, a change in the direction of his life, a change in who directed his life, and thus a change in how he lived.  But the separation in the life to come has no gate.  The chance for repentance is past.  So,  we must not spend too much time focusing on how we will live after we die when our purpose on this earth is to live for Jesus now.  As the rich man learned, we can’t change how we live after we die.  But today, we can search God’s word and learn how he wants us to live.  Today, we can repent and live differently.  And we can then trust Yehovah, the God who loves us and has gone to prepare a place for us.   So, let’s look closely at this parable.

The rich man-  Notice that he is the character who does not have a name.  This is a reversal of what was expected.   Undoubtedly, in this life, everyone would have known the rich man’s name, but no one would know that the poor man had a name.  We are told that he is not just rich but also extremely wealthy, for he is clothed in purple and fine linen, the clothing of kings.  He feasted spectacularly every day.  Again, this identifies him as being in the place of kings.  But if you read carefully, you will find something about his character.  He is not righteous.  And we know this before we ever read about the poor man at his gate.  How?  He feasts every day.  This means he is not righteous.   God designed several feasts in the Biblical Calendar.  Feasts and celebrations are important to God.  We have discussed before the great Messianic Feast in the world to come.  God loves a good party.  God is all about celebrations.  But every day in this life is not a feast.  In God’s calendar, every day is not the same.  For the Jews in Jesus’ day, the seventh day, the Sabbath, is different.  It is special.  You do not do work on the Sabbath.  Nor do you ask any of your workers or slaves in your home to work.  But this man feasts every day.  So he is forcing his staff to work on the Sabbath.  By Biblical definition, we know he is not a righteous man.

We also learn he is a man who can’t see very well.  There is a poor man at his gate.  In this life, the rich man does not see Lazarus.  Oh, he may know that the poor man is at his gate.  “What an inconvenience!  How sad that all the guests coming to my sumptuous feast must pass by such a sight.  How disgusting that they have to pass by this horrible man covered in sores on their way to my beautiful party.”  The poor man’s dream is to have a few crumbs that fall from his table, but can you imagine what would happen if he gave this poor man food?  “Why, then,” the rich man would say, “he would never leave. And worse yet, even more poor, miserable people might be encouraged to come to get my scraps.  So I give the crumbs to the household dogs.  Perhaps the poor man will leave or just go ahead and die and stop ruining the curb appeal of my mansion.”

He doesn’t really see Lazarus in the parable until verse 23:

Luke 16:23  and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

Now he sees him.  But still, the rich man does not see.  He may have noticed Lazarus in life, but he didn’t truly see him.  He didn’t see him as a human like him, created in the image of God as he was, in desperate need of love and care, starving while he feasted, suffering while he celebrated.  Now, he only sees Lazarus as just another servant who might increase his comfort, just like his servants in his prior life.

Luke 16:24  (my paraphrase)  Father Abraham, send Lazarus like a slave to comfort me, have him bring me some cold water.  Oh, Lazarus won’t mind walking through the flames to come serve me.  He won’t care; he is just a slave. 

And when told that it is impossible for Lazarus to go where he is, the rich man asks Abraham to send him back to warn his brothers to repent.  “Oh, Lazarus won’t mind leaving heaven to go back and do some service for me.”   Notice that he never directly addresses Lazarus.  In his mind, Lazarus is still someone beneath him.  Just another person to do his bidding.   He says, “Father Abraham…  Come on, Abraham, we are family.”  But He fails to see Lazarus as part of the family.  He is just a lowly servant, someone to bring him comfort.

Even in the flames of torment, he is unrepentant, for there can be no repentance after you die.

In 2 Timothy 2, Paul instructs Timothy on how to deal with opponents of the gospel.  

2 Timothy 2:25-26   Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

We pray that God will grant repentance. “Grant” means to bestow as a gift.  Jesus told us in John 16:8 that it is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict people of sin.  Repentance is a gift from God that, unfortunately, not all choose to accept.  On our own, none of us would ever repent.  And we see this rich man is now beyond repentance and beyond salvation.

And then there is Lazarus.

This is the only one of Jesus’ parables in which a character is named. He is Lazarus, the Greek form of the name Elazar, a common name in the Old Testament that means ‘God is my help.’  Jesus chose this name because this is a man who does not receive help from those around him; his only help comes from God.

 He is described as a “poor man.”  There are two Greek words for poor.  Penes and ptochos.  The penes are the working poor.  Those who are surviving day to day.  They are living in a shelter or a run-down shack.  They never have enough to eat, but they aren’t starving yet.  Their clothes are worn out, but they are not naked.  They have little hope that things will ever improve, but they are surviving.  This is the majority of the poor in Jesus’ day.  They lived in a foreign occupied country where work was scarce and taxes were oppressive.  These were hard times for the poor.  They were barely surviving.

But that is not who Jesus is talking about in this parable.  Jesus doesn’t use the word ‘penes’ but the other Greek word for the poor, the ‘ptochoi’ (singular ‘ptochos.’)  They are the completely destitute who own only the ragged clothes on their back and have no other possessions.  This Greek word comes from a root meaning “to cower in fear or cringe.”  They are not the working poor.  Due to physical problems, they can not work.  They can only beg.  They are not surviving.  They are dying in front of your eyes.  They have no hope.  Life will never get better.  For them, there is only suffering and then death.  

The New York Times published a picture in 1993 that I think best illustrates one who is ptochos, the hopeless poor.  It is a difficult picture to look at.  We instinctively do not want to look at the ptochoi.  But we must look.  This is a picture of a little boy in Sudan, Africa, who was one of many who was starving to death and attempting to walk to a UN feeding station.  Kevin Carter, a photojournalist, caught this picture of the child after he had collapsed on the way.  Just steps away is a hooded vulture, waiting on the child to die for its next meal.

This is the ptochoi.  This is the poor man at the gate in Jesus’ parable.  Starving, hopeless,  dying.  

Kevin Carter said he scared the vulture away before he left, but he did not know if the child ever made it to the feeding station.  [We later learned the child did make it and lived that day but died as a teenager of “fevers.”]  Kevin Carter committed suicide 4 months after he took this photo.  His suicide note said: “…I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…”

This is a difficult picture to look at.  How are we supposed to respond when we lift up our eyes and see a child like this?  Are we supposed to be sad?  Should we mourn?

In the Old Testament book of Joel, the people had suffered a terrible tragedy.  A swarm of locusts devastated the land, destroying most crops.  Many would be hungry due to the resulting famine.  It was terrible.  And Joel said, because of your sin, Israel, even more devastation is coming.  An army will come to conquer you.  It will be an even more terrible time.  How should people react to such news?

People in those days usually reacted to terrible news by mourning and tearing their clothes, as Jacob did when he was told Joseph was dead, or as David tore his clothes when he heard of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. But Joel tells them the proper response is not simply tearing their clothes and mourning.

Joel 2:12-13    “Yet even now,” declares Yehovah, “return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments.
Return to Yehovah your God, for he is gracious and merciful
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and he relents over disaster.

Fasting, weeping, and mourning are all appropriate responses to disaster. But Joel says the outward show of mourning, which was common in their day, tearing their garments, was not the most important response.

Rend your hearts and not your garments.

Yes, be sad at the terrible plight of the poor, mourn that children are dying, and shed a tear when you see a child in such a state. But don’t just tear your clothes.  Tear your heart.  He says, “Return to me with all your heart.”  Return – the Hebrew shuv, which we translate as repent.  Your heart should change.  You should make a decision to repent when you see such a disaster.   Return to God for his patience, grace, and mercy are stronger than his justice.   (Notice that Joel is quoting the passage we looked at last week in Exodus 34, where God describes himself.)

The appropriate response to seeing this horrible picture of poverty and famine is not just mourning or crying.  Rend your hearts.  God expects us to react with broken hearts that lead to repentance.  Our hearts should be broken by the things that break God’s heart.  And broken hearts should lead us to return to his ways.  As he is a God of grace and mercy, he expects his children to act like their father and respond to disaster with grace and mercy.  Broken hearts that lead to actions of mercy through repentance.  But our rich man in this parable does not really see Lazarus.  His heart is hard.  He does not repent and give Lazarus mercy and grace.

They both died.  Death is the great leveler.  

Ecclesiastes 9:2  All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean,
Hebrews 9:27   People are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,

Luke 16:22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side.  The rich man also died and was buried,

Is there any significance that the poor man dies first?  It was no surprise that this starving man covered in sores died soon.   A 2016 study by the National Institutes of Health showed that the extremely poor in the US died on average 15 years sooner than the average wealthy person.  The gap is even wider in third-world countries.   If a celebrity dies, it makes the news.  But the news is silent on the 20 homeless people who die in our country, on our doorstep, on average every day, most of them early, preventable deaths.  And notice this detail in the parable: Words are added to note that the rich man was buried.  Those words are missing when Lazarus dies.  The rich man likely had a magnificent funeral with a beautiful silk-lined coffin, the best vault, and a lovely granite marker.  There is no mention of even a burial of Lazarus.  He dies and is forgotten.  He was unnoticed in death as he was in life.  Not even a statistic.  

Now look at the rich man’s last request.  He asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to convince his five brothers to repent before it is too late.  Abraham tells him that all they need to know is written in the books of Moses and the Prophets.  But the rich man is convinced that if only Lazarus would return from the dead and warn them.  Then they would repent and not discover the truth too late as he did.  Abraham responds:  

Luke 16:31  “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

When Jesus is teaching this parable in 27 AD, it will be just a few days before he will be informed that his real-life friend Lazarus is ill.  Lazarus will die, and Jesus, 4 days later, will bring him back from the dead.  Just as the rich man in the parable asked, a man named Lazarus will come back from the dead.  And you think that would be enough to convince every person in Israel that Jesus was indeed who he said he was.  But Abraham in the parable was correct.  Even when the actual Lazarus returned from the dead, some refused to believe.  And just a few months later, when Jesus was crucified and after three days rose from the dead.  There were still those who refused to believe, refused to repent.  And there are people today who still refuse to believe, still those who refuse to repent.

This is a story of two people who lived extremely different lives in this world and then, in a great reversal, were placed in very different positions in the afterlife.  This is not about the “Haves” and the “Have Nots,” but rather the “Have more than they could possibly ever need” and The “Have Nothing, Need Everything”.   And the sad truth is that this happens every day in our time.  There are millions of the extremely poor, the ptochoi.  Some right at our doorstep.  Some are dying or starving while others feast sumptuously.    Like Lazarus in the parable, they are unseen.

When we began a program for the homeless in Alabama, many of those we first approached were resistant to starting services for the homeless in our county.  They said we don’t have any homeless people in Marshall County.  There is just no need.  But we had already identified hundreds of homeless people in our town and homeless children in our schools.  They were there, but no one wanted to see them. They could not see that they were already at their doorstep.  (There are entire webpages dedicated to educating tourists on how to avoid the homeless people in San Francisco, New York and other cities.)

After showing people in our county the data on our homeless population, they said if we were to begin to offer services to people without homes, it would just encourage more homeless to come to our town.  We will attract more homeless people and just have a bigger problem.  All they could see was the bigger potential problem for themselves.  They could not understand the need.  Like the rich man who refused to give crumbs from the table to Lazarus, they didn’t want to encourage the homeless to stay by giving them shelter or food or comfort.

We serve a God who sees.  When Abraham and Sarah horribly mistreat Hagar, their Egyptian slave, first sexually abusing her and then, after she was pregnant, treating her harshly, she flees to the wilderness.  In her despair, when she feels she has no hope, God comes to her and promises to care for her.  She calls God “El–Roi” the God who sees me.  God sees affliction, and he responds.  He sees the affliction of the children of Israel in Egypt.

Exodus 3:7   Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.

I have a friend who suffered many years under an emotionally abusive husband.  She prayed for decades that he would come to repentance.   No one, other than her children and closest family, had any idea what she had endured.  But God saw her affliction and came to her and clearly told her that he saw her.  He was Yehovah El Roi to her.  This was the month before she was diagnosed with terminal cancer that was supposed to have ended her life several months ago.  She is still very much alive and has been delivered from the man who abused her.  When others could not see her in her distress, God saw her.  

Know that whatever you face in this life that God sees you.  He sees your affliction, he sees your sadness, he sees your family trouble, he sees your despair, he sees your grief, he sees you troubled by the same temptations.  The rich man did not see Lazarus in this life, but God saw the poor man.  And the God who sees is the God who heals, Yehovah El Roi is Yehovah rapha (Exodus 15:26.).  He is the God who provides Yehovah yireh (Genesis 22:14.)  And as the rich man in the story discovered and as many will discover one day, he is Yehovah Tzidkenu the God of righteousness, the God who judges. (Jeremiah 22:6, Jeremiah 33:16)

God sees us, and God cares for us.  This is certain.  The big question for us is, do we see as God sees?  Do we see the forgotten people on our doorstep?  Do we lift up our eyes now and see the needs around us? Do we really see them as created in the image of God, as members of the family, as brothers?  Do we see ourselves as we are, and do we repent while there is still time to repent?

In Luke 7, Jesus is dining at the home of a Pharisee named Simon.  The dinner is interrupted by a woman, a known sinner, who comes in and breaks an alabaster flask of ointment and anoints Jesus, and washes his feet.  Jesus takes that opportunity to tell the parable of the debtors.  One owed 50 and the other 500.  Neither could afford to pay, so both debts were written off.  Jesus asked Simon, “Which will love him more?”  

Luke 7:43-44   Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he [Jesus] said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?

Well, of course, he saw her, Jesus.  She caused a big commotion, upsetting his dinner party.  But he did not see the same woman Jesus saw.  He saw a sinner.  Someone less righteous than him.  Someone who would never be invited to his home.  Someone who was unclean.  

Jesus recognized that she was a sinner; he later tells Simon, “her sins, which are many…”  But who Jesus saw was not simply a sinner, but a repentant sinner who acted out her repentance.   And he tells her she is forgiven.  She is a sinner who has repented, acted out her repentance, been forgiven, saved by her faith, and will depart in peace. “Do you see this woman?”

Matt. 7:3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Klyne Snodgrass, in his excellent book, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, says it well:  

“The ability to see is the mark of Christian discipleship.”1

This parable of Jesus is, in some ways, the story of the blind man who was never healed.

If only we can look at others and ourselves with our Father’s eyes.  If only we could see our own sins instead of focusing on the sins of others.  If only we could see the needs at our doorstep,  If only we can see how loving, how forgiving, how patient, and how merciful our Father is to his children.  Then perhaps we would be swift to repent, swift to forgive, swift to share, and swift to worship.  Like the man in John 9, there are lots of things I do not know or understand, but this I know.  Once I was blind, now I can see, and Jesus made all the difference.

Let us not spend our time in this world talking about heaven and the life to come.  It will come, and your destination in the world to come will be determined by your repentance or your lack of repentance today, by how you treat others, and by how you treat the poor.  Everyone reading these words is in the same situation.  We are all sinners, every one of us.  We may have different sins, but we all fall short of the glory of God.  I fall short daily.  As long as we breathe, we have another God-given opportunity to repent of whatever stands between us and God and to live today more closely following our Savior.  This is the day Yehovah has made.  Let us repent and be glad in it. 

1.  Snodgrass, Klyne R.. Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (p. 434). Kindle Edition. 

February 14, 27 A.D. —   The Unjust Steward #71

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

Week 52 — The Unjust Steward
Luke 16:1-13

We are in week 52/70 of the appointed year of the Lord. We are walking week by week through Jesus’ ministry. Today, we will cover what many say is the most challenging parable Jesus told. It is found in Luke 16.

Luke 16:1-8   He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.   And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’   And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.   I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’   So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’   He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’   Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’   The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. 

Let me see if I have this straight.  A landowner finds out that the person managing his land was cheating him.  So he fires the manager and tells him to turn in his books.  But before word gets out about his being fired, he calls in the renters one at a time and quickly changes the books so they will owe much less, hoping to gain friends and influence by being generous with his ex-boss’s money and cheating his boss even more.  Surprisingly, his former boss commends him for his ‘shrewdness.’  This is a tough one.

First, does it bother you that Jesus used a dishonest manager to make a point? It didn’t bother Jesus, for he tells several stories that use characters who act unrighteously to teach lessons in righteousness.  Jesus tells stories that include righteous and unrighteous people, for the world these disciples live in has both.  

For example, there is the short parable of the man who accidentally discovers that his neighbor’s field has buried treasure in it.   He doesn’t tell his neighbor but deceives his neighbor into selling him the field.  Is that good business practice?   It certainly isn’t righteous, but Jesus uses this real-life example to say that the kingdom of heaven is like that treasure you give up everything to obtain.  He says nothing about the man’s behavior; the parable is about the treasure, the kingdom.

Then there is the unneighborly neighbor in Luke 11 who doesn’t want to be bothered by his neighbor who needs food at night.  This man is not loving his neighbor as himself.  This is followed by Jesus asking What kind of father would give his child a scorpion if he asked for food?   This is a “how much more” parable, as seen in the explanation:

Luke 11:13  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”  

Jesus says if an unrighteous neighbor will eventually help, how much more will righteous God help you?  Finally, there is the unrighteous judge in Luke 18:

Luke 18:1-5  He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’  For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”

Again, this is a ‘how much more’ parable.  If even this unrighteous judge will eventually give in and give justice, how much more will a righteous God give justice to his people who cry out to him?  So don’t get hung up on the idea that Jesus uses unsavory characters in his parables.  Let’s see what Jesus is teaching using this story.

In Jesus’ day, the way to gain wealth was to play the game.  That is just the way the economy was set up. There were some honest jobs, such as fishing and being a craftsman.  But the way to get ahead financially was land ownership.  Since much of Israel in this day was occupied by the Romans, many wealthy Romans bought up land in Israel and then hired managers to collect their profits while they lived back in Rome.  This is much like many vacation towns in the US now, where wealthy people buy up many of the hotels and Airbnb’s and then hire locals to manage their property.  So, it is a story we can all identify with.  But this manager was doing a poor job, so he was fired.  The manager then acts dishonestly, cheating the owner even more by adjusting the books to gain favor with the renters.  

Then, something completely unexpected happens in the story.

Luke 16:8   The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.

You would expect the landowner to be angry and perhaps have the manager arrested.   The story has jumped the rails.  That is not a reasonable way for the rich land-owner to act.  The story no longer makes sense in our world.  This wealthy landowner is nothing like a typical landowner, as they know.  This parable has to be an allegory to make sense.  Jesus never explains the allegory (as he did with the parable of the four soils), but he does clarify the lesson from the parable:

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

Here is where we know without a doubt that the story is an allegorical parable.  Who could possibly reward you with “eternal dwellings?”  This only works if the wealthy landowner is God, for he is the only one in charge of ‘eternal dwellings.’  He owns all of the riches and all of the land.  The manager is one of God’s people who was placed in charge of managing some of God’s resources.  (Recall that Adam in Genesis was placed in the garden in Eden to manage it.)   But this manager was doing a poor job of managing God’s resources.  Such a poor job that God decided to fire him and take away his resources.  But then the manager completely changes his way of dealing with people and acts in such a way that makes God commend him.  He takes God’s resources and deals them out with extravagant grace and mercy.  And God is pleased with him.  By treating all the people living on God’s land with grace and mercy and freely dispersing God’s resources, the manager has made a friend using wealth as a tool and is received into the eternal dwelling.

Jesus goes on:

Luke 16:10   “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.  If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?   And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?   

We put a lot of emphasis on ownership.  I paid off my truck last month and got the title in the mail this week.  It says that I own that truck.  But the Biblical view is that God owns this world, and we are his stewards, managing portions of God’s property.  That rancher in Yellowstone may think he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, but the Bible says differently.

Deuteronomy 10:14    To Yehovah your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.
Psalm 24:1    The earth is Yehovah’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;

Jesus ends his teaching on this parable with this verse:

No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Something interesting happens in the Greek in this verse.  The final word, ‘money,’ is not translated into Greek but left as a Semitic word, ‘mammon.’  So this is a Hebrew or Aramaic word spelled with Greek letters.  When the Bible was translated from Greek to Latin in the 4th century, it was again not translated but left as a Semitic word.  When the King James Bible was translated in 1611, it also kept the Hebrew word, Mammon in the verse.

Luke 16:13   “…Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Jesus has personified “mammon” in his statement, which led many in the Middle Ages to falsely believe there was a demon of greed and money named ‘Mammon,’ as seen in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  But this was not what Jesus meant.

So what is the meaning of this Hebrew word, “mammon?”   It developed as a Hebrew word about 200 years after the last book of the Old Testament was written, so you won’t find it in the Old Testament.  It is, however, frequently seen in Hebrew documents in the Dead Sea Scrolls, so we know it was a commonly used word in Jesus’s day.  It was derived from a root word frequently used in the Old Testament.  It is a Hebrew word that you know: ‘Amen.’  It is another word the Bible doesn’t translate but leaves as a Hebrew word (like Hallelujah, Hosannah, Jubilee).   When we end a prayer, we say this Hebrew word, amen.  It is spelled in Hebrew with the letters, aleph, mem, nun (A, M, N).  We must understand the root word ‘amen’ to understand what mammon means.

This root carries the ideas of stability, reliability, and truth; various forms of the word are found throughout the Scriptures.  

A form of this word is found in one of the most important verses in the Old Testament.  It is in the two verses in the Old Testament that the writers of the books of the Old Testament quote more often than any other verses, Exodus 34:6,7.

These verses are the John 3:16 of the Old Testament. They are the most important verses of the Old Testament.  Let me give you the context.  In this section of Exodus, the children of Israel have left Egypt, passed through the parted waters of the sea, and camped at the base of Mount Sinai.  Moses has been up on the mountain, brought down the 10 commandments on stone tablets, and found his people worshipping a golden calf.  Moses returned to the mountain to intercede for the people and remake the stone tablets.  And Moses asks to see God’s glory.  God says, You can’t see my face, but I will show you part of my glory.  So God places Moses in a cleft in the rock, and God passes before him.  And when God is revealing himself to Moses, this is how God describes himself:

Exodus 34:6-7  Yehovah passed before him and proclaimed, “Yehovah, Yehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…”

If you want to understand who God is, then study how God describes himself.  In a job interview, you are often asked to give several adjectives to describe yourself.  God does just that with Moses on the mountain.  It is no wonder this is the most quoted verse by the writers of the Old Testament.  See the balance of love, mercy, grace, truth, and justice in God’s self-description.  We could spend weeks and weeks on understanding these verses.  The Bible Project has a 14-week series on this; you should check it out.  That is where I learned much of what you hear now. But we are just looking at the word ‘amen’ and its variants to understand this word, mammon.  

God is abounding in steadfast (covenantal) love and faithfulness.  What we translate as ‘faithfulness’ is ‘emet,’ a form of our word, amen.  Tim Mackie from The Bible Project said ‘amen’ has to do with stableness and reliability.  When Moses had to hold up his hands for hours for the Israelites to defeat the Amalekites, they put a rock under his arms so they would be stable or steady.  When emet is used for people, it describes reliable and stable character or trustworthiness. For example, when Moses appointed leaders in Israel, they were to be “people of emet,” trustworthy people who wouldn’t take bribes or distort justice.  God is stable and reliable, and his character is unchanging. he is dependable and worthy of trust because he is faithful. This is why Moses describes God as a rock.  

Jesus often said, “Verily, Verily, I say to you….

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Or in the ESV:

John 3:3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Verily is an English word from the Latin ‘Veritas,’ which means ‘truth.’  But again, in the Greek New Testament, this is our untranslated Hebrew word ‘amen.’  So Jesus literally says,

 “Amen, amen, I say to you….” Jesus says, “This is the truth; you can count on this.   I stand as a witness that this is true.”  Jesus says this over 100 times in the gospels.  

In the Old Testament, prayers, blessings, and curses were often concluded with “amen.” Paul does the same in his letters, concluding his prayers or blessings with “amen.” 

1 Chronicles 16:36 Blessed be Yehovah, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting!”  Then all the people said, “Amen!” and praised Yehovah.
Romans 15:33 May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.
Philippians 4:20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.

 By saying ‘amen,’ you say, “This is true, and I stand witness to it.”  

When Jesus is talking with Pilate before he is sentenced to die, Jesus tells Pilate his purpose in coming:

John 18:37-38 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.

Jesus came to be God’s witness to the truth.

Rev. 3:14   “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.

Jesus is God’s  ‘Amen’ – his life is a witness to who God is and what God has said all along.

2 Corinthians 3:20  For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.  

Jesus is the amen.  He is the fulfillment of the promise of God given thousands of years before. He is the witness that all God said is true.

Amen is spelled a m n. (Hebrew is written right to left, typically with no vowels אמן ).  Mammon is the noun form of the verb amen.    In Hebrew, you often make a noun out of a verb or other word by adding the letter ‘mem’ (our ‘m’) to the front of it.  So we take the verb ‘amen’ and add a preceding mem and get mammon (מאמן).  Amen, the verb, means to affirm or testify as true or trustworthy.  So the noun form (mammon) is“the thing in which you put your trust.”  It came to be a word for wealth or riches because many people who have riches have put their trust in their riches instead of God.

In our scripture today, Jesus says you can’t serve both God and mammon.  It has to be one or the other.  You can’t put your trust in God and also put your trust in wealth.  Where do you place your trust?  

I have a friend who is a ‘prepper.’  He has an entire room of his house filled with food and supplies and equipment he feels he will need one day when the world system collapses.  He has spent thousands of hours researching and a small fortune and feels sure he will be ready to survive almost any catastrophe. Now, don’t get me wrong.  I was a Boy Scout, and the scouts’ motto was “Be prepared.”  There is nothing wrong with being prepared. But this friend has gone way overboard.   He has placed his hope in the future in the contents of that room.  Where do you place your trust?  Let’s see what the First Testament says:  

Proverbs 11:28   Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.
Proverbs 18:11   The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale.

And one from the Psalms:

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

The Bible tells the king of Israel never to build an enormous army or purchase horses and chariots from Egypt.  They should not trust their army for protection but trust God to be their defender.   If they build a vast army, they say they don’t trust God to protect them.  This is why David got in so much trouble for taking a census in 2 Samuel.  Remember, an enemy was threatening them, and David decided to take a census to see how many soldiers they had to fight.   The reason the Bible shows this as a terrible sin is that David showed his lack of trust in God by putting his trust in the number of his soldiers.

Mammon is something that you put your trust in instead of God.

Look at a coin or the back of some US currency.   You will find the phrase “In God We Trust.” Since 1864, this has been on coins and paper currency since 1957.  This motto was adapted from a line in Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner”  (though you probably only know the first verse).   Here is the fourth verse:

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

“In God we trust” became the official motto of the US in 1956.

Knowing this, you may find it ironic that Jesus said, “You can’t put your trust in both God and money,” and then we go and place “In God we trust” directly on that other thing we can’t put our trust in.  Theodore Roosevelt thought it was more than a little ironic to put “In God we trust” on mammon, the very thing Jesus singled out as something you can not place trust in.  Roosevelt, in fact, said to put the phrase on money would be “dangerously close to sacrilege” and ordered it removed from new coinage in 1907.1  But the people of the US wanted it there, and there was such a public outcry that Congress passed an act in 1908 reinstating the motto on coinage.

I don’t have a problem with the motto being on our money. I only wish the people in charge of the money really meant it.   Perhaps we can use that to our advantage.  Every time you start to spend money on something, look at the motto and ask yourself, “Am I putting my trust in God or in mammon (money or wealth)?  (Maybe I need to have it printed on my bank card.)

When talking with a friend a few years ago about my upcoming retirement, he asked me if I felt I had enough money set aside to “feel secure.”  The answer was no.  I did not, and I do not have enough money set aside to feel secure.  And I never will.  What I have learned from the Word of God is that there is no security in money.  I have read the parable of the man who had so many possessions that he had to rent bigger storage units, excuse me, build bigger barns.  I read what God said to that man,

Luke 12:20-21 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

I heard Jesus say the birds of the air don’t store food in barns. They aren’t preppers, but God feeds them. I remember Jesus saying we should store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves don’t break in and steal. There is no security in money or things.

But we are tempted to put our trust in money.  How do we combat that temptation?  One day, Jesus told a young man how to deal with this.  He came to Jesus saying he had kept the commandments, but what more did he lack?  What did he need to inherit eternal life?  And Jesus saw that he was a man of great possessions and prescribed the cure for putting his faith in his wealth.  Jesus told him to give it away.  Jesus told him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

The cure for the temptation to put trust in money and possessions instead of God:  generosity.

Jesus didn’t ask anyone else in the Bible to give it all away.  He didn’t ask that of another man who came to him with the same problem, Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus was a man who had put all of his trust in money and put aside following God. As a tax collector, he cheated his way into as much money as possible.  Until he met Jesus.  When he meets Jesus, he decides to put his trust in God and starts giving that money away.

Jesus’ message to the rich young ruler was the same as the message he gives in our parable today:

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

We don’t own anything.  We are given stewardship of God’s resources.  God will commend us if we resist the temptation to keep those resources to ourselves and, like the manager in the parable, be extravagantly generous in passing along the master’s resources to those around us in need.  

This parable of the unjust steward is challenging. We worked through a Hebrew grammar lesson and an American History lesson to understand it. However, applying Jesus’ words to our lives requires more work. As discussed last week, Jesus said, “Many people will hear what I am saying, but only a few will do these words.”

Randy Alcorn said it this way:

“When I grasp that I’m a steward, not an owner, it totally changes my perspective. Suddenly, I’m not asking, “How much of my money shall I, out of the goodness of my heart, give to God?” Rather, I’m asking, “Since all of ‘my’ money is really yours, Lord, how would you like me to invest your money today?”
As long as I hold tightly to something, I believe I own it. But when I give it away, I relinquish control, power, and prestige. When I realize that God has a claim not merely on the few dollars I might choose to throw in an offering plate, not simply on 10 percent or even 50 percent, but on 100 percent of “my” money, it’s revolutionary. If I’m God’s money manager, I’m not God. Money isn’t God. God is God. So God, money, and I are each put in our rightful place.”

  1. President Theodore Roosevelt, 13 November 1907  from The New York Times 11/14/1907.
  2. Randy Alcorn, in an interview with Joshua Becker, posted on Alcorn’s website (https://www.epm.org/resources/2017/Jul/5/christ-centered-stewardship/)

December 4, 27 A.D.  –  The Good Shepherd—   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #62

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog ,

Week 42 ——— The Good Shepherd
John 10:1–23 

Last week, we discussed how the Pharisees had made following God hard for the people.  They didn’t like the kind of Messiah Jesus was turning out to be.  Jesus called them idolaters.  He said they were worshiping idols.  And what is an idol?  It is a god that you make up and pretend to be real.  The Pharisees read the scriptures, but instead of worshipping the God of the Bible, they designed their own imaginary god that fit their purposes quite well.   They remade God in their image.  The god they worshiped bore little resemblance to the God of the Bible.  The god they worshiped cared more about laws than people, rituals than righteousness, and tithing spices than the poor.  

You can read the right scriptures but worship the wrong god. 

Let me set the scene of our scripture in John 10, where Jesus continues criticizing the religious leaders of his day. The 70 disciples he sent out have returned with stories of their mission’s success. It is festival time, and despite the danger of being in Jerusalem, where the Pharisees want to kill him, Jesus goes to celebrate.

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

I cannot understand why the translators of the Bible go to great lengths to try to hide the fact that this ‘feast’ is Hanukkah.  While very few Christians know what the “Feast of Dedication” is, most everyone knows that Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday.  The word in the gospel of John in Greek is ‘egkania’ which is the word used in Ancient Greek for Hanukkah.  It is a festival celebrating the dedication of the temple, but  only one major version of the Bible translates it clearly  (New Living Translation.)   For many years, the institutional church was antisemitic and tried to divorce itself from its Jewish roots.  But Yehovah, the God of the Bible, chose the Jews to be the conduit of his message.  Our lord and savior, Jesus, was Jewish, and he celebrated Hanukkah.  Next week, we will discuss the history of this holiday and how Jesus used the festival theme to teach a great truth.  So, the teaching we discuss today and next week occurs during this Jewish festival.  It is winter, and Jerusalem can get quite cold.  We saw it snow in Jerusalem on our first trip.  Jesus is teaching in Solomon’s colonnade; it was a roofed outdoor section of the temple grounds, so it was somewhat protected from the elements.  It was huge, about 45 feet wide and 800 feet long.  A common place for public meetings, the early church met here.  

John 10:1-6 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.   But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.   To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.   When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.  A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”   This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

Jesus gives this story about the sheep and the shepherd and the disciple are confused.  Now, we have the benefit of having heard the explanation Jesus gives in the following 11 verses, so we know where Jesus is going.  But the disciples needed clarification.  They shouldn’t have been.  Jesus is calling to mind a familiar metaphor from the scriptures.  Several Old Testament prophets denounced the religious leaders of their day, calling them bad shepherds of the people.  So when Jesus introduced the idea of himself as the good shepherd, they should have gotten it.  They must have missed the class on Ezekiel 34.   That is the background for this teaching of Jesus.  If you, like the disciples, have forgotten that passage, let’s take a look at it.

Ezekiel 34:1-6   The word of Yehovah came to me:  “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says Yehovah elohim:  Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!  Should not shepherds feed the sheep?  You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.  The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.  So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered;  they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.

A shepherd’s job was to care for the sheep.  These shepherds were just using the sheep.  If they were hungry they would just kill one.  If they needed a sweater they took the wool.  But they didn’t make sure the herd was healthy. They didn’t supply them with green pastures for food.  They didn’t care for the injured.  They just let them wander and become lost.  That’s what sheep do without a shepherd.  They follow another sheep head down, munching on the next clump of grass until they end up miles from the herd.  Sheep need a shepherd.  But Ezekiel said these shepherds of the people were bad shepherds, only caring for themselves.  So what did Ezekiel say God would do?  

Ezekiel 34:11-16   “For thus says Yehovah elohim: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.   As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.  And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country.   I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land.  There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel.    I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD.   I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy.1 I will feed them in justice.

Did you see that?  This is the message of Christmas!  These shepherds have failed to care for the people.  So God himself will come and seek them out and rescue them.  What did Jesus tell Zacchaeus? 

Luke 19:10  For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

David wrote a psalm about what God, as a shepherd, would do for us. You know it.  It  begins,” The Lord is my shepherd…”

Yehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want for anything.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he restores my soul.

This picture of Yehovah as our shepherd runs throughout the Bible.  And the people of the Bible understood all about shepherding.  From Abraham on, they kept flocks. There was a special bond between a shepherd and his sheep.  The Hebrew term for shepherd of sheep is “ro-eh tzon”.    Tzon is the word for sheep.  Ro’eh is the Hebrew root we translate as shepherd, but that root is used for one who cares for another or is a close friend or companion.   So, a shepherd cares for his sheep as he would love a close friend.  Some of you have pets with whom you share this special bond.  In Leviticus 19:18  “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we see that same root for the neighbor that we are to care for.   The idea is that we should shepherd our neighbors and make sure they have food and shelter and are cared for with love.

Ohad Cohen at the Institute of Biblical Studies says, “The Hebrew context teaches us that a shepherd was not just a responsible overseer, but a caring father figure, tending to his flock out of a deep sense of love. The prophet Isaiah tells us that the shepherd “gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart” (Isaiah 40:11). The bond between a shepherd and his animals has all the qualities of a true family.” 

Jesus’ disciples could identify with this shepherd analogy.  But I’m a city boy.   The closest I ever got to caring for sheep was a wool sweater.  I had the chance one day to get up close and personal with a herd of sheep and take a crash course in shepherding.  I was in the Middle East in 2016; we were on a bus driving near Bethlehem, and several shepherds had their flocks near the roadside, so we stopped to visit with them.  We got to hold the little lambs and watch the sheep.

We learned that shepherds kept sheep in some type of enclosure at night.  This could be a low rock wall enclosure in a field, but this is winter, so most shepherds keep their sheep in caves, which are numerous on the hills of Israel.  This provides warmth and safety from predators at night.  That makes you wonder a bit about this verse:

Luke 2:8   And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

Why are shepherds out in the field at night instead of safely in a cave or enclosure?  I think it is because these particular shepherds had loaned their cave out to a poor man and his pregnant wife that night.  So when the angels announce the birth of the Messiah to the shepherds, they don’t tell them where to find the baby, but just that the baby will be lying in a feeding trough.  They didn’t need directions if it was their cave….

But usually, sheep were in an enclosure, and the shepherd would sleep in the opening of the cave so the sheep wouldn’t wander off at night and predators would not attack them.    Most caves have multiple openings, so the shepherds would stack rocks to close off all but the one they would guard.  This is where the idea of counting sheep to sleep comes from.  They would call the sheep into the cave, and once all were in, they would lay down to seal the opening with their bodies.  Having counted their sheep as they entered the cave, knowing they were all safe, they were ready for sleep.

If you wanted to hurt a shepherd, you would open their enclosure and let the sheep wander off at night.   If one left, there was a good chance that others would follow.  That’s what sheep do.  The herd would wander off, and a thief could follow and steal the herd.   Otherwise, if you just broke in and tried to grab some, you could only steal what you could carry, so you might cause them to lose a few sheep.  They would not follow the thief. They would only follow the voice of their shepherd.

During our roadside visit with the shepherds,  If any wandered off, the shepherd would make a sound, and they would return.  The sheep were pretty skittish, so I tried to imitate the sound to get one to come close.  I apparently failed because that sheep just gave me the side eye and kept going.  But when the shepherd called out, they turned right around.  Our visit was cut short as it was late afternoon, and the shepherds said it was time to take their flocks home.  We turned to go, but our teacher said to stop and watch.  As the two groups of shepherds headed in different directions, they made their particular call sound, and the flock separated as they followed their own shepherd home.  And several Bible passages came alive for me.  Let’s return to John 10 and Jesus’ explanation.

John 10:7-16   So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.   I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.   The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.   I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.   He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.   He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.  I am the good shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.   And I have other sheep that are not of this fold.   I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Who are those who came before him?  It is the current religious elite of Israel —the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes.  They claimed they were the door.  If anyone wanted to worship God, they had to go through them.  They had to do it their way.  If they didn’t, then they would be turned aside and not allowed to enter the temple.  The blind man that Jesus will heal this very week will be kicked out of the Temple and excommunicated from their religion because he witnessed to others that Jesus healed him.  It was their way or the highway.  But Jesus says they are not the way.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through him.  If anyone tells you there are things you must do, requirements not given by Jesus, do not listen.  He is the way, the only way.

Who are the “other sheep not of this fold”?  Jesus is saying, “It is not just about you, Jews.  You have made it that way, but that is never what God intended.  You were to be a kingdom of priest to the nations.  But you never reached out.  You insisted they become Jewish to worship me.  But I will bring them in.  I will bring in the lost tribes of Israel that were dispersed in 700 BC, I will bring in all the Gentile nations – and they will listen to me and answer when I call.  So, there will be one flock with no divisions.  No Jew and Gentile, no slave and free, one flock.”

What would Jesus say to us today?  When we see many people argue about minor points in the way we worship or, the way we stay pure or, the way we baptize, or the way we reach out.  We embrace our divisions and work to better our individual churches and denominations while God is begging us not to see our denominations as the kingdom but to work toward the good of the Kingdom of God: one flock, one shepherd.  

“And they will listen to my voice.”….. There are so many voices to listen to.  Do you hear his voice?  Do you hear the good shepherd calling out to you?  How do you distinguish the voice of God from all the other voices calling out to you?  I often run into this when talking to people about how they practice their faith.  People aren’t sure if they can hear the voice of God or how they can hear the voice of God.  If you hang around the shepherd long enough, and if you listen, you will learn to recognize the shepherd’s voice.  It takes time to learn the shepherd’s voice.  

The first thing you need to do is to turn off the noise.  We are bombarded by voices constantly throughout the day.  The television may be on 24/7, the radio always on in the car, and now there is the constant ping of your cellphone with an alert of yet another voice clamoring for your attention via text, email, or phone call.  You can’t hear the shepherd if you aren’t listening, and you need to find a time of silence to practice listening.  For many people, God can’t get a word in edgewise.  I don’t believe God is giving any believer the silent treatment.  He wants to call out to us, but I imagine he feels like me when I was in the office trying to talk to a teenager and then realizing he couldn’t hear me because he had his AirPods in his ears listening to music.  He couldn’t hear anyone else because he had the music turned up so loud. 

God wants to call out to us when we wander away, but we aren’t listening.  Take your headphones off.  Turn off the world for a few minutes and talk to and listen to God.   Every believer can hear the voice of God, but very few listen.  Spend time in prayer.  And prayer is not a monologue but a dialog.  Spend time listening and meditating. Begin with just a few minutes a day.  

How do you know it is God’s voice?  You can’t be sure if you don’t know the scriptures. We have these scriptures with the very words of our shepherd recorded in them.  Study and learn them; this is the shepherd’s voice spoken to so many others over the years.  He is the same God as the one who spoke long ago.  He will not contradict himself.  But you have to study the scriptures to have this awareness. 

If you want to read material to help you start your journey to hear the voice of your shepherd, here are three helpful books. Brother Lawrence, a monk in France in the 1600s, wrote the Practice of the Presence of God, a classic. Dallas Willard’s Hearing God was written about 25 years ago, and Mark Batterson’s Whisper is only a few years old.  

But remember the Pharisees in our passage today.  They had studied the right scriptures but worshiped the wrong god.  You can’t just interpret the scriptures any old way you want to.  You can’t read them trying to find something you agree with.  You must be honest with the scriptures, look at the context, and compare what you read to other scriptures.  Discuss them in community, not just by yourself. d We have to be students of the word to be the people of God.

As we pray, study, and listen, the Holy Spirit will begin to speak God’s word.

February 4, 27 A.D.  –  Many or Few? —   The Year of the Lord’s Favor #70

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

Week 51 — Many or Few?
Luke 13:22-31

Luke 13:22-30   He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem.   And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 

For the past four weeks, Jesus has been traveling in Perea, the land east of the Jordan River. His time is getting shorter. In this chapter of Luke, we learn that Herod is out to get Jesus.

Luke 13:31   At that very hour, some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

Which Herod are they talking about?  There is Herod “the Great,” the king who tried to kill Jesus after his birth, but that Herod died shortly after this event.  His kingdom was then divided among his sons, who rather confusingly also called themselves ‘Herod.’  (‘Herod’ in Greek is ‘hero.’)   Herod Philip got the territory in blue on the map below, which includes the towns of Bethsaida and Caesarea Philippi.  Herod Archelaus got the territory of Judea and Samaria in the pink, but he only ruled for 9 years.  Caesar deposed him, and the territory was made a Roman Province, with Pontius Pilate in charge of this area.   Herod Antipas (half-brother of Philip) got Galilee and Perea.  This is the Herod that was called out by John the Baptist for marrying his brother Phillip’s wife.  Herod Antipas had John the Baptist imprisoned in his fortress in Macherus in Perea and then had him beheaded.  When Herod Antipas learned of Jesus, some told him that Jesus was John the Baptist, who had been raised from the dead.  

So Jesus has been traveling and teaching for over a month in Herod Antipas’ territory in Perea.  Jesus had likely come further south, closer to Herod’s palace in Macherus, so Jesus was warned to leave the area.  Now, Jesus begins to journey back through Perea, eventually passing through Jericho and returning to Jerusalem.  On his way, someone asked Jesus a question:

“Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

“Will many be saved or few?”     It is a good question.  Jesus began with a very small following, and sometimes crowds of thousands followed him.  Then Jesus will say something the crowds don’t like, and many of them will leave.  Then he will do miracles, and the crowds will gather again.  Will there be many saved or few?  It is an interesting question today.

Remember, in the Bible’s first book, God promised Abraham that his offspring would be as countless as the stars.  

Genesis 15:5  “…number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

In the last book, Revelation, we read this:

Revelation 7:9-10  After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 

A multitude that no one can number- the promise to Abraham being fulfilled.

In the days of the early church, a tiny fraction of the Earth’s population were followers of Jesus.  Today, about one-third of the world’s population, 2.7 billion people, claim the Christian faith. If only 1% of the world’s current population were saved, the resulting assembly of 82 million people would look like an uncountable multitude. Still, compared to all the people who have ever lived (109 billion by some estimates), it would seem to be few.  

So, will it be many or few?  What is the answer?

Or, as some have suggested, will everyone be saved?  Will all 109 billion enter heaven?  In 2011, Rob Bell published a book entitled Love Wins, the premise being that, eventually, everyone will be saved.  He quoted 2 Peter 3:9, that God is not willing that any perish but that all should come to repentance, and interprets that to mean that one day all will repent.  He says that if God wills it, then it must happen. 

Bell refers to Revelation 21:25, which says that the gates of Heaven are never shut. Bell applies that verse to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7 about entering through the narrow gate.  However, city gates were closed in those days to keep out an enemy or to be shut at night for safety.  But the point in Revelation is that in the world to come, there is no enemy, and there is no night.  So, gates never have to be closed.  Bell stretches this to say that, eventually, everyone, even if after spending time in hell, will decide to enter those always open gates. 

This is not a new idea.  Theologians, as early as Origen, in the third century, promoted this idea of universalism, that everyone would be saved.  ‘Love Wins.’  It is a pleasant thought, but does this fit with what Jesus said in our passage today?

Luke 13:23-28   And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  

Jesus said, “Many will seek to enter and not be able.” And he said that we must ‘strive’ to enter…”  The Greek word for ‘strive’ is ‘agonizomai.’  We are much more Greek than we realize.   Isn’t it interesting how we can see many English words in these Greek words?  There, you see our word ‘agonize.’   Jesus says it is a struggle; it takes tremendous effort.  The only other time we see that same word on Jesus’ lips is in John 18.  There it is translated as ‘fighting.’

John 18:36  Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

We must strive to enter; it is agonizing, a struggle, a battle.

What is this agonizing that Jesus says we must do to enter this narrow door?  And if it is a battle, who is the enemy?  And are we saying this is righteousness by works?   Are we striving to earn our salvation?  Definitely not!  You probably know this verse:   

Romans 6:23   For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But did you know the word ‘free’ is not in the Greek there?   The Greek word for ‘gift’ is ‘charisma,’ a gift given not on merit but by undeserved favor.  So, the gift is given out of grace.  It is undeserved.  It cannot be earned.  But unfortunately, when we read the word ‘free’, some get the idea that there are no requirements to accept it. But there is a requirement.

To illustrate this in church, I held up a $5 bill and told the congregation I would give it away to anyone who asked. It was free and available to anyone, but accepting it required action.

‘Eternal life in Christ’ is an unearned gift of grace, but to accept it, there is a harsh requirement.  You have to die.  Paul said it this way:

Galatians 2:20  “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  

You must die to yourself.  You have to decide that you are not the best to make decisions for yourself.  You have to decide that you should not follow your own rules.  You have to determine that you can not be the ruler of your life.  You have to choose to change the way you live by changing who makes your decisions.   We call that repentance.  So you die to your selfishness and turn over your life to God instead, agreeing to live by his rules and follow his ways.  Jesus called this ‘denying yourself.’

Matthew 16:24  “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” 

The gift of forgiveness and salvation is free, but it is very costly to accept it and become a disciple.

Some people do this when they walk down an aisle and get baptized.  At that moment, they decide to die to themselves and live with a different king over their life, a king they will obey no matter what he asks.  But some people walk down an aisle and want to be saved. They don’t want to go to hell; they want to be in heaven when they die.  They are willing to say that in front of a church and are willing to get sprinkled or dunked in water publicly.  But they may not have understood that there is a prerequisite.  

The prerequisite for accepting the gift is repentance, not just a repentance of specific sins, but a complete change in how you decide your life.   You must repent of the sin of making yourself the God and the King of your life.  There can only be one God, one King, and that is not you. That is the repentance that matters.

And the gift we get differs significantly from the $5 bill I gave away.   Because this is not a gift you can hold in your hand and decide to spend whenever you want; it is not a ticket to a place called heaven that you can redeem when you die.  The gift is ‘eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’  The gift is a relationship, life in Christ.  It is a relationship with Jesus that begins today.  But the relationship is that of a king to his subject.  If Jesus is not your king, then you have no relationship with him.  

Repentance is a struggle, not just a one-time decision.  Oh, one day, you decide to put Jesus in charge of your life.  You repent of trying to run your life your own way.    And God grants forgiveness.  But then your old self that you tried to kill — you find out that the old man dies hard.  So you find yourself ignoring God’s leadership in your life, and you are back to being your own boss and king.  Instead of doing what God wants you to do, you do what you want.  (Paul admits to having this same struggle also.)  And then you have to repent of those things, but more importantly, repent of kicking God off the throne of your life.

That is the struggle; that is where we strive.  And the enemy we strive against is our self, our sins, and our desire to make our own decisions.  This is the same struggle we see in Genesis 3.  Adam and Eve have to decide who gets to make the rules, who decides what is good and what is not good, and who is the king of their life, God or themselves?

That is not us working for our salvation; it is us doing the work that results from our salvation.  For you see, we have no hope of being successful in this without God’s help.  That is why God sent his holy spirit to dwell in us so that we would have his presence with us to enable and empower us to win this battle with ourselves.

Let’s look at the rest of our passage this morning.  

Luke 13:23-28   And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’   Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’   But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from.  Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’  In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves cast out.

Sadly, many will want to enter into God’s salvation but will not be able to because they are not willing to repent.  They want to be in heaven with Jesus, but they refuse to let God be king.  They have to be their own king.   If you do not know God as your king, then you don’t know him at all.

Look at the parallel passage in Matthew 7:

Matthew 7:21-23   “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’   And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Who enters the kingdom of heaven?  Only the ones who do the will of the Father in Heaven.    

Jesus divides all people into one of two groups.  And it is not those who did bad things and those who did good things.  It is not those who were kind and those who were mean.  It is not those who went to church and those who did not.  It is those who do their own will and those who do God’s will.

Again, Jesus tells us that many will not enter the kingdom of heaven.   And look at this group who doesn’t enter.  They prophesied in Jesus’ name.  They spoke inspired words in the name of Jesus.  They cast out demons.  They did mighty, powerful works in the name of Jesus.  

They did many good things, but Jesus said he never knew them.

Doing great things will not impress God.  Doing obedient things will.   If the good things you do are not God’s will, if they are your idea instead of HIs, it doesn’t matter how good you think they are.  

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Do you see why Jesus talked about the kingdom of God more than anything else?  Do you see why the first word he publicly speaks is ‘Repent’?

Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

The only way to enter the kingdom is to repent.  Repent of your rebellion against the king.  Turn your life around and decide to be obedient to the king.  You must place yourself under the king’s reign to be in the kingdom.  If you don’t accept God’s rule over your life, then you have no relation to God.  Either God is your king, or he is a stranger.   There is no in-between.

You see, you can not earn your way into the kingdom with good works.  The people in this scripture passage did powerful, wonderful things but were turned away.  “Depart, for I never knew you.”

God, through the sacrifice of Jesus, can forgive your sins and redeem you from your slavery to sin.  We are raised to new life, a life of continual surrender of our will to Him.  We don’t submit our will to God in order to do exactly what we want to do anyway. We submit to do his will.  And you can’t expect to surrender your life to God and make him king of your life and then not expect him to give you things to do.  Paul has told us that God has prepared a list of things for us to do ahead of time:

Ephesians 2:10   For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

So there will be things God wills for us to do.  And if indeed you did submit to the king, you will be obedient to all he asks of you.

You know the parable of the two builders in Matthew 7.   One built his house on the rock, and when the rain, wind, and flood came, it stood.  The other built his house on the sand, and when the storm came, the house fell apart.  This story comes right after this scripture we just read.  It begins in verse 24.  Jesus concludes his most famous sermon with this story.  He tells those listening to him that they are either the ones building off the rock or the ones building on the sand.  What is the difference?

Matthew 7:24-27     “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.   And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.   And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.   And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

They were all hearing Jesus speak on that mountain.  But only some would do what he said.  And that makes all the difference. Hearing without doing so leads to destruction.  

Rob Bell is wrong.  Sadly, not everyone will be saved.  One day, the door will close, people will knock to enter, and God will say, “I never knew you.  I never had a relationship with you.”  One day, God will separate all humanity that has ever lived into a group on the right and a group on the left.  (See Matthew 25:31-46.)  And what does he say the difference will be?

One group gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and visited the sick and imprisoned.  The other group did not do these things. And Jesus told them that these things they did for “the least of these” they actually did for him.  Jesus notes that both groups are surprised.  Neither group had any idea that what they were doing was for Jesus. All they had done was to be obedient to share what they had with others who were needy, because that was the will of their King.  

Look back at the passage from Luke 13 above.  Does this sound like the gates or doors of heaven are always open?  No.  There comes a time when the master of the house shuts the door.  And then many people will want to enter but will not be able to enter.

Jesus never answered the question, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

He answers this question about the number by saying: Be sure you’re in the number.  The important question is not: How many will be saved?  The critical question is, will you be saved?  Will your family be saved?  Will your friends be saved?  It is too important to make assumptions, for as Jesus has told us, many will be surprised.  I beg you to make sure you know where you and your friends stand.

That narrow door is open.  One day, the door will close.  Whatever the number, be sure you are in that number.

Oh, when the saints go marching in.  Oh, when the saints go marching in.
Oh Lord, I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in.